Episode 3: Chapter 7: Fallout

Chapter 7 of Episode 3 of Order of Seasons

Brooklyn could hardly comprehend what was happening. Her entire body was limp as Ty carried her towards the airship docks. She noticed that Jacob was in his other arm, Evan was carrying Christy, Nora was carrying Nathan, Yatsuhashi was carrying Yang, and Blake was pulling Ruby away from the battle.

            “We can’t just leave her there!” Ruby yelled with tears in her eyes.

            “We don’t have a choice Ruby!”  Blake yelled as she tossed Ruby on the airship.  “We’ll mourn her later!” Brooklyn tried to look back and see if she could find Natalie, but she didn’t see her anywhere. She did however notice a single man floating above the ground, summoning lightning and fire at a mere snap of his fingers. He captured the remaining members of Team JNPR in an ice prison, sent the entirety of Junior’s army flying with just a flick of his wrist, and with a simple punch at thin air, he launched boulders towards several airships, including the warship that belonged to the Schnee company. Everything was falling apart. Everybody who wasn’t captured or killed ran for the remaining airships. As they took off, Brooklyn and Jacob were strapped into seats by Ty, while others with more severe injuries were placed on emergency medical tables in the back of the airship. While flying away from Beacon, Brooklyn could see off in the distance another airship starting to take off, but being struck down by a bolt of lightning. Unable to comprehend much more, she passed out yet again.

 

 

 

 

Lord Mortem watched the airship crash to the ground in flames then looked on as the other airship flew off into the distance. He raised his arm up to launch another attack, this time with the intent to destroy completely and totally.

            “You lied to us Mortem.” Lord Mortem powered down and turned to see Lord Fulgur standing right behind him with the rest of the High Council. “You stole all the power for yourself. You betrayed us!”

            “You should be thankful to those kids for interrupting Lord Fulgur.” Mortem said with a smirk.  “You all would be dead otherwise!”

            “What?” Lord Mortem held up his hand, and then one of the remaining containment pods came flying towards him from the top of the tower. He then grabbed a canister that was on the back of the pod and crushed it, releasing a poisonous gas. Everybody took a step back in fear when they saw this, and Lord Mortem dispersed the gas with a flick of his finger.

            “I never intended to give you fools any of this power. You would have just been more vessels to the heritage of the complete whole entity. Besides, vessels can die. Not even Ozpin and Salem, the last immortals in this world, were immune to this. But their creator, now he was truly powerful.”

            “Creator?” Adam asked. “What creator? How did you learn about all of this?”

            “There is always truth in legends Lord Taurus. Remember that. The Order of the Four Seasons was founded on the ideology of harnessing the power of the Maidens to control the world. But in the deepest archives of the Order, there exists a log of Maidens who have lived and died. There, I discovered that there was always a single person keeping a log of who lived for how long as a certain Maiden. That person was Ozpin, and even centuries before the middle entries of the books, his sister Salem. However, I only learned of their creator by accident, and the foolish lack of foresight by Ozpin. He left in this book a journal, in which he mentioned his father. I put the pieces together and realized what I could become if I brought all this power back together as a single vessel.”

            “And what power is that my lord?” Lord Hibernis asked.

            “You haven’t realized it yet? I am the new wizard of this world!”

            “And that means?” Lord Aeris said with a confused look.

            “I am now the most powerful being in existence! I can feel the power surging! I can create or destroy life in an instant, I can control all the elements, I control light and shadow, I am truly a god!”

            “So what does that mean for us then?” Lord Fulgur said, clearly starting to get agitated.

            “You will continue to serve me by making this world run smoothly. Four of you will rule over one of the four kingdoms, and then the other two will serve as the grand generals of my armies, and all of you will report back to me, the true absolute superior.”

            “After you lied to all of us?” Lord Fulgur yelled at Mortem, grabbing his bow.  “Why should we trust you?! And if Ozpin and Salem were vulnerable despite being immortal, I bet you are able to be defeated just like them!” With that said, Lord Fulgur launched a barrage of lighting bolts at Lord Mortem, and then rushed forward looking to attack Lord Mortem head on. But as he swung down his bow, he noticed that all the lightning bolts he had fired were suddenly now in the form of a blade. Lord Mortem had literally taken lightning and made it a weapon of nature.

