Valerius was fast. Faster than any plated man should be, and he moved with the force and ease of a crashing river. Just from his wide, confident grin, Weiss could tell how proud he was of his speed, so she decided to deprive him of it.

Weiss threw out an icy finger, willing the water beneath his feet to surface and freeze. His boots immediately impacted the ice and slid.

But Valerius only smiled wider.

His boots arced around him, carrying the momentum of his slide into a turn that threw him off the ice with ease. "You know how many of you frigid losers I've killed?" He mocked. "You all fight the same."

Weiss immediately reddened with offense, but she bit her tongue to keep herself steady. Taking hold of the icy patch Val just exited, she encouraged it to shatter, and combined the fragments with her telekinesis to throw them at Valerius.

Unfortunately, though his eyes did show the smallest hint of surprise, his gauntlet was huge, and his armor was all-encompassing. The shards broke against his plate, and he simply shielded his face with his giant metal claws.

Still, Weiss tried to suck some satisfaction from the moment. "You'll find I'm a little different," she claimed with a smirk, raising her saber. "There's a reason I was cast out."

'No, Weiss, you need to focus on running, you can't—'

"Shut up!" She snapped at the sword. "I can. I have to." For Ruby.

'He's gonna kill you!' Aulus grumbled.

Weiss scowled. He wouldn't. Not as long as she had purpose.

"Did you just tell your sword to be quiet?" Valerius asked, genuinely curious. "Oooh, is it cursed? I've always wanted one of those."

"H-how would you know!" Weiss didn't know why she tried to throw something accusatory at the fay, he did catch her talking to the sword. His expression matched that sentiment.

"I just saw you snap at it."

"I'll snap you!" Weiss spat indignantly.

Valerius just raised his hands and brows. Weiss had never seen such a disappointed, unimpressed look. "I almost don't want to fight you; it's just sad."

Weiss grit her teeth. "Shut up!"

Valerius scoffed, rolled his eyes, and dashed towards her again.

Thankfully, she'd stalled enough to recover some Aura, but Valerius was upon her before she could cast anything else. Claw met saber, throwing sparks that hung in the air and flared before fizzling. Aulus was in full control, giving Weiss free reign to cast with her dominant hand.

She pressed her palm towards Valerius' face. As a Binder, the iron in his body robbed him of Aura, so she could freeze the blood in his veins if she touched skin. Valerius seemed to know this, though, and ducked her hand.

Weiss felt Aulus pressing against the fay's palm, but the sudden wrench against her wrist made all her confidence falter. Valerius' amber eyes locked to hers, his grin instantly turning feral. Even while the sword was controlling her arm, she still felt the sickening crack of her wrist being twisted beyond functionality, causing Aulus to clatter at her feet.

'Shit— don't die!'

Valerius leaned closer. His breath was hot and smelled like metal. "Another Schnee-head for my mantelpiece," he hissed. His giddiness dropped suddenly, replaced by a morbid seriousness. "Die in shame."

The fay's gauntlet shot around Weiss' throat and lifted her off her feet, but she refused to lose so soon. She slapped her palm against Valerius' face and pumped every last drop of Aura to her hand. Her fingertips surged and tingled. The skin felt like it would rip.

Valerius' flesh instantly blackened and flaked where Weiss touched it, necrotizing into chips of ice that cracked off and blew away with the wind. Annoyingly enough, Valerius didn't seem particularly perturbed.

Weiss choked and gagged, her legs kicking out as she folded her hands into a triangle, drawing a frozen sphere of blood from her veins before she shot it out as a single crimson blade. Valerius dropped her to dodge, but still took a long gash across the side of his head as the ice flew by.

The fay hissed in pain, dodging back a second time as Weiss threw another icy blade his way, once again drawing from her own blood. Finally, distance.

Unfortunately, that distance came at a great cost. Weiss now tipped and teetered on her feet, lightheaded from the blood loss, and she nearly blacked out when she used her telekinesis to reclaim Aulus.

'How are you not dead?' The sword asked, full of genuine disbelief.

"You told me not to?" Weiss huffed, not really hearing what she said.

Aulus made a hum of concern— he probably noticed the blood loss. 'Well, chin up. He's coming again.'

Indeed, Valerius was sauntering towards her, gauntlet raised to plunge for her heart. She desperately wished for a full Aura, for the strength to conjure any of her summons or use more ice, but she couldn't… well, she could.

The forest was only steps away.

Full of sap. Full of power.

The power to protect Ruby.

'Do not!' Aulus shouted, the sound ringing in her brain.'Trust me— fighting while sapped is not something you want to do!'

Weiss bit her lip, but remained focused on the fay. Aulus was right; the forest was just a fallback.

'That is not what I said!'

