Oliver watched Aspen from a distance, keeping an eye on her as she stood at the edge of the cliff overlooking the forest. He'd deliberately avoided thinking about it, but the simple fact that she was standing there was, frankly, incredible. By all rights, the girl should have been dead three-times over in just the last week, and yet she was about to begin her initiation with only a pair of faint black lines down her abdomen and back to show for it. Even her clothes reflected her unnatural constitution, cleaned and mended—presumably by the Beacon staff—to the point where the only evidence she'd been wearing them when she'd been stabbed was the line sewn up the middle of her shirt. There wasn't even any blood left on it.

Behind him, the Huntsman heard a familiar gait passing through the tall grass. Laurel walked up on his right, handing him a pair of scrolls as she stopped at his side. "How's she doing?" she asked quietly as he took the devices.

Slipping the smaller scroll into the pocket of his duster, Oliver shrugged as he opened up the larger, black device. "Alright, I guess. I mean, she's just been standing looking out at the forest, which is pretty normal for her." The man began cycling through some of the scroll's various functions, chief of which being camera control. There were numerous cameras placed intermittently around the forest, but chances were he wouldn't need most of them. "Have you seen what she has to do for this?"

Laurel nodded. "Makes me wonder if I prefer our initiation or not."

"What? Getting dropped in the middle of the desert without supplies and told to 'make it back' didn't do it for you?" Oliver asked with a low chuckle.

"At least we knew where we were going. The only thing we're supposed to tell her is 'find the thing on the other side of the forest and come back?' " Laurel said, crossing her arms. "You can't tell me that seems fair to you, Oliver."

"Hey, it's not up to us to tell them how to do things here," the man pointed out, closing the scroll before almost sheepishly adding, "and come on, call me 'Mantis.' "

The woman looked at her partner in disbelief. "Seriously? You actually want to do the whole codename thing?"

Oliver shrugged. "Isn't that what we normally do when we're on the job?"

"Yeah, but this isn't really 'the job' anymore; it's the job, as in the one we are now being paid to do on a regular basis."

"A contract's a contract."

Tawny shook her head. "Fine, whatever. Let's just launch the girl and get this over with."

Aspen didn't seem to pay either of the two Hunters any mind as they approached, continuing to stare out into the forest. Realizing he hadn't prepared any type of formal speech—which was especially awkward now that he'd insisted on treating this like a typical job—Oliver stood next to the girl and looked out off the cliff. "See anything interesting?" he asked, earning a sigh from his partner.

"I wasn't looking."

Okay, then. Not expecting the answer, the Huntsman decided the best course of action was to accept it and move on. He pulled the smaller scroll out of his pocket and handed it to the girl. "This is your scroll, now." Aspen gingerly took the device, carefully turning it over in her hands to inspect it as if she might break it. "Once you go into that forest, it'll be the only way you'll be able to get in contact with Tawny and I."

"Because you have no experience with the Grimm, you can use it to ask Mantis and I any questions you have about them, but that's it," Tawny explained as Aspen slowly opened her scroll. "You're on your own for this, so if you bite off more than you can chew, you have to deal with it."

Oliver winced internally at his partner's harsh tone, but Aspen just looked up at her curiously. For whatever reason, she seemed to struggle with idioms, so it was probably Tawny's choice of words that had confused her. "Look, Aspen," he said, drawing her attention to him. "Somewhere on the other side of the forest is an artifact. All you have to do is get over there, find it, and bring it back." It really didn't seem fair, even when he put it like that. "You don't have to fight anything if you don't need to, understand?" The girl nodded, though Oliver doubted she would take his advice. As Aspen closed her scroll and put it into her pocket, he opened his own back up and looked down at it. "Now, I just need to figure out how to use the launching pad…"

"Don't bother," Tawny said flatly.

"Why?"

"She's already gone."

Oliver looked up. Sure enough, Aspen was nowhere to be seen. "Did she…?"

Tawny nodded as she walked past him to reposition herself. "Yep," she confirmed, looking over the edge. "You know, I think this is fifteen times I've said it now. I'm willing to call it there."

