Rhinoc and his group trotted around the house and veered due west from it, and Blueblood scowled as more blackened ground came into view. "What would happen to the cursed trees, were the pony or whatever had put them in such an abysmal state ended up being horribly murdered?" he hissed sibilantly.

"They would very likely die off, if the caster was killed. But should the caster die by natural means, they could remain in their current state," Rhinoc answered, his own voice marred in anger that reflected in narrowing faux eyes and a very firm frown to match it. "Not much is known about the spell and its effects; all we know is that cursed trees simply cannot die."

"I take it study of such forbidden arts is… well…" Flash trailed off, his wings ruffling as a cursed tree nudged him on the neck with a spindly, withered branch. He hurried his pace before the branch could touch him again.

"Yes, study of forbidden arts is pretty much as illegal as actually casting the spells themselves. Or at least, amongst us members of the First Unified Army," Rhinoc replied with a sigh of resignation. He noticed arching rocks up ahead, scorched black and connected to the ground with thin threads of some twig-like solid via their overhangs. He added, "Nobody knows what the hell the cursed trees are made from, let alone how they're formed. It's very suspect, but there isn't much we can do about that. Golem or transmogrified pony, it's all the same no matter how you slice it; especially once you add the flesh under their bark and their immortality into that equation."

Somehow, the second bit flew over one pony's head completely as her brain settled on two particular words she'd never expected Rhinoc to utter together in the same sentence. "... First Unified?" Dash repeated, pupils shrinking as she stared at Rhinoc.

"Yeah. It… was a bit of a kerfuffle settling on the name, and the higher-ups wanted something simple, so they picked that and rolled with it," Rhinoc answered, this time with a note of amusement in his voice. "There was an Air Force, but that one's troops been relegated to other duties when the airships were scrounged up. One higher-up didn't want redundancy, and the ectoplasms were growing out of hoof then."

Dash leaned towards Blueblood and whispered to him, "Yeah, something tells me we're only pastern-deep in whatever Fantasia's problems are."

Blueblood found himself nodding in agreement at that, before turning his attention to an arcing rock as he and the others hurriedly trotted under it, narrowly dodging its meager threads of black, solidified gunk in the process. He noticed several drop-like protrusions littering its suspiciously shiny surface, frozen to their spots as though someone had perhaps glued them there. "What happened here?" he asked.

"I heard a meteorite struck this area about half a decade ago, and apparently it did so with a vengeance. We're in a patch of solid obsidian, and I'd recommend letting it alone," Rhinoc replied, trotting on ahead. "Past here is Greenwood. There should be a trail somewhere that we can follow." As they passed another arching mound of obsidian, Blueblood caught sight of a small puddle of boiling red, thick liquid that seemed to darken just a little as he peered at it.

"Is that… lava?" Blueblood asked, flinching when the puddle popped and hissed at his passing.

"Bona fide. It'll probably finish cooling into obsidian overnight," Rhinoc answered, pausing for a moment when a small river of the stuff barred his path, at least an entire pony's barrel in width. He deftly jumped over it with a shrug, turned around, and gestured to it. "Watch your hooves. That shit can still burn." Dash, Flash, and Shining crossed over the minor obstruction, either by flaring their wings and flapping or by self-levitating. Applejack backed up a few paces before surging forward in a gallop and jumping over to land smoothly on the other side.

Blueblood sighed and backed up as well, before following Applejack's example. His landing was a little clumsy, as his legs nearly buckled and came close to making him faceplant, but a steadying hoof to the withers from Shining managed to stop him in the nick of time. After taking a moment to straighten his posture and nod his thanks to Shining, he turned to Rhinoc again. "Is that the only flow of lava we must cross?" he queried.

Rhinoc nodded, that time with a smile forming on his face. "On this route, yeah. I reckon it'll finish cooling by tonight, so we won't have to leap over it again," he replied, his tone chipper.

Blueblood nodded back, but managed a groan nonetheless. "Oh, if the Day, Night, and Crystal Courts hear of this when I get back home…" He shuddered, ears folding back.

