With the help of xTRESTWHOx and NaanContributor I've begun the process of rewriting Chapters 1 and 2. However, thanks to how my style has developed over time, these chapters will be...longer. We've already determined we're going to end up spreading the original two over five or six.

For now, these will be listed under Side Story, but once they are all done, they'll be properly threadmarked, and I'll swap this one with the old chapter one at the front of the thread. The old versions will sit here for anyone who wants to take a gander at them, but officially, the story will be different.

Chapter 1: Under Unbroken Moons

August 7th

Feeling the ocean breeze grace her cheek and the sun's rays cast down from overhead, Ruby nuzzled her dog, a tiny black and white corgi named Zwei for a moment before handing him over to Nora Valkyrie, who immediately squeed as he rounded on her and licked her cheek.

"Make sure he gets his walks, or he's going to destroy something," Ruby reminded her. From the corner of her eye, she saw her teammate Blake Belladonna adopt a blank expression before shuddering, likely in remembrance of the last time that happened.

"So many books... Lost forever..." Blake muttered under her breath. Ruby's partner, Weiss Schnee, outwardly rolled her eyes at how overdramatic the Faunus was acting over two old books with chewed spines while Blake's partner and Ruby's sister, Yang Xiao Long, patted her back comfortingly. Nora, seemingly oblivious to Blake's distress, held Zwei under her arm while using the other to salute.

"Don't worry! Me and this little fluffy boy are gonna head out every day. Aren't we, fluffy boy?" she directed to the corgi in question. He yipped in response and licked her again, causing Nora to laugh exuberantly. The others from Team RWBY and their sister team, Team JNPR, watched with smiles on their faces before Jaune Arc, the leader of JNPR, cleared his throat and turned his attention back towards team RWBY.

"So, what are you guys getting?" Jaune asked, to which the sisters shrugged.

"Don't know," Yang admitted. "My dad just said I had a present in the garage. You'll know when we know."

"We'll be back in time to celebrate at Beacon," Ruby reassured them, "but while we've got this break, we're going to show Weiss and Blake around Patch."

"I do admit to being curious about where you two grew up," Weiss said. "I'm interested in seeing what kind of environment you were raised in to get to this point."

"Thanks… I think."

"I just want to get away from the dog," Blake admitted, unabashedly. She glared at the corgi held in Nora's arms, and he looked back at her with his happy, drooling face and his tongue lolled out. "Don't give me that look, you know what you did."

"Ah, come on! You'll love it on Patch!" Yang told her. "We've got cliffs, mountains, beaches, an old lady that walks around selling baked goods to everybody every week."

"Did you grow up on an island or in a fairytale?" Jaune asked with eyebrows raised.

"Yes," Yang cheekily replied, causing Jaune to sigh and rub the back of his head. Leaning against one of the many wooden railings that lined the docks, Jaune's partner Pyrrha Nikos chuckled with her hand covering her mouth. Nora's partner Lie Ren, meanwhile, simply helped Nora tend to Zwei, a faint yet calm smile crossing his face before he turned his attention to the end of the boardwalk, where a Faunus with shark-like fins attached to his arms approached. His attire screamed sailor, complete with an anchor tattoo on his right shoulder, and it wasn't hard to spot the vessel the Faunus had come from.

"You girls ready?" the sailor asked, and Ruby quickly turned her head towards him and nodded.

"Just about, Ish," she told him. "Just saying good-bye."

"Well say it and hurry up!" another with a cetacean tail attached to his back yelled from the other end of the boat. "We're burning daylight! It'll already be night by the time we get there!"

"Don't rush them, Mail!"

"I'm the one being rushed!"

"Are they all right?" Pyrrha asked in concern, looking at the two Faunus as they continued to argue.

"Nah, they're fine. They just like to argue sometimes," Ruby assured her. As the argument appeared to increase in volume, Pyrrha wasn't quite so sure, yet she was also far too polite to say anything more about it.

"They might be a little worried about the weather, but the storm's supposed to go over Vale and go inland," Weiss figured. "We might get some waves and rain, but we'll miss the worst of it."

"As long as you're all safe, that's all that matters in the end," Ren said. The entirety of Team RWBY nodded, then they all gave each other their good-byes. Hugs and well-wishes were exchanged, and then Team RWBY walked down the docks and onto the boarding ramp. Team JNPR waved at them as the ship sailed towards Patch Island, Team RWBY doing the same until they could no longer see each other.

"Urgh, I don't like this," Weiss complained as she held her stomach. More of the storm had reached them than expected, and now it was rocking the boat in irregular patterns. "Why couldn't we have gotten on an airship?"

"Because the boat was cheaper and more direct?" Blake guessed. She knew the airbus would've gone to the north end of the island and then worked its way down, whereas Ruby and Yang's home was closer to the southeast coast.

"Money wouldn't have been an issue."

"For you."

"I would have bought us all tickets to -urt- avoid this!" Weiss groaned some more and clutched her stomach tighter. "Uggh, remind me never to complain about Jaune's airsickness again."

"Will do, and don't worry. You'll get used to it. Eventually," Blake said as she rubbed Weiss' back. The action, although infantile in Weiss' mind, seemed to help, and so the heiress allowed her to continue. Ruby then walked back in from abovedeck, shaking out her raincoat as she took it off and shut the cabin door.

"Okay, the guys said they should be able to handle the rest of the night. Yang's just grabbing us some grub, and then we can settle in." She looked over to her partner and snapped her fingers in recognition. "Oh! I told them you weren't feeling well, and Mail handed me some medicine." She fished it out of her pocket and handed over the packet. It was over-the-counter, whatever it was, so Weiss didn't object to taking it. As she swallowed a dose with some water, Yang came in with a few plastic leftover boxes.

"Who wants red snapper and rice?"

"Me me me me me," Blake said almost frantically. Yang handed over a box and she opened it up to find it steaming.

"Already heated up for ya," Yang said as drool trickled down the corner of Blake's mouth. Yang then turned her attention to the blancette. "Weiss, you okay?"

"Just give me a minute," Weiss insisted. "I can already feel it working."

"Just say-" Yang paused as a sense of weightlessness overcame her. The others felt it, too, and then things seemed to float for a second. Blake quickly put the lid on her box as she was lifted in the air for a moment while everyone's hair seemed to reach up. Then everything came back down in a crash. The sound of water splashing up reached them all as they struggled to hold themselves and several things in place.

"What was that?!" Weiss cried out, a slight tinge of fear on the edge of her voice.

"I think we were on a wave," Yang calmly guessed. "We must have been pretty high to fall like that."

"Are the guys okay?" Ruby wondered, and Yang nodded.

"Don't worry, Rubes. We've seen Ish catch up to wave riders and jump twenty feet out of the water, and Mail's an even better swimmer than him. Even if they went overboard, they'd be right back on deck."

"How do you know them, anyways?" Blake asked as she forked up fish and rice in big scoops.

"They've given us rides since forever," Yang simply said.

"I go to school with their son," Ruby added. "Buck's pretty cool. I think he wants to become a Coast Guard or a sea-route defense specialist."

"Wait, they're married?" Blake asked in surprise.

"Oh yeah. Didn't mention that."

"I thought we did," Yang said while thinking back. "I know we said we were going with the Peaks."

"That could've been a company name, or a brother pair's surname," Weiss pointed out. "Also, we really didn't pay attention to that one part."

"Wow, and you're usually a geek for little details." Yang shrugged.

Things wound down from there, with the girls discussing one thing or another until they all felt the need to go to sleep overtake them. The boat was rocking far less than before, and the storm seemed to have lifted just before they all fell asleep.

Ruby was flying, high above the world and sky. Her breath came out in light whispers that spoke of healing and repair, her mouth opened to bite away corruption, and her arms and legs pushed her forward to find that which needed her attention.

A mass of gold flashed before her, slowing to show itself as golden scales, some bigger than her. A crevice opened, revealing a massive eye beneath. The silver iris focused on her, and she laughed and rejoiced in words like honey and thunder.

"You are," a great voice seemed to say, like the life of the world put their weight behind those words. Some part of Ruby wondered what it meant, but then she was tucked into a ball and falling towards the world, only for a great, black hole to open in front of her. She fell through, and then there was crying.

"Ruby," a sweet and familiar voice softly spoke.

"Ruby, wake up!" The young girl yawned and stretched as she heard her sister waking her. She smacked her lips and looked around to see Weiss and Blake were just getting up themselves, but Yang was up, about, and looked worried.

"Wha's goin' on?" Ruby mumbled, still half asleep.

"Ish and Mail are gone!" she said, snapping Ruby away from sleepiness in an instant.

"What?! Gone?!"

"I checked all over the ship, even their cabin. They're not anywhere!"

Ruby shot up and immediately ran around the vessel, zooming in and out of places as a cloud of rose petals. No matter where she looked, the sailor couple were nowhere to be seen.

"No," she quietly uttered when she stopped on the deck. "Th- they couldn't have gone overboard. They've gone through storms for years."

The other three walked out and looked around at the ship and surrounding sea. The waters were calm and the sky above them was clear as could be. It would have almost seemed ideal if it weren't for the two missing persons.

"They- they're gone," Blake said softly, scarcely believing the words coming out of her mouth. Yang was looking overboard in every direction she could, but ended up walking away and sighing.

"No sign of them," she sadly relayed to Ruby, who looked terribly deflated. "Hey, it'll be all right. We'll get to the coast, and let the Sea Guards know."

"We're going to leave them?" Weiss asked in shock. Ruby wanted nothing more than to tell Weiss "no," but she forced herself to stop and think. After a moment, Ruby shook her head and focused her attention entirely on Weiss.

"Yang's right. We're not equipped to look for missing persons on the open sea," Ruby explained. "Besides, they're salt water type Faunus. If anyone will be fine, it's them."

"Salt water?"

"Some aquatic Faunus are able to drink salt water," Blake told her. "If they both are salt water types, then they can survive for days, potentially weeks on the sea." 'As long as they can avoid too many Grimm,' she refrained from adding.

"Huh. I didn't know that."

Yang made a sound of frustration, and they looked over to see she was fiddling with her scroll. "No signal! We'll have to dock in to tell… No, I don't know where we are. We can't find Patch like this!"

"We'll have to head back for Vale," Ruby decided.

"Can't we just go west?" Weiss asked.

"There's no telling how far off we are," the leader told her. "We might miss Patch entirely and then end up in the Drakewing Sea. At least going east means we're almost definitely going to hit Sanus. Then we-" The cry of a seagull interrupted her thoughts and the girls looked to watch one pass by. They then saw its heading and were immediately overcome with relief at the sight of land on the horizon.

"Okay, new idea. Turn towards land, find our way from there."

"Aye aye, Cap'n," Yang replied as she went to check their bearing and steer them towards the dry ground. Ruby nodded, then turned her attention towards Weiss and Blake.

"You guys know anything about boats?" she asked the two.

"A little," Blake admitted, though Weiss just shrugged. Accepting it for what it was, Ruby calmly walked towards the back of the ship and began to explain.

"Okay, let's keep an eye out for anything nearby. Any ships or coastal cities. Cities mean ports, which mean places we can dock. Another ship can help us steer in or find out where we are." She went over to the wheel, where Yang was setting their course. "Okay, I think we should head up north, since there's a lot more ports that direction."

"Uh, Ruby, I'd like to, but that land we're seeing is directly south of us." The younger sister blinked and then looked back at the distant shore, comparing its direction to the morning sun. Ruby was momentarily at a loss for words, and a tiny trickle of sweat began to drip down her brow as she pondered the implications of what Yang just said. None of them were good, and her entire team could pick up on that.

"We couldn't have been blown that far off, could we?" she wondered aloud. In the end, no one there could provide an answer.

