It had stopped when it had covered her entire scalp and her eyes, spreading down the left side of her neck and infecting her front fore leg and over the small of her back to her right wing. And it was spreading bit by bit, hour by hour, day by day, and there was nothing Shortbeak could do to stop it. Amelia couldn’t walk, she couldn’t see, she could barely hear, and Shortbeak knew, someday, she wouldn’t even be able to open her mouth. The ashen plague, the doom of Kernistad, Henorivale, and worse names besides, had been infectious and had killed thousands hundreds of years ago. Everything that had been done to treat Amelia indicated it was the exact same illness, yet nogriffon ever got infected.