Here we go.

Cover Art: Kirire

Chapter 119

Ominous silence reigned. In truth, nothing should have felt all that different but after thirty or more years of bouncing on the tracks with the sound of the wheels clanking away, being stuck in place in an empty void was stifling. Blake woke up from her nap tense and afraid, and it took her several minutes to realise it was because of the lack of sound and movement. Her body had grown used to it, to the point that its absence had her stressed beyond belief.

It wasn't just her, either. The others were equally twitchy.

Cardin and Meryl were doing their best to keep their children calm, and even if the kids were adults in terms of how long they'd been alive, they were still children deep inside. It couldn't be said that they'd grown up when all they'd ever known was the train.

Blake kept Crocea Mors close but sheathed, and Jaune held onto Gambol Shroud in one hand and the briefcase with the bomb in it in the other. In the time they'd had – long enough to discover that they still didn't need to eat – they had fashioned sharpened javelins to use against the entity. Though calling them javelins was a bit much. They'd just snapped off straight-ish bits of metal from the seats, sharpened the ends, and tossed them into a few piles around the carriage. They probably weren't going to fly well, but if they were thrown at something big enough and close enough, then they couldn't really miss.

Planning for the future kept them busy. Kept them sane.

"You grip it like this..." Cardin was teaching his wife and children how to throw, adjusting their hands to be further down toward the rear of the javelin, and to let the shaft rest in their palms and not be gripped tightly. "Take a step forward, rotate your arm, and let it go. Don't throw. Don't fling it like you would a ball. Let the javelin slide out your palm toward your target."

He'd set up some train seats further down to throw at, and while he was by no means a master of it himself, he could get the javelin to hit at some thirty feet. Nothing compared to what a professional like Pyrrha Nikos could manage, but it wasn't bad for it not being his main way of fighting. The kids and mother were less capable, but they were improving, and Cardin assured them that every little bit would help.

"What happens when we kill it, dad?" asked River.

"Then we escape from this place and go back home to Vale."

"Will you still be our daddy?"

"Of course I will." He pulled the girl's head to his chest and kissed her scalp. "Nothing is going to change there. Nothing except you'll go to school, make friends, and have a normal life. Who knows, maybe your mother and I will give you a new brother or sister as well."

"Ew. I don't want a brother."

"A sister is okay," said the second. "But no boys. Boys are stupid."

"Boys are very stupid," Cardin agreed, with the infinite patience of a good father. "I'll be sure to keep that in mind once we're out of here – but we'll need to make up for all the missed birthday parties first. How does that sound?"

"Yayyy!"

"You're the best, daddy!"

Blake turned away from the family hug, mostly because she couldn't stand thinking about how this would truly end. She caught Jaune watching, jealousy on his own face, but he wiped it away once he saw her watching. Blake doubted he was jealous of Cardin for having children where he did not, so it must have been him wishing his own family could have been something like it. Something normal.

"Was your family like that once?" she asked him, sitting down at his side. "Or were you trained as employees from birth?"

"My family isn't as bad as it looks, you know." Blake didn't believe that, and her expression must have said it. "You've only seen how they act with me," he said. "If you're not an anomaly, if you're normal, then they can be quite a good family. Not perfect, I admit. Father never loved us as much as he could have, but he didn't dislike us either. He would train us himself, and he would try and balance work and life. Mom loved us all, and my sisters are – were – all close. Those alive still are, with one another..."

"Just not with you."

Jaune shrugged. "I'm an anomaly. As far as they're concerned, their brother died and I took over his husk – after killing their mother as well. It's hardly surprising they'd not like me."

"It still isn't right of them. Or fair."

"This isn't the place or time to talk about it. Chances are, we'll never see my family again."

He kept his voice low for good reason. "You don't think killing this thing will let us out, then?"

"It might do, but that might not mean anything. Our bodies and souls are outside of time. What would happen if we came back? Would we age thirty years in an instant? Be thirty years in the future? Overtake our old bodies or become new bodies? There are too many uncertainties, but the one certainty we have is that no one who comes out this anomaly at the other end remembers any of this happening. So, we'll either be erased or we'll be left here while life carries on outside this dimension. Either way, I don't see us going back to Vale." He nodded toward the small family. "But let them have their moment. It's all we can do."

"And us...?"

"We've had many good moments." His gloved hand squeezed hers. "But now it's time for us to make sure no one else has to go through this. Not for my family, not for duty, but because it's the right thing to do."

"Hmm. I guess that's not so bad."

Jaune handed her the briefcase. "Here. I think you're best to carry this."

"Because I'm the proverbial bomber on the train?"

He chuckled. "No. Because I'm going to take my gloves off when I fight, and I don't think me setting fire to the highly volatile dust bomb is going to be a good idea."

