//------------------------------// // Chapter 27: The Hidden Mysteries of Energy and Matter // Story: Fillies and Monsters // by Solaris Vult //------------------------------// It was the middle of the night, yet Sweetie was awake, magic flowing through her body as she practised another page of spellcraft, but sleep was inevitable, and so as she created a flicker of light in her hands, trying to optimise the pattern of the light spell, trying to master her current set of spells before she moved on to the more complicated ones, she fell asleep, lying next to her open tome. What the filly failed to notice was the person standing outside the door, watching through the keyhole as the filly created flickers of light in her palms. Slowly and silently, the girl in the corridor opened the door and moved to look at the book lying on the floor of the dorm room. The first proper day of classes was over, and it brought strange omens with it… A silver-eyed girl, several students with powerful and rare semblances, and those odd faunus girls… Perhaps he should have taken those reports from Night and Tai a bit more seriously, Ozpin mused, as he thought of the girls and their powers. That Scootaloo had a certain affinity for dust, that much was clear, she had injected so much into her body with seemingly no negative side effects, even her aura level remained unchanged when she drank that bottle… If she were secretly using dust, Oz could now understand how her powers could be mistaken for the elemental magic of a maiden. She was still a bit too reckless, but that could be solved in time. Apple, Ozpin was wrong about her semblance, perhaps her strength was simply a result of her animalistic traits, or perhaps she’s just abnormally strong… Whatever she did to the plants in Peach’s class was clearly some kind of power, manipulation of flora, a hereditary power if the stories she gave about her family were indeed true... In history, there have been several families with hereditary semblances, but most had been lost to time, as far as he knew, the Schnees were the only ones with such a familial connection in over two millennia, it appears he was wrong about that…. Then, there was the purple-and-pink haired girl, the one called Sweetie Belle… Ozpin was wrong about her semblance too, but it’s actual nature illuded him… She certainly had displayed energy manipulation, her energy barriers were proof enough of that, but she had also shown several other strange abilities… She could move physical matter in a similar form to Glynda’s telekinesis, control over both energy and matter, that was magic, no one has ever had such a semblance before… But she couldn’t use magic, what Ozpin saw didn’t look like the elemental powers of a maiden, it must be something else… Perhaps she was one of those kinds of people, those whose semblances revolved around the semblances of others, it wasn’t unheard of for some to have the power to steal other’s powers, and although these kinds of semblances were rare and limited, there is a first time for everything… Perhaps this Sweetie Belle could copy the semblances of others, after seeing Glynda, she could have learned the art of telekinesis, and after encounters with Nikos and Schnee, she easily could have picked up her energy manipulation talents… It wouldn’t explain everything, but it was a start, there was more to that girl, and Ozpin needed to know what, but he would learn in time. That Diamond girl had yet to do anything spectacular… There was a chance she was the unfortunate one of the group, one without such powerful abilities, but Ozpin knew somehow that such was certainly not the case, she too was powerful, but the man would need to wait a little longer to find out what made her special. As he trotted down the hall, lost in thought, from the corners of his perception he caught the end of an argument. “-all you’ve been so far is a nuisance…” “What did I do?” “That’s just it, you’ve done nothing to earn your position. Back in the forest, you acted like a child and out of everyone those faunus girls are acting more like adults than you!.” “Weiss, where is this coming from, I thought you wanted to act as a team…” “Not a team lead by you, I’ve studied and trained, and you have not... Ozpin made a mistake.” With that, the shape of Weiss Schnee marched down the hallway, a strange book in her hands. Meanwhile, Ruby turned and nearly ran straight into the professor, “Now, I wonder what that was all about?” Ozpin remarked. Her first few days in this alien world were… Enlightening, to say the very least… When Cozy Glow first appeared in the forests of south-western Sanus, at least that’s what her current companions called the area, she explained to these aliens that she had no memory of how she had gotten there, why she was naked, and why she had no knowledge of humans, faunus, aura, semblance, dust, Remnant, or anything else in the massive list of things she was starting to understand. “Amnesia, probably some human used a memory-changing semblance on her before throwing her out into the wild for the Grimm…” She overheard these aliens talking when she woke up in the morning following her landing in this world, scraps of black and white cloth serving as a makeshift robe to wear until these… White Fang, as they called themselves, made her something better to wear… Apparently, these creatures, these faunus, had some kind of taboo against nudity, and Cozy Glow could at least somewhat understand that seeing as their skin was so weak, they didn’t possess fur, and their hooves didn’t have the hard bony bottoms of ponies. “Poor girl… At least we came around and saved her before something else found her first.” “We should get her back to Adam, see if someone in our branch is willing to take care of the child, at least until she can take care of herself… Damn humans, doing something so cruel to a little girl.” With that, one of these people came into Cozy’s tent, informing her that they needed to pack up, since they were moving somewhere else… Cozy observed as the faunus, with impressive coordination that no doubt came from years of experience, packed up their camp into the backs of these strange ponyless carriages and, when everyone was aboard, moved off into the forest. Her second day in this strange world was on the road, heading to the leader of these creatures, in central Sanus, near a place called Vale, a capital city of some kind for a nation in this world. Cozy was left alone in the back of a truck, alone with her thoughts, until one of the faunus, a female with the ears of a rabbit atop her head, entered the compartment were the