Episode 3: Chapter 12: Blood of My Blood

Chapter 12 of Episode 3 of War of Seasons

            “Mind giving me a lift?” Ember asked.  As she said this, the two spirits of Traci and Em floated out of the weapons, and lifter her up straight to the veil in the sky.  They weren’t flying quite as fast as when they took Ember back to Patch, but they were moving rather quickly.  So quick in fact, Ember was growing scared with each passing second that she would hit the veil and die before the spirits could even do anything.  But as they got closer, several spirits that were either floating around the veil or were pushing back against its descent, suddenly all came around and created a small circle on a point in the veil.  Nathan saw this and was confused, not sure what was happening.  Before he could react or respond however, the spirits started glowing even brighter, and started moving up into the veil, which in turn created a small break that was growing larger by the second.  Within moments, there was a small hole in the veil, which Ember flew through in a split second.  And as soon as she was through, the spirits backed off, and the hole closed once again, leaving Ember without any backup.  Having cleared the veil, she was now flying in the clouds, with drops of rain falling down on her.  Any rain drops that hit the veil fizzled and faded in an instant.  Ember quickly took in her surroundings.  She saw her father close to the three Relics, just floating there keeping the veil intact.  Not far from those Relics was Professor Ozpin.  He had lost consciousness, but was still floating there as the conduit for the souls to exist in the realm of the living.  Lastly, she took a deep breath, and looked over at her father, who was teeming with the dark powers of Salem.

            “How dare you….” He said as he pulled out his sword.  “How dare you!”

            “How dare I?” Ember asked as she floated towards her father.  “How dare I what?  Exist?  Because that’s the vibe you’ve been giving off ever since you started this path!”

            “Your life has been so easy!  You haven’t suffered like I’ve suffered!  You don’t know what it’s like to lose someone you love!  To lose someone who is like your family!”

            “I have lost someone dear to me!  I lost my father!  You know, you told Miles that you killed my father.  Well you know what?  I believe you.  You may have his face and body, but you are for sure not my father!”

            “I am the truest version of the man you once called your father that will ever exist!  I have finally realized who I’m supposed to be!  And nobody supported me!  Not my best friend, not my family, not anybody except for the Order!  And now it turns out that even they don’t truly support me!  They were just using me!”

            “So why are you still fighting?  Why are you still doing this?  You can stop all of this right now if you wanted!   You can still make things right!”

            “I am making things right!  I am bringing back the people who truly matter to me in this world!  I will bring back the people who will once and for all tell everyone that I’m in the right!”

            “You say that so passionately,” Traci said as she took up a form beside Ember, “but deep down, you know that you’re wrong my son.”  Nathan’s eyes widened when he saw his mother beside his daughter, but he shook his head and regained his composure.

            “Stay out of this!” Nathan yelled at the top of his lungs.  “You aren’t my real mother!  You never supported me!  The real Ember would support me on this!  I know she does!  She wants to be brought back to life!  She wants me to do this!  She….” Before Nathan could finish, Em materialized out of the other club, and just floated there.  Nathan’s eyes went even wider, and his face went pale.

            “Mother…” he said reaching towards Em.  “Tell her…..tell these monsters that they’re wrong!  That I’m right!  Tell them…..”

            “I’m disappointed in you Nathan” Em said with tears in her eyes.  “I told you long ago.  Your family and friends will always be with you.  And even if they go away, they will still return to you if you let them.  But you have refused to let anybody return to you because you think that what is returning is something harmful.  Something you don’t want in your life.  You are mistaking help and guidance for attacks and shackles.  Your friends, your wife and son are down below trying to clean up the mess you created.  Your mother and daughter and I are pleading with you to stop this for the sake of everyone, but you only care about yourself.  You didn’t do this for me.  You didn’t do this for the people of Aequo.  You did this for yourself, and only yourself.”  As Em said this, tears started rolling down Nathan’s face.

            “Ember….” He said reaching out to Em, trembling.  “Please….I did this for you…..”  Em turned her head, wiping away her tears.

