Author's Notes:

Kantus bailed (he and I had... an argument. Let's leave it like that.) However, a new editor has come forth to take his place: Thank you Norris for your aid. :D

~Dragon

The storm had passed in the late evening, some bits of its accursed hail having left many holes in roofs in their wake, while the rest littered the streets and alleys. As the last bits of day turned into night, ponies gathered on the cobblestone walkways to begrudgingly sweep up the remnants of the storm that hadn't yet melted.

This went on for a good while, though as the very late hours rolled around, many ponies ceased cleaning the streets inexplicably. The ponies who failed to finish sweeping the streets started shouting, and the city of Canterlot quickly found itself with an escalation comprised of a myriad of angry voices and hooves assaulting the paved walkways in what could best be described as a chorus of wrath.

The orchestra started as a small thing, kickstarted by the ponies that were already in the streets and letting their anger fuel their actions. But it grew in intensity, and the angry ponies' numbers started growing in perfect tandem. The symphony took to adding some new notes—notes composed of hail being shattered and ponies shoving each other aside. It was only further escalating as two sets of eyes watched the whole scene unfold at a relatively safe distance.

Witnessing this gathering crowd assemble between the golden buildings and its members fighting amongst themselves, Anna and Sarah had perched themselves on a balcony in silence. Both were sitting on opposite ends and frowning as the streets continued to erupt with the suddenness of an earthquake and the intensity of a monsoon that kept on worsening.

Many ponies below raised all sorts of hell. A few took to throwing objects in and out of windows, some more engaged in violent brawls with hooves seemingly going in every conceivable direction one could think of, their hits landing with varying degrees of success. For some bizarre reason that eluded the Fantasian spectators who went unseen by the mob, even more unicorns decided to use their magic to hurl their fellow ponies up into the air like basketballs.

Pegasi dumped buckets of hail on the unicorns, who sent into the sky a sacrificial vase or something of the sort in kind. The pegasi further retorted by flinging their emptied buckets into the grounded below, often blinding a hapless pony and causing them to blunder every which-way. Some slipped on hail clumps and skid into walls or the other fighting ponies, often knocking the latter over as if they were bowling pins.

Still more gathered accumulated clumps of hail that the pegasi had poured on them, and they smashed them against the heads of their neighbors like fine china. This caused the ponies attacked by ice clumps to retaliate by throwing objects back, only to get hit themselves immediately after they landed a hit with their makeshift projectiles.

"I'm not sure if this is a riot, or a drunk convention gone wrong," Anna remarked in a quiet voice. She began noticing some pegasi trying to fly out of the streets and buildings, only to be dragged back down by a magic aura or two grabbing them. "I don't even know why they're bashing each other."

"The weather ponies did this on purpose!" cried out one voice from the throng, the remark causing all to halt in their tracks. The rest of the mob turned to a haggard unicorn holding a bucket of hail in his magic. "They sent the hail our way! Let's go up in our airships and show those pegasi what for!"

"We're going to Cloudsdale, and tearing down the weather factory!" another exclaimed, followed by another, until the entire mob chanted this in unison.

"Riot... if it were a drunk convention gone wrong, we'd see booze bottles going all over the place," Sarah sighed, shaking her head as the chaos below continued to escalate. Some unicorns sought out and jumped on many a hapless pegasus, holding them still with magic and advancing on their prone forms with their hooves. She couldn't help but shudder as the sickening snap of bones breaking when hooves connected with delicate wings echoed over and over again.

This, combined with the shrieks of pain that came as a direct result of the wings being broken, only contributed to the unholy symphony that emanated from the streets. Her gut twisted in response, and she clenched her talons into fists in an attempt to distract herself from the horrid orchestra. She had to force herself to keep her own wings shut against her sides, as if the mere act of spreading them had a one-hundred percent chance of having their feathers ripped out.

Her pupils shrank to tiny slits as feathers were yanked out from the unfortunate pegasus ponies' wings—pegasus ponies who already had the misfortune of getting the aforementioned wings broken. Sarah's ears quickly flattened back against her head as the screams of pain continued to reverberate through the air unhindered. "I'm getting the feeling they're gonna come after me next," she murmured, a spark of fear flashing in her eyes, her body tensing up to the point it began aching in various places.

