//------------------------------// // Counterattack // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// The sounds of battle raged in front of Hot Coals, but he kept close to the noise regardless. The safest place to be on the island right now was, ironically, right behind the minotaurs. They were fighting the mummies, and with Chirp standing on his back, Coals felt a great deal safer being near them. If they weren’t going to attack him because of the macaw, he was going to cling onto that lifeline as much as he could. And the minotaurs fought astonishingly well. They used their nets to drag down one or two mummies at a time and would then butcher the corpses with their spears or their bare hands until they stopped thrashing. The mummies, in the meanwhile, were too slow and clumsy to be a real threat to the war band. Though they tirelessly pressed the assault, they simply couldn’t get close enough to the trained warriors to inflict any damage on them. The entire unit of fifty seemed to work as one, supporting each other and clearing out their flanks whenever the number of mummies began to overwhelm them and press in too closely. It was impressive what they could achieve with spears and numbers where the survivors had failed with magic and firearms. It wasn’t very long at all before the minotaurs had reached the main campgrounds and swiftly began to clear it out. The war band spread out from the center of the camp, driving the mummies back to the tree line and holding their ground on favorable terrain. Their leader stopped in the middle of the clearing to observe their progress, and after making sure Chirp was still comfortable on his back, Coals began to cautiously approach the minotaur. “Soooo… what brings you all here?” he asked the chief, as fruitless as he knew that question was going to be. The chief turned around and frowned down at him. “A takka’set’un Um’a tokto, pohna’al.” “Yeah, I figured that’d be the response I got.” Coals laughed nervously, even as the chief just stared down at him. He felt Chirp shifting on his shoulder, and he took a few steps back. “I’ll leave you all to it, then.” To his surprise and his immediate dread, Chirp squawked and leapt off of his shoulders. The macaw spread his wings and glided across the camp to one of the huts, where he touched down on the sand and waddled inside. Coals wasted no time scurrying closer to the hut, especially when the minotaur chief started to move after him. But even though the minotaur caught up to him on his longer legs, he was more interested in where the macaw had gone. He passed Coals by without even so much as a look and stopped at the doorway of the hut, where he had to bend down to even look inside. Coals stopped and cocked his head to the side as the minotaur rummaged around inside the hut, and he finally emerged nearly a full minute later with a few sheets of paper clutched in his hand. After a second to look at them, Coals realized that those were the useless waterproof papers that the other stallions had found while looking around the old campsite. Chirp flew out of the hut and perched above the doorframe while the minotaur walked back to the center of the clearing, his eyes scanning over the papers. Coals wasted no time scurrying over to Chirp’s side for the bird’s holy protection, and slowly the rest of the minotaurs began to fall back to their leader. In a short bit, some sort of conference began, and the chief started pointing to the papers and passing them around. Coals frowned and cocked his head to the side. Could… could the minotaurs actually read those papers? Chirp squawked again, catching the minotaurs’ attention, and then he began to flutter to the trees to the southwest. Coals instinctively followed him, knowing that the bird was trying to lead them somewhere, and he gestured toward the band of minotaurs. “Well, come on, then!” he called to them, allowing a little smirk onto his face. “Don’t you want to follow your holy bird or what?” ----- Rarity splashed to the surface and looked around. Where was the raft? It should have been around here. She grinded her beak in worry. Maybe it’d drifted further than she thought? She didn’t know how long she was unconscious, after all… “Rarity!” Her ears perked at the shout, and she whipped her head to the left. There, she spotted a few logs floating in the distance, with two figures clinging onto one. Gasping, Rarity immediately surged in that direction, nearly launching herself into the air with how quickly she tried to close the distance. In a few seconds, she was there, and gingerly grabbed onto the log to keep it close to her body and prevent it from rolling over and flipping the two ponies on top of it into the water. “Rainbow? Gyro?” she said, a relieved smile breaking out over her face. She leaned her head down to carefully nuzzle the two, and then she worriedly looked around. “Where are the others?” “They’re gone, Rares,” Rainbow said, shaking her head. “Soft Step destroyed the raft and took them. She’s probably almost back at the island by now.” “We need to hurry back there,” Gyro said. “We don’t have a lot of time to waste.” Rarity nodded. “Right. This is… this is very bad. Hang on!” After making sure the two ponies were holding securely onto the log, Rarity began to push it through the water, back in the direction of the home island. As they started to move, however, Rarity winced as the question she dreaded was finally asked. “Hey, Rares?” Rainbow asked. “Did you see Melody?” “I…” Rarity shook and shuddered before finally finding her voice around the knot in her throat. “She’s dead, Rainbow,” she finally said. Rainbow and Gyro looked at each other in shock. “She’s… she’s dead?” “Something destroyed her heartstone,” Rarity said. “Her body is just… just lying on the seafloor. I saw it on the way over here. I just can’t believe… What happened after I blacked out?” “I tried to help Melody fight Soft Step,” Rainbow said. Her shoulders sagged and she shook her head in defeat. “We failed.” “So what now?” Rarity asked them. “What’s our plan? What do we do?” “We go back to the island and we stop this no matter what it takes,” Gyro said, glaring ahead at the island slowly drawing nearer. “Who would have thought it’d just be us again? A pegasus, a siren, and a cripple.” “We’ll pull it off,” Rainbow said. “We’ll do it and avenge everybody who has died. Somehow.” Rarity again grinded her beak in worry. ‘Somehow’. A carefully laid plan to try and best that alicorn using two sirens had failed horribly. What chance did a single siren, a pegasus, and an earth pony have against her now?