It's been a difficult week to get work done in, for several reasons. Two of those reasons are called Elden Ring and The Witch Queen. So I haven't managed to build up my backlog quite yet, but I'm hoping to get to it in the back half of this week. And once Vow of the Disciple drops on Saturday I'll probably be able to relax, with the specter of Day One no longer hanging over my head.

10

The moment the Bullhead rounded the mountainside, Geralt started to have second thoughts.

Most of the valley was blanketed in a thick forest, but about half a mile ahead of them lay the ruins of an old village once called Talar. The village itself had been destroyed, according to Ozpin's brief, during the Great War when the Grimm surged past Vale's weakened defenses. The buildings had primarily been wooden, with stone foundations and a defensible keep at the center of the town. Most of the wood had long since rotted away or been gnawed to nothing by Grimm and wildlife.

But what remained—dusty streets, overgrown foundations, and a single, decrepit keep—was positively swarming. Hundreds of Nevermores circled overhead, and the ground was practically hidden under a blanket of Beowolves, interspersed with Ursae.

"Blood and Dust," whispered Pyrrha, staring out at the horde.

"That… looks rather extreme," observed Regis. "Is that manageable by such a small team?"

Geralt squinted. "I'm not worried about the Beowolves," he said. "There's a lot of them, but none of them have mutated any more advanced adaptations the way older ones do. Nevermores grow larger and larger as they get older, and none of those have a wingspan about six or seven feet. Ursae take on an Alpha form once they get old enough, and I don't see any Alpha Ursae. It's a large number, but they're neither powerful nor intelligent." He looked at Jaune. "Your team's dealt with mobs before, right? Large groups?"

"Not that large," said Jaune faintly, blinking at Geralt before looking back out at the horde with horrified fascination.

"We shouldn't need to take them all at once," Ren said thoughtfully. "If there aren't any intelligent Grimm commanding them, it shouldn't be too hard to funnel them into smaller groups by using my Semblance to emit controlled bursts of emotion."

Geralt nodded. "That should work," he said. "We'll use the environment to our advantage, funnel them towards that pass there." He pointed at a relatively narrow gap between two steep hills, only a few hundred feet across. "Set up a few traps in the forest there, thin their numbers out before they reach us."

"Our mission is to determine the cause of the swarming behavior, though, right?" Jaune asked. "Thinning their numbers is great," he didn't look like he necessarily agreed with that statement, "but it doesn't really solve that problem, does it?"

"I have a feeling it's gonna be a prerequisite," said Geralt dryly. "Because I have a feeling we're gonna be trying to get inside that keep before we're done here."

Jaune blanched, but Ren nodded. "It makes sense," he said, though he didn't sound happy about it. "There must be a reason they're swarming here, and that keep is the only landmark of any prominence for miles around."

Nora whooped in excitement. "Let's crash that castle!"

Geralt's lips twitched, but he turned without answering and opened the door to the cockpit. The pilot glanced back at him, his lips a thin line.

"Whole lotta Grimm," he said. "I can't get too close—that many Nevermores could take out the engines."

"Don't try to get any closer than this," Geralt said, pointing towards one of the two hills beside the pass he'd spotted. This particular hill had the steeper sides, but a relatively flat top with thinner foliage and better visibility. "Take us down on that bluff there. Near the cliffs on this side, so we have a view of the valley."

The pilot nodded, looking relieved. "Will do, boss."

Geralt almost snapped at him to call him Geralt before remembering he didn't even know the other man's name. Instead, he just gave him a nod and stepped back out of the cockpit. He turned to Team JNPR as he shut the door behind him. "When we land, our top priority is going to be setting up a defensible camp. That means a lookout post and basic barricades. We need to make sure we're defending the ship, too, not just our campfire. Clear?"

Three of the teenagers turned to their leader. Jaune blinked, then nodded quickly. "Clear, uh, Geralt."

Geralt nodded. "Good."

It was a few more minutes before the Bullhead made it into position and touched down. Before the ship had even landed, all six of them had leapt off and were quickly taking stock of the location.

"Aw…" Nora pouted, disappointed. "Not even one measly Grimm up here?"

"I assume whatever has them swarming the ruins pulled any that were here already," Pyrrha said. She glanced at Geralt. "That's good, though. It means we shouldn't have to worry too much about defending the camp as long as we're careful not to draw the Grimm to us."

