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There is a saying that a man’s heart rests within his home. If questioned where exactly, most would venture that the heart resides within the bedroom, or perhaps the dining room or foyer. But the beating heart of Jacques Schnee, the heart of Schnee Manor and the Schnee corporate empire at large, rests within his personal office.
If Jacques were to ever express such a sentiment publicly, the few business partners and subordinates who have met him there would be hard pressed to believe him. But it is the failure of most to realize that a man’s heart must not always be a warm and welcoming thing. It is here at the seat of his power, hands steepled upon the imposing desk, deep within the imposing walls of the Schnee estate, that Jacques is at his most unforgiving. This is not a place of diplomacy. To concede an inch within this room would be to allow a knife against his heart. Utterly unthinkable.
Which is most likely why his daughter has elected to confront him here. He would be surprised, were he not the one who taught her that the best place for an ambush is wherever your target feels safest. Much as he begrudges this challenge, he is also somewhat pleased to see the fruit of his efforts.
Across the desk from him stands the seventeen-year-old heiress to his legacy, straight backed, hands folded primly behind her, eyes cool and unreadable. The grandfather clock looms behind her, sharply ticking as the silence stretches on through minutes. He’s been letting her stew for a while, searching for any sign of weakness while he pretends to think it over.
Truthfully, she has already managed to convince him. A huntress education would suit her well when she eventually takes the reigns of the company. Moreover, it would buy him a few more years before he must begin to educate her in the affairs of the SDC. A young and fully qualified successor is a dangerous thing for a CEO, and Jacques has no intention of retiring any time soon.
After eleven years spent withdrawn from the broader public her training and preparation are likely as firmly set as they will ever be. He was already intent on slackening the leash a bit by allowing her some independence in her singing career. A few years spent at a hunter’s academy would be comparable, allowing less personal oversight in exchange for broader but overall unimpactful freedoms.
Her one miscalculation was believing that he would prefer her at Atlas Academy to keep her closer to home. In actuality, Beacon would have been his choice as well. It is the most illustrious of the Academies, and furthermore it is firmly outside the grasp of Jacques’ rivals in the Atlesian military.
Perhaps on another day he would choose not to exploit this leverage. But his legacy chose to meet him here, in the seat of his power. It would be mercy to let her go on her own terms, but there is no such thing here.
“You have my approval. But on one condition. A test. To prove that you are ready, and that there is truly nothing left to learn here in Atlas.”
A challenge she would lose. Afterwards Jacques will soothe any bitterness with praise for her tenacity and skill before offering a generous consolation. He will graciously allow her to attend Beacon despite her failure, albeit with a few handpicked attendants and other concessions.
His daughter smiles demurely as she agrees to the terms, but he recognizes something of his younger self within her eyes. A bit more reckless, a bit less vicious, but lit from within by the same unflinching resolve.
000
Once upon a time in the old kingdom of Mantle, noble families were expected to own vast estates. It wasn’t just an ego thing, mind you. At least, not only an ego thing.
The nobles of Mantle had a lot of guests back then. Permanent residents from their vast extended family, visiting dignitaries from foreign kingdoms, young nobles from other houses seeking courtship, merchants and artists seeking sponsorship, knights and squires training to protect their lieges, messengers seeking a place to rest for the night, representatives from nearby villages, gardeners, stable masters, secret lovers, not-so-secret lovers, stewards, priests, tutors, and a veritable army of staff members and servants to keep the entire estate clean and running smoothly while feeding and housing and catering to the erratic whims of everyone else in the manor.
Yes, the old noble estates of Mantle were massive and bustling things, and the most prestigious nobles had the largest of them all. So, when the absurdly wealthy corporate families of Atlas eclipsed the old noble dynasties of Mantle in power and influence, they had to have big estates too of course. It wouldn’t do for the ‘self-made’ neo-nobility to look less impressive than a bunch of irrelevant nepotists after all.
The homes of the Atlesian elite wouldn’t be so crowded with underclass either. Advances in technology had vastly reduced the manpower required to keep a large estate running, and in the age of scrolls and CCTS and airships there was no need to have everyone they could possibly need living in within walking distance.
The end result of this of course, is that the sprawling Atlesian estates tend to be as large or larger than the old Mantel ones while housing a fraction of the people.
All this is to say that like all Atlesian estates, most of Schnee Manor is empty. Guest rooms that have never seen a visitor, dining rooms that have never been eaten in, unused bathrooms and unfilled closets. Light switches and doors and hallways and staircases that go unused by anyone but the cleaning staff when they come by to sweep away the miniscule accumulations of dust. Anything to bump up the square-footage. Even the relatively few rooms which are actually used tend to be ridiculously oversized.
When he was small Whitley found it frightening. He had nightmares of wandering down the wrong hallway and getting lost, never to be found. Nowadays he can’t help but be bitterly amused by the sheer idiocy. Sometimes he wonders if the manor is kept so cold just to cut down on the assuredly massive heating costs.
Still, it does come in handy sometimes. For instance, when Whitley intercepts his sister on their way out of the cavernous main dining hall and tells her they need to talk. They only need to take a left down the corridor instead of the usual right, and just like that, they’re in a part of the mansion that hasn’t seen life in weeks.
Whitley pulls them into a room at random and is surprised to find that it’s a game room of some kind. There’s even a billiards table. The cues on the wall are still wrapped in plastic. He wonders where the actual billiards are. Surely, they must be around here somewhere, because who would sell a pool table without including the actual pool balls?
“Whitley,” Weiss sighs, “did you really drag me away from my highly limited free time just to watch you play with… whatever this thing is?”
“Not originally, but the idea does have merit.” Whitley admits, examining the pool cue that has found its way into his hands unbidden. “And it’s a pool table.”
“Is that so?” Weiss comments, “I’m not sure how the felt and woodwork would hold up in the water but if you’re certain I’d love to see you try.”
Whitley shoots her the flattest glare he can muster while slotting the pool cue back on the rack. Fine. Down to business it is. “I was inside father’s office the other day when I heard something rather interesting,” Whitley starts.
“Oh?” Weiss replies, cool and disaffected.
“Apparently a few board members have RSVP’d to witness an exhibition at the manor as part of a test of some kind. Father was rather irate after hearing about it. Understandable, considering that he didn’t invite them.” Whitley wasn’t actually sure about that last part, but he stretches the truth a bit just to see how she reacts.
For her part, Weiss smiles challengingly. “Every deal needs a witness,” she says.
Whitley raises his eyebrows, studying her expression disbelievingly. She actually did it.
He’s surprised. Should he be? They don’t really interact that much, but he has noticed her acting snippier and more wound up lately. This must have been building for a while. That must be the explanation, because Weiss has earned their father’s ire before but never so- well, intentionally. Blatantly subverting father’s authority like this is beyond the pale. It’s just not done. The only thing comparable would be when Winter ran away from home, but that incident had been confined to the family. Not even she had gone so far as to involve the SDC itself.
Weiss’ eyes narrow in amusement. Does she not realize how big a deal this is? She must not, otherwise she wouldn’t be acting so insanely cavalier about it. Whitley’s stomach flips a bit. He is not his sister’s keeper, but father has never been good about limiting his retaliation to the deserving. This can only end poorly.
“Is there anything else, Whitley?” Weiss prods blandly.
He should really say no and excuse himself, put as much distance between him and this disaster as possible. But impulse strikes him, and Whitley never quite learned how to resist his own whims.
“No,” Whitley says. A surprised brow ruins her disinterested mask as he steps a bit closer. “Father’s making a rather large donation to the Atlas Institute of Military History. It sounds like they’re pulling a few things out of storage for him. Something called an Arma Gigas.”
That should be enough. She can figure the rest out herself. Whitley tries to step away but Weiss halts him by suddenly grabbing his lapel yanking him closer like a cliché mafioso. The seriousness of the situation prevents him from drawing attention to the fact that despite being three years older she has to yank down.
“Why are you telling me this?” Weiss questions suspiciously.
Because Whitley looked the term up on his scroll (the one he isn’t supposed to have) and what he saw scared him. Because regardless of what anyone thinks, he does in fact have a conscience. Because they may dislike each other but she’s still the least disappointing family member he has.
