RWBY: LUCID

Jaune found the mist-thing exactly where he suspected it would be.

It hovered off near the tracks, a good twenty meters away from the main platform. A dense, gray-black cloud of it—shifting and undulating. It was a contradiction that unsettled him. Its surface writhed like it was alive, pulsing softly like breath through dying lungs. A feeling of coldness radiated from it, even from this distance. Jaune stood at the edge of the platform and stared down at it.

"This has to be the one," he muttered to himself, voice low.

He didn't need confirmation. The sense of wrongness in the air, the subtle pressure behind his eyes—he remembered it all too well. It was the same unnatural chill he felt yesterday, back in Ansel.

He hadn't noticed the mist, the first time he was here, too focused on escaping the pack that was hunting him.

His grip tightened on the hilt of his sword. "You again…"

He circled slowly around the platform edge, keeping a wide berth from the mist zone. No telling what would happen if he touched it. Raymond Red had called it a "Nightmare." Whatever the hell that meant. Something important, no doubt and most definitely, something dangerous.

But Jaune didn't understand its rules.

Was it literally a nightmare? A manifestation of fear or trauma? Or something more like a portal—an infection in the world that let these creatures through?

He frowned, dragging a breath through his nose and letting it out slowly.

"You think too much," he muttered to himself.

But it was hard not to. Standing here again, he couldn't help but remember that fight—the bear-like creature that had charged him like a tank and forced him to think on instinct alone. An Ursa, that's what it was called. The name came to him unbidden, from the system. He could still hear its roar, still see its fractured skull-mask and still feel the echo of its weight in the bones of his arms.

And afterward… Raymond. And the man with the mask.

Jaune clenched his jaw.

He pushed the thoughts away, almost angrily. They'd wormed their way in too deep. Ever since yesterday night, they were always close behind, just waiting to be remembered. And maybe part of him wanted to think about it. Wanted to replay what happened, try to piece it together. Try to understand.

But that was the wrong move here. He couldn't afford to sit in his own head right now. Not in this world. Not in the middle of a dangerous situation.

He needed to focus. Stay sharp.

He didn't need to get sentimental in a dream built to kill him.

He crouched by a rusted bench, half-sunk into the tile and waited.

The mist pulsed again, a soft lurch that made his stomach turn. He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. His body was tense and coiled. He wasn't going to be caught off guard, this time.

Soon, what felt like ten minutes passed and then, finally—it happened.

The mist rippled, like a pebble tossed into water. And from its center, something was spat out.

It began as a black mass, like spilled ink. Amorphous and featureless. Then it writhed and twisted in midair, and shapes began to emerge. Limbs, a head, then, a tail. No two parts formed in the same way—it was as if it didn't quite know what it was becoming, until it finished.

The thing landed on the ground with a wet, crunching sound. And Jaune's eyes widened slightly.

It wasn't anything he'd seen before.

Its body was lean and low to the ground, covered in the familiar pitch-black skin of the other Dream Creatures—but with no forelimbs, only long, reverse-jointed hind legs tipped in twin claws like curved knives. A heavy tail curled behind it, twitching with uncanny rhythm. Its body was plated in pale, jagged bone across its back and head, almost like armor. And its face—if you could call it that—was dominated by a narrow snout filled with needle-like teeth. No visible eyes. No nose. Just a breathing slit and an empty ridge of bone where a forehead might have been.

It was shaped almost like a raptor that didn't have arms, Jaune realized. But warped. As if it had been described by someone who only had a dream of a dinosaur to go on.

The creature let out a sound—a shriek that hit Jaune's ears like glass grinding against steel. Somewhere between a lion's roar and a hawk's cry. High and broken.

Jaune grimaced. "That's new."

The creature twisted in place, its body moving with an insect's twitchy agility. It sniffed—or at least mimicked the act—and then turned in his direction.

Of course.

Jaune stood slowly from behind the bench. His fingers flexed once against the leather grip of his sword.

"Alright," he muttered. "Let's see what you've got."

This wasn't like the Beowolves. Or the Boarbatusk. It didn't follow a pattern he recognized, didn't move like something that used to be alive. It was alien. Unreadable.

Which meant it was probably much more dangerous than any of the others.

He lowered into a loose fighting stance, making sure his knees were bent and his weight was balanced.

And as the creature began to stalk forward, twitching like a puppet with too many strings, Jaune couldn't help but think again about the name the masked man had used.

"Creatures of Grimm, huh?"

The words felt heavy in his mind.

Grimm. Like fairy tale monsters. But no fairy tale he'd ever heard had things like this. And still, that name clung to the back of his tongue like something sour.

Whatever these things were, dream creatures or otherwise… they had names. Names that the nightmare system had apparently designated and further classified by humans. And if something had a name, it had a history.

Someone out there knew more.

But right now? That didn't matter.

The raptor-thing lunged—and Jaune moved to meet it.

There was a rhythm to his movements now.

The strange raptor-like beast snapped again with those jagged teeth, but Jaune had already stepped aside. Its strike bit into the empty air where his ribs had been, and its momentum carried it just past him. Not enough for a full opening, but enough to see it now, clear and center: the way it overcommitted. The way its weight didn't follow through properly.

