Wretched Hive 3: The Gray Pony

Chapters

"What do they call you?"
"Look what we have here!"
"What good is a story without any pictures?!"
"Look who's finally awake!"
"She's here, isn't she?"
"I can be whatever I want!"
"Help will come with compassion."
"Don't make me bring a nightmare to life!"
"Look at me!"
"I believe we have an obligation."
"His intentions were not pure."
"All the pages are blank!"
"I made a promise."
"I told you!"

"What do they call you?"

The gray pony opened his eyes to the sands below. The air fell through his mane as the surface closed in. Its howling kept his snout silent; his descent towards death pressed his ears to his head with its unyielding breath.

"If this is a dream," he thought. "Then I will wake before I hit the--"

The impact shocked him. His entire body shrieked out in pain as he spat out sand. As his weary eyes looked around, there was nothing but sand in front of him and ringing all around him.

A wave crashed violently behind him. He turned around quickly, the pain and ringing forgotten, to find an angry, blue ocean crashing onto the sands. Dark clouds swirled in the horizon. He watched the movements of the sky and sea, hypnotized by their natural rhythm. The waves crashed and the clouds swirled.

Something smacked the sand.

He turned to find an adorable changeling building a simple sandcastle. Its eyes were bigger than those of other changelings, its fangs smaller, and its frame lighter. It was almost like a baby. But that was impossible. He shook his head and trotted toward the child.

It looked up and smiled at the pony approaching it.

"Hello!" the young bug chirped, happily.

"Umm... Hi?" the confused pony said, looking around. "Where... Do you know where we are?"

"My name's Mercy!" it chirped in ignorant bliss. "What's yours, mister?"

The pony's mind blanked. "I'm... I'm not entirely sure."

"What do they call you?"

"...Carnal," he reluctantly answered.

"Kernel?" Mercy grinned as Carnal gulped. "It's nice to meet you, Kernel!" Kernel decided not to correct the child.

"So... Mercy? Where are we?" He looked around, only to see one side stormy waters and the other side sand.

"So what happened to you?" Mercy chirped with an adorably crooked head.

"What... What do you mean?" Kernel asked, his concern for the child overturning his need for an answer.

"Well, I've only ever seen two others show up on this beach," Mercy explained. "Or maybe it was just one other..." Mercy shrugged. "Either way, it's nice to meet a stranger, Kernel!"

"Umm... Likewise. So where are we?"

Mercy shrugged.

Kernel looked up into the blue sky and scratched the back of his head. "Don't suppose you remember how you got here?"

"I like building sandcastles!" Mercy chirped. It grabbed his gray hoof with its harmless, little fangs and pulled him away from the sculpture.

A wave crashed just behind them, destroying the castle and leaving a dark splotch on the sand where it stood.

From the splotch grew a pony made of shadow. Dark clouds moved quickly to blot out the light. Now the two were in the middle of a rainless storm, with a shadow staring at them. Kernel turned to run, only to find Mercy standing still, staring back at the shadow with wide eyes.

"Mercy!" he called out.

The changeling didn't move.

Lightning flashed overhead as the shadow picked up some sand with its hoof.

"Mercy, come on!"

The changeling watched as the shadow slowly spilled the grains of sand into the darkness. Thunder crashed.

Mercy went limp and collapsed.

"Mercy!" Kernel shrieked as he lunged to the child's aid.

The young changeling had a hole where its heart would have been. Mercy was dead.

Kernel glared at the shadowy pony. It scooped more sand into its hoof, its gaze piercing through the pony despite a lack of eyes.

"You can't," a dark, corrupted voice echoed from the darkness.

Fear and dread filled the pony and he turned from the darkness and ran as fast as he could. All ahead of him was sand.

"You can't," the voice echoed. Sand fell from the dark clouds above him and the rest of the desert. "You can't."

Kernel couldn't take it anymore. He stopped and glared back at the pursuing darkness. "I can't what?!" he screamed at it.

The shadow spilled the sand from its hoof. "You can't."

The clouds tightened until Kernel couldn't see anything in the darkness. He closed his useless eyes.

"You can't."

"Look what we have here!"

The gray pony opened his eyes to a gleaming city. Made from beautiful crystals, it was a living paradise. The sky above was filled with the colors of the rainbow. Looking back to the streets, the strange shadow from earlier moved toward the center of town. The broad daylight gave the shadow a more misty look, like a unicorn made of shade rather than some demonic, swirling hole.

“Hey!” Kernel called out to the shadow. It kept shifting away. “Hey, I’m talking to you!” The shadow continued on, unhindered by his voice. Kernel galloped in pursuit. “You’re not ruining this world too!”

The dark pony turned to him. No eyes, even in daylight, stared through his soul. “Who are you?” a familiar voice echoed from its lack of a mouth.

“I am... Kernel.” The pony nodded. “Kernel.”

“Do you know where you are?”

The pony shook his head.

“No familiarities? None at all?”

Kernel glanced around the crystalline structures. Not a single memory came to his mind. “Should I be remembering this?”

“I can remember. So I persist. You cannot. You should die.”

Kernel took a step back.

The shadow took a shifty step forward. “You are dreaming, you know...” It shook its eyeless head. “You will awake without any pain. And staying asleep can’t give you the same promise.”

“How do I know I’m dreaming?” Kernel asked the shadow. “Could be some crazy spell teleporting me around!”

“You stand in the realm of the dead and ask for a sign of life with your own breath?” The shadow chuckled. “I do wonder what our host sees in somepony like you.” The shadow crooked its head dementedly. “You’re not even a pony, are you?”

“So what if I’m not?!” Kernel asked the shadow. “How do I know you’re not a pony!”

“You make me more sad than even myself,” the shadow admitted. “Now that’s an accomplishment.” It skulked backwards.

“Hey,” Kernel said in a more somber tone. “What do you call yourself?”

“Enemy.”

“Is... is that your name?”

“My name is an axe looming over my neck. My identity a dark and hollow shell. But they call me ‘Foresight.’”

Kernel’s eyes widened in realization. “I know you... You’re that changeling healer that helped the others!”

“Only after Advantage assuaged my bloodlust,” shadow Foresight corrected. “And you, the forbidden fruit that killed the Oasis.” The shadow nodded. “I think I know where we are...”

The shadow looked into a crystal jutting up from the ground, and a purple unicorn looked back at the shadow unicorn. He and the shadow frowned as they turned to the gray earth pony.

“Why are you a shadow?” Kernel asked Foresight.

“It is a mask,” the shadow explained. Its hoof pressed against the crystal and, upon touching its purple counterpart, shattered the mirror into a thousand pieces. “You know why we wear masks, don’t you?” it asked the startled pony as a thousand tiny ponies looked back at him from the ground. “We could be hiding what we are from strangers who might judge us. We could be hiding what we can be from enemies we seek to surpass. Or... we could be hiding what we were, and still are, from those we hold closest to ourselves.”

“Foresight?” the scared pony asked.

“Do not fear the shadows, Kernel. For they tell that a light shines upon you.” Foresight began to sink into the ground. “Instead, fear the absence of a shadow.”

Foresight disappeared into the black street. The crystals of the city twisted and turned to black. Two ponies made of the corruption appeared before the pony. They wore some kind of metallic armor and brandished large weapons made of the black crystals.

"Look what we have here!" screeched the guard on the left. She drew a sword.

A strange, if not haunting, guttural moan came from the guard on the right. Kernel turned and saw that the other guard was missing his lower jaw.

The guard on the left cackled. "That's right, Silence! Someone new to kill!"

Kernel turned and ran through the blackened streets, away from the demented guards.

The guard cackled again. "Oh ho! This one's much more fun than those 'changeling' things!"

Her blade struck Kernel's hind leg from behind, reducing his speed to a bleeding limp. The pony wished he had his changeling horn again. The thought occurred to him there was no reason he wouldn't have it... If it were just a dream.

The guard laughed as she circled her prey. Silence lumbered around them and raised his mace over the path Kernel was limping toward.

"What do they call you?" the pony asked his pursuers in pain.

"I am she who speaks for two!" the female guard gloated. "I talk for him but not for you!" She ushered her friend over.

The guttural moan returned, but the sounds rebounded inside Kernel's mind enough for him to make out a few words:
"She is a mother..."

He lifted his mace.

"She is a mother."

Kernel cowered and closed his eyes.

"She is a mother."

"Who's a mother?!" he screamed, hiding behind his closed eyes.

The female guard grabbed his throat with green magic and pulled him from his blindness. "Hi, there..." she said, chuckling. "You didn't think I'd let you die without knowing my name, huh?"

Kernel struggled in the unicorn's grip. "What... What?"

"Duplicity." She plunged her sword into his chest. His blood spilled onto the streets and she dropped him into it. He writhed on the cold, hard road.

The guards disappeared with a blink. As the blood drained from the pony, his vision painfully faded. A cold wind howled.

"She is a mother."

"What good is a story without any pictures?!"

The gray pony opened his eyes to "Duplicity" staring back at him. The word. In a book. Kernel slammed the book shut, its red and almost demonic-looking cover made the pony take a few steps back away from the reading table. On the table itself were several dusty tomes of a similar nature. Kernel turned from the books and looked around the candlelit area. He was in a library now. The shelves seemed to go on forever, both on his floor and upwards to infinity. A few floors up, he could hear the sound of books falling from their shelves.

Finding a winding staircase, Kernel decided to investigate the noise. He climbed until he could see one of the fallen books. "5" stared at him from the post connecting the railing to the current floor. The thuds were loudest here.

Looking around this fifth floor, Kernel found another reading table. On it were several open books with pages torn, burned, or chewed to a state of disrepair. In the center of the table lay several pages of colorful pictures. Each was of a different living creature, but the papers were ripped such that only a part of the creature was still legible. Amongst the chaos were two pictures that seemed to show a whole creature. One was a dragon, the other was some kind of monster Kernel didn't recognize. It had strange, web-like growths over its body with a glowing red heart in its center. The bottom half of the creature was torn off, with green staining the ripped edge.

The candle lighting the table went out with a draft of wind.

Kernel heard wings flapping in the distance, followed by the thud of a book's spine breaking on the floor just behind him. Panicking at the unknown monster's presence, the gray pony hastily ducked under the reading table for cover.

Two feet crashed down where he was just standing. With the sound of a menacing exhale, the candle flickered back to life. Kernel looked up to find two pink dragon feet dimly lit and facing the table. A familiar sounding growl emanated from above him.

"No..." the sweet sounding yet haunting voice of Bubbles, the Drooling Oasis, growled. "These aren't enough..."

The pink feet stomped to one of the closer bookshelves. She reached down to a shelf that hadn't been picked clean already. Kernel tried to maintain his composure as her teeth-filled snout appeared near the bottom shelf. A tentacle slid down her side and pulled one of the books from the shelf. The pony watched her shadow skim the book, her claws flipping the pages as quickly as they could.

The dragon's claws reached the end of the book. She screamed and ripped it in half.

