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Shale stepped onto the scene, tapping on the steel plates embedded in her outfit with a constant repetition that made a soft clink that echoed through the night air. The huntress was staring with a grin as she walked through the entrance to the inner cave workings, through the tunnel.
“So lemme get this straight. You evade death with the rest of your witch and warlock buddies when Salem’s castle goes ka-blooey!” The hunter will add smoothly, heading into the darkness of the room. “You manage to actually make it out with your tails between your legs while everyone sane is celebrating their victory over a darkness that encapsulated the world! And what do you go and do?” Shale asked with a flippant voice as she continued into the darkness with a confident smirk. “Why, you immediately try and figure out how to fuck it up, of course! Such an amazing plan!” Shale will add with a grin.
“How did an idiot like you get past my men!” a deep voice added from within the shadows, and Shale just shrugged in response, as a glow went through the cavern and the Huntress found the area filled with grimm of all forms and types.
Shale looked around at the assortment. “Let’s see… beowolves, ursa, a beringel in the back I see, musta gotten really lucky with that, and… nevermores! Really?!” Shale will add without missing a beat, looking around at the selection. “Never directed grimm before?! You’re using birds indoors!”
The deep voice revealed itself to be a large man, taller than Shale, with a barrel chest and a cruel smile amid midst of age and stubble, a blond, short-shaven military cut stood upon the man’s head, and he wore military fatigues that seemed to off-put the dust wand he held aloft. “You can keep barking until my minions rip you apart, if you’d like, but I’d prefer you simply explain how you snuck through my defences in the middle of my ritual.” The man adds with a casual, unaffected shrug.
Shale looks around at the grimm that slowly drew closer, and grinned. “Can’t do that, sicne I didn’t sneak in. See, I happen to be a pretty old hand at fighting, and besides, my wife-”
From behind the huntress, out in the tunnel outside, a brilliant stream of rainbow energy blasted to the side at some unknown assortment of foes, and the screams of a group of acolytes followed to let Shale know Marisa had hit pay-dirt.
“...Yeah. My other wife’s the reason I found the place and got this far, though. She’s a very sneaky person. Hence why I’ve had a workin’ sketch of what’cha looked like for weeks now, Frank.” Shale will add with a grin.
The older man grunted in surprise and anger. “My name is-”
“It’s Frank you fucking nerd. Don’t tell me your magic title you made for yourself!” Shale will add with a wicked smile. “How ‘bout, I’ll call you by your name when you learn to shave properly and practice proper hygiene cupcake? Now, are you gonna actually try to set these grimm on me some time today, or are you waiting for me to give you a measure of respect first? Because these little guys’ll die of starvation before you get a shred of it out of me, and grimm don’t need to eat[/I]” Shale will add with a confident grin, as she makes an elaborate sweeping motion towards the sea of claws and fangs around her. With a scowl, the warlock named Frank snapped his fingers, and at once dozens of grimm leapt with savage ferocity to overwhelm the human. Shale pulled on the pin of a flashbang she’d clipped onto her pocket, and securely fitted her shades, and the room exploded in a burst of light and sound.
“Showtime!”
The Huntress reached for the backpack she held on her back, unpinned the clasp at the top, and grabbed out a rectangle of steel twice as big as her head from the bag. Pushing one small button on the steel cube, the Huntress chucked the collapsed weapon into the air.
With the sound of a few gunshots, the shaft of a handle about as long as Shale was tall zipped from the stone, and Shale caught her favored weapon in one hand before spinning it a few times in the air, before finally catching it in her preferred two-handed grip. Shale smiled as she held her partner, her special weapon, aloft.
That feeling of invincibility filled Shale once again as she held the hammer aloft. Grond glowed with the presence of steam dust as the weapon was ready to use. \
‘
“Well come on, then! I don’t know many grimm that are cowards!” Shale yelled as the crowd of grimm and their master recovered from the effects of the flash-bang, and the huntress took the initiative with one swift swing of her hammer that smashed the head of an ursa five times her size into the cave floor.
The grimm, for their part, recovered immediately, and a group of beo-wolves dove for Shale. The huntress jumped over one, landed on the head of another, and used the beowolves head as a platform while she smash the third with a vertical swing of grond’s heavy hammer-head. Leaping up as a dozen more wolves leaped in, A second button was activated on Grond’s bottom, and shale leaped up as a length of chain appeared from the bottom of her handle. Shale concentrated, and the steam dust chambered within the weapon surged as the experienced huntress swung her weapon around by the chain into a mighty whirlwind. With a powerful throw, She crushed the head of a diving nevermore with the weapon, and the dust within exploded in a burst of superheated vapor that left a group of boiled, dissolving grimm below her.
