Lance brushed off as much dust as he could, being careful not to damage the door, only to find carvings so haphazard it may as well have been chicken scratch. He wasn't sure if these were runes, or the drawings of a madpony, but all the same it concerned him. He studied them for a moment longer, before trotting into the room beyond, finding a medium-length hall with boarded-up doors on either side. This hall did not have a door at its end; rather, it had a flat wall adorned with mounted pony skulls, all of which were hornless. His wings shivered at the sight. "Fucking headhunters…" he hissed.

NoLegs grasped his head in his magic and telepathically chimed in with, "No shit."

"Okay, this is Frostbite levels of fucked, officially," Katie agreed, wedging herself between Lance's hooves to cut in front of him.

Anna chimed in from her end of the radio, "Decided to name the baby Timber Spruce."

Lance sighed. "Timber Spruce?" he questioned.

"Yep," Anna replied bluntly.

Lance shrugged. "Whatever floats your boat," he muttered. Turning to the nearest boarded door, he strode to it and studied its bonds. The planks didn't intersect over each other, and were spaced rather evenly apart, all uniformly straight like iron bars. Small round nails were hammered into their ends and centers, so flush against the wood that he would need a needle and thimble just to get under their heads, and betwixt those runes had been carved as possible reinforcements. Strangely, they didn't splinter at all, or collect much in the way of dust for that matter; Lance figured these impromptu locks had been installed recently. He turned to Katie and nodded, and she nodded back before putting her head between the lowest set of planks and pressing one of her ears against the door.

Only silence answered her. She pulled back and shook her head. She then tapped at the lowest plank with a shoe, making sure to pulse mana down to the claws without letting ice grow on them. The runes pulsed back with a sickly green glow, but did nothing beyond that. She backed away from the door, eying it warily. Wordlessly, she turned to the door behind her and cantered to it, prodding at its planks as Lance's eyes gravitated to her. These planks were rigid, rune-marked, and failed to intersect, likewise glowing and pulsing with Katie's ministrations. She turned to NoLegs and sighed. "Can you read this shit?" she asked, using a claw to gesture to the runes.

NoLegs nodded, and levitated himself over to the second door to look at its rune-laden planks. He gave a meow laced with a growl, and used his magic to dust off the planks a little to better read the carvings. He tried to magically remove a plank, but that only caused its runes to activate, causing Katie to back off when ivy spontaneously sprouted from around the doorframe, between the planks, then around them in tight coils. The vines dug through the wall, creating new holes to slip through, and before long that entire door was shrouded in a green, venomous leafy veil. NoLegs telepathically muttered, "Yeesh, whoever put these here is really fucking paranoid about thieves."

"Then again, we did break and enter…" Katie sourly pointed out, eyes narrowing at the new blockade.

Lance sighed. "NoLegs, can you get the cleaver off the counter?" he asked. "We may have no choice but to cut these plants down, and I neglected to bring my gunblade." NoLegs nodded and levitated into the kitchen for a moment, just as Lance muttered something about Anna and magic, keeping his light within sight as his magic grasped the possibly-rusted cleaver. It gave a groan of protest as it wiggled, before it slid out with a rather unpleasant screech that made Katie and Lance wince. NoLegs levitated back to them, cleaver in tail, and Lance took a moment to scrutinize the blade. His brow furrowed when he saw it had dulled, and was caked in some black gunk that mingled with the rust, creating patches of color that did not reflect light at all; only the handle glinted now, and it was beset in hideous red. How the damn thing was impaled in the cutting board to begin with, he could only guess.

NoLegs threw the cleaver, blade first, into the ivy to see what it would do. It thunked with a sickening squelch in the plants, severing two vines cleanly in half. It failed to scratch the wood beneath the vines, which drooped and started oozing a suspect red substance that reeked strongly of iron. The house shook as the cut plants retracted into the wall, almost groaning in pain with a pulse of red mana flashing through the hall with the boarded doors. "... what the hell did the inhabitants do to this house, cast a spell to make it come alive?" Katie asked incredulously, turning to stare at the red splattered blots the vines had left on the floor.

