The team continued to trek onwards across the cliffs and hills that littered the path that the Grimm were leading everybody down. Nobody said a word, nor did anyone make a deviation in their rhythm of walking. It was all still sinking in for them. The sights, the sounds, and even the feelings that came with it. Ember looked over at a black pool down the hill where they were walking and saw Grimm climbing their way out of the ooze. It was a sight that nobody ever thought they would see in all their natural lives. Still, they pressed on like it was any other mission, trying to make sure that they didn’t do anything wrong or out of sequence that would possibly cause the Grimm to attack in an instant. Suddenly, a small Nevermore flew down from the sky and landed on Hera’s arm. Everybody except for Ozpin immediately pointed their weapons right at the bird the instant it got close to Hera.
“Calm down” Salem said speaking through Hera. “This is just one of my scouts.”
“I swear on my life,” Natalie said staring down the scope of her weapon, “if you even think about hurting her….”
“If I hurt your daughter child, then I effectively destroy myself as well” Salem said with an annoyed tone. “I am here to guide you, not to trap you and use you as food or something.” Everybody put their weapons away, Natalie muttered under her breath,
“I’m over forty years old you know….”
“And I’m over forty centuries old child. Now if we could return to the task at hand, it would seem we are not alone.” Everybody turned their attention to their surroundings, trying to see if they could spot any enemies trying to ambush them. “Not right here you idiots” Salem said waving her hand towards a mountain to the west of them. “off towards the pools that lead to the eastern lands of Remnant.”
“The Order?” Jacob said with concern in his voice.
“They’re already here” Ozpin said as his eyes widened. “We may have lost already”
“Calm down brother” Salem said as she sent the Nevermore back into the sky. “They aren’t an absolute threat just yet. For the time being, it seems that they are just sitting around waiting for something to happen. Most likely, they are tracking us to try and find the Relic.”
“How should we play this then?” Blake asked as she looked around the barren landscape. “We can’t hide very well, and if we let them follow us, they’ll ambush us with an army.”
“What if we split up?” Hera suggested raising her hand.
“I don’t like that idea” Miles said folding his arms. “If we split up, we’re at the disadvantage when the Order decides to attack.”
“But if we do split up,” Brooklyn said as she scratched her chin, “then the Order is going to have to split up as well. It won’t be much easier, but if we can at least draw some of them away from the Relic, then that makes our lives much easier.”
“Be that as it may,” Christy said as she held her arm, “I’m not exactly too keen on the idea of splitting up in a place like this. Who’s to say that the team that goes away from the Relic won’t end up lost or attacked by Grimm?”
“I can send another guide to ensure you won’t get lost or eaten” Salem said stepping forward. She waved her hand and caused a few more Grimm to arrive and circle around the group.
“Not exactly a comforting image here….” Arri said as she shuffled her feet a bit.
“All right” Jacob said putting his hands together. “We’ll split up. Miles, Natalie, Christy, Ty, Blake, and Team BEAT, you all follow the guide and be the diversion. The rest of us will continue to follow Hera and Salem and recover the Relic.”
“You sure that’s the best option right now?” Natalie said scratching her head.
“It makes the most sense. Once we reach the Relic, we will contact you so long as our Scrolls have enough local range to remain connected. If not, we can have you set off a signal flare to let us know where you are. Hopefully you will have dispatched whatever team the Order sends your way, and then can join us at the location of the Relic to deal with the remainder of the Order.”
“How are we supposed to get to you that quickly?” Miles asked as he loaded his weapons with dust crystals. “If we really are splitting up, then we aren’t exactly going to be just a few blocks away.”
“You will have your daughters speed to help assist with that. She can transport everybody from your location to our location in a matter of seconds.”
“Um, real quick?” Aurora said as she ran in between Jacob and Miles, “I’m not sure my aura levels are going to be fully up to par for transporting people back and forth, let alone just running that kind of distance.”
