As she and her galloping charge neared the pine tree between the feet of the mountains, Sora could've sworn she heard distant singing echoing about the Crested Plains, the voices ethereal and the words just faint enough to be considered garbled. She dared not make out the words, but noted the echoing singers sounded oddly tranquil, all things considered—almost like they didn't have a care in the world. Even as she pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind and galloped on, she couldn't ignore her musings—unless, of course, she was hallucinating. Though she made a mental note to consult Yukito later; hopefully, he wasn't already going as stir-crazy as she was.

But Sora couldn't rest on her scant few laurels now, and her stomach started to cramp and twist as her runaway charge skid to a halt in front of the lone pine tree. She slowed her pace to a trot, coming around the stopped carriage and making a beeline to the tree to see what was up. Her brow furrowed as Starbreaker used her magic to part its branches and launched a small ball of fire between them, being surprisingly careful to not let the tree catch so much as a spark as what lay behind it was illuminated in crimson-blue.

Sora whistled as she beheld a hidden cavern right behind it, a rocky outcrop formed over its mouth as sturdy as could be—as though somepony turned it into the entrance of an elaborate house. Said outcrop also kept the moonlight out, yet did little to stop the small fireball from probing its underside. "That's… really fantastic, actually," Sora muttered in appraisal, eying the cavern with nothing short of awe.

Starbreaker smiled and giggled, but the snickering died halfway when a burst of light erupted from the carriage, followed by Yukito reappearing at Sora's side. "So this is why you stopped…" he muttered, and trotted to the tree to duck under its branches, the outcrop, and the fireball in one fluid motion. Horn alighting, he strode right inside to see what he was dealing with, hoofsteps echoing and fading as he plunged into the unknown with caution.

Starbreaker turned to Sora, smile fading. "Why's he just trotting in?" she asked.

Sora shrugged. "Getting a visual of the area to safely teleport us inside, I'm guessing," she replied in earnest. "Can't teleport into something and just expect everything to be alright unless you know what you're setting hoof into."

"So you're saying he might turn the carriage upside-down otherwise?" Starbreaker asked, eyes widening as she started to contemplate the ramifications of Yukito's enter-first-teleport-second approach. Sora nodded, idly wondering how she came to that rather inane train of thought. But, at least she could say her adversary was slowly but surely wising up.

Whether that wising up was good or bad… well, Sora couldn't say, really. All the same, it still concerned her on some level that Starbreaker had grown… fixated on things other than death and destruction, but that was one thing she could chalk up to unfortunate circumstance. She turned to the distant base, looking at it with mixed feelings. On one hoof, it was ran by a bunch of asshats she thought had no business running it to begin with—and why had they kept those ponies in what amounted to transparent cells? She remembered the visibly pregnant mare and dead-eyed stallion, an icy chill trickling down her spine right to her augments.

What were those two ponies in particular doing there to begin with? And why had they experimented on Omega—were the Corps trying to yet again make another ultimate weapon? The air around her turned substantially colder as she entertained that horribly morbid thought. Some part of her internally muttered that she didn't want to know what would happen to the poor foal that would be born in that transparent, isolated box.

On the other hoof, though, it was the same place where she'd regularly get food and bed—only one of which was guaranteed out here in the wilderness, thanks to her yoinking a carriage, but even that wouldn't last—sooner or later, her and Starbreaker's antics would trash it beyond repair. She knew in her heart of hearts she was diving headfirst into what many ponies would rightfully call a fool's journey—only taken because she held onto a distant hope that, maybe, things could change for possibly the better. It only became clear to her earlier that day that change… would have to be substantial for the Corps before she could ever return to it.

Assuming she could even make it out of her self-imposed journey alive, of course, considering she was already seeing distant airships hovering about the rising cloud of tinted smog with military-grade caution. Also assuming on a rather grand and generous scale that they'd take her back even after its leadership changed hooves—which she doubted with a particularly strong air of resignation.