            “It’s a shame Lord Fulgur. I had hoped you would have been the master of my new armada.” Lord Mortem then pulled back the lightning blade, and as he swung it down, he morphed it into pure darkness, and sliced Lord Fulgur right in half. As the body fell to the ground, Lord Mortem let the blade dissipate into thin air. “Anybody else find themselves invincible?” Not even a tenth of a second passed after he said this before the remaining members of the High Council fell to one knee.

            “My loyalties have always lied with you Lord mortem. That has not wavered for an instant.” Lord Hibernis said.

            “I have to admit, being second to a god sound pretty fun.” Lord Aeris said. “My loyalties lie with you.”

            “I will never fall away my lord.” Lord Memoriare said. “I stand with you.”

            “The White Fang owes its growth to the goodwill of the Order. I stand with you Lord Mortem.” Adam said.

            “You granted me the title of lord at the drop of a hat.” Leo said. “You trusted me with so many things despite me being the newest among our number. I stand with you.”

            “Good.” Lord Mortem said as he drew his buster sword. “First business, I will go and conquer the remaining pieces of Atlas myself. In the meantime, all but Lord Hibernis are to gather the world leaders and bring them to Vytal. You have four days. Meanwhile, Lord Hibernis, I hereby dub thee Lord Grand Admiral of the entire army of the Order of the Four Seasons. Your task is to first take all these prisoners and place them in the hold of the command ship. Then, you will gather our best and most powerful ships. We won’t truly need them, for this will be nothing more than a show of power. My new powers alone may not be enough to sway the world leaders. That is why we need this show of force. Understood?” Everybody stood up and nodded their heads. “Good. Now if you will excuse me, I have a kingdom to topple.” With that said, Lord Mortem lifted up into the sky and flew off in the direction of Atlas.

 

 

 

 

As the airship continued to fly, it was clear nobody knew what they should do.

            “Where can we go?” Nora yelled from the cockpit. “It looks like some enemy airships have landed in Patch! We can’t go back there!”

            “What about Atlas?” Evan asked. “Their medical equipment is what we need most right now!”

            “Actually, I’m not sure there is any safe heaven for us anywhere in Remnant right now.” Weiss said with tears in her eyes. “My father just texted me, he’s breaking contact so that we don’t get caught after Atlas falls.”

            “Atlas has been defeated?” Blake said completely shocked. Nobody else knew what to say as silence filled the airship. Then Miles walked over to Nora in the cockpit.

            “Take us to the Forest of Forever Fall. It’s close enough to civilization, but far enough away that the enemy won’t look for us there.” Not even objecting, Nora took the airship and started flying for the forest. As they started to fly over the treeline, Nora put the airship in landing protocol in the middle of the forest.

            “Is right here okay Miles?”

            “Don’t set the airship down. Engage the autopilot to crash into the mountains once we jump out.”

            “Jump out?” Blake asked. “Miles, do you really think you can get everybody down safely?”

            “Everybody is capable of jumping down from this height and surviving. I’ll just help lower the injured. Now let’s move people!” With that said, everybody who could jumped down to the forest below, then Miles followed in suit helping lower the injured. As he continued to descend, everybody already on the ground started grabbing and helping the injured in any way they could. Evan and Weiss helped get Christy to a comfortable position, Yatsuhashi and Nora helped get Nathan and Yang set in a safe location, and Ty set Brooklyn and Jacob down before helping to attend to the rest of the injured. As soon as everybody was attended to, Miles landed as well and watched as the airship flew off towards the mountain range and crashed.

 

 

 

 

Nathan woke up with a throbbing pain in his chest. As he slowly sat up, he noticed his friends all moving about and helping everybody. He took a quick look around to figure out his surroundings, and then noticed that Yang was lying there next to him. As he started to remember what happened, he quickly crawled over and started inspecting her injury. He started to cry a little bit.

            “Hey big guy.” Nathan looked down and realized that Yang was awake. As soon as he saw her smile however, he turned his face away. “What’s wrong? Is my makeup smeared?” Yang smirked, but still Nathan said nothing and didn’t look at her. “Nathan, what’s wrong?”

            “How can you be so calm?!” Nathan yelled. “Adam attacked and hurt you!  That crazy woman cut off your arm!  You’re lucky they didn’t kill you!”

            “Their mistake. Now we can bounce back and take them down together!”

            “STOP IT!” Nathan yelled, which startled Yang. She was about to try and tell him to perk up, but stopped short when she noticed that he was crying uncontrollably.

