SAPR

by Scipio Smith

The Knight of Roses (New)

The Knight of Roses

The Knight of Roses sat up.

She was not altogether certain where she was, save that she was in a room of some sort. A dark room, with cobwebs strung along the corners of the walls and little furniture but the hard bed on which she sat, a little wooden table with a jug upon it — and a modest dressing table with a cracked mirror.

The mirror was covered in dust, its reflective surface dulled even where the glass had not vanished from the frame, but the Knight got up off the hard bed and approached it nonetheless.

She reached out with one armoured hand — her armour was dull, tarnished in places with rust as red as roses; it would not have shone even had there been any light within this dark and nearly lightless room to shine by — to brush at the mirror. She wiped away very little dust but feared she was in danger of scratching the glass.

She leaned forwards and blew; a little more of the dust was blown away, though it was blown away into her face. Nevertheless, by the little light that entered through a crack in the boarded up window, the Knight could see herself, in part.

She was all clad in armour. Nothing of who she was or what she looked like beneath was visible; her face was concealed beneath an armet helm, fully enclosed, and a gorget encircled her neck; a cuirass embraced her body, pauldrons, rerebrace, couter, vambrace, gauntlet, and so on; every part of her was covered in dull and tarnished metal. There was not a single inch of her to be seen.

Not a single inch of her was vulnerable. The world might beat in all its fury upon her, but she was armoured proof against its terrors and temptations.

Her besagews, that sat upon her elbows, protecting the joints where the cuirass met the pauldrons, were crafted to look like roses; they alone, of all her armour, possessed some gleam about them, a silvery sheen even in this dark place. Upon the rest of her armour, the vambraces and rerebrace upon her arms, the gauntlets that enclosed her hands, the cuirass over her chest, even her gauntlet, upon all her armour had been worked not roses but thorns, lines of thorns wrapped around her neck, crawling over her chest, winding their way around her arms, reaching her fingers, and all the thorns had sharp spikes jutting upwards as though they meant to prick unwary enemies.

A red cape, as red as blood, hung from her shoulders down her back. The Knight turned around enough to see in the mirror that her cape was ragged, torn at the hem.

She was in disrepair. She had been ill-used, she was sure, to reach such a state, although … she could not recall how that might have been.

Where was she? What was she doing here? What was her quest?

The Knight turned away from the mirror; she would get no answers gazing on her own reflection.

She would have to seek them elsewhere.

By the door leading out of the little room in which she had awoken, she found a sword and shield placed. The shield was round and made of wood, broad in size, with an iron band around the rim. It was painted black and decorated with four roses, two red and two white, occupying the four quadrants of the shield, while strings of green thorns crawled in the space between them. The sword was a sickle blade that curved forwards with the cutting blade on the inside, not the out. The blade, in contrast to the Knight's armour, was not in the least bit touched by tarnish or by rust. The hilt was crafted out of black ebony, and in the pommel of the sword was set a glistening ruby cut in the shape of a rose.

The Knight picked up the sword; it felt well balanced in their hand, which the blade fitted as though it had been made for her. Perhaps it had been, though she did not recall.

But she was the Knight of Roses, and sword and shield alike were rose adorned and here with her. It would be a curious thing indeed if they were not meant for her.

So the Knight took up the shield also, thrusting her arm through the straps; there was no sheath to secure the sword, so the Knight thrust it into their belt as she walked out of the room. This place was dark and dusty everywhere, undecorated and unloved-seeming. She was confronted by a narrow wooden staircase turning around plain white daubed walls, and the Knight followed that staircase down. The steps creaked beneath her tread.

At the bottom of the staircase, there was a door, a door that — by the amount of light streaming in — led outside into the sunlight. The Knight quickened her step, striding out of the open door and into the daylight.

She did not fear the light. Some did, she knew, wicked creatures who loathed the light that shone on their misdeeds, but the Knight of Roses was a servant of the light, its stalwart defender and its champion. Though all others forsook goodness and virtue, she would remain faithful.

She turned around. She stood in a forest, a forest that was in the grip of Fall, all the leaves turned red, some drifting down to the ground below, though there seemed to be no shortage still on the trees.

Behind her, the place she had awoken was revealed to be an old cottage, a tumbledown-looking place with a sagging roof and walls stained with muck and mildew.

How had she come to be here, and to what purpose?

The Knight of Roses turned away. The answers would no doubt be found before her, not behind.

And before her, only a short way down the path that led from the cottage deeper into the woods, was a little creature, a sort of starfish that seemed to be — that was — made of bright sunny yellow paper. It had no face, no eyes, no mouth, and the only thing that distinguished head from arms and legs was that it stood upon two points of the star and used two more to hold a broom with which it was sweeping leaves off the path, which meant the uppermost point must be its head.

It was a Paper Pleaser, the Knight knew, although she could not have said how she knew that.

The Knight approached and cleared her throat. The sound echoed out of her closed helm.

The Paper Pleaser had been bent down upon her sweeping, but now looked up. "Brave Knight!" they cried, for all that they had no mouth. "Thank goodness you are awake! The Princess has been kidnapped by the Wicked Witch of the Setting Sun! Please, go forth and rescue her, before it's too late!"

A quest! Now, the Knight's path was clear, in spirit if not in fact. They had a foe before them, and a goal; surely, they had come here in the first place to rescue the princess, and slay this foul witch, whose very name spoke of darkness.

"I shall, at once," the Knight declared. "Fear not; no evil shall stand before my might!"

"Excellent!" cried the Paper Pleaser. "I would go myself, but these leaves won't sweep themselves."

"A heavy loss, but I shall try and make do on my own," the Knight said dryly. "Do you know where the witch and the Princess may be found?"

"Good luck on your journey, brave knight," the Paper Pleaser said, resuming her sweeping. "There isn't a moment to lose to rescue the Princess."

"I am sure not," the Knight replied, "but if you could give me perhaps a direction, I will be on my way at once."

"Good luck on your journey, brave knight," said the Paper Pleaser, still sweeping up in that same patch of the path. "There isn't a moment to lose to rescue the Princess."

The Knight felt this was not very helpful, but it was clear they were not going to get anything more out of the Paper Pleaser.

Once more, she looked around; there was only one path that she could see, though even that was half covered in the falling leaves of red and gold. She would follow it, for want of any better direction in which to go; if the path did not lead her to the Princess, then it would hopefully lead to someone of more sense than the Paper Pleaser who would be able to answer her questions.

The Knight of Roses began to walk down the path, the fallen leaves crunching beneath her armoured feet.

There was a brief rise in the ground, though it hardly exerted the Knight to climb up it, beyond which she could see a little stable, in no better state of repair than the cottage that she had just left, with the wooden boards falling apart and holes in the straw roof.

But the Knight was in need of a mount — she could be a knight without a horse, but a steed would bear her more swiftly on her quest — and what was theft when weighed against the cause in which she was engaged?

So she walked towards the stable, and her heart was gladdened when a horse emerged from it, albeit a horse of a very curious colour: yellow, with black stripes like a zebra running up and down its body.

Bumblebee. The horse’s name was Bumblebee. The Knight of Roses knew that, although she did not remember how she knew, and she did not remember who the horse belonged to, although she remembered that it belonged to someone.

Someone who would be vexed if the unusually coloured horse were to vanish.

But her need was great. As the Paper Pleaser had said, there was no time to lose in rescuing the Princess.

The Knight took a step towards Bumblebee, who shied away, looking at the Knight with one suspicious yellow eye.

The Knight was about to take another step forward when she heard something growling behind her.

She turned, her right hand reaching for the sword at her belt, to be confronted with an enormous wolf. Not a beowolf, an actual wolf, a black wolf as large as a horse with thick fur and silver eyes looking right at her, its eyes piercing her visor and her armour and seeming to see into the Knight’s very soul.

The Knight of Roses was righteous, she was a servant of all things good and just, she was a warrior for the people, she was un chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, if any had the right to claim that title, and yet, the way the wolf looked at her with those eyes of silver caused her to recoil a pace, and she felt as though some of the pricking thorns that covered her armour had turned inwards to prick at her instead.

The Knight’s hand was frozen; she did not reach for her blade. Rather, having taken a step back, she was still, while the wolf stared at her, a low rumbling sound rising out of its throat.

“I…” the Knight murmured. “I thought my need for the horse was great, but I suppose that the need of the farmer for a horse to pull his plough is also great, as great as that of a princess for a rescuer.”

She had no idea whether the wolf would understand her words — and no real reason to expect she would — but … but she felt guilty; the wolf’s gaze made her guilty, and so she spoke the words that rose most rapidly when she considered her guilt.

The wolf continued to stare, its face impassive, its eyes harder than the silver they resembled.

Then the wolf turned away and bent its legs, lowering its body towards the ground.

“Mount,” the wolf commanded in a deep, gruff growl.

“You can talk?” the Knight exclaimed.

“I can, although I say nothing when I have nothing to say,” the wolf replied. “I will bear you through the forest, to the castle of the Witch of the Setting Sun, where she holds the Princess captive. Come, mount. My back is strong enough to bear your weight.”

“Will not my armour prick you with its thorns?” asked the Knight.

“My hide is tougher than your thorns are sharp,” said the wolf.

“Why would you help me? What is the Princess or my quest to you?” asked the Knight.

The wolf was silent a moment, before he said, “Like you, I would see right done. What reason need I more than that? Come, are you not in haste?”

And so, the Knight mounted the wolf, climbing upon his back, gripping some of his long, black fur with her gauntlet-clad hands. He didn't protest, nor did he make a sound or act as though he was in any way hurt by the thorns that grew from her armour, or that he was discomfited by her weight. He bore her easily, steadily, and he leapt forward at a run as though she weighed nothing at all to him.

