The Shadow over Beacon:

Now that Jaune knows where his parents are, and armed with both weapons and a companion, the young man sets out to go retrieve his parents. However, a mounting fear begins to seep deep into his bones, there's a shadow over this town. And it's darkness has only become more pronounced since he arrived. Armed with more questions than answer, the two reluctant heroes set out to the church. Let's hope it will not be their doom.

0-0-0-0

A heavy silence lingered between Qrow and I, before I finally shifted my coat and turned back to him. His mouth was in a grim line, and he need solemnly to me once before I asked him.

"Anyway into the church without being swarmed by goons?" I asked, hoping beyond hope there was somewhere.

"Well, ironically, there's a passage in the basement there that leads directly into the sewers." he smiled a wry smile. "Of course, I know the way in."

"You've been down here before?" I asked, incredulously.

"Course I have, I'm a hobo remember?" he answered, as if that explained anything.

I sighed, a little too rattled and exhausted to care much anymore. If he knew the way, all the better that we didn't need to slog through this place more than necessary. For a moment, I looked at my surroundings, the drab, weathered brick far above us, the cracked stone floor, and the rusty metal grates along the rounded edges of the room made me feel... nostalgic for some reason. Once more I glanced at the bodies, to make sure they hadn't moved or something, and confirmed they were still oozing blood. Blood that had no business looking more black than red, but it wasn't a huge surprise given everything that had happened so far.

My hands shook slightly as I examined them, whether from the adrenaline or the fear I couldn't tell. Maybe the guilt over killing those three, but I doubt it. All the color had washed out of me, and I squeezed my hands together hard enough to turn them from an ashy pale to stark white. I looked over at Qrow once more, who was waiting patiently to get my bearings before asking him one more thing.

"You knew these three?" I asked, nodding to the bodies.

If Qrow felt any guilt or sorrow at the bodies of his fellow townsfolk, he did well not to show it. "Yeah, before this, before they became like that. Even then, didn't really get along with James. Always too intense, to willing to fight, and die, for a cause that others didn't believe in. He was a lost to us before that sickness settled into his body."

We walked in silence for most of the trip, nothing but the dripping of pipes and a few clattering footsteps above us breaking the silence. He looked tired, I noticed, weathered beyond his years, perhaps with the weight of everything he saw.

"I'm sorry." I said abruptly, voice sounding too stiff in the silence.

"About?"

"Your wife."

"Ah." was all he said, nodding once and then falling quiet again.

I guess this was no time to get distracted, all I was concerned about was getting my parents, Qrow, and myself out of this godforsaken town and then moving somewhere warm and sunny. Maybe Paradise Falls in Vacuo, picking up an archaeological job or something. My thoughts served to distract me from the gnawing fear in my bones, a cold ache that set my teeth on edge.

I felt like I was being watched, like there was someone at the end of the tunnel behind us just observing. I looked back periodically, the shadows of the sewers playing tricks on my eyes, making them see phantoms that weren't there. Something wasn't adding up, why did my parents come here? What did these damn villagers want with me in the first place? The pit in my stomach that had been growing since I reentered the town seem to grow larger exponentially, a seeping dread that arose a cold sweat on my forehead.

Keep it tight, Jaune. Think about Paradise Falls, about your sisters, about your friends back at Vale University, think about staying alive to see them all again. You can get through this, we need to keep our head on straight.

"We're here." Qrow said grimly, I looked up to see an old metal ladder leading up into another manhole.

"You sure? Looks like every other manhole down here." I commented, once more checking behind us for that presence.

"Dunno how you can see down here, kid, but yeah. That's the place, see I marked it." He jerked his thumb towards a small "X" symbol carved into the wall. If it's good enough for him I suppose.

"Alright, when we get up there, we need to stay quiet. I don't know my way around this church place, but it has to be pretty big to fit the whole town right?"

"Aye, the church itself is massive, but it has a lot of lower levels. Some run deeper than this one, run out into the coastal caves near the beachhead. Like an ant hive, we'll need to watch ourselves." Qrow answered, not taking his eyes off the manhole.

"Great, just great, it'll take forever to find my parents." I snarled, gripping the gun in my hand.

"Maybe not, if Summer said they were waiting for you I can imagine they'll be in the Inner Sanctum. That's where a lot of meetings happen, and where they planned to take you first I believe."

"I imagine it's also crawling with cultists?"

He flashed me a sly grin. "Aye, by the truckload. But never fear, Qrow Branwen was quite the swashbuckler in his day and he'll be more than happy to defend a delicate maiden such as you."

