Queen of Air and Darkness

by lepolemicist

He might be the greatest swordsman in the world, but one man with blade in hand cannot change the arc of history, and killing alone does not bring about victory. Instead, Jaune Arc must resort to cunning and brilliance, just as he must learn that there is a price to salvation – if the Witch is to be defeated, and the apocalypse, averted.

28. Part II - City of Light and Shadow (27)

-(=RWBY=)-

Chapter 27

-(=RWBY=)-

It was a fine day – the sun shining brightly, and the blue sky stretching as far as the eye could see.

From the cliff upon which he stood, Jaune could see the Mistralian wilderness spread out before him, a lush and viridescent forest endless as the sky above.

In the midst of that forest was a village sitting upon a small hill; its name was Skyros, and today Jaune Arc would seize it with either silvered words or bloodied sword.

With him joining the tribe, Raven Branwen had decided it was time once more to expand the borders of the empire. Thus she had decreed that Skyros be captured, charging him to make it happen – and Jaune obeyed, acting as his new loyalties demanded.

Of course, turning imperial ambitions into actual reality carried risks, and Jaune needed to be wary.

Eyes narrowed, he scanned the skies – as did his team of bandits behind him. The Mistralian military did sometimes monitor the border areas with drones, so that bandits concentrating for an attack could be detected, and then targeted and killed by missiles and airstrikes.

The blue sky betrayed no hints of loitering aircraft, however, and so Jaune made the call –

"Start making your way down to the village."

His men neither liked nor trusted him – but Raven had put him in charge of them, and just as important, Jaune had power, and a demonstrated willingness to use it for murder. These men would not cross him.

Obeying his instructions, and led by a old greybeard named Roland, the bandits started trekking their way down the cliff, using a path that snaked out east to where the hill descended to the forest at a more gentle slope.

For Jaune, however –

He took a few paces back, to give himself a running start. Then he kicked off, long strides powering himself forward so that he leapt off the cliff –

He activated his semblance, fire exploding from his palms and feet, the force propelling himself onwards and upwards, as it did so long ago, in that breathtaking dogfight against a Valean fighter jet in the attack on the airbase.

Unlike last time, however, he was much better at it now, controlling the force of the fiery explosions with finesse, as he flew.

His flight brought him to the village in the space of a few heartbeats, at a speed far greater than what the fastest huntsman on foot could have achieved. Soaring past its walls, and right over the hundreds of sun-baked white houses and the people moving in between them, Jaune used his aura to spread his awareness a hundred meters in every direction, looking, looking –

– and he found it, a powerful aura signature that only a huntsmen could possess; it was located in a large manor, which itself sat by the fortified keep at the peak of the hill.

Perfect.

He wanted to get this over and done with – defeat the defending huntsmen and assert his control over the village, before the bandits arrived; those men, though weaker, were also more brutal, would not be as restrained as him in the employment of violence.

Jaune flipped around, bringing his feet forward so as to use a massive blast of fire to rapidly decelerate himself; and then, as he fell feet first to the ground, he used a controlled burst of flame to control his descent –

– and to land comfortably, in a crouch.

Standing, Jaune found himself in the garden courtyard of a traditional South Mistralian manor. This huntsman was clearly a powerful and established figure in the community, as the Arcs had been for Domremy, before the fall of both village and family.

Shoving aside the everpresent worries about his dark and discomfiting past, Jaune sent out a burst of killing intent at the huntsman in the house, and waited for the response.

He did not have to wait long.

A man emerged from the house –

– but when Jaune saw him, he knew something had gone terribly wrong.

The huntsman had hair red as fire, and eyes the green of glittering emeralds. He held a crimson spear in one hand, and an ornately-carved golden shield in the another. His identity, thus, was utterly unmistakeable – even if Jaune had only seen him once before, at his daughter's funeral.

Alexander Nikos.

Jaune had to swallow his shock; and smother, his dismay.

How could this be?

But even as he asked himself that, he also realized –

How could it not?

They were in South Mistral – old Graecia, the land of ancient glories and mythical heroes, where songs were yet sung of Heracles and Perseus, of Odysseus and Achilles. His old partner, herself Graecian and named after her people's invincible warrior-hero of legend, hailed from this region of Mistral – he had always known, so why the surprise now, when it turned out this was her hometown?

A despairing smile threatened to tug at the corners of his mouth.

Invading her home, and hurting her family – truly, he was dishonouring his dead partner's memory.

Jaune Arc was beyond doubt a man without honour, and the furthest thing from a knight in shining armour –

– and even so, that was what the world needed, if its destruction were to be avoided. And so Jaune swallowed his doubts, hardened his heart, and prepared to play the villain.

With a smile that cut like a dagger, Jaune greeted Alexander Nikos.

"Alexander of Skyros."

"Jaune... of Arc."

The man's deep voice echoed back at Jaune, the hatred in it unmistakeable, and indeed unremarkable – for of course Alexander Nikos hated the person who had recklessly allowed his daughter to die.

It was Ozpin's original lie, come back to haunt Jaune.

Events in Rothenburg have yet to become public knowledge, and when we do tell the world what happened there, we can tell them this. That you were hungry for glory, and recklessly went off alone to hunt a Necrovalock – even though your team was struggling against an endless tide of Grimm, and even though there were Grimm cultists at large, ready to ambush and kill your team, as indeed they did."

Jaune had come, hoping to negotiate a peaceful surrender of the village – yet that seemed as close to impossible as it could have been.

All the same – he had to try.

"I come on behalf of Raven Branwen. She has decided that Skyros is to be part of her empire, and so it will be. Your only choice is to whether this will happen in violence, or peaceably."

Pyrrha's father listened to Jaune without speaking, even as his eyes sought to murder Jaune, and even as his unadulterated rage billowed off him.

Jaune pressed forth, regardless.

"Leave the village, Alexander, and take your wife Helena and your other teammate with you. Fighting me would be foolish. There is nothing to gain, and everything to lose. The villagers will be treated well – you know that Raven Branwen doesn't harm civilians. In contrast, if you fight me, many may die, caught up as they are in –"

Jaune gathered his aura, and then breathed out.

"– this."

Right behind him, a pillar of fire a hundred meters across erupted from thin air to pierce the sky above, the roar of the flames deafening and their scale overwhelming.

And yet, it was all for naught.

Alexander of Skyros, radiating contempt, spat Jaune's suggestion of peaceful resolution back at his face, as the man growled,

"Skyros is the ancestral village of the Nikos, and I will not leave my people at the tender mercy of Branwen. And the only person dying today will be you, boy."

Jaune tried not to let a sigh escape.

Violence here was pointless, and Alexander's valor meaningless. There was a reason why the residents of captured villages didn't flee – Raven Branwen truly didn't harm civilians, while fleeing meant the loss of one's farmland and everything of value one owed, such that the costs of becoming a refugee totally swamped the benefits.

The exception were doctors, who risked being conscripted to serve the Branwen tribe directly, and who could in any case make their living elsewhere – for them, and them alone, the calculus of self interest turned the other way so as to make fleeing net advantageous, and the pragmatic thing to do.

In any case –

Alexander took a deep breath, seemingly calming himself and getting into a clear state of mind before the battle began. And it would be battle – as if that were ever in any doubt. Honour demanded that Alexander Nikos fight, not least against the man who made his daughter die.

Shield raised in protection, Alexander dashed forward. In the space of a breath the man had closed most of the distance between them, his spear arcing for Jaune's face –

– but Jaune merely brought one hand up, and blasted Alexander with a flamethrower-like stream of fire, albeit far less searing than if he were aiming to kill.

The gale-force torrent of flames smashed into Alexander, but it didn't hurt him, nor even knock him back half a step – and Jaune was forced to dodge the spear, by taking off in flight.

As Jaune hovered above his opponent, the explosive flames of his pyrokinesis keeping him aloft, Jaune took stock.

He had been briefed on the strength levels and powers of the village's huntsman, even if no one had bothered to tell him their precise identities – perhaps because it was considered a matter too obvious to have to bother saying.

According to the Branwen tribe's scouts and strategists, Alexander himself was probably a Champion-level threat, albeit at the lower end. His strength was such that he usually drew the most dangerous huntsman task in the village – that of clearing the Grimm from the forests and mountains surrounding the village. And what made all this possible –

Invulnerability.

The legendary power of the mythical Achilles, and whether or not the man himself really existed, the semblance certainly did, passed down as it was sporadically within the Nikos line, and also popping up amongst the huntsmen population of South Mistral more generally.

It was a powerful semblance, one that rivalled the very best like Jaune's own pyrokinesis and Glynda Goodwitch's telekinesis –

– and yet all semblances had limits, and the Achillean one was –

"Before we get to fighting, Alexander, may I ask you one thing?"

The man, cold-eyed and collected despite his earlier anger, called up at him –

"Come down and fight, coward."

"Oh, I will – once you answer a question for me. Tell me –"

Jaune paused, and only with great strength of will did he manage the next words.

"– do you know how Pyrrha died?"

Alexander froze, and even as he wrestled with his emotions, he forced out –

"You abandoned her for glory against the Necrovalock, and left her to die against the Grimm and that powerful cultist Rainart. I am well aware – and it seems that today I have the pleasure of bringing you to justice."

Jaune shook his head.

"You are mistaken, Alexander of Skyros. I dealt with the Necrovalock quickly enough, and returned before Pyrrha had died. I was there, when she and Rainart fought. And I was there, and I watched."

The lies dripped from his lips, cruel and false but ever purposeful.

According to the briefing, Alexander's invulnerability depended on the man keeping a cool head, and not feeling anger – the opposite of Yang's semblance, such as it were. Hence his deliberate efforts to calm himself before the battle began, and hence his struggles to keep a lid on his emotions even when his dead daughter was mentioned by the last person in the world he wanted to hear her name from. None of this had gone unnoticed by Jaune, and he sought to exploit that now, even as Alexander scoffed, and said,

"An obvious lie, boy. Pull the other one."

The man rejected Jaune's words as an obvious ploy to anger him – and yet, of course, knowing that you were being goaded didn't necessarily mean you could resist the provocation, especially on so emotional a topic. Jaune chose his next words carefully, and then drove the dagger home.

"It's the truth. Hazel Rainart caused the Domremy Collapse, and killed my family. I wanted a clean fight with him – one-on-one, me against him, no interruptions, and no one else to steal my vengeance. But Pyrrha, that stupid bitch, didn't listen – she refused to step aside, to let me fight by myself."

At this point, Alexander's face was pale, and his jaws clenched.

"And, well – if she wanted to fight a Champion-level opponent so badly, and get killed in the process, who was I to stop her? I stood there, by the side, and waited, and watched, as Rainart overwhelmed her. As she dodged and weaved, barely keeping ahead of Rainart's fists, she begged me for help – pleaded with me, to save her. She even said –"

Alexander bared his teeth, and Jaune could feel that they were at the precipice. And so Jaune delivered his coup de grace, hating himself all the while.

"– that she loved me. Please. Right before Rainart punched a hole in her, I managed to tell her that it was the Schnee I liked, so rejection was last thing Pyrrha Nikos heard before she died. I –"

Alexander roared, his hatred splitting the morning quiet, even as his aura thrummed with rage, and his desire to kill Jaune roiled off him in waves.

And as this happened, Jaune felt Alexander's semblance shimmer, and fade.

Now.

Jaune blasted Alexander with flames, driving him into the ground. Without his semblance to protect him, his automatic aura defences had to kick in – protecting him from the intense heat, even while draining probably a third of his aura.

Jaune descended closer to the ground, and blasted Alexander a second time, burning off another third or so of his aura and smashing him into a nearby pillar.

One more time ought to do the trick.

Jaune landed, directing a third stream of fire at Alexander and blasting him into a nearby wall –

– and finally, the man's aura shattered. Jaune killed the stream of flames as he felt the aura break beneath his onslaught, just in time to avoid any real harm.

The first and greatest threat within the village had been eliminated – but then a second one, almost as deadly, appeared.

Jaune's aura sense warned him of the figure closing in on him from behind, and he turned, just in time –

– to dodge the first blow from a furious Helena Nikos, and then to evade her second, and then continue to back off even as she pressed him relentlessly with her twin blades.

