75: Princess by RavensDagger(RWBY x Worm)

Fic type: Crossover

This is a really good fic. Well the plot is basically Taylor wakes up with little to no memories and ends up getting adopted by Salem. The good thing about this novel is that everything is narrated in light-hearted tone which is sometimes bad but still a pretty good fic. Akellare(Taylor) is depicted well and it is Yuri by the way.

You don't necessarily need knowledge of Worm for this as only Taylor is here and has almost no memories. You can just think of her as a girl who can control Grimm insects.

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Princess

by RavensDagger

In which a girl's only memories are about how to escalate until everyone respects you, Queen Salem tries to deal with being a single mom, and all of Remnant develops an acute case of acarophobia.

A Worm/RWBY crossover

Link:https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/29807/princess

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Prologue

She was falling.

The pain hardly registered now, only the wind screaming past bloodstained hair.

Her eyes closed. She embraced death.

The impact blew whatever breath she held out of her lungs. Her back twisted, the shock making her flinch forwards. Then she sank.

The murky depths clawed at her face and she found herself with a second wind, a sudden burst of energy where moments before there was none. She fought, tried to swim, tried to move the one arm that felt sluggish, her legs which were weak.

"Help!" she called out. Her voice sounded wrong, too desperate, too young, too broken.

It didn't matter. The liquid slipped over her prone form and stuck to her. She was the fly caught in the spider's web.

Her last gasp ended with black sludge crawling into her mouth and down her throat.

Then the darkness rose around her and the last thing that Taylor Hebert, Skitter, Weaver, Khepri saw, was a sea of untainted stars, a jagged, broken moon, and two figures, one light and one dark, looking down at her.

***

Salem lifted her head from the tome sitting before her and looked off to the west. Through the stained glass of her library's windows, she could make out the moon hanging above, slowly tumbling towards the distant horizon as the night started to wane.

She stood, slowly and carefully, as she did all things, and looked across the room. Only a few seers were there to keep her company and most of those were sorting through the towering rows of books, keeping them dust free and clean in the dry air of the Spire.

"Come," she said, her voice so low as to be a whisper. From the darkness came two creatures, both as dark as the shadows in which they lived. When she started to walk they followed, slithering from one shadow to another in her wake.

She climbed down one of the spiral staircases of her home, each step slow and measured, her dress pooling by her ankles. When she reached the very bottom she paused. There was something in her domain, something in the air that felt... wrong.

"Find it," she ordered and two shadows slid past her and into the room. She followed after them, still taking her time, still moving at the same slow and measured pace of someone that had all the time in the world to do as she wanted.

The chamber was colossal, a cavern lit by a thousand grimmlamps that floated by the ceiling and mingled with the stalactites that hung like the teeth of a dead beast. The purple light they cast did little to push away the shadows.

A pool, unmoving and of a substance that allowed no light to escape, took up the bottom of the room's interior. A few Grimm moved out of the pool with the languorous motions of something coming awake for the first time. These she ignored.

Her shades were milling, spinning through the air above something that should not be.

Salem quickened her pace.

"Remove it," she said, dark eyes fixed upon the formless thing heaped on the edge of the shoreline.

Her grimm moved to obey, pulling the thing back and out of the pool of darkness. They left it a few feet from the edge, then moved back to where the dark could swallow them once more.

Salem came to a stop above the thing. She knelt, robes bunching around her as she folded herself over and looked with something approaching open curiosity at the thing which had invaded her domain. A hand, white as snow and lined with blackened veins, grabbed the edge of the thing and turned it over.

"How very interesting."

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She woke up, naked, in a bed.

Something told her that this was wrong, that she should get up and out of the bed, start searching for a weapon and call upon her swarm to defend herself. But when she started to move it was as though weights had been tied to her body, every motion making her heart thud faster in her chest and a wave of exhaustion washing over her.

So she called her swarm, the millions of creatures that should have been around her, waiting, willing to obey her because she was... because she was her.

A few hundred heeded her call. That was all, not the millions she expected. They were hers to control, yes, but they were also wrong, something tugging at them to continue what they were doing, even if that was just flying aimlessly in circles, constantly on the hunt for prey that wasn't there.

Her vision through their eyes was warped and confusing, a sea of jagged, stony outcrops bathed in purple light, patches of black oozing liquid that made her heart beat erratically when she focused on them and places where the ground itself was on fire.

