Chapter Eight
Domains
"What are you trying to do?" Pyrrha asked, stepping into one of the converted cells Ruby used as a bedroom. The fortress changed much over the last few weeks as their new Cyclopian workforce demolished a couple of walls to make room for windows. At least, she assumed it had been a few weeks with the complete lack of a day and night cycle, the perpetual dark only broken by the glow of the river. They still hadn't figured out how to generate electricity in suitable amounts, the lack of metal haunting their need for basic human necessities, though the Cyclops practically pranced in joy and the 'shocky shocks'.
"Meditating," Ruby replied brusquely, concentrating inwards and pulling her Aura from her body. It was almost reluctant to leave her veins after the constant cycling through her network. Pyrrha danced around her, careful to not poke the slowly deteriorating Hunter Commander. Ruby gave her near complete autonomy over their new base, observing from the fortress as she and the Cyclops raised partial walls between their new home and the river to encircle an area they deemed large enough to house expansion, training grounds, a research complex, and a simple sewer system the Cyclops designed after a city they called Rome to use the purifying yet burning waters of the river to eliminate waste.
Phlegethon didn't seem to mind, claiming everything dropped in his river wasted away into energy.
Pyrrha thanked them on Ruby's behalf, leaving the civil engineering of their fortress to the beings with much greater experience designing and crafting everything. They took to it with gusto, finally free to work to their heart's content without Kampê locking them up and torturing them for their perceived slights against her benefactors. Benefactors that hadn't shown hide or tail since their assault on the fortress and leaving them both on pins and needles with eyes and sensory shells stretched to the horizon. The walls the Cyclops raised gave them a sense of security yet Pyrrha flinched whenever she remembered Ruby's battle against Tartarus.
Any pre-gunpowder infantry struggled with breaking through walls yet beings that exuded terror at their mere presence probably didn't care for them in the first place. Ruby didn't begrudge the Cyclops their security wall, helping move the massive stone blocks they quarried from the mountain and gaining a nickname in the process: 'Tiny Cyclops'. She accepted the new title, Pyrrha getting the same, inadvertently creating a weight lifting competition the redhead won every time.
"I'm more than aware you had a ban on meditation that Monty broadcast on Beacon's internal network," Pyrrha answered her glib one word response. The danger Ruby's alter ego posed came with slowing her thoughts to reflect inward, removing the flow of Aura entirely from her network and her nervous system. For the first time since her rebirth after the reality reset, she thought at an average human speed, uninhibited by the lurking demon of Summer waiting to fight for control over her body. She was still there though, all of her personalities combining to form this one consciousness she wasn't entirely sure took what part from which.
"I'm out of Aura." Ruby sighed dramatically and stood from her straw mattress, observing the squadron of Cyclops leaving the safety of her walls to begin sounding the nearest mountain in the range the fortress sat within. Her shells reached a massive distance after her quarrel with Tartarus, encompassing several kilometers in every direction yet she had no reason as to why.
"Completely?" Pyrrha frowned, keeping her shock mostly to herself. She walked around Ruby and inspected her in the low torchlight. She'd never let herself go in this manner, her hair lying limp on her head, black eyes glassy instead of flat matte, and skin shining low with sweat. After particularly difficult missions, Yang looked about ready to pass out after going twelve rounds with a Cassus Alpha, just like Ruby did this very moment.
"No." Ruby stepped forward, Pyrrha immediately catching her as she stumbled. She appreciated the support and gave her a wry smile. "Over three-quarters of my Aura since our awakening here in Tartarus has been keeping the symptoms of my oophorectomy at bay. I've been able to partially regenerate it with the river water but I've run into the point where I can't sustain my current use without suppressing symptoms."
"This place is a little lacking in HRT meds," Pyrrha responded glumly, avoiding using Tartarus's name and helping Ruby move from her quarters into the large area she designated as a command center. With the lack of any weather, Ruby designated several of the central rooms near the top of the fortress demolished for Pyrrha to have a wide and unobstructed view of the surrounding plains. Every scrap of something called parchment was brought out from storage and thrown over tables to create an action, Pyrrha and Brontes sketching designs on the back of faded maps and scratched out inventory lists.