Oliver frowned deeply as he looked at his scroll. "Not yet. I still think she'll prove you wrong."

(-)

Aspen found she didn't enjoy the sensation of falling as much as she thought she might have. It had less to do with the actual falling than with having to figure out how to stop. Oliver—or rather "Mantis," as he'd wanted to be called—had said she needed to go to the other side of the forest and, as far as she could tell, the easiest way was to go straight off the cliff, so she'd jumped. Now, she was beginning to wonder if there had been a different route she was supposed to have taken.

The cliff began to slope outward beneath the falling girl, giving her at least some form of purchase to work with. A - - - smell began filling her nose as her shoes began sliding against the stone. Her feet threatened to rip themselves out from underneath her, but Aspen forced herself to stay vertical as she dug into the cliff face with her left hand. The action allowed her to control her descent, but was brutally painful as her fingers were torn to shreds by the stone. She ignored it and continued to plan out her landing.

Once she determined she was close enough to the ground, the girl bent her legs and leapt out from the cliff with as much force as she could. As she'd—somehow—expected, she cancelled out some of her downward motion, though she was still moving fast. Twisting herself in midair, she ultimately landed in a roll. Something cracked somewhere behind her left shoulder, but she ignored it until she finally came to a stop.

Aspen rose to her feet and looked at her left arm, hanging limply at her side with blood dripping from her fingers. Reaching up with her right hand, she grabbed a hold of her upper arm and forced it upward and back. She growled against the pain until the bones finally snapped back into place. With feeling returning to her arm, she looked down at her fingers, being individually wrapped in black threads that wormed over her flesh. That's what that looks like. Curling the hand into a fist, she couldn't help but feel like she'd forgotten something, so she turned and looked back at the cliff.

Acrid. That was the word she'd been looking for.

(-)

Laurel looked over Mantis's shoulder, watching as Aspen made her landing. Even after seeing how the girl had survived after being impaled, it still made the Huntress feel uneasy watching her set… whatever it was that had broken while her fingers covered themselves with a black fiber, presumably to heal.

"You s—" Mantis started, jumping back at the unexpected closeness of his partner. Recovering, he pointed at the scroll. "See? She had a landing strategy."

"Yeah, that almost killed her. That should have killed her." Laurel seriously doubted Aspen knew what a landing strategy was, much less had one planned out in advance. "Sixteen."

(-)

Running through the forest, Aspen couldn't help but feel confused by how empty it felt. She had noticed it up on the cliff, when Oli—Mantis had thought she was looking for something. There had been the press at her back from the city and the colosseum, but in front of her there had been nothing, not a single aura pushing back at her. She hadn't even felt any animals; the way she'd felt Ruby's dog. That's what she'd found herself expecting, at least, when she'd tried to find them.

Leaping over a particularly large bush in her path, Aspen came to a halt as she found herself in a small gap between the trees. On the opposite side, just a few feet away, were two black creatures staring at her. They looked nearly identical, with hunched bodies and long limbs. White, bony spikes jutted out from various parts of their bodies and covering their faces were familiar white and red masks. The girl looked down from the creatures to check the shirt under her hoodie, then she looked back up at the pair, still staring at her. "Beowolf." Much like "coffee" and "human," the word seemed to stick to the creatures, though it didn't necessarily feel right on her tongue.

On being identified, the two Beowolves looked at each other with what Aspen interpreted as confusion. Do animals get confused? Turning back to her, the closest of the pair hunched forward and let out a tooth-baring snarl. Aspen cocked her head in confusion. Why was this creature she couldn't feel snarling at her, and why couldn't she feel them? Were they Grim? No, they're Beowolves. The label on my shirt said so. Unless Beowolves are just the—

Aspen wasn't given a chance to further question the name of the creatures as the snarling one suddenly stood up and howled. The girl flinched at the sound, but when the second Beowolf leapt at her, she acted on instinct. Side-stepping out of the way, she swung a fist in a wide arc, striking the side of the creature's head as it passed her, sending it crashing into the bushes. She barely had time to unzip her hoodie before the other Beowolf pounced as well. Aspen crouched down, coiling herself before shooting up and catching the creature under the jaw with her fist. Bones cracked under the force of the punch, and it wasn't until the creature fell down with its head at an odd angle that the girl realized they hadn't been hers.

