Chapter Fourteen
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The mountains surrounding the Brass Fortress didn't match the creeping death the Pit promised on its plains or rivers. The air for one didn't attempt to melt her lungs from the inside out with its insidious toxins but instead attempted to freeze them. While no snow fell around them, the tiny ice particles suspended around them certainly made her wish for it instead. Each one attempted to drill through her shields and it irked her more than the air around their base, leaving her with only sixteen hours before she had to make the trek down to the river a few kilometers away to top up on her water.
Ruby hadn't designated how many Cyclops to take with her but she'd taken a dozen with her to not only scout out this region for any metals but to also begin harvesting what they could find. Instead of carts or any modern Schnee mining machinery such as massive trucks, loaders, shovels, or even basic dynamite, they carried pickaxes and humongous sacks fashioned from whatever scrap they had laying about. Nothing in terms of weaponry for they relied on her to protect them but she highly doubted any single monster wanted to tangle with five meter tall hulking humanoids that could squash anything her size with ease.
How she wished she had worn gloves or bothered putting on a few more layers, not that they even had anything beyond what they wore. The river waters cleaned very well, but it got mentally tiring wearing the same outfit with every passing day.
Her first forays into the mountains immediately around revealed nothing worth starting an open quarry for, thousands of microparticles reacting to her Semblance. She pulled anything with enough polarity into a series of spheres hanging just behind her, separating every material based on its electron configuration. Most of what she pulled was clearly iron, an element she could almost entirely strip from other impurities and how she restarted her training after the Invasion, but she also found much more of the rarer elements on Remnant such as nickel and cobalt, and while all useful to fuel Ruby's war machine, the paltry few kilograms she pulled wouldn't build much.
Not to mention she could barely remember what other components it took to smelt steel, the primary backbone of any navy. She couldn't detect that with her Semblance so she had a long conversation ahead of her with the foundries and the Cyclops about the process they used to refine mortal steel… if they even had one. All she'd heard from them and Phlegethon revealed an overreliance on divine metals such as Celestial Bronze, Imperial Gold, or the rarer Stygian Iron and Lunar Silver. Their navy didn't need to take from that supply, especially as it was their only weapon against this mythical pantheon. She and Ruby could handle anything with Crescent Rose, a weapon so blooded and tied to Ruby's will it essentially was a divine weapon, and her Semblance.
She had to commission some sort of dust or multiple javelins for herself if they could scrounge up enough to waste on her.
The first area they sounded deeper in the range revealed several small deposits deep in the soil, far too down to bother starting an open quarry, and the lead Cyclops, Arges, also notified her there wasn't any divine metal to bother tunneling down that far, a process she loathed after the Schnee mining incident and declassification.
They continued meandering along the side of the mountains, Pyrrha taking several sips of the fiery water and only choking a few times at the freezing bite behind it. Another Cyclops attempted to beat her into the ground, by accident of course, after helping pat her back. She did her best to suppress the exasperated look on her face and reactivated her Semblance. Again, thousands of tiny particles bounced off her extrasensory field and again she pulled them towards, some simply skittering across the scree and others burrowing their way to the surface. A quick burst of powerful vibrations cleaned them of debris and inert material and she gestured her group onward to the next location they deemed appropriate to test.
They didn't encounter any opposition as they came across the second site but again it wasn't suitable for their purposes. While what they wanted was much closer to the surface to the point she could pull it all out with some effort, it was far too little. Even the few hundred kilograms she could sense would only serve to create part of one Airship-class vessel, where each one could weigh upwards of 8,000 tons. Ruby and Brontes most likely even had designs for the fleet already once they could figure out how to sustain electricity and power their various designs.
The Cyclops didn't seem to mind, singing along off-key to a terrible tune Arges carried to raise their spirits. She could at least take a break for the moment as they had found a suitable vein of Imperial Gold they could extract at least slightly, marking the perimeter and depth they'd have to reach for any noticeable yield. Without any machines, they swung their pickaxes with the weight of an avalanche and she took several large steps to the side when a shower of debris erupted from them. No wonder they didn't need to bother inventing any machinery like humans had to, not when each swing moved hundreds of kilos almost effortlessly. She had to, after a moment of simply watching them practically swim deeper and carve a crater out, chalk it up to their latent magical abilities, much like any Semblance on Remnant.