“Because you can consider it a favor owed.”
000
Project Arma was devised and activated during the last few months of the Great War. As the war effort faltered widespread resource shortages pushed the Mantle War Command to consider increasingly radical solutions. As part of a broader effort to shore up failing equipment stockpiles, an unspecified taskforce within the War Command was given the task of determining ways to repurpose assets from Project Sentinel, an abandoned effort from the earlier years of the Great War.
The goal of Project Sentinel was to produce a so-called ‘Autonomous Wonder-Weapon’ capable of fighting without risking human lives. While the work done would eventually pave the way for artificial intelligence and robotic combatants like the Atlesian Knight series, the only thing Project Sentinel actually managed to produce were the chassis themselves, around thirty large mechanical suits based off of Medieval suits of armor. The Sentinel chassis were fully functional, but without any way of actually piloting or controlling them they were useless.
The taskforce delivered their solutions within just seven days. The exact contents of their report have been lost but thirteen days later, following the disastrous Battle of Mannheim, Project Arma was activated, and the hunters of Mantle were pulled away from extermination and patrol missions to prioritize the live capture of Geists.
While the Arma Gigas would only be deployed a handful of times, the Arma project would be detailed as one of the primary offenses of the post-war Vale Tribunal and would be directly cited in article seven of the Vytal Accords.
Weiss skims the rest of the page, but it looks like that’s all this book has to say on the Arma Gigas. There’s nothing new. She closes the book with a sigh, returning it to its place on the shelf.
A glance at the clock tells her what she was already afraid of: It’s too close to curfew. She’s done for today. Weiss quickly flips through her binder as she reviews the notes she’s taken. It’s not much, but what she could find didn’t paint an optimistic picture.
There’s no use denying it. She’s out of her league. Ludicrously so. She’s never even fought a real Grimm, much less one possessing a literal war machine.
Maybe there’s some secret weakness that all Geists have, but if there is it’s not in the Schnee library. She has no way of contacting Winter, and she doesn’t trust her current combat tutors enough to ask for tips for fighting Geists and/or last century war machines. They’d sell her out to father in a heartbeat.
She briefly considered sending an anonymous tip to the government to prevent father from creating the Arma Gigas in the first place, but it would be risky, and some brief investigation showed that they probably wouldn’t stop him anyway. International law is pretty clear that creating an Arma Gigas counts as attempting to weaponize Grimm, which is a war crime. Unfortunately, every country on Remnant agrees that the Vytal Accords don’t apply to private citizens. (Except Menagerie, but that’s only because of article twelve, the one on human-faunus equality and co-existence.) As absurd as it seems, there’s nothing stopping father from keeping an Arma Gigas as a private training dummy.
Hah, a training dummy. She’s not even sure if she’ll be able to scratch it. She only has low potency training dust, which is far below the grade of firepower Arma Gigas was designed to operate against. Unfortunately, it’s the best she has access to as a civilian, aspiring huntress or otherwise. Atlas has rather strict laws when it comes to the possession of weapons and weaponized dust, which, ordinarily, Weiss finds understandable given-
Wait. Hold on a second.
Within a few minutes Weiss has tracked down a copy of Atlesian Law, 16th Edition and flipped to chapter thirty-three: On the Private Ownership of Weaponry and Materials. An hour of antiquated legalese later she finally finds the loophole her father was using to purchase an eighty-year-old experimental war machine: the so-called Historical Education Exception.
It turns out private citizens like Jacques Schnee can own military hardware, so long as said hardware was produced prior to the end of the Great War.
Weiss scowls as that possible piece of leverage slips through her fingers. But then she has an epiphany. If father can use legal loopholes to rig the match spectacularly… then what’s to stop her from doing the same thing?
Weiss leaves the library with a copy of Atlesian Warfare: Weapons of the Great War. She has a shopping list to write.
000
“I’m calling on behalf of the Schnee family. We are very grateful for the Atlas Institute of Military History’s assistance with putting on this historical exhibition. It’s always gratifying to see that our patronage has been well placed.”
“There is one small concern, however. We’ve received confirmation that the main part of the order is being fulfilled, but there are a few items we’ve yet to receive word on.”
“Oh, you don’t have the rest of the request on record? No bother, these things happen. Fortunately, I have the full list here with me.”
“No need to worry about delivery, we’ll send someone to pick them up in person.”
The tinny voice on the other end of the line tells her to have a good day before disappearing with a beep. A few seconds later Weiss lowers the borrowed scroll and sits down with her back to the wall. She lets out a nervous giggle while waiting for her heartbeat to settle. That actually worked. She’s somewhat stupefied. Weiss just managed to bluff her way into a small crate of Great War military-grade dust vials… among other things. The next giggle is just a shade too close to hysterical.
000
Mission Material Transfer Receipt
Mission ID: #C-LR/T-867343
Relevant Materials: One Great War era experimental long-term Geist containment and storage unit, AKA: “Arma Heart”
Material Origin: Atlas Institute of Military History, on behalf of client Jacques Schnee
Receiving Squadron ID: #I-053-CPPRBAXS (“Copperbacks”)
Charon signs the form with a line and a few swirls then slips it back to the robot manning the quartermaster’s desk. He doesn’t bother acknowledging the automated pleasantries, already turning around to help his team move their cargo, only to find them huddled silently around the large, whirring cylinder.
“Hey boss?” Xin calls, hand strobing a brilliant red as he hovers it over the tank. “I thought this thing was supposed to be empty.”
“It is,” Charon responds, ambling up to the group. “The mission is for live retrieval and transport.”
“Well, it looks like somebody’s already done the first part for us,” Xin gestures with his flashing hand.
Charon hums consideringly. “Seems to me that we’re picking up where somebody else left off. Some other team got the job before us, captured the Grimm and made it back to Atlas but couldn’t finish the transport. Probably took some casualties and didn’t have enough able bodies left to fulfill the manpower regs for long distance transport. That’s where we come in.”
A round of groans fill the air.
“Some idiot bureaucrat forgot to update the mission board again.”
“We pulled an eight-man squadron together just to get stuck with a delivery job?”
“Fucking hell, I paid the babysitter for two weeks in advance, Charon! Do you know how hard it is to get a refund out of that penny-pinching bitch?”
Charon raises his hands placatingly. Honestly, somedays it feels like he works with children.
“Hey, hey, hey, people! Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. It looks like we’re still getting paid the full price for a live capture,” Charon wets his lips before shooting a look at the oblivious robot behind the desk. He turns around with a grin. “Which is probably a mistake, but like hell am I gonna tell the fucking Schnees they’re overpaying.”
There’s a few more grumbles and complaints, but eventually they get on their way, delivering their cargo to the Schnee manor and receiving their payment before the day is over.
Afterwards the team of hunters would continue on with their lives and careers, unwitting of their mistaken assumption. The Geist containment tank had indeed been mislabeled as empty. But the mistake had not occurred recently. It happened a long, long time ago.
000
It swirls helplessly with a sealed tank. Water jets roar at all hours to maintain the violent turbulence. Its gelatinous mass churns at the center of the vortex, made fluid and unworkable by the constant motion.
The tank was solid steel and impenetrable, but it could still sense them, gathered at the edges of a small void. Smears of interest, amusement, and other petty things that could not hide the pinpricks of true substance. The biting cold of fear. Disgust, thick and oppressive. The searing agony of hatred.
Mere weeks after capture, new sensations and impressions flooded the space around it. A well of disinterest and choking revulsion came close enough to smother its sense, maddeningly close yet unreachable, and then it and the tank were being carried away.
Its prison was moved in fits over the next few days before settling somewhere. The last splash of disgust left its senses, and then it was alone in the void. It waited for the next sensation to appear, the next shard of pain to intrude upon its void, but nothing came.
Time passed. Eventually its mind grew enough to comprehend its own history. It had barely been created before overpowering impressions appeared to surround it. Its purpose was to kill, but it had been captured without a fight. Its purpose was to infest, but it had been caged within fluid and motion. It had a mother to serve and kin to follow and prey to slaughter and an enemy to destroy, but none could be felt, none were in reach.
