Today has been a bit of a busy day due to the insurance company having an argument between the people who took my car to the depot which I, for some reason, have had to be in the middle of.

Basically, the depot company (who also towed my car out the ditch after my accident) are claiming the car was damaged way more than it really was. They're saying it has internal damage that there was no evidence for at the time, and the insurers are demanding it be taken to one of their approved garages to check and prove this and be repaired if needs be (which seems fair) but the depot are saying they won't deliver it and I need to come pick it up and drive it away if I want to.

But insurers (and me) are like "How is this guy supposed to pick up and drive a car that YOU claim has internal damage and isn't safe to drive?" So now the depot is like "Oh, well, we can have it repaired at OUR garage…" but insurers (and me) are smelling this as a fucking scam because then they can claim any repairs and bill for a huge amount on false pretences.

It's a mess. It's total scum moves, too. And I've had like 4 hours of phone calls over this. A lot of that obviously spent in bleeding "you are in a queue; thank you for waiting; your time is valuable to us" waiting times every time I have to call one or the other back. I reckon I've had 90 mins of conversations to 150 of hold music and "I'll put you through to the right department, one second please."

ARGHHHH!

So, yeah, this chapter is impacted. I did some while in queue with my mobile on speaker on my desk, and some after, but I've been in such a rotten mood from it all that I've been gnashing my teeth the whole time.

Cover Art: GWBrex

Chapter 47

There was no telling what was going on anymore. When the walls came down, the attackers rushed through, and they found the citizens kept huddled within. Whitley's suspicions had proven as correct as his accusations as they were all armed with crude weapons: spears, wooden clubs, farming forks and anything else they could get their hands on. The attackers at the front tried to stop and explain they weren't there to harm them, but there were almost a thousand people trying to stream through that narrow crack in the walls and they were shoved forward, down, or directly into the terrified citizenry of Mistral.

The result was predictable in its wrongness. It was hard to tell who stabbed first – the startled attackers, the frightened defenders, or maybe even a Corps member planted there to get the ball rolling. Whomever it was, blood was shed, and the scent of it thick in the air mixed with urine and dust from the ruptured masonry pushed the citizens over the edge. Faced with an invading army, and filled with whatever stories they'd been fed, which must have seemed all too real now magic had been used to bring down the wall, they reacted as any frightened person might.

"Stop!" shouted someone. "We're on your-" He went down with a gargle, a spear through the front of his neck and out the back. The civilian who had killed him looked caught between horror and relief, but it soon turned to pain when a close friend of the dead man screamed and plunged a sword into the civilian's gut.

Primal fear took over. In war, formations might use uniforms to differentiate friend from foe, and the Corps did that, but the difference between civilians turned rebel and civilians rounded up by the Schnee was negligible. They were all faces in a mass of faces, and it was human instinct to fight or flee. Given no option to run, they chose to stand their ground, be it in defence of themselves, family, or just out of sheer desperation.

In a matter of seconds, it was all-out war.

Jaune raised his hand to summon a ball of fire – a demonstration, rather than an attack – but Taiyang gripped his wrist and pulled it back down. "What do you think the sight of a man using magic will do to them? They'll be less likely to stop if they think you're who you are!"

"I can't get their attention to stop this otherwise."

"There's no stopping this." It was Blake who spoke, her voice heavy. "When the panic takes hold it's all that can be done to ride it out."

"There is another option," said Adam, gripping his sword tight. He'd cast away the shield now that it was no longer needed. "We can't stop this but we're already in the city walls and all the Chosen are imprisoned or dead. We can stop the war."

Willow Schnee. He hadn't planned to get too involved but maybe that was foolish. Willow was a huntress capable of magic and he was the only one on the rebel's side who could take her on. Beyond that, he was already involved. Better to end this quickly, be done with Mistral, and run away to Menagerie with the faunus. It was a split-second decision. Jaune nodded, and then they were moving, skirting left and away from the melee, along the inside edge of the city walls.

There were more civilians here and there. Some hadn't wanted to fight, throwing down their weapons and hoping for mercy. Ironically, the cowardly would receive it today. The bravest of them would be reluctantly killed by their own kinsmen while those too afraid to fight would live to learn that this was a rescue operation.

The four of them jogged past the broken men and women, cut away from the wall, and pushed deeper into a city locked into hiding. Windows were drawn shut, doors boarded, and streets lay empty but for the homeless citizens rounded up from across Mistral, many of whom made no effort to impede them.

"I'm guessing the biggest building in the city is the palace," said Blake, pointing. There was a gargantuan building with a domed roof and four peaked spires roughly in the middle of the city. He'd have said it was a temple to Salem, but for a much more recognisable church-structure off to the side of it. "That's where she should be."

"I'm more surprised we're not facing any resistance along the way," panted Jaune. "Where are the SDC?"

"On the walls," answered Taiyang. "A siege like this is hold the walls or die. There's no point keeping fighting fit men back to defend your bedroom if the whole city falls to an occupying force."

