The Games We Play

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Lighting

Taking a deep breath, I snapped my fingers and my friends came to my side, arraying themselves around me as they had before. In my mind I saw the summoning circles I'd used to call each of them for the first time, the pentagrams they'd appeared inside.

Only this time, it was they who made a circle around me.

Ereb, Levant, Suryasta, Vulturnus, and Xihai each appeared at one of the imaginary star's point and Crocea Mors flowed into my gauntleted hands. Feeling his desire without having to exchange so much as a word, I canceled my Armored Shell and the gauntlets immediately began to melt, spilling down my arms in rivers and drops that splattered on the ground and began to flow away from me. In moments, he'd made a ring of steel around me, the outer edges at my other Elemental's toes, before at last going solid and still.

I took a slow breath and felt their presence within me as I did. I looked at them all without moving a muscle, reaching out to them with my thoughts, and for the first time in a long time wondered.

Do you guys know what you're doing? Because I don't.

They looked back at me without a word and smiled reassuringly, the emotion brushing against my mind even when the expressions were slow to come to their faces.

We are with you always.

The response didn't come from any one of them nor even from them all, but simple formed within my mind as a fact. Even so, it felt like the truth and I knew, knew, that I trusted them.

Exhaling slowly, I nodded once.

"Okay," I said aloud. "Let's do this, then."

At once, my Elementals began to shift and change. Ereb and Xihai, the ones who'd made their bodied out of physical water and earth, were the most obvious, with drops of water and flakes of dirt falling from their forms until their features were worn smooth and all that remained were blank figures of water and earth. The others shifted more subtly, as their edges dulled and the lines blurred, Levant's eternal smile getting wore away by the wind as Suryasta's eyes were consumed by flames. Vulturnus simply began to flicker more wildly, the appearance of humanity fading with each motion until he was faceless and blank, while Crocea Mors shifted subtly, my face changing in the reflection of the steel ring until it was purely my own.

And then, when all that was left were blank Elemental figures, they knelt as one and put their hands on the circle, as I had down when first I'd summoned them. Murmurs brushed against my thoughts, words in a language I didn't know, and then their bodies began to crumble, fading into dust and sparks and currents of air and water that drifted slowly around the outside of the circle before flowing towards its center.

Towards me.

I remained still as they touched my skin once, each contact bringing with it a shock of Aura. Water and earth fell the ground, filling the inside of the circle in a solid sheet of mud even as sparks rose into a luminous cloud above my head, casting my shadow every which way. The wind kept the cloud aloft, filling the space in-between as it did, and for a moment nothing seemed to happen.

Then my many shadows flickered once and then flowed, moving despite the stable light above. They all gathered in front of my, layering themselves into an unnaturally dark image even though there was light that should have broken the darkness. And then, slowly, my shadow began to move, head at the ring of Crocea Mors as it spun clockwise around me, moving though I was still until it was back where I started.

Not going to lie, it was kind of unnerving, but after several seconds passed and nothing else happened, I started to wonder what the hell was going on.

Which, naturally, when the pain began. It struck me unexpectedly, a tearing sensation, as if something was removing my feet—or something below my feet that I'd somehow never noticed—and when I tried to move, to escape whatever was causing it, I found my feet stuck firmly to the ground, immobilized against my will.

And then my shadow came free, flowing away from me and exiting the circle to begin another turn around it, this time moving counterclockwise. I remained still and unmoving, senses focused on the unnaturally mobile shadow as it completed its course around me and returned to its starting position. I analyzed it, Observed it, and focused on it intently, but all of my senses told me that it was just a normal shadow, nothing more than an absence of light.

Except, you know, it pretty obviously fucking wasn't. I didn't have a lot of knowledge when it came to shadow manipulation beyond what I'd picked up from watching Indigo—I'd done some experimentation to see if I was capable of anything similar and my efforts to summon a darkness or shadow elemental had failed utterly. I hadn't been particularly surprised by that, since, logically speaking, darkness wasn't really an element.

After all, I'd thought, darkness was nothing but the absence of light.

As soon as I had that thought, my shadow began to writhe, losing shape and then rising as if stretched from within—from below, as impossible as that was. I realized that I'd regained the use of my legs only when I fell to them, hands tearing up fistfuls of the building's roof as the pain rose and I felt as though I was being torn apart from within. Instead, however, my shadow was, ripping and splitting at nonexistent seems as light began to shine out of it, rising into a luminance even I struggle to see through as it flooded across the whole of the spectrum and yet left me untouched.

And then it was gone and in its place stood a figure. At the foot of my shadow, now whole once more, stood a figure that wasn't me and, even more oddly, seemed to be completely composed of light. Something made of light shouldn't have been able to cast a shadow, my mind pointed out, but really, after that whole display, that seemed like a pretty stupid thing to get hung up on so I put it aside and looked over the figure that couldn't have been anything but a Light Elemental, making sure I noticed everything important.

