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Fire…
Fire was many things, to the Lords and those they ruled, and to the petty kingdoms of Man and those beneath their heels.
Safety, protection, succor, guidance… A sign of the very Lords themselves, even, seated on their sparkling mount so high. And beyond them, a sign of life, and the promise of a power that could safeguard it all. First, against ageless Dragons thought unending until the very moment of their great breaking. And then beyond, against the base beasts of the world at large who hounded the edges of civilizations, and men so base and vicious as to be as good as.
Fire was all of these things and, ultimately, was power itself, by which it became all that it was.
Many worshipped Fire for this nature, along with the Lords who bore it and graced them with it. A conduit for prayer and sacrifice, and beseechment most sincere and pure. The primal power had, after all, first been found, nurtured even, by the Lords themselves. So Fire took them on, as symbol and signet, etched onto the hearts of men loyal and roguish alike.
But in truth, Fire cared not for its tenders or wielders, beyond their propensity to feed its never-ending hunger, or even becoming the kindling it needed. And so the moment one grew too comfortable with Fire, the moment one grew to take it as a given, they suffered dearly for it. Consumed themselves, or damned to lose their loved ones to its primal needs, it was all the same. This was the truth of the matter, ultimately, then.
Fire was a beast… Primal, natural, an unyielding force bent on ignoble ends for all who dared think it their thrall.
Fire was divine…. A shield against hunger and suffering alike, and a means to so many ends of nobler nature.
The Undead knew this truth as well, if not better, than any other in the now debatably mortal world. The Curse of Undeath was said to be born of, and perhaps even borne by, that very primal force, after all. As the Fire of the world itself sputtered and died, Undeath only grew and spread. Like a pitiable plague of pests, swelling in number and madness until all were overwhelmed. All prolonged only in the hope of finding a solution, an end to the chaos and madness and interminable terminations that wracked the souls trapped on their mortal coils, by the sacrifice of the most powerful being in all of existence.
Gwyn, once the Lord of Sunlight, who now stood before him, wounded and weak and Lord of nothing now save for the ashes and the cinders. A tragic, truly ignoble, ultimate end for such a truly noble Lord to meet. And bitterly ironic, too, for the weapon that had so neatly hamstrung him only an unliving heartbeat before. A Black Knight sword, no doubt once forged to protect the very Lord before him, that weighed ever heavier in his hand for the blackness of it all.
Now, charred and blackened and bloodied by divinity once shielded behind it…
Even charred by the Chaos flames that had blackened it so, the edge still shone a bright, nigh defiant silver that glinted beautifully with the flames around him in the semi-dark of the sacred Kiln. A calligraphy born of Titanite, gently and expertly shaped onto the ancient metal by the hands of the friendly blacksmith in the tower, that turned the weapon into something truly magnificent to behold and use. Those same gentle, elegant, and yet so exorbitantly powerful swirls coated the rim of his tower-shield and the plates of his Steel armor, the edges of both glowing so faintly as to almost be invisible outside the darkest of scenes where the light could play across the gently glimmering Titanite.
And running black with the brackish, blackened blood of his battered Lord…
He saw the hateful red eyes of the creature glance behind him, to the center of the Kiln, almost protectively, and readied himself for the attack he knew would come for him. A last instinct of the creature's noble intent, left over from before his hollowing out. Just like the Hollow soldiers damned to rotting posts, and the Knights outside damned even more. Beyond body to their soul, ensconced in armor now arcane, and damned to stand in defiant defence of a Lord long since deceased.
Save the admittedly powerful twitches of his corpse.
"This was not a fate they deserved. Or you, Lord Gwyn." The words reverberated through the eerie silence of the Kiln as he turned, raising his shield in front of him and drawing his blade back and down, to the ready. "Forgive me, Lord, as I step above my station to release you all from it."
Hissing angrily as though in answer, the creature raised its sword and flames leapt to his aid, wreathing it in power and fury as he leapt, propelled by its one good leg and swinging a clumsy if incredibly powerful slash across his armored chest from his sword-side. The blow did nothing itself, though the flames wreathing it seared the flesh of his stomach and drew a grunt from the Undead warrior, and he brought his shield rim down into the shoulder of the Hollowed Lord and shattered it.