"What the fuck is all of this?!" Bubbles' voice shrieked out of its usual harmony. She continued ripping the book to shreds. "It's all words! It's all fucking words! What's the point?!" Kernel could hear the tentacle slurp up another cover for her. "Oh? Another storybook?" She skimmed it in the same, hasty manner. "And of course this shit has no pictures either! What the fuck is wrong with these authors?!" The room lit up as her breath burned the book alive. "What good is a story without any pictures?! I can't get any inspiration from these damned piles of ash!" She stomped the book out, rendering it a dark spot on the floor.

The dragon Oasis stomped back to the table. "It's so beautiful but nowhere near perfection!"

With a blink the library grew dimmer. The whole library turned to the same, miserable state that afflicted the reading area. Kernel crawled out from under the table to find himself alone in the decrepit library. In the distance, he could hear an unfamiliar sound with bursts of Bubbles's voice, like sick laughter. Almost by instinct, Kernel trotted toward the noise. "05" stared at Kernel as he trotted past the staircase.

In a corner sat a large, pink dragon. Water fell from her eyes like blood as she hyperventilated into her own claws. She didn't notice Kernel stare at her in morbid curiosity. Taking a step forward, the gray pony's hoof stepped on a broken and chewed, green book. Looking up from there, he saw a light blue, a tan, and a brown book, each in similar states of disrepair like a path of ruin.

Remembering how the past couple dreams had gone, Kernel decided it’d be better to just turn around now. Leaving behind him the cries of the liquid dragon, the gray pony went back down the spiral staircase until he was back at the ground floor. He trotted back to the dusty reading table.

Sitting at the table before him, a changeling missing its lower jaw looked up at him as it slammed its dusted off book down on the table. It glared at the uncorrupted pony and growled menacingly, its whole head shaking.

“What the fuck are you?!” Kernel burst out in shock. He covered his mouth and looked up, listening for wings.

He turned back to the reading table. All the books were still as dusty and untouched as he had found them. The growling changeling had vanished.

“Why...” Kernel complained under his breath. “Why can’t it just end nicely for once?”

Looking cautiously over his shoulder, Kernel noticed a door. He approached it, admiring the detailed threshold and smiling at the sunlight seeping out from under it. Just to be safe, the gray pony put his ear up to it first.

“And she watched the kingdom burn...” an oddly familiar, female voice spoke through the door, as though reading from a book.

Kernel pulled his head from the door. “What the fuck?” He looked around to make sure he was still in the library. He was.

He put his ear back to the door. “And she melted with the rest of them. Indistinguishable from the filth she had tolerated for so long. Forever marked by imperfection. Branded a living nightmare.”

Kernel pulled back. “The story of the Oasis?”

He put his ear back to the door. “...a lesson learned far too late.” The last two words were of a deeper inflection. “And now they bleed water. And now they know it’s never too late to change.”

The voice stopped.

The doors flew open outwards into the blinding light.

"Look who's finally awake!"

The gray pony opened his eyes to a white room. He found himself in a strange bedroom, with a very familiar looking door on the other side of the room. Beyond it, the sound of something being ripped apart alive could be heard. But the sounds confused Kernel; it was strange that he could hear the teeth biting bone and blood splattering as though pumped from a heart, and yet there was no screaming or consistent chewing. He took a deep breath and opened the door.

“Oh! Look who’s finally awake!” Foresight exclaimed. The changeling was not only solid again but stood next to a canvas splattered in color, a pallet in his hoof and a paintbrush floating in his aura.

Bones continued to crunch as a feather savagely mauled the paper under another changeling’s magical aura, scarring the parchment with inked symbols.

“Don’t mind him!” Foresight said to Kernel with a smile. “He rarely has anything good to say.”

The changeling turned back to his canvas and splattered yellow across it just as a predator would splatter a floor in blood. Kernel couldn’t make heads or tails of the design.

“I just paint whatever comes to mind, man!” Foresight said happily, as if reading the pony’s mind. “I know I’m no good at painting, but I’m not gonna let that guy do all the fun stuff!”

Intrigued, the gray pony trotted to the other changeling and looked over its shoulder. The symbols were in some language that seemed both ancient and new, both foreign and familiar. Letters themselves were nothing, but the words spoke through the page somehow. Their whispers were like static, but over time became clearer.

“Hey!” Foresight yelled, snapping Kernel out of the translation. The changeling shook his head. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

Kernel looked around to confirm the pleasant setting. He turned from the “betrayer” as Bubbles used to call him and went back to translating the paper. Finally, the words became sentences:

That’s right, Foresight... Just keep tuning me out. Just take up another medium and suddenly your problems stop venting from your nose. So much easier to paint blood and sickness across the landscape when it’s not your land, blood, or sickness. But you are sick. You say you’re not as sick as them. You’re right. You’re worse. So. Much. Worse.

“SHUT UP, MIDNIGHT!” Foresight screamed, turning from his canvas and allowing his red-dipped brush to create a crude streak down the middle. “You think it’s easy to do this?!” he snarled, gesturing toward his “art.” “This is your doing as much as mine, you hypocrite!”

“You’re dodging the truth as though it were a knife!” the other changeling sassed with Foresight’s voice. It smirked. “Oh right, it is, isn’t it? You don’t like thinking about the good old days when you were... Civil?”

“Why are you even here, Midnight?” Foresight growled at the changeling.

Midnight simply gestured toward the clock on the wall. The hour and minute hands were closing in on twelve. “Tick, tock...”

“Fuck you!” Foresight snarled.

“Tick, tock... Tick, tock...” Midnight chuckled. “How much longer till the clock chimes its last, eh? How much longer?”

“I don’t care, Midnight,” Foresight growled.

“Maybe not about yours... But what about those?” He gestured to three other clocks on the wall. Kernel was sure they weren’t there before. “I’m sure you’ll agree that we’d hate for anything to happen to Mer--”

“Who are you?!” Foresight quickly asked Kernel. “You say you’re Kernel but I don’t recognize you!”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Midnight said, getting up from his writing to look closer at the gray pony. “I can’t rub your face in his face if there’s no meaning behind it!” He squinted at Kernel’s snout. “You’re just... gray.” He turned to Foresight. “Well, you’re the social butterfly here!”

“Fuck off, Midnight.” Foresight took a step closer to Kernel. “You can see him, right? You can hear Midnight?”

Kernel reluctantly nodded.

Foresight exhaled, aghast at the response. “Seriously? Because Midnight there is a resident of the deep subconscious. I mean deep.”

“He’s gotta be a changeling, Foresight, just tell him!” Midnight said.

“Umm... No.” Foresight glared at Midnight. “Pretty sure that’s the worst thing that I could do. Look at that face! Could be anyone.”

Midnight swallowed his response and nodded.

“And what is wrong with my face?” Kernel asked the two changelings.

“We don’t recognize it, genius.”

“So?”

“Kernel!” Foresight snapped. “We don’t recognize it. We.” He gestured between him and Midnight. “Plural. Neither my conscious self or that guy from the subconscious who’s way smarter in all the most unhelpful ways... whatever. We don’t know that face. And that is impossible because this is clearly a dream and dreams pull faces from a pool of known faces and we can’t recognize you.”

“Well I saw a black, crystal pony with no lower jaw earlier! Maybe we're just making up faces to scare ourselves?”

“Told you!” Midnight gloated to the other changeling.

“Well, fuck me.” Foresight glared at Kernel, and his horn glowed brighter and brighter.

“What is he talking about?” Kernel asked nervously.

“This.” Foresight smiled as a strong bolt of magic shot from his horn, striking Kernel in the chest.

The room’s light began to fade.

“And tell ‘Duplicity’ and ‘Silence’ to kindly fuck off for us.” Foresight smiled. “Okay, pal?”

It all went dark.

"She's here, isn't she?"

The gray pony opened his eyes to the light and colors of the crystal city. Looking around, Kernel found himself in a new part of the city. A crystal mansion caught his eye, being slightly more defined than the rest of the dreamscape.

"These are definitely dreams," Kernel thought to himself. He looked down at his reflection in the road. A gray blur looked back at him through the crystal path. "But why am I this gray stranger?"

Looking up from his reflection, Kernel could see Foresight galloping up to the mansion. His magic threw the door out his way as he went inside. Kernel picked up the pace, hoping that Foresight knew as much as he was letting on.

Kernel blinked.

The gray pony opened his eyes to a large feast placed on a long, rectangular table inside the dining room of the mansion. Places were set for at least a dozen seats. The plates and glasses were all empty, and the entrees were still covered in the middle of the table.

"Welcome, Carnal," Duplicity spoke from his left.

Kernel looked at the left end of the table to find a beautiful pony made of crystal sitting at the head. She smiled at him. On her left sat Foresight with a creepy yet friendly grin.

"Please, sit anywhere you like!" Duplicity said cheerily, waving a hoof at all the empty seats. "We'll start eating once everypony gets here."

Kernel considered his many options, scanning the entire table from left to right. Another crystal pony sat at the other head of the table, all alone. Kernel trotted over and sat on the pony's right. Looking closer, the gray pony noticed his crystal neighbor lacked a lower jaw. He nodded as he recognized this uncorrupted Silence.

"She's here, isn't she?" Foresight asked the talkative host.

Duplicity shrugged. "What's the point of her having free will if you want her here right now?"

"Well, there's always a limit. Unless you want to admit taking innocent lives was your free will, right?" Foresight chuckled. "Or was that just doing what's expected of you?"

Silence glared intently on Foresight. Duplicity stammered for a moment.

"Free will is often overshadowed by corruption," Duplicity explained. "It can't really be our fault."

"Yeah, that'd be true for crystal ponies." Foresight looked between the two hosts before fixing his gaze on Kernel. "So, what do you think about all this, Carnal?"

Kernel looked around the table, only to find all eyes on him. Silence looked away to try to relieve some pressure.

"Well..." Kernel started, trying to draw substance from a blank void. "I'm not sure?"

“Fascinating.” Foresight turned back to Duplicity. “So is he supposed to be someone you killed or what? Usually you grab ponies who are more for conversation.”

The host glared at the changeling. “Foresight, be quiet. Maybe he doesn’t talk because he doesn’t have some seething guilt that frivolous questions could distract from!”

Foresight glanced at Kernel a couple times. “And since when do you invite boring ponies to the dinner table?”

“Shut up,” Duplicity sternly replied.

Foresight scoffed. “Excuse me? You invite me to this stupid dreamscape and don’t expect me to talk?!”

“Shut up.”

“You just toy with our subconscious without any thought to the lasting--”

“Shut. Up.” Duplicity began to get up from her seat.

“Alright, fine... I’ll be quiet until that Drooling Oasis gets here.” Foresight relaxed and tried to ignore her glare.

“Her name is Bubbles.”

“O yeah? Did her mother name her that?”

“Does it matter? She’s neither affiliated with the Oasis anymore, nor does she drool.” Duplicity crooked her head as Foresight turned away. “Her past shouldn’t define her.” She put a hoof on the changeling’s shoulder.

“I wish I wasn’t awake right now,” Foresight sighed. He shrugged off her hoof. “I still don’t know who you two are or why you insist on tormenting the wretchers with these lies.” He shook his head. “But I want no part of it.” His horn lit up.

“No.” A corrupt crystal dropped from the ceiling as Duplicity grabbed Foresight’s hoof. With her guidance, the crystal impaled the changeling’s hoof on the table.

