Author's Note
Hello, time for another story idea that I've been playing around with. Just for context, this story makes use of the theory that the Silver Eyed Warriors were converted into hounds, or at least Summer Rose was. Hope you guys enjoy.
The purplish hue of the clouds blemished the little sunlight that successively struggled through the unnatural obstruction, painting and lathering the earth in a thick, oppressive filter that weighed her down with an implicit threat. The surrounding flatland was caven with Grimm pools, viscous, choking pools of black tar that spouted clogging smoke, erupting ever so often with fresh Grimm of differing nature, yet no less abominable. Shards of jagged purple crystals tore up the landscape even further, dissecting the earth where they plagued.
These factors spelt doom for them all.
Yet the bites and stabs of Myrtenastor weren't agonized over, not when she felt like this. A need that had carved itself a home behind the bars of her ribcage, nestling next to her pacing heart, an ampoule of molten salvo that rode the tides of rushing blood, racing to and fro within her person, till it came to build at the back of her throat.
She released a growl as she wiped at the Grimm blood that coated her face, viscid and tar-like, so fresh that it hadn't even begun to smoke. Flicking away the bits of a Deathstalker, she ducked readily under a swipe intended to cleave her head off, before joining her hands together at the hilt of her weapon, thrusting it upwards while glaring at the charred dirt.
Perhaps a long time ago she would've groaned at the feeling of gore splattering on her hair, back when she cared about such nugatory things. But killing Grimm had become just as much a part of her as anguish was, and now, the blood merely melded itself into her, smoking and branding the mark of war beneath her skin, itching at her morality, scratching at her peace.
No matter how hard she scrubbed till her skin turned angry and raw, no matter how much Ruby held her till she found the comfort of darkness, it always lingered, simmering beneath the image of faux collectedness.
At some point, she figured out how to utilize the affliction, figured out that this war was one she needed to wage personally, and so with every furious battle, it nibbled closer to her heart, till it blurred the lines between her flesh and it's rage like a perfect melody of spices, until they became one and the same, leaving only Weiss Schnee, 2nd General of Remnant's Armada.
The rush of air at the back of her neck triggered an instinct she has long since honed; slanting down and pivoting on her foot, sweeping her body back around while simultaneously preparing a gravity Glyph to counteract the encroaching Nuckelavee that bore down on her. Nothing too substantial.
But that left her with a spinning and prepped Glyph, frozen in a combat stance, looking foolish once the volley of fire Dust lined gunshots connected, leaving the rider with but a small remaining portion of his head, connected to the flailing mount that snarled on the ground, struggling to stand on its two remaining legs.
Sighing as she raised herself back up, she levelled her eyes to Ruby, who smirked even as she whipped Crescent Rose out of the head of a Sphinx, whirling the weapon to rest over her shoulders, her arms hanging over the scythe's body.
"I had that Ruby. You really should save the refined Dust bullets for when we face her." She rolled her eyes, driving Myrtenastor into the head of the disabled mount, eyeing the beginnings of black smoke that drifted out lazily from the puncture wound.
Ruby shrugged knowingly, giving a small grunt as she transposed with a mist of rose petals, letting the approaching Beowolf cleave through air, before materializing and swinging the point of Crescent Rose up into its jaw.
"Relax partner. You made me more than enough, and I like using the bullets near you because it gets you to do this!"
"Do what exactly?"
"Take some time out of the battle to talk to me."
Her partner was an utter buffoon, why did she like her again?
"Keep fighting dolt, we'll talk when we win", she chided, fighting back the urge to crack a smile.
Ruby drove the butt of Crescent Rose into the ground, giving a mock salute that really would have launched Winter into a tirade about Military respect and tradition, had she not been on another front.
"Yes Ma'am, Mrs General Ma'am!" She proudly asserted, before rushing off into the whirl of battle, totally ignoring Weiss' exasperated murmurs, though she did relent a grin to Ruby's charm.