She'd just have to grin and bear her woes now. She turned to the cavern as she heard the sound of returning hoofsteps, and sighed as Yukito emerged again. "It'll do for the night, but we're leaving as soon as we are able," he reported, donning a glum frown. He teleported in another flash of light, returning to sitting within the carriage. Then, his aura lanced around the vehicle, the wood stacked on top of it, and Starbreaker all at once before they vanished in another burst that itself was succeeded by a dim third that erupted from within the cavern.

Sora fluffed her wings and trotted past the tree, doing her best to not get caught in its branches whilst at the same time avoiding severing so much as a needle on its trunk. She'd have time to reflect on her decisions later, when she and her makeshift herd had enough time to lay low and slip under the Corps' radar. After avoiding becoming tangled by the tree, she ducked under the outcrop and let her ocular augments whir to life, letting her see into the darkness, albeit minimally.

A steep slope greeted her, heading right down to a flat floor after about forty yards, squeezing onto itself with the aid of tooth-like stalactites. Sora ducked again and angled her hooves to start traversing the entrance, digging her frogs in for what little traction she could get from solid stone. She angled her wings to the floor, blades scraping and rattling against the stone, but never leaving anything more than minor scratches that could be mistaken as the markings of a wild beast to any casual observers with the dumb luck to come across this cave.

She kept her head low to avoid the stalagtites as she passed under them, warily watching for any that might drop onto her. Yet no stalactite broke formation, even as she reached the floor of the cavern to behold a large enough space for three carriages, where the de-harnessed Starbreaker set to work on moving the wood off the top of their ride. To one wall, a pile of twigs sat, mixed with the bleached bones of no more than ten animals, and apart from this and a small, shrivelled bed made of dried twigs and moss, the cavern was pretty barren.

Starbreaker found a rather large beetle scuttling amongst the assorted timber and picked it up with her magic. She span it around for a moment, seeing if it was any danger whatsoever, but all the beetle did was snap open its elytra and flap its wings with legs kicking for dear life. It also flailed its head, which boasted a single horn only a measly quarter-length of a grown pegasus's secondary feather, buzzing in a feeble attempt to escape.

"Holy hell, that's an elephant beetle!" Sora muttered, trotting over to inspect the struggling insect. She lifted a hoof under its legs, and it clutched onto her pastern right away, tugging again and again against the magic holding it. "And he's got some mighty tusks for one, too." The crimson magic let go of the hapless insect, who promptly launched off of Sora's pastern and right into her face. Sora squawked and ducked for cover, letting the beetle fly out overhead as fast as its wings could carry it.

"Feh, I don't like their taste. Too euch," Starbreaker remarked, sticking her tongue out as her face twisted in disgust. "I'd rather eat rabbits, but they're hard to catch."

"I'd stick to squash and brussel sprouts," Sora muttered, straightening her posture as the middle door of the carriage flew open with the aid of blue magic. Yukito stumbled out a moment later, left hoof firmly on his temple, rubbing feverishly. "You alright?"

Yukito nodded, and used his magic to wrench open the first door on the carriage. "Not sure how Omega's holding up," he muttered, trotting over to inspect the sorry sap within the first seat. Then, carefully, he lifted Omega in his magic and pulled him out, wincing as Starbreaker lifted one of the felled trees with her magic and started grinding it into splinters with her front hooves. Omega, dozing peacefully even as he was levitated, barely stirred with tail between his hinds and augmented fronts dangling as though they had weights tied to them. His cranial wounds, from which wires poked out, had started to bleed however, and Yukito waved Sora over with a hoof.

Sora frowned as she cantered over to investigate, a hoof slowly reaching up to her bell as Yukito shook Omega awake with some of his magic grasping his withers. Omega stirred, snorting as his eyes opened. "Hunh? Is it dinner time yet?" Omega asked, voice somewhat slurred from sleep.

"No, time for your checkup," Yukito replied with a sigh. He helped Omega sit up on his haunches to better scan his injuries. "You're bleeding, which tells me you might have suffered a concussion."

