I felt more connected to the world than I had felt in weeks as I strode across the air in the direction of Ozpin's tower. If Death was a storm, then I was the eye, the source from which the entirety of the storm's power came from. Barely contained.
My body felt strong as I experimentally clenched my hands again and again. But it was a different strength. I didn't feel as if I could fell a building with a single punch or catch an anti-aircraft round with my chest. What I felt was influence. The sensation of being behind an unlimited force such as death. I was eternal, and infinite.
Being the catalyst for something like that is indescribable. I could look at a man, a conqueror of civilizations even. And he would die. It would be the smallest, easiest thing for me. I could snuff out a life and nothing or nobody could do anything to stop me.
However, none of this was new to me. Someone immune to me however, was new. I liked surprises, but this one was a sword in my back. I had to find out why this man was untouchable by death. How had he resisted my force, even if it was unfocused. When I killed him, he would die forever. But i had to figure out what he knew first.
I was at his tower already, and I didn't notice until I had passed through his wall and was staring at him at his desk, filling out paperwork with a look of pure contempt on his face. I could tell from his expression and the way his aura and or auras sat, he loved the monotony of it. He wanted to simply sit at his large clockwork desk inside of his dull grey office, and wait the years away. He would never get bored.
He could stay there until he died, and die with a smile on his face.
That was, if he could die. That's what I was here to find out, but I still had some waiting to do. He was awake now, and in order to enter his dreams, he must be asleep. That could take hours if the stack of papers yet to fill was anything to go by. So I stepped forward... And he looked up.
I froze, un-moving as a stone as I swore that he looked directly at me. Each second ticked by like an hour before he sighed and put his pen down. "I've met you enough times now, that it would be rude of me not to recognize you. Reveal yourself to me." To say that I was shocked to my core would be an understatement. The fact that Ozpin not only recognized me, but could detect me in this form, was beyond any expectations I could have had. Beyond extraordinary.
I stayed hidden, but let my voice project. In human form, it may have sounded perturbed. This voice however, was just another layer of the illusion.
"Sleep now. It wouldn't do good for someone to walk in with you talking to yourself." I spoke. The sound of it reverberated around the room in a deep whisper that was clearly heard. He pondered this for a moment. "Very well. Follow me into my world." He said, leaning backwards and placing his hands upon his chest. I could tell that the moment his head hit the headrest, that he had fallen into deep REM Sleep.
I traveled from my side of the room and to his sleeping body, glowing green and grey, with the same rainbow of colors underneath. Standing this close now, I could see something strange. The green and grey I had come to know as his aura, were not blended. They were mingled together, but distinctly separate. What did that mean. I supposed I find out in just a moment. With an effort of focus, I placed my hand upon Ozpin's forehead and entered his dreams.
The effect was immediate and overwhelming. I had entered dreams before, but they were the usual clutter of a single mind and a single dream-scape. Ozpin's body though, contained hundreds of different colors and shades, the possibility of that many fragments of souls entered my mind. All of them dreaming and with their own clutter.
I had to fight through it as if I were swimming through a junkyard within a Catagory-5 tornado. I knew that if I dug deep enough then I would hit the dream-scape. Ozpin was obviously waiting there for me. So I pushed and tore through the storm of thoughts and places and feelings, retreating into the silence of my own mind for shelter.
By the time I had fought through it all, I was shaking in my own mind at the effort of it and had to quickly compose myself once I realized that I was falling. I was in a clear sky over grassy plains that were bordered by the ocean. My body, suddenly feeling exposed, was falling near the barrier between them. As I neared the ground, I let myself fall. Fighting wouldn't do me any good now.
Shortly before I impacted the ground, it was as if my entire body became shrouded by a bungee-cord. My fall slowed and just before I started going back up, the cord broke. I landed softly on my feet. The grass bent lightly under my boots. "Exhilarating, isn't it?" An older voice asked me. I looked in front of me and standing, staring at the ocean, was Ozpin.
I recognized Ozpin and his green aura, but there was another next to him. A copy that resided in a grey suit with silver, slightly longer hair. He held the grey aura from earlier. "How do you keep your mind?" I asked him, noting that my voice did not echo or reverberate the way it should have. A glance downwards showed me that my flowing, flickering rags of clothes were still and solid. I was weighed down here.
