-(=RWBY=)-
Chapter 8
-(=RWBY=)-
He and Weiss ended up having a relatively subdued dinner – no surprise, after the weighty matters Jaune had brought up.
After eating, they retired back to their room. Weiss had some Schnee Dust Company reports to read, and analyze, and write assessments on. This was not, as Jaune had initially thought, some responsibility her father had foisted on her – so much as a voluntary exercise Weiss chosen to undertake, so as to better understand the company she hoped to lead one day.
Jaune admired her work ethic – especially since he found it hard to imagine something more boring than reading business reports. At least schoolwork – on history, say – was interesting in its own right.
Leaving Weiss to her work, Jaune grabbed Crocea Mors, before heading out – he had training to do.
On the way down the stairs, he met Pyrrha and Blake, recently returned from a long day of exploring the village.
Greeting them with a raised hand, Jaune asked,
"Hey. How did the sightseeing go?"
Pyrrha gave a sunny smile, and replied,
"Oh, very well. Rothenburg is such an interesting village – we're almost spoilt for choice in places to visit and things to do."
Blake gave a slight nod, which for the reticent girl was the equivalent of full-throated agreement; she must have had really enjoyed the afternoon.
Pyrrha, meanwhile, went on to say,
"Do help to thank Weiss for recommending the cafe. The scones with the jam and cream were mouth-watering! Unhealthy, of course, but that can't be helped..."
As Pyrrha trailed off, the corners of Blake's mouth twitched up, and the reason for the latter's amusement became clear as she offered –
"Pyrrha had four whole scones."
That revelation had Pyrrha grimacing, and rubbing her stomach, before saying,
"I'll work it off in training."
At that point, Jaune could not help but offer gentle ribbing of his own.
"How unhealthy would you rate the scones, on a scale of zero to ten, where fifty's Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow Flakes?"
Pyrrha smiled ruefully, and shook her head.
"I can't wait to get out of that endorsement deal."
The star athlete had never been enthusiastic about promoting the product, recognizing as she did how sugary and unhealthy it was.
Right then, Jaune's eye caught sight of the shopping bag in Blake's hand. Knowing his teammate...
"You bought some books, Blake?"
"... yes."
Jaune nodded.
"That's cool. I bought some myself, this morning. Of course, the stories were just a bunch of fairytales... not Ninjas of Love or anything."
He managed to keep his face deadpan even as he delivered that line, but Pyrrha showed no such self-control, for she dissolved into a fit of embarrassed, scandalized giggling upon hearing the joke.
Blake hid her mortification behind a glare, and pushed past him to head to her and Pyrrha's room without another word.
Perhaps it wasn't the most mature thing, to make fun of another person's love of erotica – but it was too funny a matter to not mention. And, in any case, it was Blake's own fault for leaving her smut lying around – Jaune had been minding his own business, and searching their dorm's shared bookshelf for a textbook; he hadn't asked to stumble upon a novel whose centrefold was two nude guys in erotic poses.
Pyrrha – having managed to stop giggling, even if she was still red-faced – looked at her mission partner huffily enter their room, before turning to him, and saying,
"That was rude, Jaune."
Even that mild chastisement was hard to take seriously, what with it coming from a girl who had just recently been giggling herself senseless.
With an amused smile, Jaune replied,
"Better rude than lewd."
With that, Jaune bade a good evening to Pyrrha, before making his way down the stairs and out of the inn.
His destination was a gym located on the main thoroughfare, halfway to the outskirts of the village. Given his and Weiss's early dinner, it was still only early evening as he made his way over, the sky bright red from the setting sun.
He drew some stares on his way to the gym, but as with the attention he received during dinner, he ignored it all. Of everything in his life that he might have had cause to regret, what he did to Neo was not one of them – and he refused to be affected by the disdain of those who did not understand.
After a brisk walk, he arrived at the gym – a short, squat place painted dull grey. It didn't fit the aesthetic out the village at all, which was just as well that it was located nowhere near the historic village centre – there, it would have been an even greater eyesore.
Jaune entered the place, and after a short back and forth with the employee on duty, arranged for a month's membership. That was how long his team was going to be stationed in the village, and for the duration of their stay, he needed a place to do his strength training.
