Note: OMG, we made a deadline! Incredible. We typically like to make each chapter about 4000 words because we think that space has the best pacing, so if we keep up our current pace, we should be able to get chapters out sometime during each week. Of course, usually, our chapters go over that limit (this one was closer to 5000). Also, this is dependent on us maintaining our pace, which we will say is very hard. Also also: if you couldn't tell, this arc is coming to an end soon. It went on way longer than we initially planned, even though we said it wouldn't. So sorry. But we would love to hear your feedback on this arc as a whole, considering that this has taken some drastic changes from our original plans and with all the craziness with gods and giant acid-spitting frogs if you've been enjoying this. We hope to update again soon. Thank you for your patience.


Run. Run faster.

That mantra consumed Blake's mind like a firestorm. She pushed herself faster than she knew possible, each step propelling her forward through the endless maze. It didn't matter that she had no idea where she was going. It didn't matter. She just had to move faster, faster, faster. Faster than them.

"How many of these fucking things are there?" Yang screamed, barely keeping up pace with her teammate. Velvet followed close behind the two of them, panting, exhausted but still pushing forward. Behind her were Ren and Nora, sticking by each other's sides, then Jaune a good distance behind them, and then lastly Pyrrha, holding back to guard the rear of the pack. They rounded a corner, and Pyrrha stopped at the edge, waiting behind the bend, timing her movements carefully. The moment a royal toad came into view, Pyrrha launched the sharp blade-end of Blake's weapon into its eye and tugged sharply downward; its momentum caused it to fall onto its side and skid across the floor, and when it was vulnerable, Pyrrha launched herself forward along the weapon's cord, ripping it from its eye as she flung herself toward before finishing it off with a slice across the mouth. She looked back, just in time to dodge a slippery tongue sailing at her head, which instead stuck to the other toad's corpse. Three more frogs coming at her from behind. She sliced the tongue apart and hurried off to rejoin the others, thankful that she had been working on her conditioning.

Blake glanced up to the walls of the maze. In the sky, high above, she saw the toads leaping over the wall, lazily following them with their black, doll-like eyes. She turned the corner, only to immediately slam her boot into the ground to stop, and hurry in the other direction.

"Other way! Other way!"

Yang watched in horror as Blake tried to escape only for a burst of acid to come flying out of nowhere and strike her in the spine. Yang's heart froze for a moment, petrified, but Blake suddenly turned into a shadow and materialized elsewhere, completely unharmed. They continued down their path, branching off into a long corridor that itself seemed to stretch on for an eternity with no breaks in sight. Not the most ideal path, but the only one they could muster.

"Yang, keep moving!" Blake ordered, and Yang snapped out of her shock and kept up after her.

"So, does anyone have a plan?" Velvet asked desperately.

"Yes! Run!" Nora cried.

"We can't keep running forever!" Yang shouted back. "There has to be some way out of here."

Pyrrha quickly caught up to the others, speeding to the middle of the pack.

"Velvet, what's your Semblance?" she asked quickly.

"W-What?"

"Semblance!"

Velvet stammered. "P-Photographic memory!"

Pyrrha scowled and dashed forward, unsatisfied. She pulled ahead of Blake and Yang, and slid to a stop, holding out her hand to halt the others. They paused at her command, and were thankful that they did, as they had been unaware of the toad that was falling out of the sky that would have landed on top of them had they continued forward. It crashed into the ground, and Pyrrha turned her back to it, instead grabbing onto Yang's shoulders and giving her an approving nod before heading back the other way to deal with more frogs approaching at the other end of the corridor.

"They have terrible peripheral vision," she explained hurriedly. "Aim for the roof of their mouths, between their eyes."

"You want me to fight that thing?" Yang said in disbelief, but Pyrrha hurried off before she could receive an answer. Her hands moved swiftly, transforming Gambol Shroud into its gun format and inserting a Dust canister into its chamber. She passed by Nora, and without hesitating, or waiting for her teammate to voice her approval, shot her in the shoulder with an electrified bullet. Nora recoiled, briefly—but she quickly straightened herself, recovering as a burst of energy pulsed through her.

