Music Choices: Angels Among Demons by Instrumental Core/Really Slow Motion, The End of the Beginning by Les Friction
Author's Notes: Are you tired of being nice? Don't you just want to go ape shitt?
Eclipse
Chapter 29
A Meeting
The Present….
Raven was dreaming again, and she knew it. She knew she was dreaming because she was in Patch in her human form and not her second skin. Sitting on the porch, a long leg dangling heedlessly into the tall grass by the steps. She wasn't even wearing shoes.
From the vivid colors of the sky, she could tell it was twilight. One of the magic hours.
She could smell Qrow cooking dinner inside, the girls chattering and laughing with one another; Taiyang butting in occasionally, to get a reaction out of them. In the bushes by the tree-line, cicadas screamed and an owl hooted.
For a few seconds, Raven let herself believe that this moment was completely real; it was completely real, and she had had dozens just like it before. That if she stood up, and walked inside the squeaky screen door behind her, her family would be happy to see her; would embrace her like nothing was wrong. Like she belonged right there with them, and had always been a part of their lives.
Fireflies started to blink, flitting across the blades of grass, dancing together as the sun set. Raven watched them passively at first, before she noticed that there were now dozens, hundreds, appearing from nowhere. The scenery was changing, growing confused; overlapping with a dozen different terrains, a multitude of different skies.
For a brief moment, it looked like the moon was whole, before being blown out of the sky. Raven stood up slowly, feeling aggrieved that even in her own fucking dreams she wasn't allowed to fantasize for a single moment that everything was as it was supposed to have been.
The dreamscape was bleeding into that liminal space that lived between slumber and spirit; the place where prophecy and omens dwelled, as well as other, far more ominous things that lurked just out of sight. Under the surface. Until they wanted you to see them.
Raven sensed she was wearing the helm in spirit, even here. She could feel it's multiple wards, the living essence of the magic and protective spirits that inhabited it, flare in sudden alarm.
Danger!
"Hello, Raven. It's been a while."
Raven didn't need to turn around to know who, or what, was behind her.
Her other protections, woven into her aura and spiritual body had already activated; symbols, rune-staves, anything and everything her mother and the Jiani could think of to keep the witch at bay, whorled over her dream body in colorful abundance. Her Semblance continued to slumber, and did not trigger.
Raven did not shake when she turned to face the thing in the dark. She was afraid, but when had she ever not been? She had reached a point in her life where fear had finally failed. She was tired of running.
Salem was standing on what looked to be a balcony, made of obsidian, stained glass and decorative bone; it looked out over a field of violet shards, crystal peaks and structures and the blackest pitch. The sun could not pierce the clouds here, but the alien mountains cast ethereal, crawling shadows that stretched for miles in every direction; she knew from personal experience that most of those crawling shadows were actually Grimm ink, and literal portals into the realms of death itself.
The witch had not aged since Raven had last laid eyes on her; or at least the form she was currently wearing had stayed the same. Black veins trailed delicately away from eyes the color of blood, a darker stain of red than even her own. She was dressed like a wraith, something that floated through the cobwebs of a mausoleum at night, waiting to snatch the life out of a trespasser's throat; but Salem could look like many things. Like Set, her shape-shifting abilities were diverse, nameless and typically horrifying.
Raven said nothing. She couldn't wake herself and knew she likely wouldn't be able to until Salem was finished saying her piece. If she fled into the spirit realms, there was a chance that one of Salem's minions would follow her, or perhaps attach itself in some manner. It was wisest to wait for now, and hear what she had to say.
Salem was smiling that smile; the one where she could see and hear the contents of your mind. Raven was entirely sure she could not, or at least not as well as she would like, and took some comfort in that.
The eldritch entity tilted her head calmly, before gesturing with languid grace towards the space besides her.
"Please. Join me," Salem's eyes watched her, like the snake watches the mouse before it strikes. "The view from here is spectacular."
"I've seen it already, thanks," Raven drawled. Her voice remained miraculously steady and unimpressed.