A raider would know that best, Jaune supposed. It was still a shock to be able to run down the streets of the greatest city in Mistral without seeing anyone. Gates deeper within the city were empty and left open; barracks lay silent; marketplaces were barren. It was like the whole city had up and died. If not for the screaming battle taking place behind, and at the other walls, he might have thought it so. As it was, he could only hope someone could take charge and rein everyone back and save lives. Either way, there would be a lot of graves to dig after this.

A part of Jaune wondered if things might not have been better had he let himself be captured by Salem in Vale. She wouldn't have even killed him as that would have meant unleashing Ozma onto a new host. He'd have been kept alive, probably somewhat well treated, just away and in isolation.

"You would not have enjoyed it," said Ozma. "I have been in the heads of many subjected to it. Isolation is as much a form of torture as whips, chains, and hooks. It has driven my hosts mad in the past. Though the Chosen often blamed me for that."

One man's madness might have been a small price to pay for all these thousands of people not to die.

"Except that this rebellion would have happened regardless and has happened once before you were even born. One man cannot be held responsible for all the ills in the world. To suggest as much is to absolve people like Willow Schnee, Salem, and the Deterrence Corps of all their involvement. You are not that important, nor so influential."

It was an odd form of comfort, but it was an effective one. People had died before he got here and would have died had he not. People died all the time. It was how the world worked. Sometimes of old age, sometimes of illness, sometimes of the Grimm. Sometimes-

"Odd," remarked Ozma, almost to himself. "Why have the Grimm not been drawn to this? Where have they been? I don't think we've seen a Grimm since arriving in Mistral."

That wasn't the main concern right now. They had to reach the palace.

/-/

Finding and killing Willow was simple in theory but much harder in reality. Getting to the palace wasn't the hard part; it was finding her. The palace was a gargantuan structure that must have had hundreds of rooms – bedrooms, halls, kitchens, servant's quarters, barracks. The whole lot. The entry hall alone had at least eight archways leading off in different directions, none of which involved a staircase. Faced with the immeasurable size of the place, Jaune was left helpless and uncertain, not wanting to split up lest Taiyang, Adam or Blake run into their target alone, but also knowing they could get lost in this place for hours.

"We could be here for an age and never find her," said Blake. "If she's here at all."

"Where would we be if we were insane?"

"I don't think that's a question any of us can answer," said Taiyang, though it was with an awkward tone and a half look toward Jaune, as if he didn't want to say it but wondered if Jaune might. Sadly, Ozma was quiet. He didn't know the palace or Willow any better than the rest of them.

"If only we had Whitley with us," said Jaune.

"Wait." Adam tapped his jaw. "Didn't the boy say his sister was here? In the dungeons or what have you. Those, at least, we can assume are downward."

It was an idea. Not a great one really, and there was no reason to think the girl would help them, but it was an idea - a direction – and they had nothing else to work with. Sometimes any plan was better than no plan.

Even then, it took them time to find the dungeons. In truth they found a serving girl first, crying and huddled in a corner, and, after spending minutes convincing her they weren't going to kill her, she pointed them in the right direction. The girl looked convinced they'd kill her even after that and stood with her eyes closed so she wouldn't see the final blow. He wondered at her expression when she opened them and realised they'd run off, but he supposed he'd never know.

It wasn't hard to guess at which door led to the dungeon; it was heavy wood reinforced with iron, far sturdier and dirtier than all the others in so beautiful a building. On the other side was a staircase carved down into the rock underneath the palace, a tunnel that weaved back on itself twice, growing narrower and tighter, until they came to another door, and then a open section cut out the rock and reinforced with wooden posts.

He'd imagined cells cut into the walls with metal bars over them. In hindsight, those might not have held up to a member of the Chosen. Instead, they stepped into a room bare of any people at all, enough that, for moment, he wondered if the girl hadn't already been killed.

"Are we too late?" asked Blake.

"It looks-"

"Who's there?" a voice, low and weak, came from a corner. There was no one there, nor a door leading elsewhere or room for there to be anyone, but when they moved closer Adam spotted a grate in the floor and pointed.

The grate, akin to a hatch, was closed shut over what looked to be a round hole, almost like a well. It might once have been that, maybe some kind of subterranean water source for the palace. Taiyang took the spot on one side and Jaune the other, and between them they wrenched the metal hatch up and over, letting it slam back down to the ground. Light from the nearby burning torches flickered on the inner walls of the narrow column cut down into the ground but failed to reach the bottom.

"There's a rope over here," said Blake, already bringing it forward. "It must be lower people in and drag them out. If they're ever allowed out." They dangled the rope down and held onto the end, the three men bracing against it as Blake knelt on the hole's edge and called down, "Take hold of the rope. Tell us when you have it."

"I-I have it."

"Alright. Hold on tight." Blake looked back to them. "Now."

With all three of them pulling it wouldn't have been hard to haul the person up, but they did so slowly, afraid to break the rope on the sharp edges, or maybe break the girl. The gentler ascent meant she could brace herself on the wall as she came up and it didn't take much longer. Two minutes later, Blake reached down and carefully helped a bedraggled and sodden figure up. Adam dropped the rope and hurried to assist her, and between them they dragged the girl out.

