Cinder had made many mistakes in her short life, but in the years that followed she didn't think calling Raven "mom" was one of them.
In the moment though, standing there staring at Vernal, who had a cocky smile on her face, and Raven, who was staring at Cinder with the most piercing and hardened gaze she'd ever seen on the woman, she struggled to feel that it had been the right decision at all. To shout such a word, such a loaded phrase with such meanings to Raven.
But the woman merely looked to one side, angled and cocked her head, and then beckoned her closer, and, face full of flaming blush, Cinder moved closer to her mother and extended the pamphlet.
Raven's face turned, darkening as she read, and then she swore something under her breath in Mistrali, and Vernal went scarlet just from hearing it.
When she looked up, her gaze was full of steel and she was marching towards one of the long, thin cases that she had been keeping with them over the past few days in their hovel. Cinder hadn't asked what was inside, content to let Raven tell her if there was something interesting or worthy of her notice within.
"I had not intended to give you these so soon, especially given they are incomplete, but they will have to do until a real weapon can be procured. Vernal, did you recover the pistols?"
She turned and began striding towards Cinder with a bundle of cloth, as Vernal nodded and replied.
"As ordered, ma'am. They're in my gear."
Raven didn't miss a beat.
"Take them, you'll need them where you're going."
Cinder had noticed that there was an air of ease to the way that Raven ordered Vernal to do things, and an air of easy acceptance in the way Vernal responded. She felt a strange, stirring sense of hostility at that ease between the two, and resolved that she would have to evaluate its effects upon herself later.
For the moment, though, her gaze was captured by the bundle Raven passed her, and with a sense of reverence and happiness, Cinder unwrapped the cloth.
They were made of heavy wood and leather, carefully made and shaped, and bearing small crystals of an intense, violet glow within the blade itself. Each one was a long, wide blade, curved and lethal looking, even in the wood, there was a perfection to the pair of swords, a perfection that Raven stood looking proudly on. Yet… there was a sense of unease in her tone as she asked Cinder.
"Are they… alright? Are they everything you hoped for?"
Cinder wants to say something, she wants to say that they're perfect and everything she could have ever wanted… but words fail her utterly. And, unable to stop herself, she throws her blades at Vernal, who, startled, barely manages to catch them, and before Raven can say anything, Cinder is rushing forwards and enveloping the woman in a tight, fierce hug.
She doesn't want to admit she's sobbing openly, but the wide smile on her face gives away her true emotions and true intentions. Something that for once… she's happy to just have, even if Raven didn't reciprocate, even if she didn't choose to respond in kind.
Of course, she isn't disappointed when Raven wraps Cinder tightly in a hug and pulls her in close. Cinder startles briefly, almost crying out, and then she begins to sob openly, even as another strong pair of arms encircle her from behind, and Vernal begins to speak.
"Look… your mom and I, we talked while you weren't around, and she made me promise something to her about you."
Cinder, wiping her eyes, takes just a moment to look at the other woman, who's hand is scratching the back of her neck hurriedly.
"She told me to take care of you as well, and… I'm happy to do that, if that's what boss lady wants."
Cinder just drops one arm from Raven and tugs in Vernal without another sound.
It doesn't matter that Nightingale threatens to bring the city to violence around them, it doesn't matter that Cinder is worried about the future, because right now, for the first time, for the very first time… she feels like she can trust Raven.
And if she can trust Raven… and Raven trusts Vernal… then she can trust the older girl as well.
"T-than-thank you…"
She wants to keep this moment forever, and to her credit, Raven allows it to continue for almost 5 more minutes, before she gently pries Cinder and Vernal apart from each other, and stepping back, kneels to Cinder's level.
"I need the both of you to do something very important for me. Can you do that?"
Cinder nods instantly. Vernal throwing a sloppy, but funny salute at Raven that makes Cinder giggle from the sheer audacity of the older girl.
"I need eyes and ears out there in the city. I need to be able to tell what's going on, while I scout and verify a hypothesis, as well as meet with Sienna and the Belladonnas about this course of action."
Vernal is the first to speak up.
"Mmkay, boss lady, I don't mind doing this, but I'm not exactly sneaky. I'm trained for smash n' grab, little else."
