[More of this song from Sleeping Beauty. Put it to 1:30 for only the creepy part.]

https://youtu.be/am-0gXBHgc0

Emerald smacked the fruit out of Sun's hand and it burst onto the ground, making a pulp like a squashed berry.

That made the sweet smell stronger.

"What's your problem?" Blake asked. "Aren't you hungry?"

"Am I hungry? For this?" Emerald said. "Do you not see this?! We're standing by a Grimm pond! And it's growing some kind of weird plant with fruit that you almost just ate!"

"Do you mean this?" Nora had one of the buds in her hand. "It looks like a flower to me."

"Well, yeah, but not like that!" Emerald examined it. She looked closer. "AHH!"

The flower had... little teeth-like strands inside of it instead of pollen stalks.

"Put it down, Nora." Emerald pulled out her knives.

"Em, what is your problem?" Mercury said, picking off one of the fruits.

"Mercury, put it down!" Emerald screamed.

"Why?" he said.

"Just do it!" Emerald said desperately.

"I don't see the problem," Hazel said.

"Yeah, it looks normal to me." Nora sniffed at the flower.

Her eyes glazed over immediately, and she lowered her hand, letting it fall.

Emerald, freaking out, stomped on it, but that only released the odor more.

It was making her feel sick... In fact...

Emerald promptly threw up.

One wouldn't think that would a reassuring thing, but it seemed to jar Mercury and Ren a little.

"Ew..." Mercury said.

But for a second he seemed a bit more focused. "Are you feeling okay?"

Emerald wiped her face. "No, I just threw up! Because this place is nauseating. That smell... Don't you feel sick?"

"I feel fine..." Sun said.

He suddenly took a bite of the fruit before Emerald could stop him--when had he picked another one?

"SUN!" she yelled.

"It's fine, Emerald," Blake said. "We'll just stop for a short time, then we can leave. But it's kind of hot, and I'm kind of dirty, so..." She moved toward that pond.

"That's a Grimm pond!" Emerald grabbed Blake's arm before she could step into it.

The Grimm themselves moved toward the pond and waded in without being bothered.

Emerald almost preferred the Grimm to whatever this was. At least they were familiar ugly things.

"Hazel, help me!" She tugged at Blake, who was a lot stronger than she looked.

She yanked, and Emerald's feet slipped.

"I feel kinda sleepy now," Sun said in a very weird voice.

He sank down.

"Sun!" Emerald shrieked.

"Em, can you stop yelling?" Mercury rubbed his head. "It's more serene here than anywhere else. Why ruin it?"

"It's not serene, you big dip! It's creepy. There's something in the air, in the food. Don't eat it!" Emerald said, and Blake angrily threw her off and stepped toward the Grimm pond.

She shot out her knife line and looped it around one of the bushes, then she looped the other end around Blake's torso somehow and hooked it.

"Hey, let go!" Blake said, tugging, but she wasn't able to pull the bush out, thankfully.

Emerald tried to twist the chain so that Blake couldn't undo it from behind, and then she slapped Nora as hard as she could.

Nora barely blinked at her.

Emerald's heart was pounding.

"Ren?" she said.

Ren was kind of just staring at the Grimm... The scent of the plants was hitting harder. Emerald wondered if he'd already inhaled too much.

Hazel, who would be a lot harder to put under than anyone else, wasn't quite that out of it, but he seemed puzzled by Emerald's behavior.

"Why are you so upset?" he said.

Emerald tried a different track.

"Hazel, I need you to listen to me," she said, and she activated her Semblance so that he'd only hear her voice in his mind... she hoped. "Whatever you're seeing or hearing in their place is some kind of trick. I don't know how they're doing it... It's like the whole thing is my Semblance but worse... I need you to help me. Just ignore everything else but what I'm telling you."

Given Hazel's life history, that wouldn't be that unusual for him.

Hazel stared at her and glanced around, then he nodded. "What?"

"Get Blake--" Emerald pointed to her. "--away from... I dunno what you see, but whatever is right there, that pond thing. And get Sun and Nora away from the Grimm--or whatever."

Hazel shrugged like she sounded odd, but he put a massive hand on Sun, who appeared to be asleep now with his tail over his eyes... which might have been funny if Emerald wasn't so horrified at the moment.

Picking both him and Nora up slowly, like he felt tired, Hazel dragged them farther up the rise, thankfully.

