Amber (Rewritten)
Amber
“Sunset,” Twilight said, “I’m a little concerned about this.”
Sunset looked at her. They were down in the vault, a camping light illuminating their table in the darkness of the underground chamber. The pale light of Amber’s pod glowed in the shadows not too far away, beseeching and bewitching in equal measure. Soon — tomorrow, in fact — that pod would become unnecessary, for tomorrow, they were going to bring Amber round.
But tonight, apparently, Twilight had doubts.
“No offence, Twilight,” Sunset said, “but isn’t it a little late for that?”
“Probably,” Twilight conceded, “but when you first suggested this, I was just relieved that nobody would have to … you know, with the aura transfer, that no one would … and then … I just get so worked up and focussed on a project, you know? But now that we’re ready, now that we’re about to do this … I’m a little worried.”
“By what?”
“What’s going to happen if, when, we pull this off,” Twilight said.
Sunset frowned. “That’s what you’re worried about? Not the actual hard part, but what comes after?”
“What does come after?”
Sunset shrugged. “Amber wakes up. We have a Fall Maiden again.” And then we have to hunt down Cinder so that both halves of the Fall Maiden’s power are reunited in Amber.
Cinder, even if you did turn over a new leaf right this instant, I’m not sure that I could save you. Is it not inevitable that out of you and Amber, one or the other must die?
Somehow, she doubted that those particular misgivings of hers were the same as whatever was plaguing Twilight’s mind at this moment.
“Sure,” Twilight murmured. “Amber wakes up. But what … what will she be when she wakes up?”
Sunset’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean her aura has been ripped in half; goodness knows what that’s done to her actual soul,” Twilight said. She had a large, old, leather-bound book sitting on the desk in front of her. She turned it around and pushed it closer to Sunset. “Aura is a reflection of the soul, yes?”
“Sure.”
“It’s a metaphor that Clover returns to time and time again, often using some additional detail,” Twilight said. “As she puts it, the difference between auras and souls can be explained using the idea of the distorted mirror, where different panes of glass can produce radically altered reflections. Like funhouse mirrors, except they didn’t have funhouses in Clover’s time, so she doesn’t say exactly that, but that’s certainly the general idea. Jaune’s aura is huge not because he has a huge soul, so to speak — that would be kind of ridiculous — his aura is so much huger than anyone else’s because his mirror is reflecting back his soul in such a way that it appears larger than it really is in the way that some mirrors can make you seem bigger or smaller than you really are.”
“That’s great, Twilight, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Sunset said. “Aura is not the actual soul; when our aura breaks or runs out, we’re not actually soulless beings in the interval until it comes back. What’s done to the mirror is not actually done to the thing reflected in the mirror. If you look into a cracked mirror, it doesn’t actually mean that your face is in pieces.”
“But there’s a reason simple aura damage doesn’t kill us,” Twilight said. “If Amber had just taken a couple of bad hits to her aura, then she wouldn’t be dying right now. Her aura isn’t just damaged; it’s disintegrating.”
“Dark magic.”
“But what if there is some effect on her actual soul?” Twilight asked. “What if part of the reason her aura can’t regenerate properly is because there’s less for the mirror to reflect than there used to be?”
Sunset leaned back in her chair. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s accept that for the moment. What about it? She’ll still be alive, and the alternative is that she dies one way or the other.”
“I know,” Twilight said. “I’m just worried that … what she’s been through is so completely unprecedented even before we add in the trauma of Cinder’s attack that led to her being in this condition. We don’t know what effects this will have on her: emotionally, spiritually, mentally.”
“But once again, I repeat that she’ll be alive,” Sunset said. “She might have some problems, and I’ll accept that she’s probably been through a lot, but whatever issues she might have, we can help her get through them. Celestia knows that everyone has helped me get through my issues.”
“Is it the same thing?”
“I don’t know, but why can’t it be?” Sunset replied. “She’ll be alive, Twi. In every other scenario, Amber dies in some way and probably so does Pyrrha. We don’t know exactly what she’ll be like … but we’ll be able to find out, and that’s not something that we can say in any other option, is it?”
Twilight hesitated. “No,” she said. “And I wasn’t actually suggesting not doing this, I just … I’m worried.”
Sunset patted her on the shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “We’re going to save Amber, and then … whatever comes next, we’ll handle it. Like we handle everything else.”
Twilight smiled. “You’re really good at that, aren’t you?”
“At what?”
“Acting like you haven’t a doubt.”
“I don’t have any doubts.”
Twilight chuckled. “Yeah, sure.” She glanced over her shoulder at Amber. “I don’t want to be right about this. I want her to come out of that pod every inch the person she went in. Do you really think we can do it?”
“Yeah,” Sunset said. “I think we can. I think we have to. We don’t have a choice, for our friends’ sake.”
Twilight nodded. “For our friends’ sake.” She looked back at Sunset. “It’s funny; if this works, we’re going to make medical history, and nobody will ever know.”
“Nobody will know half the things we do; that’s what makes this so infuriating,” Sunset said. “Saving the world, and nobody knows we’re doing it. No glory, no parades, just … silent duty. But we’re doing good, so…” She stood up. “You should get some rest, Twilight. We’ve got a big day ahead of us.”
“And you’ve got the biggest day of all; why don’t you rest yourself?”
“I plan to,” Sunset said. “I just … I need to talk to someone while I’m doing it.”
In Sunset’s dream, she was a unicorn. A unicorn sitting on one of the many balconies of the palace in Canterlot, looking out over the many sparkling lights of the city at night as they seemed to reflect the myriad lights in the night sky above.
“The irony is not lost on me,” Luna said as she sat down beside Sunset, “that I rebelled against Celestia because I felt as though nopony would ever love the night as much as they adored the day, when if I had only had a little patience, I might have been free to see them do so.”
“Could you have borne to sit still and endure for so long, Princess?” Sunset asked.
Luna was silent a moment. “No.”
Sunset nodded. “Me neither.”
Luna glanced down at her. “You dream of home.”
“I dream of Canterlot,” Sunset corrected her. “Beacon is my home now. Sapphire is my home.”
“And yet you dream of Canterlot.”
“I dream of peace,” Sunset said. “I dream of a life free from fear and toil and turmoil. I dream of peace, for myself and for my heart’s closest. Am I ready, Princess Luna?”
“No,” Luna said. “But to make you ready would have required far more time than you have. You are as ready as your circumstances allow. You will have to muddle through.”
“I told Twilight that I would succeed because I couldn’t afford to fail.”
“As good a reason as any to succeed, I suppose.”
Sunset looked up at her. “Be honest, Princess, what do you rate my chances?”
Luna put one wing around Sunset. “You are inexperienced in this, it’s true,” she said. “And you could have perhaps have made more use of your powers in that world, but I would not have agreed to aid you this far, not even for Celestia’s urging, if I did not think you had a chance. You have made promises that must be kept.”
Sunset nodded in acknowledgement of that. “If I let Professor Ozpin down, I don’t know what he’ll be driven to do next … and I won’t be able to stop him a second time.”
“As you said, you cannot afford to fail.”
Sunset was silent a while. “Twilight — the Twilight in my world — is worried that Amber will come out of this … changed. Different.”
“She is probably right.”
“She is?” Sunset asked. “What makes you say that?”
“Because dreams matter,” Luna said. “What we see in our dreams affects us when we wake; although the dream may disappear, its effects will linger on in the back of the minds, or at their forefront in the case of a particularly vivid dream. What dreams this Amber has been having … I doubt they have been pleasant.”
Sunset tapped her hooves on the balcony. “Any last minute advice?”
“Every dream is different, as every dreamer is,” Luna said. “There is nothing specific I could say to benefit you, I fear.”
“I suppose you’ve helped me enough,” Sunset said. “Thank you, Princess, for everything.”
