Two weeks are up and here's the chapter!
Reviews:
Kolomte'49 - No, no está mal pensar en la familia Arc así, los escribí para que no fueran tan agradables. No creo que vaya a hacer mucho con Biel en el corto plazo, cuando lo escribí pensé en él como un personaje tipo epílogo/prólogo. (Perdón por los errores gramaticales y los malentendidos. Usé el traductor de Google).
Megakdre100 - I guess, I might have made the story a bit too slow paced. There were a couple of chapter I could have combined with other and other's I could have dropped. Sorry I didn't realize and thanks for the review, I will try to pick up the pace a little.
X3runner - Thanks for the review. Yeah Pyrrha was a bit too clingy and desperate in the original for my taste, I know that being too popular to find friends was supposed to be her thing and all but at some point the way she acted could become a bit uncomfortable.
adislt - Don't worry about being too harsh, I don't mind. If anything I believe you and all the other reviewers a little bit too nice to me. How am I supposed to get better if I don't face any criticism?
Guest, Gamelover 41592 - Thank you! :)
The atmosphere in the pancake house could only be described as awkward. When more than a half of every guest present was acting like they were at the most uncomfortable reunion party ever it couldn't have been described as anything else.
Jaune slowly took a single sip of the tee he ordered, making an involuntary slurping noise by doing so.
They sat there, at the biggest table in the restaurant, in complete silence as almost every one of them was giving someone else peculiar stares.
Some of them had looks full of curiosity, like Saphron who was looking at Summer's daughters wondering what their relations were to Jaune.
Others looked with intensiveness and hope in their gaze, like Ruby who wouldn't turn her head away from the young Arc for a single second in fear that the blond shaman would disappear.
Yet different ones of them, like Whitley, were simply giving a stink eye to another person at the table. It was bizarre how unnatural they all looked together despite most of them knowing each other.
The fact that the other half of the guests in the restaurants were for some reason looking at their table in unmasked awe didn't make the atmosphere in the building any better.
The only ones of them who weren't actively making the situation more uncomfortable were Nora who was too busy filling herself up with pancakes and some other red haired girl whose name Jaune didn't even know.
At the very least Summer could have spared him from the constant gushing and worrying for her daughters she was doing right above his head. It would have been nice to have some support here.
"So..." Jaune started getting the attention of the entire table. "How's it going?"
"Eh, everything's as usual." The blond Summer's daughter, Yang, if the gushing from his guardian spirit meant anything, shrugged. "We've been thrown out of an invisible bullhead, faced off against an entire team of people who could make invisible weapons with Lyserg here, and travel through almost the entirety of Mistral. You know the normal stuff."
Jaune winced a little inwardly with everything that Yang had listed. Considering that he knew that team RWBY was in Mistral since the beginning of the second round he could imagine all the wild and dangerous situations they came across.
"That's good?" Jaune asked more than said only to jump a little when the moment those words left his mouth a loud bang resounded as Yang suddenly slammed her palm into the table with the force big enough to shake the entire room.
"We've been looking for you stupid people for the last month! How do you think it's going?! Couldn't you have waited in one dumb village for at least a day or two?!" Yang shouted angrily and her eyes briefly flashed red for a moment.
Yeah, he shouldn't have been the one to start the conversation. He really shouldn't have. Now he had to deal with all the emotions Summer's daughters built up in the last couple of weeks being directed solely on him.
Luckily he didn't have to deal with whatever Whitley's sister was going to do to her brother during this conversation. The poor young Schnee would probably have a scolding of the century if Weiss's narrowed eyes were to mean something.
"In our defense, we had no idea that you were following us." Jaune said, trying to protect himself. "If we knew you had the help of Lyserg to find us we would have probably waited for you."
The blond shaman jumped a little when Yang narrowed her eyes at him with doubt in her gaze. How had Summer brought up her daughters if they were so freaking scary right now?
"Yang, calm down a little. You are scaring Jaune and he's practically our only connection to mom at this point." Ruby, Summer's other daughter, said while grabbing her older sister by the shoulders.
