Things You Wrote On the Walls

two years ago

Emerald

It takes one month, three weeks, six days.

She meets her in an alleyway, under a deceptively cheerful summer sun. Watching, like an eye, a silent sentinel. The shadows from the buildings loom, menacing; sirens wail in the distance. It’s all familiar. This is not what frightens her— it’s all easy territory.

But the girl in the red dress with the amused amber eyes is not.

There’s a glint of hot silver, the arch of dual swords over her shoulder. Emerald doesn’t think she’s a Huntress— she would have apprehended her for thievery— but she is perhaps as entirely dangerous, if not more so. There’s a presence about her, an amused coldness like a cat watching its prey, that sets Emerald on edge; somehow, the weapons on her back are not the inspiration of fear.

“How did you do that?” she asks, her voice calm as waters with poisonous monsters slithering below the surface.

Emerald goes to move, her teeth bared in an almost lion-like snarl. The girl follows her with an easy sidestep. Threatening. Forceful. Emerald’s hands go to the revolvers strapped on her hips— it’s a last resort, but most muggers back down quickly when they see the threat of violence in her eyes— but the other girl laughs; she is not an ordinary mugger and she is not most.

“Don’t,” she says, a smile in her voice. “Unless, of course, you want them to hear you.” 

Grimacing, Emerald retreats. The stolen ring is snug in her pocket but it burns, as if a homing signal. I need to get out of here — sell this thing — get back to safety.

“What do you want?” Emerald snaps, hearing the panicked voices nearing, alarms growing louder, escalating into the day. I have to —

“I’ve already told you,” the girl says, taking a few steps forward, the picture of poise and control. A glass anklet shifts with her steps: one, two—  “And I don’t like repeating myself.” 

“I didn’t do anything,” Emerald snarls, growing desperate. Her voice is too unsteady and too youthful to be threatening. She sounds like exactly what she is: afraid. “Leave me alone!”

The amber-eyed girl doesn’t, and she does not back down. That would be easy, and nothing is ever easy for Emerald. “I know my fair share of liars and thieves. Stealing is an art of patience, coordination, and sometimes, sleight of hand. But you did not steal the ring in your pocket.”

Emerald’s eyes widen against her will, and one hand creeps to feel the slight bulge of the ring at her hip. How did she—?

“You took it right before the jeweler’s eyes. And he smiled.”

Emerald’s surprise burns away to a grim suspicion. This girl is not a Huntress. But just as safety is within law, there is danger within chaos.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Cinder,” the girl says with a smile devoid of light, of life, “and I have a proposition for you.”

There is a small house, tucked deep in the mountains, in the wilderness of Remnant where the Grimm do not stray. It’s deceptively peaceful, with a rill meandering across the front lawn, a sloping forest shielding it from prying eyes. It’s too calm to speak of the evil that lives within it.

Cinder says it’s not a home; she regards it as a means to an end, as she does everything.

Sometimes she returns at the stroke of midnight, blood on her clothes, eyes always burning, burning, like two sockets of fire. Reading her is like trying to read a language she has never encountered. But she transcends the usual humanity that Emerald knows from her victims: possesses none of the greed, ambition, hatred, or even sorrow. She is calm, always calm, always damnably assured.

Emerald does not have to be affable, or disarmingly friendly. Cinder sees through lies like they’re translucent.

But she bleeds and is angry at the world, and Emerald knows both are things she shares. As odd as it seems, Cinder is human, in the smallest ways it should count: a wound on her throat, an arrow to the heart. There are thin, whiplike scars all over her back, her shoulders; marked up in silver, painted in red; a painting once beautiful, now vandalized.

But despite it all, sometimes Cinder doesn’t seem human at all. When she’s sitting in silence, there’s always a burning hunger behind her eyes, a flickering, furious anger that is reminiscent of a fire blazing out of control, killing everyone in its path. 

But everything monster was once human; every demon was once an angel. And she was once innocent; now she is a fragment of a person; her hunger has burned out her humanity, as poison burns the life from the blood. 

Emerald has never shared her goals. There’s a mutual distrust between them; they are a means to an end, for the present, two allies embracing each other while holding a knife to the other’s back, ready to betray and kill. She despises most of Remnant, of course, for its softness and haughtiness, but that doesn’t mean she wants to see it swallowed in darkness.

Not yet.

She wakes her in the middle of the night, when the moon is a slice of darkness, vacant from the sky. The light is gone, but her eyes glow with a cruel light like a raging conflagration.

