CHAPTER 1 – An Old Bear and A Young Wolf
Deep in the woods upon an island did two beasts live: An Old Bear and a Young Wolf.
For so long had they lived together did they not know what age either were, only that the bear was wise, and the wolf prospered when he heeded his companion.
One day of the many they spent resting, secluded in the lush forest overgrowth upon the island, the Young Wolf questioned haughtily, "Old Bear, why do we hunt as we do and feast upon the deer, yet not of men?"
The bear let out a cross between a sigh and a grunt. He was trying to enjoy sunning himself beneath the abundant rays that peaked through the tree canopy where he rested.
Without so much as raising his head did the bear say, "Because we wish to live in peace, do we not? Man brooks no peace with that which hunts him."
The wolf paused to contemplate before the bear grumbled further, "It would do you best to not ask the same questions in hopes of an answer you find more agreeable."
To this did the Young Wolf cry out indignantly, "Nothing brings us closer to Apotheosis than the screams, rent flesh, and despair of men!"
"Nothing brings Apotheosis faster, you mean," did the bear retort evenly but shortly, "You would doom both of us for want of patience, Young Wolf?"
The wolf pouted for a moment before bearing his fangs towards the blue sky beyond the leaves above him, "Yes!? No? *SNARL* We defy our nature, Old Bear! Is what I question not what the Queen demands?"
"Speak not of the wench that would have us both die pointless deaths. Her promise of Apotheosis is a lie." Here the Young Wolf knew he had erred, as black passion growled beneath the Old Bear's words at mention of the Queen.
Arrogance melting away at the heat of his friend's anger, the wolf could only speak earnestly, "I just wish to see us freed from the Hunger."
A pause left the rustling of leaves and distant songbirds the only speakers in their conversation. "I know, Young Wolf. Grant yourself and I time. Death does us no good, and the Queen-"
"-leads only to death," the Young Wolf finished for him in a defeated sigh.
"There will be a day when we will reach Apotheosis in whatever form might it take," the Old Bear said as he rose from his resting place.
He could not stand to see the weight of sorrow from anticipating the further trials ahead of them slouch the wolf's grace again, thus did he say, "Until then we shall live and as well as we can. Come, let us hunt again to slake the Hunger's gnaw if only for a moment, the night waxes with my appetite."
In spite of but a singular hesitation the Young Wolf stood alongside his friend, such was his love of the hunt, but he could not help but ask genuinely, "Are you well enough to hunt, Old Bear? The visions-"
"-have abated for now." It was his turn to finish the Young Wolf's sentence, the Old Bear lumbering off towards the clearings where the deer congregate at dusk, "If I am to see Apotheosis, I must feed, no?"
The Young Wolf set off after him with a chortle of laughter, "I suppose so!"
/\/\/\
Within the borders of the Kingdom of Vale there is an island named Patch, and much like everywhere upon the planet of Remnant, do creatures of Grimm stalk within its forests.
Ink black monsters with eyes of ember and blood bedecked in armored plates of exoskeletal bone, beasts which quite literally spawn from darkness and shadow.
Here, in this place, they are few and so very weak. Those who live upon Patch prize it for its safety and the peace derived from it.
Such value is this safety given are the Grimm upon the island purged routinely to keep population levels low in addition to the island's combat school, Signal, having its attendees slay Grimm on chaperoned excursions into the forests.
In these woods there only two types of Grimm, both found commonly in almost every region across the world: The Beowulve and the irregular Ursa.
The Beowulve is a titanic bipedal wolfman with a penchant for pack tactics and, on average, witlessly berserker rage.
The Ursa is a behemoth of a bear that has more in common with a small tank than the animal itself and an unquenchable thirst for devastation.
Both are dangerous and ravenously hungry, as all Grimm are, which beggars the question as to why two children find themselves walking alone through said forests where these monsters are rather abundant.
A young girl with long hair blond as the sun is bright when highest in the sky and lilac eyes the envy of amethyst gems walks down a dirt path through the woods that has clearly remained unused for quite some time.