And here's the reason why team RWBY was looking for them in the first place, making him bitter again. He knew that for some reason Summer, despite loving her daughters more than anything, wanted to hide away from them since becoming his guardian spirit. It was the reason why he had hid the fact that she was his guardian spirit from them in the first place.
A single cursory glance at the ghost of the dead mother was enough for him to know that Summer still wanted him to keep that secret from them. He could only sigh at the difficult situation his guardian spirit was putting him through once more.
"Don't even try to say that she's not with you again! Lyserg already told us that she's your partner in this secret tournament of yours." Yang threatened him with a frown.
It looked like the same excuse wouldn't work for the second time. Though, this time there might not be any excuse that would work at all based on how Summer's daughters were looking at him.
"Alright, you got it." Jaune relented with a slump of his shoulders before pointing above their heads. "She's here, currently gushing over you two and bragging about how her daughters are the best in the world for figuring this out."
Considering how adamant she had been about not letting them know about her earlier, it felt weirdly annoying for Summer to be ignoring that completely now. Although, knowing his guardian spirit, the regrets and other bad feelings would only come to her once the day ended and she would have a chance to worry about everything through the night.
Ruby and Yang gasped in joy at hearing what their mother was doing right now and Jaune couldn't help but to feel a little wistful for them. They had no way to interact with Summer on their own so any conversation or interaction would have to go through him or any other shaman and they would have to trust their link to their mother almost completely blindly.
Jaune didn't know if he would have been able to endure having to communicate with his loved ones through only such means.
Tears started falling from Ruby's face as the earlier gasp turned into a shaky smile. Despite the tears, it was obvious for anyone here that the silver eyed girl had quite possibly never been as happy as she was right now.
"Hey, calm down. We aren't going to run away now." Jaune said while watching Summer rushing to comfort her daughter.
Now that team RWBY were with them he couldn't imagine Summer allowing them to leave without them, especially since the Beacon had fallen and they were in a foreign kingdom where most likely none of the team RWBY had been for long.
"I-I'm sorry." Ruby said through tears. "I-It's just that, it has been so long since the last time I saw my mom. I thought that I would never have a chance to meet her again and even if I know that it's impossible for me to see or talk directly to her I still can't help but feel so happy right now."
Upon hearing what her younger sister said, Yang, with a kind knowing smile on her face, gently hugged Ruby from the side.
Jaune hummed and leaned on his arm a little as he observed the tearful reunion of the Rose-XiaoLong family. It wasn't just the daughters of the family who were full of tears now as Summer quickly joined in when she saw her youngest daughter crying, she even tried to hug them as well but with her being a spirit it sadly wasn't possible.
The scene before him made Jaune immediately think about the reunion he would have with his father if he wouldn't be able to leave Argus before the next day. Would his dad also cry like Summer was at the moment?
What about his mom and the rest of his sisters, were they as tearful as his friends were now the moment Saphron informed them of his whereabouts?
He liked to think that he would cry with them when they would finally meet but the reunion he had with Saphron just a day ago made him a bit unsure about that. He didn't even recognize her at first and when he started to have an idea about her identity he had mistaken her for his other sister.
"I did not expect them to react so strongly upon talking to us. Jaune, what did you do to make them cry so quickly after meeting you?" Saphron whispered to them while making sure that Ruby and Yang wouldn't hear.
A quiet sigh was the only response the blond woman had gotten as Jaune decided to ignore the question. It wasn't that he didn't want to answer but he knew that no matter what he said, his sister wouldn't believe it for the simple reason of not being able to accept that the spirits existed.
"Does she...?" The red haired girl who came with team RWBY asked with a stupefied expression.
So the red haired girl knew about the spiritual side of the world? Neat, it always made things much easier when they didn't have to spend time on explaining all the seemingly weird things they were often doing whenever they interacted with spirits.
"Yeah, she somehow doesn't know." Whitley said before Jaune could answer. "Don't ask me how it's possible while being literally surrounded by people who interact with ghosts and spirits on every occasion. Trust me, I'm as confused by it as you are. It's like she refuses to believe in spirits on purpose."
