Anna and Lance trotted a few laps around the bed, with one forcing herself awake and attempting to not stumble every which-way, and the other trailing her every move in case she did fall. The unicorn fell a few times, but she always got back up with either a helping hoof from the general, or simply using the bed for support before trying again. Some five minutes passed in this manner, and both halted when the door to their room creaked open, whereupon Katie came in uninvited.

"I'm hearing some serious clip-clopping going on in here. What's the deal?" Katie asked, both brows raised as she noticed Anna wobbling in place.

"You… uh, really want to know?" Anna murmured, frowning when one of her back legs buckled again.

For a moment, Katie's orbs wavered and dimmed, and she continued staring at the two ponies in the room as she contemplated whether or not to ask. "On second thought, no," she replied after another minute, and with that she left the room without closing the door behind her.

Anna sighed, and her horn started glowing. In a flash of magic, three brown sheet-like cloths materialized before her, and she turned to Lance as he trotted up to said cloths.

He turned to her and asked, "Are you going to don one, too?"

Anna nodded. "You might freeze if Katie decided to activate her shoes again, as bizarre as that sounds, "she replied.

"I doubt she could make icicles grow on my feathers," Lance retorted with a huff, though he gave a nod as he spoke. He glanced at his sides, making sure his wings were shut, and relaxed as he felt cloth cover his midsection and stomach. A third cloth came over his head, and he felt it brush up against his ears, withers, and haunches.

"You good now?" Anna asked, causing him to turn to her and nod again.

"Just stay with me, and everything should be fine," Lance sighed, and he wasted no time in trotting to the door. Anna summoned another cloak and threw that onto herself before catching up, and only when she stood next to him did he step into the hall outside.

"Why are you two up?" Zephyr asked from his post, watching as the two Fantasians left their room.

"We couldn't sleep, and figured a bath would wind us down," Lance replied, stopping himself from letting his wings shift even the slightest bit under the cloak. His ears twitched as he felt the guards' gazes turn to him. "Is there a bath house or something we could use?"

Zephyr exchanged looks with his fellow guards, and for the most part, almost all of them shrugged in silent response. Flash turned to the duo and sighed in exasperation. "At this time of night?" he groaned.

"Afraid so," Anna stated with a nod of her head.

Flash and Zephyr turned to Katie, who merely looked back and forth between the two guards, as if they were on crack. "They told me the same thing, now please stop staring," she hissed, her wings buzzing furiously as she spoke, yet not lifting her so much as an inch from the ground.

Then, Flash hung his head and sighed before he begrudgingly turned to Zephyr. "So, who gets to play usher tonight?" he asked, a frown on his face.

Zephyr's eyelids partially drooped, and a frown set into his own muzzle, giving him a not-so-amused look. "I'll do it, if only to get away from the damned changeling sitting next to you," he grumbled.

"I'm thinking of enlisting her in my army," Lance hissed, shooting a stone-cold glare at Zephyr that could cut through solid steel if it were able. "As a fourth right-hoof—lieutenant general, to be exact. Don't even think of picking a fight with her, lest you want to fight me," he warned, and instantly Zephyr stiffened under the intense gaze and mutely nodded.

Katie turned to the general, her orbs growing wide as saucers. "R-really? Me?" she all but squeaked in surprise.

Lance turned back to her and nodded. "Of course, you'd have to prove yourself to be worthy of such a position. I have my doubts, but honestly, I think you may be able pull it off despite your rather… glaring issues," he replied.

With that, he watched as Zephyr began trotting away from the guards, and made to follow him with Anna falling in step behind him. As they rounded a bend and vanished from sight, Katie remained sitting next to Flash, looking at the bend with her jaw once more dropping open and gently swinging like a door.

Flash put a hoof on the wraith's withers. "Hey, you okay?" he asked, garnering nothing more than a shake of the head as a response.

Another guard sat on his haunches, dropped his spear, and threw his forehooves into the air. "I can understand unicorns as right hooves, but a wraith? Th-th-that's unheard of!" he exclaimed. "Not even Shining Armor would do such a thing, let alone with a wraith so bucking tiny!"

Flash sighed and shook his head. "Then again, the stallion that just left isn't Shining Armor," he retorted.