"Possible, but that'd require either an alicorn or a team of powerful unicorns," Lance groused, nodding to NoLegs as he looked at him. "Keep cutting the plants." He turned to Katie. "You too. You have shoes; use them." Both nodded and started cutting the vines again, though Katie had to rear up on her unstable hinds first to help with the hacking and slashing. The house shook and groaned with each and every vine that was split in two, retracting them into the walls with more spurts of dark red fluid flowing freely throughout the ordeal.

It took five minutes for the possibly-rusted cleaver and a set of clawed shoes to dispatch the vines, once more exposing the door and its bonds. NoLegs hardly broke a sweat, and lazily twirled the cleaver, whilst Katie staggered on her legs after reverting to all fours. Now, the door was thoroughly coated in dark, drying red, and its bonds stopped glowing once the substance leaked onto them from the holes in the wall.

There was no two ways about it; this was a downright bizarre house in the middle of Ashwood. The more Lance thought about the vines that spontaneously grew out of the doorframe, the more he found himself having to concede NoLegs' point about the tenants being really frickin' paranoid. There simply was no other explanation for such strange mechanisms of defense; whoever lived here really, really wanted to keep their distance, and prying eyes and ears out of their rooms.

Then again, the house admitted them, and none of them had an answer as to why, though the vines' presence and the fact that it groaned was a very clear indicator that the place was indeed alive. He nodded to NoLegs, who made the cleaver vanish in a flash of light and his small sword appear in its place. With a meow he thrust the blade into the topmost plank, smirking as it managed to cut the wood. A few more whacks after that cut one end of the plank from its nail anchors, and he turned to the other end to repeat the process. Katie and Lance preemptively backed off as the whacking started anew.

The plank's middle fell down to the floor as he cut it loose, its runes pulsing uselessly as it landed and kicked up another cloud of dust. It took NoLegs mere minutes to sever the rest of the planks in a similar manner, and he meowed in triumph once the door was fully exposed to them. He turned the knob slowly, expecting more magic to hold him back, but the house had fallen still with a hiss of worn metal. The dust-laden door creaked open after that, slowly and fitfully, wobbling all the while as if its hinges were about to give out.

Once the door opened fully, the group strode inside, careful to avoid slipping on the puddles that had formed from the vines. Inside, NoLegs cast his light about, revealing a sparsely-decorated room with a table to one side, some fully-stocked bookshelves and chairs on another, and a thick beige carpet spanning across all four corners, adorned with fresh liquid on its side of the door. Katie rubbed the carpet with a shoe, and shuddered as a myriad of tiny bugs jumped between the threads and scattered at her touch. The bugs that tried to crawl up her legs slowed, before she simply let mana pulse through her shoes to freeze the small pests to her limbs almost instantly. Once glued to her legs, she leaned over to identify them, and upon seeing little round, flat bodies with six legs, her nose crinkled again. "We're gonna have to wash our everything when we get back to the ship," she groused. "This place has bed bugs."

Lance snorted, barely paying heed to Katie's remark as he marched to the bookshelves. He spread a wing and gingerly pulled a book off the shelf using his primaries, frowning when this revealed a distinct lack of pages between the flaps of the cover. He had to pinch the book between his feathers just to actually lift it, hearing the distinct clap of two empty bookends impacting when it parted from the shelf. It slipped from his primaries when he pulled it a few inches away, dropping and landing with covers outstretched to reveal little more than a torn spider's web, with said spider inhabitant scuttling away to find another place to build its web.

Katie watched, keeping her distance as Lance started pulling off books by the dozens with his wings and hooves, each and every spine bereft of pages as they landed on the floor. Within seconds of emptying the first shelf, he sprinted over to the one next to it and grasped the top of the furniture with his hooves, wrenching it out to shake its books onto the floor. As that search turned up empty, he went over to the third shelf and flung every single cover he could reach. Something seemed to have possessed him, and what that was, she knew not.

