Rainbow Dash was almost thankful when they finally reached the island and they could stop flying for a bit. It wasn’t so much that the flying was tiring her, but flying with slower pegasi was irritating in its own right. While she didn’t mean anything bad by her thoughts, she knew she would have preferred to make the journey by herself in half the time.
But they were here now, and the three pegasi alighted on the outcropping of rock that once held a piece of the Concordia’s hull. There, they paused to catch their breath, rest their wings, and take a few swigs of water before moving further inland. Even Rainbow had to admit that her wings felt plenty hot from working them for so long under the summer sun, and she immediately sought some shade to help them cool off instead of letting the late afternoon sunlight continue to heat them.
“Well, we made it,” Stargazer said once they’d all had a few minutes to catch their breath. “I have to say, I would have preferred to take the raft.”
“Don’t complain,” Champagne grumbled. “I had to fly to the south and back in the past two days. You at least got to rest your wings.”
Rainbow couldn’t help herself but chuckle at the annoyed look Champagne shot her way. “It’s good exercise,” she said. “Think of it as Wonderbolt training. You’re gonna have great wings by the time we’re all back home!”
“Maybe I should try out, then,” Champagne said. “Maybe I can dethrone you.”
“Hah! Good luck with that, girl. I’d like to see you try!”
“You could at least settle for being the first Prench Wonderbolt.” Stargazer frowned. “The Wonderbolts don’t usually recruit from outside of Equestria, right?”
Rainbow shrugged. “Not that I really remember, to be honest. I’m sure I learned about it at some point, but immediately forgot about it because it wasn’t important.”
The three pegasi shared a chuckle, but that soon fell into silence as they found they didn’t have the energy to really laugh. After a minute of letting her eyes wander over tufts of grass and rocky crags, Rainbow forced herself to stand if only out of the fear that she’d be too tired to move again if she didn’t. “Well, that’s long enough, I think. Let’s get down to the tomb and get a bite to eat there, or something. There’s stuff we can eat there, right?”
“Grass and some berries,” Champagne said. “It’s not much, but it’s enough for three.”
“So long as they taste good, I’m all for it.” Rainbow let her wings hang limp as she strode to the edge of the rocky outcropping, only picking them up when she could stare down over the precipice to the surf far below her. Grinning, she stood up on her hind legs and held her forelegs out to her sides, letting her body weight pull her over the edge. In a second, she had entered freefall off the cliff, and she kept her limbs loose and limp for a full second before she spiraled out of her dive and caught the air once more.
The rush of the air was exhilarating, and it made up for having to travel across the ocean in a slow and mundane way. As she pulled out of her dive, she immediately set her wings to carrying her momentum into several loops and rolls. Her caterwauling laughter echoed over the archipelago and off of the leafy palms, and before she knew it, her wings finally felt alive again. Sure, she had something she needed to do, but it didn’t hurt to goof off now and then. She really needed to unwind before she could focus on work, especially after a long flight.
After a few minutes to have her fun, she began to drop down into the trees once more, spying a bit of stone through the palm fronds to clue her into the location of the ruins. After checking to make sure that her friends were still with her, Rainbow spotted a decent gap in the canopy and dropped right through it, flaring her blue feathers and fluttering a few times to slow her descent. Then, tucking her wings against her sides, she dropped to her hooves on top of weathered and pitted stone, standing in a clear spot amongst the ruins of leaning columns and piles of rubble.
Stargazer and Champagne set down behind her, and Rainbow immediately began to stroll through the shadowy remains of the temple atop of the tomb, her eyes shifting left and right as if she expected a horde of mummies to burst out of the shadows and devour them all. “Everything looks fine,” she murmured, mostly to herself, but that didn’t keep her wings from relaxing in case she needed to fly skyborne immediately. “But don’t get too comfortable…”
Champagne swallowed a lump in her throat and hurried to Rainbow’s side. “Do you really think they all came out?” she asked. “The door shouldn’t have opened, right?”
“It shouldn’t have,” Rainbow said. “It’s not the full moon. But I’m not going to take any chances.”
Stargazer nervously chewed on a wingtip as the three pegasi passed by ruins and rubble, where each shadow could conceal a desiccated and mummified corpse full of rotting teeth ready to rip them to pieces. Even the birds and other wildlife seemed quiet, and Rainbow’s ears twitched as they desperately sought for some noise to listen to other than her heartbeat in her chest and her ragged breathing past her muzzle. She worried that if she didn’t hear something, anything, then she was going to go insane, moon mummies or not.
But at last, the trio of pegasi made it to the edge of the stairs leading down to the tomb door. They all hesitated there, seemingly too afraid to proceed forward, each glancing at the other as if they expected somepony else to take the first step. But ultimately, Rainbow pressed forward, her wings twitching and shivering at her sides. Approaching the steps from the side, there was no way to tell if anything had passed through there recently; there was no sand to mark hoofprints in, only dead stone. A chill ran up Rainbow’s spine, and she felt like an icy hoof of death pressed down on her back. She expected to see a hundred snapping maws as soon as she peered over the edge of the stairs, and she held her breath as she stepped forward until she froze right at the very edge.
Champagne fidgeted in place behind Rainbow, shifting her weight from one hoof to the other. “W-Well?” she asked, her voice nervously tripping over itself in her anxiety. “What do you see?”
Rainbow’s nostrils flared, and her wings sagged as she let her breath out. She fell back onto her haunches, took a deep breath, and smiled. “Nothing,” she said. “The door’s still closed.”