Ch 14 - Invasion Pt 1
A/N: All right, all right, I've kept you all waiting long enough. We're back to Kuo Kuanna now. And let me tell you, shit's about to get real. Also, Neo still uses her nicknames for RWBY in her head.
Also, I got a craving to play Subnautica again, recently. Got a hell of a nostalgia trip doing so, and if anyone playing the game on Xbox 1 finds a time capsule from VaguelyCynical1, you're welcome.
Lastly, I read Roman Holiday (for those of you who may be confused because I also said this in the prequel, this chapter was being written at the same time as when I published that particular chapter), and by read, I mean I binged the whole thing in six hours, and I FUCKING LOVED IT. Though it makes me wonder why Roman and Junior (nevermind the Malachite twins) weren't trying to kill Roman in the Yellow Trailer, considering the fact that Roman and Neo kinda blew up Junior's dad and basically landed themselves at the top of Lil' Miss Malachite's shitlist at the same time. Eh, I'm sure I can have Patches sort that out somehow…
Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Souls or RWBY. Dark Souls belongs to From Software and RWBY belonged to RoosterTeeth. I only own my OCs.
(Neo)
This is a terrible idea, Neo signed for the sixth time, as they crept through the silent streets of Kuo Kuanna in the middle of the night, already several miles from the Belladonna Manor, and in what appeared to be a commercial area of Kuo Kuanna.
Red scowled at her. "You're the one following me," she petulantly shot back with a whisper.
Because I know your type. Snitching on you when I caught you sneaking out the window wouldn't have done anything. You'd just sneak out alone later. Better I follow you to make sure you come back in one piece than that. She paused, but before Red could reply to her, she added, Also, we're being followed, and whoever they are, they're good, because I can't figure out where they are. She put a finger to her lips as she signed, because she just knew Red would give some exclamation of surprise that would alert their tail. She sighed, debating on whether or not the note she left was better or worse than sending a text. But, even despite the warnings from Patches, despite the person following them, and despite the undercurrent of terror running through her veins at the thought of picking a fight with something that brought terror to someone that was as close to immortal as a human could be, some remnant of a girl she'd buried in her past was undeniably curious. Even now, her mind picked back over the conversation just a few hours ago, trying to glean anything she might have missed in the subtext of the spoken words.
Patches shut the scroll and placed it down on the table. He looked her, and every one of her friends in the eyes, even Neo. "You are not going to go after this thing." When Ruby opened her mouth to protest, he cut her off. "No. I am not going to face Vyliria down in the future and tell her you went and got your godsdamned humanity sucked out of you on my watch. That thing is beyond even graduated huntsmen. So none of you are going around alone on this island, and none of you are leaving this damned house at night. Not when there's a fucking darkwraith on Menagerie!"
"A… what now?" Yang asked what the whole room was thinking.
Patches grimaced, opening his mouth, then closing it, and taking an uncharacteristic pause as he thought of what to say. He took a breath, looked around the faces gathered around, and then sighed. "That's… an old story. Older than Vyliria by far, and nearly as old as me," the undead eventually settled on.
"So what is a darkwraith?" Weiss asked, "And how are you so sure that these murders are because of one?"
"Those corpses are a one-to-one match with what a darkwraith leaves behind after it," Patches answered her second question first. He took another breath, and then "Darkwraiths… they were human, once. And honestly, even knowing everything else, that might be the most terrifying thing about them. They might feed off of it in the literal sense, but they forsook their humanity a long time ago." Patches paced about the room as he spoke, stopping only then, and settling down into a squat that Neo had long since come to associate with him. "Back during the twilight of the Age of the Gods, my gods, before Gwyn had first Linked the Fire, there was a great city of man, ruled by four kings who had been gifted a fragment of the Light Soul by Gwyn himself. The city was called New Londo, and was populated by millions in its heyday, its splendor and prosperity rivaling its namesake, Anor Londo, the city of the gods itself. I have a suspicion that the events that I'm about to describe had something to do with the Primordial Serpent Kaathe, but once things went bad, I got the Izalith out of there and barely so much as looked back. Maybe Vyliria might know more about what exactly was the being that first created darkwraiths, and maybe she doesn't and the culprit's name is lost to history. What I do know is that someone, or something, either learned how, or gave the ability, to forcibly drain humanity from someone, killing them but devouring their scrap of the Dark Soul, and in the process, gain power. Things went from normal to apocalyptic almost literally overnight, thousands of beings that were people slaughtering others in the streets in their tens of thousands, each drained victim making each darkwraith that much harder to stop. Men, women, children, they didn't fucking care, to them, everyone that wasn't also a darkwraith was just a sack of meat containing humanity for them to drain. The disaster spiraled completely out of control in less than a week… and then the Four Kings joined the darkwraiths. Gwyn, already out of other options to prolong a dwindling First Flame, him and his armies already exhausted after the nightmarish campaign to combat the folly of the Witch of Izalith when she inadvertently became the Bed of Chaos and birthed demonkind, took one look at New Londo, a city he helped found, still full of millions of fleeing people trying to escape the roving army of soul-devouring monstrosities chasing them, that were begging the gods, begging him, to save them… and he wrote the city off as lost."
