Ravensdagger_Princess

Chapter Two

Akelarre moved through the edge of the spire with the slow, gentle pace of someone afraid of sudden movements. The ache in all her limbs had receded over the last few days, but not so much so that she was able to walk without taking her time.The view from the many arrow slits and stained glass windows was always the same. A world of dark rocks under a grey sky, purple haze floating bare meters off the ground in swirling patches that rotted away any weeds that dared poke out from the ground. Sometimes the black pools hidden in crevices would warp and bubble and a creature of black skin and white bone would crawl out of the muck.She supposed that it was almost pretty, in a way. Just like her new name.She wasn’t sure what to think of it. There was no meaning to the word; none that she knew, anyway. Maybe it was just a cute nickname, but then Salem didn’t seem the sort to do that. She was supposed to be a queen, after all.Akelarre looked outside again at the desolate wastes and wondered what kind of queen would want to rule over a kingdom of monsters.She didn’t know whether to trust Salem or not. The woman felt... nice, kind even, but also careful and smart. She was a cynic. And maybe, most of all, she was lonely.She didn’t dare spy on her with her lancers — the wasps were far too big and noisy to go unnoticed — but she had sent them to scout the Spire and so far she hadn’t found any signs of life other than the black creatures with the bone masks.“Are you enjoying yourself?” came Salem’s voice from deeper in the corridor.Akelarre nodded, her gaze still fixed on the world outside, but her lancers paid attention as Salem glided closer. “I’m feeling better,” she admitted. “Less sore.”“Your health is improving at a decent pace,” Salem said. “We will have to see about fixing that arm of yours.”Akelarre looked down at the stump. She couldn’t actually see it as it was hidden under the fabric of the white robe she was wearing, but the motion under the material made it obvious that something was wrong. “Can you do that?”“Certainly,” Salem said. “You might find my replacement to be better than the original, in time.”Akelarre nodded and turned a little to look at Salem’s reflection in the glass. “Are there others?” she asked. It was strange to find herself standing next to someone taller than her, though she couldn’t say why.“Others?” Salem repeated.She gestured at the world past the window. “People, like us.”Salem thought on it for a moment, then shook her head. “I’m afraid not. There are humans out there, and faunus, but as for those like us, I’m afraid it is just you and me, Akelarre.” One of Salem’s hands, a slim, white thing, rose to her shoulder and held onto it with gentle pressure.“If I’m like you, and you’re the queen, does that make me the princess?” she asked with just a hint of amusement, her gaze moving away from Salem’s reflection to her own. Red eyes stared back, sunken into a face that was too pale. The black veins around her eyes and neck stood out against her skin. Her hair was black as pitch and flowed with almost liquid grace to pool around her shoulders and along her back.Salem blinked, then made her laughing noise, a sort of chuffing at the back of her throat. “I suppose. Though don’t you think it’s a little early to claim royalty?”Akelarre looked over the barren wastes again, then she gestured at it dismissively. “Not much to rule over,” she said.Salem tilted her head a little, as though considering. “I suppose not,” she said. Her hand slipped off Akelarre’s shoulder. “Follow me,” she ordered as she turned in a swish of robes.Akelarre followed.The steps Salem led her towards climbed down in a slow spiral and they went on for a very long time. She sent some of her lancers ahead to scout. Salem took the steps one at a time, her pace even and regal but not so fast that Akelarre grew tired.By the time they reached the bottom, Akelarre’s heart was beating faster and her legs ached more than they had earlier, but she was still well enough. Her lancers moved ahead and through the cavernous room. It only took a stray thought for them to form up into triangular wing formations to better scout the cave.Salem looked up as one group of the large wasps flew by, then turned in a tight formation to give the room another pass. “Your fine control is rather impressive,” she said. “Better than mine, even. I suspect you can control a smaller variety of Grimm but have more control over your little niche. Interesting.”She nodded. It wasn’t as if she could confirm what Salem had said, but it felt right. “I like... arthropods.”Salem nodded and walked deeper into the room. “Light,” she called out and from the ceiling came more of the black creatures, these ones like jellyfish in appearance, though their cores glowed with a reddish inner fire that cast the shadows away. They kept circling above while Salem knelt next to the large brackish pool in the room’s centre. “The Grimm are mine, and I am of the Grimm. Some say that the Grimm lack souls but that is not entirely true.”She stood, her hand moving out of the pool while a ripple flowed across. Then the surface bubbled and a form moved out of the water. At first it looked like a man, but then the head of a horse rose before it and soon a long-limbed creature was walking out of the pool with careful steps.“This is a nuckelavee,” she said. “Can you control it?” Akelarre shook her head and the nuckelavee walked off towards a distant corner of the cavern. “When they say that the Grimm are soulless they are wrong. The Grimm have a soul. One. And it is mine.”If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.“Are they like your children?” Akelarre asked. Guilt was building up inside her. If that was the case, then by taking the lancers for her own she had stolen Salem’s children.“No, they are servants and warriors and tools,” she said. Her red eyes dared Akelarre to deny it, to question the morality of it.“They are expendable,” Akelarre said. “Like... like my swarm.” She look up where her lancers were flying in increasingly intricate patterns near the ceiling, some passing within millimeters of each other without so much as brushing.Salem’s smile was all teeth for a moment before it became demure again. “Exactly.” She knelt again and this time the creature that followed was no taller than Akelarre’s shin, but the moment it detatched itself from the pool something snapped into place and it froze.She leaned forward to inspect it. At first glance it was merely a very large scorpion, one the size of a housecat. But unlike any she’d ever seen-not that she could truly remember seeing one-this one was covered in white bones with a fine red filigree on them. Its stinger looked poised and ready to punch a hole through armour if it so chose. “This one is mine,” Akelarre said.“Is it?” Salem asked, one eyebrow raising slowly. Salem reached towards the scorpion grimm, then pointed it to someplace further down the cave. It obeyed. No thoughts, no denial of the order. Salem asked and it moved.Akelarre watched it scuttle by, felt the strain as her control over it was stretched and finally ignored. It was almost insulting, but at the same time it truly wasn’t. “What are they for?” she asked.“The Grimm?” Salem asked. She was watching Akelarre for a reaction. She must have approved of what she saw. “The Grimm are my warriors, my army against the blight of mankind.”“You fight mankind?” Akelarre asked.Salem glanced over the pool for a long few moments. “May I tell you a story?” Akelarre’s nod was enough for Salem to start. “Long ago this world was ruled by two gods, Brothers, one of dark and one of light... a golden man-” she glanced pointedly at Akelarre. “They were powerful, but they did not understand the hearts of people. We rebelled, and eventually they left.”Akelarre felt her brow shifting down. “You didn’t win,” she said.Salem look genuinely surprised, if only for the barest hint of a moment before she schooled her features. “And what would victory have looked like?” she asked.“They would have died,” she said simply.Salem’s bark of laughter echoed out into the cavern. “Perhaps, yes. But I was never so fortunate. I will spare you the details, but they took someone very special away from me and then twisted him against me. Once we ruled a paradise together, had a family, but he threw it all away in service of beings who care nothing for any of us.”“He’s still alive?”Salem nodded. “He is. And he has been twisting humanity against me, against us, for thousands of years. He wants to call the Brothers back. Make no mistake, I do terrible things to weaken them, lay low their heroes and shatter their dreams, because that is the only way they will ever be free. They will never thank me, but in the end I will watch the sun rise on a free world.”

