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swagmagussupreme · 11 months ago

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@whiterose-fans-blog White Rose in Bloom, Day 4: Dragon AU

(I, uh... got a little carried away again. I honestly wanted to do Ruby as the dragon but I just didn't. by the time i remembered i wanted to do that i already had a flow, so... c'est la vie.)

Not any content warnings I can think of. Suggestive if you find the vague, unelaborated presence of nakedness suggestive. Not edited because I wrote way too much so fuck it we're doing it live.

Words: 6388

Of all times for Ruby Rose to twist her ankle, this was probably the least opportune.

She tumbled over like a stack of bricks, spilling a decade's worth of knowledge as her satchel burst its contents over the floor. Her journals, her charcoals, her bottled paints— even her ink pot shattered loudly, splattering black against stone. Ruby's chest seized as if her ribcage were trying to throttle it, but she held herself completely still. A loud, waking breath rattled the darkness.

“Oh, an in-trud-er,” the thing within mused, its syllables breaking like each one was its own word, a tongue unused to speaking. “Or a… gue-ssssss-t. Gue-ss-ss-sstuh.” The tongue clicked impatiently. “Gue-sst. Closssse e-nough.”

Ruby hunkered low, as low as she physically could, and tried to ignore the throbbing pain in her ankle. She held her breath.

“Be sssssssss-till thy bea-ting heaaaaaar-tuh.” The voice was closer now. Ruby could see a glimmer in the dark, a pearlescent reflection of nonexistent light. “I can heeeeeear the ter-ror in your chesssss-tuh.”

Ruby willed her heart to stop. It did not.

“Ugh, you peo-ple real-ly sssssss-peak like thi-sssssss-suh?”

The glimmer was brighter. A white-blue glow swayed in the darkness— one, then two, then three pairs of eyes making themselves known. Ruby felt them.

“I can sssss-see you, you know.”

Ruby shot up and waved her hands out, thrusting a light spell from her palms to blind the dark-dwelling beast, just long enough that—

A wire-thin beam of ice-colored light struck her palm directly. Ruby's spell vanished into impotence.

“Casssssss-ting in my lair?” it rumbled. “How… un-couuuuuut-tuh.”

Ruby jumped at the opportunity. “Uncouth! Th-uh! With your tongue against your top teeth, passing the air between them!”

The cavern was suddenly bathed in cold light, and Ruby could finally see it. A dragon. A real, honest-to-Oum dragon. Not a drake, not a wyrm, not some other dumb lizard she'd been pointlessly tracking for weeks— a real, genuine, intelligent dragon. Pearlescent, slender-bodied, four-legged, with two major wings like giant, smooth sails and two minor wings situated closer to the posterior. Its pale scales were shaped like heater shields and shone like mother-of-pearl. Its claws were white, blue-tipped. Its tail was long and ended with a flare of its cyan crest, which ran up its spine before ending just above the major wings. Its head was long and triangular, serpentine, and menaced down at Ruby with six incredible, glacial eyes. It licked its dual rows of teeth with a forked turquoise tongue.

And now it couldn't even kill her! Ha! “Hahaha!” Ruby laughed despite herself. “Now you can't kill me! I've imparted value through knowledge! I'm protected!”

The dragon bent its huge neck down, each eye focusing on a different object that Ruby had spilled. Its throat rumbled pensively, unbothered. One of its eyes glowed, lifting Ruby's journal to with a magic the researcher had never witnessed. It flipped through pages and hummed. “A… ssssss-scribe, you are. Quite pro-liss-ic.”

“Prolific?”

Five of its eyes locked onto her at once, its other eye still reading through her recordings. “You are bol-duh.” It waved a claw to a wall, indicating a crumpled old skeleton in timeworn clothes from a whole other period. “He was, too.”

“But I am protected!” Ruby claimed, confidently puffing her chest and raising her chin.

The dragon snorted. “As a part of my hoard, yes,” the head bent even closer, now focusing on Ruby with all six eyes. “Or did you not know?”

Ruby reached out and touched its smooth, cool snout. It smelled like a blizzard. It was real, it was here, her life's work— she could touch it! Ruby smiled. “That's perfect,” she said truthfully. “It's perfect! I came to study you anyways!”

The dragon reeled. “What?”

Ruby smirked at it. “Don't be coy, you saw my research. I've been looking for you my whole life! A dragon! God!”

Its eyes flickered curiously. Five picked up her other books and rapidly flicked through, leaving one icy eye to keep locked onto her. “You are sssss-some… sssss-ser-pent ssss-cho-lar?”

