The passage of time proved to be a healing balm of sorts, if nothing else. Their team had managed to calm down and familiarize themselves with each other a least a little bit, and for Weiss, the quiet was nice.
That didn't mean that she didn't feel some sort of guilt for how things had happened. Her father had been forced out of Vale so quickly and roughly that Weiss was sure that she would see consequences for it. The odds were too high that her father was already removing her from the line of succession. That just meant that there was one question left buzzing around in Weiss' mind: it wasn't a matter of how it would happen, it was a matter of when.
Weiss was sure that she was now in the same place as her sister had been years before, in a way. The only difference was that she had far less control over the situation and how she had left. Winter had just taken her things, made her decision and had extracted herself without any outside help. Weiss hadn't.
She really didn't like that everyone had gone ahead and started making gestures to make her feel better. It wasn't that Weiss hated it, but more that it all felt empty and forced from her view. Ruby and Yang had been happy to invite her to dinner with their dad the next time that they had a chance, and Blake...
Well, Blake was probably the biggest change of all. Mostly because of the fact that Blake was no longer just sitting by and letting the world spin on in the way that it had. Instead, Blake had been much quieter, and while the two of them were definitely giving each other space, it was easier.
The nights were when it got to be the most exhausting but also the most comforting.
Weiss sat on the edge of the fountain in the middle of Beacon's courtyard, very much caught up in her own thoughts. It was quiet, with the only major interruption that Weiss had seen being Team JNPR bickering about something on the way back to their room for the night. Aside from that, it almost reminded her of how it was to sit at the courtyard fountain at her family's home in Atlas.
JNPR had passed through an hour ago.
"Weiss?" A voice called to her, and Weiss turned her head to look back over her shoulder and see that one of her teammates was standing there.
Blake looked tired too, but she was carrying a book that Weiss hadn't seen before. No doubt she had decided to go off to the library to do some schoolwork alone. Weiss couldn't blame her for that.
But still, the other woman's presence was at least on some level jarring.
"Blake." Weiss greeted the other girl, shifting uncomfortably on the edge of the fountain and picking a hand up to offer Blake the space.
Blake seemed wary, approaching slowly before taking her seat and setting the book down next to her. "You're out late." Blake commented, as calmly as she ever managed to.
"So are you." Weiss said, her eyes straying over to the book. It was an old book of fairy tales, probably something that Blake wanted to read before bed. Weiss was sure that she had a copy back in Atlas of her own, but far less beaten and worn.
"I was doing some work." Blake replied, shrugging. "I kind of wanted to... get away from Ruby and Yang for a bit."
"I understand." Weiss sighed, reaching down to dip her fingers into the fountain. "I wanted some quiet, so..."
"Right." Blake said, going quiet for a little too long and staring off like there was something that she wanted to say but wasn't able to find the words.
The silence that hung between the two of them was absolutely deafening, but soon enough Blake spoke again.
"I wanted to say that I'm sorry." Blake sighed, reaching up to brush her bangs out of her eyes with attractive slender fingers. "For everything."
And that was really something that Weiss hadn't been expecting to ever hear. Sure there were definitely some specific things in particular that she would have liked to ask about, but Weiss also wasn't so sure that she wanted to go ahead and push her luck.
"Oh." Weiss said, feeling awkward as her heart began to beat just a little bit harder in her chest. Nervousness overtook her. "Apology accepted."
Blake's brow furrowed and her golden eyes narrowed, getting all the more intense as she turned her gaze onto Weiss more directly now. "That's it?" She asked, almost sounding like she was going to snap. "You're just going to accept-"
"Blake." Weiss began, deciding not to raise her voice for her own sake. "I think that... I've had enough of fighting and all of that for now. At least with people. After everything I kind of just want some quiet again."
"It's just..." Blake grimaced. "I've been awful to you. Your eye-"
"Is fine." Weiss replied, feeling that first wave of self-consciousness beginning to take her over. She picked a hand up and let her fingertips brush against her scar, feeling that it was feeling better and the pain had finally subsided. Instead, it was just a raised line down his skin. "I... Think I actually might like it."
Blake was staring at her in disbelief, and Weiss wasn't sure that she could blame Blake for it. If anything, it just meant that the two of them were still on shaky ground and unsure of how to read into each other's presence.
