A/N: Welcome back to The Ivory Champion! Hopefully the first chapter wasn't too rough; it's definitely far from perfect after all.
That said, I am definitely more satisfied with this chapter, and I hope you guys are too!
Muscle memory is a funny thing. Pyrrha's mind, though dulled somewhat after her time in the dark, instantly fell back into the combat role it knew so well: assess, react, exploit. Her body moved without her even realizing it, stiff joints and protesting muscles complaining as her legs launched her several feet backwards from the immediate threat. Despite not having her sword or shield, her arms instinctively fell into a defensive position: one extended to the right, where her sword would be, and a forearm braced horizontally in front of her, where her shield should be. Her body lowered itself, feet spreading wide as she shifted her center of gravity closer to the ground. All this was done in a matter of milliseconds, before her mind could even register that she was doing it.
It was just after her shield arm, though lacking the shield, was raised in front of her that she realized something was off. The grimm before her had not moved at all, not even the slightest inch; it hadn't roared a challenge, made eye contact, or even emanated the tell tale traces of breath evident from her own breathing in the chilly night air. All rather impressive for a creature of such ridiculous size. It was then that she began to notice all the things her mind had been too preoccupied to see before: the black spittle oozing from the creature's mouth was frozen above the ground, its drip somehow suspended. The creature's mask, once a marvelous and perfect white, was speckled with the same small emerald flecks of moss and lichen that grew on the tile it gripped, and its enormous talons were even more so covered with the stuff. Its sparkling ruby eyes seemed dulled, as if the creature was asleep or in a far away land that only it could see, and, even more peculiar, the way the brows arched and the jaw opened suggested something astonishingly human in nature: the creature seemed to be scared. Was that possible? Could grimm feel fear? And even more terrifying, what could possibly have caused a creature of such obvious and immense power to be, of all things, scared? Curiously, she followed the thing's gaze over to the edge opposite the creature, but there was nothing there. Only the howling wind and distant stars obscured by the cloudy night sky greeted her.
That's probably for the best, she figured, anything that could terrify a grimm this size and then somehow freeze it in place was not something she wanted to be near.
With a grunt, Pyrrha turned to continue examining her surroundings, and she froze. She knew this place. It was her last memory before the dark had claimed her, imprisoned her. She had died here. But if she had died here...how was she back? With ever quicker and shallower breaths Pyrrha raised her hands before her face. Aside from the intense trembling born from the realization that she was within spitting distance of the very spot that an arrow had entered her chest and burned away her life, they appeared perfectly normal. Which raised the question: did she die? Was that seemingly eternal torture in the dark the afterlife? Or something else? If she had died and was now standing where she was then... oh gods, was she a ghost?
With panicking breaths and a reeling mind she desperately ran towards one of the smaller, rusted cogs lying on the floor; it couldn't have been bigger than a rat, and with all the force her body could muster she kicked it. Predictably, the tiny thing went flying off the side of the tower as soon as her foot connected with it, and with a breath of relief she sighed. That was good right? She could touch things, exert force, that meant she wasn't a ghost...right? But, she had heard stories and seen movies where ghosts could interact with objects, that was a common thing, wasn't it? But in all of those stories the ghosts weren't able to be seen by people. People! That's it! She needed to find someone and see if they could see her, and she knew just the person to help, a blond, his name was...was...what was his name? Wait, waitwaitiwaitwait no. What was his name?! Gasping, she stumbled backwards and fell against the hard tile with a thud. She remembered bright blond hair, deep sapphire eyes, and a goofy smile that warmed her heart, but what was his name?! She was panicking now, that was for sure, her breath coming in ragged gasps as her vision began to blur from tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks.