Raven absorbs this information, and then she asks.
"Have you discovered your semblance?"
The other girl shakes her head. As Raven turns her head back to Cinder and addresses the girl again.
"Can you teach that stealth trick you do to make you harder to notice to Vernal?"
Cinder pauses for a moment, considering the merits, on the one hand… it should be possible, but on the other hand… was it worth it? Did Vernal have aura reserves? Thinking, the cogs in her head turning, Raven turns to her once more and gently says.
"The swords have gravity dust embedded into the blades, if you ever need them, simply reach out with your aura and focus it into the blades. The crystals will do the rest."
Cinder nods, and then Raven is straightening up, and stretching her legs out, then she's turning that gaze back on the two girls, and she says simply.
"I want information, but I want you safe most of all. Keep yourselves safe, stop others if you must. Is that clear to both of you?"
Cinder nods, and Vernal follows suit a moment later. Then, Raven stands up, and a slight flicker of motion transforms her into the familiar shape of the large black corvid she was capable of using.
A flicker of wings, and Raven was gone, and Vernal was drawing a pair of heavy caliber handguns from her duffel bag. She strapped them into her holsters, stood and turned to Cinder.
"So… this aura thing?"
Cinder shakes her head and takes her blades.
"It's… a bit more complex than it seems. You need to wrap your aura around yourself like a shield, but… then you need to be able to… shrink the field?"
Vernal nodded and concentrated, a moment passed, and Cinder watched as the field formed and flickered, a dark burnished orange color coating Vernal's skin as the woman concentrated. Cinder smiled, and started to speak again.
"Ok, now… focus on twisting the field… inverted?"
"What does that mean?"
"The field?"
The reply sounded irritated.
"No, in-inverted."
"OH! Flip the field over."
Vernal concentrated, and her aura darkened and darkened and… suddenly, she wasn't there anymore. For all of around 3 seconds.
"Ugh. Ok… bit too much off there… urp"
Vernal staggered towards the edge of the room and began to vomit. The lucky part was the fact that she was only spitting up into a bag.
"Ok… never doing that again."
Cinder felt a hot flush of anger burst through her.
"Why didn't it work? Did you do something wrong?"
Vernal snorted.
"As if. I don't think this… thing, whatever you're doing, is working for me."
"I couldn't tell."
Vernal snorted with something resembling derision, and Cinder felt that anger boil up inside of her. How dare this girl imply she couldn't do something, that she couldn't teach or help or make it simple.
Then again, that just meant she was better than Vernal in this aspect.
"Ok. What do we do next?"
Vernal had spoken. Cinder froze, considering the options available to her.
"Mom said we need to scout, so let's scout."
Vernal nodded, and then she was gone. Vanishing down a corridor and watching at the entrance, waiting for… something.
As Cinder approached, Vernal held up a finger and cautioned her to move silently, Cinder wove her field around herself, and followed the woman's finger up and towards the grate. She was glad, once again, that Raven had cloaked her in simple, easily camouflaged clothing, all in drab browns and greys.
The grate hid them, but revealed, cast in the sunlight from outside, the forms of half a dozen Atlesian soldiers, clad in the normal white armor save for one, wearing black armor and fitted gear, and walking in their midst as naturally as he could be. But… as Cinder inspected the man, she looked for an insignia, and found none as the… woman, yes, that was a woman, turned to slowly survey the area, searching for… something. Cinder watched, studying the visor as it flickered with a pulse. The backlight that illuminated her skin just briefly shifted to dull blue, and Cinder realized with a start.
Infrared.
She stepped in front of Vernal and pushed the other girl down, Vernal was taller than her for the moment, but she put her trust in Cinder so quickly that the girl felt a rush of pure power flow through her as the woman's sharp eyed gaze turned towards the grate.
Time stopped as Cinder held her breath, terrified that her aura field wouldn't work on machinery as advanced as the Atlesian's visor.
For one thing, she was right, but not in the way she expected.
The woman took off her helmet, tapped lightly at the side of it, before striking it with the butt of her rifle, then she picked it up and slid the visor down over her eyes once more.
