Chapter 12: Rebellion Now and Forever Revolution
Charles the Lord of Fort Castle
Steady breath, steady feet. Never too far, never too loud. Keep above, few things ever look up. These thoughts were the first lessons Azura had taught Charles and now dancing around the trees, limberly stepping from branch onto branch, those same words were the only thing keeping Charles' heartbeat soft when he could smell the smoke through the rain. The thick ashen heft to it a signal as booming as the gun shots cannons and lightning above. Shouting reverberated through the woods along with curses and panicked steps. Engines of dust trucks and rearing of horses not far from here came a bit more loudly to Charles with nary a sound behind him, the rain having muffled anything like a breath from his nimble footed companions.
To anyone else, Charles likely looked alone in the dark, but his eyes saw everything. There was a glow of light on a hundred faces hidden in the shadow of the moon on either side, even more in the deeper forest, the dark had teeth tonight. Looking to the left, a Simian woman stood even more nimbly with a short bow in hand, eyes squinting in the dark, their night vision not nearly as strong as the kind that Charles' amber eyes gave him. A soundless look to him begged the question whether to move or not. Charles had the best eyes, he had to move first. Even in the dark it can be a scary thing to move, and to move first especially.
But one has to move, it's not an option, no one really gets to decide before the moment they move, not when they can hear people fighting, dying. Not when those people were friends, family, and love ones. Not when a hundred more eyes burrowed into the back of Charles' head, screaming and shouting their premature mourning for everyone that wasn't going to walk away. The lights were on, stage set, audience in their seats and a hero expected. The Faunus resigned himself to not having a choice, for it was simply a less scary way to make one. The pressure on, the fear growing sick in his gut, Charles gave a nod, a nod that unleashed it all.
A bolt of fervor struck everyone in the forest, though it made not a touch more of sound, the movement was there through the brush and trees. The charge was called and spread through the dark far beyond what Charles could see or hear. Most of his fighters moved through the tree line, most Faunus around him gifted climbers. Moving above the muddy dirt below gave them an edge, made them even more soundless and masked in the dark.
At first, there was nothing, though with each tree they passed more rustling, movement and creaks could be heard, the forest eating what human scouts there had been up this cliff. Charles saw a man full of arrows long before he saw any alive, the poor guy bouncing on his striped horse reduced to nothing more than a weight on the back of an animal's spine. Someone was quick to put the beast down, the thud as it landed the loudest sound to cut its way through the dark when the noises from both the sky and battle outweighed everything else.
Soon even that gave way to new sounds and sights. Hurried lamps running around blurring Charles' night vision slightly making the men and women attached to them turn into almost phantoms in a panicked scurry. They shouted confused, but as the troop neared what was to be the cliff side there was more noise to overpower it. It was in this motion that Charles killed his first opponent, a woman whom was just a ghastly image of armor with some sort of sword and rifle mix. Keeping his breath steady, hands still while his mind pounded, Charles notched his arrow and pulled back, his wooden simple hunting bow. Nothing special or ornate in it, no dust or runes carved into the wood, just a bit of warping from use and a solid string. It was enough. Breathing out as he let go, Charles' arrow struck the human wrath in her heart. It was the quickest death an arrow made of nevermore feathers could manage.
As the scout dropped, Charles moved forward. Each person following, firing into targets of their own. Soon the sounds of dropping forms, and the lights of scattered lamps would give them away, so the steps became quicker, cutting between trees and limbs, jumping between branches. Now these shadows and ghosts of people were beginning to look up into the trees and rain, but arrows fell them long before any alarm could go off. No one was expecting this, this the most simple of strategies. To think an army in such a hurry to ambush would be so easy to do the same. Charles for a moment allowed himself some breath, not to panic and believe in his own false legend.
That comfort melted away as soon as he could see through the trees into the blaze of his own creation, just a shot away from the tree line, fire, so much fire. It burned lines into the earth smoke bellowing from its rising heat, the downpour not able to stop flame dust when it burned into the soil. Above the smoke, the airships flew too low, they tried as they could to escape the storm above, bolts of lightning tracing around them, active in favor of Charles' cause. The white and blue of Schnee, the massive snowflake crest pressed onto the balloon of those flying machines. It was enough to stop the Faunus and give him plenty of pause. Even more when the cannons aboard erupted into the field below. The bolts of explosive ice, fire, and electricity shattered the forest trees when those Schnee cannons firing mercilessly at the darkness around him. Still the hidden Faunus came, they seemed so many, even to Charles who knew it was only a handful, but blurred by light, smoke, rain, and sound, the forces of Canis and Leo he could see from atop the trees was seemingly as endless as the forest they poured out from. The illusion was working.
