Dead By Roselight

Chapter 7: Familiar Book

Having made their way out of the carnival, Yang and Victoria were now running through a field with nothing but dying tall grass. They continued to run until they reached a forest at the edge of the field. Once the two ladies had made their way to the woods, they finally slowed down to catch their breath.

''Are we safe now?'' Yang asked while panting. ''Is that clown still going to come after us?''

''Nah. It won't leave it's realm,'' Victoria answered. ''All of the killers are pretty much confined in their realms, making this area between them almost like a ''safe spot.'' We call this area the wasteland.''

''So are we going to be staying here from now on, since it's so safe?'' the blonde asked as the two ladies began to walk deeper into the woods. ''I mean, there's really no reason for us to go into any of those areas anymore, right?''

''If it only was that easy, most of our group would still be alive,'' the blue-haired woman answered. ''Unfortunately, The Entity doesn't exactly allow us to stay away from it's sick game. No matter what we do, we will eventually end up in one of the realms one way or another.''

''How is that possible?''

''Well, there is always the possibility that you need to go to a realm for one of two reasons. One is to find supplies there, as you can actually find medical equipment and tools in a realm, if you search for them hard enough and have good luck. The other reason is that you can find other survivors for the sake of strength in numbers.''

''I can understand those reasons, but they still don't explain why we have to go there. If I'm not in the need of any equipment or people, why would I go there? What could possibly force me into going someplace where I'm most likely going to get killed?''

''While I could explain it, I think there's a better person to do that,'' Victoria answered. ''Once we find the rest of my comrades, we'll let someone do the rest of the explaining. Someone I'm certain you'll trust.''

Yang was about to ask what the blue-haired woman was talking about, but she noticed light up ahead. Someone had made a campfire in the woods, most likely Vicky's group. The two ladies soon made their way to the campsite, where a small group of people was gathered around the fire. Everyone in the group turned to look at Victoria and Yang as soon as they came into view.

''Good to see you, Vicky. We were beginning to fear that you might have gotten killed,'' one of the people in the group said.

''Oh, you guys should know better already. I'm too much of a mean bitch to die,'' the blue-haired woman replied with a smirk. She looked around a bit, trying to find someone. ''Where's Graham?''

''Over here,'' a young man said as he appeared from behind nearby trees. He was about the same age as Yang, maybe about a year or two older. He had short blonde hair, green eyes and had glasses. He was wearing a white shirt with black pants and shoes. ''Who is the new person, Vicky?''

''This here is the latest addition to our merry band, boss,'' Victoria said while pointing at Yang. ''She's Yang Xiao Long, Ruby's older sister.''

When the blonde's relation to Ruby was mentioned, everyone in the group looked surprised and started talking among each other. It was almost like a celebrity had just appeared in front of them.

''Well, this is quite the surprise,'' Graham said with a smile and walked up to Yang, offering his hand for a handshake. ''My name is Graham. I used to be Ruby's second-in-command when she was leading us. After she disappeared, I became the next leader.''

''Pleasure to meet you,'' the brawler said with a bit of uncertainty in her voice as she shook hands with the blonde man. It was weird how all these people knew her and were treating her like this without having met any of them even once. ''Did Ruby perhaps tell you about me or something?''

''Oh yes. Quite often, actually,'' Graham answered with a smile. ''We have heard numerous stories about Ruby's teammates, especially you. I'm quite happy that we managed to get you into our group before anything bad happened to you.''

''Speaking of groups, did any of you guys see my other friends?'' Yang asked, remembering that there were still members of her search group missing. ''I'm currently looking for three people, Blake Belladonna, Pyrrha Nikos and Jaune Arc. Blake is a faunus girl with long black hair and was badly injured the last time I saw her. Pyrrha is a human girl with long red hair and should have a sword and a shield with her. Jaune is a blonde boy with similar weapons as Pyrrha, but his sword doesn't have any mechanisms that allow it to transform.''

Graham turned to look at his group, waiting for any of them to answer the blonde girl's question. The people in the group looked at each other, wondering if any of them had seen the people Yang was looking for, but only one person stood up.

''Yeah, I think I saw one of the people you described,'' the person said. It was a woman in her late 20's. She had long dark brown hair that reached her back. She was wearing a black T-shirt with a dark red jacket over it, along with tight blue jeans, brown high-heeled boots and black gloves. ''That faunus girl you described. I think I might have seen her in the carnival.''

''Is she alright? Did she manage to escape?'' the brawler asked as she walked up to the woman. Her eyes were wide and had a glint of hope in them. She was praying that her partner had made it out alive and was alright. ''Please tell me that she's okay!''

''I'm afraid that's not the case,'' the red-haired woman replied. ''When I saw her, she was being carried by The Clown. She was too weakened by her injuries to struggle and got put on one of the hooks. I saw The Entity take her away.''

Yang fell to her knees as she felt her heart sink. While she had known that Blake's chances of survival had been low, she had still held onto the hope of the cat faunus managing to save herself somehow. To find out that her friend was truly gone broke the blonde's heart. Before she even knew it, tears started to fall from her eyes and she was sobbing.

The group of survivors around Yang looked at her in sympathy. They all knew what she was going through at the moment, as they had all lost people in this nightmare of a world.

Someone put a hand on Yang's shoulder, causing her to look up. She saw Graham looking down at her.

''I'm truly sorry that you've had to go through this,'' the young man said. ''However, I'm afraid that you don't have much time to grieve. There are still things that you need to learn and you still need to fight in order to survive.''

''Yeah... I know,'' Yang said as she stood up and wiped the tears from her eyes. ''Vicky told me that there would be someone that could explain things about this world to me. Who is it?''