Its senses were empty. Its body was immobile. It had been forgotten.
The tank churned. Years passed. Nobody came for it.
Over time its range grew, catching flickers of existence skirting at the edges. After so long in isolation even the faintest specks were overwhelming. The void, the extrasensory canvas upon which the whisps were painted seemed raw somehow. The severity was enough to drown out the monotonous reports of its own body, tumbling within the vortex.
Even as its physical awareness atrophied, the smears and pinpricks only grew sharper. And every day the void grew larger, slowly over the years, from the size of a small house to a city block to a small island. And the larger the canvas grew, the more stains it could encompass.
Dozens, hundreds, thousands, uncountable smears and distortions moving and flaring and fading in a riotous galaxy. The biting pinpricks and burning specks whirled and tore into the very fabric of the void, gathered and multiplied, feeding off each other in never ending orgy, amplified in chains and swarms before bursting in cracking wounds and thunderous aftershocks.
The void scoured with Hatred and Fear and Envy and Loneliness and Grief. There was so much of it. Over and over, over and over, over and over, over and over: Shame, Anger, Guilt, Fury, Envy, Fear, Lonely, Bitter, Angry, Hopeless, Guilty, Tired, Scared, Hate, Bitter, Angry, Empty, Lonely, Helpless, Shame, Anger, Hate, Empty, Lonely, Bitter, Helpless, Tired, Guilty, Grief, Helpless, Shame, Angry, Fury, Envy, Grief, Lonely, Bitter, Empty, Empty, Empty, Hate, Tired, Bitter, Scared, Grief, Fury, Never, Ending, Grief, Tired, Angry, Helpless, Guilty, Lonely, Angry, Envy, Fear, Tired, Hate, Helpless, Tired, Empty, Grief, Hate, Helpless, Empty, Bitter, Lonely, Helpless, Scared, Caged, Tired, Hate, Angry, Helpless, Captured, Empty, Hate, Fury, Bitter, Angry, Guilty, Lonely, Churning, Empty, Scared, Fury, Hopeless, Helpless, Helpless, Helpless!
For eighty years the maelstrom roared, and at the center, in a dark and rarely visited warehouse, a small mass churned endlessly with a sealed tank.
And then someone came for it.
000
It’s two in the morning and Weiss can’t fall asleep. It’s nothing new. She’s always had trouble getting into the right headspace for sleep. It got worse after the White Fang murdered Aunt Isabelle. After that she and Whitley couldn’t go to school or leave the mansion more than once or twice a month, and Weiss would spend hours staring at the ceiling and imagining conversations and playdates with her old friends. (She doesn’t do that anymore obviously. Not unless she’s dreaming.)
Nowadays she tries to spend her hours of insomnia more productively. Like practicing her repulsion glyphs with the box of ping-pong balls in her bedside table. She makes a game of trying to keep as many in the air at once as she can.
(She once showed her practice routine to Klein, and he said that outside the manor most people did it with their hands and called it ‘juggling’. Weiss asked if he knew how to do ‘juggling’ and he said he could learn and then teach her, if she wanted. That was years ago, and she’d like to think of herself as somewhat of a master by now, either by hand or semblance or both at the same time.)
As much as she’d prefer to be doing that right now, she has bigger problems. Weiss sits on her bed, idly rolling a trio of ping-pong balls in her free hand as she flips through the unnervingly slim binder.
She’s collected and organized everything she’s learned over the last week about the Arma Gigas and Geists in general. It doesn’t amount to much. The manor’s library is impressive but contains very few books on hunting or the Grimm. Most of her information comes from history books, which tend to be more concerned with the long-term ethical and political ramifications of armoring Grimm and setting them loose in enemy territory rather than technical details and exploitable weaknesses.
The other half of her preparations are already done. She’s hidden her acquisitions in an unmarked closet deep within the manor. There’s just one concern left. Despite the thoroughness of her preparation, there’s always a chance that something could go wrong somewhere. Equipment failure, false information, some hidden interference from her father…
Weiss stands up from her bed and begins pacing across her room, still fiddling with her practice tools as she thinks. She needs a trump card. A last resort in case it all starts to go horribly wrong. And unfortunately, she’s pretty sure she’s found it. If she’s actually willing to use it, that is.
Weiss… Weiss has committed a lot of trespasses over the past week. Slipping out of her room at night to break into the library, stealing a ring of keys from the maintenance staff, going through her father’s files to confirm Whitley’s words, swiping her politics tutor’s scroll to make unmonitored calls, threatening her minders into giving her space, using her family name to con historical artifacts from a respected academic institution,… she even impersonated her father to invite board members to the manor under false pretenses.
A sudden bout of creeping dread reminds Weiss why she’s been trying not to think about it all. Box it up. Push it to the back of the metaphorical shelf. She has more important things to worry about. Like her upcoming duel with a two-ton eighty-year-old killing machine, and her dubious theoretical trump card.
Morally speaking, it feels like cheating. Not the obvious rule-bending variety she and her father have been engaging in up to this point, but rather a betrayal of her own hard work and principles. Will she be able to look herself in the mirror afterwards if she ends up having to use it? And even if she doesn’t, being caught with it could cost her… everything. Her reputation, her father’s confidence, her chance at Beacon or any other hunter academy… maybe even her status as heiress. That’s not even taking into account her own health. There’s a non-zero chance it could kill her.
Is she really considering this?
Weiss braces herself against the vanity and peers searchingly at her reflection. The icy blue eyes, bloodshot and bruised with exhaustion. The fragile lines of her pale face and the stray strands of her unkempt hair. Her thin lips, chewed and bloodless. The oversized night gown, pooling against her twiggy wrists.
The girl in the mirror doesn’t look like a prospective hunter. She doesn’t look like the heiress to the world’s most powerful corporation. She looks like a desperate child about to do something stupid and drastic. Weiss doesn’t like her. She would give anything for a chance at being someone else besides this.
And isn’t that what Beacon is? A chance to be someone else, to not be another cold body haunting this empty mansion and waiting for the day it becomes her tomb. A chance to be someone warm, someone without a chill behind her ribcage welling with every word.
Weiss makes her decision. She doesn’t want to be a ghost anymore. She doesn’t want to feel like she’ll scatter into mist and dissipate at the first touch of true sunlight. She’s going to Beacon, even if she has to destroy herself in the process.
(The next day Weiss slips away from her minders to visit the manor’s infirmary. Doctor Apfel proves surprisingly amenable to her clumsy attempts at bribery. Perhaps her opening offer was too large. Or maybe medical malpractice isn’t as big of deal as she assumed it was.)
000
The main ballroom is one of the few rooms that actually sees regular use. It’s as stupidly oversized as the rest of the manor. Calling it a ballroom feels like a bit of a misnomer, since all the New Years balls and SDC events its seen tend to include very little actual dancing. Most of father’s guests are more corporate than socialite, interested in schmoozing and flexing their egos primarily, talking shit about each other secondarily, and celebration somewhere below that.
Not to say that Whitley hasn’t spotted a few executives indulging over the years. He makes a game of noting the most energetic and happy looking guests and tracking how many times they excuse themselves to the bathroom and come back with redder noses. Last year Whitley even caught a guy snorting something off the back of his hand behind a fake plant in the back corner of the room.
In any case, the ballroom is the site of today’s event once again, only this time the guests have joined father on the large balcony overlooking the room. From here every inch of the ballroom can be seen, and the servants wheeling the massive suit of armor into the center of the room work with stiff movements and heads down, inescapably aware of father looking down on them from above but not daring to glance back and meet his eye.
Whitley leans against the railing and swirls his glass of champagne idly, ignoring the board members fraternizing behind him. It’s not very hard to figure out why father spends most of his time here during these events. Jacques Schnee has always been rather obvious about the kind of man he is.
The workers below have finished setting things up, the intricate suit of armor kneeling limply around a large, nondescript metal tank, arms arranged loosely around as if trying to cradle it. A massive sword lays horizontally in front of it, ready to be grasped.
