Hey everyone! Sorry for the long and unintended hiatus. I had a two week trip to NYC then when I came back it was like a scramble to prepare for the semester. Like figuring out my next job, sorting schedules, car insurance etc.

Adulting is annoying.

Anyway here goes...

Chapter 11: Ending Trial 2

With Ruby's inner turmoil resolved, Team RWBY, Nova and Ruby-13's only task left was to escape the maze. With their cooperation and mixture of skills, navigating the rest of the maze was easy, this often left room for focused conversations while they rested.

During the night they stopped to camp since the Reavers were on the prowl from dusk until dawn, as long as they kept their resolves, dealing with the mental attacks was getting less tiresome.

Their team dynamic was much more amiable now, Ruby was relatively less hostile toward her Universe-13 counterpart and Nova, there were still some levels of uneasiness but it was mostly due to not being able to get used to dealing with herself.

Judging by the remaining paths and speed of coverage, they'd escape the maze within the first few hours of travel.

Ruby sat poking at the campfire, the other members of her team were quietly eating their jerky, tired from the days travel.

Despite her weariness, she was still ever plagued by constant questions that needed answers. Her counterpart knew things she didn't. Looking back at their previous fight, she recalled the way Ruby-13 talked about her mother with growing concern. It was itching at her brain, how could she not ask about it?

Then again... how could she?

Was the topic too sensitive? Was it something she was willing to share?

Taking a deep inhale she steeled her resolve, she just... needed to go for it. What's the worst that could happen?

"You know," she turned to her other self and Nova, "I've been meaning to ask you two something."

The dragon prince raised his eyebrow quizzically, looked at his fiancé then back at Ruby. He could sense she'd been squashing something down again, so it really was only a matter of time. "Sure, what's up?"

"How come you guys haven't been affected by the Reavers?"

This question caught the pair off guard, but it wasn't unreasonable. Every night Weiss would be plagued by the voice of her father, Blake would hear Adam's taunts, Yang heard him too, but... sometimes she heard her mom, Raven. They all had things that traumatized them or played on their emotions. It was impossible for them not to have more than one given how much they'd been through...

Ruby-13 took a deep breath and gave her a slightly pained smile, "We've… learned to come to terms with our trauma. I… want to hear a story?"

Team RWBY looked at each other and scooted closer beckoning her to continue.

Sighing heavily Ruby-13 stared at Yang and Ruby Prime intently, "When I first met the Reavers we were deep in the heart of Pandora's jungle…"

"Pandora? Remind me what's that again?" Weiss asked tilting her head.

"The dragon-shaped continent on the map," Nova added for her.

"I have so many questions…" Blake murmured while her ears twitched.

Ruby-13 continued while raising a hand, "Questions for after. Basically, my first interaction involved them mimicking mom's voice and calling me from the dark…"

Ruby Prime felt her grip tighten around her own arm.

"At the time we'd… not too long ago fought Mom and Tyrian at this party at Castle Lightmane. Things were under control until Mom summoned an army of Grimm that began to ransack the town. Well to make a long story short, I went berserk due to… certain reasons and almost killed her, Nova took on those negative emotions for me using the soul bond but… I was still pretty shaken about the whole ordeal. Anyway… those things tried to lure me in… and just like you, they showed me visions of Mom looking normal again, trying to lull me into dropping my guard. It almost worked too… if I didn't remember what was really happening. I already resolved myself to do what I need to do… so that doesn't happen again…"

Nova clapped loudly, breaking the tension after she was done speaking, "Alright, now questions."

"What's a castle Lightmane?" Weiss raised her hand.

"What happened after the party?" Blake voiced.

"What… happened to mom…?" Yang hesitantly asked, her voice shaking.

Ruby Prime was the last to ask, "What exactly happened to her? You know what I mean right?"

Nova started, "In our universe, on Pandora, there live several Faunus tribes who are the original Faunus descendants. They're divided into three kingdoms and Castle Lightmane is one of them. The aftermath of the party included a scorched ballroom, a dead Tyrian Callows and our Blake, Weiss, Neopolitan and Sun managing to save the city from destruction."

Ruby-13 took up the other half of the questions, "As for mom… I'm not sure. We assume she escaped… we haven't found her since. As for what exactly happened to her… I don't know the full story."

"You met her right? How can you not know?!" Ruby Prime was getting furious again but managed to calm herself down, she was past this feeling.

"It's complicated… Nova spent more time with her than I did…"

Their eyes turned to the dragon who looked like a deer in headlights.

"Ah fuck… alright. She was very friendly if you were wondering. She was really nice to me and did her best to keep my… torture time… as comfortable as possible. She… unfortunately couldn't do much since she's…"

"A Grimm human, like Salem." Ruby-13 finished for him.

They all gasped and Ruby Prime was shaking, "No… no please tell me you're lying…"

"We wouldn't dare lie about something like that…" they said simultaneously.

"From what I can gather, Summer went on a mission to stop Salem, but failed and got transformed into one of those Grimm creatures, our Salem has the ability to make others like herself," Ruby-13 continued, "She did it to Summer, Cinder, Emerald and Mercury. They're not dead but not alive either, puppets under her control. Summer was different though, she could think and act almost entirely freely but was unable to disobey commands."

"If she could act freely then why couldn't she ever come see you?" Ruby Prime asked.

"Well, that's the complicated part. Salem did something to her to shift her basic instincts to kill Silver-Eyed people first. Like Salem's personal anti-silver-eyed attack dog. Her last moment of sanity was spent trying to talk to me but even then I couldn't… get close to her. Then… Salem did something again that caused her to become a mindless puppet I…" Ruby-13 began to feel her own rage boiling.

Nova reached over and interlocked his fingers with hers, "That's all we know so far anyway…"

Ruby Prime took a few seconds to steady her head, "Then all that stuff you said about mom earlier…"

"That wasn't a lie… Summer's told us herself that she's a coward, unable to fight back, and she said something about… not being able to do it when she had the chance. Then when things got bad she tried to run away… back to us but it was already too late…" Ruby-13 said ominously, "It's vague… and I won't get the answers until I rip Salem's head off her shoulders and make sure she never gets back up again."

The aura she was emitting was tremendous so much so that the others instinctively froze in fear…

Ruby-13 was dangerous, much more powerful than they were… and while she was friendly toward them, they'd do well to remember exactly how dangerous she really was.

The next morning they finally got to the end of the maze. No longer were they surrounded by endless rows of mossy-covered stone walls, but now standing at the exit. A large stone archway signified the end of the maze, it looked similar to the interior and entrance but... it seemed much older.

The stones were darker, the vines were much more twisted and bore into the rocks so deep they grew inside, evident by the parts of the walls that had crumbled away revealing a mesh of brown stems and messy green. The ground they walked on was softer and denser with grass than the rest of the maze, as if not many had made it out.

Ruby's original theory about the maze was that the system constructed it for them specifically... but now she was considering that perhaps this maze had been used many times before...

Slowing her pace she gazed at the archaic architecture, her curiosity was spiking, her eyes drinking it all in. That's when she spotted it.

Scrawled in faded letters, words written in her language. Much too old to be done recently, these had to have been here for maybe centuries. Tracing her fingers along the outer lines of each letter she was barely able to tell what they used to be. Most of the words were far too faded, lines were lost and most of its meaning was gone... yet she managed to make out the words 'Be wary', 'Fabled' and 'Twilight'.

What did it all mean?