Chapter 35 – Ruby's Familiar

Winter's corpse was still warm and wet with sticky blood as Ruby cradled it in her arms, weeping back and forth. She hadn't meant to hurt her. She hadn't.

"I'm so suaaarry!" she bawled, struggling to not choke on snot as she fell to pieces. "I diiiidn't mhhhean to!"

Her breathing became short and rugged, and Ruby started to feel like she was about to pass out.

She was in that sorry state when a small black shape landed on the ground just in front of her and Winter. It was a carrion bird, with wings darker than oil and two beady red eyes. Squawking softly, it hopped forward twice and tilted its head in a series of short, jerky movements.

"Hey there, pipsqueak," said the bird. "You ain't lookin' so good, hun. What's got ya down?"

Ruby let out a gurgling groan. "I didn't mean to kill her, I swear."

"You didn't mean to kill me either, but here we are," said the crow, pecking its beak against Winter's finger as though to probe her for signs of life. "These things happen."

"But it's still wrong," Ruby said.

"Right, wrong, who knows what those really mean? But what I can say for certain is that you killed me in cold blood, Ozpin because he asked you to, and the Atlas lady in self-defense. If you ask me, you're going in the right direction."

"Thanks, Uncle Qrow," Ruby said, brushing a tear away. "You always know just the thing to cheer me up. Say, um…did you know this woman? She sort of fought like you. A lot."

"Know her?" Qrow squawked like a madbird. "Kiddo, there's no way I could tell you if I knew her. You don't know."

That sounded about right. Ruby reached over with her hand in Qrow's direction, but he fluttered away in a brief flurry of hopping and flapping to just beyond her reach.

"Kid, I know you're mournin' yer victim and all, but Hazel and Tyrian are comin' up that hill. I saw 'em on my way over to you. If they find you out of sorts like this, you might be in for a world of trouble."

"They know I'm not a cold-blooded killer," Ruby countered. "My entry test was to kill Tyrian, and I was meant to fail."

"But you are a cold-blooded killer," said Qrow.

Ruby and he looked down at the lifeless corpse between them, frowns on the both of them. Bird facial expressions were impossible to read emotions from, but Ruby knew that Qrow's beak was curling unhappily downwards. She could see it.

"There's a woman at the top of the hill who used to work for Ozpin in their eyes," Qrow said, moving on. "And you gotta tell 'em that you offed her if you don't want them to pay her a visit."

Ruby nodded and put down Winter. The blood all over her body would help convince them that the maiden was dead if she told them it was hers. That was just like Qrow, to offer her some solid advice just when she needed it. Yeah, things were really starting to look up.

Ruby broke down crying again before she made it five steps.

"The maiden?" Hazel asked with a stoic expression.

Ruby answered his question by pointing her hand at a nearby rock.

Hazel's eyes darted left, then back to Ruby. "And that mea–"

The rock exploded.

"Sorry," Ruby said. "I was expecting that to be a lot smoother, but it takes a second to build up enough power in my body to really do something." She looked down at the hound, which was between Hazel and Tyrian. "Uh…did it…"

Tyrian nodded. "इसने बांह खा ली."

Oh, that was so gross. It always disturbed Ruby that the Grimm's innate instincts were to consume human flesh, but to think that a living woman's body part was no inside this one's stomach…so gross.

"We need to press on," said Hazel, pushing past Ruby in the direction of the summit. "I assume the maiden had some food and water with her like you expected."

Crap. I forgot that I promised them supplies at the top. And I'm not yet ready to fly us down.

Qrow, who had been circling overhead like a Vacuoan buzzard up to this point, descended from the skies and landed smack dab on Hazel's head. Nestling his bird butt in like the man's hair was his own private nest, he rested his weary wings and cawed.

"Just tell them it was all destroyed in the fight."

"Oh, yeah, i-it kind got burned in the fight," Ruby said. "The food, that is."

It was partially true; some of the rows of crops had been set ablaze by Lìxià's rampant use of fire magic during their altercation. Not all of it, but it wasn't like Hazel and Tyrian needed to know that.