"Ah well. Perhaps next time, then."
Raven would fall on her own sword before she ever let there be a next time. Going off of Salem's expression, the witch knew it, too; and was highly amused by that.
"You look tired," Salem observed after a long moment. "I won't keep you from your sleep for too long, then. Since you've been so busy."
There's no way Raven was falling asleep for a long time after this, and she fucking knew it.
"I've heard about how you've been bullying poor Leo," Salem continued to smile.
Suddenly she was next to her, the movement inexplicable. Raven had scraps of rune scribbled paper and mugwort ash in her hand with a thought; she still had enough control here, then, to be able to fight back if she was attacked. She glared with as much fury as she could muster.
Salem tsked, not bothering to look down at the blatant threats bared in Raven's fingers.
"Which, to be fair: who can blame you?" Salem chuckled lightly. It was a frightening noise, simply because it sounded so human; and the being making that noise was anything but . "He is an easy target isn't he? The amount of yellow in that man's belly is embarrassing."
"If you can only get cowards to follow you, then that says more about you than him," Raven snapped back, her voice sharp, nearly a snarl. "Leo at least has an excuse for being so pathetic. What's yours?"
There was a moment of graveyard silence in the air. Raven didn't think she'd have made as much of an impact if she had actually reached out and slapped her. Not that her hand would have gotten that far.
Salem didn't grin, but her smile widened; like a snake about to unhinge its maw and clamp down. Raven prepared to throw the banishing items at her disposal and run for cover.
"Someone's feeling bolder."
Raven sneered behind the helm, mustering all the defiance she could.
"Or perhaps," Salem nearly purred. "You think you have nothing left to lose?"
A flash of gold and red in her mind's eye, which she immediately smuggled away and out of sight of the devil in front of her.
"Say what you were going to say, and then get the fuck out of my face," Raven droned contemptuously. "Because frankly? You're boring me with this whole arsenic and lace routine."
Salem drifted around her shoulder, circling lazily. A shark in the water. A vulture in the sky. A King Taijitsu wrapping itself around it's latest victim, ready to squeeze the lights out of their eyes.
"Does Ozpin know yet?"
An icy finger, stabbing through her heart and twisting.
"Know what?" she prompted flatly.
Salem gave her a look that was almost empathetic, but a million times more terrifying.
"That you're the Spring Maiden, Raven?"
Run. Run now. Run right now, run-
Despite her every impulse, every screaming instinct, Raven did not run. She was done with that. However, that didn't mean she was just going to give up that easily.
"Wow, I am? That's incredibly good news," she drawled, tilting her head. "I'll put that to good use right away. Quite a few people on my shit list that I'd love to vaporize from fucking orbit."
Salem let out a quiet, amused breath as she circled again, closer. Coiling. Constricting.
"Next you'll tell me I'm the lost queen of the moon men," Raven mocked sardonically, gesturing about the empty, macabre hall. "Whoever you've currently got gathering intel for you? I hope they're not your best, because if so, that's honestly embarrassing."
Salem actually chuckled again. She paused by Raven's other shoulder, looking down at her - she was always tall, in real life or elsewhere - or perhaps her victims saw her as such. Before she bit their faces clean off and ate their tongues for dessert.
"Ozma's been telling lies again, I see. I wonder if he will ever get tired of them?"
Raven's sarcastic barbs caught on the tip of her tongue, as she tensed up at the implication.
"Unlike sweet Ozma, I don't need whisperers and spies to tell me who the Maidens are," Salem said gently. Poison pooling over layers of velvet. "I always know who has my gifts. I just can't always find them."
Raven's fingers curled like claws across the papers and ashes in her hands, her knuckles white. She knew in her gut that Salem wasn't actually lying; because Salem didn't lie. She never told outright lies. That was Ozpin's, and to a much lesser extent Set's, whole bag.
Salem didn't need to lie to get what she wanted. That was the entire point.
All this time. All this time I spent being so, so careful. Entire years of my fucking life. All of it, a complete waste of effort. Utterly meaningless. Because he lied to our fucking faces !