Dark of hair and dark of eye, she had none of the classic Nikos flame-and-emerald colouring – but in the shape of her face and the set of her features, she looked every bit like Pyrrha.

While she would usually be guarding the farmers as they worked the olive groves outside the safety of the walls, it was clear that her husband had summoned her to his aid, even before engaging Jaune in battle.

Helena Nikos was an elite-level huntress like her daughter, and it showed. Dodging her attacks was no easy feat, when already the woman seemed to know every step he was about to take, even before he took it – as if she were seeing the future, and moving to meet it. And that was, indeed, the case, her semblance being as broken as they came –

Delphic Foresight.

She could predict the future in combat, and effortlessly pick out the optimal path to victory each and every time.

Fighting in her melee was inadvisable, and it was all Jaune could do to use his greater raw speed to evade her attacks and keep his distance –

– until he simply chose to take off in flight, putting himself beyond the reach of both her longer xiphos and shorter makhaira.

Bringing one hand out, Jaune blasted her with a flamethrower-like jet of fire, as he had served her husband earlier.

The jet drove her into the ground, her scream – so like Pyrrha's – making Jaune wince. But he didn't let up, and continued with a second blast of fire, to drain her aura to zero.

The Nikos were defeated, and that only left –

A rifle shot took Jaune clean in the head, eating his aura by a sixth.

The pain stunned Jaune momentarily – causing the jets of fire supporting his flight to sputter out of existence, and making Jaune fall to the ground.

But to the trained huntsman, pain was nothing and victory everything; by the time his knees had touched the ground of the hilltop, Jaune had already recovered. The third threat within the village was now presenting itself – and though ostensibly less significant, it didn't do to be overconfident.

Jaune took to the skies once more, flames catapulting him off the hill and towards the building in the distance where the sniper had fired from.

He was the only remaining combatant within the village. A competent professional huntsman, the man's semblance, according to the briefing, was infallible accuracy in shooting – allowing him to land difficult shots, and to hit tiny targets from significant distance, as had just happened.

Giving him space and time to shoot would be a mistake, and so Jaune closed the distance in an instant, plumes of flame billowing out behind him as the force of his fire propelled him forward.

With a forward kick of his leg and a corresponding burst of braking flame, Jaune came to a jarring halt right before the huntsman – close enough to see the tension in the man's face, and the circles around his eyes.

Jaune summoned a burst of fire, crushing the man into the roof and draining his aura from full to zero within a heartbeat.

It's over.

All the threats within the village had been neutralized, while enemy reinforcements from outside the village were not expected, Mistral not having the forces to spare.

As Jaune landed on the roof, he noted that the fight had been easier than expected; but then again, he had been using his powerful semblance liberally – as Jeanne d'Arc did centuries ago, to bring armies to their knees; and death, to her king's enemies.

Of course, Jaune served no legitimate king, only a bandit-queen – but he supposed all monarchs were illegitimate, ruling as they did without the consent of the governed. His great ancestor might have believed in the divine right of kings, but Jaune Arc certainly didn't – nor did the people of modern Remnant, not even those as traditional as the villagers of Skyros.

It was those same people Jaune would have to address, soon enough.

To the defeated huntsman, who was now getting shakily to his feet – and not, thankfully, reaching for his fallen rifle – Jaune said,

"Find all the villagers, and gather them at square outside the fortified keep atop the hill. I would speak to them."

The man glared at Jaune – but powerless as he was, and probably knowing as he did the Branwen modus operandi of taxing her subjects but otherwise leaving them alone, he grudgingly obeyed.

The huntsman left to gather the villagers, while Jaune headed straight back to the hilltop. On his way up, he met Alexander and Helena Nikos coming down.

Upon seeing him, the man with the flame-red hair clenched his fists, while the dark-haired beauty stared murderously at him.

And yet, for all their hate, they were helpless, and bound to cooperate on pain of death.

In a better world, they would know the truth – that he was no traitor, and that what he had said about Pyrrha in particular were but lies of convenience –

– but to build that better world in the first place, Jaune would have to walk a path of death and deceit all the way to the end.

With cool courtesy, Jaune said,

"Alexander Nikos. Helena of Skyros. You are to help find and gather the villagers at the village square atop the hill. I will be speaking to them."

Alexander gave a tight nod, and that was all Jaune needed. He left them to their task, even as he himself ascended the hilltop.

The fortified keep was far smaller than Domremy's, perhaps only three storeys or so tall. It didn't take much effort for Jaune to leap up onto the roof. And there he sat, at the edge, upon the parapet, waiting.

Jaune's bandits arrived soon enough – too late for the fight, but just in time to help intimidate the civilians into docile acquiescence.

Roland directed the men to take up positions around the square, and then the villagers began trickling in.

Fear, confusion, anger – all this and more was felt, as the inhabitants of Skyros were led by their defeated huntsmen before Jaune of Arc.

It was best not to let the negative emotions simmer – were it to go on long enough, the Grimm could well attack, and that was an outcome no one desired.

Jaune gathered his feet beneath him and stood, to face down the crowd watching him warily.

Then, raising his voice, he spoke –

"Citizens of Skyos. My name is Jaune Arc. My men and I are soldiers of Raven Branwen. We have defeated your huntsmen – Alexander Nikos and his team – and as of today, your village is now part of the Branwen Empire. And what that means is very simple – your obedience, for our protection. You submit to our authority, and pay your taxes to us as you once would have to Mistral. And in return, we will defend you against those who would threaten you, be they Grimm or human bandits. And here is my promise –"

The silent crowd took in his words.

"Under Raven Branwen's rule, your person and property will be respected. You need not take my word for it – just look to the past, and how other villages under our control have been treated. So long as no one takes up arms, no one is harmed. If you rebel, however –"

! ! !

Jaune let his killing intent flood the hilltop, and amateurish though it was compared to what Raven Branwen could accomplish, his murderous desire still drove the weak to their knees, while leaving the strong unable to breathe.

Jaune let the pressure of his soul crush the villagers for one second, then two, then three –

– before letting up, and concluding his speech with a deadly threat.

"Rebellion is treason, for which death is the punishment. Doubt that the sun will rise, and doubt that the moon will shine – but don't doubt that we will kill you, if ever you rise against our rule."

Jaune was only playing the villain, for now –

– but people tended to become what they pretended to be, and Jaune could only pray that the day would never come when he had to enforce Raven Branwen's tyranny.

"That concludes our business, Skyros. You may return to your business."

Jaune waved a hand in dismissal, and the villagers didn't need much encouragement beyond that to make haste and leave, that experience with his killing intent having made all and sundry keen to escape his presence.

The exception were, of course, the huntsmen. They hung back, as if to ensure that none of the bandits on the hill would harm the citizens trying to leave.

Valiant – but unnecessary, thankfully. Raven Branwen kept her soldiers on a short leash. Murderous warlord though she was, she understood that you had to treat the obedient and defiant differently, and guarantee the lives of the former even while bringing fire and sword down upon the latter. People would forgo liberty if it meant guaranteeing their own safety; but if you made them fear for their lives, then even a coward would rise up and fight.

So long the bandits treated the citizens relatively well, there would be no trouble.

The notable exception were the huntsmen themselves, whose courage and power would always be a thorn in their sides – and so Jaune leapt down from the parapet, to address Alexander and his team.

"The three of you are exiled from the village. You have my leave to stay a day to recover your aura for the journey ahead, but by this time tomorrow you are to be outside the gates and on your way."

Alexander, standing by his wife and teammate, stared Jaune down, defiant even in defeat. Eyes full of loathing, and words dripping with the promise of violence, he said,

"Oh, we will be gone tomorrow, boy. But believe me, we will be back."

Jaune shrugged.

"I look forward to it. And perhaps the next time we meet, you might actually force me to use my stronger semblance techniques... or at least draw my sword from its sheath."

If looks could kill, Jaune would have been dead, cut down by the hate-filled eyes of Alexander and Helena.

Jaune met their hate with equanimity, by staring levelly back at them – and eventually, the two of them turned away, striding off with their teammate in tow.

Once they were off, Jaune turned to Roland,

"The village is ours, and so too do its huntsmen duties fall to us. Clearing the surrounding wilderness of Grimm, guarding the farmers as they work the olives groves, and patrolling the walls come dark – these should be our main responsibilities, but do check in with the Nikos before they leave as to whether there are other miscellaneous duties they perform for the village. Then set the men into a roster, and see they keep to it."

"Aye, Colonel."

Raven ran her tribe like a military, issuing ranks and enforcing strict discipline – something Jaune expected to hold, thankfully.

As Roland gathered the men to parcel out their new responsibilities, Jaune was freed to do what he really wanted to do – what he needed to do, ever since he found out that Skyros was Pyrrha's hometown.

In these old Graecian villages of southern Mistral, where the old ways still held, the ashes of dead huntsmen were put into mausoleums housed at the village's fortified keep. Such keeps served as a last line of defence, with people sheltering there if and when the Grimm breached the walls and overran a settlement – as Domremy had done, the day the village fell. In Graecia, it was traditionally believed that the spirits of the dead would serve to protect the people taking refuge there – giving strength to the defenders, and hope in the darkness.

Jaune had caught sight of the mausoleum earlier, when he was up on the roof – and he returned to it now, gathering his aura and leaping up the battlements with a single bound.

The roof of the keep was but a simple open space paved with plain grey stone. At its centre was the mausoleum, itself built in the classical style, with fluted columns holding up the triangular gable roof, which was itself carved with the heroic deeds of the mythical dead.

There was Heracles wrestling the Nemean lion, and Perseus holding aloft the head of the slain gorgon. There was Odysseus hidden within the Trojan horse, about to win by deceit what force had failed to achieve; and of course, there was Achilles in all his wrath and glory, rampaging across the battlefield and slaying all his enemies.

Jaune walked up to the mausoleum, before pushing in its front double doors carefully, and with the greatest respect.

It was dark within, even as the sun was shining brightly outside, and so Jaune summoned to hand a small flame, as he began searching the walls for her funerary urn.

It didn't take long, the urn being located right at the boundary of full and empty shelves – she had been the last to pass, after all.

In the light of his flame, Jaune could see the words carved into the urn's face.

Beloved daughter. Gifted warrior. Died a hero, in defence of the weak and vulnerable. To her, the gods grant glory imperishable.

...

Now that he was in front of her, Jaune didn't know what to say, let alone do.

He hadn't ever really come to terms with her death, in truth, nor spoken his peace to her. The time around her funeral had been so dominated by planning and preparing for the undercover mission, and after that, it was easier not to think too much about his dead partner, the girl he had so grievously failed.

Jaune struggled, to piece together his thoughts, and put them into words; but eventually, the wounds of Rothenburg opened, and grief made him eloquent.

"Pyrrha. It's been a while. I never got to say this, so I'm saying this now. I'm sorry – sorry that I wasn't there; sorry I wasn't beside you; sorry I couldn't protect you. Maybe if I was stronger, or smarter, or braver, I could have beaten the Necrovalock more quickly, and gotten back in time to back you up against Rainart, before he killed you. But I wasn't good enough, and you've paid the price for that. I'm sorry; truly.

"And since we're on the topic of me saying sorry, let me apologize for fighting and hurting your parents. It was for the mission, and for what it's worth, I made sure not to do any real damage; they're fine, aside from broken auras and bruised pride. Ah –"

It occurred to Jaune that, her own family aside, Pyrrha would have wanted to know how their friends were doing.

"– Team JWBN is scattered to the four winds, but everyone else is doing alright. Weiss is on her own mission in Atlas, while Blake has become a successful politician – even with my best efforts to screw it up, by getting outed as a traitor. As for Team RVLY – they're still together, still in Beacon. Ruby is still Ruby, and cheerful as ever. Yang is... still the doting sister. And Ren and Nora, you will be amused to know, still haven't confessed their love for each other; but it'll come, sooner or later."

"As for me... I'm still on my mission, to save the world. The Queen of the Grimm wants to destroy us all, but I will thwart her, by denying her what she needs to steal the Relics she seeks. I swear I will not fail in this, will not fail the world, even if I've already failed my family, and you, and so many others."

