Ahoy, maties!
Just a quick little something this week as I parse down a mostly finished chapter into a smaller entry. Wasn't thrilled with a portion of it after several rewrites so opted to send this to market and fix the rest later. Hopefully it still reads okay. Sounded fine to me!
The week that followed passed with shockingly little incident.
Salem remained with her at all times. Silent and watchful. As if the woman-turned-monster masquerading as a woman had become so spiteful that sleep itself refused to touch her. In Weiss' waking moments she could feel herself being watched. Distantly, always in the furthest recesses of her mind or the corner of her vision. Like something that had flitted by in her peripherals and was gone whenever she turned to look.
Considering she felt like a ballista cocked and ready for eight days straight - longer than that still if she were honest, she fancied herself moderately well held together.
She ate. Nike would hunt, her strength returning thanks to medicine, food, and an abundance of nothing to hunted, failed, then acquiesced and let Nike take her turns as well. Where hunting failed she would see to it their temporary camps were suitable. Magic was used to form mediocre shelters hewn of stone, just enough to cover them without encapsulating them. Whatever Grimm came in response were dealt with swiftly sans magic; they did not need hordes descending upon them daily. Ignoring the fact that doing so would render them exhausted and inept, Weiss found the welcome distraction of combat to lose its luster after the fourth day. By the sixth she went through the motions as someone would dumping their waste product down a drain: with begrudging necessity.
Mistral might have been beautiful. Some of the travelers they encountered along the way could have been saints. Some could have been rapists and murderers. Weiss committed none of it to her memory. What traveled along Mistral's roads, cutting a pathway sordidly towards an unknown destination, was a facsimile of a young woman.
She smiled when people smiled at her. Dispatched Grimm with cordial familiarity. Her temporal lobe had shut off and sequestered itself behind enough locked doors to make the maddest doomsayer sane. Her amygdala had worked overtime, become overworked, clocked out and taken to binge drinking in its wake. Paranoia and apprehension gave way to a pervasive numbness.
"Weiss, you're injured," Nike had warned her after one particularly daunting encounter with a flock of Harpy Grimm. It must have been daunting because Nike too had been injured, albeit not as badly. Weiss had looked at the gash on her forearm, prodded at it to test its realness, then sealed the wound with a quick fire spell.
It hurt. Enough so that her stupor had been lifted and the brief, blinding flash of pain had woken something in her. When she finished the scabbed over flesh throbbed and dried, caked blood crumbled off as she slid down her sleeve.
"No I'm not."
With that they continued along. They passed through towns, settlements, and graveyards masquerading as towns. In the latter Weiss had stopped to admire the architecture that had outlasted its inhabitants.
Small outcroppings of trees and flowerbeds stood vibrant against the dirtied, vacant boxes that had once been homes. Pillars supporting nothing, rooftops having crumbled at their feet long ago, rose from the ground like ramrod ribs, the corpse of the town itself on display for carrion and ravagers. In the first of such towns they found no signs of its inhabitants. In the second dark stains along the roads and walls, often accompanied by claw marks or broken plaster, told them all they needed to know of what had transpired.
On the tenth day of travel, where forests had turned from deciduous to coniferous, oaks and maples faded and gave way to pines, cypress, and the occasional obstinate birch who had probably moved in years ago, realized it was in the wrong neighborhood, but felt too awkward to move out again. In the shallow alcove of a rockface, dining on rabbit and leeks, Weiss realized two things.
First, Nike was a decent cook. Better than decent even; if the mind-warped Hunter life didn't pan out for her then Nike had a potential future as a chef for some self-righteous noble.
Secondly, Weiss just might be depressed.
To anyone with eyes and even those without that would have been obvious. To Weiss, currently part way through consuming what had once been an adorable forest critter, it came as a revelation. Then her temporal lobe returned from its hiatus and slapped the rest of her mind silly, providing a 'No shit' that felt every bit deserved.
Depressed? Weiss would have been more concerned if she had been all smiles at this point. Concerned by it? Eh. She had enough wherewithal to know something was wrong but did not care enough to fix that. Oddly, she cared more about ensuring Nike could not fix it either, which seemed in some way like a grossly improper use of her energies.
