Dragon Dropped
Sunset's eyes were wide as she stared at the gate.
At what remained of the gate, of the ruin of the gate — and of those unfortunate enough to have been caught up in the blast that had destroyed the gate.
At the gate that was gone.
The dragon had opened up the way to Vale, and all that was missing was a grimm horde to pour through that way.
They were not here yet, but judging by the sounds of gunfire, they were uncomfortably close.
The way into Vale was open whenever they chose to get here, and the only thing that was stopping them from walking through the door the dragon had so obligingly opened for them was the resistance that stood in their way: the huntsmen and huntresses of Beacon, Atlas, and Haven, plus the Atlesian soldiers that remained.
In the meantime, the gate was a ruin; the centre of the metal barrier had been blasted and melted away, and jagged, twisted, molten edges were all that remained of the gate on either side. The concrete archway, too, was gone, obliterated by the dragon's breath, and the edges of the arch on either side of the blast were starting to crumble away; an anti-air gun mounted atop the gateway fell to the ground with a smash and a clatter as its mounting gave way beneath it, and soldiers of the Valish Defence Force scrambled to get to safety lest they, too, should fall.
A great trench had been carved in the road, the tarmac gone, the markings wiped clean, only a great scar in the earth — a scar that was lined with the wounded, burned men and women crying out for assistance.
They lined the scar which, like an arrow, pointed the way for the grimm into the city, when the grimm should appear.
And now, with the grimm yet delayed for now, the scar pointed the way for the mass of people who had been huddled beyond the wall and who now poured in through the shattered gate.
Like the water held back by the dam, which bursts through the slightest crack to flood the valley beyond, just so, the people of Vale, the people who had been told by Councillor Emerald to evacuate the city but had then found themselves denied access by the door slammed in their faces, now flooded through. They cared not for the wounded beneath their feet; they seemed to care little for one another, or for good order, or for anything but their fear, and their desire to put distance between themselves and the grimm who must surely be approaching now.
And so, they flooded into Vale, even though Vale could no longer be called a place of safety with the gate destroyed.
Nevertheless, the frightened people flooded in, and the cries of the wounded changed from cries of pain to cries of terror as they were trampled beneath the stampeding feet of all these people trying to get through. People fell, and Sunset could not see them rise again; she could see so little, so little beyond the sheer mass of people flooding forward in a tide — an unstoppable tide that would sweep them away if it hit them. They could not resist it. Their aura would be pummelled beneath pounding feet that hammered them as fiercely as any enemy.
"We need to move!" Weiss shouted.
Ruby was the first to get clear, escaping the onward path of the crowd near instantly, leaving only rose petals like drops of blood in her wake, to be trampled down by the crowd as they rushed down the trench. Sunset and Weiss were a little slower; Sunset picked up her bike in her telekinesis because otherwise, if she just left it there, then somebody was going to trip over it, and if that happened, they were liable to get their face stepped on.
They made it clear, both of them, all three of them, like swimmers reaching the bank of a river in spate, letting the flood of frantic, frightened people rush past them in all their terror — and with all the consequences for those caught in the flood.
There was nothing they could do. There was nothing that huntsmen could do about this. What could they do, charge into the frightened crowd with weapons drawn? Perhaps, at some point tonight, the right words — from Councillor Emerald, or Professor Ozpin, or someone that these people had cause to trust and to listen to — might have calmed them down, brought some order to the chaos, inspired or encouraged or shamed these people into calming down and proceeding through the gate in an orderly manner, but not now. Not after they had been stuck outside for so long, not with that dragon in the skies above, not with the grimm pressing against the defences, not with the gunfire of the Atlesians sounding so close, not with Atlesian airships roaring overhead, missiles streaking out from beneath their wings.
It was all much too dangerous now, and all these people were much too frightened. Nothing would stop them, least of all three students.
And it was hard, no, impossible, to blame them for what they might do in all their fear; it wasn't their fault that things had reached this pass.
Sunset, Ruby, and Weiss stood beside the wall, half-pressed up against the black concrete barrier that still rose up into the air, watching as the people flooded past them.
"Leaf's family is there," Ruby murmured. "At least, they were outside the walls; I saw them: her mom, her stepdad, her stepsister. I hope they make it through okay."
"'Make it through'?" Weiss asked. "Make it through what? The gate is gone, the wall is … breached. One side of the wall is no safer than the other."
"That's not true," Ruby insisted. "It's like I said, the gateway is a chokepoint, and that's true whether there's an actual gate or just a hole in the wall; it's still a gap which can be defended much more easily than anywhere else on the outskirts of Vale. Once everyone gets through, then all the huntsmen and the soldiers can fall back to the gateway and—"
"And stuff their bodies in the breach?" Sunset asked. "That might work, but not—"
The dragon roared triumphantly as it circled overhead. It did not dive down, it did not attack, it did not unleash another torrent of its glowing, burning breath; it merely circled overhead, as though the struggles of all those down below, their fear, their frantic desire to reach a place of greater safety, were a source of great pleasure and amusement to it.
