Really feels like the site is falling to pieces lately. Not getting emails about PMs, constantly harrassing me re being blocked in my mail browser despite being on allowed list and sending alerts of "story updates" just fine - just not PMs. I also had to try 3 times to upload this chapter as it kept doing the "check you're human" test and then failing to load anything.
Cover Art: GWBrex
Chapter 85
Jaune wasn't sure what he expected to feel when the blade struck. Ozma had called her immortal, but he had no idea if that meant her body was as solid as a mountain, or if her body could heal, or if it was her soul that passed on in a measure like Ozma's own. He didn't know if he would cut into flesh or strike off some magical barrier, but he struck anyway, and with all the force he could muster, aiming to cut from shoulder to hip and sever the spine in the process.
What he got was the sickening impact of a sword on a human body without aura. The sudden tension of the blade cutting through flesh, muscle, and lodging in bone. The squelch and bubble of blood rising up around the steel, and the weight on his arms as Salem dropped to her knees, almost pulling the sword out his hands.
It was a feeling he hated, but he stepped back with a solid grip, grinding the sword out her body and letting her drop onto all fours, bleeding profusely. For anyone else, he would have stepped back, but Ozma screamed in his head and Jaune jumped in again, taking his sword in two hands above her helpless body and stabbing down into the small of her back. This time he missed bone and pierced through intestines instead, stabbing through her and into the ground beneath her.
Ozma's wailing grew in pitch – and even in his madness the warning seemed clear that this was not a time to celebrate and call himself victorious, nor to let his guard down and be anything but deeply afraid.
This was not over.
Planting a foot on her back, he drove her down and wrenched the sword from her, then brought it up and around aimed at her neck. Immortal or not, surely her body couldn't function properly without the head. It'd slow her down if nothing else. His sword was halfway there when her left hand shot up and caught the blade against her palm. The steel bit into her hand all the way to the wrist, but it lodged there, and her fingers closed around it.
"That—" hissed Salem, pushing down with her other hand, "—was very, very rude."
"Jaune, move!" shouted Weiss.
He heeded the call, leaping back and leaving his sword in Salem's hand – he couldn't pull it past her aur anyway. Ice cold winds blasted over the goddess, freezing the cobblestones around her, and turning her clothing to solid chips of ice. It encased her as well, hoarfrost creeping up her skin and even blackening it in some places. It reached her neck and began creeping over her cheeks when the woman closed her eyes and flared her nostrils.
The ice shattered off her and burst out in every direction, forcing Jaune back further and aborting Weiss and Pyrrha's charge. They were forced to bring their hands up to cover their faces, and then forced to step back under the hail of it. When a fresh blast of wind hit them, it hit with enough force to whip Weiss off her feet entirely and sent her flying into a wall, while Pyrrha managed to stay standing but still slid some five feet backwards.
"Traitors as well," said Salem, standing tall and proud. The woman took Crocea Mors and wriggled it back and forth, tugging it out her ruined hand with a horrible noise. She held her mangled hand up, split down the centre, and Jaune watched the flesh knit itself back together. "Tell me, my Chosen. What did I do to earn your betrayal? Did I not give you everything?"
"You lied to us!" shouted Pyrrha. "You're no goddess. You're a monster!"
"Hmph. And yet I lived as a goddess for tens of thousands of years and gave you all peace and prosperity, did I not? You lived charmed lives whatever I am. And I only showed my true colours once you had all turned on me."
"You destroyed my family!" howled Weiss.
"Hmm? The Schnee, was it?" Salem chuckled. "Child, your mother destroyed your family. And your sister wilfully took part. Don't blame me for what your family chose to become. All I did was leave them to it." Salem turned and hurled Jaune's weapon back to him. It clattered on the stone at his feet. "Your sword," she mocked. "Take it. You've seen how little it can do."