            “Nathan….”

            “This is the second time this has happened! First I lost my family to Adam all those years ago, and I almost lost you today! I don’t want to lose anybody else!”

They both fell silent for a moment, then Yang slowly sat up and hugged Nathan, a few tears were rolling down her face.

            “This is what I signed up for. And yeah, this stinks, but at least I’ve got you here with me.” Nathan didn’t how to respond at first, but then returned her hug.

            “Thanks Yang.”

            “We’ll get through this together Nathan.”

 

 

 

 

Evan continued to sit next to Christy as Weiss tried to figure out what exactly she needed to do in order to help keep her alive.

            “I don’t know what to do! She isn’t healing herself like she normally should!” Evan yelled.

            “She doesn’t have any aura!” Weiss responded. “And without any tech, I have no idea how to help her!”

            “Wait, I think I remember Pyrrha teaching me something that could help!” Evan then quickly ran over and placed his hand on Christy’s forehead. “For it is in passing that we achieve immortality. Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all. Infinite in distance and unbound by death. I release your soul. And by my shoulder, protect thee.” As he said this, his own Aura flowed down like a river into Christy’s body, and she began to glow a little bit. Evan started to become short of breath since he had to sacrifice a lot of Aura.

            “So what happens now?” Weiss asked. Evan simply looked over at Christy and noticed that the healing field had begun to envelop her body.

            “Now I wait. You go help the others.”

            “Okay. Let me know when she wakes up.” As Weiss made her way to the rest of the injured, Evan just continued to sit there, waiting for her to wake up.

 

 

 

 

As Brooklyn slowly regained consciousness, she noticed that Jacob was lying nearby completely zoned out. He was curled up in a fetal position. Brooklyn was about to ask what was wrong until she remembered what had happened to her as well. She stood up and walked over to where everybody else was and saw Ty helping collect firewood for the group.

            “Brooklyn! You’re awake! How do you feel?” Brooklyn didn’t respond. Ty handed his firewood off to Yatsuhashi, grabbed a few large wood stumps and placed them on the ground as stools. “What happened back there?” Brooklyn hesitated for a moment, then sat down on the other stool.

            “I was fighting the assassin. You know, the one that attacked us back at the gorge a few days ago? Well, she kept giving me all these cryptic messages when we were imprisoned, and I didn’t think anything of them. But then, when we were fighting back in Beacon, I had just ran her through with my blade, some random blue orb came out of the sky and flew into me, and then I suddenly remembered everything.”

            “Everything about what?”

            “About who she was. I remembered her face, I remembered all we did together, I remembered who she was.”

            “Who was she?”

            “Her name was Angela McPhearson, and she was my mother.” The two of them sat in silence. Ty finally spoke up.

            “So why did she leave you in the first place?”

            “Well, according to this memory that I got back, it’s because she was so neck deep in the Order that she had no choice if she wanted to protect me and the rest of my family. To make sure that we would never try and rescue her from that organization, they had one of their high ranking officials come in and wipe out our memories of her and substitute them with alternate memories.”

            “So, now that you remember everything, what do you feel like doing?”

            “I’m not sure. I mean, I’ll still fight the Order if it means saving the world, but with this new bit of knowledge, I guess now I have a personal vendetta.”

            “True enough.” Ty got up and picked up his stool and headed back towards the main camp.

            “Do you not have anything else to say?”

            “Nah. I think you have a clear grasp on what you need to accomplish. You had a rough experience, but you know how to handle it. If anybody needs help it’s Jacob. I can’t get a word in with that guy. Maybe you could help him?” As Ty walked off, Brooklyn looked back over at where Jacob was sitting, he still hadn’t moved an inch.

 

 

 

 

The first thing that Christy felt when she woke up was a sharp pain in her back. Then all the other pains in her body were dialed up to eleven. She slowly got up, and noticed Evan sitting off to the side, having fallen asleep. She tried to stand up straight, but the pain was too much, she couldn’t help but make a small cry in pain. Despite it not being that loud, it was apparently loud enough to wake Evan up. The instant he saw Christy awake, he smiled with relief, but that turned to worry the instant he realized she was trying to walk.

            “Christy, what are you doing? You still need to rest!”

            “I’m fine!” Christy said clearly trying to fight back against the pain. “The others need my help! I can heal them!”

