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I don't own anything. RWBY is not owned by me. It is owned by talented people. I'm a nobody. Please don't sue me.

Second Case:

Red Herring

Weiss stared out the window of the moving car, fiddling with her phone for a moment before finally dialing her partner's number and placing it by her ear. Several long moments passed before a groggy Ruby answered it. "Hello?"

"Ruby," Weiss said. "I don't need a ride to work today."

"Huh?" Ruby mumbled, before seeming to gain proper consciousness. "You don't? Why not? Are you okay? You didn't get hurt by the sirens did you? Do you need me to come over?"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "I'm fine, dolt. I'll explain when I arrive at work."

"So you're coming in today?" Ruby asked.

Weiss looked out the window at the distant gates the car was slowly approaching. Beyond it lay the sprawling Schnee Estate, her lamentable destination. "Yes," she said, slightly distant. "I will be late, though."

"O-oh," Ruby said. "I'll, um, I'll-"

Weiss cut her off as the driver made it past the entrance gate and onto her family property. "I need to go. I will see you in a few hours."

"Okay, Weiss," Ruby said. "Bye..."

"Goodbye."

Hanging up, Weiss studied the grounds that had once been her home as they passed through them. The Schnee Estate had been built by a distant ancestor on a hill above the once modest town of Vale, but passing centuries had caused the hungry metropolis to devour it the same as the small fishing village that was now Innsmouth Street. Unlike the rundown fishing community, the Schnee territory was acres of fenced fields surrounded by upper class homes, a crown jewel among fine diamonds.

The Schnee Manor itself was an enormous building whose foundations were first laid when Vale was young. Every generation had made their own changes to the building, expanding and modernizing it as required, but all had spent enough money that the changes appeared beautiful rather than tacked on.

Weiss allowed her eyes to unfocus as she channeled aura into them, and until the car finally pulled to a stop at the base of the steps she studied the wards that protected the estate. Nothing in the city, nor anything in the country, resembled the wards of the Schnee Estate.

With passing years wards grew stronger rather than weaker, as they were formed from binding magics channeling the energy of nature into their works. The Schnee Estate had been built upon a nexus of ley lines, the same way that Beacon was, and every scrap of mana had been tamed and directed through the centuries to the defense and use of the Schnee family. The end result were individual wards stronger than most could afford to have created, spun into massed protections of such unimaginable complexity that a colony of spiders could not trace the strands in a hundred generations.

When the car finally pulled to a stop the driver hurried to open the door for her, and she nodded to him as she stood and made her way inside. The front room, like all of Schnee Manor, was huge, imposing, and cold, aesthetically and in temperature. No highly paid decorator, no luxurious furnishing, no careful work by the army of maids employed by the family could bring life to the place after her mother passed, and she doubted that the manor would ever truly feel like a home again.

"Miss Schnee," a man said. "It's good to see you again, if you don't mind my saying."

Weiss felt a tiny but real smile cross her face as she looked at the balding, mustached butler that had come to greet her. "Klein! It's good to see you again."

"It has been some time," he said, smiling happily at her. "Your sister isn't in, and your father is away on business. Your brother is upstairs, but he's in lessons, if you wish to see him."

"No thank you, Klein," Weiss said, shaking her head. She hadn't spoken to her brother since she'd moved out of Schnee Manor the week before starting at Beacon, and other than speaking to him as form required at her departure, she hadn't really interacted with him in years. "I'm here to check something in the private library."

Klein's eyebrows shot up. "I see. Follow me then. I hope you've been well?"

Weiss smiled slightly again. "Indeed. It's been a bit of a change, living on my own. Even with a maid cleaning every weekday when I'm at Beacon, its very different living in the penthouse than here. I like it, though."

"That's good," Klein said. "Are you enjoying your work?"

"Yes," Weiss said, nodding slowly. "It's very difficult, but it feels as though I'm doing something valuable. The city is a safer place when I finish a case."

"And your coworkers?"

Weiss shrugged. "I don't know most of them well, although I get along with my partner. She says..."

"Yes?" Klein asked when she didn't say anything for a while.

"She says that we're friends," Weiss finished shyly.

Klein lit up at that, grinning happily at her. "Very good! I'm happy for you, Weiss."

"It's strange," she confessed. "I do like spending time with her, but I'm never sure what to do or say. Friendship is very strange."

"It is indeed," he chuckled. "Don't be afraid to meet others as well. You've got a good heart, miss, and I look forward to the day you show the world that."

Weiss blushed but smiled again as Klein opened the library door for her. "Thank you. Now, I'm going to be researching for some time, and then I will need to return to work. It was good seeing you again, Klein."

"You as well, miss," Klein said warmly. "Please, return soon. Maybe bring your partner."