The Huntresses-in-training followed along the shoreline, soon catching sight of an old-fashioned lighthouse that led to a small city sitting over the sea on a peninsula arch. A cape was nestled up to the settlement, wooden ships docked and docking, loading and unloading cargo in its river mouth port. They slowly drove in and moored the boat, which Weiss noted was the only metal one there. Judging by the flabbergasted looks of the individuals around her, this port might not have ever seen one before. Everything about the place seemed to be rustic and old-fashioned, which wasn't a good sign for the overall tech level of the place. The fact they still couldn't get a CCTS signal at any point on the way wasn't helping matters.

"Hey, we need to report missing persons," Yang said as a woman who looked to be a customs official approached.

"You…lost people at sea, you're saying?" she asked as she took a quill and dipped it into an inkpot sitting on the open ledger in her arms.

"Yeah, the owners of the boat, actually," she further explained. "Ish and Mail Peak."

While Yang explained the situation and described the two men, Weiss looked around for signs of where they were. A warehouse nearby was labeled East Empire Company, which she wasn't familiar with. There was a sign down a path some distance away, but too far for her to read the names from. She swiveled her head around to try and get her bearings, but she was getting nowhere. Then, a man carrying a crate set his load down and she seized the opportunity to catch his attention.

"Excuse me, sir, but could you tell us where we are?" she politely requested.

"Ye don' know where ya are?" he asked, an eyebrow arched up high.

"We got lost," she explained. "We were heading to Patch from Vale."

"Rrriiiiight," he intoned slowly. "Well, yer in Solitude, cap'tal of Skyrim."

"Skyrim?" She never heard of a place by that name. Given it apparently had a capital, she figured any entity that substantial would be well-known. Her confusion slowly rose, but she forced herself not to dwell on it and nodded towards the longshoreman. "Thank you. Do you know where that is in relation to Vale?"

"Dunno," he said before heading back to work. "Ne'er hearda Vale." Weiss looked after him in disbelief. A grown man never hearing about Vale seemed impossible, even for the most backwoods of places. Even a tiny port should've had direct and near-constant contact with them at this distance.

"Where in the Gods' names are we?" Weiss wondered aloud, then she felt a small tug on her arm. Weiss shook herself out of her stupor and turned to face Ruby.

"Hey, Weiss," Ruby said. "Good news and bad news. Good news, they're going to keep a lookout for the Peaks and have shore patrols search for them for a few days."

"That's good to hear." Weiss nodded, then raised her eyebrow. "What's the bad news?"

"Ship's not ours, so they'll put her into dry-dock," Yang answered as she walked up from the official. "We can get whatever we need out of it, but they'll be holding the ship itself until either the Peaks come to claim it, or a year and a day have passed."

"A year-and-a-day law? Really? Vale and the other kingdoms got rid of those laws centuries ago, why does this place...?" Weiss sighed before pinching the bridge of her nose. "Did she at least know where Vale is?"

"Uh, more bad news," Yang answered with a nervous grin, and Weiss again sighed in exasperation.

"How is this even possible? There's no way a place like this can be that ignorant."

"Maybe they call it something else?" Ruby suggested. "Nora talked about this place that didn't call Mistral 'Mistral'. They called it the Jade Seat or something."

"That, at least, has both historical and cultural reasoning behind it. This place has neither that I can tell."

"Well, at least we're on land. We can figure things out from here," Blake told them while looking around. Her eyes suddenly widened, and everyone looked at what she was focused on to see a scaly being with a crocodilian tail and tooth-filled snout climb out of the water, pulling up a net as he did.

"C'mon, Makum. You're hardly going half as fast as Chakus on a bad day," a human with dark skin called out while the crocodillian shot him a look.

"Most of us have a life besides fishing," the scaly Makum answered the man as they and a half-dozen men began pulling in the mass of fish he'd dragged in. All of Team RWBY stared silently at the creature-person with dumbfounded expressions. The being was unlike anything they had ever seen before, even on a Faunus. All of the Faunus they'd seen only had one or rarely two animal traits on their person, while this Makum looked entirely like a crocodile who decided to walk on two legs and grow hands.

"Never saw a Faunus look like that before," Yang stated, still staring at the scaled person who didn't seem to notice them.

"That's not a Faunus," Blake said quietly. The others looked at her oddly but shrugged it off.

"Did we really need to take their food?" Weiss asked. "It feels almost like theft."

"It could go bad if we leave it, and we left a note saying we'd pay them back," Ruby explained. "They'll understand."

"If you say so." The girls paused at the gates of the city, seeing the line of people walking into a crowded square just past the entrance. To their horror, a man was standing on a platform with his hands bound behind him, a pair of guards near him and a man in black garb sharpening a large axe. The block with a round indention was the last piece of the puzzle needed to tell them what was occurring.

"Oh Gods," Weiss muttered as she realized what they had walked into. The crowd was generally jeering at the man, and it sounded like there was a crying girl somewhere. Something pulled at her shoulder, and she looked back to see Yang pulling back out of the gate and pushing Ruby along as well.

"That- What was that? That can't be right!" Ruby started to protest.

"Guys, hush," the blonde told them. "We don't know what's going on. Don't make a scene."

"B-but…"

"We don't know what he might have done. Could be a terrible guy or some crazy local thing. We don't know. Don't focus on it."

The girls stood outside the city for several minutes until a loud thud sounded behind them. Soon, the crowd began to disperse, telling them the deed was done. With it seemingly over, they headed back in to see two robed people heading down the street with a stretcher held between them and the body covered by a red sheet. Someone was swabbing the platform, a coppery smell coming from the place.

"Gods, it really happened," Weiss muttered. "This place performs public executions. How backwards is this country?"

"It's not right," Ruby insisted again.

"It's not," Blake agreed. "It was nothing less than barbaric. But we couldn't do anything about it, not without starting a fight with all the police in the city without really knowing why. We'll have to inform Vale about the situation when we get back."

Ruby nodded in silent acceptance, and then they moved forward, looking through the city streets for places to buy and sell and a place to sleep. A market was near the center, with stalls and shops alike lined down each side and forming circles in larger crossroads. At first, it seemed like any normal, if primitive human settlement. Then they started noticing a couple of men with almost golden skin and pointed ears. Both were wearing gold-colored armor with a feathery motif, the metal looking light compared to what they normally saw. Blake noticed the glares that came their way, remembering how she and other Faunus were usually the targets of such ire, but then another gold-skinned being, a woman in plain clothes, gave them an even harsher glare. She seemed to be rolling a tomato between her fingers as if thinking of whether or not to throw it before setting it back in her basket and moving on.

"Whoa, those guys were stiff," Yang observed. "It's like if you took all the concentrated snoot from Weiss and made it a person."

"Hey!"

"Am I the only one who noticed they were gold?" Ruby asked.

"No. It's just…" A similar person walked by, only with ash-colored skin and red eyes. He started looking at apples, and Yang felt the urge to ask several questions that might have come across as rude. "…Maybe we're further from Vale than we thought?"

"Okay, so is anyone else as confused as I am about all of this?" Yang asked as she set down another book on "history" that sounded like something out of a fantasy novel. Blake slammed a different book shut and cleared her throat.

"This is supposed to be historical fiction?" she asked the bookstore clerk who had introduced herself as Tiffany.

"You mean 2920? Yes."

"How much would you say is history and how much is fiction?"

"Hm, well…" Tiffany paused and tapped her chin. "All the major events happened, though I don't know if they did in the way it describes. I imagine the minor details were made up. I'm almost certain an Ayleid didn't appear out of nowhere and help Turala give birth in the middle of the wilds of Cyrodiil, for instance, but it's agreed upon by many that the destruction of her adopted coven and daughter's death is what triggered her summoning of Dagon for vengeance's sake."

Blake blinked at all of that, flipping forward a bit and tracing lines.

"What's an Ayleid?" Ruby asked innocently.

"Oh, some sort of elf that was darker than High Elves but lighter than Dark Elves while too tall and muscled to be Wood Elves. They used to rule Cyrodiil, but were scattered thousands of years ago after their Men slaves rebelled." Tiffany then shrugged. "Who knows? I may be part Ayleid. A lot of them fled into the parts of Daggerfall my family's from."

"What would you say…" Weiss tried, thinking her words through carefully, "are the biggest differences between the average human and an elf?"

"Hm, well, if I remember my phylogeny studies correctly… All of us are 'human', save maybe the Khajiit but certainly not the Argonians. Mer, or elves most call them, tend to be more magically-inclined, less physical, live longer, and have ears with points usually pointed up. Men, like us- Well, you and most of myself, are more physical and have round ears. Doesn't mean an elf can't learn to throw a mean punch or a man can't cast great spells, but that's the usual. Does that about answer it?"

"Yes, I believe so." Weiss nodded while taking in that information. "So, how different are those other two?"

She laughed at that. "By the Eight! Did your folks all skip out on your educations?"

"Hey, we're from out of town!" Yang called over. "This is all new to us."

"Out of town? I'd say you never set foot on Tamriel with such blanks in your knowledge. If it weren't for the clothes, I might think you were from Atmora with the questions."

"I'll admit, we're not from around here. Can you please help us?" Weiss requested.

"Certainly," the shopkeeper responded cheerfully. "Maybe this will be a good start." She reached beneath her counter and pulled up a thick book. "Heavy Scribe's Field Guide to Tamriel, 3rd Edition. It's one of the most up-to-date books on general knowledge of Tamriel and the Empire. Some people have thought of having the next Pocket Guide be based on it if they can't find the authors to do it wholesale. You'll find information on races and peoples in sections three through five. You can ignore six, since those touch on outside areas mostly, unless you're curious."

"Thank you so much!" Weiss said cheerfully before going through her wallet. "How much do I- Oh…" She pulled out a lien as she remembered how far away from civilization they were. "I don't suppose you would accept this?"

Tiffany took the plastic card in hand and turned it around while looking it over.

"Is this supposed to be…money?"

"I can't believe you traded so much fish!" Blake practically cried.

"It would have gone bad before we used it, and she has mouths to feed," Weiss argued as she flipped through the book, her nose scrunching at the unprofessional tone that the writers chose for most of the entries. It felt almost like a couple of journals stuck together. The journals of some knowledgeable, curious, and intelligent scribes, but journals all the same. "Besides, I thought if there was one thing that you'd appreciate trading the fish for it would be a book."

"Not just one."

"Besides, this brings up another problem." Weiss closed the book and her eyes then took a deep breath. "As far as this place is concerned, we're…broke." Ruby reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"It's okay, Weiss. Be strong!"

"Don't be a dunce! It's not…that terrible. We just need to figure out how to get some money."

"Perhaps I can be of assistance?" a raspy voice offered. They looked to the side and saw a scaled person with horns on his head and nose and a frill. "Greetings. I hear you're in need of septims? I happen to have a job that needs doing."

"Whoa, buddy!" Yang warned him. "Just what are you wanting, huh?"

"Nothing untoward," he assured her with a wave of his hand. "Don't worry. Just got a job that needs doing. You four are armed and look to be built like warriors. Mind doing a little retrieval quest?"

"Retrieval?" Ruby looked to her teammates. None of them were really objecting to it, but Yang was still a bit tense and Blake was staring at him as though caught in disbelief. She turned back to the reptilian man and nodded. "What do you need?"

"There's an amulet of mine, passed down through my family. I lost it to some bandit some time ago, but when I tried to chase him down, he ran into a cave full of frostbite spiders. The spiders got him, and there was no way I was going in there. If you could retrieve it, I'll pay you handsomely. You wouldn't even need to clear out all the spiders."

"Frostbite spiders?" Ruby wondered with more than a little revulsion. They certainly didn't sound like the normal creepy-crawlies, and she wasn't sure if that was better or worse. "Okay, so…we'll go get this amulet, and you'll pay us?"

"What about an advance?" Weiss stepped in. "We need cash to make it there and back, after all."

