Night approached like a creeping beast, and Tyrian sat awake in their camp whilst the others rested. Together they had decided to take cover in an old abandoned building which was all but crumbling to the ground around them. The setting was familiar in its own way because of it, so Tyrian didn't mind. Crumbled buildings had simply become a recurring backdrop in his life.
His space was in a corner without much cover, as was the norm. Tyiran had been pushed off there on his own for the sake of everyone else's comfort, as was also the norm.
Everyone else had gone to sleep hours before, so Tyrian sat up late. That didn't mean that he didn't make any effort to sleep, because he was doing his best, but rest didn't come easily. Mostly he could only find it in himself to listen to the crackle of the fire.
Tyrian let his tail wrap up around him, closed his eyes, and tried to ignore the sounds of the others. There was a gasping sound, and Tyrian shot upright at it and looked at the space around him in alarm. Something was wrong, he didn't know what, but it was wrong and that was reason enough for him to be on guard. If it came to a fight, he would be able to protect himself, at the least. His tail twitched anxiously.
He blinked and looked up the row of bodies by the fire, watching as Cinder sat up partially, her chest heaving and her form tense.
She blinked her one eye, clearly seeking out something in the dark. When her gaze fell on him, Tyrian waved, just with one hand.
Cinder nodded and got up, padding across the space until she was near him. Tyrian was about to open his mouth to say something, but Cinder just nodded in the direction of the road from where they had came. The instruction was simple enough.
Tyrian rose and followed after his teammate. The two of them made it out to the road and once they were alone Cinder allowed herself to speak.
"I saw her." Cinder said, her voice halting and afraid. The revelation left Tyrian with the hairs on the back of his neck raising. "She-"
"What did our Goddess require of you?" Tyrian asked, shifting nervously where he was standing and allowing himself to hunch over slightly. Slowly and carefully, Tyrian let his tail down, unwrapping it from around himself and relaxing.
"The maiden is here." Cinder growled the words out. "She should be right here, and yet-"
"We will find her!" Tyrian responded, perhaps a little too quickly and a little too excitedly. When Cinder moved to walk, wrapping her arms around herself, Tyrian followed just as quickly. "We will not let our Goddess down. We will find the girl, and then-"
When the laughing came, Tyrian could only do so much to suppress it.
And he knew, oh he knew that Cinder was staring at him and that she didn't know what to make of him. That didn't matter so much too Tyrian. He caught his breath and caught his emotions in the same second. Dragged himself back down to earth in one fell swoop.
"We're going to have to kill her." Cinder said, but there was something in her voice that Tyrian couldn't quite decipher. He had never been the best with understanding other people, and this was no exception to that. "You're willing to go along with it."
"I am." Tyrian responded, standing up straight for the first time since he'd risen from bed to follow after Cinder. "Of course. If our Goddess-"
"What makes you so sure?" Cinder snaps at him, and Tyrian closes his jaw so quickly that his teeth click against each other. "She only comes to us in-"
"Prophesies!" Tyrian finished before Cinder could. He brought his hands together, and he slowly began to bring his right up on his left, travelling up the arm and the wrapped bandages. Even with the bandages there, he could feel the raised bumps of scar tissue. "She comes to us because she chose us to best serve her."
"Then why us?" Cinder asked, turning slowly. "Why would she-" She shook her head and took a breath before locking her eyes with his. "Why does she choose us?"
Tyrian wanted to shrink back over that question. He remembered the first times in which he had asked the very same question, although he'd posed it to Watts. The answer that he had been given had been akin to a snarl or a slap rather than an answer. Tyrian had just learned to accept it because the life that he had with the others was all that he had left at this point in his life.
"She chooses us because we are the ones that can best serve her." Tyrian repeated the words, blinking and trying not to let his nerves get the best of him. He found himself twining his fingers in the bandages that are wrapped up around his arms. It didn't serve to give him any calm when he so desperately needed it. The scars brushed against the tips of his fingers. "Our Goddess chose you because she will need a maiden, she chose me because-"
Tyrian tripped over his own words and snapped his jaw shut before he could allow for himself to make things worse. His eyes flicked from Cinder to the ground and then back again, all the while him unable to find when he needed to say to her.