"I'm aware so I've been discussing many things with Phlegethon. Part of which includes why what passes for a society in this realm isn't completely based on his river." Ruby sat at a table and pretended to admire the architectural sketch of the Cyclops research building, Pyrrha gaining a tick of ire above her eye. "This place is a prison, the Greek world outside of it throws their unwanted and deceased immortals. Nothing in here can die of natural causes as this section of the Underworld, their afterlife, is kept in a perpetual stasis unless killed or revived after a specified amount of time Phlegethon believes the Fates decide on before they're reborn in the outside world. This only accounts for the pseudo-immortals, creatures without domains yet permanently stuck in a cycle of death in the outside world, time and penance here, and rebirth again and again. The river has such a nickname as it keeps its drinkers alive through injury, keeping them trapped here as death means a longer sentence."
Pyrrha nodded along, satisfied Ruby eked out a semblance of information on this confusing world. Every scrap of data they could scrounge from the people surrounding them painted a better picture they could poke with a sharp stick.
"Creatures and beings like Kampê and her boss whose name I won't mention have domains they can exercise control over and don't get a free pass from the Fates, reliant on escaping themselves or waiting on freedom to come from outside. Their immortality is tied to something outside this place. Creatures like us, mortals with red blood, aren't meant to enter this dark domain as our afterlife is dictated by the God of the Dead and Riches so we can leave at any time, not that it's easy."
"And you want to… what? Escape?"
"No. I've committed to the Cyclops and Neo only knows how many others are trapped here. Escaping does nothing but transfer our current problems somewhere else, somewhere I don't have a fortress, a willing workforce, or a seemingly unending river of knowledge." Ruby snagged a charcoal pen and a scrap parchment, jotting down names Pyrrha found strange and easy to read in her somehow perfect handwriting. She repeated them only in her mind, names like Koios, Krios, Hyperion, and Iapetus, among others. "These I don't dare repeat on the odd chance they attack me yet Phlegethon has named them as the most egregious offenders that may help me in my predicament."
"I don't exactly think they have the drugs you need either." Pyrrha wrapped her arms around her from behind, resting her chin on her head.
"No, but they are beings that are imprisoned here and aren't tied to their forms. The creatures of pseudo-immortality return back to their original form, at least according to the River. Their memory imprint is tied to one form, unlike the bodies of the domained immortals. Phlegethon's consciousness is not in his body and as long as there is a river, there is a Phlegethon."
Pyrrha caught up to the chain of ideas, jumping ahead of her thoughts. "And you somehow want to take a domain from one of these immortals so you no longer have to deal with a body that is plagued by your lack of hormones? Ruby, these are immortals for a reason. All of these names, the Cyclops whisper in fear, watching over their shoulders on the off chance they came after them. This isn't an enemy you can beat down. Your little bout with T terrified everyone!"
"And if I do nothing, my mental and physical condition deteriorates over the next few weeks until I'm completely out of Aura. Anything I use in this body Neo stuck me in, a body she took painstaking care to replicate beautifully when I'm aware my team disintegrated it down to atoms, can't be easily regenerated." Ruby released the floodgates on her Aura core, setting aside enough for a cyclical loop to keep her hormones in check. "Neo wanted me to solve this problem or she wouldn't make the effort to stick me here, piecing together the two separate halves of my soul."
"I'm going with you." Pyrrha pressed her weight on top of her, not letting her rise to a stand. "The Cyclops will be fine for a few days with their walls and our blueprints for 'aeryplans' as they call it." She chuckled, taking Ruby's offered hand and pulling her up. "You, on the other hand, admitted to a weakened mental state and are chasing beings potentially equal to T. I'm going with it."
"I know." Ruby simply answered, winking at her. Pyrrha twitched, realizing she hadn't needed to protest at all, her leader and charge understanding she wasn't in optimal condition and had to rely on her on this insane quest. After leaving a worried Brontes in charge of the fortress and requisitioning a pair of wineskins filled with Phlegethon's water, an ancient storage method of stitching together animal skin to hold liquid, they set off along the river who pointed them in a vague direction with a warning.
