The clouds parted during the early dawn as the sun rose, ensuring that it was casting its light over Whitefall that made it take on a pinkish hue. Rays of warming sun filtered in through a single window in the dining room of the church, where everyone had gathered with plates full of food laden on the tables. In addition to that, the remains of the crystal-pony-golem... thing were placed on a blanket on the floor to one side where all could see it.

Blueblood crossed his forelegs and huffed. "No clue who could've crafted our wayward visitor last night?" he snorted, garnering several shakings of heads as his answer.

"I don't even know anypony who could do that. It's delicate work to create a golem, not to mention whoever did it might've needed an earth pony on standby just to keep it together with said earth pony's magic," Anna replied, taking a few seconds to bite down on a biscuit.

Blueblood's brow rose. "Earth pony magic? Pardon my bluntness, but you're a unicorn for Faust's sake. How would you know about earth pony magic?" he asked sincerely.

Anna swallowed her bite and gestured to Matt with a hoof. "He taught me a thing or two," she answered. Her hoof then shifted to point at Natalie. "And she helped." Blueblood turned to the two and sighed as he found them nodding fervently, one with a biscuit halfway lodged in his mouth and the other magically stabbing a fork into a cooked egg.

Lance lifted a piece of sausage and bit into it. He did not speak until a few seconds after he chewed it up, gulped it down, and turned to Anna, "Speaking of earth pony magic… was there a distinct signature of some kind, if at all, even lingering ever since the golem was taken down?"

Anna shook her head. "No. I caught nothing of the sort," she answered.

Katie, who was wearing an ice-blue chitil muzzle over her split grin as she apprehensively nibbled on a muffin which had sprinkles on top, decided to interject, "Y'think there's an anti-signature spell or something?"

Anna lifted a hoof and idly tapped her chin with it, a small frown forming on her muzzle as she gave the question some thought. "It's possible, but… it would have had to be a really skilled unicorn to even cast such a spell. Not likely, since there was earth pony magic present in the golem, and it was more or less falling apart when it dropped by," she murmured.

Katie snorted and turned to the golem's remains, forgetting her muffin for a few seconds. "Hrm…" Her gaze fell on the massive crystal orb that once made the creature's stomach, still surprisingly intact. "Would it be possible to make something better out of what's left? That massive crystal in particular… it looks like it could be part of a helmet of some kind if cut down to size," she stated.

Natalie's horn glowed, and she used her magic to gently nudge Katie's shoulder. "Finish your muffin first, then we'll talk about crystal helmets," she chided. Katie wilted a little, but turned back to her muffin and began nibbling again.

"I'd sooner give her a set of crystal teeth," Lance snarked before tearing into the piece of sausage again. He chewed and swallowed before looking at the muffin and seeing barely a dent being made before adding, "Because she's not making much progress."

Anna turned to Bartholomew as she bit into an egg. A bit of runny yolk managed to spill out and dribble down her chin, but she caught it with a fork and scooped it up into her mouth before swallowing. "Has any strange activity been happening around here as of late?" she asked the instant she retracted her fork. "Strange ponies visiting, or more slime attacks or anything else like that?"

Bartholomew pursed his lips before sighing through his nostrils. "A couple of days ago, a cloaked unicorn lad paid Whitefall a visit. He spent the night here, ate a few plates' worth of food, paid for his grub, and then left," he replied with a shrug. "All I could get out of him was a name."

"A name?" Natalie parroted, turning to Bartholomew with a brow raised. "Well, what was it?"

"He called himself Laz," Bartholomew answered, sighing again. "Nothing more, nothing less."

Matt's eyes narrowed slightly as he turned to his father. "Just 'Laz?' What did he look like?" he asked in a low, apprehensive tone.

"All I saw was a beige muzzle and horn and a pair of blue eyes. Couldn't see his mane or tail, or even his cutie mark if he had one. Had no weapons on him, either. He was about…" Bartholomew's eyes scanned his guests carefully before settling on Lance. "About his height, give or take a few inches with his horn," he finished. "And he waltzed in praising you and Natz, oddly enough. Almost like he knew you two." His gaze turned to Matt, whose eyes narrowed a little more. "When I asked how he met you two, if he did meet you, he just… didn't answer."

Matt's eyes slid closed and he snorted. "Anything else?" he asked.