The wolf raced down the leaf-strewn path with the Knight on his back, the trees and their scarlet leaves a blur as they flew by. The distance was devoured by the wolf's tread, and the Knight's red cape streamed out behind her as she was borne along, grateful for her armour which protected her from the buffeting of the air that otherwise would have surely raced towards her.

As the wolf ran on, the Knight began to hear sounds coming through the forest, sounds which sometimes grew louder and sometimes softer, as though they were passing by those who made the sound, drawing near but then leaving them behind: they were the sounds of marching feet tramping upon the ground, the thunderous thumps of heavy footsteps, the roars and growls of monstrous grimm.

This was a world of danger. A world where brigands lurked and monsters stalked and armies marched. A world where innocent travellers feared to walk the roads. The Knight would change all that, if she could, but she had no time now to right every wrong, to fight every battle, to hunt down all monsters. She would turn her attention to them all, and none would escape her wrath, but right now, her quest claimed her energies and her attention: the rescue of the Princess, the downfall of this most foul witch. All else must wait until after.

The wolf bore the knight all the way to a crossroads, where three ways lay open to them: due west, where the signpost pointed the way to Patch; southwest, which the sign proclaimed would lead to Starhead; and southeast, to a place called Mountain Glenn.

Mountain Glenn, that was a name of ill-omen; it filled the Knight's heart with dread, though she knew not why. She had forgotten, but she had not forgotten the feeling of foreboding that the name inspired in her.

"Do you know these names?" the Knight asked the wolf.

"Nay," the wolf said. "Your names mean nought to me, but I know smells, and only one path smells sweet to my nose: the southwest path."

The Knight could not smell so well, could not distinguish between sweet smells and foul, but nevertheless, she understood the wolf perfectly. The name of Patch was … tempting and yet not. It evoked distant silver sounds, and yet, at the same time, it was as if those same sounds, though they might once have welcomed her, now bade her turn away and choose another route. And as for Mountain Glenn … that name made her want to turn away without even the consolation that it might once have bestowed some welcome on her. Of the three, only the name of Starhead brought any joy to her heart, only it attracted her rather than repelling, whether the repulse be gentle or severe. Her heart desired to bid the wolf take her that way, towards Starhead, but how likely was it that the Witch was to be found in a place the Knight would want to go? Would she not likely be rather in the foulest place that could be found?

Was it not more likely that the Knight's quest would take them to those places she most desired not to go?

"Perhaps they will know?" the wolf said, gesturing with his head towards a girl sitting on a rock not far from the crossroads, with her back to the Knight and the wolf.

The Knight looked at her. The girl was young and small, with short black hair trimmed at the tips as red as blood. She was dressed as if for bed, for some strange reason, too lightly dressed to be out in such a land as this, and in her hand, she held a stick, which she was waving down towards the earth, as if she wished to scratch it but couldn’t quite reach.

Although she could always have gotten off the rock. Perhaps she simply liked waving a stick about.

Perhaps she was a strange child, too strange to be of any real help to them.

Yet there was no one else around, so the Knight supposed they would have to approach such folk as fortune threw across her path.

"Hello there!" the Knight called out. "Can you help us?"

The girl on the rock looked round at them. She stared for a moment, then leapt down off her rocky perch and scampered towards them. Her eyes, the Knight saw, were silver, just like the wolf.

"You are the Knight of Roses," she observed.

"I have that honour,” the Knight declared proudly, for she was glad to be recognised and not ashamed to admit the fact; she had done deeds worthy of recognition and would have done deeds further still, and greater still, if only she had been allowed. “And you are?”

“A girl,” said the girl. “A poor girl, a country girl, a girl of woods and leaves.” She smiled. “A girl of metal and gears, a girl of stories, a girl of capes, a girl of needle and thread, a girl of weapons—”

“You are a girl of many things, it seems,” the Knight said.

“Aren’t we all?” asked the girl. “Aren’t you?”

“I am a knight,” proclaimed the knight. “A true knight, a brave knight, a knight of courage and resolve, a knight without fear—”

“That sounds like a lot of things.”

“It is one thing,” said the knight. “Or rather … it is all things bound in one, as the clover has three leaves but is yet one clover, all things in me around bound in one, bound beneath my armour, bound in knighthood.” She paused. “What brings a young girl to such a place as this? Whither are you bound?”

“I am bound for Patch,” the girl replied. “I’m going home to my father and sister.”

“And your mother?” the Knight asked.

The girl was silent for a moment. “My mother does not wait for me there. Perhaps she’s waiting for you instead.”

The Knight did not know what the girl meant by that, unless she was delivering a prophecy of the Knight’s death. If that was so, then … then it would be so; she had no fear of it. So long as she could rescue the Princess first, then she would gladly expire from her wounds afterwards. “For my own part, I am on a quest,” she said. “I seek to rescue the Princess from the Wicked Witch of the West. Do you know where I may find them both?”

The girl nodded. “I know where they are. I saw the Wicked Witch go past here not long ago, only she didn’t seem very wicked to me. She gave me a song.”

“You are fortunate she gave you nothing else,” the Knight muttered. “Yes, I have no doubt that she seemed not wicked to you. In faith, she can seem fair indeed when she wishes to; she seems fair, and with her fairness, she draws in victims, lures them as a spider into her web and, with her honeyed words, ensnares them such that they cannot escape even when her foulness stands revealed.”

The girl cocked her head to one side. “You don’t like her, do you?”

“I hate her,” the Knight hissed. “I would strike her down, if the chance presented itself, and rid this land of her villainy once and for all.”

The girl folded her arms. “Is that why you became a knight, to strike down the wicked?”

The Knight was quiet a moment. “Nay,” they said. “I … I wished to save people.”

“And did you?”

“Some,” the Knight said. “Less than I would, if I had been allowed.”

“But now you want to kill people instead of saving them?”

“Sometimes, the best way to save people is to kill wicked people who would otherwise do them harm,” the Knight said.

“Hmm,” the girl murmured. “I … guess. But she didn’t seem very wicked to me.”

“That is because you are a child and know nothing of the world and its realities,” the Knight said haughtily.

“What does that make you, then?” asked the girl.

The Knight stared down at her in incomprehension. What did that … what sort of a question was that? What else would it make her but a knight? Why would this child ask such a thing?

“What can it make me but what I am?” demanded the Knight. “Have you no respect for my spurs, for my armour and my blade?”

“Nope,” said the girl. “I only respect people I agree with.”

The Knight could not help but snort. “I should put you over the back of my mount and spank you for your impertinence, but that I admire your courage to speak so boldly. You said you saw the Witch, wicked or no, pass by here? Will you not tell me where she went, which path?”

“She went to Mountain Glenn,” said the girl. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” muttered the Knight, for she had spent a great deal of time bandying words with a precocious youth only to learn what her own instincts had told her straight away. “Fare you well, then, and I hope your father and sister are as tolerant of your precocious tongue as I have been.”

She said no other words to the girl, and the wolf must have known that she didn't mean to say anything else to her, for it bore her off, moving at a walk down the road towards Mountain Glenn. The wolf did not run as it had done before they reached the crossroads, but he did move away, and they began to leave the girl behind them.

"She knew her own heart,” said the wolf approvingly.

“She knew her own heart better than she knew the world,” said the Knight. “And knowing the world will be the changing of her heart, I guarantee it.”

“Is that what happened to you?” asked the wolf.

“I … do not recall,” the Knight admitted. “Is that of any consequence?”

“Might you have thought differently,” the wolf suggested, “once upon a time?”

“Nay,” said the Knight. “Always, my heart would have desired to save the Princess.”

“And slay the Wicked Witch?” asked the wolf. “Would your heart have always desired that also?”

“The Wicked Witch,” said the Knight. “If you knew what she had done to me—”

“To you?”

“To the world!” the Knight said quickly. “If you knew what she had done, you would not question that she deserves death.”

“If all got what they deserve, it would be a very empty world, no?” asked the wolf.

The Knight could scarcely argue with that; it was a wicked world, and barren of real virtue; were the Knight to spare only those that she deemed virtuous, then she would lay waste to many that a knight was sworn to protect.

But that did not excuse the Wicked Witch what she had done. What she had done to— to the world, to everyone.

This was not personal. It was only duty.

The wolf moved slowly, walking along the southeast road, leaves crunching beneath his padded feet, turning to mush as he trampled them. The Knight would have liked for him to pick up speed a little, but if he did not want to take the dread road to Mountain Glenn, then she could hardly blame him.

"If you do not want to carry me here, I will walk," she told the wolf. "You have no obligation to me, or to the Princess."

The wolf growled. "I said that I would bear you on your quest, and I will. I may have no obligation to you, but I have obligation to myself."

"Wait!" cried a girl's high-pitched voice from behind them. "Please, wait for me!"

The Knight looked around to see a jade green doll, the size of a man, running down the patch after them. She — so the Knight assumed because of her voice, although her body could have been that of a man — was, or seemed to be, made all out of green glass, and though she was made to look like a person with arms, legs, torso, and a head, her head had no features, no eyes, nose, or mouth. Like Yang, her voice seemed to come from nowhere, and yet, it did come, and it was a sweet sound to the Knight's ears.

The wolf stopped, and the Jade Doll ran up beside him, stopping when she was level with the Knight.

"Brave knight," she said. "You are the Knight of Roses, aren't you?"

"I am," the Knight said. "What would you have of me?"

"I would come with you!" the Jade Doll said. "I have run away from the camp of the White Company and sold my horse and armour to buy my freedom from the tin captain. I don't want to be a soldier, but I would love to be a knight like you. Let me come with you, and squire for you, and learn from you what it is to be a knight so gallant and fearless."

"It will be dangerous," the Knight warned her. "We are on a perilous road."

"I'm ready!" proclaimed the Jade Doll. "I'm combat ready, though I sold my weapons along with my horse and armour. But I promise, you won't find my heart wanting."

The Knight looked down at the wolf upon whose back she rode.

"I can carry two as easily as one," the wolf said, as though he could read her mind.

