A thick silence blanketed Canterlot, broken up by intense rain as it drummed on the roofs and balconies, accompanied by hard thuds as huge chunks of hail battered everything below the rainclouds. The silence did not last long for a select group within the castle walls, however.

"Big stupid ice ball hit me!" Maria screeched as she ran into an ornately-decorated guest room where most of the other Fantasians mulled about, a talon on her forehead and her face scrunched in pain.

Fenrir limped over to the foal on all fours with his tail tucked between his legs and scooped her up with a front paw. "On the head, I take it?" he groaned. The filly nodded and rubbed the spot she held, giving a small wince when the tips of her claws brushed up against it.

"Fen, are you alright? Your back legs are sagging, and your tail's between them. It's been like that an hour since the storm started," Natalie noted from across the room. The diamond dog turned to her and limped over, doing his best to not drop the foal in his grasp.

"No. Let me just say that somepony decided it was a glorious idea to use a large accumulation of hail. The somepony compacted it to the size of my shoulder, and then struck a low blow with the resulting chunk," Fenrir snarled, briefly wincing as he spoke. His reply caused the rest of the males in the room to flinch themselves, with one sets of ears folding sharply back against the head they were attached to.

Maria, likewise, cringed in sympathy. "You got the bigger hurt," she mumbled.

"Precisely," Fenrir conceded, lifting the foal and placing her on Natalie's back. He pet her head with his paw, making sure not to touch the hurt spot in the process, before setting it on the floor. He limped his way to a vacant couch and flopped on it, softly whimpering when his lower half connected with the cushions.

"You're walking around like something tore your arm off, balled the attached paw into a fist, and repeatedly clocked you between the legs with the damn thing. Who in Mythos hurt you?" Alexander asked, his inquiry earning him little more than an indignant, pained huff.

"I'll trot around and start asking the guards. Maybe they know something about what clobbered him so bad," Katie groaned, and with that, she strode out of the room. The door closed as she made her exit, aided by a brief golden glow of magic.

"Let's hope she and the guards find something," Sarah groaned, holding a nail filer in one talon and grooming the claws on the other. "If it's bad enough to make even Fenrir whimper, Godcat knows what it could do to the rest of us."

"Oioioi..." Matt mumbled, sitting on his rump with a heavy sigh. He glanced around the room until his eyes fell on Armin, who fiddled about with a strange, translucent ball of green goo with his front holey hooves. "What's that?" he asked, gesturing to the slime-like wad.

"Chitil. This substance I'm holding is used for a lot of things which I'd rather not list. I'm bored, I'm playing with it, please ask me if you want some," Armin replied with a sneer.

Maria hopped off of Natalie's back and rushed towards the changeling, eyeing the ball of chitil with a curious gaze. "Can I have some, please?" she asked in a sweet tone.

Armin blinked and looked at the child with an unreadable look. His fanged maw twitched, though not enough in an attempt to form words. He weighed the options whilst making sure the chitil didn't have a chance to drip onto the floor. His translucent wings flared wide for a moment before snapping shut as the filly gave him a pleading look.

A loud, thundering boom echoed into the room, startling the group and causing them to glance around. Sarah made to stand on her hooves, as if that could help her see past the walls in her attempt to figure out what had happened. She hesitated to revert to all fours, and looked at the others to be met with "Don't look at me"s or simple shrugs of the shoulders from the other currently-present Fantasians.

She sat down and sighed. "When do you guys think my sister and Lance will get back?" she asked, briefly stretching her wings as wide as they could go before closing them again.

"I don't know," Natalie responded, waving a front hoof as though she were holding an invisible object with it. "I hope it's soon, though."

"I hope that was only a clap of thunder. We're in a castle on a mountain, and I'm surprised the room hasn't shaken once yet," Alexander added, scratching his temples with a claw. As if on cue, another loud reverberation echoed outside, and this time it packed enough force to shake the entire castle for a full minute.

"Quit jinxing it already. We got enough problems," Armin snapped, glaring at the gryphon with the wad of chitil perched on his head like a slimy hat.

"That wasn't me, honest," the gryphon replied defensively and in an overly innocent tone, flailing his talons in front of his chest like that could help him.

"Yeah, right. About as likely a story as Katie learning how to lift Fenrir with just her wings," Matt retorted in a huff, earning a chuckle from the diamond dog in question.

