Yang did not usually dream. She tried not to. When she felt a dream coming on— and she always knew— she wrenched herself from sleep, and would stay up until daylight.
But this time she did not, because she had burned herself to sleep, and her dreams were awoken by sap.
Yang always dreamt of hell.
Hell was a campfire, one which burned a bright, glimmering gold. The campfire wasn't particularly large, nor particularly hot. It was just there.
She did not look at it, she knew better. If her eyes met that craving heart, she would see her contract. It would burn in white letters behind her eyelids. The words would blind her, and she would not be able to keep her hands from sticking into the flames. She knew that instinctively.
She should not touch the flames. That was not her place. If the flames met Yang, it would be on their volition— for their hunger. Really, all she had to do was stay completely still, not touch the fire, and not look at the bodies.
"Yang."
She also should not talk to the dragon.
"Yang."
His voice entered her brain like letters peeled from a book and poured into her skull. She looked at him. It was okay to look— she should look— but not talk.
The dragon was of a size she could not fully comprehend. She could never see his wholeness at once, always some part of him stretching past her vision, always something that could not be completely beheld in her mind. He was like a serpent, in a way— if someone had only heard the description of a serpent from a child, and said child had been very afraid of it.
He was a six-legged thing; with one pair of legs at the end of his unfathomably extensive body, along with two pairs at the front for movement and manipulation. There were four toes to each foot, one spur at the heel and three at the front, each spur clawed and wicked. The nails themselves flexed along impossible articulations to seem like an eagle's curved talon when lifted, or a flat and pointed sabaton when supporting a weight. His front claws liked to wriggle casually since he rarely placed them upon the dirt, but they also liked to writhe and molest whatever was in his palms.
His body was not something Yang could really understand. To be fair, most things about the dragon were not something Yang could understand, but that wasn't because she was ignorant– there were just things that weren't for her mind. He seemed both grounded and levitating, as if acknowledging the ground with his joints and limbs but never treading upon it. The length of his being stretched beyond sight, either always out of the corner of Yang's eyes or disappearing into distant fog. He moved like a whip, any sway at his neck moved down his body, traveling across the length before snapping up a tail-end Yang had never seen.
Upon that neck was a huge head, square in profile but truly serpentine when beheld at the face. Three pairs of long white whiskers— like a koi or catfish— wriggled from the rich white fluff around what Yang assumed to be nostrils. The thick strands twitched in the air with minds of their own, sometimes coiling around each other or batting their tips as if they were fighting.
Wicked, branching horns shot out from his crown like lightning, either perfectly symmetrical or totally different. The branches were beautifully festooned with golden chains, hanging flower-moss and ivy, furs from an unidentifiable animal, and occasionally a sheath of pristine human skin, the decorations changing whenever Yang blinked.
And his teeth… they were all the teeth. Sometimes when he spoke, he would close his mouth and sheathe them, then when he bared them again they were human. Sometimes he talked about fire, and they became sharp and triangular, setting themselves in rows. Sometimes he talked about souls and they disappeared, becoming serrated white rings that Yang would see running down his throat. Sometimes he talked about meat and grew fangs that curved outside his mouth. Sometimes he talked about murder and his teeth were like needles.
His eyes were the same color as his scales. Yang didn't know what color that was.
His wings were the envy of the sky.
And in the center of his chest, perfectly between his front four legs, was a spear. It wasn't an interesting spear. The shape of its head was hidden in the dragon's chest, so all Yang had ever seen were the stubby wings at the head's base. The shaft was just… wood. Black and charred wood, its origin tree unidentifiable, but it was still just wood.
Blood like liquid gold seeped from the wound, each droplet the size of Yang's whole body. They made craters wherever they fell, but the dragon was careful not to let Yang be endangered by them. She was his favorite, after all.
"Yang."
She was already looking at his awful, beautiful face, which he smoothly brought down to her level. He moved so perfectly that it was hard to look at, as if he slid across a glass sheet laid over the realm.
"Yang Xiao Long," he drawled lovingly, like a father whose daughter had come home after a long trip. "You look radiant today."
Yang looked down at her arms. Where the real flesh of her body would be pitted and cratered with burns, here those spots glittered with golden flames. They didn't hurt, nor did they emit any real light or heat. They were just there.
"How are things going?" the dragon asked politely, waiting but not expecting a response.
Yang said nothing.