Still, Valerius was almost upon her, and she had no idea how to beat him. He was covered in armor, protected his head well, had a nasty weapon, and moved with uncanny agility to complement those things. Weiss wasn't like Ruby, she didn't have any kind of training from Huntresses, she didn't have any Semblance, she was just a human with some generalist magic.

'Hey, sometimes that's all you need.'

Seriously?

'I mean it! What, you want me to be a dick when you're about to die?'

Yes, actually, it would be a welcome comfort for her.

'Just kill this asshole so I don't have to watch that girl cry over you.'

With the scant fragments of time before Valierus' approach, Weiss leafed through every magical capability she had:

Ice control— very useful, but Valerius did not seem to care.

Pyromancy— middling at best, very weak with what little Weiss knew.

Artifice— could be extremely useful, but depended on more Aura and time than she currently had available.

Telekinesis— what, was she supposed to throw a rock at his head? With how nimble the bastard was, there was nothing her meager control of that art could do.

Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing! There was nothing she could—

'Go invisible.'

That was stupid.

'Can't hit what you can't see.'

Stupid. Stupid, dumb, useless, and all-around exactly what she would expect from the fay so far. What, would he just freak out and stick his head in the sand? Was he supposed to be so shocked he'd die on the spot? He was a fay— those stupid ears could probably track her with ease, and he could just slash at where she'd been!

"Pass through vision, pass through light!" She was trying it anyway. She didn't really have any better ideas. "But herald not my form to sight!"

Just as she expected, Valerius only expressed surprise for a moment before swinging his gauntlet right where she'd been. Weiss backed away, forced to do so with an uncomfortable sluggishness as not to kick up any revealing dust.

Finally, Valerius stopped his aggression. He threw his head in every direction, long ears perking as he searched for her. She was only a couple feet away, a yard if she was lucky, and fear locked her legs in place.

"Seriously, Schnee?" Valerius sneered. "I'll find you eventually, you can't hold your breath forever."

He was right, and her lungs were burning. 'Weiss—'

Choosing not to waste the opportunity, she struck from behind him. His ears twitched the moment before impact, but the belated reaction couldn't save him— them. His ears. One went skyward, its cleft stump spurting purple.

"Gah, you fuck!" Valerius' chain unwrapped from his arm and whipped completely around him, lashing Weiss across the left side of her face and flaring her meager Aura. The links ripped a vertical line up her cheek, leaking blood into an eye that was miraculously okay, and the force sent her smashing into the treeline. She briefly lost consciousness when her back struck a tree. When her eyes opened again, Valerius stood before her.

His ear still shot gouts of purple, but he smirked at her anyways, holding up the cleft piece to the stump. His other hand fished through his pouch and pulled free a vial, unfastened the top, and drained it into his mouth.

Sap. Weiss knew it was sap. She could smell it. Taste it. Feel it.

His ear sparked a pinkish red, his resurgent Aura searing the parts back together before the iron chains robbed the rest. When it was done, Valerius tipped his head back and hissed— a satisfying kind of pain.

When his head dipped back to face Weiss, the words he'd prepared instantly withered to dust. She had stabbed a hole in the trunk behind her, and placed her lips directly to it. She turned to Valerius with a sap-pink smirk.

Weiss was fire.

Roaring, burning, crashing, splitting, hissing, cracking heat. She raged, her form aflame, casting her smoldering flame and scouring life like the Watcher himself. Each scream of pain and choked final breath only fuelled her being, stacking a pyre of souls that could scrape the heavens— a burning monument for the mourning in her heart.

She burned and burned, fires sweeping through palatial halls, melting crowns, jewelry, gowns, walls, floors, bricks, and butlers. She cleansed fetid life like a studious handmaiden clears pests, and none could rival her furious desire. Ashes upon ashes. Orange and red and white, leaving only black in their wake. She was end incarnate. Final and gruesome, a flash that melted stone walls and turned homes into nothing. So much nothing.

Aulus felt himself taken into a hand. It was the one who belonged to him, and to whom he belonged in turn.

"Weiss?" He assumed. Though the hand's creases were the same, the mind that owned it was completely unrecognizable. Gone was the insecurity and shame, the pain and love, replaced only by the lustful roaring of conflagration.

The hand swung him. He had no control. The arm and the mind rejected his presence, forcing him to bite into sheer hard steel with no regard to its effectiveness. He could still reach out and grasp Weiss' senses, but he sunk into them with too much ease, becoming her sight completely as if nothing had been controlling it at all.

Through the windows of Weiss' eyes, he saw madness.

Weiss slammed him time and time again into Valerius' armor, her arm bearing so much strength that it dented the metal. The sound of cracking bone accompanied a sharp and twisting pain, screaming to Aulus that the girl's wrist had violently healed itself. When he extended the senses to her Aura, he could see how.

