A Wandering Soul [Multicross OC] [Currently in: RWBY]

[Azura]

Rider 3.11

It was a little concerning how quickly you could tune out the sound of people dying, I thought as I listened to a Varden captain outlining the situation and orders to various sergeants. For the entire day we had been besieging Feinster's walls and unfortunately for us, the Empire's soldiers were doing a pretty good job of keeping us out. Their magicians had managed to stop me from blowing a hole in the walls three separate times and even counterattacked the third time viciously enough that Nasuada suggested I hold back until we could pinpoint and eliminate them.

I agreed since Samuel was likely here providing them with the raw power needed to hold me off.

This would be the fourth time we faced each other and while I considered myself in the lead so far, I think both of us were planning on only one of us walking away alive this time.

So I was being a lot more careful in this battle then I had in the past.

Instead of announcing to the entire battlefield where I was with a rain of swords and giant glowing death beams, I was acting as probably the most terrifying sniper the Empire had never seen.

With my regained ability to trace D rank Noble Phantasms I had swapped from using projected arrows to modified swords. And while D rank wasn't too impressive, three feet of steel with properties for cutting through magic defenses made for excellent arrows for hunting down any magician or officer that dared show their face without them ever knowing where it came from. Though even with their leadership constantly getting picked off and morale in the dirt, the soldiers were still managing to hold the walls.

"They are being remarkably resilient, don't you think?" Angela commented from my side, twirling her fancy dual-bladed staff though she really wasn't here to fight. For the most part she was assisting with the triage stations the Healer's Guild had scattered around the battlefield. "I wonder how much of that is because they are defending their home and how much is because of Galbatorix's forced oaths?"

"Probably a mix of both," I muttered as I put another projectile through the head of a soldier attempting to rally the men around him. "But I wouldn't be surprised if they simply couldn't surrender or flee unless every superior officer was killed or surrendered themselves."

"And how long are you going to skulk around in the background? Usually you like making yourself look like a lighthouse and making magicians panic over how much magic you can use."

I chuckled at the witch. "Ah, can't do that until we figure out where that Rider is hiding. I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to attack a completely different flank than where I set up while every magician in the city tried to exhaust me before he would commit to another fight."

Angela gave me a look and opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted by a messenger running up to us with news from the frontline directly in front of us. The Empire was sallying out to destroy the siege equipment the Varden had set up. Things like the ladders and battering rams that would make taking the city a hundred times more bloody if they were allowed.

I wasn't sure if it was the orders of one of the more competent Empire officers or a probe by Samuel, but either way I wasn't going to just let them do what they wanted.

After thanking the messenger and splitting up from Angela as she disappeared somewhere into the army I found a slightly raised section of earth that let me see the group of soldiers pouring out of one of the wall's smaller gates and pulled back the string of my bow.

Thanks to my sniping efforts, any badge or mark signaling the leader of the group had been removed but after watching for a bit it wasn't hard to spot the one in charge. He was the one who they all followed when he pointed out a direction. So he was my first target as I lined up the modified sword to his breastplate. Half a second to aim, then release. A perfect shot.

Only for the arrow to fucking bounce off the armor somehow.

I hissed out a curse and snapped off three more arrows. One more at the leader and two at random soldiers only for them all to deflect off, even the ones that hit bare skin. Samuel must have done something to this group then. Probably something like putting so much power into the wards an arrow wasn't enough to break through before it deflected. And to make things worse, the soldiers were just about to hit our own lines.

I bit out another curse, dismissed my bow, and ran towards the front while Bakuya and Kanshou fell into my hands.

Yes it was going to give away my position, but you couldn't win a battle by playing everything safe. If Samuel was going to use this as a distraction I could only hope the group of elves under Arya could hold him off long enough for me to chase him down.

With that in mind I ignited a yellow spell-circle under my foot that launched me to the front of the Empire's charge just as they surged over the line of spearmen trying to hold them back. Black and white flashed as my twin swords lashed out and thankfully whatever magic Samuel had used to protect his soldiers from my arrows wasn't enough to protect them from my blades.

Three soldiers were taken out of the fight before they could even realize what had happened as I cut the head off the leader I had spotted earlier, stabbed another through the heart, and lopped off the arm of one more before he could stab a Varden soldier instead.

"It's the Sun Witch!" Several soldiers screamed and turned to face me. Something I was fine with since it gave the Varden more time to regroup. "Abandon the mission, kill her!"

Well, it was nice to be appreciated I guess.

But even with some fancy wards, they were simply too outmatched. Not to mention outnumbered now that the Varden men were forming up behind me.

Whatever soldiers that were funneled towards me by my allies' spears were pretty quickly cut down until there was only a third of the force that sallied out of the walls. At that point I gradually began to fall back and let the soldiers deal with the heavy lifting. The Empire's troops no longer had any chance of breaking through which meant I could try reaching out to the web of magicians we had across the battlefield for any sign of Samuel making an appearance.

But as the sun slowly lowered on the horizon and no sign of a dragon, it became clear that Samuel wasn't going to show his face today.

And so ended the first day of the siege.

-o-

"Good you're here." Nasuada greeted as I pushed aside the flap to the command tent. "Were there any new issues on your front?"

My relationship with the Varden's leadership might have been strained after Orrin's stunt, but the middle of a battlefield where hundreds could die because of one mistake wasn't the place to hold a grudge. So by unspoken agreement Nasuada and I decided to ignore the issue until later.

"They've started spreading out wards that can deflect my arrows to the more important officers that remain on the wall I was at, but not anywhere else when I tested a different section. Unless I spend the entire day running from one end of the city to the other I'm probably not going to be able to pick them off as easily." I mentioned while I scanned the rough map detailing the siege.

Unfortunately it didn't look much different than the one I had seen the night before, so I wasn't the only one that had nothing to show for a day's worth of battle. Though if I had to look on the bright side, neither did the Empire.

There were several mutters and grunts from the surrounding advisors that showed they were just as pleased with that news as I was. An enemy without leadership or morale was much easier to wear down or even convince to surrender. And there were a lot fewer people willing to step up and lead when a magic steel arrow(sword) would come out of nowhere the moment you were noticed leading.

"Impenetrable gates, magic resistant walls, and now arrow proof soldiers." One of them grumbled. "And their Dragon Rider is still hiding in the shadows. Is it even possible to take the city?"

Jörmundur looked at the man. "Don't be discouraged just yet. We may not have made much progress but it has only been a single day. The rams may still break through tomorrow."

"We could also send agents to open the gates from the inside." Arya commented. "A small team could scale the walls and reach the mechanisms, allowing the army to enter the city."

It wasn't exactly a novel idea, but it was a pretty good one.

The biggest issue would be slipping the infiltrators in without having them immediately swarmed by soldiers. That meant they needed to slip past any wards the enemy magicians put up, reach the mechanism, and then survive long enough to escape or link up with the army storming the gate.

Criteria that only fourteen people in the army met. Me, Arya, and Eragon's twelve bodyguards.

"No, we can't afford risking the elves in a mission like that." Nasuada eventually denied after some thought. "All of you are our only counter to Samuel and his dragon until Eragon returns. It's risky enough scattering you throughout the army to fend them off for a time. We can't risk a trap culling those numbers. Not until we see if conventional measures will help us break through."

"If we cannot get through the walls the Varden might not have the strength to take the city, let alone march against Galbatorix!" Arya argued.

"Do we know when Eragon is supposed to return yet?" I interrupted. It was likely there wouldn't have been a fight. Arya was a lot more collected than I was, but I didn't want to sit through more arguments. I had other things to do tonight.

"Within two weeks. Potentially as few as a few days." Was the answer.

So, not great but not terrible. We could definitely wait that long, but the issue of Galbatorix organizing the soldiers from the surrounding cities and towns to send at our backs was something we couldn't ignore. If we gave the enemy too much time, we ran the risk of being surrounded. So after a brief discussion, Arya's idea was shelved for a day until we could see how much progress would be made now that we weren't setting things up and the captains could devote their full attention to assaulting the walls.

"Our next issue is what to do about their Dragon Rider." Nasuada broached the topic. "Alexandria, you mentioned special wards. Was that his doing?"

I nodded. "Both the wards and the last sally towards our line, I think."

"I think he was focused on pinpointing where I was and testing some defenses today because I didn't see the wards anywhere else, and I can't think the Empire has another magician capable of warding a group of fifty men."

Jörmundur leaned forward. "For what purpose?"

"Testing out defenses before we fight again." I gave my best guess. "I really humiliated him last time, so I think he's trying to stack every advantage he can against me. And since I've already proven I can cut through his defensive wards…"

"He's using his men as fodder while trying to draw you out so he can see if he can block you without fighting."

"Exactly."

It wasn't a terrible plan, especially because he had at least some success with any projectile I used, though it was pretty morally bankrupt.

"We'll need to keep that in mind the longer we fight. And we will have to find a way to draw him out before he can completely defend against your magic. Lady Lightbringer, how likely is it that Samuel will find a counter to all your weapons before we breach the walls."

I gave a brief thought to the almost literally uncountable number of weapon blueprints littering my soulscape along with the other spells at my disposal.

"I think I'll be fine."

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[Azura]

Rider 3.12

"Still nothing?"

"No, my Lady. No sign of the enemy Dragon Rider anywhere." The messenger updating me on the overall situation replied. "There has been some discussion that he isn't actually in the city."

"No, he's in there." I said, glaring at the city walls. "He's just not going to show himself until he feels he's ready or we force him out."

