Chapter Text

The mine is unremarkable: the floor maintains a steady decline and the uniformly placed timbers supporting the roof of the tunnel look dusty but robust. Faint ruts worn by wheelbarrows are visible in the rock floor, but the party sees nothing else worth noting. They all slow as they approach a bend in the tunnel. The path, up to this point, has been arrow-straight.

“Spot checks, please. If anyone’s got a higher Knowledge: Dungeoneering or Geography, use that instead.”

“Faiiiiled,” whined Ruby.

“17.”

“29.”

“24.”

“29, you said?” Velvet asked Blake.

She nodded in response, then paused. “Velvet, your ear’s twitching.” Blake knew that tell. The party must have missed something big, but if a 29 wasn’t enough to spot it then pushing the issue wouldn’t do much.

“Is it?” The DM sounded nonchalant.

Rose is seized by a sneezing fit and is incapable of noticing anything. Shroud and Ember identify the source of her troubles: some crates of red Dust stacked against the tunnel wall, just past the bend. A few have been prised open, some of their contents wafting in the air, but a half-dozen of them still look sealed. A length of fuse is coiled behind one loose crate lid.

Everyone but Rose—who’s still sneezing—notices distinct changes in the tunnel construction. Makeshift torches are set in hacked-out niches haphazardly scattered along the mine shaft. Several have burned out and have yet to be replaced. The rock floor is less worn and the walls look hastily-cut and uneven. Ember glances suspiciously at the next set of timber supports: unlike the sturdy beams near the head of the tunnel, these look far too rickety to properly hold up the ceiling and they’re spaced further and further apart as the party moves deeper.

Velvet looked at Yang preemptively. “No OSHA jokes.”

Yang’s expression made it clear that was exactly what she was planning, but—mercifully—she kept her mouth shut.

“So... what’s Oobleck doing?” Ruby wondered aloud.

The sudden shuffling behind the DM screen suggested that Velvet had forgotten to keep track herself. “The Doctor—” she huffed in exasperation at the results of her dice rolls, “is taking meticulous notes on some ‘pretty rocks’ scattered along the floor of the mine shaft.”

The party advances down the newer section of the mine shaft at a slower pace, each of them tense with alertness. Before long, Shroud materializes out of the shadows and gestures for everyone to stop. She’s spotted a small group of White Fang ahead. If they can sneak up quietly, they can surprise the enemy.

“I can cast Silence on you and you can move forward, preventing any sound from coming from them when you sneak attack, then the rest of us can follow behind,” Rose offers.

“Give me twelve seconds before you follow,” Shroud whispers back, pulling out her crossbow.

With a gesture and a barely audible word, an eerie quiet falls over the group—their armor stops creaking and when Myrtle opens her mouth to ask a question, no sound comes out.

The cat faunus presses forward, taking the area of silence with her.

“How did you know to prepare that spell?” Myrtle asks in disbelief as her voice returns.

Rose just shrugs. “Seemed like a decent idea since we’re trying to keep things under wraps.”

Several long moments later, they follow Shroud’s path around the corner. She’d already taken out two of the grunts, and is fighting a third, while a fourth is unsuccessfully attempting to cast a spell.

Myrtle, also restricted by Rose’s spell, fires a crossbow bolt at the other spellcaster, who staggers back, but doesn’t go down.

Blithely unaware of the magical silence, Oobleck walks towards the fight—his lips moving a mile a minute—as he starts up another lecture. He draws everyone’s attention, only to cause them to throw their hands up in frustration as he wanders off to study an inscription on the cave wall.

“Is he going to do anything useful?” Yang demanded.

Velvet looked steadily at Yang. “The Doctor picks up a rock with great gravitas... and licks it.”

There was a thud as Yang banged her head against the table in a fit of pique. Blake looked ready to join her while Weiss and Ruby shared a smile.

Shroud finishes off the grunt she had already injured before moving out of Rose’s line of fire to allow her to take out the final combatant.

Taking advantage of the spell’s duration, they scour the area thoroughly for additional enemies and any traps in the immediate vicinity.

The artificial quiet is shattered as Oobleck becomes audible mid-word, signaling the end of the time limit. They ignore his monologue in favor of searching for anything of value on the White Fang grunts, only looking up when he goes silent again, half-wondering if something had come up behind them and killed him.

