Hello everyone! How are you all doing? I hope you are fine.
Chapter 142 is here and as always I hope you enjoy it!
Thanks again to all of you for following/ favoring/ reading and commenting on the story. You are awesome; all of you!
I will see you all next week in chapter 143. Until then, be well and have fun!
Yang's sleeping noises did little to alleviate Weiss' fear as the pale girl kissed her beloved one's forehead before tugging a soft blanked under Yang's feet- the way she loved it the most. She then stood up and left.
She gently tiptoed around the corridor, being careful to not disturb any one. Blake and Ruby were talking in the guest room, trying to ease their fears before managing to get some decent sleep; she could hear cries and muffled whimpers occasionally coming out of the half-closed door.
After Yang's breakdown, they had decided to call it a night. Jaune and Sun had returned to their homes and RWBY had chosen to gather and sleep together in Weiss and Yang's house to take care of the blonde.
Weiss stopped her movement and stole a look outside the window. The panels were open and the pale moonlight was dying the interior in its mesmerizing color- a complete antithesis to the comet's bright red one.
The city was silent. A deceptive calm spread around, like a large curtain waiting to rise on the final moments of humanity. The amount of vile horrors hiding in the silence... she shivered and fiercely shook her head.
Instead of calming down, this situation has gotten the best of me. With a series of tiny little steps, Weiss reached the living room and took out a small dust lamp. She pursed her lips close to the glass and whispered.
Like a gentle breeze out of a flower, light was suddenly breathed into the glass. A low, warm white-bluish light emanated now from the lamp.
She put it on top of the desk and took out two books; a brand-new and leather bound notebook and a file full of scribbles and photos. It was all of Oobleck's work on transcribing Octavios Red's and Azure's journals.
She tugged her hair up and picked a pencil before she brought her mind back to the conversation she had with the green-haired historian earlier that day when he gave her the copies of his notes and translations.
"With due respect, Doctor, most of what you are telling me is already known or hypothesized. Don't you have anything new to work on?" she tried to hide her annoyance. Oobleck wasn't at fault and deserved none.
"With all due respect, Miss Schnee, I would like to note how exactly not easy the process is. Azure's journal aside, Mr. Red's notes are not only well encrypted, they are also organized in text combinations" he said.
"Could you explain?" she raised an eyebrow. "Oh, but of course. You see my dear child, not only he uses codes to change the meaning of what he writes inside it, he has also installed three fake codes while doing so."
Her eyes opened wide, both in shock and astonishment of the man and his extremely cautious nature. "Furthermore, even if you manage to do a complete decoding, you will only find scattered words need to be put in proper combinations using another set of codes- like hieroglyphs."
"So, in other words, his text is a mess of chaotic words need to put in place to form any coherent meaning, right? Can't we just choose which word groups to check depending on the information we want?"
"That's doable, yes, but you have to run through the whole text first to make sure that you miss no symbol corresponding to the codes you have used. Losing even one would possibly change the whole meaning."
"Can't we use computers to do that?" "We could, if we had a program that can run on a dead language like the one Red used for his hidden texts. Unfortunately, the only way right now is to do it manually."
Weiss sighed. What she had to do was very simple- and extremely time consuming. She had to select a few words, find the codes Red used for all these words and then use them to scour the text for any sentences or spells that matched the selected codes. If she were lucky, that was.
Ok… she flipped Oobleck's pages to find all the codes. Let's try 'Mother' first. If not, we can do either 'curse', 'eye' or 'comet'. Here's to hoping; and to believing she opened the leather bound tome and begun work.
As night grew, silence enveloped Weiss. She delved deeper and deeper into the scripts; her pen's scribbling was the only sound accompanying her frantic search. Her water cup was still full and her food untouched.
A couple doors away, Yang opened her eyes. Her body was sore, but gentle warmth hugged her, mimicking the spectacular rays of pale silver light passing through the open window. She smiled and raised her arm.
The tattoo was there, but the Grimm eye had returned back to hiding in her flesh. A small wound- the remains of Blake's cut- was slowly being closed by her aura's work. She sighed in a slightly relaxed manner.
"I freaked out again… sheesh" she rubbed her forehead. "I've got to do something about it soon; I am starting to lose it and I am not helping Rubes, Snowflake and Blakey with acting like a lunatic" she murmured.
She removed her blanket and was immediately assaulted by a sense of abnormal cold. Her skin had formed goosebumps and her hair stood on edge. What the heck? Did I sleep the summer away or something?