Two days.

Two more days of continuous fighting and we hadn't made any progress getting through the walls.

I had to give it to whoever created the defenses for this city, Feinster was very well built. No spell anyone tried did more than scuff the surface of the walls and even after getting pounded on continuously for days by a battering ram, the gate doors were barely dented. At this point it looked like Arya's plan to open the gates from the inside was our best path forward. In fact I already knew Nasuada was preparing a false night raid as a distraction.

What worried me was the fact Samuel probably knew that too.

While I liked to remind him every chance I could that he wasn't as smart as he thought he was…he wasn't completely stupid. It wouldn't take a lot to come to the same conclusion that the only people capable of infiltrating the walls and opening the gates were me and the elves. And once someone knew that it wasn't exactly a great feat of strategic brilliance to plan an ambush for a group you knew was coming.

And since I really didn't want my friend walking headfirst into an ambush, I needed to figure out a plan to either convince Samuel to call his ambush off…or trick him into thinking that he caught us by surprise somewhere else.

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair.

That was all for later though. Right now the assault groups were pulling back as the Varden withdrew from the battlefield. A few ragged cheers went up from the walls as the defenders celebrated another victory, but even from out here I could tell they were tired and desperate. Hard to be happy about winning when you knew the enemy hadn't thrown everything at you and would be coming back in the morning.

I retreated back to the field command tent where I was joined by both Leona and one of the Varden's magicians.

The next few hours were spent dealing with the normal things after a battle. Were there any urgent matters I needed to deal with? How were the supplies for the medical team? Were there any changes I needed to know about? And a host of other questions like that.

Just like the past couple days though, there wasn't much of a change across the battlefield.

In part that was a good thing.

Even if we weren't winning, at least we weren't losing.

Which all circled around to Arya's infiltration plan and my shrinking deadline to come up with something to draw out our enemy.

Luckily, I did have a plan.

It just wasn't a very good one.

"You want to do what?!" Leona practically shrieked in my ear. A rare lapse in decorum from my personal assistant.

I flinched from the volume but calmly repeated myself. "I'm going to give our night assault team a way to get over the walls to draw Samuel out. And I'm going to create a lightshow big and impressive enough to give them time to get there without the defenders focusing too much on them when they won't have cover."

It wouldn't even be that complicated to give the Varden a way over. Just upscale some of the greatswords I had available to the point they were just large metal – dangerous – ramps and drop them on the walls, then distract the enemy magicians so they couldn't dislodge them. Yes, the lack of handrails and terrible friction would make them treacherous to actually use, but between the threat of the assault teams finally getting over the walls and my own performance I was betting the Varden warriors would have pretty good odds of at least making the defenders feel like they were about to be overrun.

"Lady Lightbringer, why did you not use this earlier?" The Du Vangr magician asked. "If you could let our warriors scale the walls so easily, Feinster would probably have already fallen!"

I shook my head at him. It was easy to forget hanging around Arya and Angela that most of the Varden's magicians were rather lackluster, especially after Leona helped reforge all the healers to at least be competent at that. "It'd be too easy for the enemy spellcasters to disrupt for them to be all that useful."

"How so?"

I shrugged. "Create gusts of wind to knock the attackers off or disrupt their footing, break into the mind of one of the warriors and have him shove others off, make the surface of the ramps too slippery to actually use…there are dozens of fairly simple ways to make this tactic useless if you think about it, especially since I can't ward the swords against those spells directly. I'm just not going to give the enemy any time to think of them."

Leona gave me an incredibly suspicious look. "What exactly are you planning on doing as a distraction?"

"Well," I grinned. "The Empire calls me the Sun Witch and the Varden calls me Lightbringer."

"So I'm going to light the sky on fire!"

-o-

A few hours later I was standing in the sky watching the darkness below as dozens of torches representing the Varden forces prepared to attack.

From this far up they looked like tiny pinpricks more than anything so I wasn't worried about anyone on the Empire's side spotting me. In the daylight I would have stuck out as the only thing in the sky, but right now even with my glowing yellow spell circle rotating beneath me I was just another light in the sky with the stars as my background.

Time to get started.

The first thing I did was focus on the modifications to the projection I needed. Selecting a sword and mentally scaling it up so it was a few feet wide instead of a few inches and then duplicating it several times.

It was a bit of a mana drain but nothing too bad, so as the giant blades hovered around me I focused on aiming where I wanted my improvised ramps to land and adding a little velocity to them.

Most of the massive swords did exactly what I wanted, wedging themselves in the dirt right in front of the walls and tilting so they made nice shiny access points for the Varden warriors. A few did fail to land right, though. And I had to quickly dismiss the projection to avoid them either falling on another ramp or somewhere they would just get in the way.

Once those were in place I focused on part two of my plan.

A massive spell circle bloomed behind me as I tweaked a few things. The base spell was my Nova Blast with the focusing element removed and the 'Blast' part slowed to a trickle. What this did was essentially turn the bombardment spell into a massive but harmless flare pointed directly at the walls, blinding the defenders and letting the Varden quickly advance.

Your move Samuel. If you don't come out to play, Nasuada might actually decide to make this staged night raid an actual assault with a good chance of getting a foothold in the city.

And just to make sure you can't brush the whole attack off as a distraction…

I took a deep breath to prepare myself for the bloody night ahead of me and let two swords drop into my hands. Not Kanshou and Bakuya, just two random D-ranked longswords that would let me cut through most armor with ease. It might be a bit foolish to not use the most powerful swords currently at my disposal, but I didn't want to stain two of my favorite blades with the blood of people just defending their home.

With that rather morbid thought in mind, I dropped onto the top of the walls like a meteor.

My first unlucky victim had barely recovered from the sudden surge of light when I cut him across his undefended chest before practically dancing with a twirl to the next soldier and stabbing him through the heart.

The rest of the soldiers were far enough away that they had time to react to my sudden appearance, forming up into a crude shield wall as they tried to focus on me through the glaring light still high in the sky at my back.

"Call out Samuel to face me and surrender," I called out to them. "Do that and I promise you will be treated well!"

To my disappointment the men just bellowed wordless war cries or variations of 'Die!' before charging me.

I leaned out of the way as one of them stabbed at me with a spear, throwing one of my swords I grabbed at the wooden shaft and dragged the unfortunate man close enough to stab him before ripping the spear out of his hands and using it to finish the other unlucky soldier that had been wounded by my thrown blade.

Sparks jumped through the air as I twirled my remaining sword to deflect an overhead chop from another enemy. Hot blood splashed over my hand as I Traced a dagger into my free hand and stabbed the man in the stomach. Two more spearmen attempted to jab at me from a distance and I basically repeated my earlier moves, throwing the bloody dagger at one while deflecting the spear of the second. These two were considerably luckier than their companions as the dagger actually struck a small wooden shield on the one spearman's arm. The dagger pierced through the shield but was far enough away from anything important that the man was uninjured and simply had a very dangerous attachment on his arm, at least until I dismissed the dagger. The second spearman lost his weapon as my sword easily cut through the wooden haft and left him with nothing but a slightly pointed stick. He wisely fell back, scrambling for the sword on his waist before I lost sight of him as another soldier stepped forward.

The air around me quickly filled with a fine red mist as I danced from soldier to soldier, cutting down the defenders in my reach and either throwing projected blades or stolen weapons at the ones further away.

Pretty soon the Varden warriors joined me on the wall and I had to balance being aggressive without overextending to the point the Empire's spellcasters could attack the ramps and strand the Varden on the walls with no way out.

"Head towards the gatehouses!" I ordered the warriors forming up around me. "But don't overextend! We need to-"

Everything I was about to say was lost under the titanic roar right above me.

I felt more than heard a wing flap as the air pressure spiked. Not long after that there was a bone rattling crash as a few tons of giant lizard landed on a nearby building and stared right at me.

"Everyone off the walls!" I screamed and quickly followed my own advice by jumping into the air, not a second too late either as the dragon hosed the entire area in fire from its maw. Luckily for all the people on the walls, Varden and Empire both, the dragon was focused on me and directed its head upwards to follow me.

I darted around for a few seconds until the torrent of flames stopped and turned to look at the new arrival.

Just as expected Samuel was seated on the back of his red dragon, glaring at me. I happily returned the favor.

"Not even a 'hello', Sammy Boy? I'm hurt, here I thought we were closer than that. You know, you show up and strut around like a peacock. I viciously mock you. And then we try to kill each other! You're jumping the script!"

I couldn't see if he reacted in a particular way since he had a full helmet, but rather than react to my taunt, Samuel seemed to completely ignore me. Simply pointing his sword in my direction and urging his dragon forward.

I guess we weren't doing banter today.

But fine, if he wanted a serious fight, that's exactly what I would give him.

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[Azura]

Rider 3.13

Odd as it was to think, I might actually prefer when Samuel decided to angrily rant like the degenerate tryhard he was over the silent treatment.

Turns out all it took to make a guy go from exasperatingly annoying to somewhat scary was to cover him in armor, put him on top of a rampaging dragon, and have him shut up.

Though to be fair, it was mostly the rampaging dragon part.

I dove out of the way as another building was reduced to a pile of broken wood and stone under the claw of Samuel's 'partner'.

I'd have made a joke about our roles being reversed since I was the one supposed to be attacking the city, but I doubted Samuel would have cared even if we weren't totally focused on killing each other. But I didn't have time, since not only was the red dragon still hot on my heels but Samuel had been conjuring Spirits to make those stone snakes and was having them ambush me from odd angles over – and in some cases, through – other buildings.

