Breaking Quarantine

Star's eyes widen at the turtle's fast pace. He quickly unfolded his wings and grabbed Distortion. He put him on his back again and flew away from the creature as fast as he could. "Why can't we have a break and not keep flying away?" He muttered, shaking his head at the feeling of pain coming back to him.

"Maybe it's flammable 'r somethin'." Distortion muttered to himself. As Star flew away with him on his back, he raised his rune gun in a weak telekinetic grip and fired at the creature.

As the two flew away, and Ician tried to fire his shot, nothing came out of the end of the barrel. The creature, unable to follow slowed back down to a more normal walk and continued it's trek along the skywalks. Below and above, the almost jungle like setting continued for some ways, but a break and sudden shift in the buildings could be seen a bit farther ahead. What exactly that shift was, was unclear at the moment though because of the distance.

Star kept flying, looking back at Distortion. "You doing better than before?" He asked, looking behind to make sure that things wasn't following. Seeing that it wasn't he turned his attention back forward. He squinted his eyes a little bit to see what the shift in front of them was.

"Eh. A little." Distortion shook the rune gun. "Ah, dammit, it ain't workin' anymore. I knew I shouldn't've overdone it." He tried shooting at the creature a few more times, just in case his gun decided to spontaneously fix itself.

As the creature was left behind, the clicks from the trigger of the rune gun being pulled, and the magic crystal hitting the burnt out rune, gradually became louder than it's thudding foot falls or the low bellows it made. Granted that wasn't the only interesting thing going on as the scenery was going through a rather spontaneous change around them. As abruptly as it had begun, the jungle scene was being left behind, and in it's wake was something almost as strange. Firstly, the greenery around the edge here was brown and dead, and beyond that so was everything that could be seen. The skywalk, the buildings, even the wrecks just looked like they were drained of moisture to the point where there wasn't even minuscule amounts of moisture left. Large piles of sand formed wherever a flat surface was, and more was rather steadily being added to this amount as the very rock and building material slowly disintegrated into more.

Star looks at Distortion. "I think you can stop shooting now." He said, turning his head back to look at the dry landscape. "Huh...Sand...Thaaaat's not odd one bit." He said, still flying and not bothering to land. He had his energy back, but his head still hurt a tiny bit. He had the energy to fly a bit more towards where they were heading. "Soo....You want me to land somewhere or keep flying?" He asked Distortion, keeping his eyes peeled for anything dangerous.

"I dunno. Whatever ya feel like." Distortion muttered, gazing forlornly at the burnt-out rune gun. "Jus' one day and I wrecked it already... I feel a little bad. I prob'ly shoulda taken better care of it."

Star chuckled a little. "Yeah you should. That thing is basically the the only thing you have to protect yourself with. How'd ya even do that do the gun?" He asked, still flying forward. "Oh! What were you hit in the head with? You never told me and I'm still concerned."

"A few bricks." Distortion mumbled. "Nothin' too serious. But enough ta give me one heck o' a headache." He rubbed his wound lightly, wincing. "Seems ta have dried now."

He gazed forlornly at the gun. "I think I boosted the magic too high. Should've known better."

"Bricks...Ouch..." She shook his head slowly, looking down at the many piles of sand. "I don't know anything about magic, so try to keep conversations about it nonexistent. But if you want a lot of uhhs and confused faces, then go ahead and talk about magic." He said, not trying to sound...mean, but more or less just stating a fact.

"A'right." Distortion gave a tired but mischievous smile. "I'll remember to talk more about magic when I'm feelin' better then. A conversation ain't a conversation without a little awkwardness."

The sand filled area seemed to go on for quite a ways, and with no real breaks in sight. Occasionally a pile would shift but it was impossible to tell why. It could have been something underneath or something falling onto it, some sand could have finally lost it's grip and fell, or maybe what it was sitting on just buckled a little more under the weight. Either way, the sands simply continued on downwards, some even falling the entire way to the bottom lying far below.

"I...have a feeling you're gonna talk about magic..." Star muttered, watching as some of the sand moved. He looked up into the sky to see how much time of daylight they had left until the sun set. He somewhat didn't want to fly out here during the night, not sure what lurked out here in the night.

"O'course." Distortion chuckled dryly. "I'm not one ta give up a chance like that." He looked down at the moving sand. "Now that's strange. I wanna go and get a closer look at 'em sometime."

"At what the sand? I can stop and you can look at it if you want." Star said, stopping mid flight and hovered in the spot he stopped. He landed on one of the skywalks and lowered himself so Distortion could get off. "I need a break from flying anyways." He stretched his wings a little bit and sat down.

On the ground, the sand gritted under the two ponies hooves, but other than the near constant flow of sand all around them, nothing else seemed to move in this seemingly barren section of the city. A thing to note though was the dryness of everything. Even the air was noticeably dry and arid in this landscape, which just chocked another thing down on the list of things that shifted so suddenly in just a couple blocks. Surrounding them were plenty more buildings, most of which in their partial conversion into sand.

"Huh." Distortion tested the sand beneath his hooves. "Maybe there's something underneath..." He began digging into the sand halfheartedly with his forehooves.

Star looked as Distortion dug into the sand. "Aye, be careful. We don't know what's under that sand, if anything. Could be another one of 'em beast we ran from coming here." He said, ready to grab his sword if he really needed to. He doubted there was anything under the sand, but he'd better be safe than sorry.

"Eh." Distortion shrugged. "What's the worst that could happen, right?" He continued digging.

After a little digging, Dis would find something, but it probably wasn't quite what was expected. Removing enough of the sand revealed the beginnings of a skull, the hollow eye socket looking at nothing anymore as it laid there partially buried in the sand.

"Oh... huh." Distortion stared at the skull in obvious curiosity. "I wonder how this got here." He dug in deeper.

Star got up and peeked over Distortion's shoulder to see what he found. "...Is that a skull...?" He stood there, shaking a little bit. "Not what I was expecting..." He backed away from the sand a little bit and sat down again. "I think I have an idea of how that got there..." He muttered quietly, scanning the area around them to make sure nothing snuck up on them.

With more digging, more of the skeleton became visible until they had the entire skeleton of a pony before them. A number of the bones had also started the breakdown into sand, especially the thinner wing bones.

"These've been here for some time..." Distortion mused. "Some kinda predator 'r somethin'?" He sifted through the bones, trying to analyse the conditions - such as marks of fighting, unnatural breakage, fractures, basically anything that may have signalled that there was a fight at some point.