There is no map for the lost.
Four Huntsmen learned this the hardest way.
Their feet had a path. Their hands held a map. But they could not reconcile the two. The last three rivers didn't match anything on it.
Ruby handed the map to Jaune. It was his turn try.
She watched him fidget with the page, frustrated, unable to focus. He wiped away phantom tears, and tried to look okay. Even straightened his shoulders and said, "Yeah. This is good. I haven't been to Shion for a while, but I recognize a lot of this terrain. I think we're nearby."
He glanced to Nora and Ren in the rear. They were too busy bickering to notice him. He looked to Ruby. She didn't fake a smile for that act.
Jaune sighed and whispered, "Do you think we can really make it to Mistral without CCT maps?"
Ruby nodded, bobbing her dark crimson hair. She forced a smile and chimed, "We don't need a path to Mistral, Jaune. We just need a path to Shion."
Jaune nodded blonde. "And from Shion to the next town. Okay."
Crickets chirped. Birds sang. Their packs and weapons jingled as they walked.
Ruby wiped sweat from her brow and offered, "You want me to try reading the map again?"
"No need," Jaune huffed. "We're on a road. It goes somewhere."
He folded the map, aggravated, and stuffed it in his pack.
Ruby asked, "Do you think it goes to Shion?"
Jaune looked at his feet and gathered his attitude. Finally, glancing to her and remembering the question, he answered, "No matter what the map says, there's only one way to know."
Ruby nodded, glad he'd recovered. She turned to check on Ren and Nora in the rear.
Nora whispered her concerns a little too loudly, gesturing wildly with her arms so that her pink combat dress made her look like a dancer.
"Look, Ren… Ruby's not the one I'm worried about. She's been lost plenty of times, and always found her way home."
Ren sighed, far more demure. His green tunic and upright posture made him look like a statesman. And murmuring as if correcting a faux pas, he said, "Ruby believed that there was a home to return to. Losing faith is subtle and powerful, Nora."
"Okay, but, look. Jaune is kind of-" She bit the inside of her cheek, then blurted, "He can't be leader. Ruby's leading from behind, but she's taking the lead, Ren. Not Jaune. And Jaune's…" She squinted and held out her arms towards his back.
"Ruby is too young," Ren disagreed. Monotone and composed, he articulated, "She's dragging us into pointless fights. She might look okay to you, Nora, but she watched Penny die right in front of her."
Ruby relived it, suddenly and vividly. The backlight fading from her eyes.
"Then she watched her sister lose her arm,"
The scream echoed in the forest,
"and then she watched Pyrrha die."
Her croaking and gasping. The smell of cooked flesh, then ash. And the image reflected in gleeful, evil pupils. An evil smile.
"So," Ren concluded, "I think you're trying to give her more responsibility than she can carry right now."
That he uttered these things without flinching proved a lifestyle of mindfulness. He was not afraid of Truth and its associated pains. He held them dear.
Nora hugged herself and teared up. "Okay, Ren, look- Jaune is Obviously too depressed!"
"Keep your voice down," Ren reminded her.
Nora's lip trembled. "I wish Pyrrha was here."
She covered her face, ashamed, crying. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."
Ren frowned at her, but admitted, "We all wish Pyrrha was here."
They walked for a long time in silence.
Until Jaune looked down to Ruby and whispered, "Do you think they're right?"
Ruby hiked her pack higher on her little back. She'd tried to keep everyone's spirits up. But what was there to tell them? What was the point? There was a Huntsman Academy in Mistral. They had to graduate. They had to be Huntsmen, or they would be Nothing.
Tone tempered by trauma, she asserted, "We can do this, Jaune. We have to do this."
"And when we get to Mistral… Then what? It can be destroyed, too. Just like Vale."
Ruby stopped.
And so did everyone else.
She cried. Fists balled and shaking, she whispered, "I don't know Jaune."
She turned to Ren and Nora. Green and Pink blobs through her tears.
She shouted, "We can't give up! We have to keep trying!"
Silence. Real silence. The forest had quieted.
Meaning danger.
Jaune noticed it first, head perking up. He drew Crocea Mors from his hip, and the team circled up.
Nora drew her warhammer from her back. Ren, his dual SMGs. Ruby swung Crescent from its holster and gripped it like a shotgun at low ready.
The barrel slid loose to full deployment, and the scythe swung into position and clicked.