"What… what do you mean, he wrote it off?" Kali asked.
Patches sighed, and for a few seconds, he was looking at something potentially thousands of miles, and certainly uncountable centuries away. "Every age is tainted by the greed of men," the undead started to speak as continued to stare into his memories. "But the ego, pride, and fear of gods is far worse. And that's what it was. Gwyn saw what was happening in New Londo, and he was afraid. Of man. Of the Dark. Of the end of his precious Flame. The refugees who had still been streaming from the city were stopped, the entrances to the valley it was built in walled off, such that there was no way for any darkwraith to escape the cordon Gywn had created. Then, a channel was dug, from the top of the valley, all the way to the banks of the lake that provided the city with water."
"No," Red said, begged that what she was about to hear wasn't the truth.
"Gwyn ordered the valley flooded," Patches continued, as horror dawned upon every living soul in the room. "Drowned under a deluge so great that not a single darkwraith could escape the city… nor could the millions of innocents that were still trapped with them." Patches sighed, coming back to the room as he grit his teeth. "I saw the flood," he said, "I saw them die. You couldn't see the water when it finally settled, there were so many corpses floating atop it. That stagnant water was stained red with blood for years. And the worst part? Not even the smell, though that was close." Several faces in the room turned green, and even Neo had to fight down nausea at the thought of what that stench would have been like. "The darkwraiths… so glut on humanity, didn't die. It weighed them down, so they were stuck at the bottom of their watery grave, but they were still there, still waiting, the passage of time not weaning them of their desire for more humanity, even the slightest bit." Patches' gaze returned to the room, and he scowled again. "When the first undead after Gwyn Linked the First Flame, in his journey, he drained the city so that he could slay the Four Kings for their fragment of the Light Soul, and in the process, let the darkwraiths out. Lordran had been depopulated of humans by the curse of undeath by that point, so the darkwraiths, rather than feast as an unstoppable horde, spread out, plaguing the rest of the world for millennia, each no less deadly, but able to be brought down with sufficient numbers and planning. I thought all of them were gone. Hadn't seen one for centuries before the moon had been broken, and believe me, I'd hunted down a few of the last ones myself. They're nasty enough that even despite how much I avoid them like the plague, when I had a decent amount of warriors on hand, I'd still join the efforts to put the abominations down.. Apparently one slipped through the cracks, and is now out and about here of all places. And I'm too cynical to hope that this will be the last one still kicking a second time."
There had been more questions as well as answers after that, of course, but Neo was pulled from her thoughts as Red suddenly froze, looking around with alarm, and drew her oversized gardening implement, though it was still in its rifle-form. "Did you hear that?" she whispered.
Hear what? Neo signed, trying to figure out if Red was fucking with her or if her skills were slipping.
Red looked at her incredulously. "That loud-as-heck droning ring that just went off!" she whispered sharply. "How did you not hear it?!"
They were walking down a street next to some wood shops. While Menagerie was resource-poor, there was an abundance of tropical trees in the environs of Kuo Kuanna, and careful farming of the trees combined with the use of veneering had led to a booming tropical wood industry taking off on the island. In the middle of the street, one of the shops had a second story, the owner evidently having built their home above their place of work. Though much more pertinent than the choice in housing was the faunus with goat horns who probably owned the place crashing out of his front door like a Grimm was behind him. His eyes widened upon seeing them, but before he could so much as make a noise, another figure, glowing an ominous red, burst from the shadows of the store, closing the gap to its target in under a second, latching a hand glowing with a red light, streaked with white, onto the shop-owners face. The light glowed brighter, and some kind of black mist seemed to be streaking from the faunus' face into the hand. Red had gone to charge into battle, but froze less than a second later as they watched in horror as the faunus just drained right before their eyes. His skin blackened and shriveled up, his muffled screams of agony and terror died in an eye-blink, and his eyes dried out and disintegrated, the body going limp as it turned from a healthy man into a desiccated corpse in less than ten seconds.
