//------------------------------// // The Changing Tide // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// Rainbow heaved and pulled at the rocks blocking the hallway, stopping only to wipe some of the sweat from her brow. Though she’d originally been gung-ho about getting past the cave-in, exhaustion was starting to take its toll on her. Moving hundreds of pounds of rocks out of a hallway was slow and tedious without any tools or Rarity’s magic, and more than once she winced as a rock chipped or cracked her hoof. Though most pegasi didn’t wear shoes, she was starting to wish that she had some protective steel covering them like Rarity did. They must have been at it for two or three hours before they managed to open a gap in the hallway. Rolling the last stone out of place, Rainbow collapsed onto her flanks and tried to slow her panting. “We’re… we’re through!” she exclaimed, weakly smiling. “Take that, you stupid cave-in! Rainbow, one, rocks, zero!” Rarity raised her head from across the hall. “It certainly wasn’t an easy fight…” “Yeah, but now we can see what else is down here!” With a deep breath and a grunt, Rainbow found her hooves again and wobbled a bit as she stood up. She waited until Rarity stood too before working her way over to the gap in the rocks. “We should be able to squeeze through right here. Mind Mr. Bones, though.” “Shouldn’t we do something about the skeleton, though?” Rarity said, eyeing the still half-buried remains. “We should at least lay them to rest.” Rainbow turned around and cocked her eyebrow. “You wanna do more digging right now to get him out of there?” “Mrff…” Rarity scrunched her muzzle. “Not particularly…” “It’s underground, I’m sure that’s good enough. Now come on!” Wiggling her rear end like a cat about to pounce, Rainbow put her hooves on the gap in the rocks and started pulling herself through. “Let’s see what we’ve got!” Squeezing through the gap wasn’t too much of a problem for a pony as small as Rainbow, though the rocks did chafe and scratch at her coat. If anything, the thick vines binding her wing to her side caused most of the problem. The rocks tried to grab and claw at them, and any time she leaned too hard on the broken wing, it felt like somepony whacked her in the side with a sledgehammer. But with a little squirming and careful maneuvering she made it through to the other side, her hooves nearly slipping out from under her on a thin layer of slimy algae. She frowned and brushed the slime off on the nearby wall, then turned back to the gap where Rarity was watching her from the other side. “What do you see over there?” Rarity asked. Rainbow looked the other way and squinted into the darkness. “Not much. Toss the torch through.” Rarity disappeared for a moment and Rainbow saw the shadows shift on the other side of the rocks. A moment later, Rarity returned, the shortening torch held in her mouth. She spat it through the rocks and grimaced. “It’s getting awfully short, Rainbow,” she warned. “I don’t think there’s more than an hour left on it.” “Hopefully we’ll be in and out by then,” Rainbow said. “Now come on through and we can take a look ahead.” She picked up the torch and stood back a few strides to give Rarity room to squeeze through. With a sigh, Rarity climbed through the gap in the rocks, grunting and wincing as they poked at her delicate sides. With a little effort, she too forced her way past, and she gingerly placed her hooves down on the slimy floor. “I can’t wait to do that the other way,” she said. “But let’s hurry on for the time being. I do not want to be trapped down here when the torch goes out.” Rainbow shrugged; she wanted to tell Rarity that there was only one way in and one way out so far, so getting lost would be difficult, but she couldn’t speak very well with the torch in her mouth. Instead, she led the way further down the hall, sliding the torch a bit further to the left to keep the burning end away from her face. The heat the flame threw off was already making her uncomfortable, and the soot started sticking to the sweat on her cheek. The hallway went on for a short while before it opened up into yet another room, this one larger than the others they’d seen so far. Its ceiling vaulted up twenty feet, and the rough remains of statues lined the walls. There were several sconces for torches, and Rainbow quickly deposited the remains of her torch into one so she wouldn’t have to carry it anymore. Its light illuminated pictograms and glyphs higher up on the wall, faded almost to oblivion, and threw long shadows across the floor. Rainbow Dash was nearly speechless. She’d gone to a hoofful of temples and ancient ruins with Daring Do before, but this one felt even more special. She’d discovered it without Daring’s help, and now it was just her and Rarity writing their own story. Even if they couldn’t figure out what these ruins were, it was certainly something she couldn’t wait to share with her friend when she got back home. “This is amazing,” Rarity breathed, her blue eyes wandering over every weathered detail in the chamber. “We must be under the south hill right now. There’s nowhere else on the island that raises this high up!” “To think that there was all this awesome stuff right under our hooves the whole time!” Rainbow exclaimed. She was practically ready to start hopping around in excitement. “Who built this place? What was it for? What’s that?” She trotted closer to a large stone dais in the middle of the room. It was nearly ten feet in diameter and intricately carved and inlaid with gold. Unlike everything else in the room, it still seemed to be in pristine condition. The edges where ancient chisels had worked stone were still crisp and sharp, and the four raised mounds on the dais were perfect to every last detail. It didn’t take Rainbow too long to recognize one of them based on its large hill and horseshoe-like coast. “This is some kind of map!” she exclaimed, pointing to their island while Rarity curiously stalked closer. “See? That’s our island! And those are the other islands around here!” “A map?” Rarity asked. “But… but why would there be a map this detailed underground? And if the rest of the place is so horribly weathered and destroyed, why is this table so pristine?” “I dunno, but there has to be something special about it!” She looked around the room again, and this time she