But here the Grimm finally took notice of them. They growled and started to follow.

"Those birds seem a little angry," Mercury said.

[Lol... I know, terrible joke.]

Emerald gave Ren a rough shove, hoping to jar him back to his senses. "Get a grip, you idiot! Nora's in trouble."

That seemed to jar him slightly. "How is she in trouble?" he asked.

Emerald thought frantically.

"Oh, I think she picked up something freaky or something," she said, which was kind of true. "I bet the Grimm will come right for her, since she's scared. Why don't you mask her and them just in case?"

"Okay..." Ren seemed really tranquil, which he always did, but... it felt weird this time.

But he put his hand out, and his Semblance spread over the ground on them.

The Grimm suddenly lost them.

Also, thankfully, the effort seemed to wake Ren up a little.

"Something seems a little off here," he said.

"Yes, go! Follow them." Emerald shoved him after them, and he moved faster now.

The pond behind them suddenly bubbled.

She turned, in horror.

Out of the black ooze rose... what was it?

It was like a worm... but with teeth.

[Yeah, I feel like this is enough to give me nightmares, so I apologize to anyone who hates this kind of horror.]

Emerald was fortunate she didn't know what a parasitic worm looked like, or she might have thrown up again.

But she knew it looked creepy.

"AHHH!" she screamed.

The worm thing began to slither up out of the pond.

At least it was slow.

Emerald didn't even want to bother trying to fight it. She grabbed Blake's hand and yanked her up the bank, which at least worked, since she pulled her off balance.

Blake stumbled back before the thing could bite her.

Emerald tried not to look at it. "Mercury, help!" she cried. "Help me!"

"What?" He looked up. He was by one of the bushes.

"Forget about the d--- food." Emerald decided to just play along in the hope he'd listen to her more if she did. "There's... a snake or something. I need help."

"You can't handle a snake?" He sounded lazy.

"No, I'm terrified of snakes. Just come on!" Emerald said.

"Ugh, you're such a baby, Emerald." Mercury came rather slowly.

The sweet smell was getting worse by the second. It was kind of... intoxicating but still sickly.

Emerald wasn't sure why she wasn't being affected... or wasn't yet... She was afraid that it might start to take effect.

"Shoot that," she told Mercury, pointing at the worm that was coming towards her still.

"Shoot a lizard?" Mercury said.

"Lizard--whatever, just kill it," Emerald said.

"You've got issues, Em," Mercury said.

"I tell you to shoot something, and you don't want to?" Emerald spat at him. "This is the time?"

"Fine, fine." Mercury put up his foot and shot. Then he actually hit it, which was impressive when he hadn't seen it the way she did.

Then Emerald thought, what was she doing? Why not just make him see it?

The bullets didn't do much to the worm, only make it madder and rear its head up.

It was really more grotesque this way, and Emerald turned to look at it.

She projected it into Mercury's mind, changing what he saw to what she saw.

"What the--?" Mercury suddenly looked up in horror. "What the hell is that?!"

"I don't know what it is. Just kill it." Emerald yanked Blake back more. Blake was acting like a doll, incapable of moving herself. She seemed to have glazed over also... Maybe the smell had gotten to her.

Mercury shot the thing more.

This time he aimed a bit more accurately. It fell back more.

"Can you use your Eyes?" Emerald was afraid that the other Grimm would attack. They were starting to look at him more hostilely.

"I don't know. I feel a little sick..." Mercury suddenly seemed sleepy. "Maybe too hungry and thirsty to fight.."

"Mercury, you can't do this." Emerald grabbed his shoulder and shook it. "We're going to die! Please... please try... I need your help."

She couldn't fight it and keep Blake back at the same time--and she doubted her chances against the other Grimm if they pitched in.

The smell was making her feel tired too... and she was afraid that tired was the first step to her beginning to hallucinate.

Oh crap, was this how she made other people feel when she got inside their head?

Suddenly an image appeared in her mind of a much more innocent looking glen around them, with normal plants and birds sitting on the trees...

To see this was like having two windows in her mind, and one she was looking out at what was real, and through the other she saw this other version that was appealing to her and that she felt, she could have seen if she just leaned a little more that way.

But the windows weren't next to each other, they were overlaid, like two filters, and you could focus on one, like one of those optical illusion puzzles that can look like two things, or you can focus on another.