"They'll grill you like a black bird on a spit?" Flash offered.

Blueblood mulled the remark over for a moment before slowly nodding. "That, and for eating food that isn't the… ahem, usual nobility's faire," he concluded. "Nevermind for associating with admittedly-blunt Fantasians." He turned to Rhinoc. "No offense."

"None taken," Rhinoc stated, his smile faltering a little. Then his brain caught up to the fact that Blueblood mentioned Courts. "Wait… Day, Night, and…"

"One operating during daytime, one during night, and one back in the province that I rule over in Mythos that goes on and off, depending if the members there feel like it or not," Shining extrapolated, frowning a little. "When they all get together, it's a Parliament. And it's less pleasant than it sounds."

Rhinoc sighed. "One of the perks of being in… their class?" he asked.

"In my case, above their class," Shining answered, nodding in assent. "They were really vocal after your leader showed up and enlightened us to the fact that we really, really should not get involved in Fantasian affairs. He showed me his wings when they were still bound, just to prove his point."

Rhinoc's shoulders sagged at that. "And… he didn't stop you guys from coming anyway?" he queried in exasperation.

"Listen, me and my friends already got involved at Frostbite, so I just think Lance figured he wouldn't stop us from sticking our noses in a second time," Rainbow stated, sitting on her haunches to cross her forelegs over her barrel. "And that's because the village elder over there foalnapped one of our own." She gave Shining a grim, narrow-eyed look when he opened his mouth to ask what in Tartarus that was about, and her expression was one that all but screamed 'I will explain later.'

"Ah, one of those incidents," Rhinoc groused, now frowning deeply at that. "Well, Windwood's twin is also involved… shame she couldn't accompany us."

"Her broken wing got in the way?" Shining guessed.

Rhinoc fervently nodded at that. "Alexander wanted to do check-ups the moment she finished eating, just to make sure it's recovering smoothly," he clarified. With that he turned and began trotting once more, with everypony filing into step behind him. "Just a few more miles on hoof, and we should be there. We are not spending the night in town, though, for more than a few days."

With that, they trotted in silence for several minutes on end, which then stretched to an hour. After the obsidian rocks fell a good ways behind them, the group noticed that, slowly, whole portions of the surrounding wood started becoming more vibrant. A bush sprung up here, a patch of yellow flowers filled up a clearing they trotted through, and before too long the trees themselves turned a much more healthy shade of brown and even sported leaves on their branches. The cursed trees' numbers also declined drastically, filling the forest with the usual ambience of bird calls and chirping crickets in their place.

However, the leaves were a fiery orange in color, glistening in the sunlight like roiling flames. Thirty minutes after seeing the first leaves on the trees, they came across stone arches suspiciously shaped like gates. These gates were framing a sloping hill lined with a flight of stone stairs that simply sported gaps extending twenty, perhaps thirty, steps at a time.

Grass spilled from those gaps, and ivy crept up the stone gates, giving the impression that the structure simply eroded with time and nature running their courses, and the plants glimmered with a faint green aura. Both steps and gates had cracks running through their structures, only furthering that impression. It seemed the steps and gates were all that was left of whatever grandiose monument was originally built here; meager remnants of a distant past.

"Is this… a shrine?" Dash asked, studying the steps closest to her.

"Used to be more elaborate than this, but yes," Rhinoc replied, shaking his head rather pityingly at the sight. "It all went to hell around the same time Anna joined the army." He gestured to the ivy with a hoof. "She grew those vines to keep the gates together. Told me it was an important part of the village's history." He turned south, towards the fragmented bottom of the stone flight. "I am amazed the ivy is still even here."

"For all her talk about how horrendously Greenwood's galloping downhill," Blueblood mused, eyeing the ivy with a scrutiny that seemed to have been honed by years of practice, "I am rather impressed she even found something of sentimental value to attempt a preservation effort upon."

"You could say that again," Shining agreed with a hasty nod of his head. He turned to Rhinoc, just as he began descending the worn-down flight. "Can we head upstairs first? I want to see what this shrine holds."

