Her wounded hind throbbed in anguish, bleeding anguish at that, as she went henge-skipping again. Anna clenched her teeth to stave off a groan, stopping to cling to a henge as the tree rammed into another with a force that made the makeshift arena rumble so much, the loose soil jumped in place for a moment. She saw Sarah tilting and flapping to regain her balance, one claw on her halberd and the other on her perch. Thankfully, her stance held steady and true, and before long the horned behemoth would stop its flailing for a moment—no longer than that, just enough for the twins to gather their bearings again.

Anna contemplated her bow and made it vanish. She did likewise to the halberd. "No use holding them when we have to stay on our toes!" she called out as her sister's mouth opened to object. "I'll pelt the damn thing when there's an opening!"

"Just make up your fucking mind already!" Sarah squawked as the wooden fiend turned to her and roared. She bounded away a few henges as it charged, and almost stumbled into the darkness before forcing herself back up with a few quick flaps of her wings. It twisted about, and paused to sniff the air.

Anna watched its movements, seeing a twitching snout beneath the glowing, twisted horn—a snout that should not have been able to smell, given the watery quality to its owner's cries. Then, it zeroed in on her and charged. She didn't bother running, instead teleporting to a henge opposite its trajectory, and held firm even as the arena shook again. So that was how it knew where to go. She glanced at Sarah, noticing her own patches of dried blood that dotted her body.

Quick calculations ran her panicking mind in laps before settling on the most obvious course of action. She conjured a few arrows and launched them at the beast as it turned to her again, frowning when one tilt of its head resulted in the projectiles thunking on where she assumed the neck was instead. She was going to call dumb luck on that, but then power pulsed from that twisted horn. She levitated above the henge, watching the soil intently as the roots of the monster twisted onto themselves over and over.

For a few seconds, there was nothing—and strangely, the arrows hadn't activated this time. Anna considered returning to her perch when the roots shot out in all directions, twining in coils of at least three to form tight braids with pointed tips. She twisted out of the way of a few that lanced at her, one nicking her shoulder and haunch and drawing blood as she passed. Sarah was luckier; she managed to get out of harm's way entirely, opting to go higher instead of farther away to dodge the vegetation.

Then, some of the braids coiled in groups of nine, forming thick, spiraling stakes that sank into the soil before jumping right back out in rigid movements leading them straight up. Sarah was socked in the chin by one, scraped and splintered simultaneously and knocked downwards into another stake that collided with her shoulder. A third scored a hit on the cutie mark as she was sent up into the air, and stopped the apex of her unprecedented climb. Down and down she went into the deathtrap thereafter, stunned into a stupor that rattled her nerves.

Anna teleported to grab her, stopped to wrap her up in vines to secure her, then teleported again to self-levitate with her sister out of range of the roots. They started to piston up and everywhere else they could, searching for flesh to strike at. Some broke off their formations to writhe in jittery, air-tapping maneuvers that nonetheless drew closer than its stiff brethren. She groaned and contemplated her options, maneuvering her way between lashing tendrils in an effort to scope out the horned behemoth's weak points.

One tendril snagged on a false wing, but it managed to only break one joint and tear off some leaves before Anna banked towards another braided root, tilting her body in a way that left her wings on her sides. Corkscrewing through two more, with wooden joints breaking in the maneuver, Anna scowled when she noted the tree was standing still so its roots could do all the work.

… odd, she mused, but a part of her started vouching for that immobility working in her favor. Carefully, as she darted above more roots that would have otherwise stabbed her, she conjured more arrows and teleported them over to the tree prior to thunking them in its bark.

That time, the tree turned upwards and sniffed—right as two arrows hit it in a nostril and its horn. Again, the arrows didn't activate—but the strike was enough to make it jerk its head and cease its glow for the moment. Its crown rustled and flailed, the flowers opening and closing at random as they spat their vitriol all over the battleground. Its branches wavered and swayed, some touching the roots and others feeling nothing but pure darkness.