Aspen stared at the dead Beowolf in shock. It hadn't been a hallucination. She'd actually killed something, and it felt good. It was like nothing she'd ever experienced before, and she didn't even have a word for what it was she was feeling. It simply felt… euphoric. A smile spread across her face. She wanted more of it. As had happened in the arena, her senses began to sharpen, and she could hear multiple creatures coming toward her from every direction. Judging by their lack of aura, they had to be Beowolves. Good.

Soon enough, a pair of the black-furred beasts leapt out from opposite sides of the gap. Dashing toward the closet one, Aspen caught it mid-air by the "shoulders" and slammed it into the ground. Twisting around, she threw the Beowulf into the other one back-first. The two fell to the ground, the spikes along their spines pinning them together. Another of the creatures ran toward the girl, jumping to swipe at her. Aspen moved to get within its reach, using her elbow to stop its arm from hitting her before thrusting her arm forward to catch it in the face and stop its momentum. Grabbing onto both of the Beowolf's front limbs, she twisted them outward with a loud snapping of bones. The creature fell onto its knees with a howl of pain before the girl jerked its arms forward, impaling it with the spikes on its own elbows.

Aspen snarled at the beast as it fell forward with a whimper. Hearing something behind her, though, she released the Beowolf's arms and grabbed onto the spikes near its shoulders and snapped the bony protrusions off. She spun around just in time to bury them into the chest of another Beowolf. The creature stumbled backward from the unexpected attack before falling to the ground. Turning toward the two thrashing beasts still caught up in each other's spikes, Aspen walked over and placed one foot on the chest of the top Beowolf. The creature tried to swipe up at her but, as she pushed down, it began howling in pain, as did the one beneath it. With one final push, the girl shoved the Beowolves' spines into each other, killing them both.

With nothing else to kill, Aspen's breathing began to return to normal. She hadn't gotten quite the same rush from killing these last two Beowolves as she had from the first one—which was a little disappointing—but it still gave her a good feeling. As silence returned to the forest, Aspen looked around at the corpses littering the ground. There was a sort of black smoke coming from the bodies, and it took her a few seconds to realize that it was the bodies themselves evaporating. As she watched them disappear, it occurred to her that she wasn't sure if this was normal or not. It certainly felt strange, but it wasn't off-putting. Was she… was she supposed to have killed these creatures?

Reaching into her pocket, Aspen pulled out the "scroll" that Mantis had given her. It didn't look like a scroll to her—weren't they supposed to be made of rolled... paper?—and it had seemed so delicate that she was afraid to break it. Carefully reopening the device, she hesitantly tapped the picture of Mantis's face. She sucked in a sharp breath as the man's voice suddenly came out of the little piece of metal. -/Nice work, Aspen. That was a bit… overkill, but it got the job done./-

Aspen hesitated, not sure how she was supposed to proceed. Do I just… talk to it? "Was I… supposed to kill those?" she asked, feeling strangely nervous.

-/Yes,/- Laur—Tawny answered. Why did they have to use different names? It made no sense. -/Those were Grim. Rule of thumb: Anything that's black with a white mask is safe to kill./-

While Aspen wasn't sure what thumbs had to do with killing Grim, it seemed simple enough. She did have another question, though. "If those were Grim, what are Beowolves?"

-/Those are Beowolves./-

What?

-/What she means,/- Mantis interjected, -/is that those things you just killed were Beowolves. They're one of many types of Grim. You find them a lot in Vale and Atlas./-

Aspen nodded. She didn't know—or care—where Atlas was, but now she had an idea of what Grim were. Closing her scroll, she slipped it back into her pocket and began heading back into the forest. A snarl behind her caused her to stop and turn back around. The first Beowolf to attack her apparently hadn't been killed when she struck it and was now almost on top of her.