I was almost put off by his sudden change in attitude, although I was reminded of the tonal shift when I first met him as well. Maybe you just didn't get to keep all of your sanity when you lived in a town like this for so long. I nodded, and we ascended the ladder, me going first to survey our surroundings. Seems like this room was mainly used for storage, old crates and dusty religious tools sat perched around the room and on ancient shelves. We snuck out of the sewers, replacing the cover, and quickly ducked behind some large boxes to look out the cracked open door.

"We good to go?" an unfamiliar voice asked from what sounded like down a carpeted hallway.

"Not yet, no sign of James or Jaune either. But I head Summer's phone call did not go over very well. Ozpin is thinking of sending a search party down into the sewers. By all accounts he should still have the amulet" a slightly more familiar voice answered. My breath stilled, the amulet, I had forgotten about it for so long that I didn't notice it pressed against my skin. Is it what they wanted? This damn hunk of metal?

"By the depths, can we not handle this one thing? We have a whole town of people for goddess's sake!"

"Don't ask me, I'm just a grunt."

"Alright then, let's get going. So, how's Nora doing...?" the voices trailed off, finally silence by the distinct closing of a door.

"Alright, let's move." I whispered, sneaking up to the door and taking a peak outside.

Apparently this storage room was at a crossroads between a path going left, and one leading straight. Going straight meant following the two voices we had heard through the door, but going left might lead us into more trouble.

"Left or right?" I whispered back to Qrow, handing him the gun I had been giving and unholstering the gun in the waistband of my pants.

"Left, inner sanctum should be two levels below us." he whispered back, gun and knife in hand.

This place definitely needed a makeover, and maybe a building inspector. The walls, the red carpet, even the lights gave this place a sickly, drab look that seemed to worsen my spirits. Now, mind you, it wasn't as bad as the hotel perhaps, but this place needed an electrician, some construction workers, some painters, maybe even someone from health and safety, all jobs I imagined weren't in high demand here.

The whole corridor we walked down smelled like mothballs and old, shag carpeting. The peeling, yellowed wallpaper and the lack of decorations made this place even drearier than it was. Eventually we came upon another door, although this one had a strange symbol adorning it, like a pentagram with an eye in the middle of it, creepy. Qrow, apparently deeming this to be the way, went first through it and I followed suit.

It was like stepping into another building, the air cooled considerably pass the threshold and the overall look of everything was much nicer. This reminded me more of an office complex, rows of desk and nigh ancient computers over a rather pristine black rug, spacious and well air-conditioned. And also deserted, there was not a soul in sight nor a sound to be heard. It was eerie, a stillness that made every step of our feet sound like explosions upon the rug.

"What is this place?" I whispered to Qrow.

"Communications? That's what I remember."

"Communicating to who?" Qrow didn't answer, instead he narrowed his eyes and continued forward.

"We should be approaching the stairwell soon, there'll be a lot more people once we get close, gonna be hard to sneak in. I mean, unless..."

"Unless what, Qrow?"

He flashed me another sly grin. "Unless you don't mind a little bit of cloak and dagger, yeah?"

0-0-0-0

As Qrow had filled me in, apparently there were always these guys, sentinels or something, that stood in during these meetings as ceremonial guards. Like the color guard from the scouts, but only involving horrible pagan gods and terrifying sacrifices instead of smores and badges. The plan was to jump two of these goons, dress up like them, and infiltrate the meeting.

Risky? Yes. Rewarding? Not quite so. But I didn't have a better plan, and I couldn't just rush in there gung-ho and expect to leave with my soul intact. So, we crept down the long hallways, now tiled instead of carpeted and actually looking more akin to a hospital than a church. The stark bright lights and the white walls making us stand out if anyone were to glimpse us.

Even so, it seemed as if fortune took pity on us because we found two of those idiotic goons walking alone. If I had to describe them, they looked like purple-clad KKK members with purple hats and silk masks. Taking a secondary corridor, we jumped them from the side as they were engrossed in a conversation about one of them getting a new deck installed, or something.

I socked one right in the jaw as he walked past, and let me tell you I am no lightweight. The cultist went down like a sack of bricks just in time for Qrow to catch the other one right in the throat with a well-aimed jab, while the cloaked figure choak on air Qrow took the time to knee him in the face. It was easy getting their robes on, we just threw them over ourselves before we were left with the fate of these two.

"Utility closet down there," I mentioned, pointing at said closet. "We could dump 'em there."