"Nora, help out Yang!" Pyrrha ordered. Nora almost cursed Pyrrha out, but she clenched her fist and furrowed her brow and came to the realization: not the time for infighting.

"Gotcha," she growled, sprinting off towards Yang and dragging the blonde along. "Come on, Yang. Let's kick that amphibian's giant ass!"

The two pairs rushed into action, Yang and Nora charging forward and Pyrrha attacking back. In the front, the toad, blankly watching two new treats eagerly approaching it, launched out its tongue to snatch them alive. They split, dodging the tongue on either side. Yang quickly dodged back to the center of the corridor, cocking her fist back. She cried out and slammed her gauntlet into its tongue, propelled forward by a blast from her shotgun. She drove it against the ground, and the viscous fluid that coated it kept it stuck to the ground so that Nora could utilize it.

The JNPR warrior jumped onto its tongue, and with nimbleness and balance she had mastered from Ren, sprinted up its surface, charging as fast as she could toward the beast's gaping maw. Small shocks of electricity on her soles kept her detached from the organ. When she drew close, Yang drew up her foot and stamped down again on the tongue, pulling the toad's head down and giving Nora enough of a boost to launch herself up into the air. She tucked her chin, bent her leg, pulled her feet up behind her and tumbled forward and—crack.

A sickening double knee drop, driven into the royal toad's skull. The monster buckled under the force of the impact, falling onto its belly. Yang grabbed the tongue again with both hands, preparing to tear it in half. Yet, at the moment she began to rip, the frog suddenly roared back to life, spitting a ball of acid toward that she stumbled out of the way from, falling onto her back. It jerked upward, launching Nora off of its skin, and she gasped in pain as she rolled along the ground.

"Argh, how does Pyrrha make killing these things look so easy?" she asked.

On the other end of the corridor, Pyrrha didn't feel like it was easy. It took every ounce of concentration she had to dodge the coordinated attacks of the toads. She was nimble and cleverer than anyone else, but even she had difficulty dodging around the acid that was flung ferociously at her skull. Her only saving grace was the thinness of the corridor, the tightened geometry of the space that made it impossible for the massive toads to squeeze more than one in at once unless in single file or poking out behind one another. The window to kill them was incredibly precise, and she used the walls to her advantage, kicking off the ground and running along them to dodge the toads' attacks. Using the crystals to gain height, she leaped onto the first toad's head, plunging Gambol Shroud's tip deep into its eye. It croaked and threw its head into the closest wall, trying to ram the girl off its head. Pyrrha backflipped off before it could manage, landing gracefully on the floor. Unfortunately, she happened to look back just as she landed, and she scowled as she saw Nora and Yang on their backs.

"Come on," she muttered. She abandoned her current target and sprinted as fast as she could back to the others, racing past Velvet, Jaune, Ren, and Blake before they could even utter a single word to her. She sprinted past Yang, too, then Nora, and as she got closer and closer to the damaged royal toad, she pitched back her arm, aiming carefully as it opened its maw to greet her. Her back foot suddenly planted firmly into the ground, and she threw the sword like a javelin as hard as she could. It sailed through the air and lodged in the toad's throat, and as it choked, she dashed forward and jumped into its mouth. Its tongue was still languishing out on the floor, allowing to easily slip inside and retrieve her weapon from within. She took the handle and found her footing on the firm insides of the creature's lips, and she sprinted along the edge of its mouth, dragging the weapon along the roof and craving a bloody pattern into the moist innards. The tongue quickly recoiled, but before it could snatch her, she hooked the sword into its jaw, twisted it, and used the leverage to hoist herself up and out of the mouth that was rapidly filling with blood. The jaw shut tightly behind her, and she pulled again on the wedged sword, flipping onto the top of the toad's head. A few short stabs later and the beast fell.

Pyrrha jumped onto the ground, covered and blood and saliva, her lips pursed and her eyes angrily glaring at Nora and Yang, who looked up at her from the ground like she was a God.

