[Midnight Park]

Nope.

Requiem can't take any more at this point. She's unceremoniously reduced to a heap of charred, clotted gloom. Her body continues to lay there on the ground, the torrent of liquid shadow spewing from her neck stump slowing to a mere trickle.

It'll be a few minutes yet before the first responders arrive to begin trying to douse the flames. The fire will likely have difficulty spreading far, given how damp and cold the lower stories of the forest are. Not exactly an ideal place for a forest fire.

Meanwhile!

Originally Nightlight was just coming to check on his friend. He's a little surprised when he notices her sand cart sitting alone and unattended, but this wouldn't be the first time that has happened. "Hey Req! You left your cart all alone again!" he calls out as he trots along, a box of candied daisies hanging in the air next to him suspended in his TK field.

Silence meets him.

"Req? Hey, what's up? You aren't chasing squirrel shadows around again, are you?" he yells off into the forest. With a frown, Nightlight trots over to the cart and his heart stops. Requiem's rake burned to cinders. Her sand garden ruined by hoof and foot prints. A spattering of gloomy blood. Nightlight drops his box and reaches out with his magic, illuminating the area around him.

There.

Hoofprints in the forest floor. Footprints, too. Req ran. The other thing chased her.

"No..."

Nightlight gallops off as fast as his hooves can take him. The smell of smoke grows ever stronger. And the smell of spilled blood. The infernal orange glow of flames flickers and dances between the trees, casting shadows long and hard. Then he sees it, his friend sprawled across the ground and a blazing pyre fire not too distant from her. He closes the gap in a hard gallop, stumbling once along the way as his hoof crunches into something brittle and dusty. "Requiem! Req! Are you okay?" the unicorn shadeling calls out as he slows to a canter, then to a trot. "...Req...?"

Her head is gone.

Nightlight moves in a daze, his mind unable to process what he's seeing. "Req...? Come on, Req, this isn't funny." He places a hoof on the body and begins to shake it. "Req? Requiem! Get up! Please... oh God... please don't be dead. No... no no nonono..." he sobs as he falls across his lost friend and gives a keening wail of despair and anguish.