"Why do you need a few things? What things do you need?" Lazarus asked, his sheen fading entirely with a quick flash of light from his horn.

Katie continued to eye Noah from the window, noticing the snow picking up in speed. "I won't be able to fly tonight," she grumbled, dropping to the floor. "The wind will shred my wings." She twisted her head a full 180 to stare at Lazarus. "Namely, I need lots of cloth and a pillow."

Lazarus grimaced, but didn't flinch otherwise. "What do you plan to do, trot?" he asked. "And what's the pillow for?"

Katie managed a nod, albeit one that caused her neck to pop with the motion. "I'd have to." She flared her wings and flinched when one brushed up against her snout before adding, "Do you really expect me to not become a mockery of a tumbleweed out there? The pillow'll be there to anchor me, somewhat."

Her body twisted, aided by her hooves, rotating in a smooth trotting motion until her barrel and snout were properly aligned once more. She waited for Lazarus to respond, and it didn't take long for him to do so, "But wouldn't trotting be slower?"

Katie rolled her orbs and snorted. "For me, everything is slower," she scoffed.

Lazarus frowned and exchanged glances with Sarah and then Armin. They returned the looks with shrugs before turning back to Katie. "Before I take my leave, I must ask: are you going to sleep, or are you going to come with?" Katie questioned, only to be met with mute stares. When none of the trio sharing the room with her piped up, she rolled her orbs again.

Then, Armin piped up with a frown and a slanted brow on his face, "Listen… I can't trot in the snowstorm. My magic can only keep me warm for so long, and once it peters out my blood'll freeze. I don't have glycerol in my veins."

"Suit yourselves," she muttered. With that, she cantered for the door, whipped out her tongue to grasp the knob and open it once she was in reach, before pulling it open and taking her leave.

She trotted into the hall, using her tongue to close the door behind her and making sure it didn't catch in the frame on her way out. Once that was done, she started cantering her way to the ladder before pausing just a few trots into it when a door swung open to her immediate right. Katie jerked her head to the door, only to tilt it when NoLegs, Maria and Spike emerged from a room that was occupied by Lance and Anna.

Katie stifled a giggle when she got a glimpse of Anna with about seventy-five percent of her face crammed into the backside of a wing, before NoLegs flicked his tail and closed the door with his magic. She turned to Maria and queried, "So… mommy and daddy want some alone-time?"

"Can it!" Lance yelled from behind the closed door.

Maria nodded and lifted a talon to her mouth in a vain attempt to suppress a snicker. "Mommy won't stop until each feather is clean," she chirped through her talon.

"And some feathers are on…" Katie turned away, her utterance dying with the starting throes of a budding giggle fit. She quelled it by clenching her jaws, before pushing the thought aside and turning to Maria again. "Tell me, did you notice anything… odd, aside from that?" she asked, still amused.

Maria nodded. "A guard was smiling funny," she confirmed, dropping her talon to reveal a frown. "And he was standing like the big doggy."

Katie's orbs flicked to Spike, who likewise bobbed his head up and down. "I saw it too. Something just… doesn't seem right," he added. Finally, her gaze turned on NoLegs, who nodded with a meow that she guessed was more or less another confirmation.

"Oh, good, I'm not the only one," Katie snorted, turning to the ladder again. "Armin saw it too, but he'd rather stay here than investigate. Some soldier he is."

"Uuuuh, I don't think changelings like him can tolerate the cold the way you do," Spike remarked, crossing his arms together. "And you aren't exactly his superior."

"A fair point," Katie agreed with a nod before turning back to NoLegs. "Cloth, pillow, mask and shoes, please. I plan on paying Mr. Smiles a little visit." A blue light embraced her form, and the requested objects materialized around her before fitting themselves onto her frame, save for the pillow which instead hovered to her side. "Could you tie the pillow to my stomach please?" NoLegs nodded and conjured a few lengths of rope no thicker than his tail, which he'd used to anchor the pillow to her stomach.

