Time

Humanity has a lot of troubles understanding large passages of time. Decades and centuries are just words for them, they can't possibly comprehend what such lengths of time entail.

Ozpin has lived such a long life that there was no way for an outsider to believe it.

Thousands of years and hundreds of generations. He had spent that time fighting Salem, for hundreds of generations, and his lives, he had killed her, again and again.

Through subterfuge and blackmail, through armies and politics, through laws and economics, there was no means he had not used in his fight against Salem.

There was no means to which he had not stooped to.

At first, he was simply killing her. Simply and without any special thought.

By magic, by blade, by poison, by fire, by strangulation, there was no method of murder in the world that he had not tried on Salem.

But it was not enough. No methods he employed could kill Salem for good.

If he cut off her head, Salem would simply grow a new one. If he choked her until she stopped twitching, she would simply open her eyes as soon as he let go of her neck. He'd burn her body to the ground in ovens once, and she'd rise from the ashes.

The human mind is capable of committing the most vile acts, to the hardest measures, when given the will.

Ozpin had once caught Salem, after which he divided her body into pieces, then he poured concrete over each part, after which he dumped some of the cubes into the abyss of the sea, buried some, entrusted some to humans, and dumped the rest into volcanoes.

It was an act that would evoke consternation, disgust, horror in those who heard of his actions, inhumane as they are.

Ozpin, defender of humanity, genius Hunter, one of the last mages, of the last shards of the old world, did such terrible things again and again.

To stop Salem, there were no evils that he didn't commit.

To the woman he loved, the mother of his children, his beloved co-ruler of the world.

He had torn her to pieces, a body mutilated to the utmost.

Salem still feels pain.

She had become immortal, but not insensate.

Ozpin was causing her pain, terrible pain, every time he tried to kill her.

It was not enough. It had never been enough.

Salem and Ozpin were always two equals, and yet Ozpin was the only truly cursed. His magic was weakening, slowly, drop by drop, it was draining from his body.

Salem's magic was not.

The madness of pain could hold Salem back, but it could not destroy her. Even if he were to torture her to madness, time heals all wounds. And even the hundreds of years of respite that Ozpin received then did not stop her.

Ozpin and Salem were still humans, too. Changed as they were, at their core, they were human.

And people get used to everything, even pain.

Even death.

Even if Salem's body was torn apart, it couldn't destroy her mind. And after spending hundreds of years in agony, she would be able to find the strength to break free from the madness. Moment by moment, she chipped through her shackles, mountains would crumble, flames subsided, and even lava cooled.

And after four hundred years she broke free again.

And she wanted only vengeance.

Remnant were not called that for nothing. They were all survivors.

Ozpin had built six civilizations from the ground up. Five of them died, died through his fault.

When Salem broke free from her shackles, she was furious. She wanted revenge.

Every time Ozpin found a new remedy, a new way to keep the world safe from Salem, she would find a new way to break free. Each time, over and over again, and then her revenge would quickly follow suit.

And every reprieve, every way that bound Salem for centuries, always ended the same way.

Breaking free, Salem struck with renewed force.

Four times, Salem had practically destroyed this world. Four times, she had unleashed the full power of her Grimm in fury and anger. Only Ozpin and a few scattered Humanity to walk away from death, the ultimate death of all sentient beings of this world, by the skin of their teeth.

The experience of walking over the ruins of past civilizations, over the corpses and the cities wiped forever from the face of Remnant, at the millions, billions of people left to rot in the open air. Looking into the eyes of his mistakes.

Dismemberment. Concreting. Annihilation. Acid. Lava. Depth. Time. Isolation.

Nothing could stop her forever. She came back again and again.

Ozpin once did the unthinkable.

Although Dust didn't work outside of Remnant's atmosphere, Ozpin had once managed to get rid of Salem this way.

He simply threw her into outer space. Simply? No, he purposely threw her into space, in the direction of the nearest star.

Ozpin knew the speed of light in a vacuum, and he had achieved it at that moment.

Eight minutes and thirty seconds later, Salem was finally destroyed.

Or so it seemed to him.

How could Salem have escaped this trap? The gravitational pull, the incredible temperature, the vacuum of space, how could she survive? How did she come back?