"As unlikely as that scenario happens to be, somehow I find it... adorable," Fenrir stated with a grin.

"What's adorable?" Maria asked, garnering laughs from the rest of the group. "What's so funny?"

Natalie had been the first to cease laughing. "You're adorable," she answered with a wide grin, and made to speak further when the door opened.

Two more ponies that had gotten covered in ash at some point trotted into the room, leaving twin trails of dirty hoofprints behind them. One decided to loudly announce his arrival, and started this by letting off a shrill whistle that garnered the attention of the others immediately. "The high mages tried screwing with my wings, and look what happened," Lance groaned, a firm frown set into his soot-layered visage.

"What'd they do, throw you into a pile of dust and water?" Matt asked with a small grin, causing Natalie and Sarah to snicker at his inquiry.

"I wish," the pegasus huffed, glowering. The pony next to him just sighed and shook her head. "Anna tried convincing the high mages it was a bad idea. What does one of them do? Toy with the accursed wing covers anyway."

Anna spoke after taking a moment to wipe some of the ash off of her face with a front hoof, "There's good news and bad news regarding the damn things. Good news, they can be removed."

"What's the bad news?" Alexander questioned, a brow shooting up. His eyes widened as Anna grabbed one of Lance's wings in her magic and spread it as wide as it could go, and he spotted light cyan sparks glimmering from the feathers. Each spark formed strange characters, one on each protrusion, as if they were but incomplete fragments of some kind of rune.

Matt's smile fell upon seeing the anomaly. "Joy, the damn things are enchanted," he groaned in a sarcastic tone. He then inquired in a serious voice, "Did the high mages figure out anything?"

"Nope. They're like us: stuck on square one, and caked in dust," Anna replied, shaking her head and dislodging some more ash in the process. "They couldn't even identify these particular runes, and to be honest, I couldn't either," she added, releasing the wing from her magical grip.

"Is he okay?" Maria piped up, tottering over to Anna on three legs and using a claw to gesture to Lance for emphasis.

"Sort of," Lance answered for the child, punctuating his answer with a heavy sigh. "Just gotta clean up and not bust a lung sneezing my head off while I do it."

Anna blinked and gave the room a good once-over. "Wait, where's Katie?" she asked upon noticing the absence of the wraith.

"Fenrir and Maria got attacked by hail, and Katie tottered off to find out why," Sarah answered with a shrug.

"I hope what's-his-face stayed on the other side of this castle," Armin snorted, reaching up with a hoof to pry the chitil off of his head. "The longer we dwell here, and the more I hear him flap his gums like an uneducated fool who has nothing better to do, the more I find myself thinking he's going to touch us at night."

"With the guards around? Tch, that assclown has no chance of molesting us," Sarah scoffed, puffing her chest for a moment before sighing deeply as Lance and Anna started trotting around the room.

After a few moments, the latter started cursing. "Godcat-dammit, would it kill the castle staff to have feather dusters on standby after an entire room gets coated ceiling to floor in ash?" she seethed, scouring up and down the room whilst propelling herself with self-levitation.

"I think those are only granted to the local maids," Natalie stated with a roll of her eyes, shaking her head as the archer landed at Fenrir's side. "And I don't believe a feather duster to the face is a good idea."

"Natz has a point. I don't want feathers poking me in the nose or eyes anytime soon," Lance conceded, finding a spot to lay down on. He made to rest his head between his front hooves when somepony else waltzed into the room, bringing with him another winged form trapped in a giant ice cube.

Several hundred smaller chunks comprised the ice cube, distorting the inhabitant's shape, making some parts seem larger and others smaller. The only thing that served as an identifier of the frozen one's identity was a set of two rapidly-spinning orbs of blue. Said orbs brightly gleamed through the chilled crystal mass as they whirled about.

The one dragging in the icy form, a white unicorn stallion with a blue mane and monocle, sighed deeply and gestured with a hoof to the giant chunk of ice—or, rather, who'd gotten trapped in the frozen confines. "Do any of you know how this wraith found herself trapped in this gargantuan clump of hail?" he asked in a smooth voice. The stallion found himself frowning when his question went unanswered, largely because the Fantasians simply stared at the frozen pale changeling.

