---

The waning moon glowed a pale hue to the soprose landscape below Canterlot, with shadows darker than the sky as we hid beneath thick-leafed trees. We had hunkered down near the edge of a treeline, sitting behind a log overgrown with moss. The lights of the hanging city itself gleamed off neighboring mountains, reflecting beneath its sturdy foundations to the sleepy village that sat beneath it.

A few hundred meters westward sat a busy village, with several homes flickering candles from its windows. A few ponies were busy setting up decorations. Despite being so late at night, an air of bustling festivity lingered. Violet streamers of Celestia’s golden sun embroidered around Luna’s pale moon hung from the brackets, lanterns burning golden blue flames dangling on wooden posts, and crackling fireplaces hosting various circles of ponies telling stories to younger-looking foals.

I traded wary glances between the village and the skies above Canterlot, waiting for potential followers to appear. Only Luna’s starry constellations greeted me in kind.

“Hold still,” Night Light asks with a quiver in her tone.

I winced through my teeth with a grimace as I felt a debriding sensation of broken glass methodically removed from my body with extreme caution. I close my eyes, trying to block the pain from my mind.

Instead, memories of the ponies I had killed barely an hour prior greeted me. A sickly vine tugs around my stomach as I remember the bloody escapade from S.M.I.L.E.

Shaking my head, I looked to the ground at the ever-growing pile of bloody shards lying atop a pool of caked crimson. The lacerations bled thick trails of crimson down my barrel and limbs.

Night Light grunted as she removed one more shard, earning another wince from me. “There, that was the last one.”

I let go of a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. Looking down on my body to see the trails of blood create crimson channels through dirt and grime surrounding my fetlocks was a queer enough sight to twist my stomach.

“This looks bad.” My throat croaked. I suddenly realized how dehydrated I was.

“It is bad,” she speaks with a grim look on her face, “I mean, look at you!”

As I looked down at my body, seeping and stained with blood, the realization hits me. I was completely drenched in blood, looking like a serial killer from a horror novel.

I glance at the village. I see some houses are still alight in the windows. I look at the moon in the eastern sky, indicating a young night. The ponies residing inside were still awake, from the looks of it. Many of them were moving around the village with mirthful energy.

They can help us, but would they?

“It hasn’t stopped bleeding since Canterlot,” Night Light interjects my thoughts with a low whisper. I turn and see Night Light trailing her gaze on the trails of blood seeping down my legs.

I was drawing a blank in my mind. It was hard to formulate thoughts, and I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea to suggest. No course of action to recommend, no plan to fixate on. There is only a mute nod of acknowledgment as my eyes drift down to my bleeding body.

Droplets stained the blades of grass beneath us. Burning tendrils of pain lick my limbs as I put pressure on them.

Maybe it was the blood loss, but the energy from my body was waning by the second. The adrenaline from our escape had crashed down to earth long ago, but my limbs were now starting to feel heavier than my eyelids. Fatigue was slowly winning the battle of attrition against my body.

I felt colder in the limbs, and my head was swimming in jumbled thoughts. Memories of me running through sterile hallways behind Night Light plaster against my frontal cortex every time I close my eyes.

Yeah, it’s probably the blood loss.

With a hard blink, I dispel the hazy memories, turning my eyes to Night Light. “So… what do we do now?” I spoke with a noticeable slur.

“We need to get you cleaned up and treated as fast as possible,” Night Light scans the village in desperation before turning her eyes back to Canterlot. “We ask for help, and we hope to Celestia that somebody will listen.”

I’m starting to feel dizzy in the head. But through the fog, one thought pierced beyond the uncertainty plaguing me.

“That’s all we got?” I pressed incredulously with a raised brow. “To hope somebody helps us?”

Night Light didn’t answer, her eyes trailing down at my hooves.

“Isn’t this dangerous?” I slurred again, “Won’t they come looking for us here?”

Night Light trades a wary glance to Canterlot, then locks eyes back to me with a firm stare.

“Do you want to bleed throughout the night?” she asks tersely. “Because I do not!”

I didn’t answer. My eyes trailed down to my legs, furrowing as they saw them bleeding a thick crimson trail.

Night Light sighs through her nostrils as her shoulder sags alongside her frown.

“It’s the only chance you’ve got. They‘ll try to look for us in Cloudsdale first, so I think we have time.”

