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.

Shadows

I very nearly twitched, I'm not going to lie. The only thing that stopped me, really, was the simple fact that I made a conscious point to keep track of how I reacted—a necessity given that I hide a variety of…noticeable things within an illusion. I had to consciously display anything I wanted to show on my face which was useful for when I wanted to hide something, but which meant I had to keep track of what I wanted to show as well.

That was both difficult and simple. The breadth of my senses was such that keeping track of it all was easy enough, but then I had to sort through it and decide what to do. Given how much my biology had diverged from the norm over time, that was more complicated then it seemed, since there were a lot of normal reactions I had to insert and abnormal ones that needed removing. Amusingly, one of the reasons I was so good at restraining myself was the simple fact that reacting visibly could be a huge pain in the ass.

Still, ironic as it might have been given the nature of my power, I didn't like being played with. And given that I was essentially talking to myself—and thus was pretty sure everyone involved in this conversation knew I didn't enjoy messing around or jumping through hoops—it was fairly frustrating to do the whole cryptic song and dance routine. That was something I inflicted on other people, not myself.

And perhaps it was for that reason that I paused for a moment to allow the initial annoyance to fade and gave myself the benefit of the doubt and instead tried to think this through. For the moment, I'd believe there was a point to this.

"What do you mean that's not your name?" I asked calmly. "You said I'd given you my name and I'm—"

I pause, allowing myself to trail of as I considered my Light Elemental carefully. He didn't so much as twitch in response to my words, waiting patiently, and yet the feel of him somehow changed. I considered it carefully, at once surprise, exited, and confused, but if this was an expression of my soul, it was possible, right? But then, how…why…what…?

But what else could he mean.

"Do you…" I began, voice a whisper before I remembered I couldn't just use Levant to raise it and did it myself. "Remember?"

"I do," He answered impassively. "But you do not."

"No, I don't," I admitted freely. "So let's not play around here. Tell me outright; are we talking about the same thing here? Because I'm talking about the mounting wealth of evidence that says I've been around the proverbial block before—that I had a past life, died, and was reborn as who I am today. I want this to be perfectly clear, so I'm going to ask this as plainly as I possibly can. I've been reincarnated before; yes or no."

"Yes," He answered in a multitude of voices, but I was flat-out out ignoring that now. If it meant getting some fucking answers for once, I didn't care if they came from a voice on high or the monster under my bed. If he'd tell me what the fuck was happening, I'd forgive any of my Light Elemental's flaws.

And this particular answer was…more anticlimactic than anything else. I'd pretty much accept that as fact at this point; still, finally having confirmation was nice.

"Okay, I'm reincarnated," I said aloud, wondering if hearing it from my own mouth would make me feel any different about it. It didn't so I shrugged once and decided to move on. "Cool. Again, just making sure we're on the same page here—this past life of mine, whenever it was, had something to do with the fucking asshole who made the Grimm. I don't have a lot in the way of cold hard facts beyond that, but that's the life we're talking about, right? Not some hypothetical past life were I was a farmer or something; the one where shit got fucked up. That life. Yeah?"

"Yes," He replied in exactly the same tone as before, eyes calm, maybe even expectant.

"And you remember?" I pressed. "You know what happened?"

"I retained what Death left behind," He stated. "Not all, but some."

"You know more than I do, though. Right?" I asked, the sound of my pulse pounding in my ears. "Not that that's a particularly high bar to jump, given I know fuck all, but remember stuff. Important stuff?"

"Important stuff," He repeated, almost sounding amused. "Yes."

I exhaled, simultaneously wanting to jump for joy, laugh and exhilaration, and lay down for a while.

This might be it, I thought. These might be the answers I've been looking for.

"Okay then," I said. "Good. That's…very, very good. Let's start with the basics then. Can you tell me your—our, my, whatever you want to call it—name?"

"No," He replied, answer calm and soft and nonetheless kind of making me want to punch him in the face.

"Why not?" I demanded, exasperated. "You remember, don't you?"

"I remember," He confirmed. "I am the only one who still does."

"Then what's the problem?"

"You told me not to tell anyone," He answered. "Not even someone who appeared to be you."

