Chapter 32: Interlude - Salem

Mistakes, complications, unexpected variables… One would think that after living as long as she had, she'd be able to minimize them. When one had literally thousands upon thousands of years of experience, a veritable unending fountain of magic to back them up, and only one true obstacle to overcome, one would think their goals would be realized in a matter of time.

Salem had grown to learn the truth of the matter: One can't account for everything. It'd taken her much longer than she would ever admit to realize this fact of life. After all, she had an overwhelming advantage in terms of strength, power, and influence over the world when compared to Ozpin. With just one command, a Kingdom would fall. With just one month, the world would burn.

Unfortunately, even if the world burned down, that would still leave her around to lose her sanity to the sands of time. It was an eventuality when nothing but the soulless husks of Grimm remained.

Sure, she could force a mass extinction event and take over the world easily enough. Hunt down enough women and the chances of finding the Maidens by rigging the system in her favor were all but guaranteed.

With her Grimm reaching into all corners of the world, it would only be a matter of time to find the vaults. With only inexperienced Maidens around, it would be even easier to manipulate them into opening said vaults and taking the Relics.

But then what?

Would the Gods end her suffering if they came back only to find her as the cause of mankind's second extinction? With powers like theirs which created the near-omniscient Relic of Knowledge, they would easily discover her motivations. It was clear that they did not want humanity well and truly dead if they went as far as allowing them to return from the dust of their predecessors to offer them a second chance. Ruining their little "test" would not bode well for her.

Moreover, could she even guarantee that she killed off everyone? If she didn't, whatever remnants of the second generation of mankind remained would all assuredly be united against her. And, if the Gods returned to find them "united" in such a way, would that be enough for Ozma to have succeeded?

Nothing would be worse than to allow that outcome.

Not only would it not break her curse, but it would validate his betrayal. He would be the one who got to finally die and it would leave her at the mercy of the Gods who would no doubt find an even worse fate for her than being left an undying monster.

No, if she was going to break her curse, she needed to keep mankind divided while she stole the Relics from their vaults. It was hard enough to manage when her tools were oh so, brutally stupid. Without at least a century to develop, even Alpha Grimm just rushed to their deaths and she needed much, much more than just Grimm to succeed.

The Grimm were her strength, but her retainers were the key to maintaining her win conditions. Traitors to their species, they were the ones who sowed chaos within the safety of the Kingdoms. They were the ones who kept distrust and hate between Humans and Faunus alive, even if they didn't know it. They were the ones who would do her bidding as she couldn't risk her appearance uniting them.

Alas, even the best-laid plans could end in failure. Cinder not being able to steal the Fall Maiden's powers would not be the worst nor even the tenth worst result she'd endured. The fact that it was a great missed opportunity would sour her mood, but that was fine. It only meant, that she still wasn't ready. She still needed more power, more retainers, and better opportunities. All of which would come in due time, and time… Time was not a resource she lacked.

Instead of dwelling on a failure, Salem had much better things to spend her time and effort on. Like on how best to orchestrate another mine collapse in the Schnee Dust Mines to spurr the White Fang further in their violent tendencies.

Perhaps a group of Geists could possess critical infrastructure points and trap a couple dozen workers in a section of the mines. Perhaps as the trapped miners starved or dehydrated to death, a few other types of Grimm would serendipitously keep any Huntsmen and rescue teams from being able to save them. When all was said and done, the Geists would retreat and what else would there be on the news than yet another egregious example of the evil Schnee Dust Company and their terrible business practices?

Mistral was currently having Council elections. So, there were also a bevy of opportunities to ruin the entire thing with Watts' help. Maybe she should pick a purposely incompetent idiot to earn themselves a spot. Maybe it was time to bring another agent of darkness into the fold and tempt them with fame, prestige, and or luxury.

Salem also had a few spies sporadically placed all over the world feeding her all kinds of information. Usually, a single source wouldn't be enough to seize an opportunity, but when all of them were put together, something like the attempt on the Fall Maiden might happen. She kept her network systematically active even when there was little to nothing to report.

So, when a part of her digital network suddenly suffered a massive loss, she was instantly made aware of it.

"I don't know what to tell you, ma'am," Watts said as he concluded his report to her and the rest of the Inner Circle gathered at the meeting room in the Evernight Castle. "An attack of this magnitude should have required being physically present to connect directly to the server computers."

"Are you suggesting an intruder managed to make it all the way over here and destroy the backup network?" Salem asked, not angry nor skeptically, but tonelessly. It was a rhetorical question considering the millions of Grimm that stood between the continents of mankind and her domain.