The two guards flinched as they heard Lance release an echoing shout marred with irritation, "I heard that! I heard every damned word! Don't make me come back up there!"

One of the other doors in the hall opened with a shrill creak once the yell faded, and Flash directed his gaze to it to find Natalie shambling out with one of her front hooves rubbing her eyes. "The fuck is Lance bitching about this time?" she groaned, ears flattening against her head.

The guard who dropped his spear answered her, "Um… he said he'd make the wraith a fourth right hoof or something, as part of his army. Me and Flash don't exactly agree with that proposition, and unfortunately your general heard us."

Natalie's eyes widened instantly, and she dropped her hoof. "He wants to what?" she asked, her voice but a squeak as she turned to the sitting stallion.

"Exactly," the guard who dropped his spear sighed. "I don't get it, either."

"Katie, did he—" Natalie stopped upon turning to the wraith she addressed and noticed her jaw hanging open. "Katie… you okay?" All she received as an answer was a silent nod with a mouth whose lower half clacked up to meet with the upper, and briefly connected via pale gums before descending back down like a door that hadn't been installed properly.

"She's been like that since he told her she'd be considered for something like an advisor-type position five minutes ago," Flash murmured, shaking his head. "I think she needs a nap, personally."

Hooves echoed into the hall, and from the same room Natalie came out of Matt stumbled to meet up with said mare in question. "Who did what to who for how many cookies?" he asked.

"Matt, we're gonna need to have a word with Lance," Natalie replied, turning to her fellow Fantasian as he gave her a sleepy-but-vexed look. "He wants to make Katie a fourth right-hoof."

Matt's eyes went wide. "As in… something along the lines of lieutenant general?" he asked.

"With how thin she is… a private at the most. I don't see her getting lieutenant general or even colonel anytime soon," Natalie murmured with a hesitant nod. "Still, we're gonna have to talk with him about that. She wouldn't… she wouldn't be able to hold the position if she got it."

"He probably had a reason to consider it, but… you're right. We're gonna have to ask him about it—even from him, the idea of an emaciated wraith as part of an army is ludicrous," Matt agreed, drawing a heavy sigh. "I'm starting to think he took mushrooms or something."

"But, if he had mushrooms, then why was he trotting normally earlier today? Furthermore, how do you think he got mushrooms?" Natalie retorted, frowning. "He can't stand greens too well. I'm inclined to believe the same would be true for fungi."

"Touché," Matt sighed, ears flattening against his head.

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

Zephyr led the two onwards for minutes on end, winding down several corridors with Lance and Anna in step not too far behind him. The guard grumbled to himself about changelings and them being damned, but he made it just unintelligible enough that Lance had to tune out all other noises simply to make out 'changelings' and 'damned' in his little bout of rambling.

Anna chose to keep quiet for a while, watching Zephyr carefully to see where he was going to trot next. Every time his left or right wing twitched, he'd turn down a corresponding hall seconds later, which enabled her to hear him mumbling like a child trying to avoid telling their father something. Every so often, she turned to Lance with a look that could only be called disturbed, but he refused to meet her gaze.

The air hung heavily, and not in a good way. It was the kind of thick that made it difficult to breathe, difficult to think clearly, and especially difficult to speak louder than a whisper. Every time she opened her mouth to talk, no sound came out. She wanted to say something—anything—to break the silence. Yet she found she could not articulate even one syllable, without first having to take a few shallow breaths that set her already-wobbly legs into jittering-like-crazy-overdrive.

Which, in turn, caused her to almost trip and crash into Lance a few times. She stopped herself with her magic, and eventually she resorted to just levitating herself in the air like a ghost that refused to leave the mortal plane when her hooves slipped from beneath her a time too many. She did not stray from either of the pegasi, and kept herself an inch or so above ground. But when Anna looked at Lance again after a few moments, she flinched when he looked back with a stoic expression on his face.

"We'll talk when he's out of earshot," Lance mouthed, briefly pausing to use a hoof to gesture to Zephyr for emphasis. Anna nodded, and the two turned to their guard-turned-usher just in time to see him take a sharp left. They followed him closely, and watched as he turned to a door and opened it.