She sat down off a ways away, digging deep into her Semblance and spreading it thinly across a sizable area beneath her. Ruby had long theorized she could do much more than influence polarity, noting she could be an unstoppable soldier on the field. Not a Hunter as she had first mistaken her tips, but a soldier able to completely inhibit the forward advance of an army. Practically every weapon used, Hunter or not, was created from steel, and the moment anything passed into her field of control, she had nearly unparalleled control over it. A gun here became bent, a barrel tightened just slightly to jam a bullet, a missile redirected into the ground, or bullets even tossed aside like gnats.
That has been the start of the weapon Ruby left Remnant.
Everything ferromagnetic within a kilometer reacted to her Semblance, shining brightly under her control. She applied a small force to every particle, shaking it violently within place until it created enough space. It didn't even take much of her concentration, her Semblance blanketing everything equally. Okay, she lied, it took a slight bit of her concentration when she realized she'd accidentally vibrated her crew's pickaxes. Their cries of surprise interrupted her control and she sheepishly waved them off, returning to her little exercise.
She magnetized everything again sans their pickaxes, letting her reserves tank for a bit as it all vibrated again. She pulled it all towards her location slowly, drilling through the landscape with ease. It was an encompassing thought, to grab it all and pull, second after second of the same instructions repeated one after another. With most of them being located near the surface, it only took a few minutes of concentration to pull everything into an enormous sphere kept together by her will. She didn't dare levitate it for now, saving her energy for their trek home.
The rhythmic sound of metal on rock lulled her into a complacent meditation, her attention entirely on wresting the last of the iron and other various elements from this desolate mountainside. What broke her from her almost nap wasn't the sound of an avalanche, the biggest danger she expected up here in the cold, but the sound of another rhythm, this time of several large birds.
She snapped her eyes open, lost within her Semblance, to witness a humongous flock of human-sized birds careening down towards the valley they mined in. The noise they made grated on her ears, metal on metal grinding when their beaks clacked together. Those, along with their claws and feathers were metallic but not ferromagnetic annoyingly, gray shapes pinging across her sensory field.
The Cyclops stopped their mining at their shrieks, throwing rocks around themselves and tunneling sideways this time to construct a makeshift shelter. "Come shelter, Mini Red Cyclops." The first moment she had she needed to correct their grammar and make them learn her name. It wasn't insulting, no, they just didn't consider speaking their craft, not when they could speak a thousand times better through their craft. She yelled back at them to take cover, dropping her metal spheres completely, realizing these weren't just a migrating flock, but a hunting one.
Phlegethon warned them of their lack of divine metal in their arsenal yet she needed to confirm that before she tossed her Semblance's strength away. She pulled the dust about her, imposing several magnetic fields around her until she disappeared from vision. An enormous whirlwind erupted from what she collected, protecting her from the flying beasts. She tightened her fields, forcing the metal particles to accelerate. The cyclone expanded, stretching across the mountaintop until it slammed into the incoming flock.
Fuck. The shards didn't so much as slow the birds down. Not one screech called across nor one clang of metal on metal. The divine metal of their claws and beaks phased through the ore as if it wasn't even there. She immediately dashed a fair distance from her Cyclops crew to draw their attention away. Thankfully, they followed her instead, giving her seconds before they located her again and dove towards her position. With the Cyclops hidden, they circled almost immediately to Pyrrha, screeching collectively.
Her weapons were also useless, nothing entirely special about Remnant Steel other than its almost religious reforging every few years. Yang loved getting her hands on Miló to even just sharpen the edge and Akoúo̱ was eventually reforged so many times to resist greater and greater dangers until Yang very seriously let her know only the core of a star could melt it. Wouldn't particularly mean much as they'd phase through it anyways but the Cyclops were master smiths and could hopefully make an alloy that could work in both worlds. She donned them in sword and shield form on instinct.
She pulled the storm into her. Years of combat against Grimm conditioned her to throw her shards at her enemy, Grimm falling in countless droves to her power. Yet Yang, bless her, kept her on her toes with weekly strategic thinking games and… birds needed air to fly after all. She tightened her grip on her shards, strengthening her hold over her magnetic fields further until the entire blob surged inward. The air started to surge around her, lifting off into a gale force that scattered the dust about her. She couldn't control her Semblance's range with her Aura overflowing, constantly pulling new particles from further under the earth.
