CHAPTER 6 – At the Edge of Dawn
Peter Port held the determined gaze of Meg Scarlatina for nearly half a minute, the moment unceremoniously breaking at the sound of knuckles rapping on wood.
Qrow, now recomposed from his laughing fit, stood in the doorway to the kitchen, "Sorry to interrupt the staring contest. I'm leaving to go help Anne screen for our missing objective. Keep an eye on your Scrolls, we might need help if we find em'."
Peter nodded to him, "We'll be ready, Branwen. Good hunting."
Qrow raised a fist over his head to Port's salutation before leaving to gather his weapon and equipment.
Meg watched him go, snapping her attention back to Port as he said, "What is my role at Beacon Academy, Ms. Scarlatina?"
The Huntress slowly placed her mug of coffee down, straightening her back and inclining her head, "You're a professor."
Peter nodded, "Of what?"
The faunus woman narrowed her eyes but allowed herself the slightest of smiles, "Grimm Studies."
The professor's head slightly bobbed another satisfactory nod, still pouring over his notes, pausing only to pluck his reading glasses off a stack of blank notebook sheets where he left them earlier and put them on.
"I've dedicated over fifty of the seventy-three years I've lived to this field of study. I have studied the effects these creatures have had on anthropology and history, know every name for them in every language not yet lost, have fought and slain dozens of uncategorizable unique specimens, and far more I could waffle on about for hours in a desperate gambit to impart my knowledge..."
Scarlatina, once being a student subjected to the professor's meandering lectures that proved to be bountiful font of wisdom if one was willing to listen closely, felt a piece of fuller understanding for the man next to her click into place.
"I say this not as self-aggrandizement… at least not this time," Port said teasingly, "I need you to understand that even with all this rigor, effort, and countless hours of study there are things we still do not know. There are limits to our understanding of this phenomenon."
Meg rapped her fingers rhythmically on her coffee mug, "We'll start there then: The phenomenon. What is it called?"
"Our term for it is Oberon Scenario, named after the King of Faeries in Valean myth."
The Huntress' eyes narrowed slightly, unsure if that was a deflection, "Ok, so, what is it? What happened tonight?"
"There-," Port began before taking a deep sip of his tea, "-is the limits of our understanding. We know that it happens and what happens, but why or how? Those questions have haunted me since the day I came upon this knowledge."
Peter's weariness seemed to fade away as his boisterous enthusiasm was energized by this subject he had utter passion for.
Meg took a small sip of her coffee, reasonably certain Port wasn't lying by omission to her as Qrow had before, "Then tell me everything you do know."
"These phenomena have been occurring for thousands of years, most likely since the trichotomic dawn of human, faunus, and Grimm existence. I am loathe to refer to them as 'phenomena', minding all evidence points to them being sentient persons much the same way faunus are to humans, so we will use the term the various ancient cultures of Anima did: Animus."
/\/\/\
The Young Wolf continued his sprint through the forest, forced from a third resting place by the relentless human with the halberd… merely knowing the sharp stick's name caused more pain to blossom in his skull.
'What is a halberd?'
He resolved to ignore the question.
Focus could not be spent on such frivolities.
The pursuit continued and showed no sign of ceasing.
He had to escape, survive, and remember.
'Old Bear's legacy must live. His teachings must live. I must live.'
Remembrance of his mentor brought unbidden recall of the human that had killed and crawled from his corpse.
His headache worsened.
It had been steadily worsening since the brawl with Skull's pack.
There was a sickening, bile conjuring sensation of familiarity to this chase, and terror bubbled from a wellspring in him he could not recognize.
A sudden kaleidoscope of images and cacophony of sounds tore through his mind, fluttering at the edges of his sight and whispering nonsense in his ears.
For the briefest moment his arms pumping to and fro before him were unarmored hairless flesh, not the charcoal black of Grimm but a hue of man.
'Visions…'
A new fear rose in him, but he knew from whence it sprung... for Old Bear's fate was fresh in his mind.
An afar disturbance of foliage rustled behind him. Distant. But not far enough.
He redoubled his pace.
/\/\/\
Scarlatina's attention was rapt as this point, testing the new term on her tongue, "Animus…"
Her whisper did not go unnoticed, as Port said, "Do not bandy that word about. There are certain meanings and use cases in a scant few languages but using animus to refer to a type of individual will bring the exact type of attentions I warned you of before we began."
She nodded, the steel in her eyes confirming to the professor she understood, so he continued, "Animus are possessed of superhuman strength and dexterity. Whether or not that is due to a natural affinity to Aura, biological factors, or supernatural capabilities is unknown."