"I said," Pyrrha growled, frustrated, "aim for the roofs of their mouth or between their eyes."

Yang gulped. She knew it was true instantaneously: that woman could kill the whole goddamn world if she wanted to. "S-Sorry, Pyrrha."

"This isn't working," Pyrrha said succinctly, flicking the sword to remove some of the excess blood from its exterior. "I can't protect you all if you're not trying. We need another plan."

They were trying, but neither Nora or Yang had the gall to tell Pyrrha that. She could be incredibly, impossibly lovely in most circumstances. These were not those circumstances.

"What do you want to do?" asked Nora, pushing herself upright. Pyrrha looked past them towards the toads in the distance. The one in the front blocking the path was recovering from its blindness. They didn't have much time. Running around forever wasn't getting them anywhere. What was it that Weiss said? Think outside the box.

Pyrrha glanced up at the crystal walls and squinted. "Can you direct your Aura into your fingertips?"

"Uh… sure?" said Yang.

"Okay," Pyrrha stated. "How good at any of you at climbing?"


Weiss moved diligently through the halls of the place she once knew as her home. It seemed distant, blurry, almost faded in a way, like the life had been drained from them and pooled into the floor. Was it the God's will? Or the bleeding?

"Wei… Weiss!"

That voice. It was faint, so very faint and fragile and… pained. She was hurting. Something, something happened to her? What happened? What happened? What did it do to her?

She had to move. They were all dead because of her, but Ruby wasn't yet. She had to move. Save her life. Save one life. Save something. She had to keep moving, no matter how dizzy she was getting, how much the pain seemed to intensify with every step. Pieces of glass, near-microscopic but still present—stung as they remained lodged in her knuckles. Her whole left arm felt like it had been put through a meat grinder. The voice was growing thinner, and she couldn't tell if that was her own mind playing tricks on her or if Ruby herself was struggling to call her name. The Reveler—it called her its bride, its love. What in the world could it be doing to her?

"What did you do to her?"

Weiss suddenly stumbled, collapsing against the nearby wall. She clutched her head. That memory… where did it come from? Was it the God putting those thoughts back into her mind? Those damn thoughts. Every time she thought she was safe…

"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

"It's okay, Weiss. It's going to be okay."

It would be okay. Winter didn't lie, not to her. She could be stern, and condescending, but she always honest. It would be okay. Just as long as she pushed onward.

The voice was leading her to her bedroom. Up another two flights of stairs. She barely made it up one before collapsing again. There was a heaviness in her chest that had come out of nowhere, and with it came a slight numbness in her shoulder. It eased the pain, but only caused her to worry more. Keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving. She didn't remember when she finally arrived outside her bedroom door, but when it was mere inches in front of her face, she seemed to regain herself. She groaned, pressing her head against the frame. A moment's rest to recover, to process. She had led her teammates to their deaths. Not just her teammates. JNPR. Velvet. People that didn't have anything to do with her and didn't deserve a damn thing that happened to them.

"Weiss! Help me!"

Weiss took a deep breath. Not again.

She opened the door, expecting the worst. What she saw was her bedroom, still in the pristine condition that she had left it in. White, glossy and smelling of something like citrus and flowers. It was elegant, far nicer than she ever deserved. But while the room itself was normal, what was bizarre and frightening were the anomalies that stood idly by, waiting for her arrival. Mannequins, or perhaps the more accurate term would have been marionettes; seven of them, blank, human-sized, wooden, genderless, stood in a circle all facing each other, held aloft by a force unseen. There were inscriptions carved into each of their torsos, but Weiss didn't focus on making them out. Instead, her gaze was directed instantly to her bed, where a young Huntress in a red dress was tied down with her arms in chains above her head. Their eyes met, and a wave of relief washed over her terrified face.

"Ruby!" Weiss sighed, rushing over to her teammate's side. She nearly tripped over herself, but managed to find her balance and kneel at Ruby's side. She was fine. Ruby was fine. Scared and alone, but physically? She seemed completely fine. It was far better than Weiss could have hoped for. Her imagination had gotten the better of her, and she was certain that the Reveler had done something monstrous to the closest thing she could call a friend in Beacon. But Ruby was okay. Someone, thank god, was okay.