Then another pillow and more cloth came from blinding lights before covering that, with the second pillow coming to rest lengthwise on her back. This was followed up by more cloth coming in to tie the second pillow to her body and conceal it, and this was finished off by a mirror that was about the width of an average door planting itself before her in another flare.

Katie angled herself before turning to face her reflection, finding a masked form laden in cloth looking back at her with the back and stomach bulging considerably. She nodded in approval and turned to the trio that stood with her in the hall as the mirror vanished in another flare of light. "You coming, or staying?" she asked.

"Daddy may ground me again, and I don't wanna make him mad," Maria replied, her tone low as her frown started deepening, while her ears begun folding back at the notion. "It's really cold, too. And I don't wanna get taken by a bad pony either." That said, she turned and cantered to another room, reared up to open the door, and filed inside without another word.

Once the door closed behind her, Katie sighed and turned to Spike with eyes going half-lidded and orbs dimming a little more, seeing that Maria had about ten very valid points she had no hope of arguing with. "Lemme guess: you're also going to bed?" she asked in a flat and somewhat expectant tone.

Spike shook his head. Katie's orbs immediately widened at the gesture. "Well… I still have a lot of things I need to get off my chest, but I don't wanna worry Twilight by telling her about them," he stated, causing Katie's orbs to widen to the point of overtaking the black canvases that housed them. "That, and Noah kinda creeps me out," he added.

Katie's head tilted sideways instead of backwards, cracking until it sat at a grotesque 90-degree angle. "So, you need a listening pair of ears… this what I'm hearing?" she queried, her voice straining and going an octave higher as her head tilted some more to sit at an upside-down 180.

Spike didn't flinch or shudder at the display, and he nodded in confirmation. "Yeah, and preferably belonging to someone who's already been through quite a lot," he stated, though more as an aside. "And you've been through more than the other nutjobs you found yourself hanging with—no offense," he added as Katie's head twisted another 180 to rest back in its usual position.

"None taken, and I understand," Katie chirped before turning to NoLegs. "What about you, furball?" His answer was little more than jumping on her back with a mew and an aura seizing hold of her midsection. Her legs sagged a bit at his weight, but threatened to buckle when Spike decided to climb aboard and rest his hands on the back of her neck. The aura strengthened and forced her to straighten her legs, though it also did a considerable job of lessening the weight on her back.

"So, what's the plan?" Spike asked once he got himself settled.

"Noah's outside in a snowstorm, and with this cloak on my sharp ears will be next to useless. Once we get down the ladder and out the door…" Katie trailed off as a flash of light enveloped them, before it faded to reveal that she and her two charges were now outside of the church. Even with the magic keeping the added weight up, she found that she was knee-deep in snow. "Well, that solves that issue."

She, Spike, and NoLegs took a cursory glance of the scenery, before all three sets of eyes fell onto a fresh set of hoofprints that were already filling in. The tracks led straight through a row of houses to the church's right, and they were bunched tightly together and yet large enough that an adult pony would step in their places and fill them in perfectly. Though, they all had a tell-tale mound that indicated whoever the tracks belonged to was going shoeless.

Then, Spike caught on to what Katie meant. "Oh. So you need extra eyes and ears to compensate?" he asked.

Katie nodded, and lifted a hoof before very gently resting it's shoe-covered frame onto the snow without applying pressure. Ice formed up her leg and the cloth with a pulse of mana, and spread out very evenly under the hoof. A second hoof followed, doing much the same upon the blanket of white. With strength born of magical aid, she hauled herself up before quickly making two more patches for her front hooves while her back ones settled on the first patches.

"I was wondering when I could start doing this again," Katie chirped, taking a second to look at her handiwork. Spike and NoLegs also spared a glance down at the frost patches, though one shrugged and the other went back to eyeballing the tracks. She started to trot next to the prints, albeit sluggishly, and she was being careful to not scrape at her patches with her own weapons. As it was, she had enough issues to contend with. Five minutes into the trot, she heard Spike sigh.

