Her feet touched the bottom and she marveled at the abyss around her.
There was nothing. It was dark, and lonely... but peaceful, and unchanging.
Had anyone ever seen the world from these twin perspectives? High above, and far below?
Everything seemed unimportant from both.
She took a step, and then another.
As she did, her light crept upon something.
A shell?
An enormous shell?
What could it be?
An eye opened.
It stared at her.
It stared into her.
There was nothing. It was dark, and lonely... but peaceful, and unchanging.
Had anyone ever seen the world from these twin perspectives? High above, and far below?
Everything seemed unimportant from both.
She took a step, and then another.
As she did, her light crept upon something.
A shell?
An enormous shell?
What could it be?
An eye opened.
It stared at her.
It stared into her.
— x50413, Devourer of Worlds
, "1.0 Blake Belladonna"
, "1.0 Blake Belladonna"Devourer of Worlds: A Lavos Spawn Quest by x50413 is a crossover between RWBY and Chrono Trigger. It has a prologue starting before the events of canon and then picks up during the events of the Black Trailer of RWBY.
The story is a Forum Quest that rotates player control between a few viewpoint characters, but the main one is a Lavos Spawn. As a world ending eldritch abomination whose existence will lead to an eventual extinction event on the planet, the majority of its actions are focused on interacting with an Arbiter, a mortal in possession of the Frozen Flame, or dreaming about people, places, and events from the Chrono Trigger video game.
As the story progresses, the Lavos Spawn, later named Obsidian, becomes friendly with Team RWBY and trains them so that they will be better prepared for their lives as Huntresses and, consequently, the Spawn will be better prepared against threats native to Remnant.
Devourer of Worlds dreams of the following tropes...
- Advanced Ancient Humans: The civilization of Ciel (in the style of Zeal), which is visited when Blake and Obsidian get thrown back in time following the Battle of Beacon. Unlike Zeal, however, they appear to be unaware of Obsidian's existence (for now at least).
- All Just a Dream: Used in an Omake where Ruby was the last surviving member of the team in a timeline where they used Obsidian's power to wipe out the Grimm as well as the half the people of the world.
- Ancient Keeper: Obsidian's primary goal is to become one of these, if they don't count already. Learning new things is one of their biggest drives no matter how seemingly mundane the information may appear.
- Badass Teacher: Obsidian fits the trope perfectly. Generally, she's very backseat about letting Team RWBY pilot their own destiny, but the very instant any of them call for her help she answers without fail and woe be to anyone who dares stand against her at that point.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Being a giant world devouring space porcupine, Obsidian has some trouble relating to that whole "Human Morality" thing. It makes do with pure logic in the mean time. Realizing that Lavos died because of this deficiency, which was exacerbated by Zeal's madness, is Obsidian's primary motivation for interacting with the RWBY cast and empowering a sane(-ish) Arbiter.
- This is especially problematic when it comes to Yang who, as someone entirely run by her emotions, simply cannot connect with the purely logical Obsidian, and vice-versa, creating a lot of frictions not just between them but also within the team as not everyone always disagrees with Obsidian's approach to problem solving/training much to Yang's displeasure.
- Meanwhile, Weiss is the one on the team who truly grasps Obsidian's alien-ness and tries to teach it how to look at thing from a more human perspective thanks to what are implied to be her past dealing with her Big, Screwed-Up Family.
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Bonus Material: The author encourages the readers to produce a lot of this, usually for doomed timelines where Bad Ends are explored. Technically includes Recursive Fanfiction. - Brutal Honesty: Obsidian's default conversation model. Obsidian never lies and it sure doesn't minces its words when delivering criticisms. Or anything else, really.
- The Chosen One: Essentially what the Arbiter, in this case Blake, is (with a side of Willing Channeler).
- Colour-Coded Characters: To be expected from a RWBY story, but also includes Obsidian.
- Dream Weaver: Obsidian's specialty and its primary mean of getting information, by delving into the memories Lavos left it, connecting its dream to that of others or even connecting itself to the world subconscious.