"And you are talking among yourselves again." Saphron quickly cut in with a huff. "I swear, if you weren't friends of my little brother, I would have felt insulted by you all."
"They are talking about the shaman stuff again, Saph." Nora finally jumped into the conversation after swallowing the last piece of her fourteenth plate of pancakes. "As long as you don't accept that what they're saying is true you will be left out of the conversation."
Jaune laughed a little when he heard the point Nora made. It wasn't like they were doing that on purpose, or at least he wasn't since he had no idea about Whitley's reasons, but it was simply difficult to include someone in a conversation when said person didn't know most of the things they were talking about.
It was like trying to forcefully involve a young child in a discourse about politics or economy. Sure it might have been possible if you framed it in the right way but it would have been a wasted effort for someone who wouldn't bring much to the conversation.
"Speaking of being left out." Yang said after wiping the tears from her eyes and calming Ruby down. "Why were you so insistent on going straight to Argus so quickly after arriving in Mistral? If you have stayed in one village for a single day longer or moved in a different direction for once, we would have caught up to you way earlier than today. Is there something you are looking for in this city?"
"There is, actually." Ren answered calmly. "We are looking for a person called Lilirara. We were told to look for her after helping a retired huntress Maria by defeating an insane shaman who tried to kill her in order to help a vengeful spirit. All we know it's that she's in Argus so we decided to travel as quickly as we could to not waste too much time."
All of the people at the table who weren't a part of their original group blinked a couple of times while looking at Ren after hearing that.
"You are looking for my teacher?" The red haired girl asked while pointing at herself.
"You know Lilirara?!" Jaune, Ren and Whitley asked in surprise at the same time while standing up and leaning towards the confused girl so quickly that their chairs were thrown backwards.
Almost every single person who was looking at their table in awe earlier suddenly became startled and a little bit afraid as the loud shouts echoed through the alley the pancake house was in.
"S-Sorry." Jaune said with a small wince when he felt all the stares being directed at him but Whitley and Ren didn't react at all.
The red haired girl meanwhile looked about as panicked as the people who became startled from the shout. Although she seemed to be anxious for a different reason than some loud noises.
"Yes, I've known her since I was little." The red haired girl answered their previous question with as much politeness as she could muster. "Are you three the guests she's expecting?"
Jaune looked at her in slight confusion before suddenly nodding in realization. Lady Maria probably let Lilirara know that they would be coming sometime after they left for Argus back then.
Smiles appeared on all three of their faces, it certainly made getting a meeting with her a lot easier.
"We are the ones." Whitley said briefly and seriously. "Can you point us towards her so that we can meet her? We are kind of in a hurry and would like to avoid wasting too much time on looking for her."
"Of course." The red haired girl said with a stiff nod. "If you are really the people sent by lady Maria then I'm sure my teacher wouldn't mind meeting with you. She's actually waiting for you at the moment."
A scraping noise resounded in the restaurant as the red haired girl pushed back her chair to try to stand up and the three shamans of the so-called January team moved away from the table to start going to Lilirara.
Before they could leave however a loud and annoyed cough stopped the four of them in place as the rest of their people at their table didn't look as excited as they were.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" Saphron said in an almost threatening manner while looking at them pointedly. All of their other friends looked at them in a similar way and Ruby was even pouting which was easy for Jaune to see because of how Summer was gushing over it.
"N-No." Jaune said shakily with an awkward laugh, looking very much like a child caught while trying to steal a cookie from a cookie jar. "How could we forget about everyone here. All of us will go right after everyone's done with their pancakes."
"Good." Ruby said with a quick nod before taking a bite out of a pancake on her plate.
...
An hour or so later...
...
The walk towards Lilirara's house was unsurprisingly awkward. It wasn't because of how strained and peculiar their relations were since they quite quickly managed to find some lighter topics to talk about while gracefully leaving all the heavy subjects for later.
No, the awkwardness came from the fact that no matter where they went everyone was staring at them for some reason.
Sure, they might have been a rather unusually large group of people slowly traveling through one of the most crowded cities in Mistral if not the entire Remnant but it shouldn't gather that much attention from everyone else. Most people would have assumed they were just having a party and looked away in disinterest or something if that was all that was off about them yet people just kept staring at them.
