Prologue - Forever Fall
Yet my wings were not meant for such a flight
Except that then my mind was struck by lightning
Through which my longing was at last fulfilled
Here powers failed my high imagination:
But by now my desire and will were turned,
like a balanced wheel rotated evenly
By the love that moves the sun and the other stars.
— dante, inferno- movement iii
All around Blake, there is blood.
It runs in the streets like water. It is absolutely and utterly inescapable, incongruous with the meticulous surroundings that swirl out around her; the shrieks of the injured and dying ring in the air. It’s a macabre scene. But she’s unmoved. She stands, unscathed, alone— in the midst of a reeking scarlet tide that swirls around towers made of etched, grisly bone, whispering hungrily as it laps at her feet. She can’t breathe, can’t move; the corpses that float in the sea of red glare at her with dead, glazed, accusatory eyes.
“You are a part of this bloodshed, Blake.” A resonating voice edged with a taunting sneer floats from behind her: she cannot move, knows that if she does, she will see faces of the dead. And yet—
They’re all around her, these arcane ghosts she’s spent her life chasing. The corpses are not what she is scared of. She has seen death and slaughter before. It is the souls that linger in the air, tangible and paramount, that wrench a visceral fear from deep within her.
She sees her mother’s dead body whipped past in the rank deluge and she almost throws up, nausea rising up inside her throat with an acrid burn: her mother’s pale hair is tangled in rusty blood, the remains of her eyes wide open; glassy orbs of lightless, clouded amber. Her skin is streaked with scarlet, berry drops of blood— her last moments drawn out, tormented, and then all the others who have been slaughtered—
“Blake, you’re not paying attention. I need you to listen.”
Adam’s gruff voice drew her from dark memories of even darker nightmares. He was glaring at her with a mixture of annoyance and concern, one hand raking through his ruffled red hair, making it stand up in spiky tufts.
“Sorry,” she muttered, hardly meaning it. Adam set down his garnet-studded chalice, gazing at her through hooded dark eyes over his steepled fingers. He was her partner; she knew him better than anyone— his feelings, thoughts. Right now, she could only get a murky, careful cloudiness from him— he was deliberately guarded, hiding something from her. Lately, she had been getting that: along with a hot, vibrant edge of reckless anger. Ayran had changed him, and their Bond was crumbling. His Aura wasn’t a warm, orange-touched red anymore. It was darker, malevolent, like blood.
And hers… hers was the iridescent edge of twilight, barely there, like it always was.
“All day,” he said, emphasizing his words as he passed one hand over the ebony horns that rucked out over his head, “you’ve been fluctuating between a damned quietness and clipped words. I know you; you’re hiding something.”
“I’m hiding something, Adam?” Her words were disbelieving, but her tone was sharp with accusation, lashing like a whip. Instantly, his expression shut down into a blank coolness, but his eyes burned, blazing with thorn-sharp disapproval.
“Are you insinuating something, Belladonna?”
She hated when he called her that. It was his way of expressing his displeasure with her. Of digging a knife between her shoulderblades, and twisting it in. Moreover, she knew it was in the dwindling list of things he’d ever call her, because she was well on a path to cut all ties— a road she couldn’t turn back on.
He had no clue.
“No,” she growled, letting her temper fan into a fire, flaring white-hot inside of her veins like an electric wire. “Maybe I’m wondering why we’re still being monsters when you’ve insisted we aren’t.” Her last words were punctuated with a bite of anger, and his mask of disaffected coolness slipped as he faltered.
“Why?” There was note of incredulity in his voice as he drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. “Why do you think, Blake? All these years have passed with little change! We’ve done hardly anything. Humans don’t see us as equals. They still use us to work for them and they beat up those who stand up to their cruelty. There’s no impunity with them! None of them are stopping and no one is helping us!” The last sentence was delivered with volume and she flinched.
She bowed her head, a docile gesture, but defiance was thrumming through her, and she heard him snort before slamming his chair back and stalking from the room with a longlegged stride.
As soon as the door had slammed behind him, she let her head fall forward, despair filling her chest.
“You sent for us, Lord Ayran?”
Adam’s voice was husky with deference, and the leader of the White Fang rose from his throne of bones. It was fused together in an intricate design— dripping femurs, tibias. Skulls crowned the crest of the throne, and Ayran rose as they approached.
