Alright, so. After this chapter, there are two more epilogue-ish chapters, and then... that's it! And man does it feel weird to be almost at the end of something that's been in the works more than a year.


114. Silver


The building Phoenix led them to was empty.

Qrow let loose a string of curses and twisted in the saddle, looking all around for any sign of where the bastards might have gone. If they got away after all this—!

But there was nothing. Just a smoking, battle-scarred street, deserted except for them. Most of the fight had moved closer to the Headquarters building, now that the big fucker was gone and the eggs were in danger.

"We'll have to spread out," Raven decided. "Qrow, you head east. Tai, west. I'll take the north."

Qrow opened his mouth to snap at her. After all these years, did she seriously think she could waltz back in and act like some kind of leader? He never got the chance. A flurry of activity behind him drew all their attention.

A group of four hybrids streaked across an open space between two buildings, then disappeared again in a flash. Seconds later, Glacier came tearing around a corner and tumbled nose-over-tail into a clump of bushes. He shook himself off, jostling Whitley on his back until he turned an impressive shade of green, and started sniffing the air.

"Glacier!" Winter's voice. "What did I just say? Get back here!"

She and Steele crested a hill with Ragnar galloping alongside them. Glacier paused, glanced guiltily over his shoulder, and whistled.

Salty perked up. "What is it?" Qrow asked.

"Aye-brids." He barked at Glacier, who cocked his head to one side and stared blankly back. Salty sighed and pointed with his tail in the direction they'd disappeared. "Run 'way."

The hybrids hadn't run away from anything all day. If they were starting now... it wasn't because they were afraid, it was because someone wanted them somewhere else. "Shit!" Qrow blurted. "That way, that way, go, go, go!"

Raven and Tai seemed to get it. Whitley and Oscar exchanged baffled looks, but Ragnar must have gotten a better explanation from Salty because he roared and sped up. Glacier followed. Winter, who had no idea that any of the Council had escaped in the first place, scowled and charged after Whitley and Glacier. He did his best to explain as they ran, but he wasn't sure how much they understood over the fighting in the background.

They plunged into the city proper. Qrow swore every time they turned a corner and found nothing. He started swearing a lot more when they turned a corner and found Storm, and only Storm, wrestling with two of the renegade hybrids.

Three others winged past her. Steele jumped at one of them, bringing it back down to earth and pinning it there. Glacier went after another, but he missed and wound up crashing shoulder-first into a shop-front and caving it in.

It didn't matter. An instant later they... stopped. All three fluttered gently to the ground and stood there, staring placidly at nothing. The ones Storm had been fighting did the same—one went limp in her grip, and the other backed a few paces away from her and sat.

The sudden silence was... unsettling.

"The fuck?" Qrow said. Salty walked up to the biggest of the hybrids and waved a paw in its face. It didn't react at all.

Tai skipped right past confusion and into desperation. "Storm!" He and Tempest crowded around her, the older wind dragon licking at scratches on her shoulders and chest, the human wild-eyed and frantic. "Where are the girls?"

"Ffly," Storm said, craning her neck over her shoulder.

Of course. Ruby wouldn't leave Storm behind unless she had to—so whatever they were doing, they'd needed to move fast. A chase. It must be the same Councilors that had escaped, and with the hybrids frozen like this...

An alarming groaning sound made Qrow jump. He looked to his left, and stared open-mouthed at a skyscraper that had collapsed sideways. It leaned heavily on its neighbor, and in the middle floors he could see the silhouettes of people climbing down the stairs. Already they were streaming out the doors—then hurrying away when they caught sight of the dragons outside.

What the hell did those kids do?


"Uh... sir?" The Flight Squad Rider pointed at his opponent—who had, without warning, sat down and started to ignore him. "What... um...?"

"That is a very good question, soldier," James said. He was having some difficulty believing it himself. "Penny? Any ideas?"

"They appear to have received some sort of idle command." She prodded one of the hybrids gently with her nose. It didn't seem to notice. A wire gave out in her neck, and her head drooped against her chest. James winced. For Penny this was at worst a mild annoyance, but a less-than-rational part of him was having trouble ignoring the fact that his dragon's throat had been torn open.

Not the time. He shot another glance at the clumps of hybrids. They were even eerier like this, with their blank, empty stares, than when they'd been trying to kill him. James shuddered, then addressed any riders that could hear him. "Keep an eye on them. Whatever this is, it might not be permanent. While we have the chance, we should do what we can to track down the Council."

The fight turned into a search. A few dragons stayed with the eggs, in case the hybrids started to attack again, but most of the army was free to help. The tight corridors in the Headquarters building proved to be an obstacle, but even so it didn't take long for them to find the Council. Or rather, the door they were hiding behind.

