Silence held within the office again, red and green eyes locked together in an unblinking trance. Nothing dared penetrate the veil of quiet, not even the faintest twitch of a sanded claw, let alone the rustling of folded wings. The air outside was still; not a whistle of wind was to be heard. The moonlight, a smothering blanket of silver that shrouded the figure at the desk in a glow that made him look demonic, began edging its way into that room. The stars offered no help; they twinkled dimly in the gloom outside, providing no solace nor reprieve from the damning question.

Eventually, though, the query had to be answered; otherwise, Anna would have been incinerated on the spot with the seemingly withering glare she was already wilting under. "Y… yes," she managed, trying to keep the shakes out of her voice. The wood and vines on her legs trembled, giving away her trepidation for her.

For another brief bout of eternity, Lance was nothing but judging. He studied the runes on his subordinate's body, as well as plant-like veins streaking her whole coat that might have also been hidden this whole time, eventually lifting a hoof to urge her to turn about in a circle. With hesitance, she complied, and halted when she moved to poise her tail before him when he ordered, "Keep the tail low. I do not want to see your assets." She did as she was told, keeping those green locks tucked between her hinds as she resumed her slow, less than graceful pirouette. The moonlight glittered against the runes and veins, almost as though the celestial body responsible for the light was casting its baleful gaze upon her as well.

"... and is that why," Lance said slowly, his tone lowered just a little in volume, "you couldn't tell us what happened when we found you?" A shaky nod answered him, though there was a part of him that wanted to prod that breaking dam further.

"If… if I did, then…" The vines moved and writhed, burrowing into the wood of the sanded claws and causing them to pulsate in a manner reminiscent of diseased, cursed flesh that struggled to keep the horrid affliction at bay. It was enough of an answer, although it did not make Lance happy by any generous stretch of the definition.

Lance nodded back, nostrils flaring. "And did that little caveat include 'seeding those in close proximity,' by chance?"

That time, Anna shook her head. "No. That… only happens once a cutie mark is gained. If… it ever happens at all after the initial seeding..."

"Which is why the vines burrowed into me the first time, before Matt and Natalie pulled me away from that mess," Lance said, wings shuddering the tiniest bit at a distant memory that was only months old, yet still somehow fresh in his mind. Perhaps Pestilence had something to do with it, he internally mused. "One more question… how did the runes, and the veins that could only come from having plants writhing inside out, not show up until after the Elements of Harmony were used?"

Anna wilted, and sat on her haunches. "Concealment spell. Used to hide the scars so they're almost invisible," she said, ears twitching as a brief, loud pop sang into the room along a flash of light that flared up from behind her.

Lance turned to the source of the light and noise to find NoLegs near the door, scowling. He nodded to the cat and turned back to Anna. "So, basically, a stronger illusion tied with the geas, making it unbreakable by normal means," he said. Another nod answered him, to his growing discontent.

"The elders… had it worse. The villagers my age hardly have those runes as far as I know," Anna muttered. "And those my age? All that are even left now, save a few odds and ends…"

Lance huffed, briefly closing his eyes as he recalled the previous night. While it was true he didn't see much in the way of runes adorning the villagers, it was also true that shock, negotiations, and letting ponies take the time to grieve factored in to his not paying attention that much. On the other hoof, he hadn't expected the Elements of Harmony to pull all the weight they did last night, either.

And that, in itself, was nothing short of miraculous, even he had to admit. A bit extreme, yes… but then again, wasn't he and his whole military just that in the end?

He thought about the very thing that brought that military together—war, ironic as it was. He mused that it probably had been inevitable to drag Greenwood's remnants into it, given that there had been a mounting strike on the now-nonexistent village that was repelled so long ago. Further still, the inevitability of its outliers, one of whom now stood before him as a trusted right hoof, as the one who had both an unusual affliction and ways to utilize it. The other, off somewhere else, likely being taken into consideration even now for her equally bizarre set of skills.

Fate had a strange way of bringing things together, didn't it?

Thus, on that matter, he came to a short and simple decision. "Gather names of the surviving villagers, how much runes adorn their bodies, and for the love of Godcat make note of which one has what. That includes the foals and babies, but don't get all up in their grills over it." Blood simmered in Lance's veins for the barest of instants as he recalled Timber Spruce's deplorable condition, and the urge to punch the responsible party sang in his mind before he quelled it. "But wait until the Crusaders are back home before you do; we don't want to scar them for life. Understood?"