* * *

Salem watched the child, Akelarre, as her words sank in. She hoped that they would be enough to convince her to side with Salem. There were other means of obtaining loyalty, but she didn’t want to have to break the child, not when she was the first person she had met in millennia that might suffer under the same curse.A friendship now could, if Akelarre was like Salem, last forever.And what did that say about her own health, that she would stoop so low as to attempt to court a child just to stave off the long days of plotting and planning? But she was the Queen of the Grimm, she answered to no one, and so didn’t need to make excuses for herself or her actions.If her suspicions were correct, then the golden man Akelarre had fought had to be the God of Light. And if she was cursed as Salem had been, then perhaps this child predated her. Perhaps she too had rebelled against the gods and had suffered ever since.Was there a chance that Salem could have been the same? Stuck in a pit of absolute darkness for countless millennia? Perhaps.Akelarre bent down next to her. Not with the same grace that Salem displayed, but with confidence in every motion. She reached a hand towards the pool and dipped it in with all the care of a child that had never touched an open flame.A minute passed, then two. The pool bubbled and Salem watched with interest as a creature crawled out of the pit.It was small, no bigger than a hand-span and black as a moonless night. Eight legs moving in perfect tandem helped the thing scuttle towards its new master where it nestled into Akelarre’s palm. The fact that its legs ended in spikes, or that its bone-white mask was split down the middle to reveal cruel fangs didn’t seem to bother the girl one whit.Salem placed a hand on Akelarre’s head and the girl tilted her head back to stare at Salem. She smiled. “Well done,” she said. “It is a terrifying specimen.”Akelarre’s cheeks puffed out. “It was supposed to be cute,” she said.Salem held back a laugh. It wouldn’t do to lose her composure before her newest... recruit.Yes, life was taking a strange turn for Salem.