At his age, his baseline physical skills sans aura – his skill and speed, strength and durability – weren't going to improve much more, but they could certainly degrade, and that was what practice was meant to prevent.
The gym was largely empty, which Jaune took advantage of, by marching straight for the open floor area typically used for aerobic classes.
Unsheathing Crocea Mors, Jaune started upon his technique drills.
He fell into them with practised ease – these various sequences of actions, each one designed to maximize one's chances of victory in specific combat situations.
The expected timing of an opponent's attack; the number of enemies faced; the technological sophistication of their weapons and dust usage – such variables dictated which specific techniques were useful and which were not, and being able to identify the right technique for the right circumstances was the difference between winning effortlessly and dying horribly.
Some of the scenarios he trained for were quite esoteric, but Jaune ran through the relevant technique drills anyway – he wasn't about to let laziness get him killed, on the off chance he actually did have to face very old-school Mistralian fire spears, or some backwater huntsman sticking dust crystals into himself.
With a satisfying swing of his sword, Jaune decapitated yet another imaginary opponent, thereby completing his final technique drill.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Jaune then sheathed Crocea Mors, and began making his way to an empty squat rack at the other side of the gym.
Jaune loaded up a barbell with the appropriate amount of weight, and then, using a trick favoured by fellow gym rats Yang and Nora, he secured a pair of chains to the end of the barbell – thus adding a bit of sway and instability, and increasing the challenge of lifting the bar.
With that set-up work done, Jaune then proceeded to the actual lifting of weights. Bench presses, both normal and inclined, along with weighted pull-ups and dips – Jaune pushed himself hard on these exercises, knowing that all the skill in the world amounted to very little if you lacked the strength and musculature to stand and trade blows against strong men and even stronger monsters.
The next hour or so passed in this fashion, with the weightlifting interspersed with reading – and replying to – the occasional message from Weiss on his scroll.
At the end, after a good strength workout that left him gratifyingly sore, Jaune then headed back to the open floor area, for some concluding agility drills.
His grandfather had never been enamoured with such newfangled sports science practices, but the results spoke for themselves – Jaune doubted he could have kept up with the likes of Neo without the appropriate training.
Hence, Jaune gave his all, as he practised various manoeuvring exercises on an agility ladder.
And that when it happened.
Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
A howling siren pierced the night air, and Jaune felt the dread bubble up within him.
A Grimm attack.
Reminding himself that he was far stronger now than he was back then – and that this attack was unlikely to involve titan-class Grimm – Jaune tamped down on his emotions before panic could consume him.
With sheer force of will, Jaune put his rationality back in charge of his mind and body – which allowed him to started prioritizing accordingly.
First things first – he grabbed Crocea Mors, and began sprinting for the front gate. Time was of the essence, and whether they could stop the Grimm before they breached the gate was going to make the difference between a successful defence on the one hand, and a slaughtered village on the other.
Secondarily – as he ran, he fired off a voice message to his teammates, calling them to immediately arm and armour themselves before joining him at the village gate. The whole of JWBN needed to be present, if they were to fend off this Grimm incursion.
Thirdly, and almost as an afterthought – he sent a message to Beacon, requesting reinforcements. For better or for worse, however, the fate of the village would probably be decided long before any other huntsmen could come to their aid.
Jaune sped up, and with a final burst reached the open square in front of the village gate.
It was a brutal sight. Four bodies lay scattered around the square – four bodies, without heads. Smears of flesh and bone, crushed into the cobblestones, and trailing from vacant necks – that was all that was left of these once living beings.
But even with their craniums pulverized to bloody pulp, it was not too difficult to identify the dead men and women. From their mecha-shift weapons, it was clear they were the local huntsman team that JWBN had briefly met earlier that morning, upon arriving in the village.
With them dead, JWBN – and possibly Rainart, if the man was still around – were the only huntsmen left in the village. It was going to be the fight of their lives, and them surviving the night was a scenario far from guaranteed.