Murray could be seen from there, the man bashing his way into a line of rifles, the third formation from what bodies lie in the mud. Another Canis woman was spearing another soldier in the chest, though some human with semblance of some sort cut her down at shocking speeds. Taurus were visible too, a rider with one of those curved swords cut down gunmen as he passed, though the rifles took out many approaching from the dark. No matter how hard they fought the army was all cannon fodder, all just lives thrown away if Charles didn't move. The prize was still out in the open.
Just as Charles had planned, hoped, and worked for, General Lagune's banners and artillery were all pulled onto the cliffs that ran along the main road, a small tactical advantage that anyone with any sense would take at the smallest sign of trouble, but it was dangerous in its obviousness. Without any parameter those gallant Valen knights and royal guards, though strong and armed with all manner of destructive instruments and heavy artillery, were alone, stranded on the Cliffside with all the most important equipment. What scouts and guards should have been there were all punctured and dying now.
Hands shaking Charles signaled twice, switching the call from silent to loud. A massive roar, a hundred voices melded into a single wolves howl called from the deep of the forest. Many turned to look into the abyssal cry, they saw only arrows and crossbow bolts a volley of black feathered death into metal frames and bodies. Panic broke some, others simply fell dead, more tried to turn back to fire, but from the trees the Faunus came down hard. Simians with spears and staffs rushed out into the light faster than the riflemen could fire. Charles himself kept firing from the dark, making himself seen only to his own men. The most important piece in this puzzle was yet to be found. Something he couldn't trust anyone but himself to do right. General Lagune needed to be captured, preferably alive.
Moving unfettered by fear, an invisible cat in a sea of shouting warriors, he ran through the newly set up tents and artillery pieces as soldiers fought around him. Fire had already begun to spread through the royal camp, the ash and watery smoke making Charles' eyes itch, his beating chest loud and intense. It was getting harder to breath, harder to move as he approached the center camp of the royal army. One soldier went after him was removed quickly with a flick of a dagger, another by someone's spear, who Charles couldn't even make out. Finally at the center of the flames, where the most banners and equipment was, the General stood ambushed on all sides, but backed by the best. He stood in black and blue plate, the color of his name sake. Charles wouldn't have recognized him if it wasn't of the royal crest carved into the armor and the way everyone surrounded him. In his hands was the oddest pair of swords he had ever seen, one was attached to some sort of handgun, though Charles had never seen something like it yet.
Charles was not a warrior, not some knight or gifted paragon of justice. A semblance reflexes the owner, least that's what Azura once suggested. Charles had a coward's semblance, he could never win a fair fight, so never fight fair. His own shadows came alive, their forms gaseous yet solid and without feeling. Without shadows he was powerless, but the fire provided many. Raising these clones Charles let them strike out with dagger in hand. The others saw this at once, firing into the shadow and dispelling it. Charles unleashed the other with a bow knocking out one of the royal riflemen while the original Faunus slid into another position, more shadows taking the fallen ones place.
Two more clones dove into combat, two more guards died with them, their shadow weapons just as real as the original. Again and again Charles ran himself around the camp flames, letting more shadows do the fighting and dying while he hid and shifted positions, every clone another knife from another direction. So long as his Aura held, Charles was a million mediocre fighters in one. No one could outnumber him so long as he waited them out. Quickly it was just the prince and a drained Charles hidden from the fight, the royal guard dispatched by the shadows around him. Heart beating, it was time for the final parlor trick.
A shadow, one of the last Charles had the aura to make, bust through in a charge, shifted to the left deliberately. The would-be-prince swung and missed with the left blade, but as the shadow stepped passed him. Lagune turned his back to Charles stabbing into the darkness. Turning one's back to a black cat, no matter how weak is a fool's idea. Or maybe he was the fool.
Chest screaming, beating with all the fear Charles ever felt in one moment, he went for it, daggers out ready to take out the shoulder blades, but that strange blade shifted, the form of a pick attached to a chain, the strange gun firing a bolt of fire. A propellant. Swinging around in a vortex motion, Charles couldn't completely avoid it, the sickle nicking him above the eye and knocking him to the ground. A mixture of blood mud and water coated him now, unfortunately mostly his blood from the new wound. The General gave him not a moment before spinning that sickle around dropping it down.
