Alright, second early christmas present (if you celebrate christmas, elsewise it's just a winter present!) in the form of this chapter a day early. Mostly because I know I'm not going to want to do anything come tomorrow.

Anyways, without further ado...

Start Chapter 18

Brushing his teeth while surrounded on all sides by violet brimstone, the scent of decay, and just an overwhelming aura of death and darkness is a bit of an odd experience for Jaune.

He's glad, of course, that there is running water. It certainly makes life easier. Hell, there's even breakfast, complete with one of those waffle-makers that you'd sometimes see in hotels that served complimentary breakfast.

(Jaune's not sure what to feel when said waffles are actually delicious.)

The rest of his team, likewise, seem to be going through rather similar experiences. Ren and Nora are chatting quietly as they enjoy their breakfast – Ren has sprung for two pieces of toast, whereas Nora has placed three entire waffles on her plate, and absolutely lathered them in syrup – while Pyrrha reads from a book that Jaune's not seen before.

When he asks her about it, she informs him that she'd gotten it from the library, and that Salem had actually shown her the way there.

"I think she's interested in me because of the Maiden Power." Pyrrha hypothesizes, scowling slightly. "Even if I only have a little bit, it's possible that whatever these… relic things are, they require the entirety of the power to obtain."

"Wait, did she tell you about the relics?"

"Oh, right," Pyrrha shakes her head. "I completely forgot to inform you all. She didn't tell me much, only that there are four relics, and that Ozpin… or Ozma, hid them in the various academies of the world. Relics can only be accessed by using the power of their respective Maiden's. Other than that, though, I'm as in the dark as you all."

Jaune isn't alone in nodding along, as Ren and Nora seem to be following Pyrrha's words too. It's certainly an interesting line of conversation, although it's cut off from continuing by a showy voice that echoes out through the dining hall.

"Well, well, well," Jaune recognizes Tyrian's voice, although he can't see the man. "All the little juniper berries in one place! How fun, how fun. I've been meaning to get a look at all of you myself."

And then, with no further warning, Tyrian drops from the ceiling directly onto the table in front of him, scattering their food. Jaune finds himself flinching backwards somewhat, although he immediately regrets the action, knowing that someone like Tyrian will only feed on that weakness.

And as he'd suspected, the man's eyes narrow.

"It's odd. There's something about you, boy, that intrigues me." Tyrian speaks as he leans forward in a way that doesn't seem entirely anatomically possible. "Unrelated to Cinder's chain around your heart. No… you… resemble someone. I must admit, I am curious as to how far that resemblance goes."

Jaune steels himself to try and stay stationary, even when Tyrian's face comes to rest perhaps six inches from his own, smiling manically.

And yet, before Tyrian can go any further, the door at the back of the room explodes open.

In comes Cinder, clearly furious.

"Oh, look who's arrived!"

"Away from him." Cinder hisses. "Now."

Tyrian just claps as he backflips off of the table, landing with a showy raise of his hands on the other side of the table, and leering towards the both of them.

"My, my, you shouldn't be so rude, Cinder dear," Tyrian speaks, and Jaune feels a gnawing feeling in his gut to shut the man up, although he doesn't act on it, trusting Cinder. "I was merely discussing something with the boy, and… confirming something. Though I can tell you want him all to yourself. Well, I wouldn't want to be a third wheel between you and your little toy,"

The man bows, even as Cinder's teeth grind together.

Jaune can tell they are by the way his own ache.

Or perhaps its him who's angry.

"So, too-de-loo."

And then, just the same as he'd entered into the room, Tyrian climbs onto the wall, shoots himself up it, takes ahold of a beam in the ceiling, and skitters away into the dark.

Cinder growls the moment he's away.

"I despise that bastard." Cinder murmurs, even as she steps into the space and sits across from Jaune, a space between her and Nora, who's sat beside Ren another space down. "Are you alright?"

"Oh, uh, yeah." He smiles, trying to cheer the woman up somewhat. "Sorry, he just startled me. I suppose that's what got you to come check on me?"

Cinder goes red for a moment. "Who says I was checking on you?"

The way Nora and Pyrrha smirk at that is something Jaune desperately hopes Cinder doesn't see.

"Ah, I suppose not, then." He says, despite not believing for a second that Cinder hadn't just been worried about him. "Are you going to eat, then?"

"I ate earlier." She says with a shake of her head. "I always come and eat first thing in the morning. It's quieter that way."

That… Jaune gets the odd, depressing feeling that Cinder doesn't exactly dine early in the morning for the fun of it. Or just for the silence.