“Christy and Bovia can help replenish your Aura levels as you make the trips. Hopefully, Salem won’t have her Grimm take you too far away from us.”
“I’ll make sure that we are all still within a reasonable range” Salem waved her arm and the Grimm made its way down a winding path into a nearby valley. “For the Relic, stay with me. For the diversion, head into the valley. My scouts will still be patrolling the skies, so when they spot the Order, they will make sure you have the advantage when combat begins.”
“All right” Yang said as she gave Ember a quick hug. “Stay safe everybody.”
“We’ll do our best” Terra said putting her hands behind her head. With that, the two teams split, and continued on their own paths towards their own objectives.
The valley continued to spiral the deeper and deeper they went along the path that the Grimm was leading them down.
“Are you sure we aren’t going to end up completely and utterly lost?” Ty asked as he picked up a rock from the ground. “I could have sworn that we’ve passed these same rock formations ten different times now.”
“Not like there’s much variety” Christy said as she ran her fingers across the valley wall. “Everything here is blood red. Maybe Ruby was onto something about the whole color scheme of the dark realm.”
“It doesn’t matter right now” Miles said as he kicked up some dirt. “At the very least, we can see. I was honestly expecting the Dark Realm to be more literal in terms of visibility. Take what you can get.”
“Speaking of which,” Blake said leaping up onto the side of the valley wall to try and get a better view of further down the winding path, “it looks like we’re about to finally come out of the valley.”
“Can you see what’s ahead?” Bovia asked as she walked up beneath Blake.
“Looks like a giant clearing” Blake said as she strained her eyes to adjust to the brighter red in the distance. “Kind of looks like ruins of a city.”
“I thought Salem was the only person who lived here?” Miles said tilting his head. “How can there be ruins?”
“You don’t think she wanted a roof over her head during the centuries she spent here all by herself?” Ty said stretching his arms. “You and I struggled for a few months without a proper roof over our heads before we went to Beacon.”
“I thought you said that you guys stayed at hotels from time to time?” Blake said chuckling a little bit.
“We’re getting off track here” Miles said completely embarrassed. “Can you see anything else other than the ruins?”
“Well, I can see what looks like a Grimm pool. It’s kind of a bit bubblier than the ones we passed earlier.”
“Bubblier? How do you mean?”
“It’s hard to explain from up here. Let’s get closer.” With that, Blake jumped back down and rejoined everyone as they continued through the valley. Once they reached the clearing, they could see the full ruins that Blake had seen. A giant space with crumbling pillars and statues, with a few drifts of red sand covering the ground.
“What do you think this place was?” Christy asked as she walked over to a collapsed pillar.
“Looks like some kind of temple” Bovia said as she picked up a broken piece of a statue. “Maybe people worshiped Salem here?”
“Is that even possible?” Arri said as she found old bowls filled with petrified fruits and vegetables. “Everything we’ve heard about Salem suggests that she was alone for an eternity. Did she just build a shrine to herself?”
“She does sound like the kind of person who would do that” Terra said as she pushed a rock off of a nearby edge. “Besides, Salem had people constantly passing through those Grimm gates in order to get here to serve her and her council, right? Maybe Salem tried to start her own church back in the day.”
“Whatever the case, we shouldn’t dawdle here for long” Miles said making his way through the rubble. “I think that our Grimm guide is getting a bit restless. Blake, you coming?” But Blake didn’t respond. She was standing next to the giant bubbling pool of Grimm ooze that she had seen earlier, staring into its depths. Everybody walked over to where she was standing and got a much better look into the pool, and everybody’s faces turned white with horror. The pool itself was in the bottom of a sinkhole, with the Grimm ooze flowing into the center of the pit. But hovering just above the pit was what caused everybody to react the way they did. In the middle of the pit was a figure. A man, completely shriveled up and decayed, without any signs of a normal human being. He had no real skin, and whatever shriveled up muscles and bones he had left were now pitch black like the ooze that surrounded him. And on top of that, his mouth was wide open, his eyes had disintegrated into nothing, and where his heart used to be was now an empty void. Along with that, there was a giant gash across his torso. And out of every single one of these orifices, more of the Grimm ooze was flowing out into the pit. Everybody almost fell over seeing this sight. Natalie placed her hands over her mouth in horror.