A cold breeze billows through the blades of grass and into the forest behind us, sending shivers through my skin. I can hear the voice in my dreams warning me now.

You are running out of time.

I shake my head, focusing on Night Light. She begins to clamber over the log we hid behind for the past half-hour. “… Can you walk?” she twists her body to ask me.

I press my weight down against the caked dirt with my hooves. Tendrils of hot pain shoot through my nerves. Each step earns a wince through my teeth. It took effort for me to stand up, let alone move forward.

“Not on my own,” I admitted, leaning on the fallen tree with a grimace.

She hooks a foreleg over my neck, craning her neck down as I do the same to her until we both are supporting each other for leverage.

“Keep moving,” She instructed as we shuffled forward in a careful canter. The limp toward the village was agonizingly slow, each step earning a sharp breath through my teeth as tears pricked my eyes—with droplets of crimson staining the grass all the while. Eventually, after two minutes of awkward shuffling, we caught the look of some ponies staring at us incredulously, like we were ghosts from the Everfree.

“Please, somepony help!” Night Light calls out from my side with desperation lathered in her tone. All eyes that were outside now stared at us, but none immediately sprung to action until Night Light cried out again. “She’s hurt bad! She needs help, please!”

A few ponies started approaching us with caution. One got closer to get a good look at me: A thestral mare in her mid-twenties with a slender physique in the limbs and dark grey in the coat. The vertical slits in her lavender pupils were dead giveaways. When she spotted me—bruised, drenched, bleeding profusely from multiple lacerations, and growing weaker by the minute—she stopped cold with wide eyes.

“Sweet Goddesses,” she gasps in shock, fangs glistening in the moonlight before being smothered by a hoof to the mouth. “What happened to her?!”

“Does it matter?!” Night Light shouts with a hint of desperation, the thestral flinching at her tone. “She needs a doctor! Now!”

“Er… okay,” she snaps out of her stupor with a shake of her head, “Okay, yes, I know who can help! Can she walk?”

“Not on her own,” Night Light answers frantically, prompting the Thestral mare to return to the village behind her with a bellowing shout.

“BERRY!”

I look up to see the head of a stallion perk up from an ever-growing crowd of onlookers before taking off in a gallop toward us. Brushing past several ponies, he too was a thestral, just like the mare who greeted us, aqua-eyed and burly in the limbs with a cold mulberry hue in his coat.

“What is-” he speaks in baritone, stopping midsentence as his eyes widen at the sight of me.

Here, standing before the thestrals, stood two mares.

One of them supports the other, the latter caked in blood. The stench of copper pervades the air relentlessly, assaulting everybody’s nostrils as more red liquid oozes out several deep incisions. The wounds decorate my body as if I had entered a fight with a Timberwolf and lost. My eyes were heavy, but they paled to the weight of gravity, tugging my limbs down with slow, painful exertion. The skin grew pale as it lost too much of its nectar to continue functioning.

And beneath all of that—all of the stained streaks of crimson that caked my coat, all the potentially fatal wounds that carved me up like a pumpkin, all the fatigue that felt heavier than the mountains that towered kilometers above us—stood me.

A bleeding pegasus mare who had lost everything, aside from the pony she was leaning on.

His eyes harden into an understanding frown. “Okay, I see. Quinna, what do you need?” he quickly pivots his attention to the mare.

“We’re going to take her to Bleeding Heart’s house. Can you carry her?”

He nods as his sharp wings begin to flap. Hovering in front of me with practiced precision, he offers his forehooves to me in silence. “Give her to me.”

Night Light gives him a wary look.

“I promise to be gentle. You have my word.”

She glances down at me, and I nod to her.

“Do it,” I answer.

Her eyes frowned hesitantly but nodded and began to lift me into the stallion’s arms. Pain shot through my limbs in a roaring fire, earning a cry from my lips. Trails of my blood began to stain his coat.

“Sorry,” I muttered through the tears, trying to blink them away.

“It’s okay,” Berry answers softly, tilting his weight to the ground as he hovered forward. My vision was getting swimmy, and the world spun around me as my head felt dizzier and dizzier.

I could see Night Light following behind me with fear in her features, Quinna trailing alongside her in mutual concern. Their eyes continued to follow along the streaks of blood trailing my body, dripping to the bottom of my fetlocks.

