#anyway yeah. there's a tiny section of the ritual dimension that found out about what happened in Original. don't worry about it

[omarwolaeth]

The little sun from dusty streets, Raon

Ritual AU Ray shard done ;v; her ritual monsters are done too, so now (at least on her end) I need to do the rest of her main deck. I both look forward to and don't look forward to making a ref for Yuume for he is a big puffball.

Once nicknamed Nameless by a once dear friend (she hasn't seem them in so, so long) and given a name by them, Raon is the Ritual Dimension's shard of Ray.

For most of her life she's had very little beyond her clothes and her bracelet. As of recent, she's come to understand (with difficulty) that her bracelet is a bit... strange, to say the least - but at least where the occasional nagging feelings of doom (proximity to a particular person) or "take care of myself" during that time was from.

She does think En Sun trying to help her realise when she was hungry, thirsty, or tired, was cute of it, especially for a spell. It just made existing a little scary after finding out about it (she's gotten over this.)

As a member of Opus, Raon is one of their two gathered fragments. Through them she has most things in her life, up to and including her duel disk (though not pictured here) and her monsters.

Just like other members of Opus, Raon looks forward to being able to meet her sisters in Ray's other shards (as does Yuume with his brothers), and is working as best she can to keep the other shards separate,

... after all, both Raon and Yuume know exactly how dire a botched ritual can be (hell, the whole dimension does) - combining pieces together separately, and not all together at once? A recipe for disaster.

It's just very hard to do your job when your organization is frightened of letting you out of the dimension in case you get captured - as if Raon isn't the queen of booking it out of a dangerous situation - because you're fairly new to being able to duel at all.

... Maybe not helped that she's unnerved by her own monsters, even if they were made by En Sun for her and her alone. Anyway! When they're less scared of letting her loose, Raon's definitely going to help her siblings where she can!

[ruffsficstuffplace]

The Keeper of the Grove (Part 54)

It was late when they arrived back at Keeper's Hollow, Weiss riding on Zwei's back as the magical exhaustion set in. She could still walk and stay awake, but now it just felt incredibly difficult to muster the willpower to do much of anything, alongside a very physical and real growling in her stomach.

It felt strikingly like the aftermath of a particularly brutal test, and just like then, all Weiss wanted to do afterward was gorge on something sweet—in this case, chocolate chip cookies.

“Elemental weaving is a largely mental process,” Penny explained as she and Qrow cooked chicken tortillas for dinner. “Magic already exists in all bodies and beings as the base components for matter, and the Gift is both a body capable of accumulating and storing larger than usual amounts of it, and a bmind able to harness and manipulate it in ways difficult or impossible through conventional means.

“Most Fae just have the former, which tends to manifest in greatly enhanced physical capabilities like the Watchers, or just the latter, which tends to manifest in skill in science and the arts like the Makers and Creators.”

Weiss nodded. “So how rare is it, anyway?” she asked after she swallowed her mouthful of cookies.

“With the extreme amounts of magic in the Valley's wellspring, along with the frequent exposure to it from its food, environment, and our magitechnology?” Penny said as she chopped up vegetables. “About 20-42% of the population, with 61-67% of that going on to become professional weavers. The rest tend to gravitate towards other professions, oftentimes makers, watchers, and/or creators, either from personal choice, or simply not being capable of handling the stress and rigours of weaver training and occupations.”

Weiss picked up her glass of milk. “So why isn't Candela overflowing with weavers? We had to use energy like there was no tomorrow, or else the collectors would overload,” she said before she took a drink.

“Two reasons: genetics, and the nature of your magitechnology,” Penny said as she brought the tray of vegetable fillings to the table.

“As your magitech started to become cheaper, easier, and more convenient than training and hiring human weavers, the importance of preserving their bloodlines and avoiding genetic modifications that could impair their abilities became less and less important,” she said as she went to get the tortilla wraps. “At times, they were even actively hunted down and removed from the gene pool at large to avoid their side-effects, like the increased vulnerability to dementia and other mental illness.

“It didn't help that, unlike Fae, your designs tend to protect and isolate magical exposure to its users as much as possible,” Penny said as she laid them on the table, next to the vegetables. “To use a metaphor: while the Fae were outside getting regular doses of sunlight, you humans were locked in your homes with blackout curtains over the windows.”

Weiss smirked. “Fitting. Makes me wonder what would have happened if we hadn't made the full switch to magitech...”

“You humans wouldn't have started a realm-wide resource crisis because you ran out of shit to build it with, for one,” Qrow said as he came over with a crock pot full of chicken.

Weiss nodded. “Did the Fae ever suffer something like the Resource Crisis?”

“Plenty of times!” Qrow said as he set it down in the center. “Believe it or not, Sekhmet used to be a rainforest before we Fae fucked it up royally. In terms of how long we've been able to bang two rocks together and call it music, being the poster-civilization of sustainable living was after we got out of our shitty teenage years,” he continued as he ladled out shredded meat for everyone's wraps but Ruby's.

