Lazarus lit up his horn, embracing everyone in his magic, preparing another teleport when one golden blur struck the lich-wyrm right in his burnt mouth. Both unicorn and lich magics faltered, with the accumulated magma and seeds spilling out into the fissure as one caster watched in growing confusion and the other gnashed his teeth to try again. Before the latter could even gather more energy, another light moved under his massive chin and socked him hard enough to snap his muzzle bolt upright. Everyone stood there, eyes widening as they watched and heard the sickening sound of rotten teeth clacking together.

"If you're done ranting now, then why don't you cut to the chase already, sunshine?" a female, echoing voice taunted from above, resonating with a stirring power. The lich-wyrm growled and leveled his jaws at his quarry, quickly finding that none of them was in a position to taunt. The closest equivalent was Rainbow Dash, who still stood with front legs crossed and wounded hoof raised in defiance.

Rainbow shook her head. "Wasn't me," she said. Another golden light smacked the wyrm upon his snout, making him recoil hard enough to hit the outer wall of the fissure with his spines. "Although I'd still like to make your bones break," Rainbow added as the wyrm straightened out his neck with a growl.

The wyrm glanced around, turning his attention skyward before noticing the collection of more homing golden lights—right as one impacted him upon one of his horns with enough force to crack it and push him down at once. Lazarus glanced skyward as well, looking around before spotting the golden lights that orbited the incoming crimson glow. "What the…" he muttered, seeing several glowing things falling from the crimson light as it drew closer. It was far enough away he couldn't make out any definitive features, yet the voice—assuming it came from that light—sounded close by nonetheless. Part of him wondered how that was even possible, before he realized he could recognize that tone.

He wanted to ask, more than anything, if perhaps his very ears had deceived him. He turned back to the lich-wyrm and found yet more golden lights circling above him, almost dancing as their shimmering tails formed a circle within a circle. The lights slowed enough that the lot could see they were actually hollowed-out stars, twirling with the rhythm of clockwork gears. Rarity piped up, "... that's unusual, using stars to…" She trailed off when she realized what she was saying, and what she was witnessing. Her tail, finally, flagged high then and there. "Could it be…?!"

"I dunno what those things are doing, but… it's kinda awesome?" Rainbow muttered, tilting her head at the display. Before them all, runes were traced out by a few stars, complex and unintelligible as they spanned the framework. Two squares, one slanted at an angle, were likewise formed by the their glowing tails in such a way their corners jutted out from the outermost circle. Taking away their breath without so much as touching the combatants, the stars formed yet more runes and patterns within the smaller circle, outside of the arms of the eight-pointed star.

"... a spell?" Lazarus guessed, tilting his head at the forming anomaly.

A few more runes formed within the outstretched corners, followed by a few smaller circles containing silhouettes of celestial bodies, before it formed the finishing touch of a small circle stationed dead center with wheel-like spokes stretching out to touch the rest of the structure. With that the lights became stationary for a few seconds, stabilizing itself seamlessly into something both corporeal and almost fluid in nature. Then, the whole thing began to spin, changing color from golden to pure white as it did so.

Energy built up, the spell turning as though on an axis. The lich-wyrm glanced everywhere, including above him, scanning Ashwood to determine where the hell the sudden interruption came from. He scoffed at the circle, as it wasn't really doing anything noteworthy at the moment. Upon seeing the distant crimson light, now lacking in smaller golden lights orbiting it, he opened his mouth wide and aimed in that direction. Ire built up, fueling his magic as it sucked the magma still gushing from his wounds and more fresh seeds from the wisteria tree before firing off in a beam twice as big as his own body.

Everyone on the island turned to where the blast was going, feeling a chill go down their spine when it stopped abruptly. It didn't sail through the air, was not redirected, or even go around anything… it just stopped at an obstacle that hadn't been there until now. "So you think that dinky little deathray of yours could do anything to me?" the voice from earlier challenged, as the energy then started to flow around what the lich-wyrm presumed was its owner.

