Chapter Seventeen

Quests

Yang managed to wrangle Blake into her hold just before she tied a few of the poor male campers together with the female Hunters and forced them to cooperate to escape. A good plan for later but not when a vile green mist started to creep across the woods. It didn't immediately burn against her or chase the air from her lungs so she let it wash over them with reinforced shields.

Blake cared little for her hold, slipping it at a moment's notice and prowling through the fog towards the source. Yang cursed and sped after her, hearing Chiron whisper something about impossibilities and then a loud thud and groan as Blake strung up a grotesque mummy between two trees. The mist faded to reveal a satisfied Blake perched up on a branch, wires expertly wrapped around knife handles to keep them secured. Her ears wiggled back and forth happily and Yang wished she had treats to throw her one.

Chiron cantered up to the mummy nervously, coming up to her gnarly toes. Zoë moved over to them, her nervous tick coming out with constant fiddling of the arrows in her quiver. Everyone didn't dare move. Then the mummy's voice hissed, not out of her mouth but within their heads.

I am the spirit of Delphi, the voice said. Speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python. Yang filed the name away, thickening her shields until a half-meter bubble pulsed in a virulent yellow. The voice never abated, the mummy regarding them with cold, dead eyes. It turned unmistakably toward Zoë. Approach, Seeker, and ask.

Zoë swallowed, "What must I do to help my goddess?" Yang immediately stretched her Glyph Semblance out to the one not around her. Blake's was just a shade further than Weiss' but another glyph pinged far off in the west. Half the distance from Vale to Mantle if she was correct. Nothing the Ruby couldn't do in two hours or less, depending on how much fuel she burnt and how many sound barriers she broke.

With how she connected the glyph to Artemis's back, she could read her pulse, low and heavy, under stress. Alive, yes, most likely hurt, and something that could hurt a goddess would tear Weiss and Blake apart. Not to mention, Zoë knew Arty was in danger and didn't share it with her, her supposed allies in this new world. Later though, not with this mummy looking over them.

Instead of words, she instead got images of Artemis wrapped in chains and tethered to the ground. A humongous rock weighed down on her shoulders and upper back, holding her in place and preventing her escape, face screwed up in pain. The spirit spoke then,

Five shall go west to the goddess in chains,

One shall be lost in the land without rain,

The bane of Olympus shows the trail,

Campers and Hunters combined prevail,

The Titan's curse must one withstand,

And one shall perish by a parent's hand.

The mist that spilled from its mouth retreated, the corpse stilling and hanging dead in her wire prison.

Yang snorted at the antics, ignoring the rhyme altogether and silently ordering Blake to release the mummy and leave it to some other poor schmuck to handle. It crashed down in a pile of decaying limbs, Chiron barking orders to get the campers moving, the war game forgotten. She didn't see all the hullabaloo about the cryptic message, Ren waxing poetically similarly whenever he got high. Zoë yelped when she abducted her from the forest, Acceleration dragging them over to the Big House to avoid everyone else. Dionysus toasted them with his Diet Coke, a drink they recognized from Remnant, and ushered them into the rec room.

"Next time you have actionable evidence someone is in danger, you share that." Yang planted her into a seat around the ping-pong table.

"Twas a dream, Yang." She reached under the table and pulled out cans of coke for all of them. "Demigods sometimes have premonitions of events about to happen or are happening. Doesn't make much sense for mortals to believe that."

"Just like it doesn't make much sense for a mortal to fight a goddess, right?" She cracked open a can as the rest of the campers filed in. Not all of them, select ones Blake informed her led each cabin. Within just a day she identified the twelve lynchpins of the camp, impressive, and if this was how they made decisions, she wanted RWBY far away from the theocratic hereditary council. Children of gods with many offspring had less voting power than the ones with fewer, not to mention the ones without any children in one of the twelve camps had none. Zoë nodded at her words and conceded the point.

Dionysus and Chiron (in wheelchair form) sat at one end of the table, Percy, Thalia, and Grover sitting along the right with the rest of the councilors, names again provided by the information titan Blake, sitting along the left. Zoë started off the meeting, "A prophecy's been given. We know what we must do. The Hunt will move in the morning."