Its body was fast, yes—but not smart.

He kept moving, steps mores sure and measured than they were previously. His sword trailed behind him as he shifted his grip.

The beast turned with a shriek, tail swishing erratically—though that was part of the problem, wasn't it? It had acceleration without proper angles. Like it didn't understand what its own body was for.

The thing lunged again, lower this time, trying to clip Jaune's legs.

He pivoted on his heel and raised a boot.

The kick landed clean under its jaw with a sickening crack, snapping its head back and throwing it off balance. The creature collapsed onto its side with a shrill bark of pain, its tail flailing behind it. Without pause, Jaune followed through—his blade hissed through the air and came down fast onto it.

Schhlick.

The sword bit deep into the appendage, severing muscle and bone with a jolt that ran up his arms. The beast screamed, a keening, hollow noise that echoed through the broken station.

It twisted, snapping blindly at him, but Jaune stepped back in time.

Blood—or whatever black, tar-like substance passed for blood in these things—splattered across the ground. The creature shuddered, its long hind legs twitching erratically, like it had just lost its center of gravity.

Its attacks only got worse after that.

It charged again, but this time with all the precision of a drunk, skidding as it turned too fast, overshooting its own momentum. Jaune sidestepped with ease, watching the way its head tried to track him.

"Lost your balance without a tail, huh?" he spoke to it, almost taunting.

He drew the metal bat from his back with a metallic clink.

He hadn't dual-wielded since the fight against the Ursa. Not properly, anyway. But this thing wasn't as dangerous. Not anymore, at least. Its strength had waned and its movements were unrefined. Its single-minded rage made it clumsy.

Jaune exhaled a slow breath, readying himself.

If he could take anything from this strange world, it was this moment.

He pressed forward, sword in one hand, bat in the other, and began experimenting. Slashes from the right, parried with bat-strikes from the left. Short cross-cuts followed by blunt-force corrections. He remembered the advice Grise had given him—how to use the blade's edge without overextending, how to find rhythm even when it didn't exist.

One move at a time.

The beast came in low again. He slashed diagonally, missed intentionally, and followed up with a sharp blow to the creature's shoulder, knocking it to the side. It was like sparring with a broken simulation. A half-made enemy.

But he was still learning.

He pivoted, shifted stances mid-motion, incorporated footwork into each strike. Sometimes he lost his balance, sometimes his blade snagged. But the creature was too slow now to punish his mistakes.

"Come on," he muttered. "Faster. Learn faster."

The beast shrieked and lunged again, legs folding oddly as it threw its body weight into a full-body charge. Jaune stepped into the arc of motion, catching its momentum with a well-placed shoulder, then brought the bat up under its chin in a sharp uppercut. The beast fell, limbs sprawling in a pile of ash-black fur and bone.

He could've ended it there.

But part of him didn't want to. Not yet. Not while he was still improving.

Every mistake he made was another lesson. Every correction etched deeper into his body. He moved more confidently with each pass, treating the creature not just as an opponent—but as a sparring partner. A temporary, unwilling teacher.

Fifteen minutes passed like water dripping through cracks in his mind.

He wasn't sweating. Not much, at least. But his limbs burned slightly from the strain. His shoulders ached. Still—he didn't feel tired.

Then something shifted.

From the corner of his eye, the mist twitched and shuddered again, more violently this time. Still undulating like it had a heartbeat.

Jaune's eyes narrowed. "Oh no."

Another one?

He glanced back at the crippled creature, which had just barely regained its footing. Still dazed, still moving wrong, but very much alive. If that mist was about to spawn another raptor-thing—or worse—he couldn't afford to drag this out any longer.

The creature lunged one final time.

Jaune dodged, planted his heel, and thrust his sword forward, straight into the soft spot between its shoulder blades. The hit wasn't deep—angle was wrong—but the creature let out a sharp gasp as it buckled.

Without hesitation, Jaune let go of the hilt, drew the bat back with both hands—

—and hammered it down onto the stuck blade's pommel.

The sword drove deeper with a metallic clang, the sound echoing over the screech of the beast. The impact forced the blade through cartilage and bone and into its heart—or whatever organ it had there.

The creature jerked once, legs spasming, then collapsed.

Black sludge leaked from its jaws.

Jaune stood over it, bat still raised, breath held for a long moment, beholding the chime from the system.

.

.

[Rank 0 Beast, Creep, slain.]

[Runes received: 10]

.

.

He exhaled, seeing its name.

"Creep huh? It seemed creepy enough, I guess?"

He straightened slowly, glanced at the mist again. It was still writhing, but nothing else had emerged yet. Still time.

He retrieved his sword from the beast's dissolving corpse with a wet shhk.

The fight wasn't bad.

Not perfect, but not bad.

He'd improved, slightly. He could feel it—in the way he moved and in the speed of his decisions.

Now...

What beast, would the mist thing throw at him, this time?

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AN: Chapter doesn't feel good. I might come back to re-edit this later on.