At the sound of Ruby's whetstone on Weiss' blade, everyone stopped. Blake's dagger hung above Valerius' skin, its edge teasing the first spot Weiss had marked in chalk. Yang, Weiss, and Qrow turned to the smith.

"What?" Ruby whined, her hand stopping. "Oh come on! I'm nervous, okay! This calms me down! I mean, you don't want me freaking out over every small thing, do you?"

Blake sighed, but nodded. The others did the same. Ruby went back to sharpening.

"It's actually quite nice," Blake commented, her dagger unmoved. "It's like a rhythm."

"Quit stalling," Weiss snapped— not rudely, but knowingly. Both their hands were shaking.

Blake screwed her eyes shut, shook her head to clear it, and exhaled. Without any further ado, she slipped her freshly cleaned knife into the Binder's skin. The sound of it was distressingly faint– barely a squelching or slicking noise– just the visual of a living person being opened (supposedly) for their own good.

Blake's movements were slow and deliberate, splitting flesh with a disturbing ease that could only have come from experience. Her brow beat down, tongue held between slightly bared teeth, amber eyes sharp and dreadfully focused on the living fay beneath her blade. After a while, a bead of nervous sweat fell from her temple.

The first one to speak was Weiss. "Er, Blake?"

Blake hummed.

"How are you so good at this?"

Blake flicked her gaze to the heiress. Her fingers were already soaked in purple. "At what?"

Weiss nodded towards the not-corpse before them, which had the unfortunate consequence of drawing her eyes towards Blake's grisly work. Weiss gagged.

Blake shrugged and went back to cutting, her tense shoulders easing beneath a sigh. "Like I said: I had a friend, and I saw it quite literally first-hand. Plus, I've spent a lot of time surviving on my own." She finished a long cut and retracted her blade, then pointed to a bleeding area for Weiss to freeze, which the sorceress did without pause. More relaxed now— as if the addition of shared words was all she needed— Blake waved the dagger conversationally. This flung a couple drops of purple on herself that she didn't notice. "It's a long time before you can appear in public, even in disguise, when you're a runaway slave. Binders are valuable, so I had to live rough for…" Blake sighed, moving her knife back towards the incision. "A while."

"You mean you've got practice skinning animals and such," Qrow elaborated for her. His eyes were closed, and his fingers were firmly set onto Valerius' temples. "That makes sense."

Blake nodded. "Yeah, like that."

Weiss groaned, acknowledging her question had been properly answered while being too disgusted to respond.

Yang didn't say anything at all, which made Blake want to die.

Ruby just stared hard at the fay's work, her hands dragging that whetstone down Aulus' edge time and time again. Nobody even noticed the rasping sound anymore. The smith's rosy skin was a sickly pale tone, her face curdled with disgust and horror, but she dutifully watched.

'You seem… almost comfortable,' Aulus told her.

Ruby was nowhere close to any kind of comfort.

'Perhaps that was the wrong word. Accepting, maybe.'

Ruby drew the grit down his edge, whetting it like she'd done countless other times to countless other blades, turning a meat-cutting blade into a hair-splitting blade. She'd refine the fay sword named Aulus Casta into something more fitting to Weiss' character and knowledge– the duelist was used to and fit for a rapier. She did not have the sturdy legs for a saber or a sword, nor the bulk in her arms, nor the heft in her waist. She was made for ballroom dancing both in and out of combat, not worrying about the physical heft of her strikes being insufficient. The saber should slice just as easily as her rapier would stab.

Ruby hadn't been able to help in her fight against Valerius, and Weiss got hurt. If the time ever comes again that she should be fighting alone, Ruby will have at least made her blade more suitable for a duelist. At least in that sense, she could help.

'Ah, so that's what you're doing. Distracting yourself.' Aulus' voice wasn't accusatory, just understanding. 'You do have to watch, you know. It's your job.'

Ruby sighed, and turned her focus from the sword, continuing the sharpening motions. She had done them so many times in so many ways, if somebody had hewn her hand from her body and set it upon a blade, it would rigor mortis as if holding a whetstone.

She looked upon Valerius. Valerius, whose last name she did not know. Valerius, with skin the color of her smithing apron's suede. Valerius, whose brilliant crimson eyes were closed.

Valerius, who favored his left hand, just like her. Valerius, who looked at her strangely. Valerius, who made her eyes sizzle. Valerius, who had told her that she made beautiful star-charts.

Ruby jumped, getting attention from Weiss that she instinctively waved off. She blinked hard.

'What was that? I saw that.'

