Entombed

"Run, boy!" His father called, great sword held in both hands singing through the air before him as he twisted on a heel. The weapon cut as much as crushed through the two Beowolves, slamming them into the ground as the man stepped forward and yanked the sword up, smashing it into the shoulder of another as it leapt, crushing it against a tree beside the path they'd been walking through.

Gripping the base of the blade and the handle, he held the weapon horizontal like a spear and bellowed, "I will hold them off while you do! And then I will find you, but I can't defend you!"

The boy behind him pressed against the wood of the tree behind him, stock still and staring at the monsters with wide, blue eyes. He couldn't fight against grimm like these and so wore simple jeans and a white shirt, unlike the man in both respects. To contrast Jaune's civilian clothes almost seemingly by design, the old Arc who wore heavy plated armor over chain mail and padded cloth, with an open barbute, all colored a dull silver and edged in gold. A thick cloak trailed down his back, stopping halfway up his calves, made of white cloth with the Arc crescent emblazoned proudly across it. On the helmet, a thin spine of white, spiny hairs painted white and edged in gold to mark the man for who he was even in and around Ansel.

Nicholas Arc lunged as the next Beowolf, hemmed as much as they were by the trees along the path, leapt headlong for him. The ancient familial claymore met its chest and offered no gived, the force of the Beowolf impaling it on the weapon and killing it with little more than a whimper, and not even a spark of spent Aura to claim as a success. In one move, the Arch patriarch wrenched the blade free and up, smacking back a Grimm clawing over its fallen ken to get to them.

And more just kept coming, climbing over their fellows as they did.

"Jaune, please, I can win this fight and I will find you, but," the man turned, looking down on his son who returned the flat stare with his own, "run. For now. Find a place to hide, somewhere, while I deal with the Grimm. I'll use my Semblance to- Ah!" He snarled as a Beowolf leapt on his back, claws scraping against his Aura as he shoved it off and turned, bringing his sword high and slamming it down on the beast.

Shouting over his shoulder, he finished simply, "Run or we both die, boy! I can't defend this spot, I must attack!"

Unable to bring himself to even speak, the twelve year old turned and sprinted away as fast as his lanky legs could carry him, through the forest and away from the fight down the path they'd been going on. The Huntsman could only spare a few seconds to watch his son's back recede into the thick treeline, grimacing and murmuring a prayer for his safety before turning back.

Now his son was away from the fighting itself, the man surged his Aura, letting out his Semblance and luring Grimm towards him for a mile around, heaving the blade high and finally leaping into the air with a guttural battlecry, sword batting aside the trio of Grimm that leapt to meet him. Now his son was safe enough, and the Grimm in the area lured to him, it was just a game of killing Grimm.

Which he, as it just so happened, was very good at doing, no matter how many came.

He just hoped Jaune could keep running away until he could go and find him, and that he didn't head into the mountains with the storms rolling in…

XxX----XxX----XxX

"Fuck you, you boney, furry, black, little… Little fucks!" Jaune shouted in that squeaky attempt at a defiant tone that young teenagers often used, scrabbling up the steep, rocky incline he'd run up against as he ran from his father, straight in a line for nearly ten minutes before he slowed down. "Eat rocks!"

Behind him, two Creeps scrambled awkwardly up the slope after him, the blonde kicking and pulling rocks free to send them tumbling in his wake more out of spite than anything else. Many of the rocks hit, he saw when he stopped to rest for a second and look, the small rocks mostly just bouncing uselessly off armored hide, thick fur, and muscled legs and doing nothing. The hill just wasn't steep enough, caught between being steep enough to need to be climbed to make any real progress.

"Which is the only reason the Creeps aren't eating me already…" He thought aloud, watching one hop up to another rock and then stumble and fall back, rolling in the loose rocks and dirt. "At least they can't climb without hands…"

It scrambled back up and turned, leaping again at the slope and then falling once more, rolling over more easily and snarling up at him. The other, though, seemed tired of leaping and scrabbling, instead shoving its hardened nose into the loose rocks and tossing them away. An action it continued until it found a solid rock to serve as an anchor and moved up a few feet to repeat the process. The other, seeing its partner's success, joined in quickly enough, and the Grimm started making real headway towards him. Even some fifteen feet up and ahead, he knew they'd catch up to him soon enough, and turned to keep going.

