章 195: Dragon My Feet (RWBY SI as a Dragon) by Gforce1000
Words: 54k+
Link:
-https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/18208
Get Ready for Depravity Mc is A Drake Type Dragon sı and he and summer are both steamy 😊
Chapter 1: The Fifth Goddamn Floor
And now this is getting its own thread. I'd like to say that I'm on something of a roll, but really I think it's more that a lot of older projects have finally ticked over to having enough chapters to warrant this.
Dragon My Feet Chapter 1: The Fifth Goddamn Floor.
I turn the faucet on half-way and begin to scrub almost frantically, splashing a bit of soapy water over the edge of the tiny sink onto the grimy tiles of the public bathroom. Three minutes for the bathroom, six to get across campus, ten until my next class. Doable, but I still curse past me for not thinking this through every day. I straighten from the sink, rolling my shoulders because these damn buildings were not made with people my height in mind, and catch sight of myself in the mirror. I'll need to trim my beard soon, hopefully the clippers don't have too much rust on them-
I stop, staring at the mirror, all thoughts of my next class or shaving forgotten. Then I turn and look behind me.
Spoiler: hi
[img: https://i.imgur.com/snNDrEp.jpg]
"Honk," the truck beeps quietly, almost apologetically. Its wheels twist from side to side on the tile floor like a toddler caught stealing from the cookie jar, and something occurs to me.
"But, we're on the fifth floor-"
WHAM
It would be a Mercedes, wouldn't it? Fuck, those would have been much better last words.
Ow.
My everything.
My bones hurt. Am I sick? Damned relatives and their damned children with their damned plagues….
I roll over with a groan, shoving clumps of the blanket off of me. An icy breeze lances through the gaps and into my sides. Must have left the window open again.
…
Clumps?
"Gyah-ha!"
Dirt and rocks go flying as I lurch upwards, limbs flailing wildly. I try to stand, lose my balance immediately, and wind up sprawled in the dirt. And now that's my pride bruised as well as my everything else.
You know what, I'm just going to lie here and hurt for a minute or two. Don't mind me.
'Here' appears to be the bottom of a small crater. I can see a ring of thick pine trees rising above the edge of it, their thick coats dappled with snow.
Oh, I'm outside. And it's really, really cold. That means I'm going to have to move, doesn't it?
Fuuuuuuck. I liked wallowing in my misery.
I slam my hands on the cold, damp earth beneath me and heave myself up onto my hands and knees with a groan. Even my face feels swollen and stiff. Goddamn it, I feel like I've been hit by a truck. Which… which… is true.
I blink as the memory sinks in, staring at the ground. A pair of thick, dagger-tipped talons covered in thick blue scales swim into focus instead of hands.
I seize up, staring blankly at the talons denting the packed mud in front of me. They are mine. I know this with a sort of deep-seated certainty that I had never felt before. Oh, so is that what proprioception feels like?
-what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck-
I turn my head to look at my tail, a long coil of glittering blue scales tipped with a three-sided club tapering into a needle-sharp spike.
-why does it have a fucking shiv!? What the hell happened to m-
clang
Something light but large rams into me, and the sudden impact on my shoulder rocks me to the side. Damp earth parts between my fingers as I instinctively dig in with my talons. The only thing I can compare the sensation to is getting a yoga ball thrown at me without a warning.
I turn to look. Two flat pools of glowing red hate set in bleached bone stare back at me. A line of black, viscous slime drools out from between the stained fangs clamped onto my shoulder.
The words 'whoa,' 'holy shit,' and 'fuck' jam together in my throat and fuse into what I can only assume is a very girlish scream. I flinch back from the thing gnawing on me, causing a shrill squeal of metal on bone to fill the air as my scales are torn from its jaws. The monster-what else could it be?- falls nearly flat on its face from the suddenness of the motion, barely catching itself on spindly black arms dotted with spikes of gleaming bone. The face with its hollow red eyes never angles away from me.
Nope. Nope nope nope, so much NOPE all aboard the NOPETRAINTOFUCKTHATVILLEWHYAREMYLASTTHOUGHTSMEMES AGAIN
I scramble backwards, tripping over my own tail and nearly falling ass over elbows in the process. The thing straightens with an explosive, spidery convulsion that makes me want to vomit. I reach the wall of the crater and cower back into it, whimpering as a jagged snarl tears through the clearing, clutching at my undoubtedly mangled shoulder. It doesn't hurt like I expect it to. Shit, am I going into shock?
