The ashes of the Rose/Xiao Long house were long since dead, with not a hint of smoldering in them. There had been no caution tape placed around the house, nor any sort of warning about the burned down house. There was just the house, and about a fifty meter radius around it of blackened grass. That was the amount that the firefighters had been able to contain it to— although the house itself was little more than charcoal. The truck that had been in the garage was reduced to a wreck. None of the family ever had the heart to pick through their now worthless belongings. Taiyang had brought them back once, but Yang started crying before they could even exit the car, and even Ruby looked gloomy, despite the fact that not much these days seemed to alter her mood. Secretly, and feeling a little ashamed of himself, Taiyang was glad that his daughters had given him an excuse not to get too close to the old house.
He was still getting over the death of his wife. He tried his best to be strong for his girls, but Yang had taken it especially hard. Ruby was a different issue, he'd decided, and the fallout of her mother's death would likely take years to fully display themselves at this point. A complete change in personality, drive, and ethics was not indicative of mental health.
Not that Taiyang could comment on the mental health of anyone. He swore that when he looked over to the corner, just when he was about to go to sleep, he'd see Summer standing there, watching over him with dull gray eyes. The rational explanation for that was a sleep paralysis demon— a well known ailment, but terrifying nonetheless.
The dreams were a different matter. He'd never slept particularly well before— although he could never hold a candle to Summer, who he constantly worried about due to getting an average of 4 hours of sleep a day. Sometimes he had managed to convince her, and she would sleep for a solid 16 hours, and then berate herself for wasting so much time. In the end, Taiyang always regretted doing that, and so he'd left her to her anemic sleep schedule.
But his dreams... in one sense they were exactly the sort you would expect given his situation. They always involved his wife desperately trying to tell him something, crying into his chest as she displayed more emotion than he'd seen in the entirety of the time he'd been with her. She was heartbroken and lost, nothing like the white demon that he saw in the corner of the room.
There was one night— and only one night— where Yang had woken him up during the middle of this cyclical dream with no apparent end, and he could remember what Summer told him. Just as dreams usually pass from one's memory no more than ten minutes after waking, Taiyang desperately wrote on the notepad on his nightstand, confusing the scared Yang. She'd simply come to ask if she could sleep with him. It had become more common as of late, likely due to nightmares of a different nature.
As every parent does, he let Yang into his bed, the message finally received. The information itself was written on the notepad and placed within the drawer of his nightstand, but the next morning he'd forgotten entirely about both the dream and the fact that he'd written something down. On his notepad was written:
Do not trust Ozpin.
Do not trust Qrow.
Train Ruby.
Beware the Jabberwock.
It was written with the casualness one makes a grocery list with, and yet these four pieces of information would have been of great interest to Taiyang. Yet he had yet to open his nightstand and reveal Summer's words— words he'd known and instantly forgotten.
Back to our main topic of interest, setting aside dreams and spirits, a dusty but not old Qrow stood in front of the burned house that had no caution tape around it. The house itself had collapsed inwards, covering what he sought. He was there to both find answers to the mystery that had stagnated for the last two months, and to retrieve Summer's armory.
Qrow donned gloves stained brown with what one would hope was only dirt, yet if the gloves were placed under a microscope one would find hemoglobin mixed in equal parts with earth. Taking great care not to plunge a nail through his foot, Qrow stepped into the incinerated house. The only thing in the way was a large wall of bricks that was now living life as a floor, albeit poorly.
Casually punching the wall of bricks as a Hunter with aura does, he moved them aside and was assaulted by all manner of insects, bats, and animals writhing around his feet. He fell, landing squarely between two large metal slats that were broken and twisted steel beams. They had been melted in the fire, and nearly became Qrow's joint executioners. He carefully pulled himself up, once again cursed his semblance, and descended into the now unblocked basement.
If it were modern times, he would use his Scroll as his flashlight, but given their limited capabilities in his current time, he had to resort to the barbaric measure of an actual flashlight, one that easily illuminated the flooded basement.
He'd been down there several times, and could remember it like his own home. It was in a sorry state now, though. The last two months had been unkind to it, ruining every surface with a mold or plant that grew in the dark, although compared to the rest of the house it was pristine. He wished that he'd brought boots as he stepped into the stagnant water.
While the weapons were covered in a layer of dust before, now they were covered in rust. Which was not as bad as it might sound, as ironically it had protected the metal from other sorts of wear and tear, now that they had been plainly exposed to the elements for quite some time. Making three trips, he took eleven of Summer's to the surface, placing them carefully on the overgrown lawn to dry.