Cinder shook her head though, since he had apparently failed to answer the questions that she needed answers to. "What I don't understand is why we have to do anything for her in the first place. If she is so powerful-" The words are snarled out at him, and for just a second Tyrian could have sworn that he had heard some sort of distortion to Cinder's voice.
Her voice, blending in with another that was not her own.
Tyrian immediately jerked back away from her, tightening his grip on himself.
Cinder's eyebrow furrowed, her mouth opening in surprise. She took a step in towards him and raised a hand so that she could reach out for Tyrian.
Instinct took him and he shrank back, the same way that he would have from anyone else.
"We-" Tyrian began to start to speak. He tried his best not to hiss the words, tried his best not to get more worried or nervous. "She has chosen us!"
"For what, Tyrian?" Cinder asked, taking a step back in towards him, still with her hand raised to him. "Why has she chosen us?"
Tyrian shrank back more, pressing himself in against the wall of a building. His head ducked and he wished that he had let his hair fall down in front of his face so that he could be sure that he would have an extra layer of safety from Cinder. When he breathed, he sucked in nervous, afraid gasps that did little to keep him from getting lightheaded.
"Tyrian!" Cinder shouted, and there it was again, that distortion in her voice that made her sound like it was two speaking instead of just one. "Tell me!"
"Remnant is broken!" Tyrian managed to get the words out, hissing them out loudly at Cinder. He stared at her from eyes that had tears already leaking from them. "Remnant is broken and our goddess needs us to fix it for her-"
"What?" Cinder snarled. "That is nonsense."
"But-" Tyrian tore the bandage away from his arm, letting it fall so that every one of his scars was exposed to her. Her watched her eye flicker down to the arm, tracing over every mark and every scar that had been left there. "She has chosen us!"
Tyrian swallowed hard and stepped in towards her, holding his tail high over his head just in case he needed to use it. He took a nervous half-step in towards Cinder, shoving his arm in her direction to show her.
Cinder merely looked upon him with disgust- towards him, towards the miserable creature that he was. She reached out for his arm and wrapped her hand around it, and Tyrian was ready to rip himself back away just as quickly.
"This-" Cinder said, running a thumb over one of the scars. "These are-"
"Hers!" Tyrian returned. "She has given them to us because she wants us to serve her." Slowly, carefully, Tyrian withdrew his arm. "Someone must restore the world for her. She selected us who were best suited for her purposes."
"You know that answer isn't good enough for me, Tyrian." Cinder responded, and there was this eerie sort of calm that ebbed over her. Most of what Tyrian could feel was the nervousness that ripped through his body and ebbed over him like waves. It was the beat of his heart against his chest, and the nervous twitches of his tail, and the early beginning of a burning down in his scars.
He closed his eyes and shrank back again, placing his hands on the sides of his head like it would be able to hold him together, because Tyrian certainly felt like he was falling apart at the seams. "You are not her-" He whispered, dropping his head more and curling in on himself more. Over and over he began to whisper the words to himself because something was wrong and he couldn't handle it.
"Just tell me!" This time Cinder's voice raised into a yell.
From where he was, Tyrian was able to hear the sounds of someone moving around in the building where they were staying. He blinked several times, trying to force the tears that were forming in his eyes from falling.
The voice that interrupted was one that Tyrian was all too glad to hear.
"Girl." Watts' voice said, but inside there was a quiet mumbling. Hazel and the other girl, probably trying to calm down.
Tyrian cast one last glance at Cinder before scrambling back to Watts' side. Watts said nothing to him, just shot him a harsh enough look that Tyrian would stay there rather than going inside.
Cinder grit her teeth and looked at Watts. "What?"
