Well well well. Here we go again. Volume 8 has finished, and as I said, the final volume of Chaos is the Prize will commence. Took us long enough to get here, especially with that mid-season break, which pushed back the continuation of my story more than I expected, but here we are at last.
I took some small risks with my story regarding the unaired volumes; I laid some foundations with Volume 3 I was not sure I could follow up on, but everything has worked out better than expected. Volumes 7 and 8 have provided me with a perfect stage to complete this story. Volume 9 could bring all sorts of interesting things, but I don't want to wait for it. If V9 makes me want to change something, that is what I will worry about when that time comes.
This story has reached 400 reviews sharp at the time of me writing this. Thank you to all of you who have enjoyed the story and followed me this far. The end is in sight, I tell you. Five years in the making, this story will finally finish. I hope you will continue to enjoy this final volume.
Chaos is the Prize Chapter 78
There was a day when all hearts were broken
When a shadow cast out the light
And our eyes cried a million tears
Help did not arrive
There was a day when all courage collapsed
And our friends turned and left us behind
Creatures of darkness did triumph
The sun did not rise
When we lost all hope
And succumbed to fear
And the skies rained blood
And the end drew near
We did fall.
After many painful moments in sheer agony at the hands of Orchid, the White Fang cell leader was finally put out of his misery by Sangur's axe removing his head from his shoulders. The sounds of suffering finally fell silent. The man had not known anything of value, he would have spilled his beans long ago if had, under the inventive attention of the Slaaneshi freak as he had been. Sangur let out an angry grunt of frustration as he flicked his axe to cast blood from its slowing chain.
"I guess that's another empty lead…" Ceruleon sighed from the other end of the room where he had laid on top of some crates belonging to the White Fang base, waiting for Orchid to finish his questioning of the leader of the terrorist cell base.
Sangur punched the nearby wall, leaving behind a sizable fracture. He let out an anguished cry that soon died out and he returned to his brooding demeanor. The frustration of it all burned his veins and stung his mourning heart.
The head of the White Fang leader rolled along the floor, ending up at the knees of another White Fang member who, like the half a dozen others next to her, were tied up against the wall. The woman with horns let out a small yelp as she stared down at the severed head displaying an anguished expression.
Orchid rose to his feet from where he had tortured the Faunus leader and marched out of the room, muttering to himself angrily at the empty results of his interrogation.
Cerulean hopped to his feet and glanced at Sangur over his shoulder. "Well... I guess I'll tie things up here and then get the craft ready…" he stepped towards the tied-up Faunus terrorists as Sangur stepped out of the way.
Cerulean stood before the first Faunus, and without further notice pulled out his stolen Atlesian pistol and shot the abhuman thug right into the head.
The prisoners cried out as their dead comrade fell lifelessly to the floor and started to bleed on it, his brain matter staining the wall behind his corpse. Cerulean waited for a few seconds, perhaps offering the remaining ones the final chance to come forth with any nugget of useful information. When all he got was sounds of alarm, despair and fear, he moved on and shot the second one.
"Please!" cried out the horned female faunus as she looked at Sangur with pleading eyes. "Please…" Sangur met the gaze without emotion, staring down at the doomed terrorists. Another gunshot echoed in the tight space.
"We… we are sorry… for anything we have done to you… to anyone... " the terrorist woman cried. The next body hit the floor. "We… we just wanted equality… we just wanted equality…"
Sangur looked as Ceruleon put down the second to last White Fang member next to the woman. The woman sifted her eyes from Sangur to her executioner.
Cerulean calmly pointed his gun and the crying woman. "No one wants just something…" he said with a quiet voice. "Do you know what always follows the fight for equality? A fight for superiority. They are both conflicts pushing in the same direction, just at different stages…"
The final gunshot rang out, and Sangur and Cerulean walked out of the room filled with corpses of the abhumans.
Sangur exited the small base and emerged into the middle of the wilderness of Anima. Some distance away the Night Reaver stood on a small clearing suitable for landing. Sangur headed for the aircraft, noticing Orchid was not yet there. After ascending the ramp, he slumped to the nearest seat by the hull wall. Ceruleon walked past him and headed for the cockpit.
