This is basically going to be canon V9 with some tweaks. Is this claiming to "fix" volume 9? No. But it's certainly claiming to make it more palatable to this particular writer.

If you've read Wildfire, you'll have an idea of what I mean by tweaks.

Episode 1: A Place of Particular Concern

Something was in her mouth. Something was in her mouth, chafing against her skin, threatening to go up her nose, and shifting under her fingertips. As Ruby forced her eyes open and took in the sight of sand eclipsing her view of the world, she also finally processed the background rolling of waves and salty tang to the air.

One wave was lapping at her boots, sending a chill up her leg with every caress. She pulled her foot out of its reach and, now that her body was cooperating, slowly pushed herself up onto her knees. Her limbs ached, her head ached, even her eyes had their own distinct ache.

The sight that greeted her was neither Atlas nor the central location. Under the warm gaze of twin suns, a beach of tiled, orange-tinted sand stretched out to her left and right. Nestled in the sand were massive shells and starfish as large as she was, but no signs of life. Those were confined to the thick forest of palms and underbrush a few dozen yards back from the high tide mark, where brightly colored birds flitted between shadows and trills broke the silence.

Well beyond the first wall of trees was a cliff face, at the top of which stood more palm trees. Beyond those stood a single tree, not a palm, closer to the maple trees that dotted Patch, so far away that its rainbow coloring was tinted ever so slightly blue. Massive did not do it justice; it had to be hundreds of yards tall, if not more.

Her stomach, already uneasy, rolled over and released a new wave of prickling anxiety. Nothing like any of this existed in Remnant, which meant one thing: she wasn't in Remnant.

Ambrosius's warning echoed in her ears: do not fall.

Her team. Blake. Where were her friends?

When she tried to speak, just a cough came out. She licked her lips, swallowed, and tried again:

"Blake?" she called. "Weiss?" And then, hoping against hope: "Yang?"

Nothing. She shakily got to her feet and tried again, but still, there was no response. Worse, a subconscious attempt to brush a hand over Crescent Rose for reassurance encountered nothing but empty air. Ruby glanced back in the vain hope that she'd see something her hand had failed to touch, but no, her precious weapon was gone. She spun in a circle, scanning the water, the beach, the forest for any signs of red, but there was nothing.

Unarmed, alone, and lost.

She called for her team again. Only distant birdsong and shifting ocean answered.

Her heartrate picked up. Her breaths came in gasps. She squeezed a hand into a fist and tried to slow her breathing. What could she do? What was the plan?

"C'mon," she told herself. What good was a leader who couldn't even make a plan for herself?

The tree. It had to be important, and if her team had also ended up here—she could only hope that they had, that Yang had too—then they'd probably head for it too. If nothing else, it would give her a view of this place.

Even a plan as simple as "head for the giant rainbow tree" was enough to let her shove the urge to curl into a ball into a small corner of her mind where it could go ignored. With a bit of clarity, she also spared a minute to shed the thick gray shirt that, while protective in Atlas, was now crunchy with salt and only going to make her sweat. She then wrung out her cloak as best she could and set off for the tree.

It was a simple plan: walk to the tree. It was a simple plan, an easy plan, and she couldn't even do it right. She stopped dead in her tracks, hands clenched into fists as the green flamingo-like bird she'd passed three times already squawked at her. She almost squawked back at it just to vent the frustration boiling in her guts.

Instead, the bird flew away and the floor under her frustration fell out, leaving her to tumble into the crushing reality that she was stranded in a place she didn't understand with no sign of her friends or how to get back to the world now plunged into chaos. Cinder had both relics, which meant that Salem had both relics, and they didn't even know if the portals to Vacuo had worked or had even gotten every Atlesian citizen out, never mind the people killed when Cinder first revealed herself. Not to mention the message she'd put out into the world telling everyone about Salem in the naïve hope that someone would send aid. All that had done was incite panic.

Every single part of her plan had failed. Every single one.