Maria bounded forward to the imprisoned mare and stood up on her back legs, resting her claws on the thick chunk of ice that seemed to have swallowed her whole. "What happened to nice wraith?" she asked, turning to the blue-maned unicorn with a frown.

"I'll take that as a 'no,'" the newcomer sighed, turning to the filly. "To be honest, I just found her in the hallway round the corner in this state."

Natalie trotted forward and gently pushed Maria aside, her horn glowing and surrounded by soft white flames that roiled around the spire. She turned to the stallion and began, "Mister..."

"Fancypants, milady," the stallion replied, quickly stepping aside and garnering looks from the other Fantasians in the process.

"Alright, Mister Fancypants," Natalie started anew in a tight, uneven voice, "you might want to shield your eyes for a few moments. I don't want to be liable for burnt-out eyes."

Fancypants nodded and his horn glowed, and a small fragment of a glimmering blue shield hovered in front of his face like a detached mask. That mask expanded as white flames encased the massive block of compacted ice, while Natalie shut her eyes tight as the color ivory obscured much of her immediate sight. Her ears folded back as escaping steam filled the air, and hot and cold air intermingled and took to stinging at her face at the same time.

"Natz, do you need any help with that?" Anna asked, squinting her eyes as the fire continued to attack the ice with seemingly-minimal results.

"I dunno yet," Natalie answered as she kept up the fiery onslaught. Bit by bit, the ice melted into water that boiled and turned into steam as the flames kept burning, yet how much remained she couldn’t tell with certainty. It didn't help that said fires were white. Given that she stood mere inches from the phenomenon and had to keep her eyes shut the whole time, there really hadn't been much room to discern the anomaly.

Which made the margin for error all that much greater. After five whole minutes had passed of channeling the spell, Natalie slumped and stopped casting, opening her eyes after another moment with sweat and ice water beading her brow. The wraith remained locked in the massive hunk of ice. The prison had shrunk considerably and still dribbled with lingering white embers, which were doused by boiling rivers of liquid that trailed down to the floor.

She summoned up another volley of flame, this set a predominant orange in color that lashed out at the ice. Natalie stopped when one fireball shot clean through the melting cube to the other side where it fizzed out in the hall, barely missing Katie's left wings in the process.

"Natz, you faltering already?" Matt asked, frowning when the mare turned to him with an unconvincing grin.

"Not yet. Just miscalculated how stable the ice is," Natalie replied in an exhausted, pained, and worried tone.

Lance stared at the unicorn with the wet face, and he began glowering. "Just be more careful. Last thing we need is our wraith yelling our ears into orbit," he said.

"Can do," Natalie answered, turning back to the frozen mare and charging up another fire spell. However, as she continued to torch the frozen water—careful to not let herself go overboard and accidentally singe Katie in the process—the flames gradually started spluttering out and getting weaker. In moments, the unicorn reached the point where her horn glowed bright red and emitted vapor from its tip, with nothing more than the faintest of sparks every time she attempted another spell.

To add to the icing on the proverbial cake, the wraith's cage didn't shrink more than another inch or so, even with the fiery onslaught. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" Natalie cried, eyes narrowing and brow furrowing as she stared at the ice cage.

"Oh dear," Fancypants remarked, shaking his head at the display. He turned to the other Fantasians and sighed, using a hoof to gesture to Natalie—mouthing, "Stop her before she overexerts herself!" at the same time.

Natalie continued to try casting spells, yet achieved little more than fizzing, steam continually building up and rising from her horn, and a rapidly-worsening headache. Her legs began buckling, and her breathing turned ragged and raspy as sweat and ice water continued to drip from her reddening face.

"Looks like you need help. Stand aside, Natz. I think I can bust her out," Anna proclaimed, trotting forward and summoning two crystal arrows with a flash of magic. The cream-colored mare shambled out of the way and collapsed nearby, watching as the arrows landed head-first in the ice without the aid of a bow. Sharp taps and cracks filled the air as the arrows repeatedly stabbed the frozen water like miniature pickaxes, dislodging entire chunks and casting them into the floor.

In another few moments, Katie had been freed from the chilled confine. Matt scrambled to the gathering of mares and conjured a thick blanket to wrap around the wraith, hefting her up and putting the changeling on Alexander's back. Her orbs still spun and spun in the canvases of black, to the point they looked like swirls lazily turning about in a manner similar to the gears of a clock tower.