She realized she had a hallucination Semblance, a rare gift. Not many people had a mind Semblance... Was... was that why she could tell this was a trick? She was the one person in a thousand who might have had that power.

"Just... just focus on the Grimm," she said out loud. "Don't look at anyone else... I'm showing you what it really looks like.

"You exaggerating this?" Mercury said, perspiring.

"No..." Emerald said. "That's it..."

She didn't usually show people such accurate images, but this time...

"That is disgusting," Mercury said.

"AHHH!" Emerald screamed as the worm, and the Grimm, suddenly decided to just lunge at her.

She showed the Grimm to Mercury somehow though.

Mercury's Eyes flashed brilliantly.

Well... it had effect.

The worm was vaporized, and so were most of the other small Grimm.

And... also the pond suddenly seemed to have a thin layer over it like ice.

And the bushes? They turned brittle.

To Emerald's relief, this made the smell much less.

Mercury, now recovering his own mind, suddenly gasped. "Ew... Em... what is all this?"

"What happened?" Blake suddenly groaned. "Why am I tied up?"

Emerald yanked her knife out of the bush. This one was still alive.

"Move, out, run!" she said.

They didn't argue now. They ran.

Hazel had taken the others farther away, not sure when to stop, and Ren had followed them--and once he was farther away, he seemed to realize something else was off.

The sound Emerald had been hearing all this time was still going on, even if the scent was less strong now.

"What happened?" Mercury finally said, rubbing his eyes. "What was all that? Was it in our heads?"

"Somehow it... seemed like it cast some kind of illusion," Emerald said. "Just like I do, only much stronger, on all of you. But it doesn't work on me, I think because of my power."

"Come to think of it--" Hazel dropped Sun, who was not awake yet. Blake knelt down to look at him. "--the Irasci affected you less also. And the Hydra didn't affect you at all."

"So Emerald has some kind of immunity to mind Grimm?" Mercury said. "That's awesome--I mean, uh, it's useful."

Wow, Mercury didn't usually even use the word awesome.

"We have natural powers," Hazel said. "Apparently, we're not as helpless around these things as we thought, even without our guides."

Emerald put a hand to her chest. Her heart was still pounding.

"Em, maybe you should be the one leading then," Mercury said. "I mean... I know it's still there... lesser now, but I still feel weird."

"I still hear something too," Emerald said. "I don't know what it is."

"Guys!" Blake suddenly said faintly. "Sun's not waking up."

Nora was still out of it, but she seemed only dazed. She wasn't unconscious. Ren was waving his hand in front of her eyes to no avail.

"I think the scent wears off," Mercury said.

"No..." Emerald said. "He bit one of these... weird fruit things. I tried to stop him, but he must have picked it up while I was... kind of throwing up."

"EW," Mercury said

"It might have been a good thing," Hazel said. "If it kept her more in reality."

"Who would have thought that would be a good thing" Emerald made a face. "But... do you think it's like some kinda drug?"

"It seems like one," Hazel said. "But I can't think that eating anything made of Grimm would be a good idea."

"No, it's not." Blake rolled Sun over onto his back. "See?... Look..."

To their horror, they saw that purplish veins were in Sun's skin... and he'd turned very pale. Dark circles were under his eyes.

"Well, he looks horrible," Mercury said tactlessly. "How long ago did he swallow it?"

"Just a few minutes," Emerald said.

"It's poisoning him," Hazel made the obvious statement. "I've never seen any Grimm that you could eat, but if they feed off our Auras, then maybe it would from the inside also."

"We have to help him!" Blake said. "Please..."

"We can't," Hazel said. "None of us knows how to heal, and I'm not confident that would even work. That boy is probably done for."

Hazel was not always a comforting person to be around, even if he didn't mean any real harm by his words.

"What? No..." Blake started crying. "I can't... not like this... not Sun!"

Wow, she must like him more than she let on. Emerald had always felt like she was kind of blasé about Sun's whole flirtation with her, but...

"All right, don't start bawling," Mercury said, which might have been him trying to be helpful in his own way. "Maybe there's a way to stop this. Do you think if I lasered him with my Eyes?"

"No," Hazel said. "We know that human bodies block the Eyes already."

Emerald tapped her chin frantically, then suddenly she said, "Wait, Pyrrha had those cake things still, two of them, I think."

"So?" Mercury said.

"So... they might counter it a little," Emerald said. "Maybe at least buy us some time. Maybe the DJs could help him. They purified the water, remember?"

