Qrow had let himself drink a single drop of the sap, just to kickstart the healing of his chest wound, but he'd refused anything else, so it was up to Blake to follow Weiss' footsteps. She had to tediously saw at the vines with her small knives, making little headway since she'd left.

Her mouth still hurt where Weiss had stabbed up into her palate, and even if her Aura had sealed it, she licked it constantly. Angrily. Fucking Qrow, that dimwitted addlepate. How much fucking sap had he given her? A human her size, especially one with no experience, would barely be able to take a single drop, and she must've gotten a spoonful, at least.

She couldn't be angry at Weiss. Well, she shouldn't, but she was planning on greeting her with a punch to the face. Sure, it hadn't really been her fault— if anything it was Qrow's fault— but she stabbed Blake inthe mouth, then she nearly carved the drunkard's heart out of his damn chest.

In Blake's opinion, she was appropriately miffed; she'd been left to deal with the absolute moaning baby that was the injured Qrow, on top of everything else. He limped forward on his walking stick with a pained stare, his stressed features marking fresh lines over his face and pulling more hairs from his bald spot.

"A little further left," Qrow told her.

Blake rolled her eyes and sawed a little further left, her wrist and forearm aching as she forced her small blade through the umpteenth fucking vine in the Forever Fall. They were lucky the place was always damp, because Weiss' steps were much easier to track than the path she cut through the vines, which just grew back after a few hours.

"You, uh… smell anything magical?" Blake asked awkwardly, unsure of how to phrase that question.

Qrow shook his head. "No— well, yes, but everything here smells magical, overpoweringly so. Perhaps it's because this realm is unfamiliar."

Blake made a noise, something between a reluctant whine and an exasperated groan. "Eeeh, that's debatable. It's probably the dust circulating through everything."

"Everything?"

"More or less."

Qrow, apparently feeling conversational, made little noises of pain as he walked a little closer to her. "And why is that?"

"Why's what?"

"Why does everything have dust?"

Blake looked at him oddly, then at the sky, then back at him. "Have you been here before?"

Qrow's expression sombered. "No," he lied.

Blake tutted, but didn't call him on it. She looked skyward, seeking a hole through the thick red canopy. "Look there," she told him, pointing to one such gap in the foliage. "What do you see?"

Qrow squinted at the gap, to the shimmering sky beyond. "It… sparkles?"

Blake smirked and shook her head. "Huntsman, do you know how old I am?"

Qrow raised both eyebrows and recoiled at the sudden, sourceless question. "Uh, no? This is the most I've spoken with you."

A quiet chuckle rose from Blake. "Fair enough. I'm sure you've guessed there aren't really days here, so the best approximation would be…"

Qrow watched her brow furrow, expression pinching tight, fingers tapping her chin.

"I think… thirty-five, forty years? Somewhere in that range."

Qrow choked on air. "Y-you're—"

Blake turned one amber eye upon him, dagger tight against her palm. "Call me old. I dare you."

Qrow's sickly pale skin turned an embarrassed scarlet, his hands flying to wave apologetically. "N-no, I mean— you look so young—"

"For my age?"

"I never said that!"

Blake cackled, waving off her false offense. "Anyways, I've lived about…" she counted on her fingers, "about fifteen years on Remnant. And in all that time, you know what I've never seen?"

"What?"

"A telescope."

Qrow blinked. "A what?"

Blake laughed haughtily, punctuating it with a grunt as she worked her dagger through vines. "A telescope. Tele-scope. It's a device that can see deeply into the night sky."

Qrow raised a curious eyebrow, not that she could see it with her back turned. "Not much to see here."

"That's what you think, human."

"That is what I think, fay."

"Don't sass me."

"Don't be so vague."

Blake rolled her eyes. "It's not always like this, you know."

Qrow reeled. "Huh? Wh— how would the sky change?"

"So says the one whose sky changes."

"That's—" the Huntsman groaned. "That's night and day, Blake."

"Which don't exist here. Our sky changes differently."

"Dammit, Blake, just spit it out!"

"There's a giant fish in the sky that sucks the energy from our realm."

Qrow coughed. "Giant fi—"

Blake ignored him completely. "Sometimes it moves, making visible the stars beyond. Before the war, we used those moments to view the heavens. We captured them in paintings. We decorated the ceilings with them. We made maps of the stars with only scant glimpses. What could only be seen for seconds, maybe minutes, rarely an hour, we studied for centuries."