Weiss chuckled at the thought. "I'm not sure how well she'd get along here, although if the manor survived it I'm sure she would enjoy herself. Perhaps sometime... when father is away."

"Of course, miss," Klein said. "I think that went without saying."

Weiss giggled slightly, a tiny smile on her face, and Klein grinned at the reaction, winking at her. "Well, I'll leave you here. Have a nice day, miss."

"You as well, Klein."

The library took up an entire wing of Schnee Manor. It was considerably larger than the one under Beacon, covering all imaginable topics, with a strong focus on the supernatural. Weiss strolled past the majority of it, until she reached a small locked door at the far end of the library. Placing her hand on the knob, she focused her aura and carefully manipulated the wards on the door in the proper sequence, unlocking it.

Inside of the warded room was the private collection. While the main library had powerful wards to keep the books safe and undamaged, they were nothing compared to what was in use in the private collection. The air hummed with magic, making Weiss' skin itch, and any attempts to enter the room without properly being keyed into the wards would've caused her swift death.

The private collection was fairly large, taking up an entire thirty foot by forty foot room with shelves along every wall and numerous rows of shelves in the middle. The only break from the books was a small work table with a pair of chairs.

It didn't take Weiss long to find the books that she was looking for. She carefully pulled several ancient tomes from the shelves, placing them gently on the work table as she sat down and began researching.

The books in the private collection were there for three possible reasons. The first, was because they were very rare and valuable, and so needed to be kept away from maids or children who could steal or damage them. The second, was because they were forbidden tomes that would've been burned and their owner imprisoned if their existence was confirmed. Finally, the back of the room had a special reinforced shelf for books that were actively dangerous, such as those filled with knowledge that damaged the mind and soul, trapped grimoires which would kill the unwary, and prison books for dangerous entities.

Weiss began her research with a book of the first type, Things of the Water. It was an exceedingly rare work with only a few extent copies remaining in the world, but it had all of the information that she could ever desire about sirens and similar aquatic demons.

When she finished reading it she frowned. The strange blurring effect that she had observed while they had been singing was caused by the magic trying to make them appear to be what she was attracted to. The various accounts in Things of the Water all insisted that the sirens appeared either as specific people the viewer was attracted to, or as general body types and appearances that they found highly arousing.

None of the accounts gave any explanation for why she saw nothing but a blurry petite figure with unusual eyes. Was there something wrong with her? Weiss looked down at her hands, forcing them to relax where they had been tightly clenched. She carefully smoothed her gloves while she briefly thought about it.

She had never really spent much time thinking about love or attraction before. Schnee Manor was a cold place, especially after her mother's passing, and she spent most of her time in her room, or studying with venerable tutors. She had never really interacted with anyone close to her age, and she had never really thought much about romance or even simply sex.

Weiss scoffed as she rubbed her gloved hands. It was pointless to think about, anyway. Whether she had something wrong with her or not didn't really matter. Love, she felt, was a chemical reaction that caused people to behave like fools. She worked very hard to convince herself that she was glad that the sirens hadn't looked like people, and when she was able to she put away that first book and began her next research.

Several rare tomes didn't reveal anything useful, but finally, in a book that had been banned centuries ago called Unaussprechlichen Kulten she found what she was looking for. The book was an account of various cults that worshipped ancient deities, and it contained numerous references to the worship of Dagon, including details about the binding magics employed by the cult.

With her more obscure research complete Weiss put away her books and returned to the main library, grabbing a number of the better books on binding magic that had been collected or written by her family over the centuries. After another hour of work she finally confirmed her suspicions and put everything away, heading back to the front of the building and calling a driver on the way.

Weiss spent most of the trip lost in thought, carefully considering what she'd found, although she had the presence of mind to have the driver stop at a gourmet sandwich shop before they left the upperclass section of Vale for lunch for herself and her partner. It was shortly after noon when they finally arrived at Beacon, and after grabbing the sandwiches Weiss hurried down to the squad room in the basement of the building.

When she walked in she saw Captain Goodwitch standing at the entrance to her cubicle, hands on her hips as she interrogated a nervous looking Ruby. Weiss quietly approached in time to hear her partner's fumbling attempts to answer the woman's angry questions.

"Um, she'll be here soon..."

"And why isn't she here now?" Goodwitch demanded.

"She had a good reason," Ruby defended her staunchly.

"Which was?" Goodwitch demanded.

"Um... that is..."

"I was performing necessary research on the case using the Schnee Library," Weiss interjected, slipping past the captain. She nodded to her frazzled looking partner before sitting down and facing Captain Goodwitch.

"Research?" Goodwitch asked. "I thought you caught the sirens responsible for the disappearances."

"We caught three sirens," Weiss agreed. "Unfortunately, they didn't do it."