Despite the eons trapped in this prison, no one, possibly due to a lack of sanity after imprisonment in a sunless bleak landscape, had created a map of any landmarks. The Cyclops didn't seem to know why as they remembered maps of the oceans like the back of their hands yet the ever-knowledgeable river had an answer, or rather, a theory. Tartarus, much like the being she met and tousled with, wasn't infinite. No, not yet, but it was never-ending. With the domain of the abyss came the confusion of the dark, the fear of what lurked behind it, and the danger of a toxic environment.
The river of Phlegethon didn't flow the same path as it did yesterday, sections of Tartarus moving to collide with others to create a chaotic mass Neo would be proud of. Sometimes the Great Colosseum lay next to the Drakon Swamp and other times it sat next to the Delta of Despair.
Yet it moved along patterns set within certain areas.
Now that Ruby had asserted her will on the Brass Fortress and tied it to the River of Fire with a physical structure, neither could move separately from the other. It would move soon, potentially moving their new base closer to an opposing force more willing to tangle with the still fragile Cyclops, a red juggernaut, and a crippled Commander.
However, there was one part of Tartarus that did not move, ever, and Phlegethon pointed them right at it with a word of grave warning. To enter the Mansion of Night was a death sentence to even immortals and Ruby was wont to tempt the goddess that made it her home at her weakened state. The warning came that Nyx was as strong, if not stronger than Tartarus and Pyrrha shuddered at that. To overtake an immortal in their own domain after it so easily batted her down terrified even the part of Ruby that survived the reconciliation of her personalities. The other part she handed over to Pyrrha to control after it whispered to challenge her for her right to survive.
Ruby refused to waste her remaining Aura on a wind buffer, the trek across the plains taking much longer than usual. Instead of powering through in a usual sprint, they leaped in great bounds, no trees to inhibit their movement. Pyrrha worriedly glanced at Ruby by her side, watching as minute by minute passed and her pallor paled into a sickly glow against the dull fire of the river.
When they traveled out of the plains, they saw the faint outline of a mansion built into the cliffside overlooking the bay where the four rivers of Tartarus that flowed out of the Chaos Beyond collided in a miasma of toxic liquids that devoured any sapient with the misfortune to fall into it. Even at this distance, an aura of overwhelming fear of what lay within slammed into them, forcing Pyrrha to bolster her shields. Ruby soldiered on and did the same, touching her partner and sending a tendril of her Aura into her to siphon the horror away.
That part of her Aura withstood the test of rebirth, too fractured at the treatment her user suffered within the Fang Blacksite to heal entirely through Neo's little machinations. The seeping nothingness within her soul could take away the horror when used in moderation, much like Ren's Semblance could when fully activated. If she overdid it, however, she could strip Pyrrha of her emotions entirely and leave her an unmoving and completely defenseless husk. Without that ability, slaughtering her country's troops would've taken twice the effort.
Pyrrha, feeling the invading tendril, immediately attacked it and tore it to shreds before she realized only one other person had the Aura to do this to her. She felt bad when Ruby sucked in a sharp breath of air, the cost to her core nominally sucking her dry. A quick swig of the river water settled her Aura from dropping, restoring the bit she lost but nothing more. Given time, it would restore the rest of her Aura but it was a stopgap for the constant drain.
Keeping a good distance from the mansion, they proceeded clockwise along the imaginary boundary keeping them away. Everything else that dared stumble across the mansion would also, logically, keep an even further distance away from it, leaving those in their ranks in their path. Leaping across the River Acheron that flows away from the Delta of Despair, they dropped just outside a field of living shadows. One pair of amber eyes peeked through the darkness, followed by crimson, pale blue, and virulent yellow until every creature turned towards them, a low growl emanating from the pack.
Ruby stopped Pyrrha from launching back over the river with her in tow, an enormous Aura pressure roaring from her. She braced against her partner as the growl from the creatures changed instantly into a whimper, stripping away their violent nature and imposing her will on them to change them into docile canines that rolled over and showed their bellies at the alpha in front of them. Nothing dared stand in Ruby's path with the nauseating void of all pouring from her...except for the thing resting within the Mansion of Night.