“It is a difficult thing that you have chosen to undertake, Sunset Shimmer,” Luna said, “but it is a noble thing, and for that reason alone, I wish you success in your venture tomorrow.”
Sunset smiled tightly.
“But something else troubles you,” Luna said. It was a statement, not a question.
“When Amber comes around, if I can bring her round,” Sunset said, “we’ll have to kill Cinder.”
“Your friend.”
“In a … manner of speaking,” Sunset murmured.
“Is there any way such a thing can be avoided?”
“If there is, I don’t see it.”
“Yet,” Luna said.
“Princess?”
“It took you a little time to see that there was a way in which another dire fate for one of your friends could be avoided, did it not?” Luna reminded her. “Focus on the task before you for now. Focus on Amber. Focus on saving her life. Then, when that is done, you can bend yourself to the task of saving Cinder’s.”
“If she even wants to be saved,” Sunset murmured. “My friends would probably tell me to give up on her.”
“No offence to your friends, but I have a somewhat different perspective,” Luna said, “and I for one am very glad that Celestia did not give up on me.”
Sunset smiled. “Then I won’t give up either. I’ll find a way … to save everyone.” She got up onto her hooves. “Thank you for everything, Princess. Wish me luck tomorrow.”
“Never stop reaching out, Sunset Shimmer,” Luna said. “You may not grasp all things you reach for, but the moment you cease to reach out … is the moment all things will become beyond you.”
The vault was crowded.
Everyone was there — absolutely everyone — standing nearer or further away from Amber as they waited for Sunset’s effort to begin: Qrow was lounging against the wall with his arms folded across his chest; Professor Ozpin was stood in the centre of the walkway, leaning heavily upon his cane, looking as though he might collapse from anticipation at any moment; Professor Goodwitch stood beside him, hands wrapped around her riding crop, her face impassive; General Ironwood stood at ease, with his hands clasped behind him, a little further away from Amber and from Professor Ozpin than the rest; Ruby and Penny, who had nothing particular to do with this but were here anyway, stood unobtrusively on the left-hand side of the vault; Ciel was helping Twilight with the last-minute preparations to the ice bath and all of her additional equipment that they would need to make a success of this; Rainbow Dash stood just a little beyond them, trying not to look at Amber but with her gaze seeming to be inexorably drawn back towards her like waves drawn back towards the shore; Jaune stood by, looking ready but nervous at the same time; Pyrrha put one arm upon his shoulder and smiled reassuringly at him; Sunset herself stood in front of Amber, looking upwards at the girl in the glass box. The girl they hoped to save.
I don’t intend for your soul to go anywhere.
Qrow took a drink from his flask. “I still can’t believe that you’re letting them go through with this, Oz.”
“If it saves Amber—” Professor Goodwitch began.
“Pretty big ‘if,’” Qrow said.
“I thought you didn’t like my machine, Qrow,” General Ironwood said. “Shouldn’t you be glad we don’t have to use it?”
“I don’t like your machine one bit,” Qrow growled. “That doesn’t mean that I believe in miracles.” He shook his head. “Maybe I should get out of here before I screw things up for her.”
“Not everything that goes awry is your fault, Qrow,” Ozpin said patiently. “Amber’s condition certainly is not. And I believe that the success or failure of Miss Shimmer’s plan rests on far more than whether you are present or not.”
“If you’re sure,” Qrow said. He took another drink. “But you never answered my question: what made you decide to put all your chips on this?”
“A conversation with a lady,” Professor Ozpin said. “One who gave me a renewed appreciation for the virtues of hope and faith.”
“Is that why you won’t explain exactly how all of this is supposed to work?” General Ironwood said. “Or is that you can’t?”
“So long as I can save Amber, General,” Sunset said, “does it really matter to you how I did it?”
She had no wish to divulge Equestria and the source of her magic to him. He seemed a decent enough man, and Rainbow and Twilight both liked and respected him, but he was an Atlesian soldier first and foremost, and he might have … notions of how to employ her and her powers that did not necessarily accord with Sunset’s own or with the desires of Princess Celestia.
“Trust me, General,” Twilight said. “If anything can work, this will.”
General Ironwood nodded. “Very well, Twilight. I’ll trust you.”
“When will you be ready to begin, Miss Shimmer?” Professor Ozpin asked.
“Twilight?” Sunset murmured, glancing in her direction.
Twilight looked down at the white, sterile ice bath that she had, with some difficulty, erected in the vault. It was filled with water and ice, obviously, and ready to receive Amber. An IV drip and some additional monitors stood nearby.
“I think…” she began. “Yes, I’m ready.”
“Jaune?”
Jaune raised his hands. They glowed briefly with the light of his semblance. “Ready.”
Sunset looked down at her hand. She had taken her glove off for the first time in a while. She’d had to if she was going to use her semblance. She clenched her hand into a fist.
This better work. For Pyrrha’s sake, and Amber’s.
“Then I’m ready too, Professor,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“Right,” Twilight. “Ciel, unseal the casket.”
Ciel nodded briskly and strode to the very back of the vault, to where Amber slept in her enchanted sleep, where the soft blue light of her casket cast its glow upon the space around — and upon Ciel, too; she was framed as if in moonlight, or underwater, rendered with a touch of the ethereal by her proximity to the sleeping Maiden.
Ciel stopped in front of her, looking up at Amber, and then down, clasping her hands together over her chest, her eyes closed in prayer.
Nobody interrupted her, nobody chivvied her along; they let her pray, silently, lips moving without sound. If ever there was a moment for prayer, it was surely now.
And then Ciel walked past Amber to the controls located beside and just behind the sealed pod. Her nimble fingers began to tap swiftly upon the screen. “Unsealing … now.”
The seals popped open, and white smoke began to leak from the edges of the glass-and-metal pod. Slowly, as if the machine itself possessed a sense of the gravity of the occasion, the lid of the pod began to elevate upwards, inch by inch, until it stood at a right angle to the pod itself, and Amber was exposed to the world.
The machines started to beep in alarm.
“Pyrrha,” Sunset said, a single word, conveying all that needed to be said.
Pyrrha was already at the pod and, with great gentleness and even greater care, picked up Amber and held her like a bride upon her wedding day as she carried her towards the ice bath. The Fall Maiden seemed small and delicate in Pyrrha’s arms, a fragile thing, slender and lithe of limb, so young.
So young to bear this burden.
The blue light from her pod, what light there was in this shadowy chamber, cast the scars upon her face into sharp relief, the wounds that Cinder had inflicted on her seeming to cast shadows of their own.
Pyrrha’s face was grave, and her eyes were fixed on Amber as she lowered her into the ice bath as gently as though she were a babe.
The alarms that were being sounded began to quiet, although they did not silence as Twilight attached wired-up pads to Amber’s arms. “The ice bath is slowing her metabolism, as expected. Applying the IV.”
She jabbed a needle into Amber’s elbow, said needle being in turn attached to a bag of light blue fluid.
“That should help too,” Twilight said. “I’ll keep monitoring, but…” She looked at Sunset. “It’s time.”
Sunset walked forwards. Pyrrha had laid Amber in the bath with her head closest to Sunset, and for a moment, Sunset simply looked down on her, floating amidst the icy water, her brown hair spreading out all around her face like a halo. With her eyes closed and her expression passive in repose, she seemed as much dead as asleep: like a drowned girl floating in the water.
Sunset did not have time to look long. She only had time to act. She raised her hand.
“Time to wake up,” she said as she placed her palm flat on Amber’s forehead.
Sunset gasped as her eyes began to glow pure white. She felt the heady rush of energy running through her arm as her under-utilised semblance sprang to life and then—
Thunder rolled in the skies above.
There was no lightning. There was no rain. There was nothing but the incessant rumbling of the thunder, growling on and on and producing no other effects but the sound, the sound in the boiling grey clouds up above, the constant pounding sound so loud it seemed as though it ought to shake the very world as the dark clouds consumed the sky.
