Chapter 33 – Ruby's Blood

If there was any small kindness, it was that the Summer maiden engaged her in close combat rather than flying high and raining down hellfire and meteor showers from above.

It might've been a sign of respect, showing that Ruby's tale had touched her heart and persuaded her to give the young maiden-usurper a fair chance. It might have been a preference for hand-to-hand fighting; the maiden was a beefy woman and did have a melee weapon. It might've just been arrogance. Either way, it was a blessing, because it gave Ruby the chance to be demolished in a fair fight rather than from afar.

In a land of sandstorms, control of the weather made one a dangerous woman. Lìxià's powers were immense, and she was able to envelop herself in a bubble of air and ravage the world around her with a massive, abrasive cloud of sand. Ruby had once needed to clean the muzzle of Crescent Rose by sandblasting, and now she knew how it felt to be the gun part inside that tiny chamber.

Still, she wasn't losing without inflicting some damage. The pitchfork that the woman wielded, Original Sin, didn't mechshift, but it was enhanced by metal braces running up and down the length of the wooden haft. It was a poor huntress' weapon, but the weapon of a huntress just the same.

And yet, despite all her claims of training day in and day out, Lìxià wasn't much better as melee than Ruby.

Her body is tough, but her form is weak. She's trained on her own, with no teacher to learn from or partner to spar against. Her obsessive devotion to isolation might be a strength in any other scenario, but it's made her stagnate. I, on the other hand, have been fighting for my life against a wide variety of opponents for the months I've been with Salem. Cinder condensed entire years' worth of training into our brief time together, and I was up against the drones in Atlas multiple times every day for nearly a month.

Ruby also had the advantage of having a weapon that she'd been modifying and perfecting since birth, almost. Crescent Rose could use Dust, had shock absorbers to eat reverberations and spare her hands, and mechshifted into multiple forms.

On top of that, Ruby's shawl gave her decent defense against the sandstorm. Her semblance was incredibly useful in combat, and the maiden had yet to even use her own. The advantages in her favor seemed to be piled high.

The maiden powers might be the be-all and end-all, but this particular maiden wasn't fundamentally better than Ruby. She certainly was winning right now, but she wasn't invincible, and to Ruby, that made a world of difference.

If she was losing, that meant she wasn't fighting aggressively enough. Ruby decided to go on the offensive.

A short burst of sniper fire shepherded the maiden towards the house in which she lived. Ruby didn't land many of her shots, but the threat of damage was enough to push her back. Lìxià tried to regain the lost ground by thrusting forth her pitchfork, but Ruby recognized it as a feint and didn't take the bait.

Her semblance activated twice in short succession. The first time was to body-slam Lìxià into the wooden wall of her abode, and the second time was to use the spinning attack she had practiced on Tyrian. With her back to the wall, literally, Lìxià took five back-to-back hits from the blade of Crescent Rose before she managed to blow Ruby away with a strong gust of wind.

Leaning into it, Ruby peppered her enemy with even more gunshots, simultaneously using the action to control her flight and land closer to the edge of the small lake.

Maiden powers are elemental, and water is an element. It might seem like obvious bait, but she hasn't fought anyone in twenty years, so her talent for detecting tricks must be rusty.

Ruby switched Crescent Rose into a war scythe and turned her back to the lake. Right on cue, the sound of rushing water filled her ears.

She turned around like a whirlwind, slicing through the crashing wave of water with her scythe and deflecting the attack entirely. However, that turned her back to Lìxià herself, and she roared forward with the power of flight.

Ruby had no choice but to take the hit as the twin prongs of Lìxià's pitchfork shot into her. Grunting through the pain, she kicked backwards randomly and was rewarded with a satisfying growl as her foot hit her enemy's stomach.

Ruby jumped off her other foot and landed another kick against her opponent's head. Catching herself in a handstand before she fell to the ground, she rolled in a single fluid motion into a crouch and shot two more shots into Lìxià's face.