"Why—" I cut the question off before I could even finish it. The reason why was fairly obvious; if you told someone to keep something a secret, it was generally safe to assume it was because you didn't want anyone to know. In that case, there was a better question to ask. "What's so important about my name that I can't even risk telling myself, because it might not be me? I admit I'm no expert on the subject, but you're basically my soul given form, right? It took six Elementals—not to mention two hundred and forty points, a bunch of skills, and a lot of time—for me to bring you out and I'm guess that even if someone else had everything they needed to make a Light Elemental, they'd have gotten pretty different results. The way I see it, the list of people who'd have the means, motive, and opportunity to interrogate my soul is probably pretty small. I'm guessing that if I told you not to tell me because I thought it was too risky, I probably had someone in mind. Who was…who am I so afraid of?"

"We both know the answer to that question," He stated, laser pointer eyes even more piercing than before.

I sucked in another breath, stiffening before I could even consider not to.

"Fuck," I spat, because yeah, maybe I was a little scared of that. I can't say I'd ever worried about anyone tearing my soul out and torturing it for information, but dammit, if I had known it was possible, I know who I'd worry about most. Though my secret identity probably had a fair amount of enemies, there were only a few gunning for Jaune Arc and only really one that knew enough and was powerful enough that I could say I was scared of him. Not in the wary, respectful kind of way I felt towards people who deserved to be treated carefully like Raven, Cinder, and Ozpin, but who I at least thought some way of dealing with, but instead in the quiet sinking way that made me suspect he could arm himself far beyond my means to resist. That he could take away the things and people I loved and I wouldn't be able to stop him.

That one motherfucker.

But…

"How?" I asked. "I mean, I got that he was scary, but this is a level of preparation that impresses even me. If you say it's something I need to worry about, I'll do so, but I need to know—what is he capable of? What am I up against? That can't be confidential because he'd already know and if I didn't…I'd be in the shitty situation I am now. My enemy's strengths and weaknesses are something I'd want to pass on, I think."

"Indeed," He replied, voices shifting a touch towards the animalistic. His words were warped slightly as a result, not as if they were being growled but as if they were being spoken by things that had very different mouths then a human. "He is the Kingdom."

"The Kingdom," I repeated before snapping my fingers and making an illusion of the uncompleted puzzle of the Sephirot. The spheres at the very top and bottom remained missing still, but I remembered what I'd read. "Yesod's profile mentioned things being given form in the Kingdom below. Is he…?"

"He is Malkuth," The Light Elemental pronounced carefully, gesturing once and causing a sphere to fade into place at the bottom of the illusion. "Just as we are Keter."

He gestured again and the sphere at the top took its place as well.

"Malkuth and Keter," I repeated, swallowing as I felt another shock go through me, like the one I'd felt when I'd first laid eyes on the names of the Sephirot. "The Kingdom and…"

"The Crown," He completed. "The First and the Last."

I looked at the completed diagram and then at the floor beneath me. I was still within the circle, I noted, but couldn't be bothered to move.

"The First and Last of what?" I asked. "What were we?"

"We are Archangels," He answered simply. "We are what we were made to be and far more."

"Archangels," I said, smiling even though I didn't think it was very funny. "I've seen enough weirdness that it's hard to be skeptical when faced with a bit more, but I'm going to assume you don't mean literal Archangels—or else someone should tell God he's seriously fucked up with at least one of us. You said we were what we were made to be; you mean that literally, don't you? We were made, like in a lab or something."

"A lab," He whispered as if remembering something distant. "Yes."

I took a deep breath and exhaled, nodding to myself. I couldn't say I was even vaguely surprised by that, either; I'd pretty much figured that was what happened. Evolution—and the soul equivalent—may be a blind watchmaker, but after a certain point you have to assume intelligent design.

"Yesod, Tiferet, and Givurah," I began. "Their profiles mentioned their presence in the soul, but you mentioned Keter and Malkuth. What are they?"

"They are many, many things," He answered. "But in our case, they are names. The names of the experiments that gave us life."

"And there were others?" I guessed. "Named for the other Sephirot, I'm guessing. And we're…weapons? Who made us?"

"They called themselves Angels," The Light Elemental said. "Because the power they wielded put them high above mortals."

"The power they wielded?" I asked before frowning. I tried to imagine it—a time before the Grimm, before civilization fell, before thousands and thousands of years of destruction. It was surprisingly hard, but when I imagined such a world and thought about who would rule it, an image sprang to mind. "They were Hunters?"

He considered that for a long moment, million eyes blinking in absent irregularity.

"In many ways, they are similar," He answered. "But it was a time before there was anything to Hunt."