Anna's brow rose as the tree reached over to its face and pried the arrows out with a clawed branch, and then crushed the stone and crystal into pebbles and shards with one firm, crackling curling of its trunk-sized fist. It roared again, a little less watery but no less grating, and pulled down its braided roots as its horn began to shimmer once more. Magic pulsed across its broken body, raced through the soil, and touched the shards as it bathed the arena in viridian light.

The runes lit up as they bathed in that glow. It was instantaneous; the whole arena drank and bathed in that sickly light within one millisecond. Even the cracks stretching from henge to henge were filled, though not quite as deeply as the runes themselves. Anna's eyes went wide as she saw green, warbling power fill them up, break away in their shape, and twirl around the monstrosity in a slow dance that belied whatever strength they held.

Her false wings twitched, the broken joints flailing uselessly as that green light rose into the air in time with the roots. Vines coiled around them, spiraling up and up with intent. Growing thorns, the viridian tendrils stabbed into the roots, drawing more ichor as they wound their way into the dark unknown.

That ichor began bubbling and sizzling against the bark, though only when emerald light touched its almost-black, viscous surface with ripples streaking that unsightly liquid. Then, the sizzling ooze ran along the length of the vines that reached out, clinging unusually tightly to them only to launch off the ends of the plant matter in a spray that went everywhere. Upon henges, upon the soil, arcing into the gloom, even upon its own master; few things were untouched by the rain of searing black.

Anna wove her way between vines and roots alike, though even she and Sarah had suffered a few hits from the volley. Anna howled as one front fetlock began burning and withering at the timber; she summoned an arrow, wrenched its head beneath the afflicted patch, and jimmied for a moment before the wood was pried off and sent onto the arena. A crystal on that same leg wobbled threateningly, and so that same arrow was then redirected to evict that from beneath her shoulder in short order.

It didn't budge until it was half-melted, and it came loose with a squelch and a pop before it, too, went to the ruined soil, igniting on its way down. The flames were weak and sickly, flickering a dim yellow before more foul gunk extinguished them mid-air. The broken wood of one of her false joints came snapping off of its own thanks to the ooze, though fortunately it didn't spread to the rest of the accursed not-limb.

Anna flipped herself and Sarah to dodge more strikes from the hail of liquid, only to be met with a crackle of bark and a hissing of what sounded like steam. More wood fell from her false wings, descending and melting towards those dreaded roots. She looked towards her still-stunned sister, and her brow furrowed upon seeing that the gunk had punched a hole through her feathers—but not through flesh, thankfully. She plucked out the feathers surrounding the immediate area, though, just in case any leftovers decided to go feather-hopping.

She looked to the henges as the vines and bleeding roots pulled back into the torn soil. The stone glistened in what little light could exist here, but didn't seem to melt as plant matter would have done. The horned behemoth didn't roar, instead opting to sway its branches slowly and ominously.

Then Anna mentally shook her head before noticing there was a red tint about it that wasn't there before. She looked up and slung her sister across her back; a hole had opened up in the darkness now, and she could see the moon shining down onto the arena, surrounded by a void in the sky where there should have been stars. Just outside the ring of light, she could further glimpse black and shard-like entities dancing about slowly, as though the sky itself had been cracked.

She took a deep breath and descended, careful to avoid glistening patches of dirt before she even thought of letting her claws touch down on broken soil; her knees almost began buckling upon landing. Her vision blurred again, though another deep breath steadied it and her legs. She turned to stare at the tree, and its snout poked from beneath its crown of flowers. Its horn glowed, highlighting empty abysses that seemed to stare back. The henges shuddered and pulsed, but the tree did nothing else with them for the moment. The ground glowed with that fell light, briefly running up both her and Sarah's bodies before dissipating.

For a while, silence held as they held their gazes upon the other.

A sickly aura embraced her head. A malignant voice echoed into her mind, "... you shouldn't be here, wretch."

Anna's horn flashed. It seemed this tree was sentient after all. She responded in kind, "Neither should you."