Instead, Katie opted to stay silent until Lance finished emptying the shelves in mere moments. She turned to the lone table on the other side and cantered to it, the scuffing of her shoes letting him know she hadn't strayed from his fetlocks yet. Something about the table seemed off to her, but she didn't know what that was, with what terrible eyesight making it difficult to determine if the damn thing had been coated in dust or not. Katie squinted, trotting to one corner of the table before wheeling around and doubling to the other corner, and then veering between its legs outright to look at its underside.

Nothing.

Experimentally, Katie reared onto her hind hooves and rested her front shoes on the table's edge. It splintered, immediately, at her touch—which was odd, as she hadn't even scraped the thing yet. She pulled back and snorted before turning and trotting over to Lance; the damn thing was probably older than he was, and against aging it was fighting a losing battle. She found a myriad of more tiny insects scuttling away from the resultant cover pile Lance had made, and sighed ruefully. "I think the pages were either rotted away, or eaten off," she muttered dismally.

Lance nodded, kicking the chairs aside before marching out of the room with a scowl on his face. Katie winced at the look, despite it not being directed at her, and trotted after him, feeling his anger washing off of his body as they returned to the hall outside. She considered that none of the other rooms were in any better shape, much less contained anything remotely helpful, and briefly perked her ears to see if anything else stirred within the house.

Again, she found and caught nothing of the sort. For a place so… alive, for lack of a better word with which to describe it, she found it so dismally quiet. The feeling of utter wrongness increased tenfold when NoLegs went to the door across from the room they'd left, and prodded at its planks with his sword. The runes pulsed, the house groaned and shook, and… yet no vines emerged to ward them off. Whatever this place was, it seemed to have acknowledged that it could not stop their advance, and may have well consigned itself to protesting upon deaf but paradoxically attentive ears. As before, NoLegs cut the planks away, magically opening the door afterwards and flying inside with Lance and Katie following suit.

Beyond was little more than a worn, sullied bathroom. Its sink, tub, and toilet were stuffed, and clogged with the same black gunk that was in the kitchen sink, with a smashed mirror above that and a seemingly-dead lantern dangling from a fraying rope attached to the ceiling. Glass shards, dusted and smeared in red, littered the scene, and carved above the bathtub was some kind of runic scrawling. NoLegs hovered over to look at the message, brow furrowing as he racked his brain in an attempt to make out what it had said. He did not stay long, however, as soon enough the acrid stench of rot and mildew drove him, Lance, and Katie straight back out with the door slamming on their heels.

After taking a moment to clear their lungs from the burning smell of that blemished, befouled room, NoLegs waved his tail and telepathically muttered to his companions, "Ugh! What the hell did the tenants do in there, try making a philosopher's stone by homebrewing booze?!"

"Honestly, I don't want to know," Katie muttered dismally, shifting to sit on her hinds to rub her eyes fitfully with her shoes, being careful to avoid slashing into her own face on accident.

Lance let his wings puff up a little, nose crinkled in disgust. He turned to NoLegs and sighed. "What did that scrawling above the tub say?" he asked.

NoLegs gave a shrug and telepathically answered, "'My body is no longer my own,' it said. I'm still struggling to make sense of it m'self."

Katie shook her head and cantered to the door adjacent to the atrocious bathroom, wincing as she came under the long-dead gaze of the heads that were tacked to the end of the hall. "Sounds to me some sorry bastard got collared and enslaved," she muttered dismally, shoulders sagging at the thought. "Did not see a collar, though…"

NoLegs levitated to her and plopped his rear on her back. "Have you actually seen anyone get collared and enslaved?' he telepathically asked in an incredulous tone. Katie gave a glum nod.

