"What do you mean 'escaped'?" Silverstar asked, his voice a strange, panicky version of calm, if that was even possible.

Chief Bloodhoof and Chief Thunderhooves shared a glance. Bloodhoof was the one to step forward. "Just that. All the prisoners we captured from the Dawn's Light, even before the battle. Gone."

Silverstar banged his head against the wall. Then did it again. And again. This process repeated until Dust Demon popped his head in from the other room. What he was going to say was evident by the disheveled mane and tired eyes he was sporting. "Is there a reason ya'll are makin' so much racket? Or do you just hate the idea of a nap after being up all night?"

Sagebrush's voice echoed from the room about eighty percent of Dust Demon was still inside. "Nopony asked you to personally bury Jango in an unmarked grave."

The brown pegasus grumbled to himself, returning to his previous position in a chair on the far side of the room from where Silverstar and the buffalo had finally stopped with their noise. Sagebrush was reading a book he had stumbled across, his silence the only thing that made Dust Demon able to bear his presence.

Stopping to try and connect the silent figure currently absorbed in his reading with the on-the-edge-of-sanity-and-not-afraid-of-jumping battle lust he had witnessed being used against the Dawn's Light, Dust Demon found it only gave him a headache to think about. It was always the quiet ones. He had never thought that saying would turn out to be true. "Guess it's so popular for a reason." He muttered.

"Hm?" Sagebrush commented, not looking up from his book.

The sound of shattering glass interrupted the pegasus's response, followed by a chuckle from two large buffalo.

"So they told him how much repairs'll cost..." Dust Demon chuckled, using that thought to turn the annoying echo of the glass into a quick path to sleep.

A wave of snoring hit Sagebrush right in the middle of a particularly interesting paragraph. The sudden shock of returning to the world of reality stunned him for a moment, until he remembered that Dust Demon's snoring always abated after the first forty-five seconds or so. That was the only reason the rest of the party had gotten any sleep at all out in the desert.

Another few minutes passed with the only sounds being some muffled conversation between Silverstar and the Buffalo. And so it was when Breaburn decided to arrive on scene.

Despite the yellow earth pony's fairly slim frame, he still managed to work up the power needed to kick down the door outside, which sat directly beside Dust Demon's chair.

Between the loud bang of the door and Braeburn's louder "Ya'll got five minutes before he's out of it! Hurry up and get to the doctor's office!" Sagebrush wasn't very surprised when Dust Demon shot out of his peaceful stupor and reflexively flapped his swings. What did surprise him was Dust Demon flapping so hard he slammed into the ceiling. Stunned, The pegasus fell back to the ground, landing face-first in a tangle of feathers and awkwardly twisted legs. Now stunned from the second blow, Dust Demon tried to untwist himself and stand up, but only succeeded in tripping over himself and falling to the ground. Again.

Sagebrush trotted past his friend, exiting the building. "Smooth."

Dust Demon eventually managed to right himself, but when he started walking and trying to clean the crust from his eyes at the same time, he ran into a wall, temporarily going cross-eyed in the brief span of time between impact and recovery.

Silverstar opened the door to the room he and the buffalo chiefs were in, smirking as broadly as physically possible. "Is there a reason ya'll are makin' so much racket? Or do you just hate the idea of a conversation between a pony and some buffalo friends of his."

Both Thunderhooves and Bloodhoof had to bite their tongues to contain their laughter.

Eclipse cracked open his eyes, despite the headache that was telling him no.

The blinding array of blurs that greeted him sent a sharp spike of pain through his skull, making him cry out. Another lance shot through when he heard his exclamation. Unable to see or hear without experiencing a horrid pain and with a major headache that was sitting there passive-aggressively, suggesting but not openly demanding him to stay down and let as much time pass as it wanted, Eclipse decided to just lay in the bed he found himself in, one leg draped over his eyes as a precautionary defense to them opening and letting light in.

"Do you think he knows we're here?" Someone whispered.

Eclipse's ears twitched, which was followed by a sigh. "Well, Braeburn, he knows now. Maybe we should just -- Dust Demon, NO!"

The shout was a warning of what was to come. Despite the pain it caused, it warned that something much worse was rapidly approaching, so get ready. That something was a pan being banged on by something hard. Like a stick or maybe a piece of scrap metal. Then sound mattered very little compared to the spear that lanced through Eclipse's brain.