… how does shock work again?
The creature releases a chilling howl and lunges at me with a wide but far too thin claw. I throw my arm up into its path and flinch back reflexively-!
Another shrill squeal pierces the air as the black nails skate across the scales of my forearm, the sound punctuated with a sharp crack one of the nails breaks off and bounces to the crater floor. It felt a bit like being hit with a pool noodle.
My hand, the one that I had been pressing against my shoulder a second ago, has no blood on it.
"Well," I say, but the words come out as incoherent rumbling.
What? Is that- is that my voice!?
The thing tries another swipe at me, and through blind luck I manage to pre-empt it by swinging my scaled forearm into its chest. It goes flying twelve feet until it hits the wall of the crater and immediately begins to stand up again, eyes blazing and long, dog-like ears swiveling towards me.
"Will you fuck off a moment and let me think?" I snap at the demon-dog thing.
Hang on-
The wolf-thing charges again, derailing that train of thought. The fear has rather cooled off by this point, partly because it can't really do anything to me and partly because it's being a little asshole. And I never have liked being interrupted.
For only the second time in my life, I lose my temper.
I slug the monstrous dog across the jaw hard enough to send it back into the wall of the crater. Four points of sharp discomfort flare across my palm, and I open my hand to see small drops of red on my nails.
Ow, right, claws. Well, if that's the case…
I take a step, try to stand too far up, and hunch back down again with a wince as my back screams in protest.
Motherfucker but that's unpleasant.
I take another step, faster than the first, and then a third that's faster still. Everything new about this my body, from the range of motion in my back legs to the twisting weight of my tail, flows together in my brain and I pounce.
The monster is just beginning to right itself when I land on its back with all four sets of talons at once and slam it back down into the mud. A flash of unthinking reflex has me grab its exposed spine in my teeth and yank to the right in a single, fluid motion, grinding the bony spikes along its neck into powder with my back teeth.
I rip my head back, flipping the delicious chunk of bone-studded meat in my jaws into the air, and then damn near choke to death on it when my brain catches up to me and demands to know what exactly the fuck I think I'm doing.
I don't wanna eat monstery meat!
The realization comes too late, and the chunk of flesh ends up slipping down my throat despite my best efforts. There's a funny grinding and crunching sensation in my throat that I can't quite place and an alarmingly comforting warmth in my chest, but none of the pain I expected from swallowing spikes like that thing has.
"That was disgusting," I mutter to myself. The sound is so far off of what I expect that I flinch a little. It doesn't stop me from glancing back at the body.
It was really tasty- no! No more eating monsters! Look at it, it's dissolving now, what the fuck is that going to do in… my…
I turn my head to really look at the monster. Sure enough, the featureless red mass inside the creature is sublimating into black smoke around the ragged puncture wounds from my talons and the gaping hole in its neck. Well, I suppose that tears it. I just ate a Grimm.
I'm… not entirely sure what to do with that information, I was just being dramat-
A growl reaches my ears. I look down at the motionless corpse for a moment. Another growl sounds and I look up to see a another Beowolf crouching at the edge of the crater, fur bristling and parted jaws drooling black slime.
I don't know what it is, exactly, but something in its posture pisses me off. I can feel my hackles rising just looking at it. Then a second one pops up over the edge of the crater.
"Fuck off now, or I'll have you."
And a third.
Ah.
The Beowolf I'm holding by the feet howls again as the top of its head collides with another monster's jaw and breaks it with a resounding crack. Splinters of bone spray from the impact, dripping dark flesh flying out in graceful spirals as they spin through the air.
As it turns out? This whole 'moving battle against a horde of monsters' business is pretty easy when you're a giant invulnerable reptilian killing machine. I suppose it comes with the name really. Can't have a killing machine that can't kill stuff, it'd be like a toaster that froze things.
The Beowolf to my right- my, there are a lot of them, aren't there?- stumbles slightly as a particularly eager specimen scrambles up onto its back and leaps at me with its teeth bared. I spin to swing Clubby III into its face and let go just after impact, allowing the tangle of black fur and white bone to sail off into the forest trailing twin enraged howls.
So ends Clubby III. I bring an open, clawed hand down on the back of the staggering Beowolf that had been used as an impromptu springboard and wrap my fingers around his partially-exposed spine. Long live Clubby IV!
