RWBY Through Worlds (End)

BC78: Red Herring (Heroes and Villains)--5

[Opener: "How to Rest" --The Crane Wives.]

"So you think if they weren't using the Grimm on purpose, this stuff would just fade?" Royal said. "Maybe it won't really hurt people?"

"It might cause some minor damage," Winter said, "but if it was truly as powerful as the ponds, it would have burned just to touch directly. This all goes along with the idea that the Grimm that the pirates and bandits have grown have not been normal... They wouldn't be normal ones if they're using this...monstrosity."

She grimaced.

"We have to find who is doing this and stop them," Emerald said. "If we don't, more people will start trying to use it, and...we don't know how long it will take to kill all the Grimm. It could take decades, if people could keep using it to corrupt each other again."

"So the Grimm dust they're using is making people correct?" Royal asked. "But how if it's...? The grimm are dead?"

"The Grimm feed off human malice and cowardice, Royal," Winter said, for once not using a formal address, even though they were on the job. "I'm sure with the right twist they could encourage these sins that they seem to encourage... It's profane, and it's not purely logical--no dark power is, from what I've been taught. The less we know about it the better because if you know it is twisting your mind into that shape for a brief time, and we don't want to get into that habit. Best to know only enough to stop it."

She put a hand out in front of her. "Trust me, I once had magic inside me, and I felt a cold chill even seeing what just happened... I can never go back to using it, but proximity with it makes me uncomfortable and always has since I gave it up. I believe it's like once you've been poisoned by something you lose your taste for any form of it."

"Do you feel that when you're near the Grimm?" Emerald asked Cinder.

"I feel disgusted," Cinder said. "Unlike once when I admired their vicious nature, it now just repulses me. That never happened before I rejected the magic...just with Tyrian."

"He repulsed everyone," Emerald said.

"I wonder why I didn't see that he and the Grimm were far more alike than I thought--and that he'd already become like them, as I had tried to do," Cinder said. "I courted disaster."

"Perhaps it was that precise fact that it was given to you that made it not complete, yet," Winter posited. "You could see it aside from you. Callows no longer could. In the end his fate seemed striking and morbidly fitting...just horrid."

Royal winced. "So...another reason we have to find the people behind this. We have to destroy it, all of it, to be safe."

"Is that even possible?" Glynda said. "I don't know if it is."

"Well, if we just stopped the people making more of it, the rest might peter out eventually," Winter mused. "I do know that we can't do the impossible--only God can do that... If He would allow us to, I would be willing, but if it can't be, then we must just destroy as much as we can... I now understand why Shine once told us that destruction was a godly quality as well as creation. It sounds counterintuitive to what we were taught in the academies, but there is a time you must destroy. At least it explains one issue I always had with that teaching."

Mercury groaned.

Emerald was still supporting him. "Guys, can we just go? We can talk later," she said.

"I apologize, Miss Sustrai. I should not have been distracted so long," Winter said at once.

"Can I come out now?" a new voice said.

Well, it wasn't exactly a new voice.

Libby Broom stepped out from around some trees.

Weiss gaped at her. She hadn't seen her since she'd left for Beacon, as she'd spent her vacation time in Vale or Argus, not Vacuo, naturally.