A Song of Ice and Fire Cut Short by Dust (RWBY in Westeros)
Disclaimer: I do not own A Song of Fire and Ice or any of the characters in the series. I do not own RWBY or any of the characters in the series.
Author's Notes: This story is set in an Alternate Universe. While the canon events of RWBY up to Season 2 and of A Game of Thrones before the start of Book 1 happened, there will be changes to either series' background.
Prologue: This is not Solitas, is it?
One moment, they were standing around a shiny object; the next moment, they were falling. Free-falling! Ruby Rose had a flashback to the Initiation at Beacon and whipped Crescent Rose around to slow her descent, but she hit the ground before she could pull the trigger.
The impact was jarring but softer than she expected, though when she went to roll with it, she found herself buried halfway in… snow? She scrambled up, coughing and spitting, and looked around. Definitely snow. Lots of it - the whole area was covered in snow! The ground, the trees around them, the hills and mountains in the distance… She blinked. This didn't look like Vale.
"Ruby, you dolt! I told you not to touch that thing!"
Ruby turned around and saw Weiss raising her head from a mound of snow that had seemingly swallowed her. She was angry, but that was kinda normal for her. The small patch of snow on her head that was slowly slipping down was new, though.
"I was already touching it when you said it!" Ruby defended herself. "Besides, our mission was to check out the ruins!" And that meant checking out weird shining objects that kinda floated.
"We were sent to look for any Grimm that might threaten an archaeological expedition to the ruins."
Ruby turned again. Unlike Weiss, Blake didn't look angry, but it was hard to tell - she generally kept cool and calm. She wasn't covered in snow, either, though. "Yes, but checking for other dangers was kinda implied," Ruby told her.
Wait a moment - Weiss, Blake… where was…?
"Woohoo!"
Ruby jerked to the side when another mound of snow exploded in a shower of, well, snow and… steam? Ah, there was Yang, her fists raised and a broad grin on her face. Her sister blinked and looked around. "What happened? This doesn't look like the ruins where we were."
"Our reckless leader didn't listen, again, and triggered something, and we must have been… transported here," Weiss replied as she brushed off more snow from her clothes.
Ruby did the same and grimaced when she noticed some of the snow had already slipped beneath her clothes and was melting. It was cold here, da…very cold. She could see her breath.
"And where is this? It looks like Atlas, doesn't it?" Yang asked.
"You mean Solitas. Atlas is a city," Weiss snapped. "This is the wilderness."
Yang kept grinning. "So, we're stranded in the wilderness near your home?"
"If we're lucky," Weiss replied. She pulled out her scroll, then frowned. "No signal. We're not near Atlas."
"Signal's on Patch." Yang's joke wasn't really funny.
"You don't recognise the place?" Ruby asked before Weiss could blow her top at her sister.
"Do you expect me to recognise every place on an entire continent?" Weiss glared at Ruby as if it was her fault that Yang's sense of humour was kinda questionable.
"I could recognise every spot on Patch." And Yang wasn't helping.
"Your home is a small island. Solitas is a continent," Weiss said. "Now, we need to find out where we are."
"Oh!" Ruby perked up. She knew what to do! "We can check the stars for our position!" She remembered how that worked. Kinda. She had been a bit distracted planning another upgrade for Crescent Rose during that lesson. But it couldn't be too… She blinked and heard someone gasp.
"That's…"
"That's not the moon!"
"Did we skip a phase?"
"That's not our moon." Blake sounded both sure and unsure at the same time. Somehow. "It's different."
"Well, yeah, it's not broken," Yang said.
"It could just be facing us with the unbroken side," Weiss disagreed, but she didn't sound as convinced that she was right as she usually did.
"No. It's not our moon," Blake disagreed. "It looks different from when it's in the full phase."
"I don't think we're on Solitas," Ruby said in a low voice.
"That's… that's impossible!" Weiss sputtered. "It has to be our moon!"
"No," Ruby said. "That doesn't look like our moon. The colour is wrong, and ours doesn't have that big dark sea."
"It's not a sea; it's a crater," Weiss corrected her.
"Whatever, it's not our moon," Ruby shot back. "We're not in our world any more."
"Unless… we went back in time? Before the moon shattered?" Blake ventured.
"That's impossible as well!" Weiss disagreed.
"Well, the moon changing is also impossible," Yang pointed out.
"Whatever," Ruby repeated herself. She was the leader of RWBY, she had to take charge now. "We can't bicker about the moon. We need to decide what we do. Where we're going."
"We don't know where we are, so how can we decide where to go?" Weiss asked. "This is…" she shook her head almost violently, her ponytail whipping around her face. "What do we do?"
"Quiet!" Blake hissed before Ruby could try to calm her friend down. "I hear steps. Someone's coming."
Ruby didn't hear anything, but her ears weren't as good as Blake's. She didn't see anything either, though. "From which direction?" she asked.