The thing tossed the body aside like it was so much trash, and the figure turned slowly to regard the two women. Its breathing rasped from the skull mask it wore over its face, which was partly obscured by a tattered black hood draped over its head. Neo couldn't see any eyes beneath the facewear. The white armor over its chest was crafted to resemble a ribcage, and the rest of its armor, the same color, was modeled to resemble bone, like a Grimm. The boots were pointed at the end, the kneepads and shoulders had spikes, and most of the rest of its armor was jagged and sharp along its ends. The taloned gauntlet not glowing with that damned light was gripping a straight sword with two guards between the blade and the pommel, and whatever the armor didn't cover was clad in some manner of black material that she couldn't identify. On top of that, the figure constantly gave off a dull, yet clearly visible, red glow from its being, and if she looked at it from the corner of her eyes, it almost seemed as if the thing was just red outright. Going by the description Patches gave, if the thing she was looking at wasn't a darkwraith, then her tits were as mismatched as her eyes.
Mechanical clicking alerted her that Red was unfolding her scythe. The thing regarded them silently for a few more seconds, a rasping breath going in and out of the skull covering its face, and then it charged, closing at ludicrous speeds, empty hand glowing with that red-white light as it reared back and then shot at the mute's face. Glass shattered as Neo had already moved out of the way, the attack only hitting an illusion. Neo blinked, and there was a clang of metal and the thing didn't even turn as it raised its sword to stop Crescent Rose cold. It raised a foot and kicked Red back, the girl grunting from the impact as her aura flared, then it raised its sword and swung down. Metal deflected off metal again as Red intercepted the strike, then their assailant spun counter-clockwise and lashed out with its blade again, which Red barely leapt back from. Undeterred, it swung at her once more, Red blocking with the shaft of her weapon, and it swiped a fourth time, at which point the blade merely passed through a cloud of rose petals that zipped away, before reforming into Ruby a dozen feet down the road.
The two-toned girl dashed forwards, Hush at the ready, and swiping from the left to the right. It moved its sword to intercept, only for the oncoming Neo to shatter, as she dashed in from the opposite direction… and its sword shifted again to block in the time it took her to blink. A crack sounded as Red fired her weapon at it, and the bullet crashed into its stomach, no aura stopping the blow, but it didn't even flinch. The bolt of Crescent Rose was racked, and she fired again, but it raised its glowing hand, palm out, and a transparent red field bloomed out like a miniature shield, blocking the next shot. Turning back to Neo, it swung its sword twice, and she ducked out of the first swing, and leaned out of the arc of the second. The glow on its hand brightened, and it lashed out the limb at Neo, who jumped and threw herself into a midair spin to evade the attack, glowing fingers passing scant inches from her face. It twisted in a flash, hand materializing that ethereal shield, which it used to bat a swipe from Red aside. Undeterred, the trigger on the weapon was pulled, Red twisting her grip and doing a full spin to attack from the other direction, only for Crescent Rose to clash against the dark metal of its sword yet again.
Neo met her compatriot's eyes, and with a slight nod from Red, they both disengaged, opening up a good twenty feet between them and their opponent, who merely observed, though its blade remained on guard. Neo left an illusion of herself where she was, and slowly made her way towards Red while keeping her distance from that thing.
"Why are you doing this?" Red asked their foe. "Why are you killing these innocent people?"
It didn't respond. It didn't even react to the question. And then it moved. An overhead swing was barely intercepted by Red's scythe, and Hush, blade extended from its tip, was caught by its empty hand, the thing attempting to wrench the weapon from her hand. Undeterred, Neo went with the motion, allowing it to bodily throw her via her weapon, only for her to open it and right herself midair, coming to a harmless landing. In the three seconds that the course-correction had taken it had already clashed blades with Red two more times, almost lazily twirling around for a third blow faster than Ruby could react. Neo's eyes widened, and she reached out with her Overactive Imagination, and Red shattered into glass, the actual sixteen-year-old girl stumbling as she found herself next to Neo in the blink of an eye.
