Chapter 64: Veil
"Lift the veil that shades this sombre sleep…"
Hazel loosed a bellowing roar—dwarfed only by those of the two titans clashing beyond the city walls. He charged towards Qrow, smacking Ruby and Eir away with nothing but a swipe of his palm. She skidded against a pillar and grunted as her boots left twin trails on the sand.
"Get back!" Qrow said. He weaved around Hazel's bulk, his greatsword clanking and curving into a scythe. "Whatever you do, don't get close!"
Pareidolia screamed.
The floor crunched and caved in on itself.
Nex growled as he and Weiss leapt away. Her glyphs tinkled, blocking the pink tentacles that speared through the ancient tiles. Hrunting and Vigilance flashed and hacked the tentacles into pieces. The severed appendages flopped, caught in a fit of spasms. Weiss burnt them to a blackened crisp with a glyph and a stab of her rapier.
"I'm running low," Weiss said as they crouched behind a column, her hands deftly slotting another cartridge into her blade. "You don't happen to have extra, do you?"
Nex shrugged, popping open Hrunting and Vigilance. He reached into the cross-guard, sliding three cartridges of dust out. "Here," he said as he held her palm, depositing fire, ice, and gravity in her hand. His touch lingered on her calloused skin a little longer than necessary.
Long enough for her to steal a quick kiss, whispering, "I love you."
"Love you too." Nex bit his lip, peering into her pale-blue eyes. "Now let's kick some ass."
Weiss grinned as Myrtenaster's guard snapped shut. "Yes. Let's."
A sheet of ice sheared through their cover, the acrid scent of magic stinging his nose.
"Incitatia! I swear I'll kill them!" the robed woman screamed, mist wafting off her outstretched palm. "I'll freeze the marrow in their bones! Just give me what I want!"
"Ciana," Inky said, sighing as she brandished her staff. White flames wreathed it from the tip, casting upon them the warm glow of its magic. She held it like a spear. Her legs were bent into an odd, half-knelt stance. "Elder sister. Once again. I cannot grant you what has been freely given."
Ciana growled, her hand arcing downwards. Icicles the colour of ash shimmered on the roof. "Take this!"
Weiss flicked her rapier, black glyphs catching the icicles mid-flight. She smirked and spun her rapier, white glyphs flashing atop the black ones. The ice flew, and this time, towards Hazel. They ripped into his back, tearing chunks of his flesh to shreds.
The giant roared, craning his head to glare at Ciana, even as Qrow blasted his chest point blank with his shotgun—to no effect.
"I didn't do it!" Ciana said, sneering at his partner. "Lowly whore!"
"What did you just call me?" Weiss said, scowling.
Nex licked his lips. Admittedly, hearing someone insult his partner in that way ground his gears more than he expected.
"Leave my angry sister to me and Leli," Inky said, her partner already twirling a pair of poisoned daggers in her hands. "You be having 'yer own troubles, eh?"
Nex spied Archer and Eir doing the same with Ti. The duo hounded the assassin across the vast hall, barely giving him time to breathe. Between Eir's shield-work—the knight's technique was a fuckton better than his—and Archer's rapid, unpredictable spells and arrows interspersed with silent glyphs and not-so-silent cries, anyone would have had trouble fighting them off.
That left only Hazel.
At once, he knew what had to be done. His team needed to support Qrow. To strike at openings. Or to create them. That his father was the one who was in danger of having his bones bent and broken was only a coincidence.
"We have to wear him down," Nex said, eyeing Ruby and Blake as they peppered Hazel with their guns. "Strip his defences."
The bullets bounced off. Nothing. Not even so much as a scratch—or a flinch. Aside from the blood on his tattered shirt, and the scar on his back where Eir's blade gouged a pound of flesh, Hazel looked good as new.
"His semblance lets him ignore pain," Nex mused, "while his massive aura reserves protect him from damage."
A potent combination. It would effectively let a huntsman tank hits for days. Did Eir have something like what Hazel had as well? Damn. Why did Qrow insist he take Hazel on when Eir had already demonstrated what he could do against him?