It did not take to her wresting control of the Beowolf-like canines kindly, chaotic energy pulsing from the shrouded building to reach them. The creatures snapped from their trance, writhing as one mass and howling. More than the impending protogenoi bearing down on them, Pyrrha feared the hostile creatures salivating at them with hungry eyes. They didn't move though, almost as if the goddess emerging from within wanted them for herself.
"Leave Pyrrha." She startled at the sudden command from Ruby, double-taking at the serene expression on her face. "We can't fight the Abyss's equal with me weakened but I can buy you time."
She didn't expect the incoming slap to the back of her head, a dull cry of shock escaping her. "Right." Pyrrha drawled, flipping open Miló and settling Akoúo̱ on her forearm. The canines continued to growl at them, pacing around them at a distance and keeping them trapped against the cliff. They could easily jump back over the river but running from the immortal would only lead her back to their fledgling base. "You forget I trained with Yang for nearly a century. I'm not the same little A-rank you trained."
The ground surrounding them shook with a frightful tremor, particles of the cursed earth rising under Pyrrha's exertion. The surrounding canines yelped as they dodged misshapen clumps of metal forced out from deep within Tartarus. Ruby arched an eyebrow, shifting Crescent Rose through its gears and resting it on its spike with its blade glinting ominously. Hundreds of thousands of microparticles hovered at waist height, creating a shield of magnetic shards ready to sweep and shred anything around them. It was much like her petal storm but much less Aura intensive. The Grimm-like creatures dared not move after that.
A dark mist of ash and smoke rolled down the hill, coalescing into a tall figure atop a midnight chariot pulled by enormous destriers. The masses of shadows, creatures of base desire driven by hunger, parted and bowed as she passed. On closer inspection, her eyes didn't shine like stars but instead burned as quasars ready to annihilate life in their path. Wings and hair spun out of a black hole sucked in any light that dared pass through its event horizon and a nebula wrapped around her form to protect her decency.
My, my, my. The goddess's voice echoed through the cavernous space of Tartarus, seeping through the dark to infect their shadows and making them shiver. I didn't realize it was that time of the millennium for your Olympians to feed me.
"Night." Ruby brokered. "We have no conflict with you. We seek the immortals known as Titans, not the protogenoi."
Hmm. Nyx hummed, a trail of stars twinkling from her finger as she spun her hand around. You're much smarter than the usual demigods your Olympians throw down here as banishment, avoiding my name and all. Maybe you'll taste better than your brethren.
"We're not demigods, Lady Night," Pyrrha spoke diplomatically, hoping she detested the taste of mere mortals as much as the thought disgusted her. Still, if it kept them alive, she'd take the freebie.
No? The protogenoi mused, scattered the stars she created into the high heavens above to pass through the cavernous ceiling. Still, a snack is a snack and I really shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Really nothing else to eat here other than the rare ambrosia Thanatos smuggles in. He is such a good son.
"You're the goddess of night, stars, nebulas, and the cosmos from what I can see." Pyrrha recited for Ruby's benefit, mesmerized by the beautiful stardust moving across her dress, the sparkling supernovas that blinded her, and the invisible singularities eating everything. Officially, Phlegethon named her as the goddess of night and hellhounds yet she saw much more than just those two domains. "Surely you can leave at any time for a… snack?"
Playing on my vanity, young mortal? She laughed and the stars in her dress detonated into brilliant quasars and supernovas, illuminating the dim prison for a scant few precious moments. Her wings flapped a couple of times, sending physical shadows careening across the landscape. Yes, my brother mentioned you were amusing with your little challenge to his domain. Very foolish but you somehow survived with what's left of your sanity. Shame you stumbled onto me.
Pyrrha recoiled at her coo, ready to weave her hurricane of destruction, yet again Ruby stopped her with a hand on her arm. "We have no wish to serve as snacks. We hunt the Titans, not you. You have my apologies for frightening your… hellhounds but we would have not attacked them if they hadn't threatened us first."