The familiar cadence of dress shoes on wood and the way conversation withers warns of father’s approach. Whitley tries not to tense as the sound comes nearer, then tries not sigh in relief as his father stops near the center of the railing, tolerably distant from himself. The board members follow after in a murmuring clump, aware that the show is about to begin.
“That’s it then? That’s the Armor Grimma?” a man with curling muttonchops ventures.
“Arma Gigas,” corrects a man ambling up behind them with clinking steps. He wears a long overcoat and… silver plated cowboy boots? He takes his place, lurking at a polite distance over father’s left shoulder before continuing, “And no. Not yet.”
“Ah,” the man frowns, then “I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve been acquainted?”
The hunter (because what else could he be, dressed like that) glances towards father for instruction then continues smoothly when none comes. “Opal Tenpenny,” he introduces with a smile full of perfectly gleaming teeth. “An independent hunter under contract with the SDC. I’m here to keep an eye on the proceedings and intervene if necessary.”
There are a few more words exchanged but Whitley isn’t listening. The double doors beneath the balcony have opened to admit his sister. The click of her heels echoes as she walks the length of the cavernous ballroom. Her rapier gleams on her hip like polished silver. Despite himself, Whitley feels a tinge of anticipation. He’s never actually seen his sister fight.
The balcony has gone silent by the time she takes her place opposite the suit of armor. Her perfect posture yields to something more ready, like a dancer’s form. She draws her weapon with a flourish and then stills without so much as a glance backwards.
There's a pregnant pause before father waves his hand in some silent signal. A hard light barrier rises, separating the balcony from the ballroom proper. And then it begins.
000
An alien sensation.
Unease. Confusion.
The water’s churning is slowing. The gelatinous mass within begins to thicken. The jets shut off and the dark mass drifts freely, suspended peacefully within the water.
Terror. Anticipation. Budding comprehension.
Long atrophied instincts take hold. The mass twitches of its own volition. Once. Twice. And then the steel tank is shorn violently in two.
Hidden by the spray of water and shrapnel, a dark mass lunges for the nearest object. Rigid. Large. Multiple joints. Within fractions of a second the target has been infested, a new body spasming into motion.
Something indescribable.
The maelstrom roars. Alone at the center, gleaming red eyes open, and Arma Gigas roars back.
000
Weiss has read the testimonies from the Vale Tribunal. They all followed the same general pattern. Towering knights emerging suddenly from the wilderness, shrugging off whatever pitiful defenses the villages could muster. After crushing any resistance, they run down fleeing civilians with measured strides.
There was one thing that every testimony repeated. The deliberate grace in every movement. How their massive swords flashed with inhuman dispassion. The Arma Gigas did not look like Grimm. They looked serene, almost regal, even as buildings crumbled and streets ran red beneath their heels.
Weiss has done research and she knows what to expect, so she is caught off guard when the tank explodes, and the limply kneeling knight throws its head back and seizes with an ear-splitting howl.
It sounds unreal, like boiling sheet metal being forced through a tea kettle. The sheer volume is painful, even with her Aura protecting her ear drums, and Weiss flinches back a step. The click of heel on tile is swallowed entirely by the shriek, but the knight’s helmet wrenches to her anyway. They both freeze, the knight’s howl suddenly cutting to a soft, almost inaudible rumble.
Two hazy red orbs are set within the knight’s helmet, guttering like pilot-lights. They meet her own and flare.
Slowly, the knight pulls itself forward on to all fours, never breaking eye contact. It is beautiful, gleaming silver plates overlapping with perfect precision to shift with its movements. An intricate clawed gauntlet grasps the hilt of its massive claymore.
It is beautiful. It is perfect. And then it begins to crawl.
The joints of its elbows and knees grate and warble as they are bent to unnatural angles. It hoists the massive claymore onto its shoulder, the remaining three limbs twisting inhumanely to compensate. The low rumble rises to a metallic coo as it claws its way forward, eyes burning wide within its helmet.
Weiss’ legs carry her backward a step unconsciously, and as if waiting for the moment, the massive creature explodes into a skittering lunge, chestplate trembling with a torturous shriek, blade flashing high into the air. Weiss dodges the first blow by mere inches but an instant later it is rearing back unto to pull its blade from the tile before falling forward to swing again, clawed gauntlets and boots digging into the tile floor so that it might propel itself forward with every ounce of strength available.
The next few seconds are a blur as she dodges a flurry of impossibly fast blows, faster than she can process. She survives only on instinct, using a series of repulsion glyphs to rocket her body backwards. The knight wields its great sword like a butcher’s cleaver, like a bludgeon, every swing carrying the full weight of its body behind it. The floor shatters over and over, the spray of tile fragments bite painfully into her Aura.
Within seconds she is cornered, back against the ballroom wall, the knight’s massive claymore falling upon her like a guillotine blade. A desperate flick of Myrtenaster’s chamber spends an entire cartridge of ice dust to catch the massive blade mid swing, trapping it in a small glacier. The ice starts to crack immediately. Weiss tries to dart around and build distance, but too late she spots one of the knight’s limbs shooting out in a savage backhand.
There is a moment of inexplicable flight, then Weiss’ body is tumbling wildly across the floor. She slams into the wall. Something cracks, and all the delayed pain explodes through her ribcage, driving the air from her lungs in a choked gasp.
Weiss’ arms push her upwards automatically, instincts screaming at her to ignore the pain and run, but the knight is still on the other side of the ballroom, heaving to pull its abused blade from the ice.
She has seconds at most. Weiss takes stock of herself quickly. Her Aura is nearly shattered. Touching her ribcage causes horrific pain and white spots at the edge of her vision. She can feel massive bruises blooming across all four limbs. Her left ankle is twisted.
It’s been less than a minute.
Her dazed mind comes to a chilling conclusion: whatever this creature is it is far, far, beyond her. In all likelihood, her father, brother, and a group of horrified board members are about to watch as Weiss Schnee is mauled to death in her very own home.
For some reason the thought is more humiliating than terrifying. She spares a moment to wonder if her mother will show up drunk to her funeral. And then she is furious, snarling as she plunges a hand into her right boot.
She has three auto-syrettes tied around her right ankle. They’re made of steel, not glass, so they’ve survived the tumble unscathed. With a flick she removes the cap of the first syrette, revealing the short IV coiled beneath. The needle plunges into her calf with a small prick, and with a small application of Aura the syrette begins pushing a steady drip into her blood stream. A heartbeat later, Weiss gasps as the first drop of military-grade Aura-Enhancers rush into her veins.
The sensation comes instantly, like a river of ice water through her spinal column. Her Aura swells and the pain in her ribs dissipates into the void. Her body mends itself, thrown into overdrive.
It feels like a symphony in crescendo. It feels like flying.
The sound of shattering ice pulls her back into her body. Her hands move like lightning, ejecting the spent ice cartridge from her rapier and replacing it with a fresh one from her bandolier: High-Explosive wind/fire blend, courtesy of the Great War and the Atlas Institute of Military History.
A cold focus fills her mind as she flicks Myrtenaster’s chamber closed and cocks the hammer. She’s on a time limit now. The auto-syrette will keep up for five minutes at most. After that she has a three minute grace period before she has to start the next syrette. If she doesn’t, she’ll start to crash, eventually leaving her unconscious or incapacitated. That gives her twenty-four minutes maximum before all hope is lost. Chaining syrettes together comes at a risk of overdosing though. Ideally, she’ll defeat Arma Gigas within the next eight minutes. Simple.
Weiss stands up. An instant later the knight’s hulking blade is bearing down on her, but this time her own swings to meet it. Terror and exhilaration war within her veins.
000
Whitley doesn’t know much about Grimm, but it’s pretty clear that something’s wrong. Tenpenny’s alarmed flinch the instant it started screaming pretty much confirms it: Arma Gigas isn’t supposed to be acting so… feral.
And really, that’s the only way he can describe it. The freshly polished, almost regal suit of armor is down on all fours, contorted into an uncanny prowl. Despite its undeniably humanoid body, the Grimm darts across the floor like some kind of massive lizard, head cocked at a slight angle, wide eyes burning feverishly within its helmet. Its gleaming boots and clawed gauntlets dig into the floor, leaving divots in its wake, but despite the sheer violence of its movement its head is unnervingly steady, gaze locked onto its prey.
