I've never been able to remember my dreams very much. If I do catch any snippets, they're gone within a few seconds of waking up- no point wasting mental processing power on trying to overanalyze them. Today is no exception, as seconds after waking up, I've forgotten entirely about what I'd dreamt of, my mind instead wandering to thoughts on my current situation.

It's oddly blissful, lying there faceup with my head resting on my backpack- until I try to move and actually yelp. Oh, right. My right arm isn't going to heal all the way until tomorrow at least, maybe even the day after.

The rest of my body isn't any better, and while my Aura might have replenished overnight, the same cannot be said for my stamina. Everything is sore. I lob a silent fuck you to past me for doing this to me.

Standing isn't as much of a struggle as it was last night-

Wait, last night. The events come back in a blur and I narrow my eyes, sure that I must be misremembering. Why the hell would I go risking my life to defend Luskhan? And then why did I end up fighting that-

"Arnaut," I hiss, attempting to keep my temper under control.

"Hmm? Oh, you're awa-"

"Would I be correct in stating that you roped me into fighting a fucking Terrawyrm on my own last night?"

"Ah, yes, excellent work on tha-"

"You son of a bitch!" I actually take a weak swing at him that he could have dodged even if he weren't incorporeal. "I almost died!"

"Yes, that was a risk I considered when-"

"You almost fucking killed me!"

Arnaut tilts his head and gives me a deadpan look for a few long seconds, during which time I think about what I said. Oh, I remember, Right.

"If you're quite done interrupting me, I've come to a few decisions," he announces.

"Oh boy, I sure do give a shit."

He keeps going, ignoring my snark. "Firstly, I'd like to congratulate you on beating the Terrawyrm yesterday, that was extremely well done. It's a feat on par for an adult professional Huntress." That's a nice thought, but we both know it's because I had the right weapon, in the right place, at the right time. "You may have needed a bit of… motivation… to get it done, but you saved the city from falling and the lives of many people."

"Whoop-de-doo," I mutter. "Any chance that saving all those lives actually came with some benefit to me?"

I'm ignored again. "In the three days I've known you, you've saved an orphan from Grimm, killed three criminals before they could harm my family…"

"Oh, come on," I say, seeing where this is going.

"Fought off more Grimm on the wall of Luskhan, and taken on a Terrawyrm at great personal risk to protect innocent lives-"

"My life," I correct. "I did it to protect my life. And you're forgetting that I also eviscerated a national hero, looted his corpse, and am midway through fleeing the country to avoid punishment for it."

He's so wrapped up in his speech that I genuinely think he doesn't even hear me. "So, you've earned my respect, despite your initial… shortcomings. I don't know how or why I'm back on Remnant, but the Twin Gods put me here for a purpose and, now that I've seen the good you can do, I suspect the purpose was to-"

"Stop," I interrupt. The bit about the gods is a little unnerving, but not any more so than any other time I run into someone with faith in one of the several religions scattered about Remnant. I... lost my faith in those things a long time ago, and now can't imagine believing in some larger being presiding over my existence. The world's too shitty for any gods that do exist to be worth worshipping, and this situation with Arnaut is nearly enough to have me believing that whatever's up there has a skewed sense of humor. "How many times do I have to tell you- you, of all people- that I'm not going to become a Huntress."

Arnaut sighs as if I've missed the point. "This isn't about making you a Huntress, this is about my legacy. What matters is that you've earned my respect, and because of that respect, I'm willing to teach you how to use my Semblance and weapon."

That was not what I expected. I grin and slide my pack on while standing up, turning towards what my scroll tells me is east-northeast and beginning the day's walk. "So, where do we-"

"With the stipulation that you use them to protect people on your way out of Vacuo."

There it is. "The absolute last thing I need right now is to bring even more attention to myself. Using a weapon like yours to kill Grimm isn't exactly inconspicuous, especially when I seem to only be a few hours ahead of the news of your death." The way news travels long-distance now is through individual people, meaning I need to outpace the rate by which other people are traveling across Vacuo. "Vacuo'll get along fine without me."

Arnaut looks sincerely troubled and takes longer than normal to respond. "No, I… I don't think it will. You are aware of how the kingdom is set up, yes?"

"Big walled cities?"

"Ah, yes. I'd forgotten you're from… where was it? Anima? Vale?"

"Solitas," I correct.

"You're from Solitas? How-" Arnaut shakes his head. "Never mind, it doesn't matter. What I'm getting at is that Vacuo is primarily nomadic, and there are only a few solidified settlements in the kingdom."

I frown. "Then why-"

"The cities that do exist permanently in one place need to be well-defended for obvious reasons," Arnaut explains. "But I can count the permanent cities in this country on my fingers. The rest are almost all nomadic, set-up and then torn down within a few weeks. I suppose you haven't been in Vacuo long enough to see it yet, but-"

"What about Shinston?"

"Shinston is a textbook nomadic city. Didn't you notice that there wasn't a single stone structure? The city was made to be stripped down and moved every few months. The mobile cities and villages survive due to low negative emotions and avoiding the worst of the Grimm, but without ways for them to communicate they'll be in extreme danger."

