Another week of time has passed. Cinderella has come once again.


Start Chapter 45


Jaune feels like it says something about their collective survival instinct being titanically low that it takes only around two- or three-hours' time to convince the others to fly with him to Salem's castle.

There are a few rather glaring absences of course. They'd thought it a good idea to perhaps not take Summer straight back to the place she'd been imprisoned for a decade and a half, and so had left her behind with Ruby, Blake, Yang and Raven. Qrow is with their group, so that if Raven needs to warp to them, or needs to warp them out, she can.

It's a rather useful power to have, in truth. Jaune can definitely see why Ozpin had been so desperate to acquire it again once he'd lost it. They'd been using it for all sorts of things for the last few weeks.

Some rather mundane, but he isn't worrying about that at the moment.

It's as they're approaching Evernight – Jaune, Cinder, Nora, Ren, Pyrrha, Emerald, Ilia, Mercury, and Qrow – that their intercom suddenly receives a hail. Jaune looks towards Cinder from the co-pilot seat, and gets a nod from her.

He presses his finger down on the intercom button, and listens to whomever is on the other side.

"If you are who I think you are, you'd be better off turning yourselves around."

It's Arthur Watts speaking, which doesn't much surprise Jaune. Salem isn't really the type to handle a call like this herself, even if that would make things rather immensely easier.

"We've come to speak with Salem." Jaune answers.

"Obviously." Watts sneers out with pure derision. "I am saying that I doubt you will find her particularly receptive to anything you have to say."

"I think she might want to hear us out on this one."

"And why is that, exactly?"

"We'll tell her ourselves."

Watts is silent a while as they fly closer and closer towards Evernight; deeper and deeper into the Grimmlands.

"Very well. If you wish to dig your own graves, then I shan't stop you." Watts sighs. "I'll inform my mistress that you're coming. I imagine she'll roll out the veritable red carpet for your return."

Jaune gets the feeling that's not really a good thing.

"Is there any way you could put her on the com for us?"

Watts goes silent again.

"…You're asking me to inconvenience Salem… when you're already counting on her being polite enough to not blow you out of the sky the second you're in range of the AA guns?"

"Evernight has AA guns?"

"Truly? That's the thing you focus on?"

"W-Well," Jaune shakes his head, trying to refocus. "I'd like to speak with Salem. I have a feeling she'll be interested in what I have to say."

"Fine, as I said, it's your own grave you're digging."

The com goes dead in the next moment, and Jaune assumes for a moment that Watts has simply denied them. Yet, around five minutes later, they receive a second hail, and Jaune presses down on the intercom once again.

"Well, well, I can't say I expected to be speaking to you again so soon, my descendant." Salem's voice comes through the intercom. "And just why do you think you can fly back into my domain without suffering consequence?"

"We've found information about the Silver-Eyed warriors." Jaune says, and waits for Salem to say something in response. She doesn't, so he continues. "Some things we think will interest you. And we have a hypothesis that… well, if we're right about it, will really interest you."

Salem goes quiet for a few moments.

"Pah. Curse my endless curiosity. Fine, fine. Land where you normally would. Come straight to the dining hall, and do not stray, the Grimm will take some time to reacclimate to you, and I'm afraid you might find them jumpier than they once were."

Jaune nods his head, then remembers that Salem can't see him, so instead says, "Understood. Thank you for taking the time to listen to us. You won't regret it."

Salem is quiet for long enough that Jaune thinks she must've hung up, but then, with a small sigh, she mutters out, "Ah, yes, I remember why I was so willing to put up with you, now."

And then she does hang up.

Jaune pauses a moment, before looking over towards Cinder, asking with his eyes what that had been about.

"You're kind." Cinder says simply in response. "I doubt Salem experiences very much kindness. I would say that she hasn't exactly earned such from anyone, but… you have always been the type to give kindness to any who crosses your path."

He frowns somewhat. "Do you… disagree?"

"I would never do it myself, but…" Cinder hums. "I think it is a wonderful thing when you do it."

Jaune can't help smiling and blushing a bit at that.

"Thank you."

"Mm." Cinder gives out in response, even as she turns off the autopilot, and begins to take them lower. "Evernight should be coming into view soon. Alert the others that we'll be landing within the next few minutes."

Jaune nods, makes to leave the cockpit, but turns back around to plant a kiss along the side of Cinder's head.

"What are…" She mutters, her cheeks a tad bit red.

"Just felt like it." He says, chuckling under his breath. "No other reason."

Cinder hesitates, even as she nods her head smally, embarrassedly.

"…Case in point." She grumbles out.

/

Evernight hasn't changed.

That isn't to say that Jaune had expected it to; he hadn't. Still, it's a bit disconcerting to be back here when, only a few weeks ago, they'd landed here and known instantly that something had been off.

