A/N: Some of you may have noticed I upgraded the rating of this fic. This chapter is why. It doesn't go into too much detail, but it gets very, very dark.

Jaune made his way down Mira's End, the mountain Snowmire was built on, in record time. Walking downhill was much easier than walking uphill after all. Or was it upmountain in this case? Either or his point remained the same.

If he was honest it was kinda lonely. His jangling armour scared away any wildlife so that the only thing he could hear was the ever distant clamour of civilisation and the increasingly strong wind. He had grown used to being with someone, whether that was Ruby or Blake, due to so long on the road with those two. It felt like he was wandering the world naked.

He shivered. Despite the clothes he was cold. The metal of his armour was cold, not helped by the chillness in the air. It would be winter soon and the gods knew Atlesian winters were the absolute worst.

Atlas was cold on a good day if you were lucky. During winter it got colder than cold, which should've been impossible.

Jaune shivered. He hoped that whatever Blake was hunting down was far away from Atlas so they could avoid wandering through ice storms and horrible winter weather. If the gods were kind then they'd hunt down the dragon and be on their way out of Atlas before the first winter snows settled.

The cold wasn't the only reason Jaune wanted to leave Atlas. He had no idea how far away the Inquisitor sent by Mistral was, and he feared that more time had passed then he'd felt. It was hard to keep track of time on the road, the landscape becoming slightly different with every mile and the days weaving and merging together like an endless tapestry. He reckoned it had to at least be more than a week since his and Ruby's desperate escape from Nördliche Burg but it could be closer to a whole month. He just didn't know. And for all he knew it wasn't just one Inquisitor but a whole band of them, all scouring Atlas to hunt him down and kill him.

Jaune shivered again, though this time not because of the cold nor the prospect of it. His eyes darted left and right, surveying the woods that began halfway down the descent from Snowmire, row upon row of spruce and pine trees layered in a coating of snow. He thought he saw a shadow in the woods to his right, so he froze and stared at them for a solid five minutes, hand gripping the hilt of his new sword. His shield remained slung on his back, and he remembered Klein's techniques and calmed his breathing so the cloud of his own breath wouldn't blind him.

After a few minutes he felt safe enough to continue, the cold starting to bite even more as his body cooled at his stillness. However he kept a hand on his sword at all times and felt a lot more aware than he had been before. It was probably nothing, his eyes just playing tricks on him, but he refused to relax. The men hanging from Snowmire's gallows were a reminder of the cruelty people were capable of inflicting on others, and he was acutely aware of Blake's warning about how her former acquaintance wasn't working alone. He also knew the reason she brought it up was out of fear they had been watching them, waiting to ambush them.

That dark thought had him glancing back at the woods, but this time he saw nothing. He sighed and relaxed slightly, but he was much more alert than he had been before. But he couldn't focus, not when so many questions were whirling around his head.

How does Blake know Arthur Watts and Hazel Rainart? Was she aware of their crimes? Had she participated in them? Was she still working with them?

Jaune sighed again. He wouldn't find any answers to those questions here, wandering blindly through the wilderness. He assumed the shepherd wouldn't be far from the road, as it would be easier to make the ascent to Snowmire to trade and barter, but he had no idea how far down. If he could take the information Blake had given him at face value, then it was at least below halfway down the mountain, and even if it was the smallest mountain in the mountain chain it belonged to, it was still a mountain.

'I should've climbed to the top instead.' Jaune thought ruefully, staring mournfully at the distant mountain peak. It would've been a hard climb for sure, especially in his armour, but it was less of a distance then climbing down a mountain.

He shook his head and continued his descent from Snowmire.

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After what felt like hours, Jaune finally reached the outpost mentioned by Blake. It was essentially a wooden tower surrounded by a few huts. There was a tree littered with arrows that had obviously been used as target practice by bored guards. A weak fire flickered just outside the entrance and two guards in Snowmire regalia sat there, hands just over the flames. They looked up at and glanced at each other at the sight of him before standing up. They were unarmed, though two spears lay resting against the wall of the tower nearby so Jaune made a show of moving his hand away from his sword hilt.

"Greetings traveller." One of the guards said. "What brings you here?"