"Oh, certainly." He reached into a pouch and pulled out several coins, then started going through them, picking out three square ones of a white color and ten golden, round coins. "Three malks and ten septims. Should last you a few days if you're frugal. If you have a map, I can show you where the cave is."

"Uh, we don't…have a map," Ruby bashfully admitted. He blinked, the action a little surprising to them as the extra set of lids came from the sides, then shook his head.

"A bit more advancement is needed, then."

"Well, it was nice of him to buy us a map," Ruby figured as she looked it over. "Kinda kills the northwest continent theory, though." It seemed logical that they might have come upon a settlement on the shore of the least explored continent on Remnant. It would have explained the general ignorance of the people there along with the unknown elements they had run across, and the theory was further fueled by some of the banners having a stylized dragon on them. Instead, from the collection of maps available at Bits and Pieces, they saw a totally different landmass that was unrecognizable in any of their memories.

"This is becoming ridiculous," Weiss muttered. "How can we have washed up to the shores of a totally unknown continent while going through a well-traveled sea route in a single day? It doesn't make any sense. Not to mention this place is a complete backwoods still using archaic terms like 'magic'. We haven't seen the first instance of any modern technology since arriving."

"Some places are just behind on that stuff," Blake explained. "A lot of outlying towns are poor or constantly on the move, so they can't set up their own industry or purchase anything like that from the major cities. A totally isolated kingdom would probably end up the same."

"And a totally isolated continent?" Yang pointed out. "I'm almost surprised that we're even speaking the same language. Let's be grateful they've at least got a working sewer system and decent plumbing." She tapped a foot against a sewer grate to emphasize her point.

"It just doesn't make any sense," Weiss complained. "How is there even an unknown continent in the first place? Remnant has been extensively mapped. I don't doubt there's a few small islands we may not know about, but a whole continent?"

"Weiss, there's no use overthinking it," Ruby reassured her. "We'll figure it out, but first, we've gotta get through today. And tonight." She started looking around at that. "So, we need to find a hotel or inn or something. Hopefully, that guy gave us more than enough for that, at least. Let's see… Moon and Nausea…hard no. Ooh, Winking Skeever?"

"Winking what?" the others looked up at a sign with a sort of winking rodent next to a mug painted onto it. They shrugged at the odd sight, then headed inside to see if they could get a place to sleep for the night.

Ruby walked into the inn with a few more non-perishable goods than they had before, taking them up to their rented room to set in the chest for later. After she came back down, she sat with her team at a table. Blake was already helping herself to some fish whereas the other two had an assortment of vegetables and meat. Her eyes then landed on a bottle that Yang was drinking from, and she couldn't help but frown.

"Yang!" she protested, trying to take the adult beverage from her.

"Ah, c'mon sis. It's just some mead."

"You're not old enough for that!" her sister objected.

"Well, here it seems there's no real drinking age," Yang explained while setting the bottle down away from her sister's reach. Ruby, however, continued to glower. "Oh, don't be like that. I'm not going to go Uncle Qrow on you because of some loose drinking laws."

"You'd best not," Weiss added with a bit of her own glare.

"You know their uncle?" Blake asked her after swallowing her food.

"No, but any time someone uses a person they know as a measuring stick, it's usually serious."

Something told Blake that Weiss' statement had something else behind it, but decided now wasn't the time to bring it up. Instead, she nodded affirmatively, then dug back into her fish.

Ruby ceased her attempts to prevent Yang from drinking, but let the young man serving them know not to let her have any more. He seemed to take it oddly that the younger girl was acting in charge, but then promised to serve them just clean water for the rest of the night. Ruby received her own plate of food soon after, noting the lack of seasoning in most of it. Thankfully, they still had salt, so it wasn't too bad. The chicken was well-made, at least.

Several people entered and exited the inn as they dined, most human (or Men, as locals put it) and a few elves. One Argonian came and sat in a corner, but another one never showed after him. Then a group of about four members walked in, plus a large, tiger-like cat dressed in a sort of shawl with bags on its sides and back. The girls stared for a moment, a little intrigued that anyone would bring in such a creature to an establishment, tamed or not. They then noticed the furry tails swinging behind the people, under their cloaks. The common thought was that they might be seeing some Faunus for the first time since arriving in Solitude, then they pulled back their hoods. One had a human-like face, closer to Mer than Man, but cat ears atop his head and fine fur over much of his face. The other three had outright cat faces, something as unprecedented as the reptilian Argonians they'd learned the name of not too long ago. A smaller cat leaped atop the back of the not-tiger, and Ruby decided that deserved a bit more attention when it turned towards her. The cat had a sort of shirt on with an attached hood and a collar with a gem set in it.

"Well hey there," she greeted the feline. "How are you today, little fella?"

"This one is well and good," the cat said with a masculine, if tiny voice, his mouth moving a bit with the words and the collar making a small glow. Ruby and the others recoiled slightly with shock, with Blake's jaw slowly lowering as she tried to comprehend the talking cat. "He was simply investigating a scent." He then turned towards Blake, and the larger feline he was atop of turned to look at them as well.

"Ah, this one sees it," the bigger one said with a more feminine voice. Both nodded at the Faunus. "Greetings, Ohmes."

"Uh, hello," she said back, not sure what to make of what was happening. Talking cats were not a thing any of them were expecting for their day.

"Whoa!" Ruby said lowly in awe. "What are you?"

"This one is Alfiq. His wife is Pahmar," the smaller cat answered. Team RWBY looked between the two, mostly trying to come to terms with the strikingly different couple being what they were.

"Mother, father, we have rooms," the human-faced one told the quadrupeds. Now they were very confused.

"Ah, we should see to that. Get the little ones, then. We'll go and unpack." He lifted a paw and one of the bags opened as it began to glow. His wife began walking as he sorted through their belongings, the other three bipeds leading them upstairs and the fourth walking out. The girls looked at each other for a moment, then Weiss whipped out her book and rapidly flipped through the pages. She paused at the section describing different races, then turned over to a specific part.

"Khajiit," she read aloud, "the feline denizens of Elsweyr. Khajiit are one of the most…" Her eyes widened and then she rotated the tome around to let her fellows see it. There was an illustration showing different forms of the race, ranging from the housecat-sized sort like they had just met to a form that seemed larger than a rhinoceros, the next biggest being almost half its size.

"Whoa!" Ruby intoned. "There's, like, a dozen of them."

"Wait, so that was a Khajiit family?" Yang asked. Right then, the one that had gone outside reentered, a couple of smaller Khajiit in his arms with proportions that suggested childhood. Three others followed him, one looking like an elf with cat ears that reached his waist, and two that walked on all fours but had sloped backs reminiscent of a gorilla. The elfish one sniffed and then looked at their table, her eyes settling on the fish Blake was nearly finished with before gaining that familiar look, drool threatening to spill out from the corner of her mouth. One of the others head-butted her back, pushing her forward despite her small, foreign protesting. Ruby and Yang giggled at the sight while Weiss covered her mouth to hide her smile. Blake watched them a moment longer, her bow twitching about.

"Huh," Yang muttered as she looked over the entry of Khajiit, "so we've got cats, big cats, monkey cats, cat people, catty people, and super cat Faunus."

Blake bristled a bit. "They're not Faunus," she insisted.

"Right. Didn't mean anything by it," she apologized. "Just seemed like… Well, whatever they are, they're people." She shut the book and handed it back to Weiss.

"People we've never seen before. I'm starting to wonder how hidden this place is." Weiss started flipping through some other pages. "Geography, customs, whole new species of people… And apparently religion. Just what we were missing, a polity three steps from a theocracy."

"It can't be that bad," Ruby insisted.

"Maybe not, but they honestly believed the Imperial line was chosen and/or descended from the Gods. "

"So, it got better?"

Weiss turned a few pages and traced some lines. "If you can call the least terrible warlord after a near-collapse of society better?" She narrowed her eyes in incredulity. "A collapse that apparently came from a literal invasion from Hell?"

"…Well, he was the least terrible."

Night had long since fallen, and the girls were going through their items and making sure everything was distributed properly. Ruby was fiddling with her gunsmithing kit, proud of being right about possibly needing it as they hadn't run into a single gun or ammo seller. In fact, they hadn't found a Dust shop either, which probably meant there was some tight control over the substance being enforced. What's worse, they didn't know what the locals called it. The best answers they were getting was 'magic' and the 'College of Winterhold', which pointed them to the other end of the country. That meant the only ammo they had until they figured that out was what they had on hand, or what Ruby was able to put together with her kit. Even then, they needed Dust itself to make bullets.

Weiss was making sure each of them had a decent amount of food packed, along with checking to make sure they had purifier straws ready. While the innkeeper had assured them that the water he served was boiled (at least they weren't too far behind on health safety), any traveling outside of civilization wouldn't offer them the same courtesy. She was glad she had insisted on packing such things. At first, the sisters tried to convince her that their home had all the amenities of civilized life, just in a more rustic setting, but she finally got it through to them that that wasn't her concern. She knew that travel on Remnant could be fickle. Airships would go down, trains would derail, and boats got lost in storms. It was better to be overprepared than underprepared, and here she was, prepared. Weiss resisted the urge to gloat, knowing it was beneath her, tempting as it was.

Yang stretched out after making sure her clothes were packed properly, now changed into an outfit better able to stand the cold, and walked over to the window. She was beginning to feel stuffy, and if she felt it, then surely everyone else did.

"Y'all good if I open the window for a bit?" after a low chorus of affirmatives, she opened up the wooden window shutters and took a deep breath of the cold night air. "Man, it might be a tiny little city without a single electric light, but it at least gives a perfect view of the night sk-"

At Yang's sudden silence, the rest of the team looked over at her to see what was the matter. She was standing as though frozen, looking up at the night sky. Blake and Ruby went to her side first, Ruby tugging on her arm a bit to try and get her attention.

"Yang? Everything okay?"

Weiss sighed and went over to see what was the matter, standing right behind them as Yang finally moved, pointing up at the sky without a word. The girls followed her finger and immediately went still. Hanging among the stars, rather than a single, shattered moon, there was a pair of whole bodies. One was large and red, maybe the size of the one they were used to, if that one was a perfect sphere like this one appeared to be. A sliver of it was hidden in shadow, marking it as near-full in its phase. The other was much smaller and white, with only a little more than half of it visible, about halfway across the night sky from its fellow satellite.

The girls stood and stared out the window at the impossible image, barely able to note the unfamiliar patterns of stars with the giant, glowing sign in the sky.

"Guys," Ruby quietly croaked, "I don't think we're in Remnant anymore."

Chapter 2: Into the Unknown

August 7th

For a long moment, none of the girls moved or responded. They just stared up at the impossible sky filled with stars and constellations they didn't recognize and two intact moons. Yang was the first, going over to a mattress, laying down, and just curling up with her back to everyone. Blake fell against the same bed and slid down to sit on the floor, her hands on her face and her eyes wide but unseeing. Weiss started backing away, then shook her head and made a joyless laugh.

"Okay, I get it now!" she declared, almost quivering and her voice increasingly becoming high-pitched. "I was already feeling seasick, I had some strong medicine, and then I ate that fish… I'm hallucinating. A whole…made up scenario is running through my brain, just on the edge of believable. I'm probably going to be treated at any moment now in a hospital near the port, and then I'll be waking up and this will all…" She stopped her small tirade as Ruby came up to her and put her hands to Weiss' shoulders.

"Weiss," Ruby said calmly, "it's real. I'm right here, with you."

The heiress seemed to gasp in a breath and release it slow and raggedly, tears appearing in her eyes before she leaned forward and into her friend's embrace. Ruby held her like that, gently patting her back while rocking them back and forth, slowly. Nearer the window, Yang managed to uncurl and looked back out to confirm that the moons were still there, then looked down at Blake. The Faunus seemed to have gone limp, and Yang was able to reach over and nudged at her head a bit, getting her attention.

