Sorry for the tone whiplash. Content warning for canonical character death and death of a minor character (an oc).
Stella Arwen has never held any illusions about what the life of a huntress entails. She's always been a realist, never one for illusions or fairy tales to distract from the brutality of the world. She prefers to face reality head-on. And she knows that the lives of hunters and huntresses are often short, tragic, and harsh.
But standing atop Beacon tower, face to face with the person responsible for unleashing the attack on her friends and school, the inherent danger of the life that she's chosen has never felt more present. The power radiating off the woman she faces is like nothing she's ever felt before. No normal person could possess such a strong aura. It makes your average huntress seem powerless in comparison.
This isn't a battle that she can win. She'd already arrived too late to save Pyrrha—landing atop the tower just in time to see her friend skewered through the heart with an arrow. Her heart is filled with grief at the harsh reality of the situation: Pyrrha is gone. There's nothing she can do to save her. And if her friend couldn't win, Stella highly doubts her own ability to succeed where Pyrrha failed.
But that doesn't mean that she won't go down fighting.
"Step away from her," she orders the woman—Cinder, she'd said her name was—with the best glare that she can manage, proud that she can at least keep her voice from shaking.
Cinder just smirks. "I don't think I will," she sneers, standing as casual and confident as if they were simply talking about the weather. Utterly sure that she has all the power in this situation. Behind her, the giant, winged Grimm—like nothing Stella has seen before, like something out of a nightmare—shifts uneasily where it's perched on the tower. Cinder murmurs soothingly to it.
Then, without warning, she lunges forward, quicker than Stella can react, and places a hand on Pyrrha's shoulder. Instantaneously, the dead girl's body is enveloped in a golden glow, quickly reduced to nothing but ashes. Stella can't help but let out a small, strangled sound, clapping a hand to her mouth at the casually callous cruelty.
Pyrrha won't even have a body left to bring back to her family, she thinks, a bit hysterically. Then, shaking her head, she forces herself to swallow hard and focus. Okay, so things really aren't looking good. She's alone; Weiss is too far away to call for backup. All she has on her are her daggers and a small amount of fire dust—the rest had been used up in the fighting earlier. And besides Cinder, there's still the matter of that massive Grimm still lurking behind her—
Gust could work, she thinks to herself. Cinder seems to be relying on fire for her attacks—the bow and arrow that she'd used to murder Pyrrha had been made of flames. She could try to put out the fires a bit with a few small breezes—that might work. Or—
Or she could fan the flames. She has enough dust to create a decently-sized explosion, if she plays her cards right. Hopefully just enough to take her enemies down with her.
It's not such a bad way to die, she thinks to herself, fighting for her school and the people that she loves. At least she's going out fighting. There are certainly worse ways to die.
And as the tower goes up in flames and the explosion rings deafeningly loud in her ears, she just closes her eyes and hopes that she's done enough.
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