By the time Rainbow returned to the lagoon, most of the others had awoken as well, and likely due to the same cause that had driven her from the restful embrace of sleep. There was very little shade out on the open beach of the lagoon, and nopony could tolerate the heat and light for that long, even while oblivious to the world. Thankfully, they’d chosen the lagoon to rest next to, so it wasn’t too much of a problem for the survivors to stagger to their hooves and wade into the cool water to wash away the sand and sweat.
Rainbow landed next to Rarity, who was curled on her side at the edge of the lagoon so the water could soak at least some of her scales. When Rarity saw the fluttering of Rainbow’s wings, she looked away from the rest of the survivors and shifted her attention to her marefriend. “Rainbow! There you are. I was wondering where you’d flown off to.”
“I was hungry and thirsty,” Rainbow said, sitting down in the sand by Rarity’s side. “I had to take care of that.”
Rarity nodded. “I’m feeling famished as well, but I’m not sure if I can bring myself to go hunting,” she said. “Melody had taken care of that for me until now. Now I have to go catch fish with my beak and kill them myself.”
“Better get used to it,” Rainbow said, even deflating slightly as she realized what she was asking Rarity to do. “It’s not like we’ll have much of a chance to go home anytime soon.”
“What do you mean?” Rarity asked her. “It’s over, right? Now that Soft Step is… gone, we can focus on getting back home in peace!”
“Rarity…” Rainbow fidgeted in place. “…How much did Melody ever tell you about what it will take to get home?”
The siren sighed and seemed to deflate. “Enough to know that it’s not going to be easy. The barrier was raised with a blood sacrifice of some kind. And Soft Step wanted pegasi for the ritual she was performing…”
“Yeah.” Nodding her head, Rainbow watched Champagne and Stargazer splash through the water in front of them. “She sacrificed Ratchet’s and Gauze’s hearts, and then Jolly Roger shot her through hers. Three hearts were sacrificed to the shrine down there—and three totems were glowing with power when she died.”
“All except for the pegasus figurine,” Rarity finished.
Rainbow’s nostrils flared and she bowed her head. “The only thing that stands between us and home is a pegasus heart. If we’re going to lower the barrier… one of us pegasi is gonna have to bite the bullet.”
Rarity blinked in disbelief. “No!” she protested, shifting away from Rainbow as if the horrid thought was contagious. “We… we can’t do that! We can’t do anything like that!”
“I know,” Rainbow said. “I don’t want to make anypony else do it anymore than I would volunteer myself. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s the only way to lower the barrier. And if it really is the only way to go home… what do we do?”
Rarity’s beak moved a few times but no words formed. Finally, with a rough shake of her head, she crossed her legs and slapped her tail on the sand. “I… I-I don’t know, Rainbow…”
“Me neither,” Rainbow admitted with a defeated sigh. “We can always try to find another way. I mean, surely there’s gotta be something we can do. But… I’m not really hopeful that there will be.”
“Melody spent decades trapped in this island chain,” Rarity said. “She had years and years to puzzle out a solution to get home that didn’t involve these totems or rituals, and she never figured it out. What… what chance do we have to solve the mystery in even half the time?”
“A much better one than she did, admittedly,” Rainbow said. “We already gathered all the totems. Three of them have been activated. We’ve got all the ingredients in one place for this whole big ‘get off of the islands’ birthday cake we’re trying to make. We just need to figure out if we can replace ‘pegasus heart’ with, I don’t know, coconut oil or something.”
The analogy at least made Rarity giggle. “You sound like Pinkie Pie, darling.”
“What can I say?” Rainbow shrugged and smiled a bit. “I miss the crazy girl. Celestia, what I wouldn’t give to go to one of her parties again…”
Rarity smiled as well, though it faltered and fell after a few seconds. “Yes… That is perhaps the most difficult thing out of all of this,” she said. “We either spend the rest of our lives here and don’t see our friends ever again, or we go back to them with the blood of our friends here on our hooves. I don’t think I could ever bring myself to look at Fluttershy the same way again if I had to kill a pegasus to go home. I don’t think she would ever look at me the same way either.”
“So what’s worse, then?” Rainbow asked her. “Is it better to give up on going home and letting everypony there down just so you can keep your conscience clear? Or doing whatever it takes to get home, no matter what that might cost us, so we can see our friends and family again?”
“That sounds like a pirate’s way of thinking it through,” Rarity said. “‘Doing whatever it takes,’ I mean. After everything we’ve done to overcome this together, to work as a team, I’d hate to see us backtrack into their lifestyle and their morals.”
“Me too,” Rainbow said with a sigh and a sad shake of her head. “I just… I just wanna go home, you know?”
“You’re not the only one, I assure you,” Rarity said. But, steeling her gaze, she shifted her attention away from the survivors in the water and toward the bodies lying on the beach. “In any event, I think this can wait to be discussed until later, and with the group as a whole. We shouldn’t make decisions affecting all of us without their input as well. In the meanwhile, we can at least bury and remember those we’ve lost.”
Rainbow nodded and followed her gaze to the lagoon’s sandy beaches. “Yeah,” she said. “Go and get everypony else. I’ll get things from the camp so we can do this right.”