One of them burst out of a gap in the buildings and did its best to block off any escape routes I could use. A quick Trace of a Zanpakuto shooting out and spearing the minion through its head took care of that and let me slip away down a side street to avoid getting pinned in by the lizard hot on my heels.

Samuel's dragon let out another roar of frustration as I pulled away again, which I shared to some degree. I wasn't running away from the strangely silent Rider because I needed to or because I wanted to. No, as planned I was keeping him occupied while the Varden's attack force retreated off the walls now that there was no chance of Samuel ambushing Arya while she opened the way for the actual attack. Because the last thing Nasuada or any of the other leaders wanted was to risk trapping dozens of men on the walls if something happened to me. And for once I agreed with them.

So that left me playing the world's most destructive game of tag while I waited for the signal that everyone was clear.

Another rock snake appeared overhead just as I heard Samuel finally shout something. A single word in the Ancient Language that caused the buildings in front of me to explode like a mine had gone off, blocking the street. A quick glance over my shoulder let me see the dragon lunging for me, animalistic joy reflected in its eyes, its prey finally cornered where it could get its claws on it.

So I chose the path of least resistance and dove through the window of a building that hadn't been destroyed just yet. Wood and glass shattered around me and there were a few cut off screams from the second floor – dammit there were people hiding in here.

The rest of the wall exploded behind me as the dragon swiped a good part of it away.

No time to worry about them right now. The best thing I could do was move the fight as quickly as possible.

I spotted another window on the other side of the house, a flurry of projected swords tore through that easily enough and let me escape to the other side of the building as a rush of dragonfire filled the building behind me.

As I rolled to my feet and turned to run I caught a glimpse of the retreating dragon. Samuel apparently didn't want to risk getting caught in the debris if they tried to follow me directly and were going around. And thankfully while the insides were pretty trashed, there weren't any big fires left behind in the house.

The people hiding inside were probably safe for now, at least from the whole building burning down. That was good.

What wasn't so good was the fact I still couldn't find a decently open area to properly fight Samuel in.

Like I'd already discovered, the streets were too cramped and made me have to keep an eye out for attacks from all angles. Going into the air was a slightly better option but not by much. My skywalk spell wasn't true flight and I wasn't about to bet the fight on how I could maintain that spell while fighting a dragon in its home territory.

I needed something like a park or courtyard.

If it wasn't guaranteed to be swarming with more people I'd have risked heading towards the soldier's garrison buildings. Those were practically guaranteed to have a wide open space for training, but fighting a Dragon Rider pair, a few dozen soldiers, and whatever magicians happened to be in the area by myself sounded like I was trying to get myself killed.

I would just need to keep looking until – there! A space for an open air market! Thanks to the siege the place had obviously been shut down, but that actually worked in my favor. One or two wooden carts wouldn't mean much to a dragon anyway so the space being cleared out just gave me more room to move around.

And not a moment too soon, because Samuel's dragon crashed into the middle of the space even as the cobblestone roads reformed into walls at the same time, turning the place into a makeshift arena.

Which was fine by me.

"You know most girls actually don't like the whole silent stalker routine. It's creepy. The constant trying to kill me thing isn't very flattering either." I sniped at the Rider.

To my surprise, he actually did something other than order his dragon to attack me or cast a spell.

Samuel ripped off his helmet and gave me a look of pure loathing.

"You ruined EVERYTHING!"

I gave him a winning smile and twirled the swords in my hands. "Well I have to be doing something right then. Though what does 'everything' mean right now? Between the fake execution, your personal power trip, and your tyrannical boss I've been poking my nose into a lot of stuff lately."

"I was supposed to rule this stupid Empire once Galbatorix was done! I was going to make sure that these stupid fucking peasants could actually do somthing with their worthless lives." Samuel ranted. "But after everything you did, he doesn't trust me to hold up my end of the bargain! And you want to know the worst thing?!"

I shrugged, not really interested but happy to let him waste time if it meant Arya could slip in and out while he was complaining.

"He has my goddamn Name! And he used it to put a leash on me, even worse than the one that emo Murtaugh has. You hear that?! Thanks to you I'm now a fucking slave!"

I shrugged again. "What did you want an apology? Did you think that you were somehow immune from the insane control freak because you were special or something? Newsflash, all he cares about is if you were useful to him. Obviously he would leash you like the rest of his tools if you gave him an excuse."

Samuel's face went almost as red as his dragon's scales and I openly scoffed at him. He really did think that the man that destroyed the biggest peacekeeping force in the land, slaughtered an entire race, used everyone around him like tools, and enslaved people using near-unbreakable magical vows would change for him because of his 'specialness'.

"Well, no one ever said you were smart."

"I am going to enjoy killing you." He growled and shoved his helmet back on his head.

"Heh, that's my line."

At an unseen signal his dragon surged forward. I ducked under its opening bite and had to jump backwards to avoid the following claw swipe. A sudden feeling of danger washed over me and I instinctually raised Bakuya to cover my heart. A ball of lead smacked into the flat of the white blade and only then did the crack of a sonic boom hit me.

I looked incredulously at the Rider who still had a hand pointed at me, fist closed and thumb up from where he was holding the lead ball earlier.

Samuel made a fucking railgun with his magic. That was actually pretty damn impressive and overkill for practically anything but had to be so magically expensive to use that it circled back around to being stupid.

How many Eldunarí did he deplete just to fire that one shot?

I shoved that thought aside. Wasteful or not, that was a dangerous weapon I needed to be careful of.

The dragon lunged at me again, but this time instead of retreating, I used Haste to quickly get in even closer. Part of me was hoping Samuel forgot I could do this or failed to prepare but no such luck. Bakuya was stopped by his sword – another Rider's Sword, I noticed – and Kanshou was actually grabbed by his other hand.

That startled me a bit until I remembered that one was a prosthetic since I cut off the real one in our first battle.

Fine, he could keep that one for now.

I released the black sword and cocked my arm back, another copy of Kanshou appearing in my hand to stab at Samuel's legs. Cut the saddle straps and he would be busy trying to deal with undoing those while I could target–

"You think I didn't prepare for that, you moron?" Samuel spat as he simply slid off the saddle. He'd been using magic to hold himself in place instead of actual straps. "You need new tricks. Too bad I'll kill you before you can come up with any!"

Enemies that remembered tactics I used before were annoying, but I was nothing if not adaptable. Both versions of Kansou disappeared with a mental nudge and a lance appeared in my hand instead. Then I stabbed down anyway.

The unnamed D-rank Noble Phantasms wasn't the best at breaking through magical defenses, but it didn't need to be thanks to its anti-dragon properties. I had seen Saphira take some nasty wounds without complaining much, hell, I'd given this dragon some nasty cuts in our first fight and it barely flinched. Yet, the moment the lance's tip pierced the red dragon, it gave a howl of absolute agony and began writhing around enough that both Samuel and I had to focus more on getting distance from the giant lizard than trying to kill each other.

Samuel started shouting at the poor thing to ignore the lance still stuck in its back and attack me, but I guess the pain and fear of something that was literally its bane made it so it couldn't hear him. That didn't mean I didn't feel guilty watching it twist and turn, snapping at its back trying to get at the lance until it ended up crashing into a building and getting buried in the resulting rubble.

That dragon really deserved more than it got.

I made a vow right there. Samuel didn't get to walk away this time…even if I needed to take a few risks.

"My body is made of stars…"

Samuel's head snapped to me at the sound of my chant. "What, are you doing poetry now?"

"Unquenchable is my spirit…"

With each line more mana welled up inside me, straining my barely healed injuries. But it would be worth it if it let me put this poor excuse of a person down.

I used Haste to close the distance again and slashed at the Rider. He tried to block but the sword I used wasn't Kanshou or Bakuya. It was a Noble Phantasm that made every blow unstoppable.

Instead of taking it head on, Samuel dove out of the way at the last second. Unstoppable didn't mean it would always hit afterall. It could still be deflected or dodged.

"Unconquerable is my soul…"

A rock snake launched itself at me from the edges of the marketplace. As expected, Samuel hadn't just stopped using them because I was out in the open. I suspected he had a few more hiding out of sight waiting to be brought in when I was distracted.

I traced a sword as tall as a building and shot it down so it skewered the snake's head and pinned it to the ground.

"In these hands I hold the tapestry of heaven…"

A saber appeared in my hand long enough to deflect Samuel's sword before the second slash cut halfway through the blade. Rider swords weren't a joke, huh?

Bakuya appeared to deflect a stab and a rapier appeared in my off hand. Samuel moved to catch the thin blade like he did with Kanshou but thought better of it at the last second and dodged. Smart of him. The rapier would've cut through his rock hand like paper.

"With no known beginning,"
"And a forever uncertain end,"

Sparks and magic flew all around us as we circled the increasingly damaged marketplace. Neither one of us managed to land a solid hit beyond some superficial scrapes. Though Samuel actually came out better between the two of us.

He could heal his cuts with a simple spell. I couldn't do the same and had to deal with a small trickle of blood and sweat occasionally dripping into my eye from a small cut on my forehead.

"The world will echo with my arrival,"

"No, that's not poetry. It's some kind of spell, isn't it? That's why you can do all this, you have a different magic system!" Points to him for figuring it out eventually, I guess. Better late than never. "Fine, you want to end this? Let's see how you like a ball of pure plasma created by the strength of a hundred dragon hearts!"

