Chapter Nineteen
Branches
Zoe immediately dropped low and spun around to face the explosions, coming face to face with a wall of Yang's yellow glyphs keeping debris from hitting them. She then looked over to the permanent bracelet of glyphs on her wrist, a glyph pulsing in time with each subsequent explosion. So that was what she was doing when they walked over here.
"I wasn't expecting the demigods to get here so soon and in so few numbers!" Atlas stated, walking forward to block their path to the goddess. "Luke, your spies are lacking. How did their prophecy go? Five shall go west. Missing a couple." The teen shrank back from the scolding as Atlas grinned at them viciously. "No matter. If Olympus wants to play with fate, I'll teach them humility."
"Let Artemis go," Zoe demanded, Yang taking the time to discreetly spawn glyphs between the chained goddess and the inverted mountain on her shoulders. For a few seconds, the tiny constructs struggled valiantly, Yang taking the force exerted on them to reinforce them further until a monstrous force beyond her output capacity obliterated them. The air directly around her pulsed with the smell of ozone, a warning to keep her from trying again.
Atlas strolled over to the goddess, yanking on her chains. "Be my guest. Take the sky from her." He taunted.
Artemis interrupted Zoe's next sentence, "Don't offer. I forbid you." Atlas smirked at her response, trying to touch her face and got a vicious bite in reply, almost taking off his fingers.
"Hoo-hoo," Atlas chuckled. "You see, daughter? Lady Artemis likes her new job. I think I will have all the Olympians take turns carrying my burden, once Lord Kronos rules again, and this is the center of our palace."
"I'm guessing she can't just drop it, right?" Yang asked, spreading her glyph wall to block the hallway from the rest of the fortress. Every few seconds, another explosion rocked the ruins and confused whatever forces they had within, further buying them time.
"Yes, demigod. This is the point where the sky and the earth first met, where Ouranos and Gaia first brought forth their mighty children, the Titans. The sky still yearns to embrace the earth. Someone must hold it at bay, or it would crush down upon this place, instantly flattening the mountain and everything within a hundred leagues. Once you have taken the burden, there is no escape." Atlas smiled wickedly. "Unless someone else takes it from you." He approached them again, studying them each in turn. "My daughter I understand but you, you I have no information on."
"Best we keep it that way, no?" Yang brushed at her bracelet again, dragging a line up to her elbow. She removed a vial of bright blue powder from her leg pouch and downed it in one go. "No reason to make your life any easier."
"Ah, some spunk. I will enjoy crushing you if Luke fails." He took a step back, gesturing for the teen to take his place. "Can't take all the fun for myself. Have to let the minions loose every now and then." Yang nodded, a thin blue shield coalescing over her form. Her fireteams got antsy without Grimm to kill and having them hunt deeper into Sanus risked a retaliatory wave onto Vale.
As Atlas turned his back, a clone detached from her and accelerated into the teen to keep him busy. He never saw the left hook she sent at his head, sending him flying into the throne room wall. Even Zoe took a few precious seconds to react, Luke locked in combat with the clone and the dracaena hissing in tandem. The sarcophagus they held glowed in a golden fervor now.
"Oww, what the fuck are you made of?" Yang whined and the silence spell broke. She wrung out the hand she punched with. "That felt like punching tungsten." The rubble from Atlas' tumble moved at that, revealing the Titan in battle armor and a huge javelin. He cracked his neck from side to side, working out the injury. "Wooo! That worked out the crick from my neck."
"Yang!" Zoe said. "Beware!"
Yang didn't need to be told a second time as Atlas swatted aside Zoe's arrows and thrust his javelin forward. With Acceleration running throughout her, she grabbed it and pulled, Atlas refusing to let go and they proceeded to play the most hilariously dangerous game of tug-o-war Zoe had ever seen. Every time, Atlas tried to pull away, Yang turned the energy against him until both of them were throwing around enough weight to crack the floor.
"How- are- you- doing- this?" He stammered out between pulls, a sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead. Off on the other side of the throne room, the clone swatted Luke's sword aside with ease. Without any Aura to augment his movement, despite not telegraphing a single move, Yang intercepted and broke his footing until she could see him visibly angry. Zoe took this time to run to her mistress, sending arrow after arrow into the pallbearers until they all scattered to side exits, leaving the coffin to clatter to the ground. A quick bash of a knife into the chains freed her but she had no assumptions she could take the weight of the sky.
