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.

Reminiscence

I took a slow breath, looking down at my feet.

"I see," I said at last. "I suppose I wasn't a very good king."

Keter didn't reply, watching me steadily.

"I think I can guess what happened after that," I continued undeterred. "They were afraid of us and avoided us, just like we wanted…for a while. But without us—without the Archangels—there was nothing to keep things running the way there were supposed to. It wouldn't have been a problem at first, maybe, but after a few generations of, at best, rare contact, things would get worse and worse. People would forget, the Angels we made to keep things running smoothly would grow old and die, and then…"

I shrugged.

"After a century or two, I'm guessing things broke down, at least somewhat," I guessed. "If the Archangels weren't called in, something like that riot could escalate into something major—and a war between Hunters…we've had a fair number of those ourselves and they were always destructive, but there are only a few million people on Remnant and never more than a few thousand Hunters at any given time and we could never commit all our forces to a war, not with the Grimm waiting for a chance to strike. But if there were billions of people and nothing hunting them down, if they were free to dedicate their resources to whatever they chose…war on that scale must have been…"

"Apocalyptic," Keter finished. "Or almost. It wasn't an immediate thing, by any means—it took another five hundred years for things to get that bad, with the ten of us involving ourselves only rarely during that time. But we withdrew more and more over time. At first, we'd check in every few weeks or months, to make sure nothing had gone wrong. Then we began checking in at the first of every year, then every few years, and so on. By the time we were seven hundred, we'd all but stopped paying attention, and we'd long since stopped speaking to anyone outside of each other, barring a few rare exceptions."

"I'm guessing you got drawn back in when the war started."

"It became somewhat difficult to ignore," He admitted. "Between the number of Angels involved, the technology available, and everything else…yes, we noticed eventually. By that point, we'd taken to spending most of our time within one artificial dimension or another, building and experimenting, and only returned to this reality when we needed something from it. It served as something of a nexus point between our contained experiments and dimensions, you see, so we'd return to it periodically. When we did, well…with our senses, it was impossible to miss the sounds of war."

"How long had it been going on?" I asked.

"Five months," Keter replied. "At least, officially. There'd been conflict long before then, just on a lesser scale. When we figured out what had happened and looked back on things, we realized it had been pretty much inevitable. Though we'd done our best to strike a balance when we'd reshaped the world, that had been over nine hundred years before and things had changed. Some places grew in power more quickly than others and tried to wield that power, while others sought to protect themselves from threats real or imagined. In our absence, Angels had risen to rule the world again and had awakened other Angels to expand their own power, as had their children and their children's children and so on. Even if each ruler had done so with care and foresight—which they hadn't—a few hundred years of such a thing proved to be unsustainable. Truthfully, a war shouldn't have been particularly surprising, under the circumstances."

"But we were surprised anyway," I said. "Because we hadn't been paying attention."

"Yes," Keter answered. "When we realized what was happening, it came as quite a shock. Cities had been ruined by fighting and bombs, our nation had divided, rulers were being replaced what seemed like every few weeks or months…it was chaos. And we realized then that it was something we'd caused with our apathy and negligence—that this could have all been avoided if we'd just acted sooner."

"So instead you acted late," I finished, a clearer picture of what had happened taking shape in my head. "You took over again."

"We did," He confirmed. "With the power we had at our disposal by then, we hadn't even needed to be subtle about it. The war ended the day we intervened."

"And you took control?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "Despite everything that had happened because of how much you didn't want the job?"

"At the time, there seemed like no other choice," He replied blandly. "We'd seen what had happened when stayed away and did nothing. Millions of innocent people had died in our absence and as dull as we found our self-appointed duty, we didn't wish them any particular ill will. It was, we thought, a necessity, or else war would be an inevitability. It wasn't anyone's fault, merely a fact; so long as people can awaken and become Angels, equality was nothing more than a joke. Even if every person on the planet was awakened, that would remain true, because some would be born with tremendous power and others with almost nothing. And with the root cause of it all being the soul, an inseparable and invaluable part of human nature, there would always be those who could awaken."

I nodded quietly, because it was true. Even if every Hunter—or Angel—were killed, people would still awaken occasionally. Whether as a result of extreme danger and perseverance, enlightenment and focus, or whatever else, it would happen—and anyone who was awakened could theoretically awaken others. And while there would always be heroes, there would also always be people who wanted to use their power for their own ends, same as with any other kind of power. The issue was that Aura set certain people noticeable apart from others and gave them the power to, potentially, do whatever they wanted.