Perhaps they were. If the grimm were attracted to negative emotions, then perhaps it stood to reason that it gave them pleasure, that the emotions themselves satisfied them, if not as much as the killing.
Or perhaps, for this dragon, killing was so easy and so lacking in challenge that it preferred to stand back a little and simply marinade in the terror that it spread by its very presence.
Either way, if one of those explanations was correct, if not, for whatever reason, if there was a reason, the dragon did not attack. It circled overhead, over the ruins of the gate that it had smashed aside like it was nothing, raising its head up to the shattered moon and roaring out its victory.
Roaring for the rest of the grimm to sweep aside all obstacles and reach the city that now lay wide open before them.
"That might work," Sunset said again, once the dragon's roars had ceased long enough for her to get a word in edgeways, "but not with that thing up there." She pointed up at the dragon. "Unless we can find some way to bring that grimm down, then nothing else that we do is going to matter."
Ruby sucked in a sharp intake of breath. "You're right," she admitted. "We can try and defend the chokepoint, but that dragon could just blast us all to nothing with its breath if it wanted to, or drop an Atlesian cruiser on our heads, or … I think, I'm sure that if we could just get the dragon out of the way, then we could hold the gap against the rest of the grimm, if only until…" She trailed off.
"Until what?" asked Weiss.
Until everything at Beacon is settled, I suppose, Sunset thought. Until Pyrrha and the others … until they stop Amber.
Or…
Sunset didn't want to think too deeply upon the 'or' part, though it scarcely required any thought; the 'or' was obvious. Either they would defeat Amber, or else…
Almost as worrying, almost as troubling, almost as much a load upon the mind was the question of what a victory for their friends would mean. Would it mean Amber dead, her blood upon Miló's red-and-gold blade?
That was … Amber had become an enemy too recently for Sunset to regard her death with even equanimity.
Even had she been their enemy for longer, even had Sunset known that she was their enemy for longer, for as long as it seemed that she had been their enemy, nevertheless, she could not have brought herself to wish for Amber's death.
Death was too ill a thing to wish on her.
It was too ill a thing for Sunset to wish it upon anyone.
But all of that … all of that was out of Sunset's hands. That was for Pyrrha, for Jaune, for Penny and all the rest; it was all for them to deal with, including Amber's fate if they should triumph over her as Sunset hoped they would.
For Sunset's part, for her part and Ruby's part and Weiss' part, there was the dragon in the skies above, the dragon that would laugh at all their plans and toss them all aside like a bad sport throwing the board across the room.
Unless they could kill it.
"Until … it doesn't matter," Ruby said. "The point is that the grimm won't keep attacking forever, and I'm sure that we can hold them off, if only we can kill the dragon so it can't just destroy everything that gets in its way." She growled wordlessly. "If only I could get my…"
"If only you could finish a sentence," Weiss muttered.
I'm guessing that this is something like 'if only I could use my silver eyes,' Sunset thought. That would be pretty useful right about now. But Professor Ozpin, who might have been able to tell Ruby how to use her silver eyes, had never gotten around to it.
And now he was dead, and would never divulge the secret.
"I've got … I've got a power that would — or that might — let me take that thing down," Ruby explained. "It's in my eyes, sort of; the trouble is, I don't know how to use it."
Weiss' own eyes, icy blue instead of silver, narrowed somewhat. "A power? But your semblance—"
"It's not a semblance, it's…" Ruby trailed off again, which might have become very annoying for Weiss if she hadn't moved on quickly afterwards. "It doesn't matter what it is, especially since I don't know how it works. It almost worked, before, after Yang … but the dragon attacked me before it could really … destroy it, and the spell was broken, and the dragon flew away. The only times it's ever worked, twice, were when someone's life has been in danger."
"Well, I suppose someone could always throw themselves into that creature's mouth," Weiss suggested dryly. "Although I'd prefer not to volunteer if there are any other options."
"This isn't…" Ruby began, but paused. "Don't worry, I wouldn't ask that. I wouldn't ask anyone to do that. Not when I'm not certain that it would work anyway. But, at the same time, I … I don't know what else we can do. Everyone's thrown everything they've got at this thing, and it's still there, as powerful as ever."
"The Mistralians say that such creatures have weak points," Sunset pointed out. "At least in their stories."
"And in Valish stories, this grimm died centuries ago at the hands of Percy!" Ruby snapped. "Maybe stories are just stories sometimes!" She stopped, taking a deep breath. "Sorry, that—"
"It's fine," Sunset muttered. "It's been a long night. And you could be right, maybe it doesn't have a weak spot, in which case … I don't know what we'll do, except maybe somebody really will have to jump into the dragon's mouth in hope of activating Ruby's eyes." But it couldn't be me because Ruby wouldn't care at this point, and since I can't do it myself, I'm not about to seriously suggest that anyone else should do it instead. "But, if we have any other options, any at all, then I think we should explore them, don't you?"
"Do we have any other options?" Ruby asked. "Or do we just have the hope of another option? Are you just hoping that there might be a weak point, somewhere, that will let us bring this dragon down, or do you have some reason to think that there is one even though none of the rest of us have seen it?"