The lich-wyrm snapped his jaws shut and growled, orbs glowing balefully. He watched intently as the energy failed to dissipate, instead swirling ominously around that light with the magma and seeds it had absorbed. Within that crimson-sable cloud, beneath the glow, he could barely see an upright silhouette spinning something long and misshapen around it. It was almost… using that object to direct the energy about, keeping it away from his intended target. "What business have you here?" he asked. He was almost uncomprehending of why this upstart would intervene, if indeed, said upstart had a reason to begin with.

"I should be asking you the same… but I already know the answer," the entity spoke, voice dripping in contempt. "Your actions truly do speak louder than your words." It stopped spinning the energies about, only to then gather them at a point roughly above its head. The shadows and crimson twirled in an intricate dance, interspersed with white star-like flecks that seemed to stabilize it. It all compacted into one big sphere of clashing energies, almost spiraling and collapsing into itself only to draw more energies in.

This swirling sphere vanished in a burst of crimson light, and reappeared right in the wyrm's face. He recoiled as this makeshift miasma struck him head-on, growing at an exponential rate, even sucking in some of the light of the spell circle above him. It compacted on itself just as it outgrew his handsome mug, and turned into a mere shockwave of shadow strong enough that the sheer force of it sent his spines into the chasm wall behind him. What was left of the backlash gathered up above, forming a sphere of shadow around the spell circle to obscure it from sight.

However, it didn't faze him otherwise in the slightest, and he gave a sinister grin to his adversary. As all of that was going on, the spell twirled faster and faster until its corners were but a blur, and kept gathering more and more energy all the while. It was soon overshadowed by its own glow, surely now the brightest light to ever take hold in the Void. How the wyrm didn't notice it sooner with how bright it was glowing was beyond Lazarus, until he noticed the shadows dancing between it and the wyrm, carefully absorbing most of that light which spilled out. They still let gaps form, however, letting a few rays pour out with all the radiance they could muster.

"Is that the best you can do, feebly redirecting my own magic like that?" the lich-wyrm hissed.

"Better than that—I can obliterate you here and now," his light-shrouded adversary taunted, smugness reigning supreme in its tone.

The lich-wyrm straightened and gnashed his teeth to charge a stronger retort, pulling in more magma and seeds and even a few spine-sized chunks of the very earth around him. But he made the mistake of angling his muzzle skyward as the energy grew large enough it threatened to dislocate his jaw, and his orbs shrank as he caught sight of the shadows absorbing that light dispersing outright. With the shadows clear, he croaked as he beheld the spell glowing above. It fired off as soon as those shadows vanished, and it was far too late for him to pull back as the resultant beam made contact.

The beam shot right into his throat, almost completely shining through his gaping wounds and dissipating his destructive energy in one go. He lit up like a charged crystal, white radiance spilling out of his scales and turning the flesh around those wounds into flaking ash before shooting out his underbelly and into the boiling magma. The lich-wyrm was unable to even scream as more and more of that light seared him inside out, and before long the rest of his body began to crumple under the merciless onslaught of a power surpassing his own.

Just as Lazarus and his group thought it was going to stretch for hours, the blast ended, leaving behind a hollowed out wyrm who stood stiff for a few seconds. Then he slumped against their side of the chasm, chin coming to rest mere inches from them with jaws askew. His orbs had gone out entirely, leaving black abysses to listlessly stare at them. And gravity took hold and dragged his head into the unforgiving magma.

With a final, titanic splash that sent Fantasia's molten lifeblood scattering and sizzling upon the chasm's sides, the spell circle that brought that horrible light upon him faded with glimmers of glowing dust. And everyone stood there, stunned as Ashwood fell still around them once again—even the nearby wisteria tree ceased its cascade of seeds, as if sensing the disturbance had passed. Seconds passed, themselves compressed into another eternity, as the magma stopped rising and bubbling as it consumed the wyrm.

After that, a crimson glow grew in intensity from behind, causing the quintet's shadows to stretch until the tops of their heads were touching the edge of the island's precipice. Everyone turned around, and all jaws dropped at what—or rather, who—they now beheld. "Natalie, dear… are you alright?" Rarity asked as Rainbow reverted to all fours, before wincing and lifting her wounded hoof a bit higher to compensate.