"This way, you lot," Zephyr groaned, and trotted into the room the door belong to. Anna and Lance exchanged looks before they entered, finding an expansive room lined with a few lockers on one side. Beyond that, a few showerheads stuck out of the furthest wall, though it lacked stalls and curtains. "This is the guard showers. Take it or leave it."

Lance nodded to the guard. "Thank you kindly. Could you leave us to our privacy, please?" he asked in a polite, if slightly miffed, tone.

"Can do, since you brought your marefriend with you," Zephyr replied, causing Lance to blubber for a few seconds. With that, he trotted out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him in his wake. The two Fantasians flinched as the sound echoed sharply, briefly ringing in their ears for a good few minutes.

Anna turned to the door and glared at it like it was Zephyr himself. "Who does he think he is, Celestia's uncle?" she grumbled.

"Just because we happen to share a bed does not mean we're dating," Lance huffed, also glaring at the door.

Anna tuned to Lance. "Maybe he's just mad at you because you run things differently than what he's used to," she murmured with a shrug. "Either that, or just mad that you can get close to mares and he can't."

"Well, whatever the—" Lance began, only to stop when he realized what Anna just said. He turned to meet her gaze again, an incredulous brow quirked.

"I meant physically, not intimately," Anna clarified, frowning. "Unless you were dreaming again…"

"Fair point, but still. Whatever the case may be, that guard has no reason to complain, let alone assume shit," Lance sighed, his shoulders slumping a bit. He shrugged and turned to the showerheads at the far wall, and began trotting to them, with the mare following him via self-levitation. The two reached that wall in seconds, and cast off their cloaks halfway through the trip to avoid getting them soaked.

Anna laid down after turning on two showerheads, making sure she was under one of the torrents. At first, the water was freezing cold, before the chill got replaced with a very mild warmth that bordered on boiling hot. Lance sat on his haunches, and both were heavily drenched after some seconds. "Why'd you…" She stopped when her companion opened his mouth.

"Say I'd give Katie a position of power in the army?" Lance finished, turning to the mare who nodded back at him. "I did that to get that guard to stop griping. I wouldn't actually give her such a position—but, suppose that I did, theoretically. What would happen, if she had that power?"

Anna looked at the stallion and blinked a few times before her eyes widened. "Ooooh," she groaned with a nod. "You basically gave her a metaphorical shield…"

"Yeah. I couldn't sleep at all, and decided to keep tabs on things. So, while you were dreaming, I crept to the door every few minutes to see if things were going smoothly. At one point, I heard Katie say something about how he was gonna shove his spear up her ass," Lance replied, nodding back.

Anna's pupils shrank. "You're kidding," she murmured.

Lance shook his head. "Yeah. I had to do something to keep things from needlessly escalating. Otherwise…" he trailed off, shuddering in spite of the torrent of warm water that hailed upon him.

"I see," Anna mumbled, and she turned to the wall to stare at it. The crystal faintly showed her reflection, as well as that of the general's, but both were distorted because of the erratic bumps and curves of the material and by fog from steam building up. She stood up, her legs still shaky, and glanced around before finding a shelf divided into boxes standing at one end of the line of showerheads. In them, she noticed, were little white bars that looked rather dry at a distance.

Her horn lit up, and she grasped one of the white bars in her magic before making it come to her, and she found it to be rather small. "Found some soap, I take it?" Lance asked, garnering a nod. "Well, could you hand a bar to me too, please?"

Anna responded by plucking out another bar of soap and forking it over, and she stepped out of her rain of water to start rubbing the bar she claimed along her haunches and back legs. She did this in such a way Lance hardly had any clue she was cleaning her rear end first—at least, until she applied the bar to her tail and quickly built up a thick layer of suds along the hairs.

He waited until she did her shoulders and front legs before starting on his own body. Immediately upon making the bar go up and down his left front leg, it began slipping wildly. When he tried making it go still in his front hooves, it slipped out of them like a banana peel and managed to hit him square in the nose like a bullet.

This wound up causing him to recoil so sharply he fell on his back. His wings clanged loudly, feathers scraping against the crystal floor like knives, and the runes on said feathers began glowing with a sickly light. The floor itself glowed beneath him, and for a fraction of a second what looked like teal mana shot up and embraced the pegasus that landed, which only caused the runes themselves to glow even brighter.