It could have something to do with how strangely they were acting though. While some of them were casually walking while holding an ordinary conversation, it wasn't the case for the majority of their group.
Weiss, Whitley and Chocolove were stuck in a weird triangular talk filled with scoldings, threats, and terrible jokes. It looked like they could easily start a brawl between each other if only Whitley were to react to any of Chocolove's jokes. The fact that Ren would sometimes quip in with some provocative remark on the steel shaman didn't help the situation at all.
Ruby, Yang and Jaune on the other hand were having an almost entirely one-sided enthusiastic conversation in which Jaune was answering any questions the sisters had about Summer and translating anything his guardian spirit wanted to tell them in return. Luckily they didn't touch any of the more important issues because Jaune doubted that they would have been able to reach Lilirara's house while talking about his and Summer's history or why they technically ran away earlier.
Despite all of that, the situation was probably the most awkward for Pyrrha who not only led the entire group to the house of her teacher but also didn't really have a person to converse with as the only people who weren't already in any conversation, that was Blake and Lyserg, preferred to stay silent.
At least none of the people in their group treated her like a famous celebrity so it wasn't all bad.
All the conversations between them suddenly stopped as a worn down wooden house entered their sights and they stopped right before it. Most of their group didn't react too strongly to that as they already visited it earlier but those who didn't looked a good mix between nervous, excited and confused.
"Is that the place?" Ren asked while looking a bit upwards, breaking the silence.
"Yup, that's my teacher's house. I hope you don't mind the way it looks too much, trust me I tried to convince her to do some renovations and no matter how I asked she always dismissed it." Pyrrha said with a tired nod as if she had already explained the exact same thing not too long ago.
"Don't worry." Whitley reassured with a practiced smile. "We all are well aware that some, if not most, shamans can be a bit unusual so it's nothing strange that she doesn't care for her house too much. Jaune here didn't really have a home for most of his life for example."
Jaune suddenly felt a small shiver going down his spine as his older sister narrowed her eyes at him. He wasn't sure whether it was from worry or anger that he allowed himself to live without a house.
It wasn't his fault, he lived on the move for his entire life and there was no point in getting one when it's so expensive and he wouldn't use one much anyway. He knew that none of those excuses would work on his sister however so he could only whimper a little under the cold gaze.
"Can we just enter?" Jaune asked.
"Naturally." Pyrrha took a step towards the doors. "Let me be the one to open the door again. Lili dislikes dealing with strangers quite a lot."
With the door barely hanging on its hinges, Pyrrha didn't have to knock hard at all to announce their presence. A slight touch was more than enough for the door to make a loud screeching noise that was likely heard by everyone in the close proximity.
"Come in!" A voice called out from inside in a grumbling tone.
"No ambush this time either?" Pyrrha asked upon hearing the voice of her teacher. She likely didn't intend for any of them to have heard that, or at the very least least to be worried by it.
"Ambush?" Jaune couldn't help but whisper in question to Ruby and Yang. What sort of person expected an attack when visiting their teacher? Did it have something to do with the huntsman traditions? Maybe their red haired guide was simply too cautious for her own good.
Ruby answered Jaune's inquiry with a simple shrug. It wasn't like she had any more idea what Lilirara was like than Jaune had, she only met her once and it was at most a few hours ago.
During their short moment of confusion Pyrrha had already entered the building and was likely on her way to inform Lilirara of their arrival.
"Don't bother with it." Whitley said to Jaune and Ruby before following right behind Pyrrha and entering the building. "We need her help to find the Tribes Village and if she wants to fight us then all we have to do is win."
"You sure became arrogant in the time you were on your little journey, Whitley. That person you're talking about is Pyrrha Nikos' combat teacher, there's no way you four could defeat her, even with your freaky ghost powers." Weiss rebuked her younger brother with a confident huff.
Ruby giggled to herself after hearing what her partner had said. It wasn't every day that she was able to hear an uptight person like Weiss say silly words like freaky. Meeting with her little brother again had certainly affected her.