Jaune glanced at the open gate. He could sense the Grimm – a mass of roiling, seething darkness hell-bent upon killing the living – as they closed in upon the village. They were only a couple hundred meters away, with that distance ever shrinking.
Jaune drew Crocea Mors, and –
Wait a minute.
Two fantastically worrying questions came to mind even as Jaune began steeling himself for a fight.
The first was –
Where are the Grimm who killed these huntsmen?
And the second was –
Why is the village gate open, and its portcullis up, when it's meant to be closed after dark?
The truth came to Jaune, clear and obvious and terrifying.
There was no Grimm already in the village; it was a human who killed these huntsmen, and a human who opened the gate.
It was probably just one huntsman, rather than a team, if the identical ways in which the local huntsmen had been murdered was any indication; but still, the idea of even a single person betraying humanity to the Grimm was a thought impossibly dark and utterly unsettling.
Unearthly howling came, from beyond the gate and walls.
The last thing Jaune had time to do was send a voice message to his team –
"A traitor huntsman killed the local huntsman team and opened the gates to the Grimm. Trust no one but ourselves, and watch your backs."
And then the battle was joined.
Gravel exploded from under his feet as Jaune propelled himself forward into the mass of Beowolves collapsing upon the village gate.
Knowing that even a single blow landed upon him could lose him his footing, and let the whole lot of them dogpile him, it was essential that Jaune kill the pack without conceding even a scratch. With aura pushing his body to its limits, Jaune summoned the raw speed he required, to overcome the disadvantage of being outnumbered, and of standing one against a hundred.
Slash. Evade. Strike. Avoid. Sever. Leap clear.
Jaune weaved and whirled his way through the Beowolves, his sword a silver blur cutting them down, even as his body danced around every outstretched claw, and glided below every snapping jaw.
All around him, the monsters dissolved into darkness, while he himself was untouched.
But even as the thrill of battle coursed through him, Jaune could feel himself tiring – and with every second that passed, and every strike he made, and every blow he ducked under to let pass over head, he was slowing.
He couldn't keep this up forever –
– but thankfully, he didn't need to.
Steel rained down, skewering Beowolves all around, and turning them into a dark mist that faded into the night.
Pyrrha Nikos landed next to him, one arm extended to summon Miló back from the Beowolf it just annihilated, even as the other weapons – borrowed from the corpses of the murdered huntsmen, Jaune noted – remained embedded deep within the ground, a testament to the sheer power with which Pyrrha's semblance of Polarity had driven them into the enemy.
"Weiss and Blake?"
Jaune asked that question of Pyrrha, as she crouched down on the ground beside him, and she answered,
"Blake's lowering the portcullis, and Weiss is guarding her."
Jaune nodded, approvingly. It was smart of them, to prioritize the closure of the gate – preventing the Grimm from entering the village was what mattered, above all else. And, given the traitor huntsman on the loose, having a partner on guard was a wise precaution.
"Good."
He gave that one word reply, and then, as the rumbling of the ground signalled the approach of a couple of King Taijitu, he told Pyrrha,
"Deal with the Beowolves, will you? And I'll handle the King Taijitu."
She nodded in reply. No words were said; no words were needed.
Like poetry in motion, and like grace given form, Pyrrha used a smooth twist of her body and an arcing of her arm, to launch her spear into the body of a nearby Beowolf; and then, with sheer economy of movement, she transitioned into a twirl, to send her shield spinning through the air, and pushing back against Beowolves in their stillborn attempts to lunge in and attack.
Meanwhile, Jaune himself raced forward, cutting down Beowolves and carving a path towards the incoming group of King Taijitu.
The closest one noticed his approach, and immediately flung itself forward against him.
With its other head standing ready to punish any evasive actions, there was little room for clever manoeuvring or effective repositioning. Instead, this was going to be a contest of strength and toughness – a contest Jaune was more than happy to enter.
Bringing his sword up, Jaune blocked the massive fangs of the serpentine Grimm as it bore down upon him.
He was pushed back, with his legs gorging deep grooves into the ground, but for all that massive bulk coming in at speed, and for all that force the Grimm was exerting, Jaune was utterly unhurt, the aura he was using to enhance his durability having done its work.