"No, you won't," Yang interjected loudly before all the children could get a word in, drowning out Chiron's words of caution. They all turned to stare at the blonde towering over them, eyes churning in a purple storm.

"A prophecy is inevitable, Miss Yang. Part of the Hunt will have to move out to complete it. The rest are welcome to remain here." Chiron answered, the two of them pressing down the concerns of the children playing at war.

"Prophecy is the tool of the influential to control peasants. It's a war stratagem and I won't allow the Hunt to listen to a crackpot mummy barely clinging to a cursed life. That's a recipe for the death of everyone here." She practically heard the Ruby gremlin living in her head giving her a thumbs-up. It quieted when she thought up an army of Grimm for it to slaughter. "Artemis tasked me with keeping the Hunt safe and I will do that."

"I'm still Lieutenant of the Hunt." Zoë bit back, the other campers wisely staying away from the growing power struggle. Dionysus however didn't care a damn, sipping loudly from his can of coke and enjoying the conflict. "They follow me, not you."

"I fought your goddess to a standstill. Your girls won't stand a chance against me and I will tie the lot of you up if it keeps you from leaving. I don't take something that can threaten her lightly."

Dionysus coughed and then cleared his throat. "You're a mortal Miss Yang. I highly doubt your claims."

Yang raised an eyebrow at him and snapped her fingers, twenty-four glyphs snapping into existence and forcing the Campers and Zoë onto their knees with hands tied behind their back. Blake moved the moment she heard the snap, pressing a knife into Zoë's throat. Their third teammate sat back in her chair and crossed her legs, pouting at her lack of actions and sipping cooly at her drink.

"There's more to this world than the divine as you should know as God of Madness." He answered her eyebrow with his own before reclining in his seat and mimicking Weiss. The hint of madness was there, calling out to him, soft and incessant. She'd been mad before but she wrested herself back from that edge, returning to the sanity of the truth she spoke now. Yang took his relaxation as a sign to continue, facing Chiron next. "Director, your camp is a joke. Your information comes from the word of a decrepit prophet. Your council is filled with lineage seats with either unequal representation for those with fewer children or flat out no children at all. Your unit tactics are non-existent, your war games are a sham of a children's game, and your technology is archaic. If I wasn't bound to Artemis for the time, I'd rip this camp apart to teach you a lesson and I'm still tempted to do that."

Zoë tried to stand and tell her off but the adult Yang overpowered the teenage girl despite her age with her size and bright purple eyes churning with remarkable energy. She fell back into her seat and Yang took over the meeting, Blake and Weiss straightening in the presence of their Commander, one they didn't get a chance to work with specifically due to their demise.

"I don't know what games you're playing with these children's lives but they end today. One of your own is missing, that's priority one. She's alive and to the west, that much I can sense with the gift I left her. But if you think for a second, I'm letting a so-called prophecy dictate her safety, you'll find no help from me." She pulled Zoë from her seat into a piggyback ride before she could protest and pulled her team from the room, leaving a stunned camper council and a god that couldn't give less of a damn, disappearing in a burst of grape-flavored mist with a "That went well."

Zoë saw nothing but yellow rose petals for a brief second before Yang set her down within their ship. Re'iyah perked up from her heated co-pilot seat, disintegrating into a wisp of shadow and reforming into her larger wolf form by the ramp as a guard. Weiss and Blake appeared in their own flurry of petals from Yang's wake, preparing the craft as quickly as possible for takeoff, disengaging the hosing for the hydrogen pumps.

"Colour me surprised but what was that?" Zoë's thick accent drawled under her surprise and shock. "Lady Artemis is in danger and we've been granted a quest to rescue her."

"First off, I'd never follow your spirit's words without first at least checking it out." Yang flicked on the first systems and smiled brightly as the ship hummed brilliantly. "Second, the only child soldier I've ever worked with was my leader and I'm not having any more of them on my conscience. Third, how many spies do you think just heard that prophecy? I don't know anyone in this camp and the only person I trust here implicitly right now is you."

