Lance and Twilight frowned as the group formed a small circle, while the Mighty Oak dug into the earth with his massive steel knuckles. Everyone was ruminating about the very cryptic warning they had received from the fire-torn remnants that were once a house. Sarah would not yield her tight grip over Mr. Muffin, and sat with body shaking and feathers puffing as a trench was carved into the ground.

At least, deathly silence hadn't held the group as it had in the crystal caverns. Katie relaxed a little at that, content to listen to the rhythmic scraping of soil as the Mighty Oak continued to dig. "So… should we still look around… after the Mighty Oak…" Anna trailed off, brow furrowing as she looked to where the deceased pair had been discovered.

"Yes," Lance replied tersely, his voice grim as the hole the Mighty Oak made deepened substantially. "Which reminds me…" He turned to Katie and addressed her as the Mighty Oak jumped into the hole, which was now deep enough to swallow both his feet easily, "Were either of them, in any way, literally vegetating?"

Katie shook her head as the Mighty Oak used his arms to haul himself out of the hole. "The stallion had… tumors on his neck, but that was about it," she replied dismally. "Either he was… starting to, or he swallowed things that fused… into his neck somehow."

"But the flames got him before he could turn, if he was indeed turning," Lance muttered. A mute nod of confirmation answered to him, and his wings drooped as he turned to the skeletons when the Mighty Oak approached them again.

He stomped the ground once in front of them with a massive foot, and mana pulsed through the ground before vines erupted and tenderly grasped every bone in an embrace like that of a blanket. The vines lifted the skeletons, and slowly, precariously placed them into the hole he had dug, careful to keep their rings on their pastern and tarsus. Once laid at the bottom, the vines pulled the dirt over top them in a smothering blanket, until the ground was once again flat with only the barest traces of loose soil to ever confirm that patch had indeed been tampered with. A low groan left the Mighty Oak as he forced his metal jaw to move, and he trembled in place for a few seconds as he looked upon the fresh grave he had just dug.

Then he turned to the rest of the party, his metal jaw closing and a spark of green fire alighting in his seemingly empty eyes. He stomped once, and everyone stood up to face him. Even though he was unable to physically shift his face beyond its meager movements, they could still sense something budding within him. Another low groan left him, and the sparks of flame dribbled from his eyes in a manner reminiscent of tears. He stomped again, and more vines erupted before ensnaring four pieces of the torn house, forming crude crosses that were then affixed onto the soil, the vines snapping off their roots to wrap around the pieces and hold them in place.

Twilight hesitantly approached the Mighty Oak, frowning when she noted he didn't seem to realize he was somehow crying. "They… were your friends… weren't they?" she asked, garnering a reluctant nod in response. The Mighty Oak groaned again, jaw parting for a moment, which amplified the sound and somehow made it echo somberly. Then it snapped shut, and he waved his knuckles at the house one last time.

Vines erupted once more, forming a thick wall with holes that alighted with green power. Twilight turned to it and stared for a moment before realizing he was trying to convey something to her with those gaps. She pulled out her translation book from the thaumic plane and pieced together what the message was, "'Nobody should have to bury their own friends… what did they do to deserve this?'" The vines retracted into the soil, and Twilight made the book vanish. "Is that why you were stomping around in the airship?" She got a nod from the Mighty Oak.

Silence held for a long moment, as nobody could conjure an answer to the Mighty Oak's translated question. How could they answer it, when the only thing they knew was that the deceased died willingly? Lance's stomach twisted as he remembered the soldiers pulling the Mighty Oak away, and considered that they had to take him by force, now mentally picturing him trying to reach his companions, slowly but surely being consumed by fire…

No wonder he was stomping about, in that case. He started wondering who else may have been trapped in Ashwood, when the wildfire broke out, unable to leave because the Mighty Oak wasn't there to save them in their moment of need... Possibilities turned in his head, each more dismal than the last. He recalled that Ashwood was suspiciously quiet last night, as the fires raged and tore it from the roots up, and that as far as cursed trees were concerned, nothing turned up yet. Had, perhaps, the entire forest come to a decision to die then and there? He looked around; just him, his group, and felled and torched trees littered the scene.