Rhinoc stopped and glanced over his withers, a wry smirk playing at his lips. "Well, I suppose I cannot stop you. Just don't make any sudden movements when we reach the top, alright?" he asked.

Shining exchanged glances with everypony else who accompanied him, and they all nodded back. It seemed like a simple request. Then, he turned to Rhinoc and nodded as well. Rhinoc backed up a few paces and surged forward, pumping strength into his legs to make a hell of a stunning leap over his charges before landing smoothly behind them. They turned around and stared with widening eyes, and he glanced over his withers to shoot them another smile. "Some of us changelings can leap like grasshoppers. Only downside is I can't do that too many times in a day," he chirped, evidently pleased with himself. "The muscles for jumping are a little… damaged."

"Damaged?" Flash parroted, canting his head.

"Had an accident with Windwood once. She had a freak magic surge trying to work with runes using an arrow of all things, and my legs haven't healed… fully as of yet. It was only a couple of months before the barrier broke," Rhinoc extrapolated with a sigh of resignation. "Amazingly, she got her cutie mark from that accident."

Rainbow gave a low whistle at that. "How bad was the accident, all in all?"

Rhinoc gestured to the ivy again. "Turned one whole room of the base into a greenhouse, but that was only temporary, and surprisingly easy to clean up," he answered. He turned to the stairs ahead of him and began canting up them, being careful to not step on the cracks or the ivy. He took great care in lowering his hooves just a little more wherever necessary to step on the grass framing the gaps or if the steps sagged a bit. Once more, Shining and his group followed, heading in single file to avoid aggravating the steps too much in their trot uphill.

They passed under three ivy-held gates within a matter of minutes, reaching the top of the hill to discover a raised plateau lined with trees and rune-inscribed stone henges, all surrounding a structure that stood dead center. The structure stood on two legs as thick as two ponies standing side-by-side, the body held up at least twice as wide and framed with a metal jaw. Arms hung slack at its sides, one ending in a set of steel knuckles and the other in a very thick spear that gleamed with a dull sheen. Hollowed-out eyes stared into the middle distance, accentuating a flat top that made up its head.

Oddly, the structure had been primarily crafted of wood; organic and yet artificial at the same time, and even stranger it did not have a torso but rather its whole head was the torso. Rhinoc dropped his disguise in a flare of purple flames, then he stalked forward before bowing towards the entity. "We meet again, Mighty Oak," he chirped.

The thing he dubbed the Mighty Oak actually managed a slow nod, accompanied by a pulse of mana across its body and a low groan of metal grating on wood. It lifted the spear-tipped arm and gestured to the henge nearest the group of visitors, and at once the runes on it flared to life in a brilliant green light. Then, the light projected from the runes, forming odd letters none of them could read.

Rhinoc stood up and turned to the visitors, and saw them turning to the runes. "He's asking what you're doing here," he stated, lifting a hoof to gesture to the Mighty Oak for emphasis. He turned to the Mighty Oak again and answered, "Mythonian diplomats who wanted to see the shrine. A lot has… happened recently."

Again, the Mighty Oak managed a nod. The runes stopped glowing, and the letters projected from them vanished. Then, he lifted his spear-tipped arm and pulled it toward himself several times, beckoning the diplomats to come forward. They hesitated at first, but took slow steps after a few glances were exchanged. They bowed once they stood behind Rhinoc, though only to avoid getting on the Mighty Oak's bad side, if he had one.

Rhinoc stepped aside and turned to Shining. "I think you should do the honors of enlightening our friend here," he chirped. Shining Armor nodded and straightened his posture, and cleared his throat before he started explaining to the somehow-sentient construct before him all that had happened.

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

It took a whole hour for Shining to enlighten the Mighty Oak on recent happenings, with Applejack and the others chipping in their two bits wherever needed, save for the start of the whole thing, in which Applejack and Rainbow did most of the speaking. They waited after that, faces tinged a slight shade of blue—or a darker shade in Rainbow's case—as they awaited what the Mighty Oak would say or do.