“Wake, and follow me,” she says, darkly, walking out into the forest, the dual swords flashing like stars in the dark. Emerald proceeds after her. Follows. Has only ever been able to walk in her wake of ashes.

Cinder stops after a good mile of silent trekking, moving with a silent grace that is oddly chilling, not a leaf disturbed in her movement. They stop at the lip of a ravine. In the brush and trees below, a line of Grimm churns ceaselessly through the mud. But these are not the common breeds — not the Ursai or King Taijitus or even Beowolves; these are wrong, reeking of misery and pain. Their pronged faces shimmer in the dark, narrowed eyes hard with the suppressed light of violence. The claws on their paws are long and could kill a man with a single swipe. New breeds, born from the darkness.

Cinder turns to Emerald and smiles. It is not a thing of comfort; it looks as though it has been sliced into her face, dark, cold, and quietly amused, the smile of someone who would watch a person drown and not lift a finger to help.

“What are those?” Emerald’s voice is hoarse and horrified.

“Catalysts,” Cinder says, watching them; the crimson glow of the Grimm’s eyes is not unlike her own. “Mankind fights these monsters so blindly that we forget that there is a part of them within us. I have no great love for the monsters, but I have no fondness lost on the kingdoms, either. Both are forgetful, mindless. And they need to be burned away, and there will be a phoenix to rise from the ashes of their destruction. A better kingdom, and a better world.”   

“I— I don’t… catalysts?”

“You will question everything you know,” Cinder says softly, turning and blinking, a slow blink like a snake rising, uncoiling. “But I need a promise from you, Emerald Sustrai. Of obedience, and loyalty.”

“This is impossible,” Emerald protests. “I—”

“I saved you once,” Cinder snarls, eyes glowing, the first real, human anger coloring her tone. “I will not offer such kindness again. It is a grace I extend to no one else. Do you not see how foolish you would be to refuse it? It is your loyalty to my cause, to be given pardon to walk safely through the flames to the other side, or to be thrown back into the world that damned you — a world that is fated to burn and die.”

Emerald breathes, in the night and the starlight and freedom— God, just freedom— for once. And she chooses.

“Yes,” she says softly. “I promise.”

After one of her unexplained disappearances, she staggers out from the forest one night into the little safe-house, bleeding and limping. Her swords are stained with red; she looks bone-tired, her eyes cast with shadow like a flame snuffed to embers. “Cinder,” Emerald chokes, because she’s never seen anyone get the better of her before. “You’re—”

“The cost of information is high, but nothing that is out of hand,” she says, and there is triumph in her voice, seeming very wrong against the ragged appearance she sports. “These wounds are nothing. We move tomorrow to Mistral.”

“What are you doing? What — what is all this for?” Emerald asks, desperate, as the stars dawn into a sky like a translucent dome turned on its side. Cinder turns, her face like a grinning skull’s in the darkness— disembodied, grim. There is not the anger in her eyes that Emerald expects — not even the longing. There is merely a cold, flat, frightening blankness, and her voice is tired, aching. She seems to be half-talking to herself, listening to a voice on the wind, in her mind.

“Not enough,” she says, softly. “It’s never enough.”

She turns, disappears into the shadows, as much a part of them as they are of her. Emerald does not follow, and it feels like a shard has been driven into her throat as she looks up at all the constellations she has never really seen before now.

It’s been a week. It feels like she’s aged a year, an age, a lifetime in between the then and the now; the gray and the void.

They find themselves at a pub in Mistral, crawling with drunkards and leering lowlifes. It brings back memories for Emerald. She’s well-trained in the art of charming and stealing, of caressing a person’s ego while the other hand swipes them for all they have.

The bartender is cleaning off shot glasses with a rag just as filthy as the earthy floor, and yet Cinder stalks through it all with a precision and grace of chilled focus. The crowd parts effortlessly around them, silent and watching: once they get close enough to see the look in Cinder’s eyes, the look at Emerald is slowly adopting herself— a stare that says no matter how cruel you believe yourself to be, I’m worse— they veer away. If she had been told before now that people had auras that were of personality and not of strength, Emerald wouldn’t believe it. Now she’s learned not to write off anything as impossible.

She stops at the counter, pinning him with her golden glare. Demanding answers as she did with Emerald, refusing any no’s. “I have intelligence that Marcus Black lives in this area. I wish to take on an apprentice from him.”

He swallows. One eyebrow is kind of raised and his mouth is slightly open as if he is perpetually on the verge of saying something, but never quite gets around to it. “Ma’am…?”