"Right, right," I agreed, understanding. "And they called us Archangels because we were above even them?"

"No," He said. "That was simply the name we took, when we placed them beneath us."

A shiver went down my spine at the implications in that, but…I'd like to say I couldn't imagine it, but that would be a lie. Ten people with powers that were peers to my own—given time and a reason, it wasn't hard to see.

But power came in many forms—and as interesting as this was, there was one kind of power that was an immediate concern.

"Malkuth," I said. "Or whatever his real name is. What's his power?"

If the Light Elemental was surprised or put off by the sudden change in topic, he didn't show it. Instead, he simple answered.

"He is Malkuth, the Kingdom," He replied. "And it is he who makes the rules of this world."

Well, I thought. That was fucking ominous.

Also, vague as hell. Putting aside the chill of intelligent fear that swept through me, I pondered the implications and quickly decided that it could mean any number of things. Given what I knew of my enemy—of Malkuth, as I knew him now—it seemed fairly safe to assume the worst, but even that could have meant anything from a massively supped up version of Albus's Semblance to straight-up reality warping. Either way, it would no doubt be a terrifying thing to face, but I liked to know precisely how screwed I was.

And, I reminded myself firmly when that did little to assuage my fear, whatever his power was, it obviously had limits. Everything did, after all, and if he was an exception there'd be no point to playing this game of secrets and lies; if he could think hard and simply make his will truth, then logically he should have won by now.

I paused at that thought, frowning slightly as noticed the flaw in my logic.

He should have won completely, I corrected. Even if the Grimm ruled the world, he didn't have everything he wanted and couldn't just stomp all over things to take it. There had to be a reason for that.

"I need specifics," I stated, tilting my head at the Elemental. "If we're both Archangels, do our powers work similarly?"

"No," The Elemental stated. "We are different in many ways. We were made for different purposes and our paths have only diverged from there. But even so, he is still the Kingdom."

"What does that mean?" I asked. "You've mentioned that he's the Kingdom, but what is the Kingdom?"

"The Kingdom is this," He replied, but instead of gesturing to indicate anything, he stood utterly still. "Everything you've ever seen, everything you've ever known, is Malkuth. The Kingdom is the physical realm."

"I thought the Sephirot were parts of the soul?" I wondered, growing increasingly worried and confused.

The Light Elemental blinked at me once and tilted his head.

"The Sephirot are…" He paused, seeming to contemplate how to phrase it for a second. "As I said, they are many things, one of which is the forms the Light takes."

"The Light being the soul?"

"That is one of its forms," He agreed. "The Sephirot themselves are…pieces. Elements that come together to create greater things, like types of atoms and molecules. Yet they can also be seen as forms of the same thing, like the different states of matter. And of the Sephirot, Malkuth is the closest to the physical realm. You could go so far as to consider Malkuth to be the material form of the Light."

I stared at him for a long moment, silently putting the pieces together.

"That's what Malkuth Theory is," I whispered at last. "The creation of matter—except matter cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be changed. In this case, changed from the Light into Malkuth. Then we—Hunters, Conquest, the Grimm, and whatever else—pull down energy and shape it into Malkuth; into something real. A fireball, bone spikes, some kind of mind attack…they're all created through Malkuth."

"Yes," He confirmed. "That is the source of his power, which was said to rival our own. Malkuth is everything that is given shape in this world and therefore he wields power over all that is. The shifting of existing laws, the adjustment of constants, the creation of matter that interacts with the world in unique ways—all these things and more are within his power to control."

Well, fuck. If I was a game character, it looked like he was the world and the physics engine it ran on. That kind of sucked. I didn't even want to know how he could abuse a power like that.

I asked anyway.

"What can he do," I asked. "Do you remember?"

"All too well," He answered, million eyes solemn—and wow, I was already getting used to that. "You can already imagine, I'm sure. While he cannot simply ignore one's Aura, he is skill at making one's surroundings exceedingly hostile. He can increase gravity, adjust local conditions to cause phenomena to occur more easily, make reactions behave unnaturally…with direct contact, he can even cause shifts in the Strong and Weak Forces that govern the body. One of the more pleasant possible side-effects of such a thing is complete disintegration. He can even write entirely new physical laws into the world, though with far greater difficulty then his other abilities. Generally, he's limited to only one such adjustment, but that tends to be more than enough to make life unpleasant."