"And was her water burned up as well?" Hazel asked, his eyebrow raising.

"No," said Qrow. "But a maiden can control and collect ambient moisture. You think you got enough juice for that?"

Ruby held out Winter's crushed canteen and squeezed her eyes shut tightly. Focusing on the world around her, she did her best to single out the water molecules in the air.

They were all around her. She could feel their presence, just buzzing in the air like trillions upon trillions of little bees. Commanding each and every particle to coalesce into droplets would be far too difficult to do (there were too many to count, let alone control), but if Ruby could change the environment enough so that they came together on their own, it just might work.

Temperature and pressure – that would be the key. She needed to turn water vapor into liquid water, which required cooling down the air in which it floated, and she needed to get it to move into her canteen, which required a strong vacuum.

Air and fire. Ruby clenched her fist.

When she unclenched and opened her eyes, the canteen in her hands was full.

"Nice work, kiddo," said Qrow.

"Thanks," Ruby replied. She held out the canteen. "Yo, Hazel. Got something for you. Saves us a trip to the top of the mountain."

He accepted the vessel cautiously, clearly perturbed by the fact that it was coated on all sides in the blood of the innocent.

"Drink it," Ruby said to him.

He hesitated.

"It's radical," Ruby assured him.

Putting it to his lips, he took a brief sip, then nodded in approval. "Well done. I don't suppose you can summon some food?"

Ruby shook her head. After taking his fill, Hazel offered the canteen to Tyrian, who guzzled it down with abandon.

"मान लीजिए कि यह घर की भूख भरी यात्रा होगी," said Tyrian when he finished. The Faunus patted his stomach sadly while simultaneously rubbing his head. "काश देवी की सबसे अच्छी दोस्त इतनी दयालु होती कि वह हममें से बाकी लोगों के लिए कुछ कन्या का हाथ छोड़ देती। मैं, एक के लिए, भूख से मर रहा हूँ."

The pain of having her Scarab dig its way through her arm was unlike anything Ruby had ever experienced before. She'd seen it happen to Cinder twice and knew that it must've been living torture, but feeling Grubbie run up and down the length of her side was an entirely different experience.

"My queen…ghhhhhaaaagh…why?"

Salem, her hand outstretched and pointed at wherever Grubbie was next to go, didn't answer immediately. For another few seconds, she just pointed while Ruby bit down on her tongue so hard it nearly bled to avoid screaming.

Ruby couldn't recall having done anything wrong during the mission. She'd gotten the maiden powers just like Salem had requested, and as far as any of the minions knew, Lìxià was dead as a doornail. If anything, Salem should be rewarding her for a job well done.

The moment passed, and Ruby fell to the floor as Salem's arm landed by her side.

"Forgive my lack of a response, Rose. It takes great concentration to manipulate the Scarab without inflicting any damage upon your muscular or nervous system. Now, what was it you were asking?"

"WHY?" begged Ruby.

"Ah, of course." Salem stepped forward and crouched down so that she loomed over Ruby. "You see, the magic that empowers you is similar to my own. It derives from the same original source – the gods of Remnant. My lover, Ozma, and I were among the many billions of original humans who possessed it, but the Gods betrayed us. Now, our lingering power is all that remains of their essence."

"B-But why me?" Ruby whispered piteously.

"She's afraid of you," Qrow snarked from the windowsill.

"Because you need to know your place. You see, I've often found that my minions seem to gather a certain set of misconceptions when they acquire the power I enable them to possess. Maidens, especially – I have no doubt that Cinder would have made the same mistakes I seek to deter you from making.

"Your magic might be the same as mine, but I possess it in far greater quantities, and I command the Grimm due to my exposure to the pools of darkness."

Salem stood up to her full height. She couldn't have been more than five and a half feet, but to Ruby on the floor, she looked like she rose above the clouds as a giant. The blackened veins that ran along her skin grew more pronounced, and her eyes lost their red color entirely as Salem's Grimm-like aspects intensified.

"Do not forget, Ruby: you serve me. You may be strong, but I am always stronger."

