Ruby didn't know if she still had a soul.

She certainly couldn't feel it—not her Aura, at least. Whenever she tried to reach for it, in that special little place in her chest where she used to feel it always… nothing happened. Nothing but pain. Abrupt, cold, gnashing pain, so deeply ingrained into her body she could feel it beneath her bones. Scraping against her marrow, scratching at the walls of her arteries, there was something new and jagged making a home inside of her heart. It retaliated against Ruby's attempts to rediscover her humanity.

Assuming Ruby was still human to begin with. Human blood was supposed to be red like roses. But not Ruby's. Not anymore. In the brackish, dim light that passed through the thick membrane enclosing her body, Ruby could just barely make out the color of her own veins, gnarled and inflamed and clotted up from something wriggling inside.

Whatever was pumping through her body, it wasn't red. It was too stark a shade for that. How Ruby could even discern color while she felt something glued over and gumming up her eyelids was another matter, one she didn't want to think about.

She had also forgotten how to move. That was probably important to know how to do. When she first woke up inside this… stomach surrounding her, she had tried ripping at it with her teeth and nails and anything else sharp and vicious her body could provide. But the Grimm stomach had only constricted around her tighter in response, clamping so hard around her limbs and neck she felt several somethings snap all at once.

She blacked out after that, barely remembering anything besides more pain, and some splintered dreams of her mother comforting her when she was much, much younger. Her voice was somehow more crisp and vivid than the nightmare version, so much so Ruby wondered if it was really another dream, or if she was already dead. Her skin felt numb enough, and the Grimm swallowing her felt like a fitting grave for Summer's imposter.

After all, this was how mom died, wasn't it?

Ruby didn't know that for certain , but the pieces lined up with what little conversation she could remember having with Tyrian and Salem. Her mom was probably strung up, ensnared, tossed down into a hole like her, and fed to a literal flood of Grimm. Slowly teasing its way past her mother's throat and eyes and any other orifice it could fill and consume. Staining every inch of her with Grimm until there was nothing of Summer left—

And nothing of Ruby left, either.

A new sensation pierced Ruby's eardrums, interrupting the convulsing throbs of the Grimm muscle normally drowning out all other sound. It was still muffled, only loud in comparison to how little she could hear her own involuntary sobbing (it was more of a reflex at this point).

The interruption turned out to be a voice, low and cackling, of a man Ruby wanted to brutally murder. "Hello, little flower," Tyrian said, his vague outline visible past the Grimm membrane. He loomed over the edge of the pit. "I am adoring this new look of yours. Did you do something with your hair?" He laughed, each cackling impact like a gunshot against Ruby's deprived yet fragile senses.

If Ruby could shout at him, she would. But her vocal cords were shot from her own gasping, involuntary breaths, and some sort of tube still crawling down her esophagus. It kept crawling no matter how much she tried to bite down (not that she could move her jaw anyway). She settled for imagining Crescent Rose was still in her hands, and the many creative ways she could use her loquacious lover to rend through Tyrians face like a fucking lawn mower—

"Oh, something has you excited!" Tyrian said gleefully. "Your cocoon spasmed all at once in such a delicious way. Is it I that caused such a stirring reaction? Quiver once for yes, twice for no."

The Grimm walls clenched as her chest shook with anger, but otherwise she still couldn't move. The closest she got was a twitch in her fingers, longing for the phantom weight of a trigger she could never reach.

"Hmm, well, that was far more than just one or two heart murmurs, so… I'll take your answer as a yes, and assume that you don't remember how to count." His silhouette grew larger as he got closer, hanging on to the ledge with just the barb of his tail. "When will you be done marinating, I wonder? You're already so much farther along than your mother ever reached. Even that other dog we have in the next room over doesn't seem as integrated as you."

Ignoring the implications of others meeting her same fate, Ruby locked up at any news about her mother. Even the thrum of the Grimm muscles fell still, giving Ruby more room to breathe. The appendage crawling down her throat warbled, and she could feel more than hear her voice waver softly around the fleshy intrusion. "M-mother…?"

