The air around Pyrrha distorted, warbling and vibrating as streaks of unfamiliar color whipped from her form. The air grew even heavier, but Ruby's barely-functioning body forced her to keep sucking it in and blowing it out, even if it looked like she'd cough up organs at any moment.
All at once, and with the utmost power she could muster, Pyrrha allowed her dissonance to flood the realm, causing violent, short-lived rifts to crack the air as Remnant worked to reject it. She found this curious, since the realm had never actively defied her before, not even in her 'fight' against the old man. Though, she hadn't imposed her irreality this fervently, either. Come to think of it, the power was surging to her like never before. How lucky. Pyrrha looked to the night sky, expecting to see some passing astral body that Remnant could be siphoning magic from.
There was nothing. Nothing but a clear night sky, painted by a dense tapestry of stars and nebulae. It reminded her of the Chasm, its infinite streaking lines like falling through the cosmos. It had been so peaceful, so singular. The perfect place to hone one's will, and the perfect place to lose it. A void, lacking in emotion, in magic, lacking in most anything that could perceive it— save for the fleeting moments in which someone found themselves mistakenly (or purposefully) deposited therein and left for dead, or the even shorter times that a passing fay would gate through it.
The only opportunities of true observance came when a human would bridge across the realm, though they usually spent their journeys so paranoid that their eyes stayed glued to their flimsy magical bridges. Justified, of course; the number of times any human successfully bridged those death traps could be marked on one hand. Nobody risked that journey anymore, not since they'd discovered that the trip could be as simple as jamming some special iron in a fay and forcing them to gate across.
Besides that, only sifters ever graced the Chasm with more than a passing presence, their hulking forms scraping across the void-plane in search of any scraps of stray energy they could suck up. Their arrival came purely by accident, their bodies so large that the Chasm was merely furniture for them to bump into, and any eye that peeked through the boundary simply gave it the same beady stare that it would a passing star. And that was it, nothing else had—
Oh! There was a dragon, once! Goodness, it had been so long it almost forgot. She was a beautiful creature, pearlescent white scales ever-shimmering with the streaks of the Chasm's light. She'd ripped a planar tear large enough to fit a mountain and strutted in claiming she owned the place, that she'd harvest its power, that she would be the one to wield the Chasm's infinity.
But there was nothing to own, nothing to rule, nothing to wield, so she grew bored. It was an unfathomably dull place, after all, but watching the dragon fume at each futile escape attempt was quite an amusement. There was no way out from inside, so she too lost hope, and the Chasm swallowed her titanic soul.
Just as Pyrrha was about to turn back to Ruby, something interesting caught her eye: a slight distortion in the heavens' tapestry. She bobbed her head, observing its shape, how it slightly bent the light passing through it. Thin but noticeable, like a transparent strip pulled across the sky; a ley line, one of the natural pathways through which Remnant's greater Aura expressed itself. She followed it from the canopy's edge, her eyebrows raising as she tracked it directly above her position.
Multiple ley lines, converging, feeding raw arcane energy into the Emerald Forest. She smirked. The discolored whips of Remnant's rejection lashed against her being, trying desperately to free the world from her presence.
Unfortunately for the world, Pyrrha was not an infection that could be purged— she was a cancer, vascularized by Remnant's own energy. She gorged on the vortex of ley lines more hungrily than that Huntsman guzzled alcohol, flooding her amalgamated soul with ancient energy. The power bulged against her vessel. Reality grew figurative, everything else became literal.
Six wings of teal, membranous tissue unfurled from her spine, each adorned with innumerable lidless eyes— the eyes of the hopeless, whose souls forever plummeted down her endless Chasm. Now they would see for the first time, their first true manifestation since she'd been dropped in that godless hole. Pyrrha's own eyes remained in their sockets, brilliant emerald irises shining like the jewels of a crown.
Her body grew slightly, absorbing the Knight Captain's plate into her flesh in the process. The skin over her collar parted red, fresh bone pushing out the mangled shards of its predecessor within seconds. Ruby, even with the last shreds of her cognizance, couldn't help but marvel at her beauty— this must be an angel, a deity, a creature to revere. She should bask in its presence, prostrate herself before it, beg it to breathe her sins, devour her flesh, imbibe her soul. She was an ant in her presence, with a mind too feeble to even comprehend that level of being.
