AN: Hey.

This is an OC story that I might continue at some point, but for now it is a stand alone prologue chapter for something that needs to be fleshed out, I just though I might as well post this as a taster.

Arc?
Title: Taster Chapter

~A Redesign of some of Remnant

Vacuo was deserts upon deserts that soaked up the rays of sunlight, it acted as a sinkhole of Remnant. It was the place where things went to die, be they people, animals, Grimm or civilizations from a bygone era that left their mark deep in the roots of the continent through the culture and ruins scattered across the hellscape. Many thought it a place to go to disappear from the world, because no one would follow you there, which was only partially true. Remnant was far more brutal than the average man or woman could ever see, the bowels of Vacuo would chew people up and spit them out worse than even the tundra's of Mantle and it made the deathly desert of Menagerie look like an Oasis in comparison.

Hell was the only way the people who ventured deep within it could ever describe it as. The further you went the more it felt like the world sought to kill you, even the Grimm stayed from the depths of the scorched seas. That's not to mention the dense jungles and forests that form the closer you travel towards Vale as well as to the north of the desert that makes up for most of the continent. The desert from most estimates made up for sixty percent of Vacuo the other forty being forestry and jungles filled to the brim with things from Hippos to crocodiles and hundreds of other monstrous beasts.

There was a time when Vacuo was considered to have the most laid back population, and was looked to as a prospect by the other nations who only saw the deep veins of Dust all across it.

It was a hell hole disguised as a gold mine as far as the population of Vacuo was concerned, for all the Schnee Dust Company mining facilities and other companies though it had become too much for them to mine in Vacuo's Dust veins any longer with how dangerous it was. It got to a point where they were losing more money replacing workers and running operations than they were making, so there were lost or destroyed and crumbling old mining operations left from the height of it all.

There was a reason for the abundance of Dust deep in Vacuo, some had theories about where Dust came from and the compounds that made it up, but none could know the truth of it. All were wrong, in actual fact it was a compound composed of the ground and soil that absorbed the energy of the Old Word Gods and became crystallized in the event that reset humanity a millennia ago. Vacuo was the epicenter of the disaster which was why its deserts are so ruthless, as a result of all the magical energies shaping the world in a way unlike any other.

But now so long after an event that only two bore witness to, has the world changed for the better or worse?

[Scene Break]
~Karna POV

"Ugh this weather is way too hot!" my older sister shouted into the desert.

With a sigh dad responded to her "I thought you said you liked hot weather? Plus it's like this every day, how is today somehow different from every other day you've been alive?" My sister looked like she wanted to argue back with him but stopped herself when she noticed mum staring at her.

We were walking back home after being out all day on a trip, Dad had wanted to teach me and my sister how to fly properly with our wings, but now we were super tired from it all. Mum was carrying me and Dad had Priscilla on his shoulders, I felt the same as my sister about how hot it was, plus it was summer at the moment and Vacuo only had hot and hell for its temperatures. I wonder how Mum and Dad managed it at times like these, though Mum really liked hanging out in the sun- she didn't like it when we made the comparison between her and the desert Boa snakes, dad thought it was funny though.

I wasn't sure why Mum didn't like it, she was a snake Faunus after all, same with sis, but sis had wings like me and dad. Plus Mum called us all 'bird brains' all the time and I thought that was cool!

"Are we there yet?" I asked, looking at Mum's face, she made a weird expression for some reason.

"Actually yes we are, see over there-" she pointed out Dogma the town we lived in.

"Yay! Finally!" my sister yelled dropping from dad's arms, I followed after her when Mum let me down, it felt like all my energy had come back and I started running back to our house.

When we finally got home I collapsed onto the couch in the lounge, Priscilla jumped onto my back and I let out an "ompf".

