Hello everyone! How are you all doing? Hope you are fine!
Here is chapter 114. As always, I wish you enjoy it!
Thank you all, one more (and definitely not the last) time for following/ favoring/ reading the story. You are all awesome and I love you!
See you next week in chapter 115, as usual. Until then, be well and have fun!
Two rays of light from Yang and Velvet's lamps fell on the crashed train. Now that they were looking at it from a closer distance, the dented and battered doors and wagons were unreasonably old and rusted.
"This can't be a train that ran the underground up until two days ago" Blake concluded. "Like everything else, it seems to have decayed quite fast; possibly an aftereffect of the barrier or some unknown Grimm."
Standing a few steps behind, Weiss stared at the broken windows. The few pieces still in place were dyed in caked blood. She took one step and let her mismatched eyes examine one piece. The blood seems to be originating from the wagon's interior, as I expected it she threw it away.
"Baby, don't go off on your own" Yang shouted at her in concern as she stood in front of a metal sliding door. Weiss walked back to them "I am fine; let's just go in already" she tried to brush off Yang's concerns.
"Is the door stuck?" Blake asked her partner. "Yeah but it's no big deal. Just gimme a minute and it's gonna be all right" she tried to pry it open before smashing it-
As her fingers touched the blockaded iron leaf, a surge of dizziness hit her. Her fingers trembled and her hair stood on edge. She felt her heart throb loudly and cold sweat running down her spine.
An overwhelming sense of loss filled her vey being. There was a feeling of dread and abandon coming out from the collapsed vehicle. She had no idea how she knew that, but that metal husk, that abandoned ghost of a train, was a place where life had been snuffed out completely.
A cool, gentle touch in her back made her turn around. She met a pair of cyan eyes staring at her in worry "what's going on? Do you feel sick?" her fiancée asked her, while the two faunus stood behind ready to help.
"I don't know how to explain that" she caressed Weiss' soft hair before she turned to Blake "I got the chills all of a sudden. But it was freaky; I'd never felt like this before" she explained and then took a deep breath.
"I don't know if you guys will believe me, but I feel that there is nothing alive left in there" she pointed with her thumb to the wreck behind her back. Weiss raised an eyebrow in the weird choice of words.
"Isn't that obvious, though?" Velvet walked ahead to the couple, while Blake, who knew her partner far more than her fellow faunus, sent her a surprised look. Lilac eyes nodded and the blonde took off her hat.
"Look" she ruffled her hair, allowing Weiss to take her palm and start a quick investigation on the strange eyeball tattoo; the fact it was barely visible anymore wasn't enough to make them forget it at all.
"What I am trying to say is this; I don't think the people in there didn't make it. I am feeling it with my senses, dunno how. It's the same way one smells food and realizes it's good, if it makes any sense to you."
"That is kind of crude" Velvet reprimanded her. "It does the work on the other hand" she gave a quick smile to Yang. "Do you want to rest?" now visibly worried their leader got closer to them, weapon at hand.
"I am fine now. It was barely for a moment, that's all" the tall woman stared at her fiancée who raised her head from examining the weird shape. She grinned at Weiss, who returned it with a glare of her own.
"It doesn't react or bulge at all. There is not even the slight pulse of energy it had until recently" she announced, sending the cat girl a questioning look, asking her leader's opinion and waiting for her orders.
Trying to not let her anxiety be fed by her friend's questioning gaze, the black-haired woman combed her ponytail "if Yang says its fine, I trust her. We lost enough time here and we don't have a place to retreat to."
Three quick nods later and Yang found herself in front of the door once more. A bit reluctant at first, she got a lot braver when she didn't feel the same nausea appear. She grabbed the metal leaf and tore it open.
The cacophonous, screeching noise of rusted metal chilled their nerves, but they didn't have the luxury to dwell on it too much. As soon as their lights fell inside, death and rot welcomed them with red, bloody arms.
The wagon was full of corpses. Rotten flesh and decayed bones dressed in moldy clothes and holding shredded bags. Blood had dyed the floor a deep crimson color, giving a macabre tinge to the dusty walls and seats.
I knew it. The blonde stared at her team in sadness. Weiss lowered her head and Velvet made a quick gesture of praying for their souls with her hands. Blake jumped on and landed with her knees slightly bent.
"I am going first. Yang is after me and Velvet goes after Weiss to guard the rear. Keep your eyes sharp and your senses high, until we can get a good idea of what happened inside the train" she commanded them.