I'm not sure how I know how to fight like this. I could call it instinct but there aren't any jarring DO THIS NOW instincts like you read about, I'm certainly angry about getting jumped but there's no inner monster raging at the world separate from myself. I just see what's going on and… do.
A Beowolf behind me rears up to swing at my back, and with a sharp flick I stab through its throat and up into its skull with my tail spike. Handy, that thing. It helps that these Grimm are so predictable, as they almost always attack my back the moment I turn away from them, but the fact that I could see him doing it with only a slight turn of my head….
It really does suggest that there's something fucky about my field of vision. I'll need to look into that when I'm not- oh fuck off.
Clubby IV's tenure comes to an abrupt end when I use him to crush another, smaller Beowolf that had been trying to claw at my face into the dirt and end up… pulping… his middle a bit around my fist. He always was a bit of a disappointment, really.
I straighten and turn to meet the Beowolf I assume is attacking me from behind, but for the first time in what feels like several minutes I'm not immediately beset by another snarling monster. How novel.
The Beowolves aren't gone, though. A ring of crouched, panting beasts surrounds me, their eyes glittering red in bleached white skulls. There are… a dozen, maybe eighteen of them? Saying I could simply fight my way out feels like it should be hubristic but honestly I'm not seeing a reason that I can't at the moment….
Where is the alpha? From what I understand Grimm simply aren't smart enough to hold back like this normally, they need to be fairly old to make decisions like that and direct lesser Grimm to obey them. So where is the fucker?
I turn my head, scanning the line of Beowolves for one that looks especially big and spiky. None of them really stand out, honestly. There's a lot more variation in their bone patterns than you see on the show, but I suppose that was just a budget thi- !
The alpha Beowolf leaps at my back over the line of his minions, teeth bared and oversized claws outstretched. I flick my tail-spike at the unarmored darkness of his throat to end him before he can cause too much trouble.
The monster twists in midair and there's a harsh shriek as the tip of my tail leaves a deep gouge in the bone of his jaw before skittering off over his shoulder, taking a chunk out of his ear on the way. And then he's far too close for me to turn in time.
Ah, nuts.
The impact of the alpha Beowolf does what none of his minions have been able to and unbalances me. As I stumble, I get a spectacular God-knows-how-many-degrees view of a dozen or so Beowolves lunging at me like a pod of rednecks going after a freshly-opened Chinese buffet.
Huh. So that's what it feels like-
The tide of monsters crashes down on me and I fall to the earth under it. Ink-black fur obscurs my vision and dozens of razor-sharp points spark off of my scaled sides. I can feel them all despite the scales, a swarm of teeth and claws driving at every inch of my skin, hunting for an opening, a weak point in my scales that will let them dig through and-
A sound I can't put a name to leaves my throat- a snarl and shriek folded into one- and I flail my arms and tail out to try and clear some of the bastards off of me. A smooth skull meets the palm of my hand and I slam it into the ground hard enough that I feel dirt between my fingers.
Right. Calm. Calm. They still can't hurt me, they still can't survive any hits. Nothing has changed except for the fact that they've gotten much closer and thoroughly heebied my jeebies. Focus.
I plant my feet under me and shove.
Grimm go flying as I hurl the ones on top of my back away with the sudden movement, and I begin driving my armored claws down onto the exposed backs and shoulders of the creatures still clustered around me. Flesh tears and bones shatter under my talons, and I can't help but laugh a little- if anything, they've made this easier by all getting in range at once.
The alpha pops up out of the crowd in a flash of movement and rakes a set of wicked claws down the right side of my face and over my eye. And for the first time in this body I hurt.
I stagger back shrieking, my hand flying to my face as a wave of piercing agony slams into my brain. The other Grimm take the opportunity to swarm me again, claws rattling off of my hide until one of the little demons reaches up high enough to snag the edge of the wound on my face and send another spike of pain through me as it rips at the exposed flesh. The alpha howls, the sound distant and tinny through the throbbing pain coming from my fucking eye. But I hear it all the same.
And I know it. My good eye- the one not cradled behind my armored hand- picks him out from the crowd with ease.
I see the plan now. Distract me with the little ones so that the alpha, the only one that can really do damage, can pick me apart and open up gaps in my defenses for the others. Very wolf-like, and it makes me wonder how much of the animal they're formed after influences Grimm. But only the alpha can hurt me.
