To Roll The Die
Chapter 8, Zagreus
I do not own anything pertaining to DxD or RWBY.
Life is fractal.
From one, comes two, and from two comes three.
From three, comes all, self repeating and corrective.
Jaune never really understood that until he stared into a distorted mirror, surrounded by darkness on all sides except for the reflection that both was and wasn't himself before him.
The man in the mirror who both was and wasn't Jaune had appeared suddenly before the foggy minded blond, dressed in splendorous Mistralian garb that would have earned the man quite the following back on Remnant due to how little the flowing robes left to the imagination.
Long golden hair curled from his head in ringlets, falling long down his back and held away from his eyes by an elaborate crown of ivy decorated with berries, small fruits and thin golden branches woven through to bind it all. His face was flush with intoxication, though his deep blue eyes were as clear as the skies were endless. His features were obnoxiously feminine, like all seven of his sisters had held him down and made him feel Jaune's pain, yet he still carried himself like a skilled warrior.
The only distinct garb beyond the white chiton that the man barely wore was a brilliant royal purple himation bordered with golden square meandros thrown over his left shoulder, held in place by a pauldron carved from wood and decorated further by dangling grape and ivy vines.
Foliage springs forth from the ground around his bare feet, twining and growing tall in the reflection.
"Who are you?" Jaune questions wearily, despite already knowing the answer in their shared heart. "Where am I? What's happening?"
The older man smiles a knowing smile, his eyes crinkling with relish over the confusion bore by his younger appearing counterpart.
"I am you, you are me, and this," the man gestures with his free right hand, his left now holding a large, golden chalice by one of its two handles that sloshes with maddening vintage, "is where it all began and ended, again and again and again."
Jaune nods his head as if he understood. "Yep, I've actually gone crazy. Tell me more."
The robe garbed man throws his head back in laughter, boisterous enough to cause the black space to thunder raucously with him.
"I don't fault you for thinking that, the truth can be a bit… maddening at times." The robed man agreed readily before taking a long drought from his chalice. "And people wonder why I gifted Humanity my wines! If only they knew!"
Jaune continued to nod along while glancing around at the blackness surrounding them every so often, as if to seek a way out of the confines of what was quickly becoming a madhouse. "Right, uh huh…"
"And I'm losing you." The man sighs as his shoulders sag. "Alright, I guess I should take this from the top… do you know who you are?"
Jaune nods readily at this.
"Do you know who your parents are?"
Again, Jaune nods.
"Are you sure?"
Jaune is slower to nod this time.
"What if I told you… that it was all a lie?"
Jaune no longer nods.
"I see that got your attention…" The man waves a hand and a second mirror joins the first, showing a strange scene.
A long, white haired man dressed in a resplendent suit of ancient golden armor embraces a nervous looking black haired woman clothed in a deep black chiton that left very little to the imagination, much like the blond man who was showing Jaune this. They both seem nervous, or perhaps anxious, their lips swollen with their love for one another.
Despite being complete strangers, Jaune can't help but feel as if he recognizes the two loving strangers, their features surprisingly familiar.
The scene shifts to show the same dark haired woman, sleeping somewhere in a gloomy yet lavishly decorated cave, only barely illuminated by the light of a single candle by her bedside. A large, serpentine body slithers in the shadows cast by the small flame, and yellow, slitted eyes catch the light, heavy with twisted desire. The scene shifts as the serpent uses its tail to slowly, carefully slide away the garments protecting the woman, something Jaune instinctively finds himself thankful for, because he has a sick feeling he already knew what happened next.
The third scene showed the same woman, now heavyset by the miracle of pregnancy, being confronted by a giant skeleton dressed in black robes decorated by far too many jewels and bedazzlements to be considered anything but gaudy, contrasting to the ornate yet simple golden armor of the white haired male from the first scene. The skeleton seems as displeased as one would expect, considering what it was, while the woman was unrepentant and very protective of her unborn child based on the way she was cradling her stomach away from the other entity.
Jaune did not know what the relationship between that woman and that skeleton was, but something about the dead-yet-alive entity made his hackles rise.
