Rainbow Dash flew across the island as fast as she possibly could, the excitement at the prospect of going home simply too enticing to make her slow down and wait for her friends. Besides, it wasn’t like she needed their help anyway to go and place all the statuettes. It would be simple enough to carry the three inside and set them up where they needed to go, so long as the tide wasn’t too high.

Which it wasn’t, Rainbow was happy to see, but she didn’t know if it was going in or coming out. She simply hadn’t been paying much attention on her way back to the island, and she definitely wasn’t conscious or coherent enough to notice while she took her nap. On the bright side, at least, it looked like it was near its lowest part, which meant she had plenty of time to go in, place the statues, and go out.

Before she could dive into the water, however, heavy wingbeats stirred some of the grass around her hooves. Rainbow looked over her shoulder to see Champagne landing behind her, a somewhat concerned look on her face. “You probably shouldn’t go and do that alone,” Champagne said. “It would be a good idea to have somepony with you.”

“I mean, I guess,” Rainbow said with a shrug. “I’ve got this on my own, but I don’t mind if you really want to come along. You’re gonna have to get wet, though, because the cave entrance is under the water.”

Champagne trotted up to Rainbow’s side and peered down at the rocks. “So it is. I never would have guessed that there was an entrance to an underwater cave here. How did you and Rarity even find it?”

“We were bored,” Rainbow said, “and we had a lot of time. We wanted to look the island over, and we just kind of stumbled across it. This was after Rarity wondered if there was some kind of magic keeping Princess Luna from finding us in our dreams, so we knew something was going on. I guess we’re just lucky that we found this here, because that confirmed our suspicions. If we had to travel to another island just to do that…” she shrugged. “I don’t know if we would have. We might have just hidden out here for months before we even worked up the courage or will to check some of the others out.”

“What’s it like in there?” Champagne asked. “It certainly doesn’t look to hold the same grandeur as some of the other ruins around these islands.”

“That it definitely doesn’t,” Rainbow said. “It was little more than a pair of glorified hallways, a tiny staircase, and a big open room underneath the island’s hill. But there’s a table down there with some pedestals for little pony figurines, and we found a crystal pony figurine on one of them. That’s how we knew what they were for.” Rainbow regarded the three statuettes she held against her chest and smirked. “And now we’ve got all of them. This whole thing’s finally about to be over.”

“Do you really believe that?” Champagne asked. “Is it going to be that simple?”

Rainbow pursed her lips in thought and stared out over the ocean. “We’ve suffered enough crap,” Rainbow said. “If this isn’t the end, then I don’t know what I’ll do. If this doesn’t work…”

“Do you even know if it will work?” Champagne asked. “What proof do we have?”

Rainbow frowned. “Nothing,” she said. “This has all just been… just been a desperate gamble, really. It’s the only thing that makes sense. If this doesn’t work, then we’re back to square friggin’ zero. I’ll have no idea how to get back home.” She inhaled and sighed. “But Melody says that these statuettes do control the barrier around the island. And I’d trust what she has to say—she’s been here for decades, so she knows what she’s talking about.”

Huffing, Rainbow slowly began to hobble down the rocks on three legs, holding the statuettes against her chest. She stopped at the edge of the water, Champagne close behind her, and she tossed a quick look back over her shoulder. “It’s just a quick swim, but wet is wet all the same. You sure you wanna go?”

“I don’t see why not,” Champagne said. “Out here, my coat is either stiff with salt or sand. The salt’s a lot more palatable to taste when I’m preening my wings.”

“Heh. Fair enough.” Briefly wiggling her tail, Rainbow tensed her muscles and took a breath before jumping into the water. The splash of cool liquid running up and down her back briefly made her shiver, but she nevertheless held onto the figurines. From there, it was just a simple matter of using her wings like paddles to push herself through the water, and then hauling herself onto the rocky ledge on the other side.

There, she briefly set the statuettes on the ground so she could shake some of the excess water out of her coat and feathers. Not too long later, Champagne arrived, slightly disoriented after making the plunge and trying to find the cave entrance underwater, but there nevertheless. Rainbow reached over and helped the other pegasus out of the water, and patiently waited on the rocks while Champagne shook herself from soaking wet to merely wet. Grimacing, Champagne squinted through the meager light inside the cave, and her eyes fell on the tunnel leading deeper inside. “That’s very small,” she noted, “and very cramped. You weren’t kidding when you said it wasn’t that impressive.”

“Nope.” Rainbow took the figurines again and once more began to move forward. “It’s as plain as plain gets. There was some paint and stuff in here once, but it’s really hard to make out anymore.”