And now she couldn't even walk to a stupid tree.

She leaned against a nearby trunk and fought a losing battle against that urge to curl up and cry. The bark scraped against her cloak as she slid down into a sitting position against it, at which point she drew up her legs, wrapped her arms around them, and pressed her face into her knees.

The last of her composure broke under the pressure of the sob building in her throat. Tears spilled from her eyes and coursed down her face, once more bringing the taste of salt to her lips. Her whole chest hitched with every sob, and they only grew worse when she thought about how pathetic she would look if anyone stumbled across her like this. Look at her, the leader, the one who put out a message to the world, the silver-eyed warrior, crying because things went wrong.

As though to rub salt in the wound, a rumble of thunder rolled across the sky, followed by raindrops pattering down around her. A leaf overhead caught them and let them gather so that they could splatter perfectly onto her bowed head.

She cried harder.

Eventually, she ran out of tears. Not because the pain was gone, but because her body was too exhausted to break down anymore. Her head ached even worse than before, her nose was running, and no doubt her eyes were red and puffy.

As she used her newly rain-dampened cloak to wipe her face, faint squeaking piqued her interest. She pulled the red cloth away to see a mouse struggling to pull up a plant sprouting up on the path. It tried from a few different angles but had nowhere near enough strength.

Ruby sniffled, wiped at her eyes again, and used the tree for support to pull herself to her feet. Her world swayed for a second until things settled, and then she went over to the mouse. She knelt next to it, holding up her hands as a sign for peace when it squeaked in panic and cowered away from her.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she promised. "Here."

She wrapped her fingers around the plant's leaves and pulled. A surprisingly large growth came up with the roots, yellow and speckled with holes. Cheese? Ruby wondered at that, wondered whether it would qualify as a fruit or vegetable like this, but the mouse eagerly gesturing for it stopped her from examining it more closely.

"At least I can help you," she told the mouse. As pathetic as it sounded, it did help her feel better, if only a little.

"Thanks!" the mouse said when the plant was in its paws.

"You're welcome."

Ruby's reply was automatic, but as the mouse began nibbling on its prize, Ruby's brain caught up to what had just happened. She yelped and scrambled back, which caused the mouse to yelp and scramble back, until they were suddenly on opposite sides of the path and staring at each other.

"You spoke!" Ruby accused. Was she hallucinating? Was she that tired?

"You yelled!" the mouse shot back. "That's far less normal than thanking someone for helping, if you ask me. If you wanted to share, you could've just said so."

She didn't seem to be hallucinating. She swallowed, faintly aware that the brief rain had stopped.

"No, that's—I don't need to share. I've just…never spoken to a mouse before."

The mouse stood up on its hind legs, brushing itself off in a surprisingly human gesture. "Well, I guess I've never spoken to a," it looked her up and down, "you before." It cocked its head. "What are you?"

"Oh, uh. I'm a human."

The mouse cocked its head more.

"A girl?" Ruby tried. "A huntress?"

"That's a lot of things," the mouse declared. It dropped back down to four paws to reclaim its food while Ruby grappled with that pronouncement.

"I'm," she began, hunting for another thing she could call herself and coming up short. Finally, she sighed. "I'm Ruby Rose."

Like all the other attempts, this one didn't seem to land. "And to 'Ruby Rose' is your purpose?"

"No, that's my name." Did this place have names? She hoped so. "What's your name?"

Fortunately, this time, the mouse understood—kind of. "I'm still young, so I don't have one yet."

She didn't want to insult any talking mouse culture, but she didn't want to have a conversation without knowing what to call the one she was talking to. "How about I call you…Little, for now? Would that be all right?"

The mouse thought it over before standing up and shrugging. "How does one 'Little'?"

It was a silly enough pose and innocent enough question to bring a small smile to Ruby's face despite the circumstances—but by the same token it reminded her of those exact circumstances.

"What's wrong?" asked Little.

So much, Ruby wanted to say, but that wasn't going to help anything. She got to her feet and took a deep breath. "Have you seen other people—other humans like me?"

