Here we go.

Cover Art: GWBrex

Chapter 60

He'd heard it said that the only thing sadder than a battle lost was a battle won, and yet the philosophers behind such had obviously been talking from an abstract distance. Perhaps it was the fact that the ocean had taken the lost and washed away the bodies, so the aftermath wasn't quite so obvious. Whatever the case, Menagerie celebrated. They celebrated their victory, the lives of the lost, and just the raw feeling of being alive.

For those that remained anyway.

There almost certainly was grieving but it just wasn't as obvious as the celebrations and Jaune counted himself among the lucky few to have not lost anything – on account of having precious little left to lose. His immediate friends had come out alive, including Blake and Adam, though many more of his students had perished trying to take on fully trained Chosen who boarded their ships. The numbers weren't yet in and he had a feeling Sienna wouldn't release them until after the good cheer died down. It was impossible to put a figure to it as they were. A tenth? A quarter? More? There was too much celebratory chaos to tell.

"What's this?" called out a familiar voice. "Sitting out here all lonesome? That won't do." Taiyang came stumbling out one of the party tents with two kiln-baked goblets in hand sloshing with booze. Likely mead. He pushed one into Jaune's hands and took a swig of the other, then sat down on the grass beside him. "You afraid to go in? You needn't be. They're all too drunk to care who you are and I reckon they're past caring about the religious aspects by now."

"It's not that. I'm just lost in thought."

"Hmm. You know, Ruby is looking for ya."

"I figured." Ruby had been keeping him company a lot of late. Probably because she felt sorry for him. "I didn't want to drag the mood down for her as well. Everyone did great today. They deserve to celebrate. But it isn't over."

"Course it isn't. Might never be over." Taiyang took a swig. "I mean, even if we win and cast her out, it'll just be your old man taking over, right? She'll still be there. Just no longer adored and in control. It'll be the same war all over again, but the sides switched over."

He hadn't meant that, though it was a daunting thing to think of all the same. "I mean now. Salem has lost this fight but she's sure to send Grimm after us next. It's the obvious choice. Humans fail, send the Grimm, then send the humans again if those fail. Repeat until Menagerie is crushed."

Taiyang nodded. "Aye. Most likely."

"Then how are you not on edge right now?"

"Because it isn't gonna happen tonight. You're not thinking straight." The older man tapped his head. "Remember, she's sure this invasion will work. That it will already have worked. Right now, her people are swarming the island and collecting or killing us, and that's the truth she's going to believe until those ships limp back home. Why would she send the Grimm in right away when it's her own people she'd be killing? Hell, she might cause them to side with Menagerie out of fear, and then the faunus might break free. No, she's going to sit back patiently and wait for the good news. And only when that doesn't come will she think of Grimm."

Jaune released a breath, tension bleeding out his shoulders. He looked down into the sweet mead, took a drink and savoured the taste. It wasn't very strong, but then he wasn't very sturdy right now after a day filled with action and stress and fear. It hit him all the harder for it.

"That's the spirit," said Taiyang, taking a drink of his own. "They will come and she will send Grimm, but it's going to take at least a week or two for those ships to get back to Vale, and then at least a few days for her to gather Grimm and get them over here. Nothing will happen tonight. Relax."

"I… You're right. I just…"

"This happens. Take it from a man who's seen his fair share of combat. The young ones always get the jitters after. Expecting an ambush around every corner, attack in our sleep, leaping up in the midst of a nightmare and lashing out. You get used to it, I guarantee, but there's a reason the aftermath of so many battles involves getting black-out drunk or finding a whore to bury yourself in. It's to beat down those feelings that are bubbling up inside you right now. The fear, the anger, the doubt, the criticism. Hell, even the empathy you feel for those we just killed. Man ain't made to deal with all that so we drown it in booze."

"That doesn't sound healthy."

"War isn't healthy. And we didn't start the war."

"I guess I just feel responsible for it all."