She dines then because no one will bother her. Because she can do so unaccosted, unassailed. Safe from the likes of Tyrian, and Watts, and even Salem.

He pities her, in that moment, despite knowing that there's nothing Cinder hates quite like pity.

"I actually had an idea, if you all wouldn't mind?" Pyrrha speaks up all of a sudden, before turning to Cinder. "Would you mind directing us to a training area? I assume Evernight has one?"

"It does. Several." Cinder speaks, her eyes narrowing. "Why?"

"We shouldn't let out skills waver." Pyrrha speaks, smiling over at Cinder despite the way that she likely still won't be able to join them, on account of her heel. "I was going to go off on my own to do some upper body exercises and stretches, but it would perhaps be best if we all went along."

Jaune agrees, actually, and he nods along just as Nora and Ren do the same. Cinder, for her part, seems… not reluctant, but…

"I'm afraid I won't be able to join you." She speaks. "Salem has set up another arena for me to work on… rehabilitating myself fully. I am to, also, try and master the Maiden's flames, and that is not the kind of exercise that should be done around anyone else."

Jaune supposes he can understand that, even if he feels a bit disappointed that Cinder won't be able to join them.

At the same time, however, Jaune also understands that he and his team haven't been able to do much amongst themselves in…

Gods, it's been over a month now.

And so, as the four of them follow behind Cinder as she escorts them to a training area, Jaune tries to console himself with that fact.

He'll see Cinder again soon anyhow.

She leaves as soon as she's shown them the space – a large, open area, almost like a gymnasium, except it is lit by ominous blue light cast by torches. The entire place looks more like a dungeon from out of a fantasy novel than a training arena, but then again, Jaune understands that in this case, beggars can't exactly be choosers.

They're roughly a day's travel from civilization in any direction. The fact that there is a designated area for them to train is good enough, irrespective of its spookiness.

Nora almost immediately begins scanning the room, searching all the little nooks and crannies, and actually managing to turn up a weight set. It is… well, it is very clearly older than any of them, and by how much, Jaune's not entirely sure, but even still, it's not as if weights are the most complicated thing in the world. Whether or not they're a hundred years old or not, they have weight, and are thus weights.

That sounds stupid when Jaune says it like that.

Nora eagerly assists Pyrrha in setting up and eventually begins to spot the woman as she tries some simple leg work. None of it seems to be too much trouble, but Nora's there underneath her to catch her if a sudden spasm were to strike.

Ren, for his part, has begun to practice his unarmed combat, striking with palms that Jaune has seen the boy use to infuse aura into his enemies. He'd once burst the head of an Ursa with the technique, so Jaune's fairly certain it's effective.

For his part, he decides to get in some cursory sword drills. He unsheathes Crocea Mors, and holds it aloft in his right hand. Then, he swings, following along with a fairly simple set that's meant to build up both familiarity, form, and muscle mass.

It is after thirty or so minutes that a voice interrupts them.

"Ah, I thought I had heard the sounds of scuffling. Training, are we?"

The voice startles Jaune, and he's fairly certain it startles the rest of JNPR too. All of them turn towards it, and they see, standing in the archway, Salem herself.

She is… well, she seems amused, at the very least, and in as good a mood as she'd been the day prior, which is good news in Jaune's opinion. Really, the problem is mostly that he's still not really sure how to approach speaking with the Queen of the Grimm herself.

Especially so when her shadow, Tyrian, steps into the space as well. He stretches, arcing his back in a way that Jaune's not sure is humanly possible, and yet must be. Then he turns his eyes on all of them, doing the same as he'd done yesterday in measuring them.

Just as before, Jaune has no idea what it is he's looking for, or what he sees.

Salem finally 'steps' into the space proper a few seconds later. She moves slowly, deliberately, without an ounce of doubt. Jaune supposes that if he'd been an ageless immortal being, that he, too, probably would've stopped worrying about what other people might think of him, too.

"You do not have to stop on my account, you know." Salem says, a lilt of humor in her voice. "Continue."

And so Jaune feels he should. Yet, just as Jaune raises his shield, just as he takes his sword in hand and prepares to go back to his stances, he hears a gasp.

It comes, to his surprise, from Salem herself.

When he turns back to her, it is to see her staring, almost slack-jawed, at his shield. At Crocea Mors.

Specifically, at the sigil; the Arc crest.

"Your shield… that symbol…"

Salem steps towards him, and places her hand upon the Arc family crest.