It was in the basement. Several feet thick and solid tungsten, the sort of thing that would take days to melt through. James had to leave the cockpit in Penny's chest to see it, since it was at the other end of a narrow staircase.

He knocked with his metal arm. Every hit echoed ominously. "You might as well come up," James called out, even though he wasn't sure they could hear him in there. "Your hybrids are frozen. You've lost." He wasn't sure why the hybrids weren't moving, but he wasn't above taking credit for it if that meant this would end faster.

Silence.

James sighed. "Alright," he said, backing up to the top of the stairs and signaling to a group of earth dragons. "Let's dig them out."

It took a little over an hour, even with almost twenty dragons helping. They went in shifts, using their powers and their enormous paws in tandem. They broke through concrete one splinter at a time until finally the ground gave way under one of the dragons' feet.

James strode over to the hole and looked down. "Open the door," he said flatly. "It's over."

They didn't put up much of a fight. In the end, only eight of the nine Councilors were down there—Aegolius, the eldest of all of them, hadn't survived the trip here. Too much stress, according to Gosling. She shot him a venomous look to go with it.

The man had been over a hundred, and they'd all been given every possible opportunity to avoid a confrontation like this. Even if he believed her, James had worse things on his conscience.

"I assume I have your unconditional surrender?" he said, raising an eyebrow expectantly.

Gosling pressed her lips into a thin line. "You do."

Funny, how anticlimactic those two words were. Even the Councilors were underwhelming—Gosling herself looked much smaller in the flesh than she did as a crisp silhouette. James sighed and gestured to a few of his riders. "Keep them under guard for now. You—I want a head-count. And you, find somewhere we can start freeing them. We'll need gloves, too, for the ones that aren't safe to touch. This isn't over until we've destroyed every last one of those devices."

People stared at him.

"Move!" James barked. They moved.


In the end, they followed the footprints.

Tai swallowed hard as Tempest bounded past another one—they took up an entire lane, and he could see the imprints of far too many toes smashed into the pavement. It had to be the giant. He just didn't understand why when it had been freed.

And then they turned a corner, and it was obvious.

A tall, thin man in an overcoat sprinted towards them at full-tilt, his eyes wild and his hair disheveled. The girls were right behind him—but they weren't exactly chasing him. They were too busy fleeing from the giant as it clawed huge gouges out of the street, roaring in that way it had that made his chest ache.

There were four other hybrids about—one had a wing that hung limp at its side, clearly broken. The other was snarling and growling, its eyes fixed on Watts. It leaped for him, but the other got in the way and slashed at its belly. It howled and backwinged into the wall of a nearby building. Before the one with the broken wing could finish it off, Fang jumped between them and snarled.

A tiny dragonet flew at the giant's eyes, squeaking ferociously despite the fact that its opponent's teeth were longer than its entire body. The giant shook its head and snorted, slapping it out of the air with one paw and sending it skidding into a massive puddle that had formed under a shattered fire hydrant. The water froze the instant the dragonet touched it. It struggled and whined, but couldn't get free of the ice.

The last hybrid had curled into a ball in the center of the street, between Tempest and the running man. Shaking and whimpering, and not doing much of anything. That made one that wasn't an immediate threat, at least.

"Dad!"

Ruby waved her arms at him. Tai blanched. She wasn't even mounted, just running on her own two feet at the giant's heels. "Ruby! Get away from—"

"Don't let him get away!"

The fleeing man was almost on them, now. But as he sprinted past the shaking dragonet, it uncurled and launched itself at his feet. He tripped and tumbled head-over-heels onto the street. Then he yelped and scrabbled backwards, cursing and kicking his legs, as if he was trying to shake off the creature's touch.

It climbed his pant leg, then up his jacket towards his head. He shrieked and tore off one of his shoes, batting at the hatchling until it finally reached his face. Then it touched its nose to his forehead, just once, and collapsed onto his chest.

An instant later the man's eyes rolled up, and he slumped to the ground underneath it. A trail of silver traced his face, glinting in the light.

Tai stared, open-mouthed, until the memory came back to him. The Vacuan desert at night. Handing Glynda a pair of leather gloves so she could handle the doomed dragonet. Burying the tiny body afterwards.

The giant hadn't seen that, and didn't seem to understand that the man was dead. It growled and bounded forward, its massive paws destroying the street underneath it. And, to Tai's horror, Ruby ran towards it.


A lot of people were shouting. Blake was pretty sure she was one of them, but the sound was strangely muted, like the whole scene was suspended in honey. Everything happened so slowly, but she couldn't move fast enough to stop it.