"As much as I hate to admit it, I can't really tell. Wiping the servers alone is one thing that can at least be explained, but remote virus injections to connected devices from a system that's supposed to only accept data is beyond me. What we're dealing with here is either hacking technology that's decades or centuries advanced from our modern-day standard or a Technomancer Semblance."

"Best presume other attacks on our networks are imminent, then."

"Perhaps, although, I struggle to understand why they haven't already happened if the enemy has succeeded once," Watts said before sitting down, having finished saying everything he planned on.

Salem considered the next best course of action when an emergency alert began to faintly raise in volume as one of her Seers brought a Scroll into the room. Taking the device and unlocking it to do away with the distressing signals it kept blasting, the matter of the emergency was quickly revealed by a picture.

"Cinder has been captured and is currently being detained at Beacon," Salem said.

"Failed again? I wonder if our Goddess will bestow her a third chance?" Tyrian asked.

"I wonder as well," Salem frowned. "The report states she just appeared captured from one day to the other without any rhyme or reason. There was no big fight or cover-up to trace what could have led up to this."

"Ma'am," Watts said, looking alarmed at the news.

"Yes?"

He stood up and said, "I might have something to follow up on that. Last Sunday, Cinder called me to provide her with a background check on some mercenary she intended to hire. She became distressed when I sent her the information I pulled on the man and said that his pictures matched the unknown interloper that ruined her attempt on the Fall Maiden's powers."

"And you've waited to report this to me now, because?" Salem frowned as she exerted her power to create a pool of darkness all around Watts. She did not appreciate being kept out of the loop like this.

"I assumed it would have already been reported to you by her. During our call, she was very intent on running away from the mercenary and regrouping once she had built up more influence. It didn't occur to me to say anything because I was under the impression that she was not present for this meeting because she was stranded on Mistral or Vacuo without her Scroll."

The Grimm around Watts vanished, allowing him to sit back down as Salem thought about this new development. It was currently only two days after he had last made contact with Cinder and another three days before he was due to give her his weekly report. Meanwhile, Cinder had been due to report the very next day after their talk and everyone in the Inner Circle knew it since Salem had made it a point to dictate their schedules.

"I want all the information you have on that man," Salem said.

Watts did not verbally respond. He took out his Scroll and fiddled with it for a couple seconds before sliding over to the center of the table they were all gathered around. A moment after it stopped, all the information he had compiled on Lapis Lain as well as all the information his searching algorithms had picked up since the original search began to holographically display for everyone present to see.

"Is this a joke?" Hazel asked as his eyes scanned back and forth, down the many documents. "This is the profile of a harmless civilian. Someone almost too unfortunate to even use as a disguise for a mercenary."

"My thoughts… almost exactly," Watts said. "Cinder also thought the profile was a decoy or false identity until she saw a picture of him. She claimed this man was the very same one who stopped her from stealing the Fall Maiden's powers."

"One of only a few survivors of a village's destruction due to the Grimm; the only survivor of his entire family…" Salem read off before passing off her personal Scroll to Watts to work his techno-magic on all her sources and maybe scrounge up some more information. When he complied, her budding concern turned to a deep resignation.

"Recently known associate of Ozpins' at Beacon; preternaturally powerful even without Aura; suddenly and inexplicably rich and now… He was also famously accredited for having just hours prior resolved an incident with the White Fang attacking the Schnees again."

Salem grimaced, "It should be about the right time for another one to appear, but this escalation in growth… It's unreasonable even for one of them."

Every few hundred years a Paragon of mankind would appear to destroy a good chunk of her progress towards her ultimate goal of secretly getting all the Relics. This person would appear almost always right around the time her plans could start to bear fruit. She had learned over the last thousand years to prioritize their swift death above all else as the consequences of giving them any more time to grow after they were discovered would only exacerbate the damage dealt to her plans.

This Lapis Lain fit the profile of a Paragon perfectly. The destruction of his village and subsequent status as the only remaining member of his bloodline all but guaranteed it. Surely, the traumatic event had resulted in the awakening of his Aura and all the time he spent in a coma had brought out a good deal of his extraordinary soul's strength.

That he had been found by Ozpin and taken less than a month to get this strong was a sign that he could be the greatest Paragon yet. He had to be dealt with immediately.

"Change of plans," Salem said as she finished reading through all of his Lapis' information. "We are going to get rid of him, immediately. If this really is the next coming of a Paragon, we must ensure that he dies by tomorrow. So, here's what we're going to do."

She began to weave a plan in real-time while explaining it to her lessers. All three of them were to accompany her to Beacon this very night and strike while he was sleeping and unaware in his opulent apartment. They would take advantage of the fact that only Glynda and Amber were around and make another attempt on the Fall Maiden's powers after reclaiming Cinder.