"Then climb aboard," the Knight said. "And welcome aboard. I would tell you to hold onto me, but you may get pricked by my thorns."

"I don't mind," said the Jade Doll as she climbed up onto the wolf's back and wrapped her green arms around the Knight's waist. "I only get hurt on the inside."

The wolf began to run, running as he had run before, tearing up the distance between them and their destination. The forest began to change as the wolf ran on, bearing them further and further down the southeast road, closer and closer towards Mountain Glenn, that evil-omened place. The trees began to look sickly or dead, the leaves of scarlet disappeared or were replaced with black, dead leaves, the branches drooped down towards the ground, the trunks became caked with slime and lichen, and poisonous-looking mushrooms began to sprout up in the spaces between the leaves. A mist began to float about the wolf's feet, obscuring the ground beneath from view. The sunlight began to disappear, and the whole world darkened.

A sound began to echo through the dying trees, a cacophonous, yapping, barking sound, like thirty hounds questing on the hunt.

But if the Knight was right, then all that noise in its discord was coming from a single throat.

The wolf stopped, a growl rising from his own throat in answer to the baying of the legion. His fur began to rise, and he bared his teeth.

The Knight dismounted. "Wait here," she told the Jade Doll. "You have no weapons, so remain, and trust to the wolf to protect you."

For her own part, she drew her sickle sword once more and held her shield before her as she walked before the wolf, ready and waiting.

The sound of many hounds drew closer and closer, until the Knight could see the beast that made that sound in all its ugliness. It was a Questing Beast, a hideous, misshaped chimera of a thing, with the head and long, sinuous neck of a snake, the spotted body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion, and the cloven hooves of a deer. The sounds of all those hounds issued from its throat as it waved its long, serpentine neck back and forth before the Knight.

And on its back, there sat the Wicked Witch of the Setting Sun.

She wore scraps and patches of armour here and there — a pauldron on one shoulder, vambraces upon her arms, a buff coat of black leather — but for the most part, she was unprotected. Her heart was vulnerable, without the armour that the Knight wore to proof it against danger and disappointment alike. Her eyes were green and glimmered snakelike in a face that looked fair, concealing how foul it truly was beneath. Her hair was vivid red and gold, like flames, and spilled down across her shoulders and down her back; a pair of pony ears emerged from it, poking up above the hair like mountains rising above the mist. She wore a sword — a black sword, straight and double-edged — strapped across her back.

She dismounted, revealing a tail between her legs the same colour as her hair, and patted her ugly mount upon its snake's head as she advanced towards the Knight. Her look was grave; in her long acquaintance, the Knight had noticed that the Witch's look was often grave; it was part of how she convinced the unwary that she was making hard but necessary decisions. In that way did she cover over her villainy and give it a veneer of anguished rectitude.

The Knight did not believe it for a moment.

"Rose Knight," the Witch said. "Well met."

"Ill met," replied the Knight. "No meeting with you will ever be well with me."

The Witch's ears drooped. "You … you have my love, and always will, though I concede it may not always seem so by my actions towards you."

"It matters not," the Knight said sharply. "It matter not one bit whether you love me or no, not while you hurt others with your wickedness!"

"Who have I hurt this time, to bring you here?" inquired the Witch.

"The Princess you have abducted!" the Knight shouted. "Where is she?"

The Wicked Witch did not reply. Instead, she looked over the Knight's head at the wolf and the Jade Doll upon her back. "I see you have a new mount," she observed.

"You have the same wretched creature to ride as always," growled the Knight.

"Bite your tongue! He is a faithful beast," the Wicked Witch said, reaching out with one hand to rub the snake's head. To the Jade Doll she said, "How now, Miss? I have not seen you before?"

"Do not answer," the Knight said. "She will twist your words."

"Let her speak," the Witch said, in a voice heavy and insistent.

The Jade Doll hesitated. "I … I wish to be a knight, like this brave Knight of Roses, and she has let me accompany her, to witness her courage and to learn from her."

"And why is it that you want to be a knight?" asked the Witch. "Does your heart burn with a zeal for justice?"

Again, the Jade Doll hesitated. "I … want companionship," she said. "For in the camp of the White Company, I was very lonely, and I hope that the knights, so good and gallant, will be my friends; I hope that, though I am just a doll, they will treat me like a person."

"You are a person," said both the Knight and the Witch at once.

The Knight huffed.

The Witch smirked. "The Princess is with me," she admitted.

"Then let her go, you villain!" the Knight demanded.

"Let her go to where, and to what fate?" demanded the Witch in turn. "In this world so full of peril, so besieged by monsters, so marched across by armies and marauding brigand bands, what fate awaits a princess in such a world as this? What fate awaits anyone? What fate awaits us all? Death. Death and darkness. The Princess is with me," she repeated. "The Princess is safe with me, protected by me, invulnerable within the walls of my fortress. She sleeps there, upon a goosedown mattress, with soft pillows on which to lay her head. She sleeps, eternal and immortal, away from harm. Safe from any who might do her harm." She reached out gingerly towards the Knight, then pulled back her hand. "The Champion sleeps there too, and the Knight of Sunbeams. They lie in twin beds, hands reaching out to touch one another."

She smiled, though it was a frosty smile, and the Knight would have called it a sad smile had she thought a wicked witch to be capable of sadness.

"I will gather them all, if I may," the Witch declared. "The Wild Warrior and all the rest, and you, too, may come and be gathered in, and I will keep you safe from all those who would mistreat you. In this world so full of cruelty, I will make a refuge of my heart’s delight, and delightful hearts shall safely beat within it."

"You have made a cage," the Knight spat. "A cage with flowers growing around it, a prison with pleasant pictures on the walls, but a prison nonetheless."

"That is not my intent," said the Witch.

"Intent or no, it is your outcome," said the Knight. "And for your outcome, I will strike you down!"

The Witch drew her black sword, even as she said, "Stay your hand, righteous knight. I would not fight you." She retreated back a step. "I cannot persuade you to turn away from here, to give up this quest, to leave the Princess and all those I care for in my charge?"

"No," said the Knight. "For I will never turn aside from what is right. Just as I will never forgive you what you have done."

"Then no doubt we shall fight," said the Witch as she mounted the Questing Beast once more. "But not now. Not yet. Perhaps not…" She sheathed her sword. "Turn away, Knight of Roses, for both our sakes."

But it was the Questing Beast who turned away, with the Witch upon its back, still growling like a clamour of dogs upon the hunt as it scampered off, vanishing into the recesses of the darkening forest.

"She didn't seem very wicked," said the Jade Doll.

"She abducts people!" squawked the Knight in dismay. "She puts spells on them! She keeps them in eternal sleep!"

"I didn't say she wasn't wrong," protested the Jade Doll. "Just that she doesn't seem very wicked about it."

"No," the Knight agreed. "No, she doesn't seem very wicked, does she? That's why nobody sees her that way." She thrust her sword back into her belt. "Nobody has ever seen her that way. The Champion, the Knight of Sunbeams, the Old Man of the Tower, none of them saw it. They all trusted her. They all … chose her." She would have looked down, but all her armour made that very difficult. "They all thought that…" She trailed off.

The Jade Doll leaned forward upon the back of the wolf. "What did they think?"

"It doesn't matter," said the Knight. "She isn't what they all thought she was."

"Then what is she?" asked the wolf.

"She is our enemy, that's all," said the Knight, as she mounted the wolf's back once more. "Now let's keep moving. We still have a way to go."

The Jade Doll placed her arms around the Knight's waist as the wolf began to run again; the path was becoming harder to see — for the Knight at least — as the sky became darker above, and the dark, dying trees with drooping limbs and branches that seemed to be reaching out towards them grew ever closer, but the wolf seemed able to instinctively find the way forward, to know which way to go, to find the path that had become lost to the eyes of the Knight of Roses.

The wolf ran, and as the wolf ran, the Knight thought that she could see lights up ahead: fires burning on the ground and lanterns hung from the decaying branches of old trees. There might be someone up ahead, but in a place like this, anyone choosing to make camp was more likely foe to them than friend.

A glass arrow flew out of the darkness, whipped past the Knight's face, and buried itself in the trunk of the nearest tree, rather proving the point.

"Stand and deliver," purred a woman who stepped out from behind another tree, illuminated by the light of a nearby burning fire. She was tall, with night-dark hair that looked very well taken care of in the circumstances, cascading down one side of her face, hiding one eye from view. She was armoured all in glass, but being glass, it was perfectly possible to see through it to the fiery red dress she wore beneath. In one hand, she held a bow of black obsidian, and black too was the paint upon her lips and nails.

"Stand and deliver what?" asked the Jade Doll.

The woman paused for a moment. "Well, why don't we start with your lives, and then I'll take anything else I want off your bodies?"

"That doesn't sound very nice," observed the Jade Doll.

"No, it doesn't, does it?" purred the woman, sounding very pleased about the fact. "For I am no kind or gentle creature. I am the Brigand of Glass and Ashes, a plain, fair-dealing villain, and I laugh at the very idea of being nice." She began to cackle wickedly, just to prove it.

The Knight leapt down from the wolf's back, planting herself between the wolf and the Jade Doll and the Brigand. "Are you an ally of the Wicked Witch?"

"'The Wicked Witch'? 'The Wicked Witch'?" the Brigand repeated, turning her head upwards, tapping her foot. "Ah, yes, the Wicked Witch! I know her of old. What a drip. No, I am no friend of hers." She smiled. "She thinks she can keep all her little pets safe from me behind her walls. She thinks that she can lock them in their bedrooms, away from any unsuitable princes, but one day, I will creep over her walls and slink about the shadows slitting the throats of the Princess and the Champion and all the rest. And then I'll slit her throat too, but first, I'll give her time to realise what I've done."

The Knight stepped forward. "You will not! I will save the Princess from the Witch, and all her other victims too, but first, I'll bring your life to a close. Your end is here, villain!"