It needs to die.
I don't roar or howl or anything like that. I lunge at the beast with a sharp huff of air and both front talons outstretched like a diving hawk's. The Grimm snaps out of his howl and swings at where my face will be, intent on clawing at my other eye. I go under, dipping down onto all fours and redoubling the lunge into a full tackle.
Since that first Beowolf, I haven't bitten any of them. The instinct to rip and swallow is the only new reflex that has felt alien so far, and I don't really trust myself to be able to spit the chunks of Grimm I take out in time. But I'm coming in too low and too fast to claw at this one, so I'll make an exception.
Because fuck you, you furry prick.
My teeth clamp down on his thigh right above the knee and I roll, pitching both of us over and crushing more than one of the smaller Grimm beneath our combined bulk as I twist and thrash and do my very best to remember what crocodiles did next.
So help me if a hippo Grimm shows up I'm going to fucking lodge a complaint with the management.
There's a loud snap and squelch that heralds the weight in my jaws suddenly getting much lighter. I keep rolling until I'm on my feet and hurl the detached leg aside, bowling over an unfortunate Beowolf.
And fuck you as well.
There are far fewer of them now than there were when I last took count, but I don't want to waste time getting the number exactly. The alpha is more important.
Black and red ichor oozes from the stump of its left leg, and one of its arms is bent at a right angle partway down the forearm. Sizzling red eyes bore into me as it begins to crawl in my direction with its two working limbs. Hmm. Too damaged to be clever now, or just out of options?
I cross the distance between us in three loping strides, bulling through a pair of Beowolves that try to attack me and outright trampling another underfoot. No distractions, this time.
I stomp down on his good arm with one of my large, tyrannosaur-like back feet hard enough that I feel it buckle under the impact and bite down through the bone plating on the back of his neck. A massive chunk of Grimm flesh comes free in my jaws and I pull back to whip it over my shoulder before looking back down at the alpha.
He glares at me. I bite down again, and this time I thrash and tear until his head comes off entirely. Only then do I look up.
The other Beowolves have reverted to their earlier behavior, spread out from me in a rough circle and trying to edge around into my blindspot. There are less than ten of them now. My eye is still throbbing and it's definitely a weak spot now, but I'm fairly sure that I can handle this with the alpha-
A growl from the forest behind me gets my attention, and I twist my head to the left to look back over my shoulder. Something taller and far more bulky than the Beowolves is stepping out of the treeline, shouldering one of the larger saplings out of its way with a loud crack.
An Ursa. Minor, I think. I remember them being stronger and tougher than the Beowolves, but not as fast. A second form follows it out of the woods, and then a third. I suppose the fighting probably got their attention.
It probably got the attention of more than just them, actually.
Aren't there giant bird Grimm that can shoot armor-piercing feathers the length of a car?
"Oh, fuck this."
And then I run into the woods away from the bears, plowing through the Beowolves in my path and hoping that I was running towards something approximating safety.
I turn to remain under the trees as a large ridge begins to loom over the slope I've been following for the past… hour or so? Pine after snowy pine flashes past as I lope through the forest at a pace I hope is sustainable enough. Normally running in a random direction through a forest is a great way to get incredibly lost, but that doesn't apply to me now because I'm already as lost as anyone has ever been! See, you gotta look on the bright side of things.
Like, hey, I'm on another planet covered in man-eating monsters and have no idea where I am in relation to where I started, but at least I've lost the little bastards! And hey again, most of them can't even really hurt me!
My eye throbs just then, like it was listening. I thought-said most, you prick of an injury.
It's tempting to climb up the ridge and try to get my bearings, because it would be really embarrassing if it turned out that there's a town like two miles to my right and I just completely missed it. But then I'd be a bright reflective blue beacon gleaming against a field of black and white, which… no.
Stay positive, now.
Sure my eye still fucking hurts but I can see from that side! Sort of. Something seems… off… but that's better than nothing, right?
And sure it's cold enough to maintain a sizable amount of snow on and beneath the trees I'm running through, but the running seems to be enough to keep this new body nice and warm and it's not actually snow-ing so my odds of getting totally turned around are-
A lone, ominous snowflake floats down across my vision and goes right up my nose. I skid to a stop, swearing thunderously as a spear of cold bounces right up into my brain.