"By 'worst of the Grimm,' you mean…?"

"Larger packs of them that roam the deserts, such as the one that attacked Luskhan last night. They're tracked by Huntsmen scouts and most people keep a wide berth- but they can't now, because of the collapse of the CCT, which will itself also bring panic and lead to more Grimm."

"Ah, I see," I say absentmindedly. "So…"

It's nearly ten seconds before Arnaut realizes I'm not following that up with anything. "So… what?"

"Exactly."

He shakes his head. "You're missing the point. The people of Vacuo need someone like me to step in and protect them from the rising Grimm threat, but I'm… well…" He gestures down towards his body. "This is your opportunity to become a hero, a legend."

"It was less than twenty-four hours ago that you were explaining to me that I didn't have pride," I say, starting to cross my arms but wincing and dropping them back into my pockets. "You're gonna have to try harder than an appeal to my vanity to motivate me to go out of my way to help people."

"…And my offer of training you in my weapon and Semblance?"

I take a moment to consider that, but end up shaking my head. "Nah, I'll pass."

He seems to take that one personally. "Do you wish to be able to touch another person ever again without getting- well, 'hallucinogenic trips,' as you described them? And Aureum Rupti is superior in every conceivable way to simply using your hands as you've been doing."

"My Semblance isn't exactly helpful when I'm using a weapon," I shrug. "Getting Grimm claws and instincts tends to override the technique-oriented portion of my brain, and I don't have any Aura running through the Grimm parts, so I can't run it through August Raspberry."

"You're doing it on purpose now," Arnaut sighs. "But my first point still stands. Best of luck fighting anyone with an Aura over their clothing when every one of your punches gives you hallucinations."

That one's a lot tougher to brush off. I'm silent for a good while before finally responding, reluctantly, "…Fine."

"Excellen-"

"But." Arnaut stops talking and looks at me expectantly as I think through what I'm agreeing to. "One: my end of this… arrangement ends when I leave Vacuo, even if you haven't finished teaching me."

"Agreed."

"And two: you let me know what I'm walking into. I was this close to dying last night, and if you trick me into a fight I can't win I'm putting myself over anyone else, understood?"

"Understood." When he realizes there's no more clauses on their way, Arnaut's face brightens significantly and he begins speaking in an entirely different tone. "You'll need to take my Scroll out and navigate to the Huntsman Work board. You see that little icon of a- yes, that one. Activate it."

"What did I just do?" I pocket his Scroll again just as I crest a particularly large dune and see a wide expanse of badlands that alternate between desert sand and cracked, dry earth laid out before me.

"While the longer-range networks are down, your Scroll can still receive proximity alerts from settlements and people within about five kilometers, depending on the signal strength."

"So I just…" It dawns on me what that means. "No. I am not going to stop and protect every single thing within a five kilo radius of me. Absolutely not."

"Of course," Arnaut says. "Only the ones that aren't claimed by other Huntsmen will alert you."

"You do realize that stopping every eight seconds to risk my life… for other people… for free… is the literal exact opposite of what I want to be doing, right?" I shake my head. "My main goal right now is to get out of Vacuo as quickly as possible and keep- I repeat- a low profile. Which means not drawing attention to myself."

"With the CCT network down, the stories about you won't spread faster than you can travel," Arnaut reassures.

"I genuinely cannot believe that I'm doing this," I say, shaking my head.

"Neither can I," Arnaut says with a shit-eating grin on his face. "Now, you can practice upper-body movements with Aureum Rupti while we walk."

"I'm in no shape to be practicing anything, genius." I roll my eyes. "Doing a workout like I did an hour before fighting for my life, getting beaten up by some gorilla thing, then literally flat-out sprinting using my Aura for multiple minutes before getting blasted twenty meters by a Dust explosion- oh, and I forgot, doing two Dust injections in two days."

"Right, the Dust infusement," Arnaut cuts in, sounding equal parts worried and amazed- like someone watching a train wreck in slow motion. "You should probably stop doing that. Injecting a full crystal of Dust into your arm-"

"It's not a full crystal," I note, making the effort to reach down into one of the pouches in my coat to pull out a little shard of orange Lava dust and rolling it between my fingers. "It's just a small fragment. What, did you think I was standing there fighting someone with a ten-centimeter crystal of Dust jammed into my hand?"

"I…" Arnaut nods halfheartedly, clearly still thinking about something. "But you still shouldn't do it. Infusing Dust in skin safely is already difficult enough, and that's after it's been reduced to powder."

"I mean, it hurts like hell, but it's also what let me kill that… what was it?"

"A Beringel. A small one, though, still fairly young."

"Sure." I turn my right palm to face me and see the healing wound, where my skin has started to stitch itself back together, aided by the faint flickering of my grey Aura. "It's usually a last resort for me, for obvious reasons."