Such a feat needed sacrifice, and Ozpin lost some of his power again, but it seemed to him that he had finally achieved victory. Had been able to get rid of Salem forever. Destroyed forever the woman he loved.

Eighteen thousand years later, she came back again.

Ozpin still didn't know exactly how she did it. He could theorize about it forever, he has the time after all, did she not even need the atoms of her body to exist? Could she have converted into energy and escaped the trap of the Sun? Had she created the perfect Grimm that could save her?

Ozpin didn't know, couldn't find out. He couldn't even repeat the same feat to try again.

Her return came when that Remnant's civilization was at its peak. Humans were already preparing ships to colonize distant planets, orbital stations were already hovering outside the planet's atmosphere, words like 'Grimm' were long forgotten.

But then, Salem returned, and it was all gone.

She had destroyed them again, destroyed them all. Almost to the last man.

Salem's madness could not be stopped.

She found Ozpin, time after time, year after year, reincarnations after reincarnations, and made Remnant live up to its name.

Ozpin had managed to save seventy-six humans and twenty-seven faunus back then. For the next thousands of years, they had been hiding from Salem's wrath. For thousands of years, Salem had waged her vengeance.

She kept the captured humans alive so that they could leave offspring, after which she hurt them, in order to hurt Ozpin.

They screamed. They cried. They laughed.

Salem proved to Ozpin that it was possible to hurt him on Remnant the same way she had been hurt.

But Ozpin was not plagued by nightmares.

He remembered no names, no screams, no faces. He no longer remembered their language, their songs, or the sight of their cities.

Ozpin had lived such a long life that the word 'time' meant nothing to him anymore.

Names, personalities, events. How could he remember such party things?

Victory no longer meant anything to himself.

Why did he continue to fight against Salem?

Simply because that was his life. His function. What made him act.

Ozpin no longer remembered what all his past incarnations even looked like, nor the names of his children or wives. He remembered some of them, but only a fraction of them, and only the most recent ones. Ozpin's power did not include perfect memory.

And that was the only thing that kept Ozpin alive and sane. Though, he wasn't quite sure about the last one.

Even the memories of humanity's demise no longer caused even a twinge of emotion in him, perhaps a small sense of disappointment? Over and over again. Ozpin would lose his identity and emotion, regaining them again later, only for Salem to remind him why he had tried to discard them in the first place.

So many times, so many millennia…

The real Ozma was long gone from the world. The only reason the name still exists is because for Ozpin, it was the beginning of his curse. One doesn't really forget meeting gods that easily after all.

There was not even a shadow of Ozma left in Ozpin, as every time he was reborn again and again with new identities, Ozma's personality was chipped away. If not for that, Ozpin would have disappeared long ago, his mind would have broken, unable to bear the weight, unable to stand the passage of time.

It was a vicious circle, but the only one by which Ozpin could exist. After all that he has seen, and all that he did, the abyss of non-existence is the only balm to his mind.

If he saw civilization perish, how could he continue to appreciate humor? If he saw armies of Grimm devouring millions of people, how could he remain, if not sane, then at least possessing a mind?

Ozpin was reborn again and again, forgetting and remembering what it was like to be human, to be alive.

Ozpin had killed his enemies and friends so many times that he… No, his current personality, the Ozpin that he was, 'Ozpin' himself could only marvel at the emotional response it still evoked in him.

And yet, Ozpin continued to exist. Only because there was always a new Ozpin, if with a different mind and personality. Only because the new Ozpin kept on going, over and over again.

And so, as Ozpin, he had to act.

And he did. As he had always done.

Saving friends. Betraying friends. Killing friends.

James Ironwood. His staunch supporter. His dear friend.

Abandoned as he was no longer relevant, as having ceased to be usable.

James thought his rift with Ozpin happened when he brought troops into Mantle, or even when James removed Ozpin's cronies from his army. Maybe he even thought that it had appeared when he changed the channels of communication.

Ozpin had abandoned James much earlier.

James was a good Hunter. A good general. A good man.

But a bad tool. A bad strategist. A bad ally.

James thought he had rid the army, the politics, the economy of Atlas of Ozpin's influence - but he hadn't. Ozpin had long been ready for this.

Ozpin had never revealed all the cards on his hands.

