Strength of an Honest Soul
is a Fusion Fic between the RWBY series and the Darksiders series written by Chaos Productions.
Following the events of the apocalypse and the fall of Third Kingdom, the Four Horsemen succeeded in overthrowing the Charred Council and restored balance to the realms. While Creation knows peace, a powerful darkness now threatens that peace. However, the fate of all life and Creation itself is now longer in the hands of the Four Horsemen, nor in the hands of any Angel or Demon, but in the hands of a simple, innocent little girl.
The story has very infrequently updated, only receiving three 40-50K long chapters over the years. On January 3, 2020, the author announced that he was dividing the story into shorter chapters and plans to update on a more frequent basis on account of the previous format being exhausting.
The story is also hosted on Spacebattles Dot Com and can be found here.
Strength of an Honest Soul provides examples of:
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Ruby's Seer abilities have caused her to become isolated from her peers for almost her whole life, having been frequently insulted and actively treated like she was diseased. She's shown to require medication to stave off the effects of her visions and has more obvious social anxieties that are well beyond her counterpart from the main series, who was at most just socially awkward.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: While Weiss would rather avoid Ruby due to seeing her as mentally unbalanced, she's more polite with her from the outset than she was in canon and sympathizes with her struggle, even telling Yang that she's grateful that Ruby has a sister like her to look after her.
- Adaptation Name Change: Fury's steed is named Vengeance rather than Rampage like it was in III. A justified case since this was made well before the third game. This is later retconned, as Vengeance is actually Fury's new steed after Rampage died in Darksiders III.
- Adapted Out:
Word of God on Spacebattle forums confirms that the Ever After isn't going to be a thing in this story. - After the End: After the events of the Darksiders games specifically, which were set during the Apocalypse. This means that the world of Remnant is the...well, remnant, of Third Kingdom.
- An Arm and a Leg: Uriel's arm gets rendered completely useless after her battle with War, with her tearing it off. She later gets a replacement limb in the two-year Time Skip.
- Armor-Piercing Response: Uriel, having been made bitter and cynical from centuries of conflict, asks Ruby what she hopes to gain from making Remnant a better place. Ruby's answer completely stuns her.Ruby: Y-You just answered that question yourself; a better world is the gain, Uriel.
- Bait the Dog: Weiss' concern over Ruby when she starts having another vision implies that she would be nicer to Ruby at the start, but then she sees her drawings that she dropped while running and immediately assumes that Ruby is mentally unstable, even warning Pyrrha not to go anywhere near her.
- Big Sister Instinct: Yang, despite not believing her sister's stories, is very protective of her nonetheless. The instant she saw Uriel talking to Ruby, she immediately believed her sister and didn't try to rationalize it. This has become even stronger afterward, as she's now far more concerned and protective of her.
- Blessed with Suck: Ruby's abilities as a Seer are hardly helpful at all. Besides her being ostracized throughout her childhood, she frequently gets powerful and intense visions that cause major headaches, is plagued by nightmares of what she sees, and the visions themselves are either really vague or have a very shitty sense of timing.
- Cessation of Existence: This is what Oblivion entails for those whom it is inflicted upon. The old Charred Council was subjected to this fate for their crimes.
- Crapsack World: What Remnant is considered by the rest of Creation. Uriel refers to it as a dark place filled with selfish beings, and she is worn out and exhausted from constantly trying to defend it. Yang mentally notes that her world must by a harsh place if it can drive angels to cynicism.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- The demon that failed to retrieve the cursed orb attempts to fight Fury. Emphasis on attempts.
- Uriel does not do well in her fight against War. She's grown weaker in her exile while time has only made War stronger. By the end of the fight, she's beaten, bloody, and missing her arm.
- Declaration of Protection: After being told her mission by the Watcher, Uriel states with firm resolve that she will protect Ruby and Yang to the bitter end, consequences be damned.Uriel: I accept this burden. On my honour as an angel, I pledge my allegiance to the humans Ruby Rose and Yang Xiao Long. My wings will dispel the darkness that may mar their path in life, and my blades will strike down any who may attempt to draw them to it. This, I swear.
- The Dreaded:
- The Four Horseman are feared by all beings in Creation. After hearing about them once, Yang even thinks of them as super-powered cosmic hitmen, which isn't inaccurate.
- The arachne are such disturbing and horrific creatures that Ozpin feels the need to send professional Huntsman to help the students when they show up during initiation.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The demon general that Ruby encountered in the woods had no intention of harming her and only wanted the orb. When the orb showed her a possibility that he might kill her, he fully insists that he wouldn't have done so. Since he's telling this to Fury, who's about to kill him, he's being honest.
- Fate Worse than Death: Oblivion. To be destroyed down to your soul and reduced to absolute nothingness. This was the fate of the Old Charred Council, and it will be Uriel's fate should she fail at her new task.
- Feeling Their Age: Uriel has grown older and weaker as a result of millennia of unending conflict on Remnant. She's still more powerful than any Huntsman or Huntress could ever hope to be, but it's clear that she's not as spry as she was during the events of the Darksiders games.
- Friendless Background: Ruby grew up heavily isolated from anyone outside of her family because of her "condition". This results in her having a large amount of social anxiety when she comes to Beacon, even after learning the truth regarding her Seer powers.
