The pte of smoked Juntleheim is set down on the small round table.

  The waiter gives the four seated at it a dirty look before slithering away.

  Mystic is the first to dig in. Cassandra questions her as she pces one of the fish on her pte. “I never asked, but where have we been getting all the coins to afford stuff like this anyway?”

  Mystic smirks, “I can open portals to anywhere as long as I know the specific location,” She takes a bite of fish, “and I do mean anywhere.” Anvil leans to whisper to Cassandra, “She’s trying to say—”

  “I know what she’s hinting at, Anvil.” Cassandra rolls her eyes. Her long hair settles over her shoulders as she shrugs. Smith has slowly been growing hair as well. They run their scarred hand through the faint strands of it as they stare at the empty pte. “You steal it from banks across the universe.”

  Mystic nods and takes a bite of fish. “Precisely, my Smith.” Smith drops their hand down from their scalp and into their p. They aren’t shocked by Mystic’s ck of morals. It’s nothing compared to what they’ve previously seen. But it was different then. The people they were with were different. She was different. Became different at least...

  That isn’t all, though. Smith is finding it difficult to be shocked by anything at all. They weren’t even shocked when Mystic leapt on Varaphis. No. What they felt then was something else. A different feeling. The same one that seemed to fuel them after they saw what the Forge had become. The same feeling they feel now when they close their eyes and see Adamus. Smith makes a fist with their scarred hand, gripping the bandana wrapped around it.

  Cassandra narrows her gaze on them. She swallows her food before asking, “Are you not gonna eat anything?” Anvil looks at Smith and answers for them, “We’ll both wait for the sad.” Smith squints at their brother. Sad? They think, I didn’t expect that from you, Anvil.

  Mystic certainly didn’t expect it either. “Sad?” She asks, “Why sad, my Anvil?”

  Anvil crosses his wide arms, resting his elbows on the table as he leans forward. “I don’t want to eat something that had a life of its own. Filling my stomach with leaves and bread is better than filling it with flesh and bone.”

  Mystic scoffs, meat flying out of her open mouth, “Well, no one eats the bones.” She stuffs the rest of the fish in her mouth and chomps it down as she speaks, “Besides, everything has a life of its own, trees, fish, even grass, but those lives end. All lives end. Such is the circle of life, and life is precious, life is all, and all that other nonsense we were taught.”

  “You taught it,” Smith states, gring at Mystic. She smiles with her mouth full. “Have you heard the human saying, ‘Do as I say, not as I do?”

  “No.”

  “Well, learn it.” Mystic tosses another fish onto her pte. Cassandra takes a sip of the complimentary water that was brought to the table before the fish. “You’ve become fond of humanity?” She asks Mystic as she sets down the cup.

  “I wouldn’t say that, but it does…” She taps her chin. “Intrigue me.”

  “It shouldn’t.” Smith mumbles loud enough for the table to hear. They grow flustered at the judging eyes. Wishing that they had remained silent, they hastily expin themself, “I didn’t mean it like that. I—”

  “Have a point,” Cassandra states, “Humans are awful.” She takes another sip of water.

  Anvil and Mystic both exchange gnces and fumble out responses. “But Cassandra, you are huma—”

  “Life is precious, all life, no matter what.”

  Anvil’s statement draws the most eyes. Smith clenches a fist and sms their palm on the table, “I watched you rip someone’s head open!”

  The entire eatery goes silent. Smith slumps back in their chair, growing red and embarrassed as everyone returns to their food and drinks. The waiter brings out the sad. It is only after he leaves that Smith speaks again. “I’m sorry, Anvil,” They huff, “But I don’t get it. After what we saw in Rome, what you did in Rome, how can you say something like that?”

  “How can you abandon the litany you once swore yourself to?” Anvil questions with the squint of his eyes before expining, “Rome weighs on me. The bde we’ve been carrying weighs on me,” He sighs, “So much weighs on me.”

  Anvil unfolds his arms and reaches for the sad bowl. “You were right back then. Branaphis would have spared you. I should have let him expin himself. I shouldn’t have killed him. I…” He sets a clump of lettuce and mushrooms on his pte, “I can still see his face when I close my eyes, and I see you looking back at me.”

  And I still see Adamus looking back at me as his very Mother lies dead in my arms. Smith thinks before speaking, “I was wrong back then. Anyone who threatens life, threatens us, deserves to be punished.”

  Cassandra adds some sad to her pte of fish as she considers Smith’s statement. “Punished?” She wonders aloud.

  “Don’t you want to punish Vanessa?” Smith asks. Cassandra reaches for her fork and begins to speak, but the harshness of Smith’s words force her to think, Do I want to punish Vanessa? What does Smith even mean by punish? She grasps her fork, “You mean kill?” She stabs into a leaf of lettuce and a slice of fish, “Don’t you?”

  “That doesn’t answer the question.”

  “Answer mine,” Cassandra demands.

  “Yes.” Smith replies, “I think that some people deserve to die.”

  “They do.” Mystic nods. “Some of them. You said something simir once, right, Cassandra?”

  “She also just said that humans are awful.” Anvil adds. Cassandra takes a bite of what she’s gathered on her fork. “So I did, and for the record, I’m not human. Not entirely, anyway. My father was one of you.”

  “Debatable.” Mystic scoffs. “What does that mean?” Cassandra asks. Mystic shrugs.