Jacques Schnee had been removed from Atlas' political scene by James' power, but that didn't mean that Ozpin couldn't bring him into submission himself. Ozpin's men had been removed from Atlas's army, but that didn't mean that was all they were there for. The supply of arms to the Mantle rebels was made by Jonathan, but that did not mean that Ozpin did not have a hand in it.

James was useful, but he was willful. He couldn't contain what was building up in the depths of Mantle. He didn't have to.

Aifal, Jonathan, Ozpin, Quartz, Salem, five of the biggest movers on the political chessboard of the world, and they all had wanted Atlas to fall.

Salem saw it as a way to weaken Atlas, Ozpin saw it as the rise of Mantle. Salem saw it as the demise of Remnant's strongest army, Ozpin saw it as the potential to create an even more, far more powerful army.

The population of Atlas, all things considered, was no more than a million, the population of Mantle almost reached ten. Seven according to the official survey.

Mantle was far more powerful in perspective, and to secure it, Ozpin didn't mind sacrificing Atlas.

Salem was the tactician, Ozpin was the strategist.

Ozpin even felt sorry for James. As much as he could dredge up such an emotion within him.

But far, far more, he felt deep grief for the billions who had once died through his fault. Those for whom he continued to act even after all these years.

What was twenty, or even a hundred thousand losses in the revolution, compared to the millions of lives they would be able to save in the future?

Resources. People. Money.

Three interchangeable factors.

Ozpin smiled at his friends. Qrow, Summer, Theodore, Leo, more recently even at Glynda, the young assistant teacher chosen as the maiden-to-be instead of the originally proposed Cinder or Neo.

It pleased him to see Summer embracing her daughters. Listening to Qrow's drunken sarcasm. Watching Glynda's ineptly concealed youthful enthusiasm.

It didn't take away from their usefulness. That he would sacrifice them all if the situation calls for it.

Qrow, through whom Ozpin had access to Raven, and thus access to the entire inner workings of Menagerie.

Summer, the strongest of Ozpin's Hunters. Glynda, the future Maiden.

Winter Schnee had reached to Ozpin himself, tidying up a future political tool, away from future events in the heart of Atlas.

Jonathan Goodman, purveyor of strategically important artifacts, and services.

Robin Hill, a symbol of Mantle's looming revolution.

All of them his allies. All of them, his tools, his chess pieces on the board.

Glenn's ascendancy had really changed him.

He wanted to help people. Really wanted to help them.

What a shame they couldn't help themselves.

Whether it was James Ironwood's stubbornness, whether it was Glynda Goodwitch's inexperience, or Robin Hill's naivety, they could not help themselves.

They could not really see what Ozpin could.

It wasn't their fault really.

Salem does not doze off, the Grimm are only biding their time. They will yet take the price of humanity's carelessness, the price in blood.

And Ozpin will once again have to walk through a shattered civilization, saving the wretched remnants of humanity that he could for a future fight.

Considering how many times they have passed through the extinction event, how lucky they are in being able to rebuild, perhaps the next such pass will bring them to extinction.

Perhaps, next time, inbreeding might even be the thing to kill them all.

But how can people see this? To see the problem on the scale of humanity, on the scale of their species' survival, on the scale of eons and eras?

They cannot.

The horde looming over Vacuo was discovered by Qrow. Since James has been lost to Ozpin, his other subordinates have become even more important. Qrow had become more useful, and it was his observation that allowed him to see the horde of Grimm moving towards Vacuo.

A huge horde. A horde that could break Vacuo's unbreakable will forever.

Just one of many such hordes.

James had to intervene to prevent Vacuo's demise. Reduce losses, from millions, to a few tens of thousands. A small catastrophe that Ozpin wouldn't be able to remember after only a couple of dozen rebirths.

It was an excuse to weaken James's position.

More than one high-ranking officer loyal to Ironwood may die in the turmoil of battle. They can be replaced by men loyal to Ozpin. Loyal to him, while being invisible to Ironwood.

All to make a future coup as bloodless as possible, to organize the surrender of arms and refusal to fight the rebels even before the first shot.

Ideally, Ozpin's victory will be accomplished at the cost of only one life.

The life of James Ironwood.

Ozpin felt sorry for James. But Ozpin knew that he would understand him.

In order to save humanity, everyone had to sacrifice something.

And it wasn't the first time Ozpin had sacrificed friends.