"Other than that, he didn't act suspicious or anything," Bartholomew replied with a shrug.

Twilight interjected, lifting a small biscuit with her hoof as she did so, "So, aside from this 'Laz' fellow, anything else of note?"

"A few hippogryph stallions came by trying to cause trouble, and they came from the north or so I heard. Me and Andrew kicked them to kingdom come, and only the biggest and burliest survived. He's currently in the town jail, and we buried the others," Bartholomew replied, donning a rather small yet sincere grin. "He told me that we were just good-for-nothings waiting to be eaten. But we showed him otherwise."

Andrew chimed in, nodding fervently as he did so, "Yep. He underestimated my magic; I just let him go at Barthy for a few minutes before intercepting him. Thought he could go hoof-to-claw with an earth pony like him."

"From the north?" Armin piped up, both brows going up within seconds. "Did he say a specific name, location, or something?"

Bartholomew nodded. "Yes he did. Frostbite… something," he answered, his utterance sending a collective shudder through the spines of Fenrir, Sarah, and Spike. His smile fell as he heard a whimper, and turned to Maria as she moved to wedge her head between Lance's foreleg and his barrel before wrapping her tarsi around said foreleg tightly. "Is something wrong?"

Lance's brow furrowed. "Can you take us to this big and burly gryph once we're done eating? Just me, Anna and Maria, if you don't mind. I'd like to give him a piece of my mind," he hissed.

At that, Bartholomew shook his head and frowned. "He's gone stark-raving mad. Been like that since he got canned. You probably wouldn't get through to the bastard," he answered, his tone glum. "Worse, most he does is roar. Sometimes, something coherent comes out of his beak, but it's… awful."

"So… this 'Laz,' the golem, and the raving gryph aside…" Flash began, but stopped when Bartholomew turned to him and smiled.

"Well, there used to be a smelly waste disposal plant here. But it was dismantled, and the 'waste' part was cultivated by local slimes in a way the environment wasn't harmed. Other than that, and the one time Whitefall's jewel was stolen before me, Andrew and Eve came here, nothing really major has happened," Bartholomew replied, his grin widening.

That managed to get Twilight's brows raising. "Okay… I gotta see where this 'waste disposal plant' once stood. Do you think you could take me there?" she asked sincerely.

"And this 'jewel' you mentioned…" Blueblood paused, recalling what the guards were circling the eve before when he'd arrived, "pray tell, why is it out in the open? Especially since it was, by your own admission, stolen one time?"

It was Andrew who answered, his horn briefly flaring to life with a golden aura to catch Blueblood's attention as he did so, "Because it snows every night, and gets so cold not even Bartholomew could stand it for long. We only guard it during the day, when the sun's out. The weather takes care of the rest."

"In short, it would be suicidal to steal the jewel now," Bartholomew stated calmly, though he could not keep a slightly smug hint from his tone. He turned to his plate and closed his eyes serenely as he found it empty. Slowly, he stood up, pushing back his seat in doing so. "So… jail, where the waste plant was, or jewel first?" he asked.

"Hrm… I guess the place where the supposed plant was can wait… Lance, would you mind terribly if I went with you to the jail?" Twilight asked.

"No, I wouldn't mind," Lance answered, turning to Katie to find she was still struggling with making a dent in her muffin. "You're coming with, and you're bringing the muffin too." At her nod, he turned to Blueblood. "Would you like to come with as well?"

Blueblood pursed his lips in thought, and his eyes shifted to Flash for a few seconds. Then his gaze turned back to Lance. "Only if I have a guard accompanying me. Better safe than sorry, if what I hear of this 'mad hippogryph' happens to yield a grain of truth to it," he replied.

"I can get behind that," Lance stated, nodding in assent.

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

Sitting close to a steep cliff with a yawning cavern mouth at the southmost end of Whitefall was a stone-brick building sporting a steel door instead of one made from wood. What little windows it had were only inches long, lined with steel bars that kept all but the smallest of hooves from reaching in and out. Guttural roaring, hollow yet piercing, issued constantly from one of the small windows, accompanied by a nonstop rattling of chains.

Within the first room of the building, sitting behind a quaint receptionist's desk, was a lone unicorn stallion with aged leather armor and a small, bristly white mustache on the upper lip of his muzzle. He looked around, finding empty wooden seats with worn cushions and a hardwood floor bearing eight deep gouges in twin clusters of four leading from the door all the way to another door sitting right next to his desk. Behind him were knick-knack shelves, barren except for an inkwell and a quill.