The serpent scholar nodded fervently. “Yes! And you are my dream come true!”

The dragon’s body pitched back onto its haunches, then it laid down flat on its stomach. It kept one eye on her, gradually getting more to lock onto the human as it finished reading her works. “I own you now, you real-li-zzzzzzz-zuh.

Ruby extended a hand towards it. “Then introductions are in order! I'm—”

“Rrrrru-by Roooooo-suh,” the dragon interrupted. “I did just read your book-ssssssuh.”

Unperturbed, the scholar kept her hand out. “And yourself?”

The dragon's craw twitched, a hum arising— a display of amusement, Ruby decided, which she would take note of when she had a chance. “I am the ssssss-soul of the win-ter. I am the crack of the fro-zen lake ‘neath your feet. I am the drift of sssss-snow upon sssss-snow. I am the ruin of your crop, the frosssss-st upon your ssssss-skin, the fin-al bursssss-st of flame be-fore you die in. The. Cold.”

Ruby blinked. “Is… that a name?”

The dragon huffed. “Your feeble tongue cannot grassssss-sp my title.”

“Oh. Could I hear it anyways?”

The dragon stared at her for a long time, its freezing eyes impaling her, but Ruby did not buckle. She seemed perfectly content. “You are mine, now,” the dragon mused. “Ssssso, you will need the ca-pa-ci-ty to… un-der-sssssss-stand.”

Ruby cocked her head. “Uh, do I? You're not just going to stare at me all day? I'm pretty.”

A rough chuckle shook the walls of the dragon’s grand, cavernous lair. “You are my sssssss-scribe, now. You will pen my glo-ry, and I will ssssss-suf-fer thissssss aw-ful ton-gue no more.” One huge hand slowly moved towards Ruby. “Ssssss-stay sssssss-still.”

Ruby held herself rigid, calcifying her resolve with the knowledge that this creature was compelled not to kill her. The claws reached her face, went down, and traced the skin of her throat. They were sharper than something so large should be, opening more than one shallow nick that had Ruby hissing, but true panic set in when they pinched around her trachea. With barely a twitch, with a sneeze, this dragon could sever her windpipe.

The claws pinched up and down, feeling the area until they stopped at her larynx. “There it isssssss-suh.”

A piercing chill lanced through Ruby’s throat, freezing her insides, the frost traveling down her spine, then back up her tailbone and up to her brain, wracking her with the worst brain-freeze she had ever experienced. She couldn't stop herself from rocking back, whining. “Ow! You—”

Ruby stiffened, her hands stilling on her temples, her pain fading into glorious epiphany.

“You! You, you, you!” she cheered, feeling her tongue and her mouth and her teeth, rejoicing as her throat dipped and bobbed in ways it never had. She wasn't speaking the language she'd been born with, but it felt like she'd been speaking this way her whole life— with clicks of her tongue and her teeth, with hisses and groans, with throaty enunciations that rumbled her bones— dragon-tongue! She was speaking dragon-tongue!

“How have you done this!” she asked stupidly. “Magic, obviously, but none I've ever seen! None I've ever even read, and I'm pretty well-read for a scribe of snakes and drakes!”

The dragon’s six eyes became smug crescents. “I’m three thousand years old, Ruby. What the stones have forgotten, I remember.”

Ruby snorted. “Well, stones can be older than that.”

“Sure, but they have terrible memories.”

“Was that a joke?”

The dragon hummed, which was a sound that Ruby now heard in tones she'd never heard before, extracting more meaning from the simple vocalization. Amusement, obviously, but also… pleasure. Satisfaction— no, relief. Almost a… a wholeness. A bitter memory of the solemn, silent dark. How could a single sound communicate such a myriad?

She had so much to learn.

The dragon's name was Weiss. It had been stubborn in providing that much for a fair few hours before Ruby had whittled down its resolve— it said she wouldn't comprehend its name, that her brain was too molded to human-speak to form the syllables, but she proved it embarrassingly wrong when she laughed, repeating it with ease in either language.

Weiss had been keeping her in the cavernous chamber with the rest of its hoard. The room was a giant sanctum of towering walls, each one carved with deep trenches and brimming with tomes, scrolls, and loose parchment. The walls were taller than Ruby could ever hope to reach— she'd exhaust herself trying to climb them— unless Weiss opted to give her a ride. The dragon hadn't reacted too keenly to that notion.

