Note: Ah, finally within the Vault. Feels like it took forever to get here, but I hope to pick up the pace of the uploads for the rest of this arc all the way to Chapter 100, which is another huge Fables milestone. Thank you all for your support, everyone. It means so much. Enjoy.

The first rule of Vault exploring: Do not ever split up.

For once, Team NYBF was in unanimous agreement. Theoretically, their search for Penny would be more efficient if they broke off into smaller teams, but there was no chance in hell any of them were going to venture into the broken halls of the Vault alone. While there was something slightly pathetic about the Vault's broken-down state, they hadn't forgotten the warnings. No one had ever escaped alive. Whatever threat lingered within these walls, they were going to face it together.

The second rule of Vault exploring, which Ruby made up on the spot. Go around the perimeter. There was no telling where the many paths of the Vault led. There were no markings, no arrows, nothing to tell them what lay in store. The twenty-four interconnected chambers were mysteries, and despite her hope that the Fable in the back of her mind would be a guide, Rosaline remained quiet. Ruby suspected that the Vault would not all be as quaint and unassuming as a reception area. They needed to be cautious, and skirting the perimeter, where they could easily trace their path back to the entrance, seemed to be the best path forward. Of the three paths in front of them, Ruby decided to go left. No one protested.

As they began their trek down the metal corridor, Weiss scarred the nearby wall with her chains. "So we remember where we've been," she explained. The rest agreed it was a good idea.

If the entrance chamber didn't make the students feel small, the corridor did. There was no attempt to hide the coarse, metal grating on which they stepped, or the claustrophobic, dark grey metal curving around them. The corridor seemed to stretch for two hundred yards in near total darkness, with thin strips of now-broken lights lined on its smoothed walls. Every footstep crashed like thunder, and Ruby wondered if their noise was attracting something terrible. At the very least, if something came for them, they would be able to hear it. Undeterred, the students continued through the shadow, weapons at the ready, waiting for the moment something would jump out at them.

They paused when they reached the entrance to the next chambers. There were no doors separating the various rooms, not that they could tell. There were also no descriptions of what waited inside. Hanging between them and the next chamber, however, was a thin sheet of plastic that stretched from the ceiling to just above the floor. It was split down the middle and translucent, and like the Vault entrance, a pattern was painted onto its surface. Though faded over the millennium, its rough shape was somewhat familiar: a leaf curled at its tip. They pushed their way through the slit and entered the next room.

Ruby braced herself as she stopped suddenly, nearly falling down a twenty-foot pit right after the entrance.

Every room had the same dimensions except for their depth, and this chamber sunk further into the ground than Ruby anticipated. Stretched out in every direction were basins filled with dead soil and ash, neatly organized into a grid and stacked upon each other as they fell into the earth. Black bars hung from the ceiling, which cast off a warm glow in its functioning places, something close to sunlight. One of the bars in the far corner dripped, dripped, dripped a constant stream of water into one of the basins, a leak that may have run for hundreds of years. In between each basin was a pathway wide enough for the twelve to walk upon, and like the entrance, there were three tunnels that opened up new routes through the Vault.

"So, any clue what this is, Coco?" Nora asked curiously.

"Nope," Coco admitted. Velvet, however, placed her thumb to her chin, deeply curious.

"Sunlight… soil… a leaf…" she wondered aloud. "Horticulture?"

Nora shook her head. "Horti-what-now?"

"Plant growing," Velvet stated. "They grew plants here."

"Why?"

"Same reason anyone grows plants. Food. Study. Oxygen."

"Do Fables need oxygen?" asked Fox.

"Guys, if we speculate on every room, we'll be here forever," Ruby reminded them. "Let's get a move on."

Ruby jumped down into the lower path, and her teammates followed her. Despite some hesitation and grumbling, the rest followed suit. They walked swiftly across the chamber, taking the most direct path to the opposite side. While wandering, they couldn't help but look up toward the basins that towered over their heads. What plants once grew in there? What Fables worked here, hunched over their vines and flowers, tinkering with pH and sunlight? Whatever equipment they once used had been moved elsewhere, and that which may have once grown beautifully had shriveled and died lifetimes ago. They may not have known the reasons why the Vault was abandoned, but Velvet would have hoped that someone saved one of the flowers. One simple climb later, a push past a plastic sheet and a mark on the nearby wall, and they were back in another corridor, continuing their journey.