"Understood," Anna echoed.

NoLegs waved his tail with a glow, and telepathically piped up with, "It's because of that one kid, ain't it?"

Lance lowered his head with a suffering groan, and then straightened his posture after. "Yes," he said simply. He turned to his feline colonel and asked, "By the way… did Alexander get the results on the severed wings and horn yet?"

NoLegs nodded, scowl deepening. He conjured a piece of paper with another wave of his tail, and levitated it over to Lance to peruse as he saw fit. "Alexander threw a bitchfit over it, by the way. But not before he left the foals in the emergency ward in the care of some changeling nurses," he replied, fur bristling. Lance took that as a sign to fortify his own emotional walls before his wrath could spill forth and inflict itself on anything and everything within immediate reach. Distantly, he noted, he could indeed hear a gryphon raising a fuss—who it was, and how many floors apart he was to that, he left to the dregs of his imagination.

His eyes gravitated to the paper, where on top it detailed a simple chart divided into neat little rows, wherein each row was marked a series of different variables—for all he knew, it could have detailed probability and genetic sequences. Skipping over that mumbo-jumbo, he found two pictures, one of Anna and the other of Sarah, and below that, four words that would have infuriated him if he had not seen the photographic evidence one of the aforementioned twins tried to deny nights ago.

Lance's eyes slowly rose back to his subordinate, looking at her and her antics in a new light. And upon reflecting for just a moment, he found the taste in his mouth growing increasingly bitter at that denial of the truth all the same. Alas, though, there was very little he could do about that denial but address it now—it was better to bury that hatchet than let it draw yet more blood, no matter whose blood it was. "I'm going to go on both wings and assume… that you also couldn't tell anyone of your alicorn status?"

Anna wilted further, the vines pulling out of the wood and drooping with her as her shoulders sagged. "If I did, while I was still in Greenwood… then I'd have been seen as a challenger…" She let the unspoken hang in the air; though it took Lance a moment to understand what she had meant by what she withheld, it did not take him longer than that for him to come to a conclusion on the matter. Her head shook ruefully as she added, "And nopony else outside of that village… no, nobody, anywhere, would have believed me…"

"And your severed wings… and Sarah's horn… were still powering the geas?" he guessed. His mind replayed the memory of the thrashing dummy, and wondered if perhaps that was what Anna was truly freaked out about in the dim basement of that shoddy hotel.

Anna continued sagging until he was certain her chin would touch the floor. "Yes… it drained us in every way the longer we stayed… and that's not talking about it letting the curse go haywire."

"And your flute and harp?"

Impressively, even hovering inches above the floor, her chin still had yet to actually graze its surface. "Yes…"

Lance nodded. Some part of him was starting to relish in the fact that he and his crew were able to give Pestilence the beating he so righteously deserved, if indeed he was the culprit of the mass blighting of Greenwood and its outlier twins. Hopefully, Godcat would set that miserable piece of splintery horse manure out in the hereafter. So he decided to change the subject just a bit, in a way that had Anna jerking back up ramrod straight a second later. "So that's why you fondled Luna's wings—because your own were cut off at the base of your backside? And you couldn't believe you'd found an alicorn without mangled wings?"

Anna's lips flailed, her tongue writhed, her teeth were clacking together at an alarming rate, and yet the only sounds she could pull from her throat were strangled half-syllables that tumbled over each other in what might have been a distant Fantasian dialect from long, long ago. A blush of embarrassed dismay painted her cheeks, and her eyes almost bugged out. Lance couldn't help the tiny internal smirk he carefully kept off of his face; some part of him found this amusing.

So he decided to press the issue, making sure to keep his face neutral. "And that's why you're fixated on my wings—it helps you forget your own lack thereof?" Admittedly, that was a low blow coming from him, he realized, but in order to hit the nail on the head one would sometimes have to make the necessary jabs.