The tree snorted. The bark on its snout crackled when it did. "Then what is this prison we're in?" it telepathically retorted. "Who's trapped—me or you?"

Anna pondered that for a long moment. Her head shook regardless of whatever answer she could conjure. "Both," she replied with a flash of her horn.

The tree nodded slowly, more seeds falling from the crown of flowers. The moon's light wavered and filtered through it, making small shapeless shadows and lights dance with the motion and clouds of seed-smog. Another flash of its horn, and it said, "Fight to the death, then. Surely you can't refuse…"

Anna considered this, and snorted. She was sure the tree had caught her huff. Her horn flared and dimmed in seconds. "Stakes?" she questioned.

The light danced again, and Anna broke eye contact to look up briefly. The hole in the darkness began to close, drowning out the few broken shards she saw before. The tree's retort pulled her eyes back to her adversary, "Whoever emerges victorious… will rule the ground here. All of Greenwood, bending to the winner's whims. Is that not sufficient?"

Anna's reply made the tree tilt its head quizzically, "No. I'd rather not rule Greenwood, period. Besides… already burned the town. What more do you want from me?"

A crackle of bark met her ears as the branches danced, and the waning light shifted again. "... this is the first," the tree telepathically muttered, assuming a hard frown on its twisted face that Anna didn't miss, "that I've heard of a challenger not wanting anything to do with ruling the town's populace. Pray tell… then why are you here?"

Anna stomped a claw, her power pulsing around the ground in a far weaker glow than that of the tree's. Again, the branches danced, and that frown only deepened. "To end Greenwood's curse, once and for all—so the town may truly die without false immortality," she spat in reply, the venom of her words making the tree scowl. Its black abysses darkened further, almost corporeal in of themselves.

The tree rose its head, chin tipping as that frown turned into a wicked, toothy smirk. Its horn flashed once, maintaining a steady glow now. "End the curse? When you yourself and that hopelessly-feathered other bear its roots in both your veins—corrupting your scents with that of a forgotten art?" it scoffed. Its aura brightened as it added, "Impossible. What a foolish notion. So many have come before me with that proclamation, and where have they ended up, wretch?"

Anna winced with a frown. Her false wings rattled. She could've sworn she heard distant thunder ringing in the sky. The moonlight was dim now, and it wouldn't be long before the return to darkness completed itself. Wind started howling, whistling through her joints and the tree's branches as the sizzling gunk began to dry.

The tree lifted a branch and pointed it at her, but it was as large as three ponies, and the distance was just meager enough between them, to let it hover inches in front of her snout. "Pitiful. You can conjure no answer… because you know not of what this curse has even been bequeathed by," the tree telepathically spat, seeds launching out of the flowers with the utterance. "How, then, do you plan to stop the curse?"

Anna glowered. Her tail quivered. The light was dimming still, its faltering rays making her own shadow dance. She glanced up again, and could only just barely see the moon now. Then, her false wings rattled—before Lance entered the forefront of her thoughts. She telepathically replied back, "Simple; keep it from spreading beyond Greenwood… and through the rest of its ponies."

The tree barked out another telepathic laugh, retracting its massive branch even as the sound devolved into a gurgling growl. Blood began pooling from its mouth, and its eyes as they twisted to narrow. "Bah! Nothing more than talk of rubbish! You'll fall just like all the others who made that same idiotic declaration!" the tree declared, and it started charging as the light disappeared from above. Anna teleported out of the way, appearing behind the tree as it stopped its charge short and turned around with a watery roar.

Sarah slowly shook her head, the stupor finally leaving her. She groaned groggily as Anna scrabbled up a henge, noticing her sister's vines wrapped around her tarsi to keep her in place. "Who did… did we get out yet…?" she croaked seconds before Anna teleported to the other side of the arena with her in tow. The henge shook as the tree was stopped cold by stone once more.