But it isn’t anything so extreme: he is staring down at a handpick, studying it closely before resuming his lecture, “This doesn’t make any sense. While far from the quality that the Guild provides to its members, these are, in fact, archaeological tools—which are not the sort of thing I would expect miners to possess. No, this is for delicate work.”

He looks closer at the cavern wall in front of him, running his hand over a nearly invisible change in the rock face. Waving Myrtle closer, he adjusts his glasses.

“What is it, Doctor?” she asks.

“This...” He shakes his head and moves back down the cavern, kneeling to study a small section of wall that, while the same color, is shinier than the surrounding rock. “This is organic.”

“But is it certified organic?” Yang muttered under her breath, earning a glare from the two faunus at the table.

There’s a repeating pattern just barely visible in the uncovered sections that’s reminiscent of scales. Oobleck runs a finger along the surface with the utmost delicacy, then turns to the group. “This is a dragon,” he murmurs.

The rest of them step back in unison. “What?!” Myrtle asks, incredulously.

“THIS IS A DRAGON!”

Ruby recovered from her shock first and turned to the DM with a grin. “So, Velvet... where are the dwarves? And hobbits?”

“Unearthing a dragon is delicate work indeed...” the Doctor continues on, pointedly ignoring the interruption. “Why, look at—”

Shroud takes the opportunity to skip the lecture and scout out the light she’s seen from the next room up. Within moments she rushes back into the cavern, having apparently decided to forgo stealth for speed. With a frantic wave of her hand, she signals for everyone to follow her quickly. She leads them to a tiny offshoot of a cavern up ahead of where they were, the space lit by the afternoon sun. Every flat surface is covered in pooling wax and smoldering wicks, and the flickering of a few dozen candles guttering low triggers urgency in the party: whatever happened here had been set in motion hours ago. They’re late.

In an alcove to their left, a dragon skull—bigger than any they’d ever seen—sits nestled in the wax. An altar dominates the middle of the space with a carving of a five-pointed star made of black, blue, green, red, and white dragon heads. Everything is covered in a thin film of a sticky, rust-colored substance, and the air shimmers with the power radiating off runes etched into the stone.

“Kord bless,” Rose breathes, taking a step closer to the perverse altar. “Tiamat—the goddess of chromatic dragons.”

Blake leaned over to whisper in Weiss’ ear. “Chromatics are evil; metallic ones are good, with little to no exception.”

“That’s... not good.” Oobleck steps closer, studying the runes and glyphs covering the altar and surrounding walls.

Myrtle reaches out as if to touch one and then thinks better of it. “Someone damaged these—those are tool marks. The runes look like they were once some sort of modified Sleep spell.”

“And this,” Rose gestures to a complex diagram that is half-concealed behind the altar. “Looks like some sort of divine ritual—extremely powerful; it’s not anything I’m familiar with.”

Oobleck frowns. “Well, that’s because that’s part of a Wish spell! Immensely powerful, yes—it’s rumored even Guildmaster Ozpin has only ever cast it once—but it is arcane in origin, not divine. Though, why would an arcane spell be set up in a shrine to a divinity?”

Ember throws her hands up in frustration. “This doesn’t make sense!”

“Wait—they’re not trying to wake the dragon up, are they?” Shroud asks, horror creeping into her voice.

Oobleck straightens abruptly with a too-loud “Of course!” He darts around the room as he speaks, gesticulating wildly. “Of course that’s what they’re trying to do—a powerful dragon was terrorizing the area and so it was put to sleep through magical means—which, as you noted, Myrtle, are now damaged—” he waves a hand towards the defaced runes without a pause, “and then, as the years passed, the beast became little more than a legend of a powerful being—our friends in the White Fang have likely been trying to unearth the creature in preparation of waking it up through an even more powerful magical ritual—seemingly both arcane and divine in origin—possibly in hopes of controlling the creature or having it finish what it started all those years ago.”

“Did you breathe during that?” Yang asked Velvet, who merely took another sip of Red Bull before wrapping up the speech from Oobleck.

“Guildmaster Ozpin must be informed of this immediately; we may be too late—you four need to head back to the city as quickly as you can; I will stay behind to study the remains of the ancient spells and try to undo the damage they’ve already done.”

They took a moment to stretch and refill drinks before settling back at their seats to make their way out of the mine. There was a loud pop as Yang cracked open a beer with a gap in her prosthetic joints.

Blake looked at her curiously. “Should you be doing that?”