raised her eyes slightly to four pedestals surrounding the dais. They all looked nearly identical save for intricate carvings on each, each depicting the four kinds of pony: pegasus, unicorn, earth, and crystal. Only the lattermost of the four had something resting on it in the form of a gemstone statuette of a crystal pony. Rarity saw it too and frowned. “Where are the other three?” she asked. “The collection is incomplete.” “Good question,” Rainbow said. She began to snoop around the columns, wondering if maybe they’d just fallen off. “There has to be something more about this place. You don’t just put a big temple thingy underground with all these weird statues and stuff for it to do—hello!” She bent over and picked up a waterproof sack lying on the ground. She could tell from the weight that there was still something inside, so she moved it to the dais to get a closer look. “Hey, Rares, check this out!” she said, unfastening the sack’s opening. She dumped the contents out, revealing crumpled parchment and a small notebook. “This must’ve been that pony’s notes!” Rarity started walking over to Rainbow but stopped and cocked her head. “Rainbow, do you hear that?” she asked, looking back the way they came. “It sounds like… water.” Rainbow blinked in surprise and swung both her ears in Rarity’s direction. Sure enough, she heard the sound of waves slapping against stone. Her eyes drifted to the stone around them, where she saw and obvious waterline at their chest height. “The tide,” she breathed, sharing a concerned look with Rarity. “Crap! Half this place is underwater when the tide comes in! That’s why all those paintings and stuff down there were worn to nothing!” She shoved the contents of the pouch back inside and slung it over her shoulders. Rarity watched with horror as the torch on the wall sputtered once or twice, barely giving out any more light. Her eyes darted to the walls and she chewed on her lip. “The water doesn’t fill this room,” she said, eyeing the hallway nervously. “We could stay here and wait it out.” “If you want to spend six hours with water up to our necks, then sure,” Rainbow said, pushing past her. “Grab the torch! We need to go!” She didn’t wait to see if Rarity did as she was told; she needed to see where the water was at. A quick gallop took her back to the cave-in they’d partially cleared earlier, and she flung the satchel through the gap before she tried to squeeze in after it. Once she picked it up again, she scrambled to the staircase and looked down, only to watch in horror as the water lapped against the stone steps about halfway down. The light caught up with her as Rarity squirmed through the gap, and then she stopped at Rainbow’s side. She looked down at the water and her pupils shrank in fear. “That’s nearly above our heads,” she worriedly whispered, dropping the torch. “We can’t get out through there!” “We have to swim through it now,” Rainbow said. “A few more minutes, and it’s gonna be at the ceiling of that hallway.” She swallowed hard and turned to Rarity. “Leave the torch here and grab onto my tail. I’ll lead the way.” Rarity looked at the water once more, then back at Rainbow. “Rainbow, are you sure?” “Hey, Rares,” Rainbow said, putting her hooves on Rarity’s shoulders. “Do you trust me?” Rarity’s throat bobbed, but she shakily nodded. “Okay,” Rainbow said, nuzzling Rarity’s cheek. “Just hold on. We’ll get out of here.” She turned around and waited until she felt a tug on the end of her tail. Then, adjusting her bag, she stepped down into the water. Normally, the water was warm when she was in the sun, but below the ground, it felt deceptively chilly. And the further down the stairs she went, the higher it rose, until she was paddling to keep her nose above the water. With the feeble light of the torch behind them, she looked over her shoulder to make sure Rarity was doing okay. Though she got a worried look from Rarity, whose horn was scraping the ceiling as she tried to keep her nose in the air pocket, the unicorn nodded, tugging a little on Rainbow’s colorful tail, firmly clenched between her teeth. With that encouragement, Rainbow pushed onwards, making agonizingly slow progress. She could feel the tide trying to push her and Rarity back into the chamber, but she fought and struggled against it. The water came in surges in lulls, and she would try to brace herself against the wall with the surges and swim forward in the lulls. In that way, her and Rarity made it to the first room—the first, dark room. Rainbow took several breaths now that she had a higher ceiling to work with and she wasn’t feeling crushed between stone and water. She could hear Rarity panting behind her, but the unicorn refused to let go of Rainbow’s tail. And after a minute more of breathing, they pushed onwards into the last passageway, this one too short to hold any air against the ceiling. Rainbow knew that they almost had to do it all in one go, so she pushed as hard as she could, trying to use her wing like an oar to propel herself through the water. Her tail tugged on her dock as she towed Rarity’s weight behind her, but she pushed on. There wasn’t any air here, and she knew there wouldn’t be any in the cave. Their only bet was to get outside before they ran out of air. The salt stung her eyes, but she forced them open anyway. The glittering sun danced through the waves not too far ahead of her, and just the sight of it gave her enough inspiration to push onward just a little bit more. Without wasting any time, she pushed and swam and struggled, and just when she felt her lungs were about to burst—air. Rainbow sucked down as much air as she could, coughing lightly. Rarity emerged next to her with a splash, heaving and coughing. Together, the two ponies managed to ride the surf into the nearby rocks, and there they laid, clinging to solid ground for dear life while they recovered their breath. When her heart slowed down a bit, Rainbow rolled onto her back. Rarity still panted lightly at her side, and her eyes were closed, but the relief on the unicorn’s face was almost palpable. When Rainbow shifted toward Rarity, the fashionista opened one beautiful, blue eye. “We’re alive,” she breathed. “I didn’t think we’d get out of there!” Rainbow didn’t waste any time with words. She just pushed her muzzle against Rarity’s and closed her eyes. Rarity didn’t struggle.