Then she brought them around, her tiny swarm buzzing as they approached the only building in sight. It was a tower, a monolith of black stone that rose out of the ground like an accusing finger, daring the skies to protest its intrusion. Crimson light spilled out from open windows. It took only a moment for the smallest of her swarm to slip into the building and race down its many corridors.

She was lying with her eyes closed when the swarm found her room. They fluttered open and for the first time she saw the creatures she was controlling with her own eyes.

They were wasp-like, with a bulbous tail hiding an inch-long stinger and six knife-tipped feet that pressed into the blanket of her bed. Red and black wings beat at the air hard enough to make the whole room vibrate as they hovered above her.

She called one to her, the rest moving towards the walls and ceiling and floor, covering embroidered carpets and hardwood furniture that she had paid little mind to. It, the smallest of her swarm, landed gently by her side, the white bone over its face shifting as it tilted its head.

Slowly, with more effort that it was worth, she dragged her arm out from the cocoon of velvety blankets and laid a hand on the wasp's head. "What are you?" she asked.

"It is a lancer," a voice said from the entrance.

A woman stood there, tall and regal, clothed in black robes with fine red trim. She stepped into the room with little care for the creatures, the lancers, scuttling by her feet. She didn't need to, they moved out of her path of their own volition. "Lancer," she repeated while her thumb stroked the wasp's head.

The woman paused by the side of the bed and followed the path of the girl's arm to the lancer she was caressing. "Are you not afraid of it?"

"No," she said.

"And you can control it?" the woman asked. Red eyes locked onto hers, and although she felt no hostility from the woman, the gaze still made her want to shrink back into the bed.

"Yes," she replied truthfully. "It's a bug," she added.

One delicate eyebrow perked on the woman's head. "And not the others?"

"Others?" she asked.

The woman gestured towards the door. They only had to wait a few heartbeats before another creature stepped in. This one was tall, long arms ending in sharpened bone-white claws, a dog's head with teeth as long as the girl's fingers and a body covered in coarse black fur. "This is a beowolf," she said.

"Okay," she replied easily.

"Can you control it as you do these lancers?" the woman asked.

"It's not an insect," she explained.

Another eyebrow joined the first. "How very specific," she said. "And you're not afraid of it?" she asked, still gesturing towards the beowolf.

She took a moment to inspect the black creature again. It was large and intimidating, teeth bared as though ready to take a bite out of her at any moment. "No."

The woman made a noise in the back of her throat that might have been a laugh. "Most in your position would be terrified."

"Is there anyone else like me?" she asked. Her hand dropped away from the lancer's head, every finger burning with the fatigue of overuse.

"I don't know," the woman said.

She yawned, jaw cracking and eyes watering with the action. "What's your name?"

The woman tilted her head to one side, still inspecting her carefully. "I am Salem, queen of the Grimm."

"Okay," were her last words before the darkness of sleep overtook her.

***

Salem watched the girl-child as she rested. Her injuries were severe, or they had been before she deigned to heal her of the worst of them. Still, the blankets of her bed were wrapped around a too-thin body and bunched up on the side with the missing arm. By height, she seemed about Cinder's age, though she seemed far too thin for that.

She looked away from the girl-child and to the infestation of lancers occupying the room. They were docile, more so than they would normally be, even when in her presence. The one the child had been fondling wrapped itself into a tight ball by the child's side, claws held in so as to avoid hurting her.

It was disquieting, unnerving. So many years had passed since anything of interest had happened, since she had seen anything truly new, that she wasn't sure how to react to this sudden intrusion.

She could have just killed the girl, get it over with and protect her domain. But was that truly what she wanted? She was Salem, queen of the Grimm. She did not need protecting from a mere girl, not even one that shared her features.

"Watch over her," she ordered the beowolf in the room's centre as she spun around and walked out of the room. "She is interesting."

***

When she awoke a second time the lighting in her room was different. The sun outside was at its zenith and the purplish haze that robbed the landscape of its colour was at its weakest. She looked around the room, senses extending to her little swarm of lancers.

It only took her a moment to discover that she was not alone.

The woman, Salem, was back. She was sitting on a chair that had not been there before, a book on her lap and her head turned down to focus on the pages. She studied Salem for some time, gaze following the curve of her jaw and the black veins around her eyes. Her hair, too, was bizarre, six strands like ponytails sticking out in two pairs of three from either side of her head, the rest of her hair cascading down to the small of her back in a white fountain.