“Not done yet!” Shale would quip before grabbing a glass vial at her side filled with azure powder, and with a grin and a palm facing straight towards the other side of the area, she released a blast of water that covered the rest of Frank’s little army in water.
To her surprise, Shale saw the man she was fighting hold up a black, glowing orb of energy, and a split-second dodge of pure guesswork was all that saved her from a blast of black lightning that destroyed a large chunk of the cave roof behind her.
“Hey, I’ve never even seen that one!” Shale added with a chipper tone as she fell to the ground, throwing away the spent vial and grabbing another one filled with a bright yellow powder. “But, hey, you skipped part of the show early!” Shale will add with a resurfacing grin as she lands next to the water-logged grimm waiting for her below.
And that was when the clever magician concentrated, and sent an electrical current through the rest of the makeshift army of beasts and monsters. The air filled with the smoke of the dissolving corpses of grimm as she grabs her fallen hammer by the handle, and the huntress rested the weapon on one shoulder as she turned to the warlock with a chuckle.
“So… Not gonna lie, you’ve got some talent here man. Have you ever thought about putting it to better use? Y’know, maybe making the world a better place?” The huntress asked with a grin. “You’re a good magician, even if it seems like you got a gap in your library near the ‘hygiene’ spell. Why go to all these lengths creating a ruckus like this instead of making the world a better place, Frank?”
“My name is Fenrir!” The angered warlock will respond, before bringing out a jewelled knife. Shale shrugged at the comment, and readied her weapon for the sorcerer’s attack.
But Frank’s mouth curled into a grin as the knife cut through his own arm. Blood leaked to the floor, and a glowing array of lines and intersections criss-crossed throughout the floor. “And you’re about to see why!”
Every trace of Shale’s casual demeanor vanishes, as she looked down at the runes.The array was one she recognized from her own trips into darkness, and as she looked around the ritual chamber she found herself in, she recognized some of the ingredients. Rare ingredients. Things Shale knew were only useful in one or two of the worst things possible.
“Kami”. That was the spell that the book had given this one. And more importantly, the Diagram was…
The town they’d tracked these guys from. Twenty thousand humans and faunus. All encircled in the binding. Which meant…
Oh fuck.
“You figured it out!” The fell magician jeered as he looked towards the sweating huntress. “I’m surprised you know the magic, but it’s as clear as the sweat falling from your neck that you know exactly what happens next. Soon, twenty thousand people will give their lives for my ascendance! Soon I shall achieve the same heights as Salem! The heights she greedily kept for herself! And with that, I will be far past the powers of a meager hunter.
Shale’s shock turned into a scowl. “She didn’t keep them!” The woman snapped, raising her hammer, “She was cursed with them! And for all her corruption, all the darkness that was put inside her, she never once considered cursing anyone else the same way!” Shale would snap.
The Warlock gave a confused look at the statement, as he started to gain an inkling of who Shale might really be. Still, he had no time, as the circle glowed, and opted to begin chanting instead of continuing the verbal duel, a blackened aura erupting around him.
Shale had only a few seconds, and she knew the kind of barriers that stood between her and her opponent as she rushed forward. She couldn’t guarantee she could 0 the sorcerer’s aura, and if he lived even a little bit, the ritual would restore him to full, and kill everyone in the town.
The huntress bit her lip, as she heard a pair of footsteps enter the chamber. She knew it was Marisa. She didn’t know where Kayle was. That was a good sign - if she entered the room now, as a creature made of magic, she might become part of the spell. That wasn’t an end she wanted for the grimm they’d married.
A grin came across Shale’s face even as her body broke down in sweat at the risk she was about to take. Pressing her hand to the circle herself, she began chanting a spell of her own as her own aura blackened.
The sorcerer looked at her with widened eyes as he realized what she was going to do. Shale would take what pleasure she can in at least putting one more over on the putz. Magic of this sort was risky for the user’s health - it required taking in the essence of destruction, and that sort of energy only sought to annihilate one on a physical and spiritual level at the end of the day.
The other thing it required, though, was lots of precision.. Without the use of dust, the whole damn system came off easy mode and you needed to do exactly what you wanted to do.
Which is to say, someone yammering some beginner-level black spell while drawing on the same power you were using to obtain godhood was a fine way to muck it up!
What it would actually cause, however…
Shale groaned as she struggled against the familiar feeling of destruction filling her frame, of an instinctive urge to devour the human in front of her filled her body, and she felt the strength of the spell almost threaten to overwhelm her as the energy of the circle bent and cracked.
