"Weiss!"
Ruby raised up an arm to shield her eyes from the screaming wind as she moved through the disordered ranks of her peers from all over the world clustered together next to the wreck of the Sanus Express. Making a beeline straight for the unmistakable pale figure of her partner. Under the storm over head and dangerously near the now extremely close jet engines of the landing airships, it was a minor miracle the young Huntresses' voice was carried to her partner. But the Heiress from the north heard and had some choice words of her own to respond.
"Ruby!" Weiss shouted in a tone that had more than a little irritation accompanying its volume. And still much less than the Heiress wished to express having seen what she had this day. "What were you thinking?! Running after him and that thing?!"
"Wha? I… I saved," The younger girl replied with a scowl, indignant for the briefest of moments. "Never mind. Where's Yang?"
Choking back any further tongue lashing and trying to accept the plain good news her dolt of a team leader was still alive, along with the giant who might just get them through this after all. Weiss simply pointed her rapier towards the museum, above which gunships and the few converted airliners fired autocannons and what missiles they had at the Grimm that broke from the thick circling crowd on the far edge of the city to try their luck.
But Myrtenaster aimed low towards a small group of injured on the ground with their backs against the wall. Among them slumped and limp was Yang, with skin as pale as death. The toll of dismemberment on her vitality plain for all to see. Blood dripped on the ground when her already paper thin Aura flickered.
Blake knelt at her side, fixed on her scroll watching Yang's Aura level while rummaging through a small pile of medical supplies that she had managed to acquire on very short notice.
Ruby ran to them, slid close and pulled Yang's head to her chest. Not at all as delicately as her sister's condition warranted.
Pain, pain from Yang's wound and an even greater font in her heart welled up again. Tears fell from her lilac eyes while Yang gripped the red hood on Ruby's back with what little strength she had in her sole left hand. "Ruby… Raven …"
"I know," Ruby said, nothing in her tenure as team leader or other tender years of life brought her knowledge on how to comfort her sister. "I know… God Yang… But, but everything's going to be alright."
Blake muttered a curse of frustration, producing a syringe from the medical kits. Having quadruple checked the tiny print content and warning labels on all of them to make sure this was what her partner needed before jabbing the thin steel point into Yang's right shoulder. The blonde Huntress went limp immediately. Too weak to do anything but drift off unconscious in Ruby's arms.
"Quick," Blake commanded, a stern tone hiding her own concerns. "Give me a... Just help me."
It was not perfect, nothing happening this day could be described as such. The two girls had staunched the bleeding and wrapped Yang's severed arm as tight as they could. And when they were finished, Blake stood while Ruby lowered her sister to the ground trying to make her as comfortable as possible.
Meanwhile, Blake turned to look further afield with a stone cold look on her face. Which did not go unnoticed by Weiss, who asked. "How in the world are you so calm right now?"
Like she had been shocked by a cattle prod Blake, twitched at the polished sound of Weiss' voice.
"Oh," The Faunus said self-consciously, letting out a long deep breath. "Well… I'm not… But what good would that do? Panicking I mean?"
She reached out her right hand wrapped in the black ribbon bound to her weapon and gripped Weiss' shoulder. "But we're almost home." Blake said barely above a whisper.
A blur of red and one word signaled the presence of Ruby. "Hey…"
And the two older girls pulled Ruby into their embrace and one by one leaned their heads forward together. Solace found in the silence. They were still together. A price had been paid they all suspected they might have to for victory. One that would linger for the rest of their lives.
But it would not be in vain.
So they believed until a call came over the air.
"Retreat…"
Not leave, not withdraw. Retreat.
Flee
Escape.
Those that heard the word didn't believe it, those who had not heard and were soon told didn't believe those who had told them in turn. All the negative that one word conjured spread like ice frost across the Hunters.
In the distance the Grimm drew closer.
At the hole torn in the airship, surrounded on all sides by comrades sharing nigh the same expression of absolute shock stood Kad Amaranth. Hands clenched and trembling in throttled rage as he repeated himself.
"Retreat." The giant said calmly. "Onto the ships. We're going, Now."
Coco was the first to break from the surprise shock, "No! Don't just sweep this by," She knifed her right hand between Kad and the empty room at his back. "Where the fuck are the bombs?!"
The giant almost bared his teeth, and his own left hand rose up. A dozen separate trains of thoughts birthed and killed in his brains as they all boiled down to it didn't matter at this moment now.
But from Coco's team the pale eyed Huntsman Fox asked, "Didn't you look any time since we left?"
"Why in the world would I?" Kad snapped and snarled in reply. Before quickly dipping down next to his feet and grabbing one of the broken crates it took two average soldiers to lift in one hand.
"Here," He said after the briefest sideways glance at a nigh microscopic print. "I remember. Serial number One-Nine-Eight-Eight-Gamma-Gamma-Oh-Four-Six-Six. Short circuited the control panel twice in rewiring. I had to build a completely new one that could handle the new background power radiation."
He threw the crate to the ground, hard enough to smash the hardened case into further pieces and sending the teams back half a step before grabbing another one. "Serial number One-Eight-Six-Seven-Hotel-Foxtrot-Three-Three-Three. Crack in the primary Dust crystal. I replaced it when I first opened this one up."
Then again with the next closest bomb case. "Serial number Three-Seven-One-One-Romeo-Echo-One-One-Five. Power surge from my crystal almost blew me up. Twice. I remember. This, this was the one I cracked the secret with. The first one I gutted and rebuilt a hundred times better!"
With an almost casual brutality Kad crumpled the case between his hands like a student disgusted with the first draft of their homework.
"Hours of work," He lamented, "I remember all of it. All of the other work I had to do to get us ready, keep the airships floating and plan out our victory. And I remember putting these here in these crates after I had finished. I do not recall any reason since we would have moved them until now. All the way back in Vale right before we left…"
Alicia found her voice, "Well. Did the Grimm get them?"
Cardin turned on her, "Hey! We almost died to keep those safe! Don't say we lost them."
Attempting to intervene before nerves boiled over into violence they couldn't afford Penny said, "Negative." Static growing behind her voice like a hidden ball of phlegm. "M-My scans were clear."
Arguments and counter points came and went in a rising tide of voices trying to shout over one another. Co'Balt gave a thought to his team leader, "Grimm' would have taken the whole vault if they tried for these during the crash. I mean right?"
Kad quietly looked down at his friend desperate for a logical answer. One he couldn't provide.
"Well," The Faunus continued, "…We don't need those stupid things!"
Gripping the shotgun barrel-shaft of his ax tight, the old fire in Co'Balt's dark eyes simmered. "We still have you, and that crystal. We can still win!"
Pride almost brought a tear to Kad's face. However his iron mask did not slip. The darkness of prophecy growing heavier and heavier with each passing second they lingered here among the monsters. "No brother, whatever initiative we still had is gone. We are…"
The Huntsman stopped, looking up and over his comrades who turned to track his gaze to the artificial horizon of Vacuo. At his back, Hunters and soldiers took pause in making ready to leave the dead city.
All of the still standing girls of team RWBY having broken from their embrace at the call to retreat. And approached seeking answers began bringing blades and guns up to ready with their compatriots. Even with no single Grimm still in sight. The warriors of Remnant heeded the warning brought by the cold pit in their stomachs that something sinister was on its way. It was herd instinct, that a predator was staring them down looking for the weak from someplace they could not see.
The shimmering air from the desert heat through burnt out buildings and abandoned streets guttered out below a deep chill. The sun behind the conjured storm clouds had been fighting a losing battle to be seen for many hours. Now disappeared, like the Primarch had commanded their small force to do. A command many now sincerely wished they had given more haste to follow.
Shadows swept towards their battle line, such that one could easily have been mistaken night had fallen. But none of the Hunters believed this newest phenomenon was anything so mundane or natural. Even the airship pilots banked to keep their craft in the perceived safety of what little radiance remained in the sky.
Credence of their new circumstances accepted in her heart, along with a sense of dread cold and heavy like a yearlong Atlas blizzard Weiss asked of her teammates and those who could hear her, "So how were we getting out of here?"
Ruby gave her an answer, and placed one of her last full magazines into a half furled Crescent Rose.