"Yes, your mother! I promised you answers, and you're living them firsthand!" He got closer, which only made his silhouette more blurred and uncertain, his torso eclipsing the amethyst light above. "She was dolled up just the same as you. I was so sad when I couldn't rip her apart the first time, but oh how glad I am that I trusted my Goddess. Whatever bloody canvas I could make of her on my own was nothing compared to the grotesque splendor of Summer Rose's transformation." He sighed wistfully. "To this day, I've never seen a woman more beautiful… other than my Goddess, of course," he said quickly, as though he was convincing himself.

He was right there. Mere feet away as he dangled in front of her like a fishing lure, teasingly floating with the promise of something to catch but it was all a ruse. Even his words felt like bait, promising the truth of Summer's whereabouts, but Ruby only grimaced at how little she liked the taste.

She still took the bait, anyway. Her mom could be on the other side of that line.

"If you are even half as lovely when you hatch… perhaps I will give you the same offer I gave Summer," Tyrian said thoughtfully.

Ruby forced her voice to work again, as raspy as it was. "…offer?"

"Yes. Of… physical companionship."

If Ruby could blink, she would. "Fuck… you."

"Yes, exactly. Though, it sounds far less romantic when you put it like that." Ruby's prison squirmed wildly, matching the rhythm of her accelerating heartbeat as Tyrian bridged the final gap and stroked one hand against the membrane. He was admiring it. "No need to get flustered, it's merely an proposition. Though, like your mother… I doubt you'll say no forever."

Ruby's stomach lurched, and her prison convulsed with it. "W-what?" He was lying. Her mom was noble and perfect and heroic and faithful—he was just a liar. He had to be. "She… didn't."

"But she did, little flower." He sounded so proud of himself. "Why, with how painful her transformation became, and the few comforts she had in the bowels of this castle… she practically begged for my attention. If only for stress relief." Clinging to the wall now, closer than ever, all light disappeared as Tyrian became a breath away. "By the end, when you have nothing left but memories… you'll be begging for me, too."

As abruptly as he had scuttled down, he disappeared, allowing the nauseating light above to pass through the Grimm membrane once more. Or, no, it wasn't just the light that was nauseating. It was everything.

Her body—cloaked in Grimm flesh and parasites burrowing into her spine and face.

Her weakness—unable to save Penny, or herself, or anyone.

And just… Tyrian. Salem was a monster, and so was Cinder, but the scorpion faunus was another kind of freak entirely—

And he touched mother.

Something inside of Ruby changed at that realization, even more than she had changed on the outside. Whatever it was, it was wild and snarling, untamed and full of teeth.

Ruby didn't know if she still had a soul. She certainly couldn't feel it, or reach for it. But when she thought about Tyrian, his fingers digging at her scalp and his breath licking across her neck, and how he did all of that and worse to mom—

She growled. Her vision tinted red. Something harsh pulsed under skin, spreading through her like a wildfire. It wasn't Aura, and it certainly wasn't her soul. But it was strong. Stronger than Ruby was alone. So she gave up on figuring out where her soul was, or if she even still had one. Instead, she reached outwards, flexing a muscle she didn't even know she had—

And though her fingers didn't twitch, something outside of her prison did.

On the morning Salem was scheduled to be murdered, Emerald threw up. She'd been doing that a lot lately. Whether because of anxiety or her Aura exhaustion catching up to her, she didn't know. But staring face down at her toilet bowl wasn't going to help her find the answer. She had to pull herself together. For… her.

The woman she cared about most.

Emerald stumbled her way to her bedroom's sink, hastily splashing water over her face to wash away any stray grease or grime. She could honestly use another shower, but she didn't have much time before she was supposed to meet up with Cinder. And then, one way or another, her time working under Salem would finally be over.

"Only to immediately work under a new Grimm Queen, one with an even more severe case of pyromania," Ozpin said bluntly. "That is, if this scheme of yours even works to begin with, and Salem doesn't kill you both outright."

"Do you want me to throw up again?" Emerald replied irritably. "'Cause talk like that is gonna make me throw up again."

Oz sighed. "No. I just… there's no going back from this. You understand that, correct?"

Obviously she did. So obviously, she didn't even need to voice it.

Ozpin, as always, thought otherwise. "Yes, well, I prefer us to be direct in this matter. I do not want to assume your intentions. Your mind has been… muddled, as of late. And if I try too hard to piece together your thoughts, that may only accelerate our eventual union."