Foresight screamed.

“It’s not real,” he said, under his breath. “It’s not real, it’s not real...”

“You came to our world, you impotent whelp,” Duplicity growled. “And you should know that nightmares always have the greatest impact.” She put a hoof on the crystal, causing it to burn.

Foresight cried out in pain as ashes fell from his hoof like sand. “I’m... I’m gonna get out of here you...”

“You can’t,” Kernel said. “You can’t.”

The wounded changeling’s eyes widened as he turned to the pony. “Where did you hear that?” He winced in pain.

“A night’s dreams are always forgotten, Foresight,” Duplicity said, petting his head. “With exceptions only for the really good ones.” The crystal twisted in his hoof. “And the bad ones.” The crystal mare grinned. “But the best ones are both, in my opinion!” She looked over to the gray pony. “What about you? What was your favorite dream tonight?”

The gray pony’s eyes widened.

“See, Foresight?” She rubbed the changeling’s neck. “He remembers. The good... But mostly the bad.”

The gray pony’s lips quivered.

“And maybe, just maybe... a nice, little message for the waking self.”

The gray pony’s eyes closed.

“Find him.”

The gray pony opened his eyes to darkness. The voice of Duplicity seemed more distant.

“Find him.”

“Find who?” he called out to the darkness.

“He’s going to die. Find him.”

“Why?” he asked the emptiness.

“It’s all your fault. Find him.”

Frost covered the gray pony’s hooves. With a blink, they were warm and soaked with something. He blinked again.

"I can be whatever I want!"

The gray pony opened his eyes to an open ocean. Sunlight poured from holes in a clouded sky and several square columns jutted from the water like crumbled foundation beams. Kernel looked down, the water was too murky to see the bottom of, yet his hooves could feel solid ground without even his entire legs being submerged. He sloshed toward the columns. A black substance that seemed neither solid nor liquid dripped from long, rectangular indentations lining the rows of the beams.

Past the strange, blocky columns was some kind of whirlpool with a much thinner column jutting from it. He trotted closer, keeping an eye on the current encircling it.

“Even if I fall in,” he thought to himself. “This is just another dream. It won’t be pleasant... But I won’t die.”

He stepped cautiously toward it, seeing some kind of writing on the post sticking out of the hole. He found himself walking backwards in place as he maintained enough balance to read the post. Kernel squinted and the wear on the post itself made it difficult to perceive what appeared to be a number. With a sudden glare bouncing off the lettering, “070” stared at him with an emptiness in its circles.

Blinded by the light, Kernel didn’t feel the current picking up. He turned and tried to gallop from the gaping hole in the water while the currents kept him in place. A column in the distance tipped from the current, dropping something into the water. Kernel picked up the pace, but wasn’t getting any farther from the hole. The object floated on the currents, making its way toward the hole.

It was a foal’s book. Sporting soaked and charred covers and pages too destroyed to be of much use, Kernel was almost sad at its state. He smiled though, as he realized now that these columns were the bookshelves and he was on floor 70 of that “infinite” library.

“And I can’t die,” the gray pony reassured himself. He took a deep breath as he turned back toward the hole and let the waters pull him in. “The way out’s at the bottom, after all.”

The gray pony fell into the hole, a great waterfall replacing the staircase he knew. He calmly closed his eyes and waited.

Kernel landed safely in the waters at the bottom. Looking around, dust filled the air and the only light was from the waterfall. It landed on the remains of the old staircase, now just bunch of numbered signs. Kernel smirked and looked for the door.

There were only decrepit bookshelves and open, hoof-deep waters.

Kernel looked in all directions, trying to find some way out. He sloshed around, unsure of where the reading table was.

A piece of white paper floated in the still waters. The gray pony picked it up. On it was a strange drawing of that creature whose picture was ripped in two the last time he was here. The web-like growths were now accompanied with some dragon claws and the creature itself appeared more reptilian than the original.

Something splashed behind him.

Kernel turned around to find nothing out of the ordinary. There was not even a ripple on the surface of the water. He turned around to find the creature from the paper staring at him, in the flesh.

"Who are you?" it asked in a familiar, haunting voice.

"K-Kernel?" the gray pony whimpered.

"Really?" the creature asked, crooking its head. It shrugged it off. "Well, I'm Elegiac."

"Ellie... Jack?"

She giggled. "No. 'L,' 'E,' 'Jahy,' 'Ack!'" she sounded out.

"Okay, Elegiac," he managed to pronounce correctly. "How do we get out of here?"

Elegiac shrugged. "I dunno, I never actually felt like going anywhere else." She crooked her head. "What do you have in mind?"

"This may sound strange," Kernel admitted. "But I was asked to find you for some kind feast."

"I'm not the main course, am I?" she asked him with a nervous laugh.

"Not that I know of..."

"Good enough for me!" Elegiac turned and beckoned with a large smile.

The pair made their way through the sunken library until they found a familiar door. The entire door was covered in dust and cobwebs. Spiders rested among the webs; it was impossible to tell if they were still alive.

Green magic pulled the door open. Kernel turned to find the gem on his new friend's forehead pulsating in green light.

Elegiac jumped through the threshold. “Come on, Kernel!”

The gray pony followed the creature through the webs to find themselves under a crescent moon. The dry, dusty road they stood on went straight down a neighborhood of pony homes.

“A... A pony town?” Kernel looked around. “This isn’t right!”

“I thought we just needed to leave the...” Elegiac stammered until her mind finally blanked on the past completely.

“The library?” the gray pony said, attempting to finish her question.

“Was that what it was?” She crooked her head, then shrugged it off. “Whatever, let’s just get going.”

Kernel nodded and they started to make their way through the town. The moonlit shadows danced in the corners of their eyes. The broken windows of the empty houses assured the gray pony that they were alone, yet the feeling of being watched couldn’t be shaken off.

Lights flickered in the windows of the last couple houses at the end of the road. The road itself seemed to be ending just a few paces beyond the flickering, but Elegiac was not slowing down. Kernel paced himself, trying to steady his breaths, but soon found himself falling behind.

“Well, look who’s here!” a male voice yelled from behind them.

Kernel and Elegiac turned to find a familiar unicorn standing in the middle of the road. His pale yellow coat was stained red with blood, and a sinister smile crossed his snout. He chuckled as one muddy hoof after the other stomped its way toward the pair.

“Don’t we have some unfinished business, Oasis?” the unicorn growled. Bones cracked and writhed out from his sides, forming skeletal wings. “This is going to be fun!” He laughed maniacally as his eyes turned from white and brown to red and black.

“RUN!” Elegiac screamed in a chorus. Kernel couldn’t tell if the other voices were his imagination or not.

They ran from the psychopathic unicorn, past the houses and beyond the road’s end. They both glanced back to confirm the monster’s terrifying pace, and by the time they turned back around they found themselves running through a graveyard. Headstones ranging from the plain to the complex flooded the horizon. Elegiac grabbed Kernel and leaped behind one of the larger ones.

Hoofsteps stomped past them. Intense growling hanged over them. Elegiac kept a claw over Kernel’s snout. The sounds slowly closed in on them.

“Where are yoooou?” the unicorn called out in an off-key taunt. “It’s me! The Desert Mirage!” The maniacal laughter sounded off, louder than ever before.

The laughter stopped.

“Foresight?!” the unicorn called out.

Elegiac released Kernel as she turned and popped up from their hiding spot. The unicorn was just in front of them, but both she and her pursuer stared at the edge of the graves. A changeling-like silhouette stood among the graves. The unicorn galloped towards it.

Kernel poked his head up as Elegiac followed a bit too closely behind the unicorn. He rushed to catch up to her. Fortunately, the unicorn seemed focused on the shadowy changeling in the fog.

“Foresight?!” the unicorn called out again.

The shadow grew twice as large. A changeling queen lunged from the fog and snatched up the unicorn with its giant fangs. She snapped him in half and tossed him aside.

“Chrysalis!” Elegiac cried out in joy. “You saved me!”

Chrysalis stepped forward, her body subtly twitching. Slowly, green magic ripped her snout down the middle, allowing it to open sideways.

“WRREEEAAAAAKPTH!” the queen screeched, its mouth opening both ways at once.

“No!” Elegiac screamed as a wind blew papers through the wind.

“WRREEEAAAAAKPTH!”

“I’m not a wretch!” she screamed back, as Kernel began to recognize some of the papers in the wind. “I’m a changeling!”

“WRREEEAAAAAKPTH!” the queen screeched. Images flew by on the papers. Kernel could read a few of them: siren, dragon, pony, and other papers flew around in a cyclonic wind. Graves were disappearing.

“I can be whatever I want!” Elegiac screamed in the eye of the storm.

The winds converged, sending all the papers into her. Light burst forth, blinding Kernel. Everything was screaming.

Then there was silence.

Kernel knew his eyes were closed. He feared what awaited him now.

"Help will come with compassion."

The changeling opened his eyes to the familiar darkness of the hive interior. He shook subtly on his rock-like bed, unsure what the chain of dreams he just had could be trying to convey. Kernel... Carnal shook his head out of the stupor and tried to get a grip on reality. Large hooves stamped around in the darkness beyond him. He trudged through the dark to find the source. Advantage paced in the dark before, as if sensing his weariness, turning toward him.

“Carnal? You’re awake?” the male head asked him.

Carnal breathed a sigh of relief. “I sure hope so.” He shook more of the creeping feeling off. “I had one heck of a nightmare...”

“A nightmare?” the female head chuckled. “Seriously?”
“That’s impossible!” the male head laughed.

Carnal looked between them, the faces of Advantage stayed in sync with one another in a skeptical stance. “It was a terrifying nightmare with shadows, and monsters, and Bubbles was there... that unicorn was there... Foresight was there...”

“Foresight was in there?!” Advantage interrupted with a growling, male head.

“He’s a dreamwalker, Carnal,” the other head added.

“It would explain it.”

Carnal looked between them again. “And... umm... what is a ‘dreamwalker’ again?”

Advantage gave him patient smiles. “He can traverse dreams.”
“And even change their meanings!”
“Almost brainwashing.”

“So he just decided to step into my dream to give me a nightmare? Why? I thought he was our friend?”

Advantage’s patience stretched their cheeks a bit more. “Yes, he is our friend.”
“But we have become distanced.”
“By more than mere feet. He might not like you.”
“At least, not what you've become."
"He has some issues."

The changeling looked around the cave. "So should I be worried? Because that nightmare was really intense..."

“Don’t worry yourself,” Advantage said.
“Help will come with compassion.”
“Go find compassion.”

Turned away by a waving hoof, Carnal turned and trotted out of their end of the cave. He trotted past the beds and toward the dim light and the edge of the caves. Maybe if he could get some sunlight, he could feel better about all of these nightmares.

A shadow stirred in the distance, moving toward the changeling. The familiar sound of wings flapping shook his spine. Soon it loomed over Carnal.

“Did they call for compassion?” a deep voice roared.

The changeling was snout to snout with a dragon. The realization scared his words back into his chest.

“Did they say compassion?” the maw repeated.

With his shaky snout sealed, Carnal nodded his head.