"Okay," I growl, my nonsense dinosaur throat turning the word into gibberish, "I'm going to call that a fluke, and we're going to move on like it didn't happen. Right?"
I shoot an accusatory glare at the thick grey clouds overhead. Another fat snowflake lazily drifts down to land between my nostrils. The cold isn't nearly as bad this time, but I growl anyway.
"Well fuck you too, then."
It… it has been getting darker, hasn't it? In that sort of nasty, greying way that it does when an overcast day becomes a stormy one.
Oh, no.
I turn to the ridge, which is my only way to get away from the trees and see what the sky really looks like. It's a rather steep climb.
"One of these days, nature. One of these days."
The stone at the top of the ridge cracks alarmingly as I slam my talons into it, the long claws tipping my fingers digging into the rock like it's made of cheese. I need to get them nice and deep in there, or they'll cut their way out and make me fall down the hill.
Again.
I scrabble my way up and over the edge with a snarl, panting more from frustration than exertion. It would have almost been better if the falls had hurt a bit, then I could have told myself that it was too risky to try again and found another way. Instead I tumbled down the hillside smashing rocks apart like they were made of biscuits and came to a stop more annoyed than anything else. And that made it a challenge.
The snow has gotten steadily heavier over the course of my escapade, which doesn't bode spectacularly well for me. I straighten up as much as I can to get a better view and look out across the top of the forest.
"Wow."
The ridge I'm standing on extends from the side of a respectable mountain, jutting out over the gentler slopes of a broad valley filled with a black and white carpet of densely-packed pine trees and snow. Mountains loom over three sides of the bowl-shaped depression, and there's a large flat patch of white in the center that I can only assume is a frozen lake under a layer of snow. It's… genuinely beautiful.
But on one end of the valley, far off to my left, the world turns white. A simple, flat white that reaches from the very bottom of the valley up into the sky, so plain and empty that I can't tell where it ends and the clouds begin. It takes me a moment to comprehend the sheer scale of the blizzard.
"Oh, fuck a duck."
I wheel back towards the valley, scanning it for anything that might count as shelter against that. I honestly don't know if this body can freeze to death considering that I've been wandering around in the snow naked for what feels like hours, but it doesn't seem like a great idea to test the matter. Nothing leaps out at me as a real option beyond the trees themselves, and I'd rather at least be uphill if I'm going to resort to that. As for the mountains…
I crane my new, longer neck to look at the neighboring slopes. A pattern of black rocks, white snow, and the occasional flash of greener trees stretches across each of them without any distinct landmarks. Even if there was something…. I'm not good at judging distances, but I don't think any of them are close enough that I'd be able to reach them. The one I'm on, though…
I turn back to look at the craggy mass behind me again. At first it seems just like the others, but as I track the ridgeline up to the slope proper I see something. There's a large, rounded splotch of pure white on the mountain not far from where the ridge meets the side and in the rough center of that clearing I can see a sharp rectangular mass of grey.
I hesitate for a moment, my foot hovering midway through stepping towards the site. What are the odds of a construction site being right there?
I suppose that even if it turns out to be natural it won't be any worse than the other random patches of trees nearby. Besides, the odds are probably chained up in a basement somewhere being railed by that fucking truck.
With a low, unintelligible oath I start running up the ridge. No time to go back down and hope I find the right way without being able to see it.
I turn to look at the blizzard. A flat wall of white towers up to the heavens and stretches across the entire width of the valley like God's vape cloud.
I turn to look at the cave. The cracked entrance of what I think used to be a mineshaft looms before me, its smooth stone floor at odds with the rough triangular opening. It looks rather like the beginning of an indie horror movie.
I don't suppose there's a door number three?
The wind begins to pick up, forming a low howl that tickles at the edge of my hearing. So that's what it sounds like when the universe says 'no, bitch'.
Okay, focus. I can't just stay out here in the blizzard, can I? I'm not really sure whether this body is resistant to the cold or not, and… there's a decent chance that if I risk it I won't realize I need shelter until it's too late.
On the other hand, if something strong enough to actually hurt me like that Alpha sneaks up on me in the dark… I could die. New, massively-armored body or not.
Grimm eyes glow. Non-eye yellow parts glow, if the Deathstalker from canon is anything to go by. But then, that's relying on Rooster Teeth's capacity for consistent storytelling for my very survival.