With the first two people beside Pyrrha in the building the rest of them didn't have to be encouraged to follow. The only ones who took slightly longer to enter the building were confused looking Jaune, and his sister.
"Is Pyrrha some famous fighter for Whitley's sister to be so confident about her strength?" Jaune whispered to his guardian spirit before moving forward as well to not be left behind by his friends and to not appear weird to Saphron.
"Don't ask me." Summer shook her head before flying into the building. "When I died she was at most a few years old and since then I was only either at my grave to console my mourning daughters or traveling with you."
Jaune shook his head slightly at that before giving up on the question. It wasn't like the identity of the red haired girl was of any importance to him, the only thing they needed to know about her was that she was the student of Lilirara.
"You again kids?" A surprised vice echoed through the building as Jaune slowly walked to the place his friends were gathering at. "It's been less than four hours since you guys left, don't tell me you want something more from me."
The voice not only sounded surprised but also really annoyed, almost as if the person this voice belonged to was tired of dealing with them.
Curiosity arose in Jaune while he was walking through the single corridor the house appeared to have. It wasn't everyday they met with someone who was annoyed at them before they even talked.
What sort of person would be so quick to find them troublesome?
Thankfully, Jaune didn't have to wait for long before he was able to see the person who was so tired of them so quickly as just when he caught up to his friends, he was able to see an irritated long haired woman in tribal-looking clothing sitting lazily on a chair and looking at them with disinterest.
"Uhm, I know that we left only a short while ago but we found those friends of ours-" Pyrrha started politely explaining but she stopped herself when her teacher raised one of her arms to silence her and Jaune grabbed her shoulder to give himself a chance to speak.
"Don't recount everything that happened after you left, I can see the new friends you brought with you." Lilirara rolled her eyes. "I assume they are the ones who wanted to meet me after meeting you, so let them speak what's their business."
Jaune only laughed a little after being called out like that but Ren and Whitley immediately became wary of the older shaman woman.
"Good afternoon, lady Lili." Jaune said with a small smile. "We've been told to seek you out by Maria. While you probably don't know anything about us, I'm sure that old lady Maria told you that we would be coming."
Lilirara merely raised one of her eyebrows and looked at him carefully in response before leaning a bit back on her chair with a wary movement.
"So you're the ones who Maria sent to me, huh?" Lilirara asked with a rude tone in her voice. "Tell me, are her eyes still as silver and shiny as I remember or did they lose their spark already?"
This time it was Jaune's turn to raise one of his eyebrows questioningly. Was it some form of a test to see if they truly were the people they said they were?
"I'm sorry to tell you this but Maria's eyes lost their spark a long time ago. By the time we met her she was able to see only thanks to the prosthetics she had on her eyes, if you didn't tell us that her eyes were originally silver then we wouldn't even know what their color was." Jaune answered seriously with his body tense and relaxing only after he saw a smirk appear on Lilirara's face.
"Alright, kid. It seems that you have really met her." Lilirara said with a lazy wave of her hand. "Tell me, what's the issue you need my help with? It must be something serious if Maria sent you to me."
Excitement flashed on Jaune's, Ren's and Whitley's faces, they've been searching for Lilirara for the last month and now that they were here they couldn't help but feel restless at the prospect of finding out where the Tribes Village might be.
"The Shaman Fight entered its second stage and our objective is to find the Tribes Village." Jaune started to say and the smirk on Lilirara's face quickly turned into a scowl. "Maria told us that you knew where it might be so we came to ask-"
"No."
Lili's answer was instantiations, she didn't even allow them to ask the question. All three of them plus Nora looked at her in surprise at that, out of all the answers they expected a straight up refusal wasn't one of them.
While Jaune and Ren were still recovering from the sudden refusal, Whitley tightened his fists a little and stepped forward to speak his mind.
"What the hell do you mean by 'no'? You aren't participating in the tournament yourself so what's preventing you from giving some hint to us? Could it be that you don't want to give people a chance at becoming the Shaman King?"
"Whitley, stop!" Weiss rebuked her younger brother from behind but nobody in the conversation paid her any attention.
