Other members of team RWBY had quite a sight when they found their leader. All three of them thought the worst at first, but it was Yang who went into a screaming fit, throwing herself at Ruby's feet and clutching her blood-covered sister. It was only when the latter opened her eyes that she felt a stone being lifted from heart. As for Ruby herself, she had no idea what was happening at first. When her mind began piecing together everything that transpired, she immediately apologized and began explaining her situation until she reached a blank in her memories.
"I… don't know what happened next. It's all so foggy…"
"And you jumped into danger without warning us first?"
"I'm sorry, Weiss. I didn't want for you to worry about me…"
The Huntsman paid no attention to their drama, instead focusing more on the room, standing in front of the circle made of chalk.
"You said that one of these eyes was glowing, yes?"
The girls stopped talking and looked at the Huntsman.
"Yes, I did. It stopped now…"
He put a hand on the bricks.
"There's a draft coming from this wall."
His hand began passing over the wall's surface. After getting all the details he needed, the Huntsman stepped back and brought it down with a kick. The bricks echoed as they fell inward, deep into a place that, by all means, shouldn't exit underground.
"Is that…?"
"A tunnel." The man interrupted Yang and stepped forward without a warning.
"Not the most sociable type, huh?" she muttered under her breath.
"We must follow him." Ruby declared. "It might be a trap."
"And what about you?" Weiss asked "You still have untreated injuries."
"I'm fine though."
"You were all covered in blood! How is that "fine"?"
A chilling breeze swept from the depths of the tunnel. The Huntsmen-in-training collectively jumped to attention; overwhelmed by a terrifying presence.
"We must go in there." Ruby tried her best to give an ordering tone to her voice. "There's no time to waste."
Her team and CFVY reluctantly agreed.
(Limbus Company – Depressed Story Theme)
The tunnel seemed to be carved in rock, despite the fact that there was only dirt for miles and miles in the Agricultural District. The rock itself felt smooth to the touch, yet cold as ice, to the point that touching it with bare skin caused the limb to go blue in under a minute. Every few meters there would be a torch lit by the Huntsman, who was already deep within the tunnel. Blake and Velvet began feeling uncomfortable, stating how the rock's texture was morphing into ice.
They found the Huntsman standing in a room with a large black stone placed in the middle, carved to resemble a rectangle. A pair of rusty manacles were attached to it with a thick nail. The surface itself was stained with large patches of what was soon understood to be blood. There was also a bone-white mask placed on top, with large antlers growing from its sides. Someone tried to carve additional holes above the eye sockets. The hand that tried it was probably inexperienced, judging by the fact that some of the holes almost cracked the mask in two.
Blake's bow twitched, as did Velvet's ears.
"Someone's down here."
The Huntsman remained quiet as he ran towards the source of the noise. RWBY and CFVY followed. They reached a tiny segment of the cave system filled with alcoves repurposed into prison cells. Most cells were empty, while two were filled with either bones or preserved remains, yet with no stench of dead flesh present. The pleas for help mixed with ramblings came from the last, and smallest, cell at the far end of the hallway. The figure gasped loudly when it saw the approaching Huntsmen.
"You are not supposed to be here… Did you break the barrier?"
RWBY and CFVY could only look at each other in confusion.
"No… no! You destroyed the seals! The curse is spreading again! Damn you!"
The man dressed in tattered black robes leaped at the iron bars and shook them violently, throwing obscenities and curses in their way, devolving into further ramblings about monsters and visions. They drank it all until the professional Huntsman in their group decided to rip the cell door open and grab the man by the throat.
"I'm running out of patience. You will explain everything, otherwise my hand my slip and snap your neck."
"We made contact with a monster, you imbecile!" the man screamed, "It showed us its dominion through dreams; it lies beyond the wretched walls of reality, in a dark void between the realm of order and infinite chaos. A bargain was made with us, but I was skeptical. I refused to listen to the soul-chilling voice of this entity. Now only I remain." the man laughed, "Only I remain."
His gaze turned to the Huntsmen-in-training, who looked at him as if he had grown another head.
"Don't you understand? The whisperer is not whom he claims to be. It took me a while, but I figured it out. I uncovered his dirty secret. He belongs to the Lord of Darkness Below, god of the barbarian peoples that inhabited our lands many centuries ago, Defiler of all things holy and the great Hurricane of Corruption, Sin and Insanity. The last of us tried to contain it down here through the same arcane teachings we used to contact with. But then you had to let it out!"