There above them, coming to touch down just feet away from them with a crimson light dancing above her horn, was indeed Natalie herself. She landed upright, revealing just enough leftover dress and sash to cover everything past her stomach. Her scythe wasted no time coming to rest upon her shoulders by its shaft as she held it up with one fetlock, her mane flowing and glowing as though it were liquified flame. A few loose strands of black, red, and white energy still crackled along her horn and the menacing half-crescent of her improvised staff. "Yes?" she asked, voice echoing with a subdued, eerily calm quality. The skulls tied to her dress lifted up and turned to look at the group with the aid of crimson-turned magic, both canting quizzically as Natalie's head did likewise.

"First off…" Rarity cleared her throat and shifted awkwardly, almost rocking on her hooves as she studied Natalie with practiced scrutiny. "Well, that dress is… morbidly marvelous, I must say, though the skulls are completely unsightly. And second… are those crystals growing out your back and forehead, and dark magic radiating from your eyes?" She peered a little closer at said crystals growing out of Natalie's backside, and her eyes went wide as dinner plates when she she saw more appendages just beneath their wicked arcs. Those appendages were fluttering uselessly, and throwing more feathers everywhere—ghastly white feathers at that. "Third, are those… what I think they are?"

Natalie wilted with a nod, stopping the fluttering appendages long enough for the group to see what they were—bona fide flesh-and-blood wings that were suspiciously missing primary feathers, and a good bit of standard wing-length as well. Compared to Rainbow's wings, hers were short and sorely lacking for a mare of her size. Even so, they still had an impressive span that would easily be comparable to Lance's own pair up to a given point. Rainbow and Zecora started to wonder how the hell she hid the damn things for so long, though truth be told, they could also see she needed to compensate for them somehow.

"Long story… had every joint past both ulna and radii cut clean off, but let's just say that came from a very long and exhausting fight," she muttered, shifting to plant her scythe's foot on the ground to lean on it a little. The floating skulls, seemingly starting to leak blood from their sockets, wilted with her. "And it's less dark magic and more of my natural crystal self… clashing with a whole host of factors. If you want dark magic, I don't have any—at least not that which is powered by fear and hatred."

"Then what explains the skulls?" Rarity retorted. "And that… usage of the wyrm's own beam against him?"

Natalie sighed. "That's… actually a… leftover from the exhausting fight that amputated my wings to an extent. The skulls are always like this, unless I set up an illusion—the crystals on my head and back, likewise," she answered, frowning uneasily. "Though, I have complete motor control of said crystals and skulls, so at least I won't turn out like Chocolate Dismay." She shrugged. "And redirecting the beam wouldn't count as dark magic; more like repurposing already-existing destructive energies and adding a bit of light magic to turn it into a giant shadow spell. What else was I supposed to do, let him vaporize me?"

Rarity had to concede that last point. With a graceful nod she sighed and said, "Well… that was a neat trick, I do have to admit."

"Wait wait wait," Rainbow interjected, lifting a wing to point a primary at Natalie in lieu of a hoof. "So you've had those wings… for a while?" she pressed. She was already wincing as her mind concocted possible scenarios in which the results of the amputation she saw had happened. When Natalie grimly nodded, she stomped a hoof, careful to avoid stomping too hard, lest she topple on her injury. "Why didn't you tell us sooner?! Forget the skulls and crystals, the wings should've come out first!"

"First off, somegryph said all Fantasian alicorns went and pulled a tribe-wide vanishing act, to put it mildly, so I had… not wanted to draw attention to them. Seriously, you guys'd think I was a pretty little princess if I started prancing and flapping instead." That actually made Rainbow and Rarity wince a little, and the granule of truth in that statement only made it a tiny bit worse. "Second… I only show these nubs off when…" Natalie lifted one hoof and swept it out to gesture to the Void. The hoof then turned to the chasm and the dead trees, letting the wanton destruction speak for itself.

"This decides to drop by, or something equally serious happens that requires I use my full magical strength. Usually, if I need to use full magical power, it's because Matt decides he's gonna do it first," she finished. She turned to Sarah and straightened her posture, and the skulls did likewise with a suspicious bobble. "And before I left the mastership… Matt showed me something interesting…" she muttered, ominous and calm in equal measure.