"Do you really have nothing better to do than torment the insect?" Watts asked, and Tyrian allowed himself to relax, if only slightly for the time being. "I am sure that you have better things to do."
Cinder didn't relax at all. She was holding herself like she was preparing for a fight. "I need to have some more answers if I am going to stay here." Tyrian glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, as blurry as she was. "I don't like that I haven't been able to get a straight answer about anything since joining you."
"So you decided to torment the one that couldn't have given you any good answers?"
"I-"
"If you want answers, hurting him won't get you anywhere." Watts said, straightening up and any anger that he had been feeling ebbing out of his voice at once. He shot Tyrian a glance that said rather plainly that he needed to go inside. Tyrian nodded and slipped back into the building.
What he found inside was that Hazel and Emerald were by the window overlooking the street, both holding themselves just out of view. Tyrian looked between them and dropped down low before huddling into the space between them just under the window where he could still listen along.
In the street, Cinder and Watts were talking still.
"Girl." Watts said, his voice accompanied by the sound of the gravel moving beneath his feet with every step. "The answer that you are looking for is that Salem is akin to a God, and her domain has been disturbed."
"And?"
"And you live in a world of fairy tales, heroes and magic." Watts continued, his voice getting as harsh as ever. "A world where a god was slain in her physical form, many years ago. Restoring her power is something which cannot be done without people to serve her."
"So she chose us." Cinder snapped back. "Why us?"
"The boy is correct." Watts said, and Tyrian let his head pick up just enough so that he could get a glance back onto the street. "We were the ones best suited for her. You think that it is a coincidence-" Watts took a few steps forward and glanced back over at the building, a glare of sorts.
When he was squarely in Cinder's space, he continued. "He selected us for our traits. Loyalty, strength, intellect." Watts grinned, brushing Cinder's hair away from her scarred over eye, showing the brand that she had been given clear as day. "Whatever you are. I want to say ambition, but I don't think that's it. Perhaps foolishness."
"She could have found those traits in anyone."
"Quite the contrary." Watts replied. "She selected two of us because of history. The insect was presumably chosen for his broken mind."
"And me?"
"She saw something in you."
"You know that doesn't mean anything." Cinder says, but the rebuttal from Watts comes all too quickly and entirely too harshly.
"It means that you should be grateful." Watts growled back. "And stop keeping the rest of us from resting."
There was a quiet that fell over the space, and Tyrian's eyes widened when he came to remember why Cinder had said she'd gotten up early that night. In the whirlwind of everything that was going on, Tyrian had all but forgotten about it.
He looked up at Hazel, but was unable to keep the vaguely panicked expression off his face.
Hazel looked back down at him in a way that read as being wholly unamused. Tyrian nodded back in the direction of the road, and Hazel's eyebrow raised in some interest. Hazel took a half-step forward, just so that he could see what was going on just outside.
"Salem came to me." Cinder said, still out on the street. Tyrian turned and let himself sit up properly so that he could see what was going on outside for himself. Watts had gone dead still, and even Emerald didn't seem to be doing too well with what had just been said.
Watts turned slowly so that he could face her again, his expression deathly serious.
"In which way?"
"Vision." Cinder replied, sighing. "There should be a maiden here."
"And yet we haven't seen one."
"Then why would she have-"
Before Cinder got to finish what she was saying, Hazel was leaving the building. It left Tyrian and Emerald inside on their own. The two of them exchanged a quick look before the two of them went to follow after Hazel.
While Hazel stood in the doorway, Tyrian and Emerald stood behind him, jockeying for a good view.
"If there is a maiden here we should prepare for her." Hazel said, keeping his voice down in a low growl. "She may not have arrived yet."
Watts rolled his eyes, turning to Hazel now. "And what is your suggestion for that?" He snarled at Hazel. "Seeing as all that has happened this morning is that Cinder and Tyrian have gotten into an argument, and it's gotten us nowhere."
Hazel shook his head. "The thing that we should do is we should prepare the town for an attack."
