It was 11:37 PM on a Sunday night. The more mindful students and staff at Beacon should have already been asleep. Few managed to last long without learning the importance of being fully rested before a day in the trying life of a Huntsman.
Of course, there were exceptions. Some people simply didn’t need to rest as long as others to be fully recharged. Others didn’t care to put on their best face forward; being just good enough was enough.
Others still were immortal wizards with enough magic and the mastery of it to do without rest. Every incarnation of the man Ozpin used to be managed this after his soul fully synchronized with its current host. It was strictly necessary to keep up with all the variables and factors at play. From the state of the Huntsmen under his command to the development of the next generation at Beacon, to the political and economic climate of the Kingdoms and world at large, to the countless potential threats and plans Salem might employ to ruin all of the above…
There was a lot to keep track of and it was hardly smooth sailing even in the best of times. Case in point, not a day sooner than he had relented to Amber’s incessant demands to go out on a mission alone, she’d been ambushed.
The woman was headstrong about her desires to be a “True Huntress” and do her part in ridding the world of Grimm. She’d been in the know about Salem’s threat since she inherited the Fall Maiden’s powers, but after years of being locked away and constantly training behind closed doors, the writing on the wall had been clear as to her waning patience.
Sooner or later, her dissatisfaction would see her leave regardless of what was best for her and the world. So, Ozpin relented and allowed her to take the solo mission she wanted. He also contracted Qrow to follow her discreetly and make sure nothing happened to her. In the end, an ambush still happened, and it was only through sheer luck that saw Lapis had also come to her defense dozens of miles away from where he was expected to be.
Just thinking of that man left Ozpin nursing a headache. He was an impossibility, an anomaly without cause or reason for being. A man who seemingly one day just decided to ignore the laws of the universe and do whatever suited his fancy.
When he appeared without Aura, he did so while navigating through the Grimm-infested territory between Beacon and Vale. When he awakened his Aura it was to the biggest pool ever measured upon unlocking it. He had a slew of countless magical abilities, the most concerning of which being his ability to detect the Maidens without even knowing they existed in the first place.
To think that it was because of him, an outsider to the war that raged behind the scenes, that they had finally rediscovered the Spring Maiden. Perhaps, it would be for the best to bring him up to speed sooner rather than later. Only the Gods knew how catastrophic it could be if Salem managed to get to him first.
Ozpin’s Scroll started ringing and he couldn’t help but let out a tired sigh at the name on the caller ID.
Who else could have caused this reaction in him?
Ozpin let the Scroll ring for a few seconds while preparing himself before he answered the call. The last time he’d been called by Lapis, the bombshell that was the Spring Maiden’s identity had been dropped on his lap.
“Lapis, I’d say good evening, but it’s a little late for that. Has some sort of emergency come up?” Ozpin asked.
“Something like that. Personally, I wouldn’t call it an emergency, but it is something I think we should deal with as soon as possible. And, I say ‘we’ because you’re definitely going to want to get involved. Anyway, you know those three people who ambushed Amber? I caught them earlier tonight,” Lapis said and from the casual tone of his voice, it sounded like it’d been an effortless ordeal.
“The story behind that is pretty funny, but you probably don’t care about that. No, I think you’d be more interested in trading the information I got out of them, instead. I get the feeling you’d want all the notes I have on Salem.”
Rarely was Ozpin ever left as discombobulated as he was when dealing with Lapis and never had that been more true than at this very instance. Two days ago he hadn’t even known about the Maidens, now he had interrogated notes out of close associates of Salem and possibly had some of her secrets? Ozpin would laugh if the subject matter weren’t as serious as it was.
“You want to trade for the information?” Ozpin settled on the least relevant response.
“Yeah, information for information. Confronting and capturing these three has put me on the Grimm Queen’s radar and while I doubt there’s any threat to my directly, I bet she’ll target the people around me once she realizes that,” Lapis said, still with barely any detectable sharpness to his tone. It sounded like he truly didn’t care for the threat Salem posed.
Stolen novel; please report.
“I have the names and details of all the members of her Inner Circle. All I want is for you to dig up information on them — you know, things like pictures of them and where they might currently be — and trade it for all the notes I have on Salem. The Grimm she can command are not an issue to me, it’s the people I might not recognize that are a problem.”
Ozpin couldn’t have put it better himself. He didn’t even need to know what other information he might have on Salem. Knowing the identities of her non-Grimm retainers would be a windfall in and of itself. Anything else Lapis might have discovered would be hard-pressed to top the value of that.
“Very well, if you’d send me the details on those names, I’ll start an investigation right away. Though, I have to ask, do you still have those three in your possession?” It was the least accusatory way to ask if he had dealt with them already.
Ideally, they would still be alive, but Ozpin would not fault someone for torturing or even killing associates of Salem for their knowledge. It was not a method he could openly support or use himself due to his position, but with the stakes being as high as they were, he would certainly look the other way.
“Sure do. Do you know where I can drop them to get judged for… Whatever being a traitor to all intelligent life on the planet will get you tried for in court?”
“Send me a location for a pickup point and I will have Glynda retrieve them. I will call you tomorrow once I’ve finished compiling all the data I can get for you.”
