"No..." Jinn fell forward, catching herself against the cold stone floor with her hands. "Why? Again..." He had gone just as swiftly as he'd arrived. The God of Light had left her, still, without any answers.

A strong pair of arms wrapped around her and pulled her up to her feet. It was Ruby. She turned Jinn around to face her, getting altogether too close to Jinn's face. "Hey, are you alright? What happened? Jinn?"

She shook Ruby off, then staggered back, her legs about giving way under her own weight. She stumbled into Ironwood, who caught her and kept her from falling to the ground. Jinn took the moment to catch her breath, her gaze wandering idly across the floor and the feet of her companions. She looked up at them, looking around at their faces. These people... they weren't just interesting mortals. They were her own people. She was one of them. The God of Light's refusal to answer her questions was answer enough. She was the same as them.

Jinn took a deep breath and steadied herself. "I'm okay." Ironwood let go and stepped back. She wasn't quite 'okay', though, so she needed to be more clear. "I'm... I'm not okay... but I think I will be."

"Jinn." Ironwood addressed her, waiting for her to look at him before speaking. "Tell us. What happened? It looked like you just collapsed."

They hadn't seen any of what she'd been shown. "The test." She explained. "The test showed me my past. Where I came from. Who I was." She paused, unsure if she wanted to tell them. Unsure if she could trust them, or if they would even believe her. She shook off that thought. If they didn't believe her, it wouldn't change anything. They'd given her no cause to mistrust them. "And then he appeared."

"Oh boy. I love the pronoun game." Weiss said sarcastically. "Would you like to tell us who 'he' is?"

"The God of Light."

"A vision? Part of the test?" Vine inquired.

Jinn shook her head. "I thought so too. But he told me otherwise. It was him, for real, speaking to me." From their reactions, it looked like they all believed her. There was concern and fear, but also simple awe on their faces. She continued. "He asked me why I was here, with you all, like this. Why I decided to take this form and join you."

"You came here because I asked you to, and you agreed." Ironwood said. To him, it was that simple. Maybe he was right. "Is that all he wanted to know? Did he say anything else?"

Her eyes turned downward. "I... may not have been as respectful as I should have been."

"Well that makes sense." Weiss offered. When everyone else, Jinn included, looked to Weiss in surprise, she explained. "If Jinn came from somewhere, and was a normal person before the God of Light turned her into what she is now, then that would naturally come as a huge shock to her. Since she didn't remember her life before, I can only imagine what she must be feeling. Confusion. Grief. Anger? How could she not feel those things right now?"

"I suppose I would be upset too." Elm concluded.

Vine nodded in agreement. "I would try not to let it bother me, but it would be difficult to say the least."

"It's okay to be upset." Clover said, approaching Jinn and placing a hand on her shoulder. "But you can't let it affect how you respond to the situation. Is that all that happened?"

"No, he warned me about helping you beyond the parameters of my duty." She quietly patted Clover's hand and pushed it off her shoulder, indicating that she appreciated the gesture but that she would be fine. "I promised that I would not give away my knowledge unduly. But now, seeing who I was in the distant past, the kind of person I was meant to be, I cannot just go back to the way things were before. I can't sit back and watch, knowing what will happen if you fail in your battle against Salem. I must take an active role, and I must fight alongside you when the time comes."

To emphasize her newfound conviction, Jinn unclipped the Relic from her belt, holding it up by the handle. She moved suddenly, swinging the Relic over her head and pointing it towards the door to the final chamber. The handle came out, revealing a long pole with the Lamp at the end. The ornate decorative fringes shifted their shape, turning it into a beautiful golden poleaxe. After a second, Jinn made a sound like she was struggling, and then the axehead crunched into the stone floor. She slid her hands down the shaft and hauled the weapon upright, then shouldered it.

"Well, that was unexpected." Clover laughed. "You'll probably have to practice. I daresay you're a little rusty, but that's a good fighting spirit to start with."

Ironwood was quite pleased with this outcome, though it did concern him how closely the God of Light was watching their actions. It also concerned him that Jinn was voluntarily locking away her vast well of knowledge, but seeing the Relic's transformation into a weapon made him realize that he had traded one weapon for another. If the Relic was a weapon, then it was her weapon, and she would be able to use it effectively. Remembering her past, or at least seeing a glimpse of her past, had revealed to her that the Relic was itself a weapon, and undoubtedly powerful. If her past had revealed that, then it had revealed that she had once been a warrior. A Huntress of some long gone age.

The general was confident that they would be able to face whatever challenge lay ahead for the final test. "Alright, people. Move out. We're almost there." Through the door, the seven of them entered into the final test chamber.

