Dancing Roses in the Melting Snow

by Adjudicato

A heart left cold, blanketed by snow. A soul left wanting, in the shadow of winter. All things must give way to season's passage, all lives progress by phase. Yet, in the warming light of spring, new life blooms from the frozen ground. As winter's shadow gives way to spring, as friendship heals and begats love, so too do roses of all shades bloom. Roses of red, and white.

6. Thus, Kindly, I Scatter - Part One

Author's Note:
I am very sorry to keep including these, but I fear there is more than a little to tell before you press on, Dearest Reader. Firstly, let me apologize for the length of this beast and any errors within. This is only the first half of chapter six, which promises to thrust the Dancing Roses into their final soiree, and therefore contains more content than anything else thus far. I am pulling my most recent lesson from the great Stephen King, most notably his fantastic septology that I nod to more than a few times herein, and am trying to learn his method for telling a tale within a tale. I hope it came across at least somewhat well as it was a massive nightmare to edit alone.

Moving on, let me also mention that I am having some issues with my PC and, possibly, perhaps even this site as well. There was a good half-hour put into simply uploading this gargantuan document due to a formatting issue, so I hope everything carried over well and my editing hours weren't wasted. But I digress...
Thank you, Dearest Reader, for joining me in this tale. Without any further ado, I give you the next step of the Dancing Roses and the tale I continue to weave for all of your consideration...

Chapter 6

Thus, Kindly, I Scatter

Part 1

Grimm Badlands

Ψ

The sun, that horrid ball of incessant heat and insistent brightness, seemed as though it were permanently affixed at the apex of its ascent. It sat at the top of its astral throne, high and shining with glorious magnificence and fiendish heat, as it had since the third hour of the morning. Its rays poured constant and irrefutable as they bathed the land below, casting long shadows where it was blocked by jagged outcroppings of shale and granite, and lit the badlands with something that could only be described as an ungodly and oppressive brightness and temperature.

The wind came by in wretched puffs that were eerily similar in strength to an elderly man, likely in his last few hours of life, attempting to blow out a candle. It danced weakly and softly across the wasted hardpan, picking up and twirling the occasional dust devil, failing to exert even the slightest hint of cooling or relief. It served only to carry along the heat of the glowing star above, acting more akin to a tease than anything else.

Here and there and all around were the massive outcrops of granite and shale, looking like gargantuan claws poking from the earth and reaching toward the sky. By relative comparison to one another, some were small and formed little more than stunted overhangs while others were monolithic, to the point that an entire city could be built beneath with room to spare, and reached out into grand vistas that overlooked the barren hardpan beneath. All were gargantuan in comparison to the two walking through the badlands. The massive features were baked thoroughly in the immutable sun and gave off the telltale wavers of heated air if one looked at them from just the right angle.

"See any sign of him?" a woman asked with an air of absolute boredom, her true anxiety and anticipation hidden beneath her stoic façade. Her eyes, hidden behind a funny looking pair of black goggles, scanned the wasteland beneath her vantage point atop one of the larger outcrops. Her void-black hair, nearly half as long as she was tall, had begun to billow weakly behind her in one of the pathetic breezes that blew through.

"Slippery snake…" muttered the woman next to her, more to herself than in reply. This one had a cattleman's hat atop her bright golden tresses, flat-crowned and wide-brimmed and colored the dark brown of deeply tanned leather. Her lavender eyes, shielded from the oppressive sun above by her right hand and hat, scanned the wasteland scenery just as the other woman.

They had spent the better portion of the last hour scaling the rocky rear slope of the outcrop, making frightfully little progress for their effort due to the harsh and uncompromising heat. Despite their agile and strong frames, despite their expert conditioning and training, the badlands of western Vacuo seemed hell-bent on denying them progress at every turn.

Once they'd managed to achieve their vantage, and had begun scanning the direction they were sure their target had gone, the effects of their surroundings had begun to take a particularly heavy toll.

"This damn heat…" cursed the black-haired woman, peeling the bandanna from the top of her head. With a sigh of satisfaction, two distinctly feline ears, nestled atop her head in her silky locks, puffed out and twitched freely and happily. The breeze that picked up again, weakly as ever, felt quite nice to the little appendages.

"Your ears'll burn before long…" observed the other, still scanning the distance with her right hand over her eyes. The same weak breeze had now picked up and begun to play with her vibrant flaxen hair, tossing and toying with the nearly six feet of it.

In almost perfect unison, both pawed the sweat from their brow and turned to look at each other.

"He's human like us, so he can't last long in this heat." The blonde one said, sounding unsure of herself but feigning confidence well all the same.

"He'll probably have to make a midday camp before long…" agreed the other, her feline ears twisting and turning in the breeze.

The one in the flat-crowned cattleman's hat turned back to look over their vantage once more. She squinted her eyes hard against the bright glare of the sun, not bothering to shield them this time, and tried to make out something that quickly caught her gaze. It was likely a mirage for all she knew, but something about it seemed distinctly out of place.

"See something?" her partner asked.

The woman didn't answer, just stood there and continued to stare. She was now watching for any sign of movement, though she knew her eyes could scarce be trusted in a place such as this where distance was nearly as imperceptible as time.

"That overhang, four outcrops off?" the partner asked again.

"You see it too?"

"Maybe."

Both stood and stared in shared silence for a time. The sun beat down continuously while they watched, bringing continuous beads of sweat to their skin. Both had already picked up a fairly decent tan, now two months into their arid pursuit, and the sweat poured in streams almost constantly. It was the only thing that made that useless, pathetically weak breeze worth anything; it lapped up the sweat and cooled them off noticeably when it managed to pick up just a tad above a puff.

"Let's go." The void-haired woman said suddenly, turning toward the rear of the outcrop and walking off.

"Saw the glint too, huh?" the blonde asked almost giddily, stepping lively to catch up to her stoic companion.

"He knows we saw it, I'm sure." The partner went on, placing and rewrapping the bandanna atop her head and ears.

"Blazing Sol and Nightshade are on his ass." The blonde proclaimed proudly, "You know he's sure we're seeing every move he makes."

"Don't get ahead of yourself… Sol…" the void-haired one said with a very quiet, all but stifled giggle.

"Oh, I'm fine right where I am." Sol responded, reaching out and giving her partner a playful pinch on her rump.

The woman jumped only a tad, surprised by the sudden feeling, but did nothing more. She'd been around the boisterous, playful, sarcastic and undeniably amicable blonde for some years now. In that time, she'd come to expect these certain things from her partner, not all of which were unwelcome, and had grown accustomed to not squeaking at every little pinch or poke.

"Cool down before the heat gets you." Nightshade responded flatly, hiding the blush of her cheeks and voice expertly.

They descended the outcrop in relatively decent time, turning to circle around it the moment their feet left the shale claw and returned to the hardpan of the Vacuan badland. It took them another half-hour to reach the forward slant of the rocky feature, where the outcrop threw a monumental shadow over the land it shielded from the sun above.

By this time, both were sweating profusely and beyond given for breath. They took shelter under the massive edifice, in the coolest part where the shade was almost eternal, and reluctantly gave up their pursuit for a while.

Both took cross-legged seats on the dusty ground, huddling toward the hard rock of the back wall to catch their breath and let the sweat dry from their pulsing skin. Here, beneath the outcrop in the nigh-eternal shade, the wind that had felt so very weak was amplified and further pronounced, carrying a cooler touch with its stronger gust.

"Jeez…" Sol sighed, "That feels fricken nice…"

"Mmhm…" Nightshade moaned her concurrence, leaning her head against the cool rock wall.

Sol shuffled around as they sat there, reaching into the right breast-pocket of the oddly shaped duster she sported. She quickly produced a small device that looked similar to a tiny hipflask with some sort of glass and metal antenna protruding from the top. She placed the tip of the antenna to her lips, pushing a recessed button on the side of the flask-like body and sucking hard as it whirred to life.

"Can't go anywhere without that thing, can you?" her partner prodded, sounding just a tad annoyed.

Sol pulled the antenna from her lips and blew a thick cloud of white into the dry air. Its sweet and familiar scent immediately found her partner's nose, delighting both women as the smell of cotton candy and strawberries permeated them.

"It's just water and sugar, Blake." Sol responded with a thin smile, looking cheeky and impish beneath her cattleman's hat.

"I thought we were sticking with the aliases…"

Sol placed the device back in the pocket she'd taken it from and turned her gaze to her partner's be-goggled face. She flashed a quick and sharp grin, full of teasing slyness and coy sarcasm.

"I'd much rather hear my real name from your lips." Sol said with a wink, "Besides, we're gods-know how many miles into this stretch of flippin nothing. I don't think it'll do any harm not to call each other by our handles."