Anna crumpled, and the internal amusement Lance held was replaced by a tidal wave of guilt in a matter of milliseconds. She shrank as if struck, ears turned back and mouth shutting faster than he could blink. Her eyes went wide and watered, like an innocent deer just realizing it had been shot in the leg and that, yes, the pain from the bullet wound was real. Her face turned from pink to red as all manner of unpleasant emotions threatened to breach the crumbling dam. "I-I-I…" she stammered, starting to tear up as Lance got up from his desk, trotted around it, and draped a wing over her back as soon as he reached her.

He pulled her close with his wing. "Hey. It's okay to be upset about shit like that. You're not geased anymore," Lance said, in the gentlest voice he could muster. He wrapped his other wing around her as she threw her head into his shoulder and started to wail loudly enough to make his ears ache. He lifted his hooves to help cradle her as that bottled-up pain finally erupted from its prison in force. "That wasn't just the guilty party stealing your heritage; that was them then dictating that you pretend to be something you're not," he added as she cried.

For a long time, watched only by the moon, the embrace did not break as sobs filled the room. Lance, with every ounce of patience he could muster, waited until the shrieking had died down—though time was lost onto him; he couldn't tell how long it had lasted. But then again… concealing something like that, and then having to deny the truth for what was probably years would give just about anypony cause to unleash guttural screams that seemed to distort one's sense of time.

And from what his subconscious was telling him, Anna had a lot more to scream about than simply being geased, cursed, and de-winged in what was probably one excruciatingly bad day. So much to unpack, but so little time to process it all over again—such was the fate of the traumatized, Lance internally seethed. His anger could only be assuaged by the fact that something like this would probably never happen again on Fantasia, but only barely.

He made a mental note to not press anymore of Anna's buttons regarding this issue. Even light-hearted jabbing could have resulted in him being stabbed in his sleep over it—he'd have rather faced Godcat all over again than to die prematurely and without even a shred of grace to his name.

His mind, inevitably, drifted to other things as the sobbing continued. Having been informed that Mr. Muffin was animate… he started to wonder: how did he help Sarah escape? He was merely an enchanted plush in a cursed community… then he mentally shook his head. Such questions could be answered by the escapee another day.

And trying to get those answers was likely to end in another sobbing fit from that escapee, too. Or getting his face clawed off. Or witnessing the sobbing match while his face was getting clawed off. Now simply wasn't the time; he had just enough from Anna to piece together his interpretation of the rest. That would be enough for now—it had to be, lest he risk driving her further into insanity.

Right now, he had to wait for his third right hoof to calm down.

But that felt like it was stretching for an eternity.

He had to wait, with a saintly patience, until finally silence permeated the room some indeterminable amount of time later. Nothing more need be said—Lance wondered what there was to be said.

Then, he heard a soft purring accompanied by a noise like bristles being run across smooth marble, and looked in Anna's direction. Her chest was moving steadily, and he leaned a bit closer to see if she was making the first sound. She barely moved, yet the purring hadn't come from her. He glanced down at their hinds, and found NoLegs rubbing his head against Anna's haunch feverishly.

It was a bit strange to see this all of a sudden, but then again, NoLegs was a cat—and Lance had to agree, further words really would not have made Anna feel any better about this whole mess. So he remained in place, content to let his feline colonel give what meager comfort he could.

Then Anna slumped in his grasp again, albeit this time it wasn't driven by emotion. In fact, Lance had to pull away because she kept going and going, keeping only his front hooves on her to lower her fully onto the floor. After her body made contact and he pulled away, she didn't move—not so much as a twitch of her tail.

Lance looked at her face, itself partially hidden by green mane, and studied her reddened expression in the moonlight. Leaning until he was snout to snout enabled him to hear soft, sniffling snorts, which rustled her mane just enough to let one closed eye peek out from between some strands of the viridian mass.

He sighed internally, and turned to NoLegs with a nod and a wing silently unfurling, primaries turned to Anna and slowly curling upwards. NoLegs nodded and his tail shimmered, his magic wrapping around the half-wooden chimera to gently lift her up without disturbing her. When she was lifted to an inch above the desk height, Lance turned around and silently ducked and backed up with wings shut, only ceasing movement when her hinds dangled on either side of his haunches. Then, when she was set on his back and he got the chance to straighten his legs did he fall still.

He stood there for a moment or so, wondering if his subordinate would notice the change in her sleeping space. She stirred a little, vines and wood twitching, and continued to sniffle and snort… but besides that, she was motionless. Lance turned to NoLegs and mouthed, "Teleport us to her quarters please and thank you." NoLegs nodded and let his tail shimmer again, before they teleported out of the room and into another one.

