A/N: Thanks so much for all the reviews on the last chapter guys, I really appreciate them!
The room behind Ren had been empty, and it only took a few minutes of surprisingly scare-free wandering to find the next ladder room, and now Ruby found herself on the third level of the dungeon. The walls were back to being plain stone again, though somehow that didn't give her any comfort.
She was about to leave the small room she was in when she heard a faint growling sound coming from the other side of the door, but before she could decide whether to hide or not, the door slowly creaked open of its own accord. Peering out into the hallway, even with her limited range of sight she could still tell there was no one there.
As she quietly crept out of the room and down the hall, Ruby subconsciously reached down and patted the symbols on her belt to make sure she still had them. Reassured by the presence of the red rose and green gears, she focused on finding her way through the maze-like dungeon.
Nothing happened for a few minutes, and she was starting to feel less crushingly afraid, instead being lulled into a false sense of safety from the lack of monsters. That feeling instantly went away when she heard a grating noise at the end of the hall, the same one that the dark figure had made as it dragged some sort of blade around. And the sound was coming her way.
She quietly backed up in the opposite direction, looking for a room she could hide in until the monster passed at least, but keeping her eyes ahead in case the monster sped up. Realizing too late she should probably blow out her candle to keep from being seen, the monster spotted her and a loud, enraged scream came from it as it started chasing after her. There was a loud scratching noise like nails on a chalkboard as the blade was forced over the stone floor rougher than before, and the sound made Ruby's ears ring as she sprinted away.
The ringing in her ears got louder and more painful with each step, and suddenly she found herself collapsing with her sight fading to utter blackness. She hadn't fainted or passed out, since she could still think clearly, but she couldn't see or hear anything and her body wouldn't obey her commands to get up and move. Panic started to set in as she realized the monster would still be coming after her, even if she couldn't hear it anymore, and she was afraid of finding out what would happen if she died here.
Finally, her senses snapped back, similarly to being woken up abruptly, and she found herself staring at a pair of light brown boots covered in blood splatters. She slowly moved her gaze upward, chills going down her spine the more she saw of the figure. The brown clothes and long, messy blonde hair, albeit covered in blood, could belong to none other than her sister.
Yang's red eyes stared blankly ahead of her, and Ruby realized she must not have noticed her on the floor, thus why the girl was still alive and hadn't been stabbed by that noisy blade yet.
Wait, Yang doesn't carry a bladed weapon. What is she dragging along that's making that sound? Ruby's stare trailed down to Yang's right hand and the red handle that was held tightly in it, then down to the black blade embedded in the ground. Ruby felt like she'd seen that scythe somewhere before, but in its uncared for and incredibly beaten up condition it was barely recognizable. Then it hit her.
That's Crescent Rose.
Her eyes widened when she realized that was her beloved weapon, and the sorry state it was in made her want to scream. She managed to not do that, but the overall shock from seeing a blood covered Yang with an equally bloody and unrepaired Crescent Rose caused her to give a tiny squeak. Then the red eyes met hers and she heard the enraged scream again as Yang realized she was there.
Ruby rolled to the side and the scythe was swung overhead, stabbing into the floor where she'd been laying moments before. Taking the momentary opening as Yang fought to pull the scythe free, Ruby scrambled to her feet and dashed down the hall where Yang had come from.
The grating sound started up again as Yang took chase, and the noise made Ruby cringe as she imagined her poor scythe going through that kind of abuse. She had to escape, though, and forced thoughts of her weapon out of her mind as she ducked into another room and quietly closed the door behind her. She could hear Yang go past the door a minute later, continuing off down the hall, and she allowed herself to breathe properly again.
She shivered when she noticed the eyeless Blake staring at her from the other side of the room. As much as she didn't want to go near it, she realized she needed the candles on the shelf behind Blake since hers had gone out and rolled away when she fell. Taking a deep breath, she inched closer to the creepy thing, attempting to sneak around it. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she noticed its head turning to continue blindly watching her as she passed beside it.
Reaching the shelf, she snagged a candle and backed away as she lit it. Once the light illuminated Blake, it collapsed just like the previous one had. Its empty eyes continued to stare up at her, and she quickly turned and left the room, unable to look at it any longer.
Back out in the hallway, she was unsure of where to go. Yang had gone off in the direction Ruby hadn't explored yet, and she didn't see any other doors or halls back in the direction she'd come from. She couldn't hear the grating noise anymore, so that probably meant Yang had wandered far enough away that Ruby wouldn't run into her again for awhile, but she also now knew that Yang sometimes just stopped and made no noise. The bloodied berserker could very well be waiting at the end of the hall, and Ruby just didn't know it.
Deciding to take her chances, since she really had no other choice, she quietly crept down in the direction Yang had gone. She was careful to keep an eye ahead, ready to extinguish the candle at first sight of the blonde. The hallway was apparently monster-free, though, at least so far. She came to a four way intersection of halls, and chose to go left at random.
She immediately regretted that decision when she spotted a dark figure somewhere down the hall, slowly stumbling toward her. The fact it was lacking the grating noise as it moved meant this wasn't Yang, and some sort of morbid curiosity kept her from running away, instead staying still and watching it move into the range of her candle's light.
Ruby audibly gasped as she recognized Jaune, covered in cuts and gashes all over, his hair stained red on one side and blood dripping steadily from his mouth. Ruby stared at him in utter horror, finding his injured state even more disturbing than Yang's psychotic one. He continued stumbling toward her, eyes looking blank and dead and she couldn't help but take a step backward. The way he stared right through her as if she wasn't there bothered her, and she wasn't sure if he was hostile or not.
Before she could really decide what to do, whether run from him or try to speak to him, he collapsed. Legs buckling beneath him, he fell forward and Ruby braced herself to catch him, but nothing landed in her arms. She blinked in confusion when she realized he'd just vanished entirely.
She shivered as another thought entered her mind. What if Yang is the one that did that to him? No, this is just a dream. There's no realistic explanation for why the things in here look like they do, they just look like that to scare me. Right? Ruby shook her head, refusing to let herself dwell on it any longer.