"We're not in the clear yet," Anna replied, studying the tree as it turned around, leaving glowing runes in its wake. Her legs tensed, and so did her vines, inadvertently tightening their hold on Sarah. She watched as the roots began lashing again with viridian power running along their lengths, stretching out and out before brushing against the henges—not crashing or striking, brushing.

She held her tongue as some, but not all, of the runes lit up and started to float around the massive tree as some sort of attempt at language began rolling off its tongue. What left, however, was as watery as before, and just as senseless: "Kræschalt… moirækasch…" As it began devolving into its arcane chant, the tree stood to full height and rose every single branch that could spare the effort high into the air. Even its crown had rose, though those flowers still drooped nonetheless to coil around its roots.

Runes began dancing around those branches, rising just as high into the air as they did. Glowing and dancing in slow, delicate pirouettes, they almost seemed like a beacon of pure energy that shone through the nightmarish darkness. The arena rumbled in the light, and dirt and wooden fragments launched through the shadows to circle the monstrosity. Roots pierced through floating bark, and vines grabbed clumps of soil.

Before the spell could be completed though, Anna summoned some arrows and stabbed them into a few runes on the henges, covering the glowing ones with ice as their enchantments activated. More, glowing arrows conjured themselves and stabbed into the other henges, causing the pulsing viridian to ripple across their cold surfaces erratically. The floating power that circled the tree warbled and wavered, flickering in and out of existence as the arrows did their work. The disrupted spell flickered out, with a crackle and boom not unlike that of thunder and lightning.

The tree turned around and roared, horn still alight. A telepathic shout bashed its way into Anna's head with enough force to make her wobble dangerously upon her bastion, "You dare disrupt my spell?! How… where… when and from whom did you learn the dishonorable art?!"

Anna took a moment to regain her balance, false wings flailing for a moment before spreading as wide as possible. She chose not to make a retort to that, on the grounds her head would need to stop ringing first before forming telepathic words would even be considered possible. Her vines winced and writhed, tensing in some places and lashing loosely in others.

The tree howled again when it didn't receive an answer, and charged as Anna teleported—this time, reappearing between the branches on its back, hanging tight with all four claws as it began to thrash. It tried to reach around with its front branches, but the other branches jutting from its back got in its way, stopping those hamfists of wood from crashing into her by mere feet.

Anna looked about the backside of this tree, turning about and securing footholds as needed to see if there was anything she could use to her advantage. Her bloody hind burned as it slipped off a branch, before she grit her teeth and forced that hind back on to reassert her hold. The tree shook as its second fist crashed into another branch, trying to bypass the obstacle to get to the pair.

It was then she spied something between the uppermost branches, right where those claws were trying to get through—a crack in the wood, revealing pulsating flesh beneath that drummed almost like a heart. "Are you kidding?!" Sarah squawked, also eyeballing the suspect, misshapen lump that twitched there.

Anna nodded. "I think we've got no say in the matter; it's either stab that or be stuck here forever," she pointed out sourly. She conjured the halberd and started climbing towards that suspect spot, digging her claws beneath wooden plates as best she could for leverage. The tree shook from side to side vigorously, branches whistling in the wind as the twins were sent for a jostling.

Sarah snagged the halberd out of the air with one of her wings, pulling it in without cutting herself or her sister as she hung on tightly. Roots flailed, reaching, searching, slithering up the backside of the tree in tandem with its own vines. Anna pushed herself further up, false wings twitching and rustling erratically. She heaved again, getting closer to the tree's cracked, errant lump. Closer still, she could see the veins beneath, filled to bursting with that oozing ichor that began to spill out of the bark.

With a single nod, Sarah flexed her wing and used it to stab the halberd into the lump with as much force as she could muster. The tree screamed and threw its body as far back as its roots would allow, blood fountaining from the fresh wound as Sarah dug the halberd in deeper with a twist of her wing. With a tug she pulled it back out, smiling as its power danced across its surface once again.