"Exactly like you?"

"No, not exactly like me. We're similar, but we can be taller or shorter, or have different hair, that kind of thing. The way not every mouse looks exactly the same."

That last guess was a gamble but it seemed to pay off as the mouse brought a paw to its chin to think. "I mean, there are a lot of mice here."

Ruby bit her lip, then gestured around her head. "One would have long blonde hair. The other has," she paused, glancing down at the mouse, wondering if this place also had cats, "uh, short black hair."

"Hm." Little glanced down at their food, patting it, and then looked back up at Ruby. "Well, I've never seen anyone who looks anything like you. But! Maybe someone in my village has. We're always out foraging for food all over the place."

A new plan. Ruby breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

"Speaking of which," Little continued, patting their cheese plant a little more meaningfully this time before pointing a paw at the other clusters of leaves poking out of the ground nearby, "a few more of these wouldn't hurt."

"You really think it's around here somewhere?"

"I wouldn't exactly say I'm certain about anything at the moment." A couple steps ahead of Blake, Weiss nudged aside some vines growing over their narrow path through the tropical forest they'd both landed in after tumbling through the void between dimensions. "Gambol Shroud fell after you and Ruby, but before I did. And we fell close to one another, so your weapon probably came down nearby."

It was as good of a guess as any. Blake tilted her head to avoid a trunk twisted nearly ninety degrees from its base. On the bend rested a green bird with a massive beak, which watched her with a single open eye.

She whipped around to catch whatever was moving in the corner of her vision but saw only more flowering vines drifting in the light breeze. The bird squawked, almost like it was laughing at her.

She walked a little faster to catch up to Weiss, edging around a pink tubular plant and feeling the absence of her weapon keenly. She wasn't scared of the birds, but after how their fight in Atlas had ended and Cinder's ambush, she half expected Grimm to come crashing through the trees any second.

"What is this place?" Weiss wondered aloud as she glanced down at different cluster of brightly colored plants. "I still don't recognize any of these. Do you?"

"No, nothing like them grew in Menagerie that I saw. Nothing I think of fits."

"Menagerie, Vacuo, Mistral," Weiss ticked off all of their attempts to figure out where they were. "No matter what, something doesn't line up." She lifted her raised hand higher to point at the twin suns. "And that is the biggest problem."

Neither of them wanted to say it but both of them knew it: they weren't in Remnant.

Weiss slowly came to a stop. "Blake, I…I'm really glad you're okay."

Blake took her hand and squeezed it. She didn't want to think back to those terrifying first minutes in this place when she had been so terribly alone. "I'm glad you are too." She released Weiss's hand. There was one thing that she absolutely could give voice to: "If we're okay, then it's possible that Yang and Ruby are too."

Weiss smiled at that, but the expression didn't quite reach her eyes. Confused, Blake let the uneasiness settle for a few seconds as they resumed walking.

"Weiss," she tried once they'd settled into their previous pace, "what happened after we fell?"

This time, Weiss didn't turn to face her. She just kept walking. "We should focus on finding your weapon and everyone else first."

Blake's folded against her head, but pushing was just going to make things worse. She jogged to catch up to Weiss, pushing through some low leaves and nearly tripping over a root, leaving her to stumble into the clearing that Weiss had stopped in.

"Is that…?" Weiss's question trailed off as she pointed to a black shape sticking out of a pile of thorny vines.

"Yes," Blake confirmed, spirits lifting at the sight of Gambol Shroud in one piece. The vines, though, looked worryingly thick, and the pile was tall enough that Blake couldn't just reach over them. When she planted a boot on the lowest to start climbing, it shifted under her like a living thing, and only a last-second shadow let her avoid the twisted vine spike that shot out. She landed next to Weiss, watching the spear retract into the depths. It was like a big pile of traps. "I don't suppose you can burn it?"

"I don't have much Dust left." Weiss checked Myrtenaster and sighed. "And no fire, unfortunately."