Ruby kept in front of the pack, her eyes darting back and forth across every surface. If there was something to decipher, she hoped Rosaline would cooperate. Why the hell wasn't she speaking up—

"Penny better be alive."

Ruby was quickly snatched from her thoughts as Blake snuck up behind her. Ruby let out a deep breath.

"She has to be. I'm sure of it."

"She's probably close to the entrance, if she's able," Blake reasoned. "No reason to call a rescue party and then go deeper without them. So if she's far away—"

"She's in trouble. I know," Ruby muttered.

"Hey, no need to be snippy."

"Huh?" Ruby seemed surprised. "Was I snippy? Sorry."

Blake just shrugged her shoulders. She chalked it up to stress and silently hoped she wouldn't have to deal with another teammate losing her cool because of a demon in her head.

The next chamber did not have anything blocking its path, and something struck the students as they drew closer: a scent. It was potent, like a mixture of sea breeze, garlic, and mud, and Ruby recoiled as it became stronger. The technology in the chamber was more functional than the others, though the smell was most of how it manifested. When they stepped into the next room, it was bright enough for them to look up at the giant furniture and guess as to its purpose. It wasn't too difficult.

Twenty black boxes stood throughout the room in a four-by-five grid; each box had glass protrusions coming out of its side, and sculptures placed atop them. Like the statues in the main hall, they were elegant, bizarre, and fading with age. Some had broken into pieces, eyes, and wings scattered along the cubetops. On the side of the room were numerous contraptions: large chambers with twisting pipes, spirals jutting out from the walls, and more basins, deep and circular, with spouts coming out their tops. There were many more objects resting on top of them, stacked on top of each other for storage. Flat red tablets and bronze goblets, nestled neatly in a corner, ready for use. On the other side of the room, the wall had been broken into hundreds of smaller components, like perfect bricks of obsidian. Some of the slabs had broken off the wall—no, they had been sprung open, small storage vessels built into the wall for convenience. Within the few that were visible, they saw cylindrical containers. And, finally, Ruby saw the unintelligible Fable language written on every single one of them. The words were foreign, but their meaning echoed in her mind.

Drineberry Nutrient Paste

Protassen Nutrient Paste

Liblamade Drink

Growshroom Spread

Blacknut Nutrient Paste

Enriched Chloronic Water

A kitchen. A dining room. Fables had to eat after all. Those imposing cube and glass structures were just fancier desks and stools—the structures on the side, likely ovens and washers. Once again, Ruby found herself somewhat disappointed, like the magic had been sucked out of her.

"You good, Ruby?" Weiss asked nervously.

Ruby forced out a smile. "Yeah. It's just… I know what this place is."

"You do? Is Rosaline telling you?"

"Not exactly. But I just… those markings. I can read them."

Ruby pointed to the wall, and Weiss gasped. Reading an ancient, alien language was… well, terrifying. The more Weiss learned about Rosaline's control over her love, the more she started to detest her, even when her malevolence wasn't obvious. The mere fact she was exerting some level of influence that Ruby couldn't control was concerning enough. Others' concerns were less… subtle.

"You can read Fable writing?" Coco asked, suspicious. "You sure about that?"

"Yeah," Ruby nodded.

"You don't seem to be freaking out about that at all," Coco pointed out. "Like, if I could suddenly read a language I had never seen before, I'd be maybe…"

"Coco, what are you implying?" Yang said quickly, hoping to cut off the drama before it interfered with their important business.

"Nothing. Nothing," Coco sighed. "So, what does it say anyway?"

Ruby dismissed Coco's suspicions and tried to focus on the task at hand. "It's food storage. I think the Fables used to—"

"Food? I wanna see!"

Ruby's explanation was cut off by Nora's boundless enthusiasm. She barely got the sentence out, and it was too late. No one could stop the thunderous redhead before she sprinted across the chamber, giant hammer in hand, running over toward the cupboards. Pyrrha, Ren, and lastly Jaune took off after her.