WIth a thundering boom, a sphere appeared in the middle of the sorcerer and the huntress, and both of them looked up with wide eyes as a circle of black and white appeared. Meanwhile, the array shattered completely, the glowing circle shattering like white glass and flying through the air before them.
“What did you do, witch?” the mercenary Roared, and Shale moved to leap away only for her legs to suddenly turn to jelly.
“You know damn well I just rolled the dice! This is as much a mystery to me as you, Frank!” Shale shouted in frustration.
“Shale!” She heard Marisa yell from behind her, and she struggled to turn around as gravity seemed to shift.
“Don’t come any closer!” Shale yelled, a tone she didn’t use very often.
As she turned around she saw her wife, her beautiful wife, and the orb between her and Frank exploded in size, growing into an 8 foot tall sphere.
Shale looked behind to see Marisa, her eyes open with fear as she saw the sphere open, and Shale’s feet started to buckle against the pressure.
“Shale! Get over here! now!{/i]” The ordinary magician snapped, and Shale looked in her wife’s golden eyes and winces as she saw the fear hidden behind them.
“Marisa, listen to me! I’ll be fine! You need to figure out what the hell this is!” Shale yelled back, failing to keep the fear out of her voice as she watched her weapon fly past her, hearing grond enter the portal behind her with a ‘foosh’ sound effect that wouldn’t have been out of place in one of the old movies she liked to watch so often.
“Shale, no! Hold on! I’ll-”
“There’s no-” Shale started, before she felt her knees finally give in, and she looked up at her wife with terror. “Listen to me! One of us will find a way back! We will figure this out!”
Shale’s fingers dug into the earth as she heard a grunt from behind her - sounded like Frank was joining her on this ride. “Listen! I love you! Tell Kayle I love her too! And… that I will come back!”
The last view of the witch she had was of her sobbing face as she looked up. “Shale… you’d better mean that! Do you hear me? I better…”
Shale realized tears were trailing down her own face as the adrenaline left her. “Hey, this should be easy for us, right?” She’d ask with a joking tone.
Marisa blinked as the orb expanded again, and Shale was sucked into the void.
“I love you, Shale! So please, please…
Come back to me.”
Marisa’s words echoed through the void as a vortex surrounded her wife, and Shale found herself trapped in a black vortex.
She’d be back.
She had to be.
“So lemme get this straight. You evade death with the rest of your witch and warlock buddies when Salem’s castle goes ka-blooey!” The hunter will add smoothly, heading into the darkness of the room. “You manage to actually make it out with your tails between your legs while everyone sane is celebrating their victory over a darkness that encapsulated the world! And what do you go and do?” Shale asked with a flippant voice as she continued into the darkness with a confident smirk. “Why, you immediately try and figure out how to fuck it up, of course! Such an amazing plan!” Shale will add with a grin.
“How did an idiot like you get past my men!” a deep voice added from within the shadows, and Shale just shrugged in response, as a glow went through the cavern and the Huntress found the area filled with grimm of all forms and types.
Shale looked around at the assortment. “Let’s see… beowolves, ursa, a beringel in the back I see, musta gotten really lucky with that, and… nevermores! Really?!” Shale will add without missing a beat, looking around at the selection. “Never directed grimm before?! You’re using birds indoors!”
The deep voice revealed itself to be a large man, taller than Shale, with a barrel chest and a cruel smile amid midst of age and stubble, a blond, short-shaven military cut stood upon the man’s head, and he wore military fatigues that seemed to off-put the dust wand he held aloft. “You can keep barking until my minions rip you apart, if you’d like, but I’d prefer you simply explain how you snuck through my defences in the middle of my ritual.” The man adds with a casual, unaffected shrug.
Shale looks around at the grimm that slowly drew closer, and grinned. “Can’t do that, sicne I didn’t sneak in. See, I happen to be a pretty old hand at fighting, and besides, my wife-”
From behind the huntress, out in the tunnel outside, a brilliant stream of rainbow energy blasted to the side at some unknown assortment of foes, and the screams of a group of acolytes followed to let Shale know Marisa had hit pay-dirt.
“...Yeah. My other wife’s the reason I found the place and got this far, though. She’s a very sneaky person. Hence why I’ve had a workin’ sketch of what’cha looked like for weeks now, Frank.” Shale will add with a grin.