Anna took another good look at the havoc raging below, noticing a plethora of royal guards rushing in like a stampede of buffalo, with some of the earth pony ones already tackling the offending unicorns to the ground. Some more guards diverted from the others and scooped up the wounded pegasi, while still more came to them with distinct silver armor and white saddlebags on their backsides. The flaps of the silver-armored ponies' saddlebags were all marked with a distinct red cross. "Huh, they seem to have medic ponies for this sort of thing," she noted.

"Maybe this isn't the first time de-feathering's happened around these parts, then," Sarah sighed. She started relaxing a bit as the silver-armored ponies went to bandaging and tending to hurt wings. The medic ponies did not appear to worry about the unicorns who threw things every which-way, largely because a tight circle of golden-armored ponies protected them with fairly sizeable shields from many attacks.

Some of the enraged unicorns looked entirely hellbent on getting to the pegasi, though. They lashed out with their back legs, they tossed things ranging from small objects like vases to larger, entire table sets. They spit in the guards' faces, and some even catapulted themselves onto the shields with self-levitation, hoping their front hooves could dent the shields. Then the mob took to swearing up and down and sideways when said shields failed to get even a scratch.

They shouted slurs and threats, called the pegasi they wished harm upon things like 'incompetent nincompoops' and 'dumb dodos who should not rule the skies,' among various other things. All in all, they had become the pinnacle of unhappy campers, though it failed to occur to them that the innocent pegasi they had harmed might have had nothing to do with the transgression they had allegedly committed. The aforementioned pegasi—including those who had escaped being plucked—began shouting back, declaring their innocence.

"The weather went out of our control! It was like it got hijacked or something!" cried a wounded stallion as another angry unicorn threw herself onto the shield protecting him.

"The hail hit some of the weather team and put them in the Cloudsdale Infirmary! We couldn't have prevented it!" another exclaimed as she deftly dodged some flying pieces of furniture. This one found refuge on a flat rooftop with raised decorative walls on three sides, but this didn't stop the unicorns who kept barking up the tree by throwing more furniture up and over in an attempt to score a hit from below.

"It was your fault, you filthy frumptious freaks! The entirety of the pegasus race bears the weight of this out-of-control weather on their feathery backsides!" a masculine voice cried out, causing Sarah to jump and blink for a moment before turning her attention away from the medic ponies and the wounded to a sight that made her pupils dilate to vertical slits.

One particular pony that sported a cloak went so far as to attack a pegasus mother and her foal with a red object that moved too fast to be discerned properly. The mother and foal both screamed, even when some guards ran to them and jumped to their defense. The duo only calmed down when their protectors shoved the offender back with blasts of concentrated magic.

"You dare defend these wretched imbeciles? Have you gone mad?" the cloaked pony shouted at the guards, who responded by firing more wicked projectiles of raw magic his way.

Anna and Sarah tailed this pony's movements with their eyes. Both sets of brows furrowed when the entity began jumping from one pegasus to the next, only to be parried and shooed away by guards aplenty while he shouted insults as numerous as the magic blasts aimed at him. The latter's eyes narrowed when the cloaked pony's garb momentarily wavered as a guard delivered a kick that found its mark. The kick gave way to the pony very briefly betraying a flash of maroon that came from beneath the cloth as he turned and fled to find a new target.

A mew hit their ears, and the hippogryph and unicorn duo turned around to find an armored NoLegs approaching them from an open spot that lead into the castle. The cat had his little blade strapped around him and secured in its sheath, happily purring as he jumped up to the mares and rubbed his head on their back hooves. Anna smiled at the cat and made to pet him with a front hoof, only to sigh as the critter jumped up and landed on her back with another meow.

"How's he able to jump? Doesn't the armor weigh him down?" Sarah asked, gesturing to the feline with a talon. She blinked when the cat responded by waving his tail, seeing some kind of aura glimmering around its tip like a prehensile unicorn's horn. "He can do magic?"

"Dunno, really. But I wouldn't be surprised if he did self-levitation on a daily basis," Anna murmured with a shrug, turning back to peer over the balcony in another attempt to survey the still-ongoing madness that seemed to have no end in sight. The cat jumped up and perched on her head, his purring grinding to an abrupt halt when he saw what it was that had been going on in the streets.

"You sound like you've seen him do it before," Sarah noted, eyeing the cat for a moment longer before directing her attention to the anarchy. She scanned every street with a wary gaze, but found that the cloaked pony had slipped out of sight in the brief period she turned away. In addition to this, the guards had effectively gotten every single pegasus pony out of the brawl and were rounding up the rioters with shields and swords. The silver-plated ponies, in the meantime, took to corralling the wounded towards the palace. "Damn, these guys are effective."