Geralt nodded. "Think happy thoughts," he quipped. "Pyrrha, Jaune, I want you two marking out a perimeter for our camp. Nora, you and I are going to unload the Bullhead. Once Jaune and Pyrrha return, we'll set up the prefab barricades. Ren, you go with Regis."

Ren blinked. "Go where?"

"Just to gather a few samples," said Regis, giving Ren a careful, close-lipped smile. "Mostly any flora that I can't collect in Vale proper. It shouldn't take long." He looked at Geralt. "I expect we'll be back before you have those barricades up."

"You'd better," said Geralt, "or I'm coming after you."

"I'll do my best to see you don't have to," said Regis, looking amused. "Now, come, Ren. I saw some entirely unfamiliar leaves on our way down."

The crackle of the campfire echoed around the ring of metal barricades. The sound of five people sleeping murmured beneath it—or shouted, in the case of Nora's snoring. The Bullhead pilot had a bunk in the pilot's cabin, and JNPR's four bunks were set up inside the passenger compartment. Sat with his back to the Bullhead's side, eyes closed, his chest barely moving. Geralt wasn't sure whether he was actually sleeping or simply meditating as Geralt did. A rhythmic, whispering scrape came from the mound they had built as a lookout post. Jaune sat atop it, running a whetstone against Crocea Mors as he scanned the skyline.

Geralt himself sat at fire pit, a small kettle warming on a spit over the flame while he worked a mortar and pestle in his lap. He had already laid out several bottles of cheap, distilled alcohol in preparation to brew an advance supply of Swallow and Petri's Philter.

"Geralt?" Jaune's voice, barely above a whisper, was almost lost to the gently rustling night breeze. Geralt's Witcher's senses picked it up all the same.

"Yes?" he asked, speaking as low as he thought he could while still being audible to Jaune.

He seemed to judge it correctly. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Hopefully, since you just did. But go ahead."

Jaune didn't speak again for several seconds. When he did, he sounded hesitant. "This mission's pretty dangerous, isn't it?"

"Nothing you can't handle," Geralt said.

"That's the thing." Jaune took a deep breath. "Am I… holding my teammates back?"

"How do you mean?"

Silence again for several more seconds. "Sometimes I wonder if I should even be at Beacon," Jaune finally admitted. "I'm the weak link on my team. Seeing all those Grimm—the ruins of that village—it's got me thinking. About risk, and danger. I don't want my teammates to get hurt because I wasn't strong enough to protect them."

Geralt considered that. "Witchers usually hunt alone," he said eventually. "But it's not always like that. I once had a team, a group of us traveling together to achieve a common goal. There were six of us. I was probably the second-best fighter, although Milva was better with a bow and Cahir was trained in heavier armor than I used. But it was my group. I brought them together, and our mission was mine first."

"But you said you were one of the better fighters," Jaune pointed out. "It's a little different."

"It is," Geralt agreed. "I never worried about protecting them. That wasn't the idea. It wasn't about me being skilled enough to do it, it was that they weren't there to be protected. That wasn't the point. It's the same thing here. Your team isn't expecting you to protect them. They just need you to watch their backs."

"What if I'm not strong enough to do that?"

The kettle whistled. Geralt unhooked it from the spit with a grunt and started carefully pouring a measure of water into a mixing bowl. "There's always going to be something stronger than you," he said as the steam rose up around him. "No matter how strong you get. You're still just a student, Jaune—no one's expecting you to be Huntsman material quite yet."

"But even compared to Ren and Nora, I'm just… dead weight." Jaune sighed heavily. "And Pyrrha's in a league of her own."

"Is she?" Geralt asked, scraping the contents of his mortar into the hot water, where the mingled herbs and crystals began to quickly dissolve. "I hadn't noticed."

"What?" Jaune visibly started, turning from the horizon and looking back at Geralt incredulously. "What do you mean, you hadn't noticed?"

"What I said."

"How could you not notice?" Jaune gestured wildly with his sword. "She's incredible! She wins every single fight in Professor Goodwitch's class, even when she's sparring against an entire team at once!"

"That's true," Geralt acknowledged.

"Even in your class!" Jaune exclaimed. "She was one of the only people who had a kit that was effective at every range!"

"Not the only one," Geralt pointed out. "Ruby and Velvet both are versatile at any range, as long as Velvet has a weapon with the correct range logged in Anesidora."

"That's only two other people, one of which is a second-year!"

"Right. Think there's a reason for that?"

"Huh?"