"Shit…" Sangur spat. "Shit… shit… shit.."
This was the fifth cell of White Fang they had tracked down. Fifth secret terrorist base. Fifth one in many months. And they still had fuck all to show for it. No leads to Cinder Fall and her direct associates. They had nothing. Nothing. Sangur banged his fist against his knee and ground his teeth over and over again.
After some time Orchid finally emerged from the base and ascended the ramp. He smashed the ramp controls to close the thing and sat opposite of Sangur without saying the word.
Ceruleon peeked his head from the cockpit. "I made the fuel check. We can maybe do one more raid like this if we find a place on this continent. Otherwise or after that we need to find an Atlesian supply base to scavenge for fuel."
"Sure thing…" Orchid replied. "For now, I think we should get to some settlement near Mistral where we can look for our next lead… again…"
"As you say," Ceruleon said and vanished back to the cockpit. Soon after the engine of the craft came to life. Sangur found himself staring at Orchid.
"What?" the whimp asked. "Is there something on my face?"
"Blood..." Sangur grunted, and Orchid wiped away the viscera of the White Fang leader from his face.
"How much more…" Sangur complained. "How much longer before we have anything rucking real to follow…"
"It might be long, but what is certain it is a matter of time." Orchid snarled. "We are the Legiones Venatores. There is no place in this world to hide from our wrath… our vengeance..."
They sat in silence until they reached their destination. They hid their vehicle near the settlement and made their way on foot. It was a decent-sized settlement to the south of Mistral, close enough for relatively short travel needed.
And what waited for the Venatores was something unexpected: News about an attack on the Haven Academy.
The metal door ground open once more. Pyrrha had learned to hate that sound. There were two occasions in which her dark and cold hall of a dungeon was ever entered by her captors. One was to bring her food, always performed by the old servants without Aura. The second reason was for the entertainment...
Pyrrha rose to her knees from where she had been laying half asleep. She recognized the jeering voices instantly as the second reason the fiends visited her. They wanted to spar. They wanted to train. They wanted to play.
The teenagers, ones like Sangur, had quickly lost interest in her. Now it was only the literal children who tormented her with their visits, none of them older than maybe ten or so years.
"Hello there, champion of Mistral," one of them leered at Pyrrha as the kid stopped in the middle of the chamber, far enough where the chain Pyrrha was leashed with would have only barely reached had she moved towards him. "We came to test your skills again."
They loved to test their skills against her, for a champion of Mistral she was. This one's name was Shad, and he was one fiendish, cruel kid. He reminded Pyrrha of Nox because of his pale complexion. She had learned the names of a dozen kids from the conversations they had with each other. Shad belonged to the Raven Faction that habited these halls. He and also the two other kids behind him, just as pale as him.
Pyrrha rose to her feet. The chain rattled behind her as she moved. The chain was the single most foul object Pyrrha had ever encountered in her life. It seemed to be made of simple steel, but with a litany of eerily glowing red runes inscribed to it. It was attached to the back of her head by a loop someone had surgically hammered to her skull before she woke up here. The chain had a foul presence that tainted the air, and it drained her, stopping her from regenerating any Aura without some specific unknown methods the fiends used to patch the wounds they caused. It also completely stopped her from using her semblance. If she tried to damage the chain, a pain worse than she had ever felt would radiate inside her mind. She had tried to ignore the pain and break free despite it, but it was too much.
"I will be your first opponent," Shad declared and pulled out a crude looking blade that could charitably be called a short sword. One of the other kids moved out to toss Pyrrha her weapon. The metal thing clattered to the floor before Pyrrha. It was barely a weapon, just a beaten metal pipe that had been sharpened at the end, making it a poor but usable makeshift spear. Pyrrha had heard her real huntress weapons had been left behind when these fiends had snatched up her arrow pierced body from Beacon.
Pyrrha had long since learned that trying to talk and plead with the kids was a futile effort. These kids had no compassion, no pity, and no remorse. Especially Shad. He relished in beating those weaker than himself.