And so a small piece of foretelling came to pass. When the unmistakable silhouette of the second lord of the Grimm manifested from the lengthening shadows. Spectral wings wide catching the air and lowering it to the ground that impossibly cracked beneath the gentle landing. At its back another score of alpha Grimm slowly loping into reality.
Its twin ugly scimitars spun up between razor white claws with a relish plain to see. The Grimm called to the Huntsman.
"Char'Nalax gave you his prophecy! My prophecy says your doom is nigh!"
As fast as the lightning he conjured Kad struck out and a bolt of power flashed from Remnant through the crystal and his right hand across the field. Striking the twin swords brought to block moments before the Primarch had attacked. Energy spilled out in arcs, black fur, scales and feathers caught fire as sparks and coils landed on the other Grimm while their feathered master was crushed back through building after building as if under the prow of a freight train leaving a cloud of shattered concrete.
The conjured beam petered into nothingness, Kad did not linger in the relief that came in its absence. He focused on that pain, returning to the rage burning like a branding iron against his soul and leapt into motion.
Gleaming like a star and the sound of the storm overhead echoed from the bottom of his lungs he charged into the dark after the Grimm. A living beacon of light with blazing Aura and eyes, fueled by the crystal in his hand. Ignoring the other daemons too stunned by his display of power to offer any resistance.
The other Hunters' equal parts thinking this bravery and insanity watched the giant run head first into danger alone once again. Each and every one of them soon readied their myriad weapons and followed on the heels of their champion and leader. Finding no reason this time to let him fight this battle alone.
The beast was picking itself up in the middle of a bomb blasted crater, an accidently perfectly shaped arena some dozens of meters across. Gray dirt clinging to its once pearlescent armor and midnight black feathers. The clash of blades against bone and teeth dulled behind the rubble filled ridge of the pit.
The deaths were almost enough.
Kad slid down the gentle slope and up to his feet, pushing forward as hard as his muscles would propel him. So fast he would almost appear to be flying with another energy laced punch back and ready to swing.
A shockwave of light blasted out as his fist contacted with a translucent sphere mere inches from the crossed blades of the Grimm. Kad grit his teeth and held the rushing river of power searing his bones trying to push through.
His foe gave a cackle, and a smile with too many teeth in its beak "Such anger Huntsman. Yessss… So much time we wasted on this game…Oh, we have sampled many small deceptions returning to our vaunted ways."
The daemon leaned closer to fully capture Kad's reaction to what it said next. "But what just transpired we played no part in…"
"…I know."
The killings continued, Hunter teams swarmed over their foes working in perfect synergy bringing down beast after beast. The tiny spark of consciousness that drove the conjured flesh cast away onto the tides of the ocean that spawned them.
Tides which had been redirected. Back to the world of Dust, swirling in an inescapable vortex towards a kin to them that stood many ranks higher in the eyes of its court. Pushing the chords of power sung in death from an entire murdered kingdom to a final swollen point.
Another saw this, and a dark understanding dawned.
Kad's swept out his fighting knife and in a super human eye blink finally pierced the fraying barrier. Two of the Grimm's gangly fingers on its right hand fell to the ground with a thud. Not enough to relieve the monster of its weapon but it was a start.
Twisting the stabbing point back for a riposte the Primarch could not help but pause for an imperceptible moment. Eyes drifting down to the wound he made, a paltry repayment to the suffering this thing had caused.
Watching as instead of the black smoke he was all too familiar with spill from the wound, came a ghastly antonym to the fire he was bathed in. A familiar and unsettling blaze.
A sheer pulse shattered the air, the Daemon threw its arms wide. Projecting a wave of power sending a distracted Kad sailing backwards into the slope of the pit. Where he remained prone and suffering for a painfully long stretch of time, under the literal weight of the world pressing from the power he wielded.
Long enough for the Daemon to give another unholy laugh, " Lo high above does your father wait to prove the superiority of his design. As do you as you lead your flock to His sssslaughter."
Their leader on his back below the taunting Grimm was not quite the inspiring sight the first of the Hunters to crest the rise expected to see. Their out runners being team JNPR, followed closely by what remained of the teams APRC and RWBY. And taking stock of the scene soon too were beguiled by what was pouring from the creature's wound.
Red eyes moved with a weltering malevolence over the paltry numbers behind Kad who rose to his feet with what haste could be mustered feeling every muscle in his body slip and stretch.
The daemon was pleased.
"He knows Huntsman," The daemon hissed with a mocking tone, " He knows you are tainted. So seeks to at leasssst salvage something of worth from the cards that have been dealt. Perhapssss see just how much of the truth he can show your kind by letting this game come to its bloody conclusion. Thinking that the rules are still as you both believe them. Little knowing the table on which we play is about to be flipped asunder!"
Thunder cracked across the sky, sounds of negative energy reaching a final crescendo.
And Skar'rar the Schemer did something unexpected.
The twin curved blades spun and plunged up to the hilt in the Grimm's own stomach.
Its spiked back arched and curled in exquisite agony as the wings stretched out to their limit. Fire that was nothing of the sort spilled around the glinting metal sliding deep into black oiled guts. Hunters reeled back in both revulsion and shock. Doubly so when one trembling black hand missing two fingers was brought away from the swords. Before the beak that had uttered so many lies and falsehoods through millennia after millennia. Opened one more time and snapped down with a cannon crunch of breaking bone onto its own forearm.
Tearing the maimed appendage free.
Hair on the back of Kad's neck stood rigid, from the close cropped black strands on his scalp down to the base of his spine. A chill ran through his Aura.
One that had nothing to do with the disemboweling occurring.
Memories of memories which hadn't quite completely disappeared, and haunted him for years stung behind his eyes once again.
Faster than any could perceive he spun back and upwards, throwing his arms to the sky.
Pyrrha was the first to free herself from the stupor. Realizing that even Kad, the most determined out of all was paralyzed. On the brink of action but held spellbound.
Just needing someone to take a step, as he did for all of them not so long ago. As all the others who had followed him into the mouth of hell and were now staring at the devil himself.
Pyrrha took one step forward, readying Milo' her rifle spear.
Then there was a flash. And the invincible girl was caught in an explosion of light.
The bolt of lightning that was not lightning came careening down from beyond the blackened sky. Kad spun and braced his Aura with a speed and instinct no Hunter in history could hope to match. The bolt ricocheted beyond his control off what he interposed between.
And struck Pyrrha square in the chest.
Kad was slammed to the ground, a wave of dirt shot up like a bomb had been dropped on his chest. Blood spurted from his mouth between the breaths his body covered in waves of light, forced him to take to send away the shock. He managed to roll one blurry eye in the direction the beam careened off in.
Some of the others saw the briefest glimpse of Pyrrha enwrapped in energy crying out as her Aura flared and she spasmed in pain before vanishing without a single trace.
Jaune, Nora and Ren stood in mirrored poses, arms raised blinking spots from their eyes. All aimed towards the hole torn in their team and family and the loose sand settling down in it. The battle and the world forgotten, as only a single fact about what just happened could be completely understood.
Pyrrha was gone.
"No… "
Kad hissed out that word to the black unmoving sky, hauling his bulk up to a sitting position trying to get his legs underneath once again.
"No… I… Made my, choice… It is mine… Father, they need… I have to finish this… I have to save them. "
Skar'rar laughed again, a bloody wet laugh that was near enough a coughing fit. " That was your one chance to esssscape Huntsman."
The ivory claws of the one hand it had left curled and scythed upwards tearing into the flesh beneath its beak digging deep as it flexed muscles and pulled its own face away as simply as one might discard a veil for a masquerade.
And when the last wet clinging tendons snapped, this latest suit of socerously formed flesh erupted with the gathered power. The Lord of Change gave a hideous sigh of release.
The daemon fully manifest at last.
Remnant rumbled below, like the planet itself was shuddering at the thing that had just been placed down on the surface.
Jaune's breaths came hard and heavy as the cold pit in his chest spread from his heart to his stomach on a wave. Feeling like a child again now without the first person who had believed in him. Hopelessly lost and drowning in the immensity of being the Huntsman he so desperately wanted to be with all his soul.
"Pyrrha's dead." It rang through his head over and over again.
