There are many factors pertaining to my absence, i will use one word to represent them.

gaemu

While Blake her best to evade the masked, winged, larger opponent, she found herself unfamiliar to the revolutions often made to try to hit her.

A twisting slash with the flaming sword.

The same twisting slash from the real opponent, not the semblance it was using.

And her own semblance proved lacking. Leaving a clone to slow it's attacks did nothing, as the clone was taken with the swirling blades, pierced and useless.

This foe would also attack in a large motion, leaving tag-team attacks out of the question if they didn't want to get hit with burning metal.

But that gleaming purple sword had it's own power.

In the middle of the encounter, the person that was dressed like a ragged priest seemed as if he was worshipping it.

It was after that short stop in fighting, that the spectral clone came into existence. A strange thing about that figure, was that it's attacks were the same as the real opponents, which would come after.

"Hey ugly!"

At this point, the Faunus saw the two sisters in the air, seeeming as if they were about to attack. Sound of shells came after that, and although it may not have defeated their enemy, it made him lurch forward, clearly unprepared for the double attack.

During this scene, Weiss Schnee, the most adult-acting of their team constructed a series of circles with her semblance of control over ice , and Blake smiled once it clicked in her head what Weiss was going to do.

The wings on his side reminded us of interwoven tree branches in a dark night, with how brittle they looked.

But somehow, the dual-wielding enemy managed to ascend into the air into what must have been a storey high, making Weiss' projectiles veer and hit the tiles instead. With those dark wings moving around, he pointed the golden sword downwards. He descended

Landing, a massive wave of fire came from nowhere, that would have pushed back any in the vicinity, leaving them torched and engulfed. He turned towards another explorer.

Their leader in this mission, which was to explore a ruin found in a deep forest, was one of their teachers, one often seen with a mug, the one that wasn't the headmaster. The doctor twisted his mug-turned-baton around, and out launched a trio of flaming spheres, straight towards the warrior priest.

The swordsman took a large stride to the left, cleanly missing the fireballs.

But when the world turned white, the priest realized he had stepped foot in a white circle, too late to carry himself upwards with his wings, even though the projection from his sorcery was able to.

There was frost running up his legs.

Once more her turned the golden sword downwards, and pierced the polished floor. The same wall of flame burst from existence.

By now, team RWBY would have downed this foe and interrogate him for answers, especially with the doctor with them. But they were in a world where gods onced walked, and battled with lightning and fire against an army of stone from an era that seemed primordial to the average man and woman.

An era where humankind was still yet, not meant to be.

From the wall of flame, a wide, purple crescent burst out towards the professor and the Faunus, who were stood close to each other. She grabbed him and became a fading shadow chased by moonlight.

Re-appearing with the rest of her team and releasing their acting leader, Blake loosened the part that made her weapon become a sort of whip. The excitable blonde gripped the loose end, and the two stood on a black circle formed by Weiss.

The wall of flame still rushed outwards.

Weiss and Ruby both stood on their own circle, both their weapons raised towards where the priest would be.

Once the fire had faded, the humans would attack.

The burning wall had become little more than licks of orange strings.

And all at once, they released their team-coordination attack.

"Hhuuuuuuh-"

All at once, the team collapsed to the floor, exhausted from the foe's defeat.

"Very well done girls! Although I would congratulate you further, I am still very perplexed as to how that man disappeared."

A singular arm raised upwards. Ruby's.

"That was weird. It was like he was made out of... uh... Dust." She flopped her hand to the hard concrete. Carefully.

"This entire place is weird! Were supposed to be in a deep forest, but it's snowing in the middle of the hot season, it's even snowing in here!" Her sister, conveyed anger or something, with her arms, waving them around in confusion.

"Let's not think about that. Rather, I'm excited to see what's past this." Blake, who was now sat up, noticed that the doors they had entered from, which were closed, were now open. But her attention was at a little opening in the centre of what looked like an altar made of stone and forged metal.

Weiss had her arm covering her face, as she might have expended too much effort into her symbols. She panted as her chest rose and fell.

"By the stars, Blake you're right!" The doctor then spotted the passageway. "But we'll get to that later, you girls take a rest, while I examine these statues." He let the team take a load off, then went closer to the altar. A piece of the doctor wanted him to centre on the red rug, believing it to be part of some ancient ritual.

The archaeologist thought, has he ascended the short set of stairs, that the slightly ascended platform would be where priests would stand to pray towards the statues that represented their god, or maybe somebody to place the trust of the masses in.

The statues stretched halfway to the ceiling, but once he noticed their featureless forms, interest was lost. But something else had got the doctor's attention.

The passageway Blake had pointed out to him. It held a path that only ended.

"Wait right there, girls! I'll be right back!" Calling to the student team, the doctor made sure to step carefully when approaching the open doorway.