But it was also a good thing because it meant that it was something that would be able to pass easier.
Blake finally paused, squinting her eyes and leaning in towards Weiss just slightly, and it was the feeling of the other girls' amber eyes roaming over her scar that made Weiss want to pull back and put more space between herself and Blake. That would have done something for their situation, but it wouldn't have done much of anything to alleviate any of the awkwardness.
"You... don't mind it?" Blake asked, finally sitting back up properly. The space between the two of them was a more than welcome thing. "But why would you-"
"It's... hard to explain." Weiss started, pulling her eyes away from Blake as she took the moment to try and find the best way to tell Blake what she felt. "When I first got it I think I was mostly shocked. But then..."
Something deeply uncomfortable and terrible welled up in Weiss' chest. Something that made her want to run and cry and force everyone away from her for the sake of her own safety. She thought back to her father's reaction to the injury, to the way that she had needed to pull herself together to run away from it all.
Her father had been so furious. He'd been furious when she'd changed how she wore her hair too, but somehow that felt so much less significant as this did. Weiss wished that she knew why, but she might have had a way to explain it all.
She turned her head, picking it up so that she could look Blake in the eyes properly now. "Do you... ever feel like doing something specifically because someone else won't like it?"
Blake was silent for much too long, and it left Weiss wondering whether or not she had accidentally gone ahead and offender her. It wouldn't have surprised Weiss for a second to find out that was the case, and that wasn't something that she was happy about by any means.
The black haired girl tore her gaze away from Weiss, focusing on some part of the courtyard far away from them, and Weiss watched as Blake watched a black bird fly over the stretch of space. It was like she thought something important was there, but Weiss couldn't think of what it could have been.
"Yes." Blake said finally, but her voice was too quiet and too sad sounding. In fact, she sounded like her heart had somehow managed to drift far far away from the two of them. "I think that I know what that's like."
And that was the only starting point that Weiss had, so she was willing to run with it. "Well, it's like that." Weiss said quietly, leaning back and bracing herself against the edge of the fountain with her arms. "When he found out..."
Her voice trailed off again, and when Weiss turned his head to look down into the water of the fountain, a face stared back up at her, with a nasty scar running down her face. It was definitely Weiss' own face, and yet she liked it. There was beauty in the injury.
She needed to explain herself. Weiss knew she needed to explain it all. "He found out and he was furious because I had done something that he didn't want for me or Whitley to do." Weiss glanced back over at Blake, just a fast flick of the eyes. "My brother and I were... kept on a tight leash. Our father didn't like the idea of us fighting."
"I thought you had two siblings." Blake commented, "That's what you said the other night."
"I do." Weiss said, sighing. "It's just that my father didn't have any control over Winter. Nobody does, really." She shook her head. "He got more strict with Whitley and I than they did with Winter after she left."
This was going nowhere, Weiss realized. This was going nowhere fast and it wasn't worth it to waste both hers and Blake's time. "The point is, he was furious. I'd broken his rules and he hated everything that had to do with that. The scar is..."
Something won in battle. A symbol of pride but also one of shame. Just an injury. A scar. A part of her. A wound inflicted by an enemy.
"The scar is just a scar." Weiss said finally. "But I got it doing what I wanted to, and I think that matters."
Blake nodded slowly, seemingly in some disbelief, but if she was she wasn't going to voice that fact by the looks of things. "I'm sorry that I didn't pull back at all during our fight." Blake said, all too calmly. "I wasn't paying all that much attention to your aura beyond that it would eventually break."
"And I'm not mad." Weiss replied, holding her head up high. "We both got what we wanted that day, didn't we?"
Blake went silent again, far away in the same sort of way that she had been earlier. She was thinking hard about what Weiss had said, at the very least that much was obvious. For Weiss, she didn't know how much she cared if Blake took her time to think in that moment. What mattered to her was that she and Blake were finally taking time to sit together and just think things over.
Weiss was at least somewhat sure that the two of them were managing to bond, and that in itself felt so much more important than it should have been otherwise.
That was all that she could really ask for. Weiss was sure that if things worked out right the two of them could actually start to work as teammates. Maybe that would be enough to assuage some of the awkwardness about their dorm.
"I think so." Blake finally responded, blinking and picking her head up but not letting herself look back at Weiss. "I wasn't expecting to end up ever seeing you again."