"You're not." Taiyang nudged his side. "Salem was the one to take down Menagerie with no involvement from you. Sienna and the others would have found a way back here eventually, or they'd have risked it and dashed themselves on the rocks and they'd all be dead. There's no point blaming yourself for what was bound to happen."

"What do you think will happen to all the prisoners?"

"None of that now!" groaned Taiyang. "The last ones were set free and sent home so Sienna isn't going to change her mind and start torturing these ones to death now, is she? Leave it be. I guarantee the prisoners are exhausted and sleeping. Stop looking for misery and start living your life."

He stood and dragged Jaune up, then pulled him toward the tent. Jaune tried to pull away but the older man was stronger than he and soon had him inside. The sounds of music – simple wooden instruments and plenty of drunken singing – assailed his ears, and feet stamped. Faunus danced, and some were making out or in the midst of getting to know one another much too intimately. Emotions were running high, the sheer relief of surviving was hitting people and reminding them of their mortality. He wouldn't be surprised if a lot of future children were conceived tonight.

"Jauuuune!" Ruby didn't so much hug him as run at him, misjudge, and then crash into him. She didn't bounce off and instead squashed up against his front. "We won! We did it! We're – hic – We're awesome! I told you sho!"

"I guess you did." Knowing what he did about why everyone was drunk, he didn't want to ruin the mood and tell her off. Maybe Ruby was dealing with her own difficult thoughts this way. "Are you having fun?"

"No! I can't find you!"

"I'm right here."

"…" Ruby stared up at him with hazy silver eyes. "Oh. Found you!"

"Yeah. You found me."

Taiyang roared with laughter and slapped his back. "I'll leave you two lovebirds to have some fun."

"The hell, Taiyang. She's your daughter!"

"And she could do worse." The man winked. Jaune personally thought Ruby could do a lot better too, but maybe a bandit's sense of worth wasn't what a normal person's would have been.

Luckily, Ruby was too drunk to notice what had been said, and too drunk to want to act on it either. Instead, she dragged him out to dance and sing and drink for well over an hour, until she grew tired and began to fall asleep on his arm, leaving him to carry her back to her and Taiyang's tent – the man was nowhere to be found, and likely with a woman – and set her down under the blankets. Ruby clung to him when he tried to leave and he soon surrendered to his own slumber, curling up beside her under the sheep's wool blanket.

/-/

The morrow came with rain. Fitting, perhaps, given all that had happened. What shocked Jaune the most was that the ark still burned in the bay, simply so large and stuffed so full of straw that the fuel had not yet run out. Hangovers and the dawning of reality dampened spirits, which felt all the lower for having been so excited the night before. It was the dawning realisation that old friends wouldn't be seen again that did people in, and a melancholy completely opposed to the cheer from last night took over the island.

It was under that melancholy that Sienna, her commanders, and Jaune met under the cover of her larger tent. The rain pattered down on the leather stretched between poles above them, ringing out hollowly. Blake and Adam were there, along with Taiyang and a few others he didn't recognise. Among them was Pyrrha. A surprise for sure. He expected she was there to offer insight on the captured Chosen and soldiers, or as a gesture from Sienna to assure Pyrrha they wouldn't come to any harm. No sign of Coco, but then he hadn't expected it.

"First order of business," said Sienna, "is that with the first attack repelled we can expect a Grimm attack in the coming weeks. Once she finds out what happened, she'll seek to send everything she has at us. We'll need to be ready. I suggest we get to building walls because we certainly can't fight aquatic Grimm out on the water. They'll slaughter us."

"We're not going to be able to make full stone walls in so short a time," said another faunus. "Best we can hope for is some stacked stone behind a ditch. A lot of ditches. We should dig as many as we can and line them with stakes."

"Could we use the captives for that?" asked another.

Pyrrha cleared her throat.