The room was huge. Not as vast as the first chamber, but tall and wide. It was circular, like an arena, with a massive pit in the center. It was open and empty, offering a lot of room to move around, but not much in the way of a method for using most of that space. There were no special features to be found. Not a symbol, not a handle, not a button in sight. The smallest detail besides the door at the far end was the hole, which was far from small. Ironwood stood at the edge of the hole and looked down into the dark abyss. There was no sign that there was anything to be found below them either.

Ironwood looked to Weiss, who was standing nearby with Jinn. "If we're right about who each of the previous tests was designed for, this one would seem to be yours, Weiss."

"Ugh." Weiss didn't waste any time or effort pretending she was pleased with that. "Probably means it's the most annoying, too." She walked over to Ironwood's side and looked down the hole. "How awful." She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted into the pit. "Hello!"

The sound of her shouting startled everyone, and the echoes bounced around them for far too long. Once the echoes finally subsided, there was silence as everyone stood still in anticipation. They didn't know what they were waiting for, but they had to be on alert. Something in this chamber had to be missing. There had to be something that had not yet appeared. Otherwise, there was nothing to do here, and there was no test. No, they all knew that the test was coming, but not here just yet. So they waited, once Weiss' call faded away, for any answer that was forthcoming.

Weiss was about to shrug and give up, but was stopped cold by a voice answering her call. It was a slimy voice, deep and hissing. Ominous, eccentric, and mad in its tone. It echoed up to them from the depths of the pit, beckoning hypnotically and chilling them all to the bone. The air was suddenly electric, filled with nervous energy and fear. It whispered, grumbling in an agonized distant plea with one word, slowly repeating it over and over.

"Dust... Dust... Dust..."

Elm backed away from the edge of the pit. "I do not like the sound of that."

Vine also gave the pit a wide berth. "I agree. Something is stirring down below us."

"Beautiful patterned structures, carved flat faces and edges."

"Uhh, Weiss?" Ruby called over, unfolding Crescent Rose. "What did you do?"

"Dust... Dust... Dust... My one and only love. My purpose, my cause, my faculty. How it inundates my soul, how it courses through my veins. Oh, how it makes my spines tremble."

Weiss backed away, rejoining Jinn. "Spines? Why do I get the feeling this isn't a person talking?"

Jinn grimaced. "Not every species on Remnant has only one spine."

"They want to take my Dust. Come, come, come. We must devour them. Their skin will feed our hunger. Their flesh will fuel our ambition. Their bones will become... Dust."

"Oh, hell no!" Elm pulled Timber free of her back. "Not my bones!"

"Keep calm!" Clover shouted over to her. "Stay focused. It's trying to rattle us."

"The blood of my body. The phlegm, the bile, the puss. Argument and counter, flee and flounder, grind and wither. All I long for, all I long to be, long to become. All so hypnotic its colors."

A deep grinding sound came with the voice, edging away at their minds. Smooth and constant, high and earthen, like some giant snake slithering along smooth stone. It didn't take long for them to each come to the conclusion that it was exactly that. A serpent was coming.

"Dust... Dust... Dust... My duty, my leash. My cradle, my saddle. My beginning and end. They come to take it."

Ironwood prepared his weapon, backing away from the pit as he did so. He would be ready to shoot whatever monster came up.

"Let them come. Let them fight us. Let them learn fear. Let them learn to embrace terror before they die. Let them scream as they are rent sinew from soul, like we were."

"Weiss." Jinn said quietly.

Weiss turned to look at her. "Yes?"

"Remember. No fear."

"Huh?"

From the pit it struck. Like lightning, five enormous serpentine heads rose up. Eels, pale white and grotesque, mouths agape and lined with jagged sharp teeth, thick whiskers streaming back from their faces, ice blue eyes searching for their prey. They moved so fast, there was no time for anyone to react. One of them pounced at Clover, making him disappear into its mouth. Another took Ruby, leaving not even a trace that she had been there. A third swallowed up Ironwood, only a single gunshot ringing out before he too was gone. The fourth coiled around behind Elm, capturing her in its cavernous mouth and quickly darting over to scoop up Vine as well. Weiss didn't have the time for any of it to even register in her mind before Jinn shoved her aside, and a wall of white scales shot past her. In an instant, Weiss was alone.

Scampering to her feet, Weiss pointed her sword at the massive eels before her. They reared back, looking down at her, but their mouths were closed now. Whatever she could have done in that moment, she didn't do. She stopped, looking between the five heads. Their mouths had been gaping wide before, but now they were sealed tightly shut. The others were all inside, trapped in the eels' mouths. They hadn't swallowed them.

She took a deep breath. "That's right. These tests won't kill us. But if I go stabbing willy-nilly, I might accidentally kill someone." She let the breath out, then pointed her sword up at the eel in the center. "You can speak?"

Its mouth didn't open, but she heard its voice. "What will you do?"

"What?" Was it negotiating with her now? "What do you mean? I want my friends back!"

"And since when have I ever done what you pleased?"