“It’s durable enough to handle some pull-tabs.” Yang shrugged as she took a swig.

“I thought you said to never split the party?” Weiss asked the table in general, even as she moved her white token to follow the rest of them.

“He’s an NPC, he doesn’t count,” Ruby said, moving her token out towards the middle of the map.

“Wait, Ruby don’t—”

Shroud’s warning came too late, however, and Rose surges forward into an area of the cavern they hadn’t searched earlier, tripping an unseen Alarm. The entire room fills with the din of ringing bells.

A single White Fang grunt comes out to investigate—shouting to his friends when he sees the four of them.

Velvet stood and set out more miniatures.

“Now the die is cast,” Weiss commented, looking pointedly at Yang and tossing a d20 across the table.

Blake eyed the distinctly colored figure positioned at the front of the grouping. “That one must be some sort of mini-boss.”

A young female elf emerges from the shadows, with a half-dozen White Fang members in her wake. Even for an elf, she’s on the short side.

“Sounds more like a mini mini-boss,” Yang muttered under her breath. She dodged the incoming popcorn kernel from Ruby.

“She looks wildly out of place—dressed in a corset and pantsuit in pastel pink, brown, and white.” Velvet pointed at the token in question that was, in fact, a mix of those three colors. “She doesn’t appear to be armed; she’s only carrying a parasol.” She turned to the players. “What did everyone get for initiative?”

“16!” Ruby leaned in closer to study the token. “That’s so cool! How did you get it to look like that?”

Velvet let out a small laugh. “Printing error, actually. The elven warrior’s shield ended up looking more like a lace parasol when the nozzles went wonky. But Neopolitan—” she gestured at the miniature, “has become one of my favorite tokens!” She turned to Weiss for the rest of the initiative results.

“13...”

“27!”

“18.”

“Okay: enemy leader first, Blake, Yang, grunts, Ruby, then Weiss.”

The four of them exchanged a look—it was the first time that campaign that someone had managed to get the drop on Blake’s character.

The elf saunters towards the four of them, tactically positioning herself next to Ember and does nothing more.

Shroud lets out a low curse and moves closer to flank the elf, who looks over her shoulder with a cheeky smile and swings her parasol at Shroud, who barely manages to duck in time. She slips in with her kusari-gama and—

“Wait, are you adding a flanking bonus to that 23 to hit?” Velvet asked, peering over the DM’s screen to look at the placement of their tokens.

Blake looked at the map where “Shroud” and “Ember” were clearly flanking the enemy. “Yes...?”

“Right. Correction: that missed.”

Blake studied the tokens—her black one was opposite the enemy from Yang’s yellow one. “Should I not be adding the flanking bonus?” she asked, knowing that Velvet wouldn’t answer that.

“You’re flanking Neo, aren’t you?” Velvet asked cryptically, then prompted, “Yang, your turn,” when she made no move to roll, having also become distracted by the question of whether to add the additional two to hit.

Ember steps forward slightly to deliver a Flurry of Blows—right fist connecting solidly with the elf’s jaw but the left missing by a wide margin. The rest of the members of the White Fang close the distance, one heading towards Myrtle, but the majority of them focus in on the main combat.

Velvet scowled down at her dice. “The White Fang grunts all missed. Okay, everyone—”

“Velveeeeet,” whined Ruby, “at least describe how they whiffed! C’mon, this is a role playing game!”

“Says the little munchkin!” The DM let out an exasperated groan. “Fine.”

Two White Fang grunts, armed with bows and arrows, manage to miss their targets by quite frankly embarrassing margins given their proximity. One swings a halberd in a wide overhead strike, but only manages to embed the axehead in a wooden truss above. Another, twirling a large mace, finds his powers of depth perception failing him, missing Myrtle by a good three feet and nearly maiming another grunt on the backswing. Grunt Number Five wields a pair of menacing daggers, which do little more than create a light breeze in Ember’s very general vicinity.

“The sixth, wielding an unremarkable long sword...” Velvet sounded positively drained at this point, but Ruby still looked on expectantly. “He... um... swings and misses.”

Yang let out an amused snort at the disappointment that flooded her sister’s face.

“Now, everyone, roll a Spot check.” Even Weiss groaned at that, having quickly learned to hate those words.

“21!”

“13.”

“22.”

“18?”

