Wretched Hive 3: The Gray Pony

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.