"Fair." Blake took it. "You're going to use your powers, then?"

"Only makes sense to. Before, the risk was always what I might do to the innocents around me, but we're... well, there isn't really anyone for me to harm, is there? If all goes wrong, my anomalous form will be trapped here anyway."

But he might lose his mind. Blake wanted to say it wasn't worth it, and yet, without it, Jaune was just a man without aura wielding a gun. He'd be killed in an instant. Better he let loose and risk them. Better this thing die before it could claim others and put them through this.

The air began to grow hot and stagnant.

A distant sound like rumbling thunder reached their ears.

"It's coming," Cardin said, standing and grasping his makeshift mace in one hand and a javelin in the other. "This is it. We fight here and we secure our freedom!"

/-/

It was coming but it took time to arrive.

An almost mocking amount of time.

When it did, when it finally appeared, it was only visible because of brief yellow lights approaching, resembling the headlights of a car. Its body was difficult to piece out in the dark, a mass of purple black that blended all too well into the infinite world around it. Not entirely black, for the hard edges would have stood out, but something that blurred the edges of its body.

Camouflage, she realised, and didn't that paint a worrying picture – because camouflage only existed as a method for a species to escape predation by another. If this was a prey animal, then what else lived in this dimension? It wasn't something she wanted to think about. As it came closer, Blake kept Crocea Mors sheathed, knowing its light might frighten the monster away. It was tempting to let that happen.

But being trapped here forever was no mercy. Especially not if other things lived here as well.

"Get behind me!" Cardin shouted to his family. "Let me handle the bulk of it. Throw javelins but focus on staying out of trouble first and foremost! And avoid the edges of the train!"

The edge. Before, the train had been solid with walls and a ceiling, but their carriage was very much shattered now, being little more than floor and open air. They could have retreated to others more whole behind them, but what would that achieve? The creature would just peel those open, and the more they put between it and them, the more violent it'd get. If they locked themselves away, it might just topple the train from the tracks and cast them into the abyss.

Better to fight it out here in the open where they could hope to dodge than to put themselves in a confined space.

But it was so big.

Blake saw the scale of it when it finally descended upon them. It was fleshy and slimy, with long tendrils or tentacles like a squid, but fanning out from its body in every direction more akin to a starfish. Except there were a lot of them – ten at least. Some were larger, others smaller, and they wriggled independent of one another, sometimes tangling and sliding together, and always shielding the centre of its body, where two glowing yellow eyes (or what she assumed to be eyes) stared back at them.

Presumably, it had a mouth in there as well, but Blake didn't know. Couldn't be sure. All she knew was that it floated in the air and was so alien that her brain struggled to comprehend it. She could see it, but she couldn't understand it. The human understanding of anatomy she had felt too limited, and the anomaly too far beyond its scope.

And then it let out a noise she couldn't understand. Warble, scream, roar? It vibrated at a frequency either too high or too low to hear, but she felt it all the same. It made her clothes ripple and the hairs on her arms stand up. It threatened to lock her knees together and make her soil herself.

Cardin responded with a javelin launched at its face.

The battle was joined.

The attack provoked it into reaching out for Cardin with two tentacles. It came slowly, almost curiously, as if it wanted to pick him up and inspect him rather than attack. When Cardin smashed the limbs aside with his mace, the creature recoiled and attacked faster, like a child realising the insect had hurt it, and now wanting to tear it to pieces rather than admire. One tentacle slammed down and shook the carriage, but Cardin moved aside and swung his mace with both hands, biting down into the flesh. The other tentacle was cut off by Crocea Mors, its blade burning hot and bright.

Making that awful not-noise again, the beast yanked its limbs back and floated a safe distance, intimidated by the glowing weapon. That didn't stop a flaming spear hitting it, sticking, and melting into its skin. It twirled in the air, rotating a full three-sixty degrees with force enough to make the molten javelin spin out of it. Jaune lunged forward and launched another, the metal orange and melting from his barehanded grip.

The anomaly swam through the air toward them, spinning like some throwing star and slapping its limbs up and down the carriage, raking them in an unpredictable and almost-random pattern. Blake ducked and darted from side to side, swinging Crocea Mors with two hands. What she lacked in familiarity with such a long weapon, she made up for with speed.

And this thing was even less familiar with humans that could fight back and hurt it. Rather than assess and fight them tactically, it lunged and lurched, repeatedly putting itself in harms way. Blake sliced into its limbs and every blow made it flinch and twitch in apparent agony.

The others were less fortunate.

