RWBY: Beacon

Day Three

My meeting with the Headmaster continued for several more minutes as the man gave me a brief explanation of how the relic worked. Apparently it had one use left right now and the other two wouldn’t be ready for an entire century, but I didn’t begrudge Ozpin whatever information he’d used the Relic to acquire. Parting with such a treasure, even if it was for a good cause, could not have been easy. As it was, it was kind of him to leave me with even that single question.

Even if he hadn’t, I would have happily taken it. The item’s power was incredible, but not only was it more than likely that I’d be able to create copies of it for later use, but I also was equally interested in how it worked and had been created, something I could now study at my leisure in the future.

In the end, Ozpin handed me a thin notebook with instructions on how to use the Relic, then asked me to avoid messing with it until I was safely gone from this Plane. It was easy enough to agree to that. There were plenty of other things to occupy my time here and I was certain that Zatanna would be happy to help me examine such an impressive work of artifice.

With that taken care of, the two of us returned to where Amber was being kept stable by some manner of sophisticated-looking enchanted medical machinery. It took about an hour to conclude that I just didn’t know enough to be helpful for the moment. Physically, Amber was completely fine. All my diagnostic charms showed that she was in near-perfect health outside of some nutritional issues and her scars.

Magically though? The closest thing I could compare her condition to was a case I’d read in one of my family’s grimoires written during the early 14th century. One of my distant ancestors had tried to broker a deal with the reclusive but fiendishly brilliant dark wizard Ekrizdis, best known in the modern day for constructing Azkaban and quite possibly the creator of the first Dementors.

Unfortunately, nothing good had come of it and the witch who had gone to meet with the man barely escaped with her life, only to expire months later as a shell of a person. Her brother, Pollux Regulus Black, had written in horrifying detail about how her condition had deteriorated, her soul slowly falling apart and tearing free from her body piece by agonizing piece. Despite his best efforts, and nearly twenty-thousand galleons spent on hiring specialists and purchasing exotic potions and artifacts in an effort to stem the spiritual bleeding, he ultimately failed to save his sister.

As far as I could tell, Amber’s condition wasn’t quite as bad as poor Irma Callidora Black had been, but it was a near thing. People didn’t tend to survive with souls as tattered as hers––it was why even just a brush with a dementor could be fatal––but a combination of her remaining aura and what was left of the golden web of magic that made up her powers as a Maiden had managed to patch over the holes and stopped the rest of her spirit from dissipating.

I didn’t know how to help Amber. But I did know of a person who very well might be able to do so. A powerful wizard with nearly ten times more experience than I myself possessed. Conveniently I even had a Blueprint of the man, meaning I could simply bring him here directly instead of playing interplaner post owl.

…unfortunately, I was currently two mana short of actually being able to summon Kent Nelson. Conveniently however, I was currently on a brand new plane with countless potential lands to bind. Thus, it was finally time to stop putting off what was possibly the most important thing that I should have done upon arriving on Remnant. I needed to go bind some more lands. At least one of which needed to produce White mana.

Ozpin was not particularly pleased by that idea. Understandable really. He’s just handed me a priceless treasure and now here I was telling him that I needed to go waltzing off into the wilderness. However, in the end, he’d had no choice but to go along with the idea, though he did insist that I bring a guard with me to make sure that I stayed safe.

I agreed, of course. There was no real reason not to and, after learning about some of the rarer and more dangerous Grimm out there, I was more than happy to have a bodyguard who could stand between me and them as I apparated away. I was confident that I could kill or subdue a beowolf or even a pack of them, but a flying, building-sized Grimm that could shoot bolts of lightning powerful enough to instantly burn through a trained huntsman's aura was slightly more iffy.

My plan was simple. If I wanted to summon Kent, I needed to bind two different lands. Experience and instincts told me that binding the first land would be easy enough, but the second would require actual familiarity and a significant time investment. Thus, while I was confident that Beacon itself would qualify, it was better to first connect to a more isolated location where I didn’t plan to spend much time and only then move on to connecting to the Academy where I planned to spend most of my remaining time on this Plane.

My first thought was that buried ruin that I’d initially arrived in, but since I wasn’t sure what sort of mana Beacon would produce, I wanted to maximize the likelihood that my first land would produce the White mana I needed to summon Kent. There was a small chance that the ruin would qualify, but it felt more Black than White to my senses, so it wasn’t a safe bet.

Over the past few months I’d spent a lot of time contemplating the colors of Magic. I couldn’t say that I had a full understanding of them, or even a marginally thorough one, but I knew some things. White was the color of order. Of healing and protection, laws and justice. It felt like honor and community. Thus, I wanted a place with a long history that exemplified those qualities.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

On its own, that wasn’t a very hard set of requirements. I was pretty sure that something like a hospital or a courthouse would qualify. More difficulty, I also wanted somewhere isolated. Somewhere I could planeswalk without any witnesses and set up powerful wards to protect my access point to this Plane in case my relationship with Ozpin turned sour.