"Wait, there's a giant fish—"

"We built cities around great telescopes!" Blake announced, throwing her hands to the holy heavens. "Libraries filled with archives of their being! Thousands of lives devotedto their viewing! Roads and baths, glass rotundas, temples— temples! A godless race finding faith within the beauty of the heavens, which they can only see as briefly as a prayer!"

"You can't just say there's a—"

"Then you came and burned it all," Blake finished dryly. "Thanks for that."

Qrow waited.

Blake waited.

Qrow waited.

Blake waited.

Qrow wai— "You're telling me there's a giant fish—"

"In the sky, yes!"

"Okay, sit here."

Weiss obliged the command of her paramour, though she gave the smith a quizzical look. "Why?"

Ruby leaned down, close to her face— close enough for Weiss to blush and avert her gaze. Ruby didn't seem affected though, that or she was too focused to notice they were inches from kissing. In a strange home, with a strange family, and Yang watching.

"Open your mouth."

"What!" Weiss and Yang both shouted, blushing simultaneously as Ruby jumped at their volume.

The smith realized what she was saying and reddened with the others, but she wouldn't be deterred. "This is important!" she whined. "Just do it, Weiss. For me."

Her first peaceful moments back with Ruby, and the girl was making her do this. Oh well, she'd debased herself worse chasing the whims of her heart. Begrudgingly, she parted her lips.

Ruby's mouth pressed into a thin, frustrated line. "Wider."

Weiss' eyes flicked over to Yang. Her eyes were wide. She was red with mortification, but made no attempt to voice it, leaving the duelist to the wolves— or the smith, in this case, who was staring expectantly. Weiss averted her eyes and obliged.

Ruby leaned closer, her head bobbing around as she tried to catch a good angle in the inferior interior light. When it was clear this wasn't enough, she started prying the girl's cheek out of the way with her fingers. Yang coughed. Weiss yelped, almost guillotining Ruby's fingers from the shock, but the smith remained steadfast, even as all three of them started to glow crimson.

While Yang and Weiss' blushes intensified, Ruby's dulled under macabre curiosity. To the others' shock and terror, the smith started poking around in Weiss' mouthwith another finger. Weiss made a noise in protest, but before she could form that sound into real words, Ruby's finger nudged… something. Something sore, something which Weiss hadn't noticed among the searing pain over her left eye. Worse, when Ruby touched it, it felt… good?

On the other hand, Ruby was worried. Where once had been a full set of whites— likely bleached and only a little offset— now there menaced four pairs of vicious fangs, forcing out Weiss' canines and incisors as long, sharp replacements had shoved their way to the surface. They barged through her gums, making way for themselves by forcing her other teeth aside, causing the rest of her teeth to cram together and overlap slightly.

"Weiss," Ruby started, still staring at the wolfish replacements, "This might be very bad, but I'm going to say something you probably won't like."

Weiss made a worried sound; it was an accurate summation of her feelings, so she didn't bother closing her mouth for real words.

"I think you may have been bitten by a werewolf."

Weiss jolted, making her teeth bump into Ruby's finger. Her gums ached with an extremely strange kind of soreness. The feeling made her reel, allowing her to finally shut her mouth and speak. "W-what in Ozma's name are you doing!"

Ruby seemed to break from her stoic spell and realized that she had just been caught sticking her fingers in Weiss' mouth— in front of her sister, as well. Finally, she was the one going red. "Y-your teeth! Fangs! They weren't—"

Weiss' hands flew to her mouth and covered it, muffling her voice as she and Yang simultaneously repeated, "Fangs?"

The brawler ran to them, making Weiss shy away even more. "Fangs?" Yang parroted once more, questioning her sister this time. "That's— that's not— werewolves aren't even real!"

Ruby whirled on Yang, her face oddly heartbroken. "They're not?"

Weiss, desperate to continue any line of conversation that left her mental state unquestioned and mouth unviolated, answered for the brawler. "That's debatable; lycanid diseases have been recorded, but that was before the Great War, so most accounts are… apocryphal at best."

Ruby squinted. "Apoc… huh?"

"They don't have much evidence," Weiss supplied.

"But why do you have fangs!" Yang asked, forcing Ruby aside as she too attempted to stare at Weiss' teeth. Unfortunately for her, she'd had enough of being prodded, and pushed the brawler away with an annoyed huff.

