Remnant's Black Dragon (AcnologiaxRWBY)

Chapter 19: Playing Catch Up

Deep in the land of Grimm, in the library of Salem's castle, Cinder sat at a table with several books and scrolls open on the table around her. Some of the books were simply bound together by handmade leather, others were falling apart at the seams but their hard covers were decorated with silver or gold runes, and the scrolls were the same, some only holding together, some fancy, and others being neither of those things.

The one eye that wasn't covered by her hair had bags forming underneath it. She had been up reading for a very long time, diligently working. Eventually finishing the scroll she had been working on, Cinder moved it to the side and went to grab a book from on one of the stacks of books. Lifting it up, she revealed the book underneath, one with a strange purple mark on it that looked like a sharply drawn heart with downwardly pointed barbed horns. The mark of Grimoire Heart.

As she began to the new book, the doors to the library opened up and Hades stepped into the room with the doors shutting behind him all on their own. "I hope your not rushing through those girl."

Cinder took a split second to look up at Hades in a bit of a glare but her voice was still just coming back so she didn't say anything, only making a slight noise of annoyance and shaking her head to answer his question.

After she turned her head back to the book, a strange white chain of magic shot across the gap between her face and the book she was reading. The claw like end of this chain gripped the book with the Grimoire Heart symbol on it, and Hades who had casted the spell yanked the book into his awaiting hand.

This caused Cinder to look back at Hades with a annoyed expression, though it also conveyed a curiousness. "Why?" She asked, her voice still a little raspy. Hades chuckled,"You are not yet ready for this text, you may read it after you have more of a grasp of magic."

"And....when will....that be?" The Fall Maiden asked, having to clear her voice to speak. "That depends solely on you child."

"What does that mean? Have I not proven my abilities yet?" Cinder questioned again, a dark and deep red light covering her right hand making it glow. "The fact that you cannot answer that yourself only proves how unready you are." The Dark Mage placed the book at the furthest end of the table, out of reach from Cinder, and then placed his hand over it. A purple magic circle appeared between his hand and the top of the book, a series of tiny magical symbols covered the book in a dark purple light before fading away.

In all the reading she had been doing, Cinder knew that he had put a magical lock on the book, most likely binding it shut. "Put your current reading on hold, its time to see if you've learned anything in your reading." Hades told Cinder as he beckoned her up.

Standing from her chair, she began to follow Hades out of the library, using a simply flick of her hand to shut the book she had been reading with a wave of dark red magic. On their way out, she turned slightly to take a glance at the book that had been taken from her and she wondered to herself what sort of magical power was kept hidden in between the pages of that book.

-Elsewhere, in Atlas-

"-I'll strangle that ungrateful narcissistic swine with his own entrails!"

James Ironwood sat at his office desk with a slightly slacked jaw and wide eyes as he listened to Irene rant on about Jacques Schnee while she paced back and forth in his office.

In the weeks since she began to teach Winter what magic was and how it could be used once she gained the power of the likewise named Winter Maiden, she had grown accustomed to talking with the special agent regarding her younger sister and one of Irene's former students.

And the red headed mage just wound out that after a public outburst regarding some mockery of Beacon, Jacques denounced Weiss as Heiress to the Schnee family company and all its associated benefits. That was something that didn't sit kindly with Winter and, for some reason that illuded Ironwood, Irene as well.