She drags behind her a red wagon with another far younger girl swaddled in a red cloak many times too large for her resting in it, who miraculously is sleeping through the unrepentant jostling of the forest path.
Whenever a particularly large bump jolts her to consciousness for but a moment, her silver eyes solemnly close to return to her dreams.
The blonde girl moves with purpose and a confidence only borne by those children blinded with a special combination of desperate hope and absolute naivete.
From the pocket on the front of her blue jean overalls she pulls out a photograph of what can be charitably called a shack with a woman standing before it, her hair raven black and eyes like polished rubies.
Upon scrutinizing it with a quivering lip, the blonde girl's determination redoubles as does her slackened pace, unaware of the things stalking her between and behind the trees…
/\/\/\
"Remind me again why we are hunting these tiny humans when you're rather adamant about not killing man?" The Young Wolf snarkily quipped from his low crouch in the underbrush.
The Old Bear had to stifle a growl as to not alert the children to their presence, in fact it was all he could do not to roar as he felt his mind pulsing in agonizing waves of… something.
Something at the fringes of his understanding.
Snippets of sights, sounds, smells, a panoply of sensations in every sense of the word flashed through the Old Bear's mind in an unending contextless scatter shot as hauntingly familiar as it was utterly alien.
The confusion emboldened his Hunger, which raged at him to slaughter, but he forcibly marched his mind against the instinct like walking into the thundering wind walls of a typhoon.
If he fell to his Hunger, so too would the Young Wolf, who would never know restraint again.
"This is no hunt. This place has been 'safe' to men for… a very long time. They will try to slay every one of us on the island if that is threatened. We have no guarantee of surviving that."
This elicited a low whining groan from the wolf, "By the Queen's withered womb, Old Bear, do you mean to protect these whelps?"
The wolf would have laughed if the situation didn't feel so intentionally designed to infuriate him with its poeticism. Old Bear's response did little to help.
"Yes. We're to protect them. Through that we defend ourselves, Young Wolf, remember that."
The wolf gnashed his teeth, "Fine. I haven't been paying attention, which direction are the tiny humans getting lost?"
"The den Skull and his pack made out of that abandoned human place," the Old Bear gritted out with resignation and ever so slight aggressive shifts in posture.
"Oh. Oh... oh-hum, 'tsk, are we sure we can't just leave? It would truly not be our fault if…"
The Old Bear wordlessly began sauntering through the woods to follow the two children while remaining just out of sight.
The wolf hissed as he followed along begrudgingly, "I didn't mean that way!"
"Be prepared for a fight worse than we've had in many, many moons. Skull is arrogant and lets his Hunger control him. We both know he will not see reason."
"…I reserve the right to complain up to, throughout, and following this Old Bear…"
/\/\/\
The blonde girl arrived at the edge of the clearing where a dilapidated, even more so now than in the picture she carried, shack resides.
To her it was not just a shack, but the shack.
The place to find something, or rather someone, to make things better. To make home happy again.
Not a moment too soon, in her opinion. It was getting late in the day and a cloud cover had set in to shroud the once clear sky.
Had she known the words to articulate it, she would have commented how the grey indifference of those rain laden clouds overtaking the blue was a fairly accurate metaphor for her family life at the time.
Her attention returned from the sky to the ground, and specifically, the shack.
It was effectively a barn with a large side lean extension, glass in every other window long since shattered, the large doors open and ajar. Weeds and vines creeped along the outer walls, unchecked.
The entry to the side lean was still closed, so taking a few more apprehensive steps towards the building, that was where she directed her voice.
She went to speak but found it stifled by fear from both the darkness in the barn and the possibility that no one would respond. Worse, what if someone did, and gave her an answer she didn't want?
These thoughts caused her to turn back for just a moment towards the muddy path she had trudged along, her gaze following her foot and wheel tracks back to the wagon behind her.
Seeing the younger girl sound asleep within curl further into her cloak at something fitful in her dreams gave the blonde more than enough courage to see this through. For her sister if not for herself.