Jaune exhaled.

Having said what needed saying, Jaune took a step back; and because it felt right –

With both hands, Jaune cupped the flame he had been using for light. Bowing his head, he brought the flame up, as if making an offering –

Before pouring the might of his semblance into the small flame, making it up flare up into a brilliant, searing white, hotter than the sun and twice as bright.

The darkness of the mausoleum was banished, utterly, and for a moment, it felt like even death itself was a distant memory.

Then the light faded, and Jaune was left alone in the darkness.

"Goodbye, Pyrrha. I'll be back to say hello again, some time in the future. Until then – rest well, partner."

Jaune left the mausoleum, making sure to close the doors behind him.

Back out in the sunshine, he felt... cleansed – or, at least, felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

There was nothing better to do, right now, and so Jaune went over to the battlements, and sat down, his back to the low wall and his head tilted up to take in the sky.

It was nice, talking to Pyrrha; and a relief, to finally make his peace, over his failure at Rothenburg –

– but Jaune could not afford to dwell overmuch on the past, for that risked neglecting the present, and losing sight of the future.

He still had his mission, and in that regard, his situation was fraught.

Jaune had – stupidly – left his scroll behind, when he had joined up with Raven. He had been so eager, to take up her offer, and to walk through the portal, that he had forgotten to bring along anything except the sword he had in hand. His armour, his scroll – all these had been left behind. Losing his armour was bad – it having sentimental value to him – but he could always fight without, and get a functional replacement beside. A far more devastating loss was his scroll, and the information it stored – in particular, the one-time pad which provided the password to the email dead drop as well as the encryption and decryption for any messages; without that, he could not contact Ozpin.

He was trying to get in touch through alternative means – specifically, by directly contacting the headmaster at his official email address – but he had yet to get any reply. Jaune suspected that his emails were being eaten by the spam filters, if not being marked as spam by Ozpin's assistant – there was no helping the latter, insofar as Jaune had to be cryptic in his messages, and could not just outright say he was Jaune Arc, contacting the headmaster over his undercover work.

And so Jaune was alone, more so than ever, as he manoeuvred to assassinate Raven Branwen and deny Salem the bandit-queen's semblance.

Thus far, Jaune was making no headway. And so, far from saving the world, Jaune was currently only harming it, aiding as he was Raven's efforts towards expanding her empire and subjugating Mistral.

Some people believed that Raven was a necessary evil, bringing order to the otherwise chaotic and lawless Mistralian periphery – but Jaune knew otherwise. The Branwen empire made the world a worse and more dangerous place, with the villagers under its rule probably better off even under the ineffective and corrupt Mistralian state. The Branwen tribe simply did not have the resources and manpower to hunt down other bandits and suppress the Grimm to the same extent as the Mistralian state, let alone run hospital or other governments services as well as the government would have.

The real question was why Ozpin had tolerated this state of affairs for so long, when he could have marshalled his forces to try to kill her and impose peace and good governance in Mistral. After all, success was not in doubt – the Maidens were a tier above the Champions in strength, but Ozpin could gather as many strong huntsmen as he needed, with numbers capable of beating even the world's most powerful huntress. The real issue – and Jaune was sure that the ever coldly pragmatic Ozpin had so judged – was that the benefits of peace and good governance were far lower than the costs – in terms of the casualties from any such war against the Branwen tribe, plus the awful risk of Raven giving the Maiden's power to Salem before her own death out of spite.

There was, of course, the possibility of getting the military to assassinate Raven – but that too wasn't but better an option. It would have been hard to successfully execute an attack against a mobile target whose magic could obliterate missiles – and taking that into account, the blessing of peace and good governance didn't compare to the risk of Raven retaliating, let alone the power of the Spring Maiden going to Salem.

Jaune had been giving deep thought to these issues, probably well past the point where it was healthy – because he had to find a way to kill Raven and eliminate her semblance, without losing the Maiden's powers, possibly to Salem herself.

So preoccupied was Jaune with his thoughts, that he never realized he had company on the rooftop until she spoke.

"Arc."

He looked up, startled.

Raven Branwen was leaning, arms folded, against the battlements to his left. She was in her usual getup, of black-and-crimson shirt and pleated skirt, of beaded necklaces and armoured gauntlets. Omen was sheathed at her waist, its blades chambered within their rotary scabbard.

How consumed was I with my plotting, that I never noticed her arriving?

Jaune stood, and greeted the woman who was his overlord and target both.

"Raven. Skyros is yours."

"So I noticed. Good job."

She looked over at the mausoleum.

"Were you paying your respects? Your old partner hailed from here, didn't she? A Nikos, of Skyros."

Jaune fixed her with a look.

"So it seems, though I just found out when I arrived here today. A little warning would have been nice – had I known who I was dealing with, I would have sent Roland to negotiate in my place. I was the last person Alexander Nikos would have listened to."

Raven smiled.

"You have much to learn, Arc. The Nikos are a proud and ancient family. They would have never have dishonoured themselves by surrendering without a fight. And if Alexander worked himself into a rage over the mere sight of you... well, so much the worse for his vaunted semblance, and so much easier your victory, no?"

As Jaune took in her words, he found himself giving a grudging nod. Raven's words were nothing but the truth, and behind them was a deep cunning that he could not afford to underestimate.

It was also why, not longer after joining up, he had told Raven that he had been working with Watts. Between her shrewdness, and her knowing Adam Taurus – a fact she had let slip, in their initial meeting – Jaune feared that she would find out that he had been trying to get into Salem's good graces; and that she would think him duplicitous, for keeping the information secret.

"Sit with me, Arc."

Raven settled herself onto the floor, and leaned her back against the low wall, as he had been doing since before she arrived. After some hesitation, Jaune joined her, though leaving a respectable amount of space between them.

"Do you know why, for all my strength, I haven't conquered even more of Mistral?"

Raven's tone was conversational, and her question, rhetorical. On his part, Jaune was content to be silent, as Raven explained –

"It's simple. There are parts of the country – the capital, plus the whole of central Mistral, plus the cities and towns of the provinces – that are considered important enough to defend. The small provincial villages – not so much. They're fine with leaving me in control of most of rural southern Mistral, because villages such as Skyros doesn't matter to the Council – but if I take the settlements of value to them, they will gather their forces to fight back, and the risk just isn't worth it."

Jaune spoke up, at this point, his curiosity and need for knowledge piqued.

"And yet recently you moved out of the rural areas, and captured some towns – something that has never happened before. Why was there no response by Mistral; no attempt, at recapture?"

Raven gave a sharp, satisfied smile, at this.

"The short answer is that I play Salem against Ozpin. The Queen wants my support in her eternal war against humanity, and I told her that I would consider it, if she caused an uptick in Grimm activity in central Mistral – forcing the Council to reprioritize their forces towards defending the area around the capital, and leaving them no longer willing to fight for even the bigger towns in the provinces."

Jaune kept his emotions well in check, even as he listened. He could not afford an emotional flare-up; could not afford to feel something like anger, incongruous as it was with the person he was pretending to be – an amoral warrior, interested in measuring his abilities, and gaining strength enough to best the world and overcome the rules it imposed on lesser mortals.

The person that he was pretending to be would not feel outrage over setting the Grimm on the innocent civilians in central Mistral – and were the bandit-queen to notice any such emotions, she would suspect his sincerity and loyalty both.

Instead, Jaune said,

"So, I guess the plan is to continue advancing northwards? To take more villages and towns – one day, perhaps even cities – as the central government is distracted?"

Raven nodded.

"Exactly. Though I'm open to other, even better ideas, if you have any."

Jaune turned to look at her, one eyebrow raised.

"You're looking to me for advice?"

Raven matched his raised eyebrow with her own.

"Why not? A good leader knows she doesn't know everything, and is wise enough to listen to those worth listening to. And you – you're clever, I freely admit. Ozpin tried to recruit you into his schemes when you first started Beacon, and no way he does that unless you can think and not just fight. And when we fought, you really did figure out, right away, why I wanted Yang safe. Oh yeah – and you mentioned that Watts had you doing political intrigue and maneuvering for him; hard to do that, without a certain deep cunning."

Despite himself, Jaune felt a certain warm glow at the praise. Raven didn't fail to notice, and smirked.

In any case, Jaune pondered the question at hand. It was difficult enough, coming up with a way of expanding the Branwen empire in the face of Mistralian opposition; what made it even harder was the need to avoid suggesting something that would actually work, in conquering even more territory and harming more people.

The answer came to him, an idea brilliant and dazzling; a scheme breathtakingly bold, and intensely cunning.

"Surrender your territory, make peace with Mistral, and secure a pardon for you and your people."

Scepticism couldn't even begin to describe the look Raven gave him.

"Explain."

"You're going about this the wrong way. You want to conquer Mistral, right? There are two ways to do that.

"The first is force. It's what you've been trying – defeating the government's huntsmen and military in battle, and taking their territory for yourself. But that's not very effective, as you yourself acknowledge. Weak and corrupt as the government is, they can and will fight back, to protect the parts of the country that actually matter – the centres of wealth, of influence, of power.

"But force is not the only way for you to come to rule Mistral. There is a second way, a better way – politics. The world is a dangerous place, and the people want be protected from it. They want the bandits to be put down, and the Grimm, culled. And yet the Mistralian government is failing at this. Neither their military nor their huntsmen can do any of this effectively. And of course they can't. They're weak. But you know who isn't? You know who has the might to put Mistral to right?"

Jaune smiled.

"You, of course. Raven Branwen – Spring Maiden, and the strongest huntress in existence."

Raven's eyes were intent, as he spoke, all traces of scepticism having evaporated.

"Here is my suggestion, if you will hear it. Offer to give back Branwen territory to Mistral, in return for full pardons. The Council would accept it. Of course they would; they'll bite your hand off, in fact – because it's the biggest threat to their rule, gone, just like that. And once those pardons are issued, and you become part of legitimate Mistralian society again, you – like every other free citizen – would be entitled to run for office, and play the game of politics. And that's exactly what you'll do. You'll seek a position in the Mistralian Assembly, and then the Council itself, on an electoral platform that's elegant in its simplicity. If the people will elect you, will give you political power, then you will use your own unparalleled combat power to lead Mistral's huntsmen and military to victory – to slaughter the Grimm, and all the other bandit armies. Mistral would be at peace, at last.

"And all that the people of Mistral would need to do to make that happen, is to elect you to high office – to grant you two seats on the Council, one for leadership of the huntsmen forces, and the other for command of the military. It's not even unprecedented; after all, Ironwood enjoys the same arrangement in Atlas, on top of being Chancellor."

At this point, Raven interjected. Even though her eyes were hungry, her reason brought her to voice her doubts –

"The sheep will never vote for a wolf to be their leader. I have spent the better parts of the last two decades in open rebellion against the Mistralian state. People know that I care about gaining power and asserting authority, not all that nonsense about freedom and democracy. They know that if I am given power over the Mistralian security forces, I can use it silence critics, and to rig future elections to my benefit."

All true – and all irrelevant. Jaune's comeback was as swift as it was sure –

"You're right that people will know all this to be a risk. But you're wrong to think they'll care. Most people want security – meaning physical safety for themselves and their family, and enough food to fill their bellies. For that, they would happily give up freedom and democracy. You know that to be true. Otherwise –"

Jaune swept a hand out, at Skyros.

"– why don't the people in your subjugated towns and villages rebel? Why don't they rise up, and try to cast down their bandit oppressors? Why don't they risk their lives, and fight for freedom and right?"

Jaune let his hand fall.

"Because, ultimately, they just don't care enough. For the average person, abstract notions of freedom mean nothing; life and livelihoods mean everything."

Jaune finished speaking, and waited for Raven to reply.

She was looking far into the distance, one hand on her chin and seemingly deep in thought.

Eventually, though, she turned around to look at Jaune.

Her eyes met his, and in those crimson orbs, there was a terrible brightness to behold.

"You really are as clever as they come, Arc. I think your idea has some promise – I'll give it some more thought, and we'll see where we can take it."

Jaune nodded.