Dressed in only a thin nightdress that felt ridiculous to sleep into, Yang stepped out of her bed. The warm night air seeping in from the corridor windows helped her realize how strange it was for her to feel cold.
Drawn by the light blue fluorescence emanating from the living room, she stopped by the guest room to see Ruby and Blake napping. A quick jab of sorrow pierced her heart as she walked in- Ruby's face was wet.
A box of tissues was next to her little sis who was trying to sleep despite the visible pain her dreams were inflicting on her. She had cried herself to sleep- and Yang knew she was the cause behind it.
She tried to reach out and caress Ruby's cheek, but retreated at once. A recent memory of the brunette's windpipes being squeezed under her fingers had Yang shiver. She gritted her teeth hard enough to feel pain.
So, it's come to this, Rubes? She gripped her left wrist. Not only I caused you pain, but I also can't even chase your bad dreams away? She turned to stare at Blake. The faunus was sleeping as lightly as ever. She sighed.
I need some water and something to eat. Before sorrow crept its way back to her, Yang back stepped away from her sister and partner and walked towards the living room, now feeling even colder than before.
As she stepped out of the hall, her eyes welcomed the sight of Weiss' tiny back bent over her working desk. The light blue lamp sent rays of thin light on her lover's form, highlighting her determined face.
The scribbles of a pen and the sound of paper rustling in those elegant fingers was so enticing that Yang humored the thought of standing in the corner and admiring her lover until she turned around to see her.
"Baby?" realizing that something like this would be extremely creepy under the circumstances she decided to gently call out to her instead.
A cascade of blue and white turned its attention to her. "You woke up? Are you feeling all right?" she dropped her pen and made an attempt to stand up, only for the blonde to walk and kiss her forehead.
"I kind of slept my troubles away this time" she caressed Weiss' cheek and enjoyed the thin pink lips kissing her scar. If Weiss could literally kiss the trouble away… that would the best thing in the freaking world. "You are dressed too lightly- is my dress comfortable enough?" Yang nodded "It's fine; most important" she leaned forward a bit.
"What are you doing?" she stared at the series of notes her fiancée had strewn across the wooden surface. Ink blots and trailed lines connected with each other, forming symbols and groups. She tilted her head.
"I am trying to use Oobleck's notes to try and find anything relevant to your situation" Weiss exclaimed. Yang's lips opened and she tried to say something at first, but quickly changed her mind and walked away.
A couple seconds after that, she returned with a bottle of water, a slice of cake and a chair in her hands "let me help; anyway I can help you is fine" she pecked Weiss' lips, happy to see her smile and kiss her back.
"All right" the petite huntress replied "start by noting down every word I tell you; then we will compare and try to use this key to filter the fake from the true ones…"
-o—
Blake's sleep had never been a deep, luxurious one. As far as she could remember, all her rests since she had been a child were small, shallow, restless slumbers. It was as if her mind tried hard to work while resting.
And that wasn't only exclusive to missions; it also happened during her time off. The only times she could enjoy deep relaxing sleep were when Sun was hugging her. Not that she would ever openly admit it.
Based on that, it was no surprise to see that she had heard all of Yang's previous shenanigans despite her decision to not show and make her partner feel really uncomfortable; Yang had a lot of her mind already.
Neither was the fact that she was the first one to realize the blonde's hurried steps and was already on her feet when the guest room door got opened and an anxious Yang Xiao Long appeared at the doorstep.
"Wake Rubes up; we found something really important."
"So, you guys worked on Red's notes while we slept?" Ruby clicked her tongue in a half-drowsy state "now I feel like a lazy bum" she added, making Yang smile proudly at her praise. "To each their own, little sis."
Ruby stuck her tongue out, but Blake cut both of them off with an angry glare "let's get to the important part, shall we?" she addressed Weiss. A nod of approval was the pale girl's only reaction before she spoke.
"Unfortunately, we found nothing about the Grand Mother or eyes" in an apologetic manner, the ex-heiress began. "But, when we used the code 'curse', quite a few things came up and we continued that path. What we reached at the end may be tied to another Eldergrimm."
The light flickered for a moment, startling the members of team RWBY. Blake and Ruby shifted a bit closer to each other and Yang reached out her hand to caress Weiss' back. All the summer warmth had vanished.
"Go on, please" Ruby gulped and urged Weiss to continue. The pale girl opened the notebook, took a good look outside the window and began.