Arms outstretched, Aspen caught the beast on either side of its neck, keeping its fangs just inches from her face. With a growl, she shifted her hands and grabbed onto the back of the Beowolf's mask. Digging her fingers into the beast's fur, she began pulling back. The Grim began thrashing at her, landing a few blows on her back and legs as it tried to stop the pain in its head, but Aspen ignored her wounds as she continued to pull, bracing herself with a foot against the beast's chest. Eventually, the mask came off with a tearing sound, strands of flesh coming with it. The Beowolf howled in agony as the bony plate was literally ripped off. Lifting the mask above her head, Aspen brought it down through what was left of the Grim's skull to pin it to the ground. Standing back up, she waited until the beast began dissolving before walking away.

(-)

"Eighteen."

Oliver snapped his mouth shut and looked at his partner. "What happened to seventeen?"

Tawny crossed her arms. "That was somewhere during the rest of the fight. I just didn't say it."

"Doesn't count then," Oliver said, trying to hide his lack of confidence. He wasn't going to admit defeat yet. "Seventeen."

"Still not giving it up?" the woman asked. He didn't answer, opting to track Aspen on his scroll instead. "Whatever. It's your money."

(-)

Aspen continued her sprint through the forest, taking out any Grim that got in her way. Despite what Mantis had said, there was a larger variety of the creatures than she had been expecting. Every time she came across a new one, she'd ask the two Hunters what they were called. Packs of Beowolves, a pair of hog-like Boarbatusks, a den of two-headed Taijitu snakes, and a few bears called Ursas... Ursases? Ursae? Ursai? Ursai. She hadn't made it through the skirmishes completely unscathed—she found herself having trouble facing groups of Grim attacking all at once—but any wounds she had sustained had sealed up with the black fibers and weren't giving her much trouble.

Seeing an Ursa ahead of her, Aspen adjusted her path toward a nearby tree. The beast turned and looked at her in confusion—all the Grim seemed to do that—before roaring at her—they all did that too. Ignoring it, Aspen hit the tree at an angle and took two steps up it before leaping out toward the Ursa. She flipped herself over and grabbed either side of the bear's head. With a crack, she snapped the beast's neck, simultaneously turning herself around to hit the ground running. She barely heard the sound of the body hitting the ground.

(-)

"Eighteen."

"You're just jealous you can't snap an Ursa's neck."

"You can't either."

"…I could try…"

(-)

Not long after killing the lone Ursa, Aspen skidded to a stop. Something felt… off. Of course, the complete lack of any auras in the forest didn't help, but it was more than that. Something in the way the ground seemed to be constantly shaking. No, that is what's off. Closing her eyes, she focused on the tremors, trying to find where they were coming from. They were ahead of her and… to her left. She'd been heading in a straight line the entire time she'd been in the forest, so investigating the source of the shaking would take her out of her way… but she really wanted to know what it was. Turning slightly, she took off through the trees.

The further the girl ran, the stronger the tremors got, but they seemed to move, pulling her further and further to her left. Eventually, she got close enough to hear whatever was making them and, after a few more minutes, saw them. Stopping at the edge of the tree line, she looked up in fascination at the massive beasts plodding through the forest. They resembled - - -, about three times taller than her with black leathery skin. They had large triangular ears—ah, mammoths was the word she'd wanted—long snouts and white tusks that were even bigger than those on the Boarbatusks she'd killed, though not quite as curvy. There were six of them, travelling in a single line, though none of them seemed to notice the girl.

A buzzing in her thigh caught Aspen's attention and she looked down before remembering her scroll. How long had that been vibrating? Reaching into her pocket, she opened it up quickly now that she knew it wasn't going to break.

-/Aspen, whatever you do, do not engage those Grim,/-Mantis's voice buzzed urgently through the device as she stared up at the mammoths. -/Those Goliaths may be young, but not even Laurel and I could take them on./- Aspen furrowed her brow. Hadn't he been calling her "Tawny?"