“What happened to her?” Quinna asked Night Light. The latter gazed at the ground with her head hung low.

“... A long story,” she answers, sounding too tired to divulge in the thestral’s curiosity. “But the short version is she jumped out of a window.”

“Really?” Quinna’s tone bordered with disbelief and curiosity. “A window did all of this?!”

“... Not all of it.”

There was a pause.

“Like I said, long story.” Night Light finishes. I look up from Berry’s arms to see Night Light gluing her gaze to the ground she trodded on, with Quinna keeping quiet.

As we floated past loosely piled cobblestone streets and fenced-out homes of thatch, Berry took a slight detour along a dirt path diverging away from most homes. It carried up a small hill, with a lonely cabin constructed out of logs standing proudly at the top. A single mailbox sticks out from the side of the dirt path before ending at a staircase leading up to a roofed porch.

The chimney was empty of smoke. No lights emanate from the windows, and it looked like nopony was home.

“Quinna, can you knock for me?” Berry asks, the former nodding as she steps up to the thick door of Cedarwood.

Bom! Bom! Bom!

Quick and decisive knocks were followed by a hasty retreat as if Quinna was dreading what was to come.

“Brace yourself,” she warns Berry, who nods in mute acknowledgment.

'Brace yourself?' For what?

Focusing on that thought proved to be a challenge as my head was starting to feel foggy. My eyes were growing heavier and heavier.

Berry lifts me with a sudden motion, jolting me back awake.

“Stay with us now, don’t doze off…” Berry instructs.

Easy for him to say. He’s not the one bleeding to death.

Oh, right. I’m bleeding to death... I should probably stay awake.

Night plants a hoof on my forehead, stroking my mane gently as I looked up at her eyes. I stare at her upside-down figure, looking into me with genuine terror as she inspects my wounds again.

“... Who is Bleeding Heart?” Night Light gazes at Quinna with a raised brow.

“Our village doctor. He is the best we got.”

I gaze back at the door, still too dark inside to indicate anybody living there.

“... It… doesn’t look like anypony’s home.” I slurred.

Berry grunts with frustration, “Come on, you lazy bastard...” He mutters to himself.

“Did he not hear us?” Quinna asks with worry.

As the words left her mouth, I could hear clicking from beyond the door. The locking mechanisms groaned with exertion until the doorknob tilted down and swung open with a loud croak.

Inside revealed a pair of eyes tinted in amber, glaring at us with what appeared to be contempt.

“What is it?” an old voice, coarse like sandpaper grating against the skin, greets us discontentedly.

“Doctor Bleeding Heart,” Berry nods, “I am very sorry to disturb you at this hour, but we need your help.”

Bleeding Heart’s eyes locked onto mine after Berry spoke, trailing down my body. They softened upon inspecting my wounds before stiffening again at Berry’s words.

“... It is midnight,” He replies with a lathered bitterness, “I was supposed to get up five hours from now.”

“She’s losing a lot of blood, doctor. I don’t think this is something to wait on.” Berry presses aggressively.

A guttural sigh emits from the door. “Give me a moment,” he answers before closing the door behind him.

A few seconds pass. From inside, I heard the hum of a unicorn’s magic as candles and lanterns from the house flicker on, one by one. Clicking noises from the locking mechanisms shudder into place before the door swings inward once again with an even louder groan.

Inside stood a bitter-looking Unicorn who was well past his physical prime. The coat had washed away its peach color long ago, leaving behind a hollow and duller shade of its former glory. His starchy gray mane and overlapping layers of wrinkles sagging down his forehead betrayed his age and enfeeblement.

Yet beneath the milky eyes of dull hazel was a spark of intelligence that dwarfed my own, decades of experience outshining all of my existence.

And they looked cranky, upset for being disturbed from their peaceful slumber.

“Lay her atop the cot, carefully.” He points inside. As Berry floats in, the decorum of the interior overtakes me all at once.

A wooly rug sat beneath a round coffee table of carved oakwood, with various sofas circling the table in the center of the living room. Small dressers that hosted flower pots made of clay—hosting lilacs and lavenders—sat beneath the windowsill to bask in the moonlight. An empty chimney dominates the face of a wall leading further back to the cabin before splitting open to reveal a hallway with the bedroom door slightly ajar at the end.

