RWBY: Forever Fall

Day One

It turns out that what I had initially thought was some sort of enchanted suit of armor was nothing of the sort. Instead it was a magical creature with the curious ability to ‘possess’ a physical object. The creature was called a ‘Geist of Grimm’ and I unfortunately ended up incinerating it, though thankfully only after I’d already gained a Blueprint from it. I hadn’t meant to do so, but the Geist’s true form reminded me a tad too much of a dementor, so when the creature had slipped out of the tightly bound suit of armor, I had reflexively killed it.

With that taken care of and Zatanna busy healing the wound one of the geists had left in her arm, I returned to examining the rest of the items in the tomb. The sword, staff, crown, and lantern all went into a pocket of my expanded bag, along with the pedestals they’d been standing on and the single remaining suit of armor.

None of it seemed magical, but the items both looked very valuable and rather aesthetically pleasing. I’d been meaning to decorate my new home and what better than treasures gathered in a distant world to adorn the home of a Planeswalker? I could even enchant the armor, then stick a geist in it (or just animate it manually) and it would serve as an extra line of defense for my home in case someone ever penetrated the wards.

After that, I’d decided to examine the room itself. There were some really beautiful murals on the walls, most of them featuring a crowned man done in solid white, often carrying one or more of what was clearly the same sword, lamp, or staff that I’d just tucked away in my bag.

Sometimes he was standing in front of a giant building, other times he was fighting hordes of black monsters, and yet other times he seemed to be holding court or at some other important event. He was often pictured with four other figures, young women from the shape and size, who were also depicted in white. Had the king had four wives? Or perhaps four daughters? Or the number could have some other significance.

I assumed these murals depicted important scenes from the life of whoever had been buried here. I honestly didn’t care much, but, just in case any of this was important in the future, I made sure to commit the scenes to memory so I could look at them more closely with my occlumency if a reason arose.

There didn’t seem to be anything else to look at, so eventually I found myself standing beside the coffin, Zatanna a step behind me. I started by examining the stone sword lying on top of the coffin, which proved to be…just a big hunk of stone, apparently. It didn’t seem enchanted or anything, and was completely solid all the way through near as I could tell. Weird. It weighed probably fifty pounds and was completely dull, but I shoved it in my bag regardless. Feather-light charms combined with expansion charms were such an amazing combination.

I took a deep breath, oddly worried for some reason, and flicked my wand. I’d scanned the box with a half-dozen detection spells, but none of them had come up with anything out of the ordinary, though that still didn’t fully settle my nerves. The stone lid lifted slowly up into the air, polished stone gliding almost soundlessly across polished stone. No trap triggered, no enchantments activated, nothing.

I carefully levitated the lid to the side, then lowered it to the ground. Despite its great weight and size, it landed nearly soundlessly on the floor, my levitation charm controlling its descent from start to finish.

Inside the coffin lay a desiccated body, barely more than a skeleton. Its arms were crossed over its chest and a short, ornate staff was clutched between its boney fingers. A silver circlet sat lopsidedly on the corpse’s head and the remnants of a fine robe hung in tatters on its body.

I squinted curiously at the corpse. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now that the lid was out of the way, I could detect just the slightest glimmer of magic in the staff and sunk into the core of the bones. It was faint, barely a remnant of a shadow, but my senses and spells were keen enough to pick it up.

“Huh,” I said softly, “He was a wizard.” I paused, “Or maybe he just had some enchanted clothing or something. I can feel some magic in the body.”

“I guess that at least means that there are wizards around here somewhere?” Zatanna said softly.

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“Probably. Or at least there used to be.”

I bowed my head slightly and closed my eyes. “May you have found peace on the other side,” I whispered.

“Amen,” Zatanna added, bowing her head as well.

I opened my eyes and raised my head, then used another levitation charm to tug the staff free of the corpse’s hands, followed by the circlet. This man clearly didn’t have any more use for his mortal possessions and I was interested in examining the staff. There was no active magic on it now, but perhaps I’d be able to learn something about whatever traces remained.