Sora put a hoof to her bell and looked at the floor in front of Omega's forelegs. "Light, return gauze," she muttered, and the bell jingled and glowed fitfully before it expelled a burst of light that coalesced into a solid gauze roll that landed on its side. Yukito scooped up the roll in his magic, unwound it, and started to wrap it around Omega's skull.

Omega wilted a little as he mentally caught up to Yukito's suspicion of him having a concussion. Then he registered that the gauze going round and round his head came from a bell, and he turned to Sora with a vexed frown. "Whatever happened t' missiles, filly?" he asked.

Sora shrugged. "Well… haven't had a chance to restock on the damn things since the Clash ended and the need for missiles plummeted to the sum of nil, but found my bell can hold all manner of other stuff in the meantime," she answered. "And frankly, I don't want what I've already stored in my bell to become incendiary exponents. We're in hot water anyway, and I don't need to leave missile-sized craters everywhere I go."

Omega nodded and winced as the bandages tightened on his head, just enough to stay on and cover the wires poking from it. "Fair enough," he conceded. He averted his gaze to Yukito, who stuck his tongue out of the corner of his lips in concentration as he started to tie the gauze into a knot, using the end he'd already dispensed and half of the remaining roll as an anchor. As soon as the knot was completed, Sora lifted a wing and snipped the roll an inch from the tie-off point, and she watched as Yukito made the remains of the roll vanish before carefully studying the applied bandages.

"We'll have to wait a while to remove those exposed wires… you may well have to keep the bandage on your head just to keep the birds from trying to eat them," Yukito muttered with a shudder that shook him hard enough to make his tail-hairs stand on end for a few fleeting seconds. With a foul aftertaste in his mouth with that declaration, he had to keep himself from retching as he added, "I'd imagine having wires removed from one's brain, still conscious, wouldn't be too pleasant."

Omega wilted, tail shivering. "Having th' wires go in was even worse, doc," he replied bitterly, ears turning back. "I feel like I'm… scrambled, y'know?"

Yukito's brow furrowed. What he'd just heard didn't bode particularly well in regards to what he'd just finished tying up in bandages. "Do you suffer from memory loss? Emotional impairment?" he asked, a cautious edge in his voice that wasn't there before. Omega shook his head.

"Nope, just… I wish I could forget what th' Corps did to me, if that makes sense," Omega muttered dismally, tail drooping. "Like… having ten thousand needles stuck wh-where…" His voice cracked as he went on, before stopping with a shiver. Yukito lifted a hoof to pat his withers, having a hunch as to where these 'ten thousand needles' wound up in.

The three jumped when they heard the very distinct crackle of something erupting into flame, and twisted to look at Starbreaker, who had formed a makeshift firepit out of the dried moss-leaf bed. She was casually throwing bits of torn bark into it with her magic, while with a hoof she held a twig that got impaled through a very large, very unfortunate spider's head. The blue-red flames popped and sizzled as they were fueled by torn-up trees, and warmth started to spread in the cavern.

The impaled spider flailed its legs as it was slowly toasted alive, once-regal blue color slowly fading into a toasty hue matching Omega's coat. Stranger still, most of the rest of the timber pile was intact, complete with insects hustling to beat a hasty retreat. Starbreaker turned to the three and waved, grinning a small, serene, distinctly out of place smile. "I found a tasty morsel!" Starbreaker chirped, her chipper tone unnerving Sora a little.

Omega turned a shade or two of healthy green upon seeing the spider. "I-is that… a st-starsilk spider?" he asked, before lurching with Sora and Yukito as Starbreaker pulled the spider out of the fire and took out a healthy chunk of its abdomen in one rather crunchy bite.

"It was a starsilk spider…" Sora grumbled, cheeks puffing out as she tried to reign in her protesting stomach.

"Looks like we have ourselves a pony who has a bad case of Diomedis Defectus…" Yukito mumbled, his legs shaking a little at the sight. "This… will take getting some used to…" He turned away, and so did Sora, both looking to Omega as Starbreaker continued to munch on the poor spider.