The older man grunted in surprise and anger. “My name is-”
“It’s Frank you fucking nerd. Don’t tell me your magic title you made for yourself!” Shale will add with a wicked smile. “How ‘bout, I’ll call you by your name when you learn to shave properly and practice proper hygiene cupcake? Now, are you gonna actually try to set these grimm on me some time today, or are you waiting for me to give you a measure of respect first? Because these little guys’ll die of starvation before you get a shred of it out of me, and grimm don’t need to eat[/I]” Shale will add with a confident grin, as she makes an elaborate sweeping motion towards the sea of claws and fangs around her. With a scowl, the warlock named Frank snapped his fingers, and at once dozens of grimm leapt with savage ferocity to overwhelm the human. Shale pulled on the pin of a flashbang she’d clipped onto her pocket, and securely fitted her shades, and the room exploded in a burst of light and sound.
“Showtime!”
The Huntress reached for the backpack she held on her back, unpinned the clasp at the top, and grabbed out a rectangle of steel twice as big as her head from the bag. Pushing one small button on the steel cube, the Huntress chucked the collapsed weapon into the air.
With the sound of a few gunshots, the shaft of a handle about as long as Shale was tall zipped from the stone, and Shale caught her favored weapon in one hand before spinning it a few times in the air, before finally catching it in her preferred two-handed grip. Shale smiled as she held her partner, her special weapon, aloft.
That feeling of invincibility filled Shale once again as she held the hammer aloft. Grond glowed with the presence of steam dust as the weapon was ready to use. \
‘
“Well come on, then! I don’t know many grimm that are cowards!” Shale yelled as the crowd of grimm and their master recovered from the effects of the flash-bang, and the huntress took the initiative with one swift swing of her hammer that smashed the head of an ursa five times her size into the cave floor.
The grimm, for their part, recovered immediately, and a group of beo-wolves dove for Shale. The huntress jumped over one, landed on the head of another, and used the beowolves head as a platform while she smash the third with a vertical swing of grond’s heavy hammer-head. Leaping up as a dozen more wolves leaped in, A second button was activated on Grond’s bottom, and shale leaped up as a length of chain appeared from the bottom of her handle. Shale concentrated, and the steam dust chambered within the weapon surged as the experienced huntress swung her weapon around by the chain into a mighty whirlwind. With a powerful throw, She crushed the head of a diving nevermore with the weapon, and the dust within exploded in a burst of superheated vapor that left a group of boiled, dissolving grimm below her.
“Not done yet!” Shale would quip before grabbing a glass vial at her side filled with azure powder, and with a grin and a palm facing straight towards the other side of the area, she released a blast of water that covered the rest of Frank’s little army in water.
To her surprise, Shale saw the man she was fighting hold up a black, glowing orb of energy, and a split-second dodge of pure guesswork was all that saved her from a blast of black lightning that destroyed a large chunk of the cave roof behind her.
“Hey, I’ve never even seen that one!” Shale added with a chipper tone as she fell to the ground, throwing away the spent vial and grabbing another one filled with a bright yellow powder. “But, hey, you skipped part of the show early!” Shale will add with a resurfacing grin as she lands next to the water-logged grimm waiting for her below.
And that was when the clever magician concentrated, and sent an electrical current through the rest of the makeshift army of beasts and monsters. The air filled with the smoke of the dissolving corpses of grimm as she grabs her fallen hammer by the handle, and the huntress rested the weapon on one shoulder as she turned to the warlock with a chuckle.
“So… Not gonna lie, you’ve got some talent here man. Have you ever thought about putting it to better use? Y’know, maybe making the world a better place?” The huntress asked with a grin. “You’re a good magician, even if it seems like you got a gap in your library near the ‘hygiene’ spell. Why go to all these lengths creating a ruckus like this instead of making the world a better place, Frank?”
“My name is Fenrir!” The angered warlock will respond, before bringing out a jewelled knife. Shale shrugged at the comment, and readied her weapon for the sorcerer’s attack.
But Frank’s mouth curled into a grin as the knife cut through his own arm. Blood leaked to the floor, and a glowing array of lines and intersections criss-crossed throughout the floor. “And you’re about to see why!”
Every trace of Shale’s casual demeanor vanishes, as she looked down at the runes.The array was one she recognized from her own trips into darkness, and as she looked around the ritual chamber she found herself in, she recognized some of the ingredients. Rare ingredients. Things Shale knew were only useful in one or two of the worst things possible.
“Kami”. That was the spell that the book had given this one. And more importantly, the Diagram was…
The town they’d tracked these guys from. Twenty thousand humans and faunus. All encircled in the binding. Which meant…
Oh fuck.
