Ruby Rose rushed with wide-eyed horror as Qrow Branwen fell to the ground, thoroughly impaled by the spears Salem had produced. "NOO! Qrow!" She caught her fallen uncle before he hit the ground, staining her hands and clothes with his blood in the process. "Please! You have to stay with us! Jaune! Jaune, we need you now!"
Jaune Arc raced over and began to enhance Qrow's aura- only for it to splutter and fade out again. "I- I can't- I'm- so sorry-"
"No, no, it can't be! Try again!" Ruby shouted.
"I- It's okay, kiddo," Qrow managed, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth. "It's- too late- for me…" Qrow coughed up more blood. "S-sorry, I couldn't-" He trailed off, falling still in Ruby's arms.
"No! NO! NO!" Ruby sobbed, clutching her uncle while the light faded from his eyes.
While Ruby was distracted by Qrow's tragic demise, Salem had flown away, seizing her opportunity to strike.
Lashing out with dark magic, Salem blasted the group bitterly defending the last Relic.
"AAAAHH!" Penny Polendina, who had dived in to shield Weiss Schnee, screamed as her leg was blow off, spewing metal parts onto the rocky ground.
Next to her, Cardin Winchester was even more unfortunate- dark magic bisected him from right shoulder to left hip- as his upper body sloughed off his lower half, he had a moment to see the exposed organs on his lower half before everything went black. He was the only fatality, but most of the Relic defenders were now incapacitated, unconcious or cradling gruesome injuries.
"Ruby, we need you here!" Professor Oobleck shouted, as he crawled painfully across the ground to where Coco Adel lay unconscious in a puddle of her own blood.
Ruby snapped out of her grief, and after furiously swiping her tears away, rushed back into the fray, hacking her way across hordes of attacking Grimm, but their numbers were just too much. She could only watch in horror as Salem stormed right up to the Relic, where a few of the last defenders were making a last stand.
"Fiona!" Robyn Hill cried out in horror as the sheep faunus was dragged off screaming by a hulking Sphinx.
But by then, Salem was just meters in front of her, having just violently thrashed Professor Potts with her Grimm tentacles.
Robyn glared murderously at Salem and fired rapidly, but they seemed to have little effect on the Grimm Queen.
Salem merely growled in annoyance, and a long tentacle shot out like a spring and swatted Robyn away like an inconsequential fly.
Across on the other side of the battlefield, Winter Schnee, Glynda Goodwitch, and Oscar Pine were dueling furiously with Tyrian Callows and a now-fully-Grimmified Cinder Fall, while Nora Valkyrie, Lie Ren, and Sun Wukong provided close fire support to keep swarms of Grimm off them.
"Neptune, grab it!" Sun ordered his teammate to grab the Staff of Creation currently resting in the mouth of a Grimm Whale, after seeing an opening in the Grimm ranks.
Neptune rushed for it, but not fast enough, and the whale's jaws caught him on the way out, slicing him in half.
"Nooo! Neptune!" Sun screamed in horrified disbelief, and fell out his knees.
"Sun, we don't have time for this!" Nora cried, angrily swatting away an attacking Beowulf like a baseball.
Luckily, Velvet Scarlatina, who was fighting nearby, saw the falter in their defense, and rushed over to help her allies, knocking aside two Creeps with a hardlite-dusk broadsword.
Unluckily, this meant she stopped giving support to Ciel Soleil and Neon Katt, who had to give up their attempt to recapture the Crown of Choice from a Wyvern, and fell back toward Ren and Nora.
Meanwhile, Ruby and Jaune had managed to link up with a pair of straggling survivors, Octavia Ember and Ilia Amitola, both of whom were almost out of aura after defeating a Nuckalvee and a swarm of Ravagers.
"Where are the remaining Vacuo forces?" Ruby questioned urgently, shooting down a pair of Lancers as they whizzed by. "Salem's got the damned Sword! We have to intercept her before she gets back to the other Relics!"
"Who knows?!" Octavia was hysterical and on the verge of tears. "Professor Theodore and Nebula are dead! They got trapped by some fucking Apathies, and then the Beringels-" She trailed off, sobbing.
"What about the Atlas-"
Ilia shook her head grimly. "Cordovin is dead! I saw the Griffins picking her mech clean! I think- Blake is fine, but her parents are badly hurt- they got cut off at the harbor with Gwen and Scarlet. We don't know where Dew and Sage are, but…" She trailed off, groaning, as she leaned against a rock formation for support.
"Fine! We'll just have to do it ourselves!" Ruby declared, rushing back toward the fray, Jaune close behind.
"Wait, no, Ruby!" Ilia shouted, but it was to no avail. She groaned, lifted Lightning Lash, and fired a blast at a nearby Boarbatusk. "Come on, Octavia, let's get out of here!"
"AAAH!" Winter shouted as her aura shattered from a blow by Cinder, and she staggered backward.
"Stay away from her!" Glynda knocked Cinder back with a blast of Dust from her riding crop.
But while her back was turned, Tyrian managed to land a blow on Oscar, slicing a huge gash across the boy's abdomen with his mechanical tail.
"GAHH!" Oscar collapsed on the ground, doubled-over and clutching his poisoned wound.
Ciel Soleil skated in on a pair of skates Neon Katt had made for her and fired madly with her dual D-shaped handlebar guns to cover the boy.
Tyrian stopped cackling insanely and growled irritably as his aura collapsed- he swung his tail around to try and take out Ciel.
But the Atlesian girl pressed a button on both her handlebar pistols, and retractable blades shaped like bat-wings and made of strong, composite metal sprang out. She nimbly dodged Tyrian's strike and managed to slash the girth of his tail, damaging it.