Cinder’s mouth curves in a lovely, cold smile, her eyes dark, looped with fire. “Marcus Black, my good sir. I believe I asked you a question. Where is he?”

The man slowly sets the shot glass down and bows his head nervously. “He lives in the mountains to the east, with his son. At the peak in a little cottage. Ma’am— he’s dangerous, that one—” 

The smile drops, replaced with a grim coldness like ice, of a predator scenting its prey. Her scorn is palpable. “Your concern is admirable, but unnecessary. That will be all, thank you. Come, Emerald,” she says with a touch of imperiousness before turning, shearing through the crowd with her head high, steps never faltering.

The mountains rear against the sky like serrated teeth, jagged and cruel. Emerald cannot imagine anyone living in them, but this is an assassin they are after, and Cinder only would go after those as morally depraved as she is. But Emerald cannot judge. Her life of thievery and cruelty attests to that.

Night is falling as the two of them reach the peak, the stars as bright as a handful of diamonds scattered across a dark cloth. Spidery shadows shimmer across the ground, the moonlight feeble. Emerald thinks they’re going to go right up to the peak, and to the assassin’s front door, but Cinder stops at the very edge of the coniferous forest, head tilted, before a disconcerting smile— not a cold smirk, but a grin— curves her face. When they both stop behind a broad oak tree, remaining in the shadows, Emerald sees why.

There is a house on the peak. But it is burning with an inferno, swallowed by tinder and licking flame. The dark shadows of what once was a home shimmer blackly within the light, and there are two figures locked in an intense struggle in front of the flame, blood soaking the ground to black. There’s an older man with white hair, savagely striking out at the younger boy fighting him.

“Father and son,” Cinder observes with a detached amusement, the flickering of firelight dancing with a cruel glee in her eyes. “How quickly do the bonds of familial affection unravel under too much pressure, as fire tries gold…”

Emerald’s breath catches as the son kicks out, seeing the wilting bandages circling his legs; they are crimson and awful. The man lets out a scream of agony that is bloodcurdling even from this distance. “Cinder, you can’t — the assassin — “

“The assassin,” she breathes, as soft and crackling as a spark uncurling on the air, “no. Not him. He is too savage, too sly, not subtle enough. There will be one winner of this battle, and it is clear who the victor will be. Thought itself turns energy, and his hate has become a living creature. Now the son turns on his father.”

As Emerald watches, the gray-eyed son lashes out with a cry of hatred, his leg punching outward, belting his father in the chest with a blow that makes Emerald cringe. Marcus Black’s eyes fly wide, dark and stunned and looped in gray, before he staggers back, sinks to his knees, and crumples onto his face. Blood pools out around his chest, trickling from his slack mouth.

He does not move again.

Emerald watches one man die, cut down by his son. Cinder looks at the corpse with something bordering contempt, before she emerges from the trees and starts up the path. After a pause — if Emerald follows Cinder now, she knows she cannot ever return to her old life — before she looks at the body, sees the flat, blank eyes, and something in her veins grows cold.

She follows Cinder.

The son of Black has turned and stumbled away from his father’s corpse, coughing and retching horribly. His legs are shaking, blood rusting them; his cheekbone is darkening and swelling with a bruise. He looks up, his lip curling in defiance, as Cinder nears him. But then he swallows and drops his fists as Emerald treads up silently behind her. He is in no shape to fight the both of them.

“What are you looking at?” he shouts, his voice dark and furious.

“I’m looking for Marcus Black,” Cinder says to the boy, warily, and Emerald realizes with a jolt of electric surprise that this gray-eyed boy has managed to do the impossible: surprise Cinder, throw off her plans.

The boy coughs out a laugh of horrible amusement, mixed with a dark fury in his eyes. “You want my father? There you go.” He flings out a bloody hand towards the facedown corpse, naked pain written across his face. “He’s— was— a bastard, got what he had coming—"

“That’s the assassin,” Emerald whispers. Overpowered and betrayed by his own flesh and blood.

“And you’re his son,” Cinder says to the boy, who doesn’t acknowledge the statement, merely wiping a thin trail of blood from his split lip. “We watched your fight from the treeline. It would seem he has taught you well.”

“Guess so,” he growls with a cold look to the cooling body. “Guess he taught me a little too well.”

Cinder goes in for the kill, stepping delicately across the tussocks of grass, and Emerald realizes why she came, and her eyes widen as she looks between the two of them, the pictures of opposites: silver and ash, poise and fury, broken and controlled. “What is your name?”