Then, disengaging his sword from the fangs and arcing it around, Jaune used his aura-boosted strength to cleave the white-scaled head into two.
The King Taijitu's remaining half roared, but Jaune was already on it, his sword arcing out to all but behead the black-scaled portion of the snake.
Hissing to his back warned Jaune that the recently destroyed Grimm had companions, and so Jaune moved on to his next targets.
Once more, raw resilience and sheer strength carried the day, as Jaune systematically repelled the headlong charges of the other King Taijitu, and punished each failed attack with retaliatory execution.
Then, as Jaune jumped off the rapidly-disintegrating corpse of his most recently killed snake, a wave of fire and a hail of bullets destroyed a group of Grimm about to rush Pyrrha.
Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna leapt into the fray, and joined Pyrrha in killing the pack of Beowolves, with Myrtenaster trailing fire and Gambol Shroud pumping out round after round.
It was perfect timing. Seeing the silhouette of a stinger against the faint light of the moon, Jaune called out to his team –
"Weiss, Blake, handle the Beowolves! Pyrrha, kill the remaining King Taijitu, while I stop the Deathstalker!"
Trusting his team to do as he directed, Jaune dodged a strike from one of the few King Taijitu not yet slain, and then sprinted for the giant scorpion.
With its two huge pincers and a wicked stinger capable of delivering fatal toxins, the Deathstalker was a dangerous opponent. Moreover, given the heavy armour protecting the creature's entire body, relying on raw speed and strength to overcome it was not going to be a particularly effective strategy. Here, Jaune needed a deliberate approach, one incorporating both skill and subtlety.
The Deathstalker's tail jabbed at him, and Jaune dodged, even while bringing Crocea Mors arcing towards base of the stinger, at the point where two of the scorpion's armour plates met each other.
His sword sliced right through the weak point, and brought the toxin-laden stinger crashing to ground.
The Deathstalker roared, and snapped its right pincer forward in an attempt to crush Jaune –
– but Jaune leapt above the attack, to somersault right onto the pincer itself. This was not a manoeuvre Jaune would have attempted when the Deathstalker's stinger was still attached, and capable of striking at him in midair, but now, the Deathstalker's options at attack were limited.
With a downward swipe of his blade, Jaune cut off the Deathstalker's right pincer, precisely at the point where its armour plates edged each other.
And as another roar was loosened by the monster, and as it brought its remaining pincer angling for him, Jaune vaulted to the side, right onto the Deathstalker's very head.
Spinning, Jaune's eyes searched for the correct spot on the Deathstalker's head, where armour was absent and only feeble flesh was present.
Upon finding it, Jaune brought his sword stabbing down, to drive the steel right into the monster.
The Deathstalker collapsed, and with a wrench, Jaune drew his sword back out of the monster's corpse.
At the same time, his team seemed to be having things well in hand. Pyrrha had killed the remaining King Taijitu, while Weiss and Blake were successfully holding off the Beowolves – and if Jaune's eyes weren't deceiving him, the hordes were starting to thin out.
They were winning, and Jaune felt some degree of hope and relief creep back into him.
But the world was a cruel place, and it was right then that the screams started coming in from the direction of the village.
Jaune's head snapped towards the gate. The portcullis was down, Weiss and Blake having succeeded in their task. However, it was possible that some Grimm had gotten into the village regardless, by scaling the walls – or, in the case of larger Grimm like King Taijitu, just by crawling right over.
"Pyrrha, Weiss, Blake! Hold the line here. I'll scour the village and kill any Grimm that made it past the walls."
He ran even as he shouted his instructions, and though he needed to cut down some Beowolves blocking his path, he got back to the village gate in no time at all.
With a powerful leap, Jaune cleared the top of the gatehouse, before landing on its stone-paved, battlements-lined roof. To both his left and right, the village walls stretched out into the distance, curving gently so that they would eventually join up at the village's northern side, to form an oval-shaped defensive barrier around Rothenburg. A walkway ran atop the walls, so as to allow a person to patrol the length of it, and to ensure that no Grimm was trying to get over.
Jaune would do that later – for now, he had to hunt down the Grimm already within the village.