"Poor bastard was gelded, too. Screamed like a filly for hours on end, and the ponies who enslaved him… parted head from neck to make it stop," Katie stated dourly, wings shivering. "It happened… ten years after I turned, actually. I stumbled upon that fiasco by freak chance." She let her wings droop. "He told me to run just before he kicked the head-collection basket. Ran, I did."

NoLegs shivered at that mental imagery, and sighed as he lifted himself off of Katie's back to cut away more planks. The house once again protested and shuddered, growling in pain yet doing nothing to abate it as the door beneath the planks was gradually worked loose. The ceiling started to splinter as the planks fell, oozing a red substance that trickled down the walls in disconcerting rivers. Katie had to wonder if, perhaps, she and her cohorts were causing the place genuine anguish when all they did was break the planks from the scaffoldings without removing the bloody nails first. NoLegs opened the door, which swung outwards instead of inwards, and found a block of wood behind it. "What the…?" she muttered, trotting up to the frame that should have led to a room, yet didn't.

NoLegs tapped the anomaly with his tail, then his sword. This wall was no trick of the mind, nor of magic; the tail and blade both thunked audibly and solidly against the wood. His magic washed over it, yet the aura rippled against the surface and faded with nothing yielded. Katie lifted a hoof and tapped at the wood herself, and had as much luck as NoLegs. Lance came over and spread a wing to prod at it, and the primaries bent a little at their ends when he touched it. NoLegs turned to the last door and worked its planks free, brow furrowing at the anomaly of the third door; who would in their right mind affix a door to that spot, board it up, enchant it, and then just have it lead to nowhere at the end of the day? He was of a mind to find that architect and strangle them, but put that aside and strode into the room beyond with Lance and Katie following suit.

They wordlessly gawked, and the light of a blue-furred tail flickered briefly as they beheld a small corridor of stocked shelves—shelves lining either side of them, ending at another door that wasn't barred, filled very neatly with a menagerie of body parts galore. Heads with tangled and scraggly manes intact, forelegs, hind legs, severed thighs complete with cutie marks, horns, internal organs filled every space they could, with that last item stored very neatly in labeled glass jars. There were even severed wings littering the fray, plucked and spread in a way to show off every single joint that they still possessed. For a moment, nobody wanted to advance through this room, as eyeless faces leered at them with horrifically wide opened mouths and slanted brows; what could only be called agonized expressions afflicted with rigor mortis.

The severed heads seemed to judge them with impertinence and agony, for that was really all they could do in their decrepit state. Katie and NoLegs peered closer at the nearest set of heads, shivering as they found small heads that could take up the entirety of Katie's barrel were she to hold just one of them up. The closer she looked at their forms, or what little was left of them, the more her stomach twisted at what she beheld. Her orbs did not, could not deceive her, no matter how much her inner nymph shrieked that such was the case.

Though they were without sight, the sockets of the heads looked to be glaring in spite of their slanted brows. Though they were without voices to call their own, they seemed to be saying something—perhaps issuing a warning by silently screaming in desperation. Though they were without feeling, as that had left them long ago, their manes were filled with bugs crawling throughout, twisting and turning amidst tangles in a way that only added to the heads' apparent discomfort. Though they were without conscience, as that had been stolen from them, one thing was collectively on their minds—almost etched firmly on their anguished, ailing expressions at that.

'Run. You do not belong here,' the severed heads seemed to say. 'Leave, before you become one of us.'

Lance gave another sympathetic wince as he saw the severed wings, his own wings aching once again at the horrible sight. His mind reeled, parts of him screaming to leave this hellhole before he could join the unfortunate ponies who had now adorned the shelves, as chill after chill ran down his spine with enough force to make his tail hike and his feathers stand on end. His mind started running wild before he reined it it; he shivered as he pictured the tree-foal, or worse, Heather and her infant colt adorning these very shelves that he'd stumbled across.