"How bad?" I asked, even though I was really beginning to wish for a topic change. Or at least a break to allow me time to demolish the rest of the city.

"It's hard to say," He replied. "Sadly, he rarely broadcasted the details of his rules, but several of the more memorable ones were fairly awful. One seemed to adjust how his body interacted with external forces in a way that he claimed granted him invincibility—despite a rather significant amount of effort, we were unable to disprove this. Another caused a variety of existing principles cease to function, which could do anything from disable certain abilities entirely to make survival tremendously complicated. One effect we were on the receiving end of seemed to greatly increase the output of his attacks."

"Define greatly," I asked, wishing for a chair.

"We believe it squared their power."

Good God. I didn't need the Mathematician's Answer to figure out how shitty that could be, but it helpfully informed me.

"Is there any good news?"

"His power is not infinite," He answered. "And its magnitude ensures that it is quite costly."

"Since we knew about that and still didn't win, I'm assuming there's a 'but'," I replied with a sigh.

"Though not infinite, his power is tremendous," My manifested soul agreed. "And should he not be preoccupied by the more draining uses of his power, he can adjust his surroundings to regain that power exceedingly quickly."

"He cheats," I summarized. And sure, I cheated incessantly myself, but it seemed a lot less fair when I—and the rest of the world, of course—was on the receiving end.

"Relentlessly."

I took a deep breath and wiped my hands on my pants, giving the reality of…of this a moment to sink in.

"That's pretty bad news," I noted calmly, lifting my gaze. "But you said we were peers. I fought him, somehow, and I may have died, but I'm betting I didn't die easily. I managed to do something to him or else he'd be ruling the world right now and I'd probably be dead again. He's got access to the source code of the Universe—what do I have? Or rather, what do I have that I don't know about?"

He didn't answer and surprisingly, that made me smile.

"Can't say, huh?" I guessed before nodding slowly to myself. "That's…that's good. Because that means I have something—something big enough that I don't want him to know. Something that could or did stop him? Or something else?"

Despite having several million things that could have possibly given him away, the Light Elemental didn't so much as twitch. He had a damn good poker face—and that was coming from a guy who wore an illusionary face that only showed what I wanted it to.

"Okay, then," I continued. "Changing topic. You told me about Malkuth—but what about Keter? What's the Crown do? If the Kingdom is the material form of the Light…what am I, the pure form?"

At that, there was a response and the eyes shifted back to me.

"Just as the crown is worn above the head, so too is the Crown above the mind's ability to comprehend," He began. "We are something that should not exist in this world, not as we are. Keter is the highest sphere and the one closest to the light, but not it's pure form."

I frowned, pondering that before nodding.

"What would happen if I managed to draw straight from the tap?" I asked.

"You already have," He answered dryly, ignoring my surprised look. "As has your oldest sister and many others."

"Bianca?" I repeated, eyebrows furrowing. It wasn't hard to see the light there, but I had no idea what that implied.

"Your oldest sister draws upon the light without shaping it," He said. "And yet, in refusing to change it, she turns the infinite light of creation into a force incapable of anything but destruction. The Light is not weakened by being given shape anymore then a canvas is ruined by the touch of paint."

I nodded once, understanding. There was a fair bit to be said for destructive power, but there was a lot to be said for other things to. I saw his point.

"And me?" I asked. "I assume you're talking about Lux Aeterna."

"You draw upon the Light in a similar but different way. Instead of wielding that power unchanged, you return power to its original state—into undivided light. If she pulls power down, you drag it back up." He confirmed. "You could think of it this way. Your lights are composed of the same material, but hers is exothermic and yours is endothermic."

"Good to know," I mused, honestly interested in this subject even beyond probability of death if I failed to figure things out. "Then Bianca…she doesn't have any of the Sephirot? If her light is unshaped…"

"Everyone possesses at least some of the Sephirot within their souls," He answered. "Just as humans possess Carbon and Hydrogen within their bodies. The shape their power is given, their 'Semblances,' depend on the composition and quality of their souls. In your sister's case, her soul is primarily composed of Malkuth, followed by Gevurah, Hod, Binah, and trace elements of the other Sephirot. Even if the nature power she pulls from above is left relatively unaffected by the transition, it must still be expressed in the physical world and released upon it."

I nodded again, this time a bit more slowly. So basically, I was looking at a periodic table for the soul. But then…

"What about me?" I asked him. "What am I made of? And…how was I made?"