Anger. Pain. Fear.
Those were the three emotions that Sunset felt. They were the only three emotions that she felt as she stood in the midst of a wood somewhere, with the thunder rolling on and on and the clouds growing ever darker above her. She felt the emotions that Amber was feeling, and Amber was feeling anger, pain, and fear.
The anger was … well, it wasn’t quite as bad as the sheer rage at everyone and everything coursing through Cinder, but it was coming pretty close. The fear made Sunset want to cower on her knees in terror, putting her head in her hands and screaming for Celestia; the pain, the pain, Sunset wanted to scratch at her face until the skin fell off to try and get the pain to stop, she wanted to throw herself into a fire just to stop the cold, she wanted to plunge into the deepest darkness where no light could reach anything to just make it stop.
Sunset’s breathing was coming shallow now, shallow and quick, and she had to fight to steady it. She had to fight. She had been prepared for something like this. Not for the deluge of terror and hatred mingling in Amber’s soul — Twilight might have had more of a point than Sunset had initially credited — but for the need to protect herself from Amber’s emotions. That was the risk with Sunset’s semblance, that had always been the risk from the moment that it had activated and Sunset had been deluged with Cinder’s fury. She had to block them out. She had to remain herself if she was to see this through.
That was part of what she and Luna had been practicing at nights. She had to focus on things that were hers, things that Amber would have no knowledge of, things that would counteract the fear and pain and anger that dominated Amber’s mindscape. As the thunder howled, Sunset stood straight. She closed her eyes, armouring her soul in her own experiences against Amber’s feelings and the things that had befallen her: Ruby falling asleep curled up against Sunset in their dorm room after the field trip to Forever Fall; Pyrrha recognising her as an equal on the rooftop after their duel; the four of them getting their picture taken with Fluffy in Benni Havens’; Celestia forgiving her for all her wrongs and welcoming her back into the embrace of her affection; Blake reaching out to her for help; dancing with Flash and ending things the right way; all her friends; the silver light in Ruby’s soul driving away Cinder’s darkness as that beautiful music played all around her.
Though they could not be with her here, they were all with her nevertheless, standing guard over the integrity of her own thoughts as Sunset, though she could feel the beating of Amber’s feelings upon her soul like waves pounding at a sea wall, was able to keep her own feelings separate as she surveyed the world around her.
The clouds were not a part of any memory of Amber’s; there was no lightning emanating from the thunder, and beneath the dark clouds, the sunlight was falling brightly on the forest as though the clouds weren’t there, which they weren’t. This was a symptom of Amber’s troubles, a creation of her inner turmoil. Wherever this was, whenever this was, the day itself had been beautiful.
Wherever this was, whenever this was. One of the downsides of putting up an emotional barrier between herself and Amber was that things Sunset would have known straight away were unclear to her now. She would have to keep her eyes open and try to work things out the old-fashioned way.
And also work out if this storm was a sign of the damage to Amber’s aura or simply a consequence of her having been through a lot. Sunset eyed it carefully. It didn’t look as she and Luna had discussed the damage to Amber’s soul appearing; according to Luna, it would take the form of tears in the world around her, reality itself being torn apart. This was not that. This was just a visible sign of Amber’s emotions clouding over everything else.
She strained her ears. Was that…? Sunset listened carefully. Yes, there it was, barely audible beneath the sound of the constantly rolling thunder, but she could hear someone singing. Not like the music in Ruby’s soul, but still beautiful. Whoever was singing had a lovely voice, for all that Sunset could barely hear it.
Although, as she strained to hear it so it became easier to hear, rising above the storm, or perhaps it was more true to say that the storm receded from her ears to let her better hear the singing. Whichever was true, Sunset followed the sound. It was not far; once she picked her way through the tall trees of this stout oak forest, she soon came to a ruined building with a dirt track leading to it from out of the trees.
It was not entirely clear to Sunset what kind of a building it was: it was square, with what looked like the remains of a tower at one end, built out of grey stone blocks, with buttresses and gargoyles decorating the exterior. It was almost all gone now, only a few crumbling remains and a single weather-worn gargoyle remaining of it. The singing was coming from within — as much as anything could be said to be within such a ruin — and so it was within that Sunset headed.
The floor was gone, replaced by the same grass that dominated without the ruin walls, but against the northern wall, there remained, though overgrown by vines and moss, a marble statue of a woman, swathed in a shawl, her hands clasped beatifically to her chest as she looked downwards to where people might have stood or knelt before her.
Right now, the statue was looking down at Amber; it was clearly she, for all that she had her back to Sunset, who was standing before the statue of the lady, standing in a patch of sunlight falling through a hole in the wall. And she was singing.
She was the source of that beautiful voice, standing mirroring the stance of the statue, with her head bowed and her hands clasped to her chest, singing so beautifully. Sunset wasn’t sure if she’d ever heard such a beautiful singing voice before. Had even Princess Celestia sang so sweetly?
Sunset tentatively lowered her emotional defences; there were still the thunderclouds overhead, there was still the same anger and pain, but there was happiness here too; it was faint beneath the fear and anger, but she could feel it. She could even feel love.
“Who are you?”
Sunset turned to see Amber standing behind her. She was dressed in clothes that, although rustic in style, were clearly tailored, with golden bangles hanging from her wrist. A quick glance confirmed that the singing Amber had not moved, and in any case, this Amber — the one who had just demanded to know who Sunset was — had scars criss-crossing her face. The real Amber, the present Amber, the comatose Amber trapped in her own mind.
“Who are you?” Amber demanded a second time. “I don’t remember you; you don’t belong here.” Her amber eyes widened. “Did she send you?”
Sunset raised her hands. “My name is Sunset Shimmer. I’m a huntress; Professor Ozpin—”
Amber screamed, and as she screamed, the thunder roared louder, loud enough to completely drown out the memory of her singing in the ruin, and as she shrieked in fury, she thrust out her hands, and Sunset was struck by an enormous gust of wind that knocked her off her feet, blowing her on her back along the grass.
“Get out of here!” Amber yelled. “You don’t belong here! I don’t want you here!”
Sunset picked herself up off the ground. “I know that you’ve been through a lot—”
“Go!” Amber screamed, and she hurled a second gust of wind at Sunset. But Sunset was prepared for it this time, and with a thought, she conjured up a shield that resisted Amber’s blast as though it were nothing at all.
“I’m here to help you, Amber,” Sunset said. “I know who you are, and I’m here to help. If you’ll just trust me, I can get you out of here.”
Amber shook her head, tears forming at the edges of her eyes as she retreated away from Sunset. “You can’t help me. Nobody can help me. Just … just get out of here before one of them finds me.”
“Who?” Sunset asked. “Who finds you?”
A shadow fell across the entrance to the ruin.
“Your voice is too lovely for the squirrels and the birds alone,” Professor Ozpin said as he walked through the crumbling archway that was all that remained of the entrance to this fallen place. He was smiling; in fact, he looked more at ease than Sunset had ever seen him. His cane was nowhere to be seen, and he walked with the vigour of a much younger man.
Amber — the Amber of memory, the past Amber — turned to look at him, her green cloak swirling around her. She smiled; she was younger in this memory but not so much younger, perhaps a little younger than Ruby.
“Uncle Ozpin,” she said, in a tone that was slightly exasperated, slightly teasing, and most full of joy and happiness. “I come up here so that no one can hear me.”
“And I’m telling you there is no need,” Professor Ozpin said. “You could sing at the greatest concert halls in Vale, and you would hold the crowds enraptured.”
Amber skipped across the grass towards him. “Does that mean you’ll talk to mom?” she asked. “Does that mean you’ll take me with you when you go?”
“Amber—”
“I want to see what’s out there, Uncle Oz,” Amber said. She clasped her hands behind her as she leaned a little sideways. “I want to see the world. I want to see your world, oh, brave new world.” She twirled in place, spreading her arms out around her like a dancer. “I want to see everything and everyone. I want to see where you go whenever you’re not here. There must be so much more out there than this.”