"Your hair looks like a spider," she said.

Salem looked up from her book, folded the corner of one page without looking, and shut the tome with a gentle thud. "Does it?"

She nodded. She could feel a warmth climbing onto her cheeks and she wondered why she had let herself speak aloud.

"Should I perhaps change hairstyles then?" Salem asked.

She shook her head. It wouldn't do to insult the woman caring for her. "I like it."

Salem made another noise at the back of her throat, one she was quickly associating with faint amusement. "Then I'll keep it this way," she said easily. "How are you feeling?"

She paused, moving still-naked limbs under the satin sheets of her bed, letting the soft material murmur as it slid across bare skin. Her arm and legs were still heavy, still tired, but now it was the tired of a muscle recovering after hard exercise, a familiar burning and ache. "Better. A lot better," she said.

"You have been asleep for three days," Salem said.

"Oh... I'm sorry," she said as she stretched her legs under the blankets until they quivered. The wasp nestled by her side moved out of the way with all of the grumpy disposition of a wet cat.

"It is of little consequence," Salem said. "I had questions for you."

Something, a little voice at the back of her mind, told her to be careful, to be wary of this Salem woman, but it was easily drowned out by her apathy. She just wanted to sleep again, or maybe to walk around and move? Her body didn't seem to agree on what she wanted to do. "Okay," she said, finally.

"What is your name, child?" Salem asked.

"My name," she repeated. She had a name. She had many names, but at the moment none of them were coming to the surface. "I don't remember," she said.

One of Salem's eyebrows perked. "That is unfortunate," she said. "I cannot continue calling you child."

She shook her head. "I'm not a child."

"Of course not," Salem lied. She caught it, but didn't comment. "Then perhaps a nickname for now. Maybe Wasp?" Salem gestured at all the lancers still hanging onto the ceiling.

She gave Salem a flat, unamused look. "That is not my name," she said.

"I know it isn't, child," Salem said.

Her unamused look turned into a glare, but all that did was add a twinkle of joy in Salem's eye. "I don't like Wasp," she said. It wasn't a nice name. It wasn't even a real name. And it sounded too villainous besides.

"Very well, we can table that for later. There are more important questions." Salem shifted in her seat, one leg crossing over the other. "How did you come to be here?"

"I don't remember," she replied instantly.

Salem looked at her for a long time. "Nothing at all?" she prodded.

She wanted to keep what little she knew to herself, but then, maybe that wasn't wise. She had to extend some trust eventually, and Salem had been nothing but kind to her. "I remember a fight. There were lots of us. I had a big swarm."

"And who were you fighting?" Salem asked.

She frowned, trying to parse the memories, even though most of them were patchy at best. "It looked like a man. He was golden, and powerful, and it took a lot of us to fight him."

Salem's interest, which had just been idle curiosity before, sharpened to a razor's edge. Red eyes locked on her and refused to blink. "Tell me more," she demanded.

"He... he destroyed a lot, killed so many of us. But we fought him and... and I think we won? Maybe."

"And then you awoke here?" she asked.

She frowned a little, gaze drifting over to the window. The moon hung close to the horizon. "The moon here is broken. It wasn't before."

Salem's breath caught, and for a few long seconds she wondered if something she said had hurt the woman. "I think I see. What else can you recall?"

She frowned, trying to make sense of the fragmented images she still had. "Lots of portals, and a city by the bay. It was... my city. My friends... I." She stopped and with an effort of will moved her hand up to her face to wipe away some of the tears gathered there. "Sorry," she whispered.

"It's fine," Salem said.

"Where am I?" she asked Salem.

Salem took a while to respond. "You are on what remains of the world. What was left." With a single graceful motion Salem uncrossed her legs and stood. "I have affairs to take care of. Rest for now. We can talk more later."

"Okay," she said. "Thank you."

Salem paused, eyes glancing down for a moment before meeting hers again. "Akelarre," she said before moving towards the door.

"What?" she asked.

"Your name, it shall be Akelarre."

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Akelarre moved through the edge of the spire with the slow, gentle pace of someone afraid of sudden movements. The ache in all her limbs had receded over the last few days, but not so much so that she was able to walk without taking her time.

The view from the many arrow slits and stained glass windows was always the same. A world of dark rocks under a grey sky, purple haze floating bare meters off the ground in swirling patches that rotted away any weeds that dared poke out from the ground. Sometimes the black pools hidden in crevices would warp and bubble and a creature of black skin and white bone would crawl out of the muck.

