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.
Once They Conquered
Sometimes Jaune wished his mind didn't work the way it did. That he could be one of those people to just accept a complement, take things at face value and just enjoy the damn moment. That he could just shut off his brain once in a while.
But a lifetime of waiting for the other shoe to drop made him hyper-analytical of everything that seemed like a good turn his life might take. Sure sometimes the good times were just good times: his months learning with the Get of Shuck or his time riding with Ren on his merchant's route where eventually her met Nora. Even being at home in Croceatta hadn't been all bad: his family was never anything but loving and he'd even had a friend who didn't shun the 'useless' sickly child—if only because they were useless in another way.
As such, he couldn't deny it felt nice trotting along behind Ren hand-in-hand with Pyrrha, but that traitorous little voice in the back of his head was pointing out just how slim a chance there was that she knew the actual significance of the gesture. More than likely she was just doing what she saw other couples do and wasn't even thinking about the delineation between traveling companions and couples.
It was making it very difficult the overwhelming warmth coming from her hand over the long walk.
And it was a long walk. The Arc family home was near the Eastern Gate where the older, more established houses stood. The houses here actually had yards of their own, separated by low stone walls that had long since had generous gaps worn in them by time and neighbors being too lazy to walk around.
After a bit of winding through the village, they came to what depending on who one asked was either the forth or fifth oldest house in Croceatta. Originally made from mammoth logs, the Arc home had been patched and expanded with stone drawn from the earth with ere-a until none of the original wood could be seen past the various additions. It was one of the few two-story structures in the village and sported a sizable yard.
Said yard, in Jaune's memory at least, had always been home to a huge brick oven, one of Croceatta's only two smokers, and an ancient stone barbecue pit. It was now also home to what was normally a moderate-sized merchant's cart, which had been, by virtue of any number of clever, complex and mind-bending mechanisms had been unfolded into a miniature storefront twice its size, plus an awning stretched out the back to give shade to a large wooden folding table.
In the cart, facing a fair to middling-size queue, was a goblin woman. Her bristly hair was dyed a garish orange-red and she was wearing a purple-stained white smock over a bright pink blouse and blue canvas skirt. Her bat-wing ears twitched animatedly as she exchanged elongated buns of some sort for silver coins.
Beside her, actually doing the collection of the money and the making of change was a women with pale greenish skin and small but visible tusks that blended rather than clashed with her otherwise delicate features. A shock of black hair nearly fell in her eyes as she offered gentle smiles to every customer.
Jaune recognized them immediately as Nora Val Kairee and Summer of the Roses respectively.
Nora spotted them as she was just handing over another bun, ears perking up and eyes going wide. It was just enough warning to Summer that she reached over and caught the bun as Nora dropped it and pounced up onto the cart's counter.
"Renny! You're back!" the goblin crowed before bounding from the counter to the shoulder of a man waiting in line, to Ren. It said a great deal about goblin agility and spacial awareness in general and Nora's in particular that her clawed toes immediately found Ren's belt to clutch onto as her arms went around his shoulders. She was tall for a goblin, but still at least two heads shorter than her hob beau.
Used to this by now, Ren caught her almost without thought, nuzzling his face into her hair in greeting before replying, "Indeed. And I bought back something special." He turned so they were both facing Jaune and Pyrrha.
Again, Nora's excitement was all body language a good second before she vocalized it. "Jauney! I told Ren you'd be in Croceatta this year!" She turn to Ren. "I was right! Money well spent to get the cart across the lake, I'd say. And you wouldn't believe how much money we're making with this year's idea!"
Jaune waved to Nora with his free hand, unable to keep himself from looking confused. "Hey Nora. Good to see you. Wait: you're saying my mother and Summer actually had a good idea this year?"
"I heard that!" came Summer's voice from behind the line of people waiting to buy whatever baked goods they were selling. "All of our ideas were good! They were just ahead of their time!"
"Last year, the big plan was to sell pre-written love poems for people to read to the one the bid on at the block," Jaune muttered informatively to Pyrrha.