My darlings submit to any alpha and you, my little morsel, certainly are one, aren't you? Ruby stared up at the goddess, feeling the deadly quasars attempt to pierce into her very soul. Perhaps I'll simply keep you around instead. It's so difficult to find entertainment down here. Your challenge to the Abyss certainly sparked my attention. In fact…" The nebula surrounding her swirled in sickly greens and royal purple at her amusement, "I think I'll let you live to torment him." Again her laughter lit up the stars around her, accompanied this time by the haunting dull explosions of colliding supergiants. She shooed them away, pointing off to the distance. Run along mortals. Krios is in that direction. I'll be watching you with great interest.
Both of them believed her wholeheartedly, a creeping feeling of being watched from somewhere settling over them as Nyx burst into smoke riddled with bright lights and rushed back into her mansion. The pack of hellhounds similarly burst into shadows and followed their mother home, settling onto a field just outside of its walls. Ruby didn't trust the faint trails of dark energy lingering after her dismissal, parasites waiting on them to move to latch onto their shadows.
The burn of her quasars into her soul refused to leave her.
Yes, calling her just the goddess of night and hellhounds was an immense fallacy.
Pyrrha released her hold on the magnetic hurricane, wrapping everything she pulled from the earth and coalescing it into a ball. Exerting her Semblance crushed the particles into a hand-sized sphere Ruby's shells detected as ridiculously dense. It hovered just above and behind Pyrrha's head as she released her titanic grip.
"Ruby," Pyrrha dared breathe after a minute of nothing attacking them, eyeing the dense shadow keeping a fair distance away, a dark mist waving slightly over the packed dirt. "We're not going to live long if you keep antagonizing the protogenoi."
The late Commander fell into a silence, walking forward in the direction Nyx pointed them in and lost deep in thought. Phlegethon had mentioned a few other protogenoi lived within Tartarus's domain yet to encounter two of the three in a relatively short period made her pause. Those the river was aware of, at least. The others he claimed were imprisoned or slumbered in a dormant state elsewhere, cut from the physical world. Nyx and her partner in Erebus chose to remain in Tartarus, most likely due to how closely their domains were tied together.
Night, along with the rest of the Cosmos under her domain, collided with the Nothing of the Abyss along with Darkness and the Absence of Light.
They stood a theoretical chance of defeating Gods and Titans with how easily Ruby smote Kampê, simply wielders of the domains under their control, as simply as a god could be but to challenge the domain's personification… would require becoming a domain herself. Tartarus, much like Nyx, didn't obliterate her for her folly due to her perceived strength, but due to its amusement. Even fighting their lesser forms might not pan out the way they wanted, her entire basis for their strength based on how powerful Ozpin and Salem were in their home dimension.
This essential scout mission against the other denizens of Tartarus cemented her continued existence with the constant drain on her Aura. Not solving the issue opened up an avenue of weakness for her enemies to exploit as it would leave her sequestered to her quarters in a self-induced coma to only be awoken if Pyrrha needed help or risk the mental effects of her impromptu surgery hindering her abilities. Phlegethon, with all of his knowledge harvested from the dead mortals, did not know how immortals gained their immortality in the first place, other than being born into it.
Defeating Krios would remove one of the potential threats the River warned them of, though she did not know why he wanted them to pursue him and the other Titans. Ozpin generally sat back and let humanity make their own mistakes, a little too much with his role as Commander and Headmaster of the Hunters. Salem just didn't care about humanity and saw them as amusement for her Grimm children. Still, something must've ticked off the River that primarily healed people and she didn't mind the mercenary work in trade for his waters.
Pyrrha accepted her silence as an acceptance of a fault in attempting to save them. Her psyche was designed to protect her Hunters, seeing just about everything that wasn't under her direct control as a potential enemy to subsume or appropriate for her needs. Tartarus, as the domain they were imprisoned in, asserted a level of control Ruby fought against on instinct and Nyx, as another being of similar strength, grated on that same nerve.
"Ruby, answer me this." She nodded without breaking her stride. "Your symptoms are remarkably similar to menopause and both Yang and I survived that without any negative adverse effects. Sure, we had them but we took breaks and we got incredibly irritable at times but we made it work. The world isn't going to collapse because you took a break and I'm competent enough to lead with and without you." Pyrrha explained, slightly vexed Ruby couldn't see her worth without having to shove it into her face. Sharing the command didn't annoy Ruby seeing as she offloaded work to Qrow during her reign and then similarly stole it right back in the dead of night if she couldn't sleep.
