(Ten minutes earlier)
Jaune moved alongside the group at a steady pace, walking along the dark earth that seemed more like packed ash than soil. Above them, the canopy stretched into a ceiling of colossal leaves and interwoven branches, yet the light of the black sun still managed to spill through in long fractured shafts. The pale, strange illumination fell in slanted ribbons across the forest floor, painting the trunks in layered shades of gray and black.
The scale of everything here was difficult to truly comprehend.
The trees had trunk so vast that, at a rough estimate, its circumference was nearly the size of an entire city block. Looking closer, their barks had textured ridges and grooves like weathered stone, and when Jaune ran his gaze upward, the trunk continued so high that its branches disappeared into shadow long before the crown became visible.
It was like walking through a forest made for giants.
Still, despite the oppressive size of their surroundings, the Stalkers they had encountered so far hadn't truly threatened them.
A zero variant lunged from behind a low ridge of twisted roots, its white eyes blazing with that familiar hunger.
Jaune barely had to think.
With a smooth thrust, he drove his spear through the creature's chest. The Stalker let out a soundless shudder before dissolving into shadow essence that bled back into the ground. Absorbing them now wasn't worth it anymore. His Stalker buddy seemed to have finally hit some type of bottleneck. No matter how much he absorbed, there was no change to his strength.
There appeared to be another key requirement that Jaune was missing.
"Still just zero and first variants," Auberyn said from beside him.
Her own Stalker puppet moved in eerie lockstep at her shoulder, threaded with faint silver-white light from her Stellar rune.
Jaune nodded dissolved the spear back into his hand.
"So far."
That was the thing hanging over all of them. So far there weren't any Asura variants. Raven had been very clear about what that meant.
The second variant Stalker was, by all accounts, equivalent to a Rank 2.
That alone was enough to keep the entire group alert.
Ahead, Raven moved with quiet, predatory grace, her posture loose but ready. Qrow walked slightly off to one side, his expression quite casual despite the circumstances. Zeki, by contrast, had one hand resting near the ground every so often, subtly feeling through the surrounding terrain.
Jaune found himself glancing sideways at Auberyn.
"So," he said, lowering his voice slightly, "how's your… passenger doing?"
Auberyn gave him a sidelong look, then glanced at the Stalker beside her. The creature's white eyes flickered with unmistakable resentment.
"Well... I'm pretty sure it hates me," she said plainly.
Jaune let out a short laugh. "Yeah, I kind of got that impression."
He could actually feel it. Through his Weakness sense, he could determine that whenever Auberyn directed her puppet to move or attack, the Stalker's emotions bled faintly into his awareness.
Fear, frustration and anger.
The thing was terrified because it had no control over its own body, furious because it could do nothing about it, and simmering with hatred toward Auberyn for forcing its movements.
Jaune frowned faintly. A small twinge of pity stirred in him.
Not much, but enough to stir his own feelings. Then again, he reminded himself, these creatures attacked on sight. Every single time.
Whatever sympathy he might have had was tempered by the memory of white eyes lunging out of the dark with murder in their gaze.
Auberyn lifted one hand and her Stalker mirrored the motion a second later, its arm rising with unnatural precision.
"I still can't merge with it the way you can," she said. "At least not directly."
Jaune glanced at her.
"But?"
A faint smile touched her lips.
"But I can sort of use it like armor."
She tapped lightly against the creature's chest.
"If I wrap it around myself and direct the movement through Stellar and Figure, it acts almost like an external body."
Jaune hummed.
"So basically a shadow exosuit?"
"That's one way to put it."
She rolled one shoulder.
"The problem is that it doesn't really improve my combat strength right now. My Stellar rune and Figure rune already give me Rank 1 equivalent physical output. If anything, it sort of lowers it due to me having to focus on an extra setting."
Jaune nodded slowly. "So yours is more manual."
"Exactly. Yours feels like an already integrated system. Mine feels like I'm writing the code every time I want it to move."
That actually made Jaune grin.
"Can't help it. It's a testing phase, after all. Or... we could just say that my runes are better."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "That's stretch. We both know who wins in a fight."
"That was a controlled environment and a tournament. No holds barred, things would be different."
"Sounds like a sore loser talk to me." She smirked.
"Whatever."
As if punctuating the conversation, another first variant rushed from between two roots.
Its arms shifted into twin blades as it sprinted toward them. Jaune stepped forward, condensing weakness on it before cleanly driving his spear through the Stalker's torso as it fell to the ground. It couldn't even reach striking distance.
It dissolved with a hiss of shadow.
