"A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors. Who wields power is not important, provided that the structure remains the same."
- George Orwell, 1984
It couldn't be a coincidence, could it?
He'd met one person who had flaming eyes like that, with such ferocity and distinct color. And he'd met one maiden.
This wasn't Raven, that was for sure. She was different in almost every way. Her eyes glowed silver, not red, she had darker skin, her hair — or what little of it Percy could see — was crimson red, not black, and she was most of a foot shorter than Raven as well. She looked familiar to him somehow, but she wasn't Raven. Of that, he was certain.
He was instantly on guard, his hand dropping to his pocket and grabbing Riptide in what he hoped passed for a casual motion. He still didn't think the siblings were trying to pull anything — they seemed enamored enough by feudal honor and loyalty that he didn't think they'd be stabbing him in the back anytime soon — but if he was correct and this was a maiden, then he was looking at one of the few people on this planet which could realistically pose a threat to him.
Raven was strong and he'd gotten a lot better since he'd beaten her, but if there was anyone who could actually kill him if he let his guard down, it'd be a maiden.
Both Jax and Gillian stood when he entered the room, their attention on him and their faces deadly serious.
"I think it's best if we speak in private." Gillian broke the silence.
Percy turned back for a moment to close the door, but paused.
Gillian and even Jax knew. Maybe not all of it, maybe not even the truth of any of it, but they knew something. And they didn't know that he knew. Which meant they were more than likely about to explain it to him, for… whatever reason the maiden had come here.
And he, for as long as he'd been here, had been forbidden from telling anyone.
Well, he wasn't going to.
"No." Percy said instead. "It's not." he opened the door slightly wider, jerking his head and motioning to Shiro to enter the room.
Gillian looked uncomfortable. "Lord Perseus, I beg you to trust me. Please, it's best if we speak in private. If you'd like to tell your servant afterwards then-"
"He's staying." Percy said, swinging the door shut after Shiro had come in. "Whatever you were about to tell me, you can do so with Shiro here." Percy walked to the other couch and sat slowly, beckoning for the others to do the same.
Gillian and Jax sat, but the woman stayed standing. Shiro echoed her, as if it'd do any good. As much as Percy had faith in his friend against any normal person, he'd have a very tough time holding his own against an active huntsman right now. A maiden, if she truly was one, would wipe the floor with him.
"This is Samara," Gillian was the one to introduce them, "We… came across her in our campaign to restore the legitimacy of Vacuo. She's given us some valuable information, and asked to… meet with you."
Percy narrowed his eyes. Raven had been the maiden for the season of spring. According to her, there was one relic for each kingdom, which meant one maiden. Assuming that the winter maiden pretty much had to be in the north in Atlas (though he was very confident it wasn't the person named Winter) that left summer and fall. His mind flittered back to the message he'd decrypted from Ozpin some time ago. The one about 'fall', which he now assumed could be nobody but the fall maiden. While not as confident as with Winter, he was pretty sure that Ozpin hadn't been talking about the girl Ella Fall.
But that, logically, left him with summer for Vacuo. And Samara… that was a bit too convenient of a name. Maybe he needed to rethink his assessment of Ella soon. It'd make a bit too much sense for her to be involved with the supernatural.
"A pleasure to meet you, Summer." Percy said carefully.
Gillian and Shiro grimaced at him getting her name wrong mere seconds after hearing it, while Jax looked more amused than anything. None of them bothered correcting him, however.
Samara tensed, her hand falling to near her waist.
"Samara," Gillian resumed, emphasizing the name. "Has helped us quite a bit as well. What we're about to tell you is… hear us out. We have proof."
Percy knew they did.
'Samara' stepped forward at Gillian's gesture, looking at him curiously. "The world," she began slowly, "Is not completely as you know it. There exists… magic. Or at least, magical beings. Four beings across Remnant known as the maidens, who can control the elements. All young women, who pass their powers on when w- they die."
Shiro snorted from where he was standing next to Percy. "You know you're gonna have to have proof to make a claim like that, right?"
Samara extended her hand slowly. In it, a small ball of fire materialized.
She interrupted Shiro's coming rejection of a single fireball being proof when the air in the room around them began to slowly twist and turn. Shiro lowered his hand to his sword, but Percy remained relaxed on the couch. Or at least, appeared relaxed.