Lilirara scoffed at Whitley's questions and looked at him in either contempt or pity. It was hard to decipher which emotion was it when she not only looked as cold as she did but also wasn't bothering to keep up the eye contact.
"I'm doing this to save your lives, you fools." Lilirara shook her head. "The Tournament will end as nothing more than an one-sided bloodbath of every weaker shaman by the members of the tribes. Believe me, it's how it ended the last time."
The moment Lili gave her answer, Whitley tightly grabbed his saber and was about to start a fight from the irritation that was raging within him. Luckily he was stopped by Ren who gently pulled him back while himself coming closer to the older shaman.
"You say that's how it ended the last time yet there's no way for you to actually know what had happened there. The last Shaman Fight was centuries ago and even if you met any ghosts from that time there's a small chance that they would tell you exactly what had happened back then." The wind shaman of their group said kindly.
"You truly are beginner shamans, aren't you?" Lilirara asked with a snort after hearing Ren's words. "Let me tell you something kid, for an experienced shaman there's always a way to learn of the spirits' true history. It's only a matter of knowing how."
Jaune gritted his teeth after thinking about Lilirara's points for a few seconds. If he had learned of what Lili said back in Vale then he would have quit the Tournament without questions, his original goal was to merely find other people like him in order to become more normal so there's no reason for him to be risking his life for that, but now after witnessing the terrifying nature of people like Hao who could very well become the next Shaman King he couldn't just give up in the middle.
"Even if what you're saying is the truth, and we could really die there." Jaune started with a whisper that could still be clearly heard in the silence of the building and raised his voice a little after noticing that people were listening to him. "You still should tell us the directions to the Tribes Village or at the very least some hints on where it might be. If not to help us then to help the rest of the world because if the current favorite of the tournament wins, Remnant might not be such a peaceful place anymore."
Lilirara observed them in silence for a few seconds before sighing and shaking her head a little.
"I take it you won't give up on that?" Upon hearing no answers to her question, Lilirara could only scoff before standing up. "Fine, if you want to be so stubborn then the least I can do is show you exactly what the danger you are walking into will look like."
The moment everyone heard those words was more than enough for all the shamans present in the room to instinctively form their Over Souls and prepare for a fight. There might not have been any truly experienced shaman here but even less accomplished shamans knew that the moment a shaman was reaching to make an Over Soul a fight was almost always bound to happen.
"You think that with your insignificant power you can face me here directly?" Lilirara raised one of her eyebrows before snapping her fingers as if to command someone. "I said that I would show you the danger awaiting you and I will keep my word."
A sound of flying objects entered their ears as a couple of levitating dolls suddenly surrounded them in a peculiar circular formation. At first they didn't appear to be aggressive and only circled around them but when the world began to shift a little because of that everybody understood that something was happening.
"Ahh! W-What is that!?" Saphron screamed loudly when she saw the rapidly flying dolls. It was the first time she had ever seen something supernatural with her own eyes so there was no way it wouldn't have left an impression.
Thankfully she didn't have too worry to much about her safety because the dolls skillfully separated every shaman of the group from the ordinary people with their circular formation. Unless they were hit by any attacks from their friends, the non shamans in the building would be safe and unharmed.
In the middle of that formation however, it wasn't as nice and peaceful as outside of it. The image around them blurred and shifted, and it was becoming increasingly harder to breathe and keep consciousness.
Lyserg and Whitley tried to break through one of the dolls with their Over Souls but sadly their attacks were easily blocked or avoided and the attempt alone wasted so much energy that they couldn't afford another one.
The wooden dolls gradually sped up, increasing the effects they had on all of them inside the circle at the same time. It didn't take long for them to stop being able to breathe at all and for the world around them to become completely comprehensible to them.
Jaune soon collapsed to his knees because of the strain the weird formation was leaving on his body. The only thing that kept him from passing out was his sheer stubbornness to show Lilirara that they would be able to handle the danger of the Tournament.
A couple of dust rounds were fired as Jaune barely held to his consciousness. Most likely team RWBY tried to help them get away from the formation. Sadly it wouldn't do much to help them when even their Over Souls proved to be useless against the wooden dolls.