"How many of those custom-made crystals do you have? I imagine getting something like that made must be expensive, so-"

I smile as I interrupt him. "They're dirt cheap, actually. I buy them off most Dust vendors- they're the scraps that are too volatile to sell retail." In the process of carving a Dust crystal into the main shapes most weapons and machines are designed to accommodate, it needs to be cut. The pieces I carry are small, volatile things that result from mistakes made during the carving process. I've got a few pockets sewn into the inside of my coat- Ooh, I notice, Sekhma added flaps to keep them shut- that accommodate black Gravity Dust, red Fire, green Life, blue Ice, yellow Lightning, and the orange Lava. "If you offer to pay someone for something they'd been planning to throw away, they'll give you a pretty good price.

"That's highly illegal-" Arnaut stops himself mid-sentence and rolls his eyes. "Right, right, I know, you don't have to say it."

The sun is dipping low in the sky by the time I see a huge mass of shapes outlined against the red horizon. "Arnaut," I hiss, jolting him out of his thoughts, "What is this?"

"It's-" he squints. "Ah, one of the nomadic villages is heading towards Luskhan. If we get closer I can probably identify the flag-"

"Nope." I move off towards the right, maintaining a rough arc in order to make sure the mass of people and vehicles is kept far, far away from me. "They're apparently doing just fine, so I'll leave them to their miserable little lives."

"Hmmph."

Despite what I said, I'm not willing to waste my time and energy actually sprinting in the opposite direction of the caravan, so it does pass close enough for me to see some details. There's a rough border of city guardsmen and a few people that I suspect to be Huntsmen, forming a barrier of sorts around the main body of civilians. The entire affair is moving at a walking pace, even the trucks and bikes in the middle running at minimum power while carrying the collapsed tents and planks that probably make up the town when it's not moving.

"Wahah."

"Bless you."

"No, it's the name of the town," Arnaut corrects.

I couldn't care less about the village's name, but a thought does occur to me- "Wait, do you sneeze? Can you sneeze?"

"No," he sighs. "Nor do I need to sleep or eat. I would have thought that to be obvious, considering that I haven't eaten in three days."

"But you did sleep," I accuse.

"I can if I wish to," he says. "But I didn't while keeping watch last night. It appears to be a matter of personal preference."

We lapse back into silence. With each glance over my shoulder, the group of refugees disappears further and further into their own cloud of dust, until they're out of view and I'm alone in a sea of yellow-brown desert once again. Kilometers pass without either of us speaking, so when a muted alarm sound plays from my pocket I flinch in surprise at the sudden, unexpected disturbance.

Ugh, I think, pulling out Arnaut's scroll, Already?

The answer to that would appear to be yes, as a small flashing red blip on the map a few kilometers to my east indicates someone's in trouble.

"Creep attack," Arnaut notes from over my shoulder. "This shouldn't be particularly difficult for you- how's your arm?"

I roll my shoulder, elbow, and wrist experimentally. They feel fine, but am I really willing to risk fighting off some Grimm in this state?

"Creeps are some of the weakest of the Grimm," Arnaut says, as though he can read my mind. "This would be a good opportunity to practice with Aureum Rupti on an opponent that you're not in too much danger against."

"Fine." I start off at a quick pace towards the flashing blip. "But we're renaming the sword."

"Aureum Rupti is a perfectly fine name," Arnaut protests. "It means 'Golden Burst'-"

"It's two words and five syllables. I'm not going to name my weapon something in a language I don't even speak, much less something that sounds so… dumb."

"You have no taste whatsoever," Arnaut grumbles. "But… fine, have it your way. Is 'Aurum' short enough for you?"

"That means… what, gold?" He nods. "No. You can call it whatever the hell you want, but I'm calling it what it is: a sword. No stupid-ass latin name."

As I get closer to the blinking red light, I pocket his Scroll and reach over my shoulder to unsheathe his sword. It's lighter than it looks- but not by much, and it's still awkward to use compared to how quick and fluid I can be with my hands.

"You'll want to shift your dominant hand towards the bottom of the hilt," Arnaut advises. "Don't wind up too much on your swings, and make sure to lever the hilt between your two hands to make your attacks faster."

Before I can respond, I come over the top of a dune and see the source of the distress signal: an extremely small caravan of three or four trucks, with only a smattering of guardsmen defending it against a swarm of two-legged Creeps. There doesn't appear to be a Huntsman, and although the guards are doing a decent job of protecting the civilians, the sheer numbers and ferocity of the Grimm is beginning to overpower them.

"Why don't you start things off with a-"

"Already on it," I mutter, reaching into my backpack and extricating a Lightning Dust round, then turning the cannon so the hilt faces me and inserting the pointed tip of the shell into a slot at the top of the circular hollowed-out area along the blade. The weapon makes a pleasant hum and a yellow light activates on the side of the barrel.

Aim and shoot, I think, activating the rifle stock and leveling the cannon horizontally towards a pack of Creeps currently advancing towards the caravan from behind. They're far enough away that I don't have to worry about catching any unintended targets in the explosion.

