The Veins Run Deep

by Thunderblast

Featherheads

“Come in.”

The door swung open to a soldier’s office inside the Bat Legion outpost’s central building, revealing behind it two thestral stallions, one with a black leather patch covering his right eye. Below them stood a young charcoal-grey pegasus-winged colt with a slicked-back mane with two shades of purple, and bright gold eyes.

The colt peered around the room in awe, then to a large wooden-and-glass frame on the wall with a sword striking down through a basic steel shield. The opposite wall of which the sword and shield sat on was decorated with portraits of the cave colony, as well as some of the past year’s troops gathered in a neat, collected group, though none smiled in these pictures.

The stallion at the desk lifted his gaze. He was a jet-black bat pony with a dark blue mane. A dark grey scar stretched an inch below his left eye, extending another few centimeters above it, likely acquired during training, or an unknown war as pondered by the young colt. Unlike the rest of the ponies, he shared the same circular-pupil eyes as Bloodvein, but with a grassy-green color.

“Who’s this? Who let a foal on the base?”

“We discovered him walking towards the base on his own, sir. He claims to be lost. He also claims to be Lieutenant Skywatcher’s son,” the stone-grey bat pony motioned his hoof as he spoke, while the other with the eye patch looked down at Bloodvein.

The pony at the desk looked at the colt once more, before motioning his hoof towards himself. “Have a seat, little guy," he then glanced up once more. "You two, wait outside, and please shut the door on your way out.”

The two stallions who brought Blood in responded with a firm salute and trotted out, closing the door gently behind them. Blood then slowly strode up to the desk and climbed onto a chair. Deep down, he felt as if his little heart was going to explode from beating as fast as it was. Never in his life had he had such an adrenaline rush, not even when his father made him run ten laps around the cave for stealing a mango cookie from the kitchen late one night.

“What is your name?”

“B-Bloodvein, sir.”

The stallion cracked the faintest of smiles, although, not enough to comfort the young pegasus. “So, you are Skywatcher’s son," he remarked in more of a statement than question.

Blood nodded in response, confirming even more.

“Commander Kozak’s the name, little one. What brings you out here by yourself?” he calmly questioned.

“I didn’t mean to, sir, I-I swear! I was just trying to find my class. I was... split up a while earlier,” Blood’s fear was evident, showing he was in fact lost.

Kozak nodded in reply. “But, you did see the signs right?”

“That’s what that one of your ponies asked… I did not see any signs, I-I swear,” Blood kept his cool, though unable to stop his hooves from trembling.

"I'm not sure if I believe you, Blood. We have warning signs posted every eighth of a mile, spanning a mile away around. Tell me you saw something?"

Blood shook his head slowly, his eyes moving down and fixing on the surface of the polished wooden desk separating the two.

Kozak sighed and slid his chair back, rising to all fours and moving slowly around his desk, over to a glass case that stored some locked-away weapons, unable to be reached unless the glass were to be broken.

"It truly is not that often that ponies get mixed up on a turn or two and wind up here, but it also isn't often that they leave without cuffs on their hooves," he grabbed a towel and began wiping at the glass to clean it.

This made the young colt extremely uneasy, and now his wings began to tremble in almost synchronization with his hooves. "I'm going to be arrested?!"

Kozak turned around and faced Bloodvein, settling his gaze upon him and blinking slowly. "No, of course not. You're a colt, I do believe you got lost. But, not a moment do I believe you didn't spot any signs warning you to turn around."

Blood eased himself only slightly. Fear was still painted all over his paling coat and feathers as he gawked up at the tall, muscular stallion.

"For now, I am going to keep you under watch in the barracks. I don't believe you will do anything if you are truly Skywatcher's son, but, I must take every precaution there is. I am certain that you understand, correct?" the stallion sat back down at his desk.

Blood nodded, gulping some. "Yes, sir."

