Chapter 3 - Hard Truth
Ruby might have had her Aura to help heal most wounds she took, but that didn't mean she lacked the knowledge to treat injures in the "traditional" way.
Survival classes taken during her time at Beacon, as well as the months spent travelling across Mistral's wilderness, had taught her a thing or two.
After bringing the unconscious man to a more sheltered area of the canyon, not too far from the site of the battle, she found this task much easier to do thanks to a medi kit discovered amongst the soldier's belongings.
She undertook the basic actions needed to treat a wound like that, at least until he could get proper medical care: she applied direct pressure to stop the bleeding; she scrubbed the wound to remove any contaminants that could cause infection, using also the contra septics found in the kit; she then used clean bandages to cover the wound.
While doing that, she had a chance to look better at the man she saved up close: he must have been in his mid-twenties, though his rough and scarred face made him look far older. It reminded Ruby of some veteran Huntsmen, whose entire life spent fighting had taken a toll on their appearance. And it was clear that the man in front of him had lived that kind of life, as she confirmed when glancing at his well-built body during treatment.
He wore a dark olive uniform, along with a sleeveless wool gilet, coloured black and adorned with red velvet embroidery. On its upper right side, there was sewed a patch with a crest depicting a white ram with golden horns on a red and black background. Perhaps some sort of emblem denoting his squad, she thought. On his arm, there were two other icons, equally unfamiliar to the girl: a double-headed eagle, and a skull on two golden wings.
The lack of any insignia belonging to the four Kingdom, despite the man clearly being a professional soldier and not some village militia, was equally baffling.
An outlandish hypothesis began to form inside Ruby's head, but she quickly dismissed it: jumping to conclusions without further information was unwise.
After finishing nursing his wound, the man already looked better, his face slowly gaining colour again. Judging that he would soon wake on his own, Ruby preferred to let him rest for a little, if there was no danger in sight.
While waiting, she went back to the site of the battle, always keeping an eye on the man and her surroundings, in case more of the green monsters decided to show up.
She reached the corpses of the greenskinned beasts. Stinking blood trickled from their wounds like plant sap and already the first, minor signs that signalled the beginning of decomposition could be noticed on closer look. Real and natural decay, not the rapid and obviously supernatural "evaporation" that follows a Grimm's death.
"Professor Port would have surely loved hunting them, if only because he could have a corpse to show alongside his tales". Ruby said to herself, a nostalgic smile forming at the memory of a happier, simpler time.
The moment of quiet allowed the girl to pick up her thoughts from prior to the fight. What were these creatures?
Some previously unknown monsters? Impossible: something that peculiar, with such violent behaviour, would have already been known across all Remnant.
A new "creations" devised by Salem? Maybe, but something Ruby believed to be improbable: as she found out the hard way in the last days, Salem wasn't afraid to show the world her "abominations", and monsters like these would have been present during the invasion of Atlas.
The more she thought about it, the more she believed that these creatures were something that didn't belong to Remnant, to her world.
Something alien.
She walked around while thinking about all this, until her foot bumped on something. Looking to the ground, she saw the gun wielded by the soldier, forgotten by everyone in the heat of the action.
She picked it up and examined it up close. Just like before, she could not recognize its pattern. While unique costum-made weapons existed, the form and shape of it suggested a standardized manufacture.
For the most part, the elements composing it were the same common to the majority of rifles: barrel, body casing and stock, with an holding lug linking the latter two together.
The unusual part came when she inspected the "magazine": it didn't hold Dust ammunitions like all weapons on Remnant. Instead, it looked more like a battery of some kind: some sort of power unit, rechargeable from solar energy, judging from what looked like photovoltaic cells on its upper side.
Without needing to fire it, she quickly deduced what kind of weapon it was: an energy weapon, most likely anti-personnel, powered by light and heat as source of power.
While its workings were easy to deduce and pretty straightforward, what this actually meant was more overwhelming: a standardized energy weapon that didn't use Dust as a power source would be greatly widespread – especially on areas where Dust supplying is more difficult and expensive – and well-known, instead of being something never seen before, especially to a weapon "dork" like her...
The supposition she had ignored before came back, looking stronger and less improbable by the minute...
She slowly went back to the inert soldier, her face betraying the doubts and confusions inside her mind, and sat close to him.
She will wait until he woke up, ensuring that he was going to be fine.
Then she will find answers.
⁓
He was back on Arbanon.
Experiencing everything again, as if it were the first time...