He stretched his aura sense outwards, desperately trying to locate the Grimm terrorizing the villagers –
– but the emanations of darkness he could pinpoint were strange things, far too weak to be actual Grimm.
He doubted that this was the work of the traitor huntsman either, for the screams were coming from too many places, for it to be a single person going around and shooting or stabbing others. And of course, Jaune could sense no active aura signature in the village, which ruled out the traitor huntsman using a semblance capable of dealing damage over a wide area.
But if all other possibilities had been eliminated, then... then...
Jaune glanced down at the empty square; it was devoid of people, and also devoid of corpses.
The truth came like a punch to the liver, and left Jaune gagging in disgust and horror – so much so that he would almost have preferred it if the situation were as simple as a Goliath coming into the village and rolling everything over.
Necrovalock.
With their ability to reanimate corpses, and to turn the dead into soulless puppets, Necrovalocks were creatures whose very existence was a crime against nature; an outrage, to all people; a sin, against the very world's moral order.
There were stronger Grimm, and there were more brutal ones, but nothing in heaven and earth was half as horrifying as a monster that could use your body in death, to murder those who loved you in life.
And with every person killed, and with ever village slaughtered, the Necrovalock's army of the damned grew ever bigger, and capable of threatening even a capital city – which was one reason why no nation on Remnant would ever tolerate a Necrovalock within its borders; were one to be found, an entire army of huntsmen would be activated, to wipe the monster out.
The last known Necrovalock had been exterminated in the Great War, but it seemed that the species was not quite as extinct as the world thought it to be.
With a sudden, vertiginous exhaustion, Jaune realized that his team's task had suddenly taken on monumental significance; failure here didn't just mean the destruction of a village, but the possible emergence of a region-destroying threat.
Movement on the main thoroughfare caught Jaune's eye.
Confirming all his suspicions, and all his fears, four headless corpses strode into view.
It was the murdered huntsmen; and despite their distinct lack of heads, they seemed to move just fine – and indeed, they seemed to sense him just fine as well, for they immediately started dashing towards where he stood.
Jaune found the time to fire off a message to Beacon – they needed to know of the threat – and to send a voice message to the rest of his team.
"Team JWBN, there's a Necrovalock in the area, and reanimated corpses are killing people within the village."
Gasps of horror and shouts of disbelief were the response he got from his team, and though he fully sympathized with their feelings, they had no time for this.
"Pyrrha and Blake, continue holding the line against the Grimm outside, but Weiss, I need you back here with your fire dust, to hunt down the Necrovalock's puppets, as I search for and destroy Necrovalock itself."
Out in the distance, Jaune could see Weiss turn away from the fight with the Beowolves, and, using her glyphs, accelerate her way through the air and back towards the village.
Satisfied, Jaune started to turn his attention back to the undead huntsmen.
Without aura, the corpses lacked the strength their living selves possessed; but even so, the Necrovalock's dark power thrummed through them, making them at least as powerful, and at least as dangerous, as the average Beowolf.
Weiss landed next to him, and Jaune immediately told her,
"I'll deal with these guys. You head deeper into the village. Maybe starting that way –"
Jaune pointed east, towards a big cluster of Grimm signatures he sensed.
" – would probably be best."
Weiss spared him a nod, before stepping on a glyph and vanishing in a blur of speed.
At this point, the undead huntsmen were closing in, and Jaune was getting ready to jump down from the gatehouse and make short work of them –
– except Hazel Rainart emerged from a nearby house, and with speed nearly too fast to follow, slammed into the nearest corpse puppet, and smashed it into the ground so hard the whole body just blew apart.
A shower of gore and gristle rained down onto the stones, and for all that the carnage churned one's stomach, no one could not deny its effectiveness – the Necrovalock was not about to resurrect a thousand bits of bloody flesh scattered around the square.
His father's old friend, with his scarred forearms and close cropped beard, looked up Jaune, and roared –
"Go, boy! Find the Necrovalock!"
Jaune gave a short, sharp nod – and then he was off.
He ran along the walkway atop the village walls; he suspected the Necrovalock was going to be keeping close to the village, so as to be able to reanimate more corpses and expand its undead army.