Above the seats were wanted posters, all except one scribbled over with the words 'caught and executed' in hoofwriting so ludicrously large and messy the beings within the pictures may as well have been sporting demonic horns and scraggly beards for extra flair. The one who had escaped being scribbled on depicted nothing more than a fragmented horseshoe accompanied by what looked to be knives.

Surrounding the shoe and knives was a puddle of blood, but that was all it contained; not one strand of hide nor a lock of hair was to be seen of any sort of sentient being. It also sported the words 'Wanted: Envoy of Cocytus, Preferably In Pieces' and a sum of twenty thousand bits to whoever managed to catch and hack this 'Envoy.'

Within hoof's reach was a thick sheaf of papers sitting on the desk, easily tall enough to reach his neck if it were on the floor instead. On the other side was a small picture frame, also within hoof's reach. Other than that and the unicorn himself, the place was empty, save the incessant roaring that had declared this place it's home as of late.

He turned to the second door as another roar tore through the air. His chest puffed up and he bellowed out, "Shut your beak hole already!" He deflated as another roar answered his call, and his horn started sputtering to life with a grey aura. Two shapeless blobs started floating next to his ears, before compacting and shaping themselves into vaguely-bullet forms and gathering matter. Bit by bit, two small sponge-like objects formed, grey at first before orange blossomed across their frames as they came together.

When the blobs took on a definitive shape and color, he stuffed them tightly into his ear canals. To the unicorn, sound may as well have ceased existing in that moment. "Aaaah, earplugs. Can't live without 'em," he murmured, smiling as he realized he couldn't hear a single iota of his own utterance, let alone the roaring. With another faltering flick of magic he grasped the paper at the top of the sheaf and plopped it down before him. "Let's see… how much should the guard unit get paid this week?"

After pondering for a moment and scanning the paper to confirm what he was seeing, he moved the paper aside without doing anything to fill it out. "Eh, I'll pay them later." He picked up the next sheet of paper, looked at it, and then set it aside atop the first. So it went like that for several minutes on end; him in his soundless bubble supplemented by earplugs as he set papers aside after reading them just once with self-spoken promises to do them later.

Over the roaring and his plugs, he failed to notice the sound of several sets of hooves fumbling about outside, let alone the sound of the steel door being magically opened by a green glow. In fact, he noticed nothing until a tan-beige hoof slammed itself on the desk before he could slide the most recent piece of paper over to the growing pile, snagging his attention. He turned up to find Anna looking at him, accompanied by a few other ponies, in addition to an armed Katie resting on her back with a quarter of what looked like a muffin lodged in her mouth.

The unicorn stallion sighed and turned to magically fetch the inkwell and quill before focusing on Anna again. He noticed her mouth was frantically moving, but he could not decipher what at all she'd been saying. He turned to the piece of paper he had yet to throw onto the pile, noticing it was completely blank. He lifted a hoof in a 'hold on' gesture before popping open the well and dipping the quill's tip inside.

Anna backed off, tilting her head at the stallion. She turned to Bartholomew. "Is he deaf?" she asked.

Another roar issued through the building again, and Bartholomew shook his head. "Likely has his earplugs in. Wouldn't blame him with the ruckus going on," he answered. That garnered a groan from Anna as she turned back to the mustachioed stallion as he started to scrawl onto the piece of paper before him. With a few deft flicks of his quill, he was able to jot something down with such ease it seemed second nature for him. He only paused once or twice to dip the quill into the inkwell, but even that was swift, calculated, and precise.

The moment the quill ceased moving altogether was the same moment he lifted the paper up to scrutinize it. Anna waited until he nodded at his own handiwork and sighed as he flipped the paper so the scrawlings he'd made faced her.

"Please, for the love of Godcat, can you silence Mr. Yellingsworth? My head hurts, and he's been raving for the last five days! I'll pay you handsomely, no matter how you go about silencing that beak of his."

Anna nodded, and the stallion smiled before using his quill to gesture to the door next to his desk. She turned to Bartholomew and asked, "Does that lead to the cells?"