Chapter Three

Akelarre was wandering the Spire again. She hadn’t been keeping count of the days, especially not at the start when everything was still a haze of pain and confusion, but she assumed that it had been at least a month since she’d awakened.In that time the Spire was home to exactly two people that weren’t her or Salem, a lot of Grimm, and now an entire swarm of insects of every size and shape. Salem seemed impressed by her collection of tiny Grimm, though she did seem to want to push her towards making bigger, more dangerous specimens.For now she was satisfied with her swarm; the Grimm bugs stuffed into the hems of her robe and entwined in her hair felt natural, reassuring even. She was... content spending her days exploring the tower with her own eyes and occasionally talking to Salem when they met in the corridors or in Salem’s library.Every afternoon, when the sun started to dip, Akelarre would walk down the spiral stairs in the middle of the tower and to the pool room below. There she would dip her feet in the black and summon more Grimm.Her memories were still fuzzy, but she seemed to have no issue calling forth a seemingly unending variety of insects. She wondered, idly, how many there were.But those idle concerns didn’t matter any more. There were guests in the castle. Three of them. They had arrived via a strange flying machine that had docked atop one of the crystal spires nearby, before all three walked over to the castle proper. She knew, because from the moment the machine was a speck in the distant sky she had watched them approaching.One had moved straight to the throne room where Salem was waiting, the other two had found one of the waiting rooms nearby and were just... waiting.She had to assume that the one in the throne room was there on some sort of business, and maybe the other two were guards or companions. They all seemed very young. Whatever the case was, Akelarre was curious, and while she didn’t feel as though she had ever been the social sort, she had been mostly alone for a few weeks.Yes, she was going to go meet those strangers and she was going to make some friends.