Through the window they could see the wind beginning to pick up outside, battering trees and vegetation alike. Just a couple feet from the window itself they could see the world's smallest tornado manifesting. All the while the ball of flame in Samara's hand stayed alight.
"This is but a small fraction of my power." Samara announced over the winds as they began to calm, the fire in her hand extinguishing. "I'll refrain from destroying this building, as a courtesy."
"Thanks for that." Percy said dryly, taking a paper that had landed next to him on the couch and setting it back on the table.
Shiro's eyes were narrowed in suspicion. "This is a bit hard of a pill to swallow based on some fire and wind alone. You could have another person with a wind semblance out of sight, or be manipulating some dust to get the same effects."
"She's not lying." Jax interrupted, sneering at Shiro. "We've seen her create sand storms, and shape entire regions of the desert to her will. Entire dunes turned to glass. She is mighty. A gift from the gods, as a sign of our birthright."
"And we haven't seen any of that." Shiro pointed out. "It's not very reassuring to us."
"You would accuse us of lying?" Jax challenged and rose from his seat, the implied 'commoner' going unsaid.
"Yes." Shiro deadpanned.
"Enough!" Samara interrupted, stopping Jax from just about lunging at Shiro. Shiro, for his part, didn't look all that threatened. "This is a pointless exercise. Ask your lord. He already knows, doubtlessly."
All eyes in the room went to him. Percy shrugged, fine to let things play out. While Oum probably wouldn't take kindly to Percy 'accidentally' letting some information slip, or telling Raven to tell someone, none of this was planned by him or really in his control, which presented a very unique opportunity to let Shiro glean at the truth. So, the more information he could get from Samara, the more Shiro would learn. Jax and Gillian weren't… the best people to learn that he knew of the supernatural, but they'd be running a kingdom in his stead. If he didn't learn to trust them with this sort of thing, he'd be in a bad position when it came to protecting the relics.
"And how do you figure that?" Shiro asked incredulously when Percy didn't answer.
"As I said, there are four maidens who control the elements. One for each season. One for each academy. One for each kingdom. Spring for Mistral, fall for Vale, winter for Atlas, and… summer for Vacuo."
All eyes were on him again. Considering he had called her summer just a few seconds before, he could hardly blame them for the doubt he saw in their eyes.
"Were you planning on telling us about the rest of it, or…?" Percy trailed off, breaking the silence. He looked at Samara expectantly, doing his best to ignore the prying eyes in the room.
Samara frowned. "I wasn't planning on it. If you'd like them to know about those then tell them yourself."
"So what do you want from me?" Percy changed the subject quickly. Exploring it further would force him to answer some questions he didn't have the answers to. Or rather, that he couldn't answer.
"As you might imagine." Samara cleared her throat, turning slightly to address Jax and Gillian as well. So, they hadn't heard her pitch yet. "Being a maiden makes you the target of a lot of people who want to use that power themselves. I… know some of the people who have tried to recruit me in the past, and I'd rather stay away from them. I need to be left out of their plans."
"And you want me to ensure that Vacuo — and even Mistral — is a place where you can be left alone. And what are you doing for us?" Percy asked, all the while knowing exactly what he wanted from her.
"I'm willing to… help out, periodically." She said, slowly. "I won't be at your beck and call, but if you need me once or twice… you'll know how to find me. And in return, all you have to do is leave me alone."
Percy pretended to consider it for a moment. "And what if that's not enough?"
Samara stiffened, and then forcibly relaxed herself. "I won't be your servant if I'm your ally, but I promise that I am a far worse enemy. But I suppose… it depends what else you would want."
Percy's eyes met hers in an open challenge. "You know exactly what it is I want. The one thing that you can give me that nobody else on Remnant can."
"No." she flat out denied, "I can't — won't — give you that. I refuse."
Percy did visibly tense at that, and because her hand had inched into her cloak. She was ready to fight, now. While he knew he could beat a maiden, he had no idea how Raven stacked up to Samara. For all he knew Raven had gotten her powers the week before while Samara had had them as a child. Percy knew firsthand what kind of difference that could make when you were wielding divine power. Plus, he didn't really want to find out what a fight between them would do to the capitol building, Haven academy, or even the rest of Mistral. And he really didn't want to reveal that much of his hand like this. He'd had to use his powers to win against Raven, and he'd likely have to here if it came to it. A fight like that happening at the top floor meant he couldn't possibly hide the use of his powers, or even his face. His identity and supernatural powers would get out, and his plans would go askew.