Although his tired, aching body wanted nothing more than to lay down and rest, Jaune stood because they were. He took a moment to catch his breath, something they noted and the one who spoke smiled sympathetically.

"Looking…for the shep…shepherd who…saw…dragon…'' Jaune panted, cursing the weight of his armour and the way it encased his body. It felt like he was wrapped in a tomb, and the uncomfortable feeling caused by his sweat didn't help one bit.

"Ah, you after the bounty?"

Jaune nodded.

"You poor bugger. He lives right at the bottom." The guard walked around the edge of the tower, gesturing to Jaune to follow. He did so. "Do you see those hills?"

He did. They were a dull green and littered with rocks. They stretched on for a few miles before they began to even out into wetlands and plains that went all the way to the coast. From where he stood, it seemed like it was hundreds of miles away, yet it couldn't be more than ten miles at least. The problem was the slope was windier than usual, a consequence of the steepness of the slope. It would be a meandering journey from there.

"The shepherd lives out in those hills. If you have something that'll make it worth my time, I'll tell you exactly where."

Jaune turned to the guard. He was smiling at him and it looked friendly. But it showed too many teeth and his eyes were hard. He was dimly aware of the other guard shifting behind him.

"I'll make it. Thanks for the help." Jaune said, offering a sharp nod as he turned to leave, the other guard stepped into his vision, holding one of the spears that had been propped up against the tower. Before Jaune could react, he had thrown the other to his colleague.

"Easy there mister adventurer, that information wasn't free." The guard he'd been speaking to, now behind him, said.

"Aye, I believe it was two hundred Lien for the info." The one in front of him added, grinning a cruel smile.

"Are you reneging on our deal mister knight? Not very honourable, is it John?"

"Nope." The one in front, John, replied, popping the 'p'.

"Well that means the info costs more! Three hundred Lien and that fancy sword sounds like suitable recompense doesn't it?"

"Don't forget the armour."

"And the armour."

Jaune shifted so his back was to the tower. In front of him was a steep drop leading to the road. On either side of him were the guards. He was trapped.

He surveyed each guard closely. They were smiling friendly smiles but their eyes betrayed them. If he let them take his stuff they'd leave him defenceless and kill him. He saw a splash of red on the collar of John's tabard, and his eyes narrowed beneath his steel helm.

"I don't have any Lien." Jaune told them honestly, hand falling to his sword hilt. The unnamed one sighed dramatically.

"Well I guess we'll just have to kill you then."

They both lunged simultaneously, thrusting their spears forward. Jaune saw it coming from a mile away.

He stepped precariously closer to the edge leading to the sharp drop, and the spear thrust from John thudded against his side and scraped off his armour. Jaune grunted but his armour took the worst of the blow and he focused on drawing his sword. The guard, but likely a bandit, who hadn't been named, had missed his lunge and was overextended. He realised and tried pulling back.

Jaune was quicker. His blade in both hands he swung it like a club, smacking the bandit on the forehead with the flat of the blade. He yelled and his head jerked back. He staggered before he fell off the edge and there was a brief moment of silence before a sickening crunch shattered it.

"Bastard!" John growled, surging forward. Jaune had accidentally trapped his spear against the tower with his body due to his momentum carrying him forward. John hoped to tackle him and gain an advantage, but Jaune was steady and although he staggered it ended up with him still on two feet and John bent over with his arms around Jaune's waist whilst he pushed and tried toppling him.

Carried by fear and anger and adrenaline, Jaune adjusted his grip on his sword and stabbed downward. There was a brief moment of resistance before it sank like a knife through butter and Jaune pushed harder. He could distantly hear John gurgle and plead and cry but it was all background noise to Jaune.

After weeks on the road, being forced to flee from his second home like a criminal and having to abandon his mentor, after nearly dying the previous night and having faced down a dragon, all the problems he'd been forcing down, repressing in order to be nice and friendly and not lash out unfairly at his new friends, Jaune snapped.

He pulled his blade out of John, who fell to the floor moaning in pain. Then he raised it again. And again. And again.

Then he blinked. He was coated in blood. His arms ached. There was a bloody, shredded mess in front of him that had once been a person.

