For a few brief seconds, whiteness washed over Neo's vision. The sounds of the battle all around her were suddenly silenced; all she could hear was the steady rushing of a wind she couldn't feel. An unfamiliar heat flooded through her body, almost as if she'd stepped straight into a bonfire, yet there was no pain.
Neo felt herself levitate off the ground. The heat she'd felt seconds before was suddenly replaced by a bitter chill roaring around her, emanating shocks of energy that seemed to go straight into her soul. She reached her arms out to catch herself, but she was floating, suspended in the middle of the wind and the shocks of crystal-blue light.
When Neo opened her eyes, two mismatched flames radiated from them.
A feral growl tore from Cinder's throat as she stood at the edge of the platform, seething into the blackness below.
The floor at her feet was spattered with Penny's scarlet blood, but the redheaded girl was nowhere to be seen, having fallen backward into the abyss in her last desperate attempt to keep the power of the Winter Maiden from falling into the hands of the enemy. Cinder clenched the Staff of Creation in her Shadow Hand, holding it in a death grip.
If she knew anything about the mind of General Ironwood's pet project (and Watts had made sure she knew enough), it was that Penny would've made sure that on her death, her power passed to Ruby Rose. But with Ruby being almost assuredly dead, there was only one other person that Cinder knew of that Penny would bestow her gift on. Winter Schnee.
Cinder's stomach clenched as she realized that she was caught in a trap of her own making. For all she knew, Winter Schnee was still in Atlas— which was currently falling from the sky— and Ambrosius' portals were one-way doors. She had no way to get back to Atlas to retrieve the Maiden powers, if Winter was even still alive— and if she wasn't, then the gift had likely passed on to someone random, as her sister Weiss (her most likely candidate) had already fallen into the darkness.
The floor of the platform rocked under Cinder's feet and she hissed in rage, readying a ball of fire to defend herself. The last thing she wanted to deal with right now was another one of those blasted kids.
The ball of flame died in Cinder's hand when she saw the towering whirlwind of blue energy and the diminutive woman suspended in the midst of it.
Her voice cracked. "N-Neo..?"