"At least they were able to get to the pegasi in time..." Anna sadly muttered under her breath, turning away from the balcony and to the open spot. "But we couldn't save that stallion in Frostbite..."

"Don't beat yourself up over it," Sarah chastised as she whirled around to see that her sister's back was facing her. When Anna shot a glance over her shoulder, Sarah sighed softly and stood on her back legs before walking up to her sister and resting a claw on her withers. "We can't help everygryph or pony we come across. But we can still help those we reach in time."

"Well..." Anna trailed off, taking a moment to consider Sarah's remark. It was a moment she didn't have to spare—one that Sarah took with her subsequent utterance.

"You know you can still help Lance. It's why you became one of his advisors, isn't it?" Sarah mused with a snort, garnering another look from her sister. A moment passed and silence took hold between the two, and it went without so much as an inkling of a response from Anna. Sarah took this as her cue to continue, "It's also why you didn't... end Katie, right? You had the chance to slay her, but you didn't take it. Why?"

Still no answer came from Anna. Only when Sarah relented and retracted her claw did the pony with an armored cat on her head speak up, "It's... something just tells me it wouldn't be right to kill Katie."

"Go on..." Sarah implored, ears twitching slightly. NoLegs turned to her and mewed, starting to purr again when Anna did as was asked of her.

"It'd be like killing Maria," Anna answered in a low, hesitant tone. "That wraith... look at it logically, Sarah, she can't defend herself. Maybe fly away, but her wings are nothing more than tatters at this point. I'm amazed she can even fly at all. Hell, when me and Matt and Natz found her, she was seconds from becoming bear chow."

"So, that explains the bearskin I found when I was helping clean out the tank?" Sarah asked, a brow shooting up.

"Yeah. We... kinda ate the bear," Anna answered with a nod, angling her head to gaze at the sky. She went on, unaware that her sibling donned an amused smile, "Seventeen hungry mouths in a tank parked in a wintery wonderland... oh, Lance was grouchy before we found that bear."

"Speaking of Lance, why're you helping him?" Sarah went on, her grin widening.

Anna opened her mouth to speak, but closed it prior to jerking her head back to the streets below as a scream that sounded like it came from multiple ponies rang out. "Oh, what is going on down there now?" she groaned as her gaze went everywhere, scanning even the smallest details of the aftermath in a bid to figure out where the accursed sound had come from.

"It probably came from a pegasus whose wings have been touched the wrong way," Sarah murmured. "Now, why're you helping Lance?" she repeated, her grin fading as Anna simply opted to ignore her. NoLegs mewed and shook his head, waving his tail for a moment before curling it around his limbless hips. A vein appeared on her slightly-twitching forehead, and she snarled out, "Sis, whatever is going on below isn't important!"

"Then what's that?" Anna replied, using a hoof to gesture to a particular spot in the streets below. Sarah followed her hoof, finding a gathering of ponies marching from a bizarre, two-story violet building that sported twin towers erecting up from both ends of the roof. Said gathering of ponies were listening to some kind of drivel from a cloaked triad, one of which betrayed a flash of maroon as they continued onward.

The group led by the unusual trio continued to shriek in unison, and as Anna's ears swiveled about to catch their ruckus, their cries became crystal clear. "The Fantasians screwed with the weather! We must have them hanged! Prince Blueblood was right!" the marching crowd bellowed over and over as if it were a chant, their call for death sending icy water shooting through Anna's veins.

"'Not important' my ass," Anna scoffed, ears flattening against her head. She whirled around to meet Sarah's gaze, face hardening within seconds. "There's another group down there, and apparently, we made it onto their shitlist. Let's find the others, and haul out of here."

"Want me to fly?" Sarah asked, spreading her wings wide. Anna nodded, her horn glowing for a moment. In a flash of light, her flute appeared. "I could get to the others and warn them faster if I flexed my wings."

"Might as well call forth some wind. It couldn't hurt to be extra-speedy," Anna chirped, putting the instrument to her mouth. She took a second to grin, but the expression fell and her magic briefly faltered as a vase flew over the balcony and shattered against the back of her head. She dropped the flute, but lunged and caught it between her teeth before it had the chance to finish its descent.