"Is that how you usually travel?" Spike asked, briefly glancing at the frost patches that came and went with every single one of Katie's hoofsteps.

"Only after rain or in heavy snow, since all I do is freeze water beneath my hooves. Makes the task of slogging through bad weather or its aftermath so much easier," Katie confirmed with a nod, tilting her head when the tracks veered sharply to the left all of a sudden. "That, and I never leave any tracks behind doing this. Though, I'm still not sure how Matt and his group found me all the way up north despite that." As suddenly as the trail of prints twisted, she twisted to start cantering after them.

Silence reigned for another ten minutes, during which Spike's mental gears began clicking here and there. It wasn't until another minute was the silence broken. "Then again, you're a bright red… and I think Anna has eagle eyes with how she detected the wraiths up in Frostbite's general area," Spike murmured, his utterance causing Katie to pause.

Giving his remark a bit of thought, Katie shrugged and continued to follow the trail of prints. "Well… she's the first gryph I've seen with round pupils… she may actually have eagle in her blood, then," she replied, orbs once more locked on the trail. "I wouldn't be surprised if she's also part mustang." It only took another few paces before the tracks veered sharply to the right, but Katie diligently followed nonetheless.

The trail went straight after a fourth and final turn to the left a good twenty paces after that, with that turn veering to the very sharp south of town. The prints kept filling in, and they were almost invisible now, but that only made Katie pick up her pace from a sauntering gait to something slightly slower than a filly's trot. After another half-hour of trotting, she decided to strike up a conversation with Spike again, if only to break the silence that was otherwise filled in by her clicking horseshoes.

"So… what is it you need to get off your chest?" she asked.

"It's… what went down at Frostbite," Spike confessed, donning a deep frown. If he had ears to pin back, they'd have touched his spines with their tips by then. When he felt a furry head rub against his shoulder, he continued in a faltering, shaky voice, "A… a lot happened, but things went really south once they managed to wrangle me, Sarah and Fenrir in… a holding compartment?"

"Cut to the chase," Katie stated in a soft murmur that would have been motherly if not for the fact that it was hollow. "The sooner you get it off your chest, and the more compact you make it, the better. If you want, I'll translate it to Twilight later."

"D-don't… I'll tell her myself one of these days," Spike replied, and at Katie's nod let his shoulders sag a little in relief. He took a glance around town, finding that no other soul was out and about. "Well… they tried to… mount her, I guess, and she went hogwild and started scratching at every hippogryph that even came near her. I'd even seen her bite off a few squishy bits."

"I see…" Katie could picture how that fiasco likely went down, as well as how mad the hippogryphs were likely to have been then, and nodded once more. "You were wrangled in the compartment first, right? I want to be sure we're on the same page here."

"Y-yeah. They managed to hold my mouth shut so I couldn't breathe fire on them, and also tied my arms and legs down." Spike gave a shudder, and his claws gripped the fabric on Katie's neck a little tighter. "Anyway, they had to tie Sarah down with… strands of guts. She just shredded through that and kept going crazy, until the elder got a hold of her halberd and clocked her with the blunt end. Fenrir kept them away from her, and Maria, until they were too tired to even try anymore."

"So how'd they keep him overnight?" Katie queried, quickening her pace a little more as the tracks kept filling in.

"Well… they knocked him out with Sarah's halberd," Spike answered, shivering. "And they did the same with me before I could do anything, but it took them a few tries to knock me out."

Katie would have frowned if she were able. As it was, her eyes narrowed at the rather horrendous image that formed in her head. "That'll do. I'll ask Maria about her side of the story at a later time," she stated, an air of anger in her voice that resonated to the point it was almost as if a second wraith with a deeper voice spoke right in tandem with her.

Spike grimaced at the irate tone, but relaxed as he felt NoLegs rub up against his shoulder again. "Quick… question," he began, causing Katie to jerk her head a little forward before perking it up. At her nod, he asked, "How do you manage your anger?"