In the end, despite all of their efforts, they lost their consciousness.
...
Unknown time later...
...
When Jaune awoke, he couldn't hide his confusion. Despite not remembering much from their brief clash against Lilirara, he was certain that he fainted in her house that should be somewhere in Argus and he doubted that he was unconscious for long enough to be dragged out of the city, especially when Saphron wanted to do anything but separate from him.
Why did he awoke somewhere completely different then?
No matter where he looked, there weren't any buildings or walls that would have been a common sight in the port city. The landscape didn't resemble anything around Argus either.
There were no sprawling fields right outside the gates of the city nor two angled mountains that made for perfect protection from the sides. The ocean was still there but the only thing it bordered was a large desert.
Jaune quickly looked around in hopes of finding out what was going on but to his displeasure he found nothing.
He couldn't see any of his friends, living people who might know what was going on, or even any ghosts and spirits for that matter. It was almost like the place he woke up at was entirely abandoned.
"Finally! The Tribes Village's just before us! We reached it!" A loud and boisterous voice suddenly called out of the desert, instantly bringing Jaune's attention towards it.
Before Jaune could even pinpoint the exact location where the voice came from, let alone start walking towards it, an invisible force suddenly dragged him in that direction on its own.
It lifted his body without any issues and before he could comprehend what was going on, Jaune was already flying through the air towards the source of that previous shout. The weird force didn't care if there were any obstructions in the way and as Jaune quickly learned when his body phased through a giant rock that was on the way, he didn't have to worry about that either.
Panic immediately overtook Jaune. Did he die?! That would be, well only slightly inconvenient now that Jaune thought about it, most of his friends were either capable of seeing spirits or spirits themselves. In reality the only important people he wouldn't have been able to talk with were girls from team RWBY whom he barely knew and his family which he hadn't seen since ten years ago.
Being a shaman really took most of the fear of death away, didn't it?
Luckily he didn't have to say his good-byes to the few people he wouldn't be able to talk with yet since there was quite a high chance that he was still alive. Sure, the fact that his body had passed through solid objects like nothing was a good proof that he was a ghost but if he really was dead then he should have still been able to see other spirits beside him yet the area around him was devoid of any spirits.
It did make him question what was happening to him right now though.
Was it some sort of dream?
"Don't be celebrating so quickly you impatient hot head. There still are next rounds that we will have to win for any one of us to have a chance at becoming the Shaman King. The Shaman Fight is far from over." Another voice rebuked the first one as Jaune finally arrived at the source of these voices.
Whatever it was, it appeared to be showing him the place right before the Tribes Village. Maybe it was what happened back during the previous Shaman Fight? Lilirara did say that she would show them the danger of the Tournament.
Jaune moved his legs to a sitting position and concentrated on what was happening before him. He couldn't afford to miss any information about the Tribes Village that could be gathered from here.
"Let him live a little. It is another step to becoming the Shaman King being accomplished, after all." Another voice resounded and now that Jaune could see who was talking he could see that the person who just said that was most likely the leader of all those voices.
A group of five ancient looking shamans stood in front of the ocean while looking at the distance. The man who just talked was at the very front of them with his feet already partially submerged in the water. He appeared to be looking at something with a wide grin of excitement on his face, it was clear that the previous shamans had as many troubles with finding the Village as they had.
For some reason when Jaune finally took a careful look at the man with his feet in the water, his own feet started to feel slightly cold. It couldn't have been because of the wind that was blowing through him as he knew that his body here was only spiritual.
Was he sharing the physical sensations with one of the people he was observing?
Jaune gulped a little in worry. He remembered Lilirara saying something about bloodbath at the Village and if his intuition was right then there was a high possibility that it was going to be the exact thing he was watching at the moment.
Well, no matter what it was, it couldn't possibly be worse than the torture that was Summer's training.
"I would have followed the tip of one of your friends, young Callows." Another unfamiliar voice resounded from behind as a few slow footsteps could be heard. "If you take some time to look around you will see that the Shaman Fight is far from over."
