What did you see?" Qrow asks.
"I don't know...it was human like, covered in flames. Cracked, with lava inside of its body. It was terrifying, like something you'd hear in a children's book. Like the devil." She begins.
Kassius sits there, listening intently, and then his eyes look down at the floor, Yang looks at him, sat beside him as he stares endlessly at the floor as she describes this thing. "It killed my father...and my mother...right in front of me. It killed everyone; we only escaped by the skin of our teeth when he came after us." Blake explains.
"Menagerie is now completely destroyed."
"Oh my god...Blake..." Weiss gasps compassionately for her, hearing that she has just lost her parents, but still from fear of what did that. Everyone converses about what this thing is. Even Qrow and Ozpin don't know what this thing is. But amidst all this confusion, Kassius slowly lifts his head up.
"Have you told Lionheart?" Qrow asks him.
"No, we were going to...but we were so tired we said we should find Neptune, Scarlet and Sage. I have to admit...I didn't expect to see all of you guys here." Sun explains to them all. Neptune chuckles.
"Yeah, you know how it is. Always partying." Neptune chuckles.
"We'll make sure we tell him tomorrow." Sun assures, but Qrow raises his finger.
"No, not yet. It's good you came to us first..." Qrow states.
"Why?" Sun nervously asks, then Oscar speaks, sounding like Ozpin once more.
"It appears at the moment that Lionheart is acting rather strangely, disobeying specific instructions Ozpin left. It's possible he works for our common enemy." Oscar explains to them both.
"And who is our common enemy, may I ask?" Blake inquires with her soft voice.
"Salem." Oscar answers, and those who've not been informed look quite fearful of the name.
"Who?" Yang asks with concern.
"We don't know her origin, but she leads the Grimm. She is a powerful being that is hunting four powerful Relics and the Seasonal Maidens, so then she can destroy everything we know and love." Oscar sums up, leaving them all shocked and horrified.
"Wait what?" Sage questions with shock and awe on his face.
"We can go into further detail later, however this...entity you encountered..." Ruby says to them with curiosity and concern.
"I don't know what this is, I've never heard of it." Qrow states.
"I have." Kassius reveals.
Everyone turns to look at him and he looks at his cybernetic hand. "They are not something that many people know about, because nearly none have survived to tell the tale." He explains. "But there are stories about them." Kassius begins, pulling everyone's attention in. Oscar listens to Ozpin's voice in his head.
"Do you know?" Oscar subconsciously asks.
There is a pause before his answer, a disturbingly long pause as well. "No." Ozpin says. Oscar shudders when he says that, finding out that the wise Ozpin has finally realised that he does not know everything that there is to know about Remnant.
"Them?" Blake asks, sounding scared.
Kassius looks at them all.
"Have you ever heard the Fable of the Knights of Grimm?"
Kassius
He begins his explanation to them all. "They have existed for centuries, maybe millennia, few know much about them. I am one of the few." Kassius begins as he remembers, looking at his cybernetic palm. "The one you saw, Blake?" He starts off. Blake leans forward. "That was Fury." He says.
"Fury?" Blake asks.
"The Knight of Fury, yes." He says. "The Knights of Grimm are said to be the four representations of what makes the Grimm what they are. They are the form of the very things that attract them." He explains.
Fury, a tall fire forged monster fuelled just by rage all of the time that uses a Berserker's Axes in combat. Fire glowing everywhere and magma built up underneath his charred body that is not constantly on fire. "They all can speak fluent Human Language, but it is harder for Fury because he is always angry, making his dialect quite...harsh and brutish, just like his personality. His very presence makes you become a little bit angrier, but he can send you into animalistic rage if he roars." Kassius explains.
"Then you have Loss...a female form of Grimm, one that looks just like a human woman, but she has pale blue skin and is always crying. She is very dangerous because she can just cripple her foes into submission by showing them their lost loved ones or just by making them suffer." He explains to them all.
Tall, pale blue skin with widow's clothes covering her body. Glowing blue eyes that have tears constantly falling from them and she brings dread wherever she goes. Jaune actually experienced her effects when he saw the poster of Pyrrha; she was the crying woman in the alleyway that he did not see staring at her when he was walking away. She was watching him the whole time, and she carries a bow with her at all times, able to kill from a distance if she must.
"Then you have Fear..." Kassius introduces. "The most terrifying of the bunch, makes your hairs stand on end when he is close and gives you Goosebumps. I was hunting Fear here because I felt his presence. Lionheart asked me to track him down, and that is how I ended up at that Motel. After finding evidence of another mission he gave me. He was in the forest, wears a grey cloak and hood, and he carries an old scythe and a crossbow that explodes into clouds of fear toxin. He can show you all your worst fears, fears that exist down to your very core." Kassius explains to them all.