Finally, after a moment that seemed to stretch for an eternity, the Mighty Oak gave his answer in the form of a slow, methodic nod. Another henge glowed in light, and before him more of those strange letters appeared. Rhinoc studied them for a second. "He's glad Sarah's been found and reunited with her sister, but is concerned about their mental health," he translated.

Applejack turned to Rhinoc, an incredulous brow raised. "Where'd you learn to read that?" she asked, lifting a hoof to gesture to the glowing letters.

"And what language is it?" Flash added. "It's nothing like I've seen; not even Pre-Unification Equestrian compares."

"Oh, that's something the higher-ups refer to as 'ancient alicorn,' but only because they don't know what language it is either," Rhinoc replied with an earnest shrug. "It's been around for about as long as a changeling dialect I've heard only one changeling even use anymore, and sparingly at that, according to Lieutenant Armin."

"Spindly red mane, thin as a twig, broke horn?" Applejack guessed. "I heard her rattling off in what she called Swarm dialect once."

Rhinoc nodded again. "Yeah, that one." He turned to the Mighty Oak. "Thank you for your time. We'll be on our way." The Mighty Oak groaned and nodded, and with that they trotted away from him and down the haggard steps leading to his enshrined plateau.

"So… nobody speaks in Swarm anymore?" Rainbow asked, frowning.

Rhinoc nodded slowly and glumly as he assumed his unicorn guise again. "It's practically a dead language at this point. Only one speaker left to use it, and she doesn't use it that much." He sighed pityingly and ruefully. "I wonder if she can read and write in that tongue. Would be a waste if she couldn't. We found so few records written in Swarm that Armin's the only one who studied it extensively, but even he can't speak it fluently."

Applejack leaned toward Rainbow, but only enough to whisper to her without risking her own balance in the process. "Sounds to me Armin's gonna be their go-to changeling whenever Katie lapses in that Swarm o' hers," she muttered.

Rainbow nodded. "Remind me to ask her if she can write in it," she stated.

"Blueblood… are you the modest type of pony?" Rhinoc asked, waiting until he passed the final gate before sparing a glance over his shoulder. When Blueblood nodded, he turned back to the rest of the staircase that awaited them. With a flash of light he conjured several buckets, each one polished so thoroughly they reflected the bits of sunlight that filtered through the leaves. "You guys may need these for when we reach Greenwood." He gave each of his charges a bucket, and set aside a triad by resting them on his back.

"Is it anything like hippogryphs ripping a full-grown stallion to shreds?" Rainbow queried, her utterance causing Blueblood's cheeks to puff out and a green tint to bud on his face.

"Well… on a scale of horrendous to let-us-never-speak-of-this-ever-again, nowhere near it. But still disgusting in its own right," Rhinoc answered with a sigh. As they descended the flight, Shining noticed that he could faintly hear some kind of commotion coming from the trees ahead. The noises were rather joyous, but over what he couldn't discern. Perhaps there was a celebration of some sort?

Well, whatever the case, he took a few deep breaths to steel himself. He held the bucket that was hoofed to him in his magic, and sighed through his nose. He saw Blueblood doing the same, and Flash and Rainbow using their primaries to hold theirs. Applejack simply carried hers precariously upon her back. Amusingly, some of the trees surrounding them, and the pebbles at their roots, were now also equipped with an array of buckets of their own. The instruments of liquid-juggling were either tucked away in branches or resting upon the pebbles.

Shining frowned. Delta Unit was preparing for whatever horrendous thing lay in Greenwood, too? His stomach began twisting into knots, and he started getting the niggling feeling that maybe the changelings could sense things he couldn't; that would very well explain their affinity for love-draining, now that he thought about it. The joyous noises grew louder as they trotted off the staircase and headed straight south, and Shining shuddered as one of the cursed trees, intermingled with the trees full of leaves, managed to look at him.

"Stay… away from Greenwood," it pleaded, its voice taking on a desperate note that reflected in its haphazardly-swaying branches. "Otherwise… you'll end up…" It did not get to finish its utterance as, tragically, Shining already vanished deeper into the forest with his group at that point.

