Bit of a family issue has come up today and cut down my writing time drastically. This is actually what I jotted down last night in bed, so it's kind of lucky I did or there wouldn't have been anything today. Now, if my family could stop imploding left, right and centre that would be appreciated. I suppose that's the issue of having elderly parents, two sisters and two nephews. I could have had this up hours sooner but I held off hoping I'd free myself up enough to come back and finish writing another 3,000 words. Alas, I've only just gotten back home at 8pm. Sorry about that.

Cover Art: Z-ComiX

Chapter 85

Lightning arched down and punched through the skull of an Ursa.

A Beowolf roared and lunged at her from behind. Eyes shining, Ruby twisted and snapped out a hand. Red-hot ropes of fire as hard as metal pierced through its chest and out its back. Rather than let go, she screamed and wrenched her arm forward, dragging the monster like a ball on the end of a chain to whip it into two more and reduce them to pulp.

Several more came from behind her, only to meet a wall of wind so powerful it lifted beasts hundreds of kilograms off the floor and sent them flying back into the trees, impaling them on jagged branches.

Enough. Enough of this.

"Enough!" Ruby shrieked, wishing they'd all just die already.

Power ripped through her like hot fire, spilling out so euphorically, so wildly. Sparks of electricity shot out from her and tore furrows through the ground, burning and cutting through Grimm as it radiated out from her. The clouds above swirled and coalesced, turning dark to cover the sky. First came rain, then hail, then chunks of ice as big as a child's fist smashing into the hordes coming down on them.

"Orghhhhh!" the gargantuan monster roared, ignoring the pain and lumbering toward her.

Ruby glared back, a tiny figure some five feet two with hands clenched into fists at her sides and teeth bared. "Rarghhh!" she yelled, stabbing one hand at it.

Green lightning lunged forth and gripped the beast's raised club arm. The magic burned its flesh where it touched, grating and eating through skin and muscle and bone. The monster roared through it and kept coming, forcing her to bring her full attention.

"Die!" she seethed, twin arcs of green lightning eating away at it. "Die already." More Grimm poured in around them, surrounding her while she was busy, hurling in with reckless abandon for the sheer chance to rip and tear Wildmage flesh. Ruby screamed out, "ALL OF YOU JUST DIE!"

The magic coursed through her veins. Raising her hands, the towering abomination rose with her, its feet coming up off the floor as it made confused and angry sounds. Her arms wavered, muscles straining as if she herself was lifting it. Bringing her left hand higher, Ruby shouted and dragged both to the left, tilting the beast and sending it hurtling down.

Its head and shoulders impacted the ground first, smashing into dirt and rock a foot deep. Without stopping, Ruby dragged her hands further back, pulling it along until it was carving its way across the meadow through its fellow Grimm, crushing them under itself.

Swinging it across, Ruby used it to crush twenty more Grimm into paste, then wrenched her hands up and bounced the abomination off the ground, carrying it over her and Qrow's heads to slam it back down into the rest of the charging pack. Huge plumes of dust shook up from the impact, stained red with blood.

Something cold tickled at her senses from behind.

Twisting, Ruby batted the spike of ice out the air, then thrust her other hand at the spot where she knew the Arcanist to be. She wasn't sure how she knew, only that she did. Her fingers clenched tight around something and the rock beneath that point snapped upward, long jagged spikes like fingers closing around something.

A muffled curse reached her ears and the Arcanist moved, still invisible and yet not to her. Growling, she willed him to be stopped, caught, and the ground itself responded, tearing up and chasing the figure, grasping at his heels and shifting underfoot.

He wasn't going to get away. Not this time.

Following the distortions in space with her eyes, Ruby focused her will on the area around him, snarling out "Burn" with an angry sweep of her hand.

Wildmagic responded. Power coursed out of her and ignited the air, burning with oxygen to cause an instantaneous and violent explosion. Not a fireball, not a fire spell at all, but a large blast originating in the spot he was travelling to. His invisibility snapped out in an instant, revealing a figure in grey robes hurtling back into a tree.

Ruby was merciless. Another bolt of lightning whipped out to coil around one of his legs, making the man scream as she dragged him in. A Beowolf got in her way so she slammed the Arcanist into it, breaking his bones rather than the Grimm's. When the monster tried to go for her, she willed it to fuck off please and watched it be launched over the treetops by an impossibly powerful gust of wind.