She supposed that it was almost pretty, in a way. Just like her new name.

She wasn't sure what to think of it. There was no meaning to the word; none that she knew, anyway. Maybe it was just a cute nickname, but then Salem didn't seem the sort to do that. She was supposed to be a queen, after all.

Akelarre looked outside again at the desolate wastes and wondered what kind of queen would want to rule over a kingdom of monsters.

She didn't know whether to trust Salem or not. The woman felt... nice, kind even, but also careful and smart. She was a cynic. And maybe, most of all, she was lonely.

She didn't dare spy on her with her lancers -- the wasps were far too big and noisy to go unnoticed -- but she had sent them to scout the Spire and so far she hadn't found any signs of life other than the black creatures with the bone masks.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" came Salem's voice from deeper in the corridor.

Akelarre nodded, her gaze still fixed on the world outside, but her lancers paid attention as Salem glided closer. "I'm feeling better," she admitted. "Less sore."

"Your health is improving at a decent pace," Salem said. "We will have to see about fixing that arm of yours."

Akelarre looked down at the stump. She couldn't actually see it as it was hidden under the fabric of the white robe she was wearing, but the motion under the material made it obvious that something was wrong. "Can you do that?"

"Certainly," Salem said. "You might find my replacement to be better than the original, in time."

Akelarre nodded and turned a little to look at Salem's reflection in the glass. "Are there others?" she asked. It was strange to find herself standing next to someone taller than her, though she couldn't say why.

"Others?" Salem repeated.

She gestured at the world past the window. "People, like us."

Salem thought on it for a moment, then shook her head. "I'm afraid not. There are humans out there, and faunus, but as for those like us, I'm afraid it is just you and me, Akelarre." One of Salem's hands, a slim, white thing, rose to her shoulder and held onto it with gentle pressure.

"If I'm like you, and you're the queen, does that make me the princess?" she asked with just a hint of amusement, her gaze moving away from Salem's reflection to her own. Red eyes stared back, sunken into a face that was too pale. The black veins around her eyes and neck stood out against her skin. Her hair was black as pitch and flowed with almost liquid grace to pool around her shoulders and along her back.

Salem blinked, then made her laughing noise, a sort of chuffing at the back of her throat. "I suppose. Though don't you think it's a little early to claim royalty?"

Akelarre looked over the barren wastes again, then she gestured at it dismissively. "Not much to rule over," she said.

Salem tilted her head a little, as though considering. "I suppose not," she said. Her hand slipped off Akelarre's shoulder. "Follow me," she ordered as she turned in a swish of robes.

Akelarre followed.

The steps Salem led her towards climbed down in a slow spiral and they went on for a very long time. She sent some of her lancers ahead to scout. Salem took the steps one at a time, her pace even and regal but not so fast that Akelarre grew tired.

By the time they reached the bottom, Akelarre's heart was beating faster and her legs ached more than they had earlier, but she was still well enough. Her lancers moved ahead and through the cavernous room. It only took a stray thought for them to form up into triangular wing formations to better scout the cave.

Salem looked up as one group of the large wasps flew by, then turned in a tight formation to give the room another pass. "Your fine control is rather impressive," she said. "Better than mine, even. I suspect you can control a smaller variety of Grimm but have more control over your little niche. Interesting."

She nodded. It wasn't as if she could confirm what Salem had said, but it felt right. "I like... arthropods."

Salem nodded and walked deeper into the room. "Light," she called out and from the ceiling came more of the black creatures, these ones like jellyfish in appearance, though their cores glowed with a reddish inner fire that cast the shadows away. They kept circling above while Salem knelt next to the large brackish pool in the room's centre. "The Grimm are mine, and I am of the Grimm. Some say that the Grimm lack souls but that is not entirely true."

She stood, her hand moving out of the pool while a ripple flowed across. Then the surface bubbled and a form moved out of the water. At first it looked like a man, but then the head of a horse rose before it and soon a long-limbed creature was walking out of the pool with careful steps.

"This is a nuckelavee," she said. "Can you control it?" Akelarre shook her head and the nuckelavee walked off towards a distant corner of the cavern. "When they say that the Grimm are soulless they are wrong. The Grimm have a soul. One. And it is mine."

"Are they like your children?" Akelarre asked. Guilt was building up inside her. If that was the case, then by taking the lancers for her own she had stolen Salem's children.