Speaking of, his frown twisted further, and several alarm bells were going off in his head. The trees were now telling him to stay away too? Just what sort of madness had befallen this place? He swore if he spent a minute longer in town than was necessary, he might come out with a few loose screws that would need a thorough application of brain bleach at a later time. It wasn't until several minutes after departing from the steps of the shrine, when an old dirt trail weaved through the forest caught their eye, was the silence that settled broken.

Rainbow, tired of the silence, decided to blurt something out. "Laz told me that Anna's crazy. Did Greenwood drive her nuts?" she asked.

Rhinoc paused to consider the statement, before he reluctantly shrugged. "She got crazy enough to get therapy for a full year before joining the army, in fact, but I don't know if the town itself was responsible. She was, mentally and metaphorically speaking, a train wreck," he answered, his voice low and grim. "I don't know the full details; you'd have to ask either Lance or Alexander. They know the extent of her nuttiness."

"She… had a therapist?" Flash asked, his jaw hanging open after he made the utterance.

Rhinoc nodded again. "Most I know is physical therapy, on top of mental exercises that didn't involve the use of her magic," he answered. "And a few classes for the most basic of spells."

"She had to be taught basic spells?!" Blueblood exclaimed, pupils shrinking to pinpricks as that, and Rhinoc's confirmation that one of his higher-ups was tutti-frutti registered in his mind with the force of an airship colliding with a mountainside. "What barbarians kept one unicorn from reaching her potential before she joined the military?!"

"Good news is she was a very fast learner. Only downside was having to explain the basics to her, but even that was simple," Rhinoc answered, nodding again. "As for who didn't teach her… dunno." His ears folded back as the sounds grew louder still, and enough that many different masculine voices could be made out with ease. "Oh great, the villagers are partying…" he groused.

"Is that a bad thing?" Applejack asked, frowning deeply at that.

"I take it you have yet to see how hard some villages party? Sometimes it crosses so many disgusting thresholds it makes me ashamed to have been born on the same planet as the partygoers," Rhinoc groaned, slowing his pace just a little bit. "Frostbite should've been your first clue."

Applejack winced, a clawing sense of dread and trepidation growing uncontrollably within the very depths of her soul. Some hamlets considered cannibalism cause for celebration? She found herself breathing a sigh of relief over the fact she didn't bring Apple Bloom and the other Crusaders along for the diplomatic ride. Though, she did make a mental note to consult Luna to let them see her in the dreamworld at a later time.

Dear Faust, some morbidly fascinated part of her wondered what other horrors local Fantasians got themselves giddy over. Applejack tried shaking the thoughts from her head, but such curious musings would not so easily be banished. This only made her shudder as her dread increased, causing her pupils to shrink and her frown to deepen further into a scowl. She noticed that the voices ahead that were celebrating were also… moaning? Over what?

Then, amidst all of the voices, a single feminine voice managed to pierce through the fog, though only barely. "I-I'll be a g-good f-filly… a g-good b-blank f-flanked filly," the owner uttered, in something trying to be anything else other than a half-gurgled choke. Applejack tensed, and her ears fell back as she remembered Maria's plea the day one of her tormentors met his gruesome end at Rarity's hooves.

Her stomach twisted as the possibility of Greenwood turning into another Frostbite presented itself to her with the utterance of the half-choked voice, and something seemed to click in place. She turned to Rainbow and asked, "Didja hear that?"

Rainbow looked back and nodded solemnly. "Heard the 'good filly' part loud and clear. Remind you of anypony?" she queried, her voice slightly cracking.

Applejack nodded back, just as gravely. "Anygryph, rather, but yeah. I think we should prepare to kick some flank in case—" She bumped into an errant torch and staggered before she had the chance to turn ahead and stop herself, but she did not topple over or even drop her bucket. Instead, she merely backed up a few trots, turned forward, then went around the torch when a sign right next to it caught her eye. "Hey, what's this here say?" she asked, brow furrowing when she saw the same strange letters the Mighty Oak had used on the piece of wood.