"We have no idea where they are," Ren said grimly.

"We can try to find them," Emerald said hastily. "There's a chance they could be close, right?"

"It's possible," Hazel began. "Not likely, but--"

"We have to try," Blake said. "I can't lose Sun like this."

"Dumba-- shouldn't have eaten strange food," Mercury said.

"What? We were under a spell!" Blake said, swinging at him.

"I was joking," Mercury said, dodging.

"Merc, that's not helping," Emerald said. "Hazel, can you...?"

Hazel picked Sun back up.

"We'd better hurry," he said, resignedly. "But be prepared for the worst. The odds that no one would fall on this journey were not good. We're lucky only one of us ate it to begin with."

More Grimm were still following them.

"Run, hurry," Emerald said.

They took off as fast as they could, dragging Nora with them.

[Yikes...

Okay, who caught the Lair of the Lotus Eaters reference? I'm just throwing you myth fans all kinds of bones.]

* * *

Shine's group was getting closer to the weird light with time.

She didn't care for how distracted the others were acting.

Vara and Theo kept talking amongst themselves and ignoring everyone else.

Pyrrha and Jaune weren't that different from them, and neither were Roman and Neo.

As for Wally, he kept distracting Shine, amiably enough, but it wasn't charming when she was so tense. She wanted to slap him.

Odd, Cinder was the least jarring right now. She was the only one acting at all normal.

Shine was surprised she'd rely on her as some kind of solace from the situation, but even someone you can't stand can be comforting if they are just as weirded out as you are.

"Are they all drunk?" Cinder asked rudely.

"They aren't acting drunk exactly," Shine said. "Just... lighthearted... no--flippant? No, giddy... Self absorbed? I don't know what words to put to it."

"Idiotic?" Cinder suggested.

"Hmm." Shine didn't disagree. "Well, unfortunately, I may know what's going on."

"Oh really. Please explain." Cinder said please like it was an insult.

"Remember when I listed off those sins I thought the Grimm were like?" Shine said. "Well, this is reminding me of one... only less dark. Well, there's at least three that are somewhat similar. Greed, Gluttony, and Lust."

"I hope you're kidding about that last one," Cinder said.

"Why?"

"That's not really a sin," Cinder said. "It's natural to the mind, or body, if you prefer to think of it that way."

"Well, the way the Bible thinks of lust is not how you people define it," Shine said. "You're thinking of sexual desire."

Cinder couldn't believe she just said that.

"But that's too much of a stereotype," Shine said. "For one thing, sexual desire is not always lust. Nor is it always bad. Lust has an object, but you can want sex and not have any particular object in mind. So there's that."

"That is disgusting," Cinder said.

"Perversion is always disgusting, Cinder," Shine said somberly. "My point is that I don't think that's all there is to the sin. Though it might be what the people who coined the 7 sins list thought. They were harsh when it came to our bodies and desires. You know how gluttony is just the perversion of hunger, which is healthy? And greed is a perversion of a healthy admiration for beauty and value. We shouldn't want worthless things after all. But greed wants things just for the sake of having them, just because it makes it feel powerful and secure. You know all about it, I assume."

"I wouldn't call myself greedy just because I want power," Cinder said. "That's not what it's about. I don't care about money."

"Did you not hear what I just said about it not being that simple?" Shine said. "The Bible also calls lust much more than sexual. It refers to the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh. And it doesn't mean sex, it means that sometimes we have that desire for evil things, which doesn't start out in our body but in our mind. Which is really what the lust of the eyes means. The eyes are compared to the mind in the Bible. I've been taught this kind of thing my whole life, trust me."

"As if I care what that book says."

"You should. It has many things about you," Shine said. "Good and bad, I might add."

Cinder huffed. "So what?"

"So my guess is that if a Grimm was to embody any of those three things, it wouldn't be as basic as sex or money. That's just what we assign those terms to. I think it would be warped desire itself--that's the thread through them all. Greed is wanting just to possess, gluttony is wanting it beyond any natural limit that would be had, and lust is wanting an object only for your own pleasure and not for any real value of it. They all together make up what unnatural desire is. And that, we're told, gives birth to sin. On the other hand, there're healthy desires to be sure, and we need those. A lack of hunger is a bad sign in your body if you haven't eaten in a long time. A little lust is usually much less of a problem than a total lack of wish for anything... however, in its ugliest form, lust and greed and gluttony are all extremely repulsive things. You would know, right? Even you think Tyrian is repulsive."