“But it's been a long day, and that's an even longer story, princess, so that's all the Chronicler Qrow you're getting today,” he said as he made a quadruple-large tortilla for Zwei.

“We'll eventually get to it in your history classes, don't worry,” Penny said, smiling as she and Qrow worked together to keep Zwei's dinner from falling apart. The head sticking in through the window started to drool like crazy.

Weiss shrugged, and dug in. She hummed after she took her first bite; her herbs and vegetables had helped make a damn good sauce.

She still had too much energy from sleeping at Abner's lab earlier, so Weiss spent most of that evening building and setting up the new equipment they'd received, starting with the barn and her lab/kitchen, and after that, the long abandoned weaver's section of the training grounds.

“Alright!” Ruby called out as she worked in an underground hatch, only the very tips of her horns visible. “I'm turning the valve on—tell me if anything happens!”

“Got it!” Weiss said as she stood by with a lamp in her hands.

She watched as a long-dead fountain came back to life, water trickling down its numerous grooves, filling its many basins, and a waterfall appearing in the center and pouring out onto a platform big enough for two or three Fae to sit and meditate under.

“It's working!”

“Woo!” Ruby cried as she climbed out. “Go me!”

The two of them stood there, admiring their handiwork, until the combined light of their lamps and the water brought out some rather unpleasant details they'd missed earlier.

“… Do you Fae happen to have bacteria that can eat all that mold and fungus?”

“Yeah, we do, but we could also just turn the water off again then torch it! Weaver equipment is made to withstand all the elements.”

Weiss hummed. “Yeah, that'd work much better.”

Ruby shut off the water, and the two began to head back to the house.

Weiss yelped and nearly dropped her lamp as she came to face with a ferocious looking bird Fae, ghostly and glowing an ominous blood-red.

“Oh, hey!” Ruby said. “The Echoes are already appearing! Neat!”

Weiss stepped well back as the “echo” of Raven Branwen pulled out her sword and got into a combat stance, her eyes narrowed and her mouth/beak curled into a scowl. “What the hell are 'echoes,' and why are they happening?” she said as her eyes darted between Ruby and Raven.

“Echoes are the pieces of you that you leave behind after you die,” Ruby explained. “Usually, it takes a ritual to make them appear, but when there's so much raw magic floating around before and during the Eve, they just come out all on their own.”

Weiss watched a different echo appear some distance away from—Summer, her cloaked figure and the Keeper's scythe a calming silver. The two echoes charged each other, their battle too fast for Weiss to see, so ferocious she could hear the clashes of blade-on-blade and the faint sounds of war cries from long ago.

It was far beyond the level of anything Weiss was capable of, or that she'd ever seen in her entire life—even Ruby's wiping the floor with all of her guards that fateful night.

Raven swung too hard and missed, all the energy in her sword exploding into the ground, sending ghostly dirt and debris flying several feet into the air.

Summer took the opportunity to swing the Keeper's scythe right at her neck, stopping just before she cut her head clean off her shoulders.

The air was tense as the two figures stared each other down, seething hatred in Raven, amusement in Summer's.

Summer pulled the scythe away, and offered her hand with a smile.

Raven ignored her as she picked herself and her sword off the ground.

The two echoes parted ways, and disappeared.

It all happened in the span of less than a minute, though it felt like it had dragged on for much longer.

“Holy shit...” Weiss whispered.

“Yep,” Ruby said. “And that's when mom was holding back.”

Weiss looked at her in disbelief. “That's her holding back?”

Ruby nodded. “Mom was always way stronger than Aunt Raven or Uncle Qrow. It always bothered her, my aunt, since their family has always been kinda obsessed about being the strongest around, probably because they were from Sekhmet.”

“How'd they end in the Valley?”

Ruby shrugged. “Uncle Qrow says it's a REALLY long story—so long he's never really found the time to tell me!” she replied innocently.

Weiss stared at her for a moment, before she nodded slowly. “Do these echoes just show up, or is there a pattern?” she asked as they resumed walking.

“They tend to appear wherever someone had really important memories, or where they spent most of their time, but only if you're related to them in some way,” Ruby replied. “It's mostly for family, but Abner always sees echoes of Ilaya at his place this time of year. You could also summon them by bringing something they used to own and used a lot, seeing as part of their essence rubs off on it.”

Weiss smiled. “You Fae certainly bring a new dimension to the value of heirlooms and antiques...”

“Mhmm!” Ruby said. “As the saying goes, 'Our bodies falter, our memories fade, and our breaths cease, but Havalon remembers always.'”

They walked through Weiss' farm, and noticed one of the mana detectors that had been planted among her crops was glowing and beeping in warning.

Weiss sighed heavily. “Oh, what now...?” she muttered as she walked over to investigate.

“You think your vegetables turned into elementals too?”

“I seriously hope not! Cheese blobs with faces and sore-stiff ointment that moves, I can handle; I don't know how I'd react to vegetables that scream when I harvest them.”

“They definitely won't do that,” Ruby replied. “You're their weaver; they'll probably think it's a great honour to be picked and eaten, maybe even tell you when they're at their best so you can get the most out of them.”