Lance took a moment to analyze the new room he now stood in. A collection of bows and arrows hung on one wall, as well as two pony-sized harps, amusingly enough. One hewn of vine and tree, the other of gold with silver wings decorating its top, served as the first oddballs of the room. A few dressers were strewn about, all wood but with drawers thrown open to hold loose collections of arrows and materials that Lance didn't care to identify. Between two such dressers stood a metal chest, itself also stuffed to bursting with more arrows than Lance could shake his gunblade at.

To his left stood a worn desk, lined with many scratch marks and scattered papers with some musical sheets nestled within the morass here and there. It had its drawers too, but though they were closed, he could already tell they weren't stuffed full of projectiles—they would not have been able to shut otherwise, as arrows tended to clutter no matter how neat their arrangements were.

Given that, though, there was no telling what they were stuffed with in lieu of still more projectiles. In front of the desk was a chair, askew but still standing upright. It was a simple sort, the kind of bland cookie-cutter design found in most homes, with a worn cushion on its seat. And while he could barely see it, he still noticed a filled waste basket stuffed past bursting with wadded papers, some of which had escaped and hid beneath the chair.

The other side housed a collection of well-cared plants, some in pots and others placed in a metal box filled with dirt. That side of the room rested under bright halogen lights accompanied by mist sprinklers, all stationed behind glass walls etched with shimmering runes. Beside this structure in a corner was a simple showerhead, sporting opaque walls and a loose collection of bottles both capped and open. In front of Lance, which he strode to with a careful and silent stride, sat the bed—unkempt, with blankets and pillows as scattered as the papers upon the worn desk.

And it was there that Lance crawled onto the mattress, using his wings to balance himself by spreading them partially, before he shifted his hinds beneath him. As he did this, the mattress groaned and creaked; he sighed, wondering when it would need replacing. With another nod to NoLegs, he lifted his fronts and delicately grasped Anna's forelegs. He lifted the left one over his head, halting when she grumbled something unintelligible as the claws dangled in front of his eyes.

Anna moved her head away from his neck, and mumbled as her snout hit the mattress before any of her legs did. After a few seconds passed and Lance had determined that she wasn't going to get back up anytime soon, he finished hoisting her left front over his head and lowered her front quarters to the worn bed. Then, he shimmied a little bit, pulling his body under her hinds to wiggle out of her personal space without tangling his wings. He made certain to close his eyes and hold his breath as he moved until her haunches hovered on either side of his shoulders. As carefully as he could, he grasped the left hind hock and did the same to it as he had done to the front one, slowly and delicately to avoid any accidental harming.

As soon as she was fully settled onto the bed, Lance sighed silently and watched as a pillow and a few blankets, all glowing with a blue aura, hovered up from the floor where they lay and started to position themselves accordingly. Anna's head was lifted by the same magic, but only just enough to nestle the pillow beneath her chin. The moment it stilled, she grumbled again and grabbed it tight with her claws, moving it to her chest to hug it tightly. NoLegs snorted and shook his head, and lifted two more pillows—one to put under her head again, and another within reach in case she wanted to do something with it. After that, the blankets slid over her body and the first to cover her tucked itself in snuggly, with the subsequent ones opting to cover in loosely and hang at the bed's sides.

Lance nodded and turned to the desk, trotting quietly to it as NoLegs slid over to magically lift the papers and start to sort them out. The messy parchments swirled around the feline, separating and reforming into neat little stacks that went onto the table in a set of three with their tops against the wall—the blank sheets, the partially-finished, and the fully finished. Sitting on the chair and silently scooting it close enough to the desk was an easy enough feat, and Lance got himself comfortable relatively quickly. His right wing spread, and crimson primaries felt for worn drawer handles before pulling the topmost one open with a soft groan of protest coming from wood and the metal tracks installed within it, and crimson eyes turned to find…

A few chisels with different heads and squares of various grades of sandpaper were strewn about, alongside various grades of whetstone that he could barely make out beneath the sandpaper. Lance made a mental note to get some quality-grade wood for Anna later; she could make a whole new flute if she had time, or perhaps another instrument altogether. That drawer was closed, the clutter within barely stirring and clinking as its confine drew back into place. The one beneath it was opened by feathers, and… was stuffed with clear boxes, both large enough to fill the drawer in its entirety without room to spare. One had a myriad of threads, most coiled neatly and some hopelessly tangled, and the other had weapons-grade feathers.

