Pyre of Destiny
(AO3 link here) is a RWBY time travel fanfic written by Teen Spirit/Stormwalker and hosted on SpaceBattles.com.
The plot follows Blake and her daughters, Kali and Summer, as they're sent back in time during a freak storm to everyone's initial travels on their journey to stop Salem.
The story is divided into acts and is currently on Act 9.
On June 10th, 2022, it was announced that the story would be cancelled and rebooted under a new title: Pyre of Destiny-Rebuild.
Pyre of Destiny provides examples of:
Original Version
- Adaptational Backstory Change: Volume 8 reveals that Cinder was abused by her stepmother and stepsisters when she was a child, and eventually killed them. Here, she is Blake and Yang’s daughter from the future. The AO3 version states that the fic was written before Cinder’s canonical backstory was revealed, so it's a case of Acceptable Breaks from Canon.
- Adaptational Heroism:
- In the previous timeline, Cinder's absence led to Emerald being adopted by a Huntress and becoming a hero from the get-go.
- While Marrow was already the most heroic of the Ace Ops, it wasn't until Ironwood threatened to bomb Mantle that he defected. Here, he changes sides much earlier, largely due to learning about the man he would turn into in Summer's future, even using his Semblance on his team and General to help the heroes escape.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed with Cinder. Whereas in canon she has yet to show any moral standards as of the Volume 8 finale, here she's shown to care for her family from the future, and only her family from the future.
- Adaptational Villainy: In the original timeline, aside from their canonical actions, Atlas succeeded in escaping into the upper atmosphere and became a cruel bandit nation that would go on to terrorize the rest of Remnant. In particular, characters that pulled a Heel–Face Turn in canon (Marrow and Winter) didn't do so in Summer's timeline, and devolved into further evil as a result.
- Adaptation Name Change: “Cinder Fall” is an alias and her real name is Kali Belladonna-Xiao Long.
- Antagonistic Offspring: Cinder/Kali for Future!Yang and Future!Blake, much to both side's frustration. Frost Schnee is one as well, with zero reservations about killing her mother, Winter.
- Bad Future: The timeline that the future versions of Blake and Yang, as well as their children, come from isn't exactly a sunny one. Most of their family and friends are dead, Atlas is in ruins and Salem rules over the remaining Kingdoms with seemingly no hope left of defeating her.
- Boomerang Bigot: Despite being human herself, Frost loathes humanity on an identical level to Adam.
- Broken Pedestal: Emerald's faith in Cinder is utterly shaken when Summer tells her that in her timeline, someone else would have saved her from the streets, meaning Cinder had been lying and taking advantage of her from the start. This faith suffers even more when she starts seeing Cinder's blatant double-standards when it comes to Frost and other people from her time. So much so she ends up defecting to Summer's side.
- Cain and Abel: Kali is the Cain to Summer's Abel. Unusually for this trope, it's the Abel, Summer, who wants to kill her sister and has to be talked out of it while the Cain, Kali, would rather avoid killing her sister.
- Dead Guy Junior: Summer and Kali are named after the mothers of Yang and Blake respectively.
- Death Seeker: Charrie becomes this after he learns Pyrrha is dead in the new timeline, seeing no reason to continue forward with the object of his vengeance no longer existing. During their second encounter, he's able to tell that Jaune's this too, as he's actively throwing his life away out of Survivor's Guilt for Pyrrha's death.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation:
- Adam Taurus survives past Argus where he canonically died, instead dying during the attack on the Schnee Manor to Future!Blake.
- Unlike canon, where Jacques was killed by Ironwood in V8, he's instead killed by his future granddaughter during the party at Schnee Manor, where she drags her knife across his throat.
- Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Zig-zagged. Future!Blake, Future!Yang, and Summer treat the past incarnations of their deceased friends and loved ones like they are those same people, with Summer in particular struggling to reconcile Emerald's more villainous incarnation with the Emerald who mentored her. Cinder/Kali, meanwhile, doesn't see the people from the past as real, with the sole, possible exception of Emerald. However, she is noted to have killed Ursula (the mastermind behind Beacon's fall in the "original" timeline), hates the Atlas of the present for its future incarnation's crimes against Remnant, and is shown to be somewhat attached to the new timeline's Emerald, even if she's still just as abusive towards her as she was in canon.
- The Dreaded:
- Future!Yang. Frost notably is terrified at the prospect of fighting her.