"KRAAAAH!"

The world exploded in flames as Lìxià threw her arms down reflexively. Ruby's aura protected her, but that attack was much heavier than the gradual aura-drain of the sandstorms.

She's only better than me when she busts out her maiden powers, but she's a lot better than me when she does.

Ruby needed to end this fight quickly. Her aura was slow to regenerate relatively, and she was probably down to 50% already.

By her count, she had about ten more shots left on Crescent Rose. Her original plan had been to use them primarily as a means to move herself about the battlefield, but that no longer seemed like a feasibly strategy if random explosions of fire could end the battle at any moment.

Ruby mentally commanded Grubbie to exit out of her hand and crawl onto the tip of Crescent. From this distance and with all of the winds swirling around in a chaotic frenzy, it was probably all but impossible for Lìxià to see him, which was what Ruby was counting on.

Swinging her scythe like a cricket bat, Ruby intentionally missed the hit and let her Scarab sail through the air until it was behind Lìxià's back. It held its position on the ground, awaiting Ruby's order and letting its thick bone plating protect it from the dust.

Ruby charged forward, locking her own blade into her enemy's until they were both pressing forward with all their might just to hold back the other's weapon. The Summer maiden was the stronger woman of the two, but Ruby had angled Crescent so that the barrel faced away from her. Thus, when she discharged five of her remaining shots one after the other, it gave her enough of a boost to push her back towards where Grubbie lay in waiting.

Two more shots were fired in extremely short succession, enabling Ruby to strike the enemy right at the center of her chest and knock her off her feet.

Her last three shots were used to bring Crescent down in a mighty sweep that dug its tip nearly a foot into the rock, pinning Lìxià. Ruby wrapped her tiny hands around her opponent's thick neck did her best to pretend that her grand strategy was to choke her out. Meanwhile, Grubbie bit his mandibles into her hair, hidden from sight and likely forgotten altogether by the maiden.

I shouldn't have shown him to her. Dust, I shouldn't have even come to her.

Ruby couldn't bring herself to regret it. Even if this mission was the death of her, making the choice to try to spare her opponent mattered. If Salem's victory condition was corrupting Ruby into a true villain, then holding herself back and not doing that would be a win in Ruby's eyes.

Two strong arms pried two far weaker hands away, and Ruby found the tables turned on her as Lìxià wrapped her much larger fingers around her throat. She saw it coming, but her brain took too long to realize what it meant, and she wasn't able to get a breath in before her windpipe was clamped down on.

Lìxià's lips were moving, and she was probably saying something really heartful or maybe some great trash talk, but Ruby couldn't hear it over the shrieking whip of the winds. The maiden had previously protected herself from the sandstorm by using a small bubble of air to shield herself, but now that Ruby was in her personal space, she'd dropped the shield and let the sands buffet them both.

She cares more about stopping me than saving herself. She really wasn't lying when she said that her own life doesn't matter as much as her mission.

If they both died, who would get the power? Ruby frowned at the thought of both women failing. If that happened, Ruby's interference would only have made the situation worse by depriving a trained maiden of her powers and forcing it into an untrained host.

I can't let that happen. It's horrible, but I need to kill her to ensure that it doesn't all go to waste. Her death will have a purpose if I'm the one to end her life.

Her vision started to turn black, indicating that a loss of consciousness from asphyxiation was coming, so Ruby gave Grubbie the command. She watched as he crawled from her hair onto her face and into her open mouth with the speed and urgency of a bolt of lightning.

Lìxià clearly had forgotten about him or assumed him to be too weak to matter, and she would pay the price for her shortsightedness. Grubbie's legs and teeth were razor sharp, so every step he took inside of her mouth was like a ball of barbed wire being swallowed, and that wasn't even the worst of it. Around halfway on the journey through her esophagus (when he was thoroughly protected from any jaw-clenching based defense or stomach acids), he dug his feet into the lining of her throat and held tight.

