I finished barricading the door of the closet and laid down on the ground. Then, I floated the memory orb of the bag and, with a deep breath focused on. As I felt myself being sucked inside, the sounds of a long-ago battle filled my ears.
All of a sudden, I found myself dashing through the trenches, staying low to avoid the bullets, bombs and laser blasts whizzing overhead. I was relieved not to have the strange feeling of a missing horn this time, but that relief was soon washed away as cries of "Medic!" found my ears from seemingly every direction at once, shoving their way past the explosions and popping of gunfire to grab at my attention. The closest screams of pain were just around the corner, and as the source came into view, my heart sank.
An earth pony was lying on the ground, sticking halfway out of a pile of mud that had once formed the trench's forward wall. A fellow soldier was next to him, trying to dig away at the mud stained red from an open wound in his abdomen. The injured pony in question looked over at me with wide, terrified eyes, hoping I would do something… but there was nothing to do. Even if I get the wound closed up, an infection from the mud would almost certainly do him in.
More shouting for help came from further down the trench, so I quickly decided to administer a nonstandard, hoof-based anesthetic in an attempt to ease his pain. "Turn your head and close your eyes," I said as I trotted up to him.
His lips moved silently. Though he couldn't find the strength to speak, I knew he was trying to ask, "Why?"
"It's gonna make my job a lot easier," I replied to the unspoken question. He finally obeyed and turned his head away from. I reared up and, with all the strength I could muster, brought my forehooves down on his head as hard as I could. As I'd hoped, his body went limp, though I could still hear his ragged breathing. Then, refusing to consider the implications of my decision, I turned my attention to the cries further away and continued my mad dash through the trench.
An airship went up in flames and exploded high above the battlefield. A pegasus thrown clear by the blast fell toward me, but its only movement was its wings fluttering idly in the wind.
As soon as it was near enough, I grabbed the pegasus in a magic field in an attempt to slow it down even a little bit. But, as I was concentrating, a burst of zebra gunfire ripped through the pegasus's body. The pegasus fell into the trench beside me, lifeless and bleeding into the mud.
Somepony lost their magical grip on a grenade and dropped it in the dirt. There was no time to run, and the explosion sent bits of metal flying everywhere. My side erupted in pain as three hot chunks of metal buried themselves in my skin.
I couldn't see my side well enough through the pain to get the pieces of metal out, so I fumbled some bandages out of my kit and did my best to stick them over the wounds. After a painkiller, I limped over to look for any survivors. All I found was a bloodied unicorn with a pair of binoculars around her neck. I did what I could and dragged her partway back with my teeth and magic before having the next two ponies I saw bring her the rest of the way to the hospital.
Minutes later, I was running through the mud once again when a landmine exploded near the trench I was moving through, raining dirt and mud everywhere. I stopped to shield my eyes from the muck and, as I stood there, the body of the zebra that had stepped on the mine came flying toward me and landed on its back with a loud *squelch* and another spray of mud. I stumbled backwards in shock, trying to shake the filth out of my mane.
The zebra laid on her back, shouting in pain from the fall, her now-ruined hind legs and the shrapnel that had pierced her belly. Then she saw me and froze, a mixture of rage and fear on her face. Red flowed from the shrapnel wounds, mixing with the mud to make the same color I'd seen earlier.
She regained her composure just enough to ask, "Gaan jy my doodmaak?" From what little Sebrikaans I knew, she was asking if I was going to kill her.
No.
I lit my horn and started pulling the shrapnel pieces out of the zebra's body, slapping healing bandages over the wounds as soon afterward as I could. She tried to resist at first, but I held her still with my magic. "Fok!" she shouted when I yanked out another metal shard. "Dit maak seer, jou ster-verdoem idioot!"
Two friendlies appeared, running in my direction, but stopped short just as I looked up from where I was bent over the zebra. "Get this one to the rear!" I shouted at them over the noise.
"But that's a zebra!" one of them, another unicorn, shouted back. "You can't be serious!"
"Well, I am serious."
"No way am I dragging a stripey all the way back," the other one, an earth pony, said.
I fixed them with a stare. "It's the same fucking blood."
The memory ended and I found myself in my own body once more, still sitting in the dark closet. A rueful chuckle found its way to my lips as a thought occurred to me: It was still the same blood. Raider or Ranger, settler or slaver, earthbound or Enclave. Even after all this time, it still held true.
I looked down at my barding, still stained with my own essence, as well as that of my enemies, and even my allies, and saw what that medic had seen more than a century and a half ago.
The same fucking blood.
