By the time everyone else in the guest chambers had woken up and gone to the mess hall, it was not only early afternoon, but it was filled with a sort of pregnant tension that could only be felt if one were to sit directly next to its many living and breathing sources. For one reason or another, half the Mythonian diplomats and a lot of their Fantasian military escorts could not, would not sit still.

Tails swished, eyes darted this way and that, rear legs crossed and uncrossed without rhyme nor reason. The soldiers of Delta Unit, who by that point came in for lunch, chose to ignore it for the most part to their credit. A lot of the food being eaten then took a while to prep, and the changelings busied themselves with making and serving it. With the food came several rounds of coffee and tea, and once the food was plopped on the various tables everyone was well and wide awake at that point.

Applejack and Shining both ate a fresh helping of cooked vegetables slowly as Flash sat across from them, helping himself to a small and chicken-shaped animal that had been cooked until its skin was crispy brown. Two tails, streaked blue and blond, swished, though not so suddenly they would hit the pony that sat next to them. "Flash," Shining began in a calm voice, pausing to take in a mouthful of cauliflower, "you do know that would be frowned upon in many provinces in Equestria, right?"

Flash nodded, but simply ripped a wing off the cooked critter with delicate tugs, and bit into it the moment wing parted from body. He did not speak until he polished it to the tiny bones, "Try telling that to the crystal ponies back home, Captain-Emperor. They haven't gotten the memo yet, and introduced me to this." He gestured to the bird with a hoof for emphasis. That got him a very reluctant sigh from his Captain-Emperor.

Shining blinked and took another sampling of his platter. Applejack, who herself just swallowed another mouthful, was all too happy to fill in for him on the matter of Flash eating meat. "Why'd they do it, if they did?" she asked, her tone edging a little towards suspicion. Flash simply relayed to her what he'd relayed to Matt and Lance, and when he finished her eyes widened. "Wait. Sombra was that awful?"

Flash nodded again, biting into a piece of legmeat with relish. He spoke when that went down the hatch, "Desperate times called for desperate measures, and… have you seen the fields before the Crystal Heart was found?" When Applejack nodded, albeit reluctantly, Flash extrapolated, "Not a lot of them could remember how to farm effectively until that particular spell was broken. You were lucky to find spare non-meat foodstuffs to even set up for the Crystal Faire then."

Applejack shuddered, envisioning barren farming fields and despondent, starving crystal ponies hunting for meager scraps of rabbit that were probably not particularly willing to frolic to the Empire under Sombra's regime. "I take it the Empire's back to square…" She racked her brain for a way to finish her utterance, and it came up with a very rough estimate that she'd blurted out before fully processing it, "one hundred on farming?"

Flash shook his head and beamed with a smile. "Square one thousand and fifty, ever since trade's opened up between the Empire and the rest of Equestria the day after Sombra was destroyed. The Empire's now on par with the rest of Equestria technology-wise, and produce is skyrocketing now that its earth ponies and weather pegasi can use their talents to the fullest extent. It could probably go another two hundred at least, if Fantasia opens up on the trading front," he chirped, pausing to tear into more bird flesh. "And this black bird is good."

Shining nodded and bit into some more of his vegetables, smiling a little as Flash was evidently having a good time with his meal. He turned to Applejack and added, "I've… put into place some new regulations concerning the crystal ponies' killing of animals for their meat, what was and wasn't alright to kill, and to do so while making sure the animals involved don't feel any pain. I am really glad I got that out of the way before the barrier broke."

Applejack nodded and relaxed a little, taking in another mouthful herself. "So all the bunny rabbits and birds don't feel nothing?" she asked.

"Mhm," Shining hummed in reply, nodding again. He glanced around before his eyes fell on a table to their left, upon which the purple wasp was laid on a platter with bits of steam trailing away from its body and some meat-based stuffing-type material heaped beneath it. The table the wasp was laid on flashed in green light several times, and when the lightshow ended, it was further topped by a myriad of plates and forks.

A few changelings, including the still-gurney-bound Cassida and Katie, were gathered around it. Shining saw the barest sliver of drool leave through the gaps in Katie's new teeth, her lower jaw quivering so minimally he had to blink just to register the sight.

He turned back to the wasp and gawped when he realized just how big it was in direct comparison to the changelings hungrily staring at it. "... has anypony here seen an insect that huge in Equestria?" he asked, turning to Flash and Applejack for confirmation. Both looked at Shining and shook their heads.