Geralt stirred his mixing bowl, trying to get the last stubborn grains of salt to dissolve. "CFVY is one of the best-performing teams in their year," he said. "Only one of them has a style that's versatile at any range. Of the others, not one has an extremely long-range option, and two of them have non-mechshift melee weapons. Why do you think that is?"

"I mean, no one really talked about our kits and engagement ranges until your class," Jaune said, but he sounded thoughtful.

"True," Geralt agreed. "But I guarantee you at least some of your classmates thought about it when they were designing their weapons. I'd bet Ruby did. Crescent Rose is based on her uncle's weapon—but its included gun is a shotgun. She made a conscious decision to replace that with a weapon that would be effective at a range her scythe was useless at."

"I mean, Ruby being a prodigy isn't anything new," Jaune said. "She got into Beacon two years early at Headmaster Ozpin's personal recommendation."

"That's not my point." Geralt sighed, pouring a few ounces of alcohol into a beaker and adding the water solution to it. The mixture immediately began to froth with a faint hiss. "Look, Jaune. Pyrrha's a tournament winner, and an incredible combatant against human opponents. But what good is her Semblance against Grimm with no metal on them? I've seen your grades. Ren does better than Pyrrha in Grimm studies, as does Ruby. Weiss, Blake, and Nora have the best scores in Dust mechanics. But there's only one person who's top three in math, history, social science, and writing. That's you."

"Wait, really?"

"Yes."

Jaune was silent for a moment. "But none of those are Huntsman classes," he finally said. "They're just… school."

"Do you think they'd be taught at Beacon if they weren't useful?" Geralt asked. "I've been in the staff meetings for a few weeks now, and all of the others are constantly working to update their curricula, to make sure everything they teach you is relevant. Huntsmen need to be more than able fighters, Jaune. The fact that you can work as mediators, scholars, advisors, explorers, scientists, and more is what sets you apart from simple mercenaries. There's a reason you're required to take specialization courses in non-combat topics in your third and fourth years, and it's not just to keep you busy."

"I…" Jaune trailed off. Then he sighed. "It doesn't solve the problem, though," he said. "Which is that I can't really help my friends in a fight."

"If you were as useless as you say, you wouldn't have passed Glynda's course last semester," Geralt said. "Or Peter's, for that matter. You're measuring yourself against some incredible people, Jaune, and you're only measuring the fields they specialize in. But Ren, Nora, and Pyrrha need someone who can make sure they're not stumbling into some hundred-year feud on a mission, or who can make sure they're not getting outmaneuvered politically by whoever hired them just as much as they need support in combat. Every Huntsmen team has a weakest fighter, Jaune—that's just how it works. The key is to make sure you're contributing where you can and developing your skills to support your teammates where they need you."

Jaune was silent.

Geralt poured the faintly fizzing, orange liquid through a sieve into a glass bottle. "You're getting better all the time," he said. "In combat, I mean. Maybe you'll never pass any of your teammates, because they're working hard too. But you don't have to. You just have to hold your own in combat, as long as you're supporting them in other areas. You're the leader. It doesn't mean you have to be the best fighter; it means being there for them and making decisions where they need to be made. That, you can do. You've been doing it. Like I said, I wasn't the best fighter on my old team either."

Jaune said nothing for a long moment. Then the faint sound of the whetstone started up again. "Thanks, Geralt," he said quietly.

"Anytime."

"It can't be," Qrow muttered. He glared balefully at his sister. "You're lying. Oz wouldn't keep something like that from us."

Raven rolled her eyes. "Riiight. Of course."

Summer rubbed at her eyes. "Okay," she said. "Okay, okay. What exactly did the lamp tell you?"

Raven narrowed her eyes at her. "It showed me Ozpin's history," she said. "Including the three questions he asked it the first time he found it. One of them was 'how can I destroy Salem?' The answer was you can't. She's 'died' dozens, maybe hundreds of times. It never keeps. I saw it."

"Well, I didn't," said Summer, "but I know a technicality when I see one. Can you get us into the vault?"

"What?" Qrow asked blankly, staring at her.

"What?" Raven echoed.

"Can you," Summer repeated patiently. "Get us. Into. The vault?"

"Why would I do that?"

Summer's brow furrowed. "Um. Old times' sake? Because even if you've given up, I haven't yet? Because it's no skin off your back? Take your pick."

Raven's lips twisted. "Why do you even want to get into the vault?" she demanded. "What are you hoping to find out?"