"Hey, don't run off!" Ren chastised her, but his words fell on deaf ears. She didn't run far. She merely parked herself in front of the many shelves, staring up at the Nora-sized storage unit with wonder. By the time RWBY and CFVY had caught up to her, she was already trying to pull one of the lower containers open, eager to see what goodies were inside. She pulled as hard as she could, even jumping up to hang on the narrow gap between the edge of the door and the wall. As she dangled there, hoping gravity and her weight would be enough to force the hole open, the others yelled at her.

"Nora, what is wrong with you?" Blake groaned.

"This place is dangerous, and you're getting distracted by food?" Fox asked incredulously.

"Get down from there," Pyrrha said simply.

Nora just rolled her eyes. "Guys, come on? I know we're in the middle of a rescue mission, but look around you! We're in an ancient ruin that no one has ever documented before! Don't you guys want to look around even a little bit?"

"Nora, we can't afford distractions," Ren reminded her. "Penny is somewhere in here and she needs our help."

"Or," Nora claimed, "maybe she's hiding out in one of these cabinets. Maybe we shouldn't blow through every single room as fast as possible, and take the time to examine some hiding spots. Penny could have left behind something that'd help us locate her."

Weiss sighed. "Nora, that's…" She paused. Actually, that wasn't a super horrible idea. Sure, Nora was probably saying it because she wanted an excuse, but they actually would benefit from more closely studying their surroundings. Who knew? It might even save their life somehow. "Fine. Open a few drawers. Maybe. Are you fine with that, Ruby?"

Ruby thought on it for a moment. She didn't want to procrastinate from exploring the Vault, but she also couldn't just bully her teammates into doing whatever she wanted. "Fine. Let's check a few for any signs of Penny. But then we are moving on."

"Awesome—whoa!" Nora's celebration was silenced as the drawer she clung to suddenly fell open. It collapsed toward the party, and they had to scatter to avoid getting crushed underneath the metal. Nora was able to release her hold and jump off just in time, letting the meta slam in front of her. As the dust cleared—and there was a large amount of dust that went flying from the impact—Nora looked into the hole in the wall, eager to see what food awaited her.

Instead, she let out a panicked scream.

Inside the cupboard, stowed away where no one would find it, was the corpse of an Atlasian soldier.

The body had rotted away to a skeleton, curled around one of the person-sized tubes of nutrient paste. Its body armor was thick, and its weapon was still resting by its side. As the students gathered around the corpse, in equal parts curiosity and horror, they noticed a distinct lack of damage to the body—save for one vital wound. The top of its skull had been blown open, jagged bits of bone scattered on the floor beside it, the remainder cracked like an eggshell. Ren hovered over the body, examining it for any further signs of damage. Pyrrha turned away and raised her weapons; a useful way to guard her teammates from a possible threat without having to deal with the terror inside her. The rest just hovered around the skeleton, shaken. For some, it was the first time they had ever seen a dead body, and its slacked jaw and empty eye sockets still somehow radiated the fear it must have felt in its final moments.

"What do you think did this?" Velvet asked worriedly.

"Ozpin did say there was something big down here, right?" Yang asked, resting her hands on her hips.

"I don't think it was anything else," Ren stated. "Look closer." He pointed at the ground. Mixed among the fragments of bone was a single shell casing. The trajectory of the fragments helped guide Ruby to the same conclusion.

"He… he shot himself."

A dark chill overcame them. Weiss spoke in a hushed tone.

"Why would he do that?"

"Maybe something just used his weapon against him?" Nora suggested, hoping for a less cruel reality.

"Maybe…" Ruby looked around the kitchen. The stillness overpowered the room in a way she hadn't noticed before. She pursed her lips, picturing herself in this poor soldier's boots. "There was a battle. He tried to hide within this container but got stuck. He wasn't able to leave, and instead of starving to death, he… took a quicker way out."

"Jeez," Coco said, looking away from the death. "Maybe we should be careful where we stand then."

"I mean, I got this open pretty easily," Nora stated.

"Then maybe he just didn't want to leave," Blake reasoned.

The students looked around the kitchen. There was no sign of a battle. No more skeletons. No discarded shells or weapons. This soldier must have run a long way from his fight to end up alone—or, more worryingly, all signs of the conflict had merely been swept away. Atlasians were tough, honorable, and bred to be tossed away in pursuit of a greater cause. They weren't supposed to scare easily. What could possibly drive a soldier to suicide within these abandoned walls?