Kitty's getting all serious. I guess it's a good thing Yang thought as she helped Weiss and Velvet up the train, mindful to not step on the body closest to them. "It smells like a cemetery in here" she heard Weiss say.
"That is true" their leader had already moved a couple steps and knelt in front of a skeleton that was hanging from the nearby bar, wrist tied on the rotten leather handle. She stared in shock at its bashed skull.
"This one was not killed by Grimm" the cat girl looked at her partner. "His head was smashed by a thin, heavy object; like a bat or a-"
"Metal bar used for standing" her fellow faunus lit a fallen, bloody bar, bent by being hit with immense force. It was held by a corpse, with a detached, snapped in half, arm. She imagined it happen and shivered.
Just a couple feet away, Weiss examined a pile of corpses. Three human bodies formed it, with barely any flesh left, on top of each other. They were so intertwined at some places; it was tough to have a clear sight-
As soon as she found their hands and legs, the alabaster woman took a few seconds to clear her mind from the shock. The top one was clearly holding a glass shard and had used it to cut the mid one's throat with.
The mid one had his fingers around the lower one's broken spine. They strangled them to death! The lower one, on their part, had his own arm stretched, grabbing his killer's chest, while he had used a metal bar to impale both the other two in their stomachs, like it was an iron skewer.
"Weiss?" she heard Yang walk behind her "did you find anything baby?" She turned around and coughed in her palm before she answered her fiancée, sending gazes at her eye tattoo for any unwanted movements.
"What am I looking at, Yang?" she asked in morbid astonishment. "I am no stranger to seeing dead bodies, but… those corpses were so brutally killed! Like they had no regard for their safety and only wanted to-"
"Kill the ones they believed to be their enemies" Blake cut them off, her grim voice echoing like the harbinger of demise inside the rusty, metal coffin of a train. "Does it remind you of something?" she asked Weiss.
"We" she trailed off for a moment, feeling Yang's comforting grip land on her shoulder "we acted this way back in Nyctos' coffin; when it got both of us to catfight against each other" the pale girl replied.
"Every corpse inside this wagon is the same manner; they were all killed in brutal ways, next to their killers" Velvet announced, kneeling next to the door that led to the next wagon. "And they all used whatever they found available at the time; bars, knives, chairs, their fists and bags…"
"I think it's a plausible theory that Nyctos showered them in its aura of rage to the point they beat each other to death and left them" Blake's voice commented. The feline girl looked at the bloodstained windows-
She saw a smiling reflection vanish behind the caked blood before her usual idol returned. Her yellow disks were open wide from the shock. In a moment, she saw her chest going up and down in heavy breathing.
Not again! She licked her lips, stared at her reflection a couple times to make sure nothing unusual still happened and turned back to her team.
"Let's get to the next one; we can't stay in here for too long" she said as she walked by Yang. She exchanged a quick glance with the blonde who was looking at the display of corpses in deep, troubled silence.
"Is everything okay, Yang?" she whispered at her. "I am just felling sad; nothing more. I am not so sure why I feel like this, though. You know I never was the mourning one" she whispered back in a confused voice.
The cat girl stared at the other side of the wagon where Velvet helped Weiss collect a few blood samples. "All corpses look really old" the pale huntress explained "despite obviously that not being the case here."
"I want to test them back at the lab to see if there is a scientific reason for that state before I start considering magic and other stuff" she then finished her thoughts "it will take no more than a couple minutes."
"True" Blake tapped her partner's hat on her head "tell me if you feel anything coming up, ok?" Yang nodded "same goes for you, kitten" she winked at her and moved to pry open the destroyed folding door.
Each wagon they passed through was the same; blood, rust, dust, mold and brutally killed corpses in weirdly advanced stages of decomposition.
Yang, in an alarming state of silence and lack of her usual aloofness was leading the group alongside Blake. Weiss and Velvet were behind and occasionally stopped to gather samples and examine corpses' wounds.
The cat girl stopped in front of another automatic door. It looked a lot heavier and armored, unlike the normal ones they had seen so far. She realized it was the one leading to the cab. "Go on" she told her partner.
Wordlessly and with only a nod to affirm the command, the tall woman grabbed the armored door and started pushing it open while Blake took out Envelop ready to shoot anything that might attacked the tall girl.