"That doesn't sound so..."
"They copied ones I wrote to Madlayne Austrue."
"Well you are rather..."
"...when I was twelve."
"Oh."
"Twelve or not, you were and are still the most wordy person I know!" Summer defended.
It was around this time that Nora decided to get over her preoccupation with Ren and Jaune's return to notice that Jaune was with someone. Leaping off Ren, she came to land before Jaune and Pyrrha, highly reflective turquoise eyes focused on the pair's joined hands.
"Ooooh." She said as if laying eyes on something to be reverent of. "Summer! Summer! You gotta see this! Jauney's got a girl! He's holding her hand and everything!"
Every eye on the line turned in their direction. There were snickers. And a few guffaws. And ogre slapped his belly and bent double trying to hold hers in.
Jaune wondered if it wasn't too late to go back and crawl into the naacka's stomach. Or the ogres. The stories said mountain ogres ate humans and elves. Maybe that hill ogre would like to see what her more primitive cousins made such a fuss over.
"He is?"
He knew his mother's voice, chorusing alongside his sisters Claire and Violetta's instantly.
Now he wasn't willing to bet on mastication and an acid bath in an ogre's stomach to kill him completely enough. He was actively wondering why the Vishnari didn't have a god of Death for just this sort of occasion and whether Denaii would be offended if he offered up a prayer to the Lurking Demise of the old kobold religion or the All-Consuming Maw of goblin tradition.
Well something arguably more dangerous than Denaii might take offense at that last one. Namely Nora. She didn't hold to or much like the goblin traditions—namely because she was one of its greatest blasphemies: an only child. Most goblins thought that the only driving force in the world was the Maw, and in order for the goblin race to survive it, they needed to breed in such numbers that the Maw could never consume them all. So needless to say Nora's sixty-six aunts and uncles thought it was a little odd for her parents to just have the one child albeit one with the boundless energy of seventy.
And he was now just trying to distract himself, Jaune realized. Looking in the direction of the voices, he spotted Claire first. One would think she was the runt of the Arc family given how small and thin she was. But rather than gaunt, she could better be described as willowy. Her hair was shoulder length, a shade or two darker than ash blonde and left largely unstyled. At the moment, she was carefully pulling a tray from the huge oven, looking terribly nervous that she was going to drop them. Then again, Claire was always nervous.
Violetta was farther out in the yard near a recently constructed fire pit, tending a huge bubbling cauldron of... something purple and a folding table laden with bowls and other ingredients and implements. Even in the midst of such common labor, Violetta dressed and carried herself like a highborn lady; a immaculate layered dress dyed a pale lilac color under her purple-smudged apron, her hair done up in an intricate system of yellow braids that made her two feet taller and full make-up even if it was just to stand out in the sun and stir a big pot.
She was the complete opposite of their mother, Muriel. She wore an old, faded blue linen skirt and a homespun shirt that had gone from white to beige with age. Her voluminous ash blonde hair was tied back with a blue ribbon at the bottom where it worried the backs of her thighs, and with a headband featuring two knobby horns at the top. The headband had been part Jaune's grandmother, the Blight Witch's regalia once upon a time, gifted to her son's new bride on their wedding day. It was magical, but Jaune had no idea what it did.
All thought of response fled his mind when he caught sight of who she was sharing the shaded table with.
It was a hailene. The woman was perched on a stool next to her, diligently pulling leaves and stems off of clumps of blackberries she was pulling from a bucket and dropping them into a work bowl where his mother was mixing them with other ingredients.
Now that he was paying attention, he spotted a second one, also a woman, leaning against the cart, arms folded and looking sour.
He couldn't help himself; he stopped cold, tightening his grip on Pyrrha's hand. He'd seen one or two of the winged tyrants during other festivals; always putting on airs and often getting into fights with the hobs whose mother race had been exterminated by them, or the occasional dwarf or elf who had lived long enough to have suffered first hand.
