Chapter Text
Ruby awoke in a forest. Her last memories were that of her falling into an abyss between time and space, failure being her only feeling as she waited for the cold embrace of death. As she got up, she gazed her eyes across her new environment.
It was night in the forest with the woodlands reminding her of her home, the island of Patch, yet something in her soul tugged at her that something was wrong. Something was off about this the forest. Despite that feeling, she pushed the thought aside, thinking it nothing more than paranoia caused by fear. Noticing her weapon, Crescent Rose, was gone, the huntress panicked before spotting the oversized weapon stuck in the bark of a large tree. She walked over towards the tree to pull the scythe out, but before she could, she heard a voice scream out into the night. Quickly, she grabbed the scythe out of the tree and used her semblance to transform into a cloud of rose petals, traveling through the forest with lightning speed. As she got closer, she began hearing the sounds of a rabid beast.
A Grimm, she thought at first.
She reached a clearing and spotted a small child, no more than seven years of age, covered in dirt, wearing a ragged outfit. Ruby reformed her body with scythe in hand, ready to fight whatever abomination of Salem greeted her, but instead she found herself facing something even worse. Something worse than the creatures of Grimm.
It was a massive beast, its head that of a cat and wolf combined with multiple eyes across its ugly face, within its mouth were two snapping tongues. The thing’s claws were massive, the size of her arms, that looked like they could rip apart a paladin with ease. However, the worst thing that caught Ruby’s attention was the smell. It smelled… wrong, tainted. Whatever afflicted it didn’t belong in this reality. It was worse than any Grimm she fought and could feel the sadistic joy it got out of killing. Her hands quivered in fear for a second before tightening around the haft of her weapon as she readied to face whatever this… thing was.
“Run!” a booming voice shouted to them.
They turned their heads and were greeted by a black armored giant whose armor resembled that of a knight. He wore a weird backpack, and on his chest plate was a downwards winged blade.
What kingdom is he from, she thought.
The child listening to the giant ran into the forest while the stranger in black raised two blocky pistols at the monster’s face. The warrior shot at the beast with a precision she had not even seen in the disciplined soldiers of Atlas or even their robots. Each trigger pull was a loud bang before the bullet exploded on the beast’s flesh. Howling in pain, the monster turned its attention away from her to the black knight and charged him. For a moment she contemplated running into the woods like the child but decided against that. In a cloud of petals, she zipped towards the creature and slashed at the creature’s right foot, her momentum being enough to cut through the wretched thing’s bone. It roared in pain, allowing the black knight to unload his twin pistols into the thing’s dreaded face. Pulping its brains and turning its head into little more than a lump of disfigured flesh, the beast slumped down dead.
Satisfied that the monster was dead, the black knight reloaded his pistols, switching magazines in that cold, calculating efficiency she took notice of earlier. They then walked towards her, and Ruby noticed how the giant’s hands seemed to twitch momentarily as if it was thinking if it should shoot her or not. Standing in front of her, the armored giant looked down at Ruby, his red eye lenses meeting her eyes.
“Thank you for your assistance, even if it was unneeded,” he spoke, his voice loud through his helmet’s speaker. With Ruby not being able to place the odd accent he spoke in anywhere on Remnant.
“It’s my job as a huntsman to defend the innocent. I only did my duty,” she replied meekly, unnerved by a weird sense of dread that washed over her. “What’s your name, mister giant man?” she asked, her voice filled with nervousness towards the black knight.
“I am known as Zabriel of the First Legion,” he replied.
What in the brothers was the First Legion? Ruby thought to herself as she smiled to hide her confusion.
“Ruby Rose, uh… huntsman of Vale,” she returned in kind.
“You are not from Camarth?” Zabriel suddenly asked, causing Ruby to have a puzzled face wondering what he meant by that and what Camarth was. It didn’t sound like anywhere in the four kingdoms, let alone Remnant.
“What’s Camarth and what kingdom is that?” she asked to see if she could get an answer from Zabriel. While she couldn’t see his face, Ruby could notice the confused look he was giving her.
“Camarth is the world that you and I find ourselves on,” Zabriel replied. “Has humanity’s realm devolved to where its own citizenry don’t even know when they find themselves off-world?” He asked more directed to himself than Ruby.