* * *

The Lands of Darkness were, as far as one Emerald Sustrai was concerned, a bit much.Oh, she didn’t mind being there, especially not if it was because she was escorting her Cinder and keeping her safe. She just wished that maybe Cinder wanted escorting elsewhere. Like a beach resort, or a shopping centre in Atlas, and not in the literal hell on Remnant that the Grimmlands represented.“Damn this is lame.”Then again, the situation could also have improved if it was just her and Cinder, not her, Cinder and one arrogant, rude, idiotic half-human cyborg asshole. “Shut up Mercury,” she said as she crossed the waiting room and slumped into one of the crystal seats lining the walls.Queen of the Grimm Salem might have been, but interior decorator she was not. All of her castles and spires and evil dungeons shared the same theme. Crystals, red lighting, evil chandeliers.Not that she was going to tell the pants-wettingly terrifying woman. Even Cinder seemed to, if not fear, then at least respect the Queen of all Grimm.“You’d think she could afford a television,” Mercury sneered as he leaned against a nearby wall.“A television would be nice, but I don’t think we’d get any signal.”Emerald’s heart decided, after a bit of jumping around, to stay in her chest, but it was a nearthing. She scrambled to her feet and looked around the room, almost immediately spotting the person that had spoken.Her heart decided to make another go at escaping.The first thought to cross her mind was ‘holy shit Salem’s in the room’ but that faded as soon as she had the chance to really look at the girl. She was maybe a year older than Emerald. Maybe. It was hard to tell what with the red eyes and dark, protruding veins and hair that was so black it seemed to absorb all the light around it. She wore a simple robe, almost a bathrobe that covered her from neck to ankles and left everything to the imagination. That, and one arm of the robe was flopping uselessly at her side.“H-hi!” Emerald said, her voice only half an octave away from a squeak.She expected Mercury to snicker at her about it but his sense of self-preservation was too well honed for that.Too bad.The younger, thinner version of Salem met Emerald’s eyes and blinked slowly. “Hello.”“Hey there, sweetheart, you, uh, kinda surprised us,” Mercury said.Emerald crossed her fingers and hoped that she tore his head off for the comment. And that she spared her afterwards. But, her luck being what it was, the girl just turned her stare towards Mercury, eyed him up and down like a prime piece of roadkill and scoffed. “Then you should have been paying more attention.”She... had been paying attention. That’s why the girl talking had surprised her and probably Mercury too. “Must have been distracted,” Mercury said with an easy-going smile.The girl seemed to accept that with a shrug. “What are your names? And what are you doing here?”“I’m Emerald, Emerald Sustrai. The doofus is Mercury Black. Please pretend he’s mute. It makes life easier for all of us,” she said while focusing all of her attention on the girl’s features. Seeing how someone took a joke told you a lot about them.Things like whether or not they would disembowel you on a whim.“Hello, Emerald and Mercury. You can call me Akelarre,” the girl-Akelarre, apparently-said.“Ah, pleased to meet you,” she replied.“Yeah, real pleasure,” Mercury said.Akelarre stared at Emerald. Emerald stared back. The unblinking, unflinching red eyes were locked onto hers and even when Emerald felt the first beads of sweat trickling down her back and the first quiet minute ticked by the stare never ceased. She wanted to say something, anything, to break the silence, but nothing was coming and Akelarre just wouldn’t. Stop. Staring.Then, from the girl’s hair, came an almost mechanical movement, eight legs moving with stop-motion actions, unfolding to reveal a spider with Grimm markings the size of Emerald’s spread hand that slowly, carefully, crawled across Arelarre’s face and tucked itself away in the collar of her robe where it started to nuzzle her.Ozpin’s saggy nutsack the girl was insane. “A-are you okay?” Emerald asked. She sounded faint. She felt faint. She wondered if she was going to faint.“I was waiting for you to tell me why you were here.”She could do that. Emerald had all the equipment and information necessary to tell the creepy Grimm girl everything she needed to know. “We’re with Cinder,” she said, and instantly a weight lifted itself off her shoulders. Cinder was important, and if they were with Cinder no one would eat them.“Who is Cinder?”Emerald was on the fence. On the one hand, this girl didn’t know who Cinder was and that was awful. On the other, she didn’t know who Cinder was and might be tempted to take a nibble out of Emerald.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it“Cinder’s our boss. She’s off meeting with Salem,” Mercury said.“Oh,” Akelarre said. “That makes sense.”“So, who’re you?” Mercury asked.Akelarre turned towards him and seemed to consider the question for a moment. “I am Akelarre,” she finally said. “I’m like Salem. But I like bugs more. Do you like bugs?”Emerald and Mercury’s eyes met. They had never agreed on anything, ever. Sure, half the time that was them being assholes at each other but the point stood. “We love bugs,” Emerald said with a smile that hurt her cheeks.“Totally,” Mercury added.“Oh, that’s good,” Akelarre said. “Look.” She pointed to the ceiling.Emerald didn’t want to look. She’d once seen a Bullhead crash. Well, she’d caused it because Cinder had asked, but the point stood, she had seen a crash, and the memory was still fresh and vivid in her mind years later. She had a premonition that if she looked up the same kind of memory-scarring event would happen again.Swallowing, she slowly tilted her head back and locked her chest in place to avoid screaming.Bugs. A swarm of thousands of chitinous insectile Grimm moving in perfect geometric patterns that overlapped like a tightly woven rug. And in the centre of it an opening in which a few spiders, lancers, and what looked like butterflies made of childhood nightmares were forming the word ‘hello’ next to a smiling face whose mouth was made from the carapace of a five-foot-long centipede-like Grimm, whos overlapping legs formed jaws full of needle-like fangs.Emerald was very proud when Mercury was the first to start screaming.