The heat from his body felt tiny.

"Bitingly windy, isn't it..." The teacher said to himself as he walked along the pathway, holding onto the ancient, yet polished stone.

It was like he had been plucked from the earth and whisked into the sky. The doctor's green hair fluttered like his clothing in the peaceful, cool wind.

Surely someone less tolerant to height would fall to their knees.

"Professor Oo-"

"By Jove!"

"Ahh!"

"Miss Schnee!"

Did she frighten him?

"Do these apparatus deceive me?" The professor wiped his glasses on his shirt, before then wiping his eyes. "Belike a miracle!"

"Those are... ghosts." the crowned girl said without understanding.

"And they're fighting!" Satisfied with her recovery, Ruby was now next to her teammate, admiring the transparent ghosts. The same ghosts that attacked each other.

"...on thin air..." Blake peeked over the three.

"That one's got TWO huge swords! And they look so SICK! Look at him!" The excitable child pointed at the transparent image of a person in an old suit of armor, with a large pair of black swords that spanned larger than a single person, jumping around as if he was an early Hunter.

Eventually, someone looked at the device on the ground.

"No! We have no idea what that lever will do!" The more experienced of the five shouted out.

"...Ah..."
"...but isn't everywhere else a dead end?"

"Hey, so I got up and there's stuff shaking, who pressed what?"

"Oh cool!" The other excitable girl began to spectate the ghosts instead of listening to the answer given. "Is that?" She took another look at a ghost's flaming wrists, then her towards her own wrists, where yellow plated weaponry rested. "Unbelievable."

The world around them vibrated, like an earthquake was about to happen. Soon, vision shook, and a stony structure rose from below, into view, twirling slowly.

"It wasn't me!" Ruby confessed.

The doctor made a comment about how structurally advanced past civilizations must had been. But everyone else was gawking at the spinning tower-like building, until the shaking ceased, and a path forward appeared from the new building.

"E- I guess, the only way of progression is, to move forward, then." the teacher fixed his misaligned glasses.

"Didn't you just say we shouldn't have pulled that? What if, uh, it breaks?" Cautious Blake queried the leader while sharing a glance with a similarly concerned Schnee.

"Come on up!" A distant voice called.

"We don't - ah? They're already on it, Weiss."

"They are" Weiss said back, somehow expecting this.

"Alright, on three!"

"Hrgh!"

"It's moving!"

After deciding to push a lever they found at the top of the spinny tower, a mechanical sound that hadn't been made for a while sounded.

It was very loud.

"My ears!" Blake covered her hearing apparatus, as the noise was a little too loud for her tastes.

A sudden shift in the building surprised everyone, who stumbled. A more steady motion of a twisting view followed.

"-Oof, my head." Yang held her head up from a short headache. As did her sibling.

"Your eyes are telling you the world is moving around you, yet you know that it is in fact us, who are traversing at this moment." The wizened professor explained the reason for her sickness, but he himself was feeling out of it.

"Uuugh, shuddup, stupid eyes." Ruby covered her head with her cloak.

The other two, whom gripped a pillar each, said something about the other two being less experienced.

"T-this is nothing for an heiress like me."

"Your legs are shaking, Weiss." Blake pointed out.

"What!?"

She looked towards the person who said that, and got a picture snapped of her distressed figure hugging a stone pillar.

"Hey! Delete that image!"

"Not a chance."

"-Rgh!"

Soon, the foul motions of what was now identified as a spinny-elevator, a Spinnivator, came to a halt.

"You know that word doesn't exist, Ruby." The person who said that was ignored completely, and grunted.

After exiting the Spinnivator, the five came up on large stairs leading upwards into a castle straight out of a fairy-tale novel.

"Please stop using that word, it's just as childish as the person who came up with it."

So you admit it's a word?

"Professor? Uuh, weren't we just in a forest? Why does it look like we're in a city?"

?

Despite a chance of having lower than average intelligence, Yang knew for a fact that the surrounding area was a forest, yet in front of her was a landscape covered in large buildings, like it had replaced the green of the trees. There was also a thick blanket of clouds in the sky, yet now a setting sun dipped the towers in the color of sunset. Even the structures that were part of a city wrapped in what seemed to be an eternal snowfall season were replaced with tall towers.

"You calling me dumb?"

The professor was about to answer to the blondie, but she instead got caught up arguing with somebody who wasn't there. But there were others noticing the sudden change in scenery, looking around surprisingly.

First steps off the Spinnivator, and the professor felt warm light pressing into his body

Place looked like it was untouched for centuries, it looked pristine.

The teacher sprung into action at movement up the stairs.

"Girls, get to cover!"

Detecting the urgency in their leader's voice, the team got out of obvious sight.