Chapter Text
Evernight was cold.
Crimson did not sorely miss sunlight; she saw enough of it on missions for her Queen that her skin was not too pale and eyesight not too poor. Slipping through the shadows was a task best left to Cinder, where Crimson’s bright red cape would make her an easy target. Of all of the Queen’s servants, Crimson spent the most time out in the open, soaked in the dry desert warmth of Vacuo or the oppressively humid heat of Vale under her hood. She indisputably preferred the midnight chill of her Queen's domain to the sun’s piercing rays. But most of all, the sun was a reminder of the passage of time. Time was the one luxury Crimson could never seem to afford.
Despite all this, Crimson wrapped her red cloak tighter around herself when the wind picked up. She sat exposed on a high ledge outside the castle, overlooking the causeway. The wind was not strong enough to blow her off her perch, but it still gnawed at her fingers and ears. She tugged her hood around her face. It never stormed in Evernight -- she assumed her Queen’s magic had some role to play in that -- but the wind always lingered. Today, it bit at her more fiercely than usual. She shivered.
The wind suddenly roared in strength and tore her cape out of her grasp, a titanic gust raining down on her from above. The blast held the power to carelessly thrust her off the top of the tower and send her careening into freefall. Crimson twisted midair, falling backwards and squinting her one silver eye up at the flash of dazzling, unnatural lights. Crimson squeezed her eye into rapid blinks as the lights moved on, passing with the wind to somewhere beyond her head that took the roaring along with it. This new quiet meant she was now frightfully conscious of the thin air whistling past her face. Crimson tumbled back over to face the ground speeding towards her. It now took but a practiced breath to propel her dive into parallel with the lower level of the castle in a burst of spectral rose petals. For just a moment, she watched the purplish stone zoom past the tip of her nose in a thrilling blur. Then, she tucked her chin, released her Semblance, and rolled into a somersault, letting her feet fall to the ground before her and rising in one swift motion. The breeze of her landing blew softly against her face, fading as she rocked to a halt.
The airship that had caused her displacement with its turbines had come to rest precariously on the pier jutting out from the front of the castle. The bullhead’s lights dimmed. Crimson dusted herself off, adjusting the cape that had been knocked akilter as she walked down the causeway. While she approached the ship, the hull door slowly creaked open, revealing just the culprit Crimson expected to see.
“You nearly killed me,” Crimson greeted. “I could have fallen to my death.”
“Yet here you stand,” Cinder responded, descending down the ramp. Her glass heels clicked daintily against the metal surface. “How could I have known you were on lookout?” she teased.
“When have I ever not waited for you?” Crimson said, then quickly followed with, "Don't answer that, you know what I mean." She glanced backwards over her shoulder. “I didn't see you coming -- I thought you were in Vale, why did you approach from the East?”
“I got a bit turned around,” she replied coolly. She gestured to an angry rip in her red dress. Other than that, she seemed perfectly unscathed. “I had to take evasive action over the sea. Don’t worry, I lost them.”
“I don’t think I’m the one who should be worried,” Crimson replied. Cinder passed her as she continued walking up the causeway towards the castle. Crimson turned to follow at her side. “Salem said she wanted to see both of us as soon as you got back.”
Cinder frowned. “Did she.”
Crimson shrugged. “I don’t know what it’s about. It seems important, though.”
Cinder’s scowl deepened.
“Probably not Maiden stuff,” Crimson smoothened. “She’s not that anxious -- I’ve been hanging around her alone for hours and I’ve still got one eye.” She pointed comically to the eyepatch covering the left side of her face and grinned.
Cinder said nothing.
“It is about the Spring Maiden,” Salem said.
Cinder glared at Crimson. She hid inside her hood.
They sat around the conference table in their usual positions, Crimson to Salem’s right and Cinder on her far left side. The Seer made its menacing orbits around them. Cinder only caught snippets of its ghostly whispers as it glided past. She suppressed a shiver and decided to focus her attention elsewhere.
“What about her?” she asked, turning towards the head of the table. “Have we discovered her identity?”
“Possibly,” Salem replied.
Crimson gasped. Salem held up a hand to silence her. “It’s only a possibility. However, the information is from a reputable source.”
Cinder repressed her excitement, bowing her head. Crimson peeked out from her hood. “From who?”
It’s “whom,” Cinder thought idly.
Salem lowered her hand. “Leonardo has called to my attention a girl who passed the entrance exams to Haven Academy two days ago." She turned her gaze on Cinder, whose posture automatically stiffened. "According to him, she matches the description of a member of the Branwen tribe.”
Cinder froze.
Impossible, her mind muttered.
“...I thought we ruled them out as a possible refuge for the Spring Maiden?” Crimson clarified.
Cinder leaned forward and put a hand on the table, maintaining contact with Salem's gaze. “I personally investigated that matter. No strange weather patterns, no unusual raids. I even interrogated one of their puny runts and I--”
“And somehow you learned nothing!” Salem barked.