- Future!Ruby is this for Salem. According to Future!Yang in an argument with Raven, her sister not only came closer than anyone else to defeating Salem for good, but actually drove her to the brink and left her terrified.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In sharp contrast to canon, Cinder is an example of this, caring deeply for her family. Though this is played with as her feelings apply only to her parents and sister, treating everyone else, even her parent's present counterparts, as bad as she does as canon. And this love is not enough to stop her from maiming her sister during a fight.
- Even Evil Has Standards
- Part of the reason Kali hates Frost Schnee is due to Frost's past abusive relationship with her sister, Summer. Deconstructed however, as this doesn't stop her from being just as abusive, if not more so, towards Emerald. This hypocritical behavior is what compels Emerald to defect.
- Frost herself despises Atlas in large part due to its Anti-Faunus attitudes.
- First-Episode Twist: Cinder is revealed to be Future!Yang and Future!Blake's time-displaced daughter, Kali, at the end of the second part of the first chapter.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Summer has a hard time adjusting to the comparatively carefree present. Being weirded out by how many people travel without weapons, and sleeping with a gun under her pillow for example.
- Future Badass: Blake and Yang's future counterparts, due to having decades more experience and in Yang's case, being the Spring Maiden.
- Future Me Scares Me:
- Downplayed. While Blake and Yang mostly get along with their future counterparts, they're not a fan of Future!Blake and Future!Yang's more ruthless actions and behavior. In some cases, it gets lampshaded by their younger counterparts how their actions can come scarily close to something Adam would attempt.
- Deconstructed. Ironwood, Winter, and the Ace Ops are horrified at what they become in the future. However, despite this, they don't put any active effort in trying to prevent it because they're so convinced that they're the good guys and won't end up that way, clinging stubbornly to the power they have. Marrow ends up being the only one who understands that he's on the path to becoming a monster and defects when it's clear Atlas' leadership is past the point of no return.
- Heel–Face Turn: In Chapter 6 of the story, Emerald switches sides, though notably for more personal reasons than in canon as she seems to have latched on to Summer as a replacement for Cinder.
- Heroic Wannabe: Yang calls Ironwood out on being this. For all his talk on making necessary sacrifices, it's clear that he's making everyone but himself sacrifice everything while expecting them to see him as the hero for his so called "sacrifices".
- Hypocrisy Nod: Something Future!Yang acknowledges is that, despite her anger towards Ozpin for his deceptiveness and the choices he made, when she wound up in the same position as he was, she made the exact same decisions.
- Hypocrite: Cinder/Kali keeps claiming that everything she does is to protect her family, but she also shows no issue with hurting them and trying to force them to comply with her views. She also hates abusers like Frost yet is far more abusive to Emerald than Frost ever was to Summer. Even Emerald becomes aware of how hypocritical Cinder is and defects as a result.
- I Have No Son!: Averted. Despite everything Kali has done as Cinder, neither Future!Yang or Future!Blake disown her.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Qrow's reaction to when he learns that the people who suddenly popped out of the sky in the first chapter are his great-niece and niece-in-law from the future.
- In Spite of a Nail:
- When Kali first landed in the past, she originally intervened in preventing the Bad Future by killing Salem’s original agent, Ursula; this just led to her being captured, tortured into revealing the future, and taking Ursula’s role in the plan as Cinder Fall…and causing more immediate harm than her predecessor ever did.
- Even though Ozpin is a lot more active in the V7 portion of the plot and actively tries to prevent Ironwood from going down the deep end, it becomes clear the man was already doomed by that point, as he devolves just like he did in canon and brands the heroes as his enemies.
- Irrational Hatred: Due to her trauma related to them from her past, Summer has an unchecked loathing for Atlas as an entity and the Ace Ops as a whole — especially Marrow.
- Kid from the Future: There are a few. Summer and Cinder/Kali Belladonna-Xiao Long for example. Later on another appears in the form of Frost Schnee, Winter Schnee's villainous daughter.
- Like a God to Me: Similar to Tyrian, Frost is heavily devoted to Salem's will and worships her like a goddess. Aside from the fact that Cinder/Kali is the sister of her ex-girlfriend, another reason she hates her is because it's clear that Cinder serves her own agenda and not Salem's.
- Misplaced Retribution: Subverted. Charrie has a personal grudge against Future!Pyrrha for how she humiliated him and left scars all over his body. At first, it seems like this old grudge extends to Jaune and his team as well, but once he learns that the Pyrrha of the new timeline is already dead, he stops fighting and leaves, seeing no point in continuing when the object of his vengeance doesn't exist.