"Hello! Is anyone home?!"
An absolute silent stillness descended upon the clearing, the shack, and the blonde girl. She called out again.
"Raven! Is Raven here!?"
Awakened by the shouting, the girl in the wagon sat up, now fully aware of where they were and weakly tugging at the back of her sister's overalls. The pleading warning went unheeded.
"MOM, ARE YOU HERE?!"
In the barn a pair of red dots slowly came into view. Eyes.
"Mom?"
And they rose far higher and faster than any human would stand.
"Stupid," the blonde girl thought as a clawed canine foot stepped out of the shade, the rest of the Beowulve following shortly after with a guttural growl.
"How could I be…" Five more pairs of eyes flicked open and towards them from within the barn, "…so stupid."
As the pack of Beowulves stalked through the barn doors with malicious intent so palpable the girls could feel it like a keening hum in the air… they stopped, staring hatefully.
Not at her, she soon realized as seconds stretched on like decades, but behind her. Before she could turn to see just what was giving the beasts pause, it lumbered past her.
An Ursa, five feet high to its shoulder at the very least and twice as long, covered in so much and so many bone plates the pitch of its fur only served as an accent to the white armor.
The blonde recalled reading in a book about how Grimm grow more bone armor as they age, and before her was an undoubtedly ancient thing interposing itself between her and the Beowulves.
At the front of the pack the sole Beowulve with any bone plates upon him, only but a skeletal mask, barked at the behemoth bear.
It only responded with a deep growl that shuddered through the ground… no, wait, that was just her legs from fear, she realized.
The sudden remembrance that she had legs led to the logical conclusion that the best place to be at the moment was anywhere but here.
Rounding about in blind terror had her staring at what her sister had been transfixed upon in a fear induced catatonia: A Beowulve, bedecked in just as much bone as the Ursa, directly behind the wagon.
It stared down at them from a height of roughly nine feet with noticeably less malice than the other Beowulves, although such a distinction was lost upon the children at that moment.
Further barks and growls sounded out from behind the sisters, escalating in a ferocity and anger that transcended the language barriers of all species.
A single sharp grunt from the Ursa over its shoulder was directed to the Beowulve before them. In response it let a long slow release of air from its nose with its equivalent of a sneer.
The baring of fangs in resentment did not properly convey its intent as it proceeded to pick up the blonde in a massive, clawed hand, to which the silver eyed younger shrieked, "YAN'!"
The girls, in a credit to their courage, immediately began struggling and striking the beast.
The hail of blows from four diminutive fists that ultimately did more damage to the aggressors abruptly stopped when the Beowulve placed the girl back down alongside her sibling in the wagon.
It then proceeded to heft the wagon up close to its chest, just as a series of roars and howls erupted behind them, before sprinting back down the path they had traveled.
They moved down the dirt and mud track out of sight of the shack within the span of but half a minute, the Beowulve's bounds covering ground so quickly it left the children in too much confused shock to resist further.
Just as it began to dawn on them both how very likely it was that they were going to be eaten, the Beowulve abruptly stopped so suddenly it had to tilt the wagon to keep the girls from spilling out.
It began sniffing the air carried by a small breeze blowing towards them, then with a short huff, placed the wagon down in the middle of the path and began bounding back towards the shack.
Shortly after, a dark-haired man with maroon eyes came sprinting up the path bearing a large single edged sword on his shoulder, his gravelly voice already hoarse from screaming, "YANG! RUBY!"
At the sight and sound of him the sisters teared up and cried in unison, "UNCLE QROW!"
/\/\/\
There were three of Skull's pack left when the Young Wolf returned and took stock of the battle... which was a one sided brawl, really.
The leader himself and an unlucky follower were embedded through and on the splintered remains of the shack's front wall, a third's chest crushed beneath one of the Old Bear's mighty paws.
Their corpses were disintegrating in wafts of smoke and ash as all dead Grimm did.
The remaining three were forced to keep their distance as the bear made a broad swipe at them, his claws trailing black blood and miasmic viscera from their fallen comrade.