  “Tell me,” Cassandra demands. She’s finding herself making more and more demands tely. What other way is there to get what she so desperately needs?

  Mystic takes a sip of water while Cassandra gres at her. Anvil and Smith watch her as well. Anvil gnces at Smith, “You weren’t wrong, back then. In Rome. About life being precious, I mean.” He states before wondering, “Why the change of heart?”

  You know why, Smith thinks with a scowl. Everyone here knows why.

  “Your Father is one of us in name only.” Mystic snorts after setting down her cup, “That Schor left us long before the Rusting. I don’t know what he did in that time, but he may be partially to bme for this wild hunt we’re on.”

  “Ebrote.”

  “Cassandra…”

  “You’ve avoided this enough, Mystic. Out with it.”

  Mystic looks to her siblings. They both gre back at her. She groans, “Fine. Your Father was one of us, yes, but as I said, he left the Forge, abandoned it. He and a set of others. They all fled out into the universe.”

  “Is that why there’s so much Machinist stuff scattered around the universe?” Cassandra gnces at Anvil and Smith. They both shrug. “That was before my time.” Anvil states. “And long before mine, as well,” Smith adds.

  “Precisely.” Mystic takes her st bite of fish. “I don’t expect you two to know or understand it, but Cassandra’s Father is essentially a traitor to us Machinists, or perhaps deserter would be the better word.”

  That’s it? Cassandra thinks, He just left the Forge? She isn’t sure what type of answer she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t such a tame one. Still, it is an answer, it will do for now, even if Cassandra still feels like she is yet to see the full picture.

  “So, Terra-Draxus.” Mystic cps, “I had a feeling that our journey would bring us there. I wonder if that Ryomen fellow will show us to that temple and catacombs that housed two of the heads… Although I suppose the more urgent question I should be asking is when are we leaving?”

  “Once we’re done eating,” Anvil says, lifting a forkful of lettuce and dried seaweed into his mouth. Smith begins to eat as well. They set a clump of the sad on their pte and stab into it as someone off in the distance yells, “There they are!”

  “Or we could just go now,” Mystic suggests, hopping down from her chair as Varaphis approaches the table with Branaphis’s mother and a group of pirates.

  Smith and Cassandra stand. Anvil grabs the runed bde at his side and stands as well.

  Varaphis draws a bde. “The white-haired child is mine.”

  “I’ll take the thin pale one.” The mother procims, unsheathing a dagger that a pirate hands her. The pirates themselves seem not to have any particur preference. They all just want “Vengeance for our dead!”

  Mystic snaps her fingers.

  Blue light fshes over the group of four. The light fades into a muddy scene of ramshackle homes lining a dark horizon. A Qrow flies down from that horizon and nds atop one of the homes to gaze upon the four strangers.

  “Violin.” Cassandra makes her st demand of the day. Mystic sighs and snaps again. In a flicker of light, a severed finger drops to the ground of Terra-Draxus, and Cassandra’s violin case drops into her arms. Smith looks at the finger in disgust as the rest of the group walks into town.

  “Ryomen Kaga,” Mystic gnces back at Anvil and Cassandra, who she is already five paces ahead of, “Shall we simply just start asking around for him?”

  “No.” Smith spits, rushing to join the trio ahead of them. “We don’t want to make the same mistakes we did on Ourobeel.”

  “Mistakes that we just saw the consequences of,” Anvil adds.

  Mystic nods, “Fair enough, so where do you suggest we begin then?”

  “Probably there.” Cassandra points off into the distance at a rge, luminous structure sitting on the end of the horizon. A Bioship descends on it.

  Mystic snaps her fingers.

  The four are gone before the townsfolk even notice they were there. However, the Qrow lets out a squawk at their departure and takes off toward the spaceport. Another bird flies over it.

  The hawk matches the Qrow’s movements, perfectly synchronizing with it before it dives. The Qrow rings out the closest thing it can to a scream as the hawk's cws rip into her. She attempts to fight back, but the hawk’s beak stabs into her bck eye, blinding her. The hawk's talons then pierce the Qrow’s heart.

  She falls to the ground.

  Dead.

  “Qrow.”

  Galihend calls. “Qrow.”

  Her getin cell fights against her as she twitches in pain.

  Galihend cracks her neck. The cell twists with her. She sighs, exhausted and defeated, “Fuck…”

  Feydrum steps inside the cell. Before he can ask for the typical daily update that he has asked for every day he’s come to see Galihend since Vanessa’s case was settled, she tells him that “Qrow on Terra-Draxus dead.”

  “Fuck.” Feydrum kicks the getin floor. It shifts around his foot and pushes back at him.

  He steps back and presses his fingers to his wide brow, “Please tell me that you at least saw Cassandra there before your bird died.”

  “I did,” Galihend confirms.

  Feydrum breathes a sigh of relief. “Good, you didn’t happen to see or hear anything else before it died, did you?”

  “Hmmm…” Galihend recalls, “Something worth noting. Conversation. Heard st night before group left Ourobeel.”

  Feydrum crosses his arms, “What was it?”

  “One I fought. Had suspicions, now know what they truly seek.”

  Feydrum’s brow rises. “Which is?”

  Galihend raises her blind head. Even though he knows that the woman is blind, Feydrum swears that she can see him. She’s staring into his soul right now with her white eyes, with that long scar running across them. “They seek vengeance for Scorched Archer.”

  Galihend says, “They want to kill Adamus Atheneum.”