//------------------------------// // A House of Cards in a Strong Wind // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// Flag momentarily hesitated, his ears twitching at some ghost noise. He frowned and looked back over his shoulder, but there was nothing behind him save for the short tunnel out to the hidden cave. Still, he was almost certain he had heard something. But what was there to hear other than the slap of water against rock? A light shifted in the corner of his vision, and Ruse cautiously walked next to him. “What is it?” the ventriloquist asked. “You hear something?” The pirate’s frown fixated itself on Ruse’s face. “Oh, fuck off,” Flag growled at him, angrily turning in place. “I know what you’re doing.” Ruse blinked in surprise. “What I’m doing? That’d be a first. I don’t even know what I’m doing.” “Fuck off, you asshole ventriloquist.” Flag stomped away, flicking his tail at Ruse in annoyance. “I don’t need you making any Celestia-damned sounds while I’m trying to listen!” Realization dawned on Ruse’s face, and the stallion trotted up behind Flag. “Black Flag, normally I’d enjoy messing with you like that, but not now. My horn’s busy being a nightlight glued to my forehead. I can’t use it to throw my voice. If you heard something—” “What’s this?” Ratchet asked, turning away from the wall he and Gauze had been surveying. “Is something happening?” “Flag thought he heard something,” Ruse said before Flag could even open his mouth. “He won’t tell me what it is.” “If you’d just shut up for two seconds, then maybe I could explain.” His angry glare was enough to make Ruse flinch away, and when he turned back to Ratchet, he simply shrugged. “I don’t know. I couldn’t make out what it was. Thought I heard somepony shout or something. It was probably the water, though.” “Shouting?” Concern flashed across Ratchet’s face. “Perhaps we should go back and see what’s going on.” Flag huffed and pointedly pushed past him to look at a wall he couldn’t make sense of. “That’d be a waste of time. It was nothing; just my mind playing tricks on me. Or your comedian.” Before Ratchet could say anything to Ruse, the ventriloquist held up his hooves. “You know I wouldn’t mess around at a time like this,” he said. “If Flag thought he heard something, it wasn’t my doing.” “Why would somepony be shouting?” Gauze asked, a twitch of his ear making up for the lack of emotion and seeming disinterest in his voice. He pushed away from the wall in front of him and narrowed his eyes. “Gyro and Hot Coals are at the camp all alone. If something has happened topside, they’d be the first to know. It may be worth investigating, in case Flag heard one of them.” “Fuck it, I’ll take a look, then,” Flag said, turning around and moving past the other three stallions. “I’m next to useless down here. I can’t make sense of any of this shit, and I hate the smell of this place. Besides, I always hated caves. I prefer the open sky on the deck of an airship.” “I didn’t take you for a pegasus,” Ruse quipped. “I thought earth ponies liked to keep their hooves on the ground.” “Fuck the ground,” Flag said. “The ground doesn’t have anything good on it. Anypony can raid a wagon, but only the good ones can be sky pirates.” And then he was gone from the group, heading back out to the hidden cave. He kept his ears pointed forward the entire way in case he heard that scream again, but also just so he didn’t have to listen to the annoying ventriloquist anymore. If his brother came back and killed Ruse in a fit of suicidal fury, Flag wouldn’t have really cared. In fact, he might cheer him on. He stopped by the water’s edge as a thought crossed his mind. He hadn’t seen Roger all day. Had his brother been hiding and waiting for nightfall to do his stupid plan all along? It was just Hot Coals and Gyro in the camp, after all; easy pickings for a seasoned pirate with the element of surprise on his side. And if that was true, and if Jolly had murdered the two of them while everypony else was split up, then he needed to investigate before the rest of the team finished crawling through this little shrine beneath the island. If there was blood on the sand, then Flag decided very quickly that he needed to get off of this island before the rest of the survivors strung him up in retaliation for his stupid brother’s actions. Growling to himself, Flag stepped right up to the water’s edge and looked at the rocks around the mouth of the cave. The water level had risen an inch or two since they’d entered, and they probably only had a couple more hours before it started getting dangerously high. Flag shook his head and stuck his hoof into the water. That would be their problem, not his. Almost as soon as his hoof touched the water, however, he saw something shift underneath it. He pulled his leg back right as a bony hoof splashed out of the waves, clawing at the slipper rocks Flag had been standing on. A skeletal face emerged soon after, hissing and gurgling through the seawater still stuck in its maw. Its eyes were black as death, and bit by bit, it dragged itself out of the water and onto the stone of the tunnel. Roaring, Flag reared back and slammed his hooves down on the mummy’s head, caving it into bloody chunks and knocking the body back into the water. But almost as soon as it slipped beneath the waves, a second began climbing up, followed by a third and a fourth. As they pulled themselves onto the rocks, Flag tried to batter them away, shouting and grunting as loud as he could. “Mummies!” he shouted, wrestling one back into the water. “Mummies! They’re here!” Hooves thundered down stone, and the other three stallions swiftly appeared at Flag’s sides. To their credit, they didn’t stop to gawk or panic at the sight of the undead trying to force their way into the shrine. Instead, they immediately took up positions at the edge of the water, trying to fight the mummies back down into the ground. “How the fuck did these get here?!” Ruse shouted, using his magic to fling a pair back into the sea. “I thought the door was supposed to be closed!” A burst of magic erupted from the water, showering the four stallions with salty spray and knocking them backwards. Tendrils of pure night snaked out of the water, snuffing out the lights on Ruse’s and Gauze’s horns, and drowning the cave in almost complete darkness. Flag tried to scramble backwards away from the water, but his back hit stone, and in the dark, he couldn’t find the hallway that led deeper into the shrine. All the while, the sounds of the mummies trying to escape the pool around them echoed about the tiny cave, but then it suddenly fell deathly quiet. In its place, a pair of slit eyes opened up, glowing and disembodied in the dark. The shadows faded away just enough to reveal the silhouette of a tall pony seemingly standing on the water’s surface. Feathers fanned in the darkness, and a pale glow like moonlight began to emanate from the curved horn atop the figure’s head. Stepping forward, the figure bared wickedly sharp fangs, its lips pulling back into a predatory smile. “Hello, boys,” she said, her voice sultry and malevolent. “It’s been too long.”