"Nice work!" Neon Katt congratulated, throwing a glowstick bomb that stuck to Tyrian while the scorpion faunus was distracted. "Take this, you psycho!"
"No, no, no!" Tyrian glared furiously, trying to get the bomb off, to no avail. The blast knocked him into the rock wall, and he collapsed, wounded and unconscious.
But they had no chance to celebrate- a Wyvern swept down and grabbed the wounded Winter in its gaping maw.
"Winter!" Weiss screamed from a couple hundred feet away, trying in vain to fight her way across swarms of Grimm, aided by a damaged Penny, who half-hopped and half-flew her way forward.
Ciel also tried to intercept the Grimm before it could fly away, leaping as high as she could to slash it with her blades, but only landing a glancing blow.
It was too late- the Wyvern chomped down, ripping Winter in half.
"WINNTTERR!" Weiss shrieked in anguish, watching her sister's bloody lower half plummet to the ground.
"AAAHH!" Glynda had lost her duel with Cinder and fell to the ground, her left leg twisted at an unnatural angle.
The Grimmified Cinder smiled a twisted facsimile of a human grin and moved in predatorily for the kill- but a cry of "Hey ugly!" drew its attention.
Neon Katt tossed a glowstick bomb at Cinder. "For someone with such scrawny Grimm arms, you sure have fat legs!"
"AUGHH!" Some distance away, Nora had been grappling with a full Goliath, when a Death Stalker joined the fray, striking her with its tail.
"Nora!" Ren cried, distracted by her cry.
At that moment, a particularly large Winged Beringel grabbed him and tried to fly off with him.
Ren managed to slash its arms and wiggle out.
While Ren made his escape, Nora managed to knock the Death Stalker aside, and turned to repel a Nevermore bombardment. But the Goliath she'd initially been fighting took the opportunity to charge, trampling her underfoot.
"NORRAAA!" Ren screamed in despair as the Goliath barreled past, revealing Nora's crushed body, the bones broken, limbs horribly mangled in a rapidly expanding pool of blood. He rushed and hugged the mangled corpse, sobbing. "I'm so sorry, Nora! I was a fool to pretend- I love you! I'm sorry- so please wake up! Please!"
Attracted by the surge of dam-busting negative emotion, many of the Grimm in the area swamped Ren, and he vanished under a cascade of dark creatures.
This gave the others a momentary respite.
"Fall back! Fall back!" Ciel ordered, dragging the wounded Oscar with one hand and firing on Cinder with the other. Beside her, Neon was doing the same with Glynda, though Glynda was still well enough to keep blasting away at Cinder, while Velvet focused on driving off Grimm.
"Noo! We have to keep going!" Ruby shouted, running and shooting with Crescent Rose. "Salem's got the last Relic, we have to stop her from gathering them with the others!"
Behind her were Weiss, Jaune, and a damaged Penny.
"Be gone, monster!" Penny cried, blasting Cinder hard enough to send her flying.
"Well, in case you haven't noticed, we still have, oh, you know, Goliaths, Wyverns, and a fuck-ton of Beringels, King Tajitas, Geists, Manticores, Death Stalkers… and that fucking Whale!" Ciel blew her lid, losing her cool for probably the first time in her life. "And just about everyone is dead! So unless you got those silver eyes-"
"Ruby has already used them four times today!" Weiss interjected, furiously coming to the defense of her friend. "She's already taken out a Leviathan, a swarm of Apathies, a column of Goliaths, and a pair of Wyverns! It's about time-"
"Can it, you guys!" Neon cut off sharply. "Something's not right…"
"All the Grimm… are retreating?" Glynda stared dumbfounded as everything from Beowulfs to Wyverns turned and ran away from them.
"I've got a real bad feeling about this…" Ruby muttered.
"What's going on?! Ruby!" Yang Xiao Long shouted, running over from the direction of the harbor. She'd run back there when she heard that Blake had been cut off there, and now brought Blake, Gwen, and Scarlet in tow.
Gwen quickly knelt down and began tending to the wounded Robyn, while Scarlet tended to the disconsolate Sun Wukong.
"Yang!" Ruby lit up to see her sister was alright.
"Who's guarding the ships?" Weiss questioned.
"Mata and Saber- Octavia, Dew, and Ilia also made it back to the ships," Blake replied. "We also cleared out most of the Grimm infesting the harbor. Besides, Dr. Polendina is doing a pretty good job with those turrets."
"H-Hey, sorry to interrupt, but- Wh-What is that-?" Jaune asked tremulously.
Two giant looming dragons easily and rapidly crossed the vast battlefield- one purple four-legged one striding menacingly on the ground, while a golden one hovered above the ground.
Any Grimm in their way parted hastily or were effortlessly destroyed. The golden dragon emitted a bright sliverly aura, vaporizing all the Grimm in its path, while any Grimm that made contact with the purple dragon's skin liquified and was whirled away like water down a drain.
"Salem… did it…" Ruby stared wide-eyed.
"It's… the gods," Weiss gaped in both terror and awe. "The brothers… of light and dark…"
"What a pitiful display…" The God of Darkness derided. "See, brother- humanity still constantly wars, bringing no peace to this planet. Only the destruction I wrought can cleanse this world and bring it the solitude of peace. Humanity is incapable of knowing peace."
"What a pity, I confess my disappointment," The God of Light shook his head slowly. "I had hoped for better."
"Humanity must perish," The God of Darkness stated coldly. "This world must be wiped from existence."