Pyrrha picked up the "spear" she was always given at the start of these sick matches. She assumed a ready stance, pointing her weapon at Shad who stepped closer. No matter what they did, she would not allow despair to stop her from standing up for herself. The kid had Aura, an undeveloped one at his age, but Aura nonetheless. She had no Aura, so it was still a fight in his favor despite the vast difference in skill. These fights were all unevenly weighted in such a way. She had gotten used to it. Before being taken here, Pyrrha had almost forgotten what it was like to face danger without the protection of her soul's force field, she had almost forgotten what it was like to be like most people: frail and vulnerable. She had learned to live with it in the dozens of spars she had had with the kids. She had reached a stage where she could actually put up opposition and defeat some of the less skilled kids, despite their superior strength, speed and stamina. But not Shad. Never Shad.
Shad Charged forward, and Pyrrha swallowed her tears as she lunged to meet him, the chain rattle echoing in the miserable dungeon that was her hell.
The fight lasted several minutes. Pyrrha did not even manage to knock Shad's limited Aura in half by her estimation. She sometimes managed to deplete the Aura of her opponents, and in such occasions, the kid just retreated where her chain stopped, and another one would take his place.
At the end of the sick spar, Pyrrha was laying on the ground, bleeding from cuts in her body. Sometimes… sometimes she almost hoped the bleeding did not stop.
Shad and his gang gathered around her body, looking down at her lying in the fetal position she had coiled herself into. They started jeering and kicking her, bruising her already wounded body. "Some champion of Mistral you are…" Shad laughed at her the evilest laugh she had ever heard.
They kept ganging up on her for a while longer. A couple of tears escaped her eyes, shielded behind her arms. "Help me.." she cried without sound. "Help me… Jaune… Nora… Ren… Anyone… help me…"
"Spider lady?" Orchid asked as he, Ceruleon and Sangur made their way through the shady parts of Mistral late in the evening.
"Yes. Little miss Malachite. She is a prominent local dealer in information."
"You met her before?" Orchid asked carefully. He had little trust in some pretty underground rat of Mistral.
"Not directly, but my operatives have had dealings with her occasionally."
"How do we get her info?" Sangur asked. "I have an idea!"
"We are not going to kill anyone," Ceruleon sighed.
"Oh, in that case, I got nothing."
"Violence is always your first option," Orchid said, almost surprised by his own words. He had not been particularly against using violence to resolve issues in the past. But that was the past. This was now. And now was without Azuhrius to keep his impulses in check.
"You can't make an omelet without breaking the frying pan," Sangur declared. "No blood no life."
"That is not true... well I guess it technically is, but no in a way..." Cerulean said with resignation.
"Technically correct is the best correct!"
"Currency greases stuff like information very well," Ceruleon continued. "I am sure that talking to her will spare us time and effort, if not money. She knows what goes around in this Kingdom."
"Can't we just threaten the info out of her?" Sangur growled.
"I think trying to harm her would be counterintuitive for us getting the information we need," Cerulean pointed out, and Orchid silently low-key agreed. It would have been unwise to do. Azuhrius would not have settled it with violence.
"I mean sure we will not do anything if she does not buckle under the pressure, but threatening is always worth the shot," Sangur said, speaking some old wisdom.
They passed by various shady marketplaces and establishments. Orchid's eyes passively scanned the merchandise of various vendors. There were a lot of low-grade weapons for sale, things to arm thugs, not Hunters. The good stuff was probably hidden somewhere more hidden and required connections. Orchid noted down in his mind this might be a good place to look for weapons once neophytes grew out of using thug-grade weapons and required something more. For a moment he thought about picking up souvenirs for his two younger brothers back at Terra, but quickly dismissed it as irrelevant to the tasks at hand. The two little Children could wait, they were used to Orchid being distant with them anyway.
Finally, Ceruleon came to halt before an unremarkable establishment. He nodded at a nearby symbol that seemed to mark the place. It was a spider in its web. Without further hassle, the trio proceeded inside.
Orchid looked around. The place looked like a bar of some sort. Many of the tables were occupied with less than savory looking folks. His circling gaze finally reached an overweight woman sitting in a center table near the bar counter, flanked by some goons. It was easy to tell she was the one in charge, the whole place looked like a low-grade throne room for her.