Gambol Shroud did little of anything to it, and Jaune soon abandoned her weapon in favour of using his bare hands. The fire burned where it touched but flames would not spread, refusing to take hold on the anomaly's odd, slimy body. Jaune would dodge a strike and slide his hand across a limb in the brief moment it was lodged in the carriage. That would melt and burn through the thing's skin and force it to yank a tentacle out. He was holding his own.

But not everyone here was trained and spry as they.

Meryl and her children did their best but the creature was flailing about wildly above them, smashing tentacles down with reckless abandon. Though she managed to predict the first few, it wasn't long before she was hemmed to the edge of the carriage. A tentacle slammed down and hit her legs and feet as she tried to dive under it.

"Arghhhh!" she screamed.

"MERYL!" Cardin roared. "Rarghhh!"

He stood over her and did his best to cover her, but that only placed him as a stationary target. The creature swept three tentacles at once into both him and her, smearing Meryl across the floor and killing her instantly, and launching Cardin off the train and into the abyss.

His children screamed as he did, sent hurtling to his inevitable doom.

Two down already.

Blake screamed to draw its attention and waved Crocea Mors to buy the children time. If only they'd used that time to run or hide or do something. Lily, driven by the loss of her parents, picked up a javelin and jumped up, grabbing a tentacle.

"No!" Jaune shouted. "Don't!"

The child didn't listen. It rose up stabbing and stabbing, trying to kill the thing that had wiped out her parents, but she didn't notice other tentacles coming up around the one she was holding onto. River screamed out, but Lily was lost to her angry screams. The beast looked at her as if unsure what to make of it, thoroughly unhurt by the attacks. It coiled its other tentacle around the first and around Lily.

And squeezed.

The girl's screams were silenced with a slick crunching sound.

It was all Blake could do to watch it happen, unable to get up to the anomaly with Crocea Mors since it was floating above them. River cried and hurled javelins up, her aim obscured by tears running down her face. Jaune's flaming ones did a little more damage, but neither really seemed to bother the beast. The only things that did was Crocea Mors, and Blake couldn't afford to throw it for fear of losing it.

Its grim work done, the anomaly came back and swept its limbs at them once more. Jaune jumped one and burned it, while Blake sliced through hers with Crocea Mors, fighting her way closer to the others so she could defend them. River did her best, ducking the first limb and scrambling over the second, but she was so short and couldn't get high enough. Another that came low, sweeping across the floor, was too big for her to jump over, and she was caught by the top of it and sent flying with a scream toward Jaune, past Jaune.

He lunged for her. "I've got you!"

River reached out and their hands met, Jaune grasping her wrist to save her.

With his bare hand.

The girl went up off like a firework, burning hot and bright with flames roaring up from her and silencing her agonised screams. Jaune stared, his face wracked with nightmarish guilt as the girl he'd tried to save turned to ash in his hand.

It was too much for him.

"ARGHHHHH!"

Fire burst out from his body and wrapped around him to form a cocoon, or an egg. It layered over itself until it was a burning hot ball of orange floating ominously three feet off the floor. The egg-cocoon pulsed with inner fire, beating like a heart.

Knowing it was coming to an end, Blake knelt and opened the briefcase, activating the bomb and its timer. Thirty seconds. Such a short time. Blake stared counting in her head.

The anomaly was intrigued by the new development and tried to pick Jaune up by wrapping its tentacles around the egg. It burned furiously, the air filling with steam, and the anomaly whipped back in pain. Incensed, it lashed out with strike after strike, bringing its limbs down in wild overhead swings on the egg again and again and again, pounding it down into the carriage floor.

There was a crack and, for a moment, the fire dimmed.

The egg slumped down, broken, and something burned sadly in the middle, half-human and half-something else. Blood glowing like lava pooled sadly out from under what had once been, and what still half was, her lover. His fires flickered out as life left him.

Trembling, Blake bit back her cries.

It was only her left.

Blake's eyes burned with furious tears and her throat burned when she screamed her hatred. In one hand, Crocea Mors burning like a star, so bright that it practically burned spots into her right eye. In her left hand, the briefcase ticked away, the dust bomb within it working its way down. Around her, the ruined remains of a train carriage smeared with blood.

Ahead and above, some disgusting creature that closed in on her from every direction.

It had taken everything from her.

Left her as the last one remaining here in this empty world.

If it died, and she lived, what would happen to her? Trapped here for an eternity unable to die, unable to age, unable to escape? Blake trembled at the thought of it. Everything she had and loved was gone.

"I'll take you with me!" she swore, dodging a tendril that slammed down and pierced the carriage. Crocea Mors swiped across and sliced through it like a hot knife through butter. The creature screamed. "We'll die together!" she howled, jumping up to catch the tentacle as it retracted. Blake was thrown up along with it and she let go above the creature's centre of mass. Gravity took hold and she fell. "I hope you suffer!"