Now, looking at it, he finds that same hesitancy filling him. He looks towards Cinder and sees that she is much the same, albeit hiding it a lot better. The only thing that really gives her away is the twinge he feels through their link.

"Welp," Qrow mutters underneath his breath as he steps up towards the doors of Evernight. "No time like the present I suppose. Can't say this is what I thought I'd be doing when I woke up this morning, but I guess that's life for ya'."

He pushes open the door and enters into Evernight before any of them, which Jaune can't help feeling is probably a poor plan. He follows hurriedly, making sure that Qrow isn't able to get sidetracked, or go someplace he shouldn't – which Jaune had specifically told him not to do, but this is Qrow he's talking about, so it still happening anyways is a very real possibility – but the man surprises him by being propped up against the wall immediately off to his right upon entering, seemingly having been waiting for him.

"This place…" Qrow shakes his head. "It's got a bad vibe to it. A real bad vibe."

"I guess I forgot," Jaune murmurs a tad awkwardly. "You've never actually been here before, have you?"

"Hah, no, kid, I haven't. Suffice it to say I also didn't terribly want to come here, either. Still, duty calls, as they say."

Jaune nods, before taking the lead for their little entourage. He remembers the route towards the many-windows-room without much effort. It hasn't been very long since they left, after all, and despite the way that Salem had closed many of the corridors as they'd attempted to make their escape the last time they'd been here, it seemed as if she'd opened them back up once they'd gotten away.

So, they push their way into the many-windows-room with trepidation, but Jaune tries to do so with determination set in his gaze as well.

"My descendant," Salem greets him at the head of the table, every one of her enforcers sat down with her. "It's good to see you. How have you been these last few weeks?"

"Well enough." He answers honestly. "Combing the sands of Vacuo, mostly."

"So, you say." Salem answers, balancing her head on her elbow. "And yet, the last time you were here, we did not part on the best of circumstances, did we?"

"No, we didn't."

"Have you anything to say for yourself regarding that, my descendant?"

Jaune pauses a moment.

"Uh, not really?"

If it is at all possible for Salem to be surprised, she is in that moment.

"You… don't?"

"Well, I mean, you were going to hurt my friends," Jaune says, shrugging, and completely missing the very pointed signals that Cinder is trying to send him to stop talking. "And I couldn't let that happen. So… no, I don't regret leaving."

"And in regards to Summer Rose?"

"I don't regret that, either."

Salem stares at him for a long while after that.

"You are trying my patience, oh descendant of mine. I expected an honest apology at the very least from you, and yet here you are, with nothing."

"Uh, ma'am," Jaune rubs his hand along the back of his neck. "I appreciate that you let us come in here and talk with you in the first place and all, but… I don't regret anything that I did in regards to you eventually turning on us. I stand by every one of those decisions."

This time, Cinder actually slaps Jaune's arm, trying to get him to stop, but Jaune… he can't stop, not now.

Because there's a part of him that's scared, yes. There's a part of him that's terrified of the monster under the bed that's in front of him. But there's another part that's trying to tell him something else. A part of him that wants to communicate that Salem is, ultimately, not a monster; or perhaps that she has not always been one.

The woman, Salem, is who he is trying to reach.

"You command the Grimm. You took down Beacon. You treated Cinder poorly her entire life. I can't sit here and pretend like I think you're in the right, and I'm in the wrong. I won't lie to you and apologize for doing the right thing."

Salem just watches him. Her enforcers are doing so as well in varying states of shock. Hazel's eyes are wider than normal, but he seems otherwise unaffected. If anything, he looks a second or so away from nodding his head in agreement.

Watts just looks shocked that Jaune's still alive after all he's had to say. He keeps glancing back and forth between himself and Salem, as if expecting things to come to blows at any moment.

Speaking of blows, Tyrian Callows looks like he's about three seconds away from trying to rip Jaune's head off. His form is literally vibrating with rage.

He'd expected that, though, in truth.

Salem, however, is staring at him evenly; albeit frowning slightly. Nearly every other time he's spoken with her, there's been a sort of film over her vision, like Salem has always been one step away from falling asleep. He'd seen it break but once, when she had first figured out Jaune to be one of her descendants.

And now, again, that film has disappeared. She eyes him warily, expecting something from him.

"I guess I just… I don't think it's too late." Jaune says, looking Salem in the eye and trying his best to smile. "I was talking with Ra– with someone a few days ago about this. They thought that it was too late for them to try and improve, to try and do the right thing. But… it's never too late, I think."

Salem's frown deepens somewhat.

"I could tell, back when we spoke about Summer… there was some part of you that thought what you'd done was wrong, right?"

"I told you already, that was all just a performance to try and test your loyalty." Salem counters, her expression unchanging.

