Chapter XI.
Ruby Rose was not having a good morning. It had started off nicely, she'd be lying if she argued otherwise. Last night had her team training hard, and they came back to their dorm with that special kind of exhaustion that knocks one out as soon as their head hits the pillow. She dreamed of corgis pulping beowolves in fields of greenery, with their newest teacher in his big suit of shiny red armor cheering them on. It was a pleasant dream. Then, roughly two and a half hours after her head had hit the pillow, she was awoken by her scroll screeching at her as half a dozen people called her at once. That got her up quick. The anger she felt, seeing that bright red 03:23 on her alarm clock was beyond frustrating. Weiss bemoaning the utterly ungodly hour tempted Ruby to go back to sleep just to avoid the whine-fest.
Then, Nora had all but punched the door down to holler at us that Hastar needed us for an emergency mission. That woke up the other two members of RWBY and got the lot of them on their feet and quietly darting into the hallway after dressing in a rush, stopping at the armoury and parking their feet outside the library.
Ruby would be lying if she said she had been amused by Hastar standing there, looming in some manner of robe rather than his bright, shiny red armour. A turned glance toward her teammates and fellows in JNPR revealed similar utter irritation in their gazes. Yang was the only one willing to get vocal.
"So, I suppose you're going to be demonstrating those godlike abilities by not bothering with any sort of armour when we go kick the butts of whatever jerks you're sending us to fight?" Hastar only grinned at her words. He spoke, and a few of them nearly jumped again—the sheer depth and gravelly-ness of his voice was hard to get used to.
"No, no, Yang. Nothing of the sort. Nor will I be sending you against any despotic servants of Chaos. I will explain as we walk, follow me." He turned and effortlessly pushed open the massive doors. The speed at which they swung open was still disorienting, but the eight huntsman-huntress cadets followed quickly at the heels of the transhuman demigod as his sandals clapped loudly against the floor. Nora made a whispered comment about how it sounded way quieter than someone that beefy should sound, but she was hushed by Jaune Arc. Instead, they followed behind the massive scholarly killing machine.
Beacon Library's sheer scale despite its age was a constant argument between more scholarly students and unenlightened teachers, who discussed, debated and bickered endlessly over how the fine craftsmanship was too fine, how the material was too advanced, the architecture borderline impossible for the craftsmen who built the school originally. It was argued that it could've been the enigmatic force of the Semblance that allowed for it. It was also argued that it had been built by underground-dwelling tinkering goblins and their giant, jolly green Master of Construction who had gone extinct by the Grimm.
Suffice to say, Nora was no longer allowed to participate in those sorts of discussions under threat of violence.
In any regard, the library was a marvelous, gothic construction that harkened to an age before written history that few, if any, ruins even hinted at the existence of. The central chamber was a quarter-kilometer tall and half a kilometer long, with huge, arching pillars holding up a narrow, arched roof. High reliefs of huntsmen and huntresses across history were carved across the tops of pillars and along the supporting columns and arches that supported the roof. Mid-reliefs depicting the Great War covered the columns below those, spiraling down the columns to the ground.
Filling the room were mazes of bookshelves and webs of wooden catwalks, platforms and walkways that allowed students to appreciate the architecture, reach higher shelves or circumvent navigating the supermassive mazes of shelves. Lighting was cast down from braziers shooting calm beams of subtle light that dotted the room, hanging from chains, mounted on walls or otherwise in discreet locations. The corridor split to the left and right in wings, the roof lowered significantly in those long, long stretches, giving the library a distinctive plus-slash-cross shape, with the arms of the cross being much shorter but longer than the central corridor. In short, it was a confusing maze with a big, open area in the front with tables on the first floor.
They headed into the left wing of the structure, where the floor went from pleasant hardwood divided up with carpets to ceramic-like tiles and intricate stone carvings that unnerved the eyes and warded away curious students. When Hastar passed over them, the stone floors glowed briefing and the students felt the deep sense of unease and the onset migraine that had developed when nearing the floors to simply vanish, replaced by an unsteady calm. The shelves down the left wing were full of much older looking tomes and books than the rest of the library. Pyrrha and the other book-smart students in their eight-person team found themselves gawking in awe of the present material.