He recognised her. It was hard not to with her distinctive white hair, even dusty and wet and mucky as it was. Her skin was pale and bruised, one eye swollen shut, but her other had a red line cut down through it where Ozma had wounded her. Her pale blue took him in and widened briefly, but she didn't have the energy to harm him. The girl looked close to passing out.

"You," she said, instead. "Of all people. Ahah. And here I dared hope. Very well. Will you at least grant me the sight of the sun before you kill me?"

"No one is killing you." He couldn't blame her thinking it, though. "Your brother snuck out the city and warned us about your mother. He asked us to save you." Left out was that finding her at all was a coincidence. "Your mother has gone insane."

The girl snorted. "You think I didn't realise that when she cast me in a hole to die? I cannot execute my own daughter, she said, but if the Goddess wishes it then you won't die in there. Her words. That if I should die, it would be because the Goddess didn't wish to save me, and not because my own mother locked me away without food nor even room to lay down. Yes, my mother is insane. I know this. What else is there?"

"All the other Chosen in the city have been killed," said Blake. This time, Weiss Schnee's eyes widened. "And most of the clergy has been executed for heresy as well. Willow has crowned herself some kind of prophet and started throwing innocent people off the walls to their death."

"Goddess…"

"And now your city is under attack and set to fall to the rebels," added Taiyang. "Far be it for me to ruin such a moment, but I'll be frank if no one else will be. You're best bet of survival is aiding us put down your mother before she causes even more bloodshed, then hoping that's enough to win you mercy with the rebels."

"We're willing to speak on your behalf," added Jaune, not quite liking how threatening that sounded coming from Taiyang. Truth or not, he didn't want to make it sound like he was forcing this on her or anyone. "We've already promised Whitley we'll keep him safe, and you're no more involved than he."

"To hear that… from the Dark Lord." Her good eye closed, and she laughed a hoarse and dry laugh. "What has my world come to? I'm not even surprised anymore. Not after my own mother sought to kill me." Her shoulders rose and fell. "What do you want of me? What heresy must I commit for my life?"

"It's hardly heresy considering what your mother has done," said Blake. "I'm fairly sure she's the heretic now, no matter what she thinks."

"You want my mother?" Weiss looked to him. "Haven't you found her already?"

"How could we? None of us have ever been here and this place is huge."

"Then it is a good thing you sought me out after all, because she probably isn't in the palace at all. Whenever things are bad, mother retreats to the church. Forces everyone out so she can worship in silence. Says it brings her closer to the goddess…" Weiss grimaced. "If she's anywhere, she'll be there."

The church nearby. It really was a good thing they'd come here; they would have never found her otherwise. "Will she have guards with her?" asked Jaune. "Any loyalist Chosen who would betray the goddess for her sake?"

"No. No one. Mother prays alone. And she never got on with other Chosen. Saw them – saw us – as competition. Made her feel less special to have other people also selected by the goddess for service. She didn't get on with the clergy either, and often butted heads with them over her treatment of the people of Mistral." The girl heaved another sigh. "The signs of this were all there had we cared to look deeper. How foolish we were."

"We're going to kill her," said Jaune, watching the girl's expression. It didn't change. "Will that be a problem to you?"

"No."

The girl closed her eye.

"No. My mother is dead. All that remains now is a beast that not even the goddess would accept. I can't stop you, and I wouldn't, but I won't help you. I can't. I'm Chosen. I… I believe in the goddess. The actions of my mother when she's driven mad don't change that. They won't. You have helped me here, and I am grateful, but you are my enemy, and I am yours. Out of respect, and gratitude, I will look the other way now."

"Why not help us?" asked Blake.

"Help you?" Weiss laughed again. A wheezing noise. "What help would I be? Anything I can do; she can do better." Weiss pointed. "And he better than the both of us. You don't need me, and I can hardly move. I haven't eaten in days. I've been drinking moisture off the walls."

Of course she had. Jaune cursed himself even as he unhooked his waterskin. There was naked greed in her eyes as she caught, uncorked, and guzzled at it. He took a pouch off his belt with jerky and some preserved and dried fruit inside and set that down beside her. The girl fell to her knees, shakily opening it. That she'd stayed standing at all was nothing more than a desperate show of strength.

"Stay close to here and rest," he told her. "We'll come back once we've dealt with your mother. I know you have no reason to trust us but keep in mind there's an army out there who hates your family. We're your best bet of getting out of here alive."

"I know when I'm beaten. I couldn't fight you anyway. I'll stay. Beware my mother; she's skilled, but she's also mad. I would face her alone. You." Her eyes were on him. "Not them. There will be no concern for collateral damage in her. She will bring the church down if she's desperate, and they won't survive it. You…" A laugh. "It's not like she can fight the Dark Lord alone and win. Just end it quickly. Put her out her misery."

"…" With a deep breath, Jaune nodded. "I will."

Next Chapter: 22nd January

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