It was then he remembered where the remaining weapon was— besides Thorn of course— squinting through the murky water to find where Ruby had killed the Grimm on that fateful day. The scythe was intact, although it was in poor shape. After it was cleaned up, he thought it would make an excellent gift to Ruby and be given a new purpose.
Thinking about it a little more, he searched the wall right of where Ruby had fired the gun and found the bullet lodged several inches into the concrete. He rubbed at it, a smile coming to his face. Beyond the grave, Summer had saved her daughter with ingenuity that she had thought as useless. He pulled his hand away and while stepping away— he found something attached to the sole of his shoe. Normally it would be safe to assume some manner of disgusting bug, plant, or growth was the cause, but when Qrow looked back he found a red and white pool beneath the surface of the water.
He touched it beneath the water.
Instantly he recoiled, falling flat. The terror had been brief but absolute, a negativity that both burned and drowned him. The fact that Grimm weren't swarming the house and every inch of it was a wonder in and of itself, but it wasn't as if he could feel the negativity even five feet away from the portal. A talent that most Hunters learned naturally over their career.
Being far more cautious this time, he touched the red and white swirl of colors with a pinky.
Rage and sadness that were not his own filled him, emotions that cursed the gods above and the entirety of the human race.
He ripped his hand away and a bit of his skin refused to come along, attached to the strange white and red circle. Calming himself, Qrow looked closely as the skin was absorbed into the circle, sinking into it like quicksand. Then, a moment later, a tiny deformed Grimm crawled out of the circle after the portal opened for a split second. The Grimm was no bigger than a rat, but with all the wrong proportions for a small animal. It had a tiny head, with one leg bigger than the other, a claw as long as its body, and a white and red color Qrow had never seen before. What he could only guess was supposed to be the wing of a crow rested on its bumpy and misshapen back.
With a measure of casual interest and horror, he watched the Grimm vermin recognize his presence and charge toward him.
He squashed it underfoot with his shoe. Black smoke dissipated beneath the water like a squid spilling ink, infecting and spreading through the water before eventually disappearing altogether.
"Shit."
Qrow had found a portal to hell in the basement of his brother in law's burned down house. One that matched Summer's colors perfectly, and would easily explain how the grimm got into the basement in the first place.
His Scroll rang, scaring him more than it had any right to. He opened it and answered.
"Qrow, whatever you're doing— drop it now."
Ozpin sounded scared, which was something he'd never heard before in the old man's voice. Not even when he'd become a part of the secret 'club' that Ozpin had.
"Done."
"I need you to head to Patch, somewhere near Taiyang's old house—"
"Already there. Why?"
The line was quiet for a moment as Ozpin thought about Qrow's words. "Did you happen to see some sort of... strange circle?"
"Yeah."
"Hmm."
Ozpin paused yet again. "Destroy it."
"Are you—"
"Do it."
Ozpin did not interrupt people. He viewed it as an offense to a person's intelligence to cut them off before they had a chance to finish their thought, however stupid.
"I will, but I haven't even told you what it is. How did you know about it?" Qrow asked, stepping away from the red and white swirl.
Ozpin was not thinking about Qrow's words. He was thinking about the fact he wished he was right less often.
"I knew about it because two months ago— the day that Taiyang's house burned down, there was an unusual magic I hadn't felt in at least a decade. Magic that I thought was long gone. Magic that I thought I put to rest indefinitely, but, alas... The first time I felt it, I was unsure of its location. It was sudden and I was unprepared. Now, I was ready for it and could pinpoint its location with ease. I was very much hoping it was not in that house. As a side note, why are you there?"
An attentive reader might notice conflicting information, the anomaly that Ozpin was not forthright in one other use of Summer's semblance, the one after her death. Take heed reader. Take heed.
"I'm here for Summer's weapons. They never got taken out."
"Really? Intriguing. Now destroy the portal, and pray that we never see another one."
"How do I destroy it? Shoot it?"
"You happen to be in luck. If I remember correctly... in the top left drawer of the cabinet below the weapon's display, there should be an odd looking knife. Hit it with that and it should disappear."
Qrow rolled his eyes. This was not the first time the old man had given him a set of instructions like that. He did of course find the knife, but it would be more accurate to call it a dagger given its size. Runes that Qrow didn't recognize covered it, with a strange steel with ripples flowing along the surface like water.
"What kind of metal is this?"