"From…" Blake tensed. "From all around us!" she spat, drawing Gambol Shroud.
"Wait!" Ruby held up a hand. "Calm down! We don't want the people here to think we want to do them any harm!"
"I don't…" Blake drew a sharp breath. "What are they?"
What did she mean? Then Ruby saw the first figure appear between the trees, slowly walking towards them. Almost stumbling. The first of many. They looked…
"What are they?" Weiss repeated Blake's question.
Ruby didn't know either. They looked like… "Zombies! Ice zombies!" she blurted out.
"Don't be ridiculous! This is not one of your silly games!" Weiss snapped.
But the people surrounding them, slowly encircling them, looked like zombies. Some of them had visible wounds. Some had missing limbs. And they were armed. Clubs, spears, staffs.
Still… Ruby was the team leader. She had to lead. Maybe the people here looked like this? Maybe this was normal? She smiled and waved. "Hello there! Can you help us? We're kinda lost!"
They didn't react. Didn't say anything. They just kept coming closer. And they didn't look friendly at all!
"We come in peace!" Ruby tried again.
"Ruby!" Yang hissed behind her. "I don't think they're listening."
Ruby didn't think so, either. But what else could they do? "Can you understand me?" She pointed at herself, then at them. "Me Ruby. You?"
"Ruby…" Yang groaned.
The first of the maybe-ice zombies had almost reached her. He - he looked male - raised his club and grunted, showing gapped teeth, before he swung at her.
Without thinking, Ruby parried the blow with Crescent Rose, taking off half his club in the process and sending him stumbling. "Oh, sorry! I just…"
He swung the stump of his club at her again, growling like… like a Grimm!
"Ruby!"
Ruby had reach on him. She hit him with the shaft of Crescent Rose. But instead of sending him back a few steps, as she had wanted, she heard his ribs break as her weapon caved his chest in and sent him flying. Gasping, she stared at him. That was… "I didn't mean to!"
But he got up despite his chest now sporting a hole. And he wasn't bleeding at all!
"They're really ice zombies!" Ruby blurted out - right before the other zombies charged in.
Ruby fended off a staff blow and kicked a smaller zombie trying to stab her with a knife. Her kick caught the zombie's head and ripped it off! For a moment, it felt as if her heart stopped.
But the headless zombie kept swinging its weapon at her.
Horrified, she swung Crescent Rose at it, cutting it in half, then swung her blade around and slashed through two more who were trying to flank her.
Around her, her friends were fighting as well.
"They're not staying down!" Yang shouted, shattering - exploding - a pair of zombies with a series of blows with Ember Celica. "Not even if they lose their heads!"
That wasn't how it worked in the games! But this wasn't a game! They were surrounded by unstoppable ice zombies that kept going! Ruby clenched her teeth, then used her semblance, sweeping through the dozen zombies converging on her and cutting them into pieces before coming to a stop between Blake and Weiss.
"They don't die!" Weiss yelled, stabbing a zombie before blasting it away with a shot of dust. "They keep coming."
That was… "We need to set them on fire!" Ruby yelled. If headshots didn't work, then fire would! It had to! It always did in the movies! "Kill them with fire!"
"Yeah!" Yang roared, diving into the middle of a bunch of zombies.
They jumped on her, and Ruby gasped again. "Yang!"
She started to move, hefting Crescent Rose. A zombie charged at her, and she jumped over it, flipping around and cutting it apart. She landed on a second zombie, kicking it in the chest and pushing off, slicing the zombie's chest open with her scythe in the process. She had to get to Yang! She had to…
In the middle of the zombie group, a fire flared up - Yang had activated her semblance. And the zombies were burning - and falling down!
"Fire works!" Ruby yelled, landing on one knee before sweeping Crescent Rose in an arc around her and cutting off two more zombies at the knees. Literally!
Weiss landed next to her, jumping off a floating glyph. Ruby heard Myrtenaster cycle, and a zombie about to swing a club at her caught a fireball to the face that burned him to ashes.
"Take this!" Yang barreled through another group of zombies, leaving them broken and burning.
Blake, flitting around from clone to clone, leaving cut and falling zombies behind, caught three more in Gambol Shroud and flung them on the burning ones. "They're not that strong," she said as she reached Weiss and Ruby.
"Just hard to kill," Ruby agreed. They were not nearly as dangerous as Grimm, though. They just looked so… She clenched her teeth and activated her semblance again, cutting a swath through the rear of the zombie horde and trying to punt the pieces into the fires the others were starting.
She mostly succeeded. A few pieces missed. One almost hit Weiss, but her partner could handle it.
"Hey!"
Should be able to handle it.