The Brigand grinned. "My, how you storm." Her glass bow dissolved in her hand, reforming into a pair of scimitars. "Come then, brave knight, gallant knight, renowned knight, virtuous knight, righteous and self-righteous knight. Come, all your qualities, come, and I'll spill your blood that's red like roses!"

She charged, and the Knight charged towards her in turn, crashing across the ground to get to grips with her enemy. She already knew how she would win this battle. The Brigand might have armoured herself in glass, but the Knight was armoured in steel, and tarnished or no, she would put her faith in steel over glass any day.

The Brigand hurled herself on the Knight, slashing at her from all directions, launching wild strokes at the Knight without any discipline or focus or any sign of training. She was as swift as the wind on a stormy day, and like a storm, she assailed the Knight, but the Knight simply charged forwards regardless, holding her shield up to protect her head, letting the strokes of the glass scimitars beat on her armour like rain beating on the windows of a house, and she pressed forward.

Some reckoned the armour made her slow, but it was not so; it was so well-fitted that she barely felt the weight for all that it was considerable, and since she barely felt the weight, she could build up speed.

Yet since the weight was considerable, others would feel it even when she did not, and the Knight could also build up momentum.

And so the Knight charged through the onslaught of the Brigand, enduring her wild fury, enduring the pounding of the swords on her armour as she pushed through the Brigand's guard and was on her. The Brigand tried to retreat, but it was too late; the Knight could not be stopped now; she struck the Brigand full on with her body and knocked her back and down onto the ground.

The fires in the forest illuminated the shock on the Brigand's face as the Knight brought down one armoured foot upon her chest. Her glass cuirass cracked beneath the impact, fissures spreading up and down the carapace, hiding the red dress beneath.

The Brigand grappled at the Knight's foot with both hands, her unprotected hands scraping and scratching at the thorns, but she could not budge it, could not throw the Knight off.

The Knight raised her sickle sword to cut off the Brigand's head. Her sword swung down, but the Brigand caught the blow upon her glass vambrace. That glass cracked too, if only in a couple of places, far less spectacularly than her cuirass had, but it did not break, and the Brigand's arm but trembled. She held the Knight's sword in place, until the Knight pulled it back.

She raised the blade again, reversing her grip on it for a straight downward thrust to break the Brigand's cuirass and impale her.

She thrust. The Brigand caught the blade between the palms of her hands, slamming them together as though she were catching a fly that buzzed about the room. The Knight's blade was stuck; she could not push it forwards, nor when she tried could she pull it back out of the Brigand's grasp.

The Brigand smirked at her.

The smirk soon died on her face as the Knight pressed down with her foot, causing her glass armour to crack yet further, audibly crunching as it began to give way.

The Brigand growled and snarled as fiercely as any beowolf as she tried to rise, but the Knight was as steadfast as the mountain and as constant as the stars and would not be thrown off.

Flames sparked from the side of the Brigand's visible eye, and yet more flames leapt from her fingertips to race up the Knight's sword and consume her in her armour.

"No!" cried the Jade Doll.

The Brigand began to cackle triumphantly, but the Knight was not moved. Though she could feel the heat building on her armour, though she could feel herself starting to roast within it, though she closed her eyes and flinched against the flames that flickered before her visor, she continued to press down with her foot upon the Brigand's chest.

The glass cuirass shattered completely. The Knight brought down her foot upon the Brigand herself and began to crush her ribs as she had shattered the glass.

The Brigand cried out in pain, the flames from her fingers flickering, her grip on the Knight's sword faltering as blood burst out of her mouth.

The Knight thrust downwards, impaling the Brigand through the chest.

The Brigand's amber eyes widened. She gasped, her head jerking.

"Oh, oh, I am slain," she murmured, coughing up more blood out of her mouth, to stain her black-painted lips. "Alack, alack, I am undone. Come, death, and close my eyes. Dead … for a lien … dead." Her eyes were not closed, by death or anyone else; they remained open so the Knight could see the light leaving them as her head lolled sideways and was still.

The Knight withdrew her sword.

"So end all who take the path of wickedness," she said, kneeling to wipe the blood off her sword.

"I was worried about you," the Jade Doll said. "When those flames sprung up, I thought that—"

"I'm fine," the Knight assured her. "I can overcome any trial, master any obstacle. You need have no fears for me. I am a knight, and there is no battle that I cannot win.

"Don't be overconfident," the wolf growled.

The Knight paused. "You're right," she admitted. "That was a lie. I cannot say that I will never meet a foe who is stronger than I am. But I would rather lay down my life in a good cause than live amidst all the comforts in the world if I must live with the shame of cowardice. If I should die, mourn me not; rather, rejoice at the fact that I died for something worth fighting for."

"I'd rather you didn't die," said the Jade Doll plaintively.

The Knight laughed. "Then to please you," she said, "I shall endeavour to live on."

She thrust her sword back into her belt and walked back towards the wolf.

"It was not for this that you dreamed of knighthood, no?” asked the wolf.

“What else would you have had me do?” asked the Knight in turn. “What else could I do but what I did?”

“I said nought of that,” said the wolf.

“Did you not?” demanded the Knight. “I did what my duty required of me.”

“Yet it was not for this that you dreamed of knighthood,” the wolf repeated. “Or am I mistaken?”

The Knight did not call him mistaken, for he … was not mistaken. Her triumph, the death of the Brigand, it brought her scant joy and small satisfaction. Yes, a villain was dead, the victory was hers, but…

But she would rather save a life than take it. Her blood was not so hot that it burned to the shedding of the blood of others.

Yet if she had to…

If she had to, then she would.

But she might give thought to it before she did the deed, lest she regret it later.

Not that she regretted the Brigand’s passing, not by any means, but in future, there might come a time, there might come a person…

Not her. Not after what she did.

“Not for this,” the Knight conceded. “But I will do it nonetheless.” She climbed aboard the wolf’s back once again.

The wolf set off. He did not move so quickly as he had done before; his pace was more cautious now, his steps more considered; the wolf turned his head this way and that, constantly looking for any further dangers like the Brigand, sniffing the air for scents of ambush.

He stopped. "There are two people ahead."

"I don't see them," said the Knight, for she saw nothing before her but the trees.

"There are still two people ahead," said the wolf.

"Is it the Witch?" asked the Knight.

"No," the wolf answered her. "I have not smelled these two before."

"They might be friendly," the Jade Doll suggested optimistically.

"Then what are they doing here?" asked the Knight. "This is not a place to find friends."

"If they know we're here, they might be wondering what we're doing here," the Jade Doll pointed out.

The Knight and the wolf were silent for a moment.

"She makes a good point," said the wolf.

"I suppose," muttered the Knight. "Okay then, let's go and see who they are and what they want." She placed a hand upon the hilt of her sword but did not draw it.

The wolf padded slowly forwards, moving through the gloom. The Knight looked carefully, hoping to see what the wolf had smelled or seen, but she could still see nothing, nor could she smell anything or even hear anything. She had no idea of what waited for them, until eventually, they drew close enough that she could see them: two people, sitting by the side of the path — or at least what remained of the path — a woman whom the Knight did not recognise and a man whom she did.

"Dove!" the Knight cried, leaping off the wolf's back and running towards him. "Dove, what are you doing here?"

The Knight of Doves was a squat but broad-shouldered young man, distinguishable by the dove-feather cape that he wore hanging off his shoulders and down his back, and by his helmet, which was adorned with wings jutting out on either side. His armour was white but did not cover his hands, nor to be honest did it offer as much protection around the joints — elbows, knees, waist — as the Knight's armour did.

He had his helmet off, revealing sandy blond hair and blue eyes and a smile when he heard the Knight's voice issuing out of her armour.

"Well met!" he cried. "Well met indeed! It gladdens my heart to see a friendly face in this grim place. Though I suppose better a grim place than a grimm place, eh?"

The Knight stared at him. "That … that was terrible."

Dove's face fell. "You … may be right," he admitted. "In fact, you probably are, as you are about most things. But what brings you here, and…" — he was not tall enough to look over the Knight's shoulder, so he contented himself with looking around her — "so accompanied?"

"I am on a quest to Mountain Glenn, to rescue the Princess who has been kidnapped by the Wicked Witch of the Setting Sun," the Knight explained. "I will put an end to her villainy once and for all. You should come with me. I could use another strong, stout-hearted sword like yours."

Dove chuckled lightly. "The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards, and I am flattered indeed by yours, but I fear I cannot. I have a quest of my own to discharge." He gestured to the woman with him, who sat beside the road and had not gotten up. "This maiden is … the Fall Maiden. I have pledged to escort her through these dark lands and bring her safely home."

"I see," said the Knight. "That is a worthy thing, and I would not ask you to forsake such a quest, nor to put a maiden in danger." She bowed to the Fall Maiden. "Good day to you, my lady."

The Fall Maiden looked up at her. Her eyes were amber, just like the eyes of the Brigand that the Knight had lately slain, although her hair was a soft brown, cut short around the nape of her neck. Her face was pretty, but marred by heavy scars upon one side of her face, suggesting that she had been attacked by something — or someone; doubtless, that was why she was eager for a night to escort her on this new journey. She wore a green cloak, drawn around her, and golden bands glistened upon her arms.

She smiled, softening her scars. "Good day," she said, getting up. "Good day, brave knight. You must forgive me, but in times like these, on roads like these, one feels wary of travellers; but, if you are a friend of the Knight of Doves, then you are my friend also."

She reached out and placed a hand upon the Knight's shoulder pauldron, only to pierce her hand upon the thorns that sprouted from the armour. She gave a little shriek and yanked her hand back, clutching at it with her other hand as blood stained her palm and fingers.

"I'm sorry!" the Knight cried. "I didn't mean to … I'm sorry."

"It's alright," the Maiden said quickly, although there was pain in her voice as she said it. "It's alright. It's not your fault."