“No,” Amber — the other Amber, the present Amber, the soul of the wounded and unconscious Fall Maiden — cried, as she shook her head desperately. “No, you don’t. You really don’t. It’s dangerous out there, it isn’t worth it, just stay here.”
Professor Ozpin smiled fondly. “Maybe later, when you’re older.”
The Amber of memory pouted. “I’m fourteen years old; I’m not a child anymore.” She smiled. “How long can you stay?”
“Not long, I’m afraid,” Professor Ozpin said. “Duty calls.”
“When are you going to tell me what it is that you do when you’re not here?”
“When—”
“When I’m older,” Amber said with mock exasperation. She kissed Professor Ozpin on the cheek. “I miss you when you’re gone.”
“And I miss you—”
“No!” the Amber of the present yelled. “No! Don’t listen to him! Don’t trust him! He’s the reason, it’s all his fault, he made me this way!”
“What are you talking about?” Sunset demanded. “Professor Ozpin didn’t attack you—”
“He put this power inside me!” Amber cried. “That’s the reason they were hunting me, he’s the reason—” She stopped, eyes wide and filling with tears. She looked around, head darting this way and that like a rabbit. “No. No, no. They’ve found me. It’s coming.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Stay away from me,” Amber cried as she fled into the forest and out of sight.
Sunset didn’t pursue. As important as it was to follow her, she had a feeling that a touch of whatever dark power Cinder had infected her with was about to make itself known.
Amber and Ozpin continued their conversation in memory. Sunset didn’t pay as much attention as she perhaps should have, but she was listening for the approach of darkness, and in any case, Professor Ozpin was being so fond and tender with Amber, so unusually so in her experience, that it seemed almost indecent to spy upon the particulars of their interactions as they walked away, arm in arm, headed towards wherever, somewhere else.
Sunset looked around the ruin. So, Amber had come here to practice her singing where nobody could hear. She could understand that; she’d had a secret place in the palace garden, an overgrown and abandoned place where nobody ever went, where she would sneak off to practice spells where nobody could see, so that nobody could see her screw up. And it didn’t matter how good you were or how unlikely you were to screw up: that fear of doing so, and of failing to live up to the expectations of the person who you wanted to impress more than anyone in the world, never left you.
Amber and Ozpin departed, blissfully unaware of the approach of the enormous beowolf that lumbered through the woods, snorting and snarling. It raised its head and roared up at the thundering sky, and then it began to swipe its claws left and right, and as it slashed seemingly the empty air, the empty air was scored and wounded, revealing darkness beneath and howling winds that began to gust at Sunset as they flooded through from out of the void, released by the damage that the metaphorical beowolf was inflicting.
“Oh no you don’t,” Sunset muttered, and she clicked her fingers.
Instantly, the beowolf was engulfed in fire, its whole black body burning, and the mental grimm howled in pain as the flames rippled up its body, consuming everything.
Sunset grinned. It was good to be able to do whatever she could imagine doing. She clapped her hands together, and the earth itself rose up to swallow the burning beowolf whole, crushing it to nothingness in a vice of inescapable pressure.
“One down,” Sunset thought. “Some more left to go.”
Now, she just had to deal with the wounds inflicted on Amber’s aura and soul.
Sunset raised both her hands, as the winds blowing in from the empty void beyond buffeted her jacket and blue her hair this way and that. She raised her hands and imagined severed pieces of metal being welded together; she imagined Jaune at the forge remaking his sword, melting the fragments together as the heat of the furnace turned the metal molten. Sunset thought of that as she raised her hands, and a wave like molten metal slid down the very wall of reality itself, closing the wounds the beowolf had inflicted as the walls of Amber’s memory were cleansed and closed and made whole once again.
“Amber?” Sunset called. “Amber, where are you?”
If Amber was still somewhere nearby, then she would hear Sunset, but if not, then Sunset thought it likely that she would be—
The sky darkened. The whole world darkened. But then it was filled with light again. Light after a fashion, at least. The world was grey, and it wasn’t just because of the storm clouds booming out Amber’s anger and her fear. The world was grey because it had been a grey day. But it was windy because Amber’s aura was falling apart.
Whatever this memory was, it had been destroyed. Sunset could just about make out Beacon Tower, the green lights burning in Ozpin’s office, and so the area around here must be Beacon, but it was hard to tell. There were rents and tears everywhere; the people walking through the courtyard were mere silhouettes devoid of features that had been robbed from Amber’s memories by the decay and the destruction. Tattered shreds of remembrance fluttered free, barely tethered to the tower at the centre of it all, the only thing that was holding it all together, and the wind howled even louder than the thunder as it pulled upon the threads to tear them all to pieces.
Sunset reached out and pulled back.
It was harder going this time; the force trying to destroy this memory was much greater than it had been, and what Sunset had to work with was so much less. She was lucky that she knew some of the details herself. She could give Amber some of her own memories of Beacon courtyard, of the school, of what lay around the tower, using her memories of what ought to go where and what this building looked like and where the statue was in relation to the dining hall, and she could wrench, by force of will, the memory together and reconstruct it not exactly in her own image but out of her perception. But only the superficials. She could expel the darkness, she could banish the void, she could weld the threads of Amber’s aura together until they became whole, she could even recreate Beacon from her own experiences of it, but as to what this memory had once been, what it meant to Amber, who had been there, for all of that, Sunset was powerless. The figures remained silhouettes at best; some of them were mere clumps of mist that happened to move like men. And all Sunset could feel was fear; if there were any other emotions associated with this memory, specific emotions, they were gone now.
“How did you do that?” Amber demanded, appearing in front of the statue of the huntsman and huntress. “I’ve never … all I can do is watch it all fall apart.”
“I may not be a Maiden, but I’m not without power,” Sunset explained. “I made it this far. I really can help you; I dealt with the—”
“Don’t say it; you’ll just draw more of them,” Amber cried. “I can’t … they try to find me. We have to be quiet.”
Sunset didn’t point out that Amber had been doing most of the screaming so far.
Amber looked around. “I … I don’t remember what this was. I just remember that I didn’t like it.”
“No?”
“No,” Amber repeated. “Oh, brave new world. So often I begged Uncle … I begged him to bring me here, and when I came … I hated it. The noise, the people. Oh, brave new world that has such people in it. Ozpin sent you? To bring me back?”
Sunset nodded. “That’s about it, yeah.”
Amber retreated a step. “He’ll always send people to bring me back. He’ll never let me alone, will he?”
Sunset shook her head. “Amber, I … I’m going to be honest with you. It’s not pretty, but it’s the truth. You’re dying. I can help you, but you have to trust me.”
“Why?” Amber demanded.
“'Why'?” Sunset repeated. “Didn’t you hear me?”
“At least the pain will stop,” Amber whispered.
Sunset hesitated. “We … we can help you with that too, once you wake up.“
“Why should I believe you?” Amber said. “Why should I believe anything you say? You work for Ozpin; you just want to take me back so that I can be his weapon. Well, I won’t! I won’t!” she yelled as she turned away, fleeing from Beacon courtyard and its shadowy and barely half-remembered denizens as she ran away into a different part of her soul.
Sunset gave chase. There was no beowolf to delay her this time, and she had already repaired the damage that Cinder had inflicted upon this part of Amber’s aura. So she pursued Amber, who ran and ran through memories and experiences, some of which flitted past in an instant as Amber and Sunset dashed through them, but other times, Sunset had to linger just a little, letting Amber open up a slight lead on her as she took in what Amber was running through, what her life had been.
