Everyone scooted closer together upon hearing that ghastly wail, muscles tensing as the walls started to fray in places. Katie lifted her ears and grimaced as she heard a sharp retort, followed by the very distinct sound of something tipping, rolling, falling and then breaking on impact. Another roar filled the house, and then stopped as wood snapping came from downstairs. She heard one crunch, then another, each sound hushing like crumpled paper in between the noises of planks splitting and the house groaning and writhing all around them.

Another series of crashes, coming in tandem with the sound of cloth tearing and metal shrieking, rang sharply in her sensitive ears. She would have covered her ears, had she not been wearing her shoes, as some part of her figured that whatever was making the racket would find her and the others all the same. It would only be a matter of time before it did.

And, indeed, that suspicion proved correct within mere minutes of the awful orchestra's start. Something rushed, jumped, then crashed loudly and brazenly into the open cabinets of the lounge, followed by a pained roar and the sound of yet more peeling bark accompanied by several harried taps. A beat sang from the stairs that led to the hall with the utilities' closet, before the owner of the racket wheeled into the collective eyes of the group and smashed itself into a wall with enough force to snap its own neck. All eyes widened as the thing crumpled to the floor with a scream and thrashed upon it, somehow mobile despite its grievous injury.

It thrashed and kicked, moving so fast that its legs—or what the group of eight assumed as such—were a blur that obscured its body for a few seconds, until Twilight seized it in her magic and forced it to keep itself on the floor. Its thrashing slowed to a lazy flailing, its agonized cries deafening and gurgling as the lavender light of Twilight's magic revealed the unsightly appearance of the new arrival.

Twilight wished she hadn't cast her light on such a beast. She wanted to retch and scream, but couldn't do either—it was as if Ragnarok were being cast all over again. Her magic faltered and flickered, but held steady even as she beheld the abominable sight that stumbled right to the hall.

The beast was, surprisingly enough, a quadrupedal creature that may have been a wraith whose physical state was as bad, if not worse than, Katie's. Its legs were twisted at odd angles, sprouting twigs and vines that constantly oozed that dark, iron-reeking substance that tried holding the flailing limbs together. Its legs did not end in claws, but instead spear-like protrusions that each tapered out to a seemingly-fragile point, and were covered to the haunches and withers in plate-like folds.

The thing's head was covered in that same fraying, plated bark, leaving two meager eye-holes open that even now continued to bleed. Its orbs, if it had any, flickered out long ago—only twin abysses of pitch black stared out at the group. A tail of wooden plates swished behind its bucking hinds as it struggled to get up on its contorted limbs, even with the magic keeping it pinned and slowing its movements. Nobody could tell what species this thing belonged to; what wasn't encased in plant matter was a pale skin as white as Frostbite Haven, with a gaunt ribcage and stomach so thin that Katie could've sworn she saw its spine peeking out its front. A hoof-thick stitch ran from its groin upwards, right where its genitals should have been, ending at its chest.

"What… is that thing?" Twilight muttered, gagging at the sight before collecting herself.

"Suffering, that's what," Katie replied, brow furrowing. "Looks like it's halfway done turning into a tree."

"What should we do…?" Fluttershy hesitantly asked, ears falling back as the creature continued to writhe in anguish on the floor.

Katie's gaze hardened as, with great reluctance, Twilight relinquished her magical hold on the poor, ailing creature. "Whether or not if it's a wraith, we kill it. Only thing we can do for it," she stated grimly, wincing in sympathy for the beast. "I doubt its mind is intact at this rate."

Within a minute after being freed, however, the wraith turned on its back and stood on those thin points, head and neck popping back into place as a gurgle left its throat. Its legs bent further, causing its stance to become lopsided and disoriented, all the while its empty gaze fell onto the intruders once more. Everyone tensed further as a long, serpentine tongue of ivy slithered out from where its mouth would be. As this makeshift tongue snaked out, its impromptu mask started fraying and shifting in a manner that reminded Lance of gears and chains, all to let the vine taste the damp and musty air. Katie flared her wings, but did not flap them, as her orbs scanned this anomaly.