And then another vase arced over the balcony, breaking into a thousand fragments upon her back, and narrowly missing NoLegs while sending his makeshift mount sprawling to the floor. This ended up forcing her to drop her flute once more, where it rolled helplessly for a few inches before stopping its tumble abruptly. The cat started hissing furiously, tail waving and emitting a pale blue glow from the tip like no tomorrow.

Sarah's eyes went wide, and she shut her wings before another object—this time, it was a chair—had the opportunity to snag her left one. The wooden piece of furniture broke into several smaller fragments, and her ears flattened against her head as the crowd's cry of "We must have them hanged!" grew loud enough to echo into the skies.

"They're in the castle! They might have incapacitated everypony else inside!" cried one of the gathered unicorns as the hippogryph dared to peek over the balcony. Another next to him reared up on his back legs, grasping in his magic an entire dish cabinet.

Sarah gulped, then made to scoop up her sibling and nestle her between her wings. Anna groaned, but made no attempt to move. NoLegs swished his tail and lifted the fallen flute up in a faint magical aura, mewing before grabbing Anna's mane with his mouth.

Sarah rose onto her back legs, holding Anna's rear hooves with her talons as she ran into the castle upright. Her heart started racing as glass and wood crashed loudly behind her heels. She skid into a hall and almost tripped over her hooves, but caught herself with a few hasty flaps of her wings.

The mobile foundation of the impromptu totem pole awkwardly stumbled down the hall in a constantly shifting gait, speed fluctuating as she struggled to avoid blundering into walls or bumping into the occasional dangling flower pot. Her wings never fully spread wide, with the exception of flapping madly whenever she miscalculated her velocity and came close to having her muzzle meet with the red carpet. This went on for a good twenty minutes or so before she had to stop in an otherwise-empty corner and gently lower her sibling to the floor before collapsing herself.

Sarah's breath came in sharp, wheezing exhales that barely left her throat, chest tightening and wings and claws rippling with electrical sensations as they started going numb. Her ears, though, remained upright and constantly swiveled, only to catch nothing but her own rasping breaths and the echoes of the chaos outside. She barely noticed NoLegs as he let go of Anna's mane, jumped down, and moved to her until he stuck his tongue out to lick the corner of her mouth.

"You... still have her flute, right?" Sarah asked, slowly turning to the cat. NoLegs waved the flute in a magic aura, his glowing tail facilitating the movements. He let off a mew that gave way to soft purring. She gave the feline a weak smile, which broadened ever so slightly as her breathing slowly returned to normal exhales that still had a raspy undertone.

"Sarah, did a train come by to hit you, and then backed up to be sure?" a hollow voice asked, and Sarah blinked before glancing around. Her gaze fell on a pale form with a crimson mane that just cantered round the bend and tilted her head quizzically.

"If that happened, I'd be in bloody chunks right now," Sarah replied. She took to shifting her forelimbs and wings, grunting as the feeling of a dull, tingling, current-like sensation faded away. With her limbs recovering from the sensation and numbness, she made to stand, though on all fours.

"And... why are there chunks of pretty shiny things in her mane?" Katie asked, raising a hoof to gesture to Anna. Sarah turned to her sibling who then gave an indignant grunt, shifting a bit and allowing light to reflect off of tiny glass chunks that stubbornly clung to the viridian strands.

"The mob outside managed to throw a vase high enough to bypass the balcony, and it clocked her on the head," Sarah replied, sighing as Anna gave a groan of confirmation that accompanied a sluggish nod of her head.

"Two vases," Anna corrected with another grunt. "One hit me on the back."

"Wait, wait, there's a mob?" Katie asked, orbs widening. The two mares and the cat nodded slowly, and the wraith's orbs flickered for a moment. She whirled around to look in the hall behind her, tensing when she found it absolutely barren of life.

Katie quickly turned around again and then looked up, past Sarah and Anna and NoLegs, only to gape. In the hall she stared at, a bunch of new arrivals were led by a cloaked trio, and they had taken to juggling a wide array of objects in their magical grasp.

"Girls, get up, because we have to hit the fucking road!" she exclaimed, her remark spurring Anna into action. She got up, horn glowing as her magic grasped the other three and the flute while her legs kicked into gear and pushed her back down the first hall. Her magic held firm, ensuring that the makeshift cargo remained behind her and kept up, all the while the mob began shouting all over again.