The birds definitely noticed the winds roaring about them, the first few daring to cross into her storm slamming into their nearest neighbors. They became her weapons instead, every claw, break, and stray feather caught ripping themselves apart. Not exactly the perfect weapon or ability to manipulate air, certainly unorthodox, but without her primary weapons, she needed to get creative.
If only it didn't drain her constantly but the new skillset made her smile grimly. It reminded her of Ruby's fabled Petal Storm, named after the sizable chunk she ripped from the Grimm Invasion of District 117M. Millions of Aural Petals got caught under her Acceleration control, shredding anything without enough shielding. Her's however drained her Aura worse than a rampaging Yang on a training marathon and she knew she only had a dozen minutes or so until she had to relent her assault.
Bird after bird fell into the storm but the back half of the flock veered off into the headwind, riding the current instead of getting swept into the storm. Their incessant chattering turned into a warcry that slammed into her with the force of a tsunami, forcing her to plug her ears with yet more of her Aura. She moved back towards her crew, maintaining the vast whirlwind around her and calling them out. With the majority of the birds on her, closing onto her eye of the storm with every passing rotation, she could afford to have them out. They were her only weapon after all and all that ore they mined were makeshift cannonballs in the making. She had to waste seconds on calling to them, finally relieved they answered by tunneling violently out.
They rather quickly understood what she wanted from that, seeing all the birds focused on her, and dug back into the scree. Pulling out large wads of yellow ore, Pyrrha's eyes widened when it began to glow red hot in their hands. Suddenly, it wasn't just Imperial Gold chunks flying at the birds and taking a few of them out at a time, but melted slag taking several more down at once. Their warcry brought her to a smile, feeling much more confident about their odds.
It also however brought the attention of something far more terrifying than the birds if only because she didn't expect a freezing chill to shoot through her combined with a low feminine growl that echoed throughout her mind. Pyrrha, why are you using enough Aura to resonate back into your soul star? Her entire maelstrom shuddered and undulated when her magnetic fields weakened under her surprise. Everything Yang built around the Ruby myth suddenly started to make sense. She had never died in the Invasion after all, living in her star and waiting to resurrect in the next afterlife. I'm flattered. I see Yang put by death to good use. Sitrep.
That word set her mind calm, sinking into the mentality Beacon beat into her over the many decades. A flock of non-metallic birds attacked us. My weapons are useless with their lack of divine metal. Forced to expend Aura to move non-divine magnetic shards quickly enough to create a windstorm. The Cyclops are using their mined ore as weapons to help.
Finish this skirmish and return home. You have my reserves. The freezing chill abated and Ruby's voice with it. No words of encouragement to get her through a fight she had to improvise to stand a chance of survival. No hope of physical reinforcement unless she called out back to her Commander. There was a trust she implicitly placed in those she surrounded her command with. They didn't need to rely on her to save them from an impossible situation and while her pride appreciated it, she could really use a more efficient storm to kill these things.
She wouldn't even need to take from Ruby's star if she didn't make the mistake of forgetting her weapons were essentially useless. On top of not having anything other than Cyclops and their rudimentary weaponry to rely on, she counted her lucky stars they hadn't stirred something far, far worse from slumber. Oh, how she wished she'd poked the magical smiths to make an alloy of magnetic divine dust just for her. Or reforge her weapons so she didn't have to think of a loophole for this defense. Or created ships with proper armaments or shield emitters or just about any of the basic supplies she took for granted back on Remnant.
The physics of this mythological world made little sense to her. Why did only certain metals affect the creatures when almost every other did nothing? What constituted effecting a creature in the first place if they all interacted in the same real world? Were there special air particles the birds needed to coast on? Why could every other creature then even step on the soil she did or why did the Cyclops have to dig through non-divine rock to get to the Imperial Gold? If there was one trait she stole from Weiss and then refined under Yang, it was the scientific process and she loathed inaccuracies.
And if the answer ended up being "magic", she was throwing Nyx into the ceiling.
