User blog:Zolnir/Song Analysis: Sacrifice

How long has it been since I last did a meaningful blog? This will be the interpretation andtheorizing of the RWBY Volume 2 Song, 'Sacrifice'.

The Ancient Ritual - The Moon:

I believe this ancient ritual is enacted for the sole purpose of suppressing a great evil or great Grimm. When the ritual is complete, it results literally in a white moon hanging in the sky, which is a source of power that opposes this ancient evil and kept it asleep for many years.

The great evil - this black queen - cannot be destroyed, otherwise they would have done so a long time ago. To maintain this prison of evil and source of power, a sacrifice of a life, or more specifically the sacrifice of a powerful and pure soul is needed. It was mentioned that the Vytal Festival is a celebration of unity and peace among Kingdoms, and there is the Vytal Tournament where Huntsmen from all Kingdoms convene to identify the greatest fighter of them all.

But what if this is all but a facade? What if the purpose of the Vytal Festival itself is to identify the Huntsmen with the highest combat potential and strength, which in turn can be an indicator of a great soul, so they may be trained, honed, brought up - and among them, select the perfect candidate to be turned turned into a sacrifice for this terrible ritual?

And Summer Rose is likely the most recent candidate. The moon will sadly watch the roses die, because they are the composition of some of the purest, greatest, most noble souls in the land watching yet another join them in a futile, endless exercise of self-sacrifice that will sees no end.

Cinder Fall - Summer Rose

If the 'narrator' of this lyrics refers to Cinder Fall, then Cinder and Summer Rose have a past together.

They have spent time together where Cinder Fall very likely looked up to Summer Rose (much like Emerald to her), who was one of the greatest and most noble Huntress at the time.

But ironically, I believe that Summer Rose's soul did not meet the expectations required to fulfill the ritual. Her soul was not right. The chosen candidate for the ritual must have a pure, noble soul, and I believe that Cinder Fall is the candidate to be sacrificed atop the altar.

This is my guess: Summer Rose went on a mission to save Cinder. She succeeded, but she was faced with the impossible situation to either just walk away and return to her family, thus failing the ancient ritual and allowing the great scourge to be awakened once more; or sacrifice her own life in place of Cinder's to maintain the ritual. It will be incomplete - which is why you see the moon shattered on one side - and it is only a matter of buying time that's already running short.

But it was also the only way she could choose in order to protect her loved ones. So she did it, and she died.

Cinder Fall - Professor Ozpin

So, who in all of Remnant would know most, if not all of the truth? Professor Ozpin, naturally. Once a hero, now only an old man perhaps far older than he looks, bearing the terrible truth as burden as he sees again and again people like Summer sacrifice themselves in vain for a foolish ritual.

There is every reason to believe that Summer has consulted him on this. Most people - and himself - will think that he had manipulated Summer into giving up her own life as a sacrifice, but I think all he did was giving Summer the truth. The choice were hers. In the end, Summer could not see another person die for this ritual, but she could not let the ritual end as of now or risk the destruction of all Remnant.

Naturally, Cinder Fall did not see it this way. She cannot. The person she respected and loved the most had sacrificed herself to save her, and if she could not find it in herself to move past this fact and live on as if it was the natural, logical conclusion. Ozpin may be someone Summer respected, but she will never forgive him for letting Summer walk to her death. She will never give up the life Summer had saved for the stupid ritual, even if it meant the death of everyone else.

Therefore she fought, escaped, went into hiding and planned hard striving to one day reveal the truth. But ironically, as we can see from her appearance now, as a person who knew the truth she was slowly becoming more and more like the old Ozpin ( I strongly believe that he has changed his ways since then). Logical, cruelly kind, always making the 'right' choices and will do whatever's necessary to save the greater good with the minimum amount of sacrifice (Kiritsugu?).

It's like stepping into a quicksand. Cinder may have suffered terribly over her actions and even want to turn back, seeing the horrible transformation wrought upon herself as she made more and more 'necessary' decision to achieve her goal of revealing the truth and destroy the ritual, but it was too late. She cannot turn back even if she wants to, she was already too deep in that the only way to move on is forwards.

Cinder - Emerald

Cinder likely sensed that Emerald's attachment to her is much like her own to Summer's. That's why she firmly kept her away - she did not want Emerald to suffer the same pain she did, should anything happen to her.

Ironwood - The True Purpose of Penny's Creation

I think we can speculate now exactly why Penny was created. What if Ironwood is trying to create a synthetic soul that can be sacrificed to the ritual in place of real human life? If he succeeded, he may be able to maintain the ritual indefinitely, even if the sacrifice may be incomplete or sustain for a much shorter time.

How to Identify a Pure Soul

The eyes - the window to a person's soul. Or more specifically, the eye color. I don't think I need to say this, but Ruby seems to meet expectation.