"Here, let me help you," Dove said, producing a handkerchief as though out of nowhere and making to tie it around the Maiden's hands.

She winced at his touch.

He drew back his hand. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "Warrior's hands."

"Don't stop," the Maiden whispered, looking into his eyes.

Dove looked into her eyes in turn, and kept looking at them as he — gently, delicately, with such care in every single motion no matter how slight that one might have thought the Maiden was made of glass just as the Jade Doll was — wound his handkerchief around her hand as a makeshift bandage.

The Knight could hardly miss the way they looked at one another. Well, he would not be the first. And if he was happy, if they were happy, then so be it.

Dove cleared his throat. “No doubt, you will want to continue on your quest,” he said. “And we should be moving on as well—”

“No,” said the Fall Maiden. “Oh no, you cannot go yet. I mean, you must be weary after travelling so far into this gloomy place. Rest awhile with us, share some food and wine to refresh your bodies and your spirits.”

“I don’t have a mouth,” said the Jade Doll.

“I do,” said the wolf.

“Yes, you need more rest than I do,” said the Knight. “You have borne me far, and all I have done is slain one single villain.”

“You have fought?” asked Dove.

“A bandit,” the Knight explained. “The Brigand of Glass and Ashes, she called herself. She presented little challenge.”

“You … you killed her?” asked the Fall Maiden, a tremble in her voice.

“Yes. What else should I do with the likes of her?” asked the Knight.

“I suppose you’re right,” the Maiden murmured. “Yes. Yes, I know you’re right.” She smiled. “Please, please, sit down.”

The Knight sat, her legs hunched up, the thorns of her cuisses scratching at her cuirass and vice versa.

Dove watched her, his eyes flickering between the Knight and the Maiden.

The Jade Doll got down off the back of the wolf, and the wolf sat down beside the Knight; he seemed almost to be purring as he closed his silver eyes.

“Yes, now, take the weight off your feet for a little while, and you’ll feel better,” the Fall Maiden told them. She turned away and walked to a couple of packs that sat on the ground not far from them.

Dove continued to stand and watch as the Fall Maiden knelt at the packs, her fingers working dexterously as she opened it up. With her back to the Knight and her body obscuring the packs, it was hard to see exactly what she was doing, but the Knight presumed that she was getting food and drink out of the bags.

The Fall Maiden turned, looking at the Knight over her shoulder. Her eyes were wide and … frightened? Yes, frightened, unmistakably frightened: her mouth was open and her lower lip flat with alarm; she was afraid, but … why? What did she have to be afraid of?

Soft lights began to rise out of the Fall Maiden’s palm. They were golden lights, motes of light that sparkled like stars in this gloomy forest. It was as if she was conjuring fireflies out of gold, bringing them to life and sending them forth in a swarm straight towards the Knight.

They were beautiful. They were so beautiful.

The Knight felt weary. She watched the motes of light as they emerged, she watched them come closer towards her, and she felt … she felt a darkness that was nought to do with the forest, she felt her head loll forwards, she felt herself slipping sideways.

She felt…

She felt…

Amber.

Beacon.

Semblance.

Fall Maiden.

Danger.

Protect.

Semblance.

Sleepy.

Sapphire.

Alone.

Dove.

Semblance.

“What?” the Knight — Ruby, was her name Ruby? Who was the girl in the black dress, was that her? Who was she? — asked, or tried to ask. Sleep slurred her words and made them trip as they shambled out of her mouth. “Amber, what—?”

“Stop!” cried the Jade Doll as she rushed past the Knight towards the Fall Maiden — Amber, was that her name? — and grabbed her by the shoulders. The Jade Doll started to shake her. “Whatever you’re doing to her, stop it!”

Dove drew the short sword he wore at his hip.

The Knight stumbled to her feet, fumbling for her own sword even as she charged at Dove. She didn’t know what it was that was in her mind, she didn’t know what these thoughts were that she had … remembered or imagined or … she didn’t know why those words had suddenly come flooding in, but she knew that Dove had betrayed her, that this Fall Maiden was not to be trusted, and she knew that if she did nothing, then Dove would draw his sword upon the Jade Doll, and she could not allow that to happen.

Dove’s sword was out; the Knight could not draw hers, she could not find the hilt, her mind was too fogged by sleep. But she charged anyway, bent down so that her head was level with Dove’s waist. She charged more like a bull than a man, grappling with him, both her hands around his waist — he yelped as the thorns on her armour pricked him in the vulnerable spot around his waist — before they both fell to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs.

The Knight was atop him. He hit her in the head with a mixture of his hand and his sword hilt, but though he made her head ring, he hurt his hand more than he injured her; the Knight heard him cry out in pain.

He should have armoured his hands.

The Knight roared with anger. He had betrayed her. He had betrayed her! He was a villain, as vile as any which they were sworn to fight. She grabbed him by the neck with one hand, and with the other hand, she punched him while he lay on the ground, her fist rising and falling like a hammer down upon him. His head snapped sideways, and a tooth flew from his mouth to land on the ground in a pool of blood.

“Villain,” the Knight snarled as she hit him again. His cheek was bloody and raw, scarred by the thorns on her gauntlet; blood was pouring out of his mouth.

The Knight raised her hand for a third blow.

“No!” the Fall Maiden cried as she leapt on the Knight from behind. She cut herself on the thorns — the Knight could hear her wincing and whimpering in pain — but she clung on nevertheless, trying to pull the Knight off of Dove, or maybe trying to pull the Knight’s helmet off, or both.

It wasn’t wholly clear what she was trying to do, but it was clear that she would not succeed. Her strength was insufficient.

Although, if she was holding onto the Knight, what had she done to the Jade Doll?

The Knight growled and got off Dove — so that she could grab the Fall Maiden by the arms instead and bodily wrench her off and throw her off, casting her aside, flinging her at a nearby tree. She hit the trunk with a sickening thud and landed in a heap on the ground.

The wolf barked, and a growl emanated from his throat.

The Knight left Dove lying on the ground — he tried to move, but his attempts were sluggish, the pain was slowing him — as she advanced upon the Fall Maiden.

She drew her sword.

“What now?” asked the wolf. “Will you slay her? Will you slay them both?”

“Is she not a villain, subtle, false, and treacherous?” the Knight murmured. “Is not death the best salvation for those she would hurt otherwise?”

She looked down at the Fall Maiden. Her arms were covered in cuts; they did not bleed too much, any of them, but together, they had soaked her arms and hands in blood; together, they made her whimper and mewl as she lay at the Knight’s feet.

She lay at the Knight’s feet. She was curled up there, tears in her eyes, her whole body trembling. She held her arms against her chest, staining her white tunic with the blood of her many cuts.

She stared up at the Knight with frightened eyes, tears running down the scars on her face, the scars that seemed so especially large and prominent to the Knight’s gaze now.

“Though you be false, you are no villain,” the Knight murmured. Her sword remained drawn and poised to strike. “Being so, then why?” she demanded. “Why did you attack me?”

“For my safety,” the Fall Maiden whispered.

“Your safety?” the Knight repeated. “For your safety, I … I do not understand.”

"Because of Salem!" the Fall Maiden shrieked.

The Knight's sword trembled in her hand. Salem. She knew the name. A great darkness, greater than the Wicked Witch could ever be, so great that not the Knight, nor all the knights, could hope to bring her down. A menace. A shadow on the world.

A shadow against which she was powerless.

"She gave you those scars," the Knight said.

The Fall Maiden let out a little choked sob. "She hurt me. She was going to kill me. But I … I went to the Witch, and she promised that she'd protect me, but I didn't believe her. I didn't trust her. Hiding in her ruined castle with everyone asleep. She said I didn't have to fall asleep if I didn't want to, but … she said she'd die to keep me safe, and I believed her, but so what? What if she died to protect me, or to protect the Princess, or the Champion, or anyone else? She'd just be dead. Dead and gone and … and they … and I…" She closed her eyes. "Salem said she'd let me go, if only I could … if I … if I lured knights to their deaths. I didn't want to do it, and Dove didn't want to do it — Dove hated it, hated every moment of it — but … but it was the only way. The only way I could be safe."

The Knight stood over her, looking down upon her, sword raised above her. Her sword was raised, but it shook in her hands.

The Fall Maiden was a wicked woman. She had made a pact with a great evil; she had put her life, her safety, above the lives of others; she had encompassed the deaths of noble knights; but standing over her, watching her curled up before her with bleeding arms, watching her sob and shake, the Knight felt … the Knight did not feel … all the righteous wrath that had consumed her when confronted with the Brigand of Glass and Ashes had melted away like morning dew.

There was only a cold sadness left in her, a sadness that it had come to this, that the world was such that things like this could happen, and people less steadfast in their virtues than herself could be forced to do such things to survive in it.

She lowered her sickle sword a little as she rounded on Dove. "You didn't like it?" she asked. "You hated it? Then why did you do it?"

Dove, like the Fall Maiden, lay on the ground. He spat blood out of his mouth, and looked up at her. "For love," he said, softly and simply. "Because I love her."

They deserved death. They had both done such things that warranted it. If the Knight were to cut off their heads here and now, then no one — no one at all — would be able to say that she had done the wrong thing. But she did not desire to do it. Rather, her sword felt heavy in her hand, and she wanted nothing more than to thrust it back into her belt and not to draw it for a while.

She looked past Dove, to where the Jade Doll lay on her side on the ground.

"Are you alright?" asked the Knight. "Did she hurt you?"

"She pushed me," the Jade Doll replied with a slight groan. "But I'll be fine." She climbed slowly back up to her feet. "I was afraid I was going to crack somewhere, but I don't think I did."

"I'm glad," the Knight said softly. She felt a little guilty to even consider that that — some harm done to the Jade Doll — might have stirred her to an anger that the other crimes of these two did not; after all, as a virtuous individual, and even more as a brave knight, she ought to weigh all lives equally in her heart. But it would have grieved her if they had shattered the Doll, and might have driven away some of the pity that she felt for this frightened, wounded girl who had sought to escape the thorns.