"Oh, that was really disorienting," she muttered while raising a hand to her head. The monster slowly turned around, staring at them for a few seconds. "I go left, you go right?" Red suggested. Neo gave a single nod. Their foe didn't wait for them to go on the attack, and Neo had barely finished the second-long gesture before it was running towards them once more. The two broke apart to tag-team it, Red swinging high as she leapt in, but it conjured forth that strange red shield once more, and used it to bat the scythe blade aside before its sword lashed out and struck Ruby twice, and it twisted out of the way of a stab from Hush even as it did so. Neo twirled, using the momentum to swing at it as she opened the parasol, but its empty hand lashed out and grabbed the razor-sharp fabric, before yanking her towards it. Neo shattered on impact, and was now positioned above and behind it as she swung the now-closed weapon at the back of its head, yet its sword had already moved to intercept the strike in the time it took her to make the jump with her semblance. Even as the impact of her weapon being stopped cold jolted her arms, the sword effortlessly slid down Hush, and it executed a 180 degree turn, its foot lashing out and kicking her in the stomach before she could react. Her pink aura flared from the sheer force behind the blow, and an explosive rush of air slipped from her lungs as the wind was knocked out of her. She went tumbling through the air, rolling a few times on the ground before she came to a stop. She got her hands under herself, and started pushing off the ground, only for thundering footsteps to tell her that it was almost on her already, blade swinging low and aiming for her neck.
The heterochromatic felt hands grab her, and her world suddenly shifted into a cloud of red, brown, and pink rose petals, before turning back to normal just as fast, yet two-dozen feet away. She shook off the wave of disorientation that washed over her as her mismatched eyes glanced over to see Red brandish her talisman, her weapon in its compact form and on her back.
With the bite of a lance yet the speed of a sparrow,
The maidens of the Lord smote them with their Lighting Arrows!
The electric projectiles started blasting out, only to unerringly meet the shield that was once more projecting from its free hand. It started sprinting at them yet again, the slightest clenching of the fingers on its sword telling Neo that they were only annoying it. It swiped at Red, who broke into two clouds of petals that swirled around and behind it, reforming into a girl with a lighting arrow at the ready. The bolt was loose, only to be struck mid-flight by its sword, the electricity breaking apart like so much splintered wood on impact. Seeing her chance, Neo sprinted forwards, and stabbed with her weapon, punching the tip of the blade into the armor in its back. It only sank in a few inches, however, and the resistance to the attack almost felt like the time she'd broken through Avalon's tough-as-shit armor back at the docks, and just like then, no aura had stopped the blow… oh… Realization dawned upon her when she noticed that it didn't even flinch at the impact, and pain dawned upon her as the pommel of its sword cracked into the side of her head. Lights sparked across her vision, and she felt a good portion of her aura get annihilated by the force of the blow. Though at least she'd managed to maintain a grip upon her weapon, which had been ripped from its back by the force of the impact against her. She instinctively moved herself with Overactive Imagination as soon as she could muster the mental capacity to do so, and when she forced off the dizziness from the blow to her temple, the first thing she saw was that thing's sword plunged into the ground where she'd been a second prior.
Red was coming up on it once more, scythe swinging with the additional aid of a gunshot's recoil, but its sword arm batted the massive weapon aside, treating the force that had been swung at it like it was nothing. Off-balanced by the attack, Red yelped, and its free hand shot towards her, already glowing, only for some manner of gray whip, interpressed with yellow rings glowing with lightning dust, to shoot from the shadows, and wrap about it's wrist. Finally, the thing made a noise, though the guttural grunt that erupted from its throat sounded much more like it was borne from annoyance instead of pain or anger. Even as electricity arched down the whip and into its arm, it didn't flinch, and just dug its sword under the whip, twisting the blade to uncoil it before flicking it away, where it began to retract. Keeping one eye on their foe, Neo regarded the new arrival as they stepped under the moonlight. Except she didn't, because despite being visible, the feminine figure was colored black from head to toe, like an extra in some low budget web-show before they got a better graphics engine, the only other colors visible being the white of her eyes, her gray irises, and her lighting dust infused weapon, which appeared to be a rapier of sorts that evidently doubled as a whip. And the horned White Fang mask on the top half of her face. That was probably an important detail.