There was no way in hell she'd be able to take this beast head-on, she quickly realized; its wooden parts may have looked frail, but for all she knew that armor was impenetrable, and its hideously-warped legs only further reinforced that suspicion. Its vines would, doubtless, cast her off were she to lunge here and now, and its vulnerable back would only become vulnerable once it dropped its guard.

She contemplated conjuring ice, crawling up the walls, trundling along the ceiling and dropping down as she had with the wraith in Whitefall's jail. The ceiling frayed, however, writhing with its own set of vines, and oozing a suspect amount of red fluids that started dropping on her and the others of her group. Such a tactic would be, at best, a hell of a stunt to pull off. At worst, she could end up with broken legs all over again.

Twilight decided to conjure first a runic spell circle, and then a sword of light from that runic circle as the wraith started to charge. Instinct kicked in, and she launched the blade towards the monstrosity. The wraith skid to a halt and ducked effortlessly, using its own unsteady stance to help it narrowly avoid the blade by mere centimeters, which thunked solidly in the wall behind it. Then it resumed charging, and made to crash into Twilight before a brown-and-pink blur halted it by jumping on its head.

Lance growled as Maria scrabbled to the beast's back before it realized what was happening, and pushed past Twilight and Fluttershy to grab the wraith by its bark-covered head with his hooves and immediately throwing it bodily to the floor. The wraith screamed from the assault, while Maria hopped off and turned to her surrogate. As the thing started to move, Maria rushed in and sank her talons into the back of the beast's neck, seizing its spine with ease as she tore into flesh once again.

It took but a few sharp wrenches of her claws before she felt a spine snap at its weakest point, and the wraith thrashed once, then twice before falling still. Lance was tempted, tempted to put Maria back on his back and scold her from now into next year about why such a move was beyond reckless. But, all the same, he had to admit he'd have struck the thing's spinal column in the same place were he able to.

He drew deep breaths through his flaring nostrils and sighed to collect himself and reign in his ire. "Maria… don't do that again, for the love of Godcat, unless I say otherwise," he said in a gentle but firm reprimand. "Before you ask, it's because I said so." "Because she could've gotten hurt," his conscious snarked at him, but he had to concede that it had a very solid point.

Maria nodded, but dared not withdraw her claws from the masked wraith. She could still feel it, just barely, twitching in her grip. She squeezed, just to ensure that this… creature wouldn't come back to pester them again, frowning as its muscles spasmed around her digits. "Did Heather tell you about this thing?" Lance asked, lifting a hoof to gesture to the creature for emphasis.

Maria shook her head. She took a glance around the hall; the walls and ceiling stopped cracking and bleeding further, for the moment, and the vines had fallen deathly still. "Just about the bad place," she muttered.

Lance nodded. "Your claws stuck?" he asked. Again, Maria shook her head before hesitantly sliding her digits out of weak flesh, and jumped back with a cry as the wraith started to thrash the moment she did. Lance jumped back too, eyes widening at first before narrowing coldly as he reared onto his hinds and brought his front hooves down upon the barky mask. Wood snapped, frayed, splintered from the first impact, and he reared up and stomped again and again. Flesh burst, ripped, tore like paper as wooden shrapnel dug into it from the repeated assault. Bones broke, withered, crumpled beneath hooves, and only as its skull caved in did the beast fall still again—hopefully, for good this time.

Twilight, Fluttershy, and Angel looked away as Lance kept stomping on its head for several minutes after it ceased movement. He did not stop until he thoroughly smeared the creature's brains and vines over a sizeable portion of the floor, wings flared and chest heaving with silent breaths. He was panting as he eyed the mess his two hooves had wrought. "Daddy, are you okay?" Maria asked, frowning as she cantered around the mess to jump on his back again.

Lance shook his head. "Was just… not expecting it to fucking move after its spine was…" He took a breath to collect himself again and closed his wings. He made a mental note to keep a better eye for such underhoofed tactics in the future.

"She might not have dislocated its spine, and as such, it still had access to movement," Twilight muttered, sighing wearily as Lance turned to her and took another breath. "Is it… going to regenerate, somehow?"

"After having its head turned into paste, I very much doubt the possibility," Katie piped up, rolling her orbs and shrugging as Twilight turned to her. "Then again, I should have been ash by now. I can't exactly… vouch for its permanent demise." She turned to the downstairs door, eyes narrowing as she saw liquid pooling at the bottom step despite her poor vision.