That being said, what was the point of all of his plans and conquests in the first place if not to get the relics and keep them safe? To use them against Salem, even, if any of them proved to be more useful than the relic of knowledge had been so far.
"Does someone care to fill the rest of us in?" Shiro interrupted, his tone annoyed and his own hand hovering over his sword's hilt. The only half-kidding voice in the back of Percy's head pointed out that he was about as likely to use it on Percy as he was Samara at his point.
Samara looked at Percy expectantly, but he refused to yield. Oum had been downright pleasant for a deity so far, but Percy was in no rush to push the line. He couldn't tell any of them anything that Oum had told him. That would have to be her.
"The relic of destruction." Samara finally bit out, glancing at Shiro but making it clear her attention was still on him. "I suppose there's no reason to keep it from you, considering he knows. The purpose of the maidens is to protect four relics across Remnant. Powerful objects, the remaining power of the gods on Remnant. Only we can access them. And he." she jerked her chin at Percy, "wants my relic. The relic of destruction."
Percy didn't bother listening to the bevy of questions that flooded in after that. He couldn't answer any of them, and he'd clarify all of that later. For now, he had to focus on what was one of his main objectives just within his grasp.
"What's your objection?" Percy interrupted something that Gillian was saying, surprising her if the way her jaw clicked shut was any indication. "Why are you so opposed to retrieving your relic?"
"You- it's a fraction of a god's power! You could decimate a city with it for all I know, or rule Remnant single handedly with it alone! It's my duty to protect it, and I won't be the first maiden to let it fall into the wrong hands after thousands of years."
He was hardly incapable of doing those things now. Even discounting his gains in mortal power and influence since coming here, destroying one city was well within his means. An earthquake would bring Mistral to the ground, the avalanches killing millions in seconds. A tsunami and Vale would be wiped from the map, waves taller than any building crushing the entire city. One very large hurricane targeting Atlas meant that it'd be knocked out of the sky, and Mantle buried beneath a mountain of snow. Vacuo, he had to admit, would take him a bit longer. He'd have to gradually flood the lowlands of the continent until he could start encroaching on the city itself. But the idea that he, the son of the storm bringer and earth shaker, would need the relic of destruction to do anything to mortals was… not practical. At least, for anyone that knew what he was truly capable of.
A list which, right now, was looking rather short. Maybe non-existent, depending on how much Oum truly knew about him. Though, nobody was stopping him from expanding it.
As far as other options went, fighting her for the relic was always one. If Percy went to Vacuo, it was the one place on Remnant he wasn't very confident in his odds against a maiden. He had earthquakes, sure, but while sandstorms were technically storms, he didn't want to find out where his level of control over them ranked compared to Samara. He may still be able to win, but in a desert, where there was virtually no water and where his opponent had presumably spent her entire life? He would be at a huge disadvantage, with no plan B. So he didn't want to face her here, and he really didn't want to wait until she'd returned to Vacuo to try it either.
That left him with one option to try to convince her to get the relic for him, as far as he could think of at least. He took a moment to look around and make sure that yes, he really did want to do this. Shiro was… if anyone should know anything, it should be Shiro. Samara was… already magical, and it sounded like she didn't have many friends. She wouldn't tell anyone anything, there wasn't much of a reason to. And Jax and Gillian…? They were now the only ones on his side other than Shiro who knew about Maidens and relics. And soon, they'd be ruling an entire kingdom of people, unofficially in his name. While he'd have to take the extra effort to get even more of his men embedded with them… he had to trust them. More than he did anyone other than Shiro, even.
His mind made up, Percy took a deep breath and a moment to clear his mind.
"A fraction of a god's power? And what if I told you I already have that? Would it be enough to convince you I'm not trying to destroy Remnant if I'm already capable of it?"
Samara took a step back. Percy couldn't blame her when she looked at him like he was an insane person. "And how exactly are you able to do that?"
