The Rock of Enigmas was always a place of solitude since the beginning of its creation. Placed far from the reaches of Earth, it eternally stagnated between Jupiter and Mars with movement exempt from its being. Its peculiar shape was elongated into three large protrusions that appeared to be man-sized. Each met in the middle to create an archaic symbol indiscernible by the lunatic astronomers that chanced upon its existence for a single moment, and their haggard manuscripts and scribbled drawings had divulged it to be of the English language: it was a Y.
Yet its real purpose was unknown by the humans that observed it through their telescopes, for the creatures inside were accused of treason, a transgression so inconceivable that the grand master of the universe had trapped them there for a planned eternity.
x
The goddess of Life stirred in her sleep, her ears picking up the sounds of grunting and strained groans that encapsulated the anger she knew full well belonged to her brother.
She was curled in the corner of the enormous cavern that she inured with her standard visage. It was damp and dank, fishing with the stenches of unknown putridity; it spread infinitely, sharing its unbearable smell with each of the inhabitants which crawled and slunk listlessly through their own dug corridors. Lifting her head and opening her eyes, she was brought by the vision of darkness that commonly accommodated her existence here in this prison. The only light she could see, after a few moments of rubbing her eyes, was the faint aura spread about her body.
She adopted a humanoid look like almost the rest of the deities dwelling in the pantheon. They rather liked the look and the mannerisms of the humans which laden the Earth long years ago, though some preferred their true form to the volatile appearances of the humans.
Her eyes blinked perplexedly so when she recognized the red hue of Yvetal on the edge of her vision. The light was a blur, rapidly moving from side to side, and she heard the sounds of loathing and amenity, too. His shouting had designated the vigor with which he worked whenever choler had plagued his system and sent rage piling through the ramparts od his veins. She slowly gained her footing upon the cool surface of the cave, and she drew a relaxed sigh from her lips that involuntarily escaped. The sound wasn't loud enough to rouse the god of Death from his useless thrashing, nor had it been able to penetrate the noise of rocks slamming upon the ground, the scattering pebbles sharply bouncing off the floor with velocities unbeknownst. Hesitantly, she approached with silent strides through the voluminous spreads of the cavern, her padding inaudible in the noise engendered by his spleen.
The noises became louder and nearer; her steps began slowing, gradually germinating into a mere plod lethargic in temperament. The heaving of Yvetal's chest had made him pause in the chaos he brought willingly upon the haggard wall in question; the noise so suddenly ceased, whereupon Xerneas's gasping was heard. Her attempts to prevent stepping on the rocks dispersed about the ground had gone in vain.
Hence, Yvetal whipped his head around to peer at the petite woman. Her glowing blue aura enthralled the petite, young form of a twenty-year-old woman adorning a small white dress that flowered down to below her knees. She could've easily passed for a human if it weren't for the immense horns made of ivory and multicolored jewels that emerged from her comely, flowing hair. A look of determination was evident upon her visage; commonplace it was, and condescending, especially to her brother.
His efforts of escape were suddenly forgotten as exhaustion, something many deities had never experienced before unwilling humanization was imbued inside them, spread abound his body, and he slumped into the small indentation he made in the dark, gleaming obsidian. He didn't care for the suit he wore to be dirtied and affected by the stonework that surrounded them indefinitely. He said, "What are you doing awake, Xerneas? You should be sleeping."
She shrugged. "It was difficult to sleep while you made your mark on the wall. It's even more so when the shouting reaches a threshold that makes slumber virtually impossible."
He smiled wryly. Running his hand through a thick mane of dark hair, he managed, "Too bad I got you up, then. I'm sure you had some great dreams. Cresselia always does a great number on the pleasure given by those things. Can't explain it, but boy, do they rock."
Her smile revealed no emotion to the god of Death. She simply took a seat in front of him, crossing her legs and releasing a sigh of exasperation. "Need I remind you that a thousand dreams, a thousand nightmares and a thousand sleepless nights do not equal the foundation of a pleasurable existence?"
He said nothing.
He never wants to answer my questions, she thought sadly. "Well?" she badgered.
"You have," he said begrudgingly. His voice was edged with serration and malice.
She smiled at the response, inciting the flow of inexistent blood to toil harshly to the edifices of his sculpted cheeks. "Then you should know exactly how I feel about dreams and nightmares and sleepless nights."
He grunted. "I was just joking, y'know," he said.
"Sure."
She got to her feet again, testing the sturdiness of the ground with the ball of her foot. It was still caked with sharp-edged pebbles, but those could easily be avoided if she stepped carefully through the terrain. She walked to the indentation where Yvetal rested his head in with only three scratches injuring her feet. Her hands run up and down the pockmark, feeling the divets and curvatures of the abrasion with her lithe fingers.
"Angry?" she asked absently, picking at the stray rocks and throwing them askew.
"Yes," he answered from beneath her. His aura grew in conception as his eyes glowed a dark crimson, increasing its radius to an enormous inflammation. She inched away from the abrasion, avoiding the red light as it bounded unconsciously toward her.
"What about?"
"Arceus," he replied vaguely. "And you."
She squinted at him. Sometimes she reigned him in too far, but mentioning her had set off a nerve that prevented her from engaging naturally within arguments with her brother. It was severed in a mere second, and her face garnered an embarrassing loathing that she occasionally battered Yvetal with. "You're mad about me?" she asked defensively, crossing her arms over her chest. "What have you to be mad about?"
He peered up at her with contempt, his eyes closing together, and then got to his feet, hovering above her with his utmost height. He towered over her, for they were stark juxtapositions to each other's existence. She always hated how he could look down on her and make her look small in the eyes of those who never watched, the inexistent audience that garnered their skills of dominance into honed talents. Yet she never acquiesced under his foot, keeping her confidence and arrogance as she went down in the coming years, decades, centuries and millennia she lived alongside this man of anger and vengeance.