"I'll bet a parasprite swarm would have themselves a field day with that big bug," Applejack remarked, her eyes widening when Katie lunged from the gurney to the table and landed clumsily next to the freshly-plated wasp, gawping as she realized her legs were still tied up in makeshift casts.

A soldier groaned as he grappled Katie with his hooves and planted her back on the gurney in one deft motion. Katie merely jumped to the table again, eying the wasp with a hungry glint in her orbs, only to shriek as she was removed and replaced on the gurney yet again. When she jumped a third time, the soldier trying to keep her planted in place groused in exasperation, "Yeesh, not even being hogtied keeps her still. Are we gonna have to anchor the newbie's tail to the ceiling to get her to stay put?!"

"I've seen her rotate her head a full 360 horizontally with no problems. I wouldn't be surprised if she could backbend to pull her own tail out of a knot," Armin remarked, chuckling as the complaining soldier once again deposited Katie onto the blasted gurney. "And she has new molars. I'll bet she could shear her own tail now anyway." Katie proceeded to jump ship yet again, much to the other troops' growing frustration.

Finally, one soldier just gave up, applied chitil to the gurney, and planted Katie on it before cementing her to the damned thing with said chitil. She wiggled for a moment, growling in annoyance and jaws gnashing about, but the chitil would not yield to her whims. Her attention turned to the gelatinous goo and she started to bite at it, but it would not break and tear at all. It bent, stretched, and flexed to comically ludicrous proportions, yes, but did not break.

Katie opened her mouth and began to undulate her tongue, but a slap right to the snout stopped her before it could even get an inch past her teeth. She whimpered and lowered her head, ceasing her struggling on the spot. The soldier who slapped her, a changeling with golden ribs and eyes, growled out in a feminine voice riddled with exasperation, "We get that you're starving, but can't you share even a little bit of wasp?"

"Haven't had purple wasp since I was a grub…" Katie lamented, looking at the wasp longingly. "So tasty-looking… my tongue is itching..."

A rumble echoed through the room, followed by a low hum, causing everyone in Delta Unit to look around in confusion. This culminated in a masculine voice then coughing into the megaphone planted above one of the tables, and everyone looked up to find Lance, his circle of right hoof ponies, and Maria sitting in the tallest booth. They shook their heads in the changelings' direction, their faces set in neutral, unreadable expressions. The megaphone in question hovered in front of Lance via a mechanical arm, with the spot it was originally resting at having parted in vertical halves to let said mechanical arm move it.

"Just carve it already; sooner you get it done, the less uppity a certain someling amongst you will get," Lance stated in a flat voice. "And on that note, I'm glad her appetite's finally kicked in."

The changelings obeyed, and the brown-ribbed soldier hummed a merry tune as he conjured a carving knife and a fork in flashes of light. "Trust me, nooblet, you haven't had purple wasp like this," he chirped, looking pointedly at Katie as he started to grind the edge of the blade against the fork as though it were a sharpener. "Tortoise bacon and tender stuffing usually reserved for fowl have never gone so good with wasp."

Applejack and Shining turned away from the changelings and back to Flash, who was now peeling away skin from the bird's breastmeat. "Y'know, this is the first time I've seen a wraith get their tail in a twist over food," Applejack remarked, smiling faintly at the prospect of Katie actively wanting food.

"Then again, I don't think any of us have seen wraith eating habits extensively, either," Shining pointed out, deciding to take another mouthful of his meal. "And she's getting something she enjoyed when she was a grub, whatever that means. Honestly, that's a good thing if you asked for my input."

Flash nodded in agreement, moving the skin he tore off the breastmeat into his mouth. He shifted the skin to one cheek before speaking, "I wonder if she's one of the few… or perhaps the many wraiths who eat."

Applejack shrugged at that. "I guess we'll find out which o' the two she fits into sooner or later." She turned up to look at Lance, who'd gone back to eating some sort of meat-based thing she had trouble discerning from below his perch. She also noticed Rainbow Dash from the corner of her eye, flying up to said perch. "Oh boy," she muttered under her breath.

The moment Rainbow reached the perch was the same moment she more or less shot her mouth clean off her muzzle. "So when will we be able to go into Greenwood and see what the fuss is about?" she asked, crossing her forelegs impatiently.

Surprisingly, all she received from Lance and his group was a quartet of flat looks, one perplexed face, one brow raising out of the whole lot, and complete silence, broken only by the sounds of said group still biting and slicing at their meals. It took a few seconds for someone to answer. "I dunno," Maria replied with a shrug of her shoulders, her tone sincere and her face twisted into an expression of confusion.

"Whenever they damn well feel like it," Armin called from his seat. That earned him four nods from his superiors, and a groan of exasperation from Rainbow.