My eyes widened at the sight of a small sun sitting in his prosthetic hand.

"Want to know the best part?! I couldn't do this without burning myself no matter what I did! But thanks to you, that isn't a problem any more, is it?!"

"So by my command…"

This was going to be close…

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[Azura]

Rider 3.14

Sweat dripped down my face as white flames danced all around me.

Samuel's attack wasn't an explosion caused by the handheld sun he created like I first thought. It was more like a handheld flamethrower that directed all that plasma and force in my direction for a few seconds.

If I had gone for an all or nothing defense…that probably would have killed me.

Lucky for me my go to defense wasn't all or nothing.

The four remaining layers of Rho Aias shattered and vanished as I dismissed the Noble Phantasm.

"Unlimited Blade Works." I finished the invocation of my Reality Marble and then winced from the several new wounds throughout my body since the backlash from the broken layers was no joke. Still, better than getting turned extra crispy.

Rho Aias was fantastic, but sometimes I really didn't like its drawback.

"Wh-what is this? What did you do!?"

I looked around the surroundings, mostly ignoring Samuel for a second.

My soulscape wasn't looking much better than the last time I saw it. Kinda expected considering the damage fighting Aizen had caused and the fact I was still working my way back up to the level I was when I fought him. Besides the newly created cone of blackened or glassed ground from Samuel's attack that I instinctively knew was mostly cosmetic – there were still massive cracks running through the landscape and other signs of damage partially hidden by the fields of swords and weapons littering the ground.

Damage using the Reality Marble in its current state was no doubt going to get worse.

Oh well – a little delay and some pain was worth having my full arsenal at my fingertips again. No more struggling to Trace weapons since they already existed in my Reality Marble and were only a thought away.

"Welcome to the Unlimited Blade Works," I said, returning my full attention to the Dragon Rider. "If you want to be scientific you can think of it as me overwriting a small section of reality with a dimension of my own. If you want to be poetic you could call it a manifestation of my Inner World."

"Reality manipulation? I call bullshit."

I shrugged. "I don't really care. If you prefer, you can just call this place your grave."

Samuel scowled and adjusted the grip on his sword. "You didn't win shit yet."

I won the second I pulled him here. He just didn't know it yet.

-o-

Feinster was in chaos.

The Varden had attacked in the middle of the night, the Sun Witch leading the charge onto the walls. When Rider Samuel finally flew out to drive her off many of the Empire soldiers rejoiced. Not out of any great love for the Rider or the King, but out of hope that their home would survive another day.

They quickly stopped rejoicing when the Rider's great red dragon began rampaging through the city trying to hunt down the Witch while the Varden managed to retreat off the walls largely unharmed despite the dangerous assault only to turn around and continue a more conventional attack.

Without magically created ramps that let the attacking army literally walk over the walls or their leaders getting picked off by magically accurate arrows, the defenders managed to hold off the attack better than they had during the daytime but morale was getting low.

It was hard to feel like you were winning when there was an army in your face and two of the most powerful fighters on the continent were destroying the city behind you. Especially when the one seemingly causing the most damage was supposed to be on your side.

But the soldiers couldn't give up.

For some that was very literal. The oaths they were forced to swear meant they would keep fighting as long as someone higher ranked didn't order them to stand down. For others there was simply no choice. Their whole lives were here, and they did not trust the Varden to not destroy those lives should they take the city. Especially when they saw the monstrous Urgals fighting alongside them. And for a silent few? They didn't give up because they didn't see a way to escape. The axiom 'a cornered animal will fight anything' applied perfectly to them. Surrounded by the enemy and soldiers that wouldn't hesitate to cut them down for cowardice, they had no other option to keep fighting while looking for a way out.

Feinster was in chaos.

And then the second Dragon Rider arrived.

Initially there was a lull in the fighting as everyone tried to figure out where the distant roars were coming from. The Empire's soldiers looked up hoping that Samuel had defeated the Sun Witch and was coming to finish driving the invaders off, while the Varden's warriors were hoping the two were still fighting.

Then another roar accompanied by a bright tongue of blue flame appeared in the sky and both sides knew it wasn't Samuel's dragon roaring.

A cheer went up from the Varden's forces and they threw themselves into battle with renewed vigor.

Eragon Shadeslayer had arrived and with him the tide of battle changed once again.

Feinster was in chaos, and it only seemed to be getting worse.

-o-

It felt nice to fight at one hundred percent again, if only for a little bit, I decided as I parried a desperate slash from Samuel with one hand while cutting through a nasty looking spell with a blade that ate magic.

I was swapping swords so much I wasn't really paying them much attention beyond what abilities they had at the moment.

A gust of wind exploded outward and scattered the wall of blades I had created as a makeshift arena only to be almost immediately replaced by more materializing in the air and stabbing into the ground a moment later.

A roar followed by a flash of red out of the corner of my eye made me Flash Step to the side. Samuel's dragon landed on the spot I had just occupied, looking pretty beat up with a broken wing hanging uselessly down his side and wide gashes in his limbs and body spraying blood everywhere.

I actually felt bad about that.

Now that I had the ability to, the first thing I had done was hit the dragon with Rule Breaker to cut any magical ties to Samuel or Galbatorix forcing the poor thing to fight me in hopes that at the very least I could get him to sit the fight out and eventually recover from a lifetime of abuse. Unfortunately, breaking the chains that forced certain behaviors didn't do anything to change those behaviors when they were the only thing the dragon knew and his mind had never been encouraged to grow enough to think for himself.

The dragon I wasn't even sure had ever been given a name was nothing more than a mindless animal trained to hunt everything but Samuel. Nothing I tried convinced the dragon to listen to me or even pause in its attacks. All it knew how to do was follow orders.

I was going to have to kill the poor thing, I grimaced at the thought.

"How are you doing this? HOW ARE YOU THIS POWERFUL!?" Samuel screamed, taking advantage of my slight distraction.

I furrowed my eyebrows and frowned. "I feel like we had this conversation before."

"It doesn't make sense!" Samuel ranted, ignoring me. "Even if you got some bullshit other magic system, I'm using hundreds of dragons as a powersource! One person can't keep up with that. You shouldn't be able to get stronger like this out of fucking nowhere!"

"Not a fan of shounen anime, were you?" I snarked. "But anyway, you made one big mistake about me getting stronger."

"What?"

I gave him a nasty smile as a certain sword appeared in my hands, the mere appearance of it making Samuel's dragon crouch down and back away. "I've always been this strong. This whole time? Since the first moment I appeared in this world, I've been forced to hold back because of some injuries. But because of the Unlimited Blade Works, I can fight at one hundred percent for a little bit."

"...so you're saying you're on a time limit, huh?" Samuel sneered. "Pretty stupid to tell me that."

"If you had a chance, maybe it would be." I twirled the sword in my hand and let muscle memory take over. "Thy dragon, originating from sin," Normally this would require either being closer to the target or a horse to close the distance. A Haste powered flash step was a decent substitute. "See the truth of Ascalon!" A perfect line of yellow energy cut horizontally through Samuel's dragon's chest, followed by a vertical one that formed a cross. I pulled the sword back in preparation of the final blow and sent a silent apology to the young dragon that didn't deserve this. "[ASCALON]!" The now glowing blade stabbed right through both the center of the cross and the middle of the dragon's chest. A second later there was an explosion in the dragon's chest.

The dragon looked down at its utterly ruined chest and let out a hiss that sounded uncomfortably close to a relieved sigh before falling over, dead.

"You utter BITCH! What did you do to my mount!?"

I saw red as a faint buzzing sound drowned out any other words.

A red spear barely had time to form before I snatched it out of the air and hurled it at Samuel.

He was expecting the attack and had a hand already up, ready to cast a shield against whatever I threw at him.

Gáe Dearg didn't care and easily cut through the magic, Samuel's wards, and the black pit where his heart should be.

"...wha-?"

I wasn't done.

Six massive spell circles appeared in the air around him.

"Solar Burst: Supernova."

Bombardment spells a level above the Nova Blasts I had used on occasion all converged on one spot.

I don't know if it was the nature of the spell itself since I never tested this outside my Reality Marble or the fact we were currently in a manifestation of my soul, but there was no massive explosion as more mana than I ever put into a single spell bar the fight with Aizen went off with a massive surge of light so bright I actually needed to shield my eyes from it.

When I managed to look again there was only a crater in the ground and some ash on the wind.

-o-

I groaned as a soul-deep ache pounded in my chest and my head.

Using the Unlimited Blade Works didn't mess me up like it had against Aizen since I wasn't overcharging myself on mana like I had back then, but it still wasn't easy and I was still more damaged than when I used it then.

Wouldn't be using it again for a little bit but then again I probably wouldn't need to.

I looked around the destroyed marketplace and noticed that there were still sounds of fighting in the distance, definitely inside the walls which meant Arya's plan had worked out. But…I think I was tapped for a little bit.

Taking out the enemy Dragon Rider should be enough to earn a ten minute break – right?

After that I could–

A sudden pressure on my mind forced me to my knees and for a second I panicked. I did not want to deal with another fight right now! But when I noticed the Hōgyoku wasn't reacting, I realized this wasn't an attack and paid attention to what was being blared in my mind.

ALG-184-G ERROR 901 : Rouge Avatar Resolved
Cause : Terminated by Avatar Template #29872
Contacting Administrator -ERROR:notfound- for retrieval
ERROR : Admin undefined
Scheduled : Automatic removal of Avatar Template #29872 in &^# : #^& : ^@%​

"...well…fuck."