filly lay, next to the disassembled form of a tent, and various crates with the word: Warning - Dust, painted on them. “Hello…” Cozy said, “What are you doing back here ma’am?” “Just wanted to check on you… Macfield told me all about how he found you back there in the forest, sound’s rough.” “I’ll live.” “Well, you will for now anyway… Want some tea?” The bunny girl said, passing the filly a cup. Cozy drunk the warm liquid, she had been too afraid at first to ask these creatures for food or water, and the flavour as the tea passed down her dry throat was heaven. “Golly… That’s really good, can I have more?” Cozy asked once she had finished the cup. “I can make some more for you later, but there is something else I want to talk about…” “What?” With that, the rabbit girl pulled out a boxy grey and red device and offered it to the filly, “Well, if you’re going to be staying with us, you should know how to defend yourself.” Weiss sat down on her bed… It was a little too much to hope that she wouldn’t be interrupted this night, but that idiot had to get in her way, luckily, she didn’t notice the book she held in her hands. It was untitled, as far as Weiss could tell, the cover was blank aside from a six-pointed star inside a circle covered in markings reminiscent of those Weiss used on her glyphs… The resemblance was uncanny… She pulled open the cover and stared at the symbol on the first page… It was just like on the cover, a six-pointed star inside a circle outlined in mystical lettering. Underneath it said: “Light. A spell used by unicorns for as long as history can remember, the spell’s original creator has long since been lost to time. Suspected to be one of the first spells created by ponykind, easily as old as telekinesis and ignition.” Weiss reread the first paragraph over and over again… What are unicorns? How can this book teach magic, it wasn’t even real to begin with! She ignored all the strange gibberish talking about magic, ponies, unicorns, and spells, and skipped straight to a line of mystical letters… That looked promising. Weiss thought back to what the faunus girl yammered on about back when they met in the hallway last night… Something about writing code into a matrix… Weiss raised her hand and created a glyph. She stared at the alien lettering that encircled her glyph, she never thought about it before, but whenever Winter summoned something, the glyph was different… It also looked different when using time dilation, and, now that she was paying attention, the letters on the glyph were changing, flicking in and out, creating different strings based on what she wanted the glyph to do… She thought about using the glyph as a platform, and the letters changed. She thought about the glyphs as they attracted and repelled, like when she used it during her team’s fight with the giant nevermore, and it changed again. She remembered what her glyphs looked like when she used them to boost someone’s speed, and they changed again. Weiss also remembered Belle saying something about creating the pattern in her mind, and so, Weiss studied the mysterious letters on the page, imagined the letters on her glyph and replaced them with the ones inside the book… Then, she reached out, like she was using her semblance and… Light. In the palm of her hand was a glyph, a very small one, in the core of which was a small bead of white light, she poured more power into her semblance, and the light grew brighter, she let go of the power and it dimmed until it vanished… Raven sat on her bed… Vernal was concerned when she saw the look on her master’s face when she appeared from her portal, but Raven brushed the girl aside and went right into her tent, refusing entry to anyone until further notice… That most of all concerned the young woman. Raven thought over what she had seen in the Forever Fall forest… She had never imagined it, there was other life out there, humans, faunus, grimm, they weren’t the only creatures in this universe… A flash of white light drawing her attention, a creature, horse-like, but brightly coloured with an enlarged head and small torso, with large humanesque eyes. Said horse creature using a device of some sort, an insect-shaped machine, to create a portal much like Raven’s very own semblance… Then, a series of abominations marching through the gateway, ten in total, similar in shape to the first horse-like creature, but covered in black chitin, with green insectoid eyes, led by a creature that towered over them all, some kind of matriarch, far more in proportion to an actual horse, with a sickly green mane and tail, a wickedly curved and jagged horn protruding from its head… Raven simply sat on her bed, trying to comprehend the implications… What were those beings doing in this world? How had they found it? How would the people of this world react when they learned what Raven had just learned? And most importantly, what more was there to learn about these creatures? What was their world like? What kind of magic was involved in all this? A litany of hows, whats, whens, wheres, and whys rolled through her mind as she wondered… Then, one thought came floating to the surface of her scattered, panicked, thoughts… This was perfect… Raven, ever since learning the truth of Ozpin, of Salem, of the Gods, she had been filled with a sense of hopelessness that she desperately pushed to the back of her mind… Someday, someday soon, Salem would win, there was no defeating her, the only hope for survival was to hide from her, but you could only hide for so long. The idea that there were other worlds out there, filled with life, accessible through some kind of alien magic, that made hiding a far easier prospect… Raven knew how to get out of Salem’s grasp for good, she could run to this other world, she could bring her tribe with her, and with the spring maiden gone from this world for good, Salem wouldn’t be able to win… The idea was perfect, almost… There was one problem… How would she flee to this other world, and what would she do once she got there… She would need to learn more about these aliens, learn more about their home, and figure out exactly what they wanted, that way Raven could trade for what she desired. For now, she would watch, and pray that Ozpin never found out about these creatures… Unlikely, very unlikely, but Raven didn’t want her plan jeopardized by that liar, if Ozpin discovered this other world, no doubt he would try to hide the relics and other maidens there, which would bring Salem’s gaze… But that was something that could wait for the future… Right now, she was tired, and needed sleep… And so, Raven slept.