"Of course, I fuckin' would get the smart Grimm." He grunted, pulling himself up to the next rock and panting before reaching for the next in a long line of muddy hill and loose rocks, arms already sore and with plenty more climbing to do and rain pattering down around them, making the climb even more terrifying. "Just don't fall, Jaune… Just don't fall."

But he couldn't let himself freeze, he didn't even want to think about what would happen if he did. Instead, he forced himself to just climb. Past the cuts on his hands, the water slicked surfaces, the dizzying heights and even past the snapping and snarling Grimm far below. He just kept climbing, as fast as he could, for what felt like an hour straight, up maybe a hundred feet of steep, wet hill. How he even made it came down to the very strong desire to not get eaten.

Giant monsters hounding you, who wanted to rip you to pieces, turned out to be good motivation not to fall.

Exhausted and freezing, the young boy pulled himself over the edge of the hill and rolled onto his back, sweating so much he'd be soaked without the pelting rain and howling wind whipping against his skin. After several minutes with his eyes squeezed shut against the rain and chest heaving for breath, he forced himself to roll over and look down the hill he'd climbed in his desperate escape, to see where the Grimm were. And then screamed loudly in surprise, scrabbling away as one leapt the couple feet left between him and the pair, jaw snapping in front of him before it fell away and rolled all the way back down the hill.

Around him, the top of the ridge he'd climbed to stretched for about a hundred yards in either direction, never wider than ten feet or more vegetated than a few sparse bushes and short, squat trees clinging to the mountainside and covered in thin branches and sparse leafage. Above him, the cliff turned sharp, covered in slick, sharp rocks and almost at a right angle for twenty feet at least before it started easing off.

He was far too exhausted to make that climb, he knew. Already, his legs were trembling under him still as he stood.

Swearing under his breath, he turned and looked down, the Grimm scrabbling up the last foot. Looking around, he picked up a rock the size of his chest, panting and raising it over his head and then throwing it down on the closest Grimm. It hit the Grimm's head with a muted thunk and threw it down under the weight of the rock, the monster sliding, stunned, down the steep and muddy incline. It slid, rolling to recover already, and Juane turned with a petty smile of satisfaction to head towards the right side of the mountain in search of somewhere he could hide.

Running as fast as his tired body could carry him - so, shambling at a pace that would slightly outpace a zombie on television - he followed the ridge until he found a cave that he figured would work and ducked into it. Inside it was dim and damp, and the cave dove deep, at a gentle angle, down into the mountain proper, with round sides and no apparent turns as far as he could see down the dark hole. He looked back the way he'd come, wondering for a moment if he should keep looking.

He turned to leave when something in him… Tugged his attention onto the tunnel's entrance, like a rope tied around his stomach tugging him back to the entrance even when he'd decided to leave. He took a step towards the cave and heard the rocks back the way he'd come shift, turning in time to see the first Creep lumber around the corner and come to a stop, head low and hissing threateningly.

Just as it started to sprint towards him, he dove into the entrance of the cave, shuffling down the gentle incline he found inside as fast as he could manage.

The cave was a foot taller than Jaune himself, but only an inch wider than his shoulders, each shoulder brushing against the stone when he jostled to either side as he went. Several times, he hit stone and scraped the skin, the fit was so tight. The good thing was that while he could shuffle along with his hands on the walls for support and step around the water flowing steadily down the tunnel easily enough. The bad thing was that the Grimm didn't give up, it wasn't what they did.

Instead, the Creeps behind him slammed back and forth to make progress, occasionally getting stuck and wriggling for passage, or clawing through the stone with reckless abandon, to follow him down and into the earth. Their violent pursuit sent tremors through the rock and stone that he could feel, occasionally even spider-webbing cracks in it that caught up to his fingers. The stone split loudly now and again, sending slabs tumbling down just behind him, occasionally sending flecks along his shoulders and head that terrified him and spurred him onwards ever faster. Ever more recklessly.

But that didn't mean they were being slowed down that much, unfortunately.

As he and the Grimm went deeper, the light outside vanished beyond strikes of lightning that silently illuminated the passage. In the dark, he could barely make out where he was going, even though the Grimm, he knew, could. He was weak and small, for a Frontiersman family at the very least, but he wasn't a moron. Beowolves were middlingly fast and pretty strong, Ursai were slow and hit like trucks, and Creeps… Creeps were subterranean and pack creatures. Which meant they could see in the dark, and were far more at home underground than he was.