Weiss didn't like that it almost hurt hearing that, but she wasn't going to let herself get caught up on the thought too much. "I don't think that I was expecting to see you again either." She said finally, feeling a little bit too distant when she spoke. "Because I was expecting for that fight to be a thing that I would do and then I was going to get forced to go back to Atlas anyways."
"And now you're here."
"And now I'm here." Weiss repeated, because that really did manage to sum everything up that she'd needed to say. "And I have teammates and I am trying to figure out where I stand with some of them." She glanced back at Blake, feeling at the very least a little bit shy. "And I would like to know."
Blake's lips pressed together into a thin line and Weiss watched as Blake's expression shifted into something much more uncomfortable.. "I don't know that I would call us friends." She said finally, still managing to sound all too distant. "But I'm willing to call you my teammate."
For now, Weiss thought that might have been as far as it could have possibly gone. Teammates wasn't ideal at all, but it was the very first chance that Weiss had to win the acceptance of Blake. Maybe eventually the two of them could call themselves friends, but it was hard to say how long it would be before that was the case.
Either way, it was a win in Weiss' book.
She smiled just slightly at Blake and picked her hand up, offering it in a handshake. "Then I am glad to call you my teammate." Weiss said.
Blake stared her down, her gaze flickering between the offered hand and her face until she finally reached out to take Weiss' hand in her own. Blake's hand was just a little bit larger than her own, but not by much. "Teammates." Blake said, holding the handshake for just a moment before she pulled away. "We should probably get to our dorm."
And that was true, Weiss thought. They were both already out rather late, and Weiss was sure that it wasn't going to be long before Ruby and Yang began to worry. Although, she was sure that giving the sisters some space to be sisters wasn't such a bad thing. If anything, it meant that one positive dynamic was going to be able to be maintained for the time being.
"You're right." Weiss sighed, pushing herself up to her feet and stretching just slightly as she turned to follow after Blake whenever her teammate was ready to lead. "I think we have an early class in the morning anyways."
"Right." Blake answered, smiling just slightly. "we should have probably thought of that earlier, shouldn't we?"
"Probably." Weiss smiled, walking alongside Blake. "I think it's just a lecture, anyways."
"So one of us should take notes?" Blake asked.
"Yeah." Weiss couldn't help the slight laugh that escaped her. "We both probably should, actually."
The two of them were able to go quiet together after that, and it was a relief in itself. The rest of the walk up to their down was calm, and when they finally stepped inside the two of them were greeted by Ruby and Yang alike.
Weiss finally was beginning to feel a little bit better about this whole being at Beacon thing.
Cinder was staring up at him with one eye that somehow managed to look like it was almost dead despite the fact that it was uninjured. When she tried to speak, nothing left her mouth once more, and her movements were so weak that he had serious doubts that she was going to be able to walk.
Either way, this girl had just experienced something great and terrible.
Hazel picked his head up and looked amongst his teammates, searching his mind for some sort of order that he could pass down but found none. Instead, he let his eyes drift over the stone in the cave before his eyes widened in recognition of what he saw there.
Suddenly, he had some sort of idea about what Cinder might have seen.
"Cinder." Hazel said, softening his voice and letting his volume lower as much as it could without becoming flat out unintelligible. "Can you try to explain?"
She stared up at him and blinked her solitary eye before raising a shaky arm to point at the wall. That explained so much but also explained so little. Hazel tried to push back his nervousness over it all before looking to Watts. "Examine the wall."
"If you can't tell, I'm already on it." The other man replied with a sneering expression on his face. At the very least he was going to be out of the way for a little while, and Hazel was ready for whatever that was going to entail.
Hazel swallowed and looked over at Tyrian. "What about you?" He asked, because that was all that he could do and the only question that he could really think to raise. "What happened?"
Tyrian shifted uncomfortably and Hazel took the time that he had to slip out of his coat. It felt a little bit like he had to shed his skin to do so, and he knew that it bared the scarring on his arms when he did so. That didn't matter. He knew where his pains had come from, and if the others asked, he was going to be able to work around it.