So, I guess I'm going spelunking. Joy. I'm not even going to bother hoping that this place isn't too full of monsters because it so very definitely is. I stick my hand into the cave. Nothing immediately bites down on it.
I'll take this as a positive sign. I step into the cave gingerly, waving my hand/claw thing in front of my face to catch any spiderwebs that might have filled the place.
Oh god, Grimm spiders. Why did I think of Grimm spiders?
My eyes adapt to the darkness inside the cave quickly- it's not instant, but it's noticeably faster than I expected which serves as a welcome distraction from- nope. The interior of the cave is strewn with old hand tools- pickaxes, shovels, a hammer or two. There's even a wheelbarrow tipped over against one of the walls.
The first chamber is also a good bit larger than I expected, probably around twenty feet across and twice as long. There's a half-closed pair of thick metal doors on tracks at the opposite end of the room from the entrance, their surfaces covered in scratches and dents that seem to have come from both inside and out. A set of rails lead out of them, ending in twisted spurs just short of the entrance. Off to the right of them there's what looks like a little office someone made in the corner out of two freestanding walls that are dotted with mold.
When I try to stand up a bit more my horns scrape against the stone ceiling with a horrible shrill squeal and a soft pattering of dust and chips across my shoulders before I can even get to the point where this body's back stops me from going fully upright. I go down on all fours to avoid doing that again and go over to poke at one of the piles of tools, keeping a wary eye on the hole between the two tracked doors. Were the Grimm smart enough to clear out the area and go hunting elsewhere when they finished with this place, or are there a few still mindlessly pathing around down in that hole?
I grab one of the more intact pickaxes and heft it, swinging it experimentally. It weighs almost nothing to me, but not being able to stand up makes swinging it a bit awkward. The head is covered in rust, but not to the point that it's dissolved or anything. A gentle scrape with the side of a talon reveals actual metal just under the red coating. It… might be worth using?
After a moment of thought, I reach up with one hand and pinch the spade-like end up the pickaxe head between my forefinger and thumb. The claws pass through the metal like it's made of mud. The wooden haft creaks slightly in my grip. If I had aura to reinforce it with it might be worth trying, but as it is I'd probably break it just by trying to swing properly. I put the pick down gently, to hopefully avoid making too much noise.
Then I go to look in the office, to avoid looking at the mine. A glance through the window reveals nothing- it has one of those wavy textures that only lets light and rough shapes through. Maybe this is actually a bathroom? I turn the handle as delicately as I can with hands the size of a catcher's mitt and pull the door open from the side. Nothing immediately leaps out to bite my hand off, so I poke my head inside.
It is an office, as it turns out. There's a desk, with the remains of some sort of computer littering its surface, and a cheap wheeled office chair. A pair of filing cabinets take up one of the rocky walls, their shelves pulled open and in one case out entirely in a haphazard way, papers strewn everywhere. There's a calendar hung next to the window that shows a month I'm not familiar with along with a picture of two kittens in a field of yellow flowers that I'm damn sure I saw on more than one calendar back home.
The skeleton piled against the other rock wall takes up most of my attention, though. It lies below a small crater in the stone, huddled in the ratty remains of a button-up shirt and slacks, grinning up at me with one eye socket caved in. That whole half of the office is covered in rusty red stains. I close the door and start hyperventilating a little.
It's not the skeleton itself- I've seen dead people before, from hospitals to museums- it's the reminder that yes, the horrible monsters that are trying to kill me are in fact rather good at killing people. It's something that I've… tried to put out of mind.
It takes me around a minute to get my breathing under control- I count it out, which helps a fair bit. Once I have, though, I turn to look at the tracked doors. They loom ominously against the back wall, one of them hanging at an angle because it's been knocked off of its bottom track. Can I afford to not check them?
… Not if there's a Grimm down there who's going to feel my worry and come looking for me in my sleep. I creep forward with all the stealth a massive gleaming blue lizard can muster and look into the hallway beyond the door.
It's much darker than the entrance, but I can still see a fair way through the gloom. There are a few reddish stains on the floor, but no skeletons. The tracks continue on into the cave, occasionally torn up from the floor by one impact or another. There's not nearly as many tools along the path as there are in the main room, though I don't know why.
There's also a distinct glow coming from a bend a little way down the hall, which almost causes me to flinch back and slam the doors closed before I realize that it's not yellow or red. It's a sort of violet-y purple. A decidedly non-Grimm color. I hesitate, drumming my toes against the floor absentmindedly.