The Kitchen was located next to the front door, with cabinets constructed out of finely carved planks of beech wood running all along the wall before ending at a vertice. A window above the sink gave an excellent view of the lit village beneath the hill we stood upon. I could hear the faucet dripping down the drain with sporadic droplets.

Berry floats past Bleeding Heart and retreats to a wall with no windows and two small cots. The cots were only four metal legs supporting a square frame that tethered a drab olive-green cloth—with springs and coils suspending the fabric mid-air as taut as a coiled rope. Berry gently lays me down atop the scratchy fabric, blood dripping onto the hardwood floors all the while.

“Berry, you are going to help me clean this mess, and that is not a suggestion.”

“Of course,” he nods quickly, “Do you want me to start now, or…?”

“That can wait; get yourself ready. You’re gonna be my assistant. Just gimme a minute.” He trots down the hallway into his bedroom.

I look to my left, seeing Night Light sitting on her haunches beside me. Her eyes never stopped frowning, drifting from my wounds to my gaze. Despite everything, seeing her sitting by my side made my heart swell.

I look beyond her to see Berry in the corner of the room, adorning himself with latex gloves and a cloth mask from two boxes, standing atop a bookshelf.

My vision is starting to darken.

“Sunshine?” Night Light notices my eyes drifting shut, cupping a hoof under my cheek.

“...Tired,” The words float from my mouth in a mumble.

“Hey, no, no, no, don’t do that! Stay awake, just stay awake!” I remember hearing voices, but they were drowned away.

There were sounds heard but no words. The last thing I saw was Night Light standing over me in panic.

---

The klaxons shriek a shrill blare, echoing off the claustrophobic halls in a deafening din.

It felt like needles were stabbing my ears, and hot coals seared my lungs with each breath. My heart was thundering as it threatened to burst out of my chest. The halls were tinted red from the sirens. The bulbs mounted against the walls spun in perpetual motion, squeaking with each revolution.

All I could do was run away from the danger that followed me. I dared not look back as I sprinted in a mad dash forward, frantically carrying one hoof after another in this seemingly infinite hallway. Pain enveloped my nerve endings like a roaring inferno, burning me inside out as I continued to gallop.

The floors were starting to feel slippery. I gaze down to see a pool of blood drowning my hooves, splashing up my limbs with each step. Caked blood now stained my coat from the neck down, speckles of it blurring my vision as it splashed against my face. The taste of copper stains my tongue and burns my nostrils.

Terror seizes me. I know with a simple certainty that if I stop now, I will die. That ever-familiar feeling of loss grips its sharp vices around my heart as it quaked into a crescendo. The fear of death overtakes any other thought; adrenaline courses me as I wade slower and slower into ever-growing pools of crimson.

The hallway feels endless. There is no escape in sight. I dare not look behind me as a shrill scream pierces through the thundering heartbeat in my eardrums.

My breathing verged on hyperventilation, my heart thundering away, threatening to explode. I keep trudging forward, now swimming in the ocean of blood. It rises without slowing and threatens to drown me. It overtakes my shoulders as panic grips my psyche. It smothers my neck as I gasp for one last defiant breath and close my eyes.

And then there was darkness.

I held on for as long as I physically could—the burning in my lungs, combined with the pain in my limbs and the draining of all energy in my body, forced me to surrender to the weight pulling me down. I feel myself sinking as I exhale the oxygen in my lungs.

I open my eyes to see nothing but a smothering shadow blinding me. I willed my limbs to move, but it was like swimming in tar, each movement more exerting than the last.

Everywhere I looked revealed nothing but a dark and murky expanse surrounding me. It drowned my ears and burned my nostrils and eyes. I began to gag for air beneath its thick waves.

My eyes drift down to the bottom of the abyss. Darkness awaited me.

But buried beneath all the pale, cold depths of the seemingly endless plane of liquid that surrounded me, the briefest glimmer caught my eyes. It looked like a gold coin shining from the bottom of the pool.

No such coin exists, I knew. Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me as I was finally going brain-dead. Or perhaps it was Elysium greeting me with open arms.

My chest convulses in a violent spasm as a sudden, but sharp pain pierces through my abdomen.

The light at the bottom of the pool glares brighter until everything is smothered in silver light.

---

Oxygen billows into my burning lungs as I struggle with my first gasps for fresh air. A canvas of silver light encompassed my vision, branding my retinas with burning splotches of discoloration everywhere I looked.