Port shuffled the notes in his hand to another page, "They are all described as shape shifters. How many forms they can take and what level of control they possess over those forms' shape are unknown."
He placed the notes down and slid a finger to a line on the page he had open in his journal, "It can be reasonably derived from tertiary evidence and surviving witness accounts from ancient history that, through unknown means, animus are capable of convening with and directing Creatures of Grimm."
"That final capability is at the top of the list of reasons as to why we are here," Peter said, tapping the page with back of his knuckles and looking up to meet Scarlatina's eyes again.
Meg pushed her empty mug away from her and shook her head, thoughts of the possibilities such a thing offered the future circling her psyche as numerous as dust particles about a newborn star.
It didn't take her long, however, to find fault in what she was told, "If these things are so strong, with that kind of power, why aren't there more of them? How am I only finding out they exist now?"
Passionate fire gently laced her inquiry, the righteous anger of a Huntress to the beasts she slays, ready to unravel whatever conspiracy laid before her.
"The reasons are twofold. Firstly, they are already rare in the first place. Our 'guest' is the first one we know of to occur in the last century and a half at minimum," Port said before finishing the last of his tea, "Secondly is, for lack of a better term, competition."
Meg felt her left eyebrow uncontrollably raise as the professor paused for a hesitant second.
"There is an entity or group of entities, which are most likely animus, of terrifying power and control that command the Creatures of Grimm at large. They… do not appreciate pretenders to the throne, so to say."
"They... kill them, don't they?" Meg stated to give voice the unspoken meaning of his words, the righteous flame in her breast curling in upon itself, blooming into the creeping frost of fear and a sympathy for the nameless and faceless dead.
Port nodded morosely, "Whatever they are. Yet another unknown of the animus is their lifespan. Ozpin believes the commander entity to be an exceptional case, the same monster that took power in the first place when man's creations were young, but we haven't ruled out the possibility of a dynastic lineage."
"That's- why do they command the Grimm to attack people then?" Scarlatina asked, binding the awe and terror this subject was inspiring in her core with cords of curiosity anew.
/\/\/\
The siren call boiled his blood again... but not for the reasons it used to.
'Does the pain not tell you the truth?' it asked and beguiled.
'You have suffered and endured, have you not earned respite?' it justified and reasoned.
'Face the human, wet your claws, dye your fangs crimson,' it lured and lied.
'I reward the faithful. Gift me a red tithe and I promise you peace,' it lied and lied again.
The Young Wolf bounded over a fallen tree with a snarl, responding in spite of his pain, "Skull knew no peace in your service and died like the mongrel he was for it. The Old Bear was right… you know naught of which you speak, lying whore."
He knew there would be no response. There never was.
The voice of the Queen was heard by all, but none could reach her ear.
A chord of the unknown churning within him harmonized with the Young Wolf's conscious thought in that moment, an alike loathing for some one or thing not too dissimilar to the Queen.
Unbeknownst to him, much the same did the Old Bear agree with a sensation in the unknown which urged him to protect the children the previous day.
The pain was getting worse. Searing like an expanding sun behind his eyes.
The edges of his vision were hazy, the outskirts of that edge black and waxing slowly.
Hallucinate sounds mixed real with unreal.
He ran, but not as swiftly as before.
He did not need to perceive it to know the human was gaining ground.
/\/\/\
"We do not know. Only that they do," Port said as tire and frustration creeped into his voice again.
Clearly, this was not the first time that question was poised.
Peter sighed and leaned back into his seat, slipping his reading glass off and lightly tossing them onto his journal, "There is one answer our unexpected guest has lent credence to in this enigma. For transparency's sake, I'm questioning whether I should tell you. It is just a theory, credible though it may be now, but I believe the concept will impact you rather heavily."
Meg gave him a halfhearted glare, "I'm already in this deep, Port. What's a few more feet down?"
The professor sighed resignedly, "…my wife's research is as much mine as it is hers and vice versa. A joint effort in unraveling every mystery of the Grimm we can. Vix has dual focus in Grimm Studies and anthropology… which was initially fueled by her absolute certainty her great grandmother was an animus."
Meg had seen pictures of Vix Port in the family photos Peter kept on his office wall years ago during her time at Beacon Academy.
She was an absolutely beautiful woman in youth with an undeniable elegance and grace in old age that spate the passing of time.
The features that struck Meg the most the first time she'd seen the fox faunus' picture was her trait… or rather traits. An additional set of ears atop her head. Elongated canines visible in her gleaming smile. The end of a tail peaking around her side.
Scarlatina would have laughed about the absurd similarity to a Kitsune Grimm, how the connection was there for all to see but none to understand, if she didn't feel like choking on the air she was breathing.