It's probably not a Grimm. It could be something useful, but I have no idea what might be useful to me that glows purple. Most likely it's some sort of Dust, which I might be able to make a dangerously unstable explosive I don't need out of. There's nothing saying that there aren't also Grimm near whatever's glowing. Wouldn't it be better to find them on my terms?
I glance back at the entrance and see a hole of solid white cut into the stone. The blizzard, evidently, is here in force. Will I even be able to see in a few minutes if I close the doors now? Having a light will at least be better than nothing.
With that thought fixed firmly in my mind I carefully begin prying the doors apart. They release an absolutely godless screech as they open, but hopefully the snow will deaden the noise too much for any Grimm outside to hear. Still cringing slightly at the high-pitched noise, I step through the doorway.
The tunnel isn't terribly long, maybe fifty feet. Luckily enough there are no forks in this section. I poke my head around the corner to see if I can't find the source of the glow. A few yards beyond the turn the tunnel opens up into a cavern suffused with that purple-ish light, though I can't see exactly where the source is from from here.
Damnit, I'm going to have to go further like every other horror movie schmuck. I slither around the corner like a snake stalking its prey, wincing at the scrape of scales on stone when I hug the wall a bit too much.
The cavern is massive, easily stretching thirty feet to the other side from me and sixty off to my right, the walls veined with glittering metal deposits and the occasional seam of glowing purple. The ceiling is almost as high as it is wide, and I give the stalactites above a suspicious glance before I step all the way in. I don't plan to be the dumbass who forgot to look up and got jumped by- nope.
I shake the thought away forcefully. Damn me for ever considering that possibility. The ceiling is empty anyway, thank fuck.
The slivers of what is presumably Dust in the walls are glowing, but not enough to create the light I saw. That is coming from about halfway down the chamber. There, sitting next to a rusty overturned minecart like the most innocent thing in the world, is a massive chunk of Dust. Or rather, two chunks of Dust. Two rough hemispheres of purple crystal, almost three feet across, occupy the center of a strange purple haze that takes up the middle half of the cave. One of them is hovering just above the other and at a slight angle, and a small star of purple light is hovering in the gap. There are even chunks of rock hanging in the upper parts of the haze like they just froze mid-fall.
It looks almost as if they were a single sort-of sphere that split in half when it spilled out of the minecart and did something eldritch, but I'm not quite sure what. If it's some sort of zero-gravity effect the other half would have continued to fly off until it hit something. Is it- can Dust manipulate time? I actually think I remember Weiss doing that once or twice, but I'm not sure. It certainly seems like the most obvious effect that this could be.
I step halfway into the cave warily, considering the haze. It doesn't go all the way to the walls, and I can see another tunnel entrance on the other side. Is it worth checking?
I decide to delay the question by sciencing, so I pick up the tip of a broken stalactite that's lying at my feet and chuck it lightly at the haze. It arcs through the air and instantly begins to slow down as it makes contact with the field, its speed bleeding off faster and faster until it stops in the air about half a foot in. Its arc didn't appear to change as it slowed down, which looks very time-ish to me. I take another step into the cave and notice something that makes my heart almost stop.
There's someone in the field. A completely-still figure wearing a hooded purple cloak, with a single hand outstretched towards the boundary. They're low to the ground but not touching it, seemingly frozen just as they tried to leap for the exit. I take a few steps closer, keeping an eye on the rock I threw to make sure I don't end up trapped as well.
I follow the line of their hand and notice something on the ground just at the edge of the field. It's a large bearded axe, with some sort of complicated array of machinery at the point where the blade meets the haft. A good portion of the top is sticking out of the haze, and most of the machinery in that section has long since rusted to shit. Their hand was so close to reaching it.
I can't help but wonder if they knew what was happening, before…
I lean down to look at their face and she clearly did. Her face is stretched into a rictus of terror, her eyes wide open and staring right into mine, everything tinted purple by the haze around her.
I take a step back to break contact with those eyes. That is… much worse than a skeleton. A small, treasonous part of me wonders whether she's still conscious, and I try desperately to forget that question.
Shaking slightly, I start to make my way around the haze towards the other tunnel entrance. I don't even have much of a plan, I just default to continue exploring so I can think about things other than her eyes. There's nothing I can do for, I keep telling myself. It doesn't help, of course.