The boy looks up. There is ash on his face, white and fine, and sparks in his eyes. Emerald sees him realize that he is in the presence of danger made flesh. She sees the insolence leave his face, and sees fear enter his eyes in its place. “Mercury.”

Cinder circles him, her eyes shifting and changing and burning, living gold like the fire that devours the peak. “Mercury,” she breathes in a half-hiss, half-purr. “Tell me, are you anything like your father?”

Mercury’s grin is surely painful, a rictus of blood and pearl. “He is dead, and I am alive. He was a damned fool and I was smarter than he was, in the end.”

“Come with me,” she says, “come with me, and you will never be underestimated again.”

Emerald tastes bitterness, bile, on the back of her throat: come with me, and you will never be hungry again.

Thank you…

Mercury’s eyes narrow at her, a sharp contrast of steel against gold. “Tempting,” he says in a growl, “but what’s in it for me?”

Emerald’s anger rises inside of her as she looks back at the corpse on the ground. If he would kill his own father so easily, why would he not do the same to us? “We don’t need him,” Emerald says, her voice sharp in the crackle and pop of the dying embers. “Everything was going fine!”

Cinder moves faster than the eye can follow, a blur of red. Pain explodes across Emerald’s left cheek, white and blinding. Her head snaps around and she’s dimly aware that a cry leaves her, before the world shifts back into focus, and Cinder’s hand is lowering, her eyes hotter and more furiously angry than the fire that lives around them. “Do not mistake your place,” she snarls. 

Emerald bows her head. “Yes, ma’am.”

Mercury’s grinning at the exchange, a grin devoid of kindness. Emerald does not give him— or her— the satisfaction of showing her pain.

When he agrees to join up with them, her anger is more bitter than the taste of ash on the air.

Cinder needs allies, people who are willing to get their hands dirty while she crafts the plans. Like a puppeteer, or a spider spinning its deadly web.

Mercury quotes things his father has said, often, which Emerald finds to be sickening. Even she knows that lack of remorse is not a good thing. But it seems to amuse Cinder, if anything.

Mercury leads them to a man named Torchwick. He’s nothing altogether impressive or unique, but there is a cunningness and cruelty in him — something vulpine and cold lurking behind his eyes— that makes Cinder ally herself with him. Emerald doesn’t like him. Doesn’t like the lecherous smirks he seems to always wear, doesn’t like the way he takes pleasure at the prospect of unnecessary violence and pain, and most of all, doesn’t like the way he places himself above her and Mercury.

But there is always pain in the recollection and she is too far ensnared to back out now.

It’s a pain in the ass to trudge through miles of barren wasteland, crawling with Grimm, to get to the territory of the White Fang. Emerald thinks that it seems fundamentally wrong to see Cinder, of all people, forced to beg — but something in her tone, some power, is persuasive enough, and the White Fang lackeys agree to allow them an audience with the leader. Adam Taurus, the leader alongside Ayran, they say. That’s his name, the revered secondary leader who brought them power and respect. The adoration in their eyes seems familiar— until Emerald realizes that their blind worship is not unlike her own.

She expects a stupid, hulking brute who will agree immediately to ally with him. Another mindless lackey, except perhaps with more physical prowess, and people to back him up. What she expects could not be farther from the truth.

They are taken to a beige tent, the front flap held open by a brutish guard. He leers at them as they walk in, heads bowed. Cinder proceeds to the center, and she indicates with a jerk of her head that Emerald and Mercury should remain behind her. Mercury looks unnerved at the sight of the White Fang’s leader, and as he turns around, Emerald sees why.

Adam’s eyes, through the mask, glitter with intelligence and stealthy cunningness. He stands out from the others, and there are hard, angular lines to his face, speaking of cruel wisdom, of years of battle. This is not a mindless animal. This is a man with a mind and plots of his own, and one side of his mouth lifts in a silent smirk at them.

Cinder seems taken aback, too, but she quickly gathers herself as he waits silently, glowering at them.

“So, let me get this straight,” he growls, waving a hand for the other lackeys to leave. “You could have gone to anyone for help. You could have conducted a deal with a gang leader, paid off a Hunstmen that had strayed from their righteous path,” he spits out the words, derogatory, “but instead, you choose to seek an audience with me.” He juts his head forward, eyes flaring darkly, even through the mask. The painted red swirls look like fresh blood.