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[Azura]

Rider 3.15

"I still can't believe you decided to go fight a Shade on your own." I muttered to Arya again as we waited for everyone to gather for another meeting about the aftermath in Feinster.

By now I was very familiar with spending days in meetings going over every little detail after a major event.

It was unavoidable when dealing with something as large as an army.

It also had made me incredibly jealous of Eragon who managed to miss most of these meetings for one reason or another. At least until Orrin threw his fit and I largely stepped away from attending anything to do with the Varden's internal politics. But the capture of the city, and all the events that happened during it, made an invitation pretty much unavoidable.

Of course all that information needed time to actually find its way back to the leaders. So it was actually a day after the city leadership surrendered that we were all called to meet. Which was fine. It meant I got to grill Arya for the details around her night when I wasn't packing things away.

Despite my night assault on the walls, some magicians had remained vigilant on other sections of the city and had managed to detect her and the other elf and raised the alarm. That wasn't an issue for the two elves until a squad of abnormally heavily warded soldiers showed up with magical backup and forced them into a corner. Arya had actually been moments away from calling for my help when Eragon had arrived and rescued them. Then the crazy elf had decided to tear across the city after the magicians that fled with the help of Eragon and Saphira while her companion finished the original mission to open the gates for the rest of the army.

By this point I had already locked Samuel in my Reality Marble so there was no way for them to either ask for or come for help. So the three decided to just do it on their own.

Which may have been a good thing since they eventually traced the magicians all the way back to the castle and found them in the middle of summoning a Shade.

I still didn't have a benchmark for how powerful a Shade was, but considering it had nearly killed Arya while holding off Eragon and Saphira at the same time, it definitely wasn't a pushover.

"Does this mean people are going to start calling you Shadeslayer, too?" I asked with a teasing grin. "It might get confusing if you and Eragon spend too much time in the same room."

"As I said before, I think my achievement is going to be overshadowed enough that it will not be an issue." She gave me a side eye. "Isn't that right, 'Dragonslayer'?"

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. "You're too stiff, Arya. You should relax a bit, I know you can. I've seen you do it!"

The elf let out a small huff, but was interrupted from answering when the door opened and people started to filter in for the meeting. A few of them wandered over to us and made smalltalk in an effort to get some details in advance, but Arya was easily able to fend them off with some verbal sparring. I, meanwhile, just grabbed Leona and pretended to have a very in depth discussion about the manufacture of more specialized healing mystic codes. A conversation that we had already wrapped up a week ago but was a great excuse not to talk to anyone else.

A few moments later the door opened again and Nasuada, Orrin, Eragon, and a few others I kinda recognised walked in. Nasuada took her position at the table and everyone took that as a sign the meeting was about to start.

"Good evening, I know many of us have other irons to attend to, so let's not waste time. With the capture of Feinster and more of the southern territories the Varden is in an excellent position to strike at the heart of the Empire." Nasuada had to pause as some cheers went up around that. "And we aren't alone there. Arya, any more news from the Elven army?"

Eyes turned to the dark haired ambassador as she gave a quick update on what was happening up north.

After we left the forest while Eragon continued his training with Oromis, the elves had been mobilizing for war. And not long after Eragon left for the second time after managing to get his own freshly forged Rider Sword they had swept through the northern sections of the Empire like an out of control fire.

Something that was utterly unsurprising considering every elf was at least stronger, faster, and more experienced than any normal soldier they went up against. Combined with the fact every elf was also a magician…the best the Empire could do was delay and occasionally kill one or two of their attackers when they got lucky. And that was ignoring the fact that Oromis and Glaedr had come out of hiding and were leading the charge.

Even I didn't want to fight the gold dragon the size of a small hill. I couldn't imagine how a normal garrison soldier felt when facing something like that.

All of that came to a head over Gil'ead, though, when Murtagh and Thorn were sent to confront the other Rider pair. Arya didn't have all the details yet but the four of them fought over the city and after nearly a day of fighting, Oromis and Glaedr managed to capture their opponents at great cost to themselves. In a morbidly ironic turn of events Oromis lost an arm and Glaedr took a bad hit to the throat that prevented him from breathing fire.

I couldn't help but smile at the knowledge my little discovery had saved the lives of the ancient Rider pair and likely gave Murtagh a shot at a happier ending than what he got. It was also a relief to know Galbatorix had lost both his subordinate Riders on the same day. It made what I was going to bring up much easier to swallow for the others…hopefully.

Eventually things circled around to me, since everyone wanted to know what happened with Samuel.

I gave them a very cut down version of my assault on the walls, the fight through the city when Samuel showed up, and then an even more brief description of the final fight in the marketplace.

I could tell that some people were frustrated by how little detail I was putting into the recounting. Some because they wanted to hear an epic story about the battle between me and a dragon. Some, like Trianna, who were frustrated that I wasn't giving more insight into my abilities. And then some, like Orrin, that were being bluntly reminded how powerful I was and how little they could control me. Which meant they would really enjoy this last part.

"...so after I killed his dragon, I speared him through the heart and hit him with a spell that reduced his body to ash. Unfortunately, this will be the last battle I fight for the Varden–" I said only to almost immediately be drowned out under the volume of protests from damn near everyone at the table.

After a solid minute of yelling without anyone managing to get everyone under control Arya finally cast a spell that silenced the room. She held it just long enough to give everyone a stern look before dropping it and giving Nasuada a nod.

"Thank you for that, Arya." The Leader of the Varden said with a nod of her own towards the elf. "Now then, Lady Alexandria, please explain what you meant."

I resisted the urge to cross my arms over my chest defensively with everyone staring at me. "There isn't much to explain. In the fight with Samuel I pushed things too far. I've undone nearly all the recovery from my previous wounds and from what I can determine I'm not long for this world anymore." I said, slipping a small lie in with the truth. None of the wounds I got during the fight were permanent and I had already recovered from the strain of using the Unlimited Blade Works. However, that countdown was still present in the back of my mind. I still couldn't read it so I had no idea how much time I had left to leave this world before I was forced out, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't like what happened when it did.

Sure, there was the small chance that whatever was supposed to remove me was as broken as the rest of that message, but there was just as likely a chance it could straight up delete me from reality.

I wasn't exactly willing to test it out, so it was time to leave.

Nasuada looked stricken, and several others gasped at my revelation.

"Alex, that's…are you sure?"

I chuckled, this is what finally got Nasuada to address me casually? "Yeah, I'm sure."

"What about the elves?" Eragon asked. "Their healers–"

"–Can't do anything I haven't already tried." I cut the young Rider off. "It was my research that was able to finally help heal your teacher after they failed to find a cure for decades, and his wound was a lot milder than mine."

"...that can't be true. Arya, is there–"

"We've already spoken about this." Arya replied calmly, having already heard the actual story behind me leaving before swearing herself to silence. "Alexandria is right, the Elves know nothing she does not or is not more skilled in herself."

"Is there a chance you could be wrong, Lady Alexandria?" King Orrin asked.

"None."

"Then it seems I have limited time to do this." And to my shock, he stood and bowed low. Much lower than I had ever seen nobility do, let alone a king. "Lady Alexandria, I must deeply apologize for my words towards you earlier. You have given much to the Varden even if you did not formally swear yourself to it, and now you have given us everything. I have shamed myself and cannot help but feel like I bear some responsibility. But I swear your sacrifice will not be forgotten."

"Whoa! Hold on a second!" I protested and shot to my feet. "Let's not act like I'm going to just drop dead!"

"You still deserve to be recognized for what you did for us." Nasuada argued. "It's the least you are owed…and wildly insufficient for what you have sacrificed."

Crap, I was starting to feel bad. And I couldn't exactly say I wasn't actually dying now, could I?

"Why don't we just move on with the meeting?" I tried.

Not that anyone was listening to me at this point.

-o-

My departure from the Varden was a much more sedate affair than the Soul Society had been. Part of that was to avoid the morale hit my absence would cause, but most of it came down to the difference in relationships I had with the people here.

I had simply made more and closer friends in the Bleach world compared to the handful of acquaintances I had among the Varden. I had sort of set myself up in a mentorship role for Eragon, but he was often so busy with other things or even just in other places that I couldn't call us more than friendly acquaintances. Saphira appreciated me helping wrangle her Rider, but we never had much of a connection beyond that. I felt like Sandra and Fredric could have been friends, but I hadn't seen much of them once the war started in earnest.

The only two people I would really miss were Arya and Leona. And while I considered asking them to come with me, Arya was a princess, an ambassador between humans and elves, and quite possibly a potential Dragon Rider if I or Samuel hadn't butterflied that away somehow. She simply devoted too much of herself here to pack up and leave. And Leona had gone from a barely educated hedge-witch to the de facto leader of the Healer's Guild.

So after one final celebration with everyone to say goodbye, I slipped away and began heading towards the eastern side of camp, where I was very surprised to see someone waiting for me.

"Are you ready to depart, mistress?" Leona asked, a fully loaded horse beside her.

"Depart? Leona, you're a guildmaster. You can't just give that up for me."

She actually laughed. "I never really wanted it anyway. It was more I became guildmaster because I was your apprentice, even if we never officially said it. Besides, I would be a proper fool to abandon that position when I have so much more to learn from you."