That was simply a fact of life on Remnant that everyone had to live with, if only by doing what the Kingdoms did and trying to strike a balance. I'd known that for a while, but then, it was pretty easy to find examples of in Remnant's history. Even if all the Grimm were destroyed, I knew full well that everything wouldn't be sunshine and rainbows forever after. I accepted that.

I'm guessing they hadn't.

"What they needed," Keter continued. "Or, at least, what we thought they needed, was someone to keep things under control. A power that couldn't be questioned, denied, or resisted. We ended the war and created peace through our sheer, overwhelming power and demanded to be obeyed. Before, our goal had been to avoid any similarities to our predecessors, so we'd listened and made allowances, and had driven ourselves to apathy and the world to ruin. So we chose a different route for our second attempt and simply passed down word from on high. We reigned as tyrants and it worked. So many things can be simplified by removing the human element you see, and without anyone to slow things down, it became easy to rule. We were reluctant, of course, to be pulled away from our projects, but it proved to be fairly painless thanks to the simple breadth of our power. We rebuilt things, made new laws, and enforced them ourselves. There wasn't a crime in our Kingdom that went unnoticed, not a wrong or ill that went unseen. We returned things to the way they were before, curing disease, stopping wars, making sure everything ran smoothly. It even gave us an opportunity to put our inventions to good use. We provided free power to the world, ended scarcity, and made something grand. Not perfect, of course, but great—and better then a world torn apart by war."

"Did anyone thank you for that?" I asked.

"Surprisingly yes, not that it much mattered," Keter answered with a shrug. "It's easy to be seen as merciful when you rescue cities from death and disease and cast down their enemies; it's amazing how fragile civilization can be at time, such as when water is no longer being cleaned and the power does out. We'd become almost mythical figures by that point, which I imagined helped—to them, we must have seemed like gods, returning to protect our people. There were complaints, of course, especially from those we uprooted, but they didn't protest for very long after the extent of our power was made clear. Destroy a mountain or two and arguments tend to evaporate."

I bobbed my head, accepting that, and looked back at him.

"So you ruled for another hundred years or so?" I guessed. "Before you died?"

"Indeed," Keter confirmed. "The ten of us ruled the world and stayed apart from things, except to enforce the law. We had no need for money, nor food, nor anything else, so it's not as if we demanded offerings or servitude, simply obedience. Even then, the rules were fairly simple—as Gevurah put it, 'If I am forced to come over there, it's going to ruin my day, at which point I am going to ruin your day.' As long as people weren't dying or being hurt, we left things be and kept to ourselves, and people quickly learned the punishments for murder and the like. With the power we had by then, it was easy to keep the peace—so easy, in fact, that we rather regretted not doing it from the beginning. The result would have been the same and it would have been vastly easier to get there."

"How do Malkuth and the Grimm play into this?" I asked him. "I mean, I'm glad to finally find out about my past and this is all good to know, but what happens to reduce Babel to…well, Remnant."

Keter smiled at me again, creepy looking as ever.

"Do not worry," He said. "Our story is about to come to an end."

I gave him an Adam-like grunt, knowing he'd understand to continue.

"The Grimm did not exist until near the end," Keter replied. "But in a way, they tie back to this point as well. Have you ever wondered about their name?"

"It's a shortened form of 'the creatures of Grimm,'" I answered. "They've been called that as long as anyone remembers. I assume Grimm is either a person or a place."

"Close," He said, tone almost amused. "It is a person and a place. Malkuth and I had always been the strongest of the Archangels and also the closest; we were the oldest and youngest, you see, and our makers often had us work together. We were best friends, though—as close as brothers, which I suppose we technically were. In fact, they called us the Brothers Grimm."

"What?" I asked, alarmed. "Why?"

"Because we were the kings of the land called Grimm," Keter answered. "The land you now know as Babel, on the continent north of Vytal."

I closed my eyes and swore.

"No," I said, almost pleadingly. "Please no."

"Yes," Keter replied, pressing on without mercy. "Malkuth and I worked on the Grimm together."

"Ugh," I groan, more annoyed then surprised. "Fuck."

"If it makes you feel any better, our efforts were mostly on the theoretical side of things," He continued. "By necessity, Malkuth was the one to give them life."

