Blake poked at the fire that the Huntsman had lit. "I thought you did transformation stuff," she mused.

Qrow looked her way with a lopsided smirk. "Well, I transformed these sticks and detritus into flame."

"Funny."

Qrow snorted, but continued on more seriously. "I do— it's my primary study— but locking oneself into a single aspect of magic is just wasteful. Conjuring flame is an extremely useful spell, which is why most any wizard knows how to do it before anything else. I'm also versed in several other utility spells, but they're not particularly interesting."

"What about Yang?" Blake asked, her eyes locked onto their small flame. She watched the smoke climb, then lazily spread, some part of it being caught by the canopy before it could escape. "I've only ever seen her do fire."

Qrow waved his fire-poking-stick around and nodded. "Astute observation."

Blake huffed. "Any further explanations for that?"

"Not really," the Huntsman said, shrugging. "She just likes fire, always has. Some people have more of a…" he rolled his hand, tilted his head, and took a moment to find the right word to pluck before continuing, "affinity towards certain things, I suppose. Like our resident Schnee; I can tell she's more widely versed than other mages, but she's clearly got an inherent leaning towards the frostier side."

"It must be nice, living with such natural conveniences as your magic," Blake bitterly mumbled, thumbing the blade of her dagger— it desperatelyneeded to be honed. "You humans have it easy."

Qrow gave her a sidelong look. He pressed his lips into a hard, thin line before turning back to the fire. "Not all of us are magically gifted, you know."

Blake scoffed. "Wonder what that's like."

"I'm just saying," Qrow continued, "we're not so monolithic, having a propensity towards magic doesn't preclude the myriad problems we have."

"Woah, big fancy words," Blake mocked, waggling her hands. "How scholarly of you."

A long sigh— the sigh of someone with thinning patience— hissed through Qrow's nostrils. "Stop being bitter, you can't be angry at an entire race just because they have something you don't."

Blake shot to her feet with a growl, leveling her dagger at the Huntsman as fury glowed in her eyes. "I can! I can be angry that you have something we don't, because we had something that you stole! You have your magic, but you've taken our gates too! You've taken our homes! Our realm is nothing anymore— the most powerful empire in the planes, torn and burned to ashes by a bunch of spell-slinging monkeys!"

Qrow shut his mouth and let her seethe. She stomped closer, wildly gesturing with her dagger.

"And now we've been reduced to your slaves!It's either that, or scrounge for bits in the husk and shadow of the cities you burned!" Blake sucked in a big gulp of air. Her eyes brimmed with tears. "We're gone! There is no 'people' for us anymore! There is no fay!"

Qrow raised his hands disarmingly. He waited to speak, keeping an imploring gaze on Blake until she lowered her knife and stepped back. When she did, he said, "And yet, here you are."

Blake immediately whirled on him to start shouting again, but the words bunched up in her throat. It gave her a second to calm down, just long enough for a rueful laugh to bubble past her lips instead. "Yeah. Here I am. Stuck with a bunch of humans— one of whom stabbed me in the mouth— with no idea where I am or where to go." She rocked her head back up, hoping to see the stars, but the canopy above was too thick. Blake sighed. "Watcher's willy, I'm probably going to die here— with you."

Qrow snorted. "And what's so wrong with that?"

Blake's answer came without thought, without consideration, throwing itself from her mouth before its contents even parsed her brain:

"I haven't told Yang—" Blake sucked in a sudden breath and bit her lip, catching her words, locking them tight before she could say something she might regret. "Nothing, nevermind."

Yang's head was on a swivel, her jaw was set forward, and her nose was held high. She took in a deep breath.

The fragrant prick of muddled spice surrounded her, so pervasive that it numbed her senses after focusing on it for too long. Everything smelled magic here, making it hard to pick out scents, but she tried nonetheless.

She could vaguely catch floral whiffs of the fay family they left behind, but they were all too close and muddled by ambient scents to distinguish individually. No lavender was among them.

The forest— Forever Fall, as Weiss called it— was pungent. A million implacable scents filtered through the treeline, assaulting Yang's magical senses. She tried to breathe it in, but its heaviness sat in her lungs like smoke, flooding everything until she took a moment to cough it all out. No lavender, no tobacco. Nothing. Yang took a smaller whiff.