Leona was one of the few that knew I wasn't dying, but I didn't think she really understood what it meant when I said I was leaving.

"I understand enough, mistress." She argued when I pointed that out. "I don't know how, obviously, but you are leaving this plane of existence. And I want to come with you."

I huffed at her. "You realize this could be a one way trip? We might never come back here again."

"Even more reason to go, if this is the last chance I have to study under a teacher like you."

I couldn't help but smile a little at that. Fine then, if she wanted to come along…

"Then let's get going. We have a long way back to the Beor Mountains, and I still have a lot of work to do…"

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[Azura]

Rider 3.16

"..and what does this do?" Leona asked, making me look up from the metal bracket I was struggling to remove.

"That's the navigational computer," I replied. "It's…basically like a team of surveyors and map readers I can give commands to tell what to look at."

"And what about this?"

"That's where the ship AI is supposed to go. Think of it like a bound spirit that is supposed to help me run things. Well, it will when I get around to building it."

"Bound spirits? Those are usually a bad idea."

"If you do it wrong, definitely. But I would be creating the spirit to see the ship as its home, not binding it against its will."

"Interesting, and what about…"

We continued on like that for a long time. While Leona was fascinated and had little frame of reference for the purely mechanical parts of the Azure Horizon, she had worked with me long enough that some of the smaller quality of life improvements I had introduced when talking about or making the healing mystic codes that she could understand the broad strokes. It did make actually fabricating a new reactor and replacing the slagged one take much longer than it would have otherwise.

But she was curious and I was hardly going to discourage that kind of thinking, especially when she would be following me to god knows where and not knowing something like say, what a car was, would make her stick out more than we absolutely were going to anyway.

Besides, I was almost done anyway. A few extra minutes wasn't going to make a difference in the end…I hoped.

Once that was done I had to check on anything else that might have been shaken up during my little crash landing now that I had power again, but for once luck seemed to be on my side. Besides a few burned out lights and a replaced length of cable for one of the doors, there was very little damage to the interior.

The exterior was another story and was scraped to hell in some places, punctured by rocks in others, and a good bit of the front was still technically buried. According to the sensors the ventral weapons were probably scrap along with a good bit of plating, but the ship was still sealed so I would have to wait until I got to a world capable of supplying large amounts of sheet metal.

Problems for another time.

Inside was good, outside was as good as it was going to get. It was time to leave, I thought as I flipped the ignition switch.

There were a few vibrations throughout the ship that had Leona looking around in a panic while I had a laser focus on the power readout. Theoretically the reactor was perfectly safe, but I couldn't shake the feeling I had just installed a giant bomb until it came online normally at least once. But once it did and the ship started going through its full startup checks I quickly relaxed.

Everything was good.

"Last chance if you're having second thoughts." I told Leona, who was watching the control panel with astonishment. "I can drop you off anywhere you want, no questions asked if you don't feel like you want to do this."

"And miss seeing wonders like this? I could never!" My apprentice denied. "But I thought you hadn't bound a spirit to the vessel yet, how are the little levers moving by themselves?"

They were doing what now?

I rushed over to see what she was talking about and sure enough, several switches were moving on their own. Some buttons too, now that I was looking at them.

The ship was running through initial checks and startups after the reactor was replaced so they weren't doing anything, but what could have caused this to…

"Son of a bitch, that's how he did it." I muttered angrily as I figured out what was going on. "That clever bastard…"

"Is something wrong?" Leona asked worriedly.

I took a moment to calm down. No point freaking her out just because I was frustrated. "Well, as you might have guessed from the fact I crashed here, I didn't exactly plan my landing. I was actually planning on visiting a different World entirely but one of the guardians there mistook me for one of the threats they have to deal with occasionally and managed to kick me out of the dimension entirely." I explained. "I thought it was some kind of spell or something, but the bastard just enchanted my control panel to repeat the last few actions over and over again. That's what caused me to skip through a few dimensions and eventually crash here when the reactor broke down and the safeties refused to let me do another jump…"

"He must have been incredibly powerful to do such a thing!" Leona exclaimed which felt like an arrow right through my heart.

"I mean, he called himself a master so he's probably no slouch, but this is such a simple spell I don't think he needed to try very hard…" I slouched over and hid my face.

It was actually pretty humbling.

While I couldn't consider myself a master of magic I at least thought I had been beaten because I'd been up against someone simply stronger, more experienced, and with the backing of an organization that regularly protected their planet from extra-dimensional threats that kicked me out with irresistible force. And now I was finding out that I had really been beaten by the equivalent of a street performer doing a card trick.

"O-oh, um, well at least you discovered it now before it became an issue again?" Leona tried comforthing me, which did little to help since she was the one to notice it.

Still, I appreciated the effort.

"Yeah…anyways, the spell is broken and I'll get some defenses over the controls when I have a chance…we shouldn't need it for where I plan on taking us and we just packed everything up…so, ready to go?" I rambled a bit, trying to push through my embarrassment.

"As ready as I'll ever be…but where are we going?"

I nodded at the expected question. "Eventually I want to try and find a World where I can deal with my injuries permanently, but thanks to my research with the elves it's not an immediate problem." The dashboard beeped in front of me and I took a second to look over the various startup errors – nothing that would stop us from taking off. "So instead I want to try and find a more technologically focused World so I can build something to help me use my magic better."

I was sick of trying to calculate everything for my bombardment spells in my head. Getting even a basic device up and running would change all that.

It would also let me do things with a bit more finesse than 'glass everything in that general direction'.

That would be nice…

"How does that work?" Leona asked, breaking me out of my thoughts. "Do you just look randomly until you find what you are looking for, or is there a kind of map you can use?"

"Usually I need to enter a world at random to see what's going on but there are ways to navigate the Dimensional Sea…it's kinda hard to explain if you don't have the senses for it…" I debated trying to teach her for a moment before discarding the idea. I barely knew what I was doing. Trying to teach someone as tech-illiterate as Leona would only end badly. "But the good news is that I already have a good idea of where to go thanks to the random jumping the Azure Horizon was forced to do, ironically enough."

I had only gotten a brief view before the ship jumped out of the World again but there are some sights that just stick with you.

Especially when you pulled up a saved image from the forward camera and put it on one of the cockpit screens.

"Is…is their moon…broken?!" Leona gasped as she moved closer to get a better look at the picture.

"Yeah, don't worry too much about it. It's not a big deal."

Leona gave me an incredulous look. "Their moon is broken! How is that not a big deal?!

"Cause it's been that way for a while and nothing bad has happened because of it." I replied as I ran through the last few preflight tasks. "Besides the god that broke it isn't even around anymore, so it's fine."

"The what?!"

Ah, I should give her a bit of a history lesson on the way there so she knows what to expect. It'd be awkward if she was labeled a crazy person for not knowing some of the basics…

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[Azura]

Informational 2

Aaaand out of world 2!
Not exactly the way I wanted when I first came up with the idea, but I had forgotten how dragged out the Inheritance Saga could be and how much was just disconnected 'Eragon and Saphira left to go to another place'.

It makes sense when you think about it. The other characters need time to actually move to the places their next scenes take place in and actually do things but when the POV doesn't change like it does in the books it leaves a lot of blank space I didn't know how to fill.

Too many POV changes would change how the story flowed and I'm personally annoyed when stories primarily about certain characters spend a dozen chapters on someone else I don't really care about.

Couldn't do too many timeskips either because then it's either all flashbacks, info dumps, or just a never ending fight scene.

So in the end I decided once the main conflict was resolved to give Alex a reason to GTFO and leave the rest of the war for Eragon to finish. Beating Galbatorix is kinda his responsibility or his name isn't Hiro Gary-Stu Protagonist the XXIII…

…right.

So fairly obviously the next world is Remnant from the webshow RWBY. Started off strong with three really solid seasons before gradually falling apart IMO thanks to the unfortunate passing of the main creator (RIP Monty Oum)

Things that people that have never watched the show need to know that may/may not get explained in story.

Aura – basically a personal force field generated by someone's soul that can be used to mitigate incoming damage and some other defensive tricks until it is temporarily depleted or broken. Not everyone on Remnant has an active Aura, something I am going to chalk up to people with active Auras more easily attracting creatures of Grimm (shadow monsters that are attracted to negative emotions). Really useful if you plan on fighting them or going into dangerous situations, less so if you plan on being an accountant or shopkeeper or just living in a more secure town.

Semblances – unique magic abilities usable by people with an active Aura. Yes, the show says that Semblances aren't magic…I don't care. They totally are. Once discovered a person can train and improve their Semblance but they can't change it. It's often highly based on a person's personality rather than anything else.

Magic – Other magic does exist in the show, mainly caught up in a few people and a handful of artifacts. While Semblances are magic, they are powered by a person's soul while the other methods (like the 4 maidens) are remnants of the system powered by the two gods that abandoned the planet. It could be taught and strengthened with effort as long as a person had a connection to that magic system, but if you don't have it, you can never use it.

Dust – a lot of other authors like to say Dust is crystallized elemental mana caused by Remnant slowly dying. Basically if mana is the 'lifeblood' of a planet then it's slowly clotting as the world dies. I'm going the opposite route.
Dust is formed due to the overabundance of mana on the planet caused by the mess the gods caused as the left. Basically they tried cutting people off from magic as a punishment, but magic isn't something even gods can really control. That's why you still get Semblances even after they left. The issue is that all the mana that was supposed to be absorbed and used by the people living on the planet is now dammed up thanks to the gods and is finding other ways to leak out.
And since Dust is crystallized mana it can easily be used to enhance or alter the effects of a person's Semblance – though the base will remain the same – or even power various forms of magitech.