"I find something to stab, and freeze if at all possible," Katie replied with a shrug. "But I only direct my ire… at something that not only deserves it, but sparked it to begin with. That buffed-up aerobics instructor from Frostbite would be a good example." She paused mid-trot, and turned to look down at something. Spike and NoLegs leaned to the left and right respectively, trying to get a glimpse at whatever had caught Katie's attention now.

It didn't take them long to notice a second set of prints that came from the north of town, one which unusually lined up with the first trail after coming in sharply from the immediate right and between a pair of houses. Though, that first trail now blended in seamlessly with the rest of the snow; even so it didn't take more than a few seconds to tell that these tracks were different.

For starters, the second set seemed a few inches larger than the first, as well as more spaced out. These tracks lacked mounds, instead being flat as pancakes at the bottom. "Well… this just got a lot more interesting. Lance could snugly fit his hooves in this batch," Katie remarked, eyeing the second set of tracks with an air of suspicion in her tone. "But we know Lance is at the church. Begging the question: who could these belong to?"

Spike and NoLegs reoriented themselves to not slip off of Katie's back, and they exchanged glances not long after. Spike decided to speak, "Well… Shining went to look around town today, after breakfast… and didn't come back for lunch…" Then Spike's eyes widened when he realized what he'd just uttered. "Oh no! Shining could be in trouble!"

That was all it took. Katie kicked her legs into gear and started galloping in the direction of the tracks, leaving a trail of frost in her wake. Her claws scraped with each movement, the ice formed beneath them bearing jagged gouges that penetrated the snow they formed over. She did not lose traction, as the ice she made cracked with every step she took, only further supplemented thanks to her added weight. Indeed, she seemed to gain speed, but she still went no faster than an average foal.

Her orbs locked straight ahead, barely paying heed to the trail at this point. Spike glanced over his shoulder and grimaced as he spotted a row of buildings behind him and his group, one that grew more distant each and every second. "Are we leaving Whitefall?!" he cried.

"I reckon so! There's a cave dead ahead!" Katie replied, galloping as fast as her legs could carry her. Spike turned around and gaped as he saw the approaching cave, its yawning mouth barely visible against the snow surrounding it. Some sort of light, dim though it was, illuminated something within the otherwise-black abyss. NoLegs meowed loudly, and his magic fully embraced himself and his group, though it did not do a thing until they reached the entrance of the cave a minute later.

Then, only then, did it seize Katie's legs and forced her to grind to an abrupt, sliding halt right where the snow and cavern floor met up at an uneven border. Her head jerked up as she stopped, clocking Spike in the snout and causing him to tilt back into NoLegs, who merely ducked to avoid the spines. The magic quickly reoriented everyone, though not without some reservations.

"Ah fuck, that hurt!" Katie yelled, her voice echoing into the cave in such a way it sounded as though there were multiple copies of her speaking at once. She flexed her legs and neck as the aura dissipated from everywhere except for her back and middle, finding five semi-stiff limbs that only caused burning pain to sear through her nerves with each movement. She turned to glare at the cavern she'd found herself in front of. "Give me whiplash, why don't you?!"

A brief glow embraced her head, and a masculine voice echoed into her mind in a condescending tone, "Ain't my fault you ain't used to this shit."

Katie groaned and rolled her orbs with a sigh of resignation. She shook her head and asked, "So, boys, what would you suggest?"

"Well… I don't know the layout of the cavern… so… uh…" Spike trailed off, grimacing as Katie sighed once more. His eyes fell onto a trail of fading prints leading inward. "And we may not be following Shining…"

"Great, we may as well be playing hide-and-seek… and we don't know whose tracks these are... jooooy…" Katie scoffed, and with that she began to trot into the cavern, once more following the trail of snow-prints that diminished in size until it simply vanished after a few paces. Her back started to hurt before she could get some distance from the end of the proverbial trail, but she simply grinned and beared it in a more literal sense than she'd have liked. She took the time to scan her surroundings, finding slate grey walls forming a hallway that stretched on for a good thirty yards by itself.