"The Harbinger of Blight is quite possibly one of the foulest beings that existed on the face of Remnant" her voice turned a sorrowful note. "A heck of a way to make an entrance" Ruby licked her parched lips.
"Faunus call it Charon, since their religion depicts the being as a cloaked figure that heralds death and destruction. Its Vacuan name is Tephrus, for its domain is a pit of black, molten rock surrounded by six towering red monoliths. All worshippers, however, agree on its formal title; The Mad King of Curses." She stopped for a moment to calm down.
Realizing everyone was paying full attention to her Weiss continued "a being unlike most of its peers, The Mad King is a twisted, paranoid one. It lacks its siblings' physical abilities and is often depicted as a tall, sickly figure wrapped in a pale yellow cloak with malformed limbs and head."
"That looks a lot like the Nameless One Bistre summoned" Blake's eyes lit up in recognition. "I asked Cherry about it; it seems it was created in Vacuo by some lunatics who wanted to leech of powers from an Elder."
"That Elder, it would seem" Ruby connected the dots. "Its magic skills and capabilities are phenomenal, on the other hand. Its mere gaze has the ability to twist and warp human mind under its polluted lunacies.
Its magical knowledge is vast and it has enough intellect to perform any magic it desires on its own. In the old times…" Weiss trailed off "people who desired power would travel to the far land of Vacuo in order to see and beg before the monstrous being for a gift of its arcane mysteries."
"People seriously did that?" "At this point I am not even surprised, little sis." "As word of its unstoppable powers came to pass, more and more people would fly to ask for its aid. Word is, even Salem's father studied under the monstrous being for a brief period. And so, magic flourished.
And when I say flourished, I mean in the worst possible way. It should be no surprise to anyone that Mad King never intended to share with puny humans that easily. What people did, what it made them do…"
Weiss gulped and continued, hoping her voice hadn't started to crack "it taught mortals- puny, power-hungry, irresponsible mortals- how to summon and command lesser Grimm. How to cast rituals of such evil nature I dare not include here. I once participated in one- Sweet Dust!
It brought black magic and the study of curses to the world of men. It gave them knowledge; only to help them dig up their own graves. Its teachings gave humans power- in exchange for unnamable tributes.
Offering sacrifices and tributes to it only accelerated its hunger. Magic floated towards its domain, with sages and powerful wizards bringing their own studies before the monster. It took everything- and gave back only what it could; blight and curses. Death, rot and madness.
Every person casting spells under its name carried the curse of blight in them. Madness and death spread like a disease; the breath of a King of no mortal domain. Its empire was the rot brought forth by its teachings.
Grimmification began with it. Even though Avyssos had developed a tad similar practice, Charon was the first one to properly scribe down spells to mutilate and replace parts of one's flesh for Grimm" Weiss spat out.
"And the worst part of all; the abominations it created to serve. Like all of its siblings, it had a court of servants surrounding it. I asked Bistre of this once and he told me 'no mortal mind should even come across the twisted creations of the Mad King, shunned by men and Grimm alike."
"Shunned by Grimm?!" Ruby's voice cut the tension, her shock evident in her outburst. "What things did it create that other Grimm wouldn't even go- the Hound!" she answered her own question in astonishment.
"It would seem Salem had a lot of inspiration out of her rivals' skills" a soft growling comment came from Blake, her eyes narrowed in a quite aggressive manner at what she was hearing.
"Can you even imagine a domain where all Grimm are like the Hound; or the Nameless?" Ruby shivered "I am grateful to Salem for once, for sealing it away." Yang and Weiss stared at each other in a dry smile.
"There are a few lines left" the alabaster woman commented before she continued reading again.
"Once upon a forgotten land, a King of Fools on a throne of sand,
Curses and magic nameless it held, mind and matter alike it meld,
Twisted, warped, shrouded in blight, worshipped by men and Grimm alike,
In agony thrived and madness it brought, a curse itself cast on the world,
The Black Witch's magic sealed it away, inside a coffin of enchanted clay"
With every line, her voice rose and the faces of team RWBY grew paler. The rhythm was akin to a child's song, but listening to their friend's gentle voice utter those blasphemous words was terrifying on its own.
"Inside it remains in slumbering haze…" Weiss raised her eyes and fixed them on her friends, as she uttered the final lines with extreme caution.
"Forever expecting the scarlet star's gaze."
-o—
A few hours ago
Vacuan Desert, Clayhorn Village
"And I tell you, Wilfred,this thing is definitely Theodore's way of telling us we are not ready for bigger things yet" the girl said, narrowing her eyebrows while trying her best to look menacing towards her partner.