"My Gods…" Pyrrha mumbled as her eyes drifted over the titles of books that had been thought lost to the world.
"H-How… why… this place…" her murmurings stopped as Hastar cleared his throat, her attention sharply turning to him.
"This is the… aptly titled accursed wing of the library. It is my personal wing, and as such is warded in such a way to keep any curious students from entering. Those few who had the skills or sheer natural ability to breach the warding, you'll remember from school mythos, disappeared," Hastar began, smirking invisibly at the sheepish looks of concern on the faces of the young warriors. He continued as they walked.
"Those students became apprentices. They were conscripted into a war that few have the privilege to know is being fought. The collective potential of your group has earned you access to what lies beyond this wing, and should you pass the trials to come… the same privilege of those students of old," Hastar explained, a hand gliding over ancient shelves and the covers of tomes, some older than him, transported many uncountable kilometers of space to get here. Jaune, attentive to the information in this rare circumstance, frowned.
"Trials?" Hastar nodded at his inquiry.
"Yes, trials. One moment…" they reached the far wall. Frost accumulated on the ground and on the surfaces of the metal of the students' collective arms and armour. They all stood at alert at the hitherto unseen phenomena as the wall shimmered and turned liquid as it melted away into the floor. Hastar walked through, unphased, and after a long, silent few seconds, he turned and beckoned the students in. A moment of hesitation later, they followed behind him.
The corridor took on a distinctly metallic appearance. Dark and foreboding, it was utterly foreign to the students as they trailed behind the hulking figure of their mentor. It angled downward, and had been modified at some point, with stairs cut into one half of the flooring and two parallel sets of rails bolted into the other. The most unnerving thing was the long, unbroken stretches of metal walls and glowing divots that lit the tunnel with an unnatural, green light.
"Where are we going, exactly?" Weiss piped in with irritation mounting. Hastar gave a simple, unhelpful reply of 'down.' A snicker erupted in the ice queen's young leader, however a gentle smack to the back of the head by her older sister had the little red reaper shutting her mouth.
Further down they went. It grew colder the deeper they went, until it leveled to a tolerable chilliness. Frost began to gather on the walls as the floor, too, leveled out into a flat surface. Ruby Rose looked around and panicked suddenly when she found herself alone. The only thing that kept her moving was a quiet tugging and an urge to move forward. A few deep breaths, and Ruby calmed herself. Hastar had mentioned trials… and so she moved forward, hoping this was some manner of test rather than some convoluted defense mechanism or what-have-you.
The vast temple complex beneath Beacon was astir with movement as Shen'ban Albistus darted through the corridors toward the source of the excitement. He had suspicions as to the 'why' but he needed to be absolutely sure. Over narrow bridges looming above sheer drops, through corridors full of Necronic chicken scratch and into the familiar throne room he went. The palpable sensation was barely contained, even in the outskirts of the recycled tomb complex. Their father had stirred in his slumber.
The Pavoni sorcerers dotting the room had abandoned any sense of stoicism in their movements as they excitedly dashed about the massive form of the Crimson King on his throne as he visibly stirred, shifting on his throne as psychic electricity coursed across the thousands of cables that crisscrossed around the throne and into the thick steel band around his head.
The Magister Templi immediately rushed down and over to the nearest sorcerer, but the excitement about the room was quickly halted as the Primarch's fists tightened around the armrests of the throne and a soundless, agonized howl resonated throughout the room. Metal crunched under massive, bronze digits and the collective of psykers were sent to their knees as the mounting pressure in the room increased dramatically.
