Howdy folks, how's it going?
Not much to say here this time around, really. Just started some vacations which is nice and yet the stresses of work refuse to stay at work…
Anyway, as always, shout out to Chaos Productions for his assistance.
And as always, I own neither RWBY nor LoL.
Now, enjoy!
/
Sprawling before them, with the ceiling very high above, and beacon of green light spread at regular intervals lighting up even as Ruby stared, was a corridor. A corridor of what, going the big, bulky doors that decorated the walls on either side, with the one at the distant end of the corridor being positively massive, was clearly a vault.
But that wasn't the thing that had drawn the red-cloaked girl's attention. No, what had caught her attention was the walls themselves, as well as the floor and, slowly turning her head up, even the ceiling so faintly visible from here.
They were white. The entire space was white, the green beacons reflecting upon smooth, polished surfaces in a way that brought to Ruby's mind her home's kitchen counter. This wasn't a vault of steel and a brick, but rather of solid stone.
And even before taking a single step into the place, she could feel that something was off, Merle crooning uncomfortably at how… muted the surroundings seemed to feel to senses beyond the human.
"So, uh," Arslan was the first to speak, giving the place a confused and unimpressed look. "What's so special about this hole in the ground in comparison to the one Jaune's stuff was previously at?"
"Petricite…" Ruby mumbled in reply, flashes of a colossal figure going through her mind as she did and making her miss the inquisitive looks of both other team leaders falling on her.
"Perceptive, Miss Rose. Indeed, this entire vault is lined with it." Ozpin complimented her with a polite nod, before turning his attention to the others. "Petricite, Miss Altan, Mr. Arc, is a material from the ancient times, the art of its creation long since lost to the ages, and one that is remarkable due to its… peculiar interactions with magic."
"Peculiar?" Jaune couldn't help but repeat, his curiosity about anything ancient now piqued.
"Petricite absorbs magic." Penny clarified, as she cast an appreciative look of recognition around. "And by absorbing and storing magical energy, it can nullify and outright dispel sorcery, as well as obscure its presence. This stuff came from and was mostly used by the city state of Demacia, who had a rather unfavorable view of magic and its wielders in all its forms."
"Didn't do them any good in the end, the bunch of self-righteous morons." Jax commented with a sigh. "Damn shame that one of the few potentially worthy opponents I've ever had wasted her talents on that place."
"Quite so, Miss Polendina." The headmaster took over again, ignoring the Grandmaster. "You see, Mr. Arc, I have something of a collection of artefacts from the times of Runeterra of my own. The nature of petricite means that those of a more magical nature, and whose magic has endured the passing of the ages, are safely contained, and at the same time the magical signatures of that which is kept within is made unnoticeable, hidden away from the rest of the world. You would be hard-pressed to find a better concealed hideout."
"We just took an elevator here, though." Arslan commented with a raised eyebrow. "That's not exactly difficult access."
"Ah, but Miss Altan, that is only because as the custodian of this place, I've let you all in." The Headmaster replied with a chuckle. "Believe me, there are as many security measures against uninvited guests in this vault as the importance of what it keeps hidden deserves. If someone tried to use the elevator down to this level without my express permission… well, let's just say it wouldn't end well for them."
"And you're not concerned that… some student might just accidentally press the wrong button on the way to your office?" Jaune asked with some concern, because that sounded exactly like the kind of thing that Nora would get herself into…
"I've prepared against such eventualities, Mr. Arc, no need for concern." Ozpin replied reassuringly, a small upward turn at the edge of his mouth showing his amusement at the questions, before finally taking a step forward. "Now, if you would follow me."
He proceeded to lead them further down into the corridor, and as they passed by some of the massive, perfectly square petricite doors, it did not escape Ruby's notice that all of them were heavily inscribed, spiraling patterns and odd letters carved into the stone itself, some of them almost seeming to give off a faint glow, unrelated to the green lights illuminating the place.
A few short steps later, the headmaster has stopped before one such door.
"This one is where your collection's been placed, Mr. Arc." The man stated, casually tapping the tip of his cane against the smooth marble-like surface. For a moment, nothing happened, but then, a low rumble filled the place, as the carvings in the door almost seems to flow around the point of contact, twisting in a way not unlike an opening lock, and ponderously slowly, the thick stone block that was the door began rising, stopping just high enough that the headmaster could comfortably walk in. "Take a look."
"Uh, that almost looks like that ruin over in Vacuo, except without the deathstalker swarms, which is always a plus…" Jaune commented at the sight, casting an uncomfortable glance at the weighty stone as he passed under it, Arslan and Ruby following.
The vault's inside was also laced with petricite, from the far closer ceiling, to the shelves carved into a wall where all the dusty old tomes and scrolls had been deposited, all the way to the plinths where the familiar sights of the massive broken blade and other such artefacts now rested, all of them familiar to Ruby, except for one that had both girl and crow glancing curiously.
Between the rusted remnants of the ancient hextech riffle and the antique staff, there was a plinth that held a box. A simple wooden box, with nothing remarkable about it, no inscriptions or decorations of any sort, nothing that caused her to remember things of a time so long ago. The red-cloaked girl vaguely recalled seeing it before, in previous visits to Tukson's store, but it had never really warranted her attention, and Jaune had never asked her about it. She wondered what could it contain that earned it that particular spot in the display…
"Well, everything seems to be in order." Jaune stated at length, a complicated expression on his face as he looked around to the legacy that had been bequeathed to him, before shaking his head and turning away, clearly not keen on looking further for the time being, addressing the Headmaster with an inquisitive look. "So, you got stuff like this in these other vaults?"
"Indeed," The Headmaster confirmed with a nod, as the others walked out and the door closed with a rumble, before moving on to another door and once again tapping his cane against it. "Here, see for yourself."