Cinder’s voice is as smooth as glass. “You’re the one we need.Your skill. Your ability to lead those beneath you. You're an exceptionally valuable man, Adam. And we've put a lot of thought into—”

Emerald winces as he interrupts her with a harsh anger in his tone. “Then you're clearly not thinking straight! If you truly understood me, you would know coming here was a mistake. The White Fang is not an organization for hire. We are not people for you to make into monsters once more. We're a force of revolution!”

Adam’s fist was slices through the air and Mercury exchanges a look of amused contempt with her. She grins, hiding it smoothly as a guard glares at her, before looking back. Cinder is unmistakably tense, her shoulderblades pronounced, muscles rippling under her skin. But she speaks calmly still, voice as unruffled as stone. “I believe our plan will be beneficial for all parties involved.”

Adam is silent, all calmness gone. He paces restlessly, prowling like a cat, as Cinder watches him warily.

“I have... an associate in Vale,” she says, though there is reluctance in her tone: Emerald and Mercury both know that this is her trump card, and that she’s obviously displeased not to have his immediate agreement. “He and I are working on a revolution of our own. But we can't do it without your forces. We need—”

Adam’s head snaps up, a scowl twisting his face. “No. What you need is to leave.” Cinder’s back straightens, and even from the behind, Emerald can sense her anger, like it’s scorching the air. “You’re asking my men to die for your cause — a human cause.” His hand finds the hilt of his sword, eyes narrow as slits. “That is not an idea I’m willing to entertain, for you, or for anyone.”

Cinder forces herself to bow with a clipped, “very well,” and Emerald shivers, despite herself, at the cold fury in her eyes as her master turns around and exits the tent, each step like a gunshot. She doesn’t know much about her, but one thing has always been painfully clear: when Cinder wants something, she does not give up, and she does not take no for an answer. They will return here, that much is certain. But the real question is who will be hurt in the path for triumph.

When Cinder tells them about the guardians, the Maidens, it’s Mercury who is doubtful. But Emerald has seen enough of the world to know that no rule of the universe holds true forever. And if magic exists, so be it. Cinder’s hellbent determination to seize the power is a plan that finally makes sense to Emerald. Go in, attack, take it, and leave. It should be simple.

But it’s Cinder and it’s her hunger and greed: nothing is ever simple, nothing is ever enough.

She lays out a plan to attack, every detail counted, every option carefully considered and expelled. There is no way, she says. No way the Maiden can escape. Not her, with her power, or even with her tricks and magic.

Emerald stands in the middle of a broad, beaten path, a fence that has long since seen its better days. The trees rustle and breathe in the wind, a far-off rumble of thunder shivering through the air; the sun is gone, the sky leeched of color.

Amber approaches on a snowy-white stallion, the click of hooves echoing in the still air. She will be at her peak of power. This is Autumn’s element; the power of the third season. She will try to control the elements until the elements control her, Emerald thinks bitterly. This is truly darkness’s season.

She closes her eyes, conjuring up an image in her head of a little girl, of a dream she once held close, of who she could have been many years ago. When she opens them, she can see both reality— and the illusion—  as Amber dismounts her horse and heads towards the false image, totally unsuspecting.

Resentment bubbles up, hot and choking, in Emerald’s chest. She doesn’t know Amber, but in that moment, her scruples about this act of terror are buried. People like this Maiden— they’re all willing to help the innocent, the weak, the sick— they are willing to help a child. But she was a child once, not who she is now, and nobody helped her, nobody cared. Not a single person since Cinder has ever extended a hand to her, taken pity on her plights: she hates that it still matters, that someone should care — but there it is. Cinder saw her when no one else did.

She shifts her foot backward for better balance, yanking her revolvers from their holsters. Amber looks up straightaway, and Emerald capitalizes on the moment, springing forward and jamming her thumbs on the triggers. Green light flashes out, but Amber’s hood falls back to reveal a cold, determined face. Emerald almost falters— the shade of her eyes is so like Cinder’s— before she hardens her heart and shoots on.

Amber’s hand flashes out, casting an unforgiving wind whisking towards her. Emerald’s eyes widen before it slams into her, knocking her backward; as she scrambles back to her feet, she sees Mercury fly down from the sky and crash into Amber. 

With unbelievable agility, she deflects his charge and he shoots backward, using the momentum to propel himself from a crumbling fence pillar and back towards Amber. Her jaws gape in a soundless cry of defiance, fire blossoming and streaming from her staff.