Crocea Mors struck a second before her feet did, all her bodyweight forcing the anomalous sword down into the monster's face. It trembled in fear and pain, and Blake twisted violently with both hands, cutting a larger hole within which she shoved the briefcase, her hand, and her arm all the way up to her elbow.

Tick.

"Zero," she whispered, closing her eyes. "I'm coming, Jaune. Wherever we might end up..."

The world exploded into white.

/-/

White light bloomed ahead.

Blake jolted in her seat as the train left the tunnel with a nasty bump on the rails. The briefcase in her lap almost fell of it, but she quickly caught it before dust could spill out – or worse, ignite. Sunlight streamed in the windows blindingly, though it shouldn't have felt so bright this late in the afternoon.

And it had only been a few minutes since the journey started.

"What happened?" she asked Jaune. He looked as surprised as she. "Why didn't it work? We were supposed to experience time in there – years, if the Fist Office's anomaly was the same as this one."

"Maybe it wasn't the same."

There was nothing they could do but stand and get off the train once it reached its destination. A young woman barged past them, mumbling an apology as she hurried to a kiosk selling snacks and cigarettes. A few men and women in the carriage ahead came off rubbing their heads and yawning. The speakers at the station loudly asked them to step off the train and beyond the yellow line marked for safety.

As she did, Blake wondered why her head felt so heavy. Had the ride been that uncomfortable? She worked her arm in slow circles to loosen her muscles, and her head from side to side. Her neck cracked like she'd slept bad. "I feel awful," she said. "You?"

"I've been better," Jaune replied. He touched fingers to his nose and they came away bloody, red smeared across his black gloves. He checked his scroll. "But we were only in there sixty seconds – as is advertised."

"It felt longer. Like five minutes."

"Hmm. That's the anomaly at work, I'm sure, but why didn't it take us?"

"Maybe we were the lucky ones."

"Hm. Maybe..."

A mother and her two daughters came off the train, and one of the children stumbled and bumped into someone's legs. "M'sorry," she said, tiredly.

"Mind where you're going, animal!" snarled the teenage boy.

The girl stared up at him. "Daddy...?"

"Pah! Do I look like a freaking animal!?"

"I'm sorry, sir." The mother drew her shocked child back. "I'm very sorry, sir."

"Tch. Whatever."

He stalked away, shooting an angry glare at the apologetic and frightened mother. Blake scowled at the boy as he went. Even if she was no longer White Fang, she hated to see assholes like him. The young girl who had been insulted stared after him with a strange look on her face somewhere between confusion and heartbreak.

"Can all passengers leave the train..." the speakers repeated.

Blake looked around. "Isn't this all of us?"

"I assumed so," Jaune said.

"Excuse me!" A member of staff came off the train with a black briefcase and a suit jacket. "Does this belong to anyone? It was left on seat 16A. Has anyone forgotten a business suit and a briefcase?"

It wasn't theirs, that was for sure. Considering theirs had a bomb in it, Jaune and Blake hadn't let it out their sight. The jacket looked fit for a slightly rounder person as well. After asking around, the security guard said something about taking it to lost and found, and how it must have been left from an earlier journey since, according to records, there had been no one else on their carriage. Only the two of them, the young woman buying cigarettes, the student from Beacon, and the mother and two children.

Blake couldn't recall anyone else being on there.

"What now?" she asked Jaune.

"We take it back. Try again and let it take us."

Blake grimaced, but there was no arguing with him – or with duty. They booked fresh tickets and boarded it in reverse, riding into the tunnel as Blake closed her eyes and counted in her head. At fifty-five seconds, proving she was a little slow on counting, the train came back out the other side once more.

Exactly sixty seconds in the tunnel and no greater.

Jaune made them take the journey two more times before shrugging and marking the case down as unresolved. Perhaps the anomaly had been spooked and left, or perhaps they'd misread the signs in the first place and it never existed.

Either way, Blake was grateful. It was nice to have any easy job for a change.

So, was this a "dream" and didn't exist, or was it an alternate reality that did exist, and they died in it? I favour the latter, and that was my intent, but I suppose it's open to interpretation. Certainly, the former almost has the sadder element to it in that the Jaune and Blake (and others) in that reality had all their suffering and hard work, but also their rare moments of happiness, erased from existence as if they never happened.

Why did the businessman only go missing? Basically, it's the manner of his death. He left the train of his own accord. The others died on it or were killed as they were thrown off.

Next Chapter: 21st October

Like my work? Please consider supporting me, even if it's only a little a month or even for a whole year, so I can keep writing so many stories as often as I do. Even a little means a lot and helps me dedicate more time and resources to my work.

P a treon . com (slash) Coeur