"I'm a demigod." He revealed, as casually as he could manage. Though, it didn't stop his heartbeat from ticking up a few notches as soon as he said it. He liked to imagine he was pretty calm right about now, but it didn't stop the adrenaline from dumping itself into his blood en-masse at the admission. "Half god, half human. Destroying any of the cities is already well within my means. I don't want the relic of destruction to destroy humanity, or even rule it. I want it so that I can protect it from those who would seek to." A white lie. Mostly he wanted it so that he could make sure Erebus was never summoned to Remnant, but making sure that Ozma (whether or not that was truly Ozpin) and especially Salem couldn't use it to their own ends was certainly a motivating factor as well.
"He speaks the truth." Jax broke several long moments of disbelieving silence, his voice oddly steady. "I tried to use my semblance on him as I did you. Gillian helped. Compared to anyone else I've ever felt you were a force of nature Samara, near impossible to control. But Perseus… I couldn't even begin the process of trying. He swatted me away as though I were a gnat. He's not lying, he's a god." Jax looked at him in a new light, though not too different from before, Percy noticed. It seemed that whether or not he'd known the truth of the matter, Jax had known he was something different. Gillian on the other hand, looked like the breath had been driven from her. Her skin was white, and she couldn't take her eyes off of him.
It was unfortunate, then, that Samara was hardly as willing to take Jax's word for it.
"Oh? And which god is your daddy?" Samara mocked, narrowing her eyes.
"Poseidon," he said dryly. "King of the seas, storm bringer, earth shaker. Known as Neptune by most of Remnant."
"Oh?" Samara snorted "A Mistrali god? What a coincidence, you're the ruler of Mistral and you happen to be the child of a Mistrali god. How perfect."
"Not a coincidence." he corrected, though in reality he had no idea. Oum had put him in Mistral for some reason — or maybe it had been Erebus — but Percy had no illusion that he had any idea as to their intentions. "I arrived on Remnant when I was seventeen, sent here by a god. You can ask Shiro, he met me just weeks after I arrived."
Percy glanced over to the deadly silent Shiro. He was looking at Percy in a way he couldn't quite decipher. It wasn't Jax or Gillian's look of awe, it wasn't Samara's look of blatant disbelief, it was… something near in-between the two. Shiro didn't want to believe it, but Percy could see the doubt in his eyes.
"It's… you didn't know what a bullhead was. Barely understood the concept of dust. So many things in Remnant that are cutting-edge revolutionary advancements, that you've referred to like they're from a by-gone era. You appeared from a village that never existed, claiming a grimm migration that never happened, wielding a sword that appears from a pen. You… you're not joking, are you?"
"No," Percy's eyes softened. "We'll talk after Shiro, and I'll explain everything. But right now…" he turned back to the maiden, his eyes hardening, "Summer. Accept what's in front of you."
"With what proof?" she scoffed. "It's a nice little show you've put on. Maybe some interesting coincidences, if I for some reason assume they're both telling the truth. But you won't get me to hand over a relic that easily."
"And if I could give you proof?" Percy asked, more for the sake of argument than anything. He wasn't sure what he could do to prove it to someone who would come up with excuses for everything he did short of sinking a city, but he wanted to plant the seed of doubt anyway.
"If you can prove you're a divine being, capable of wiping a city off the map?" she snorted. "Yeah, I'll give you your relic. Good luck with that."
"Okay." Percy shrugged. "I'll find a way to prove it to you, with time. I don't exactly have it in the cards to draw that much attention to myself right now, but I'm content to wait. That's the deal I'm willing to make with you, Summer. When I prove to you my heritage, the relic of destruction is mine. I'll have a way to contact you, and you're free to roam as you please within my lands until then."
That threw her for a loop, apparently. "That's… really? You're that confident that you can prove you're a god?"
"Half god." he corrected absentmindedly, "But yes, I am. As long as I can keep track of you so I know you're safe, it only benefits me to keep you safe from anyone else who wants to use you. At least, so long as our deal sticks."
"I… You have a deal." She spoke cautiously. "But no tricks. Or the deal's off."
"Fair enough." he said, "But in the meantime, I think I should speak to those loyal to me who just learned of my true nature. In private."
She rolled her eyes, but didn't argue. "I'll be by the bullhead."
Jax huffed as soon as she was out the door. "Personally, I'm not sure why you let her go. You could have dealt with her now and forced her to give you the relic."