“It’s fast,” observes one of the board members, raising his voice to be heard over the creatures building shriek. “I thought Geists were supposed to-“
A sudden burst of ice interrupts him. Whitley can’t quite make out what happens next, but a ringing clang makes him flinch before Weiss’ limp body slams into the western wall. Somebody gasps, another swears as they spill their champagne, but a half second later Weiss is pulling herself up into a crouch and Whitley releases the breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
A glance at Tenpenny reveals visible panic before his expression shutters and he relaxes from his aborted lunge towards the balcony railing.
A tense few seconds later, Weiss is standing to somehow parry the knight’s massive weapon, following up with a massive fire ball to its chest to throw it off balance. A glyph locks the knight’s wrist in place and another sends Weiss skating forward to land a ringing blow at the sword arm’s elbow. An instant later the glyph shatters as the knight tears itself free, throwing itself at the retreating girl with reckless abandon.
The knight’s shriek becomes a bit more bearable, and more than one pair of shoulders relaxes as it chases Weiss further from the balcony. As the battle continues, a reedy voice pipes up to answer the first man’s question.
“It depends on the mass of what they’re possessing, of course,” the man says with all the confidence of expert explaining a lifelong obsession, or an idiot speaking on a subject with which he is passably familiar. “The armor suit must be a lot lighter than it appears.”
The chorus of agreements and understanding hums emboldens the reedy voice to continue. “I imagine in real life it would be slower and heavier,” the man ventures cautiously, continuing when father fails to correct him. “This must be a practice suit of some kind, made out of a lighter and softer material.”
It’s not. Whitley checked. And so did Tenpenny, judging by the puzzled blink, momentarily drawn from his laser-focus on the battle below.
The first man makes a noise of understanding. “That explains how she was able to recover so quickly! After, well-,“ he gestures awkwardly to the cracked section of the western wall, “I don’t mean to be macabre, but if a knock from the practice suit could send her flying like that…”
“Oh relax, Helmut,” an older man with a rich baritone scolds, “It don’t take much when the girl’s the size of a mouse! When my girls were that tall, we had to keep em inside on windy days, otherwise we’d lose em!”
Whitley mentally notes that one down for future reference. The reedy man chuckles politely, looking put out by having his spotlight stolen. Meanwhile, Tenpenny shuffles closer to father and begins to murmur something quietly.
“As colorfully as Burkhard puts it, he does have a point. Miss Schnee is obviously very talented,” the man simpers, “but it would be pure madness to allow an untrained young lady such as her to stand alone against a true Atlesian war machine.”
Whitley glances away from the fight below to memorize the man’s face, looking very pleased at having solved the mystery. Around him, the other board members make self-congratulatory noise, now certain that they are not actually watching a young girl risking her life at her father’s behest. The air of guilty unease evaporates, even as violence of steel and dust continues to clamor from beneath them.
Tenpenny’s one-sided whispering with father has escalated into fervent hisses as he reaches for something in his long coat. Father finally spares him a glance and says something short and low. Tenpenny freezes.
“Jacques, you sly dog,” A fat man with a thinning hair line jokes, “does the little lady know she’s got training wheels on?”
Father hums non-committal, a placid smile fixed in place. There’s a round of laughter. Opal Tenpenny stands stiffly behind him, still facing the battle below. His expression is stiff, mouth a tight line. Slowly, his hands retreat from his coat to hang empty at his sides.
Whitley smiles wordlessly and imagines pushing someone over the balcony railing.
000
The rush of power and energy is undeniable, but it won’t last forever. The knight shows no signs of exhaustion, and the dozens of blows she has landed don’t seem to be affecting it.
A battle of attrition is a losing game for her. She needs to finish this fast.
A blast of high-pressure wind dust sends the knight stumbling back a few paces, buying Weiss enough space to stab her rapier into the ground, laying a large gravity glyph beneath her. An instant later she skates to the left and back, dodging the knight’s blade and the following lash of its clawed gauntlet. As the knight lunges after her she activates her trap, pinning the knight’s legs and sending it crashing into the ground.
A safe distance away, Weiss plants her feet and braces herself as she flicks the chamber to another special cartridge: super-concentrated AP lightning dust. Apparently, these cartridges were used in early anti-tank guns. She only has two of them, so she needs to make them count.
As a last second idea she places a barrier glyph behind her to brace herself, and another in front of her to hold Myrtenaster as she lines up her shot. The knight raises its battered blade like a shield just as the hammer falls and her Aura explodes into the chamber.
Myrtenaster’s steel hilt flares hot enough to sear her palms, and the world disappears in a blinding flash. The recoil feels a lot like what she imagines being kicked in the chest by a horse would feel like. It slams her clear through the barrier glyph and into the ground behind her.
Weiss blinks rapidly, but her vision doesn’t return. She heaves a few wracking coughs, and suddenly it feels like the adrenaline has left her. She’s exhausted and in pain and blind, lying limp on the ballroom floor. It takes a few seconds for her dazed mind to realize that remaining like this is a very bad idea. Weiss tries to scramble to her feet, but her sense of balance is all off, and trying to put any weight on her wrists causes a burst of pain that cuts through the narcotic haze.
At the very least it doesn’t sound like the knight is about to smash her yet. Well, actually it doesn’t sound like anything. The howling has stopped. Weiss freezes and listens closely. Nothing.
It feels a bit like climbing stairs in the dark and missing a step, but in reverse. Instead of a sudden burst of weightless dread, there is a sudden upswell of relief and groundedness. Arma Gigas has stopped howling. Its dead. She won.
Weiss won.
She can’t help the unrestrained smile that cuts across her face. She must look insane, laid out on the floor, hands burned, wrists broken, eyes wide and blind and grinning like a lunatic. She can’t help it. She won. She can’t muster the energy to wipe away the tears she can feel running down her cheeks, can’t smother the giggles bubbling up from-
She can’t hear herself giggle.
Weiss opens her mouth to try her voice. Her lips part and her throat buzzes and her tongue flicks through the first few notes of the scale, but-
Weiss flicks her throbbing wrist to cycle Myrtenaster’s chamber. No click. She tries tapping the blade against the tile floor. Nothing.
Oh. She’s not just blind. She’s blind and deaf.
A large, cold gauntlet wraps around her left leg and squeezes. Her Aura shatters silently.
The ground falls out beneath Weiss’ body as she is lifted into the air. She hammers her blade against the gauntlet in a reflexive panic but it’s not helping. She sways helplessly as the hand begins to squeeze, causing her breath to catch in her throat in a strangled scream. It hurts. It hurts! She is blind and deaf and helpless and it hurts, no, no, no, no, she never even got the chance to live it’s not fair-
The gauntlet squeezes and her femur shatters into grinding splinters, just as her hand plunges the needles into her calf her in a euphoric one, two. Her throat spasms in agony as the last of her Aura slams into the syrettes, not just a flicker but a tidal wave to force them empty. The gauntlet starts to fall to smash her limp body against the floor and every last drop of blood inside her freezes.
A blood vessel in her nose bursts and heals and bursts again. Her wrists snap into place and her ears pop and her eyes clear. Her soul is too large for her body. Bones creak and muscles tremble beneath the strain.
Her arms flash like lightning. With one hand she flicks Myrtenaster to a new cartridge and jams the tip into a gap in the knight’s elbow, even as the other plucks the last few vials of ice dust from her bandolier. Aura explodes around her fist as she crushes them in her hand, swallowing Weiss and the knight whole in a blistering tidal wave of ice.
For a moment the ballroom is still and silent, all movement arrested by the massive pillar of ice stretching from floor to ceiling. And then Weiss’ Aura surges through her blade to form a small red glyph around the weapon’s tip, and the cylinder’s chamber flares as an entire cartridge of High-Explosive blend is catalyzed instantly.
Weiss gasps awake as her shattered ribcage mends itself with a few sickening pops. She is lying on her back in a small crater, and chunks of ice fall around her like hail the size of bowling balls. A haze of smoke and steam chokes the air and a low, rattling groan murmurs from somewhere within.