Jaune cast his senses out – further and further, stretching his attention so thin he could barely make out anything at a qualitative level beyond the presence – or absence – of Grimm.
A particular Grimm signature caught his attention – not just for how strong it was, and not simply for its proximity to the walls, but for the mere fact that fact it was keeping still, and failing to at all move even as the seconds ticked by. An ordinary Grimm would have been in constant motion, mindlessly chasing after the nearest humans; for one to stay in the same place over time – that signalled the sort of self-control and intelligence only elder Grimm possessed.
Reaching the spot on the walls closest to the Grimm signature in question, Jaune then leapt down.
Crocea Mors in hand, Jaune raced into the thicket of trees where his enemy awaited.
He was not disappointed.
In the silent forest glade stood a thin humanoid figure, its pitch black body emaciated like a starving child's, and its head an alabaster skull broken into a dozen pieces, but held together all the same by a tapestry of sable stitches.
In looks and mannerisms, the elder Grimm was uncannily like a human – more so than any other Grimm Jaune had the misfortunate to meet – but it was precisely that which made is so unsettling, and so viscerally revolting.
Without hesitation, Jaune attacked –
– only for a corpse on the forest floor to spring up, and stab at him with a sword, thus forcing Jaune to halt his assault and get his own blade up in a last minute block.
As he matched blades with the Necrovalock's puppet, Jaune found himself unpleasantly surprised, by the sheer strength of the reanimated corpse.
Proximity to its master, and the Necrovalock focusing its power – those would plausibly explain the puppet's strength. Whatever the reason, however, it was clear that this would be no easy fight. Even as Jaune disengaged, and took a few steps back to give himself space, he shifted his mind towards identifying an opening.
The Necrovalock, unfortunately, had other ideas. With a cackling laugh, and a gesture of its fingers, fog began descending upon the forest clearing, while wraiths of the past – incredibly, impossibly, intolerably – began emerging from thin air.
Eight people – women and girls, with hair the colour of sunshine and eyes the blue of an azure sky – stood before Jaune.
No.
His mother, and his sisters.
Jaune's mouth worked, but not a sound came out. Whispers or screams, it mattered not – speaking was beyond him now.
Emotions flitted across the faces of his deceased family, and what he saw chilled him to the bone.
Sorrow and sadness. Disappointment and dismay. Anger and outrage. Loathing, detestation, hate.
Then the whispering started.
"Jaune..."
"How could you do that to us?"
"Coward! Asshole! Traitor!"
"Die, you worthless excuse for a brother."
Their accusations poured forth in a deluge, fast and furious and true.
This wasn't real, of course; none of it was. The rational part of his brain knew, all too well, that this was but a hallucination the Necrovalock was projecting, by pulling out his memories of the dead.
But it doesn't matter, does it?
The trauma came, not from believing that these ghosts truly were one's dead family, but from knowing that the accusations were, legitimately, what his family would have made, had they been alive to do so.
And of course they weren't – because of him.
Any lesser mortal would have collapsed under this assault, this torrent of the truth, as the weight of their crimes was revealed; as guilt brought them to their knees; as they accepted death as punishment justly earned.
The Necrovalock's puppet lunged forward, its sword point racing towards Jaune's heart.
Time seemed to freeze.
Jaune had a decision to make – yield to society's condemnation, or trust his own judgement.
It was no choice at all.
Crocea Mors arced forward, faster and stronger and surer than ever, to deflect the strike to the side.
The Necrovalock itself seemed shocked, that its ultimate power was failing to work – that somehow, a human could fail to succumb to guilt and fear.
Stepping into the puppet's guard, Jaune twisted his blade around and lopped off his opponent's sword arm; then, he followed up, by slicing and dicing the whole corpse into little shreds – until it was in far too mangled a state for even the elder Grimm to resurrect.
No more reanimations; the dead would stay dead.
"You seem confused."
Despite himself, Jaune was compelled to talk to the Grimm. The creature seemed intelligent enough – indeed, when it was laughing previously, it emanated a malicious glee almost human, in how it let its pleasure be taken, from another sentient being's pain and tribulations.