"Spies?" She didn't even think about that. While she didn't enjoy the Camp by any stretch and heavily protested whenever her Lady brought them here, she firmly thought it within the grips of Olympus. The Hunt she trusted along with her Lady due to the oaths yet Olympus didn't demand the same of their children. In hindsight, it was a rather terrible idea.

Yang stopped her inspection and to give her a long deadpan stare. "Okay, how green are you at war?"

"Technically," she nervously laughed. "I've never fought in a war before."

"Right, then shush while I work with over a decade of experience fighting a cold war." She reached into the storage locker and removed a square block of Gravity Dust, the tiny centimeter cube costing enough to fund five fully equipped Bullheads in their time. The potent Dust surged into her Aura network the moment she ate it, a thin film sheen glowing across her skin. "The entire camp just heard Artemis is in danger and expects a group of five to go west to save her. So, we're gonna ignore pretty much all of that."

The purple skin over her thickened into a dark violet, churning with the toxic yellow of her Aura until another Yang stepped from her body, pulling the Dust with her. Unlike Blake's clones, this Yang's eyes glowing the same shade as the Dust sustaining her. The original Yang stripped and dressed into her black-ops gear, Zoë choosing smartly to look away only to face a perfectly unashamed Weiss oogling her wife.

"My clone will stay here with Blake and Weiss and yes, that's an order. Stay and recover. Weiss, practice your Aura and Semblance. Blake, keep an eye on her and ferret out those spies. Don't eliminate them. Gather evidence for when we get back with Artemis. We'll handle them when we return."

"They'll know you're coming when you leave," Weiss answered. This mission was above her and Blake right now. Maybe not Blake seeing as she could demolish a pack of children without use of her clones. She snorted and got a knife trimming a few hairs for her troubles, Blake saluting and then making herself scarce.

"The mission is recon with possible extraction depending on that information." She removed two scrolls and handed them out, the ports they connected to automatically syncing to the ship's computers. "These will stay connected to the Ruby. My clone will cover for my appearance but I fear it won't stop the Camp or the Hunt from going on their little quest without placing them on lockdown and I don't want the gods on my ass." At least, not without learning about their weakness and how to keep them off their case, she privately added.

She tapped a message to Blake across the shared communication network, tasking her with learning more about the gods. Hestia was a perfect target for her and if she was anything like the spymaster she was back in Beacon, she'd get her answers within the next few weeks. "Zoë and I will follow Artemis' glyph." The Huntress tried to protest and got a finger to her lips. "Dismissed." Weiss stepped from the platform with her and Blake's bags, the Ruby lifting off smoothly automatically and banking to the west.

"Yang," Zoë started exasperated, "I need to give the Hunt orders in my absence."
"They should have a second in command and already have standing orders from Arty." She flicked on the autopilot and activated the afterburners, pulling the craft high into the atmosphere to shorten the jump. "If not, they'll learn. They gotta learn how to operate without a chain of command and quickly establish one." She didn't understand how this Hunt operated if their only officer was Zoë. Lugging the dozen or so girls into missions, only on foot, seemed a pain, not to mention it was a sizable enough group easy to track. Maybe. Kinda. Seeing as their technology was non-existent.

Zoë begrudgingly agreed. Phoebe would take charge in her absence and keep them in place assuming they didn't think Yang kidnapped her or anything. Or they'd go out on their own to follow the prophecy. She had nothing against the Spirit itself but she hated the damn mummy it was trapped in due to Hades' curse. Seeing as the spirit kept moving to new hosts instead of dying, the Lord of the Dead had the skills to keep it there, much to Apollo's chagrin. The Hunt probably wouldn't move in the end now that she thought on it, the aforementioned prophecy stating they needed to work with the campers to succeed. Not only were there males to contend with but Aphrodite's children annoyed most of them.

"So, you gonna explain the clone and the glyphs or you gonna keep pretending you're a simple mortal?" She asked, sitting down in a huff and spinning the co-pilot's seat about. "I don't know how you managed to fool Lord Apollo and Lady Artemis but mortals do not have those abilities. Thou art a hypocrite, Yang."