Katie turned to Lance, noticing his silence. "Some of the torches… were alight with blue fire," she muttered, snapping him out of his stupor and causing him to look at her. "In a clearing. We should investigate that first."

Lance frowned. "I heard something about that yesterday…" he muttered, brow furrowing. "But why do you want to start there?"

"Something about that clearing… was off, sir. Just… wrong," Katie replied, shivering as she recalled her hoof nearly catching fire. "The gryphons accompanying me suspected absorbed pegasus magic, and literal loads of it." She buzzed her wings, teeth grinding a little. "If the torches are still around when we get to that clearing, I'll eat my tail!" Her ears perked, then rotated as she caught a faint sound. She strained, trying to ascertain what it was and where it was coming from.

Lance opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, when his ears rotated too. Anna and Sarah's ears, likewise, moved in unison. Twilight and NoLegs followed suit, as slowly the noise grew louder. They heard twigs snapping, leaves crunching, and something shuffling about in the fire-torn undergrowth with a fervor that could only be called panicked. In tandem with that, though, came a horrific and pained cry that distorted the longer it dragged on. Eyes darted, and even the Mighty Oak found himself glancing around to figure out where the sound was coming from. It persisted for a few minutes, stopping only with a hiccup, and then resumed without its source revealing itself.

Katie deftly hopped off of Twilight's back and landed smoothly on her hooves. Silently, she trotted past a few of the felled trees, slowly as to avoid startling the already-shrieking newcomer who was raising quite a fuss. She chittered softly, shifting her body low and keeping her wings shut as she slunk out of sight past the barely-visible obsidian patch. Several minutes passed, with the shuffling continuing and the outburst growing louder and more frantic, before silence settled so fast all eyes that could widen did widen. Had something gone wrong? Did the source of the outburst calm down? Or was it an illusion?

They got their answer when Katie cooed, just loud enough for the whole lot to hear, "Hey, hey… it's okay, little guy…" The crying started all over again immediately after that, but amidst it they could hear Katie mutter, trying to reassure that which was wailing. Exchanging glances, Sarah and Anna took a few steps away from the group before vanishing beyond the trees and obsidian patch, keeping their steps slow and quiet. Lance and Twilight followed them, as did NoLegs, whilst the Mighty Oak opted to stay in the clearing.

They came upon a most bizarre sight a good forty yards away from where the grave had been freshly dug, under a felled tree that managed to stay mostly intact after it landed on one of its worse-off brethren. There, Katie had laid down and cradled something that struggled in her forelegs, ears pinned back as she nuzzled and cooed to get it to calm down. Seeing the group approaching, Katie extended her tongue to wave them over, as her hooves were currently occupied in more ways than one.

Seeing the invitation, the group came closer before they blanched in unison. A tiny, thin, and heavily burnt foal wailed and thrashed with hooves made of bloodied, soot-covered bark. Wings of tattered leaves buzzed feebly, and eyes of a dulled, almost milky forest green were glistening with fear and had gone wide, glancing everywhere they could in an effort to find a way out. Blood stained the foal's tiny, pale face in dried droplets, and it kept trying to use its hooves to push Katie away. Strangely, despite the bark and leaves and the horrific burns, this little one wasn't rotting even as branches were growing out of its head and rear in place of a mane and tail. "Dear Godcat… you're kidding me…" Lance muttered, pupils shrinking at the sight.

Katie shook her head even as she tried to soothe the screeching tree-baby. However, the child continued to fuss and shriek, flailing for all it was worth. Lance hoofed his blaster over to Anna, who took it along with his saddlebags and gunblade in her magic before he shifted to lay down in front of the two with hooves extended. Sensing what he was wanting her to do, Katie hoofed the baby over to him, brow furrowing. "Do we take this one?" she asked.

Lance hastily nodded and turned to cradle the baby, who tensed and hushed upon noticing it was in another set of forelegs. He looked at the foal, who looked back at him with a sniffle. "Hey… relax. You're safe," he muttered, keeping his voice soft as he shifted to hold the foal to his barrel. The foal immediately began to shriek again, but quieted when the legs holding it gently bounced. "Shh…" The baby shifted to cling to his uniform, and slowly Lance shifted to stand on his hinds again, wings spread for balance.