"Good," Kozak then picked up a pen, which, on the top end, had two bat wings sticking out of the side, as well as the Bat Pony Legion's main emblem located dead in the middle, which wrapped around almost the entire pen, and started writing something on paper. "Guards, take him to the barracks and keep an eye on him."

The same two stallions from earlier trotted inside and saluted a second time, the pony with the eye patch gently lifting Blood up and placing him on his own back, trotting out of Commander Kozak's office, downstairs, and outside, into the rest of the base.

Blood sighed quietly as he rode on the stallion's back. He did not enjoy the feeling that he was brought to the Base Commander's office, even though he was not exactly in enough trouble to land him in the magma dungeons in the nearby region.

His father has once told him about those caves, and his description of it wasn't sunshine and rainbows with a cherry on top, either. Normally, those who were imprisoned there had done something nasty prior to being transported there, mainly those who killed others, or, even worse, made deals with Equestrians, which was a major punishment to the colony and others scattered across the land.

A minute or two after speaking with the Base Commander, Blood was taken in between two barrack cabins and seated down at a bench-like table used for eating when the time came. By that time, the sun was just barely past dead center in the sky, and along with the air temperature, humidity shot through the roof, creating a hot and sticky environment—a rather unpleasant one for Blood to sit in for long periods of time.

Unlike Vanhoover, which was a simple valley's jump west of the base, the valley where his colony was situated experienced a climate similar to that of the southeastern Equestrian coast. Even a distant forest named the Everfree situated in central Equestria and was unexplainable to many, but every pony had to live with it. A few of the soldiers hid in their barracks to keep cool. Blood didn't mind the heat and humidity much at that time, what he was worried about most was...

"What will my dad say?" he mentally questioned himself, staring down at the wooden picnic table.

Moments later, three bat stallions—two of them a similar grey to Bloodvein's coat, while the other was midnight blue with a similar mane to the colt's—trotted up to the table, all joking with each other, until they spotted the colt sitting at their table.

"Who is that?" the midnight blue stallion pointed his hoof at the sight of the colt.

Blood glanced up at the stallions, his heart racing again. "H-hi...?"

The stallions exchanged looks, then fixed their gazes individually at Blood. "Who are you, and how did you get in the base?"

"I got split up from my class on a field trip and ended up here by accident," Blood explained, looking back down in embarrassment.

The stallions once again glanced at each other, before chuckling mischievously. One of the grey ponies stopped laughing and trotted closer. "You screwed up big time, kid," he smirked.

"But... th-the..."

"No buts, you're headed to the magma dungeons," the midnight blue stallion joked. Blood didn't know that he was.

Blood's heart stopped as he started to tremble even worse than before He moments later hopped off of the picnic table and scurried away. While chatting, the two stallions who brought the colt in caught sight of him running out the gate, and quickly jumped to chase after him.

"Hey!" the pony with the eye patch shouted, running after the colt, who quickly ran out the unguarded gate and into some bushes just beyond the base's boundaries.

"Just let him go. He chose to run away," the other stallion trotted up next to his friend, who was panting slightly.

"Yeah, but... what's the Captain gonna say?"

---

Bloodvein ran and ran, not caring about where he was going anymore. He didn't want to be imprisoned in a cave where lava poured from the ceiling and into an enormous, searing lake of fire below, even though the Base Commander told him otherwise.

What felt like forever, but in reality was most likely just ten minutes, Blood was once again lost in the middle of the humid pine forest, but now stood in dead center of a path, which led to a direction that he hoped wouldn't loop back around and bring him right to the base again. The young colt stood perfectly still, before dropping to his haunches to catch his breath.

The poor colt panted like a dog in a desert without water, but managed to quickly regain some of his composure a few lengthy moments later to gather his surroundings. The sun hadn't budged much in the sky, meaning he had at least eight and a half or so hours to find his class—or, even better, home.

He soon stood back up and casually walked down the path, which was half-covered in pine needles and other leaves the wind broke free of their tree branches. The soft dirt muffled the sounds of hooves as he is used to hearing back home in the caves, which was nothing but stone all around.

