𝐈𝐧 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 (English)

Chapter 64

It was hard for Jaune to piece together what was happening. His mind kept drifting in and out of consciousness, not quite enough to fall asleep and use his Semblance, but also not enough to be fully awake. In the brief moments of lucidity, he perceived flashes of light, explosions, loud curses, and cold metal under his body. More than that, he felt a deep exhaustion characteristic of low aura reserves. He'd been using his Semblance too much in too short a time, and Tyrian breaking through it hadn't helped either.

I'm running on fumes, he realised. If I fall asleep and dream, I'll go into negative aura. The last time I did that, I suffered a cardiac arrest...

There'd be no one to save him out here.

So, with a great amount of effort and pain, Jaune forced himself to embrace the pain and let it keep him awake. To fight that soft, comfortable urge to close his eyes and let unconsciousness take him. Focusing on the cold metal of the floor of a Bullhead, Jaune counted slowly in his head and matched his breathing to it, slowly orienting himself so that his head would stop spinning in circles.

It took several agonising minutes but he managed it. Weeks and months of being knocked around in spars helped, because while Beacon did its best to keep health and safety in mind, concussions were still a very common injury in combat class. Aura protected you like a suit of armour, but that also meant a lot of your squishy parts were bouncing around inside it, hence why Cardin's mace was a viable weapon.

Once he was awake, Jaune pushed down to try and sit up, but that proved too much too soon. The short increase in elevation made him sick, and he slumped against the Bullhead door, holding on for dear life and peering outside.

Where Cinder was attempting to murder Tyrian and Hazel.

I did that, Jaune thought, dully. I turned them on one another...

Or, well, he'd lit the match and set it beside the heaped tinder. It was obvious from Cinder's dream that she'd never held any true loyalty toward them and was only in this for herself, so she'd have betrayed them eventually. It wasn't as if he'd made her do anything she wasn't already planning; he'd just convinced her that now was the best opportunity. And that he was her ticket to unlimited power.

Which, in a way, he was. Better she have his power close than her employer, who probably wouldn't be so generous as to share it. Nothing he'd said in her dream was wrong, and the only misleading aspect was him ever using his Semblance to help her – because he'd absolutely kill her first for what she did to Amber.

But if she couldn't have him, no one would have him.

Cinder would have his power or no one would.

His unlikely saviour was somehow holding her own against the two people, and fighting with the so-called maiden's power to hurl lightning and wind like it was confetti.

It wasn't clever or skilful, and certainly not as accurate as her archery, but there was a certain simplicity to the "blast everything" mentality. She was outnumbered and dealing with highly skilled enemies, one of which could cancel her aura and both of whom wanted to get in close. Turning herself into ball lightning and cooking everyone within a ten metre radius to a crisp was just the sensible decision.

Meanwhile, the sensible decision for him was to stop watching and start escaping.

Still dizzy and weak, Jaune pushed his legs out the edge like he was sitting on the edge of a swimming pool, then pushed off and dropped to the floor. Though he landed on his feet, they buckled, along with his knees, spilling him face first onto the grass. It'd have to do. Biting back a groan, he reached out with one hand and dug his fingers into the dirt, then, with one hand and then another, he began dragging his unresponsive body under the Bullhead and to the other side, before crawling in the direction of the wood line.