The White Fang’s Faunus leader and overlord was not someone to be trifled with. He was a tall, tall Faunus, broad as an oak tree, with huge shoulders corded with wiry muscle, his hair a curling mass of coppery-black tresses. There was perpetually a mad gleam in his eye, and scars puckered his throat, suggesting that someone had tried and failed to kill him. Dark, scrolling tattoos twined all over his bulging arms. His face was angular— beautiful, even, in the way that sharks and panthers were beautiful. His torn, notched animal ears— scarred from fights— pricked as he looked at Adam and Blake; she could see his sharp fangs shine as his lips drew back in a twisted, grimacing grin. They seemed almost permanently stained with a reddish hue of blood. His pupils were ringed with a corona of hauntingly bright, jaded amber that glittered with just a shadow of menace— they were beseeching, supplicating, and that was why he was so charismatic. He was deceitful, formidable, but with a pretty face like his, he could win over almost anyone.
“Ah, my two favorite fighters return.” He stepped down from his throne, a disconcerting smile still pulling his lips up in a twist, though his eyes glinted with fastidious distaste. Blake repressed a shudder as he silkily wove through them, resisting the urge to flee. She’d liked Julian, the old White Fang overlord, much, much better. “And both of your pretty faces intact, to boot. How considerate. Taurus.” His eyes sharpened, returning to Adam. “Taurus, Taurus, Taurus. My second in command. I am pleased with your performances as of late.”
Hatred blazed in Blake’s chest as she remembered Ayran commanding Adam to murder a Schnee Dust Company corporate— and it was snuffed out as she remembered the proud, arrogant gleam in Adam’s eyes after he had slit the man’s throat. You’re both monsters, she thought fiercely. Monsters.
“Belladonna,” Ayran purred. “Little kitty-cat, my darling… today, you shall prove your prowess. I have a mission for you two. A secret one.” He shifted, his demeanor switching from dangerously playful to cold cruelty. His eyes flickered with shadows, turning from two crystal rings of emerald and amber to a shark’s predatory gaze. “If any of the White Fang hears of this, you will both be slain. Executed. Is that clear?”
“Crystal, my Lord,” Blake said, struggling to keep the growl of loathing from her tone. Ayran’s eyes flashed— green, amber— but he didn’t comment on her insubordination.
“Yes, Lord Ayran. We understand.” Adam bowed his head, but when he looked up, his eyes shone with an adoration that made Blake want to throw up.
“Where are we going?” She asked instead, pulling Gambol Shroud closer and eyeing the manic gleam in Ayran’s pupils with a considerable amount of wariness.
“I’m so pleased you asked,” he said with a lecherous smirk. “In an hour, a train sets off from Schnee Company headquarters, and it cuts right through Forever Fall. It’s loaded with as much dust as it can hold. Enough to last us for months, you see. And it’s guarded heavily, as our recent… ambushes have set the humans on their alert.” His voice dripped with disdain on the word human, and he passed a tongue thoughtfully over his fangs, before smiling. “But you two have proved yourselves time and time again. I have no doubt that you can handle a few faulty guards that James Ironwood has conjured up.”
“Yes, sir,” Blake and Adam said in the same monotonous voice, before bowing their heads. Ayran shook his head, lanky curls falling down to shield a scar that puckered his temple.
“Go now,” the Lord of the White Fang rumbled. “And pay careful heed to this: should you fail, you could lose all.” He turned before they could say anything, stepping onto the dais, and vanished behind his lectern of bones.
“Dammit, Blake.” Adam said harshly, anger in his voice, as soon as he’d gone from their view. He whirled on her. “Why do you have to bait him like that?”
“I can’t help it. Vicious bureaucrats get under my skin.”
His voice was seething. “Even so—“
She held up a hand, anger still prickling her heart. “Don’t, Adam. Let’s go.”
She sheathed Gambol Shroud, swinging herself up to the windows that arched on the high, shadowy walls. It was beginning to turn to dusk, she thought, a beautiful hue of colors splashed across the sky: gold, amber, and flame. The sun sank in a brilliant ball of light, the heart of silence, and she remained crouched on the windowsill for a heartbeat, nostalgia sweeping over her in a drowning wave.
“Move along, Blake,” Adam’s annoyed voice drifted up to her. “We haven’t got a lot of time.”
She unlatched the window with a decisive click and jumped out, falling as Adam had taught her so long ago: letting her body float down as gently as if she were ash sifting away on the wind. She landed with barely a whisper of grass, and Adam came down, completely silent, behind her.
“Forever Fall, he said,” Adam observed. “Should we split up? We’d cover more ground that way—“
“Fine by me,” she said shortly, relieved to get away from him. “If you find it, come get me. Vice versa.”
He nodded curtly before turning and springing off into the forests with a burst of crimson trailing from his wake. She turned, eyes traveling up the dilapidated, corrugated sides of the warehouse that served as the White Fang’s base.
With a final glance at her home that was now an empty shell that didn’t deserve to be called as such, she turned and shot like an arrow into the whispering forest.
