//------------------------------//
// A World Removed from Pain and Death 
// Story: Surviving Sand Island 
// by The 24th Pegasus 
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Rarity didn’t know what was worse: how terribly difficult it was to navigate by the stars and moonlight alone, or how terribly easy it was to trust her body and her instincts to get to where she needed to go. She simply pointed herself to the northwest, roughly in the direction Melody had pointed out for her, and swam beneath the waves. Some otherworldly sixth sense helped her keep a straight line, even if she couldn’t really tell if her heading was changing or not based on the stars and the position of the moon overhead. While the first hour or so had left her with only the island behind her and no sight of the archipelago over the horizon, it wasn’t all that long before she saw a tiny black nub begin to rise over the sea, slowly blotting out stars as it grew larger and larger the longer Rarity swam.

Yet Rarity didn’t spend the entire journey with her head above sea level. On the contrary, she spent most of it trying to scan the seafloor below her, looking for any signs of mummies or moon spirit thralls shuffling across the sandy bottom. Rarity knew that they had gotten out somehow based on what she’d seen back at the atoll, but other than that, there was no evidence that they’d gone anywhere else. Rarity knew if she at least saw one mummy wandering across the seafloor, then it would at least validate her suspicions and worries, if not set her heart at ease. But right now, there were too many questions she wanted answers to, and not enough evidence to back up her conclusions one way or another.

But how did the mummies get out? Did they find another way out of the tomb? She had no doubt that it wouldn’t be too much work for them to escape through the same way she had. That dark spirit had been there the entire time, and it surely knew how Rarity had left. And with an alicorn and a horde of undead soldiers, it would be oh so easy to knock down that stone wall and make an escape through the mountain. Even if Rainbow Dash’s plan to cover the door had worked, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. That they were too late to even put that plan into motion just added insult to injury.

Rarity momentarily faltered and placed a hoof over her heart. Rainbow Dash had flown right into the eye of the storm with Champagne and Stargazer, all of them without any idea that the mummies had already escaped. If there were still mummies on the archipelago, then the three pegasi could have been ambushed and killed almost as soon as they set hoof down on it. But then again, the mummies were loud and slow—supposedly, from what Rainbow had told her. Surely the three pegasi would have heard them coming if they were about to be ambushed. And they had wings, while Rarity was all but certain that the mummies wouldn’t be able to fly even if some of them were pegasi. They could easily escape from the mummies if need be. They could even fly back to the home island and rally with the other survivors there. Rarity wondered if she was wasting time by heading to the archipelago anyway, when maybe she should have followed Melody to the home island.

But no, she needed to check first. She realized she was just thinking up ways to try to justify Rainbow’s safety in the face of everything going absolutely horribly wrong. Right now, she had to assume the worst, but act as if they were still in the best case scenario, that there was still time to warn everypony before it was too late. Even if it was too late, she wouldn’t know what to do next until she figured out what the situation was on the other islands.

In any case, it wasn’t all that long before Rarity soon found herself just outside of the archipelago, without having spotted a single mummy. Whatever they had done at the atoll, they hadn’t decided to bring the old avatar’s body back here. Otherwise, she was certain she would have seen something during the trip back, but the sand and coral had been clean and bare, only home to lethargic fish and sea life lying low until the sun rose again. And now that she was back at the archipelago, she noted that it sounded entirely natural, calm, still. The nocturnal wildlife still made its usual noises, and the beaches were clean and pristine. If she hadn’t known better, she could have easily made the assumption that nothing had changed since she last was here, several days ago.

But now she was faced with another dilemma. The tomb was in the heart of the islands, separated from the shore by narrow channels that were too shallow to swim in. Rarity supposed she could have flown all the way to the tomb, but she still didn’t trust her ability to fly yet. The absolute last thing she needed was to fall down on the trees and get stuck on land, unable to make it back to water, and slowly dry out come the morning sun. She could try and crawl through the channels to get as close to the tomb as possible, but that would take too long. She needed to find out if Rainbow was safe now, and if she was, then they needed to move back to the home island immediately. She couldn’t afford to waste more time. But how could she let them know she was here?

She slapped herself just below her antennae when she realized the obvious answer. “You’re a siren, Rarity. Sing!” she said, chastising herself. After all, siren song could be heard for miles across the sea. Surely, Rainbow and the others would hear her if she started singing now.

Pulling herself onto the beach until she could lie on her belly, Rarity turned her head toward the center of the islands, took a deep breath, and bellowed out a few notes. There wasn’t really a song she had in mind, but so long as she could make a loud enough noise and make it sound like song so the others knew it was her, then she could attract their attention. She slowly picked her way up and down a scale, feeling her whole body shake as she sang as loud and as hard as she could, stopping every few seconds to draw in a deep breath and start singing again.

Her efforts were rewarded a minute later when Stargazer flew out of the trees to investigate. Upon seeing Rarity, the stallion immediately swooped down to her eye level, surprise written plainly across his face. “Rarity?” he asked. “What are you doing here? I thought you would be at the atoll with Melody!”

“We have a problem,” Rarity breathlessly said. “Is everypony okay? I need you to bring them all to the beach, now!”

Stargazer flew back a few feet and raised his hooves. “Woah, okay, everypony’s fine. What’s all this about?”

“I’ll explain when you come back!” Rarity said, her tail impatiently splashing through the water. “But there’s no time to lose. Hurry!”

“Alright, alright! Be back in a second!” Without anything further, the pegasus turned around and bolted back through the trees, shouting for Rainbow and Champagne the entire time. Rarity watched him go until she couldn’t see him anymore, and began digging through the sand with her hooves. Every single second counted, and they had already lost too many as it was.

But if she made it to the archipelago, then Melody should have made it to the home island by now…