Fear is made up of a rotten body with glowing gold eyes, and as he said, he wears a dark grey cloak and hood around his body; he has razor sharp teeth and long clawed fingers that makes him look even more terrifying.
"Each one has served the Grimm for generations, and very few have ever survived them. But they have not been seen since the end of the Great War at Vytal, some believe that they came together there and could have been responsible." Kassius explains. The Knights of Grimm are a new threat that are unlike anything that the young Huntsmen and Huntresses have ever seen before, and they are pure nightmare fuel, like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or the Wild Hunt.
"How do we kill them?" Blake snarls in anger, mainly wanting to kill Fury for what he did to Kali and Ghira.
"No one knows." Kassius says.
"How's that possible?" Qrow questions.
"Their forms have been destroyed countless times from endured combat, but they always return. Nobody truly knows how to actually kill the Knights of Grimm, only how to keep them at bay." Kassius explains. "The best option if you ever meet one? You run...as far and as fast as you can." He advises. "Because they will kill you, not like our other enemies that they have ever faced, they will not hesitate. They are merciless." He warns. Ruby shudders from the fear of the thought of facing these things now.
"Wait..." Nora says, sounding confused. "You said that there were Four Knights...Fury, Fear and Loss...who is the Fourth?" Nora asks.
Kassius pauses, sat there, he closes his eyes and he remembers back to when he was on the ground, bleeding out. Blood pooling out across his entire body on the soil. He looks at the dead bodies of his team, of Vetra whose eyes are staring straight at him, but her body is dead as she lies there. He whimpers on the ground, accepting his fate.
"There was a time...when I was gonna die." Kassius says, still looking at his cybernetic arm. "I accepted it for the first time in my life...and that's when he appeared." Kassius says.
In the flashback, he looks over at the darkness, seeing a blast of shadows nearby. Something emerges from the portal of shadows that has transported him here. He walks out, towards him. Each step causes the plants to die around him, and the bodies of his team decay at a faster rate when he passes. He watches as Vetra's body decays away into a skeleton as he approaches.
Chills channel up his dying body and he looks up at the dark...shadowy figure. He shudders when he sees the glowing red eyes that are locked with his. "His name is Death..." Kassius answers. The monster glares straight at him, the sharp metal plates connecting together by dark shadows that create the Grimm themselves, the darkness creates him. The plates slide away, floating around his head, connected by plumes of smoke around his head. The plates move and they reveal the face inside.
The face is a burning skull, fire burning around the edges and the flames leak through the eyes and from its mouth. The skull growls at him, and Death reaches his hand out towards him, shadows surrounding the armoured form. "Death was about to claim me...and then the Mistraalian Knights arrived and they saved me." Kassius says. Death turns sharply, the metal plates sliding away from where they once hung, connecting together in front of the skull, and concealing it from the world. He stands tall, his cape of smoke blowing in the wind and he holds his sword made from the shadows in his hand. The Knights stop in horror when they see Death, locking eye contact with him.
Death creates a terrifying demonic laugh from inside the mask, and he turns away from them. The smoke carries and his form completely disappears into the smoke, and then the smoke fades.
And Death is gone, leaving the Knights terrifies of what they just saw. "I am one the only men and women to have seen Death and survive in this generation, because the Mistraalian Knights saw me before Death could have absorbed my aura, which would have disintegrated my form." Kassius explains to them all, returning back to reality. They all look at him with terrified eyes.
"The Four Knights of Grimm: Death, Fear, Loss and Fury. Humanity has the Four Maidens, the Grimm have the Four Knights." Kassius explains to them.
"You were hunting one of them when you found me?" Yang asks him.
"Yeah...I was looking for Fear, I saw him in the woods and I even fought him. I managed to destroy him...but he came back the next day. I have been reading the Fable of the Four Knights ever since my encounter with Death, and I remember it word by word." Kassius explains. "Then I found evidence of the Acolytes of Lien in Mistral, so I had to report that to Lionheart."
"Does he know about Fear?" Oscar asks.
"Yes." Kassius answers, since he did not know about the issues that surround the man.
Ruby looks at the fire in fear, realising that there are these things all along...and they are real. Weiss grabs Neptune's hand in fear and Blake does the same, leaning up against Sun. Sun wraps his arm around her, pressing his head to the side of hers gently. "What do we do?" Ruby asks him. Kassius looks at Ruby.
"I don't know...but if Fury was at Menagerie in force, then that means that the time is coming." Kassius says to them all. "The Day the Moon watches us die." He says, "It is a line from the Book I read about them."