She kept seeing faces in her mind, some sharp and clear, though none as clear as the blond boy's, but others were blurry, faded, distorted images of faces where only a features could be seen: a strip of pink hair in a sea of black, deep sky-blue eyes with a shock of short orange hair, short black hair with red tips that framed a small and distorted face with glistening silver eyes, another blond, though this one was female, with a cowlick of hair perched on her head and eyes that shifted from lilac to a deep crimson, pale white hair with eyes cold and blue, and deep black hair with a large, and equally black, bow perched atop. But who were they?! She could feel emotions with each face, happiness, trust, comfort and-wait. There was another. It was similar to the other redhead, but in the hair was nestled a pink bow, and the eyes glistened a deep green instead of blue, and this one was so much more clear, almost as clear as the blond boy's. But for all the wrong reasons; where she had seen the blond's smiling face and sapphire eyes she felt nothing but joy and comfort, but this face, this face formed ice in her stomach. It stared back at her with empty, dilated green eyes, accusing her. There was guilt, so much guilt that it stopped her mind as suddenly as if she were struck. She was shocked and choking on her gasps. She slammed her eyes shut and screwed them together, trying to conjure up the face of the blond who made her feel so safe; anything to get away from those empty eyes that filled her with guilt. But that only ended in sobbing.
She knew she was close to these people, but that only made her more terrified when she realized that she couldn't remember their names. Desperately, she searched her brain, there were moments that were clear, most with the blond boy and two others, the one with a green shirt and black hair, and the shorter redhead that she desperately tried to separate from the other with the pink bow. She could see the blond boy placing his hand on hers, them resting together in the autumn sun, she could see the redhead knocking four other kids out of some sort of an arena with a hammer much too large for her frame, she could see the black haired boy quietly making pancakes for them all with a green apron that made her chuckle, but the further back she went the more muddled and distorted the images became. Eventually, they were all just wisps of colored smoke chattering in dissonant tones that she could not understand.
She continued to sob, but the tears stopped coming. And, after a while, even the sobs stopped, and it was quiet. Just her, the howling wind, and the frozen dragon atop a ruined tower that used to be her grave.
Used to be.
Her eyes shot open at the suddenness and ease of the words and all they represented. She had died here, or maybe she hadn't and she was just sent somewhere else, but she was here now. With hardening eyes and calming breaths Pyrrha Nikos rose up from the spot where she had spent several hours, judging by the new height of the moon, and surveyed the tower before her as a new face came to mind. One with burning amber eyes, raven hair, and a fire red dress, and with it came so much hate. She had never hated anyone before, at least she didn't think she had, but this face was different. This was the face of the woman who had killed her, submitted her to the torturous grasp of the dark and, much more importantly, had hurt her friends.
Her fists unconsciously clenched at her side as the rage suddenly filled her. This place used to be her grave, but no longer. She was given a chance, and she would not squander it. She would find that raven haired woman with that damned bow, and she would hurt her, as much as she had hurt the faces that filled her memory. Pyrrha Nikos looked at the frozen dragon behind her one last time before she turned on her heel and stalked towards the elevator that would take her down from her grave. Ironic that she would be coming down rather than climbing out, she thought.
Unsurprisingly, the elevator no longer worked; a giant dragon resting on the top and a battle raging below tended to make maintenance seem less important. Luckily however, the doors barring the shaft were no longer in place. She peered down the hole, dark and foreboding, with no elevators themselves in sight, but the cable suspending one was still there. Backing up some to get a running start, she raced forwards and leapt to grab the cable, easily reaching it. The descent was long and tedious, potentially fatal, yes, but still tedious. Shimmy down the cable endlessly; occasionally push aside those empty green eyes that filled her with guilt and shimmy some more. She wondered if the battle for Beacon was still raging outside, but doubted it. She had been on the top of that tower for hours and not heard a single sound of battle: no guns firing, swords clashing with claws, no Grimm roaring challenges or victory calls, nothing but the eerie silence of the night.
It wasn't until she neared the ground floor, or at least what she thought was the ground floor, that things started to get interesting. There were two elevator cars smashed together directly below her, while the doors leading out to the ground floor were forced open and inwards by something that must've been immensely powerful. The elevators themselves were crunched and crushed, their ceilings, or what remained of them, ending about three or so feet below the top of the ground floor doors. Just enough space for her to crawl through. However, there was one minor problem: the cable itself was sheared off, the frayed end of it dangling about fifteen feet above the smashed "floor" that the elevators provided. But, to Pyrrha's mind, this was hardly a problem at all; she was a huntress, well a huntress in training but still, and she had dropped much further than this; she even vaguely recalled being launched off a cliff.