A fact that made itself known when he felt breath blow against his neck, a growl rumbling across him and drawing a strangled scream from him as, instinctively, he leapt forward.

His head struck the stone and he fell, sliding and crashing down the slope quickly, hot blood flowing from his forehead where the stone he had struck the stone. All the way, further down than he knew to be possible, he fell until he slammed into something hard, flat and round at the bottom. His legs flared in pain and buckled, trying and then failing just as quickly to catch him, the boy crumpling in a ball of wounded, bruised blonde preteen.

The grimm weren't far behind and, bleary eyed, he rolled so that he was laying on the metal circle, just able to make out red dots in the dark. Bouncing around, as the Creeps came, but burning with that hatred and malice only Grimm could match. Desperate, his hands felt around the surface until he found a long, metal cylinder about as long as his arm and lifted it up. Some kind of pipe, but if a rock had cracked its plating…

"Come on then!" He shouted loudly, voice shrill, cracking and pained but pulling as much defiance as his adrenaline filled body could manage out of himself. "First one down loses an eye to remember me by! I'm an Arc, and an Arc never goes back on his word, so… I'll make it memorable!"

A cheesy line from a movie he'd seen days prior, but it filled him with the faux confidence of a teenager playing at hero regardless. It was the best he was going to get, the rational, resigned part of him said… The vast majority of him was torn between hoping to hurt them back, and wanting to scream for mommy, though.

Then the metal circle jerked back and down, the blonde rolling across a metal, grated floor and crying out in surprise. The circle closed up, and he heard the Grimm impacting him, clawing against the metal in a frenzy before rock and stone slammed into them and the metal circle both. Thousands of rocks, beating pelting against it with the force of an avalanche for a solid thirty seconds before leaving him in dark silence.

Coughing and sucking in stale air, he sat up on the cold, metal floor and tried to look around in the blackness. Then, lights flicked on. First subtle red, illuminating the long passageway for him but not blinding him in doing so, almost like it was on purpose. The passage was simple enough. A dull, ruddy brow grated floor sat over a small, open area below where water flowed by, from the rains outside he guessed after a second. The walls were flat and black, featureless aside from the red lights at the top and bottom of each of the clearly segmented panels of metal. The ceiling was the same, except instead of the red lights it had darkened strips of long, pale glass.

"I would suggest you not look at the lights before they come on."

"Huh?" He looked to the far door instead, where a skeletal thing stood just as the lights flicked on, blinding him. He fell against the metal circle again, arm shielding his eyes, and snarled. Or tried to, the sound caught somewhere between a gasp and a squeak of anger. "What the hell!"

"I did warn you, young Arc." The voice laughed, a sound caught between a synthetic sounding but human laugh and an odd whirring. The machine plugged towards him as he blinked his eyes open, looking at the humanoid contraption. "You are bleeding. I trust you aren't too terribly damaged, Arc?"

It looked oddly like a knight to him, actually, with a bulky, armored and man-shaped torso and long limbs covered in smooth, dull silver metal like plated armor, that ended in what looked very much like gauntlets ending in rounded fingers. Its head was flat-topped, with a long antenna sticking out of one side, and a wide visor that glowed ominously crimson. Its legs, though, were blocky, like the armor had been stripped away at some point for some reason, leaving behind exposed wiring around blocky, ball-ended metal framework wrapped in black cords that held it together.

"I-I, uh, I hit my head on the rock on the way down. And then I… Fell, a little bit, too."

"Oh yes, I heard that, little Human." The machine said, letting out a whirring sound that Jaune decided had to be a chuckle or a laugh based on how it shook its head. "It was quite amusing, to hear that sound… Though I took more interest in you shouting at those pathetic, bestial things. Did you suppose you would frighten them off?"

"No, I just… I dunno." He shrugged, unsure of what to say, but the machine just stared down at him silently. Waiting on a real answer. "I didn't want to just… Let it happen, you know? Wanted to at least sound cool when they got to me. It was stupid, I know, but… I dunno, it just felt better than not doing anything. Even if, you know, it didn't do anything."