"Weiss, thank goodness," Ruby said in disbelief. "I never thought anyone would come."

"Are you okay?" Weiss asked frantically, checking Ruby over for injuries. "Did it do anything to you?"

Ruby squirmed in her binds, wriggling about on the bed. "I'm… I'm fine. My chains are kind of tight, though."

Weiss steadied herself. "Okay, that's… that's good. I was expecting worse."

"Do you know where the others are?" Ruby asked, concerned.

"They're—"

"Is Yang with them? Is she okay?"

The questions were too much. Weiss shushed her. "Don't worry about that. It's almost over now. I'm here to get you out of here. I just have to fight whatever it wants me to and finish this Trial, and after that—"

"Trial?" Ruby asked, stunned. "Wait, are you still—"

Before she could finish, the chains suddenly tightened, and she let out a sharp cry as they squeezed the muscles in her arms. Weiss jumped back, confused, unable to do anything as Ruby began to levitate, floating above the bed as she was lifted by invisible strings. Another voice came to speak with her, and the dark, melodic tones were ones she had come to recognize well.

"Weiss Abailess Schnee-Saeva, how long hast thou known my love?"

Ruby's eyes were drawn wide, her teeth gritted together. She was forcibly turned around so that she was facing the ground. She shivered as a cold wind hit her back. She focused her attention on Weiss, trying to use her friend as an anchor, but the voice seemed undeterred as it continued to drone.

"I asked thee a question."

"I… I…" Weiss stammered. She didn't have an answer. Did it want an answer? Did it want her to do anything other than cower?

"The guise thou witness now is but the fragment of something greater," the Reveler claimed. "So tiny and fragile, like a doll-thing. She was glorious, my love, in the Time Before Decum Luna. She was above us all. My Red Angel, a perfect being that flew across the clouds and left a bloody scar in the sky in her wake. My Red Angel, so pure…"

Weiss backed against the wall, horrified at what her interference might have caused it to do. Ruby closed her eyes, trying to shut out the world as it continued to turn her over and over again, examining her from all angles like a work of art.

"Dost thou remember my affection, my love? I wrote songs singing thy praises, plays of thy conquests, comedies and tragedies alike? Dost thou remember how I bequeathed thee flowers: roses. Like thy name…"

Ruby was turned again onto her stomach, only her eyes shot open as she felt something… the pull of the dress's zipper down her spine.

"Dost thou remember the day I asked for thy hand in matrimony?" it asked fondly. "We stood together in a field of snow. I bent my knee to thee, professed my deepest love for thy beauty, thy strength, thy cunning. I asked to spend an eternity with thee, forever and ever upon time."

Ruby gasped as she felt a presence run down her bare skin. At first, she thought it was its finger, but it was too thin, too sharp, too cold. The sensation traveled deeper than her skin and muscle, and she felt it running along her bone, like ice pumping through her veins. Weiss could only watch as the invisible force continued to toy with her, tease her, and it sighed loudly.

"I shall never forget what it was thou said to me on that day."

The room went silent. Weiss was frozen stiff, watching slack-jawed as Ruby trembled under the touch of whatever thing was groping her. There was nothing there to grab onto, nothing to fight against. Weiss considered grabbing onto Ruby and pulling her down, but she knew better than to cross the God. It would destroy her in a heartbeat. Its whims were law in the land she inhabited. Ruby herself was quickly coming to that same conclusion. She barely understood anything that had happened in the past hour or so. The revelation of Weiss's faith, the sudden disappearance of her friends, why that monster—the thing she couldn't even bring herself to call a God—believed her to be its bride. She could barely move her mind past the phallic thing traveling across her back. Wait, no, not right. Not phallic. It was too thin for that. Too… smooth. Too familiar. The invisible thing came to a stop on the upper part of her skin, below the neck where the shoulder blades began. And it was when it finally came to a complete stop, and she felt it dig more precisely into her flesh, that Ruby realized what the thing touching her was.