She was slightly short, wearing a long desert cloak over her purple vest and olive green cargo pants. A light yellow shirt completed her outfit. A long gray halberd hung from her back and she held her scroll in hand.
Her companion, a tall boy with a bright red ponytail, neatly shaved hair above the cheeks and silver circlets hanging from his left ear, sighed in an exaggerating manner, tugging his cloak against the desert night cold.
"How many times have I told you to stop exaggerating about things so far, Violet?" he glared at the girl with his bright orange eyes "it wasn't funny two years ago and hasn't become funnier so far" he added.
The girl groaned and shook her throat, a disproportional sack forming out of her flesh. Her cheeks puffed and her skin color changed from its original pinkish lilac to bright, venomous neon purple. She glared back.
The boy raised a red double-barreled shotgun, let it rest on his shoulder and walked past her "honestly, if I didn't know better I would take you for a cat faunus with such an attitude, V" he teased her while walking.
The girl deflated and ran after him, moving up the closest sand dune. It was their goal to reach the top of the dunes and stay guard up there, watching over the isolated Clayhorn Village that stood behind them in the shadow of the Red Rocks- a massive array of Red clay monoliths.
"I am serious, Will!" she screamed "why are we stuck on guard duty while Christopher with Marie are helping with the investigation?" the sand had already started to turn its black-golden color, distinct for this area since when the boy could remember it.
He gave her a hand to help her climb after him "Someone has to do it; if all those mercenaries the expedition leader stationed in the perimeter had your mindset, nothing would work for them" he replied to the girl.
"I am sure team RWBY wasn't stuck with guard duty on their third year in Academy" she pouted. The boy gave her a stern glare again "we are not team RWBY, V. And I have no desire to get killed pretending to be."
If possible, she deflated even more. "I would have liked to at least take a better look at the comet; but no. Boss had me check the area map at the time, so I missed the only interesting thing to happen tonight. Life-"
Suddenly, her scroll beeped, cutting off her complains. She picked it up at once, recognizing Christopher's number "yes, Boss?" she asked him.
"Please tell me you are in position, V" the voice was slightly muffled and hoarse, with lots of static. She took a peek at the boy next to her. "We are almost there" she honestly replied. Wilfred groaned in annoyance.
"I won't comment on that" Chris replied "we have lost touch with the investigation team; all communications were cut off again after the meteor faded. Use your radio, get in position and call them ASAP!"
They exchanged a quick stare "yes, sir!" they both replied and started scaling the dune, making sure to not waste any more time. Christopher was a really kind guy, except for when they were messing a mission up.
They trekked up the sands, boots kicking gold and black showers of sand-covered rock away. "What was the contact's name again?" V asked Walter. He sighed as audibly as he could. "It was Jason" he said.
She opened her radio. The sound of static reached their ears. "Jason?" Violet asked through the device. Wilfred sped up, eager to see if his eyes could spot anything going on at the village from the dune's top.
There was no reply. The radio was silent except for the static. "Jason? Is anyone there who can reply to me?" she shook it and started climbing again, her heart feeling a strange uneasiness as she waited for a reply.
"What the hell?" all of a sudden, Wilfred cursed. She raised her eyes and saw the boy standing on top of the dune, his back turned at her but his face fixed on the view below the slope. He sounded… mortified.
"Will?" her heart filling with worry Violet sped up. "What's the matter? Do you hear me?" "Call them again!" he shouted at her, drawing his weapon. Violet didn't ask- the shock made her to thoughtlessly comply.
"Jason? Anyone? Can you hear me, for the love of dust?" she screamed at the radio, part anxious about their fate, part worried about Wilfred's serious behavior- and part terrified of the uncertainty looming above.
The radio beeped. She smiled in satisfaction "Jason? Is that you?" she asked in anticipation, happy to see her fears vanish. Wilfred was right; she was way too emotional sometimes.
And then the voice replied. It was like nothing she had ever heard. It was slippery, gelatinous and parched; it was the first time in their lives the two huntsmen heard such a voice- an alien and inhuman one.
"Jas- on?" the sound was hoarse; like dry sand rubbed on top of thick parchment. It wasn't human; it couldn't belong to any mortal being and only the sound of it was enough to send goosebumps all over their skin.
"Who are-" Violet tried to ask, but Wilfred ran to her and covered her mouth. She glared at him, but before she could complain, the voice spoke again, sending them both running down the dune at full speed.
"Jason- weak"