The dragon was polite enough to leave motes of light hanging along the walls and ceiling, leaving lit the modest pile of standard dragon-treasure at the room’s far end. Silver and platinum in coins, bars, goblets, and most other forms of such riches. It wasn't the towering pile of gold that Ruby had read and seen depicted in legends, but it was just large enough to be stacked taller than she was. Ruby looked around.

“Weiss!” she called, her voice echoing across the sanctum’s clawed stone walls. “Weiss, come here! I need something!”

“You do not need to yell,” Weiss responded, its voice somewhere deep in the lair. “What could you possibly need?”

“For you to come here!” Ruby demanded, stomping her foot.

“You are my thing, Roseling. Make no demands of me.”

“I am demanding you to get over here whether you like it or not!”

There was a palpable pause. Weiss’ slender head rounded into the sanctum shortly thereafter. The dragon stared, its six eyes gleaming under the magical lights. It said nothing.

Ruby marched to it sternly and turned up her nose. As much as she could, at least, which had very little effect because she had to crane her neck up at Weiss anyways. “I'm a human, Weiss,” she claimed. “I have needs.”

Weiss blinked two of its eyes and let out a suffersome sigh. “You have food.”

“No, I don't.”

Weiss pointed to the back of the room, towards the hoard of precious metal. “Yes, you do.”

Ruby followed its claw, then turned back to Weiss, stupefied. “I— wha— you eat silver?”

“Silver is food, yes,” the dragon replied obviously. “What, your first feeding? Mortals…”

“I can't eat silver!”

Weiss reeled genuinely. “You… yes you can,” it claimed. “Who doesn't?”

Ruby raised her arms in a broad gesture. “Everyone! Nobody eats metal! We eat things like meat and vegetables! Dragons actually eat their hoard?”

Weiss blinked again, this time with the four eyes it hadn't blinked before. “What? I cannot eat knowledge.”

“The coins aren't part of your hoard?”

Weiss shook its head. “Why would they be? Your petty human riches mean nothing to me. True wealth is knowing.”

Ruby gave the dragon an impressed frown, and added that to the list of things she needed to take note of. “I can agree with that. Why’re the riches in here, then?”

Weiss shook her head like a wet-but-lazy dog, which Ruby understood as something shrug-adjacent. “I like to have a snack while I read.”

A smile shot over Ruby’s lips. “Oh, me too! Can't feed the brain without feeding the body!”

The dragon nodded at her sage wisdom, but seemed to catch itself halfway through agreeing with a mortal. “Hmph. Well, how can we get you food?”

“You can't just…” Ruby wiggled her hands in the air. “Magick some up?”

The dragon rolled all six of its eyes, which was apparently a universal gesture. “No, Roseling. I cannot just ‘magick up’ something nutritious from nothing, unless you would find meat-shaped rocks palatable.” It let out a long, disappointed sigh. “Oh well, I suppose you'll starve, then.”

Weiss started to turn, but Ruby sprinted to grab at its swaying tail on the way out, hoping to stop the dragon. That didn't work, and only ended with Ruby flailing around on the end of that long, articulate limb, screaming herself senseless while Weiss dutifully ignored her.

“Weiss!” she cried. “Weiss, feed me! Please! You're compelled not to kill me, I'll die if I don't eat!”

“Not killing you and letting you die are two very different things, Roseling.”

“Stop calling me that! Also, feed me!”

“No.”

“Please!”

The dragon stopped, nearly throwing Ruby from its tail as its momentum was arrested. Its long neck craned around, showing a hungry grin as it brought its head to Ruby. “What was that?”

The scholar gulped. “Feed me.”

The dragon stared expectantly, its incandescent eyes wide.

“Please.”

Weiss’ lips rose smugly, its tongue lashing the backs of its teeth like it was about to verbally flay and/or devour Ruby Rose, but it set the scholar down without doing either. “Good,” it rumbled. “You're humbled, as you should be. For your humility, I will hear out whatever proposal you have for getting you fed, however stupid it will be. You appreciate my magnanimity, I'm sure.”

Ruby scowled. “I can't hunt.”

“Surely not.”

“Does anything grow here?”

The dragon shifted its jaw in thought. “Mushrooms and lichen, sometimes— if I haven't scoured it in a long while. The books would moulder if not for the stasis enchantment I placed on that room.”

“Stasis?”

“Anti-decay. Perpetuation,” Weiss explained casually, as if it weren't making Ruby's mind explode. “That sort of thing.”