Ruby appeared next to her, taking quick breaths and looked around. Most of the zombies were burning in pieces now, but the rest were still coming, not caring about the fate of the others. "Like Grimm," she whispered. "Just like Grimm." They weren't people. Just people-shaped monsters. They had to be.
"Yes," Weiss agreed, also breathing a bit heavily. "We should… Watch out!"
Ruby spun around and just caught an arrow shattering on one of Weiss's glyphs that had appeared in front of her face. An ice arrow!
She looked around. That had come from… There! Between a patch of trees! Her eyes widened. Sitting on a huge spider, a figure, pale as ice, with glowing blue eyes, was notching another ice arrow to a shiny white bow. And it was surrounded by more of the zombies.
"That's the boss!" Ruby yelled as she flipped Crescent Rose around and shifted her into a rifle.
Another arrow flew toward her - no, toward Blake! But it only hit a clone that turned to ice before shattering.
And Ruby had a bead drawn on the figure. She pulled the trigger, and a dust round from Crescent Rose hit the archer in the chest while she flipped head over heels to compensate for the recoil.
Her target blew up, splattering the zombies passing him with blueish blood or something. But the zombies didn't stop. They kept coming.
Not for long, though - Yang leapt at them, followed by Blake and Weiss. Yang's first blow caved in the spider's head, leaving it twitching on the ground. Weiss jumped from glyph to glyph, firing dust charges with Myrtenaster and fending off feeble blows from broken weapons. Blake wove through the ranks of the enemies, clones confusing them until they fell with their limbs cut or entangled.
And Ruby swept around, cutting into them from behind. Crescent Rose flashed, and parts flew.
A minute later, it was over. A flick of her scythe set the last pieces into the fire Weiss had started over the spider's carcass.
"Whoo! That was…" Yang trailed off with a sigh. "Satisfying," she finished.
"It was cathartic," Weiss surprisingly agreed - at least Ruby thought she did. "But we're still stuck in…. An unknown place, facing unknown dangers."
"And known dangers," Blake said. "We're in the middle of an icy wasteland without shelter or supplies."
Their aura would keep them from freezing. For a time, at least. But… "Does anyone have food on them?" Ruby asked.
"Hungry already, sis?" Yang joked, but Ruby could tell that her sister was concerned.
And she was hungry, actually. And she only had a few chocolate cookies on her. She gasped, then checked her pockets. No! They had been crushed in the fighting!
"We need to find shelter and get some food," Blake said. "We can't…"
Her ears were twitching again, Ruby saw. She grimaced. "More zombies?"
Blake nodded with a grim expression.
More fighting, then. Ruby clenched her teeth and gripped Crescent Rose harder. No matter what stood against them, they would get out of this. She wouldn't let her team down!
Chapter 1: The Strangers at the Gate
'The origin of the group we know as the Ruby Order remains one of the great mysteries of Westeros. It has been agreed by all reliable scholars that their claims to have come from another world were an exaggeration meant to obfuscate their true origin. From a modern perspective, their tales of a broken moon, flying cities and monster hunters are obvious exaggerations like the myths related to the Age of Heroes. Nevertheless, the fact remains that despite extensive research and Maester Aeon's famous but ultimately fruitless expedition to Yi-Ti to investigate a possible link between the Yellow Emperor and Yang Xiao Long, no one has been able to find where the four maidens came from. This, coupled with their choice of obvious noms-de-guerre, has, of course, led to a lot of unfounded speculation ranging from the fantastical - such as the theory, if one could call those ramblings that, of Ruby Rose being a daughter of Brandon the Builder who had been put into a magical sleep with her companions to save Westeros in its time of need, to the utterly mad, such as the claim that the entire tale was a fabrication and that the Ruby Order was actually Daenerys Targaryen and her three dragons, based on nothing more than the colour of Weiss Schnee's hair.
In this work, I will cut through all this speculation and focus on what we can prove based on records, evidence and sound logic.'
A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet BrackenThe Haunted Forest, Westeros, 298 AC
After four years at the Wall, Will had grown used to the cold, and the Haunted Forest held no terrors for him any more. As a veteran of a hundred rangings, he knew the territory as well as - better than - the Wildlings who claimed the land here, and he knew from experience that he was better at sneaking through the woods than they were.
Proof of that was the fact that he had been tracking the band of wildling raiders they were after for days now without them being able to lose him. And they were getting closer as well.
No, the only thing Will worried about was that he and Gared were under the orders of Ser Waymar Royce, and that noble was not quite as experienced as he thought he was - just enough to be too confident, which was bad everywhere but doubly so beyond the Wall. Three brothers of the Nigth Watch could take half a dozen wildlings, but only if you were smart about it. If you were dumb, even warhorses and the best armour and weapons wouldn't save you from an ambush. Will could only hope that by the time they caught up to their prey, the noble would not be too reckless. The Lord Commander should have let Gared lead this ranging; Gared had been a Brother longer than Will had been alive. But Ser Waymar was a noble, and nobles didn't serve under smallfolk, not even in the Night's Watch, where everyone was a brother.