The tree trembled and tossed itself from side to side, in turn flinging its ichor off of the weapon's shaft and blades, and everywhere else for that matter—except the twins. Anna jumped away from the tree with a flap of her false wings, teleporting herself and her sister to the safety of the henges. As her claws hit stone, the tree ripped apart its uppermost backside branches with a heave and another spray of decayed blood. Falling in arcs like that, the ooze almost resembled crude wings for a second before the geysers reduced to trickles that raced downwards to the roots.

Tossing the branches aside, the tree turned once again to the pair with its horn flashing. "Why you little—" it began in another roar, charging once more with frontmost branches raised to crush and maim vulnerable flesh.

Anna's world tilted again as she jumped over one henge and found herself clinging to the one past it. Her shoulders throbbed, and so did her hind—followed by the rest of the flesh that wood and vines were growing out of. Her legs wobbled, and her vision blurred into shades of grey and black that she could barely tell apart from one another. Her lungs burned, and so did the crystals embedded in her legs.

Her head shook, but this time her stance and sight did not stabilize. "No… have… to see… this through," she hissed through clenched teeth. She felt her coiled vines giving way as Sarah struggled in her grasp, and felt the weight on her back lessening. Her claws began to shriek against the stone, but she tightened her grip in an effort to delay the inevitable. A claw slipped, but she forced it back onto the stone.

The tree didn't charge this time; she'd have heard it moving otherwise. Nor did it crash into solid rock; the resultant noise would have been distinct. There were no passing tremors filtering through the shadows; only silence held as her stance warbled. The weight receded from her back entirely, and she heard the flapping of wings. Talons touched her shoulder, trying to stabilize her again, before the faltering became too much for her to bear.

She became, dimly, aware of Sarah calling out to her. Her words, though, eluded her entirely; pain clouded her hearing, unable to be ignored anymore. What blood that hadn't spilt pounded in her cranium, demanding release from the torment. The curse was taking its toll on her body; her shoulders were proof of that. The only thing she could continue to hold onto was consciousness, but the longer she held, the dizzier her world turned. She idly wondered if she had finally reached her limit.

The otherworldly reverb of that echoing voice decided to make itself known once again, cutting through the agonizing fog with a crystal clarity she couldn't misconstrue, "It was the same with Godcat. You faltered then… and you'll falter now, cursed wretch. Your fortitude is an obscenity. You'll pay dearly for your continued silence..."

Her knees buckled. Her false wings sagged. The vines merely flopped in place. Another claw slipped, planting her haunches against stone. Then she tilted over the edge, and fell from the henge to the soil before landing between a pair of feathered wings. She felt claws being grasped by talons, and for a moment the twirling lilt in reality waned.

Sarah relaxed a little as she felt her sister's ragged breath against her neck. She turned back to the tree as it did likewise to her. Another telepathic shout raced, but it reached the still-able sister, "It seems there is only one of you now…" A horrid smile spread on the tree's features, showing jagged pikes for teeth. "And I can tell… you've no magic. Not an ounce in your tainted blood." The smirk widened into something horrible, bleeding profusely with its twisting. Sarah wondered how it was able to still manage that much in its current state. "Pray to Godcat while you still can; my mercy has left this wretched world so long ago."

Sarah's brow furrowed, and her head shook. She watched as the crown of flowers shifted, the petals twirling onto themselves to form miniature spikes of their own. Her false horn splintered a little as it twitched in time with the rest of her otherwise-impassive face. She was alone now, without her weapon and her claws occupied. Despite the odds, she found herself flashing a toothy smirk of her own at the tree.

Sarah ascended to be eye level with the tree, and she was well aware of how small she was before the behemoth. She spotted mana pulsing across her feathers, vibrant and full and ready to aid any way it could. The crown of flowers parted to let her get snout to snout with the beast.

Then she reared her hinds up and kicked it in the face, launching back as soon as she heard the snap of bone and wood and felt the squelching of fraying flesh around her hooves. Pirouetting away, she purred as she spied two new holes in the monster's face. The tree roared and brought its branches up to ascertain the damage, the crown shifting and flailing like hair caught in a fierce breeze.