"Glad that you found my advice useful, at any rate."

"It sure was. But enough talk about business!"

She grinned.

"A leader has to know her men, and her men should also know her. So here's something I like to do with my chief lieutenants. Call it a game, if you like. We'll take turns to ask each other questions about our lives, and to answer honestly. So go ahead – ask me anything."

Sharing intimate details of his life was not something Jaune particularly wanted to do; but to ensure that Raven liked him, or at least didn't dislike and distrust him, Jaune went with the flow. After some consideration, he asked,

"Why did you abandon Yang?"

That most sensitive question elicited an unexpected response from Raven. Throwing her head back, she laughed, before replying,

"Straight to the difficult questions, huh, Arc? But alright – I'll tell you."

Raven closed her eyes, as if remembering – before opening them again, and saying,

"Team STRQ had been running special missions for Ozpin since Beacon – he was always testing us, seeing if we would make good pieces in his eternal war on Salem. And we passed the test, clearly, because upon graduation, he told us about the Queen of the Grimm, and brought us into his cabal. The four of us swore then to help him fight off the darkness, and for three years after graduation, we continued doing missions – scouting and infiltration; culling the Grimm, and slaying Salem's agents. Summer and Tai were good at it, and Qrow even better; but I was the very best. Ozpin eventually rewarded my service by making me a Champion of Vale – one of the youngest in history. Summer and Tai were happy for me, but Qrow was so jealous – which I found hilarious, because I didn't care for the title, and increasingly didn't care for Ozpin's war either.

Raven grimaced.

"We had known since the beginning that Salem was immortal. Ozpin told us it didn't matter, told us we were doing good and making a difference so long as we held her at bay. And we believed him, at first. But half a decade of missions in the field taught us a different a lesson. Year after year, it was the same shit, over and over again. We hunt down one of Salem's agents, and she just recruits another. We cull a batch of budding Titan-class Grimm, and Salem raises ten more. It was just endless fighting, and all for nothing."

Raven's face was hard.

"It was all pointless. Eventually, I realized there was no point in risking myself for this endless grinding stalemate against Salem. If I had to spend my life fighting, it would be for myself. And I had to die, it would be for something that would last – an empire, to last a thousand years. And so I left, to try for just that.

"Before leaving, I tried to persuade my husband Tai to leave with me, but he was having none of it. Tai raged at me, threw all the arguments he could think of into my face – it's evil to be a bandit going around killing and robbing people; wrong to raise our new baby as a criminal; and stupid, to give up our comfortable life in Vale for life on the run. Tch. What weak, coward's logic that all was.

"But Qrow – he was even worse."

Contempt curled Raven's lips.

"He went on about needing to be loyal to Ozpin and his doomed cause. I had to stop myself from wringing his neck."

Raven clenched her fist, perhaps unconsciously.

"And Summer... Summer was the absolute worst. She begged me to not leave, and literally tried hugging me and not letting go until I agree to stay. I had to pry her off. Stupid, brave, idealistic fool. Look what staying and fighting for Ozpin did to her – dead, and body not even recovered."

Raven exhaled.

"Anyway – I was determined to go, and no arguments from my husband or brother or teammate could convince me otherwise. The only question was whether I would bring Yang with me or not."

Raven closed her eyes once more. And for an almost imperceptible moment, the hardness in her face gave way, showing instead a raw tenderness.

"I thought about it long and hard. But eventually I decided to leave Yang behind. She would have a better life with her father, and I thought I owed her that much."

The bandit-queen of Mistral shrugged, and put her hands behind her head as she leaned back onto the low wall of the roof.

"So, yeah – that's the long story about why I left Yang, and for the matter, why I left Ozpin."

Jaune had been listening quietly throughout, and even as Raven concluded her story, he said nothing, only giving an acknowledging nod.

Internally, however, he mused –

So even the bandit-queen of Mistral is a mother who loves her daughter. Figures – she did come, to save Yang, when we fought.

That said, even as clarity came on that one issue, his mind identified another unexplained puzzle. That nagged at him, just as Raven seemed to put the uncomfortable memories of her past behind, by smirking and saying,

"Alright, enough about me, Arc. It's my turn with the questions, and yours with the answers."

She narrowed her eyes, gave it some thought, then asked –

"What's your biggest regret, Jaune?"

That question gave Jaune pause.

A few events came immediately to mind. Domremy. Rothenburg. The slaying of the Ace-Operatives, under Watts's orders. And yet –

Saying that he regretted what he did would not be anywhere near the truth. He had ruminated on these matters before, and the conclusion he had come to, and his honest belief as he now relayed to Raven –

"I don't have any big regrets, really."

Raven raised an eyebrow, at that. Her scepticism writ plain across her face, she said, wryly,

"Really? You've lived an eventful life – survived one Collapse, prevented another, and did a lot of fighting and killing along the way. People like that – like us – tend to pick up a few regrets along the way, tend to wish that things were different from how they were."

As Jaune looked at Raven, he saw sympathy mixed in with her scepticism – but the former he didn't need, and the latter he didn't warrant. Moving to explain himself, Jaune said,

"Of course I wish that things were different – that I was stronger, or faster, or that circumstances didn't conspire to put me in an impossible situation. But none of those are regrets. Regret isn't when you wish that circumstances were different – that's just disappointment. Regret is when you wish your actions were different, that you did something other than what you chose back then.

"And I don't wish that my actions – my significant life decisions – were anything other than what they were. I have always done the best I could, done what was right according to my own lights. What space is left, then, for regrets?"

Raven's scepticism had faded; now there was only sympathy left – sympathy, and melancholy. Gently – more gently than he would have expected, from a bandit and would-be empress – she said,

"Are telling me, Jaune? Or are you telling yourself?"

She glanced away, to stare idly at the horizon.

"But thank you for sharing. I think I understand you better, now. Your turn."

Happy enough to move away from having his psyche prodded, Jaune pivoted to asking,

"Why are you trying so hard to befriend me?"

The question caught Raven off-guard – though only for a moment, for soon enough she laughed, deeply and heartily. Only once her chortling died down, did she respond with –

"Well, you're the clever boy. What do you think?"

Jaune had his suspicions, and he voiced them now.

"Because you need to like me, for your semblance to work and for you to be able to portal to me. Without that you can't project your power and assert control over the region I would be helping you to take and govern. But the liking has to go both ways. Opening a portal somewhere could easily mean stepping into an ambush, and whoever you're connecting to has to be someone who likes and is loyal to you, enough so that they would never dream of betraying you."

Raven smirked.

"Right in one, Arc."

At this, Jaune found himself having to snark, just a bit.

"And here I thought you were genuinely interested in my personality."

That brought a riposte of Raven's own.

"Please. Mysterious and moody does it for the teenage girls, but I graduated from that two decades ago."

"So I noticed, from all the wrinkles and –"

Jaune had to bring his left arm up, to block the punch thrown by Raven at his shoulder.

! ! !

Gods, she's strong.

From the way she was grinning, he knew it was all in jest.

Raven Branwen was, Jaune had to admit, for more charming and likeable than he had ever imagined – far more so than her gloomy, alcoholic brother, but perhaps only as much as her stature demanded, for a ruler needed to compel the devotion of others.

Soon enough, Raven moved on to say,

"My turn again. Tell me about –"

The rest of the morning passed like that, bandit-queen and aspiring traitor alike sharing their life stories and trading light barbs as they did.

It was pleasant, and seductive, and all the more troublesome for it.

Once noon came, Raven had to leave, to see to other business.

Jaune, meanwhile, saw too his own duties, of going around town to reassure the residents that no harm would come to them.

This proved a mix of annoying and dispiriting, as the citizens of Skyros – understandably – met Jaune with both barely-concealed hostility and open fear.

Jaune got across his main point, however, which was that they could come to him for justice if any of his men mistreated them; and otherwise, Jaune didn't make the effort to change their minds.

He was who he pretended to be – a member of Raven Branwen's bandit empire, and these people had every right to hate and fear him.

Once night fell, Raven made her return, portalling back to Skyros from another town or village she had been settling matters in. She used Roland as her anchor, the old man being a veteran of the tribe since the Branwen twins' childhood, and whom Raven herself had a great deal of fondness for.

Jaune was in the foyer area of the old village hall with Roland when the portal formed, inky blackness on otherworldly red.

Raven stepped out, and wasted no time in nodding at Roland, and beckoning at Raven.

"Alright there, Roland?"

"Right as rain, Raven."

"Good. Be safe tonight, and see that the new blood make no trouble."

"Oh, they know better than to bother them villagers. Not one of 'em wants to get an ass-whooping from you."

"Ha. If Jaune here doesn't kill them first."

She turned to him, beckoning with her head.

"Come on. Party time, as you young-uns say."

Jaune stepped forward, striding across the foyer and entering Raven's portal –

– to immediately exit into a large dining hall.

The hall had a high ceiling, and walls of painted frescos depicting the God of Light and the saints of Mistral's past. Candles hung on chandeliers above, casting light on the oaken tables below, on which platters of food had been set. There was a whole crackling pig, as well as roast chicken and slices of beef. Accompanying these were trenchers of seared fish, along with trays of roast vegetables and fresh-baked bread. Cheese and nuts and berries were available too, served on wooden boards. And of course, wine and whiskey flowed freely, with bottles of Mistral's best scattered all over the table. It was a feast fit for a king – or queen, as it were.

Ten people were already seated around the main table; ten men and women, amongst whom were counted some of the most dangerous individuals in the world.

They were Raven's chief lieutenants, colonels like himself in the military hierarchy Raven espoused. Jaune had made the effort of remembering their names and faces upon joining Raven's empire, but three of them Jaune had long ago known by strength of reputation alone.

On the right side of the table, sitting two seats down from the head, there was Arthur, long pale blond hair hanging to his shoulders, and violet eyes bright with interest, as he looked across at Jaune. As skilled a swordsman as Jaune had ever met, the man's greatsword hung across his back; and while all of Raven's chief lieutenants were elite huntsman, Arthur was at the high-end, and likely to break Champion-level soon. Here was a man whose growing strength could break the present stalemate between Branwen empire and the state of Mistral – who could see Raven's iron rule extended far beyond its current borders, to towns and cities thus far unmolested.

And yet even he was not as dangerous as the man who sat beside him, right next to Raven's own chair at the head of the table.

An East Mistralian, Wulong was fanning himself with an ornate hand fan, a small smile playing across his lips as he considered Jaune. Brilliant beyond compare, and a superb administrator, it was he who truly ran Branwen territory; who ensured that taxes were collected and basic government services rendered; who made of anarchy order, and of banditry, empire.

And finally –

Feared amongst even all these hardened killers, and whose mere presence made men tremble –

Vernal Nox was scowling, the brown-skinned, short-haired girl's hatred of him hardly a secret. Extremist; zealot; fanatic – Vernal was Raven's most loyal follower, and for her mistress she would burn down the world. Ultraviolent at the best of times, the girl with the flower tattoo was wanted in four Kingdoms for war crimes, and in Menagerie for genocide. Her favoured tactic for taking a village was kidnapping civilians and executing them until the huntsmen surrendered; and her usual strategy for deterring opposition, was wholesale slaughter of both the guilty and the innocent.

Ostensibly, Raven tried to rein her in, but even so, under Vernal whole villages had been burned, huntsmen tortured, and entire Mistralian ethnic groups murdered.

I will kill you, one day.

Raven took her position at the head of the table, and Jaune took the position of honour by her left – the reason why Vernal was looking especially poisonous tonight, Jaune would wager.

"Loyal friends!"

With a confident, charming smirk, Raven addressed the gathering of her best and worst.

"Today we celebrate a great victory. Jaune Arc duelled Alexander Nikos, his wife Helena, and their teammate Hephaestion. Three on one, they took him on, and three on one, they were crushed. Skyros is ours, at last!"

A great resounding cheer arose, as the men and women around the table hollered, banging fists upon the tables, and stamping boots upon the floor.

"A few words, Jaune?"

Raven looked to him, and with a shrug, Jaune stood, and smirked, and said,

"Easiest fucking fight of my life."