"Probably for the best that we don't accidentally burn this forest down," Blake admitted.

They tried pulling the vines away. That didn't work; they refused to budge.

Weiss tried cutting the vines away. That didn't work; they just grew back.

They tried having Weiss make a glyph staircase for Blake, only for the pile to shudder and fire out more spears to break them when they got too close. Blake, annoyed and feeling the heat of the suns beating down, shed her coat and set it off to one side while she tried to think of a new approach. Weiss also shed her layers, leaving her in just her white dress, blue waistband, and belts.

She eyed a tree that twisted pretty far over the pile of vines. "If I climb that, can you make a platform I can use to grab Gambol Shroud?"

"The vines are going to try to break it," Weiss warned.

"I'll be fast."

"All right. Tell me when."

Blake climbed up the tree in a few seconds, walking out as far as she dared on the rapidly thinning trunk. It bowed under her weight with a warning creak. She bent her knees, adjusting her footing, and narrowed her focus to Gambol Shroud. There were vines intertwined with it, wrapping through its trigger mechanism, but they were thinner than the ones at the base. She could tear them.

"Now!"

A white glyph bloomed to life between Blake and her weapon, followed by another one past the pile to get her out of the vines' reach. Blake launched herself from the tree and swept across the glyphs, hooking her hands around Gambol Shroud and yanking the weapon free with a single violent heave. Spears raced after her but they weren't fast enough; she made it to the second glyph and leaped clear an instant before the second glyph was shattered.

She landed and rolled, popping back to her feet with a victorious grin. She picked out some vine remnants still stuck to the weapon. "Nice work," she told Weiss, who was walking over.

"You weren't so bad yourself."

Blake caught more movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned quickly and was rewarded with the sight of a mouse frozen on its way back to cover. Stiff under her gaze, it trembled.

"How did you defeat our trap?"

It took Blake a second to realize the mouse had just spoken. Before she could really process that, a wave of shush noises spread out from the bushes and trees around the one visible mouse.

Weiss palmed Myrtenaster. "Um, what?"

"We've been discovered!" cried a mouse Blake couldn't see. "Attack!"

Legions of mice poured out of the shadows all around the clearing. Weiss and Blake backed up but there was nowhere for them to go; Blake went to throw Gambol Shroud only to see mice in all the trees ringing the clearing.

She didn't want to hurt these mice. For one, they were just mice. For another, they could talk, and maybe they knew something useful about this place.

Besides, with their appearance came new validity to a niggling suspicion that Blake had been trying to reason out ever since waking up.

Weiss bluffed a few stabs at the nearest mice but that didn't deter them for long. "I don't want to hurt them, they're just mice," she said, but there was panic in her voice at the thought of the mice climbing on her.

"Neither do I."

In a last-ditch effort to avoid violence, Weiss summoned a raised white glyph that she pulled Blake onto. Though it was only a couple yards off the ground, that was enough to put them out of the mice's reach.

"How long can you do this for?" asked Blake, using the new height to try to find a tree free of mice that she could grapple to.

"Not long enough," Weiss replied. "I don't have enough aura to get us clear, either."

Blake, her second search as futile as the first, looked down at the mass of mice calling for their heads.

Great.

Little had pointed Ruby in the general direction of their village and promptly fallen asleep, leaving Ruby to her armful of cheese plants and her thoughts. She didn't particularly want to think at the moment, an attitude reflected by the overcast sky that seemed to follow her wherever she went.

Distant yelling broke through the buzzing of insects and bird calls that formed the forest's ambient soundscape. Ruby paused, glancing down at Little, but the mouse was still fast asleep.

Unless there were more talking creatures in this forest, whoever was yelling was probably part of Little's village. Sure, they weren't in the exact direction Little had pointed when they were last awake, but it was close enough. Ruby ducked into the underbrush, picking up the pace when she realized that the sound was distinctly angry.