The Knight Captain gazed into the night's tapestry, mouth wide like she could drink the constellations.
"Wow," Pyrrha breathed, her voice a gentle promise of violence. "I didn't know I could do that."
Ruby bore witness to the Knight Captain's rebirth. Her skin itched more than her wounds could explain, and her working eye felt like it was boiling in her skull. Regardless, she couldn't look away; Pyrrha's presence demanded she drink every moment, even as her grip on life started to fade once more. The crumpled baton sank into the Pyrrha's palm, disappearing below her flesh.
Pyrrha's face suddenly lost its elation. She thoughtfully pinched her chin, humming. "I wonder if he knows…"
Ruby groaned, and Pyrrha looked over as though she'd forgotten the girl's presence. She lifted her hand and closed a thin membrane of teal over one wing-affixed eye— Ruby was barely conscious enough to register the movement at all, much less to notice which eye had closed, but she could see the crimson energy sparking in Pyrrha's palm just fine.
"One moment, I need to read something," the bolt of red streaked towards Ruby, striking directly between her eyes. "Don't die."
The scarlet jolt ebbed across her hollow soul, feeding it the barest trickle of life before fizzling into the air. The air grew marginally lighter, and she could feel her shattered ribs evacuate her lungs before the well of her soul ran dry once more. Unfortunately, everything else remained broken, so she continued to watch helplessly as Pyrrha pulled a long scroll from nothing. The Knight Captain slowly read over the text.
The air shimmered, and an off-red distortion appeared just before Ruby. She made a noise.
"Oh, that?" Pyrrha gave her a sidelong glance before going back to her scroll, her lips cocked into a smirk that Ruby was too almost-dead to see. "One of my souls. I think it knows you."
Ruby couldn't form any words to express her confusion, not with half her face shredded and her jaw broken. She made another noise.
The distortion shifted, taking on a misty humanoid silhouette. Small, eye-shaped white outlines appeared on its head, and a voice emanated from its presence.
"Ruby?"
She froze, muscles primally screaming as they tried to seize their torn fibers. It was a voice she could never forget, a voice she tried to preserve with her own, one she heard only in fading memories.
"Is that you?"
How was she supposed to comprehend the shadow of her mother's soul?
"Oh, petal, what'd you do?"
The shape crouched to Ruby's level, an ethereal hand ghosting across her disfigured face.
"What did you think was going to happen?"
Not this. She couldn't possibly have imagined this, not in her worst nightmares. The spirit of her mother, trapped within the Knight Captain, trying to speak to her. And she couldn't say a word in return. Her legs were too broken to stand, her arms too shattered to reach for her spirit, her fingers too crooked to hold her hand. She couldn't even cry out for her comfort; her fractured jaw wouldn't form the sound.
The spirit floated closer, and Ruby could almost feel the matronly look on the nigh-featureless smoke of its face. "You need to stop fighting, petal. If you do, we can be together again."
Ruby's heart dropped away into a void, all of her conviction immediately sucked away by that promise. It soared above any Grimm she could freely hunt, any weapon she could forge, any wish she could ever have— it was the one desire that always stalked the edges of her mind, latching onto her thoughts in the rare moments of silence. It was a belligerent taunt. Her mother was dead, but there was no one she needed more in her life.
A tone played in Ruby's ears, a shrill drone that buried everything but her mother's voice. It'd been so long.
"We can see each other again," Summer promised, laying both hands on Ruby's shoulders. "Just be good, okay? You don't have to be afraid anymore, we can be free together." She hovered closer, close enough to plant a kiss on Ruby's forehead. "All you have to do is you do that for me?"
She could do anything for her, she would do anything for her. Anything to see her again.
So much had happened. What would she say about Weiss? She'd have to tell her— sure, it'd be a little strange, but she knew Summer would accept her. And the tourney! How well she'd done, how much she'd endured. Maybe skip the parts about dad— she could use that time to gush about Yang instead. Or Weiss. There was so much that she could finally share, so many questions she could finally ask. She'd waited so long.
Summer's form drifted closer, cold hands gently ghosting across her daughter's cheeks. "I believe in you, my little rose. You can do it. You just have to…"
Let go.