“All right. Rose and Shroud notice shifting shadows at the far end of the tunnel—up towards the entrance. It seems as though another group is coming towards you.” Velvet added a single token to the side of the map that indicated the mine’s entrance.

Ruby studied the table. “I could move forward, see what’s going on,” she said, tracing a potential path with her finger. It would provoke at least two attacks of opportunity.

“No!” shouted the other three.

Blake smiled when she heard Weiss join in. She’d known Weiss would have no trouble getting the hang of things.

“Never split the party!” Yang admonished. “That’s the fastest way to get us all killed.”

“Ruby, it’s your turn.”

Rose spares one last glance down the tunnel at the incoming foes but focuses on the battle directly in front of her. Quickly darting forward, she swings her massive scythe, yelling triumphantly when the White Fang grunt falls to a single strike. A quick ninety-degree turn to the right and she takes down the next without a second thought.

Weiss frowned at her spell sheet. With an additional fight looming, it wouldn’t do to burn all her high-level spells right away—not that she should be firing into the melee unless she was certain she would hit only the enemy.

Blake leaned over and pointed at “Wand of Magic Missile (7th)” on Myrtle’s character sheet when she saw Weiss floundering over spells. “It doesn’t do a lot of damage, but it can’t miss and it won’t use up your spell slots.”

Myrtle draws and brandishes the wand, saying a word that makes the air around her shimmer, and four bolts fly forth, unerringly finding their elven target who neatly dodges Shroud’s kusari-gama a moment later.

Shroud merely frowns, but Ember growls in frustration. “Hold still!”

But the elf just gives that same cheeky smile and adds a sly wink as she smacks Ember’s head with her parasol. In retaliation, Ember surges forward... and trips over her own feet, falling flat on her face.

“Seriously?” Yang griped, staring down at the d20 that had betrayed her twice in a row.

Velvet hid a smile behind one hand. “Could be worse, I once was in a party where someone rolled so many 1s in a row they accidentally opened a portal to another dimension. We had a masked woman dressed in red and black armor and wielding a katana showing up to save—or attack—us randomly the rest of the campaign.” She moved the tokens of the remaining grunts to their new locations and added a few more at the tunnel entrance before beginning her own rolls. “Weiss, does 22 hit?”

She flinched. “It does.”

Velvet went back to scowling at her dice. “4 damage.”

Weiss let out a sigh of relief. “That’s not so bad.”

“Blake—17 doesn’t hit, does it?”

“Nope,” came the smug reply.

She scowled again. “Okay, Ruby.”

Rose closes distance to the elf and manages a devastating blow. She shakes her head as if dazed by the attack.

“Wait, I thought you said 23 didn’t hit a moment ago,” Blake asked, a touch indignantly.

“Mmm, no, your 23 didn’t hit.” Velvet clarified.

Blake’s eyes narrowed. “She’s a rogue?” If she was, she was a high-level one if Blake wasn’t able to flank her, thus losing the associated attack bonus.

“Could also be a barbarian,” Ruby pointed out. “They get that bonus at level 5.”

Velvet just shrugged. “Weiss?”

Myrtle moves five feet back and casts Scorching Ray, downing another White Fang grunt and injuring a second. Shroud manages to draw a little more blood from the elf and then steps away, trying to lure her from Ember’s prone form while the monk elects to hold off on her action for the time being.

Velvet rolled a couple of dice.

The elf looks around and studies Ember for a moment and then smiles. She twists the parasol and a wand comes out of the handle, which she waves. A moment later she disappears—her image shattering into a thousand pieces like glass.

“No! Not the loot!” Ruby bemoaned the loss.

Weiss’ brow furrowed and she flipped through the Player’s Handbook. “Did she say anything? Did I recognize the spell?”

“She didn’t say anything, just waved the wand and disappeared.”

“But illusion spells require a verbal component, don’t they?” She had stopped in the Feats chapter and was studying the rules on how to cast a silent spell.

“Illusion spells do, but who said it was an illusion spell?” Velvet asked, ear twitching again. “Yang? Your turn.”

Blake leaned over to Weiss. “How do you even know that? Didn’t I tell you not to memorize the handbook?” she teased.

“I didn’t read it cover-to-cover,” Weiss sniffed. “I was just very thorough in reading the relevant parts.”

There were still two low-level grunts in the immediate vicinity—and another group no more than two rounds away.

No longer threatened, Ember scrambles to her feet, then moves around to help Rose flank one of the remaining grunts.