The silence returned. The stench of death had permeated through the kitchen, and though the broken skull stared off into nothingness, Ruby felt like it was a warning directly for her. Leave, it said. Only despair awaits you. It was a message she was forced to ignore, though the gravity of their mission was now clearer than ever.

"No more goofing off," Ruby declared. "I don't want to stay here any longer than we have to."

For once, the others agreed immediately. They slowly backed away from the skeleton, and when they felt it was safe, they continued on to the next chamber of the Vault.

Their journey through the following corridor was slower, ironically. With every few steps, someone hesitated, looking over their shoulder or up at the ceiling, expecting something to jump out at them. Something that became more noticeable as the minutes passed: the Vault was deathly silent. Even in the partially functional rooms, there was no ambient noise, no background hum, no creaking of old metal, or whistling of wind. It was as if sound itself had fled the Vault along with its inhabitants. Even their footsteps on the metal grates would get swallowed by the corridor before they could venture into the adjacent rooms. Ruby assumed this was a work of purposeful Fable engineering, a way to remove all audio distractions from those dwelling underground. Or, perhaps, the sound systems had been lost to time as well.

The next chamber was taller than the others, and at first glance, it appeared thoroughly empty. The substance of the room came not from its center, but again, within its walls. The Fables seemed to build whatever they could into the structure of the Vault wall itself to save upon space, and this was no different; within the metal, stacked on top of each other, were several dozen holes, each stretched out twenty feet long but squished flat. There were thin metal sheets that covered some of them, though others were left open, allowing the students to see the contents within. Each hole was a room unto itself: a soft, matted floor with a circular gel-like sphere at its head. The interior walls were decorated, each in its own custom fashion. Images flickered within them: shapes of people, static smiles, and strange-colored skin. A soft blue glow emanated from the more functional rooms, and Ruby could almost imagine the technology stored and lost to time. Within the rooms, there were even smaller compartments, in which exotic fabric was stuffed and now molding. How many clothes were kept safe within those small spaces? How much did the Fables even need when staying in hell?

"So, this is like… a Fable bedroom," Yang reasoned as the students moved through the center of the room.

"I guess," Weiss sighed. "Strange beds, though."

"Everything with the Fables is strange," Blake pointed out. "Say what you want about them, but they definitely had their aesthetic."

"So wait a moment," Velvet said, trying to follow along. "This is the sleeping quarters for the Fables. And the kitchen is right next door, and they were cultivating crops…"

"What are you getting at?" Ruby asked.

"People were living down here, probably for a long time," Velvet stated. "It's expected to be self-sufficient. This isn't a Vault. It's more like a… like a bunker."

"A bunker?" Coco said. "Like… for the end of the world?"

Blake groaned loudly. "I swear if I'm walking around in some doomsday prepper bullshit…"

"I highly doubt that's what this place is supposed to be," Weiss claimed, though Ruby let the idea simmer.

"It could be. The world was ending," Ruby reminded them. "The Fables don't exist anymore. Building an underground hideout where they could hide from the Anti-Fable… that isn't too unreasonable."

"Yeah, except for the huge reception area," Nora said suddenly. "Kinda weird to expect visitors in a place where you don't want anyone to find you."

"And what would the Holy Grail be doing down here?" Pyrrha questioned. Ruby shrugged her shoulders.

"I wish I knew."

She waited for something to answer her questions, but nothing came. They had walked halfway around the perimeter of the Vault, and Rosaline had yet to open her mouth. It was really getting to be a pain. This god would speak to her in nightmares, and shout at her out of the blue, but it wouldn't help her when it really mattered. Ruby's eyes looked around the many beds. She didn't even know they needed sleep, or that they needed to eat. She had to wonder: Did Rosaline sleep in one of these bunks? They reminded her of their first days in Beacon Academy, crammed onto unsteady metal frames as they waited to be sorted into teams. This tight spacing was something Ruby would expect from a military installation, though the idea of something as graceful as a Fable being forced to cram itself into a small space seemed too ridiculous still.