"Zoe…" Artemis whispered, "You need to leave. I don't know how long Yang can last against him but please… please leave." Zoe ignored her, far too concerned for her to notice she never begged or pleaded and simply gave orders usually.
A loud crash took her attention away, Atlas pushing instead of pulling once his turn came up and tripping Yang up. With the strength of a Titan behind his blow, Yang smashed through the flagstones and kicked up dust. Before either of them could worry about the javelin through her stomach, a breeze cleared the impact zone, revealing a broken javelin, a yellow glyph over her chest, and a grinning Yang. In a feat of acrobatics, she spun around to knock Atlas down and then reverse-tumbled into a stand.
"What are you, demigod?" He cast aside the broken weapon and watched Luke struggle before turning back to the blonde. Like him, she had a sheen of sweat rolling across her skin and the same smile every adrenaline junkie had. "No normal demigod can stand against me."
"Aren't you just the sweetest." Yang quipped back and rushed him with eyes bleeding purple, Atlas tanking a punch to his forearms before retaliating with his own. For every punch Yang gave, she either blocked with her arms or spawned a glyph, redirecting the energy into her glyph bracelet for easier retrieval. "Keep this up and I might let you court me."
"Woman, if you keep this up I might let you court ME." Unlike Yang, he didn't have shields or glyphs to tank her shots. He spat out a globule of ichor at the break in her assault, a sadistic grin taking over the adrenaline-fueled one. She let him rush her this time, planting a glyph on his fist and then adding another one to his body with a kick. With every attack he gave, Yang took and dropped a glyph in place. Not visible, not yet fully forming into them, but enough to snap weak ones into place once needed.
The two juggernauts clashed, Yang slowly backing away in a convincing show of ebbing strength. An exhausted grunt made him press harder, another glyph getting added to his knees this time with a slap. A fake trip had her missing a thunderous blow to her head, a glyph appearing behind her on the floor until they were only a couple of meters from Artemis and the sky. She rolled to the side and blew a raspberry at him and he still didn't realize his mistake until she blasted him off his feet by pushing Ruby's Semblance into a glyph. That one broke immediately yet she pulled at move glyphs, directing him to the line of glyphs she tied to her forearm earlier, removing friction entirely until he turned into a bowling ball headed straight for the trapped goddess and her hunter.
The one glyph she gave Artemis she used to pull her from her burden the moment Atlas skidded into her, the weight of the sky crashed onto his back, almost smashing him flat until he managed to get to his knees, struggling to get out from under the crushing weight of the sky. Zoe jumped clean from the impact, cradling Artemis in her arms. Yang didn't need to outlast the Titan, not when an awfully convenient trap pinned her ally and could easily be turned around. His hubris and need to taunt kept him there long enough for her plan to come together, and despite having Aura reserves to match most of her forces put together, she wasn't immortal.
"Noooooo!" He bellowed so hard it shook the mountain. "Not again!"
Yang incinerated the layer of sweat on her and bowed cheekily to her opponent. With the adrenaline now fading from her body, she felt each punch he gave start to ache. Pyrrha got to the point where her strikes could break through her shields if she didn't use her Semblance yet Atlas broke through them fairly easily, her secondary glyph skin having to tank the blows just barely enough that her bones creaked.
Her clone off to the side kept Luke busy, backing him into a corner. She'd taken the chance to spawn a pair of glyphs in her palms to keep his sword away. Compared to Atlas, he was a fresh trainee at the Academy, a skilled and annoying one. Desperation kept him fighting, Yang pushing him back against the wall with the sarcophagus. With a kick, she sent him flying, and weakened from the surrounding explosions, right through it and off the cliff.
Before she could think to check on her kill, a golden burst erupted from the coffin and blinded her, forcing her to shut her eyes. When she finished blinking out the spots, both it and Luke were gone. Annoying but her mission wasn't to kick ass but to retrieve Artemis and with the immediate threats to her gone, that was basically complete. Kinda. They still had to escape and likely kick ass on their way out but that was pretty par for the course for her missions.
She hefted the tiny goddess up, wrapping her in her Aura and soothing away the aches from her burden. Her eyes could barely stay open, a tired but relieved silver gracing her. Goddess or not, anything that could keep one of them pinned forever wasn't to be fucked with. That and all of her girls liked her warmth, struggling to break free in the mornings. "You can fuss over her later. She'll pull through. Have some faith in her." She joked, getting a mute look in response and a small smile from the goddess before she fell limp. "You must be very fun at parties."