Lance turned to the door. He started trotting to it with NoLegs and Katie in tow, but paused and looked at Angel. "Fluttershy, why'd you bring Angel here?" he asked.

"He doesn't want to see Maria hurt," Fluttershy replied, frowning.

Lance immediately made another mental note to give Maria self-defense courses at the earliest possible time, considering she helped bring a half-tree menace down, and maybe give Angel a dagger to defend himself with on top of that. At the rate things were progressing, even he could never be too careful. "Perhaps we should go downstairs first, all together. Then teleport back here and go up. More eyes watching for danger that way," he stated.

Twilight and Fluttershy exchanged glances, then made to follow him. They'd have to work together to uncover the secrets of this mess, both of them realized, and it seemed Lance had as well. Lance resumed trotting, but Katie and NoLegs cut ahead of him to start dismantling the vines and planks barring the door. "Daddy, why does this house move?" Maria asked.

"I wish I knew," Lance replied, frowning as the door was forcibly opened by way of claw and sword. Cautiously, Katie and NoLegs went past the door, finding a sight that gave them pause.

"... what the…" Katie trailed off, ears drooping almost immediately. Lance trotted in after them to see what they'd stumbled upon, and halted right in the doorframe, eyes widening at what he beheld.

Arranged in a perfect circle, in a square room with only one door leading in and out, stood nothing but stitched-up cotton dummies reinforced with structural support bars, each one in the shape of a pony mixed with a rocking horse. Affixed crudely onto these lifeless replicas were multiple sets of wings, and severed horns, each one already wasted away into a state of irreparable decay and missing either half their spirals or the joints up to the humeral bones. No feathers remained, no flesh stubbornly clung to long-lost joints; each and every part was nothing but yellowed, broken bone. Blood stained the dummies, turning patches into a hideous black that seemingly distorted the white cotton that made them. Each one had what seemed to be closed eyes painted upon their faces, heads bowed low and adorned with further markings reminiscent of tears.

Only one of the dummies, an oddity which possessed whole yet dubiously small wings and a fully-pointed horn, even moved at all. The head was thrashing madly about, its movements throwing into stark relief a ripped-open mouth adorned with canines hewn of wood and black circles acting as sockets. A rustling filled the air as a crude mane and tail made of long and withered leaves flapped with the thrashing. Affixed into that mane and tail were wooden beads which acted as a scalp, but each movement jostled them more and more.

Its body was tilting as far back and forth as it possibly could, only further accentuating the disconcerting display, manacled legs writhing in their bonds almost as if something was trapped inside. But even with its desperate attempts to get out, its support did not creak in the slightest, nor did it manage to break from the others in the circle. Even though its wings were bone, it flapped with all of its might, and a green wave of mana pulsed across them with each frantic beat. Katie and NoLegs went over to the moving dummy to further inspect it, the latter using his magic to hold it down to ascertain if it was even alive to begin with.

NoLegs stabbed it in the neck, hoping to get the disconcerting movement to stop, yet it failed to even phase the dummy. It did not bleed, but on closer inspection, a lot of the blemishes marking this one were crafted into lines and curves—most likely of the runic sort he and the others had been seeing all over the place as of late. He scanned the rest of the dummies, but they had no such markings. Katie sank her claws into the thing's barrel, and froze it somewhat, yet even then the dummy continued to move.

Lance trotted towards the two and the still-wiggling construct, frowning at the fact that the damn thing would not keep still. He himself reared up and wrapped his forelegs around its head, being mindful of its wings, and that did nothing to cease its incessant thrashing. The runes pulsed at his touch, glowing fitfully as if warning him to let go. He did not release the dummy until vines erupted from its legs to manually take his hooves and force them to part, along with Katie's claws and NoLegs' sword.

"It pains me to say this… but collect its bones and horn. We'll have to analyze them later; seeing as this dummy is our odd one out, I am inclined to think there might be a very good reason for it being that way," he ordered, an air of reluctance in his voice as he dropped to all fours. NoLegs nodded and magically wrenched off the flailing bones and horn, neither of which so much as crumbled into dust even as they left holes in the dummy. The dummy thrashed some more, raising its head skyward to let off a silent scream, before finally falling still with a slump. Its runes glowed for just one moment, in a green that shifted to red, before its magic simply gave out and ceased to emit light.