Sienna beat her to it. "No. Leaving aside the moral implications, we can't keep Chosen captive here for any length of time. They'll regain their strength and aura and realise they could break out in the middle of us all. I want them all on a ship and gone as soon as possible. Nikos, I want you to meet with them and explain this."

"They won't trust me," warned Pyrrha. "I'm a traitor now."

"I'm not asking you to win them over. Only to make sure they know they're to be released and given a ship and some supplies to take back home. Don't bother telling them about Salem; there's little chance they're going to believe us on that; the best we can do is see them off where they won't be a bother."

"What's to say they don't turn that ship around and attack us?" asked Taiyang.

"We have the Dark Lord here capable of sinking them. Pyrrha can tell them that. Besides that, they're beaten, and they know it. There's been enough death that I doubt they'll have much fight left in them. The church has already signalled the retreat so they shouldn't feel bad about falling back either. And they know our last captives were let go alive, so it's not like they won't believe our offer. We've proven we'll release captives already."

Pyrrha nodded. He didn't imagine it would be a fun experience for her to face her former allies like this. In battle was bad enough, but now she'd have to weather the storm of their accusations. Anyone else would be in too much danger however, and sending himself down would only terrify the prisoners. They'd think he was there for some dark ritual or something.

"Back onto the defence of Menagerie, we can't afford to break down any more ships for construction material. We expect the next attack will be from the Grimm, but there's a good chance the church sends another soon after – to conveniently take advantage of the fact we're exhausted after dealing with an incursion."

"That pattern could repeat forever," said a faunus. "What's to stop her just grinding us down over years and years? We'll fall eventually and she has all the time in the world."

"That would be where Jaune comes in." Sienna waved his way. "Our aura-capable fighters, our own huntsmen, proved themselves invaluable against the church. They weren't as skilled as Chosen obviously, but they were stronger than any normal soldier could have been. The more time we have, the more of those we get – and they'll get better and better over time. I wonder how long it will be before every single person on Menagerie has aura. Whether or not they keep attacking, there'll be a tipping point sooner or later where our people outclass theirs, and at that point they're less grinding us down as grinding themselves down."

"And then?" asked Taiyang. "We let them go? Or do we counterattack?"

A counterattack. It must have been what Ozma wanted, a chance to take the battle to Salem, and yet he wasn't sure how that would work. They'd only need to take out Atlas, Vale and Vacuo now that Mistral was reduced to ruins, but that was still three whole kingdoms, each major city, and no doubt numerous other fortifications across the land. It was no small feat. A campaign like that would take decades.

"We can't conquer the world. Even if every single person here was on the level of the dark lord, we'd still fail by sheer numbers. There's just no way."

"We don't have to conquer anything," said Sienna, cutting off that avenue. "Ultimately the church exists because of Salem so cutting off the head would solve the issue – but that's not anything we have in plan just yet. Let's focus on defending ourselves before we start overreaching."

There were nods around the table, and a general lessening of tension. They'd come to reclaim Menagerie, and he could imagine several had been very angry at the idea of leaving it to take on Salem. They might have thought that was his influence over Sienna, and that he was using them for his end like the dark lords before him.

"In truth, I would not begrudge you staying here forever," said Ozma. "On a strategic level it benefits me just as much. A life spent here training up huntsmen and expanding Menagerie would give me a far greater base from which to assail Salem in the future."

Jaune hummed to show he agreed but didn't comment. He didn't think Sienna and the faunus would like to know that Ozma was thinking of their worth in battle, even if that was a hundred years or more from now. It was doable, though. Salem had backed herself into a corner with her claims of aura being a gift from her to a select few women; it meant that even if she tried, she couldn't just up recruitment of Chosen without some people asking why, and her lies coming down around her. He, on the other hand, could unlock the aura of every single faunus on the island if he wanted and no one would question it.

