Not Your Saint George
This is a work of fan fiction, created for entertainment purposes only and with no claim to the characters depicted. Ownership of RWBY characters and concepts belongs to Rooster Teeth. The World of Ere setting belongs to Landon Porter and Paradox-Omni Entertainment.
The Three Treasures
On an intellectual level, Jaune knew that he was still looking at a dragon. There were even flaws in the shape she'd taken: no one's hair was that particular shade of red and her eyes were ever so slightly too large. She was more like a drawing of a woman than any of the real thing he'd ever met.
But the less rational part of his mind couldn't help acknowledging that unreal or not, she made for a highly attractive woman. Which she wasn't, he was quick to remind himself, because she was a dragon. A big, scaly monster of legend who was more than capable of killing him where he stood.
"Is something the matter?" she asked, those glimmering green eyes that had shot a lance of predatory fear into him earlier looked honestly confused and self conscious now as she held out her arms and looked down to examine herself. "I should have the exact form I pictured in my mind's eye—and I've seen more than a few adventuring women on the mountain... is this wrong?"
Some traitorous portion of Jaune's mind pointed out that there was no reason for a dragon to keep mundane clothes lying around. That meant that the simple red shirt and tan skirt she was wearing were conjured; probably spun out of the air from ice and light.
He looked away with a nervous cough. "No, you're... fine. So we need to get our story straight. I'm supposed to have saved you from the dragon that lives here?"
Raising an eyebrow at his odd behavior, she nodded slowly. "Yes. We can say that I am an adventurer who whose party was waylaid by the beast. The others scattered and perished while the dragon took me to torment—as dragons do."
"They do?" Jaune gulped.
"I find it would be best to discourage anyone else from running around and confronting dragons. If the threat of death won't do, maybe torture will." She turned a slow circle, surveying her home. No matter how things went after this, she knew she would never be able to return. That meant most of her hoard—such as it was—would be lost to her.
A heaviness weighted down on her thinking of that. It was mostly objectively junk, but it held memories of sojourns out onto the mountain, discovering ruins of old camps and settlements, stalking bands of explorers and adventurers so she could spy on them and learn more about the larger worlds, and the various trials of stealth and guile she'd undertaken to claim even the most worthless of baubles.
Young dragons, her brood mother often said, were more related to magpies than orms.
Suppressing an unhappy sigh, she committed herself to taking only what she needed and only the absolutely most sentimental and leaving the rest. Maybe once Lord Citraan was dealt with, she could return and claim what was hers. Or perhaps some years from then, another young dragon would stumble upon what to them was a great treasure.
All the same, she knew where she had to start: she had a grand total of three very minor magical items and they all would be a great help to her if she was going to have to be in a human shape for a while.
Without a word, she turned and headed for the rear of the cave where she normally slept.
Reluctantly, Jaune followed behind at a respectful distance. While she'd been thinking, he'd been turning over her suggestion in his own head. "I guess that makes sense. But if you lost to this dragon, how did I manage to chase her... it... away? It's got to be something I could actually do and something that would impress Lord Citraan."
Pyrrha sank to her knees and started digging through layers of copper coins, rusted cutlery and even shiny stones she'd taken a liking to in her youth. "Alright, how exactly did you plan to best me in the first place?"
He shrugged. "I was kind of hoping to convince you to surrender. Believe it or not, I've got sort of a talent for getting to people to do what I ask."
Pausing, she gave him a sidelong look. "I think it would take more than a talent to convince someone to submit to execution."
At least he had the decency to look ashamed. "Yeah, probably. I honestly don't have a lot going for me. I'm more of a mage than a warrior. Not much of a mage, mind, but I do have this." From inside his armor, he produced a palm-sized book bound in black leather. "My grandmother's ritual book. She fought in the War. The real war, not the border skirmishes and things my parents fought in."
"My parents fought in the War as well." Pyrrha replied simply as she continued to sift through her soon to be abandoned possessions. After almost a thousand years carefully isolating themselves from demihumans, the Dragon Nations had rallied to the side of the Vishnari Alliance against the hailene. There had been great sacrifices. The Blue Nation in particular had been brought so close to the brink of extinction that it was widely known that it was impossible for them to recover. The future of their blood lay solely in their dragonsired progeny.
Pyrrha herself didn't know if her parents survived the War. She knew where their shared territory was, but even if she felt the need to look for them, she was still too young to make the journey so far west through lands filled with monsters far deadlier than a young dragoness and kingdoms in a constant cycle of civil wars and coups.