Sarah paled under that level, wilting glare. "Wh-what… is it?" she asked, pupils shrinking as Natalie spread her pitifully-sized wings as far as they could go.

"A little something… that could explain how you play your cursed harp without the aid of a horn," Natalie said carefully, wings twitching as black crystals started to grow out from between the largest feathers they still possessed. "Something that I find… quite ironic, given the situation." The crystals continued growing outward, almost like crude bio-engineered extensions, leaking blood for the barest of instants before those rivers were cut off and cast aside by her magic. Everypony noticed she didn't flinch in the slightest, which was disconcerting in itself.

Sarah's tail quivered, and her claws started to tap on the ground on instinct. "... u-um…" Her wings snapped open, and she felt the urge to fly the coop as fast as possible. Crimson magic grabbed her wings and pulled them back to her sides, however, and slowly her mind went into a tizzy.

"However… given the Void's dropped by, and the severity of the circumstances, I'll give you the full questionnaire at a later time," Natalie muttered, releasing her magical hold on Sarah. She turned to Lazarus. "We can't dally for long. We'll have to get to Greenwood." She turned to the wisteria tree and shook her head at it. "Somepony already called dibs on that thing anyway," she added as an aside. Turning the rest of the way in Greenwood's direction, she sighed and levitated herself, keeping her scythe low for the moment. Her wing-crystals continued to grow as she flew over the chasm with honed ease, twisting into a mockery of the bones in a standard pair of pegasus wings. They were complete replicas almost, sans feathers—of at least, the bones she had been lacking.

Lazarus lit up his horn and grabbed everybody else in his magic. "Great, we're gonna have to deal with those nutjobs again," Rainbow hissed as the magic prodded her hurt hoof. "Zecora, didja make burn ointments?" she groaned before Lazarus teleported the whole group to the other side. As they started to gallop—and fly, in Rainbow's case—after Natalie the second they emerged from the burst of light, Lazarus rematerialized Zecora's saddlebags and put them gently on her back. He also made sure to strap them just tight enough in to place they were secure, and in the event Zecora had tripped, they wouldn't have the slightest chance to fly off.

Zecora shook her head. "Nay, I did not, for I did not anticipate magma at all," she answered, wilting a little. "Though, given we just escaped death's jaws, we mustn't stall."

Rarity summoned the daggers and handed Zecora hers, but held onto Rainbow's. "Apologies Rainbow, but I'd rather keep my distance from any bloodshed," she muttered.

Rainbow nodded and waved a hoof to Rarity in understanding. "I getcha Rares; it's like wanting to be a Wonderbolt—not everypony's cut out for it," she replied. She flew ahead, but did not go past Natalie, instead doing a few loops in the air at her side to show off the wounded hoof.

Natalie heaved a sigh of exasperation. "Close call?" she guessed, letting a flare of white magic trail its way from her horn to Rainbow's hoof as soon as she had stopped looping.

"Closest call yet," Rainbow affirmed. She smiled as she felt the white magic working itself on her hoof, easing her burn gently and bit by bit until it was gone. She twisted around and flew backwards for a second to examine her hoof; now it reverted to the same mint condition it was before her near-disastrous run-in with the lich-wyrm. Upon reorienting herself, she flashed a widened grin at Natalie. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Natalie chirped with a small smile of her own.

"Can't believe we have to go to that hellhole again…" Sarah muttered under her breath, keeping just quiet enough that her voice was drowned out by galloping hooves. She was instead content to rest her wings, and to listen to whatever chit-chat everypony else was getting up to as they raced to Greenwood.

Natalie turned her eye onto Lazarus as he caught up to gallop opposite of Rainbow Dash. "And when'd you learn how to teleport?" she asked, oddly chipper in tone.

Lazarus, in spite of Natalie's odd behavior, managed a small grin. He whickered and whinnied for a moment with a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Sometime after you joined the army; haven't tracked the exact date because I couldn't be half-assed to do that," he snarked.