"We have our plans," said Sienna. "Get to work on walls and ditches – but remember to be mindful of those who have lost people. We'll need a group of steady faunus who are willing to keep an eye on the shore, fish out any bodies that wash up and bury them. The last thing we need is disease breaking out here. If anyone wants to go out and try to salvage ships and supplies, then that'll be good as well. Use your intuition. We're not a monarchy here and I'm not your queen. We're all free faunus working together." There were nods all around, and pleased grunts. "Do what you think is best, but let's work together to give our people the best chance they can have."

"Aye!" chorused the crowd.

/-/

As much as Jaune had intended to use his magic to carve great trenches and ditches in the landscape, Sienna had convinced him that his time could be better used unlocking aura and training new warriors to use it. The last vestiges of reluctance had faded away in the face of the church's attack, and seeing how brave and impactful their own huntsmen were, and now it was all but impossible to find people unwilling to volunteer. He focused on the warriors first, those most able to fight, but civilians and children showed up as well, and soon he had to teach Ren and Ruby how to unlock aura just to keep up with the demand. Blake, Adam, and a few others including Pyrrha were overtaking general training.

Within a few days, well over a thousand men and women were partnered up and throwing bags filled with sand at one another, using that as practice on activating and controlling their aura to block the stinging impact. Over one thousand people with aura; Pyrrha had said that there were probably less Chosen than that in all of Vale, though across the three remaining kingdoms there were probably over two thousand in total.

Still, to have half the numbers of the church in so small a time was staggering, and the only reason it wasn't greater was because they were too drained to unlock more, and because Menagerie couldn't afford every single person to be practicing, or no other work would get done. As it was he had a feeling they'd need to create a rota to alternate training days, because those ditches needed to be built and there were farms of crops to be harvested.

The last of the prisoners had been released that morning. In the end Sienna had decided to release them in thirds over three days to make them less likely to try anything. With the last of them gone, it was at most a week before the retreating army reached Vale again, or maybe they'd landed on Mistral to gather supplies. Either way, time would eventually run short. The wall had only been sketched out by rocks at the moment, and teams were busy looking for more that could fit it. They lacked the time to cut them into blocks or bricks, so they were just being stacked up as a mound with the gaps filled in by clay left to bake in the sun.

It wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing. Some faunus were trying to shore it up and build a small wooden wall behind it, but the main defence was going to be the ditches. Mindless Grimm charging en masse with no regard for their safety would trip and fall into them, then be crushed by their allies behind, so in a very real sense every hundred metres of steep trenching might account for a hundred or more Grimm. If Sienna had her way, the island would be cut apart by ditches.

Jaune sighed and approached Pyrrha, who was watching over about two hundred people, split into a hundred groups of pairs. Her group had run out of sandbags and were using sticks to wail on one another. Only willow branches, so it was painful but not dangerous. The constant swish-crack of the branches hitting still made him wince.

"How is it going?"

"Rushed," said Pyrrha. "Our training was infinitely slower back home. You didn't even start on the physical aspect until after you'd learned the history of aura and attended a year of theoretical study on the goddess and the church." Her lips peeled downward. "Which I realise now is a long-winded way of saying we were all indoctrinated. Even so, when we did start physical training it was never this rough."

"Do you think this is too rough?"

"No. A lot of them are adults and made of stern stuff. They can handle the pain and it's a good motivator. I'm going to suggest a lighter method when we do start teaching children, though."

"That's a good idea. Are any picking it up?"

"Here and there." Pyrrha pointed and he looked as a branch was deflected by a sheen of pink. The woman who had achieved it froze, as if surprised by her own actions, which meant she caught the second whip strike on her shoulder with a yelp. "These are fresh recruits. It's honestly incredible that anyone can manifest it even by accident, but then they've been doing this for two hours, switching over every fifteen minutes. I can't even hazard a guess as to how many will be capable of maintaining their aura in combat."

"I don't think it'll matter," said Jaune. "Everyone will have to fight – whether or not they're ready."

"Yes." Pyrrha grimaced. "And I know they'll have better odds than if they had no aura at all but… hah. It's painful. We're supposed to stop the Grimm. Oh, that reminds me. Coco has promised to fight with us against the Grimm."