She pulls herself upward, shaking her head to clear the blood clogging her ear. The smoldering rags of her bolero slip from her shoulders. Charred flesh drips from her forearms to reveal newborn skin, flush like rubies. Her boots have gone missing, and the empty syrettes with them. Her naked toes curl in the air, and she cannot say whether it is from agony or delight.
The soothing blue whisps of her Aura have burnt away to a colorless cloak, so heavily condensed that solid shards manifest and burst around her like churning glass. She is a shattering and spasming firework, a violent and irrepressible kaleidoscope. Every fracture is like another needle against her skin, provoking new waves of Pavlovian rapture. Her nerves ripple and strobe excruciatingly while her bloodstream trembles with ecstasy and she wants more. More intensity, more sensation, more.
A few clangs echo through the ballroom, shaking Weiss from her unwitting trance. The knight is pulling itself to its feet somewhere within the haze. The low groan builds to a seething hiss as she stumbles gracelessly out of her crater.
She pries her rapier from a nearby pile of rubble. The blade is warped and mangled, but she manages to wrench the cylinder open anyway, the empty cartridges slipping out to ring musically against the floor. Her bandolier remains in place, but her questing fingers discover that only a single cartridge has survived the explosion intact: The reinforced steel vial of super-concentrated lightning dust.
A pair of fever red orbs pierce the smoke. The knight crawls forward on its elbows, steam parting to reveal its damaged mass. Weiss greets it with a bloodied smile. She can’t help but admire her work.
The gleaming silver armor has been mangled and blackened; the knightly visage warped into something hellish. Its once-fluid movements are now slow and shuddering, joints protesting with torturous creaks. Its left arm ends in jagged stump, the metal twisted and curling. The remaining hand has melted and fused around the hilt it clutches. The blade itself is little more than a long heap of slag, still glowing with residual heat. The knight plants its molten sword into the floor and pushes itself to its knees. It hunches for a moment, trembling and seething. Something oily and black spatters down its chin.
The cartridge slides into home with a sibilant hiss, cylinder clicking shut like a lover’s kiss. Weiss lifts her tattered skirt with a trembling hand as she dips into a curtsey, Aura boiling across her shoulders like a roiling shawl. Myrtenaster hums and vibrates as a dozen golden glyphs bloom and writhe beneath her feet.
With a snarl like shearing metal the berserk knight rears back for the final time, burning blade trailing slag and fire as it rises. Its murderous red eyes never leave Weiss’ own. Just as the burning pillar begins to fall, the time dilation glyphs beneath Weiss’ feet flare blindingly. With a deafening crack the glyphs shatter, and flesh and bone and blade turn to lightning.
Sheer speed reduces her profile to a pale streak. On her first pass she strikes where the left leg meets the hip, and Myrtenaster’s edge shears through the knight’s armor like a bullet through a windshield. The fragments of shrapnel have barely begun to fly before she crashes into a repulsion glyph and bounces back to strike the other. Dozens of white glyphs bloom around her opponent and then she is in flight, ricocheting madly from platform to platform.
The air tears savagely, her skin splits and tendons strain as muscles threaten to slip from bone but she is moving too fast for pain, too fast for thought, her vision and mind going white. Flight and then impact, body slamming into the next platform, organs churn, vision flickers black, fractions of seconds lost as electrochemistry flinches beneath sheer g-force. But even amidst microseconds of death the muscles in her arms and legs fire in predetermined reflex, rocketing her onward before the neurons can reorganize into consciousness. Black bleeds to white, she is lightning once more.
Weiss is gone, all that remains is the anguish of speed and the rapturous release of cloven steel. Her heart does not beat; it roars, propelled not by feeble muscle but sheer chemical inertia. The valves have stuck open, blood screaming from atria to ventricle to artery like fuel through a jet engine. She carves furrows and canyons a dozen times over, metal sings and shrapnel flies and finally she is directly above it, falling like a bolt from heaven. Her blade splits the creature’s helmet, cleaves the space between its smoldering eyes and further, burying halfway through the knight’s chest before finally snapping as it bisects the Grimm’s core hidden within.
Weiss lands on her knees hard enough to crack the tile, the hilt of her shattered Myrtenaster still clutched within her hands. The effects of the time dilation glyph fade out, and as the burning shell of Arma Gigas collapses behind her everything goes black.
000
Weiss doesn’t wake up so much as she suddenly finds herself staring at her bedroom ceiling. She is laying atop the covers, head sinking into a feather pillow. She recognizes it as her least favorite, the one that is too airy and soft to provide any sort of support and always leaves her with a crick in her neck come morning. She feels fuzzy.
There’s something shuffling and clinking to the right. She tries to sit up but settles for limply flopping her head to the side.
Doctor Apfel sits at her bedside. He’s sitting in a leather office chair, one she’s pretty sure wasn’t there before given how horribly it clashes with the rest of the room. He has a metal cart by his side which he seems to be repacking with an array of bottles and other gleaming instruments. She must make noise of some kind because in the next moment he is glancing up to meet her eyes.
“Finally awake, huh?”
Weiss blinks back at him. The doctor reaches for her face with a gloved hand and- oh, is he pulling that plastic thing from out of her mouth? How did she not notice-
Weiss gags belatedly as the nauseatingly long tube brushes the back of her throat on its way out of her esophagus, followed by a copious amount of spittle and a rattling coughing fit.
By the time she has fully repressed the urge to vomit and just begun to process the sheer indignity the tube and whatever it was connected to have disappeared. The doctor stares at her for a few moments with a blank expression.
“We’re going to need to renegotiate my fee,” he starts. Is he mad? He seems mad. “Your condition was far more severe than anticipated. As previously negotiated, I have failed to inform your father of the presence of illegal combat enhancers within your system.”
Weiss interjects with a limp wave. “Nah Illeegal,” she slurs. “Jus ah loophole.” A bit more spittle slips out. Okay, maybe she’s more out of it than she thought. Her vision is rather blurry, but she’s pretty sure the doctor’s expression is annoyed. She tries to wipe away the saliva, but somebody gets it for her with a handkerchief.
“I’ll take your word for it. Regardless, in keeping with the spirit of our deal I’ve elected to misdiagnose, downplay, and otherwise misdirect the reasons for your more egregious symptoms, but to be clear, Miss Schnee,” the doctor leans in, voice lowering to a hiss. “I was under the impression that I would be fudging a few blood tests, not bringing you back from the brink of death while covering up a catastrophic overdose!”
Overdose? Oh, right. She dumped two entire syrettes of Aura-Enhancers into her bloodstream at once. Weiss blinks, a bit taken aback by the memory. She’s not quite sure how to defend herself.
Doctor Apfel studies her for a moment with an annoyed expression. He leans back with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “…It’s been a rather stressful night. We can discuss this when you are more lucid. For the moment, just remember that officially speaking you are suffering a Cascading Shatter due to extreme Aura depletion, exacerbated by heavy physical exertion and traumatic injury.”
Weiss hums absent-mindedly. The doctor lifts a large bag from the floor and zips it before crossing his arms over it.
“Unofficially speaking, you can consider yourself a medical miracle. As far as I know, you might be the first person in history to survive Ouroboros Syndrome.” He pauses to let the words sink in, but the lack of recognition must show on Weiss’ face. “Ouroboros Syndrome is when the regeneration cycle and Aura replenishment process engage in mutually destructive acceleration. The only reason you’re still alive is because the after-effects of that temporal manipulation ability slowed your body’s processes long enough for us to pull off a full Aura flush.”
A beat of silence.
“Your body and soul started racing to cannibalize each other,” explains Whitley.
“…Oh,” mutters Weiss. That sounds bad.
“Oh,” parrots Whitley. Wait, Whitley? When did Whitley get here? And who let him into her room? This is her room, right?
“Regardless,” the doctor continues, “You’re out of the danger zone but we’ll being doing a number of more invasive tests later to determine the full scope of the damage. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.” The doctor treats Weiss and her brother to crisp nods before striding swiftly out the room. The bedroom door opens and shuts with quiet clicks.