A hunter's mind was already a fortress, but on the level that Ozpin was, he was a kingdom whose walls would never be cracked. And so it weighed me down, akin to being underwater. I was not as powerful here as I should have been.
"I've had many, many years to become adjusted to it." Ozpin said, and turned around. With him, the silver-haired man turned as well. I could see his chisled and iron features that were accompanied by a cold red glare. He wore a silver suit and both hands were grasped around a solid metal cane. He was old. At least sixty years in age.
"How many years?" I asked. "Would you believe me if I told you that I was one of the first? I wasn't one of those that discovered dust, but I was the first to control it. By the same extent, I was the first to unlock a semblance. I'm sure that if you looked hard enough then you could see." He said. I couldn't though. I was dimmed here, limited.
"Unbind me and reveal your soul for me to see." I said in commanding tone. As the words left me, the weight lifted itself and Ozpin's form faded away. The silver man remained solid, unaffected. That didn't matter yet.
I searched through Ozpin's aura and soul for two things. His age, and my mark. By mark, mean that literally. When a person dies, there is a mark left on their soul as they move on to the afterlife. A skeletal hand with fingers digging in. The angel of death pulling you away from life. And I found the mark.
Actually, I found thousands. There were thousands of interlocking hand-prints showered across his soul. The mark of death, the center of the death miasma, there were too many. Even just two was too many.
Beyond the marks, I could see his age. It angered me.
I was brought into existence when the first man died. I remember so clearly the feeling of bringing a soul out of a body for the first time. I was barely more than a man then. I only got stronger as more died. Ozpin was within a few generations of that first man. Within a single century. That's how close our own ages were.
"How are you this old? How have you evaded death for so long?" This time the silver man spoke, and he started with a deep and gruff laugh. "He has evaded nothing. The gods simply grab his soul before it reaches an afterlife, and puts it in another body. I would know." I took that in.
If the gods were involved in this man's fate, then it really was a toss-up as to whether I could actually kill him, and keep him dead. I was a god on my own, but there were more beings of power out there like me. More forces. If they wanted Ozpin alive for that long, he had to be important.
"Where do you fit into all of this? Who are you and why do the gods themselves wish for you to live?" I asked him, my voice rising a bit. "I am a character in many of children's stories. One with magic to back my own aura. I was once the Wizard who gave the maidens their powers. As for why the gods bring me back each and every time, it is because I keep failing." He stopped there.
"Failing to do what?" I hissed at him. He sighed, looking his age for once. "I have failed countless times to rid humanity of the Grimm and Salem. Each time she wins by the smallest of margins, and humanity must restart with the history books all but wiped away." I knew all of this. I knew that humanity and Salem have been at odds for millennium. I just didn't expect Ozpin to be the center of it all for the humans.
"I have answered all of your questions this far. Now answer me only one. What do you plan to gain from this information?" I stared at him and the silver man whom it was now obvious was the original soul of this body. I didn't know. Even with this information, I didn't know if I could kill him. What if I did? Would it end the cycle, or perhaps the gods would find a new pawn for humanity?
"I have no idea what to do with this. What I do know however, is that it is never good to see Death, even a part of me. Now though, you and everything you love, have my full attention." I watched Ozpin's face drop slightly and felt the dream-scape turn hostile. Quickly I faded out of his world, bypassing the clutter of minds on my exit. Faintly I could hear him yelling. "You can't take my school! I won't let you!"
"Like you have a choice." I said, letting the words take my place as I was ejected from his mind and into his office once more. Even the moment I opened my eyes, I could see his aura prepping to scatter defensively, and I forced mine over his first. It took effort, not having enough time to gather my power, but I successfully repressed Ozpin's aura so that he couldn't wake up for the next few hours.
I still wasn't about to take any chances. Ozpin had surprised me before, so I left. Through his walls and back into the air, I traveled to my body. On the trip, I noticed that it had become day time. The sun had just begun to rise. And what a view it was from atop these cliffs. The orange and rad stretched on for miles, bordering the horizon in a half circle. Unfortunately this meant that I had only an hour or so before the rest of my 'team' woke up. I liked to catch breakfast on most days.
That and the fact that my body was lying on the roof without a soul in it, surrounded by a marking that would most likely kill anyone who touched it. Although by the inactivity of their auras, none of them were awake yet. I had time, and I wasn't going to squander that. Time was a resource.