"You might have," Sunset replied. She folded her arms. "Do you remember a specific bone plate, on the dragon's breast, just below the shoulder, around where you'd expect its heart to be?"
Ruby frowned. "The dragon … has a lot of bone plates."
"No," Sunset said. "No, it doesn't, not really, not like you'd expect from a grimm of that size. It's got a big thick skull, it's got visible ribs and some bone spurs on its shoulders and knees, but not a lot of bone, not like you'd see on an alpha beowolf or an ursa major. Not a lot of armour; it's mostly black. It's actually a little odd."
"Perhaps it can't fly with too much weight," Weiss suggested.
Perhaps, but I'm not sure how well this thing obeys the laws of physics, Sunset thought.
"Or maybe it needs to have a lot of flesh showing to drip down that grimm goo that spawns other grimm," Ruby suggested. "You've seen that, right?"
"Unfortunately, yes," Weiss murmured.
"Or perhaps it just doesn't need bone because it's practically invincible even without," Ruby said sharply. "Invulnerable, whatever."
"In which case, why does it have a patch of bone plate above its heart, or where its heart would be?" Sunset asked. "Could it be that that particular armour plate is concealing something, that it's protecting something?"
Weiss folded her arms across her chest. "That feels like quite the reach."
"Are we not operating in the realm of vast reaches at this point?" Sunset replied. "Are we not at the point where we need a million to one chance that just might work? Haven't we shot past the point at which we can only look at the obvious solutions?"
"Yes," Ruby said. "Yeah, we are. We definitely are. We have to consider all options, definitely, but…" She pulled out Crescent Rose, holding it upwards as the large scythe unfolded in her hands, the barrel extending outwards and upwards, the scythe blade extending with a sequence of clicks. Ruby held the rifle slightly awkwardly; being held up like this, it looked a little tricky to put it to her shoulder, but she was able to get her eye to the scope nonetheless.
Crescent Rose shifted a little in her grasp, as she deliberately weaved the weapon up and down, left and right, trying — Sunset guessed — to keep the dragon in view. She made a sort of tsking sound. "I can't see well enough. With this wall in the way, I can't get a good enough view, the dragon keeps passing onto the other side; I need to get higher."
"Allow me," Weiss replied as she drew Myrtenaster from her hip with a slight flourish. She gestured with the slender, needle-like blade, and a staircase of glowing white glyphs began to appear in the air beside her, a diagonal staircase of glyphs climbing upwards towards the top of the wall.
"Thanks, Weiss," Ruby called as she took the lead in leapfrogging up the staircase of glyphs, moving from left to right, then left again, every jump bringing her a little higher up the black wall that rose above them.
Ruby was moving quickly, easily outpacing Weiss as she tried to follow, and so rather than using Weiss' glyphs herself, Sunset used reverse gravity to lift herself upwards through the air, floating upwards towards the top of the wall.
Considering that she couldn't see a nearby staircase or lift, it was just as well that they had other means of getting up the top of this wall; otherwise, they might have had to go considerably out of their way in order to get up here.
Ruby reached the top first, with Sunset close behind and then Weiss bringing up the rear afterwards, panting a little as she finally leapt off her last glyph — the others had all vanished behind her, fading into nothingness — after Sunset, her spell ceased, had dropped down onto the rampart.
The wall that marked and constituted Vale's Red Line, its final line of defence, the point beyond which the grimm could not be allowed to pass, was wide, wide enough for a large number of people — twenty, maybe, twelve at least — to walk abreast along the parapet where now the three huntresses stood. It was wide enough to accommodate the great guns to be mounted not only on top of the wall, but also within it too, the guns that could be seen protruding from the outside of the wall as one approached the gate.
None of those guns were firing now, though Sunset could see at least one gun as clear as the moonlight allowed, its large barrel pointed upwards at a forty-five degree angle; the gun itself seeming to be mounted on rails which ran for a short distance along the wall, allowing the gun to shift position somewhat.
But it wasn't firing. Sunset couldn't even see for sure if it had a crew. In fact, considering the situation, there were not very many soldiers up here at all. The wall was not deserted, but the defenders of Vale were few and far between, and getting fewer as soldiers ran past Sunset, Ruby, and Weiss, heading away from the dragon, if nowhere else.
Mind, considering the situation, considering what had happened, perhaps the small number of soldiers wasn't too surprising.
"Cowards," Weiss muttered, her voice loaded with contempt.
"They're scared," Ruby said, quietly but with evident reproach in her own voice sufficient to match all Weiss' contempt.
Weiss snorted. "Listen to those guns," she said, gesturing out beyond the wall, out into the outskirts of Vale from whence they could hear the firing of the Atlesian troops. "You don't think our boys out there are scared? But you don't see them running away, do you?"
"'Our boys'?" Sunset asked.
Weiss didn't respond.
Ruby's hands tightened their grip around Crescent Rose. "Just because they're afraid, doesn't mean that … it's not a reason for us to judge them, just because we're braver than they are."
She glanced at Sunset, or at least Sunset thought that she did, or might have done. She probably hadn't, actually. It was hard for Sunset to make out.