The thin man finally spoke up just as Hazel wrapped Cinder up in the coat. "We followed a feeling here, Hazel-" The man began, and it sounded like he was beginning to stumble over his words. Hazel wished that he was surprised by that fact, but he also couldn't quite bring himself to get there. "-Our dear Ember told me to go and get you and Watts, I had nothing to do with this, I left her because she asked and when we got back-"
Hazel sighed. That was about what he'd been expecting, at least on some level. This wasn't something that made any sense to him. "Understood." He mumbled as he finally laced his arms around Cinder so that he could lift her like an injured child. Hazel absolutely hated the familiarity of it, and the ache that it sparked in his chest and the fact that he wanted to /scream/ for everything that washed through his mind.
For now, he had to push all of his feelings aside. For now, Hazel knew that the best thing that he could do for Cinder was get her somewhere safe and set her down to rest. The girl was in poor health, and they couldn't reliably think that they were going to be able to get past all of it. Not when things were getting bad.
Of course, there were so many worries that plagued the back of his mind as he stood there considering everything. There was a spawning pool within walking distance, and it was only a matter of time before grimm either began to populate the area or the pools began to spread further and further.
For now, they were going to have a choice to make and it was going to be an absolutely crucial one. They had to decide whether or not this was going to be a matter that they could resolve there and then, they would have to make a decision on whether camp was going to be there in this cave, or whether they should return to their old base.
The responsible thing would be to return to their old camp, but Hazel wasn't confident that Cinder was going to be able to stand up to the travel. It was a damn shame too, because Hazel was so certain that this girl could be so strong and powerful if she got a chance to be. The only problem was that now Hazel didn't know that he could rely on anything.
And the worst part that Hazel knew what his part in the place was going to be. He knew for a fact that when things began to fall apart or got really bad, it was going to be up to him to be the glue between the four of them. Watts didn't have a caring quality, and Tyrian wasn't capable of the coherency that they needed in a situation like this on a good day.
As for his own feelings and worries, Hazel could defeat them easy enough. When he fell into his restless sleeps, then Hazel was content to let those thoughts torture him. Only then would he allow himself to see certain similarities, only then would be finally allow for himself to wallow in some of his more dark fears and memories. If he was lucky there would be intervention, but Hazel knew not to rely on it.
For now, he was going to have to stay strong for the four of them. He sighed heavily and looked back at Tyrian and then to Watts. "You two should go back to the camp and pack it up. I'll keep watch over Cinder."
Arthur stepped away from the wall, and Hazel saw that he had his dossier book open and in hand. It seemed like he'd flipped to a particular page, and while Hazel had his questions about what was on it, that wasn't important at the moment. He stared Hazel down, and Hazel was sure that he was trying to think of choice insults to use later on already.
"You will watch the girl?" Arthur asked, taking a step forward slowly and placing himself directly in front of Hazel. "And what makes you think that you are capable, Hazel?"
"It doesn't matter." Hazel said finally. "I'm going to take care of her for the time being. And do some research of my own."
Arthur sighed heavily and walked over beside Hazel, dropping the book into Hazel's hand. "You best do your reading. I suspect you still remember how to read?"
"I do." Hazel growled, glaring Arthur down as he and Tyrian finally turned to leave them alone. Hazel waited a few minutes before he was left alone with Cinder and willing to talk about everything that was going on.
Cinder looked exhausted. The best thing that someone could have done for her in that moment probably would have been to take the chance to dab the sweat away from her water with a rag, but Hazel didn't have cool water to use in that moment. Instead of saying too much, Hazel took a seat by Cinder's head and reached out with a careful hand to brush her hair out of her face. In contrast, she looked too small and fragile. Like a doll that he could crush with a single stray move.
The girl stared up at him with a beleaguered look that Hazel hated seeing on the girl's face. "How are you feeling?" Hazel asked, because there wasn't all that much that he could think to say. The whole thing felt entirely too intimate to him, but this was what he needed to do. He hesitated, because to ask for Cinder to answer him was wrong. Not when she was already so weak and beaten down as she already was. He let out a quiet sigh and finally spoke again. "You don't have to answer."
Cinder closed her eye, pain flickering over her expression as she tried to force herself upright. Realizing what she was doing, Hazel offered his hands to try and help to steady her as she sat up finally. SHe was shaky and weak, and when Hazel realized that he was needed he helped to turn her so that she could rest with her back against the cave wall.
