Once Ratchet had put together a team to recover the raft, Rainbow led them across the islands to retrieve it. Everypony moved with haste, cantering through the jungle at an anxious pace. Though it was still the afternoon, nopony wanted to be around when night finally fell, for fear of what might come out of the tomb when it did. Though Rainbow had noticed clouds building up on the horizon, she didn’t know if they would do anything to shelter the tomb from the moon after everything that had happened the night before. They didn’t seem as strong or thick as they had last night, and she wondered if her Sonic Rainboom had damaged the spell summoning them in some way.
By the time they made it to the raft, the bloodstains on the beach had all but disappeared. With the tide coming in and the wind steadily picking up, the only thing Rainbow could notice was the splotch of brown on the ground from where Rarity had fallen. She was able to show Ruse and Champagne the shells left on the beach, however, and how they pointed off to the southeast. Though the island itself wasn’t visible from the beach, all Champagne had to do was fly up about a thousand feet before she could see it just over the horizon. They both agreed with Rainbow upon Champagne’s return that Rarity had to have ended up on that island somehow. The ’how’ still eluded them, and none of the likely answers Rainbow could think of had all that pleasant of implications.
The raft proved to be more of a challenge to lift than Rainbow had originally anticipated. Though Ruse’s magic was strong, and likely stronger than Rarity’s in terms of sheer power, the raft was half-buried in the sand from the wind and the tides, and it proved difficult to dig out of the beach. At the very least, the supplies of food and water were still in decent shape, so the three ponies were able to get drinks when they needed it and take a break to eat some fruit. To Rainbow’s surprise, she learned from the other two that they hadn’t done much scavenging of their own islands due to the fighting with the pirates, and they hadn’t ever had star apples or sugar apples before. Rainbow warned them that the two fruits were basically the only things that grew on the island they were heading to, with the exception of some grass and lots of coconuts, and that they better get used to it.
But once they finally started digging out the raft, it wasn’t too difficult to get it in the water. Ruse’s magic was strong enough to heft it off the beach, and Rainbow and Champagne pushed against it to get it out to the water. The sandy logs held fast to each other and lifted up upon the waves, leaving Rainbow relieved to see that it was still in good condition for the trip back. The last thing they needed was the raft breaking apart when it began to move across the ocean, but thankfully, it looked like it would hold. They just needed to test how much it could carry before it risked going under the waves.
Next came the difficult task of trying to explain to Ruse exactly what Rarity had done with her magic to propel it across the water. Rainbow didn’t really understand how it worked, but between her explaining the basic principle and Champagne and Ruse puzzling it out, the ventriloquist finally managed to get the raft moving. By pushing the water down in front of the raft and raising it up behind, they managed to manipulate gravity into moving the raft forward and toward the camp on the farthest island. Unfortunately, turning was another matter entirely, and Ruse’s attempt to turn it ended up flipping the raft and flinging all three ponies into the water. At the very least, Rainbow realized, was that the raft was almost exactly the same on one side as it was on the other, the only difference being the vines jutting out of the logs to tie things down were now under the water. But no damage had been done to the raft, and after they finally brought it to the shore, Ruse quickly flipped it over so that it was once more right-side up.
After taking a quick break at the camp to rest up for the journey ahead, Ratchet divided everything into two groups, as there were too many ponies and too much material to move back to the other island in one go. The first group consisted of the bulk of their supplies, as well as Gauze, Gyro, Fresh Linens, and Hot Coals. Ratchet insisted that they needed to get to the other island first, as the rest of the survivors could afford to wait for the raft to return, and could fight and stall for time if it desperately came down to it. Though Rainbow assured them it wouldn’t take too long for the raft to leave and come back, it would still take longer than two hours.
Once the raft was loaded up, and after checking that it wouldn’t sink when pushed across the open ocean, Rainbow took wing and started flying off to the northeast, giving Ruse something to follow while guiding it along. Rainbow also simply didn’t want to sit on the raft with them; there wasn’t any room, and she didn’t need to add her weight to the already very burdened platform. They pushed off in the late afternoon, and by the time they reached the other island, it was nearly dinner time.
But the important thing was that they had reached it, and Rainbow helped as best she could with getting everything off the raft. Once it was finally empty, Gauze and Ruse had a brief argument about who should take the raft back to the islands to pick everypony else up. Eventually, Gauze won out, arguing that Ruse needed to rest his horn and couldn’t afford to tax it any more in making two more trips with the raft. That left him in care of Gauze’s patients, and Rainbow agreed to stay behind and help him care for them and move everypony to the far side of the camp. While Gauze disappeared back to the west with the raft, Ruse and Rainbow carried Hot Coals and Fresh Linens through the jungle, leaving Gyro behind for a bit on the west coast of the island.
When they returned to her camp, Rainbow was happy to see that everything still seemed in good shape. Both their shelters were standing, and all their supplies were right where they’d left them, including the pegasus statuette tucked away safely in the large hut. Rainbow and Ruse agreed to put Coals and Linens in the smaller hut, figuring it would make a good medical center for Gauze to use, while most everypony else could stay in the much larger hut Rainbow and Rarity had built earlier. Rainbow then went back and recovered Gyro, and the three ponies sat around the camp, waiting for Gauze to return with everypony else.
It wasn’t until the sun had nearly set that Gauze returned. Ratchet led everypony out of the jungle, carrying what few supplies they had left to bring, and started organizing ponies around Rainbow’s camp. This time it was Rainbow who sorted things out, and over the course of the next hour, they’d gotten most everything organized. With the patients in one hut, the survivors in the other, and the pirates deciding they’d rather sleep under the trees instead of in a confined hut with everypony else, they had things squared away by nightfall. At that point, the only thing they had left to do was rest and wait out whatever would happen that night. Though the clouds started moving in, they were patchy and weak by the time they reached the new island, and everypony anxiously waited for something to change, for death to find them, some way, somehow.
But for better or for worse, Rainbow couldn’t figure out if anything had happened by the time the sun began to rise again. Nothing changed, and as the first rays of sunlight hit the island, they were all still standing.
For how long it would last, however, she had no idea.