The creature roared, and the Undead warrior's sword arm thrust up, burying the Black Knight's sword to the hilt in the fallen God's chest and ending the roar in a wet and sad choke.
It struggled weakly for a moment, before he saw the fire in its eyes flicker and finally sputter out, and he cast his shield aside as the body fell limp. Cradling it to him like a man might a fallen brother, he knelt and laid it on the ash covered ground, gently pulling the blade from the wound and laying it beside him while he set to work straightening the God-King's legs and folding his hands over his chest. The crown he removed only so long as it took to draw forth a rag and wipe it clean, and then he replaced it so that he might rest, regal, even now.
"And so, the mighty Lord of Sunlight finds his rest. And, I hope, his peace as well." He intoned quietly, voice echoing around the Kiln and out even further, coming back like whispers in the dark.
Whispers of the dead, his mind offer him contemptuously, before he shook the thought off and rose. Turning, he looked at the simple sword in the center of the Kiln of the First Flame itself. He left his weapon and shield with the dead god, a last tribute for a fallen Lord, and lumbered to the hilt buried in the bone and ash of the bonfire that had taken shape inside the Kiln. Kneeling before it, he sighed, and raised his hand to light the bonfire.
And with it, as the flames crawled up his body, sucked the very air from his chest, scorched along his every fiber and the Kiln burst to life around him, he murmured a nearly silent prayer that someone would find a way forward where he and his fellows had tried so hard and failed so greatly.
Into a better future, one that did not send Lords and Men into madness for the failures of their leaders and past.
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He awoke not to pain, as he thought he would when he had finally lost himself to the kiss of fire on flesh, but to a dry throat that gasped and choked on ash and old, trapped smoke. His visor was almost entirely covered, only tiny pinpricks of dim light making their way into his armored mask from whatever source it came from. It was faint, and flickering, and distantly he could hear the sound of feet.
And voices he did not understand beyond the panic in their words.
"Ani! Ani, jebal!" He heard a woman's voice accompanied by the baritone of a man's cruel laugh, before a sound like thunder cracked.
Ani! Petra, jebal- Wae?" Another woman cried, repeating the word again and again as he felt… Life, nearby, draining away. Silent, he reached for it, letting the Souls - the Humanity - of the slain flow into him as the word repeated. "Wae? Wae? Wae?!"
Flashes, then.
Trees, mountains, strange horseless carriages- Cars, the memories told him, then a woman, face split by a wide smile and hair cut by gentle, elegant ram horns. A child - Copper, for her russet hair, the memories spoke - held in her arms. Of a word. 'Anae'. Spoken a thousand times, over rings and cloths and papers and tears. Anae.
Anae...
...Wife.
The memories rush forward, then, as the man's cruel laugh split the air once more. As though the dying woman wished him to see, to know, something.
Forests rolled by through the iron fronted windows of a train, another new thing he could not comprehend even though he knew it. A fervent look to the Wife, hands held, and silent resignation of what to come. Thoughts of home, a child left behind to be earned for, that quieted fear and set them to purpose. Geunyeoleul wihae mwodeunji.
'Anything for her sake'.
Then men in black and blue armor, their fellows - sporting tails and horns and scales and wings - filed into lines and given a speech by a portly man in white. A bored looking, cruel man. Another traded look, more resignation and a whispered 'anything for her'. Then, a whistle and a hand on the back of the dying woman's neck, dragging her out of the line and to the side.
The first beating.
The first…
Not the last.
Then, a cramped dorm, and orientation. A pick, a hammer, a helmet with a flickering light that fit so tight her own little horns hurt, throbbing on her forehead. A week in he, she, thought to forego it. Then she heard alarms and saw Faunus hauled out clutching bloody limbs and bloodied heads.
Or clutching nothing at all.
