Soft Step stood next to the obsidian altar in His shrine, watching one of His thralls place itself down on the stone for her. It was all that they were good for, now that the others had figured out how to counter their enthralling powers. He had already lost two of His four thralls: one to death, and the other as a vessel for His power. Now, Soft Step would sacrifice the third to expand His power and bequeath upon Him an army of His faithful.
The thrall lied down on the altar with its neck exposed and forelimbs crossed over its chest, eyes focused on the statue of its lord overhead. Its muscles twitched and occasionally spasmed as the remains of the pony within tried to break free, but it was too weak to resist. Like a wolf, Soft Step stood over the helpless thrall and let her tongue slide over her sharp teeth before she opened her maw and sank them into the thrall’s neck.
The taste of warm blood flooded her mouth and crimson dribbled down her chin. The thrall gasped and spasmed wildly as it bled out on the altar, but within a minute, it finally fell still. Only then did Soft Step release her bite on its throat and stepped back, reveling in the adrenaline-inducing smell of blood. The altar upon which the sacrifice had been made began to glow, and with its power, she gathered magic and began to cast a spell.
“Rise, warriors,” she commanded, her shadowy voice permeating every crack of the tomb’s stones. “Your wait is over. Your lord is returning, and He calls upon you to serve once more.”
-----
Gyro couldn’t sleep—not like she made much of an effort to do so anyway. Ever since Champagne’s frantic return and the sallying forth of almost everypony in the camp, she couldn’t bring herself to search for rest when she knew something big was going down in the jungle. So she’d remained awake, her eyes turned toward the interior of the island in the hopes of seeing her friends return safe and sound.
But there hadn’t been much activity from the heart of the islands yet, and she was starting to get bored. Coupled with her exhaustion from being up all night, she was starting to find it hard to keep her eyes open. At the very least, the crippling pain in her back had faded into a dull ache that only flared up if she moved around too much. It would’ve been surprisingly easy for her to sleep had she actually wanted to.
Fluttering wings snapped her back to reality before she could doze off. Jerking her head upright (and wincing at the pain in her spine), Gyro saw Stargazer land in the middle of the camp in front of her, another pony on his back. “Doctor!” he shouted, immediately trotting toward the hut. “Gauze! We’ve got wounded!”
Doctor Gauze emerged from inside his hut, looking remarkably awake for staying up nearly all night. Adjusting his glasses and blinking away any lingering bits of sleep clinging to his eyes, he trotted over to Stargazer and immediately looked the other pony over, who Gyro quickly recognized as Fresh Linens. “What happened to her?” Gauze asked, lifting the mare with his magic and shifting her to his operating table. “What’s going on at the tomb?”
“It’s like Champagne said,” Stargazer replied, sitting down in the sand after his frantic flight back to the camp. “Soft Step, Blow Off, and two pirates are possessed. Soft Step and one of the pirates went deeper into the temple while all of us ended up fighting Blow Off and the other possessed pirate. One of them bit her.” Swallowing hard, he took a step closer. “Is she… is she going to make it?”
Gauze shoved him back through the sand with his magic to clear some space around the table. “Not if you hover over me and prevent me from working,” he growled. His horn flared and numerous tools flew into his magical grasp, and he immediately set to work on Linen’s neck. Gyro noted that the mare didn’t seem to be moving or even breathing, but if Gauze had decided to frantically treat her, then she had to still be alive.
Stargazer chewed on his lower lip for a few seconds before shuffling back to the entrance of the hut. There, he stopped next to Gyro, who went back to staring out at the jungle because looking over her shoulder into the interior of the hut was becoming too painful. “What’s going on at the temple?” she asked him. “Are Rainbow and Rarity okay? Anypony else hurt?”
“We managed to capture Blow Off, and Linens was the only one who got hurt,” Stargazer said. “Rainbow’s down there taking charge right now, but we don’t know where Rarity is.”