After that pain-filled ordeal, Ruby was given a period to rest and then sent along to a new room in the castle that she'd never seen before with orders to practice controlling her new maiden powers.

It was similar to the training rooms she'd practiced with Cinder in back when she'd first arrived, but this one was a big circle and much larger. There were no windows or external lights, with a mass of glowing crystals at the center.

As Ruby entered the room, she noticed that there were at least ten entrances, each of a different size but all equally spaced along the end of the room. There were also individual Seers at the entrances.

Ruby hadn't received much instruction for just how she was supposed to be learning to flex her maiden muscles with more finesse, so she walked up to one of the Seers. The little jellyfish like being rotated through the air but didn't move in any direction.

"It's weird, isn't it?" asked Qrow, from wherever he was. Ruby's back was turned to him. "You and the Grimm are just chummy chums now."

"Buzz off, Qrow," Ruby said. Then, to the Seer, "Excuse me. What are you –"

Faint growls from beyond the dark hallway that the entrance opened up into answered her question.

It's Grimm, Ruby thought. For target practice.

"Um, could you…"

Ruby paused. Looking up at the ten doorways, she realized she was in front of what was probably the third biggest one. She took a step back as the Seer continued to twist on its axis.

"Good call," said Qrow. He flapped down and perched his bird legs on the Seer's sloped head, slipping a little bit before catching himself. "Start small. Nothing to be gained by dying at the hands of some Leviathan when you don't even know what you're doing yet."

The smallest one was about the size of a regular human doorway. Ruby began walking that way. It probably had something simpler, like a pack of small Beowolf or something similar a behind it.

"Bawk! Bak-bak-baaaawk!"

Ruby snapped around, glaring. Qrow was there, scratching his toes against the Seer and whistling through his beak like a songbird. "What?"

"Something you wanna say?" Ruby said.

"I just squawked. I'm a bird."

"No, you made chicken noises. Are you trying to tell me something?"

Qrow shook his head. "I think you might be projecting a bit, kiddo. Just go on with your baby Beowolves. The sooner you start small, the sooner you go home. And I mean your real home."

"Oh, don't think I don't see what you're doing," said Ruby. "I'm not that easy to manipulate."

"Oh, whatever happened to 'you always give me such good advice, dearest uncle?' Kids these days – they love you, then they're off getting tattoos, dyeing their hair, and telling off the nearest authority figure."

"The nearest ghost," Ruby clapped back, only to regret it instantly. She turned around to apologize, but Qrow was already gone.

I don't have to listen to him. Just because I killed him doesn't mean I owe him anything. He's not even real, he's just a guilty figment of my mind because I didn't get enough sleep on Mount Serathusa.

"Bawk! Bawk!"

"Seer," Ruby said, straightening her back authoritatively. "Please send one of whatever is at the end of this tunnel my way."

It swished back and forth, and the chuffing that Ruby could just barely make out started to grow louder. Ruby stepped away, drawing her scythe to be at the ready just in case. The point of this exercise was to use the maiden powers, but in the event that it didn't work on the first try, she would rather have Crescent deployed to cut down whatever came through just in case.

The Grimm came into view. Its eyes were the first thing Ruby saw, glowing a rare red in the darkness. They were surprisingly low to the ground, barely two feet above the floor. Ruby watched them observe her from the darkness for a few seconds. Whatever this Grimm was, it wasn't a brute.

"Bawk! Baw-gaaawk!"

It hides in the darkness and stalks humans; an ambush predator, if I had to guess. I can't say I'm familiar, but the Grimmlands are home to a lot of new species that people just don't encounter on the continents. I might be the first person to ever see this.

When Ruby didn't take her eyes off of the Grimm, it decided that there was no option but a frontal assault. Prowling into view came a catlike creature. It had huge, floofy paws that made no noise when they patted down onto the ground as it walked. Both of its enormous ears had small tufts of white fur sticking out the top, and the white fur fell down the sides of its face like sideburns until they coalesced into a long beard that fell just short of dragging along the floor.

"And what might you be, mister?"