More flashes- Grimm attacks killing soldiers and work crews alike, and far more of the latter than the former. Soldiers coming home on an airship without their work crew. Lies, about Grimm that targeted the Faunus but ignored them. A leaked helmet cam… Then, riots. Riots and violent suppression by force of arms, soldiers too afraid to face the beasts that wandered the world more than happy to turn them on barely armed miners. Of the White Fang's attack, barely a handful ramming through a gate to try… Something.
Of a panicked flight into the mines, to shelter from both sides…
Of the lot of them being hunted through tunnels, fleeing deeper and deeper through long stripped and abandoned tunnels. A wall that was weak, that fell through with the mildest of hammer blows. A wide cavern, rounded but collapsed in places and smelling of ash, with rolling hills like frozen, liquid rock. Of hiding in it, lights off and arms around each other, until new lights found them.
A gunshot that cut off a plea with fire and a laugh...
"Please, I-I wasn't with them-"
"We don't care, you animal." The voice of the fat, white-dressed man, laughed out loud. A harsh sound that fit him well. "We're clearing the site for the next round. Hopefully they'll be more docile, less demanding. Maybe it'll keep the Grimm at bay."
"I won't tell anyone." The muffled voice promised while he let the woman's Souls invigorate him. Her Humanity, restore him. Her rage fuel him. "I-I swear, I just want to-to provide for my daughter. I'm all she has!"
"Shame." The man laughed as stone cracked, his voice masking it from him. "But you know what they say… The best way for two people can keep a secret is if one of them are dead."
Stone screeched as it shattered, exploding upward as a gun cracked, rock and dust showering him as he tore free of stone and ancient ash. Standing, he turned a glare first on the woman at his feet, clutching a bloodied leg and wearing scant more than rags. Then on the portly man and a pair of automatons standing, rifles raised and level on his armored, ash encrusted chest.
"What the fu-"
"No." He rumbled, taking a step forward as the two machines opened fire on him. His flesh seared as they bored home but he ignored them, closing on them and grabbing both by their heads. Towering twice their height and width, it was like holding a child's head in his hand…
Copper…
He saw red.
Metal and wiring spilled out from between his fingers as he crushed their heads and hurled them aside. They crumpled against the wall from the force and he stepped by and to the side, cutting off the portly man as he tried for the exit. He pressed his back to the wall and raised his heavy handgun, yet another word he didn't know, then looked to it and tossed it aside contemptuously.
"W-Whatever you are-"
"Knight." He rumbled, leaning close enough to smell his sweat through his ash-caked visor. "Protector. You?"
"F-Foreman, for the Schnee Dust Corporation…"
"Wrong." He rumbled his fury, throat raw and aching even for the paltry souls the woman had gifted him. Grabbing the fat creature by the throat, he hefted it into the air, "Killer. Murderer. Unworthy of the gift of life."
"B-But I can- Hrgl!" He closed his fist around the pudgy throat until he felt the familiar, heady flush of souls, then dropped the heap to the ground and turned.
"P-Please, Nia… Come on, stop playing games." The woman, bleeding from her leg still, begged, laid over the body of the other woman. He turned and took a single step towards her and her head snapped up, amber eyes locked onto his own no doubt crimson ones. "Please, I- She won't get up- -You have to help me, help me carry her."
"Can't." He rumbled, kneeling as the ash and stone cracked and fell from him, exposing weathered but still faintly shimmering armor. Laying a hand on her shoulder that was so large his fingers reached nearly to the other blade, he paid the fallen woman a small look. "Already gone."
"How do you know-" She cut off at the sound of more footsteps and looked back to him as he rose and turned, measuring the room with his eyes. Pacing across it to where he knew it to be he knelt and curled his fingers into a fist, punching down through ages of ashen stone with a crack. Jumping, the woman hissed, "W-What are you doing?! They're going to find us!"
"No." He rumbled as fingers found the rim of his shield and he yanked up, ripping the frail stone apart like so much paper and showering the far wall in stone. Drawing the relic weapons out and standing, he growled, "I am going to find them."
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"His tracker implant leads this way." Their point man, Sergeant Ifrit, said quietly as the three of them advanced in a too-tight chevron, forced in close by the confines of the mines. "Life signs still negative. Hostile contacts probably."