"The only other person who knows of that is Apollo and now you. My people are born with genetic abilities, not unlike you demigods. They're sometimes hereditary but most of the time they… change across generations. My mother, for instance, could tear open portals to traverse great distances but I can take kinetic energy and change it into potential, and vice versa."

"But then, where did the clone come from? Or this glyph you keep speaking of?"

"Back during our war, our leader Ruby was dying. Her ability dealt with acceleration and she was the primary reason we survived long enough to end it. But instead of leaving us without that, she instead tore apart the genetic material within her and transferred it to us with each of us doing the same for her. The clones are Blake's ability and the glyphs are Weiss's. Very handy things in a pinch and right now, we're tracking the glyph I left attached to Arty." She held up a hand. "Yes, I told her I was attaching it and didn't just add it to her. No need to eviscerate me on her part."

"Why do you call her Arty?" Zoë interrupted her other train of thought, wondering just what sorta creature this was. To have been born with demigod-level abilities without divine parents and then tear their equivalent of that divine spark apart to give it to others. Yang didn't share that her Semblance technically came from the reinvention of humanity at the hands of sibling gods and then shifted due to genetic quirks. There wasn't a need to make the pantheon panic at the thought of other humans with the strength to fight against them.

"In my military, we had very few titles, titles only used on extremely formal occasions. Instead of Lieutenants and Camp Councilors, we had Captains in charge of four-man cells that often ran independently. Above them was only the Commander, a title my late leader held until her death and then transferred to me upon my election and confirmation. Supreme power over four thousand in an elected, non-hereditary, absolute dictatorship and most called me Yang. Titles mean nothing to me, Zoë."

Zoë stewed on that for a good long few minutes, picking apart the information she revealed. It certainly explained why she ignored any forms of honorifics when she stood at the top of the food chain. Didn't look the part at all yet she quelled the clamoring camp cabin leaders with one sentence. Had some freaky eye color change to boot she only ever saw that when Lady Artemis got angry.

That slightly terrified her.

"So what happened with your four thousand?" That many people didn't just disappear or even appear; an entire society hidden from Olympus the same way they were hidden from the mortal world.

"They died," Yang answered simply and sagged into her seat, genuine sadness spilling down her cheeks. "They all died, including Ruby, in the end. A long, terrible war that ended with their deaths. All loyal soldiers in the end, down to their last breath for the defense of our people." She summarized in a brief paragraph. Their first Remnant fell and took the majority of their Hunters with it, barely a few teams escaping to Mistral in another presumed final stand after their Jump. Their next two dimensions partially succeeded but telling Zoë of multiple dimensions was pushing belief a little too far into the "Neo is a chaotic deity that likes ice-cream" realm.

"I'm sorry." Zoë answered, not knowing what more to say. She didn't keep abreast of the mortal wars or their conflicts. What the US did in the Middle East in their conflict never concerned Olympus, or rather, what they didn't publicly do in the rest of the world never did. Four thousand people didn't just disappear from the face of Gaia without large organizations undertaking covert operations. For Yang to speak about losing that many people spoke of a campaign shrouded in secrecy to the point her abilities went unnoticed. Lady Artemis stopped taking them into warzones after the proliferation of repeating gunpowder weaponry, keeping them far away as technology advanced and the Mist struggled to hide them for this reason.

"It happened. I've made my peace." She waved it off. The deaths of the four thousand Hunters under Ruby's command never weighed on her as heavily as people thought. She suspected it was how Beacon trained its officers, teaching them to celebrate the lives they lead in their service. With Ozpin and Ruby's average life expectancy, mourning took far too much of a toll mentally and chronically. "Do you know what significant points of interest are west of your camp?"

Zoë frowned at remembering what lay west. She rattled them off with raised fingers. "Three locations. The Garden, a safe spot I doubt she's imprisoned in. Las Vegas, a gambling den filled with numerous monsters, and near Camp Jupiter, Camp Half-blood's rivals."

She was fairly sure Yang would've slammed the brakes if she wasn't entirely set on speeding across the landscape. "You mean to tell me you could've sent a message to them asking for information on that side of the continent?"