Had… this been why she left Greenwood, perhaps—to avoid becoming a macabre decoration? Some part of him decided to add this place to the list of reasons of refusing to enter the village proper, understanding why Heather hightailed it out of the village if this was the case. Yet he wouldn't obey that urge which filled his legs; that rush of adrenalin that bade him to flee. He couldn't, really, now that he'd dug this hole and had to sit in it. And this house, strangeness and tastelessness of decor aside, begged to be investigated.

So investigate, with great reluctance, he did. He trotted along one side of shelves, scanning each and every item carefully. Most of the items that weren't in jars had deteriorated into a skeletal state some time ago, save the heads, whose remaining bits of skin seemed to have darkened to a uniform patina of light brown leather. The severed thighs sporting the cutie marks fared little better, and these had started to intrigue him a little because the marks, weirdly enough, had a uniform theme—almost every single one he spotted on that one side alone had ivy entangling something wooden.

He paused at the closed door that marked the hall's end, thoughts briefly filled with Anna's mark. He shook his head, opting to call shenanigans later as he turned to the other shelves and doubled back to examine them. Same thing here, too; leathery heads and ivy-themed cutie marks galore. Besides that, only bones and broken horns that had long since lost color stuck out at him; he barely heeded those, much less the labeled organs sitting in jars. Only as he completed the initial look-around did he sigh and turn to Katie and NoLegs. Both shrugged in unison. Neither really made to comment on what they were seeing, either; the items on the shelves spoke volumes about this place. Then Katie trotted to the second closed door between the shelves, and reared up on her hinds to try for the knob with her front shoes.

It jiggled a little, and slipped before she willed herself to create ice and hold the thing in her grip. She chittered as ice cemented shoe and knob together before twisting the knob firmly and stumbling into the room beyond as the door opened, which caused Lance and NoLegs to canter after her to discover a small room. Within lay a queen-sized bed with a rusted, warping frame and a torn mattress that was stained in a suspect and copious amount of red that drained whatever previous color it had been before. The rest of the room was also stained in red, though the dust muted it to a more sickly color of rotting flesh.

Katie detached herself from the doorknob and proceeded to canter to the bed. She poked her head under it as NoLegs cast his light about the room, and reached under with a hoof as she caught a distinct but faint glint. She touched an object, heard a clink, and paused for a few seconds before grasping it with her claws and pulling it and her head out. With her claws, however, she pulled out a few links of chain, each segment rusted and stretched thin. Dangling off one end was a manacle that was itself in less than pristine condition, further stained with a patina of cast iron black in spots. She dropped the chain and stepped away from the bed, considering the rather barren room, and what the presence of the chain meant.

Lance and NoLegs did as well, and it did not take long for the trio to come to the same grim conclusion. Yet nobody wanted to voice it, merely exchanging glances instead, orbs and eyes glittering with sparks of concern and dread. Before anyone could open their mouth and figure out what to do next, Anna decided to chime in from her end of the radio line, "Lance, we got a problem!"

Lance's immediate response was to lift a hoof to the radio and ask, "What?!"

"Fluttershy of all ponies has decided to fly to your location! Sh-she glared at me and asked me, a-and I told her about th-the tree you found," Anna stammered, voice weakening for a moment. "She's taken Maria, Twilight and Angel, too!"

Lance frowned at that. Fluttershy managed to get his fourth-in-command to spill the beans, and even worse, was bringing Maria, her friend Twilight and her pet rabbit along for the ride? He nodded to NoLegs and Katie, spreading a wing and curling all but one primary inward as he asked, "Okay, what the hell went down?"

"Sh-she saw Timber Spruce and just started firing questions ten miles a minute! A-and when I told her, h-her eyes gleamed and narrowed and…" Anna audibly swallowed, evidently collecting herself. "H-her innate magic kicked in, and… she has a glare like a dragon!"

Innate magic? Lance's brow furrowed; that didn't sound particularly pleasant when he caught the 'glare like a dragon' bit. "You sound… hackled, for lack of a better word," he noted.

"You would too, if you pissed her off!" Anna cried defensively. Lance sighed and closed his wing, figuring today's already-long day just got that much worse.