[Scene Break]
~Priscilla POV

Karna fell asleep not even ten minutes after we got home, after he did I felt like I got a whole lot more tired too, he had some much energy that sometimes when I watched him it felt like he was giving me some. Kinda like what it feels like when an Aura Nurse heals you and your Aura is at full. It's a nice feeling. But my little brother was nearly ten now and if I had to guess I think it might have something to do with his semblance, I was pretty sure I knew what mine was but Mum and Dad said they weren't too sure about him, Dad had said he had felt something similar but wasn't sure what to make of it.

I moved him to his room so our parents didn't have to, Dad looked like he was ready to collapse as well and Mum was running on all cylinders again like she hadn't been up for twenty hours already all the while looking after all of us. She was a superhero for sure.

Not long after I set my brother in his room I went to sleep as well.

When I woke up the next day I went for a walk after breakfast, I didn't have any lessons today and Dad wasn't teaching Karna and I how to fight until later. So when I set out I took a dagger in its sheath with me just in case. Mum and Dad had been driving it into my mind that our country wasn't safe in any way shape or form so I should be extra cautious when I decided to go hang out with my friends.

Dogma was a town that was situated around an enormous lake and river that flowed through Vacuo back out toward the ocean, there were a few really large old temple structures, I liked going out to them with Suna. She was an older girl that trained at Shade Academy, she didn't say what happened to her but now she didn't attend the Huntsman school. Suna always knew something too, whenever we went places she could tell me everything and anything from the place the owner brought their rugs from to the age of the building or when it was built.

Which was exactly why I loved being around her when I went and explored the temple because she could read the pictures and stuff on the walls that she called 'hieroglyphs', they told stories of gods and people that were super old!

The large white ancient pillars of marble and stone came into view as we walked further on, this was the third one we'd found over the last year and a half. I say 'we' but really it was all Suna, she went on expeditions into the desert looking for a similar sort of thing. All her time in the desert had tanned her skin quite a dark shade, she had started wearing tank tops and shorts since we first met, back then she had worn a duster and all sorts of gear I can only assume she had from when she wanted to be a Huntress. I think Suna was seventeen or eighteen, I never really asked- though I also didn't know the age Shade started taking people.

"Woah! It's so freaking cool! I'm so glad I tagged along with those lame archaeologists!" The dark haired girl next to me yelled as we stood at the entrance staring into the gaping maw that was guarded on either side by these huge stone statues shaped like people holding weapons.

"They're like guardians..." the words fell out of my mouth as it hung open while looking at the hundred foot statues up and down.

Suna and I spent the next two hours looking around at all the amazing relics of the old temple held, Suna loved talking and there was almost never a moment when she left us with a silence. About an hour into the expedition someone she knew showed up and they started talking about the temple. I think he was some kind of researcher because he could talk about all the hieroglyphs just as well if not way better than Suna.

Eventually the time came and Suna helped take me back home and talked to Mum a bit when she dropped me off, Mum liked Suna and talked to her a lot whenever she stopped by.

[Scene Break]

A few years passed us by quickly.

I was nearly sixteen and it was Karna's birthday.

"Priscilla! Priscilla!" Karna shouted as I could hear his footsteps coming toward me. "Look! Look!" he stopped in front of me and showed an old spear, it was a charred black metal and the metal pole of it was twisted with the only parts that were smooth were a roughly thirty centimeter patch where there was leather wrapped around it.

"It looks cool Karna." I watched his face shine brightly holding it above him, the spear had to be something along the lines of two meters long.

"Yeah! Suna got it for me! She's awesome!" Speaking of which, my old friend walked into the kitchen where I was sitting, she had a grin from ear to ear.

"I know, I am awesome aren't I?" Something about her childish smile made my heart flutter for a moment before I pushed past the feeling and focused on my brother's hyper mood.

"Thanks so much!" Karna continued praising Suna who dragged him into a hug. Karna had been getting interested in weapons, I had tried to keep up with his new found love for them, but he was too much for me when it came to them. Not to mention just a few weeks back when Dad took him and me to a gun range on the outskirts of Dogma, it was the only place we could buy guns unless you wanted to travel to the next city over and that was nearly forty kilometers away.