But the stories... not just legends and tales like the ones he'd been exchanging with Pyrrha on the road, but actual first hand accounts like the ones his grandmother had penned in the margins of her ritual book... They'd struck a chord of fear in him that the spirit beasts had difficulty surpassing.
Once they had conquered all the lands south of the great mountains and east to the point that the Valley had become the front lines of the War of Ascension. Their method was to spread despair and terror with brutally overwhelming shows of magical force from having their choirs call down tornadoes to scour resisting towns, to having their ships' cannons burn fields just before the harvest.
They took prisoners. Children, goblins and kobolds crammed into the narrow engineering compartments of ships and war machines and made to learn how to maintain them—or feed the fires that fueled them. Other captives were thrown into mines to bring up ore, or sent into the soaring forests of the Tresholm or even back to the jungles of the hailene home island of Illium to cut lumber to build more flying ships.
Their monstrous actions were what the Blight Witch used to justify her own... excesses. Reading through her fragmented accounts, he'd followed the story of a young woman who just wanted to keep the hailene away from their farmstead to a desperate and slightly unhinged archmage who delighted in describing using the power of healing vitae to make the normal tiny creatures that lived in every animal's gut consume choirs of hailene from the inside out. A far cry from the doddering old woman who in her waning years would dandle her sickly grandson on her knee and explain the basics of magic, but such was the dark miasma the hailene had poisoned the world with, it seemed.
And now there were two of them idly chatting with his mother while making blackberry jam.
Ren made a face that suggested he was sorry for forgetting to warn him, but did do Jaune the favor of taking Nora by the hand and leading her back to the cart. Left with no other recourse, Jaune made his way toward the table, where his mother had set down the bowl and was standing up.
"I knew you couldn't stay away from the Planter's Festival," she said with a loving smile, "It always was your favorite." Her eyes danced as they moved from him to Pyrrha. "Though now I think I see why you stayed away for so long. I trust you've been good to your new lady friend?"
Touching her sternum lightly, she then reached out and took Pyrrha's free hand in both of hers. "I'm Muriel Arc, Jaune's mother. I'm terribly pleased to meet you. I hope it's not too forward of me to ask how long you've been together? Jaune's been gone almost three months, after all."
Pyrrha's eyes darted to Jaune. The whole winter? A lone human had voluntarily gone out into the Valley's already murderous environs in the worst season? Had he been tracking her that whole time? Oh Jaune...
But there were more pressing concerns than the past. For example, with Nora's reaction, taken with Muriel's, she was starting to realize the very specific reason why one demihuman taking another's hand made that particular recipient happy. And why Jaune had been so surprised when she took his.
Again, in the future when retelling this story, she would utterly deny that the sound she made was a squeak. Dragons don't squeak. And red dragons in particular do not blush, seeing as they are already naturally red.
Immediately letting go of Jaune's hand (and just as immediately feeling some measure of loss from no longer feeling his warmth), she returned the handclasp Muriel was offering. "Pyrrha Nikos, ma'am. I-I'm sorry Mrs. Arc, but I believe you've mistaken something here. Jaune and I are merely traveling companions. Though I do owe him a great deal for saving my life—several times now, in fact."
Two by her count, given the ospreshrike and the naacka. Plus one for the fictional saving of her the 'human' from her the dragon.
She did not like the knowing smile Muriel donned. "Oh, of course dear. I understand. I've been there." Releasing Pyrrha from her grasp, she stepped back and to the side, giving them access to the table and the hailene who was now standing beside it. "Come, have a seat. Oh, I suppose more introductions are in order. Jaune, Miss Nikos, this is Hospitaler Winter Schnee. Father Vhaeltressl took ill in the past few months and he'll be retiring at the close of the festival. Luckily for us, the Hessan temple saw fit to send us a new Priestess of the Light. We're quartering her until the Father leaves the shrine to her."
Winter as over a foot taller than Jaune at her full height, as was the usual for a hailene. Unlike her brethren, however, she wasn't trying to stand as tall as possible, or extend her wingspan in an intimidation display. Instead, she was very purposefully slouching and bowed her head in greeting.
