Rainbow Dash stared down the hollow nostrils of the deer skull. There was no hint of flesh or muscle; all had decayed, save for the calcified interior of the ill-fated guardian of Val Roa.
She shuddered, tilting her head aside and squinting. In the dim light peeking through the slits of the wooden entrance, she tried to determine where the deer had been positioned and what he had been doing. Such was a nigh-impossible task, but Rainbow allowed her imagination to run wild anyways.
The figure was lying on its side. Due to the antlers, its head had been slightly propped up, but Rainbow could tell that the guard had been preoccupied with something physically assailing him. His forelimbs were wrapped around his lower body—as if he was hugging himself.
“Clutching his belly, perhaps?” Rainbow's fuzzy nose wriggled. “Could use a scan, there, Pilate. If only...” Her words trailed off, and her ears folded back in brief melancholy. A few blinks later, she leaned in close, nearly brushing her face against the skeletal remains.
There were several hollow strips situated within the deer's leg bones. Overall, Rainbow observed, the skeleton looked brittle and frail.
“Must have been super old when he died.” She gulped. “But... starvation?”
She tapped her chin in thought. The crashing of waves persisted outside while Rainbow tilted her head about, ultimately facing the desk immediately nearby the collapsed skeleton. She noticed a stool resting on its side beneath the furniture's splintery edge. Trotting up, she carefully studied a fine bed of dust and sand lying over the desktop.
Taking a deep, deep breath, Rainbow exhaled forcibly. She blew off a fine layer of dust, exposing a square-shaped lump. Tentatively, she reached forward, pulling at the lump. She felt a leather binding, and her ears heard the rustle of age-old paper sheets.
She twitched slightly. “A book...” Her eyes blinked. “A journal.”
The pegasus struggled to maintain her enthusiasm. There was no telling how old—or brittle—the contents were. With icily slow grace and precision, she pulled the front lip of the book open.
The first one hundred pages clung together like honey'd leaves.
Rainbow winced. She fidgeted, contemplated it, but ultimately decided not to try and pry the pages apart. She figured that just the slightest tug would rip them to shreds, rendering the tome utterly useless. So, instead, she flipped the clumped-together pages to the left and scanned her eyes over the first page she could see.
This proved fruitless. Every single page was obscured by grime and mildew. Any part that wasn't consumed was eaten through by the hard grit of sand and time.
Rainbow sighed, nevertheless flipping forward as slowly and gracefully as she could.
“I know, I know,” she murmured aloud. “It's a total travesty. Kera, hug Mommy, will ya?” She turned another page. “At this rate, I swear she's gonna—”
Rainbow spotted legible words.
“...collapse.” Rainbow blinked. With a jittery hoof, she stroked her pendant, summoning a ruby glow that she swiftly shone across the decrepit page.
Indeed, a series of ink stains formed legible sentences. Rainbow's vision flew to the very top of it.
“'Day Two Hundred and Twelve...'” Her blood ran cold. “Luna Poop, how... h-how long have I been out here, Roarke...?”
She stood in dead silence for a prolonged period of time.
Hesitantly, she returned to reading: “'...have resolved ourselves to guarding this makeshift bastion. We lost too many on the trip here, and so many of our brothers are dead, their bodies lost to the elements of the desert. The Grand Choke consumed us so swiftly that there was no point in giving them a dedicated burial, or else we would all surely perish in the heat and sand. If we were to make a return trip now, with so many of our rations utterly vanished, we wouldn't even make it one quarter of the way back to the...'”
Rainbow's brow furrowed. The entry had been consumed by a splotch of sand and mildew, making the words illegible. She flipped a few more pages until she found another entry.
“'Day Two Hundred and Forty. Work on the raft continues, albeit slowly. We simply lack the materials to make something that will stay afloat. It's pressing enough that we fashioned half of the wagons into the walls of this fort. I've tried to convince my brothers-in-arms that we must abandon the settlement completely, but they are stubborn... and growing weak. I understand it's a noble thing to want to maintain this bastion, but if we stay any longer on this shore we will surely die. The only way to go is forward, across the ocean. I think I might be able to make a crude sail out of our burlap materials. While magic may have abandoned us, surely the elements won't. I must find a way to convince them of this...'”
Rainbow stopped reading. A sour lump had formed in her throat.
Sighing, she flipped ahead. Suddenly, she encountered nothing but blank pages. There wasn't enough ink for the throes of time to blemish.
With a blink, she flipped back, found some scribbled pages, then skipped towards the second-to-last entry.
“'Day Four Hundred and Eleven,'” Rainbow's voice cracked. “'Sunlight. Sweltering. Never quiet. I miss you, Thelma. I'm alone out here, but I hear my brothers' voices in the surf. They scream at me with each swallow that I take. I'm a sinner, and I am damned, but I must stay here. I must guard my post. It's my charge. My only purpose. Aside from my love for you. I love you so much, Thelma. Forever and always.'”
Rainbow shivered. She didn't want to, but—with shaking hooves—she peeled the last page open, her ruby eyes ran over the page. There was no date listed—simply a series of crooked, meandering sentences:
“'Please, God, forgive me. Forgive me, God. Have mercy on my soul. I am so wicked. So wicked. So very wicked, God, forgive me. Forgive me, please, I beg you, God.'”
Her lips pursed. She leaned back, and in so doing she became aware of deeper shadows in the cave. Immediately, Rainbow swiveled her head to the left, gazing into the far corner of the cave. One hoof at another, she trotted towards the furthest wall.
There, in the corner, beyond the decayed garden, rested several jagged branches—antlers. As Rainbow rounded a final piece of wooden furniture, she expected to see the bodies of the other guards lying side by side. To her numb surprise, she saw the antlers lying against each other, like twigs lopped off of a tree.
Her eyes searched for the matching skulls, but to no avail. She did see bones—but they were all piled lazily into the corner with no rhyme or reason. What's more—upon closer examination—many of them were broken, severed, and covered all over with jagged lines and fissures.
Rainbow's vision twitched. She gaped, staring closer.
She saw more and more scrapes, scars, and hacked lines across the bones' surfaces. The calcified strips were all over the place, with several rib-bones spilling off a crookedly leaning table where an assortment of sharp, rusted tools lay glinting in the slitted sunlight.
Rainbow grimaced hard. She backtrotted—only to trip on a petrified legbone. Panting—hyperventilating—she turned completely around and galloped out of the hovel.
She burst out onto the sunlit world. Light overwhelmed her, blinding her. She bumped into a collapsed wall or two, then fell chest-forward in the hot sand, wheezing for breath. Her pained voice squeaked and she clutched her stomach as she curled up, retching and spitting up bile.
The roaring surf consumed her whimpers.