As if to add weight to his words, a breeze came from nowhere and fell upon the group.
"Brrr! It's freezing in here!" complained Yang.
"We should get out of here." answered Coco, "And bring that man with us too. Methinks he might know a little bit more than he lets on."
They managed to open the cell and bring the rambling man with them. The latter fell silent as soon as they went out of the cave. Going out of the basement, the group passed by a window, where the stranger freed himself from the grasp of those around him and became erratic at the sight of the blankets of snow.
"No… no, no, no, no! It's too late! It's far too late! He's coming!"
"Who? Who's coming?"
He turned to Coco.
"We must stop him! Before his realization is complete! I must make the banishment spell. We'll need a sacrifice… right… I'll do it! I'll do the ritual."
The Huntsmen-in-training looked at each other in confusion. It didn't take them long to realize that they were dealing with an insane person. The words he said, however, brought fear in their hearts, for they felt true. Who could deny the possibility of the supernatural after what they experienced?
It was the last part that made them wary.
"When you, uh, say ritual… what do you-"
"We must act quickly and with caution." he interrupted Velvet, "Before he swallows this world whole!"
His manic eyes looked at each face as if searching for a response. When he got quiet stares of confusion and horror, he began to scream.
"Why can't you understand! These things are spiritual! One bad spirit will attract seven worse! You think we can just solve our problems by putting them in boxes? That's not how it works. It's not a childish fantasy. It's not even reality. It's something much, much bigger. 'Their' influence expands above and beyond the sea of worlds. We thought we could keep them out of our daily lives by renouncing the very idea of spiritual influences and it didn't even work! We tried to remove every concept or idea related to 'Them' from our minds, thinking we would be safe if we didn't attract attention. But we were wrong. So, so, so very wrong." he calmed down and took a deep breath. The Huntsmen-in-training cringed collectively and stepped back.
"Woo-ho-ho-hoo…" Yang whispered in her comrade's ears, "This guy's giving me the creeps…"
"True, but… I don't know, Yang. Something doesn't feel right."
"Duh, I saw it too, Blake. We all saw it."
The trio's eyes quietly landed on Ruby, who absorbed every word coming from the rambling man's mouth as if it were a gospel. As if she knew something they didn't.
Something began scraping outside. It was the sound of someone trying to scratch at the walls with a metallic object, but was too weak to do so. Several repetitions, along with the sound coming from multiple directions, made the professional Huntsman realize that the sound was not coming from a natural source.
"Someone's outside."
They all heard a loud crack in one of the rooms followed by the sound of something crashing on the ground.
"What was that?"
Velvet immediately hid behind Coco while Blake unsheathed her weapon. Others did the same. A dark blue spike pierced through the bricks of the wall, followed by others until a hole could be dug through. Low growls and clicking of teeth came from the other side. The group heard something taking deep breaths, as if lifting something heavy. With multiple loud bangs, the wall came crashing down.
"Gods!"
"Trouble. Again."
Coco and Ruby, acting like responsible leaders, stood in front of the crowd and aimed at the billowing smoke and scattered bricks. Black shapes stepped forward; distorted human forms carrying tools in thin hands. The professional Huntsman pushed Ruby and Coco aside and stared at the approaching humanoids with a blank expression.
"There's a killing intent." he said to nobody in particular, "It makes my skin crawl."
At the same time, somewhere behind the group and in another room, heavy steps boomed throughout the hallway. Yang, Yatsuhashi and Fox turned and prepared themselves for the eventual assault.
"We're surrounded. They're everywhere, Yang!"
"Tell me something I don't know, Blake. Just hearing them makes me uncomfortable."
The silhouettes stepped out of the shadows with heavy breaths that congealed as soon as the air went through the mouths and nostrils. Pale faces with mindless gazes emerged, carrying tools that seemed to be carved out of ice blocks. Ice itself seemed to grow out of their bodies, behaving way too similar to a parasite organism for the Huntsmen-in-training to be comfortable with. More of them appeared behind the group and those ones resembled decaying corpses than actual living humans.
"What the fuck!"
In any other circumstance, Ruby would have felt more than obligated to scold her sister for her bad language. But she had to control her urge to simply pull the trigger and destroy the obvious sign of "their" corruption. They could have still been alive.