“She’s coming around!”

A searing nail pierces my head and travels down my eye, quaking in energy. The splitting migraine blinds me for a few moments as I can see nothing but bright light glaring down my pupils. My breathing quickens alongside the pace of my heart as I feel the sensation of pain returning to my body in full force.

The light blinks out of existence, leaving a splotch of discoloration swimming about my vision as the flashlight is pulled away. I feel the sensation of a needle poking me as it slowly slides out of my chest. A feeling of warmth is gradually seeping to the bottom of my core, euphoric and energetic. It courses into my limbs soon after as my vision comes back, though the cold in my limbs threatens to drown the warmth.

Two ponies, Berry and Bleeding Heart, circled me, each with masks protecting their snouts, latex gloves to protect their hooves, and sterile white coats covering their bodies.

“Rejoov potion! Now!” I heard a scraggly voice bark above my head, my ears ringing slightly. I feel a hoof gently cup the back of my neck and lift it upward, chin level with the ground, as a round flask filled with bubbling-greenish liquid cusps around my lips.

“Drink! All of it!” I see Berry staring firmly into my eyes with his order. I do as he says, greedily gulping every last drop of the foul-tasting concoction until nothing remains. (Why do they always taste so bad?) I gagged my throat after swallowing the last drop. The burning nail in my head starts to recede as the contents spill into my stomach. The pain was still there, and it was still intense, but it didn’t threaten to blind me, at least.

“Shit. Some of these are too deep, Doctor.” Berry speaks with a grim frown in his eyes.

“I know,” Bleeding Heart interjects Berry with a raised hoof. “First things first; gimme the bottle!”

I twist my head around the cot to look around the room, trying to find Night Light and Quinna. Only Berry and Bleeding Heart were in the room with me.

“Where…” A hoof twisted my head back to the cot, gently laying it down. I barely got the word out as Berry answered me.

“They’re outside,” he says, “and you need to rest. They will be fine.” He gives Bleeding Heart a plastic bottle filled with transparent liquid with a wing.

“I’m sorry to say that this procedure is going to be painful,” Bleeding Heart warned with a hum of magic from his horn, the bottle carefully pouring the contents onto several cotton balls. “We’ll have to stitch some of these lacerations together.”

A ball of dread plummets to my stomach at those words, chilling my blood all across my limbs as they begin to shake.

This was going to suck.

“Can’t you just use your magic to heal the wounds?” Berry asks from the foot of my cot, watching on with a troubled look on his features.

Bleeding Heart groans in petulant frustration as if he had heard that question thousands of times before.

“First rule of thermodynamics: Matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The spell matrix needs focal points to be concise enough to be grounded in reality. The spell can’t just fabricate-”

A frustrated groan escapes Berry’s throat, “In ponish, please.”

I look up to see Bleeding Heart rolling his eyes as he closes the cap on the bottle. “I can’t magically tell the wound to create new skin cells because I can’t teach my horn how to do six years of medical school in six seconds!” He gripes with a bitter sigh, “As powerful as they are, magic and alchemy can only do so much for the body alone. The rest falls onto us.”

Bleeding Heart clears his throat, locking eyes on me as his magic holds several cotton balls saturated in disinfectant. “Grit your teeth. This is going to hurt.”

I do his bidding, closing my eyes as I braced myself. The cold, damp liquid drips onto my coat until it makes contact with all the incisions simultaneously.

“Tss-Aggh!”

My limbs thrashed about immediately, feeling the disinfectant burning my wounds in a frigid fire.

“Berry, hold her down.”

Firm hooves dug into my coat, pushing me into the cot as the springs squeaked in exertion. “Sorry about this,” Berry whispers.

The saturated clumps of cotton returned to the wounds as they dug inside the soft crevices of flesh, soaking into a soppy crimson mess. Burning, searing agony shoots up my body. I willed it to move, but it could only kick its limbs as Berry held me down.

For about thirty mind-numbing seconds, he dug those wads into me, though it felt like an eternity had passed. When the bloody clumps retreated, the cuts felt cold and numb. The burning sensation retreats from the wounds, amalgamating into the bubbly warmth seeping into my stomach. A cocktail of pain and relief swims violently in my head, making me dizzy.