"My village is still a ways away from here. Flying would be faster, cutting our travels down significantly." Nike stared across the flames, shadows dancing across her face. When Weiss didn't rebuke her she pressed the matter again. "I've healed, Weiss, and I can get us there in no time. Although, if you wouldn't mind explaining to me why we're going there…?"
Holding her hand in flames would hurt. Intrinsically, Weiss knew that. She still felt tempted to do so just to get a spark of something. But with the sensible part of her mind returned, even smothered, there was enough to keep her from trying.
"Weiss, please. It's evident that something has been bothering you. I've kept mum about it all week but enough is enough. Allow me to do my duty and help you in what few ways I can."
"Nike?"
"Yes, ma'am?"
Weiss' eye twitched. She set down the skewer in her hands and wiped grease on her trousers. They were filthy anyways. "Where are you from?"
Considering they were just discussing the exact place in question it seemed like an absurd question to ask. Nike's perplexed expression said as much but she still answered. "Agria. Have you forgotten?"
"And why did you leave your home again?"
"My lady, is there a reason for this line of questioning?"
"Weiss. It's Weiss. And just humor me."
Sighing, Nike shifted and crossed her legs. "My purpose was to join the Church of Remnant and serve as a Hunter. I would use my earnings to help support my family back home," she answered in a drawl, as though explaining it to a toddler for the fifteenth time. Exasperated, she looked at Weiss and frowned. "Is there a problem with that?"
"And you have since neglected your post, abandoned your partner, and traveled into the wilderness with someone who you've been told is a goddess."
"When you phrase it like that it sounds absurd."
Because it was. Because everything about this godsforsaken situation they found themselves in was! Her own self-affliction and being steeped in enough loathing to drown a whale. Nike's mind being totally reworked to make her an obedient drone. Oh, and marching off to what would be her certain doom. There was that small tidbit too.
"Nike. You could leave now, go back to Greyson. I can find my way from here."
"With all due respect, Weiss. I doubt that." Nike pointed beyond her to the mountains that began to rise up but a few miles away. "Agria is within those peaks, up winding trails that only people who live there know. And even then most of us just flew from point to point, peak to valley." Nike fluttered her wings before shaking her head. "On a good day I'd not trust anyone to find the path on their own, let alone traverse the entire thing."
"So, you think I'm inept."
"That's not what I said, Weiss," Nike answered.
"You believe I cannot travel by myself?"
"I believe you cannot make your way up the mountain alone. I did not say you cannot be on your own." Nike paused, rolling her tongue in her mouth before lowering her head. "Although in your current… State, I would be reluctant to leave you alone regardless."
Right. A sorry mess incapable of surviving on its own. Not an accomplished Hunter, a so-called Warden; Weiss was a liability to herself and to Nike. Dead weight. Except not dead, more comatose. Languorous? At the very least a right pain to deal with.
Worse than being called a risk was the fact Weiss couldn't find an argument against it. Her back prickled as stone dug into it, leaning into the wall and closing her eyes. Frost-hinted wind whistled into space and chilled her. Cold fingers raked down her body, stroked her thighs and 1stole heat from her still damp boots. Shivering, she drew her oil-skinned cloak around herself tighter, relaxing slightly, hearing branches snap and begin to fizzle in the fire.
"Forgive me, but I just want to make certain you are safe. It's the very least I can do for you."
If Nike really wanted to help then she'd leave, not stick by her like a growing tumor. For all her usefulness the woman was not, as she might hope to be, a savior. Rather, Nike served as a reminder of a crime perpetrated, one which Weiss hadn't perpetrated but carried the guilt like a sack of stones. The cold wind lapped against her cheeks and robbed them of heat. She swore she saw ice crystallize on her lashes.
"It's fortunate at least that we're traveling in autumn," Nike mentioned offhandedly as she stoked the fire, shivering. "It will only get colder the further north we go. And unfortunately, colder still as we climb the mountains." Further comment died on Nike's tongue and she lowered the stick she'd been using to prod at the fire. "Weiss, are you feeling okay?"