Natalie snickered for a second at the answer. "Sounds like you had quite an adventure, going about and blinding everypony with your shimmering radiance," she fired back.

Lazarus returned in kind, "White, black, and blood red is an eyesore. Knock it off already."

Natalie grinned. "Sorry, can't help it, even if I dye my coat and shake off my crystal growths," she chirped. "Also, when did you decide to wear a pot on your head?"

"When you donned the kettle," Lazarus shot with mild amusement.

Natalie snickered at his smartassery, but decided to change the subject and have the horn-measuring contest another day. "I've yet to ascertain Greenwood's… state," she muttered, voice dropping all traces of her prior amusement. "Let's just say I wasn't able to reach it when the wyrm decided he was gonna throw his little tantrum."

"So you don't know if it's bad over there?" Rainbow translated, garnering a grim nod.

"Or worse," Natalie added as an aside. "Actually came to that village before, and let's just say the villagers put the Canterlot nobles to shame when me and the rest of the army visited the last time."

"Oh boy, this I gotta hear," Lazarus muttered, smiling a sarcastic smile at that prospect.

"Later, when we and the villagers are in the clear," Natalie replied, waving a crystal-tipped wing dismissively.

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

"Brakalz meriitoulk," Katie snarked as another half-tree monster of unknown species was sent flying down a staircase thanks to Twilight casting a blade of light through its body. A crimson light crackled at the end of her stub-horn with the utterance, before dimming its glow. She watched as the beast was promptly skewered at the floor in front of the steps the group had just climbed, though the house had stopped groaning and bleeding for the moment. Twilight turned to it too, studying it for a moment.

Behind it, she idly noted, Twilight could see the floors past the monster—thanks to a series of holes that the house itself had made. She could even peer right down to that one hall that had a flight of stairs going down, to the room where the dummies were kept, all from where she currently stood. She found that especially odd, given the lack of decent lighting in the house and the house's bizzare choice of architecture—perhaps that was the Void's handiwork, she mused. Turning to Katie, and finding a short hall ending in a singular door that awaited the lot with more planks and vines barring the path, she perked as Katie added in a wry voice, "No offense."

"None taken," Twilight chirped with a nod, turning to the door and conjuring another sword of light. She approached the blocked door and started to hack away at its bonds, her work swift and precise and her cuts as clean as any well-sharpened razor. "At least the shaking stopped, finally. And am I grateful all we had to trot through was more stairs and halls."

"I hope nothing… worse has happened," Fluttershy muttered, ears folding back at the prospect. She shivered when she felt a cold horseshoe come to rest on one of her pasterns, the claws angled away from her, and looked down to find Katie looking back at her.

"Ræ yhl treschulnect umkralscht grolkæ sulnaire," Katie muttered consolingly. "'It is always darkest before dawn.' The Void taught me that."

"She's right; that's basically the mentality that helped me get my cutie mark," Lance agreed with a nod, trotting forward as the door was cleared of its last bonds. "Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst."

"Oh? That's actually…" Fluttershy thought it over for a moment and managed a small smile. "That's a pretty good mentality to follow."

Lance nodded again. "Indeed it is. NoLegs, Accelerator." NoLegs gave a grumbling meow, but conjured the blaster with a wave of his tail and a flare of his magic. Lance rose upright to clasp it in both pasterns, feeling Maria shifting on his back to hang on by his withers.

"Daddy, why do you need the big gun?" Maria asked innocently, frowning.

Lance shivered his wings a little, tail swishing for a second as his gut twisted. "I get the feeling I may need to fight," he muttered uneasily. "Get on Fluttershy's back, now."

Maria did as she was told, though her wings fluttered uncomfortably. "Are we at the end of this damned house yet?" Katie asked, turning to Lance with her wings flaring. "Because I am starting to think its roots might start moving soon!"

Lance snorted at the question; the fact that the concern was legitimate only helped to fuel his growing laundry list of woes, and so he tightened his hold on the Accelerator. "Given that this place seems to have its own security detail… I'm sort of hoping we're there, but expecting that we're not just yet," he muttered, a faint note resignation in his tone.