He snorted and moved ahead another dozen paces, past a scraggly bush. The raiders were loaded down with their loot, and that made them sloppy. They had tried to walk in a single file to hide their numbers but hadn't quite managed it. He checked a broken twig - they were even closer than he had thought. He could almost smell the wildlings…
He blinked, sniffing the air. That was smoke! Had the wildlings set camp already? They weren't that far from the last campsite Will had found, so why would they have stopped here? Sure, the sun would be setting soon, but the wildlings had still been hours ahead of Will's band when they had set out this morning.
He looked at the sky and squinted. It was cloudy, but… yes, that was a column of smoke. That was even weirder - even the dumbest wildling raiders knew how to build a smokeless fire.
Something wasn't right.
He quickly started backtracking to where Gared and Ser Waymar were waiting, not caring about hiding his own tracks any more. This was too important.
It didn't take him long to reach the others. When they saw him running, both jumped up, hands on weapons, and he waved them down.
"There's smoke ahead! Someone made a fire!" he blurted out between catching his breath.
"Hah! We have them!" Ser Waymar grinned.
"Smoke?" Gared, of course, realised what that meant at once. "Can't be. Must be a trap."
That was a possibility Will hadn't considered. But it made sense, kind of. Or not - most brothers would know better than to charge ahead blindly.
"If it's a trap, we'll spring it!" Ser Waymar strode to his horse. "Mount up! We'll show those raiders that they cannot escape the Watch!"
Will exchanged a glance with Gared. The older brother sneered for a moment, then clenched his teeth and started for his own horse.
Will sighed and followed them. He had a bad feeling about this.
"Show us the way, Brother Will!"
Yeah, definitely a bad feeling. But he had sworn the oath, and orders were orders. With his back to the others, he grimaced and started to lead them towards the fire in the distance.
They made good time, but not good enough for Ser Waymar. By the time they approached a small snow-covered ridge that hid the fire from them, the noble was chomping at the bit.
Will held up a hand. "They're beyond that ridge," he whispered - they were still too far away to be overheard, and he hadn't spotted any guards around, but you never knew.
"Good! Follow me!" Ser Waymar didn't stop. He urged his horse up the ridge, sword drawn.
Gared and Will, grimacing again, drew their own swords and did as told.
Ser Waymar was first on the ridge, uttered a battle cry Will didn't quite get, and charged down the slope.
Will heard shouting and high-pitched cries. Then he reached the top of the ridge himself, half a pace ahead of Gared, and his eyes widened.
Ser Waymar was down, his horse riderless. The noble was on the ground, disarmed - but still alive; Will saw him squirming under the boot of a… Will blinked. That wasn't a wildling!
He realised that he had stopped charging, as had Gared next to him. They were facing four people in… colourful clothes. He had never seen, not even heard, of any wildling wearing such garb!
The one holding down Ser Waymar was wearing a bright red cape over a pitch-black garment - and holding the biggest scythe he had ever seen. It was bigger than herself! Next to her stood a woman with a mane of golden hair wearing… Whatever it was, her legs were almost bare! And the one next to her wore a skirt so short it bared her entire legs!
"Targaryen!" Gared whispered next to him.
Yes, the woman had the silver hair of the old kings. And she was wielding a slim, shining sword. And the blonde wore golden gauntlets. Wildlings didn't dress like that. And they didn't have such weapons! And they didn't show any concern or fear faced with two mounted brothers. Of course, they had dismounted Ser Waymar seemingly easily - and for all his overconfidence, the brother was a trained knight.
Will licked his lips. Somehow, he didn't fancy their chances to charge double their numbers. Not to mention they had Ser Waymar at their mercy.
The silver-haired one took a step towards them and pointed her sword at Will. "You there! Why did you attack us?"
She sounded like a noble. She acted like a noble. Best to treat her like a noble.
Will shrugged and pointed at Ser Waymar. "Ser Waymar is in command."
All four looked at the still squirming and cursing knight on the ground. Will thought he heard the shorter one say: 'Oh!' and despite how serious their situation was, he couldn't help snorting.
"Do we look like wildlings? Do we?" Weiss Schnee glared at the oaf who had attacked them. She expected, based on far too much experience, to be attacked by the bandits roaming those woods - she wouldn't call them 'free folk'; they were common criminals - but the members of the Night's Watch were meant to be civilised, not barbarians!
The leader of the small band, supposedly a knight, glared back at her. "Only wildlings live beyond the Wall!"
For someone Ruby had dismounted and disarmed without fully waking up, he had nerve! Weiss sniffed and raised her chin a bit more. "We don't live here, as should be obvious." She was a Schnee, far more refined than this ruffian. How could anyone mistake her for one of those barbarian folks wearing rags? Granted, they had been sleeping under a few layers of furs taken from those barbarians, but still!