Katie stood up again, eying the child warily. "I'd say we're not taking samples off that one. Just… no," she muttered.

Lance gave another curt nod, continuing to bounce the foal in his legs to placate it. "Yeeeeeah, Alexander ain't getting his claws on this one," he agreed. He turned to Katie. "Filly, or colt?"

"Colt," Katie replied bluntly.

"So… what do we do?" Twilight queried, looking at the child intently. "How do we feed him… and can he still eat?"

Lance sighed, shrugging his shoulders as the child finally hushed, looking around with very wide eyes. "I doubt it. He's probably not eaten since… I don't know when, to be honest." He shifted to nuzzle the foal, wincing as his snout brushed up against fraying bark. The foal poked him with a hoof, and he pulled his head back. "And the little guy's already part tree, too… which is going to make caring for him a lot more challenging…"

Twilight's brow slanted. "Do you think you can manage it?" she queried sincerely.

Lance nodded. "If nothing else, I can keep him calm," he replied. He turned to Sarah and eyed the plush she stubbornly clung to. "Do you think Mr. Muffin would make a good friend for the tyke?"

Sarah's eyes darted from Mr. Muffin to the foal, then back again. "Not like this, no," she muttered. "He'll need to be cleaned and patched up first…"

Lance nodded, seeing why Sarah made the remark. He turned to Twilight. "Would you be comfortable holding the little guy?" he asked.

Twilight nodded, lit up her horn, and took the foal in her magic, smiling as the child went with quietly. She watched, perplexed, as the little one buzzed his false wings with a changeling's fervor. "Hrm… would this count as 'bound wings?'" she asked.

"Not really much wing to bind, in the strictly biological sense," Lance groaned, flexing his forelegs before slowly retaking his blaster from Anna, who made his saddlebags and gunblade vanish in separate flashes of light. He lifted one of his wings to brush his primaries against the child, who burbled and tried to grasp the feathers. "I'd wager none at all." He smiled as the baby managed to wrap his little barky hooves around a primary, cooing in a distorted voice that still held an air of innocence about it.

Anna's horn alighted, and she took off her front shoes before making them vanish. "Well… the poor thing's gonna need a basket," she pointed out, garnering a look from Lance and Twilight.

"You are right… but where are we going to get a basket?" Twilight shot back, frowning.

The ground beneath Anna pulsed and trembled slightly, shimmering with a green ripple of mana. "You'll see," Anna replied with a cheeky grin budding on her face. The ground shook, a low groan filled the air, and trees snapped as the Mighty Oak finally decided to catch up, stopping just behind the group. She turned to him with a nod and jerked her horn to Twilight for emphasis as the ground pulsed with another viridian ripple.

Twilight turned to the Mighty Oak and lifted the child a little higher than her head. The Mighty Oak tilted his body slightly, and lifted his knuckles slowly, until they could brush up against tiny wooden hooves. The baby squealed and cooed as he started tapping at the knuckles with all four legs, and then stopped and curled up when the knuckles retracted. She turned to Anna as she levitated the foal to her barrel, before feeling the ground pulse and heave a little with power.

Twilight opened her mouth, about to ask what Anna was going to do, when the ground in front of the felled tree cracked and split in several places. Mana seeped into the breaks in the soil, filling them until light burst from them in miniature rays that weaved twisting lines that had no structure, no form, no fine-tuned control. Simply put, light became corporeal and extended, outwards from ash-laden soil in serpentine motions. The magic danced around Anna's horn, yet did not launch from it. Her flesh writhed unnaturally, before a bit of ivy sprouted from her left foreleg with something cradled in its leaves.

"A-are you transmogrifying again?!" Twilight asked. Anna shook her head.

"No," Anna replied, voice echoing with power, "merely utilising my special talent." She conjured arrows in a few flashes of light and stabbed them into the ground where light erupted, causing that light to twist around them and hold tight. These arrows were different from her standard, Twilight noticed; predominately bark with feather fletchings and steel heads. The ivy growing from her foreleg threw several small somethings with enough force to make them land in the holes and retracted back into its host, leaving just a small wound and an upwelling of smeared blood as proof that it had been there.