Her hand moved to the side of her head, and Cinder watched as she tilted her head to one side, receiving… or giving orders?
Vernal crouched behind her, trying to hide her substantially larger physicality behind Cinder.
For just a moment they thought they'd managed to hide, and then the woman unslung her rifle, raised it, and began moving towards the tunnel.
Plans flashed through Cinder's mind, she was strong enough to take this soldier… maybe? She wasn't sure she could take the whole squad, and it was Vernal whispering that saved her.
"I… I've got this, just… take my hand and trust me, ok?"
Cinder obeyed, grabbing tight to the warm hand of her sister as she stood up, and then, Cinder felt something twist in her gut as a field of shimmering aura covered her, she saw Vernal's face, pale and sweaty in the low light of the tunnel, and the woman's concentration on her task, shrouding the two of them in… something.
Was this a new aura technique? Or was it… no, this was…
Cinder reached into the aura with her own, bolstering Vernal with a donation from her own reserves as the other woman focused forwards on her task, as the soldier came so close to the grate that Cinder felt that she could smell the gunmetal and oil of the woman's movements.
A moment passed.
A second one.
Terror froze the two as the soldier looked right at them, her visor staring into the tunnel.
Then… she began to move, began to slowly, cautiously move away.
Cinder held her breath until she felt her lungs ready to burst from the sheer effort of restraining herself.
When the patrol had finally moved on, Vernal collapsed to one side of the tunnel, and Cinder the other. The drainage tunnels of Argus, used only when the city experienced springtime snowmelt and extreme rains, were usually left alone, and that had made them the perfect area for the Branwen tribe to set up a camp within. It made it perfect for them to set up small tunnels within the walls, digging them out.
Unfortunately, it also meant limited exits, and as Cinder had just discovered, that could cause problems.
"What was that!?"
She whisper-hissed at Vernal, the other girl smirking a bit before replying.
"I took what you said about forcing them to not notice you, and made it stationary… I had to project it around us, and we can't move, but I can hold it for a bit."
Cinder nodded, and then they were moving again, pushing out to the grate. It took both of them straining to move the heavy metal, but they managed well enough, before starting outside into the beautiful air of Argus.
The most immediate thing that Cinder and Vernal noticed was the smell of smoke in the air, the exit to the tunnels where they had been was a shorthand into Argus' docks, and, casually surveying the environment, it became clear just what had happened.
A tight, thick cordon of soldiers took up much of the space on the docks, at least, near to the walls, behind it, remained the remnants of the protestors. Sullen groups of faunus and human dockworkers shot hateful glances towards the wall of white armor and faceless masks that hemmed them in and provided a mask of utter inhumanity.
It was genuinely terrifying, Cinder reflected, to see the white carapace armor and inhuman power that the soldiers' presence placed forwards. The dockworkers, threatened by Atlas' sudden imposition of martial law, had likely broken out into open protest, based on the slight smell of iron in the air under the smoke, they had been violently beaten into subservience.
Cinder cringed, the sheer agony of what they had gone through made an impact on her, and a part of her wished to tear them limb from limb. Simply because they couldn't stop to free or break the cordon, the Atlesians likely only would hold that perimeter until one of the larger airships could return and begin to round up the dockworkers, probably to throw them into prison or worse.
Cinder flinched at the realization that many of Blake's kinsmen and women would suffer for her inaction here, and bile rose in her throat. Bile that had to be quashed by Vernal herself.
"We don't have the time. Believe me, I know you want to, but we can't."
She was right, and Cinder hated that. Casting another look at the sullen and forlorn crowd of dockworkers, then at the clouds around the city, knowing that Atlas would have them locked up, and disappear any of the ones likely to form any sort of leadership for the rest.
It disgusted her, rankling in her gut and twisting her stomach as she turned away and headed into the city, following the patrol. Vernal slunk along the shadows, even as Cinder stuck to the sidewalks and wove, by now her trademark field around herself shielding her from view.
The information they were able to glean was simple. Atlas' martial law cordons were brutally effective, while humans moved about in the day with no fear. Cinder only saw three faunus moving in the streets, slinking on the side of the roads, hands clearly presented and open, none of them carried large bags, and yet… it didn't matter.