“You can stop things from rotting?” Ruby asked excitedly. “That's incredible! Weiss, that kind of magic could change the world, that could save villages, cities, nations!”

Weiss shook its head dismissively again. “Of course it could. I made it, after all.”

“You crafted the spell?” Ruby squeaked. “That's— that's incredible! You're incredible! Weiss, that is insane!”

The dragon bared its teeth in smug amusement. “I am incredible. You can finally see that.”

“I— I've been seeing that this whole time! You're a dragon!”

Weiss chortled. “Are you not hungry anymore?”

Ruby froze. “I— of course I am! Take me to town! Please.”

The dragon leaned closer and took a deep breath, sucking enough air into its nostrils to pull at Ruby's robes. “To town? You want me to take you to town?” The dragon let out an avalanche of laughter. “Sure, Roseling. I will fly you there on my back. We’ll be greeted with open arms, certainly.”

“Obviously not,” Ruby complained with a snort, as if she were in on the dragon’s joke and about to add to it. “Just teleport us there and turn into a human.”

Weiss laughed again, uproariously, loud enough to shake the walls and make Ruby cover her ears. “Aha! Hahaha! You, my Roseling, are the third funniest thing in my entire hoard.”

Ruby blushed at being addressed like that, for some indiscernible reason. “Third?”

“Behind the last good human joke-book and the personal diary of Salem Luminarius.”

Ruby laughed. “What would be so funny about a lich’s diary?”

“Her glyphwork. Her runes are scrawled like a blind child did them, they're hilariously awful. They'd barely hold a charge of anything— that's why her phylactery died a couple centuries ago. It just leaked her entire soul into the aether!” Weiss giggled in a way unbecoming of itself. “Embarrassing!”

Weiss was actually taken fully by that wave of mirth, closing all of its eyes tight as it laughed and laughed. When they opened again, they found Ruby, sickly pale and looking very close to vomiting.

Ruby’s pink lips flapped. “You… you actually… you have her phylactery?”

Weiss nodded. “And her journal.”

“You… how…”

Weiss opened its mouth.

“N-no!’ Ruby denied, deflating with a look of distant horror. “No. I don't want to know. Just teleport us to town.”

“That is not funny the second time.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me,” the dragon stated. “If you are insistent on telling jokes, refer to my joke-book first. It is the funniest thing your people will ever produce.”

Ruby, surprising herself, was not at all shocked to hear the joke-book was apparently real, too. “I'm not joking. Weiss, you can teleport, right?”

Weiss threw its head aside petulantly. “I certainly could, if it were possible. I am too large for a teleportation circle.”

Ruby blinked hard, reeling, her head shaking with confusion. “T— teleportation circle?” She barked a laugh. “What is this, the Age of Fae? Nobody uses a circle anymore. Do you really not—”

Weiss suddenly threw its head forwards, flinging Ruby back to the ground with a huff. “Have respect for your owner, Roseling. Of course I know what you're talking about, I just… am cursed not to travel that way.”

Ankle still smarting, Ruby winced and got back to her feet. “Curses can't bind you like that.”

The dragon huffed. “This one does.”

“I can show you, you know.”

Weiss’ whole, massive head snapped towards Ruby like a cracking whip, displacing enough air to blow her charcoal robes back. “You will.”

Ruby felt her chest heave towards the dragon, her thoughts lurching in tandem, her whole being desperate to follow Weiss’ compulsion. With tangible effort and a burning pain in her chest, Ruby bit down on that feeling. “Not unless you promise to come with,” she defied through gritted teeth. “In human form.”

“I don't have a human form,” Weiss hissed.

Ruby seethed, resisting herself. “Then figure it out!”

Weiss growled. It snarled, and it was an awful sound, one that awoke goose-pimples along Ruby’s skin and had her shivering instinctively, but she held her ground. Weiss kept snarling, closing the distance, opening her maw to break the unruly scholar with fear.

Ruby remained resolute.

Weiss, physically unable to kill the human, huffed. “Fine. I don't care. Show me the magic.”

Ruby's silver eyes glimmered with resolve. “Change first, that way I can trust you.”

Surprising Ruby, the massive dragon flinched before her. “You… do not trust me?”

It sounded genuinely hurt, which made Ruby cock her head. “No? Why would I? I don't know you that well. You're an incredible thing, yes, but humans don't really trust like that.”

Weiss flinched again. “I am not a thing. I am a dragon. We do not have such… human predilections towards trickery.”

“And what about the thing about teleportation, huh?” Ruby probed. “You lied about your ability, you have no idea how to do it.”