"Are they wanting to drag me out?" he asked after a long moment.

"N-no… they want to see… how bad it is. F-Fluttershy and T-Twilight, that is," Anna replied.

"They'd best brace themselves, then," Lance groaned, frown deepening. "Because we've just found a serial killer's treasure trove." Anna sighed from her end, but said no more. Then, only then, did Lance turn to his troops again, growling in exasperation. "It shouldn't take them long to get here. Let's head upstairs, and brief them when they arrive."

Katie nodded and took a moment to rub the back of her head with the tips of her claws, scuffing the chitinous scalp a little as her superior turned to trot as fast out of the room and the row of stocked shelves as he could. As soon as her hoof dropped she trailed briskly after him, followed in short order by NoLegs. They quickly got into the kitchen, then out back into the lounge before heading up the stairs in silence. After a flight of twenty steps, they arrived in another dust-laden hall, although an oddly short one with only a door that wasn't barred in any capacity to one side and another flight of stairs just barely visible past that, going both up and down into steep darkness.

"How did… those poor ponies not turn into trees?" Katie asked, shivering as the severed heads that silently shrieked at her took up the forefront of her thoughts. Some part of her started to think they were somehow alive now, if only as little more than slumbering wraiths dispossessed of their bodies.

Lance frowned, ears catching the very faint beat of beating wings and the rustling of branches. How long had he been here? How fast did Fluttershy fly here in the meantime, if it was indeed her? Before he could answer Katie's question, he heard a loud pop echo throughout the house, and saw a flash of lavender from the corner of his eye that dimmed into a soft light. He turned as hooves and claws hit the stairs, silently swearing to himself as Maria bumbled right to him and clambered onto his back with admirable speed. "Daddy, new filly told me about a bad place," she began.

Cantering up the stairs behind Maria, much to Lance's dismay, were Twilight and Fluttershy, the latter of whom had Angel on her head and the former with her horn glowing in a violet light. All three were wearing concerned frowns and slanted brows, and Lance saw a spark of something darting across Fluttershy's eyes. He gestured them with a wing to hold on for a minute, and turned to Maria again. "What all did she say?" he asked slowly, reining in his irritation before it could roll off his tongue. He had half a mind to tell Fluttershy to not involve his adopted filly in this mess, but assumed she had a very good reason to do just that anyway.

"Yeah. Where bad ponies cut up good ponies and keep their cutie marks," Maria answered with a fervent nodding of her head. Lance's frown deepened; he'd found such things on display not moments ago… or was it hours? Anna did mention the clouds were darkening earlier... Either way, this was very disconcerting information. Her wings flapped and she added, "Anypony going to the bad place that's not the bad ponies don't come out ever again."

"Well… we found displayed cutie marks downstairs. I… wouldn't recommend looking unless you want sleepless nights for the next month," Katie interjected, turning to look pointedly at Twilight and Fluttershy as she said that. She was careful to keep her tone neutral; such an atrocity did not warrant her usual snark, until she found the owner of this hellhole and turned them into an ice cube first. NoLegs gripped them telepathically and filled their minds with images of said atrocity, and they cringed, winced and gagged when his magic left their heads.

Lance grimly nodded and asked Maria, "So… why'd you want to come here?"

Maria frowned. "Because I wanted to help make the bad ponies pay," she replied bluntly.

Lance sighed and shook his head, but he didn't bother arguing with her at this point. He wanted to find that bastard and grind them into pulp with the Accelerator, tying them up if need be. He turned to Fluttershy and Twilight and briefed them on what little he'd already found so far, and slowly they paled as he informed them that the house was alive, in pain, and had a treasure trove of a maniac's goodies stashed away in a room somewhere. When that was done a few minutes later, the two exchanged glances, then looked at him again. "I only just discovered this place today. It was probably covered by illusions of a very strong sort," Lance muttered with a sigh of reluctance. "We can quibble later. Right now, we have a bigger basket of fish to fry."