"We were stranded in these lands by an accident, and we're on our way south," Ruby chimed in with a wide smile on her face.
"Stranded? We're nowhere near either coast," the younger, more sensible man, Will, blurted out.
"They were unique circumstances," Weiss told him with all the dignity she could muster.
"We got lost," Yang commented. "It took a while until we found someone who could tell us how to get out of here."
"What?" Will stared at her.
Weiss frowned again. Yes, these people here were obviously not as sophisticated as the people back home in Atlas, or in Vale, but that didn't mean they couldn't tell when Yang was making fun of them.
"OK, it was like this! We were on a mission to investigate an old ruin back home, in Vale, when a magic device dropped us in the middle of this country," Ruby interjected. "Before we could really understand what had happened, we were attacked by ice zombies and some white, uh, monsters with glowy blue eyes and ice powers, and monster spiders - with ice powers. We had to fight our way through them - they didn't stop coming even though it was obvious they couldn't really beat us, not when we were working together, but they were like the Grimm, those are monsters back home, monsters we hunt, but they are not like your monsters here, anyway, we had to burn them all so they stayed dead, because otherwise they would keep attacking us, but only until we met their Alpha…"
"King," Weiss corrected. "He wore a crown." And Alphas were animals. She didn't know what those 'Others', as the wildlings called them, were, but they were not animals.
"Witch-King," Yang added with a grin.
"Whatever!" Ruby pouted for a moment. "Anyway, what matters is when we destroyed that guy, everyone else fell down and didn't move any more - ice zombies and other guys. Well, there were a few monsters left, but those were easy."
"And edible."
Weiss glared at Yang. There was no need to remind them that they had had to eat giant spiders to survive. And they didn't taste like lobsters! Weiss had eaten enough lobsters for her palate to know the difference!
"Anyway!" Ruby repeated herself. "We defeated those ice monsters and looked for a way back, but there weren't even ruins where we had landed, and we didn't find anything in the Alpha's - Witch-King's - lair, so we started walking south. At least we think it's south, we don't know if south here is actually south, you know? But back home, south is where the sun is highest at noon. Kinda - it varies with the seasons, I think, and where you are, but it was close enough, and we met the locals, the wildlings, you call them, before we ran out of spider legs. And they told us that further south was the Wall, and behind that wall was civilisation! So, here we are!" She beamed at the three men. "On the way to civilisation so we can get home!"
Weiss suppressed a sigh. It was obvious that none of the men had understood a word Ruby had said. Ruby meant well, but she wasn't experienced enough to deal with this. "We're not wildlings. We have no quarrel with you. We simply wish to travel to civilised lands where you aren't attacked by bandits trying to steal your valuables at every corner." That was technically a slight exaggeration - they hadn't been attacked quite that often, though Weiss was sure that was mostly due to the population of these lands being spread rather thin - but seeing as those barbarians were also trying to 'steal' Weiss and her friends for obvious and utterly disgusting purposes, as some of them had stated before being violently taught the error of their ways, she felt it was a true reflection of the situation.
"Exactly!" Ruby kept beaming at the ruffians dressed in black. "So, can we go back with you? We could probably scale that wall easily, but we'd rather not have another misunderstanding. We just want to go home!"
"Yeah." Yang was smiling as well, though showing more teeth.
Weiss glanced at Blake, who nodded. She hadn't said much so far, but as long as she didn't make things worse, Weiss could live with that.
Really, all they needed was to get out of this wasteland and back to civilisation. Or what passed as civilisation here - it was obvious that they were not as technologically advanced as Atlas or Vale. But then again, a lot of Remnant wasn't either.
At least they knew that they had kingdoms behind the wall. Weiss desperately needed a hot shower - no, a hot bath! And a meal cooked by a chef, not scraps of dried meat roasted over a campfire or spider legs the size of her own legs! And decent clothes and bedrolls! She was so sick of sleeping wrapped in smelly furs!
And they needed to replenish their Dust reserves. They had spent almost everything on fighting the ice monsters and then surviving in this wasteland. Weiss still hated that she had wasted so much expensive Gravity Dust to check for buried ruins under the location where they had arrived, only to find rocks and dirt.
The Wall, Westeros, 298 AC
Blake Belladonna squinted as she gazed up at the top of the Wall ahead of them. The fortification was so massive, even with her sharp eyes, she could barely make out the people - members of the Night's Watch - up there. It was easily over two hundred metres tall, casting a long shadow over the frozen wasteland it separated from the, supposedly, more civilised kingdom behind it. As far as they had been told, it ran across the entire continent, a hundred leagues - about five hundred clicks, if her maths was correct. She could barely imagine how people without modern technology had erected such an edifice. Even if it was, as their semi-voluntary guides claimed, mostly built out of frozen water, it would have taken a very long time to finish it. And the stone foundations it would take to support such a massive structure…
"And I thought the walls back home were tall," Ruby commented.