"No, they are servants and warriors and tools," she said. Her red eyes dared Akelarre to deny it, to question the morality of it.

"They are expendable," Akelarre said. "Like... like my swarm." She look up where her lancers were flying in increasingly intricate patterns near the ceiling, some passing within millimeters of each other without so much as brushing.

Salem's smile was all teeth for a moment before it became demure again. "Exactly." She knelt again and this time the creature that followed was no taller than Akelarre's shin, but the moment it detatched itself from the pool something snapped into place and it froze.

She leaned forward to inspect it. At first glance it was merely a very large scorpion, one the size of a housecat. But unlike any she'd ever seen--not that she could truly remember seeing one--this one was covered in white bones with a fine red filigree on them. Its stinger looked poised and ready to punch a hole through armour if it so chose. "This one is mine," Akelarre said.

"Is it?" Salem asked, one eyebrow raising slowly. Salem reached towards the scorpion grimm, then pointed it to someplace further down the cave. It obeyed. No thoughts, no denial of the order. Salem asked and it moved.

Akelarre watched it scuttle by, felt the strain as her control over it was stretched and finally ignored. It was almost insulting, but at the same time it truly wasn't. "What are they for?" she asked.

"The Grimm?" Salem asked. She was watching Akelarre for a reaction. She must have approved of what she saw. "The Grimm are my warriors, my army against the blight of mankind."

"You fight mankind?" Akelarre asked.

Salem glanced over the pool for a long few moments. "May I tell you a story?" Akelarre's nod was enough for Salem to start. "Long ago this world was ruled by two gods, Brothers, one of dark and one of light... a golden man-" she glanced pointedly at Akelarre. "They were powerful, but they did not understand the hearts of people. We rebelled, and eventually they left."

Akelarre felt her brow shifting down. "You didn't win," she said.

Salem look genuinely surprised, if only for the barest hint of a moment before she schooled her features. "And what would victory have looked like?" she asked.

"They would have died," she said simply.

Salem's bark of laughter echoed out into the cavern. "Perhaps, yes. But I was never so fortunate. I will spare you the details, but they took someone very special away from me and then twisted him against me. Once we ruled a paradise together, had a family, but he threw it all away in service of beings who care nothing for any of us."

"He's still alive?"

Salem nodded. "He is. And he has been twisting humanity against me, against us, for thousands of years. He wants to call the Brothers back. Make no mistake, I do terrible things to weaken them, lay low their heroes and shatter their dreams, because that is the only way they will ever be free. They will never thank me, but in the end I will watch the sun rise on a free world."

***

Salem watched the child, Akelarre, as her words sank in. She hoped that they would be enough to convince her to side with Salem. There were other means of obtaining loyalty, but she didn't want to have to break the child, not when she was the first person she had met in millennia that might suffer under the same curse.

A friendship now could, if Akelarre was like Salem, last forever.

And what did that say about her own health, that she would stoop so low as to attempt to court a child just to stave off the long days of plotting and planning? But she was the Queen of the Grimm, she answered to no one, and so didn't need to make excuses for herself or her actions.

If her suspicions were correct, then the golden man Akelarre had fought had to be the God of Light. And if she was cursed as Salem had been, then perhaps this child predated her. Perhaps she too had rebelled against the gods and had suffered ever since.

Was there a chance that Salem could have been the same? Stuck in a pit of absolute darkness for countless millennia? Perhaps.

Akelarre bent down next to her. Not with the same grace that Salem displayed, but with confidence in every motion. She reached a hand towards the pool and dipped it in with all the care of a child that had never touched an open flame.

A minute passed, then two. The pool bubbled and Salem watched with interest as a creature crawled out of the pit.

It was small, no bigger than a hand-span and black as a moonless night. Eight legs moving in perfect tandem helped the thing scuttle towards its new master where it nestled into Akelarre's palm. The fact that its legs ended in spikes, or that its bone-white mask was split down the middle to reveal cruel fangs didn't seem to bother the girl one whit.

Salem placed a hand on Akelarre's head and the girl tilted her head back to stare at Salem. She smiled. "Well done," she said. "It is a terrifying specimen."

Akelarre's cheeks puffed out. "It was supposed to be cute," she said.

Salem held back a laugh. It wouldn't do to lose her composure before her newest... recruit.

Yes, life was taking a strange turn for Salem.