"Sadly, that about sums it up," Natalie stated rather dejectedly, her ears folding back as a shiver ran down her spine.

"Perfectly," Matt added off-handedly, through a mouthful of meat no less.

"But if you want to go, I suppose we can't stop you," Lance sighed, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "I would recommend taking some of my troops with you, though, just to err on caution."

"Greenwood used to be nice until seven years ago…" Anna lamented in a low voice, sighing despondently.

Rainbow frowned deeply at that. There was only one conclusion such a statement lead to, and she'd have to be very simple-minded to not see it straight away. "Something went down, and something major if you guys don't wanna go near it," she stated rather matter-of-factly.

"Very," Anna replied tersely.

"Mayhaps I should accompany you?" Blueblood proposed all the way from one of the second-highest booths, looking at Rainbow with a flat gaze and a chin held high. "I happen to know a thing or two about diplomacy; if anything, it would be wise to tread cautiously."

That remark earned him several incredulous looks from Armin, Katie, and Shining, all of whom rolled their eyes at him and muttered "Yeah, right" under their breaths in unison, "Suuuuure you do." It also earned him a very incredulous stare from Matt, which he balked a teensy bit under. Still, he managed to keep his composure this time, which Matt found to be a commendable feat.

"Perhaps I could trot along with you, too?" Flash piped up, having finished stripping his bird to the bone. "Just in case we need to bolt."

"Only if I accompany you lot," Shining interjected.

"I wanna go too. Something's mighty fishy about this forest, and I ain't stopping until I know what," Applejack stated, frowning firmly.

"Fine, fine, but we'll need to park the airship closer to Greenwood first. Let's finish eating though; trotting there on an empty stomach is a bad idea," Lance barked through the megaphone, not even bothering to hide the exasperation in his voice. With that, he tapped it with his hoof, pressing a button on the side that Rainbow could not see until after his hoof retracted and it popped up from the initial pressing. The mechanical arm vibrated a bit before it retracted back into the wall, but the hole closed its sides and let the megaphone rest as it was.

"Alright," the whole of Delta Unit replied in unison. Some of them spoke through clenched teeth, while others only nodded dejectedly. Katie merely folded her ears back and buzzed her swollen wing-nubs, an unpleasant shiver trailing all the way to the base of her tailbone as she spoke alongside the other changelings. At least one changeling was looking at Lance like he'd gone crazy, though they kept their complaints to those incredulous stares.

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The airship found another spot to park later that day, in a different part of the woodland that honestly didn't look anything really different from the first one save a ring of snuffed-out torches lining the clearing. By the time Blueblood and his group of volunteers had disembarked the ship with Major Rhinoc accompanying them, the sun was hanging at approximately 3 o'clock. The first thing they noticed was a sweltering heat that seemed to have swept throughout the forest, causing Rainbow and Flash to fan their wings to avoid breaking out into a sweat.

"Yeesh, it feels like we trotted into a furnace!" Flash griped, sparing a glance at the sky to find nary a cloud in its endless expanse of blue.

"No kidding!" Dash agreed, lifting a hoof to wipe the sweat already gathering off of her brow. "And I haven't seen one leaf here at all! Why the hay did they name this area 'Greenwood?!'"

"Actually, Greenwood's a little further away. We're in the surrounding wood that is called Ashwood," Rhinoc corrected, getting incredulous stares from the madly-flapping pegasi.

"Ashwood? Why's it called that?" Flash queried, both brows climbing up his forehead.

Rhinoc responded by lifting a hoof and gesturing to the nearest tree with it. Flash and Dash turned to it and frowned, finding its bark a hideous ashen color that stretched from root to branch. Heck, now that they took a good look at the branches, they saw that the entire lot was shriveled and withered beyond anything they'd ever seen in Equestria. "That, my dignitaries, is what happens when heat is allowed to rage through a wood unchecked," he stated grimly.

"Do they have earth ponies tending this wood?" Blueblood asked sincerely, giving the tree Rhinoc pointed at a scrutinizing glare. "Or have the ponies here let it wither as it did? Have they simply stopped caring about the environment?"

Rhinoc shook his head. "Nopony has tended to this wood in some time now," he replied. "Nopony."

"Not even earth ponies?" Blueblood asked, turning to Rhinoc with widening eyes and a brow going up as its mate dropped down. Rhinoc shook his head again.

"Let's just get to Greenwood before my feathers burn off," Dash complained, eyes narrowing as the air around her seemed to get hotter, thus forcing her to flap her wings faster to compensate. Everyone nodded, and with that they trotted into Ashwood, though not before Flash and Dash closed their wings just so they could walk.