"Always the reckless one, eh Yang?" Blake sighed in halfhearted agreement.

"You know it!" Yang agreed, rising from her cross-legged seat and dusting off her rear, "We better get moving, though. No telling where that bastard'll get off to if we loiter around in the shade."

Blake stood as well, the silky wrap around her torso fluttering in the stronger breeze beneath the outcrop. She dusted herself off, shaking her posterior like a cat trying to rid itself of a recent bath, before following her partner.

Both women exited the shade of the outcrop and reentered the oppressive heat of the badland sun. Their booted feet kicked up puffs of fine dust with each footfall on the hardpan as they walked on after their prey. Far off to the north, on their right as they headed ever further west, the few scraggly pines that dotted a pathetic excuse for a mountain range, which was closer kin to a rocky series of hills, swayed in a strong breeze that blew ahead of an approaching cloud.

The two walked for some time, perhaps another three hours, taking greedily small sips of their water supply every now and again, before the titanic cloud blowing in caught their attention.

Its grey bulk was beyond enormous, covering the northern horizon and blotting out the sun entirely as it crossed the badlands beneath. It simply shouted the coming of a monsoon or something of the like as it barreled toward them, dragging its misshapen and bulky shadow beneath it like a blanket of shade. The scent of heat-lightning and rain that would do no good was overpowering as it closed in.

When the cloud came fully overhead, almost seeming to stop and park above the traveling duo, the women were passing through a particularly crowded bunch of the rocky formations that covered the land. The shadows were now all-consuming and irregular in their shading, looking like a progressive step from grey to black to blacker and then to pitch darkness, as the two pressed on.

They stuck to the exposed hardpan as much as possible, avoiding the areas where the outcrops hung overhead, and kept their eyes scanning the way ahead. Any sign of their prey, any slight hint of their mark's passage, simply could not afford to be missed. So they watched, closely, and pressed further and further beneath the ominous cloud and through the field of outcroppings.

Blake stopped suddenly, her breath hitching in her teeth with a muted hiss. Yang was short to follow, hearing the sound and instinctively halting as well.

"See something good?" Yang teased quietly, pushing her coat back and revealing an odd pair of cesti that hung menacingly from her shapely hips.

Blake only shushed her in reply before she thumbed one of the switches on her odd goggles. The lenses set into the eyeholes whirred and clicked mutedly, spinning away and replacing the polarized brown with an ivory-colored set. They glowed queerly as the woman peered into the distance through them, slowly undoing the bandanna that covered her ears. The fuzzy things popped up and began to twitch back and forth, feeling the air and listening for any slight rustle or easily unheard whisper.

"Four big ones and two pups on our rear." Blake mumbled quickly, still looking ahead through her odd headgear, "Got this?"

"You bet that sweet ass!" Yang replied excitedly, turning and walking back the way they'd come from.

She threw the coat open wide and slipped her fingers into the bulk of the cesti, gripping the cold steel handles tight in her lightly sweating palms. She yanked them from their resting place on her hip with a dry click and the ordinary looking things came quickly and fiercely to life.

They covered her knuckles and the top of her hands in the blink of an eye, blued metal plates shifting out in sequence from the thick bulk of the front. Each snapped into place with another dry click as the next ran over top until they covered the woman from knuckle to the middle of her forearm. When the last was settled, the whole of both weapons lit up with a fierce golden glow and a number of little slots opened up on the sleek surface.

Yang only managed to load the left cestus when the first Grimm leapt from behind a twelve-foot-tall boulder. Its mouth gaped wide and its many fangs dripped with hungry drool as it charged her.

"Wrong choice." She said flatly, twisting on her left heel and thrusting her right fist forward. The cestus made contact wonderfully, slogging the critter's head square on the nose and sending it flying before Yang could even get a good look at it.

Two more rounded from behind the same boulder on her left, exercising a hint of extra caution after witnessing their fellow get tossed so effortlessly. After them, one more adult crested the top of a slanted boulder just ahead of her, licking its chops and slavering viciously.

They looked like a rabid cross between a jackal and something similar to a puma, standing nearly five feet at the withers. They were likely around seven feet from buttock to snout, thin and lanky and looking half-starved, with an arrow shaped head full of deadly, pointed fangs. Two long slender ears stood almost an entire foot atop their heads, pointed straight at the sky like a declaration that something fascinating could be seen there. Their paws were wide and powerful looking, sporting four viciously curved talons and a dagger-like dewclaw on each.

Yang recognized the creatures from her studies at Beacon, which now felt ages behind her, as Anubi. They were a particularly nasty breed of Grimm, left alone to fester and seethe in their solitude far from the places mankind tended to reside. They were known to be cunning and to possess a love of ambush, often avoiding all but the most vulnerable of their scarce prey. Time apart from man, left to watch from the shadows, had made them sly and patient predators; a deadly mix for all but the most prepared.

The headstrong woman and her stoic companion were exactly that, ready and willing to send the creatures back to whatever pit their kind came from.

"I got a bead on him!" Blake shouted, her voice betraying her sudden wash of excitement.

Yang heard this, both the statement and the tone, and couldn't stop the smirk that cut across her lips. She pulled the right cestus to herself, dropping a number of red oblong pellets into the exposed holes before striking the raised pad on the rear. All the holes closed tight at once and both began to glow even brighter, turning from the vibrant golden hue to a screaming red.

"Get a head start, Blake dear!" Yang shouted back, "I'll be right behind ya!"

Her partner wasted no time, bolting off as Yang had bid while the wild-eyed woman lunged in the opposite direction.

She came upon the first of her chosen targets, pushing hard from the ground when she was little more than a meter from the Anubi atop the slanted boulder. It hunkered down and bore its fangs menacingly at her, daring the woman to put her hands anywhere near it.

"Hope you're hungry, you ugly shit!" Yang roared as she came upon it, thrusting her fist out with terrible force.

The critter lunged upward just before the contact, opening its maw wider in hopes to chomp the woman's arm off. It failed, none too surprisingly, as she instead thrust the cestus hard into its snout. The delicate bones beneath were crushed and shattered at once, thrown into its skull like shot with the force of the blow.

Yang landed astride the boulder and the creature plummeted to the ground before her. It landed limp and lifeless, immediately turning to ash.

The woman wasted not a moment, spinning gracefully on the ball of her right foot and launching into another charge. Her targets this time were both of the Anubi that had rounded the boulder from whence the first came. They snarled and snapped like their fallen comrade, daring her approach with their slobbering rows of knifelike fangs. She, of course, obliged quite effectively.

With a right uppercut, Yang first ducked under then crushed the left Anubi's windpipe, shattering the critter's neck and tossing it a good many feet into the air. In the blink of an eye, she spun and launched a left straight-jab into the other's side. When she felt the cestus make contact, she squeezed the mechanism inside the glove of the weapon and brought it terribly to life.

The ribs of the last adult Anubi gave way, shattering under the force of her punch alone before the cestus belched a blast of explosive-aspected dust into the point of impact. In only a moment, a clean and sizzling hole, large enough to toss a melon through, was left where there had once been pitch black fur and flesh and bone.

The creature tottered a half step forward and collapsed soundlessly to the dusty earth, beginning its own ash-out no sooner than it came to a halt.

"Well… That was fun!" the woman sighed happily, removing the cesti and placing them back on their rests beneath her coat.

She turned to spot her partner, who had made some good headway while she busied herself with their assailants, and ran off after the woman. The clouds above opened up almost the moment she kicked into a run, releasing a torrential downpour that the hardpan greedily consumed.

Ψ

Night fell quickly and unnoticed while the two continued through the badlands, chasing madly after their prey with the torrential downpour serving well to cool their heated flesh. They ran and ran, stopping only occasionally to rest their aching muscles before bolting off once more. They kept this up for a good four hours more before the fatigue overtook them entirely, forcing the two to seek shelter beneath a particularly large claw of shale.

The sun, hidden behind the equally oppressive mass of clouds above, had descended below the horizon by the time they sought their shelter. It had exited its astral throne and stolen away to press on over other parts of Remnant, circling as it ever did to come up for another day of baking the eternally bleak badlands.

The rain continued to pour as they ducked into the shadow of the outcrop and the hardpan continued to greedily suck it up almost as soon as it fell. The wind had picked up into a furious roar as well, turning the rain sideways and away from the opening the duo fled under.

"That came out of nowhere…" Blake mused, walking along into the depths of their chosen shelter.

"Freezing alive in badland rain or baking alive in badland sun. So hard to choose, huh?" Yang teased.

The two waltzed into the depths beneath the outcrop, passing over a good two or three-hundred meters before coming to the back wall. Here they found a small semicircle formed by large chunks of shale that had fallen free from the bulk above over the ages. The stones made somewhat of a satisfying windbreaker against the harsh gale the torrent outside had brought with it.

