Oh my goodness. This has to be the least related to Pokemon anything can get. It was meant to be told from the point of view of a ghost-type/dark-type, but it isn't apparent at all.
I first saw this style with Cipher Admin Eevee (who is no longer active, by the way), and I finally decided to do this.
It was also induced by too much time studying for my exams.
aether
Four elements. Four elements constituted the world, it seemed to earliest man.
Earth is the element of all that falls downwards, and all that never changes shape. Earth, the element of the living and of the non-living—sturdy, hard, unrelenting. On it, one could stand, and with it one could inflict devastating harm. This is the element that worked by sheer weight and force alone, of those who use the raw strength of matter to carve down the enemy to uselessness—with rock, leaf, claw or fang.
Water is masterful in flexibility. It exists in streams and puddles, up to the wide expanses of the deep—able to change shape as much as the hard elements, the wind and the warmth around it allow. It gives life, for no life can live without it. But with impurity, it can kill. And its strength comes from that—it goes where it is allowed, infiltrates the systems of the living and destroys from within. It is so with venom—water that has been tainted with purpose to destroy. And otherwise, when directed well, water may also cause destruction by entirely physical means, like the strength of a tidal wave, with the sheer force of a solid on flesh.
Then there comes air. Air, the strength of all that surrounds us, power that one can simply draw from nature and turn on his foe. Air runs through every sky and tunnel, every inch and every mile of the vast world. From the air, one can pull thunder and lightning, use the power of amplified sound, and strike the foe with something that does not really exist. It is the most resourceful, power that can be produced instantly and thrown upon the foe with no warning.
And fire—fire is pure energy, with absolute absence of substance—power that is formed from the movement of subatomic particles, holding even more potential than any amount matter can contain in itself; colossal, even in the smallest quantities. This power, when passed through flesh or stone, will shift their atomic compositions, cause irreversible damage that can only be helped, in the living, by the replacement of damaged flesh. Such power can become uncontrollable once given full rein, but so can every element—
Except one. A single element that is forgotten, time and time again, age after age. All four are so obvious, so easily observed and understood—it is not hard to remember all four for their unique traits. But there is that one last element that constitutes so little of the universe that it might as well be forgotten, as it always is. But spare a thought—when one dies, what does he become? In every thought, every wish, every shade of envy, hatred and fear—what is there? What makes up the real yet not-so-real?
It is I.
I lack the strength of earth, the flexibility of water, the readiness of air, and the vigour of fire. I work by subtlety, shifting betweens hues of the true and the imaginary, bringing on that strike of fatality as a dragging of the foe into my world of unreality—one that it cannot survive.
What am I, you ask. Look behind you. Do you see your shadow scudding hurriedly after you? Do you feel the frigid fear of mortality that always clouds a part of your mind, as you look on at silent emptiness? Do you feel that haunting chill when the music of the spheres, soundless, vibrates in your ears?
That is what I am. I am aether.
*Faints* Nonsense, right? Told you, it was the result of too much exam studying.