It feels like I am in a fever dream.

“That rejuvenation potion should do the trick, right?” Berry asks hopefully.

“For the most part,” Bleeding Heart replies as he wipes a scalpel and a pair of surgical scissors with another saturated cotton ball. “But a few of her wounds need closing, and we gotta do it ourselves.”

“What did you dose her with?”

“Anesthetic with epinephrine.”

“... Isn’t that-”

“Yes, and yes. She’ll be fine.” Bleeding Heart groans with another roll of his eyes before locking on to mine. “It won’t be enough to make the pain go away, I’m sorry to say. It’s mainly to prevent your brain from going into shock. I’ll try to be quick, but I need these to be precise. Do you understand?”

I nodded meekly, feeling no energy to protest. There wasn’t much of a choice anyway. A golden hue of magic enveloped my being as I felt the sudden absence of gravity overtake me. I suddenly felt weightless.

He lifts me into the air a few inches before proceeding to roll me onto my belly. Several of the incisions slashed along my flanks and ribs. I could feel most of the smaller ones beginning to close together on their own—a token to the work of the Rejuvenation potion.

The rest of them, as Bleeding Heart said, would have to be closed manually. I twist my head over my shoulder to see Bleeding Heart wrapping a purple thread around his gloved hoof, fishing it out of a sterile-looking contraption on a metal rolling tray at the edge of my cot. Floating beside him with a hum from his horn was a thin needle that curved toward the floor at an angle. He gingerly threads the needle and loops it around to fish it through a second time before tying it taut together.

My heart begins to beat faster, feeling my arms grow numb as fear grips me for what is to come. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes.

A tugging sensation around my upper flank stretched the skin flaps of the laceration. I winced through my teeth with deep breaths as fiery tendrils licked my body. My brain quivers in apprehension and pain, daring not to peer behind me.

“Do you need a count?” Bleeding Heart asks me. I quickly nodded. “On three, then.” I nod again.

“One. Two. Three.”

The needle punctures through the skin and pierces through the other side with a burning prick.

“NN-AH-TSSSKKGGGAAAAAAH!” I scream through my teeth, Berry grinding his hooves around my spine as he readjusted his weight. It burns like Celestia’s sun has descended to scorch me. I felt my brain fry in the sensory overload, desperately sending signals down my body to flail and flee. To resist and run. But there was no escape.

I feel a thin string of fabric course through my flesh as it loops underneath the skin, puncturing through another angle and surfacing through my coat onto the other side. Tears pricked in my scrunched eyes. The wound was pulling itself closer together, agonizingly slow. As the thread pulled taut enough to connect the skin back together, the needle swerved around to prod again. Soon, another puncture pushed inside my wound.

“NNNNNNAAHGGTSKAAAAAAAH!!” My throat growled, my cheeks wet with tears, and my teeth painfully ground against the gums of my jaw as I pressed all my weight against them. Copper stained my tongue and permeated my nostrils as I could feel the wound closing through his efforts—one agonizing puncture at a time.

The needle pokes through the wound's surface again, pulling the cut closer together. I could feel my skin touching as the suture coiled ever tighter. Salty tears blurred my vision. I could feel my skin cells rupture and pull at the seams as that damned needle came back around for one more pass. Berry’s hooves dug deeper into my skin.

“Almost there!” I heard Bleeding Heart speak through my screams.

“NNNYAAAGHSGAAAAGHHHAHAAA!”

Everything washed away in a drowning delirium. My world only consisted of burning, furious agony, licking my body like Diamond Dogs hungry for their next meal.

I attempted to open my eyes, seeing stars and twinkling lights through blurry tears. I smelled and tasted copper with a hint of sterile rubbing alcohol. I felt fire licking its agonizing tendrils all around my wounds, burning my skin cells away one ruptured seam at a time.

Am I dead? Is this death? Eternal torment? Did I deserve this?

Through the hazy delirium of my thoughts, I kept wishing to myself to pass out and to go to sleep. No such command bore any fruit. Another prod at the needle earns more tears from my eyes. My skull pulses in agony, the nail in my head slowly debriding me inside out with each passing second.

A squelch noise was heard from behind me as I felt the thread rubbing against my inner flesh in a burning sensation. But at this point, the wound was well closed together now. As Bleeding Heart pulled the thread back and pulled it all together in a tight pattern of interwoven knots, I somehow understood without a word spoken that this was the final puncture to pull through.