Anna scrambled down the hall, heart climbing up her throat and feeling as if it drummed out its frantic song so hard her jaws trembled. She rounded a bend, almost sending the cat flying into a marble pillar in the process, but the archer briefly paused to stop his careening and placed him on her back. When the cat grabbed a lock of her mane with his tail, the mare bounded forth again, this time with Sarah and Katie jostling to grab her tail to no avail.

This gave the mob a scant few seconds that they did not waste catching up to the fleeting group. Their shouts morphed, one by one, into screams of pure anger that echoed down the halls. Sarah glanced over her shoulder, noticing tiny, ball-like sparks erupting from the pursuing unicorns' horns that deftly moved to their throats in tandem with their gallops. These balls then began to fade into nothingness, just as the screams amplified in volume tenfold.

The sudden spike in screeching intensity forced Anna's ears to the back of her head, the concentration spent on maintaining the flow of mana wavering for the shadow of an instant. Her magic let go of the gryph and wraith, but both flared their wings and started flapping madly as soon as the green glow disintegrated around them.

The now-airborne duo were spurred on by the shouting of the mob in an attempt to keep up with Anna as she turned a sharp left. They too darted to the left, silently cursing as they looked over their shoulders and found that the mob still gained some ground, inches behind their wavering tails. The two rose their claws and hooves to cover their ears as the mob's unified outcry rose once more, this time to head-splitting levels that further amplified their pain. As a result, their wings slowed their flapping, although only by a meager margin.

This only served to fuel the mob's own efforts, and the lot of angry unicorns started pumping as much energy into their gallops as they were able. The group of shouting ponies turned another corner, near-flawlessly keeping pace with the otherworlders who were still scrambling to stay as far away as they possibly could.

"Maybe we should pelt the fliers with more vases!" yelled one stallion. "I bet that damned skinny bitch won't fight once glass breaks on her spine!"

"Save your ammunition!" bellowed the leading cloaked pony, the voice distinctly masculine in tone. Sarah glanced over her shoulder as he turned to the one unicorn who wanted to chuck more vases and betraying a flash of maroon and silver in the process. Her eyes went wide as he spoke further, "We'll wear them down yet, the whole mangy lot! Spare the hippogryph; I have a score to settle with her!"

"That voice... wasn't he... no, don't focus on that right now, Sarah. Save your feathers and live to fly another day," a voice in Sarah's head chastised, one not her own that had an echo to it. She blinked and turned to Anna, who glanced back with a horn that had started glowing, only for its magic to dim and flicker out as soon as she set her eyes on the pointed appendage.

Anna turned her attention back ahead and rounded another bend, and Sarah nodded before following her lead. Katie struggled to keep pace, and outstretched a hoof to tap at Sarah's cutie mark frantically. She turned to her pale companion, noticing narrowed eyes and wings that buzzed less and less with each passing second.

Katie flailed her forelegs in an attempt to make various signs, whereupon she mouthed, "I'm about to drop." Her orbs flickered erratically, like dimming light bulbs about to shut off, and she began plummeting to the ground as her wings began beating weakly. Sarah weaved under the wraith and felt her land between her wings, using her mouth to grab a lock of mane and hang on for all it was worth. Sweat formed on Sarah's brow as she went into overdrive, flapping so much her wings started aching in protest.

The action caused the mob to once more double their efforts into their unified gallop. This, combined with their shouting, which fluctuated in volume once again, immediately gave way to a sort of disorientation. Their shouts started hurting the ears of their own makeshift battalion, as much as it antagonized the still-fleeing Fantasians who managed to outrun them as they swerved into another hall—and one that was particularly long at that. This hall ended with an ornately-decorated set of double doors marked by a great sun, which split perfectly down a vertical middle.

Unicorns began stumbling into one another, and any objects they held in their magic was instantly released as their holders lost concentration—either dropping them onto the ground, or, in some cases, causing the damned things to start landing on the heads of their fellow mobsters. As the objects fell and smashed upon more heads, they and their former holders thereby contributed to more unicorns bumbling into one another and losing concentration.

To put the situation at this point into a nutshell, the mob lost much of its traction and impromptu weapons. This left the three cloaked ponies to scoff at the unicorns they lead, turn their attention to their quarry, and immediately ditch their followers to continue pursuing the Fantasians. Said Fantasians had gotten a bit of distance away from the trio, but Sarah noticed the door at the end of the hall and closed her wings against her sides before they could seize up from the pain.