The woman in question spoke up as well. -/If you try to fight them, you will die, and you will not be able to heal yourself./- Aspen couldn't feel Tawny's aura from so far away, but she sounded… worried. Typically, she only felt the orange-haired Huntress direct frustration and distrust towards her, so this was something new.

It sounded like a challenge to her. In fact, it sounded exactly like the one she'd received from the chalky man: Win, or die. Aspen smirked. She would win.

-/I can see you smiling, Aspen,/- Mantis said, his voice harsh but carrying a hint of fear. -/Don't—/- Closing the scroll on him, the girl slipped it into her pocket. She was going to kill these Goliaths, just to prove she could.

(-)

Oliver stared down at his scroll, jaw clenched as he watched Aspen begin climbing a tree. This girl… Maybe he just didn't want to be wrong or maybe he wanted something to go right for a change, but in spite of everything, he'd defended her, justified her actions, and even went so far as to put his neck on the line for her, and now she was just… It almost seemed like she had a death-wish.

Sighing, the man closed his eyes in defeat. "Eighteen, you said?"

"Nineteen."

Fair enough. Reaching into his back pocket he took out his wallet and began looking through it. It hardly seemed worth the effort, though, so he just threw it at his partner. "Just… take the money, alright?"

Tawny caught the worn leather case, but didn't open it just yet. "I need to hear you say it," she said without a hint of levity.

Oliver sighed again, unable to bring himself to look at the shorter woman. "You were right," he finally admitted. "You were right: There is something wrong with Aspen."

Nodding, Tawny opened the wallet and pulled out nineteen lien. As she handed it back, she quietly said, "If it makes you feel better, I didn't want to be."

(-)

Aspen carefully crept through the tree branches, analyzing the Goliaths in the shadows. Their size would make it impossible to break their necks and difficult to reach any vital organs, but that didn't mean she couldn't kill them. In fact, they likely had the same weaknesses the other Grim she'd faced had—slow like Ursa and unarmored undersides like Boarbatusk—and like the others, they had spikes on their backs that she could use.

Waiting for the Goliath in the rear of the line to pass in front of her, Aspen leapt out from her perch onto its back. The instant she touched it, the mammoth reared back and made a trumpeting noise: The surprise. Aspen barely had a chance to grab onto the front-most spike running down the creature's spine to stop herself from falling before it dropped to the ground with a crash. Disoriented, the girl hit the hard leathery skin on the Goliath's back, narrowly avoiding being impaled by the smaller spikes next to the large one she was holding. Not happening again.

Righting herself, Aspen kept herself steady as the mammoth tried to shake her off. The creature's struggling had attracted the attention of the rest of the herd, and the Grim directly in front of the one she was atop of turned to look at her. The beast looked at her with its bright red eyes and let out a low rumbling sound: The snarl. Baring her teeth in return, Aspen reached down and snapped one of the spikes off, which caused the mammoth to trumpet in pain.

Aspen swung around to the other side of the spike and placed one foot against it while pushing forward on the Goliath's head with the other. Once she found an opening, she raised up the spike she'd broken off and jammed it into the leathery skin at the base of its skull. The Grim that had rumbled at the girl turned its head to the side before tilting back and whipping it back around. Aspen ducked as the creature's snout—trunk—flew over her. Standing back up, she removed her foot from the Goliath's head and stomped down on the spike.

The Grim made no noise as the bony protrusion was buried into its spine and it crumpled forward, its large tusks digging deep furrows into the ground. Aspen leapt off the dying Goliath to scramble up the face of the one in front of it. As she got to the top, the mammoth struck her in the back with its trunk, knocking her forward onto its spikes. A cry of pain escaped Aspen's throat as two of the sharp points pierced her left side, with another going through her leg. She struggled to lift herself up, grabbing hold two more spikes as she rolled off.