"But..." Emerald spoke up, still behind Hazel. "How can we be so sure that it will happen?"
"We can't." Hazel growled, taking his steps so that he was outside of the building properly. Tyrian followed after him, and Emerald stepped outside as well, taking a few steps into the road. "But we need to prepare anyhow."
"But if we don't know what a maiden is capable of-" Emerald piped up, but snapped her jaw back shut when Watts shot her a glare. She visibly shrank back, and nobody said anything else to her.
Hazel spoke up. "There is high ground where we can position some of us until we are in a more secure position." He made the suggestion before looking at Watts and Cinder each. "You two are the best suited for that position."
Watts rolled his eyes and went back inside wordlessly to get his things. Cinder almost shrank back, but she held her head up high and went in to do the same thing. Once they were out of view, Hazel decided to come in and give further directions for their group.
"Tyrian, you and I will stay low and prepare for a physical confrontation."
That was a good enough role, Tyrian thought. He just nodded his agreement before going in to make sure that he himself would be armed. From outside, Hazel continued to speak, turning his attention onto Emerald.
"What do you want for me to do, sir?" Emerald asked, just within Tyrian's earshot.
"Hide and be prepared to create a distraction." Hazel said, his voice low in volume and him sounding gruff and exhausted as ever. "You can best prepare us for an ambush."
With orders handed out, the entire group scattered just as had been intended. Tyrian stretched out his body as much as he could, just doing what he could to make sure that he wasn't going to be risking any sort of injury.
He found his position, made himself comfortable, and waited.
The communication amongst their group was all but absent. Emerald had decided that she was going to hide by the building that they'd decided to use for shelter. Cinder had taken her place on top of it, while Watts had found a secure location of his own.
Tyrian and Hazel waited on opposite sides of the city gates, both silent and both ready.
It felt like they had been waiting there for hours. Tyrian nearly slipped off to sleep himself, only to be woken back up by the sound of an arrow embedding itself into the wall at his side. He forced himself back awake and shook his head, remembering that he was going to have to be ready.
They just needed for the alleged maiden to arrive.
Either they were going to have an attack, or they were going to split off.
Tyrian didn't know what would be the case.
Another hour or two passed, and the sun began to rise over Mistral. Tyrian let himself look up at it and blinked because if it was morning, then it was time for people to be travelling. He wasn't the only one that was getting annoyed with the situation, that much was clear enough on its own.
Finally, a sound broke through the relative silence of their space.
Tyrian craned his neck, looking for the source of the noise.
It was the sound of hooves against cobblestone, and for someone to be travelling alone they would have had to be confident. Tyrian closed his eyes and took in a deep breath before digging his feet into the ground and leaning forward to place his open palms on the ground in front of him.
It was definitely only one person. Hazel was tense across from him. Emerald was similarly displeased with the situation.
When their visitor arrived in the village, she was cloaked and riding on a white horse. She didn't seem to be looking out for much of anything, but she was rather clearly armed. That in itself should have set off alarms in Tyrian's mind.
She stopped her mount, casting a glance around the village like she was checking for something. Tyrian could have sworn that her eyes were on him for a moment, but she just shook her head like there was nothing there.
"Hello?" The woman called, to someone that wasn't there.
Tyrian watched as Emerald moved forward, prepared to talk at the very least. "Hello?" She called back, stepping into the clearing. She was walking as though she had a limp, playing up something that wasn't there entirely.
Tyrian had absolutely no idea as to what to think, or what Emerald was doing.
The woman pulled her hood down, and Tyrian's eyes widened when he realized that she had dark hair and skin, and large brown eyes. It almost felt... familiar.
Across from him, Tyrian felt the vibrations of Hazel's heartbeat getting faster.
"Are you hurt?" The young woman asked.
"I am!" Emerald called back, slumping against the wall and holding her arm over a false wound. "Can you help me?"
The woman nodded, going back to her horse to get some things. She opened up a saddlepack and removed something from it. "Are you alone here?"