It was surging, billowing so great that he could feel it trying to rip out of the girl's skin. The sap churned in her stomach and filled her veins, tearing through every inch of her body as her Aura's will overtook everything. Like before, the girl had sunk completely into the sap.

"Weiss, get a hold of yourself!" He screamed into her mind. "Weiss! Weiss!"

Weiss was a monster.

She tore through another home, claws ripping through every barrier with ease be it door or wall or beating, pounding heart. She raked across flesh and pulled sinuous muscle into her maw, gnashing her fangs against sinew and bone before casting them into the abyss of her gullet. She couldn't even see the faces, nor did she care to, the lives were nothing to her. She could rip and tear until nothing remained, and she desired nothing more than to sate the craving for violence in her heart.

'Weiss, get a hold of yourself!' One of the victims cried. She broke it upon her hands and gulped the fluid from its corpse.

'Weiss!' Screamed another one, another body channeled into her aching stomach.

'Weiss!' Another meal.

But still her hunger cried, demanding she feast on more and more until the world was drained of all its hearts and souls; all things thrown into the void behind her teeth.

Aulus experienced pure terror. He could not control Weiss. Weiss was not in control of him. Sap drove every swipe and thrust and slash across Valerius, who was helpless to the psychotic assault. The fay struck her body over and over again, but every scrape of flesh he opened was immediately slammed shut by the force of the girl's engorged Aura. He shared Aulus' terror, and it was quite clear from the unbridled fear shaking in his eyes.

One of the girl's hands recklessly drew blood from her own body, uncaring as to how much she lost as she formed a clawed gauntlet of her own. It drove forward artlessly, disregarding form and grace, but Valerius was too occupied with the saber to stop it. The talons raked across his face, nearly opening his throat.

The fay tried to scramble away, but the thing within Weiss had no intention of giving him space, and pursued him immediately. His chain whipped out and shattered her knee, but it reformed in moments. She didn't even stumble.

Weiss was madness.

Alone and insane. No matter how many times she raked herself, whether it be by her hands or knives or nails, she could feel none of it. She was isolated in her palace of bones.

'Weiss, you need to stop! This is insane!'

Oh, that old thing— her conscience or whatever. She'd corked it so long ago that she forgot its voice.

'Weiss, you're going to break!'

Ha. What a stupid notion. Every part of her had already shattered, there wasn't even anything left to regret that. The state of her wholeness was unquestionably nil.

'Think about the girl, the girl! Please, Weiss!'

As if she ever stopped thinking about the girl. It was ironic, actually. She'd forgotten what her name was supposed to be.

'Think about Ruby! What would she think if she saw this!'

Was it seriously Ruby? How childish. Who names their kids after gemstones.

Perhaps she should feel sad, but that emotion had been smart enough to flee long ago. Even if she'd done it all for this Ruby, the name was nothing more than a footnote to her desolation now.

Valerius was not going to live. Valerius was going to die and Aulus knew this perfectly well. Maybe he should be happy about that, knowing the once-centurion's history, but all Aulus knew now was fear.

Weiss' violence was unrelenting. Barbarous. She didn't even slash at the fay anymore. She'd somehow managed to pin his armored body beneath her, locking his arms and legs in place with shackles of blood-ice, and now chose to wail on his open face with her bare hands— as bare as they could be with Aulus' handguard over her knuckles.

Valerius' face was little more than violaceous blood now, and only his natural fay hardiness kept him gurgling bloody breaths through his sundered mouth. Tears had started flowing from Weiss' face at some point. Distantly, Aulus could feel soreness in her mouth.

What even was Weiss?

She certainly didn't know. She couldn't decipher the girl's actions. She fled her riches and comfort, discarding them for love, only for her to discard that too.

'Weiss, please! You're going to kill him! Don't you remember your deal with Blake?'

Killing. That's all she ever came back to. Killing out of desperation, killing out of fear, killing out of some blind desire for a redemption she didn't need. Every drop of blood on her blade was excused with the walking justification that Ruby had become. It was sick how readily she used her love as a scapegoat.

She couldn't accept any fate that didn't end in blood. It's all she saw. She was blinded by it, and the more she spilled, the more she was blinded to it. When the curtain finally fell, and Death cast her into the river of her deeds, she couldn't accept a single hair of it. She pushed all her guilt onto the girl like she was a hollow vessel, as if that would maintain her own sanctity.

It didn't. She became just as rotten as the fears she herself had constructed.

Aulus—

"Weiss!"

Oh thank the fucking stars.

A/N: holy shit im so sorry i didnt realize i hadnt posted the last 2 chapters on ff. sorry yall, my bad.

btw this chapter is a rewrite, the original version was a huge shift in the tone of violence id taken in the story, even if im very happy with the prose itself. kinda got lost trying something new, but im still happy with this one. if anyone wants to read the original, it's on my tumblr swagmagussupreme