Tai did not take the news of his wife's death well at all. For the rest of the month, he was more like a zombie than a man, only performing the most basic duties for himself and his family before retiring to his room. That left Qrow having to explain to Ruby and Yang why their mother would not be coming home ever again. Ruby was a bit too young to grasp it all, but Yang was absolutely distraught by the news. Like Tai, she stayed up in her room most of the time, grieving and sulking. It took a while for Qrow to snap them both out of it, but the damage from Summer's death had already been done. The Xiao Long family was never the same without her.

Wanting to take a break from it all, Qrow decided to pay a visit to a random bar and drink himself into another alcohol induced blackout. He had been drinking much, much more since it all happened. It was never enough to completely erase the terrible memories, but at least it was enough to somewhat dull the pain. He was already on his sixth shot of vodka when he spotted someone very familiar sitting by himself in the corner of the room. He had to stop and stare, just to make sure he wasn't imagining things. But no, he was actually sitting right there.

After downing his glass, Qrow got up and walked towards the person in the corner, who was drinking from his own shot glass. "Well, well, well," he slurred, sitting down across the man without waiting for an invitation. "Never thought I'd see you in a random bar of all places. So tell me, what's the Captain of the Atlesian Army doing here?" The captain raised an eyebrow at him, but was otherwise used to Qrow's antics. "Branwen," he greeted stiffly, nodding his head. "Huh. I'm surprised you still remember my name," said Qrow. "We met a while ago, right? First time we met, you were trying to hit on Glynda. Your name's Jimmy, right? Jimmy Steelwood."

"Close. It's James Ironwood," the man corrected him. "And you're correct, we met on a team mission that students from both Beacon and Atlas Academy were required to participate in. You were… a bit of a rule breaker, weren't you?" Qrow smiled cockily and leaned back in his chair. "Heh, guilty as charged. You didn't answer my question, though," he said.

"No, I suppose not," sighed James, staring into his glass. "I'm here because… I've been having nightmares recently, as embarrassing as it is to admit. Most of my specialists don't know it, but I often go to this bar to try and calm my nerves." "Nightmares, huh?," said Qrow. "I never thought the Captain of the largest army on Remnant would be having nightmares."

"You can scoff if you want to," sighed James, sipping his vodka. "Nobody is old enough to stop having nightmares. And as a veteran Huntsman, you should know that better than most." Qrow dropped his smile and nodded. There were plenty of times when he had nightmares of his own, usually ones that revolved around burning villages and Grimm attacks. Recently, however, those nightmares centered more around a certain woman and a certain manor…

Shaking the thoughts from his head, Qrow took another swig of his drink. "You wanna hang?," he asked bluntly. James paused and stared at him in bewilderment. "...Excuse me?," he asked. "I said, do you wanna hang?," Qrow repeated himself. "Look, I can tell you've got a lot on your mind right now. This ain't exactly the kind of bar people go to for a good time. Well, I've got a lot of shit on my plate, too. So the way I see it, this is a great opportunity for us to let some of that tension out." James raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Really? The last time we parted ways, you told me it would be a 'cold day in hell' before we share a drink together," he said.

"Trust me, James, a lot of crazy shit happened to me in recent times. I fucking need this," said Qrow. "I'll even pay for both of our drinks. How does that sound?" This time, both of James' eyebrows shot up. "Free drinks, eh? Alright, I could stay for a while longer…"

An hour later, both of them were surrounded by empty shot glasses. After challenging each other to a drinking contest, Qrow and James were now drunk out of their minds, their faces flushed, laughing and joking around like they were old pals. To Qrow's pleasant surprise, James was much less of a stick-in-the-mud when he was drunk. "So then… so then… Raven activated one of her portals and tried to leave," Qrow slurred, on the verge of laughter. "But Summer tried to go after her. She jumped through just as the portal was closing and…" He stopped and began laughing like a loon. "And what?," asked James, smiling from ear to ear. "Come on, Qrow, what happened next?" Qrow tried to keep his laughter under control, and was failing miserably. "And then, she… she got stuck in there halfway! Ha, ha, ha, ha!" The two men laughed, ignoring the glares being sent to them by the bartender and the other patrons. "H-her, her… oh shit, I can't breathe… h-her legs and ass were just dangling there in mid-air. And she was stuck like that for the whole day! Tai… Tai couldn't even look at her without getting a nosebleed!"

The two men laughed even harder, with James even banging on the table with his robotic fist. But then, once the laughter died down, the Atlesian captain's mood became more somber. "I… I heard about what happened to her, Qrow. I'm very sorry for your loss. From the way you described her, she must have been a wonderful woman." Qrow's good mood instantly evaporated as well. "Well shit, and we were having such a good time…" He sighed. "But yeah, she was wonderful. I'm not exaggerating when I say there was no other Huntress like her. She saved my life, you know. I wouldn't be sitting here right now if it wasn't for her."