Her smile grew. "Ozma really is gone, isn't he? He'd have known better than to waste time attacking me like that. You're just a pathetic little human caught up in things beyond you." Her laughter was deafening. "You, too, should have accepted my generosity. Had you simply surrendered to my Chosen, you would have lived a life locked away but well cared for. I would have kept you alive."
"I would have gone mad," Jaune said.
With how Ozma was now, he'd have never retained his sanity if he was forced to live in close proximity to her. Maybe that was why so many people assumed every Dark Lord went mad – because when they were imprisoned close to Salem, Ozma lost his mind and the hosts soon descended into madness.
"I'd argue madness is better than death, but what do I know of either? Pick up your sword. You may well be the last humans who ever face me. Once I have wiped out your kind, nature will reclaim this world and I shall be alone. But perhaps it will be better. A world filled with wildlife and plants, until, in many hundreds of thousands of years, new life evolves again. Maybe I shall become their goddess, or maybe I shall remember this moment and deem it best to snuff them out."
Jaune swallowed, and stooped, grasping his sword and rising to his feet. He summoned aura to his body and tried to focus on the lessons he'd imparted, with Ozma, onto others. The magic was there, but it was fleeting and clumsy. Before, Ozma had helped him tune his control, but now it was worse than having to do it on his own.
He was having to try and control his soul while Ozma's own was writhing and thrashing. Every time he grasped at the magic, Ozma would shriek and twist his aura against his will, like a child yanking at your elbows and wrists while you were trying to carry something. Always pulling an arm away when you had it steadied and getting between your legs to trip you up.
But Ruby had no such struggles.
In her distraction, Salem didn't notice the spinning disc of fire until it struck her legs with force enough to burn through her shins. The goddess gasped as her upper body fell by about a foot, severed through her legs. Ruby followed it up with a great fireball that was so volatile that it detonated on impact, splashing over the stone cobbles and glowing bright orange.
Jaune hopped back and gestured for Pyrrha and Weiss to take the other corners and form a triangle around Salem. Their only hope was to make use of their numbers advantage, but even then, he wasn't sure what exactly he was hoping for. For Ozma to come back and give him some answers, maybe. It was about all he had – that exposure to Salem would slowly let him regain control and share the best way to defeat her.
If there was one.
The fire around Salem was snuffed out with a wave of her hand, and the woman was back on her feet – reconnected somehow. Worse yet, her robes seemed fine as well. Her control of aura was so fine that she could protect her own clothing.
"You did well to train up your own Chosen in so short a time," she said, "Ozma was always better at making use of humanity than I. He had a knack for seeing potential and teasing it out, whereas I always favoured ambition. If one cannot rise on their own, what worth are they? If you have to do half the work to make them reach their potential, then all that shows is they could not make it there alone. I'd call it pathetic, but it's worked in your favour here, so perhaps I am wrong there."
"You're awfully chatty all of a sudden," accused Weiss. "Are you stalling for something?"
Salem chuckled. "Perhaps it's nostalgia, child. This is the last real conversation I shall ever have, isn't it? Once you are dead, I shall purge humanity from this world and only be able to speak with animals and plants. Even Ozma will be gone without a host to take, though I expect he'll be trapped in limbo rather than granted any peace." Her lips peeled back. "But if you are impatient for me to begin then let me indulge you."
"Weiss, move!" yelled Jaune.
Lightning struck down from a clear sky on the spot Weiss had leapt from, shattering stone, and sending up hundreds of tiny shards. Those rose but didn't fall, and Salem guided them with her finger to chase Weiss like a hundred tiny carnivorous fish darting after the carcass of a bird in the water. The sharp fragments of stone pelted her body and circled around her like a small tornado, chipping away at her aura and flesh while she screamed in pain.
