Wretched Hive 2: The Drooling Oasis

Mrs. Cloud cried out for help, but that only hastened the bugs' approach. The two changelings moved up to her, one hissing and the other snickering. She backed away from them and, feeling no pain, turned and galloped back toward her family. They flew overhead and appeared in front of her in two flashes of green. She quickly turned again.

The sharp pain returned. She faltered in agony, her ill legs collapsing beneath her weight. She shut her eyes to shield herself as her head plummeted to the sand. Now she only heard the laughing of the bugs as their hoofsteps heralded her demise.

Suddenly the laughing stopped, replaced with music. Not from a changeling whistling, but from something greater. A heavenly voice sang in a perfect harmony.

The mare opened her eyes to the sparkling waters of the oasis. The reunion dried her throat. She licked her sore gums and lips. The two changelings watched as she slowly dragged herself toward it. One of them trotted ahead of her, focused on investigating the spring. Its curious hoof touched the surface, finding it as hard and cold as ice. It chuckled and placed its other hoof on it. It took a step forward onto the solid pond.

Its hoof fell through. Its other hoof sank just as quickly, sending the bug face-first into the water. Its hind legs struggled in futility to pull their upper half out of the water. Pop by pop, the bug's last breaths died on the surface of the water. The other changeling rushed to its aid. It grabbed its friend's waist. It was too distracted to notice a third, larger changeling sneaking up behind it.

Foresight charged into the changeling's flank, knocking it into the water. Now both changelings struggled to find air. With a smirk, the green-eyed bug placed a hoof on the first changeling's rump and pushed it into the oasis.

The second changeling gasped for air, then sank like a stone. The bubbling water became still again within seconds.

The changeling stepped in front of the mare, who was clawing furiously at the sands in an effort to progress. It shook its head and trotted to her side. It grabbed her waist with its hooves and began pulling the pony away from the waters she craved. The music continued, pulling at the mare's will and causing her to punch and bite at the hairless hooves of her captor.

"Please!" she yelled at Foresight. "I'm so thirsty!"

The pond stirred. Waves formed on its small surface, crashing toward them. A few stray lines of water made their way toward the mare as though the world had turned on its side. Like a skeletal claw reaching from the underworld, the paths of the waters converged on the light blue pony.

"No!" Foresight yelled, pulling the pony away from the liquids. "This isn't how it works, Nine! She isn't one of them!" The water found her mouth and her tongue met their sweet taste. "She's a mother!"

Her body twitched furiously. She slipped from the bug's grasp. It tried to get a better grip. It failed. The mare's head twisted and looked back at Foresight, a mixture of blood and water dripping from her snout. She glared at it.

"I..." Foresight shook its head as it worked up the nerve. "I will stop you if I have to..."

Its horn glowed with a special spell. The mare groaned in agony as a strange hiss stirred from her throat. The skin around her stomach shifted and rose with a strange lump that pulsated with Foresight's nervous breath. Slowly, it began a bleed. The blood dripped down her side. The bug turned its attention to the mare's face, and used its magic to try to remove the water.

The blood hit the sands and pooled. It split into different streams from the puddle, like legs on a centipede. Each stream contracted, lifting the puddle up and skittering toward the changeling's hooves. With a leap, it climbed up the changeling's carapace. Foresight shook violently, trying to loosen the tips of the red centipede climbing up its body. Its hooves did nothing to slow the crawling blood. It continued to climb up the changeling's front, eventually finding its face.

The watery, blood red pincers snapped at the oversized bug's eyelid and pulled it away from the retina. Using the fixed pincers as leverage, the other end of the worm swung over the top of its head. With a subtle shake, the legs twisted around and a pincer-less head formed from the other end. With a twitch, it climbed into the pocket its pincers had made and let go. Foresight screamed as the creature burrowed into its eye from inside its own head.

The pincers chewed through the sensitive tissue as the sharpened legs poked into Foresight's eye over and over as the centipede crawled behind its eyelid. The changeling felt the parasite squeeze to the inner part of its eye. It began to chew behind the eye. With each sharp pain, Foresight lost part of its vision in that eye.

Then the pain stopped.

Feeling nothing but tears around the closed eye, Foresight opened it. That eye could see nothing. Its other eye watched the eyeball roll out of its socket with the red tears. It fell into the ever expanding pool of water and sank. The red tears on his face dripped in the wrong direction. Foresight's attempt at wiping them away only hastened the blood. They seeped into the other eyelid. Under Foresight's eye, the legs returned. The pincers chewed straight through this time, taking a more direct route. Foresight screamed and writhed in agony as it felt its sight being taken away bite by bite.

Then all was calm. And all was dark.

Foresight opened its other eye to feel the eyeball rolling out of its place and plopping into the water. Foresight felt the blood move from the socket to the tip of its snout. It expanded, sending a chill of cold into the changeling’s nostrils and mouth. It seeped up its face until it could feel sharp pains in its eye sockets again. Then a strong tug pulled Foresight down into the full embrace of the water. A brief moment later the pull stopped and it could feel water dripping off of itself. It opened its now free mouth to catch its breath. Then it heard water sloshing. Someone with an unfamiliar scent stood in front of the changeling now. The changeling felt a strange, ooze-like limb force its way into its mouth. Sharp claws clamped down on its tongue. Foresight howled in pain, muffled by whatever was in its mouth. It felt its own tongue get ripped from its open jaw and into oblivion. The blind changeling sat down in the ice cold water.