Yang, ever the more impulsive of the two, was the first to give in to her screaming thighs, plopping her shapely buttocks onto the cool dust of the hardpan floor. She kicked her legs straight out and leaned against a corner formed between one of the larger shale chunks and the back wall of the outcrop, pulling her hair out from behind herself and placing the tangled bulk on her lap.

"Vale's conditioner market is gonna make a killing off of me when we get back…" she mused quietly, trying to brush some of the worst tangles out with her fingers.

Blake walked off to explore their chosen campground, thumbing the switch on her goggles again and looking about. The mechanism around them whirred to life once again, clicking three times as it cycled over to a glowing set of green lenses. These shined even brighter once they settled into place, amplifying the faunus' already strong night-vision.

She looked around the mostly empty vastness beneath the shale claw, scanning their surroundings for what her partner always seemed to forget when making camp for the night. Her golden eyes quickly honed in on what she sought, finding a few stunted and twisted Joshua trees near the edge of the outcrop some thirty meters off.

While Yang continued to brush at her tangled locks, cursing every now and again when she yanked painfully on a tight knot, the faunus stepped quickly toward the flora. She headed cattycorner to the direction they'd come from, moving toward the north-eastern side of the outcrop, her boots puffing clouds of loose earth into the ever more humid air.

The stunted trees, more closely resembling shrubs that had long been starved for water, populated a fair sized patch of surprisingly softer ground. Their persistent roots had, someway or another, managed to find purchase in a spot where the hardpan was thinner and not so complete in its presence.

When she reached them, Blake realized, with no small relief, that the things were long dead and dry as sun-bleached bones despite the present torrent. She set about quickly to her task, reaching beneath the tail of black silk that hung over her right shoulder and pulling her weapon free of its resting place.

What she drew from the scabbard at the small of her back looked queerly like a long-barreled revolver, sporting a sickly curved crescent-blade on the underside of its two-foot-long barrel. The blade was thin as paper at its edge, widening triangularly toward the base where it was affixed to the firearm. It shined with its own light it seemed, gleaming a testament to its own sharpness. She lifted it and swung with four quick, delicate motions.

The tree she'd chosen fell quickly to pieces, sliced nicely and cleanly at each point the blade had made even the briefest of contact. With a satisfied huff, she holstered the odd weapon and gathered her spoils, returning to her partner shortly after.

"Aww, look at you, Blake!" Yang cheered playfully, "Always so reliable you are, Miss Kitty!"

"You know I hate it when you call me that." The woman replied wearily as she began to set four pieces of the dried Joshua tree in the shape of a tent.

"I know you love to hate it, Blake dear." Yang went on while her partner ringed the tent with smaller slivers of the tree.

Blake ignored her and finished the dressing of their campfire, stuffing the space within the tent with the smallest bits of the tree's remnants. She then dusted her hands off and started to reach into one of her pockets, jumping slightly when she felt Yang's hot hand on her forearm's cool flesh.

"I got this." The woman said calmly, her lavenders affixed to the faunus' goggled eyes.

Blake felt an unusually powerful blush tease at her cheeks as the blonde's hand withdrew.

She watched her partner reach into her dark brown duster, rifling through the same pocket she kept her little smoking device in. The woman quickly found what she sought and brought out two little bits of metal. Blake almost wanted to chuckle. She watched the woman lean in toward the nicely dressed tent of kindling, holding the two metal bits against each other.

"Spark a dark, where's my sire?" the blonde began, rubbing the pieces slowly together in her quirky ritual, "Will I lay me? Will I stay me?"

She pulled them apart and cocked the lighter-colored piece behind the darker. With a swift and practiced motion, she struck the two together and sent a shower of bright sparks onto the campfire-to-be.

"Bless this camp with fire!" she shouted triumphantly as the kindling did indeed blaze to life, lighting the rocky semicircle beneath the outcrop with warmth and brilliance.

"That was a cute little rhyme." Blake mused, pulling the goggles from her head. She had lifted them from her eyes as soon as her partner began her little ritual, striking her old-fashioned flint and steel to breathe life into the kindling. She joined her partner's seat against the back wall, resting the goggles in her lap under her folded hands, and nestled close to the boisterous woman.

"Have I ever told you about my sister?" Yang began, ignoring her partner's comment altogether.

"Only about a thousand times by now…" the faunus mused warmly, leaning her head against the crook of the blonde's left shoulder.

The fire sputtered and crackled warmly while the torrent raged outside their shelter, sounding far and away with its unabated ferocity. Both women's eyes, lavender and gold, danced beautifully in the orange and red hues thrown off from the blazing bed of embers.

Yang shifted slightly, pushing her partner's head back and slipping her arms, left first, from her long duster. After pulling both free, she thrust her hips upward and yanked the long coat from beneath herself, throwing her left arm around her partner in the same fluid motion and tossing the thick leather over both of them.

She could've sworn she felt Blake purring, if only just a tad, in the light of the fire that warmed them both beneath the coat.

"I turned her into a serious bookworm when we were little." Yang went on, picking up her previous statement, "Before she learned how to read, when our mother was still alive, I used to read all kinds of books to her. Kiddy-books at first, of course, but we moved on to other things as we got older. I went from reading her the children's classics, like Charlotte's Web and Where the Wild Things Are, to reading from poetry books and things like Where the Sidewalk Ends."

Blake cocked her head up from its resting place in the crook of her partner's shoulder, shifting her gaze to watch the woman's bright lavender eyes dance enchantingly in the flame of the campfire. They were now thoroughly washed over with a look of nostalgia and memory, clearly seeing not the fire before them but the days spent reading with her sister in their house so long and far away.

The faunus' heart throbbed with heat and admiration. She watched and listened raptly.

"When I first started at Beacon, and she had just moved on to her junior year of high school, I introduced her to one of my favorite authors." Yang went on, completely engrossed in her ruminations, "Dad was so pissed at first, 'cause he knew the man's works too and only remembered the worst of them, but I talked him down once I told him which ones I'd given her. It started off with my favorites at the time, Dark House and The Stand, and she read them over and over while I was going through classes at Beacon.

"Anyway, about five years ago, I gave her what's probably my favorite set of books after she said they sounded interesting. There's seven in all, and she blew through them in just a couple months. Told me she loved them, too, which made me pretty ecstatic…"

"The Dark Tower?" Blake interjected dreamily, still watching her partner's glowing visage. The smile that crept over Yang's face in the next instant, proud and loving and kind, set the faunus' heart to racing even hotter and quicker.

"Yep." She answered flatly, "The very same place I got that 'cute little rhyme' you heard earlier."

Blake smiled at that before twisting herself into more of a lying position than a sitting one as she made herself more comfortable. The blonde made quite the welcoming cuddler as she observed for the umpteenth time.

"I liked them too." Blake said after a sleepy yawn, "Kind of funny, when you think about the first book, that we're chasing a dangerous mystery-man through this barren stretch of wasteland, huh?"

Yang yawned empathetically along with her partner, wrapping her arm tighter around her and settling herself further against the back wall of their shelter. The fire blazed powerful and warmly while they watched, both now lying more than sitting. It popped every now and again when the flames licked a spot of the wood that still greedily held onto the teeniest bit of water. Sparks would spurt beautifully into the darkness and be carried up on the rising heat, giving a show that made both begin to feel more than a little amorous.

"Think we'll really catch him?" Blake whispered, with just the barest hint of moroseness in her sleepy, stoic voice.

"We will, Miss Kitty." Yang answered, sweet and teasing, and began to run her fingers through the faunus' silky black tresses, "Can't let the last three years go completely to waste, can we?"

Blake continued to stare into the fire, not caring that her night-vision would be ruined for the rest of the evening, as the sensation of her partner's fingers running through her hair began to make her very skull tingle. Yet, even through the comforting and relaxing sensation, tears began to sting at her golden eyes while she watched the dancing embers and felt those soft caresses.

"We'll get him back for Adam." Yang said suddenly, her voice atypically serious and grave, "I will make him pay for hurting you, Blake."

It was only one, only one thin and nearly imperceptible stream of salty heat, that ran down the woman's cheek at those words. She could clearly remember finding the man, a fellow faunus she had once cared deeply for, torn apart and long dead in the wake of their prey. She could still remember the revolting sight and the terrible feeling of loss that quickly came with it, oppressive and overpowering in the injury it left her.

She was pulled out of the memory with sudden motion when she felt herself rise, pushed up and away by her partner. Her golden eyes blinked a few times, confused and perhaps a tad dazed as well by the sudden stirring, before she realized what the soft and warm sensation was that now pressed firmly to her lips.

