He is standing before a throne, trembling, though he doesn't know why.

Mother is seated before him, looking as stiff and stern as a statue, and he knows he has done something wrong, though, despite his best efforts, he simply cannot remember what it was. Had he demanded something? No, he had already been punished for that. Had his sisters done… no, he shakes his head, it couldn't be that. But he knows there is something he has done wrong and he knows, as his legs grow weak and his stomach roils, that the consequences are coming to him. And he cannot escape.

"You are afraid."

Her voice slices through him like a razor. He feels like he has been slit open, the parts of his body no longer connected, his weakness exposed. his belly opened up to the merciless air.

"N-no, Mother," he stammers. In spite of his fear, he knows that he does not leave a question unanswered. And that he does not admit the fear he cannot hide from his face.

Be strong, he thinks to himself, Be strong like Pyrrha is strong. Like Emerald is strong. Like Blake is strong. Like Weiss is strong. Like they're counting on you to be strong.

"A Prince should not show such fear..."

Is this his failure? He can't deny he feels relief to hear it. Better to know what he's about to be punished for than to leave it hanging above him.

"But I did not call you to me for that." He freezes. Terror snatches away his thoughts as his eyes get wide and the Darkness screams at his frozen legs to run as far as he can. "I called you here… to praise you."

An explosion inside him. Hope and curdled fear, warring as every sparking thought was on maintaining composure. The unfairness of it all, that he, alone, is here to endure this… is silenced as he remembers that his suffering now is sparing his sisters from this.

Unmoved by his clear terror, Mother continues. "You are my Heir, my chosen Prince… and my son."

Composure fails him. He gasps, far too much of his own desire boiling forth for him to maintain his strength as he hears the words he has longed for for so very, very long. He blinks in disbelief, knowing that it's only the first sign of danger, but he wants to hear it too badly to caution himself.

"Yes. You are my son. My dear, sweet son. Come," she says, a smile crossing her face, "sit on Mother's lap."

Terrified that it might be a trap, but unable to resist the pull of his deep and hopeless desire, he steps forward. Hesitant at first, but as she gestures to him, he scrambles forward, crawling up on the throne and seating himself on her lap and, for the first time in the meeting, he realizes he is crying as Mother holds him and makes him feel like he is her son, these few scraps of maternal love he clings to with a desperate, delusional need.

"Do you want me to stroke your hair? To kiss your forehead, to call you my son and tell you that I love you?"

He moans at the thought, as though the gesture alone would be enough to banish his fears and free him from his nightmares. "Yes..." he replies, tears flowing down his eyes. "Yes," he says again, desperately. He wants it more than anything in the world.

"What a good son you are," she says as her hand gently strokes him, causing him to sob with years of repressed fear. "What a good and dutiful son… but Mother has a task for you."

"Wh-what is it?" he asks, fearful for what it might be but, again, unable to keep the hope from his voice, his eyes.

She whispers something, something in a language he doesn't recognize. He feels a crackle on his skin. It doesn't feel good. He knows it, though. Magic.

"You will be tested… but you will become powerful," she whispers in his ear, "Powerful enough to truly be my heir. You will be changed, but… you will become more like Mother. And you want that, don't you?"

He gazes upward. He sees her eyes. So red, so cruel and pitiless, sunk deep in a dark, black pits set against an unnaturally white face. She's so scary, so frightening that Jaune can't feel anything but fear looking back at him, but he wants to have a mother so badly, to be a good son, to hear her say what she promised she would say…

"I do," he croaks, "I- I want to be like you, Mother."

"I don't doubt Ironwood will hand over any documentation we've given to him, but we have to maintain face on this—and that means briefing her on the Valean perspective, so we're probably going to want to prepare an onboard report for her."

Summer could hear Qrow's dismay at the additional work, but it didn't give her pause. She'd felt dismay enough already, after all, and this early in the morning, she didn't exactly feel inclined to sympathy.

