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// Blood on the Beach 
// Story: Surviving Sand Island 
// by The 24th Pegasus 
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Rainbow’s brief flight across the islands passed in mostly thoughtless silence. The refusal of Ratchet and the rest of the crew to help her find Rarity stung. Though Flag’s rejection didn’t surprise her, she had hoped that she could at least count on the survivors to help her out. But as soon as Ratchet drew the line in favor of Flag, she knew she was the only pony who cared about what had happened to Rarity and could do something about it. The rational part of her didn’t blame Ratchet at all for his decision—had she been tasked with the safety of the other ponies in her crew, she wouldn’t want to risk their lives to help find a pony who had only just shown up the day before—but that didn’t make her feel any better. If anything, it only made her feel worse. Why was Rarity’s life not as important as everypony else’s? Why should they give up on her just to keep the others safe?

Rainbow felt like she was the only one who saw the big picture. She of course didn’t want anypony to die, especially after the horribly botched expedition the night before. But if there really was powerful dark magic at play here, their only bet on surviving it was to risk everything to find these statuettes and get home. Only then, through attracting the attention of the princesses, could they actually deal with whatever curses they’d unleashed in exploring the tomb. There was no way they could do it on their own, and if they didn’t get home, something would eventually kill them. The thought that they were living on borrowed time at best left Rainbow worried and uncomfortable. Where she had once hoped she could be home in Equestria a few weeks after the airship crash, now she started to fear that she’d be dead on the islands in a similar amount of time from now, and nopony back home would ever know what happened to her.

And that went doubly so for Rarity if nopony ever found her…

After several minutes of climbing and gaining altitude, Rainbow realized that she had no idea where Rarity and Gyro had parked the raft after making landfall. She knew it was somewhere on the far side of the island, likely around the big island with the mountain on it, but she hadn’t bothered to actually ask Gyro where it was before she took off. Rarity had likely hidden it under some trees or somewhere covered to keep it out of sight, much like they’d done on the minotaur island, but that would only make it harder to spot from the air. After all, the mountain itself was covered in lush trees right down to the beach, and Rarity could have hidden the raft under any one of those clusters. Rainbow soon realized that she needed to drop down closer to the sand and fly along the beach so she could see under the trees.

Working her way around the north face of the island, the first thing Rainbow saw was the shattered remains of the airship wreckage she’d briefly stopped at on her way further into the island a few days ago. Wood and debris lied strewn up and down the beach, with planks and metal even sticking out of the shallow waters of the swash zone, and large chunks of the hull still recognizable where they’d ended up. She could tell by the lay of the land that the wreckage had been picked over considerably, or at least visited, by ponies shortly after it had fallen. And with a stirring breeze occasionally lifting a tingle or clattering of metal and wood out of the jungle below her, Rainbow remembered Rarity’s ambitious project that had ultimately saved her life and ended Squall’s. It was thanks to her that she was able to fly high now without worrying about being seen or attacked by pirates.

All the more reason she needed to return the favor.

Swooping low over the beach, Rainbow dropped down nearly to sea level, her hooves skimming the tops of breaking waves while she kept her eyes angled inland. It was her hope that she’d be able to see the raft parked beneath the trees if she flew around the beach at this angle, and thankfully, there wasn’t a whole lot of beach for her to cover on this side of the island. It was about as much coast as on the east side of their home island, maybe a little bit more, and Rainbow knew she could survey the entire thing in about five minutes, maybe less. With any luck, it wouldn’t take her that long to find the raft, supplies, and potentially, Rarity herself.

She didn’t have any luck the first few minutes; there was only sand and trees, but definitely no raft, supplies, or white unicorns. But after a few minutes of flying, she noticed two things near simultaneously. The first one was a rectangular platform of wood hauled out of the surf and into the sand beneath a copse of trees with a few bags and jugs around it. The second, as she flew over the beach to investigate the raft, was a trail of mottled blood splotches on the sand, long since dried to brown and slowly dissipating to the shifting sands. Had Rainbow waited another few hours, she doubted she would’ve been able to see anything. There probably wouldn’t have been anything left to see from the fickle winds.

The raft and the supplies could wait, Rainbow decided; the blood could not. Wheeling about with a twist of her wings, Rainbow quickly spun away from the raft and landed on the sand in front of the largest bloodstain. The sand around it was shifted and disturbed, at odds with the mostly flat beach around it, like somepony had struggled and fallen where the blood now lay. Rainbow raised her eyes and noted a mottled trail leading back along the sands, very faint and difficult to follow, but there nonetheless. Whatever had left the blood here had walked quite a distance, but had collapsed and bled out all over the beach.

But where had it gone? There was no body; only blood on the sand. Yet the beach was anything but devoid of clues. In fact, the next ones were very obvious once Rainbow took the time to look around. Enormous hoofprints decorated the sand around the bloodstain, and some kelp that’d been stripped for fibers poked out of the sand, along with a needle that’d been made from a fishbone. The needle was also stained with drying blood, and all signs pointed to a large something that had slid across the beach from the bloodstain to the surf. But whether it had pushed the sand in as it came from the sea, or out as it ventured into it, Rainbow couldn’t tell.

Then her eyes fell on the next piece. An arrangement of shells had carefully been placed in the sand, and only after Rainbow glanced at them for a while, did she realize that they made a rough arrow, pointing toward the sea. When Rainbow spun around and landed at the tail of the arrow, she saw that its head pointed toward the southeast. Rainbow frowned and examined the arrangement. Who had made it? Who had made it, and why?

Whatever it meant, Rainbow very quickly figured out it pointed toward the only remaining island they had left to explore. Whoever had left the arrangement wanted to draw attention to it. But what did they want?

The breeze pushed the sands some more, and caused something to flicker in the edge of Rainbow’s vision. Blinking, she moved forward and snatched it out of the sand. Holding it in front of her face with her wingtips, Rainbow saw it was a purple hair, faintly salt-streaked, but still as beautiful as the mare it had come from.

Swallowing hard, Rainbow held the hair close to her chest and stared off to the southeast.