The one between them swings with all his might at Rose, but barely gets through her chainmail, leaving little more than a scratch along her side. The other closes distance on Shroud, who dodges his clumsy blow.

Rose, muttering under her breath about not needing the help from Ember, easily slices through the grunt’s armor, felling him with a second solid hit from her scythe.

Engrossed in a spell description, Weiss didn’t notice it was her turn until Blake nudged her. “I’m going to cast Glitterdust.”

“Glitterdust?” Yang asked as Weiss leaned over the table to point on the map where she wanted to aim her spell: right in the middle of the newest batch of White Fang combatants.

“It’ll outline any invisible creatures in the area. I figure our short friend can’t be much further than here, based on movement speeds for medium creatures.”

“Did you account for a speed bonus if she’s a barbarian?” Ruby seemed doggedly determined to pin that particular class on the elf.

“I can’t account for every possibility—it only has a ten foot radius. I’m thinking that Blake’s assessment is more likely since she seemed to use a wand.” She looked up at Velvet. “The spell’s got a Will save against blindness as well as a massive hide penalty.”

Blake shuddered. “Keep it away from me!”

Velvet nodded, picking up her dice. “DC?”

“16.”

A golden orb speeds towards its destination, exploding some distance down the tunnel, covering everything in a ten-foot radius in a fine mist of gold light that clings to anything it touches. Two of the grunts stumble back, scrubbing at their masks in a futile effort to restore their sight.

Weiss looked up at Velvet expectantly.

“Sorry, Weiss, nothing new.”

She slumped back into her seat.

“That was a really good idea,” Blake reassured her.

“I hope she comes back; I want what she was carrying,” Ruby muttered.

Yang reached across the table and snagged Rose’s character sheet. “You probably can’t even use it!”

“I have ranks in Use Magic Device!” She tried—and failed—to reach the paper. “Yaaang, give it back!”

Yang passed the sheet over with a roll of her eyes.

“Blake, your turn,” Velvet said, shaking her head at their antics.

Shroud gives the sparkly grunts a sidelong glance, opting to let them come to the party rather than moving out to meet them. She focuses, instead, on the remaining grunt in front of her. Having been injured once already by Myrtle, he was easy enough to take down with her kusari-gama. She hesitates a moment, then moves forward in preparation of the next fight, the other three following shortly after.

The sound of heavy footsteps grows louder, signaling the White Fang lieutenant’s approach. He towers over even the tallest of the grunts fanned out behind him. Though menacing in stature, the effect is greatly lessened by the soft, shimmering gold sparkles that cling to every inch of uniform and skin. He raises his chainsaw and fires it up, but the ominous whirring noise is punctuated by the occasional splutter as motes of iridescent powder shoot out from the spinning teeth. “Finally, I get to kill a Schnee...”

Ruby raised an eyebrow. “Is... is that Yatsu’s voice?”

The groan from the couches confirmed that it was.

“And why am I being dragged into this?” Weiss added indignantly.

“’Cause you covered him in glitter?” snickered Yang.

The DM squeaked in startlement as she frantically flipped back and forth between several sheets of notes. “Bloody hell, I’m sorry, I’ve got the wrong dialogue for this scene. This is from... uh, a White Fang versus SDC storyline...” Velvet trailed off as she shrank under Blake’s withering look.

“It’s okay, I know the SDC is a boogeyman for faunus everywhere.” Weiss managed a small smile before bringing them back to the issue at hand. “But that doesn’t explain why Yatsuhashi’s an evil henchman.”

Blake broke from her attempts to set Velvet on fire with her eyes and cracked a smile. “It’s a pretty good story.”

Yang was grinning in anticipation. “I wanna hear!”

This time, Velvet’s groan matched Yatsuhashi’s.

“Velvs was having a hard time reaching equipment on a high shelf in the lab and Yatsu had tried to help by picking her up. She struggled, he dropped her—accidentally copping a feel in the process, and she was offended about the entire affair. He ended up taking her out to lunch to apologize, and they started dating soon thereafter.” Blake smiled at the memory. “They’ve been together since, but she trots out the ‘Banesaw’ character frequently as a running joke.”

Yang’s expression was nearly beatific as Blake wrapped up the story. “So you’re telling me that Yatsu picked Velvs up and then picked her up?” Blond eyebrows waggled salaciously. A jelly bean and three popcorn kernels flew at Yang in response. She managed to catch the candy in her mouth and deflected the rest with her mechanical hand. “Thanks guys!”