She landed gracefully onto the carpeted floor and shifted into a mad gallop, feeling Katie rise up and drop down between her wings like a loosely-secured saddlebag. But Sarah then stopped as Anna's run skid to a halt at the end of the hall. Anna stopped just inches from the sun-decorated door and turned around, her face reddened and her chest heaving with heavy, pained breaths. Upon seeing that almost all members of the mob had effectively—and unwittingly—disabled themselves, she summoned her bow with a flash of magic, face setting in a hard glare that was directed to the cloaked triad.

"What... do you want?" Anna seethed in a hoarse voice, noticing that the cloaked ponies slowed to a sluggish walk. They too breathed heavily, but kept their semi-concealed muzzles high.

One cloaked pony answered by pausing in their advance before raising a hoof—distinctly maroon in color—to their head and using it to shake off the hood. A familiar unicorn stallion stood with the other two, but his silver mane was unkempt and stringy, some visible tangles dangling past the cheeks like he hadn't gone through it with a brush in weeks. "It isn't you. It's the hippogryph, the one who had the nerve to land me in the wretched dungeons a few weeks ago," he hissed.

"Anna, halberd," Sarah murmured, glaring at the now-uncloaked unicorn. "Godcat-dammit, Chanson, you just had to stir shit up, didn't you?"

"Moi, cause havoc in Canterlot?" Chanson asked, raising a hoof and putting it to his chest before shaking his head. "No, no, and no. That's your doing, and yours alone. I'm merely doing my people a favor." The hoof rose and parted some thick locks of mane that clung around his horn, revealing at its base a rune-inscribed ring fashioned of silver.

"You assaulted her. I saw it with my own two eyes, ketchup colt!" Katie shrieked, the strands of mane she held with her maw falling out through the gaps of her split grin as she spoke.

"And so did Captain Armor," Anna added, levitating her bow in front of her horizontally. "And while we're on the subject, how'd you get out of the dungeons he threw you in?" she asked, shooting Chanson another hard look.

The still-cloaked ponies rose hooves to shake off their hoods, revealing two more unicorns whose horns glowed. Dual auras grasped the ring around Chanson's horn, one teal and the other brown that crushed and ripped apart the metal, casting it aside once it became a mangled heap of scrap. Anna stared at the two ponies, noticing that one of the now-unveiled ponies was another stallion with a greyed mane and dulling coat of red. If not for his beard and wrinkles along his eyes, he'd have been a perfectly good mirror-image of Chanson himself.

The other, a mare with a white coat and oily black mane, began hissing in an irate tone, "Our dear Chanson assaulted nopony. Me and his father here have simply paid for his bail when the riot started."

"Bail? You're telling me you shelled out enough coins for that sorry prick?" Sarah asked, a brow raising as she stood up on her back legs. A flash of green magic shined and vanished next to her in the span of seconds, and a halberd was thrust into her claws immediately after. She gripped the shaft of the weapon eagerly, barely noticing the wraith as she slid off her back and landed on the floor behind her rear hooves.

The stallion with wrinkles around his eyes growled, his horn still glowing. "We earned that money. I dare say, the riot's timing was excellent. And Chanson told us of everything you did, you mongrel—Fantasians don't belong in Mythos. My family and our gathering will drive you foul lot out," he snarled.

"On what grounds?" Anna retorted coldly, her breathing starting to steady. "You and that mob chased us and managed to pelt me with two vases. We haven't retaliated in any way, unless running to save our tails count as such."

NoLegs gave a mew before jumping up and positioning himself behind Anna's horn. He leveled a glare at the triad as they conjured three instruments with their magic. The instruments comprised of a red-and-silver cordless guitar, a brass tuba, and a black-and-white accordion with polka dots. He hissed at the three unicorns, positioning the flute to his mouth like he knew how to play it.

"Spare yourself, NoLegs. Let me and Sarah handle this," Anna remarked, magically plucking the flute from the cat's grasp before holding it to her own lips. Her eyes briefly averted as Katie cantered up to her on exceedingly shaky legs, stopping to steady herself as her wings buzzed softly and helped her balance once or twice.

"Do you have my horseshoes? If so, can I have those back, please?" Katie asked, her voice strangled and much more raspy than it usually was. "I want to puncture holes in that bearded stallion's... thingamajig." NoLegs mewed at the wraith and jumped down to stand in front of her pale hooves, still turned to the trio that cornered him and his companions in front of a door. He used his tail to draw forth his blade, ears flattening against his armored head as he let off a warning hiss.