"You're a general too…"
It was nice to find pockets of solace within the war, moments where she was reminded that she wasn't alone, that her cause wasn't just her cause, but their cause. The entirety of Remnant, amalgamated into the largest fighting force ever seen in history. Bankers and beggers, engineers and teenagers, rich and poor, young and old, all fighting together for a one common goal: 'Rid Remnant of Salem.'
The fight was different for everyone; some came into it easy, some brutalized themselves for an opportunity to swing a sword, and where some mourned their losses, some celebrated their gains. Some were in tune with the whistle of a knife, some were deafened to the song of battle, yet all of them gave themselves anyway, for a chance at tomorrow.
3 years. 3 years of being on the backfoot, not knowing when the next attack would come, not knowing if it would be their last. It was a sordid existence, living under decrepit roofs leaden with paranoia and consternation. Not today, never again after today.
Today was the culmination of the dead and dying, a final desperate assault, the attempt to be amongst the survivors who write the pages of Remnant's history. The tide of their assault had caught Salem off guard, piercing through her Grimm army with a strategy devised by the greatest tacticians of their forces, which she was destined to have been a part of.
With the heavy hitting Hunters beginning the assault from the East, it had drawn the bulk of Salem's forces to them, gnashing and snarling at the sight of the silver eyed Huntress, who admittedly deserved such a response. What Salem didn't expect, was for the rest of Remnant, men and women alike, to strike in a pincer formation from the North and West, aided by the Winter Maiden herself. Should Salem have looked to scatter towards the South, she would have found the mountains, harsh and looming, striking in their mockery. Of course, they had watch parties stationed near the mountains just in case, small groups of scouts that looked for signs of a desperate retreat, but Weiss was certain they would not find any trouble.
Salem was cornered, beset on all sides, and the winds that rode their cries for blood were bolstered by the last breaths of everyone that had died to get them here.
The steps that led up to the arching doors of the Castle were in sight now, with but a draft of Salem's elites standing in their way, emitting raucous, reverberating roars that rung in her blood as the Hunters slaughtered a path to them.
Then she spotted Ruby, smoking Grimm scattered around her, facing down the crystalline Castle like it spoke to her doubts. She came to a stop beside Ruby, who had her eyes squeezed shut with gritted teeth, knuckles drained and pronounced as she curled her hands around Crescent Rose. Almost like Weiss had declared her presence, Ruby tilted her head towards her, a strange reposefulness overcoming her features, her mouth curling only ever so slightly at the edges, and yet it was cut and sharpened with jubilance. It only made sense that when Ruby dropped a hand from Crescent Rose to dangle at her side, she grasped it, firm with a promise housed in her soul.
Ruby recited it in a plea, wrote down the incantation in the rhythm of her pulse, and squeezed it back into her hand, like it was too heavy to hold inside with the brittle nature of a human heart, too scorching and important to be kept tucked away in a trench within for just herself to enjoy. Then, Ruby opened her eyes.
"Ready?" Ruby's eyes were sparking, gleaming drops of pure riotous white that billowed in pools of burnished silver, catching on the specks of molten gray, retribution seeking to be unleashed.
Weiss flexed her fingers, testing the strings of the propulsion Glyph to be woven, one that she knew Ruby was ready for. Yang's laughter echoed knowingly from her earpiece, but it sounded far away, distant, unfocused, like it was assembled out of a desire to comfort, but worry lined its seams.
"Ready."
Her earpiece crackled to life again, a huff tinted with undertones of exertion, yet ferociousness nowhere near quelled. "Give her hell, we'll hold the flank as per the plan. Come back in one piece you guys, or I swear Yang and I will drag you back kicking and screaming."
Weiss shot a smile at Ruby, who returned it with equal intent, though in Weiss' opinion, Ruby's radiated all the brighter. "Will do Belladona, same for you and the brute." Giving a firm nod to Ruby, she shook their joined hands readily, capturing the essence and branding nature of Ruby's grin before closing her eyes in preparation.
