18 - ||

Two games of go fish later I found myself sitting around the same table we had been sitting at before Jorth's arrival, with the everyone taking a seat around the table, including a thankfully clothed Jorth who stared at us with unblinking eyes while a still red faced Ruby tried to avoid meeting our eyes.

Nora on the other hand?

Well let's just say the way she was looking provided me with plenty of incentive to think of a way to change the subject before this awkward silence evolves into something else entirely.

"Outside you said that you recognised the marks on my sword as Enochian." I said to Jorth, drawing the attention of the table towards me. "Is there anyone that you know of that could read it? Tell us what it says?"

Jorth shook her head. "The only person who could still read it died over a hundred years ago, but he did write a thesis know as 'the Illuminated Manuscript', which supposedly contained a basic translation of some of the more common symbology employed by Enochian."

"Supposedly?" Ren enquired even as a sinking feeling began to enter my chest as a thought entered my brain.

Oh don't tell me.

"The only one that I knew of was in the Grand Library in Mistral." Jorth explained and I let out a groan as I realised just what that entailed, letting my head collide with the table with a loud clunk as my fear was confirmed.

"Well, why don't we just pick it up while we're there?" Ruby suggested, not seeing the problem that Jorth's words presented.

"Because the Grand Library doesn't exist anymore Ruby." I explained, thudding my head into the table once more. "It was burned to a crisp during the Great War."

I bit back a curse as the frustration mounted within me.

Typical.

A way to find out more about my past and it's been ash in the wind since before I was born.

"Okay then, so we can't do anything about that now." Nora said firmly clapping her hands once. "Let's focus on what we can do. We can use the forge to either make or upgrade whatever we might need to do, use the town to resupply and then start making our way to Mistral."

"I saw your matches during the tournament." Jorth said blandly, seemingly ignoring her daughter's words, her eyes locked on me. "Your shield technique was…adequate. But it could be far better."

I raised a brow at that before I indicated towards where my sheath would normally be equipped. "I don't exactly have a shield at the moment." I rebutted, one of my wings twitching under the coat as I turned. "And my shield mentor is…indisposed as well."

Jorth stood up from the table and walked out through one of the doorways that led further into the house without saying a word, all of us watching her walk away.

I winced as a cacophony of noise sounded out in the room beyond, like someone has grabbed a stack of plates and a girder and tried to mince them in an oversized blender.

I saw Wayland sigh silently as one hand came up to massage his brow while he appeared to slowly count backwards from five making use of his other.

Moments later Jorth returned, carrying a kite shield that was almost as big as she was.

She tossed the shield at me like it was a rubber ball and I went to catch it only for all the breath to whoosh out of me in a wheeze as it knocked me off of my stool.

Blast it.

This thing is damn heavy.

I manage to push it off me with a huff to see Jorth standing expectantly by the front door, looking directly at me.

"Honey," Wayland ventured, asking the question with all the caution of a man who has just realised he is standing on an active land mine. "What are you doing?"

"He no longer has a shield mentor to continue his tuition." Jorth said simply, not looking away from me even as she responded. "Therefore, I will teach him until I deem his technique to be acceptable."

I watched all the color flee from Nora and Ren's face even as Wayland proceeded to choke on thin air, hacking and coughing as both my remaining teammates from JNPR gave me a variety of subtle and not so subtle gestures telling me not to go.

I felt a grip like iron seize me by the wrist and the next thing I knew I was outside the house, sprawled onto the pavement in front of Jorth's power armour.

Which she was getting back into, the frame closing around her and powering up with remarkable swiftness.

The frame stood up, moving fluidly before drawing it's axe back behind it's back in a swift movement.

"BLOCK."

I froze for a moment before I rushed to raise the ridiculously heavy shield into position just in time for the oversized weapon slammed into it with the force of an oncoming train, lifting me off me feet and sending me tumbling through the air, sending me crashing through something in a dizzying spin before I came to a stop with a groan.

I sat up slowly to find myself back in the living room of the Valkyrie residence, embedded deeply into one of the stone walls and as I blearily looked up I could see the others staring at me in varying degrees of dismay as well as the suspiciously me shaped hole on the other side of the room.

"Well, since Jaune seems to be handily occupying my darling wife, how about we all retire to the forge so we can get to work on our projects?" Wayland said loudly, blatantly ignoring my form at this point.

