Chapter Text
Salem would have gasped for air if she still needed to breathe, instinctively clawing the Grimmstuff around her into something passing for clothing. She would also have summoned a gown for herself, but her magic refused to respond, the part of her soul she drew power from alarmingly missing, replaced by some sort of empathic connection to –
She paused and flicked her eyes around the room.
No avenging huntresses with bright metallic eyes, no streaks of white or black or yellow executing the final legs of whatever Brothers-forsaken ritual they managed to dig up. Well, there was some white, white tiling beneath green countertops and silver appliances. She’d never been in one herself, but it matched what she saw when her Seers opened into kitchens built in the last few decades. Aside from the great puddle of Grimmstuff she just clawed her way out of and formed into a simple dress. And its occupants.
Salem focused her eyes on the two humans huddled against the wall, the mother pulling her wide-eyed child close. Their proportions were subtly wrong, but the mother, at least, was clearly human under her green hair and endless freckles. The child…
The child was like her.
He shared his mother’s freckles and slightly off proportions, and the tips of his hair were the same green. But his roots were Salem’s bleached white, his skin pale with sprawling black veins, his sclera her black to his mother’s white. And she could feel his emotions: fear and shock, mixed with uncertainty and an underlying analytical curiosity that faintly reminded her of time spent reading books while locked in a tower. Yet no hatred, or malice, or aggression.
For the first time since before the second, flawed human species walked the earth, Salem realized, she felt little of the three in herself.
“Peace,” Salem said, raising open palms to reflect her intentions. The two cringed back, looking at her clawlike nails, and she quietly frowned as she put her hands back down. “I know my appearance must be alarming, but I mean you no harm.” The mother stared back, and Salem cycled the message from Valish through Solitan, Vacuon, and ultimately Mistralian before the woman’s eyes finally lit up in recognition. She seemed to respond well to Salem’s pacifying tone and calm persistence, her shoulders relaxing and pulling away slightly from the child.
“I know this is rude,” the mother said hesitantly, “and I’m sorry, but I have to ask: what – who – are you?”
“… You may call me Salem.”
“Two weeks ago,” the mother said quickly, squeezing her child, “my son used his quirk for the first time and – and a big black wolf thing came out. It almost attacked some of Izuku’s friends,” Salem noted the child frowning and pulling closer to his mother at that, “before a passing hero stopped it, and now people keep calling him a villain. And now he throws up in our kitchen and you crawl out. I need to know who you are, and, and if you’re dangerous.”
“Again, I mean you no harm,” Salem said, “I promise you that. But I must admit some confusion. The use of the word ‘quirk’ in this context is unfamiliar to me. Could you explain what you mean?”
The child’s eyes went wide and he sat straight up. Something in his mother’s face went from frightened to long-suffering.
The child – Izuku – closed his mouth.
“Ah,” Salem said.
He had revealed more than he probably realized – a world without Grimm or aura, where semblances were replaced by more varied and universal quirks, where instead of hunters and their prey the most frequent conflict pitted establishment heroes against criminal villains, all expressed through the enthusiastic babblings of a five-year-old. Though she had to admit the boy was precocious to the extreme; even accounting for the meanderings, stumbles, and clear gaps in his understanding, she doubted most children three times his age could tell her as much about this new world.
This new world.
Perhaps this should have been obvious: the subtly different proportions of what must’ve been a third species of human, the utter absence of magic, and her anomalous mental state. Even in this unfamiliar environment, facing an unknown future with her oldest and most powerful weapon gone, she could not remember feeling this light. Her rage, her aggression, the urge to dominate, she could still feel them, but they were muted and easy to control. She supposed part of it must’ve been the absence of Grimmstuff to reinforce her mood, and maybe being a different environment than she’d seen in centuries. But the rest…
As she reflected, the boy took to muttering until he finally burst out, “sentient quirk!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Sentient quirks: quirks that display self-awareness,” the boy muttered, “demonstrate full at-ato-autonomy, often have some sort of emotional bond with…”
Salem felt a tug in the part of her soul she once reached into for her magic. A mental probe brushed against another mind and her emotions settled even further.