She had been raised in a cabin in the woods, alone except for a woman named … named Merida, that was the name that she heard Ozpin calling her when he thought Amber had gone to bed one night. Merida. The name from Summer Rose’s diary, the girl that Team STRQ had brought to Beacon, with Auburn. Auburn, the Fall Maiden, had passed her powers on to Merida, and then Merida had raised Amber as her own daughter? Had Ozpin arranged that? Obviously, since he visited them often enough. He never stayed very long, it was rare for him to stay more than one or two nights, and then he would be gone again, usually for months before his next visit, but whenever he arrived, little Amber would run down the path towards the cottage gate shrieking in delight.
“Uncle Ozpin! Uncle Ozpin! Did you bring me back a present?”
He had always brought her a present: a toy, a book, some new clothes; something from his travels, something from the wider world that he would tell her of but never let her see, no matter how much she begged him to.
She was raised that way, with no other contact with anybody but Merida, who was her mother in every way that really mattered except — probably — for the having physically given birth to Amber, and Professor Ozpin. Uncle Ozpin.
As much as it had felt wrong of her, indecent, intrusive on her part to watch Ozpin and Amber’s interactions in the ruin, there were times — as Amber ran from memory to memory, dashing through her memories of Professor Ozpin as though she wanted to stay away from them almost as much as she wanted to stay away from Sunset — when Sunset had to stop and watch because they were just so familiar to her: the way that Amber and Professor Ozpin would sit in front of the fire, drinking hot cocoa while Ozpin read to her; the way that he brought her a staff with a wind-dust crystal and taught her how to use it, so patient and so understanding with all of Amber’s difficulties, rewarding even the mildest accomplishment with effusive praise; the way that there was a lesson to be found in what seemed at first to be even the most casual of their interactions; the way that he cared about her, so solicitous, so patient; it was all so familiar to her.
She had been his faithful student, his little sunbeam.
Yes, they hadn’t lived together the way that Sunset and Celestia had, but she recognised all of this, right down to the way in which they had sat in front of the fire and drank hot chocolate in Celestia’s study, and Celestia would put one wing around Sunset, draping her soft feathers around her like a blanket. Amber sang so prettily; Celestia had insisted that Sunset learn music as well as magic because she wanted her to be a sophisticated gentlemare; Celestia had told Sunset that she was destined for great things, and Ozpin had told Amber the same.
They had both found in their tutors the parental affection that was otherwise missing from their lives.
Celestia told me that she could never sacrifice Twilight, not even to save the world, but Amber is your Twilight, Professor, or your Sunset, at least.
What kind of life have you had that you could bring yourself to sacrifice her to give her powers to Pyrrha?
After all, his interactions with Pyrrha weren’t anything like as deep or as devoted as what she was witnessing with Amber.
Sunset could recognise the anger now, the constant anger that was making it thunder in the skies over Amber’s memories. The fear was general, she was terrified, but the anger, the anger had direction: it was pointed towards Ozpin, and to anyone associated with him. Sunset could feel that because so much of it — the distrust, the feeling of being used, the feeling of being manipulated and thrown into the path of danger — felt so very, terribly familiar to her.
It was like Cinder all over again: the hardest emotions to keep out were the ones that chimed with the emotions that were there already, and though she had started to get over those feelings towards Professor Ozpin, the way that he had been willing to put Pyrrha’s soul in such extreme jeopardy had brought some latent hostility roaring to the fore, and now, Amber’s own feelings on the matter were calling out to Sunset’s emotions, pushing past the barriers like flood waters breaking through the levee, seeping in even as Sunset fought to keep them out.
Sunset pursued Amber, following where she led, through memories that showed her failing to kill a deer in the woods because she couldn’t bring herself to hurt it, at which point, Merida declared that she would eat no meat until she did, because there’d be no hypocrites in their house — from what Sunset could gather, Amber hadn’t had a bite of meat since.
She followed through memories that were beginning to tear and memories that were falling apart, and whenever she came to such a place, Sunset had to stop and repair the damage as best she could, killing whatever mental grimm infested the place and tying up the fluttering threads of Amber’s aura until it was intact once again. She couldn’t do anything about the existing damage to Amber’s memories: she couldn’t repopulate the people she had forgotten, or even the landscapes that Sunset herself didn’t remember. There was mist there instead, misty holes in Amber’s soul that served to plug the gaps and achieve a measure of coherence, but as for what it would actually mean for her … Sunset couldn’t exactly say. All she could say was that the memories that Amber fled through showed the sweetest maid who ever lived, an ingénue who had never known trouble or hardship or strife, who was completely ignorant of all the evils of the world, wholly innocent and absolutely untouched by them.
And yet now, she was consumed by anger and by fear, tormented by pain, in all her memories, the happiness and love that must have once been there was but a kind of distant echo now. Where love had once run deepest, a cancer spread.
Sunset pursued Amber into a memory of Cinder.
She couldn’t look away. Though her limbs were shaking, she couldn’t turn away. She had never seen Cinder like this before, so cruel, so vicious, so utterly without mercy. She knew, objectively, that Cinder was capable of these things — how could she have been ignorant of it? — but the face that she showed to Sunset, playful, teasing, ultimately honest and even trustworthy in a sense, all of that was gone from the Cinder who stood over a helpless Amber while Mercury and Lightning Dust held her pinioned between them. All of that was gone from the Cinder who produced some kind of bug grimm, which transformed into black slime while Amber begged for mercy; all of that was gone from the Cinder who showed no mercy as she flung the slime into Amber’s face and began to rip her aura apart so that she could take the power of the Fall Maiden for herself.
It was the first time that Sunset had genuinely seen this side of Cinder before, the merciless enemy, the commander of a crew of bloodthirsty savages, the killer who would smirk as she took your life and soul alike.
This was the Cinder that others saw; Sunset understood, that now. This was the Cinder whom nobody could understand Sunset’s bizarre attachment to. This was the Cinder who made the world terrified.
And she had Amber terrified as well. The fear from this memory was overwhelming; it threatened to have Sunset on the ground puking in blind terror. And the pain, this was the focus of the pain that was tearing Amber apart. This was where it had all started, and this memory — the memory that Amber could perhaps have most done to lose — was completely untouched.
Sunset couldn’t take it anymore. Amber had already gone, and Sunset made haste to do likewise. She didn’t want to stay here, she didn’t want to see this, she didn’t want to … she couldn’t … it was cowardly, but … if she stayed here much longer, then all that she was feeling would undo her utterly.
So she followed Amber further still.
To a memory where Amber stopped, seemingly unable to simply run on, unable to pass this memory by, unable to do ought but stop and stare.
They were back at the ruins, at the old remains of what Amber’s memories suggested had been — or at least she thought that it had been — a chapel, a place of worship long since crumbled, the place as deserted as the goddess who had been worshipped here.
Amber, the old Amber, the Amber of memory, stood once more in the midst of the ruins. She was older now; Sunset could make out no difference between the Amber of memory and the present Amber who stood, silent, watching said memory; they were alike in all respects save for the scars upon the present Amber’s face.
They were not dressed alike; in her memory, Amber was dressed more simply, in a grey blouse with a black bustier worn over the top and a dark grey skirt. Her feet were bare, although she hardly seemed to notice as she danced over the grass that grew where once the floor of this chapel had been.
She was dancing, arms out on either side of her, eyes closed, a smile on her face as bright as the sun.
And she was singing. As squirrels and rabbits gambolled around her, as little birds flew about and settled momentarily upon her fingers before flying up to perch upon the crumbling stone and listen to her sweet song.
“I know you; I walked with you once upon a dream,
I know you, the gleam in your eyes—”
“Is so familiar a gleam,” the other Amber, the present Amber, whispered.
Sunset glanced at her.
“This is … this is when we met,” Amber said quietly.
“Met who?” asked Sunset, with equal softness, as though the memory of Amber could hear her and would be disturbed by too much racket.
“Here he comes,” Amber replied, gesturing to the door, the archway that had once served as an entrance to the chapel.
