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.
What The Soul Knows Is Right
"I know you don't like this place, but this is the first village I've even visited and I like it quite a bit," Pyrrha said lightly as she and Jaune exited the social hall out into the chill night air.
Given that his home village of Croceata had a proper tavern with much stronger liquor, he'd seen his share of drunks in all their variety in his short life. While he couldn't figure out how she managed to get even as far as she had on a single cup, he was pleased to find she wasn't one of the bad kinds. Denaii spare his carcass if she were the type to get combative an angry.
Instead, she was just chatty and a tad off balance. She remedied the latter by taking gentle hold of his arm and the former mostly by prattling on about the things she liked about Sol Sodatta.
As he conjured up a magelight to see by on their short trip down the darkened street, it occurred to him that to an outsider, they looked like a pair of lovers having an evening stroll. And as soon as he thought that, he cursed himself, because on some accursed instinct, he looked over at her and into those green eyes, so luminous in more than one meaning of the word.
Beyond the eyes, her face was a perfect portrait of contentment and burgeoning excitement. Jaune couldn't remember the last time he'd seen that expression on the face of someone in his company, but he knew how much she's enjoyed their journey and felt more than a little happy knowing he'd had even a small part in that.
Noticing him looking at her, Pyrrha just smiled and squeezed his arm a little. "Are all the villages in the valley like this one?" she asked, eyes darting away to take in the few lit windows around them. There weren't many: most of the town had turned out for the festivities in the social hall, but there were enough to make themselves known.
Jaune shrugged, careful not to dislodge her as they continued along. "Every village is the same on some ways, but different in others. They all have walls—y'know because we don't want to die—and grow some crops. There's always an inn or sometimes even a hotel down south where they get more people passing through. But past that... it all depends on what they grow, what they make, what kind of magi live there..."
"What about your village? What's that like?"
He balked at that question, but only for a moment because he didn't need her asking why he wasn't excited talking about his home village. "Oh. Well... Croceatta is near the lakeshore and that means we have the water to raise livestock and fish. That means there's more people there, more crops to feed all the animals..." He sighed. "This has to be really boring. Maybe I should tell you about some of the bigger towns or..."
"No, it's fine. I wanted to know more about the place you come from. Mostly because I wonder if there are more humans like you there."
Never had Jaune been so thankful to have come to a door than when he used the time opening the one into the Vibrancy Inn to think up a way to respond to that. The bar was unmanned as they entered, and the common room was populated only by a a pair of old men too engrossed in a game played with wooden plaques to even take notice of them.
It wasn't until they were already starting up the stairs that Pyrrha finally prodded him for a reply. "Jaune?"
"Hmm?"
"You... were telling me about your village. What are the people like? Did they teach you woodcraft and the other things you know?"
He forced himself to keep moving, and his eyes to keep forward. "To tell the truth, not long after I was old enough to be expected to work, I've spent a lot of time going around the Lake Ring Road; making deliveries, making contracts for my family's wares, collecting things people back home ordered from other villages... things like that.
"I picked up woodcraft from people who live outside the walls who come into Croceatta for the Festivals and for trade—they're the ones that eventually talked my parents into letting me go out into the world alone. So... no, there's really no one else like me."
He finished just in time to fit the key into the door to their room and push it open. He had to admit that the rooms at the Vibrancy Inn were very nice: there were two mattresses sitting atop polished wood plinths with a small table between them holding a wash basin and a large pitcher. Off to one side there was a tin wash tub and a folding divider for privacy.
Pyrrha gave him a concerned look as he allowed her to enter first. "Jaune? Are you alright?"
"Just tired," he lied, shucking off his coat and heading to one of the beds.
"If you say so," Pyrrha replied, not bothering to hide her concern or curiosity. She didn't bother changing or even undressing, simply tottering over to the unoccupied bed and allowing herself to simply flop forward onto her stomach. After a moment, she wormed her way up the mattress to the pillows, immediately burying her head in them.
For his part, Jaune simply sat down in his bed and pushed away the nagging thoughts their discussion stirred up. His gaze eventually settled on the lazing form of Pyrrha.
This, he forcibly reminded himself, was a dragon. He hadn't thought about that during the entire walk back to the inn. Then, she'd just been another woman. Well, not another woman, she'd been Pyrrha, a woman he knew and was enjoying the company of.
Shaking his head, he admonished himself. Above all, he had to remember that Pyrrha was not a human. She was wearing the form of one for the purposes of their ultimate goal of fleecing the most powerful man in the valley. While she certainly liked humans and was interested in their way of life, it was in the same way a human might be interested in the ways of apes or orms.
Yes, he now understood that he owed a great deal to her, but he had to keep in mind that when everything was over, she was going to resume her natural form and fly off to find another cave to make her bed of coins and in a few hundred years, the feathered mattress at the Vibrancy Inn and the blonde failure knight in the room with it would be a distant memory, barely worth considering.