Shen'ban screamed and clutched the sides of his helmet. Alarms blared within the throne room. Some piece of arcanotech, a dampener or some such, exploded and the pressure lessened enough for one of the attendant caretakers to stagger over to a terminal against one of the towering walls and begin punching away at its keys. Several others stood weakly and directed their psychic force to soothing the agonized screams of their primarch. Shen'ban aided in the endeavour as he staggered near the huge, imposing throne of cables, valves and pipework in the center of the room, like some unholy amalgam of a naval command throne and the emperor's own torturous life preserver, crammed into an incomprehensibly smaller space and jury-rigged together like some ork-codged trash. Frost thickly gathered along every surface of the room as they fought against a growing psychic tantrum.
The hulking forms of Shen'ban's retinue, the two Scarab Occult terminators rushed into the room, in their hulking suits of ornate Astartes-equivalent juggernaut suits, wielding their Khopesh-glaives that cosplayed the part of guardian spears. At the peak of the psychic onslaught, two marines fell to their knees near Shen'ban in a familiar manner that brought an alien sensation of sheer dread into his twin hearts.
His two guards rushed forward with inhuman speed and silenced the torture of the two marines as their forms rapidly began to mutate and shift. Their deaths were swift as they were impaled by the business ends of the occult terminators' weapons, bolt shells lobbed unto their bodies and splattering gore across the ground.
The tragedy of the sudden outset of Flesh Change did little to distract the remaining Pavoni sorcerers, and in little time, the psychic assault was subsiding. A gaggle of techmarines had soon after rushed in and stabilized the throne as Magnus' fit of agony came to an end. Psychic dampeners pulsed as they were thrown into overdrive, and soon the pained expression on the slumbering face of the Prosperan Cyclops came to morph into its usual discomforted neutral stance.
Shen'ban was quick to turn to the nearest sorcerer and demand an explanation. The response was disheartening.
Magnus the Red, the one of the greatest psykers in the galaxy, had stirred from a self-imposed slumber, that much Shen'ban had felt. Magnus the Red had also experienced the psychic equivalent to a heart attack or a seizure due to external sources of corruptive warp energies seeping into reality and corroding at certain components of the throne. It did not take the Pavoni telling him for Shen'ban to figure the cause. A quick vox hail later, and Shen'ban got to aiding in cleaning up the mess left by the two piles of dead sorcerer.
Captain Ardeshir, first captain under Shen'ban Albistus and the commander of the majority of the Pavoni Cult stepped into the throne room with a quick salute and a greeting to the Magister Templi. Shen'ban was clutching a helmet that had burst through the left-front side of its faceplate, tight enough to put finger grooves in the unmolested right side of the helmet.
"Ardeshir, stand with me a moment." The marine captain obliged and sidled up to the hulking form of his superior, his gaze falling to the helmet with a knowing sorrow. Shen'ban began talking at the captain.
"Chaos is the greatest form of evil this galaxy has to offer. It is the source of this legion's deepest flaws. It fans the flames that burned the Milky Way so badly that it may still crumble to ash. Even purged of its influence, the taint finds a way to spite us," he snarled through his vox-grille.
"No matter how far we run, it follows. Lurking. Corrupting everything it touches. It predates on this world like some sick, monstrous cur. It rapes the natural world with its influence and turns the natural majesty of the Empyrean into a force of sheer, unreal destruction. I am sick of it, Ardeshir. I am sick of watching my brothers fall to the molestation of the Architect and his foul minions." He turned to his captain, removing his helmet and allowing the malicious gaze encompassing his stony features to be absorbed in full by his first captain.
Ardeshir had known Shen'ban Albistus as a diplomat with unmatched calm. A warrior with measured brutality, emotionless and cold where he had to be. Seeing the hateful gaze on the man filled Ardeshir with much the same emotion. That gaze on his superior turned remorseful and regretful.
"I regret listening to the mortal dog. Father be damned, I won't allow his arrogance to bring this world any closer to the brink of death. I will not be playing his games in the shadows anymore. No more skulking around in the dark in hopes that we stumble into the enemy before they jam a dagger into our backs. Now is the time for bringing light to the dark. Send a telepathic communique to the rest of the legion. We are going to reform the War Council." Ardeshir nodded.