I think that covers the high points for RWBY without getting too technical. If there is a certain topic that needs an explanation I'll add it here later if it won't be addressed in the story.

 

[Azura]

Intermission 2

Nathanael sighed as he closed out another report.

He really wanted to spend more time looking for the cause of all the incidents along his wavelength of reality, if only to make sure it couldn't happen again, but his boss had caught up with him only moments after he began looking just to tell him that he needed to get all the disturbances documented before he did anything else.

It was pointless busy-work and Nathanael would be happy to tell that to anyone that asked his opinion. Unfortunately for him, his boss obviously didn't care about his opinion which meant Nathanael was busy filling out ten different forms for each incursion noted even if it had only been registered for a few moments before disappearing again.

All while his own actual work piled up in the background.

He still needed to figure out why ALG-184-G had given him an Avatar Already Uploaded error when he definitely hadn't finished the process to upload one. It was probably a read error or something equally annoying that was the result of a malfunction somewhere. Unfortunately, he just had his workstation replaced three millennia ago so there was almost no chance of getting another upgrade so soon unless he could prove what was causing issues. And even then his boss would probably just tell him to reset whatever it was and see if that fixed it.

Speaking of his boss, another note just arrived. 'Good job resolving the 901 issue. Keep up the good work.'

Nathanael could only stare at the message because he hadn't even gotten around to looking at ALG-184-G again, let alone actually doing anything to resolve the issues there but ultimately he shrugged his shoulders and decided to accept the rare praise.

He would just look at the logs to get an idea of what happened later so if anyone asked he could pretend he knew what had happened.

…after he got through the rest of those incidents…

-o-

"You got most of them right that time." I complimented as I finished looking over the primer I had given Leona.

My assistant turned companion had a lot to learn about what more advanced societies took for granted. And while I had taught her quite a few things about some of the more abstract concepts like physics, biology, and math…I hadn't exactly done the same for things I hadn't expected her to ever encounter. Like a car or light switch.

Some of it was easy to explain using magic as a metaphor or comparison, but there was plenty that Leona had trouble wrapping her head around which would have people familiar with certain things looking at her oddly.

Not being familiar with how to use certain technology could be excused to some extent, but insisting that a computer was powered by a bound spirit would definitely get the wrong type of attention.

So I was trying to teach a hedge-witch from a pre-industrial world how to blend in with a low sci-fi one by giving her a series of tests and seeing how she replied to a bunch of pictures and scenarios and then giving feedback based on her answers.

Leona just sighed and closed her eyes, obviously annoyed that she didn't get a perfect score. "It was my answer on what to do with a runaway vehicle, wasn't it? You said it was better to simply get out of the way but I figured removing the 'engine' would get it to stop quicker."

I waggled my hand. "Eh, I gave you partial credit for that one because if we absolutely did want to stop a vehicle that could work, but lighting it on fire could cause an explosion that could either destroy the vehicle or hurt bystanders. In certain situations it's worth a try but not if we want to be able to use it later. No, the main one you got wrong this time was regarding what to do when you see several brightly colored liquids."

"...I'm guessing 'tasting them to determine what they are' was wrong?"

I snorted at her. "Considering the liquids I had in mind were all cleaning products that would be poisonous to you? Yes, yes it was. I would have accepted pretty much anything other than 'drink the unknown liquid' as an answer. Remember lab safety tip number five…"

"...If I don't know what it is, it shouldn't go near my mouth." Leona completed with a sigh. "Alright, I'm ready for the next test."

"Don't worry, you're doing much better than I expected." I gave her some light encouragement as I handed her the next test. "And we should reach our destination in a day or so."

Leona gave the stack of papers I handed her a look of resignation.

"It cannot come soon enough…"

 

[Azura]

Reaper 1.1

Thanks to the Azure Horizon exiting the Dimensional Sea in a much more controlled manner then my last journey we got to enjoy the view as we flew down towards the planet. Which was a good thing because choosing where to land was important for my short term plans.

At some point I needed to head to Atlas in order to take advantage of their advanced manufacturing capabilities, both for repairs to the Azure Horizon and for the personal equipment I wanted to build, but I needed to approach them slowly. Atlas was advanced, but they were also very militaristic and disciplined so I doubted they would welcome an unknown ship of an unknown design anywhere inside their kingdom without me answering several questions I simply wouldn't be able to answer to their satisfaction.

And from my understanding the 'kingdom' of Vacuo had the opposite problem. Being more of a loose coalition of desert city-states than a real kingdom. I wouldn't have an issue with people looking too closely at our paperwork – if we managed to get any – but at the same time I'd have to keep an eye out for anyone that thought they could steal my stuff and get away with it and then having to worry about whatever group backed up the would be thief.

Mistral was slightly better than its counterpart in the west simply because the government actually existed in more than name, but had the drawback of it being very culturally important about who you knew. You either were in the pocket of one of the upper class and had them open doors for you through favors or you were part of one of the criminal syndicates that ruled the underworld. Again, not exactly great if I wanted to keep my stuff without getting into a lot of fights.

Which left Vale.

Theoretically it was the best kingdom of the four for me to approach since it was more developed than Vacuo, less corrupt than Mistral, and less draconically bureaucratic than Atlas, but it also had the major drawback of being slated for destruction at some point depending where we entered in the timeline. And that wasn't even considering the body snatching, immortal wizard that was using the kingdom for his own whims in the background.

I really didn't need him poking his nose into my business while I was trying to get my ship repaired.

Unfortunately, it was starting to look like I wasn't going to have much of a choice.

*BANG!*

"What was that?!"

"We just lost our atmospheric stabilizers and half our engines." I said tersely as my hands flew over the control panel. "Looks like the last crash did some damage I didn't catch."

"What does that mean?!"

"Well, without the stabilizers we're eventually going to lose air pressure and oxygen, which means our maximum altitude is going to be severely limited for a while. As for the engines –"

"Short version, mistress!"

"Ah…we're slowly crashing and unless we touch down on dry land we're going to choke to death on stale air."

"Isn't that a bad thing?!"

"Yes, very!" I replied in a more cheerful tone. "But we're doing better than the last landing I made already and unless something else breaks, we should be able to walk away with minor injuries. Now strap yourself in and brace for impact!"

The Azure Horizon started fighting me more and more the closer we got to the ground, but I was able to wrestle it into a mostly flat descent. Between that and the still functioning air brakes and thrusters it looked like it would be a comparatively soft landing…

The hull of my variant YT-1300 smashed into the ground and the cockpit started shaking as we bounced to a stop. Alarms shrieked even as the two of us struggled to untangle ourselves from our harnesses. Leona simply flopped to the floor while I at least managed to stay on my feet and peer out the viewport.

Green fields greeted me and honestly? I just considered it an improvement from the last landing since the front end was only partially buried instead of completely underground this time. Now I just needed to see what new issues popped up from another rough landing and add them to the list of things to fix.

-o-

"Well the good news is that nothing is too badly broken." I told Leona as we both settled in for lunch. "Mostly some plating that will need to be replaced and a few components that are a bit smashed up. Which we already had on the list."

"And the bad news?"

I shrugged. "Not that bad actually. We wont be sealing the ship any time soon or flying all that high, but it's functional and it moves. Which is better than I was expecting."

Which was an understatement.

Two crash landings in a row, a handcrafted replacement reactor, and several damaged parts and the Horizon could still hover a few hundred feet in the air and move at what I estimated to be around 120 miles per hour before things got shaky showed exactly how tough my poor ship was. That it could move at all was already more than I could ask for.

"Now we just need to figure out where we are and where to go from here…"

My apprentice nodded and looked out into the distance while I turned my attention back towards my food, both of us content to just let the silence stretch out while we enjoyed the day and push off worrying about where we were going to go for later.

It was only several hours later when we had cleaned up both lunch and most of the ship's interior from the crash that we had any reason for discussion more serious than small talk. The reason for that was a pair of figures we saw walking towards us I happened to see through a viewport.

"Who do you suppose they are?" Leona asked.

"Depends how close we are to a town." I replied. "Most likely they are Huntsmen, but if we are close enough there might be some kind of town guard. We didn't see any major settlements on the way down so I doubt it's the military or anything like that."

"Right, the aura empowered individuals that hunt the shadow spirits." Leona said. I had given her a basic overview on the types of people we could expect to find on Remnant and it was always nice to know she listened to my lessons. "Hopefully they can point us towards a town. While we have plenty of water and your ship is an excellent shelter, we only have two days worth of food stored unless we go hunting soon."

"Well they seem friendly enough so far," they weren't running at us weapons drawn at any rate, "so I don't think that should be too much of a problem. Still, let's be careful just in case."

Leona nodded and sneakily palmed the modified spell pistol I had given her. Instead of a one use device that fired a bombardment spell, it was capable of shooting mana bullets as long as it had power. Not very useful for me, since even my Trace Bullets with normal weaponry were more powerful, but invaluable for Leona who had very little combat experience.

And it doesn't get much easier than point and shoot.

"Hello there!" I call out once they are close enough to hear. "Can we help you two?"

"'Ello yerself, Lass." The first man shouted back, a thick accent coloring his words. "We saw yer crash miles back. Any injured we can 'elp wif?"

"Who's asking?"

"Sean McIntyre and Dann DeLyon, we're Huntsmen out of Thornbell."