That one was closed in short order. The one beneath it, the last of its row, was breached. Lance grinned to himself as he found a few fountain pens and vials of ink, all in different colors. Choosing the classic black vial, and a similarly-colored pen, he plucked them up and put them onto the desk using his primaries when he heard a rustle of cloth and another creaking of the mattress. Pausing to turn to Anna, he cocked his head when he found she had rolled onto her back, the first pillow still in her grasp and the blankets askew once more. NoLegs might have snickered, or at least made a sound similar in nature to a snicker, as he magically repositioned the blankets without a complaint.

Turning back to the desk and plucking off a blank sheet of paper, Lance grasped the fountain pen between two of his primaries and uncorked the ink with his hooves before dipping the pen's tip inside the reservoir. Pulling the paper in front of him, he began to write with long, clumsy strokes that could only belong to a school-aged foal inexperienced in wingwriting. And he was no musician, either; it took him no less than five attempts to even scratch one sentence out onto that parchment. At least the instrument of writing held steady between his primaries, but that was no excuse for the lackluster attempt at his own penmareship.

He looked it over and waved NoLegs over with a hoof. NoLegs hopped onto the desk and looked at the wingwriting before shaking his head. His tail shimmered and he telepathically grumbled to Lance, "There's no way in hell I can read that."

So Lance sighed, put the fountain pen down, crumpled the paper and threw it beneath the desk. It bounced against a filled waste bin and rolled to his hooves, lining up with a few other crumpled parchments already at the chair's feet. He plucked off another blank scrap of paper and put it before his snout, and attempted to write once more—using his hoof this time, itself no easy feat as the pen kept slipping every which-way it could in his grasp.

When the first sentence was wrought once more, NoLegs again shook his head. "Still can't read it," NoLegs telepathically muttered. "Try using your teeth."

Lance grumbled, crumpled the paper, tossed it and grabbed another sheet. He dipped the fountain pen in more ink in case it was low, and put its non-business end between his molars. After a few strokes of the pentip, though, he realized he could barely see what he was doing past his own snout, and paused to pull back to gauge his progress thus far.

Huh, he only wrote the first word and could actually read it, despite it being somewhat chicken-scratchy. He turned to NoLegs, who slowly nodded with a glint in his eye as his tail shined bright with light. On the corner of the desk, materializing from a blue aura, now sat a chocolate, vanilla-frosted cupcake with a slice of apple wedged on top, neatly wrapped in plastic film with a pretty pink bow around the pastry's foot.

Lance didn't ask using his vocal chords, instead shrugging, glancing at the cupcake, and turning back to NoLegs. NoLegs merely jerked his head in Anna's direction a few times before his superior understood. Resuming his mouthwriting, albeit a little more slowly for the sake of keeping track of his progress, to refill the pen, and to pause and read as necessary, he started to lose track of time as he poured out some measure of his own thoughts onto the paper.

Though when he finished, he rotated and slid the parchment to NoLegs so he could read it. The cat looked at the sheet somewhat cross-eyed, but slid it back and used his tail to gesture to the cupcake. Lance sighed, but moved the paper up a bit so he could scrutinize its bottom to see if there was any room left.

And he was in luck; just enough left over to add in an addendum. Lance grinned and began writing again, keeping the slow pace to make his writing as legible as possible. When that was done, he lowered the pen into the inkwell and emptied whatever ink remained. When that got finished, he corked the vial and put it and its partner back where they belonged in the third drawer. Then he lifted the finished product with a hoof, flapping it a bit to make sure the ink had dried properly.

No droplets flew off the paper. That was good enough, he supposed. He put it on the desk, slowly slid the wrapped treat to sit atop the parchment, and turned to Anna. Finding she was still off in dreamland, and hopefully not within its evil twin's grasp, he turned back to and nodded to NoLegs. The cat jumped on his back, and teleported them both out without any sound other than a faint pop that failed to rouse Anna from slumber.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Princess Luna was not a happy pony.