Cinder glanced at her. "When did I say that?"

"I've seen the way you look at him when he's acting up," Shine said.

Cinder didn't recall ever being in the same area as Tyrian when Shine was around.

But she wasn't wrong.

"Of course it's funny since you're so similar in that way..." Shine said.

"I am not! I'm not like that..."

"Oh, we all have to have someone else who's more corrupt than us to make ourselves feel better," Shine said. "But not Tyrian, you notice... People like that always want everyone else to be like them. I think it's why he detests Mercury so much. And Hazel. But is indifferent to Watts. I showed him the same thing when I spoke to him. The only way to defeat something like that is to not feed into it. Lust especially is something that burns out fast once it uses the object, because it's not what even matters, it's the feeling itself. Healthy desire wants the same thing over and over again because it knows it's good. That's not lust. Do you see the difference yet?"

Cinder didn't want to admit that she was finding this interesting, as all human failings interested her when they might be useful.

So instead of answering,  she just said, "Do you really think that what's bothering them? Which one would it be?"

"One thing I can't explain is why they seem like they're in a good mood..." Shine mused. "That's not part of it."

"Seems to me like they've forgotten what we're supposed to be focused on." Cinder didn't really mean to make any profound observations, but Shine blinked and then pointed like that was it.

"It starts with distraction, right?" she said. "Hmm... creepy."

"Can you stop it?" Cinder asked.

"Cinder, do I look powerful enough to stop temptation to you?" Shine replied. "If I could stop it, I could stop most of the evil in the world. But even the Lord allows temptation, just 'not more than you can stand'. "

"Well, that makes no sense." Cinder seemed to point out things that would have only been working for her if they weren't different. "Why not remove temptation?"

"Without temptation there is no choice," Shine replied simply. "And without choice there is no freedom. And without freedom, love is not love. And without love, we will cease to exist."

"That makes no sense when plenty of people do not love anyone," Cinder said. "I would know."

"Oh, please, Cinder, even if you don't harbor any such feelings, how do you think you got here?" Shine said.

"I know no such thing. I didn't know my parents, but I still lived," Cinder said. "Besides which, why would they have left me if there was love?"

"I don't mean that exactly. Perhaps not every child is a product of love, but our relationships are meant to work because of it, and at some point in your lineage, I assure you it was there. Love is our inheritance as much as sin, or more so, because people can love you even if you sin, but sin loves no one. Therefore love is greater than sin. Sin can never transform itself into being a virtue, but virtue can live despite sin's presence."

"Then sin can live with virtue also," Cinder said.

"True enough."

"So it means nothing."

"Ah, but why would we struggle with it if it meant nothing? Surely the existence of a struggle between good and evil proves there is a reason one side should win. There is no war where there is nothing to fight over, you know."

Cinder looked at her oddly.

"Hmm, well, why would we desire anything that's bad anyway, if it's so meaningless?"

"Because evil actually looks like good, and always starts with the abuse of good things. The first temptation was over a tree," Shine said. "Some people don't believe that account. But I don't understand why people think sin is so very complex. Most of our errors are over small, petty things, so why not a fruit? Any step away from love and towards selfishness is still sin. People also miss that there were at least three sins in the eating of the fruit in the story."

"What story?"

Shine briefly told her the story of the Garden of Eden in simple terms. [If you want to read it yourself, look in Genesis 3.]

"And they just believed something like that?" Cinder said.

"You just believed Salem, didn't you?" Shine said.

She assumed a lot by implying that Cinder no longer did.

"But if it would lead to death..." Cinder said.

"Imagine that..." Shine glanced at her Grimm arm. "Like I said, there's three sins, not just disobedience. Eve was selfish by risking Adam's security on her own risk to disobey God, with no thought to what would happen to him if she was wrong. Adam was selfish to not try to stop her. The pull to want to do the selfish thing itself, though, is not pure evil. It's natural to want to save yourself, and it's good to want to save yourself, sometimes. The sin is when you don't check it when someone else is in danger. And thus doom the whole human race. That's why the word says that desire gives birth to sin."

"I just don't see how knowing good and evil makes you like God," Cinder said. "Like... they didn't know it was evil already? What kind of choice is that."