A young man stood beneath the arch. Not just any young man, but to Sunset’s amazement, she found it was a young man that she recognised: Dove Bronzewing of Team BLBL, dressed in a grey tunic over a black shirt and brown trousers, with a forest-green cloak hanging off one shoulder.
What’s he doing here?
What he was doing was standing as still as though he had been turned to stone, as though he were another statue of an ancient god or some such figure of worship, staring with his blue eyes wide, his mouth open, as he gazed with amazement upon Amber, entranced by the sound of her sweet voice.
“I know it’s true that visions are seldom all they seem,
But if I know you, I know what you’ll do,
You’ll lo—”
Amber stopped, her singing stopping with her, a gasp escaping her lips as she opened her eyes to see Dove standing there, watching her. She took a step backwards, and then another, raising one hand.
“Wait!” Dove cried, holding up his own hands pacifically as he ventured a step forward. “Please wait,” he said, more quietly now, his voice gentle. “Please, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to startle you. I mean you no harm. I was just … I heard a voice singing, singing so beautifully, I had to see who it was.”
Amber was silent for a moment, staring at him. “My mother says I should be wary of strange men.”
“Your mother may be right,” Dove admitted, “but I would not be a stranger to you; my name is Dove, Dove Bronzewing. I live with my grandfather in town.”
“In the town?” Amber repeated, “Just past the woods?”
“Yes,” Dove said, “that’s right, in Fairmarket.”
“I’ve never been there,” Amber replied. “I’ve never been allowed to go there.”
“That explains why I’ve never seen you before,” Dove murmured. He smiled. “I would have remembered if I’d seen you before. Do you…? It doesn’t matter.”
“See how he doesn’t ask where I live,” Amber — the real Amber — said to Sunset in her memory. “He fears to frighten me, or make me suspicious.”
“Can you tell me what your home is like?” Amber asked. “Can you tell me what the world is like? Can you tell me stories?”
“What would you like to know?”
“Anything,” Amber replied. “Everything. Whatever you can tell me.”
“I would be honoured,” Dove began, and then paused. He smiled. “If I do, will you sing for me some more? I would love to hear more of that sweet song.”
Amber laughed lightly. “Come back tomorrow, and meet me here, and maybe I will.”
The real Amber let out a sob, covering her scarred face with one hand, her body trembling as she turned away from Sunset and the memory.
“I’m sorry, Dove,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“'Sorry'?” Sunset asked. “Sorry for what?”
Amber shook her head, walking on and then running on, continuing to run, running away from Sunset once again. Sunset resumed the chase, but as she ran, she found that she was running to a stand still, in a sense, because all the memories were here, in this chapel; it was memories of Dove that Amber returned to again and again, of their meetings in these ruins, meetings which she kept secret from her mother and Ozpin. Memories of the stories he told her and of the songs that she sang for him.
She never did sing that song for him, the one that he had interrupted and caused her to stop, but by some art, some magic, some power of love, he seemed to come to know the words regardless, enough to sing them in his own half-decent baritone.
“But if I know you, I know what you’ll do,
You’ll love me at once, the way you did once,
Upon a dream.”
Memories of them dancing in the ruins, and in the woods, while birds and woodland creatures watched them in delight. Memories of them dancing in Dove’s rustic hometown, which she begged him to bring her to for a festival. Amber laughed like a child in delight to see these rather unimpressive houses, these little homes of wood and daub; to Sunset’s eyes, they seemed mere rustic dwellings lacking in beauty or sophistication, but to Amber, they seemed as marvellous as the palaces of princesses.
“Oh, brave new world,” she whispered, turning around and around gawping at everything, eyes straining to take it in. “Oh, brave new world that has such people in it.”
Perhaps if I told her that I know where Dove is, she’d stop and listen to me.
No. No, I should not do that. Dove doesn’t know about any of this; he’s given no sign that he does, and there’s nothing in Amber’s memories either. Amber wasn’t the Fall Maiden when … when they fell in love.
That was what it was; Amber’s feelings were unmistakable upon that point. They were in love, or at least, she had loved him. In her eyes, in her mind, in her soul, Dove Bronzewing was the one living person who had not betrayed her, had not abandoned her.
But she had abandoned him.
That was a memory that Amber fled through, not stopping this time, seeming to want to avoid it almost as much as her memory of Cinder’s attack, a memory of Amber, dressed just as she was now, mounted on a horse, while Dove stood beside her, looking up.
“You’re leaving then?” he asked, his voice trembling slightly. “You … you’re going to see Vale, just like you always wanted.” He tried to smile, but his heart was not in it, and he struggled to turn his lips up.
“Yes,” Amber whispered. “Yes, just like I always wanted.”
And yet, nothing like you wanted it, Sunset thought.
“Then…” Dove hesitated. “Then why do you seem so sad?”
Amber bowed her head. “Because … because I don’t want to go.”
Dove reached up and pressed his hand upon hers where they sat on the pommel of her saddle. “I’ll be seventeen soon,” he said. “Next year, I can come to Beacon and study to become a huntsman, just like I told you about. I’ll be there, with you. Just … wait for me, Amber. Promise me you’ll wait.”
Now Amber smiled, and unlike Dove, she was able to smile, to smile with relief, with joy, with anticipation.
“I will,” she declared. “I will!” she cried. “I’ll wait for you, Dove, for months or years or however long it takes, I’ll wait for you because … because I love you. You’re my forever fall.”
Dove reached for her, Amber’s horse obediently sidestepped away from him, not to get Amber away, but rather, to give Amber room to lean down, to lean so far that she was almost falling off the horse, to lean down far enough she could kiss him as he cupped her face with both his hands.
“We will meet again,” Dove promised. “In dreams, and then reality.”
“We will,” Amber vowed. “I know we will.”
And then, smiling, she rode away.
‘They looked for her coming from the White Tower, but she did not return.’
And at least the Empress knew what she was getting into when she rode away.
Professor, how could you make someone like this the Fall Maiden? This is a heavy burden to place on Pyrrha’s shoulders, but on Amber? How could you think she was suited for this?
She should have been sent away before her mother died.
But Professor Ozpin, it seemed, had wished for Amber to have the powers. He had not sent Merida to fetch a successor as he had Auburn, he had not sent a successor to live with Merida, he had not removed Amber from Merida’s house, and from her thoughts, he had let them carry on living together until the day Merida died and passed the powers on to her beloved daughter. Why? Why had he done this, why had he allowed it? Why did he think Amber would be a good Fall Maiden?
Secrecy, yes, but if secrecy is all, then why select for virtue? Why choose, if not because you believe the choice matters?
Then why choose Amber?
In some ways, it hardly mattered. Whether by her mother or by Ozpin, Amber had been chosen, and it was Sunset’s task to address the consequences of that.
And so followed where Amber had fled.
Following on until the end of the line.
Amber’s cottage, the home that she had shared with Merida, the place where she had lived in the woods, the place she had felt safe, that was where she’d run to in the end.
Sunset was outside the cottage and could not see Amber, but she knew she was within.
There was nowhere left for her to run.
In front of Sunset, directly ahead, just between Sunset and the cottage, was a raging vortex. The landscape had been ripped apart, and it was streaming like paper in the wind as the vortex pulled against it. Sunset guessed that they had reached the limit of Amber’s remaining aura, the point at which it was all fraying and unravelling. She could see it doing just that, tearing the way that fabric does once first you let it start to tear, little bits of sky and tree and memory pulling free and falling into nothingness. Lost like dreams forgotten upon waking.
She would have to do something about this. But first, as the wind gusted about her, she would have to do something about the grimm.
At first, there were many of them, a dozen at least, all beowolves, the remnants of whatever Cinder had done to Amber, of the darkness that she had flung into her face, the remains of the darkness corrupting her aura, tearing at it, pulling it, devouring it. They had all come to this place, drawn by Amber or by Sunset, she couldn’t be sure. But as Sunset watched, those dozen beowolves all dissolved into black ooze which moved, guided by invisible eyes and invisible intelligence, flowing together into a vast black puddle out of which arose, before Sunset’s eyes, into an enormous many-headed dragon grimm, a Colchian to give it the name of its kind, with two red leathery wings flapping on the back of its long serpentine body.