It must've been a special kind of agony, to be actively choked by an enemy on the inside. Ruby tried not to think about it as she desperately crawled over the where she'd dropped Crescent Rose. Lìxià was pounding her fist into her upper chest in an attempt to dislodge Grubbie, but Ruby knew it was over for her.

She had to pull up and down, wobbling Crescent left and right until it slowly popped out of the solid rock she'd stabbed it down into. There were some scratches on her baby from being so poorly treated, but Ruby could barely focus on that right now.

It was time.

Lìxià's eyes weren't full of fear as Ruby raised her scythe for the killing blow, nor were they angry or vengeful. She just looked disappointed in herself for having failed.

But you haven't failed, Ruby wanted to say. Salem isn't getting the powers; I am, and I have every intention of defecting back to Ozpin once Raven is taken care of.

With Grubbie preoccupied by choking the maiden, there was no way Ruby could use him to steal away the powers nonlethally. Killing her was the only way.

I'm so sorry, Lìxià. This isn't what I wanted. I tried to find another way.

This felt so wrong. Not just because killing a good guy was inherently wrong, but because she was doing more than just killing her. Ruby was rendering all the years she'd spent living in isolation, safeguarding the maiden powers by sequestering herself away from the world, useless. The worst part about –

Ruby felt something in her back.

Then it was in her front.

Looking down, she saw a tendril of water poking out of a hole in her gut. Blood was seeping out past her skin into the water, slowly diffusing around randomly as it left her body. Ruby turned her head over her shoulder to see the water trailing back to the lake from which it had come.

I really shouldn't have spent all that time thinking about stuff, Ruby thought to herself as she collapsed. I should've just killed her.

Grubbie remained inside Lìxià's throat when she'd done the attack, steadfast in his obedience to Ruby's orders to disable her from within. When Ruby went down, he remained just as compliant and continued to block air from entering her lungs.

Both women were in grievous danger now. Ruby was struggling to clutch her stomach enough to prevent it from losing too much blood while simultaneously dragging herself away from the water to prevent another attack, and Lìxià was probably only a few breaths away from losing consciousness.

Ruby's red aura was slowly patching the hole in her stomach back together, and while it wouldn't be enough to save her entirely, she could in theory last until it broke with enough of the damage undone to survive – assuming the tendrils of water that were slowly inching after her didn't end her life first. The maiden was tiring, and so her magic's pursuit slowed as well, meaning the water was only as fast as a crawling Ruby.

The disappointed look was gone from the Summer maiden's eyes, replaced by a face of solid, determined steel. She was enjoying this game of theirs, now armed with a second chance to slay her would-be usurper.

It was a game of chicken for Ruby at this point. If she bled out and died, Grubbie would have no one to call him off, and he would kill Lìxià by asphyxiation. The nightmare scenario from before would come true, and both women would die horribly meaningless deaths.

Alternatively, if Ruby held fast for just a little bit longer and outlived Lìxià, the powers of the Summer maiden would transfer to her, and she could use the boost to survive her injuries. The mission would go on, and Ruby's sad little life would too.

So, did she gamble on both their lives, risking the powers of the Summer maiden? Or did she call off Grubbie and let Lìxià live to keep them safe for another twenty years of loneliness?

There was another option.

No.

It had almost zero chance of success.

I can't. Ozpin died to get me this chance, and I've already nearly blown it by announcing myself to her.

But it would get Ruby everything. No one would have to die.

I shouldn't even think it.

If Ruby recalled Grubbie…

This is madness.

…and ignored healing herself altogether, instead using that precious aura of hers to fight…

I can NOT do this.

…and she was able to defeat Lìxià in combat…

Gambling against the water tentacles chasing after me is a safer bet.

…then she could use Grubbie to steal the maiden powers, save herself, and spare her enemy.

It would never work.

But it might.

And 'might' was all Ruby needed.

