Here we go

Cover Art: GWBrex

Chapter 27

Ruby had never felt so utterly exhausted as when she and the rest from the Branwen finally met back up with the tribe in the distant forests outside the city of Vale. Her legs were on fire, her sides burning, and that was with her father carrying her part of the way after she collapsed. She didn't dare wonder how tired those carrying Raven and Qrow's winnings between them felt. They hunkered the great chests down and dropped onto their backs, chests rising and falling as Raven barked orders for the camp to make ready to leave. More travelling. Ruby felt sick.

It was an honest to goodness miracle they'd escaped at all after what Jaune did – no, after what the Dark Lord did. His bold declaration of war against the Eternity Queen had sent the city into absolute chaos. People had been running everywhere, Chosen were split between dashing for their goddess or for the stables to give chase. In the midst of it all, the ten or so people from the Branwen tribe had somehow gone unmolested. Their having worked together with Jaune had somehow been forgotten, but Raven hadn't been keen on giving anyone time to remember and had them use the cover of the panicking crowds to run for their lives.

As they left the city, she'd seen riders dispatched in every direction. Chosen of Salem, Huntresses, mounting their powerful steeds and riding out in pursuit of Jaune, and likely with murder on their minds. There had been so many. Hundreds, easily. Ruby still felt anxious now thinking about it and how he was doing. Or if he was even still himself and whether the Dark Lord hadn't taken full control.

"Taiyang!" Raven was angry. It was only the more pressing concern of their retreat that had kept them safe until now. The bandit queen stalked toward them with her hand gripping her sword so tight her fingers were white. "You knew!" she hissed. "You knew he was the Dark Lord!"

"Us!?" Taiyang threw back his head and laughed. "Are you joking, Ray? Why would he tell us he had the dark lord inside him? Why would he tell anyone? Why would we travel with someone like that? Fuck, do you think we would have willingly gone to Vale if we knew? That's literally where the Eternity Queen is."

He lied so well, Ruby thought to herself, that even Raven hesitated, the anger dripping off her. She held his gaze, but Taiyang didn't flinch, and finally her hand released its death grip on her weapon. "Damn it," she said. "The Relic of Knowledge was right there in our hands, right within our grasp, and then this…"

"Let's be honest, Ray, it was never in our grasp. The only reason we won it was because of Jaune. We won it because the Dark Lord wanted it, which means it was always within his grasp. Not ours."

"You're not wrong. We'll have to be content with the winnings we do have. They're not insignificant. We'll need them to traverse the seas as well."

Taiyang stiffened. "You're not thinking of going after him…"

"Pit the tribe against a dark god?" she asked. "No. But the memories of those at the festival won't stay empty for long. There were those enough who knew we are, and they'll inform the Chosen. The tribe can't stay in Vale. I'm thinking Mistral."

"Any particular reason?"

"I hate sand and snow respectively."

"Good enough for me." Taiyang laid a hand on Ruby's shoulder. "We were obviously planning to travel on anyway, but do you mind if we hitch along to Mistral? I'll understand if this business has soured our welcome…"

"Stay if you wish. No one will argue. I need to go prepare everyone." Raven left without a word, stalking back into the mass of bandits shouting at the top of her lungs. Ruby heaved a sigh, crouching down to gather her scattered nerves.

"Are we really staying with them?" she asked her father.

"Only to Mistral. We'll be remembered as having spent time with him as well, so we should get off the continent before it's us being hunted down and interrogated. We'll make our long-term plans while we're on the ocean."

It was as good a plan as any and she had no other, having intended to just travel with Jaune as thanks for him saving her dad's life. She wondered where he was and what he intended. Leaving Vale was as obvious for him as it was for them, but someone in his situation couldn't be picky about the direction. There was no telling what kingdom he would end up in or whether she would ever see him again.

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Pyrrha Nikos, Chosen of the Goddess, left the inner cloisters with a haunted and pale complexion, hands shaking, her steps unsteady. Coco was waiting for her outside, lacking her usual teasing manner. Her face was set in a grim, if concerned, frown. She pushed off the wall on seeing Pyrrha and approached.