"Shall I alert Guardian H'Kett?" Ardeshir asked. Shen'ban considered it for a moment.
"Once he has finished the initiation rites with his trainees. Recommend that the other Magisters to inform their own vault guardians of the situation and to be on full alert. I will not allow this meeting to cause a security breach. Not when that wretch Salem and her lackeys are no doubt plotting against a moment where our guard is down." Ardeshir acknowledged the order with a nod.
"Get to it, captain. I am going to continue helping our brothers here." Shen'ban gently tossed the burst helmet amid a pile of equally burst and blown-out bits and pieces of broken Astartes plate.
Ruby Rose was not having a good day. It had started off poorly, waking up at an ungodly hour to follow their mentor into some strange tunnel. Hours later, she was still walking down that tunnel—at least it felt like hours. She supposed this was some part of the trials Hastar had mentioned, but it was hard to discern when most of what she had done and had to do was simply to walk. It was stranger yet still when the walls faded away and she was surrounded by open air choked with black smoke. Any pretense of it being a trial had been pushed out of her mind when artillery fire exploded overhead, and she was forced to charge forward just to stay out of harm's way.
Her boots splashed in mud or loudly clapped against half-sunken duckboards zigzagging between craters and roaring fires. Her mind raced as she ran through the strange environment with a pain in her head and a tightness in her chest.
The young red reaper's attention was immediately drawn to the sound of her name being called by her familiar icy teammate, knee deep in Grimm alongside soldiers wearing green armour and carrying blocky green rifles that spat red lasers at the encroaching swarm of black that approached from all angles.
Her mind was wracked with anxiety as she drew her signature weapon and rushed to meet her friend. Bombs exploded overhead and kept setting off the superhuman instincts of her semblance, keeping her head on a swivel in lieu of her failing preternatural abilities. Her beloved sniper-scythe was kept in its rifle configuration and constantly firing as Grimm lunged from any direction that didn't have one of the grimy, faceless soldiers or an unfamiliar, vaguely huntsman-looking silhouette.
Something felt increasingly wrong as she approached Weiss. Her throat felt tight. Her eyes caught sight of a splotch of golden hair amidst a pile of singed chunks of meat and her heart dropped into her feet as she quickened her pace toward her teammate. She leapt down into the trench they were hunkered in. She couldn't get a good breath in her lungs.
The onslaught of emotions she felt, standing there amidst what felt like a hundred bodies, sinking or half-sunk into thick, gooey mud mixed with distinctly human ichor and gore, was beyond her words. Tears welled in her eyes and were it not for the sight of Weiss, still breathing as she leaned against the wall of the trench, clutching a weeping wound that had dragged from her neck down her chest, Ruby would have simply stalled. The sight of her living teammate amidst all the dead—all of them far too familiar—invigorated the young reaper. She froze as she came up to the ice queen, her throat choking for breath. Why couldn't she breathe? Why did her head hurt so much?
She pushed the questions aside as drilled instincts kicked in and she pushed her aura outward to her friend, tears welling in both of their eyes.
"Yang… she…" Weiss barely whispered, but Ruby ignored it and focused on trying to help her teammate and trying to breathe. The mud felt like it was up to their knees as explosions rang out so far above their heads. Ruby tore at her cloak after a moment of watching her friend limply cling to life, and she tried to swear through choked, nullified small breaths of air and sobbed as she desperately tried to jam the torn fabric into the open wounds, but it was simply too late for her. Weiss fell limp and Ruby froze as the girl slumped down beneath the waist-high mud.
She watched as something distinctly familiar—a black bow, floated to the surface. Then a clump of golden hair attached to an utterly inhuman skull, half-slagged with the bone bubbling away. She tried so desperately to breathe but nothing came to her throat. The mud grew higher as personal effects and bodies floated to the surface of the blood. The weapon of a teacher there, a friend's severed limb here. Gods above, she tried to scream at the sight, but no breath came to her lungs. She was choking, the mud coming to her neck. She just couldn't breathe. Ruby closed her eyes and tried desperately to just cling onto life as her head pounded and her instincts screamed at her to swim upward.
