Surviving Sand Island

by The 24th Pegasus

The Butcher of Sand Island

Slipping through space was trivially easy when you carried the power of a god in your blood.

Soft Step crossed the distance between where she’d sunk the raft and the island shrine in a matter of minutes. She couldn’t move as fast as she would have liked thanks to the pegasi she dragged through the darkness with her, but it was still much faster than the last pegasus could fly. Once she returned to the island, there would be nothing to stop her from finishing the ritual.

She could feel her prey struggling in her magical grasp, fighting even though she’d ripped their bodies apart into shadow for easier transporting. She had to tighten her grip on them to make them stop and keep them from accidentally breaking free, for their sake as much as for hers and His. If her magical grip on them failed, if the spell that kept them stuck in the shadows with her while she moved fell apart, they could suddenly disintegrate into a cloud of bloody mist as they popped back out. They obviously didn’t know that, but Soft couldn’t afford to stop and tell them anyway. She just needed to keep them secure until she arrived.

Which only took her another fifteen or so minutes. She triumphantly materialized just beyond the island’s shores to survey the situation, and she immediately knew something had happened while she was moving. Her connection to her undead thralls had faltered and considerably weakened, and she could only find a few scattered about the island to command. Something had happened to them while she was gone and thinned their numbers.

That was enough to give her pause. This was either some kind of trick, or another party had joined the fray that she previously hadn’t given much thought to. All she had to do, however, was look to the beach to the north, where she saw a line of outrigger canoes moored on the sand. The sight sent her into a seething rage. Of course. The primitives. They lived on the Usurper’s island and paid him tribute at his temple. And here, on the eve of her greatest triumph, they’d come in force to interfere. Her thralls were very little match for them, and they’d reduced much of her army to writhing limbs and chunks of dead flesh in the sand.

She flinched and gasped as she felt two more of her thralls die beneath the earth. They were making their way to the shrine! If they managed to get to the inner sanctum and kill her captives before she could sacrifice them, then she would fail, and she would never get the chance again. They had to be stopped, and she had to stop them now.

“Help!” The mare she held captive began to scream and thrash, and Soft glared at her. “Somepony, help! I don’t want to die!”

“Silence!” Soft roared at her, and all she had to do was send magic down her horn to squeeze the pegasus until she didn’t even have the breath to cry out in pain. She held the grip for a few seconds to prove her point, even as the other pegasus began to shout at her, but released the tension well before she risked killing her captive. The pegasus mare’s head lolled back and she trembled in Soft’s grasp, and all Soft had to do was shoot a murderous look at her other captive to silence him.

But new shouts filled the void, and she looked down to see a group of about twenty minotaurs standing around the entrance to the shrine. They waved their weapons at her, and a few began spinning their nets in what would be futile attempts to tangle her up and bring her down. Growling, Soft lowered herself to their level and bared her fangs. “You are the ones killing my army and trying to stop my ritual?!” she barked at them, eyes practically flaming with hatred. “I cannot be stopped!”

Her roar staggered the minotaurs, and nearly a hundred lances of moonlight appeared in the air around her at the beckoning of her horn. Though a few minotaurs rushed forward to fling their spears or nets at her, the rest began to back off in fear. Before either could make a move, however, Soft loosed all of her spears, cutting them all down in the blink of an eye. In no more than a second, she had turned twenty minotaur warriors into shish kebabs skewered to the ground with multiple lances of moonlight. A few moaned or whimpered in agony, but none rose to fight her when the lances faded away.

“Holy shit,” the stallion in her grasp muttered. “You just killed all of them!”

“They are primitive scum,” Soft growled out of the corner of her mouth. “They died like the animals they are.”

“Soft, what happened to you?” When she looked over her shoulder, the stallion managed to meet her gaze, albeit with worried and fearful eyes. “This isn’t like you at all! You were such a sweet and caring pony before all of this…”

“I am not that mare any longer,” Soft hissed at him. “She is dead. And you will be too, in a few minutes.”

She swooped down and splashed through the water at the mouth of the cave, dragging her prey in after her, who began to sputter and cough as she hauled them through the water. Though she preemptively charged her horn in anticipation of a fight, she didn’t see any minotaurs waiting for her. They must have all foolishly moved deeper into the structure instead of leaving any door guards behind—not that they would have stopped her anyway.

Up ahead of her, the minotaurs called out to each other, and Soft Step began to creep after them on hooves as silent as the dead of night. She knew her captives might try to shout and warn them, so she preemptively closed her magic around their muzzles, preventing them from speaking. With the advantage of stealth on her side, she swiftly advanced on the shrine, ready to complete the ritual and end the folly of the sun once and for all.

Comments

[Eroraf86]

So much shit, so little fan. It's all coming to a head now. Here's hoping Soft Step can still be saved.

[esplin10]

Wow. We are really down to the wire. I don't know what Rainbow and Rarity can even do now.

[PonyDragon]

“I cannot be stopped!”

What happened everything an MLP-villain said that line?

9009251
Yup, that fan has to work overtime.
Like ususal.

[Merula]

The last act begins...let's hope that it is a victory

[zaponator]

Yeah, shit's getting real messy.

[Archangel of the Silent]

I... I did it? That doesn't seem right, somehow.