Jeers and laughs rang out, the contempt for their enemy appreciated, and his arrogance taken with good humour. Grinning to show that he wasn't taking himself too seriously, Jaune looked around the table, giving friendly eye-contact and a nod here and there – even for Vernal, who looked as if she wanted to roast and serve him in lieu of the dead pig on the table.

"A toast, to Jaune!"

Raven raised a cup of fine red wine, and everyone mirrored her, with wine and whiskey alike.

"Jaune!"

"Arc!"

"Raven!"

Cheering, everyone then downed their alcohol – as did Jaune himself, the whole tumbler of whiskey going straight down his throat, to burn a pleasant warmth into his chest.

"Now, let's eat!"

Raven's shout signalled the start of the feasting, and people started piling food onto their plates, or just grabbing meat and bread and cheese to eat with their bare hands.

Jaune was more sedate, choosing instead to pour himself a glass of that fine-looking red wine that Raven was nursing.

In a manner that would have seemed inebriated and joking to everyone else, Jaune sniffed suspiciously at the food, and asked,

"How do we know it's not poisoned by the locals who hate us?"

Raven merely snorted, while beside him, Vernal snarled.

"You goddamn pussy. Scared of fucking poison, really?"

It was Wulong who answered his question, as he said, good-naturedly,

"In general, no one would dare. Skilled huntsmen like us can purge all but the most exotic poisons with aura, and any failed attempts would bring down terrible vengeance. No rational man would risk the attempt, the slim chances of success not being worth our wroth."

Vernal interjected, then, with –

"One guy tried, in my region. I got a real bad stomach ache, but it passed and I killed the suspect's whole family as he watched, before torturing him to death myself."

Charming.

Wulong, meanwhile, magnificently ignored Vernal's interjection, to say,

"For tonight in particular, we are at a monastery, as you can tell from the walls. The monks here wouldn't dare kill anyone, let alone poison guests in the house of God. But yes, outside, you might want to take care by eating only what you and your men prepare."

"Ah, that makes sense."

Jaune nodded agreeably – even while noting that being in the monastery had a second, additional benefit. The military was unlikely to dare try a decapitating airstrike on the place, even if they knew that Raven and her inner circle were here. A military strike, on a religious site valued so highly by the Church of Light? That would have been political suicide, for whoever ordered the attempt on their lives.

That being said, there was probably little reason in general to worry about decapitation strikes. In theory, the military could target where they – Raven's chief lieutenants – lived, to try and kill them as they slept. The ten of them were the key enforcers of Raven's rule, but more than that, they were – through Kindred Link – the way Raven could bring all her awesome power to bear, against any Mistralian effort to recapture her territory. Take them out, and the empire crumbled. However, such assassination-by-air had never been tried, and would likely never be, or so Jaune assessed. For one, there was a decent chance that the target would survive, even as Raven would retaliate harshly against any attempt to take out her most valuable assets – the grave risks would not, for the Mistralian state, be worth it. Moreover, the military likely wouldn't even know where Raven's chief lieutenants were living in the Branwen-controlled towns and villages – the locals knew, but would have been afraid to snitch. Further, Branwen territory operated air defence radars, even if of the less technologically-sophisticated variety – they were useful against both airborne Grimm, and incoming military aircraft.

And perhaps all that was for the best. Otherwise, Jaune wouldn't put it past the truly psychotic amongst their number – by which he meant Vernal – to use human shields; to sleep in buildings with as many civilians as possible, so that the military could not try and kill them for fear of also slaying dozens or hundreds of innocents.

Enough morbid thoughts.

Jaune's mental state was far improved, since those dark days underground, with both sunlight and human contact doubtlessly helping – but he was also making the concerted effort not to overthink things.

Jaune drained his glass of wine, and then began piling meat onto his plate, along with some fish and vegetables, plus a hunk of cheese on the side.

Let's enjoy tonight.

And so he did.

That dinner, as it turned out, would be far from the only feast that Raven would call. For the sake of engendering camaraderie, she tried to get her core team to meet to drink and dine together at least once a month; and also whenever there was a big success, like a new town or village being taken. Always, they would meet at that monastery, for a dinner of killers in a house of the pious.

The weeks passed, like that, with fighting and feasting and long talks with Raven in between.

They formed what Jaune would always call friendship – and wasn't that terrifying?

A month after the fall of Skyros, Jaune was back in that fortified keep, atop the hill at the centre of village. His men were busy training, under the watchful eye of Roland. Some were matching blows in melee, swords on shields, maces on morningstars; and yet others were practising their aim, by firing their rifles and pistols down a makeshift range.

Jaune, too, was training – though this was no ordinary session. Instead, he was testing out a new technique of his semblance, all in the hope of making possible a successful assassination.

Champion-level combat – and indeed, Maiden-level combat – tended to occur at a hundred meters, that tending to be about the range of a physically-minded Champion's lunge, as well as the effective range of long distance attacks via magic, semblance or dust sorcery.

Even at a shorter range, however – like if he and Raven were conversing – an experienced huntress such as her would never be taken off-guard. Any fire blast would be blocked by a whirling vortex of ice, any slash with Crocea Mors intercepted by Omen's counterstrike.

No – Jaune needed a new skill, one that could bypass any defences, and kill she who could not be conventionally bested.

And naturally, that led to the intriguing question of whether Jaune's semblance could affect people's bodies directly.

Science said no. The Polendina Limit – the inability of semblances to directly affect people's bodies through the protection of their aura – had been rigorously demonstrated in comprehensive scientific experiments by the man after whom the phenomenon was named.

And yet correlation was not always causation, and the past was never an infallible guide to the present. His semblance was already so powerful, and his use of it so skillful – so why not break the Polendina Limit, too?

And after all, it wasn't technically true that no semblance at all worked on other people's bodies through their auras. Healing semblances were the obvious exception, in working on the injured despite their aura otherwise resisting the intrusion of foreign aura and the effects of other semblances.

As for why this was the case – Professor Ozpin was the foremost authority on aura in the world, as one would expect of an immortal reincarnating wizard, and he wrote that it all revolved around the fact that aura was the manifestation of the soul, and hence of humanity's deepest, most fundamental desires. All humans cared, in the most basic and primordial way, for physical and mental integrity – for not having one's body or mind violated, by the outside world or others. One's aura pursued this desire, by defending against foreign intrusions of aura, which could otherwise destroy or defile one's body and mind from the inside out. And yet, humans also had the desire – the strongest there was – to live, and for that matter, to avoid disability and suffering. Responding to this desire, one's aura permitted healing semblances to affect the body and mind where other foreign semblances would have been rejected unconditionally.

In short, though huntsmen often forgot –

Aura is not an unthinking tool, but a living, sentient thing. It is the soul, and hence it is us, we conscious beings into this world thrust.

And the flipside – if one could perhaps fool the enemy huntsman's aura into thinking that no harm was intended; that indeed, you were looking to heal and help them...

... then he could project his aura into the enemy, and burn them from within.

It was this technique that Jaune wanted to put to the test, in his training session today. It could well not work; and it was possible that a Maiden's magic would resist his attack, regardless – but it was something well worth trying.

He focused on one of the Branwen bandits – a known murderer, one whose death would be of no loss to the world. Even as that man was practising with his rifle at the makeshift shooting range, Jaune cleared his mind of all malicious intent.

He wasn't looking to harm anyone – only to cauterize; to prevent further bleeding and exsanguination; to burn away disease, and infection.

Single Bladed Immolation.

Jaune gathered all his aura, and then chopped down with his hand, to send the manifestation of his soul pulsing forward like the edge of a blade.

That blade crashed onto the shield that was the bandit's soul –

– and though the intention was to part the man's aura, fill his body with Jaune's power, and so transmute flesh to fire –

– instead Jaune's aura washed harmlessly around the rock that was his enemy's soul –

– and Jaune fell, dizzy, to the ground, all aura expended.

He wanted to puke, from the aura exhaustion; and wanted to scream, from the failure. The goal had been to vaporize a good part of the bandit's body by directly heating it up till flesh boiled into plasmic air – but that had clearly not happened.

Even worse, the bandit he had been trying to practise his new technique on had turned around, utterly wary, with rifle at the ready. The man had noticed the attack from Jaune, and seemed about to retaliate on instinct, with Jaune helpless and horror-stricken and bereft of his semblance –

– when Raven stepped out of a portal, Omen drawn.

The bandit, about to fire, froze, even as Jaune desperately forced himself to his feet.

As Raven took stock of the situation, confusion gave way to anger.

"What is the meaning of this?"

As he was supposed to be in charge over here, Jaune stepped up to explain.

"Apologies, Raven. I was practising a new semblance technique, and I believe I accidentally let my killing intent wash over my man there, and caused him to react on instinct. It's not a big deal – sorry to bother you."

That was, of course, a flat out lie, and in more ways than one. Aside from the fact that there was nothing accidental about the attempt, it was a big deal – Jaune had almost died, and would have, had Raven not arrived in time to stop the bandit from shooting him.

Oh, the irony, to be saved by the woman I am trying to kill, and while practising the technique meant to slay her, no less.

Raven, sharp as ever, noticed something was awry. Frowning at him, she said,

"My semblance does not activate, and I would not come to your aid, unless you're in genuine danger. And how can that be? You're almost as strong as me – someone of your strength, threatened by one of your own men?"

Jaune shook his head, and supplied the truth, as far as he could.

"The new technique I'm testing is extremely aura intensive. I'm almost on fumes here."

Raven, if anything, seemed utterly exasperated.

"I expect better from you, Arc. Don't waste my time, please – or you might find that when you actually do need me, no help will be at hand."

Jaune gave a deep nod, almost a bow, as he let himself seem appropriately chastened.

"I understand."

Raven shook her head, and then swung her sword to summon a portal, which she stepped into.

As the portal faded, the bandits were left looking uncertainly at Jaune – save for that bandit that had almost attacked Jaune; he looked afraid, fearful as he was of potential retaliation.

Shaking his own head, Jaune called out,

"Back to training!"

They obeyed, while Jaune retreated to a corner to rest up.

His aura was desperately low, and so he spent the rest of the day avoiding more training and just resting – he needed to recover his reserves as soon as possible, or a serious attack by Mistralian huntsmen or the Grimm could well kill him.

That night, as Jaune brooded away in the chair of his bedroom within the Nikos manor, he reflected upon the day.

Not only did he make no progress on the all-important assassination, he had almost gotten killed. Things could not have gone much worse than they had – though, on the bright side, the day had not been a total waste. Earlier that evening, when conducting his weekly visit to the mausoleum to visit Pyrrha, he had cast a small candleflame as part of his usual offering of respect –

– and found that he was drawing down a far smaller fraction of his aura compared to after his fight with the Ace-Ops and the confrontation with Penny, and vastly less than when he had first unlocked his semblance. His original suspicion – that improvement came from needing his semblance in desperate situations but lacking the necessary aura reserves – seemed to have been borne out, no matter that it wasn't a real battle that had caused this increased aura efficiency, so much as almost getting killed for his own stupidity.

Clearly, the semblance-based option for assassinating Raven Branwen wasn't going to work.

No – he had to turn to other means, it seemed.

At that first feast, Jaune had subtly prodded at the Branwen inner circle's security measures against poisoning. Their security, as it turned out, was lax. And while Raven's chief strategist Wulong was right in pointing out that that poison wasn't a very effective method of assassination, huntsmen having the ability to use aura to purge most poisons before any real damage was done –

– most poisons wasn't all poisons.

Jaune used his scroll – a gift from Raven, his old one having been left behind in Vale – to start searching the internet for what poisons would be effective against huntsmen. He took the necessary precautions while searching, of course, by using an onion routing browser; he didn't want to risk the Branwen tribe getting suspicious if they saw what he was looking for.

Cyanide; mercury bichloride; and classic hemlock – all these poisons and more were deadly for humans, but just didn't cut it for huntsmen and their superhuman constitution. For that, there was only one option –

Kingsbane.

Used since the days of old, to kill powerful huntsmen that could not overcome by force of arms – be they valiant heroes or despotic tyrants – the Kingsbane was a poison that resisted any attempts to purge it using aura, and indeed, fed off aura to destroy the body from within.