How fitting that the only person outside his family that didn't find him useless in the extreme would herself have no use of him in a few short weeks.
He laid back and closed his eyes, Logaire had told him his fortunes would change now that he'd made his connection to the Well of Souls. So far it didn't feel like it.
Except there was Summaiyi.
True, she wasn't completely human—or even demihuman—either, but at this point, given recent history it took a spark of something far removed from humanity to drive someone to befriend him. That would explain how he got along with the Shamblethorn Tribe and The Get of Shuck too.
Not that he knew all that much about the Copper Nation dragonsired, but she at least shared his moral proclivities. Speaking of which...
He propped his head up and looked in Pyrrha's direction. She was in the same position as she'd been before: face-first in the pillows, her vibrant red hair splayed out across her back like a silk sheet. The only movement in her were the soft, repetitive breaths of light sleep.
Looking at her made him feel inexplicably guilty even though he knew what he planned to do was right. Maybe it was the fact he was sneaking out, maybe it was because he knew she wouldn't be happy about it. Either way, he averted his eyes from her as he got up and set about changing.
Putting on his armor would make too much noise, so he left it off. He still took up his sword belt and buckled it on. Thus armed, he cast one last look at his traveling companion and left the room as quietly as possible.
If he'd lingered at the door a moment, and had the keen hearing of a dragon, he would have heard an unhappy sigh.
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At the rear of the Vibrancy Inn was a small, cobblestone plaza centered around a well surrounded by benches. Several bars of soap the size of Jaune's fists put together showed evidence as to what this particular well was used for, but they all appeared to have been fossilized to the benches by the deep cold of winter and hadn't yet fully thawed.
Summaiyi sat cross-legged on one of those benches, prodding one of the giant soap bars with the bladed hilt of one of her swords. Since Jaune had seen he last, she'd changed so as to be ready for battle: a light, patchwork vest of supple leather with matching bracers and trousers that was open in the back save for catches up near her neck and down at the base of her spine. Loose toggles also held closed the snug woolen shirt beneath it. Instead of boots or normal shoes, she wore sandals with a strip of hardened leather positioned to protect her toes and bronze plates entangled in the leather thongs securing the sandals to her legs, keeping her shins and the tendons in her calves shielded as well.
The dominate light of the white moon, Gracelia turned her short hair into a shock of silver that seemed to dance around her face as she turned upon sensing his approach.
"You decided to help me," she observed with a relieved smile, "I'm glad. And also proud there are still such people in the world. Logaire and the rest of the Troupe don't seem to see the harm in..." She gestured around her in frustration, "This." A shadow settled over her face as she lowered it, shaking with rage. "The damned dwarves don't even believe in the undead. I suppose that says something favorable about those holes they call home though."
Jaune stopped a good distance away from her, hands shoved in his pockets. "Believe me, I know. The Valley saw a lot of battles and the nekras has just settled in some places. A handful of zombie animals attack the walls back home every month or so. The worst is when something big dies out in the Knotted Woods... and you don't really need my life's story. Sorry."
Standing, Summaiyi waved his apology off. "I'm just happy to have someone with some sense around. You're lucky you've only had zombies. The desert... it's a place where a person can die many terrible, lingering deaths. Before joining the Troupe, I hunted and destroyed them: revenants, stegna, lost spirits, ghuls..." She said the last word in a growl."
"T-these things are pretty terrible," Jaune tried, "All armored up and decorated..."
"Indeed. But they're mindless. As hard as they are to damage, they're easy to dodge and strike. But as long as there's a source of the disgusting things, it doesn't matter of we destroy every one in town,: they'll merely be reconstructed or replaced."
She flashed him a grin that showed off a set of sharp, inhumanly long canines. "You've lived near pockets of strong nekras, right? Then you know what you have to do to stop everything that dies there from rising as a zombie, yes?"
Indeed he did know, but something about the way she asked made him feel uncomfortable saying it. Still, he soldiered on and managed: "Cleanse the area?" He doubted she was expecting a priest to show up and perform the literal version of that.
Her grin widened and before his eyes, her pupils became catlike slits and lines of triangular, copper scales emerged from her skin, forming tapering stripes running up her neck, leading up the the corners of her eyes and mouth and on just licking her cheekbones. The white moonlight stopped bleaching her hair white was it took on a metallic sheen that was decidedly not silver, much less blonde or white.
"Exactly." She pointed a gloved finger to a narrow avenue that threaded its way between two blocks of tightly-packed houses. "Now onward to wipe Sol Sodatta's soul clean."
Jaune hesitated when she started off at a job, but reminded himself that choosing not to aid the dragonsired woman was acting on the side of Sol Sodatta's abominations. Steeled by his own fervent belief that keeping more of those creatures from coming into existence was the right thing, he set off after her.