The light changes halfway through my trek around the field. I freeze in my tracks, wondering if the crystal is destabilizing somehow from me throwing shit at it. I turn to look at the Dust after nothing happens- though, would I know? Or would I just be stuck in the midst of a thought forever, only coming to when the effect failed for whatever reason?
My existential dread is halted by the realization that I'm looking at the minecart, not the Dust. For some reason it seems… sharper than the stone around it or even the rails a few feet to either side of it. The rusty undercarriage comes through more clearly, and the tattered logo on the top is actually slightly blue instead of purple like I thought it was from the door.
Like there's not a haze in the way.
A half-formed thought leads me to pick up another rock and chuck it at the cart. It hits with a dull clang and bounces up, where it quickly becomes stuck inside the field. The cart wobbles slightly, and I can see the haze shifting around it as it casts a sort of shadow through the field.
"In-ter-est-ing."
Experiments on the field and cart prove highly rewarding. The cart is, in fact, at least highly resistant to the time distortion the Dust is creating. It doesn't wobble quite as quickly as I think it should when a rock hits it, but wobble it does. I'm not sure how light is passing through the haze to let me see that, but I can't really find that out with what I have. More importantly, the cart obviously casts a shadow in the haze that allows objects to penetrate all the way to the center without freezing. Which means it not only resists but blocks the effect. And that… has potential.
The cart is on its side right next to the crystal. If I can tip it over to cover the Dust, it should- theoretically- contain the field entirely. Or possibly compressing the effect will make it massively stronger and blow the mountain to kingdom come, I don't know.
It's a dangerously foolish idea to fuck about with this object, I know. I wouldn't even realize what had happened if the cart tipped the wrong way or the Dust went off more aggressively or something else went wrong. I'm gambling quite a lot to possibly save a woman I've never met who is just as likely to have died in the microsecond only half of her brain was frozen as not.
It's just… she actually might be still alive, though hopefully not aware. She's in one piece as far as I can tell with her cloak blocking most of her from my view. If the shift happened fast enough it might not have fucked up her internals too horribly, and if my assumption that she's a Huntress is right her aura might give her more leeway than a normal human.
I trot back into the main hall looking for a big ol' stick. I don't trust my estimations of how much force I need enough to try and tip the cart by throwing a rock at it, it might roll back towards me. A small tree would probably be perfect, but…
I glance up at the entryway. It's still solid white and howling with the force of the wind outside. A large section of the front of the room is starting to frost over. It doesn't feel all that cold, not any more than it was before it started snowing, but I'd literally never be able to find my way back if I went out.
I turn my attention to the tools on hand. None of the picks or shovels are long enough, obviously, and my hopes for finding a standing light are dashed pretty quickly.
"Come on, there's got to be something around here…" I cast my gaze around the room and it falls on the office.
The pre-made wall sections are made of slabs of drywall set in a metal frame and coated over with plaster and generic office wallpaper. The structure falls apart easily under my claws and, after a brief muttered apology to the occupant, I begin to strip the three metal struts from one of the walls. They're shaped like miniature I-beams, seem fairly sturdy when I heft one, and are about six and a half feet long each. Close enough.
I return to the cave with my cargo of aluminum (probably) poking sticks under one scaly arm. Walking on three limbs is a bitch and a half, as it turns out.
I take a moment to look at the woman in the field again. It's… a bit easier to meet her gaze when I know that I'm going to try, at least. I muster my courage and step around the field to the cart's shadow.
The first poke is successful, as expected I can reach out and touch the cart without freezing my stick. The problem is that to do so I have to fully extend my arm and hold the pole just barely by the end. If I want to actually knock it over….
"Why am I not surprised?" I don't get an answer, thankfully.
I step forward with the pole and begin to push, slowly and carefully. There's a fair bit of resistance at first, as cart's surface cuts through the haze. The pole begins to bend threateningly. I hold the other two poles out with my other arm to help take the pressure, wedging them up under the wheel assembly on the cart and heaving-
The cart tips over its balancing point, and then all the light in the room goes out as an almighty bang splits the air.
And underneath that, a sharp gasp.
And so it begins. For those curious about what type of dragon our Main Character is… well, you could call it a homebrew, and kind of a weird one at that. I will say that there's no CYOA or Catalog or anything like that involved.
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