So, without a second thought, she let go of the cable and fell to the elevator roofs, but something went wrong. The force of her landing from fifteen feet should've been nothing with her aura, but that was not the case. The force was lessened it's true, but not nearly as much as it should've been, and, caught off guard, her landing went somewhat wrong. A sharp pain exploded through her ankle, followed by an equally explosive, and shocked gasp from her mouth. Her right side collapsed and she found herself in a half sitting, half kneeling position favoring her right side. What just happened? That wasn't right at all, the force of that fall should've been nothing, but the deep throbbing in her ankle told her otherwise. Gingerly, careful not to put too much weight on her impossibly wounded ankle, she crawled through the ground floor doors and out into what was once the lobby of Beacon Academy.
The place was ruined, a smashed reception desk lay to her left while dilapidated and crumbling walls covered in vines and moss and full of shattered windows formed the crumbling shell of the room. Directly in front of her was the once grand doorway that led out to the courtyard. Its grandeur was somewhat lessened however, clogged as it was with a tremendous amount of rubble. To her left and right hallways stretched, linking the main tower to other key complexes of the school. Some lights still clung desperately to the ceiling with their wiring, but most were empty and shattered across the ground. It was beautiful, in a morbid sort of way, like an abandoned building or monument, but the pain that filled her as she looked around at the once grand lobby overshadowed the beauty, leaving only a dull lust for the way things used to be.
The steady throbbing of her ankle forced her attention back to her injury. Carefully, though still gritting her teeth in pain as she did, she slid her right boot off her foot to examine it. Her ankle was a flare of deep blue and browns on her pale skin, but there were no bones protruding, so that was good. Definitely badly rolled or sprained, but not terribly shattered. The real question though was if it was broken. She stood up as slowly as she could, heavily favoring her left side as she did, before experimentally placing her right foot down, the rule she had always heard was that if it could bear even some weight then it wasn't broken, but if it collapsed, or the pain was too unbearable for even the smallest pressure, then it was time to put the thing in a cast.
She grit her teeth in frustration as she began to ease her foot towards the floor in a test; this was definitely not a good start, but even more pressing was the fact that this should not have happened at all. Her aura should've protected her, she hadn't been in a fight or taken any blows, and the trip out of the dark hadn't winded her or left her with that familiar foreboding emptiness and exhaustion that alerted her that her aura was drained. She had felt sore, true, but not nearly bad enough to the point where a fifteen foot fall would cause her this level of damage; even more to the point was the fact that she had been up on the tower doing nothing but emotionally exhausting herself for hours. Surely that should've been enough time for any aura depletion she may have suffered to be fixed, right? A lance of fear shot through her chest as her hand moved to touch the spot on her abdomen where the darkness had pierced her, that was the only thing that could've caused this. Her immeasurable torture at the "hands" of the darkness. But she was fine, wasn't she? She looked normal, her hands were still her hands, and her foot was still her foot, no new scars or blemishes to point towards torture, everything was completely perfect.
A familiar dagger of pain shot through her leg as it reminded her that everything was, in fact, not perfect. But nor was it terrible, her foot could bear some weight, which meant it wasn't broken; that was good news. She still had to favor her left side tremendously, but at least she wasn't immobile. Taking solace in that weak reassurance she knelt down and, through the pain, tied her boot back on her right foot. Tightening the laces and gritting her teeth before gingerly standing back up and limping around to face her surroundings. It was only then that she noticed the glowing red eyes and ivory-white mask and spikes of an Alpha Beowulf staring back at her from the right hallway.
Boom, two Grimm in two chapters; we (and by 'we' I mean 'I') here at TIC like to really keep up the action packed adventures. /end sarcasm
Don't worry though, stuff is getting setup to go down hard. Chapter Four will be the beginning of that, though I may end up merging three and four since three is kinda short, so who knows?
9/9/2016, 1:14pm: Updated Chapter 2 format, sliced down/split up my paragraphs to a much more easy-to-handle length. As of now, Ch. 12 has been finalized, though I'm rewriting some of 9 to make the battle seem more intense/awesome/longer/etc. It is the conclusion to this first arc after all so you guys deserve some quality payoff. Again, if anyone wants to help brainstorm ideas for this story or any of my others just message me, I'd love the company/help. Have a good one!
9/12/2016, 9:38pm: "Eery" changed to the correct "eerie." Don't know how I missed that, shoutout to RemnantSoul for pointing it out, thanks!