"It has been standing for eight thousand years, protecting the Seven Kingdoms from the wildlings," Ser Waymar, the leader of the small band of warriors, declared, pride dripping from every word.
"All that for a bunch of bandits?" Yang snorted. "Seems like overkill."
"What?"
While Yang explained what it meant, Blake was tempted to remind her friend that she had denied, on numerous occasions, that such a thing as overkill existed. Yet, Blake held her tongue. The ensuing banter would volunteer more information to the soldiers with them, and the men hadn't earned their trust. Quite the opposite, actually - the so-called 'knight' had attacked them without warning, not bothering with even a token attempt at learning who they were and what they were doing here. Blake wasn't about to lower her guard amongst people whose first impulse was to attack a stranger.
Although she had to admit, if she was honest, that, based on her and her friends' experience so far with the people living in the so-called Haunted Forest, she couldn't completely fault the men for assuming the worst. Every time they had met those nefarious bandits, they had attempted to rob them - and to kidnap them for vile purposes. She would be a hypocrite of the worst order if she ignored how such experiences could form or cement prejudices - she had lived through that herself when she had been in the White Fang.
And yet, Blake neither could ignore how strangely familiar this felt, albeit in a twisted way: A band of outcasts eeking out a difficult existence in a harsh wilderness, kept out of more hospitable lands by the armed guards of supposedly more civilised men? The Atlas military and SDC guards might use more advanced technology, but the principle was the same. The top of the Wall might even be an allusion to Atlas floating above Mantle.
She clenched her teeth as they continued to approach the Wall, her friends and herself easily keeping pace with the mounted warriors. She didn't know if there were Faunus in this world and how they were treated, but she would keep hiding her ears. What she had seen so far from the three members of the Night's Watch had not left her with the impression that they would treat her as an equal. It was obviously a rather stratified society, with nobles ruling commoners, as happened in ancient times on Remnant, and she was intimately familiar with how people on the lower rungs of society tended to look for others who were even worse off in a stupid and self-defeating but, sadly, very common attempt to assure themselves that there were people still beneath them, and so they had an interest in upholding the very order that diminished and oppressed them.
And yet, the Wall also was a symbol of hope. If the people here had been able to build such a monumental fortification in the past, then it was quite likely that they achieved other, similarly impressive feats. Such as creating whatever mythical device transported Team RWBY to this forsaken place in another world and which, therefore, should also be able to transport them back home. Blake still had her doubts about the claim that the Wall was thousands of years old, but unlike the remains of whatever civilisation had preceded the Kingdom of Vale back on Remnant, the Wall had not fallen into ruins, their builders forgotten, lost to a bloody, violent past filled with Grimm.
"I see."
Ser Waymar didn't sound as if he truly understood Yang's explanation, and Blake couldn't honestly blame him for it. Her friend had used so many other terms and examples related to Remnant - people who didn't know firearms wouldn't be familiar with video games, much less memes, which Yang would have been aware of had she shown the least interest in literature set in Remnants past or in fantasy worlds - that the man must be more confused than enlightened. Hell, from what they had gathered, the people here were not even aware of Dust, although the tales of Alchemists creating Wildfire sounded as if at least some people were aware of the properties of Dust. The substance certainly sounded as volatile as Dust.
"Look! There's a gate at the bottom of the ice wall!" Ruby suddenly called out, pointing ahead.
Blake cocked her head and stepped up the faint slope to join her friend who had walked in front of her. Indeed, there was a black gate set into the Wall - directly under the busiest part of the wall she could see, she noted. So, this would be their destination, the way past the Wall, into the Seven Kingdoms.
As they approached, Ruby eagerly rushed ahead, and Blake exchanged glances with Yang and Weiss. If their 'guides' meant them ill, this would be their best opportunity to make a move. A narrow tunnel would be the perfect place for an ambush. And while Blake didn't think much of the chances of even a large force of soldiers such as the three men with them to take on Team RWBY, there were other ways than direct attacks to threaten them. Just closing the tunnel on both sides would be a lethal threat if they could not blast or cut their way free.
Ser Waymar rode ahead, barely keeping pace with an excited Ruby, and pulled out a horn. Blake narrowed her eyes at the harsh sound - it grated on her ears - and glanced at the other two men, Will and Gared. They didn't look tense but relieved, though while she believed that they were not putting up an act, that alone didn't mean that this wasn't a trap. They might still wish them ill, and their relief might be rooted in the - quite mistaken - belief that reunited with the rest of the Night's Watch, they had the power to take on Blake and her friends.
Maybe they should scale the Wall instead? It would avoid an underground trap or ambush. But it would also show that they didn't trust the men here and reveal more of their capabilities.