NoLegs made the bones vanish in flashes of light, and turned to the open space the dummies had been placed around. A great big smudge mark was scrawled into that formation, but a lot of it had been trampled over and scuffed up in markings that were suspiciously dust-free. What wasn't scuffed and smudged was covered in dust, but even so, he could make out worn-away runes placed in three circles, two facing the furthest wall and one pointing at the door. In the middle of it, amidst all the scuffing, was a strangely neat set of runes that were carved into the floor. He read it carefully as Twilight and Fluttershy found the gumption to join them in the room.

"What's it say?" Katie asked.

NoLegs scowled. "The harpy-children still live," he muttered telepathically. "Just that."

"Harpy-children… is that a slur around here?" Twilight asked, frowning at the collection of dummies.

Lance gravely nodded. "Yes, reserved for foals with a winged parent in communities lacking wings. And this looks a little more like an archaic magic ritual…" He scanned the scuff marks and smudge carefully. "Looks like we can add 'wanton sabotage' to the growing list of things that I am strongly considering burning this place for." He turned to the door, but not before scanning the walls for anything else that showed signs of foul play. The walls were barren, however, peeling away with age and the aid of that foul substance that started leaking from the ceiling.

Twilight nodded, frown deepening. "So… we hit the other door…" she muttered.

Lance nodded and started trotting that way, Katie and NoLegs falling into step behind him. "Sounds about right," he confirmed. Twilight and Fluttershy exchanged glances, but followed after them, stomachs turning and churning with a strong desire to be emptied.

Behind them, the scuffed-up runes glowed with a fading power. The house trembled again as they marched to the other door.

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

Major Rhinoc watched Greenwood from the deck of the mastership, eyes darting to the strange wysteria abode every twenty minutes. Latched onto his coat was a radio, and his wings buzzed as the cloudy sky continued to darken to a uniform shade of charcoal. An ominous fog that he could've sworn was made of darkness started to encroach slowly on Ashwood as night graced the land. He noticed something off right away—Greenwood's barrier hadn't yet reformed. Worse, Lance and his little search party had yet to get out.

His gut twisted uncomfortably, and his wings started to rattle with an urge to leave. He looked to the house trapped in its own little island, frowning as the lit torches glowed brightly for a moment, then snuffed out one by one until the wysteria-house they surrounded was shrouded in sable. The sky rumbled with thunder, but didn't crackle with lightning; it seemed the ectoplasms were spent. His horn alighted, and his magic started to fiddle with the radio a bit. "Lance, sir, can you hear me?" he asked.

Several seconds passed before he'd received an answer. "What is it?" Lance asked.

Rhinoc swallowed nervously. "Greenwood's barrier hasn't come up yet, and the torches outside your location have gone out," he reported.

Lance was oddly silent for another few seconds. A creaking groan came in through the radio, splintering and crackling and dripping. What the hell was going on through Lance's end to produce such noises? "The barrier protecting the villagers… is still down?" he asked slowly, as if struggling to comprehend what he'd just heard.

"Not one thaumic spark came from the village," Rhinoc replied glumly.

Lance went quiet again, and Rhinoc waited for him to speak, getting the sinking suspicion that he had started to take in the implications of what had been relayed to him. "Any movement from the cursed trees?" he asked after a full minute of silence passed, when the dripping and splintering ceased on his end. Rhinoc turned to Ashwood and fitfully scanned what little remained of the forest, yet thanks to the darkening surroundings, he caught not one shudder of movement.

After five minutes of fruitless scanning, he reported, "Nothing, sir. It's… too quiet."

"Wouldn't put it past the trees to regenerate at the speed this shit's going," Katie chimed in from Lance's end, voice distorting with irritation. "Because what's going on over in this hellhole of a house is—" Static erupted from the radio, followed by a deep and unearthly groan of some sort, garbling the rest of what she'd said.

"What? What's going on?!" Rhinoc barked as the static and groaning died down. He tensed for a moment, then wilted a little when he heard Katie coughing.