I jumped off my so called 'path' that I had been running on and slowly fell to the roof, landing with a simply crouch and a hollow thunk. My body sat in front of me in the same position I had left it, surrounded by the same glowing lotus. It was a simple act to step back into my body, letting my senses drown in mortality and my connection sever.
For a few moments I felt as if underwater with how limited I was. It passed, and I was left sitting in my markings. Sighing, I stood up and began to create seven more lines. They originated from each of the points and gathered in the center. With the point created, I stepped over the convergence and watched the entire sign splinter and crack as the energy was destroyed and dispersed, before it reabsorbed into my body once more.
Even as a being of my category, absorbing that much energy was still a small rush, and I felt invigorated by it. I couldn't do anything with this energy however, because there simply wasn't time to do so. It would be best for me to simply mark out the next steps of my plan in meditation.
So what if I meditate a lot. The monks were onto something there. There's a reason i let them live as long as they do.
So I sat down once again, and closed my mind. My plans had been going great so far, excluding the problem of Ozpin's supposed immortality. Other than that, it was great. I had broken a champion, ignited the true power of some girl, gained the trust of just about everyone that mattered... Okay, excluding Glynda and Pyrrha.
Again, great. My cover as Darren Bentley was secure and was going to stay that way. I might be known as incredibly strong and fast, but I hadn't heard anyone say 'unnatural' yet. With the semester also nearing its end in just a week, I would have all the time I needed to find the LockBox.
The LockBox. I wasn't 100% what was in there yet, but I was sure that it would be something fun. Who doesn't love tampering with a loaded nuke? Just me? Alright.
Either way, once I found that I would commit its location to memory and then wait for a good time to execute my attack. Preferably during an event where a lot of people would be able to see it. Hell, if I could get the effects of my plan to hit some of the other Kingdoms then I would go for it. Who knows, maybe I won't stop at one kingdom. I had always been a fan of the whole, 'humanity needs a reset' idea.
Mass genocide. The thought put a smile on my face.
"Hey Darren. What you doing up here?" And just like that my smile fell and my eyes opened to see the ever innocent face of Ruby Rose bent down at an angle to look at me. The stupid smile remained present on her face. "I'm thinking." I said.
"Oh. What are you thinking about?" She asked.
About six to seven different ways to kill you. My favorite is chest tackling you off this roof.
"Nothing important. What are you doing up here?" I asked her. She straightened up. "Yang told me to get you. Apparently you promised to come down and get to know us today. I kinda wanted to as well. We really know nothing about you." She said, a little hope in her voice, as well as an undertone of apprehension.
"I only agreed to dinner, but why not. I've nothing better to do. Breakfast?" I spoke. She nodded. "I'll go tell them you're coming down." Before I could say anything she sprinted to the edge and carefully stepped down to jump back in the room.
"Idiot." I said under my breath, not really sure who it was directed at. I just sealed my fate to a day wasted getting to know teenagers. They hadn't even lived long enough to have anything interesting happen. Just how was I supposed to resist killing these people for an entire day.
With a sigh of annoyance I followed Ruby's steps and jumped, turning and swinging into the room without a warning. My mistake as I almost dive-kicked Weiss as she got out of bed. "Wha- Imbecile! Watch where you're going!" She yelled, partially on instinct.
"Curtains. Couldn't see. Not my fault." I said in a monotone voice, only serving to irritate hew more. She looked like she was about to say something, most likely a slue of insults, but Blake stopped her. "Nice of you to join us. Breakfast?" She said, gesturing towards the door.
"Yes, I suppose that is in order." I said, hiding my irritation well. I needed to make them think I liked them, or at least didn't hate them. A circle of people defending me if shit hit the fan would be nice.
"To the mess hall, troops!" Ruby yelled, acting much younger than she was. That childlike innocence would only make it more fun to bend and stretch her soul until it snapped. We needed to have another training session, this time without needles. Knives maybe? Perhaps razor-wire.
Everyone filed out of the room, looking to have a nice peaceful breakfast. With Ruby and Yang though, that probably wasn't going to happen. Oh well, if they annoyed me enough then I would use both knives AND razor-wire. That sounded like fun, and it was that thought that kept me sane against Ruby's constant rambling's on the way to the cafeteria. I just hoped that with food in her mouth that she would talk less.
I was wrong. She talked just as much as she wolfed down pancakes and spoke among us. It seemed to bother the heiress even more than me though, even to the point of more than a few elbows to the ribs and shin-kicking. She ignored them in favor of talking.