Twilight trotted forward, pulling her sword back to open the door. "Security detail or not, this place reeks worse than Frostbite," she hissed. Using her magic to wrench the door open—in the process, making one of its rusted hinges break with the force of that action—she tensed at what lay beyond. There was another staircase waiting for them, broken and fragmented like the steps of the Mighty Oak's shrine, except the gaps were wide enough everyone could see the flowers of the tree all around them.

At the topmost end of these broken stairs lay another door, this one already ajar and framed only by a wooden structure that shifted like it was trying to keep something contained, but just couldn't. From her current vantage point, it almost looked like a pulsating flesh-cage with the wood acting as its bars. The flowers they could spot had started to wither and die on their branches, horking out one last spray of seeds as they shriveled. "Okay… what the…" Twilight muttered, wrinkling her nose at this sight.

Katie trotted over, dove between a pair of hinds, and poked her head out from between Twilight's forelegs before a confused croak left her torn mouth. That croak dragged on as she studied this anomaly for a few seconds. "Okaaaaay, I didn't see this when Lance and I got past the spraying flowers…" she muttered.

Lance strode to the precipice, leaned over and whistled at the morbid, yet equally fascinating, sight. "We're either about to switch branches, or the house is doing this to fuck with us," he said, entertaining the former possibility whilst tempted to dismiss the latter.

"Why not both?" Katie piped up, fully donning the sneer in her tone. "Because it groans and moves and grows fucking ivy on a Godcat-damned whim, and I'm betting my shriveled bones that it's done all that to dissuade us!"

"Well, it's failed in the persuasion department," Lance fired back with a snort. "Even though we couldn't scrounge much… having found nothing but more stairs once we left the dummies, it's still hiding something that demands explanation."

"Maybe it's hiding all the important goodies from us," Katie reasoned, huffing out a sigh of irritation at that fun prospect. "I'm guessing, if we head back downstairs, we're gonna end up in an entirely different room."

Lance nickered. "Wouldn't put it past this place," he muttered disdainfully. He flared his wings and flew over first, garnering an eyeroll from Twilight as she levitated behind him. Katie and Fluttershy followed suit, and NoLegs stayed back for a few seconds to check the stairs they'd just left.

Good. Nothing else, be it the house itself or the makeshift security detail it was packing, came in to dish out another surprise. He turned ahead and found the group already trotting into the flesh-cage, and teleported to meet up with them. The room he found himself in was barren, save for the cracked walls, floor, and ceiling pulsing with writhing vines. The cracks on the floor were flooded with foul-smelling liquid, and the walls gushed out more of the stuff at a constant rate.

Inside stood another half-tree thing with pike-like legs, its back turned to its unexpected guest party. Unlike its brethren, however, it had a mane and tail made of viridian leaves, trimmed and chipped to various lengths and sizes, and multi-jointed twig-wings sporting much the same in addition to multiple digits. Though it was emaciated, it stood tall and proud with its wings flared wide, and ivy broke out of its body to form a protective weave around its otherwise-vulnerable stomach.

Everyone paused as this beast, almost changeling-like in posture and in appearance, turned to them slowly, letting its black abysses fall onto them. In doing so, its movements had revealed a tall, twisted horn of wood jutting from its surprisingly equine-shaped head and a carving of some sort resting on its wooden haunches. The carving had been worn by time, and splinters that frayed around it muddled and blurred its shape into something unrecognizable. Glowing red embers, almost orb-like in shape, lit up in those abysses with a spark of pure contempt.

"So the Void has come, at last, for Greenwood…" it muttered in a masculine voice, eying the group with an air of expectancy. "I should have known this day would come…" It sighed wistfully. "And one of my… children has informed me I was expecting visitors as the sun started to set."

"Who are you? What are you?" Lance asked, feeling his trigger hoof twitch against the barrel of his blaster. "And what do you mean by 'children?'"

The beast flapped its leafy wings once, the motion both crude and oddly majestic in equal measure. "I… was the first to be cursed—I remember not my name, just that I sired many foals who would end up following my hoofsteps—foals that I might have to tend to once this farce is over." He shook his head grimly, leafy mane twisting with the effort.