The last of the leaves in her way parted to reveal a clearing with a large pile of green vines on the far side. Between those vines and Ruby stood Blake and Weiss, suspended over the ground on a white glyph that was flickering and dimming with each passing second. Under them roiled a sea of angry talking mice calling for them to be captured as food.

Ruby nudged Little, who had been sleeping in the collar of her cloak, as best she could by lifting her shoulder, then nudged them again when they didn't wake up.

"Oh, hey," Little said as they roused from their slumber, "it's your black-haired friend." They looked a little closer and froze. "Are those cat ears?"

"It's just a feature of her species, she's not actually a cat," Ruby said distractedly, still trying to figure out exactly what she was seeing. "Is that your village?"

"It's my people, yes."

Blake saw Ruby first, followed an instant later by Weiss.

"Ruby?" Blake called, visibly relieved.

A mouse near Ruby followed their gazes to the new arrival. A wave of panicked stillness spread over the sea of mice until the large black, blue, and white one standing over the others on a rock turned around.

"A new adversary approaches!" it declared. "We must liberate our kin!"

It took Little several minutes to explain the situation—or, at least, their colorful interpretation of the situation. Their peacemaking efforts were aided by Ruby gifting the plants she'd helped Little pull up. While Little told their tale, Blake, Weiss, and Ruby embraced each other and checked that they were all okay.

Little's explanation finished and the large mouse who had been leading the attack on Blake and Weiss ran over to their group. It stood on its hind legs, intact eye apologetic. "You have our sincerest apologies. Please understand, when things trespass on our land, they tend not to be friendly. Especially things with weapons, and especially cat things."

Blake, kneeling to be closer to the mouse's level while Ruby and Weiss looked on, frowned lightly but flipped to a strained smile. "It's okay, I understand. If we could ask, have you seen anyone else that looks like us? Long, blonde hair?"

The mouse shook its head.

"Thanks anyway," Ruby offered as Blake stood and the mouse went back to its people. "Before all of…this," she gestured to the clearing, "I was trying to go to that tree. I figured going to higher ground and getting my bearings would be good."

"Sounds like the best option for now," Weiss said.

"I can't help you get all the way to the tree, but if you just want to get higher, I can help you reach the cliff!" As Little spoke, they scrambled up Blake's catsuit until they sat on her shoulder. Blake flinched but resigned herself to the mouse shortly after they finished talking. "I don't really have anything to do yet," Little added after a beat.

"Yet?" Ruby queried, reminded of their earlier "purpose" comments. Little ignored her completely.

"I can be your trusty guide!"

Just like when they'd attempted to guide Ruby to their village, Little fell asleep almost immediately after they parted ways with the other residents of the mouse village. Still, their directions were enough to get Ruby, Blake, and Weiss on the right track. Halfway up the path carved from the side of the cliff, Ruby glanced down to check that Little was still nestled comfortably in her hood.

"Ugh," Weiss grumbled, swatting at a fly with rocker-like feet that refused to stop buzzing around her. "Some guide."

"They got us to this path," Blake pointed out. "Once we get to higher ground, we can search for Yang. We got attacked by mice after only a couple of hours. She's been down here for even longer. There's no telling what kind of danger she could be in."

Ruby glanced back the way they'd come. Even though they were higher than they'd been, the forest canopy was almost impenetrable from above. She sighed and decided to change the subject.

"Weiss, I was wondering…if you fell, are there others down here too? What happened?"

Weiss didn't slow her stride. "I don't know if anyone else fell, no. We should focus on finding Yang—if she's even down here. Then we can go over everything together."

Frowning, Ruby exchanged a look with Blake. "I just—"

A distorted scream echoed over the cliff, accompanied by a flock of birds fleeing its source. The sound sent goosebumps racing down Ruby's arms and prickled the hair on the back of her neck. Little awoke with a start and shrieked, cowering in the back of Ruby's hood.

Ruby exchanged a look with her teammates and took off at a sprint. Whatever made that noise had to be bad news, and if there was any chance that Yang or anyone else was caught up in it, they had to help.