His sword fell from shaking hands. He staggered away and closed his eyes but the images of what he had done flashed before them. He had just enough time to pull off his helmet before he vomited what he'd eaten earlier, the liquid splashing into the crimson pool of gore spreading from the maimed body in front of him.

He'd done that. How could he do that?

He saw something white amongst the red carnage. It was sharp and jutted out of the body unevenly, awkwardly, wrongly. It was bone.

Jaune vomited some more. He staggered away from the corpse and fell to the ground. He tried to calm down, to breath, but he seemed to be sucking in nothing but empty air with every breath. He was sobbing and crying. He was a murderer now.

He'd seen dead bodies before. An old man at Ansel who sighed happily, surrounded by family and friends, before his eyes shut and stayed shut. The guards Klein had been forced to kill in order to defend him, their blood staining the stable floor and courtyard. But he had never taken a life before. Never been forced to kill.

But it wasn't just murder. It was a frenzy, like a dog with a bone. After the first cut all he needed to do was to cut John's throat to give him a quick death. He hadn't. He had hacked and maimed and brutalised. That wasn't normal. It wasn't heroic. It wasn't necessary. He just snapped, and some random guy had paid the price.

'John' Jaune thought to himself. 'His name was John and I killed him'

He had a feeling that John wouldn't be the last man he would have to kill. That thought alone made Jaune stare at the sky before bursting into uncontrollable sobs.

Minutes turned into hours. He blinked again. He wasn't crying anymore. His eyes were red and his cheeks sticky from drying tears. He rubbed his face, only to feel something worse brush against it. It was blood. His hands were coated in blood.

His body moved, but he didn't feel like he was moving it consciously. It was almost as if he was being controlled by someone else, like a puppet, but his body moved and used the waterskin and some cloth to scrub the drying blood from his armour. He recovered his sword and helmet, cleaned them too, then donned the helm and sheathed the blade.

He refused to look at the body.

He then made his way into the tower, curious about what had happened and hoping to find answers. The stench of metallic blood and the decay of death flooded his senses as he entered. There were two piles of bodies. The smaller pile of five were wearing blood-stained uniforms of Snowmire's militia. The larger pile were wearing furs and ragtag pieces of hardened leather armour. Bandits.

There was a stairway leading to the top of the tower. He ascended it. There were two more bodies. One male and one female. Both had their throats cut. One was stripped naked. Both had tears tracks staining their cheeks, pain etched on their faces. Their hands were outstretched towards one another, finger tips barely touching and adorned by identical bands of dull metal that had a lover's cross etched into them.

He suddenly felt a lot less bad about killing John and his friend.

He left the tower and shrugged off his armour and weapons. He left them in the open and he couldn't care less if someone stole them. He searched the huts outside the tower and found a shovel in one of them. He dug six graves. He started with the four bodies at the bottom. He tried to be gentle, but their armour made them heavy and he ended up dragging them across the dirt in an undignified manner. He whispered apologies as he gently laid them to rest in their shallow graves. Then he went upstairs. He used some of the furs he'd taken from the bandit corpses to give the woman some dignity before carrying her in his arms down the stairs and towards her grave. He then went upstairs and slung the male over his shoulder, not wanting to drag him down the stairs. He then laid the man next to the woman in the same grave.

He returned to the tower and stripped the bandits of all their furs. He then gave each dead guard a blanket to keep them warm before he poured soil over them. Then he gathered stones from the fraying edges of the Solitas Road and made cairns atop each grave.

Then he donned his armour and sword and shield and left the bandits to rot.

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"Should we kill him?"

"Did you not see what he did to John and Raul? No. We'll wait for the others to come back."

"Shouldn't we follow him then?"

"Doesn't matter. We know where he's headed."

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Red eyes watched the two humans watch the other human. Their souls were far dimmer than that of the human it had been following, so it could restrain itself from maiming and killing much easier.

The other human made it curious. He'd inflicted such carnage, oozed such splendid rage. Then he'd been gripped by bitterly joyous sorrow followed by savage, dark satisfaction. It could see why he was the one with the destiny to return greatness to this world. Such savage darkness. Such burning hope and love.

Suddenly its task seemed much more easier.