Meta runes truly were a sight to see. Without an Aura stat, meta runes could straight up just kill you instantly. And even if a person had it, meta abilities couldn't be completely blocked. Only mitigated. The stronger the Aura, the more the meta rune's power was blocked, the weaker, the less.
While that though ran through his head, a subtle shift seemed to occur through his Weakness sense.
Jaune froze.
Something was watching them.
Something strong.
His eyes lifted sharply.
Up there.
Standing horizontally against the side of one of the colossal trunks, as casually as if gravity meant nothing at all, was a Stalker.
Six arms crossed over its broad chest. Its body was taller and more heavily built than any first variant they had seen. White eyes glowed in the half-light beneath the canopy.
Its head tilted as it stared at them in curiosity.
Jaune's breath caught.
"Raven."
The others immediately looked up. The moment Raven's gaze locked onto it, the creature moved.
It simply melted into the trunk.
Jaune's eyes widened.
"Oh shit!"
The ground in front of Raven erupted and the Asura variant surged upward from the shadowed earth, appearing directly before her.
But it did not attack, at least not immediately. It simply stood there, towering over her, white eyes fixed on her face.
Raven stared back with cold, cutting stillness. For a single heartbeat, the forest held its breath. Then everything exploded.
A blade of condensed shadow flashed into Raven's hand and she struck.
The speed was monstrous. Jaune barely tracked the first slash before there were ten more. The Asura moved with impossible fluidity, weaving, twisting, and deflecting her attacks in a blur of six-armed motion.
Qrow was already shifting.
His body collapsed inward and burst into black feathers as he took crow form, slightly smaller than normal, wings snapping outward as he launched at the creature.
The Asura flipped away from his attack, its body arcing through the air with shocking grace. Then, the ground behind it erupted and a veritable tsunami of roots surged upward.
Zeki.
The roots twisted like massive serpents, filling the forest clearing in a crashing wave of living wood. The Asura vanished into the shadow ground again, slipping through just before the roots could close around it.
It reemerged near Qrow.
One fist swelled grotesquely, transforming into a gigantic shadow arm that lashed outward in a devastating punch.
But Jaune had already condensed Weakness around the limb.
The Umbra destabilized and the enlarged arm began to melt apart mid-strike, the structure collapsing into loose shadow.
The punch missed.
Qrow whipped around in crow form and slammed into the Asura with brutal force, sending it flying across the air.
For a moment, Jaune thought they had the advantage.
Then he saw it. The creature gaze was focused on him. Even as it was struck away, its eyes never left him. The instant its body hit the ground, it merged with the shadows.
Jaune's stomach dropped. An instant later, it was in front of him.
A hand clamped around his throat and he was lifted effortlessly off the ground.
The creature tilted its head, studying him. Then Raven's blade screamed toward its neck. One arm transformed into a sword and blocked the strike with effortless ease.
Two more arms unraveled into tendrils, coiling outward like living serpents to push Zeki's roots back.
The last pair shot outward and seized Qrow's beak, forcing it open and stopping the vicious snap aimed at its face.
Jaune hung there, heart hammering.
The white eyes stared into him and then the creature's face split open. A smooth, white, toothless maw unfolded.
"What… Are… You?"
Jaune didn't answer.
The moment the creature's white eyes bored into his own, instinct overrode everything else. Weakness condensed around the hand crushing his throat, his meta rune compressing into a razor-thin point of destabilization.
The Asura's limb melted as its Umbra collapsed into itself leaving loose shadow that spilled away from Jaune's neck.
The moment his feet hit the ground, alarm shot through him.
Nearly half of his reserves were gone.
The earlier destabilization of the giant arm had already taken a massive bite out of his energy, and this second use had pushed it to nearly fifty percent.
The thing was simply too dense.
It could not defend against Weakness directly, but its Umbra was packed so tightly and oppressively concentrated, that forcing instability into it was like trying to melt a mountain with bare hands.
Before Jaune could retreat farther, the creature's torso rippled. A new arm burst out from the middle of its chest, slick with fresh shadow, lunging straight for him.
Jaune's eyes widened and Weakness began to gather again.
But before he could melt it, the limb froze.
For the briefest moment, tiny pinpricks of starlight bloomed across the new arm like a constellation taking shape across midnight skin.
Instead of reaching for Jaune, it jerked sideways and clawed toward the creature's own throat.
Auberyn.
Before the limb could make contact, the starlight-converted arm detonated into a violent burst of shadow. The explosion splashed darkness across the roots and trunks around them.
The Asura slowly turned its head.
Its white gaze settled on Auberyn.
That was when Raven's kick slammed into its side and the impact cracked like thunder.
The towering creature was hurled sideways through a curtain of roots and crashed against the trunk of one of the colossal shadow trees. By the time it straightened, the hand that Jaune had melted had already regrown.