Ah.
It was the child’s influence.
“You’re my quirk,” Izuku said with wonder. He stood up from his mother to walk over and embrace Salem’s leg. She reached down to stroke his hair, hands awkward showing affection not meant to manipulate, and the faces of four long-dead little girls seemed to superimpose themselves over his.
She thought back to Remnant. An eternity worth less than nothing to her with no option to escape it. A forlorn castle full of broken people where her only entertainment was breaking them further. A world beyond of no better appeal. A life where living was the most exquisite torture she could imagine.
Ozma’s last and most formidable round of puppets, come to avenge all their suffering on her. Divine magic even she couldn’t resist or counterspell wrapping like claws around her soul. The knowledge that even victory would bring nothing more than sweet oblivion.
A child’s simple but overwhelming happiness, felt only as a shadow of what it must truly be through the link but enough to make her happier than she she’d been since… Since before Ozma’s first death.
This. This might be worth a try.
Salem could not even imagine what expression showed on her face, but the sight seemed to steady the mother. “Well,” she said, still a little unsteady as she stood up, “I guess we have a new member of our family. Come on, sit down at the table. Do you… Is there anything you want to eat? Drink?”
“I don’t precisely need to eat,” Salem said as she glided towards the dining area, Izuku trailing after her, “but I would appreciate tea, if you have it.”
The mother – Inko, she said – bustled over to the counter and began preparing tea, babbling about their family and circumstances as she went. Apparently such was a family trait. Salem listed with half an ear, but her attention was riveted on the child that gazed up at her, so different from her and yet so clearly marked by the Brothers’ influence, a freshly-minted Prince of the Grimm to her ancient Queen. She broke out of her reverie when something in Inko’s stream of consciousness caught her attention.
“I appreciate the offer, but while I will need some assistance navigating this new world, I’m not new to the world in general. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“So you’re old?” The child said guilelessly.
“Izuku!!”
“I couldn’t tell you exactly; I lost count some time ago. But I would say at least 10,000 years.”
“Wow, that’s old!”
“IZUKU!”
Salem croaked out her first genuine laugh since before Valish and Vacuon split from their parent language.
“It is old! I’ve been the Queen of the Grimm for a very long time. And before you ask, child,” she cut him off, “the Grimm are the creatures I command, and I suspect you can command as well.”
“Oh. Like the wolf.” Izuku sagged, the light going out of his eyes. “I couldn’t make it do anything. And it just wanted to… Hurt people. Is that what my quirk does?”
“The Grimm are more than that. Come here, child,” she said firmly, patting her lap, and Izuku clambered up as his mother returned to the table, tea in hand. Salem noted she was still watching her closely, if with less hostility.
“In the place I come from, long before even I was born, there were two great brother gods who ruled all they surveyed. The God of Light created, and the sun, the mountains, and everything alive, large and small, were his children. The God of Darkness destroyed, and fires, earthquakes, diseases, and everything that causes pain and suffering were his. But they needed each other. When the God of Darkness walked alone, the God of Light needed to come to restore life to the dead earth. But when the God of Light walked alone, his children multiplied beyond control; his children ate everything that grew just to stay alive, and turned on each other when the food ran out. The God of Darkness needed to come to thin their numbers and keep them from destroying themselves. The world needed both creation and destruction, and as the brothers kept the two in balance, the world prospered.
“But the brothers grew lonely, and in time they realized they wanted something that could compare to them. They wanted something as capable of creation and destruction as they were. So for the first time, the brothers worked on something together. They made a thing capable of both creation and destruction, something that could both grow its own numbers and keep itself in check. They wanted themselves in miniature, and so they made the first humans. Humans build, and they tear down. Humans hurt, but also heal. They were a perfect mix of both gods.
“Or so the brothers thought. But they were wrong. Humans contained destruction, but they had significantly more creation in them. They prospered, but in time they still turned on each other as the things they needed to survive ran out, their ability to create only making the conflict worse. They created marvelous things to destroy each other, and eventually only one human – one woman – was left.