"Wait, so the creatures with the wooden heads and gaunt legs are…" Twilight trailed off, mentally connecting the dots.

The beast nodded, scowling. "Yes. I had been expecting more of the rabble that makes up the nearby villagers as of late, instead of complete strangers. But since you lot are evidently new here… allow me to offer some basic courtesy. I am the Progenitor of Ashwood, the First Branch of Greenwood, Father and Shepherd of the Forested Flock," he answered blithely. "But if you want something… less taxing on your tongues, you can refer to me as Pestilence."

Katie's ears twitched upright, and her orbs widened. "Pestilence?" she echoed.

Pestilence nodded and turned to her, canting his head. "Although… Envoy of Cocytus, I'll admit you to be the last creature I'd expected upon my doorstep," he stated in an eerie calm tone laced with a note of resignation. "Ever since that fateful day, whence you'd been sealed have I held my breath. But it seems fate itself turned you loose. I should have anticipated as much—though it seems even you have stooped low enough to come in with this rabble." He flapped his wings again, almost distressingly.

"Frulkæ olkaar, ultoryun astæ?!" Katie shouted, wings buzzing with that declaration.

Pestilence issued her a small grin, the wood fraying at the corners of his warped mouth with the effort. "Altruskarn, orobrumæ estelkei," he replied. He turned to look at the others, still grinning, horn crackling as his ember-like eyes turned onto Lance. "Pardon me… but why have you brought the Envoy here?"

Lance straightened his back and flared his wings, seeing the ivy writhing out of the corners of his eyes. "Same reason I am here," he hissed, eyes narrowing, "and that reason is a matter of curiosity: did you build this house, and if so, why?"

Pestilence chuckled, viridian magic crackling along the length of his horn. "Yes I did… and I simply wanted some peace and quiet after Godcat was sealed," he replied, almost cheerful in his disposition. "And it seems you've all come looking for a battle." His grin widened further, fracturing at the edges as the ivy on his body writhed. "Although it's been a while since I've seen living pegasi… at least three decades. This ought to be interesting."

Twilight eyed Pestilence warily. Lance turned the barrel of the Accelerator to him and angled his wings along its sides. He purposely slipped the primaries between two of the gears and let mana pulse through them—and Pestilence faltered as the hands of the weapon's clock began to spin with the glow. "A pegasus charging a cat-built weapon? That's—!"

Lance smirked. "Impossible? Would be, had I been an ordinary pegasus," he snarked as a gathering of swirling white energy started to form in the weapon's mouth, causing the gears to rattle in protest.

Before Pestilence could ask what Lance had meant by that, he fired off a massive glowing beam the size of Princess Celestia. He vanished in a burst of viridian light and reappeared under the ceiling, leafy wings flapping with all their might to keep him airborne. He watched as the beam, having missed him, ended up tearing a new hole in the wall behind the area where he stood. The hole widened as Lance swiveled to redirect the beam, almost hitting but not quite reaching the so-called First Branch before it dissipated.

When that volley ended, everyone could see the swaying branches of the wisteria tree dangling outside, some of them shortened and torched to allow a clear view into the remains of Ashwood. Pestilence nickered in disapproval, and the house shook and groaned with the injury. "I'll have to add your bodies to close that hole when I am through breaking your hopes and spirits," he growled.

His magic seized the writhing vines before then directing them towards the intruders with a refined, fluid grace. Twilight simply sliced them into pieces with her blade, smirking as Pestilence snickered. "Are you just getting warmed up? Compared to Lance over here, your style's rusty," she taunted.

"Oh please, the last two ponies who dared fight me at all were just foals. I hadn't needed to use the full brunt of my power," Pestilence replied, his magic seeping into the cracks of the room around them. The lifeblood that kept oozing from the tree started to glow a sickly green in seconds, casting into stark relief the state of the room and the destruction of one of the walls that had just happened.

"Foals!? Why I oughta—" Katie began, buzzing her wings to launch herself at Pestilence and ram her claws into his throat. NoLegs, however, waved his tail and let his magic seize her to hold her down.