The heavy armor slowed down Yang's work, but after a while the leaf's rail started to move with a creaking sound, as rusted pieces of metal rubbed on each other. Her muscles strained, but she silently endured it.
"Isn't she acting too weird?" the calm, aggravating voice from before reached Blake's feline ears as she saw it, as pompous and arrogant as ever, stepping out from the corner of the room, right next to her friend.
The world blurred around her. Her heartbeat rose, making her pulse feeling like a jackhammer. Noise got muddled and even colors lost any sort of recognition, turning a darker, black-purplish tone. "Go away."
"Why?" it asked her "because you don't believe what I say? Or because you do?" she- it- narrowed its eyes, smirking. "Yang is acting weird and you know it, even if you are too afraid to bring it up to her" it stated.
"I am not afraid of Yang. I trust Yang. I love her even more than if she were my sister" she hissed, feeling the words coming out of her mouth in a slower than normal pace, like she was stretching them.
"Then why don't you call her out for her risky and inappropriate way of taking this mission?" it replied. "Have you actually realized the sheer amount of danger she put you into?" the cat faunus didn't reply at all.
"She didn't withdraw when she saw an unholy mark in her hand, or when she started getting emotionally and spiritually depleted." "Shut up" she clutched her chest, scratching her gloves from the inside.
"She is risking everything just to satisfy her own need to be around you all, no matter the cost." "Shut. Up" she bit her lips to control her rising anger. Red, warm blood coated her tongue, leaving a bittersweet taste.
"I bet, she prefers to be around, whispering sweet words to your blood-stained and mutilated corpses rather than sitting home and waiting like a good girl; such a-" "Shut up, or I will end you this very moment."
There was no shouting, not even a raise of her voice. The black-haired huntress merely stated the threat as a matter of fact to the eidolon. On its part, it simply shrugged its shoulders and dropped its smile.
It was the first time she saw the figure taking in a serious face. It scared her much more than she expected to; as if she was seeing into its true nature. Or was her true nature? Dust gracious, I am losing my mind!
"End me?" it asked in the same voice she knew she had when getting deadly serious. An eerie aura surrounded her, chilling her very bones. She instinctively reached out for her weapon, before it spoke again.
"How are you going to do that, exactly?" it took one step forward. Her own eyes were reflected into their copies. She saw large, purple irises form in the middle of the shining yellow feline orbs. They scared her.
"After all" it stopped its advance "I simply said out loudly the very same thing that lurks into your mind." "JUST DIE!" Blake punched the figure with her left arm- and felt a sharp pain in her fist as it collided on metal.
She realized she had acted too rash again, only after her punch landed on the wagon's wall, a couple meters away from Yang. She quickly took out one ampule and sniffed it like her life depended on it; which, in her current predicament, was not that far from how she felt.
Without even looking around, she knew her friends were staring at her and waited for an explanation. So much for being a good leader, Blake. So much for being dependable! She clutched her chest again-
"Ready to go" Yang's voice accompanied the image of the door to the cab having opened enough for a person to pass through. "I will provide cover" Velvet created a three-barreled assault rifle in her arms at once.
"You are not going to ask what happened?" she looked at them in both shock and confusion. "It's the image you have been seeing, isn't it?" Weiss walked next to her, Myrtenaster at hand. She meekly nodded.
"Then, there is nothing to say" Yang took a peek at the small corridor leading to the control room with the help of her lamp. It was cleaner than she had been expecting it to "unless you prefer discussing your issue rather than giving us orders on how to proceed" she exclaimed.
The ex-heiress gave her a handkerchief "wipe off your lips first. They shouldn't get infected, but be mindful of it next time." "You…" she took the tissue and hung her head in shame.
Those three… they are putting their trust in me that much? "I can't completely trust myself at this point" she said, head still tilted down, but smiling with warmth she had almost forgotten how good it felt.
"Velvet will take my place next to Yang as the second frontline" with a reserved gulp, she announced "I will stay behind with Weiss to provide as much support as necessary. If I am unable to, she will call the shots."
The three girls nodded at their leader, smiling. Velvet swapped her gun for Cross and Bell replicas and moved forward, jumping inside the cab just behind the blonde girl. "That was a good call" she heard her say.
For the first time in a while, the cat girl felt satisfied enough to keep smiling at her team as they slowly advanced to the end of the train.
-o—
The cab was rusted and full of dust, but there were no signs of battle or splatters of blood around. They tip-toed the narrow path to the control room and carefully pried open the hanging door leading inside.