The Grimm hissed sharply, then sprang at Ruby. It never hit her, though, as a wall of wind blew it with enough force to push it back to inches in front of where it started.

These maiden powers aren't difficult. I can access them easily, it's just gathering enough energy to do more than a gust of wind or a tiny spark of flames that troubles me. Lìxià was able to whip up a sandstorm and keep it going for minutes on end, so that means the power is within me somewhere.

Well, if the point of this –

"Bok! Bok!" Laughter rang out. "Bok-bok-bok!"

Ruby grit her teeth. "Grrrrrrr…"

…if the point of this was to get better, Ruby needed to a way to either congregate more power quickly or to spend what she had more efficiently.

Ruby flexed her fingers and tried to summon the smallest smidgeon of power she could, just to get an idea of what the baseline unit was. Magic might be magic, but she could be scientific about it if she tried.

A single spark, much like what would come off a piece of flint when struck with a stone, bounced through the air in the direction of the cat Grimm. Both it and Ruby watched the tiny light sail through the sky and flicker away before it ever made it to its target.

The cat pounced again, and Ruby was forced to bat it away with her scythe.

It's really not all that smart, if its only attack is to leap out at me. No wonder this is the Level One Grimm behind the first smallest door.

Okay. Ruby held out both palms and tried to see if a bunch of tiny, consecutive sparks would do more damage, or if a stream of steadier fire was better. The second one sounded like it be more destructive, but Ruby could remember a videogame where the heroine had a jetpack with limited fuel. She could fly through the air until she ran out, but there was a bug where if you tapped the space bar in rapid succession, you could actually get more bang for your buck than if you held it steady.

Sucks that they patched that out. But maybe the maiden power has glitches that can be exploited too. If the way forward is just practice, practice, practice, I can do that, but there's nothing wrong with seeing if there're any shortcuts first.

Ruby ignored the mirthful cawing behind her and got to work.

Progress was slow, but it was still progress.

But it was also really, really, really slow.

By the time her alarm for dinner went off, Ruby had worked her way up to the third door, where Creeps were held. She'd figured out that magic a) had no glitches to manipulate, b) had no cheat codes or spells as she liked to call them, and d) did, in fact, get easier to use the more she practiced.

The problem with that last part was that Ruby estimated that she'd gone up by about 10 to 20% by the end of the day, and she'd started at just barely being able to do the most basic attacks.

I guess I really am just gonna have to grind levels for days. Damn it, this is gonna be a problem. I won't be able to just waltz in and kill Raven, who's been working out for years, maybe even decades.

"That's just how it can be, kiddo," said Qrow, who was now behaving himself and perched on her shoulder. "You don't always get an easy way out. I know you're practically vibrating with the need to see Yang again, but exuberance doesn't change the world to meet your whims.

"I know," Ruby griped, kicking her heels as she returned back to her room. "I just…I was so close, ya know."

"Yeah, I getcha. You wanted to put this all behind you and move on," Qrow said.

Ruby nodded.

Qrow leaned his beak right up against Ruby's ear. "But you can't. You killed me and you killed Winter and you never get to put this behind you."

The brusque tone and harsh words made her recoil. "Jeez, Uncle Q–"

Ruby looked his way, but he was already gone.

Coming Soon – Ruby's Tenth Tunnel

And now, a tip from Ruby:

Ruby's Tip #251 – If your soup is too cold, microwave the metal spoon. If you get it hot enough, it'll warm up every bite.

Ruby's Note – As an alternative, shake a handwarmer, then cut it open and pour out the contents into the soup so they heat it.

Ruby's Tip #66 – There are actually Eleven Commandments. They wrote the last one on the back.

Author's Notes

Imperfect translation: "I wish goddess' best friend had been kind enough to leave some maiden arm for the rest of us. I, for one, am starving." I don't normally translate, but GT returned something like 'virginal handouts' for 'maiden arm' so I wanted to help out a little.

The latter half of this chapter and the next one are mostly just filler. I wanted to show Ruby training and exploring Evernight, so it's sort of a non sequitur where she fucks off and does a sidequest gameshow bullshit. Sorry.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!