Lance screamed as his body was immediately encased in a sphere of tealish-colored lightning that lasted for a few seconds, the pure shock causing him to start flailing his legs on his back as it dragged on for a few more seconds. Anna watched with a horrified look as more mana erupted from the floor, enveloping the stray bolts before they could hurt him any more.

When the dual glows faded and the runes ceased glowing with a few lingering crackles, she quickly turned the showerheads off with her magic and rushed over with a shriek of alarm, standing over Lance while using her hooves to tuck his wings beneath him. He groaned as she positioned his front legs at his sides, effectively covering up the wings, and both heard the door flying open before hooves hitting crystal graced their ears.

"What happened?!" a masculine voice cried.

Anna turned to the lockers, and found that Zephyr had barged in. "He, uh, dropped the soap, and skid against the floor after he fell," she answered. When the guard gave her a glare, she added, "We weren't horsing around, honest!"

"I see. Don't scare me like that next time," Zephyr groaned, and with that he turned and left.

When the door slamming hit his ears again, Lance asked in a pained wheeze, "Did he… see my wings?"

"He didn't. I tucked them in before he even opened the door," Anna answered in a low whisper. "Want me to help you scrub, since…" She stopped when he rose a foreleg slowly, noticing that when he bent it at the joints, it jittered slightly and then stiffened part-way. "I'll… take that as a yes." Being careful to avoid touching him with her magic, she used her hooves to slowly get him to sit up first, and then stand.

"Next time… I'm s-securing the soap… in a damn net," Lance groaned, his wings shuddering and slightly rattling against his sides. As the wings stilled, his legs trembled slightly from the aftershock, but he made them stiffen for a moment. Slowly, he went back under the torrent of water, with Anna guiding him along the way. He leaned against his current showermate and shivered in pain as she scrubbed him with the soap bar that flew into his face, though she simply cleaned his legs and tail and neck before having the suds rinsed off.

Once both of them were clean and the soap bars were stowed away where they'd been found, Anna turned off the showerheads by letting her magic twist the knobs, and the two stood in silence. After a few minutes, she decided to break the tranquility by asking, "You good enough to walk?"

Lance pulled himself away and tried to trot around her, but his legs gave out halfway and he ended up landing on his stomach with his limbs sprawled out. "Give me… a few," he grumbled in reply. Anna nodded and tried to trot herself, but when her legs wobbled, she simply stopped trotting after a few seconds and willed them to stop shaking. "What are you… doing?"

"Trying to walk right so I can carry you back. I don't trust that guard outside those lockers," Anna replied, once more attempting to trot without shaking and stumbling every which-way she could, before she fell down herself. She got back up and tried again, and again after she fell down a second time.

Lance nodded and watched as she made several attempts to steady herself, getting up when her hooves slipped out from under her, and in a few moments her legs stopped trying to give out. Whether she was forcing herself to be as steady as could be, or she had merely recovered from her dream, he couldn't tell—though he was inwardly grateful that she was definitely trying and succeeding. He found himself half-dragged into a sitting position, before the cloaks he cast off were replaced on his form.

Anna used hers to dry him off, without doing the same for herself, and wrapped the fourth cloak around his midsection for good measure. Then she sat in front of him with her muzzle pointing at the shelf of soap bars and away from him. "Afraid you're gonna have to piggyback it," she sighed. Lance blushed a little, but slowly pressed his chest and stomach against her as he put his hooves around the barrel of her chest regardless.

Then she lifted herself into a standing position, and dragged him with. His rear legs dangled beside hers, and they bent at the fetlocks, which meant his pasterns and hooves now touched the floor front side down. She sagged a little beneath him, but not so much that her legs could end up buckling and send them both crashing to the floor.

"Are you… part earth pony?" he groaned inquisitively.

"No. I'm guessing it's your innate pegasus magic making you light enough for me to do this," Anna replied. "You gotta be light to fly, after all… if and when your wings get fixed," she glumly added, feeling Lance nod against her neck.

With that, she began inching her way to the door with her mane and tail still dripping as she moved, her companion's pasterns dragging against the floor in defeat. She made sure her movements were sluggish enough to not let him tilt one way or the other and throw her off-balance, but fast enough she made it to the obstruction in a minute's time without rubbing him raw in the process.