- Fusion Fic: The worlds of Darksiders and RWBY are combined into a single universe. Remnant is actually Earth following the aftermath of the Apocalypse, demons and other being from across the cosmos journey to it for one reason or another and humanity sometimes gets caught in the crossfire of their scuffles.
- Good Is Not Nice: While the New Charred Council is more lenient and kinder than the old one, they will do whatever it takes to maintain the Balance and don't even bat an eye at ordering the death of innocent people should they witness what they weren't meant to.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Weiss starts out yelling at Ruby for knocking over her luggage, but when she sees that Ruby is having an attack, she immediately stops being mean and gets help.
- Knight in Sour Armor:
- Uriel continues to fight for mankind and protect them with everything she has, but it's clear that the ever-growing cruelty of human nature, the horrors of war, and her just getting older and weaker, have worn her out to the point where protecting humanity isn't even a choice for her; it's just the only thing she can do at this point.
- Strife continues to do his task of maintaining balance throughout the cosmos, but he's been at it for so long that he's completely given way to apathy. Almost everything he does has no effort, joy, sadness, or hate behind it. It's a job, might as well do it.
- Locked Out of the Loop:
- While Uriel does subvert this by telling Ruby about Creation and the Balance to help put her mind at ease, she leaves out certain aspects such as the "who" and "why" since answering these questions would put her to death immediately.
- Ruby and Yang agree that they need to keep everything a secret until they are certain they can trust other people with it, as well as gain Uriel's approval for them.
- Meaningful Name: For Remnant as a whole. After the Apocalypse, Third Kingdom would eventually become Remnant. So Remnant is the literal remnants of Earth.
- The Mentally Disturbed: After Ruby becomes a seer, she's considered this by those from Remnant since no one has any idea what's going on with her. Yang tries her best to help Ruby out, but until she saw that what her sister was saying was true, she tended to get frustrated by Ruby's "mental issues". Weiss views her as mentally unstable and not someone that she or any within her standing should associate with.
- Moral Myopia: War thinks it foolish and unreasonable for Uriel to wager her life and mankind's fate on the bond between two siblings. He even goes so far as to call it capricious. Uriel, even while beaten within an inch of her life, calls War out on this, as his brother traversed all of Creation to save him from the Council's judgement and all of his siblings stood alongside him when they faced the Council together. Considering how far War's own kin went for him, he has no right to doubt the power of blood and family.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Yang briefly goes through this when she sees that Ruby was telling the truth the entire time and she never believed her.Yang: You were right all this time and I… I…
- Nice Girl: Pyrrha shows strong concern for Ruby when her visions cause her to have an "episode" and she makes it clear that she doesn't care about Ruby's abnormalities, only wanting to be friends with her.
- Pet the Dog: The demon Ruby encountered was perfectly willing to let her leave unharmed and told her to speak to no one of the encounter. For a creature of Hell, that's pretty generous.
- Pyrrhic Victory: War easily defeated Uriel during her trial, but she technically won since she was able to convince the Charred Council to her case and make it so that Ruby and Yang could leave with their memories of the encounter fully intact.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The New Charred Council is far more lenient and forgiving than the Old Charred Council, to the point where Death still finds himself surprised by this even after serving them for eons. After Uriel's testimony regarding Ruby and Yang, they intend to allow them to leave with the full knowledge of what happened that day and will allow Ruby a circle of allies of her choosing to trust with these secrets, though they also make it clear that there are severe repercussions for Uriel should letting them do so prove to be a mistake.
- Sanity Slippage: Death notes that Seers have a tendency to go insane due to being unable to withstand having the knowledge of Creation in their head. Ruby has the potential to either master her newfound knowledge or go completely insane from it. Uriel is hellbent on ensuring that she masters it.
- Seers: Ruby receives the powers of a seer from a special orb a demon was guarding. However, she ends up being a deconstruction of this trope. She gains the power to view the secrets of Creation, but she's too young to understand what she's witnessing, not to mention that the visions are so intense and powerful they either cause her headaches, blackouts, or nightmares. Since the average people of Remnant are none the wiser about Angels, Demons, or anything beyond Grimm, they write her off as having some mental disorder, which has resulted in her being a lonely child.
- The Soulless: The Grimm are referred to as this by those not native of Remnant. Fitting since they literally don't have souls.
- Superior Successor: The New Charred Council is far more lenient and competent than the old one, taking the time to listen and agree with cases even when they go against their initial desires, rather than ignore and throw people under the bus.
- Time Abyss: Uriel and the Horsemen have all been in existence long before even the first fall of mankind. Uriel herself has been in exile on Remnant for centuries if not millennia.
- Training from Hell: War subjected Uriel to this for around two years to help her get used to her new arm and restore her old strength that she lost from centuries of fighting on Remnant.
- True Companions: The Four Horsemen. Death gave it everything he had to save War from the Council's judgement and all of them stood together against the Council when casting them into Oblivion.
- Vagueness Is Coming: Ruby's visions, when telling her the future, don't give her a clear idea of what's going to happen. They tell her things through strange imagery, shadows, etc., but what they refer to is often unclear to her, and this aspect really starts to frustrate her.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Discussed and subverted. It's frequently stated that the future isn't set in stone, making it possible to alter the course of fate. When Ruby saw visions of Roman's string of robberies, she sought to stop him. When she and Yang beat him, the visions change as well to match the new events, showing that you can fight destiny, or at least alter it.