A new blaze lit out across the field. The giant calling on his might and the power of the Dust. Screaming in defiance and pain as he did so. Warmth spread through the air again, offering strength to those who needed it now more than ever.
The warmth turned hot and wrathful beneath Jaune's skin. He screamed his grief out to the world and charged down the crumbling slope.
Like a shattering of glass the other youths snapped into action. The melody of metal from readying weapons alerted Kad to their intent.
He roared out in command, "Concentrate at range! Now!"
Punching forward with both fists carrying blade and shard, a jet of fire erupted at his will. Held persistent and bright, like a spot lamp directing the others. Bullets and slugs cracked down into the opposing inferno. Bolts of Dust darted out, before whole shards of the element were hurled like grenades and a luminous emerald green beam connected almost simultaneously with the volley fire.
Its soul piercing gaze moved over the mortals. Seeing the threads of fate that would be so easy to read and pull upon to his master's design. The daemon banished the temptation to plot and weave.
Looking instead elsewhere. To the spark of life that untold numbers of other mortals had which burned like a flame in the warriors opposing his chaos. So bright, so precious, things that for thousands of years he had coveted. And the little piece of the limitless power of the great ocean reflected through those flames.
Granting a semblance of the power that he could call upon to heights unfathomable.
So with a wickedly cruel thought Skar'rar looked through those Auras and the gifts they provided, and he found one appropriate to this situation.
From an alabaster figure, side by side with her chosen sisters. Plying the cursed Dust that stung his form with a fraction of the power the even more cursed Primarch did.
And spun his own might out in bloom like a dark flower, in reflection of that semblance.
"Witness and succumb!" A force sibilated on the wind, "To the mark of divinity!"
In front the twisting migraine that was their target sprung a symbol. Those who could stomach it for long without turning away and vomiting saw an orb trailing two tails of flame shrouded by a barbed circle as Auras plummeted shielding their minds. Shifting through maddening colors out of space, and what they saw within that orb promised more insanity yet to come.
A glyph writ in Daemon tongue blocking the first salvo of the Hunters and silencing the arms which attempted to deliver it.
Blinded by wrath to the madness awaiting Jaune ran forward. Skin blistering in the heat as fast as it healed from his Aura. Crocea Mors swung high, aiming for what its latest inheritor believed to be a leg. The only thing he could see, long avian and temptingly within reach out of a thousand blurry contradictions.
Those patterns, flowing and mutating into a more coherent shape with every second. Lashed down upon the grief ridden Huntsman whose view filled up with dirt. As a giant boot slammed into Jaune's back with no small amount of force.
Kad's Primarch brain read those shapes finding a familiarity he had buried deep within the back of his mind. Learned from the nightmare he had lived between his first memories, and finding himself on Remnant.
Only he saw the sword in those shapes coming down on his friend.
Finding his foot a kinder option than his blade or even worse the crystal to send Jaune to the dirt winded but alive. Black iron crashed into existence and the ground skidding off from his leg when it failed to bite through the giant's Aura. Kad threw his bulk forward and low, shattering the daemon symbol and grappling hard with the twisting mass behind it.
An ear splitting roar came forth from the thing that once was the Grimm. The other Hunters' Auras flared and they found their wits, and Penny set them to task.
"Flank and cover Kad!" She yelled, "Go wide!"
"Sssssso you remember. But you do not understand Huntsman!"
Pulses equal in strength, yet opposite in force and feeling pounded on senses as the two fought trading blows.
Skar'rar sensed the little lights encircling. Searched through their gifts and picked out another semblance to mimic.
Cardin, the one selected like a lamb for slaughter was the first to feel this effect. One mirrored from his own semblance. Magnification , the power to increase the hold the universe had on something with that force that bound all things together called, gravity. He slowed, running steps becoming slow shuffles. Breath coming in ragged bursts while this effect spread out.
Aura's rippled as bones began to quake. Only a few of his peers able to take at most half a dozen steps before they collapsed under their own pronounced weight falling to the dirt.
The thing Kad reasoned was a blade viciously swung up, a blow telegraphed with no subtlety and dodging it required him to simply lean back a hair's breadth. It still kissed the side of his face near enough to shaving it off completely. This new power slowing his brothers and sisters manifested against him as well, dragging on superhuman muscles.
But Kad found an opening.
Right arm snapped up, and pressed the crystal down on the blade. Pinning it to his shoulder beneath the unnaturally heavy limb and his own peerless strength. Wrenching the guard wide open for his knife to rise up. Strike true and come away with a coating of what looked like blood.
"Pathetic! " The schemer hissed, drawing the sword back with a trail of what was definitely blood and Aura light. Beating at Kad with two wings that came into focus, "And far too mundane!"
Metal clashing rang out again. Red eyes at the peak of the blurry shape of nightmares resolved themselves in sinister clarity flicking down in surprise. Penny brought a dozen green edged swords webbing around the much larger slab of metal and threw her own considerable might and the artificially magnified weight driving it into the dirt.
Long enough for Jaune to launch himself up with a renewed cry and plunge his ancestral sword up to the hilt in Ska'Rars' back.
As gravity pushed him down, his semblance pushed back.
Jaune's new found ability granting him some mobility reflecting the malignant force off his shoulders. His entire Aura shone with effort. Which he knew could not be maintained. Rows of teeth in a gnashing beak of a mouth manifested and finally produced a place from whence the Hunters could see it hiss in pain.
They pressed the attack.
Sparks cascaded down from a dozen swords grinding off the daemon blade, and spinning like a buzzsaw up. The feathered neck wove away dancing as a cobra would have. Into range of the knife seeking more blood. It drank a shallow draught cutting a finger length through something considered flesh. Ska'Rar stepped back and away, feeling the Crocea Mors slide free with a moment's pain. The long knife swept back carving a shallow trail across its chest and the armored plate that manifested almost in response to the danger.
Crocea Mors moved again. The daemon's blade careened up and against the old sword. Knocking it and the Huntsman who bore it back. Cleaving for the mechanical girl on its down stroke. Running a hundred separate tactical calculations and finding all of them not in her favor, Penny leapt back as far as the cloying weight would let her. Kad saw it wouldn't be enough. He focused his own semblance and let out another blast of energy through the crystal. Spending more precious energy and stamina to knock the questing blade off target.
Its twin slashing into reality in the Daemon's other hand found its mark. Skidding off the giant's arm and Aura, chipping another piece of that ethereal defense away. Nearly enough to let the first sword coming back around pierce the soul shield to gut the Primarch where he stood.
Seeking space and snarling in frustration, Kad reached out to Remnant again. Instead of commanding particles to move and burn, he brought them to almost complete stillness. Ska'Rar had a moment to look down at the frost covering his form. Ice erupted from nothing locking his blades, wings and limbs in a cold, cold death grip mirroring the Primarchs clenched fist.
The daemon gave a mighty roar, swelling in size and power that buffeted all with waves of force bursting forth from the would-be cocoon. Jagged shards of ice taken in its' invisible hand and sent scything at Penny and Jaune. Soon intercepted in another wave of fire from Kad. More of the precious energy he had gathered spent and gone.
The terrible voice hammered on the ears, the arithmetic of energy moving balance to favor him more and more every time the giant wasted power like this. " You can't save your weakling pets! And defeat me!"
The daemon's focus on keeping the other Hunters pinned down waned towards a greater weave of sorcery. Forms of power curated from several semblances.
And one, whose once bearer was nowhere among the Hunters.
Arms and swords splayed wide, Ska'Rar unleashed his spell. From the space its dark flame stood polluting Remnant leapt another brace of figures. Clear and lethal in their intent as their wings launched them at the Hunters just regaining their feet. More mirror images of the true shape of the daemon, which was now plain as day for all to see in its terrible glory.
Energy curled around Kad's fingers and the crystal as he struck. Intending to punch through the conjuration coming and at his hellish opponent. He would not be tricked by any simple illusion.
But the strike met resistance.
Enough for him to realize by the time his glowing fist and crystal burst out through the back of the winged thing and its dying bulk slammed into his chest, that they were no mere trick of the eye. And five more of them grafted into the shadow flesh of the Grimm, unarmed but for their claws and teeth but no less deadly for it were swooping towards the other Hunters.