Fresh Umbra curled and hardened into a perfect replacement.
It stared at them and Jaune felt the emotion radiating from it through his strange connection.
Hunger, yes. But not the blind, animalistic hunger of the lesser Stalkers.
This was something else. Malicious curiosity.
It wanted to know and seemingly wanted to understand.
Auberyn stepped forward, six massive starlight arms unfurling around her body in a radiant halo. Silvery-white armor wrapped over her figure, layering into a luminous shell that made her seem almost celestial amidst the black forest.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Qrow muttered, "Damn. Didn't know they could talk. And in our language too."
His crow-like eyes flicked toward Raven.
"You kinda forgot to mention that part."
Raven shot him a cold look sharp enough to cut bark.
"Do I look like I know why?"
Zeki's voice came lower, cautious.
"If it's capable of discourse then perhaps we might not have to fight it. Perhaps we can—"
The Asura interrupted him, its split maw opened again, the white interior flexing unnaturally.
"Your power is fascinating."
Its voice was rough and layered, like multiple throats speaking at once.
"It is not like ours. Not like &%$#."
The last word hit the air wrong.
It was not a sound so much as a collision of whispers, a hundred voices forcing five letters into existence at the exact same instant.
Jaune's breath caught. He understood it.
Not fully or consciously, but something inside him translated the meaning before thought could catch up.
Umbra.
Something closer to the raw idea beneath the word. It sounded almost like how he imagined runes would sound if written symbols were forced into spoken form.
The theoretical language behind all runic structure.
Qrow stared.
"The fuck?"
He jabbed a thumb toward Raven.
"Ray, you've got a shadow rune. You get what it said?"
Raven glared at him.
"Do I look like I speak Stalker?"
Jaune swallowed and said quietly, "It was talking about Umbra."
Qrow's head snapped toward him.
"You understand it?"
Jaune nodded slowly. "Yeah. I think it's because of the Sleeper's boon. I think..." He frowned. "I think it's speaking a theoretical runic spoken language."
Qrow blinked.
"What? Runes have a verbal language too?"
Before anyone could respond, the Asura moved. Its patience had snapped. All six arms transformed at once. The upper pair widened and split into brutal battle axes, edges glimmering with sharpened Umbra. The middle pair lengthened into wicked spears and the lower pair peeled open into massive chomping maws lined with white teeth.
Its voice thundered through the clearing.
"I want your power."
The white eyes locked onto Jaune.
"Give it to me!"
Then it rushed them.
"Hold on!" Zeki barked.
His palm slammed into the ground.
A vast wooden platform erupted upward beneath the five of them, lifting them above the forest floor in an instant. Thousands upon thousands of roots exploded from the soil below, spearing into the air in a dense lattice.
It was brilliant.
By flooding the area with wood, he was stripping the creature of its teleportation routes.
No shadows meant no ground merging. But the Asura adapted instantly. Its lower body twisted and lengthened into a massive serpent's tail.
The creature slithered through the forest of roots with horrifying grace, weaving between the spears of wood as if flowing through water.
Then it plunged directly into the trunk of a nearby shadow tree.
Jaune's stomach dropped as he sensed it.
"Above!"
It burst from the trunk above and behind them, descending onto the platform in a storm of flashing weapons.
Raven launched upward to meet it.
Shadow exploded from her back as four immense Asura limbs formed around her own body, mirroring the creature's monstrous shape.
Their clash split the air.
Axes met shadow blades and spears shrieked against condensed limbs. The impact waves rattled the platform beneath Jaune's feet.
Then four massive crows dropped from the canopy. They tore downwards, beaks snapping at the Asura's limbs.
Qrow's clones.
The creature snarled, its lower maws twisting into tendrils that lashed outward and bound the four giant crows midair.
But one of the crows had been hiding something.
A shape burst from behind it.
The real Qrow.
Jaune's eyes widened.
This was the first time he had seen him like this. Qrow's form was neither fully man nor fully beast. Great black wings spread from his back. A sleek, predatory crow's head sat atop a powerful human frame.
In his hands was his greatsword.
Then he moved.
A sonic boom cracked through the clearing. Jaune did not even see the strike. One moment Qrow was behind the clone.
The next, he had already flashed past the Asura. For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the creature's body split cleanly in two from head to tail.
A perfect vertical cut.
The halves began to slide apart. Jaune exhaled in stunned disbelief.
Then, just as suddenly, Qrow slammed face-first straight into the platform. The impact sent a huge spray of shadow soil and splintered wood erupting everywhere.
There was a stunned silence.
Then Qrow's muffled voice came from the crater.
"…Meant to do that."