It did not excuse her crimes, but it did make the Knight inclined … inclined to pause and give thought before she shed her blood.

For the Knight’s own blood did not thrill to the thought of shedding the blood of others. She was no Brigand of Glass and Ashes; she took life only … only for the safety of others, just as the Fall Maiden had sought to take her life for her own safety.

She took life only to protect, to save, because that was why she had dreamed of knighthood: to save people, not to kill them.

So why then should she not save the Fall Maiden? Why should she not save Dove?

Why should she not save lives from herself and over-eager judgement?

Not that there was anything eager about any judgement she might render upon these two. All the more reason to save them then.

"Go," the Knight muttered. "I’ll not shed your blood. Go and … I pray you do not give me cause to regret this … kindness. Do no evil, serve Salem no longer, live and love and keep the peace. And call on me, if ever you are in need again, and I will come and save you once again."

There was a moment of pause, of silence. The Fall Maiden stared up at her, with eyes wide. "You … you’re letting us go?”

The Knight sheathed her sword. “I am trusting you to reform yourself and live better after this,” she said. “Perhaps I am naive, but perhaps it is better to be naive than to let the world make me a killer, when I set out to save lives instead. Therefore, let me save your lives, if only from myself.”

Again, a pause. Dove said, "Thank—"

"Don't thank me," the Knight said. “I do this not for your gratitude but my own heart … and perhaps for a girl I met at a crossroads, who might approve. Go now, and fare you well in love and peace for all the days hereafter.”

She watched as Dove scrambled to his feet and made his way as quick as she could over to the Fall Maiden. She watched as he lifted her up in his arms, cradling her there while she put her arms around his neck, and started to carry her away.

She did not watch as he carried her off; rather, she turned her back upon the both of them, but she could still hear the sounds, hear Dove grunting with effort as he fought through his own pain to carry off the Fall Maiden.

The Knight couldn't help but think that he deserved better.

But then, what was true about deserving punishment surely applied to the deserving of love also, no? If all were loved only by those who deserved to be loved, then many would be lonely.

Though perhaps I would be less lonely than I am.

The wolf padded softly over to her. "What will become of them now?" he asked.

"I don't know," the Knight replied. "I have hope for them, or else I wouldn’t have let them go like that, but I don’t know. I only hope that I don’t regret it, and that they don’t fall into anymore that … that they’ll regret.”

“You were very kind to them,” said the Jade Doll.

“I was merciful,” the Knight corrected her. “Kindness has nothing to do with it.”

“No?” asked the Jade Doll.

“There is nothing kind about letting the wicked roam free,” the Knight declared. “But I did not believe that she was wicked, and I know that Dove is not. And I don’t think that he would fall in love with a wicked soul; no, she was not foul; she … she was afraid, not malicious. And while that makes her a coward, at the same time … at the same time, this is a world that's full of things to be afraid of."

"Just like the Witch said," said the Jade Doll softly.

The Knight didn't answer that. She didn’t want to answer it, for all that — or because — the Jade Doll was not wrong. The Wicked Witch was afraid, of the many things in the world there were to be afraid of, just like the Fall Maiden. And she had betrayed the Knight, just as Dove had. So, really, what was the difference between them?

But that was not something the Knight wished to answer or admit, and so she said to the wolf, "How do you feel? Do you need to rest for real?"

The wolf shook his head. "Nay, I can bear you yet, if you wish. It is not far now."

And so, the Knight and the Jade Doll mounted on the wolf's back once more, and the faithful wolf carried them out of the dark forest — and into an even darker place.

He bore them into Mountain Glenn.

It was a ruined city. It was a dead city. It was a city of wreckage and rubble, a city of crumbling old collapsing buildings, of fallen barricades that had failed to keep the grimm at bay … of old bleached skulls and discarded bones lying in the streets.

"What happened here?" the Jade Doll asked, her arms shivered where they wrapped around the Knight's waist.

"I don't know," the Knight admitted. "But I imagine the grimm came, and once they came, they could not be driven out until…"

Until everyone was dead.

"Why would anyone choose to live here now?" asked the Jade Doll. "Why would anyone want to make a home in a place like this?"

At one point — at one point not very long ago at all — the Knight would have answered that it was because the Wicked Witch was as wicked as her name, and so she was drawn to death, and to decay, and to reminders of the destruction that she hoped to visit upon the world. Now, however, she thought that it might be different. Now, she wondered if the Witch might have other motives.

"She is a coward, devoid of valour," the Knight said. "She fears the world, and so she has come here, to a place where only death and nothing living dwells, and hopes the world will pass her by."

"That doesn't sound very nice," the Jade Doll said.

"No," the Knight agreed. "But there is a sort of sense to it, as twisted as that sense may be.”

Mountain Glenn was dark, darker even than the forest they had passed through to reach this place; the sun had failed completely, the moon was dead; it was so dark, it was as if they were underground rather than above it. It was so dark, it was as though the earth had swallowed them up, whole and entire, and left only a little light coming from … it was hard to say where the light was coming from, only that the Knight could see a little of what lay around them.

She found herself glad that she could not see more. She did not want to see more. She did not want to see the whole vast expanse of this place in all its devastation. She did not want to see the bones piled high, the gruesome remains of a home destroyed.

What she could see was bad enough.

There seemed to be no grimm here in the city; they might have destroyed it, but they had moved on afterwards. There was not a howl or growl or snarl to be heard, no shuffling feet somewhere off in the darkness, nothing skittering or crawling around unseen. No doubt, that was why the Witch had felt safe enough to set up her base here; she would not have felt so secure had the grimm continued to infest this city of the dead.

As to where the Witch herself might be, an emerald light shone in the darkness, illuminating the top of a ragged tower, holed in places but still standing tall above the rest of a crumbling old ruined fortress. The Fall Maiden had talked of just such a thing, the Witch hiding in her ruined castle, trying to convince the Maiden that she could hold off Salem's malice.

The light showed them the way. A folly on the part of the Witch, to show where she was to any comers. After all, how many friendly visitors was she likely to have?

They approached the crumbling walls of the castle, where the gatehouse — what remained of it — gaped open like an open mouth, and the crenellations had fallen away from the walls, where old stone gargoyles looked out across the rotting corpse of a city filled with corpses.

And so too looked the Wicked Witch of the Setting Sun. She was silhouetted by the emerald light of the tower behind her, but the Knight knew that it was her, that it must be her, and not just by the length of her hair as it waved in the chill wind that wafted through the dead city.

She stood on the crumbling battlements and looked down on them as they approached. As they drew near, the Witch's voice echoed down to them.

"So you are come to my gate, brave knight!" she shouted down at them.

"What gate?" called the Jade Doll back up to her.

"It's a metaphorical gate," replied the Witch, a touch of irritation entering her voice. "Why have you come? Have you come to join me, to sleep in fairyland and let the world in all its horrors pass you by?"

"No!" declared the Knight. "No, not in a thousand years, not ever. You know why I am here. I am here to save the Princess…” She paused, and when she spoke again it was in a voice almost tender. “And to save you, also.”

"To save me?” demanded the Wicked Witch. “I pray you, by our old fellowship, mock me not, for I am … I am not made to bear the mocking scorn; I do not like it. I would rather have your honest hate than your feigned pity.”

“And what if the pity were not feigned?” asked the Knight.

“I … I don’t believe you!” cried the Wicked Witch. “I thought you better than to play such games, to toy with spirits, to speak untruths and raise … false hopes. You are come to my gate, my metaphorical gate, but further than that, you shall not enter, not for the Princess nor any other. You cannot enter here!”

So she spoke, and as she spoke, her voice acquired an echo of power, an echo which made the city shake, made the shattered walls of the buildings tremble and shed yet further detritus upon the ground, even as the ground itself rumbled and roiled. The wolf took a step back, and then another, as thorns, vast thorns, a great hedge of thorns each broader than the waist of a strong man burst out of the ground to form a new wall, stronger than the stone wall with all its weaknesses, around the castle.

The thorns grew twenty feet high or higher; the Wicked Witch was lost behind them; she and her wall and even the light of the tower were concealed. There were only the thorns, and the barbs like spearheads protruding out to snag the unwary.

But the Knight was not unwary. She was the Knight of Roses, and she had thorns of her own; she was covered in them as much as this new wall was, and she feared no other thorns in the garden. She leapt from the wolf's back, drawing her sickle sword, and began to scythe away at the thorns before her, her blade cutting through the vines no matter how thick they were, hacking at them, wounding them, severing them completely until they fell. She feared no thorns, for her armour was proof against all barbs, while they had no such protection from her blade. She cut through them as though they were nothing at all; they could not stand before her, and she hewed a path for the wolf and the Jade Doll to follow behind her, cutting and cutting until she had cut clean through the thorns and forged a path through to the other side.

The Knight walked through the gap in the thorns, her cloak rippling behind her, managing not to get caught on any barbs on either side as she took the final steps beyond the makeshift wall the Witch had conjured.

The Witch was waiting for her on the other side, her black sword drawn, the night-dark blade almost invisible in this darkness, until the Witch by some power lit it aflame, and the fire that rippled up the sword showed clearly where it was: raised above the Witch's head, poised for a descending stroke.

"Now you will deal with me, O Knight," the Witch declared. "And all the power at my command."

"As I have told you," the Knight looked down at her own sword. She thrust it into her belt. "I would rather not."

The Witch's green eyes bulged. There was a touch of hysterical laughter in her voice as she said, "No?"

"No," replied the Knight. "No, I don't want to fight you. I don't want to kill you."

"Bold of you to assume you would," the Witch muttered. "But if you are not here to fight, and not to sleep, why are you here?"

"To show you mercy," the Knight answered.