"Let's go."
The activation of the Glyph came secondary to Ruby's signal, a burst of white light that permeated through her closed eyes, feeding comforting warmth that seared silver behind the skin of her eyelids. She didn't need her eyes for this, she knew her aim was true, and that the silver that coated the world would keep her safe. She could feel the wind grazing her cheeks, billowing in her hair, and were she with anyone else, she wouldn't have dared to surrender her sense of sight.
She supposed it could have been imperceivable to anyone else, but to her, it was like the warmth of a hug, or the assuredness of a dance under the shattered moon. A small squeeze at the bridge of their hands was all she needed to form the series of reverse dilation Glyphs necessary to slow them down, and when she came to a stop, she opened her eyes to spy pockets of clouding dust floating off in the distant wind, all that remained of the surrounding Grimm.
Now, the steps of the castle were all that stood in their way. Their flank was covered by JNPR, CFVY, and the alius partner duo of RWBY, and that was adequate to handle the swarms of Grimm that Salem would undoubtedly recall from neighboring lands.
But…she just couldn't move.
It was like even the steps themselves were brewed with Salem's ominousness, a calculating surgical sense of foreboding that jaded at her courage, a weight that clung to her feet, a gripping silhouette that whispered out of the peripherals of her mind: "You and Ruby are going to die here."
No…No, Ruby couldn't die, she swore to Summer Rose on her last breath that Ruby would thrive, that she would do whatever it took to see Ruby happy. Maybe this was a mistake, maybe they needed more people. Salem was knocked down here today right? Maybe it was enough, maybe Salem would leave them alone. What was she saying? Leave them alone, Salem would?
Why…Why was it so hard to breathe?
She was faintly aware of the palms that gripped at her cheeks, the fingers that traced torturous lines at the base of her scar, and the eyes that bore into hers, like it was seeking the plague that was destroying her from within, cutting it out with a silver toothed dagger.
"Weiss! Look at me, please look at me!"
There was a yearning in her voice that snapped through the despair that had taken her by the reins, a pleading that bled her cognizance back into the present, a cry that brought her hands up to meld around the ones that held her so dutifully.
"Weiss, you are the smartest person I know. You know whatever it is you are thinking, you would never think it otherwise. It's Apathy."
She was right, of course she was. Ruby Rose could lead her to hell and back and she would still proclaim her faith in Ruby because she knew not the definition of leading those she loved astray.
It was a tricky thing they had perfected, coating the mind with Aura.
It demanded superb Aura control, so much so that those with deeper than normal Aura pools like Jaune struggled to perform the technique, but team RWBY had the memory of the Apathy fresh in their minds, the corpses that littered that house all too often transposing with a team mate or a lover in their dreams, and so they struggled tirelessly, days and nights, till they had met more Apathy and were able to smile through it all.
The coating of the mind with Aura was pleasant in a way, like an embrace that wrapped her within the confines of her skull, each and every neuron tended to with a coat of fortification. The doubts had cleared now, and it was strange to even fathom that she had them at all. The fear lingered, but not the kind that sent her running, not the kind she had associated with her father. This fear was born out of love, cataclysmic in its nature, fashioned out of calamity and forged in the crucible of war.
She stared as Ruby relayed the presence of the Apathy to the other teams, tracing over the slight furrow that tilted her brows, and the way the dirt and black only seemed to bring out the luster of gray.
Ruby wouldn't die today.
Straightening to attention as Ruby dropped her hand from her earpiece, she grinned. "Ready to take down a false goddess Ruby?"
She had faulted not the breath that rushed out of her lungs, nor the sudden drought that sapped her mouth, for they were byproducts of the way Ruby had smirked; sharp and grazing, revealing the edge of steel.
"Oh Weiss, you really know how to psych a girl up."