She halted upon hearing voices talking on the other side. Quirking a brow, she carefully aligned herself to the door and pressed her ear to it, and Lance did likewise while causing her to sag a little on the side in the process. The door held them, though, and they listened closely. "... I'm telling you, you're a lunatic!" a mare cried out on the other side.

"Listen, Prism, the Emperor has gone nuts! He's trusting an equally-crazy Fantasian who has changelings in his army!" an unfamiliar-sounding stallion retorted. "For Celestia's sake, they even got Spike the Brave and Glorious on his side!"

"That's nonsense, and you know it," the mare who the two assumed was Prism huffed. "I saw a bunch of ponies earlier, and a diamond dog and some gryphs. Nothing more, nothing less, unless you count the striped one they had accompanying them."

"I saw two of them shapeshift before my eyes! The Fantasians have buckmothering changelings with them!" the stallion yelled, and Anna cringed when his response was punctuated by what sounded like a stomping hoof. "I'm gonna set the Emperor and Spike the Brave and Glorious straight, and have those vile Fantasians deported—by any means necessary!"

"You'll do no such thing! The Emperor is your superior, and if he wants some Fantasians to stay, then so be it! As long as they don't do anything even remotely like what Sombra did, I'm perfectly fine with it!" Prism shot back, and with that the sound of galloping hooves echoed into the room. Then, they faded, bringing about a silence that lingered for what felt like hours. In fact, the silence was so thick that as Anna shuffled away with Lance on her back, neither set of hooves—whether being lifted up and down or being dragged along the floor—made not one peep.

They shared one glance, each knowing what was on the other's mind. Somepony wanted them deported 'by any means necessary,' and wished to 'set the Emperor and Spike the Brave and Glorious straight' in the process? They turned back to the door in unison, but dared not approach it again—not until another galloping set of hooves filled in the silence before they too faded. "You'll see, Prism! You'll see that I was right!" the stallion beyond the room bellowed, his voice rapidly turning into a dull echo when the hooves themselves had silenced.

"... Levitate us to the guest rooms. We have to warn the others as soon as we can," Lance ordered in a low voice, causing Anna to stiffen.

"But… won't that set off your wings again?" Anna asked in apprehension, her voice faltering when 'set off' left her lips.

"It won't, if you just use levitation," Lance replied. "I'll let you know if they are set off, though." Anna nodded, and embraced both herself and him in her magic. She did the same with the door and flung it open, and they flew out of it and into the hall like they were fired from a slingshot. They darted down the hall as one, but not before looking both ways and finding that Zephyr was oddly absent.

"Where is that guard?" Anna mumbled under her breath.

"Probably returned to his post with the others. But him not waiting on us to finish cleaning up… it's awfully fishy," Lance murmured, his brow furrowing. "Unless maybe another guard found him, told him to go back to his post. Only way I can see that happening would be if guard two had a superior rank or something."

"We'll check whether or not he returned to his post, and see what happens from there," Anna sighed.

"And act if need be," Lance finished for her with a nod of his head. "If they're itching to do what I think they're gonna do, we need to act as soon as we can." He paused for a moment, before his face hardened. "Actually, let's hold off on returning to the guest rooms."

"Change in plans?" Anna inquired.

"Yes. I want to see if we can find Prism first. She—I am assuming it's a she—might still be somewhere in this damned castle," Lance answered, ears folding back against his head. "If we don't find her, then we go to the others."

With another shared glance and dual nods, they made haste and set off to find out where Prism was, still embraced by a green-tinted magic.

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

It wasn't until the sun rose did they return to the guest rooms. The guards were still stationed, but Katie was oddly absent. However, Zephyr was present at the scene as stoic as ever, his eyes carefully trailing the floating ponies in such a way they didn't know he was looking directly at them.

Matt waited outside a room with an opened door, and beckoned Lance and Anna inside with a hoof before going in himself. They floated in after the blond-maned stallion and the mare's horn turned a bright red-hot that shimmered through the green, and it fizzled violently before her magic immediately waned. As a result, Anna and Lance crashed to the floor in a heap. The former was grunting as a headache settled in, and the latter began groaning as the mare's body ended up pressuring his ribs a bit from how they were positioned.