"Damascus. I'm the only one that remembers it, these days." Ozpin said, sighing. "Again, just use that and the portal should dissipate."
Holding the knife underhanded, he slammed it into the red and white swirl. It slid through the concrete beneath it like butter. He hadn't expected the thing to writhe like a living animal in its death throes, lines that he thought were nothing more than markings undulating in pain. It took half a minute before the portal gave up and died, leaving the knife still stuck in the ground.
"It's dead."
"Good. Keep the knife. I fear you may need it again."
Qrow pocketed it, heading up the stairs with Ozpin still on the line. He'd never been more unsure of whether or not to ask Ozpin something. Steeling himself, he took the plunge.
"Do you know what Summer's semblance is?" Qrow asked.
"I had a guess that I had very much hoped was wrong. Unfortunately... I believe that we are on the same page. I did an investigation of my own. Did Summer ever talk to you about her childhood?"
"No. Whenever it came up she usually said she didn't remember it."
The sound of pages flipping came from over the line. "I'll spare you the details of the how, but I managed to find Summer's hometown. Do you remember the slaughter of Thead village?"
"No." Qrow answered bluntly, making liberal use of his flask after what he had learned.
"I do. An entire village just flattened. No survivors, no eyewitnesses."
"What do you mean by 'flattened'?" Qrow asked.
"I mean that there was once a village, and then there was a level field with bits of village in it. But no villagers. The name of the village being an anagram for 'death' is no coincidence, as there was no officially recorded name for the village, and one was needed. I was the one to come up with it."
"What does this have to do with Summer?" Qrow asked, trying to purge Ozpin's rather strange statement from his mind through the use of alcohol.
"My previous assistant was... poor compared to Glynda, to the point where I was forced to redo most of his paperwork. I did something akin to self harm for me, and checked records back when Summer first came to Beacon. She was an unusual case as you well know, and therefore I handled her personally. When it came to the paperwork she had filled out for formalities— such as name, date of birth, and the like, I think it had been regarded as trash initially— because the handwriting was so poor it looked like it had been written by someone illiterate."
"Say it Ozpin. I know you're waiting." Qrow sighed.
"You make it far less fun. This is the most entertainment I've had in years. Except for when I get to launch first years off the cliff. I still can't believe there's been no lawsuits." Ozpin chuckled. "Nonetheless, her hometown has been dubbed Thead. I believe that she is the cause of the village's slaughter, given that the time that I sensed the use of Grimm magic and the slaughter itself happened within days of each other."
"Just as a sanity check. For old time's sake." Qrow said, kicking at the rusty scythe. "You know Summer's dead right? And that you're implying she tried to kill her daughter?"
"We don't have the information necessary." Ozpin lamented. "We can't talk to her and know exactly what she intended, or if she even did it."
"It doesn't matter if she can talk or not, this happened two months after her death. Was there even a portal at Thead?" Qrow asked, frustrated.
"No one's ever checked. It's no different than you checking the basement."
"And the fact that she's dead?"
"Aura is... more complicated than Hunters are usually informed of."
"Not this shit again. This is like the third time you've said that and then just tried to act like aura is the reason everything happens. I know you're an immortal wizard, but really? Is Aura really always the reason why?" Qrow asked, annoyed.
"Unfortunately, yes. Aura is will given form. And Summer, if anything, was strong-willed. She would not be the first to detach from her material form and live on as somewhat of a spirit. Using her Semblance in that form would come naturally, although powering it would become... interesting after a certain point. There is truth in fairy tales, Qrow. There are reasons why there are legends about vampires, ghouls, and succubi."
"Okay. Where's Thead?" Qrow asked, wanting to disprove his theory with his own eyes.
"This is far too dangerous for you to handle on your own."
"I'm not taking him." Qrow answered flatly.
"Do you have something against cripples that I'm unaware of? Beacon has a strict zero tolerance policy when it comes to discrimination."
"You old bastard, I don't hate cripples! He's just... weird. Fine. Whatever."
"I'm glad to see you move past your myopic ways. You leave tomorrow with him."
The scroll clicked off. Ozpin had hung up.
Qrow looked at the weapons laid out on the lawn. In specific, Flower. The massive mace.
I do need to make sure no one ever goes down there... Qrow thought, handling the giant mace. The fact that beating the house to a pulp would alleviate some stress was just a bonus.
If the house was alive, it would've wet itself at the sight of Qrow swinging a mace.
A/N: Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. As always, I'm open to feedback and criticism.