"I have a question for the lamp," said Summer. "A very simple one, really. The one Ozpin really should have asked back then. Who can stop Salem?"

Raven sneered. "And if the answer is nobody? Because it will be. She's older than you can imagine, and she's survived more fatal wounds than you've ever seen."

Summer shrugged. "Then we do what we've always done," she said. "Live our lives knowing we're all going to die one day."

Raven's sneer fell away. She stared at Summer, face unreadable. "It's… really that easy for you, isn't it?" she asked.

"Shouldn't it be?" Summer asked. "This is already my second lease on life. What do I care if we're all going to die eventually? I have today; that's already a gift."

Raven's lips twitched suddenly. Her eyes softened. "Brothers damn it, Summ," she said. "I've missed you."

"Yeah," said Qrow, sounding like he might cry. He lowered his head and rested his brow on the table, his shoulders hunched. "We all did."

Summer reached out and squeezed his shoulder. "So?" she asked Raven. "Vault?"

Raven sighed. "Fine," she said. "There's a fissure in the cliffs below Haven. It's a back way into the vault."

"Sounds like a security flaw," Qrow mumbled into the table.

"I'm not about to walk up to Lionheart's front door," Raven said, rolling her eyes. "You want my help or not?"

"We do," Summer said quickly. "Thank you, Raven."

The sun rose slowly, painting gold across the landscape. Pyrrha, who had taken the final watch of the night, stood atop the lookout mound with a soft grunt as she stretched.

"It seems odd," she said to Geralt as she leapt down from the mound , "that even with so many Grimm only a mile or two away, not one attacked our camp during the night."

"Let's hope it's not a bad sign," Geralt said, checking the pouches at his belt and bandolier to ensure everything was where he expected them to be. "Grimm don't usually organize. Get your teammates up. We'll do some reconnaissance after breakfast."

Pyrrha nodded, already stepping aboard the Bullhead. As she started to rouse the rest of the students, Geralt crosse over to Regis. The vampire's eyes opened when Geralt was still five feet away. He took Geralt's offered hand up with a grateful, close-lipped smile.

"Sleep well?" Geralt asked.

"Not particularly," said Regis. "But, then, I didn't expect to under these circumstances." He looked Geralt in the eyes. "I heard your conversation with Mr. Arc. Teaching suits you better than I had guessed, my friend."

"People keep saying that," Geralt said wryly. His slight grin faded quickly. "I'd hoped to be able to keep you in reserve without bringing you into combat unless we were sure we'd need you," he said. "But now I'm not sure that's going to be an option, with the scenario being what it is. The Grimm are just too thickly concentrated in too small an area."

"I agree," said Regis, looking grim. "I will need to accompany you from the start, it seems. Do you want to broach the subject of my nature over breakfast, or should it wait?"

"It's still possible we won't need you to fight," Geralt pointed out. "We just won't have time to come fetch you in the event that we do."

Regis gave him an amused smile. "I appreciate your efforts to protect me, Geralt," he said, "but as I'm sure you've realized, the shock of seeing my, ah, altered state could be distracting to your students in a combat situation. Potentially fatally so."

Geralt grimaced. "Damn it, you're right," he muttered. "All right. We'll bring it up to them over breakfast."

"Bring what up to us over breakfast?" Pyrrha stepped out of the airship, smiling at them. "The others are awake and should join us soon."

Geralt gave her a nod. "We were talking about when and how to give you more details on Regis' abilities," he said. "Regis pointed out that the distraction could be dangerous if they took you by surprise in combat."

Pyrrha nodded, brow creasing slightly. "I had wondered," she admitted. "I couldn't imagine anything that warranted this level of secrecy would be anything we could simply accept mid-combat without taking at least a moment to mentally catch up."

"Well, you were quite right," Regis said. "But we should prepare food before we discuss it. I have found the local field rations to be remarkable."

"Really?" Geralt asked, raising an eyebrow. "They taste like wood."

"Yes," Regis agreed cheerfully. "Remarkably nutrient-dense, and yet equally remarkably inedible. I've never before seen the like!"

Geralt rolled his eyes as he pulled the ration case out of the Bullhead's luggage compartment.

A few minutes later, the rest of JNPR joined them around the smoldering campfire. Geralt tossed each of them a ration bar, then passed one to the pilot, who retreated to the cabin to eat.

Nora made a face as she unwrapped hers. "Ren," she said seriously. "When we're Huntsmen, we're bringing everything you need to make pancakes on the road."