"Aa-aaaaah!" the ex-prisoner began shouting, "The Eternal Winter has taken over their hearts and minds! They are the Frozen Slaves* that obey the Final Dirge of the Universe! You must kill them quickly or we risk becoming like them!"
The professional Huntsman spun around and grabbed the crazed man by the throat.
"You will have a lot of explaining to do once this is over. If you try to run, I will kill you like a dog. Do you understand?"
Without waiting for an answer, he returned to face the Frozen Slaves and pulled out a karambit. His tone never left the emotionless tint it always seemed to carry.
"Hear me out everyone. Keep your focus on the enemy and aim to kill. Don't think of them as people. Get it into your thick skulls. No one can survive what they've gone through and you know it. The sooner we're done, the sooner we can all get to safety."
(Limbus Company – Canto IV Theme B2)
The Huntsman displayed his combat experience very quickly. Leaping under a swing from the closest Slave, he killed the one behind it with a single stab to the side of the head, dragging the knife through the skull and to the back of the first Slave's head. He switched the hold on the knife and performed a swift twirl that decapitated the third Frozen Slave. Blood splashed on the floor and walls either in neat lines or large stains.
A loud bang came from the crowd of Huntsmen-in-training. The head of a Slave that tried to sneak up on the professional Huntsman exploded moments before it could bring down its ice pickaxe. He looked impassively at Ruby, Crescent Rose's barrel fuming and tiny hands trembling, daring her to break out of her indecisiveness. Instead her sniper rifle fell to the floor as she broke down in a fit of panic. The girls around her were shocked to see the one who was thought of as the most alternative-answer-seeking was the first to kill.
"What a pitiful state of affairs."
Back to the students. The wave of Frozen Slaves that came at them kept growing as they crawled out of the side rooms and open windows. Unlike Ruby, the three Huntsmen-in-trading had lesser problems in dealing with their inner moral struggles, realizing that this was a battle of life and death. No neat little tricks they could pull off to avoid killing the opponent would save them now.
Still, there was some reluctance in Yatsuhashi and Yang as they dealt with the first wave of enemies, with Fox going for the next ones in row. Their heavy attacks crushed through the weak defenses of the frost-consumed corpses. Fox killed two more Slaves with several slice-and-dice maneuvers. Having little room for further movement, however, Fox right arm received a cut by an ice spear. Though the wound barely scratched the surface of the skin, the blind Huntsman-in-training felt a sudden chill inflicting pain on his whole being and fell on his knees paralyzed, taking deep breaths through his teeth and trembling feverishly.
"Fox!" his team mate yelled, bringing his massive weapon down on the resurrected corpse and splitting it in two. He soon came to his friend's side, checking the injury.
"Is he alright?" Yang yelled in the background as she punched through the horde.
"He has a fever."
It was more a question than a statement. Yatsuhashi couldn't believe what was unfolding. Fox was healthy just a minute ago. Now his body was burning with fever.
"Wasn't his Aura supposed to block that attack?"
"Watch out!"
Yatsuhashi turned his head to see Blake warning Weiss of an attack from behind, which she deflected. Both of them stood their ground and tried to repel any attack directed at their leader, who still seemed under shock. The professional Huntsman, meanwhile, already decimated the other horde, filling the hallway with mutilated corpses. He remembered how the man gave his brief lecture to the students on how should they treat this encounter and he didn't seem to have qualms with the amount of brutality he had invested in each clash. His movements were precise and deadly. Yatsuhashi wasn't sure on whether or not the Huntsman kept in mind the fact that these were people at the end of the day. Everyone else seemed to struggle with it.
"We have to get out of the building!" his leader barked after swinging at a Frozen Slave with the hand bag, "Or we run the risk of being overwhelmed!"
They all agreed. Yatsuhashi carried Fox in his arms while Yang took her sister. They fought their way out of the facility, leaving behind the Huntsman who seemed disturbingly focused on carving up as much enemies as possible.
Snow consumed everything. There was so much of it that it was hard to recognize shapes and outlines of objects, making it harder for the group to distance themselves from the building. A cold wind blew against their faces, freezing the air that came out of their mouths. Contrary to their belief, the building wasn't swarmed by a large group of Frozen Slaves. Only a few straggles circled around it, making a few of them believe that the majority was already inside.
"Heads up! Someone's there!" Coco pointed at a shadow approaching from the wall of fog. A gust of wind blew in their direction witch each painfully slow step the shadow had made, as if it had all the time in the world to do what it had planned. After its third step, the Huntsmen-in-training heard a faint buzz in the back of their minds before they heard a loud popping noise that gave them a headache.