The half-Clydesdale sighed and shook his head when they crashed, trotted to them and helped them up with his magic. Only after he successfully dragged them to the bed and disentangled the two without complications, he turned around to close the door behind them with magic. "Alright, explain why you two flew instead of trotted along the hall and why you didn't show up earlier," Matt sighed, a frown etched onto his muzzle as his gaze fell onto the ponies in bed.

"Lance's wings set off. He tripped, and the feathers scraped... against the floor, and those damned runes jolted him... bad enough his legs were half-paralyzed," Anna groaned, bringing a hoof up to rub her temples. "We… couldn't sleep, and took a shower. After we finished, the guard who escorted us vanished, and we heard…"

"Somepony—a stallion, I believe—wants to, I quote, 'set Shining and Spike straight,'" Lance stated in a hiss. "We heard him yelling at a Prism pony, and he thinks the Emperor's gone mad for trusting me. We went looking for the Prism pony first, before coming back—it's why it took us so long."

"Did he say your name?" Matt asked, a brow quirked.

Lance shook his head. "He did mention the fact that I have changelings in my army, so I assumed he was talking about me," he answered. "Oh, and the pony—whoever in fuck he is—wants our asses deported."

"But… they can't deport us. Most we did was fuck up a timberdrake and shut down a hotel just by spending the night," Matt sighed, shoulders sagging as he spoke.

"Won't stop whoever we overheard from trying to find a reason to have us booted, though," Lance retorted. "The Prism pony he argued with didn't agree with him." He paused for a moment. "And where's Katie?"

Matt gestured to the other end of the bed with a hoof as hooves hitting crystal filled the room. As soon as the clip-clopping halted, Lance turned to find an illusion-disguised Katie looking right at him, her front hooves resting on the frame of the bed. "Right over there. And I have another twenty questions—"

Lance turned his attention back to Matt, and cut him off in a harsh whisper, "I said that I'd make her a fourth right hoof to get one of the guards to stop bitching at her. I heard her say something about him wanting to shove a spear up her ass. And no, I won't actually go through with making her a right hoof unless she does something exceptional, thank you very much."

"Guess that explains a lot," Katie huffed, eyes narrowing for a moment.

Matt nodded in understanding. He turned to the table that sat at one end of the room, and Lance did likewise. Both saw Natalie sitting next to it in the chair, looking at them with her chin resting on one of her front pasterns and both front legs on the table. "So, boys, we have another problem?" she asked sarcastically, eyes half-lidded and a bored frown on her face.

Both stallions nodded. "We'll have to keep an extra eye on Armin and Katie, if what Lance said is true," Matt replied.

"I was there with him, I'm a witness…" Anna grumbled indignantly, turning her head to glare at Matt.

"Well," Natalie began, rising to stand from her chair. She leaned on the table, using her front legs to support herself in doing so. "We'll keep an eye out, alright? There's only one pony who wants to 'set Shining straight' as far as we know, and counting Spike and Zecora, twelve of us. Thirteen, including NoLegs."

"You're right, Natz. That pony's very likely outnumbered," Lance agreed with a nod. "But still, they may catch us off-guard. I don't want a repeat of that damn hotel all over again."

Natalie nodded back. "How about we take turns watching for suspicious activity? This time, we have guards with us," she murmured. "It'll be much safer."

"True, and one of them might know who's wanting us deported," Lance stated. He frowned, though. "But they may not know until tomorrow, or the next day. Hell, they might never know at all, and we'd be none the wiser."

"Doesn't mean we can't keep our eyes and ears peeled," Anna retorted with a huff. "However… should we tell Shining about it, or no?"

The eyes of the other four turned to her immediately, and a series of frowns upon muzzles greeted her. Matt rose a hoof and rubbed his chin with it, humming thoughtfully. Lance's wings shifted beneath the cloth, though fortunately the hexes upon them didn't activate at all even as they brushed up against the cloaks. Natalie's brow furrowed, though only slightly, and she got off of the table before trotting over to the others. Katie's ears twitched, but she showed no signs of movement otherwise.