A nearby tree cracked and toppled down. An injured and dying Grimm weakly tried to drag itself toward her. The abomination heaved its last and the feathers from Nevermore exploded in the sky by the sudden thunderstorm drifted down like black snow. The clearing was still, empty, lit only by the crackling lines of burning electricity linking Ruby's hand to her prey.

"Ahh! Arghhh!" The man howled and kicked and thrashed his arms about, spasming under the lightning dragging him across bumpy rock and grass. It cut off suddenly, leaving him heaving for air on his back. "Ooof!" he grunted as Ruby landed down atop him, knees on either side of his body and fists gripping his collar tight.

Ruby shook him violently to knock the hood back and reveal a badly burnt face twisted with agony. Male, about forty, hair burned off and eyes misty with pain. Human. Not Grimm, not some half-monster, but perfectly human.

"Why!?" Ruby howled, dragging his face in close. She didn't need to explain what she was asking him about. He knew. "WHY!?"

"O-Orders…" he croaked.

"From who? Tell me who!"

"C-Can't. T-They'll kill me…"

"They are the least of your problems!" Ruby roared, swinging a hand back. Power surged around it, the very air shifting visibly as heat rolled off her. "I am all of your problems. I am the only thing that matters to you now!"

His eyes flickered with fear. "W-Wildmage…"

It was almost laughable. He was afraid. Afraid of her. He acted, even now, like her being a Wildmage was a disgusting and frightful thing. He - who worked with the Grimm to kill people – acted like she was the monster. Ruby could have laughed, did laugh, but it was hoarse and broken. Her hand slammed down, her small fist catching him square on the nose and breaking it with a spurt of blood. She'd never been strong, but he was in no position to withstand her.

"Who ordered this?" she yelled, striking him a second time. "Answer me!"

His right hand snaked out and slashed a dagger for her eyes. Ruby saw it in slow motion, more used to tricks like that than any Arcanist was. Her lips peeled back, and she didn't even bother to move, only to narrow her eyes on it and let her fury rip through.

Metal peeled back like a banana peel, curling like wood shavings long before the blade could touch her. The hilt peeled back too, then the grip. From there, it was too quick for her to process. Wildmagic worked on emotion and intent. It was not something you controlled. Not as such.

When the knife peeled back to his fingers, so too did his skin, his muscle, his bones as well. Everything peeled away in a matter of seconds, causing his right arm to explode in a shower of gore before she could even think to stop the magic. Wide eyed, Ruby watched the man shiver, gasp and fall limp in her hands.

"W-Wait…" she whispered. "No! Don't die!" She shook him angrily. "Answer my questions!" Another shake, another lifeless roll of his head. "Answer me, damn it!"

A hand fell on her shoulder. "He's dead, Ruby."

She looked up, released the body and stared at Lord Qrow Branwen. He looked exhausted and much the worse for wear, bleeding from numerous wounds but still alive. Still of the White, too, and having witnessed her power.

"I didn't…"

"You didn't mean to." He grimaced. "I know. Wild magic responds to emotion and intent, but what you intend in the heat of the moment isn't always what you want."

The body was proof enough of that. She'd wanted to hurt this person, to make them suffer – and she had. But that suffering was short lived and came at the cost of answers. She also hadn't really wanted to kill someone, especially not in so gruesome a manner.

And then there was the other problem. "I'm not going to the Sanctum."

I'll fight you, she promised, staring up at him. You've seen what I can do. I can fight you.

"I wouldn't send you there anyway, Ruby. And no, that's not a threat that I'll kill you." He tried to grin, but the wounds and exhaustion made it too fragile. "After all, I let your mother go the first time, didn't I?"

The lie was up there. Ruby didn't even try it. "You mean she was… like me…?"

"A Wildmage? Yes." Qrow stood with a grimace, holding out a hand to help her up. "We can talk more when we're in a safer spot. Good work here. You saved both our lives." Qrow glanced down at the dead Arcanist, sighed and knelt again to rummage through his robes. "And our friend here, it sounds like he's one of many. Or a few. Hopefully, the latter. Ah, here we go."