            “You have become the very thing you swore to destroy” she said fighting back sniffles.  “And I won’t hesitate.  Not even for you.”  With that, Em faded back into the club, leaving Ember and Traci to look on as Nathan’s fear and panic continued to grow.  His hand was still trembling, but he slowly started to clench it.  Then, suddenly, he screamed at the top of his lungs.  Dark energy flowed around his body and wrapped around him.  He then took up an attack pose, and flew straight towards Ember.  The spirits returned to their respective weapons as Ember deflected the incoming attack.  The move was so powerful that when Ember deflected it and pushed Nathan to the side, his momentum sent him flying further past his target.  He quickly re-oriented himself, and prepared to charge again.  As he flew in to strike, Ember pointed her right club at Nathan, and squeezed the handle, but nothing happened.  She thought something was wrong, but quickly had to block Nathan’s sword.  Nathan did not try to pull away and try different attacks, but continued to press against the clubs, with Ember struggling to keep her defenses up.

            “Care to explain why you just pointed at him without doing anything?” Em said chastising Ember.  Ember looked around and saw that the club that Em was inhabiting was glowing.

            “Are you in my head?” Ember thought to herself.

            “Yep” Traci said with a chuckle.  “Don’t forget, these aren’t your normal clubs.  No projectiles for you to use.”

            “Great” Ember said as she spun to Nathan’s side and fell back to regain her composure.  “That’s half of my skill set right out the window.  Do I have to rely solely on my close quarters combat experience?”

            “Not with us here” Em said confidently.  “We’re inside the weapons.  Just use the training your father gave you when it comes to throwing your weapons.  We’ll take care of the rest.”  As Em said this, Nathan charged forward once again.  Ember simply took a breath, and threw the purple club right at Nathan.  However, Nathan noticed this and dodged easily.  Ember grew concerned as she prepared to defend herself with just one club, but in that moment, the purple club instead of continuing to fly back towards the ground, started to glow.  Once it started glowing, it turned itself around and flew back towards Ember almost in an instant.  The club clocked Nathan in the back of the head, stopping his attack in its tracks.  Ember then reclaimed the club and smiled.

            “Could have told me that you can make these bad boys fly” she said with a smirk.

            “Where’s the fun in that?” Em said tauntingly.

            “Focus” Traci said sharply.  “We’re not done.”  As she said this, Nathan screamed at the top of his lungs again, and the dark energy grew even more powerful.  This time to the point where he had grown giant black wings.

            “Couldn’t he fly on his own beforehand?” Em asked slightly confused.

            “This dark power is nothing if not theatric” Ember said as she flew towards Nathan.  The two of them continued to trade parries and blows.  Nathan’s attacks being focused on trying to completely and utterly destroy Ember’s entire being, but since Ember was more composed and focused, she was able to keep dodging the more devastating attacks and strike critical blows that was slowly but surely depleting Nathan’s aura as well as the dark power.  Nathan kept swinging the sword at full power leaving himself open for several less powerful but far more plentiful hits from Ember.  With each small attack that Ember landed on him, Nathan’s rage grew greater and greater still.  And with that, his attacks became even more predictable and easier to counter.  Nathan tried to take his tuning fork sword and run Ember through right through her chest.  But he telegraphed this move super easily by screaming and charging straight at her, giving Ember more than enough time to spin to right beside the blade.  But instead of attacking Nathan directly, she took the two clubs and placed them in between the space of the tuning fork sword, and swung with enough force to break the sword in two.  This created a powerful shockwave that while Ember took some damage, she still kept conscious.  However, the blast knocked Nathan for a loop, and he flew spiraling back higher into the sky.  As he flew closer to the sky, it looked like he was losing consciousness, and the dark power within him was struggling to contain itself within his body.  But he quickly regained his bearings, and charged straight at Ember once again.  His red eye was oozing some of the dark energy, as he approached her.  The two of them immediately started engaging in fisticuffs, even with Ember still using the clubs.  Nathan kept trying to land powerful punches and kicks, but at this point, he was flailing about more than a child in a playground fight.  Realizing this, Ember grabbed Nathan’s fist, and used the momentum of one of his punches to cause him to spin around.  As he tried to regain control of his body, she pulled back and smacked Nathan in the head with the clubs, sending him flying into the sky.  As soon as this happened, the dark power burst out, creating a sort of weird stream flowing around his body like a helix.  As soon as the dark power started doing this, three things happened.  First of all, the three Relics by the veil started glowing super bright, and started to distance themselves from each other.  This in turn caused the veil to dissipate, and the rain to fall to the ground below.  Ember saw that everybody had dispatched the remaining threats down below.  She floated down towards the Relics, and found the Relic of Life.  She grabbed it, healed herself real quick, and then floated towards Professor Ozpin, who was starting to regain consciousness.

            “Relic….Connection…..” Ozpin said struggling for words.

            “It’s all right Professor” Ember said with a smile.  “I’ll get you some help down below.”