"Oh, don't look so glum," Salem sighed leisurely, brushing an imaginary bit of lint from Raven's armored shoulder.
The ward-marks and bind-runes Ciara had spent ages lovingly weaving into her spiritual body and armaments flared up menacingly at the proximity. Salem's fingers pulled back, smoking like Grimm matter from the savage bite of wild magic. Salem didn't act like it hurt her, but Raven took some satisfaction in knowing it had to sting, and more than a little.
"Besides, it's not like I'd tell him your secret. I honestly thought it was priceless how you gored his little pet and stole power right out from under his nose. I know he was furious."
Salem looked like the cat that had eaten the canary, nearly oozing with satisfaction. For a brief moment, she almost reminded her of Set. Raven was, however, absolutely livid.
Wide, teary eyes staring at the crimson blade erupting from a thin, trembling chest-
"Frankly? He got exactly what he deserved. Don't you think?"
Raven had had enough. If she didn't leave, then she was going to attack her; and that was suicidal. At the intersections of dream and death, Salem was still much more powerful than Raven was alone. Maiden powers and other leverages aside, she couldn't win on this playing field.
So she turned to leave instead.
Raven swiped with her hand, visualizing her blade to slice through the fabric of the dream and exit into a corner of the spiritual realms where she had more allies. She never completed the motion.
Salem was now at her elbow, and had caught her hand out of the air, pressing it between two fingers. Even as the marble digits began to smoke from the furious wards and protections keeping Raven's soul ultimately unscathed, Salem did not react to the damage.
Raven glared back up at her, and in that moment, didn't feel like she was completely alone against an insurmountable foe. Every person who had ever worn the mantle of the Morrigan was there with her, and some others besides; and perhaps, they always had been.
For the first time that Raven could recall, Salem looked genuinely uncertain; the look faded quickly, as if it had never existed. But for a microsecond? That half stutter between heartbeats?
The witch had second guessed herself.
Raven would take that microsecond and hang on to it fiercely, forever, and never let it go.
I saw that flinch, you bitch.
"You really think your life is all you have left to lose, Raven?" Salem prompted again. Her voice had grown ominous, eyes had blown out to a full black, the veins of tar that ran under the alabaster popping lividly as the entity tried to intimidate her.
"I dare you to ever fucking try to take anything else from me again," Raven spat back viciously, flaring the wards instinctively.
Salem smiled back almost appreciatively, even as the skin around her hands cracked and ashed.
"Anything?" the witch prompted. "Don't you mean anyone ."
Raven snarled. Yet, before she could lash out, Salem had dropped her hand and slithered out of range once more. The scenery had changed in the blink of an eye, from that of the nightmare castle to a familiar looking forest.
"Relax, Morrigan," Salem intoned, her voice nearly indifferent. For the life of her, Raven couldn't see a mouth on that face. "I'm not planning on taking anything that belongs to you."
Her guise had changed again, from a marble caricature of a human being and into something darker than sin, more ominous than Grimm. When she really prettied herself up and put her face on? Salem was nightmare incarnate. She was everything hiding under a child's bed. She was the abyss that looked back with a smile. She could drive you mad with a glance, and you would thank her; because being mad was better than staying sane and aware and knowing that something like this could be allowed to exist in the world.
Raven had fought her own brain, body and soul long enough to know, though, how to occupy the space between such states and still keep a smirk on her face. She glared back, even though her heart wanted to crawl out of her throat and flee.
Her wrists itched, her mind ran through it's worst paces, its bloodiest, most horrible memories; but she kept breathing. Because she wasn't just Raven right now, after all. She had her real face on, too; and the Morrigan doesn't flinch away from nightmares.
Trees swayed ominously around them; and to their left was a familiar cliff looking out over an island forest. A single gravestone stood, like a sentinel keeping watch.
"I actually wanted to offer you something," Salem billowed, Grimm smoke and black ash.
She could hear music coming over the hills, faintly. A familiar tune. One of the chords that helped build the foundations of the universe.
