• Published 14th Aug 2017
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Surviving Sand Island - The 24th Pegasus



An airship wreck leaves Rainbow Dash and Rarity stranded on a deserted island. Together, they must find a way to survive until help comes—if it comes.

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Shipwreck

Rainbow regretted losing altitude to inform Rarity and Gyro about what her plans were. Out over the water, the thermals were much weaker, so she couldn’t ride them up as easily. That meant she had to work her wings, and after not flying until just yesterday, it was almost torturous to build up a suitable height over the water. She would also need to rest soon; hopefully she made it to the islands before her wings gave out on her. Every beat of her healed wing sent an ache of pain down the limb. “Grrmmmff… stop it,” she grumbled at the offending limb. “Get over yourself.”

She turned her attention back to the skies in front of her. The island was much closer now, and suddenly seemed much taller from almost sea level. Rainbow hoped that they wouldn’t have to go hiking up that one in search of the next figurine. That would take a full day for Rarity and Gyro to hike up, assuming Rainbow didn’t carry them. Which she’d probably be pressured into by Rarity.

Behind her, the raft was just a blur on the water, guided along by Rarity’s magic. It’d take some time for them to make landfall, and until they did so, it was up to Rainbow to get a lay of the land. So far, from what she could see, the eastern coast of the island chain was relatively shallow, so it would make for a good landing site. On top of that, there were plenty of trees and undergrowth to conceal the raft in, so they wouldn’t have to worry about something finding it later. If only they knew whether or not there was something to hide the raft from to spare them the worry. But the way Rainbow figured it, if there were minotaurs on one island, then why wouldn’t they be on this one as well?

Spires of shattered rock loomed above her, and Rainbow flapped her wings a few more times to climb a little. The spires were crooked and jagged, rising out of the water like teeth. Whatever ledges there were, vegetation found a way to cling onto, topping every flat surface it covered with tufts of grass and weeds. Ancient fissures and layers of sediment and rock gave the spires a wavy, striated appearance, and the lines were angled in different ways, but often aligned vertically. Rainbow wondered if maybe they were just huge chunks of rock blasted away when the volcano blew up and just ended up here. It would certainly explain their orientation.

Nestled between two of those massive spires was the piece of the shipwreck. Once Rainbow located it again from low altitude, she circled a few times as she slowly gained altitude, conserving her energy and keeping unnecessary strain off her wings while she climbed. It gave her a few minutes to observe the wreck and figure out what she was dealing with.

The wreck was still fresh, that much she could easily tell now that she was up close. The paint hadn’t worn away except for some patches near the edges that would be most exposed to the elements. The wood hadn’t begun to splinter, and it was only slightly swollen from the moisture and humidity. Apart from a few holes here and there, all the planks were still held tightly together. The nails between them hadn’t even loosened yet.

Four blue hooves touched down on the wood, and Rainbow immediately spread her closing wings when the wreckage shifted beneath her. Wood groaned and somewhere below her, a pebble rattled down a rocky slope. Whatever the wreck had ended up on, it was only precariously perched between some of the spires. If Rainbow shifted her weight too much, it could come tumbling off of whatever rocky point it was perched on.

Sighing, she spread her sore wings again and once more took flight, not willing to risk upsetting the balance of the wreckage. Carefully hovering over the wreck, Rainbow frowned and began to examine it more. There was an opulent porthole set in the middle of the chunk of wood, maybe ten feet below a polished mahogany railing at the very top of the piece. When she flew further up to examine it, she saw that a bit of the deck was still attached to the interior wall of the piece, extending for about two or three feet before it abruptly ended in a splintered, jagged line. Given the shape of the gutters beneath the railing and how the metal still had a fresh coat of white paint adorning it, Rainbow figured that they were very modern. But there still wasn’t any definitive proof that this piece of the hull belonged to the Concordia.

So she decided to look under the hull. Lowering herself some on the other side of the wreckage, she first saw the knoblike spire of stone that held up the wreck’s weight and saw the markings where it’d smashed and splintered the interior rooms. Of which there were many—the yellowing wallpaper clinging to the inside reminded Rainbow of the design and decorations inside of her own room. Bits of floor jutted out of the walls, and dead wires hung from gaps in the ceilings. But apart from that, there wasn’t anything more. Whatever contents the rooms may have once had were probably lost over the ocean, along with their inhabitants.

Rising once more above the wreck, Rainbow started fluttering along the edges. The section of the hull had obviously been violently ripped off of the rest of the ship, since the wood at the edges poked out in haphazard, random directions. But getting closer to it, Rainbow noticed a sizeable fragment lying off to the side, half obscured by some low-growing plants. Frowning, she fluttered down and dragged the wood out of the brush. After using a wing to dust it off, Rainbow blinked in surprise at what she saw:

ORDI

There were bits of other letters next to that fragment, but Rainbow didn’t need to see them to know what they were. It only confirmed her suspicions; the piece of the hull belonged to the Concordia.

“You ended up pretty far from where we did,” she muttered to herself. “You must’ve been flying for another fifteen, twenty minutes after we jumped ship.”

Extending her wings, she flew straight up until she was above the spires within which the piece of the Concordia was nestled. Sure enough, scattered across the sands of the other fractured islands, bits of wood and metal debris stuck out of the sand at random. Another sizeable chunk of hull sat in the shallow water between the big island and an island in the center of the collapsed crater, nearly as big as the one Rainbow had just investigated. It seemed like a good bulk of the ship had crashed on this island. So if the ship made it here, did any lifeboats?

Just as she thought that, she heard a distant vboomf echo out over the islands. Frowning, she fluttered forward, in the direction of the noise. What was that? It didn’t sound like anything natural, that was for sure. So what could it have been?

…Could it be another survivor?

Rainbow hardly hesitated before she made her move. Curious, perhaps dangerously so, she flapped her wings and drifted forward, deeper into the heart of the island cluster.

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