Forever Fall was true to its name: it was pure autumn, down to the smell of woodsmoke that faintly touched the breeze. Blake’s chest heaved, and she trembled— from cold or something else, she wasn’t sure. The distant shrieks of Grimm wavered through the air and she looked up, to the halo of red leaves that waved gently in the wind, framing the shard of ice-blue sky like tiny banners.
She could sense Adam— he was her partner, she could always sense him— as a dark force quivering in the edges of her mind. He was searching for the train tracks, and he thought she was too: in reality, she was was hunched in on herself, on a cracked boulder. The grass around her was withered, dry. Stray ants scuttled around the cracks, and the wind whistled lowly through the trees.
She was anxious, a tangled ball of emotions warring inside of her: dread, hatred, misery, thrill. But she didn’t know which feelings were hers, and which ones were Adam’s. The hatred and thrill were his, she assumed, but the dread and misery were solely her own.
“Blake. It’s time.”
Her shoulders stiffened as his rough rasp growled through the air. Hating how youthful— weak, even— her voice was, she quietly responded, “okay.”
The breeze seemed icier as she raced after him, stirring up great drifts of dust, and puffs of leaves in their wake. The trees whispered of their passing. Blake felt unwelcome and afraid. Adam— she could feel him, taut and eager to please Ayran— and she quickly backpedaled out of the Bond, her heart thudding a tattoo against her ribs.
A precipice soon loomed ahead. A great sea of crimson stretched fathomlessly beyond, leaves melding like a rippling sea. The sky was close, close enough that she felt that if she reached out, she could pluck a shard of azure from the distance. The distant, throaty whistle of a Schnee train echoed through the air. In the distance, Blake saw a Nevermore wheeling against the sky, and she swallowed— streets teeming with blood like water— before hurtling after Adam, outrunning all but her thoughts.
She blasted off the cliff edge after him, feeling wind run its icy fingers through her hair, snatching her up and thrusting her, spinning her end over end like a leaf buffeted by wind until she landed with a thump on the shuddering metal of the train car. Adam was already slinking to the dark, raised rectangle of the entrance, the embossed emblem upon his back catching the sun’s dying light; it raced like a running spark of fire along his hair.
Blake stared out into the forest for a moment, her hair tossed out past her shoulders as the vagrant train whistled eerily. I’ll wreck this if I have to, she promised herself grimly, before turning back to Adam. All of it.
Wordlessly, he popped it open; with a curling, disdainful smirk towards the waving trees, he dropped inside, soundlessly as a cat. His eyes glowed through the dark as she followed, thumping silently beside him.
Red bars of light shattered the darkness, and Blake swore— an epithet that Adam let out a dry laugh at— before an AK-130 Android stepped forward with a hollow clunk, red beamed eyes staring at them.
“Looks like we’re gonna be doing this the hard way,” he snarled, but there was glee thrumming like a pulse from him, his eyes glittering with the cold, savage joy of battle. Then, she saw the hardness of Ayran in him— the feral, vulpine viciousness that belied the kind mentor he had once been.
The Androids all turned on, a red light slowly filling the traincar, turning Adam to blood-red. Blake forced her chilling certainty down and smiled, allowing— for the last time— the compelling fire of the White Fang glory to flood her, the high adrenaline of sparring and battles. “Don’t be so dramatic,” she purred, and they slid together, like two puzzle pieces: back to back, defending each other. For the last time, she drew out Gambol Shroud, feeling Adam— cold certainty, grim determination, dark beauty— fill her.
”Intruder,” the Android clicked. “Identify yourself.”
She felt Adam smirk through the darkness before he lunged— lightning fast, a razor slice in the dark— and broke the Android in two.
After that, things blurred in the fire of battle; everything slowing to the space between heartbeats. She spun up into the air, flipping end over end with shadows blotting the air around her; she slashed and whirled and dove, untouched, aiding Adam and helping alike, until they had annihilated every last one of them into curled chunks of ruined metal and shattered glass.
Adam exploded out of the freight car and onto the roof, where dusk had truly fallen, the air turning to cold. He cursed loudly as he saw a horde of Androids running flat-out towards them, metal making a clamoring din, their blades extended. In the failing light, it looked like they were singing with teardrops of fire, light racing along every blade.
“Let’s do this!” Adam shouted, before springing forward and laying into an Android. Blake followed, flipping into the air, leaving shadows and displaced air behind as she diverted all her anger, all her emotion into the fight, feeling the flow of energy through hers and Adam’s Bond exert itself in the humming of the air.
The Androids lay, decimated, in what could have been merely moments or days; Adam hardly stopped to ruffle his hair before he was plunging into a second freight car, and she followed, flicking one ear irritably as darkness closed around her once more.
This car was vacant, empty except for a large, faintly glowing box that was wedged in a corner of the corrugated space. Adam opened it, examining the contents before a humorless grin crooked his face. He let it fall closed with a tinny clank.