Ruby looked down at the sword, remembering that she had it. Her hand had drifted from the edge to absently sharpen nothing. She did not know what he meant.

'No, yes you do. You know– you thought it!'

Ruby placed her whetstone back on the blade. Valerius remained still.

Blake pried her kin open with finger and knife. Thankfully, they didn't have to go toodeep to find the chain, locating the bump of a link near the right hip's apex.

"There," Blake declared, spreading the flesh with her fingers. Purple squirted from something, immediately trying to flood the wound, but Weiss froze the source with remarkable speed for her trembling hands. Everyone gave her an impressed nod, which made her frown. Blake turned to her… Yang. "Yang? You see it?"

Yang leaned close to the incision, having to lightly dab at the area to get a view that wasn't occluded with blood. Running from one wall of split flesh to another, she saw a small black line. "Where's the rest?" she asked reasonably.

Blake nodded towards the wound. "Just get your fingers in and grab it– we're not melting it inside the body, we're pulling it out. Slowly."

Yang scowled, but didn't object. She gently slipped two fingers into the incision, pulling no face, not wincing, not even making it seem like she was sticking her hands in another person's living meat.

Blake's eyebrows creased. "Have you done this before?"

Yang looked at her. It wasn't quite a glare, but it slammed through Blake like it had been. She turned her lilac eyes back to the body, her voice steady. "I was on a mission— a trial— for my Huntress certification. I had a… partner, this girl named Cinder. Incredibly skilledwith flames— gods, she was a fucking… she was pure talent, even before Beacon. Helped me discover my affinity for fire."

Yang squelchingly rooted around in the flesh, not even seeming particularly perturbed as she dug, stopped, then slowly pulled. Blake's eyes were firmly on Yang's face. Her sharp ears and long neck were starting to burn purple.

Yang continued, undeterred. "Amazing woman. And sweet Shepherd, what a body—"

"Yang," Qrow sharply intoned, making Blake infinitely grateful towards him.

The Huntress chuckled, finally bringing the first link— barely wider than a finger— out of the cut. "Right, right. Anyways, we were on this trial out in… wherever, I don't even remember. Chasing a Grimm like always, finding it pretty easily." Yang pulled another link through the slit. "It had those… those things… what're— what do porcupines have?"

Weiss answered immediately: "Quills."

"Quills," Yang repeated, nodding. "It stuck her with about… seven." Weiss, Blake, and Ruby winced. "Huge things, these quills, about as long as my forearm. Poisonous, too."

More links. Another, another.

"Watcher was already looking her way by the time I pulled the last one out," Yang recounted, her unaffected voice finally turning somber. "I… I fucked up. I don't know how, but she kept dying. She just… kept dying."

Qrow sighed. "Shards," he added mournfully. "Parts that broke off while you were pulling them out."

Yang nodded. "Y-yeah, I figured it out pretty quickly when I saw the quills weren't whole, and I had to…" her voice trailed suspensefully, drawing the others in.

Another link. They waited with bated breath, anxious for Yang to deliver a gruesome recount of how she painstakingly extracted every shard of quill.

Instead, she snorted. "Finger all her holes, just to get the—"

"Yang Xiao Long!" Qrow bit, nearly losing contact with Valerius.

Blake punched her arm. "You motherfucker!"

Weiss and Ruby only went a little red, because they didn't really get it.

Yang giggled, holding the links up with taunting carefulness. "Woah, woah there! I am doing meti-clu-ous work."

"Meticulous?" Weiss corrected, unsure if it was a joke.

Yang shrugged. "Anyway, I got all of it out, but she remained in a constant state of almost-dying until she was pulled out of Beacon."

Weiss reeled. "How did she survive? How did she survive and continue to hunt Grimm?'

Yang's lips drew into a tiny smirk. "Like I said," she drawled, the links getting taut as she drew them. "Pure talent. Even just shambling through life, she was brilliant."

Blake snapped out of her jealous (and envious) stupor. "Stop!" she commanded, seizing Yang's wrist. "Stop! Stop, before you yank his rib out!"

Slightly embarrassed, Yang brushed the hand off before grumbling, "Yeah, I get it, I wasn't… whatever. Stay back."

Blake watched her pinch one link— the furthest one down that wasn't sticking halfway out of the incision— and focus, cupping her hand beneath it to catch any slag.

A couple sparks flew between her fingertips. Yang's skin immediately reddened with effort and sweat, unused to pushing so much heat through such a small area, her flames demanding to be unshackled. More sparks flew. Yang's fingers twitched around the chain, tightening.

Weiss tensed, Ruby tensed, even Qrow— with his eyes closed, only smelling the arcane smoke and sulfur— wound up tight.