The dragon squirmed. “I… did not lie, I… I was confident in… in…” A word bubbled in its throat, an ugly one, one which looked like it physically hurt on the way out. “My ignorance.”

Ruby watched the dragon slump with defeat. Her own heart fell, and she was pretty sure that was on her own accord, not some emotional compulsion for sympathy. She limped to the dragon and laid a hand on its heel. The scales were cool to the touch. “Uh… sorry, Weiss. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.”

“I am a dragon! A petty human like you could never hurt my feelings!” Weiss whined, its pitch and wavering tone displaying obvious hurt, self-pity, and shame. “Be silent!”

“I didn't—”

“Silence!”

Ruby went silent. She kept her hand on the dragon. It was either too big to feel her or it didn't care.

When Weiss spoke up again, its voice was hoarse with defeat. “I… give me a moment. And stay still, Roseling. I need an impression of your form if I'm to construct my own.”

Ruby remained silent, and did not move. She kept her hand where it was until the dragon moved, turning wholly around to lie back down in front of her. Weiss’ head bent low, all six eyes affixed to her scholar.

“I… own you, human,” it said unsurely, as if trying to convince itself rather than Ruby. The scholar bowed politely, pitying the dragon.

“Of course. Thank you.”

“Don't speak.”

“Of course.”

Weiss growled.

Ruby giggled. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll be quiet.”

The dragon harrumphed, and waited for its scholar’s giggles to properly subside before it moved. It dragged its great front claws towards her, both hands cupping into a halo around Ruby’s body. All six eyes glowed blue, flashed white, then closed. A warbling blueness overcame the scholar. Her body rang like a tuning fork.

“An impressive lineage, Roseling,” the dragon mused lowly, its eyes still closed. “Yet your own aptitude is… middling, at best.”

Ruby shifted, laughing awkwardly. “Uh… y-yeah, uh…”

“Be silent.”

Ruby buttoned her lips.

The dragon’s lids twitched, and Ruby’s chest became a void. “Oh. I see.”

The claws separated, freeing Ruby from their encirclement. Weiss’ eyes opened, glaring down at the human, spears of gleaming ice that hooked into her ribs.

“And when exactly did you plan on telling me that you had that… thing in your chest?”

Weiss’ words were slow and careful, but edged to the point of danger. Ruby winced.

“Did you think you could sneak into my lair and snip a piece from my claw? Did you hope to make a wish on it? Did you think you could siphon my blood without me noticing, that you could concoct some cure?”

“No!” Ruby answered frantically, splaying her hands out wide. “I never believed any of that stuff, I just…”

Ruby's arms sagged to her sides. Weiss watched, waited, its six eyes unblinking.

“I've always loved dragons. I've heard so much— everyone said they were extinct— but I knew I could find one. You. All the signs were there, but nobody knew to look for them, nobody could remember your… intelligence. All the legends were just ‘big, scary lizard, breathes fire, eats people—’”

“Eugh, as if I’d eat one of you—”

“But I knew!” Ruby declared, suddenly loud, thumping her chest and wincing every time. Her mouth stayed open for something louder, something definitive, but it died in her throat, and it's weight dragged her down with it. “Nobody really believed me. Nobody cared about my study. I've got…” she laughed mirthlessly, cruelly. “I've got two books just on… geckos. It's useless. It's embarrassing.”

Weiss opened its mouth, but Ruby raised her hand to interrupt. Surprisingly, it obliged.

“But I knew. I just wanted to see if I was right, before I…” Ruby rolled her shoulders uncomfortably, then scratched at her chest. “I don't have much time left. I can feel it.”

Weiss rumbled low. Doleful. Angry. Possessive. “Show me the construct.”

Ruby flushed red and backed away in a panic, hands clutching her robes tightly over her chest. “I— I can't do that! That's—”

The dragon huffed. “Show me before I compel you to show me.”

Ruby stuck up her chin, defiant. “I resisted it once.”

“You will not manage again.”

The scholar stared those six eyes down, summoning all her human courage to stand tall against the beast. She willed herself to resist. She willed herself to be strong.

Weiss gave her a slow, unimpressed blink, and compelled her scholar.

Ruby undid the pins of her robes and folded open the front, scowling as she bent obediently to the dragon's will. Her blush traveled down her collar, splotching red over her neck, then visibly over her chest as she exposed the construct.

Ruby Rose's heart was in a tube of brass. Ruby Rose’s heart was a golem core, a multicolored gemstone buzzing and whirring with silvery wisps of arcane energy. Ruby Rose's heart was covered in cracks.