A tall crocodile faunus was being slammed into a wall as they passed an alley, the man's eyes, which should have shone to Cinder's gaze, looked dead and dull as the police dumped the man's pockets out on the road. Before nodding, handing him back a number of small pieces of jewelry, a wallet, and what looked like a small utility tool.
Cinder felt disgust roil in her gut. None of the humans walked with such a fear in their eyes, none of them moved like they feared the Atlesian soldiers. So why did the faunus have to suffer so? Blake had left an impact on her, and she saw, and felt the way that the faunus had stared at her in that camp come back to bite.
It hurt to see their fears validated. To see that humanity was just as terrible as they'd thought they were. It hurt more to see the dead look in the eyes of the few faunus she spotted as they moved deeper into the city. Hurt more to see them move with the resigned acceptance of the fact that the world couldn't move or wouldn't change for them.
Cinder hated it. A part of her wanted the humans to burn simply for such an injustice. But she tolerated the rage, forced it down into a simmer as Vernal and she moved evenly through the streets.
Everywhere they went, downtrodden faunus slunk between shadows, while jubilant humans celebrated and idly chatted.
Everything only began to shift as night began to fall, and Cinder and Vernal smirked to each other. Faunus all had superior night vision, it was a strange quirk of the species, and never seemed to stem from the same genes, no matter how much experimentation and gene analysis was done.
It was largely accepted by now that Faunus were simply blessed with that unusual bonus. Of course, it never stopped people like Madame and her ilk from comparing the faunus to animals.
Cinder simply sucked a breath in through her teeth and kept moving. Night falling showed immediate changes, as dozens more Atlesian soldiers began to appear from their command posts and martialing locations. Even the city's streets seemed to be under lockdown, with airborne gunships floating over the streets, spotlights passing over the sidewalks. Ironically enough, after the second or third time they'd nearly caught Vernal in the shadows of the alley, she'd joined Cinder in waltzing along the main roads. The spotlights never seemed to track into the middle of the roads, something that Cinder hadn't immediately puzzled out, and it had been Vernal who had enlightened her, during one of their stops under an awning.
"You don't know, do you?"
Cinder had looked up from the small pouch of jerky she was devouring. She cocked her head to one side, and asked, mumbling over the food.
"What do you mean?"
Vernal pointed as one of the gunships swept overhead.
"Why they don't scan the middle of the roads."
Cinder nods cautiously, shifting her gaze to the road as Vernal takes a sip of water and begins.
"Yeah. They're… watching just for Faunus. Atlesian criminals, that is, human criminals like me and your mom."
"Our-"
Vernal rolled her eyes.
"Sure, whatever, our."
Cinder didn't drop the matter.
"Seriously. She looks at you like a long lost daughter."
"No, she… she knew my family. I think…"
Cinder knows the feeling of stepping on a conversational landmine, and she wants to stop it, but… instead she pushes forwards.
"What… happened?"
"Eh?"
Vernal's face seemed confused.
"You sound like they're gone…"
"Ah well, yeah. They're dead and gone now, lost a challenge to the Vacuo tribe, that… that one's a bad one to lose to. She's led for 30 years."
"Lost a challenge?"
Vernal snapped her fingers, as if remembering something.
"Right! You wouldn't know. Has Raven told you anything about us? About the Branwen tribe?"
Cinder shakes her head, staring as another patrol of Atlesian soldiers move through the opposing side of the street, flashlight beams playing across the road, flicking briefly over to where Vernal and herself are, but neither spot the taller girl, who squats behind a car, or Cinder herself, who remains cloaked in her field.
"The Branwen tribe are criminals, outlaws, we're about as bad as the worst of the fang on a good day."
Cinder's eyes widen, and Vernal seems to suddenly realize what she's telling the smaller girl.
"The tribe are… different. They take and steal and rob and kill. They have two branches, one in Vacuo and one in Mistral. Raven is… was? I'm not sure anymore, one of the top lieutenants with her brother Qrow for a really long time."
She pauses, sucking in a deep breath as another patrol rounds the street, this time, though, they're dragging a pair of faunus with them. One was a tall woman with a distinctive pair of wolf ears.