The Witch of the Setting Sun stared at her a moment, and longer than a moment; moments passed, and still, the Witch stared. "'Mercy'?" she whispered. She snorted. “Still you play this game with me?”

“It is no game, but words truly spoken,” insisted the Knight.

“'Truly spoken'?” cried the Witch. “You are not merciful!”

The Knight recoiled. “I … if I am become hard, is it not because you and the world have made me so?” she demanded. “Have I not cause to armour up my heart, when you misused it so?”

The Witch licked her lips. “Cause,” she whispered. “Some cause, great cause, unquestionable cause, 'tis so, I will concede it. I did not seek to abuse your heart, but through the course of mine own heart, I hurt yours nonetheless.” She turned her eyes away. “Ignored your counsel, thought little of your beliefs, belittled and demeaned you through my conduct.” She shook her head. “And for this courtesy, you would show me mercy?”

"Aye, for all that I would," said the Knight. “For I would not be what you have made of me. I would be more. I would be better, as once I was when I set out.” She took a step forward. "You're afraid, aren't you?"

The Witch's lower lip trembled. Her sword shook in her hands; it shook so much that she had to lower it. "'Afraid'?" the Witch said softly. "I am terrified."

"But not for yourself," the Knight said, taking another step towards her. "It is for others that you fear, no? For the Champion, for the Knight of Sunbeams, for the Princess—"

"For you," the Witch said tremulously.

The Knight paused. "I … I remember," she murmured. "Or I have dreamed, or I have imagined, or … I know not what it is, but I see a girl — a little girl in red and black — and you. A warrior rushes towards you with a terrible red sword, the girl pushes you aside, and then … she receives in return a dolorous blow."

"Yes," the Witch whispered. "Yes. I…" She took a step back, a stumbling step away from the Knight. Her burning sword fell from her hands and landed with a clatter on the ground. "I would take a hundred wounds upon my breast; cut off my breasts, let crows pluck out my eyes, feed my entrails to the baying hounds, and I shall smile." She did smile, though it did not reach her eyes, and seemed a rather unsettling sight as it quivered and wobbled on her face. Tears began to well in her eyes. "I will smile," she said again, "so long as you … all of you…" She wiped at her eyes with one hand. "This world is so cruel, so hard, so full of peril, and you … all of you … all my pretty ones, I…"

"What you have done is wrong," the Knight said. "What you do is evil."

"I know it well enough," said the Witch, her voice hoarse and quiet.

"But you," the Knight said. "You are not … you do not deserve the style of Wicked Witch."

The Witch blinked back a few tears, though more sprung swiftly up to take their place. "No?"

"No," the Knight said. "You are … you are pitiful. You're … pathetic. A half-formed and misshapen thing, with no morals or values to guide you, only … only impulse, and a heart." She paused, and took two more steps towards the Witch. "But it is … I must admit, it is a heart that aims for goodness, though it misses the mark more oft than not."

The Witch sniffed. "A heart which aims for goodness," she repeated. "A good heart, a constant heart, a tender and a feeling heart."

"It is not enough," the Knight told her. "It is far, far from enough. A good heart alone does not goodness make, not by a yard nor even by a mile." She paused. "But … it is so much that my own heart does not sit easy at the thought of stopping yours. Live, then. Be saved from me, by me. Live and fear my wrath no more. It is all spent, as is my love, love and hate and all things … gone. We are nothing to one another now, not friends or foes but … perfect strangers. Not forgiven … but erased."

The Knight felt something change; she could not say exactly what she felt, but when she looked down at her hands, at the gauntlets that enclosed her hands, at her arms and her chest, the thorns were gone. All the thorns that had sprouted from her armour were gone, vanished, shrunk back into the metal, disappeared as though they had never been at all.

And in their place, flowers were engraved upon the metal, which bore no tarnish now but shone as bright as silver, silver engraved with myriad roses, a field of flowers blooming in her defence.

The Witch, not the Wicked Witch, just the Witch, half-turned away from the Knight. She did not bother to wipe her eyes; the tears were falling down her cheeks too readily for that. She said nothing.

"What you're doing is wrong," the Knight said softly. "You know that, don't you?"

The Witch sniffed and nodded. "I wanted to protect them."

"I know," said the Knight. "But you can't, and even if you could, you wouldn't have the right. Where is the Princess?"

The Witch hesitated a moment, and then nodded. "Come with me."

She led the way, and the Knight followed.

She followed across the courtyard of the ruined castle and into the tower from which the emerald light shone so brightly. She followed up the narrow, winding stairs, where cobwebs clung to the walls, where the wind howled through the gaps in the stonework, and where the decaying wooden boards creaked alarmingly beneath the Knight's feet. She followed up and up, round and round, climbing and climbing until the Witch led her all the way to a room, in good repair considering the state of the tower, with no holes in the walls visible.

In that room, in a bed surrounded by flowers, there lay a girl, a young girl with a pale face, dressed in a black dress with red trim around the hem, wearing black stockings and high black boots. A girl with short black hair, with tips of bloody red.

In the bed, there lay the girl that the Knight had dreamed.

In the bed, there lay herself.

Memories returned as Ruby Rose shoved Sunset aside and crossed the room, rose petals falling on the floor in her wake, to where she lay. Amber had used her semblance on her, Amber had put her to sleep, and now…

Now, here she was.

She didn't know how she knew, but she did know that she could wake up from this, if she chose. She was right here. She was sleeping, but she could choose not to. She could break the … the spell, for want of a better word, that Amber had put on her.

She could wake up.

And she could let go of all her anger. Let go of hate, let go of love, let go of … everything. Perfect strangers, all things erased between them. No bitterness, no need to…

No need to let Sunset Shimmer trouble her mind or heart, for Sunset would be as nothing to her.

Ruby reached out for her forehead.

"You don't have to go," Sunset said from where she stood by the doorway. "You can stay here, if you will. Stay in fairyland, where you are strong enough to overcome all your enemies with ease—"

"Fake enemies," Ruby replied. "They're not real, nor are the battles. Cinder isn't dead, and Amber … why did Amber do that to me?"

"How should I know, I'm not really here?" asked Sunset dryly. "But even if you can't defeat your real enemies here, at least you're safe. Safe from danger, safe from harm—"

"Safe from living?" Ruby asked. "No. No, I can't stay. I won't." She looked down at herself, her sleeping self. "But I'll remember this. I'll remember what I decided." She paused. "Since you're not really here, I don't need to say goodbye, do I?"

"No," Sunset said. "But I can wish you good luck. I don't know what you're going to wake up into."

"Neither do I," said Ruby. "That's what makes life exciting."

She turned away and reached out to place her armoured hand upon the shoulder of her sleeping self, where she lay atop the bed.

"Time to wake up," she said.

---

Ruby Rose opened her eyes.

Author's Note:

A couple of volume 9 references here, with the Paper Pleaser and the Jade Doll. My original concept for this chapter blended fairy tales and video game references much more evenly, there aren't that many video game elements left, with the main one being the Paper Pleaser as a quest giver NPC. I wanted a sort of mushroom type thing (not having ever really played Mario Bros I'm not sure if they are NPC quest givers but that's the impression I get, 'Mario, Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach!' kind of thing) and the Paper Pleasers seem like they might fit the bill.

It's suggested that the Paper Pleasers weren't in The Girl Who Fell Through the World, but they were in this version.

And I just though the jade doll, life size obviously, was a neat idea when considering a Penny-analogue.

Comments

[AngelicTitan]

So all it took for Ruby to get over her anger at Sunset was a good night sleep... It’s actually pretty appropriate.
So, Ruby finally realized that she was becoming as bad as the monsters she dreamed of and that she was more focused on killing wicked Witches than saving Princesses. And I was spot on! I knew that the reason she was so fucking mad was because she felt personally betrayed by Sunset and it’s good to see that, for Ruby, she would rather start over with Sunset than continue with her venomous anger.
And I completely forgot about Ruby’s sacrifice for Sunset at the end of the Fight at the docks and how that may be a reason to why Sunset would be afraid of losing Ruby; was there when Sunset discovered Ruby’s death wish? Maybe...
Now that Ruby woke up, how will things turn out? I’m excited for Friday to see how it unravels. (I miss Wednesday updates, it would be much more bearable then, lmao)

[Stet709]

So...
Here we got:
Knight of Roses - Ruby's (self-righteous) ego
Princess - Ruby herself
Girl at the crossroads - Ruby before Beacon or before Mountain Glen?
Wicked Witch - Sunset
Champion - Pyrrha
Knight of Sunbeams - Jaune
Jade Doll - Penny
Wild Warrior - Blake?
Brigand - Cinder
Knight of Doves - Dove
Maiden - Amber
Old Man in the tower - Ozpin
Wolf - ... I have no clue. I'm thinking Qrow but the wolf has silver eyes so... maybe Ruby again or Summer since Ruby is carried by her mother's example?

Through her dream, Ruby knows Amber had betrayed them... and in showing mercy to Dove and Amber, she must realize it's hypocritical to not show similar mercy to Sunset. She may still not want anything to do with Sunset, but the opening is there to rebuild that burned bridge.

Also the ending kinda reminds me of when Sunset woke up Amber.
Sunset said the same words before diving into Amber's mind/soul, and that chapter ended with Amber opening her eyes.

[Scipio Smith]

11860069
Pretty much, yeah. The Wild Warrior is Blake, who was going to show up in an early draft but ended up getting cut. The Wolf I kind of envisaged as sort of the embodiment of Ruby's magic, which is why it has silver eyes.

[AngelicTitan]

11860134
Tbh, I personally prefer the chapter without Blake as you made, specially because Blake is more important to Sunset and Rainbow than Ruby in this version of the story; as Blake was the “fifth” SAPR member in the OG version, Penny is the official fifth member in the rewrite and I actually kind of like it this way as she seems to be more connected with all of the members in contrast to how only really Sunset has a meaningful connection with Blake, who is closer with Rainbow than with Sunset. Anyway, yeah, I don’t think Blake would have a big presence in Ruby’s subconscious.