Salem's greatest virtue had always been patience.

She knew how to wait. For days, years, eras.

In any circumstance.

She could wait silently for thousands of years, if necessary. And in her waiting, Salem could accumulate strength, or she could wait out setbacks, negating all problems and advantages, going back to the starting point.

Waiting was familiar to Salem, as perhaps her greatest weapon. By silently waiting, Salem could win battles, wars, and even entire civilizations…

But to win forever by waiting? Salem could not.

How strange it was for Salem, that thousands and thousands of years later, she was still standing in her original position. Against the same Ozpin, with the same role as the two actors in the gods' play. The scenery changes, but the plot remains the same.

Battle, battle, battle, and here they are back in their original positions.

Were all the kingdoms of the world to fall today? In a thousand years Ozpin will return again, in a new guise, with new thoughts, with new methods, but with old goals.

Eradicate Salem again, and she will return in a thousand years.

Just as unchanged, and just as powerful.

No one has ever won their war. Sometimes one of them would come close to victory, but no one could ever take the final step. It was as if fate itself drew them each time to a different corner of the ring, preparing to count down a new round of their never-ending fight.

How many times has this happened? How many more times will it happen again?

What has changed to date? What has changed compared to the thousands of generations she has already experienced? Nothing.

Just a few pathetic Kingdoms, compared to the tribes of hundreds, dozens even of people who had once fled her wrath. Those were decent results.

The Horde she had sent to Vacuo? It wasn't even a crumb of the great hordes of the past that devoured entire continents, once even literally.

Atlas' army, created for the defense of Remnant? Not even an echo of the greatest armies this world had ever seen, which was once not called Remnant.

Technology? Over and over again they rediscovered the same laws, changing their names and wording, it was incomparable to the technological marvels of past eras.

Resources? The naive people of Remnant, they thought they were scratching out irreplaceable resources, not realizing that they themselves would in turn become mere fertilizers for a future civilization.

It was the way things were, and it would always be the way things are.

Salem was not in a rush. She did not care whether or not the horde she gathered would destroy Vacuo. In a week or a millennium, the city would cease to exist either way. If all she wanted was the destruction of Vacuo, she could just wait.

Watching civilizations blossom and wither away, was something she was used to.

No, what she wanted from her attack was not the destruction of Vacuo.

What she wanted, was information.

People died, rivers dried up, continents continued their unhurried movement, even the stars went out. Only two always remained unchanged, Salem and Ozpin. The last two shards of an era forever lost. Two unchanging pillars of the magic of this world.

Well, there were the Brothers, but she prefers not to think about them.

And what a shock it was for her to behold the one who could become the third. For the one thing to remain constant, to change.

Salem did not know the principle by which she remained immortal, but she had once looked for a way to get rid of her curse, on how to achieve oblivion. She wonders what Ozma would think about that.

If only Ozpin knew that all of his terrifying experiments to get rid of her immortality, she had already conducted on her own self, a long time ago.

Salem simply couldn't die. No matter how hard or whatever it is, she tried.

Neither natural threats nor man-made horrors were capable of it. It was a divine curse on herself, a punishment from the gods for her actions.

No matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she studied it, she was no closer to understanding her immortality today than the day she found herself cursed by it. Salem was powerless against it.

Nothing goes against divine law. That was the truth of this world.

Except for divine power itself, of course.

Salem was the one who had watched the gods clash, Salem had seen them fight amongst themselves… And seen that they were equal.

The only thing that could stand against a divine power was another divine power.

Creation, destruction, intelligence, determination…

And magic.

Though in the legends favored by Ozpin, the four relics were bestowed upon mankind according to the four qualities bestowed upon them, Ozpin always sidestepped the fifth trait, so irrelevant in the circumstances. Magic.

Magic was bestowed by the gods to humanity at their will, and whim, and was taken away just as willfully. There were supposed to be only two people left on Remnant that possesses Magic.

But, now something has changed.

Salem. Ozpin. Jonathan Goodman.

Salem could not destroy her curse with magic. Nor could Ozpin do it.

Could Jonathan Goodman do it?

Ozpin's ambition was always to 'win', but Salem's ambition was not the same. Salem's aspiration was to 'die'.

It just so happened that in Salem's mind, their two aspirations pitted them against each other, time after time.

