//------------------------------// // Go Out with a Bang // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// Soft Step and her clones circled beneath the rainbow pegasus as she flew into the sky. Soft wondered if she was attempting to flee or not. If she was, she’d chosen a poor angle to fly in. She could only fly so high before the air became too thin to carry her weight, and she’d tire herself out much faster in attempting to do so. Soft was content to let the pegasus wear herself out on her own; it would make breaking into her mind that much easier. She winced as a throb of pain wracked her horn from base to tip. Maintaining seven copies of herself was swiftly outpacing how fast the moon could replenish her energy, and she considered dismissing a few to conserve on her energy. But ultimately, she decided against it. The more copies of herself she had available when the pegasus finally came crashing back down to her, the easier it would be to subdue her. So, for the time being, she circled and waited. Eventually, the pegasus reached the apex of her climb. Whether she couldn’t keep climbing anymore or had simply given up, Soft didn’t know. Yet it hardly mattered; she parted her lips and grinned with anticipation all the same. She watched as the glowing pegasus tipped backwards and began to fall as gravity did its work on her. It wouldn’t be long now; in a few seconds, she would finally know all she needed to finish the ritual and welcome Him back into the world. Yet the pegasus began flapping her wings as she fell. Soft furrowed her brow as she watched the figure draw closer and closer. Instead of changing her course or slowing down, she seemed to be picking up speed. Soft carefully repositioned her clones beneath the pegasus in response. If her plan was to just fly through and past them to make a break for it at breakneck speeds, then Soft needed to stop her. The moonlight was running out, and if she didn’t finish this fast, she wouldn’t have time to finish the ritual. But then she felt that little crushed presence in the back of her mind cheering. At first, Soft tried to ignore it; then, she tried to crush it. By the time she realized why that presence was cheering, well after her cheers had already turned to screams of pain and agony, it was nearly too late. The air shimmered around the glowing, diving pegasus, and colorful sparks of static began to jump from her feathers to the surrounding wind. The light she gave off was too bright for Soft to step into the shadows, so she desperately took whatever energy she had left to throw up the thickest shield around herself she could possibly manage. The sudden explosion of noise and color and light was beyond overwhelming. It vaporized her copies in the blink of an eye, and the entire night lit up like she was standing on the sun. Soft felt her eyes physically burn as the daylight sliced through them, and her shield shattered into billions of tiny particles of moonlight under the force of the explosion. The boom popped both of her eardrums, and her green coat turned to ash in an instant. Crippled and scarred, Soft tumbled out of the sky as the blast flung her away from the epicenter, while the pain to her frayed nerves left her too dizzy and incoherent to think anything other than one thought: How could she have known the Usurper would have sent a champion of his own to oppose Him?! ----- Gyro could only watch the ongoing fight helplessly from afar. She still couldn’t believe that she was bearing witness to such a duel where the participants casually flung around such powerful magic that it could light up the night sky so brightly. Great green beams of light, catastrophic novae of moonlight, and occasional lances of white energy all split apart the skies. Somewhere high above the ocean, Melody, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash dueled against Soft Step to decide the fate of the islands and everybody in them. And not just that, either; if Soft Step won, the evil being she served could possibly bring the entire world to its knees if it escaped the islands. At some point in the fight, a glowing spark appeared in the air, swiftly moving about and flitting across the battle with incredible agility. At first, Gyro thought it was a spell or some kind of magic, but it persisted as the fight dragged on. And the way it moved didn’t look like any of the spells she’d seen so far. Against the background of the night, it looked like a shooting star, set perfectly at home in the twinkling background surrounding it. It gave Gyro something to focus on in between the volleys of magic, even if she didn’t know what it was. She glanced up at the sky, where Champagne and Stargazer were busy keeping the cloud they’d broken off of the body in place over the raft. That single cloud was all that stood between Gyro and the light of the moon, and likely the only thing keeping them safe. She hoped that the pegasi would be able to keep it over the raft as it drifted, and they likely had to stay up there for another few hours yet. She didn’t know how much longer it would be until daybreak, but it simply couldn’t come fast enough. And then she saw that spark of light in the distance begin to climb higher and higher and higher. She blinked and furrowed her brow in confusion; what was happening over there? As the spark climbed, it lost more and more speed, until finally, it seemed to hover in one place, far above the horizon. There was a twinkling of light, and then it began to fall again, faster and faster, always picking up speed, never slowing down. It didn’t take Gyro long to realize that she’d seen this before… and it didn’t take her too long to realize that the glowing star was Rainbow Dash, somehow. “Go, Rainbow,” Gyro said, forcing herself to stand on the raft. “Go! Do it!” There was a bright flash of light, and a ring exploded out from the spark of light diving through the air. Even as far away as she was, the night suddenly turned to day, and Gyro could see the world as clearly as if she was standing under the sun at the height of noon. Blue waters, white beaches, and green trees all stood out in the distance as the islands came into stark relief with the expanding ring of colorful daylight lighting up the night sky above her. Even the clouds seemed to vanish at the explosion of magical light, much like they’d done before when Rainbow had used a rainboom to open up the tomb doors on the archipelago. But as the ring of light began to fade and the darkness of night came trickling back in, Gyro’s elation turned to fear and dread. The rainboom had destroyed the clouds above her, including the one sheltering the raft. Now, as the daylight faded and the night returned, moonlight began to settle over the islands and the seas, now uninterrupted without any clouds to block it. Her pale shadow soon grew over the raft, and the light of the moon glittered on the waters all around the raft—and on the water covering the raft and herself. Stargazer and Champagne landed on the raft shortly thereafter, both panting and with feathers a little frayed after barely escaping from the rainboom. “What was that?” Stargazer asked. “What is Rainbow doing?!” “She’s fighting Soft Step,” Gyro said. “I think she just tried to rainboom her.” “Did it work?” Champagne asked, worried eyes turned toward the moonlit heavens above. “Please tell me it worked.” “I don’t know,” Gyro admitted, shaking her head. “But if it didn’t…” “I suppose we’ll find out,” Stargazer said. He sat down on the raft and sighed, reaching for their meager supplies of food and water. “The only thing we can do now is wait and see who comes to us.”