Ruby seemed to be a bit stunned at this point and was staring at my groaning form only for Nora to grab her by the arm and start dragging her after her father's retreating form. "That sounds like a great idea dad, I'm right behind you."

I forced my eyes up to look at my last hope of salvation, my brother in battle, the one I knew would stand beside me in my time of need.

Only to find an empty stool, rattling as it spun in place, a green tinged form blurring after the others.

Damn you Ren!

There was a loud crashing sound and suddenly the silver armoured suit crashed through the wall it had blasted me through with all the grace of a falling tree.

"YOU GOT KNOCKED OFF YOUR FEET." Jorth remarked, her voice horribly distorted by the power armour. "TRY NOT TO DO THAT. LET'S DO IT AGAIN."

A massive mechanical fist pulled me from the wall and started dragging me outside once more and I fought the urge to let out a whimper.

At the rate things were going I wouldn't have to worry about Mistral.

I was going to be dead long before that.

"BLOCK."

"Argh!"

Interlude I - Cinder

The three 'students' from Haven academy, walked through the dimly lit corridor, the darkness pressing down upon them like a physical force, threatening to snatch the air from their very lungs.

This was supposed to be their moment of triumph, the crowning achievement after all the hard work they had put in, all come undone in the actions of a single night.

When Emerald and Mercury had seen Cinder last she had been soaring through the skies like a goddess, sending bursts of flame beyond anything they'd ever seen Cinder make before across the skies, setting the city below aflame with the force of her attacks.

They'd seen her go toe to toe with an angel of all things, and come up on top, looking to be dominating the encounter as far as they could see it.

And then…

Then something had happened.

Something that had occurred out of sight of the two saboteurs, Cinder's form briefly lost in the chaos of the Grimm invading the city.

They'd realised that Cinder's form was no longer soaring through the skies.

That there were no more plumes of flame marking her presence.

They managed to track her down eventually but when they'd seen her…

Cinder staggered towards the door, her beautiful hair now far shorter than it had previously been, almost as short as when Emerald and Mercury had first met her.

And her eye…

She hadn't let them see it, kept it hidden as best as she could beneath her hair which had only grown longer during the journey back to the castle but even her best attempts couldn't hide the edges of a massive scar spreading out from beneath it, the extent of which leaving them wondering if she even had an eye anymore hidden beneath that hair.

Mercury and Emerald stepped forward and opened the tall double doors that led to the Queen's throne room, Cinder walking through them without pause, her normally smooth as silk gait now noticeably stilted most likely from the pain that racked her form still.

Four forms waited within, three sitting on high backed chairs surrounding the table that stood as a centrepiece to the room, the high glass windows on the walls around them allowing the eerie glow of the unnatural crystals which served as one of the only forms of light within the dark continent to enter the room.

Dr Watts dressed as impeccably as he always seemed to be in his signature dark clothes accented with a dull yellow gazed at Cinder through green eyes that seemed to glimmer with malevolence as he saw her injury, his moustache creasing slightly as an expression of displeasure appeared across his face momentarily before he schooled it into an apathetic expression once more.

Hazel on the other hand remained as unmoved by Cinder's appearance as he ever was, his brown eyes glancing over her form briefly before they returned to face forward once more, not an inch of emotion being expressed the entire time, although Emerald could have sworn that he pulled back his sleeves slightly as they approached, revealing hints of the faded scars that coat concealed.

Tyrian in direct contrast to the other two members of the Queen's inner circle laughed with joy as he saw Cinder's battered form, his joviality tinged with the edge of insanity that followed all of his movements, the assassin nearly leaping bodily from his chair towards the returning trio so that he may better insult and belittle them only to think better of it as his eyes flicked back to the remaining person in the room, a cruel grin stretching across his face as he envisioned what was going to happen next.

At the end of the hall was a throne, one carved with an expert hand of some type of stone the world has not seen the like of in recent times, and the occasional cracks and faded parts stood as a testament to just how long it had remained within this room throughout the ages.

On each side of the throne were two flames, crackling an unnatural green and suspended off the ground by archaic looking fire pits that seemed to defy gravity by no visible means.

And sitting upon that throne was a woman that was known of only by a handful of people in the entirety of Remnant.