She blinked thrice more, rapidly and alarmed. She regarded the lightly shut lids of her partner's eyes, feeling the heat from the woman as she pressed against her. Holding her tight and gently, the blonde pushed their lips together with comforting force. The faunus relaxed and the alarm left her, releasing the terrible memory from her mind's eye. She returned the embrace shortly after, pushing with her own lips to return the kiss, joining her partner, her lover, in this shared expression of comfort and care.

It felt like only moments to the two in their passionately silent palaver, hearts racing like mad drums beneath their bosoms, but lack of air came quickly and harshly to remind them that time was passing quicker than they could tell. Reluctantly, both pulled away from the embrace and looked at one another. Blake's Golden eyes were wary and reluctant, showcasing her reservation over letting her feelings run wild in this place. Yang's met them with stone resolve and loving conviction, attesting to her solid determination.

"We will get him, Blake." She said, her eyes practically afire with the resolve in her heart, "We will catch him and we will make him pay for what he's done. I swear it."

Blake said nothing in reply, only threw herself onto the blonde. Both crashed to the dusty ground. She planted a few more furious kisses, starting on the blonde's cheeks and working back to her full lips. The two cuddled up against the back wall and let their embrace carry them on into the night. The soft whispers and whimpers that followed were mostly drowned out by the storm that raged continually outside and the crackle of the campfire.

When sleep finally found them, even sweatier and wholly exhausted, it was kind and gentle as it took them into its embrace.

Ψ

Morning came to the badlands at the far reaches of Vacuo, near the very end of the known lands of Remnant, and the sun climbed lazily over the eastern horizon. Its ascent was slow and the star had only managed to cast out the first of its glowing tendrils when the two huntresses began their march across the dusty hardpan once more. Their footfalls landed determinedly on the still-dark ground, kicking up puffs of loose dirt that was little more than sand while they pushed through the early-morning darkness.

They had both awoken only a short while earlier, while the sun still lay below the horizon. Their rise was greeted with aches and pains and growling stomachs, but the two had bravely collected their camp, dressed themselves and set out. There would be no stopping for true rest until they found him, the man in the mask, and both knew and abided by this mutual vow.

The wind had picked up and begun to carry along slightly stronger than the previous day by this point. It carried no scent save the dryness of the badlands, but already it promised to keep them cooler through the day's heat than it last had; a welcome thing to be sure. They pressed on in the dark, scanning and watching for any sign of their quarry.

"See any sign of him yet?" Yang asked.

"Nothing." Blake replied swiftly, almost curtly. Her golden eyes scanned the way ahead through the polarized lenses of her odd goggles, but they could find nothing worth noting. Only the last direction they'd caught him fleeing served to guide them.

They pushed on through the morning and into the day, keeping their pace at an even tempo. By the time the sun had fully risen, spreading both its brilliant light and its oppressive heat, they were sure they'd managed to put at least ten more miles behind them. It felt good, to know they were making decent progress, but the fatigue was once again starting to crop up. It mixed with the hunger in their growling stomachs until neither felt they could keep up their swift march, pushing the women to look for a place to make an early mid-camp.

When they began to look for a suitable spot, they had crossed into the stretch of the badlands that was made up predominately of tall mesas and vast valleys. The ochre giants rose an easy mile into the sky and stretched perhaps twice that from one end to the other on their flat tops. The bluffs were sharp and immediate in their descent, broken off into nearly perfect flat faces. At the foot of these giants ran the remains of what had once surely been a truly titanic river, now little more than a thin series of weak tributaries that joined into a stream that barely constituted an overly swelled creek.

There was a little more brush and vegetation as they pushed on, looking for a decent spot to halt and rest along the tiny river's banks. They passed by a small forest of cacti and a scraggly bunch of Joshua trees, the latter of which somehow managed to look less lively than the ones used for their campfire the previous night. It was here that they decided to rest, pitching themselves down at the calmly babbling edge of the thin river.

Yang sat down on her knees by the water's edge, leaning down and splashing her face greedily with the cool liquid. It felt amazing to her heated skin, still pulsing after the previous night's parley with her partner and even more so with the day's gradually building heat. Blake was about to join her when a rustle from a nearby thicket of witch grass caught her ear, pulling the faunus' gaze in the direction of the disturbance quite immediately.

She spotted a particularly portly hare sauntering from the brush, likely just as recently awoken as they themselves, that had clearly not yet picked up their scent. Its nose twitched cautiously at the air, whose breeze had receded to little more than a puff once more, and its eyes flicked to and fro. The long ears atop its fluffy head turned back and forth, perhaps listening for any possible predators whilst it began whatever morning routine hares are inclined toward.

It heard nothing when the raven-headed woman drew her weapon, the odd revolver with the crescent blade under its barrel, and fired off a shot that sounded like dry thunder and echoed like the voice of God. Her shot landed true, ending the critter mercifully quick. The entirety of the head disappeared from its fluffy shoulders in an instant, nearly evaporated with hardly a trace of gore.

A splash, loud and sudden, echoed from behind the raven-headed faunus.

"Holy shit!" Yang shouted, pulling herself up from where she'd leapt into the river in her surprise, "You could at least warn me when you're going to do that, Blake!"

"Didn't want to scare our breakfast away." The stoic faunus replied, holstering her weapon and heading for her kill.

The blonde, now thoroughly soaked and more than a tad irritated, stomped her way out from the ankle-deep water she'd sprawled into. Her duster felt thrice its actual weight with the disturbing amount of water it now held after her tumble. She pulled it off with a grunt of effort and tossed it onto a nearby flat rock that was oddly shaped like a waving hand, perhaps the size of a king mattress.

It landed with a wet plop and the woman set about removing the rest of her soaked clothes, starting with the shirt that amounted to little more than a black tube of something like nylon. It took more effort than she had wanted to give, coming free only after she yanked hard enough to send her breasts to bouncing when they popped out of it. This, too, she tossed on the waving hand of a rock, hoping it would dry before the sun began to burn her exposed flesh.

"Next time you startle me enough to fall in a river, or a pool, or any other body of water like that…" she mused angrily, pulling at her jackboots with blatant irritation, "I'm dragging you in with me, ya hear?!"

Blake tried to stifle her laugh, tried very hard at that, but couldn't suppress the very warm giggle that tittered from her heart. It was a bit disturbing, perhaps, to see a woman in the middle of skinning and cleaning a fresh kill when she suddenly fell into a bout of giggles. Yang paid it no mind. She simply dumped the water from her tall boots and tossed them onto the stone with the rest of her clothes.

"I'll try to remember to warn you next time." Blake conceded at last, now parting the critter for easier cooking, "But in the meantime, Yang… Would you mind building us a fire?"

The blonde looked up at her partner, eyes glimmering coyly in the sunlight as her fingers pawed at the buttons of her miniskirt, and felt like saying something snarky in reply. She didn't in the end, instead settling on silently tossing the skirt with the rest of her soaked belongings. She only prayed the device she used in her spare time, in lieu of the nasty tobacco neither woman cared for, had not gotten wet enough to be rendered useless.

Now nude as the day she was born, and in the middle of the badland sun and heat no less, she waltzed over to her partner with more than a little irritation in her step.

"Where's the bowie?" she asked.

"Did you check your pockets?" Blake replied with a thin smile.

Yang leveled a very exasperated and nearly furious gaze at the woman, in whose hand the very knife she had requested was presently held, before the cute little snippet won out. Her face brightened and the rising ire dissipated entirely as a strong gust of laughter broke free from her lungs, rattling her entire body with its ferocity.

"Just hand it over, Miss Kitty." She said after the laughter mostly ran its course, pawing at the tears that had formed in the corners of her eyes.

Blake gave a wan smile in return, tilting her gaze up to the brazenly nude woman, and offered the knife, handle-first.

"You look good like that, Yang." She mused when the woman took it, ignoring the mess left from her partner's task, "It really suits your brazen personality."

"You just like getting to see me in broad daylight!" the blonde replied before making for the river to wash the knife off, swaying her hips purposefully with each step.

Blake allowed her eyes to rest on this spectacle for a moment longer than prudence might have dictated, averting her gaze only once she was satisfied with her small treat.

Once Yang had finished cleaning the tool, she made her way to one of the deader-looking Joshua trees and hacked enough off of it to make a useful fire with. She gathered this into a pile and placed the knife atop it before returning to her partner, arms full of nigh-entirely dry wood with which to cook. While she had been about this, Blake had hastily set up a very rudimentary grill. She had found herself two decently sized and rounded rocks, placing them about two feet from each other, and a flat hunk of shale to set over them.

The blonde walked over and dropped the pile of wood beside the little makeshift grill, plopping herself down on the sandy ground as soon as the last piece came to a rest. She pulled her heels close in a cross-legged stance, trying to guard her nethers from the ground. She then tossed a longing gaze at the splayed out hodgepodge of her clothes while she waited, still too wet for her tastes as they continued to dry on the hand-shaped rock some twelve feet away.