"There's a story?" Jaune asks in a surprised voice.
"Yes, but it is very old." Kassius says. "I can try and re-tell it if you like." He says.
"Please...do." Qrow requests.
Kassius begins to recite the Fable of the Four Knights, as he has remembered it for all these years after he first read it as a child, after seeing Death in person, he has read it time and time again, to pick anything he can from the text to help find them. "In the Ancient Times, before the Great War...there were once four Knights who were out on patrol on the island of Solitude." Kassius begins, narrating.
"They would fight anything that would dare challenge them, from Beowulf to Ursa to even a Death Stalker. Together...nothing could defeat them." Kassius narrates.
"Until, when they follow the winding cobblestone road, they discovered a collapsed bridge over a rapid river. And thus, the dark spirit of the Brother of Darkness formed before them." Kassius explains.
The Brother of Darkness...he was the one that created the Grimm in the Tale of the Two Brothers. "Jealous of their unstoppable nature, he would have acted as one more block for them if he had challenged them. However...the Brother is cunning, and he has always hated the creations of life, despite this being a creation of both brothers combined." He narrates.
"The Brother acted like an impressed individual, approaching them as a humble merchant and soothsayer in the road, carrying possessions that he wished to offer them as gifts." He narrates.
"He approaches the tallest and strongest of the men who sheathed his sword first. The Brother noticed the cracks on the blade and used that to his advantage." Kassius narrates.
"The Brother pointed this fact out, and he offered him a new sword from his rucksack of goods. The sword was powerful, large and lethal and he handed it to the Knight, placing it in his hands. The Knight felt the power in his hands and he cheered for that power. The ability to kill those who stood in his way and control them if he chose to return them from the dead." Kassius lists.
"He then turned to the next Knight, a man with a damaged back but he was still a good fighter, and could scare his enemies from his skill." Kassius says.
"And so the Brother of Darkness reached into his bag of goods and pulled out a Gardening Scythe, the Knights mocked him, but once placed in his hand, the scythe grew and became a terrifying weapon that struck fear into them all when he held it." Kassius explains.
"The Brother now turns to the next Knight, a tall muscular man with brutish features, he immediately identified him as a man who means business, and thus he pulled two battle axes from his bag which ignited in flames that could not hard the body of the Knight. The man felt the anger, and yet he thanked the Merchant anyway." Kassius narrates.
"Finally, the Brother of Darkness turned to the final Knight. To his surprise, it is a woman with long white hair and blue eyes. A beautiful woman, he stated that he could provide a beautiful ring for such a woman. But the woman denied, and so, he sought something else. He reached in and removed a deadly bow from his collection, handing it to the Female Knight." Kassius narrates.
"The Knights continue on their journey to a small village on the island. The Swordsman arrived at the village and was challenged by many other Mercenaries that had a little too much to drink, and the swordsman too had drank far too much. They began a duel, and the sword allowed the Knight to slay them all, absorbing their auras and killing them all. The more he killed, the more death started to become what he was. And before he knew it, the power of the Grimm itself had actually consumed his Aura, turning him into a servant of the Brother of Darkness." Kassius narrates.
"The Knight of Fear would wander through the town, and the townsfolk would run, cry and become terrified at the image. His hunched over, hooded form with the scythe terrified the people and they treated him like a monster, thus over time, he became the very beast that they saw in him, scarring his body and his body mutated as the Grimm took him over. And so through fear, the Brother of Darkness had claimed another Knight."
"The woman would arrive at her home to meet her beloved husband whom of which she is pregnant to. But when arriving back, he attacked her when lies were spread about her, and she was forced to murder her own husband. Sorrow overcame her and that sorrow lead to her unborn child dying in her stomach, leaving her with loss as well. Left in a tearful state for weeks, she had no idea that it would never end, and that the Grimm have now claimed yet another Knight." He continues.
"The last Knight returned home, finding that his wife had been having an affair behind his back. This rage consumed him and the power of the Grimm took him over into a bloodthirsty rage and he slaughtered his wife and the man she had slept with for months behind his back. But the rage still never ended and he continued to slaughter and slaughter until the townsfolk doused him with oil and attempted to burn him alive, the fire never extinguished and he never stopped. Becoming the fourth servant of the Brother of Darkness." Kassius narrates.
"It is said that the Four Knights still serve him today, existing within us all, that attracts the Grimm to harm us. Death, Fear, Loss and Fury...the Four Knights of Grimm." Kassius concludes.
They all look at him after hearing the Fable of the Four Knights. It is something that they never thought they would find out, or hope to hear. There are Grimm Knights, the closest they came to something on this scale was the Nuckelavee, and that was still animalistic, these things are sentient. "Is it true?" Neptune asks.