Percy shook his head. "It'd attract too much attention, with too much potential collateral damage. If she gets lucky or she's better than I think, then the fight'll be drawn out into the street. Probably level half the floor, too. I'm a demigod, but she has magic, too. It wouldn't be a snap of the fingers. Besides, we couldn't actually get the relic until we take over Shade. Otherwise there's a good chance the alarm is sounded and we're forced into conflict before we're ready. Plus she's already shown me she's not willing to give the relic up to just anyone, so it'll be safe until we're nice and ready to go get it."
"You're really…" Shiro reminded Percy he existed by muttering to himself, seemingly in a daze.
He didn't finish the sentence, collapsing to a knee and dipping his head. Jax nudged a still near-catatonic Gillian and the two followed the motion, dropping off of the couch into a kneel.
"Shiro." Percy spoke softly, turning to the man and frowning. "This changes nothing. I'm still the same person you've known for years, you're still my closest confidante, and we're still in this together. Nothing about me or what I've done has been fake. I just… it's not something I really planned to reveal. Especially not in this way."
"Who… who knows?" He asked, hesitantly, head still down.
"Nobody." Percy assured him. "This is the first time any mortal soul on Remnant has known the truth. And for Hades' sake, stop kneeling. Detesting formality wasn't an act either. That goes for you two, too." Percy swiveled his head to look at the siblings. "You may not be Shiro, but you now know of things that only a small handful of people are privy to. Both my family, and the truth of the maidens and relics on Remnant. Your loyalty hasn't wavered since we first met. If I'm to trust you two to rule a kingdom for me, I won't have you kneeling at my feet."
Hesitantly, all three rose.
"Now, before I answer any questions I need to make something clear. None of what you heard today can get out. Not the relics, not the maidens, especially not what you've learned about me. Nobody can know. Nobody. Alright?"
All three nodded. Shiro, maybe predictably, was the first to break the silence. "So… what now? With the maidens, relics, magic… everything changes."
"Nothing's changed, Shiro." Percy disagreed.
Shiro looked at him like he'd grown a second head. "But… this changes everything! There's relics out there capable of destroying the world, and anyone who happens to get on a maiden's good side can just… have one! We need to find a way to get them, and-"
"Yes, Shiro, getting and protecting the relics should be a top priority." Percy cut him off. "I don't know a good way to easily find the maidens and get the relics, but at the least we should establish an intelligence network. Make it as wide-reaching as possible, all across Remnant. Develop as many contacts as possible in places low and high, to get the best possible chance of hearing about one. And when we get a relic, we'll need to protect it. But one person, or even a group, isn't enough to fight off the army that might be after it. So we'll need to work to accumulate as much power, wealth, and influence as possible. We'll need to spread even beyond Mistral to the other kingdoms, to grow our power base in Vale, in Atlas, in Vacuo and even Menagerie. We'll need to control the very face of warfare itself, and make it unthinkable for anyone on the planet to try to attack us. Weapons are a good start, but we'll need to control the flow of dust as well, a complete monopoly on it, to make sure that nobody but us has the ability to wage war. And then, when that's well underway, we take over the other kingdoms in any way we possibly can. Hostile takeovers, criminal intrigue, rigging elections, trading influence for cities, taking control of an entire nation's economy and tying them to us so closely they may as well be the same nation, even backing the family of a deposed monarch's claim to the throne so that when it's all over and the dust is settled, humanity is a united force. Only then can we be sure that the relics will be safe and humanity won't be completely wiped out. But we'd need years to do any of that, at least. To be even close to that point by now, we'd need to have started as soon as we met, Shiro."
Silence.
"The entire time?" Shiro finally asked, "You've… so this is why you're doing all of this? Back in Windpath, at the beginning, one moment I was convincing you to remove the other crime lords in the settlement, and the next thing I knew it was like a flip had switched. You were pushing me, if anything, and we started expanding even beyond Windpath."