It wasn't much, but the fact that she was at the very least able to move around on her own was something that Hazel had to admit was encouraging. They were on a good start, it was just going to be a matter of seeing where it all ended up.
Cinder opened her mouth to speak again, but only managed to let out a gasping sound. This was too much like it had been before, Hazel thought to himself. This was bad.
But he had to do something, anything if it meant that he was going to be able to comfort this girl and help her heal. Hazel just wished that he actually knew what he could do.
Hazel let out a quiet sigh and nodded, giving Cinder his approval to go quiet if she wanted to. She seemed to accept it and turned her head away from him, letting her eyes slip closed for the time being.
In the quiet, Hazel began to feel a little bit unsure of himself. He needed to figure out what he wanted to do for himself. "Rest." he said finally, because that was all that he could think to do. "If you need me, I'll be right here."
Cinder nodded silently, and Hazel pushed himself up to his feet and moved away from the stone slab where he'd laid the girl down. If it wasn't for the fact that it had seemed to been formed naturally, Hazel was sure that this was something that would have served to unsettle him on some level.
That was only one of the things that he was worried about in that cavern. The presence of dust in the walls was obvious, if the ceiling was lit up in the way that it was. In theory all that it would take to set this place off would be a lone spark. Hazel kept that in mind, and walked to the wall where the carvings stood out against the dark.
Hazel paused, raising a hand up so that he could press his fingers to one of the carvings, but couldn't do anything to stop himself from hesitating. The possibility for things to go wrong were all too real.
He swallowed and turned his head to glance back over at Cinder.
She was lying there, still breathing softly and seemingly just asleep. Whatever she'd experienced it had weakened her, but it hadn't done anything to injure her by the way that things looked. It was going to be up to him at least on some level to make sure that the girl stayed awake and in relatively high spirits.
At least, it would be that way assuming that grimm were still attracted in the ways that they used to be. Considering that they were dealing with a brand new crop of grimm, Hazel couldn't be too sure.
For the first time, under the flow of the Dustlit ceiling, Hazel finally let himself begin to examine the walls in search of whatever had triggered this. THe carvings were surprisingly intricate, despite the fact that they looked close to ancient. Based on the look of them, Hazel wasn't so sure that the carvings had been achieved with hammer and chisel.
Shaping stone with a semblance was something that wasn't outside of the realm of possibility.
Hazel swallowed, casting his gaze down the mural in search of its start. It wasn't so far away, and so Hazel walked all the way down to the end.
The first carving on the wall was of a circle. Empty and bore into the stone like something had once meant to be inlaid there. That was interesting, Hazel thought as he raised his hand and let his fingers brush along the hole.
It was long worn down, but Hazel was sure that it had been once meant to hold something. A moment of thought provided Hazel with nothing, and when he stared down the length of the mural, nothing appeared to him that seemed relevant.
That was most strange.
Hazel took a step away from the wall so that there was place between himself and the wall. The carvings were just there dull against the stone and Hazel crossed his arms as he examined it all. It crossed his mind for just a moment that he still had Arthur's dossier book, but without the other man there to discuss it with it wouldn't be so useful.
Besides, Hazel reminded himself, he knew for a fact that Arthur hadn't had nearly enough time to examine this mural as he now had.
That was going to have to wait.
Hazel paused, reminding himself that he wasn't alone as he turned his head to look back at Cinder. She was still resting, her face cast with a soft blue glow from the crystals of Dust in the ceiling.
Dust.
That was it, Hazel realized as he looked back over at the mural and the strange hole in it. That was it.
He took a few steps away from the wall and made his way over to Cinder. He wasn't sure that he was going to be able to retrieve the Dust from his coat without disturbing the girl, but Hazel couldn't let this wait for too long. If he needed, Hazel was sure that he would have been able to pluck some of the Dust from the cavern itself, but without the proper tools it would take too long.
The man lowered himself to his seat by the girls' head and leaned to the side in an attempt to find his pockets. Hazel saw one of the edges of his coat and pulled it away from Cinder so that he could reach down into it and find the pouch of crystals that he carried with him.
With it retrieved, Hazel stepped away from the girl and opened the package to see what he had. The multicolored crystals were all there, waiting for someone to reach out and take them into his hand. Hazel swallowed and tilted his head back so that he could see the ceiling again.
Light blue, greenish tinge.