"He always adored you, y'know," said Yvetal, the choler entering his voice.
"Yes, he did. I was the respectful one whilst you were the rebellious one. If I had my own child, I would have punished the latter without thinking anything of their motives but of their behavior in the matter."
"Arceus favored you because you had listened without questioning his motives. Never did you think I was telling the truth when I told you -"
"Never mention that awful thing to me again, will you?" she snapped. "It was hard enough being trapped here by him due to your inconsiderate snooping regarding his slumbers and your insistence to share it with me of all people."
"I thought I could get you to see my side of the story, Xerneas," he said firmly. "Yet you still hadn't believed a word I said because Arceus insisted it wasn't true, that the things I proposed with such conviction were unbelievable simply because he said so."
"Has he ever lied to us before, Yvetal?" she asked.
"Yes, he has," he exclaimed. His voice was getting strained, stretched beyond the threshold of tolerance. He had clenched his fists; his face grew in color. "You never wanted to listen to me then, and I know you will not listen to me now, I know for sure. You are a coward, Xerneas. You are submissive when you think you're confident!"
She pushed herself onto the tips of her toes, pressing her finger to his chest. Her fingernail dug into the fabric, and the agony she wished to inflict upon him was justified. "He has always given us the ability to live and not die, y'know. We are immortal, Yvetal, what else could you ask for? He only asks for us to be loyal."
"And you are not loyal to the people who trusted you the most," he said. "Do you remember Valentino and the way you just let him go? Do you?"
She shook her head, denial running through her veins. She did not let him go; he went on his own merits. "Valentino was dying," she choked out. "I did what I had to do, I did my job. I handed him off to you because he said he was willing to go into the afterlife if I wanted him to."
"But it was Arceus that controlled you to say yes, Xerneas. I know how much you loved that man, that mortal. You had memories that have plagued you for long intervals. I hear you say his name, Xerneas."
"Stop!" she shrieked. "YOU DON'T KNOW ME!"
"I know you better than Arceus himself. He didn't care for individuality, he only wanted us for our unquestionable loyalty, no matter if it killed millions of his own creations, no matter if it went against our own moralities, no matter if our love had brought us to exile."
She covered her ears, shouting at Yvetal to stop talking, to cease all utterances at her expense.
He did nothing of the sort. His face was red with determination as hers was previously. The irony of the situation was unspoken, but it was addressed by their own consciences, and Yvetal used this to his advantage. "Valentino was in your hands, Xerneas," he declared easily, "and you had done the same as me, except you had let him go and continued believing in Arceus's control. You never queried why he did the things he did to us, y'know. Maria Thebes was the love of my life, the one above all, and she was taken away by that vile fucking beast. How do you think I felt at that?"
She shook her head, said nothing. Stop, she thought, her voice too hoarse and drawn for any capability of speech at all. I told you to stop, you monster, yet you keep going. Why must you affect me so?
"We are vulnerable, we are almost human, but the only thing he sees us as are workers that will never go against him. A revolution never has occurred because all of them like the stupid overlord as he is. Well, guess what? I don't, Xerneas!"
"He has done nothing to you," she whispered surely. "All you speak is folly and pretense."
"What?" he demanded. "Speak up when you comment, you weak coward!"
"YOU ARE PRETENDING!" she shouted loudly, the resonance of the shriek bouncing effectively from the walls and into his conception. She yelled, "YOU ARE A LIAR!"
"Why would I lie about all of this, Xerneas? Why would I lie about my failed love with a mortal I met on Earth? Why would I lie about Arceus and his idiotic ways of ruling this universe in its enormity?"
"I don't know," she whispered, repeating it over and over as she curled into a ball, crushing her guilt into the depths of her bile and dissolving it into inexistence. The defeat in her tonality disappeared, replaced with a meager erroneous ogle at the towering man of rage and choler and spleen and unwilling, blatant, uncoated truth.
The heaving of his chest had evolved into a rasping gasp that escaped his mouth in unwilling intervals.
"You hate me, and I hate you, but I still care, y'know," he said gruffly. "I don't want you to be affected by the utter folly that Arceus feeds you. D'you know what I mean? Xerneas?"
Her voice was small and degraded into a mere whisper that was almost inaudible, yet he heard it nonetheless. "Piss off," she exclaimed angrily. "Valentino loved me and he wanted to go, Yvetal. Arceus said that was what he wanted, and never has Arceus has lied to any of us - even you."
He grimaced at the lying woman. He watched the tears roll down her cheeks, increased by the mere inclusion of growing blue that tinged her cheeks. "He has lied to all of us, Xerneas - the moment you realize that, the more you'll see the world in a better light. The sciences we brought to the humans was not a deterrent of evolution, but a tool to assist them as they go about their lives without struggle. Arceus has lied about this, and I saw through his mask."
"He has not lied about that," she insisted. But she knew that the technologies developed by the humans would soon transcend their assistance, bringing aside the churches of Arceus and pushing them into a utopia crafted by their own hands, by the sciences introduced by their own divine intervention. "He has only our own existences in mind. The worshipping, the lauding - it will go away when they evolve a little too much."
"Yet it would not matter," he said sternly. "We would dissipate no matter the circumstances. The sentience on Earth are not the only ones which live in this solar system, huh?"
He cannot know about Erdenwald, she thought. Could he have gotten that information? But from who would he have received such confidential knowledge?
Instead of asking the internal questions which plagued her, she asked anxiously, "What do you mean?"
But he said nothing in return and kept silent as he skulked away. The only thing that she saw of him was his red eyes as he turned momentarily to her, sneering.