Ruby, like all the others could only see a column of un-fire where this Grimm had once stood and tore itself apart. The harder she tried to wrap her mind around what her silver eyes saw her friends fighting, the more it hurt her brain. Where she laid upon the ground pressed under an invisible hand. The pressure abated soon enough, she shook the stars out of her silver eyes.
The young Huntress' heart leapt up into her throat. Using the spiked end of Crescent Rose to push herself up from the ground as hard as she could into the air, seeing red eyes in a white bone mask barreling down on her. As her boots left the ground she channeled her semblance, spinning off in a blur of rose petals.
Another fragment of power was woven through this puppet of shadow flesh.
And the Grimm thing pursued her, coming apart in a dark cloud of its own hot on the Huntress' trail. They came down together, Ruby letting out a scream seeing death even closer descending in a handful of talons that raked down her front across her face and chest. Her Aura held on with the barest dregs of strength she could muster under the blow. A hot wind and a guttural roar followed the strike.
White light burst across the field.
Two spectral arms, covered in plate armor sprouted from a glyph Weiss conjured between her leader and the monster. Fingers the length of her forearms latched onto an equally massive black limb, and up to the first knuckle around its throat.
Weiss shouted out to her teammates, her voice thick with effort. "Do something! Hurry!"
"Lady Bug!"
Ruby shouted out to Blake, several meters away now on the other side of this Grimm. Together they leapt, hair trailing in waves behind them in the wind swinging scythe and sword. Edged metal parted sorcery conjured skin, and again as the two Huntresses leapt back and forth. Cutting higher and higher each pass.
Until Crescent Rose and Gambol Shroud met in a clash of bone on blades. The monster gave no sound while its left arm fell and vanished severed at the shoulder. The deep drawing cuts left upon its hide immediately beginning to close.
They needed Dust. Weiss knew this, having seen the element overcome this mending power time and time again. She raised Myrtenaster . And flicked three cold white bolts away. On target at the end of their errant twisting flight paths. The Grimm staggered back only slightly still grappled by the arms of her summon. Frost and Dust burst and packed into the gaping wounds. Pushing the sealing edges back away from each other.
For a moment.
The wounds still closed. Cracking the crystal forms as they closed inexorably as tectonic plates.
Ruby and Blake shot at the deep lacerations. More dark energy flowed into this cloned nightmare. And between blinks of an eye it vanished. Just as Blake would have, displacing itself a short space away.
Free from the conjured arms. Free from the Dust.
Ska'Rar's shadow rounded on Ruby and Blake claws fencing off their weapons and driving them back. Weiss looked at her sword and knew what she needed to do.
A quick glyph sent the Heiress shooting forward. Burying the rapier up to the hilt in the last gap remaining below the shadow spewing stump of the arm, a new limb already sprouting several inches out like a tenaciously returning tree branch.
The cries of her team ringing in her ears Weiss set off the Dust vials. All of them.
Myrtenaster, unable to channel that much energy came apart like a grenade. As Weiss suspected it might but desperately hoped it wouldn't . The explosion that followed sent her sailing back through the air shimmering with the dying light of her broken Aura. She did not feel the impact with the dirt.
Or see the monster blown in two.
So focused on the raw need of vengeance for Pyrrha, Jaune had completely forgotten about the other two young Hunters he held as family. And seeing them under such peril sent ice washing down through his chest to his feet.
"No!" He yelled out. Turning his back on Ska'Rar manifested and charging at the Primarch again. Repeating that word again and again. A desperate half thought out plan formed before Jaune could even consider it was probably a bad idea.
He jumped with all the strength he had left. And gripped the hyperextended first two fingers of his sword hand around a clone Grimm's foot.
First his shoulder came out of its socket. Jaune screamed in pain as coming off from the ground dragged along like a tick behind the flying beast. It looked down in annoyance at the unwanted passenger. And with one swift kick tossed the swordsman through the air towards the bulk of the lesser Hunters.
Ren, Nora and all their compatriots with munitions left and guns to use them in, fired doing nothing to halt the monster's charge. Jaune quickly tucked his knees to his chest and rolled across the ground. His landing strategy, sloppy as it was, still a hundred times better than the first he had failed to apply so long ago in the emerald forest.
Pushing the dislocated arm back into place on the ashen sand below with another shout of pain. The blonde Huntsman rolled to his feet. Three of the Grimm came down on the group, fangs out and hungry for souls.
The monster not quite to the utmost right in front of them slashed down, ready to tear Jaune's head off and then move onto the last of team JNPR. His sword arm numb in shock, the Huntsman swung up with his shield.
And with his semblance.
Another flash lit out in the darkness. First the Grimm's claws, then its entire arm were torn apart by its own might reflected away. Bone fragments blowing out through the black skin, the construct skidded back pulled by the momentum.
Wrenching Crocea Mors out in a wide circle trying to get blood flowing again Jaune shouted and charged. Ren and Nora behind him.
To team JNPR's right Alicia and Co'Balt ran.
Finding an uncomfortable familiarity staring down the red eyes of this Grimm they had been told to flee from by Kad every time they had met it in battle. And now he was trapped grappling the true face of whatever had emerged from the first mutilated monster corpse. Leaving them alone before the greater beast.
Co'Balt spun and threw his teammate over a shoulder, disappearing a short space away in a blur. Alicia ignored the familiar nausea and grit her teeth. A red glow settled over their piece of the field, the Huntress raised her Dust knife and concentrated. Needing the elemental power and her semblance infinitely more than the rifle-spear on her back. The Grimm barely even slowed crushing through the half formed sigil she laid in its path.
Co'Balt felt the shadow still looming over them, and quickly threw Alicia back. Took up his ax and steeled himself to give her all the time he could.
With another pulse of speed he jumped, the beast blinked and snarled when his fist covered in Aura crashed into its face. Cracks ripple on the white death mask then disappeared. That wild punching hand found its way back to the barrel shaft of Keila coming down with all of Co'Balt's rage and might and belief that they could be more. Stronger, better, unafraid and powerful as Kad told them they should be.
One red eye pulled a mockery of his semblance into being with the barest sliver of power.
As dismissively as one might shoo a fly, and faster than it had any right to the left arm backhanded Co'Balt down into the ground. His battle cry cut short as he plowed a trench in the soft gray dirt. The strength in the air shielded the brunt of the impact and kept the young bull Faunus from being scattered into pieces.
Outstretched to the sky and whatever might have been watching beyond those dark clouds, the talons of the Grimm seemed to impossibly gleam in the dark. That Alicia saw, the moment they began to descend stretching into infinity. As the first blow came down.
She gasped in cold shock knocked to the ground, red lines drawn across her skin beneath her black jacket tracing the course of the blow.
This Grimm slunk down three of its limbs on the ground like a loping wolf. The fourth out to play with its food.
A kaleidoscope of color shimmered into being, Alicia started throwing all she had left of her Dust. What strength she had barely enough to will the elemental bolts towards the Grimm. Desperately hoping volume would make up for a lack of focus and accuracy. But its disproportionate arm reached through the blasts. This time the talons caught her in the right shoulder, piercing through what little Aura was left through leather and flesh.
Across the field Myrtenaster exploded and took one of the creatures with it while Alicia screamed in searing pain. The Grimm sent her spinning up like a pinwheel. And before she hit the ground the serpentine neck darted forward.
Ska'Rar laughed, feeding on the delicacy of torment.
The evil sound echoing through the mouths of its creations.
Drowning Kad's battle cry trying to bury the dread dug deep in his heart, looking for any way he could refute the monster's claim.
A feeling which turned to cold shock as Ska'Rar stabbed through the one dying construct and carved along the giant's stomach. The giant was already in motion to let the blades only scrape against his Aura. Half a second's hesitation would have severed his spine. Like a pair of dancers Kad pulled the Daemon's arm into a crushing embrace and together they turned. Letting the laws of physics and momentum neither embattled creature controlled bring the Daemon to the ground.
It rolled as smoothly as could be expected for a thing the size of a small house into the throw, not letting the giant out of sight for more than a heartbeat. But in that blink of an eye the Primarch was on him. Kad gripped tight his weapons and hammered them both down onto the horrendously patterned armor. Churning the energy out in a torrent of sparks and flames as quickly as it came through Remnant and the Crystal, burning away at Ska'rar's essence.
