Surviving Sand Island

by The 24th Pegasus

Thunderstruck

Rarity bobbed and weaved through the air, her undulating body barely moving fast enough to keep her away from Squall’s sand spears or Soft Step’s moonlight lances. Between the two foes, she hardly had any time to respond with an attack of her own. She felt like she was endlessly on the defensive, and staying aloft was quickly tiring her out. Yet right when she felt like she could catch a break from one opponent, the other would shift their focus to her. She knew she was being targeted because she didn’t know how to fight as a siren, and it was costing both her and Melody.

All that pressure on her meant that Melody couldn’t go on the offensive, either. She constantly had to intervene to save Rarity from a painful death, using her magic to dispel what she could and trying to shield the smaller siren. Soft Step was content to hang back from a distance and fling devastating spells at them while Squall disrupted the two with her up close attacks, and they made for a terrifyingly effective team. Rarity didn’t know if they were communicating with each other in some way, but their synchronicity was much better than anything she and Melody could achieve.

Melody sang a few notes to raise and roll a large wave at Squall, nearly sweeping the pirate off her hooves and into the water. The wave forced Squall to anchor herself in place with her sand magic, offering the two sirens a brief respite from her dangerous attacks. They capitalized on it by flying backwards and up, putting more distance between them and the sea below.

Rarity panted as she strained to fly higher at Melody’s side. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up!” she exclaimed between breaths. “They just won’t stop!”

“One’s an undead, and the other is fed by the moon,” Melody said. “We can’t outlast them. We’re just wearing ourselves ragged while they can patiently sit back and fling magic at us.”

“So what do we do?” Rarity grimaced at the ocean below her, now roughly fifty feet down. “We can’t get near one without the other helping out!”

“If we can stay up here, then we’ll be safe from the pirate,” Melody said. “It’s much more difficult for her to get her magic up this high to strike at us than it is down there. We can focus on the real threat.”

Rarity eyed Soft Step, who had casually flapped her wings to stay on level with the two sirens. “I don’t know how long I can stay aloft,” she said. She glanced back at her tail, which still dribbled blood from the sand spike that had impaled it earlier. “Even this is difficult!”

Squall prowled on a platform of sand below them, not expending the energy to rise up to their level. “You’ve gotta come down eventually, fishies,” she sang. “Stop dragging it out!”

Melody frowned across the distance between them and Soft Step. “We’ll go and fight the avatar, try to take her down fast. I almost got her once. She’s not infallible; we can beat her if we keep the pressure on. After we kill her, the pirate might just keel over as well.”

Though Rarity didn’t agree with the ‘killing’ part, she kept those thoughts to herself. They didn’t have the luxury of arguing about how to subdue Soft Step right now. The important thing was that they did it, and if Rarity could ensure that she survived somehow, then she would take that opportunity. If not… she could at least console herself by saying it was for the greater good.

Rarity nodded her head in agreement, and Melody immediately set off to engage Soft Step. The two sirens moved as one but kept a decent space between them so Soft Step couldn’t get them both with a lucky spell. As soon as they started moving, however, Soft’s horn began to crackle with otherworldly energy, and she flung several orbs of shadowy magic at the two. Both sirens broke wide in opposite directions of the magic, which began to explode with dark energy whenever it got close to them. In addition to that, Rarity felt a tug of gravity tied to each orb trying to pull her in like tiny black holes. If she wasn’t quick enough to get away, she knew that it would be the end of her.

Thankfully, while she managed to catch Soft Step’s attention, Melody shot another brilliant beam of green energy at the alicorn, nearly vaporizing her. But some sixth sense seemed to alert Soft to what she was trying to do, and she slid into the shadows to appear off to the side, completely unharmed. Growling, she lowered her horn and retaliated with a bright lance of moonlit energy, which Melody had to twist to avoid.

Rarity tried to capitalize on it by lunging at Soft Step, her beak open and ready to snatch onto the mare’s legs, but Soft whirled around and struck Rarity with the back of one of her wings. Instead of simply breaking the mare’s wing, however, the blow sent Rarity reeling and tumbling backwards, nearly snapping her neck from the whiplash. Before she could stabilize herself, she’d plummeted almost down toward the water, where Squall waited for her with horrible, giddy malice in her eyes. Rarity instinctively lashed out with her tail, changing the direction of her fall, and barely avoiding a painful death at the points of Squall’s sand spikes she mashed together where her body had been a split second ago.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, pretty fish,” Squall growled, galloping towards Rarity on her platform of sand. “You aren’t getting off so easily this time!”

Rarity grimaced and screeched at Squall, the high note making the pirate shrink back in pain, and her magic shifted to simply supporting her platform and preventing Rarity from dispelling it. This time, Rarity used the full volume of her enormous lungs, carrying the note on and on and on, maintaining that perfectly shrill pitch as if she could rip Squall’s head apart from the inside. She drifted closer and closer as well, slowly drawing closer to striking distance while the pirate was immobilized with pain and concentration. All she had to do was end the note with a snap at the pirate’s head to decapitate her—

“Rarity!”

The warning was all she had before a thunderbolt of moonlight slammed into the water right next to her. The resulting explosion rocketed her up into the air, and the water vaporized from the energy in the blast. The scalding steam scoured her body across all the gaps in her armored hide, and Rarity immediately covered her eyes with her hooves to protect them from the steam. She had to resist every urge to scream, for if she opened her mouth, then the steam would burn her gums and her throat.

Yet somehow, when the air finally cooled and the water settled, she was alive. She didn’t know how, and her body hurt all over, but she found herself drifting back down through hot water that stung at her gills. Across from her, a horribly burnt body fell through the water as well, limbs unmoving, horn split open from the extreme heat.

The water grew colder the deeper she fell, until it felt like ice on her burned flesh, only redoubling the pain. Rarity writhed once more, but it was too much. With one last gasp, her eyes rolled back…

…and she blacked out, drifting to the bottom of the endless deep.

Comments

[FloydienSlip]

Interesting! Did Squall just get fried?

[PonyDragon]

Across from her, a horribly burnt body fell through the water as well, limbs unmoving, horn split open from the extreme heat.

Hopefully that's Squall. And hopefully she will stay out of the picture this time.

But knowing the author at least one of those two hopes won't be fulfilled.

[esplin10]

One final underwater cage match between Rarity and Squall. Only one of them is coming back out of that water.