//------------------------------// // The Price of Survival // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// Rainbow Dash had to pause and wipe the sweat from her face. Dragging things from one side of the island to the other on a few hours of sleep was pushing her to her limits. Her limbs were still sore from everything she’d done the night before, and hauling wood from the camp to the lagoon only made them ache worse. At least she had some help from the others and didn’t have to carry everything herself. She dropped the somewhat damp planks of wood she’d been carrying in the sand and tried to spit out the splinters digging into her lips and tongue. For a moment, she wished that she was a unicorn just so she didn’t have to lug things around with her mouth, but it didn’t last all that long. As much as she loved Rarity, unicorns and magic were nowhere near as awesome as pegasi and flying. Though that didn’t matter all that much when Rarity was a big scaly siren, did it? Panting lightly and with sweat drenching her coat, Rainbow wandered off to the shade for a few quick minutes of rest before she got back to it. Directly in the center of the lagoon’s beach, the survivors had put together a huge pyre from their scrap and salvage. Rainbow didn’t really want to waste wood like that, but after a brief conference with the others, they’d decided that the safest way to get rid of Soft’s body and all the mummies scattered around the island would be to incinerate them. After all, the last thing they needed was to leave any corpses around that dark magic could reanimate again if somehow the worst happened and the moon god found another way to create an avatar. But if they destroyed the horn attached to Soft’s skull, they hopefully wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. Rainbow wasn’t sure if she should feel relieved or angered that Jolly Roger was more than happy to fetch Soft’s body and smash her horn with a rock until it was too cracked and fractured to channel magic. Just in case. Ruse walked by with his horn aglow, towing several mummies in a telekinetic aura. “You might wanna stay upwind,” he said to Rainbow as he passed, his nose wrinkled in disgust. “These things smell awful. I can’t imagine just how much worse it’ll stink when we light the pyre.” “Hopefully it’s hot enough that it will just burn away the stench,” Rainbow said, reluctantly surrendering her shade to stay ahead of Ruse and away from the mummy smell. At least she could always stand in the water and let it soak a few inches around her fetlocks. She watched as Ruse unceremoniously dumped the mummies onto the pyre and grimaced, almost as if he’d still contaminated himself by touching them with his intangible magic. “If not, we’ll just have to get used to it.” “The smell of thirty or forty rotten and burning corpses?” Ruse gagged and trotted away from the pyre. “I don’t think there’s a way to get used to that. Not at all.” “Yeah, you’re probably right about that.” Rainbow’s eyes fell on the pair of graves dug in firmer ground closer to the base of the hill. The pirate brothers hung around next to them, sweat dripping from their faces as they finished carving up the earth for Ratchet and Gauze. “Run into any minotaurs while you were hunting for mummies?” Ruse shook his head. “I think they’re all gone,” he said. “I didn’t really go to the shore to check it out. But there’s a lot less hooting and hollering now, don’t you agree?” Rainbow nodded, noting that it did seem quieter around the islands. Once again, they had returned to their usual ambient sounds of insects and the occasional bird. Chirp watched them from the shade of a palm tree perched on the east ridge, his feathers puffed out and his beak occasionally opening in a wide yawn. Even the god bird seemed like he could get tired, a fact Rainbow found endlessly amusing for some reason. The water splashed behind her, and she turned around to see Rarity trying to drag herself back into the lagoon. “I hate this shallow water,” she growled as she used her legs to pull herself in. “I don’t have any room to use my tail and I have to haul myself all the way back out past the rocks before the water gets deep enough to swim again.” “You could just try flying in,” Rainbow said. “Everything’s better when you fly.” “Flying is too difficult when I don’t have wings,” Rarity said. “Much as I complain about this, it’s easier than trying to move through the air on sheer willpower alone.” “Right.” Ruse quietly cleared his throat, and when Rarity looked in his direction, he cautiously moved a few steps closer to the beach. “Is it… Is she…?” Rarity sighed and nodded. “I took care of it,” she said. “The crabs won’t be able to get to her.” The ventriloquist sighed and nodded. “Well… thank you for that. At least she can rest easy.” “I would’ve liked to see her one last time,” Rainbow said. “But I don’t think I can if she’s at the bottom of the ocean… and under a ton of sand now.” “I would have liked to speak to her one last time, too,” Rarity said. Ultimately, however, she sighed and hung her head. “Celestia, if we keep talking about this, I feel like we’re going to be buried in misery.” Rainbow reluctantly nodded. “We’ve already got enough to dig out of as is.” She again looked toward the beach, where Champagne and Stargazer had returned with dried brush they could use to start the fire with. “But I suppose there’s no point in waiting around any longer. Might as well get this over with.” The others nodded, and Rainbow and Ruse approached the pyre while Rarity remained in the water. The rest of the survivors slowly formed up, and Rainbow lightly bumped Stargazer’s shoulder with her hoof. “Didn’t see any more mummies out there? Ruse got them all?” “Looks like it,” the pegasus said. “Though I’m sure we’ll find more.” “I’m sure of that, too.” Rainbow sighed and lowered her head. “At least we’re getting this done with, one way or another.” She walked past the others and stopped in front of the graves dug in the dirt. Flag and Roger watched her from the shade, and Rainbow spared them a thankful nod for their hard work. Then she turned her attention to the bodies lying next to them, the gaping holes in their chests covered by palm fronds to at least hide the bloody mess from sight. It wasn’t too hard to imagine that they were merely sleeping and would wake up if she touched them, but she knew that wouldn’t happen. After a moment to collect her thoughts, Rainbow turned around to find all the survivors and Rarity watching her. Clearing her throat, she took a step forward and tried to relax. “I’m… I’m not super good with speeches and stuff,” she said, letting her gaze sweep over the ponies assembled before her. “But I can at least say a few nice words for them now. I didn’t get to know them all that long—only a few days, really—but I could tell they were good people. All of them. Even Soft Step.” She let her eyes linger on the pyre and the alicorn body resting within. “We need to remember that it wasn’t her that did all this, but some evil spirit that possessed and enslaved her. She tried to fight it all she could, but she wasn’t strong enough. At least… at least when she died, she was finally free during her final breath.” She faltered and hung her head. “The rest of us? We made it through an awful night. It’s probably the worst thing any of us could ever have to deal with. But it’s over now, okay? We’ve got the sun back and the threat is over. Now we can start trying to go home for real… but we can’t forget everyone who died along the way.” She swallowed hard and added, “That’s the price we pay for surviving. We’ve gotta live with that weight on our shoulders, and we owe it to them to go home. Because if they’ll never see Equestria again, we have to for them.” Rainbow felt tears prick at her eyes, but she forced them away. “I’ll remember them,” she firmly stated. “I’ll remember everything they did for us. And if we go home in two days from now or two decades, I’ll make sure to keep them close to my heart. ‘Cause that’s all we can do.” Wings trembling, she closed her eyes and walked away, passing through the meager crowd of survivors assembled around her. She didn’t stop walking until she felt her hooves touch water, and then she sat down. She simply had no more words left to say. Strong, scaly limbs gently caressed her and pulled her into a calming embrace as she struggled to fight back her tears.