Sunset could feel Amber’s fear increasing.
“Hey, Amber!” Sunset called out, certain that Amber could hear her even if she couldn’t see. “Watch this; you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
The Colchian hissed as it slithered towards her on its long black trunk, red tongues flickering from out of its multitude of white, bony heads, each one triangular in shape and ridged with horns longer and sharper than their fangs.
“You see,” Sunset said as she sauntered towards the grimm and the wind blew all around her. “I am not the best huntress around.” She flung out her hand, and Crescent Rose appeared in it, because if this was a dream, then why the hay shouldn’t she be as cool as all her friends? “But I know all the most awesome huntsmen there are, no question.”
She spun Crescent Rose dramatically in the air, planting the scythe-blade in the ground like Ruby always did before she let them have it, firing one, two, three, four shots with the sniper rifle that made the Colchian hiss in pain and anger before she charged. Sunset moved faster than she had ever moved in the real world or ever could, so fast that she was leaving a trail of rose petals behind her as she ran. One of the Colchian’s heads lunged for her, but Sunset came to a sudden halt and slashed at it with her scythe, wounding it. She fired into the ground, propelling herself high up into the air, higher than the Colchian’s heads could reach, and there, she hung suspended for a moment as she turned lazily in the air, before she fell as swiftly as a thunderbolt to slice off one of the Colchian’s heads.
One down.
Crescent Rose disappeared from Sunset’s hands, replaced by Miló in her right hand and Akoúo̱ on her left arm, and like Pyrrha, she leapt with the grace of a dancer away from the snapping jaws of the Colchian, slashing at it with Miló in sword form, then spear form, then switching it to rifle mode to fire five shots at the grimm in quick succession as she leapt away, then back to spear mode as she whirled in place, slashing, then thrusting the spear into the throat of one of the creature’s other heads.
And another one down.
Crocea Mors, new and improved, appeared in Sunset’s hands as she slashed with the sword to cleave off another head cleanly from its trunk.
And another.
Gambol Shroud formed instantly, as swift as Sunset could imagine it, and she buried the cleaver in the eye of the fourth head, grappling onto the grimm’s neck as it writhed in pain, swinging around and around. Another of the remaining heads tried to swallow her, but bit down only on a fire clone that exploded in its jaws. Sunset swung around once more, and her momentum was such that with the sword she could slice off another head.
Ciel’s Distant Thunder took care of another even before Sunset had hit the ground again.
There was only a single head left, roaring and snarling and writhing as Sunset landed.
Penny’s swords appeared all around Sunset like a halo; they formed a ring around her, spinning and whirring, and from that ring erupted an enormous laser burst so bright that it threatened to blind Sunset and consume all else within her vision.
And when it was finished, there was not a single trace of the grimm remaining, nor of the darkness with which Cinder had infected Amber.
Sunset turned her attention to the void and the vortex. She grabbed hold of the flapping tendrils of aura with her thought, this dreamscape making her magic as strong as it needed to be, and once again, a wave like molten metal in the blacksmith’s forge washed down what passed for the reality of this place, stitching it together, fusing it together, remaking it as best Sunset could. It wasn’t perfect by any means; she had seen these woods too briefly to well recall what they looked like, but she had, she thought, accomplished what she had set out to do. She had closed off the tears in Amber’s aura and stopped the constant unravelling that had threatened her life.
Now all she had to do was convince Amber to wake up.
Golden light was already deluging the memories as Sunset walked into the cottage, motes of golden light falling like rain after a long dry spell, light descending as if from heaven to fall upon the ground: Jaune’s semblance, working to boost Amber’s aura now that the degradation had ceased. Why it was only visible to her now, when Jaune had been at work boosting Amber’s aura since Sunset had entered her mind, she could not say; perhaps it was only now the degradation had ceased that Jaune’s aura could have any effect.
Whatever the exact cause, Sunset felt it was rather appropriate.
“Amber?” Sunset called. “Amber, it’s okay now; they’re gone. You don’t ever have to worry about them again.”
A sob was her only answer. A sob that sounded like it was coming from the second floor of the isolated cottage, so Sunset climbed up the wooden stairs, passed framed pencil drawings that looked as though they had been drawn by Amber herself, and made her way into a child’s bedroom, rustic and simple without much in the way of décor but filled with toys and books. The window was open, and a little girl — oblivious to the thunder outside that was no part of her memories — sat on the floor humming to herself, sketching a bluebird that was perched obediently upon the windowsill.
Amber was sitting in the corner, her legs tucked beneath her chin and her arms wrapped around her knees.
Sunset knelt down in front of her. “It’s over,” she said. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
“Is this … is this a dream?” Amber asked.
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Sunset replied. “But, in this dream, you can choose to wake up.”
Amber closed her eyes. “Once upon a dream,” she murmured. “I was wishing for a never, a never-ending…”
Sunset was once again seized by the desire to tell her about Dove, how he was at Beacon, how he had come just as he had promised he would, how she could see him again if she only woke up. But … she could not. Dove was not in the know, after all. He was not trusted with this momentous knowledge. In all likelihood, whatever had befallen Amber, he would have been kept well away from her by Ozpin. He would not allow her to see him now.
To be a Maiden was to be alone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I can’t change what was done to you, but I can give you a better future.”
Amber was silent for a moment. “I was so safe here. I felt so safe here. When she was here, I knew that nothing could hurt me, and when Ozpin … I don’t remember how she died. I don’t remember how I got these powers, I only know that I did. Why don’t I remember that? Why don’t I remember how my own mother died?”
“You’ve been wounded,” Sunset said. “My friend Twilight, she said that … there might some lingering effects.”
“I don’t want to remember everything,” Amber whispered. “I don’t want to remember … I don’t want to remember her, I don’t want to remember what she did to me, I don’t want to feel like this, I don’t want to hurt like this!”
“We can do something about that.”
“No, you can’t, you’re lying!”
“What makes you think I’m lying?”
“Because you’re with Ozpin and Ozpin lied to me!” Amber shrieked. “He told me … he made me think that … I loved him.”
Sunset swallowed. “I know,” she said.
“He made me think that he loved me.”
“I know.”
“But he didn’t!” Amber cried. “He just wanted me to be his Fall Maiden once Mother was gone. I don’t … I don’t remember everything, but I remember … that was why he taught me to fight, he wanted me to fight, he made me fight, he made me into a weapon, and when I didn’t want to, he just kept on bringing me back, and I had to get away and—”
“Calm down,” Sunset insisted. “That can’t be good for you.”
Amber closed her eyes for a moment. “You can’t trust him. However much you give, he always wants more of you. Until in the end, there’s nothing left.”
“I’m going to protect my friends from that,” Sunset said. “I can protect you from that too, if you want.”
“You can’t protect me from him, no one can.”
“Yes, I can, and from Cinder too,” Sunset said. “You can see for yourself, if you’ll just come with me. All you have to do is open your eyes.” She held out her hand. “What do you say?”
Amber shivered. “I’m scared.”
“We’re all scared,” Sunset said. “But we can’t let that stop us from living. In your memories, you loved to sing, to draw; don’t you want to do that again? Don’t you want to live?”
“I’m the Fall Maiden,” Amber whispered. “There’s no living with that.”
“We’ll find a way,” Sunset said. “It has to be better than being stuck in here, right?”
Amber regarded her warily. “Why should I trust you?”
“Because I’m offering to set you free,” Sunset said. “And who else has made you an offer like that?”
Amber hesitated. “I … I don’t remember what the outside world is like. I barely knew it at all, and what I saw … those memories are gone.”