And surely a minor hormone imbalance couldn't incapacitate her to the point she would drop below A-rank in level.
"No, you're correct," Ruby responded succinctly, catching a dilapidated structure press against her shells a few kilometers away. "But my mental state during its occurrence was questionable and my irritability could have cost Vale and Remnant much more than the thousands I slaughtered. It wasn't a question as to whether I could control myself or suppress the issues but as to whether I could trust myself to lead my team and Beacon objectively without my hormones screwing with my senses. I was responsible for billions of lives and I couldn't afford the interference of a personal affliction."
Pyrrha grabbed her hand and wrapped her in a hug before she could stop her, planting her head on top of her head and keeping her trapped. This wasn't a reformed Yang after a decade of therapy and soft-locked conflict with a reborn Council but a woman with a broken psyche glued back together that sacrificed herself for her people. She didn't see the necessity of placing her needs above someone else's and she vehemently thanked Yang and the rest of her late team weren't with them or she'd do something incredibly bad to them for accepting this weapon she created herself into instead of helping her.
Yes, war made people commit horrendous atrocities and they probably had no choice but to accept the living weapon to help them stand against their enemies yet she never got to meet the girl behind the mask of the Commander.
"And you're unsure of your mental state and our future in this incredibly hostile landscape?" She voiced Ruby's fear, feeling the woman tense in her arms briefly. Tartarus was what nature was without the trappings of society restricting them with social contracts to constrain everyone. In literature, nature was green and beautiful and full of life yet it was, in reality, a place that demanded vigilance and culled the weak. Anything that couldn't hunt or defend itself succumbed to a greater predator and Ruby's psyche rebelled at not being at the top of the chain. "Okay."
Ruby pulled away and glanced at her, straining to hold back the weight of her eyes. Pyrrha pushed her gently and bound forward, gesturing her to follow and making her grin. They had an immortal to kill and drag out the secrets of immortality from. She did not care for the domains that came with it, just the source of potential infinite energy she could extract and chain to power her Aura.
Wrapping them in a shield, Ruby dragged them into the air and rocketed them towards the building, a large source of energy pulsing in her grayscale radar vision. Pyrrha rested Ruby on her back and braced Akoúo̱ at her feet, slamming into the ruins and raising a cloud of ash and smoke. Several of Krios's minions perished immediately, Ruby disappearing into the midst where nothing could track her, Crescent Rose carving a path through two of the survivors with a single swipe.
The larger energy source disappeared from the smoke and she blasted it away to reveal a three-meter tall giant with a massive sword in his hands. She had no doubt this was the Titan they sought. Pyrrha noticed his armor glittered much like Nyx's dress, a deep black that reflected almost no light save for the twinkling stars painted across it in animals and shapes she could vaguely draw out.
"Demigods," the Titan's voice didn't creep along their backs as the protogenoi did, sounded more human with the decibels cranked up. "You dare attack me? I am Krios, Titan of Stars, Constellations, and now your death!"
Pyrrha knew Ruby could read her facial expression at his arrogant words, raising an eyebrow. The protogenoi were less arrogant than this cannon fodder and they were literal embodiments of the universe in their pantheon. She felt no guilt at hunting him down, having fought her fair share of arrogance with words during Council meetings but this one took the cake as there were two of them against his one.
Ruby gave him no chance to move, invading his personal space and slamming Crescent Rose into his weaker sword side, pleasantly surprised when he raised his defense and held her back. A surprised noise emanated from his body as he stumbled back, expecting to easily repel his attacker's weapon. Pyrrha threw Miló in javelin form at his shoulder but he blasted both of the weapons and Ruby away with an energy pulse. She grabbed at her spear with her Semblance, dragging it back into her hand while Ruby stopped her progress by digging her scythe into the ground.