They continued onto the next chamber around the perimeter. They were at the furthest point from the entrance, though they had only moved through less than a handful of rooms. The exit didn't seem that far away, even as their steps grew heavier and the Vault only seemed to become larger and larger with each step. There was still no noise, no movement. If something was waiting to kill them, it took its sweet time. As Team NYBF entered the next chamber, they did a doubletake.

It was the same room. Or, at least, the same model. More Fables had lived down here than they realized. Another few dozen beds in the same format as before, in the same state of mild disarray. Actually, it was something that drew more of Ruby's attention the longer she thought about it. Ruby took notice that the beds seemed mostly made. The kitchen was in a mostly clean state as well. Something obviously happened to the Fables that dwelled within this Vault, but there was no sign of panic or chaos, not the slightest indication that something had gone awry. There weren't even Fable corpses—not that she was sure they left corpses, but wouldn't there at least be some clue as to what happened to everyone living down here? It was a mystery she was forced to put on hold for the time being.

Because she heard a noise.

Blake actually heard it first and pulled forth her sheath-blade without warning the others. Fox picked it up around the same time, speaking hushed words of warning to his teammates. It was only after taking a few steps into the chamber itself did Ruby hear the noise: a soft, mechanical whirring that rumbled along the floor. It echoed around the room, the Vault's alien design deflecting the noise from strange angles. It took Fox several seconds to locate its exact source, but eventually, he moved to the front of the pack and pointed toward one of the bedrooms.

"There. It's coming from over there."

The students followed his finger. He was pointing to one of the rest areas on the ground floor, its metal door folded shut. Whatever was making the noise came from inside that room. Looking closely, Ruby could see splashes of a dark liquid around the frame. She recognized it almost immediately.

"Penny…"

Ruby was on the move before her teammates could stop her. Within an instant, a flurry of red rose petals flew across the entire chamber, racing toward the room at a breakneck pace. She didn't bother thinking about the consequences, or the possibility of failure. The guilt that had been consuming her for days, which she had barely been keeping below the surface, was now bubbling over, screaming for release. She broke out of her rose form and stumbled the last few steps toward the metal door. She heard her teammates running after her, eager to stick together, but she ignored them. She pressed her ear against the metal, trying to listen carefully. There was definitely something mechanical working away within those walls. What was Penny doing? Was she hurt? Oh god, please don't let her be hurt.

Weiss called her name. She wasn't listening.

Yang told her to be cautious. She didn't care.

She screamed at the wall.

"Penny! Are you in there—"

The whirring stopped. A new sound rapidly approached.

Her reflexes took over, and at the last possible moment, she pulled away from the wall as a sword broke through the metal. She gasped as the blade flew out from within the room, blindly sailing across the room in search of a target—followed by three of its allies. Ruby flew away from the assault, but the swords traveled directly toward her teammates. They had little time to react to the sudden attack. They were forced to dodge out of the way… though they were not all successful.

"Gah!"

Yatsu was the first hit, shielding Velvet from one of the incoming swords. It sliced through the side of his leg, and the mountain of a man fell to his knees in pain, blood seeping from the gash. Weiss redirected one of the blades with a glyph, though in the process, it ricocheted off the floor and caught Blake in the shin. Her wound was shallow, though she still hissed in pain and cursed up a storm at her misfortune. The third sword found its victim in Jaune, who was unable to raise his shield before the attack cut through his right shoulder. Pyrrha screamed in horror, rushing to his side, and putting pressure on the deep cut into his muscle. The swords, merely following the instinctive command of the master, buried themselves into the floor, unwilling to follow with a counterattack.

The screams of pain had pierced through the door. From within, Ruby heard a confused voice call out to her.

"R-Ruby? Wait…"

The door opened slowly, pulled open by an unseen force, and Ruby, no longer cowering from the attack, was able to see inside the ancient resting room of the Fables. As her teammates scrambled to heal their injuries and care for one another, all of her focus was pulled into the room. There, on the abstract, gel-like pillow, the woman of her hopes and fears sat patiently—her left leg cleanly removed from her body, black fluid leaking from her wound, and the discarded limb kept close to her side for safekeeping. The skin around her neck was tattered, revealing the sleek machinery beneath, and her clothes were covered in soot. And yet, on seeing Ruby Rose, she flashed the smile that was always as unnerving as it was comforting.

"Ruby Rose, it really is you" Penny stated. "What a pleasant surprise."