As I'd already observed, it was a figure composed of pure light, featureless through its own radiance. I was reminded strongly of Bianca for a moment, of how she looked in the fullness of her power, but there was another detail that caught my attention. From its back spread pairs of massive wings, some vast and others small, but all glowing with the same light as its body, almost as if someone had cut the space around the figure to ribbons and it was light that had come pouring out through the cracks. For a moment some of them covered its body, especially its face, but they quickly shifted aside to reveal it in it's entirety as a humanoid figure.

Then, it opened its eyes.

It's many, many eyes.

The first two were on its face, where a human's would be, and the first thing that struck me was that they were the exact color of my own—blue, at least around the irises, though that was where the similarities stopped. The sclera, if you could call them that on a Light Elemental, glowed an even brighter white then the rest of his body, as if what I was looking at was merely what had managed to escape through its skin, but there was an even greater light within. It didn't have pupils, either, or at least not human ones—instead of black dots, there were points of even brighter light at the center of the eyes, and they left points of light on my skin like laser pointers as the Elemental looked at me.

And then slits began to appear across its body, seemingly at random. I'd have called them countless, but I happened to be pretty good at counting—even so, I struggled to keep up when they began to appear by the hundreds of thousands. The majority of them were small, with many just a few dozen micrometers long, but others were measurable in millimeters and some were as large or larger than a humans. As the slits widened, about half of them revealed eyes, fully formed regardless of size and each the color of my own. The other half were dark and empty, opening to reveal absolutely nothing, not even light. Sometimes an eye would blink closed and a hole would shut in response, only to reveal an eye when it opened again and leave emptiness in its wake. They'd switched place in an instant, but the number of eyes and gaps remained constant, though the size of the pieces switched didn't seem to matter.

But there were so many. I counted a million of each after a few moments of crunching numbers—exactly a million of each. And one by one, every single eye on the front side of its body turned to focus on me, considering me for a long moment. Then, a slit on its face in the exact position of a person's mouth moved. It revealed no teeth nor a tongue nor anything at all within it and yet it spoke.

"Until our soul meets its end, we shall be forever one," It murmured in a voice that was like absolutely nothing I'd ever fucking heard, as if finishing the ritual.

Hell, maybe that was exactly what it was doing.

For a long moment, all I could do was stare. I opened my mouth as if to say something but ended up simply closing it again, thinking better off it as I took a moment to get my thoughts together. I didn't really think of myself as the type to worry about stage fright—if nothing else, I'd managed to put on a show to save my life a fair number of times now—but with a million eyes on me, even I was given pause.

And yet, it was more than that. Looking the Elemental over as it spread its thirty-six wings, it wasn't hard to pick up the similarities to the image I'd seen beneath the Red Rider's Temple—and, though I'd only heard it described, to what Bianca had claimed to see when she looked at me. Sure, the differences were obvious, but that's the danger of second hand information; after a moment of thought I decided I'd have to be a fool to dismiss the resemblance out of hand. In all likelihood, it was safe to assume that the figure in front of me was the figure my sister had seen, if smaller then she had described.

Which meant…what? It was obvious by this point that the Element of Light was special and didn't refer just too mundane illumination. Lux Aeterna was something special, even if I didn't fully understand why, and my Light Elemental was obviously special, too. I'd needed to merge all of my Elementals to create it and the summoning process had been…odd to say the least, so there was obviously something going one here, but what? Was it some sort of reflection of my soul? I'd heard Aura described as the light of the soul enough that it somehow wouldn't surprise me, but still, I had no idea what was happening anymore.

I paused for a moment before nearly rolling my eyes at myself. Yes, I didn't know what was going on—but I could always just ask. I generally made a point to keep from seeming ignorant even if—especially if—I was, but that was mostly because I had so many enemies. I could trust my elementals completely and though they didn't always give me clear answers, often because they didn't usually understand human issues, they never lied to me. And, however strange this whole thing seemed, this was my Light Elemental.

First things first, though. Most of the time when I merged my Elementals, the results was…a bit hard to describe. When Xihai and Levant merged and became an Ice Elemental, for example, I wouldn't say the two of them inhabited the same body because they didn't. In the end, there was only one mind in control, a new one created along with their body. And yet, at the same time, it was still them. That didn't really make sense—how could it be them and not be them at the same time?—but it was still true. Whether I merged two or three or however many Elementals into one, it was the same.

Except, apparently, with light. I could sense my Elementals the same as always, but they felt dormant. Like the minds our contract had given to the, well, Elemental forces of the world now slept and all that remained were the massive and slow consciousness that flowed through the world. I could still feel Ereb and Levant, but not as the smiling figures I could speak to or touch; I felt them as the glacial movements of plate tectonics and as clashing currents of moving air. They were there, still, and in a sense they were alive, but not like I knew them. It was a bit odd, honestly, as used to their presence in my thoughts as I was.