Electric Dust, by the looks of it. Hazel found his target and removed it from the package before folding it back shut and walking to the wall itself. He hesitated, looking down at the crystal's shape and size before comparing it to the hole.
Maybe it was going to fit. It wasn't going to be a perfect fit, but the long thing shard was the right length by the looks of things.
He took in a deep breath, forced himself to relax, and slid the crystal into place.
Hazel felt an almost immediate wave of disappointment when nothing seemed to happen. It had felt like the first real lead that he'd had to figure this out in a while, and yet he couldn't help but feel like it had managed to do nothing. It was like there was some sort of piece missing and he had no idea what it could have been.
If it wasn't about Dust, then what could it be?
He let out a very frustrated sigh and was about to pull away from the wall when he felt some sort of tremor under the surface of his thumb. It was the crystal reacting, and he watched as it began to light up and brighten.
So that was what it was. Hazel began to force his aura into the Dust and watched as it began to glow brighter and brighter until the color began to bleed into the rest of the wall, lighting up the stone in a way that wasn't strictly natural.
Dust embedded in the stone, a voice in the back of Hazel's mind supplied, but he could only think that if that was the case it would turn out to be too hard to investigate. Not without tools and resources that he quite plainly just didn't have available to him. All that he could immediately guess was that the formations were far from natural.
It made him wonder though, about this cave. It had either managed to stay hidden and go forgotten for a very long time, or everything in it was recent but Hazel found that particular possibility to be a very hard one to believe. If this was recent, then the Dust would have already been mined out of it.
Which meant that the cave had been able to stay hidden for ages, only to be uncovered by a group of wanderers that had been too far off the beaten path, being led by something that could only be described as being divine and with themselves in a very different place from where the average traveller would end up.
Hazel wracked his mind as he watched the light bleed further and further away from the Dust that he had supplied. He watched as the glow spread along natural veins, might brighter streaks in some places where others only got the peripheral remains of the light to make them glow.
In the end, Hazel ended up waiting there for several minutes as he just watched and waited for something to happen.
When the whole room was lit, that was when Hazel was finally able to piece together what he was seeing.
Whoever had designed the room had been very aware of the resources that were buried and hidden in the walls, Hazel thought. The wall seemed to be telling a story. An old fairy tale that Hazel hadn't thought about in a very long time. He remembered reading it to...
Not important, Hazel cut the thought off as he stepped in closer to what he was able to identify as the beginning of the tale. It looked like a cave, with only a lone figure spilling out of it, their body lit up with the green light of wind Dust. Surrounding them, there was nothing. Just the cave there in the background of the image.
Hazel's gaze followed it, and watched as people began to be added to the tapestry, all lit in different shades of dust. Some of them were more intricately cut than others, and when Hazel let himself draw close he was able to feel the heat of fire on his skin, or the chill of ice.
It was too intricate. This place should have been mined into oblivion ages ago.
Hazel swallowed hard and stepped in close to Cinder, seeing that she laid behind a woman that was cut from the violet glow of Dust, with orange and red swirls of leaves surrounding her. There was also brown mixing into the image, and Hazel felt something tug in his heard that he wasn't able to identify.
Something awful.
"Hazel?" Watts' voice broke him out of his reverie, and Hazel turned just slightly so that he could look at the other man and see that he was okay. "What did you-?'
"Dust." Hazel answered, keeping his voice as calm as possible when he finally allowed himself to face Tyrian and Watts properly. The two of them were standing there with their supplies from the camp, and when Hazel allowed himself to think about how far away from the camp they had been, Hazel froze.
Had he been there that long? Was that possible?
"I can see that." Arthur replied, stepping up into the space beside him. "It's-"
"The story of the seasons." Hazel finished for Watts before the other man could go much further with what he was saying. "I know."
Watts was staring him down, his eyes light with curiosity and his expression all too serious. "Do you think it's a lead?"
"I do." Hazel said finally, because that was all that he could really think to say as a response to Watts at that point. Besides, what else was he really supposed to go ahead and say to that? "But I don't know if we can count on it yet."
Watts took a seat on the slab near Cinder, and Hazel could see the thin man moving to begin to check that she wasn't injured at all. Hazel couldn't help but feel a little bit guilty over the fact that he'd allowed for Cinder to lie there in such poor condition.