"They are coming again, Emperor damn them!"
"Gaunts incoming!"
An endless dark tide of small hooved beasts coming on in a wave of chittering limbs...
"Warriors at sector three-beta!"
Bigger nightmares, firing blasts of caustic chemicals...
"Carnifex, sector one-alpha!"
A living battering ram, smashing barricades and shredding troopers as they weren't even there...
They'd been inexorably driven back. Every defence had crumbled. Every hope had been vanquished. All the guards regiments the planet had sired, alongside others from throughout the sector had faced the Devourer. A dam that had washed away all the same. What could they have done against an enemy that grew stronger with death?
By the end, there hadn't even been battle lines. Just pockets of resistance, swallowed one after the other by the tide, like drops of water in the dry desert.
A lone ship, avoiding destruction from the battle raging in the void, saved him and few others it could.
He watched then, sat against the window as he rose into orbit, one of the ship firing its payload not at the enemy's living spacecrafts, but at the world below, dissolving it into all-consuming flames. "Exterminatus", they called it. A last purification when there was nothing that could be saved.
That was the last day of Arbanon.
The last day of his home...
Ismail woke up with a jolt, an action quickly followed by an acute surge of pain from his belly. Ruby, who at the moment was sitting close to him, cleaning Crescent Rose, immediately turned her attention to the man and rushed to his side.
"It's okay. Don't move too suddenly, else you reopen your wound. Here, have some water."
Ismail, slowly calming himself, accepted gladly the canteen offered by the girl. His canteen, now that he looked at it.
"Yeah, sorry." said Ruby sheepishly "I took the liberty to search through your stuff, when looking for some way to treat your wound. I hope you don't mind..."
Ismail, following her words, looked at the bandages covering his wound, decent enough to stop the bleeding and saving his life. Again.
"It's...ugh...it's fine. Thanks." he said, those simple words prompting a relieved smile from the huntress.
After a moment, he added : "How... how long was I unconscious?"
The young lady hummed for a second. "I can't say for sure. My Scroll ran out of power. I'll say an hour, maybe two."
Any questions Ismail might have had regarding this so called "Scroll" didn't have time to form as he heard the last sentence.
He immediately stood up, despite the pain resurfacing and the girl's attempts to stop him, and started to grab his equipment.
"I've wasted too much time. The vox was destroyed, so I have to warn the regiment directly. They need to know..."
His sentence was cut short by the loss of strength coming from his wobbly legs, which made him lose balance. He never hit the ground however, thanks to his two-times saviour grabbing him before the fall.
"You are in no condition to go anywhere." she said, while she put his arm over her shoulder, in order for him to have a support.
"There is a Tauros hidden in a cave less than a mile from here. I was so close to it, before the Orks caught up with me." He spoke through gritted teeth, trying to suppress both his physical pain and his mental frustration at his state.
Ruby took note of the term that clearly identified the monsters she fought before, but didn't change the subject.
"That doesn't change the fact that you can't go far on your own. Let me help you."
The look she gave him told that the last part was not negotiable. And Ismail found that there was no way he could refuse her.
"...Alright". He uttered, and the two began walking towards the hidden vehicle.
"... Thank you. For saving my life. I'm Ismail. Ismail Demiraj. Sergeant, Second Company, last regiment of the Arbanian Janissaries."
Ismail missed the brief look of confusion in the young lady's face, and only saw the genuine smile she gave him alongside her answer.
"I'm Ruby. Ruby Rose. Huntress."
⁓
The "Tauros" was a 4x4 military vehicle, with a heavy flamer mounted on its top. Ruby tried to suppress the excitement at the sight of another novel weapon. She wasn't sure she succeeded to do that.
"Once out of this canyon and into the wastelands, it will take 5 hours at full speed to reach Epidamnus and the coast." Ismail said, as he entered the driver seat. Pointing at the flamer and the gunner seat, he added:
"We should be clear in the wastelands, but just in case, keep an eye for any greenskins heading our way. It will be a long trip, so if you get hungry, there are some supplies attached to the side of your seat. Arian won't be able to use them anyway..."
"Okay" Ruby simply responded, not needing further elaboration on the last part, as it was obvious enough.
Ismail started the car, and it began moving with a soft hum, which suggested to Ruby that it was powered by electricity instead of combustion.
After a couple of minutes, they were already outside the rocky area and into the barren land, and Ruby watched the solitary butte, near which she had awoken, slowly growing smaller as the distance widened, until it disappeared.