Though as she trotted, the light the group initially saw brightened bit by bit, and its source began to crystallize into view. Spike's eyes grew wide as several glistening, glowing crystals of many colors dispelled the darkness of the cavern, most of them circling three absolute behemoths that came very close to rivaling the Valkyrie tank in height and half its width.

The space these gemstones occupied was a sort of round room, one that spanned a good four hundred yards all around. The crystal behemoths were stationed in its very center, jutting up from the ground with an imposing stature that reminded Spike of the Crystal Empire's columns. The other crystals jutted from the walls, their varicolored lights throwing a surprisingly flat and crystal-free floor into a stark, breathtaking relief. This illumination, as beautiful as it was, also threw a deep chasm on the right into view, stretching down into a black abyss for a good few miles at least, save a scant portion of the floor that led elsewhere.
Spike jumped from Katie's back and waddled to a small pile of blue gemstones, his jaw quivering and drool pooling around his tongue. He reached out to the crystals with one hand, only to stop just inches shy when he felt something slender and fuzzy wrap around the end of his tail. He twisted around to find NoLegs looking at him, shaking his head with a disapproving frown on his face.

An aura embraced Spike's head for the briefest of seconds, before a voice echoed into his mind. "Tempting as they are, I wouldn't advise it. You'd need an earth pony or someone skilled in crystal magics to safely get one out."

Spike raised a brow. "Why's that?"

NoLegs retracted his tail, hit his face with it as though it were a palm, and turned to Katie before embracing her head in a magic aura. "Kick a crystal for me, would you?" he asked telepathically.

Katie rolled her orbs and cantered to the nearest of the crystalline behemoths. She turned her rump to it once she was within range, lifted her back legs… and promptly fell over and faceplanted with her back legs dangling at her sides. The mask cracked a little from the impact, though otherwise she was unharmed. "I can't kick for shit like this…" she hissed, her voice a little muffled.

NoLegs hit his face with his tail again, and grumbled out a few exasperated meows that Spike was certain was a single string of curses. His magic then grabbed Katie by her middle and yanked her sideways, forcing her to stand into an upright stance. She turned to look at her middle incredulously for some seconds, but shrugged and raised her back legs again before delivering a proper, if somewhat weak, buck to the crystal stalactite.

Immediately, the crystal responded in a most unusual way: it pulsed with mana as varicolored as it and its companions, before a good half-dozen bits and pieces started breaking away from the very top of the structure spontaneously. The bits then shot up and scraped at the ceiling repeatedly, until they managed to gather bits of stone that then joined with them with auras of their own. Afterwards, they completed the process by changing colors, though only to a bizarrely limited palette: red, yellow, and blue.

Once that was done, they rained down on Katie and exploded into several columns of light that sent sparks, flames, and frost dancing about all around her. NoLegs made her vanish in a flash of light prior to having her reappear at his side, well before any serious damage could be done. This, though, did have the side-effect of leaving a good scorch mark—which was still crackling with lightning and glimmering with frost for some seconds after the exploding ceased—where she stood.

Spike watched as the crystals evaporated during the display and turned their stone anchors into wee pebbles in the process, his eyes bugging out with shrunken pupils on full display. "Sweet Celestia…" he murmured, his tone low and his voice quivering. "S-so that's why…"

NoLegs nodded with a meow. Katie decided to speak for him, "Great, exploding crystals. What next, giant tentacled monstrosities?"

Spike shook his head and turned to look at Katie, noticing that some bits of her cloth cover were likewise blackened and riddled with frost patches. "Are you okay?" he asked.

Katie turned to look at Spike with eyes narrowing and she promptly hissed, "Do I look like I'm okay?"

Before Spike could open his mouth again, a blue aura seized it and Katie's masked muzzle. Both found themselves yanked towards NoLegs, who let off a low growl and bared his needle-sharp teeth at the two. A voice echoed into their heads, low and rather patronizing at that, "Both of you, behave. We got a stallion to catch." When Spike and Katie nodded in unison, the aura dissipated from their muzzles, but not before shoving them back just enough that they wouldn't tumble forward and faceplant.