"Don't you think you're a little old to be Huntsmen?" I called back. And this wasn't me being snarky.

Sean was a pretty large man but from the look of his generous stomach and the fact his once black hair was mostly gray at this point, it was pretty obvious he was past his prime and while his partner was in better shape and his yellow hair hid the gray better, I could still clearly see that he wasn't much younger.

"Aye, nothin for it tho'. Thornbell aint like those fancy kingdom towns with Huntsmen crawlin all o'er the place. Long as we can fight we can at least make the rounds now and again."

I frowned at that. "Are you expecting a lot of Grimm?"

Because we hadn't seen any.

"Not Grimm. But we've heard rumors of bandits in the area." Dann clarified and I noticed he was lacking his partner's accent.

Bandits though, huh?

I had a bit of metaknowldge about one bandit group on Remnant, but that was mostly centered around its leader. I had very little idea about how widespread bandits were or how much of a threat they could be. But then again if Thornbell was only sending out two older Huntsmen to look for them I guess they couldn't be that big of a deal.

"Any signs of them?"

"Na' a one." Sean grumbled. "Spose they could be hidin out inna hole somewhere but ya could stir up a Grimm nest just as easily as finding them. But enough o' tha. You lasses need an escort into town? Ain' safe and yer ship looks like it landed rough. Ye get caught by a Nevermore or some such?"

"No, just equipment trouble. But she'll fly just fine if it's a short trip." I replied. "We can give you a ride if you can give us some directions?"

The two of them looked at eachother and had a sort of silent conversation before coming to an agreement and looking back to me.

"We'll take you up on that…"

----------------------------------------------------------------------

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[Azura]

Reaper 1.2

"That the place?" I asked as we flew towards a small walled town surrounded by what looked liked farms with a small copse of trees off to one side, but far enough anything trying to sneak up on the walls themselves could be spotted with plenty of warning.

"Aye, tha' be Thornbell aight." Sean replied through gritted teeth as another shudder went through the Azure Horizon. The damaged and missing panels were really playing hell with the ship's aerodynamics. At this point I was mostly keeping the thing flying through the brute force of the engines.

I knew nothing more serious than another hull panel ripping itself free would happen, but everyone else in the ship didn't seem nearly as reassured as I was. Especially poor Leona, who had the arms on her chair in a white-knuckled deathgrip. Sean and Dann were nervous, but keeping it to themselves.

"You're sure this bucket of bolts can get us there?" Dann added. "We're close enough to walk without much trouble now!"

"We'll be fine. It's all turbulence, nothing to do with the ship." I dismissed. "Though I probably won't be flying her anymore until I can get the hull patched up after this."

"Thank the gods for that." Leona muttered, probably louder than she intended because everyone heard it going by Sean's barking laugh and Dann's more subdued one.

My poor apprentice turned an almost glowing red and did her best to sink through her seat into the floor at that.

"You guys have a way to call ahead?" I asked the two Huntsmen. "I'd like to have an idea where I'm going to park us."

"Kin ya not do it yerself?"

No, because I had no access protocols to whatever broadcast network they used and until I got those I'd have to just guess the frequency and hope someone could hear it. But that would be way too suspicious to say so instead I just pressed a button that caused a bunch of red alerts to appear on the nearest screen.

"Comm system is a bit banged up. You're our best bet unless you think whoever is in charge would accept a scroll call from a random ship flying directly at them with a completely unknown pilot better than a call from one of you." I fibbed as I cleared the alerts for the still uninstalled weapon systems. "Still going to need a number in that case."

"Nah, yer right about Jenkins freakin' out a bit. Better I call 'im before he does sum'tin foolish." Sean muttered as he pulled out his scroll and made a call.

Thankfully for everyone things went pretty smoothly once the town found out two of their own were on the UFO heading towards them. Sure they didn't exactly welcome us with open arms and invite us to land in the middle of the town, but they did direct me to a decent sized lot close enough to some dedicated landing pads that I would be close enough to get my hands on some hardware if I could pay for it.

I'm sure the fact that it kept my ship from being in the way and in the theoretical case I decided to sell or abandon it the town wouldn't need to move it far to be worked on were also taken into consideration.

I wouldn't ever consider it, but since it made things easier for me I also wasn't going to point it out or complain.

Dann did plenty of that for me.

"No offense kid, but there's no way I'm flying in that scrapheap you have there until it's all fixed up." He said as we headed off into the town proper. "I'll stick to some safer ways of traveling. Like jumping on the back of a Griffon."

"Speak fer yerself," Sean grumbled. "I'll take a bumpy ride o'er four days o' walkin' any time."

The two Huntsmen continued to poke at each other the whole time we walked but eventually our paths had to diverge. They had to go report to whoever they worked under about their patrol and Leona and I needed to figure out how to get our hands on some local currency.

Easy enough since I had several pieces of jewelry I could pawn or sell off, but not exactly in the same direction.

In the end we said our goodbyes and separated at a street corner, letting me turn my full attention to my rather overwhelmed apprentice.

"Taking in the sights?"

Leona seemed to snap her attention away from our surroundings fast enough that I was a little concerned she had hurt her neck. "No, mistress!" She hurried to say, only to slouch a bit when I raised an eyebrow at the obvious lie. "I mean, I know what you said about wor– places more advanced than my home, but I never thought it would be so stark. The wealth they casually display…it's almost obscene!"

I was confused by that for a second because while Thornbell was nicer than pretty much every town I had seen in Alagaësia, Leona had seen Farthen Dûr which I would consider significantly more impressive…up until I saw the building she had been looking at and something clicked.

Glass.

For a long time glasswork was incredibly expensive and how much you had was a statement of wealth. And it wasn't until new technology and techniques were introduced that large scale sheets were even possible. Yet in a random town Leona was not only surrounded by buildings with glass windows, even storefronts that in her experience should belong to simple merchants.

For the average person on Earth it would be like going to the next town over and seeing that they paved everything with gold because they liked the color and had enough of it. The scarcity and inherent wealth associated with it simply didn't apply to the owners.

"You'll get used to it." I assured her, causing her to huff and sneak a glance back to the store I had caught her looking at.

"I doubt that."

I shrugged and let the topic drop. For all that I could describe the places that we might visit it wouldn't mean much until Leona had seen them herself. Eventually things that she considered incredible and impossible back home might just be commonplace to her.

As if sensing my own doubt Leona puffed up in annoyance. "Anyway, what are we to do now? Trade for local coinage? Talk to the smiths about the order you want to place?"

"I want to get some local currency first and then get my hands on a couple scrolls for the both of us."

"Those mystic codes the Huntsmen used? Would they make something like that for two unknowns even if we helped their defenders?"

I smiled and pointed a little further down the street where several people could be seen eating outside a restaurant. Several of them, from older men and women to children, could be seen with a scroll in their hand.

Leona's mouth dropped open as she quickly spotted children using a device she considered miraculous. Like I said, she would learn in time.

"Depending where you go, devices like that are used by nearly everyone." I informed her. "Sometimes they are simple communication devices, but more often than not they are basically handheld libraries. Something we are going to need since my abilities don't extend to witten words and it will help shorten the time you need to rely on that trinket." I waved a hand at the choker she was wearing.

I was actually being pretty dismissive calling the thing a trinket considering it was a mystic code that could transfer my own inbuilt omniglot nature to her through a combination of Runes, Jewelcraft, and Mana manipulation and abusing Leona's own abilities as an Animancer so that it would actually slowly teach her the language as she used it. The fact it worked instead of melting into a puddle like the first two prototypes was a minor miracle, but one that would only work for a few weeks before it broke down and while she was within a certain distance from me.

Theoretically that was plenty of time for her to learn the language but I knew things happened and I wanted her fully fluent before whatever crazy situation that popped up forced my apprentice to fend for herself.

"Come on, I want to get this settled before it gets dark." I nudged her to keep walking. "The faster we get some money and ourselves a scroll the faster we can move on to the actually important things."

Leona nodded. "Repairing the ship." "Finding a good restaurant." The two of us spoke over each other.

"...mistress…" Leona groaned at my nonsensical answer.

I was unrepentant. We'd had nothing but jerky and nonperishable meals ever since we left Alagaësia. I was absolutely going to prioritize food now that we had the chance!

But even if I wanted to run off for a good meal we still needed the money to pay for it, so our first stop was actually to a small locally owned jewelry store where I could sell off a few pieces I had made specifically for this purpose. I was sure that I got absolutely fleeced by the owner for what those would actually be worth but at the end of it we now had several thousand Lien in a variety of colored plastic cards.

From there it was a simple trip to an electronics store where Leona and I got a basic model scroll after spinning a tale about how ours had both been damaged while we were outside the town.

I even made a projection of Sean's scroll to sell the story. And since I had no idea how the device actually worked and the projection was basically a thin metal shell rather than a working device, no matter what the sales person did he was unable to 'retrieve' our information or settings and was forced to set up two completely new devices.

The poor guy was so embarrassed after failing to uphold his promise that he could get everything migrated to the new devices no matter the state they were in that I was able to get him to download a few language learning apps without him asking any questions about them.

I was happy with it though. We had some money, we had access to everything we'd need to learn Valeish, Eastern Minstrali, and Old Atlesian even if we probably wouldn't need the last two.

That meant it was time for food!

"Come on, Leona. You can play with the scroll later. I think I saw a ramen bar this way. You'll love it!"

----------------------------------------------------------------------

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