But Emerald knows what she does not: Mercury lets his legs take the brunt of the damage. For his legs are not flesh and blood, but machinery and unfeeling gears. Charred metal flashes like a dying star, and he kicks her square in the chest. She flies back with a shriek, hitting the ground hard, and Emerald uses the moment to jump down and smash her heels into Amber’s chest. Something crunches, and Mercury follows up on her attack, leaving her lying limp as a rag-doll on the ground.

But then her head lifts.

Fire, as fierce and unforgiving as the sun, blazes from her eyes, the color of it blinding. Emerald looks away, but the afterimage is seared into her eyes in colors of violet and blue. She is borne into the air on wind and air, and Emerald shields her eyes from the lash of the gale. She sees lightning flash against her eyelids, spears of heavenly fire forking down from the purpling sky.

A spear bigger than the rest darts down like a snake towards the two of them. Emerald barely has time to shove off with her feet, landing clumsily as fire erupts behind her, white hot and searing.

As she dances in a kind of pirouette, avoiding the strikes of white fire, Emerald feels a tug in her veins, a prickle between her shoulder blades, and relief engulfs her. Cinder, she thinks, her eyes shifting over and back: sure enough, there she is, her amber eyes cool and amused at the Maiden’s extravagant display of power.

Emerald fires at Amber, and Mercury does, too, both of them trying to provide cover until the last second. But their shots bounce off harmlessly; horror envelopes her as Amber raises her hand, calling on Nature itself.

Leaves flock up to her bidding, a swirling, roaring maelstrom of paradoxically beautiful green. As Emerald watches, dumbfounded, they turn to cold ice, arrowheads of white, raining down upon her.

She is unable to withhold a shriek of pain as razor tips tear into her flesh, leaving berry-bright droplets of blood in their wake. 

But then it stops. Emerald peels open her eyes to see Amber whirl around, casting a seething sphere of fire towards— Cinder!

She’s running in a sharp, determined stride, her face like the diving pronouncing of an angel. She soars over the fireball with ease, landing with a skid of billowing dirt. Emerald circles back around as Cinder uses her semblance to turn the dirt to jagged glass shards, sending them in a hail of deadly projectiles at Amber. She falls from the sky with a howl of anger and agony, hitting the ground hard, the fire leaving her eyes. Emerald does not waste a moment; she creeps into Amber’s unraveling mind, spinning an illusion there. But a surge of determination throws her out, and Amber’s eyes grow round as moons as she sees Cinder hurtling towards her, her swords slicing through the air.

But, impossibly, Amber deflects the blast, kicking her away. Cinder goes crashing backward with a grunt of pain, and Emerald and Mercury exchange glances before rushing forward in her stead.

Amber punches Mercury hard, and he goes flying back with a yell of pain. It’s up to Emerald, then, to distract the fallen Maiden as Cinder makes her move, and her heart is thundering like a waterfall in her veins as the vengeful Amber glares at her from fire-filled eyes. As she kicks Emerald away, her blow weak and faltering, three arrows hurtle down around her with shrill wails. She only has time to cast a terrified look towards Cinder before they explode, and she screams, an awful scream of agony that Emerald feels resonate right down to her chilled heart.

Amber is down, blood matting her head, wounds gashing her body. There’s an awful burn on her side, the clothes charred and eaten away like acid. Emerald feels a pang of relief to not have to fight her anymore, with such savage brutality. She looks down for the count.

But as they approach, flanking Cinder on either side, Amber lets out a defiant yell, her hand swiping out and sending the strongest blast of wind yet. Emerald goes flying backward before hitting the ground hard. She curls and rolls, but it’s not enough, and her side explodes in agony. Something must be wounded. Blood fills her mouth as she bites down hard with the impact, flesh turning ragged and metallic with blood.

She staggers back to her feet, throwing a weak illusion of herself to the left. But then Amber snarls and hurls a fireball at the illusion, blasting it to pieces of smoke, and Emerald only has time to gape before a fireball smashes into her stomach and she’s knocked the ground, a ceaseless whine of agony thrumming through her.

She looks up.

Amber is standing over her, and there is a look in her eyes that Emerald knows too well. The look of fury and hatred. The look that she used to get all the time on the streets, the look of killing and darkness and all the places of the night that do not allow mercy. She sees a shaft of sunlight angle down from the clouds and strike the glittering jewel on Amber’s staff, and she closes her eyes: it is a last image of beauty before she is killed.