Instead, I felt a new mind, like and unlike the others. My elementals had gone into its creation and their power had given it form, but they weren't what was staring out at me through a million eyes. I honestly wasn't sure what was.

As such, it was only proper that I introduce myself.

"Hello," I said. "My name is Jaune Arc. Are the others okay?"

It stared at me—and everything else, which was fairly easy when you could spare an eye for everything in the vicinity—for a moment before replying.

"Yes," He replied, and I decided he was a guy simply because he was probably a reflection of me. His voice was weird as hell for all that it was calm, because it wasn't an individual voice—it was a chorus of a million voices, male, female, animalistic, robotic, and everything else you could think of, so numerous that it should have drowned out what he was trying to say, but didn't only because every single voice spoke in perfect unison. It was pretty cool, but also creepy as hell. "Do not worry."

I pondered that for a moment, considering him.

"You say that, but I find it hard not to worry about my friends," I mused aloud. "Even when they merge, I can usually feel them, but now I can only feel you."

"You are right and you are wrong," He answered, enunciating the words carefully so they weren't swallowed by the alien sounds of his voice. "They exist in me, for they exist only in me."

"Oh?" I asked. "I can't say I understand."

"I know," He answered calmly. "You apply concepts that are inapplicable, for you do not understand the nature of this power."

"My Elementals, you mean?" I wonder, frowning slightly as I reviewed what I knew. I could tell he wasn't trying to insult me and the truth was that I honestly didn't know a whole lot about how Elementals worked. No one did, as far as I knew; that knowledge, if it had ever been known at all, had been lost a long, long time ago. "You're right. All I know is that we made a contract—"

I paused.

"Yes," The Light Elemental murmured. "A contract with earth, fire, water, air, lighting, and metal. They bound themselves to you and you tied yourself to them—the nature of the contract is that it binds both ways."

"It allows me to summon them," I whispered. "I gain allies and friends and can draw upon their power. But what do they get?"

"You already know," He stated, the voice a bit softer as tones shifted in and out of it.

"Bodies and minds," I said. "Minds that can experience things on a human scale—or close enough—and bodies that can exist and operate on that scale. And they can do it because of the terms of the contract. Our souls will be forever one."

This time, the Light Elemental said nothing, standing impassively. I took that to mean it felt there was nothing to argue.

"Is that how they merge?" I wondered aloud. "They're the elements given form, but they're also pieces of the same puzzle—of me."

"Of me," My reflection repeated. Or maybe corrected. I wasn't sure.

"Then you're what happens when all the pieces come back together?" I asked. "Because you're what was broken apart in the first place—me. You're me, aren't you? My soul given form."

He was silent again. Maybe he just didn't feel the need to tell himself he was right—or maybe if I wasn't right, he just wouldn't know. But it made sense; I'd wondered before why earth or wind or fire gave a shit about…anything, really. Why did they allow themselves to be summoned and do what I asked? But if I gave them parts of myself, then perhaps it made sense that they would help me. And certainly, I hadn't encountered any other Elementals, at least not in the form of minds I could sit down and converse with, because the earth itself didn't have a mind like humans did. There was something there, but not the type of thing that caused earthquakes when it was upset or that became upset at all. You didn't hear about women made of air coming down from the sky to blow people away, either—because it took a person, someone with an Affinity that would allow them to make the connection, to breath something human into the wind or sea.

It made sense. I hadn't had any way to confirm anything before, but the pieces fit.

"Okay then," I said. "Do you have a name, then? The others did."

"Crocea Mors, the name of your ancestral blade," He replied, looking at me still. "Levant and Vulturnus, the winds that blows towards the west. Xihai, the western sea. Suryasta, the sun that sets in the west during Ereb, the evening. The elements have no names but the ones you gave them after you started your journey as the White Tiger of the West. Just as I have no name but the one you have given me."

I stiffened slightly at that, blinking twice.

"I…didn't know that was what those words meant," I replied, voice sounding subdued even to my own ears. I'd never given it much thought beyond recognizing the languages of the names—the words came from ancient Vytal and Mistral, I knew, but hadn't wondered if they meant anything more than that. Hearing them now though, the connections were fairly blatant.

But I didn't speak those languages. How would I have known their meaning, even subconsciously? Hell, how did I know that was what they meant? I'd have to check later today, but…

"If that's true," I began slowly, shaking myself once to regain focus. "And the names of all my Elementals were ones I've given, then what have I named you? If you're the reflection of my soul, what are you called?"

"You know that as well," He stated before tilting his head. "Or perhaps you don't."

"My name," I stated, becoming annoyed. "If you're me, I'd give you my name. Right?"

"That's right," He whispered, eyes blinking open and shut in different places. "Tell me my name."

"I already told you," I said. "My name's Jaune Arc."

He looked at me for a moment, disappointment shining in all one million of his eyes.

"That," He said gravely. "Is not my name."