Chapter 1. Aner Ex Chronou

Pyrrha completed her attack exactly as intended, with her shield to her adversary's back and Milo at her neck. But the woman in red simply held the sword, her grip slowly heating Milo where she gripped it. Then Milo shattered, and Pyrrha gasped as she felt herself flung backwards. She called her shield to her, ducked and rolled, came up standing and hurled Akouo at the woman who'd broken her sword. At the same moment, the woman formed a bow in her hands from nothing, an arrow coalescing on the bowstring. Shield and missile met in the air, head-on—and the arrow split around her shield and reformed, continuing toward her as if it had never been touched.

She turned to dodge, when the corner of her eye caught a brilliant flare of crackling white light. It lasted only a moment, and when it faded, a man in a long, dark coat and a black, beaked cap was standing between her and the woman in red, his hands clutching his chest. With a bitter grunt, he pulled the arrow—whole—from his chest and cast it aside as he drew a sword from somewhere unseen within his coat.

The blade was at least three feet long—the man's height made it hard to judge—and made of a brilliant blue crystal. The hilt was silver, with a brown leather grip and a bold, classical crossguard; in the tenebrous night atop the tower, the shining blade seemed to glow, a defiant, hopeful note against the darkness.

The man spared a moment to glance over his shoulder at Pyrrha with a craggy face and eyes like a sea god's. "I'd advise you leave, Miss Nikos," he rumbled, his voice as stormy as the rest of him.

He turned back to the woman in red, who had readied a fireball that splashed harmlessly against the angled diamond blade. Then they joined battle in earnest, twisting and leaping around each other in a deadly ballet from which Pyrrha found herself unable to turn. The woman in red seemed to fear the tall man's crystal blade in a way she had utterly disregarded Milo, and Pyrrha found herself hoping.

In an instant, the crystal blade was lodged in the woman's chest, blackish red streaking the half of the blade that had penetrated. She cried out, and dropped to her knees as the victor withdrew his weapon. He pulled a white cloth from his pocket and ran it down the blade, then sheathed it and turned to Pyrrha.

"Alright, kids, show's over. Time to get out of here before things get hairy."

Pyrrha started at the word "kids," only then noticing that Ruby had ascended the tower and was standing next to her. Second, she realized that the stranger was right: the dragon had distanced itself from the tower and now appeared to be preparing for an attack. Neither she nor Ruby could likely do much to harm the monster, so she nodded to the stranger and prepared to grab Ruby and run when she made her third observation: the woman in red had regained her feet and drawn her bow. She made to warn the stranger, but too late.

He whirled around, and the arrow caught him in his right shoulder, just below his collarbone. He gave a pained grunt, ripped the arrow out, and instructed the girls to stay behind him, then stepped laboriously forward.

"Go on, then, agent of darkness. Finish it."

Cinder formed another arrow on her bowstring, and released it dead center into the man's head. He staggered back, pulled it out once more, and flashed an utterly incongruous grin. "Kids? Stay down."

His entire body spasmed, his arms shot out parallel to the ground, and golden fire poured from his head and hands. Pyrrha and Ruby were knocked back and off their feet, where they remained, shielding their eyes from the radiant maelstrom. Cinder, at a farther remove, kept her footing, but still staggered back and bent over, one hand clutching her wound while the other protected her eyes. And as the stranger exploded in light, the dragon had arrived; now,it writhed in the grip of an incredible hurricane, streams of burning energy that struck its skin and rebounded on it again and again, containing the remains of the tower's pinnacle in a swirling, golden sphere.

Finally, it dissipated. The dragon moaned and crashed to the ground, encircling the tower's base like some malign ouroboros. Where the gray-haired, craggy-faced man had stood was a slightly shorter man, his bronze hair falling past his shoulders, whose face when he turned around was young, smoothly angular, and smiling, his stormy eyes now a calm sea-green.

"You just can't leave when you're told, can you?" he asked, smiling only half-reproachfully when he glanced back at Pyrrha and Ruby. His voice had changed, too, retaining its curious accent but now in softer tones. "If you had my luck you'd be dead twice over, instead of just the once. And I don't imagine you can pull a trick like that, now, can you?"

Pyrrha, dumbstruck, failed to respond before another arrow whipped through the air, although somehow the man sensed its approach and turned again to catch it in the chest.

He winced slightly, but otherwise did not react. Then he once more tore out the missile, held out his hand, and caught the diamond sword as it flew to him. He advanced on the woman in red slowly, casually, now, sword clearly ready but held down and to the side, rather than on guard.

"I would really appreciate it if you'd stop doing that, lady," he spoke chidingly to the archer. "In fact," he added, almost cheerfully, "let's see how you like it!"

And with that, the diamond sword flashed up and darted forward, piercing her through the heart. She cried out, and the sword flashed again, striking through her chest just below her throat and stayed there. She gasped in vain, her hands clutching at her wounds, and finally expired. He drew out the sword one final time, and she fell, first to her knees, then down onto her face with a dull thud.

An amber mist drifted slowly from her body, seeping out through the cuts in her back, and stretched its way through the air to Pyrrha, on whom it settled like a second skin before descending into her bones. She breathed in sharply at the sensation—a sudden feeling of tremendous power, a knowledge that hardly anything was beyond her grasp, not to mention the sheer physical feeling of rejuvenation—as harmless flames licked from her hands and around her eyes. It took a moment to get the foreign power under control, but once she did, she felt refreshed and ready to take on a city full of Grimm. Which, she immediately realized, was a good thing given the situation.

The stranger replaced his sword in his now-oversized dark coat, where it vanished to the place whence it had come. He nodded sagely to Pyrrha, who summoned the broken pieces of Milo, which stitched themselves together before her until it was as though the proud weapon had never faltered. Likewise summoning Akouo, he placed both weapons on her back, but turned for one final moment back to the stranger.

"You can call me the Mendicant," he told her. He pulled down the sleeve of his now-oversized jacket, revealing a strange leather brace with a primitive-looking screen embedded in it. "Miss Rose and I will be down right behind you. Or right ahead, if you don't hurry. But there are Grimm to be dealt with"—he glanced at himself with distaste—"and I need a change of clothes."

So speaking, he offered Ruby his arm, tapped a button on the odd contraption, and vanished in a flash of light just like the one in which he'd come. Looking down over the side of the tower, Pyrrha saw the two standing just beyond the body of the frozen dragon. Ruby looked up and waved before both went back to carving their way through the Grimm that surrounded the tower. Taking a moment to assess her new abilities, Pyrrha shrugged internally—was Jaune rubbing off on her? She supposed she could to worse—and dove off the tower.