"You!" the new arrival barked out, confirming Neo's guess of her gender to be correct in doing so, even as she leveled her rapier-whip at the glowing form of their foe. "You're the one who's been killing so many faunus!" And speaking of faunus, the heterochromatic quickly pinned her as a chameleon, as the uniform black that had covered her suddenly underwent a rapid shift to red, though some spots on her skin, along with her hair, which was tied in a ponytail that curved at the end so as to resemble a chameleon's tail, shifted to yellow. Their foe tilted its head slightly, and the new arrival grit her teeth, before taking a breath, and Neo watched her skin shift to a more tan complexion, though the spots that were yellow were still darker. Her hair was apparently naturally brown, and Neo had to take a moment to remember her foe rather than marvel about any similarities this faunus' animal trait bore to her own semblance. The Grimm mask had chameleon horns on it, and pointed upwards at the top, going past her hairline, resembling the crest of a veiled chameleon. Her clothing consisted of a black, gray and dark gray sleeveless stealth suit with short legs that had black trim, reminiscent of a playsuit. The suit's zipper was gold, and over it were gray belt straps with gold buckles. On her feet were simple black boots with a cuff and a black glove was on her right hand.
Their foe silently regarded the new arrival for a handful of seconds, before she took the initiative and went on the attack. The rapier extended as a whip again, only to be deflected by that red shield it was projecting from its empty hand. Not a moment later, a clang echoed into the night as it turned and its blade intercepted Hush yet again. Red came in and swept at its legs, but it leapt over Crescent Rose, twisting in midair and lashing its foot out to strike the red reaper as she cried out in pain from the blow to her face. Even as it fell back to the ground, its empty hand used its shield to bat Hush out of the way, and as it landed and rose to a crouch, its sword lashed out to stop two swings from the rapier-whip cold. It dashed towards the masked faunus, deflecting yet another blow she threw at it, while simultaneously ignoring a shot from Crescent Rose that punched into the exact spot Neo had stabbed earlier. It feinted a swing at the faunus, and as soon as she fell for it, it's empty hand lashed out, grabbing the rapier and not caring about the electricity arcing into it's hand at all. It yanked the White Fang member forwards, who gave a yelp in surprise as she lost her grip on her weapon, and the monster tossed it away, which was quickly cut off as it drove a knee into her stomach, and then smashed the pommel of its sword into her face. The mask shattered, and Neo caught a glimpse of gray eyes in the moonlight, before rose petals blocked the view.
"Leave her alone!" Red shouted as she came in swinging. The scythe sunk into the forearm holding its sword, the tip of the blade sticking out the other side, but it had accomplished its objective of preventing Crescent Rose from striking its head. Its empty hand began to glow more brightly, and Red let go of her weapon and burst into petals as it grabbed at where she had been not a second prior. It yanked the scythe from its arm with complete and utter contempt, tossing it to the side, and turned back towards the female faunus… who Neo couldn't find anymore. Evidently, their attacker didn't have that problem, as it only turned its head for a second, before it dashed at a seemingly empty point between where it was and the discarded rapier-whip. Its sword swung from the left as it sprinted forwards, and a rippling of colors revealed the chameleon girl as she flipped out of the way of the strike. Undeterred, it closed the gap to her once more, even as she frantically ducked and dodged another three swings from the sword. Neo charged towards it while Red dashed for her own weapon, creating an illusion that went to swipe at it, which it blocked with its shield, only for the real Neo to vault over the shield rather than attempt to attack from a different angle. Hush swung outward and smacked the side of its head, but Neo paid for the attack with a strike from its sword. She managed to partially control her tumble from the hit, rolling on the ground and transitioning to a somersault that brought her away from the followup strike it attempted.
A lighting arrow cracked out and struck its back, and its gaze returned to Red as she shot another bolt towards it, only for that damned shield to block it. Without even turning around, it dove into a roll to avoid a strike from the faunus girl, who'd finally retrieved her own weapon. It whipped its head around to stare at the chameleon girl, and its sword hand reared back, before it threw the weapon at her, the blade tumbling through the air end over end. The faunus dodged the blade, which lodged itself into the ground where she'd been standing, but by that point the thing had already sprinted towards her, it's shield hand lashing out to grab a strike from the rapier-whip out of midair, and it's empty sword hand snapping forwards and grabbing her by the throat, before lifting her up and slamming her into the floor, once, twice, three times, before it tossed her up and punted her like a douchebag would kick a puppy, her aura visibly flaring form the force of the impact, and then again when her back collided with the wall of an empty shop. A crow cawed out twice in the dead of night. In two steps, it had gone for its discarded blade, retrieving the weapon, and then it was sprinting at the faunus. Red was already a blur of rose petals moving to intercept, but she was taking too long. Neo got ready to reach out with her Overactive Imagination, and the White Fang member groaned and started to push herself to her feet, looking up and widening her eyes as their foe reared back its glowing hand yet again.