"It's a den of pure fuckery, that's what," Katie snarked, followed by the sound of metal hitting and scraping against wood. "I think this house… needs to be burnt."

"How it evaded the lightning and Ragnarok, we'll never know," Lance interjected; Rhinoc could almost hear him nodding. "When we're done here… we'll give it the send-off it deserves."

Rhinoc forced his wings to cease movement. His stomach churned again; something about Lance's statements and tone pressed something in his changeling instinct, and a chill seeped through his chitin at the implications. "Open fire on it?" he asked.

"Yes, but only when we get out and clear of the immediate area," Lance replied with a snort. "Send somepony down to Greenwood in the meantime. If the barrier's down…"

"Will do, sir," Rhinoc replied before Lance could finish. He turned to the hatch and flung it open with his magic, then beat his wings as he sprinted to it with haste. He needed to get somepony down there… the question was, who? Everypony on board was caught up with something, surely, and not everypony could fly or self-levitate. He jumped in and started to climb down the ladder, closing the hatch on his way down. His ears twitched to the clang of steel against holey hooves, and his wings rattled in tandem with the monotonous beat.

Once he got to the engine room, he turned and launched to the lift as fast as his wings could carry him. The crackling came in through the radio again, followed by several hard and solid thunks as an odd creaking noise faded in and out with a squeaky hum. He forced himself to ignore those noises, and pressed the button to go up as soon as he boarded the lift. The lift shuddered, and started to ascend as the radio fell quiet again. "No… no no… oh fuck me…" Katie muttered from Lance's end.

Rhinoc picked up on the distress in her tone. "What is it?" he asked.

"What's wrong?" Lance muttered.

"I… I sense it…" Katie muttered, followed by the sound of crackling magic. Everyone on Lance's end stomped in unison, then gasped and muttered, voices tumbling hopelessly over one another as the crackling noise continued to grow. It took but seconds for somepony to raise his voice to hush the cacophony.

"Whoa! Can you control that spazzing stump of yours?!" Lance barked, the barest tinge of worry present in his otherwise-no-nonsense tone.

"I-I can't… not when th-the Void draws near…" Katie replied, her voice giving way to a scraping of something against wood.

"The Void? What are you talking about?" Twilight asked. "Is this something as improbable as, I don't know, King Sombra coming back?"

The lift stopped at the lounge, and Rhinoc darted from it in a swift jog, scanning it fitfully for anyone who might've been present. "Worse," Katie replied, the scraping growing in a fitful frequency that had Rhinoc's membranes quivering. He wheeled down a hall and sprinted for the second lift that would lead him to the guest rooms, buzzing his wings even as he hopped in and pressed the button to go up.

His brain caught up to Katie's muttering about 'the Void drawing near,' and instantly he found himself doing a mental double-take. "Th-the Void? S-sir, did I hear that right?" Rhinoc uttered in a particularly strangled voice as the lift shook and closed the doors before taking him up. Lance sighed from his end, the noise laced with a quiet growl of discontent.

"That, you did," Lance grumbled. NoLegs meowed, loudly. "And now Katie's magic has gone on the fritz. Nothing but illumination so far, but I'm not taking chances. Alright ladies, let's pick up our pace and finish cleaning this shithole out!"

"S-sir, wh-when can we augment h-her horn?" Rhinoc asked as the lift shook, stopped, and opened up to let him trot into the hallway leading to the guest bedrooms.

"... we'll have to be at the base for that, and I don't think augments would help at all," Lance replied dismally, snorting. "If need be… initiate the Void Protocol."

Rhinoc blanched at that. "I'll… send Lieutenant-General Starcovert down," he muttered, and with that started galloping to the master bedrooms with his eyes growing to the size of saucers. He banged his hooves against the door the second he got within reach of it, but only five times—then he backed off as the knob glowed in a blue aura and twisted. The door swung open to reveal Natalie in the room, still sporting her outfit sans the baubles that held her mane up.

"Need something?" Natalie asked, eyes narrowed a little. "You're looking a little… rattled."