Then they heard it.
"And on the sixth day, when God made all the animals that walk on land, he gave them seasons as an eternal reminder of the order that permeated Creation. He made Spring, so that all things could flourish and spread over the Earth. He made Summer, so that all who live could bask in the warmth of his eternal love. He made Fall, so that life could understand what it means to develop into maturity, to understand the need for change and to accept the inevitable loss that comes after…"
A snowstorm grew in power as it engulfed the group, further crippling their vision. It was so cold that walking became a chore.
"…And there was evening. The lesser light cast its gaze upon the Earth when God had finally completed the cycle of life. At last, he made Winter, the Inevitable Fate of the Universe, where the light would cease to give warmth and where all things would meet their end. In the shadows that would swallow the world the living would find no peace and all the colors of life would fade into pure white, consumed by death of heat itself."
The shadow grew in size, towering over the teams, with a pair of antlers sticking out from its head and wrapped in a blanket of ice blue aura. The imprisoned cultist they brought along screamed in horror.
"Winter has come to consume you all."
The arrival was far less eventful than anticipated. Nothing stopped Jaune from approaching the tower. Space around him began to display anomalous activity with each step. Humanoid shapes materialized when Jaune got to the entrance, forever repeating a set of movements as if stuck in a loop, before eventually crumbling into particles of light that would reassemble moments later. Where the fortified gate was supposed to be now lay a pile of debris, with two large statue toppled over them. Jaune climbed the pile, careful not to fall, then slid inside the building.
Jaune felt something was off as soon as a chilling breeze leaked through the cracks in the walls. A phantom green light illuminated the area even though there was no visible source. A constant background droning scraped at his ears despite him being the only thing in the place that could produce any kind of noise. Unlike in the wasteland outside, the alien vegetation seemed to survive inside the tower, forming complex colonies and symbiotic constructs in the corners or on top of corroded contraptions.
Jaune scouted the area. Finding nothing of interest, he went to the staircase and on the second floor. He understood immediately that this area was larger than from the outside. Judging from the overturned furniture, it seemed as if the place was ransacked before it was abandoned. The layout of the place closely resembled that of a modern office one could see all over Vale. Overall, apart from the anomalous size of the room, there was nothing noteworthy.
(Doom 3 – Evil Monks)
The stairs that led to the next floor were tinged with black and Jaune's vision became dimmer. He was sweating profusely by the time he got to the top. Each step echoed for what felt like miles. The air was stuffy and greasy; hard to swallow. The hallway twisted and broadened as it led to a cave made from dark stone. In the center of the cave stood a lake of bright yellow liquid that sizzled and evaporated into yellowish fumes without ever drying out. Jaune could make out black shapes of objects that sunk at the bottom of the yellow lake.
"It's best to ignore it. Don't think too much."
Careful not to fall on the rock that became slippery, the blond Huntsman-in-training made his way to the other side of the cave, making sure to stand as far away from the lake as possible. His foot kicked a pebble, which bounced off the rock and into the liquid, melting instantly.
"Crap… maybe I shouldn't ignore it too much. It's so hot in here."
Jaune reached a nearby alcove and sat on the ground, trying to wipe the sweat and grease off his face. His heart thumped harder and harder. To his left, rising from the floor, stood a head-shaped statue looking upwards and surrounded by floating candles. Twelve chair-like objects were stuck on the ceiling in a circle, with the statue looking right at the center. In the dim light, Jaune tried to get a better look at the irregular black growths stuck on the chair. He felt the sudden need to leave the place when he recognized those shapes as vaguely humanoid.
(Onasander – Red Hot Harvest)
The passage turned narrow and unstable as he found a way back to reality, back to the steps that led to the next floor of the tower. His lungs threatened to explode as soon as he passed the line that divided the black rocky substance and the bricks, feeling a jolt of fresh and breathable air fill his personal space. Jaune dashed upstairs, happy that he had left that hellhole behind, even if covered in grease that will take hours to wash off.
Unlike what was seen so far, the area he headed into was spherical in shape, with an equally spherical device placed in the middle of the room. It buzzed into life as soon as Jaune went over the boundary, transforming the dull brownish walls into a dark blue void. Jaune's feet weren't standing on solid ground anymore. Thinking it was a projector of sorts, yet thankful that it wasn't another nightmarish anomaly, he crouched and tried to touch the floor beneath his feet, completely unprepared for the moment when his hand passed right through what was supposed to be hard matter. His brain told him that he was not only floating, but standing still whatsoever. The two contradictory feelings didn't mess with his head.