Neo's eyes widened as the silhouette of a crow in the night sky changed to a human falling downwards in the blink of an eye. A segmented greatsword was raised overhead, and swung down at their assailant, who whipped around with inhuman reaction times, both hands on a raised blade as the two swords met with a thunderous clang of metal. Neo recognized the man as the same one that had talked down General Irondick when he tried to arrest Roman in the middle of a Grimm invasion. He used his leftover momentum from his initial strike to leap over the thing, and bounded off the wall of the shop, coming in with a horizontal swing that the monster chose to dodge back from rather than block. The huntsman placed himself between it and the faunus, and it took a few more steps back as it assessed the latest arrival.
Red rematerialized, stopping in place as she stared with wide eyes. "Uncle Qrow?" she shouted. Of course it would be someone related to Red, Neo thought.
To his credit, Qrow didn't take his eyes off their foe. "Don't come any closer," he barked in a tone that brooked no argument. "That goes for all of you." Neo's eyes widened, and she started to take offense before a twinge of pain shot through her abdomen, and she stole a quick second to check her aura. It was just above half by this point, and she was willing to bet good lien that Red and the chameleon girl weren't much better. And all they had to show for it was the corpse of a faunus discarded down the road, and two hits that bothered their foe more than anything else. She decided that maybe it would be for the best to let the professional huntsman take a shot. So instead, she made her way over to the faunus girl, who had frozen on her hands and knees from the surprise of the sudden development, and began to help her up. Red looked like she wanted to protest, but just clenched her jaw and transitioned into a cloud of petals that zipped to where her two female fellows were.
"Are you okay?" Red asked the faunus.
"Let go of me," she spat, yanking her arms out of Neo's grip and earning a glare from the mute.
"Sorry," Red apologized, while Neo rolled her eyes. The girl needed to grow a spine, and not apologize for other people being rude to her. "I just wanted to make sure you weren't hurt. Oh, I'm Ruby, and that's Neo, by the way."
The chameleon girl narrowed her eyes. "Why?"
"Because it's the right thing to do? That's why Uncle Qrow saved you," Red replied with genuine confusion, while Neo sighed and made sure that at least one person in the trio was watching the actual threat, which continued to regard Qrow in silence for the time being.
The faunus remained pensive for a few seconds, before letting out a begrudging, "Ilia."
Red looked more confused somehow, but before she could open her mouth, Neo snapped her fingers, causing her to look over as the mute signed, Her name, dum dum.
"Ooooh, her name." Red flushed. "I knew that." Which Neo sincerely doubted.
Qrow finally had enough of waiting. "Alright, you sick bastard, I'm giving you one chance to give up, and that's it."
It tilted its head as it gazed at Qrow for another handful of seconds, and then it laughed. Though calling the sound it made laughter would be an insult to the word itself. Five long, grating rasps erupted from its throat, before it shifted its stance and raised its sword while the glow on its free hand intensified.
"Hard way it is, then," Qrow said, and then he went in swinging.
(Ruby)
Ruby Rose had a lot of questions. Most of those weren't actually related to the immediate matter at hand, but the chief ones that were related ran somewhere along the lines of "Where the heck did Uncle Qrow come from?" and "Why doesn't he want us to help?"
