//------------------------------// // A Shadow Too Thick // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// “What the fuck was that?!” “Why did all the lights go out!” “Who screamed? Who was that scream?” “Somepony make a light, quick, quick!” Rainbow Dash squinted as the three unicorns managed to pull tiny spots of light onto their horns, just barely enough to illuminate their surroundings. By the looks of exertion on the unicorns’ faces, Rainbow knew they were trying to brighten their horns, but they couldn’t manage to summon anything more than a pale glow, barely enough to even see the outline of the walls around them. “Can’t you brighten it?” Flag growled, whirling about and staring down the inky shadows that seemed to be encroaching on them from all sides. “It’s fucking dark!” “I’m trying, jackass!” Hayseed spat back. “It’s as bright as I can make it!” “Then all you unicorns are doing a pretty bad job at something this simple!” “It’s the darkness itself,” Ratchet concluded. He walked over to what Rainbow could barely tell was a wall and stuck his hoof out. She flinched back when she realized she could actually see the shadows flowing over his hoof like a waterfall of abyssal molasses. One of the unicorns moved their head lower to the ground, and there Rainbow could see the thick shadows piling up like sludge on top of the water. “What the actual shit…” Hayseed murmured to herself. “This night just keeps getting worse and worse,” Bearings said. Swallowing hard, he turned to Rainbow and shook his head. “We are way out of our league here. Whatever is happening is too much for us to deal with!” “We’re dealing with god magic here,” Flag said. “It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together and see what’s going on. You idiots let some sort of elder deity out of its cage, and now we’re all going to pay the price!” “We don’t know it’s anything like that!” Rainbow spat back at him. “We don’t know what any of this is!” “And that’s just the problem!” Flag marched forward until he was nearly nose to nose with Rainbow. “We don’t know what you’ve done, what you’ve unleashed on these islands, and frankly, I don’t want to find out! If it is an evil moon god unicorn—!” “That’s stupid!” Rainbow shouted back at him. “Only Luna can do moon stuff with the moon!” “That you know of!” “Yeah, and I’m not going to draw stupid conclusions just because some Ponynesian primitives thought they knew how everything worked!” “And you do?!” “Better than they do, I guarantee it!” Rainbow aggressively puffed out her chest and flared her wingtips, trying to make up for her height disadvantage against the pirate. “I don’t know what this stuff is all about, but I’m not going to believe for a second that these gods the Ponynesians worshipped are actually real without more proof!” Flag gestured all around them with an outstretched hoof. “What more do you need, you flippant, gay jackass?! Everything about this temple has been dedicated to this moon god! All this evil magic we’ve seen has to deal with the moon and darkness! I don’t know what more you want that’ll convince you otherwise!” “How about some solid proof instead of just making assumptions—!” “Can we please calm down?!” Ratchet shouted, stepping between the two of them and forcing them apart. After shooting an angry glare at each pony, he pensively blew a breath through his nose and calmed himself down. “Arguing about this is not going to get us anywhere. But what we can do is get out of here and regroup. Whatever it was that Soft Step and the other possessed pony were trying to do, I think they’ve done it, because this is hardly what I’d call natural.” “What we need to do is find Rarity!” Rainbow protested. She jumped some more on the shielded section of water and stomped her hooves in frustration. “If we can just get past this shield—!” “If you do that, you’re gonna fucking die, bluebird,” Hayseed spat at her. “I don’t want to face whatever’s in there.” “Because you’re a cowardly bitch who preys on other ponies for a living!” Rainbow stomped her hoof, sending a little splash of water and shadow away from her. “I shouldn’t even listen to you!” Hayseed growled and started to stomp forward. “Want to say that to my face, cunt?” Clever Ruse quickly grabbed the pirate mare with his magic and pulled her back into line. “We can’t get at each other’s throats,” he said. “Not now. Not while we don’t know what we’re dealing with.” Ratchet advanced on Rainbow and rested a hoof on her shoulder. “I know Rarity’s a smart mare, and she’d figure some way out of what’s going on in there. But we can’t stay here and blindly tackle this foe head on. We need to be smart about this, and that means falling back and regrouping.” Rainbow fidgeted and looked again at the water beneath her hooves. “But…” “We’re not getting anywhere with this,” Bearings said, trying to help convince Rainbow to move. “Let’s get out of the temple and regroup with Champagne. We need to figure things out from there and plan our next move.” Reluctantly, Rainbow hung her head and trudged off the barrier of water. “Fine,” she grumbled, pushing her way through the other ponies. “Let’s get back to the moonlight and actually talk about this. The sooner we can get that done, the sooner we can go find Rarity.” ----- Power. Raw power. It was an exhilarating high that Soft Step had never experienced before. She felt like she could do anything. Whatever she wanted, whatever she desired, she could make real with her willpower alone. But whenever she thought about things she could do as an all-powerful alicorn, it felt like a set of hooves redirected her thoughts and attentions elsewhere. Somepony or something guided her mind along a path it desired, and Soft Step was only barely perceptive of it, like an itch in the back of her mind. But right now, all she wanted to do was use her new powers for His glory and to help facilitate His return. She’d already accomplished the first part in retrieving His horn, and by melding it to her skull, she’d been granted some of His power. She would need it to undo the humiliation and curse that had persisted for far, far too long. Her magic flowed from her new horn with a thought, a mere desire, and it startled Soft Step at first. She had been a pegasus in a past life, but now she had a horn and magic. It was fickle and difficult to control, but powerful and easy to bend to her will when she knew what she wanted. And what she wanted right now was a mirror to admire how He had altered her form to better suit His needs. With just a thought, one appeared in front of her, a shiny obsidian surface surrounded by dripping black magic. It showed a tall mare with a deep, dark green coat, slitted eyes, sharp fangs, and a mane that seemed to drip darkness and starlight from her scalp like the oily shadows running down the walls. Her horn—His horn—was long, pronounced, and lethally sharp, curved back slightly and seemingly flitting in and out of existence with the aura of dark magic surrounding it, sucking up what little light even remained in the chamber. The extent to which her body had been twisted and modified shocked Soft Step, but it also brought her great pleasure. She was a beautiful vessel for His return, and she would do everything in her power to make it happen. She let the mirror fizzle away and looked up at His statue looming over the altar. Everything about Him was so perfect and powerful. She felt honored to be sculpted into His image. Striding around the altar on uncomfortably long legs, she stopped in front of the statue and flared her great, dark wings, fluttering up just enough to see eye to eye with the statue. “Your return approaches,” she said in a deep, smoky, silver voice. “We must only recover one thing and perform the final ritual. Then, you shall be made whole again, and the world will be swallowed by the dark.” The statue seemed to whisper back to her. She could feel it in her very core. It told her what she had to do and how to do it. It told her of its plans and how they would bear fruit. And finally, it gave her a command. Grinning, Soft Step dropped to the ground and bared her razor sharp teeth, letting dark magic build on her horn, soaked out of the shadows of the room. “Yes… an army sounds like a wonderful idea…”