"I hope you don't burn." Blake mused while setting the last piece of wood under her grill.

"Eh, I wanted to even out my tan anyway." Yang replied with a cheeky smirk.

"The wood's all set up. Want to do your thing?"

Yang turned her gaze back to the faunus, who held out the flint and steel to the blonde with a sassy grin decorating her face.

"I thought that was in my coat pocket…"

"I took it out during the night to rekindle the fire. It died down while you were snoring away."

Yang gave her a look of poorly-feigned insult, as though her partner had said something that stung her deeply.

"Oh! So I'm not warm enough for you?!" she said, trying to adopt a tone like some snooty royalty, before taking the offered flint and steel. It failed mostly, though it still elicited a charming giggle from her raven-headed partner. Yang supposed that was well enough as she leaned over and toward the kindling.

"Spark a dark, where's my sire?" She muttered, rubbing the flint and steel slowly together, "Will I lay me? Will I stay me?"

She cocked the steel bit and launched it smoothly at the flint, showering sparks into the bed of kindling.

"Bless this camp with fire!" She finished with a happy smirk.

The fire caught and burned well, cooking the hare atop the flat stone not long after.

All in all, the two spent perhaps only half an hour at their little rest. The hare only took some ten minutes to cook, with the temperature of the sunbaked rock and the blazing fire beneath it working quite a charm. They ate it happily and contentedly as soon as it was ready, hunkering into a spot of shade only around twenty feet from the river's edge while they did. There they sat together while the blonde's clothes finished drying, watching the river crawl lazily by in the interim.

Once all was done, with both women fed and rested and the blonde clothed once more, they struck out into the heat of the day again. They crossed the thin river, which never became deeper than their knees, and continued into the maze of mesas and valleys, picking up on the scant trail left by their prey at his own passing. A scant few cigarette butts and the remains of a hastily destroyed campfire some three miles away from the main river, that thin and pitiful excuse they had rested by, told them they were going the right way.

From a perch atop a twelve-foot-tall boulder, some two miles off and barely in view if either woman had looked, the masked man watched them both with renewed interest while they pushed on.

His nearly translucent lips parted into a wickedly thin smile, dead eyes regarding them through the violet-glowing lenses of his mask.

Λ

He stood and watched while the sun beat down upon his hooded head, pulling hard and deep on the cigarette poking from his lips. The ember at the end blazed brightly and smoldered, filling his rotted lungs with its acrid smoke. He savored the tastes of the ancient tobacco, in all its myriad bouquets and flavors, while his milky eyes watched them from under the violet-glowing lenses of his mask.

He cracked another wicked smile, thin and wide and filled with rotted teeth of yellow and green, and pulled on the last of the hand-rolled delight. It burned up to the lips that were nearly see-through, marking them with another ring of black and charring the dead flesh, and died out once it reached his teeth. The rotted things dripped with some fetid goo, coming from his discolored gums that looked like nothing living should.

With an effortless motion, he spat the last inch of the hand-rolled cigarette onto the ground and departed his watch, leaving the boulder with a flutter of his long black cloak.

He stepped purposefully and quickly along the bank of one of the larger tributaries, which flowed unnaturally away from the thin remains of the main river body some five miles back, putting ever more distance between himself and his pursuers. He had no intent of losing them, heavens perish the thought, but neither did he mean to make it easy for them to catch him. It was his first real break in such a span of time as even he could no longer recall, and he did not mean to pass some half-baked and half-assed spit-wits off as the real deal unless they earned it from his dead fingers.

So on he went, pushing further along the oddly reversed tributary and heading deeper into the badland river network, working his way ever closer to the edge of the known reaches of Remnant's geography. He knew precisely where he was going, of course, but this was to be expected of one who had wandered everywhere and everywhen for nigh unto eternity. He knew exactly where he wanted to lead the two headstrong women that continued after him, nipping at his heels like persistent pups unfettered by either distance or hardship.

He stopped some seven miles ahead of his prey, who he still allowed to believe were preying upon he himself. His flight along the sandy bank of the ancient tributary had brought him before a hole in the ochre rock of a particularly large mesa that stretched nearly twice the height of its surrounding brethren.

He looked deep into the hole, which stood some twenty feet tall and perhaps fifteen wide, and gave a soft and gentle whistle. It carried on the scant bit of breeze that picked up the moment his tune began to play from his lips, billowing playfully into the eternal darkness within the mouth of what was surely some terrible creature's din. He played the tune for a good four minute's time, neither receding nor faltering in his even tone, while his dead lungs pushed air continually through his nigh-translucent pursed lips.

When he finally let the whistle die, carrying off into an ever higher and weaker pitch before it faded entirely, there came a hiss in reply from deep in the belly of the cave. It was weak at first, as though very far and away from the masked man, but it grew louder and stronger over a very short time. He smiled and listened to it, feeling as though it were the sweetest thing he'd heard in a very long time. The sound washed over and through him as something approached.

When he finally began his flight once more, leaving behind both the women and the cave in ever increasing distance, the brightly glowing red eyes that had appeared were still upon his cloaked back. They watched curiously, filled with hate and fury more ancient than the hunters and huntresses, and perhaps even the dust that let man fight back against the Grimm, while the masked man fled further up the path of his chosen tributary.

They watched even a while longer after he had left their sight, waiting, perhaps, to see if he would turn back, before the primeval the eyes belonged to turned and departed into its ancient din. It would wait, exactly as he had instructed, though it had no love for the man any more so than it did for its own brethren. Even still, for love or loyalty or sheer enchantment that could not be denied, it would wait as bid until the time came.

And that time was very short off, indeed. It picked a spot near the mouth of the ancient hole it called home, curling up and listening for approaching footsteps, flicking out its forked tongue to taste the air and keening its eyes to watch for the slightest disturbance.

Ψ

The huntresses pressed further up the tributary that had contained the bits of trail left by their quarry. Even in the heat of midday, with the sun shining bright and hot at its zenith in the sky, their pursuit would not flag for fatigue or exhaustion. They were fed, they were quenched and they were cooled by the river. There would be no more excuse to make rest or camp until either night fell, bringing the hauntingly powerful cold of the badlands, or they caught the masked man.

Either would do. Both women thought so with equal surety. They remained sure of the humanity of their quarry, knowing no reason to think differently save for, perhaps, the uncanny swiftness of his flight from them. That detail aside, however, which could easily be attributed to conditioning and training like their own, the two were sure the cold of night would stop his flight as much as it would halt their pursuit.

So on they went, sure in their knowledge, following the winding path of the gradually dying tributary.

It was an odd thing for more than a few reasons, that weakly trickling brook that had only recently been like a very miniature river itself, some two miles back where it left the remains of the main river. Of all the other reasons, glossing over the odd smell that now came from the water and the gradually looser texture of the ground over which they traversed, the most unsettling aspect of the tiny tributary was its direction of travel.

It crawled determinedly along, much like the two women following its winding trail, at a west by northwest bearing. This was not unusual per se, though water rarely traveled in any northerly direction so far as they were aware. What truly made its direction of travel odd was the fact that, after the fourth mile along this stream's banks, what was now little more than a weak creek traveled at a perceptibly upward angle, ever further away from what it should feed into, as it seemed to defy the natural order. It was passing strange, and both could feel it, but they let it do little other than strike them as odd while they moved onward.

The sandy bank had become wet enough by this point, soaked in some strange way by what was surely too little water passing by to do so, to keep the footprints of their quarry. There was enough of a trail for them to pick up on and begin to follow with more surety, their hearts and vigor both swelling with the feeling of impending closure. They picked up their pace as they followed it, briefly noting a distinct drag in the man's left foot as they went onward.

It seemed that he might be injured, either long ago in a way that had not healed well or recently enough to stifle his walk, and this served only to further their waxing bravado.

"We're closing in on him." Yang muttered assuredly.

"Maybe." Blake replied, cold and calm on the surface but shaking with anger and anxiety beneath. Her resolution was growing closer and closer at hand. Adam's killer was coming within her grasp.

It nearly stole her breath to think on such.

When they had made it to the seventh mile from their mid-camp, on the shore of the tiny little river that grew ever further away, neither made any note of the cavernous maw that loomed none too far ahead. It was imposing and wickedly shadowed by the angle of the sun, looking like the mouth of a creature born purely from shadow. The stalactites that hung long and jagged from the topmost point of the hole served only to reinforce this effect.

Yet, regardless of the imposing nature of it, the two seemed entirely incapable of noticing the hole, nearly passing it by entirely. It wasn't until Blake made an entirely instinctual move, after barely feeling the soft breeze of something approaching at monstrous speed, that either woman took note of the cavernous maw.