She supposed that was a fair point, though it might be worth mentioning that it was quite considerate to have not killed them yet. "What do you want, then?"

"To grind down and defeat all who would oppose me. To rule over the weak as the greatest, the apex predator in this world."

It was nagging at her. This megalomaniacal response was basically a cookie cutter answer, unfitting of the monster before her. "So what's stopping you?" There was no reason that these eels were the test meant for her, other than that they hadn't swallowed her up. That felt strange. There had to be something more pointed. She had to find out.

"What is stopping me? Disobedience. Rebellion. Loathing. Those who should be most compliant are the least. And so my empire dwindles."

She looked to the other eel heads. Could they be what was holding it back? "Is it them? Your family?"

It screeched and wailed in response, opening its mouth and spitting Jinn back out before leaning in close to sniff at Weiss. She could stab its nose now if she wanted to anger it. But it answered. "My wife schemes. My son cowers. My daughters despise me. All because they fear me, fear what I could become! Fear my inherent higher standing in this world!" It reared back up, raising its head high towards the ceiling of the chamber. "For I am the head of the empire! I am the one whose word shall be followed without question! So why do you refuse me? Why do you flee in your rebellion? If you could only see the world I can create! If you only obeyed my word, we would make the gods shudder and quake!"

Weiss was about fed up with this creature. "You sound... just like my father."

Those words enraged the beast. It lunged down at her, mouth yawning open to consume her. Instead of snapping shut on her, its jaws slammed into the ground in front and behind her. The eel's tongue snapped forward, nearly touching her, and every fear that had been locked away inside of Weiss' mind was set loose as she saw what lay inside the eel's mouth. On the end of its tongue, attached like it was a part of the eel, from the waist up, was her father's bleached body. His face was livid as he screeched in the eel's booming voice.

"I AM YOUR FATHER! YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS REBELLION! I AM THE AUTHORITY! I AM THE ELITE, THE RIGHTFUL HEIR TO REMNANT! IF YOU WOULD FOLLOW MY COMMAND, THE SCHNEE FAMILY NAME WOULD REIGN SUPREME OVER EVERYTHING! OVER IRONWOOD, OVER OZPIN, OVER SALEM, OVER THE GODS THEMSELVES! THE UNIVERSE WOULD BELONG TO US AND US ALONE!"

This wasn't real. Weiss knew it wasn't real, but she knew what would appear in each of the other eel's mouths. Her mother, her sister, her brother, and herself. They were all there. The Schnee family was the five-headed pale white eel that desired to devour the world. Maybe not literally, but in every sense that mattered, there was cold blood in their veins. It wasn't physically real, but what she was seeing now was simply the truth behind their mortal bodies, the reality behind the masks forced upon them by genetics. A monster, with five heads and five minds, each striving to wrangle and wrest control away from the others. One that would swallow and consume their friends if left unchecked. One that had to be severed if it ever was to be made harmless.

The real test was back home.

But as for this monster... "I take it back. You don't sound like my father at all."

"WHAT? HOW DARE YOU?"

Her fear forgotten, stored away for later challenges, real challenges, Weiss lifted the point of her sword to the throat of the foul image of her foul father. "I said you don't sound like my father at all! For all his screeching and shouting, all his whining about being in control, he is a coward! To actually attack others, he would require a spine! My father couldn't win a fight against Ruby, let alone Ironwood! There will be no crushing of bones here! You will release them, or I will end your reign before it has even begun!"

With a furious roar, slowly dying down to a defeated groan, the massive eel backed away from her, slowly closing its mouth. The other heads spat out their prisoners and retreated back into the pit. The center head, the great white eel that was her father, or what he could be, backed off but did not vanish. It snarled at her. "This is not the last you have seen of me, daughter..."

Weiss checked on either side of her to see that the others were pulling themselves back to their feet. She returned the eel's snarl. "I don't expect so. Next time, though, you'll be a weak little man, and I won't be afraid of you even a little."

"Oh, how that would be true, little snow queen... if I meant him."

And with that, the eel slithered away, back down the pit and into the abyss. The door opened.

Weiss felt like her fingers were frozen to her sword, like her arm was set in its position and unable to move. She had done her best to face the monster without fear, to challenge its disastrous implications and defy them, but its parting words haunted her. She felt like they would haunt her for a long time. What, in all the universe, gave a mere illusory construct of a mind game the right to tell her they would meet again. It was toying with her, and she knew it, but she was helpless to stop its taunt from doing the damage it was intended to do. She dreaded the thought that somewhere, some time in the future, outside of this place where dangers were only imagined, that nightmare would show its face again. And she was terrified that next time it would not be so constrained.

But the door to the future lay open ahead. Ruby and the others were calling for her to take that last step with them. The Relic awaited.

The Cradle of Deliverance was in their grasp.