Bartholomew nodded as another roar came and went. "Need a key to enter the cells, though," he remarked, trotting up to the second door before pushing it open with a hoof. Taking point, he lead his group to what was beyond; a relatively medium-length hall sporting cells with iron bars that criss-crossed like chainlink fencing. At the very end of the hall, from between a set of crossing bars protruded a pair of shackled, pale tarsi that ended in talons whose digits were clipped past the first knuckle.

Another roar issued out from that cell, further supplemented by rattling chains. Blueblood took a few shaking steps forward to stand shoulder to shoulder with Bartholomew, and slowly turned to him. "Is that… our 'mad hippogryph?'" he asked slowly, his voice quaking slightly.

"Yep. Can't believe he's still pitching a hissyfit, though. I thought he'd have tired out by now," Bartholomew answered. With that, he began trotting to the one cell with clipped talons poking out of it, and hesitantly his guests followed him.

Flash winced as the roaring ceased and the talons drew back, giving way to a low grumble akin to a warning growl. He turned to Lance, who had Twilight trotting next to him and Maria on his back. "Big mean hippogryph…" Maria mumbled, trying in vain to stuff her face into Lance's mane.

Bartholomew nodded. "Oh, yeah. This one's got some guts, I'll give him that," he replied. As the group came closer to the cell in which the 'mad hippogryph' resided, a keening hiss echoed in from the bars in place of a roar. This was quickly followed by a frantic flapping of wings that was strong enough to kick up dust in the opposite cell.

It took them a minute to reach the cell, but when they did and looked inside, Lance and Anna paled. Katie had to force herself to keep her mouth shut lest she lose the remnants of her muffin, and Maria fanned her wings before curling them forward to shield her face. Flash and Blueblood squawked in unison and shuffled back to stand behind Lance, while Twilight could do naught but stare.

Beyond the cell stood a musclebound hippogryph stallion in an upright stance, and although his muscles had shrunk considerably to reveal a despairingly thin ribcage some time ago, his legs and shoulders were still very toned and bulky. Large wings flapped and sent horrifically pale feathers everywhere, and he let off a growl with a beak that was only little more than jagged mandibles barely an inch long.

A deep gash ran across his chest, stained with dried crimson. Each movement of his body caused the wound to ooze slightly. His pasterns as well as his tarsi were chained, anchored to the wall by a few inches of links just long enough for him to reach out of his prison. What had the group's attention, though, were his eyes. Streaks of black, dried gunk trailed from blackened sclera that housed glowing red orbs, just stopping at his ruined beak.

The eyes themselves were narrowed to slits, seemingly alight in crimson. A deep frown creased his face from what remained of his beak, and his gaze fell onto Maria in seconds. "Little… cunt… when I get out of here, you'll wish you'd have died…" he hissed.

Bartholomew jumped back, eyes widening. "Now hold your horses! Who the hell are you talking to?" he asked.

The crimson orbs fell on him. The gyrph lifted a pale talon and mutely gestured to Maria with it, before issuing another deep growl from his throat. "That cunt… is why Frostbite Haven is no more," he snarled. His frown then twisted to form a hideous grin as he added, "But she can't get a cutie mark. She's as worthless as any other cunt; only fit to bear foals, and nothing else."

Anna's eyes narrowed, with red forming on the fringes of her irises and spreading rapidly across her face. She stomped a hoof, garnering the massive gryph's attention. The instant his orbs fell onto her was the instant she snapped, "If you think she's worthless, buster, then I have a whole fucking bridge to sell you! 'Fit to bear foals?' She's probably not old enough to have kids of her own, and thanks to you and your fellow sick fucks, probably won't have any for a long while yet!"

Katie snapped her head up to swallow her muffin's remnants whole before turning back to the bound hippogryph. Slowly, she lifted her forelegs up, and her wings buzzed before she ascended off of Anna's back. She rose to hover an inch below the ceiling, eyes narrowing at the cell door. She brought her forehooves together to scrape the claws against each other with surprisingly swift movements, making the shoes shriek as they raked one another again and again.

"Can you let me in to deal with him? Because I want to give him a taste of cold shoulder," she hissed, her jaws quivering as mana pulsed across her hooves. The temperature dropped, and ice rapidly formed on her legs. The claws lengthened by a good inch of frost, becoming more akin to little sickles than anything else.

Bartholomew turned to Katie, a brow raised. "You sure about that? He could rend you a new one, and he still has some bulk on him. What're you gonna do, poke him?" he queried sincerely.