Kad could tell immediately it was a losing gambit. Ska'Rar hissed in pain, but gladly accepted a battle of attrition. Its beaked face split open and belched a torrent of fire down onto the Huntsman. Drawing more power to the Primarch's protection that could have been spent against the Daemon. Doubly so when the swords with their poisoned edges began pushing deep into the shield of Kad's soul.
The Primarch knew it was no good. He needed more energy, more than he had ever mustered.
And time to collect it.
One dark blade levered his left arm and the knife at the end of it up between the eyes of crimson and amber that locked onto each other around the shining razor edge. Such a simple tool to one who only saw it as the long blade.
Other minds could perceive more.
"Treachery follows this traitor's knife Huntsman." Disgust and bile spilled up Kad's throat while the Daemon taunted him. Setting all his strength to breaking free to no avail.
Skar'Rar could not help but sneer drinking in the giant's turmoil after so long away from the core tenants one such as it was spun from. " In betrayal it was claimed. And betrayal found its way back again on that poor soul. But you shall not see the next turn of that cycle! Nor any of your impuissant cursssss!"
Behind him, Jaune had rushed off to the aid of his team. Penny turned and began readying a mighty blast of emerald energy.
Aiming for the Grimm that clasped Alicia in its jaws.
The ivory daggers that were its teeth came down hard. Blood flowed and Alicia screamed out in pain, before one of her lungs collapsed and she was left choking on the agony.
A heart beat later the Grimm's bone armored chest was vaporized. It moved both arms to explore the extent of the damage in surprise before completely dissipating back to the ether.
Co'Balt jackknifed to his feet and immediately pulsed his semblance jumping to catch Alicia falling to Remnant. Red coated his arms and chest as he did.
Kad's perfectly tuned senses gave him a clear picture of what was transpiring. With the Grimm, with the other Hunters… With his partner. Kad snarled and bared his teeth, sweat stung running down and falling from his face. He latched onto the rage and reached out for more power from the crystal.
Two of the five unholy creations had been slain. The other three being set upon by the Hunters still standing. Fighting for their world, their future.
Fighting for him, and his ideas.
"They aren't weak!" He roared back at Ska'Rar. "They never were!"
There was a desperate keening through his grinding teeth that had nothing to do with the pain surging through his Aura. With a shout Kad turned in their embrace and slipped to the ground, his hips and legs spreading perfectly in line and opposite directions.
"He couldn't fail them…"
A potential fate that hounded Kad for weeks. Sheer gut wrenching horror that everything he had done, all the lessons so painfully learned would be for nothing. The possibility that he might once again fail himself, fail his planet, and fail the ones he strove to be worthy enough to stand in their presence again with his every new waking moment was too terrible to consider.
Before the Daemon could look down in surprise Kad let loose another blast from his semblance. Driving it back and off balance.
"He couldn't defeat it and save his friends…"
Words of the enemy, who basked in lies. How true could that proclamation possibly be? He had power now never dreamed of by the Hunters of Remnant. It could carry the day, could it not?
If he had enough time to gather that power.
This the Primarch knew was as true as the shaking in his hands that clutched the crystal and the knife. Caused by the horrendously sickening feeling of a plan starting to form.
The others had accepted the risks.
But they weren't even supposed to be here…
Ska'Rar laughed sensing the realization Kad was coming too.
The mad cackling of chaos incarnate drew Ruby's vision back up to the battle from the pause she and Blake had taken to check on Weiss. The Heiress's head rolled to the side and her piercing blue eyes fluttered whilst unconsciousness took hold. The faint pulse of life she felt on Weiss' wrist, little comfort to Ruby.
Tears were already dripping down her eyes and would not stop no matter how much she tried to blink them away. Not even their work still undone could focus her away from these choking feelings, like cold water all round and she was starting to drown. Blake called her name. Ruby did not want to ignore the last member of her team. But she could not help herself, as time seemed to slow.
The rest of her friends still fought the remaining copies of the Grimm. Defiant and strong in the face of the apocalypse. The Huntress looked elsewhere,
Kad shot back up to his feet. But did not resume his attack on the terrifying collage of shapes and angles come into reality he had been dueling only moments ago.
Neither did the Daemon take up its onslaught.
Kad looked down to the crystal, luminous and hot like staring into the surface of the sun. Ruby heard him speak.
"Penny."
Atlas's crowning achievement. The artificial Huntress, the one Ruby might call her best friend, refrained from joining the others trying to lay the Grimm low. Turning back to Kad at the sound of her name. His voice was muted and hollow. Two warriors, one forged of flesh and the other of metal locked eyes to one another.
"Buy me some time." Kad said.
Penny knew what he was asking, and that she was the only one who could provide it.
She did not hesitate
Kad took one step back and raised his arms to the sky reaching deeper into this well than he ever had before. Light reflecting across the field, dazzling and brilliant, growing and growing against the shadows. Penny took three running strides and jumped. Arraying the dozen blades linked to her back glinting with her own prodigious Aura strength.
And Ska'Rar, satisfied in having schemed this, the Huntsman's lowest moment into being simply raised one hand.
Telekine power from a will most malevolent stopped the machine girl cold. The irresistible grip crushing Penny's vibrant aura to almost nothing.
Deflecting the coming storm of blades back. The razor thin cables cut deep into synthetic flesh. One tore Penny's left arm free into the wind billowing off of Kad. Three more wrapped around her stomach, slicing steel bones and a heart of power only one man on the planet truly understood. And parted the young girl in two.
The building column of light around Kad sputtered out. All his ironclad focus cracked and gone, the sundered upper half of Penny slammed into his chest. In reflex he moved to catch her, cradled in the crook of his left arm. The girl was already limp and oh so cold. Dark fluid leaked across his chest and sparks cascaded down from Penny's ruined insides at the proximity of the crystal shard. She tried to speak, but no words emerged. And Kad could only stare helplessly into the black pit of Penny's dilating pupil in the only remaining facade of an eye on her face.
Following one last glint of life and soul fading into the dark.
"Another lie you so readily wove into your pathetic little narrative Huntsman!"
Ruby couldn't move. The precipice she had been teetering on suddenly rushed up and swallowed her whole. It had all happened so fast, in such casual brutality. She didn't believe Penny could possibly be gone.
"I told you, you could not beat me and save the others… But you sssssshall not be doing either."
But she was. Ruby saw what remained of her friend crash to the ground like discarded scrap metal as Kad tried to defend himself as the Daemon struck. The radiance of his soul and the mystic shard buried beneath the oppressive hate that swelled Skar'Rar tenfold.
Cold burrowed deeper and deeper beneath her skin. And her tears flowed freely.
She could have done something, Ruby reasoned. And then became angry as she figured more than that, Kad could have done something! Shouldered this burden all on his own, and not placed any of them in this mortal danger. Played another trick. used another tactic, or this Dust he had put such faith in and actually done something with it.
Or if she hadn't been so weak, so distracted she could have aided the two of them in battle.
But she had not.
And now Penny was dead.
Sorrow reaved her soul, hollowing out Ruby in despair.
And something poured into that emptiness. O ut through her silver eyes.
Ska'Rar had him on his knees. One sword through Kad's right shoulder, spilling rich crimson blood. The hand that delivered the crippling blow now tearing at the crystal shard in the giant's burned hand. The other evil blade locked guard to guard against the long knife back against Kad's pulsating neck. Roaring its hatred down on the Primarch pushed to his lowest and then lower still.
There, struggling for his life Kad heard Ruby cry out in anguish.
"PENNY!"
And the world exploded in light.
First the empty puppet copies of the Daemon were cast away. Their anguished squeals lost in the soundless blast that consumed the battle ambiance. The two baleful swords their creator wielded vanished soon after.
And Ska'Rar screamed.
In pain. In denial. In impudence. The game board it thought flipped over remained in play, letting his opponent play a card He did not even realize was in his hand. The Daemon knew this light. It scoured him every day, all the way across the universe and beneath to the sea it had first swam from as a thought in time immemorial. It flowed against him like acid rain, even when cooled against what vessel the Lord of Change strode the materium in. Only now infinitely worse in such proximity.
Antithesis , bane, a thousand other ideas set against the primordial rendered down into the power this girl unleashed in all its terrible fury against its kind.