Charles kicked back to his feet narrowly missing the steel edge of that device, it spun again and again Charles dove into the mud to avoid it. The Faunus had nary a moment to wipe his face before the sickle came again and again, a vortex of steel and chain. Backing away the sickle caught Charles in the shoulder, not too deep, but the pain. It burned. Something else burned with it as the Faunus kicked himself back the blood trickling down his leather sleeves. 'No.' It screamed, 'No I don't want to die. I refuse to die.' The coward in him, raging against the dying light.
"I'm not dying. Surrender," Charles spoke softly, barely reaching the general over the flames. Lagune just smirked spinning the sickle around again, its point going straight for Charles. He could see it glimmering bright in the night that point. Charles had no option, cowards became devils when that happened. Fast as he could gambling he pulled the longest dagger he had, barely half the length of the sickle. Ducking he let all the weight of the sickle and chain wrap around the bladed dagger a twisted mess locked to the weapon, barely holding on. Before the general could think Charles turned and with all his strength embedded the blade into the wood and metal of some rubble.
Try and try again, the chain wouldn't come loose, the dagger caught. Charles went for it, full run at the general. Dashing with all his weight and took a dive into the mud. It wasn't for General Lagune, it was for the chain he dropped in favor of the second blade, the chain connected to a sickle that Charles' shadow unhooked, the chain which he pulled sliding out from right under General Lagune. Sickle freed the edge struck Lagune in the leg, blood and mud spraying the air as he fell into the dirt. The pick reached Charles' hand shifting quickly into a sword. The Faunus didn't waste time with speeches or mumbled words. This was a fight, and a fight is always bloody. He jumped on Lagune, smacking away the would-be-prince's sword and stabbing the commandeered weapon into the leader's shoulder.
Lagune shouted and cursed, but nothing stopped Charles in the slightest. Fist free he beat the prince bloody. Didn't kill him, but once Charles calmed down, all around him his fighters stood silent, looking down at him and the defeated prince.
"Charles… He's out… We need to take care of the Airships!" Charles looked down at his hands, they were muddy, or bloody. Maybe both, but mostly they just shook. He wasn't scared though, and while his body ached, head screamed and back burned, he felt invincible. He could kill them all.
"Okay, we…uh we can com-co-commandeer it." Charles could feel that twitchy stutter in him. His nerves were shot, Aura near drained, perfect time to steal a Schnee Airship. In the lightning above they flew so low, the largest of them all at the center, that damn snowflake crest on its balloon, smaller ones so closely keeping near. It rained down cannon fire and death, ropes let bellow to pick up soldiers as the Faunus cut down the army it encircled. This was last piece, the last thing in the way of true Faunus victory. Charles was going to smite these invaders from their skies.
"How?" one Simian woman asked, her face burnt slightly from fire dust though her blonde hair seemed only slightly singed. She was in rags, but still able. Strong Faunus whoever she was. Charles looked down at his new weapon, letting it shift back into a sickle, the chain was so long and the trees so high. In these rains a bird has to fly slowly, and when it does, the limbs can be caught in the trees.
"Get the rope hooks for climbing. I have my own. We take the big one." This was it for human supremacy. They would tear the ships from the skies, they had the prince, and they had the army. It was their time to lose everything. The Faunus rebellion now and forever; revolution.
Wilhelm Schnee the Ice Prince
Wilhelm had read much about war, its atrocities, inequities, brutality and futility. The senselessness never seems apparent no matter how many times one says it without seeing. It's not the senselessness in the manner of a dispute, nor in the sense of lack in utility. It is in the visual affirmation of bloodshed that shows a disconnect Wilhelm had never seen before. How foolish it was to throw thousands at each other in theoretical debates of mortality and property when none who did the sacrificing will ever reap the benefit. Watching the thousands below struggle in thick mucus of soil, blood, and rain. Expensive equipment ruined in fire, people on fire, workers on fire, the whole of the world ablaze and Wilhelm stood centered above it all, his ships firing silently into the woods, merely gesturing support for Lagune who had foolishly done the one thing Wilhelm had warned him not to. March on cliffs. Lead from the airship, Wilhelm had pleaded, but no. The brave General Lagune had much to prove and from the fires in his camp Wilhelm wagered no time left to prove it. This had all gone backwards, Wilhelm had hoped for a gunless siege to make terms and negotiate, foolish, but hope was for the young and Wilhelm was still rather young.
