Disclaimer: Own nothing. Don't seek to gain any profits from this. Just borrowing my favourite characters for some fun.

20: Light

A fable hence retold, of a maiden young and fair, whose soul was much too old.

For the first time in the eons of her existence – fueled and consumed as she had been by hate now, for time immemorial, honing it with anger into an impervious fortress within her – she felt an entirely new emotion slip through the cracks: fear. An unexplained feeling of terror gripped her when Ruby's silver eyes alighted to white as they made contact with her own. To her disbelief, her form retreated of its own accord, dictated by the simple instinct of self-preservation, her mind an almost bystander to her body's reaction. This was an alien feeling for her, one who had entirely subjugated her senses, who wielded immeasurable magical power at her fingertips.

Yet, for that brief moment, she felt as her creations did.

The light penetrated her very being, and she fled in fear, much as the Grimm.

To Weiss Schnee, on the other hand, those very eyes, unnaturally devoid of pupils and irises as they were, conveyed a feeling diametrically opposite. She didn't even flinch when two massive wings of light sprouted from her partner's back, and she levitated the slightest bit above the ground, her entire form glowing in sharp contrast to the dark desolation which surrounded them. Ruby stretched forward an arm, her fist open, palm facing skywards. Her action caused something discernible but indefinable to shift around the heiress.

"Within this barrier, nothing shall know change," the silver eyed warrior paused. "I will return."

You better, Weiss declared internally, knowing full well she was heard despite not uttering those words out loud. There was something uncharacteristic about her diminutive friend; moreso than the ethereal form, the potent power, the overwhelming magic. There was a sense of certitude and equanimity that emanated from her which was rooted in things that she could not comprehend, but nevertheless intuitively feel.

There was no room for dread or doubt as her team leader's form burst into vibrant rose petals, suddenly out of sight.

The outcome was already known.

Salem was unable to trace Ruby's movements, and it seemed a matter of both speed and perception. She quickly manifested a ball of concentrated dark aura, cackling with purple lightening and shot it upwards to once again tear dimensional rifts to Remnant – her ploy failed however, as the ball pixilated and dematerialized into nothing.

Not much later, a white light erupted where it disappeared, and engulfed the horizon.

Noxious fumes and dark clouds gave way to a sterile whiteness while the rumble of thunder silenced itself. Dark puddles on the ground birthing Grimm collapsed into themselves, degenerating into nothingness, space reforming to a continuum where there remained no difference between the ground and skies.

Salem let out a high-pitched, ear-piercing scream, and with that the Grimm congregated to their mother, at the heart of the Other Realm. They piled into one another, seemingly absorbing into her, and her form was quickly subsumed in an ever expanding mountain of black tar. It was as if a massive conflagration, dark and menacing, thick as lava. Soon, it began to metamorphose into a gigantic form of the ancient dark witch herself.

Her head finally formed and surfaced, and she laughed maniacally, her booming voice distorted and garbled.

"Darkness is inevitable!"

As if in response, Ruby's comparatively tiny form landed in a crouch directly in the ancient witch's line of sight, head bowed under her hooded red cloak. Crescent Rose was held in one of her hands, its hilt firmly planted on the ground, with the scythe arching gracefully above her. The magnificent wings on her back, made entirely of light, spread out fully before curling around her frame. She finally raised her head, and looked straight ahead.

Her snowy gaze chilled Salem down to her very core.

What is this feeling?

The dark witch immediately manifested a gigantic ball of pulsed dark lightning in her hands and launched it straight at the young huntress in the shape of a spear. Even from where she stood, very far away, Weiss could clearly see it and she gasped – she would have moved in the next split-second but it pixilated and disintegrated to nothing mid-path without a single movement from her red-clad partner.

She let out a breath, soon followed by a confident smirk; she realized in her heart that Ruby really did have this entirely under her control.

She really was a piece of legend alive; the last silver eyed warrior.

Possibly the strongest.

Shortly after, the young Rose raised herself to stand on her feet. She pulled back the hood of her cloak with her free hand to reveal her bi-coloured hair, before swinging Crescent Rose a full 360 degrees. The skies rumbled in response, before a bolt of blinding lightning struck Salem's humungous form and she howled in agony as she was briefly covered in a pillar of bright light. The right side of her body, including her face, was completely singed and vaporized, but began to quickly regenerate as the light began to clear.

Strong gusts of wind blew through her hair and made her cloak billow behind her.

It started raining.

Slowly, Ruby began to close the distance between herself and Salem, one deliberate step at a time. Salem launched one attack after the other, her desperation becoming quickly evident with every attack that failed. Whether she used the land below or the skies above, everything came to naught, and it was as if the very existence of whatever she created was wiped out and transmuted to something dimensionless.

Finally, just a few hundred meters shy of her, Ruby stopped.

"Give up Salem," she declared calmly. Her brilliant wings retracted and her eyes reverted to their original silver colour. "You cannot win."

The ancient sorceress was livid at the young human's insolent nonchalance. "I can't be defeated!" She yelled out in a ghastly, deformed voice, completely out of control. She shot a pulse of incinerating dark aura point blank at the young warrior; Ruby dematerialized it with the outstretched palm of her right hand in front of her. A fraction of a second later it exploded within Salem.

The witch regenerated as she howled in agony.

Her humungous form flailed, disbalanced. "He could not stop me, neither will you!" She screeched out, unable to fully recover her limbs. Parts of her children, her creature of Grimm, pixilated away, and she experienced a feeling of void she could not recognize. It was markedly different from being frozen in time, a condition she could always recover from, given her immortality. Quickly, she metamorphosed back to her condensed, humanoid form once more, concentrating her powers to saturation; it took everything she had to maintain this new state and she was able to somehow hold at bay the dimensionless void.