It didn't matter either way.
"Would it be better if they stayed?" Ruby went on. "Maybe, probably, except … what are they going to do against that thing up there?" She paused. "What are…?" She trailed off and turned away from Weiss, once more raising her scythe and rifle upwards, placing her eye to the scope — even if she had to do so in a slightly ungainly fashion — to look at the dragon as it circled in the air above the broken gate.
Waiting for its legions to break through the defences and swarm through the open door, Sunset thought.
"I think…" Ruby said. "I think I see what Sunset is talking about. An armour plate, on its own, with nothing around it."
"That's not so unusual," Weiss pointed out. "Most grimm don't have complete suits of armour; there are usually gaps between the plates of bone."
"Yeah, but this … it just looks strange, like it doesn't fit. Sunset could have a point; it could be hiding something," Ruby said. She lowered Crescent Rose. "And Sunset's right; we need to take any chance that we can at this point. I don't know about the Atlesians, but with the numbers of the grimm, I … I don't know how long the Beacon and Haven students can hold them off on the left flank."
"Okay," Weiss said. "But what is the change, what is the plan? You say that the weak spot is the bone plate?"
"No," Sunset replied. "I think, assuming that I'm on anything like the right track with this, which I might not be, then the armour is protecting the weak spot, and that if we can break it or shatter it in some way, then that will reveal the dragon's weak spot, and we can kill it."
"Very well," Weiss muttered. "As you've admitted, it's a long shot, but what makes it even longer is that … how are we supposed to crack or remove or do anything to that specific armour plate, that has endured laser fire and missiles and everything else? If it's stayed intact and in place throughout all of that, then what are we supposed to do to it?"
Sunset didn't reply right away. It was a hard question to reply to. The answer, or at least the obvious answer, the answer that sprung to mind, was that the alternative was to admit that the dragon was invincible and just give up, and nobody wanted that — or at least, Sunset hoped that nobody wanted that. But it wasn't much of an answer, was it, to say that something was the only option so it would have to work? It wasn't a plan; it wasn't an answer to how they were going to do something.
And yet, they would have to find some way to make it work, because they might be out of other options — unless Ruby could make her silver eyes work right now, with no instruction and no training.
But how? Weiss had asked a very good question: what were they going to do? What were they supposed to do? How were they supposed to defeat something that had withstood all assaults of its enemies up until this point?
"It's not invulnerable," Ruby said. "It's been hurt already; you can see, there's a wound on its side."
"There is?" Sunset asked.
"Yes, on its left flank, you can see it," Ruby said, holding up Crescent Rose to her eye once more. She held the rifle there for a moment, tracking the dragon's movements, until she said, "There! Right there, between the second and third ribs, and just above them." She stepped back, letting someone else peer into the scope of Crescent Rose.
Weiss stepped up first, sidling in beside Ruby and bending down — not that she had to bend down much — to look down the sights of the rifle. "Yes," she murmured. "Yes, I see. I wonder what did that. It's a sizable injury too. I wonder why nothing else has been able to replicate it?"
"What is it?" Sunset asked.
"See for yourself," Weiss answered as she stepped away.
As Weiss stepped back, Sunset stepped around Ruby. She had to bend down a little more than Weiss had done in order to get low enough and to see through the scope from the right angle, but she was able to do it, and she looked up at the dragon that now seemed much larger in her sight — alarmingly so.
At first, Sunset couldn't see anything; the dragon had turned away again and was presenting its right side to her, not its left. But Ruby kept the scope fixed upon the enormous grimm, and eventually, as it continued to circle lazily above, smug in its own invulnerability, Sunset could see what Ruby had been talking about.
Between the dragon's second and third ribs, and just above them, just as Ruby had said, was a great gash in the grimm's flank, a gaping, yawning maw in the grimm's black flesh as though a great spear had been driven into its side. A pit into the blackness, from which only more blackness, more grimm essence, could be beheld.
But it showed that the dragon could be wounded; Sunset did not believe, not for a moment, that such a chasm in its flesh was a part of the dragon naturally; that had been done to it by someone or something.
Someone or something, whoever they were, had demonstrated that though the dragon might be proof against lasers or missiles, it was not proof against every assault or every weapon.
It could be hurt. They had a chance.
A slim chance, perhaps, but a chance nonetheless.
And any chance was better than no chance at all in circumstances such as these.
But what to do, what to do, what to do? Just because the dragon could be injured by something — as good a something as that was to know — didn't mean that…
But you could think yourself into despair with thoughts like that, think yourself into a state of utter helplessness that was no, well, no use to anybody.
The dragon could be hurt; that meant they had to assume that they could hurt it, otherwise what was the point? They had to assume that or give up, just like they had to assume that it had a weakness, and proceed on a growing tower of assumptions because they were the only hope they had.
The only thing they had to go on.
The dragon could be hurt, some brave soul had proven that, which meant that if they could only … Sunset stopped, calling a halt to her thoughts which had, like an army in pursuit, scattered all over the battlefield seeking the enemy here and there and at their camp. Now, Sunset sounded the rally on her trumpet and recalled them to order, reordering her lines for best advantage.