Roses and mint followed behind, mingling, mint on the rose's arm, sharing little giggles and pecking each other carelessly. Yang grit her teeth. "You could help, you know," she snapped over her shoulder, directing her ire at the Schnee.

Weiss jumped, caught in the middle of a conversation with the Huntress' sister— less of a conversation, really, more like she'd just been watching Ruby's lips move, letting the girl's rambling words caress her ears while she held the smith's bicep. She blushed, but didn't let her champion go. "W-well, I… er… I don't have much I could help with. I don't know any tracking spells."

Ruby, whose rant on the pains of working with iron had been ungraciously interrupted, sourly lifted her new longsword— Valerius', one of the many things they pilfered before Weiss froze him— from its sheath before letting it fall back in. "Nothing I can help with, unless we run into some vines."

Weiss shivered, but Yang growled before the once-heiress could recount Forever Fall's most annoying and abundant foliage. "You could try to come up with something," the Huntress hissed. "This was your idea, after all."

Ruby cocked her head. "Well… you wanted to find her too, right? I mean, she is your—"

Yang snapped her head towards the smith, making Ruby's jaw clap shut. "She's not—" Yang's throat suddenly felt thick, forcing her to gulp the words down and restart. "I mean— I don't know— I don't know if she… if she can, or if I should… or if she even wants… ugh. Nevermind."

Ruby quickened her pace and approached the Huntress, ignoring the sparks flickering in and out of existence around her knuckles. "But you do want to find her, right? That way you could ask?"

Yang bit her lip and looked away, her feelings visibly knotted behind her expression.

Ruby pulled her sister into a half-hug. "Uncle Qrow is probably with her too, and we definitely want to see him."

Yang gave a curt nod in begrudging agreement, but Weiss felt a little part of her chest wrench and whine, reminding her of the rip she'd torn in their uncle's chest. Aulus said they'd be forgiving, but…

'Don't worry, humans at his age get pretty sappy. You'll be okay.'

Weiss tutted.

'You should tell them,' Aulus insisted. 'It'll make things easier once you find him.'

Which part would she tell? The sap? The stabbing?

'Yes.'

Weiss bit her cheeks. The pouch she'd taken from Valerius was full of sap vials. The pouch felt heavier than it really was, as if it wanted to remind her it was there, to tempt her into its crimson web. She wanted it— the power, welled up in her veins until it leaked out of her mouth, her skin, her eyes, an itching desperation; she hadn't even felt that power when she was in its trance, but its memory was carved into her bones.

She knew exactly what she could do with that power; she would shove her hands into the forest floor and spread her magic out, freezing labyrinthine tracks of permafrost across that entire bed of wet soil, her ice chasing over every inch until it found fay feet. It'd be so quick, so easy, Yang would appreciate it, Ruby would love her for it.

'Stop that. If you insist on keeping that stuff, then we're only using it for emergencies.'

Weiss shook her head vigorously, forcing the pink haze from her brain. Ruby was staring with concern— Weiss had fallen behind, with one hand shivering over the flap of her sap-pouch.

"Weiss?" Ruby's voice was tiny but stark, cutting through Weiss' mental fog. When speaking turned out to be hard, the smith came closer, her lovely eyes fond and full of care as she placed a hand on Weiss' arm. "Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

'Tell her, right now.'

Ruby was watching her expression. For such a cold, steely color, her eyes were impossibly warm. "Weiss?"

The pouch was so heavy. If she told Ruby, she'd worry. She'd take it from her. Weiss wouldn't be able to protect her. She'd be just as useless as when she joined this group— a royal leech.

The hand moved from her arm, slowly drifting up until its rough calluses met Weiss' cheek. "Talk to me," she begged. From up ahead, they could hear Yang calling for them.

'Don't you trust her?'

She did— she did! She trusted no one more.

"Please."

'Prove it.'

Weiss' hand slipped into the pouch. The vials went tink-t-tink against each other. Ruby's gaze flitted over to the pouch. "What's that?" she asked.

"Ruby," Weiss' voice shook out like a haggard last breath. She pulled her hand from the pouch and extended it towards her paramour, her open palm displaying a small vial of tempting, beautiful liquid. "I hurt Qrow."