And feared by all of them.

The first though that came to mind whenever you gazed upon the woman upon the throne was 'inhuman'.

That the person before me cannot be human.

Normal humans don't have skin as white as polished bone.

Normal humans don't have purple veins encroaching upon their face, or down their arms the colour utterly bizarre to see on a human form.

And those eyes.

Normal humans most certainly did not have sclera as black as a starless night with bright crimson irises that glowed in the dark.

Like a Grimm.

Cinder flinched as the flames on either side of the ancient throne roared even higher in the face of the wrath of the one sitting upon it.

"You." The woman sitting on the voice spoke, her word soft and yet booming with a power that sent Mercury and Emerald sliding backward with each new syllable. "You have failed me, Cinder."

Emerald let out a sound of protest at that which midway was strangled, Emerald's eyes bulging as she clutched at her throat, dropping to her knees.

"Your task was simple. Bring me the boy, alive." The woman on the throne continued on ignoring Emerald's silent gasps and desperate scrabbles as if she didn't even exist as her red eyes stared directly into Cinder's own. "I even woke the Dragon for you to give you a helping hand. But not only have you failed to bring me the boy, you also got my dragon taken out of the picture."

The woman stood and as she did the fires surrounding the halls dimmed and even more noticeably, the sound of every shrieking cry and bellowing roar of the Grimm milling and gathering below faded away to nothing.

"How do you think that makes me feel?" The word's hissed through the air, Mercury letting out a wince as blood began to trickle from one of his ears.

The world stood still for a heartbeat, then two as they all waited, unwilling to make any action that might invoke the wrath of the monster before them.

And then the moment passed, the white-haired woman sitting back down upon her throne with all the grace of a queen, Emerald taking in a deep breath of air as the force choking her abated without warning.

"Leave us." The woman spoke, her words said with the clear understanding that they were to be obeyed without question.

Mercury nodded and all but lifted Emerald from the floor and retreated from the room, following the other occupants.

The door slammed shut behind him with a sense of finality, the loud rasp of a heavy bolt sliding into place, locking the only entrance into the throne room.

There was silence for a moment, then the scene changed,

One moment the battered and injured form of Cinder stood before her master Salem, her red on black eyes gleaming with something that could not be called human.

And then it was Cinder sitting at the throne, still as resplendent as she had been when she had fled form Beacon, no injuries visibly present on her form.

The Cinder on the throne gazed down at the one standing silently before her and raised an eyebrow.

"I think that's quite enough of that performance don't you?" She asked, her yellow eyes crackling with power.

The Cinder before her shattered like a someone had thrown a brick through a plate glass window and when the light cleared a far shorter figure stood in her place.

Someone with mismatched eyes and tri-color hair.

"Yet another excellent performance Neo, well done." Cinder praised lightly, the silent form of Neo giving an elaborate curtesy in response, a small grin on her face.

Cinder sat there for a moment, luxuriating in the simple joy of sitting upon her throne once more before she stood walking towards the one of the massive windows that viewed the land outside, gesturing Neo to come forward as she gazed out of it.

The land was as inhospitable as always.

No source of clean water or plant life.

Eerily glowing dust formations, the likes of which the kingdoms could only dream of having dimly lighting the land around them revealing the constant stream of Grimm pulling themselves from the pits of mercurial black liquid that pitted the Dark continent's entirety.

But they weren't what Cinder was interested in at the moment.

She was far more interested in what she had been seeing for the first time in over a millennium.

Down below, so small they almost seemed like ants' countless small forms slaved away with crude mining equipment, chipping away at the mighty structures of crystalline dust that dominated the land.

No one tried to escape.

Not anymore at least.

After they'd seen what the Grimm had done to the first few who had tried.

Well…

Let's just say that they didn't die quickly.

"Progress is going well." Cinder remarked as Neo came to a stop before the window as well, looking down at their captive workforce, their clothes all-ready becoming rags under the harsh conditions they were forced to work under. "At their current rate, we should have the device sufficiently powered ahead of schedule."

Neo's expression was one of wicked glee as she stared down at the wretched forms below her and she turned to face Cinder once more, gesturing as she did so.

