Chapter 1: A World Unknown

486 23 9
                                    

The forest was still, with deers grazing upon the wet grass, the sound of crickets echoed out as the night skies twinkled with countless stars. Yet, as life in the forest began to settle down for the night, their rest was interrupted by the ground beneath letting out a faint, but evident, shudder.

At that very moment, the creatures of the forest sprang to their feet as their instincts commanded them to run. There was a predator nearby, though a predator they could not fathom. There was no scent of a panther or a wolf, nor was the ever-present aura of fear a Grimm could make noticeable. By now, they would have heard the footsteps of a hunter, no matter how cautiously such humans could have acted, by now they would have been dead, mauled by this unforeseen creature.

No, even for their nature to quickly discern such threats immediately, a gift of Darwinism, it had taken them a while to notice what entity was causing such a silent disturbance in the night.

In a small open patch devoid of trees and shrubbery, a massive shadow grows from the ground. Antler-like horns rose above the main form, with the cloak shrouding the figure and outlining the heavy armour underneath.

"Huh?" Looking around, the man known as Patriot scouted his surroundings. He knew for sure he was still in the moving city of Chernobog, having discovered an entity destine to bring the world into ruins. He knew he also was not dreaming, or drunk, as he could feel his body, his feet planted firmly on the wet grass, his hand, holding a tree, and crushing it within seconds, feeling the wood shatter and hearing the tree falling. Wait... feeling?

"What happened to me?" Due to Oripathy, a fatal infection that would crystallize a being's body, he had not felt anything in his skin for a long time, yet now, he could feel the cold night, the rough bark of the tree, his armour. Looking at his bare hand, he saw it normal again, no more was it encased in a dark crystal that always tried to take his life every second of the day for the past century... No, he felt as if he was in his younger days, back before he got infected...

It was only then that he looked up did he find out where he was, or where he wasn't. The moon was shattered into many pieces, with it forming an eternal crescent moon, he knew he wasn't on Terra, his world. Yet, as he still looked up into the sky, something shiny caught his attention at the edge of his sight, and walking up to it, he soon found two things he immediately recognizes. One was a red halberd, his halberd, and the other one was a shield, his shield. Yet as puzzling it was for him to be reunited with his weapons, they were brand new, as if he had just received them from a weaponsmith.

"The insignia of Ursus..." He muttered, looking at his shield, it had a sign engraved on it. It was really his, the same two pieces of equipment that he carried for a century's worth of fighting, it truly was. Now equipped with two weapons he was familiar with, he began wandering around the forest, noticing that even with his knowledge of wildlife, the animals here weren't the same as the ecosystem of what he was familiar with, but he was thankful, as it was not as dangerous, as the lands of where he roamed were too dangerous for even he to walk about late at night, from the insane cold to the unknown dangers...

It was a rather pleasant walk by his standards, as a Wendigo like him was able to walk for days on end, without even realizing it, he had already walked a good 6 hours until he found something of note. During that 6 hours, he hunted a deer and started a fire to satiate his hunger, confirming that even if he was in a different world, his general knowledge of survival and the properties of the world are the same. The deer itself tasted the same, no, it was far more delicious, with his tastebuds returning as well, so delicious in fact that he decided to hunt a second deer. Just to be sure.

Back to the present, he soon found himself overseeing a village from a cliff, bright lights contrasting the darkened sky.

'What idiot leaves the lights open at night?' Were his first thoughts. Having spent his years in the hostile wastes of the north, he had grown accustomed to the guarded nature of the villages there. From the boarded-up windows of the peasantry to the small army of soldiers decorating an Ursus noble. One way or another, there was some form of protection. Surely would there be such a trait in this very village?

RWBYKNIGHTS 2.0: Volume 1Where stories live. Discover now