//------------------------------// // Treacherous Ascent // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// The piece of the wreckage turned out to be much farther away than Rarity had thought it was when she first set out to it. It took her and Gyro nearly half an hour of walking just to get close to it, and then they realized that it stuck out of the water some, across a shallow channel separating the spires of rock from the main island. Both mares had to splash across the channel in water up to their chests to get beneath the spires and the piece of the Concordia between them. “That’s pretty high up there,” Gyro said, craning her neck back. “We have to climb all the way up, don’t we?” “My horn certainly isn’t in any condition to levitate us up to it,” Rarity said, rubbing the ivory projection on her skull with a salty hoof. “We’ll have to do it the hard way.” Gyro sighed and trudged toward the base of the rocky outcropping, searching for a hoofhold to start her ascent. “I hate the hard way,” she grumbled as she began to climb, testing each rock with steady hooves before moving on. “The hard way sucks.” Rarity followed suit, trying to match Gyro’s hoofsteps and motions—after all, if the rocks could support the larger, slightly heavier mare, then they could support her as well. “You’re so insistent that we call you an engineer, but from what I’ve seen in my experience, engineers thrive on solving hard problems.” “Different kind of engineer,” Gyro retorted. “Besides, all engineers have one thing in common: they’re always trying to find an easier shortcut to solving a hard problem. That’s why they make engines, or taller buildings, or higher order mathematics and differential equations and thermodynamics and shit.” “I suppose that makes sense in a way…” Rarity waited while Gyro plotted her next move, the gray mare ultimately settling on a dangerous climb on hoofholds barely more than three inches wide. Rarity watched her ascend, studying the way the mechanic contorted her body to grab at the hoofholds, and swallowed hard when Gyro finally made it to a wider outcropping. “Celestia, it just can’t be easy, can it?” Gyro looked back over her shoulder since there wasn’t enough room where she stood to turn around. “Don’t worry, Rarity, it only gets worse from here!” Rarity glowered at Gyro. “You can’t be serious!” “Nope! One hundred percent serious!” she looked the other way and shuddered. “I need to jump to the next ledge from here, but after that it shouldn’t get too much worse. Maybe.” “Heavens above,” Rarity muttered. She looked straight up, where she could see a bit of wood jutting out into open air. “Rainbow Dash?! Darling?! Are you up there?! I’d rather not have to climb the whole way up just to see if you’re there or not, so if you’re up there, could you please come down?!” Silence answered her, silence save for the crashing of the waves against the rocks below her. Pursing her lips, Rarity took a deep breath and tensed her muscles. “It’s never simple with that mare,” she muttered to herself, and with a nervous step, she began to navigate the almost vertical climb up to the next ledge. Her legs began to scream in protest as she reached and stretched, trying to pull her entire bodyweight up to the next hoofhold using only one or two hooves. The rocky grit grinded against the steel covering her hooves, and she feared that they’d slip at any moment, sending her to a terrifying plunge into the stony shoal beneath her. She didn’t dare look down, though. To look down would’ve caused her to panic, and if she panicked, she knew she’d slip and fall. So she forced herself onwards and upwards, twisting and stretching to make it to the last hoofhold. When she did, she hauled herself up next to Gyro and collapsed, panting and shaking. “This is too much,” she managed between shaky breaths. “I should have stayed on the ground!” “We’re almost there,” Gyro said, eyeing up the next portion of the climb. “Take a moment to breathe, and get ready to catch me in your magic or something if I fall.” “My poor horn,” Rarity whined. “I simply won’t be able to give it a rest, will I?” “So long as you don’t split it, we’ll need all the magic you can afford while we’re up here,” Gyro countered. Then, with pale blue eyes set on a rocky ledge, Gyro moved forward and wiggled her rump from side to side like a cat ready to pounce. “Gonna jump in three, two, one—!” Her hooves struck out against the stone, propelling her through the air and toward the ledge on the other side. Rarity bit down on her lip and let magic begin to build on her horn just in case, but Gyro managed to make it to the other side—mostly. Her upper body hit the ledge but her hind legs kicked at thin air, scrambling for purchase on a surface that wasn’t there. Grunting and wincing, the mechanic puffed her cheeks out and hauled herself up the rest of the way using only her forelegs, rolling onto her back once she finally was fully on the ledge. Rarity sighed in relief and let her magic fizzle away. “That was too close, Gyro,” she said. “How in the world am I going to make this jump?” “I don’t know, use unicorn cheats or something.” Gyro rolled back onto her stomach and raised her head. “Can’t you do things with your magic? I mean, if you could levitate yourself out of the temple and propel a raft across open water, then surely using it to extend a jump shouldn’t be too hard. The only limitation to magic is how you use it, right?” “That and how much mana I can squeeze out of my horn per second,” Rarity said. She inched closer to the ledge she was standing on and sucked on her lower lip as she looked down. Sharp rocks jutted out of frothy white waves slamming against the base of the rocky spires about eighty feet below her. “This is not how I imagined I’d perish,” she muttered almost to herself, instinctively taking a nervous step back from the edge. Gyro waved her over. “Come on, just believe in yourself. I’ll catch you if I have to. You’ll be fine!” “Easy for you to say…” Swallowing hard, Rarity inched backwards until her hind legs were right on the edge of the platform. With as much room to build up speed as she could find, Rarity took a few deep breaths to slow her heart and line up her jump. “Here goes nothing!” She lowered her head and charged directly for the edge, building up the speed she’d need to clear the jump. Right before she reached the edge, she shifted the placement of her hooves to emulate the stance Rainbow usually took before she launched herself off of something. As soon as all four of her hooves lined up on the edge of the ledge, she kicked off, stretching herself for all it was worth. She even gave herself a boost with her telekinesis as well, pushing her hooves further after they separated from the ground. Below her, the drop to the shoal opened up into an infinite plunge, and for a moment, she felt like she was straddling a line between flying and falling. Then her hooves made contact with stone, and her momentum carried her forward into a fuzzy gray wall. Gyro wrapped her forelegs around Rarity’s shoulders and held her tight before she could bounce back and fall off the ledge. After a moment for them both to regain their balance, Gyro let go of Rarity and shuffled back a bit, giving her more space on the ledge. “That was a good jump,” she said. “You got more distance than I did.” “A little magic goes a long way,” Rarity murmured, still somewhat dazed at the adrenaline surge running through her veins. “But I’m here now. So… I guess I did it.” “Yeah, you did,” Gyro said, patting Rarity’s shoulder. Then her head tilted back, and she frowned at the dozens of feet of rock they still had to scale. “Good thing the fun’s not over yet…”