//------------------------------// // Dueling Duets // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// Soft Step was the first to move, violently ripping her wings through the air and rocketing across the shore to Melody in an attempt to close the distance before the siren could even begin singing. Melody kicked her tail out and launched herself backwards to try and maintain her distance, loosing an ear-splitting shout that quite literally sliced through the waves at Soft Step in return. The alicorn quickly jaunted to the side, avoiding the deadly scream, and climbed into the sky to get some more room to maneuver and attack. Meanwhile, Rarity instinctively backed off, eyes warily watching Squall. She didn’t know how the undead pirate would fight her from the shore, especially if she could put some distance between herself and the beach. Squall seemed to consider this for a moment as well, but then her horn lit up and she simply galloped into the water. No, not into, Rarity soon realized—on top of the waves. Though the rolling swells would sometimes sweep up to the pirate’s chest and shoulders, she never seemed to lose her balance or her momentum. Whatever she was doing with her horn had allowed her to simply ignore the bothersome ocean as if it wasn’t even there. And then Rarity felt pain lance through her tail fin, and a spike of sand roared out of the water, her translucent flipper impaled on it. Crying out in pain, Rarity immediately broke the sand spear with her leg, causing the entire thing to fall apart and free her. Squall charged out of the water, rising up on pillars of sand, her knife slicing for Rarity’s face, but she turned her beak into the weapon’s path, causing it to harmlessly glance off her armor. She opened her mouth and snapped at Squall, but the undead pirate flung herself backwards with her sand magic, and Rarity only snapped through a wall of salty sediment. Growling, Rarity lunged forward, trying to press the attack and not give Squall any time to work her sand magic to attack her again. She had no qualms using her teeth and her sheer power against the pirate; she’d already killed her once, and apparently not well enough. Now, Squall wasn’t even technically alive. She was just a zombie, and if Rarity could mash her to paste with her teeth, then that would end the fight in one bite. But Squall remained a surprisingly nimble opponent, using her magic to shape the sand and propel herself away from Rarity, remaining just out of reach. Occasionally, she would spin around and whip sand into Rarity’s eyes, though Rarity soon learned to counter it by holding her third eyelid shut over them to keep the sand out. When Rarity lunged at Squall again, the pirate simply dropped the sand she was standing on, falling below Rarity’s jaws, and slashing with the knife at her throat. Thankfully, Rarity’s armor was more than enough to resist a little knife, and the blade harmlessly bounced off of her scales. Yet the blade was never the real danger, and Rarity realized that so long as she didn’t give Squall a chance to strike at her eyes, it couldn’t hurt her. The sand spikes, on the other hoof, were more problematic. Rarity lost sight of Squall when she dropped out of the air, and she frantically tried to regain sight of the pirate before she was attacked again. When she didn’t see her, Rarity instinctively jumped into the air, hovering above the ground to get a better look around. Almost as soon as she did so, several large razors of sand whipped out of the water, shredding the space she’d been swimming in into frothy ribbons. As the foam settled, Squall emerged from the water on a pillar of sand, glowering up at Rarity. “When did fish learn how to fly?” the pirate growled in frustration. Rather than trade one-liners and remarks with the pirate, however, Rarity took a deep breath and roared down at the pirate with an ear-splitting high note. She felt the draw of magical energy up through her chest and out her mouth, and the sand under Squall’s hooves started to drop into the sea. Apparently, not even undead were immune to pain like that; Squall flattened her ears against her head and cringed as Rarity bellowed at her. As the platform she stood on finally fell apart, Squall dropped back into the sea again. Rarity stopped and placed a hoof over her chest. So that was what siren magic felt like? It made her feel powerful, and all she’d done was make Squall’s magic fall apart. What else could she do with her voice? With a momentary break in her fight against Squall, Rarity quickly scanned around her to locate Melody and Soft Step. She found the two dueling almost a quarter mile away, having moved further from the island as they fought tooth and hoof with each other. Soft Step would occasionally pull knives made of darkness out of the shadow and try to rip through Melody’s armor, and the siren ran through quick scales and arpeggios to disintegrate them and strike back. As Rarity watched, Melody launched herself out of the water, stretched her cavernous maw open wide, and screamed what looked like almost a laser beam of raw magical energy at Soft Step, missing the mare only by virtue of her disintegrating into shadow and reappearing nearby. Rarity blinked. She didn’t even know she could do that. But how? A spike of sand pierced through the base of her tail, ripping her attention away from the distant fight and back to her own problems. Without her screaming note to smother Squall and her magic, the pirate had recovered enough to strike back and had managed to hit something solid. The surprise shock and pain was enough to break Rarity’s concentration and force her to fall, which only began to widen the hole ripped through her tail. Tears of pain fell from Rarity’s eyes, but thankfully her bodyweight broke the spike of sand, once again freeing her. She immediately caught herself and flew away as Squall summoned more spikes behind her, rising up into the air one after the other. She needed to regain some distance before she fought the pirate again, and fast. A wall of sand rose up in front of Rarity, abruptly stopping her dead in her tracks. Rarity grunted and tried to push away from the wall, but it wrapped around her like a rolling wave, linking back together into one solid mass. Rarity writhed and squirmed in its grasp, trying to wriggle her way out like a fish, but it clamped down tight on her shoulders and bent her tall dorsal fin at an awkward and painful angle. While Rarity seethed and cried out in pain, Squall casually approached on rising pillars of sand. “Caught in a net,” she taunted as she drew nearer. Her magic rose her knife up in front of her face, and she drew her rotten tongue over her lips. “I’m going to enjoy gutting you,” she said, pressing the knife to Rarity’s nose. “And I’m going to take my time. It’s the least I can do to pay you back for all the pain you caused me.” She hitched the point under a scale on Rarity’s nose and twisted, prying the piece of armor off and sending Rarity shuddering in pain. Squall picked it up, looked at it, and tossed it away with a smile. “One down,” she said, winking at her. “A million to go.”