“Why?” it growled. Smoke gently rose from the reptile’s nose. It glared at the shaking mass. “Well?!”

“I've been having nightmares,” Carnal meekly admitted, raising a shaky hoof in an attempt to gesture toward himself.

A claw reached toward him. The changeling hid behind his front hooves. Nothing happened.

“What's your name?” the dragon asked.

The hooves lowered, revealing the suspended claw beckoning him. The changeling smiled shyly as he put his hoof into the claw.

“I'm... Carnal.”

“Kernel, huh?” the dragon asked as it gently shook his hoof. It smiled as Kernel weakly nodded, too fearful to correct it. “They call me Compassion.”

The changeling looked up with wider eyes. The claw pulled its new friend back toward the light. In the light of day, a slender, brown dragon at a teenage height stood before him. It looked over the changeling with its yellow eyes.

“So... Nightmares, huh?”

The changeling looked over the dragon with its blue eyes. “You supposed to be some kind of expert on them?”

The dragon shrugged. “You could say that. Nightmares are just your minds way of getting back on the path of destiny, usually.” Compassion smiled. “Just gotta figure out who you are and it'll sort itself out!” He crooked his head toward the changeling.

Kernel blinked twice. “Oh... I'm honestly not sure...” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I haven't really been myself for...”

The dragon shook his claws at him. “Don't worry about that. Tell me about what your dreams were about.”

Kernel took a step back. “Could you... Not use such a scary voice?”

“Dragon in your dream?”

“Yep.”

“Got it.”

With a flash of green, a fellow changeling now stood before Kernel. “Better?” he chirped.

Kernel nodded happily.

“Good.” He turned and trotted out into the hot sun. “C’mon, we’ll talk on the way.”

“The way where?”

Compassion glanced back at him. “Did you dream about Chrysalis’s hive?”

“No...”

He smiled and pranced into the dust. “Good. Come on, then. You want me to help you, then you're going to help me!”

Kernel galloped from the comforts of the cave to catch up to the changeling. “What exactly are we doing?”

Compassion didn't slow down as he explained. “The Oasis’s job... Since, you know, she kinda lost it and destroyed all the food stores.” He turned his head toward the shaking changeling. “You dream of her?”

Kernel shyly nodded. “She was the dragon at first then a weird creature later. There was lots of blood and she said something about being whatever she wanted.”

“She said that to you?”

Kernel shook his head. “Chrysalis, I think. It looked kinda like that queen but made creepy screeching noises.”

“Do you remember where that happened?” Compassion’s happy snout drooped lower with each question.

“It was outside somewhere...” He shook his head. “I can't remember.”

“Then we'll sleep together tonight. In the morning, you can tell me everything you dreamt of.” Compassion put a hoof up to the happy changeling. “But you still have to help me today.”

Looking up from his hooves, Kernel realized they had trotted across the wasteland to Chrysalis's hive. They could hear yelling at the top, where the entrance was fiercely guarded. Overlapping voices kept the two wretchers from understanding any of the commotion.

“My leg!” a single, changeling voice screamed out above. Something fell from the spire as the voices reignited.

Compassion reached out and caught the changeling leg that had been “dropped.” Then his horn caught the rest of the screaming changeling.

The changeling flailed wildly beneath the green, glowing net. “Knock him out while I've got him, Kernel... Quick!”

Kernel shook and looked desperately around for a rock. Compassion sighed and tossed him the leg.

“Never mind...” With a swing of Compassion’s head, the snared changeling flew headfirst into the side of the spire, silencing its cries.

“Good enough for one day,” Compassion said with a smile. “Let's get home.”

“Yeah!” Foresight’s voice cried out, unseen, from above. “Who else wants some?! I'm still out here!”

“C’mon, Kernel,” Compassion prodded. “Let's go!”

"Don't make me bring a nightmare to life!"

The changeling lifted his eyes to the moon on the horizon. Still trotting back home, Kernel turned to his companion, the prisoner lying motionless on his back. An emptiness shook his stomach. He turned from the body and looked at the leg balanced on his own back.

“You know the rules, Kernel,” Compassion growled. “Keep your fangs to yourself until our new friend wakes up.”

“But he’s probably already given the leg up for lost...”

Compassion glared at him. “Fine. But Advantage will know where to look for a replacement if he hasn’t.”

Kernel sighed in defeat. He looked back toward the wretched hive to find a couple wretchers waiting for them.

“Compassion!” one of them shouted to the passing changelings. “The Perfect One’s been calling for you all day!”

“I’m on duty today!” he called back, shrugging a gesture toward the prisoner. “They were the ones to assign it anyways.” He waved a hoof toward Kernel. “And this guy is the only one to help with that, so... tough luck guys!” He chuckled, only for the pair of wretchers blocking their path.

“We’re all having nightmares, Compassion!” one said, snarling.

“Get out of my way,” he commanded. “Don’t make me bring a nightmare to life!” He exhaled through his nose, created a couple pillars of smoke.

“You don’t understand!” the other one said, stepping between the two. “It’s the Oasis. We’re all having nightmares about the Oasis.”

“Didn’t the Oasis get destroyed?” Kernel asked the two rather twitchy wretchers.

“The drooling part didn’t!” It shuddered at the word. “The drooler appeared in all of our nightmares!”

Compassion laughed. “Well, duh! We were all swallowed by that thing, remember?” He shook his head at the two wretchers. “You’re going to have nightmares for a few days.” He shrugged. “It’s just the way things have to be for a while.”

“Didn’t you dream about that monster?” the shaking wretcher asked him.

“Well, yeah...” Compassion shrugged off. “It was just the waking world seeping in. Don't take it so personally!”

“Well...” the one started as its companion trotted away. “Advantage is still calling for you. Whether or not you think it’s important, it’s important to them.”

“I understand,” Compassion replied calmly. The wretcher nodded back and went on its way.

The two changelings trotted to the inner sanctum of the hive, where Advantage paced rhythmically. The two-headed wretcher greeted them with smiles. Compassion placed the unconscious changeling down, then nudged Kernel to drop the leg.

“His head is scratched here,” the male head noticed.

Compassion shrugged. “Yeah, we can talk about how we miss Dredge another time.”

“Dredge?” Kernel asked.

“He left with Foresight. But when he was here, he could render any changeling unconscious without hurting them.”

Kernel nodded and understanding as the two turned back toward Advantage. A large hoof prodded the fallen changeling, then a glowing horn lifted it up onto its three remaining legs.

It was still unconscious.

Advantage shook it a little with its aura. The hooves began to tremble. The head moved on its own as the glow disappeared around it. The changeling opened its eyes to the sight of the two-headed creature before it.

Extra limbs twitched at the sides of the monster. Extra wings withered and shook from a draft. And it couldn’t feel its hind leg anymore. It looked back, only to find it was missing. It slowly faced the abomination again.

Advantage smiled.

The changeling shook subtly.

“You seem to have hit your head...” the female head screeched in a twisted form of Chrysalis’s beautiful voice.

It reached a hoof out to him.

The changeling fainted.

“I think you hit him too hard back there, Compassion,” Kernel said.

Compassion chuckled. “Maybe.”

The male head of Advantage shined its horn upon the, once again, unconscious changeling. “This one’s full of fear.”

“What else is new?”

Advantage’s brows furrowed at his tone.

He smiled. “What?”

“You’re not helping here.” Both heads looked to Kernel and back.
“Did you translate his dreams yet?”

“He hasn’t,” Kernel said.

“Then leave us alone.”

Compassion let out an irritated sigh, then prodded Kernel. “Come on, let’s get ready for bed.” He turned and trotted back into the darkness of the hive.

“Isn’t it a bit soon?” Kernel asked him as he caught up.

“Well, you don’t remember anything about your old dreams, so you’re gonna need to make some new ones.”

“I do too remember things about my nightmare!” the changeling corrected, galloping past Compassion and blocking the way. “You never told me what seeing a dragon in my dream meant!”

Compassion sighed. “All right. Fair enough.” He cleared his throat. “A dragon in your dream is either a literal dragon, or exemplifies passion... particularly passion that’s fiery and lacking in all forms of self-control. The kind of scales that make someone say ‘I can do whatever I want!’”

“Woah...” More memories sparked curiosities inside Kernel’s head. “And what if it’s pink?”

“Do you like pink?” Compassion asked.

Kernel rubbed his chin. “Should I?”

Compassion shrugged. “Well, assuming you do, it represents either the wide array of emotions that normal changelings devour... or an inherent weakness. But I guess that’s more of a pony thing.”

“So it was like a passion for passion.” The changeling smiled as the pieces came together. “What’s up with the library I saw it in?”

“A library?” the translator asked, almost shocked. “Well, libraries usually represent your knowledge. Like... All of it.”

Kernel looked over the pieces and found no connection. “Really?”

“Like I said, sometimes it’s just literal. Maybe it was an actual library.”

“It had infinite floors. The dragon was on the fifth one...”

This notion confused Compassion for a moment. He shook himself out of it. “Did you count the floors? To get to the fifth, I mean...”

Kernel shook his head. “There was a sign near the stairs.” His head began to hurt. “Was it just ‘5’ or ‘05?’” he wondered aloud.

“Doesn’t really matter,” Compassion said. “I don’t do numbers. And in an instance like this the sign’s probably literal.” He shrugged. “You’re best bet is to go to sleep and hope you see something again.”

Kernel nodded and trotted toward his bed. Then something made him glance back at the changeling. “What if it was gray?”

“Probably literal.”

“But... What if I see a complete stranger?”

“There’s no such thing in dreams, Carnal. Every snout is pulled from your library!” Compassion laughed. “What?” he asked the silent changeling. “Don’t you think that’s cool?”

Kernel shook his head and tried to get some rest.

"Look at me!"

The gray pony opened his eyes to a strange crystal hall swirling in darkness.

“Kernel?” Duplicity’s voice echoed in the room. “Kernel?”

He shook himself out of the daze. The pony found himself in the same dining room from before, with Duplicity and Silence looking at him from either sides of the table. At each seat was a plate smothered by leafy green leaves. Silence picked at his with his hoof while Duplicity chomped on her own meal.

Kernel approached the table and sat down. He pushed the plate aside and stared at the mare. “What are you?” he asked her.

“I’m Duplicity,” she replied with her mouth full. She swallowed. “Don’t you remember me?”

The gray pony shook his head. “I asked you what you are.”

“Duplicity,” she affirmed before chomping down again. “Kernel, what’s gotten into you?”

“Who are you?” he asked her.

Duplicity gulped. “What role do Silence and I play in all this?” She smirked. “Is that you’re wondering?”

Kernel nodded.

Duplicity smiled, changeling fangs breaking through her snout. “I’m your conscience, Kernel.” She gestured toward Silence. “And that is your innocence: Faultless, but broken by your own sins.”

Silence’s changeling hoof shed its form as he prodded the pile of greens once more.

“Look at me!” The pony’s gaze was pulled back to his side, where Duplicity now stood atop the chair next to him. Her fangs were inches from his face. “You’re not going to tune me out like Foresight tries to, are you?”

“You... you’re scaring me,” Kernel said, slinking away from the table. He blinked and she was gone.