Unfortunately, I grievously overestimate my aiming abilities and the shot goes wide, singeing the top of one of the trucks, streaming right by the head of a guard, and then impacting a dune. The resulting expanding sphere of raw Lightning energy reduces only two or three Grimm to ash, as well as nearly killing several guards and drawing the attention of everyone and everything involved onto me.

Well, shit. I snap his weapon back into sword mode and decide to gloss over my incompetence by simply charging forward towards the back of the Grimm, dragging the weapon behind me with one hand on the hilt.

I might not have technique, or experience, or anything resembling skill, but what I do have is strength and raw athleticism that bring the sword's wide front edge slicing around before me. At the last minute I do as Arnaut advised, pulling my bottom hand inwards while pushing out with the upper to rapidly accelerate the sword's strike and cleave right through the skull of the nearest Creep. Holy shit, I think, feeling a grin start to spread on my face, I could get used to this.

Another Creep comes charging at me but I swing my blade down towards it, cutting deep into the top of its head and nearly killing it immediately. I briefly wonder if I've been handicapping myself for years by using my claws when this is the kind of sheer damage that this sword can dish out-

Then again, there are some attached downsides, which I'm reminded of as I begin to pry the sword out with another Grimm rapidly approaching from my left. I'm not gonna make it, I realize, but when the Creep's snapping jaw nears me my arm acts on instinct and slams a fist up into the bottom of its head, lifting it off the ground.

Just in time, my other hand extricates the sword from the skull of one Grimm just in time to bring it slicing around and cut directly into the exposed belly of the other one I've just punched up off the ground. Both of them turn to ash, but the space they'd stood in is filled almost immediately by more of the unceasing horde.

"If you put more power into your strikes, you can keep a momentum going," Arnaut advises, miming an attacking movement with his own ghostly sword. "The trick is to-"

"Maybe save the advice for-" I duck under a Creep's kamikaze leap, hearing its jaws snap together over my head but managing to whip my arm up in time to grab its leg and turn it in midair to slam it into another of its brethren. "-Later. I'm kind of-" I raise Arnaut's sword up over my head and attempt a two-handed downwards blacksmith blow, which punches through both of the Creeps but throws me off-balance enough that I can't dodge another one tackling me and snapping its jaws shut on the forearm I raised defensively. "-In the fucking middle of something!" It hurts, but the teeth can't pierce my Aura... yet.

A few shots into its body loosen the vice clamp of its jaws enough for me to let go of Aurum and slam my fist directly into its head over and over until it finally releases my arm. I celebrate the occasion of having two arms again by clasping one atop the Creep's head, one beneath, and pulling them in opposite directions to snap the monster's neck.

I stalk forward to get the sword back and send more of my Aura than probably necessary pouring through my hand in a blow against the first Creep in my way, demolishing its skull upon impact. "Son of a bitch," I hiss- the arm's not fully back. Maybe using the sword's actually a decent idea, at least until my right arm's back in punching shape. Not that I'll ever admit it to Arnaut.

As I step into another swing, the sword starts to feel a hell of a lot more practiced in my grip than it probably should. This time I keep the momentum up when I cleave through the skull of the next Creep, going right through it without getting the sword caught, and turn the motion into a spin that forces two more Creeps back and killing another one.

"Liar," Arnaut accuses from behind me, but I'm too engaged at the moment to comment. It's only a few minutes later, when I've killed enough of the Grimm for hope to return to the caravan and the rest lose interest and bolt, that I decide to poke at what his meaning was:

"What did you mean by calling me a liar?"

"You've obviously had practice fighting with claymores before-"

"Thanks, Huntress," one of the guards interrupts, stepping up to lay a hand on my shoulder. I whip around and barely catch myself before obeying the instinct to punch him, turning the swing of my arm into an offered handshake:

"No… problem?" I frown, not sure how this interaction is supposed to proceed. "All in a day's work…?"

"Smooth," Arnaut comments.

"Shut up," I whisper back, before turning back to the guard: "I'll be going now."

"Uh… sure," the man responds, but I'm already walking away with Auru- shit, he's infecting me- with the sword sheathed away on my back.

"How are you from Solitas, of all places?" Arnaut asks me for what feels like the hundredth time in the last week of travel. In that week I've killed fifty-three Creeps, eight Beowolves, six Blind Worms, three Griffins, and two Ursi, mostly with the sword that I'm getting better with by the day. My arm's healed enough by this point for me to be able to practice my swings while walking, something I continue doing while pointedly ignoring Arnaut's inane questions.

"Hello?" Arnaut waves a hand in front of me, but I just keep repeating the same left-to-right two-handed swipe right through his body. Some of the muscles for swordfighting were already developed well enough from my hand-to-hand training, requiring only new muscle memory, while others I'm having to build up from scratch (with no small amount of soreness).

"I've been to Solitas, you understand," Arnaut presses, "It's all Dust mines and overcrowded cities. Everyone there's either a factory worker or a wealthy elite, and you're obviously neither. Other than anarchists and Faunus rights activists, almost all the crime there's suppressed, what with the ridiculous governmental overreaching and security protocols… but again, you don't strike me as someone with a cause-"

"Really? I don't seem like an anarchist to your Huntsman sensibilities?"