He didn't need to shout for Pyrrha to charge in with him. They pincered Salem from both sides, hoping to break her concentration. One black and red eye twitched his way, and he caught it crinkle in pleasure a moment before the ground before him trembled. Jaune managed to stop his charge in time not to run into the waist-high slab of stone that shot up out the ground, but that didn't stop her pushing with her hand and slamming it back into him. It rippled through the ground like it was skating over ice, driving the wind out of his lungs and threatening to topple him over the docks into the water, then chase him down and pin him underwater. Jaune pushed back before giving up and vaulting it, narrowly falling on the other side as it went off the edge with a splash.
Pyrrha had been thrown back by hurricane winds that changed direction and picked her up, juggling her in the air. The redhead fought back as best she could, but she'd always been primarily a melee-oriented Chosen. Her magic had improved working with him, but not to the level of its progenitor. Salem had taught the first Chosen her magic, and she was a master of it.
Worse yet, she hadn't lost control over the storm of stone shards eating away at Weiss' aura, and soon after her body. Jaune tried to throw a fireball at her, as little more than distraction, but while he summoned it to his hands and threw, Ozma panicked and the fire exploded less than a foot from his hand, blowing back and sending him spinning with singed skin.
"Get a grip, Ozma!" Jaune snapped. "Before you get us all killed!"
A stream of fire far more controlled than his came from the second floor of a nearby building and pelted Salem, forcing her to discard either Weiss or Pyrrha. It was Weiss who was spared, left sprawled on the ground while Salem deflected the fire with one hand and took Pyrrha in the other, using her wind to hurl the redhead up and over the tallest mats of the burning ships. He wasn't sure if she landed in the water or on one of the burning decks, but she was out the fight in an instant, and Salem turned to Ruby's building.
"There you are," she teased, reaching out a bare hand as if to grasp at something.
The whole building Ruby was in cracked and trembled. Huge fractures spread around its brickwork as if huge, invisible fingers were squeezing it in mimicry of her own. Salem squeezed, and that comparison became so much more real when wooden beams splintered, and the slate roof began to collapse inward.
Ruby leapt from the window.
But Salem would not have it.
"No. No. I insist." A wave of her hand summoned winds strong enough to hurl Ruby accurately back through the window. "You've made your bed, child. Now die in it!"
The house gave one horrible groaning sound and collapsed inward.
Jaune screamed. "RUBY!"
"This is entertaining!" howled Salem, her face split with a maddening smile. "How many thousands of years has it been since I flexed my strength?" She laughed. "I had forgotten how good it felt to be so far above your kind."
Jaune sprinted in and lunged.
Salem's hand caught the blade and halted it before her neck, her eyes filled with amusement. "That did not work well for you the first time," she remarked. "What made you think the second would be any different?"
Her other hand ducked under his sword and punched him in the stomach.
No. It wasn't a punch.
Her fingers, outstretched and hardened by aura, dug into his stomach, and pushed up and in – and had he not his own aura, he was sure they would have pierced skin and slid under his ribcage to grab at his lungs or even his heart. Salem kept pushing, but since neither her fingers nor his aura would give way, she ended up lifting his feet up off the ground. He was suspended in the air upon her outstretched hand.
"You can use your aura still," she said. "Good. I would hate for the fun to be over so quickly. Let's see how fine a control you have."
Fire raced up her arm and ignited him, burning unnaturally over his skin and body within a fraction of a second. A scream slipped from his lips as he was roasted alive above her, but he had the presence of mind – or the desperation – to swing his sword at her arm. It didn't cut through, but it did knock her arm away, allowing him to fall and roll the fire out. It winked out immediately, only ever existing because of her magic.
They were losing.
No. They were being massacred.
"Ozma, please!" he hissed. "Everyone is going to die if you don't get your shit together!"
Hundreds of voices cried out in his head. Ozma's might have been among them, buried, but there were too many conflicting ones screaming in pain. Past hosts? All the people who Ozma had taken over? Or just different, fractured parts of his psyche tortured to madness. Jaune clenched his teeth against a migraine powerful enough to make his vision dim and scrambled to his feet.