Crimson energy seeped from every rift in the core, brightly illuminating each split in the gemstone. Ruby turned away, unable to cover herself again. Weiss craned closer.

“Blood of Oum,” the dragon cursed, it's eyes fixed solely on the construct. “You made this?”

Ruby grit her teeth. “We're not as predisposed to trickery as you think.”

“Evidently. And how much of your heart remained by the time you finished the work?”

The scholar grimaced so hard she feared her cheeks would rip. “Half.”

Weiss stared for a moment longer before dropping the compulsion. Ruby immediately pinned her robes back in place, her face the color of her namesake. “On your deathbed— no, halfway in your grave.”

“Stop talking about it.”

“Stop talking about it?” the dragon parroted, aghast. “How could I ever! Ruby, you are a font! You are a singular talent! This thing you've done— and with the noose of the heavens already around your neck— it is incomparable! I would trade you for half— more than half of my hoard! And now—”

“I'm already in your hoard, Weiss.”

The dragon jolted back and shook its head, blinking hard. Its eyes narrowed. Its nostrils twitched.

Ruby watched as Weiss brought its claws up again, blue-white energy snapping between each one for only a moment before they clapped together, creating a blinding, deafening flash that sent the scholar to the floor. She belatedly threw a hand over her face and scrubbed at her eyes, blinking the colorful spots from her sight. Her ears rang.

Ruby’s vision cleared after a moment. Weiss was before her. A human, skinny and short, with skin the same shining, pearly whiteness as the waist-length hair. Weiss’ eyes were still blue on black sclera, now with two major eyes and two pairs of tiny ones clustered at the outside corners of their larger twins. She was also naked. She was also a ‘she’.

Ruby, coming from such an emotional lowpoint to this, floundered. “You're a girl!”

Weiss looked down at herself, her slender hands feeling up her own sides. “I thought I was a human.”

“A female human!” Ruby shrieked, hiding her eyes behind her hands, then spreading her finger so she could look anyways. “A girl!”

“Is that what this is?” Weiss started feeling at her own face, pulling her ears, tweaking her nose, tugging her lips. “Why are you humans so… flappy.”

“You have six eyes!”

Weiss blinked at her obviously.

“Still!”

“Of course I do,” she stated, her human voice high and pitchy— noble, some would probably say. “These aren't natural, you know. I added them, and they're not as malleable as the rest of me.”

“But— but you're a girl!”

The human that was now Weiss pointed accusingly at her scholar. “Don't act so perturbed, I got it from you!” In a very human gesture, she crossed her arms and turned away, chin held imperiously high. “And I happen to like it.”

“Well, you need clothes!” Ruby whined. “Cover yourself, it's rude!”

“Why would I cover this?” Weiss asked, gesturing over herself confidently. “I am a perfect specimen of humanity. Your people will be delighted to see me.”

Ruby, unfortunately, agreed with that notion. That people would like to see her, that is. Creepy people. Not Ruby. She did not like seeing Weiss, which was why she had her hand over her face. She was only peeping through her fingers to make sure nothing was wrong. “Some will, then they'll throw you out for indecency! Or arrest you! Then execute you!”

Weiss snorted. “I'd like to see them try.”

“Just put on some damn clothes! Please!”

The now-human dragon waved her off. “Fine, fine,” she muttered, her hands flashing together again, much less blindingly this time. “Better?”

Ruby observed the human Weiss before her, taking in the outfit. She wore almost an exact copy of Ruby's robes— pinned close to the torso, but loose around the arms and waist— only her collar was pinned scandalously open, exposing the milky skin of her neckline and the shading of her pronounced collarbone. In addition, the whole thing seemed to be made of silk rather than Ruby's linen, which baffled the scholar. “Where'd you get that?”

“I made it,” Weiss answered casually. “Vellum and parchment transmute easily to silk. From there I just made what you have, only better.”

Ruby sniffed at ‘better’, but said nothing to oppose it. “Well… it’s good. Cover your chest, though.”

Weiss puffed her chest out in petulant riposte, which made Ruby turn away. “I will not, what I have is plenty.” She approached the scholar aggressively, stomping hard with her shoulders set in a way that didn’t match the easy expression on her face— consequences of going from dragon to human, Ruby supposed. “Now show me your teleportation.”