"I am sorry if my contract hurts you," he told her, even though he had no right to apologize for something he merely inherited.
Yang kept her expression neutral. It was easy to forget that the dragon was not a dragon, but technically a daemon— in the same way that one who eats too much pork becomes part pig. Even with the acknowledgment fresh, she felt that fact trying to wriggle itself out of her brain. He wanted not to be seen as a daemon.
"Have you died this time? Are you here to stay?"
He would love for her to stay.
"I'd love for you to stay."
She knew that, but she hated hell— even if she had no particularly strong feelings regarding the dragon.
"I understand. You have a family, all that jazz."
He said things she didn't understand, but he always said them like she did.
"You're a little… pinker, today."
Yang looked down at herself. Indeed, the golden flames had a pinkish hue that was harder to immediately distinguish.
"I think you've been sapped. Are you okay with that?"
Yang could not stop the twitch of surprise. The moment she emoted, the dragon's whole face thrust itself before her, grinning wide with teeth upon teeth upon teeth, slavering gem-colored drool.
"Have you something to say?" he begged. "Oh, please, Yang Xiao Long. Enlighten me. Speak in multitudes, describe your world, mete unto me thy wisdom, please."
Yang remained mute.
The dragon's grin fell. "You are so…" he huffed petulantly, "rote. Boring. Why oh why did I have to inherit this cursed lineage of stuffed shirts?"
His body quivered behind him, shaking the crest along his back and making a sound like a colossal rattlesnake.
He gave her a polite distance, closing his eyes as if in apology. "Sorry, child. Not you. You are none of those things," he snorted. "Though you are silent like all the rest."
As always, his posture left just enough room for her eyes to find the campfire.
"No, you are a fun one, and I love those twisted souls you grant me–" he raised a claw from one hand, some uncanny reflection of a human gesticulation. "Save for that last one! Like eating a whole menagerie of old, shriveled garbage!" He thrust out a human tongue and melodramatically scraped it with his hands. "Awful, Yang! Just awful!"
His eyes narrowed.
"If you feed me that again, I will…" his threatening look dragged unsurely before he hung his colossal head, sighing. "Not do anything. Because I'm stuck here."
He met her gaze again, features drooping with untenable despair.
"It's dreadful, child! I tell you, I never would've deposed my soul if I knew it would be this droll!"
He looked around as if there was something to see, then sighed again. Without looking, he idly mussed through the campfire, knocking sticks and logs around through the flames.
"Oh well. Send me a palette cleanser, perhaps something umami."
She had no clue what that meant.
He held one claw up to his eye and it split hundreds of times, opening like the pages of a book. He grinned once more. "And it looks like I'll be seeing you soon."
Yang's eyes widened and he was upon her again, desperate to pounce.
"Sooner than you think," he hissed, making terrible clicks from his teeth by rubbing their serrations together. "Ta-ta!"
Yang opened her eyes. She could hear her sister's panicked breathing— it was a sound for which she had developed an instinct— and craned her neck towards the girl, her spine feeling like the rusty hinges of an ancient door.
She got a perfect view of the smith standing above Valerius, longsword poised for his throat, her face a rigid mask. Qrow still sat at the fay's head, fingers lifting away from his temples, staring up at Ruby with a drawn scowl as if he'd just told his niece that her dog had died.
Yang must have made some kind of noise, because Ruby sent her a look of panic. Her silver eyes widened. She turned back to Valerius. Her chest rose sharply, her shoulders hitching high as she started to shake her head. Ruby screwed her eyes shut. She grit her teeth and grimaced. Yang tried to speak.
"Ruby?"
Ruby stabbed Valerius in the neck.
He did not jolt. He did not gasp. He simply bled.
Ruby looked down at what she'd done in horror. She pulled out the sword. She stabbed him again, she stabbed him again— the blade flashing— the purple spraying up, splattering her jaw, clear tear-tracks diluting the color— she stabbed him. Again and again and again.
"Ruby!"
It wasn't Yang this time, it was Qrow. He stared up at her, red eyes chastising, as if she was his own daughter.
"Ruby, stop," he commanded. "It's done."
The girl stared down at her sword, swallowing air in huge gasping huffs. Her cheeks were stained with tears and blood.
Yang had seen her sister mangled. She had seen her pummeled beyond recognition. She had seen her face— Ruby's face, her sister's sweet, comforting face— turned into dripping splinters of gore and bone. And yet, Yang had never before seen her sister look so broken.