Jaune and all of the shamans he was watching turned around as one to see who was the person that had sneaked up on them and when they saw who it was Jaune couldn't help but to widen his eyes.
The person who just arrived looked remarkably similar to the woman who had been his exterminator back during the eliminations, Raven Branwen. There were some differences of course, for one the person behind them was a man and he gave off a much more threatening feeling, but the resemblance was so uncanny that Jaune wouldn't be surprised if that man was one of Raven's ancestors.
"What do you want, Branwen?" One of the shamans said and Jaune nodded in satisfaction, it looked like he was right. "We've arrived before time and even if you don't count us as being in the Village yet we still have more than a week to enter."
"I hate to tell you this but the Shaman Fight ends right here. All the previous people who arrived here have already been consumed by my spirit, now it's your turn." The Branwen ancestor said with a smile that somehow looked both innocent and cruel.
"What are you talking about!?" The leader of the shaman group demanded angrily and prepared for a fight. Jaune couldn't blame him, if he were in a similar situation he would have been furious as well.
The Branwen ancestor merely smiled lightly at the question directed at him. The more Jaune looked at him the more he reminded him of someone, though he couldn't quite place who yet.
"Why should I explain anything to people who are about to become nothing more than a nourishment for my spirit?" Branwen shook his head lightly. "Don't worry I might just leave you as wandering ghosts after I consume your guardian spirits."
Two of the shamans charged at Branwen in rage in response. They quickly realized that talking was going to get them nowhere and if they wanted to live they had to get rid of that judge.
"So petty." The Branwen ancestor said with an almost playful tone and Jaune's eyes widened in shock.
The charging shamans were caught by two giant arms made out of flames. They tried to protect themselves but their Over Souls broke the instant flaming arms came in contact with them.
"Y-You-!" One of the shamans shouted while watching his friends trapped in the burning hands.
The Branwen merely smiled a little bit more in response and the fire arms easily crushed the shamans in them.
Jaune looked in horror at the corpses that hit the ground after the Branwen let go of them. The bodies looked scorched and crushed, he could barely recognize which body belonged to which shamanas even their faces become charred.
The silence that overtook them after that happened was only broken by the remaining shamans starting their own attack.
"Oh? You are coming straight at me? Brave choice." Branwen said lightly before jumping up and landing on the shoulders of a fire giant that appeared the moment he left the ground.
Jaune was shaking at the sight of that spirit. He knew very well to whom that giant belonged and what would be left of the people who tried to fight against it, the scene of a spirit being burned into a nothingness still sometimes flashed through his mind.
Every shaman aside from the leader of the group shook the moment the flame spirit showed its full form. It was a mistake more than big enough to cost their lives as two small whirlwinds of fire devoured them in seconds.
Jaune shuddered the moment that happened, he was sharing sensation with the leader yet even despite him dodging the temperature he felt was still so hot it was painful. He didn't want to know how it would feel if he were to be caught in the middle of those flames.
"It looks like you are the only one left, Callows." Branwen sat down, letting his legs hang of the edge off the fire spirit's shoulder. "I have to say, I expected something more from the top dog of the tournament."
Callows only grunted in anger before jumping up to try to reach the Branwen ancoestor.
Muscles tensed in his body, when Jaune saw that happened. He knew exactly what was about to happen and he wasn't looking forward to that.
A single finger was enough to kill the leader of the group of shamans. It pierced through his chest, burning away anything that stood in its way. The body quickly turned limp and the life in the shaman's eyes slowly died out.
Jaune was coughing and squirming from pain, despite the leader having a huge hole being burned through his chest he still tried to keep onto any life he might have left. It made for a slow and gruesome death as the Branwen merely stood in place and waited for the shaman to die on his own after being impaled by the fire spirit.
With the feeling of being impaled and burning from inside all over his body, Jaune lost his consciousness one more time.
And cut!
We've got the the previous tournament flashback and the familiar figure killing off the previous teams of shaman out of the way. Now the only question's how the Branwen tribe is related to all of that.
I hate to say it right after a two week break but the next week there probably won't be any chapters either (Sorry). I promise that after that it will be back regularly at Fridays like it was before.
See ya later!