"W-we may have to initiate th-the Void P-Protocol, ma'am," Rhinoc squeezed out, throat drying out as he spoke. Natalie's expression darkened considerably, and for the barest of instants, her eyes gleamed with a crimson glow.

"Just great, the Void Protocol might be used when one of our own is at risk for turning into a tree," Natalie grumbled with no small amount of exasperation. Her eyes flickered again, and that time, her crystal sheen dimmed.

"N-no kidding," Rhinoc agreed with a shaky nod.

Natalie's horn glowed, and she trotted out of the master bedroom, shutting the door behind her with her magic. "Teleport me to the deck, now," she ordered, horn dimming. Rhinoc nodded and alighted his horn before vanishing with her in a flash of light, and reappearing upon the deck with her in tow. Natalie trotted to the railing and peered over it, eyelids twitching as she saw nothing but absolute darkness permeate where Ashwood and Greenwood should have been, littered with pulses of distinctly purplish-black power. She turned to Rhinoc, expression darkening further. "What, or whom, caused the damn Void to come here?"

Rhinoc shook, trying his best to keep his legs from buckling. "I-I don't know, m-ma'am. O-our nooblet… sh-she sensed it, a-and alerted me th-through radio," he answered. Natalie's expression softened, but her head tilted quizzically.

"Wait, wait, hold up… our wraith picked up on this?" Natalie asked, being careful to keep her tone neutral.

Rhinoc nodded. "Yeah. Th-that's probably b-because she's on g-ground level right n-now," he stammered. He turned to the radio and tapped it with a shaky hoof. "G-General, c-can you hear m-me?" he asked—only to pale as he got the sound of static coming in through what should have been Lance's end on the communications line.

Natalie frowned, her ears twitching as she, too, heard the static. "Wait for a few minutes. He might be experiencing interference," she muttered in a soft, consoling voice, trotting up to Rhinoc to lift a booted hoof onto his withers.

Just as she touched him, though, the radio's static suddenly cut out. A deep, gravelly voice came from it with enough volume to shake the thing against Rhinoc's uniform as it spoke, "A warning lantern, flame flickering to light the way; a raging pyre to reduce all to cinders, against all dreary and droll. A flash of gold and silver, despite what warning elders say; a flash of light and dark, to collect the sinners, for the bell to disaster tolls."

Natalie almost jumped upon hearing that voice. Her eyes widened as she heard the sound of splintering wood, followed by a pained, echoing screech come from the radio a second later. "What the…?!"

"The house is teeming with half-tree lunatics!" Lance barked from his end. "I have no clue what they're harping on about!"

Natalie's brow furrowed, and she lit her horn before conjuring a radio in a flash of light and affixing it to the collar of her uniform. After tweaking it a bit to make sure it was working, she sighed and lowered her raised hoof. "Major Rhinoc… keep everyone else on this vessel inside, until either I or Lance say otherwise. Understood?" she asked.

Rhinoc nodded and gave a shaky salute. "Yes m-ma'am," he answered. His horn glowed, and with that, he vanished in another flash of light. Natalie wordlessly turned to the railing and trotted back to it, horn crackling with magic once again. Though now, it was tinted blood-crimson, and her eyes shifted to match the color with little more than one blink.

"This is a really bad time for the friggin' Protocol to be initiated…" Natalie muttered, coat paling as her own magic washed over her body. Her mane began to writhe as though whipped up by wind, though unlike Matt's mane, it started to give off a crackling light. "But if the Void thinks that Ragnarok and a wildfire weren't enough for this place…" She shivered at those implications, and idly considered that the universe was having a seriously bad mood, before backpedalling one final time to then gallop forward and jump clear over the railing. Her magic gripped her as she started to plummet, yet didn't stop her fall or even slow it down.

The Void pulsed at her approach, before some of its corporeal darkness parted to reveal a clearing littered with burnt trees. Natalie zeroed in on it, noting that it seemed the Void was almost… inviting her right in. The air battered her ears, tossed her mane and dress to and fro, yet could not deter her from her destination. The darkness of the Void dared not swallow her up until she set hoof on the torched soil, only stopping herself from turning into a grotesque splatter with the aid of a well-timed exertion of self-levitation just seconds prior.