"What?" Ruby and Goodwitch asked simultaneously.

"As I said, something was bothering me about the case," Weiss said. "Several somethings, to be frank. Why would no one have said or done anything about a group of sirens picking off sailors in the bay for an extended period? Sirens are messy eaters, so why was there no sign of bone piles around the grotto? Why did we wander around all day without any results, before directions to find the sirens just fell into our laps?"

Goodwitch's eyes narrowed. "Those are good points, and it's nice to see you starting to think like a detective, but I wouldn't say that is proof of anything."

"No, but it was what made me visit the Schnee Library," Weiss countered. "I did further research into the binding magic employed in the ship, and came to several disturbing conclusions. First, while I was correct in that it is used to contact Dagon and funnel energies from sacrifices to it, I did miss a detail. The sigil is part of a larger ritual of manifestation."

Goodwitch paled slightly, while Ruby simply looked confused. "Are you certain?" the captain demanded.

"Yes," Weiss said, nodding. "The Schnee Library is far more extensive than Beacon's, and I ran the numbers myself to verify the possibility."

"What does manifestation mean?" Ruby asked.

"Powerful entities, like demon lords, cannot simply enter our plane of existence," Weiss lectured. "In order to come here, a large number of people must channel energies through an elaborate string of rituals to pave the way, or an enormous quantity of mana must be used to transform a region of this plane to be like the demon's, making the transition easier."

Ruby's brow scrunched her face as she tried to follow the explanation. After a moment Weiss sighed and tried again. "You can bring a demon lord into the world by sending a bunch of mana from here to the demon by a bunch of rituals, or you can use a bunch of mana to make part of this world so similar to the demons' that they can easily cross over."

"I presume this ritual was part of the first kind of manifestation?" Goodwitch asked. "Don't sirens come from Dagon's home plane? Why couldn't they have done it?"

"Like I said, I did some research into the rituals," Weiss said. "The binding magic employed in that sigil are truly ancient and poorly formulated. It had several otherwise unnecessary requirements, one of which was that the caster be a native of the plane in question."

"So since sirens come from Dagon's plane-" Ruby started.

"The Abyssal Sea," Weiss interjected.

"-and the magic has to be done by people from here, that means they couldn't have done it, right?" Ruby finished.

"Very good," Weiss said with a tiny smile, nodding to her partner, who bounced in place, beaming at the praise.

"How did you discover this?" Goodwitch asked. "I've never seen any references to such a thing."

The question strayed into dangerous territory, as Unaussprechlichen Kulten was illegal to own. Weiss waved her hand dismissively and answered as blandly as possible. "Like I said, the Schnee Library is quite extensive, and after I found a reference to that I worked through the theory behind the sigil and my conclusions. If you would like to check my arithmancy, I can walk you through how the binding magics function on a theoretical level."

"That won't be necessary," Goodwitch said. "I presume that you will be continuing the case, then?"

"Yes," Weiss said. "In fact, it's become an even higher priority."

"Why?" Ruby asked.

"There was one other point about the sigil," Weiss said. "Dagon's manifestation rituals take many forms, but the one that was used in that ship has one additional detail. It is only performed after many, many preparatory rituals have been done, and is in fact one of the final steps in the process."

Goodwitch's eyes widened. "How much time is left?"

Weiss shrugged. "They still need to perform a few rituals, but those have fewer intricate requirements. If the cult is small we have weeks, but with enough numbers they could force things through much, much faster."

"Then we really need to hurry," Ruby said, standing up. "If we haven't heard of them before now, they must've been careful, and this was all really not careful. They probably think they're in the home stretch and it doesn't matter if we notice anything."

"Alright," Goodwtich said. "Good work, detectives. I'll get in contact with SWAT and make sure our own people are on call. We'll be prepared to offer backup as soon as you find something."

"Come on," Ruby said, leading the way to the cars.

"I never thought I'd see the day that you weren't interested in stopping for lunch before working," Weiss drawled.

Ruby's stomach growled in response, making her blush. "I guess we'll have to eat on the way."

Weiss rolled her eyes and tossed her partner her sandwich. "I already picked something up, dolt."

Ruby's eyes opened wide, and she grinned from ear to ear as she looked at Weiss with a strange expression that she had never seen directed at her before. "Thanks Weiss. You're the best."

"Of course," Weiss said with a superior sniff. "Now hurry up. We have a cult to catch."

Author's Notes

This chapter made references to a pair of magical books, and as will always be the case in this story, books of that nature will be mythos books related to the world of H. P. Lovecraft. Things of the Water was created by Brian Lumley for the story "The Cyprus Shell". Unaussprechlichen Kulten was originally created by Robert Howard, although Lovecraft made use of it himself.