The fire from the Atlesian airships, great or small, had not fazed the grimm, so if they were assuming so much else, they could similarly surmise that none of their smaller firearms would do what lasers and missiles could not and crack that plate of armour.
Possibly, it would also be a poor idea to rely on some blunt physical force to shatter the plate also. But if they could … pull it off, or slice it off, or in some like way remove it, then perhaps…
The dragon could be injured, and just as importantly, it looked as though that particular injury had come from a piercing blow, like a great lance or a sword thrust forward. If the dragon could be injured that way once, why not again?
"If we can get close enough," Sunset said, "then we can slice the bone plate off like slicing the rotten bit off a baking potato."
Weiss made a wordless noise of disgust.
"You think that will work?" asked Ruby.
"I think it's worth a shot," replied Sunset.
"I think just about anything is worth a shot," Ruby responded. "But how—?"
"How are we going to get close enough?" Weiss guessed.
Ruby nodded. "Exactly. It's come down before, but do we just want to wait until it does?"
"No," Sunset replied. "Apart from anything else, it might not, not again. No, we need to draw it down, to us." She took a deep breath as her thoughts continued to advance in a steady, disciplined line. "I'll get the dragon's attention and draw it down onto myself," she said. "When it comes down, Weiss will help Ruby slice away the bone plate, and then, if that reveals a weakness as we hope it will, you can shoot it or stab it or shoot it and stab it and bring this thing down, and take the grimm's strongest piece off the board."
There was a pause, a moment of quiet on the wall before Weiss said, "And if there is no weak spot? If the idea that there is is as much a Mistralian nonsense as the Valish nonsense of this particular grimm being killed by a hero centuries ago?"
"Then we try and survive long enough to come up with a new plan," Sunset said.
Weiss snorted. "Fair enough."
"If you get the dragon's attention," Ruby said, "if it's chasing you, then it will be moving too quickly — or it might be — for Weiss and me to do what we have to do." She paused. "There's a girl, a Shade student, Umber Gorgoneion. Her semblance lets her freeze things in place with her gaze. We've used it on the dragon once already; if we get her help—"
"Won't the grimm be expecting that, if you've already caught it with that trick once?" asked Weiss. "I can hold it still with my glyphs, for a little while, if need be."
"Can you?" asked Sunset. "With a grimm so big?"
"Yes," Weiss said. "If not for long."
"I don't like the idea of trying this with just the three of us," said Ruby. "I've already blown one chance at taking this thing down, and…" She shook her head, only once, but vigorously. "It's not going to keep giving us free shots at it. This might be our last chance; we need more people who can take over if anything happens to us. Ren and Nora at least, maybe a few others if they can be spared from the fighting. Just so it doesn't all depend on us."
Sunset nodded. That made sense. "Who do you have in mind?"
Sunset stood on the ground, in the street, in the part of Vale that lay beyond the walls, beyond the shattered Freedom Gate.
Sunset understood from Ruby that this part of the city had been jam-packed not too long ago, cramped with all the people who had come on the Councillor's words and found the gate shut to them. Yet now, these exposed Valish suburbs were quiet. Everyone had fled through the ruins of the gate — or been trampled trying to flee through the ruins of the gate — and there was no one left out here, beyond the suddenly dubious safety of the breached walls and broken gate.
That was all to the good. The idea of trying to pull this off amidst a heaving, frightened crowd … it was too monstrous to bear thinking about.
But they had fled, and though the place they had fled to might not be much safer for them if the grimm broke through, nevertheless, they had done the huntsmen a service: they had cleared the stage for the performance.
Sunset was all alone. She knew that there were others nearby, Ruby and Weiss, Ren and Nora amongst them, but she couldn't see them. They were concealed amongst the suburban buildings that lurked about the shadow of the mighty walls, concealed from the dragon's view as much as from Sunset's eyes.
With luck on their side, it wouldn't suspect a thing.
They would need luck on their side for more than that, of course. But it would be a good start.
It was … inconvenient to be down here on the street, so far below the dragon as it circled overhead; from the perspective of her own part in all this, it would have been better to have been up on the wall and closer to the target. But the wall — wide for a wall though it was — was too narrow and too lacking in concealment for the other elements of their plan to come together.
Up on the wall, everybody else would have been too exposed. Down here, only Sunset was exposed, by design.
She bore the black sword, so she would play the Mistralian warrior's part and face the enemy head on, beneath the light of the moon while all others hid like bandits and waited for their ideal moment.
Sunset did not object to that, but being so far below the dragon did complicate the question of getting its attention.
Even if she was able to hurt it, attacks that might have done so when closer might lose much potency over the great divide of open sky that lay between.
Yet she had to get its attention nonetheless, or the whole plan would collapse.
Sunset tugged on studded lapels of her leather jacket, adjusting the fit; it had started to lie a little crooked.
She looked down at her hands, enfolded within the white silk of her bridal gloves that had gotten a little dirty and in need of dry cleaning.