She grabbed him from behind and turned him around. “You need to face the facts of your situation, Kernel!” Her fangs moved closer to him. “You need to save your innocence before it’s too late!”

“Why is my conscience a female?” he asked her, trying to think his way out of the dream.

The figure before him twitched. A changeling queen loomed over him. Kernel didn’t recognize her. “I speak for him and not for you,” she explained in a twisted voice that sounded like Advantage’s female head mixed with Chrysalis. “I am that which you look to when you wish to see the invisible.”

Kernel tore his gaze away from the queen to find the table was gone. Silence was gone. He looked back and saw only a door. It was a strangely familiar door, like one from Chrysalis's hive. He looked it over several times before opening it.

It was a bedroom. No, it was a troop’s quarters from Chrysalis’s hive. Five beds covered in slime rested around the room. On the ceiling, the number “9” was painted in changeling blood, dripping onto the floor. He slowly looked down from the green, gooey ceiling.

A shadow sat upon the bed at the far end of the room.

“Who are you?” he called out to the shadow.

The shadow glanced up to the ceiling, then back to him. “It’s always been six. It’s always been six. It’s always been six,” it droned in Kernel’s inner voice, as though he were reading an invisible paper.

Kernel looked back up to the ceiling. The “9” had dried. The surface was cracked and a red fluid dripped through, rhythmically.

A sense of apathy fell onto Kernel’s snout, pushing it back down to the empty bunks. A piece of paper took the place of the shadow at the foot of the bed. The apathetic pony turned and trotted back to the door.

Trotting through it, Kernel found himself in the crystal dining room again. The table was small and round--built for two. Sitting there, staring at him, was Silence. As Kernel approached he could somehow feel a warmth about the jawless pony, as though it were smiling at him. Kernel pulled up a chair with his hoof and took a seat.

“So,” he started, the jawless creature’s gaze keeping him uneasy. “What do I do to save you?”

Silence reached across the table with his hoof, much like Compassion had done with his claw. Kernel smiled and put his hoof up to meet it.

As soon as the hooves met, strange claws poked out of Silence’s hoof and crunched down on Kernel’s. He flinched. The gray pony opened his eyes to a somehow familiar monster growling at him. It was Bubbles. She screeched at him and lunged forward.

Kernel flinched. When he opened his eyes, the screeching was gone and the room was melting. Slowly the darkness rearranged itself into his home. With a shaky head, he turned to Compassion, who was snoring in the bed next to him.

He shook his head as his tired mind decided if it was worth waking him up.

"I believe we have an obligation."

The changeling opened his eyes to find himself standing at the entrance of Chrysalis’s hive. He peered into the entrance and Foresight glared back at him.

“What the fuck?!” the changeling backed away from the dreamwalker. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I don’t know if you cared to remember,” Foresight explained in an almost sarcastic tone. “But Chrysalis doesn’t take kindly to her soldiers disappearing.”

“Hardly my fault,” the changeling scoffed. “We’re all starving out here, Foresight!”

Foresight scoffed back. “The point is that I can’t rightly leave the physical hive right now.”

“Don’t you usually have someone else to bother in the dream world?”

“Not this time,” Foresight said with a smirk. “It just so happens that a rather clumsy dreamwalker managed to visit all the wretchers last night.” The smirk grew to a bigger smile. “Tracking their rather large hoofprints led me to this rather... ideal hive. And now that I know it’s you, well... I can’t just keep trotting on now, can I?”

The changeling sighed. “The Oasis.”

Foresight crooked his head with genuine shock. “What?”

“Everyone in the hive dreamt of the Oasis.” He shrugged. “So I guess that’s our dreamwalker.”

The dreamwalker shook his head. “The Oasis can’t dreamwalk. When I was eaten, she sifted through my head and dwelt only on physical things, not magic tricks. Especially not ones concerning the trivial rest for the ‘wicked.’” The smile came back. “Even then, she didn’t like me enough to probe very deep.”

“Spare me,” the changeling growled, waving off Foresight’s ramblings. “Who then?”

Foresight shrugged. “I’ll be honest. I don’t care.” He shook his head. “I just need your help here.”

“Wow, Foresight is asking me for help!” the changeling said snarkily.

“There’s a job in this for you,” Foresight added.

“I already have a--”

“In Chrysalis’s Hive!” the walker finished.

Both changelings smiled at each other now. “Go on...”

“That one you took... The three-legged one. Get his head into your stomach. His knowledge of the Hive will get you your entry into the Hive.”

“I can’t kill him!” the changeling argued. “His fate is still undecided.”

“It is now. I believe we have an obligation.” Foresight chuckled as he stepped toward the changeling. The sky and hive began to pulsate rhythmically. “You’re torn between three groups. And I don’t think that dragoness is going to--” The rhythm cut Foresight short as the sky fell into the dreamer’s gut and pulled him into reality.

Compassion opened his eyes to a shaking Kernel.

“I had a nightmare...”

The changeling tried to shake off the weariness. “You and me both.” He crooked his head. “What was yours about?”

Kernel’s memory retrieved only that final image. “I... I saw the Oasis.” His voice shook from fear. “What about you?”

Compassion chuckled. “Lucky. I saw the dreamwalker Foresight in mine.” He glanced toward the direction of the inner sanctum. “He wants me to betray Advantage.”

“Really?” Kernel asked, almost scared to know the answer.

Compassion solemnly nodded. “He betrayed my perception of him.” Kernel crooked his head. “I mean... That's how dreams work. If you meet someone you know, they're going to behave and look exactly how you expect them to look. That's called your ‘perception’ of that person.” Compassion lowered his head. “The only exceptions are twists brought on by some underlying stress or urges.” He shook his head. “I don't want to believe that I would betray Advantage.”

Kernel scoffed. “You couldn't possibly betray her after all your services! You kept me from gnawing on that leg, heck you even arranged that whole pickup because Advantage wanted it done!”

Compassion reluctantly nodded. “Sure, I've done those twins some favors, but that doesn't mean I really belong here.” He put a hoof to Kernel. “You just stay here and get some more rest.” He got up and turned toward the inner sanctum. “I'm going to talk to Advantage and hope that my dreams can involve them a bit more.”

“Have you seen Advantage in your dreams before?”

Compassion nodded. “They're always so happy. Or killing whatever made them unhappy.”

He trotted away before Kernel could ask anything else.

Inside the inner sanctum, Advantage paced rhythmically as though waiting for something. A dragon appeared at the edge of their vision. It walked into their presence, its eyes focused on the newest member: the three-legged changeling that was still unconscious in the corner. Advantage stayed still, watching the dragon pick up the creature’s head from the floor, as though it might wake up. The dragon barely glanced at the wretcher queen but when they caught the corner of its eye, it dropped the head to the ground; the lower jaw smacked against the stone.

“Oh, Advantage!” the dragon once called Compassion said in a gasp. “You’re awake!”

“What were you doing?” Advantage asked him with their male head, trying to keep frowns from wrinkling their snouts.

“Foresight,” he explained with a trembling voice. He gulped it down. “Foresight told me he’d be able to get me into Chrysalis’s hive with this guy’s memories.” He licked his reptilian snout. “I mean, I’d have to eat him, but...”

“You would kill him to gain worth?” the female head asked.

The dragon scoffed. “No, Advantage, that’s not what I...” Their gaze stuck another gulp down his throat. “I mean... it’s a better place, isn’t it? For me, I mean...” They kept staring. “Don’t look at me like that!” He shook his head. “It’s just one changeling! No one’s gonna... no one’s gonna miss him.” He shrugged. “That’s why, I guess... I didn’t think you cared if I left.”

“A life for a life,” the male head said. Advantage stared through him.

“Look, Advantage, I guess what I’m trying to say is... Thank you.” He backed away from them, toward the unconscious victim. “I mean, he’s going back to his hive. He didn’t like it here and you know that!”

“Don’t ask what he knows...” the male head said.

The dragon let out a scared chuckle. He shed his form and looked over his fellow changeling with an appetite commanding his snout.

“Why wear a suit of armor?” the female head asked on the whim of fleeting hope.

It was wasted on him. He ignored them and bit into the changeling’s neck for a quick kill. Advantage’s horns glowed, seeking a part of him that needed rekindling. The changeling devoured the unconscious creature without a second thought, and sifted through the memories. He closed his eyes to focus.

The changeling opened his eyes to the void. A whirlwind pushed against his carapace and he turned to see two unfamiliar faces. They smiled menacingly at him. Unsettled, he didn’t see the spear coming. It impaled him through the back. An unseen hoof pulled it out, and the changeling turned into a dragon to stop the attacker. But the winds were too strong, and the flesh was ripped from his wings. The scales flew off of his body, replaced only by a cold pain. A changeling brandishing a bloody spear stood over him. It shook its head, merely watching as the winds pulled the very flesh from the dragon, until it was nothing but bones.

Then the bones turned to ash, and scattered to the whirlwind.

The changeling looked toward a figure not unlike Chrysalis in the distance. It called out to him, but the winds were too strong to make out what she was saying.

“...act of being... over... you... Compass... home... soon.”

The changeling woke up in the middle of the wasteland. His home, Chrysalis’s hive was a short walk away. Delighted, he jumped on all fours. His head hurt from the strange dream he had. He looked back to make sure he had all his limbs. For some reason, it took him a second to remember his own name.

“It was just a bad dream, Compass,” he whispered to himself. “Let’s get back to those new recruits. Those cocoons are due to hatch any moment.”

"His intentions were not pure."

The changeling opened his eyes to the hive interior after a dreamless sleep. The bed next to him was empty. Kernel looked around and found nothing else amiss; all the other wretchers were chatting to each other or sleeping in. He looked toward the inner sanctum and could hear Advantage’s voice. He quickly got up and trotted toward the sounds.

A familiar voice was talking to the queen. “All I’m saying is that the mental subprocesses aren’t meant for such an amount of manipulation!” It was Foresight. “Somebody’s been going through the entire hive’s dreams, spooking them with their Oasis memories or...” He chuckled. “Hell, pretty much any tragic event they were a part of. Especially those that they themselves committed!”

Advantage simply nodded. “What about Kernel?” the male head replied.

“What about him?”

“He had nightmares too, Foresight,” the female head explained.
“He’s no memories,” the male head added.

Foresight sighed. “I saw things I had repressed over the long centuries.” He shrugged. “Maybe he isn’t as clean as we thought?”

“His mind was empty,” the male insisted.
“The nine devoured it all,” the female clarified.
Both the heads shook. “He repressed nothing.”

The visitor dug at the ground with his hoof, shaking his head some more. “Then maybe we don’t understand the mind as well as we might think!”

Advantage coughed and shuddered. “Absolutely not!” the male said as both heads shook.
“Compass had proven us right,” the female explained, smiling while her large hoof gestured casually toward the empty corner where Compassion had died.

“But you’re only proving my point!” Foresight shouted at them. “The fact that Compassion didn’t survive the wretching under your supervision would imply that the changeling he was devouring was somehow more mentally strong.” He started to bob his head in the rhythm of his escalating reason. “I bet you that whoever is putting these nightmares into your hive knows exactly what they’re doing: Starving you.” He shook his head. “There’s no way your hive can grow if none of you are strong enough to bind souls.”

