Surviving Sand Island

by The 24th Pegasus

Spelunk Like Your Life Depends On It

Rarity stopped for air on an outcropping of rock in the middle of the tunnels. The caves beneath the islands seemed to wind on forever and ever, and she didn’t know how long she’d been lost exploring them. Whether it had been five minutes or five hours, she couldn’t keep track of it anymore. She was tired and hurt all over, and to make things worse, her bleeding flank was starting to leave her lightheaded. It’d already soaked through her makeshift bandage, and she didn’t have any more cloth to patch it up with. Her best bet now was to make it out of the caves and get back home.

But if there was an exit to these caves, she hadn’t seen it anywhere. Occasionally she would see a twisting gap in the walls leading up into the ceiling, but she couldn’t even see the other end of it when she tried peering inside. Without seeing the other end, she couldn’t reasonably judge her distance for a teleport, and the fear of impaling herself through a tree or only emerging halfway out of the earth was too terrifying a prospect for her to risk. Her best bet was to find a natural opening to walk out of or a gap in the rocks that would allow her to see the outside, but so far, she’d come across neither.

She rubbed her sore horn, and the mere touch left her sick and in pain. She’d pushed her horn well past its limits already. She didn’t even know if it had enough juice for another teleport, should the opportunity arise. The split in the tip she’d inflicted on it two days ago was still there, and had even widened slightly with the constant magical exertion she’d forced on it since. The teleports definitely didn’t help in that regard, but at the very least, it hadn’t completely split down the middle like it had in the immediate aftermath of the Concordia’s wrecking. But at the rate Rarity was using her magic, she wondered if her horn would permanently have a split or a divot near the tip from the constant injuries it was sustaining.

She sighed and twitched her scalp around her missing ear. A month ago, all she’d worried about was returning to Equestria with leathery skin and wrinkles from too much exposure to the scalding sun. Now, merely making it back in one piece had become all but impossible. Between her missing ear, deep gouge in her flank, and splitting horn, she could already feel her status as an icon of beauty and sex appeal slipping away from her.

Her status as a living pony was also going to slip away if she didn’t get moving again, though, and that, ultimately, was more important than her appearance, if only by a little. Hissing in pain from the wound in her flank, Rarity managed to clamber back to her three hooves while keeping her fourth off the ground to not aggravate the injury anymore. Once she had done that, she resumed her painful and exhausting trek through the caves, more dragging herself along with her forehooves than actually walking. For a moment, she imagined how Gyro must’ve similarly felt when she lost the use of her hind legs, and a fresh wave of sympathy for the engineer’s plight washed over her. Trying to pogo around on one hind leg was already bad enough; she didn’t want to imagine trying to navigate these caves with only her forelegs.

The caves overall seemed like more of the same, constantly repeating themselves in slight variations of patterns. They rose and fell, were filled with stalactites and stalagmites, and even had trickling gullies of water running through little channels in the stone. Some insects crawled around the rock formations, and Rarity would occasionally hear the chittering of distant bats down a branching cave. Again, she reassured herself that if bats could get in, then they could get out. And hopefully their way out would be more than just a tiny gap she couldn’t possibly fit through or even see out of like some she’d already encountered.

But she did note that the tunnels overall seemed to be trending upwards, which was good. She’d ended up so far below the earth while exploring the tomb that the only way to get back to the surface was to start hiking upwards. And even though the inclined gradient made it more difficult for her to navigate the slippery rocks on three hooves, it was at least a sign of tangible progress. So long as she kept moving upwards, It was only a matter of time before she finally emerged into the moonlight once more.

Before she could even get there, however, she came across her first impasse. The tunnel abruptly transitioned into a sheer cliff directly in front of her, rising maybe fifty feet out of the ground before presumably continuing at the top. Rocky outcroppings and seams in the stone provided the only traction to scale the cliff face, and many of those barely offered room for more than a hoof or two. Rarity’s heart fell as she realized she would have to scale the thing on three hooves, or risk burning a teleport and hoping she still had enough energy left for another one should she need it. And she doubted her horn could take two more teleports, let alone one.