Cinder watched as the patrol stopped near the entrance to an alley in the middle of the street, they evenly split apart and a pair took up sentinel positions near the entrance, while the remaining 5 moved into the alleyway. A chill ran down her spine, twisting and shaping her, and her mind flashed to the guard she and Blake had stopped cold.
Would that happen to the faunus woman who'd helped her over the walls too?
Cinder stepped up and began to move out, and this time, Vernal grabbed her arm and hissed.
"No! We can't risk it!"
Cinder just shook her head. There… was a good chance mom would be furious with her, a really good chance… but she couldn't stand by again. Not when it was innocents in the line of fire.
A part of her helpfully reminded her that this woman carried a breaching shotgun and wicked looking knife normally. She probably wasn't… quite so innocent.
Cinder shook it off. Did she deserve to maybe be in jail? Yeah. Did she deserve to be shot like a war criminal or grimm in the streets? Absolutely not.
She set her teeth and began to move forwards.
Vernal's grip faded, and she heard the other girl murmur something under her breath that sounded of vast irritation.
Cinder didn't care. Her heart skipped and felt light in her chest, as her aura swirled around her muted form like shadows. She wanted to cast it off, to wear the power of her semblance on her skin like a blanket, to enjoy and embrace the beauty and the blaze within. But she knew she couldn't do that.
She needed to assess what was happening first.
The moan of pain, one of agony, stopped her first.
She peered into the alley on the haunches of one of the guards, who was turning away as quickly as he'd looked, letting Cinder slide evenly past his outstretched grip and forwards, into the alleyway.
The remaining 5 members were busy, one, the sergeant, based on the slight decoration on her shoulder guards, was preparing something… strange, in the low light, Cinder cursed she couldn't make it out, whatever it was was a mechanical device of some kind, with long, needlelike probes in the back end of it that looked vicious.
The woman leading the patrol stepped forwards, and snapped out the mechanical device, preparing to drive the spikes into the woman's ears.
Cinder didn't realize she was moving, that she'd dropped her cloaking field, or that her arms were striking at the woman with all the rage and unabashed strength her aura could give her.
The sergeant's armor buckled, and then her arm from the forearm down exploded. Showering Cinder in a spray of brilliantly red and iron smelling, arterial blood. It was such a shocking display of violence and brutality, that it took a buzzing snapping crack and Vernal shouting at her to snap her free of the trance.
The faunus woman had slumped to the ground, and the second one… judging from the bleeding from his ears, he'd been subjected to whatever the mechanical device did to people.
The two sentries at the entrance to the alley slumped bonelessly to the ground, and the world began to pick up speed once more as the sergeant fell back screaming, and her soldiers drew compact rifles on Cinder.
She had a second to dive for cover, the dumpster, before the roar of automatic carbines silenced any retorts, all Cinder could do was think about the way that woman's body had just… detonated.
She could taste her blood and flesh, and had felt it spatter her and soak her clothing.
Iron sickened her throat and slicked her body. She felt it drip from her clothing and her skin like rain, even as the snapping buzz of Vernal's pistols filled the alleyway with as much noise as the thunderous cracking of the carbines.
Almost as quickly as it had begun, the fight was over. All 4 of the remaining soldiers lay slumped on the ground, and Vernal, panting heavily, stood over them. She had holstered her pistols, and was now reaching a hand out to Cinder, a hand that only smelled of gunmetal and oil, and not of the thick, cloying, honeyiron of a woman's lifeblood.
"Cinder, your semblance is fire based, right?"
Cinder feels herself nod numbly.
"Then we don't have much time, come here, you're going to have to save her life. Ok?"
Vernal's tone is cruel, cold, and vicious as the hollow, shattered moon above her as she drags Cinder around the dumpster, to where the sergeant slumps, lying in a rapidly spreading pool of red.
Vernal spoke once more, her voice harsh.
"You need to sear her wound, she'll bleed out before help can get to her if you don't. Here, wrap your hand around her stump, and push your semblance out."