Then she opened her eyes, and she nearly choked on the disgusting, viscous fluid that flooded her nostrils. It was thick, indescribable and it was choking her. She desperately fought to swim upward. She fought for inches, then feet, and just as she thought she was about to black out, her collar was jammed up by a hook, and she was dragged through the disgusting fluid and into breathable air.
Those first few breaths were heavenly as Ruby was tossed roughly onto a cold, metallic floor, divided by glowing green lines. She rapidly cycled through a hundred emotions as she fought to process what had happened, gasping for air, and clawing at the ground just to remind herself it was solid. Her head swept over the room, and she found the forms of Jaune and Pyrrha beside Hastar, haunted expressions on their faces as the big psychic warrior rubbed his temples with one hand and fished through the pool with his staff in the other hand.
The sight of her hulking mentor looming over her filled her with no relief. Just confusion, shock, and a solid mix of anger. He knelt next to her and helped her through the coughing fits, and a few more bated seconds of bartering her relaxation, he explained himself briefly. He helped her to her feet and turned to watch the massive… pit, of mucus-green ooze, scant air bubbles popping to the surface every few seconds. His gaze flicked over to her as she stood beside him, watching the pool with those naïve silver eyes.
"Your fortitude is beyond commendable, Miss Rose." She only turned to stare dumbfoundedly at him, anger building in her chest.
"You… that…" she stammered for words as her chest tightened and she began going through the beginnings of the utterly foreign sensation of a panic attack, however a calming psychic aura stamped it out quickly.
"Understand that I did not fabricate whatever psychological torment that you experienced. Your… unique blood and stronger force of will was an unexpected variable. The system was ill-understood even when its creator was still cohesive, but its success rate has always spoken for itself," Hastar spoke aloud as his eyes scanned over the viscous pool. Ruby's confusion was only increased, but she didn't bother pressing. Hastar H'Kett was a very difficult individual at times when he was relaxed. Currently, his body was tensed and coiled up with psychic energies visibly spooling in the form of frost gathering around him.
"What about the rest of my friends? My team?!" Ruby was quick to start panicking again, but her own instincts and experience allowed her to plateau her heartbeat's spiking and calm herself again quickly enough. Hastar's answer was brief, and his face visibly twitched as he became… distracted.
"They are not nearly as hardy. I have faith in their mental fortitude, though it is proving a harsh experience for the rest of them. Too harsh for what I intended… I'm doing my best to pull them out of the psychic trappings they're in, but xenos amniotic fluid is not cooperative with my psychic talents…" Hastar grumbled. Pyrrha and Jaune did their best to remain quiet off to the side, likely put through similar hells to Ruby, she figured. Then things got worse.
A deep uneasiness passed through the three cadets, and suddenly, the transhuman supersoldier, whom the three had seen perform acts of magic, and combat maneuvers they hadn't thought possible, drop to his knees. Electricity crackled off his body and he screamed, grasping at his head in agony. Whatever sense of pseudo-professionalism amid the three was quickly thrown out the window. Jaune and Pyrrha rushed to help the marine while Ruby's eyes caught onto a shimmer of silver and white in the viscous pool. Against her better judgement, she threw down her weapons and dove forward into the horrid pool.
She wouldn't fail Weiss again.
Shen'ban Albistus' planning chamber was an open structure that was notably familiar. Lightly coloured stone and dark, reddish metal made up the floors and walls, intermingling with traditional Prosperan tapestries and furnishings and stark, militaristic cogitators, tables covered with various strategic utilities, data slates and the like, with the usual fleet of tamed scarabs skittering across the walls replaced by a flock of servoskulls in the rafters.