“That’s preposterous!” the male head exclaimed. “Compassion was weak!”

Foresight scoffed. “Weak? He was literate! He knew how dreams worked!”

“His intentions were not pure,” the female head argued.

“Since when the fuck do intentions come into play?” he snarled back at them.

“The shield’s on your back,” the male head of Advantage chastised while the female one glared. “The blade in its sheathe.”

Kernel was confused. Foresight wasn’t.

“I carry no blade,” Foresight growled.

The two heads smiled. “You do,” the female head affirmed. “It is denial.”

“Then what’s my shield?” he growled.

“It doesn’t fit you,” the male noted. “And it never will.”
“It is your own purity,” the female interjected.
“Stained with your own blood.” Advantage chuckled. “It makes bad polish.”

Foresight frowned, but his gaze stayed affixed to the queen. He seemed much calmer now. “But your whole hive is just blood polishing skin.” He shook his head. “Why am I the bad guy here?”

“Because the shield doesn’t breathe,” the female head hissed.

“But...” Foresight’s voice trailed off. His gaze finally drooped with the rest of his snout. “Alright.” He turned from them and started trotting toward the exit. He stopped after a few steps, now closer to Kernel than to Advantage. He turned back toward the queen. “But what about my intentions?”

Advantage smiled. “Care without a hope.”

Foresight nodded. “And Compassion’s?”

“Hope without a care.”

“Right.” He nodded again as he turned back toward the exit. His head drooped back down.

Kernel stepped toward him, blocking his way. “What was all that about?” he asked him.

Foresight’s head perked up, an almost unsettling smile creased his snout as his eyes focused on Kernel. A slow chuckle crept from his throat. He stepped forward putting a hoof on the changeling and pushing him aside. He didn’t break eye contact as he trotted past.

“Tonight, you’re gonna have a real nightmare.” The chuckle returned, faster this time. “I can’t wait.”

Foresight galloped away.

Kernel tried not to think about it too much. He trotted into the inner sanctum where Advantage was waiting.

“Compassion’s not coming back,” the female head said as Advantage turned to him.

Kernel frowned as he nodded. “I... I heard.”

“Don’t get discouraged.” Advantage smiled at him. “Foresight is on it.”
“It is the last he would do.”

“The least he could do?” Kernel repeated back.

“The last he would do,” the male head affirmed. “After this he’s done.”

“Done with what?”

“His destiny encroaches.”

“Approaches?”

“Encroaches on all.”

Kernel crooked his head. “Is that your way of saying he’s going to die?”

Advantage shook their heads, sure of what they meant. “He is going to wake up.” Kernel shook his head, completely lost.
“He’s going to learn,” the male head clarified. “Just needs time for fate.”

Kernel nodded. He looked around the cave. “So... If Compassion’s gone, what do I do now?”

Advantage smiled. “What do you feel like doing?”

Kernel looked up at them. “I'm not sure but...” his gaze couldn't decide which head to look at. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

Advantage looked over him briefly. “Ask away, Kernel.”

The changeling bit his lip for a moment. “Where... Where did you get an extra head?”

Advantage’s eyes widened. Both heads looked around to the left and right of their sides. Confused, the four eyes returned to Kernel. “What are you talking about?” the female head asked.
“We’ve no extra head,” the male head insisted.

“But you have two heads,” Kernel noted. He gestured toward his single head then to both of Advantage’s. “I only have one...”

“Should we really care?” Advantage asked before the voice switched heads back and forth again.
“Aren't two heads better than one?”
“It shouldn't matter.”

“I was just asking,” Kernel pleaded. “I didn't mean anything was wrong with you.”

Advantage nodded. “We understand, Kernel.”
They chuckled. “Oddly enough, we don't know,” the female head said, finally answering the question.
They nodded. “Sorry about that.”

“It's fine,” Kernel said. He turned back toward the exit. “Well, I'll see if anyone needs help with anything.”

“We're sure someone does,” Advantage said.
“And don't fret about your dreams.”
“Foresight won't hurt you.”

The smiled and waved him off.

Alone, Advantage began to pace their room again. The steps along their path were embedded in both their heads. The two heads glanced at each other for a brief moment.

“How did this happen?”
“Let's just forget this happened.”
“Yes, but not the past.”

Beyond Advantage’s gaze, Kernel trotted back toward his bed. An unseen hoof flew from the darkness and struck him in the back of the head. Darkness and pain played an irresistible lullaby.

"All the pages are blank!"

The changeling opened his eyes to find himself in his bed again, but not in the hive. Looking around, Kernel found himself in a gray library. Lining the walls were all gray bookshelves holding the same, monochromatic books. In the distance, he could hear their paper spines hit the floor one after the other. A strange reflex had the changeling look up, but his blue eyes found the ceiling of this library. He turned back toward the sound and began to trot toward it.

It was a trail of destruction. Books were flung off the shelves with no concern for their conditions and onto the floor like common garbage. The strange part was that there were no claw marks, ashes, or any major damage to any of the books. Almost stranger was the fact that the books bore no titles on their covers or words in their pages. The changeling looked over the wasted paper until the sound of more spines hitting the floor grabbed his attention. He galloped this time.

Kernel rushed through the library, tracing the line of books to the source of the ruckus. A shadowy figure reached a long and gangly, dragon-like arm up to the top of the shelf and pulled several books down with one motion. The changeling could hear the figure flipping through all the pages before the long arm tossed the empty books aside like the rest.

“Hey!” Kernel shouted at the figure.

What turned toward him was something he didn’t recognize. Four green, changeling-like eyes looked at him from a rounded snout sporting two sets of fangs. The upper set was normal; the lower set was more like two mandibles, twitching as the four eyes made contact with Kernel’s two. Below the mouth, eight thin legs supported the monsters weight. Each seemed to end with a pair of claws. Covering the creature was a black cloak that seemed to end in dark smoke, keeping its hind obscured from his sight.

The creature crooked its head slightly as its mandibles twitched. Its four eyes blinked. Then it fled, its eight legs a blur within the smoke. Kernel chased after it, only to find the smoky trail leading up the side of the bookshelf.

“Wait!” he cried out to the thing.

But it was gone.

Kernel trotted around the library, unsure of where his old bed had gone to in his chase. He could feel the gaze of the monster crawling down the back of his spine, but when he turned there was nothing. He trotted faster. The feeling persisted. Kernel galloped toward a reading table and ducked underneath it. This started to seem familiar.

As if on cue, eight long legs thumped lightly onto the floor a foot away from Kernel’s cowardly snout. They scuttled toward him. He could hear papers rustling and felt the sounds of four claws thumping down onto the table above him. Kernel watched the sounds scratch their way down the length of the wood until they were directly above his neck. Looking back toward the legs, his gaze was met with the four eyes staring back. Though it had no lips, Kernel could tell it was smiling. The cloak had been caught on the table and a changeling horn stuck out from the monster’s forehead.

“What do you want from me?!” the startled changeling screamed at the beast.

The mandibles stilled themselves before pulling away from the maw. “To explain,” Foresight’s voice echoed out. “I need you to explain this...”

One of the extra limbs grabbed Kernel by the throat and dragged him out from under the table. He shook out of the creep’s grip, only to find a strange collage of pictures sitting on the table. Each picture was a different drawing of part of a monster. When combined, it looked like Bubbles.

“What is that?” Foresight’s voice echoed from beneath the cloak.

“What does it matter?” Kernel asked it, glaring back at the eight-legged thing.

“It’s foreign,” it whispered. “You didn’t think of these images yourself.”

“Oh please,” he scoffed. He gestured toward the table. “It was here the last time I had nightmares! This library had that monster and a dragon with some kind of tentacle.” He shook his head. “There’s nothing foreign about it! It’s just as foreign as you... Whatever you are.”

The four eyes blinked asynchronously. Two of the limbs gestured toward a couple busts to the left. “And them?”

Kernel looked over the sculptures. Both were of ponies. The second one was missing its jaw. They seemed familiar. Then it clicked.

“That’s my innocence,” he explained. “And that’s my conscience.” He smiled. “Even less foreign than everything else here!”

The four eyes smiled back at him. “That’s funny.” The limbs seemed to be shuffling around under the sheet. Two of them reappeared with a book held between them. “Because I just happened to find a transcript of your mind.” Its mandibles shifted slightly, grinning more widely as he held the gray book out to Kernel.

The changeling grabbed it from the monster’s claws and started flipping through it. It was just like any other book in the library.

“All the pages are blank!” Foresight’s voice cackled. “You don’t have the foundation for any form of dream, let alone a nightmare of that caliber!”

“Then how do I remember those nightmares so well!” Kernel insisted.

The cloaked figure shook its head. “You just don’t get it do you?”

The smoke flared up as the library began to melt.

“You can’t reference materials that don’t exist!”

The darkness clouded the monster enough that only Foresight’s voice could be heard.

“Which means if someone tells you...”

The voice faded into blackness.

Kernel could feel that his eyes were closed.

"I made a promise."

The changeling opened his eyes to a familiar bed. But it wasn’t his. He looked around the room for some clue as to where he was.

“Well, look who’s awake and ready for their life in the new hive?” a familiar voice eagerly greeted Kernel.

He turned to find Compassion sitting on a bed opposite of his. It didn’t strike him odd at first. Memories came to his mind and he realized that Compassion had taken the outsider’s body correctly and had come back to the wretched hive to bring him back. It was a lot to process, but his mind had almost no doubts. Almost.

“We’re going to have so much fun with you back home at last, Kernel!” the changeling chuckled. “Foresight’s not here anymore, so we each get a bunch of--”

“I can’t,” Kernel interrupted. “I forgot something back with Advantage.”

Compassion’s grin disappeared. “You do realize how long it took me to get you here, right? If you go back to that wretched hive, then you can’t come back here.”

Kernel looked around the room. All the hopes for the fun the two would have slowly faded away. Finally, he nodded. “I made a promise.” He sighed. “I have to do this.”

“Are you sure?” Compassion asked one last time.

The changeling nodded and trotted out of the room. He traversed the interior of Chrysalis’s hive as though he remembered exactly what its interior looked like. Finally, he made his way outside and took flight. He closed his eyes as the the wind blew over his body.

The changeling opened his eyes to Advantage’s sanctum. Silence stood at the end of the room, staring into a mirror. His head down to his waist was changeling flesh, while the rest was still that shimmering pony coat. On the mirror were scratched the words “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, Kernel!” Duplicity’s voice echoed from beyond where Silence stood. She appeared at her friend’s side with an orb of some kind in her hooves. The orb shifted between shades of blue and green. She turned from Kernel with the orb in hoof and trotted deeper into the hive. “This way! Come on!”

The path took twists and turns that were unfamiliar to Kernel. Finally they reached a door not unlike the one’s from Chrysalis’s hive.

“She’s waiting inside.” Duplicity pushed the door open with her free hoof and ushered him in.

Kernel nodded in an empty understanding. He trotted through the door. “I promised I was going to do this,” he thought to himself aloud. “And now I’m finally doing it.”