- My Future Self and Me: Since the story by design of the concept has Yang and Blake interacting with their alternate future selves, this is a given.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Atlas arc stresses this point regarding Ironwood; no matter what he claims to the contrary, he can’t truly accept the idea that he’s ultimately in the wrong. While he’s willing to be civil at the beginning, almost the instant he feels betrayed he declares the Xiao Long-Belladonna family and their associates to have been lying from the start.
- Older and Wiser: Future!Blake and Future!Yang, naturally, though they're also more pragmatic as well, given their willingness to commit more brutal actions that their past selves would balk at.
- Parents as People: Future!Yang and Future!Blake. It's clear that both their children love them very much, but it's noted that they often weren't there for them, being forced to leave Summer and Kali with relatives for long periods of time while they went away on missions.
- Power Copying: Summer's Semblance, fittingly called Copycat, allows to copy the powers of any other Semblance.
- Psycho Ex: Adam Taurus as in the main series, but Summer has one of her own in the form of her ex-girlfriend, Frost Schnee.
- Related in the Adaptation: Here, Cinder is actually the time-displaced daughter of Blake and Yang. In canon, Cinder had no familial ties to either of them.
- Retired Badass: According to Charrie, the Jaune in his timeline was a house husband, indicating that he retired from fighting.
- Self-Made Orphan: Future!Yang killed her biological mother, Raven Branwen, in self-defense. Also, one Frost Schnee's goals is to kill her mother, Winter.
- Shipper on Deck: Nora for Yang and Blake. When she learns from Summer that the two get married in the future, she smugly smiles and says, "Called it."
- Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: A key part of the reason Cinder loathes her aunt, Ruby, is due to her decade of loneliness in the past and treatment by Salem having shattered her formerly kind and idealistic self. And because she became that as a result of idolizing her aunt, she resents Ruby on a particularly personal level.
- Spared by the Adaptation:
- In the future timeline, Pyrrha and Penny never died during the Fall of Beacon and got to live on. In Pyrrha's case, she got to live to get married to Jaune and have children.
- Both Vernal Branwen and Leonardo Lionheart escape with Raven at the Battle of Haven; the former was killed by Cinder in canon, the latter by Salem shortly afterwards.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Due to their past history, while they're both servants of Salem, Cinder/Kali and Frost loathe each other. On the Heroes side, Summer and Jaune don't get along due to Summer's relation to Cinder. Then there is Future!Yang and Ironwood, who were on the verge of a civil war when Ruby and the others arrived and barely tolerate each other afterwards. Naturally Ironwood turns on Future!Yang and her family the moment he gets suspicious of them in the aftermath of an attack on Schnee Manor.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: By all accounts, Kali was a tender, quiet, sweet little girl who tended to be too soft for her own good and idolized her aunt, Ruby Rose. Many are completely shocked to find that said girl grew up to become Cinder Fall, a vile, sadistic sociopath who wants to kill her aunt more than anything.
- Villainous BSoD: Cinder has one when Summer becomes the Winter Maiden. It makes her two goals, acquiring the powers of all of the Maidens and protecting her family, mutually contradictory. The realization of this causes her to surrender.
- Villainous Friendship: Adam and Frost form an unusual friendship, bonding over their shared hatred for humanity and their exs.
- Villain Respect: Despite his immense hatred for Pyrrha, Charrie still holds a strong amount of respect for her as a warrior. The knowledge that she's already dead in the new timeline nearly breaks him and he even goes to see Pyrrha's mother to tell her of the accomplished hero she would have become.
- Would Hurt a Child: Aside from canonical examples, Charrie confirms that he murdered the children of his timeline's version of Pyrrha and Jaune, showing no regret or guilt for doing so either.
Rebuild Version
- Adaptational Angst Downgrade: Summer, while still having issues, has a lot less than she did in the main story, where the problems kept piling on in a short period of time with hardly any breathing room. Here, she's given more room to process everything that's happening and is overall less stressed out because of it.
- Adaptational Villainy:
- Winter's future version, while already bad in that she was a horrible mother to her daughter, Frost, is even worse here in that she now works for Salem.
- Jaune's son from the alternate timeline is working for Salem here, when in the previous version of the fic he was just a civilian who was killed by a member of Salem's forces.
- The future version of Ironwood and Atlas wound up cutting a deal with Salem and joined her to save their own skins. For as bad as Ironwood became in both the main series and the future timeline of the original story, joining Salem is something neither would ever do even at their lowest.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Jaune's son in the original version was killed alongside him. Here, said son is still alive...and working for Salem.