Weiss's rapier twitched. Her glyphs deflected a strike meant for Qrow, letting him land a solid hit with his scythe. "You have a plan—"
"Rise, my pets! Show these savages the power a trueborn mage holds!"
Ciana's shrill scream cut through the howling wind. Skeletal Grimm clawed their way out of the sands, their shambling gaits making their red-veined joints creak. Their eyes glowed the bloodiest of crimson. Weapons fashioned from jagged bones—clubs, spears, and all manner of blades—were clutched tightly in their sinewed hands.
His nose wrinkled. They stunk bad enough that even his half-faunus nose could smell their death and decay, magically arrested as they might have been.
Nex shot Weiss a look, bobbing his chin as he dashed towards Qrow to stop the skeletons from taking his flank. He bashed a bone-white axe away. His sword plunged into the offender's chest.
Ruby spun through three of them at once. The blunt shaft of her scythe splintered their weathered bones. Her arm bumped against his as they fought side by side, skirting a small ring around Hazel and Qrow.
The two were locked in a duel. One moved like a battering ram, force directed with purpose. The other tried his utmost to dodge, his blade glancing off the other's skin. A standstill. But it was definitely what Hazel wanted—stalling them long enough for Cinder to finish her ritual.
Nex smashed his shield against a skeleton's arm, hewing it from the elbow. Flesh tore with a grisly squelch. The limb smacked against a pillar, sliding down the stone. He stopped its squirming with a sword to the throat, ripping its skull off with a practiced jerk of his wrist.
But there were more of them, dotting the chamber like flies. And eventually, they would tire. But their undying enemy would not.
The standstill had to be broken. Somehow.
Maybe there was no real need to deal with Hazel himself.
Maybe the barrier around the cultists could be destroyed, or otherwise lowered.
Fuck.
It was the first time that there was nothing he could do at all.
Nex licked his gritty lips, parrying a skeletal claw. Three more assaulted him all sides, their magic-infused blades like hooks digging into his skin. It hurt more—more than the slashes of Beowolves or the sting of Deathstalkers.
With a grunt, his aura flowed through his limbs, the warmth almost as if his mother's soft embrace. Reminding him. Of his promise to her. To survive. No. Not just to her. But to his partner as well.
When their swords flashed for a second time, he strained Pareidolia to its limit. Thunder rushed through his arms, the buzzing of static consuming his mind once more. The tempest. The shade. He was the leaf swaying in the storm, caught in the nebulous winds of possibility.
He smiled as the world slowed to a crawl, everything frozen in just one moment. Crystallised. Save for one Ruby Rose, who seemed to move faster than the others. Inch by inch, her scythe cut through the grey, sinking into a skeleton's thigh with the crunching of bone.
And he could see it. The threads stitched into the skeletal Grimm. The magic. The raw, flickering magic entwined with their bones, leading back to their puppet master. To Ciana. Fireworks burst in his brain, the metaphorical light bulb going off.
Could he part Ciana's magic?
Like he parted Inky's flame?
Nex clutched Hrunting and Vigilance, channelling his aura through its steel. A twist of his hip had him surging forward. He drove his sword into a skeleton's ribcage, shoving his aura into one of the invisible threads.
Darkness.
His vision dimmed, a sudden hit of nausea punching the gooey parts of his brain.
Nex groaned, the grip of his semblance loosening.
The skeleton's blade hovered on his neck, nanoseconds away from shattering his trance.
He had to hold on.
He had to.
His jaw clenched, steel rising like a barricade to shore up the cracks in his mind.
Deeper. Part the threads.
His aura delved into the blackness between, in the sea of dark that permeated Ciana's magic.
Deeper. Part the strands.
The blackness… It seemed similar to what the Grimm and Cinder's magic had. Twisted. Where Inky was the literal sun, hers was colder, drenched in muck. There was no other way to describe it. His aura wading through it was akin to his soul taking a swim in Mantle's filthiest sewers.
The sludge roiled against his form, pushing him back. Every inch seemed almost like fighting for a mile.
Nex bit the tip of his tongue, drawing a drop of blood.
His semblance might not have been as flashy as his partner's. But it was powerful. Powerful in its own right. It was not as inferior as he believed it to be, so long ago. Oh so long ago.
