In the last chapter:
"If you walk past that, then there is no turning back from there." It says.
Ker and I take a step back while Raven walks past the rock.
"Very well, if that is your choice, then you have chosen… DEATH!" It shouts before running at Raven on all fours.
[3rd POV]
It slams down its claws onto Raven as she blocks it with her sword. And immediately, she is visibly struggling to keep the elder's claw at bay and is pushed down to her knee. When it looks like she can't take it anymore she quickly turns into her raven form and flies above the elder. It didn't have time to be shocked as she slashed its back between the few spikes protruding out its back.
While it's still staggered, she flips behind it and waits for it to attacks again.
"You have some tricks I see. But it'll take more than a few tricks to kill me!" It shouts as it smashes the ground bringing up big chunks of it before punching them at Raven.
She tenses up before visibly enforcing her body with her aura and slash right through the makeshift projectiles only to be met with the elder as she slashes the last chunk of earth. It goes for another slash and she manages to roll out of the way, but unfortunately for her, a few of the elder's tails grabbed her and threw her to one of the few large rocks in the area. As she impacts it a spiderweb of cracks appeared on the rock and she looks to be reeling in pain.
The elder rushes at her, intent on ending the battle then and there. But at the last moment, Raven snaps out of it and manages to dodge out of the way only leaving with some part of her outfit ripped from the elder's claws. I don't see any blood which meant that her aura had to take a hit for that. Raven jumps back multiple times and they proceed to have a stare down.
'Hey Ker, do you have any idea what its aura will do?' Kratos asks Ker
'I can't say for sure since it's hard to tell, but I can at least say that it's more destructive than the smokescreen I can make with mine.' He answers.
'I see, do you think if she succeeds and uses my mana it will make the pact partly shared with me?' Kratos asks while still partly focused on the fight.
'That seems to make logical sense to me since it's sort of a part of you she's using, so it's only fair to assume that you'll get shared part of the pact.' Ker says.
With the discussion over they focus back on the fight, Raven ignites her blade and the elder scoffs.
"Such weak fire. I'll grace you with the view of what a fire should look like!" It shouts before its red markings around its body glow brighter and brighter before igniting into flames and the flames quickly spread all over it.
Once the flames completely covered it, they burned with twice as much power compared to Raven's sword.
'Damn, looks like you were right with his aura being more destructive than yours.' Kratos says.
"… Oh fuck." Raven says in dismay.
She quickly dashes back while sheathing her sword, the elder wastes no time and rushes right after her. Raven unsheathes her blade in a slashing motion and instead of the blade being red, it's a deep blue color and it sends an arc of the same-colored blue at the elder. It quickly and easily dodges it before rushing Raven. And where that arc landed it dug into the ground and left some water there.
But back to the fight, the elder attacks Raven again but this time instead of using only claw swipes or the occasional bites, it's using as many tails as it can at once to try and strangle Raven. She does an impressively good job at blocking most of it, but some stray attacks managed to get through her guard and burn parts of her outfit.
Similar to Raven, the elder either blocked or parried most of Raven's attacks but one particularly harsh wound to one of its front arms made it through. As Raven was attacking, the elder saw an opening and it used all its tails to hold Raven's sword at bay before clawing her abdomen sending her flying away with her sword still being held by his tails. And with all the sustained damage her aura finally breaks which leaves a rather large mark on where the elder struck with blood flowing out of it and staining her already mostly red outfit with even more red.
When she finally hits the ground, she tumbles and bounces a few times not helping with the wound at all. Once she fully stops, I can see that she's still breathing, albeit very hardly. The elder throws the sword away and it embedded itself into the ground a good distance away from it. Raven manages to get up -after a lot of effort- and is holding her wound with ragged breath, and even though the elder couldn't properly make expressions due to the bone mask, she could almost feel its arrogance that it's already won this fight.
"*Chuckle* You put up quite an entertaining fight, I'll give you that. But it's clear that you are no match for me, so give up now and I'll put you out of your misery." It says with arrogance practically oozing out of its voice.
"Ha!" She spits out a mouthful of blood, "As if my pride will allow me to do that. Now get over here so I can put you down!" She shouts between breaths.
"Then so be it." It says before rushing at her again.
With an act of sheer willpower alone, Raven dashes at the elder. Once they were only a few feet away from each other, Raven quickly dodged around the elder and made a dead sprint to her sword that's still embedded into the ground. The elder quickly turns around and rushes at Raven recklessly, confident that it already won the fight no matter what happens.
Raven struggles to pull out the sword out of the ground as the elder lunges at her. Fortunately for her she manages to pull out the sword at the last possible moment and dash forward before stabbing the elder's exposed chest while ignoring the pain form the elder's flames. And with a loud shout she puts all of her effort into it and manages to push the elder into the ground and climb on top of it before stomping her sword deeper into its chest until only the hilt was visible.
She jumps down and drags the sword through the elder's flesh making it shout in pain before taking it out and slicing the back of the hind legs and its remaining arm effectively immobilizing it.
"*Pant* *Pant* The fight isn't over *Pant* until it's over." She says severely out of breath. "Dominus now!" She shouts.
[Back to 1st POV]
I quickly run to her and channel my mana and I put my hand on her back before I start transferring it to her. The wound she got was healed for the most part, she quickly kneeled and put her hand onto the elder's head.
"I, Raven make a pact with Erebus and may we be bonded by our flesh and soul until the end of time." She says.
Not even a few moments later, I feel a connection forming, similar like Ker's but not as strong. Looks like the elder now named Erebus accepted her. His wounds quickly close up and he slowly sits up straight and looks at Raven. They stare for a few moments before he spoke.
"It seems I have underestimated you." He says.
"You bet your ass you did, and you paid for it." She continues, "Now that we're in a pact, you can call me Raven."