Her trip through the dream world had been rudely, unexpectedly interrupted when she was passing through the section housing the dreams of Lance and his motley crew. First, the door holding Lance and Anna's dreams split of its own accord, repositioning those accursed locks around the frames so tightly she thought the wood would splinter.

Then, the locks holding Anna's dreams shut began clattering and ringing against the door, as though something were trapped on the other side and trying to get out. The foul ink-like matter smeared and smattered and sprayed as the shackles thrashed, drying on contact with anything and everything it could touch. The ringing grew, first an incessant rattling before then vibrating in a constant drone slowly reaching a crescendo that hurt her ears.

Prismatic light burst from the locks, first in thin streams that could only seep out where the locks clicked into their own latches. But the light gradually grew, and glittered as it started emerging from within with such force as to send chunks of their prisons flying in arcs that were either halted by Luna's body, or continued onto the other side of the dream-walkway to crash into other doors. Then, the aura started seeping from the chains as well, breaking them and their anchors apart from within, drying the ichor merely by casting itself onto the befouled sludge.

A brief bout of tranquility came when the locks and chains suddenly stilled, and their little lightshow had died with only the holes in the chains and locks to show for it. Though hesitant at first, Luna lifted a hoof and prodded at the nearest shackle, frowning when a distinct lack of coldness greeted her instead of its usual frigidness. Without warning though, the rainbow aura returned in full force, and she spread her wings to cover her eyes as a titanic, deafening boom rattled the dreamscape with enough strength to jostle the locks that hadn't yet displayed such bizarre behavior. The blast wasn't enough to knock her off her hooves—she had tackled worse, after all—but it was enough to make her not lower her wings in case there was any smog present.

It took a few moments for shielding primaries to lower, but not before she realized she couldn't smell anything that would have naturally come from an explosion of this nature—no shrapnel, smoke, or sludge hit her sinuses. Glancing to the door for answers, her brows climbed up her forehead when she saw it unobstructed, and hewn of birch as opposed to the rich burnt oak it was before. Though, there were the holes where the chains rested, with fresh ivy and kudzu weaving into them to fill the gaps.

Not a second after Luna made eye contact with the door again, it opened of its own volition. Before entering, she glanced around at the other doors, to see if anything had changed with them. Sarah's had lightened in color, and possessed fewer shackles—hers also had holes decorating its frame and surface, with a few breezes billowing out of them. The shackles that remained oozed more ichor, though, and none of the other doors had changed whatsoever—a tiny fact which nonetheless infuriated her.

The longer the Fantasians went without their royal therapy session, the more damage they risked doing to themselves and everything else around them. What infuriated her more was there was little she could do about it—their bed to make, their bed to rest in. She couldn't force them to do anything, lest that trigger interplanetary fighting.

Why did diplomacy have to be such a pain in the royal posterior, Luna wondered, especially when it involved other nations and their wants and needs?

Frowning at this development, she strode through the door, hoping that it was invitation enough. She looked around as the door closed behind her and vanished, finding herself on a scorched, fragmented island ringed with torches around its precipice, cut off from most of any nearby land with endless seas of magma. Ahead of her was a ruined structure, roots upturned with runes carved into its surface, visible only under moonlight.

Luna glanced upwards, and found the moon full with a pearlescent sheen on its surface. She looked around the rest of the sky… odd. There were no stars to be seen—it was all clouds, letting only the moon shine through a minute hole in the sky that seemed to threaten to swallow it up any moment.

She whirled around, looking for something else amidst the glowing crimson sea. Behind the rock island stood a singular spire, tapered off into a disc-like plateau at the top that oddly glowed with a soft viridian light. Spreading her wings to take flight, she galloped first to pick up speed, just in case the heated air didn't offer any lift.

"That's strange… her dreams have changed," Luna mused, brow furrowing slightly as the thought ran laps in her mind. She launched off the fragmented island with ease, ascending with long and graceful flaps that kept her from the magma below. She chanced a glance down every now and then as she neared the spire, noticing that the magma wasn't bubbling or popping or… anything of the sort. It just sat there and glowed.

"Then again… if the Tormentor had a hold here and doesn't any longer, then it would make sense for the dream itself to change," Luna theorized, continuing to fly ahead as the spire started growing closer and closer. Atop the plateau, she noticed somepony sitting in its center, their back turned to her approach and their muzzle lifted skyward.