"That would be heavy," Ren observed, chewing determinedly on his own bar. "But," he added, "still possibly worth it."

Geralt listened to his students' banter as he forced himself to eat his entire ration bar. Then he started on his second. It wasn't the first time he'd cursed his Witcher's metabolism. Beside him, he saw Regis nibble through half of one, then stow the other half in one of his pouches. "This," he said, glancing sidelong at Geralt, "deserves alchemical investigation."

Geralt snorted. Then he cleared his throat. Immediately, he felt all of JNPR's eyes on him. "Yesterday, we talked about Regis' combat style and how you could play around it," he said. "After taking stock of the situation, he and I realized there was no real way to know whether he'd need to fight in advance. Seeing him fight for the first time… might be a surprise. And no one likes surprises in combat. So…" he hesitated, glancing at Regis. Regis nodded at him.

Before he could continue, however, Jaune spoke up. "You're Geralt's vampire friend, aren't you?" he asked. He didn't sound frightened, only interested.

Regis' eyebrows rose. "I wasn't aware he'd told you he had one."

"He mentioned it on the first day of class," Pyrrha said, blinking at Jaune, then looking at Regis with wide eyes. "When he was telling us about his equipment. Is it… true?"

Regis slowly smiled. Geralt could pick out the exact moment each of his students realized what they were looking at on their faces. "It is," he said. "When I go into battle, I partially transform into my vampiric shape. The shift can be… unsettling to those who are not expecting it. We felt it was best not to take you completely by surprise."

"Understandable," said Pyrrha.

"Sooooo…" Nora drawled. "Do you need us to donate some blood for your breakfast?"

"Ah, that won't be necessary," said Regis quickly. "Higher Vampires, such as myself, do not need to drink blood to survive. Many do, because it makes us more powerful and is powerfully intoxicating to us. For myself, I have sworn off the stuff."

"What if you need a power boost?" Ren asked, brow creasing in thought. "Should we prepare—"

"No," said Regis firmly. "You misunderstand. In my youth, I was an addict. I abstain not because of the ethics—they are a consideration, but there are ethical way to harvest blood—but because I worry that, if I start again, I will find it just as difficult to stop as I did the first time."

"A-ah." Now Pyrrha sounded nervous. "Yes. We should probably try to avoid that."

"Agreed," said Regis dryly. "I will demonstrate my transformation as we approach the ruins so that it does not take you by surprise." He scanned the four students, an unreadable look on his face. "I am… pleasantly surprised by your reactions," he admitted.

Jaune shrugged. "Geralt was clear that you were a person, not just some monster," he said. "It'd be like being scared of a faunus just because they had sharp teeth."

"I have not been here long," said Regis, "but already it has become clear to me that is far more common than it should be."

"Hear, hear," murmured Ren.

"Stand back," said Raven.

Her protégé, Vernal, held out her arms, pushing Summer and Qrow behind her. Qrow grumbled, but Summer took it silently.

Raven spun the chamber of Omen, drawing a Gravity Dust blade, pulling it back, and stabbing it into the rubble piled up against the side of the cliff. With a thunderous rumble, the boulders scattered, many falling within inches of Raven. The blast revealed an opening in the mountainside, a crevasse that opened into a cavern after a few feet. "Come on," Raven ordered, squeezing in through the crack.

Vernal glared at Summer, who shrugged and followed. "Hey!" Qrow yelped as he was shoved after her.

In single file they crept through the narrow gap. When they emerged into the wider cave, Summer saw that there was a pool of water in the center of a vaguely cylindrical chamber. Raven stood at the edge of the water, staring upward. Summer stepped up beside her and followed her gaze.

High above them was a strange, floating island of rock, attached by a bridge of some sort to the side of the cavern. Atop that island were what looked like the branches of a tree with glowing, orange fruit.

"Huh," said Summer thoughtfully. "Never actually been into one of these vaults besides the Beacon one. The relic's up there?"

Raven nodded. "You haven't forgotten how to climb, have you?" she asked, smirking at Summer.

"Let's find out," Summer answered with a grin, taking an Aura-assisted leap to the nearest wall and starting to clamber up it with the help of Pinprick and the Gravity Dust chamber in it. She heard a pair of caws behind her and shook her fist jokingly at the two birds flying past her. "Cheaters!" she shouted, a grin on her face.

Vernal clambered past her on her right. "Thought you were supposed to be a great huntress," she taunted. "Is that the best you can do?"