If it had the mental sophistication to feel schadenfreude, then perhaps it would also be smart enough to understand this –
"It's simple enough, Grimm. Guilt is for those fettered by moral constraints. Guilt is for those with a conscience. Guilt is for humans. Believe me, I suffer from no such hindrance."
To the hallucination that was his dead family, he offered –
"I'm sorry for what happened. But there was no other way."
Jaune then dashed forward, and decapitated the Necrovalock. As its head fell from its shoulder to the forest floor, so too did the shades of his family fade – as did the Grimm signatures within the village disappear, the undead puppets collapsing from the death of their master.
The Necrovalock's corpse almost immediately began dissipating – giving it peace in death that it didn't deserve or earn; that its own victims were never given.
As he watched the Grimm he defeated fade into blackness, Jaune wasn't sure what to feel, and what to think.
He had duelled an actual, elder Grimm, and come out with a win. The Necrovalock had been poised to threaten the whole eastern portion of the Kingdom, before Jaune put a stop to it through quick, decisive action. This ought to have been a glorious moment – an epic victory, of the sorts unseen since the darkest days of the last century.
Instead, he only felt empty.
Jaune's jaws clenched
The navel-gazing can wait; the others still need my help.
After marking this spot in the forest with his mind – so they could come back here later, and give a proper burial to the poor man he had just chopped up – Jaune began heading back to the village.
Vaulting back onto the village walls, Jaune started retracing his steps back to the gate.
And when he arrived, he was pleased to find that there were no more Grimm in sight; his team and Mr Rainart had clearly succeeded.
Except –
Where's Pyrrha? Where's Blake?
Mr Rainart was near, while he could make out Weiss's glyphs towards the north, shining against the night as she fended off Grimm trying to scale the village walls there. But as for his partner, and Blake – nothing.
Jaune jumped down to ground, ready to ask Mr Rainart if his team had foolishly started chasing Grimm out into nearby forests.
Upon landing on the cobblestone square in front of the gate, Jaune turned towards where –
neorgnqoeurbfoqf
The sight he saw then froze his heart, and turned his brain to mush, and made his whole body heave and wrack and threaten to gag.
Pyrrha Nikos, the girl the world thought invincible, and his very first friend at Beacon...
... she lay slumped against the village wall, within a pool of her own blood, and with a hole blown right through a stomach.
Jaune collapsed to his knees beside her.
He reached out, impotently, ineffectually, uselessly – as if he could still save her; as if this wasn't a wound far too grievous to heal; as if her eyes weren't already closed and her breathing stopped, for good.
Jaune prayed; he really did – that this was a hallucination of the Necrovalock's; that this was some illusion by Neo; that this was a terrible nightmare from which he would soon wake.
But it was none of that – and reality could not just be remade, simply because his friend was dead.
Across the street, Jaune could see the other member of his team.
Blake Belladonna, a girl whose people deserved better from the world, and a person who had treated him with professional courtesy even if they weren't friends...
... she was skewered to the village wall by a red spear and a black sword, by Miló, and Gambol Shroud.
Jaune really did vomit then, right onto the cobblestones, his stomach heaving until there was nothing left to retch; and he cried too, until he had no tears left to offer.
Then – and only then – did he stand.
Sword in hand, he looked across the square, to the monster that had murdered his friends.
Hazel Rainart was sat upon a pile of rocks, two massive crystals of lightning dust infused into his arms, and his bare hands stained crimson with blood.
The hate Jaune felt then was like nothing else he had ever experienced, and in that moment he felt more Grimm than human, his soul burning with loathing so intense and so overwhelming that no other emotion was left remaining.
Slowly, the man-mountain stood, and in a voice that rumbled like thunder, asked,
"Do you know who I am, Arc?"
To which Jaune snarled,
"Some dead fuck."
Feeding his aura until it was an inferno blazing brighter than the stars, Jaune burst forward, right at the same time Rainart nodded grimly and charged.
In that cobblestone square, steel sang and lightning flashed, as fist and sword clashed.
And whatever the outcome of the battle, one thing was certain – mercy would not be sought, nor quarter given.
-(=RWBY=)-