And then it’s just the two of them. Staring at each other. Silently. Weiss’ eyes sting but like hell she’ll be the first to break eye contact. They are making eye contact, right? It’s hard to tell when everything is so out of focus. Weiss tries to blink the blurriness from her vision and the next thing she knows someone is trying to smother her. She fights back by groaning and limply squirming.
“Honestly, dear sister,” Whitley huffs, pulling the silken handkerchief away from her face. He gestures sharply with his free hand, “Would it kill you to- well I suppose at this point there’s not much that wouldn’t kill you.” He sneers, voice underlined with an unfamiliar bitterness and exhaustion.
Despite herself, Weiss feels a flicker of unease to hear him like that. To be honest, she rarely spares her little brother a thought. Whitley has been a dedicated annoyance since the day he was born. Then again, he is fourteen. Apparently, that’s supposed to be an annoying age, but Weiss doesn’t exactly have the sample size to test that claim.
What was she thinking about again?
“I hope you appreciate how disgusting this is,” Whitley grumbles, pulling her from her conundrum. He’s finished scrubbing at her face, and Weiss blinks the dots from her vision to find him pinching the handkerchief at arm’s length, the embroidered silk now carrying red and yellow tinges. He glances around for a place to put it before quickly giving up and dropping it to the bedroom floor. Weiss opens her mouth to moan a complaint at his blatant littering, but he interrupts her.
“You’re an idiot.”
Weiss makes a noise that might one day grow up to become a ‘Hey!’
“What exactly possessed you to make you think binging Aura-Enhancers was a good idea? Do I even want to know where they came from? Did you trade your common-sense for them?” He barrels on without waiting for her explanation. Probably a good thing, because telling him that she got them from the Atlas Institute of Military History and that they’re actually experimental drugs developed during the Great War probably isn’t reassuring. It’s fine. Aura-Enhancers don’t expire. Theoretically.
“Honestly its almost impressive! When I told you about the Arma Gigas I was expecting you to try and sabotage the armor suit or weaken the Grimm beforehand!” Okay yes, that does actually sound like a far better plan but- “But no! You decided that the best solution would be to pump yourself full of drugs and explode yourself!”
Whitley voice cracks at the end, but it goes unremarked on for once as he continues raving without so much as a stumble. Not that she’s in much of a position to poke fun at him, having shrunk back into her obnoxiously fluffy pillow and feeling very off balance. Weiss hates being yelled at, but it’s not usually… like this.
When father gets angry, he’s very focused about it. He stands up and looms at you over his desk, and if you flinch back or try to avoid eye contact, he stalks his way around to tower over you and digs his hand into your shoulder to make it very clear that you are testing his restraint.
Weiss doesn’t quite know what to make of the way her little brother stomps back and forth, gesturing and sputtering wildly at the ceiling but never so much as glancing in her direction, so deep into his own fury that he seems to have forgotten the person causing it. He swerves wildly from grievance to grievance without so much as a passing interest in coherence. Weiss hasn’t had someone rant at her like this since she borrowed Winter’s saber to play hunters and princesses with her imaginary friends when she was ten.
The resemblance is almost uncanny now that she thinks about it. It must come from mother’s side.
The shouting finally comes to an end. Whitley heaves a few angry breaths, hands on his knees. Sweat drips from his brow. Weiss gives a polite cough to draw his attention but Whitley pins her with a glare. His eyes are rimmed red.
“Honestly! Do you have any idea- What the hell were you thinking!?”
Weiss lets a few seconds pass before she’s certain that Whitley’s done. Okay, she can explain this. She just needs to share her logic and defuse the situation, and then it will be Whitley feeling guilty and sheepish for getting angry and jumping to conclusions when the situation isn’t as cut and dry as it appears. She may still be a bit loopy but-
“I won though, yes?” Weiss blurts out.
Oh, drat. Well at least she’s speaking coherently again.
Whitley glares at her like he wants deeply to be furious but can’t quite muster up the energy. He heaves a long and stressful sigh. “Yes, sister,” he drawls disgustedly, “You won. Congratulations.”
Weiss sighs in relief, sinking into her bed as the tension leaves her. For the first time in a long while, her lips curl in a relaxed smile.
Whitley sneers a huff before falling into the leather office chair and massaging his temples. “Father even corrected one of the board members when he asked when you were shipping off to Atlas Academy, so he’s committed to the Beacon thing. He probably wants you as afar from Atlas as possible when the eye situation gets out.” Whitley snorts. “By the way the ‘supervising Huntsman’ offered to write you a letter of recommendation.” Whitley rolls his eyes with a sneer. “It seems like empty words are a specialty of his.”
“I’ll take it into consideration,” Weiss offers, unwilling to unpack Whitley’s disdain right now. “What’s the ‘eye situation’?”
There’s a long moment of silence as Whitley’s expression does something strange. They’re stuck staring at each other again, but this time it feels a bit more tense for some reason. Wordlessly, he stands up and slips into the bathroom, leaving the door open as he rummages for something.
“Whitley?” she calls.
There is loud clatter from the doorway and Whitley reappears with an unreadable expression, hiding something behind his back. He strides up to her bedside and hesitates before quickly getting down onto his knees. They are at eye level now, but his face is still blank.
“Whitley? What…?” Weiss prods, cutting herself off when her brother raises a hand.
“Just-,” he starts and stops, mouth working silently before continuing, “your sword shattered at some point.”
“Yes?” Weiss feels a brief pang for Myrtenaster but it’s hardly as if she can’t afford to repair it.
“When it did, it… there were fragments, shrapnel.”
Weiss suddenly recalls something. At the last second, just before she slipped into unconsciousness…
“The doctor thinks that when your sword broke, your Aura also-“
There was a burst of pain. Like something was trying claw its way out of her brain through her face.
“-and well, there was shrapnel, so-”
Weiss suddenly feels very sober.
“-Doctor Apfel did everything he could but-”
“Whitley,” Weiss interjects, holding out a hand. “Give it to me.”
Wordlessly her brother passes her the hand mirror he was holding behind his back. She raises it and looks into her reflection.
Her right eye stares back at her, the icy blue hazy and dilated but unmarred. Her left is hidden, swaddled in bandages and gauze padding.
“How bad is it?” asks Weiss.
“Well, its… total,” answers Whitley.
“Totally unrecoverable? Totally blind?” asks Weiss.
“I mean gone.”
Weiss swallows, suddenly feeling nauseous.
“Oh.”
000
As Beacon’s towers peak over the horizon, banners fluttering regally in the breeze, Weiss comes to the firmest epiphany of her young life: Air travel is a scourge upon society.
Some might accuse her of jumping to conclusions based solely on first impressions. Weiss concedes that her conviction is based solely upon her first, only, and yet to be concluded flight. But frankly, after enduring an entire transcontinental journey in one sitting, she feels that the evidence speaks for itself.
Weiss found the trip rather enjoyable for the first couple of hours, staring out the window and watching the ground pass beneath her. After the novelty wore off her thoughts turned to her destination, and she spent the rest of the trip alternating between stewing in her anxieties and failing to distract herself. (She should have brought her ping-pong balls.)
By hour five she had taken to pacing the small cabin with her arms crossed to stop herself from picking her nails. Dust, what she wouldn’t give for five minutes in the training courtyard. By the time her Aura starts acting up again she’s almost grateful for the distraction, even if that distraction is her own soul throwing a tantrum and attacking her with little firecracker pops.
A few minutes later, Weiss eyes the healing little bruises and welts ruefully while trying to straighten out her ruffled appearance in the cabin window. Who would have thought that the missing eye would turn out to be the least of her problems? As it turns out, Weiss’ brush with Ouroboros had some rather dire long-term effects.
She has a prescription for Aura stabilizers now, taken every morning with breakfast. The pills are hard to swallow and taste horrible if they sit on her tongue too long, but they are necessary. Without them her little incidents turn life threatening, her Aura randomly flaring high enough to set off the dust cartridges in her bandolier and trying to materialize shields inside her own body.