"I've been questioned." Pyrrha said quietly. "I've told them everything I can."

"I don't care about that. Are you okay?"

Was she? Pyrrha laughed, as unsure of the answer as she was of anything else at this point of time. "I'm well enough. I just… I never once guessed. I didn't even…" She clenched her eyes shut. "And Cinder and I went to his village, talked with him, even used our powers on him. We never knew."

"All the more reason not to blame yourself. Cinder is one of the best. Don't let her know I said that, or she'll be even more insufferable." Coco's attempt at a joke fell flat. She threw an arm around Pyrrha's shoulder instead and steered her away. "Look, you can't blame yourself. He was obviously damned good at staying hidden if he fooled Cinder. He fooled everyone, even the Goddess herself, and why not? He's been doing this for thousands of years."

"I had dinner with him. I sparred with him."

"We all watched him from the stands and didn't suspect a thing. Four hundred or more Chosen, along with the Superiors and even the Goddess herself, and not a one of us figured it out."

It didn't feel like the same thing. She had sat with him, talked with him, laughed with him and even flirted clumsily with him. Just knowing now that it was the Dark Lord who had done all that… It felt awful. It was as if she'd just found out the man who raised her all her life wasn't her father but someone who kidnapped her as a child. Had he been laughing to himself as she talked about her dreams? Had he been considering the best ways to kill her when they sparred? What about in Ansel, where she and Cinder were alone with him in the hills – had he put thought to getting rid of them then and there, only to change his mind at the last second? Of course the Grimm hadn't killed him. He was probably the one who summoned them.

"Was it the Huntress Superior who questioned you?"

"No. It was the Goddess."

Coco nearly stumbled, this time needing Pyrrha to keep her upright. Her eyes were wide as she asked, "She questioned you herself!?"

"Huntress Superiors Schnee and Goodwitch were there, but yes it was the Goddess who asked me the questions. I… I've never felt so small and insignificant in my life."

"Did she fault you for not discovering him?"

"No." Pyrrha admitted. "Not once."

"T-Then there you have it. No blame." Coco sounded more relieved than certain, and Pyrrha could understand why. It was one thing to believe something wholly, but if the Goddess had blamed her and even demanded her life as punishment, there wouldn't have been anything Coco or anyone else could have said or done. "The goddess is merciful and understanding." Coco said. "I'm not surprised she would realise the truth. What did she ask? If you're allowed to tell me."

"I didn't receive instruction otherwise. Mostly, she asked about him."

"He is her immortal enemy. I guess it makes sense."

"Yes…"

Coco regarded her from the corner of one eye. "You sound unsure."

"Not of the Goddess' intentions," Pyrrha explained hastily. "Only, the questions confused me. I suppose it's a difference between mortal and divine wisdom. I'm not surprised I didn't grasp the nuance, but I still want to."

"Nothing wrong with wanting to understand things as she does."

"I know. It just… There was a lot of asking about him, his manners, the way he talked, the way he acted. I was barely asked at all about what he did in Ansel or what I saw in my spar with him. It was all about his eyes, his voice, his speech. The Goddess appeared surprised he could speak at all, or so coherently. And then she said…"

Coco waited. When the words didn't come, her curiosity got the better of her. "What? What did she say?"

/-/

"When last I left him he was broken in mind and in spirit."

The Goddess Salem, the Eternity Queen, Monarch of the Four Kingdoms and Patron of the Church of Salem. There were more titles, many more, but one that had stuck in her head for so many thousands of years was one uttered by only a single person who still lived.

Monster.

One would be hard pressed to see her as such now. The mirrors in her chamber reflected a pale-skinned beauty with golden hair, eyes a curious mix of green and blue and a voluptuous body. She set the standard for beauty in the realm nowadays as her supporters and devotees flocked to look like her. They called her perfect, and she knew that many of them believed it wholly.