The interior of the castle was eerie, silent, clumps of melding shadows that spoke of peril. The color scheme of the castle's exterior had held up, shades of violets, purples, reddish sky and black for contours. It was dimly lit, illuminated only by weak flickering candles situated on columns, their wicks blackened and withered, with molten wax forming a viscous pool that teetered solidification.
The windows that appeared periodically down the halls were of no help either, tinted purple as they were, like they served to filter out what little light that had managed to leak through the thick clouds overcast.
Weiss wasn't sure if it was a good thing that there were no Grimm present. On one hand, it made sense, having all the Grimm outside to deter the majority of Hunters from reaching the castle. But, Salem undoubtedly knew that they were in her domain, she could feel it, eyes that crawled down the skin of her neck, pockets of darkness that relayed to one another, whispering unintelligibly, yet no less effective in their unarticulated threats.
They had advanced regardless, navigating through the tall spanning halls, back-to-back with their weapons at the ready. Whenever they communicated, it was seamless, a series of taps and drags against each other that spoke efficient messages, disseminating information that kept both of them in play.
Door front, ice flower.
She tapped an affirmative into Ruby's leg, pivoting on her left foot and coming face to face with a archway that encased a aged wooden door, layered in cracks, and segmented by rows of corroding studded iron plates, with a wooden sliding bolt crossing its middle. She tasted the musty scent of oxidization as she knelt in front of the door, so strongly metallic in its nature that she could feel the rust lining her lungs, jabbing at her vessels. But there was something else, a hint of tragedy that she, along with many others, had come to be familiar with.
Blood.
Spinning the chamber of Myrtenastor to utilize her stores of ice dust, she had called upon a Glyph, traced with blue and revolving layered snowflakes, positioned to her right, about a head above her own. She had tilted her head off to the side, remembered spying Ruby a little further back, the point of Crescent Rose forming an incision on the ground, serving as a form of anticipated stability as the barrel was rotated towards the center of her Glyph.
When Ruby meets her eyes, she sees the resolve in them, and she finds that she draws from their stores much more than her partner would ever realize. Turning her attention back to the door, she tests the weight of the trigger under her index, squeezing it ever so tautly, a maneuver familiar beyond measure, such that the slightest bit more force would trigger the mechanism, igniting the dust.
The next breath she takes feels more exhausting than ever, a conscious, laborious activity that she has to remind herself to complete, ignoring the temptation to hold her breath till Remnant crumbled to the test of time. 3 years had felt like an eternity, Salem would pay them back every second.
This will be the day Remnant has been waiting for.
The trigger had been released at the apex of her swing, leaked out the beginnings of blooming ice dust that had trickled down the verge of her blade, flinging the trails of an energized arc consisting shining ice that had shattered through the bolt of the door, though it had expectedly carried its energy through, flinging the doors open to the maxima permitted by their hinges.
There they had come face to face with-
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When had I started recounting in past perfect tense?
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Wait… Since when was I recounting in the first place?
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Did I say you could stop?
Her eyelids were heavy, weighted with a pressure she struggled to overcome, like the heavens themselves rested on the thin layers of her flesh, mocking her with the threat of Ever After. But heaven was seeing everyone safe, seeing Remnant prosper, seeing Ruby.
So she carved through the mud and molten tar that had congested her mind, struggled past and paid the toll of the destruction that welcomed her when she cracked her eyes open, persevered through the incessant sting that danced the length of her eyeballs.
The ceiling was serrated, maimed with extensive cones of rounded stalagmites, reaching so far down that she felt they might pierce through her eyes if she were to sit up, and they were moving, progressing past her in intermittent bursts of haggard movement, reminding her of the scenery of a train of which she merely watched, a passenger with no stake in control.