Atlas recalling General Ironwood was the two worst things Summer could imagine, right when things were starting to go so well: it meant that Atlas was planning something, and, worse, that Atlas saw the need to misdirect her.

"Due to the exceptional caution present in Vale and the remarkable success of the return of the claimed to Remnant's society, it has been decided by the Council of Atlas that my presence is no longer needed here," he'd told her.

Yeah fucking right.

Discussions with Ozpin and the Council meant paying attention to troop movements, whether or not Atlas was moving to war readiness, with Atlesian battleships already hanging in the sky above them… who were they readying against was the question Summer had. Salem? The claimed? The whole goddamn world as part of some insane crusade to unite all of humanity and Faunus kind? Ozpin trusted the General, but right now… hah, all Summer had left was faith now, faith in Ozpin, faith in her colleagues, faith in Yang and the Grimm kids. And even if that faith was wavering, she had to cling to it.

But it meant another bad situation—Winter Schnee, fresh off of her brief medical leave following the situation with Parents Night, was now taking his place. And that summarized exactly why Specialist Schnee was not a good fit for this, what with her own sister having attacked her. Yet another minefield, yet another delicate political situation that Summer was woefully out of her depth to handle, and yet, handle it she must.

That was even before she factored in the historic rivalry of Summer and Winter, and she could already hear Taiyang's puns in her head. But their relationship had always been frosty at best- GODS DAMMIT ALL!

But… she still had some assets on her side.

"Qrow," she asked, "what've you heard from Clover on this, is there… anything?"

His eyes flashed with a hint of annoyance, but he knew as well as she did that they couldn't afford to leave things off the table. "Officially, no," Qrow said, all business, "He follows orders and sticks to the party line—he's one of Jimmy's men, through and through."

"You know I was asking unofficially."

Qrow rolled his eyes. "Before you ask—no, we ain't dating, Sum. But, yeah, we talked about this last night..."

"You were out last night?"

A mean question. She shouldn't have asked it, especially when it was so critical that Summer have not only good information on the situation, but that she keep Qrow in a good mood. Still… she could never resist an opportunity to make her old partner blush like a schoolgirl. And she needed some levity, with all that was going on. Some movement to pretend that things were still like they used to be.

"...we spent the night in, in my quarters." He shot her a withering glare, "So shut the hell up about it and I'll tell you what he told me. Simply put… he don't like it either. Winter's not showing it—no surprise there—but she took the attack hard. And word is, she and her father's whole 'falling out' was more in the papers than reality. And if that's the case, it means that there's one Schnee agitating the Council in Atlas and another Schnee now in charge of all those gunships in the sky."

Summer paled. "You can't mean…"

"Clover don't think it's such a conspiracy," Qrow quickly added, "Just that… tensions are gonna go up. More of a 'grieving family keeping the hurt deep' sort of thing. He's seen everything we've seen, and the kids're doing great here, really opening up and all that, making friends, seeming almost normal half the time—but Winter's presence is definitely gonna ramp up the scrutiny and..."

"We just have to get through this..." Summer sighed, "Once the Vytal starts, there will, and I can't believe I'm saying this, there will actually be bigger issues that we don't have to deal with."

Qrow chuckled, though without any humor. Hard to believe that they were praying to get to the Vytal Festival as fast as they could, to get this all over with, but… here they were.

Suddenly, the door burst open, Summer's eyes shooting to the disturbance, her hand shooting to Damask, ready for whatever got past Amber at the door.

But it was Yang.

And she looked terrible.

Here eyes had dark rings under them, signs of a sleepless night, and there was a grim, resolute presence to her, a look that told Summer that, whatever her daughter was about to say, it had shaken her to her very core.

"Mom," she said, "We have to talk, now."

Too stunned to think, but maternal instinct spurred her to speak. "Yang," she asked, "What are you- what happened?"

"We're wrong, Mom. We're wrong about everything, I was- I was- Oh, gods, I was wrong!" she suddenly wailed in desperate remorse.