When they rounded a corner and saw the source, though, they pulled up short. Shaded by a thick growth of trees on either side of the path, the creature crawled on dull brown hands and feet tipped with vicious claws. Purple throughout its body and with what almost looked like armored plates dotted across its thin form, it resembled nothing Ruby had ever seen before. As its head turned this way and that, Ruby caught glimpses of a mask the same color as its extremities covering its face, but the holes for its eyes and fanged mouth didn't go all the way through. Bright white lines decorated its cheeks, nose, and forehead, drawing as much attention as the four purple-and-brown-striped horns spiraling out from either side of its head and from its temples.

"Seeking," it hissed with the same hair-raising voice that it had shouted in before. Doubled over itself, the voice was at once too high and too low, reaching all the way into Ruby's chest to set her heart pounding.

"Searching," it intoned as it slowly took a step. Its head turned, scanning the area, but it moved as though pulled by a wire in sharp and jerky bursts. Every motion left afterimages in its wake that were gone in an instant, leaving its head blurry.

"Scouring."

Its tail lashed the air.

"Stalking. Searching. Scouring. Stalking."

It had its back to them, but that wasn't going to last long. Blake and Weiss drew their weapons. Ruby went to do the same only to be reminded that she was weaponless, forcing her to hang back, useless.

Weiss and Blake's heels crunched on the path. The creature paused.

"Detecting. Listening."

It faced them and loped a few steps forward, only to pause again, head twitching.

The marks on its mask lit up. "DANGER," it howled, breaking into a frighteningly fast sprint at Blake. "DEATH."

Blake leaped forward to meet it.

"BITE. RIP. TEAR."

Its rose up on its hind legs and brought a clawed hand down. Blake raised Gambol Shroud and caught the attack, but it nearly forced her to her knees.

"Blake!" Weiss leaped to a glyph shining next to the creature's head and lunged, Myrtenaster ready to spear the thing's head clean through. It abandoned its attack and jumped back, head and tail constant blurs as it readied itself for another charge.

"I said we weren't done!"

A bright yellow blur blasted out of the shadows. Yang, down an arm but with Ember Celica deployed on her left, crashed her fist into the creature's face and sent it sprawling. She landed badly, ending up in an awkward somersault, but pushed herself back to her feet and shoved her hair out of her face. Her coat was gone, and the top of her overalls had been unbuckled to fall over her waist. She was speckled with dirt and breathing hard, but she was alive.

She glanced at Ruby, Blake, and Weiss, then refocused on the creature, who was reevaluating its odds.

"Recede," it whispered, backing up a step for every step the other three took towards it. "Retreat. Wait. Return."

It abruptly spun and leaped into the trees, then clawed up the cliff face and vanished into the vegetation at the top with another ear-piercing scream that thankfully faded from earshot quickly.

Yang's shoulders fell and she tipped her head back while she caught her breath. She sank to one knee. Ruby rushed over, already calling her name—

"Dammit!" Yang cut her off. She raised her eyes to Ruby's and Ruby froze at the tears shining there. "You weren't supposed to be here."

Ruby's chest ached. She knelt next to her sister and pulled her into a hug. "I'd always go after you, Yang. Did you forget who raised us?"

Yang huffed out something that could've been a laugh or a groan. She leaned into Ruby's embrace, bringing her arm up to pull her sister as close as she could. "I don't know if being down here means any of us are safe, but…I'm glad you're okay."

"Me too."

They separated and Ruby gestured to Yang's missing right arm. "What happened to your arm?"

Yang, looking caught between exhaustion and exasperation, said, "I don't think you'd believe me if I told you."

Little, apparently having recovered from their fright, poked their head up from Ruby's cloak. "Why not? You seem trustworthy."

Yang stared. "Uh, Ruby? What is—"

Blake's flying tackle cut off Yang's question. Yang's breath left her in a groan when she hit the ground. Blake squeezed her tight.