Showing Weiss the trick to teleportation without a circle mostly consisted of Ruby explaining, then having the experience of watching Weiss’ face cascade into a series of ‘it was so obvious, how did you idiots find that out’ expressions. It was very fun to watch until Ruby realized she was openly staring at Weiss’ face.

Thankfully, the dragon in human skin hadn’t noticed (or hadn’t cared), and teleported them both before Ruby even finished her explanation, dropping the both of them in the central square of the closest city: Vale.

Bustling crowds stopped, looked at them for half a second, then went about their day.

“W-Weiss!” Ruby panicked, grabbing the other girl and hiding her face with her robe’s sleeve. “Hide your eyes, people will freak out!”

Weiss smirked up at her. “Oh please,” she said in Ruby’s mother-tongue. “My magical eyes wouldn’t be nearly as strange as you openly speaking Draconic.” She frowned at herself. “Ugh, Dra-co-nic? That’s really what you people call it? So unimaginative.”

Ruby had to consciously search for her own language, speaking like a dragon just felt so natural now, as if she’d been speaking it for years. “Shut up,” she managed, emboldened by the fact Weiss was no longer several storeys taller than her. “People will notice.”

Weiss pushed the scholar’s arm down and motioned to the people around them, none of whom even turned. “Nobody cares, Ruby. And if they do, what I have isn’t any stranger than what you have.”

That was delivered with a bitterness that made Ruby recoil— not directed at her, but somewhere close enough that it still hurt. Nonetheless, she protested, “Well I don’t go around flaunting my chest, unlike some people!”

“Nobody is looking! Nobody cares!” Weiss darted to the nearest stall— a fruit stand— and leaned over the display to jeer at the man inside. “Hello! Hello, human! Look at my chest! My flesh is bared in this specific region! ARE YOU TANTALIZED?”

Ruby yanked her away by the collar of her robes, dragging her fully out of the square while Weiss held a smug, satisfied grin. Ruby, on the other hand, was burning crimson. “Weiss! Act normal! I’m human, I’ve been living as one my whole life, so please have some tact and listen!”

Weiss opened her mouth, but clapped it shut at the authority the scholar wielded through her raised brows. When it was clear she would defer to her, Ruby sighed in relief.

“Thank you. Now, all we have to do is grab some food and some other essentials you can’t transmute— I would assume you can turn the trees surrounding your lair into wooden furniture, right?”

Weiss cocked her head. Ruby pointed to a nearby bench.

“Furniture. Chairs, beds, things like that. For my accommodations.”

“Accommodations? Who said I was accommodating you? You’re my property.”

Ruby rolled her lambent grey eyes. “Because you’re nice and a magnanimous master of your hoard,” she said, deadpan and blatantly sarcastic. “And because I’m dying. Let my last slumber be on a bed.”

Weiss’ whole body went rigid, her eyes locking to Ruby’s. She visibly bit the insides of her cheeks. “Right,” she mumbled through her teeth. “We will get you some food.”

The scholar nodded. With a plan made, Weiss reluctantly followed Ruby along the disorganized streets of Vale, scowling with disgust but nonetheless paying rapt attention whenever they passed someone in the middle of a human bodily function. At one point, Weiss had the opportunity to witness a back-alley robbery, but Ruby stopped her by wrapping their hands together to keep pulling her along.

Weiss stared at the hand in hers, and was shocked by how warm it was. It made her realize how cold she was. She could feel her own temperature wherever Ruby touched. The red-hot fingers were like a light in the dark, shone directly into the eyes of someone who’d never seen light before, blinding, but impossible to turn away from. Without scales, she could feel them in a way she’d never felt anything before— softly. Skin-on-skin, hot against cold. Curious, Weiss clasped her own fingers around Ruby’s, squeezing them tightly. There was a little give before she could feel the bone structure. The flesh was warm. The palms were soft in some places, rough in others, which Weiss felt at by rubbing her thumb between their interlocked hands.

Ruby stopped after a while. Weiss noted the rush of red beneath her face. The scholar slipped her hand out of Weiss’ with a conflicted look that was unrecognizable. She had found a cart with an oven on it, and spoke to the fellow manning it. When she turned back to Weiss and spoke, the once-dragon jumped.

“S-sorry, what?” Weiss said, shaking her head hard at her own apology. “I mean, what do you want?”

That strange look passed over Ruby’s face again, this time with an edge of something that Weiss assumed to be guilt. “I, uh, don’t have money,” the scholar admitted.

Weiss raised her hands uncomprehendingly. “Okay?”

Ruby led her with a nod of her head. “You don’t have any?”