"Yang, stop!" she shouted, loud and alarmed, tucking low and leaping into her blonde partner.

The faunus landed well, shoving her shoulder into the woman's side and wrapping her arms around her. The momentum of her leap pulled both women forward with a painful lurch, sending them tumbling along the sandy shore and through the thin streamlet that the tributary had now become.

The source of Blake's panic and barely successful jump of instinct popped from the mouth of the gigantic cave, lunging with the speed of a bullet as it sailed through the air. The raven-headed faunus had only barely made her move in time, saving both herself and her partner at only the cost of the blonde's flat-crowned hat which disappeared into their assailant's maw.

The beast slammed hard into the foot of the mesa on the other side of the streamlet, crossing a distance of some hundred feet easily in only a fraction of a moment. It dug out a fantastic hole for itself, perhaps the beginnings of a new lair after it finished off the huntresses, upon its impact. The dust this stirred up billowed both ways through the valley that the tributary had cut in ages past, choking the entire area with a thick cloud of ochre powder.

Both women rolled a good distance, turning ass-over-teakettle some seven times before their travel was broken by a fairly large chunk of rock. The massive piece of quartz, entirely out of place with its shimmering bluish glory, stopped them well with a sickening and painful thud.

They coughed and rasped weakly, trying to pull themselves up and get to their feet, while the dust spread further and further through the canyon. Yang had to cover her mouth and nose with the collar of her coat, shielding her lungs as much as possible, simply to breathe through the choking cloud. Blake pulled her silk wrap up over her nose as soon as she found her feet, thumbing the goggles afterward to swap to the ivory lenses that could pierce the dirt-ridden fog.

Both nearly suffered their hearts to stop for what pierced the faint tinkle and trickle of broken rock and earth tumbling free from the mesa's shattered bluff. By the time both women had found their footing, standing and readying themselves as quickly as possible, the creature that had attacked with such unseen ferocity was well and ready to press its assault.

They heard the thundering steps first, as though something shook the very crust of Remnant with its every footfall. The faint hissing came shortly after, at least to their ears, and was purveyed along with the lightning-fast flicking of the critter's forked tongue. It lapped greedily and cautiously at the air, straining for a taste of its newfound prey and trying to discern exactly how dangerous the two might be.

After some two minutes of this, the women standing stunned while their fear gradually built and the creature slowly advancing with caution key in its mind, the dust stilled enough in the air for the huntresses to see through it. Not enough to make out what lumbered slowly toward them in full detail, and this was well and good, but they were able to make out its rough dimensions.

Their slight hint of terror blossomed nearly into a full-blown panic when both first regarded it in some semblance of clarity.

What advanced toward them traveled dexterously astride six legs, each moving with such perfect unity and precision with the others as to beggar disbelief. Atop its flat and long body, surely some seven meters in length, stretched a thin neck that ended in a very disturbing head not unlike a cobra's. The top was fanned out, starting midway up the neck and ending in a dip just above the head, making it look much like the more romantic rendition of the heart.

It closed in purposefully and quick, giving the two only enough time to halfway gather their wits and fully draw their weapons. Yang made her cesti ready and loaded while Blake drew her odd revolver into her right hand, both readying themselves for its next move.

Not more than a moment later, after the creature seemed to halt a good distance from them, both women were nearly swallowed whole by the second strike.

The towering shadow, which now looked to reach some thirty feet above their heads, regarded them through the remaining veil of the dust cloud while both dropped into a ready stance. They prepped themselves to engage, waiting for the thing to make another move and hoping to turn the tables with a well-timed counter against it.

It lunged its head forward, lashing its neck like a bullwhip and opening its maw wide to gobble the huntresses in one fell swoop. Both parted and leapt at the same instant, heading in two opposite directions to miss the attack. Their evasion succeeded, with only the barest fraction of a second to spare. The force of its attack swept the dust away from the immediate vicinity of the three combatants.

It cleared up and the creature slowly hoisted its head proper again, readying to pick and engage one of the two women. They now saw it in its true and terrifying glory, a serpent of nightmare proportions and appearance astride six gangly legs that looked more like a spider's than anything else.

Its eyes glowed fiercely with the sort of red hue one would believe only a manmade light could give off. They simply dripped with hate and contempt and no end of cunning while the primeval Grimm regarded the women, watching Blake with the left and Yang with the right. Each woman breathed in slow, haggard breaths. The creature's eyes bounced and lolled between them as if to size them up from head to toe, moving independently like the eyes of a chameleon.

"Come ye not into the Valley of Death unweathered and unwary, stripling woman-children."

The sound came from everywhere and nowhere at once, piercing both women with a feeling as though their heads would split. It felt like the sound had come from within their minds and echoed into their very souls. Both clutched their heads, believing they would fall apart if they didn't, and nearly buckled their knees under the foreign sensation.

Blake hitched and retched dryly while Yang turned and vomited into the tiny stream.

"I have ever been and will ever be, striplings." It came again, renewing the assault on the huntresses with damned force, "You will be my dinner and nothing more."

Λ

The long black cloak floated coyly on the breeze that now rushed past the masked man, hard and strong, carrying off through the canyon that stretched behind him. It pulled his hood down and exposed his rotted face, blowing forth from the stunning scene below and before him. The smells it brought with it were glorious.

He stood now at the last leg of his journey, overlooking a vast stretch of the deepest blue waters some four miles below his present vantage. The drop was sheer and the walls that encircled the sunken bowl below held no deviations in their smooth surface. They looked as though a glassmaker had painstakingly cut them, leaving the ochre walls as smooth as finely polished marble.

At his feet, trickling faintly whilst it continued to defy gravity and nature to the last, the tributary he had followed poured over the sheer drop and fed into the massive body of water below. Its weak stream was joined by countless others, all along the circular wall of the bowl, that fed into the gargantuan lake beneath.

The lake's surface was calm and still, undisturbed by the wind that carried powerfully and nearly cold over it. It looked much and more like a perfectly shaped mirror of sapphire, colored a deep royal blue that reflected the sun's powerful rays back to the sky. From where it touched the wall of its bowl, sitting perfect and calm against the smooth surface with no shoreline, it reached some thirty miles across.

His milky eyes began to water, perhaps tearing up with joy, while he swept his gaze over the perfection of it all. He breathed deeply, filling the remains of his lungs with the soothing scent that came from the lake; the fresh and calming smell of absolutely pure water, untouched by any living being so far as one could tell.

But he knew better. He knew much the likewise, being that he had seen the birth and death of countless when's and where's. He knew that there did exist one thing within those perfect waters, sleeping and waiting as it ever had since before mankind, pitiful children of dust, first walked the dirt of Remnant's surface.

He knew that there was one more primeval within his easy reach, ready to be made the last hurdle for his intrepid pursuers if they managed to overcome the first.

With this knowledge, and with his rotted lungs still full of the nigh-perfect air of the titanic lake, he took a long and calm step forward. He plummeted quickly like a stone, holding his stance as though standing the entire way down, until his sandaled feet found the water's surface.

He landed with a barely audible plop, sending only a few droplets of water into the air and a scant ring of tiny ripples along the untouched surface. Then, with his feet finding purchase as though it were solid, he proceeded to walk over the sapphire surface of the lake. Step after step he went, sending the same weak ripples as his landing with each footfall, pushing on toward the center of the seemingly endless stretch of perfect waters.

He tilted his head back and let the nearly cold breeze play with the few strands of his gossamer-thin hair that remained. It hung only in some few patches here and there on his mostly exposed skull, where the flesh had not yet fallen away despite his nigh-endless existence. Even still, he made this all too human gesture while he walked along over the surface of the water.

Once he'd come to about the halfway point between himself and his destination, which had just barely come into view off in the distance, he stopped and sat himself down. With legs crossed and feet tucked upon his folded knees, he reached into his ancient and ragged coat and produced a small pouch of rawhide. He withdrew a single thin sheet of paper and a pinch of tobacco, the latter of which was older than the most primeval of the Grimm, and began to roll himself a cigarette as he so oft enjoyed doing.

Even he, who had existed longer than life, had his vices.

Once the smoke-stick was formed to satisfaction, he poked it into his mouth and bit gently on the end while he rummaged around for a match. He found one and quickly lit it, puffing a few times before tossing the first pollutant that the lake had ever known into the as-yet untouched waters.

After he toked a good half of the smoke-stick to ash, he held it away from his lips and began to whistle his eerie tune once again. It carried long and sharp on the breeze that still played with his few strands of hair, echoing proudly from the smooth ochre rock face of the bowl. It danced along the surface of the water, piercing it unnaturally as the sound crept into the surely endless depths of blue. He did this for four minutes or so, just as he had at the cavern's entrance, and awaited his next messenger.