It was hopeless. He'd have to do this alone. But how—? Simply stabbing Salem wasn't going to kill her. Was he to try and drain her aura? Aura alone wasn't what saved her from dying when he stabbed her before, so she wouldn't die, but at least she'd be less capable of throwing magic around if she were drained. The problem was in guessing how large her stores were, and whether they could threaten to deplete them before she ended their lives.
Right now, she was playing with them, but that could change either when she got bored, or when they pushed her too hard, and she panicked. If they got her down to half reserves, then she might decide it time to stop playing around and kill them.
A ball of fire hit Salem's back and knocked her a few paces sideways. Ruby was still alive, then. Good. Jaune jogged back and glanced to Weiss, who was pushing herself off the ground covered in blood. Being trapped in a tornado of stone shards had done a number on her, shredding her aura, clothing, and skin in equal measure. She might already be out the fight.
"Come on, Ozma. Pull yourself together."
There was no response.
Jaune shouldered his sword and charged back in.
/-/
"Rotate out!" shouted Blake. "New fighters! Get the others back to recover! Spread your magic out! We can't keep wasting aura!"
The faunus raced to obey, bolstered by the local guard who had joined with them against the new threat, but she didn't know much of a difference it would make. They had been fighting for half an hour now, and that was a lot of time to fight without rest. Battles normally had a lull to them as sides backed off to catch their breath. The Grimm, however, were relentless.
It had started as a massacre in their favour, as Grimm were scythed down by magical firepower and slaughtered en masse. An almost trivial affair. But looking back on that now she realised they'd overused their magic, basically overkilling those Grimm and wasting reserves. They were more cautious now, realising the danger of a longer battle and doing their best to spread out their magic, and to only just kill the Grimm where they could.
It was an inexact science, but they had to let some reach their lines to be dispatched in melee, even if it meant injuries. Aura was less draining than magic, so they could kill more in combat. That didn't mean it was bloodless, though.
People were dying, and Blake wasn't sure when or how she'd been left in charge.
But if she were to go quiet for too long, everyone would realise something was wrong, so she kept talking. Kept shouting. "We only have to hold out until Salem is dispatched! The Grimm will perish then!"
She had no idea if that was the case.
"Just hold on a little longer! The battle is ours!"
"Blake!" Yang, Ruby's sister, came running up. The girl was covered in gore and sweat. "The defenders are wanting to try and get the civilians out. They want to escort them out the back of our formation and to safety."
"What? Tell them no!" she snapped. "There's no such thing as safety if we fall here. Salem will wipe the entire world clean, and I'm not willing to let their fighting men wander off when we need every sword and shield we can get!"
Yang nodded and raced back, but she was only replaced by Nora and Ren.
"Everyone is running low on aura," said Ren, giving her the words she didn't want to hear. "I don't know how much longer we can hold this large an area. We need to fall back to somewhere where we can achieve more with fewer numbers. A chokepoint."
"How about the temple?" asked Blake.
Nora jumped in. "Too small. Everyone inside it is cramped already. We literally couldn't fit a fifth of our army in there. We were thinking we could wedge ourselves in a street. At least there'd only be two routes to get us then."
"We'd be pincered," said Blake.
"We're surrounded already," argued Ren. "The Grimm simply aren't intelligent enough to notice and make use of it. Yet. Give them fifteen more minutes and they'll spread around our flanks without meaning to, and suddenly we'll have to cast magic over a stretch of some five hundred feet. We'll be out of aura within minutes."
"Fuck's sake," Blake cursed. "What is taking Jaune and the others so long? Fine. Fine, spread the news. We're going to fall back. Someone chase Yang and pass it on to the people in the temple. Tell them if they refuse to move, we'll have to abandon them." Raising her voice, she shouted, "We're going to fall back to a nearby street. Hold the line but be ready to move back slowly when we give the order. We are not retreating! We're just funnelling the monsters into a narrower channel!"