“Did you see me conjure any with this robe?” Weiss mocked, wiggling her large, drooping sleeve. “No? Well, there’s your answer. Dolt.”

Ruby’s voice became hot and hushed. “I already ordered, we have to pay somehow!”

“We? The food is yours! It’s your responsibility!”

“And I’m your property, so the real responsibility lies on you!”

Weiss growled. “I. Don’t. Have. Any!”

“Summon some!”

“That’s not how anything works!”

“Figure something—”

“Pies’re done!” the oven-cart man announced, pulling a pair of steaming round things out of the mobile furnace. “Ladies! And if ya don’t mind me askin’, what sort’a strange speak’re you two doin’?”

Weiss and Ruby looked at the man, then at each other, both equally unaware of how their languages had switched. Ruby looked into her eyes and, as seemed to be her wont of late, went red. Weiss felt her own face warm.

With a flick of one dainty wrist, Weiss beamed the food-man right between the eyes with a ice-colored ray of magic. “F-free,” she commanded, stuttering a little for some reason. “They’re free. For us. Thank you. Rubytakethem.”

Ruby, with only a brief look of horror towards the dragon who was now a human, dashed over to the food-man and took the pies. She yelped the moment she scooped them up, but managed to drop them onto a nearby public table before she developed burns. Ruby sighed.

“Sit down,” she told Weiss, nodding to the seat across from her.

Weiss took the seat beside her instead. Ruby gulped and focused on her own steaming food thing. “What is that?” Weiss asked, leaning close to her scholar.

Ruby stiffened again. “Meat pie. Pie crust, pie stuff,” she claimed, motioning to the bread-colored parts of the ‘meat pie’. “The meat’s inside.”

Weiss bent further down to smell Ruby’s pie, doing so in a way that got as much of her body to touch Ruby’s as possible. The girl was warm, and she was cold. “It smells nice.”

Ruby turned away and coughed, pushing her other pie to Weiss. “Eat it,” she said quickly, as if saying it slower would make her stutter.

“Huh? No. That sounds… ew.”

Ruby kept her face turned away, but glared at Weiss with one eye. “You’ll make me spend one of my last meals alone? Here I thought dragons had honor.”

Weiss instantly soured. “Stop saying that.”

“Why?”

Weiss stared down at her meat pie. After a moment of deliberation, she started shoveling chunks of it into her mouth with her hands. Ruby made a noise of horror, but she ignored the scholar. She ate. The food tasted like taste. She’d never tasted before.

She’d also never been a human before. She’d never had a reason to be one, cramming her glorious body into this form would only make her library more difficult to fully access, and she’d have to deal with being a human. She’d have human hands that burned when she shoved them into a meat pie, though it wasn’t the same kind of burn she got from Ruby’s hands. Ruby’s hands burned in a new way. Did the construct make her hotter? Or was it just Weiss?

She’d never had one human heart beating in her chest. Always four, easier to pump blood with, but this singular thing was… odd. More vulnerable. If one of her own hearts got destroyed, she still had three left; that’d give her enough time to reconstruct the fourth.

But having just one was awful. She felt small with it. She felt like someone would come up behind her and stab it, and the three thousand years of Weiss would splatter all over her meat pie. The idea made her chest tight. She ate burning food so she wouldn’t notice. It didn’t help much.

Ruby had zero hearts, and yet her body wasn’t coiled in the way Weiss’ was. Sure, she was throwing herself at the now-human in an attempt to stop her from shoving more meat pie in her face, but she didn’t have an inherent tightness. She seemed free. Loose. Like she’d done the one thing she wanted, which, Weiss realized, was probably accurate. Meeting her. She’d only wanted to catch a glimpse to die happy, and she was dying. Weiss had seen that much with her own eyes, with her own magic. Sure, she didn’t seem bad now, but such was the nature of golem cores. Ruby Rose would operate as-normal until the moment it ran out, then she would die all at once. The girl who had built a heart, outpacing her own dying one, would lose to that beating death-knell in the end. Weiss would have her books, but the world would forget Ruby’s knowledge.

The one heart was doing something to Weiss. Something bad. It beat its tha-thump, tha-thump tempo one note at a time, which made it all the more strange when Ruby’s warmth sped it up. The one thing in her chest twisted. It wrenched. It was afraid. It was angry.

Like anything else in her hoard, Ruby was hers. Nothing would take that away. Not if Weiss could help it.

#fanfic #my writing #spoilers #ruby rose #weiss schnee #whiterose #white rose in bloom #dragon au

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