"I welcome you home, Jaune. I've heard much about you. And greeting to you as well, Miss Nikos." She glanced aside at the other hailene, became visibly annoyed and gave a little sigh. "And I suppose I should introduce my sister. This is Templar Weiss Schnee of the Order of the Eye of Truth."
If Jaune had been surprised by a hailene priestess of Hessa, his mind simply could not grasp one being a templar of his own patron, the Lawgiver Denaii.
At her sister's prompting, Weiss glanced their way and inclined her head. "Charmed," she said, then went back to glaring at the ground some distance ahead of her.
Winter shook her head, both amused and at least a little shamed. "Forgive my sister. She was given a vision that said her task was to accompany me here, but has found no guidance as of yet as to what her next step should be. So she's opted to pout."
"I am not pouting!" Weiss became animated for the first time since the traveling pair had arrived, pushing off the wall of the cart to stomp toward her sister. The mail shirt she wore of well made but simple white linens jingled quietly. "I have simply chosen not to become embroiled in the trivial goings on of this village lest I miss the Lawgiver's sign of my next sacred mission."
Still shaking her head, Winter folded her arms into the sleeves of her voluminous white cotton robe. There was a sky blue sash around her waist and her only adornment was a silver chain laden with a golden sunburst pendant—the holy symbol of Hessa, Goddess of Light and Healing. "And what if Denaii wishes you to stay here and protect these people? Will you set yourself apart from them forever, waiting for a sign that never comes?"
For a moment, Weiss's mouth worked but no words came out as visions of that very thing flashed before her eyes to her horror. "It will never happen!" she all but screeched, "the Lawgiver has delivered onto me two sacred treasures worthy of great feats. While I don't devalue protecting home and hearth, using the Seekant Eye and the Orden Sentinel for such a thing is the equivalent of using a forest fire to cook a simple meal!"
"If that's how you feel about it," Winter said with a soft sigh before returning her attention to Jaune and Pyrrha. "Please excuse us. You didn't travel months to come home to someone else's sibling spats. When you have your own family to attend to."
Jaune scratched the back of his head awkwardly because while he'd been distracted by the hailene sisters, his own—not just Claire and Violetta, but the two youngest, Gris and Verte had closed in on them. Violetta in particular had managed to sidle up right beside him. Before he could say anything, she opened her own mouth.
"And it seems to me that he's going to need to brush up on his manners as well. Aren't you going to introduce us, little brother?"
Fighting the urge to glare at her, he coughed into his fist to cover. "W-well yes. But I'm sure you all have questions and I'd rather not tell the whole story of how we came to travel together a dozen times, alright? Where are father and the others?" He knew his eldest sister, Blanche wouldn't be home; she'd married a fisherman in Tellaya Marue, a few days east along the shore of the lake and would be attending their festivals most of the time. That left second eldest Marron and Claire's twin, Matte as well as the Arc patriarch.
"Father's off with some of the old men playing horseshoes near the wall," Violetta recounted, "And the brute is probably pulling a plow to shame a cerato for being too slow." 'The brute' was Violetta's derisive name for Matte, who had taken to physical labor with a zeal and competence that put pretty much everyone else in the village to shame. "And as for Marron," there were stars in her eyes, as she said, "She left a few days ago for Tellaya Marue. There was an earthquake there a week ago and their wall split."
Jaune started to nod at this. It made sense, as Marron was an accomplished ere-a mage and couldn't just stand by while Blanche's new hometown was left vulnerable. He was stopped by the 'cat who has somehow swallowed the entire species of canaries' look on Violetta's face.
"But..." she continued sweetly, "I would suppose she might extend her trip longer for that friend of Aerik's she met when we last visited Blanche." Aerik was Blanche's husband. Jaune had met him only a few times in passing. Violetta dramatically feigned a swoon. "I was thinking she'd be the next to marry, but then our oddling little brother steps out of the wilderness with someone of his own. The only way fate could punish me further for allowing my high standards to keep me from accepting the hands of these common men would be is Claire or the brute suddenly had someone."