Then NoLegs summoned his wooden horse and opened the hatches on its stomach and barrel. Magic burst from the hatches and swirled around the horse, expanding it in size and fitting it with a giant, sharpened log that jutted out from its chest as its body changed from a set of legs to a cart adorned with shields at the sides. He sat on its head, seizing the cornucopia in his magic as its back hollowed out to then materialize some sort of grey pip-engine in the resultant cavity. The tack and saddle completely vanished, instead replaced by a false pink tongue and a flat floor of the cavity respectively.

"Awww, a trojan horse. How novel," Pestilence taunted with a grin, waving his forelegs with a strangely apathetic shrug of his withers. "But how do you expect to hit me with that battering ram…" Vines seized the horse by its wheels, trying their best to wrench it apart. "When it's caught up in a tangle?"

NoLegs smirked and aligned the cornucopia's slim end with his mouth, before puffing his cheeks and blowing into it with all the air his lungs could hold. A loud drone, one so deep anypony outside the house could've mistaken it for a tuba, emerged from the other end with a force that made the room shudder. Pestilence winced and covered his ears with his forelegs, horn fizzling out as he lost concentration. As the noise petered out in a reverberating echo, Twilight lunged towards Pestilence by self-levitating, aiming her blade directly for his head while he was distracted. However, he turned away from her, swatting her aside with a wing and briefly losing his aerial balance as he sent her to the floor.

She landed on her hooves, however, and shook herself off. "Fluttershy! Take Angel and Maria to the mastership!" she called, brow furrowing as Pestilence managed to shake off his temporary headache. Fluttershy nodded, and without hesitation raced to the massive hole with wings flapping.

"Kick his ass, daddy!" Maria called as Fluttershy launched out of the hole and started to fly up.

"Will do!" Lance called back before parting his wings from the Accelerator. He started flapping; if Pestilence was flying, then so would he. Katie started buzzing again, her stub-horn finally ceasing its crackling for the moment as NoLegs released his magical hold on her. The two exchanged a glance and nodded in tandem, and darted to opposite sides of the makeshift arena, making sure to hover just out of the edge of the vines' reach. Pestilence chuckled and watched them, and they watched back for a moment before NoLegs blew the cornucopia once more with bravado.

"Rhaa! Stupid cat!" Pestilence howled as he covered his ears again, glaring balefully at NoLegs as the sound petered out in another echo. He flew towards him, pike-like legs aimed at NoLegs's head. Lance and Katie flew to him, one flipping his blaster so its back faced the floor as it was then raised like a mace and the other with foreclaws low and pointing up. Twilight winced as the Accelerator's back met with the First Branch's spine while, at the same time, frozen horseshoes cut through both flesh and ivy with ease.

Pestilence howled and changed course, hinds kicking out awkwardly as he then landed into the nearest wall with all the grace of a carriage falling off a cliff. Katie clung to him for a few seconds after he impacted before slicing down to where she estimated the gonads would be located and then pulling out to dart away. She raced to Twilight's side as Lance opted to hover a few feet away from the flailing Progenitor as pain overtook his nerves for a moment. NoLegs dislodged the ivy from the wheels of his trojan horse with a series of quick swipes from his sword and used his magic to steer it to Twilight, being mindful of the battering ram it was now fitted with.

"What did you say to him earlier?" Twilight whispered to Katie.

"Basically, 'hold up, you did?'" she answered with a shrug. "Dunno what he said in response, though."

"Something along the lines of, 'maybe, maybe not,'" NoLegs telepathically translated with a wave of his tail. They turned to Pestilence as they heard and saw his pike-legs plant themselves into the wall he flew into.

"So you wish to end me… is that it?" Pestilence growled as he pried himself from the wall with minimal effort, bleeding profusely enough to stain the vines beneath his stomach red. "Very well…" The house shook and groaned as he unleashed a flare of bright green magic that swept throughout the whole room, causing the walls to twist in on themselves and the open door frame to collapse. The branches with the dead flowers pierced the walls easily, the shriveled petals folding in to form thin and needle-like points. "If you intend to kill me… then so be it!"