She hears the staff raised, hears it hurtling down—

and then it buries itself in the ground beside her head, and Amber shrieks in pain. Emerald’s heart stops as she cracks open an eye to see Amber slump forward, an arrow protruding from between her shoulderblades. Blood begins to ooze out around the bristling shaft. Beyond her, Cinder is lowering her bow with a look of fury on her face.

Cinder just saved her life and put her in a debt she will never be able to repay.

Unsteadily, Emerald hauls herself to her feet as Mercury trots over, his gray eyes narrowed. “You okay?” he says out of the corner of his mouth, and she frowns.

“I’ll manage.”

Together, they each hook an arm under Amber’s and force her up. Cinder approaches at a leisurely saunter, pulling on a glittering white glove with a pattern splashed on it, like fresh blood. Her grin is lazy and dangerous, and Amber recoils with fear at the sight.

As Cinder poises the glove in front of her face, a shrill whine hums through the air before a dark Portal opens, a Grimm crawling out. Amber knows, must know, what it is, for she goes taut, straining backward.

“Please— please don’t,” she gasps, eyes white and rolling with fear. Cinder merely bends her face closer, eyes always cold as flint.

“Your time is over. Let this be a message to the poor fools who put all their faith in you, and now will know you failed them, Autumn,” she whispers, before the Grimm clicks its pincers menacingly, dark strands flying out and splattering on the Maiden’s face. She lets out a grunting shriek of agony before she collapses forward with a gut-wrenching scream of pain, shaking; Emerald’s lip curls in a snarl.

Then wind explodes around them. Emerald nearly staggers, but she grips Amber’s shoulder hard enough to draw blood, and the Maiden arches, a long, low groan of pain falling from her. Mercury is grinning fiercely, gray eyes cold and hard as he stares at the arrow protruding from Amber’s back. A glow comes from Amber’s eyes, hot and fiery.

Cinder freezes before her head goes back, body arching like her bow, and a veil of flame shimmers through her veins, up her arm: golden bones connected by tendons of fire.

Amber howls, then, a scream that is unable to be articulated by the sheer amount of agony that throbs within it, a scream like her soul is being severed in two. Cinder’s laugh is lost in the sudden crackle of flame, and she looks up, gray clouds casting a net of shadow across her face.

And then her eyes catch light.

Her eyes are gold. They always have been, but Emerald swears something has changed now, that the gold within them lives andburns. Sweat shines along her cheekbones, and she’s breathing hard as Amber slackens, all the fight draining from her.

Emerald’s caught in a stupefied sort of horror, because in that moment, she can sense, more than see, the last vestiges of humanity being burnt out of Cinder. There is light flowing into her, but it is only darkness that she is gaining.

Then there’s the distant sound of footsteps before silver, bright and blinding, flashes down before her and throws Cinder back, tendrils of light dissipating into the air with fainting hisses. Emerald springs back as a sword swings out at her viciously, a man with hard angry eyes catching Amber as she falls. Then she’s flipping backward through the air, flinging out an illusion as he turns his gaze towards Cinder: blurring the air, blurring the mind.

But then Cinder’s mouth is curving in the cold, catlike smile, her left eye alive with fire, looking not human — no — but something seraphic and untouchable.

Then darkness descends upon her and she is gone.

Emerald comes to consciousness slowly. There’s a cold weight against her back, sunlight glaring against her eyelids. When she blinks, the world swings into focus: she is in an alleyway.

Her heart thumps— the irony is not lost on her— but then she sees Mercury sitting on a crate with a cocky smirk on his face; he’s eating an apple, and he offers one to her. His pantlegs are still scorched away; there are char marks on his prosthetics.

“No thanks,” she says, still narrowing her eyes at the stained walls looming around them.

“Suit yourself,” he shrugs, swallowing.

“Where is Cinder?”

Another noisy bite. Mercury swallows and purses his lips thoughtfully. “Think she went to go nab some Haven uniforms. Plan two’s in action, supposedly.”

Emerald shivers and pulls up a desecrated crate from her right, sitting atop it. Mercury doesn’t look fazed at the injuries slashed over his skin, though hers still sting like fury. “That was a harder fight then I expected it to be.”

Mercury grins around the red of the apple; it looks like blood. “Three versus one? Give me a break, Emerald, no one is that strong, not even some mythical guardian. Weird powers or not, we would have won eventually.”

Emerald frowns at the ground, nudging a glinting shard of glass with her toe. It sparks like fire in the light. “But she didn’t get all of the powers, did she? Cinder, I mean.”