“That’s…that’s……”
“Lord Mortem” a new voice cut in, causing everybody to jump. They turned to see Lord Imperia standing alongside Lord Sangui and several Order soldiers, all of them with weapons drawn. “This is what happened to him after you killed him,” Imperia said as she pointed her staff at Natalie, “and Ozpin left him here to rot for the rest of eternity.” Everybody quickly drew their weapons and stepped away from the pit.
“The Relic isn’t here” Miles said pointing his sword at Imperia. “Sorry to disappoint you, but you walked right into our trap.”
“We aren’t here for the Relic child” Lord Sangui said with an evil laugh. “That’s the mission of the other squad. We’re here for our former leader.” Everybody tilted their heads a bit when Lord Sangui said this.
“What do you guys want with this horrifying corpse?” Ty asked as he morphed his weapon to bazooka form.
“That’s enough Lord Sangui” Lord Imperia said raising her hand to stop him from speaking further. “We don’t want to give too much away now do we?”
“How about we beat you to a pulp and then you tell us everything we want to know?” Ember said as she fired her weapons at the enemy. Imperia and Sangui leapt out of the way of the blasts, but a good chunk of the soldiers were hit by the attack and sent flying. Those who managed to avoid the attack charged forward along with Imperia and Sangui and the battle was joined. Lord Sangui immediately started splitting into several different clones of himself and each of them attacked a different target. The main body stayed back a short ways while the clones took all the damage. Blake struggled to get a clean hit on the yellow clone, as it continued to dodge and sneak in well calculated strikes. Blake managed to use her after-image to dodge most of the attacks, but she still kept losing small amounts of Aura overtime. Meanwhile, Miles was constantly parrying the attacks from the red clone as it attacked him head on without any pause or concern for its own life. Miles decided that in order to turn the situation around, he needed to use the clone’s brutish nature to his advantage. When the clone rushed in for another attack, Miles activated his Semblance and used it on the clone, causing it to float up into the air. The clone thrashed about, trying to break free, but Miles simply deactivated his Semblance, causing the clone to fall onto his sword and dissipate into nothing and flow of energy back into Lord Sangui. Once he was sure that the clone had been dispatched, Miles ran over to Blake to try and help her with the clone she was fighting. Meanwhile, Christy was going toe to toe with the blue clone. This clone seemed much more intent on defensive and counter tactics than direct attack, which meant Christy had to focus more on defensive-breaking tactics to counter the simple pattern that her opponent had. She had worked with combat techniques like this a thousand times over teaching classes at Beacon, and she knew all the holes and exploitable openings in the pattern. After a few minutes of following a traditional sparring pattern and lulling the clone into a repetitive cycle, Christy let the clone land one hit on her shoulder, then sliced up with one of her axes, cutting off the right arm of the clone. The clone reacted as if it were in pain leaving itself wide open, and in that moment, Christy morphed one of her weapons to rifle form and blasted the clone into oblivion. With that, she turned her attention to see if Ty needed any help fighting the Orange clone, but then saw that it was no issue whatsoever. The clone was hitting Ty left and right, trying to break through his absolute defense. But without flinching even once, Ty simply pulled out his sword and smashed the clone into oblivion. Everybody kept fighting, making sure that their friends were still alive and holding their own. The clones of Lord Sangui continued to diminish, but the soldiers were still great in number. Team BEAT was dealing with all these different groups as well, but Ember noticed that Lord Imperia had taken a few soldiers and had directed them through small cracks away from the main battle and towards the pit where Lord Mortem’s body was. Ember quickly dispatched the soldier she was fighting and ran through everybody to get to Lord Imperia. Ember initially aimed for the soldiers, planning on removing any form of backup that Lord Imperia could have, but before she could strike, Lord Imperia blocked the attack with her staff, and pushed Ember off and took up a battle stance.