            “We need to focus on Nathan right now!” Traci said growing more and more worried.  “He’s out for now, and that means we can remove the power from him!  We need to act now!”

            “Looks like the people below need more help than I do right now” Ember said with a sigh.  With that, she let Ozpin fall to the earth below with the Relic of Life not far behind.  As she watched as her friends claimed the items in question, she prepared to grab the last of the Relics.

            “We really should focus on your father kiddo” Em said growing more and more worried.

            “If we take the Relics out of play, then he can’t kill anyone with the veil.  We win.”

            “Yes, but by removing Ozpin, you’ve put a timer on how much longer Traci and I can stay here.  We need to take care of Nathan now before…..”  But as Em was saying this, suddenly, a dark arm flew past Ember and grabbed the Relic of Connection.  Looking up, they saw that the dark power had flowed back into Nathan, and was acting even crazier than before.  It ebbed from his body like spikes rising and falling from his body, completely engulfed in chaos.  Nathan held the staff up, glaring at Ember.  His eyes started leaking dark power like tears.

            “You….don’t have any right to exist….” He said gasping for breath.  “You….have tainted….the true Ember….with your lies.  You don’t belong in this…..or any world!”  As he yelled this, Nathan pointed the staff skyward, and suddenly, a bright light flashed from the tip of the staff.  Ember shielded her eyes due to the brightness, but it dissipated moments later.  When she opened her eyes again, she realized she was no longer in the sky above Aequo, but standing in a very bizarre land.  She was standing on what felt like solid ground, but in reality, when she looked down, she was standing on a sheet of water.  The water was perfectly still unless stood upon, which in turn created ripples around the point of impact, and was completely and perfectly reflective.  She could see practically every single pore of her skin clearer than any mirror back home.  And above the surface was a bright night sky, with several clouds rolling by at high speeds revealing a bright starry sky.  Ember looked around, and it almost looked as if beams of light were transferring between the stars in the sky, as if they were all somehow connected.  But before she could fully take in everything, Nathan started slowly approaching her, the darkness continuing to grow even more powerful than before.  His eyes were fully red, his body morphed into a monster with various different sized limbs as well as the wings he sprouted earlier.  Ember gasped and took a step back when she saw this horror show.

            “What’s happening to him?”

            “That idiot” Em said with fear growing in her voice.  “He opened the final door.”

            “We need to get out of here now!” Traci yelled, her club glowing brighter than ever before.

            “You…aren’t going anywhere!” Nathan yelled as he charged forward.  Without a weapon, he simply morphed his hands into giant claws and latched onto Ember’s shoulders, who didn’t even have time to react.  As the claws dug deeper into her skin, Ember screamed out in pain.

            “Shut up!” Nathan roared.  “You don’t know what true pain is!”

            “You’re right!” Ember yelled back fighting through the tears.  “Because you worked so hard to make sure I never had to endure what you had to endure!  I was proud to call you my father!  Because despite everything bad that happened to you, you still found ways to be happy with the life you had!  You found ways to brighten everybody’s day!  You raised me to always look out for my family and friends no matter what!  You raised me to never let my ego get the better of me and ignore my friends and family!  You raised me right.  And now you’ve become everything you taught me not to become.”

            “And yet, you are the one who is about to be removed from this reality.  You keep talking about who I was, but that person is gone.  He died when Aequo died.  Now, I will bring back my true family.  I won’t let you stop me.  This means too much to me!”

            “Not as much as it means to me!”  Ember yelled at the top of her lungs as she grabbed the claws and ripped them out of her shoulders.  She took a few quick leaps backwards and took up a battle stance.

            “You okay kiddo?” Em asked appearing next to her.

            “I’ll live” Ember said biting her lip in pain.  “Wish I knew that the dark power could tear right through aura no matter what.”

            “This wouldn’t have been an issue if you had finished him off before all of this” Traci added.

            “Hindsight is twenty-twenty” Ember said as she leapt out of the way of another of Nathan’s charges.  “I don’t know anything about this place or what you know that I don’t but we need to finish this now.”

            “We can pull something off that should work pretty quickly” Em said nervously.  “But it will all but use up the remaining power we have left to be in this world.  If we do this, you’re falling to the ground below without us to catch you.  Heck, there’s no guarantee you’ll survive this.”

            “Things are getting worse before they get better.  If there’s any chance that I can help everyone, then let’s do it.”

            “Are you so sure about your conviction child?” Nathan said mockingly.  “Are you truly willing to die just to stop me from doing the right thing?”