Cinder chuckled before shaking her head. "No, we'll keep them at their current pace. We'll need as many of them alive as possible if we want to achieve the final phase." She paused for a moment as she looked upon Neo's pouting form before she rolled her eyes. "But the next one that tries to escape is all yours."

Neo clapped happily at that, giving another little courtesy in thanks. The silent assassin turned on her heel and began making her way for the door before the sound of Cinder clearing her throat reached her ears and she stopped.

"Also, even though I couldn't bring you what you wanted thanks to that insufferable Quatermain, I did manage to bring back a souvenir of my own for you to keep." The Fall Maiden said what began as a snarl as she spoke of the man who vexed her so but it turned into a sly grin as she turned back towards her throne.

Cinder held out a hand and with a rush of air something that had been hidden behind the throne suddenly rushed out, whipping through the air towards Neo who caught it easily with one hand.

She looked down at what she had caught and her eyes widened, a rapturous expression appearing across her face. Neo turned from Cinder, walking back towards the vast doors that lead to the throne room, the sound of her laughter filling the air.

Cinder waited for a moment, before she gestured with her arm and a heavy deadbolt slid in place barring the door from entry.

She walked up to her throne and sat down upon it, her fingers beating a pattern on the arm of the chair that was seemingly random.

The windows changed from a clear opaque into an impenetrable black, the two flames on either side of her throne retracting into the wall which itself was also shifting and changing, the stone transmuting into an entirely different material.

The throne spun on its axis and the yellow eyes woman gazed up at the massive golden disc that now dominated the wall. A cruel twist came upon her lips as she gazed up upon the disc of gold, the

"Show him to me." Cinder demanded, the gold rippling as if it was a disturbed pond before it came to a stop.

The golden mirror stilled and an entirely different appeared before her.

It was a single room, no windows, no doors.

There was no light within the room itself, only what little remained in the throne room providing the barest amount of illumination possible.

There was a man within the room, sitting with his back pressed up against the wall. From what little you could see of the man it was clear that he was unkempt, a ragged beard and long unwashed hair that could only be called dark trailing over his eyes. He had the tattered remains of what had once been clothes around him, now far to ragged to be called such. He had been in good shape once, but now he seemed almost skeletal, muscle stretched tightly over bone, skin bearing the marks of old tortures that hadn't seen the light of the sun in years.

And he was chained to the wall, a manacle on each hand connected to a chain that was deadbolted to the wall that have him just enough slack to rest his arms, provided he sat directly beneath it, as he was doing right now.

"I have need of your services, historian." Cinder purred out, her eyes glinting like a living flame as she did so.

The man let out a raspy laugh that turned in a ragged cough halfway through, his head still bowed as he did so. "So much for the supposed endless knowledge you were talking about last time." He rasped, a smirk full of yellow teeth visible. "Let me guess, you stuffed up the soul cage, again."

She bit back a growl at the man's impudence. "If you were anyone else, I'd have had you killed for that." She said in a sickly-sweet tone.

The man let out another raspy chuckle at that, shaking his head lightly as he did so. "Oh please, we both know that if you were going to kill me you would have done so already." "So, since I don't seem to be going anywhere what is it that you want to show me."

Cinder moved her finger through the air, leaving behind a trail of fire that floated before her, a myriad of symbols and archaic looking letters transposed across it.

The same symbols that had appeared on Jaune's sword.

The man stopped for a moment seemingly in shock before he chuckled once before bursting into roaring laughter that sounded like to physically hurt the man.

"What are you laughing about?"

"He's alive." The man said with confidence, staring through his hair at Cinder "He's alive and you don't know where he is."

"You'll tell me what I want to know or I swear I'll…"

"You'll what?" The man challenged pushing himself up from the all and standing on shaking legs. "Torture me, ooh gee, never had that one happen to me before. And you can't kill him either."

"And why is that?" Cinder challenged, her once glowing eyes now literally flames burning within her sockets, trying to use her new powers to intimidate the man before her.

The emaciated man laughed in the face of her attempt, collapsing to the floor again as his legs failed him. "Because that thing you want, more than anything in the world, it can only be opened by a living angel."

Cinder swore internally "I will find him." She said aloud, glaring at the insufferable being before her.

He had the gall to laugh, again at her. "Good luck with that. I mean it only took you what was it six or seven years to track down his mother, and hell, I think he takes after her side of the family, don't you?""