“Perfect. Move up to the next car,” he demanded. “I’ll set the charges.”
Blake stared blankly at him, feeling his breathless energy— slaughter, she thought hopelessly. That’s what he wants to do… “What about the crew members?
Menace entered his voice, tone rumbling to growl of displeasure. In that moment, he had never looked more like Ayran, she thought, resolve burning to steel. “What about them?”
An earthshaking crash rang out behind them, shattering the silence as a low hum shivered under their feet, and a Spider Droid dropped from the walls, clicking its pincers with menacing intent. Adam swore, jerking his head so the Grimm mask fell somberly over his eyes. He threw a wild-eyed look at her before advancing on it, his weapons extended.
“Adam,” Blake pleaded, anxious, but he had already pounced with a roar of unadulterated rage. She stared— dumbstruck— as he flipped and whirled in a tawny glow of fury, his Aura pulsing in time with his strikes, the screeches of metal only countered by beams of white-tinged azure exploding and rocketing, crazily flying blue shafts of light. She hurled herself into the fight, swearing profusely as the Droid effortlessly sent her flying, skidding against the grooved floor. She yelped in agony. Ayran, she thought dizzily, he never told us it would be like this—
“Blake!” Adam cried, his voice lost in a yowl of pain as the Droid hurled him and he went thwack against the wallwith a sickening crunching noise. Fury condensing like a sun in her chest before expanding and exploding out, filling her veins with thrilling fire, she flew at the Droid—
and it knocked her flat, and she coughed as two clicking iron pincers moved towards her with lethal intent. “We need to get out of here!” she called, voice raw with the clouds of dust that had been shaken into the air.
And then Adam was there, sheltering her in his arms with worry etched on his face as he scuttled backward. “Stay with me,” he breathed, before bursting into the cool dusk night.
The Droid sprang out after them, landing with a snarling, hissing clatter of steel on the top of the freight train. Smoke blew over Blake in an acrid, stinging deluge, blotting out the failing light as red lanced through her vision. Adam set her down— none too gently— and clambered backward, Wilt glowing a malicious scarlet. “Buy me some time!” he shouted at her, his voice gravelly with pain and frustration.
She stared in disbelief, Gambol Shroud in her bleeding, chafed palm. “Are you sure?” The cold metal felt good against her skin, and she glanced back at the howling Spider Droid, something tightening in her chest as Adam crouched— she remembered the dreams, of raining ash and bloated corpses and frothing blood and the miasma of reeking demise— and Adam turned an enraged expression on her, searing and seething, furious.
“Do it!” he snarled at her, voice crackling with lightning, livid. Wheeling around, she vaulted herself forward— feet slamming down— careened towards the Droid, a grunt of exertion huffing out of her as she spun around, fighting her last, leaving shadows all around her. Time faded to a distant hum— it was only the pattern of strike, counterattack, block and defense. It seemed impervious to her strikes, and she threw herself backward, skidding to a halt behind Adam. He glanced at her before screeching, “move!”
An icy coldness flooding her veins, she turned— the forest was rushing past, whispering, blurred and indistinct as it passed too quickly for her to pick out any single detail— and leaped the abyss to the next freight car. Whipping a wild-eyed gaze past herself, she saw Adam, concentrating a fierce white-hot ball between his palms. Horror broke over her as it shot towards the Droid with a swipe of Adam’s sword, exploding it in a fearsome shriek of groaning metal that burst into an inferno of red, rubble and debris falling to the ground. He laughed, a horrible rasp of imperious arrogance, the cackle he’d uttered after he had killed.
Adam turned as if nothing inconsequential had occurred, and Blake rose, emotion thrumming through her. She saw Adam watch her quizzically over the gap that seemed like miles before realization crashed over his face.
He reached out, two fingers extended in a plea, his wretched, burning onyx eyes on her. Only on her, and she felt a wave of electric energy surge through their Bond, so powerful she almost fell backward. They were lion’s eyes, burning and deadly and beautiful like the very first time she had ever seen him, like the iridescent shimmer of flames, turning tawny in the light like two twin fires burning through the dark. She was him in that moment, feeling his utter disbelief and then— a wave of wrenching sadness and pain, seeing herself, a lanky dark Faunus with terribly devastated eyes and blood staining her, drifting away into the darkness.
“Goodbye,” she whispered, before Gambol Shroud was swinging down and severing the connection between the cable cars, and tears stung her eyes. His expression shattered into raw pain as a chasm opened between them, dark and uncrossable.
She saw the light in his eyes die to a shadow.
And then he was gone, gone, gone, the boy that had meant more to her than anything. The train continued on silent tracks, the forest watching her with cold eyes.
And she was drawn into the blood red forest, leaving her utterly, utterly alone.