Katie's split grin twitched at the fringes and both sides curled onto themselves, giving the distinct impression that it was widening beneath her chitil mask. "Poke him? No, no, no, I'm gonna do worse than just poke him," she replied. She shifted her gaze to let it fall on Twilight. "Say… is it possible to put me in the cell with him, without using the key?"

Twilight glanced up at Katie, a tight frown creasing her muzzle. "Why do you want to bypass the cell door?" she asked in a flat tone.

"I reckon that the instant the door opens is the instant he bolts," Katie retorted, turning back to the incarcerated hippogryph, who was oddly silent as he slinked to the furthest wall of his cell. "That… and I think it's time I show you what I can really do to a bastard like him."

"Wasn't Chocolate Latte enough for you?" Flash piped up, frowning.

Katie shook her head. "This time it'll be different," she promised darkly. A violet aura flared to life, immediately encased her and it pulled her sharply to the ground tail-first. Once she was inches above ground, she twisted around to find Twilight with her horn aglow and a rather blank stare on her face. "What?"

Twilight shook her head. "He could squish you, wounded as he is. That, and it wouldn't be wise to egg him on," she replied. "You're rushing into a dangerous situation head-first, and he could easily disarm you. It would be foolish, to say the least."

Katie rolled her orbs and crossed her forelegs together. "If my mother was still alive, you'd sound just like her," she snorted. "Next wraith I find, provided they haven't been paddywagoned or decapitated first, is mine."

Blueblood turned to look at Katie rather incredulously, one brow lowering and the other rising in perfect tandem. "A wraith… attacking other wraiths… or at least making threats of such," he began slowly, his tone low and bemused. "That I find highly absurd, even when accounting for your being a changeling." He waited until she looked at him before asking, "How many of your fellow wraiths do you trust enough to not wish to attack upon sight?"

Katie giggled at the query, her torn smile only curling in on itself to widen some more. "The one wraith I have trusted… she was put down per her own request," she replied. She turned her gaze to the caged beast in chains before adding, "But that one… chains and bars would do little in teaching him a lesson."

"What do you mean by that?" Bartholomew asked, his brows raising simultaneously.

"He's likely immortal. And sooner or later, he'll find a way out," Katie replied, barely keeping a growl from her voice. "I'd like to remedy that while I am able."

Twilight and Bartholomew exchanged glances at that, and for a few seconds they simply stared at each other, unsure of what to do. But their shackled hippogryph rushed forward and thrust his talons out, swiping frantically to no avail as everyone jumped back to get out of range. "I will end you all, even if I have to bend these damned bars to do so! That little bitch especially! I'll make her watch as I rip your guts out and decorate the walls with crimson!" he bellowed, eyes fixed in an angry glare.

Katie lifted a hoof and gestured to him with it. "See what I mean?" she asked rhetorically.

Twilight's horn gathered particles that emitted a bright white light, and so too did the aura around Katie. "You asked for it," she sighed in resignation. In a burst of light Katie vanished, only to then reappear in the cell. She whirled around to find herself hovering behind the hippogryph, who was now staring at Twilight with a lower mandible going slack. He turned to look at her for a second, during which time she stopped buzzing and landed on the floor, before twisting back to face Twilight.

"H-how did you…" the hippogryph stammered, orbs shrinking to pinpricks.

"Simple teleportation spell that I learned in magic school," Twilight replied, watching as Katie started heading to the furthest wall. She frowned as she scaled it, releasing pulses of mana and making patches of ice just thick and strong enough to hold her weight in the process. Then Katie twisted herself to walk upside down on the ceiling once she got to it, her steps slow and calculated. Not even her movements, which broke frost patches constantly, made sound; the instant her hooves parted from the patches was the instant the patches vaporized before forming again.

"But mares… can't teleport objects!" the hippogryph yelled, his tone laced with several notes of disbelief. He continued to stare at Twilight, unaware that the gazes of the rest of his visitors fell onto Katie as she moved to stand directly above him, turned around and reared down. Her wings faced them as her forelegs inched towards him, while her back ones kept her suspended via frost.