"No," Qrow shook his head grimly. "People only stay knocked out for about 2-5 minutes at best. We don't got rope to tie them up, and we don't need them letting everyone know where we are."

He looked at me, a silent question in his eyes: Can you do it?

I did, and I wasn't proud of it.

Dressed in some new ceremonial duds, Qrow and I sauntered our way towards what Qrow swore was the inner sanctum. I was inclined to believe him, I could hear the chatter pick up as we moved down carefully laid hallways of tile and white plaster. Finally we reached a sort of anti-chamber, a large room with various benches along the walls, in between the door we had come through and the massive double doors opposite of us. I noted another oak door to the right of us, I could vaguely see the shape of a spiral staircase through a small glass window.

"What are you two doing?" a voice cut in from behind, turning my blood to ice.

Both Qrow and I turned around, giving our best "Who, me?" appearance -well, as well as we could with masks on- and trying to remain calm. This guy must've been the head honcho of ceremonial goons, because he was decked out in blood red robes, not our peasant-tier purple ones. The figure marched up to us, Qrow's hand falling towards his waist where his knife and gun were.

"We've been looking for you two everywhere, the meeting begins in 5 minutes. Where have you been?" he barked at us.

"We- I mean, I, ugh,-" I stumbled over my words before he cut me off.

"Nevermind, I don't care, follow me to the priestess's quarters." he sped off at a clipped pace, both of us following behind him like scorned children being dragged along by their parent.

We followed him to the door with the spiral staircase, all three of us ascending it at rapid pace. By the time we reached the top, the dread that had been mounting inside of me reached its peak as I gazed over what appeared to be a balcony above the sanctum. Cloaked figures, identical to us, stood along either side of balcony, flanking the gathered procession of townsfolk in the pew below. At the front of the "church", stood an altar composed of limestone and chiseled with blasphemous carvings of wicked, black tentacles and a vaguely humanoid shape standing in the center. On it were various brass dishes of strange, dark fluid and a weathered book open to about its midway.

"Get a move on," the lead ceremonial priest guy hissed at us, shoving two brass bowls of smoking, purple incense into our hands. "Take your places at the end there, on the left side."

We did so, moving to the end of the row and giving us both a good view of the altar, and the entrance. It seems we truly were the last to arrive, the smoldering embers in the hanging braziers providing enough illumination to give me a good look at what appeared to be half the town in attendance. Old, young, men in business suits, and women in sundresses all stood shoulder-to-shoulder next to one another.

The incense was choking, thick wafts of up turning the already stuffy and nearly nauseating atmosphere of the church even more so. Qrow snapped a quick glance at me as if to say "suck it up", and I did so, holding the bowl slightly away from myself. It was then the doors swung open, and a figure strode in, flanked by two others whose very presence silenced the whispers of the church goers.

The three figures -one I recognized as the lady in red from my first day, the other two a pair of blackhaired women who wore white and black robes respectively- strode down the aisle, climbed up the altar, and turned to face the crowd.

"My fellow acolytes," the one in the black stated, long raven hair falling down her back. "today has been a day of great progress. Today we are closer than ever to bringing our lady back from the murky depths where she slumbers."

A chorus of cheers, even a few sobs of excitement and contentment. I turned my nose up.

"Yes," whitey continued, and ah Hell it was the goddamn mayor; Summer. "you have all struggled long and hard in your duties, but soon they shall be rewarded."

"Tonight, we have to special guests coming to visit us. We have long since expected their arrival, and with them they bring our lady's salvation." the woman in red nearly cried out in joy.

A set of doors hidden behind the curtains next to the altar opened, and through them a pair of hooded figures emerged on each side. I felt my stomach twist in knots to the point it felt like my whole abdomen was cramping up. The two cloaked figures strode up next to the three, black-haired women and red-lady grabbing their hoods before pausing for dramatic effect.

"I welcome our new, or rather old members of our communion," Summer cheered to the crowd, the hoods flying down from the figures's heads. "The progenitors of our savior:"

My goddamn parents.

0-0-0-0

Vanitas50 back at it, keeping me updating this story. I know this isn't as long as some of you might like, but I figure this is good a cliffhanger as any to leave off on. Anyways November is national novel writing month and that means I am gonna devote some time to my original work "Leaderboard". I talked about it back awhile ago, and I need to pick up the pace soon. If you like superheroes this'll be your kind of story. Also, if anyone ANYONE would like to adopt my stories, please shoot me a PM and we can talk.

Until next time my lovelies, keep those requests and reviews coming!

XOXOXO

CoffeyJoe