“Mhmm, just remember I have work tomorrow. So, if you call and I don’t answer from noon to ten at night, just send me a text,” Lapis said.
“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind…” Ozpin said before ending the call.
He fought the urge to ram his head through his desk and settled for placing it gently against it instead. Once the cool smoothness of the metal plating seeped through his skin and into his skull, he felt good enough to look back at his Scroll and read through the messages Lapis had sent.
“Hazel Rainart…” He muttered as the name and makeshift profile Lapis had cobbled together of the man came into view. It was lacking details, such as his motivations and grudge, but the descriptions of what he was like and how he fought were accurate. If the rest of the profiles were even a tenth as detailed as Hazel’s, they would be worth a thousand times their weight in gold.
Ozpin knew how important this opportunity was. How urgently — as Lapis put it — he wanted, no, needed to get this situation under control. But still, it was late and that last conversation with the impossible man had left him more exhausted than everything else he had done in the day. Now, he was going to do something approximately as mentally draining by summoning Glynda Goodwich in the middle of a Sunday night, so he felt justified in making himself a full mug of cocoa.
“This better be something important,” Glynda grumbled as she appeared within ten minutes. She was in a nightgown, looking like she had come straight to his office upon receiving her summons.
“Lapis Lain…” Ozpin started only to slow down at the unusually offensive gesture Glynda made — as if to convey she was “completely over anything that man had said or done” — “He has captured the members of Salem’s Inner Circle who ambushed Amber earlier this week. I need someone I can trust to oversee that they get delivered to Beacon’s Detainment Facility without any complications.”
“...I understand,” Glynda sighed. Sure enough, she had seen right away how ‘important’ the matter at hand was.
“Oh?” Ozpin’s Scroll pinged again, now containing the pickup location Lapis had agreed to provide them. It wasn’t the fact that the pickup point was in the residential area of Vale that surprised him, rather, it was that he had requested the pickup be done thousands of feet in the air.
“I have the pickup location, so if you could head for the Bullheads, I will arrange for a pilot to be ready within half an hour,” Ozpin said.
Glynda shook her head, “It’s better if we contain those people as soon as possible. I will pilot a ship to the pickup point myself.”
“I’d appreciate it if you did that. Also, if you could give Lapis at least an overview of what we’re dealing with. I don’t know how much information he’s managed to get about Salem or to what extent he knows about the fight against her, but he’s already too involved to ignore the issue. He believes that Salem already knows about him, so we can more or less expect him to be on our side, but it will ingratiate him to us all the more so if we explain things as soon as possible,” Ozpin said.
“I will personally stay here to fulfill his only request for trading all the information he has on Salem. It should not take too long, but as you said, securing Salem’s people should be taken care of as soon as possible. Usually, I’d be the one to tell people about the underlying threat to the world, but this is not a normal situation.”
“I will talk to him,” Glynda said.
She left Ozpin’s office while the headmaster worked away on his computer to scrounge up all the information publicly available. As an AI algorithm worked on summarizing those data points, Ozpin systematically used his highest level administrator privileges — as Beacon’s Headmaster, Councilman of Vale, and his personal connections to various other people in places of power and high authority — to comb through every police database and private business security system he could reach.
His computer was a state-of-the-art modern marvel, which allowed him to process hundreds of terabytes of information in seconds. Still, it took nearly an hour to piece through everything he could access and only retain the most relevant points.
He sent the information he compiled to Lapis and only a few seconds later, he received pictures of a few handwritten notes. Most of the information contained in the notes were things he already knew: The Relics, the Maidens, the vaults and how to unlock them, a good portion of the notes had the information Lapis had originally sent regarding the members of Salem’s Inner Circle.
However, there were other things Ozpin had faint suspicions about that were now more-or-less confirmed. Like, where Salem was headquartered. The Land of Darkness in the Dragon Continent had been his best-inferred guess, but now he narrowed down millions of square miles into just the strip along the middle of the second wing on the dragon-shaped landmass.
Also, there was that motivation Cinder gave for why she joined Salem that revealed her specific manipulations. Ozpin had known for thousands of years that Salem manipulated Humans and Faunus to do her bidding, but rarely if ever did he find out how she had gone about it with her monstrous appearance and penchant for destruction. Picking up a destitute girl with a tragic backstory and promising her the Maiden powers along with a seat by her throne was as good a lie as any he could come up with.
Then, there was the one piece of information that might just have been the most important thing recorded on the notes. The innocuous little tidbit about Salem’s current understanding of the locations of the four Maidens. Fall and Winter, he already expected her to know about. The Spring Maiden being Raven had only been revealed to him a few days ago, so it made sense for Salem to have yet to hear about her. It was the information on the Summer Maiden that raised the hairs on Ozpin’s back.
Summer… She had been lost to the world for nearly thirteen years at this point; even longer than the Spring Maiden. Lapis hadn’t managed to get her identity with whatever it was that he did to Cinder, but based on everything else he had gotten, it was probably due to the woman not knowing herself. That Cinder only knew Salem had special plans for the Maiden who guarded the Relic of Destruction did not bode well for anyone.
Whether she already knew who the Maiden was and had managed to steal the powers or worse…
Ozpin shook his head as he rationalized the futility of dwelling on the worst-case scenario. He would prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and try to survive.
In other words, nothing would change.