"Contacts…" She sighed, adjusting her hand on the pistol grip of the surplus bought pulse rifle. It was shoddy, hard-locked to three round pulses as a rule by Atlas when they let them be sold on the open market. Regardless, "Just rats in a maze. Waiting for the cat."
And, well, she'd prefer to be the cat to being the rat.
"Prepare for room clearing." Sergeant Ifrit ordered as they rounded a corner in the ragged, abandoned tunnel. "Two, left. Three, ri-"
The sound of stone shattering cut Sergeant Ifrit off and sent them all to their knees, wary of a potential cave-in. When nothing came after half a minute they slowly stood and turned looks on each other, silently checking they were all still there and steady. Satisfied, and now sure that something was up ahead of them, they raised their rifles and moved on in silence. At the end of the hallway they could see light, presumably coming from a hole in the wall where their targets would be hiding.
"And so the Goddess came upon the knight, laid low by blade o' steel." A low, rough voice whispered, carried through the cave and filled with a strange… Energy. Like electricity hanging in the air, setting their hairs on edge. "And on his wounds, of bloody ken. She laid frail hand on newfound friend. And said unto him… Be healed!"
"Free- Ack!" Sergeant Ifrit rounded the corner just as a piece of steel as large as him ripped through it, shattering the stone of the crevice and crushing him against the rock on his other side. It yanked back and a dark figure lumbered into view, towering so high it had to stoop in the too-short tunnel.
"What the fuck…" Two murmured as it looked down on them, crimson eyes boring into their visors silently. "Fuck! Grimm!"
His rifle snapped up and the creature's hand followed, landing palm first on the barrel and then crushing the rifle as he reached for Two's hand. Enveloping it, crumpled rifle and all, and squeezing, he wrenched up and slammed the man into the ceiling so hard his body molded to each and every contour of the rock. Then he slammed him down to do the same and left him there, bloodied and ruined.
All she could do was watch as he turned, yanking his red-stained sword from Sergeant Ifrit and turning to her. "I'm not a monster. I'm a monster slayer. Yield or join your fellows in their graves."
"F-Fucking shit…" She staggered back, rifle snapping up as the creature's shield snapped into place between them, Dust rounds pinging uselessly off it.
"No surrender, then." He sighed, taking a single step forward as she backpedaled and threw herself to the side. Her last view was red eyes and a glint of shimmering silver, lancing up and towards her.
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"Such a shame…" He sighed as he flicked the blade down and let the woman's body fall. It slumped and he used the blade to nudge it and then her fellow aside, out of their path so that they would not be stepped on. "I would have preferred survivors to cadavers."
"I-Is it safe?" He turned, the dirt and blood flecked face of the other Faunus. Crimson, poking her head around the corner nervously.
"For now." He nodded, raising his sword to the ceiling and murmuring, "Guiding light, burning bright. Guiding light, see me free from blackest night."
In answer, a fist sized ball bloomed to life, casting the cave in a pale white light. It would not last, he knew, but he only needed it for a short while. He knew the path out, after all, from the woman's soul alone. Even if he hadn't assimilated the other souls, he had that, and so long in the mine brought an understanding of it.
"Follow behind me, Crimson." He ordered quietly, locking his shield in front of him for rote routine if nothing else. Watching the woman as confusion crawled across her face he went on, "But do so at a distance. I shall cleanse the path of all that would bar your way to your daughter. Believe that o'er all else."
"S-Sure…" She murmured, "But what are you?"
"A knight." He answered quietly, turning his back to her and raising his arms. "A protector in the dark."
This time, literally.
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The riot hadn't gone as he'd planned when he leaked the video. The miners were too scattered and lacking unity, and the soldiers too eager to shut them up when they started their shouting. His men had been too slow and far away to react in time, and by the time they'd gotten in in force, the bloody work had been done. An entire camp, purged, with every last miner dead or missing. They'd search the mine, soon, but…
There was little hope there.