“Do what needs to be done” Imperia said to the soldiers behind her. “I will keep her here.” With that, the soldiers activated some kind of force field armor around their bodies, and started making their way into the pit where Mortem’s body was. Ember pulled back and launched herself towards Lord Imperia, her tonfas clashing with Imperia’s staff. The two of them went back and forth, Ember very much on the offensive with quick strikes, and Lord Imperia being much more defensive, blocking attacks with her staff while also avoiding them entirely with small bursts of Dust energy allowing her to dodge. Ember was getting annoyed by these tactics from Lord Imperia, so she decided to try a different trick. She pulled back, and started running forward like she was going to attack head on. Lord Imperia prepared for the attack, but the moment that it seemed like the attack should have connected with her staff, the tonfas faded right through her, as did the rest of Ember’s body. In that moment, Ember had turned herself intangible and phased right through Lord Imperia. She phased out her back, and once she was fully clear of her, Ember turned solid again, spun around, and landed a massive hit on Lord Imperia, which sent her flying over the battlefield back towards where the original Lord Sangui was meditating and commanding his clones. Ember wanted to pursue and try to continue the fight, but she decided to turn her attention to the soldiers in the pit. As she ran back to where the body was, she saw that the soldiers had placed the oozing body of Lord Mortem into a medical pod and had fired a flare into the sky. Ember tried to attack the soldiers and take back the pod, but before she could do so, Lord Imperia had used a Dust crystal in her staff to launch herself back towards Ember and strike a powerful blow from above, knocking Ember into the ground. Imperia had her in a pin, holding her down on her back. Ember tried to get back up, but Lord Imperia fired a powerful charge of fire dust directly at Ember’s head. Her aura took most of the blast, but she knew that another attack like that could potentially not just deplete her aura, but kill her entirely. Ember quickly phased out of the hold and retreated back to her teammates. Lord Imperia cracked her neck, and grabbed a radio out of her belt.
“Impressive child. I suppose he did train you after all.”
“Huh?” Before Ember could question Lord Imperia further, Imperia activated the radio and said,
“Target secure. Bring in the pickup.” Seconds later, an airship flew in and started raining cover fire around the pit. Everybody except for the Order fell back into the valley, trying to make sure they weren’t hit by the rain of bullets. Ty pulled out his bazooka and fired a few rockets towards the airship, but Lord Imperia used Wind Dust to cause the rockets to fly harmlessly off into the distance. Seconds later, the airship touched down next to the pit, Lord Imperia and Sangui boarded, the soldiers loaded the medical pod with Lord Mortem’s body, then they took off and flew into the distance. Once the ship was gone, everybody made their way back out of the valley and inspected the pit, watching as the Grimm ooze just trickled down into the hole at the bottom like water circling a shower drain.
“What the heck just happened?” Ty said as he put his weapon away. “I thought the Order was after the Relic, not some shriveled up corpse?”
“Better question,” Miles said as he put his swords away, “what do we do now? We just got our butts handed to us by the Order, and if they are going after the Relic alongside the corpse, then who’s to say that we just let the other team down because we couldn’t stop them?”
“We need to find them” Christy said as she reloaded her weapons. “Miles, you might be able to get high enough that you could spot the other group.” Before Miles could do so however, they noticed a flare flying off in the distance.
“Is that one of ours or the Order’s?” Arri asked as she collected herself.
“Not sure” Bovia said studying it closely. “It doesn’t look like any of the regular flare colors.”
“That’s my mom’s flare” Ember said as she regained her bearings. “She’d fire it often whenever we got in too deep during training and needed dad to give us a lift back home.”
“Well if that’s the case,” Terra said with a sigh, “then that’s the best news I’ve heard all day.” Everybody gathered themselves and started making their way towards the flare.
“I hope they had better luck than we did” Christy said as she healed up people’s wounds while they were walking.
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