Dangling on the Grim's side, Aspen focused her mind on her wounds. They were already beginning to bind themselves back together, and though they would be stiff until the black fibers went away, she could still fight. Tearing off one of the spikes, she dropped to the ground and rolled beneath the Goliath. The creature immediately began stomping the ground, trying to crush Aspen beneath its massive feet, but the girl had found a relatively safe distance from each of the legs.

Gripping her improvised weapon, she looked up at the Grim's underside. It was too far up for her to reach, but if she could bring it down to her… She looked for a pattern in the Goliath's stomping. Back left, front left, back right, front right, back left… Reversing her grip on the spike, Aspen waited for the back left leg to come down again. As soon as it did, she darted forward and put as much force into a punch as she could. It felt like punching a tree, but it had the desired effect. The Grim ceased its frenzied actions and began to slump down, giving Aspen the opportunity to run to the other side and repeat her attack.

It took several more punches, but the Goliath's back legs eventually began to shake and gave out. The creature collapsed onto its haunches before slipping and falling onto its side, giving Aspen the opening she'd wanted. Before she could finish it off, though, a sharp trumpeting noise tore through the air. She flinched away from the sound, only to be struck from her blind side and sent flying.

Rolling to a stop, Aspen quickly righted herself and appraised the new threat. The next Goliath in the line was coming toward her—no, it was moving between her and the one she'd downed. She snarled. She wasn't going to let it get back up. To her left, the spike she'd used to kill the first Grim was laying in the grass, the corpse having dissolved since. Snatching it up, Aspen sprinted back toward the Goliaths.

The creature that had hit her charged, tusks down. The girl didn't bother changing her course, keeping her eyes on the Grim. As they approached each other, the Goliath turned its head to the side. Aspen reacted by dropping into a slide, and as the mammoth's head swept over her, she took one of the spikes and stabbed it into the beast's trunk. An irritated rumble shook her from above, but the girl rose back to her feet and kept running.

Crossing the distance toward the downed Goliath still struggling to stand again, Aspen threw her second spike. It bounced off the leathery skin without causing so much as a scratch, but she was moving fast enough to meet it in mid-air with a powerful punch that sent it deep into the creature's body with a satisfying shluckt.

A rumble behind her caught Aspen's attention, and she had heard it enough in the last few minutes to know what it was. Jumping up onto the downed Grim, she spun around and leapt back out, landing on the face of a fourth Goliath as it crashed tusk-first into its now dying herd mate. Ripping itself free from the corpse, the mammoth began shaking its head violently in an attempt to loose the girl.

As she struggled to find and keep her grip, Aspen felt a familiar feeling pierce through her chest. It was… fear. This time, though, it wasn't coming from the Grim or some other person she couldn't see, but from herself. She didn't know why it was coming from her, but she didn't like it.

The Goliath continued to flail about, crashing through entire trees as it tried to remove her. Aspen's face tightened up in pain as her foot slipped out and struck a thick branch, but she just tightened her grip on the Grim and bore it. Once the Goliath slowed its thrashing, Aspen began crawling back up its face. Ignoring the pain shooting up her leg, she climbed until she was looking the Grim in the eye. With a snarl, she reached one arm back and plunged it deep into the soft tissue. The creature reared up on two legs as it was blinded, and Aspen, unable to remove her arm from its socket, felt the bone snap as she finally lost her grip.

Flung into space, the girl briefly heard a cracking sound from the Goliath before hitting the ground hard. She cried out in pain as she bounced and rolled, finally coming to a stop several yards from the damaged tree line. Oliver and Laurel had been right; she couldn't… she couldn't do this. She needed to run.

Quickly setting her broken arm, Aspen scrambled to her feet and stumbled toward the forest. Behind her, she could hear the Goliaths chasing after her. They may have been slow for their size, but they were much larger than her and her injured legs were slowing her down. She got into the woods and, with her arm now healed, she was able to use the trees to keep herself steady. Wood shattered and splintered as the Grim continued their chase, but the further Aspen got, the harder it was for the mammoths to follow.