Angel jumped from Fluttershy's head and landed smoothly on Lance's back, chittering worriedly. Fluttershy, overcoming her disgust faster than Twilight, translated, "If the house is alive, then shouldn't we leave as soon as possible?"

Lance nodded. "I'd like to, but not until I know the full extent of what goes on here. If Anna's tight-lipped about shit like this, there's probably a good reason why," he muttered dismally, nose crinkling at that possibility. "That is, assuming she does know more about this house than what I've already told her through the radio earlier."

Twilight nodded, seeing the logic of that decision. Her eyes filled and sparked with resolution, and she turned to Fluttershy. "Did Anna tell you anything about the cursed trees?" she asked.

Fluttershy shook her head and frowned forlornly. "No. My Stare... froze her before I could get anything about that," she replied grimly. When Lance's brow raised, and she caught this from the corner of her eye, she turned to him and elaborated, "She just… stiffened. Would not move a muscle until I looked away, and even then her mouth remained shut."

Lance closed his eyes and facehoofed. "If this Stare you speak of did that to her, can we please avoid using that in the future?" he grumbled.

"I don't like using it myself… I won't use it in the future," Fluttershy replied, frown easing a little as Lance dropped his hoof and turned to the lone door of the hallway. "On Anna," she muttered under her breath, her voice obscured by the sound of hooves hitting wood as Lance strode to the door. She and Twilight followed him to the door, with Katie and NoLegs flanking them. Lance opened the door and poked his head inside, finding no locks or runes to speak of.

Twilight watched as NoLegs levitated inside, his light revealing a small and cramped space with a shelf above, some cobwebs, and little else. They pulled back and Lance closed the door. "Probably a utilities' closet," he grumbled, proceeding on to the stairs that diverged on either side of the hall's end. Everyone followed him, sharing glances.

"Daddy, which way do we go?" Maria asked as Lance paused to look left, then right. Indeed, one flight of stairs wound up, and the other went down, and in the twin spells of illumination he could tell they ended in closed, barred doors only after ten steps apiece. Planks, vines, and runes barred both paths, oozing that foul substance that he prayed to Faust and Godcat wasn't what he thought it was.

The house groaned and shook again, the noise sounding oddly… equine. It came in a distorted series of nickers and whinnies that echoed with pain and power. Twilight and Fluttershy winced at the sound, while Angel covered his ears with a disapproving chitter leaving his mouth. "Okay, Lance, you weren't kidding… this is a strange house," Twilight muttered, ears folding back.

"No shit," Lance snarked, wings ruffling. "I'm not sure if we should split up, or stay together."

"I say split. We have two teleporters with us; we could just warp to the other group if shit gets worse than this," Katie interjected, ears up and swiveling as the house fell still and silent. "Because if something's living here… assuming that somepony would actually do that, then we'll need to evict ourselves as fast as possible."

"I don't know… we could get ambushed, for one," Twilight muttered grimly, shaking her head at those prospects.

"And we could get hurt, for another," Fluttershy added, ears and wings drooping. "And… I don't want any of us to get hurt."

"I know that, but… so far, I haven't heard anything from any possible tenants at all," Katie replied, ears folding back. "Not one little peep. The house itself is more animated than they are, which is… saying something, sadly." She flinched as Angel shrieked, and turned to him to find him and Maria looking up with wide eyes. Slowly, her orbs gravitated in that direction, and Fluttershy and Twilight looked up too.

An unnatural snapping sound filled the air as the ceiling above them started to crack and ooze that red substance in places. It was only thanks to the twin lights of Twilight and NoLegs that any of them could see pulsating, rotten flesh peeking out of the fraying bark. Vines started emerging from the bark, stained with crimson, writhing about in serpentine motions that were oddly stiff, as though controlled by an unseen force entirely. Downstairs, Katie heard the sound of wood snapping in fragments, followed by an echoing, inequine wail.