Arnaut frowns. "Are you?"

"Well, no, but that's not the point."

"Right, the point… which is: how the hell did a petty criminal like yourself come out of Solitas?"

"Atlas's got street urchins too, right?" I ask, careful not to actually say anything about myself.

"And your parents? How did you end up on the streets in the first place?"

"I'd tell you, but…" That would require trawling through some memories that I've put a serious amount of effort into not thinking about. Ever. So instead, I decide to kill the subject in the cradle: "I don't know. Been alone for as long as I can remember."

"Have you never thought about finding out-"

"Is that Nihayi up ahead?" I interrupt him and point towards the horizon, which is marred by a single dark blot that's too large to be anything but the city I just named, the final bastion of civilization before the dust wastes.

"Yes," Arnaut sighs. "And I'll ask you once more to reconsider your moronic plan."

"More or less moronic than chartering a boat with the entire country on lockdown?" I sigh, sheathing the sword for the moment as slight details of Nihayi come into view.

"More. Absolutely more," Arnaut immediately answers. "It's not even close. The dust wastes are- look, I don't know what you think you know about it, but I can assure you that there's a reason a patch of land nearly a fifth the size of the continent is abandoned. You need to at least get a vehicle of some sort-"

"And then what? Nothing small enough for me to pilot alone could possibly cross the dust wastes on one tank of fuel. No captain would ever offer to not just violate a national lockdown procedure, but also run themselves right into the most dangerous place on the planet. If I'm on foot I'm a hell of a lot more agile, and worst comes to worst I…"

I trail off as I see Nihayi and words die on my tongue. It's nothing like any of the cities, nomadic or not, that I've seen prior- no singular huge wall, instead six massive spires stretching up into the spy at equidistant points around the city. "What's up with…"

"Impressed?" Arnaut sounds smug for some reason. "Nihayi's one of the great Walking Cities- long since dead in its tracks, of course, but the legs-"

"Those are legs?" More details come into view and I can see that the 'ground level' of the city is probably fifty meters off the ground, atop a massive metal body buried in the sand, ramps forming a way up to the various entrances on the metal hull of what must have once been a true marvel. The six massive 'spires' from before are indeed legs, each one jointed at the top and with its foot pulled in to go nearly straight up and down.

"Nihayi and its brethren are a remnant of when Vacuo was a Dust-mining colony under the yoke of Solitas control. Massive walkers trawling the Dustlands-"

"Dustlands?" I've never heard of them, but my interruption seems to annoy Arnaut.

"Yes, yes, I'm getting to that. Solitas ordered the creation and operation of colossal mobile self-sufficient city-mines like the one you see before you. They ravaged the land in their wake, extracting every possible trace of Dust and leaving behind a trail of dead, ruined earth, until the Great War came to pass. Miners became soldiers and never returned, and what few remained ran out of viable land to exploit. One by one, the legendary trawler cities fell to ruin, leaving their occupants as food for the Grimm."

Nihayi does not seem to fit that last part, as there's nearly a full second makeshift city built in, on, and around the old one. Little platforms built into the spires serve as the bases for houses, and I can see the tiny moving forms of people bustling all throughout the city- "Seems pretty alive and thriving to me for a ruin, Arnaut."

"Nihayi is an exception. Its governor ordered it to move towards greater Vacuo and it escaped the Dustlands before they became the dust wastes. It's considered as just another one of the Great Cities these days, with the caveat of also serving as a defensive position in case the Dusties go off on one of their raids."

"Well, first off: Dusties? Dustlands? Dust wastes? You should fire the uncreative bastard in charge of naming these things. And second: Who the hell are 'Dusties?' Did you think that might be important to tell me before I wander right into their home turf?"

"Ah, right, I sometimes forget how little you know. Dusties are the people of the tribes formed from die-hard miners who wouldn't abandon their cities, but… centuries of isolation have made them regress into a more primitive, tribalistic 'society', if you can even call it that. They survive living in a Grimm-infested wasteland through extreme aggression, which translates into attacking anything- including errant, lost little Faunus girls pushing their luck by traveling on foot- on sight. I'd call them bandits, but they're a lot more skilled and deadly than your average thief or brigand."

I bite my lip as I reconsider my earlier decision. Trying to cross the dust wastes when it was just Grimm would likely be alright, as they typically have issues detecting me through my general apathy, but tribalistic hunters… that's more than I bargained for.

With that said, giving up now would require me to take a boat trip- during which I would be extremely seasick- and deal with Arnaut 'I-told-you-so-ing' for multiple weeks. Not to mention having to find and pay off a captain to avoid the travel restrictions, hoping the ship doesn't get attacked and sunken by Grimm...

I'll take the hunters, I decide. "Doesn't matter. I'm walking across the dust wastes."