"Why?" I asked dully, sighing and looking up at the sky. Seriously, though, fuck. The news that my past self hadn't been a saint, while a bit disappointing, hadn't really come as a surprise. Hell, if anything, I thought it could have been way, way worse—I mean, I was well aware of how abusable my powers were. In the wrong hands, I could cause a pretty horrific amount of pain and suffering on a scale that was hard to really imagine. There were people who were stronger than me, sure, and people who could get in my way if I went on a rampage, but stopping me…that would be difficult. While I couldn't create portals like Raven did, I could move between the Kingdoms fairly easily on speed alone, and if I approached with Naraka…I could drop into normal reality, drop some particularly lethal techniques, and then vanish again. Repeat the process at random times and locations and nobody but maybe Ozpin could really put me down. Not before I killed a huge amount of people, anyway.

And honestly, compared to some of the things I was potentially capable of if I went evil…that was probably one of the better possibilities.

"The very of the project was something of a reversal of the one that created us," He answered. "The word Sephirot means 'Emanations' and we Archangels were designed to emanate from the Sephirot. Through a careful balancing and blending of countless souls, we were intended to be divinity given form. The Grimm, however, were meant to be the opposite—a way of touching the divine through physical means. Soulless beings who could nonetheless draw upon higher powers, we called them Qlippoth, at first—'Husks.'"

"What's the point of doing that?" I wondered, dropping my gaze to look back at him.

He pondered that for a moment, mulling it over.

"At first, perhaps simply to see if we could and to overcome our apparent limits," He began, speaking slowly. "We weren't the first to try, nor were we the last, though I doubt anyone else thought of creating something quite like the Grimm to do it."

"Oh?" I replied, furrowing my eyebrows at the words. On the surface, it seemed like a worrying statement, but I honestly wasn't sure what he meant by that. "What do you mean?"

Keter chuckled, a cascade of laughs falling from a million mouths.

"Nothing like you're imagining," He assured. "As you well know, Aura in its natural form cannot be used as a conventional power source. That is, you cannot fuel a machine—or, at least, not a normal machine—on Aura alone; you need to convert it into another form, such as electricity, to do that. Though you can channel Aura through an object to protect it or guide it, you cannot power something with it."

"That's why we use Dust," I said, nodding. "You can use it to change Aura into a different form or even draw power from it directly with the proper machinery."

"Indeed," He answered with a smile. "Dust is, in fact, the best example of the Qlippoth—and why we pursued it. Dust can change a person's Aura in ways even the user cannot, proving that a person's Aura can be shaped artificially. Imagine if the same could be done with technology—if a weapon could change Aura into fire or ice on demand, if a house could draw power from its inhabitants, if the world could be run on Aura alone. Things that took a lifetime to learn could be done with a push of a button; you could heal and shape the elements and countless other things. At its most basic level, that is what the Qlippoth was; an attempt to shape the immaterial with the physical."

Realization struck.

"Like Conquest did," I whispered, eyes widening. "Even though he was soulless, he could affect a person's body and Aura. Hell, I saw what he did to Dad's soul—and he'd been able to do that because it was what he'd been built for.

"Yes, the creature that goes by that name was one of the projects greatest successes," Keter confirmed. "Though all the Grimm are capable of it to some extent, whether by interacting with the world—with Malkuth—in bizarre ways, possessing unusual powers, or simply by creating more of themselves. You've seen it before; both the Goliath and the Leviathan were able to convert surrounding matter into more of the Grimm. They can remodel their bodies, draw upon matter and energy, sense emotions, and more. All that and more without a soul."

"You said at first it was just to see if it was possible," I said. "But it became more than that, didn't it? What were you planning to use the Grimm for?"

"Everything we possibly could," Keter answered bluntly. "When they aren't being used to kill you, they really are quite marvelous creatures. They are soulless and their loyalty is beyond question—and yet, at the same time, they are capable of independent thought and free action. They can grow and learn, communicate and improve, solve complex problems, notice patterns, follow orders, and both adapt their surrounding and adapt to them. To say nothing of the greatest of them."

"The Riders," I whispered. "And the Knights."