It took some discussion, but eventually Ozpin helped me identify just such a place. An ancient memorial some distance outside of Vale that had been constructed to honor a particularly valiant team of Hunters that had spent their entire lives valiantly fighting to protect man from the Creatures of Grimm. One of them had been famed throughout the Kingdom for their powerful healing semblance, while two others had devoted their final years to codifying protections for the families of Huntsmen who perished in the line of duty.

And so, with a few hours of daylight remaining and no reason to dilly dally, I found myself boarding a bullhead with Zatanna and the Huntsman that Ozpin had selected to guard me. Well, Huntress. Ozpin had introduced the tall, dark-haired woman as Raven, and told me that she was a trusted ally and a very powerful combatant.

The woman herself had stayed mostly silent so far, answering most questions with one-word answers or nods. She wore a blank white mask with no visible eye slits over her face that completely hid her features from view, thigh-high black boots, a black and red shirt with a v-neckline and some armored plates, and a short black skirt. A bulky scabbard hung at her side and she unconsciously kept the hilt within easy reach at all times.

I was pretty sure she was another one of Ozpin’s maidens, though I wasn’t sure which one. I’d still had my magic-sight spell active when I’d gone to meet with Ozpin for the second time, and she was the only person on this Plane outside of Zatanna, Ozpin, and Amber who lit up under its effect. Aura was magic, I was certain of it, but it was magic of too different a kind to be visible to the spell.

The trip ended up being rather underwhelming, all things considered. It was about an hour-long flight, most of which I spent pouring over a Grimm bestiary. Zatanna joined me at first, then decided to start pestering Raven about the different creatures we were reading about. It took some prodding, but she did eventually provide a few bits and pieces not present in the book. Mostly tips on how to best kill some of the more troublesome Grimm.

We landed a short distance from the ruins and Raven proved her worth by absolutely shredding through the dozen or so ursa and beowolves we encountered between the bullhead and our destination. I would have been upset about the missed Blueprints, but I’d already gained one during a short excursion into the forest that surrounded Beacon and my efforts to create duplicate Blueprints from an ursa with slightly different spikes had gone nowhere.

She was a whirlwind of death, her blade a red streak as she cleaved through the Creatures of Grimm like a farmer harvesting wheat. She moved like lightning, dashing from one enemy to the next without stopping, each strike a killing blow. The entire time her aura didn’t so much as shimmer, not a single one of the creatures able to touch her before they died.

The memorial had once been at the center of a small town, but now it was all that remained. Grass and small shrubs grew where there had once been cobblestones and I could see the remnants of foundations and streets of hard-packed dirt through the trees. The statue of the four hunters that had once stood upon the tall stone plinth was long gone as well; all that was left of it was a broken limb half buried in the foliage.

I walked slowly around the plinth, studying the faded words carved into the stone. They told the story of the men and women honored here, meant to immortalize their names and deeds in something more permanent than memory. The stone was worn in places, words and letters obscured by dirt or smoothed out by rain and wind. Some of it was left completely illegible, while other parts were mostly untouched.

I ran a finger across a smooth, featureless face. Any detail the carving had once held was long gone, leaving only a placid expression and pupiless eyes. It was a woman’s face, I thought. Any inscription that had once appeared beneath it was long gone, but it was probably meant to be one of the heroic Huntresses. That made her either Quartz Rose or Emiliya Wondergreen. Or perhaps it was someone else. A family member, or even the sculptor who’d created the original statue?

I turned to Raven, who had just dispatched another beowolf with a precise flick of her sword. “I’m going to need some time.”

“Understood.” She nodded sharply and then lept, landing easily on top of the plinth. The trees around the monument were still rather young and sparse compared to the ancient trees of the greater forest. From her high vantage point, Raven had an excellent view of our surroundings and would be able to intercept any Grimm that found us.

Despite her presence, I still didn’t feel entirely safe lowering my guard entirely. Sitting down with my back against the monument, I took a moment to cast a White mana reinforced protego horribilis around myself, then closed my eyes, laid the tip of my wand against the ground, and focused on the world around me.

It took about half an hour of searching and fiddling with my Spark, but eventually I felt the connection form. The bond was slightly different from what I was used to. This place was meaningful, but not unique in the same way that Shadowcrest, the Tower of Fate, and Slaughter Swamp were unique.

It was a Huntsmen's Memorial, not the Huntsmen's Memorial. Still, I was pretty sure I’d be able to draw mana from it just as well. It also had some secondary effect that I would need to explore in the future, some method that allowed it to permanently strengthen people like the Huntsmen it honored using mana. Ozpin would probably be pleased if I augmented some of his subordinates, and perhaps this could even do something to help Amber?

It even produced White mana like I’d hoped it would! I was very pleased with the trip. Zatanna complained that it had been boring, but I was pretty sure she was just trying to fill the silence.

Before we left, I made sure to thoroughly memorize the surroundings so that I could apparate back here in the future. I could always just planeswalk, but that would just unduly stress my Spark and I wanted it to be in optimal shape at all times so that I could flee safely if something happened.