The power pulsed through the ground with increasing intensity and frequency, and the light embraced the arrows down to their feathers. Yet, not once did the glow turn red, nor did Anna's eyes as she concentrated. Slowly, the tiny objects that were lobbed onto the arrows burst, and from them more viridian vines expanded outward, gradually taking the shape of the light. NoLegs waved his tail and, with a flicker of his own magic, summoned the wooden horse on wheels again and watched as poison ivy slowly grew into a manageable, corporeal form. When they ivy started rising past the fletching in an effort to find something else to ensnare, Anna merely lifted the arrows out of the holes, careful to avoid cutting the vines and keeping their roots in the soil at the same time.

The ivy continued to grow, steadily growing inch by inch as the arrows they were anchored to kept rising up into the air, ensuring the vines could not grapple for anything else. Mana repeatedly pulsed, nay, pumped itself into the earth and the roots of the ivy, hastening its growth at an admirable rate. When the vines were about as long as the felled tree, the arrows disentangled themselves and an aura seized the plants by their roots before yanking them out of the soil in tandem.

Twilight gave a low whistle at the sight and watched as the vines were rolled onto themselves in almost perfect coils, each about the size of a pony's head when Anna got through with them. Anna conjured her front horseshoes again and slipped them on, turning to Twilight with a small smile on her muzzle. "My curse… has some benefits," Anna muttered, ears folding back a little. "Just… not a lot of them."

Twilight sighed, and flinched as the infant poked her in the barrel with his bark-laden hooves. "What are you going to do with the ivy?" she asked, glancing between the gathered coils and Anna for a moment.

Anna frowned. "Make a basket for our little guy," she replied.

Lance flared his wings and flapped once. "I'll do an aerial preliminary in the meantime, see if I can spot any wayward torches," he muttered, turning to Anna. "You have a radio on hoof?" Anna nodded and conjured a radio in a flash of light, affixing it to the collar of her dress with care, before conjuring another one and affixing that to the collar of Lance's uniform and turning both devices on with another flick of magic. He nodded and turned to address Katie. "You want to help?"

Katie's wings flared instantly, and buzzed with fervor as NoLegs conjured her clawed shoes and put them on her hooves. She turned to the little one, who stretched his legs and yawned. "Sounds good. Pretty confident little twiggy over there will be safe in the meantime," she muttered. Then her wings sagged. "A timberbaby. Great Godcat, what the hell has Fantasia come to…?" With that, both she and Lance took off rather clumsily into the skies, one struggling to balance his wingbeats and the other veering a few feet away just to avoid getting a faceful of said wingbeats.

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

An hour after they launched, making sure to keep to the treeline as they fitfully scanned Ashwood, nothing turned up for Lance and Katie. Lance had kept his blaster firmly in his hooves, in case anything struck him and his soldier, who was leading him to the clearing that she had mentioned. All the while, both listened intently for anything to come through the radio, and from the world below their wings. Only silence answered to them from the latter; the whole of Ashwood was as still and tranquil as yesterday, and the ectoplasms that still reigned in the skies had likewise gone quiet. A niggling feeling that something was wrong settled in their guts and minds, but neither elected to comment on it.

The radio, however, was animated with chatter. "Got the basket built, and some dirt put in it so the ivy's rooted in it," Anna reported from her end.

"And the foal's condition?" Lance asked.

"In the basket and asleep with Mr. Muffin in his hooves," Anna replied in a chipper voice. "And we've relocated back to… the shrine."

Lance frowned. "Why? Did something happen?" he asked.

"The Mighty Oak got antsy," Anna sighed, her voice followed by a low groan of wood and metal.

Lance nodded and muttered, "Fair enough." His eyes gravitated down when Katie stopped all of a sudden, and—what in the wide world of Fantasia was this? He and Katie had come upon a clearing, lined with a ring of scorched torches alight with suspect blue flames. Green miasma danced in the center, spiraling around a tall willow tree that was not only in bloom, but decidedly not scorched or punctured in any capacity whatsoever. The branches were long enough to coil around the trunk twice, and with the flowers in the way, neither of the airborne duo could ascertain if it had a door or not.