That being said, if it wasn't for Neo putting a hand on her shoulder, she probably would have disregarded his order and rushed in, but as it was, even though it had proved ineffective at best, she shifted Crescent Rose into its less-often-used rifle configuration, and readied herself to take a shot whenever the opportunity presented itself. Though given how fast her uncle and his opponent were exchanging blows, that might actually be a while. Case in point, his first swing was intercepted in a flash and a cloud of sparks, and Qrow was forced to step to the side and shift his guard when the monster kicked out at him and then swiped at him twice with its own blade. Harbinger met both strikes, and using his momentum from the second deflection, the huntsman slashed counterclockwise, yet his foe danced back from the strike at the last second, only to immediately dart back in. Its left hand lit up with that awful glow, and Ruby's eyes widened, only for her uncle to intercept the grab with his greatsword before it even got close to him. No aura stopped the blow, but no visible damage occurred to its hand, whatever that light was evidently having an absurd damage tolerance even when it wasn't projecting a shield. Qrow shifted his grip, and the barrels near the pommel of Harbinger twisted to angle themselves at his opponents head, buckshot coming out in a cone that forced a grunt out of the monster as it staggered back. Not giving it time to recover, Qrow ran at it, weapon held to his left by both hands as he swung the blade up. It slammed against the thing's sword once again, its empty hand rising to project that shield in front of its face less than a second before the huntsman shot at it again. Qrow twisted and leapt, bringing the blade down in an overhead strike that his opponent sidestepped. Undeterred, he swung clockwise, lifting one foot off the ground as he did so. Harbinger batted the shield the monster had raised to the side, and Qrow let his momentum carry him once more, completing a full spin that forced the abomination to block with its sword this time. Then the huntsman was on the defense, reversing his grip and aligning the blade behind him to block a strike from the sword, before he turned to face his opponent and used the flat of his blade to intercept two more swings as they continued to fight beneath a hanging steel store sign.
Finally, Ruby saw a chance to fire, and immediately took it, only for their foe to simultaneously slap aside a swing from her uncle with its ethereal shield and deflect her round with its sword. The bullet ricocheted upwards, somehow managing to strike one of the two chains holding the store sign aloft. The other wasn't up to the task of defying gravity alone, and with a crack, the metal broke, and Qrow backflipped out of the way while the sign landed atop the monster, which uttered another rasping vocalization before it shifted its arms and shunted the metal to the side, and then with one arm, threw it at her uncle. Qrow slashed the sign in half, but it had already reached him by that point, that horrible glow building on its hand as its arm shot out and past Qrow's guard…
And Qrow Branwen screamed. His aura started violently flaring a dark red as his fingers began to spasm, Harbinger tumbling from his grip and clattering to the floor. It kicked the sword away, and stepped closer to Qrow, leaning it, and Ruby could feel it leering behind its mask as it took in her uncle's agony.
"Uncle Qrow!" Ruby shouted out, unfurling Crescent Rose and she began to sprint forwards, only to screech to a halt as it picked the man up by his face with one hand, and held him in the air, placed between itself and Ruby as a meatshield. Tears began to brim in the red reaper's eyes as she stood helpless, and Qrow's aura drained further, and then-
That droning ring sounded out again, and Ruby's heart froze even more. Not another one. Please, gods, not another one, she desperately begged in her thoughts.
-and the monster stopped draining Qrow, who merely hung limp and heaved ragged breaths as his aura flickered around his body. It twisted its head towards the opposite direction that Ruby and Neo had come from, and with a guttural voice that sounded like it came from a corpse, it rasped out, with more hatred than Ruby thought could possibly be harbored by a single being, "Darkmoon…"
It drew its arm back slightly, and then tossed Qrow like a ragdoll towards Neo and Ilia, where he tumbled to a stop a few feet away from. Neo moved towards him to check on him, and upon hearing his groans of pain, looked to Ruby and gave a thumbs up. Ilia reluctantly followed over, and Ruby used Petal Burst to dash over to Harbinger, which had been knocked a few dozen feet away, before moving back towards them as they assumed guard over her uncle.
A chime rang out from somewhere nearby. Not the one that had signaled the arrival of that abomination, nor the arrival of what Ruby didn't even dare to hope after hearing it speak, but a much softer, more melodious one. And one that sounded familiar. A few more seconds passed as the monster stared towards the nearest intersection in the direction it had turned to look. Finally, whatever had drawn so much ire from the thing that it had literally tossed Qrow aside in order to face it strode around the corner.
Ruby's eyes bugged out as she saw the hooded form of Vyliria Avalon, glowing a deep blue in the same manner as the monster glowed red, stride around the corner, the golden glow of a regenerative miracle wrapped around her, and an ornate, black glaive clutched in her hands. She took in the scene before her, and settled into a combat stance, leveling her weapon in the direction of her foe.
"Darkwraith," she spat. The wind blew, carrying the scent of the ocean. "The penance for your sins is nigh. Pray for mercy from whatever foul things you worship, for I shall offer none."