Her fingers grazed leather and she paused in her digging to fish the first of her belongings free. It was a bulky satchel made of a dark brown hide with leather trim and straps, held closed by a silver clasp. It wasn't one of the well-known high-capacity bags whose interior was larger than their exterior thanks to the application of vox the energy of the void. Instead, it was infused with ere-a and ferif, elemental earth and metal to render it and its contents virtually indestructible.
It had come into her possession when she'd found its previous owner long frozen to death in a rarely used pass. A macabre memory, but it was her first magical possession, so she treasured it nevertheless.
Reverently, she sat it aside and continued digging. Noting that Jaune had lapsed into uncomfortable silence, she decided to pick up the conversation where they left off. "What sort of spells do you know then? Even if they aren't powerful, perhaps we can concoct some clever use you might have employed to 'defeat' me."
Jaune sat down, careful not to stab himself on the truly heroic amount of sharp things littering the ground. With a quiet sigh, he leaned forward, hands pressed firmly on his knees and distracted himself looking at the various items around them. "I'm good with ere-a and vitae mostly, though I know things like filter air—which I guess is obvious since I'm not choking to death in here.
"I can raise of lower the earth maybe... five feet? Ten if I'm really concentrating. Make it shoot up in spikes or just blast rocks out of the ground. That's the best battle-type magic I've got. I can heal people... a little, which I don't see scaring a dragon, and I can make myself weaker to make myself faster or the other way around. I think that's called body alter, but I'm not sure." He hesitated a bit before adding, "And I know some dark anima too. My grandmother always said you can't learn vitae without knowing some nekras. I'd... rather not even let someone like Lord Citraan know that though, okay? Besides, it's creepy. One time I was practicing in the barn... and I brought all the bugs and things that had died in there... back."
The way he said 'back' sent a shiver down Pyrrha's spine. Obviously the creatures hadn't been returned to anything resembling a natural life.
"I'd appreciate not having to witness that myself," she assured him. "But your ere-a magic sounds promising. In theory, if you lowered the earth and stone in my cave at the right spots, you could collapse it. That would be a suitable threat."
After a long pause, she added, "Not that I'm inviting you to try."
Jaune jerked and tried to stand while holding his hands up defensively. "I-I wouldn't! I swear, I wouldn't!"
Grabbing his arm to keep him from slashing himself to bits on the blade-strewn floor, she forced him into steadiness with calm, steady strength. After several evasions, she managed to lock eyes with him and offered a warm smile. Or so she hoped. She made sure not to show her teeth.
"I know you won't Jaune. I was trying to be humorous." Tentatively releasing her grip, she moved her hand to lightly rest on his shoulder. This was a gesture she knew: adventurers always seemed to be doing it. As far as she could tell it was a gesture of trust and reassurance. It must have worked, as the blonde would-be dragonslayer relaxed a fraction.
"I understand this is an unusual circumstance for you. It is for me as well, but we will need to have one another's trust if we're to succeed. Otherwise, this Lord Citraan will have both our heads." When he nodded, she let go of him and returned to her excavation. "Good. Then our story is set. You arrived to find me at the dragon's mercy and, thinking fast, threatened to bring the lair down on her head, causing her to flee. Thanks to your thrilling heroics, my life was saved, and as the people of my native... Nikosia... do, I have now pledged my loyalty and my soul to your service."
As she pulled a pelt from the debris of her nest, she continued with an affected fawning voice, "Oh, Master Arc, I would follow you into the Inferno itself if that Is your wish!"
Jaune winced and looked away. "Maybe not so..." He trailed off as he watched her unfold the pelt. "Is that a spirit beast's hide?"
Pyrrha nodded. Spirit beasts were a curse upon the land: normal living creatures twisted and transformed by a phenomenon known as divinity sparks. The resultant monster was usually stronger, larger and more powerful than their natural counterparts, but more frighteningly, they often became sapient and possessed of incredibly powers and abilities, the most common of which was effective immortality.
This one had been a fox of some type, its body easily three times the size of a normal fox and its fur was the color of blood with silver at the tip of the tail and along the belly. Additional lines of silver, curiously geometric in their patterns decorated the back and flanks. Someone had replaced the eyes with glass ones that shone an unnatural blue.
"Did you kill it?" his voice was hushed with awe. It was a notable feat for anyone to overcome their semi-immortality save by beheading or immolation, but the specimen Pyrrha was holding seemed remarkably whole and uncharred.