"She's not gonna eat u-us, is she?" Omega muttered, eyes wide in dawning horror. Sora shook her head, lifted a hoof, and put it on his shoulder.

"No…" Sora swallowed her protesting stomach before continuing in a low whisper, "I'm not going to let our possibly-Diomedian nightmare eat you."

Starbreaker, despite being half-deaf, turned to the three and snickered. "I won't eat you—ponies taste horrible to me. Especially doctors," she stated rather unhelpfully before taking off one of the spider's legs to munch on it. "Worse than beetles."

Sora shivered at that resultant mental imagery, though she internally heaved a sigh of relief at the same time. Being eaten post-mortem was a pretty horrible way to go, and she was glad Starbreaker was sane enough—that is, if she were at some point even sane to begin with—to understand that. Although… her comment about doctors still concerned her. She eyed Omega as Yukito magically lifted him up to put him back in the carriage. "Need a blanket? I brought a couple," she offered, hoping to the old gods she could change the subject before the Diomedian nightmare she was now stuck with could insert two more bits into the conversation.

"And brain bleach," Omega answered, slumping as he was plopped on the seat as though he could somehow sink into it. Sora nodded, put her hoof to the bell, muttered something that was drowned out by the sound of wood snapping as Starbreaker chucked yet more wood into her inferno, and waited for her bell to jingle. It didn't take long to respond to whatever she'd commanded it to do.

In seconds it rang and spat out another burst of light that caused no less than two dozen blankets, pillows, and sleeping bags to appear at her hooves, all rolled up tightly onto each other in neat little bundles of two apiece. Some had nasty slash marks on them, a few running so deep it was a miracle those stacks they'd afflicted were even standing to begin with. Omega's eyes widened, and he gave a low whistle. "Geez, how much did you stack?"

"Enough to smother the Admiral in a pillow fort," Sora replied, making a sweeping gesture with her hoof at the array of rolled-up bundles. "Pick your poison." Omega just shrugged his withers.

"A sleeping bag sounds good," Omega muttered. "Don't want t' wrestle a blanket." Yukito seized a rolled-up sleeping bag in his magic, unfurled it, and promptly levitated it over to wrap Omega in it back hooves first. Omega let him pull the sleeping bag across his body, as he wasn't really in a position to do anything about it at the moment, and smiled as its soothing and silky smooth texture. After it came to stop at his neck, he found a pillow being nestled under his chin, a little firm and thick, but he didn't mind since it kept his head out from between his forelegs. "Thanks doc," he chirped.

Sora nodded. "You're welcome," Yukito replied, smiling faintly as he lifted two more bundles of blankets and pillows, one being double the mass of the other. Sora made the rest vanish with the aid of her bell, which jingled incessantly until the rest was swallowed up in magical light it promptly absorbed. "I'm glad I took the spares from the Corps."

Omega perked up at that. "Wait, th' Corps had spares?" he echoed.

Yukito nodded again. "It always does, mostly in the events of emergency patients. I took just enough they probably wouldn't think anything of it," he answered. "Only… five pillows and three blankets, in fact; the rest, I'd already gathered over the years with what few bits I had left after paying my bills, in the event I'd find myself homeless."

"Double that, ever since I married him," Sora added with a wry smirk. "On account of blades."

Omega nodded and nestled into the pillow. It'd make sense these two would be prepared for such a possibility, and he was internally grateful they were able to scrounge up what little they could get their hooves on. "Do either o' you think you'd be homeless if th' Corps only found out you two were married?" he asked sincerely.

Sora wilted at that. "Well… I had the misfortune of overhearing a few ponies who called me dumb on the basis of my being an ultimate weapon, and that they wouldn't have let Sham get me hitched if they'd known before then…" She shivered, then steeled herself. "But that's neither here nor there."

"Eh, true, but it still makes me wonder," Omega conceded with another shrug. He closed his eyes and smiled. Yukito gently closed his door and sighed, turning to the middle seat to lay out the roll of blankets and pillows he'd selected.