The scene shifts again to the woman, just now having finished giving birth to a healthy baby boy with hauntingly familiar blond hair. Despite being newly born, barely wiped clean of the placenta, there was a strange intelligence in those open blue eyes of the babe.
Eyes that instinctively sought out Jaune's across time and space.
The older blond's skin crawls as the baby smiles and waves in his direction just before the image shifts again. The last thing Jaune was able to make out was the dark haired woman, too, looking up in Jaune's direction, but with an expression of primal fear that makes the Huntsman's gut churn.
The final scene makes Jaune's blood boil as he watches an older man dressed in blue robes dazzled with golden regalia snatch the now even more familiar blond child from the arms of the woman, who was screaming and fighting back with everything she could to take her child back.
The child did not fight back against the man, instead seeking out Jaune's eyes once again with his own. His sclera had become pitch black, and his irises a deep bloody crimson, reminding the older Huntsman of the terrifying visage of Salem herself. A deep crimson crown of maple leaves is woven together and placed atop the babes head, burning a brilliant gold at the tips with a spiritual fire that Jaune would have to be blind to not recognize as his own.
Despite the danger, the younger blond did not seem to fear the older man holding him aloft by his ankle, his expression showing no small amount of mirth, as if he were amused by the much older beings' threats.
Jaune, too, joins the woman as he slams himself into the mirror bodily, the shield of Crocea Mors in his left hand while in his right was the shattered blade, glowing orange, red and black with power that was not his own yet familiar enough that it may as well have been.
The blue robed man cloaked in clouds and brimming with lightning pauses and turns to lock eyes with Jaune much as the baby had, confusion joining his rage before morphing into something unholy and twisted.
This distraction echoing back through time and space and the outrage empowering Jaune's actions causes reality to distort and ache fiercely. Another man, this one familiar and far more welcomed by Jaune, arrived just as lightning begins to coalesce into a spear in the cloud cloaked man's right hand, and the void is filled with screams of anger and horror as electricity, light, nature and the power of Jaune's soul collide.
The mirror shatters, and through the fragments, Jaune is able to glean only brief snippets of the terrible future that awaited those he had only known for moments, and many others that confused him due to a lack of context save one.
"Pyrrha?" Jaune questions softly as he watches a single, infinitely small shard fall into the nothingness below and above. "What… what is all of this? Why are you showing me this crazy nonsense?!"
Floating in a massive ship, surrounded on all sides by pairs of animals in cages, was Pyrrha and… himself, but at the same time, it wasn't her and wasn't himself, either. They were distorted reflections, where they looked extremely similar but were distinct enough to be their own people.
Jaune watches as a white dove bearing a twig of green in its beak lands on his counterpart's offered arm, a brilliant smile blooming on his face at the sight for one reason or another.
This played out time and time again as Jaune desperately scanned the shards, his vision clearer than the scope of Crescent Rose and his mind sharper than its blade.
With no names or memories to go with the falling images lost to the darkness, Jaune soon gave up torturing himself with fleeting glimpses of what-if's, or rather, the many may-have-beens, instead trying to find either hide or hair of the older alcoholic version of himself so as to extract an explanation.
The Huntsman did not have to search long as a second mirror appeared opposite of where the first had arrived. Jaune was unable to pinpoint exactly when it appeared or by what mechanism it had done so, but he didn't pay it much mind. Nothing about his situation made much sense to him to begin with, but he had a sinking feeling he knew what was happening here.
"Explain."
The man in the mirror smiles smugly at the demand instead of growing angry, but eventually complies when Jaune tightens his grip on his blade, still glowing a burning red-orange that seemed to grow brighter by the moment.
"The truth is, you are me, and I am you." The man repeats his first introduction with relish. "However, that is only a version of the truth and not the entire truth. You have our original soul, while I have our original body, and before you say anything, yes, believe you me, I'm well aware of how crazy this is, it's why I drink like Willow."
"So that baby…"
"That was us, and we just saved our own lives, again." The man takes a much longer drink from his goblet, uncaring of the wine spilling from the corners of his mouth. "This has happened before, and is going to happen again. It has to for reality to make sense anymore, since our many births and incarnations have both spawned and resolved multiple different paradoxes at once, this meeting across space and time being the last such event I need to worry about until your arrival about three thousand years or so from the moment in time in which I presently exist."