Could Jonathan Goodman fulfill Salem's dream?

And if there was an opportunity… Salem was ready to put it all on the table

She couldn't beat Ozpin in his scheming, but even the most powerful man of Remnant had only a finite number of eyes.

Eyes that were so hard to keep open if you threw a handful of sand from the deserts of Vacuo into them.

Aifal was not all-powerful.

Contrary to the thoughts of the most powerful and the greatest, the most knowledgeable and the most paranoid, Aifal was not all-powerful. Even he could not control the entire world, even he could not guarantee the absolute effectiveness of all his actions. And to quote a famous book, he couldn't even command the waves to cease.

The ideal, unfortunately, was unattainable.

Aifal could not keep Jacques Schnee afloat. Oh, he tried, he did try, initially suspecting that he was fighting on a distant field exclusively against the General, and he managed to even cool his ardor… for a time, before finding himself unexpectedly on the losing side.

Aifal tried, but where James Ironwood was no more than a child in his wake, the looming shadow behind him put fear even upon Aifal.

Ozpin. A name that was more sacred than that of Aifal himself.

Of Aifal there were maybe… A hundred? Two hundred? Even five hundred of the most powerful, most fortunate, or unfortunate, people in the world that knew about him. They whispered about his abilities, tried to avoid him, and sometimes used his services themselves.

Aifal liked the latter.

He let them use his abilities, to have them spread the word of his 'weakness', of his 'blind spot', luring more and more flies after him into his web.

About Ozpin? About how dangerous that man is? Only he knew.

This may have seemed untrue, his allies knew about Ozpin, opponents knew about him, but no one knew what Ozpin really was.

It was like the way ordinary people when they look at a hard maths equation can only shrug their shoulders, surrendering to its complexity. Only a specialist could cry out in horror when he sees, among the letters and numbers, a single notation that would explain to him absolutely everything he had not understood in the past.

Salem has no equal in her experience, but she was no politician. Even after millenniums, she had never been able to understand just how dangerous Ozpin really was.

When Aifal first realized that all of James Ironwood's actions were being puppeteered by Ozpin? He realized the futility of his attempts to keep Jacques afloat.

Yes, he could resist, he could fight, but he could not win. And if he had a thousand times more resources and connections, a thousand times more time in his hands, he could only delay the fall of Jacques Schnee.

Ozpin had lost opportunities, but he had not lost his skills. Aifal had reached his absolute peak, while Ozpin had only increased his power.

When he had struck a deal with Salem six years ago, Ozpin had seemed a mere threat on the horizon. A vague, looming silhouette, frightening sure, but only rationally, the way a blade to your throat can be frightening. But it did not evoke animal terror in Aifal the way irrational fears do in humans, appealing to something deeper than understanding.

Aifal looked upon him as a rust-covered colossus, a majestic figure, a forgotten symbol of a bygone era.

As fear crept in on the man, he saw for the first time the movement of a mountain awakening from its centuries-long slumber.

And most amusing of all was the fact that it was only an 'age-old dream' for Aifal. He was only living in his seventh decade, stories of Ozpin from a hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago were 'stories of the past' to him.

For Ozpin and Salem, however, it was no more than a moment's pause for respite.

Six years ago, Ozpin, had been to Aifal a relic of the past no less than ancient obelisks or half-decayed records under the glass of museum exhibitions. And now his shadow loomed over Remnant once more.

Aifal could turn all his forces against Ozpin, all his might, all his resources, and it would not be enough.

Not even close.

Ozpin was regaining his former strength. Something he had only heard of in the already infinitely distant warnings of Salem.

Aifal believed that one of the most important indicators of success was nothing short of luck. The most ordinary and the most real luck.

Aifal was blessed with good fortune.

He was lucky to be born with his body, his aura reserves, his Semblance. He was lucky to find himself repeatedly in the right place at the right time. He was lucky to meet the right people.

He was lucky to create his own great empire.

He was just unlucky to meet Ozpin along the way.

Aifal could have thrown his entire empire into the fire to destroy Ozpin, and it would have meant nothing in the long run. All he would have accomplished was slow down Ozpin's growth. To watch, as in just six years, without any luck, Ozpin regains the power that only with great fortune did Aifal build in forty.