Her brain throbbed with the sounds of collapsing rubble overhead, a reverberating thunder that sung the song of distant battle, each note hammering her head further and further into disarray, which explained why the ceiling was wobbling, rocking ever so violently, each shake seemingly more extreme than the last, and at first she had considered that it might be the effects of a concussion, distorting the world and playing to the bruises that no doubt layered her battered brain.
But the silica dust that fell on her with every shake couldn't have been imagined, not when it clung to her with its scratching nature, not when she was laden with the urge to claw it all off. She tried, she really did, but her hand refused to move, and at first, she thought she might have been so beaten, so damaged, that her brain was simply too broken to relay the commands.
Then she discerned a stump, dangling out the corner of her eye, flesh tattered and hanging like the arm was gnawed off ferally, draping limply around the length of uneven, jagged bone. She knew it was hers, the way it swung ineptly as she commanded it around, but the agony was absent, like she had too many wires ripped loose, such that she had simply forgotten to comprehend the torment of a missing limb.
A snarl ripped loose somewhere from her legs, and she found that it was an added burden on her even for the simple task of lifting her head up to look. She managed it however, and the first thing she had noticed was…how shattered she was.
From the patches of exposed muscle and bone that climbed the expanse of her torso, to the twisted disfigurement that plagued her right leg, bent and rotated in a way that she knew was too much for Aura, or any medical procedure for that matter, to correct.
The gashes and multitude of cuts that seemingly layered the remaining intact canvases of skin seemed small in comparison, and though she thankfully was unable to comprehend the pain, she did feel the hastening of her breath. Regardless, her lungs never seemed to fill, an emptiness that lingered tauntingly in the cavern of a crippled husk.
She flitted over to her left leg, realizing for the first time that it was lifted to an angle, connected to a straining, veiny pair of hands that gripped at her ankle, over the hardened leather of her worn boot.
Lifting her eyes tiredly, she met the back of Salem, rounded in strain, and heaving with raddled breaths. Her cape meant to introduce regality was absent, exposing the slashes that spanned her, framing punctures and lacerations that struggled to close. The edges of the parted flesh were tinted with hints of burning silver, shying away from each other such that the damage beyond the surface could be seen.
Withered tissue, grey and dying, spreading ever so slowly, like a viral disease, cut and manufactured with igneous silver. Even in her addled state, Weiss knew what Remnant had accomplished.
They had won.
A weak barking laugh escaped out of her, signaling a string of bloodied coughs that bordered her tongue with metallic undertones, a hint of encroaching death hidden beneath the guise of rushing blood. It was a pleasure to see how much strain it took Salem for something as simple as a turn of the head, and she couldn't help but relent a grin over the pulverized eye that protested crystals of bloomed ice shards, leaking streams of dark, viscid essence from its gaps that incised their way down the tyrant's ghostly pallor.
She reckoned Ruby made great use of her dust bullets.
Salem growled darkly, turning her head back straight, continuing to drag Weiss as more columns of stalagmites shook loose, increasing in frequency and number by the second. Through the tinnitus that gnawed at her ears, she barely made out Salem's words, winded and feeble as they were, and despite them sounding as weak as Weiss felt, she couldn't help the rush of satisfaction at the quality of suffering that Salem failed to keep hidden.
"You…damn…Hunters. I'll take you…all down with me."
Weiss coughed up a wad of blood that landed on her front, but she couldn't find it in herself to care less. "Grrk! Heh, you've got no more moves Salem…soon you'll be gone, and Remnant will prosper all the more for it."
When Salem chuckled, a dark, harrowing laugh enunciated by the grunt of a particularly hard tug on her leg, a shot of fear stabbed at her chest, and she felt the return of horror overcast, a crawling thought that just maybe, their victory wasn't as concrete as she had thought.
"You, have no idea…little girl. Even gone my Grimm still roam the lands, and while they may die out…"
The look that Salem shot at her fulminated in her heart, rapid beats of tumultuous dread that ricocheted through the columns of her instilled confidence, knocking down the visage of Remnant victorious.