His heart pumped faster, pounding in his temples.
He could do it.
He had to.
An eternity passed, time frozen, as he hardened every fibre of his being, his aura, his soul, his mind, and finally, finally shoved his head out of the blackened mud—and into the void that lay within.
Deeper.
He needed to emerge even deeper, his aura coalescing into a scalpel that tore off the remnants of the muck clinging to his flesh.
There.
The light.
Winking. Shivering. Gaping.
A dragon stared at him, an amused chuckle rumbling in its rotten, titanic shape. Crimson holes dripped blood down its forehead, from which the light could not escape, melding into motes of nascent purple. The dragon whispered something, its scarlet eyes spears glinting in the dark.
It spoke one word loud enough for his slipping soul to hear.
Totem.
Then another.
Begone.
The grey cracked, his extra pair of ears stiffening. Aura burst from his soul like a grenade cooked for far too long.
Nex flinched as the skeletons crumbled into powder, the mist of Grimm escaping their bones. The beginnings of a migraine stabbed the back of his skull.
But it worked.
In fact, it worked a little too well.
"What!" Ciana screeched. "How could a—"
Leli leapt out of the shadows, smashing the pommel of her dagger against Ciana's chin. "You yap too much," she said, sweeping the mage's legs from under her.
Inky grinned and tapped the floor with her staff. A bed of fire spread below Ciana, catching her fall. The flames snaked over her shoulders and bound her hands above her head—in a grotesque imitation of one of The Pearl's professional contortionists.
"Release me!" Ciana squirmed, writhing against her blazing bonds.
"You be staying put now, eh?" Inky said. "We be returning to our world soon enough, eh, dearest sister o' mine?" Her fiery eyes turned frosty. "You be answering for 'yer crimes in court, eh? Mark me words."
His semblance croaked—a dying frog groping at the back of his neck.
Nex cupped his forehead, his legs wobbling even as he forced himself away from Hazel's left hook, the tanned fist skimming his cheek.
The sudden assault sent Pareidolia reeling.
He barely had time to raise his shield, his sword still inside. The back of Hazel's palm slammed against Vigilance as it expanded in a desperate bid to block the blow.
"Nex!" Qrow said as the world turned blurry and his legs left the ground.
Nex growled, his blood pumping up his ears. He twisted mid-flight, his heels stopping against a pillar. Feet entrenched into aged rock, Hrunting and Vigilance found itself whole once again.
He squeezed the trigger.
It howled, the recoil clattering his teeth. The manoeuvre launched him away from Hazel's charge. He landed beside Weiss, her eyebrows creasing as she shot him a glance.
His gambit worked. Hazel crashed against a thick wall, digging deep into the stone.
"Now!" Nex said, aiming his cannon at Hazel's back.
Blake flipped over the giant. She blasted his eyes with her gun, drawing frenzied roars from him. Crescent Rose left scratches on his shoulder, splattering the sandstone red. Weiss' glyphs spat lightning at his calves. Ropes of thunder slithered around his trembling limbs. His aura sparked, cracks appearing on its surface.
Nex smirked. "Beautiful."
Hrunting and Vigilance fired.
And a solid buckshot with all the firepower of an Atlesian Paladin exploded over Hazel's spine. It sent him flying through the wall, smoke and debris trailing after him. Doubtful he got out of that one unscathed, even with his reserves and supposed semblance.
"Two down," Nex said. "What's the status—"
"'Tis most fortunate, father!" Archer said, Eir trotting after her. "The Tentacle Hentai of the most terrifying has done the fleeing!"
"Huh?" Qrow said. "Father?"
Nex rolled his eyes. "Apparently, being weird runs in the family."
Weiss giggled. "I wouldn't exactly phrase it like that, but…"
Ruby snickered as Qrow's eyes darted between them. "It's time travel."
"Time travel." Qrow shrugged, taking a gulp from his flask. "Well, weirder shit's happened."
"Yeah, like," Eir said, "have you seen Inception?"
No one had an answer to that.
"Bugger," Inky said. "We be in the middle of something, eh?"
She slit her wrist in the folds of her robes, chanting something garbled under her breath. White fire crept up the barrier, the violent winds snapping like twigs.