"Oh?" Rhinoc lifted a hoof to halt the expedition party before cantering around them and to the sign to study it. His face paled considerably as he read it. "W-wedding c-ceremony… t-today u-until m-midnight…" He gulped and backed away from the sign, and returned to take point and continue on his way, his knees a lot more weak and wobbly than before. "R-ready the b-buckets…"

Applejack felt her stomach rumbling and pang repeatedly in pain, as though it were re-enacting the petrification of Discord. While a wedding ceremony in itself didn't sound terribly bad, if the moaning and the whole 'I'll be a good filly' bit were anything to go by, then somehow something was going wrong. But she didn't know for certain; maybe the moaners had wounded themselves somehow, and perhaps the 'I'll be good' was the standard equivalent of 'I do' in these parts of Fantasia. That revelation did little to ebb her concerns, though.

A village gate came into view twenty minutes after they trotted from the sign, laden with red roses interlaced with poison ivy of all things. In fact, were it not for the roses, she'd not have noticed at all. "That the entrance to Greenwood?" she asked, her voice a little weak as bile started climbing up their throat.

Rhinoc hastily nodded. "A-are your b-buckets r-ready?" he stammered weakly. He glanced over his shoulder to receive five nods, though not before Applejack lifted a foreleg to grasp her bucket, lift it off her back and grapple the thin wiry handle in her mouth. Then, he lifted one of the buckets on his back and put it in his mouth before turning ahead and striding forward.

Once the group entered Greenwood proper, the moaning only intensified into a deafening din. However, where the incessant noises were coming from were a bit muddled, largely in part because they basically strode into another clearing peppered with leafless trees, some as thick at the trunk of Fluttershy's cottage, with windows to frame the upper floors and doors to serve as the entrances. Anything to suggest marital festivities, though, were bereft from the surrounding landscape. In fact, not even the ground itself held any clues as to what was going on.

Stranger still, the villagers were nowhere to be found; not one piece of hide nor mane lingered. Despite the lack of visible life that wasn't tree and ground, the group pressed on, weaving between several trees until they came upon a trail consisting of several sets of hoofprints. Wordlessly, they followed the trail, heading into a secondary clearing with rows of ponies watching a podium of some sort, all within in a matter of minutes. On the podium, one young mare in a white gown was…

Applejack and her companions promptly did a double-take, shaking their heads and rapidly blinking their eyes to confirm what they were seeing. The young mare on the podium was being mounted by a stallion in a tuxedo, and if the strangeness didn't skyrocket from there, then the line of yet more stallions in similar outfits and sporting fifth legs behind the one having his turn did.

Behind the publicly-mating couple, an elderly unicorn stallion with a faded brown coat and a greying green mane watched on with an expression so utterly devoid of emotion he almost seemed to be staring into the middle distance. His eyes were as dull as his coat, and his pupils seemed to have blended into the pools of green, which did not at all help matters in the slightest, let alone his vacant expression.

Rhinoc and his charges' faces promptly twisted into expressions of pure disgust. They backpedaled slowly, partly to avoid drawing attention to themselves and partly to avoid bumping into each other in their ignominious exit from an even more horrendous display. They halted, however, when the elderly stallion shifted his distant gaze ever so slightly toward them, and cleared his throat loudly enough to get the bride and… groom? Best stallion? Whomever it was, his sharp "ahem" ground the proceedings to an immediate halt. They looked to him, and he nodded in the direction of the unexpected guests.

"Come sit with us… stay for the festivities," the elderly stallion intoned, his tone surprisingly sharp and authoritative for somepony so dead-faced the cursed trees were given a run for their bits. "You needn't mount the bride, though; only those born into Greenwood are afforded that privilege."

In that moment, the stomachs of Applejack and her companions clenched so hard they felt the bile squeezing out into their throats. They proceeded to ready the buckets to receive their payload, but not before turning around and witnessing a vibrant green shield encompassing all of Greenwood.