"Did either of you see the blood moon?" Yukito asked, turning to Sora first. His ears twitched when he noticed he could only hear the crackle of flames, and that the sound of chewing crunchy meat had stopped altogether. Sora nodded.

"Yeah, and… things dancing in front of it," Sora muttered, frowning. "You think it's a bad sign?"

Yukito grimly nodded. "For whom, though, I can't exactly say," he muttered in reply. "But I didn't think I'd ever see one so soon, after the Clash…"

Starbreaker giggled, and when the two turned to her, she tossed the stick that once held a skewered, cooked spider on it over her withers. She then turned to the timber pile and made the whole thing vanish, leaves and all, in a burst of crimson light. "But it looked like it could set the skies ablaze…" she muttered with a faint note of appraisal. Her prosthetic ear twitched, and her lips twisted into a smile. "You think those blowhards who run the army saw it?"

"Considering all that has happened, they probably did… but might be more concerned with where we've gone," Sora answered with a shrug. "They'd think nothing of a blood moon."

Yukito nodded and swished his tail a little, barely moving it from side to side. "That reminds me… the shadow who'd teleported me and Starbreaker on the roof didn't even say anything," he muttered, causing Sora to turn to him with both brows raised high. "It had a mouth, the mouth moved, yet… it was deathly silent. And when Starbreaker tried to touch it to see what was wrong, her hoof went straight through it."

Sora took a moment to absorb all of that and mentally picture it. "Did you… figure out what it tried telling you?" she asked. Yukito shook his head.

"Not one ounce of coherent mouthing; it was struggling with just moving its jaws. And it was rattling off in near-blackness before we'd been whisked up a few floors," Yukito answered with a frown. "Stranger still, it was upright—all the time. Even sat on its haunches in the posture."

Sora shivered, figuring which specter he was talking about. "It… came to me in the base. But all I could see was its glowing eyes and… it had three horns," she muttered. "And it looked really, really pissed off. Like, firing magic everywhere kind of pissed. At what… I don't even know—all I know is, I was there to witness its rampage."

Yukito approached Sora and nuzzled her. She nuzzled back, and winced as another stomach cramp ran its course. "Are you alright?" he asked, pulling away to scrutinize her closely.

Starbreaker, having also caught the wince, trotted over with a frown. "What is it now?" she groaned.

"Just stomach cramps. I'm fine," Sora muttered, ears folding back and a blush spreading on her face as her stomach gurgled. She put a hoof to her bell. "I'll pull out some dinner…"

Yukito lifted a hoof and clutched Sora's raised pastern, stopping her just as she started to mutter to her bell. Perplexed, she looked at him and found a confused glint in his eyes. "Not tonight," he said bluntly. His ears twitched haltingly, as though straining. Slowly, Sora's ears rotated about before freezing as they folded upon her head—that was when she heard it, a series of distant and terrible roars that had drowned out the singing she'd heard earlier. "The hunt's already begun… we'll have to travel fast and eat light, especially you."

Hearing that made Sora wilt, but at the same time, she had to concede his point—especially since she was the only one who could fly, and if those distant growls came from where she thought they did… And that wasn't even touching the issue of rationing everything out; there were four mouths to feed, and sooner or later, food was going to run out altogether. Unless Starbreaker got the bright idea to cannibalize them, but then where would she end up after reducing their bodies to bones?

Sora had to stop herself from gagging at that terrible image. She hoped Starbreaker wouldn't resort to such underhoofed methods when it came time to sleep. But she pushed that aside for now, as the distant roaring echoed in the cavern from outside—louder than before.

And, without a doubt, closer than before. Her stomach twisted once more, and her instinct screamed at her to leave. But she couldn't, at least not yet; nor could the others, for that matter. For in their haste to find shelter, they had unwittingly trapped themselves for their pursuers to find.

That was assuming, of course, the Corps started to hunt them down this night.