"You okay?"

"A-are you?" Blake asked right back before looking at the window again. "You… It's really real, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Yang relayed, looking back out again. "It's real. God, I don't… What does this mean?"

Ruby guided Weiss over to sit on the other bed and then hugged her friend again before sitting next to her. The four young women looked at each other, none speaking for a long moment before Ruby spoke.

"Okay, so this is more than we expected."

"You can say that again," Yang put in.

"But it'll be fine. I know it will." Ruby smiled, and Weiss seemed to lean onto her, prompting the younger girl to put her arm around her shoulder. "I don't know how we got here, but we got here somehow. That means there's got to be a way back. And we'll figure it out. But one step at a time."

"What's the first?" Blake asked, pulling herself back up from the floor.

"First step… Well, first major step is getting money, but that shouldn't be too hard. We might be students, but we're still Huntresses. We've already got a job, in fact."

"Oh right," Yang recalled. "Spider cave. Uh, what kind of Grimm are frostbite spiders?"

Ruby shrugged, and the other two didn't seem to know either. Yang just shook her head.

"Ugh, hate spiders…"

"But, our real first step is getting some sleep," Ruby declared. "We've got traveling to do tomorrow, and that's no small task."

The girls could agree to that much. Yang shut up the window then went back to lay down. As they started to get comfortable, Weiss sat up for a long moment and looked over at her team leader.

"Ruby…"

"Yeah, Weiss?"

"Thank you."

The girl smiled and then gave the heiress a sideways hug.

"No problem," Ruby said. "It's a leader's job to make sure their team's okay, and a good friend's job to make sure her bestie is happy."

"Don't ruin it," Weiss said with a small grin. She was released from the hug and they settled in to sleep, Blake blowing out the candle that lit up half the room, leaving just the fireplace's slowly dying embers to illuminate the room.

Despite how much they tried, sleep came to them slowly, and even then it was restless.

Morning came, and the girls left the city, heading down the road towards their goal. Just outside the walls were a few homes and farms, including one with a horse stable right past the main entrance. After talking it over, they decided they didn't really need (nor could they afford) some horses right now. Their first planned stop was in a place called Dragon Bridge, a settlement that lay next to a river gorge and, from what they heard, had a large and ancient bridge that tended to attract visitors in normal times. Along with being on a main road between several capitals, it was oft visited and well-traveled.

"Okay, so a Hold is like a county or district," Weiss explained while reading through their Field Guide. "We're in Haafingar, which is basically the capital Hold of Skyrim, a province of the Empire."

"The Empire?" Yang asked. "So, there's not, like, competing empires to differentiate from?"

"Well, if what I'm reading is right," Weiss said while flipping a few pages, "technically no. There is, however, a polity known as the Aldmeri Dominion, which is functionally a competing empire. They had a war about twenty-five years ago, but the treaty at its end has caused a lot of tension within the Empire."

"Is that why that guy was yelling about Ulfric and the Stormcloaks?" Ruby wondered aloud. Said guy had been a prisoner being led back to Solitude by a trio of guards. They hadn't paid the girls too much mind, but their prisoner had told them that if they knew any 'true sons and daughters of Skyrim' that they should direct them to Windhelm. The soldiers just kept pushing him on with one telling them to be on their way. They mostly agreed not to touch that situation even with a ten-foot pole.

"That seems to be a little more recent than the book's publication, but the authors definitely predicted things coming to a head." She flipped back a few pages. "Going by this and the map, the cave we're heading to will be near the three-way border point of Whiterun Hold, Hjaalmarch, and the Reach. Afterward, we'll be close to Rorickstead, so we could stop there before heading back up."

"Sounds like a plan," Blake agreed.

"Yeah, but I got a bit more to the plan if we're cool with it," Yang suggested while pointing out some houses and a stone structure as they crested a hill. "That Dragon Bridge?"

"Yes, actually," Weiss confirmed while looking at the map. "We're making good time."

"Nice. Hey Ruby, wanna go hunting?"

"Hunting? Like for food?" the younger sister curiously asked.

"Yeah. Hasn't been any Grimm the whole way here, so we could use the target practice, the food, and the fur."

"Fur would sell well," Weiss contemplated before looking through the book. "I'm not seeing anything about poaching laws…"

"Which means there isn't any," Yang figured before leading them off the road. "C'mon guys, twilight's coming."

The others chased after her, Weiss packing her book away and Ruby taking out Crescent Rose, switching the ammo type for some low-grade shots. They still packed more of a punch than something along the lines of, say, a twenty-two rifle, but they wouldn't blow a hole bigger than her fist through any unfortunate prey they found. Yang soon found a spot and then settled in atop an old log, the other three following suit as she dragged some nearby brush and branches into a rudimentary blind around them.

"What are we doing?" Weiss asked, only for Ruby to shush her.

"Waiting," Yang whispered.

"And how do you know something will come through here?" she whispered back. Yang pointed over to a couple of oak trees nearby with disturbed ground beneath their boughs.

"Critters like acorns," she simply explained. "Make sure your coats are covering anything bright," she added, putting word to action by tying back her own golden locks under a beige kerchief and tucking the ends beneath the collar of her shirt, before sitting still as a statue. Weiss pulled the drab, brown coat a little more closed, looking out across the patch of forest they were in and then her teammates. Yang and Blake both seemed experienced and calm, but Ruby was a little giddier, putting some kind of camouflage net over her weapon before resting it on her lap. Weiss released a breath and waited. And waited. And waited. Just when she was beginning to grow aggravated at the boredom and worried about the sinking sun, Blake's attention was taken as her bow twitched. Everyone followed her gaze and watched as a few deer slowly made their way towards the area. They seemed extremely cautious, taking a few steps towards the patch before stopping, then continuing again. Once they were all in sight, Yang leaned a little and whispered even lower than before.

"Get the buck," she told Ruby, almost inaudible to Weiss' ears. The younger sister took aim at the largest specimen, a buck with antlers that maybe had close to twenty points or so. Weiss waited for the gunshot to sound out, but nothing came. As she wondered what the holdup was, she saw Ruby lower the gun and pass it to her sister.

"It's okay," Yang reassured her before aiming it herself. Weiss wondered if she had ever used Ruby's sniper-scythe before right before the shot boomed, a sharp contrast to the silence they had grown used to. The buck ran instantly, and soon the small herd followed suit.

"I think you missed," Weiss pointed out while rubbing one ear.

"Nah, I got him," Yang responded as she handed back Ruby's weapon. She patted the younger girl's shoulder before walking towards where the deer had run. After going around some bushes and brambles, they came across the buck's body, now with a hole in its chest. Red blood stained the brown fur, and a small pool flowed out onto the green grass beneath and around its body.

"Heart shot," Blake noted. "Good aim."

"Yeah. People are always surprised about that for some reason. Like shotgun gauntlets are easy to accurately shoot or something."

Weiss' eyebrows went up at that. She never put much thought into it, but now she realized how hard it must actually be to aim something like that, especially since they fired through a punching motion. She suddenly found a new respect for the skill she never associated with their brawler too much.

"Well, now to take this guy and bag him. You think we'll have to clean him, or would there be a butcher in town?"

"Let's check for butchers first," Blake suggested. "Less messy that way."

After checking a few sources, Weiss was able to convince the butcher to give them twenty-eight septims for the carcass. He originally wanted it for twenty-two, but Weiss was able to haggle it up by pointing out the low damage to the edible meat and the size of the antlers. With several more of the gold coins to their name, Weiss walked away happily.

"So, how much is twenty-eight septims?" Ruby asked as they settled in at the Four Shields.

"See these?" Weiss asked as she showed Ruby the square, white coins. "These are malks, or marks in some areas. Each one is worth ten septims."

"About the same cost as a room at an inn," Ruby realized. Both the Winking Skeever and the Four Shields Tavern charged the same price for a room per night. Weiss figured it was regulated by law.

"Exactly. Assuming no one ends up wanting some extra privacy, making more than ten septims a day will be the minimum needed for profit. That's not accounting for food and other necessities."

"So, a deer a day will keep the bill collectors at bay?" Yang joked. Weiss glared, but Ruby actually giggled at that one.

"I wonder how much a moose is worth?" Blake asked no one in particular.

"Whoa, Blake, walk before you run!" Yang warned her.

"We're Huntresses. We fight Grimm every other weekend," the Faunus pointed out.

"You've never seen a moose, have you?" Yang asked her. Ruby thought back, and she couldn't say she had either. Though she did hear stories about moose from neighbors. One time a couple swam all the way from the mainland, somehow. Someone hunted them down after they caused a bit of property damage and really hurt an old lady. They hadn't even had any Aura, which could be a roll of the dice when it came to wild animals. The thought of what might've happened if those moose had unlocked their Auras left her shuddering. They probably would have needed her dad or uncle to personally fight them!

"Even I know you should careful about moose," Weiss said. "Granted, I'd be more worried about polar bears or the like."

"Ooh, now how much would that be worth?" Yang wondered.

"I'll check possible price ranges before we start hunting dangerous predators like that," Weiss told her. "Besides that, we could do Grimm hunting. Much more to our level. It's what we're all trained for, and I'll admit I'm also more comfortable with killing soulless monsters for money than innocent animals." She shot Ruby a sympathetic glance at that, receiving a grateful smile in return.

"Physically less of a hassle too," Yang agreed with an exaggerated roll of her shoulder, "Since I'm the one who had to carry that whole buck all the way over here. Don't have to deal with any carcasses from Grimm."

"Yeah, although it's weird that we haven't spotted any Grimm yet," Ruby pointed out before they all froze. "Wait, are there Grimm here? It's…another world, after all."

"Not thinking about this," Weiss immediately announced before lying down and putting her fingers to her head. "One restless night was enough. Not going to think about otherworldly Grimm or lack thereof."

"Right, forget I asked." Ruby set out her gunsmithing kit and went through her spent casings and Dust loadout. She didn't have much, but she could fashion a few bullets. "We figure out who holds the Dust?"

"I asked those officials, Penitus Oculatus," Blake explained. "They didn't seem to know what I was talking about, but figured it was magic. Seems there's two places we can get any reliably. Court Wizards are the first, but there's only one or two in every Hold and they work directly for the Jarls, and most are probably too occupied with their own stuff. The other is the College of Winterhold."

"There's that College again," Yang pointed out. "You sure there's nowhere else we can get some?"

"Not unless we want to dig up our own."

"May as well dig up our own metals if we're going to do that," Weiss said. "So, we can try one of these 'wizards', and if they're too busy or refuse, we can make for this college. Maybe there we can find out a little more about what happened to us."

"Sounds like a plan," Ruby agreed. "We've got some direction, at least. Okay, then. We'll try the wizards." She giggled at that. "Boy, it'd be something if they used 'real' magic."

"Haha," Weiss deadpanned before smiling. "As if."

Travel from Dragon Bridge was mostly uneventful at this point. The girls looked over the impressive stone construct that gave the small town its name as they crossed it, but didn't linger. They spotted a few men watching them from far away, up on a hill or some other high-rise. A couple of other travelers decided to go along with them, so their numbers were likely keeping any unscrupulous sorts from attacking. One man had a laden wagon that went at about walking speed that he offered for the tired to sit on the back of whenever they needed to. It was an offer the four Huntresses graciously accepted, but despite the seeming lack of danger, Team RWBY unconsciously took a defensive stance around the dozen or so civilians. They couldn't help it. This was an entirely new world they were only on for the past day and a half. None of them knew what dangers lurked. Only one man looked like a warrior out of them all, a double-bladed steel axe on his back and a basic, iron chest plate with some hide armor around and under it. Nothing compared to what they had, of course, but Ruby, being the weapon geek she was, couldn't help but gawk over it.