"I do not doubt my Goddess' words." Huntress Superior Winter Schnee said from her position knelt on the floor. Her eyes were diverted downward. "But it has been many cycles now. Time heals all wounds."

"Time does not heal so fully nor so quickly. The last incarnation was a gibbering wreck of a man, was he not, Goodwitch?"

"He was, my goddess." Huntress Superior Goodwitch shared the same pose as her peer. "Until the day he died, he was a raving lunatic that could not string together sentences without bursting into laughter, tears or wild muttering."

Much like the last fifty incarnations or so. Her torture had been performed to perfection, learned and mastered on Ozma over a period of many months. The torture had been as much aimed at the mind and spirit as the body, for what concern did he have for a body that could so easily be replaced? The man, her former husband, would flit from one body to the next without concern, and so she had taken the steps necessary to break his mind and his soul instead, and reaped millennia of victory for it.

In that time she had shaped the world, contorted it and formed it again in her image – this image. A world devoted to her, a peoples who would this time listen to her and not be led astray by jealousy, greed, or belief in two petty gods. Here, shew as the only god that mattered, and she was a benevolent one. The people loved her. For thousand years of peace, four thousand years of victory.

Four thousand years of boredom.

It had been so long – such a painfully long time – since anything dared to threaten her rule. Ozma's maddened attempts continued, but they were so rarely him. Just arrogant, power-hungry men using his power before they went mad. Sometimes she let them go mad just to get a glimpse of her true foe. More often than not, she killed them first so she wouldn't have to see the wretched state she'd reduced him to.

That had been him in the arena, however. She was sure of it. The voice, the words, the look in his eye – mad, yes, but not maddened. Somewhere caught half between. Time did heal all wounds, and it might well be that after so many thousands of years he had begun to recover his sanity.

If that were the case then she could not wait to face him properly.

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The first morning rays broke through the slatted wood of the kennels and drew lines of light across Jaune's face. He awoke to the rustling of furry bodies beside his own, groaned and pushed himself up as one of the dogs lapped at a bucket of rainwater. The sun had only just come up and the streets were still empty. Despite that, he could heard the sounds of people moving about in the kitchens through the wall the kennel was adjoined to. The innkeeper and her people must have been up early for the guests.

Though he'd paid for food, Jaune picked up his pack and made his way off the property, too worried about the guests or staff suddenly remembering him and asking if the Chosen weren't there looking for him. He drew his hood up to cover his blonde hair and concealed the Relic of Knowledge under a roll of chainmail hidden beneath his cloak and against his back, then picked his way out the tavern grounds and toward the long piers where the tall ships nestled in much calmer waters.

The docks were busy this morning, men coming and going carrying wooden crates to the edge of the docks and stacking them down beside narrow wooden ramps. More came down from the ships to cart those on board while the first set returned to storehouses for more. Food for the voyage or trade goods bound for foreign shores; it didn't really matter which to him. Jaune watched from a safe distance among the buildings, scanning the wooden docks for Chosen.

There were female sailors of course but they were busy guiding others in carrying crates, ticking off inventory or checking over the ships. It was the distinctive black leather and capes he looked for, or signs of weaponry not suitable to the average person. Chosen stood out by design as much as by accident, fully intended to be noticeable so that anyone with news on the Grimm could find and inform them. In the early morning light he saw none, but that didn't mean they weren't there. It seemed all too unlikely that they would come check the taverns in the evening but not bother checking the ships come morning.

The Relic of Knowledge again came to mind and was again dismissed. It would tell him if any Chosen were still here in the town, but he was certain they were, so what was the point? The Relic couldn't tell him the future and so couldn't identify the best way to get on the ship without being found, and he couldn't afford to back off and stay in Vale even if it did say there were Chosen here, so there really wasn't much point wasting one of his two remaining questions. Better yet, those questions could be bartered away if they were even half as valuable as Raven made them sound.

"I can-"

"Go away." Jaune whispered. "I'm not trusting you again."