After a moment’s thought, I ultimately decided to just reseal the casket and leave the body behind. I didn’t really have a use for such a decayed skeleton at the moment and I could always come back for it if necessary. I still hadn’t gotten all the corpses out of Slaughter Swamp, and there were plenty of muggle graveyards I could raid if I needed more materials to work with for whatever reason. Plus I didn’t want it bouncing around inside my bag and I wasn’t sure how far I was willing to trust the spellwork on my bag. I was a talented amateur, not a master enchanter.

With this room fully searched and looted, Zatanna and I continued onward. I used a simple unlocking charm to open the door leading into this chamber, but unfortunately it seemed as though the hallway beyond it had become filled with dirt in the many, many years since the door had been sealed. We could potentially clear the way with our magic, but there were still several other already-excavated paths we wanted to explore and it was more than possible that the rest of this level hadn’t survived half as well as the burial chamber itself.

We backtracked to the room with the buried sphinx and once more chose the next door on the left to explore. Along the way, we bounced ideas back and forth about what the nature of the connection between the geist and the sphinx might be. They were both called ‘Something of Grimm’, and looked slightly similar with their black bodies and white masks.

My leading theory was that they were both the creations of some long-ago wizard. Something about their appearances and abilities just felt artificial. Zatanna on the other hand raised the idea that all the people and animals on this plane looked like that. After all, all of the carvings and murals we’d seen so far depicted people only in stark black and white. Perhaps these were perfectly ordinary magical creatures and we’d be the odd ones out with our cream and tan skin tones instead of the bone white and pitch black everyone else would have.

Both options seemed perfectly plausible, so we eventually decided that we would just have to wait and see. So far this plane was already rather different from the two that I’d visited so far, so perhaps the differences extended to the people as well. That discussion eventually took us down a rabbit hole of imagining all sorts of exotic magical races that might exist throughout the multiverse. Blue-skinned amazons with horns, man-sized dragons that walked on two legs, four-armed lizard people with too-many eyes, and much more besides. Zatanna had a powerful imagination, coming up with ideas I never would have considered on my own.

Unfortunately, our exploration didn’t go nearly as well as our conversation. The next tunnel we tried led nowhere, but it took us nearly twenty minutes of walking to reach the dead end. I apparated us back to the cave and we tried again, only to once more walk pointlessly for fifteen minutes before finally reaching the point where the path forward was simply too short and narrow to keep going.

I once more apparated us back and, after a brief stop to eat some of the food packed away in my bag, we headed down the last of the tunnels we were interested in exploring. Unlike the others, this one led upward instead of deeper into the earth. I was initially hopeful that it would lead us to some as-of-yet unseen portion of the ruins, but soon realized that the angle and direction were all wrong for that to be the case.

After some time, light and a fresh breeze began to appear, followed soon after by individual red leaves that crunched under our feet and gave a pretty clear hint of where this particular tunnel would emerge. Still, we continued walking, hoping that maybe there would be something worth finding, but alas.

The entrance we eventually reached was also nestled in the roots of a tree, this one considerably larger and older-looking than the first. There was a narrow slit in the earth with a deep drop that led down into the tunnel itself and I ended up levitating Zatanna up and out, then doing the same to myself. It was a bit unpleasant to get hauled into the air by my clothing, but unfortunately I was not yet proficient with Logomancy or Order magic to fly unaided and a broom would be too big.

Zatanna and I were stretching and enjoying the sunlight trickling through the canopy, tentatively discussing what we wanted to do next, when suddenly Zatanna gasped and pointed up towards the sky.

I followed her hand and my eyes widened when I saw the large, clearly-artificial metal vehicle flying through the air above us. Well, if that wasn’t a sign of humans––or perhaps some other sapient race like the Atlanteans––I didn’t know what was. It flew quickly over us and off into the distance, but it was clearly slowly descending towards the canopy. Perhaps the people onboard were planning to land somewhere not too far away?

Zatanna and I exchanged looks. We’d discussed going looking for the Plane’s native peoples, but hadn’t expected for them to all but come to us. What were we going to do?