- This is how Obsidian trains RWBY, connecting their Dream to its own and using the resulting realm to either show them past events to learn from, usually snapshots of Crono and his friend's journey, or by creating dream replica of people and creatures for RWBY to spar against.
- Expendable Alternate Universe: Any Omake that doesn't fit into the quest's canon is filed under this, as an alternate timeline where some other choice was taken.
- Mathematician's Answer: Obsidian, and in some cases Penny, are liable to withhold information from others by utilizing this.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Obsidian avert the usual Always Chaotic Evil nature of his species by virtue of being a defective Lavos Spawn. Lavos created Obsidian as a last ditch attempt at survival from the crazy people that just broke their way into its carapace and were in the process of messing up its internal organs but died before the whole process was finished, leaving Obsidian with Lavos' entire library of knowledge but otherwise a blank slate, free to develop itself as it wished instead of being a clone.
- Off the Rails: Team RWBY's actions during The Breach and Cinder's plans for the Fall of Beacon experience a bit of this thanks to Neo, when compared to canon.
- Parental Substitute: Penny sees Obsidian as her mother due to her being the source of the energy used to give the former life and a soul.
- Passing the Torch: What Maidens do when they die, with the successor receiving the power slightly stronger with the echos of the previous holders.
- Planet Eater: Obsidian is one of these by its species, just like its progenitor, the Lavos.
- Psychic Link: The connection between Obsidian and the Arbiter is this, allowing telepathic communication, sharing of dreams, and even channeling power. Staying in close proximity to the Frozen Flame allows Obsidian to make the initial communication, and streamlines any processes involved.
- Security Blanket: It becomes clear later on that the Frozen Flame is beginning to become one to Blake, much to the concern of her teammates (and Obsidian, who is hoping to avoid a repeat of Queen Zeal).
- Soul Eating: A possibility Obsidian suggests to deal with Neo though she phrases it as "repurposing energy" rather then eating it.
- More seriously theorized in regards to what Lavos was planning. She thinks her progenitor was gifting magic to people so it could harvest the souls and knowledge of everyone who wielded its power when it destroyed the planet. Obsidian notes even for a being like her the power up would still be significant.
- Super-Empowering: Obsidian is capable of granting people that it has a sufficiently strong connection with access to Chrono Trigger style magic. The Arbiter in particular gets a LOT out of this arrangement by virtue of being plugged into Obsidian's suficiently enormous mana pool, if at the risk of RRoD-ing if they try to take too much too fast.
- Swiss-Army Appendage: Blake got a magical one of these after the Battle of Beacon.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Obsidian's magical power is so great that if it were to act directly by shooting off one of its spines (or just using the Frozen Flame to channel its magical power), Word of God states it would be like shooting a tactical nuke.
- These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Obsidian is full of this kind of knowledge. Not letting the girls have it is something of a contention point early in the story. Later Yang admits it's because when most people say "it's for your safety" they're just using that as an excuse while Obsidian actually means it.
- Time Travel: As this is a Chrono Trigger Crossover, this was probably inevitable, but it took some time (and a bit of Dust) to get to it.
- Training from Hell: Obsidian is a firm proponent of the saying "What doesn't kill you make you stronger" which when coupled with the fact that dying in the Dream simply lead to respawning at the end of the exercise mean RWBY have become very familiar with the myriad ways Crono, his friend and Chrono Trigger's collection of bosses are capable of killing them. Needless to say, all four girls are much more lethal then their canon incarnation even before taking the magic into account.
- Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: One alternate timeline has the girls summoning the Brother Gods to try and convince them to help deal with Salem in the Grimm. They fail and the Gods once again wipe out all life on the planet. Obsidian shatters the world in her rage at Blake's loss and the timeline ends just as she and the Brothers are about to clash.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity:
- Played straight where those that serve as Arbiters can end up going mad with power and in turn drive the eldritch being mad in turn. We've seen that before.
- Mortals who have made a connection with Obsidian without its knowledge have shown signs of mental instability, in the vein of Go Mad from the Revelation.
- Xenofiction:
- A large portion of the story is told from the perspective of Obsidian, a creature from outside of time whose perspective is very inhuman and who didn't even have a name until it was given one.