Eclipse froze, his eyes snapping open and his ears tuning in to the world around him. Luckily the world was quiet, so pain was avoided from that direction. But he still had to contend with the sudden brightness in his vision. Between the blurriness and the floating shapes he had to clear from his sight, Eclipse had to take several moments of blinking to get better than severe nearsightedness for his vision.

Once the respite was over he saw Dust Demon being held down by Sagebrush, Braeburn and Fateweaver standing on either side of the two.

"Well, I had to wake up for him." Dust Demon growled, squirming.

"Well, really that was me." Braeburn quietly said, but it was loud enough to attract Dust Demon's attention.

Sitting still and taking a moment to process this new information, the pegasus smiled. "You're right."

Braeburn sprinted out of the building, Dust Demon following close behind.

Fateweaver acted like nothing had happened, instead just saying, "Lay down, Eclipse. Being knocked out by magic can be very debilitating to the mind and body when it awakes.

"You mean the headache and sensory sensitivity?"

Sagebrush pursed his lips. "What was that you said about phases?" He asked, directing the question at Fateweaver.

The buffalo sighed. "Enter stage two." Eclipse suddenly discovered what it was like to have the whole back half of his body lose feeling. "Numbness."

Eclipse paled to the point his gray coat became a dirty white, struggling to move his back legs but only receiving static in response.

Fateweaver shook his head. "If ever you get hit by a blast of energy capable of knocking you out, expect your nervous system to be scrambled for some time afterwords."

"You are a mother bucking shaman!" Eclipse shouted. "You should know potions, not advanced biology and the effects magic has on it!"

Sagebrush moved to the side of the bed. "I thought you were sensitive to loud noises?" he asked, reffering to Eclipse's rise in volume.

Eclipse flung a baseball at Sagebrush, who took the unexpected projectile in the forehead. Laying on his back, legs pointing straight up, tongue slightly out and with stars dancing around his head wasn't a good look for him.

Eclipse sat up, grunting both in pain from the half of his body could still feel and in surprise mixed with horror from the nothing around his other half. Despite Sagebrush's protests, he sat up and shook away the blurriness from is vision. This was a double-edged sword, however, bringing the pain in his head to a near unbearable spike.

A Doctor came in through the door, ending a conversation with a nurse. "Just make sure he takes his meds. It'll be fine."

Closing the door behind him, the Doctor paused to take absorb the scene in front of him. The room was fairly average sized, featuring two beds for patients. The second bed was occupied by an earth pony who had pulled a few muscles and was now paying the price of not getting medical assistance earlier. He was currently enjoying the spectacle offered by the three other people in the room.

Fateweaver was eyeing Eclipse to make sure he didn't try anything to strenuous, Eclipse was eyeing Sagebrush as the pony quickly began to recover and Sagebrush was somewhere between high and low on cherry street. Eclipse had a much better arm than he would give himself credit for.

Sighing at the sight of a possible concussion, the Doctor moved over to the bed Eclipse was not occupying and began the routine of ensuring the patient was comfortable.

With the doctor's appearance giving the trio some time to calm down, Eclipse turned his head to stare at a potted spiderplant sitting on a nightstand next to his bed. "I would have preferred waking up to a cactus."

With Sagebrush coming to a shaky stand in the background, Fateweaver smiled. "Don't be like that. It makes the place feel a bit more like a home."

Eclipse held up a hoof. "One, I don't have a spiderplant, so that reminds me that this isn't home. Two, like every other hospital in existence, this one has the smell of death all over it."

"Smells like sterilization to me." Sagebrush groaned.

"That's what I mean." Eclipse answered, crossing his hooves over his chest. "It's too clean."

"Cleanliness reminds you of death?" Sagebrush took a step away from Eclipse. "If you ever think that it'll be a good idea to dust or something, I'll be far away. Far far away."

Dust Demon calmly walked back into the room, followed by Braeburn. The two had blank expressions on their faces, each telling a story of something epic happening out of sight but neither of them willing to talk about it.

Eclipse sighed. "Maybe I can get into contact with Luna or something..."

Braeburn coughed. "Now, just how're you going to do that?"

Eclipse cocked his leg back to throw another baseball.