"We rarely go to them." Zoe answered as Yang took down the glyph wall in the hallway. A squad waited for them and Yang blasted them away with a shotgun shell, Ember Celica finally deployed. Two of the humanoids, young demigods from a glance, fell to the birdshot and shrapnel, screaming. Zoe faltered when Yang didn't so much as blink, shooting arrows at blinding speed at the mythical monsters still charging them. Yang parried those that made it through her onslaught, throwing them far over the ruins.
"Weren't we only supposed to do reconnaissance?" Zoe let loose another arrow, a dracaena bursting into gold powder. Without any glyphs left to explode, the army at the foot of the fortress finally swarmed in. Dozens crowded every intersection and hallway and it took precious minutes just to fight their way over to the first prisoner they saw. Unlike Yang, Zoe didn't have an infinite supply of throwables. Her magical quiver couldn't refill quickly enough to deal with the hordes so for every arrow she released she had to find and not all of them survived intact. Yang spawned another clone to rescue the sole prisoner. "This is your idea of recon?"
Instead of trying to get through the glyphs Yang placed in the archway, a smarter minion detonated the nearby wall in a gout of green flames. "Well, no, usually I take binoculars but seeing as we couldn't even get in without some magical fog getting in the way…" She trailed off and Zoe got the point. Yang placed another glyph wall to block them and then blasted the other wall apart to make an opening, black marble raining around them. Building material didn't care if her shotgun shells were mortal or not.
"Do your plans usually end up like this?" Zoë cursed and skewered an empousa that got too close, pinning her hand into the stone. Yang laughed and blasted a few more guards away.
"Usually." Yang had on a smile a mile wide, eyes glowing purple. Her bracelet of glyphs pulsed a bright crimson and she disappeared from Zoe's view. She took the chance to grab as many of her used arrows as she could, dodging a thrust from a demigod and shoving a knife into his shoulder. His eyes widened in fear she so often saw in men she caught spying on the Hunt and she left him there after knocking him out with her bow, moving on to the next immediate threat.
Her partner didn't give them that courtesy and she reappeared with blood and gold streaked across her face with eyes to match, dozens falling in sequential bursts. Two more Yangs decimated the rest of the army rushing them while what she assumed was the original one rested by her side, breathing heavily. After tanking Atlas for those few minutes and now tearing apart enemy after enemy, she was surprised to see her still standing.
"Is there anything blocking us from leaving like we had to enter?" Yang played with a vial of that strange dust in her pouch before returning it, shaking her head. Her copies kept two of the corridors busy with a combination of glyphs but she could feel them fading, each subsequent glyph pinging weaker back to her core.
"No, not reallyyyyyyyyyyyyy-" Zoe shrieked as Yang hoisted her up. Again, for the third time, she found herself clinging to her new acquaintance with very little awareness. The other two carrying their passengers followed right behind them, all of them diving off the mountaintop at breakneck speed, making her question their sanity until a slide of yellow glyphs shot them over the treeline and back in the direction of their ship. She closed her eyes tight once Yang sent them flying again with another slide, quietly muttering to herself it'd soon be over.
One last explosion rocked the fortress and they suddenly slowed down. She dared take a peek to see how she was doing this, expecting a parachute or some cushion to appear from the ship yet only found Yang just floating them, coming to a stop just a foot over the ground. She wiggled free, inspecting Yang's miraculous freefall arresting technique, and then proceeded to slap her shoulder, "Stop-" She slapped her again "-abducting-" and then whacked her with her bow for good measure "-me."
Yang let her have her moment, entirely too amused at her tantrum especially when she stamped her foot petulantly and reverted to cursing at her in an entirely different language. She patted her head once and then disappeared back into the Ruby, her clones following and depositing their rescuees into a bunk. They wrapped each one in a blanket and crumbled into iridescent dust. Zoe didn't so much as blink at all of the weirdness she threw out today, continuing to rant unintelligently, between the slaughter they committed against the Titan army and all of her abilities
She briefly made sure the redhead they found along the way was stable and fired up the ship, Zoe finally shutting up to care for her goddess. After lifting off and charting a course back to the camp, she leaned up against the frame to watch over her patients. Zoe really did care for Artemis, fluffing up her pillow and tucking in her blanket to make sure she was warm. Curled up on the bed into a tight ball, she didn't look like the Goddess of the Moon, stuck in her child form with her auburn hair paled down to a wispy grayish of the celestial surface. "Hard to believe she's a god sometimes."