In what moment over the past week would anything she'd displayed be qualified as 'okay'? Waking up screaming? Hardly eating. Bathing irregularly and wallowing in filth as thick as her misery? Even in the loosest sense of the word 'okay' was so incompatible with what she was that Nike might as well have asked if she were a Varuna. That, at least, would have made some semblance of sense.
Her numbed fingertips worked at her sleeves, found them cold, and slipped them into the breast of her shirt for warmth. Skin prickled at the jarring chill and she recoiled, curling up and shuddering. Her teeth had begun to chatter and Weiss worked her fingers against herself to try and rub feeling back into them.
Cold. Why was she so cold? The fire continued to rage at her feet but she couldn't even feel its warmth anymore. Rattling, she opened her lips and gasped as a plume of breath passed through, a whine following after it. "N-Nike…?"
The Faunus darted across the closed space in an instant, wings tucking around Weiss and enveloping her. Slammed bodily into the other woman she felt much needed warmth, then balked as said warmth too began to fade. Needling, grasping tendrils of bitter cold grabbing the edges of body heat and dragging it down into wintry depths, tendrils that Weiss had no command of or say over.
"Weiss, you need to control your magic!"
Control it? She hadn't used any! She hadn't drawn a rune or used her rapier. Yet frost had begun to form on Nike too and ice, slabs of it, began to gather in the miniature cave. Tufts of snow appeared out of thin air and began to swirl as a veritable blizzard in a can opened up around them, smattering them with biting flakes. And through it all Nike tightened her hold, furled her wings closer around her, and drew Weiss in for warmth.
"Weiss, listen to me. You have to get your magic under control! Relax and reel it in!"
She hadn't used any magic! She needed her runes for that, or a medium like a spellbook or rapier. None of that she had on hand, and yet the proof was laid bare around them.
That dull, droning hum in her mind began and Weiss understood at once that, somehow, she was releasing magic. Dangerous amounts of it at that. Snow billowed out of the cave and slammed into trees, turning brown stalks white, smothering smaller brush and plastering the ground. Winds picked up and trees rattled, smaller limbs snapping under the sudden gale. Feathers, buffeted by the air bursts, ruffled and rattled by her ears, a sharp ringing beginning to build between them.
Why? Why couldn't she control it? She hadn't conjured any spells. Hadn't woven any runes.
Salem, the small, destitute part of her mind not embroiled in panic told her. It had to be; the witch was doing something to her to make it run haywire. But there were no taunts or jeers, no feelings of being puppeted. Just her own building dread and desperation.
Nike's wings peeled back and exposed both of them to the angry slashing winds of a wintry tempest. Thinking she would be abandoned, Weiss was surprised as two chilled hands cupped her cheeks, lifting her chin from her chest as she was made to look at Nike. With strands of hair frozen together and her lips gone purple the Faunus leaned in close, needing the proximity over the screeching winds.
"Weiss. You are in control. You command your magic, just focus. Breathe." Easier said than done. She gasped, inhaled, and choked as air ripped from her lungs. "You are your own person, Weiss. You are in control. Your magic is yours, you just need to reclaim it."
"I can't!"
Rock sheared from the cavern wall. Nike hissed and Weiss, having squeezed her eyes shut, opened them to see a bloodied gash on the woman's forehead. "You are the master of your magic, not the other way around. You are in control!" Weiss tried to look away but Nike held her head firm. "You are in control. You are in control," she repeated over and over, eyes staring imploringly.
An empty, meaningless mantra. With little else to lose Weiss chanced to repeat it, forcing numb lips to comply, extricating breath from her lungs that desperately tried to remain packed away. "I am in control," she rasped, groaning as an airburst rocked the cavern, rattling more stone and shards of ice off the rockface.
"I am the master of my own magic," Nike repeated. "I am Weiss, I am the master of my magic. I am my own master."
Evidently not! Some lousy master she was, freezing herself and her lone companion as her magic ran rampant. Choking on her own breath she curled in on herself, grabbing her head in her hands and rocking desperately.
