This story is a spin-off of the Changelings in a World of Foes series.

Charybdis is your typical young, adventurous filly with a long streak of recklessness. She lives in the town of Baltimare, and has a very loving family. But, after her mother comes down with a supposedly incurable and fatal illness, her life takes a turn for the worse.

While her father is away tending to his wife at the hospital in Ponyville, Charybdis's "cousin," a book-loving changeling named Skia, is sent to watch her. Unable to just sit and do nothing while her mother suffers, Charybdis looks to the local legends that say a cure for any disease can be found in the heart of the neighboring Gloomwood Forest; a place wrought with danger, where no soul has ever returned from alive, and in which almost everything will want to eat you.

But she's more than up to that kind of challenge.