Armifera flattened her ears as Thea launched herself from the ground, the sonic boom buffeting her furiously. "Did I miss someth-" she began, only to stop as Sweeper gave her a "long story short".

"Wait, cult?" She asked, a dangerous gleam in her eye, "Oh, I'd have helped her out here, if that's the case." She scowled, "I'll need to ask her next time I see her, then." 

But of course, that would be a while, judging by the speeds at which Thea had... abruptly departed. Even if she'd been as fast as her sister unarmored, there was no way she would be able to catch up with her wearing the heavy metal plates. She gave a sigh, "Any... other news, then?" 

Instead of an answer her gaze was drawn suddenly to one of the mortals, who's name she hadn't been been present long enough to know, rushing over to the heap of fur and feathers lying beyond a pony shaped hole in a wall of charred bricks. It was only then that she noticed the other mortal who'd been present before her and Summer Winds' arrival was nowhere to be seen.

"Damnit." she cursed, flapping her wings and gliding over, she glared silently at the mortal stallion for a second, before saying quickly to Sweeper, "Let me take a look, I can't guarantee anything, but eons spent fighting things leaves one with a pretty decent knowledge of fixing injury."

The pegasus, Winterjet, lay on the ground, groaning in obvious discomfort. Pain lanced through her body, burning its way through her veins. She tried to move a leg but hissed violently as pain flared through her shoulder. 

[i]Great. Dislocated at best,[/i] she thought. It wasn’t difficult to figure that she’d taken quite the pounding, given how she felt like a punching bag after training. 

Another groan escaped her as she opened her eyes, only to find Armifera and Sweeper looking down at her. A faint smirk tugged at the edges of her lips, pulling it upwards in a grimace halfway between pain and playful arrogance. “What? Something on my face?” She croaked.

“You’ve made quite the dynamic entry through that wall, just so you know.” Armifera told her, “I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you’d appreciate some help? I’ve crashed through more than enough things to know what it takes to break bones and dislocate them.”

The pegasus attempted a chuckle but came up with only a cough, spitting out a small bit of blood. “Ugh. Dislocated leg, front eight, and right wing.” She took a moment to close her eyes and get a feel for the rest of her body. Taking a deep breath revealed a third injury. “Argh! That… hurt. Broken rib or two, and one hell of a bump on the back of my head, too, I think.” 

“That’s… surprisingly little.” Armifera said with a raised eyebrow, “That shouldn’t be too difficult to set and heal, really, if you’re patient.” She crouched down, “Let me see…” conjuring the same semi-physical magical cast she used whenever she needed to stop blood flow, or hold something in place, she cast an anesthetic spell over the mare, “Just in case you don’t like feeling me putting your bones back the way they should be.” She explained to the pegasus, just in case she felt the need to ask. She set the cast around the bones once she’d finished making sure they were in the proper alignment, throwing some energy in to help the body speed along it’s natural healing process. 

“I’m just going to push the leg back in the socket, you, hopefully, shouldn’t feel a thing.” she told her, taking the dislocated leg in her magic and easing it back into the socket, casting liberal amounts of the anesthetic spell over it, and the same magical cast on top, to hold things in place long enough for the muscles to heal themselves.

“As for your head, it’s probably a concussion, but I’m not risking accidentally destroying anything important to fix something I don’t know how to fix.” she explained apologetically, “But on the plus side, the magical cast I used should let you actually move around, instead of being stuck on a bed for a month or two.” The alicorn paused for a second, “I’m a bit curious, by the way, you should’ve been a lot worse, but you weren’t, and you seemed awfully aware of all the different parts that’d broken, how?” 

Winterjet winced as both her wing and leg were put back into their sockets, silently thanking the alicorn for reducing the pain. Having been forced to do the exact same thing on herself without anesthetics once made her appreciate the small amount of pain even more. 

“Thanks,” she managed. With a small bit of hesitance she moved her right front leg, finding only a dull ache left - the same went for her right wing. After a few moments she shuffled herself onto her belly and pushed herself up into a standing position, panting slightly. Painkiller spells or not, broken ribs hurt like hell. 

It took a few moments before she said anything else, at which point she looked up at the armoured alicorn with a cheeky grin. “As for how I took so little damage… this is why.” She unfurled her left with in one fluid and quick motion as if drawing a sword from its scabbard, and like a sword, her wing had a sharp edge to it. The front of her wing was covered in a layer of solid ice shaped into the likeness of a Wingblade. 

The grin never left her face even as the ice started to spread, crawling up the joint that connected her wing to her back, surrounding her neck and crawling down her back, barrel and haunches until she was practically covered in an entire set of armour made of ice. “Magic, really. With the help of this,” she brought a hoof to the snowflake shaped pendant studded with azure gems hanging around her neck, “empowers my natural abilities to create ice around my body at will. It isn’t for nothing that my name is Winterjet, as it is sorta an indication to how fast I can do it. The amulet also makes it tough as steel which is why it’s at all useful.” She flexed her wing and the ice shattered into a million tiny fragments that soon melted away, the rest of the ice-armour following. Her grin slowly reduced itself to a more neutral expression as she finished showing off. “I managed to cover by back in ice before I crashed through the wall. That’s what saved me.”

Armifera raised an eyebrow, “Now that,” she paused, “Is damn impressive, I must say.”

She looked the smaller mortal in front of her up and down, “Anything feel out of place? Think I missed anything?” She asked, returning to the ‘field surgeon’ mentality. Calling over to Summer Winds, she asked her, “Summer, do you have any of that whiskey you found the other day? I could use a bit, and probably her too.” She said, gesturing to Winterjet.

Summer nodded and walked forward, fishing out a small bottle of amber liquid, “Here ya’ go.” she replied, before asking, “Where did you learn all of that?”

Armifera smirked as she took a swig of the whiskey, offering it to Winterjet if she wanted any, “Eons of trial and error, my dear Summer Winds, mostly error, however.” with that she turned to the others present, “This is Summer Winds, by the way. I met her in a fateful encounter in which I dragged her into a crater of my own creation, spiraling down from the sky as I was.” 

“Sounds like how I got my cutie mark,” she noted, accepting the flask and passing it back after taking a sip. “Heavy winter, snowstorm. Crosswind threw me off and I nearly got impaled by a rock I crashed down on. I discovered my talent for making ice armour like this at that point… saved my life too.” A grimace came across her face, clearly indicating that she either didn’t like thinking about how she almost died getting her cutie mark or, the more likely one, that she didn’t much like the whiskey. 

“And no, nothing else feels out of place. Not dizzy or anything so I don’t think I got a concussion either. Armour took the blow for me.” A few moments passed with her not saying anything, her gaze drawn to the woods visible on the horizon. “I wonder why she got so angry,” she muttered. 

Armifera sighed, “You didn’t have to drink the whiskey if you didn’t want any, you know.” she said, before answering the actual question, “As to Thea, while I’m definitely not the best mare to ask, I’d wager she was either insulted, confused, or frustrated that she couldn’t seduce Arcon, again.”

She looked over at Sweeper and Arcon, “Speaking of which, I was an ass earlier Arcon, sorry about that. But how have all of you been doing? All I gathered so far is that some cultists angered Thea enough that she attempted to incorporate dramatic landscaping into one of her spheres of influence.”