He had loved it anyway.

The rest of Karna's birthday party was spent in what little of a backyard we had, though I suppose the grass and soil that our entire part of town was sitting on top of would be considered weird unless you lived up near the Oasis of Feiyum where it sat at the border of the desert that bled into a huge forest and swampy jungle from what I've been told. Though the same was to be said about Aremis which was near the edge of the desert that broke off toward Vale.

Later when Karna's two friends that had come over had left and he was with Mum learning how to use the spear he'd gotten, I was sitting on the roof of our house, which was easy enough to do with being able to fly and all and not to mention that nearly all the houses in Dogma were made of mud, clay, thatch/flax and a few brick buildings all the while most of the mud and clay houses had wooden roofs and flooring. So our roof was flat and had a viewing platform on it, again which was where I was sitting to watch the sun go down.

My eyes were tired and I was on the verge of falling asleep, just before I managed to drift off a voice called me and I opened them again half lidded.

"Fiore, there you are." It was Suna, of course it was her. "The party's over and you're already falling asleep" she laughed to herself. "Must be that snake in you, always looking to sleep in the hot sun."

"I thought you were going home?" I asked ignoring the vaguely offensive comment about my Faunus heritage, my brother and our parents along with every other Faunus that lived in extreme environments had evolved to have enough traits to survive, so I had been born with my mothers perceptive snake eyes, hard scales, a snake tail not that it did much for me and my fathers illustrious massive wings. My brother had eyes that could see up to three miles away in perfect detail and the wings, Mum and Dad had mostly normal features and weren't mixed or well like I was.

"I never said I was, I walked out of the room to go to the bathroom." She dismissed my miss-remembering. "But you know not all girls are like you and can go days without using a toilet, what I wouldn't give to have that though it would make my job easier." Suna sighed wistfully.

"I wouldn't know." I said dryly.

The dark haired woman laughed "I know, I know… but there was something I wanted to talk to you about anyway." she settled before sitting down next to me with her legs dangling over the edge.

"I hope this isn't some kind of crappy love confession like in those novels you read- you know the Ninja ones or whatever?" I joked watching as my friend got flustered herself for a second.

"No not yet, or as far as I'm aware. I just wanted to talk about whether or not you were going to come work for me or if you were going to be a Huntress?" it was something I had been thinking about, I didn't really want to go to shade, but I did enjoy training when I did it. At the same time I had spent the last four years helping Suna with some of what she did, I wasn't really sure if I wanted to do it as a job though.

"Looks like you're not sure yet then?" she asked, grabbing my attention again.

"Well the problem is that my parents want us to move to Vale within the next year and a half or so." it was something they'd told me about recently, Vacuo was just too dangerous for us to stay here any longer, even if there were heaps of nice respectable people it didn't mean the deserts, oasis' and swamps were that way.

"Oh?" Suna's hazel eyes brimmed with intrigue.

"Yeah, I'm not sure if I even want to go with them yet, they said I was old enough to be my own person so if I wanted to stay they'd give me the house and I could do with it what I wanted. If I went with them though they would sell it and we'd all take the train in Barracks that crosses the border into Vale and we'd probably live in the capital." The more I thought about it the more I wanted to go off with Suna and yet still I wanted to go with my Family to Vale because of how young Karna still was.

It was a dilemma really, something that would shape the rest of my life and something that would go on to open and close opportunities I don't even know about.

[Scene Break]
~Unknown Girl POV

The scene of a horrific event long since passed played over in my mind constantly, it had been two or more years and it wouldn't stop. No one was left, all my siblings had died and there was nothing left for me, not any longer anyway.

"Train ticket?" A voice said from my left suddenly, scaring me in the process, when I looked and realised what was happening my heart began to calm from having spiked.

"Right here." I said handing an older man, he was wearing the Redoran Train Company outfit, just a Conductor to make sure there weren't any stowaways I guess.