"I wouldn't say that, Arc. Not at all, I would in fact say quite the opposite." The machine chortled in that whirring way it did once again, kneeling heavily with an electrical, clanging sound echoing out in the passageway as it did. Reaching out, it gripped his chin and tilted his head to look at the cut there, bleeding hot and fast down the side of his head. It reached behind its waist and produced a packet of blue something and reached out to dab it at his forehead, squeezing it out like sauce as it spoke, "I found what you said, and how you did, rather amusing. Enough to save your pitiable self from the monsters quite literally nipping at your heels, at the least."

"W-What?" He blinked, flinching as the cold, goopy liquid touched the center of his cut. Then it soothed and he relaxed, looking up at the eight-foot tall machine in quiet anxiety. "W-Why would you have left me out there? Those things would have killed me!"

"Hm? Is it so surprising?" The machine chortled again, seeming more amused than before. "My duty is to oversee and protect this sacred site from all trespassers, and those monsters would not make that any easier. One simple, crying child would not be worth the damages this temple would suffer if I helped him. But," the machine enunciated the word heavily with drops of amusement dripping from it, head tilted as he nursed Jaune's wound, "you were not some pitiful, crying whelp, were you?"

"I mean…" He shrugged weakly and winced, cuts and bruises flaring when he did, the boy fighting back tears at the pain there. "No, I-I guess not… I was just pretending, though, I wasn't actually- I was scared, I just didn't want to… I don't know."

"You do not know much, do you, Human boy?" The machine pulled away, returning the little, silver packet to wherever it had gotten it from and then stood. Jaune gave the machine a look, and it chortled yet again, "You say 'I don't know' quite a bit is what I mean, Arc."

Turning, the machine walked to the door and Jaune got a look at its back, which matched its front for the most part, but with the addition of a large case on its back where a man's hips would have been, and black tubing running up from the case to the back of its head. The sides of the head-sized case were flat, with little handles where they could be pulled open, and unlike the polished-looking front of the machine, the back was spotted and dotted with rust and dirt.

"It is hard to clean and maintain my back. The legs are difficult as well, hence the rust, damage, and general wear and tear. My automated repair foundry is, sadly, insufficient for producing replacements for the encasement and the like." The machine answered his curious-looking, knowing he was looking without even turning to see him doing it. The blonde flinched and looked away, embarrassed to have been caught, and the robot whirred its laughing again. "Best you get used to seeing it, young one, for you are quite trapped down here now. You'll be seeing it a lot."

"What do you mean, I'm trapped?" The blonde stood, looking at the back of the machine's head and adding, "I-I have to get home! My dad will be looking for me, my family… H-He was going to finally train me to be a Huntsman! I can't be… Stuck down here!"

"The only access to the surface large enough for either of us to use is this one, young man." The machine said simply, turning to look down on him and tilting its head to the side. "You did notice the collapse you caused, yes?"

"Y-Yeah, but…"

"We can't dig it out, we have no tools to do so and I am unsuited to the harsh tasks involved. We also have nowhere to move the rock to." Holding up a hand, it counted each point as it made it, "No manpower, no equipment, nowhere to move the rock to… Three reasons we, or rather you, are damned here. But do try and look on the bright side, being trapped in an ancient library can't be worse than being torn to shreds and forgotten in a mountain."

"There has to be something I can do!" He demanded, panic washing over him while the machine watched in silence. Pulling at his hair he turned, looking towards the door the machine had come through and then back to it. "I can't stay down here. Open that door, I-I'll find a way through if I have to dig and crawl."

"You will die." The machine pointed out quietly, "Before you make any true headway, likely crushed under tons of rock shifting around your… Efforts."

"I may as well be dead already, stuck down here with no way out." He said simply, surprised at how easily he said it. How easily he realized he meant it. "I have a family, I have… Things I want to do with my life, I-I can't just be stuck down here. I have to try something, anything that'll work or-or even anything that probably won't."

"Anything at all?" The machine asked, Jaune nodding stiffly at the question. Turning and striding away, back the way it had come, the machine said, "Then follow me. It has been long since I had someone to teach… And if you prove adept, I do know of one tool you may, in time, be able to use to escape."

"What kind of tool?" He asked, walking on still-tired legs after the machine into the wide, round entry room to the temple proper.