Qrow fished out a chunk of metal that had withstood the damage she'd caused. An Arcanum bearing the snarling wolf of Menagerie, with two gemstones inlaid in it. Blake would choke to hear of the misty grey indicating he was of the Shadow Arcana, but by far the bigger shock was the second.

Pure, crystal white.

/-/

For Yang, it was a scene from her nightmares.

Blake had to hold onto her, pull her in close and try to cover her eyes, but even that didn't do enough to hide the sounds, the noises and the knowledge. The Grimm ran loose in the slums, running down fleeing men, women and children and ripping them asunder. Doors splintered under their might, windows shattered, and the screams of the dying and soon-to-die reached a fever pitch.

There was nothing she could do. Nothing. The town watch were absent – missing as they so often were, but now all the more conspicuous for it. The soldiers on the walls fired arrows down, but what difference did that make? The lucky people below took an arrow to the eye or throat and died quickly, but more were run down, pinned down and split open like ripe fruit.

The words `massacre` had been thrown around so much in her life. Her beating up marks Junior sent her after was called a massacre. Two thugs having at some urchins who had stolen their food was a massacre. None of that compared to this. This was the true massacre. Within two minutes, the death toll was easily over two hundred.

And it was rising.

"Where are the Arcanists?" Yang shrieked, tears running down her face. "Where are the guards? Where is the help?"

"I'm sorry," Blake whispered, rocking her. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

The apology wasn't hers to give. It was given on behalf of the dead Arcanist who had kept the gate open, who with his actions had all but proven there would be no help from the Collegium. That they had not only been abandoned, but intentionally left to die. The Collegium had let the Grimm into the city.

The answer as to why came far too quickly.

The rushing and roaring sound of the River Vale could never be mistaken by anyone living in the slums. It was the annual toll of their race for survival, and it had already happened this year. The river didn't flood twice. Never. There hadn't even been any rain to suggest it would this time, and yet she could hear it as clear as day.

Magic. That was the only answer.

Yang struggled out of Blake's grip and raced to the doorway, gripping the edge and looking out as the water burst its banks and rolled down the narrow streets and alleyways six feet high. The force of it swept fleeing dredgers and Grimm away alike, throwing them together and smashing their bodies against the walls with bone breaking force.

Before her very eyes a running woman with a baby in her arms turned a corner only with time to gasp before she was overwhelmed by water and swept away. The Grimm chasing her fared no better, clawing at the water before being pushed under, neither to emerge. The wall came up to meet her, knees striking first and then her forehead as she bent over and vomited onto the stone. All around – below and everywhere – people cried out for help. At the far wall, the wall connecting to the merchant's district, people were trying to climb to safety as they always had. As had protected them time and time before.

This had never happened before. The water was coming too quickly, no one had the warning to prepare, and the Grimm were unceasing in their violence, plucking people off the walls to kill them or in some cases ramming their bodies against it, shaking the brickwork and making people fall to their deaths. The lucky, she hoped, would die from the impact and not have to face the Grimm surrounding them or the rushing water drowning them.

"Why?" she screamed. "WHY!?"

"Bait." Blake's answer came wrapped in rage and grief. "They're being used as bait for the Grimm. Let inside, occupied with the people here and then annihilated by the coming flood. I… I'm sorry Yang. I'm so sorry…"

"You're an Arcanist!" Yang gripped at Blake's cloak helplessly. "You have magic! Do something!"

Blake's tortured expression said everything. Hers was the Arcana of Shadows – that, Yang knew. Hiding, concealment and trickery. Nothing that would let her take on an army of Grimm, stop a raging flood or lift hundreds of thousands of dying people out of a doomed city.

"I'm sorry," Blake said again, helpless. "I'm so sorry…"

In under half an hour, the Grimm attack on the city of Vale had been thwarted, drowned in the moat that now surrounded the city, one dotted with swollen and floating bodies and the rare survivor fished out by suddenly sympathetic merchants and soldiers. The Grimm were no more, but the same could be said for the slums and the people who lived within them.

Sorry for the short chapter. Family really doesn't understand that I work weekends as well as weekdays, but I suppose that's to be expected every now and then. Also, when one health issue happens others tend to come in quick succession so… yeah, probably not to be unexpected.

Next Chapter: 25th April

P a treon . com (slash) Coeur