Blake felt a hurt and desperate gnawing in her gut as she watched Yang. Her blonde hair, once so perfect and voluptuous, was now a long series of mats, knots, and tangles that would be near impossible to conquer. Her face, pinched tight with effort, was covered in old streaks of mud and dirt, stuff that they hadn't the time to properly wash away. There was an urgent air of wrongness about her unkempt state, as if it were something that needed to be imminently fixed. Was it perhaps a representation of her control, a mirror to unspoken woes? Did it help keep her focus off that infernal contract?

If Blake had a comb, would Yang let her fix it?

That mess of blonde shimmered, lifting at the ends as smoke forcefully billowed from Yang's shoulder blades. Her throat glowed like a dragon's, flickering between arcane orange and infernal gold, her control visibly slipping. Yang bared her teeth and hissed, blowing out hot, strangled wisps of smoke.

Blake could see all the little sparks and blazes of gold along her scarred arms and hands, just waiting for Yang to slip and ignite her Aura into daemonic conflagration. She could even see the pain in Yang's curling lips, her tightening eyes, every feature anticipating the anguish of payment. She looked so afraid— afraid and embarrassed— afraid of herself, of burning; embarrassed at her failure, at not being able to do the one thing she was tasked with, at falling to daemonic temptation justbecause she couldn't melt this tiny. Fucking. Chain.

Yang's face wasn't made for those contortions. It wasn't made for that kind of abashed struggle. Her stupid face was madeto show that stupid smile. It was made to honk out her godawful, goose-likelaugh. It was made to look down at Blake, glowing with bliss, and utter the very thing she was so afraid to hear.

Blake didn't tense. She scooted over, put one of her bloodied hands between Yang's (painfully hot) shoulder blades, and said: "Y-you can, uh… you got it."

Which was awful. Terrible. Disgusting, stupid, unhelpful, bad.

But it worked, and Yang opened one eye just enough to look at Blake. Lilac and red fought in her irises. Her lips parted from grit teeth. She sucked in a heaving breath, then blew it all out as a waft of smoke. "Fine," she breathed, almost smiling.

Blake blinked, having expected a romantic look that would put her heart in the clouds. With what she got, she could only mouth an 'okay' and weakly nod.

The link turned orange, then white, then to dripping slag that pooled in Yang's palm. She tossed the separated length of chain away and fell back on her haunches, sighing. "Okay, that was harder than I thought," she admitted. "Next time… shouldn't be that hard."

Ruby, Weiss, and Qrow let out the breaths they'd been holding. Yang shrugged off the girl she'd slept with.

"Let's get back to it," Yang said, her voice so coldly professional that both Weiss and Ruby raised eyebrows.

Blake, for only the briefest flash, made the face of a struck dog before throwing on a mask of focus. She took up her dagger and poised it over Valerius' lowest right rib.

'I hate this,' Aulus said into Ruby's mind, making her whetstone stop. 'No, not that, I mean… this.'

Ruby looked over the operation before her. Blake was up to the sternum now, her dagger sliding through fay flesh. Weiss couldn't reliably freeze the larger incisions shut, so Yang had to cauterize them, leaving unsightly strips of burnt skin. The room stank.

Ruby hated it, too.

Aulus sighed— sucha weird thing to hear inside her head. 'Awful. I'm glad we agree. And whatever's going on between everybody?' The image of a hand gesturing between her friends rose in Ruby's thoughts. 'Not good. Especially the divorced ones over there.'

Ruby didn't know what that meant.

'Your sister and the fay.'

Yang and Blake.

'Sure, whatever. I can't even see them properly— just flashes of what you experience— but what I have seen makes me want to lock them in a room until they kiss or kill each other.'

Ruby snorted, which got a side eye from Weiss before Blake snapped her fingers, directing the duelist's frosty talents towards a profuse bleed. Ruby absently watched her sister dab the excess blood into a cloth, clearing the way for Weiss to see the source and seal it in ice. With the purple cleared, black metal was visible.

Yang slipped her fingers into the wound, still unbothered. It was shallower than the pelvic one, so she found the link with ease. She slowly pulled at the binding chain. Links, links, links, rising from the flesh, dripping with purple.

"How did you do this?" Ruby found herself asking. "The chains, I mean, how'd you break them without a… uh…"

"Pyromancer," supplied Weiss.

"Ignifer," Yang corrected.

"Without one of those?" Ruby finished.

Blake pursed her lips, her amber eyes locked to the procession of unveiling iron. For the first time she looked a little sick, and gave no immediate answer.