"So… the more you read my thoughts, the less thoughts of my own I'll actually have?"

"A little reductive, but… basically, yes."

Cool. Yet another piece of existential dread to mull over before she probably got clap-backed by a suicidal witch.

"This is technically your plan, Emerald. Even if Cinder seems to have spun it around to be hers and hers alone."

Emerald chuckled darkly, staring at her own reflection like she was looking Ozpin in the eyes. "Is that what this pep talk is about? Who gets what credit for the shit show that's about to go down?" She shook her head, taking a pause to inspect the bags under her eyes. Would Cinder notice? Fuck, where was Emerald's concealer when she needed it—

"Focus, please," Oz said, but not unkindly. "At this point, I'm not trying to stop you. But I do need you to consider the future—as much as you normally hate to do so. Whether you win or lose today, there will be ramifications. Ramifications that require contingencies, regardless of the outcome."

"And you didn't bring this up yesterday, why—"

"Emerald," Oz interrupted, sounding exasperated to his very soul. "I bring this up every day. You are just… stubborn. The future matters, even if you—deep down—don't think you'll ever have one of your own."

It was Emerald's turn to sigh: her concealer had dried out. Typical. "What else can we even do, Oz? It's Salem or Cinder, no magic third option. If I have to pick a poison, I'll always pick the one that tastes good."

He mumbled something illegible, with a few curse words mixed in, before he continued more clearly, "At the very least, if this scheme of yours does end up working… will you keep your promise to me and help Miss Rose out of this place, whenever she… emerges? No matter what Cinder has to say about it?"

That answer was also obvious, as much as Emerald hated to admit it out loud. "Yeah." Either Oz's sentimentality had infected her, or Ruby was just a pitiable enough girl to root for. "I'll get her out of here."

From her own reflection, Emerald caught a shimmer of green flash behind her eyes. A sign of acknowledgment from Oz, no doubt. "Indeed. No matter how this develops… we will face it together, Emerald." He gave a dark chuckle of his own. "Not that we have much of a choice in the matter."

Turning the sink nozzle off, Emerald turned away from the mirror as she dried her face with a towel. "I can't say I have any ideas for what happens next, Oz. You're right about that, at least. So… do you have any?" He wasn't going to gripe this much and not bring a scheme of his own to the table, was he?"

There was a deliberate pause before his reply. "If you fail, only one comes to mind. One that will guarantee our mutual survival." She could feel the instinctive wince behind his mental grimace. "It, however, will not be pleasant for you."

Emerald side eyed her own reflection, chasing the green outline in her retinas. "Do I even want to know?"

"Knowing you? Probably not."

"Cool." She tossed her towel to the side, accepting (reluctantly) there was no saving herself from how shitty she looked this morning. "I'd better not fail then."

"See that you don't," Ozpin agreed, almost mournfully. "I'd rather not resort to bad habits."

Emerald stepped out of her bathroom, hands clutched over her chest as she felt another deluge of anticipation curdle through her stomach. She didn't have the time (or mental capacity) to guess whatever fallback strategy Oz was implying. She simply steeled her resolve, marching towards her door even as she heard Cinder's own impatient footfalls pacing outside in the hallway.

Her hand hovered over the door knob. She breathed in, and out. Ready or not…

It was time to burn a witch.

Salem considered herself a patient woman. She tended to her plans like a well-groomed garden, each seed of discord planted and plucked over years of careful dedication—some only coming to fruition after centuries of cultivation. But it didn't matter how long her design took to come together, nor how many lives were buried beneath her garden's foundations. As long as she had the time, she would win.

In the end, time was always on her side.

Yet, across the many millennia that Salem had walked the face of this ruined, godless world, there were times where even she would give in to her impulses—

Like Penny Polendina.

Though resurrecting Ironwood's little soldier-who-could had started off as a rather uncharacteristically spontaneous decision, the results of Arthur's tampering had ignited an emotion she hadn't felt in millennia:

Hope.