A stream of cultists broke free from their circle, their eyes glazing over as they held their palms up. The hooded men and women faced them in a line, an avalanche of magic surging from the crimson veins pulsing across their arms.
Grimm. Those things were Grimm. Growing inside them.
Was it how those Grimmified people were made?
"Ah, it be like that, eh?" Inky said, grinning as she lowered her voice. Her magic coiled into a whip and strained against her hold. "Rest in flames my testament, the trail of life we burn…"
The words lingered in the air like the prelude to a storm. White fire lashed out and battered the cultist's shell. Once. Twice. Thrice. At the fourth strike, the cultists screamed and fell, convulsing on the sands.
And, at last, the vortex of magic fell.
Cinder's eyes snapped open, her face twisting in fury. "No!" she said as the suit of armour clanked and shook, motes of gold rising from the blood-red steel as it vanished. "So close…"
She slumped, her shoulders sagging as she lay prostrated—before a statue of the witch queen.
"Not close enough," Qrow said, inching towards Cinder. He had a careful grip on his scythe. "You'll pay for what you did."
"I'm Fall… I'm Cinder…" Cinder mumbled, staring at the crimson lines rippling under her fair skin. "I'm Fall… I'm Cinder…" She kept repeating it like a mantra as she sank deeper into the sands.
Nex licked his lips. There was something awfully wrong—Cinder being almost not there notwithstanding. All of it just seemed a little too… easy.
"Shut up!" Qrow said, brandishing the flat of his scythe. "I'm taking you back to Oz, and he's gonna—"
Pareidolia screamed.
And Nexus Shade watched, too late, as a pike tipped with bone lanced through thin air with a sharp crack.
Weiss gasped.
Blood.
It pierced Qrow's stomach, the huntsman barely tilting his body enough so the pike missed his liver. And instead shattered a rib or two.
"Ugh…" Qrow spat out a mouthful of insides. "Lucky hit…"
"Uncle Qrow!" Ruby said, dashing towards him as the tentacle vanished.
Nex cursed and took a step forward, his extra pair of ears stiffening as Ruby pried Qrow off the floor. He and Eir exchanged glances. The knight kept ahold of his shield. His knuckles were clenched around the strap, chalk-white cartilage showing through bronzed skin.
"Fool," Cinder whispered. "You don't realise where we are, do you?"
"Never been to this place before," Qrow said, coughing up more blood as Ruby helped him stand.
Cinder laughed. "In here, as long as I'm under her protection, I am invincible." She flung her arms open. "Allow me to show you!"
A pool of black and red swirled around her, the acrid tang of iron and sulfur blanketing his nose. The cultists moaned as mana the colour of blood rose from their robes, sucked into the maelstrom.
In the distance, Czipueth howled as he toppled over, beams of light from Vigilance's paw cutting canyons into his dark flesh. What should have been a moment of victory turned into one of uncertainty—as a grainy, crimson film enveloped them like a shell.
Nex gasped, the sharp teeth of magic tearing at the undersides of his skin. The muffled screams of his friends pierced the air. His partner collapsed against him, spurring him to action. He gritted his teeth, managing to lift Hrunting and Vigilance with one arm, the other one keeping Weiss standing as shivers wracked her limbs.
She stopped.
Her breathing stopped.
Her heart stopped.
Nex stiffened. His eyes darted around the chamber.
What the hell was going on?
Frozen. All of them were frozen.
Locked in time, his semblance whispered.
Cinder smirked as their eyes met.
Damn it.
Nex tugged at the trigger.
It gave a soft click.
Jammed.
The fuck?
He mashed at the trigger, even as the agony forced him to his knees. His extra pair of ears had long since grown numb. Still, he caught a flash of white at the corner of his eye—a silent Archer spinning a golden glyph the size of a penny between her fingers.
Discreet. Nex stifled the urge to smile. Apparently, being immune to whatever time-freezing spell Cinder used also ran in the family—the Shade part at least, considering that Qrow was frozen too.
"A shame," Cinder said, strutting towards him. She patted his cheek. Her touch burned like candles. "You had a clear shot, but you just couldn't take it."