"I had a talk with… someone." He admitted, "Where I used to live, we didn't have relics or anything. We had our own challenges, but they were… different from Remnant's. But yes, I spoke to someone and learned about everything. I'd been hesitant before, but I knew that I couldn't protect the relics by myself. I'm strong, but even at my strongest an army would be able to distract me long enough to snatch one, and that's discounting the possibility of maidens or other relics being used against me. So I had to find another way. And for a teenager, stranded in Windpath with no proof I was a real person and no lien…"
"Crime was the only real option." Shiro said grimly. "But that doesn't explain why you didn't tell me. I can understand not at first, but we've been in this together for years Percy. This entire time I've been dedicating years of my life to this cause and I didn't even know it."
"I… couldn't." Percy sighed. "I can't explain how or why or anything about it, but I couldn't tell you, or anyone, anything about the maidens and the relics. Even now there's stuff you don't know that I can't tell you. Hades, I might get in trouble for saying that."
"That's why you let the maiden keep talking." Gillian said suddenly from across the room. "And why you insisted on Shiro being in the room. You knew about maidens, you knew about the relics, you even knew that Samara was the summer maiden. You had nothing to gain by letting her keep talking, except that someone else would tell Shiro. You even made sure he knew about the relics, without mentioning it yourself. You only said that Samara would know what you wanted, and made her say it. That makes… way too much sense."
Percy just shrugged, not bothering to deny it.
"This still doesn't make sense." Jax said, shaking his head. "The maiden was right. With a relic you could have held entire kingdoms at gunpoint, and conquered Remnant in a week. But you have something even better than a relic, you're a demigod. You have that power inside you. So… why? Why bother with any of this, instead of just taking the world for yourself?"
Percy did pause to consider that for a moment. He thought of a lot of different reasons in hindsight.
People only worked when they thought they had something to gain, for one, and that included all the things he'd need to stand up to an army of grimm. Wealth and money and power and progress were completely reliant on what people thought was real. If he took over the world and pretty much erased the economy and financial system, it'd take Remnant decades to recover if he was lucky. Realistically, it never would.
There was also that quick and dirty dictatorships didn't tend to last too long. Sure maybe he could hold Remnant in fear for a while, but a couple years in a spark would ignite and it'd all come crumbling down. There'd be a revolution he'd have to put down, and Remnant would be all the weaker for it when it came to protecting the relics and facing the grimm and Salem. Hades, he might've lost that revolution. His powers were very handy for doing something like destroying an entire city, but if an army of huntsmen came marching for him? He wasn't sure there was much he could do to make his odds more than none other than hanging out by the seafront. And even then they could just… reclaim everywhere he wasn't. Sure he might keep the relics 'safe' and he might stay alive, but that didn't really mean anything when all of Remnant was so busy hating him that they didn't care about the grimm.
But he knew the real answer wasn't as pragmatic or calculated as that. He hadn't been thinking about any of that when he considered his plan to take over Remnant. He'd only thought about one thing when he considered that path for the briefest second.
"Because I'd have to make an example. I'd have to wipe a city off the map, and kill a hundred million people for anyone to believe me. And that… I've done a lot of bad things since coming here, but everything I've done combined doesn't hold a flickering candle to the atrocity that that would be. That kind of thing… it's for monsters."
That kind of thing made every one of the most evil dictators back on earth look like children on a playground. The literal paragons of evil, the people that everyone brought up when they wanted to reference something so purely bad that you couldn't argue otherwise, had only managed a small fraction of the people's lives Percy would end in a day if he did that.
So no, he couldn't. It was off the table.
Jax apparently didn't have an immediate response to that, because he remained silent.
"So… what?" Shiro filled the gap. "Business as usual, then? World-shaking revelation, and we keep doing what we have been?"
"Pretty much." Percy admitted. "What we've been doing is going after the relics and the means to protect them. It's just that now, you know what we're really doing. And so do you two." Percy turned to regard the siblings.
"We will answer the call of the gods." Jax swore. "Our loyalty to you has never been stronger."
Percy rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I get it, but cut it with the godly stuff. Even if we're alone the room can be bugged, and even if it's not I'm not one for formalities. We'll keep doing what we have been, and soon enough we'll have the relics in our grasp."
There was a round of determined nods, before there was a knock on the door and it opened to reveal one of the building's staff.
"My lord, Mr. Taurus has just arrived at landing pad six."
Discord and Pat-reon are on my profile. Come hang out :) Pat-reon is 2 chapters ahead rn, also posted a few cut scenes there if you're interested.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter.
Next Chapter May 1