            “You can hardly move!” Evan said jumping up and blocking her path. “How do you think you can help them?!”

            “Look, I’ll heal in time! But you guys need more help than I do!” Christy tried to take another step but was stopped when Evan wrapped her in a bear hug.

            “You help so many people Christy. And you don’t hesitate for a second to try and help others who rely on you. That’s one of the many things I love about you. But think about yourself for a second please? People may rely on your abilities, but I don’t rely on your abilities. I rely on you. I need you.” As he said this, he hugged her even tighter. “I can’t imagine my life without you.” Christy smiled and started crying as soon as Evan finished.

            “Hon, that’s great, but the thing is, I kind of hurt all over and you hugging me isn’t helping.” Evan quickly jumped back, afraid he had done something wrong.

            “I’m so sorry!”

            “It’s fine.” Christy said wiping away a tear. “You’re right. We can all heal in time. I’ll just focus on getting better so I can be at my best when we rally together for another round!”

            “Always ready to go aren’t you?”

            “Eh, part of my charm.” They both giggled, and smiled looking up at the sky.

 

 

 

 

Brooklyn sat down next to Jacob, and patted him on the shoulder. He didn’t respond. He just continued to sit there.

            “And here I thought I was the shallow one.” Brooklyn said tilting her head up to the sky. “Seriously, what’s wrong? You aren’t usually like this.” Jacob looked over at Brooklyn, then up to the sky.

            “I hated him. I hated my father. He always criticized me, he never cared about my hopes and dreams, he never cared about my goals, and he never cared about my feelings. The only thing I ever learned from him was how to fight. And when I had enough, I rebelled. I wanted to stay at a single school instead of going to all four like he wanted me to.  I wanted to do what I wanted to do. And as a result, he dragged me into his secret life, forced me to join his revolution, lied to me about the death of my friends, and when I tried to run off again, it got my mother killed. I thought I would feel relieved to see him dead. I thought I would be happy to be rid of him. But I’m not. I’m sad. I’m torn! I hated him! I don’t get it! Brooklyn, why do I care so much about him?” Brooklyn sighed, sat down next to Jacob and gave him a hug.

            “Because you are a good son.” Jacob thought about this for a second, then let the tears flow as he returned Brooklyn’s hug. Afterwards, the two of them just sat there, reflecting on their families.

 

 

 

 

Miles looked down on the camp from a nearby cliff. He had volunteered to take first watch.

            “You doing okay?” Miles turned and saw Blake walking towards him.

            “Yeah. About as good as I can be.”

            “Does Nathan or anybody else who wasn’t there know about Natalie yet?”

            “I’ll make a formal announcement tomorrow once everybody has had a chance to rest. But I asked Ty to tell Nathan directly for me tonight in my stead.”

            “Why not tell him yourself?” Miles fell silent for a few seconds at this question.

            “I don’t think I can face him.” Miles said as he sat down. “This is the second time that someone from his family has been killed because of my actions.”

            “You couldn’t have known what was going to happen on that tower.”

            “Maybe, but I probably shouldn’t have sent Natls up there alone! I should have gone up! At least if I died, nobody would miss me!” Blake then slapped him across the face.

            “THAT’S NOT TRUE!” Miles was about to retort, but he was silenced by Blake smothering him in a hug, tears streaming down her face. “I would.” Miles then finally let his emotions loose, and the two of them sat there for an hour just crying, missing their friend.

 

 

 

 

As she tried to open her eyes, she had to squint, as there was a bright beam of light shining directly on her face. Quickly getting up, she took in her surroundings. It was an empty cathedral; the walls were decorated with stain glass windows. About fifteen of them had designs on them, but there were almost a hundred more that were blank. As she looked over the windows, she recognized them as key moments in her past. While she was surveying the rest of the room, a door at the far end opened up, a stranger stood there bathed in light.

            “You’re early.” The voice said walking in. “I honestly didn’t expect you here for at least another 80 years or so Natls.” Natalie took a step back the instant she recognized the voice.

            “Ember?”

Author's Note

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Reviews

[Shep]

Cool, now that was some battle as Lord Mortem takes control of everything. I question what's going to take to kill this guy? In the meantime, there is hardly anyone left to fight. you have got me on the edge of seat hoping for a good outcome and I have to tell myself it will all work out. Awesome chapter moving on to the next one Please be kind and return the love.