Enwrapped in pain that could be put to no mortal tongue. The lord of beast's cry sputtered out whilst its true form that finally walked again after so many thousands of years yielded to the irresistible force that brooked no rebuttal when it saw how reality had bent and said No.
And when what the other Hunters perceived as light faded away in a second that stretched into forever. They saw the face of the monster that had set itself against all of civilization turned to solid stone.
Hands raised and recoiling away from something that could not be escaped.
An almost mirror pose to Kad, who stood petrified just the same.
He knew this light.
It had greeted and calmed a young panicked child in his first moments of existence. Remembered in such perfect clarity the geneforged brain within his skull could not separate from the here and now. But it was changed, hostile and burning like ice where it once had embodied naught but peace and safety.
Kad tried to cry out. To call for an answer from high above, why had he been forsaken? So, so desperate to once in his life understand. Cold fire washed through his bones, muscles froze and his throat grew tight like an iron bar around his airway and he fell into darkness.
The other teams, shocked beyond words but alive nonetheless. Stood in the quiet, letting the long seconds of nothingness drag toward what threatened to be many minutes of inaction. Few had seen exactly what had just transpired. But all saw what happened next.
Ruby fell, like an unguided puppet down on her back with her face to the sky. Crescent Rose clattering in a heap. Her silver eyes wide and unblinking as others grew in their reflection.
Blake came forward, trying to deny this turn of events in an endlessly repeated string of, "No, no, no, no…" While she attempted to shake Ruby awake again. Joined by Sun who knelt at her side.
Across the field, Co'Balt's actions to aid Alicia bleeding in his arms were much more involved, but he did not need to diagnose what was wrong with his friend. Quickly he removed and tore his blue vest into strips and began packing and wrapping the bleeding wounds across her stomach. The helping strength of Kad's Aura nowhere to be found, so Alicia had only her own strength to cling to life. She cried out in pain while the bull Faunus worked, the noise drawing the attention of two from team CFVY, Fox and Velvet who came to help.
In between short gasping breaths Alicia asked, "What… happened?"
"You almost got bit in half dummy," Co'Balt replied, his voice trembling like the smile he tried to show.
"No!" She retorted, only making the pain worse. "Idiot!... ugh… Kad…"
He did not answer because he could not answer. Co'Balt looked up to everyone else that could still stand on their own two feet as they cautiously approached the new pair of statues. No one spoke. No one could speak through the shock after the energy they all imagined was light faded away and left them with only another mystery. A few brave Hunters drew closer. Avoiding the towering Daemon that no longer gave migraines to any trying to focus on the figure. It's frozen wings shading those who walked even closer to Kad.
The shadows pressing, were flattened back against the crooks and edges of now stone clothes.
Gently illuminated by the unfrozen shard of Dust.
Kad never was particularly affected by the cold. That was one of the first things he had learned in his short time on Remnant. Knowledge grown in the days and early formative months being spent in the Highlands of Atlas and the deadly winter which always plagued that kingdom.
This dark was cold.
His strong and warm body a distant memory here unbound in this place of nothing. Of omnipresent cold… He could almost imagine he was standing but Kad knew here he was not, for he had no feet and no legs below him, nor even eyes in his head it seemed.
Only the dark.
And a quick stabbing flash of panic when the Primarch knew he must be dead.
Disbelief flooded Kad's plummeting spirit, he might have wept if still in his own flesh and bones. The possibility of his end had always been there through the battles. Before during his time with Cinder it had been lashed away behind self-assured supremacy and a promised destiny awaiting his mighty self.
Now, so much left unanswered. So much left unsaid and undone. His only hope for a measure of peace that what had been done to him had been done to the Grimm. It was no help.
He had failed, and now he was dead.
Dead and doomed to the cold.
And that was unacceptable.
Another thought occurred. In this cold, he was still him. Kad Amaranth, the Huntsman. All that he had become and whatever else his father had intended before Kad was cast away. That he knew. He had not stopped being any of that yet, as he heard some others think was what happened in the end. He was still him,
So he still had his soul.
And if he had his soul, then he should have his Aura.
And if he had his Aura…
Stilling, Kad cast out his awareness. And immediately felt a warmth kindling within what he was now. Familiar strength returning, bearing away the burden of the piercing cold. He gripped tight to that power shielding his heart from despair. And with a quick twist of will sent it out like he had done so many times before.
Brushing through the darkness he began to move through this nothing realm, like swimming in the night.
Towards a light that appeared in the dark and cold.
Following a familiar link around himself and the world that he pulled on as a drowning man would a rope. The light grew, shining and radiant. Calling him back.
A crack like a gunshot split the heavy silence.
The young Hunters flinched and stepped back together. Not quite out of their arms reach from Kad just yet. A jagged fissure in the carapace of stone on the giant opened up all the way from his right hand to his neck.
Another made their ears ring as a line split along Kad's stomach. That tone lingered in their ears, building power vibrated the air and the cracks continued to shoot across Kad's body. Some heard the muffled tone from within. Like screaming with one's teeth around a belt. Growing with every passing second.
Between heart beats and the blink of an eye Kad broke free. The carapace exploded out like a grenade carrying fragments on an invisible pulse. Air explosively forced from his lungs as he fell backwards continuing on throwing himself to cover from what Ruby had done to him. Back in his own flesh and blood once again, the wounds upon both, especially the still bleeding scimitar wound through his right shoulder making their presence known as flesh slowly knitted back together sapping at his strength.
Quickly Kad dropped the crystal, in no state to even attempt to control the wild energy bound to return. But retaining a firm comforting grasp on the worn hilt of Amaranth's knife. Team CRDL gathered close and rolled the giant onto his back. Some of the stone like grey matter still clung to his face and ran down his heaving chest. His breaths were ragged and shallow and his ember like eyes rolled trying to focus back on the here and now over the tightness in his chest.
"What happened," Kad managed to wheeze out. Fearful of more interference from on high.
Cardin raised a hand conducting his thoughts out, "I don't know. Just, we saw… We saw Penny go down and then… Ruby did something…"
Brow furrowed in confusion and a lance of pain shooting through his skull, Kad hauled himself up as high as he could on his elbows with Dove and Russell supporting him. An uncomfortable train of thought taking off.
One very short lived as another ear splitting crack echoed across the deathly silent city.
Every eye still able to move shot back to the frozen Grimm. A crevasse in its encasement opening up from the corners of its mouth.
Flying curses and shouts of warning were belted out. Banishing the many discomforts upon him, Kad stood tall.
Darkness draped back over the Daemon. The force of its presence trying to escape could be tasted in the air itself. Metallic and sour.
"Back away!" Kad shouted, the crystal leaping up to his waiting bandaged hand. Precious little time left to act, to make all the sacrifices worth something.
Hurricane winds surged, forming a screaming cyclone around Kad who raised the crystal high. The air hummed, the ground shook and the light coming in waves from the giant grew so bright it washed out all the color left in the world.
He roared with the wind circling round and around, using the power gathered and threatening to burst in his Aura for strength to gather yet even more. More than he ever had, and still growing and growing.
Flashes of white cut through his vision, brief bursts where he was lost back on the ocean of power.
Sensing the Dust mines far across and deep within Remnant flare, spewing the elemental force locked within out freely as the world roused. Volcanoes shook and erupted, power reactors began to overload and threaten meltdowns before some were scrammed to no avail by their panicking operators still on station. Tectonic plates, billions of tons of rocks began to shudder and slip at his touch and call.
Revealing only the briefest hints at what lay even further below.
But Kad knew what it was.
Dust.
In space, auspex and their watchers began to cry alike in alarm. Navigators, Astropaths and the like who held all manner of psychic gifts. Shielded from the screaming of daemons in the ether by Him could not ignore this blazing fire.
And still Kad drew more. His determination growing with every haggard breath.
The others about him retreated, their skin blistering red and raw as Auras failed and cracked beneath the barest fraction of what Kad was enduring. Energy doused him in a flood, every atom in his body on fire and burning away his ability to feel anything at all but this power. Forced into his aura, bound by his semblance.
All three prisms through which the others were focused and refined.
All three coming to bear when he opened both flaming eyes again.