"We must pick up the General. Master Wilhelm, please give the order and we'll fly low and pick him up," Captain Bely pleaded. She was a zealous woman, and Wilhelm appreciated that, if a little too much for his pacifistic taste. It was beyond pointless to save him now. The Faunus were pouring over the ridge taking the back line from behind, an ambush on top of an ambush. They had encircled an army twice the size if not more than theirs. If Wilhelm wasn't their enemy he would be earnestly impressed by their versatility in combat.
"Too late, he's dead. Fly low and keep the gunships from letting any sort of enemy in the trees hit us. We need to pick up everyone we can from the center line and get out." Castle White would need to hear of this, before the battle radio was already out, the storm and poor reception combined made reaching Castle White now impossible. All he had heard from them today is that his father was ill, and Weiss was sure Summer was a bad influence on Friedrich. Qrow mentioned a lead in the investigation as well, but all that ended in fire. Now smoke was added to the radio interference.
They were alone in the sky, watching the carnage below. The infamous wolf huntress made short work of whatever those royal spider tanks were supposed to do, worthless things, off brand Schnee tech. He was almost happy to watch her stand visibly atop a sea of dead machines had her howl been not so heavy that it nearly tore Wilhelm's courage asunder. He wasn't even in the battle. How any normal soldier stood up to huntresses and hunters was insane. The way she blocked every strike with that rock of a shield. She was nigh immortal beast.
"Master Wilhelm, your bottom deck is requesting help. There are Faunus under the deck." Nimh, the Faunus maid whom was more an older sister than a servant to the brothers called from the bottom steps, coming up with crossbow in hand and blood on her thin armor. Wilhelm felt a bit of panic burrow inside his heart. How could they manage to skip the gunships was beyond him. The plan was danger proof, they had no means to hurt him yet here they were coating a woman of his household in blood and taking his ship. If they meant to make thieves of themselves Wilhelm would hang them as such.
"Boys and girls. I believe we are needed below. Captain you have the deck. Nimh rest up," Wilhelm's personal guard was the best of the ship, though nothing compared to the huntresses and hunters his sister consorted with. They were all knights trained to fight on the Brothers Grimm, they knew its copper and pipe filled halls, the way the tight spaces of the airship worked, the different levels of engineering marvel. This ship was one of Wernher's last finished designs, though he had first intended to be free of the center balloon, that design was unfinished, meant for a future generation. The decks were divided into five, top command deck, second barracks and living quarters, third kitchen and armory, fourth fire deck and fifth storage which would now be packed with refugees soon. If any incursion would happen it would be on the gun deck, lower than most and open to the air.
Though narrow as the stairs were it felt too long, the path to the gun deck riddled with the sounds of some poor deckhand moaning and the shouts reverberating through the metal halls. Wilhelm has no training in combat beyond Weiss' personal demands, but he had the sense to hold his sister's Rapier tight in his hands, his gloves the only separation between this grip and his fingers. As the moaning got worse Wilhelm feared for himself in equal measure. Quickly five protectors seemed like nothing but a joke. A bad one at that.
What was more frightening than an army on the deck was the prospect of one empty of anything besides a poor boy with a nevermore feather bolt in him, blood pooling on the floor and a crew of confused idiots shouting at each other over the sounds of cannon fire from the automatic cannons. Many soldiers who had fled onto the rope up to the airship now lay on the floor stung about with such gormless look of defeat. Such a pathetic thing, to survive and be so defeated. Wilhelm almost had more sympathy for them, almost as if death was a better fate to anything else.
"What's happening? I heard we were being boarded?" Wilhelm looked around the deck, open, but nothing that implicated a struggle. Just machinery and an eerie noise Wilhelm couldn't identify.
"Nothing Sir. An arrow fired from below got one of the workers on the cannons." Wilhelm became very aware of what that odd sound was, or more what it wasn't. The cannons were silent, all aside from the hum of their motors turning the turrets. Each gun meant to take down a nevermore found its way to a new target above the forest wall. It is a horrific thing to witness everything fall apart around you, know it was about to happen, and know it will regardless of what you do. Thunder clapped in the same moments those cannons did. It was in terrified silence Wilhelm watched his gunships rupture in fire and burst. Metal, rain, and fire all poured down below. Wilhelm didn't need to see the other to hear the side guns fire. All the protective ships were nothing more than a falling flame.