The body of a man, rapidly decayed, was sitting on the room's single chair. His clothes had been melted away and his bones barely held any sort of cohesive form; as if they were looking at an ancient corpse.
Behind him, the control panel was so rusted, that even brushing Yang's hand on it made a wry sound like an old mine trying to remember its former glory. Velvet knelt next to the corpse and started examining it.
"Is anything useful to be found?" Blake stood by the door on guard duty while the Xiao-Long couple searched around the room. "Not here" her partner begrudgingly replied. "Give me a few minutes" Weiss added.
"I can't be sure" the bunny girl stood up after a while "since I am not a doctor, but this person has no scars on his corpse indicating any deep wounds, nor are there any stains here showing tremendous blood loss."
Lilac met yellow and they both turned their heads at Velvet "you mean this person died of natural causes?" Blake asked in confusion. "I think it's a possibility" her fellow faunus replied. "Say what?" Yang blinked.
"This is purely a hypothesis" the brunette begun explaining "but so far we have seen signs of abandon everywhere; rusted metals, dusty and full of decay surfaces, corpses that look ancient… like Vale was not a living city and those things were not brand new three days ago, right?"
"Right" their leader nodded, eager to see what her friend's theory was. "What if, and I remind you it's just a theory, this dome has the ability to make things much older by absorbing their energy?" she concluded.
"Nyctos couldn't do that; I think, at least" Yang replied. Her voice was emotionless and full of worry. She was as angry at herself for that as at the thin tattoo that glazed her hand. She threw a couple glances at it.
"That may be true, but we are not up only against Nyctos, are we?" the bunny girl asked them. Blake's eyes opened wide from realization; so much, that she ignored the haughty laughter fading away in her head.
"You may be up to something! We have seen Cherry cast some really elaborate spells. It makes sense she wouldn't be the only one in their group to do so" she concluded. "Again, that's just a theory" Velvet said.
"If it's true" Yang, trying to fight off her annoyance, rubbed her head in an attempt to chill her nerves "what is their purpose? Because I am not buying the whole 'we are bad guys doing bad things' explanation."
"Energy" Blake replied to her, so suddenly and surely that she even got herself confused. "Energy?" her partner asked her. "Remember what we said back with the others; they need the proper time, place and the correct amount of energy to perform their rituals" she grimly noted.
"I second that" Weiss' voice cut them off. She was kneeling in front of the control room and stood up, holding a piece of metal that glowed in a pulsing, green set of runes; a very familiar one. "That is…" Blake said.
"A piece of metal from the control panel; someone scribed this rune on it" the alabaster girl replied. "Do you know what it does?" the cat girl's voice was slightly betraying her anxiety at the swirling magical energy.
"I am sorry, I don't" cyan eyes looked away in shame. "This magic is way too advanced for me" she smiled as Yang gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder "I can tell it's not much different from my runes, though" Weiss exclaimed.
"Throw it away" Blake firmly stated, making the petite woman raise an eyebrow. "If there is a chance it has to do with absorbing energy, I am not having you carry this thing with you around this ghost city, Weiss."
Her pink lips parted slightly in order to protest; but a quick gaze at her very concerned fiancée and the determined face of her team leader had her change her mind. Weiss looked at Velvet, who shook her shoulders.
"You are possibly right" she then carefully placed the plate on the floor and stared at Blake, who let out a deep breath "I promise we will come to recover it as soon as we are done with the mission, ok?"
"There is no need to go out of your way; you know that" she argued "I agree it may be dangerous and don't want to-"
"Oh come on; at least let her respect your wishes" Yang cut her off. "We will be recovering that plate, as soon as we deem the dome safe" Blake looked at her partner who held up her scroll, smiling brightly.
"Just uploaded the location here; unfortunately the connection to our EOL is still cut off" she explained. Blake smiled at her family's antics "I hope we won't need it; let's get out of here and reach the station."
They opened the cab outer door and stepped out in the deserted rail, unaware that their actions were currently being reflected on the clear surface of a golden chalice held by a robed man with a brown beard.
Bistre Woodrock cursed under his breath as they left his barrier, having discovered much more than he wanted them to for his runes and the purpose of his created dome. Their meddling had become troublesome.
Such wonderful camaraderie, he spat in irony as he walked towards the shelf where his summoning components were let's see how much it can keep saving your naïve lives, huntresses.