A whole uneven chasm surrounded the clearing in a jagged ovoid shape, each twist and bend as wide as three Valkyrie tanks, with the whole thing going deep enough into the earth to let magma spill out. Its radius was wide enough that it effectively protected the clearing against the wildfire's wrath; still-lit torches aside, virtually nothing had blackened. He turned to Katie, who looked at him with shrunken orbs and hooves flailing in the direction of the bizarre sight.

"That tree wasn't there before, I swear!" Katie gabbled. "That clearing was empty yesterday, except for those torches!"

Lance turned to the sight again, and took a moment to study the chasm that cut this oddity off from the rest of Ashwood. "Forget that… how the hell did it get out of Ragnarok intact, and turned into its own little island?" he questioned, and he would have scratched his head at the strange phenomenon if his hooves weren't full.

"Found something?" Anna queried from her end of the line.

"Yeah, and I'm flabbergasted," Lance snarked in reply. "I'll investigate, see what the hell is up, and then I'll rendezvous with you at the shrine."

"What is it?" Twilight piped up from Anna's end.

"A tree that isn't torched, and blooming," Lance replied bluntly as he and Katie slowly descended into the clearing, stretching his back hooves a little early to compensate for his loaded forelegs. "Not sure if it's a house yet, since its branches are long as shit, but either way it's pretty strange." As he and Katie touched down with a brief stagger and trotted to see the nearest torch to discover burning rings and bleached skulls therein, the radio's chatter picked up quite a bit.

"In bloom? But it's autumn!" Anna griped, sounding just as perplexed as Twilight. Lance snorted and righted his posture first, and bade Katie to approach the strange willow with a wing after they pulled away from the torch.

"Actually, some trees do bloom later than others," Twilight cut in as Katie gave a reluctant nod and started to shamble forward. Twilight uttered a garbled syllable before Anna decided to go on a little tirade and cut her off.

"I know that, thank you very much, but Ashwood was destroyed twice, if you recall!" Anna pointed out, audibly stomping a hoof. "Nothing outside of Greenwood should have survived, unless it's a really persistent cursed tree!"

"Sis, please don't wake the baby…" Sarah chimed in as Lance started to walk after Katie, going slow to avoid tripping over her.

Anna audibly groaned. "Alright, alright," she muttered. NoLegs gave a meow as Katie and Lance neared the admittedly-majestic branches, both pausing to stare at the flowers, but not just because they were gorgeous. The petals were uniformly formed, small and a delicate lilac in hue, untouched by any singe marks whatsoever. Yet they oozed a thick, rather shady scent of iron and rot that clashed horribly with their fragile appearance.

"... a wisteria willow," Lance muttered, nose wrinkling at the scent.

Katie lifted a shoe and brushed her claws against a flower, careful to avoid cutting it. The flower bounced upon the claws, and did little else but eject a tiny red seed onto the ground. That seed sizzled and popped as soon as it landed, before it evaporated in a smog of green miasma that for but an instant turned a hideous crimson. Her brow furrowed, and her hoof dropped at the anomaly. "Strange… this tree seems to be of a magical sort…" she noted before rearing onto her hinds to part the branches with her forelegs. More seeds ejected from the ruffled flowers, each one vanishing in a puff of smog after a crackle or two.

Lance cocked the Accelerator, ears twitching as Katie simply stopped. "You okay?" he asked.

Katie gave a slow nod. "Yes. This tree, though… something ain't right with it," she muttered blandly. She turned her head to Lance, the rest of her body stiff. "I don't trust the seeds. Do you think it would be wise to freeze these flowers before they hork up more of them?"

Lance shook his head, and made to gesture Katie to stand aside when the tree slowly, of its own accord, parted its branches. With a distinct red pulse of mana, a swath was erected for them to pass through, revealing a pristine wood door built into the trunk. Oddly, there were no window frames or sills to be had here; just that door, and nothing more. Katie reoriented her head and dropped back to all fours, and Lance found his grip on the blaster tightening. "Whooo-kay, I'll be surprised if this is a cursed tree that has enough living space for a cluster of twenty changelings," Katie muttered.