"I am in control. I am in control." Weiss shuddered and groaned as her entire body tensed, muscles melting under the buildup of acid. Her lungs constricted and she gasped for breath, sputtered, and repeated it again. "I am in control…"
Weiss. She was Weiss. She commanded her magic, her magic did not command her. Contrary to what Salem might think, what Ozpin may believe, she was not some font to be drawn on at another's leisure, nor was she a maniac incapable of controlling herself.
"Get that thing out of my house!"
"Filthy halfbreed."
"Come home to us, Weiss, like a good little Warden."
She might have had much and more torn from her over the last few days. Maybe giving in to her madness and letting Salem take her, or her magic be her own undoing would be easier. Yet a single, stubborn spark somewhere inside of her refused to die out. Even as ice encapsulated the rest of her, throttling her blood and choking her lungs, trying to leave her an icy corpse.
Capillaries that had begun to shrivel into waste slowly sprung back to life. Fingers regained feeling. Not much, she could have raked them down the edge of a sword and probably hardly felt it, but some. She wriggled her toes, shuddered, and unleashed a few terrible coughs that tried to separate her ribs from one another. But they clung together and she didn't implode. Her mind, frazzled but intact somehow, grabbed hold of the magic fluttering around her. With proverbial hooks set in she pulled and pulled, shutting doors and withdrawing into herself.
Dragging. Sealing. Capping off a fountain that had erupted unexpectedly, Weiss brought her magic to a screeching halt, kicking and screaming, but to a standstill.
With her head still feeling simultaneously crushed and inflated Weiss prized her eyes open, lungs working overtime to replenish spent oxygen. The winds had stopped. The cave, once somewhat dry, now stood wholly encased in sheets of translucent, glittering ice.
And before her, huddled over and looking on the verge of death for the second time in a week sat Nike. Wind had ruined her feathers and ice clung to her wings and hair, skin gone pale. Through trembling, frozen lips she somehow smiled, reaching out unsteadily and grabbing Weiss' shoulder. "S-See?" she whispered. Wheezed, barely, rasping as her body was wracked by a sudden, violent chill. "You can control it, W-Weiss."
Maybe. If the stars aligned and she wasn't asleep or caught unawares then maybe she could keep herself under control.
Somewhat. The snow and ice blanketing them said otherwise, but she had managed to rein it in. Weiss smiled, or tried to. Her entire body, every muscle within, wasn't exactly compliant at the moment. "I a-am my own master…"
Which, all things considered, sounded like a ridiculous thing to be saying. It stunk of the sort of thought an overambitious youth might tell themselves before getting their rears handed to them in a bout at a faire. Or some delirious, addled manic trying to come down from a high. Neither of which were exactly flattering company, Weiss conceded. Given her string of blunders and episodes as of late however she found herself reluctantly fitting in.
"We're not dead," she pointed out with a chuckle. "I did it."
"You did it," Nike repeated, nodding. "W-Well done."
Of course, controlling her magic had been only half the battle. Weiss had been left feeling like she'd been dragged by a carriage for half a mile, then thrown into a vat of skunky liquor to soothe abrasions and wounds. Her pores hurt. Her hurts hurt. She was pretty sure she had frostbite in places that no cold should be able to reach. And that was to say nothing of Nike who hunched before her looking like an unholy matrimony between a bird and an ice cube.
But they were alive. Partially frozen, entirely flustered, but alive. And that had to count for something.
Both of them glanced at the now extinguished fire behind Nike, flames snuffed and wood, embers, and ash all entombed. With an admirable effort Nike struggled to her feet, breaking ice off herself in the process, and smiled haggardly. "I'll fetch us some fresh wood. P-Please try to rest…"
Weiss would have very much preferred to leave the cave as well considering she had turned it into an ice box. An ice box that, with a fire going, would instead turn into a wet, dripping maw. But she hadn't the energy to move, with or without help. Even nodding left her feeling dizzy and breathless.