There was always so little hope in a mine…
Still, Banesaw uncrossed his arms and lumbered toward the main mine entrance, ordering over a shoulder, "Three men, with me. One of you best be medical. If anyone's alive in there they'll probably be-"
"Sir, footsteps." One of the soldiers searching the dead troopers, who had not been spared the treatment they'd doled out so eagerly. His white wolf ears flicked as he stepped away from them and raised his scattergun, "Two. One of them is very large, a bit bigger than you, Sir. The other, carrying something."
"Rifles!" He ordered, backing away to the center of the smallish mine-camp, the blasted and broken perimeter wall behind him. "Even spacing, you know the drill!"
He only had fifteen fighters, half of them armed with pilfered rifles before they'd gotten here and now all of them packing them. But to the last they obeyed, scattering to either side of him in loose but disciplined enough lines to receive whatever came out. After a moment his less sensitive ears picked up the heavy sound of boots on rock, and metal shifting. Then a glint of steel and an almost… Eerie glow of red that he felt instincts rail against.
"Gri-"
"Ho there, and well met, my friends!" A booming, bright voice called out from the mine's front. "Please, don't shoot at me. Those things hurt quite a bit, you know! And you might hurt my friends. I only just saved them, and so I would rather you not do that."
Finally, the figure emerged, massive and caked in dirt and rock that made him look like a golem, freshly hewn and shedding debris as he moved. He was probably a foot or two taller than Bane himself, which said a solid something considering his own prodigious size, and as wide as Bane was with half a Bane to spare. He lowered his hand as the figure stepped into the light, gazing up to the sky almost reverently, while a small Faunus emerged.
Carrying a still woman over a shoulder.
"Medic!" Banesaw called out, paying the titan a look before surging forward to take the body from the tired woman, kneeling with her to lay her on the dirt.
"The blessed sun…" The titan murmured, planting his sword in the dirt and laying his great shield against it. Then, slowly enough it was like molasses rolling down a rock, the man's arms rose into a 'V' as he stretched towards the sky.
"You helped them?" He asked as the titan recovered, turning to him and nodding slowly. "Why?"
"They needed it." The warrior answered simply, retrieving his weapon and turning to the broken wall as their lookout called out a warning. "As do you, it seems… You have a way out, yes?"
"I do."
"Good." He lumbered towards the wall, sword resting across a shoulder, "Take it, flee. I shall hold the line to buy you time."
"We can't return for you… We'd be leaving you behind." Banesaw warned, eyeing the man for a long moment and frowning. "Why would you die for us, Human?"
"H-Human?" The giant turned to him and then laughed, the action shaking his entire body. "Well. Yes, dying is such an inconvenience. But it's been so long since I have been called that… You asked me why?"
"I did."
"Anything for her..." He answered quietly, almost like they were automatic words. Then he sighed, shaking his great head and taking a breath, the warrior answered more earnestly and brightly, "And in the name of jolly cooperation, of course!"
"Jolly… Cooperation?" Banesaw murmured, confused for a moment.
"Of course." The giant laughed, a sound that rumbled through the air as he set his shield down, watching the woods. "Between warriors and protectors such as we, such a thing is most important indeed. Now go, 'fore the beasts arrive. I shall be well, fret not!"
"...Withdraw!" He ordered after a heartbeat, "Grimm coming! Take what you have and get out! To the Bullheads in the trees!"
As they rose into the air, minutes later, he watched from afar as one Beowolf clanged into the giant's shield and was hurled away so hard it exploded into dust on impact. Another two were bisected in a single mighty sweep he made as he stepped forward and opened his guard wide enough to bring a foot up and down on the skull of yet another.
"Best of luck, Human." He rumbled as the door slid shut and he turned away, "You deserve that much, at least."
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The Black Knight - now with a bit of extra spit and polish! This chapter will be virtually identical to the original, but as time goes on, I intend to better pace and set things in later chapters. So expect greater tweaks!
Anyways, as before, the language I used for the Mistrali Faunus was Korean.
Because logically, he wouldn't know their language.
I know a handful of languages at google translate level, by which I mean not really beyond basic words. But Korean isn't one. So if you see any errors, blame Google Translate for them.
Have a good one~!