Utterly illegal, there was nonetheless a small black market for it – if you were willing to pay a king's ransom for it.

Jaune spent the rest of the night searching for potential sellers on the dark web – that part of the internet accessible only by specific software, configurations or authorizations, and which were unindexed by search engines. It was a howling void of criminality and debauchery, of drugs and guns and the worst sort of pornography.

After a long and soul-corrupting hunt, Jaune came across a familiar name. That alone piqued his interest, but more importantly, its bearer – a gang leader and significant figure in the Mistralian underworld – seemed capable of procuring what he needed.

Jaune made contact, after some quick negotiations, secured a meeting.

There was real uncertainty, of course, as to whether his counterpart was acting in good faith – and even if they were, whether they could do what they said. Still, he was cautiously optimistic, and more to the point, there was no point in worrying about what was out of his control.

A better use of his time was in securing the funding he needed. A small vial of Kingsbane went for ten million Valean lien, which was no small price.

The taxes we're collecting just won't cut it right now.

Mistral was middle-income – poorer than Vale or Atlas, but richer than Vacuo – and also growing fast. The tax revenues they were collecting were not insubstantial, and would number in the tens of millions per annum once tax collection ramped up. However, right now his division had but a month's worth of revenue collected, and most of that had to go to paying his men's salaries and funding the local hospitals and government services.

Jaune needed another source of money, and quickly.

Thankfully, he knew just where to get his cash – so long as he didn't have any compunctions.

After a night of fitful sleep, Jaune woke, and began pillaging Pyrrha's childhood home. Jaune was many things – traitor, terrorist, liar, bandit – and now, he could add thief to that list.

The Nikos were noted collectors of Graecian art and antiques. A proud and storied family, they saw themselves as guardians of the region's culture and keepers of its history. And with the wealth afforded them from being an old aristocratic family, they had, over the centuries, purchased and protected the most valuable of Graecian weapons, paintings, sculptures, metalwork, vases, and manuscripts.

Of course, walking about the house now, and sipping tea to banish his fatigue, Jaune could see none of such things around the house. All he saw, instead, were weapon racks without weapons; blank walls marked by grimy rectangular outlines indicating where paintings once hung; and empty glass cases within which sat vacant bookstands.

It was a curiosity, that these things had gone missing, when Jaune had watched Alexander and his team leave carrying little more than their weapons, and backpacks containing their personal effects. Certainly, they hadn't been trying to carry out a whole museum's worth of antiquities with them – not that that was even possible.

Despite himself, Jaune smiled – this was a puzzle, and it would be fun to solve, if nothing else.

The Nikos manor was built in the traditional Graecian style – U-shaped, with two large wings separated by a courtyard. Jaune took a walk around the outside of the house, to get a clearer sense of the dimensions of the place –

– and then went inside once more, to do a thorough search of the place. This was something he hadn't bothered doing – beyond a cursory exploration of the villa when he had first moved in, Jaune had largely kept to one of the guest bedrooms, its nearby toilet, and the kitchen on the ground floor.

As he did his careful search now, Jaune sized up the rooms he entered, and put them together to form a mental model of the place –

– which he then compared, in size and dimension, to the villa as he saw it from outside.

It mostly matched up, with the house within as large as it appeared to be from without –

– except for the third floor of the east wing. From the outside, the third floor was a large, square space sticking up near the rear of the wing – but as Jaune walked up the staircase from the second floor, he found himself in a rectangular library, far smaller than the floor ought to have been and yet with no doors in sight.

Bookshelves lined the place, wall to wall and from carpeted floor to oak-panelled ceiling, save for one window facing north through which the keep was visible.

The deep grooves on the carpet in front of one bookcase at the north-eastern corner of the library was very telling, and with some mirth – and not the least amount of delight – at how cloak-and-dagger all this was, Jaune strode forward to the bookcase in question.

Jaune found a groove on the left side of the shelf; and grasping it with his fingers, he pulled –

The bookshelf swung open, as expected, its bottom scouring the carpet along the existing grooves. Behind the bookcase, there was a small door, and when Jaune opened that in turn –

– he came to a storeroom filled with the antique collection of Nikos, hastily moved from their original locations, doubtlessly so that they could escape the fate of being stolen.

The secret room, Jaune thought, was a clever concept, and one that appealed to the part of him who loved intrigue and liked nothing better than a test of wits – even if said room was never going to be too difficult to find, between the carpet and the difference between inside dimensions and outside appearances.

Jaune considered the collection of paintings and weapons and various other antiques, including one bound and dusty manuscript, before choosing the most obviously valuable thing – a golden funeral mask supposed belonging to the legendary Agamemnon, the king who commanded the ancient Graecians when they went to war against doomed Ilium.

Using his scroll, Jaune also took some pictures of the other objects – snapping a photo of the manuscript where it sat upon an old set of drawers; laying the weapons out individually on the ground to get individual shots of each; and shuffling the stack of paintings leaning against the wall, so that each in turn was at the front and visible to his scroll's camera.

All this while, he noted himself that Weiss would have loved all this – would have envied him, indeed.

High art and culture was far more her thing than his, and it would have been nice to show her all this, one day.

Weiss.

The thought of her caused a pang of longing. There was nothing that Jaune wanted more than to contact her, but it was still too risky to do so without the dead drop method. Were their communications being monitored, then any loose talk of this being a mission – and even the slightest hint that he wasn't the amoral warrior he appeared to be – could well end up alerting Raven as to his true intentions. And that, of course, could end in only one way only – his death, the mission's failure, and Salem having a clear path to the Relics once she won over the Branwen leader.

Jaune had to bear this, at least for a while longer –

– for soon, all this would be over.

Done with his picture-taking, Jaune grabbed the golden funeral mask in its thin, protective glass case, and then headed out of the secret room. After shutting the door and concealing bookcase behind him, Jaune went to grab the items he needed for the trip he had to make.

In his bedroom, Jaune armed himself, before retrieving his backpack and stuffing the mask into it, along with a beanie, a scarf, and a water bottle. Then, after ensuring he had his scroll and wallet with him, he left the manor, to hike down the hill into the village proper.

At the town hall, he found Roland meeting some rough-looking men – bandits from the surrounding region, here to join up with the Branwen tribe. It was Raven's policy to augment their strength in such a way, and Jaune greeted the men with both a smile and a reminder that were they to turn traitor, he would burn them alive.

That done, Jaune quietly notified Roland of his short trip away from the village, leaving instructions to contact him if anything critical came up – but to leave him alone otherwise, given the important business he was on.

Then, he went to one of the villagers living near the town hall, to request the use of the man's motorcycle – paying handsomely for the privilege, of course, all in the name of hearts-and-minds, and keeping the villagers placated.

The man agreed, albeit warily, and then Jaune was off.

He navigated his way carefully through Skyros until he got to the gates, but upon exiting the village, he let loose his engine.

The wheel of the motorcycle crunched the gravel of the unpaved road, as he tore north.

The journey took around about two hours and forty minutes, and it was a fairly relaxing drive all things considered, even if Jaune had to always keep an eye out for Grimm looking to jump him.

He reached the town of Laurium half an hour before noon, the walls of the town rising up above the surrounding trees to greet him. He was approaching from the south, and the gate was on the north side, which meant he had to go the long way around. Before he did that, he paused to pull out the beanie and scarf from his bag and to put them on – he didn't want to be recognized by the townsfolk, and thus trigger a panic.

Only once that was done did he circle round the town, and enter its north gate, which was open and guarded only by a single civilian – a man who was on the lookout for Grimm, and uninterested in scrutinizing the humans who entered.

And as Jaune drove through the town, no one noticed him, his distinctive blond hair hidden as it was under the beanie, and the loosely-wrapped scarf concealing his lower features.

Using his scroll to guide him, he drove to the bar where the meeting was going to take place.

Upon arrival, he saw that it was an old building, with walls of brick and windows in the traditional East Mistralian style, of wooden frames and rice paper panes. Parking outside, he grabbed his backpack from the trunk of the bike, and then entered without hesitation.

The inside, he saw, was warm and comfortable – paper lanterns providing light, and the dark wooden tables giving the place a homey feel. And if the crowd seemed on the rough side – well, that didn't bother Jaune any.

He headed to a table at the back of the room, by the bar itself. There sat a plump blond woman in a purple dress, guarded by a man with studded metal pauldrons and a younger woman with fashionable frontless pants.

The two guards eyed him as he approached, but otherwise didn't stop him.

As Jaune took a seat, he greeted the woman.

"Lil Miss Malachite, I presume."

She eyed him, unimpressed.

"And you're the so-called J from the Branwen tribe."

Jaune had used the initial as a handle when doing the initial online negotiations – he hadn't wanted to scare them off with his real name, which now carried real and deadly weight in the world of Remnant. But now –

"Yes. But you might know me better as –"

Jaune slid the scarf down his face, and pulled the beanie of his head, and smiled coldly.

"– Jaune Arc."

Malachite's two guards tensed, their panic immediate and their fear obvious. Malachite, however, was made of sterner stuff, as she asked, unimpressed –

"And so you're interested in buying Kingsbane?"

Jaune had wondered why the gang leader felt so comfortable speaking on criminal business out in the open – certainly, Junior had never been so careless. But now, as he realized that he couldn't hear any of the conversation from the other tables further away, and he noted the look of concentration on the male guard's face, Jaune glanced at the man and nodded appreciatively.

"Ah, a silence semblance. Useful."

Turning back to Malachite, he said,

"And yes, I'm interested in making that purchase"

"It'll cost you. Ten million dollars, upfront."

So it was straight to business – something Jaune appreciated

"I don't have the cash on me right now, but I have something even better."

Jaune pushed his bag across the table.

"Look inside."

Malachite did so, and her face didn't give anything away, as she assessed the priceless antique within. And as she did so, Jaune elaborated,

"The Mask of Agamemnon, straight from the Nikos's internationally renowned private collection. Given the prevailing prices at which famous paintings are being sold, and given how this is far more notable and unique than any of those multi-million-dollar paintings, this is easily worth ten million dollars, if not hundreds.

In response, Malachite put on a mask of scepticism of her own.

"You're joking, boy. This wouldn't go for a fraction of that. Hard enough to sell something stolen, but the antique itself just isn't worth more than a million, I can tell you that."

Jaune might have appreciated getting straight to business, he didn't appreciate this haggling – it annoyed him, and he said, bluntly,

"Spare me the lies. We could get an independent evaluator – some reputable archeologist from the University of Mistral, perhaps – to value this antique, if you like; but we both know what he'll say. And please – as if it'll be difficult to find some corrupt business magnate to buy something like this."

At his words, the plump woman in violet signed, theatrically,

"Boy, there's something you want to buy, and I'm the only seller. If I tell you this ain't valuable enough to make me sell, then it ain't. Now, if you got me –"

She didn't get to finish, as Jaune's killing intent crashed into her and her guards, the crushing weight of it leaving the former gasping and grasping at the table for support, even as the latter collapsed to the floor.

Jaune held the pressure for a couple of seconds, before letting up. And as they scrambled to their feet, he said, with his voice quiet and conversational,

"I mislike wasting time, so here's my offer. Get me my Kingsbane, and I will spare your life, and pay you fairly beside – with this precious, irreplaceable antique mask. Refuse, and I kill you."

The dagger was already buried in his enemy, but to twist it even further, he added –

"But to change the topic completely, Miss Malachite – may I ask after your daughters? Melanie and Militia were such good friends of mine. I hung out with them a lot, when I was still back in Vale. Perhaps, if you refuse me here, I will have Raven bring me to Vale where I'll pay Junior a visit, and see if your daughters can help me –see if they'll accept my offer after their mother rejected it so unwisely."

The threat was hardly subtle – but then again, it was never meant to be. Lil Miss Malachite's face was pale, as his words sunk in.

And slowly, as she weighed the situation, and saw that her position was impossible, she gritted out,

"Fine. I accept the trade."

"Good. How long will it take?"

Still agitated, she shrugged,

"A week, maybe, I don't know."

"Fine. I'll be back in Laurium in a week, then. If you need to reach me, you have my email."

Jaune stood, and then offered one final warning.