Grated floors and the same steel walls surrounded him, going about ten feet up and lined by those same lights as in the other hallway. Three other doors were spaced evenly around the room, one far to his right, one far to his left and one in the back, directly behind the statue. and in the center stood a large statue of a robed man holding two long, straight baton-like things. A metal mask covered its face, staring down at the ground, and heavy plated looking armor covered its body and legs. A wide visor had been set into the old stone, made of some kind of red glass covered in random-seeming facets and grooves. Like the machine he'd met here, it reminded him of knights, in heavy armor and carrying long swords to fight their enemies.

But unlike the machine itself, it had that same… Distracting, attracting feeling that the mouth of the tunnel had had when he'd looked down it. Like it wanted him, somehow, to do something. Which, he knew, was impossible… It was just a statue, after all.

"A statue of the Sith Lord Arkanius, who built this temple when his fellows… Rather pointedly told him to leave their company, you could say." The machine informed him, standing behind the smaller boy and looking up at the machine with him. "A follower of Darth Revan's later ideas on the Dark Side as a whole, with his own interpretations layered on top, of course. Both of which you shall have to learn about if you wish to leave."

"What's a Sith? And the Dark Side sounds… Weird." He asked, turning to look up at the machine and adding in a curious tone, "And why does it feel like… Like the statue wants something?"

"Lord Arkanius is interred here, and so his presence has an impressive pressure on those who are sensitive to the Force… For you to feel it already is a good thing indeed. Useful." The machine turned suddenly, speaking over its shoulder as it went. "As for what a Sith and the Dark Side are… You shall learn, in time, boy. For now, we must tend to your wounds, and I must reactivate and repair the food nutrient synthesizer."

"Nutrient synthesizer?" He repeated silently, grimacing, "That sounds nasty…"

"It is unpleasant, but while I have a sleeping area and the required hygiene needs a Human-like you needs, I do not have any way to grow food. Eat the paste or starve, I shall leave the choice to you." The machine said simply, shrugging as they stepped into the room. "This is the library, where Arkanius saw to the storage and maintenance of ancient knowledge in these scrolls, tomes and holocrons. All of which you will, in time, come to study and learn."

The room was maybe thirty feet long and the same wide, only as tall as his bedroom at home had been. Three walls were dedicated to storage, one lined in scrolls stacked on top of each other methodically and capped on either end by red painted wood, the next in heavy looking books backed in everything from cloth to leather, and on the last in little black boxes stacked high and layered three deep on the shelves. They, like the statue, seemed to… Tug on his attention, pulling him to them, but he didn't know why and it subsided after a moment while he looked around.

The last wall, to the right of the door, had a wide, metal desk that took the entire wall set up against it. Two chairs had been tucked under it, one of which the machine pulled out for him, the wheels rolling over the old, musty smelling carpet that covered the floor of the area. The desks were empty and kind of plain, with small triangles set onto the center for… Something. They were raised slightly, so he guessed something would be set into them, but he couldn't be sure.

"Ah!" Jaune cried out in surprise when the machine slammed down a heavy tome in front of him, the blonde recoiling on instinct. It held out a pair of glasses to him and, swallowing anxiously, he took them from him. "I don't need glasses…"

"You need these, Arc." The machine corrected, tapping the top of the book meaningfully. "Those glasses are a device of Sith Lord Arkanius' design. They are connected to the computer network throughout the temple, and I have monitored your kind's transmissions to keep the language translators up to date as well. These will translate the text you are looking at for you as you read."

"How?"

"Do you know how advanced, predictive translator technology functions in translating words and images into ones you will understand instantaneously, superimposing them over the words you are reading as you go based on where your pupil is looking at the time?" He shook his head, and the machine gave his head a gentle pat. "Then don't bother asking how, as you will not understand the explanation regardless. Now, read the cover aloud, please."

"Okay…" He turned, putting the glasses on and then blinking, blue lines underlining each word and superimposing the words he could read over them when he looked at them. "A… Brief History of the Sith Code, Its Interpretations, and Its Applications."

"Indeed. Enjoy your evening, Arc, I shall return in some hours with food and water for you." The machine hesitated, as though waiting for something, and then added in a mirthful voice, "And also, a test on the book's material."

"Wait!" He called to the machine's back, the robot turning to look at him. Grimacing awkwardly, he shuffled on the seat and asked, "Uh, I don't know your name, so could you tell me what it is? M-Mine's Jaune! And, uh, how long this will take before I can go home?"

"I am designated, Instructor." The machine said simply, "And… I do not know how long training you will take. But I suggest you get comfortable."