"Prepare to be boarded! They've taken the command deck. One of you with me the rest hold here no matter what!" There was only one way, and it was the devil's way. Wilhelm had a smile on, but he could burst with anger. The red on his face, the fury in him. It was an icy sort of hate. The one that can only come from betrayal. The Ice prince did not wait to see who would follow him. He ran up the decks knocking aside doors, people, anything that stood in his way. Rapier felt lighter than before, and the inner cool nature he had begun to melt away.
The command deck came up and his guard with him, one of the bigger men, tall and broad shouldered. Young and handsome too, someone who would catch your eye in a crowd. These were all his undoing. A bolt, nothing fancy just a black feather bolt ended him. Perfect shot to the head. Somehow that made it all the worse. Wilhelm hid behind another console; more sensible to hide then run out and die bleeding. The room around him was covered in blood, but not from any wound, there was an acidic smell in the air. A toxin released then quickly flushed out by wind, but not before it killed the crew. Such a sad pathetic way to die.
"Nimh," Wilhelm called, he did not want a reply.
"Yes." He got it. All the things he never wanted to hear. A boy, Wilhelm would have cried, but as a full Schnee adult, he wanted to slit her neck. What possessed him to stand the Ice Prince did not know, but its force brought the man to his feet standing straight in what was his command post, his ship, with his dead crew. The smile he had faded to a dead look of disgust. In the center alone, with only dead to keep her company and a loaded crossbow aimed true and deadly at Wilhelm. It was that woman, the filthy creature he let hold Friedrich and Summer, the one he trusted and grew up with. The fox he pretended was family. Mongrel.
"Nevermore bolts?" Wilhelm asked, but didn't need to. He could see it. He didn't want to see it, but they were there. After everything. How kind that man was to her, to Nimh, it was so obvious too. So apparent. It explained everything. How long she had been with them, her family had been with them. Lying deceiving Foxes.
"Nevermore bolts." It was then a decision was made. No matter how, why or when, Nimh was going to die. For murdering a good man, for murdering a scientist, for murdering his uncle. She could kill him now, but a bolt in his heart and Wilhelm was sure he would get up and kill her, put a gods damn rapier in her heart. Seemed she was going to test it. The trigger let the bolt loose, racing right towards Wilhelm, there was no dodging. No way to block it. The Ice Prince didn't have the speed or the care. He never bothered to stop it.
Something else did. A ghost of phantom, maybe some divine intervention. Whatever it was the bolt failed and the shadow disappeared with it. Wilhelm nearly laughed, would have bolted for Nimh right then if it wasn't for the knife pointed at his neck. Gods had given him a gift. Wilhelm smiled knowing how he intended to use it.
"Drop your weapon," the Faunus that held him by the throat said coolly. Wilhelm happily agreed placing his rapier on the nearest desk with a smile on his face. Nimh seemed so uncomfortable. This assassination was more of a capture now fox, much more complicated. "I'm taking this ship Schnee."
"I surrender," Wilhelm replied with a smile getting to his knees, never breaking eye contact with Nimh. Now it made sense, looking at Nimh and her black feathered arrows, he understood exactly what war was about. It could take a million knights to kill that woman, and a million knights would be sent. He would skin her alive before the end. That Wilhelm swore on all that was Schnee, all that was himself. Wealth or ruin it did not matter to him. Snow would snuff out her lungs and rub out her miserable existence. Then when that last breath left her choking body, he would find the rest of these traitors and corrupted factions within their false fighting. War made so much sense now. 'Thank you Nimh,' Wilhelm wanted to say, 'Thank you for everything. I figured it out; I know who you work for.'
*** OMG I'm so late I'm sorry! D: Finals happened then I took a vacation and I'm sorry so sorry! I hope you enjoy this chapter, it was super hard to write for some reason. Happy, so happy, to be out of class though and looking to get new MV out before weekend is over I promise. Also Excited for the new episode tomorrow (written as of the 24th) wondering when I'll be made A.U. XD
Special thanks to TCR who rushed out to get the edits in before the episode aired, and to everyone who reads. Make sure to review and tell me what you think!