"Y-you wretch! I'll skin you alive and drape you over my bark!" the tree telepathically declared, its face shifting in a scowl that tried to grow new plates over its wounds, only to cause the bark around them to curl up and wither. This left it looking as though it had grown more eyes than the two it began with.

Sarah pondered that for a moment as it pawed about, trying to figure out what was going wrong. "... it's not regenerating? That's funny… my sister was doing a fine job of that…" she mused in the back of her head, head tilting at the display before her. "As much as the curse was letting her," she mentally added after a few seconds.

The tree thrust its crown of flowers towards her, all at once, twisting them onto each other to form a giant lance that raced to meet her flesh. Sarah ascended as far up as she could go, until she was just out of range of the attack. It did its best to follow her, weaving and twisting about in pursuit, but ultimately could not even scrape at her hooves no matter how hard it tried. By the time it was under her, Sarah noticed that she could still see the tree a fair distance away—easily a few meters, she guessed.

The tree roared once more, and this time it did so with the reverb of the other voice joining in. "Running away won't save you! It hasn't helped either of you wretches the last time!" the second entity declared, manifesting itself before the tree in a swirl of smoke, sickly green orbs poised on Sarah.

Sarah's smirk twitched. "I'm not flying away!" she declared.

"Then what are you doing?!" the tree demanded, wavings its branches erratically with the telepathic utterance. Sarah was under the impression it was signing for her to come back and fight.

For a moment, she didn't answer. Then her smirk twitched knowingly again, broadening to reveal her pointed teeth.

"I'm ending this shitshow!" Sarah declared, vines erupting from her body to wrap around her prone sister tightly. She angled herself and descended downward, gaining speed quickly enough for the wind to shriek in her ears. She dodged around the flowers as they raced to strangle her, batting any that came in too close with her claws wherever she could. Anna lazily swatted too, though she wasn't able to shove as many tendrils away.

A few arrows, the glow around them weak as they came into existence, thunked into a few more flowers. The stricken tendrils backed away, enabling Sarah to flit deftly through a gap in their defenses. Talons returned to bark and held tight as more tendrils moved in to compensate for their weakness. Some twisted around from behind, hoping to strike at prone hinds, but instead met each other as Sarah twisted her way through another gap in a daunting corkscrew that had plants scraping her flesh from every conceivable angle.

A near-miss almost resulted in a hind being caught, but she was able to pull the leg away at the last second. Another aimed for her face and struck in a whip-like lash, but merely glanced off her false horn—it didn't even splinter from the assault. A third made to wrap around her wings, but Anna's false pair took the brunt of the attack, breaking away by their approximation of the radial joints to spare Sarah's.

The broken false-wing parts clattered to the ground around the tree as Sarah rushed headlong to meet it. Yet the tendrils were tenacious; one tendril became two, two tendrils became legion as they thrust themselves at the pair to halt the advance cold. Sarah didn't squawk as they seized legs and claws and tails, and turned to Anna to find her horn glowing in a faltering light. Anna nodded, face scrunched in pain and concentration.

The ball of death tightened on itself, but could only find thin air as the sisters vanished and reappeared outside its mass. Sarah touched down on soil, launched herself back into the air, and resumed flying to the odd lump of flesh at the tree's back. As she did this, she took only a second and no longer to scan where she was and how to use the shift in location to her advantage.

She grinned as the tendrils disentangled from themselves, catching on to the ruse. That just meant more time for her to do what needed to be done. She was careful to hold herself in check until the last moment, when her claws let go of Anna's barky hooves and wasted no time reaching towards the tree mere seconds before they impacted the lump on its back.

Another spray of blood met her as she pierced the lump. Another came as she feverishly wrenched at it, tugging, using her hooves and wings to aid in pulling. The howls of anguish that followed were deafening, shaking her body and the walking greenhouse of a corpse she was attempting to mutilate. The branches reached around again, about to dislodge her as she in turn started dislodging that misshapen lump.