It is in that moment that a chill passes through him, seemingly reverberating through the very ether that hovers around them all. Jaune has to root himself to the spot to avoid flinching backwards, but it is enough, at least, to keep him stationary.

Salem is still staring, but there is a certain… glassiness to her eyes that tells Jaune she is not looking at what they are any longer. No. Her gaze is past the physical, staring not here, but elsewhere.

To where, exactly, Jaune cannot claim to guess.

It is around twenty or so seconds later that Salem's eyes dilate, and she seems to come back to herself. Even now, however, her eyes are surprisingly wide, and she looks upon Jaune with…

"I had thought the resemblance peculiar. And when I searched this items magics, it…"

Salem shakes her head, apparently deciding that there is something here she cannot explain with words. Instead, Salem holds out her hand, and, as effortless as breathing, produces a symbol out of magic, hovering in the air. It is something that causes Jaune's eyes to widen, as do the eyes of everyone else in the room.

Notably, however, Tyrian seems unsurprised. In fact, he is smiling rather widely.

"That's…"

"My own crest." Salem confirms. "From a very… very long time ago."

And it is the spitting image of the double crescent of the Arcs, with a spear running up the middle the only major difference.

Jaune does his best to rationalize that in the moment. Of course, with how long Salem has lived, it is entirely possible that two families had stumbled upon similar designs. More than that, it seems more likely than… than…

He keeps going, further this time.

Is it not more likely, even still, that his family had simply found the crest, and taken it as their own? Would it be such a strange thing, truly?

And yet… what Salem looks at him with then cannot be mistaken for anything but an odd sense of familiarity.

"…How strange…" The woman speaks, though it is… softer. It does not carry the normal grandeur that she speaks with, the above-it-all tone that seems to seep into every word she says. "I had thought all my descendants dead and gone. I had thought every one of my daughters had perished. I had thought… that I… and yet here you stand."

Jaune tries to breathe, then, in that moment, but finds himself unable to entirely draw breath. He swallows instead, trying to mask the motion by moving his head, and says, "I'm… your descendant?"

"…It seems." Salem says, and now, she leans towards him, reaching out with her hand and cupping the side of his face. Jaune actually blushes momentarily, before the woman tilts it from one side to the other, evidently studying him. "Arc, you said? Are there more of you?"

"Uhm…" Jaune really wonders whether or not he should be giving up the fact that he has sisters, but, yet again, he considers that withholding information, or lying, might not be entirely smart, especially given that Watts character's supposed ability with tech. Cinder had said it had been he who had come up with the virus that brought down Atlas' entire air fleet.

Retrieving information about a family whose names he knew seemed a lot less difficult.

And even past Watts, he had begun to doubt that Salem could be lied to. There's just… just something in her gaze. Something that seems to see right through the self.

Jaune gets the odd feeling she watches not one's physical body, but their magical one.

"…Yeah." He finally says. "I have seven sisters–"

"Heavens," Salem murmurs, her eyebrows rising. "Not even I thought to have that many."

And for some crazy reason, Jaune actually laughs at that. It's… it's odd, but…

Suddenly, he finds himself almost relaxing around Salem. Almost comfortable with the sudden shift in tone.

Which feels really, really weird.

But… when he looks at the woman standing opposite him now, he finds himself incapable of consoling her image with that of Salem, the monster under the bed of humanity, the endbringer, the Queen of the Grimm.

Here she is just a person. Someone who has seen much, and who is beyond his understanding in ways, surely, but…

He has a feeling as to what to say next.

"Y'know, My oldest sister, Saphron, has a young boy named Adrian." Jaune says, before feeling like he should mention, "Her wife is named Terra."

And, just as Jaune had hypothesized she might, Salem leans just a touch forward, her brow drawing down, definitively interested.

"Do you have pictures?"

It is, perhaps, the single most hilarious thing that has ever happened in Jaune's life, from a cosmic perspective. There he is, digging out his scroll and going through his photo album, so that he can show the Evil Queen of the Grimm her great, great, great – about a thousand or so more greats – grandchild.

And when he does, Salem actually smiles. It is… for once, it is an innocent thing. Not laced with any underlying scheme, or idea, or plan. Just…

The tiniest bit of joy.

"He is rather adorable." She says after a moment. "Your sister and her wife match one another. Soulmates, I see."

Jaune smiles, then, laughing himself.

This is just… so unfathomable a conversation.

And then, suddenly, Salem is tilting Jaune's scroll in her hand, looking at the thing with an odd sort of intrigue.