"Indeed," He replied. "Though the former more than the latter in this case. A group of beings that could infect a body and remodel it directly, strengthening it, improving the use of Aura, and opening entirely new possibilities. Though Conquest is a monster, you cannot deny the potential of his power. Imagine if, instead of taking complete control of everyone he infect, Conquest left them in control. If, at will, anyone could draw upon his power, giving their bodies the power of the Grimm, even as Conquest allowed them greater access to their Semblances. If knowledge could be instantly transferred between two people with a mere touch. If they could adapt to situations in a physical sense and recover from even horrific wounds. And then, imagine that if someone, even with all those powers, were to try and say, murder someone, those powers would shut down. Conquest could immobilize them instantly or act to call authorities. Alone, he could end countless ills and fix the world."

"It's a little hard to imagine," I said. "Mostly because he broke it instead."

Keter inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement.

"Things went somewhat awry," He agreed.

Understatement of the century, right there. Also, an amazing statement of the obvious.

"So how did we screw it up?" I asked with another sigh. "Is this a sort of rogue AI situation where we gave him a bunch of orders we didn't think through or did Malkuth do something instead?"

"The latter," Keter answered, voices growing sad. "Conquest is working perfectly in the sense that it is completely loyal to its master and a quick study. Even now, it determines how to best fulfill Malkuth's desires and then does so to the best of its abilities."

"Figured as much," I murmured before raising my voice. "Then tell me why. If Malkuth and I were so close, if the Archangels were such friends, if we had all these great and wonderful things plan, how did it all go to hell?"

Keter looked at me calmly for a long moment, eyes focusing on me until the lights of his pupils all but covered me.

The, he spoke.

"I don't know," He stated easily. "Which was why I told you the events surrounding the situation instead of telling you the answer outright."

"The fuck?" I demanded. "The fuck do you mean you don't know?"

"If I ever knew, Death took those memories from me," He explained, voice as calm as ever. "I could make several guesses, but many of those memories are gone."

I frowned at him severely for a few seconds and then clicked my tongue, annoyed but unable to get particularly angry if it was like that.

"How much do you remember, all told?" I asked.

"A fair amount, owing to the length of our life," He answered. "But only a fraction of a percent, all told. Enough to recognize how events are related, at least some of the time, though it's easier to see how things progressed over centuries then in shorter time frames. If an event occurs in a day and I recall nothing for months before it, it's hard to establish a firm context, but even with only a hand full of days out of every years, it's easy to notice patterns that occur over centuries. I have more memories of the early days then the end, as they posed less of a threat."

I pursed my lips for a moment and then spoke.

"Death," I said. "You've mentioned several times that we lost a lot to is. At first, I thought you meant death as in the process of reincarnation had wiped us clean. But that's not it, is it? You mean Death as a person. Was he a Rider, like Conquest? Or something else?"

"Like Conquest," Keter repeated as if sounding it out. "Yes. The greatest of the four and Malkuth's right hand."

"What is he?" I asked. "Do we remember anything about him or the others?"

Keter considered that carefully before nodding once.

"Conquest, War, Famine, and Death," Keter recited. "He named them after things we claimed to be beyond—to have overcome and extinguished. They all work from the same base design, but express it in different ways, adjusting the body and Aura of their host to demonstrate greater power. Even among them, however, Death is special. He though he is soulless, he is a disease of the soul, and those he is not as…virulent as his siblings, he can draw out great strength from his hosts. Malkuth generally kept him close and often within his own soul, just as he frequently allowed portions the Riders to remain within his body."

"He was immune?" I assumed, to which Keter nodded.

"We made sure of it," He answered. "As you've no doubt noticed from Conquest's infection, the power of the Riders can be quite useful. I'm unsure of the full extent of Death's power, but I know he can mutilate the souls of his enemies in various ways. He left us relatively untouched only because he had no choice, but he was thorough in exterminating any memories he deemed potentially threatening. Beyond that, I only know that I was careful to attack Malkuth while Death was unable to support him."

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, closing my eyes for a long moment.

"Wonderful," I stated tiredly. "You get all that, Adam?"

"Shit's fucked, as always" He said from his position on the roof of the next building over. He had his back to us, probably because Keter was hard to look at directly, and though his words were casual, I could see the tension in his shoulders. Given what everything I'd learned had been doing to my head, I couldn't imagine he was having any easier of a time. Nothing I heard about Malkuth was good.

But it didn't change anything. We still had to fight. We still had to win.

All we had to do was figure out how the fuck we were going to do it.

No rest for the wicked, I told myself. So we better get started or we were going to get outworked.

"Okay," I said. "Time for a new plan. Step one, we're going to work our asses of even harder than before. Step two, we're going to…get to that eventually. For let's just, uh…blow stuff up."