The Knights of Grimm - Act 4 - Whispers of Arkhonex

Chapter 2 - The Traffickers

Yang

Darkness...

The cold air brushes across her face as she looks around, terrified wide lilac eyes, seeing the scorched trees that surround her. The crimson tainted dying sky with the completely shattered moon above her head with clouds of thick smoke floating in the sky. Ceaseless screams of terror and agony echo around her as she stands there, and she knows where she is...she even says the words with a trembling voice.

"The Charred Forest..." She gasps, staring at the hundreds of skyscraper tall blackened trees around her. Snowing thick flakes of ash fall upon her and into her stunning blonde hair.

Her eyes gaze down to her arms, almost instinctively, and she can see she has both arms here. Her eyes widen and she gasps when seeing both arms again, until a faint snarling collection of whispers echoes through her mind. For some reason she is wearing her cream coloured dressing gown that she has for the morning...or if she needs to recover from a nightmare. The fluffy gown seems to protect her frail body from nothing in this chilling landscape. Her hair has also been curled slightly as well, making her long beautiful blonde hair wavy. She raises her head slowly to see something in the distance.

A dark entity walking away from her and passing by a destroyed tree.

Curiosity takes the place of fear, so the Sunny Little Dragon begins to follow the entity she just witnessed disappear from her very eyes. The ground is so soft, the soil contaminated with the ashes of countless realms and universes that have been destroyed by him. The screams that make up this realm are so endless, overlapping each other so much, that she cannot even decipher the words that they scream. Distant howls and roars of Grimm echo endlessly, most of the roars are unlike anything she has ever heard.

Like something straight out of hell, titanic monsters ready to be unleashed on their world when Vir Nominis Umbra decrees it to happen.

The land is utterly haunting, devoid of colour and beauty, only replaced with destruction and chaos. But she continues to follow that mysterious entity through the forest, unaware that she is starting to have very similar nightmares that Ruby has had in the past. It is like a nightmare that spreads like a disease. "Yang..." The heartbreakingly familiar voice of Taiyang speaks with a whispering voice into her ear.

She flinches and spins around, finding nothing there. Just the endless expanse of the Charred Forest before her very eyes. "Daddy?" She mutters with fear, her voice breaking at the very mention of his name...for the poor girl still remembers the sight of her father being impaled by a javelin of shadows.

"Tell me Yang...why did you want to become a Huntress?" Oobleck's distant voice echoes, faint memories pulsating through her mind of the people that they have lost. She continues down this path as she follows the entity, and she continues to walk her eyes are set on a bench. A cloud of ash rises from the ground, forming the shape of young Yang and younger Ruby.

Ruby must have only been five years old here, dancing and playing with her sister. She can still remember this memory, it was when Patch had heavy snowfall one time and it was one of their favourite memories. Playing in all that snow was like a dream for the tiny little Huntresses, whilst Taiyang watched with a smile on his face. With the still alive Summer Rose beside him – only a few weeks before she would die at the hands of Death.

The giggles of both of them enter her memory and it hurts her tender heart, seeing Ruby with two eyes – with a smile on her face. Little does she know how much she has fallen now, taking all her rage out on random criminals that she comes across. Yang continues away from that memory, leaving it behind and the ash memories float away, losing form and carried off in the winds of memory.