Wretched Hive 3: The Gray Pony

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.