"….What?" Jaune questions eloquently, unsure of how to process his counterpart's claim.
It sounded crazy, even to a man that was talking to himself in a mirror somewhere in the void of nothingness that he seemed to be fated with.
"Let's keep it simple." The man sighs while reclining himself into a lavish hair of vines and wood that sprouts from the ground rapidly at an unspoken command. "We were conceived by the God of the Morning Star, Eros-Phosphoros, whom the Romans called Lucifer long before Helel fell from grace, and the Primeval Goddess of the Underworld, Despoina-Anosia, who has been conflated with so many different goddesses over the past five thousand years that the people of Earth no longer remember who she was. The same night we were conceived by our true father, our mother was raped by another in the form of a serpent, which is the blue robed man you saw, Zeus, whom many believed to be her father in ancient times, which couldn't be further from the truth."
Jaune gags at the admission, his body beginning to shake with both anger and disgust upon having his suspicions confirmed and further compounded by his supposed 'relation' to the being known as Zeus.
"Don't worry, like I said, he wasn't really her father, mom is actually older than the modern Olympians and was well known to the natives of Arcadia long before 'dad' and his ilk came to power." The not-Jaune in the mirror seems sympathetic to his younger self and gives Jaune a moment to gather his wits before continuing. "So, to get back to explaining how we came to be as we are now, Zeus slays our infant self named Zagreus-Dionysus, takes our heart and uses it to conceive us, or rather, me, Bromius-Dionysus a second time by taking our heart, consuming it, then forcing himself upon yet another Goddess named Cybele. Through this, you and I became separate entities that echo into one another across history, even worlds apart."
"Uh… how is any of that simple?" Jaune questions uneasily as he tries and fails to process the logic behind what is clearly illogical. "Can you maybe… dumb that down a bit more for me?"
The weight of the days revelations had long since worn down his ability to think, and by this point, he felt as if his brain was being liquified in his cranium by information overload.
"We died. Our soul was sent to the Other Side, Remnant, while our body stayed here on Earth under the control of Zeus. The soul reincarnated into you while our body was reanimated into me." The newly identified Dionysus explains as simply as he can, showing a fair understanding to his younger physically yet older spiritually counterpart. "We share a very deep connection that I have leveraged to great effect over the past four thousand or so years to help pave the way for your return, and our reunion."
"Reunion?" Jaune parrots in alarm, not liking the sound of that at all.
His fears must have shown on his face, because Dionysus is quick to dispel Jaune's paranoia.
"The Dionysus you are currently speaking to, that is, myself, is about three thousand or so years removed from the Dionysus who has already sacrificed himself by this point in our conversation, just as I am a thousand years removed from the last time we spoke by divination mirror, even if it's only been a minute or so at best for you." The blond man casually explained, enjoying the maddening confusion that comes along with his very existence. "We, that is, I, have to do this to keep the timeline stable. This exact conversation between ourselves has already happened, is happening and has yet to happen all at once."
"Okay, okay, I think that's enough." Jaune shakes his head in denial. "This is all bullshit, even if my gut is telling me you aren't lying. No matter how crazy I go, there's just no way my mind would cook up something so…"
"Crazy?" Dionysus supplies helpfully. "Maddening? Insane?!"
Jaune nods silently in agreement.
"Don't worry, once you and your beloved partner hatch from that accursed egg, all of the crazy timeline shenanigans will already be long behind you, mostly." Dionysus assures the blond while gesturing at himself with a free hand. "You've already done your part by being acknowledged by ourselves and distracting Zeus long enough for our real dad to arrive to save our mother, who is both ourselves and not. Thanks for that, by the way."
"… So wait, that was…"
"That was the penultimate completion of our paradox, or your part in it anyway, which is something I couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't have warned you about so don't bother getting upset about it." Dionysus takes another small sip from his goblet, giving him a moment's reprieve to gather his thoughts, obviously just as distressed as Jaune was over their shared conundrum. "You should focus on our future, leave our past to me. Trust us, we know what we are doing, and so do the forces that set all of this into motion, which… you know what, I'll let you figure that out on your own too, good luck with that clusterfuck."