"But you just saw me do it. Isn't that evidence enough to the contrary?" Twilight rebuked firmly, noticing the frost on Katie's back hooves shrinking by the second. "Here, lemme demonstrate it again." Her horn glowed and her aura seized Maria, making her squawk before she vanished and reappeared on a stunned Bartholomew's back. The hippogryph dropped to the floor, shifting to all fours with a few digits connecting with the bars, seemingly in a position to pounce.

"Lies!" the hippogryph hissed, and he would have bared fangs if he had any to spare. His wings flared, though, and flapped just once.

Seeing that the bulky hippogryph was distracted and had crouched low with talons brushing up against the bars, Katie made her move. The ice on her back legs broke away entirely, and her wings buzzed at the same time, propelling her onward to him before she shifted her forelegs violently. Her claws angled and wasted no time stabbing him in the back of the neck from both sides with the aid of gravity, channeling mana and dislodging a few vital vertebra in the process.

He lost all feeling below the neck, and weakly crowed as he felt his blood turn solid in his veins within thirty seconds. He did not slump, but instead managed a gurgle that cracked as ice grew on his body at such speeds he simply couldn't react; the ability to react had been stolen the moment claws slid into his neck.

Even his gaping wound went stiff as a board, with a thick layer of frost growing outward from it. Then, when his entire body was coated in a good rime of ice, it continued to spread until it encased both his chains and the bars he'd been foolishly touching at that point. Mana pulsed across his body once he was fully trapped in a cold, unmoving stance.

"A very curious thing about us wraiths… most cannot regulate body temperature by themselves to save their hides," Katie dryly remarked as she pulled back, her claws sliding out with ease. "They have just enough warmth in their bodies to still be able to move. Maybe a little more if they eat, but nothing like they had before coming to the very border between life and death. But they have to move in places like a tundra, lest they risk desiccation."

"And all it takes for it to go wrong… is a slight chink in the rime," she finished, flying around to hover at the hippogryph's side, just below the left wing. She found the start of his wound and stabbed it with her claws, though it did not immediately go into the solidified flesh. "Either pre-made at the very border… or forged by claw post-revival."

She applied force and tilted her weapons up and down whilst using her back legs to tap repeatedly, until she found purchase and managed to impale successfully. The instant the claws were in was the instant she pulled out, and she watched as a good crack formed from her probing and stabbing, which only further widened his gash considerably.

The crack pulsed with blue mana momentarily. "How… long is he gonna stay like that?" Flash asked, taking a second to swallow a forming lump in his throat.

"A good… few hours or so as a popsicle," Katie answered with a snort. "But I've probably made him immobile for a while yet." A purple aura embraced her and made her vanish in a bright light, before causing her to reappear in front of the whole group on their side of the bars.

For a few minutes on end, everypony else was silent. Then, Lance's mouth inched open, and he spoke up, "So… would you like military training once we get to the base?"

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

Matt and Natalie were patrolling with Andrew and the other guards, hovering nigh-incessantly around the blue jewel like it was more important than their lives. One was wearing a thick fur coat comprised of brown fuzz, while the other opted for a scarf and fuzzy boots. Spike accompanied the lot, if 'accompanied' meant being seated on Matt's back that was reinforced with fuzz twice over.

"So, that jewel thingy… what's it do?" Spike asked, barely feeling Matt tense under his clothes.

"By itself, nothing. But with two other jewels like it, the end result… let's just say it's not very good," Matt replied, his voice low and chilling.

Spike's brow rose and he turned to Natalie for clarification. Instead her horn glowed and a zipper formed over her mouth again. He sighed, and decided to drop the subject considering it was this quick to get such a reaction from the two. He turned to Andrew and asked, "So, do you have a cutie mark?"

The question, while fairly innocent, made Andrew blush a little. "Yes, but it's just a shield," he answered, lighting his horn and using his magic to lift a patch of armor away from his hip. Indeed, resting on that hip was a shield, one sporting a golden pentagram affixed in a silver surface. He dropped the leather patch before another guard passed him, and his horn ceased glowing. "It's… odd, though."

Spike's brow rose higher. "Odd? How? That looked like a perfectly ordinary mark to me," he stated.

"You see me toting around a shield?" Andrew snarked, a small but wry smile playing on his lips.

Spike gave the remark some thought. "Maybe you have a mana-based shield," he retorted.

Andrew rolled his eyes. "You got the wrong pony," he replied, lifting a hoof and gesturing to Matt with it.