"Don't make me turn you into a jackalope." Artemis muttered, cracking open a faintly glowing silver eye. She gave them a once over before shutting it again. "That glyph you put on my back… thank you."
"Not a problem." Yang walked over and patted her on the back, shattering the glyph free now that its job was complete. "Quick question now that you're conscious. Can gods actually, you know, get knocked unconscious or go to sleep?"
"Yang!" Zoe hissed and slapped her yet again. This was gonna be a running bit with her, she already knew it. "Let her rest." Artemis shushed her with a whisper.
"No, even in this mortal form I always have a form of consciousness and we have no need to sleep. While a majority of my strength was trapped by the sky, I always have a portion of myself keeping the Moon in orbit." She waved her away, falling back into a state resembling sleep. Bit by bit, Yang felt her divinity increasing in power, a golden hue creeping into her skin and returning color to her hair. Not in a way a typical Hunter sensor could pinpoint a target but enough to trigger that instinct of danger, like the hum of a reactor charging up.
"Rest up then. We'll be back at camp in a couple of hours."
The first thing Blake did after Yang and Zoe took off wasn't to ferret out those spies she suspected were dotted around the camp but to track down the armory and requisition weapons that wouldn't simply phase through the next mythological creature they ran into. Unfortunately for her, other than arrows and some slings, the Camp didn't have any throwable weapons, every knife fashioned almost just specifically off-balanced enough she'd have better luck throwing slag around.
While Weiss badgered Hestia incessantly for homemade ice cream and leached both mythological information and heat from her, practically moving into the hearth pit with her, Blake accosted the Hephaestus cabin at their forge and, over a very engaging game of charades, she managed to extort half a dozen copies of her normal knives in Celestial Bronze. That was the easy part and she left after trying and failing to communicate anything further. Without Weiss or Yang to convey her words, she couldn't get Gambol Shroud reforged and alloyed with any divine metal and even waving around a bullet didn't get the idea across.
Anything beyond medieval weaponry was anathema to them and it went
beyond simple ignorance, beyond an aversion to firearms and gunpowder. Something almost anchored them to the time of the sword and bow or kept them from advancing. Didn't stop her from stealing several different weapons to stash within the ship for later and leaving cryptic IOUs, the exercise enough to drain some of the excess Aura trapped in her network.
Forging wasn't a talent she had, knowing just enough to repair and maintain her weapon and then go to Ruby or Yang if anything worse ever occurred. A few bars of their bronze disappeared into thin air for Yang to use and alloy their blades with later, another set aside to fashion into bullets. She didn't quite understand why only certain metals worked on the creatures, the smiths explaining about blessings, location, and forging processes until she cut them off. However, she figured that what actually shot the bullets didn't matter, the Hunt's bows and arrow shafts made from regular wood with only the arrow tip made from Lunar Silver.
The military or gangs in that city district nearby had to have some decent hardware they misplaced or had lying about waiting to liberate.
With Weiss busy schmoozing Hestia, she took the chance to disappear into the forest. Without most of her Aura, she had to crawl up a tall tree using her knives and tricks, settling into the dense foliage high above the cabins. Artemis' girls returned from the archery range as the sun finally fell below the horizon with the rest of the children trickling into their respective cabins, one of them drastically having more than the others and others not even having one. She donned her night vision gear as the camp settled into sleep, the hearth dying down in flames until Hestia herself disappeared into a cascade of embers.
Her vision exploded into a series of colors instead of the usual pale green shade and she shook off the brief surprise. While not perfectly matching the shades in direct sunlight, it was a far better cry than the hundreds of green shades that made up the typical goggles she used during the Second Great War. Yang and the SDC must've dragged the bleeding edge of technology so far forward that the Ruby might've well have been alien technology, and she hadn't even checked how evolved the AI had grown.
Something for later though.
For now, she leaned against the trunk and simply watched, the familiar routine calming her nerves. Up above, Artemis's moon didn't dare peek through the cloud cover, either because of the phase or because of her predicament, completely enshrouding the camp in darkness. The few torches keeping the paths like revealed a half dozen of the older campers patrolling around and that was about it. Even the lava well next to her died down in vigor, leaving the perfect time for any rogue agents to make contact. Without modern technology, she hedged her bets on them physically having to communicate, and even just spotting shifty individuals out this late gave her a preliminary list.