“Then you’ll just have to find out all over again,” Sunset said. She smiled. “It’ll even be fun. Trust me, there’s never a dull moment with my friends around.”
“Brave new world,” Amber murmured. “You won’t … you won’t let him hurt me?”
“No,” Sunset said, thinking that would be an easy promise to keep, since there was no way that Ozpin would want to hurt her anyway. “Come on, take my hand.”
Amber was motionless for a moment, and then another; then, tentatively, she reached out and gently took Sunset’s hand.
Sunset was returned to the vault, staggering backwards as she let go of Amber, she felt someone’s hands upon her shoulders steadying her as her eyes became reaccustomed to the underground gloom, and her soul became reaccustomed to its own company.
In the ice bath, Amber opened her eyes.
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So uh, anyone else hoping for Sunset to just straight up put a fist in Ozpin's face if he tries to come near Amber?
Aww yes.
Ozpins Hearth = Borken
Question: is there a chance that some of Amber's maiden power was absorbed by Sunset during the healing process, not the same amount as what was taken by Cinder but just enough for Sunset to establish a connection to Amber?
... well, RIP Ozpin. That’s pretty damning for him. Ouch...
Sunset pulled a Velvet in this chapter against that Colchian. Very nice. Happy to see that she was successful. Wasn't expecting convincing Amber to wake up to be the hardest part, but it makes sense. Amber is now a very traumatized and scared girl. Whoever she was before Cinder's attack isn't quite who she is now. I don't know what Ozpin can do to regain her trust. This will have to come from Amber if she ever finds a reason.
9764161
While perhaps deserved due to what he unintentionally did to her, it wouldn't be productive or helpful. Sunset isn't the one angry of fearful of Ozpin right now.
Nothing in the world is permanent. Not even nightmares.
Welcome back, Amber.
9764358
It would make Amber like Sunset more.
9764358
Well, she might be, if her semblance gives her Amber's emotions like it did with Cinder.
--Spade
9764516
It seemed to be that Sunset took great care to ensure that exact same situation wouldn't happen again. At least, not to the extent of what happened with Cinder. She may have some of Amber's residual feelings, but I don't think she'll act on them.
9764403
I don't think Amber wants Ozpin punished; she just wants nothing to do with him. If Sunset was going to punch Oz, she would have when Amber and the Watts Engine were revealed and explained, and the offer made to Pyrrha.
9764330
I was wondering that myself, but I think the power will want to stay attached to Amber, and unlike Cinder, Sunset wasn't trying to take it.
It would be interesting for it to transfer though, and the ability to move the power would open up a way for Sunset to save Cinder. It crossed my mind that all of Amber's magic could jump into Sunset, perhaps attracted by her existing magic, and then people would tell her that she has to kill Cinder. Lovely bit of drama that would lead to.
I'm more interested in other consequences to Sunset. She just performed reconstitution of a soul and borderline true resurrection by her own power. In the vault of Beacon, merely few hundreds of meters away from one of four Relics. First true resurrection in history of two worlds performed not by one of brother-gods. Second true resurrection if you count what God of Light did to Ozma.
It's looking too alike with princess Twilight's reweaving of destiny and Cadence's use of magic of love to defeat Prismia. Impossible deed of the same nature with future divine portfolio in presence of energy source for ascension - exceptionally powerful artefact. Hell, even canon EQG confrontation between Sunset and human Twilight, one during which Sunset grew wings of fire, looks quite similar to confrontation with that multyheaded grim in Amber's soul, with all that borrowing strength from your friends...
Anyone else betting on the fact that we are looking at Alicorn of Life here?
It's actually quite fascinating, what different fates could wait Sunset Shimmer if a human world she gets into is different. In my own fanfic (written in Russian and on Russian site, sorry English speakers) I threw her into a world where Sirens were not displaced in time, arrived to Earth in Dark Ages and got along perfectly with local Vikings. That resulted with world dominated by half-sirens who draw their power from conflicts. After Sunset returned from there and passed through several crisises in Equestria, she took mantle of deity of war. Here Scipio Smith threw her into even more deadly but slightly less conflict torn world, and result is deity of life who just performed her first resurrection. Fascinating!
9764358
Perhaps not the best answer, but I think it is abundantly clear that Amber doe s/not/ need more of Ozpin and his 'influence' in her life right now.
Ozpin needs to figure out that yeah, you make mistakes, but guess what, you have to own them too, and if that means leaving your niece alone as she's put back together by people that aren't you, then kindly fuck off.
9764534
9764549
I think the next part of the story will have Ozpin make attempts to apologize to Amber during her recovery and her not having any of it and becoming more withdrawn from the world with her only contact to it being Sunset and in the climax of the battle with Sonata it will be Amber coming to SAPR's aid with her singing
9764917
That seems likely, yeah. It'd hurt Oz to back off, but he's never forced his presence or his war on those who didn't accept it. I would be very surprised if he didn't respect Amber's wishes to just stay away from him.
9765097
The big issue I have with Ozpin's gaining of 'acceptance' is the whole(and this is even seen in the OG series too), "Hey, you know, you don't have to say yes, but it sure would be a shame if the bad guys one and everyone you know and loved died horribly because you didn't."
There are far, far better ways to spin it, that allow you to be more upfront and honest. Don't get me wrong, it would entirely change the number of people okay with it that you find, and those numbers would be lower, but I likewise feel that in the long run that would help with the caliber of people you get too.
I dunno to be certain though, I just don't like manipulators tbh. Not even on a normal level, but to the extent that people at my workplace know that they're better off just telling me they messed up and need help, but it's going to be a shitshow rather than downplay it to try to get me to agree. Because I'll always try to help, until you lie to me or try to twist things around on me, then you wind up on my shitlist. Ozpin strikes me as the kind of guy that would twist a situation and not tell me exactly what I'm getting into.
9765385 Well I mean, when the situation really is 'the bad guys will come and kill everyone you love' that opens up a lot of leeway imo. It's hardly manipulation when things really are that dire.
One of the things I think I like most about this story is how it expands upon seemingly incidental characters from the show. Amber and Ciel being the two most prominent in my mind.
9765385
But Oz wasn't even wrong in the show when he said that if Pyrrha didn't become the maiden Cinder would kill a lot of people. That's just brutal honesty not manipulation.
Seriously!? Harry Potter!? You couldn’t find something less cliche!? Not that I don’t like Harry Potter, the books are good. But really? This was obvious!
No, Amber. You did that to him. How poetically ironic that your Semblance causes more misfortune, for yourself and others, than Qrow’s Semblance ever could. And yet, you are so talented at finding someone else to blame.
11549110
I've decided to actually change Amber's semblance in the rewrite because a) mind control is an awfully lazy way of moving the plot along and b) one of the things that I want to correct in the rewrite is to make Amber less of a selfish bitch. This time around you will, hopefully, actually feel quite sorry for Amber.
11549122
...I didn't read the old version and only know the new one. What the hell did you do with Amber?
11549599
You might want to know, I don't want to
admit ittell you.11549599
Let's say that the story attempted to use a shortcut for plot progression that went really, really bad.
If you still want to know, Amber Semblance was emotional mind-control, she could worm herself into the hearts of anyone who was miserable and alone to make herself the object of their devotion, a Semblance that she used as first, last and ONLY option for human interaction. She used it on everyone she could, including Ozpin and the previous Fall Maiden, to make them love her. That Semblance was used as a way to explain how could Amber convince the Bluebells to betray Beacon and help her give Salem the Relic of Choice in exchange for Amber's life, but it had the unintended consequence of making Amber, a character we are supposed to feel sorry for, look like an absolute monster.
Really enjoyed the changes you made with dove. I am really excited to see where all that goes. It was interesting with amber being super manipulative using her semblance but I am so ready for this new turn. You have been doing a great job of building up dove's love for her and bonbon and Lyra's support of him. I could totally see them going to war for her.
I may fall moment was real