"Vix's theory for the longest time was that animus are the progenitors of faunus. The closer one's lineage is to the animus, the more likely they are born with more traits…" Port laughed stiltedly, "Which is corroborated by our unexpected guest's teeth and claws. The wife is always right I suppose."
/\/\/\
The Young Wolf burst from the underbrush into an open glade slick wet with morning dew, still just cognizant enough to realize he had erred.
Trying to find the forest edge again, he staggered forward gracelessly and desperate to forestall the end, before stopping just short of his doom.
His vision swimming before him had obscured a cliff edge barely noticeable in the dim light of near sunrise.
What he thought to be ferns and saplings in truth were the tops of trees a fatal drop below.
The human would find him soon.
A vivid, wretched vision gifted him the sensate kiss of steel parting his flesh.
His clutched at his throat as the ghost of a wound he never received haunted him.
Pain wracked his entire body with a spasming shudder.
With the sun rising there was but one place to hide.
The pain came in waves now, passing a threshold of hurt into an encompassing ache that sapped vitality from him by the second.
He shuffled towards the cliff edge and lowered himself down.
Stabbing holds in the stone with the claws on his hands and toes was agonizing.
Four chipped.
One splintered.
The sensation did not even register to him, so deep was he in the throes of the pulses radiating from his head throughout his body.
With near the last of his strength he clung to that cliff face shuddering in pain, hoping to hope he remained unfound.
/\/\/\
Meg felt her teeth creak as her jaw clenched.
More than one animal trait as a faunus was rare, more than two exceptionally so, but it could happen… and the explanation as to how made Meg feel as though she was staring down the barrel of a gun.
Peter rubbed his face, "Faunus are an enigma anthropologically, historically, and evolutionarily. They have no homeland nor evolutionary footprint. Faunus just happened. All archeological evidence points to them simply appearing as a minority throughout the earliest societies in our history at roughly the same rate. We've been looking for an answer as to how for centuries and… here we are."
It all made sense.
'It's just a theory.'
Which both made it better and worse for Meg Scarlatina to contemplate.
'It's just a theory…'
The Huntress couldn't deny the concept had merit to it, that merit currently unconscious on the living room couch, and there was no fault to the logic behind it she could find.
'It's just a theory…. but I believe it.'
All the implications this had for humans, faunus, Grimm, their relation to one another and the very way she perceived the world to be were overwhelming.
"Thank you, Peter. I… I'm going to go outside and get some air."
/\/\/\
He forced his eyes open again with a ragged breath.
That was the second time he almost slipped into unconsciousness.
He felt the heat of the sunrise upon his back.
His grip remained firm.
The Young Wolf would live to see another moon. He had to.
That was the first of the only two things that mattered in this moment.
The second he could smell on the morning air.
He could see nothing but the stone before him and his hearing was baffled by the accursed visions, but scents were still perceptible.
Not a man, a woman, scentless save for the natural smell of humanity.
She must have dipped into a river as he and Old Bear would before a hunt…
A tangent thought he found oddly comforting despite the fact she was standing on the ledge directly above him.
If the human looked down, she would end him.
If she waited for too long where she stood, the fall would end him.
If he survived and crawled back up, the visions would end him.
The niggling urge to just let go and choose his fate was there, but it was one quickly quashed.
Perhaps he would endure the visions and a human would not burst from him?
'Best not to squander a potential future for want of hope in the present.'
That sounded like something Old Bear would say.
Pride swelled in his chest.
Then he noticed it.
The scent had faded in intensity.
He considered waiting for surety his ascension was safe.
A final wave of exhaustion crested.
He was out of time.
The Young Wolf shakily climbed back atop the cliff with the last of his strength and laid still at the precipice.
He could go no farther, now motionlessly prostrate adjacent to an odd boulder.
Symmetrical, angular, blocky.
All the hallmarks of a human creation.
There were scratchings on it that meant nothing to him. Yet he knew what it was.
There was a final recognition as the wave finally crashed atop him.
He closed his eyes, contemplating the gravestone's purpose as he was enveloped by darkness.
'Old Bear deserves one of these.'
12/16/2022 Post Chapter Blurb
This one was a doozy to write. I had to make two separate drafts to make this work, one for Peter and Meg's conversation and another for the Young Wolf chase. Also I rewrote Chapter 5 because it kind of sucked. More info on that is in Chapter 5's Post Chapter Blurb if you care about that kind of thing.
I know where I want to take this after the next couple chapters I have planned. It was vague ideas before, and while most of them are still pretty vague, there's enough there for the next leg of the story.
Criticism is expected and anticipated as always.