Walking down the steps and onto the docks proper, he continued to keep his eyes out for Chosen, only approaching the first of the sailors when he was absolutely sure the coast was clear. He went for one of the men who was looking over stock rather than lifting anything, so they were less likely to tell him to shove it.

"Morning." The man he spoke to raised his head with an expression that said it was anything but a good morning. Jaune hurried on before he could talk. "I'm looking for a ship headed out to Mistral."

It was a location picked at random. Saying he was looking for passage to "anywhere that wasn't here" would raise too many eyebrows and there was a good chance these people had been visited by the Chosen as well. All the people in the tavern he'd been staying at had.

"We're for Vacuo," the man said. "You want that one." He pointed to a middling-sized vessel with one mast and one set of sails. It wasn't the largest at the docks by any means. "Try your luck there."

Jaune thanked the man and made for the second ship, this time approaching a woman who was counting things off a document as sailors moved up and down the ramp to load things on board and repeated his question. She looked up at him, her brown hair tied back and her eyes flat and tired. It probably worked to his advantage since she answered without putting a lot of thought into it and was too hungover to care about asking why he wanted passage or where he was from.

"Going rate is forty-four coppers for passage," she said. "Fifty if you want food."

So much? Jaune bit back his feelings – he had little choice in the matter – and counted at some pieces, most of it change from the single silver piece Cinder had given him in Ansel. The woman counted them in her hand, looked vaguely surprised, and then nodded.

"Do I at least get a private room for that?" he asked.

"You'll not be sleeping among the crew if that's what you mean. We have some passenger quarters. They're not much but you'll have your privacy if that's the issue." Under her breath she added, "Last thing we need is idiots riling up the crew. Follow me. I'll bring you on board and introduce you to the captain."

He followed her up the ramp and onto a smallish deck where people were strapping crates down with thick ropes lashed to the sides. It was more a merchant vessel than anything else, so a lot of the room looked like it was going to be designated for cargo. There were a few ballistae on the side however, likely for Grimm or to ward off opportunistic pirates.

At the back of the ship, a small wooden platform of sorts rose up with the captain's wheel above it. He was sure they had a name on ships but didn't know it himself. There was a doorway leading into the square-like home and then a much wider staircase leading down beneath the deck where most of the crew likely slept. It was the single door the woman opened, leading Jaune into the shade of the cabin itself.

Rather than a luxurious captain's quarters, it opened to a corridor leading off to several different rooms. The one he was brought to was less a sleeping area and looked to be more for planning and navigation. There was a table in the centre nailed down to the wooden floor with a map stretched out and nailed over the top. It wasn't a map of Remnant but of ocean lanes and sea charts between Vale and Mistral, coated with scribbled-on notes in handwriting he couldn't read. Those must have been rocks, small islands or other points of interests the map had missed out but which the sailors had added.

There were two men stood behind it. One had blonde hair a similar colour to his own but much shorter. He wore a bright red coat opened down the centre to reveal a toned chest, while the other had a similar coat in blue but buttoned up. His hair was a light shade of turquoise.

"Captain." The woman saluted. "First mate. We have a passenger who wishes passage to Mistral."

"Has he paid?" the blue-haired man asked.

"Yes Captain."

"Then all is well." He pushed off the table. Jaune was struck by how young he looked, no older than himself and somehow already leading a ship. It must have been a family business or an inheritance because he couldn't fathom it otherwise. "I am Captain Neptune Vasilias. You may call me captain. This is my first mate Sun Wukong. Welcome to the Trident. May she see you safely to Mistral's shores…?"

"Nicholas. Nicholas Tulle." They didn't seem to have recognised him. If they'd been out on the ocean the whole time they might not have heard the news yet. He changed the subject before they could. "Isn't the Trident a bit of a bold name for a merchant vessel?"

"My father named it. And he wasn't… well, let's just say I'm the first merchant in the family and leave it at that. Anna, you can go back to overseeing the cargo. Sun, can you show our guest to his quarters and answer any questions he has?"