"So, what kind of steel did they use to make it?" Ruby asked, trying to get whatever information she could out of the man about his weapon.

"I didn't worry too much 'bout that sorta thing." The man shrugged. "I just grabbed axes off the wall until one felt right, then I bought it."

"Oh, well, at least you made sure it was a good one. You wouldn't believe how many people grabbed the first thing they could and tried to fight with it."

"I reckon I could," he responded with a sigh. "Little whelps think they're invincible until they get shown how fragile they really are. Think they can just run in and take on the world."

"I wouldn't put it like that, but yeah, some people can get pretty cocky."

The man moved to respond, clearly enjoying the conversation with Ruby, when someone screamed in fright. Several people scattered as a roar sounded out, sounding like a hippo mixed with a dinosaur. The girls all turned to see a brown, three-eyed creature holding a woman by the leg. She looked to be a Bosmer, and was desperately trying to pull herself free of the monster's three claws. It slung her around, causing her to scream in pain, then Blake's variant ballistic chain-scythe stabbed into its arm and yanked it forward. The beast roared as it dropped the woman and pulled back, causing Blake to brace herself and strain against its strength.

"Troll!" someone yelled before it ripped its arm free of Gambol Shroud. It went back after the woman, who was crawling away, but then Yang got in front of it and socked it across the face. It stumbled back, and Ruby rushed in to help get the woman out of the way. Yang repeatedly punched the troll, blocking its own heavy swings with her arms before returning five punches between them. The man had his axe out and swung into its back with a battlecry, digging in deep, but not quite felling it. Weiss readied herself to join in when a dark-skinned Dunmer ran up with his fingers curled.

"Get clear!" he called out in warning, and the two fighters jumped back. The troll seemed to be recovering, pulling itself back up off its knees, but then fire sprang up from the elf's hands then shot out in a blazing roar, muffling the troll's own cries. Weiss and the rest of her team stared flabbergasted at the display of raw power. They wondered what kind of Semblance this was, but part of them felt that this was something different. Something they couldn't quite pin down. A few seconds later, the Dunmer stopped and the troll was shown to be nearly burned to a crisp. It still moved, as if trying to overcome its wounds, but the warrior stepped forward and brought his axe down on its head, splitting the skull and finally killing it.

"Damn thing must have been starving to attack a group this big in broad daylight," the man said before kicking a roasted arm. "Looks scrawny."

"Whatever it was doing, it hurt Drolsi," the Dunmer bit out before going to where Ruby had carried the Bosmer woman.

"What was that?" Yang asked, looking at the monster's corpse, noting that it wasn't sublimating like a Grimm, not that she thought it was one. At the same time, she couldn't help but glance occasionally at the Dark Elf as he extinguished the fire cupped in his hands.

"Troll," the man said as though it was obvious. "Never saw a troll before?"

"Uh, not in real life," Yang decided to answer.

"Well, I suppose stories either under or oversell it. " The man shrugged and shook his head. "They're tough, but not unstoppable. Simple, but not stupid. Probably would have killed it without the elf's help, but it would've taken longer."

"Yeah, it did feel tough," Yang admitted. Its body seemed cushioned by a layer of fat, though if this was a starving one then it probably didn't have that much compared to normal. The Dunmer's fire didn't mix well with that, for the troll, anyway. The fat burned and boiled under its skin, some of it visibly leaking out as an oily liquid. She decided to leave the smelly corpse alone and went over to see Weiss and Ruby watching as some sort of cream was applied to the woman's wounded leg. She figured it was medicinal, but as a gash on her calf started to seal like a zipper was being slowly drawn, without the accompanying glow of an Aura, Yang blinked and rubbed her eyes before looking back to make sure what she was seeing was real.

"Here, drink this potion," the Dunmer offered her after uncorking a vial. "Should help with the bones."

"Thank the Gods for alchemy," she muttered before swallowing the liquid. She then hummed out a sigh and looked at the girls. "Thank you for helping me there. My leg or more of me might be in a troll's belly if you hadn't stepped in." She then looked over to where the warrior was walking. "And thank you as well, sir."

He harrumphed. "Just doing what anyone'd do," he brushed off the thanks. Ruby smiled brightly.

"Doesn't make you less of a hero," the young Huntress told him. He kept his gruff composure, but didn't say anything against it. For the next several minutes, the group recollected themselves, waiting for the Bosmer woman's leg to fully heal and the horses to calm down before they set off. Yang and the Nord, as he described himself, went out to ensure there wasn't anything else lurking out there. Ruby and Blake, meanwhile, watched over the injured woman, leaving a curious Weiss to carefully approach the Dunmer who had gravely injured the troll.

"Excuse me, sir?" Weiss asked, grabbing the Dunmer's attention.

"Yes?" he asked, and Weiss nodded.

"That fire you made. I'm curious, what Dust or Semblance was that? I've never seen a technique like that before."

"Dust? Semblance?" the Dunmer asked, completely confused. Again, Weiss was reminded that she was in another world, and judging from her previous discussion with the Penitus Oculatus, it was likely such terminology was different.

"Sorry, I'm not from around here," Weiss replied. "I believe your people call it...'magic?'" The heiress couldn't believe she was seriously using that term, even more so when the Dunmer nodded in recognition.

"Right, right. Thought that's what you meant. That was simply a Flames spell. Real easy, Novice-level Destruction spell. Anyone can learn it."

"Is that so?" Weiss asked, looking about his person to try and find the Dust shard he must've used as fuel. If it was as easy as he made it out to be, it would be wise of her to try and pick it up herself. If she was going to be stuck in this other world without any access to her resources, she and the rest of her team would need all the help they could get.

"Yep. In fact," the Dunmer said as he reached into a hip pouch and began to rummage around. At first, Weiss thought he was searching for a Dust crystal or form of apparatus, but instead he pulled out a worn hardcover book with the symbol of a burning hand stitched into its cover. "Here, this is an old spellbook of mine."

"A...book?" Weiss softly spoke as the Dunmer handed it to her.

"I'm not using it anymore, and you seem like the type of person who'd be able to pick up on the clever craft pretty easily," he said. "Think of it as payment for your friends' help in saving Drolsi's life."

"I... Thank you, sir," Weiss replied after a momentary pause. The Dunmer nodded at her just as Yang and the Nord returned. The two called out that they were all clear, and at that moment the Bosmer woman shakily rose with the assistance of Ruby and Blake.

With the entire group now ready to move out again, they piled back into the wagon and rode off. Ruby and the Nord returned to their previous conversation on weapons and combat techniques while the others kept a watchful eye on their surroundings. Weiss, meanwhile, pulled out the tome and opened it. She pored over its contents, seeing terms without any idea of what they meant. 'Magicka,' 'Aetherius,' 'Oblivion,' and more were thrown around as though they were common knowledge, and Weiss wanted nothing more than to dismiss them as the superstitions of a primitive culture. Yet, she couldn't help but think back to the Dunmer's display of power, and as she continued to read, she began to feel that perhaps it wasn't as far-fetched as she wanted to believe.

The party dispersed as they reached Rorickstead. Night was closing in, so the girls saved the search for the cave for the next day. Asking around helped to point them in the right direction of it, though most of the people warned them against going there.

"Ain't right, whatever it is," one man had told them. "Folks go in there and never come out. Seems to be far more than just spiders in that cave."

"Sometimes, I hear something wail from that way at night," another woman shakily replied. More and more of the townspeople reported the same thing, and by the time Team RWBY made it to their room, they were all feeling a little unnerved.

"Right, so does anybody get the feeling this place might be more than we expected?" Yang asked her teammates. All of them nodded, but rather than dwell on it they focused on the task at hand.

"I found an entry on frostbite spiders," Weiss started, showing them an illustration just below an article. "Apparently, they're literally just large spiders."

Yang shivered. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. I also read a bit about trolls, but let's focus on the spiders for now. They're predatory, but do make webs and sometimes catch prey in them. However, given their size, that prey can range from large rodents to humans. They also spit poison, though it's not too deadly if treated quickly. I think they should be pretty simple to kill, as long as we're careful."

"Right," Ruby agreed. "We'll need to take it slow and get used to them. Since they're not Grimm, they'll have some self-preservation instincts, so we might not have to fight them all. We've just got to retrieve the amulet."

"Speaking of, did we get a description of that?" Blake asked. Weiss started to answer, before her whole body froze.

"Actually, we didn't. Ah, by the Lovers and Brothers!"

"It's okay, Weiss," Ruby reassured her. "We'll just grab any amulets that might be there and ask him which is the right one when we get back."

"Okay, well… I guess that'll have to do. But if that's the case, we might have to scour the cave for anything that might be the right one."

"Aw," Yang groaned, resigned to her fate of having to deal with the eight-legged creepy-crawlies.

"And that's Bessa," Sissel explained to Ruby, who was watching the cows eat hay with her. "She's the oldest, but she's tough. Ennis says that one time, she ran down a bear by herself."

"Wow! That really is tough," Ruby admitted. Bessa seemed to be just a normal cow, at that, making it that much more impressive. While Zwei taking out an Ursa was amazing from a certain point of view, he had an unlocked Aura and had been taught to fight Grimm for almost as long as Ruby had. He was practically a Huntsman himself. A small frown briefly crossed her face as she wondered how Zwei and the others would've reacted to their disappearance, but forced herself not to dwell on it for very long lest the younger girl notice.

Sissel then froze when a girl who looked exactly like her showed up, a mean glare on her face. The other girl paused when she walked up, seeing Ruby, but then continued on her approach, a smirk appearing as she did.

"You're gonna get it, Sissel!" the girl teased her.

"Why? What did I do?"

"I told you to weed the garden by sunset, and you didn't do it. Now you're in big trouble."

"Papa told you to do that, not me! Now leave me alone!"

Ruby was frowning and decided to step in at that.

"Hey, knock it off," she told the young girl. "That's your sister, right? You should always have your family's back, not pick on them or make life hard for them."

The girl sneered at her. "What do you know?!"

"Plenty. Family should be there to help one another, not put each other down."

Sissel's sister just frowned and walked away. Ruby sighed and looked back to the girl who she'd stood up for.

"Thank you," the local girl muttered.

"Don't mention it," Ruby told her while gently rubbing the top of her hair.

"Nice goat," Yang mentioned to a guy walking said goat on a leash.

"Thank you. She's a prize winner," he proudly told them before moving on. Yang hummed in thought before taking a sip of cider.

"I was thinking of a joke, but he seemed so genuinely honored."

"Anyone else getting a weird vibe from this place?" Blake asked. "I heard the mayor-founder talking with some guy about the way the harvest is going this year. He was wondering how it was doing so well, but the guy insisted it was just the hard work everyone put into it."

"Well, that's not unusual," Yang mentioned.

"I mean, he insisted. It was like he was afraid of people thinking of any possible alternative explanation. Just weird."

"Huh, that does sound weird. Maybe he's superstitious?" she suggested.

"Maybe." She didn't mention the part where Rorick muttered something about figuring there was something else at play, but decided that Yang was right about there being some superstition the people might have.

Weiss walked up from the marketplace, releasing a sigh as she did. "So, questions have led us down the same path. Wizards and magic."

"Maybe they're just what they call people with Aura?" Yang suggested. "Like in that movie where wizards were just people with, like, all of the Semblances and didn't need Dust."

"Or Galaxy Wars," Blake proposed.

"I already figured it was just local parlance. I just wish we had more options than a single, isolated school or one of a dozen government employees." She sighed and joined them on the Frostfruit Inn's porch. Ruby came bounding up soon enough, a small smile on her face.

"So, is everything good?" she asked her team.

"As good as it can be," Weiss answered. "We're ready for the trip to the cave, and we're pretty much supplied to head out the moment we're done."