"You are strong demigods," Still, neither of them accepted the banter he offered, Pyrrha releasing her sphere of condensed metal while Ruby rushed him again, noticeably slower than usual and giving her time to uncompress her secondary abilities. Dozens of magnetic shards spiraled from her weapon, weaving their way across the battlefield in tendrils and piercing into the Titan's unprotected back and sides to dig into his armor as Ruby occupied his front, straining against the strength he offered in return.
Pivoting her scythe into letting his sword fall to her side, she sliced the back of his knee open between the legs. His roar of pain echoed across the plains and shook debris free from the vaulted ceiling. Golden ichor drained from the wound and stained the dirt, forcing him to maintain balance on his better leg until Pyrrha ripped her shards from his back armor and forced him to fall.
Ruby crushed his wrist with a deft stomp, the sound of breaking bones joining his screams of agony. Picking up his massive sword, she slid it into his shoulder and pinned him to the ground beneath, unhindered by its size and weight, and Krios understood far, far too late these weren't the normal fodder the Olympians threw into Tartarus after they displeased them. Pyrrha created skewers from her metal and jabbed them through his limbs, setting her feelings aside as the Goddess of War overtook her personality, steeling her thoughts at essentially torturing a god.
The road to hell was paved with good intentions after all.
A weaker blast of energy rushed from the Titan in his blind panic, dissipating almost harmlessly against their shields and only making them stagger. His golden blood poured from him in thick rivulets and almost as an afterthought, Pyrrha grabbed his armor with her Semblance and jostled him, sheepishly hiding her embarrassment at not just crushing him in his own defensive plating as she couldn't manipulate almost any other metal. Whatever his armor was made from had the most magnetic polarity of any other crafted material. Ruby didn't comment on her mistake, trusting she would flex her Semblance more often to learn about this world's elements.
Krios laughed as blood filled his lungs and Pyrrha grabbed at it with her Semblance, discovering that just like red blood with hemoglobin with its central iron atoms, this golden ichor also barely resonated with her. "Foolish demigods." He turned his head to the sides and saw the skewers keeping him in place, resigned to a fate of several thousands of more years in Tartarus. "I will return and I will hunt you down with my brethren."
"No, you won't." Ruby surged her Aura and Semblance into his body, savagely ripping through veins, muscles, and nerves until she found an incredibly similar ball of energy every Aura user on Remnant had. Yang had made an entry, a small simple paragraph, in her profile about the internal destruction her Semblance could wreck on a human or Grimm body and blatantly refused her orders to write a detailed report, giving her a stink eye and downing a bottle of something to make her forget her theory.
She understood why she so stalwartly refused.
Delicate veins burst apart with overwhelming force, nerves ate themselves into painful strands, and muscles constricted until they tore in twain.
And this was the destructive part she could control with little more than a thought, willing her Semblance to rip and tear in her quest for the core.
Clamping onto it, she set aside the energy surrounding it and delved deeper, instinctively looking for where Krios hid his immortality. She cared not for his external body, their shields keeping the worst of his thrashing blood from seeping into their clothing and his restraints protecting them from his flailing limbs. Pyrrha stepped away as she ransacked his core further yet she did not know why, unable to ask with her full consciousness focused on the task.
A steady light grew from Krios's eyes, matching the rising screams she heard, coiling Aura into her ears to block most of it out. Through her rapidly disintegrating radar shells, she noticed every living thing within half a hundred kilometers ran as if their lives depended on it. Deeper and deeper she carved into his core until he gave a shuddering last breath when she reached an enormous nether space filled with bright stars making vivid constellations against the midnight sky.
Everything started collapsing around her tendril of thought with Krios's death and she surged every last bit of Aura into his and took what she could siphon, throwing the thousands of stars into her mindscape with a great rush of returning energy.
She didn't have the time to brace as Krios's body exploded into bright light and threw her high into the air with her shields crackling from godly interference. What shields she had burnt away nigh instantly, leaving the majority of it to singe her flesh. Pyrrha moved after her almost as quickly, catching her on her falling arc to the ground. She settled into her arms comfortably, nothing left in her core to dull the pain of the burns streaking across her form. A faint glow enveloped her form as Pyrrha sprinted back to their base with abandon.
Neither of them noticed the black miasma shadowing them on their return.
AN: Two chapters in one month? What is this?