Time slowed. Adrenalin shot through her veins, and it came bearing a strength that made her lighter and faster. Wind pounded her ears. Tendrils writhed agitatedly. Darkness fogged all else but her sister and the immediate. The tree swayed, attempting to shake her off as its own tendrils raced to stop her from every angle they could find.

Sarah spread her wings and beat furiously, mana racing across all of her feathers and out into the world. Tinted wind rushed from her flapping, and the gust was enough to knock the tendrils back for another few seconds.

She figured it was all the time she had left. She set about using it immediately and expediently.

The shadows rippled, pulsing as their veins cracked across their surfaces. The sickening sound of tearing meat filled her ears, though decidedly as an undernote of the tree's yowling and fidgeting. Muscles split in her grasp, some at the natural seams and others against the grain. Sarah wasn't a particularly good mortician, but she was certain flesh should not have been so devoid of color as to be mistaken for grey.

But it was. This tree was running on borrowed time. How much of it was left, though, eluded her and so she parlayed not with any potential answers—save for the one where its life was cut short. Another tug, and the lump would give. Sarah dug farther, and sank her claws as deep as they could go. The last tug yielded a discarded bundle of flesh that was tossed to the side as soon as it came free, and another fountain of blood that touched everything except her face.

Sarah darted away before the branches could swat her off. Ichor was now painting the tree's whole backside and her front, and where the lump was revealed a horrible hole where a beating heart lay, trembling in vines and bearing several stab-marks in its pumping frame. The tree turned, and Sarah flew around it as swiftly as her weighted wings would allow, idly noticing the shadows at the edge of her vision beginning to crack and give way.

She was faster than the wounded tree, given her smaller frame in comparison to it. The shadow in the arena howled again, "You are prolonging your agony! Cease this, and your end shall be quick!"

"You can eat my ass with a rusty spoon!" Sarah retorted, reaching the backside of the tree once again. She planted her hinds at the edge of the hole and sank her claws into that wretched heart, cutting away arteries and veins with one and tugging with the other. The heart flailed, sprouting more vines that coiled themselves around the edges as best they could, sprouting thorns in an effort to sway the attacking claws away.

But even as she felt punctures in her flesh, and her own blood oozing, Sarah did not let go until tendrils from opposite directions snagged her and pulled her aside, throwing her to a henge. She spun so hooves and talons would hit stone instead of Anna's backside, and upon landing launched off once more with a flap of her wings that stirred the soil where she landed. The tendrils raced to her again, forming another massive lance that would do more than skewer her were she to get impaled, and tried to strike.

Sarah yowled and sailed over the attack, looking for chinks in the tree's defenses to slip through. Anna nodded against her neck and her horn flashed, her voice echoing in her sister's head, "Fly… up… and I'll help you… finish this…"

Sarah nodded and did as she was told, the tendrils racing after her with fervor. She beat her wings harder and faster to get to the safety zone quicker, feeling the wind beating at her ears and through her feathers once again. Light shimmered, and she looked down to find her cutie mark alternating rapidly between vines and wind, two different shades of green flashing intermittently as they struggled for dominance.

She smirked and willed mana across her feathers. The wind tinted and lifted her even higher, a bright and vibrant emerald that began to win out against its more sickly counterpart. The runes etched in her body flared, but their power was receding just as fast as it had been carved. Higher and higher she went, until the flowers could no longer reach her. She cracked her talons against each other and signaled to Anna with a nod.

Another teleport, and she was back near the half-severed heart of the tree. Immediately she dug back in, severing the last few arteries that she could not get to the first time. Another howl of anguish shook the arena as the final artery popped free with a squelch and a spray of blackish-crimson. The tree made to swat again, but couldn't get there in time; within seconds the heart was freed, pulled from its sanctuary and Sarah flew away once again with it in grasp.

The tree only had enough time left to turn to her with another roar and a telepathic growl of, "Return that at once!"