That couldn’t be right, humans on other planets? That couldn’t be possible unless… Remnant wasn’t man’s original home, but she had seen man’s creation by the Brother gods. It didn’t make any sense! The more she learned of this new land, the more it sounded like a terrible sci-fi B movie from Vale she and her team would watch on the weekends.
“Did you say ‘off-world’ as in planet?” she asked, her eyes widening in shock.
“Yes, what of it?” Zabriel replied as if it were common knowledge.
Panicking at what he just told her, Ruby used her semblance to scale the treeline until she could see the night sky. But when she looked out at the sky and searched for the white glow of Remnant’s shattered moon, the only thing that greeted her eyes was a massive gash that caused her eyes to reel in pain. She lost her balance as she gripped her eyes and fell to the forest floor breaking her aura on tree branches before landing in the cold, armored hands of Zabriel as he caught her.
“What is that?” she cried.
“What do you speak of?”
“The sky, what is… that in the sky!” she screamed before falling unconscious.
***
Ruby woke up and found herself in a tent on the grassy floor of the forest she now found herself in. Her eyes still seared with pain, and she rubbed them. Looking at her side, she was relieved to find Crescent Rose next to her and picked up her weapon, setting it on her waist before weakly getting up. She walked out of the tent and found it was midday, with her being greeted by a campsite of dozens of people at work in somber silence, all giving her an uneasy look as she walked past them, with some looking like she had kicked their dog. When she spotted the child from earlier, she waved a hand at them, but instead of greeting her with a smile, they just stared at her before running off somewhere else in the camp.
“You are awake,” the familiar voice of Zabriel said. When she turned around, she found the giant with his helmet off, surprised that he was human. His face was that of someone who appeared to be in their late forties to early fifties suffering from gigantism, with his black hair peppered with gray. He stared down at her with blue eyes while his skin was a rough bronze-brown.
“Did you think I was some mere automaton girl?” he asked with a hint of humor, taking notice of her staring.
“What no… of course not… it’s just…”
“How can something so giant and methodical be that of a man?” he finished, causing Ruby to giggle a bit in embarrassment. “Come, we have much to discuss. I have my questions, and you have yours.” He gestured to a tent across the campsite, Ruby attempted to keep up with Zabriel, finding it difficult as he strode towards his tent. When she entered the tent, she found it scarce with very little in decoration, only seeing his massive pistols neatly arranged on black and red cloth. Hypnotized by the strange weapons, a grunt from Zabriel would break her trance, finding him sitting down in the middle of the tent with the giant gesturing for her to do the same. She sat down in a similar position to Zabriel and smiled awkwardly as he stared at her for a few long seconds before speaking.
“I have served since the times of Unification, when the symbol of the Imperium was merely the eagle and lightning bolt, and have seen many wondrous and terrible things this galaxy has had to offer. I have fought all manner of aliens and human empires and helped in the compliance of hundreds of worlds, but you, Ruby Rose, are the strangest thing this galaxy has shown me thus far.”
“And why would that be?” she asked, perplexed by many things in his statement.
“You are a relic of an era I thought long gone, you are a psyker yet no nothing of the Great Rift which has torn the galaxy in two, you speak a dialect of Low Gothic long dead, and no nothing of the Imperium of Man.”
“Psyker? Low Gothic? Imperium of what?” she asked, confused as she felt her mind was about to explode from the information overload.
“Tell me how did you end up on Camarth?” he asked, ignoring her previous statement.
And so that’s what she did with a deep, breath she recounted her tale. She told Zabriel of Remnant, of the witch queen Salem, the creatures of Grimm. S, the fall of Atlas, and how aura and semblance worked. All the while he remained silent, listening to her story, only interrupting to ask the occasional question.
“Fascinating,” he replied when she finished her tale. “Your world, this planet of Remnant, reminds me of Caliban before the Imperium came.”
“You keep mentioning the Imperium. What is it?” Ruby asked with curiosity on her face.
“It was mankind’s greatest empire in the aftermath of Old Night. It was a realm that sought to reunite the lost tribes of man under one banner and bring about a new golden age of understanding and science,” he explained. “Now… now it is but a backwards rump state ruled by decadence, tyranny, and blind zealotry for the corpse of a man who didn’t want to be a god.” His words bitter and filled with contempt.
“What happened to it?”
“Betrayal of the foulest order,” he replied venomously. ”At our height, our greatest military leader—Horus Lupercal—betrayed us. Fell powers from beyond corrupted him, and with his treachery, eight of his brothers joined him in damnation and waged war against the Imperium. The war only ended when in the skies of Terra when the Emperor slew him at the cost of his own life. Since that day he has been entombed on Terra, immobile and unable to govern his realm, that was ten thousand years ago.”