"Was it really?" Jaune asks, completely serious. "Because I don't think that's the case. You sounded… guilt-ridden, almost. You called yourself a monster, and didn't seem too terribly happy about it."

Salem doesn't try and counter that, at least.

"So, I guess I just… don't think that just because you've walked this path for a hundred thousand years, you always have to. You can still–"

"Enough."

Jaune feels the fire that had been building within him, stoked by Salem's seeming guilt, fading away then. He doesn't look away, but he watches as her own eyes harden.

"Believe me when I say that you are not the first person to try and convince me away from my path, Jaune Arc. Countless people over countless generations have I had this conversation with. It did not work then. It shall not work now."

Jaune feels the conversation getting away from him, but he wants to fight. Damnit, but he wants to fight for this.

Cinder had managed to change, despite how terrible her life had been, despite how horrible the world had been to her. She'd come so far, and now acted as one of the de facto leaders of their group, often taking charge.

Raven had managed to change; or at least to start to, despite how much she had stuck to her terrible decisions. She'd decided to do something about it, even if, as she'd said, she'd waited two decades too long.

Salem can change, too. Jaune is sure of it. Whether or not he can convince her too now, however… well, that he's not terribly sure of.

He hasn't had enough time to get to the root cause of this, and honestly, it's not like he really can, either. They'd come here with a goal; an objective, and he'd gone and derailed all of that to try and reach out to Salem's good nature.

He can't help it, really, even if he knows now that the time for this conversation has passed.

"Fine." He says with a sigh. "Then… about what we found in Vacuo, regarding the Silver-Eyed Warriors."

Salem nods her head, though it is a notably stiffer motion than it had been a few minutes prior.

"We found a tablet within some ruins; ruins decorated with images of what we believe to be the first Silver-Eyed Warriors, and evidence that suggests that the first of them were of the Rose clan, same as Summer and Ruby."

Salem's eyes widen somewhat, which confirms for Jaune that she hadn't known or suspected such a thing.

"This tablet, do you still have it?"

He nods, turning back towards Ren and taking it as his friend hands it to him. He walks over towards Salem – choosing to take the side of the table that Tyrian isn't on, since he wants to live – and holds it out towards her.

Salem stares at him a moment.

"…You didn't think I would hurt you if you came towards me?"

"Well, I mean, I figured if you wanted to hurt me, you could've done it with your magic." Jaune admits, rubbing at the back of his neck a tad bit awkwardly. "It's not like it would've been that hard."

Salem's expression gets a touch less tense, then.

She takes a moment to study the tablet in her hands. The inscription upon it is something that Jaune can no longer decipher, even if he remembers, largely, what had been on it. It's like whatever magic that had been given to him when he'd needed to read it in that moment had just… shown up.

And it had disappeared the moment it hadn't been needed any longer.

"I see." Salem says after a moment. "This is a language I have long since forgotten. I recognize a few of the words, but I must confess I struggle to ascertain it's meaning."

Jaune's eyes widen. "You can't use your magic to read it?"

"No." Salem states, shaking her head. "Magic cannot be used in such a way; or, I should say, I have never once encountered anyone who could use magic to translate a tablet such as this."

Jaune's eyes are wide as he looks back towards his group, including Cinder herself, who is eyeing him uncertainly.

Because… he had. He had used magic to translate the tablet. It's the reason they have a translation at all; anything to go off of.

He relays as much to Salem, and receives only a pensive tightening of the woman's jaw.

"You speak truthfully?"

"I'm fairly certain I can't actually lie to you."

Salem hums. "You cannot. That is something that my magics can sense. But the ability to translate another language… I might understand it if it were spoken word. If someone who possessed magic spoke, then it may make some small amount of sense that you would be able to divine their meaning via your own. But a tablet such as this… even if it once had magic, it has to have long since been rid of it in the twenty or so millennia since it was crafted."

Jaune frowns himself, now. "I felt magic on it, when we entered into the bowels of that place."

Salem's expression darkens, somehow.

"That is… most curious. And not at all in a good way."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that either Ozma himself had been in that place rather recently," Salem speaks, and Jaune catches onto her meaning. "Or some other magical force… led you there."

Jaune flinches somewhat, even as the others among his group, who are now growing comfortable enough to step more solidly into the room, begin whispering amongst themselves.

"Raven said the same thing." Jaune admits, watching as Salem considers his words. "That she felt it wasn't a coincidence we found that place. We located it in barely a day of searching; it was the second place we looked, and even then, we noticed it immediately, just chose to go somewhere else first."

"In the entire desert, you somehow stumbled upon a ruin of the Silver-Eyed Warriors?" Salem questions him, and he nods his head. "Yes, that is… most troubling. You were certainly being led there, though by what, I am remiss to say."