“Done,” Bleeding Heart confirms my interpretation, “gauze,” he simply asks with an extended hoof, Berry complying with a deft toss from his hoof. The thick, pink dressing unravels from the roll in his magic grip, pressing the soft fabric all around my barrel multiple times to cover up all the wounds across my body. He lifts my sweating, crying, nearly unconscious body in the air with his magic a few times to ensure he covers every inch of the wound there is.

“One more rejuvenation potion,” Bleeding Heart speaks the next item off atonally as he levitates another flask of bubbling-greenish liquid to my lips. I groaned in protest at the taste but otherwise began to chug it all as fast as I could. Only a few drops dribbled down my chin as I drank.

As I finished, I felt drained—in every sense of the word. My body felt like it had been running a triathlon, bleeding and starving. My limbs were burning in exertion as if they had exercise fatigue. My eyes felt heavy, and my brain demanded sleep at the whim.

And it was so very tempting to listen to it telling me to sleep.

“Is she done?” Berry asks above me. I didn’t bother to move my head, I only tuned my ears to the conversation.

“No, not even close. She needs plasma in her system fast.”

“Please tell me you have some,” Berry asks with a hint of worry.

“I have thestrals in the village giving me donations to keep me supplied just to make me stay here.” He remarks with a hint of pride, “I always have plasma; it’s just…” he trails off with a hitch in his tone. “It’s only Thestral blood I’ve been donated to. I’m not sure if Pony and Thestral Plasma are compatible with one another. And I can’t risk trying.”

“... How bad is she?” Berry asks, fear lathered in his tone.

“Bad.”

It was one word, but it was said in such a way that it spoke volumes.

“... What about that Mare she was with?”

Another pause at the mention of Night Light. I felt my heart thunder faster.

“Could work. Depends on the blood type they are. If she has blood type AB, then it could work. Their plasma is universal.”

“So we ask her to donate her blood then, right?” Berry asks hopefully.

“Not that simple,” Bleeding Heart sighs. “The amount of blood she lost is more than two whole units worth. And I cannot drain a pony for more than two units worth in one day. And even if I could—never mind all the health implications that may have for the donor—but even if I could, it wouldn’t be enough. She has lost too much.”

There was a tense quiet after those words. I could hear Berry swallow his throat behind me. My eyes were closed now, too heavy to keep open.

So this was how I died? Jumping out through a window?

How boring.

“What now?” Berry asks. Bleeding Heart sighs.

“We give the mare the bad news.”

Another uneasy silence. I wanted to protest. To scream. I tried to fight. I wanted to defy the world.

And yet, fighting didn’t feel right. For the first time I could remember, I felt tired.

Not like the physical fatigue one would get, but something more profound.

I was drifting off. A chilly blanket of dread encompasses me for what is to come. I wasn’t sure if would wake up this time. Maybe this was my last sleep.

Maybe I shouldn’t be scared. Perhaps this was what I deserved.

As I heard hoofsteps retreat behind me to the front door, recent memories flashed in front of my mind’s eye in a slideshow.

How I killed the ponies in the elevator.

How I trotted back covered in blood to see Night Light.

How we escaped S.M.I.L.E. Agency with nothing but the skins on our backs.

How we made it all this way. Even after everything.

After the Great War. After all the torment and suffering. All the long years of desperate fighting.

All I had ever done was fight.

And look what it got me—bleeding out in a random cot in the middle of nowhere, as an enemy of the state, most likely.

I felt my energy fade with each passing second. Each memory was more exhausting than the last. Everything that had happened leading up to this moment, it all felt pointless. It felt like my entire life was wasted on something that never mattered.

At least, that was how it felt at the moment. I wasn’t sure if I was still me or if I was already dead. I could hear nothing but my waning heartbeat in my eardrums. I could feel nothing but a chilly pain creeping up my limbs and spine. I could see nothing but a dark, primordial soup inside my mind’s eye.

The potion’s effects were kicking in now. I felt lethargic and dull in the senses. My brain was going mute for the first time in a long time—no hauntings of ghosts, no memories of death, no thoughts of past failures plaguing me. It was like the universe singing me a lullaby.

Only the blank canvas of the inevitable stared back at me.

And it was beautiful.

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