“The brothers decided to try again. They created humans once more, leaving them as they were. But this time they made something else. The God of Darkness created the Creatures of Grimm, pure embodiments of destruction, to keep the humans from repeating their mistakes. The God of Light took the one survivor and bound her to his service. The two brothers then combined the essences of the woman and the Grimm, creating a balance to humanity, something mostly destruction but more than a spark of creation. The Grimm would keep the humans in check, and the woman would keep them in check in turn, allowing humans to survive forever without exhausting the world around them. And so humans flourished, never comfortable, never without hardship or tragedy, but always able to survive, for hundreds of generations.”
A comfortable lie she’d fed her more gullible followers over the years, but the truth wouldn’t serve Izuku at the moment.
Salem shifted, the eyes of mother and child boring into her. “This is not that world, and there’s no need to have the Grimm take up that role. But you must remember that, frightening as they may be, commanding the Grimm was my birthright, and now it’s ours. If you have the will to control them, they must listen to your orders. They will not lay a hand on anyone you don’t want them to.”
Salem looked down and met Izuku’s eyes as that analytical curiosity she felt through the link came to the fore. “How do I make them not hurt anybody else?”
“We’ll need some space,” Salem said to Inko, and in moments they’d been bustled into the small apartment’s central living area. Salem and Inko stood at Izuku’s sides as he faced the center of the now-cleared room, Salem’s hand on his shoulder.
“First, you must be able to consciously summon the creatures. Do you know how?”
Izuku shook his head wordlessly.
Salem thought for a moment.
“Picture a tree. The most beautiful tree you’ve ever seen, full of ripe fruit and stretching into the sun.”
The child wrenched his eyes shut.
“Do you see it?”
He nodded.
“Reach your hands out.”
He did.
“Now crush it.”
He stopped.
“Squeeze it with your hands until it dies.”
He looked at her in dismay. “But it’s so pretty!”
“Do it, child,” Salem said firmly, reining in the part of her that promised pain for disobedience.
He let out a small noise of discontent, but he closed his eyes and faced forward.
“Watch its bark split, its fruit pop, and its leaves wither and fall off. Take something wonderful and ruin it for no reason.”
She could feel his unhappiness at his task, and sure enough, black liquid began flowing slowly between his shaking fingers.
“You have it, Izuku! Throw it to the center of the room, quickly!”
Izuku awkwardly pushed the Grimmstuff out and failed to make it further than his feet, but the liquid responded to his will and flowed to the center of the room. Over the next several seconds, it warped, then expanded, and gradually coalesced into a creature with two short but powerful legs, a muscular tail, and a head covered in bony plate. Breath hissed between white jaws as it turned to face them, eyes red and malicious.
It was a Creep, the weakest of the surface-based Grimm, as well as the smallest specimen of the breed she’d ever seen. It was still a Grimm in full, a clear success.
“Reach out to it as you reached out to me through our bond earlier, then assert your will over it. Make it stand still.”
Izuku wrenched his eyes shut once more. The Creep, smelling the nervousness and fear wafting off mother and child, began to advance on them, but within a few steps she could feel the boy’s will wrap around what passed for its mind and it aborted its charge. The Grimm took a few increasingly hesitant steps forward before stopping, stock-still and docile in front of its new master.
“Well done, child. It is yours.”
He slowly opened his eyes, only to realize the creature was less than a foot away from him. He started and scuttled back, his concentration broken, and the newly-freed Creeper refocused his eyes on him and lunged.
The side of Salem’s hand struck its head hard enough to fracture the faceplate. The Creeper reeled, its head almost torn apart by the force, and with a quick motion she swept her claws through the base of its neck, killing it. Straightening as the creature dissolved, she absorbed the Grimmstuff through her still-extended hand before turning to face the boy and his mother.
"Grimm are frightening, and they are attracted to fear,” Salem said. “You must have a strong enough will to conquer them if they are to listen to you.”
She looked Izuku in his wide eyes.
“But you do not need to be afraid of them. As long as I am here, you are under my protection.”
Four faces once again flashed across his.
“I will ensure no harm comes to you or your family. Ever.”