It’s been six months and Weiss hasn’t forgotten a dosage yet, even if they don’t fully prevent the flare ups. In comparison to her own soul trying to gouge chunks out of her the painful little cracks and sparks of Aura micro-shattering are downright tolerable. And if an incident happens at the wrong time she has a stash of emergency suppressors, which may leave her horribly exhausted with that half-asleep feeling on every inch of her skin, but they also stop the incidents cold. (She opted for the slap on patch version, even if they work slower than necessary in an emergency. It’s just- she has a thing about needles nowadays.)
So really, it’s not that bad. She may be weak and frustrated but at least she’s not dead. Weiss decided to risk everything for a chance for a new life at Beacon, and she succeeded. Now she just has to woman up and live it. Even if it’s not shaping up to be what she imagined.
Anyways, by the time Beacon appears through the airship window her patience has been long worn away and the exhaustion and anxiety have started to ferment into teeth-grinding irritation. Also, she’s starving. It’s a good thing they’ll be landing in the city proper before docking at Beacon.
000
Weiss lets out a relieved breath as the airship settles down in the Vale airship dock with a small shudder. As the engines shut off Weiss is already repacking her bag and mentally reviewing everything she knows about ordering food at a restaurant because she’s never actually handled the process herself and doesn’t want to mess up and humiliate herself when she actually finds a place to eat. How does she find a place to eat anyway? Does she just walk around and pick the first one she sees? Dust, should she have made a reservation? There are restaurants that serve people without reservations, right? Oh god, if she ends up spending her first day in Vale getting turned away from every restaurant in the city because she was too much of a clueless idiot to know to make a simple reservation-
Somebody’s scroll pings, pulling Weiss from her spiral. Weiss instinctively whips her head around and glares for the owner in case somebody’s taking a video of her or something before remembering she’s on a private flight, and that she also owns a scroll now. Two of them in fact. Whitley insisted that it would be a bad idea to actually use the one father gave her.
Weiss fumbles the two scrolls out of her bag and has a brief moment of panic as she tries to figure out which one received the message before noticing the blinking light on one of them. Then she has a far longer moment of dread as she tries to figure out if this is the scroll her father gave her, but even if it is she’ll have to answer him anyway so-
The offending scroll buzzes in her hand and Weiss drops it out of shock. It clatters to the airship floor and opens, displaying a message from her sister Winter: ‘Good luck at Beacon. You’re still in recovery, so be careful and try not to exert yourself. Don’t forget your medication. Remember to inform the proctors of your condition, that way they can intervene if something happens. Text me when the initiation is over.’
Weiss’ flash of relief is crushed by the spike of conflicting feelings as she reads the message.
Winter ran away from home when Weiss was twelve. By the time Weiss was fourteen she had pretty much given up on ever hearing from her again. Then she was sixteen singing at the Alabaster Opera House when she accidentally made eye contact with her long-lost sister sitting in one of the private boxes next to General Ironwood of all people.
The pair of them walked up to her at the afterparty and General Ironwood asked Specialist Winter to introduce him to her cousin. Winter corrected him and Ironwood said that he didn’t know Winter’s sister sang opera to which Winter replied that neither did she. Then Ironwood asked what she meant by that, and nobody said anything. Eventually Weiss spoke up for the first time and said something about feeling unwell then spent the rest of the night hiding in the bathroom.
The second time it happened Ironwood didn’t spare her a word before he awkwardly clapped a hand on Winter’s shoulder and told her that he had something to take care of alone, but she should really stay here and catch up with her sister. After Ironwood speedwalked away she and Winter actually managed to exchange a few words about what they had been doing lately, both quietly ignoring the four-year gap between them. The process repeated a couple times after that with little improvement.
The point is, Weiss really didn’t know how to feel when, a few days after her duel with Arma Gigas, Winter showed up unannounced at the Schnee manor after hearing about her injury from an undisclosed source. Weiss was still on a moderate cocktail of painkillers and other drugs at that point, so she doesn’t quite recall the visit clearly, but after that Winter gave her scroll number to Whitley and started sending messages to them every few days inquiring about their health and how their lessons were going. Weiss let Whitley answer most of those however he wanted.
The night before Weiss left for Beacon father presented her with a scroll as a going away present, his own number already programed within it. The next morning Whitley dropped a second scroll in her lap, telling her to only use fathers in an emergency and mentioned passing her contact numbers (both of them) to Winter.
In the back of her mind, Weiss knew she would probably be getting a message from Winter at some point. She just didn’t expect it to be so… overbearing. Without her younger brother to act as a go-between Weiss struggled with how to respond. Weiss rewrites her reply a dozen times. Eventually she settles on a short and bland ‘Okay. Thank you.’
Afterwards her stomach growls, reminding her of her current predicament. Dinner. Swallowing her pride, she sends Whitley a message asking how to use the internet application on her scroll. After a pointlessly exasperating tutorial she spends the next fifteen minutes looking up a few pointed questions about restaurants.
000
A few hours later she’s back in the airship as it lifts off again. Loathe as she is to return to the tiny cabin, the flight to Beacon proper will only take a few minutes. She’s feeling remarkably better, stomach full of a delicious traditional Valean cuisine called chili.
Weiss kills time by studying her reflection in the window. She’s been doing that a lot lately, ever since she started building her collection of luxurious designer-brand eyepatches. Today she’s wearing one her black ones, the Schnee family crest stitched in brilliant red over the center. The edges of her scar peek from beneath, stretching from brow to cheek bone.
It’s an admittedly bold choice when contrasted with her pale coloring and white dress. But paradoxically, drawing attention to her weakness makes her feel stronger. Despite the many difficulties and adjustments that came with the loss of her left eye, it’s a wound she can’t help but feel proud of.
Arma Gigas was savage, relentless and terrifying- but there was something inspiring in its ferocity, in the sheer power it exuded, in its maddened refusal to die. It’s a bad idea to try and empathize with the Grimm. Even Weiss knows that. But still, in the months since, Weiss has dreamed often of that final moment before the end, of the knight, mangled, blackened, brutalized but clawing its way forward through the smoke and haze. Of a half-melted arm lifting that titanic slab of burning metal high. Of those feverish red eyes, burning with mad defiance even as Weiss’ blade parted the black between them.
Before she left, Winter once told her that the enemies they defeat become a part of them, their victories enshrined within their semblance. Weiss liked the sound of that, and she still does. Somewhere within her burns a monster like no other. Somewhere within her, a dying girl falls like a bolt from heaven to destroy them both. But against all odds, they are still here, locked inside that moment, the moment where cheats and schemes and sacrifices came to fruition and for the first time in her life Weiss won.
She likes the idea of that impossible moment carved into her soul. And over the months since their fateful duel, she has come to like the idea of it carved into her body as well.
What is an eye before a victory like that? She’ll bare her wound proudly, because it’s the one part of herself that nobody could ever make her ashamed of. So she wears her ponytail off center and trims her bangs and speaks with her chin tilted just so and feels strong enough to risk another step forward.
And if a small, childish part of Weiss likes way an eye patch hardens her otherwise delicate features, likes practicing dangerous scowls and roguishly sexy smirks in the mirror… well that’s nobody’s business but hers.
(Years from now, while having a fancy dinner with her teammates and siblings, Weiss will get quite tipsy and end up trying to explain her emotional attachment to her extensive collection of eyepatches. Eventually her partner will interrupt her defensive ramble by blurting ‘Oh! It’s like lingerie but for your face!’ just as the waiter arrives to take their check. Weiss will never forgive her.)
000
As she steps off the ramp and sets foot on Beacon proper a final ping pulls her attention to her scroll. This one is from Whitley. ‘Enjoy yourself in Vale, dear sister. Klein says he’s proud.’
Weiss feels a smile tugging at her lips and small warmth blooming in her chest. She’s just about to reply with something thankful and heartfelt when she’s interrupted by a follow up message.
‘Remember to be careful. I have it on good authority that it gets rather windy there, so remember to check the forecast before going out. We wouldn’t want you to get blown away.’
Before she can stop herself, Weiss finds herself typing ‘Is that a height joke?’
To which Whitley replies: ‘Joke?’
Weiss huffs, caught in that increasingly familiar space between amusement and irritation. She’s just about to reply with something witty and cutting when a red blur tackles her into her luggage.