"I see, I hope we won't hold each other back. *Turns to me* And who might you be? I feel a connection both with her and you." He asks.
"This is for you too Raven, my you can call me Kratos. And the reason why we have a slight connection is likely because she used my mana to make the pact with you since she doesn't have mana herself." I explain.
"You used a fake name, why?" Raven asks.
"Because, at first I wasn't sure who was friend or foe so I just went with Dominus instead of using my real name." I say.
"And I assume you're the one that tracked me." It says to Ker.
He nods, "I am, that was quite an impressive fight you did there."
"Thanks, and I assume you gave your partner a hard fight as well?" He asks.
"No, it was quite one-sided. He was much more powerful than I was at the time." Ker says.
"Or maybe you're just weak." He says.
"Believe what you want, but take a punch from him and you'll see what I mean." Ker says.
"Oh now I'm curious. *Turns to me* Show me this apparent strength of yours then." He says with the same arrogance leaking into his voice again.
"You asked for it, don't blame me for what's about to happen." I say.
"*Scoff* How hard could you possibly punc-" I interrupt him with a punch to his chest with enough force to send him through multiple trees and through a rock which quickly stops its momentum.
"Did you have to send him that far?" Raven asks in better condition from the mana that was flowing through her.
"Well he asked for it, and I did say to not blame me." I say.
I can see him getting up in the distance and igniting himself to get rid of the small pieces of wood still on him. He walks over and even though his face can't really show it, I can feel that he's pissed. He walks over and sits on his previous spot and is silent.
"Underestimated someone again have you?" I ask.
"Oh shut up, why would anyone believe that a person could easily defeat an elder grimm." It says trying to defend itself.
"He has a point you know, if I didn't know you than I wouldn't have believed you easily defeating an elder grimm." Raven says.
"Well whatever the cases, let's just get back already. It'll probably be night when we get back and that should have been enough time for the others to follow out their plan." I say.
"Others? What plan?" Erebus asks.
"We'll explain on the way, can you shrink yourself down or something else to hide yourself?" I ask.
"The best I can do to hide is just shrink myself, if there's another way then I don't know how yet." He says.
"Alright then let's not waste any more time here." Raven says.
Erebus nods and shrinks down to a miniature version of himself and hides himself in Raven's hair. Ker goes back into my shadow, and we start the trek back to Argus.
"Hey Raven, why didn't you use your maiden powers back there?" I ask.
"I was wondering that too, I could clearly feel that you have the powers of one." Erebus says.
"Because I wanted to earn my victory instead of using some cheap and easy way to defeat Erebus." She explains.
After that Raven starts explaining what's happened through her mental link with Erebus while I add in some in details through my own connection with him.
(Timeskip)
My prediction was accurate because it the sun has set, and moon has risen when we were a few minutes away from Argus' entrance.
"Ugh, I'm going to have to get a new outfit." Raven says looking down just now because she was busy explaining to Erebus what has happened so far.
After some security checks from the guards we head Jaune's sister's house. I walk up to the door, and I can hear lots of talking inside and it seems like it's good natured for once. I knock on the door loud enough so they hear me. I hear someone shout 'coming!' and the talking quieting down a bunch.
The door opens and I see that Saphron was the one to open it, "Oh Dominus welcome back, *Gasp* What happened with you?" She asks when she sees the state of Raven's outfit and some minor wounds that haven't finished healing fully.
That got the attention of the others as Saphron lets us in. Once Raven's visible most of their eyes widen in shock and Qrow was the first one to speak up.
"What happened to you?" He asks.
"I got myself a partner, that's what happened." Raven says.
"You mean you actually got a grimm to help you?" Ruby asks doubtful.
"That I did." She says as Erebus jumps out of her hair next to her and grows to the size of an average dog.
"So," I take a seat, "how did that oh so wonderful plan of yours go?" I ask.
As I said that they seemed to find the ground or ceiling quite interesting making Raven laugh.
"Ha! I told you it would go to shit!" She says as she sits next to Qrow.
"Oh shut up, it's not like you could come up with a better plan!" Weiss shouts.
"I don't but at least I don't pretend to know that it won't fail." She says gaining an irritated look from Weiss.
"What exactly happened at the base?" I ask.
"Well…" Then Ruby starts her explanation on what happened.
(Small Timeskip, it goes the same like it does normally)
"And that's what happened." Ruby finishes with a sigh.
"… Has it ever crossed your minds that you could have sent Weiss and convince them to either let me, Qrow, or Raven to accompany her to Atlas and then whoever is there with her can explain the situation to Ironwood and convince him to send a ship to here to pick the rest of you up?" I ask.
"…" Collective silence with the only noise being the baby playing with his toys and Raven facepalming
"Why didn't we think of that… that's so much better than what we were going to do." Ruby says gripping her hair in frustration.
"What were you planning to do?" Raven asks.
"… Uh… we might have uh planned to steal a uh ship…" Ruby says awkwardly.
"…" Ravn deadpans at Ruby causing her to blush.
"And what did you do? You honestly didn't think that was a good idea to you?" Raven asks Qrow.
"Uh… *Looks at his imaginary watch* Oh would you look at the time! I'm going to bed, good night!" Qrow says quickly going up the stairs causing Raven to sigh and pinch the bridge of her nose while muttering, "Idiots."
"… So should we vote on who'll go with Weiss tomorrow?" Jaune asks.
Everyone nods and after three rounds of voting I got chosen with the most amount of votes.
"Alright, it's decided then. Dominus will be the one accompanying Weiss tomorrow." Ruby says.
"Dinner's ready!" Saphron shouts from the dining room.
We all get up and eat some food before going to our own rooms and getting some rest for the next day.
AN: Uploads will probably not be as consistent because school holiday is over and it's not online anymore