Hesitantly, the two approached the bark, and paused to turn around as the branches closed behind them with another spray of smoking seeds. "If somepony's actually sick enough in the head to do that, then why did we only find this anomaly now?" Lance questioned, turning to the door first, noticing that crude runes had been carved into its frame around a tarnished silver knob. He turned to the branches after, but all that yielded was a sky clouded with flowers; he couldn't see anything past them, let alone under them except for the door. When his eyes gravitated back down, he and Katie exchanged concerned looks.

"Want me to trot around the bark before we break and enter?" Katie asked, brow slanting. Lance gave a mute nod and watched as she started to trot around the trunk. It wasn't long before she vanished from sight, and the only sign she was even there was the gentle thunking of her shoes on the soil. It took her twenty minutes to come back from the other side, brow furrowed again. "Nothin'," she reported.

Lance sighed and readied the Accelerator, angling his wings to the blaster before the tarnished knob spun, and the door spontaneously pulsed with red mana that filled in the runes, before it opened with hinges a-creaking to reveal a dark abyss beyond. Katie sat on her haunches and threw her forehooves into the air. "Yeesh, is somepony lonely in there?!" she cried in exasperation, her outburst echoing into the conspicuous tree.

Nopony answered from within the abode, if it was indeed even that. Katie stood up and snorted before she took the first step inside, followed by Lance. "Should've asked NoLegs to come with…" Lance muttered, glancing about in an attempt to let his eyes adjust to the lack of light. "It would've been really useful to have a light about now…"

NoLegs meowed from his end of the line, before Anna piped up, "What is it?"

"Found out the tree's a house, and it's dark," Lance replied.

"Peculiar… alright NoLegs, warp over to Lance," Anna muttered, before NoLegs meowed and a pop sounded from the radio. Seconds after, he appeared before Lance in a flash of light and alighted his tail. "Hooray for teleporting cats," Anna added wryly.

"Indeed," Lance agreed. Immediately, NoLegs jumped on his head and cast his glow about the room they were in. A living room greeted them and Katie, thick with dust that had seemingly drained most of the color, shrouding the space in a brown hue as dull as the soil outside. Cabinets, open yet spaciously empty, hung to their left, and to the right sat a small table and a large flight of stairs going up. In front of them was another door leading deeper into the house. Past that, the place was barren; nothing had even decorated the ceiling unless the dust counted for something.

Katie's stomach twisted again as she beheld the sight. Lance's wings ruffled, and NoLegs made his blaster vanish in a flash of light with his tail puffing out. Hesitantly, Lance reverted to all fours, nose still slightly crinkled. "Abandoned…" he muttered. He turned to Katie. "Hear anything?"

Katie's ears twitched, swiveled upright, and rotated repeatedly for a few minutes. She eventually dropped them and shook her head when she failed to detect a single sound. "Zero, zip, nada," she replied. "As still as a fucking grave."

"So it let us in… and nobody's here…" Lance spread his wings and fanned them in the air in lieu of his forehooves, rolling his eyes in exasperation. "This is… a very peculiar house."

"Probably enchanted," Katie noted, wings shuddering for a moment. "I mean… nothing else would come close to explaining why it admitted us to begin with." She turned to Lance. "Which way first? That second door over there, or the stairs?"

Lance pondered this for a second or two, and strode to the second door to scrutinize it. On the surface of this door, he found naught but a splintering array of runes that warped with age and a hole where a knob should've been. He lifted a hoof to push it open, but when he made contact the door fell into the next room with a thud that sent dust flying everywhere. He staggered back, hoof shooting to his muzzle in a vain attempt to keep the dust out of his nose and mouth, coughing with NoLegs as the cloud settled.

Peering into the room after sneezing a few times, Lance frowned when he eyed a kitchen with cabinets thrown open and a countertop in the center of the room with a cutting board resting upon it, and a dulled cleaver impaled on top of it. Beneath the cabinets rested a metal sink, filled with dirty dishes coated in a black grime so thick he couldn't tell what was silverware and what was plates and bowls. It formed this improbable, shapeless blob that seemed to inhale any dust that came into contact with it. A stench of rot came from that sink, which made him gag a little before he reigned in his stomach and elected to stay as far away from that atrocity as possible. NoLegs hissed, and likewise shielded his mouth and nose with his tail.