The answer came not as sound this time, like the serpentine primeval further into the tributary had, but more akin to a rumble that began to disturb the entire surface of the sapphire waters beneath him. The whole lake shook with it, forming ripples all along the surface that spread out in a maddening tangle.

It was a longer wait for the masked man this time. He sat there, basking in the perfect triune of the sun's heat, the breeze's cool caress and the final echoes of his finished whistle for nearly a full ten minutes.

Once it had come, and he had given his order through silent palaver, the masked man stood and continued across the lake toward its center, smiling his wicked smile while glowing yellow eyes watched him go. They remained poked above the sapphire surface, once more calm some twenty minutes later, watching him go off toward a single speck of green on the horizon.

The eyes eventually dipped back into the endless depths, once the man had gone from their sight entirely, and awaited the coming of those they were to watch for. This one held no love in itself either, neither for the masked man nor for anything else in the world it inhabited, but it too would wait as bid. It would wait and watch as it wondered if it would even be needed.

While this all went on, there came an ever increasing crescendo of crashes and hollow cracks from the tributary that the masked man had come from. They echoed out into the bowl of the massive lake whilst the two huntresses fought for their lives against the first of their true trials.

Ψ

The blonde peeled herself painfully from the crevice she had made with her impact, after being tossed by the powerful tail of their opponent. She could hear her partner's shouts and grunts in a bleary sort of way, sounding as though they came to her through a thick haze or deep water. She realized, once she'd regained her feet and forced her eyes open once more, that she could feel a trickle of something warm and sticky flowing through the flaxen locks above her temple.

Gingerly, wincing as she did, Yang pressed two fingers against the soft bit of skin and pulled them into her field of view. She could make out the crimson on their tips immediately and briefly wondered if the bleary quality of the sound was a product of another concussion. She quickly pushed the thought from her mind and loaded fresh rounds into her odd cesti before leaning into her ready stance and kicking off into the fray yet again.

The faunus was busily dodging the nimble strikes of the beast's massive fangs and clawed feet, turning hither and thither as she twisted her body to miss each potentially fatal blow. The thing moved like nothing she'd ever encountered, ignoring the shades she left behind with her semblance as it moved to strike its true target every time. It was fast and smart and wickedly cruel in its motions. Even more so with what appeared to be tactical thought, something she remembered being taught that Grimm absolutely did not possess.

"Open up, ugly!" she heard Yang call before seeing the streak of flame whizz past her field of view.

The blonde missed her intended strike, only nicking the top of the creature's withers instead of planting her cestus into its ribs like she had planned. Still, it was some small satisfaction when a pained shriek issued from the creature's yawning maw. Her strike had torn a chunk from one of the armored plates of its shoulders, shattering the rest when she passed through with her blow, and had at least done some damage.

Blake saw her chance and took it, bringing her revolver to sight-in when the massive creature reared up on its hindmost legs. She squeezed the delicate trigger thrice in quick succession, loosing hot blasts of lightning-aspected dust and lead with each volley. The powerful sound of thunder echoed throughout the valley, following both ways through the canyon and carrying on for miles.

Her shots struck true with their powerful effect, clapping large gouts of flame and plasma into the jet-black hide of the primeval Grimm. However, much to both women's dismay, it did not push the battle in their favor in any meaningful way.

Yang quickly recovered herself from her mostly missed blow just in time to see the creature hurdling its front half back to the earth and, more importantly, toward her partner. She crouched low and pointed her cesti behind herself, cycling the mechanism inside to fire three rounds at once with each, and loosed a humbling jet of force at the canyon wall behind her.

It picked her up and threw her like a shooting star, sending the woman flying toward her partner. She struggled to reach her arms out ahead of her, managing all of this in only a few moments, and swept the faunus off her feet and away from the devastating impact of the primeval's body slam. Both were sent on yet another tumble when the creature's impact carried forth, hauling an imposing cloud of dust and sand with it.

They spilled across the water of the tributary painfully and hard, scraping against rocks that tore fresh wounds before coming to a stop some thirty feet off.

"We're not going to win this with brute force, Yang…" the raven-headed woman wheezed from under her partner, who had ended up atop her after their spill had halted.

"Maybe not…" Yang replied, pushing herself up wearily, "But we are going to win."

The blonde turned to ready herself again, her eyes tinting to red, and loosed her fury in full. She held her cesti out and low to her hip, fists pointed forward, and dropped into a stance of attack.

Blake had no time to respond. The blonde pushed off and reengaged their foe while she pulled herself up and watched the exchange for a moment. She marveled at how the serpentine creature moved off from every potentially injurious blow so very easily, desperately trying to recall what had been eating at her mind almost from the start.

She could remember, however faintly, that a certain history class she'd taken at Beacon had briefly touched on a creature that vaguely matched this one's description. Something only worth passing mention in their bestiary lessons, the professor had decided to briefly touch the subject of the legendary Grimm that were mostly understood to be little more than myth. Creatures that had haunted mankind's history in the shadows of their oral tradition, either having never existed in the first place or having slinked off into hiding long before recorded history began.

Basyl was the name that came to her mind; a serpentine lord of the desert and wasteland Grimm that dissuaded any who held a notion to inhabit the arid reaches of Vacuo's expansive badlands. The look of this one fit the scant details she could recall almost to a tittle. It was fast and agile and strong; it was cruel in its persistence and remorseless in its approach; worst of all, however, it was intelligent and tactical, something that Grimm could only achieve after an almost impossibly long life.

If what she remembered was right, and true to any small degree what's more, then this one would have to be well beyond ancient. Victory would be hard won indeed, if it even came at all.

"Yang!" she shouted, pushing the unsettling thoughts from her head.

"What?!" the blonde yelled in reply, leaping away from another swing of the creature's massive tail.

"Look for tooth marks on its back!" she tried to be heard over the crash of splitting rocks and the skitter of flying sand, "Hit those if you can see them!"

She prayed the gambit might work, even if only to a small degree, while her partner landed and leapt sideways. The blonde had heard her, heavens be praised, and set immediately to trying to outmaneuver the beast so as to find the mentioned marks. She was moving excellently too, hurdling herself nimbly and purposefully around each strike launched by the primeval Basyl.

"Think me not foolish, striplings!" the voice roared into their heads once more, shaking both women to their core. It would have fully incapacitated them, as it had before, were it not for the fact that they were now expecting it to some degree by this point in their death-dance.

"You'll find no scar in my hide, no chink in my armor! Only your death will you find, as it is my will!"

It hauled one of its massive forelegs up into the air, readying a deadly sweep from the left with its scythe-like claws, and swung with lightning speed at the blonde. She was in midstride on the ochre rock of the canyon wall, running along to try for the Grimm's back, when the blow issued forth. After a thunderous roar, it barely missed her and instead cut cleanly through the rock above with terrifying force.

The barrel of Blake's revolver wisped a thin thread of smoke into the air, having just fired the last three shots in its cylinder, while she watched her partner leap from the wall. Her aim had been quick and true, striking the swinging paw and shattering three of the claws with the bloom of its lightning and flames. This threw the creature's swing off enough for the blonde to miss it and finish her maneuver.

Yang had pushed off after a few more steps and flown quickly for the creature's sleek back. She landed while it still writhed over its injured paw, scooping low and grabbing onto a protruding bit of armor-like bone. Without wasting so much as a moment, she began to scan for the teeth marks.

Her fiery-red eyes crawled all across the jet-black scales, looking and looking without success, when the thing began to try and buck her off.

"Do you see it?!" Blake screamed, running for the creature and ducking down to slide under another swing.

"No!" Yang replied, hanging on for dear life while the thing wriggled ever more wildly.

"Keep looking! It's our only shot!"

Blake began to feel dirty, far off in her mind where it could little distract her, for diverting her partner so. It was not a lie in all truth, for it was their only real chance so long as the thing remained distracted, but she knew well that she was putting the woman in more danger than she should've. She knew it and hated herself for doing it.

Her slide along the muddy stream, what had been the thin tributary before their death-dance began and all but ruined it, brought her under the massive Grimm's belly. It was just as jet-black as the rest of it, sleek and shiny and imposing to the eye, with none of the bony protrusions that dotted the rest of it like armor. She noted this only briefly before turning her card and making her move, cashing in on the gambit she'd begun with her bogus pleas for Yang to seek out tooth marks above.

The raven-headed faunus dug her heels into the muddy stream and clenched her abs, launching herself upright as quickly as she could. It briefly amazed her that, even as she came a few feet off the ground, the belly of the Grimm that stood ready to end them both towered an easy four more over her head. Not thinking on this, nor on the present predicament of her partner that she could only pray was still holding on, she swung the revolver up and over her head with as much force as she could muster.