"I don't know...The stories changed over time and have long been forgotten since they have not been seen in so long." Kassius explains. "But it is the original story, not the newer ones. Others have nicknamed them the Four Horsemen, but this is not the case. They are simply knights who intend on serving the Grimm to kill us all, Faunus and Humanity alike." He explains.
"God...I was hoping that I knew everything there was to know about Remnant...appears I was wrong." Qrow groans.
"So...there's that." Kassius says, sitting back in his chair after telling everyone about the story of the Four Knights.
"Um...I still have so many questions...the Four Maidens? What are you talking about?" Blake asks him. Kassius looks at Ruby and then at Qrow.
Qrow sighs. "What's your favourite fairy tale?" He asks them all.
Cinder
Cinder sits there in her chair at Salem's Base. She looks at her hand that is sleeved, only looking at it with one eye. Her glowing orange eye, faintly amber underneath, looks at it and she clenches her hand into a fist. She breathes in and out, her voice appearing more prominently now. She still has half of her face covered up after what Ruby did to her when using her Silver Eyes, an attack that vastly wounded her and left her in Salem's charge. She looks forward and her eyes fixate onto Tyrian who is also sat at the table.
Watts and Hazel are still out in the field. Tyrian has calmed down after his outburst on the Beowulf after his failure. He looks at her with a smirk and she looks away. Emerald and Mercury stand behind her. "Merc-" She winces, getting his attention. Her voice is still tender, only struggles every now and then.
"Yeah?" Mercury respond. Cinder coughs aggressively, blood coming out her mouth, and she points to a bag.
"The meds..." She weakly says. Mercury walks over to the bag and he pulls out a vial with a purple substance inside.
"Here." He says, handing it to her. She unscrews the cap and drinks a little bit of the stuff. She tenses up at the vile taste of the substance and she grits her teeth. Then she starts to breathe normally, still a rasp in her voice as she breathes. Mercury looks at Emerald and she looks at him before turning back to Cinder. Tyrian clasps his hands together.
"You wish to fight her again?" Tyrian questions. She looks at him with a scowl. He just points at his own eye, just like he did beforehand.
"Enough!" Cinder yells, slamming her fist into the table with force, gritting her teeth. "I will kill that girl in my time. And when I find her, there won't be enough to identify her with." Cinder threatens. Tyrian laughs a little at that, his severed scorpion tail sat on the table.
"You might have to get in line." Tyrian says, pointing at where his stinger used to be, still regenerating. Cinder smirks at that and Tyrian flares his teeth at her, activating his blades. But before he can lunge at her, the doors burst open. They both turn and they stand down in fear.
They stand up respectfully as she enters the room. The black and purple dress around her and the red eyes glow. Grimm scarring across her face that connect to her eyes. White hair formed like a spider with jewels clinking around, attached to the hair. She looks at the two Circle Members with the black sclera and red iris filled eyes.
"I think we have had enough sparring, haven't we?" Salem asks, a real presence of terror about her. She ushers them to sit down and they do so without question. "Cinder...how are you?" She asks.
"Better..." Cinder says, her voice still weak but she can actually speak now through a scratchy voice.
"Well, you will still have to remain here for some time to fully recover. Worry not, we have some old friends who have returned." Salem says, opening the doors by moving her hand. Darkness surrounds the doors and it yanks them both open, revealing she has some sort of Telekinetic Power. Cinder turns and her eyes widen in pure fear when she sees them.
The Four figures emerge from the darkness. The dark being stands in the middle of the four, glowing red eyes looking at them all, black smoke trailing from his body. His sword is sheathed into his scabbard on his leg and he continues to walk in. Then by his side is the hunched over Knight with the torn grey hood pulled over his rotten head, golden eyes looking at them all and long sharp clawed fingers. He holds his scythe in his hand as he enters and his Crossbow is strapped to his back. He walks in, making the hairs stand up on all their bodies. Cinder pushes some of the black hair from her eye so then she can see them clearly. The fire based Knight is also here, snarling in rage, clutching the fiery axes in his massive burning hands, which makes Tyrian's hand clench into a fist. And finally there is the smaller woman with the veil over her face, pale blue skin and sniffling slightly, not crying at the moment though. Her presence makes Emerald wipe a tear away, even though she doesn't know why.
"Meet the Four Knights of Grimm: Death, Fear, Loss and Fury." Salem introduces, her arms stretched out to them as they stand there. Fear has affected Cinder, Fury affected Tyrian and Loss affected Emerald.
"When do we start?" Death asks.
The Knights of Grimm have returned...