Fear,
Fear greeted Ska'Rar as it clawed back from the same cold abyss the Primarch had. Pressure hammering by another entirely different power than what the girl had scourged its corrupt and mangled essence.
Ska'Rar did not understand. But it had to understand, that was what it was. The ripples of understanding a hunter had in the midst of the night reading subtle signs that suddenly revealed that one was no longer the predator but had become the prey. Twists to the game echoing across the Warp that forged its core of being in a time no living thing remembered.
That was what the Daemon was.
That was what the Daemon felt now.
Helplessness. Fear.
How deep would he be cast away this time? To fall so far from how low Ska'Rar did not even realize he already had. Discord with Char'Nalax had removed the tie that kept them so close to the world of Dust. One always bringing the other back after defeat. The twisted mind of the Daemon raced with calculations, threats and choked promises of retaliation and the millions of torments he would visit upon the Huntsman. Bargains with only itself and the future that was only the coming fire.
Until Kad moved.
More and more energy he grasped slipping away, the apex of his abilities met and surpassed a hundred times again. His world and his loved ones counting on him and the daemon about to break free he struck. He threw forth his right hand. The Huntsman's promise fulfilled. Calling on his Semblance through which the gathered power howled and flowed. Energy of his soul and the wrath of nature exploding in a pulse like a solar flare. Carving a great swath miles back through the city, curious Grimm and the desert beyond that was seen from space. Leaving nothing but glass in its wake.
And all that Ska'Rar the Schemer ever was or would be was washed away.
Deafening silence filled the ash pit and the rest of Vacuo in the wake of that blast. As if the universe itself was holding breath having borne witness to the powers unleashed.
Kad looked to where the Grimm once stood, sheer willpower keeping him standing on legs he could no longer feel. Its true body was gone, there was no denying that. But there was more as he looked with eyes bright with fire. Something new, and unexpected that only now could he observe as sunlight returned to the field.
Specifically the absence of it.
A darkness that had haunted every corner of Remnant every waking moment Kad spent on its soil and under its sky, was gone. Cast away on more than the wind never to return. He could not render how he knew. Yet he did, the monster was gone
And never coming back.
Out on the periphery of this new sight fading with each palpitating beat of his hearts, there were still shadows. One in particular that loomed large and imposing still as it processed what had just happened.
Until it too disappeared. Not in the same way Ska'Rar had vanished, but it vanished nonetheless. And the Huntsman allowed himself a moment of satisfaction laced with no small amount of melancholy as this sense drifted away along with the last dregs of energy he summoned.
Understanding now the absence of its partner in the portents for what it truly was. Withdrawing back to the depths, hiding what it truly felt behind a dozen facades. Some of which could not help but hint at the fear that had stricken Char'Nalax to the core.
Then into the void the two champions of change and ruin had left over their eons of schemes and deceptions that all but collapsed around them long ago as they hunted, another stepped into place.
Ruby was exhausted, feeling as though she had been stepped on by a goliath. Utterly devoid of energy and thought as her head lolled backwards over the stout arm of the one carrying her away.
Caught up in a dream long forgotten. A dream of home and her family she would never see whole again. Brought in from a long night by the fire in their yard next to the house on Patch. Allowed to attempt to stay up later than she ever had before and catch a meteor shower that was set to grace the sky. Absolutely failing to do so and being carried back inside by her mother. Who unbeknownst to young Ruby was similarly exhausted from a long hunt she had only recently returned from. Summer had tried her hardest but Ruby had grown so much lately it was too much. Summer tripped on the stairs and nearly dropped her young daughter.
That Ruby remembered. And the sensation of falling snapped her from the fugue and back to reality with a sharp gasp. Finding herself in the arms of Kad Amaranth, her back braced against the crook of his left arm. Feeling like the child she so briefly was in her mind again as they moved.
She tried to speak, mumbling out half a moan and attempting to bring up Crescent Rose which lay on her lap before finding the effort beyond her. Her eyelids drooped down again and unconsciousness beckoned. Ruby fought against the tempting void. Where she could forget seeing Penny torn in half for a time.
What had happened after that was only a blur…
Tears returning, she tried to look around.
Most of their friends at least were not dead, team SSSN and what was left of team JNPR keeping a rear guard on the others bringing up the rear next to Kad. So something had to have defeated the monster that murdered Penny. She could guess what that had been, rolling her head back and seeing a field of glass that hadn't been there before. Finding some relief in that. Yet other sounds told her the situation had hardly improved. The storm had returned, the guardian barrier swirling around and drowning the howls of Grimm in lighting and wind.
And the familiar scream of jet turbines from airships nearby. Only a few craft now, but she could see a majority of their fleet overhead preparing to leave. She felt movement again, briefly blacked out and found herself next to Yang on the floor of a Bullhead. Her sister still unconscious and limp. Across from the two of them, Blake helped a badly limping Weiss lock herself into a seat.
The others lingered on the threshold of the airship. She could hear a bit of the conversation carrying on. Jaune was shouting. And she could tell something was still wrong.
"We can still try!" The young swordsman was almost bawling.
Kad shook his head, trying to guide those who remained onto the ship. "There is no more trying… Only how much time I can borrow…"
Co'Balt, who was still carrying Alicia gave his concurring protest, "You're not the only one!"
"No," Kad smirked, "But I need to be…"
The Grimm had regained their courage remarkably fast. Moving fast to overrun their position and cut off any potential avenue of escape. Until the giant hurled the storm back at the monsters.
Spurred on by the new will directing their numbers. The torments that one could conjure far worse than the threat of the Huntsman doing to them, what he had done to Ska'Rar. But also the knowledge this Primarch no longer had strength enough to deliver it on ones as lowly as their countless numbers.
Time was running out, he had bought them a moment to potentially get away. But Kad could not guarantee how far any of them would get through the waiting horde, or how long the Grimm would give chase.
Or that any help would be coming.
Unless he stayed.
The Grimm wanted him. And if they found him alone they would all come for him. The moment he had suggested that, Kad was met with a chorus of denials and questions once again of his sanity. He remained steadfast. It was an imbalance of power with an obvious solution. The victory and future Kad promised a thing of memory now. He knew any attempt to repeat the monumental feat he wrought against that lord of the Grimm on the horde may very well kill him this time with how weak he was.
But not all hope was lost yet. Kad just had to trade his life for all the others. It seemed quite simple to him. And as the Hunters of Remnant saw how little their pleas moved him, one by one they fell silent. Letting themselves be numbly marched away, except three.
"Come on. There'll be another time…" Kad told the little crowd of waiting faces. All of them caught in the enormity of history, the ending of one chapter and the start of a new. One they could not believe Kad would not be a part of.
He knelt down before Alicia and Co'Balt, still determined to stand in the light Kad told them they had all along. With his breath weak and low, he gripped tight to one shoulder apiece. "I can't do this unless I know you are safe."
Alicia tried to speak through the pain of her wounds and her heart. Almost drawing more blood gritting her teeth, knowing she was in no shape to stop or stand by him in the end. Co'Balt was similarly mute, unable to refute the giant's logic. Kad tried to give them one last smile. Leaning forward until his forehead touched Alicia's and bringing Co'Balt's to this goodbye embrace.
Kad spoke one last time to the two of them, "Take care of her Co'Balt."
Behind them, Ren and Nora had slowly tried to pull Jaune back to the waiting Bullhead. He looked up to Kad who walked his two teammates to the ship with one hand on Co'Balt's back.
Lost in grief Jaune pleaded, "What are we going to… What am I supposed to do?"
"Live brother," Kad said, handing him the messenger bag that held the crystal, "Pyrrha would want that."
Reluctantly, Jaune gripped the navy blue satchel tight in both hands. "Don't you need this?"
Kad shook his head, "It's still not mine to take."
The giant turned his right palm up, and willed a small ribbon of fire into existence. Danced it around his scorched and bandaged digits then drew it back to his palm where it grew matching the blaze from his eyes. Elongating into a shape not so dissimilar to his knife before it sputtered out.
"Besides I think I'll manage." Kad said, giving Jaune a gentle shove towards the Bullhead, the last ship still on the ground. There the last of team JNPR guided Jaune up into a seat towards the middle of the craft. And to their left, Kad took both Co'Balt and Alicia up into his arms and set them down in the last open space on the rearward row.