Even in the realms of dream, Summer's protective spells carried powerfully. She'd woven them into the landscape in Patch, much like Ciara had woven her magic across the torn fabric of Raven's astral body. Summer had spent literal months singing them into the ground and spiritual planes after Ruby had been born, and after Raven had left.
It was her love letter. It was her promise.
It's why there were fewer Grimm manifestations there with every passing year, because the song grew stronger as the land and people flourished. Summer had turned Patch into sacred ground; and most of the world would never even know.
Summer, I wish you were here .
Perhaps, in a way, she was.
"Pass," Raven drawled. The feathers at her hip swayed in the nonexistent breeze, along with the other trinkets and beads woven into her clothes and hair.
"Are you certain?" Salem twisted, a movement that could have been a head tilt. Or a hand gesture. "You don't even know what it is."
"Call me cynical, but I bet it's nothing I can't live without," Raven said drolly. "I'd probably live better without it."
Salem laughed. Or at least, Raven thought it was a laugh. When she was channeling the universe's own nightmare fuel, it was rather difficult to interpret her in a human context.
"Perhaps. But I thought you people prized knowledge above all else?" Salem hummed.
She's got me there, I suppose.
"Then stop wasting my time," Raven demanded coldly, tilting her head mockingly. "And spit it out."
An annoyed flicker, before Salem took on a more concrete shape. She looked almost like Grimm ink and tree roots, slithering with too many scales, chitin and eyes. She seemed to almost be having fun, changing shapes like this and creating new, horrifying amalgamations to haunt Raven's forever sleepless nights.
"Do you want to know who killed your wife?"
An electric brush down her spine. Rage sparking to her finger tips; the wind picked up, and the song of thunder joined the ethereal song of Hecate, creating a tension that could break the world or make it.
"That is why you were interrogating poor Leo, correct? And running frantically about Vale?"
Raven wished she could draw a sword, or anything really, and chuck it at the twisting entity that had made her existence a living hell for nearly twenty years.
"According to Leonardo, they were one of yours," Raven hissed viciously. For a moment, she barely sounded human herself. "He gave me plenty of names. And when I get to them all? I'll skin them and wear their yellow hides like fucking party hats!"
Salem smiled with too many mouths and too many teeth, none of which were actually on the flat, pale oval that was her 'face' in this form; like a blank masquerade mask strapped to a scaly, black monstrosity that was both endless and unquantifiable.
The pale not-face suddenly swarmed closer, trailing black smoke, chitinous limbs and insect wings as she loomed menacingly over Raven's personal space. Raven considered the merits of spitting at her.
"Leo would sell me his firstborn to save himself a thousand times over. What makes you think I'd ever tell him anything actually useful?" Salem growled right back at her, her voice all grave dirt and bloody tendons.
In the distance, lighting streaked and danced in the air; electricity danced in her blood, and the air in her lungs.
"Ask yourself. Be honest," Salem coiled. "Why would I waste such effort on Summer Rose? The amount of strings I'd need to pluck to not only remove her, but to cover up her death and obscure her investigation are not insignificant. Why would I waste precious resources on something that doesn't impact me in the slightest?"
"Bullshit," Raven snorted in dismissal, sounding utterly unimpressed. "Whatever you're trying to sell? It's bullshit. You're just scared I'm going to break your toys."
Raven had her list of names. She had Summer's book, and she would have Summer's other notes hopefully by tomorrow evening. If Salem was concerned that Raven, Qrow and Forzani were about to clear out her goons from Vale, then it would make sense for her to try to sow seeds of doubt.
"Aetheri are annoying, yes," Salem conceded, bobbing her mouthless face. Her body slithered and floated unnaturally in the space between them. "Sometimes they break my valuables and run amok in my garden. And when they wander too far into my path, I swat them down like one would a gnat."
A tree was struck in the distance, and Raven could smell the ozone and flame; she knew her eyes were alight right then. Salem paid the destruction no heed.