She held out those hands on the stained and grubby gloves, holding them out away from her, stretching the sleeves of her jacket as though she were straining to show that there was nothing up said sleeves.
"Okay," Sunset muttered. "Let's do this."
Sunset cast the first spell on herself, a spell colloquially known as Meadowbrook's Magical Microphone — colloquially known because they hadn't had microphones in Mage Meadowbrook's day — to amplify her own voice. Sadly, it didn't imbue her voice with any Siren-like special abilities, but it did make her very loud.
Loud enough that her voice resounded to the heavens, striking the stars and the ears of the dragon besides as she shouted, "Hey! Down here, you monstrous blackguard!"
That was not, perhaps, the best opener ever, but there would be no point in using the good lines before the dragon had started paying attention. If it only perked its ears up partway through, it wouldn't have any idea what she was talking about.
As it was, as far away as they were, Sunset saw — thought she saw, hoped she saw, needed to believe she saw — the dragon's giant bony skull turn downwards in her direction.
"That's right, you remember me, don't you?" Sunset asked, and even those words were magnified by the spell so that they boomed out across Vale.
Sunset drew Soteria from across her back. She did not set the blade on fire, because it wasn't drama so much as gravitas that Sunset was after right now. She didn't know how good the dragon's eyesight was, but she wanted it to be able to see the black and venerable blade itself, unobstructed by any flames or artifice.
Sunset raised the sword beside her head, her feet shifting into a high guard stance, sword drawn back and poised to strike.
Not that it really mattered, but as she stood there, an ancient sword of heroic antiquity in her hands, with a monster among monsters hovering overhead, Sunset fancied that she looked every inch the hero.
Hopefully, the dragon thought so too, and didn't think to wonder if this might be a setup.
"My name," Sunset shouted, her voice echoing through the empty streets and across the yawning expanse of sky, "is Sunset Shimmer. In my hands, I bear Soteria, which was carried for the Emperors of Mistral down through generations! This sword has tasted of the flesh of mightier grimm than you, great though you are, and now shall taste of yours if you will not but come in reach!"
The dragon laughed, that unpleasant, grating, saw-like laugh that seemed to whip back and forth as it sliced through Sunset's ears. It had no need to speak; that laugh was all the answer it need give: why should it, a mighty grimm, a lord of the battlefield, descend in every sense to answer the challenge of a single girl?
"Are you a coward, then?" Sunset demanded. "Does the great beast know fear?"
The dragon growled, a soft growl by its standards, but even a soft growl from such a creature echoed through the night.
Sunset fought to control the trembling in her knees. "No? Yet it must be so, or why do you hang so safe up there and not come down to swat me like a fly?"
The dragon roared now, a great bellowing roar that echoed off the houses, that echoed off the Red Line wall, that echoed back and forth and through Sunset's ears and her whole body and made her tremble, though Sunset sought to hide her trembling. She cast another spell, this one to muffle her ears; what would have protected her from the Sirens song would surely also protect her from the dragon's shriek which, they said, could undo any heart that was less untouched by fear than Ruby's was.
And she thought the dragon might shriek; it would deal with the accusation of cowardice by making a coward of its foe, by undoing their heart and setting them to flight.
But if Sunset could seem to withstand its call, then … then she might get its attention.
And so, Sunset stood firm while the dragon opened its mouth gaping wide, though she knew not what sound now emerged from it.
Whatever it was, Sunset stood firm as though she, too, were without fear.
"Coward!" she roared, though Sunset could no longer hear her own voice speaking. "I am the bearer of the black sword, champion of the House of Nikos, and I am not afraid. Come down, creature of the dark, come down, great wyrm, or flee back to your mountain lair and let all know you were afraid to face a single huntress!"
Now, they would see the vanity of this grimm. Now, they would see how surfeit swollen up with pride it was. Now they would see how easy it was to prick the ego of such a monster.
Frankly, if it were her, Sunset would have quite an ego indeed. If she were so invulnerable, able to shrug off all the fire of Atlas, able to lay waste to armies and pierce the defences of great cities so they lay open to the hordes of grimm, she would be very proud indeed. Proud and vain and ill-disposed to suffer slights from little huntresses with old swords.
Plus, there was the fact that grimm were made to kill. It was what, according to Professor Ozpin, they had been made for by the old gods of Remnant. To destroy, to kill, that was their reason, and for younger grimm, it was their only thought. Older grimm could master the killing extinct, to an extent, but it remained there at their core. Restraint did not come naturally to these monsters as violence did.
And when instinct united with vanity…
The dragon swooped down, red wings swept back on either side, neck extended out and forwards and straight towards Sunset as it fell upon her like a thunderbolt.
Sunset couldn't hear the dragon's sound, but with its mouth gaping open, she thought it must be roaring fiercely as it descended on her, the impudent impugnar of its courage.
Sunset dropped the spell that was amplifying her voice, though she kept on muffling her ears lest the dragon shriek again.
"Come on," she muttered. "Come on."
The dragon came down out of the sky like a wolf on the fold, its immense skull gleaming brilliant white under the light of the fractured moon.