"Are you alright there young lady? I didn't mean to scare you like that, you seem a little shaky?" He asked with his cobalt blue eyes filled with sincerity.

"Oh! Uh sorry for worrying you, I- I just was lost in my thoughts..." I tried to explain away to end the conversation already, I didn't want more attention than any other person would give to another walking by them on the street.

"If that's all then I apologise again and hope you enjoy the ride to Kashin." With that he turned away and went back to collecting tickets.

Kashin, the next stop in my journey and after it I could take a boat to Sanus and try to find a way to Vale, then I could finally have all this behind me and leave this shithole. Though I had heard about a band of brigands held up out near the direction this train was headed, so if my luck decides not to show itself then I won't have to deal with something like that. If it does though, then this train is going to end up getting robbed.

I'd really rather it not come to that considering how much I've had to do just to get to this point, everything I have is riding on making it to Vale at this point. The train seemed like it would be able to hold up should anything happen either way, there had been two huntsmen and two huntresses on the platform when I was boarding so with them and the armour of the train so we should make it without incident. When the train finally got moving I noticed one of the Huntresses that I had seen, a purple haired woman with a large black scythe that had purple accents on it as well as a long black chain with a spearhead. She also seemed to have a pair of pistols on her hips that I saw as she surveyed the cart a few times over the first twenty minutes.

About an hour into the ride while I was watching the scenery pass us I thought I noticed a large group of people coming up alongside the train, at which point when I went to say as much to the woman the carriage we were in shook. There were heavy footsteps coming from the roof, the Huntress acted with a speed that was incomprehensible to me as she teleported to where a man dressed in bits and pieces of armour had come in through a trapdoor in the roof, her foot connected sending him out one of the windows that replaced itself with a metal sheet. Before I could understand more of what was happening another came through and the same happened, the woman decided to take it outside and away from all the civilians in the cart with me, there were a few babies crying while most of the people looked frightened.

From there it was anyone's guess as to what was happening, a voice came on over the speakers of the train that said that brigands had attacked but the Huntsman and huntresses had taken care of the threat for the time being, the only problem came when there was an announcement asking people to calm because they didn't want to risk a Grimm attack so soon after dealing with the bandits.

Eventually the Huntress came back inside the cart and was looking a little beat, no visual injuries, but she was panting and looked pretty rough. There was a doctor in our carriage who went to help the woman when she walked back through to the front where she had been serving as guard from, I'm not too familiar with the process but the doctor seemed to do something with their Aura from what I understood. I'd never seen Aura actually used or semblances no less but this seemed like it was one.

The whole event reminded me that I've never even seen a Grimm either, it was a haunting feeling to know that something so brutal and tortured existed out there waiting for the moment to strike against the world in this awful unified force. My understanding is pretty limited anyway, I never went to school for Huntsman training or the prep school either.

Train had left the station at eleven thirty and we arrived at the coastal town of Kashin at two in the afternoon, the sun was beginning to go down and the station was filled with people waiting to take the train back inland. As I stepped off I caught sight of the conductor who seemed to have seen me looking and waved, I didn't wave back and continued on through the building heading for the port to hopefully find passage to Sanus.

I was happy to finally set sail from the crowded docks that had been filled with hundreds of people doing trade and working the shipyards, I had been stopped several times by passersby, but now I was finally on my way. The Captain of this ship said that the journey would take three and a half days if conditions were at their best, but would take up to a week if things got choppy or worse.

While walking around the main deck of the large boat there were several children running amok playing and being semi-chased by their parents trying to reign them in. There were quite a few more Hunters on this boat then had been on the train though I assumed that because of aquatic Grimm, though I wasn't sure of what said sort of Grimm would take the form of. If I had to make a guess, possibly a large Octopus or Squid.

AN: Hello again.

Like I said at the top this is a taster chapter/prologue and I'm not really sure when it will start getting chapter releases.