It felt like a knife.

"How could I ever love a fool such as thee?"

The blade carved into her skin, and as the sudden flood of pain overcame her, Ruby screamed. She tried to, at least. What came out of her mouth was nothing, a breathless rush of air that caught itself in her throat and choked her. Weiss could only watch, teary-eyed, as blood began to pour freely down her back and Ruby's head drooped forward as she lost the strength to hold it up any longer. The knife, still invisible but frighteningly real, quickly jerked downward a few inches, carving jaggedly along the bone, and that movement was enough to finally draw an audible, broken and bloodcurdling scream out of Ruby Rose.

"Thou thought thyself greater than I," the Reveler said, its voice becoming more excited as the blood flow increased. "Thou wast so willing to accept my gifts. How long did thou laugh at thy deception, thy masquerade? Did thou lead me to false hopes of thy own volition? O, yea, thou surely knew. I gave myself to thee, and thou pushed me away. Thou treated me as cruelly as the others. Thou called me the Fable of Fools. Thou broke my heart a million times."

The knife jerked again, changing directions, ripping crosswise along her spine. Ruby cried out again, and Weiss collapsed back against the wall, watching helplessly. She had to do something. She knew she had to do something. Even if she couldn't stop it, she had to comfort Ruby, promise her that it would be okay. She had never heard Ruby scream like that before. Shrill. Terrified. Violent. Like her heart was being ripped out of her chest. From her angle on the ground, she couldn't see what the Reveler was doing; all she could see was Ruby's face twisting in pain.

"Then the world fell. I offered thee salvation, a chance to live anew. And thou rejected me. Even in the face of death, thou could not stomach my presence."

Another twist of the knife. Another scream. Another moment that dragged on for an eternity.

"I waited eons, stewing in the vessels, my love for thee churning and boiling over into hatred. The words I dreamt of speaking to thee, the pain I wished to cause thee. I would burn thy skin and drink thy blood. All as thy silver eyes begged for my mercy. I thought my chance lost, that I shalt always be the Fable of Fools."

Ruby's tears splashed down on the bedsheets. Her screams mutated into quiet sobs as the knife continued its journey across the entirety of her back.

"But now, thou hast returned," the Reveler taunted. "And how the great hast fallen. Thou art small and so very fragile, trapped inside this pathetic form. And I…" It cackled with untamed glee. "I hast ascended to godhood. A ruler of this land and its people. I shall live forever within the Souls of Humankind, a giant amongst the stars. Decum Luna hast given me new purpose. And thou… thou art the reward for my patience."

Then, the pressure stopped, and like a stone, Ruby fell. She clattered onto the bed, her body limp, the impact caused her to bounce and tumble onto the floor, rolling into a bloody heap by Weiss's feet. Weiss clasped her hand over her open mouth. The body was tender, barely moving, and Weiss was finally able to see what it had done to her. From the bleeding flesh, she could see that the knife had roughly carved a pattern into her back, descending vertically from her neck to the base of her spine. A set of letters, forming a word out of the misshapen meat.

Harlot.

"Ruby… oh my God…" Weiss gasped. Ruby didn't respond. She twitched, and Weiss could see the rapid rise and fall of her torso as she struggled to breathe, but she couldn't say anything. Weiss fell to her knees, reaching out, her hands hovering just over Ruby's wounds but never touching them. She had hated Ruby Rose for as long as she could remember—at least, she always thought she did. Hated her from the very first day she laid her eyes on the girl. She was naïve and whiny and childish and obnoxious, and her actions were reckless, and risky, and wasteful, and poorly planned, and showed a complete lack of respect to everything that the institution of Huntsmen and Huntresses represented.

And she was scared. And hurting. And Weiss knew, even as she would never admit it to a living soul, that she would give anything to take that pain away from her.

"Dost thou care for this whore, Weiss?"

Weiss bowed her head, trying to sniff back her tears. Another person's life ruined, all because of her. Because of it. No… because of them both. She had to finish the Trial. Send the thing back to hell where it belonged. Then, she would be able to get Ruby to the doctors at Beacon. They could heal her. She had to fix it. For Ruby. For the rest of the broken people left in her wake.