"Hmm, I suppose they did in a sense," Shine said. "The snake's trick is always the same, Cinder, blinding you to what you have already. I've heard it misinterpreted that the story means that knowledge is evil. But that is an idiotic take on it. Adam and Eve had knowledge of all the world before them, the animals, and each other. God never forbade knowledge of that, only the knowledge of the difference of good and evil. And perhaps the only reason you could know evil is if someone sinned already, which we believed it was the sin of the devil who had already fallen. Evil is the absence of good, at its basest form."

"Like IT." Pyrrha has been listening to this for some time, which was probably a good sign.

"Like IT," Shine agreed.

"From the Wrinkle in Time book," Pyrrha explained to Cinder's puzzled look. "I finished it today. It was fascinating... and it made a lot of things make sense. IT corrupted the entire planet it was on, by making no goodness possible. And in turn, even though they didn't do evil, the lack of good was already evil. I think it made sense. We should always do good. Not do nothing."

"'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,'" Shine quoted. "But there is another thing I've realized. When you know something, it has power over you. I can't tell you how many sins I never would have considered doing until I knew about them. Most perversions, since we've been on that subject, only happen by the power of suggestion first making it into someone's mind. Gradually it becomes natural to them. Do you think Tyrian was always the way he is? No, it was probably gradual... and horrifying in that. Like slow poison sinks through soil and kills a plant."

It was almost like Shine was with the other group without being with them, though no one would think this till later.

"That's why we're told to only think of the good things and the noble things and the pure things," Shine said. "And not look at evil. David said he would not set any wicked thing in front of his eyes. What you see, you become. And some people have theorized that the worst punishment of all would be to look at the pure evil of the universe, without any of the lies or disguises it puts on to be more tempting to us, and see it as it is. It would only be terror and horror."

"Even seeing Salem certainly seemed to have that effect on some of us," Pyrrha noted. "I have not seen her myself."

"Oh, she's scary, but she's a mere inkling of what the real evil would be," Shine said. "Evil works through us all, but it is not complete in any of us. Even the most repulsive of humans is not pure evil. But once you even allow part of it, it spreads like cancer. That is how knowledge has power over you. Now we're capable of evil even if we don't know what the evil is. But the more complicated sins are usually the work of other factors. I won't say one is better than the others, but there are differences."

"I have the feeling that normally I'd be quite chilled by what you're saying," Pyrrha said, "and I'm not. And... I'm a little uneasy about that. But the light... and the sound, it makes it so easy to relax..."

Cinder gave her a disturbed look and then looked upward.

"Then why am I still not affected?" she asked.

"I can't be sure, Cinder, but there's two possibilities that come to mind." Shine pinched herself as if to jar herself a little. "One is that you never relax. That anger you cherish might actually render it harder for you to really enjoy temptation. And what is your weakest point usually might be useful in this one instance. The other is that you have become part Grimm again, and anything happy is not usually a grimm emotion. Desire seems to be a human facet and not one of the Grimm. They only kill because they are compelled to do so. I've never seen any sign that they enjoy it. Lewis also thought that all desires were from God above, and the evil only twisted them into a wrong form, it does not create them. Which is why the more given to evil you are, the less you enjoy it. The worst is when you embrace that and would rather be hungry forever than ever eat good food instead. That is the worst of lust and greed and selfishness. Though it's still less than that robotic sin of simply no longer caring. Like I told you, hating good can be closer to it than indifference. You might as well be dead already if you feel nothing either way and do not care."

[To be clear, this does not mean that apathetic feelings themselves are a sign of despair. It depends on whether someone is concerned that they are apathetic. Sometimes emotions are damaged but our awareness of that is still present. But when even that is eroded, people are pretty far gone.]

"Pyrrha, I would try not to relax," Shine said after a moment. "All this talking about it has made me realize even more how unnatural it is that we're not on edge. Even I'm finding it hard to keep up, but I just know that I am still. Don't give into it. Even if you can't manage to feel afraid, try not to allow that kind of indolence."

"Okay..." Pyrrha said, uneasy. "I'm tempted to say you're overreacting, but I know deep down that you don't usually make mistakes in this area."

"Be on the lookout," Shine looked ahead. "Some part of me thinks that something is going to change soon. I just don't know why I think so."

Nothing seemed off in front of them. But Cinder, still immune to this relaxation, felt pretty sure that Shine was correct about this one.