Standing at one end of a long, digital screen topped table was the Magister Templi of the Pavoni himself, flanked by his two terminator companions. Across from him, his first captain Ardeshir in his stock panoply of the beak-helmeted, round-surfaced, and studded Mark VI power armour. A few others meandered about the room—most notably, the headmaster's own uptight second in command, a marine marked with the serpentine eye of the telepath and mindreading cult of the Athanaeans, the only one of his ilk on their side of the continent if Shen'ban recalled.
Admittedly, he was uncertain as to why the mortal woman was present—or how she had gotten this far down without being torn to bits by the defenses, for that matter, but it was of little consequence. Shen'ban would have preferred to give the message of his intentions to Ozpin directly, but she would suit the purposes fine. He also tolerated her presence much more than the man himself, though he would never suggest such a thing outside the confines of his own mind. He removed his helmet, cleared his throat with the volume of a small IED and the comparable grittiness of two boulders smashing together. With the attention on him, he began their little meeting.
"Ardeshir, if you would so kindly provide a situation report?" The captain nodded affirmingly in reply to his superior's inquiry and began relaying what he had learned. In simple terms, the situation was by no means world ending—but dire, nonetheless.
"Thirty of our number were lost to an outbreak of the Flesh Change, and roughly one hundred more were incapacitated by the initial psychic outburst. According to Sister Goodwitch, the situation was noted above ground by a collective sense of dread and a brief frost on surfaces around the Tower and certain campus sites. It was easily explained by certain energy pipelines being ruptured, their ice elemental crystal to blame, but it is likely to be noted by others…" Goodwitch winced inwardly at being referred to as 'sister' but managed her expressionless, slightly frowning visage. Ardeshir went on for a long while regarding structural damage due to overloading of pylons, dampeners and other words that were lost on Glynda, although judging by the increasing frustration in the face of Albistus, it was nothing short of severe.
In addition, he noted that Hastar H'Kett was in the middle of running eight initiates through the Labyrinth, which immediately had Glynda concerned.
"Initiates? You wouldn't mean our students, would you?" the blank expression received from the first captain nearly caused Glynda to burst a blood vessel. He and Shen'ban made a worthwhile attempt at tuning her out while they continued their own briefing. Shen'ban took the lead, leaning over the table and examining the visual data displayed a few inches off the surface of the tabletop display.
"Investigations by myself, the techmarines and our more esoteric librarians have made obvious the source of this… incident. Father's situation being as untenable as it is, we are certain that the servants of Chaos are to blame," Shen'ban began, bringing up several visual aids. Footage caught from helmets and confiscated civilian recording devices like scrolls or cameras, sigils, and symbols of known local cults, myriads of other data that was quickly tuned out by Glynda as she focused on the words coming out of the big, bad superhuman's mouth.
"I will be reforming the War Council to better combat the threat and to coordinate legion activity." Glynda frowned at the declaration by the magister.
"And you aren't at all concerned that will warn our enemy that we're aware of their activity?" Glynda's remark earned her a snide, condescending snort of amusement from Shen'ban. He loomed over the woman, and she felt a twinge of dread.
"If that is what you are concerned about, your priorities are sorely misplaced. Salem has been allowed to move unimpeded, implant her agents and begin weaving the elaborate cracks that will destroy the foundations of the meagre civilisations of this planet. All this, due to your headmaster's insistence and our father's reluctance to see another world burned by the fires of ignorance," Shen'ban ranted on about incompetence, slowly burning himself into a grumbling before reasserting himself.
"In any case, we have strategies in mind for that. Simple cloak and dagger missions should allow us to provide Salem with false intelligence." Shen'ban cleared his throat with another low grumble and continued discussing strategies with Ardeshir. Glynda found herself fighting against the pigheaded arrogance of the two superhumans. That proved to be a difficult fight, and so she refocused her efforts on containing their plans and strategies from defenestrating any form of subtlety into simple containment of their insanity.
She would be content to prevent them from bringing down the collective wrath of every single Grimm onto their heads for the time being. The rest could be worked out with Ozpin later. Glynda sipped her tea and allowed herself to sigh. It would be a very long day.