It swept down on Sunset, not so much flying as falling through the skies towards her. Its mouth was open gaping wide, wide enough to swallow an airship whole, never mind an impertinent huntress.
But the yellow light that was beginning to glow in the depths if the dragon's maw said it had other thoughts than swallowing her in mind.
Sunset took one hand away from the cold hilt of Soteria; her dirty gloves were wreathed in green as a bolt of magic leapt from her palm and flew like an arrow straight into the dragon's open mouth.
Sunset couldn't hear the sound the dragon made, she couldn't hear what cry of pain or irritation burst from it, but though her ears were muffled, she could see plain as day the way those monstrous jaws snapped shut, the way the way that great head upon that long neck wriggled like a worm on a hook, the way that it fairy jumped upwards, the way the dragon shook its head from side to side as though it had swallowed a bee.
Sunset had hoped — a little less than half hoped — that the power the dragon had been building up might explode in its own gullet and blow its head off. It was not to be, but she was gratified by the fact that she seemed to have pained the creature nonetheless.
At the very least, judging by the way its red eyes seemed to burn hotter than before, she had enraged it. It glared at her with a burning gaze as it completed its descent, dropping down almost to the level of the street as great wings beat to drive it on. Those same wings crushed the upper levels of three-storey houses with their beating, leaving collapsing rubble and roof tiles sliding down onto the road in its wake, whilst its claws dragged along the tarmac, leaving long scars running down the road.
The dragon's mouth was closed now; Sunset thought it had been put off trying to eat her lest she toss another spell down its throat. Instead, it would scoop her up in its claws, or perhaps seek to catch her in that tail that swiped eagerly from side to side behind it.
Sunset grinned as she dropped the spell to muffle her ears, and — just in case the dragon changed its mind about opening its mouth — she hit it with another spell that flew from her palm.
One that sewed up its mouth completely. The monstrous jaws of the monstrous grimm vanished from view, replaced by what was or seemed almost a mask, a mask of solid bone from which only muffled sounds of incandescent fury could emerge, half heard and indistinct as the dragon tossed its head from one side to the other.
It would swallow nothing now, though it had weapons enough still to make it dangerous.
Sunset roared in challenge as the dragon closed in, all its monstrous, furious attention fixed upon her.
The dragon swept down the street, intent on Sunset, only for a trio of white glyphs, brilliant white, shining like the moon in darkness, to appear around its neck, just before its shoulders. Two more glyphs appeared, then another, then another, all of them shimmering into sight around the dragon's neck like ornate collars as the dragon was stopped dead in its tracks.
The dragon tried to roar through its mouthless bone mask as it shook its head, its neck, its whole entire body from side to side, trying to break free. It beared its wings trying to push forwards, but for now, it was held fast by Weiss' semblance.
The first huntress to emerge out of concealment was Nora, cackling loudly as she burst out of a roof, tiles flying around her, with Magnhild drawn back. She landed on top of the dragon's neck, just behind the head, and clung on with one hand as with the other she brandished her hammer above her head and brought it down upon the dragon's skull.
The dragon shook its head furiously, slamming into the buildings on either side in its efforts to throw Nora off. Its tail whipped up, reaching for her with its three claws, but Ren was the next to come out of hiding, leaping through the same hole Nora had made, following her onto the dragon's neck, turning his Stormflowers upon its tail. Both pistols blazed away, and when the tail got too close, he slashed at it with the blades mounted beneath the barrels.
One of Weiss' glyphs shattered, dissolving into nothing as the dragon pushed forwards.
Sunset charged with a great shout, and so did others as they, too, emerged from their hiding places: Arslan Altan, Coco Adel, Neptune Vasilias, Umber Gorgoneion, and Gregory Douglas, all that could be spared from the fighting against the grimm pushing inwards towards the shattered gate. Sunset understood from Ruby that they had assailed the dragon with more the last time, with all the strength of Beacon and Haven combined.
Hopefully, the dragon did not take their reduced numbers as an indication of lack of effort on their part.
The five of them charged from the ground floor, bursting out of doors or smashing through windows; they charged towards the dragon, and Sunset charged too, firing magical bolts towards it as she ran.
They attacked the dragon's feet, and they struck down the juvenile grimm that rose from the dripping pools of black grimm ooze that fell from the dragon to land upon the scarred tarmac. Arslan's fists and feet alike flew as she leapt up to pummel the dragon's ankles, then dropped down to deal with some juveniles. Coco's rotary machine gun sprayed bullets upwards to rake the dragon's flank. Neptune switched fluidly between gun and polearm modes, shooting the dragon or stabbing the juveniles as appropriate. Umber had two whips, one for her giant opponent and another for the small fry. Gregory laid about him with his greatsword.
Sunset used her sword to strike down the newly spawned grimm, and would sometimes stab upwards unto the pads of the dragon's feet or thrust her black sword between its claws, even as she fired bolt after bolt into its not so soft underbelly.
They assailed the dragon whenever their strength allowed them, whenever the incessantly spawning juvenile grimm allowed them. They hit the grimm with everything they had.
Almost as though they were trying to hurt it.