"I probably shifted!" Weiss answered.

Yang's mouth hinged wide in shock. Ruby, extremely confused, asked, "Shifted?"

"You shifted?" Yang's volume overpowered her sister's. "You lucky— how! Why?"

Weiss raised one brow. Now that she knew what it was, she couldn't stop noticing the pinching feeling in her gums, as if they were overly full. She averted her gaze away from her paramour, overpowered by shame. "I may have… imbibed on something I shouldn't have during my fight with Valerius. I didn't have a choice at the time."

"That clarifies nothing," Yang responded.

"Valerius?" probed Ruby. "Who's that?"

"This realm is full of dust, which is inherently magical," Weiss supplied for the two. "I needed to sustain my Aura since that fay was going to kill me, so I ate a substance teeming with the stuff— purely out of desperation. You know what happens when your Aura becomes too powerful?"

That last question was directed to Yang, leaving Ruby to try and grapple with whatever her paramour was spouting. "Wow," Yang enviously breathed, "You seriously shifted?"

"What's shifting!" Ruby cried, tired of being left out.

Weiss lifted her chin imperiously, perfectly happy to lord her wealth of knowledge over these clods. "Well, my gleaming Ruby," Yang's eye twitched at that, but Weiss continued, unbothered, "Your Aura is a manifestation of your soul, something which represents its strength and individuality. You understand that, right?"

Ruby didn't, at least not the actual explanation of her Aura, since it was just a regular part of her life. But now she did, and got to learn the word 'manifestation' on top of that. "I do now."

"That's what heals you," Weiss gestured to her own face, specifically the still-burning scar up the left side of her face. "Without it, this would be considerably worse."

Ruby nodded, then suddenly made a face of confusion. "Wait, you just got that, didn't you? How did you heal so quickly?"

Weiss shrugged. "Human Auras are stronger than fay."

Ruby blinked. "Oh, uh…"

"You're half-fay, so yours works slower than ours."

The curiosity on Ruby's face darkened. That's why it had taken so long to heal. "Oh. Y-yeah, I knew that."

Weiss patted the smith's shoulder, trying her best to comfort whatever was clearly wrong.

But, before Weiss could impart any platitudes, Ruby drew the conversation away from herself. "What does that have to do with… whatever you were saying?"

Weiss drew her hand back and sighed. "Well, if your Aura can spur changes in your body— such as healing— and your soul is a manifestation of your being, what could happen if there was too much?"

Ruby's features scrunched tightly in thought. Yang remained silent, though she was growing moderately jealous of how effectively Weiss was convincing her sister to learn. "If there was too much…" Ruby looked around in thought before her eyes locked onto the duelist's mouth, picturing the fangs within. "It could change you?"

Weiss nodded, giving the girl a proud smile before the ensuing stares reminded her of her new fangs, which she sheepishly hid. "That is correct, Ruby. You're quite quick."

Ruby beamed, blushing at the compliment.

Weiss continued her explanation. "So, if something I did could empower my Aura, it could cause changes in my body, whether I like it or not."

Yang and Ruby both made an 'oooh' sound, but Ruby recovered from her revelation the fastest. "Wait, so why teeth?"

The pleasant grin on Weiss' face immediately died, replaced by pure dread. "That… doesn't matter, right now. We should speak to that fay."

"Doesn't matter?" Yang loudly interjected. "You have fangs! That matters!"

Weiss stood from her chair and turned, keeping the surely-visible maelstrom of emotions hidden from her friends. "Come. Let's see what Valerius has to say."

"Is that the fay? You know him?" Ruby asked.

Weiss shook her head. "Aulus does."

Weiss tried to walk away, but Ruby grabbed her sleeve. "Who's Aulus?"

"My sword."

"The curse has a name?" that came from Yang, though Ruby was clearly going to ask the same thing.

"He is not a curse." Weiss snapped defensively. "There's a soul trapped in the sword, a fay one named Aulus. Somehow, he knows the one who tried to kill me."

In her head, Aulus grumbled. 'That doesn't mean I want to talk about it.'

"You will," Weiss hissed towards him— they'd propped him up in a corner.

Ruby was suddenly in her face, her eyes gleaming with intense interest. "What'd he say? What does he do? How did he get like this?"

Weiss gave the girl a fond look, but pushed her away. "Not important right now. We have a fay to question."