“Rainbow Dash?! What are you doing here?!”
Rainbow momentarily wilted under Melody’s outraged voice. She’d broken the plan and gone to Plan B, and now she had to face the music. But she couldn’t sit idly by on the sidelines and let her friends fight and suffer for her. Loyalty fought with her friends until the very end—however bitter it might be.
“I came to help,” she said, glancing at Melody as she climbed out from the sea. “I was getting worried on the—where we were hiding. I couldn’t just sit by and do nothing!”
Melody flew up to Rainbow’s face, her dominating presence making the pegasus feel very, very small. “You can’t be here!” she hissed at her. “The whole plan was to keep you and the others safe while we waited for daybreak! Rarity and I would hold her off while you hid!”
“And where is Rarity?” Rainbow asked her, refusing to back down. “Where is she?!”
The green siren’s shoulders sagged and she looked at Soft Step, who calmly watched them from afar with a little bit of curiosity. “I… don’t know. If she’s alive, she’s in the water somewhere.”
“If?!” Rainbow whipped her head to Soft Step, teeth bared. “What did you do?!”
“If she was lucky, she was vaporized immediately,” Soft said, looking at her hoof with disinterest. “If not, that spell boiled her blood and cooked her like a lobster. A big, white, scaly lobster. I’m sure she’d taste great if you crack open her shell, wherever it sunk to.”
Rainbow let out a yell and immediately rocketed toward Soft, barely slipping out of reach of Melody’s jaws before she could bite down on her tail and hold her back. Soft raised an eyebrow as she approached, letting her horn flare to life and putting up a simple shield in front of her before Rainbow could make contact. The pegasus slammed into the shield, which began to wrap around her hooves and pulled her face down to Soft’s eye level. “You truly are out of your league, little pegasus,” Soft said, grinning at Rainbow and revealing all of her horrible fangs. “I have His power flowing through my veins, and I am indestructible. The moon protects me. It fuels me. What do you have? That you can fly fast?”
Grunting, Rainbow struggled against the shield for a second before glaring right into Soft Step’s eyes. “I don’t fly fast,” she growled, falling slack in the magic’s grip. “I fly the fastest. And I don’t monologue while my friend sneaks up behind you!”
Soft Step blinked and whirled around right as Melody lunged at her, jaws opened wide and teeth ready to slice the alicorn to ribbons. She had to quickly drop her grasp on Rainbow and slide into the shadows to avoid becoming siren chow, and Melody pitched her nose up to come to a stop by Rainbow’s side instead of plowing directly into her. While Soft reformed a good distance away from the two, Melody quickly glanced at Rainbow. “Alright, you’re here,” she said. “Did you at least come with a plan?”
“My plan was all about getting here,” Rainbow said. “I didn’t think past that point.”
An annoyed noise escaped Melody’s throat. “Great.”
“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to fight her until sunrise!” Rainbow exclaimed, tilting her head back to look up at the enormous siren. “You’re supposed to have the plan!”
“It involved you staying as far away from here as possible and trying not to die.”
Rainbow rolled her eyes and settled them back on Soft Step, who began to pull spears of moonlight out of the air around her. “Doesn’t sound that much better than my first plan. Alright, I’ll distract her, you go and, like, snap her horn off or something! Do that and the fight’s over!”
Before Melody could respond, Rainbow turned to the side and flew away so fast that the air rumbled in her wake. She angled her wings into a long curve around Soft Step, staying far enough away to avoid her magic while remaining close enough to force the siren to turn her head if she wanted to track her. In only a few seconds she ended up behind Soft, where she changed her trajectory into a climb to try and sail over the alicorn’s head.
Lances of moonlight pierced the air around Rainbow, but the quick and nimble pegasus zipped between them almost effortlessly. Unlike Melody, Rainbow was small and swift, and she knew she had the advantage in that. It would take Soft a lot more concentration and effort to hit her than it would a siren, and Melody wouldn’t let Soft have that much space and time to think. Even as soon as the moment Soft started loosing spears at Rainbow, Melody had closed the distance between them and starting snapping at the alicorn’s neck.
In retaliation, Soft erected a shield to block Melody on and materialized another spear of moonlight to try and ram between the siren’s scales. Before she could, however, Rainbow dropped on her from above, bypassing the shield and planting her hooves firmly on Soft’s back. The alicorn faltered and fell, and her shield and spear evaporated as the blow interrupted her magic. When Rainbow darted away, Melody reared her head back and let another beam of green magic fly from her maw, one which Soft barely avoided through the shadows.
“We can’t hit her when she keeps doing that!” Melody exclaimed. “Every time I get close, she just disappears into the dark!”
“How do we stop it?” Rainbow shouted back. “Can’t you use your songs to make light or something? That might get rid of the shadows!”
“I need something to enchant to glow, I can’t just create a light source out of nothing! And there’s nothing up here for me to do that on!”
Rainbow looked around at the empty sky. There really wasn’t anything that Melody could enchant. Maybe she could enchant some clouds, but they were too high in the sky to really be of help, and even though Rainbow could bring a chunk down, she doubted that she’d get the opportunity to, or that Soft would even let it survive in the middle of the fight that long. So what could she do?
“Use me,” she said as an idea suddenly struck her. “Make me glow!”
“Are you sure?” Melody asked. “It might be hard to see.”
“What other choice do we have?” Rainbow asked. “We’ve gotta do it or we’ll never catch her! Do it now!”
Melody sharply inhaled, but nevertheless she nodded. Closing her eyes, she quickly slid through a staccato tune, ending with a sharp, high note like a punctuation that kicked Rainbow in the chest. A bright glow dominated Rainbow’s vision, and when she looked down at her coat, her blue had been replaced with a glowing white gold. All around her, the night sky lit up like the day, and the bright light cast Melody in stark relief against the background.
“It worked,” Melody said, holding a hoof up to shield her eye from the bright glow, “but only out to so far.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” Rainbow said, setting her sights on Soft Step, who had taken on a concerned look. “I can get close to her and stay there. You just gotta finish her off.”
Melody nodded and allowed herself a sly smile, perhaps the first time her lips had curved upwards in the fight so far. “Sounds good to me.”
“Then let’s do it!” Rainbow set off at a blistering speed, rocketing toward the alicorn as fast as she could. “You’re gonna pay for what you did to Rarity!”