Wretched Hive 3: The Gray Pony

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.