After a minute of pained running, Aspen could no longer hear the sounds of the Goliaths. Slowing her pace, she came to a stop against a tree and slumped down to examine her foot. It was cocked at an angle that didn't seem quite right, so she gripped both sides and twisted it to what felt natural. Back in place, the bones and tissue began to seal and repair themselves. The girl sat silently against the tree, finally out of danger and healing. She'd… lost. She hadn't been strong enough to kill them. She hadn't even killed the second one on her own. How was she supposed to have killed six?

A buzzing in her pocket drew Aspen's attention down to her leg. Pulling her scroll out, she stared at it as it continued to vibrate. For some reason, she didn't want to open it because that would mean talking to Oliver and Laurel. Mantis and Tawny. Whichever. She opened the scroll anyway.

-/Are you alright?/- Oliver immediately asked.

Aspen looked away, fixating on a nearby bush. There were dozens of small red berries on it, and the leaves had a jagged edge. "I lost," she said quietly.

The scroll was silent for several seconds before Laurel's voice buzzed out. -/Aspen, what you did? What you just went through? No one else could have even survived that. You did a good job./- The Huntress's voice was uncharacteristically warm, and Aspen found it… comforting, like a blanket wrapped—no, wait, she'd used that analogy before. Still, it was true. She looked at the scroll instinctively, though there was no real reason to.

-/Now, can you walk?/- Laurel's voice was back to its usual, cool tone.

Aspen looked down at her ankle and rolled it around. It was stiff, but it didn't hurt. "Yes."

-/Good, because you need to finish your initiation./- The girl closed the scroll and stood back up. She was still on the same side of the Goliaths that she had approached from, so—

The scroll buzzed again, though this time it was only a single, short vibration instead of a recurring pulse. Curious, she opened the device back up to see a block of text. }That was an impressive performance. Meet me in front of Beacon's statue once you've settled in; I have a proposition that you may find interesting.{

Aspen barely had time to read the message and figure out what all of the words meant before it winked away. Strange. Reclosing the scroll, she slipped it into her pocket, finished orienting herself, and jogged awkwardly into the forest.

(-)

"Good, because you need to finish your initiation." Laurel watched as Aspen cut the connection and stood before passing the scroll back to Mantis. The man looked at her with a raised eyebrow, telling her exactly what he was thinking. "She was moping and needed a kick to get her going again," she explained, gesturing limply with her arms. "Girl takes surviving a herd of Goliaths like she just blew the Vytal Tournament." She looked up at her partner quickly, stumbling over herself to apologize. "Not that I'm saying you moped or anything, or that it was your fault we lost…"

Mantis ignored her and looked back at the black scroll where Aspen was only now moving away from her resting spot. "Why were there even any Goliaths out here in the first place?" he wondered aloud. "Don't they usually stay away from people?"

Laurel frowned. She hadn't actually thought about it. "Well, they were young, right? Maybe the Vytal Tournament got their attention? You get a lot of people together in a close space with a bunch of teens fighting each other, things can get tense."

"Maybe," the man said absently, keeping his eyes on the scroll as he scratched the stubble on his jaw. Did he really have to monitor Aspen every step of the way? "Didn't Goodwitch say they were preparing a 'special' initiation, though?"

The point didn't sit well with the Huntress. Glynda had said "special" in a really weird way, but surely they couldn't have arranged this in such a short time, right? "You think they intentionally put a herd of Goliaths in the forest as a part of the test?"

Mantis shrugged. "It did seem like this was supposed to be a life-or-death sort of thing." Laurel still didn't like it, but she couldn't really argue the point either. It was a question for another day.

(-)

After several minutes of running without encountering any more Grim, Aspen finally came out of the trees again. Ahead of her was a spacious area bordered on two sides by large stone pillars almost as tall as the Goliaths. Slowing her pace, she looked around at the structures. They seemed old to her, though she wasn't sure what it was about them that made them seem that way to her. The color? No, stones were supposed to be gray. Was it that they were all broken? That might have been it. As she climbed the hill, more of the ruins came into sight, spanning across a wide chasm before edging up to a tall cliff. These structures seemed much more broken than the ones she was walking past, though that didn't feel terribly significant in any way.