Although she ran into a bit of a headache when she spotted three winged humanoids taking turns patrolling around the camps, cautiously eyeing the still awake Weiss as she happily munched on marshmallows their new favorite goddess left behind. Or maybe it was the large hound of Re'iyah they feared, the now massive wolf curled around her protectively, its normally hidden bone armor coming out to play. She didn't bother even growling at them, alternating between nudging Weiss for more pets and then gazing right at her position, as if to make sure she was still okay in her perch and confused why she was up there and not with them.
She paused and looked over at Re'iyah again, hand twitching in realization.
For some Salem-cursed reason, she was in a tree all alone, trying to watch over juveniles that probably only spied for their enemies because of very high levels of angst and narrow world views, when she had a literal bioengineered human-tracking creature to leverage instead. Especially because she didn't have her clone army to keep track of special targets. Well, she had a Yang clone doing Ruby knew what keeping up appearances but that didn't count.
Tomorrow, she'd ask Re'iyah to keep watch over some of the cabins in her smol form. For now, she noticed someone moving from the Hephaestus cabin, a tall dark teenager she saw working the forges earlier. She dove from her branch and swung onto the path with her ribbon off another. Instinctively, she reached for her Aura to brace against the fall and crashed into the dirt with a spasm of pain. Maybe Weiss was onto something with the suppressant as she distinctly heard Re'iyah chuffing and knew she was laughing, her red eyes tracking her through the night.
She staggered back up on shaky legs, feeling like she just spent the last hour squatting Yang's personal best. Without Aura, she couldn't suppress away the pain, memories of Adam's training flashing back to her, of the training month Ruby put them through to ensure their survival without Aura. Her demon of a wife really did love them in her own twisted way.
Her target slunk across the clearing towards the forest battleground, every so often scanning around them to check for followers before moving onwards. Those bird creatures she saw clattered about to scare away the campers back into their cabins but this one had a mission, diving into the nearest bushes and making far more noise than appropriate. They continued to dip, dive, and weave around trees erratically, stepping on enough branches to make her question who exactly she followed up high on the tree perch she reclaimed once they made it into the forest.
Another teenager meandered their way from the dark to meet the first, features obscured and they exchanged brief greetings before they engaged in the most teenage activity ever, making her roll her eyes. She didn't dare give them the privacy needed for their make-out session, the pair unaware of her voyeurism, and got frisky enough to send Jaune running for the hills. The best spies fell apart in heightened emotional states and nothing spelled doom like oxytocin, dopamine, and horniness. She only wished she had some soda to slurp on for their performance.
Whereas others might've looked away, she took the chance to close in on them, stepping through the canopy carefully with her ribbons to catch and swing her instead of relying on her Aura to close the gaps. The moon rays revealed the Hephaestus cabin leader tangled together with a brunette she didn't know for all of three seconds until her whispered name leaked from his lips, a Silena she'd track down in the sunlight. A series of taps on her wrist communicator saved her notes for review and she settled into her shadows to wait.
They didn't exactly have the makings of spies, not wearing their allegiances proudly on their chests like some of the edgier teens at Signal. They didn't start secret scroll calls in the dark just waiting to get caught or dead drop packages in transit hub lockers. These two just acted like teenagers yet she added them to her list anyways as suspects. While just sneaking out didn't tag them as enemies, they still had the ability and if she knew about them, someone else, a cell leader or rogue element likely also knew already, waiting for their moment to subvert them, blackmail them, or use them as scapegoats. A superior might pull rank for information or a friend might make casual small talk and reveal a weakness, enough of one to pull potentially vital secure info.
After only a few short minutes, maybe not even half an hour, the heavily breathing pair separated and fixed their ruffled clothing. She caught whispers of their conversation, exaggerated romantic fluff talk best found in Weiss' favorite bodice rippers, hearing about the unfairness of curfew and doing this sneaking out again in two days. That was all she caught with the glacial pace she had to move at without giving away her presence but she had enough, shadowing the girl to the pink cabin and tracing the boy's path back to his.
Finished with that mission, she ran into the Yang the original left behind standing guard near Artemis' cabin. She took her hand and tapped a message in her palm and then sauntered over to the hearth, Re'iyah lifting her weary head to glare for disturbing her slumber. She gently pushed Weiss aside to make room on her massive bean bag and curled around her as the big spoon, trusting Yang to watch over them. Her snowflake mumbled something she didn't quite understand and grasped an arm possessively before drifting back to sleep.
AN: I'm officially stepping away from my stories for now but will attempt to update every few months when I can. I'm dealing with a number of mental issues I need to resolve and hope to come back to this series as a better person.