"Sure thing, Nep."

"That's Captain…"

"Captain Nep."

He shook his head. "Just get it done."

The faunus, for Jaune finally noticed the tail as he moved around the table, came and motioned for him to follow. They went back out into the corridor but didn't leave the cabins entirely. Instead, Sun gave him a short tour of the captain's quarters, his own, the helmsmen's and then the three small rooms for passengers.

They were no bigger than the kennel he'd spent the night in but at least they had a bed each, even if that took up two thirds of the space. They had no windows, no furniture but a tiny bit of room for his equipment and a bedpan beneath the wooden bed that he noticed was affixed to the floor to keep it sliding about in a storm.

"It's not much but it's better than what the crew has." Sun said. "Space is at a premium on a trade vessel. Food is served below decks, but you're welcome to bring it back up here. If nature calls, I suggest doing your business off the edge of the ship."

"What if I fall off?"

Sun looked at him like he'd gone mad. "Don't."

Not at all worrying. If he fell off, he doubted anyone would notice let alone come back for him. "How long is the journey to Mistral?"

"Two days assuming the weather playing nice. You needn't worry either way – Neptune may look young, but he was born on a ship and has been involved since he was able to walk. He's sailed us through the worst squalls, Grimm attacks and more."

"Pirates?"

"There aren't any pirates on these seas. Used to be, but then the Eternity Queen took exception. One of them plundered a vessel with a Relic aboard." Jaune touched his nervously. "Course, that was a long time ago. The pirates were hunted down. All of them. It was the biggest purge ever seen and led by the Chosen of the Goddess themselves."

He had to wonder if the Chosen would purge this ship and its crew if he was found. The thought made him sick. "Is it okay if I retire to my room now? I'm not feeling so great. It's the rocking."

"Bets if you do to be honest. You'll be in the way otherwise. Stay off the main deck when people are busy and you won't have any problems here."

"I'll do that."

"First mate!" a sailor further down the ship called for Sun's attention right as Jaune was leaving. He paused to look back, seeing Sun walking down the deck as the man pointed. His voice was loud enough to hear. "We've got a problem, sir. Looks like all the ships are being searched."

Jaune froze.

Sun pressed his hands down on the wooden railing and stared at another ship down the line. "What's this all about? Oi!" he shouted to some men down on the docks. "You there. Mind tell us what's going on over there?"

"Chosen," someone called up. "They're stopping all the ships. Stopped ours right as we was about to set out and came on board. Didn't tell us jack shit. I reckon they'll want to have a look through yours as well."

Sun turned but Jaune turned quicker, making sure he was walking calmly back into the cabins as Sun looked his way. He was tense but forced his legs to move, showing none of the panic he felt. Of course this had been too easy.

"With one spell I could have this vessel moving outside their control."

He could – but then what? What would come after? Would the Dark Lord have him moving outside his control? Would the vessel attack innocent people, become the first part of an armada to fight a war against Salem? Everything Ozma did was in service of his bloody war against the Eternity Queen. A war Jaune wanted no part of. That he'd have no part of.

"I can handle this myself."

"You cannot."

"Then I'll die on my own terms!" he spat. "My life isn't yours to control!"

New Helluva Boss episode dropped, and I just watched it this morning – loved it. Stolas is such a good dad, plus seeing his and Blitzo's backstories was amazing (and tragic). Also works really well as a sort of reflection of his own with his daughter and how he tried to make sure she had a better upbringing than he did. Also how shitty Blitzo's was, which I doubt comes as a surprise to anyone watching the show.

I love the pairing so damn much and this makes me even more certain that even after the last episode of S1, it's not going to end like a lot of people were saying. This is just a saucy bit of conflict any good romance drama needs.

And yes it ended all sad and such but that only has me more stoked for the huge fight leading to Blitzo x Stolas coming back together.

Which, I mean, if it doesn't then I'll be wildly upset...

Next Chapter: 7th August

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