This painted a physical line of pitch black across the ground and like Beowulves were wont to do: They heedlessly crossed it.
They circled about the great bear before pouncing in unison with yips and snarls, but only two left the ground, as the Young Wolf clutched the nearest to him by the neck before jabbing his claws into the Beowulve's side.
After a grip, twist, then terrible ripping and squelching yank, there were only two of Skull's pack remaining.
One of the two that leapt at the Old Bear was swatted out of the air by his quarry, collapsing in a dissipating heap of broken bones spurting inky blood four yards to the right for his trouble.
The remaining Beowulve landed upon the bear's right shoulder, slashing at the bony armor with his claws, merely scoring them.
In a frenzied rage it began hammering a fist into the plates protecting the shoulder instead, heedless of its own hand snapping and pulping in the process, spurred on by every crack or pop regardless of who it came from.
The Young Wolf tackled this dark reflection of himself off the Old Bear and had torn the throat from the last of Skull's pack before even hitting the ground.
He rose turning to the Old Bear, the latter breathing heavily and slowly sinking to the ground to rest.
He voiced no complaint or quip, simply striding over to his friend to sit beside him.
"No commentary from you after something like this?" The Old Bear rasped with a chuckle.
The Young Wolf laughed lightly along with him, "You are injured… didn't you teach me there's no sport in mocking those in such a state?"
A silence, peaceful and serene, settled upon the clearing as their laughter tapered off.
"The visions. They're getting worse, are they not?"
The only sound the Old Bear made was breathing for a long moment, "…yes. They are."
The Young Wolf nodded, "You have yet to tell me what you see in them."
Further silence.
"Do you not trust me, Old Bear?"
Silence yet still.
"Answer me-" The Young Wolf's admonishment caught in his throat at the sight of Old Bear's breathing ebbing and flowing in shudders.
"I see…" the bear said breathily, "…through the eyes of a man in unbidden dreams of places and things I do not understand, Young Wolf."
The Young Wolf said nothing. What was there he could say?
"Do we feel, Young Wolf?"
"What? I- What do you mean?"
"Do we feel… as man can feel?"
The Young Wolf closed his eyes as the immensity of that question daunted his psyche, "Questions for when you're fully rested, Old Bear. Get some sleep."
"I cannot… disagree with that…" The Young Wolf listened to his friend's breathing become even and steady before setting about watching the clearing around them.
No person nor thing would disturb the Old Bear's rest.
As he scanned the forest for threats, he little heeded the crow watching the duo intently from the branches.
/\/\/\
On the outskirts of the City of Vale atop the highest point in a towering academy that oversees the horizon in every direction, a man sips at a cup of coffee at his desk.
For him it has been a long day, with more than his fair share of them in the past couple months if he was entirely honest. Then again, he was the best man on the planet suited to handle such days, he mused.
He looked out to the views of Vale through the sweeping reinforced glass windows of his clocktower office, then down through the floor made of the same material to the intricate clockwork beneath.
TICK TOCK TICK TOCK TICK
He synced his breathing to the clock's rhythm, every five seconds releasing a slow exhale, letting the monotony soothe his overstimulated mind… then his Scroll rang.
He loosed something caught between a groan and a sigh, "What new fire needs putting out, I wonder?"
Picking up the little rectangular framed glass pane off his desk and recognizing the name on the screen, he tapped the hologram on the Scroll to answer the call.
"Pleasure to hear from you, Qrow. What's the occasion?"
A gravelly voice responded quickly, "I think we have an Oberon Scenario."
The man slowly set his mug down on his desk and sat up very straight in his chair, "Where."
"There are two of them on Patch, and Oz, they just saved my nieces' lives."
4/24/2022 Post Chapter Blurb
This is my first posting of my writing not only to this site, but the internet in general.
I'm pretending like I know what I'm doing. I don't. I wrote this first chapter a while ago now and I've come back to it with a vague plan to just see where it goes.
Criticism is expected and eagerly anticipated in any reviews, but I'd also like to see your guesses as to where the story is going.