Spike sighed. "Aside from guard work, what do you do?" he asked, hoping to strike up a conversation.

"Eat, sleep, wonder why the hell my nephew and adopted niece joined the military… and sometimes I take weapons to the forge-pony around these parts and have him repair them," Andrew answered with a rather modest shrug.

Spike nodded. "Is it true that Natalie set somepony's tail on fire one time?" he queried, instantly garnering a muffled giggle from the mare in question.

"Well… the forge-pony tried asking her out once, and this was before we moved to Whitefall with him, and wouldn't let up even after she told him she was dating her adoptive brother. She about gave me a heart attack saying that," Andrew began, his small smile evolving into a large grin. "So she lifted his tail and set its very tip in the furnace with her magic, without him even noticing."

Spike donned a smile, very easily envisioning some poor sod with his tail caught in a furnace. "What happened next?" he asked, barely suppressing a chuckle.

"He was left tail-less for a year, and had to cover the remains with a cloak until the hairs grew back. I told all the guards here about it once we arrived," Andrew answered. "And to this day, me and my fellow guards call him Scorched Stubble."

Spike cracked up upon hearing 'Scorched Stubble.' He leaned into Matt's mane and laughed. The other guards chuckled a little as well, and soon their little clique was alive with the fervor of conversation and laughter. When he calmed down, he lifted his head from blond locks of hair and wiped his eyes for any stray tears that may have formed.

He glanced around afterwards, before his gaze turned to the beige guard. Almost immediately, Spike noticed that he was frowning. "Why the long face?" he asked.

The beige guard sighed. "That was my brother whose tail got burnt," he muttered. "I paid him a visit earlier this morning and he was still head-over-hooves."

Spike's smile faded. "Isn't he mad about the whole 'Scorched Stubble' thing?"

The guard shook his head. "His tail grew back, so he's more or less over it. But he still wants a hot piece of flank, if you get the drift," he answered.

Spike found himself nodding. It would make sense for the sorry sod to let the incident go after having regrown his tail, but a niggling feeling started to sink in with that realization. "Where is your brother anyway? I'd like to meet him," he stated, donning a small smile as he spoke.

"My brother has the horsey hives, and something fierce. I was only at his place long enough to make sure he was fed for the day and everything," the guard replied, his frown deepening. The utterance made the fervor die down, and all eyes turned to him in the span of a second.

"Horsey hives? Why didn't you tell us sooner, Noah? You could be carrying it right now and don't even realize it!" Andrew exclaimed, paling with his utterance. The fervor began once again, but now it was little more than hushed murmurs and worried glances going this way and that.

Noah lowered his head. "My brother… didn't want the whole town going in an uproar over it. Everypony in Whitefall knows him, Andrew. And he had me board up his house before I left," he replied glumly.

"Hold up, hold up. Board up his house?" Matt interjected, making Noah jump. He lifted a hoof to signal for the rambling of the other guards to halt, and within seconds they saw the gesture before shutting their mouths. A palpable silence fell upon the area, but it lasted for only seconds. "Why board his house up? That just seems… strange."

"He didn't want the horsey hives spreading," Noah replied, lifting his head up to level his gaze at Matt.

Matt's brow rose, and he frowned. "How is he holding up?" he asked carefully.

Noah's head dropped again. "Been awful. He can barely trot a few paces before he has to scratch. I had to put a magic bubble around myself to keep clean," he said.

Spike's niggling feeling got that much stronger. "How bad does his throat hurt, or how much has his appetite shrunk?" he piped up.

"I had to magically force biscuits into his mouth, and he wouldn't stop hacking, either. Poor bastard was going on like a friggin' lumberjack, I swear to Godcat," Noah sighed, his ears folding back against his head. "So if you guys want any armor reforged or whatever, don't go near him until he gets better and that I know for sure that he's better."

The other guards nodded. "Should one of us go tell Bartholomew, though? He went to the jail earlier…" Andrew trailed off as all eyes fell onto him. "What?"

"I think it would be best if you did it. You're his in-law, after all," Noah stated with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Something about Noah doesn't seem right. I think I'll need to consult somepony…" Spike murmured, so lowly that nopony else heard him speak. Andrew nodded and turned sharply to the town before galloping away, causing snow to fly behind him in his wake. "Question is… who? If it's horsey hives as he says it is, then I may need to warn Twilight…"