"Let's focus on the more relevant aspect of our findings," Qrow suddenly cuts in, stepping forward. "As much as I'd like to sit here and theorize about what magical, mystical being gave us that location, don't we have something to actually tell her?"

Jaune remembers in that moment that yes, they very much do, and clears his throat.

"Right." He mutters. "So, uh… I had a theory based on what we translated– oh, right, uh, Ren, do you have the translation?"

His friend nods, stepping towards him and handing him a folded piece of paper. Jaune gifts it to Salem, and she spends a moment reading up on it.

Her eyes widen as the note goes on, and when she reaches the end, she mutters under her breath, "That doesn't make any sense…"

"That's what we thought." Jaune answers. "Why spend time going through all that trouble just to try and do something he could do with a snap of his fingers, right?"

Salem nods her head, before passing the translation towards Watts, who had a rather similar reaction to Salem herself. Watts passes it to Hazel, and Hazel keeps it, given that Tyrian seems to have no interest at all in reading the note.

"And you have a theory regarding why?"

"I think that he might've been using you as… well, as a training dummy, essentially."

Salem's brow furrows. "Pardon?"

"Okay, so… my theory is that he created the Silver-Eyed Warriors to act beside him in a war against his brother." Salem reacts to that, going wide-eyed, but Jaune isn't finished. "Of course, he has no idea whether or not a human with his powers could even hope to match the God of Darkness. After all, he's a god, but he's not omnipotent. They're fallible, at least through words."

Salem nods, seeming as if she's hanging off of Jaune's every word.

"So, he tries the next best thing; you." Jaune says, even as Salem's brow furrows further. "Think about it. You've inherited the powers of the God of Darkness – or at least some of them – by dipping in the pools of darkness. You're essentially immortal, I'd assume just like his brother is. And you're quite the powerful magician. You're… well, you're a pretty good expy for the God of Darkness."

Salem pauses a moment, considering his words.

"I see. I must admit I doubt I'd have seen such an angle myself." Salem looks back up at him. "And you believe that the Silver-Eyed warriors were sent to defeat me… essentially as a test?"

"Exactly." Jaune says, nodding his head. "Only, well, they seem to have failed, judging by the whole…" He gestures towards her. "You still being here thing."

Salem gives a breath of amusement. "Yes, so it seems."

"But even still… on a godly timescale… how long is twenty-thousand years? Do we really know?"

"The brothers didn't seem to care too terribly much about the millennia or so that it took me to amass an army large enough to challenge them after I was made immortal. They spoke to me as if it had been mere minutes." Salem speaks, and her countenance grows more and more intrigued. "I believe your idea may have some merit, my descendant."

He smiles. "That's good. I uh… sort of have an idea about something we could do on that front, if you don't mind?"

"Very well," Salem says. "What is it?"

"I think that we should contact your ex-husband."

Salem pauses and stares at him as the room goes deathly quiet. Everyone is staring at him. Cinder, meanwhile, is rubbing her temples with both hands, letting out a low grown under her breath.

Salem seems only to have energy to sigh.

"I often wonder if it is a unique characteristic of yours to be able to say something in the worst way possible."

"It's a gift." Cinder replies without hesitation.

"Hey!"

/

Oscar Pine has had a really weird couple of months.

The whole talking voice in his head thing not even being the weirdest, which is really, really saying something.

But when he gets a call on his scroll from an unknown number, one that immediately has the voice in his head telling him rather certainly not to answer, and to break his phone in half lest she – whoever the heck she is – track his location, he can't quite hide his curiosity.

Oscar's always had pretty poor survival instincts, so he can't help but pick up the scroll and say, "Hello?"

"Ah, it seems he's reincarnated into someone rather young this time."

"Uh… who are you?"

"He hasn't talked about me yet? Hm. Noted. I am Salem."

"…Uhm… you'll really have to be more–"

"I am the counterpart to the voice in your head; one of the twin immortals who governs this miserable rock behind the scenes…"

"And I am cordially inviting you to my palace on a matter of great import."

Suddenly, Oscar feels the reigns of control being ripped away from him, and he can tell that Ozpin is now piloting their shared body.

"Define great import, Salem." His voice sounds almost alien to him whenever Ozpin speaks through him.

"Great import as in I have just been handed a piece of information that might give us a lead as to the nature of our curses, and potentially even the breaking of them."

Oscar feels his body go disturbingly still.

"…I'll be there by tomorrow."


End Chapter 45


I have decided to hold back on releasing the first chapter of my Bianca fic 'Who We Used to Be', as I've yet to finish working on chapter 2, and want to have some wiggle room in case something comes up. In theory that will be up next week, but theory is as theory does, which is to say 'no promises'.

Next time on Cinderella, however... two bitter exes talk to each other in person for the first time in roughly... well, a while.