"Right… about that…," said James, suddenly turning a bit nervous. "I was wondering… since you and her were in the middle of it all… what happened to the Schnee family? I've heard the news, but the details were frustratingly vague, and nobody aside from you and the surviving heiresses seem to know anything about it." Qrow narrowed his eyes in annoyance and put down his drink. "Let me guess. You just want information on what has been going on in that mansion. That's the whole reason why you came here, am I right?" James winced, caught in his lie like a child with his hand in the cookie jar. "I admit, that's… the only reason why I'm here. The reason why I didn't bring it up sooner was because your offer to 'hang out' caught me by surprise, and I got a bit carried away with it. But you need to understand that Atlas' safety is my top priority, and if something happened here, something dangerous, then I need to know what it is."

Qrow stared at him for a moment, the gears in his head turning, then sighed. "Alright, you'd better sit down, 'cause this is gonna be one hell of a story." The captain's eyes widened with surprise. "Really? Just like that?," he asked. "Yeah, why not?," said Qrow, leaning back in his chair. "Maybe it's just the drinks talking, but I think I can trust you with this. Ozpin warned me not to tell anyone what I saw, probably so it wouldn't cause any panic, but I don't think you'll tell anyone else, right?" "I won't tell a soul. You have my word," James said with a nod.

So Qrow told him everything, about Mother, about the torment the family went through, about Summer's death, and even mentioned the giant monster and the human-faced larva that he had to carry around. He knew how absolutely insane it all sounded, but if James walked out of here thinking he had a few screws loose, well, that was no skin off his back.

After he was finished, he prepared for the mockery. "Go on, James. Tell me how crazy I am. Or call me a liar. Just let it all out." He closed his eyes and waited. When he heard nothing, he opened his eyes and saw James staring at him sympathetically. "I will do nothing of the sort, Qrow," he said. "In fact, in a strange way, your story… almost has me relieved. It proves to me that I'm not crazy either." At first, Qrow was bewildered by what James was saying. But the look on the captain's face and the pain in his eyes quickly told him everything. "Hold on, back up for a minute!," he said, waving his hands erratically. "You're telling me you've actually…"

James nodded somberly. "Do you remember my first mission as the newly appointed Captain of the Atlesian military?," he asked. "Who doesn't? It was all over the news," said Qrow. James sighed. "Well, to avoid any confusion, I'd better start from the beginning, anyway. You'd better sit down for this one, Qrow. I have a story of my own to tell." Qrow was still trying to grasp this sudden revelation, but he managed to keep quiet and wait patiently. "I have never told this to anyone. In fact, you're the last person I thought I'd be telling this to," said James. "It's like you said, Qrow. Maybe it is the alcohol talking. Or maybe… it's some sort of predetermined destiny, as superstitious as that sounds. It can't be a coincidence, right? No, it can't be…

…Three years ago, after I was promoted to the rank of Captain and given my own team of Specialists, I was given my first mission: to investigate the northern tundras, where rumors of Merlot's secret laboratories were supposedly hidden. I chose two of my best specialists and an entire platoon of the best soldiers to aid in the investigation. If you thought Atlas was cold, then the tundras were freezing. There was snow and wind everywhere, so we could barely see more than a few feet in front of us. We all had to hold hands to make sure that nobody got lost in the blizzard. We were trudging through snow that came up to our knees. And to make things worse, we soon realized that the rumors turned out to be false. There were no hidden laboratories to be found, so we were freezing in the cold for nothing. Our morale just plummeted.

Then… it got even worse. We couldn't find the Bullhead we arrived in. We were basically lost in the tundras, with limited food and water, unable to find our way back. It was all my fault, really. I was their captain, the one leading the entire team. I should've anticipated the possibility of us getting lost, especially in such an inhospitable land. But I was too proud and headstrong to acknowledge my faults, and because of my pride, I may have inadvertently led an entire platoon of men, men with their own families waiting for them in Atlas, to their own graves.

We were stuck there for who knows how long. The blizzard never seemed to end. Our food and water rations ran out faster than we anticipated, so we were forced to eat the snow we were walking on, which was so cold that it felt like we were swallowing fire. And when eating the snow wasn't enough, we started eating some of our own clothes, despite the cold. I'm ashamed and disgusted to admit that… some of my men attempted to cannibalize their fellow soldiers. But I quickly put a stop to that and had those monsters executed on the spot.

I don't know how long we were stuck there. Many men died, both good and bad. One of my specialists died from hypothermia, and I had the unpleasant duty to force my other specialist into exile after he was discovered digging the former's corpse out of the snow with the intention of eating her. We were all close to madness by that point. And then… someone came."

"Let me guess," Qrow interrupted him. "That 'someone' was a seven foot tall woman with flawless skin, empty eyes, and a smile that could scare away the grim reaper?" James gave him a bitter smile. "You've gotten one thing wrong, Qrow. It was a man, not a woman.