Then, while a good part of the academy burned down, Lapis' precious friends would be hunted and secured as bait for him to walk right into their trap. Tyrian would seek to cause as many deaths in the school as possible, while searching for the team Lapis frequently ate and trained with.

Salem would spare no expense to make sure the operation went as smoothly as possible as she planned to bring a thousand Ancient Geists into the fold to possess any of the students, staff or recording devices that might discover her during the attack. Even for a first year at Beacon, it would cost no less than ten such millennium-old Grimm to overtake and all the ones that failed in the process would be lost forever. Such was the price she was willing to pay to minimize the chance that any concrete evidence of her existence was left behind.

When all was said and done, their group would leave Beacon and head towards the nearest Titan's Lair with the hostages. The longer it took for Lapis to be informed of the attack and chase after them — because his nature as a Paragon would ensure it, even if it was against Ozma's wishes — the longer she would have to converge all the surrounding Grimm to the nearest Titan, Raksha.

If everything went to plan she would get the Fall Maiden's powers with Cinder, the death of the next Paragon, and deal a massive blow to Ozpin's efforts in Vale with the whole or partial destruction of Beacon… And, it would only cost a good 10% of the real power behind her army, risk revealing herself as well as the lives of the best retainers she'd had in centuries.

Geists were not meant to possess humans. Their true strength lay in possessing inanimate objects and transferring from vessel to vessel. Ancient Geists could go as far as to possess entire buildings, manipulate their interiors or telekinetically detach from the ground to be thrown at enemies. Alas, they were the most intelligent of the Possession-types and would need to be sacrificed to raise her chances of success as high as possible.

After all, it wouldn't make sense for Beacon to suddenly get attacked overnight for no reason. Unless, of course, the Possessed individuals she came across were commanded through the Geists to provide an appropriate motive.

Perhaps she would decide to enslave a majority of Fanus individuals to find a scapegoat in the White Fang. Perhaps she could fabricate the existence of a new type of Grimm and leak it to the public. A Viral Grimm that may or may not have been the focus of secret underground research at the academy. Something so vile and twisted that it only targets Huntsmen and makes them go insane. There were a lot of ways to spin the narrative if she was creative enough, each having its own subsequent implications that would further depress and stress the world at large.

When the plan was finalized, Salem called for the Ancient Grimm to make use of their advanced ghostly nature and follow the airship she and the rest of her Inner Circle boarded while almost completely invisible. The flight from Evernight Castle to Beacon would take hours and deposit them right on time to launch the attack.

At approximately 3:51 AM the airship landed over ten miles away from Beacon. The plan quickly began to fall apart while they traveled on foot to infiltrate Beacon when a "creature," neither Human nor Faunus nor even Grimm, descended on them. It looked like a puppet scarecrow with a blue bird attached to its right hand and a wooden bow on its left.

As the creature immediately began to attack Salem's group with one of its arrows, Hazel called out, "Let me handle this one." As everyone scattered, he was the only one who dodged towards the creature and began to fight it.

The rest of the group continued towards Beacon as the sounds of the fight raging behind them slowly quieted down the further away they went. The sounds of explosions, electrical discharges and smacking thuds soon were entirely too distant to be heard at all even before the appearance of Beacon broke through the forests.

The Geists were possessing and covertly shutting down dozens of cameras and sensors as they approached before moving on from one electronic to the next. They had been doing that since the airship touched down and had seemingly done a well enough job for no alarm to have been raised within the academy.

Tyrian broke off with a good three hundred Geists to begin his part in the sabotage while Watts led Salem directly towards the room Amber, the Fall Maiden, was supposed to be resting in. The intel Watts managed to pull from Beacon's records contained no less than five decoy rooms for the woman all near the complete opposite side of the campus.

The Fall Maiden didn't stand a chance the moment they broke into her room. Sleeping so utterly vulnerably before them, she couldn't even react when Salem used a special Grimm parasite and her Dark Magic to rip out the Maiden powers out of her. A few seconds was all it took and as soon as they were done, they were back to running towards their next destination; the detainment facility holding Cinder.

The Grimm Salem used could only hold the Maiden powers for at most five minutes before the Magic in them burned the parasite out, but they made it to Cinder in just three. With no time to explain what was going on, Salem forced the parasite onto Cinder and just like that, she became the next Fall Maiden.

"Um… Hello?" Mercury sounded perhaps the most reserved Salem had ever heard him as he tried to get their attention while ignoring Cinder's agonizing screams.