Time had nearly run out. The artificial storm was devouring the last bit of power keeping it going. Kad made to step back and signal the pilot to lift off. Until Ruby, delirious and unbalanced, found an untapped well of strength within herself. Stood, took a step and then nearly fell out of the aircraft. Much to the surprise of all present.
Kad caught her quickly and gave a soft sigh, trying to gently push her back.
"Wait," She protested, "No…"
"It's alright Ruby," Kad said, before looking at the others. "And you all take care of her, she might just be more important than that little rock, or me."
"But your sword!" She cried out.
"Ruby…"
"Here!" She held out Crescent Rose . "Take it."
"I…" Kad balked, knowing how much she loved that scythe she crafted with her own two hands. And if he took it, would never get it back. "I can't."
"You need it!" She said, trying one last time to gift the red weapon. Kad found no reproach in her silver eyes. So he lifted Crescent Rose from her meek grasp with a gentleness one applied cradling a newborn babe. Finding any words of thanks he could give choked to death. With this little bit of forgiveness in his hands.
Ruby smiled back at him before collapsing backwards once again.
The approaching Grimm howled.
A swooping shadow caught the giant's attention. And a firebolt caught the first Nevermore to breach the thinning storm in the chest. It called again in pain soaring back into the sky away from the loitering airships.
"Stay low! Beneath the storm and above the Grimm!" Kad shouted out and sprang into action. Unfurling Crescent Rose with none of the practiced ease of its maker, the sniper-scythe reached up to his chest. Running across the black cobblestones some still slick with blood, he made towards his foes and his destiny.
They all watched him go.
From on high and across the horizon the Grimm came in their thousands. The ferocity once ever present in their gaze, was dulled by intimidation. Some kilometers remained between them and their singular prey.
He still had time.
Kad breathed deep, fighting against the petrified shallowness each time he did. His keen ears tracking the fading jet engines heading east, as far as he could tell un-harried. Using that sense and another more esoteric to check one last time for survivors in the ruins.
He found none.
So Kad stopped on the edge of the field of glass he had created, with buildings at his back to retreat into when the battle resumed. Testing the weight and feel of Crescent Rose, with the wound through his right shoulder as he looked up to the sky.
"Father…" Kad said out loud. Not expecting an answer. "Father… I don't really know if you are listening... If you are angry… Think I am a failure. That I have seen too much of… But I'm not sorry."
Stepping down towards the Grimm he continued. "All this time… Walking on a knife's edge… Between… So many worlds… Now… If I have to stay this course. Where I may not have to sacrifice, the only good things in my life. So be it…"
He crested up a mound, the army of darkness tentatively approaching. Stopping nigh two hundred meters away. Waiting. Watching.
"Or…" Kad wheezed out, "If there is still something more… All I ask… Is they live… That's all I want… They get to live…"
No response came to the lone Huntsman. So he returned his focus back to Remnant, with a serenity that was equally as terrifying for the Grimm. Besieged by countless foes. Kad took the spear tip on the end of the scythe and simply scratched a line in the glass.
Silence and resignation filled the Bullhead. Some called simple survival a victory. None of the Hunters could conjure any warmth from that thought.
So they sat in silence, nursing their wounds and hearts trying to picture what tomorrow would bring now. Some of them looked back to the city and the apocalyptic horde that did not seem at all diminished in numbers or ferocity by their efforts.
A few had thoughts but no voice to give them on some of the more peculiar events of that battle. What had hit Pyrrha when Kad batted it away. If they had correctly heard half of what the monster said to Kad. What Ruby had done to the Daemon and Huntsman both. Eyes gazing over her as she lay finally unconscious on the deck. Trying to unravel the enigma the young girl had become but finding no pieces to that puzzle.
Co'Balt was not one of their number. Too focused on reliving the last few moments. Trying to find sense in them or anything he could have done differently.
Before snapping back to the horrid reality he had to live in now with a jolt of adrenaline sensing Alicia go limp in his arms.
"Hey!" The Faunus said to the only remaining member of team APRC. Shifting and knocking the three weapons at this side back underneath the row of seats. "Stay with me Ali."
Co'Balt clutched her tighter on his lap. His left hand along Alicia's midriff in a sleeve of red form the blood leaking through the bandaged wounds But she did not move. Even when Co'Balt interlocked their hands his left to her right and brought them up.
"Come on," Co'Balt cried the words, "Don't leave me too."
He shut his eyes and focused harder than he ever had before. Looking for his friend's Aura and finding the barest embers remaining in a very dark place where Co'Balt desperately seized them tight and held them close.
Blue light flowed from his white knuckled grip into Alicia's smaller hand. Life linked to life through the ties that would never be severed. The two remained there motionless together. Neither strength nor focus to spare to look through the impossible distance to dead Vacuo for Kad.
Jaune looked. Clutching his burden and wondering how he could possibly face another day. Pyrrha was gone, Penny was gone. So was Kad, and none of their sacrifices had been enough to entirely stop the Grimm. One of the monsters may have been gone, Jaune hoped it was given what Kad hit the thing with. He couldn't imagine that creature would ever show its face again.
But there would be others.
This war was only beginning.
Jaune twitched out of his revelry with a gasp. Finding Ren's right hand on his left shoulder, and Nora leaning around his best friend. Water pooling in his eyes, Jaune wondered if they were expecting some words from him. And he almost opened his mouth to deliver them when Nora too leaned close and took his left hand in a gentle grip.
From the looks on both of their faces he could tell, no words were expected. Nor needed now.
JNPR all turned to look through the small window set into the armored door to their right. They could still see Vacuo, what was left of it. And the gleaming scar cut into its side. Covered in black dots like a colony of ravenous ants. Imagining they could see Kad in the distance fighting still, picturing what they thought were gouts of flame and lightning but could hardly truly believe. But it was a comforting fantasy with the other image coming to mind him finally torn apart and desecrated by the ravenous beasts.
That image grew prominent as Vacuo shrank away.
Their pilot called something out over the intercom. Speaking of the fleet they were finally catching up with. Ignored by most of the Hunters who found themselves distracted.
Down through the black clouds came another yellow bolt of unlight.
Some looking out the same window blinked and missed it. Jaune did not. He stood almost running as best he could through the cramped hold to the window. All the turmoil within forgotten in an instant, tracing the path the strange beam came from up and up.
Finding another glow coming down in its place.
Blurry with distance, and slow enough for even his plain eyes to track for the briefest of moments. Large and trailing a brilliant tail like a blazing comet heading through the atmosphere from space.
And lost in a flash as it hit the center of Vacou.
Jaune fell backwards as it seared his retinas and his Aura flared in defense. Crying in pain and tearing at his eyes as long shadows danced on the wall opposite him. Those who could, shot to their feet. Ren and Nora going to Jaune's side. Everyone else trying to look through the painfully bright beam filling the bullhead.
For the briefest moment before the shockwave hit them.
All the quiet ambiance was drowned in the colossal blast of air forcibly thrown away at several times the speed of sound. Hunters and loose weapons slammed against the walls. Red warning lights blinked to life, screams and a high pitched alarm clicked on but could not be heard while the gravitational pull of Remnant pancaked everyone in the craft down against their seats or whatever nook they crashed back down into. The vision of all going black as blood shot away to extremities and the Bullhead plummeted from the sky.
Death seemed certain. The only thing any were now aware of beyond the ringing in their ears and the pounding of their hearts. As the end was drawn out into an endless moment.
Until, end it did.
Blake clamped her teeth shut on the scream she suddenly realized was coming from herself when the pilot pulled a minor miracle, leveled out the airship and stopped the world from spinning. Panting hot and still panicked breaths she looked to her team. Finding them all in one piece but unconscious and limp where they laid. And herself one of the few who was still awake and scared witless.
So she stood. Unbuckling herself, and picking her way through her friends all trapped in the same dazed states.
Blake threw open the starboard door and let the whipping sand and ash filled wind inside. And the others all joined her in slack jawed shock.
A firestorm washed out all the color and radiance of the harsh eastern ecosphere burning across the horizon and into the sky as far as the eye could see.
The dessert, Vacuo, the Grimm army. Kad.
One and all laid to waste.