And then, as the dragon pushed through glyph after glyph that held it fast, as it shattered Weiss' glyphs faster than she could replace them, and as the dragon became accustomed to attack from down below, Ruby struck.
She leapt through a second-storey window, shards of shattered glass flying around her as surely as rose petals. She flew through the air, Crescent Rose drawn back in her hands, the immense scythe flying behind her even more than her blood red cape as she flew past the front of the dragon.
And like a knife severing the crust from the loaf of bread, she sliced through the dragon's black flesh to cut the armour plate from off its breast.
The bone plate fell, and began to turn to ashes even as it fell, and on the dragon's breast, below its shoulder, where its heart would have been if it had a heart, there was revealed a red and throbbing mark, pulsating with a strange energy, dark red waves rippling slightly across the dragon's black flesh.
It looked … it looked almost as though the dragon did have a heart after all, and they had uncovered it.
Sunset wanted to cheer as she stabbed downwards through the neck of a juvenile boarbatusk spawned out of black grimm ooze. She wanted to howl in triumph but forced restraint upon herself — for now. That mark, that pulsing mark, was surely something important to the grimm, and when they—
The dragon burst through the last of Weiss' glyphs, the white collar that had restrained it dissolving into nothing. The dragon's legs touched the claw-scarred tarmac of the road for just long enough to kick off it, shattering the road yet more beneath its power as the dragon took to the skies once more. Nora and Ren leapt off the dragon's back before it rose too high, both of them dodging the grasping claws of the dragon's tail as they landed heavily upon the ground below.
The dragon's roars were muffled by the absence of a mouth as its wings beat furiously, carrying it upwards. Coco's rotary gun spat bullets, tracer rounds so fast they looked like laser bolts slamming into the grimm, but it had its rump and tail to them, and Coco's fire did not find the newly revealed weak point.
The dragon rose, upwards and upwards, out of reach of the swords and fists of the huntsmen and huntresses, and as it rose, it roared, the sounds muffled—
A blast of yellow energy ripped from the dragon's throat to blast a hole in the bone mask that Sunset's magic had made of its mouth. With a cracking, tearing sound that could be heard below, it tore its own mouth open, shattering the bone in jagged edges until it had two toothless jaws once more, like an old man with wisps of hair and wrinkled gums.
An old man with a roar of such rage that it made Sunset's whole body shiver, and Soteria dropped from her trembling hands to clatter on the road.
The dragon circled over them, red eyes burning as bright as stars, a yellow light beginning to burn brighter in a throat that was once more clear to view.
It was too high for Sunset to clearly see its weak point now, but Sunset thought the dragon's breath would reach them easily enough.
"Ruby, can you get it?" she asked.
Ruby's response was to eject the magazine from Crescent Rose and then pull one of the individual silver cartridges that she wore at her belt out into her hand.
The cartridge glistened in her pale hand as she raised it to her lips and kissed it.
Then she chambered it, slamming into the open breach and charging it with a snap.
She knelt, her body dropping down as she raised her rifle up towards the sky.
Crescent Rose moved in her hands, waving like a ship tossed upon the waves, this way, then that.
The yellow glow in the dragon's throat burned brightly now.
"Everyone run!" Arslan shouted.
The movements of Crescent Rose became gentler, a rising and facing with Ruby's breath. Breath that Sunset could hear, in and out.
The dragon's breath began to lance down towards them.
Ruby fired.
The muzzle of Crescent Rose blazed with fire, blinding bright. Its loud report was the only sound in the world, all else seeming for a moment to fall silent.
The dragon's breath died before it reached them, the yellow beam fizzling out to nothingness. The dragon itself hung for a moment in the skies above.
Then it began to fall, silently but surely, little drops of ash trailing after its great body as it fell, but not enough, not near enough, to dissolve the corpse before it hit the ground.
Now, the huntsmen and huntresses ran, scattering in all directions to escape the falling dragon and its bulk before it landed with an immense crashing thump.
The ground trembled as the dragon landed, crushing empty dwellings beneath its monstrous form, turning houses to rubble, scarring the wall itself with one wing that raked a gash down the black exterior, dragging guns from their barbettes and dumping them at the foot of the wall.
And so, the dragon lay beside the wall, amidst the ruins of this part of outer Vale, still and silent and slowly dissolving and dead.
The dragon was dead.
The dragon was dead, and they had killed it.
Sunset and the others stared at the slowly decaying corpse, and she wondered if anyone else, like her, was scarcely able to believe it.
Sunset looked at Ruby, stood beside. Praise too effusive, gestures too familiar, would be inappropriate for their circumstances, so Sunset merely said, in a gruff voice. "That was a superb shot. Congratulations, Dragonslayer."
Ruby glanced at her, and was silent for a moment. "Thanks," she said quietly.
Slowly, tentatively, like she was dealing with a skittish animal that might take fright and bolt at any moment, she held out one fist towards Sunset.
Sunset stared at it, unsure — or unbelieving — what was being offered.
Her movements were as tentative as Ruby's own as she clenched her own fist with her dirty, sweat stained glove, and gently bumped her knuckles against Ruby's own.