Blake shook her head. They had been travelling for days with the three soldiers, and while she was not as skilled in judging people as her parents - much less skilled, she had to admit, since she had fallen for Adam's lies and had taken far too long to see him for what he was, despite her parents' misgivings - she was not naive either, and she had observed the three extensively during the nights, when they would have thought themselves safely hidden by the darkness, and had not seen any sign of plotting.
And so they followed their enthusiastic leader to the gate and, after a short discussion between Ser Waymar and the gatekeeper, through it and into a tunnel carved into the ice.
Despite her calculated optimism, Blake didn't relax even a little until they were safely out of the tunnel and Ruby was complaining that the other side was just as cold as the land they had just left.
Castle Black, The Wall, Westeros, 298 AC
"...and then we had to fight a whole bunch of blue-eyed ice zombies and pale Grimm-People until we killed their leader, and then they all fell down. Like puppets with cut strings - you know what puppets with strings are, do you? Marionettes. Anyway, they just fell down and stopped moving."
Yang Xiao Long grinned and leaned back against a wooden fence, arms crossed over her chest, as she watched Ruby and Weiss talk to the 'Lord Commander' of the Night's Watch. Jeor Mormont or something. A really old guy, all wrinkled.
Her sister didn't give the man time to answer and went on: "Anyway, since we couldn't find whatever had dropped us in the middle of the zombie horde, we decided to head south and look for others. Others, as in other people, not more Others, as the wildlings called the Grimm-People - though they weren't really people, you know? People don't stop moving and die when their leader gets cleaved in half. They seemed to be more like some kinda Grimm. Grimm are monsters in our world, you know, which want to kill everyone and which we fight, and that fit the Others here, and…"
"Ruby!"
Ah, Weiss's patience had reached its end.
The girl frowned at Ruby, who looked sheepish for a moment and rubbed the back of her head with that beaming smile of hers, then turned back to Mormont staring at them. "I'm sorry, sir, my friend is, sometimes, a bit too enthusiastic." She flashed what Yang privately called her 'business smile' at the man, polite and cold. "But she is correct; we have been stranded by an unknown device, possibly an uncontrolled interaction of various exotic Dust, in the lands up north, and we are looking for a way to return home."
"I see."
Yang would bet that Mormont didn't see it. Or believed them. The side glance he sent at Waymar told her enough. It reminded her of how Dad would glance at a fellow teacher at Signal whenever they weren't buying Yang's perfectly plausible explanation for whatever had happened.
"So, we would be very grateful if you could point us to the closest expert on similar phenomena," Weiss gamely went on while Ruby nodded with wide eyes and a wider smile.
Yang narrowed her eyes at the expressions she caught on some of the men's faces watching the talk upon hearing that. It reminded her of some of the scum in Vale she'd had to beat up. And why were all the soldiers here men, anyway? She hadn't seen a single woman so far. Talk about a sausage party! And, even worse, they all wore black. As if the name of the castle was an order. No speck of colour or style among them - worse than Junior's goons. In fact, a lot of them gave off the same vibe as those thugs…
She glanced at Blake, who was leaning against a post a few metres away. Her partner was acting bored, but Yang could tell that she was tense. Must have picked up the mood as well.
"Yes!" Ruby nodded emphatically, and Yang sighed. Her innocent sister hadn't got a clue. "We were on an important mission, and we have to return as soon as possible before the school starts worrying. Or informs our families that we're missing."
"The school?" Mormont frowned as if he didn't know what that meant.
"Beacon! The best school for Huntresses in all of Remnant!"
"A distinguished institution with a long tradition of turning out the finest Huntsmen and Huntresses in Vale," Weiss said.
Yang smirked; Weiss couldn't let the claim that Beacon was better than Atlas stand even though she attended the school herself. Her humour didn't last long, though.
Mormont nodded slowly, though he looked even stonier than when Waymar had presented them. "You claim to come from the Vale?"
"Not the Vale," Ruby corrected him, causing Weiss to make another face at her. "The Kingdom of Vale - our home. Well, mine and Yang's, Weiss and Blake aren't from Vale. Our Vale, not yours. Though yours is probably great as well, I think, right?"
Mormont held up his hand. "Please, enough of this."
Ruby blinked, Weiss drew back a little, a frown on her face, and Yang pushed off the fence and rolled her shoulders. Just in case. The old guy didn't give off the same vibes as some of the men, but you never knew. Next to her, Blake didn't move from her spot, but Yang saw her shift her balance some, ready to jump into action.
"Sorry?" Ruby still looked confused. "Did I talk too fast?"
"Ruby!" Weiss hissed.
"What?"
"You made him mad!"
"I didn't mean to! I'm sorry!"