This darkness… held with it a disturbing air of familiarity. The trees, warped and twisted thanks to her adoptive brother and the ectoplasms, only heightened her sense of growing alarm. She shivered at this familiarity, before steeling her own nerves with a few deep breaths—familiarity be damned, she wasn't going to lose her wits now. Not when the Void itself decided to pay Greenwood a visit; too much was at stake, and time was of the essence.

Natalie then recanted to herself, under her own breath, what the supposed lunatic on Lance's end of the communications link had said, "A warning lantern, flame flickering to light the way; a raging pyre to reduce all to cinders, against all dreary and droll. A flash of gold and silver, despite what warning elders say; a flash of light and dark, to collect the sinners, for the bell to disaster tolls."

At once, her horn cast a blood-red light upon the area from its very tip, and a myriad of broken, wooden faces stared her down. Many couldn't move, due to being uprooted and damaged beyond all possible regenerative repair. The few that could dared not shift in the slightest, not even so much as an inch—making the very generous assumption, of course, that any trees could even move now after the pandemonic destruction of the last few days.

She heard thunder crackle, and saw lightning arcing overhead. Natalie simply conjured her crystal-tipped staff in response, sclera and magic aura turning pitch-black as she poured wisps of what seemed to be living shadow upon it, embers of purple magic pooling from the sides of her eyes with a crackling power. Her crystal sheen flickered, then faded entirely as a few black gems started to grow out of her exposed backside and along the length of her glowing horn. Each sprouting fragment tore through skin and muscle, leaving blood to well up and dribble down her face and sides, before her magic grasped the droplets to pull them off of herself.

Then, the droplets were cast aside to hit the ground without smearing themselves upon her dress, and a quick healing spell closed off the wounds just enough that the crystals acted as makeshift clots. Within seconds after these loose drops impacted the ashen soil, the blue gem turned as black as the Void itself, and started growing outward at an exponential rate. It arced in front of her barrel and stopped at a tapered point, a jagged half-crescent that grew spikes from its spine. Natalie reared up onto her hinds and clasped the staff with a fetlock once the gem ceased growing, and at once the half-crescent's inside thinned out to a wickedly sharp-looking razor's edge.

She scraped the curved tip against the soil, smiling as it drew a thin, inch-deep line with ease. Staff-turned-scythe in hoof, she began making a slow and calculated walk towards a vague approximation of Greenwood's direction, the crystals on her back continuing to expand around to form two holes at her sides, almost perfectly parallel with her own dress. Stranger still, a few crystals decided to reach out, first to her head and then to the trees behind her, all in crooked arcs that jutted from behind. "I am really glad Mom taught me this little trick," Natalie muttered in gratitude, her voice echoing with a wraith-like quality as she spoke. "Who says a crystal pony can't use a bit of shadow magic every once in a while?"

The Void pulsed once again as she stalked through the trees, yet it did nothing to stop her advance upon Greenwood. The trees stayed right where they were, not even daring to lift so much as a branch in her direction. They didn't even sway with her slow passing, nor as flecks of gold and blue magic broke apart along her entire back and faded away with each and every hoofstep. They didn't even move as, in her wake, she left behind a set of hoofprints that sent dust everywhere each time she took a step onward. For once, Ashwood felt truly dead—just like its namesake.

Just like the state of the decrepit trees within its premises. Though the same wasn't true for the glowing blue light that started to descend from the mastership, nor of the sound of flapping wings accompanying it. Natalie didn't pay heed to either the new sound or blazing azure light, for her focus was on much bigger things at the moment.

The Void couldn't wait, couldn't be reasoned with, couldn't be swayed with brute force alone. It was something far bigger… and whatever drew it here, she reasoned, would very likely end up in a decrepit state before long. But how much damage could whatever wound up being the source of the Void's interest do to the innocent villagers caught up in this mess in the meantime? She hoped, idly, that it wouldn't already be far too late for them, though she had a sinking suspicion that twisted her stomach that such was already the case.

Either way, she was going to find out. Some part of her was frantically, half-madly wishing she hadn't before she even got within ten paces of the village, but she forced herself to ignore that inner skeptic all the same. And all the while, she was leaving behind more than a set of hoofprints—but she cared not for her little breadcrumb trail in the slightest.