He turned to scrutinize the rest of the kitchen, hoof still firmly on snout, to find that another door stood opposite of the reeking sink. Then, something on the counter caught his eye; the cleaver glinted with a distinct red color. Had it rusted, perhaps? "Katie, c'mere a sec," he ordered, his voice muffled. He heard thunking hooves and scraping claws, before he felt something tap his rear pastern. Taking the hint, he trotted to the cutting board so Katie could enter right behind him, and it did not take him long to hear her retch and hiss.

"What is that smell!? It reeks worse than where that disposal plant supposedly stood!" Katie cried, coughing to get the stench out of her lungs.

"I don't know, and I don't want to find out," Lance grumbled in reply, turning to study the cleaver when he noticed something jutting out a little from behind the cutting board, practically small enough that he only noticed it now. Curious, he trotted around the countertop to ascertain what it was, but stopped as he reached one end of the countertop. Resting just behind it, flush against the structure, was the bleached, headless and dust-covered skeleton of a long-dead pegasus—a pegasus who, suspiciously enough, had rusted metal wing-bindings and copper feathers with runes carved into them. Lance gave a sympathetic wince at the sight, his own wings cringing as an old and particularly unpleasant pain came to the forefront of his thoughts.

Well, he found the wing-bound pony he'd caught wind of, but the poor bastard was already long dead. He hesitantly approached the hollowed-out carcass, and began scrutinizing it in an attempt to find out what had killed this unfortunate sap, and… huh? There was a rune-inscribed tarnished ring on its left front pastern. He heard thunking steps again, and it took mere seconds for Katie to emerge on the other side of the countertop. She, too, paused to consider the corpse, putting a shoe to her chest in respect. Then she noticed the ring and sighed. "Looks like this one got a dose of sablestone absorption… but why?" she muttered.

"I wish I knew," Lance muttered dismally, eyes gravitating to NoLegs. "Take the corpse. We'll bury it later." NoLegs nodded and made to grasp the skeleton in his magic, but the moment he did the skeleton simply crumbled to dust, letting the ring and wing-bindings clatter to the floor and kick up another cloud in the process. Lance and Katie jumped and coughed in unison, grimacing as they realized that body transport wouldn't be possible with this lost soul, either. Nonetheless, NoLegs managed to grasp the wing-bindings and the ring the body left behind, and made those vanish accordingly in a burst of light.

They turned to the cleaver again after, and found curled and dirtied feathers resting just behind the cutting board. The feathers were so old the color simply drained from them, and the caked-on dust only ensured that their filaments clumped together uselessly. NoLegs touched them with his magic too, but they likewise disintegrated. "What did they do, boil the poor bastard? Bones and feathers don't crumble like that unless smashed, ripped, or drained of collagen first…" Lance groused, brow furrowing.

"They'd need a pretty big pot to boil the pony," Katie hissed, rearing onto her hinds and resting her fronts onto the countertop's side to better observe the cleaver. "This may be the work of the unicorns who snagged your wings and plucked you."

Lance gave another wince. "In that case, I get dibs on their horns," he hissed, turning to the door that stood opposite the sink. There was something horribly wrong with this place, and he was going to find out what exactly that was. It did not escape his notice, however, that the radio had gone silent. "Anna? You there?" he asked.

"Still here," Anna replied. "The ectoplasms' clouds are turning black… can we go back to the airship?"

"Yes you can. Me, NoLegs, and Katie will follow you as soon as we are able," Lance answered.

"Alright. We've called the vehicular transport vessel so we can get the Mighty Oak in the sky too," Anna replied. "We'll need to teleport to the mastership anyway, solely for the baby's sake." She sighed. "He'll need a bath."

"Alright. Over and out," Lance muttered before he started to trot to the third door. Strange, this one creaked open to let him in too, and without a pulse of mana to signify any enchantments. What sort of secrets were hiding in this wisteria-turned-house? Part of him demanded immediate answers, but his inner skeptic warned that things could turn sour at any moment. Something was here in this abandoned abode, of that much he was certain. With Katie falling in step behind him, he reached the third door and lifted a hoof to dust it aside, and see if it had any runes on its frame.