As he walked along, he suddenly heard a new sound: leaves rustling and twigs moving around. Blood stopped dead in his tracks as the sound snatched his attention, quickly looking around to see where it was coming from.

The colt took notice of a bush just a few paces off to his left beginning to rustle. He was curious to see what it was, but also part of him wanted to run away in case it was a cockatrice, or worse, a winged python! Moments later, a small yellow beak popped out of the bush.

"It's a..."

---

"You... WHAT?!" Skywatcher hissed, baring his fangs in pure anger, his blue irises shrunk as he barked at two other bat ponies.

"W-we... uh... told him he was going to the magma dungeons for sneaking in, s-sir," one of the stallions—the midnight blue pony—answered with a broken and rather terrified voice.

"Why in Tartarus would you do that?! Not only is he my son that you picked on and scared off, but you scared him into the most dangerous forest west of the Everfree! You are lucky I didn't chop all of your heads off by now and served your blood to the rest of the officers here!" Sky continued to yell in his loudest volume at the three stallions, as well as the two who tried to catch him. "And why in the world weren't you two there to watch him?!"

The pony with the eye patch fiddled with his own hooves, tapping them together and biting his lip in fear. "We didn't think anypony would try and scare him off like these three did. I tried to catch him and stop him from running, believe us we did, but he ran too fast sir."

Sky grunted in anger and threw his hoof into an empty wooden trash bin, the force smashing it to bits out of pure rage, before facing away.

"You idiots may have sealed my son's—my ONLY son's fate!"

---

"...an eagle?"

Bloodvein blinked in both curiosity and awe as a small brown feathered avian crawled out from the bushes and stared up at the young colt. Unlike most of the eagles he had seen in class, this one was different. Instead of being brown across its whole body, its head displayed pure white feathers, with some tiny black spots mixed in towards the borderline of the bird's brown and white feathers.

"A bald eagle..." Blood thought to himself, eyes widening in even more awe at the young eagle.

The eagle squawked suddenly, backing away and tucking its head into its neck in fear as it looked right back up at the colt.

"Hey, shh. I'm not going to hurt you," Blood plopped down on his haunches and smiled kindly at the bird, which had stopped backing away and peeked its head out a bit more, before slowly approaching him.

It squawked again, cocking its head slightly at the sight of Bloodvein's tiny fangs. The tone the eagle squawked, as well as its small size, gave away that it was a young male, likely only a couple of weeks old, and the colt's smile grew. Not only the sighting of a rare bald eagle excite him, enough to almost scream, but rather holding it in to avoid scaring it off, standing up close to one that initially backed away, but then returned to him excited him even more!

His only problem now was how he would explain all of it to his parents.

Comments

[dracone]

Blood's got some pretty interesting early experiences, those soldiers are going definitely get the worst punishment Sky can think of after Blood gets back home.

[Thunderblast]

4934457 Yes, definitely You don't mess with Skywatcher, some would compare him to the devil when he's angry.

[dracone]

4934533 4934533 I think that would probably be too lenient

[Kestrel]

So if we're using the map of Equestria as released by Hasbro, I'm going to assume that this story takes place in the "Undiscovered West" part of the map?

[DarkPurveyorOfJustice]

The opposite wall the word and shield

This seems ok, but so far nothing has been set up for the story.

[Truthseeker]

Normally, those who were imprisoned there had done something nasty prior to being transported there, mainly those who killed, or even worse, made deals with Equestrians, which was a major punishment to the colony and others scattered across the land.

So... making deals with Equestrian Ponies is WORSE than murder? These guys have absolutely no right to hate the Equestrians when those who are trying to establish a connection with the rest of the world are treated worse than murderers. Idiots.

Furthermore, the wording of the above statement is confusing as HELL, '...which was a major punishment to the colony...' How is is a punishment to the colony? Do you mean 'crime against the colony'? These guys also seem extremely xenophobic, heartlessly so.