"We'll make it to A-Agria yet, Weiss. I know it…"
One nice thing in all of that chaos was they had managed to find a stroke of good luck. One stroke, which had completely been used up by Weiss not becoming a living battery for northerlies. The howls that rose up from the forests around them and the shrill, piercing screech in the skies above made sure they knew their good fortune was gone.
Not just dead. No, something in the universe had seen to it that their fortune was killed, dragged into a field, set aflame and then buried in a crag filled with unmentionables.
Magic. She had unleashed all that damnable magic and so Weiss wasn't surprised. Heartbroken, mortified, but hardly shocked. Nike looked stupefied enough for the both of them, staggering back into the cave and prying her spear from the wall.
A moot effort. Weiss had no magic to fight with and could hardly keep her head up, nevermind fight with her rapier. Nike might have been upright but that would be the extent of it, her arms trembling with fatigue as she tried to lift her weapon and prepare herself.
Grinding her teeth, Weiss reached for her rapier, the muscles from her fingertips to her pectorals crying out in protest. "I am… The master of my fate…" she hissed, grinding until her jaw ached as pain laced along her spine.
She would not just die in some godsdamned hole in the middle of a forest, not after she just went through… Whatever that was. A pep talk?
At the very least she could die trying to help the woman who had just saved her from herself. She owed Nike that much. Probably more.
Weiss grabbed her rapier, dragged it towards herself, then dropped it in her lap. With raspy breaths she signaled for Nike to back into the cave; a smaller, narrow passage would be easier to defend than the wide open, she reasoned. It also turned the ice-filled hole-in-the-wall into a glacial coffin but beggars couldn't be choosers.
With morbid determination to at least go down fighting they sat and waited as another chorus of monstrous cries filtered through the trees. Waited, silent save for the sounds of labored breathing, for the shadowy bodies of Grimm to come poring through. Waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Seconds trickled by, then a minute passed, and another. No further cries sounded and no Grimm materialized. Even the screeching Nevermore that had been overhead remained ostensibly absent, as though it had become distracted by something far more enticing. Except magic drew Grimm and Weiss was positive, as certain as her foggy mind could be, that no one else had been casting spells nearby. The air lacked the distinct spark of spellcraft and the Grimm hadn't rallied against another opponent.
Five minutes later and no signs of the Grimm persisted, the forest serene and safe. Inexplicable, outright confounding, but Weiss took solace in the irregularity. She half expected Salem to have had a hand in their salvation. Wholly expected the witch to take credit for it. Yet the near-constant voice in her head remained silent, the woman's presence itself strikingly absent.
Despite the murkiness muddled her mind Weiss felt clear-headed and free of interference. Still languid, but the mud that had been saturating her thoughts had turned into dirty water. Still difficult to navigate but easier.
Nike dropped to her knees and let her spear clatter to the ground. Smiling, almost hysterical, her shoulders shook as she exhaled unsteadily. "We're safe…?"
That seemed to be the case. Unless Grimm had developed a taste for stealth and were sneaking up on them, which could be possible given how screwed up things had become, they were safe. Some god somewhere had seen their week from hells and took pity upon them at long last. If Weiss ever found out which one had she would become a devotee for life.
But for now? Gods above, right now she just needed a fire, warmth, and possibly a change of clothes.
She decided to try and help Nike with the firewood endeavor and made to rise. Her hand met ice and in a flash she found herself sprawled out on the ground, basket guard of her rapier digging into her gut and chin resting on a cold, slick surface.
"Firewood?" Nike croaked, chuckling nervously.
"Firewood."
With the strength of a crippled fawn Nike crawled out of the cave and began to collect whatever wood hadn't been saturated or frozen while Weiss watched from her oh so comfortable bed. Another effort to move made her muscles screech at her and she gave up on it entirely. Although she did turn her head to rest her cheek on the ground instead and found the ice soothing for her throbbing skull.
So that was nice.
And that's that. With any luck I'll have the rest revised and ready to go a week from today, if not sooner. No promises though! In the interim, be safe, stay healthy, and eat your veggies!
Or don't, I'm not your mother.
I think.