The rumble continued as that door opened, and curiously, the trio of students and the android looked inside. This room, it was immediately noticeable, was much sparser in its contents. There was, in fact, only one single plinth at the center of it, and lying on top of it…
It was a weird weapon, one of a sleek design, made of silvery looking metal. One might have thought it to be some sort of odd axe or sickle, with the way the handle curved and the segmented, fang like blade jutted out from the other end, but Ruby looked at it and…
She remembered then, a young man, a shadow stalking its opponents in the utmost quiet of the night, an arsenal of blessed weaponry of the faith as his tools, and the voice of the sister so far away from him as the guide that led him forward, never together, yet never apart…
…She knew better. It was a pistol.
"Aphelios…" She muttered, glancing towards the other champion in the room.
"Indeed, I'd recognize that gun anywhere." Penny replied with a somber, wistful tone.
"Another champion?" Jaune asked, clearly understanding the implications, and politely refraining from inquiring on how the heck was this thing a gun. Probably something magic.
"Yes. One of the quiet ones, solitary type. Not much was known about him outside the fields of Justice, but still," She replied, her tone one of solemn reminiscence, as she turned toward her fellow champion. "Was this all that remained?"
"Afraid so," Jax replied, his own tone matching her own. "Them Targonian folk, well, they had it rougher than most others. Which considering how that whole mess ended, it's saying something."
"What do you mean?" The android asked, giving him a look that was clearly requesting answers.
"You want I should start explaining, kiddo?" The grandmaster said, masked gaze clearly turning towards the Headmaster, who breathed out through his nose in resignation.
"Yes, Jax, that is why we are here." He said, and Ruby didn't miss how the old man seemed to be bracing for something.
"Alright." Jax replied with a shrug, before turning to a now quite curious audience. "So, you all know the short version by now. Grimm arrived out of nowhere, wrecked stuff, bad shit happened, world went to hell in a casket and eventually turned out like this, right?"
The four of them glanced confusedly at each other, before they each nodded in reply.
"Well, what you weren't told was how bad it was exactly." The champion with a sigh. "You guys nowadays have your kingdoms and your huntsmen, and you are barely keeping the Grimm at bay. This may sound like an old man's "Back in my day" rambles to you, but the fact is, those damn things were much worse back then. Oh they didn't start out that way, when they first showed up, but as the fighting kept going, it was like they were learning. Like they were adapting, growing stronger to handle the worst that we could throw at them. And then it got so bad, what we could throw at them stopped being enough."
Jax then flicked a thumb towards the weapon on the pedestal. "For those not in the know, the moon-worshipping fellow that owned that came from a place where people were chosen as vessels by celestial beings, effectively becoming gods in human form for all intents and purposes. Dead-eyes and robo-chick here will recall some of them. When things started getting really bad, those guys finally climbed down from that tall-arse mountain they called a home and started to take things seriously, tried to take the fight back to the Grimm."
"Wait," Penny interrupted, a deep pondering frown on her face. "I know it sounds like a foregone conclusion from where we're standing, but you're saying the Grimm could stand up to the likes of Leona and Diana?"
"How'd you think the moon got wrecked like that?" The hooded man replied with a shake of his head. "The moment it seemed like they could perhaps start turning things around, the Grimm wrecked the damn thing, and whatever the fuck they pulled to do it, it somehow crippled the connection between the celestial realms and the material world, massively weakening the aspects and the magics of that whole region. Targon did not last long against the onslaught after that. The mountain was turned to rubble when some of the moon's fragments came crashing down on it."
…
…
…
"How the fuck did you even manage to stand against something like that?" Jaune all but whispered, completely floored by this particular revelation. The Grimm threat and the destruction they promised had been ever looming over humanity and Faunuskind alike, but to hear that it had once been like this, from someone who had lived through it…
Even Arslan seemed to lose her usual confident demeanour at the revelation, for once quiet and unsure. Penny seemed surprised, looking down forlornly, no doubt thinking of what had been lost. Ruby looked largely the same as ever, but even Merle on her shoulder seemed to fidget in distress.
"Simple, Mr. Arc." The headmaster replied gravely. "In their desperation, those still left to fight resorted to the biggest gun they had. And we were left with the fallout."
Without another word, the man turned, and lead them all towards the other end of the corridor, towards the outright massive gate that stood there. Once again, the Headmaster tapped his cane against the door, not just once, but rather as if he was inserting a code, or weaving a melody.
And with the loudest rumble of all, the door opened, not rising like all the others, but rather parting before them.
Ruby stood up straighter, Merle squawking in alarm. Even within this prison of petricite, the thrum of power could be felt…
There was no green light within, but rather a molten glow of flames.
Within the chamber, this one also barren save for the one thing it contained, the walls of white were absolutely riddled with runes and words and symbols, patterns upon patterns, each one glowing as brightly as if they'd been carved from flames, all twisting and weaving in a spiral around the thing in the center.
A thing that, upon closer inspection, seemed to be a rather out of place piece of technology, some sort of pod, clearly of Atlesian design, it too completely covered in runes and symbols.
And through the glass, Ruby could see a woman, seemingly in a deep slumber.
The glow, the power, it was all coming from her…
"Meet Amber Herbst." Ozpin said, with a weight of a sorrow far heavier than a single lifetime should allow in his voice. "The latest bearer of a World Rune shard..."
/
You know, just in case it wasn't already obvious just how deeply AU the setting of this story is supposed to be.
And I do apologize if it feels like I am stacking the cliffhangers a bit too much, that is honestly more a consequence of the new size format for my updates than it is intentional on my part.
Next time, the messy situation of the distant past will be further explained. But before that, next up is the next update to Beneath the Broken Moon, so look forward to that.
Cya all on the next one, stay safe and take care.