En route to Shade Academy
The Kingdom of Vacuo
Remnant
As a native Canadian, once upon a time, Godafrid was used to snow.
Used to it, but not overly fond of it; it was cold, wet, tended to clump together, was impossible to walk comfortably in, showed up in gloomy if not outright dark conditions, and was no better under sunlight, when it sparkled blindingly.
Sand, he was learning, was no better. It wasn’t cold, but it was as hard as ice pellets, as fine as snow, and again, sparkled blindingly under sunlight—which it also absorbed to become really damned hot.
In other words, he thought to himself, “sand” is a four-letter word for a damned good reason . . .
Frid spent several minutes cursing the gods—and a number of specific ones in particular. First, Krampus, Norse God of Just Desserts (for lack of a more official title), for giving the Sword of Atli to Erik Uflricson; also Erik, for losing the damned thing, Gaia, for trying to push it to the Reverse Side of the World, and the “Brother of Light” for being a lazy ass . . . Why bother making a “Relic of Destruction,” after all, when you can just steal one that’s conveniently nearby (relatively speaking, in multiversal terms)?
And so, naturally, he’d been sent to retrieve it . . .
“‘We should do our best to eliminate all cross-contamination,’ they said,” he muttered under his breath. “‘It’ll even help them, as a bonus,’ they said . . .”
It had taken way too damned long to trace the bloody sword’s trail, and when they’d finally found it, Frid had been ready to chew marbles. Of all the places to wind up, it was on freaking REMNANT?!
And of course, he thought disgustedly, of all the places on Remnant for the damned thing to be, it just had to be the kingdom and school I know the least about . . .
The engine snarled for him—and wasn’t that a shock? He, who’d wanted nothing to do with driving, had a car. Even worse, he was pretty much the only one of the Works with it; Rider could drive it, with her skills, but not Saber, let alone the magi. And the one time it had been suggested that Rider trade her motorcycle to Saber for the Relic, the sheer amount of murder that had come off that woman had the subject killed so fast it was worthy of an Assassin-class Servant . . .
That said, the sleek, mist-gray vehicle wasn’t all bad; in addition to giving him access to the Journeys Purview (and letting him transport passengers), it never ran out of fuel, could travel over water as easily as land—making it a literal all-terrain vehicle—just like its namesake, and was a lot quieter and tougher than it looked.
Plus, the possibility of getting in an accident is a lot less worrying, now, given what I’ve got going for me now . . .
Still, even if the car handled like a dream, and gave him better paths than any GPS, he wasn’t entirely comfortable behind the wheel. And that was unlikely to change anytime soon; which made Frid ever so grateful to be able to get out of the car, and start walking towards the school—
And of course, that was when the sinkhole opened under his feet.
He cried out, briefly, and spent the rest of the fall spitting out sand, rather than attempting to breathe it. When he landed, Frid grumbled and hacked up a lung on his way to his feet.
“Right,” he rasped. “Hidden chamber under the school; I forgot. And naturally, I just ‘happen’ to literally stumble into it—just my luck . . .”
Frid coughed up another wad of gritty saliva.
Still, he reflected, while getting out might be a problem, it did make what he came here for easier to do.
The primary defence of any of RWBY’s four Relics (no relation, in theory, to the kind of Relics found in Scion, current situation notwithstanding) was that the vault containing them could only be opened by a specific one of the four Seasonal Maidens. As of when Frid had left his home reality, only the identities of the Spring and Fall Maidens were known, and—assuming that the wiki was correct—this Relic needed the Summer Maiden to get to it. But he had a way around that.
It took a while to etch the symbols of the summoning circle, but he remembered how. And the chant just needed a little modification . . .
“For the elements: silver and iron.
The foundation: stone and the archduke of pacts.
And for my great master Schweinorg, let SUMMER be the season that I pay tribute to . . .”
As he’d hoped, the summoning circle flared with light, revealing—
“Saber,” the swimsuit-clad woman introduced herself cheerfully, “Katsushika Ōi—whoops, it’s ‘Katsushika Hokusai!’”
Staring wordlessly at the Servant as she continued chattering, with a diabolical mini-squid on her shoulder, Frid made a truly heroic effort not to rub his temples.
. . . OK, as with many things, if summoning Summer Servants is somehow being woven into my fate, I will be very annoyed—and what is it with it always being FOREIGNERS?!