"We cannot use electronic devices." Yang snorted, patting the ship she spent a century improving. Compared to pre-Great War technology, she tore through Kali's SDC (the woman refusing to rename it in Weiss' honor) R&D and took charge of it. Every standard component instead hummed with light and crystal, far more stable and precise than copper. She quietly whispered sweet nothings to the ship to ignore Zoë's harsh words much to her bemusement. "It's a danger we can't risk. Not to mention the camps don't like each other."

Great, another Vacuo-Vale situation where while technically allied, the immortal Kaldwin never bothered Ruby and vice-versa.

"So can't expect help on that front, got it." The engines hummed steadily as she throttled them down into a tacking pattern, adjusting every few minutes when they got closer to the glyph still attached to Artemis's back. She didn't tell Zoë that her mistress slowly weakened by the hour, enough to survive the next few days easily yet wouldn't get back on her feet immediately. No need to worry her more than she undoubtedly was already. "Still, it's a recon mission first. Then we can poke the camp to see if they're willing to help a goddess."

Zoë gave a halfhearted smile, still somewhat baffled by this legacy, 'cause at what point did mortals get the power to clone themselves or fight deities. To defy a prophecy and ignore Apollo's Oracle asked for terrible consequences, ones she only hoped didn't get them killed with a war on the horizon. Very rarely did her Hunters venture out solo, preferring strength in numbers against the roaming hordes hidden under the Mist.

When the Ruby blasted over the shore, Yang swiveled them around into a wide sweep several klicks from the top of a mountain range. A fog toiled over the area obscuring the vision of a decrepit fortress but it wasn't the most defining trait of the base. No, that honor went to the funnel of clouds that stretched from the upper atmosphere and slammed into the mountaintop, two peaks joined in the middle. Zoë paled at the sight of that, hands shaking slightly with fear worn on her sleeve. A zoomed-in screen popped on the HUD and confirmed the anomaly, the sensors registering mass rather than a clever illusion.

"I'm guessing that's a problem." She surmised, setting the ship down in the forest away from the nearby city. Zoë nodded mutely, Yang kneeling by her side and guiding her through the panic attack, asking her to focus on the many different senses around to ground her. She had some anti-anxiety meds to force Hunters through it stocked in case though. "You don't have to follow me in. It's not my first recon." She gathered her kit after ensuring her partner settled down.

Zoë grabbed her arm as she left the cockpit, dragging herself out and forward. Very few Hunters had the balls to push through that and continue the mission. Still, she needed her information to navigate a fortress she feared and knew about or she'd sit her ass down in the seat and have her wait. After she closed the ramp, Zoë started speaking again, every step shaking off her worries until they trudged through the setting sky.

"This is my father's prison." She whispered, fiddling with the string in her ready bow. "After the gods vanquished their parents and allies in the first Titanomachy, they imprisoned him under the weight of the sky." Yang nodded along despite not understanding their weird mythology completely. Intelligence mattered more right now than Zoë's estranged relationship with her father. "That alone makes this difficult as we have to pass through my sisters' garden to find a path up and we can only do that at twilight."

"Convenient." She remarked, speeding up their walk. "Good thing I didn't just fly us in."

"What makes it worse is the ruins of Mount Othrys rest on this mountain, making this the Titan headquarters and, with them escaping their prisons and gaining strength, it will rebuild itself. Taking it will require an army and stealth difficult."

"How guarded is the garden?"

"One dragon. My sisters themselves don't fight and can't leave." Yang perked up at the mention of the legendary creature. No doubt it was different from the dragon she knew in Remnant, the Grimm copying the idea from the worst of their nightmares. Zoë just shook her head at her antics. They eventually came upon the treeline, an entrance of woven flowers peeking through a dense fog that strangely didn't touch on the forest.

They sprinted towards the gate after checking their surroundings, slipping through the mist and coming up a long dirt road decorated with lush grass and bright flowers. Exotic species dotted the side of the mountain and the air tasted sweet, all illuminated by the orange sun. The summit of the mountain seemed much closer now, swirling with storm clouds and raw power. Halfway up, the path split around a clearing where an enormous dragon sat wrapped about a massive tree dotted with golden apples.