Cinder recoiled. Salem’s eyes glowed that eerie red.
Crimson looked down.
“You were mistaken, my dear Cinder,” Salem spoke softly. Cinder dared not blanch.
The Seer came to rest at Salem’s left. Crimson's eye glimmered as she peered towards it.
“This is what Leonardo witnessed,” Salem continued, gaze burning, “that led him to believe that he had discovered the Spring Maiden.”
She lifted a hand and the Seer rose onto the table, floating serenely towards Cinder. She leaned back on instinct. It halted in the middle of the table and stilled, and for a moment, all was quiet.
Then, the smoky film inside the orb crackled to life, shards of lightning in a bottle springing from the darkness. The globe filled with whirling points of light that sparkled with an ever-blooming multitude of different colors and intensities until the starcloud became so tightly interspersed that its light and color took shape, morphing into a unified image within the orb, forms three-dimensional and lifelike.
Crimson sighed in mesmerized awe, as if there were any sort of novelty to the Seer's typical lightshow. Cinder nestled farther back in her chair.
The globe showed them a simple scene: a girl, standing in a clearing in the woods, viewed from far above. Her long hair was a brilliant shade of yellow that seemed to confuse itself with the sunlight. She wore grey and tan and red, colors that Cinder recognized as the signature garb of the Branwen tribe. The girl was facing away from her viewers to favor three growling Ursa Minors. One of them, circling to her right, emitted a stream of smoke from one of its legs as though she had already drawn first blood. Cinder leaned closer: she spotted gunmetal grey gauntlets on her arms, and a slender silver sword hanging from her hip. The blade looked untouched from this distance, gleaming as clearly as a wet mirror.
One mass of black chose to surge towards her. The yellow-haired girl immediately flipped backwards out of its range and then lunged in response, driving a head-on punch towards the charging Grimm. Cinder caught a glimpse of a silver streak through the air before the blow landed firmly in the Ursa’s skull. The Grimm crumpled to a halt against her unmoving fist, and moments later the beast disintegrated into smoke.
When the girl returned to a neutral stance, Cinder got a better look at her weapon. Extending over her fists from her gauntlets were single blades, like daggers on springs, deployed to slash and puncture in close-range combat. Why she would use mounted dinnerware in Grimm combat rather than such a beautiful sword, Cinder couldn't say.
The other two Ursai chose this moment to barrel towards her. They rushed her from opposite sides of the clearing, plausibly with the intent to crush her between them. She easily had enough time to jump out of the way like she had done moments before, but instead, Cinder watched as she dropped to the ground, crouching as if taking shelter from a spray of bullets.
And then, CRACK-OOM!
Cinder’s knee jerked and smashed into the table. Crimson let out a small yelp at the sudden onomatopoeia.
Two thunderbolts had appeared from the sky and smote the Ursai in one fell swoop. The two Grimm were reduced to ash in the blink of an eye.
Salem frowned.
The dust settled as the yellow-haired girl slowly rose from the ground. She seemed completely unscathed and unbothered by this act of the Gods, simply dusting herself off and flipping a shimmering golden lock freely over her shoulder. With her feet planted and shoulders broad, she radiated an energy of prideful dominance that even pervaded the Seer's reproduction. Cinder stared at the girl’s back with renewed interest. Such power, she marveled. Such strength, such control...
I must have it, Cinder decided in her heart.
The image in the Seer scattered into solute. Cinder blinked, her intensity dissolved. The smoke returned to formlessness, and the orb went dark.
The room was quiet. Cinder’s heart hammered in her ears.
“As you can see,” Salem said, “this may be the Spring Maiden.”
Cinder shook herself again. Her muscles relaxed, but her thoughts did not.
“May?” Crimson parroted. “That’s still a ‘maybe'?”
“Leonardo claims that none of the other proctors had been able to see her face when she conjured the lightning,” Salem explained. “It may have been her Semblance. He saw nothing during her exam that contradicts that. If her eyes ignited, it would be certain.”
“But that power…”
Salem and Crimson’s eyes fell upon Cinder. It had just barely escaped her lips, but it now sat in the open. She cleared her throat.
“That power was remarkable,” Cinder said. “How could they have hidden it when I was searching for her?”
Salem rose from her seat, not fast enough to warrant fear, but deliberately enough to make Cinder straighten her spine.
“That no longer concerns me,” Salem said. “What matters is that you failed.”
Crimson gasped quietly.
Cinder’s fingers curled into knots.
She took a step. Cinder’s gaze welded itself to the table.
“If she is indeed the Spring Maiden, then the power cannot have come to her coincidentally,” Salem said. "Raven Branwen was formerly an ally of our enemy. Her awareness may have spawned an abundance of caution; her tribe may very well have chosen not to wreak havoc in order to leave no trace for you to find.”
Each footfall seemed to take a wizard's lifetime. Crimson watched anxiously, one eye darting back and forth across the closing distance. Cinder's eyes continued drilling a hole in the tabletop.