"That's good. Once we're done there, we'll figure out the very next step," she declared. "It should either be getting to that college, getting a step closer, or getting some personal attention from a wizard. Whichever is more available at the time."

"Should work out," Yang figured. "Maybe Ish and Mail will have washed up by the time we get back to Solitude, and they can help us figure out how we got here."

"How would we have gotten here?" Ruby wondered. "I still haven't figured that out."

"Well, in books and sci-fi movies, usually people go through some kind of portal," Blake explained. "The only problem is…we were out on the sea. Storms aren't uncommon, but they're usually more fantasy."

"True. Storms are usually a thematic source, not scientific," Ruby agreed.

"Well, there's a sub-theory I have," Weiss relayed while opening her book. "This place does know about the other planets in their system, but they don't match up with our own. They're also named after the gods of the primary pantheon worshipped by most of Tamriel. Kynerath was my first guess, since it seems to contain life, but I got to looking further. None of the constellations match up."

"Well, that's expected, right?" Yang asked. "We're on another planet, after all."

"True, but it's more than that. If we were in the same system, we'd see most of the same constellations, the only difference being where the planets appear as stars. The night sky of this world, Nirn, is wholly different from the one on Remnant. That's not getting into the planets."

"What are the planets?" Ruby asked, a curious glint in her eye as she looked over Weiss' shoulder.

"Like I said, they're named after the Eight Divines, which are Kynerath, Akatosh, Zenithar, Mara, Julianos, Dibella, Stenndar, and Arkay. The planet we're on they call Nirn," she pointed out while going over the illustration of the planets and their orbits. "Our solar system only has four planets, including Remnant, though some scientists think they found a fifth one with the new observatory up in Solitas. Obviously, this place is behind on the science, as they use a geocentric model. Not to mention the plain oddness in the way they orbit. They go all over the place, and Arkay doesn't even look like it orbits anything. More importantly, none of the smaller rocky planets look like a brown rust ball like Ramsey does. Kynerath, like I mentioned, has been noted to have a green and blue surface, likely covered in forests and seas, though it's noted that storms often appear. Akatosh is the largest, probably a gas giant similar to Hullum or Sorola. Zenithar is the second largest, and Mara and Dibella orbit around Zenithar. Apparently, they believe there are "angelic cities" on those two. Whether that means there are actually people on those worlds or a case of mistaken observation, I can't say. The writer seems convinced they're an aspect of the heavens brought close to Mundus, or the mundane world."

As Weiss told more of the world's lore to her teammates, they all listened with rapt attention, eventually getting a little lost and going further and further into the details of the world, its beliefs, and its cultures, until finally, they forced themselves to retire for the night.

The girls left for the cave first thing in the morning. Mostly backtracking up the road, they quickly found it hidden in the woods a fair distance from the path. Spiderwebs lined most of the opening, thick and silky. Weiss test-touched some of the substance, finding it to not be very sticky.

"Must be lined along the walls for insulation," she figured as she rubbed her fingertips across her thumbs. Blake mostly led them along, being able to see far more clearly in the dark cave than the rest of them. She paused a moment before taking up a lighter and flicking it on up against the wall, catching the end of a torch aflame and burning away some webs near it. She pulled it free of a sconce and handed it back to Yang, who smiled as she took it in hand.

"Torchlight. How medieval!" Yang joked, causing her partner to roll her eyes.

"Well, you're free to use up your scroll's battery," Blake told her.

"Eh, I've got half a year before I've got to replace it." Despite saying it, she didn't take out the device and continued using the old torch. A little way further, something jumped out and squealed at them. Yang squealed in return and stamped on it, leaving a green splotch with eight twitching legs around it.

"Sweet mother of-" Yang began as she turned to face the wide-eyed members of her team. "I know you said they'd be big, but…!"

"That…was probably a little one," Weiss mentioned, finding it hard to believe herself. Blake suddenly took out her blades and stood at the ready.

"It was definitely a little one! Dodge!"

Everyone moved as a glob of venomous-looking fluid went past them, and something shrieked. They looked forward to see a pair of spiders that came up to their waists and drew their own weapons. Yang screamed as one came at her, jabbing the torch into its face then punching it back. Weiss stabbed at the other one's eyes, getting one and making it back away and chitter in pain. Blake swiped her blades across its face, scoring deep hits, but not quite killing it. Ruby rushed at the one her sister was beating back and sliced three of its legs off. It fell, and Yang stamped on its head, squishing its brain and ending its struggles. Weiss pierced one of the wounds Blake left on the other and stabbed deeply into it. The spider struggled a moment, then went still as it slid back.

"Oh, I'm going to be sick," Yang complained as she handed the torch over to Weiss and stumbled away from the green ichor and spider corpses. She heaved a moment, but nothing came out, leaving her gasping for breath before standing up and rejoining the others. "Let's get to looking for that necklace, already."

"Right," Ruby said. "Lead the way, Blake."

"How can those things even breathe...?" Weiss whispered to herself as she stared at the corpse of a spider the size of a large dog. Blake silently wondered the same thing, whereas Yang and Ruby (neither of whom knew about spider biology) wondered what she meant, but soon they all shook those thoughts out of their heads.

The Faunus nodded once they all looked at her, and they headed deeper into the cave. They started coming across braziers, which Yang lit after tossing in an old, spider web covered bag of coal set near them, each one providing a good bit more light than before. Something like a room with rotted furniture and a collapsed door was seen to their right, but as they went to enter it, a chest-high spider dropped from above. All of them screamed at that, but beat the creature to death in short order.

"Ceiling! Ceiling!" Yang shouted while holding up her torch, only to start whimpering. Several spiders the size of their hands were crawling away, with one slightly bigger taking a defensive stance against the threatening torch. The others started shivering at the sight, realizing they might have been walking under a handful of oversized spiders at any given moment.

"Don't look up, don't look up," Ruby muttered to herself, shivering slightly from fear. None of her teammates judged her, for they felt the same thing.

They went into the room, Yang and Blake watching out for ceiling spiders while Ruby and Weiss dug around, looking for any sign of the amulet. They ended up finding three necklaces, but two didn't have anything on them. Still, they packed them away along with the scattered coins that they found, then moved along further into the cave. The spiders seemed to have mostly scattered from them, letting the girls feel a little less creeped out as they continued searching. Another room was checked and cleared, but then the girls came across a tunnel-hallway with several rooms set about and a distinct lack of spiderwebs.

"Looks like the crawlers don't come back here too much," Ruby pointed out while holding another torch she'd gotten forward. The room she looked into had chairs with holes in the middle and buckets set under them, making her back up while she crinkled her nose. Blake began looking towards the darkest end with Yang right behind her while Weiss moved towards the opposite.

To her surprise, a coffin was propped up against the far wall of a small room. At first, she thought it must have been where someone had died before the spiders took over, but then thought about the people who must have been in this cave beforehand. Not only did a coffin seem out of place for people avoiding the law, anyone using one would have set it down with the body inside, if not place it in the ground. Part of her was saying there was nothing in it, while another part told her they could have hidden items of value inside, believing no one would look in such a container. A small, but loud part of her also cried out in warning about investigating such an item in such a place.

Slowly, Weiss walked up to the coffin, reaching out with one hand while holding her torch in the other. Her fingers touched the edge of the lid, pulling at it slightly and finding it loose enough to open. She took in a deep breath and pulled, slowly opening the container to the world and her eyes, her heart pounding and other arm tensed as its inside was slowly revealed.

She sighed when she saw that nothing was inside, simply the cushioned lining typical of a coffin. She almost laughed at her childish fear of the simple object and turned to head back to her friends and continue searching, only to see a pale, sunken face behind her. Before she could react, the face's mouth opened and came at her, sharp points piercing and sinking into her neck as it bit down.

Weiss screamed.

August 9th - 9th of Last Seed

Chapter 3: Blight of the Soul

9th of Last Seed

Pain was firing through Weiss' neck as she tried to shove the man – or perhaps simply man-shaped thing – off of her. It had taken hold of her arms, gripping them with almost unnatural strength, but she was beginning to pull her way free of them as her Aura was heightened with her struggle. She almost ripped herself free when a feeling of fatigue began to overcome her. Her energy felt as though it was slipping away as cold took her extremities and began to spread through her.

"What the hell?!" Yang's voice yelled before the thing's face was pulled away from her throat. The thing tried to bat her away, but the brawler blocked and then punched it across the jaw. It shrieked as it leaped back, and then Weiss felt herself falter. Her team were yelling things to each other, at the creature, and to her, but she couldn't focus on the words. Her head was swimming and spinning while she tried to gain her bearings, kneeling down to avoid falling from the dizziness. Her attacker looked back at her, but Blake jumped between them, bringing out her sword as she did. The creature drew a sword from a nearby rack as well, swinging it as soon as it was out of the scabbard. Blake slid back from the blow, then Yang came in. An audible punch hit the thing's chest, breaking several ribs with a loud crack, and making it shout as it was flung back, but it punched back and hit Yang in the throat. The blonde was stunned by the strike, allowing the creature to kick her away and into the wall of the hallway with enough force to cause the cave itself to ominously shake.

Between Yang's injuries and the shaking cavern, Blake was distracted enough for the being to slash at her again, but she still blocked it, though it knocked her back. Ruby tried to jump in, but the small space prevented her from bringing her scythe to bear quickly. This gave the thing enough time to turn its attention towards her, grabbing at the shaft of her weapon and stabbing at her. Ruby was able to jump back in a burst of petals, to which the creature roared furiously and splayed its arms out wide. A glow began emanating from its palms and black blood began to stream out of its mouth. The blancette had mostly recovered by this point, though she still felt weak and cold. She had enough strength to recognize the opportunity presented to her, however, when she noticed the creature's unprotected back was facing towards her. As quickly as she could, she shot to her feet, drew Myrtenaster, and dashed towards the attacker with the assistance of a Glyph. She stabbed where she assumed the heart was and pierced all the way through, much to the surprise of herself, Ruby, and the creature itself, who seemed to look at the thin blade in shock.

Then the thing shrieked in bloodcurdling agony as it clutched the place where the blade erupted from its chest and spasmed. Weiss stepped back before it fell to its knees, pulling her blade from it. The thing seemed to shrivel up before their eyes, soon crumbling into dust around the tattered clothing it wore.

"Wha- what?" she asked no one in particular, clutching at the stinging spot on her neck a moment later. Weiss then stumbled and swayed, fatigue returning as the adrenaline wore off. As fast as they could, Blake was back on her feet and Yang was stumbling towards them, the former going through her pack and pulling out a medkit. Ruby, meanwhile, adopted a serious look on her face as she analyzed the pile of dust the creature left behind, her anger visibly restrained. Yang joined her soon after, both content with letting Blake tend to Weiss.

"Here, you're bleeding," Blake said before taking alcohol pads and wiping them against the spots on Weiss' neck. She hissed in a breath at the cool sting on her wounds, then let out a grunt of pain. Once the bleeding stopped, Blake looked over the punctures for a moment before shaking her head. "I don't know how deep those go, but that's about all we can do for now. Let me find some gauze."

"What the heck was that thing?" Yang asked while shaking out her hair. "It hit like an Ursa, looked like a dried-up human, used a sword, and turned into dust?" She kicked at some of the dusty clothing, pushing a bit of the pile around to reveal an amulet of sorts. "Huh…?" As she fished it out, Ruby joined in on looking over Weiss.

"You sure you okay? It didn't poison you or anything?" Ruby asked with naked concern.

"I'm fine. Just…a little cold, maybe."

Much to Weiss' surprise, Ruby responded by taking her hand into her own and holding it. Weiss tried to sputter out to ask what she was doing, then she brought it up to her cheek. Blake set the medkit aside and did the same with her other hand, confusing her further.

"Yeah, you're cold," Ruby stated.