"Just what is that supposed to mean?" Claire managed to speak up, but she was doing so while carefully keeping Jaune and Pyrrha between herself and Violetta.
Jaune just scrubbed his hand through his hair. "This is why I wanted to make introductions once everyone was together. Pyrrha? These are my sisters. The pushy one who talks like a nob is Violetta, the quiet one using you as a shield is Claire." He reached down and tousled the scrubby brush of eight year-old Gris's ash blonde hair. All the children in the village had their hair cut short between seven and ten to it didn't interfere with their combat training. "This little lady is Gris, and her hanger-on is Verte."
Little Verte had one hand firmly latched on to Gris's shirt while the thumb of the other was in her mouth. When she noticed attention had shifted to her, she pulled harder on Gris's shirt and tried to hide behind her.
Deciding to go all the way with things just to get it out of the way, Jaune plunged onward. "Girls, Mother, this is Pyrrha Nikos. She's a princess of one of the River Kingdoms.
The sound Violetta made started at painful to the human ear and then went up to a pitch only animals could hear. "That is not possible!" she accused, pointing at Jaune. "You are having us on for teasing you!"
Gris and Verte's reactions were just the opposite. "Really?" Gris asked, eyes sparkling. "You're a real live princess like in the stories? Are you magic? Do you have a djinn servant? Do you have an army?" After a moment of thought, she let go of Verte's hand to pound a fist into her palm. "Oh! I've got it! Jaune turned into a bandit king and kidnapped you! And a prince is going to ride into town and rescue you!"
"How is me turning bandit your best guess?" Jaune tried to look serious, but he couldn't help but laugh. Pyrrha couldn't either as she knelt down to Gris's level, reaching out to tousle her hair as Jaune had.
"You don't have to worry about that. In fact, the opposite is true." She looked up at the surrounding Arcs plus Winter. "Perhaps I can tell you all the story?"
Muriel nodded. "Of course. Why don't you both set your bags down in the house and we can sit out here and talk."
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A few minutes later, they were sitting at the table. Winter had gone to take over stirring the pot so Violetta could participate in the family discussion. Embarrassed to be in earshot, Weiss had also reluctantly volunteered herself for duty taking the buns out of the oven as they were done. Less concerned with being considered an eavesdropper, Summer had come out of the cart with a wooden folding chair and taken a seat next to Muriel.
Jaune had been pressed into service making what he now understood to be blackberry compote-filled sweet buns. The secret ingredient was a strange, curled bark Summer had brought with her from her travels to the south called cassia. As he set about grinding the stuff in a mortar, he had to admit that the sweet, spicy scent was very appetizing and he could understand why his and Ruby's mothers' venture was finally seeing profit.
Pyrrha too had been armed with an icing bag full of glaze and set to work as she told their story—both the fabricated beginning and the factual remainder. To Jaune's horror, she also included how they'd slept together for warmth the night of the blizzard, but at least she emphasized that it was for survival.
"...so as you see," she'd concluded with their meeting with Ruby and Yang, "We haven't been traveling together long, but we've been through a lot together. And I still haven't been able to repay Jaune for saving my life."
The Arc women all started talking at once, expressing either sympathy of disbelief or how impressed they were. Gris wanted to know more about the dragon and whether or not Jaune had taken any of its treasure. Violetta had ignored all other parts of the tale to know more about the court politics of Nikosia. Muriel was mostly concerned about whether the two had any lasting injuries. Claire stayed quiet and focused on keeping a fussy Verte from grabbing and eating handfuls of ingredients off the table.
All the while, Summer stayed quiet which was what made Jaune instantly stop worrying. With one big exception, the Get of Shuck as a family whose members couldn't stop talking to save their lives unless they were cooking up some sort of prank or scheme. After spending so much time as an honorary member of that family, Jaune knew that one of them being quiet did not usually bode well for him.