“So, same initiative order for the party as the previous encounter,” Velvet began briskly, trying to steer the conversation back to the game as she rolled for the incoming combatants. “Blake, Yang, and Ruby have already gone this round, so the grunts, Weiss, and then Banesaw are up next.”

The blinded grunts do little more than make a nuisance of themselves. Even their comrades are careful to step away from their flailing weapons before making attacks on the adventurers. Two of the grunts connect with their sword swings against Ember and Rose, and the third’s arrow finds its mark in Myrtle. The fourth growls as his spear hits nothing but empty space where Shroud once was. The wizard takes the opportunity to send a pair of fiery rays at him, scorching cloth and skin alike.

Banesaw advances on Myrtle, driving her into a corner. In such close proximity, the wizard cannot cast spells without provoking an attack of opportunity so she turns to the only option she has: her quarterstaff. She deals piddling damage but manages to knock a bit of glitter off his shoulder. He merely laughs at the blow but frowns as he spots the cloud of gold sparkles floating off his uniform. With a roar, Banesaw grabs Myrtle by the face and slams her bodily into the rocky floor and succeeds in pinning her to the ground.

The DM smirked a little as she tipped the white token onto its side.

Weiss glanced up from the handbook in her lap with a look of consternation. “I have, like, negative strength. There’s no way I can unpin myself...”

Velvet’s smirk only intensified.

“Hrmph mrg?” the wizard calls out, but the plaintive plea is stifled by the giant hand over her mouth and most of her face. She settles for waving her arms.

Somehow her companions manage to understand her muffled cries and thrashing limbs. Myrtle is unable to see the attacks, but the sounds of a chain wrapping around her assailant and fists connecting solidly with flesh are unmistakable. The whistle of a massive blade sounds through the air and—finally!—the hand pinning her lets go, leaving her free to pick herself up.

Shroud is standing to one side, frowning at the faint clouds of glitter swirling around the retreating Banesaw as she unconsciously scrubs her hand against her own tunic. “Does this stuff go away?”

Myrtle grins to herself. “It will once you kill him!”

“Consider it done!”

With a slew of attacks that defy physics, Shroud lands several crippling hits against the White Fang lieutenant. An uppercut from Ember catches him in the stomach and a mighty headbutt connects with his chin with a sickening crunch. His giant form falls to the ground, neck twisted at an unnatural angle. “Kill steal!” Shroud grumbles.

Ember merely shrugs. “Did you want him down or not?”

Shroud prods at the body, still faintly shimmering with gold iridescence. “Isn’t this supposed to disappear once he’s—”

“Did you just manipulate me into killing Banesaw?” Blake hissed at Weiss, but only received a grin in reply.

The white-suited, orange-haired elf appears in a huff at the far end of the tunnel, taking in the situation with a sweeping glance. He looks angry, but not all that surprised, cursing loudly in an Elvish tongue. With a visible effort he clears the irritation from his face and turns towards the adventurers. “Not so pleased to make your acquaintance,” he says with a bow as he doffs his hat, “I’m Torchwick, head of the... joint business venture here.” Despite the chaos around him, he keeps his tone suave and self-assured, as if he’s introducing himself at a cocktail party.

“Nice to meet you, too, Captain Exposition,” replied Yang, teasingly.

Velvet bristled. “Listen here, we’ve got eighteen pages of character background to get through, so the less time you waste interrupting me, the better.”

“Pff, nice try.” Her eyes narrowed. “What’s his favorite scotch?”

“Mr. Torchwick is more a bourbon man, but if pressed, he prefers a Laphroaig single malt, 30-year-old, of course,” Velvet answered without missing a beat.

Yang let out a defeated huff. “You win this round.”

He rapidly barks commands to several of the grunts still in the melee, evidently no stranger to violence. “Take care of these kids. I have to find Neo.”

“We need to stop him!” Rose shouts.

“But we can’t just go after him with these mobs still attacking us!” Ember grunts as she weathers a glancing blow from a mace.

The adventurers turn to look at Myrtle. “Got any area-of-effect spells?” asks Rose, casually parrying a sword swing with the haft of her scythe.

The wizard winces as an arrow nicks her leg. “I’m running low on higher level spell slots, and it looks like we’ve got at least one more fight ahead of us...”