            “For my family?  Without hesitation.”  With that, Ember rushed forward, catching Nathan off guard and hitting him in the jaw, causing him to stagger a little bit.  Nathan quickly got back up and charged again.  His claws grew even larger, and started swinging at Ember.  Ember took a few hits, and despite the fact that she felt she had plenty of Aura left, the attacks were still directly hurting her.  But she didn’t care.  She just took the pain in stride and fought back.  Nathan tried to run his claws through her chest, but Ember managed to redirect this attack into the veil of water below.  The veil of water acted just as if it were the ground, and Nathan’s claws got stuck.  Ember took this opportunity to strike Nathan square in the jaw, sending him flying.  But instead of just letting him land on the ground, Ember leapt up and kept pummeling Nathan with every ounce of strength she had left.  With one powerful strike, Ember caused Nathan to start spinning in mid-air, which Em and Traci took as their opportunity.  The two of them, both still inhabiting their respective weapons, flew out of Ember’s hands and started flying around Nathan fast and repeatedly, striking him in vital areas as well as areas where the dark power seemed the weakest.  They didn’t let up, not even for a second.  Nathan kept swinging his claws around, trying to hit them, but to no avail.  And even when he did clip one, it was for naught as the weapon continued on its path without stopping even for a second.  They kept striking him without rest until they were beating him into the ground, the water rippling and creating small waves as they did so.  Nathan started to force himself back up onto his feet on his own power, but as soon as he attempted this, Ember rushed in, got behind Nathan, and struck him in the legs, causing him to buckle.  With that strike, Nathan’s aura was finally completely and absolutely depleted.  This caused the dark power to start falling from his body like dead skin to the reflective surface beneath him.  With the dark power fading, the Relic of Connection was visible, and Ember grabbed it from him.  Nathan tried to fight back, but it was clear with the dark power gone, he had lost all energy to fight within himself.  From there, the white club struck Nathan in the face, forcing him to fall on his back, then the purple club gave Ember a stepping point to start from, and launched her into the air, and she aimed herself right at Nathan, with the Relic of Connection as her weapon.  Nathan weakly reached out, attempting to stop her and he croaked out,

            “Don’t…..we’ll…..die…..”  Ember, fighting back tears, stared right at her father and still without hesitation, struck him with the Relic of Connection into the ground.  As soon as the attack connected, the surface shattered like a mirror, the starry sky faded from their vision and disappeared, leaving the gray rainy clouds of the world they knew in their stead.  Once they were back in the skies above Aequo, they both started plummeting to the ground, with the spirits around them beginning to fade away.  As they fell to the earth below, with tears in her eyes, Ember simply looked at her father’s broken body and whispered,

            “Today is as good a day as any to die.”  As she said this, she closed her eyes and prepared for what came next.  They fell faster and faster to the ground, nobody below realizing what was going on until it was almost too late.  Miles managed to see them both just about in time to activate his Semblance and try to slow them down before landing, but even then, their impact created a small crater with a cloud of dust rising out of it.  Nathan was on his knees, fighting for consciousness.  As he looked around, he saw all the spirits continuing to fade back to the realm of the dead.  Ember was hidden behind a small cloud of dust, but Nathan now saw standing in front of her and before him was Em and Traci.  Both of them with tears in their eyes.  Nathan started crawling towards Em, tears rolling down the side of his face as well.

            “Ember….please…..” he pleaded as he reached out to her.  Em closed her eyes and wiped her tears and turned her back on him.  “No….please….I did this all for you….I was just trying to find…..my true family….” As Nathan gasped this out, Em faded back to the realm of the dead, leaving his mother standing there still.  Traci got down on one knee, and placed her hand on her sons cheek.

            “My poor, misguided boy” she said fighting through sobs, “you already had.”  With that said, Traci faded away to the realm of the dead as well, leaving Nathan there to watch as the clouds of dust rolled away, and he could see everybody standing there before him.  Everybody lined up along the side of the crater the two of them made with their impact, and his daughter slowly inching her way towards him.  Ember was clutching her arm in pain, but still slowly walked towards him.  She fell down to her knees in front of him, her tears stinging in the wounds she had received from the battle.

            “I love you dad” she said with a sniffle.  Nathan glared at Ember, anger still boiling in his eyes.  But then his rage stated to fade.  Then he looked at her, then looked at the sky, then passed out.  Ember caught him in her arms, and let all her tears fall as she held him close as the rain fell from the sky.

Author's Note

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