With that, Katie started to amble towards the southern end of the room, though she kept close to the wall and well away from the stalactites in case they spontaneously attacked her again. Spike and NoLegs fell in step behind her, only to stop when Katie halted in front of a crystal formation large enough to effectively act like a hoof to the barrel. She turned to NoLegs. "Strip me down, please," she said in a flat tone.

NoLegs rolled his eyes, but seized her in his aura and made her garments vanish in so many flashes of light that Spike had to avert his eyes. The lightshow lasted for mere seconds, but Spike still found spots forming and swimming about in his vision the moment it ended. He blinked to be rid of them, and turned back to Katie to find her once again stark naked, save for her hooves.

"Thanks," Katie chirped as she turned to the crystal formation in front of her before backing up just a hare or two and immediately cantering around it. Spike and NoLegs set about following her again, noting that her ears jerked upright and began swiveling. He opened his mouth to say something when he saw a faint red glow at the far end of the room, one largely overshadowed by the crystals' own lights and very dim in comparison.

Wherever it was coming from was flanked on either side by two massive crystals that oddly acted as columns, leaving the dim mahogany to paint a portion of the floor instead. As soon as he spotted the faint glow, he squinted his eyes at it. "Where's that lead?" he asked.

Katie twisted her head to look at Spike, revealing an arched brow. "Huh?" Spike sighed and lifted a claw before curling it into a fist and using his index to gesticulate at where the red glow was coming from. Katie turned her head to it back the way it came, followed by lifting her chin slightly and leaning forward as much as her body could allow her to before she concluded with an "Ooooooooooooh."

She trotted towards the red glow, canting her head as she heard a very faint bubbling sound. Spike and NoLegs followed her, though both spread out to flank her instead of continuing on in a straight line. Because of this, they quickly found themselves shoulder-to-shoulder with her, which also had the added bonus of enabling them to better discern the mahogany glow on the floor—and even better, what exactly it was originating from.

The two gargantuan pillars flanked another hallway on either side, a long hallway that was oddly devoid of crystals. In the crystals' place, however, were small upwellings of magma, puddling here and there throughout the floor for some indiscernible distance. "A fool would have to trot through that," Katie scoffed, turning away and instead plodding along to the chasm.

Spike plodded along after Katie, grasping her tail and halting her before she could stray a few feet away. "Hey, I could pick you up and walk across it just fine," he offered, causing Katie to twist her head to face him again.

Katie shook her head and wrinkled her snout the moment she made eye contact. "No offense, but I am not willing to shrivel up more than I already have. If I touch one puddle, much of my insides will become ash," she hissed.

Spike's brows leveled and his eyes went half-lidded. "Aren't you, y'know, immortal?" he retorted.

"Yes, but to regenerate every organ that burnt after touching magma… I tried that once, and it wasn't particularly pleasant," Katie stated, shaking her head again. "I lost use of my entire stomach and reproductive regions for a whole decade, and my back legs as well. Not happening again."

Spike grimaced, his eyes bulging out. "Y-your back legs…" he trailed off, his mind starting to paint a gruesome picture of something involving magma and Katie's rear end. As the image turned more horrid, he dropped his claw, letting go of her tail in doing so.

Katie nodded that time and twisted her head to face the chasm again. "They literally fell off all at once. With nothing more than merely brushing up against magma puddles. I had to crawl pitifully until I fully regenerated. No." With that she trotted to the chasm, only stopping at its very edge to peer down into the darkness below a few minutes later. The one thing she could see was the wall she loomed over, going down into a black abyss after a mere couple of feet.