The ooze patted its shoulder with a cold claw. "Good boy..." a light, feminine voice whispered from all around. Foresight's head turned around, its eyeless gaze finding no source to the noise. A claw grabbed its wandering snout, numbing it with cold. "Don't struggle. You're still alive only because Advantage trusts you. But I can't abide your... Duties... anymore." A deep growl echoed from the tongueless snout. "You're not my leash. You're not my friend. What purpose could an insane, backstabbing wretcher possibly serve to us?" The growling continued. "A spotter? A crier?" The voice chuckled. "You can't be either anymore!"

The changeling roared at the voice. Its fangs snapped at the air around it. Then cold claws grabbed its throat, silencing it.

"Are you hungry?" the voice asked in its right ear. Foresight snapped at the breath and caught nothing.

The voice chuckled. "You're nothing more than a rabid animal, betrayer. Sin is your only companion."

Water filled Foresight’s lungs. The cold chill of the waters numbed the changeling to any movement. All at once the sensations were gone. It coughed up nothing. It sniffed the air. The reek of the Nine was gone. The voice was silent. It was alone.

Hoofsteps sounded from behind the changeling. Foresight sniffed the air again. Fear, anger, and sadness clouded the black air.

Cloud had Nameless keep Junior back. The pegasus stepped slowly around to get a look at the sitting changeling. Its eyes were missing. No blood or damaged flesh remained; it was as though the creature was born without them. Cloud covered his mouth and retreated to his son, shaking his head.

Nameless trotted up and smiled.

"So how'd it go?" he asked Foresight with a straight face.

The eye sockets turned to him. The mouth opened, no tongue within. A howl died in the back of its throat, echoing a deep and broken moan.

"Listen," Cloud started, trying his best to ignore the scarred changeling. "...unicorn. I'm taking my son and going North. We're gonna find our home beyond the trees." He lifted a green hoof to the pale yellow unicorn. "You can come with us."

Nameless smirked. "Go on without me." He turned to the changeling. "Whatever killed your wife and gouged this guy's eyes out is still out there." He tapped the changeling on the shoulder. "You know anything about what did this to you?"

Foresight nodded.

"Can it be killed?"

Foresight shrugged.

"Is there any perfect weapon against it?" The unicorn shrugged as the changeling crooked its head. "There's usually that one thing that can stop the monster, right? That's what it says in like, every story!"

Foresight rolled its entire head to make due. It shook its head.

"How do we stop it?!" Nameless finally yelled at the bug.

Foresight got up and dug at the sand with its hoof. Slowly, it dragged the hoof along a winding path that left a crude "S" on the ground.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Foresight sighed and dragged a line through the S, then put a "V" at the bottom of the clumsy "$."

"Money... Down?" Nameless crooked his head. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"No, wait..." Junior said, approaching the changeling without fear. The foal looked over the symbol. "This is pointing down, but this is just an 'S,'" he explained, gesturing to the crude $. "S was its own clue. Put together, they make 'South.'"

Foresight smiled and nodded.

"See?" Junior trotted closer. "Foresight knows a way to stop it, and it's to the south!"

"Junior!" Cloud put a hoof around the young colt and pulled him away. "This... This thing couldn't stop the changelings from taking your mother when he promised to!"

"But..."

Foresight waved in the general direction of the noise. Cloud pulled his son onward as the colt waved back.

"We're going home." He looked back at the unicorn as they trotted onward. "Last chance."

The unicorn put a hoof around the blind bug. "Nah, I'd rather go monster slaying."

Cloud scoffed. "Fine. Have fun getting heat stroke!" He turned from the two and focused on the path home. "Stupid thief," he muttered under his breath.

"Oh, I will," Nameless said to the changeling with a smirk. He patted it on the back. "C'mon, let's get this adventure started." The unicorn turned and trotted south. The blind changeling stumbled behind, following the sounds of his hoofsteps.

Foresight felt strange not having a tongue to bite. The hoofsteps it followed were from the only pony to heed its warning of the Oasis, but with the waters flowing so rampantly there would be no guarantee that the two would get help in time.

"Funny," the unicorn said to the bug stumbling behind him. "You, a blind bug, following an almost perfect stranger just because I want to kill that monster." He looked back to the forest on the horizon and sighed. "I almost wish I could say there was still something for me back in town." He shook his head. "But there isn't. I've been stealing to survive all my life and wondering when it'll get worse. And here we are! Slaying a water monster in a desert just because I want to feel what it's like."

Foresight crooked its head at the young male voice.

"So how much farther do we need to go here?"

The eyeless changeling stopped and drug its hoof around in a spiral. After a moment, it stopped and patted the ground off-center of the spiral to imprint a smaller but less crude circle.

"Oookay..." Nameless turned back slowly, completely confused. "I'm sure we'll see it when we get there, right?"

Foresight nodded behind the unicorn.

"You think those two are okay?" the unicorn asked, turning an eye to the blind creature behind him.

It shook its head.

"And the other two? You know... the couple?"

It shook its head again.

Nameless smirked. "And us two?"

It shook its head a third time.

The unicorn shook his head. "Dude, have you ever been positive about anything?"

Foresight nodded. It put its ear to the sand for a brief moment.

"Now what are you doing?"

Its head flew up and its eyeless gaze affixed itself to the southern horizon. It galloped forward, almost running over the unicorn in the process.

"Hey!" he yelled at the bug. "What the hell are you doing?!" Nameless galloped after the bug.

The sand they left behind melted into a blue mist. A feminine growl echoed from deep within the fog. Green lights flickered in the mists like lightning bugs. As the cloud turned to a puddle, the light melted into two boiling, green fountains in the center of the cold waters.

The Oasis hissed as their prey, blinded by their ignorance, galloped onward. The green bubbles popped over the water as the changeling's destination was divined.

"Sin follows you home; but whom do you follow, creep?"

The changeling turned toward the sound, but couldn't see anything. His follower turned as well, but the sands behind them were still dry and marked with their hoofprints.