But she hadn't seemed physically injured, just weak. And Hazel was sure that she was going to be fine once the girl was given time to recover. "It'll depend if She comes."
"She will." Arthur replied, his voice all too calm. While the conversation continued, Tyrian just wandered in closer to the cave walls, reaching out to brush his fingers down a woman that was lit in green. Hazel decided to ignore him for the time being and see what was going on. "You know that this is one-"
"I do." Hazel mumbled. "Not a legend. But if this is what we're looking at, then we don't know what we're going to be looking for beyond a young woman." He paused, looking back to the wall and thinking hard before his gaze flickered over to Cinder. A thought pushed at the back of his mind, but all that Hazel could think was that they needed to get some proper information from Her directly.
The only problem was that the way that they'd been going about things, with the sitting and waiting wasn't all that productive. It put them in a difficult position, one that Hazel didn't know how they were going to be able to get past the situation. He knew fully well that they were wrapped up in a near constant waiting game, and this was something that they were ready to deal with.
That didn't stop him and Arthur from getting frustrated. Hazel was more than certain that their travels and constant searching had also managed to make Tyrian even get fed up with things.
Watts paused, looking down at Cinder. "Do you think that she-"
Hazel swallowed, because that was one of the questions that he didn't want to be asked. There was a lot of risk that came with being close to any of the maidens. Hazel didn't know whether or not it was a story that Cinder was familiar with, and if it was one then...
Well, the question after that became how to make sure that all of them were going to be able to go ahead and play along with it.
"I don't know." Hazel said finally. "Maybe if all four of us had been here when she'd gone down it would be different, but right now we have to wait until she's able to recover."
Watts nodded. Hazel sighed and turned away from the wall, glad that it was remaining lit for the time being. It was undoubtedly making things easier for watts to get his job done. For Hazel, that alone managed to make things worthwhile. Something in the back of his mind told him that the crystal he'd had to sacrifice for the sake of making the wall work was going to be useless after this.
That would be two crystals of dust wasted in that day alone. Ones that he wasn't even going to be able to exchange as dust later. That definitely shot a spike of annoyance up Hazel's thought over the thought. Dust was expensive, and he felt more like he was wasting what was meant to be a line of defense instead of actually getting to put himself to use.
When they found themselves in a position where they needed to fight, Hazel couldn't help but wonder about whether or not he was going to be able to be of use when it came down to it. The absolute last thing that he wanted to do was find himself in a situation where he was the weakest part of their group. The jabs from Watts, and the frustration and anger weren't going to be enough to make it anywhere close to worth it for him to experience.
And Hazel couldn't help the feeling that he was rapidly spiraling towards that point.
He had to force the thought away from himself for everyone's sake. They needed to be able to keep their faculties about them as a collective group, and with Cinder already out they had a lot of problems to look out for.
Hazel swallowed hard, making a fast decision for the sake of their grouping.
"We should set up camp." Hazel suggested calmly, sighing and turning slightly so that he could give a proper look to Watts and Tyrian both. "Since we're already here and this cave can provide cover, it won't hurt to use this as a base for the night. In the morning, we're going to be able to move on and see where we go from there."
"Right, of course-" Watts rolled his eyes, his frustration bleeding through all at once. "We should stay the night and slow down again, because that'll do us so well."
Tyrian stepped in towards them again, placing himself in close to the rest of them. "I think that staying here for the night may be a good idea-" The too thin man offered. "With the Dust, the cave... our Goddess must be close."
"Yes, of course." Watts snapped. "I just don't think that spending another night here out in the middle of nowhere will do anything for us."
Hazel sighed and raised a hand to gesture towards Cinder. "She's not in any condition to travel," he finally said, as bluntly as he could manage. "And it doesn't do us any good to push her and get her killed."
Watts sneered at him and brought his hands up at his sides, like he was doing his best to brush the frustration off all at once. "One night," He snapped like he thought that was going to be enough to dissuade them. "Fine. But I will not be responsible if this ends up getting us killed."
Hazel sighed, because what else was he supposed to say to that. Instead of saying thing, he just offered his hands to the others and took some of the camping supplies so that they could at least set up the basics. At some point someone was going to have to go out to do some sort of patrol,
But for now, they just needed to wait it out and see where things went.