“You figured it out!” The fell magician jeered as he looked towards the sweating huntress. “I’m surprised you know the magic, but it’s as clear as the sweat falling from your neck that you know exactly what happens next. Soon, twenty thousand people will give their lives for my ascendance! Soon I shall achieve the same heights as Salem! The heights she greedily kept for herself! And with that, I will be far past the powers of a meager hunter.
Shale’s shock turned into a scowl. “She didn’t keep them!” The woman snapped, raising her hammer, “She was cursed with them! And for all her corruption, all the darkness that was put inside her, she never once considered cursing anyone else the same way!” Shale would snap.
The Warlock gave a confused look at the statement, as he started to gain an inkling of who Shale might really be. Still, he had no time, as the circle glowed, and opted to begin chanting instead of continuing the verbal duel, a blackened aura erupting around him.
Shale had only a few seconds, and she knew the kind of barriers that stood between her and her opponent as she rushed forward. She couldn’t guarantee she could 0 the sorcerer’s aura, and if he lived even a little bit, the ritual would restore him to full, and kill everyone in the town.
The huntress bit her lip, as she heard a pair of footsteps enter the chamber. She knew it was Marisa. She didn’t know where Kayle was. That was a good sign - if she entered the room now, as a creature made of magic, she might become part of the spell. That wasn’t an end she wanted for the grimm they’d married.
A grin came across Shale’s face even as her body broke down in sweat at the risk she was about to take. Pressing her hand to the circle herself, she began chanting a spell of her own as her own aura blackened.
The sorcerer looked at her with widened eyes as he realized what she was going to do. Shale would take what pleasure she can in at least putting one more over on the putz. Magic of this sort was risky for the user’s health - it required taking in the essence of destruction, and that sort of energy only sought to annihilate one on a physical and spiritual level at the end of the day.
The other thing it required, though, was lots of precision.. Without the use of dust, the whole damn system came off easy mode and you needed to do exactly what you wanted to do.
Which is to say, someone yammering some beginner-level black spell while drawing on the same power you were using to obtain godhood was a fine way to muck it up!
What it would actually cause, however…
Shale groaned as she struggled against the familiar feeling of destruction filling her frame, of an instinctive urge to devour the human in front of her filled her body, and she felt the strength of the spell almost threaten to overwhelm her as the energy of the circle bent and cracked.
WIth a thundering boom, a sphere appeared in the middle of the sorcerer and the huntress, and both of them looked up with wide eyes as a circle of black and white appeared. Meanwhile, the array shattered completely, the glowing circle shattering like white glass and flying through the air before them.
“What did you do, witch?” the mercenary Roared, and Shale moved to leap away only for her legs to suddenly turn to jelly.
“You know damn well I just rolled the dice! This is as much a mystery to me as you, Frank!” Shale shouted in frustration.
“Shale!” She heard Marisa yell from behind her, and she struggled to turn around as gravity seemed to shift.
“Don’t come any closer!” Shale yelled, a tone she didn’t use very often.
As she turned around she saw her wife, her beautiful wife, and the orb between her and Frank exploded in size, growing into an 8 foot tall sphere.
Shale looked behind to see Marisa, her eyes open with fear as she saw the sphere open, and Shale’s feet started to buckle against the pressure.
“Shale! Get over here! now!{/i]” The ordinary magician snapped, and Shale looked in her wife’s golden eyes and winces as she saw the fear hidden behind them.
“Marisa, listen to me! I’ll be fine! You need to figure out what the hell this is!” Shale yelled back, failing to keep the fear out of her voice as she watched her weapon fly past her, hearing grond enter the portal behind her with a ‘foosh’ sound effect that wouldn’t have been out of place in one of the old movies she liked to watch so often.
“Shale, no! Hold on! I’ll-”
“There’s no-” Shale started, before she felt her knees finally give in, and she looked up at her wife with terror. “Listen to me! One of us will find a way back! We will figure this out!”
Shale’s fingers dug into the earth as she heard a grunt from behind her - sounded like Frank was joining her on this ride. “Listen! I love you! Tell Kayle I love her too! And… that I will come back!”
The last view of the witch she had was of her sobbing face as she looked up. “Shale… you’d better mean that! Do you hear me? I better…”
Shale realized tears were trailing down her own face as the adrenaline left her. “Hey, this should be easy for us, right?” She’d ask with a joking tone.
Marisa blinked as the orb expanded again, and Shale was sucked into the void.
“I love you, Shale! So please, please…
Come back to me.”
Marisa’s words echoed through the void as a vortex surrounded her wife, and Shale found herself trapped in a black vortex.
She’d be back.
She had to be.