"Cute," said Summer with a roll of her eyes, speeding up.

Soon they were all assembled atop the platform. The massive tree, Summer now saw, seemed to have grown up surrounded by a ring of jagged, standing stones. Into one of them was set an ornate, golden door with no visible hinges, handle, or seam.

"Is that…?" Summer asked.

"Yes," Raven said. She glanced back at the rest of them. "This is the part," she said coldly, "where I swear you both to secrecy."

"Or what?" Qrow growled.

"Sure," Summer said, narrowing her eyes at him. "As long as it's not a direct threat to anyone I care about."

"It isn't," said Raven. "Qrow?"

"Fine, fine."

"Good," Raven said, turning around.

"You sure we can trust them?" Vernal asked, standing between Raven and her former teammates, glaring at them suspiciously.

"No," Raven said without looking back at them. "But you know what they say—you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family." She crossed over to the ornate door and laid her hand against it. The engraved patterns upon its face, laurel vines creeping up the gold, began glowing a faint blue, then flared white. The door did not swing wide. Rather, the interlocking golden panels of it rotated into one another like the petals of metal flowers falling away.

The door opened to reveal an impossibility. Instead of a small room built into the tree, a vast desert stretched into an indeterminate distance beneath a cloudless blue sky. A series of three stone plates marked a path to a small pedestal, upon which rested a spherical lamp of glowing blue set in gold.

Summer whistled.

"Wait, wait, wait," Qrow said, at his eyes with the fingers of his left hand. "Rae? I thought—wait."

Raven turned to face them. Her eyes glowed with power, like little red flames burning in her face. They faded. "Vernal isn't the Spring Maiden," she said quietly. "I am. That is the secret."

Summer studied Vernal with new eyes. A decoy. Bait.

A sacrifice.

She gritted her teeth behind her lips but kept her face neutral as she strode past Vernal towards her former teammate. "Clever," she said neutrally. Raven saw something in her face, glaring at her, but Summer passed her without meeting her gaze.

The sand crunched beneath her boots. The world seemed strangely vibrant, colorful, and the edges of the dunes and the stone plates looked fuzzy, as if a painter had brushed the sky and sand into being.

Summer strode up to the lamp. For a moment, she hesitated. Then she picked it up.

Nothing happened.

She glanced back at Raven. "Is, uh, it supposed to do something?"

"Not until you activate it," Raven answered, looking amused. "Took me a lot of searching to find the password. Come on out so we're all in its area before you use it."

"Sure," Summer said, emerging from the vault. Qrow and Vernal joined her and Raven at the doorway.

"The password," said Raven, "is Jinn."

Sound grew muted. A leaf falling from the tree slowed to a halt in its descent. The lamp shook itself free of Summer's grip, blue smoke billowing from it like a cloud of Ice Dust powder. The smoke coalesced into a shape, which grew and grew until the cloud burst, revealing a figure with skin the same color as the lamp.

She was nude, but other than her curves she had no sexual characteristics. Her lips were full and quirked into a faint, knowing smile. Her eyes were sapphire-blue, but their sclerae were black, and an array of golden chains wrapped around her, floating weightlessly in the air.

She stretched luxuriously. "Hello!" she said happily. "Tell me: what knowledge do you seek?"

Summer blinked up at her. "Are you… Jinn?"

"Is that your question?" the woman responded, her smile widening in amusement.

"Oh, uh, no. Sorry!"

The woman laughed. "It's quite all right. Yes, I am Jinn. I'll give you that one for free."

"Um. Thank you?"

"You're quite welcome." Jinn rotated in the air so that she seemed to be laying on her stomach, resting her chin on her hand. "Oh, hello again," she said, her eyes finding Raven. "Welcome back."

Raven grunted. She seemed to be having trouble looking directly at Jinn. Summer decided she could wait to unpack that one until later.

For that matter, Qrow was also averting his eyes. Vernal—the decoy, the sacrifice—was visibly flushing.

Summer's lips quirked and she looked back up at Jinn. "I wanted to ask," she said. "Who can stop Salem?"

Jinn blinked at her once. Her smile widened still further. "Do you have any idea," she said conversationally, "just how long I have been waiting for someone to ask me that question?"

Summer started. "No, but I'm curious. Can I get that one as a freebie, too?"

Jinn just laughed. "I'm afraid not. But to answer your question…"

She spoke a single name. Summer was somehow completely unsurprised.