Passing the circle of torches, some more soldiers of Delta Unit flew behind them from the airship, enveloping themselves in various colors of fire before turning into rocks or barren trees, while Rhinoc threw purple flames around himself to transform into a unicorn stallion sporting a murky, almost blackened green mane and a birch blond coat. After doing that, he took point, and then stopped before turning to his charges, in turn causing them to grind to a halt.

"Shining, do you know how to mass-teleport?" Rhinoc asked. "Or even yourself?"

Shining shook his head. "I can shield the entirety of Canterlot with one spell, but teleportation isn't exactly my forte," he replied.

"Canter… oh. Lieutenant Armin told me of his little excursion there. Have you ever tried to teleport before, then?" Rhinoc tried, only to grimace when Shining nodded. "Did you succeed?" That time, Shining shook his head. "Not even once?"

"I couldn't manage it. When I tried, I got distracted and turned my mother into an orange on accident," Shining replied, ears folding back. "And I somehow gave her a mustache in the process."

Rhinoc could've sworn he heard one of his fellow disguised changelings snickering at that, though who exactly he couldn't tell since they decided to transform into trees and stones. He made a mental note to have words with them later, and sighed. "And since then you didn't?" he queried.

Shining nodded. "For an admittedly foalish fear of being tackled by my kid sister," he replied. "Though we're grown now, and I may start practicing… provided I don't get knocked off my hooves again."

Rhinoc nodded back. "Fair enough," he agreed. He turned around and started trotting again, his steps harried but carefully calculated into the lockstep march. He heard the others moving along behind him, hurriedly trotting to escape the sweltering air as soon as possible. It took him several minutes of trotting before he realized that he couldn't help but notice that another line of torches had stretched at their side, probably stemming from the ones circling the second clearing, and idly wondered whether or not they led to Greenwood.

The hot air around them shifted, sometimes climbing to new heights of desert-level heat, other times dipping to something a little more bearable. An hour of wading through the forest passed by, with nobody daring to speak for fear that the heated air may scorch their tongues, and Delta Unit stealthily moving behind in their effort to play as part of a ruined environment. Blueblood took the chance to look at the ground before finding a lot of it suspiciously blackened, as though lightning or fire swept through the desolate Ashwood. He turned to the trees and studied them as they passed, finding bits of slate gray and bits of flaking ash.

"Just dreadful! Horrendously, simply dreadful beyond compare! Even the abominable Everfree Forest is more lively in comparison!" Blueblood thought, ears folding back when he heard a rather suspect bubbling of some sort of thick liquid. He hesitated, his pace slowing, as his eyes darted about to find the source of the liquid, if only to confirm what it was and whether or not it had to do with the current state of Ashwood.

Rhinoc tensed as an ash-laden wind whistled through the trees. Everypony behind him paused, looking about to see what had him agitated. Blueblood halted and took another look at the trees. Oddly, one of them seemed to have sported… a malformed face? He couldn't tell; it had lumps aplenty, and freakishly wide holes on a trunk so thick it gave the lich-wyrm in the crystal caverns some competition. Some of the bark had either peeled away or been ripped off, revealing deathly pale… pulsating flesh beneath it?

And the damned thing seemed to have been grinning at him with a hole forming on a crudely-muzzle-shaped lump, or he thought it did. He turned to Rhinoc, opening his mouth to demand an explanation, when his voice died in his throat at the sight of many trees turning their holes in the group's direction in suspect, fluid unison. All of the trees were leering at them from empty voids betraying a whole myriad of expressions on the suspect lumps littering their barks.

"... those the other changelings?" Shining asked, whereupon Rhinoc turned to him and shook his head with a grimace.

"No. Cursed trees—some say they're ponies who fell under a horrific curse and were transmogrified, but honestly I dunno how the hell that's possible. Others've told me they're golems, given life yet without mobility. It's best to let them be," Rhinoc replied, turning ahead and trotting on. The rest of his entourage followed him, hastily trotting to escape the gaze of the trees.

"Cursed… trees?" Blueblood uttered, his face blanching as he turned to one of the trees that were watching his every hoofstep. His jaw quivered upon seeing its face; its mouth drooped down at the corners so sharply he wondered whether or not it had been forcibly extended by cruel means. Its eyes were slanted likewise, and some blackened substance dribbled from their corners in rivulets of crude tears.