“Ten thousand years?” Ruby repeated in surprise. ”Just how old are you?” she then asked. Zabriel in response chuckled, unnerving her, seeing it as unnatural coming from the giant.
”I am merely only a few centuries old, not ten thousand. My current circumstances are due to an incident I do not wish to discuss at this moment,” he replied.
“Still, how have you lived so long?” she asked.
“Come now, I thought you were more intelligent isn’t it clear I am not what you would call the standard mold of a human being?” he asked.
“I didn’t want to be rude,” she whispered, ignorant that Zabriel heard her, causing the giant to give her a warm smile.
“You mortals are an interesting bunch I have learned. To answer your original question, I am an Astartes, a genetically engineered warrior made for the purpose of conquering the stars in the name of the Imperium. Thousands strong, our legions marched and freed countless worlds from the vile tyranny of the alien. I was in fact one of the originals created by Him during the Wars of Unification, one of the ‘Uncrowned Princes’ we were called.”
Despite her fascination with his tale, Ruby couldn’t help notice the venom Zabriel placed on the term ‘alien’, she didn’t like that it reminded her too much of the many racists she had met across Remnant who despised the Faunas.
“You mentioned that I was a psyker earlier when talking about the… Great Rift earlier what did you mean by, that Zabriel.”
“Ah, now we discuss the Calibanite lion in the room.”
Ruby looked at him with a confused look. “You mean the goliath in the room?” Ruby said, not getting the old Astarte’s euphemism.
“Yes, forgive me I spent the latter days of the Great Crusade on Caliban, could say I went a bit native.” He smiled. “To get back on topic, you and the rest of the populace of your world are what those of the Imperium call a psyker. One born with the ability to control the energies of the warp, a parallel dimension to our reality where thought is made real, many liken it to magic, at least most in this current age of ignorance.”
“Are most people not psykers?” She asked, confused, as it went against everything Remnant knew of the human soul and aura.
“Yes, most humans are not psykers, thankfully. If that were the case, humanity would’ve gone extinct long ago.”
“You make out being a psyker as a bad thing, Zabriel, shouldn’t they be proud of their gifts?” the girl asked the Space Marine.
“Psykers are conduits for the warp; those not trained on how to control their powers will become nexus points for the Neverborn. Too many worlds were lost during Old Night because their planetary populations did not keep their psykers in check either with purges or the correct training. Even in the Imperium, the witch is still hated, rightfully in my eyes,” Zabriel explained. Ruby’s anger flared as Zabriel waved off what practically sounded like genocide as justifiable in front of her.
“Does that apply to me?” Ruby asked with a hint of her anger apparent in her voice, ready to fight the transhuman if she had to.
“That remains to be seen,” he said, his voice still flat, either not noticing or caring about Ruby’s anger from his previous comments. “But so far I would say your psychic discipline is strong. I’ve only ever seen such mental fortitude in the Thousand Sons—most mortal psykers at your level would’ve had their heads explode or be gibbering like madmen.”
“Oh,” she replied sheepishly, her anger evaporating as she began wondering if her head would explode at any minute.
“You… said you were part of an army, Zabriel. Where is the rest of it? Do they have a ship off-world?” she asked, seeing if there was any way to get back to Remnant from what he described in his tales.
“The only other Astartes on this Throne-forsaken world are the Bastards, as the locals like to call them, and the corpses of the Ruby Crescents that garrisoned this planet,” he replied curtly. She turned her head down in disappointment and frowned, realizing she was stuck on Camarth.
“Tell me, Huntress Rose, you said earlier when we met in the forest that your duty was to the innocent?” Zabriel asked.
“Yah, what about that?”
“While I cannot offer you harbor off this world, I would ask for your help. The people of Camarth have been hunted by the warp mutated beasts or the foul Ten Thousand Eyes since the Rift opened I have made it my duty to defend what survivors I come across as best I can, will you assist me in this endeavor?” he asked, raising his gauntlet towards her.
“Of course, I wouldn’t be a huntress if I didn’t,” she replied with a smile, grasping the cold ceramite of his gauntlet. Whatever it takes, I will get back home, she thought before the two stood up and went about their duty to defend the people of Camarth.