"Yang!" Summer took command of the room, "You have to tell me what's wrong."

"The Grimm kids!" Yang shouted, "I thought they were just… just weird, just isolated, just..."

Her voice trailed off and Summer realized how pale Yang was. "What happened..." she asked, terrified to hear the answer but knowing there was no way around it.

"Last night, I... Blake, she was, she was a mess, she just-"

"Breathe kiddo," Qrow said, soothingly, and directing her to take a seat. As Yang sat down, she exhaled, deeply, then looked to Summer plaintively.

Summer gestured for her to continue, her attention focused on her daughter's plight.

"Blake... came to my room. Really late last night, after midnight. And she... talked to me, about some... stuff." She was being evasive, though Summer wasn't sure how much she could risk prying. Things told in confidence couldn't be easily told to adults, and even if Yang was (hard as it was to accept) an adult herself, those old rules died hard. "But when she was telling me about what went... what went wrong, last night, she told me... more about their... their childhoods..."

Yang's voice trailed off, weakly, her eyes pointed at Summer, but what she was looking at was a thousand miles away. Summer wasn't sure what she had heard, but the look on her face and the mention of childhood filled Summer with dread. But that dread needed to be pushed aside. "Yang... what did she tell you."

Dull lilac eyes met Summer's, and then her daughter spoke. "Salem tortured them. Routinely."

Silence.

"Oh gods," Qrow moaned, "Oh, gods!"

Tears were starting to fall down Yang's cheeks. "They- they weren't fed, they were… they weren't clothed, and Jaune..." her voice had a haunted ring, like she wasn't even aware she was talking to anyone, "She tortured Jaune. Solitary confinement. No light. For days. Regularly."

Summer was aghast to hear it, made all the worse by Yang's obvious horror.

"They need help, Mom, they need help! Help I can't give them!"

In times of crisis, Summer had learned to trust her reflexes. Having a Semblance that let her move at such blinding speeds meant she relied on instinct to guide her. And motherhood was a lot like combat in this regard. In an instant, she had her daughter wrapped in a tight hug, letting Yang bury her face into Summer's shoulder, feeling a tear shed against her and reassuring her daughter that everything was alright. That everything would be alright.

And she said it with conviction enough that even she believed it.

With a pat on the shoulder, she encouraged Yang to continue.

Loosening from the hug, Yang looked up, meeting her mother's gaze. Her lilac eyes had a frightened, shaken look in them, the kind that Summer hadn't seen in those eyes in years. But she gathered her courage and continued, "This whole time, we thought of them… like whether they were kids or whether they were monsters, but they're… they're child soldiers, Mom! They've been- they've been indoctrinated since they were kids and now… I'm scared, Mom, I'm scared for them! I don't know what to do and I need your help!"

There was nothing in the world that Summer wanted to do more than to comfort her eldest. She could see she wasn't well, that she still needed more mothering, but… she could also see that Yang... wasn't a kid anymore. A grown woman. And what Yang needed more than anything wasn't her mother to tell her everything would be alright. She needed Summer Rose to marshal everything at her disposal to make sure a wrong was righted.

She activated her radio. "Amber?" she asked, "Could you come in and help out here?"

The Fall Maiden entered quickly, and Summer felt terrible that she was delegating this task, something of supreme importance to her, but Yang… would understand. "Amber?" she asked, "Qrow and I need to discuss a matter of urgent importance that Yang brought to our attention. Would you mind-"

"I'll- I'll go," Yang said, catching on to what was happening. She was such an amazing young woman, someone Summer was so grateful to have in her life, to have seen her grow up to become the brave woman standing before her today. "Just… please, help them, they need help so badly, and I… please."

But with that, Amber led her out of the room.

Summer wanted to go after her, to wrap her daughter in her arms and promise that she would make everything better, like she did after so many scraped knees and bee stings. Like she had the night Ruby and Yang had been attacked by that Beowulf, promising her dear little girl that she would always be her daughter and nothing could ever change that…

But Yang needed her to come up with something that would help the claimed. Needed to address the horrifying reality of what their lives were, without sparking an international incident.

