When Rainbow trudged back into the survivors’ camp, she felt a little weight disappear from her shoulders. To even be standing at the fringes of the camp was a miracle she didn’t think she’d live to experience again. After the chaos and horrors unleashed upon them at the tomb, the fact that Rainbow had made it back to the camp in one piece almost seemed like a dream, too good to be true.
But it wasn’t perfect. The return to the camp was hardly the triumphant parade she’d been envisioning when she set out for the tomb early that evening. Instead, it was merely six ponies limping back to the camp, covered in scars and wounds, and heads hanging low in defeat. Neither was there any fanfare for their arrival. The camp had been emptied out when Champagne summoned reinforcements, and now many of those ponies lay dead beneath the earth, surrounded by mummies and other horrors. The failure of an expedition had sapped what few numbers and resources the ponies on the islands had left, even if it did reshuffle alliances from ‘pirates and survivors’ to ‘living and dead’.
Stargazer was the first of the survivors at the camp to meet the routed expedition. Though he at first enthusiastically flew over to the six ponies upon seeing their safe return, that enthusiasm harshly died when he realized nopony else followed. “What happened down there?” the pegasus asked. “Where’s Blow Off and Soft Step and the others?”
“We couldn’t save them,” Ratchet said, walking by the pegasus and into the center of the camp. “We weren’t ready for what was down there.”
Stargazer blinked in surprised and followed the six at a distance. The expedition crew sat down around the dead fire pit, staring at the burnt wood with a whole mixture of expressions. They ranged from dejected and defeated like Rainbow’s and Champagne’s to angry and anxious like the pirate brothers’. Confused and concerned, Stargazer approached the group but stood off to the side. “What do you mean?”
Before Ratchet could start to explain and recount the night’s events to Stargazer, Rainbow grunted and stood up, leaving the fire pit behind. Instead, she moved towards the doctor’s hut, spying the gray figure sprawled out in front of it with her eyes shut. Though Rainbow thought Gyro was asleep at first, she quickly noted that the mare’s ears were up and active, and her face betrayed her discomfort even more than her twitching and fidgeting hooves. Once she got within ear shot, a blue eye opened, and Gyro grimaced as she raised her head.
“Rainbow?” the mechanic asked, rubbing at her eyes. “You’re back?” Her face momentarily brightened upon seeing her friend, and the corners of her lips curved up. “Holy crap, with all the shit I was hearing from Stargazer and Champagne, I thought you’d all be moon zombies serving some god named Lenny or something. Glad to see I was worrying for nothing.” When Rainbow didn’t respond and Gyro noted the absence of a white unicorn at her side, her smile began to falter. “…Right?”
Rainbow groaned and sat down on the sand across from Gyro. “We failed,” she said. “We didn’t even get the statue and… a-and a lot of ponies died.”
Gyro swallowed hard. “Died? Not like… turned into moon zombies or anything like Soft Step?”
“Died,” Rainbow reiterated. “All the corpses in the tomb got up and started attacking us. Only the six of us got out of there alive.”
“And… Rarity?” Gyro nervously shifted a little closer to Rainbow, even if it aggravated her back. “Where is she? Stargazer said she’d gone to explore deeper into the tomb, and…?”
“I… don’t know.” Rainbow sighed and laid her head down on crossed forelegs. “Yeah, she went to explore the deeper parts of the tomb, but we weren’t able to get to her. We tried to follow her through after we subdued Blow Off and one of the pirates that’d been hypnotized or whatever, but there was some stupid friggin’ magic blocking the way. And then there was this really thick magical darkness that made it almost impossible to see, and when we tried to backtrack our way out of the tomb, we got attacked by mummies. It was awful.”
“But you don’t know what happened to Rarity, right?”
“No.” Rainbow’s hackles momentarily bristled, but she took a deep breath and calmed herself down, smoothing the feathers back down on her wings. “We weren’t able to get to her, but Soft Step and the other possessed pirate got farther into the tomb than we did. I don’t know what happened to her or what happened in there, but whatever it is… it’s not good. Really not good.”
“It… can’t be the end of the world though, right?” Gyro tried to prompt her.
“It probably is,” Rainbow said, and Gyro’s face paled in surprise. “I saw a horrific dark alicorn try to attack us right before the tomb doors shut. It was like Nightmare Moon all over again. If something like that happened in a tomb like this… if Rarity ran into something like that… how could she have possibly survived? And even besides that, how are we going to survive?”
“Nightmare Moon?” Gyro blinked and tried to find something to do with her mouth rather than just let it hang open in shock. “There’s no way. That’s impossible!”
“I would’ve thought the same thing last night,” Rainbow said. “But I know what I saw. We’re messing with stuff we don’t understand. Whatever is going on here, we’re in way over our heads.”
Gyro shook her head and stuttered a few times, failing to form any words. “But… how? Nightmare Moon is—was—Princess Luna! How can there be another?”
“It must’ve been locked up deep inside the tomb,” Rainbow said. “And we opened it like idiots. That’s how all this started. Now we’ve just doomed ourselves and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“There can’t be nothing!” Gyro protested. “There’s always something we can do. Always! If you really think there’s a nightmare alicorn on the loose, then we have to stop it! I mean, you’ve fought Nightmare Moon before, right? You’re experienced!”
But Rainbow limply shook her head. “Not alone,” she said. “I had all my friends with me, and the Elements of Harmony. It took all of that to defeat Nightmare Moon. But here? I’ve got nothing.” Swallowing hard, she managed to barely keep her voice from cracking as she added, “Not even Rarity.”
Gyro chewed on her lip. “I’m sure she’ll be fine, Rainbow,” she assured her. “She’ll be fine.”
“That’s what everypony keeps telling me,” Rainbow said. “Even myself. I just… I just hope you’re right.”
“I know I’m right,” Gyro said, managing a small smile. “You think even a super evil dark alicorn of angst could take Rarity down? She’d probably berate its fashion sense until it gave up and found somewhere quiet to cry.”
The quip made Rainbow smirk a little. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she said. Yawning, she added, “I just wish that I knew for sure she was alright. I wanted to hang around the temple and look for her, but…”
“She could’ve gotten anywhere,” Gyro concluded.
“Yeah. She could be on any of these islands if she found a way out. There were a bunch of caves and stuff down there. There had to be a way out someway.”
“Maybe we’ll see her in the morning,” Gyro said. “It’s all we can do, right?”
“That and sleep.” Rainbow’s jaws stretched wide in another tremendous yawn. “I… need to get some sleep or I’m gonna be a moon zombie, too.”
“That’s how they get you,” Gyro said. “Gotta be careful about that.”
“Yeah.” Groaning, Rainbow shuffled her feathers and curled up by Gyro’s side. “Night, G.”
And then she was out.