"That's… actually a good question. He might not believe us when and if we tell him there's a pony plotting against him," Lance murmured, sighing heavily.

"Maybe… maybe we'll wait a day before telling him. Just in case we happen to overhear that crazy pony you guys said you heard," Natalie stated, slowly nodding as she spoke.

"Maybe Shining himself will overhear that pony himself, if he's lucky," Matt added, setting his hoof down.

"But there's as much a chance none of those things could happen," Katie pointed out, shaking her head.

"But there's a chance the pony could tell Shining something ludicrous—like, suppose they said I went and raped a mare with my horn," Anna began, scowling. "They may do something to implicate me and convince the guards I was there at the crime scene when it happened."

"They'd have to replicate your bow, or one of your arrows first," Natalie remarked, causing Anna to shake her head.

"Perhaps so, but these are crystal ponies we're talking about here. They may just as well have a bow similar to mine—then again, how should I know? We don't know much about the territory we're currently in," Anna replied, her face hardening. "For all we know, there could be multiple bows forged of stone and crystal, exactly like mine."

Matt and Natalie shared a glance, and the latter spoke up, "The only ponies with weapons we've seen so far are the guards and Twilight."

"Unless hooves count as weapons," Anna scoffed. "In which case, most ponies have at least one."

"Including us," Matt pointed out matter-of-factly.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Anna hissed sarcastically, a mock-smile forming on her face.

"You're welcome," Matt replied, a grin spreading on his muzzle.

"Alright, you guys, calm down," Lance barked, and instantly the two unicorns turned to him before they had the chance to start arguing. "It's no use even starting a fight, when somepony who I have reason to believe wants to bring harm onto Shining's on the loose."

The trio of unicorns and the disguised wraith nodded, and they took a few deep breaths and a minute to shift a bit. Matt and Natalie sat on their haunches, and Anna rose to sit up. "Of course, we're also gonna have to tell the others about this…" Natalie murmured, garnering a slow nod from the other three ponies in the room. Katie let go of the bed and dropped to all fours.

"In any case, we'll also need to tell Maria to keep mum about it," Anna added, sighing once more. Her shoulders sagged for a bit, and she began rolling them as if to work out kinks in their muscles. "And my sister, too. I certainly don't want a repeat of Chanson."

"At any rate, we don't know who this mystery pony that may or may not want to hurt Shining even is. I think we should keep eyes and ears out for any names that may come up," Matt piped up, his ears folding back as he spoke.

"Exactly. All Anna and I know was that it sounded like a stallion, and that a pony named Prism bickered with him," Lance murmured, wings twitching ever so slightly under the garbs.

"You think we should keep an eye out for this Prism? They may know the pony who wants to 'set Shining straight,' if you get my drift," Natalie said, tilting her head.

Lance put a hoof to his chin and rubbed, prior to languidly sitting up and nodding his head. "Sounds like a plan to me," he replied. "As soon as we find this Prism pony, we're gonna whistleblow to Shining. Hopefully, with another pony who talked to the stallion that wants to potentially harm him, we could have something to go on. In the meantime, we'll check the library to see if its manager and her volunteers have found anything."

"I can get behind that," Natalie agreed.

"Seconded," Matt added, a small smile forming upon his muzzle.

"And if we're really lucky, we may be able to find the Prism pony at the library," Anna piped up, also grinning herself.

"If I run into the pony that wants us deported, I'll ask him if he wants a pretty convincing lie, or the ugly truth. Otherwise, I'm gonna stick around with you guys, in case this damn illusion wears off on its own," Katie stated, trotting around the bed to meet up with Natalie and Matt.

"Then it's settled," Lance murmured, his eyes glinting as he spoke. He laid back down, head resting with his forelegs under his chin. Anna followed suit, yawning as her head met with a pillow. "Matt, Natz, I trust you two to tell the others what we just relayed to you. Katie, don't wander off—if your illusion wears off prematurely, it could lead to something terrible. In the meantime, Anna and I are gonna catch up on some sleep. Wake us up if something happens."

Matt and Natalie nodded in understanding, and waited until Anna and Lance had fallen asleep before gently pulling the bed's covers over them with magic. After that, Katie climbed onto Matt's back, and the three silently crept out of the room, softly shutting the door behind them on their way out.