Yang gulped despite having faced worse, the dragon's body thicker than an Atlesian Cruiser and with more heads than she could count at this distance. She glanced over to Zoë and found her nibbling on her lower lip, planning how to get past it without their ship. "Now that we're in here, are we all good to just skip the dragon or is there some passport control?"

Even the dated Lieutenant understood that and snorted at the levity Yang tried to bring with her. "If we move away from the path, we get lost in the fog."

"So all I'm hearing is we gotta stay on the path and keep away from becoming roast barbecue?" Zoë nodded despite how simple Yang made it sound, yelping when she found herself in Yang's hold again twice in one day and automatically clinging to her. Her protest disappeared when a sonic boom exploded around them and she curled away from the sudden blast of rushing air. When it was over, she gave it a few seconds to make sure and tentatively peeked out.

"Yang?" She peered over her shoulders and back at Ladon this time. The entrance was far behind them, clouds of dust settling from their apparent path here. "Please don't do that again." She didn't bother reprimanding her beyond that, Yang solving their problem efficiently without even letting Ladon react to them. Looking back, she saw him sneeze aggressively and her sisters' screech in rage at the damage the winds caused.

Served them right.

It took until Yang stepped into the empty fortress for her to briefly yelp and slap her incessantly until she dropped her. It didn't stop her from grinning stupidly at her reaction, snapping to attention when she realized where they stood. The walls around them stood in shambles with statues melted atop their pedestals. The emptiness crept on her instantly until Yang started walking about like she owned the place, still checking around corners but relaxing a more usual crouch. "Yang!" She whisper-shouted, indicating for her to get down and wildly looking around for enemies. "Hide!"
Far too casually, she walked back towards her and spoke normally. "This is a broken mountain fortress. We'd hear any patrol before they'd hear us. C'mon." She yanked Zoë forward and marched. True to her word, they encountered practically no one except for a pair of two guards Yang happily waved at while she froze instantly at getting spotted. Yang didn't care, moving them onward and calling the largest bluff ever: acting like they belonged. Her dark bodysuit looked nothing like any Olympus-allied armor and her parka combo made her out as any normal run-of-the-mill archer. Her parted hair hid her circlet perfectly, tucked off to the side and revealing nothing.

Every few steps Yang dragged a finger along a wall or collapsed column, moved over to the opposite side of the crumbling walkway and did the same, humming an incessant tune while she suffered mini-scares every time they walked past someone else, Yang blindly following the tracker glyph. Only about a dozen in total guards mingled about, most of them dracaenae or empousa keeping guard over a single lone red-haired girl collapsed sleeping manacled on a bed.

They eventually came to an open-air throne room, the dark storm clouds of the sky crashing down and resting on the shoulders of a familiar goddess. She had retreated into her more comfortable twelve-year-old form, sweat caking her hair, silvery dress in tatters, and legs chained to the rock with bronze. It took everything in her to not rush forward and release her, spotting a dreaded figure from her past. Yang saw the resemblance, the same regal expression gracing their faces with a cold, proud look in their eyes.

Unfortunately for them, the guards littered around the perimeter were slightly more aware than a slug and watched them warily, drawing Atlas' away from taunting Artemis. "Ah, what do we have here?" He wore a brown silk suit. At his side stood a blonde teen and half a dozen dracaena bearing a golden sarcophagus. Yang didn't need to know whatever rested in that wasn't anything Arty or Zoë wanted to deal with. It disturbed her and she had survived an encounter with a Nuckelavee! Atlas grinned maliciously. "Welcome home, daughter."

Yang met Arty's eyes, one message coming from tired silver eyes: RUN!
"Guess that means the recon is over." Yang cheekily waved at Artemis and even dared blow her a kiss before looking back at Atlas. Zoë couldn't tell who was startled more at her quip, her father or her lady. "Your guards suck by the way." She snapped her fingers and the mountaintop erupted in explosions.

Sneak Peak

"Do your plans usually end up like this?" Zoë cursed and skewered a empousa that got too close, pinning her hand into the stone. Yang laughed and blasted a few more guards away. Another Yang cradled Artemis while yet another carried the redheaded girl they found earlier.

"Usually." Yang had on a smile a mile wide, eyes glowing purple.