Sol Sodatta wasn't a large village, but off the main two streets, it was dense in the fashion that most villages in the Valley shared in common. It saved space inside the walls and keeping the houses close meant there were fewer walls for the heat to escape through in the winter, and less distance to run should a neighbor be in trouble and need assistance. It made fires a danger, but that was what magic was for.
They passed through several knots of homes like that before coming to the one private home in the city set apart from the others. Standing alone It had now walls of its own, just a circle of well-manicured grass and stone planter boxes supporting plants not normally seen in early spring—Vivae's work no doubt, Jaune surmised. As a nekras master, she had to also be intimately familiar with its other half in anima, vitae.
Two dark shapes loomed on either side of the single arched door of the two-story stone block house. They didn't resemble the Walking Shrines seen elsewhere in the town. Each of these wore a full suit of plate armor, heavy visored helm included. Instead of engravings, they were heavy with ornamentation: solver filigreed ivy running down their ribs, plumes of drawn copper wire interwoven with cut gems in their helmets, lines of alternating rubies and onyxes tracing their collar bones, and more luxuriant of all, their names, written in a script Jaune didn't recognize, were written in gold across plates of rare aluminum across their foreheads.
One wielded a polearm that practically hummed with magical energy. The other appeared unarmed until one noticed that its gauntlets had been forged so that the fingers ended in a set of claws that would make a bear back down in a fight.
Summaiyi gripped the hilts of her swords and eyed them like Jaune had seen Pyrrha so often eye Gasten, but she gave the building a wide berth and circled around it. "The necromancer's sanctum is accessible from inside. She actually invited the Troupe to come visit it. But while I was there, I noticed a hidden ladder built into a wall behind some shelves—something from a time where her ancestor's actions weren't as well-loved here."
Her pace slowed as her eyes scanned the base of the building. "It should be right... there." she pointed to one of the stone planters from which a beautiful bunch of orchids was growing, willing the air with the sweet scent of vanilla. Her predatory grin returned as she grasped the hilts of her swords once more.
But before she could make her move, her back stiffened and her head whipped around toward the direction they'd come.
Coming up short, Jaune turned to see what had disturbed her and felt his stomach drop into his boots.
Pyrrha Nikos was walking around the path around the house at a determined clip. She was still wearing the clothes she'd gone to the social hall in, but had hastily donned her curiass of her leathers and a belt containing her sheathed katars. Gracelia turned her hair to flame and her diadem into a halo while it threw every tension hardened muscle in her expression into stark relief.
"You told her?" Summaiyi growled.
"I didn't say a word to her." Jaune whispered, hoping Pyrrha wouldn't here—even though he didn't know if it were possible to make her more upset with him at this point.
"He told me nothing." Pyrrha speaking in her normal speaking voice seemed to split the air with its din for the pair who had been whispering and moving silently for the past half-hour. "You're the one that told me everything, Daughter of Copper. I heard everything when you propositioned him at the social hall."
Summaiyi slipped her swords loose from the hooks that held them onto her belt by a fraction. "Then you're here to stop me then?"
The redheaded dragoness closed her eyes and shook her head. "While I would beg you not to do this, you aren't any of my concern at the moment." And with those words it was as if Summaiyi ceased to exist for Pyrrha as she cast a pleading gaze in Jaune's direction.
"Jaune, you owe me nothing, but what you're about to do... it will hurt this town—hurt it's people. And if you would so flippantly do that to people who have been nothing but kind to you... then I'm afraid our time traveling together is over."
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AN: Hey look, Pyrrha finally gets back to doing stuff! Hooray!
Quite a bit of foreshadowing in this chapter. We'll meet a lot of people mentioned here. And people can now probably piece together some of the stuff about Jaune's back story and why he's often out in the murderous wilds. For one, villages on Ere are great places to stand and fight; if you're only good at running away and being clever, they're just kill boxes.
And if you're a D&D player, you can probably guess which 'monster' race would be the best friends with Jaune. Hint: they may have eaten your baby in another game.
Speaking of Jaune's thoughts, yeah, we're starting to turn the corner here. Jaune gets to go first this time mostly because I feel like it would be easier for a human to fall for a shapeshifted dragon than a dragon to fall for a person.
A lot of people have asked it the rest of the RWBY cast will show up and Summaiyi is the reason the answer is 'no'. When I was first thinking about this, she would have been Yang. But I can't write Yang as actively evil. Mischievous, sneaky—yes. Evil no. Not a lot of people really line up right or stay around long enough to be more than cameos. But if you read Game On, you'll soon be getting all the Yang-as-dragonsired you can handle, so fair's fair.
Next Chapter... well the title says it all: When Dragons Do Battle.