"You little idiot!" Arnaut moves to be in front of me, walking backwards so he can face me while lecturing: "I've fought the Dusties. They're highly skilled and extremely dangerous, and I wasn't kidding when I said they attack anything but other Dusties on sight. There's a reason no land-based transport from Vacuo to Vale exists despite it being cheaper and easier than sea travel. I must urge you to reconsider-"

"Shush." I step up to the furthest-out edge of the city, passing by a variety of tents and buildings that all appear to vary in style and-

With a sudden flicker of realization, it occurs to me that these must be other nomadic towns and villages from southeast Vacuo that trailed in to the larger, probably safer and better-defended Nihayi. With no solid, permanent border here, there's no pesky guards asking me nosy questions, and outside of the occasional curious glance I'm completely unimpeded in my hike towards the larger city. I keep an eye out for any convenience or arms stores even as I soon enter a much dirtier portion of the city that must be the outer slums.

Here there buildings are more permanent, but also lower-quality, made of rotting wood and other equally sketchy materials, sometimes consisting of only canvas stretched over sticks. This city matches Luskhan for the number of disenfranchised and homeless people overstuffed into too small of an area. As I step up to a street and turn to continue along it towards a huge ramp leading up into the main city, the air gets smokier and smokier, becoming almost hazy with dark smog that trails from the heavily industrialized buildings.

Reminds me a little too much of home.

"Disgusting," Arnaut comments. "If there's one good thing about being in this state, it's that I don't have to breathe the gaseous filth that this city vomits out. I swear it only gets worse and worse each time I visit."

"So you have been here before," I note. "In that case, can you direct me to the nearest Huntsman supply store?"

Arnaut complies and it's only a few minutes before I'm stuffing almost forty ration bars into my bag. These are way worse than the meal packs, but they're also lighter and take up less space- quite literally only the absolute essential nutrients to keep a person alive, condensed into grey rectangular blocks of yuck.

I consider loading back up on ammo but feel like neither finding a false ID for use at a legitimate shop nor hunting down a criminal supplier at the moment. Besides, I've still got more than enough for what should only be a two-week hike at my pace.

The middle area of the city is made up by huge processing plants and factories, some obviously repurposed from the Dust-mining days and others built practically from scratch. They must be the source of the heavy smog.

Arnaut is uncharacteristically silent as I proceed deeper and deeper into the heart of Nihayi and then back out of it on the other side, leaving me to wallow in the heavy air and the memories it brings up of back before Roman found me. They aren't particularly pleasant ones, so for the first time I can remember, hearing Arnaut start to speak actually perks me up.

"I'll ask you one final time: please do not do this. The Dusties are… well, I'd say they're worse than the Grimm, but even the Grimm out there in the dust wastes are many times worse. They've had centuries of feasting on the hatred and fear of the remaining survivors to grow and adapt. Terrawyrms are practically commonplace out there, you understand?"

"Are the Terrawyrms likely to latch onto me?"

"Well, no, but-"

"Look, Arnaut, I'm gonna come clean here-" I cut off briefly as I notice what looks to be a Huntsman (judging by his black combat armor and the large assault rifle slung over his back) raise his hand to point at something over my shoulder- right, the sword. "Son of a bitch. Arnaut, you know this guy?"

"Ah… that's Kayro Serris. He's an acquaintance of mine, but-"

"Do I run away or try to bullshit here?"

"He'll catch you easily if you attempt to flee on foot."

"Bullshit, then," I whisper under my breath, just as the man steps right up to me and grabs my shoulder roughly.

Up close, he seems unlikely to buy whatever line I feed him. Two dark eyes set deep in his head behind a curtain of loose black hair seem to bore right through me, and his first words are just as disheartening: "How the fuck did you get that sword?"

"Wh- what sword? I don't know-" I bite my tongue as he clenches a hand on my shoulder hard enough to bruise.

"That is the sword of Arnaut Sylvas, a good friend of mine who is dead. You have thirty seconds to convince me not to break your arms and legs before throwing you in prison for the rest of your life."

"Holy shit," I whisper, defensive reflexes going crazy and screaming at me to make a run for it. "I'm… I'm…"

"Tell him you're the heir of my spirit," Arnaut says.

"No, that's stupid- Agh!"

Kayro twists my shoulder painfully. "Ten seconds. Nine. Eight."

"He follows the Endless Path. Tell him you're the Mortal Heir of my soul- those exact words."

"Four. Three. Two-"

"Gods damn it, fine!" I look the man in his eyes. "I'm the Mortal Heir of Arnaut's soul, or whatever."

Kayro freezes and actually loosens his grip, but then narrows his eyes. "Arnaut didn't follow the Path. You're lying again-"

"Tell him I'm sorry for not mentioning in my mission report how he helped me with those six Nevermores in Tayir."

"Uhm, Arnaut-"

"Wait- tell him I told you that the last time you communed. Tell him it was one of my Anchoring Regrets."

I'm extraordinarily uncomfortable attempting to stumble through this religious stuff, but also don't see a better option: "Okay, so Arnaut told me the last time I communica- I mean, communed, that he was sorry he left you out of his report when you two took down six Nevermores together." I frown, trying to remember- "Oh, right. He said it was one of his Anchoring Regrets…?"