“Strange,” Champagne said. “The ponies that lived here… they didn’t really do a whole lot of painting.”

“Yeah. So?” Rainbow cast a look over her shoulder as they walked deeper into the shrine. “Maybe they didn’t have the time to carve stuff like they usually did.”

“Maybe.” Champagne shrugged, her eyes lingering on the faded pastels decorating some of the recesses of rock. “It just seems odd that a people that almost exclusively worked with carvings would suddenly paint something like this.”

“Eh, I guess.” Rainbow shrugged mid-step. “We’ll worry about that later, though, okay? We’re basically here.”

A few more steps and Rainbow came to the remains of the cave-in her and Rarity had cleared on their last visit to the shrine. The skeleton of the unfortunate explorer still rested under a pile of rocks, and Champagne shivered when she saw it. “I see you weren’t the first ponies to venture down here?” she asked.

“Nah. I’ve got his notes lying around somewhere back at camp. They were kinda dry reading material, but at least they were something to read. It helped stave off the boredom for a brief bit.” Rainbow gingerly stepped past the corpse and through the hallway, already trying to see anything through the darkness that lied beyond. She knew there were torch sconces along the walls up ahead of her, but she didn’t have her flint and tinder. At least with the sun shining brightly outside, there was just enough residual light to make out what she was doing. “You don’t have a light on you by any chance?” Rainbow asked. “I forgot it’s super dark in here.”

To her surprise, a brief shower of sparks momentarily illuminated the hall behind her. She turned around to see Champagne strike another with the flint and steel, each piece held in the feathers of one of her wings. Smirking, she trotted past Rainbow and deeper into the tunnel. “Rarity warned me that I might need these,” she said. “I grabbed them on my way after you.”

With Champagne to lead the way, the two pegasi entered the final shrine, and Champagne soon found a sconce to light to shed some illumination on the chamber. While she went around finding the little stone bowls full of fuel to light, Rainbow trotted to the center of the room. There, she briefly paused at the immaculately carved table in the middle of the room, still so crisp and clean compared to the damp and decaying structures around it. “We’re going home,” she said, and pushing off of the table, she began to walk around to the pedestals surrounding it.

One by one, Rainbow placed the figurines in their appropriate places, matching each one to the relevant carvings beneath the platform. She took her time to adjust them as nice and neat as she could, until all four figurines faced the middle of the table. And then, wingtips quivering with excitement, she pranced back and forth and waited.

Nothing happened.

It took her almost a full minute before the excited smile on her face turned into a look of confusion. “Did… did something happen?” she wondered aloud. She double checked the figurines, her brow furrowing more and more. “I put them all in the right place.”

“Maybe there’s something more we need to do,” Champagne said. “It can’t have been as simple as that. Maybe a word of power of some kind? That seems like the sort of thing ancient indigenous ponies would use.”

“Yeah, but what would that word be?” Rainbow shook her head. “They didn’t leave written records. I doubt they even had an alphabet. So how the crap are we gonna figure that out?!”

Growling, Rainbow stomped her hooves and yelled in frustration. “This was supposed to be it!” she shouted. “We’re supposed to be going home! We did everything, everything! Why can’t we go home?!”

Champagne quickly moved to Rainbow’s side and tried to calm her with a hoof on her shoulder. “Breathe, Rainbow Dash,” she said. “This isn’t over yet. We have all the time in the world to sort this out.” When Rainbow stopped pacing and shouting, Champagne looked her in the eyes. “Let’s go back to the rest of the group,” she said. “We can discuss what happened there. Getting the figurines was likely just the first part of lowering the barrier. If there’s some kind of ritual that we must perform, then I think we can figure it out between all of us.”

Rainbow deflated, her wings drooping and their tips touching the floor. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “It’s at least worth a shot…”

Champagne spared a disappointed look at the figurines around them. “I was just as hopeful as you were,” she admitted. “But just because it didn’t work, doesn’t mean we should give up. We must have expected it to not be so simple. I don’t think anypony thought we were just going to plop these down and go home.”

“I hoped that would be it,” Rainbow said. “I hoped that would be the long and short of it. After everything we’ve been through…”

“We’ll figure it out,” Champagne assured her. “I promise. Now let’s get back to the others.”

At her urging, Rainbow reluctantly followed her out of the chamber. She briefly thought about collecting the figurines as she left, but figured down here would be the safest place for them. As it was, only her, Rarity, and Champagne knew where this place was. Nothing would happen to them.

But that was just the problem. Nothing had happened. And if they couldn’t figure out what to do from here…

Well, then they were never going home. It was as simple as that.