"But what about the present? And what the hell did you mean by me and my beloved partner hatching from an egg?!"
Dionysus opens his mouth to explain before snapping it shut while turning his head to the side, away from the mirror he is looking through.
Jaune can make out faint noises in the background, and his counterpart's expression grows grim as he turns back to face the younger warrior.
"The best presents are often left surprises, but I have a feeling we've both had enough surprises to last us the next few incarnations over." Dionysus rises from his seated position while lightly waving his thyrsus in Jaune's general direction. "If you want to make it up to me, name your first son Iacchos, you'll understand eventually… and one last thing… don't forget who you are, what we are. No matter what they say or what becomes of us, remember that we are the Protector of Humanity, even after this cursed cycle finally ends."
"Wha-"
And then, there was light.
Life is cruel.
Pyrrha Nikos had realized this not long after her death.
The Fates, however, are not.
Dying had been… liberating, in a way. Without a mortal coil, Pyrrha had become exactly what she had thought she would be, a legend that would be venerated for generations, and a spirit that lingered with those she had hoped to protect from the afterlife.
There was no great beyond for her, but there certainly was another adventure to be had, sort of.
Instead of leaving Remnant behind, her soul had been torn from her earthly vessel and bound to the pieces of her armor and weaponry that still channeled her Aura the moment her heart had been pierced by Cinder's Magic enhanced arrow.
Perhaps it had been her unsuccessful inheritance of the Fall Maiden's power that had led to her bizarre afterlife, her soul jostled loose by the Aura transfer machine, perhaps it had been that strange silver light that Ruby had unleashed from her eyes upon seeing Pyrrha's passing, or perhaps it had been her destiny all along. Pyrrha did not know the how or the why behind her ghostly existence from that moment on, but it eventually came to weigh heavily on her mind for years to follow nonetheless.
Rather than the 'Invincible Girl' she was remembered by the material world as, she had instead become the 'Invisible Girl', alone in the spectral plane in between life and death.
Alone, but not for long.
Jaune Arc, bless his soul, had come to inherit her belongings the very day that Ruby had frozen the Grimm Wyvern atop the tower that acted as the main communication hub for the Kingdom of Vale, the Headmaster's office and lastly the front for the vault deep below the bluffs that had once contained the dying Fall Maiden, Amber.
Pyrrha had watched helplessly as her partner fought tooth and nail with their still living teammates Ren and Nora as backup to claim what was rightfully his, heedless of the danger that the constantly spawning abominations created by the ichor dropping from the Wyvern statue posed for the enraged team of three.
She was there when he swore on his family's name to bring Cinder to justice, and it nearly killed her a second time to know that she would never be able to fully enjoy the fruits of her labor of love when she failed to somehow capture his attention and tell him that she was still there with him, that he shouldn't take the path of vengeance for her sake.
It dawned on her that overnight, her partner, the lovable fool, had died alongside her, while Jaune Eros Arc, the man on a mission, had been reborn from her ashes.
And so, she followed him to Patch alongside the rest of her team to be with them in spirit, since she could no longer be present in person. Being bound to what remained of her Huntress gear was at first a pain, as she was not able to travel far from the damaged remains of bronze and crimson, but that changed when her beloved had enshrined her crown into his shield and her damaged armaments into his sword.
Pyrrha Nikos became Crocea Mors in an act of devotion that continuously stirred her heart even as time continued to move for the newly dubbed Team RN(n)JR, with her own addition to the name being as silent as she was invisible.
Things had gotten much better for her after Jaune had embedded her weapons into his own, as it allowed her to once again fight side by side with her leader, partner, best friend and the love of her life.
As his prowess with her new form continued to grow, and as the battles turned from a dozen to a hundred under his belt, she was there by his side.
When he grieved under the broken moon of Remnant in the dead of night, training by the sound of her voice to the point of exhaustion time and time again, she was there by his side.