The tree, distended though its mouth was, managed to utter something. A fleshy tongue flopped up and down, filled with rot-holes and spilling maggots with each movement. The face twisted even further, resembling less a face and something more eldritch in nature. Out came a single plea, gurgled and choked and hollow to the point Blueblood could not place tone, inflection, nor baritone or lack thereof. "Help… m-m-meeee…"

Blueblood felt shivers go down his spine. "Is… there anything we can…"

Rhinoc shook his head. "No. We'd have to find whoever cast the spell and kill them, and I'll bet that bastard's long dead. Even cutting them down would not alleviate their pain." He turned to another pleading tree, its mouth warped to the point it could not speak, but instead waving its branches frantically. "This is one of the reasons Lance doesn't like going through here."

Flash's wings ruffled and their feathers puffed out at the notion. "But what if… whoever did this is still…"

"Well, in that case, we'll yank their horn clean off and cart them to Lieutenant-General Windwood to deal with," Rhinoc replied. "Assuming, of course, the caster's a unicorn and not a centaur or something."

Blueblood balked. "Why resort to such barbaric methods?!" he cried.

Rhinoc jerked his head to another cursed tree, pleading for help as they passed. "If they, as in the caster, were heartless enough to do this, then they deserve no more and no less. Treated as they have treated these poor souls," he stated rather callously. "If they transmogrified ponies directly," he added as an aside.

He frowned as they passed a felled tree that lay in several pieces, each fragment bleeding profusely and writhing with decaying flesh beneath the bark. Its multitude of bodyparts was riddled with a plethora of arrows made from a whole array of various materials. What materials they were, though, were obscured as moss and kudzu that were growing on the bark concealed most of the arrows, leaving only their fletching untouched. Still, somehow, by a twisted miracle, the fragmented tree was pitifully moaning for help.

Rhinoc's voice lowered, and his tone turned somber as he added, "Anna… tried to help the trees here. The one we just passed…" He shook his head. "She broke down crying trying to alleviate its pain three years ago, and it was already in pieces before she even arrived." Everypony behind him winced, each turning to the tree as it lay there, paling and grimacing when 'three years ago' registered in their minds. "She just… snapped then. I couldn't blame her. We've left Greenwood alone, and Ashwood too, until you guys insisted on trekking through here."

"It's been like that for three years?! Just laying there, hurting, and in pieces before then?!" Applejack screamed, tears beginning to prick at her eyes the longer she stared at the broken tree, her ears starting a fit of ringing the longer she heard it cry out for help that wouldn't come. "That's… words can't even describe how awful it is!" She stamped her hoof and turned to Rhinoc. "I'd buck whoever cast that spell from here straight to Frostbite!"

"May as well get in line," Rhinoc snorted with another shake of his head, "If Anna could, she'd probably turn them into a tree first."

"Would the whole military use whatever spell turned these ponies into trees, if Anna could turn that plothole who did this into a tree?" Dash asked.

Rhinoc nodded. "That bastard has been on Lance's shitlist ever since we found out about the cursed trees," he answered. "And if we had the tree-spell on hoof, that bastard would wind up suffering as these ponies have suffered. However, Lance deemed that forbidden dark magic, and honestly I can see why."

Shining's brow furrowed at that, though he did agree with Rhinoc's utterance nonetheless. "So… horn removal would be the next best option?" he asked.

Rhinoc nodded once more. "Just about." With that, the group trotted on, past moaning trees and sweltering air that would not yield too much heat at all. A good hour passed before they reached another clearing, also marked with torches lining its edges.

Rhinoc's ears pricked when he noticed that a faint bubbling sound permeated the air. He glanced around, trying to scan the surrounding area without looking into the faces of any nearby cursed trees, and squinted his eyes when he spotted a faint orange glow directly east by an immeasurable number of meters. "We must be close to Greenwood," he murmured.

Blueblood looked at Rhinoc and narrowed his eyes again. "What are you stipulating now? If we were close, we'd see a bloody house!" he pointed out in an irate tone.

Rhinoc sighed and lifted a hoof to rub his temples with it, before he dropped it and noticed a tree that had, against all logic, reason, and probability, had a cracked, dusty window in the back. The tree itself was as thick as ten ponies standing side by side, and without hesitation he trotted right up to it. When he reached the window, he reared up and peered inside, finding an open door on the opposite wall greeting him, and past that a distant river of glowing orange liquid.

"Welp, we found a house, but one in disuse. Definitely close now," Rhinoc snorted, squinting his eyes to better see the insides of the tree house he'd discovered. Whatever furniture there was had been broken beyond all recognition, and caked in dust and moss on top of that. "I wonder who this place belonged to."