NoLegs and Spike effortlessly caught up with her with a brisk jog and hop, and both turned to find her seemingly transfixed with the chasm. Something about it had her orbs glued in its direction, though what the two couldn't discern right away. They too peered down after a few seconds, squinting their eyes to see if the abyss of sable had something to yield. The only thing it gave them was a stone wall, black, and more black, coupled with a tense silence.

"So… what's wrong?" Spike asked, turning back to Katie with a brow raised. That actually managed to make her look up at him and shrug.

"I swear I heard something come from this direction," Katie replied with a huff. She turned to the section of floor the chasm ended at. "But it was so faint that now I swear my ears are playing tricks on me."

Spike nodded, and glanced to the end of the chasm as well. "So, what do we do now?" he asked with a frown.

"Well, we have two paths… both of which Emperor Carpetmuncher could've trotted through… one has magma, and the other goes to fuck knows where…" Katie turned to regard Spike again, her gaze drilling into his soul the moment orbs and eyes locked. Spike opened his mouth, only to close it when Katie lifted a set of claws to his chin, upturned them, and nudged him a little. "And don't mind the moniker I've given your unc, crass though it is. I've called other ponies far worse things."

Spike sighed, but only when the claws retracted and were put back on the floor. "I'd like to explore the magma-filled hall… but Shining may not have gone that way." When Katie tilted her nose in a nudging gesture, he elaborated, "He may have trotted in with his shoes. Metal shoes and molten rock doesn't sound like it'd go great together, at least not without… consequences."

"So… not very likely he'd even consider that route," Katie translated, to which Spike nodded in confirmation. Her ears twitched, and she turned to the two crystal columns that marked the 'magma hall.' Spike and NoLegs turned with her. "What in the…" she trailed off as frantic hoofsteps filled the cavern, before a wide-orbed stallion made of crystal tumbled out with his body melting in places.

"Faust save me!" the stallion cried, scrambling towards the exit as though Celestia were hot on his heels.

"... how the hell did he get here, and what did he piss off?" Katie asked, her orbs widening as the stallion vanished behind a crystal column, audibly cowering and whimpering in fright. She got her answer when something else emerged from the same hallway mere seconds later, something as large as Celestia herself with an imposing form to match. It snatched the stallion with a limb after slithering its way to the column he hid behind, casting its body into a stark relief under the crystals' light as it did so.

Many tentacles, all reddish-pink and some housing eyeballs at their ends, both jutted from the back of and held up the frame of a monstrosity with a mostly-stone body composed of red and orange rocks. Flecks of brown flesh pulsed beneath the stones, barely-visible but still noticeable. What looked like sharpened teeth folded and unfurled repeatedly near the front, which housed a massive eyeball that looked to be a good fourth its size, sporting sickly yellow sclera and three irises. The whole thing glimmered with a faint magenta light, and some of its rocks were bizarrely chipped in places.

The beast turned one eye to Spike and his group, and then the rest of its body, still clutching the hapless sod in one slimy tendril. It scanned them with its many oculars for the barest of instants before lunging forward with surprising speed and swatting at them with two tentacles as soon as it reached them. Spike ran to one side and scaled up the nearest wall hurriedly, making sure to avoid the crystals jutting out of its surface. Katie and NoLegs opted to fly over the chasm, one with wings and the other via self-levitation.

A blue aura embraced Katie and Spike's heads before they heard NoLegs hiss telepathically, "Oh bollocks, Chocolate Truffle enraged a Beholder. I'm betting ten bits and a saddle we'll have to stop this thing."

"Help! This thing almost shoved its slime-maker inside of me!" Chocolate yelled, flailing his limbs every which-way he could. This only caused the Beholder to wrap around them with the tendril already in use, fully encasing him in slimy mahogany and muffling any further pleas for help.

Katie took a good look at the Beholder, noticing right away that its faint aura had started to recede. The irony of Chocolate's part of the situation did not escape her notice, either. "Oh joy, the victimizer becomes the victim. Maybe Peeved Rocky here has somethin' to do with Shining…" she muttered, bringing her claws together before scraping them in a short-lived cacophony and lunging towards the monstrosity.