Kayro takes the words hard, stumbling back a step or two, equal parts wonder, shock, and reverence mixing with a hint of distrust on his face. "You're… Arnaut would have mentioned, wouldn't he? But…"

"What now?" I whisper.

"Tell him another one of my Anchoring Regrets is in the dust wastes, and that you're on your way to deal with it."

"Uh, Arnaut has another Anchoring Regret out there," I say, pointing out to the east of the city, "And I'm going off to take care of it."

Kayro doesn't seem to hear me. "To think that, after all this time… I was important enough to him to serve as an Anchor? I misjudged him…" He looks up at me. "Arnaut, I misjudged you. You have my sincere apologies."

I frown. "My name isn't-"

"He thinks my soul is inside you."

"I mean, Arnaut accepts your apology- uh, or, I guess I assume he does? Look, I've gotta to out to the dust wastes, so if you'll just excuse me, I-"

Kayro's dark eyes snap up to meet mine. "I'll assist you. It's the least I can do for an old friend."

"Oh, uh…" I frantically think of an excuse- "This is more of a one-person thing, actually."

"Why?" Kayro crosses his arms.

"Why indeed," I say, doing my best not to look at Arnaut but wishing that he'd hurry up and feed me another religious reason already. "I said, why indeed?"

"You know, two people out in the dust wastes would have better odds of survival," Arnaut muses.

"Absolutely not," I say firmly, drawing a quizzical look from Kayro.

"I must insist on accompanying you," he says with the tiniest hint of a smile on his deadpan features. "This shall be my penance for having so grievously overlooked our late friend Arnaut's true attitude about me."

"No way-" I stop myself. If I get any pushier about this, he's liable to get suspicious again- and he seemed dead serious about breaking both my arms and legs. With Arnaut being zero help and myself stumped for a good reason to not take him along, I don't see any good way out of this.

"Son of a bitch," I mutter. "Fine, you can come along." I'll have to find a way to ditch him later, maybe once we're out in the dust wastes.

"Excellent. Allow me to treat you to lunch, then. You can explain to me your relationship with Arnaut, and how he came to choose you as his Mortal Heir!"

"Wonderful," I say through gritted teeth, before immediately transitioning to an under-my-breath frantic whisper: "Arnaut, what the fuck is this guy smoking? What's a Mortal Heir? And an anchor? And how the shit do you get off making me drag this guy halfway across the continent with me!?"

Arnaut ignores that last bit, instead answering my earlier questions one by one: "Kayro follows the Endless Path, a religion which states that, when a person dies, their soul goes to a designated 'Mortal Heir' of theirs, which then must commune with them and complete tasks known as their 'Anchoring Regrets', or things that they left unfinished and must see through. Once all the Anchors are lifted, the soul may move on to the afterlife and the Mortal Heir earns themselves a place in their heaven- once their own heir completes their anchors, of course. And so on and so forth."

"I-" I frown. "Hold on, that sounds like a description of what you're doing to me, making me go out of my way on some Huntsman bullshit for you."

"No no," Arnaut sighs, "Followers of the Endless Path may only speak with the departed through special communion rituals- which, by the way, I'll have to teach you if we're to keep up this charade."

"This day just keeps getting better and better," I hiss, just as Kayro grabs my arm to turn me down into another thin street. This city is practically a maze of alleys, ladders, platforms and twisting metal, built haphazardly on an industrial husk as it is, and I couldn't remember the route I'm dragged off along if I tried.

Eventually we reach a small noodle joint built inside a hollow metal smokestack, a metal grate floor the only thing keeping the place from collapsing down into the darkness below, from which a faint warmth is being exuded. I take a moment to bend down slightly and feel the increase in heat with my hands-

"The engines of Nihayi are still running faintly," Arnaut says. "With the amount of raw volatile Heat Dust fusion going on in them, it'll be another few centuries before they truly die down. The core overloaded and melted down- it's why the city stopped moving here, on the very edge of the dust wastes."

"Well, young friend of Arnaut's? What will you be having?" Kayro asks, drawing an equally awed and confused look from the slit-pupiled Snake Faunus lady manning the counter.

"I, uh…" I don't recognize any of the dishes on the menu, so I shrug helplessly.

Arnaut comes to my rescue: "Nodu Bowl with extra beef."

I order what he suggested and find myself dragged (once again by my injured shoulder) over into a seat across from Kayro, who immediately launches into speech: "Young… what was your name?"

"Drek-" Shit, I don't… but I'm too far in to change enough for it to matter anyway.- "Dreki."

"Ah." Kayro gives me an odd look. "That's not a Vacuese name, is it?"

"N-Yes? Nyes. Yes." For whatever reason, my ability to speak properly has imploded, to Arnaut's apparent delight as he starts laughing at me. The bastard.

"Yes, it isn't? Or yes, it is?"

"Yes, it isn't." I decide to stick close to the truth- can't fuck that one up too much, can I? "I'm from Solitas, actually."

"Really?" Kayro sounds interested in that. "Pray tell, how does such a young Faunus girl from halfway across the world end up not only following the Endless Path, but serving as the Mortal Heir of the Golden Guardian himself? That sounds like it must be quite the tale!"