''I think she's someone you know very well,'' Graham said with a small smile. He then pulled out a book from underneath his shirt and handed it to the brawler. ''While she can't speak to you in person, her theories and other such things regarding this world are here.''

Yang's eyes went wide as she saw the book. It was something she recognized quite well. The book was none other than Ruby's diary, something the redhead had kept for many years.

''Ruby wrote about some of the things she found out about this world in that book. It has served as sort of a survival guide to us ever since she disappeared,'' Graham explained. ''I suggest you take your time to rest up and study what your sister wrote there. After some time has passed, we'll introduce you to everyone and teach you how we work around here.''

The blonde girl could only give a nod, as her attention had been taken completely by the book in her hands. She walked away from the group a bit, so that she would have some privacy while reading Ruby's diary. Yang sat down on the ground and leaned her back against a tree as she opened the book and started to read.

Yang went through some of the earliest entries in the diary at a fast pace, as they didn't really offer any useful information. There were a couple of times she stopped to read some entries completely, as they were about events that brought a smile to her face, like the time their family had a party to celebrate the brawler getting accepted to Beacon or their first time at Beacon together.

However, as she went further on with the entries, the mood started to change. While Ruby at first had been writing about how fun it was to be with her team in Beacon, it quickly changed into her talking about how lonely and rejected she was feeling, as her own teammates kept ignoring her. It all eventually led to that fateful night when Yang had committed her worst crime ever. Reading through the entry that described that broke the blonde's heart, but steeled her resolve to find her younger sister and get her out of this nightmare they were trapped in.

After the entry about Ruby running away from her team, the diary started to be about the redhead's experiences in this new world. She told how she had suddenly woken up in a strange forest, before making her way to a fenced off area that was the hunting ground to a sadistic killer. It told how she had managed to escape and how she learned about how this world worked with it's realm and killers. As Yang continued to read the entries, there came up detailed information on a lot of the different killers in this world. These entries contained descriptions on their appearances, realms, abilities and even the ways they hunted survivors and what were the best ways to counter them. There was even an entry on The Clown and his bottles of poison.

But as Yang kept reading, she soon realized that Ruby wasn't just trying to survive in this world. The redhead had actually started to investigate this world in order to understand more about how it worked and to possibly find a way out.

One of the entries told about how this world seemed to be structured. Apparently, the realms didn't remain on a single place all the time. The landscape changed randomly, thus placing the realms in different spots. This would prevent any survivor out there from being able to make any sort of a map, as the areas this world was made up of could be behind you one second and then appear in front of you before you knew it. You could even be sleeping in the middle of the forest that was located between the realms, only to wake up in the area of one of the killers. This was probably meant to prevent survivors from staying out of the realms entirely. However, if a survivor managed to stay out of the realms for too long, The Entity would the release one of the killers from their realm to hunt them. It seemed to be some sort of a last resort, as the killers wouldn't bring the survivor to be sacrificed and would simply kill them on the spot. The blonde guessed that this is what Victoria was talking about, when she said that they couldn't simply stay out of the realms.

'Wow, you've been working really hard, sis. I know I don't really have the right to say this anymore, but I'm proud of you. Even in this nightmarish world, you're still striving to be the Huntress you've always dreamed of being,' Yang thought to herself with a smile. 'For what it's worth, I think you've already become one of the heroes you used to admire as a child. It almost feels like I'm reading one of those books I used to read for you when we were little, except you're the protagonist this time.'

One entry suddenly caught the brawler's interest. It was a theory Ruby had written regarding this world and The Entity that was controlling it. It was about the possible true objectives The Entity has.

I've been stuck in this world for what feels like months now, yet the more I discover about this world, the more questions I seem to have. Whatever this Entity that seems to control this world is, it seems to have a rather restricted control over everything. While it can take us from our own world no matter where we are, it can't seem to do anything more until we are sacrificed by one of the killers. Not only that, but the killers can only sacrifice us in their own realms and not chase us to the wasteland, unless The Entity specifically allows that. Even if this happens, it's more like a last resort meant to dispose of a difficult intruder.

All of this makes me ask one thing. Why is everything designed like this? If The Entity simply wants sacrifices, why does it need the killers, when it can already pulls us from our own world? And more than that, why does it allow us not only to escape, but to fight back? The realms hold many different items that help us survive in here and even help in our struggle against the killers. If The Entity has control over everything in here, why would it allow us to have anything that could help us?

Not too long ago, I think I found my answer to at least some of this. It happened when I met a person from our group that had gotten separated and lost. We had been certain that he had lost his life to one of the killers, but what had happened was actually much worse. He had in fact become one of the killers.

It was thanks to this encounter that I was able to determine what The Entity's objectives most likely are. The first objective is obvious. It is to gather sacrifices through the killers. For what purpose these sacrifices are used is unknown to me, but I doubt it's anything good.

The second objective is to create more killers. The reason The Entity allows us a chance to escape and survive is for the purpose of essentially finding out the strongest ones among us. After these people have been running away for some time, The Entity somehow makes them into new killers, thus allowing it to get even more sacrifices. In other words, it wants more servants.

Author's notes: This became a bit of an explanation chapter as well, but I wanted to get rid of as much of the world building as possible with this. There are also a couple of things that kind of hint at things to come further in the story. I also wanted to do this as a way of giving Ruby essentially presence in the story. While she isn't actively doing thins with other characters, she is still affecting them through her diary.

The next chapter is surely going to be interesting. I'm not gonna reveal too much, but I'll give you a hint. We won't be following Yang in that chapter.

Until next time.

RWBY is owned by Rooster Teeth and Dead by Daylight belongs to Behaviour Interactive.