When he brought the unspeakable horror known as the Nuckelavee to a standstill using brute force alone to protect his teammates and helped Ren and Nora find closure in the ruins of Kuroyuri, she was there by his side.
When he had given it his all to avenge her at Haven, she was there by his side.
When he had finally met her mother in passing in her hometown of Argus, she was there by his side.
When he slowly fell in love with Weiss Schnee a second time during that long, cold year in Atlas, she was there by his side…
When he was forced to honor his dying friend's wish, she was there by his side, poised to kill Penny Polendina for a second time.
When the blade of her second body shattered against Cinder's obsidian falchion, splintered in three by the might of the Fall Maiden, just like before, she remained by his side, despite being damaged in a way she was not capable of recovering from.
And when he fell… she fell with him, determined to remain by his side no matter what that cold, dark gap in reality had in store for them.
She saw unspeakable things in that place, things that tore at her already fraying mind, scarred from the injuries inflicted upon her by Cinder in life and undeath.
Things that she refused to commit to memory.
Thankfully, her beloved had been spared greater insight into the abominable existences that swelled and churned in the endless dark gulf between worlds, focused as he was on a destination that had been beyond his trajectory and later holding tightly to Crescent Rose and Penny's Polendina's corpse as they fell further and further and further away from the reality they once called home.
Eventually, she had been forced to mourn Jaune's passing, but found solace in the fact that they'd remain side by side until the darkness that wasn't darkness consumed them both entirely.
Except, it didn't.
Somehow, someway, she, Jaune and Penny found a way out of that abyss and into another segment of unreality that made the black abyss seem welcoming by comparison, denizens and all.
Despite the array of colors present in the chaotic regions of uncontrollable existence that made it appear somewhat welcoming, its caustic nature eroded at the luminous golden fire that sprung from Jaune's body almost as quickly as the spiritual force could replenish itself.
There, in that yawning void, something Great sleuthed between the waves of nothingness that wished to reduce everything Pyrrha knew to its most granular components.
Something Divine.
Pyrrha only observed it for a moment through the radiant barrier that kept her safe from further damage, and in turn, it observed her.
Pressure was the first true sensation Pyrrha had physically felt in quite some time, so it came as an immense surprise when she was able to somehow feel the weight that the creature's gaze bore, despite being reduced to little more than a spirit trapped within a broken blade.
For the first time since her death, Pyrrha somehow slept, and when she awoke the moment Jaune's and Penny's corpses broke into an entirely new dimension, she knew that something about her had been changed, even if she couldn't recall what had changed her or how she had fallen unconscious in the first place.
Pyrrha did not have long to file away her concerns for later introspection, instead having her attention drawn to the strange Humanoids that had appeared in flashes of what could have easily been misconstrued as Aura Glyphs. The first to appear would have been considered a teenager in appearance back on Remnant, with long, blood red hair, delicately fair skin and sharp blue eyes that spoke of at least some level of alertness.
The strange newcomer was joined by another would-be teenager, this one bearing heavy southern Mistralian features and perhaps one of the largest busts Pyrrha had ever seen on the usually much more diminutive women. This second newcomer was not hostile to the first and seemed subordinate to the redhead based on the way she physically deferred to the girl as they chatted in a strangely accented language that Pyrrha could somewhat parse due to her avid love of ancient Mistralian dialects and the legends of yesteryears passed down almost exclusively by the spoken word in Argus.
In what could only be described as a miracle, or perhaps a perversion of the natural order, Pyrrha witnessed soon thereafter as the beautiful redhead who could have been her little sister in another life first brought Penny back to the world of the living using what appeared to be a chess piece, of all things, and then thankfully, blessedly, her dear partner moments later.
And thus, Pyrrha made herself content with the fact that her friend and love had both been granted new leases on life in a strange new world beyond the dark gulf and colorful sea of unreality that she couldn't quite remember as clearly as she'd like.
Rias, the name of the redhead that had brought Jaune back as Pyrrha soon learned, had gone to great lengths to personally clean and groom Jaune that night, something that had made the unliving Huntress envious beyond belief, and had done the unthinkable by crawling into bed naked with him without so much as asking his name or for permission first!