It was Cinder who laughed blackly this time, a smug look on her face. "I have all the time in the world."

The man in the cell looked up that, his dark eyes glittering through his hair as a smirk spread across his face. "You sure about that?"

Interlude - ?

Her eyes flickered open and she bought herself up, a hand raising to cradle her head instinctively.

After that battle she had a killer headac…

She paused.

She didn't have a headache.

In fact, she didn't feel any pain at all.

She reached down for her injury, aiming to see how bad the damage was to find nothing but smooth skin beneath her fingers.

She frowned.

That wasn't right.

As foggy as the memory was, she knew she'd been hurt badly.

Perhaps even fatally.

Her eyes flashed open even wider at that and she spun around, trying to make out where she was.

But it was all for nought.

She was not in a room.

Or in a building.

Or anywhere so it seemed.

She seemed to be floating within an utterly blank void, nothing but empty white space in every direction around her.

She couldn't see anything else.

She couldn't hear anything else.

All of her senses reached out around her, desperately trying to reach out for something.

For anything.

Nothing.

She screamed and yelled as loud as she could, trying to get someone, anyone to hear her, to come help her, but as it became painful for her to shout she was just as alone as she had been before.

And then the thought came to her.

It was a terrible thought.

One she didn't want to contemplate.

But the longer she floated in this featureless space, the louder the though got until it all but dominated her mind.

And then finally, she asked it aloud, afraid of the answer she might find.

"Am I…" She began, her voice echoing bizarrely within this lifeless void. "Am I dead?"

"Not exactly." A voice she'd never heard before replied directly behind her, the girl almost leaping out of her skin in shock.

How had they gotten behind her?

She couldn't even hear them breathe!

She spun as best as she could without anything to push off and the world distorted crazily as she did so, the sights so painful to behold that she had to close her eyes.

When she opened them again she was sitting down on solid ground, the feel of grass and coarse dirt greeting her fingertips as she ran them across the ground.

She was sitting before a campfire, the flames low and in dire need of more kindling but still burning with enough strength that she could feel the heat on her face, an sensation that was immensely satisfying for a reason that she couldn't quite put a name to.

Sitting on the other side of the campfire were two other individuals, both of them women.

The first wore a white cloak with the hood drawn back, Her brown hair neatly cut to fall short just above her shoulders, the brown strands just beginning to drift close to her equally brown eyes. The woman's skin was darker than that of her own, but at the same time not the darkest that she had seen. She was unsure if it was naturally that dark or simply an aftereffect of a life in the sun.

The brown-haired woman smiled simply at her, brushing an errant strand of hair out of the way as she did so.

She recognised this woman.

And yet…

Something was missing about her appearance.

Some aspect of her was not quite right, not that she could put a name to what it was.

The other woman sitting around the fire was somehow even harder to make out.

It was as if she was sitting in shadows, despite the fact that her sitting so close to the fire should have illuminated her form perfectly.

It was as if her form would begin to distort whenever she tried to focus on it, only becoming blurrier instead of becoming clearer.

"Using your power like that was very brave, but at the same time very foolish." The woman enveloped in shadows said, the same voice from before coming from her. "It was the only thing keeping you going, such as it was, and you almost ran out of it."

The woman's words would have seemed harsh and berating if not for her tone of voice making it clear she meant nothing of the sort.

"You're not quite dead." The brown-haired girl, 'Amber' she thought suddenly, her name was Amber, said aloud, the fire still crackling away. "But at the same time, you're not quite alive either. You're somewhere in the middle."

So, she wasn't dead.

That was something.

But she wasn't alive either?

So was she in a coma or anything?

But even in the face of this information she found herself pushing herself up off the ground, trying to walk around to the other side of the other side of the campfire to confront the shadowed woman.

Who… who are you?" She asked finally, trying to remember just how it was that she knew one of the two, and why the other one was so eerily familiar.

The woman laughed at that, a musical sound that threated to cause her to smile in response. "I suppose you could call us two of your predecessors, miss Nikos." The blonde woman said with a smile standing up from where she had been sitting around the campfire.

As the woman did so the campfire blazed unnaturally, nearly tripling in both height and intensity.

And as it did sparkling eyes that were blue like the deepest oceans stared back into Pyrrha's own.

"I hear you've met my son."