She twirled it by the staff and caught it over her shoulders, held as if crucified. Her sorrows transmuted to rage, shaking her body, and light shimmered on Crescent's trembling blade.
"Find it," Ruby ordered. "And kill it."
Ren murmured, "We only have to so much ammo, Ruby. We can't fight every-"
"Then we'll kill them with our hands."
Tough talk from a little girl. But her aura sparked on her finger tips as she hissed.
The same power shone in everyone's eyes, and where their hands gripped their weapons.
"I don't feel any Grimm this way," Nora whispered.
Jaune pointed. "Something's moving down the trail."
"Wedge," Ruby ordered.
The team reformed. Nora hustled to grenadier position and switched her warhammer to its launcher configuration.
Ruby planted her scythe blade as a monopod and laid back to find a target for her sniper-scythe.
Ren keened his eyes. "That's not something moving on the trail," he noted. "That's… The trail, moving."
Everyone blinked at the impossible.
The ground crawled away, shifting rocks as it moved. And as the trail extended, its destination came nearer, so that here and there seemed to be trading places.
Reality did not like this super-positioning.
The ground cracked, three jagged lines splitting the team onto islands. And before Ruby could shout an order, the cracks spread like lightning. The world shattered, the path dissolved beneath Ruby's feet, and her stomach lurched as on a rollercoaster.
She shrieked and fell into darkness, cradled in her red cape.
Training took over. She'd jumped from many cliffs and aircraft. She gripped her cape and made a wing, rolling to face to the ground. But there was only blackness, and wind rushing past her ears.
Focusing her soul, she flexed her semblance and slowed her descent, all laws of inertia bending to suit her. Rose petals spawned from the entropic output, clouding around her as she slowly drifted into darkness.
She saw ground, dark and rising to meet her, and she hit her brakes hard. She thumped it, left a dent, felt the impact disperse across her aural shield. But the feeling was only that, a pressure.
The ground didn't have a temperature, nor a texture.
She rose to her knees, then her feet, and dusted her combat skirt. She couldn't feel the fabric. Rubbing her fingers yielded only a tingling sensation. She pushed her fingers to her neck, but didn't find her pulse.
She was dead, or hallucinating.
She was afraid.
She'd landed exactly where she fell from.
The same trail.
The same trees.
Footprints where her friends had stood.
Though the world was soft and black. Colors blunted. The air tasted stale and everything looked like a fuzzy copy of itself.
"Alright, Ruby. Get it together. Find the team, find the trail, get to Mistral. Or, Shion."
She shouted, "I'm alive!"
No echo. No answer.
"Guys?"
Her shout sounded hollow. But it carried enough to draw attention.
A figure appeared in the trees, upright and graceful. Silver hair billowed like a cape.
Ruby drew back her foot and readied Crescent.
"Who goes there?!" Her little voice cracked.
The man smirked. His eyes glowed golden. She'd seen that before. Pyrrha burning, reflected in Cinder's pupils. And evil smile.
Ruby's face twitched with fear and fury. "I said-!"
The man emerged from the woods.
He had a wing. Only one, but massive like an angel's, and black.
And on his hip rode a blade darker than black.
Odachi design. Two, maybe two-point-five meters. Three including arm length.
Mobility and Close-Quarters were her best option.
He was watching her, eyes dancing and analyzing in kind.
But she was being too hasty. This wasn't a Grimm. "H-Hey!" she shouted. "Who are you?"
His smirk broadened into a smile. And he very slowly enunciated, "I'm looking for a man named Cloud." His voice rumbled, hypnotic and beautiful.
He stopped at ten meters. If he was a Huntsman, he could close seven and strike in a single leap.
"Never met him." Ruby back-stepped to eleven, and kept her stance. The man didn't follow.
She checked her shoulders for foes, hoped for friends. She shouted, "Nora! Jaune!"
The One-Winged swordsman asked, "Are you lost?"
"I'm fine!"
She shivered. This was bad. Evil intent filled the air. Ruby knew this sensation. She'd felt it every day that Cinder lived in the dorms with her, every day that they attended classes together. She'd ignored it. Never again.
"Go away! What do you want?!"
The swordsman's eyes moved to Crescent. "Well, now… That's an interesting weapon. Are you a warrior?"
His hand moved to the hilt on his own weapon. Ruby read "Masamune" engraved upon the grip. She swallowed. Adrenaline coursed her veins. Her tendons ached.
"BACK OFF! I'm a Huntress! I don't know you stranger, but if you're looking for a fight-"
"I am."