The sky tinged red and orange, and sunset followed the beginning of their journey.
They didn't speak much with each other, both because their positions made any small talk not practical, and more importantly because they were both lost in their own thoughts.
But as the first signs of nightfall begin to creep in the heavens, Ismail tried to start a conversation.
"So, what planet are you from?"
A simple question, that completely stunned Ruby.
Eyes widened and mouth agape, she could only manage a barely audible "...what?"
Ismail, his attention fixed on what was in front of him and oblivious of the dumbfounded face his new companion was having, continued from where he left.
"I mean, you said you were an huntress, but there isn't any beast worth hunting on this world, so you can't be a native. The only monsters are the Feral Orks, but you don't look like part of the Planetary Defence Force. I heard the Governor had hired some private mercenaries to contain the greenskins problems, before he was forced to call for help."
Ruby was only outwardly paying attention to his words, while her mind was in total disarray. She didn't even notice that she had murmured the name "...Remnant."
"Remnant, eh. That's a name I've never heard of. Then again, the Imperium has a million worlds, so that doesn't surprise me. I believe only the Emperor knows the name of every world belonging to mankind."
The young Huntress was completely flabbergasted.
A soldier with a name not based on colours, wearing unknown coats of arms...
Weapons and monsters never seen before...
Planets...
A million worlds...
That means...
Night finally came and reality itself, seemingly amused by the girl's certainties crumbling to dust, decided to put the final nail in the coffin.
Ruby looked up in the starry sky, and what she saw finally made her previous preposterous speculation into an absolute fact.
Two pristine moons.
Officially announcing to the huntress her arrival in a new world.
⁓
Urzog found Ungrudd and his wild Boyz.
Well, what was left of them.
It disembarked from its Warbike, soon followed by its two best boyz doing the same from theirs and three wild boyz from their Squighog rides.
Approaching the corpse of Ungrudd, it decided to have a closer look: the body of the large Nob was entirely cut in half. Whoever did it either was incredibly strong or had a great choppa, possibly both.
"'Oo do yer fink kilt im, boss? no 'umie 'n dis planet iz strong enough ta do someth'n like dis..."
"Perhaps da Beakies are 'er."
Urzog pondered about this possibility. Marine Boyz would certainly be strong enough to kill Ungrudd in such a manner...
Then it smacked the boy suggesting that in its head, hard enough to make its face hit the ground.
" Ya git. If 'da beakies were ere, dey would have already attacked 'da base an' give us a propa fight."
"Hey boss, I found someth'n."
Urzog turned and faced the Boy still standing, who had a bullet pellet in its hand.
"Ughh, it smelz like wun uv 'da weidboyz..." the boy continued, as it brought the pellet close to its face.
None of this made any sense to Urzog, which made the Nob crotchety. Giving a quick glance at the feral orks, who up until that moment had spent all the time laughing as they watched their Squighogs devouring the corpses of their fellow dead brethren, certainly didn't improve its foul mood.
Stupid feral gits, more useless than gretchins, Urzog thought. Hopefully they will fight well, when the real battle would start...
"It iz pointlez ta stay ere." he finally grumbled to its two subordinate. "Wun fing iz certain: 'da 'umiez know we are kom'n. We need ta inform 'da Warboss. Hopefully, dis means da propa attack will finally begin. I was gett'n tired uv wait'n..."
Urzog and its boyz began walking towards their bikes, shouting to the feral orks that they were going back to the mountains.
Two of them begrudgingly complied, beginning to get on their rides, while the third one didn't seem to have listened.
Urzog, its patience completely exausted, grabbed its skull in its massive hand and squeezed, crushing the disobedient ork's head to a pulp.
"I SAID MOVE, YOU GITS!"
No signs of misconducts was found, as its four boyz quickly jumped on their respective means of locomotion and began to ride towards the mountains.
Urzog gave one last look at the direction where the humans were stationed, grinning.
The attack will begin soon, and it seems there even was someone worth fighting in their midst...
⁓
Despite being the middle of the night, the two full moons gave enough light to make out most of the surroundings, after a bit of adjusting.
It was thanks to this that the still dismayed Ruby was able to discern the shapes and the lights of a big coastal city in the distance, slowly getting closer.
Thanks to Ismail's few words, during the trip, she had an idea of where they were headed to.
Epidamnus, capital city of Kanrilia.
A foreign city.
In an alien new world.