When she reached the plateau, she circled its underside a few times to see if it was an entirely different structure. But upon sighting the spiral path and its cavernous opening, she knew she was right where she had to be, and so flew from beneath the plateau to land upon its topside. She kept her wings open upon finding a runic circle etched onto its surface, glimmering and lined by a ring of arrows. Sitting within the center was Anna, body as still as the graveyards abandoned so long ago.

Luna bristled a bit upon sighting wood and vines still lingering upon her body, and the silver scars of runes etched into flesh an indeterminable amount of time ago. She had heard of wood and vines burrowing into flesh, and scrutinized the lone Fantasian a bit more to find old, tell-tale markings vein-like in structure overlapped by some newer ones, though not so many as to distort the rest of the coat to which the runes sharing it belonged. And then there was the oddity of having her entire mane down, cascading to her lower back in a frazzled display that hadn't looked like it saw a hairbrush for a few days now.

She looked behind again, at the distant fragmented island that she had abandoned. Faintly, she could hear rock crumbling and splashing in molten, sizzling liquid, and watched as piece by piece, it tore apart the rest of the way and sank into burning crimson-gold. It was only when the island had sunk and silence had reigned once more did she hear Anna speak.

"... let's cut the horseshit," Anna said firmly.

That caused Luna to turn back ahead, eyes wide. "Prithee?"

Anna didn't budge from her location. She didn't even turn her head. "You're the Princess of Night, Dreams, and Moon. I know you're being fed things through the power of that second thing," she said tartly. "And I'm starting to think Discord's spoon feeding you other things from whatever the flying monkeyfuck he does in his spare time."

Luna's feathers drooped a bit under the stinging accusation, but alas there was technical truth to it. She could not deny it, lest tempers flare, so the next best thing had to suffice. "Is that why you've locked me out for so long?"

"That, and the last time I let somepony nose so far up my own womb, I nearly died on the spot," Anna hissed, the venom in her words causing the runes on and around her to crackle as she spat them out. "And no—I'm not here to talk about the time I nearly died on the spot of having my womb invaded, thank you kindly."

Luna took a deep breath through her nose. Anna's hostility was starting to grate on her a little. Then again, Fantasians in heat could still be locked in the 'good ol' days,' as some would say—which didn't excuse Anna's behavior at all. Or perhaps the Greenwood Blight was still affecting her in some way; either way, her inner cynic was starting to entertain the possibility of beating the hostility out of the petulant mare before her.

So she popped off a different question, hoping to get off on the right hoof this time. "Then… what are you here to talk about?"

"What I want to know is this: let's say Discord's spoon feeding you news about any Fantasian alicorns. Does he distinguish between the mortal and the immortal?" Anna replied, still keeping her eyes seemingly locked on the moon above.

Luna paused, pursing her lips as she wracked her brain for an answer. She didn't jump when bubbles of chocolate milk and confetti made of candy suddenly coalesced into existence next to her in the form of an explosion, before swirling around and compacting into a familiar chaotic shape that crossed his mismatched arms in a pout. "Well, of course I distinguish between mortal and immortal alicorns if I find any, and so far everyone and their mother is giving me the runaround on Fantasia! What's it to you if all alicorns were immune to old age and the like, you…"

Discord's voice died in his throat when he blinked, lifted his talon, wrenched out an eye and clenched his digits around it to reform it into a kaleidoscope that he then put to his other eye. Through the sparkling wonders of the contraption, he could see Anna's scars clear as day. "Oh… oh… that's why…" he muttered, turning the kaleidoscope in his claw.

The gizmo tumbled about, and therein so did a tiny replica of Anna's body, enabling him to see her from the full three-sixty view. When he was done with it, he threw it over his shoulder and lifted his paw to wrench at his blue antler, twisting it a few times before a reformed eye fell back into its socket. The kaleidoscope twisted into an origami butterfly and burned in the magma below before it could take flight.

It took Luna but a second to realize what had caught Discord's eye all of a sudden. She turned to him, jaw shaking and threatening to drop. "You mean to imply that she's…"

Discord nodded resolutely, face souring as his head briefly twisted into a lemon on one side and a lime on the other. "And this whole time, she was right under our snouts… more or less," he said bluntly, tail swishing. "It's one thing to be an interspecies foal, but quite another to turn out an alicorn on top of that. And if there's anything more improbably chaotic than that, I don't know what is."