"Yeah, you'd think, but…" I shrug. "It's pretty boring."

"Oh, come now," Kayro says just as two steaming bowls of noodles in broth arrive for us, "There must be more to it. Tell me, how did you end up transferring across the world to Vacuo from Solitas?"

"Uhm." I busy myself eating to buy time, trying to think of something that could reasonably work- "Oh, yeah. It was 'cause of all the anti-Faunus racism stuff in Solitas, you know?" It wasn't, but bleeding-heart Huntsman types usually buy that kind of thing, especially when it implies that their kingdom is better than any other one.

"So you came to Vacuo for our equality," Kayro muses. "But what about Arnaut? How did you meet him? And how did you become his Mortal Heir? A man who traveled as much as he did, must not have made for an easy person to connect with, especially for a student Huntress such as yourself- oh, excuse me, are you a Huntress?"

"Maybe…?" I frown, flashing my eyes over to Arnaut (who's sitting at an unoccupied third chair at our table). "I'm still a little confused about the whole 'becoming a Huntsman' process myself, to be perfectly honest."

"Tell him I took you on as a special protege-in-training in lieu of schooling at a primary combat school."

"Arnaut took me as a protege instead of me being trained at a primary combat school," I repeat. "But, you know, kept it quiet for obvious reasons. Wouldn't want a bunch of jealous people trying to also get taken on as apprentices, plus he was always trying to maintain that overblown 'cool loner' image- trying way too hard, if you ask me." I can't resist the opportunity to take a jab at him.

Kayro shakes his head. "It's unfortunate that Arnaut passed before really letting you know the purpose behind his… persona, but I'll spell it out for you now: there was a reason in nearly everything he did. He never stayed too long in one place, but made sure that every brief impression he made was larger-than-life, and always fought in an excessively theatrical manner… because he was cultivating a legend."

I blink a few times, then turn towards Arnaut, only to see him refuse to meet my eyes for some reason. Kayro continues, drawing my attention back to him: "At me and Arnaut's graduation from Shade, Ozpin, the visiting Headmaster of Beacon, told us that the greatest weapon against the Grimm was not dust or Aura, but simple faith. At the time, I did not take those words to heart, but Arnaut did. Since that conversation he dedicated his entire life to building his legend, and gave all of Vacuo something to have faith in: himself.

"I didn't agree with it, but even now- especially now- I must acknowledge that it was effective. Vacuo is… unique among the kingdoms. Cities are few and far apart, towns are makeshift and constantly moving, and vast hordes of Grimm roam around within its borders. What keeps it all working is, as Ozpin said, the faith of its people- for centuries, it was faith in higher powers, but for the last fifteen years it has been faith in Arnaut.

"His career saw a decided drop in Grimm attacks everywhere in Vacuo, even in places he visited only once or twice- or never at all, as few at those were. When the people of Vacuo were given this idea of a pure, infallible, shining hero, a 'Golden Guardian,' so to speak, they felt secure. Safe. And that very feeling of security and safety in turn kept the Grimm away.

"I'd always questioned his tactics, because he was taking the burden of keeping Vacuo safe squarely on his shoulders. If he ever died, well… I'd assumed the entire illusion would shatter and thrust us deeper into despair- and the Grimm- than we'd been when we started."

I sit, silent, as several things begin to click into place for me, and the exact same things seem to occur to Kayro, whose eyes widen: "But I only now realize that the rumors I've heard about his… ghost… saving straggling travelers, caravans, towns in transit… all of Luskhan. You were always the end goal, weren't you? An heir to his will, and the person responsible for writing the final chapter to his story. The only thing that could bring Vacuo more faith than a hero, is an actual legend- a spirit of a hero that, even after death, would go on saving people forevermore."

I snap my gaze back towards Arnaut, eyes blazing with a renewed suspicion that this whole mess was his fault. The promises that I wouldn't be drawing too much attention, that the news wouldn't spread, all lies. He was using me as a pawn for his idiotic fucking quest, and now I'm sure my face has been plastered on god knows how many screens all across the country-

There's a tiny flicker of white in one of the scales poking out from where the glove on my wrists ends, and I immediately shelve all the thoughts and emotions before they can trigger my Semblance. By now, trampling my feelings is second nature, so it's easy to transition into more apathy: "Yeah, I've been doing some odd jobs for him on my way out to the dust wastes," I sigh. "But I'm pretty sure the stories have been blown wildly out of proportion."

"As all stories are," Kayro says, expression still deadly serious. "But, perhaps that was the linchpin of our late friend's entire plan. A story can never be defeated the way a single man could. Perhaps in death- and through your efforts- Arnaut has given our kingdom what it needs most in these trying times to come."

(A/N) I've seen conflicting maps of Vacuo from different sources, but I'm operating under the impression that the majority of the kingdom is split between a northern tropical area and one large desert, and then there's a separate, darker-colored badlands separating the kingdom from Southern Vale. In this story, that's the dust wastes.