Rainbow Dash shed no tears as she rocketed away from her friend and her lover, leaving them behind as the sea blurred by beneath her. She was strong, determined, and resolute in her conviction. She had to do this, even if it would kill her. The fate of the world depended on it. The water shed from her eyelashes was just the wind blasting into her face.
Yet she did take a deep breath to ready herself, not to calm any emotions roiling within her breast. What she faced before her was an impossible task: stopping an all-powerful alicorn of death and darkness by herself. She didn’t even have Melody’s enchantment to make her coat glow with daylight. The only thing that had given her a chance to take out the alicorn was a daylight-infused Sonic Rainboom, and she’d squandered that opportunity so horrendously she knew she’d never get it back. There was no feasible way for her to take down Soft Step in a cramped shrine with no room to fly and very little light. She’d be trying to fight the alicorn in her element. The only advantage she could remotely consider she had going for herself—if it even mattered at all—was that there was no moonlight in the shrine. Would it help her? She had no idea… but she wasn’t going to count on it.
This was a fight she couldn’t win with hooves and force, she soon concluded. It wasn’t a fight she could win at all, but that didn’t mean she could give up. If she could do anything, anything, to buy a few extra minutes for Rarity and Gyro, then she would do it. Her life was merely a tool to pry a little more time out of the alicorn before she finished her ritual. Nothing more.
She looked up to the sky, where the glow of the sun rounding the world was just beginning to needle its way through the darkness of the night. It wouldn’t be long now before that cheerful golden light would climb above the horizon once more, chasing away the nightmares of the dark. Rainbow had to stifle a yawn and vigorously shake her head to chase away her exhaustion. She’d flown so much tonight, done so much and fought so hard. There wasn’t much of the night left now; could she fight her way through what was left of it and finally emerge to see the fiery herald of the day poke its head out in the east? Or had she seen her final sunrise, lived her final day, and never even known it?
Her mind was wandering, and wandering into the sentimental. She tried to push all those thoughts aside. She had a mission to do, and it would likely be the most dangerous thing she’d ever done in her entire life. If she wasn’t focused, wasn’t prepared, then it would also be the last.
Her sights settled on the rocky bluffs of the island which concealed the entrance to the shrine beneath the waters of the rising tide. A tiny twitch of her feathers was all it took to adjust her attitude and dive towards the water on the edge. She could just barely make out the shadow of the overhang concealing the entrance and had enough time for one final adjustment before it was too late.
She hit the water and let her momentum carry her through to the other side.
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Gyro clutched onto the log as it plowed through the water in silence. Since Rainbow’s departure, neither she nor Rarity had spoken a word. An awful quiet hung around them, heavy and foreboding, only interrupted by the splashing of Rarity’s fin on the water or the sound of the waves breaking against the log.
Would she ever see Rainbow again? Gyro didn’t know if she could answer that. Rainbow Dash had already fought Soft Step and escaped with her life, even winning before she wasted her opportunity to finish it all with a single blow. The mare could fight, and she could hold her own against demigods and supernatural beings stacked against her. But could she pull off the impossible without her wings, without her flight, in a lair that gave all the advantages to Soft Step? It didn’t seem possible at all.
It would take nothing short of a miracle to save the pegasus… an admission made all the more difficult when she heard Rarity sniffle above her.
She craned her head back and saw Rarity’s scaly lips had parted as she gnashed her teeth together. The siren’s body trembled, and Gyro wondered if the water on her face was only the spray of the sea or something else. But when she sniffled again, the sound was unmistakable, even over the din of the sea. “Rarity?” she asked, hazarding the reaction she might get from the siren. “Are you… you know…?”
“Hmn?” Rarity blinked and shook her head from side to side, as her hooves were occupied with pushing the log so she couldn’t wipe at her eyes. “What… what do you mean, darling?”
Gyro lightly frowned at the siren. “You know what I mean. Are you okay?”
“I’m… I’m fine,” Rarity said, shifting her attention back to the island in front of them. “Don’t worry about me.”
“You’re not fine, Rarity, I can tell.” Sighing, she slid over on the log until she could put her hoof over Rarity’s. “We’ll see her again. I promise it.”
“But will she be okay when we do?” Rarity asked. “She’s going to fight Soft Step alone…”
“She’ll be fine,” Gyro assured her, even as she held her own doubts. “You’ve gotta admit, she’s too stubborn to die.”
Rarity chuckled slightly; Gyro considered that a victory. “She’s certainly been through a lot and come out the other side not much worse for wear. If there’s any mare that could go through Tartarus and walk out the other side unscathed, it’s her.” But her momentary mirth faded and she frowned at the sea. “But I think she’s walking into more than Tartarus…”
“Then we just need to get to the island,” Gyro said, tightening her grip on the slippery log. “The sooner we can get there, the sooner we can help out.”
“I... I suppose you’re right.” Gyro felt the log shift as Rarity redoubled her speed. “We can’t afford to waste any more time, can we?”
“No, no we cannot,” Gyro agreed. “I just hope that there will be enough when we get there.”
“Me too... me too.”