Emerald looked up at the space where Watts was waiting, looking for some sort of permission from the man. She got a nod of approval, and then she decided to keep on going.
"I'm with my partner." She said calmly. "We ran into trouble from some bandits, and we could use some help."
"Bandits?" The brown haired woman asked as she walked up to Emerald's side. She was carrying some sort of mix of Dust in a bottle, but Tyrian couldn't identify what it was. "All the way out here?"
"Yes!" Emerald replied. "Please, can you help us find our teammates?"
"I was on my way to Mistral." The woman explained calmly. "I'm guessing you're from the academy?"
"We are." Emerald lied. "We should be able to find them if we go back that way."
"Where is your partner?" The woman asked, blinking. "Because I wouldn't mind helping you."
Emerald tilted her head back and shouted. "Cinder!"
Tyrian picked his head up, and he was able to see Cinder's silhouette against the moon. She climbed down off of the roof, storing her weapon behind her. She walked out to the road beside Emerald rather confidently, but she was rather obviously playing along with the girl's ploy.
"Can you help us?" Cinder asked, taking a few steps forward and letting herself lean against the wall beside Emerald. "We're a bit of a ways out."
The woman looked between the two of them and nodded before offering a small medical kit to them. Emerald digged into it first, passing off bits to Cinder for what would seem appropriate for whatever the woman was seeing. "I don't think that I'd mind some extra company. Besides, if you two are from the academy you should get back to Haven so that Lionheart knows you're alright anyways."
"Thank you." Emerald said as she slipped down to the ground and began to bandage wounds that weren't there. "We were hiding out here in case we ended up running into trouble. It's possible that our teammates would come through, but with bandits out here-"
"I understand." The woman said, smiling softly and there a quiet in her voice that was almost comforting. "You two don't have to explain yourselves to me."
"Thank you." Emerald said. "We can start moving whenever you're ready, but..." She sighed. "We've been through a lot."
"Well," The woman said, looking from Emerald to Cinder, but still rather obviously oblivious to the others. "I guess that once you two are ready we'll go. Do you have names?"
"Emerald."
Cinder smiled slightly. "Cinder Fall."
"Oh!" The woman said cheerily. "I'm Amber."
"It's nice to meet you." Emerald said with a forced sort of friendliness. "But really, thank you for helping us."
Amber laughed, and her voice was... nice. Kind. "Well, since I'm a huntress part of my job is looking out for others. So it's really nothing."
"Well, thank you anyways." Emerald said.
Tyrian looked across the way from himself to see that Hazel was still there, craning his neck as though that were necessary for him to do. Like he was desperate for a better look at their target. Watts was out of his view, but Tyrian was sure that he was watching just as closely, and he'd definitely caught on with the plan that had been put into action.
They waited, all silent and all doing their best to stay out of view.
Amber helped Cinder and Emerald both onto her horse, and then began to lead them out of the village, leaving Hazel, Tyrian, and Watts alone like they had been so many times before.
Once the others were far out of view, they met by their group's things.
"We have a new objective, gentlemen." Watts announced plainly as he bundled his things. He looked exhausted, and that was something that Tyrian felt the same way about. None of them had been able to do much in the way of sleeping the night before. "Since we are apparently going to be bandits now. I know that I can't play that role, but-" His eyes fell on Tyrian and a smile split his face. "I know that we have two men that can do so."
"No." Hazel grumbled. "I refuse to aid in this."
"You know your duty, Hazel." Watts said, taking a few steps in. "I doubt that Tyrian would refuse this, but you-" He grinned. "Is this bringing up bad memories for you, Hazel?"
Hazel shot back a glare that could have made a lesser man drop dead. He shouldered his bag and followed after the others once the coast was clear.
Watts nodded to Tyrian, and Tyrian gathered both his things and what was left of Cinder's so that they could continue on their path, once again just the three of them like things had been before.
Now, it felt like there was much more purpose to them travelling together.