"…It is rather humorous to me, that these devices can do what was previously unthought of in my day." Salem says, returning his scroll. "Long ago, one had to be rather well funded to afford a portrait. And it took many months to be completed. Even so, I had several made of me by my father. Before he locked me away." Salem smiles, despite what cannot be anything but a sad story. "I still have one of them in the basement somewhere, refurbished every once in a few centuries. Perhaps I'll dig it out. You can see the appearance I once had, and how similar we truly are."

Jaune's pretty sure he's crazy, because…

"I'd love to." He speaks.

He's not even lying.

And Salem smiles at him again, before chuckling herself.

"My, the coincidences the world brings. How curious indeed. Often, I am confounded as to how small this Remnant of ours truly is."

Jaune laughs. "Yeah, you can say that again."

Salem turns to him with a raised eyebrow.

"Why would I do that?"

Jaune tries, really, really hard not to snort at that.

He fails, of course.

And so Jaune spends the next fifteen or so minutes attempting to explain slang to Salem, the woman single-handedly attempting to end all life on the planet.

…It sounds a lot worse when he puts it like that.

/

It is around two hours later that Jaune returns to his room.

Or, well, he's about halfway towards his door when he sees that Cinder's is cracked just the barest amount, and he's far too curious to not at least knock.

After all, part of the reason he'd broken off of training so much sooner than the others is mostly due to the fact that he's been able to feel Cinder's exertion as well. The exhaustion of one's soulmate isn't truly real. The pain that comes through one's link is never enough to actually damage anything physically, so Jaune could technically simply work through the pain, and focus only on his own growth.

But frankly, that idea sounds really shitty, so Jaune had decided not to go along with it.

So, he goes over, and knocks, and when Cinder pokes her head out at him, looking haggard and exhausted, and more than a little cranky for it, Jaune smiles as apologetically as he can.

"Hey. How are you?"

"I have been… better." Cinder says, sighing. "Yourself?"

"Oh, y'know… decent."

"…Define decent?"

Jaune really struggles to come up with a succinct way to sum up the last few hours.

"Uhm… I think I had a bonding experience with Salem?"

Cinder eyes him like he's just said that he wants to exterminate the human race.

…Actually, that's probably a bad example. Tyrian's likely suggested that already.

"You what?"

"Yeah, honestly, I'm not sure either."

So, he follows Cinder into her room, and he recounts the day's events, including the revelation that both he and Salem had shared in that they were, apparently, related, albeit so distantly that genetics-wise, they were likely complete strangers.

Cinder, however, has had wide eyes nearly the entire time he's been speaking, and honestly, Jaune can't really blame her for that.

"Yeah, that was kinda' my reaction too."

"I simply… well, it is good for you, and thereby good for me, since I will hopefully not have to concern myself with your safety as much." Cinder says, before explaining. "I had been worried Tyrian or Watts might make some kind of powerplay on you, but if Salem is intrigued by you, then they wouldn't dare cross her."

Jaune lets out a 'huh' at that.

"…However, I imagine Salem will not exactly ignore you, either. You will likely be called out by her more often than I'd anticipated. Hopefully, it will not be too terribly often, but–"

And then Salem is at Cinder's door, knocking lightly on the already ajar wood.

"I had thought you might be in here." Salem says, staring at the two of them on the floor. "If you're going to be intimate, might I suggest a bed?"

Jaune goes red in the face, even as Cinder shows teeth. Salem, meanwhile, looks rather proud of her teasing as she gestures towards him.

"There is something I am interested to learn, Jaune of Arc." She states, saying his name the way an old-timey person might, which Jaune supposes makes sense. "…Although, actually, Cinder, you may benefit from this as well, given what you carry."

Jaune is curious as to exactly what the woman means. "So… are you going to ask us something, or–"

"The opposite." Salem clarifies, her posture completely straight. "I am going to teach you something. You were curious about soulbonds, were you not?"

Jaune finds himself, once more, curious, although at this point, it may be more accurate to use a term like 'flabbergasted' or 'flummoxed'.

"And just what," Cinder voices for him, sounding almost suspicious. "Are you planning to teach us?"

"Why I had thought that would be obvious." Salem says, before she extends her hand, and, just as easily as she had done earlier, conjures into being a sort of swirling spell in the air above it.

"I aim to teach you magic."

End Chapter 18

So confirming the fact that Jaune is related to Salem, albeit very distantly. Tyrian figured it out because he's insane. I don't have much more reason than that, to be honest.

Anyways, see you all next year! ...Well, in two weeks, but both are technically correct.