"You… you bastard…" Weiss seethed. "Give me the Second Trial already. Please."

"So, she hast fooled thee as well. A shame," cooed the Reveler. "Life is but a play, my child. I hast witnessed many. My Red Angel wast the greatest performer of them all. She fooled so many into believing herself above them, worthy of divine appreciation. Fooled even I. But I hast seen through the lies of the harlot, and now I am complete. I am not the Fable of Fools. I am Strength and Luxury. I am the Reveler, Aspect of Decum Luna, God of the World. For thou to be whole, thy must see past the masquerade."

There was a loud clang, and Weiss turned to the mannequins. They did not budge, but something else had appeared. In the center of the circle, a pile of masks appeared, one for each of the dolls. But there was something familiar about them, and Weiss was drawn to them, rising slowly, unable to take her gaze of their appearance.

"Ruby, I'll be back. I promise," Weiss whispered. Wiping the tears away, she gently picked Ruby off the floor, struggling with the dead weight. It took the rest of her rapidly fading strength, but somehow, by a power unseen, she managed to hoist Ruby's quivering body off the ground and rest her on her side along the soft sheets of the bed. She regretted leaving, but the masks attracted her, and she knew that the God would not enjoy her lingering by its victim's side.

She approached them cautiously. They were all strewn about in the pile, their backs facing her, each equipped with a small strap that could easily fit around a mannequin's head. She soon noticed strange details on them, specifically being what seemed to be strange shapes spread out from underneath them. She cautiously grabbed onto the mask resting at the height of the mound and turned it over, only to immediately screech and drop it to the ground.

"Thou still mourns the loss of thy comrades. Why? Why dost thou feel for those not of Decum Luna? Thou hast fallen under their spell. Like plucking an Angel's wings and witnessing the bare flesh, to complete thyself, one must see thy allies as they truly were, and reject them."

It was a face. Velvet's face. It was carved so perfectly into the wood—even strands of her hand were carved, flowing down her face and past her chin. The mask smiled, and if it wasn't for the blank holes for eyes, one might even mistake it for the real, genuine article. It did not take long for her to realize that the other masks were much of the same, each one modeled after one of the Huntsmen and Huntresses who were dragged into the Reveler's world and abandoned within the maze. And with the seven mannequins matching, it didn't take long for Weiss to more closely examine each of the inscriptions found on their wooden torsos. They were saying, scribbled in the same scratchy writing as the scars on Ruby's spine.

"Thy friends hide so much behind their masks," the Reveler teased. "Let the truth come to light, or face judgment for thy foolery. Thou can no longer afford to be deceived. Such is the will of God."

Let the truth come to light. It hit Weiss cold. That… that was her Trial. Not combat. It had grown bored of watching combat. How many toads could one person face in a day without monotony setting in, after all? It wanted something different from her. A Trial of the mind. A Trial about the one thing that was her greatest weakness ever since arriving at Beacon Academy: understanding others. She read the descriptions on the mannequins' chests, one after the other, her head swimming.

Beast of two minds. Hast let Evil kindle within their Soul and nurtured it.

Bound by Jealousy. Hast sabotaged their Love's desires to maintain a fruitless bond.

Projects false honor. Hast slain and tortured those they sWear to protect.

Failure in all regards. Hast believed that thou are Superior to them.

Poisoned with contempt. Hast let strength pervert into disgust for the weak.

Holds tradition as sin. Hast engaged in heresy against their family's Legacy.

Parasitic yet alone. Hast deceived in an attempt to claim the Dragon's glory.

They were sins. Secrets. Each one representing the ultimate truth that they wished to never be revealed. She looked at the masks. A matching game. A lie for every Huntsman and Huntress. There were no clues, no hints or second guesses. She was going to have to uncover the truth about the people closest to her. She barely understood the descriptions herself, but it didn't matter. Her "friends" … they were going to save Ruby's life. They would finish it. She would make them.

Even if it killed her.