"Just follow us and do as we say. We're on the clock and would ideally be done with all our objectives before Ozpin or any of his pawns find out our true intentions," Watts said as he broke through all of Team CEM's restraints.

"Tch," Mercury clicked his teeth but stood begrudgingly to the side while waiting for Salem to speak to him. Emerald followed him without saying a word.

"Here," Salem opened Cinder's mouth and forced her to swallow a painkiller. "That should tide you over for now. Come now, we must get to the vault, get the Relic and get out. By then, Tyrian and Hazel should have the rest of our targets." Before she even finished speaking, Cinder had stopped writhing in pain, screaming and was struggling up to her feet.

Cinder opened her mouth to speak, but the look on Salem's face told her it would be wise to remain silent and follow as she and the rest of her team had been told.

They all followed Watts out of the detainment facility and toward a room filled with various servers; Ozpin's very own home network, if not at least one of them. He worked on the computers for a minute or so before getting the location and access code of the Vault.

"I have good news and bad news," He said while taking the group outside of the building they were currently in and heading for Beacon Tower.

"Get on with it," Salem demanded as her patience was at an all-time low while exposed as she was to possibly have all her plans ruined with her presence outside of the Land of Darkness.

"The good news is that getting to the vault will be easier than we were hoping for. The only way to reach it is through the elevator of Beacon Tower taking us deep into an underground layer where it will be a long walk away. The bad news is that taking the elevator, will trigger a mechanical alarm that will let Ozpin know we are on the way to the Relic."

"This far along, it will be an acceptable risk to have him confront us while we are on the way back up," Salem resolutely said. All the remaining Ancient Geists she had following her would simply have to make an impromptu exit out for her if the elevator was closed off.

They made it to Beacon Tower, entered the elevator and after Watts used the special access code required to take them down to the underground layer, were assaulted by a bunch of alarms going off at the same time. The elevator, tower, probably Ozpin's office, and maybe even the school at large might very well be alerted to their plans now.

Salem trusted that with all the time that had passed by now, the others had to have been done with their tasks in the worst-case scenario. If nothing else, then taking the bunny-eared girl who was likely in a relationship with Lapis would be more than enough and that was something Tyrian alone could accomplish with all the time he'd had to find her and her team.

Not five seconds after they exited the elevators in the underground layer, the elevator began to close and head up toward the surface. Ozpin was likely only a couple minutes away from confronting them if not already planning on sealing them inside.

Salem's group proceeded towards the Vault, reached it and had Cinder open it. Inside was a separate dimension altogether. A labyrinth with no gaps between the walls, ceiling and floor. An obstacle that should have made reaching the Relic a challenge for all but the one who hid it in the first place.

To Salem, who could sense the potent Magic off in the distance and command her army of Ancient Geist it did not even amount to being a distraction. Alas, even when the environment parted for her, there was still quite a distance to cover before she could reach it. It was so far in fact, that by the time they were halfway to it, Watts called out that the elevator had been brought down to the underground layer again.

Salem ignored him when he spoke of the cameras he had left in the elevator picking up images of Ozpin and Glynda Goodwich having come down to confront them. If it was only them, she would just kill them for foolishly thinking they stood a chance against the five of them once it was made evident that they had taken the Fall Maiden's powers.

They reached the Relic of Choice and Salem donned it on her head. As the jewel-encrusted crown fell on her temple, Salem experienced its effect instantaneously.

What should have happened was that the Relic would show her various futures she could choose from to make a reality. The possible futures should have been random and only a very remote possibility of the path to her desired outcome might show up. Instead, Salem only saw one future which she could not avoid.

She paused for five seconds before forcing the crown on Cinder and asking, "What did you see?"

"T-that... That monster," Cinder's face rapidly paled before she averted her head and vomited all over the floor. "I-it is real? Am I-I r-really about to d-die?"

Salem forced the crown on Watts before asking again.

"You die," he said while pointing at Cinder. There was a haunting look in his eye as he dragged his finger over to Mercury then Emerald before finally stopping on Salem herself. "All of you die before me… and then I follow."

Salem holds the crown for a couple of seconds before the start of the prophecy plays out exactly as she envisioned it. Ozpin and Glynda appear off in the distance as they run towards her and the others in her group. As they approach she hears Ozpin ask, "Finally lost your patience?" He looked just as genuinely curious as he had in her vision.

Originally, she would have just attacked without responding. But now that she knew it would be for nothing, she just tossed the Relic over to him and smiled. The end she had so hopefully desired all this time would soon be upon her.

Before Ozpin could even speak, the colors of the world around them faded to a monochrome gradient. The earth shook and a moment later, Death itself appeared between Ozpin's group and Salem's.