Qrow looked to Summer. "I… don't think we can tell Winter about this."

"We don't have a choice," she sighed. "She's coordinating Atlesian-"

"Let me tell Clover, loop him in and-"

"I'm not starting a conspiracy, Qrow! Not when this is so sensitive! Atlas finds out we're keeping secrets and it blows up in our-"

"Tell Winter Schnee that her little sister was so unstable when she met her because Salem tortured her and we will have a war on our hands!"

Except... keep her out of the loop on that same question and they might have a wholly different war on their hands. It was lose-lose in the best case scenario, and Summer cursed Salem, suspecting that this was part of her master plan, a strategy to sow dismay and grief across the Kingdoms. The sight of her daughter's grief and dismay had already kindled Summer's maternal instincts, and they were ignited into full wrath as she thought about that chilld-stealing demon bitch that had treated children, innocent gods-damned children, with such cruelty. Every aspect they noted about the claimed, about their odd behaviors, about them stealing food... it painted a picture that moved Summer to a furious anger.

But anger... Summer had learned, right here at Beacon, that while anger was important and it was important to feel it, there came times for a cooler head to prevail.

"...We'll reconvene the Committee for an emergency session to brief them on what we've learned, but until then-"

"That'll take ages! Summer, if Yang found out, it's only a matter of time before the information goes live-"

"And if that's the case, I want to make damn sure we get caught doing everything by the book!"

Qrow took a seat, leaning heavily into his chair. He looked to Summer, a tired, haggard expression on his face. "This is a GOLD matter, Sum. And you're under the Committee, but I'm..."

"Under Vale," Summer finished for him.

This was a matter of loyalties and obligations. Summer trusted Qrow with more than even her life. They'd worked together closely for years, but… he was Ozpin's man, through and through. Summer was loyal to Ozpin as well, but her authority here stemmed from the Committee, defunct as it was, and her loyalty was to all of Remnant. But she also had a duty and loyalty to Vale's Council, particularly to Task Force: RENEGADE GOLD, created to coordinate Vale's response to Salem. Vale demanded that she prioritize Vale's interests here. The Committee demanded that she prioritize the future of all Remnant.

Qrow had made up his mind. He was asking if she'd made up hers.

He folded his hands in front of him and sighed. "It's lose-lose, Sum, and… and it's not just about Vale and Atlas and all the rest of the world, not anymore."

Summer nodded, unable to deny that she was feeling the same thing her closest friend was. "I'm worried about the kids, too," she admitted in a hoarse voice.

"So..." he gave her a look that appeared as exhausted as she felt, "What's the call, boss?"

Moment of truth.

Loyalty to her Kingdom or to her ideals. Follow her official chain of command or put her faith in the one man she still trusted in the ugly world of geopolitics. The fate of five children caught in the machinations of a monster. The fate of a world on the brink of apocalypse.

The fate of her daughters.

Looking up to Qrow, she let out a long sigh.

"Call Ozpin. And Glynda. Whatever we're about to do… I want to be able to say we helped the kids."

Thanks to Renarde for feedback on this chapter! And we've just broke 500 followers! That's incredible, and I am, as always, very touched by every review, follow, and fave.

But welcome to Act 4—things are bad, but people are now going to try to fix them. Place your bets on how you see that all going. If Acts 2-3 were driven by Jaune being tested by the Maiden (Yang in our Triple Goddess imagery), Act 4 is marked by the claimed being tested by the Mother. There's experience and nurturing love here, but also caution, and a commitment to protecting the young. Sometimes, a mother's love, even genuine and true, can be a dangerous thing to everyone involved.

Also: Summer's weapons are Damask and Gallica, a rapier and main-gauche pair named for breeds of roses! Believe me, you'll get to see Summer fight at a future point in this series, and I'm doing what I can to make sure she lives up to the hype.