The darkness around her shuddered at her thought, reacting to the mention of the Primordial that shared a domain with it. It wasn't an angry reminder, as she expected from another Primordial like the Pit, but more of a prod to let her know she was watching constantly. It probably wasn't even an intentional mechanic, the weight of their names calling across this reality as a warning to not take them lightly or in vain.
She wondered hard if Ruby's name would eventually have the same weight behind it.
Accepting Ruby's help, she let the freezing cold lingering just outside her body rush back in, feeling the overwhelming Aura seep into her body. Part of what she absorbed was intensely familiar, Yang's Aura handing over its warmth readily. Weiss's Aura crept in the same way. It was a different cold she couldn't quite possibly describe. The cold of the Mantle mountains, of the light, drifting snow, of skating on an ice rink. The nice, pleasant kind. The cold of the void wasn't like that; not cold in the standard sense but all entropy instead. Less than the theoretical absolute of the universe.
Blake's Aura came next, almost neutral if it wasn't for the feeling she remembered from long ago of being wrapped in her arms back in Beacon. Basic didn't have good words, no language could describe every facet of the four different energies Ruby allowed her to take to protect herself. Her Semblance however understood far too well how to use them, the sheer mass within her magnetic control lessening as Ruby's Semblance took control. She could actually feel the strain Ruby underwent from helping her from so far away, remembering there was very little she wouldn't do to protect what she saw as hers. The rest of the energies sufficed to keep the storm going until every bird lay thrashed against the side of the mountain.
Ruby abruptly cut the connection after that, the mental image of her star glowing dimly in her pocket reality. She got the feeling she was going off to the river to replenish her Aura before returning to her work laying the foundations of society. Part of which heavily relied on their ability to find enough workable material to begin crafting the many turbines needed to bring electricity to the Pit. Relied on her to continually bring in metal for the Cyclops to work.
It was these first crucial months and steps they needed to survive and take to ensure their continued survival in this prison. They got lucky with the river, even if she personally suspected Phlegethon had his own motives for sticking with them. They got lucky with Night, the Primordial more concerned with her children than chasing aberrations down. But that luck wouldn't hold forever, Ruby already clashing with the Pit and barely escaping with her mind intact and keeping her safe.
She swiped the sweat from her brow, watching the hundreds of dead or dying birds carefully. Almost all of them immediately disintegrated into golden non-magnetic dust and she finally released her Semblance. All of the ore under her control fell to the ground in a wide mess but she reached far into herself again to grab everything. She made sure to pull it all into a reasonable pile before collapsing bonelessly. Arges managed to reach her first, shaking her fairly violently to make sure she was alive but all she could do was lay there limply. "I'm alive."
He picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, patting her back in his own comforting manner. The other Cyclops followed his orders to grab all the ore they threw about and they spent the next half hour scavenging all the melted slag and shards and stuffing their sacks full. They did the same with all the iron, cobalt, and nickel she scattered about, testing their weight and properties as they did, fascinated by these new metals. She tapped Arges' back several times to get his attention until he placed her back on her feet.
Her Aura screamed at her, this body left with the bare minimum it needed to survive, constantly reaching back to her soul star just to sustain the energy it needed to power her shields. She still had a few sips of the healing river to get her by, her Aura growing back tenfold to last her on the way to their base. "Scrap the rest of the sites for tonight. Take what we can carry. We return to base."
The Cyclops made hundreds of kilograms look like bags of candy, throwing everything over their shoulders and marching back towards their Fortress under the beat of a bellowing song. Nothing disturbed their journey other than a rockfall the Cyclops batted aside easily, collectively curling around her. They hadn't bothered with the smaller rocks at all, letting them crash into them with little fanfare or reaction. She got another round of pats on her back for letting them protect her after her showing near their mining crater.
Ruby had apparently ordered a few patrols along the growing borders of the Fortress, several squads roaming the perimeter. In the few hours she had been away, Ruby had already marked several throughways, a base slowly forming in her mind. She could almost imagine it: barracks, market, maintenance, hangers, cafeteria, and the twenty or so other things that only Ruby could remember. Like a laundromat. She really wanted a machine she could throw her clothes in, especially given this was her only set so she had to manually wash everything every few days.