The last part needed to be stressed lest anyone misinterpret her orders and panic. It'd only take one, and then it would be a full rout she'd never regain control of. At this point, she wouldn't try, either. If the lines fell, then she'd stand and die with the rest of them. Better to die here with hope than live in constant fear knowing that Salem would come and burn you and your loved ones away sooner or later.
Better to live and be victorious, she thought. Damn it, Jaune. You were meant to be her equal. Kill her already.
"The temple is emptying out!" shouted Yang, coming back after a few tense minutes. "They're getting ready to do as you told them to. The locals say they know a good place for us. Older buildings that should be strong enough to withstand a little pressure, and a barracks on one side that might have some spare supplies for us. If we trust them—"
"We trust them," Blake said. "We've no choice right now, and neither do they. We either trust each other or we all die. They know that as well as we do." Before they could go, Blake grabbed Ren by the arm and whispered, "How long can we hold if we fall back to this place, do you think? How much time do we have before we don't have enough magic to hold the Grimm back?"
"Twenty minutes," said Ren. It was a punishingly small amount of time. "Maybe thirty if we collapse the buildings to buy us time, but that will trap us in there with them. There will be aura left to fight in melee, but their numbers are limitless and ours are not. I'd give us another five once melee starts, but no longer."
Thirty-five at best, then, but more realistically twenty-five minutes.
It would have to do.
/-/
He was drowning.
Drowning in memories. Drowning in voices.
Voices and memories of the past, distant and yet present, bombarding his senses with visions of better and worse times, and tugging at the vestiges of his long-failing sanity.
He remembered his marriage.
He remembered the fall.
He remembered his mistakes.
He remembered being king.
He remembered being deposed.
He remembered founding Beacon.
He remembered it falling.
He remembered so many names throughout history, thousands of them, and their faces too. Mixing together in his mind until they had all blurred as one. How many had asked him if he would remember them after they were gone, and how many had he assured he would? Too many. He had tried, of course, but he was only human despite his curse and the millennia passed by and robbed even his fondest memories.
Leaving only the traumatic ones behind.
And a distant voice begging him to come back, pleading with him to stop sinking into the abyss and return to the fight before it was too late.
Ozma tried.
He flailed his metaphorical arms and did his best to swim against the current of screaming voices surrounding him, but they dragged at his body and legs and tugged him back down.
"No!" he pleaded, his voice lost in the cacophony. "Not now! Not like this! He needs me – us! Can you not hear? The world will be doomed if we do not respond!"
The wailing and sobbing became louder still, and Ozma fought past what felt like a million hands and arms trying to pull him down. They don't exist, he told himself. This madness was his own, a weakness of his mind scarred by Salem's cruelty. Oh, how General Ironwood would have lamented him. How Gwyn – or was it Glyn? Glynda? – would have shaken his (her?) head. Too many names. Too many faces. Too much pain.
He had never asked for this curse. All he had ever done was love a woman and then die. That was all he had done. He'd lived a good life, a devout life, and he'd been dragged from death and punished for his wife's grief. It hadn't even been her fault, but a failure of the so-called Brother God who first brought Ozma back.
"No!" he hissed, shaking the fugue away. "No thoughts of the past. Now! I need— I need— Team RWBY. JNPR. No." He clenched his eyes shut. "No. Different. Not… Ruby. Jaune. Yes. But not them. I failed them. They did it all, they won, and I promised the world would be safe as they grew old, didn't I? Yet another mistake. Yet another failure on my part. Oh, how Oscar would have despised me for my uselessness."
Slowly, he sank again, feeling heavier than ever before.
"Come on, Ozma. Pull yourself together."
His eyes snapped back open and upward.
No! He could not sink now, not again! Ozma thrashed against the madness and roared his anger, clinging onto the little reality that remained and using it to haul his battered, broken mind upward.
"I am coming!" he shouted. "Fight, Jaune! Fight! I am coming!"
No more.
No more mistakes and no more regrets. No more failures.
Let it be decided here, once and for all.
Next Chapter: 12th November
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