"Was it…draining your blood?" Blake asked. "This feels almost like someone who donated blood recently."

"I don't know… Maybe?"

"How do you know what someone feels like just after donating?" Yang asked with genuine curiosity.

"I used to donate all the time. Do you feel dizzy?" she directed back at Weiss.

"Not as much as I did," she admitted, not sure what to think of something having drained her of blood. "Mostly…tired."

"I'd say this whole thing is tiring." Yang rolled her shoulders and neck as Blake pulled out a water bottle and mixed in an electrolyte packet. "Hitting that support beam sucked. A spider almost fell on me."

"Support beam?" Weiss stepped out and looked down to see a wooden beam nearly broken in half. The cave above it was spilling dirt, and the wood seemed to be breaking further. "Oh no."

Ruby looked down the cavern tunnel as well and gasped. "Hit the deck!"

The girls went into the room and hugged a wall. Seconds later, the crashing of stone on stone was heard and a rush of air and dirt was sent past the opening of the room as the ground shook. When things began to settle, they all headed back out and looked down to see several boulders had caved in, including one that seemed to be bigger than any two of them put together.

"Aw crap!" Yang complained. "Now we've got to dig out!"

"Not a good idea," Weiss warned her before walking up towards the cave in. "If we move too much of this, we could risk another, bigger cave-in. It wouldn't be a problem with something to stabilize things, but all we have on hand that could do that is my Semblance, and that would be a temporary measure."

"Then what do we do?" Blake asked, looking to Ruby after a second.

"Weiss knows more about caves and mining and stuff," the youngest of them pointed out. "What do you think, Weiss?"

The heiress smiled and looked back towards the darkness.

"We should see if there's any other way out. Sometimes, mines and caves, such as this one, have secondary exits in case of situations just like this. In fact, look at the settling dust." She pointed towards the dust still in the air, illuminated by torchlight, flowing down to the ground at an angle. "There's probably a slight draft in the direction of the exit."

"Okay, let's see if we can find a way out," Ruby agreed. The four of them continued down the tunnel, which seemed to wind its way around like a snake. With her natural night vision, Blake led them deeper into the cave, and after a few minutes of walking she turned her head around at a sound, and soon the other three heard it as well. It was a trickle, but it was unmistakably the sound of water flowing. At one turn, a slight stream of water flowed from slightly higher, cascading down the rock before pooling a bit at the bottom and then continued downhill with the next section of tunnel.

"Is this a good sign?" Ruby hopefully asked.

"It isn't bad." Blake squatted down to look at the place where the stream began. "Wherever this flows the water would have carved at the rock. It could lead outside to a creek or maybe a river, or it could lead to an underground reservoir." She stood up and looked back down the tunnel. "We'll just have to see."

They continued down further, a foul smell reaching their noses after a few minutes. They started cupping their faces or holding their noses against the stench, Ruby feeling a little nauseous from it. They began to pass by another cavern where flies were buzzing but stopped when they saw what was within. Piles and piles of bones lay inside, some picked clean while others were covered in fetid, rotted meat. Dotted among the bones were skulls of clearly human origin, along with a couple feline-shaped ones. At the top of the pile, though, were three 'fresher' bodies. One was heavily infested with maggots, slowly exposing the bone beneath to match the mass around them, another bloated disgustingly, looking like a balloon of filth in human-shape. The newest one looked as though he had just been added to the pile, a slight dry look to him and his neck missing a chunk.

The girls ran away from the dumping ground, trying not to gag and hack as they fled the horrid scene. There were some near trip-ups, but they managed to stay on their feet and kept going, stumbling away from the rotting carcasses until they could no longer smell the stench of rot behind them.

"Oh God! Oh God!" Yang got out as she tried to keep down her breakfast. "That was disgusting!"

"How many people were in there?" Ruby asked as she looked back a moment.

"I don't know," Weiss confessed. "There was no way to count. But it was-" She shivered at the memory of maggots crawling over teeth and through empty eye sockets. As she rubbed her arms, trying to keep out the thought of her almost succumbing to that same, horrible fate, she almost missed the sight of natural light up ahead. "Oh, thank the Gods! We're almost out."

Everyone muttered their relief as they made their way out, stepping out of the cave into a bit of forest with nearby mountains. Weiss winced at the sunlight, rubbing her eyes a bit as a feeling of wooziness overcame her. Ruby was by her side in an instant, helping her to sit on a stone and keep her steady while Blake fished out the bottle of electrolyte water she had prepared. The heiress began to drink it down, shading her eyes while looking over everything.

"Where are we?" she asked. Ruby looked around them, not sure herself, while Yang seemed to take a lookout position.

"Not sure. Don't worry. We'll find our way back to Rorichstead."

"It's Rorickstead," Weiss corrected her with a mumble. She smacked her lips after taking a sip of the water and sighed. "Let's just…move on."

Despite trying to find their way, the group was almost completely turned around by the exit area of the cave. They had managed to exit the forest and enter the plains area, which they knew Rorickstead was in. Following the road, however, didn't return them to the village. In fact, it brought them to a whole new landmark, a sort of stone pillar somewhere between twenty and thirty meters tall, with five five-foot-tall stones arranged around it. An old, worn banner blew through the wind, attached near the top. It didn't appear to be a ruin, so they guessed it was some sort of memorial or monument. The girls then set up camp against the stone outcropping nearby, as the sun was beginning to disappear in the distance. Weiss pored over the map as Yang tried to find a place to start a fire, trying to find out where they were.

"I think we went the wrong way," she concluded as the blonde started pushing large stones in a circle for a firepit. This caught the other girls' attentions, letting her continue. "If we had been anywhere north of Rorickstead, we would have run into it by now. And I know for a fact that we went south."

"So, we need to go north?" Yang suggested as she set down another stone for a seat.

"We could, but there's no telling how far we are from Rorickstead," Weiss explained while showing them the map. "The stretch below it is vaster than above it. We could be a full day away from Rorickstead now."

"What about here?" Ruby asked while pointing at another settlement.

"Northkeep," Weiss read, taking the map from Ruby and running her finger across it. "It could be closer or further, there's just no way to tell. But…we would be able to orient ourselves better if we found it. We'd have to go through the mountain pass here, which would be clearly visible if the map's even half-accurate."

"Plus, it's civilization," Yang added while rubbing her arms. "Not exactly looking forward to sleeping out in the cold tonight. Twice in a row would not be great."

"We could make that in a day, I believe." Weiss looked over to Ruby. "Well, what do you say?"

"Well…we're not in any rush to get back to Solitude," Ruby figured while rubbing her chin in thought. "We could see more of the area while getting our bearings. There may be even more opportunities there. We still aren't sure how much what's-his-name is going to give us for the amulet."

"Forget that, I wanna know what was up with that thing," Yang griped. Weiss shivered as she rubbed her neck where the two punctures had faded. "Did he know that was in there?"

"Maybe, maybe not." Ruby groaned and crossed her arms. "Seemed kinda fishy, though. From that…one room, we can tell lots of people went in there and didn't come out. We might have been the first ones he asked and everyone else went there for other reasons, or he kept asking people and no one was bringing back his amulet for reasons he didn't know. Though, I doubt he would have tried that many times…"

"Whatever it was, we'll get to the bottom of it," Blake promised. She'd finally gotten the kindling started and was trying to get the fire to grow.

"I just…wanna give him the benefit of the doubt. He didn't seem…malicious."

"His face was reptilian. He wasn't displaying much emotion at all," The Faunus said as she put on another dry log piece and poked the fire with a green stick.

"I can't imagine he had any reason to send people to die to a monster," Weiss spoke up. "The people of Rorickstead didn't seem to know what was going on either, and they lived near it. I think it might have been using the spiders as a cover."

"Whatever it was," Yang jumped in. "What was it? It definitely wasn't a Grimm. Everything else aside, it turned to dust, not…empty air. Take into account it was using a weapon and wearing clothes…"

"Some kind of body-possessing Grimm?" Ruby suggested. "Like a Geist for corpses?"

"No, we would've seen it exit," Weis pointed out. "Or there would've been some sign of it. I think…it was just a wholly new monster we've never seen before."

"Like those elf people, or the super Faunus," Yang suggested.

"Not Faunus," Blake tersely mumbled.

"I guess that makes sense," Ruby acquiesced. "We have run into some alien creatures. Trolls are definitely not normal. Frostbite spiders too."

"If this place has giant cephalopods, I'm punching my way back to Remnant," Yang promised with a tightened fist. The other girls laughed at that as the last vestige of the day sunk away.

Weiss decided to take first watch. She was tired, but something about the night felt a little re-energizing to her. Most of her watch saw her staring up at the moons and reading the book the Dunmer had given her. She was beginning to regret not getting his name. She also regretted not getting a little verbal assistance with her first steps in trying to learn 'magic'.

Weiss was finding it increasingly harder and harder to sweep away the existence of 'magic'. She tried rationalizing magicka as Aura, but going further into it seemed to contradict the idea. Magicka was described as being a natural force, like light and gravity, suffused into the air, earth, and water. Even ignoring the 'sun is a hole in the void of Oblivion leading to Aetherius' nonsense, she had to admit they at least seemed to solidly explain how magicka came from the sun and the stars. The fact it was supposed to be a form of energy made sense, scientifically speaking. Everything needed an energy source. Even Aura depended on the state of the body as much as the soul.

She was sure she was getting somewhere. Her hand felt hot. That was a good sign, right? She should be able to summon plumes of flame soon enough.

For some reason, the idea of flames pouring from her hands didn't seem so appealing now. Weiss reached up and brushed back some of her hair, feeling the sweat sticking to her bangs. She was then reminded of the bodily ache that had been slowly building through her.

"Weiss, you good?" she heard Yang ask and looked back to see the girl was up on schedule.

The heiress sighed. "To be honest, no. I feel dreadful."

"Yeah, you don't look so hot." Yang reached up and felt her forehead. "Correction, you are hot. Not good." Yang shook her head and pointed over to their packs. "There's some fever pills in the medkits. Go ahead and take a couple and get some sleep."

"Yeah, thanks." Weiss closed the book and headed over to find the medicine, cursing the fact that she was coming down with something else already. She swallowed the fever reducers with a swig of water then headed to her sleeping bag.

It was dark and cold, and something was winding its way around her. She scrambled for purchase, trying to drag herself up and away from whatever it was. She kept ahead of it, but it was always there, looking down on her and laughing. No matter how fast she went, she couldn't lose it, and she couldn't get to her feet. Other voices laughed at her as well, enjoying the fear and torment she was experiencing. As they lapped it up, she cried out for someone, anyone to save her.

"Weiss, you okay?" Ruby asked her partner after she sat with them to eat breakfast. She looked ill to anyone with eyes, and probably sounded like it to those who didn't.

"Didn't sleep well," she muttered, brushing off Ruby's concern while drinking the almost detestable instant campfire coffee. "I think I'm coming down with something."

"Crap, do you think it's some local disease?" Yang asked, her eyes slightly widened. "That might be what gets us: alien germs and our unprepared immune systems." Ruby gasped at that before fire seemed to shine behind her silver eyes.

"We better get to the town and get you some medicine!" she declared while hold her fist up in a determined look. "Let's get ready ASAP! Weiss, don't strain yourself!" Before the heiress could tell Ruby not to be overly worried, the younger girl quickly scarfed down the remainder of her food and set to packing. Yang and Blake went after her, leaving Weiss to finish her breakfast practically alone. She sighed good-naturedly and shook her head before focusing on finishing her food. Once she was done, she started packing as well. There wasn't much at that point, but she didn't want to feel like a burden. Intrinsically, she knew they wouldn't see it that way, but there was her personal peace of mind to worry over as well.

Soon, they set off, heading south towards a place they hoped would point them in the right direction.