Rose’s gaze alights on the Dust crates stacked along the tunnel wall. “I’ve got an idea...”

Shroud follows Rose’s line of sight and picks up on the plan immediately. She runs one end of the fuse along the back of the boxes. Upending an open crate, she dumps the contents between the wall and the rest of the stack, over the cord. She unwinds the rest of the coil, backing away from the pile of Dust as she does before striking a tindertwig on the rough rock floor and lighting the makeshift incendiary.

Velvet stared pointedly at Blake, the faint drumming of fingers audible from behind the DM’s screen.

“What?”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to firebomb anything.”

Blake’s lips were pressed into a thin line as she fished for a response. “You’re not wrong,” she admitted reluctantly, “but this was Ruby’s idea. Now did I roll well enough for this to work?”

A sharp explosion tears through the mine shaft, followed by the rumbling of falling rocks and faint patter of debris. The large gout of flame takes out the final White Fang grunts, but Torchwick is outside the blast radius and remains unaffected. He wastes no time and runs towards the center of the chaos, away from the adventurers, and disappears. When the smoke clears, a new passage is visible. Those closest to the entrance, and Shroud, can see that the floor of the tunnel slopes upwards, and a faint light is visible in the distance.

Rose lags behind the group as they make their way through the gap.

“Rose!” Ember shouts when she notices.

“But he had a chainsaw!” she whines, though she picks up the pace, regardless, to join the rest of the party.

Racing forward towards the sounds of machinery, the adventurers struggle to adjust to the brightness of natural light as as they peer out from the bowels of the mine into the sprawling open air cavern. Towards the mouth of the cave is a massive airship, larger than any vessel commonly used for transport. It is tethered loosely by several ropes.

Sweeping aside the tokens on the map, Velvet unrolled a large, laminated grid onto the table, the markered-in lines depicting a “room” vastly larger than the close quarters of the mines they had all gotten used to. The DM hurriedly placed down a dozen-odd tokens and markers indicating the positions of various people and items of interest, but the airship itself was large enough to be represented by a second gridded diagram layered atop the first.

“Make a Spot check.”

“11.”

“14.”

“8.”

There was a smattering of mockery for the scout of the party rolling so poorly, but it was silenced with a scowl.

“19!”

Velvet nodded approvingly.

The distinct orange hair and black hat of Torchwick is visible beyond the glare of the setting sun, gesturing with a cane towards the tethers. Several grunts, cowed by his shrieks of fury, scuttle off to do his bidding. Torchwick storms up the airship’s ramp in a huff.

“Does it look like the airship is ready to take off?” asked Blake.

Velvet nodded. “Although still tethered down, the airship is clearly being prepared for departure. The ramp is being stowed—it could take off at any minute.” She consulted her notes. “From your position, you’re just under 200 feet away.”

Shroud hunched low, keeping her body pressed against the cavern’s rock. “We should try to sneak aboard,” she murmurs. “There doesn’t seem to be too many guards, so if we stick to the shadows, we should be able to make it to the underbelly without being spotted.”

Ember snorts at that. “Why bother? Thing doesn’t look so tough. If we hit it with everything we’ve got we could probably cripple it right here.”

“Wait, are we supposed to get onto the airship or destroy it?” asked Weiss, turning to Velvet. The DM shrugged unhelpfully.

“We definitely need to get someone on that airship, before it’s too late,” whispers Rose. “I propose me.”

Weiss didn’t miss the way Blake, Yang, and Velvet all rolled their eyes, with varying degrees of discretion.

“There’s not a lot of cover,” murmurs Shroud. “And you’re not exactly stealthy. I don’t know if you can make it without being spotted and attacked.”

“That’s why you guys are going to create a distraction for me,” Rose hurriedly explains, her tone suggesting the debate is already over. “Myrtle and Shroud, you two hang back and pin them down with ranged attacks. Ember, you’ll move to those crates there—try to keep their attention occupied.”

Ember blinks, stupefied at how Rose is trying to rope everyone into her ridiculous scheme.

“With the mooks focusing on you guys, I’ll move in a wide arc along the cavern wall like so...” Ruby gestured to the grid, tracing a finger along the closest line on the map.

“What happens to those of us who stay behind?” asks Myrtle.

Rose shrugs. “Then I turn around and create a distraction for the rest of you to get aboard. Shouldn’t be hard if it looks like we’re flanking them. Or you could find some other way to follow me.”