They arrived to scattered cheers, the smiths ecstatic they finally had some material to work with. She already knew the task she'd set them to first but she also highly expected Ruby to have given them their marching orders already and her needs were likely on top.
Ruby phased next to her with a sonic boom, scattering arid dust everywhere. She inspected her briefly, taking note of her shaky legs and layer of sweat caking her hair. She dismissed the Cyclops to return to their homes, satisfied Brontes would have them crafting supplies by tonight. They trudged off with their bags of different metals, already conversing in their Greek with each other about all they could do now. She wryly smiled, knowing well her demands would keep them busy for at least the next five decades, if not century.
Time was all they had in this prison after all.
Without the massive infrastructure of Remnant to mine, smelt, forge, and construct a navy for her, they needed to first build it up. Worse than that, they needed to actually build all the supporting infrastructure. Every foundry needed to start construction, every pathway planning, and every building constructing. They lacked everything save for a sewage network the Cyclops dug in a span of a few days but it was crude without any of the modern trappings. On top of building turbines and an aqueduct to move the river partially into the Fortress. She wanted them to start experimenting with the waters beyond just their natural movements to generate electricity.
She had the latest version of Wikipedia stored on the quartz-based storage scroll, ready to spin up whenever she figured out how to get power running. The solar panels on it were useless at the moment in the eternal darkness and the entire scroll lost power a few days into their torment. The Pit didn't seem to have standard 120V in the walls or even a plug. It was stuck so far in the archaic age that only Menagerie had the records to match.
That and Neo but she wanted to avoid the chaotic deity as much as possible.
Best she kept antimatter and nuclear fission and fusion off the table until after the Cyclops learned how to handle basic electricity. They already had far too much fun theorizing about the "shocks" that she had to limit how quickly they learned. Master smiths they might've been but they were slow to grasp Basic, something she chalked up to switching languages, and she struggled hard not to tuck them away like children.
The fact she was a teddy bear in size compared to them never occurred to her.
"You're alive." She stated to Pyrrha quietly. "Never get caught off guard again. The Cyclops will make an alloyed dust for you and reforge your weapons tonight." She couldn't afford an S-rank liability without a way to defend herself or them. Pyrrha gave her a wide smile and tackled her with a hug. She did care, she really did, she just had a very unorthodox way of showing it when her entire life revolved around taking care of her Hunters professionally. She tightened her grip just a tad and Ruby's broken instincts returned it fairly quickly.
"You need more hugs, Ruby." Her Commander moved her hands to pat her back condescendingly instead. Pyrrha whined at that, breaking the hug and holding her at arm's length instead. She gently caressed her cheeks, that dark, terrible, and oppressive power thrumming reality adjacent. The same sweat and tiredness never appeared on her form and she sorta understood that. Her soul, and consequently her different Aura cores, weren't contained in her mortal form anymore so she didn't have to expend the effort. Her consent defined their relationship and that's all it took to link them, Pyrrha's consent giving Ruby all the excuse she needed to tie their thoughts together and grant her access to her Aura pools.
She'd make a fairly decent politician in the Big Brother way, claiming she was 'monitoring the situation'. It wasn't until she tapped into her reserves in her soul star that it brought her attention away from her duties within their Fortress. While she couldn't quite help in construction, she could help visualize her vision. Actually, now that she thought of it, she probably could if she tightened her vision shells enough. She could do quite a lot other than read.
"Perhaps," Ruby admitted softly. Pyrrha dared meet her gaze, the thrumming darkness resonating deep within her. No longer did she feel or fear the oncoming dread of oblivion sitting on her chest. Instead, she felt her connection to her soul star increase, flooding her body with more Aura than she expected. Not even Yang could match the vast Aura pool hovering in the middle of nothing and Ruby's star was just slightly larger. Remnant combined didn't have a fraction of hers, let alone both.
She laughed derisively at the knowledge of a massive Aura reserve just waiting to be accessed by reaching to the tendril of cold anchored to where her pool used to reside. None of it was her own after the god she'd sacrificed to her ambition. She'd admitted Pyrrha's reserve was several times greater yet she had enough to charge her back up. Delving back into the soulscape for only a second, she saw Ruby's star barely smoldering, a tiny and delicate shred of light responsible for keeping the Outside at bay. She pinched Ruby's checks hard upon her return, mushing them together as if punishing a young child.