The Oasis glowed in the darkness before him. Captivated by how the waters swirled, he didn’t realize the room was melting into blackness. The light of the waters dimmed.

Reality knocked on Kernel’s tired eyes and aching head. He flinched enough to gain the realization that he was back in his bed in the wretched hive. But his eyes were still closed.

The changeling opened his eyes to the concerned look of a fellow wretcher.

Its head was crooked. “You alright?”

Kernel picked himself up from his bed and rubbed the soreness on the back of his head. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Bad dream?”

Kernel shrugged. “I’ve had worse.” He looked for the inner sanctum. “I think I need to talk to Advantage about something.” Pain made him cringe and rub the back of his head.

“He’s a real bastard, that Foresight.”

Kernel’s hoof dropped back to his side. “What?”

Its head wasn’t crooked anymore. “Rescue saw him knock you unconscious.” The wretcher glanced toward another resident in the distance. Kernel turned in time to see the changeling cower behind a turn in the cave. The wretcher chuckled. “Yeah. Rescue waited until Foresight was gone, then dragged you into your bed and acted like nothing was wrong.”

Kernel didn't smile.

“Oh, don't look so concerned.” The wretcher chuckled. “He's got good intentions.” It gestured around the hive. “That's what all this was made for: Good intentions.”

Kernel nodded on the outside. He rubbed his sore spot again.

“I'm Percy, by the way,” the wretcher introduced herself.

“Percy?” Kernel repeated, confused. “What kind of name is that?”

“It's short for Perception,” Percy explained. “I used to have a third eye right here!” She gestured excitedly to her forehead, then slowly lowered her hoof. “But after the Oasis incident I lost it.” Percy sighed. “Advantage says it might grow back but I shouldn't hope too hard.” The smile returned to her snout. “Oh look at me, not even giving you time to tell me your name!”

The changeling let out a nervous chuckle. “I'm Kernel.”

“And you thought Percy was a funny name? What does Kernel mean?”

“Oh...” The changeling’s mind blanked. “Ummm...” He decided against talking about “carnal.” “It's just a name. It just kinda came to me.”

Percy’s eyes widened. “Advantage didn't name you?!”

“Is... Is that bad?”

She smiled. “That's actually amazing! That you think well enough of yourself to make your own name... Good for you!” Percy glanced to either side real quick. “You don't tell each wretch a different name, do you?”

Kernel scoffed. “Nooo... I'm Kernel, I swear.”

Percy nodded. “Good. Nice to meet someone who can make up their own name and be a good person.” The wretch got up from its seat. “Well, I'll keep an eye out for you, Kernel!” Percy chuckled.

“See you around, Percy,” he replied, nodding it off.

Kernel turned from the chuckling wretcher toward the inner sanctum. The wallop from Foresight had eased its painful grip on his head. He got up from his bed and trotted deeper into the hive.

Advantage paced the sanctum rhythmically. Upon seeing Kernel, they trotted back to their usual spot and nodded both their heads in acknowledgment.

“Back after seven hours?” the female head started.
“Why so soon, Kernel? The sun has just set.”

“Advantage, what happened to Bubbles?”

“You’ve had nightmares of her, yes?” the female had asked him.

Kernel sighed and shook his head. “Not recently. I just saw the Oasis in my dream and I think it’s a sign that I need to check on her.”

Their eyes widened. “Really?” They smiled. A large hoof gestured to a familiar looking door in the darkest part of the inner sanctum. “She’s through there. Just be careful, though.”

He nodded. “I will.” Something about how Advantage had stayed so stoic disturbed a part of him. He couldn’t suppress the question. “Didn’t you two used to flinch before switching heads?”

“You’re never too old to heal,” the female head explained.
“We’ll separate too. Just give us the time.” The heads smiled and looked at each other.

Kernel turned from them, unsure what he expected. He trotted up to the shady door. His changeling hooves pushed the door open and he went inside. The only light source now was the haunting aura around the glowing green pond that was the Oasis. Kernel took a deep breath and approached it. Strands of the goo lifted toward the ceiling like tentacles, swaying gently back and forth in an unfelt breeze.

Kernel gulped down his anxieties. “Hello?”

Something sloshed within the green soup. A clawed hoof reached up from the depths. It pulled up an almost familiar face. Kernel had seen this strange creature in his dream, he was sure. But the real thing was missing an eye and its lower jaw.

Kernel found his throat gripped by an unfamiliar emotion. It definitely wasn’t fear. “What happened to you?”

The strands fell into the pool, regrouping to the edge that Bubbles was trying to surface from. They restrained her.

He shook his head. “You don’t have to do this to yourself.”

A strange, echoing hiss answered him. It was too dark to tell, but he was sure that it wasn’t coming from what was left of her mouth.

The emotion gripped his chest as he watched Bubbles struggle against her own bindings. Words poured from his mouth without thought. “You’re not perfect.” He shook his head. “That’s not to say that you can’t be. It’s just a fact. Perfection isn’t something that’s achieved by knowing what you want to be.” He chuckled. “It’s by forgetting what you are. It’s by throwing away the shackles of your past and letting the unlimited potential inside you breathe carefree.” He shook himself out the trance. “Wow, I sound like Foresight...”

The strands retched and retreated from Bubbles’s body. She crawled her way out of the goop until only her webbed tail remained submerged. She looked him over with her remaining eye. One the strands began to make its way up her tail and crawl up her back.

Kernel put his hoof out to her. “I guess, what I mean to say is... I think you’re cool. And I want to be friends.”

The eye twitched as it witnessed the gesture. The hiss returned, lower this time. Bubbles looked him in the eye and reached a claw towards him.

The strand spread into a tentacle, sliding effortlessly around and off her claw. It lunged at Kernel’s face. It dug into his eye, filling his head with too much pain to bear. The light of the Oasis died. Now, the only sensations were darkness and pain.

"I told you!"

“I told you!” Foresight’s voice rang out from the blurriness. “I told you whoever was getting into your dreams was sabotaging everything and here it is!” His chuckle bounced around in the blur. “Your little, innocent guy, the blank slate... almost killed by your ocean of sins.” His chuckle persisted as pain began to course through the blur. “She took his eye out!”

Duplicity’s voice rang out like thunder within the blur. “So fix him, Foresight!”

“Oh, fuck that!” he laughed. “No. I ain’t helping you. You don’t listen to me, so I won’t listen to you!”

“Don’t be so naive, you fool!” The voice that could only be Silence’s rang out. Though deep as a whole, his voice squeaked with inexperience.

“Oh, I'm naive?!” Foresight almost screeched into Kernel’s ear. “You saved me! How the fuck can you think that you know what's best?!”

“Please, Foresight,” Duplicity begged. “Don't go!”

“Nope. Fuck you! Fuck him! Fuck this whole hive! I'm out!” Rolling thunder shook the pain inside Kernel’s head like a wasp nest. Slowly, it got quiet again.

“He's missing an eye!” Duplicity screamed out to the silent blur.

Suddenly the blur released Kernel. He could feel his body again, except for his right eye.

The changeling opened his left eye to find himself at the feet of Advantage. The male mouth was dripping with blood.

“She didn't kill you,” the female head said to him. “Nice work.”

“Yeah,” a familiar voice chirped from behind. “That was awesome!” Percy patted the one-eyed changeling on the back.

“Percy here saved you,” the male head explained. “And needs rewarding.”

Kernel turned in time to see Percy’s scarred, hornless forehead get smacked with a mouthful of Advantage’s blood. She used her hooves to stuff the green slop into the hole in her forehead.

Turning back to Advantage, he noticed the male head sloshing something back and forth in his mouth.

A sudden surge of unknown emotions struck Kernel. “No thanks!” he said, waving down the gurgling snout. “I think I'm good.”

“You sure?” Percy asked as she continued to massage her forehead. “You can never have too many eyes...”

Kernel shrugged. “I doubt I'll miss it as much as you've missed yours.”

A large smile creased Percy's snout. “Alright.” She turned to Advantage. “I’m ready.”

Advantage’s female horn glowed, casting a spell on the goop on the wretcher’s forehead. With a flash, the goop was gone, and Percy’s horn was back.

And a third eye twitched at its base.

Percy’s smile got bigger and she erupted in glee. “It’s back! O thank goodness for these healing spells!”

Advantage nodded.

Kernel was just confused. “Wait... Is that healthy?”

“Who cares!” Percy giggled. “It’s awesome!” Her head scanned the entire room until it settled on a dark corner of the sanctum. “Advantage... are those books?!”

The whole of Advantage turned to look. “Can either of you two read?” the female head asked them.

“I can,” Kernel replied happily.

“I can’t...” Percy admitted.

The two wretchers trotted up to the books. One was practically destroyed from unnatural causes. It was stained by some kind of dark red substance and charred. Kernel ignored it and looked at another one. “Dream Dictionary” sat upon a few dust gathering books. Percy couldn’t read it so she decided to struggle with the destroyed pages of the other one.

Kernel opened up the dictionary to find entries of all kinds of things one could see in a dream and their possible metaphorical meanings.

“That’s where Compassion...” Advantage’s male voice trailed off as Kernel’s snout rose from the book. “That’s where he studied.”

Kernel nodded. He looked up “gray.”

“Gray indicates fear, fright, depression, ill health, ambivalence and confusion. You may feel emotionally distant, isolated, or detached. Alternatively, the color gray symbolizes your individualism.”

“I’m starting to think Compassion wasn’t taking his studies seriously enough,” Kernel noted aloud.

“Keep reading the book, Kernel,” Advantage encouraged.
“You’ll be our new guide!”

Kernel couldn’t remember any other specifics he wanted to look up, so he skimmed the pages as Percy fumbled around with the wretched remains of the other book. A page fell out of it.

Percy looked at it carefully. It was some kind of drawing that looked like a pony, but the edges of page were too burnt and bad-tasting to be sure. The picture itself had been scribbled with some kind of gray substance. She looked at the crude drawing for a few seconds more before seeing if anything else might fall out of the book.

Kernel was getting bored of looking up random words. “Hey, Advantage? Where’d you get these books, anyways?”

Advantage looked over them. “Too long ago now.”
“Relics from an old, dead hive.”
“Older than even us,” the male head added.

He nodded back at them with a smile before reopening the book to a random page. They kept on until Advantage interrupted.

“The time has now come,” they said to the two wretchers.
“Put aside the books for sleep.”
“Come back when you wake.” The tone and smile of the male head implied this wasn’t an actual command.

“I will,” Kernel promised to the smiling wretcher queen.

He put the book back on the pile. As Percy returned her scarred relic, Kernel noticed the picture of the gray pony on the ground. He rushed to it and picked it up. It was clearly drawn by someone inexperienced in any form of art, but there seemed to be some writing near the bottom, seared edge. It was illegible from the wear and tear, it seemed. He turned toward Advantage with the paper in his hoof, but the two heads were slumped together in a drowsy heap. Aside from the stray twitches of a limb here and there, it seemed the queen was already asleep.

Kernel smiled and stuffed the picture back into the goopy book. Percy had already left the sanctum and it was time for him to do the same. He took to his bed for the night.

The gray pony opened his eyes to the shining crystal mansion again. He felt for his missing eye; it was still gone. He put his hoof down and the street was wet. Instinctively, he turned around.