"Yeah, Patch was a great place to be, especially in the winter. What about you Darren, where do you come from." I froze for the barest hints of a second, my eggs hanging off my fork. "You might not believe me, but me and my family used to live out in the wastes of Mistral. Oh what was it called?" I pretended to ponder the thought, letting them create my past partially.
"The Twisted Ice-Fangs?" Weiss said incredulously. I pointed at her. "That's the place. I loved the summers there. Almost got above the negatives a few times. Great auroras." She still looked at me with this look on her face. Meanwhile Yang began to talk again. "Hey, I actually know that place. There's no way you actually lived out there."
"Really, cause I still have the scar from falling off one of the fangs." I said, creating a large scar on my back that they hadn't seen yet. It was simple skin changing, and I turned to let them see. It started at the base of my neck and I pointed to halfway down my spine. "That's where it ended. Hurt like hell, but I probably shouldn't have been climbing without a harness."
They stopped doubting me after that, but Blake had some questions for me. "I've seen the way you fight, and what Ruby and Yang told me about your training, you had to learn that somewhere." She said, finally looking up from her book.
"You're absolutely right. I trained under a man named Hazel Rainart in hand-to-hand combat, a woman named Eileen in swords, and finally a man named Shaw. He taught me everything I know about aura, even to mimic semblances." Weiss choked on her food when I said this, and we all looked at her. "That's *cough* That's impossible."
"Is it now?" I said, grinning as I summoned one of her own glyphs in my hand and pressed it to the table. The resulting action elicited a scream of surprise across the cafeteria as a random girl just caught her breakfast with her face and walked away to clean up. I chuckled while she scowled at me while Ruby leaned in. "How in the world did he teach you to do that!?" She half screamed.
"A lot of life or death situations. Basically I had to study a semblance for months, figuring out how to work my aura to it and everything I could do with it. Then he shoved me into a horde of Grimm and waited for the bloodbath." Ruby's excitement seemed to have died down and she had a frown on her face. "But, how did he know if you'd unlock the semblance.?"
"He didn't." Yang was scowling this time. "And what if you died?" She asked seriously. I shrugged. "He really didn't care either way. You see, if I had even the slightest notion that he might come in and save me, it wouldn't have been life or death." Yang shook her head.
"That's just insane. I mean, I'm a fan of the whole 'trial by fire' thing, but that's too far." I shrugged once more, taking another bite and finishing my eggs. "Worked, didn't it?" I said as I summoned a flame in my free hand before turning it into an exact replica of ice, the moisture to make it taken from Weiss' glass of water, which was now bone dry. She huffed in annoyance.
"Ooh, pretty." Someone said behind me, and I recognized the voice. Nora Valkyrie was now hovering her head around me, scoping out the piece of Fire-Ice from every angle. In the blink of an eye she picked it up. I waited until she held it up to the light before reigniting the residual aura in it into a small combustion. With a yelp she jumped back from it, unknowingly falling into Ren, who was standing behind her.
The two of them fell on the ground and a shard of ice hit Nora between the eyes. It apparently had an interesting pattern as her ADHD riddled mind latched onto it as her hands did the same, and the stupid grin returned to her face. "Ren look, exploding ice!" She yelled, whipping it at someone in the cafeteria. Another yell of pain and questioning was heard as well as a disappointed noise from Nora as it didn't explode again.
"Please get off of me." Ren said from the floor. Nora jumped off, once again hurting Ren by using his chest as a spring-board before dragging him up with her and off somewhere. Again, teenagers. Although Nora was definitely beyond that kind of crazy. I pitied the boy she drug around.
"Do you think you could teach us to do that?" Ruby asked. I shrugged. "I'm no teacher. I can help evolve your semblances for sure. Teaching you what Shaw taught me, I don't think so." I said, bullshitting my answer. The truth of it was that the strain of multiple semblances would probably destroy their aura, leaving them nothing but a well-trained civilian.
"Evolve? How could you evolve Glyphs, or Shadow-Clones, let alone Yang's semblance?" Blake asked me, setting her book down. She was now interested. "Glyphs would be as simply as learning bigger, more complex words. It is like Rune-work, which is what Glyphs were based on."
"What is Rune-work? I've never heard of it." Weiss asked me. So many questions with these people. Must not kill...