[Kiue Jin]

11860455
I mean, Blake still has a presence but... yeah, the chapter is better without her in it.

11860134
I figured the Wolf was a representation of the Silver Eyed magic and it's disappointment with Ruby's zealous designs. I cannot help but find it suitable that the one willing to call out Ruby for her bullshit is herself on some level. That being said, Ruby encountering Amber in the waking world is going to be...fun. Even more so if Amber fully admits to why she committed to her path. Because Ruby only thinks Amber did it out of fear of Salem; the truth is going to punch her right in the heart.

[Mastermind4892]

In the words of Tony Stark when he finally made peace with Steve Rogers, "Turns out resentment is corrosive, and I hate it."

Oh, sweet Celestia, thank you! Ruby has actually taken the first step, and the first step is always the greatest one! She's willing to start fresh with Sunset. What a weight off my shoulders. I'll be honest: I would not be able to bear more of Ruby's hatred and Sunset's self-loathing for another Volume, not after OG V4 with Freeport, nor with how Sunset has already gone through her suicidal stage after V2. I could not keep going through all of that repetitive emotional angst again. I've long wanted the true Ruby Rose back; otherwise, if Ruby can't function with the team, how can this be the story of Team SAPR?

Of course, Ruby still has a ways to go. She'll feel awful seeing Pyrrha and Penny fear her, and Rainbow and especially Lady Nikkos will have strong words for her. She must still learn a few things, as Sunset has been doing for several months, but most importantly, Ruby has taken the first step. She is now willing to learn.

Finally, I'm excited to see how Ozpin feels this Friday that Summer's daughter has finally woken up, in more ways than one. If he dies tonight, he'll pass knowing that his faith in Team SAPR was not misplaced after all. Through them, hope remains.

[RanmaChaos]

God, Ruby chapters are such a fucking chore to get through.

[Thisguyhere]

Still as impossibly full of herself as ever I see, adamant her ideals are the only right answer and still believing she herself has nothing to be sorry for. And worst of all STILL failing to match, or even Try to match her mother's kindness and compassion by thinking mercy alone is enough and giving up on all connection...

Buuuut I suppose even a small step in the right direction is still a step in the right direction, and the first is usually the hardest one (Though I have no doubt Scipio will find ways to still make every following step painful in their own right ). And I also suppose it would be rather out of character for this story's Ruby to not still be infuriating about the whole thing too

And hey, with still plenty of room to grow that just means more story! Maybe someday Ruby won't make me want to pull my hair out anymore even.
Looking forward to Friday!

[Cyclone Knight]

11860047
It's not a death wish. It's understanding that they all signed up for a job with a very high fatality rate and accepting that it's worth doing anyway.

[Luviere]

This chapter was... Interesting. First off all because we got to see how Ruby thinks of herself. A knight, and a righteous one at that, however we know that is far from the truth. She would let a couple people die for the greater good in a heartbeat. Her ideology is twisted, yet she sees herself as the only one who is right, and the rest are wrong. I feel pity for her. We also see other characters portrayed as Ruby herself sees them, Sunset is obvious, she is a witch, a betrayer, once a friend, then a enemy, now a stranger. A coward in ruby's eyes. We also see how she thinks of Penny, a fragile girl, a child. A very brave glass child, but a child nonetheless. The wolf is a manifestation of her magic, don't really have much to say about it. Well maybe that this manifestation has a will of it's own, maybe? Not clear on this one. Dove and Amber as betrayers, but for Amber, also a scarred and scared girl that didn't want any of this.
And second off, I did not expect going into this chapter with a peek inside Ruby's mind. Not a bad chapter. Actually very good, but, unexpected to be sure. Different then what you usually do, but sometimes Different is good.

[Antiquarian]

This... this is so good. So profoundly good.

Ruby does not bend on the point that what Sunset did was wrong. Nor should she. Sunset herself admits it. Yet Ruby remembers mercy. She puts aside her wrathfulness, her hate. She feels pity, and it was pity that stayed her hand.

The communication of the theme in this poetic, fantastical way gives us a deeply needed insight into Ruby's tormented heart, into all the hardship she has suffered, into all the trauma and pain... into how she had started to lose her way, needing to be reminded that she became a warrior to save lives, not to take them, even though she would not shy away from dealing the killing blow if needed. We see the compassionate and genuinely righteous heart that has been hidden by self-righteousness and wrath, and we see the heroism at her core waiting to be unleashed.

I loved so many things about this chapter, but the final exchange between the two - perhaps typified here - is just absolute gold. It even has a callback to Ruby's act of loving self-sacrifice for Sunset all that time ago.

Stellar work.

"Aye, for all that I would," said the Knight. “For I would not be what you have made of me. I would be more. I would be better, as once I was when I set out.” She took a step forward. "You're afraid, aren't you?"

The Witch's lower lip trembled. Her sword shook in her hands; it shook so much that she had to lower it. "'Afraid'?" the Witch said softly. "I am terrified."

"But not for yourself," the Knight said, taking another step towards her. "It is for others that you fear, no? For the Champion, for the Knight of Sunbeams, for the Princess—"

"For you," the Witch said tremulously.

The Knight paused. "I … I remember," she murmured. "Or I have dreamed, or I have imagined, or … I know not what it is, but I see a girl — a little girl in red and black — and you. A warrior rushes towards you with a terrible red sword, the girl pushes you aside, and then … she receives in return a dolorous blow."

"Yes," the Witch whispered. "Yes. I…" She took a step back, a stumbling step away from the Knight. Her burning sword fell from her hands and landed with a clatter on the ground. "I would take a hundred wounds upon my breast; cut off my breasts, let crows pluck out my eyes, feed my entrails to the baying hounds, and I shall smile." She did smile, though it did not reach her eyes, and seemed a rather unsettling sight as it quivered and wobbled on her face. Tears began to well in her eyes. "I will smile," she said again, "so long as you … all of you…" She wiped at her eyes with one hand. "This world is so cruel, so hard, so full of peril, and you … all of you … all my pretty ones, I…"

"What you have done is wrong," the Knight said. "What you do is evil."

"I know it well enough," said the Witch, her voice hoarse and quiet.

"But you," the Knight said. "You are not … you do not deserve the style of Wicked Witch."

The Witch blinked back a few tears, though more sprung swiftly up to take their place. "No?"

"No," the Knight said. "You are … you are pitiful. You're … pathetic. A half-formed and misshapen thing, with no morals or values to guide you, only … only impulse, and a heart." She paused, and took two more steps towards the Witch. "But it is … I must admit, it is a heart that aims for goodness, though it misses the mark more oft than not."

The Witch sniffed. "A heart which aims for goodness," she repeated. "A good heart, a constant heart, a tender and a feeling heart."

"It is not enough," the Knight told her. "It is far, far from enough. A good heart alone does not goodness make, not by a yard nor even by a mile." She paused. "But … it is so much that my own heart does not sit easy at the thought of stopping yours. Live, then. Be saved from me, by me. Live and fear my wrath no more."

That last paragraph in particular stands out to me. Merely having good instincts is not enough. How we act on those instincts - or fail to - is even more critical.

[BeardedRedMane]

I still don't like Ruby. I mean sure, as others have said this is probably the first step in the right direction but here she is letting go of not only her hate but also her love? So what everything they all went through and Ruby is like, "Nah, fuck it we're strangers now." I'ma need her to walk that back to a more reasonable, "I understand why you did it, please try not to do it again."

Really, her mindset isn't healthy and lets face it, if Ruby really wants to go that route she might as well toss Yang out on her ass as well because it'll be a cold day in Hell that Yang goes, "Ah, I see its uncertain but possible that I save everyone, I just for certain need to watch my sister die horribly." Stop putting Ruby up on a pedestal people, her way of thinking shouldn't be praised. I'll give that neither should Sunsets so we should instead understand that there is not right choice for either scenario and pray that we never have to be in a situation where we are tested like Sunset. I for one know my Monkey Sphere is not large enough to care about faceless randoms over the people in my immediate proximity.

[Rwby2085]

Did you mean to have ruby to throw subtle shade at yang by calling her a farmer

[Rwby2085]

11861638
Ruby has an overconfidence in her own battle skills she seem to think she can fight like a dnd fighter or paladin when she actually fight closer to a Rouge assain build or a bow ranger build I would even go so far to say that jaun could beat her in a close range fight and even trounce her in the right environment (small room tight hallway)

[BeardedRedMane]

11862187
I actually didn't want to shit on Ruby by bringing that up but she's totally dead under so many scenarios. Enclosed spaces, hell a forest will suck if she fails to cut through a tree and that shit gets stuck. Moreover hasn't her shit got stuck in grim bone before? Ruby absolutely needs a team because she has way too many short commings to function alone.

All that aside the worst part is whats she going to do against a villian who grabs two random kids off the street, kills one of them and then tells Ruby to toss her weapon away and lay face down on the ground? Her morals will tell her to die and if the villian is sick enough he'll beat Ruby to an inch of her life before killing the other kid. I used to love the idea of characters like Ruby, Goku and Superman but they need god like power and skill to back up their convictions

[Scipio Smith]

11862605
One of the things I want to do at some point is give Crescent a short melee form, like a sickle or an axe or something because you're right, as it stands it has many weaknesses. It's also a bit of a pain in the bum to write.

Honestly, I kind of prefer the short scythe that she has in the second part of the Justice League movie.

[Rwby2085]

11862618
You could also give her a bayonet on the end of her riffle mode and a love your writing so many small subtle hints into how ruby sees the world in your dream sequence

[DirtyFinger]

Skip.

[Mindscape]

This chapter was an absolute gem, though it was even more surprising considering I only managed to watch Season 9 of RWBY today, and then immediately read this chapter afterwards and was able to see the references. That was a little brain bending of a coincidence