Ruby's mind began to wander. "I suppose you could've…" she leaned towards the links being pulled out of Valerius, her gaze analytical. "Hmm. It looks like these are a combination of wrought and cast iron. Cast iron's pretty brittle, so…" her face crested with confusion, then horror, and she let her words hang.

"The old-fashioned way," Blake confirmed grimly. "Finding cast-iron, then hitting it until it broke."

"Wouldn't that hurt?" Ruby asked, oblivious to how hard her question made Blake wince. "Wouldn't it be loud? It doesn't seem like something you can do in secret."

Blake rubbed at her forearm. "It did hurt. They had to pull it taut to get as much iron out as possible— I could feel itsqueezing my bones together— and when they…" she shivered. "Hammered, it…"

Blake ran a hand through her violet locks, not even noticing they were still covered in blood, and let loose a shaky sigh. Ruby raised her hands placatingly, saying, "I-I'm sorry, you don't have to—"

"I, uh… died."

Yang's nascent sparks died before they could properly alight. Everyone stared at Blake— save for Qrow, who only turned her way, his eyes still shut with focus.

Blake rubbed her forearm again. "The pain, and… we had to work fast— like you said, it's loud— so compared to what we're doing now, it was… I was… butchered. I went unconscious from the pain, or from the blood; it doesn't matter. I died."

Nobody spoke; no one would dare interrupt her.

"While I was unconscious," Blake added, her voice quiet, eyes distant. "Funny how you can tell the difference."

It felt like the Shimmer's day had turned to night in the time it took Ruby to speak up again. "But… you're not dead."

Blake jolted, wrenched unceremoniously from her recollections. "Er… no. I had help."

A hundred different questions rose in the room, and Ruby was the only one with the audacity to actually ask: "What kind of help?"

Blake stiffened as her face pinched with pain, her answer coming fast and hard: "A cleric."

Yang side-eyed her. "That's a lie."

"A necromancer." Weiss' voice was airy with disbelief. It hardened over the next words, sharpening into an accusatory tone. "You know a necromancer and you didn't tell me!"

In Ruby's head, Aulus let out a decades-long sigh– not of relief, but exasperation.

Blake bared her teeth in anger, her own voice hissing through it. "No I did not! She–" her voice cracked. "She was not a necromancer! She wasa cleric! A good person–a good human!" Blake turned down, focusing on the body. "She… did what she had to do. For me, of all people."

The room's atmosphere thickened with things unsaid, but a sound broke through before anything could get tense– Qrow grunting.

Blake jumped on the opportunity to take focus off herself. "Huntsman? Is something wrong?"

Qrow shivered, then shook his head and shoulders. "No. He's… having a dream."

"Is that not normal?" Blake asked.

Qrow shrugged. "I don't know, I haven't really done this before— not like this I mean."

Blake hummed. When Ruby opened her mouth, clearly about to launch another question Blake's way, she cut it off by asking: "What's he dreaming of?"

Qrow scowled. His cheeks dusted with the lightest red— near invisible on someone with rosy skin like Ruby, but painfully visible on his sallow-pale tones. "I'd… rather not disclose."

Yang shook her head to refocus on the chain, now taut, and pinched a link between her fingers. "Raunchy," she grunted, her teeth grit, sparks flying between the grind of molars. "Give me the details, old man. I need something to focus on that isn't burning."

"Yang!" Qrow admonished again. "Your sister is here!"

Yang scoffed, blowing a heavy puff of smoke past her lips. "Oh, please, she is a grown woman. Gods forbid she learn a few things."

Qrow got one sound out of his mouth before Ruby cut him off, saying, "Yeah, say it! Come on!"

"Your father's going to kill me," Qrow muttered under his breath. "Fine. There's… a man."

"Oooooho-ho-ho," Yang hooted, creased brow easing. "Details, details!"

Qrow groaned. "They're having… intimate relations—"

"Intimate relations!" Yang parroted, fingers sparking orange. "We all know what that means!"

She wiggled an eyebrow at Blake, who indulged her with a shaky half-smile. Ruby and Weiss blushed, but remained blissfully naive (for the most part).

"What does the man look like?" Ruby probed, unsure of what she was really asking.

Qrow groaned again, much more agonized than before. "He's… human. I think. Skin like Blake's. Eyes— eye, singular— blue."

Blake hadn't really been listening, even with her name in the air, but now she paid rapt attention.

"Pretty," Yang hissed sarcastically, keeping a much better hold on her flames. "What're they—"

"What's his hair color!" Blake's voice burst over Yang's like a fireball, making all eyes turn to her.