And he was not seven feet tall. He was more like… eight or nine feet tall. But you got the rest of it correct. His skin was shiny and poreless, almost like plastic. He was almost completely bald, with tufts of white hair behind his ears. He wore nothing but a black suit, which should not have been nearly enough to keep him warm, yet he wasn't even shivering. His eyes were like a hawk's, piercing right through us. He had a crooked nose, and a giant grin that only a complete lunatic would wear. But his voice was very light and pleasant, almost like a child's voice, not like the deep, baritone voice that you said Mother had. He introduced himself as The Traveler, and he told us that he was on his way to meet some friends. He said that they were going to have a great feast together, and if anyone cared to follow him, he would lead them to it.

It was idiotic, I know. Nobody in their right minds would trust the word of a stranger that they stumble upon in the middle of nowhere. But remember, we were not in our right minds at the time. We were slowly going insane. We were desperate and delusional from hunger, so we accepted his offer without a second thought. Sadly, I was one of those people. My intuition told me that this man couldn't be trusted, but my mind and stomach told me that this man was trying to help us, offering to help feed people he had never met before, so he couldn't possibly be bad, right? Like mindless sheep, we followed the man through the snow and the blizzard.

We walked for weeks. More than half of the entire platoon starved to death or died from the cold weather. But the man we were following never got hungry or tired, never got cold. My men began to suspect that he was hiding food for himself, and suggested that we kill him, and eat him if it turned out he had none. I firmly put my foot down. But looking back on it… I almost wish that I did let my men kill him. It would've saved us so much pain and death.

One day, we woke up, and the man was gone. We searched and called for him, but he didn't show up. At first, we thought he abandoned us. Then… something emerged from the wind and snow. Something big and black. The moment I laid eyes on it, somehow, I knew that thing was actually the man we had been following. He never lied. We were the feast.

I… I can't clearly remember the events of what happened next, no matter how hard I try. Maybe a part of my brain is actively repressing it. Maybe it's for the best… All I remember was that everyone had their firearms out and were shooting wildly, screaming like madmen. None of them were even aiming properly. It was as though the mere sight of that monster made them so terrified that they forgot all of their training. Dust rounds flew everywhere, most of them hitting the other soldiers instead of the monster. And I can… barely recall the monster itself picking us off one by one, though I don't remember how it was doing it. I also remember… a searing pain in my arm and leg. I remember being picked up and flung through the air. I remember landing in the snow and bleeding there, thinking I was going to die. I remember a pair of hikers coming across my mutilated body. They quickly brought me with them and patched me up as best as they could. Even so, it was a miracle that I survived at all. That monster tore off the entire right side of my body. I was brought back to Atlas, where they managed to save my life and replace my missing limbs with robotic parts. I was the only survivor of that expedition, Qrow. Not one other person came back from the tundras. And the rest, as you know, is history."

Qrow sat back in silence, letting it all slowly sink in. Three years ago, James went on an expedition to the tundras with two specialists and a platoon, and weeks later, he returned all on his own with the entire right half of his body missing, as well as the platoon that he had been assigned to. The Council suspected foul play and tried to get him court martialed. They would have succeeded if Ozpin hadn't stepped in. Even then, the disappearance of an entire platoon of soldiers, along with James' secrecy about the whole thing, set the entire news media on fire. Everyone in Atlas, as well as the surrounding kingdoms, heard about it. Even after three years had passed, the captain's reputation had never quite recovered. Qrow knew that whatever had happened to James must've been bad. He had no idea it was that bad, though.

"Holy shit, so this whole time, there's been two of these bastards running around?," said Qrow. "This… this is huge! Why the hell didn't you say anything back then?!" "You didn't think I tried?," James asked rhetorically. "Once my robotic parts were finished being installed and I had fully recovered, I immediately reported to my superiors what had happened. Of course, they did not believe me. They thought I had gone insane. They insisted that I imagined the whole thing, and even threatened to strip me of my rank if I told anyone else. They assigned me a personal therapist, a condescending little prick who mocked my sanity, forced me to take pills that made me throw up, and had me put in isolation whenever I acted out in the slightest. Eventually, after months had passed, I began to believe that I did imagine the whole thing, that I really had gone crazy. But after hearing your story, I now know for a fact that what I saw was real."

"...You said you were having nightmares earlier," said Qrow. "I'm guessing they were about… this?" James nodded wearily. "They're always the same," he said. "I'd be back in the tundras, in the cold. My men would be all around me, lying dead in the snow. And there would be the man, the Traveler, standing in front of me, smiling. He would transform into the monster in front of my very eyes, and then… well, my nightmares always end right before anything else happens. But it's strange. I stopped having them a long time ago, but recently, they've been coming back with a vengeance, more vivid than ever. I have no idea why…"