Grubbie offered no disagreement as Ruby bade him climb his saliva covered butt out of Lìxià's throat. Ruby was grateful that he managed to shake off most of the gross body fluids that coated him and run them off into the sand by the time he returned home.

Whenever he entered her body, it never felt like being pierced or stabbed, which was what she would've expected. The little buddy literally crawled into her skin, but there was no pain.

Standing hurt, and gripping her scythe hurt even more, but Ruby couldn't afford to numb the pain by focusing her aura on the wound. This was a risky gambit, one that neither Ozpin nor Salem would approve of if they were here to see it.

But they weren't here, and Ruby couldn't find any loyalty to either of them when she searched around in the deepest recesses of her heart. Salem was a monster who surrounded herself with other monsters, and Ozpin's will no longer held the authority he once had.

Ruby had had close encounters with three supposedly 'well-hidden' maidens while operating under Salem's orders, and she'd learned that Lionheart was a traitor, something which Ozpin had no clue about based on what he'd said when she'd last spoken to him. For all that he might have been a good man, he wasn't a role model to her anymore. There were cracks in his castle, large cracks that the enemy could and had used to slip through.

Ruby didn't know what she was doing anymore. But she trusted herself more than she trusted anyone else.

Without Grubbie to stall her, Lìxià was now free to unleash a disastrous torrent of elemental magic in every which direction. The brush with death must have been enough to convince her that she would need to step up her game if she needed to win. It certainly had for Ruby.

To use her Scarab to steal the powers, she needed to get a clear shot on Lìxià's face and disable any means of her disrupting the transfer midway through. That meant disarming her of her pitchfork, breaking her aura, and ensuring her maiden powers couldn't be used. Ruby had already completed the first step (the pitchfork was nowhere to be seen, probably buried under a good foot of sand that its wielder had kicked up), and if she did the second, a simple punch to the head would knock the maiden out. Then, she could drain the powers, heal her own wounds, and leave before anyone had to get hurt.

Using her semblance at half power gave her enough speed to get out of the way when bolts of lightning arced down upon her while not using up her own aura, but she would never win by letting her opponent keep on the offensive. Lìxià was floating in the air now, so Ruby ran over to her house and kicked off the wall to gain some altitude. Well, she tried to do that, but her stomach was hurting, so she ended up desperately scrambling up the side of the building and collapsing in exhaustion of the roof.

Gasping for breath, she righted herself just in time to get smashed in the face by a large chunk of ice. It knocked her clean over the building and onto the other side.

"AAAH!"

Ruby landed in the sand and held back the tears of pain. This had been a mistake.

But it wasn't over. Not until Ruby was dead. The pain might have been a burning, searing source of agony, but the adrenaline pumping through her veins was enough to keep her moving. Clamoring up against the side of the building, she crawled along the base over to the right side.

When Lìxià floated right over the cabin expecting a crumpled heap of an adversary, Ruby used her semblance to jump straight up into her from underneath. The wind was so fast that the petals she left behind were gone before she'd even reached her target. It was tempting to headbutt her or do some other visceral action with her body itself as the weapon, but her aura was too low, so she smashed Crescent between the woman's legs as hard as she could.

It landed a clean hit, and Ruby followed up with an overhead swing that knocked the maiden down beneath her. Lìxià fell out of the sky, having lost her concentration, and Ruby landed right on top of her.

Only one of their auras broke.

Coming Soon – Ruby's First Kill

And now, a tip from Ruby:

Ruby's Tip #129 – Always look up if a body part grows back before severing it off.

Ruby's Tip #222 – Want to buy expensive video games, but you don't have enough dough? Combine water, milk, and sugar at a ratio of 3:3:2. Heat to 120°F and stir until mixed. Add yeast (volume will vary depending on desired consistency) and let sit 10 minutes covered. Beat in one egg and 2.25 cups flour for every 10 rolls desired. Kneed until just mixed (do not overmix). Separate into 2 ounce balls and bake at 400°F. Sell the rolls at a bake sale to get enough dough to buy the video games.