//------------------------------//
// The Fallen 
// Story: Surviving Sand Island 
// by The 24th Pegasus 
//------------------------------//

Rarity slowly came to as the underwater currents blew across her ears like wind beneath the ocean. Everything was so dark on the ocean floor, but there was still enough moonlight for her to see by. Little by little, she forced her limbs to move, and she started to sit up only to double over in pain and collapse on her back once again.

Memories came flooding back to her. The battle with Soft Step, her fight with Squall, and then the painful arcane blast that had sent her to the bottom of the sea. Her whole body felt raw, and when she looked around, she noticed that she’d added a smattering of white scales to the sandy floor around her. She remembered how the spell had burned her flesh all over and made her eyes feel like they were about to pop. She was just happy that she’d gotten to keep them.

She sat up again, this time much more slowly so as not to aggravate her injuries, and looked around. The ocean floor was all torn up, with deep trenches carved through the sand sitting next to large hills and dunes. Chunks of coral and stone had been scattered about, and a few crabs picked over the remains. Squall’s magic had wreaked havoc on the seafloor, but at the very least, it would be disturbed no longer. Lying not too far from Rarity were the extra crispy remains of a corpse, fried inside and out by the magic that had nearly killed her. Rarity had to look away and cover her beak to not be sick at the grisly sight.

What had happened since she blacked out? How long had she been blacked out? Rarity didn’t know, and it worried her. It was still night at least, so she couldn’t have been unconscious for that long—unless she’d somehow been out cold for a full day. But there wasn’t any magic above her, and the night sky seemed as still as could be. Had the fight already finished? If it had, then Melody would have come looking for her. Maybe it had gone somewhere else?

Rarity decided to not jump to another much worse conclusion. Melody had to be okay, right? Everypony had to be fine, and they’d defeated Soft Step. Melody would be more than a match for the alicorn, she just knew it.

Still, she needed to find the other siren and her friends first, so mustering her strength and bracing herself for a painful swim, Rarity used her tail to kick off of the floor and paddle to the surface. At the very least, moving seemed to dull her pain once she got used to it. She just needed to stay active and put her mind to other things. She couldn’t worry about her own injuries now. Those could be taken care of later.

When she breached the surface, however, she spun in place but could see nothing. The ocean was a little choppy and there weren’t any figures moving in the sky. On top of that, what had once been a decent bank of clouds had been shattered into little wisps. But how? Why would that happen?

She realized that she’d seen exactly that once before when Rainbow Dash had used a rainboom to clear the skies over the tomb. Assuming the clouds hadn’t broken apart due to some natural calamity or maybe even due to Soft Step’s magic, then a rainboom seemed like the most obvious culprit. But why? Why would Rainbow use a Rainboom when she was supposed to be hiding?

And where was Melody? Did she go back to the raft? How far had the raft drifted while she was unconscious?

Rarity knew one thing for certain, and it was that she wasn’t going to get any more answers just floating in the water. She needed to find her friends and get clued in on what had happened after she blacked out.

So she dived back below the water and began to swim off to the south, her eyes scanning the seafloor as she traveled. If Soft Step was still out there somewhere… if her friends had failed… then it would do better for her to move about unseen rather than advertise her presence with scales that glowed like a second moon sitting on the water. Besides, it was easy enough to see anything floating on the surface of the water above her. Her sharp siren eyes could surely pick out a square of wood floating on the open ocean, right?

Despite that, they almost missed the dull emerald figure lying on its side through the murky haze of the water. Rarity did a double-take as she realized what she had seen, and she abruptly changed course, swimming as quickly as she could to get to Melody’s side. “Melody?!” she cried, stopping just shy of the siren and gasping as she saw the hole punched through her back, just to the left of her dorsal fin. The water all around her stank of the coppery smell of blood, even if the hole ripped through Melody’s body didn’t bleed any more.

Rarity tried to swallow her panic as she slowly swam over Melody to get a look at her other side. “M-Melody?” she squeaked when the siren didn’t respond to her earlier cry. The siren wasn’t moving, and Rarity couldn’t see her gills parting from her breathing. “M-Melody? You… y-you’re not…”

She gasped and covered her beak with both her hooves when she finally saw Melody’s front side. The hole punched through her back had burst out of her chest, shattering her heartstone in the process. Tiny shards of emerald decorated the sand all around her like little green glass snowflakes, and the sand underneath her body had been stained brown from her blood. The siren’s eyes were half-lidded and her mouth was parted; Rarity had to turn away and hug herself to not have to look at her glassy eyes and lolling tongue.

Rarity closed her eyes and rocked back and forth as salty tears dissolved into the salty ocean.

Melody was dead.

“Oh, Melody. Melody, darling…” Rarity clawed at her face, her big, scaly, siren face. She couldn’t believe Melody was dead. It didn’t seem possible. There was no way! She was supposed to be the one who knew all the answers, the one who would help get them all home. And now she was dead, taking all her knowledge, all her magic, and all her happiness with her.

Rarity sniffled and shuddered. Assuming that she even survived the night… who was going to turn her back into a pony when this was all over?

She turned around and faced Melody one last time. She deserved to be buried, not left to rot and be picked clean by crabs. But there wasn’t any time to bury her now. If Soft Step had done this to her, then Rarity knew that the alicorn had to have won. She had to be out there, somewhere, and that meant the rest of her friends were in danger. As the last siren, she needed to find them and protect them.

“You… you won’t have died in vain,” Rarity said, drifting back to Melody. She placed one hoof on the siren’s face, closing her eyes, and picked up a chunk of her heartstone from the sand with the other. It was a sizeable chunk, maybe about a third of the heartstone, and Rarity pressed it against her cheek. If she closed her eyes and let her imagination wander, it wasn’t too hard to pretend that Melody was still in there to help her. She could at least take this little piece of her friend with her to remember her by and give her strength.

Then she turned around and swam to the south, unable to waste any more time lingering by the body of a friend.