“If you had not been outsmarted by that rabble of rogues, we would have that power now,” Salem accused, stalking ever closer. “Your chance to kill her in the woods has been passed up; if she is admitted to Haven Academy, which she may go to great lengths to ensure, she will be under the protection of Ozpin and his puppets. If they find out about her power, it will be as good as lost.”
Salem now hovered at Cinder’s side. Cinder had sunken so low in her chair that she towered over her, her silhouette a shadowy talon poised to strike.
One cold hand snaked under Cinder’s chin. Cinder's body clenched as her clawed fingertips made contact with her skin. Gently, yet threatening enough strength to snap her jaw clean off, Salem turned her head to rip Cinder’s gaze from its boreholes and capture it with her own leering eyes.
Her lips were slightly upturned. They betrayed no compassion.
Cinder swallowed, then took in a deep breath.
“What would you have me do?” Cinder whispered.
Salem’s smile sweetened. Her gaze did not.
She removed her hand from under Cinder’s chin and turned away. The moment the paralyzing force of her gaze departed, the tension in Cinder’s body flushed out of her in throes of relief. She keeled over, accepting a shaky gulp of air; she had forgotten to breathe.
Crimson looked on.
Salem spared no pause as she returned to the head of the table. “If you would recall, I originally planned for you and your underlings to enroll at Haven Academy during the Vytal Festival in order to orchestrate the fall of Beacon." She sat down, melding back into her throne. Crimson shuffled in her seat.
“This now takes priority,” Salem ordered. “The Fall Maiden can wait for the fall semester. It is now springtime. Let us not let it go to waste.”
Cinder nodded, just as Crimson did.
“What are our orders?” Crimson asked.
'Our' orders? Cinder thought.
Salem carried on. “The two of you will enroll at Haven for the full year. Cinder, you will form a team with Emerald, Mercury, and Neo as planned. My design for the Vytal Festival still stands.”
Cinder nodded, but inwardly, her confusion worsened. 'The two of you'? She had accepted this role long ago, when she had first been sent to claim the Fall Maiden’s powers. Crimson had never been a part of the picture. While two semesters would be more difficult to survive undiscovered than one, covert operations were her specialty, a department in which Crimson was sorely lacking. She would be willing to bear another semester if it meant that she could fill the gnawing emptiness of the Fall Maiden’s incomplete power. But bearing Crimson as well? For what purpose?
“You, Crimson,” Salem continued, turning to the other girl, “will be responsible for taking the power of the Spring Maiden.”
Crimson’s eye widened. Cinder clutched the edge of the table.
“What?" she growled.
Salem watched solely for Crimson's response. The girl's mouth hung open and empty.
Cinder bristled.
“But,” Cinder tried, grip tightening. “You promised me…!”
“I promised you one thing,” Salem hissed, her eyes fixing into her. “Power. Yes. I remember. In exchange for your loyalty.”
Cinder swallowed her objections.
“And I cannot deny that you have been loyal,” she continued, tone unkindly. “But.”
She gestured to Crimson, who had retreated into her hood. “Perhaps Crimson will be able to succeed in this task where you have failed. She will earn the power of the Spring Maiden, as you will earn the power of the Fall Maiden when the destruction of Beacon is complete.”
Cinder's indignation turned on Crimson. The girl continued to hide in her cloak. She stared herself speechless at Crimson, who was so young that she still hid in that ridiculous red cape like the frightened child she was; Crimson, who had never failed her Queen because her Queen barely entrusted her with anything more important than an assassination; Crimson, who had been at Salem’s side for longer than Cinder even knew despite never playing any more important a role in their plans than the brainless fanatics in the White Fang -- until now.
Cinder stared at Crimson, in hatred.
“What are you asking me to do?” Crimson finally said, ignorant of the burning in Cinder’s heart.
“You will also enroll at Haven,” Salem answered. “You will investigate the suspected Spring Maiden. And when you discern that you have found the right opportunity, you will kill her and take the power.”
Cinder pondered the vicious scheme. It befitted someone with more tact and experience, she decided.
Someone like herself, she thought bitterly.
Crimson looked down as she processed the information.
“It’s an assassination job, then,” she said, after a pause. “Got it.”
Salem's chin tipped ever so slightly upward in approval, and something twisted in Cinder’s gut.
“Cinder and her teammates will be there to assist you, if needed.”
The words echoed through Cinder's mind.
To ASSIST you.
Each reverberation fueled the next. IF needed. IF.
Her jaw clenched.
“Of course, if she is not the Spring Maiden, you may drop out with Leonardo’s help and return home,” Salem said with a wave of her hand. “But if she is…”
Cinder looked on as Salem gave Crimson what seemed like the same smile she gave Cinder. Perhaps Cinder’s spitefulness was clouding her perception of reality, or perhaps the softness of her lip really did hold the warmth of affection.
“...I trust that you will not disappoint me.”
Crimson smiled.
It matched.
She nodded. “It will be done.”