White lines began to draw five symbols at five different sides of the device, each as complex as the ones from calligraphy classes that Ren had always spoke about. Having no idea what he was supposed to do, Jaune went and touched the nearest symbol with his free hand, praying that he didn't activate a trap.
The selected symbol turned green while others faded, only for it to fade after them. The void spun as dozens of white dots began forming in the background. It stopped spinning after a few minutes and shapes resembling galaxies began to form near the center of the room. Jaune was able to count twelve before more of them could be created. After the last galaxy had formed, the whole void seemed to come to a stop as, right above the projector, a bluish-white elliptical object came into existence.
A white line dragged itself out from the elliptical galaxy, displaying a string of indecipherable text. When the text was completed, two more lines drew from the two nearest galaxies; a green irregular and a bluish spiral, each with its own alien descriptions. An alarm was then quickly activated, tinging the void twice with two seconds-long flashes of red, startling Jaune. The lines of both the irregular and spiral galaxies turned red, with the previous paragraphs being deleted and replaced with new ones.
"Huh?"
The irregular galaxy began displaying tiny red dots within its structure that quickly overwhelmed the entire object and shifted its color from green to blood red. The spiral galaxy, on the other hand, began contorting like a visual glitch before, in front of Jaune's very eyes, spinning faster and faster as its size decreased into a tiny purple dot. Said dot then folded over itself, erasing all traces of its and the galaxy's existence.
Feeling uneasy, he touched the elliptical galaxy. It expanded and pushed all of them away. Dots began to spread again, this time colored red, yellow, blue and white. Many had multiple white rings with dots moving on them. A yellow star appeared at the center, displaying seven different rings with seven differently-colored spheres circling at unequal speeds around the star.
Multiple solar systems flashed red as strings of text began describing something Jaune couldn't understand. He touched the central star, displaying the solar system in which, Jaune figured, stood Remnant as far as he knew. He had found his home planet after a few minutes of searching. The lack of a shattered moon confused him. A touch of the finger increased the planet's size.
Jaune's senses were suddenly overwhelmed with mountains of information. Alarms, walls of archaic texts, dots of all colors and sizes illuminating the entire planet, lines jumping from place to place. He groaned as a sudden headache banged the insides of his head. One of his hands waved at the planetary display, trying to stop the sensory overload.
"Stop, stop, stop… stop it!"
It was by pure miracle that a swing with his fist cleared more than half of the visual and audio markers on the map, leaving the planet's terrain bare as it spun the land towards him. Jaune coughed, opening his eyes enough to check whether it was safe to look. His brain required a full minute to come back to its senses.
Something must have been wrong with the map, for there was the entire world of Remnant laid bare, though far different than what he knew. The ocean between Sanus and Anima, according to the map, was nonexistent. Solitas was one giant landmass devoid of islands and Menagerie was much bigger. But something else bothered him as well. He was never on good terms with geology, but he was sure that the two more landmasses he was looking at weren't supposed to be where they were. One of them, similar in size with Menagerie, was placed so close to the polar cap that it might as well have been part of it. The other polar cap, on the opposite side of the planet, was a sea of green instead of one giant block of ice, with a strange spiral pattern set right at the center of the cap. Both additions paled in comparison to the last one; a tiny seven-pointed star placed so far from everything else that it might have been unreal. And yet it was clearly there, far too real to be denied.
A hand went to wipe his eyes wet with tears. Confused as to the dark stains on his glove, he removed it and wiped again. For the first time in his life, Jaune realized that Remnant, the planet he was sharing with everyone he knew, had a history far deeper than anyone could have imagined. And that maybe some of it is best left buried; for what he had been crying were tears of blood.
*Entry #234: Frozen Slave
Type: Demonic Corruption
Faction: Legions of Hell
Description: "Desperate souls end up consumed by the coldness of the heart that grows accustomed to the hardships of life. Taken over by this phenomenon, they try and spread their misery to others." (Consumed by Winter: immunity to DOTs, immunity to Cryo and Pyro Damage / Deathchill Aura: attacks have a chance to deal additional Aetherial Damage as well as inflict "Frost Touched" debuff (target gains Damage Resistance reduction with each debuff stack))