Ruby jumped in front of the charging giant, both her hands out. Its eyes burned with rage and hatred and fear, and Blake knew in her bones that it wasn't going to stop. Why should it, when the person it should have been able to trust implicitly had enslaved it instead? Storm leaped in front of her rider, spreading her good wing wide and shrieking her defiance. Ruby screamed, and—

And the giant balked. Its attack went wide, and it clawed open the street in front of them with one swipe of its paw. Then it roared, its tail lashing behind it, making Blake cringe and clap her hands over her ears. But it wouldn't last—already the giant was shaking its head and snarling.

She sprinted for the downed figure of Watts, stripping off her riding jacket as she went. The silver hatchling stirred weakly when she knelt down, careful to avoid the streaks of silver pooling on the asphalt. Blake draped the jacket over it and picked it up, wary all the while of the giant only a few dozen feet away.

It slammed its shoulder against a nearby building, bringing the whole thing down and growling at the rubble. Then its tail snapped out, sending a car through the upper story of a warehouse. Blake dearly hoped this street was as empty as it looked.

Behind her, Pit started to growl. She turned and found him in a defensive crouch, his hackles rising as the hybrid Watts had been riding came closer. But he relaxed slightly when it became clear that it wasn't paying Blake any mind at all—its eyes were fixed on the dead man. She swallowed, and cradled the silver dragonet against her chest.

"He's gone, now," she said. "It's okay."

The giant approached. Blake backed away with the bundle in her jacket. Once the little one was out of danger, Ruby didn't bother trying to stop it, and... well, it wasn't like they could even if they wanted to. Not for long, anyway. She just hoped it didn't—

A paw came down.

—touch him.

Blake swallowed hard and looked away from the place Watts used to be.

The giant let out another roar, its head twisting this way and that like it was looking for the next threat. Ruby kept her distance, but Blake could hear her talking, a steady stream of soft reassurances. It shuddered once and sat down hard on its haunches. This time, when it tried to growl, the sound petered off in a whine.

It wobbled, tipped sideways, and came down like a felled tree with a crash that shook the entire street. Ruby yelped and ran over to its head. But its gigantic side rose and fell steadily. It was only unconscious.

"Gods."

Ruby froze where she had been patting the sleeping giant's jaw, which was as high as she could reach. "Um. Hey, dad!"

There was a brief scuffle, as Tempest and Storm and Tai all competed to see who could squeeze the breath out of her faster. Blake managed a small smile at the sight of them all tangled together. It dropped when his shoulders started to shake.

"Dad?" Ruby squirmed out from under Tempest's paw so that she could look at his face. "Wait, where's...?" His breath hitched. Then he wrapped both arms around her, burying his face in her shoulder. Feeling like an intruder, Blake backed off and looked around for anything else that needed dealing with.

The icy hatchling had been freed from the puddle by Steele and Specter. They crouched over it—Specter nuzzling its side and whining sympathetically, Steele in a defensive crouch with his ears pricked up in case of more trouble. As she watched, Glacier ambled over to them and bent down to peer at it curiously. It tried to bite his nose. He snorted and blew a puff of mist into its face. Steele snapped at them both and nudged the little one closer to his chest.

Fang and Phoenix circled the other hybrid, the one with the explosive powers. It growled and hissed at them whenever they got too close, and when Raven held up a roll of bandages it might have tried to blow her up if Salty hadn't rushed over and barked something to calm it down.

Ragnar moved over to Jade and sniffed at her injury, snorting in displeasure when she winced. He draped a wing over her back and purred softly to distract her from the pain. Oscar scrambled off his back and went to retrieve some of the ice left behind by the hatchling, which the older dragon helped her hold to her chest.

The bundle in Blake's arms squirmed. She flinched and knelt to lay the jacket on the ground. The little hybrid wobbled out, sniffing the air. It looked healthier than the one that had hatched with them in Vacuo... but not by much. Blake knelt down and, after checking to make sure there weren't any holes in her gloves, pet the dragonet gently on the head. It squeaked and butted its head against her fingers, its eyes wide and shining like it had never been touched before.

It probably hadn't.

Blake had a mad impulse to rip off the glove and give it just one memory of a friendly touch without leather in the way, consequences be damned. But Pit gave her a warning look, and she kept the glove on. There was no way of knowing if she'd only get sick like Goodwitch had, or...

She did not look at Watts.

Had it meant to do that? Or had it only been looking for affection from someone who would never have given it? Blake couldn't tell. She just kept petting it, murmuring softly under her breath, as it slowly sank in that it was really over. The Council had lost. Watts was dead.

Now it was just a matter of dealing with the mess they'd left behind.