Wretched Hive 3: The Gray Pony

“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."