At the edge of the cliff on her side of the chasm, Aspen saw a rounded area with a small podium sitting between two pillars. Approaching it, she found a pair of fairly large and identically shaped stones. Two rounded layers made up the short bases while the tall bodies quickly sloped outward before tapering up. The caps had the most unusual shapes, small points jutting out from a round dome with a smaller ball sitting on top. The only difference between the two stones was the color: One was black while the other was yellow. If she was supposed to pick between them, the choice was obvious. Grabbing the black stone, she pushed it into her hoodie pocket and turned around.

As the girl took a step, she felt... something. It was as if she had been completely submerged in warm water. No, not water: Blood. Just as quickly as it had appeared, though, the feeling was gone, leaving Aspen feeling cold.

She stopped, trying to work out what had just happened. Did... Did the stone do that? No, it had almost felt like aura. There was something off about it, though, something she couldn't quite place. She'd felt it strongly for a brief moment before it vanished, as if the person had been standing next to her and simply disappeared. Whatever it was, it hadn't been human or animal. This was something new. She wanted to investigate, but she needed to finish her initiation first. Zipping up her hoodie she began running back toward the forest.


IMPORTANT: If you don't typically read these notes, don't leave just yet. I'm trying something new this time around and having an epilogue of sorts, and bits of the next few chapters won't make sense if you don't read it.

Looking back, I remember this chapter feeling like a bit of a mouthful when I wrote it. To be fair, it is around 6000 words, but that's not much longer than most other chapters I write, and certainly nothing compared to the last chapter of Wayward Son. Maybe it had to do with how many times it took me to write that Goliath fight.

The idea for that scene actually came from a guy named Recycler, the one who also pitched me the idea for this story. We went back and forth about some of the details, such as how many and how big the Goliaths were, as well as when to include it in the story. We ended up figuring all that stuff out with Aspen winning the fight, but as I was writing it, it actually felt more natural and interesting for her to lose (and boy did she lose). Obviously, though, it was enough to catch someone's attention…

Speaking of which, it's a little weird for me how interconnected the chapters in this story are. With Wayward Son, each chapter is essentially a self-contained story, or at most occurs as a direct result of the previous chapter. With this story, I'm finding myself intentionally setting up threads not necessarily dependant on the ending of each chapter. I think they call that getting better. Huh.

Okay, that's it for this bit. Here's your epilogue.


EPILOGUE:

Aspen didn't encounter a single Grim on her way back. It occurred to her at one point that she may have killed anything in her path on her way out, but she didn't think on it too long and simply continued running. It wasn't until she came to a familiar gap in the trees that she stopped. A few pieces of white bone lay in the grass, discarded from her first encounter with the Beowolves, including the mask she had torn off and pinned through the Grim's head. Bending down, the girl pulled the plate from where it stood impaled in the dirt before dusting it off and examining it.

A few spots were worn and pitted, more so than what she remembered, but it seemed otherwise intact. Without the creature behind it, it didn't possess quite the same level of menace, but with a little black behind it… Curious, Aspen lifted the mask to her shoulder, the nose pointing up. That did look good. With a smile, she flipped the bony plate in her hand and continued on.


This scene was important for a couple of moments later on, so it needed to be included. It doesn't really feel like a natural ending to the chapter for me, but it also doesn't make sense to include it in the next chapter. This felt like the best solution to me. How was it? Did it work well?

At this point, I guess I should establish one of the "rules" of the story. I know what you're thinking: "Grimm bone staying after the body disappears? Insanity!" Here's the way it works in this: If the bone was removed before death, it sticks around. I've put a lot of thought into trying to explain how that would work, but since RWBY has a lot of "fantastical" elements, I shouldn't have to. Also, the show has kind of already set a precedent of things not immediately disintegrating (see Nevermore feathers and Taijitu tooth as examples), so I feel justified taking it a bit further.

And that is all I have. Don't be shy if you have something you want to tell me about this story, and follow it if you want to see where it goes. Adieu!