()
A/N: So, first off, only people with DS magic or from Dark Souls can hear the invasion chime. Just a little thing, but I thought that it would be cool, lorewise.
As for phantoms/invaders, I decided to follow Bloodborne's summon aesthetic. IE; the summons look like a person, but with an outline/glow appropriate to their role, rather than a figure resembling the person that is solely made of a specific color.
Neo's semblance is OP, pls nerf.
Now, to explain how a run of the mill darkwraith is so dangerous…
First off: Lore. The darkwraiths were so horrifying and dangerous that the gods feared them so much that they had New Londo outright flooded, killing tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocents because the alternative of letting even a single darkwraith escape was too terrible to allow. There was an order of sealers founded specifically to make sure that no-one unflooded them. They're these things that were once human, who strike spine-numbing terror in even the most stalwart warriors, even the most powerful of undead. They had an entire covenant founded specifically to counteract them, even if I had the Blades eventually evolve into more general hunting of sinners. So, going by lore mechanics, darkwraiths are about as close to a miniboss as you can get in terms of mooks. Like, there's only two or three other things I plan on adding in terms of canon fodder foes that would be between them and named characters. WAAAAY more dangerous than the average Grimm, and a genuine threat to even professional huntsmen.
Second: There's a reason that I repeatedly pointed out how many people this darkwraith killed. When it comes to bosses in Dark Souls like Manus, Midir, or Gael, it becomes blatantly obvious that getting more pieces of the Dark Soul directly ties into how much power you bring onto the field. Humanity is part of the Dark Soul. A darkwraith drains humanity from others into itself. Therefore, I find it perfectly reasonable to conclude that the more humanity an individual darkwraith drains, the more powerful it becomes. And this one has sucked over sixty people dry by this point. This further plays into why New Londo was flooded, because by the time that drastic decision was made there were likely dozens of darkwraiths that had likely drained hundreds of people. That threat level would have been impossible to stop via conventional means, so they did the only thing they could to make sure that no darkwraiths escaped the city.
Basically, I went into this with one goal above all others: I wanted Lore-Accurate darkwraiths, and I think I knocked that goal out of the park.
Ilia spies on Blake and Sun in canon. It stands to reason that her watching the Belladonna Manor the night Blake arrives doesn't change. Ergo, she witnesses Ruby and Neo sneaking out, and thinks that since they're human, they're going to do something evil (this is still before her redemption arc). However, while her beliefs are strong, they aren't outright fanatical, so for pragmatism's sake, she's willing to put aside her personal distaste to help Ruby and Neo fight the darkwraith.
Except it's still not enough, so Qrow (who fell asleep and only noticed things were amiss when the commotion of finding out Ruby was gone woke him up) finally comes in at the last second, saving Ilia instead of Ruby. Not really a big change in the moment, especially considering the vastly different context, but still, she'll remember that.
Next up is Qrow… well… I wanted to have Qrow be badass, but at the same time, I've had basically everyone dodge the SUCC (dark souls joke, referring to the darkwraith's lifedrain grab-attack) like a dozen times, including Qrow himself. I will say that honestly, in a straight up 1v1, without lifedrain being a factor, Qrow had a small chance to beat the darkwraith. Very small, but still extant. Much more likely would be that he could hold it off until help finally arrived, after which sheer numbers would either drive it off, or kill the invader. Unfortunately, Misfortune giveth, and Misfortune taketh. In this case, the sign did fall on the darkwraith, but just seconds later, it finally managed a grab. I decided to throw RWBY characters a homeward bone here, and have the dark hand have to drain all of Qrow's aura before it could get to his humanity, because otherwise basically any named character who gets grabbed would be dead in seconds. Qrow also still has most of his aura at that point in the fight, hence it takes a bit. Just long enough for a new arrival, and one that the darkwraith has such vehement hatred for that he's willing to literally toss his prey aside to face it, which inadvertently saves Qrow's life.
And now Vyliria of Avalon, knightess of the Blades of the Darkmoon, is answering the call of her covenant for the first time in an era. Two covenants that exist in direct opposition of each other, even if their founders aren't even ash in the wind by this point in time.
I'll just close this chapter off by saying this: This fight was planned as far back as November of 2020. A general plan for it was written down in March of 2021, that underwent six different revisions, three of which were quite drastic, before I finally got to writing it in July, and finished the chapter in late September, basically a year after I sat down to write out the prologue for the prequel.