The shadows cracked again. Crimson light, itself then superseded by something far brighter outside, began spilling into the desolate area from those cracks. Sarah shook her head as her claw trembled. One flex of digits was all it took to crush the pulsing, thrashing organ in her grip. Before the tree could act, she then rammed that crushed heart upon her false horn and skewered it cleanly, drenching her face in its blood. A power unlike any pulsed through the wood of the false spire, before breaking away by itself and falling to the arena floor in a wet plap.

That same power coursed through and across the remnants of Anna's false wings, before they too fell away and landed unceremoniously upon the broken soil. The runes etched in Sarah's flesh glowed brighter for one moment, and gold and blue dust fell away from Anna to reveal much the same, only for those runes on their bodies to die away with a crackle, leaving bleeding flesh where that power had come from. Sarah's cutie mark reverted, fully, to the wind-and-halberd; the vines upon her flanks were no more.

Silence reigned, for three seconds. It was broken by another thunderclap as the shadows trembled again. The cracks widened, allowing more light to spill through.

The tree howled one last time and charged, but halted as the shadows above broke so suddenly and fiercely, it was like a strike of lightning reverberating through the arena, revealing the moon hanging high over them all once again. More of the darkness began falling away from the top down, in increments that seemed reminiscent of broken glass. With the crimson light on the scene, it and its opponents could do nothing but look up to find the eclipsed moon was leering down upon the scene.

Then, another thunderclap followed as it croaked and buckled at the trunk, falling to its equivalent of hind knees as the frontmost branches raced to stop its complete fall. A hollow, gargling choke came out as the tree glowed in a dying, viridian light that raced across it like the beating of the heart it no longer possessed. The crown of flowers withered, shriveling and spitting out a final spray of smoking seeds as petals began to curl up and fall from the whip-like branches.

"I… impossible… the immortality ritual…" the tree wheezed telepathically, its bark starting to fall away. "It's… it's been… no, it shouldn't have…" Its branches shook and strained, threatening collapse. It looked up one last time at Sarah, who came in to land next to the discarded, false limbs and horn that were once attached to her and Anna's bodies. "Unless… the Envoy…?!"

Sarah shook her bloodied head, and watched impassively as the tree finally fell with bark peeling away from its twisted flesh to reveal little more than scraps remaining, and bones rearranged into an impossible configuration that could do nothing to support itself. In seconds, the flesh and bones withered into dried husks, then shriveled things that were barely recognizable as such. Mana raced across the whole mangled surface one last time, leaving the broken form in dissipating wisps of viridian miasma that lingered for a moment before dying. "It seems…" She turned to the shadow that lingered, "that our adversary was more bark than bite."

The shadow scowled, its horn crackling in sickly green with red and blue highlights. "But you cannot leave here—not even if you atone!" it hissed. Another thunderclap sang in the crumbling gloom, shaking the arena with enough force to stir the henges and jostle the broken soil. The discarded, dessicated bones rattled where they lay, fragmenting with each tremor, as did the false wing-remnants and horn. The cracks behind the shade widened some more, barely able to keep anymore radiance from tumbling inwards.

Anna sluggishly raised her head as the thunderclap faded. "Wha… wha was that…?" she groaned, voice raspy and weak from exertion.

Sarah shrugged. "I don't know." She looked to the shadow, searching its features for any confirmation. Alas, the quick scan yielded nothing of the sort; save the scowl, its features remained indistinguishable.

The shadow continued to glare balefully. "Nothing should be able to do this from outside…" it grumbled, its scowl twitching.

Sarah opened her mouth to retort when another, final thunderclap announced its arrival through the fading sable. That thunderclap was followed by an oddly rainbow light piercing the darkness from behind the shade, crashing through an already-cracked portion that broke and fell away like pieces of sparkling glass. And it aimed straight at the fragmented tree, then redirected to the twins when it realized the tree was no more. Time froze, and nobody had the chance to move or comprehend the sudden intrusion of prismic light as it impacted itself onto the arena full force.

Only the eclipsed moon bore witness to what happened next, in that bloodstained battleground.