I began to draw a small sign on the table in my black power as it glowed faintly, throwing off white embers. It started as a square, then a circle inside of that. Within that was a decagon. As I finished, I slammed my hand over the air above it and the trays on the table began to rattle with the untamed power. "This is the base of all runes. What is drawn within the center makes up the rune's effect."
I spun my hand as the circle turned clockwise and the decagon counter. Slowly my hand lowered until my fingers were outstretched to the edges of the rune, and overlapping lines merged into the center. Then the symbols began to crawl up my hand and wrist like a snake, settling in a wrapping that took all of it off of the table.
"Once you have chosen your effect and taken control of it, like I have, you simply activate your rune." With that I closed my fist hard, a ball of flame the size of your typical basketball exploding quickly, taking the power of the rune with it. Everyone seemed impressed at the table, except Weiss. "If runes are so good, why are glyphs more widely used?"
"Because runes must be drawn, at least partially. They hold more power than glyphs, but they are slower. It takes years to be able to use them in combat scenarios. It's a trade off, really." I answered her. She seemed satisfied about that, probably only hearing the parts where glyphs were better than runes.
"What about my clones then?" Blake asked me. That I had to think about for a minute. "From what I've seen, you use your clones to take the hit, and then a second later you strike. But if their blade passes through the clone with no resistance, they know it's fake. You need to expand the illusion, make them think you're already dead."
"That's... Dark. But true." She said after a moment of silence. "Okay, what about me?" Yang asked. I was starting to get the very strong feeling that they would all be asking to train with me now. I couldn't waste my time on that. I needed to find the Lock-Box. So thinking quickly about how the byproduct of her semblance was fire, I grabbed a napkin.
"We can see about that once you can light this on fire." I said. Without missing a beat she grabbed at it, her hair already starting to glow a bit. I pulled it back. "Without touching it." I told her, and she stopped, and just stared intently at the napkin in my hand. It lasted about thirty seconds before she gave up. Thirty worthless seconds.
"It's impossible." She said, and I almost laughed. 'You have no idea how to project your aura away from yourself, do you?" She looked at me strangely and I continued to explain. "Your aura resides in your body, but that knowledge is elementary. You must be able to feel it though, brimming just past your skin in the natural shield you create. You've already learned that, you just have to increase your area of influence." I pointed at the heiress.
"Like her, she can summon glyphs a hundred yards from her, and Blake can leave a clone across the room." The two of them respectively nodded as Yang started to understand. "I get it now. Like heatwaves, but aura. Yeah I can do that." She stared intently at the napkin once again, her hand outstretched to meet the distance halfway.
This time I closed my eyes, getting a good look at her aura. I could see her shape, the aura extending from her core to her hand as the concentration increased in that arm. But it went no further. An inch away from her skin seemed to be the barrier. "Do not think as if you are using your aura, think as if you are truly reaching for it." I said.
Her aura wavered for a moment before a phantom limb apparition slowly extended outwards in the shape of an arm. Crude and rudimentary, but on the right tracks. From the flickers in her core aura, I could tell she felt it as well. With eyes closed I watched as her 'hand' slowly moved to grasp the napkin in a phantom grip. I opened my eyes once the aura had reached it.
After ten seconds the napkin began to smoke, and a little after, the barest embers appeared. Then her whole body shivered as the first pieces of flame died and her nose started to bleed slightly. "Oh no, Yang! Are you alright?" Ruby asked, grabbing her dazed sister by the shoulder and shaking slightly. Yang nodded slowly, and spoke even slower.
"Head... Rush..." And then she promptly passed out into her food tray, which was empty. I laughed, getting a dirty look from Weiss and Blake while Ruby picked Yang up by her hair. "What, she's fine. A little aura strain, but nothing serious. Give her five minutes." I told them. Blake sighed and picked up her book again, but watched Yang out of the corner of her eye. Weiss finished eating and took her tray up, and Ruby poked Yang periodically.
Sorry about the wait, but I found a way to somewhat cure my writer's block. I'm going to start writing SCP entries about random things, either from my story or any ideas you give me. So start talking about random creatures from games or movies and such, and I'll do my best. They will probably come up next week.
As far as this story goes, I was just putting this out as celebration for finishing finals. The apology giant chapter is still on it's way, probably the next one. Remember to leave a review or PM if you have any comments or ideas, and await the next chapter.