"You're right," Ruby replied, "I alone can't stop you." She raised her left arm, and launched Crescent Rose into the air. "But I am not alone." She now stood at the spot where she'd held Ozpin's disintegrating form, unable to keep it together for all her powers. The two halves of Moon Bane flew to her hand, which glowed green. Her irises lit up with the same colour. Crescent Rose returned to its rightful place in her other hand; the entire area was covered in blinding light as soon as the two scythes made contact.

Boulders lifted up from the ground and crumbled to nothing.

The irradiation cleared as if an ethereal fog to reveal Salem and Ruby standing just a few feet from one another, surrounded entirely by white: there was no ground, no sky, no discernible physical dimension; there existed no bend in space to define the curvature of time. At first Salem thought it was yet another time seal, the last resort of the many Silver Eyed Warriors who had stood and fallen before her in the past. A futile sacrifice which could only postpone the inevitable.

Summer Rose's life force had bought the most time.

"You're wrong," commented Ruby, as if reading her thoughts, her tone factual and devoid of any emotion.

Then it hit Salem all at once: she gasped involuntarily on observing the scythe now held in Ruby's hands. Crescent Rose's smooth metallic curve was now bifurcated into two, and each edge was sawtoothed, reminiscent of Moon Bane. And that was not all: the combined colour schemes of red and green, the ancient hilt – before she could comprehend it, the mechanism on the hybrid scythe shifted and parted it into two, and one each was held in the young warrior's hands.

Salem managed to manifest the most powerful forms of Umbra and Penumbra – her very arms transforming into the dark magical blades – to block Ruby's incoming blow just in time.

A portion of her energy, her very being and vitality, drained away.

"What is this abomination?!" She exclaimed, horrified.

"Isn't that ironic?" Ruby whispered softly, "Did you think you were the only one who could use dark magic?"

They clashed again, swift, violent, and imperceptible to every sense, except that of aura itself.

Salem found that, despite herself, she could not recover the energy she was losing, and she also could not regenerate the damage taken by her dual swords.

Once again, as if reading her mind, Ruby spoke. "You can recreate, perhaps, what is destroyed, Salem," she paused, "however, that which is uncreated, is free from all cycles. Of both creation and destruction. In the void," she continued as the scythes now shaved off to nothingness parts of Umbra and Penumbra, which were also Salem's arms, "that surrounds us," Ruby eyes turned white once more, and everything around them turned pitch black, "and is channelled through Moon Rose, there is no duality."

In front of her, Salem saw a vision of the fractured Moon which had stood over Remnant's skies for eons, slowly complete itself.

"Stop it!" She howled.

"I am only balancing what was unbalanced."

In the darkness, Salem's dark sword-arms decomposed to reveal soft skin underneath – her white hair started giving way to gold, and her menacing eyes began to flicker to cerulean. "No," she screamed in drawn out syllables and sobbed as she felt her powers diminish to nothing and leave her frame. "Why…? Why after everything…" She could barely speak. "Why was he taken from me? What was my fault?"

Cerulean met silver. "To think he entrusted everything to you…end me."

Ruby responded with a faraway look on her face, before fixing her eyes on the ancient witch. "The truth is he planned everything," she gracefully swung the two scythes to merge them into one. "In recreating Crescent Rose at the ancient forge, its very form had been imbued with magic: both light and dark. And his own aura. In using it, I was already learning, I just did not realize it," she exhaled, "the last steps included his own death, and the complete merger of auras…" she tilted Crescent Bane in her hands, "…and that of semblances. Long enough to change you – Jinn was always right, you never could be defeated or killed as you were."

Salem gave an embittered laugh. "To think that…" she started and stopped herself, collapsing to her knees. "Just end it."

"…and killing you was never part of his plan," Ruby spoke with certainty, knowing in her very being that it was the truth. "He always loved you."

"I don't want to hear this!" She snarled back at Ruby, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Do you think I'm the one who wants to say it?" Her eyes flickered the slightest bit green, and that's when Salem truly understood. Ruby set the edge of her blade at the nape of Salem's neck as the unmanifested cube dissolved around them to once again give way to the Other Realm, which was now transformed to a barren wasteland.

"But don't you see?" Salem implored, "I have no reason left to live. From the beginning, without Ozma, I had no reason to live. I…" she put her hand on the blade, and pressed it ever so slightly, "Free me from this existence. It's the kindest thing you could do," her eyes were downcast, "if you think I do not deserve this kindness, then think of it as punishment."

"No," Ruby's voice was cold in an almost uncharacteristic way. "You cannot die, unless you learn to live. That is your punishment, your lesson, and your salvation – it is not my will," her eyes changed colour to a brilliant gold, "neither is it Ozma's. It is the will of the universe, of the gods who comprehend it."

Salem fell at Ruby's feet, and begged. "Please, don't do this," she cried, "don't leave me alone to exist."

"You are never alone," Ruby said, eyes full of pity, "Both creation and destruction, and our freedom from it," she stepped away, "rests in the palm of our hands."

With her words, Moon Rose dematerialized.

A/N: Well well well. Guess who is back from the dead? I hope ya'll are healthy in these strange times. Finally, with this chapter, we finish the first arc. The next arc, spanning – a now somewhat planned – twenty chapters will be much more psychology/philosophy heavy, and will also tackle even deeper themes regarding "bonds". I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you - for your reviews, PMs, whatnot, even if I have been a lousy author to not reply to things. Each little thing made a big difference to me on any given day, and always reminded me of my promise that I do intend to keep: of finishing this story. It's entwined with my own life story in a way, so you can bet I will complete it. :) Despite being busy with PhD life and a bazillion other stressors, I do hope I will update every couple of months or so, at least, from now (since I have actually planned better now).

end long A/N babble! Love you all.