Qrow pinched his eyebrows together and frowned. "Red," he answered. "Very red. Colored, I think."

Blake's breathing quickened. She whipped her head towards Weiss, leaning over Valerius' body just to get in the heiress' face. "The master, who is he? You must have talked to him– what did he tell you?"

"Of course I did!" Weiss reeled out of Blake's personal space. "Why?"

Blake grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back in. "And you didn't think to tell me? Are you stupid?" She shook the heiress, close enough for their noses to touch. "Who. Does. He. Serve?"

Weiss trembled and stammered, getting only "Un— unhand me—" out before Ruby pulled her from the fay's grip.

"Hey!" Ruby's voice was sharper than Aulus, though she only had Weiss in her hands. "Get it together!"

"The master!" Blake shouted, dagger tight in her grip, her whole body poised to vault over Valerius and chase the girl in Ruby's arms. Yang fumed, her face twisting with confliction as her control threatened to slip. Qrow opened his sharp eyes and glared at Blake, his fingers twitching on Valerius' temples.

"Calm down!" Ruby demanded, though her voice was background noise to Blake.

"T-Taurus!" Weiss squeaked. Then, with a little more confidence: "Taurus!"

Blake had no reaction, save for slamming her dagger down.

Yang lunged forward and thrust her hand out, catching the blade between the creases of her palm, her Aura shivering in response. She caught it, saving Valerius without even getting stabbed.

But that bump— that tiny little shunt of the dagger's point against her slipping soul— was just enough to tip the scales.

Yang's Aura ignited into an infernal blaze of gold, glittering, throwing embers and sparks, drinking her Aura until there was nothing to hold the dagger. The blade drove through her palm. Then it melted.

Weiss scrambled back, Ruby scrambled back, Qrow reeled, barely keeping his fingers in place.

The only one who didn't move was Blake. She had just enough wherewithal to launch herself into Yang, dropping what was now just a burnt handle in favor of throwing her hands out. She caught Yang by the biceps, thrusting the Huntress' flame-sheathed arms fully out and away as Blake brought her to the floor. She remained sprawled atop the brawler, holding her down as she thrashed and wailed at the fiery consumption of half a stone of flesh.

"It's okay!" Blake shouted over the Huntress' screaming. "It's— I'm sorry! You're going to be okay! I've got you!"

"Why did you— gods!" Yang threw her head back and bit down on a wail of pain. "Why?"

Blake ran through every lie and excuse in her head, but they all crashed against the truth. "It's him," she bit out. "Taurus— Adam, my…" Blake threw her gaze aside and swallowed. "He's the one who owned me. Bound me."

Yang tried to hold herself still— both of them did, but the final wave of fiery consumption washed down past her fat, eating the barely-repaired muscles of her forearms. She screamed again, thrashed again, and Blake couldn't quite stop her arms from swinging up and catching her violet hair aflame.

"Shite!" Yang yelled, the flames finally dying from her arms. "I'm sorry!"

The Huntress tried to reach out and pat the fire away, only to be reminded of the fact that her forearms had been reduced to cratered lengths of charred flesh, smoking sinew, and bubbling fat. They didn't heed her command. Instead, a wave of frost blew over Blake's head. The infernal flames fought very hard against it, taking a good few seconds to finally dim, wither, and disappear. By the time they went out, it looked like a dragon had taken a burning bite out of her plum mane.

The room smelled like blood and burnt hair.

Weiss slumped weakly into Ruby's arms, hoping to be held, only to be gently set down.

"Blake."Ruby's voice was colder than ice, with a depth of foreboding that only Pyrrha could surpass. "Outside. Now."

She turned on a heel and started storming out of the barn, not waiting for Blake. When Weiss slowly got up, Ruby whirled on her.

"No, stay here. Look after Yang, wrap her up if you can. Give her sap if you can't." Ruby's commands were clipped and harsh. "Please."

The word 'sap' rattled through Weiss' skull. "S-sap? But what if I—"

"You can do it. If you can't, Qrow will. Kill Valerius if you have to, but try to wrap Yang up first. Thank you. Blake," she jerked her head towards the exit. "Come on."

Blake didn't come. Instead, she stood above Yang and crossed her arms, declaring, "I'm not leaving her."

Ruby stopped at the door, breathed in through her nose, then breathed out through her mouth. She turned sharply, marching to Blake until she was well within the fay's personal space. Ruby looked up at her, silver skewering amber.

"Come outside," Ruby demanded, her voice a warning.

Blake stared into her eyes, trying to stay stalwart, but that boiling mercury devoured her resolve in moments. Blake bit her lip and followed, despondent.