But then it hit him: Yang had recognized Pyrrha was not human immediately by smell alone. It stood to reason that an older, more experienced werewolf would have noticed as soon if not sooner. And yet she'd just sat there nodding along with what she had to know was at least partially a lie.
Just like Yang had.
Jaune squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Their stay at Croceatta was going to be a very long one indeed.
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AN: So a big introduction to more RWBY characters. I decided to dedicate at least a little of Croceatta to some fan service, as I know a lot of people wanted to see RWBY characters Ere-ified. Most of them will just be in this arc because I'd have nothing for them to do in the back half, so enjoy while you can.
A few notes on who is what and why:
Nora's a goblin because even over in my published Ere books, I haven't had a chance to really explore goblins and figured Nora would be a good character to introduce them with because her canon character is a lot like Ere goblins. If humans are special because they're shorter lived and thus more adaptable, then goblins are humans turned up to eleven. They're quick to learn given half an opportunity, but didn't normally get that chance being a 'savage' race until the hailene stupidly taught them engineering. Not a lot of people really notice this, but Magnhild is one of the most complex weapons in RWBY and Nora clearly packs her own powder for her grenades (hence the heart-splosion), and Ren doesn't display any technical aptitude, meaning Nora is probably an engineer and weaponsmith on par with Ruby.
Hence here, Nora is a goblin who is the supply side of Ren's merchant business as a tinkerer and the reason the cart is so complex (speaking of which, the foldout everything style of merchant cart was a real thing, which is awesome).
Weiss and Winter. If you've followed Game On and my sample teaser for Dragonwrought Chronicles on my site, you'll know that when I translate Schnees or Schnee-derived characters into Ere, I make them hailene. That's because the hailene are the most haughty, self important people in the setting and also the ones most likely to have the kind of character development that pairs well with Weiss's character. I've softened Winter a bit here though I'll be the first to admit I'm not entirely certain the canon character works well this way. I think Winter is still vague enough that this can still be a reasonable interpretation.
Summer. Okay, so Summer raised Yang after Raven left, who in turn basically raised Ruby. Now granted, a lot of their mannerisms clearly come from Taiyang and at least the STRQ picture makes Summer look all aloof, but I like to think there's a reason Taiyang and Summer clicked and that might be because they've got similar senses of humor. So Ere!Summer is less the sainted missing mom and more like the kind of woman whose loving care would produce Yang. I have plans to have some fun and some feels with her. Still contemplating what to do with Raven. Might put her in Citraan's household, since there's no Salem in this and the only member of Salem's villains team that's worth a damn is Cinder.
Oh yeah, and Torchwick will be in this. Not in Croceatta, not with Citraan, but he'll be around because he is awesome.
As for the Arcs, yeah Gris and Verte are little kids. Of you're reading Arc Reaction, remember that's ten years in the future and here the characters are canon ages, which means the OC family members will be scaled appropriately. And we introduce Violetta here. I've been trying to keep only five sisters active in each fic to limit keeping track of them. I regularly juggle ten to fifteen characters in my original fics by splitting teams, and Jaune coming with a family of TEN on his own is just a bit much even for me.
No one noticed over in Arc Reaction, but Jaune's mom is dressed like Star Butterfly from Star vs the Forces of Evil.
I also just want to point out that they never stopped holding hands until the scene break. There were a couple of moments where I was going to have one or the other let go, but decided, 'nope, they're gonna keep holding them'.
One last note: at long last my Indie Go Go for the World of Ere roleplaying game (as featured as the game they're playing in Game On) is live and you can secure your copy of the Alpha Playtest version of core game by going to www DOT indiegogo DOT com SLASH projects SLASH world-of-ere-rpg-fantasy SLASH x SLASH 16253717#/. I am almost ready for playtesting, with the monsters, DMG bits, a couple of dozen magic items, and of course the sample adventure to go. If all goes well, donors will be getting their Alpha versions in early July.