"Let me do the talking!" Weiss flashed another of her business smiles at Mormont. "She's sorry. Please don't hold her youthful enthusiasm against her or us. We really just want to be on our way towards the closest expert on… unknown displacement effects."
Yang snorted. "Good one, Weiss."
It earned her a glare, but Weiss quickly focused on the man in front of them when he cleared his throat.
"Please, before I regret having let you pass through the wall on Ser Waymar's counsel, just tell me, in simple words: Where are you from, and what do you want in the Seven Kingdoms?"
"But…" Ruby was gaping at him. "We told you that already!"
"You spoke a lot, but you didn't tell me much. Not much I could make sense of, at least." Mormont smiled, though a little toothily.
Probably not used to Ruby, Yang thought. Well, he'd probably warm up to her if they stayed here for a while. Everyone did. Not that Yang planned to stay here for long; the cold cramped her style. She didn't want to end up like Weiss.
"I know these lands as I know the back of my hand, on both sides of the wall, and I have never encountered any of those creatures you claim to have met - and fought," Mormont went on. "You are armed with steel, and you dress so…" He looked as if he had swallowed a lemon. "...so outrageously, it is clear you aren't wildlings and not from the North or any other of the Seven Kingdoms."
"Exactly!" Ruby nodded several times, then flinched and ducked her head when Mormont narrowed his eyes at her,
"So, where are you from, and how did you end up in the North? Were you on a ship and stranded on the coast? Do you hail from Braavos?"
"Lys!" one of the men standing in the back yelled, causing a wave of chuckling to spread through the ranks.
Yang scowled. She didn't know what Lys was - but she knew that tone and that reaction. They had just been insulted.
Before she could tell the idiots to shut up or she'd crush their balls, Mormont whipped around and bellowed at his men, loud enough to make Yang and her friends flinch: "Silence!"
The men jerked, a number of them taking a step back. "But, Lord Commander…"
"I said silence! You are men of the watch! Black Brothers! Sworn to defend the realm! Do not shame the Watch or me by acting like boys thinking with their cocks!"
Yang heard Ruby gasp at that, and when she glanced at her, she saw both her sister and Weiss blush a little, which made her smirk.
Mormont was still glaring at his men. "The next one who brings dishonour on us all will rue it. Am I understood?"
"Yes, Lord Commander!"
Taking a deep breath, the old man turned back to address Ruby and Weiss. "I apologise for my men. They serve a noble cause, yet not all of them have forgotten their brutish roots."
"Ah… It's OK!" Ruby chirped with a forced smile that told Yang she wasn't quite sure about the whole thing.
Weiss cleared her throat. "We are not from Braavos - or from any other kingdom you know. We are from a different world."
"It's the truth! Your moon is completely different! Ours is broken!" Ruby cut in.
But Mormont wasn't buying it. The old man was too polite to yell at them, but Yang could tell he didn't believe them. And she knew that neither Ruby nor Weiss would be able to convince him. He was too rigid.
Well, if things were too rigid, they needed a bit of shaking up.
Yang grinned widely and took a step forward, smashing her fists together. "We're not from your world. Let me demonstrate just how much we're not from your world."
"Yang! What are you doing?" Ruby blurted out.
"Don't do anything stupid!" Weiss hissed.
Yang didn't listen to either. She looked around. She could punch a hole into the ground, but people generally didn't like holes in their yards. Backyards or schoolyards. So… ah! There!
She crouched, then jumped over the gathered men, landing ten metres behind them next to a cart. Or wagon, whatever. It looked heavy and sturdy enough for a demonstration. "Watch!" she yelled over the gasps and comments, then gripped the cart's bottom with both hands and lifted.
It was unwieldy, and she had to shift her grip twice while she raised the thing over her head, but a few seconds later, she was holding it up with one arm and smiling widely at the gaping crowd.
"Don't break it, Yang!"
She raised her eyebrows at Weiss. As if she was about to break the cart! Well, to be fair, shattering it with one blow would be really impressive, but she knew better than to break other people's stuff. Unless they deserved it, at least.
"So?" She asked, tossing her head back and grinning at Mormont. "Ever seen this before?"
The old man slowly shook his head. "No, I did not."
Yang smiled. It wasn't exactly a glowing agreement, but it was probably good enough.
"And you haven't seen anything yet!" Ruby blurted out. "Watch this!"
A moment later, she vanished in a cloud of red petals, then reappeared on the roof of a small stable on the side, then flickered around the entire yard like Zwei when he got the zoomies until she stopped - on top of the cart Yang was holding since it suddenly got heavier.
"We're Huntresses! We fight the Grimm to protect the people! Kinda like you, I guess!" Yang heard her announce.
The next thing she heard was the thunk of Crescent Rose's butt slamming into the cart, followed by a creaking, familiar noise as the cart broke into pieces.
"Oops! Sorry!"
"Ruby! You dolt!"
"I'm really sorry!"