RWBY Through Worlds

187: We Lost Ourselves?

All the groups lost track of time because the sun never set.

The odd thing was, most of them forgot to even wonder why it had been up so long.

When Shine pointed it out finally, Wally said that the sun never set in the north sometimes--maybe it was that.

"But it moves," Shine said. "I don't think it's moved more than a few feet along our vision... That's not that far."

"But nothing else is happening," Wally said.

"And that's the weirder part--something else should be happening," Shine said.

"You're too paranoid, Likstar." Torchwick adjusted his hat.

Neo nodded.

"I'm sorry, I'm too paranoid about being in the land of Grimm and nothing attacking us for a whole day?" Shine said.

They shrugged.

"It's a welcome change." Theo was carrying Vara again. "We could use a respite from all that, don't you think? I don't mind some quality time to not be trying not to get eaten."

"Mmm." Vara had a book in her one hand.

"You know, if you have enough energy to read that, why do you need him to carry you?" Jaune said.

"Shh." Vara put a finger to her lips behind Theo's head.

Pyrrha shook her head and smiled. "Maybe I'm losing it, but that's kind of cute, not... weird."

"It's still weird," Cinder said.

"How would you know?" Vara said snippily. "You're not interested in men or anyone else."

"I never said that," Cinder said.

"Trust me," Theo said, "say you're not, for your own sake."

Vara was eyeing Cinder like she was a target.

"You know that I have this." Cinder held up her Grimm arm. "I could just take those powers off your hands if you don't want them so badly."

"Thanks, but I decided against the surgery option," Vara said. "And if you're going to suck the life out of me, you'd have to at least propose first." [I apologize for this joke. But it is in character.]

"Oh..." Pyrrha made a face.

Wally almost laughed and then saw Shine glaring at him.

"Well," he changed the subject, "do you think we're getting close to Salem?"

"I hope not," Vara muttered.

Shine consulted the map.

"I think we're... actually not doing too badly. These spire things seem to be much farther west. I think we caught up to our trail. At the rate we're going, we might reach her in about 2 days... Of course, that assumes we find the rest of the group and don't have any more unpleasant encounters."

She glanced up warily again.

"Let's hope," Wally said. "But you know, maybe if nothing is attacking us, it's not attacking them either. Maybe it's like, after all that fear and anger, there's a calm."

"Before the storm," Cinder said.

"You know--" Shine looked at her. "--I find it weird that you are the only one who's agreeing with me that this doesn't make sense."

"I can't agree with you now?" Cinder said snippily.

"No, it's just weird."

"So what? I think the lack of something is uncharacteristic of Salem," Cinder said. "That's all. She wouldn't do it if there wasn't something worse coming."