"You may me tempted to betray this bargain and try instead to kill me. That is, of course, your right. But before you commit suicide, remember that I am Jaune Arc. I have duelled some of the strongest huntsmen in existence, and defeated each and every one in turn. Hazel Rainart, along with the Ace-Operatives, are six feet under, courtesy of me – while Alexander Nikos and his team are alive only by my mercy. So cross me if you dare, but if you do, know that I will slaughter your men and burn your city; and then I will kill you – slowly."

He spoke like a sociopath – channelling what someone like Vernal would say.

And fairly disquietingly, he enjoyed it – enjoyed as his enemies trembled before him; enjoyed the power he held, the fear they felt.

I really have to cut this out, before I become the monster I pretend to be.

Jaune turned and left.

Soon. This will all be over soon.

And yet, soon could not come soon enough. Later that night, once he was back in Skyros, and turning his plans over and over his mind –

A portal the scarlet of blood and the sable of dusk formed in midair, and Raven Branwen stepped through.

Jaune looked up, feeling surprised but not – if he was honest with himself – displeased. Raven was always good company, which she immediately proved when she said,

"Arc. I come bearing gifts."

There were two bottles in her hands – in her left, her favourite wine, the ruinously expensive Chateau Lafite; and her right, his best-loved whiskey, the Caol Ila and its taste of smoke and sea.

Jaune rose, a smile quirking at his lips.

"What's the occasion?"

"No occasion. Do friends need one, to talk over drinks?"

Even as he went over to a nearby cupboard, to fish out a wine glass and a whiskey tumbler, he quipped,

"Sounds like something your brother would say. We're both going to be alcoholics, at this rate."

Raven deposited the two bottles onto his nightstand, before settling herself down into the armchair by the window. In response to his quip, she said, mildly,

"The difference between people like us, and someone like Qrow, is that we drink when we're happy, and in good company. He drinks when he's lonely and depressed – which is all the time, now."

Jaune had to hide a grimace, remember all the times he had done precisely the latter, during his long stint undercover – especially during those tough periods right after Pyrrha's death, and when he had been in hiding.

Raven might have noticed his discomfort, for after he poured them out their favourite drinks and handed her her wine, she asked, affably,

"Penny for your thoughts, Arc?"

Jaune shrugged, and ignored the question by asking one of his own.

"You asked me some time ago, whether I had any regrets. How about you, Raven?"

Jaune drank his whisky, as did Raven sip at her wine – even while giving him a look to tell him his attempt at evasion had not gone unnoticed. All the same, she answered his question, saying,

"I have enough regrets for ten lifetimes. Where to begin? I wish I had never believed Ozpin – wish I had spent my youth enjoying the world, not rushing from one mission to the next; building my own empire, rather than being another man's sword-for-hire.

"I wish I had could have been a better sister to Qrow. I –"

She must have seen his quizzical, if not outright doubting cock of the head, and so clarified,

"I don't like the man he became, but the boy he was I miss. The Qrow I used to know was strong and wild and free – his own man, and not a slave to another. I think that if I had spent more time with him at Beacon, rather than doing my own thing and leaving him to Summer – who filled his head with love and idealism and all the things that get you killed – he wouldn't be the fool he is now, fighting a pointless war between a monster and his mirror."

She drained her glass of wine, and moved to pour another, her eyes dark with remembrance.

"Regrets... I also wish I hadn't gotten involved with Tai. A younger, more foolish me thought she loved him. But age and wisdom and distance has let me see, more clearly than ever, that it was just lust – lust, and being in love with the idea of love. I think Summer rubbed off on me, too, that romantic idiot –"

She snorted, bitter amusement and affectionate melancholy playing out on her face.

"– because eventually I wanted the same thing as her. My own fairytale, where I fell in love and my love was reciprocated."

Raven grimaced.

"But Tai and I were too different. He's the father of my daughter, but now that is all we have together. Our marriage would never have lasted, even if I hadn't left. He ended up happier with Summer, I think, and good for him."

She drained her second glass of wine, and then poured a third.

"Summer... my best friend, and my worst enemy. She's everything I hate in huntsmen, and still I can't help but admire her. Her death... I should have been there."

Raven lapsed into a brooding silence; Jaune had been expecting her to go into more detail, but it appeared that the death of Summer Rose was still too fresh and raw an issue for Raven to comfortably discuss.

And indeed, she turned things away from that issue, by asking him,

"But enough about my midlife crisis. Tell me more about yourself, Arc. Do you have any more family left?"

Jaune's mouth twisted, as Raven brought up the one issue above all that Jaune did not want discussed. Still, he thought he owed some sort of substantive answer to Raven, seeing as how she had been open with her own past. Electing to give her the truth at its surface, while leaving the darker things unsaid, Jaune downed his whisky, before answering,

"I don't have family any more. My mother and sisters all died during the Domremy Collapse, killed by the Grimm. My father's alive, but we're all but estranged. He had never respected my desire to become a huntsman –"

And Jaune almost said, then –

... and to put others before myself...

– but he caught himself in time. It was so seductively easy, slipping out of his mask and just being him; being Jaune Arc, and speaking the truth of his heart, as he drank and chatted with a woman who, though his mortal enemy, was also his friend.

Controlling himself, Jaune chose his words even more carefully than before, saying,

"I am someone who fights, for myself and whatever I think right. I am not, and never will be, a victim. Someone might kill me, but they will never humiliate me – if and when I die, it will be with sword in hand, and the corpses of my enemies littering the land. And that's why I could never be a civilian – someone who cowers and hides and shies behind the protection of others. To me, the life of a huntsman – of fighting men and monsters, by skill of arms and the power of your semblance – it was never a choice to me, so much as a necessity."

Jaune refilled his glass with whisky, throwing the burning liquid down his throat in a single go.

And then he put his hand on Crocea Mors in his sheath.

"This is not a weapon, but a part of myself. And fighting is not just what I do, but who I am. So when my father rejects my career as a huntsman..."

Raven finished the sentence for him.

" – then he rejects you. And why would you ever except that?"

Raven's eyes were bright, those crimson orbs of hers a medley of emotion impossible to describe. Understanding and satisfaction; approval, and admiration – all these and more came through, as she asked,

"Where have you been all my life, Arc? I have never met anyone like you, except when I look into the mirror. And I swear –"

She grinned, all raw charisma and queenly aura.

"– with you by my side, we'll conquer Mistral. So –"

She went to refill her glass for the umpteenth time, and did the same for him. Then, offering him a toast, she declared,

"Here's to friendship, and to the future. May it be full of glory, and endless, with victory."

Jaune nodded, and with a chink, he tapped his glass to Raven's – and then the two of them drank, deeply.

It felt weighty, in a way, this toast – like a deep bond had been formed, and some sacred oath made.

Raven really did consider him a friend, and a good one at that; and Jaune had to admit, he counted her the same.

And yet, what is friendship worth, against the whole weight of the world?

Jaune allowed himself a melancholic smile; and Raven, too drunk, didn't notice it or divine its meaning.

They whiled the night away, drinking and chatting and speaking of a future that Jaune knew would never come.

Eventually, Raven left, and Jaune collapsed into his bed, sinking into a dark, cruel sleep.

The next week came and went, the days long and spent on edge, as Jaune waited for Malachite to make good her word. He trained his semblance, thrice a week, trying to make the unworkable Single Bladed Immolation technique work, even while maintaining his skill at the tried-and-tested parts of his ability – from massive pillars of fire and unceasing flamethrowers, to searing blasts and scorching shields, to flight and maneuvering. He prepared, for if worse came to worst and he would have to resort to the more direct means of elimination.

For all his worry, Lil Miss Malachite delivered, as the message came in from her, summoning him back to Laurium to pick up the package. And so he did, travelling down to the town on his rented motorcycle without delay, to hand over the mask and receive in return a small vial of Kingsbane, the liquid poison a purple so dark it was virtually black.

Jaune doubted that Lil Miss Malachite would cross him on this, and provide a product that wasn't what it was supposed to be – but he performed his tests anyway, all of which came up true, and deadly.

And with all his preparations complete, he could finally put his plan into action.

It was the last day of June, at the height of summer.

He had just about finished sending an email on a delayed trigger to Weiss. In the event that he failed, it would ensure that the truth did not die with him, and Ozpin's faction would know – that Raven's semblance was the key to Salem breaching the vaults and stealing the Relics.

The email had hardly been sent, however, when Raven was stepping out of her portal, and beckoning him over.

"C'mon."

Jaune stood, grabbing his bag. Since they were at the end, in any case, he asked her something that had always been on his mind.

"Don't think I've asked you this before, but where do you live, actually? Not in any of our captured villages and towns, right?"

In a good mood – as she ought to have been, since Jaune had just that day captured another village for her – Raven replied,

"I have a cabin in a very isolated part of a mountain range somewhere. I might show it to you, one day."

Jaune headed over to Raven and the open Kindred Link portal, even while noting –

That cabin, wherever it is, serves as a safe haven for her. No one knows where she is, and so no one can try to kill her in her sleep. She's careful, Raven. Tonight, therefore, must go perfectly, or all will be lost.

They stepped through the portal, the colours of dust and dawn swallowing them –

– before spitting them out at the monastery.

His fellow elites of the empire, Raven's chief lieutenants, were already seated, but they greeted him, with respectful nods and friendly salutes at his most recent accomplishment.

The swordsman Arthur rose from his seat, smiling, and clasped hands with Jaune. The man had always been the friendliest of the bunch, both in general and to Jaune, on account of their shared interest in bladework.

Vernal, of course, was scowling away, his every success raising his esteem in Raven's eyes and hence annoying her all the more. That much was expected –

– but what was not was Raven's chief strategist and administrator staring hard at him. Wulong didn't seem happy, and that made Jaune immediately wary, his mind churning as he tried to game out if his plans could still go ahead successfully.

The food, at least, looked good. It was Eastern Mistralian cuisine on offer tonight, and raw slices of fish, from salmon to swordfish to mackerel, had been prepared and plated. Teacups of steamed egg custard were also available, set out at intervals around the table. More modern dishes rounded out the meal, from cereal-breaded fried chicken, to salads of lettuce, tomato and tofu garnished with sesame-dressing, to omelettes topped with cheese and cod roe.

At any other time, Jaune would have been pleased to enjoy himself, but he kept his mind focused tonight, as Raven addressed the crowd of her companions.

"Friends! Another day, another victory. Jaune has brought the village of Alonnisos into the fold."

Cheers rang out, and as was her custom, Raven offered her victorious general – him, tonight – the chance to speak. With a smile and a nod, she said,

"What say you, Jaune?"

"I –"

Jaune retrieved, from his bag, a bottle of Raven's favourite wine. Expensive as sin, the Chateau Lafite was the best of the best, and while Raven could well afford it herself, it was the thought that counted.

"– bought this the other day. Thought I should get us something to celebrate with – since there wasn't any doubt that I would take Alonnisos, now was there?"

He grinned, Raven laughed, and the others booed his arrogance in good humour. On his part, Jaune poured Raven a generous helping of wine and himself a smaller amount, before going around the table and serving everyone in turn, even – or especially – a glowering Vernal Nox.

Once he returned to his seat, Raven raised her glass, and was about to offer a toast –

– when Wulong, eyes hard and lips thin, intervened.

"Raven. Wait."

She paused, the beginnings of a frown sketching itself across her face, even as he said,

"I have –"

Wulong looked across, his cold gaze boring into Jaune.

"– had reports, of Kingsbane being sold by the Malachites to young Jaune here. Kingsbane is a poison that feeds off aura, to destroy the body of a huntsman from within. Historically, it has been employed to murder kings and queens – hence the name."

Jaune had not expected this – but the die was cast, and all he could do was control his emotions, wear his look of insouciance, and wait to see out his enemy's move and make his own in turn.

Raven, no fool, saw immediately what her chief strategiest was implying. Her brows furrowing, and her eyes seeming to darken, she said, in a voice of both warning and scepticism,

"You're accusing Jaune of trying to kill us? To kill me?"

"I merely raise it as a possibility."

Raven frowned, unconvinced.