"Bet you twenty bits she won't feel a damn thing for an hour or so," Lance sighed, then he turned his attention to Fancypants. "Thanks for notifying us that she'd somehow gotten into a block of ice," he added in a sincere, if agitated, tone of voice.

"It was nothing at all," Fancy replied with a nod and a smile. His grin fell as his gaze fell onto Katie. "Tell me, is she going to be well?"

"She'll be fine. She's a wraith; she's probably handled much worse than just being frozen for a few minutes," Alexander replied, carefully raising a claw to pat the head of the wraith on his back.

"I see. Still, I can't help but worry for her. That level of emaciation is something that can't easily be ignored," Fancy stated, sighing heavily before smiling faintly again. "But I trust your judgment. I hope she recovers." With that, he left the room, making sure to close the door behind himself as he went.

"Remind me to find her a hot tub tonight. I'm impressed she hasn't caught a cold yet," Armin remarked, trotting over to Alexander and examining the wraith.

Katie weakly groaned, jaw barely moving as she spoke, "I cah feeh awyfig."

"I will find whoever put nice wraith in ice, and their face will go bye-bye!" Maria proclaimed with a firm frown and furrowed brow, talons balling into fists for a moment. They unclenched as Anna trotted over and rested a hoof on the foal's withers.

"You don't want to be an ice cube yourself, right?" the archer asked. When the foal shook her head after turning to face her, she continued, "That’s what I thought. It's one thing to—" Anna paused to shudder and fidget uncomfortably before resuming, "—scratch a rapist in the dick. It's another to throw yourself to whoever decided it was a good idea to turn Katie into a wraithsicle."

"And besides, we don't know who exactly did it," Matt added, sighing. "You might accidentally hurt the wrong pony, and then we'd all be fucked."

"That would be assuming she manages to strike first," Fenrir interjected, nostrils flaring for a second.

"Touché," Natalie groaned in agreement, rising to stand on unsteady hooves, her head gently swaying and her bright-red horn starting to fade back to its natural cream color. "I swear, that ice drained me of my mana like a..." she paused, struggling to speak as her mind tried racking up words to finish her remark.

"Like a hoard of aphids drinking the blood of your crops," Anna finished for Natalie, shooting a glance at the shaky red-maned unicorn before turning back to Maria. She ruffled the foal's mane with a hoof and smiled. "Be lucky you don't have to deal with channeling raw magic," she stated.

"Why? Magic sounds fun and looks cool," Maria protested, looking at the archer with a pouty frown on her face.

"You saw what happened to Natalie's horn, right?" When the foal nodded, Anna continued, "Well, that's... a very painful thing for a unicorn to go through. An overheating horn is bad juju."

"I cwah fhah I cah deeh wif cah," Katie mumbled, front legs moving ever so slightly to press deeper into Alexander's feathers.

"Er... whatever it was that she just said. Yes, that," Alexander sighed, eyes widening as his head shook.

"At least she isn't drugged out of her mind," Lance remarked, taking a chance to shoot Matt a stony glare.

"I swear, there were no mushrooms on the Scylla," Matt stated defensively as he met the pegasus's glare head-on with a firm frown set into his muzzle.

"What's a mushroom?" Maria piped up, turning to Anna as the green-maned unicorn lowered her head, shaking it as a soft laughter escaped her mouth.

"Oh, boy. The kid's got her started," Armin murmured, a wide frown spreading fast on his face, revealing every single sharp tooth in his jaws as he laughed. This wound up creating a noise sounding something like an "eeeuh!"

"Please don't tell me this is going where I think it's going," Lance moaned, his visage starting to turn a shade of verdant through the ash coat still on him.

"It's... it's... oh Godcat..." Anna began, only to stop as she flopped on the floor to immediately roll on her back and howl with laughter, her front hooves clutching her stomach as a giggle fit shook her form.

"Here we go. This just can't get any worse, could it?" Sarah groaned while frowning at the laughing mare, and as soon as she said that a guard burst into the room with a harried look on his face.

"The hail has gotten out of control, and your scheduled train ride has been delayed for another week," the guard stated.

Sarah rose a talon and let it connect with her face. "Apparently, it can get worse," she hissed as the talon slid down the bridge of her muzzle.

"How in the name of Godcat's glorious paws is such a thing possible?" Fenrir asked, turning to the guard with a brow raised and a hard frown set into his jawline.