Bubbles stared back at him. She stood in the flooded street, the waters dripping out from her scaley form. Her face was unscarred and healthy as ever.

“You?” she said in a voice more beautiful than Kernel remembered. She shook her head. “Where are we?”

Kernel sloshed through the waters to get close enough to take her hoof in his. “Exactly where we need to be.”

The pair trotted into the mansion and soon found themselves in the familiar dining hall. The table was set for four and was the appropriate size for them, too. Kernel sat Bubbles in the seat closest to the door, while he took the one across from her. On his right now sat Duplicity, with Silence across from her on his left. Bubbles looked around the table, unsure if she could trust any of the faces.

“We would have set the table for more, but it seems that Foresight and quite a few others have lost their faith in us,” Duplicity explained to Kernel in a calm voice. She shook her head. “But that’s not important right now.” She turned to Bubbles. “You’ve brought her here just as we’ve requested. And now we can finally make things right again.”

“What the fuck do you want with me?” she snarled at the crystal pony.

Duplicity gasped. “Bubbles! How dare you waste such a beautiful voice on such profanity!”

Bubbles glanced toward Silence, whose disfigurement sent her snout straight back toward Duplicity. “Well, who the fu...” her voice trailed off. She shook her head.

“What does it matter who we are?” Duplicity answered.

The siren-wretcher gave a fearful glare. “I have my jaw. The nine ripped it off. But it’s back.” She tentatively turned back toward Silence. “Where’s his?”

“Oh... He’s... different,” Duplicity started to explain.

“What, is he a metaphor for something?” Kernel guessed.

Duplicity shook her head and crooked it nervously. “No... he’s just...” She uncrooked it and sighed, letting her gaze fall away from her guests. She looked up at them. “Silence had no jaw when he... Died.”

Kernel’s eyes widened. “What?!” Both guests shook in their seats.

“I tried to help him, I swear!” Duplicity explained. “I took him away from that terrible, terrible Hive after Chrysalis had made an example of him for speaking against her!” She shook her head as memories poured from her mouth. “We came here, to Paradise. We lived in peace with the other crystal ponies. We took part in their culture... The dancing...” She looked at Kernel. “The stories...” She looked at Bubbles. “The songs and melodies.” She smiled at the both of them. “We had so much time... We spent so much time...”

“Wait,” Kernel interrupted. “Weren’t you two evil-looking soldiers when we first met?”

“When the shadows first spread, the hope bled from our faces. We tried to take the form of the monsters so we might be spared another tragic end.” She wistfully looked toward the now empty seat across from her. “But the King found him. By his nature... By his afflictions the King found Silence and killed him like the rest.” She shook her head.

“What happened then?” Bubbles prodded with an uneasy glance back at the empty seat.

Blood dripped onto Duplicity’s plate. She turned with a patient, dripping smile to the siren. “I gave up.” She laughed at her guests’ unease. The blood splattered the table. “What did you two expect? A happy ending?”

Bubbles’s voice shook with her body. “So... You died too...”

The host nodded. “And if you don't start seeing your true flaws, your fate will be the same as ours.” She chuckled, pushing more blood out onto the plate. “Without forgiveness you won't be coming back.” She looked at Kernel. “Foresight is a grand example.”

Kernel smirked and glanced at Bubbles. “I didn't think Foresight could be a ‘grand example’ at anything...”

“He is a living tragedy,” Duplicity affirmed. “We are a dead one.” She chuckled. “But we are the ones with hope to give.” She lowered and shook her head. “If only he felt his life had worth...” She lifted it back up to the faces of her guests. “In hopelessness there are many paths out. ...Not just ‘good,’ or ‘evil.’ No such allowances for intentions either. In hope, there is care and care not. In care, there is love and love not. In love, there is hope and hope not. And these paths travel a winding road going neither north nor south, intersecting endlessly.”

The guests were hopelessly lost.

“But!” the host exclaimed to get their attention back. “If you really want to trim that labyrinth down to a two-way street... One side leads to yourself. The other leads to those around you. If one side gets congested, the other will be paved over. If one fails, the other must be used until it's better.” She smiled. “Some call these roads ‘good and evil,’ but I prefer ‘black and white.’ The ideal path, then, is gray.”

She smiled at Kernel. Blood dripped from the corners of her mouth. Then from her nose. Then from her eyes. Then from her ceiling. The house began to melt around them.

Kernel leaped over the table, grabbing Bubbles and pulling her out the door to escape the crashing, crystal wave.

The cold caught up to them, flooding the view with pitch darkness. Bubbles pulled the blind pony through the waters. They washed up on a small island.

The gray pony opened his eyes to black sands. Bubbles picked him up from the ground with care.

“You FOOLS!” a familiar voice screamed, ripping like thunder through the red clouds. “What are you even doing?!”

Kernel and Bubbles looked up to find Foresight standing on the red cloud, his horn and hooves dripping with blood.

“I trace that troublesome signal to a wretched dream state and THIS is what I isolate?!” he growled through the sky. “I knew I was looking for two souls... But YOU?!”

Tentacles made of shadow rose from the ground and seized the gray pony. Bubbles flexed her own, but her fish-like tail remained at her rear.

“We're not the monsters you're looking for!” Bubbles pleaded.

“We know who’s doing it!” Kernel added, pinned to the ground.

Foresight smashed into the dust, throwing black sand into the air. He stomped towards them, his wings twitching and broken. His fangs, horn, and hooves were all dripping green.

“Who?” he asked the pinned pony sarcastically.

“Duplicity and Silence!” Kernel screamed. “They were trying to--”

“Shut up!” Foresight screamed back. “Those names mean NOTHING to me!”

“But you know them...” Kernel whimpered.

“Not anymore,” Bubbles corrected before turning to Foresight. “You. You've lost all faith in them.”

“They are dead. The books that Advantage keeps will tell you that!” He laughed. “The dead can't enter our dreams and strew about a path.” He glared at Kernel. “And with possession ending at the physical realm, your own magics would have carried you here.”

“He's innocent!” Bubbles yelled.

Foresight stared her dead in the eye. “When did that ever matter?”

“You're just looking for a scapegoat!” she accused.

“And I've found one!” he happily admitted. He trotted toward the ensnared pony.

“Please...” the gray pony pleaded as the tentacles grew tighter around his neck. “Mercy...”

The blood spurted out of Foresight’s hooves with greater intensity.

“Foresight...” Bubbles started.

He ignored her. “What the fuck did you just say?!” he growled at Kernel.

“...Mercy.”

Kernel smiled at something in the distance. Foresight turned and saw it too. It was a familiar sandcastle on the black beach.

“...Mercy,” Kernel repeated.

“You kept that thing?” Bubbles asked. She turned from the sandcastle only to find both the stallions staring at her. “What? I was there! The wave crashed down and destroyed it!” She smiled at Foresight. “And you rebuilt it.”

“It persists,” the bleeding changeling replied. “It persists. It persists.”

A wave crashed down on the small sculpture and wiped it off the beach. The sands shifted as the walls reformed on their own.

“One day it won’t fall. And I'll be dead.” He lowered his head and sighed. Blood ran down his face until it dripped from his snout.

Bubbles felt something touch her hoof from behind. It pushed a spear into her grip.

“We are all beyond saving, you know?” Foresight sniffed some of the stray blood in. “What does it matter if we live or die?” A sinister grin creased his snout as he turned to Kernel with his fangs bared. “Maybe if I keep killing, the pain’ll just go away eventually...”

Foresight leapt towards Kernel.

Bubbles jumped in between them and shoved the spear into his chest. It impaled him completely. The blood stopped pouring. He retched as he continued to fight the force of the spear, thrashing around in a futile attempt to get to Kernel. He was like a wild animal, with nothing left but the fight to survive.

He stopped thrashing. His breathing slowed. He looked onward toward the shore. A young changeling trotted toward him. The shadows released Kernel as Mercy passed by. Bubbles dropped the spear. Foresight reached out to touch the young one’s hoof.

Foresight couldn’t reach. His hoof fell. His entire body, spear and all, turned to dust and blew away with the wind. The wind grew stronger, blowing the rest of the sand with it as well.

The gray pony opened his eyes to Silence smiling at him and Bubbles. Duplicity joined Silence, taking his hoof in hers. She smiled at the two wretchers.

“So you see what will become of those who fight fate? They are doomed to repeat it.” She chuckled. “He’s overcome with far too much grief to see the sunlight. But I know you two can do so much more.” She shook her head. “Don’t let that betrayer ruin you. Just take care of yourselves. Be the best that you can be. Killing will never be the answer.” She looked Bubbles in the eye. “Never.” She smiled at the visible guilt weighing down the siren’s face. “Never again. You can’t change what you’ve done, Elegiac...”

The siren lifted her head. “How do you know my--”

“We’re ghosts that own a vast dreamscape.” Duplicity chuckled. “You really think I want to explain anything?”

Elegiac giggled. “I guess not.”

“And in this dreamscape, they can’t touch you.” The crystal mare sighed. “But the moment you wake, the nine will whisper to you again.” The smile was gone. “And you’ll get terrible nightmares for as long as you keep them.” She turned to Kernel. “And you too.”

Elegiac and Kernel smiled.

Duplicity smiled back. “Then you understand? Good. Welcome to our special nightmare.” She chuckled. Silence joined with a strange cough.

“May none of us ever wake up...”

The changeling opened his eye to the hive and a rapid heart beat. He caught his breath. He galloped back to the inner sanctum, where Advantage was just getting upright again.

“Have a nice dream, Advantage?” Kernel asked with a smirk.

Advantage smiled back. “We don’t dream, Kernel.”
“Our sleeps are soundless nothings.”
“If not, we forget.”

Kernel looked at the pile of worn books in the corner for a moment. “And what was this ‘old hive’ like? Where you got the books from?”

Advantage dropped their smile. “We don’t remember.”
“Something about ‘paradise...’”
“Obvious misfortune.”

Kernel looked from one head of Advantage to the other and back for a moment.

“Something wrong, Kernel?” the male asked.

Kernel galloped up to Advantage and put his forelegs around their large necks, embracing them both at once and dragging them down to the ground with his weight.

“Thank you,” he whispered in their ears.

“For what?” the female asked. “We did nothing.”

“No...” Kernel shook his head. He held them tighter. “You didn’t. But you guys helped me in my dream last night.”

“Glad to hear of it...” the male said.
“Could you stop pulling so hard?” the female pleaded.

“Oh, right...” He let go of the two-headed wretcher. They stretched their necks back out. “Advantage, if you don’t mind me asking...” He looked back toward the door for a brief moment. “What was Bubble’s name before she...” his voice trailed off as he ran out of kind words.

“It’s Elegiac. Siren-inspired.”
“We always loved her music.”
“And this silence hurts.” They passed a sad glance at the door for a brief moment. “Take care of her, please.”
“She needs to overcome her guilt.”
“She can be revived.”

Kernel smiled. “I know. Those dream-weaving friends of yours told me all about it.”

“What dream-weaving friends?”

The one-eyed wretcher chuckled. “Nevermind, Advantage. Just forget I said anything."