"You remember how destroyed the rose was when she had to kill my beautiful creation, Summer Rose incarnate?"
She remembered. Of course she remembered, she had helped Ruby through the trauma for weeks as she paced between the torrents of guilt and despair, had whispered comforts to soothe the hemorrhaging scars that came as a result. Yet she had felt helpless, like a bystander to a great natural disaster, sentenced to merely watching as the cries of the bereaved rained on her conscience.
She refused to answer Salem however, refused to give her the satisfaction of getting what she wanted in her final moments. Though it didn't seem to matter, not with the way Salem smirked, knowing and cruel.
"You remember. Now I must admit, the hound had been weak and mutated, my influence hampered by the power that flowed through the veins of their breed, those silver eyed warriors. But a Schnee bloodline…"
The fear that filled her was a horrible thing, overwhelming and terrible. It drowned her, heat scorching the inside of her throat and leaving brands of hatred and terror and collapse, her lungs constricting as air failed to enter her body.
It led her to do something she never fathomed, a reality that had never before touched the corners of her thoughts. She begged for mercy.
"Please…please don't do this! Look, you can kill me! Just kill me, I-"
She was cut off when they came to a stop, the abrasions on her back suddenly more apparent as they throbbed with a dull ache, although they were out of mind compared to the dread that rolled in her gut, liquifying and mashing her organs, a fresh wave of nausea that made her want to throw up.
There was a hope that Salem wouldn't uncover what scared her the most, that her worst fears would remain hidden, disguised as self-serving terror for her mortality. But there was a reason why Salem posed such a threat, and it was in her calculative nature that she uncovered the truth, slicing Weiss open with the cutting edge of a scalpel, glancing over her internals with a conniving eye, discovering what made her tick, what made her live, what made her fear.
"Ruby Rose…is precious to you is she not? As you are to her. I wonder how she'll feel, with your claws lodged in her chest, clutched around her beating heart."
She couldn't help but look past Salem, and it was so close that her right foot bore the fumes.
A Grimm pool.
This one was different from the rest however. While the others were thick and viscous, clogging with a shade of midnight, this one was thinned, runny, a hint of purple that had bled into its body. It looked like it was thin enough to drink, watery enough to drown, like it would fill your lungs and aim to assimilate rather than clog, a contamination that would spread far into the corners of a person, till not even the soul remained unblemished.
Her breaths rode a meteoric rise indoctrinated by her panic, staccato gasps that emulated scraping chalkstones, having her frantically grasp for the remnants of her Aura, crushing her very soul itself for the last drops that would give her a chance of avoiding this fate. But there was none to give, too broken and brittle was she that she couldn't even lift her remaining hand as Salem dragged her into the pool.
Helpless was Weiss Schnee when her legs dipped, as the wickedness clung to the first taste of her flesh. She felt it twist at her leg, righting and filling the cracks in her bones with something foreign, a vile perverse spawn that ran up the length of her leg, corrupting where it went.
Helpless was Weiss Schnee when her torso followed, as the malevolence permeated through her ribs, carving out and replacing the flesh with its own, sewing together the strings that held its new puppet together, then dissecting her heart into neat little segments, taking its time in its study, ensuring that every last scrap of her succumbed. When it reached her arm, she found that the matter that replaced it howled to her brain, refusing her authority, a limb that had been replaced, yet remained all the more detached.
Helpless was Weiss Schnee when she heard her name screamed across the cavern, far too long, and far too dark for her to see the start, from where Ruby's voice grew, frantic in its assertions. The dark had reached her throat now however, and her brittle words could only come out in a frail gurgle.
"Ru-"
Just before her head dipped, and the ubiquitous darkness assumed her reality, she made out the ceiling giving in, aiming to fill the cavern with rubble and desolation. She could only hope it would serve as her tomb.
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I'll keep us alive Schnee, for every suffocating gasp. When we rise from the rubble, Remnant will endure our agony.