"I'm afraid not," she said truthfully. What she didn't say was that she'd seen it in use one night while following a merchant caravan and simply had to have it. And by 'had to have it', she meant she nicked it while its owner was bathing in a river.
Young dragons, her brood mother was fond of saying, were all part magpie.
Chuckling to herself (much to Jaune's confusion), she stood and took a moment to consider how the original owner had worn it. She normally put it around her neck, but now she was a third of her size and doing so would likely smother her. After some thought, she wound it around her waist, allowing the tail to hang down along her right leg. There was a spring inside the fox's jaw that let her use it as a clasp to fasten it so the rest of the pelt hung around her hips.
The silver lines briefly flashed as the pelt's magic became active.
That didn't go unnoticed by Jaune. "So... what's it do? Make you faster? More Agile?"
The dragoness gave him a surprisingly impish grin. "Nothing so practical." She held out a hand and a heatless green flame burst into being in her outstretched palm. A simple gesture flicked the flame to the floor where it grew and changed shape, becoming a green-flame simulacrum of her dragon form, only half scale. Another motion caused the image to explode into multicolored fireworks that burst and skittered through the air. "This, I believe is called a Sash of Foxfire. The green flame it gives me can create images, light and sound. They're all obviously illusory, but I have fun with it."
Jaune couldn't help but match the joyful expression she wore. "I have to say, that really was something. If we don't manage to get into Lord Citraan's household, we could always busk at my village's festivals."
"Let's keep that plan in reserve, shall we." Pyrrha returned to her nest once more, though now she seemed to know where she wanted to search. It took her only a moment for her hands to close over a curve of metal that was warmed both by the temperature of the cavern and her own body heat, having been at the very center of her nest for more than a decade.
"This though... it's the most valuable thing I own. I never expected to be able to use it though. Never thought I'd have a reason."
From beneath a dense deposit of small, silver coins, she retrieved a bronze diadem forged in a shape to mimic waves with a pair of delicate chains looping down at the sides, each supporting a tear-shaped emerald the size of a finger tip.
"The owner was a the leader of a bandit gang who set up at one of the river crossings several summers back," she explained to Jaune, "I watched them for a few weeks. She was a terrifying fighter. It was just mesmerizing watching her spar." A conflicted look crossed Pyrrha's face. She knew the woman was a villain, but she'd sort of become attached while spying on the camp. "It didn't help her when they tried to ambush a caravan that included a powerful mage though. He shouted with a force so hard it threw her off the bridge. She was dead before she hit the water of course."
Jaune made a face. "You took this off her?"
"Adventurers do that sort of thing all the time," she said more quickly than she intended. After a polite cough, she added, "But yes, I did. It was magical and I didn't want the river to claim it." She held the diadem up at eye level. "As it turns out, this was the source of her combat prowess. Some very powerful mental magic has recorded the martial skill of an extremely adept warrior. When you wear it, over time that skill transfers to you. The longer you wear it, the better you become. For obvious reasons, I never had reason to try it myself."
She gave him a self-satisfied smirk before donning the diadem. The bronze shimmered as it shrank and molded itself to fit her head.
"Not that I doubt that you probably have one of every knife and sword ever here, but do you have the kind of weapons that thing trains you in?" Jaune asked.
Pyrrha nodded and reached down into the pile of silver coins again. "Actually, I thought to keep hers. They were very well made." From the pile, she retrieved a pair of sheathed daggers with H-shaped cross handles; katars. "She called this one Speak and this one Listen."
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AN: My god, people were very vocal about me continuing this!
So here we go, no longer a one shot. I am still very concerned with characterization, but I'll give it until they're on the road before I really get over-worried about where they're going. I did try to anchor myself in the canon characters by playing around with doing things like giving Pyrrha her sash and diadem (every fic uses a different name for Pyrrha's headpiece, but this is the one I've found to be most accurate. The Wikipedia article even has a picture of two that have hanging ornaments like hers, one of which was even from Greece).
Milo and Akouo translate to 'Speak' and 'Listen'. Why did I switch a xiphos/spear and shield combo for katars? Mostly 'dragon'. I like the idea of giving her a more savage fighting style.
Jaune... feels like he's playing wallpaper for most of this chapter. Not really intended, but it does make sense seeing as he can't demonstrate his best powers without dropping the cave on them. He'll have more to do next chapter.
When that will be? I can't say. I've got a lot of writing both professional and fanfic on my plate. I've got a book coming out next month... we'll see.
Anyway, hope you all enjoy this!