“That’s splitting the party!” hisses Ember.

“You can see several of the guylines being untied. The airship is already being buffeted slightly by the wind, it looks ready to sail at the drop of a hat.”

“And what if we get stuck down—”

“Only a single rope keeps the airship tethered to the ground at this point.” Velvet moved several tokens on the map around, towards the final guyline. “The grunts are beginning to relax again, now that their job is almost done.”

“We’re not going to have time to board it,” growls Shroud. “Does anyone see any other way we could follow—”

“I can make it!” Rose insists. “Using Haste,” she pulls a red bottle off her belt and waves it meaningfully, “I can sprint there in less than six seconds,” she explains as she uncorks and chugs the potion.

“Ruby, don’t!” Yang pleaded, but her sister was already sliding her avatar across the map.

Rose zooms towards the airship, moving at three times the speed of a normal human. Velvet rolled a few dice behind her screen. The White Fang mercenaries are immediately alerted to her presence and raise their weapons menacingly. One raises the alarm.

“Dust!” Ember swears. “You two, try to suppress the grunts by the final rope, keep them from untethering.” She balls her fist. “She’s not getting away that easily.”

“Torchwick is a male dark elf, Yang,” reminded Velvet, slightly puzzled. She thought this had been established already.

“I meant my sister,” growled Yang in reply. She jabbed a finger angrily in Ruby’s direction. “Never. Split. The. Party.”

The clatter of dice filled the air.

Myrtle casts Color Spray in the direction of the two grunts nearest the tether and they stumble around dazed as a garish rainbow floods their vision.

Gasping for breath, Rose makes it to the airship, fingers curling around the rope netting the balloon.

Ember comes to within sixty feet of the base of the ropes, running at full-tilt directly towards the ship, but Rose is already clambering across the netting, making her way towards the starboard entrance.

Shroud looses a bolt, striking one of the dazed White Fang guards. He’s gravely injured but still standing.

Apparently sensing Ember’s plan, one of the grunts turns his back to the fight and sprints for the last rope keeping the airship in place. His sword is drawn, and there is no mistaking his intent to cleanly slice through the rope.

“M, freeze him!” Ember calls over the chaos.

Myrtle panics, casting the only thing that came to mind. “Ray of Frost!” she shouts, as a faint blue ray pings off the grunt’s armor, having about as much effect as a hastily thrown ice cube.

Ember shoots Myrtle an incredulous look. “What was that?!”

“It’s the only ice spell I have!”

Ember continues sprinting towards the airship, but she can’t hope to close the distance in time. “I’m not going to make it! Just stop that damn grunt however you can!”

Furrowing her brow, Myrtle’s fingers move in a blur of motion, the wizard muttering quietly as she prepares to cast Fireball—

Velvet interrupted. “There’s some half-finished constructions in the way and the engines and wind are kicking up a great deal of flying debris. You’ll need to roll to hit: DC 15 and add your dex bonus and attack bonus. Do you still want to do it?”

The wizard narrows her eyes in determination and completes the incantation. A moment later a brilliant red beam streaks out from between her fingers, sizzling through the air as it is launched in the direction of the moving grunt. But she can only watch in horror as the ship bucks in a gust of wind and the guyline goes slack, putting it directly in the line of fire. The Fireball blossoms to life prematurely, catching the running grunt—as well as his two comrades—by surprise in the periphery of the flaming sphere, felling all three immediately. It also incinerates the rope he was so desperately trying to sever and scorches a large section of the hull as the airship lurches forward, no longer held down by its moorings. Bone-chilling screeches fill the air.

Velvet slid the diagrammed airship towards the edge of the cavern.

“Guys?” Rose glances over her shoulder. She sees the other members of her party growing more distant with each passing second.

Running at a dead sprint, Ember nevertheless loses ground to the departing airship. Barring a miracle, she will never catch it before it clears the cavern’s entrance.

Shroud hisses something under her breath and fires her crossbow at the last remaining White Fang grunt. He falls to the ground a moment later, a bolt protruding from his throat.

“Guys!”

The airship clears the cavern, passing over the edge of a cliff. It is soon drifting over the forest, following the winding river below. The rest of the engines kick in a moment later and it lurches forward towards an unknown destination.

“Were we supposed to be on that?” Weiss asked the DM for the second time.

Velvet said nothing, and this time nobody missed the way her ear twitched.