She chuckled, her slender fingers drumming her thigh.
"Although, I'm curious, Nexus Shade," Cinder said, her eyes blazing orange. "Why aren't you frozen like your friends?"
"Heh," Nex said, licking his lips. "Guess I'm just built different."
She laughed, tossing her hair back, the strands clinging to her glistening neck.
"No matter," Cinder said. She raised her hand, a fireball the size of his head hissing into existence. "I spent years orchestrating this. You managed to ruin it in a single afternoon."
"I do my best," Nex said, keeping his eyes off Archer.
It was in her hands now, whatever came next.
"That you do," Cinder said, growling as she toyed with the flame. "I'll enjoy burning you to ash." She held the fireball against Weiss' nose, the dancing flames parting the shadows of her visage. "But first, I'll have the pleasure of taking what you cherish the most."
Nex clutched Weiss tighter, trying to cover her form with his. Invisible chains—the chains of time—dug painfully into his body, every motion causing a creaking sound not unlike that of a rusted clock's. His aura strained, trying to part the braided links of her magic. To no avail. They were too thick, and his aura was too low.
Archer's face twitched, the golden glyph in her hand spinning faster.
"I never understood love," Cinder said, sighing as the flames roared. "Pledging yourself—your life—to another?" She shook her head. "At the right price, perhaps. But unconditionally? Nothing's more foolish."
"I dunno about that," Nex said. "Let's agree to disagree?"
The flames surged.
It was Cinder's only response.
Nex scrunched his eyes shut, his bones cracking as he twisted his spine. He held Weiss to his chest, the heat kissing his back. His coat sizzled. The last of his reserves primed the dust sewn into the fabric, a brilliant blue blossoming into a shield that weathered the dull inferno.
"Resist all you want," Cinder said. "I can do this all—"
"Fallen angel deprived of light and wings!" Archer said, gasping for air, hundreds of golden glyphs spiralling around Cinder. "Let thine misery cage mine enemy!"
"What?!" Cinder screamed.
Purple waves rolled off the glyphs. The force of gravity smashed against Cinder, her magic quivering as it tried to keep the unrelenting tide from grinding her to dust. She shrieked, gouts of fire and lightning arcing from her hands.
"You!" Cinder said, the magic turning bitter, rotten, her hold over it slipping. The sting of thunder lay within. "How do you have my powers?!"
"Hmph!" Archer's jaw clenched, a brewing storm crackling around her. The wind blew, flinging piles of debris as her eyes blazed with a pristine, silvery light. "Pray! You have merely stolen your magic! To call it yours is beyond foolish, is it not?"
Cinder growled, the fire in her eyes shrinking. "So you're the one Ozpin picked." More mana gathered around her, the makings of another spell linking into a chain. "Alas, I'm not letting you keep it. It's mine."
In response to her words, Archer's magic swelled like an ocean, the storm raging. Whipping. Shaped into a giant arrow of ice and thunder.
Pareidolia mewled, scratching its protest on the walls of his skull. The red film swayed, murky, as the two magical juggernauts clashed. A violet storm shattered the silence, the stench of blood smothering his nose. As the duel between the two Maidens raged, the desert heat eventually reached the apex of his skull. A splitting headache carved into it like a huntsman's axe and coaxed a fevered groan from his lips.
Then the world broke into fluid, crystal motion, everything going up as if someone chucked them in a lift through time. Images and words swerved around them like a butterfly's wings, Pareidolia searing the indescribable tapestry into his mind with blazing hot tongs.
The magic.
The root.
Akasha.
He could see it shimmering in the void, a sole beacon of gold to light the dark. A gaping red maw sat at the end of their ride—a carousel through time.
Waiting.
Hungry.
Its teeth clamped over them.
Author's Notes:
Thanks for reading and leaving those reviews! This chapter's shorter than the usual fare, but I promise that the next chapter will make up for it. It's the longest one yet, and I had a ton of fun writing it.
Fun Trivia: Leli's character theme is Nightingale by Haken. She isn't exactly an OC. But with the expansive way I've written her in Today I Saw The Whole World, she might as well be. And, yes, TSTW has already been drafted.