On a Pale Horse (Umamusume/Youjo Senki)

[9ballSeraph]

The air was thick with gunpowder smoke, and the sky itself seemed to groan beneath the weight of thunder and musket fire. Byerley Turk staggered in the mud, her breath ragged, the sharp taste of iron flooding her mouth. Her forehead burned—blood streamed down into her eye, blinding one side of her world. She could still feel the tremor of steel on steel in her hands, the memory of that desperate clash with the enemy uma's bayonet. Every muscle screamed. Her knees buckled.

The cries of men and horses mingled in a chorus of violence around her, but they grew faint—muffled, as though she were sliding beneath water. She collapsed, cheek pressed to the cold mire, staring upward through the smoke and chaos.

And then she saw it.

The heavens split, not by cannon fire, but by the streak of something impossible.

A girl. Small, blonde-haired, clad in a green military uniform that did not belong to this war, soared across the sky. Not riding, not leaping, but flying—cutting through clouds as though the world had granted her dominion over air itself. Bullets—no, not bullets, something stranger—sought her out, and she twisted between them with unearthly precision. She corkscrewed, rolled, danced among murderous bursts of fire. Around her swarmed enemies—uniformed men wielding weapons she did not recognize, their flashes sparking against the dark—but none could touch her.

The world should have trembled beneath such fury, yet Byerley's eyes caught on something else.

The wind caught the girl's hair as she soared higher. Golden strands shimmered in the light of explosions. And though her face was twisted in some terrible frenzy, though her mouth was pulled back in a snarl of battle-madness, Byerley did not see the fury. She saw the glimmer of joy burning in the filly's eyes, brighter than all the fire that rained around her.

It was freedom.

That was what it meant. To cut through the sky unbound, to feel the air as a living current beneath your body, to dance where no hoof had ever touched. Byerley's heart lurched with a pang sharper than her wounds.

She wanted that.

She wanted to run—not across fields of mud and blood, not through the clamor of musket fire and dying screams, but across endless green. She wanted to feel the same wind, the same sky, brushing against her skin.

Her lips moved, barely a whisper, swallowed by the noise of battle:

"Ah… to run…"

The vision shimmered, like sunlight off a blade, and faded. All that remained was the smoke, the mud, and the slow trickle of her blood painting the earth beneath her.

A shadow fell over her. A strong hand gripped her arm, hauling her upright.

"Come now, lass!" Captain Robert Byerley's voice thundered, though muffled in her daze. She could barely make out his grin through the haze, his face streaked with mud and powder, eyes alight with reckless joy. He pressed a fresh musket into her hands, slapping the stock against her shoulder as if to rouse her spirit. "Up! Up! We've work yet!"

He gestured wildly, rallying, chuckling at her state as though this was all a game. He bellowed something more—orders, encouragement, maybe a jest—but the words were lost in the ringing of her ears.

Still, his laughter reached her.

Her vision of the flying girl burned still in her mind, lending her a strength that surprised her battered body. Her legs, trembling and slick with mud, steadied. She wanted to live. She wanted to run.

For a moment she wavered—ashamed of her lapse in discipline, ashamed of how her spirit faltered when her comrades still pressed forward. "Fool," she muttered under her breath, chiding herself. An uma must not drift into dream while the muskets roared.

And yet—because of that dream—she found her footing again. She snapped the musket to her chest, gritted her teeth, and surged forward beside Robert.

Through smoke and steel they charged.

The war was won, though not without blood. Months later, in a grand mansion far from the battlefield, the air was heavy with firelight and conversation instead of powder and death. Colonel Robert Byerley sat among gentlemen, his uniform polished, his wounds mostly healed, his wife seated elegantly at his side. Crystal glasses clinked, and the talk had turned—as it always did—to the war just passed.

"You should have seen it," Robert said, his booming laugh filling the chamber. "There I was, near cut off from my men, reconnoitering far too close to the enemy line. A fool's errand, but orders are orders. They spotted me, and I caught a ball for my trouble. Would've been finished there and then—aye, captured, dragged before their officers—had it not been for my friend."

He raised his glass toward Byerley Turk, who lingered at the edge of the gathering, half in the shadow of the mantel's glow. "Owing my safety to her superior speed, no less. Carried me as though I weighed no more than a sack of oats, though blood soaked us both. A finer comrade no officer could pray for."

The men of the Jockey Club chuckled appreciatively, though some looked at her with curiosity—this soldier, this uma, who fought in fields where most of their kind were seen only in races or hunts.

Robert's wife smiled faintly, though with that restrained air of a woman accustomed to war stories retold for effect. She laid a hand on her husband's arm, murmuring for him to temper his boasting.

But Byerley Turk stepped forward then, the firelight catching the scar still faintly visible upon her brow. Her eyes were steady, though within them flickered something other than battle. Something freer.

"Colonel," she said, her voice quiet but firm, "I want to join the club."

The room paused, the chatter stilled. Robert blinked, then broke into a grin, his teeth flashing.

She lowered her gaze for a moment, then raised it again with quiet resolve.

"I want to run."