Weiss cringed. “Please stop before I have to become a full-time carnivore; at least I know meat's supposed to move around before I can eat it...”

They halted as they reached the edge of the fence. There was an echo walking through Weiss' crops, wielding a hoe and tilling the soil. She was an arctic fox Fae from the tiny ears and the ridiculously fluffy tail, wearing a long, flowing dress of distinctly human-make, with her glow a pale, icy blue.

“Relative of yours?” Weiss asked as they watched her work and slowly come closer to them.

“Uh… not that I know of...?” Ruby replied. “I haven't really seen her before, either.”

The mystery woman got close enough to reach. Weiss slowly held out her gloved hand, her fingertips brushing the echo. The crystals on it began to glow.

Then, a flash.

Weiss found herself in Keeper's Grove, a long, long, long time ago, seeing through the eyes of the mystery woman as she worked. From the grunts of effort and the sweat she was regularly wiping from her brow, she was just as new to farming as Weiss was, when her farm was just a patch of sweet potatoes.

She heard a voice ask something in broken German.

The woman turned, and Weiss found herself looking at one of Ruby's ancestors. She had the same silver eyes, the friendly face, and the black hair, only her horns were much more pronounced, there were almost no whites in her eyes for how wide her irises were, and her hands and feet clearly ended in what looked like hooves.

The woman chuckled, affectionately said something in the same language, except much more fluently.

Ruby's ancestor smiled, getting a mischievous look on her face as she struggled to say something in a playful tone, before suggestively waggling her eyebrows.

The woman made an exasperated noise, then planted her hoe in the ground. She narrowed her eyes at Ruby's ancestor, shaking her head before she walked up to her.

From the loving expression on her face, it was clearly for a kiss.

There was another flash, and Weiss found herself back in her own body, her legs crumpled beneath her, Ruby holding her up and sounding increasingly desperate.

“… eiss?! Weiss! Are you okay?”

Weiss blinked, groaning and shaking her head. “What happened…?”

“You touched the echo of that fox lady, she disappeared, and then you fainted!”

Weiss looked at the mana detector, now dark and quiet, then to her crops, no more trace of the echo.

“Call the Terrace and Abner,” Weiss muttered as she took off her gauntlet, the crystals now glowing a pale shade of icy blue.

Weiss was amused that the senior weaver for the night shift was an Owl Fae.

Less amusing was the way Keeper's Hollow was swarming with weavers once more, this time with chroniclers deep into their tablets and comm-crystals, half frantically requesting files from all over Avalon and an audience with Elder Oobleck himself, the other half studying the data from the mana detector, what footage they had seen of Weiss touching the echo and it disappearing before she fainted.

And from the way Penny was conversing with them in Actaeon, shaking her head even as they pleaded desperately with her, she could just tell they were itching to crack her head open and see what memories they could pull up.

Through Qrow, she relayed what she had seen through her vision to the chroniclers, Ruby, and Abner who was attending through the second's comm-crystal. The things they knew was that the ancestor she had seen was Gabija herself, and that the time-frame was a few decades after the First Settlers had landed.

Everything else was a mystery.

The chroniclers grilled her relentlessly, frustrated at what little she could tell, before they sighed and returned to their referencing the Codex, calling up their fellow chroniclers, and trying to rebuild the vision from the mana detector and her gauntlet.

“What was that all about?” Weiss asked after the last finally gave up.

“You may have found a very important key to unlocking the mystery that has been boggling the Fae for a thousand years,” Abner said.

“The short version of it is: the Valley wasn't always an Eldan Settlement, it started as a split-off,” Qrow said. “A lot of unethical and illegal shit happened here, and when everything went to hell, the survivors called the Council to save their asses…

“… But not before destroying most the evidence that would link them to the crimes against Avalon that would get them executed or worse, a lot of identities changing, and folks mysterious disappearing of the face of the realm.”

“They burned down the original Chronicler's Grove...” Abner said sadly. “Aside from the loss of all that data, there was also the fact that those who did come forward for their crimes and pleaded guilty were put into witness protection, and what information we do have from just after the Council retook the Valley was delivered via Info-Grid—not nearly as fast, expansive, or reliable then as it is now, made worse because they were ferrying secret messages that were destroyed at the slightest hint of being compromised.”

“So what does what I saw have to do with all that?” Weiss asked.

“Because, Weiss, that lady whose memories you saw was probably Gabija's mate, and the key to why Keeper's like me are so special,” Ruby replied.

“And you don't have better records of her? She was the first Keeper of the Grove, right? Did no one happen to have a pen and paper on hand?!”

Abner sighed. “She and her mate requested the latter's true identity be kept a secret, for reasons unknown. And more importantly, this was WELL before anyone realized just how important the Keeper bloodline really was...”

“Go get some sleep, Weiss,” Qrow said. “Believe us: the answers to the mysteries of the Valley are massive teases, who also love coming when you least expect them.”

Weiss scowled. “I'm starting to realize that, and it's giving me a real headache...”