"Well… at least that's settled, then." Anna stood up and lowered her head, groaning audibly as her vines writhed. She turned around, wriggling her claws up and down on the ground until they popped as though they had bones within their structures. Her horn lit up, and some of the runes on both sides of her horizontal scarring lit up with her power.

Luna knelt slightly, tilting her head as a feeling of wrongness began settling into her gut. "Dare I ask what she's doing?" she muttered to Discord, who only stood there seeming indifferent. All she received was a wave of the paw and a shake of the head in response, and she side-glanced him with her frown growing in concern.

The wood pulsed, the flesh writhed as if bewitched once more, and plates of bark erupted from Anna's horizontal scars in a messy spray of blood before arranging themselves into twisted forms that stretched long and thin like the wings of a bat. Between the joints, long leaves sprouted in clusters, glistening in the light of the magma and the runes on the ground. Overlaying them from the other side of the joints came a downy moss that emerged from the wood itself, clinging tightly onto itself and its bastion that it did not even tremble as the structures flapped once completed.

Discord grinned as the moss spread across the rest of Anna's back, going up until it was beneath her mane and cascading down over her tail like the world's smallest gown. "Oh? You can still tap into that? Well…" He reached behind himself with his paw and bent to the side slightly, and out of seemingly nowhere he thrust it sharply at his side to reveal he had a sledgehammer with its head fashioned into a miniature red-roofed house in his grip. "This has gotten interesting."

Anna smiled, and the expression was filled with flat molars and razor-sharp teeth front and back as she shifted into a pouncing stance with all four legs spread as wide as possible. The wood raced down her tail, enveloping the hairs and moss as it formed its own joints to then lift and extend over her head, breaking off into five more digits that splintered with purpose. More bark encroached on her face, and formed a partial mask that only covered her horn and the bridge of her snout. An orb-web-like structure sprouted and cascaded from just behind her cheekbones to the very end of her neck.

"Well now that the curse can't overtake me… might as well see what I can really do," Anna said, eyes flashing crimson for but an instant.

Luna shuddered. Great, just wonderful, absolutely fantastic—one of the Fantasians going insane. Last thing she needed. And it seemed this one had come upon a power that few should ever wield, much less without doing so responsibly. "So you wish to test yourself, here instead of the waking world?"

Anna's grin almost turned maniacal as it broadened, fangs glistening as she chuckled hollowly. Wooden, curved ram's horns erupted from her mask to hover just under her ears as her sclera blackened. "Why not? Limitless potential here," she pointed out. "I'm alone, and against two entities that required the Elements of Harmony to set straight, so…" She flexed her faux wings again, the moss rustling like feathers as they stilled. "I'm just leveling the playing field."

"So, Princess…" Discord piped up, swinging his hammer around a few times experimentally before hunching slightly as he clutched its shaft in both hands.

"What?" Luna grumbled, her magic etching floating runes into the air around her horn that formed into a circle.

"Does the name Gaea Everfree ring any bells?" Discord asked, eyes gleaming.

Luna wracked her brain for a moment, before shuddering as a half-wooden alicorn mare materialized in her mind's eye, albeit with a two-toned mane of streaked teal and grey-pinkish coat. "Why?"

"Well… she had somepony just like her on Fantasia, right down to making their very own cursed forest using the souls of any damned villagers who died within its depths. Only… a stallion. And it seems we might be dealing with… descendants of his," Discord said, tipping his chin at Anna. "After all… wouldn't the descendants be able to tap into that same power we're witnessing now?"

Luna paled considerably as the implications sank in. "... no…" she muttered, wings shuddering.

"Oh, yes… the town in the Everfree… Sunnytown, was it? I'm sure Celestia hoofed you all the details of that mess during your… reintegration period." Discord shook his head, face hardening and tail lashing. "Well, whatever the case, we can't let any of that cockamammy wannabe-chaos run amok, can we?"

Luna's face turned grim as her wings straightened. "No. We cannot," she said firmly.

Author's Notes:

You may have noticed, this is the longest single-chapter yet. This is one of the very few times I will stray from a single-chapter wordlength of 4-6k words.