"I thought I'd lost you," she whispered.

Yang brought her hand up to rest on the back of Blake's head while she leaned her head against Blake's.

"I sort of thought you'd be happier to see us," Weiss said when the moment stretched on. Blake and Yang sat up, the former taking Yang's hand and intertwining their fingers.

"I am," Yang said, "it's just…it must've gone pretty bad, huh?"

The third time was the final straw. Weiss's composure cracked and tears leaked out. She clenched her hands into fists but her breathing refused to steady. She couldn't meet any of their eyes.

"Weiss," Ruby started, not knowing where she was going.

"It all happened so fast. No one came back from Vacuo to help," the words landed like an anvil on Ruby's chest, "and Penny—Jaune tried to help, but she sacrificed herself—" Weiss kept going, but to Ruby, the words were distant, bouncing down a tunnel growing longer by the second and just as quickly getting subsumed by a roar of static rising up from the ground swaying under her feet.

The last thing she heard with any clarity was Yang saying her name: "Ruby?"

The world went black.

When she woke up, it was to the gentle sound of falling rain and Blake's voice.

"—ack from Vacuo seems weird. They wouldn't just abandon us."

Ruby's head was pillowed on Yang's lap; Yang was gently brushing her fingers through Ruby's hair in a repetitive motion. Blake sat on Yang's left, Weiss kneeled on her right. Little had fashioned a small fan from a leaf and was trying to fan Ruby as best they could. The five of them were under what scant cover the foliage could provide.

Ruby slowly pushed herself up, Yang supporting her as she went.

"Ruby? How're you feeling?"

"What was that?" Weiss added.

"Are you okay?" Blake finished.

"I'm fine." She'd thought her team seeing her cry would be the worst thing that could happen, but no, she just had to go and pass out in front of them. Useless in a fight and now useless everywhere else, too. "What did I miss?"

Yang frowned. "Nothing, we didn't want to leave you out. But—I guess to recap what Weiss was saying, Penny didn't make it, and we have no idea what happened to the relic, the people in Vacuo, or Neo."

Ruby's sour mood darkened further. "Neo's here too. I saw her when I fell."

Another rumble of thunder rolled through.

"Maybe everyone else made it," Blake tried.

"Maybe." Weiss looked down at her lap. "But I have a bad feeling."

The silence, punctuated by raindrops, stretched on until Blake pushed herself to her feet. "Okay, we need a plan. Ruby's weapon is still missing, so is Yang's arm—"

"It was stolen," Yang supplied. "Long story."

"Right. Ruby's missing weapon, Yang's stolen arm, then we can figure out exactly how to get out of here. Wherever here is."

"What if we can't leave?" Weiss asked. "I mean, we all heard what the staff spirit said. What if this place doesn't have a way out? I mean, what if—"

"What if we're dead?" Yang gave voice to the question Weiss had been building to. No one could look her in the eye, and she dropped her gaze to the ground. "Until you all found me, I thought for sure I was."

Blake straightened her shoulders. "No, I don't think we're dead. Why would we have our weapons? Besides, nothing we saw in what the lamp showed us looked like this, right?"

They all exchanged looks.

"That's true," Weiss allowed.

"The edge of the cliff is just over there." Blake pointed past a screen of thick yellow vines. "We can take a look and try to figure things out there."

They all got to their feet and followed Blake to the cliff. Beyond and below it stretched a land the likes of which none of them had seen: massive octagonal sections of land, each one distinct from those around it, split by a bottomless abyss seeping faint yellow mist. There was one section dominated by a red forest and castle; another by craggy dark mountains jutting towards the sky; still another made of paper; and one shaded by massive glowing mushrooms. One even had volcanoes leaking smoke.

Centered and above them all towered the rainbow tree Ruby had seen from the beach. It stood alone upon its own section, a guardian or a sentinel.

Blake took a deep breath and turned to face the rest of them. "I know how this sounds, but…I think we're in a fairy tale."