Aifal still had great nets, great reserves, great possibilities… But now he could no longer see Ozpin from the height of his pedestal. All he could do now was watch as he slowly climbed the stairs towards him. Slowly. Inevitably. One step at a time. Menacingly.

The one whom Aifal considered his personal piggy bank, Jacques Schnee, was taken over by Ozpin.

James must have thought he was now in control of the Schnee, Quartz being the way that he is. Only Aifal knows that Ozpin was behind it all.

Aifal tried, purely to test not just on the level of theory, but on the level of practice of Ozpin's powers, to stop, or at least slow him down.

Did he succeed? Partially. He had somewhat undermined Ozpin's efforts to destroy Schnee's company; at that, Aifal succeeded. He may have delayed the fall of Schnee by six months, maybe less.

Instead of one year to destroy the world's largest company by purely political and peaceful means, Ozpin had spent a year and a half.

Perhaps Aifal might even have congratulated himself on such an achievement, if such congratulations had not sounded so much like mockery.

Aifal could have continued to fight for Jacques Schnee's position. Perhaps he could even have drawn back Ozpin's forces even further, delaying the fall of the Schnee megacorporation by a few more months, perhaps even by a year.

But Aifal quickly realized that this war was lost from the moment Ozpin entered the arena.

And then Aifal, having committed only a few token acts of support towards Jacques Schnee, to the extent that he could later justify to his mistress that he had continued to fight with Ozpin on that front, fled.

Aifal's gaze turned to the brewing revolution of Mantle…

Only to discover Ozpin's hand in that event as well.

Not only did Ozpin know, Ozpin was acting in concert with all the conspirators.

Jonathan could have hung all the barn locks of the world on his secret laboratories, run a hundred tests on his agency, but where there are people, there is room for imperfection.

When Jonathan's miraculous artifacts were created by himself, they were nothing more than a piece of merchandise, barely a blip of power increase across Remnant. But humanity's power lies elsewhere, it's in mass production.

Jonathan understood this as well as anyone else, he understood that if he wanted to supply not just a select dozen people, but hundreds of his subordinates, he needed manpower.

Machines to do his work, artifacts producing more artifacts.

Where mass production appears, traces appear. And the footprints of the movers' boots cleverly conceal the prints of someone else's dexterous hands.

And so, General Ironwood finds himself scrapped. Written off in advance to the inevitable losses of humanity. Atlas was struck off by one decision of the world's political elites.

All according to Ozpin's plan.

Certainly it was also in accordance with Aifal's wishes, so he had lost nothing. But, how amusing it is that he was also acting in concert with Ozpin in this situation. And in that situation he could not defeat him, because in that situation they were allies.

And so Salem decided to act more openly.

She was not a politician, but time had made her an excellent psychologist, no one else knows best just how to kill them, in all the manners possible. She did not know how to lead a political candidate to victory, but she knew how one could make a man be disliked by the people.

The attack on Vacuo was just another move in her big game, but…

Salem was no human-level strategist.

It was both a compliment and an insult.

It was hard for Aifal to even imagine how he could have created a plan that stretched across millennia, something that is the bread and butter for Salem. And at the same time, Salem herself could not make any strategic plan that would bear fruit in 'only' five or ten years.

Such deadlines were so small and the gains immaterial that she could not make a plan that met them, just as people cannot make a schedule for their next sneeze or blink.

But Aifal could. Aifal really could.

Where Salem had planned to make a move without having a goal in front of her in 'just' five, ten or even twenty years, Aifal could see a different possibility.

And right now the mysteriously disappeared son of Marcus Black, Marcus Junior, now called Mercury White… Some people are really bad at naming…

The mysteriously disappeared Fall Maiden, little Amber Autumn…

The hapless daughter of the small-time criminal mastermind of Mistral, Emerald Sustrai…

And even the daughter of a famous athlete, oh, so sadly taken too early in a car accident, Pyrrha Nikos…

Slowly, such small events turned into seeds, scattered on soil fertilized by Salem's, and Ozpin's, forces.

Aifal might never live to see the first sprouts. But unlike Salem, he could only plan ten or twenty years ahead.

And when his spirit finally rested, he would laugh at what happened next from heaven.

Did this mean that he planned to betray Salem during his lifetime? Or even after his death?

Maybe.