Thankfully, Rias had not crossed any lines beyond those crossed in that first moment through the night, instead finding solace in Jaune's embrace while telling his sleeping form all about how she would take care of him and provide for all of his needs in return for his love and service.
Considering that Pyrrha did not require sleep like her more able-lived companions, the ghost-in-the-weapon spent her time poking around Rias's room and other segments of the large abode within her traveling range once she had ascertained that Rias wasn't going to do anything even more untoward, becoming more intrigued and later horrified as she went.
What did this… extremely well endowed girl plan to do to poor Penny?!
Why did she need three of those… those… what even are those?!
Pyrrha had been forced to beat a hasty retreat from the sadists room of debauchery and torture, but not before offering the sleeping form of Penny the most piteous expression she could muster and a sincere prayer for her chastity.
After returning to where her partner slept naked in the arms of another redhead, which sparked no small amount of jealousy in the spectral teenager, Pyrrha was left with little to do as her beloved rested besides doing what she always did.
She thought.
Eventually, she formed the hypothesis that they had somehow ended up on an alternate version of Remnant where Magic had never disappeared using what scant information she had been able to glean thus far, perhaps, only to later learn the following day the truth behind their shared predicament.
Earth, Devils, Magic, Gods, Pyrrha listened to every introduction, every question and every answer shared between her beloved and those he was now indebted to, until it happened.
In an act of faith born from beliefs that had been far more true than either had realized, Jaune recited her family's personal aria and reignited her soul with his own as he reached out to do the same for Zeoticus and Rias as she had done for Jaune, consolidating the many scattered pieces of her spirit spread across his armor, accessories and weapons into one within the shattered blade of Crocea Mors.
It was also this reciting of ancient rites passed down exclusively among the oldest of Mistralian families from parent to child in secret that started a series of events that would later become known as the Great Unveiling.
Pyrrha didn't know what to expect after being reunited with the scattered portions of her lost soul, but finding herself trapped in the black void with her dearly beloved once more was not something she wanted to experience again. She was not made to wait long, however.
The Invincible Girl always knew that her partner was special, but she could have never in a million years fathomed his true origin story. From being born a proper God, according to his alcoholic reflection, to being murdered for reasons unknown and split in half, there had been no indications over the years besides a gut feeling to point Pyrrha in the direction of the truth regarding the nature of her partner.
Primed and brimming with a strength she hadn't felt since she was still alive, Pyrrha readily joined her partner as she was driven into the impossibly durable glass before them in an effort to distract the cloud-robed man from slaying his younger, darker counterpart, her metal body growing heated at the sight.
If she had blood still, it would have been boiling in her veins.
Their efforts had proven effective, strangely enough, and Pyrrha had become enthused by the results, before it was revealed to the two exactly what had just happened. Whereas Jaune struggled to wrap his mind around the concept of linear paradoxes, Pyrrha understood well, having grown up listening to stories and legends told by her father that were far more difficult to follow.
Putting the complications aside, the invisible redhead listened intently as the man revealed to be the physical half of the baby they had just saved described who her partner really was and the nature of their strange relationship, before something strange began to occur.
Flush with foreign power, Pyrrha feels her soul become untethered from Crocea Mors as the man known as Dionysus waves his thyrsus in her direction before in a flash of light, her body was reformed around her.
First came numbness, different from nothingness, and then came the prickle of sensation one would feel with the return of circulation. Piece by piece, bit by bit, Pyrrha was rebuilt from scratch until finally, she regained control over something she had lost years prior.
Born again from the sacrifice of Dionysus, Pyrrha Nikos draws a shaky breath that draws the attention of her scatterbrained partner.
"Hello again, Jaune."
Alright then, before people start getting pissy with me, I never claimed it would be just Penny and Jaune, so do NOT start that nonsense with me again. I never lied, chapter one even hints at Pyrrha, since I never specified who 'The Crimson One' is. That was very much on purpose.
For a bit of insight into my train of thought, I'd look up the legends of Arcas and Deucalion. The theme of this story, as you can probably guess, is Synchronicity.