Her idiot had, instead of keeping the remaining godling's energy all for herself, handed over just under half of what she stole and didn't offer for this fragment of reality. And without even bothering to check if she had Aura to spare, she handed over everything she had in her reserve. That was the biggest cue she got that no matter what Ruby said or lacked in her touchy-feely reactions, she put those under her wings first. And it wouldn't regenerate like her body's natural Aura from food or rest unless she transferred it daily.
Another deity would have to fall to her hands to recoup the loss.
"You can hug me whenever you wish." She let Pyrrha squeeze and pinch her cheeks for a few more moments before gently pulling her hands away. The next instant, they reappeared at the makeshift area Ruby allowed the Cyclops to start construction on their forge. It even had space to expand over the walls if needed without having to tunnel into the surrounding mountains. What they had now was barely enough room to handle working on a small industrial scale, not anywhere close to the enterprise scale factories in the cold Mantle mountains that could churn out an Airship-class destroyer in roughly six months at full bore.
At least they could've had Blake not sabotaged several of them.
The Cyclops, starting from scratch, worked with the recovered metal with only their hands. They handled the molten slag with the same danger of handling a newborn puppy, molding the iron and gold into anvils and hammers, crafting two sets to handle the two types of metals they'd be in charge of. They needed no tongs to work the metals, fire erupting from their hands to melt it down and then manipulating it free of impurities. Another few Cyclops worked a few buckets the size of industrial scoops to them, moving in a line down to the River to get their quenching medium.
"Brontes, are you able to mix iron with divine gold?" She walked them over to the one Cyclops she knew by name.
"No," he answered shortly, returning to slamming together two pieces of iron into a bar with tremendous strength. "Gold and iron do not mix. We must first find copper and tin to make bronze and then quench within the waters of Styx to make it celestial. It is the waters in addition that makes them deadly. Gold doesn't require this same process." He molded together a piece they couldn't quite place a use for but Ruby made a note to keep an eye on how much metal they consumed.
"Once Pyrrha's recovered, we'll send out another caravan. I will go with you this time." She looked over Pyrrha, eying Miló and Akoúo̱ strapped to a rough leather holster. Pyrrha flinched only slightly when a blast of wind washed over her and she reached out to grab an offending hand. It was gone along with Miló and all she caught was air.
Ruby swung her sword about with practiced ease, almost as if she had trained with it for all her young years. The weapon felt at home right in her hand, shining with a bright edge and positively thrummed with Ruby's new energy. She deftly swiped it across her hand, not a blink or twitch displayed as her blood ran thinly. That confirmed it worked on mortals and she swiped at Brontes without warning. He eyed her warily in turn, a large lonely eye blinking slowly. No blood or ichor spilled from the wound, skin only split along a thin slice. "Your weapon will not need reforging. You harmed Night when defending me." She threw it back without fanfare, spinning it masterfully into her hand.
Pyrrha slotted her weapon in, staring at her through narrowed eyes. She'd been unconscious during that escapade when she'd plunged her sword straight up into her heart. A bright mist had seeped from the wound but she wrote it off as a reaction to her body; a mimicry of the human form to blend in. What were the odds her little weapon could harm the homunculus she masqueraded as when she encompassed all the stars and celestial bodies? She hadn't so much as flinched when she stabbed her, just before she fell unconscious. To even scratch an injury on her would cost a star, not a price they could feasible afford to pay.
Harm the vessel and she'd only temporarily deter her return, much like how she suspected that if their mortal shells ever died, they'd simply find themselves within their shared soulscape within their stars. Not dead perhaps but stuck dimension adjacent without a body to return to. Night could probably snap her fingers and construct one for herself but Ruby never had that power. Another facet of this world she needed to explore and tie down.
A thunderous explosion near the river drew their attention away from Brontes continuing his work.
It seemed they'd figured out how to generate electricity with only a few words of encouragement and guidance from Pyrrha's rather limited understanding of turbines.
"SPARKY BOOM BOOM!" She facepalmed quite hard when she heard a loud shout followed by a mad group cackle that sent shivers down her spine.
Neo save them all.