“This is exactly what I needed,” she grumbled. “As if making this far didn’t prove my endurance enough! Couldn’t I have just found an exit to these cursed tunnels without this much fuss?!”

Of course, complaining at the stone wasn’t going to encourage it to move, so Rarity sighed and trudged over to the base after a minute to catch her breath. She was running on fumes by now, and it would take everything she had left to make it to the top of the cliff. Whether an exit or a dead end awaited her at the top of the cliff, Rarity knew she wasn’t going back down. She’d either make it out of these tunnels or starve down here, but she was not going to go back towards the tomb. After the horrors she witnessed there, it might as well have been akin to suicide.

She swallowed and looked up at the cliff. Not like this prospect was any different, though…

Shuffling into position at the base, she started to carefully pick her way up the rocky seams and jutting stones, simply trying to find the best way to the top. Her progress was slow but steady at first; thankfully she already had experience scaling a sheer rock face when she followed Gyro to the piece of the Concordia’s wreckage. It meant she at least knew what she was doing, but with her crippling physical limitations, she doubted it would make up for much once the going got rough.

And get rough it did. It didn’t take long before she reached a stretch of rock with no easy outcroppings within a foreleg’s reach. Instead, she stared down a sizable gap between one platform and the next, followed by a seam in the rock that she’d have to wedge herself into and scale vertically to make it to the top. Again, the temptation to pour her all into a teleport began to weigh down on her, especially when she considered how far of a fall it was to the ground below, but she had to temper herself with a reminder that burning her last teleport now could kill her later. At least here, if she made the jump and the shimmying climb, she’d be home free. Or so she hoped.

Rarity let her injured leg touch the floor and chanced putting some weight on it. It hurt, and hurt bad, but with the desperation of the jump ahead of her, she could afford to force herself through the pain. She needed to propel with both her hind legs if she wanted to clear the gap, not just one. Trying to jump using only one leg would almost certainly cause her to fall short and end her.

Looking at her oozing wound, she swallowed hard and gritted her teeth. “Please don’t begin profusely bleeding again,” she asked it, knowing full well that the stress she was about to put on her thigh would likely cause it to do exactly that. Then, setting her sights on the opposite platform, she swallowed hard, lowered her head, and began to gallop toward the edge.

Pain knifed her in the side with every step her hind leg took, and she nearly stumbled after the first. But she only had a small amount of space to work with; by the time she took the fourth, she was already at the edge. Grunting in exertion, Rarity reared back, put both her hind legs on the stone, and kicked off as hard as she could, flinging herself across the gap.

She barely cleared the distance, and ended up scrabbling at the rocks and stones on the edge for something to hold onto. She found it in a tiny stalagmite, and hooking her forelegs around it, cried out as she hauled her body onto the platform. She immediately collapsed onto the protrusion as soon as she’d pulled herself away from the edge, panting and feeling warm blood trickle down her leg. She knew if she didn’t find something to bandage it up with soon, she’d end up bleeding out very quickly.

And she still wasn’t done.

The next stage of the ascent loomed over her, tall and intimidating. Just the mere sight of what she had to do filled Rarity with dread. Sitting up, she rested her back against the stone and put her hooves over her wound, trying to stem the bleeding as best she could while she worked up the strength and the willpower to tackle the next stage of the climb.

“Five minutes,” she grunted to herself. “Just… five minutes.”

Comments

[alamais]

Hmm...cauterize with magic fire?

[Merula]

Moar parkour Rara hoers!

[Admiral Q Ponyform]

8787641
Sadly i don't think she knows that one.

[Mocha Star]

Ouch.

I'm actually pulling for her.

[zaponator]

Fuck, Rarity's becoming quite the badass.

[Neece]

8788007
Shame she didn't want to be a badass, but a fashionista.