"Seeing shadows in every corner, and conspiracy even in the loyal – that's dangerous, and a surefire way for my empire to come undone."

Wulong smiled, without humour or joy.

"Quite. But the even surer path to destruction is you dying, and your power gone to the wind."

That made Raven hesitate, and before any of that doubt could percolate, Jaune spoke up in his own defence.

"I did buy the Kingsbane. I thought it would be a useful weapon, for the next conquest that involves Champion-level opponents. But I understand that you are suspicious, and perhaps you are right to be. So let me allay your misgivings, and resolve this misunderstanding."

Jaune grabbed his own glass, and displayed it so that Raven and everyone else near him could see that it was full of the same wine he poured –

– before tipping his head back and drinking the entire glass of wine in a single go, leaving not a single liquid within to drip down when he turned the whole glass upside down, to show just how thoroughly he had consumed the alleged poison.

"There. Satisfied?"

Raven certainly was, but when she made to drink, Wulong reached up to grab her hand. Most people would have lost their arm, for that, but Wulong – like her other elites – had long earned her trust, and so now all he received was a glare.

"Wulong. Enough. I appreciate that being suspicious on my behalf is your job, but I think it's clear that my Chateau Lafite isn't poisoned, yes?"

The East Mistralian man shook his head.

"Alas, all Jaune has just shown is that he is willing to drink the wine. If he cared more for living than for killing you, then yes, it means the wine is unpoisoned. But if your death meant more to him than his own life, then this means nothing. Let us wait. The Kingsbane takes perhaps a minute to show its effect. If nothing happens to Jaune, then yes, I agree that my suspicions were misplaced – and I will make my abject apologies, for accusing a friend and ruining this otherwise magnificent dinner."

Raven saw the logic in that, and so shrugged, and put down her wine glass, even as everyone around the table looked at Jaune with varying degrees of suspicion.

A minute passed, then two, then three.

And nothing happened.

At last, an exasperated Raven declared –

"There, Wulong. The wine is safe. Admit it – your suspicions were groundless."

Between the evidence of his eyes, and his leader's clear annoyance, Wulong had to bow his head, and allow –

"Had the wine been poisoned, Jaune would already have fallen into the throes of agony, and died. He... has not. The wine is safe."

"Alright! Time to drink, boys!"

To Wulong's left, a relieved looking Arthur cheered, clearly pleased that the distrust and drama was over. And Raven, herself grinning, clapped Wulong on the shoulder.

"Don't get me wrong, Wulong. I appreciate your loyalty, and I am always grateful for your cleverness and cunning – it's beaten our enemies time and time again. But Jaune is trustworthy, as you can see. And Jaune –"

She turned to him, raising her glass to him, and saying solemnly,

"Your loyalty has never been in doubt, to me."

Jaune bowed his head.

"I know. And I appreciate it."

And to everyone else in the room, he said,

"Everyone better fucking drink up. That wine was expensive, you know, and I poured for each of you individually, like some East Mistralian maid! Of course, feel free not to drink, if you're a pussy too afraid of imaginary poison."

That last part was mainly directed at Vernal, who growled at him – but now, having her manhood challenged, she could not but do as he said or else risk losing face. She grabbed the glass of wine he poured – as did everyone else in the room – and then Raven led the toast.

"To Jaune, and to loyal friends!"

With their glasses raised to the ceiling, the elites of the Branwen empire echoed her words.

"Jaune!"

"To our friend!"

"Raven!"

Raven drank; they all did – and as the scarlet liquid flowed down their throats, their fates were fixed.

The pain came, soon enough, for all of them.

People doubled over, around the table, clutching their bellies and hissing in pain.

Across the table, Arthur pounded the table, so hard the wood shattered beneath his fist. Beside him. Wulong was scrambling desperately for a carafe of water, as if that could save him now. And right to Jaune's left, Vernal was grasping her stomach with one hand, even as her other reached out towards –

– Raven. Raven, who was standing, head bowed, and leaning heavily on the table for support.

The act was almost over, but not quite, and for his last deception –

Jaune gripped his own stomach, even while choking out –

"Raven!"

His words got Raven's notice, and she looked up, at him. The pain was apparent in her grimace, but even at the doors of death, there was dignity in her.

"I'm sorry, Raven. I swear, I didn't poison the wine. I don't know why –"

Vernal had collapsed on the table in front of him, while Wulong had fallen to the floor. Arthur was slumped back in his chair, and all the other Branwen elites were in similar states of dead or dying.

Raven's strength, however, held her up even now, and listening to his panicked apologies, she cut him off, with –

"Don't apologize. This is Ozpin, I know it. He found out, somehow, about Salem's offer of my semblance for a ceasefire. Argh!"

She groaned, in pain, and even while never dropping his own grimace, Jaune said, urgently,

"Raven. If this is the end, I need to tell you something. Yang. She –"

Raven looked up at Jaune, the mention of her daughter cutting through the haze of her pain.

"– told me, some time ago, that she never hated you for leaving her. She knew you did it for her, and she loved you. I just wanted to let you know that, in case, we don't make it."

Raven gave a half-laugh, half-wince, even as her strength finally gave out and she collapsed back into her chair.

"Ah. Shit. Don't think I'm going to make it. Well, see you on the other side, I guess, but before I go, I should say... even if it was only for a month, I'm grateful for your loyalty and your friendship. And thanks for letting me for letting me know about Yang. I was a terrible mother, and knowing that Yang loves me is..."

She closed her eyes, as if picking her words – but those words never came, as did her eyes never open again.

Raven Branwen wasn't breathing, and it was clear – she had died, even while thinking of her daughter.

Jaune let his hand fall from his belly –

– for of course, there had never been any pain except what he pretended there to be.

All around, the room was filled with corpses –

– except a sound came from the other side of the table, and with a frown, Jaune paced over, drawing Crocea Mors as he did.

Wulong was on the floor, alive, if barely. A dagger was strewn on the floor in front of him, and he was bleeding badly, from a wound in his left hand.

"Arc..."

The hatred in his voice was palpable, and when the man forced himself up onto his elbows, so he could look up, Jaune saw the rage and despair in his eyes.

"Wulong. Congratulations. You figured out my trick."

"You broke your own aura, even before coming... no wonder the Kingsbane didn't affect you."

Having already won, Jaune no longer felt the need to conceal his deceit. And freely, he admitted –

"Yes. Kingsbane feeds off one's aura, and if your aura's broken..."

He had even tested it out, well before slipping the poison into the wine today. In Skyros, in the makeshift jail cells underneath the keep –

"So. Who's the murderer, and who's the rapist?"

Naked sword in hand, Jaune entered the cell, even as his prisoners backed away from him. The two bandits – who had only recently joined up with the tribe – had been found guilty of killing a man and then sexually assaulting the wife. It was, needless to say, contrary to the laws Raven had set down, and so justice was now his to mete out.

"She was willing!"

"Fuck you, Arc!"

Jaune smashed the second man in the face with his ordinary steel sword, breaking the bandit's aura in a single blow.

"Shut up."

The condemned pair fell silent, allowing Jaune to say,

"Here are two bottles of wine. We think one of them is poisoned, and want to confirm it. If you agree to drink, and you survive, you get to go free. If you reject it, I behead the both of you, and mount your heads on pikes."

A man starving in the desert had to take what food he was offered, no matter how paltry, and so it went with hope, however slight, in the face of death. The men accepted his offer, and grabbed the two Kingsbane-laced bottles of wine Jaune had brought, and began drinking.

It didn't take long, for the one whose aura remained whole to start clutching his stomach, and descend into the depths of agony – even as his companion, looking horrified but also equally relieved, tried vainly to help him.

The former, with his full aura, died quickly enough. Jaune then waited another ten minutes, and only once it was clear that there were no side-effects for the aura-broken survivor – at least within this timeframe – did Jaune kill the latter, with a single, sure stroke to severe his neck. He did the same for the man already dead from Kingsbane; it would not do to have anyone suspect his plans.

In a twisted way, Jaune was lucky that these two scum of the earth had appeared and made themselves available for testing. The other, least morally depraved alternative, was to go to a hospice. Due to the risk of increasing the rate at which settlements attracted Grimm, sick patients were generally not treated by having their auras unlocked, unless their illness was severe, said illness was even treatable by aura, and if the illness was expected to last long enough – rather than being treated by other means or going away on its own – that the patient had time to master their aura and heal themselves. Aura healing wasn't automatic, after all.

Hospice patients were, by definition, the victims of severe illnesses – leukemia and stage four lung cancer and the like – and many would have had their auras unlocked as a last ditch attempt at treatment. And when such attempts failed, that left many in hospices, with naught left but to live out their remaining days the best they could. Jaune could – and would – have gone to them, and tested whether the ostensible Kingsbane provided by Malachite was working as intended, and whether breaking one's aura could stop the poison from working. And if the hospice patients died, as expected, than he wasn't robbing them of many years, regardless.

Jaune felt dirty, even considering it, but when the world was at stake, nothing was off the table.

And now...

Jaune stared down at Wulong, the man's hateful eyes dimmed with pain.

Raven's East Mistralian chief strategist was a brilliant man, Jaune had to give him that. In the depths of agony, he had figured out the trick – even if too late to help anyone else – and had used a dagger to break his own aura, and limit the damage.

Jaune doubted it would be enough, at this point. All Wulong had earned for himself was a longer, more painful death; and to spare him that –

Crocea Mors pierced Wulong's heart, and as the man slumped down into the pool of his blood, he slipped into his final sleep.

Jaune was then left, alone and alive, triumphant in his deceit and victorious without a fight.

He ought to have been happy. Raven was dead, and with her, the possibility of Salem studying her semblance to break into the vaults, steal the Relics, and destroy the world. Remnant was safe, and his mission was over, and soon enough, he would be back in the light, with his friends, and with Weiss.

He could finally see her, and they could keep that promise, to visit that Atlesian waterfall together in winter.

And yet –

– and yet Jaune felt no joy, no pleasure, no satisfaction – no relief, even.

And introspective as he was, Jaune knew why – because Raven had, somehow or another, become someone he could call a friend, and this was betrayal, pure and simple.

And more than that – it was unclean. There had been no honourable battle, no glorious single combat, no earning the death of your opponent by laying your own life on the line.

There had only been poison, and that felt like the furthest thing from heroism.

You fool.

The voice of reason, from that cold, utilitarian part of his being that was both the best and worst of him, spoke up.

What matters – what truly matters – is that the world has been delivered from the risk of annihilation, and that innumerable millions of lives are now safe. And heroism is far more than being the knight in shining armour, standing tall against the Grimm – you learnt that lesson, before age thirteen.

Jaune glanced over at Raven, slumped in her chair.

For all her strength, and all her power, she had lost. That thought gripped Jaune, and made him reflect –

– that cunning had killed the most powerful huntress in existence, even as Mistral's huntsmen and military forces had failed time and time again.

And once more, Jaune remembered what Ozpin had told him at initiation, and saw that the headmaster had the right of it all along.

Strength and sword and semblance were by themselves insufficient – saving people and heroism also required intelligence. A hero had to be cunning, to vanquish evil; and clever, to build a better world.

This was not the life Jaune wanted – but it was what the world demanded.

Pain gripped him, then.

! ! !

His stomach felt like it wanted to kill him, and Jaune failed to hold back an agonized groan, as the pain forced him to his knees.

This –?

The Kingsbane, having not affected him so far, appeared to be taking effect now anyway.

Why?

Even in the throes of agony, Jaune answered himself –

A broken aura doesn't mean no aura. And mere traces, of the manifestation of my soul, are now feeding the poison.

"Nnngh!"

The anguished gasp escaped him, and Jaune doubled over, his fist pounding the ground in futility.

Darkness began eating at the edges of his vision.

And even as he was dying, and even as eternity came for him, all he could think of was her.

Weiss.

And all he could feel, was sorrow, and keening regret, that he had not told her the truth yet.

I love you.

He said it, like a prayer, like his feelings would ever reach her.

Darkness took him, and he went, not wanting.

-(=RWBY=)-

A/N: Ultra-long chapter, as promised. And the story's not over, for what it's worth – plenty left to go.