Weiss Schnee, heiress to the Schnee Dust Company and its corporate empire, sat at a pristine white dinner table quietly. To say the nicknamed 'Ice Queen' was uncomfortable was an understatement. Her throat was tight, and she was struggling to keep her composure together as she felt small in the big chair. At one side, her father rolled his eyes and hollered vitriol as her mother sat at the other side, drinking from her umpteenth glass of wine, spitting harsher vitriol at her father so loud it was making some of the glassware visibly shudder from the volume. Dread prodded at her mind as insults were hurled across the table.
Her older sister didn't even bother consoling the young heiress—instead glaring with contempt at her sibling. The little sister whose shadow she was trapped within. The look of malice made Weiss' throat feel tighter and she focused on prodding at the cold-looking food in front of her. Her head felt heavy and fuzzy. She blamed it on the chaos around her.
Weiss' eyes glanced up to see her brother—the third and youngest sibling, grinning at her with a look of malign joy. She could guess why—just judging by how often his name came from the mouths of both screaming parents at Weiss' left and right, she quickly deduced that he had started this spat. He would not receive the blame, though—that would be Weiss' fate.
She sat upright, and in a moment of poor judgement, she scowled at her brother. He only smiled back. Daring her to speak up with his venomous gaze. His evil little mannerisms—the little, pathetic responses he gave to the yelling whenever the attention shifted to him. The guilt tripping, the blame-shifting, it pushed Weiss over the edge.
The words 'Dad, Whitley is-' barely made it out of her mouth before she was quickly taught of her mistake, her throat choking up as Weiss fought for air as she was suddenly thrown to the floor by her father, her cheek stinging and bleeding from a ring-filled backhand. Her mother stood to defend the middle child, but her father was quick to teach his drunken wife the same lesson as his daughter. He was in charge, and nobody would speak out of turn at his fucking dinner table.
Weiss watched, choking, and sobbing as she struggled to breathe, her father beating on her mother. She tried so desperately to plead for them to stop, but the words wouldn't come out as more than a jumbled cough or gurgle for air. She couldn't stop it.
Everything faded as her attention fell solely on her father, angrily putting his knuckles across the face of her mother, sobbing, and pleading for him to stop. She would never be able to stop it. Weiss couldn't even gather the strength to breathe. She was supposed to be a huntress, but she was too weak to even gather air into her lungs. Tears freely flowed as the corporate heiress sobbed on her knees and desperately fought to get the word 'stop' out of her mouth, failing at even that. Her vision swam, and Weiss felt herself growing weaker.
Then a hand grabbed at her shoulder. Weiss' eyes gazed up at the owner of the hand, and she found the illusion cracking around her at the sight of her begrudgingly dear friend and team leader. She nearly burst into tears at the sight of Ruby Rose. Weiss swore the raven-haired girl smiled at her then, but she was too distracted by the shattering illusion around her to process it. She could finally taste the horrid muck flooding her lungs and rapidly fought to swim upward, away from the murky depth that threatened to drown her.
Breaking the surface, Weiss gasped for air as Ruby helped her to the side of the horrid sinking pit of despair and mental torment. They sat there, fighting for breath for a few moments, before Weiss latched onto her team leader and bawled into her shoulder. The two stayed like that for a long, long several minutes. Were it not for Ruby seeing Hastar standing again with blood dribbling from his nose, they'd have likely stayed like that a while longer. Seeing the superhuman bleeding from the nose after some manner of psychic seizure and getting a sitrep was more important to the reaper, however, in the long run. She calmed Weiss and rushed to the side of the hulking space marine. She couldn't even get words out before Hastar turned his gaze to her.
"We need to move, lest your friends drown in their own weaknesses."
A/N: Hope you enjoy. I'll be spending this week doing some formatting tweaks and minor updates to the story. Next update will be a Marginal, Following the Trail Pt II or some unrelated short to help with worldbuilding.
-Commissar W