Malina nodded slowly and added "Well, let's hope we have to find that Grimm again and it doesn't find us then." solemnly. "Well," She began in a slightly more upbeat tone after wiping away some drops of rain from her eyes, "we'd better get a move on then. Take a few moments to get situated, reload, take a breather, whatever you need to do. We move out in five minutes." She turned away from the group and opened her pouch once again to retrieve her scroll. In a quick motion, she expanded it into it's full tablet form and brought up the picture she'd taken. She stared at the sky in the picture, full of dark clouds with no evidence of a bright light behind them just like the sky above and yet...
Malina lowered the scroll and turned around, staring up at the sky through the twisted branches of swamp trees, toward the south. Toward Jackson. The sky was almost identical, full of clouds and dark, and yet far off in the distance, only inches away from being cut off by the tree line above them, the sky had the faintest purple glow. She wouldn't have even noticed it had the Grimm not leapt so high into the air. It was a bright purple, not like that from a sunset, but still almost non-existent.
She looked back toward the scroll, and the sky above the Grimm. Full of cloud, without the faintest hint of any bright light behind them, and perfectly black. Not even the slightest hint of purple. It was entirely possible, she thought, that whatever was making that light had turned on in the middle of the fight. Possible, yes, but only as possible as something not appearing on her scroll even though she can see it herself.
Malina's train of thought was interrupted by a call of "Ready!" from one of the students, she could tell which, and she slid the scroll closed and tucked it into her pouch once more, sealing it tight.
An hour had passed since the Grimm had attacked the group and the rest of the hiking had gone by quietly. 'Well, no.' Malina thought. 'Quietly isn't quite the right word.' No other Grimm had attacked them sure, and Calen's almost clockwork timed jokes killed the silence, sure, but there were other things. The cracking from what Malina assumed couldn't be anything other than the Grimm kept sounding off around them as they made their way through the swamp. Sometimes to their left, sometimes to their right, and sometimes, much to the dismay or annoyance- she wasn't sure which- of Malina, from behind. Always following and yet always just barely too far away to warrant investigation. Malina had kept her hand planted firmly against her staff on her hip most of the way though.
And despite all that, they had made it, more or less, unharmed. The swampy marsh gave way to more firm land and taller trees, which gave way to a less dense forest, which eventually gave way to a large clearly.
Malina raised her eyebrow as she watched each student stop as they reached the treeline and stare up. As she glanced up toward the sky to try to see what they were staring at, she suddenly remembered the purple light in the clouds she'd seen early. And yet when she looked up, her sight was cut off by the dense canopy of the trees above her. She sighed and silently scolded herself for forgetting such an odd thing and moved to the treeline with the rest of the group.
As she broke the treeline, she was finally able to see what the group was staring at. Ahead of her, maybe fifty or so yards away, were the walls of Jackson. Barely visible in the dark, yet there. That wasn't what stopped her dead in her tracks, however. Her eyes followed the walls up. And up. And up. They seemed to reach into the sky taller than any building she'd seen in her life, taller than even the CCT Tower in Beacon. "That's not... normal..." She began to say as her eyes kept moving upward, though the last word trailed off as the walls finally ended and gave way to a bright spot of light in the clouds, seeming to come from within Jackson. The spot seemed to be a mix of bright neon colors, blues, greens, purples, reds, all far too bright and colorful in contrast with the already unsettlingly dark sky around it, which only seemed to get darker the closer to Jackson they had gotten.
"What the hell..." Malina muttered under breath as she, almost absentmindedly, made her way forward to the enormous walls ahead of her, stopping several meters away. Ahead of her was a door. A small door, at least relative to the walls around it, making both it and Malina seem insignificant by comparison. On the wooden door in bold, engraved, and fancy lettering was simply the word "JACKSON" with a small arrow pointing toward the handle. Malina looked back, failing to hide her concern, toward the four students behind her.