Cinder feels as though she is watching her body on autopilot, as if her form shrank away from itself, she feels even the flickering blaze of the fire within fail to calm her as her semblance pours out, as the scent of burning, seared flesh fills the air. She feels Vernal rip her hand away and check her work, and then she is tearing strips of bandage from her pockets… did she just carry those? Before binding the woman's wound with them.
"Get the woman and her friend, and then get out of here. Quickly!"
It's the suddenness of the shout that sends Cinder finally back into herself, and she breathes in deeply before moving.
Her hand seizes the wolf eared woman's collar and drags her, Cinder does not have the leverage, or the strength to hoist the much larger woman over her shoulders, and she doesn't try, knowing she cannot succeed, she drags the woman by her jerkin, pouring aura at a slower, drip fed pace into her arms.
Her mind is ensnared, replaying the moment over and over. Her strike had hit the woman's armor, and should have broken the bone beneath after buckling the armor.
Instead, her aura had violently discharged its force beyond the armor's protection, cracking the shell of the armor, but… utterly destroying the woman's arm. Even now, Cinder looks back at the alleyway, her gaze full of horror at the scattered pieces of Atlesian armor.
What was happening to her? She hadn't ever had control issues like this before. She'd never seen that kind of destructive energy in an aura enhanced strike before, not even when Raven used her martial arts on the Grimm! She'd… never seen that kind of devastation.
She doesn't even realize she's made it to another alleyway until Vernal punches her in the shoulder, shaking her out of the endless loop of the woman's arm popping like a blood filled balloon.
"Cinder!"
She looks at her sister? Companion? She's not sure what Vernal is to her yet. She'd sworn to be a good older sister, but… could Cinder trust that? She'd not been proven. She'd not been who she… said she was.
"Wake her up, I'm going to try and wake her friend up."
Cinder nods, and begins to gently shake the woman's shoulder, trying to wake her up, she is so shaken by what she's done, that when the woman rears back and levels a deadly, fist at her, she nearly fails to dodge it. The blow, more than capable of cracking stone, instead only scores a thin line across the top of Cinder's head as she shakes her head and looks up.
Her face turns the color of sour milk as she sees it is not the Atlesian's who have her, but Cinder.
"Fuck. Are you ok, little one? I didn't mean to hurt you."
She takes in the state of the other woman, the low light makes it hard to be certain of the bruises and bumps, but the trickling blood that runs down her cheek and into her bodice is clear enough. Cinder shakes her head, unable to get the image of the sergeant out of her mind.
"I should be asking you that. Are you alright, ma'am?"
The woman looks to her companion, seeing Vernal shaking the man, and then she speaks up.
"Don't bother. Nightingale's thralls got one of their stupid ear probes on him before he could raise his aura to protect them."
"Weak aura? Or improper training?"
The wolf faunus flinched and paused, before she spoke, quietly.
"He didn't have it."
Cinder tried to not snap at the woman, and she failed.
"WHY!?"
As the evening's events finally registered, as her anger at her own lack of control and the sickening current of joy that had run through her when she'd hurt that woman so badly… when she'd given her that injury broke over her like a rogue wave, she disabused herself of ladylike notions and came in swinging.
"Why would you ever let him help you? He would have been useless in a fight! You didn't even let him wear armor!"
Her voice cracked and broke, and she looked away, more iron taste filling her mouth as the woman drew herself up.
"Look, little human."
The way she said the word filled Cinder with disgust and rage, it was a tone of voice that was so utterly disgusted with her, so patronizing, that the girl felt her semblance flare up, the bonfire blaze whispering to her that she could burn this woman to ash… if she so chose.
"You have a super special huntress momma who protects you. We don't get that. Unlike you, and really, unlike her, we can't unlock auras easily. Do you know what happens if someone tries to unlock their aura without help? Or if they don't have it?"
Cinder flinched, and the wolf faunus kept going.
"They die. Violently. My brother and my mother died that way, trying to unlock their aura's to have just a chance against Atlas. My brother burned to ash in front of my eyes. We don't have the luxury of professional training, we don't have the caches of weapons and lien that she does."
A final pause, her tone so full of venom that Cinder half expected it to melt her skin from where droplets of the woman's verbal fury landed.