* * *

Akelarre cuddled her current favourite spider closer to her chest while the two people she’d just met continued screaming. Not even dispersing her swarm and tucking all of it away and out of sight really helped. In fact, having twice their combined body mass of insectile Grimm suddenly fade away into the darkness seemed to make the two of them more nervous, not less.It was really quite traumatic all around. People were not like her insects. It took a lot more work to make them not be afraid and be nice to her. She vaguely recalled not being very good socially, and even remembered a few other occasions where people had similar reactions to her friends. She had hoped it would be different, but she was wrong.She watched as they scrambled towards the door, kicking and punching to be the first one out of the room while she was left behind.“It was... enjoyable meeting you. Goodbye,” she said to their retreating backs.She tracked them for a while thanks to the Grimm ticks she’d placed all over their bodies, but they didn’t seem to be heading anywhere interesting, just out the side of the spire and back towards their ship.Shrugging to herself and her swarm, Akelarre moved out of the room and made her way towards the throne room. It was relatively close, and Salem, at least, had never denied her a conversation before.The doors to the throne room, two massive pillars of stone, moved as Akelarre shouldered them aside. As her bugs had told her, the room was empty except for a young woman, presumably Cinder, and Salem, who was seated on her throne and looking right at her.“Is something wrong, Akelarre?” Salem asked.Akelarre paused and gave the question some thought. Yes, things were wrong. She was disappointed and a little saddened. It was why she had come to Salem. “Yes,” she said as she started to cross the room.The Cinder girl looked to be about her age, with beautiful hair that tumbled down to the small of her back and a lithe but full body that barely fit into the dress she was wearing. Akelarre couldn’t remember seeing many women, but she knew at a glance that Cinder was spectacularly beautiful. “Hello, Cinder,” she said as she walked past the woman.“Hello?” Cinder said automatically from where she was on the ground on one knee.Akelarre continued walking until she reached Salem’s throne. She paused, looking for somewhere else to sit, but finding none with either her eyes or that of the swarm, she moved closer and climbed onto the arm of the throne next to Salem. “What happened?” Salem asked.She felt Salem’s unusually warm hand land on her back and start to brush long fingers through her hair. “I met two new people. They said they were with Cinder. They said they liked insects but they were lying.” She frowned a little at the still-fresh memory. “They ran away.”“I see,” Salem said. Her gaze shifted onto Cinder. “Do you have anything to say in defence of your minions?”“I, my queen, please, forgive me,” Cinder bowed at the waist. “I will see them punished for their actions against... Akelarre.”Akelarre looked up to the ceiling where her swarm was gathering, then shook her head. “No, it’s okay,” she said. “It was my fault. I showed them too many bugs.”Salem’s lips twisted at the corner for just a moment before her flat expression returned. “Well well, Cinder, it seems that Akelarre’s mercy will spare you the trouble of punishing your subordinates.”“I... see, thank you Miss Akelarre,” Cinder said. Akelarre detected a faint hint of confusion in the pretty woman’s voice but let it go.“It’s okay. It was my fault,” she repeated before examining Cinder closer. “Salem?”“Yes?” Salem asked.“Who is she?”Salem made that laughing noise at the back of her throat again. “She is a subordinate of mine. Her name is Cinder Fall. She is quite... useful.”“Is she like your Grimm or my Swarm?” she asked.“Not quite. She can go places and do things that my Grimm cannot.”Akelarre nodded. That made sense. “So she’s not as expendable. That’s nice.” Cinder seemed to tense up at that but didn’t comment. “Are you using her right now?”“I am,” Salem said. “I’m giving her a very important mission.”“What is it?”Salem looked away for a moment, eyes clouding over in the way that they did when she was thinking. Akelarre gave her all the time she needed, though after a moment Cinder looked ready to start fidgeting. She couldn’t see it, but the Grimm mites on Cinder’s body could feel the gathering tension in her muscles. “There are four relics hidden across the world of Remnant,” Salem said with the tone Akelarre had come to associate with storytelling. “To obtain them, you need the power of a maiden, one for each relic. Cinder is going to find one of these wayward maidens and hunt her down.”“Oh. Can I help?” Akelarre asked.“No, this mission is Cinder’s. It is her opportunity to prove herself.”Akelarre nodded and jumped off the arm of Salem’s throne with a dainty hop. “Okay. I’m tired now. Goodbye, Salem. Goodbye, Cinder. And good luck.”“Thank you,” Cinder said immediately.As she crossed the girl on her path to the doors of the throne room, Akelarre felt the slightest shiver run across her body.Perhaps Cinder was tired too?She was already out of the throne room when she realized that she missed her opportunity to show Cinder her bugs.But there would always be another time.