"But I don't despise the Aetheri. On the contrary, I respect their tenacity. Their existence is not an insult to my sovereignty. Not like it is to some people."
More thunder, slow and rolling overhead thoughtfully.
"I don't need to hunt them down for releasing Grimm or causing mischief- I will always have more than enough Grimm. I have more Grimm than I know what to do with."
In her youth, hearing such news would have left her existentially depressed; now, it was hardly a surprise. There were an endless supply of unclaimed, angry dead people for Salem to pull from. It would take a legion of Aetheri centuries to make even a dent in the amount of souls she could conscript; because without the guiding light of Hecate, or major religious rites for the masses? Most unclaimed spirits converted to Grimm nearly by default.
"So no. I don't need to have Aetheri assassinated in the wilderness. Where no one is supposed to be looking."
Just because Salem always technically told the truth, didn't mean she couldn't twist it to her own ends. Raven glared skeptically, refusing to glance towards the headstone. She was clearly trying to manipulate Raven with the topic and scenery; it was almost desperate, really, how heavy-handed she was being.
Unless...
"Or have them stabbed to death in their beds, while they sleep."
She isn't...
"Or spirit their children away. Or lock them up in cages. These are not my methods. They never have been."
Raven glanced up, staring at the being that showed people the absolute worst things that they expected to see; the self projections of their own, damaged grey matter. For a second, she saw something that looked like the dead faces of everyone she'd ever loved; and winced. The imagery passed.
"My methods are more direct. For example, I take that which is offered unto me," Salem declared slowly. "I can only take that which is offered."
Raven's lip pulled at that, the hairs on the back of her neck rising.
"Do you understand what I am saying?"
The memory of Salem standing in their home that fateful day all those years ago, cradling Yang, almost tenderly; how Raven had immediately, thoughtlessly, launched herself at her like a wild animal.
If Salem had really wanted to, she could have walked out of that house with her baby that day. No feral thing Raven could have done in that moment would have mattered or made a single lick of difference, but she hadn't cared.
Raven didn't remember much of what happened after. But she did remember how Salem had looked at her that day, and seemed satisfied with something. Now that she had the context, it made far more sense, but she still, as always, had questions.
The truth was that Salem apparently had arcane laws she had to follow - magic, ancient laws written before the second coming of humanity and maybe even before the first. Raven had bumped into such things a few times during her duties as the Morrigan.
In a way, she was beholden to a few of them herself; though not nearly as much as the Jiani. These bizarre, almost nonsense rules that spirits loved to play by, whose context had to be sifted out of the obfuscating horse-manure they hid behind; and which had serious, fate-woven repercussions if a person beholden to them broke them.
There had been no way for her to know that Salem couldn't have taken Yang that day. Salem couldn't have, unless Raven had offered Yang up to save herself. Which, she hadn't.
By attacking, she'd incidentally offered her own life instead; and for whatever reason, Salem hadn't killed her. Nor had she hunted Raven down after she became the Spring Maiden. Meaning, she'd wanted her around for something else.
A lull, as the chords of Summer's song wove over the treetops, and through the blood in her veins and tresses of her hair.
"What exactly do you want in exchange for this information?" Raven asked, keeping her voice tempered. "No riddles. No bullshit. Tell me in no uncertain terms the nature of your offer, and its consequences. Or I will walk away."
Salem paused, before coalescing into another form; one nearly human in appearance, more so than any other guise Raven had seen her wear before.
It was almost more unsettling than the other forms she'd worn previously; because this wasn't a mockery of humanity, it was an expression of it. The nearly human Salem stared at Raven in her helm, before saying something Raven couldn't have predicted if she tried.
"...I want to be free."
Crimson eyes widened behind the slots of the helm.
"And in exchange for your help? I will tell you everything you could ever want to know. Including who sacrificed your wife. And I will supply you with the means and knowledge to ultimately win."
Raven inhaled slowly.
"Win against?" she whispered, her entire frame tense.
Salem smiled. Genuinely, this time.
"Ozma."