A child not born, but forged. A soul that could transcend death, so long as her heart was fed the life of another—not unlike the lich-king phylacteries of the old world. Like Salem herself, Penny was ageless and immortal; a nearly perfect lifeform. For the first time since Ozma had abandoned her, Salem was in the presence of a true equal—the closest thing to a real human being that had crawled out from the mud of new humanity.

Yet, for all the care and devotion she felt for the girl, Penny did not reciprocate it. Even now, as the two of them sat across from each other, nestled at a table in Evernight's library, Penny refused to meet her eyes. Instead, she fiddled with her fingers, scratching at her gloves so feverishly she tore holes through the fabric.

Salem sighed. It was the seventh pair she'd worn out in three days. "You could just take them off," Salem suggested. She had plenty of new gloves to spare, but that would only treat the symptoms of Penny's anxiousness, not the source. "Or is something else bothering you?"

Penny flinched, shrinking away from Salem's attention. The fear stirring within her was as palpable as it was irritating. "No, ma'am. I just…" She trailed off, struggling to form her words properly. "I just feel itchy."

So polite yet so guarded. Salem longed for the days where Penny would feel safe enough to smile around her once more. But, again, Salem was a patient woman.

She'd wait centuries if she had to, for Penny to come to her senses.

Though, her current dilemma gave Salem pause. "I wasn't aware you could itch, darling." Arthur had made it clear that Penny didn't have tactile senses of her own (a project she would commission as soon as the Aura Core was replicated).

Penny glanced at her hands, the color in her eyes going grey as she pinched the fabric again. "Neither did I…"

Conversation was sparse after that. Not that Salem expected much discussion to begin with, considering their petty argument the other day. The whole point of today's outing (and the several others she had cleared out her schedule for across the next few weeks), was for Penny to grow accustomed to Salem again. Like nurturing a bond with a skittish animal, all it took was time and repetitive exposure.

The library was the easiest enclosure for this re-acclimation process, as it gave them both a good excuse to sit in silence together, repurposing the awkward tension between them as an opportunity to read.

Though, at the moment, Salem was the only one reading anything. It was a dry read, a faded medical text lifetimes out of date, but she rather enjoyed spotting the wildly wrong conclusions drawn by the foundational yet fringe alchemists of early medicine in Remnant. From the four humors, to the supposed aphrodisiac effects of broiled Faunus ears, Salem could only chuckle as she traced the trajectory of every assumptive leap they made throughout history.

As she reached her favorite passage (detailing a Mistrali king's failed attempt to grasp immortality by huffing jade dust), Penny finally gave in and initiated conversation on her own. "Why… why did you bring me here?" Penny scratched at her gloves again. "What is the purpose of this?"

Salem peered over the rim of the book, giving nothing away as she replied, "Does there need to be an ulterior motive?" She glanced back down at the current page, turning it casually to the next. "Can we not simply enjoy one another's company?"

Penny had no response to that. But Salem sensed some of her fear ebb away, not quite becoming comfortable, but not quite as terrified anymore either. Slim as it was, it was progress. A seed between them that would flourish under the unyielding yet caring hands of eternity.

Salem smiled as what modicum of fear remained settled itself into confusion. Some trepidation ignited anew, however, as one of her Seers drifted overhead, delivering a tray of tea and some breakfast scones.

"Thank you, Mortimer." She savored the bitter taste, raising an eyebrow as she noticed Penny's aghast expression. "You have a question for me?" Despite wording it as a question, it was more of an observation. Grimm senses could be so astute when required, if sometimes still vague. Negative emotions alone could only reveal so much behind the walls of a person's heart. But Penny's heart had always been so painfully open and easy to read. It's one of the qualities she loved most about her child.

"I was just wondering…" Penny began meekly. "Do you… name all of them?"

"My Grimm?" What an innocent question. How adorable. "Only the ones that left an impression." Whether by intelligence or ferocity. "And most of the ones that do are a result of my own personal… research into an important matter I am working on."

"I see." Penny paused. "Research into what?"

Salem narrowed her smile, detecting a trace of anxiety spike as Penny waited for a response. She was clearly fishing about something, possibly about Arthur's progress or her new test subject in the basement. "Several things, really," she replied simply. "But mostly into the Brothers and the creations they left behind."

Fear ebbed away once more. Was it only genuine curiosity then? "You mean humanity?" Penny asked.