Mercury’s smirk slowly fades into true exhaustion, brows settling together in a hard line of trepidation. “No. That bastard, that Huntsman— I guess broke off the connection before she got ‘em all. And she’s acting really weird now, too. She seemed… irritated. More liable to snap out. Good thing you were still out cold before she left, or she would’ve probably yelled at you, too.” Mercury glances at his arm and Emerald notices that there is a bloody gash on his skin— one that he didn’t get in the fight with Amber.

Emerald takes the apple Mercury lobs her way and bites into it, not really noticing the bleak irony again: her hunger is mental at this point. A dull ache… though for what, she cannot name.

“Excuse you,” Mercury grunts, breaking into her thoughts. “I asked you a question, thief-girl.”

“That’s not my name,” she growls, nerves stretched to the breaking point. He flicks a strand of metallic hair from his eyes.

“Yeah, whatever. How did Cinder meet you?”

Emerald eyes him suspiciously, trying to determine what ulterior motive he could possibly have, but he seems genuine. “I was in a lot of trouble. Pickings were lean, and the whole city was on the lookout. I… got a ring with my semblance and she caught me in an alley. Recruited me then.” Her teeth clench as he tosses the core of the apple behind him, still ripe with food; it bounces away and lands in shadow. “And you weren’t supposed to be joining us.”

“Grudge on me all you like,” he says with an bitter scowl that makes her want to punch him in the nose. “It’s not like you or I are saints.” 

Cinder does manage to acquire three Haven uniforms, a handsome scarlet-patterned arrangement, accented with darker colors. Mercury looks like he’s swallowing a large, unpleasant pill as he pulls his on; Emerald doubts he has ever worn anything that can be considered formal, by any means. But she herself is much more comfortable when she dons a new outfit — this isn’t her old green camisole and dark khakis, but a new plated armor that wraps around her torso, with holsters for her revolvers. There is the pattern of a gem between the shoulderblades. Fitting, and it makes her feel more dangerous— more in charge of her own fate.

It takes a lot of planning and lot of trial and error to make their way, undetected, into Beacon, and even then— even as the eyes of the others pass over her— she feels exposed and vulnerable. But they do make it. And Emerald feels the ice in her veins grow a bit colder with every step that takes her deeper into the twisting labyrinth of the school.

She falls asleep that night to darkness and wind.

Emerald is dreaming. She is on the shore of a lake webbed in blue ice, the frozen landscape smoking with cold. She expels a breath of swirling mist; frost furs the ground in sparkling nebulas.

There is a girl in the center of the lake. Emerald squints and blinks; she is young and slender. There are white wings protruding from her back, flying wide and high, shimmering in a lattice of ice. A girl with gray eyes, not unlike Mercury’s, but hers are strong and determined, her face still soft with hope, with love — things that have so long been denied to Emerald, emotions she has written off as the brothers of weakness. 

Emerald’s heart jumps as she sees her master on the lake, fire flickering in her wake. Ice and fire, together.

Cinder is there, turning away, always turning away, her shining eyes always hidden by flame or mist or her own dark hair. And she, too, is winged, dark feathers tinged with blood and ice. As Emerald watches, the gray-eyed girl and Cinder begin fighting; Emerald cries out as they struggle on the frozen lake, moving faster than her eyes can follow, two blurs of darkness and light. Locked in lethal embraces, attacking and springing away, they rise in the air. Emerald has never seen anyone match Cinder; in her sleep, she shudders.

The girl with the white wings knocks Cinder out of the sky. Before Emerald can move, a storm carries her away into darkness, into a land of swirling pillars of fire, of screaming and cold red eyes, of a place where the light cannot find her.

She wakes.

Her hand flies to her throat, where her heartbeat is loud and rushing. On the other side of the room, Mercury’s hair is metallic in the moonlight, strands of starlight; Cinder is gone. Emerald remembers blood and darkness and fire and she shivers. The ice in her veins has only been growing colder and colder.

Come with me, and you’ll never be hungry again.

But she is. This is not a physical hunger; this is a gnawing sense of dread at her heart. She is in the heart of good, here, at Beacon. But she feels so wrong.

But in the end, it is always better to be the killer than to be killed; fifteen blows to the back of the head are always better with the lights off.

She will regret. She will want. She will hate. She will, she will, she will.

But it’s much too late to turn back now, and Emerald rolls over, trying to ignore the desperately burning pressure behind her eyes.

As sleep rises up to claim her, she runs gratefully into the darkness.