The crescent blade found purchase in the softer hide of the primeval's belly, tearing in and slicing through with surgical ease. The woman followed this up with a deft forward flip, tucking herself into a ball the moment the blade came free and rolling out from under the creature in one swift motion.

Blake then leapt to her feet, digging her heels into the ground and halting her forward motion to do so, and spun around no sooner than she had cleared the creature's tail. What happened next filled her with dismay, more for the sight than for the awful sound that now began to ring through her very being.

Whatever it was that kept talking to them, whether the creature's actual voice or some sort of semi-psychic presence, it was now in terrible pain. It shrieked loudly and sharply in both their heads, echoing around as though it would melt their minds and shatter their skulls. Blake's vision began to blur while she watched the blonde release her grip and cover her ears. It was instinctual, she knew such for sooth, but it did no good. Her brazen partner, agonizing with the ethereal sound, began to plummet while the creature instinctively reared up on its hind legs.

It would fall on her, Blake was sure of this, and so the faunus abandoned every pretense of self-preservation and shot forward with all her will.

She crossed the distance in a flash and hit her partner hard, crashing into the same side as she had when first she preserved the blonde's life. Her motion carried both of them across the tributary and into the creature's cave while a sharp pain bloomed to life on her thigh. Both hit the ground hard, knocking the wind from their lungs, and rolled into the pitch-black depths.

Ψ

They awoke shortly after falling unconscious. The lumbering thud of their enemy's approach did not wake them, as they were too far fatigued and battered for such. Instead, they were awoken by what sounded like a gurgled hiss, coming from within and without at once. It rattled the meat between their ears, just as it had every other time, and pulled them from the blackness they had sunken into.

"Fetid dust…" it pounded through the gurgling hiss, "Will you still give chase?"

The women opened their eyes in tandem, peeking blearily at the figure that blocked the light from the cavern's entrance. It stood imposing and proud and regarded them with its hateful eyes, glowing as bright and red as ever. One foreleg could be seen to be bent, wrapped up under its body and clutching its wounded belly, but it looked otherwise unfazed to their bleary eyes.

"If your mouths remain silent, I will simply eat you. Answer me, striplings, before my patience wanes fully…"

Blake and Yang shared a brief glance, confused and perhaps a little terrified, before the blonde spoke up first. Her voice wavered with disbelief and battle fatigue, but her words carried strong in the still darkness.

"What if we do 'mean to give chase'?" she asked, mimicking what she assumed was the creature's voice with more than a little disdain, "What do you plan to do? Stop us? Ha!"

She stood shakily to her feet, swaying once before catching herself and straightening up. Her eyes still carried their fierce red glow from the battle and her hair still shined with a bright golden flame. She stared the gargantuan Grimm down with utter defiance.

"I made a promise I'm going to keep. No scraggly excuse for a six-legged lizard is going to stop me. Nor, for that matter, will it be stopping my partner while I'm still breathing. So come on! Come eat me if you think you've got the stomach to handle it!"

Her eyes glowed even brighter and her hair flared up once more, lighting the cavern with its brilliant glow. The creature stepped closer to the boisterous woman, its footfalls shaking the ground while one paw continued to clutch at its stomach. It stood directly before her, leveling its own red gaze with hers, but made no move to attack.

"I could kill you, wretched dust, with but my word alone." The voice rumbled in her head while the primeval stared into her eyes, glowing red to glowing red, "But if you mean to give chase even still, then my part is done. Go when it suits you but trouble me no more, lest you wish your lives ended before you have your resolution. Take rest and chase the rotting one again, but leave me to my solitude…"

The voice receded with all the soft calm of a departing migraine and the beast stepped purposefully over the women, retreating into the darkness of its ancient lair.

Yang turned and moved as if she meant to chase it down when she felt a soft tug on her heel. She stopped and turned her gaze down to see the raven-headed faunus, still curled up on the ground, holding her left leg tightly to her chest. At that sight, the blonde forgot the massive serpentine Grimm altogether and kneeled down to tend to her partner.

"Let it go, Yang." Blake pleaded softly, not seeing that the woman had no more intent to go after their accoster.

"Don't worry, Miss Kitty." The blonde responded softly, "I'm more concerned about you than that… thing."

She looked toward the leg her partner clutched so tightly with more than a little worry in her lavender eyes.

"What's wrong with your leg?" She asked, reaching to try and have a look. Blake only swept her hand away.

"I'll be fine." She said assuredly, "But we have to get back after him if we're going to catch him…"

Yang ignored her partner's words and reached her hand out to see about the leg again. This time the faunus offered no resistance, letting the woman pull her arm away and look at the mess of her thigh.

It alarmed her, but not overly so. The blonde was never one to give into panic or despair. For this, and for reasons more intimate and pressing, she ignored the initial shock and scooped her injured partner into her arms. She carried the woman up the short distance to the cavern's entrance and exited the dark hole into the last light of the day.

The orange-red rays of the sun had painted the sky an unsettling menagerie of vivid colors when they came out into the open again. It was mostly hidden from their view by the walls of the valley, leaving the two battered huntresses in shadow for the most part, but still lit just enough of their way for both to see.

Without going far from the cavern, Yang found a decent rock, one of only a few still intact within the area of their battle, and laid her partner down with her back against it. She then took a closer look at the thigh with the last bit of sunlight to aid her task.

It was torn open with a surgical cleanliness, but thankfully the wound was only skin-deep. At the worst point it might have reached only so far as the bottom-most layer of flesh, leaving it too shallow to have damaged muscle or sinew. Yang saw this and, with a deep sigh of relief, smiled at her faunus partner.

"You'll be alright." She said with soft and loving eyes, "I'll get you sewn and patched up in a jiffy, and we'll be after our guy by tomorrow."

"Think of how far he could get by then, Yang!" Blake nearly screamed. It was unusual for her to let her emotions show so blatantly, but the blonde made no regard of it. After the day they'd both had, it was more than a little understandable.

"We'll catch him..." Yang insisted calmly as she prepared to treat the wound, "I promise you, Blake. We will catch him."

Ψ

They had no campfire that night to keep them warm, but the two found heat all the same whilst resting at the mouth of the primeval's cave. The valley of the tributary, which was now little more than a run of muddy water creeping over the upset ground, seemed to defy the encroaching cold of the badlands. The biting freeze that had come to them every night for the last two months, while they chased the masked man ever further into nowhere, was robbed of its teeth by the ochre surroundings.

The sky above also served to distract them from the little bit of cold that found them. It was such an absolute shade of black that each and every little dot of starlight could be seen clearly. Even the shattered moon, which looked close enough to reach out and touch, had an unusual clarity to it. Both women watched this with childlike awe while they sat against the uneven wall of the cavernous maw.

They watched this and were very content, despite their bumps and bruises and wounds.

"Hey, Yang…" Blake spoke up through the soft silence, her ears twitching playfully in the gentle breeze that blew by.

"Hm?"

The blonde's voice was dreamy and far away while her bruised fingers ran distractedly through her partner's hair. The hummed response reverberated in Yang's throat and tickled the faunus' ears pleasingly while she lay with her head against the blonde's ample chest.

"Aren't you worried about Ruby?" she asked tentatively, loving every soft stroke of the fingers running through her raven tresses.

"Why would I be?" Yang replied, pulling her fingers free before running them back through again.

"Well…"

Blake paused, thinking it over for a moment before asking. Better now while they might yet turn back than later when they found and faced their masked quarry.

"Aren't you worried this guy might be too much for us?"

"Nope."

The faunus' breath hitched in her throat at that and she turned her gaze up to her partner. The woman's face bespoke no hint of reservation or doubt whatsoever, holding, instead, a serene look of utter calm and surety. It made her heart flutter to see that look of resolve.

"Are you that brave or that foolish?" Blake whispered and continued to stare.

Now, at last, Yang turned her lavender eyes down to her partner's soft features. A thin but happy smile spread across her lips, sending another shiver through Blake's heart.

"I made you a promise." She said placidly, her face and eyes glowing in the moonlight, "I made her a promise too…"

She turned her gaze back to the heavens and looked off into their cosmic depths.

"I'm not going to die out here, or anywhere anytime soon." She said with conviction, "We'll catch him and we'll make him pay for what he's done and we'll both come back from this. We'll come back and we'll have a good, long life as legendary huntresses…"

Blake could've sworn, despite her own relief at hearing those words, that she heard the slightest falter in her partner's voice. She kept staring up at the placid blonde, her sight seeming much more lucid and vibrant than it ever had before. With that feeling burning in her mind, and even more so in her heart, Blake pushed herself up on her elbows, reaching up toward her partner while the woman's gaze remained heavenward.

She planted a soft and simple kiss against Yang's lips, holding it there for some time while a single tear slid down one pale cheek.