"Hmmh, pretty criminals and hired thugs," Sangur grunted with distaste at their surroundings. "Never seen a true battlefield and fighting only for the lowliest reason in history… money…"
Many of the occupants turned to look as the three Venatores made their way for the table of the lady. Orchid himself and Sangur probably looked threatening in their eyes with their weapons and all, and Ceruleon looked suspicious in his scavenged military suit. The goons flanking the lady stepped forward to stop the three of them before they got too close.
"We are here for business, and we have money," Ceruleon called out. "I believe you have dealt with my proxy, Kimidori, before, Little miss Malachite."
The woman waved her hand to the goons who stepped aside, though not far away. "Ah, I take it you must be her boss Alpharius then?"
"That's me, the one and only. The man the myth the legend," Ceruleon replied. For a moment it seemed he regained some of his jovial old demeanor, but the moment quickly passed once the irresistible name joking of his bloodline faded. "May we have a seat?"
"You associates can stay where they are. You can take a chair and we will talk this business of yours."
"No," Orchid said. "I will do the talking."
The woman raised her eyebrow with some surprise. Perhaps she had assumed he and Sangur were some sorts of bodyguards of Ceruleon. Without further word, Orchid took a step forward and grabbed the chair. He sat down and guided his eyes to the information seller.
A long silence followed, and Orchid looked for a way to break it. He focussed on the cigarette the woman was smoking casually. "Smoking is bad for you," she said with a diplomatic voice.
The looks of utter shock Sangur and Ceruleon gave to him were extraordinary.
The woman just stared at Orchid for a moment before opening her mouth at least. "Well then, let's talk about this business you said," Malachite said after a moment. "I hope you have enough to cover my prices."
"Don't talk to us about money, I have plenty of money." Sangur snarled and turned half away.
"Eh, please be assured your efforts will be generously compensated," Cerulean chirped where he flanked Orchid's back. He threw some lien to the table to smooth the situation. Orchid looked at the money. It was acquired through the dust raid in the Vale docks hat felt like forever ago.
Malachite narrowed her eyes at Sangur but did not say anything. Then she addressed Orchid. "The information you are after, then?"
"We want everything you know about the attack on Haven three weeks ago, especially who is responsible," Orchid laid out. "More specifically than just White Fang, that can be acquired from the newspapers. We want names and anything you might know of those who escaped the attack."
"We want Cinder Fall," Sangur blurted out with his usual bluntness.
Orchid and Ceruleon glanced at him with narrowed eyes. "Yes, Orchid said after a moment. If you have any information about her and her associates, we would be willing to pay very handsomely."
"And if you could be expedient with what you have to offer, I would pay extra for receiving the information without any avoidable delays," Ceruleon added.
"How much more?" Malachite asked.
Ceruleon threw more lien on the table. "Much more. Money is not an issue."
"My favorite words from a customer," Malachite smiled. Her mood seemed to have been considerably brightened by the amount of money in her line of sight.
"Well, you are in very much luck. I happen to have some very good and accurate info about Cinder Fall…"
Ceruleon perked. He could feel his heart beating faster. Finally something. "Tell us."
"I actually met her. Three days ago. Right here, right on that chair. She was after information about a certain group consisting of many young hunters and huntresses. I pointed her the way after them. She also had some unsettled matters with certain Neopolitan girl, though they seemed to have resolved them some way since they left together."
Neopolitan… Orchid had a curious feeling he had heard the name before somewhere. "I want to know everything about anything to do with this. Tell all the details you have…" Orchid said, motioning Cerulean to add more money on the table. "I want it all."
We were born to fight and die
Sacrificed for one huge lie
We're not heroes keeping peace
We are weapons pointed at the enemy
So someone else can claim a victory.
I quite liked the end of Volume 8 of RWBY, not that I did not think V8 had its flaws. But it was a better end than many other volumes at least. I actually found myself being impacted by some things that happened, maybe things one might not expect.
I think I made this prediction before, and it seems like we will finish at about 100 chapters. I am still working on the exact outline of V4 of CitP, so it might be shorter or longer, can't say at this point. If you have anything you are wondering about the story, do voice them in the reviews so that I don't forget to address them. I already got something I was kinda dismissing pointed out to me, so there might be more.
Leave a review if you feel like it and have a nice day.