The girls arrived at Northkeep just as the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon. A few hours before, they had passed between the mountains the map showed just after hitting a four-way crossing in the road. Weiss, luckily, kept them on track when Ruby almost led them to the east-bound road. Keep Inn had some vacancies, and they managed to get a room just before the shops closed, with Ruby rushing out to the apothecary, the place most likely to have medicine.

Storm clouds rolled over, having been distant when they were on the approach, and now they were pouring rain down in buckets, letting the girls know they had narrowly dodged a bullet there. Ruby returned in the thick of it, her hood pulled up to help keep herself from getting soaked. She then brought out a bottle and sighed sadly.

"This was all we could afford," she said sadly while handing the bottle over to Weiss, who looked it over curiously. "She called it a 'low-grade disease treatment' potion. Supposed to help fight off infections, but if we wanted anything more specific, we'd have to know the name of the disease or let her figure it out. But it wouldn't matter, because I asked how much 'cure' potions are, and the cheapest one is eighty septims." She sighed as she sat down at their table. "And I doubt it's Witless Pox."

"Someone having money troubles?" the dark-skinned bartender asked them. The four turned to her and she gave them a light smile. "We've all been there. Maybe I could give you a hand?"

Weiss' face became a little pensive and the others looked uncertain. Suddenly accepting charity wasn't automatically bad, but to do it when they weren't actually desperate was another thing. Ruby was sure any one of them could go out and make a bit of money if someone was willing to pay them for work. From the look on the innkeeper's face, she clearly understood their concerns.

"Oh, don't worry," she reassured them with a wave of her hand. "It's not a handout. I just need someone to deliver something for me to the inn at Helgen." She pulled up a small crate that rattled a bit on the inside, the chinking of glass heard from within.

Weiss hummed with uncertainty while checking their map. She saw Helgen labelled to the east of them. "That's…a day away if we leave first thing in the morning." A roll of thunder passed over them, letting them know the likelihood of that.

"Well, I can promise you a whole denar if you make the trip."

Weiss' eyes went wide at that while Ruby gained a thoughtful look.

"How much is a denar?" she asked, and her partner leaned over.

"One hundred septims," Weiss whispered.

"Oh, wow, uh…" Ruby took on a more thoughtful look before turning to her team. Blake and Yang both looked at Weiss, who still looked as if she was falling ill. For her part, Weiss was trying to resist the urge to haggle. She already knew this was charity disguised as a simple task, and pushing it when her well-being was on the line was not wise.

"Okay," the younger girl finally agreed. "We'll head over with it as soon as we can."

"Good deal. Vilod will give you what you're owed, just tell him it's from Nania. Here, I'll write up a note and leave it in the bottles for him to find." The woman then took a sheet of paper from a box along with a quill and inkwell. She quickly wrote up a message for her fellow inn keeper as a man a few shades darker than her walked up.

"Giving these girls some work, dear?"

"They need a little more than what we can give them for chopping wood, Alusan." They looked towards one of their windows being pattered by hard rain and both shared a smile. "Of course, no one's chopping wood now."

The man smiled at his wife as she set a denar on the dried note and folded it over the coin out of sight of the girls before setting it into the crate. The girls had an honest look about them that she felt she could trust. Despite their manner of dress, she could tell they were in a bad way. She didn't know the situation, but she had been at the business of innkeeping and bartending long enough to tell when someone needed a hand. She just hoped the situation with their sick member wasn't too dire. If nothing else, they'd get to Helgen and a priest would see to her, or they'd manage to get the right potion. Most diseases took a long time to become deadly, anyway, and the sick girl's condition didn't seem too bad yet. She should be right as rain in no time.

It was dark and cold, and something was winding its way around her. She scrambled for purchase, trying to drag herself up and away from whatever it was. She kept ahead of it, but it was always there, looking down on her and laughing. No matter how fast she went, she couldn't lose it, and she couldn't get to her feet. Other voices laughed at her as well, enjoying the fear and torment she was experiencing. As they lapped it up, she cried out for someone, anyone to save her.

No answer came, but instead the winding of digits and limbs were felt around her legs, dragging her back and into the cold. Slivers of something like creeping ice worked its way up her back, sinking into her skin with its unwanted embrace. The cold hands held her arms now, and she was screaming.

Team RWBY waited for the rain to let up, which took close to noon, before heading out to Helgen. As they hit the road, Ruby looked over their map before handing it over to Blake. Northkeep was a rather small settlement, tightly packed into a wall that once served as a fort, so it didn't take them long to exit and leave it behind.

"We may have to camp out at night, but luckily I've got a waterproof tent," Ruby told them. "You were right about being prepared, Weiss."

"Even I couldn't have predicted this," she grumbled, trying not to sound irate. The sun felt more blinding than normal to her, but luckily the storm was hiding it behind cloud cover half the time. She didn't really get to enjoy it, however, and instead was plagued by the constant fatigue and soreness flowing through her, not to mention the fever. Ruby had half-suggested that Weiss wait at Northkeep, but the heiress quickly talked her into letting her come, citing that if the treatment was in Helgen, then it would be more prudent for her to go there rather than wait on the others to make a round trip. More selfishly, she just wanted it to end as soon as possible, and if there was some form of "instant cure" that people seemed to profess existed for most diseases, then she wanted it the moment it was available.

"We're kinda unprepared for all of this," Yang admitted while putting her arms behind her head. "Big, mountainous land with monsters around every corner, medieval North Anima looking guys, walking reptiles, and variable cat people. Like a fantasy board game. All we need now is a dragon."

"Well, none of us are bards, so we'd have to fight it," Blake responded, smirking a little at the implied joke.

"Eh, my charisma score's high enough. I could pull it off."

Ruby started to make a sound of disgust, but it quickly morphed into laughter. Weiss look at them all in confusion.

"I don't get it," the blancette confessed.

"It's a rolling joke," Yang said.

"That explains nothing."

"Remind me to get a session of Cairns and Chimeras started when we get back," Yang said to her sister. "We need to give Weiss a crash course."

"Hopefully it turns out better than Remnant: the Game," the team leader responded with a chuckle.

"She purposefully confused me with that one!" Weiss accused while pointing towards the blonde. Yang defended herself, and the girls entered a short back and forth that was more playful than anything. As they rested for a short break, eating some tuna sandwiches that Blake threw together for them all, the cat-eared Faunus started looking around, her bow moving with the twitches of her ears. The others turned in the direction she was looking, and everyone tensed when she grabbed her weapons.

"What's up?" Ruby whispered to her as she readied Crescent Rose, a finger twitch away from deploying the scythe.

"Something's stalking towards us," she warned them. They followed her gaze and, for a moment, didn't see anything. However, they could all soon make out the details of a brown coat of fur approaching. Whatever it was noticed their alert stances and paused, then it rushed forward in a burst of movement and leaped the last twenty or so feet through the air. Yang's fist came around and knocked it away with a crunch, a snarling yelp coming from the creature, now revealed to be a feline with exposed incisors the size of small knives.

"The hell?!" she exclaimed before turning back to see three more incoming, though they stopped and began circling the four girls. One came near where its fellow had landed and sniffed at the downed cat. It then growled before letting out a sound between a cat's meow and a roar, then they all fled. The girls remained alert for a moment before Blake went over to the dead one and checked over it, the others moving around to look at the corpse from all angles

"I think you caved its chest in," she relayed to her partner. "The others must have thought twice when that one saw it was dead."

"I don't believe this," Weiss muttered while looking closely at the limp mouth of the dead feline. "Homotherium crenatidens."

"Gesundheit," Ruby told her, but Weiss shook her head.

"It's a saber-toothed cat," Weiss explained. "These things have been extinct on Remnant for ten thousand years."

"I thought the saber-toothed cats were smiledons," Yang commented, remembering her faint studies on Remnant's natural history.

"Those are the most famous, but there were several species. These were less well-known as they had smaller fangs, but still bigger than anything you'd find on an extant feline species on Remnant." Weiss prodded at the gums with a stick. "Why is this here, on an alien world?"

"I think we'll hurt ourselves thinking about it," Blake told her before standing up straight. "At least, those three won't come after us again. They're animals, but they aren't stupid. Still, we shouldn't stick around here. Let's move on."

"Right," Ruby agreed before looking at the carcass. "Should we leave it here?"

"It probably wouldn't be any good for eating," the Faunus explained before rubbing her chin. "But maybe the fur can get us a little money. Okay, I can skin it if we take a moment."

With a new pelt added to their inventory, Team RWBY continued along the road. Night started falling as they reached the point where the lake emptied itself into a river, camping near the rockface after deciding to not tempt the world to show them if it had lake monsters. It turned out the world was going to show them anyways with a couple of crabs larger than the sisters' dog. They were easily killed, but one had made a rip in a sleeping bag, which earned it a kick from Yang that split it in half.

"Stupid crabs," the blonde complained as Ruby sewed a patch in Yang's bag. While she was ripping the legs and claws off for food, the brawler was unable to hide the vindictiveness she felt in tearing the critters apart. Blake readied a pot with purified water and got out some butter from their stored food.

"Knew I wasn't overpacking."

"The crabbing industry must be a lot more dangerous here than we'd have thought," Ruby said before shaking out the fixed sleeping bag and handing it over to her sister. She then looked over to her sick friend and grimaced. "Hey Weiss, are you okay? You need anything?"

"Water," the heiress got out between winces of pain and discomfort. Parts of her felt as though they were being twisted and set on fire. While the sun's sinking away provided a modicum of relief, they couldn't let her get cold and so bundled her up. Her condition seemed to have deteriorated rapidly in just a couple of hours, and now Ruby was making plans to get her treatment at Helgen even if she had to 'borrow' it first and worry about paying back for it later. The leader returned with a drinking canteen and helped Weiss to get a few swallows down.

"Don't worry about taking a turn at watch tonight," Ruby assured her. "Well split it between the three of us. You just get some rest."

Weiss looked at her for a moment, wincing with pain as tears came unbidden. "Thank you," she got out.

"Don't mention it," Ruby told her while gently patting her arm. "Just lay down and relax. Let us know if you think you can eat anything." At Weiss' nod, Ruby went back to helping set up camp. The sick woman watched her leave and wiggled in her bundle of covers, trying to get as comfortable as she could, even as aches and fever plagued her.

It was dark and cold, and something was winding its way around her. She scrambled for purchase, trying to drag herself up and away from whatever it was. She kept ahead of it, but it was always there, looking down on her and laughing. No matter how fast she went, she couldn't lose it, and she couldn't get to her feet. Other voices laughed at her as well, enjoying the fear and torment she was experiencing. As they lapped it up, she cried out for someone, anyone to save her.

No answer came, but instead the winding of digits and limbs were felt around her legs, dragging her back and into the cold. Slivers of something like creeping ice worked its way up her back, sinking into her skin with its unwanted embrace. The cold hands held her arms now, and she was screaming.

She was lifted up, her struggles seemingly only serving to excite the limbs holding her in place, and her eyes beheld a pair of glowing, cold points of light. A smile stretched beneath them, teeth like needles the size of a man in mismatched rows revealed before her. A massive finger stretched out before her and came down, a gnarled claw coming for her face. She struggled and screamed, but could do nothing to move out of its path.

The tip of the claw touched her forehead, blood leaking down her face from the point of contact. A laugh like grating stone and billowing flames rang out around her.

"You're mine now, my child."

Weiss' body shook as she awoke for a brief moment. She tried to get up but felt restricted by the blankets wrapped around her as well as her own weakness. Her heart raced faster and faster and images of demonic faces flashed across her eyes. She tried to scream, but the sound wouldn't come to her. As her friends noticed her thrashing, she went still as her throat seemed to lock up. No breath reached her as her eyes fluttered close and she rattled, her body finally going still as her heart stopped.

12th/13th of Last Seed