"That's good. How is she doing?"

"Better. She's been out a few times and she visited the prisoners before they left. I think seeing them helped, though not in the way you might think. She tried to convince them of what we saw and they accused her of heresy and treachery." He hadn't expected any different. "The funny thing is, Coco came back to me after and wouldn't stop ranting on how blind and stupid they all are, and how they won't use their brains when they can rely on their faith." Her smile was bitterly amused. "I think it's opened her eyes a little. This morning she went for a walk across Menagerie and even talked to a few faunus. I think she's coming around."

Strange to think all it took was her meeting people who had been as she once had, but maybe that was all you needed to make you open your eyes to how unreasonable you had been. It wasn't entirely fair of course, since Coco and Pyrrha had seen the irrefutable proof of the Relic of Knowledge, while the others had not.

"With your permission, I'd like to hold some classes with the better warriors among the faunus and start to teach them how to fight against Grimm."

"Huh?" Jaune glanced to her. "Me? You should be asking Sienna for permission. I'm sure she'd give it, but what exactly do you mean?"

"Fighting Grimm is different from people," she explained. "They don't react the same way a thinking opponent does. Human on human combat is a balance of risks, with each side trying to preserve their life, and humans being relatively frail. Grimm are different. Aside from the mental aspect, the physiology just isn't the same. Stabbing a person in the bicep can cause them to drop their weapon and bleed out, but you're more likely to lose a sword in the meat of a Grimm. Even certain weapons are less viable. The hafts of spears will break and the points will rarely dig deep enough to be a problem. Thinner swords won't have nearly enough weight to cut through a Beowolf's arm."

"Didn't your old partner use a bow?"

"Partner-? Oh, you mean Cinder? We were just assigned together to Ansel. But no, her bow was metal and her arrows were designed specifically for Grimm. They were heavy tipped, wickedly serrated, and with multiple barbs. The arrowhead alone had four edges like a cross-shape to maximise the amount of damage it would do on the way in. You really want heavy, cutting weapons like axes, cleavers, and two-handed swords. Things that have the weight necessary to cut through an arm half a foot thick without getting stuck."

And the training to use such would be different from using them against a human, because that was based around weapon against weapon combat. Jaune nodded. His own father had taught him and the girls to use spears against Grimm, but that was on the idea of a whole bunch of people against a lone Grimm, prodding and poking to keep it at a distance and hoping that enough of you could bring it down before it carved you all to pieces.

"Do you think we stand a chance?" asked Jaune. "What's your opinion as a huntress?"

"I just don't know. We were dispatched to deal with small amounts of Grimm, which I realise now is because Salem held them back. It makes me wonder what the places that were lost to them did to upset her. As for here, it'll depend on how many there are. There hasn't been a real Grimm attack like this since… well, I guess Mistral counts but I mean there hasn't been one recorded where anyone survived to tell of it. I'm concerned, obviously. We beat back the church so she won't be as arrogant this time. She might take her time and gather a truly immeasurable horde."

Her voice was quiet enough that only he could hear, and that was for the best. Those training were determined to learn their aura so they could defend themselves and their loved ones, and it wouldn't do for them to realise just how unlikely that all was. Jaune looked out over the mass of students as they brought their willow branches down. Aura flashed here and there in small bursts, and Pyrrha was quick to walk among them and tell them how they could keep hold of that feeling and keep using it.

It might not be enough, but it would be better than nothing. This wasn't his fault, either. As Taiyang had said, they would have tried to return to Menagerie anyway, and knowing what they did from Jinn, Salem would have attacked again regardless.

All he was doing was giving them a fighting chance.

I do feel significantly better for having a week off.

My sleep schedule is back in a good place, I don't think I've had a single headache and my mood is drastically improved. Put on a little weight, though. Went too lazy.

Next Chapter: 30th April

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