"Humanity is dead," Salem said bluntly. "You and I are the closest things left."

Her fear spiked again. She cowered, confusion overwhelmed by terror. "S-sorry."

"Think nothing of it, darling," Salem said quickly. Her daughter had become even more fragile than she had realized. Best to handle her with care. "But to answer your question more directly, no, not… modern humanity." She did her best not to spit the word, for Penny's sake. For now, anyway. "I'm actually looking into something else the gods left behind. A power I hope to weaponize against them."

Confusion won over fear once more. "Weaponize? Weaponize what?"

Salem took another sip of her tea, chuckling as she returned to her book. "Their bastards."

That only confused Penny more, and Salem almost cooed at the cute way she tilted her head before her next question—

But their family bonding time was cut short as the doors to the library burst open, a wave of blistering heat surging into the air. It didn't take Grimm senses to figure out which of her servants had arrived, especially with such obvious magic use.

"Cinder, what a surprise," Salem deadpanned. "To what great urgency have I been interrupted?"

The negative emotions roiling under Cinder's skin were too wild and volatile to pick apart. Though, her barely concealed scowl, and the smoke billowing from her nostrils, made her mood fairly clear. "I need answers from you, my grace."

Salem rolled her eyes. Such a needless display of power. When would Cinder learn that subtlety was key? "Whatever it is can wait. I shall collect you in an hour or so—"

"I will have answers now."

A crack splintered through the porcelain handle of Salem's tea cup. Her smile became just as brittle. "Was that… a command?"

For a brief moment, Cinder remembered her place, trembling at Salem's voice, and stumbled back from the door. But as quick as the fear was summoned, it was just as quickly dismissed from her face. Cinder stood her ground. "Where is Ruby Rose?"

Salem sighed, standing to her feet as she ignored the waves of negativity clouding Penny's heart at the sound of that one name. "We can discuss this elsewhere. Regardless, you will not be touching her." She emphasized the word so Penny wouldn't fall apart after making so much progress.

"But you promised she'd be mine," Cinder growled. "Just like you promised me many things."

Had Cinder always been this much of a hassle? If she wasn't already a Maiden, she'd have been disassembled twice over by Salem's magic—though, admittedly out of sight of Penny's eyes. The poor girl was still too squeamish for such truths. How that Rose girl's eyes reverted Penny's affinity for violence was still beyond Salem's understanding at the moment, but she'd figure it out with more time and experimentation.

Still, while death was overkill, there were other methods of persuasion at Salem's command. Namely, the Grimm parasite she could possess remotely, gnarled and wound up inside of Cinder's chest. Such abrupt manipulation could accidentally damage the Grimm itself, but it was merely a prototype anyway. She could always implant Cinder with another.

Yet, as she tried to reach for that connection, to yank Cinder to her knees and make her kneel before her Queen, Salem found only nothingness. Even her Grimm senses fell quiet, losing track of all the negativity she could sense before. The loss of her sixth sense left her numb and shell-shocked, like she had suddenly gone deaf.

Penny mumbled something, and Salem spun towards the sound, anchoring herself to any sensation she could grasp. "What did you say?"

"N-nothing—" But she hiccupped.

While Salem couldn't sense her confusion or fear or frustration anymore, she could see the way Penny's eyes widened, flickering back and forth between Salem and something else behind her—

Yet, as she turned around, she saw nothing. Only the fading edges of her own vision as she fell to the floor, unable to feel a single nerve in her entire body.

"Fascinating," Salem said weakly, more astounded than angry. "How—"

But her question was cut off as Cinder stomped her glass heel through Salem's chest—

And closed her Grimm hand around Salem's throat. Though she couldn't feel the heat of it, fire licked across her skin and boiled her flesh down to the bone.

"You promised," Cinder repeated, wrapping her hand tighter around Salem's neck. She could only feel the pressure of it, not the actual aching pain thrumming through her chest. She could not feel her lungs gasping for fleeting air.

As Salem's vision blackened and blurred, she focused on the snarl curling across Cinder's face, searching the labored expression for any weakness she could exploit. But within the flaring intensity of Cinder's lone amber eye—

Salem could only find the familiar indifference of death.