Somehow ignoring the cackling mare who still lay on the floor, the guard sighed. "The train cars, and the station itself, suffered from..." he paused to shake his head before continuing, "Would you like to see the damage for yourself? Once the storm ends?"

"If time and shenanigans permit, yes we would," Lance answered before Fenrir could speak again. The guard nodded and went out of the room, leaving the Fantasians to their own devices and their still-giggling member.

At long last, Anna calmed down and rolled onto her stomach, panting rather excitedly for breath. "M-Maria, you don't w-want to know what a m-mushroom is..." she spluttered, gasping between words as she spoke.

Armin bustled over and jammed a chitil-covered hoof into Anna's mouth. "Take some breaths through the nose, mare. That giggle fit needs to stop before it starts up again and makes you bust a lung," he stated. The unicorn nodded and did as she was asked, inhaling through her nostrils until the changeling removed his hoof from her muzzle.

Immediately after that, Anna spluttered. She rose a hoof to cough and spit into it. "Bleh! Don't coat your hooves in chitil next time! It tasted like used rubber!" she cried, ears folding back against her head as she spoke.

"Does used rubber taste bad?" Maria piped up, flinching as Natalie shuffled to her with a soft glare.

"You really don't want to know," the cream-colored mare answered in a low, tight voice. "You just... don't, alright?"

"What she said," Anna added, her tone also falling quiet, although it briefly faltered as she shuddered. The archer went on, voice dropping lower, "And don't ask how I know what used rubber tastes like, please."

Sarah cringed, then stood up on her hind legs and walked over to Anna. "Sis, are you..." she trailed off, eyes averting as she mentally searched for words that could aid her.

Anna sat on her rump and trailed a hoof over one of her cutie marks, ears flattening against her head. "Y-yeah," she replied, flinching before setting her hoof on the floor.

Sarah nodded and reverted to all fours, placing a talon on the unicorn's shoulder and sighing heavily. "Listen, if it takes your mind off of... that and makes you feel better," she paused to lean in close to the archer's ear, her voice dropping to a soft and near-silent whisper, "you can touch my feathers. Alright?"

"It's... worth a shot," Anna answered with a nod after hesitating for a moment.

Fenrir eyed the mares, a brow raised as they excused themselves and waltzed out of the room. "Dare I question them?" he asked, turning to the others who either shrugged or responded with "No"s.

"Oi, Katie, anybody home yet?" Matt asked, turning his gaze to the wraith as he spoke.

"No," the wraith answered, her form shivering under the blanket she'd been wrapped in.

"Give her another few moments. I'm sure she'll have a bit of clarity then," Alexander sighed, shifting to lay down. He took to being careful not to jerk or make any other sudden motion that had potential to cause Katie to roll off of his back.

Katie let off a low groan, nestling her head in the feathers of the gryphon's neck. Her ears perked and swiveled a bit before drooping back down against her head, and the orbs stopped glowing in their black canvases as a soft snore left her torn maw.

"Looks like she's napping," Natalie remarked, tilting her head at the display.

Alexander chortled. "I think she's gotten comfy," he stated.

"You're sleeping with the wraith tonight. No ifs, ands, or buts," Lance said simply, earning himself some guffaws from the gryphon.

"You sound like you're expecting me to advance on her, general," he retorted with a wry grin. "Even I wouldn't do that. She'd most likely bite."

"He has a point," Armin added, turning to the pegasus with a smirk on his fanged maw as he flinched and brought a hoof up by reflex. His smirk widened as Lance's face drained of its color, only further highlighted by the soot still clinging to him.

Fenrir decided to add in his two bits with a toothy grin, "Pardon my forwardness, but shouldn't a general keep his muzzle out of his soldiers' sex lives?"

"I only said he was sleeping with her! I don't recall saying he could piledrive her!" Lance exclaimed defensively, turning to Fenrir with another glower. "Besides, would a wraith want to screw with a gryphon, or the other way around? Face it, I barely see those two getting along under the sheets."

Fenrir met the glare with a snicker. "Sounds like somepony's envious," he stated.

"A-am not!" Lance spluttered, ears folding back sharply against his head. "W-where's your proof of that claim!"

"I'd wager that your spluttering and sudden change in attitude would be more than enough for me to make my initial assumption," Fenrir chirped, his grin widening.