"And we aren't anywhere near as the supreme bandit bitch herself. Ever wondered how much blood is on her hands?"
Cinder looks to Vernal, who can't meet her eyes, and the woman in front of her lets out a deep, painful sigh.
"Fuck. I'm sorry kid, I don't mean to take it out on you. But we just don't have the ability to train our people like that. There are people who want things to be different, but… Sienna can't just unlock everyone's aura all day long. I'm sure that Raven's taught you a lot about restraint, and how aura is just as dangerous to the user as it is to the victim of your blows."
The woman pointedly didn't look at the fact that Cinder was covered in gore from her torso up. Cinder flinched, the unintentional… or was it intentional, attack on her lack of control felt… painful.
"If you screw up… you can broadcast your emotions to everyone around you, if you're feeling even remotely sad… or anxious… or anything negative. I'm sure you know what happens next."
Cinder nodded numbly. The other woman didn't need to spell it out, Grimm. Not just the small ones, the alphas, the elder grimm, the monsters that ate cities and wiped villages off the map. The rage grimm that could make parents kill their children, the sadness grimm that could make someone do anything in order to end the pain. The greed grimm that would make your neighbor's guts seem as valuable and prized as any glittering piles of gold or dust.
Then there were the monsters, the Skinstealers and the Revenants, the ones that took the faces and flesh of the people they murdered. The ones who would lock you in your head forever, take you apart piece by piece, and rip you until you shredded anything to get them to stop. Even if it was your own soul.
Then they would move on, the trophies of their kills, of the victims, clustered around them, draped across bone spines, faces frozen in rictuses of horrible relief because their ordeals were finally over.
None dared speak of the last type, the ones that even Raven and the Branwen tribe feared. The all encompassing, horrible power of a Dreadwalker. The monsters that had brought down Mount Glenn's walls, the same ones who had shattered Vacuo with a single of their number. The ones that looked almost human or faunus.
There were reasons, that people who had aura were taught to weaponize it, to force it to focus on only the positives, on the sweat and chemicals of the brain after exercise. There were reasons that they were taught in schools, where the herd immunity of overwhelming positivity would keep the others who weren't ok sheltered and safe.
In the middle of nowhere? With the plight of the faunus… they must have been avoiding it on purpose.
"I… I see it now."
The wolf eared woman nodded, her face grimm and lined with her age.
"I wish it was different, little one, but there isn't a way around this, unfortunately. We make do with what we have, and that is precious little. It might be different if…"
She trailed off, swallowing as a single, clear sound echoed through the night.
It was a sound Cinder had heard before, a sound she dreaded with every fibre of her being, and a sound that would have had Raven scrambling to her side if it was possible.
It was a cackling laugh that raised hairs on the back of her neck, made Vernal turn white, and drained every bit of color from the world around it, as Cinder thought back to what that voice symbolized.
Pain, murder, sadism.
At the end of a scorpion tailed menace, someone who would kill her if he found her.
Cinder drew on everything she had, everything she'd ever considered. She had so much, so much to do, so much left yet to accomplish.
She would not let it end like this.
She pulled deeply, craving, desperately, that anyone, anything would save them.
She threw her aura out into a screen, desperately trying to obscure them, Cinder pushed hard, as hard as she could, and a flickering skein of aura flowed from her hands like shadow. She reached out, grabbed Vernal firmly and held her tightly. Her hand squeezed delicately, desperately, on both the woman and Vernal.
She felt her aura cloak them, and then, a shadow cast across the alleyway. A shadow with a segmented, arachnid tail mounted with a stinger.
Cinder held her breath.
Yellow eyes turned the corner, and Cinder froze as they locked onto her.
A/N: We spiral ever closer to a climactic confrontation, or did we just start one~? Who can say~!
And there we have it, the first (of many) cliffhangers, I'm only a little sorry~! I hope everyone is having a lovely week, and I look forward to seeing you all once more in 7 days~! As always, leave a like, kudo, or review if you like what I'm doing. I feed off of reviews especially.
I have a Discord now! I'd love to hear from you all more directly, and can answer questions when I see them! Feel free to join in!
discord . gg / QtmaU53Np