“You don’t know where Rarity is?” Gyro’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
“We found a door that we could only get open a crack, so Rarity teleported through the gap and started exploring it. She’s somewhere really deep in the tomb right now.”
“But… but she’s okay, right?” Gyro asked. If Rarity was deep in the tomb behind a door that couldn’t open and could move through it via teleportation, then hopefully that would keep her safe from anything bad sneaking up on her.
“Soft Step and the other pirate broke the door down and went through it right before we fought Blow Off’s pair.” Stargazer nervously shuffled his hoof through the sand. “She’s on her own, but everypony else was running off to get to her, hopefully before Soft Step does. She should be fine; it’s just two of them against her and seven of us, and so long as you don’t look at their eyes, they can’t even do much against you.”
Though Gyro was still worried for her friend, she at least lowered her guard. “Okay,” she said. “That’s good to hear. But what did you guys find in the tomb?”
“A lot of bodies, as one would expect.” Stargazer shrugged. “A lot of statues to both the moon god and the sun god. We’re still not really sure what the place was built for other than to house the Ponynesians’ dead, but it has a lot to do with their gods, especially that moon god.”
“And if Soft Step and the others are ‘moonstruck’, I think Champagne called it, then it has to be related to him in some way.” After a moment to think, her mind led her down an unfortunate path, and she swallowed hard. “You… don’t think that we could be doing something really bad by exploring this tomb and even just getting it open in the first place, do you?”
Stargazer sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know. All I know is that it’s a lot more complicated than what we first thought. We’re messing with stuff that we don’t really understand.”
Gyro nodded and stared at the sand beneath her hooves. The grains had started casting shadows over their brethren, and when she looked to the sky, she saw the moon hanging low on the horizon, barely above the swaying trees around her. “Whatever’s going on at that temple, they need to finish it quickly. The moon’s not going to stay up there much longer.”
-----
Deep beneath the surface of the earth…
A small group of ponies wandered through the abyss. The lights they provided barely scratched at the darkness, and instead of chasing it away, they merely held it back. The water they trudged through seemed thick and suffocating, and black fog swirled around their chests, occasionally rising up far enough to obscure their vision. Even though her head was above the water, Rainbow felt like she was drowning.
“The exit was this way, right?” Straight Edges asked, his worried voice seemingly muffled by the shadows around them. “I can’t even see anything!”
“Don’t wander too far!” Ratchet warned the others. “If we lose sight of you, we might not ever find you again!”
Rainbow shivered and rose out of the water, flapping her wings and hovering above the group as best as she could. That was a scary thought, and not something she really wanted to consider. “It’s somewhere ahead of us,” Rainbow said. “Dead center of the cavern. It’s not like we could really miss it so long as we got our nightlights spread out, right?”
“This place was bigger than you give it credit for,” Bearings said. “You didn’t appreciate it all because you flew straight to the end.”
“Wish I could do that now…”
As she said that, a deep bass whine echoed through the cavern, almost like a moan. It persisted for many seconds, nearly a full minute, before it died away. In its place, terrifying stillness remained, save for the scared panting of the ponies stuck in the abyss.
“What was that?” Hayseed whispered. “That couldn’t have been good.”
“Do you see that?” Bearings said, pointing through the darkness. “There’s a light, up there!”
Rainbow turned in the direction and squinted. Sure enough, she saw a small blue light drifting through the darkness. It moved in jerky motions, but it was soon joined by another, and another. All around them, more and more of the lights began to appear, but it wasn’t until they got closer that Rainbow noticed they weren’t one blue light each, but two.
A low hiss and moan seemed to stretch out of the darkness around them, and each pony trembled in terror.
“Do… a-are those what I think they are?” Flag asked.
The first of the blue lights wandered within the corona of the unicorns’ lights. As soon as it did, Rainbow saw a skeletal muzzle, splitting, embalmed flesh, and eyes of glowing star fire, wrapped within decaying bandages.
“Run!” she screamed, already darting away from the walking corpse with her wings. “Get out of here! They’re everywhere!”