Chapter 4

I flew as fast as my tired body would let me. I wanted to spend as little time with Azurite as possible. I would have teleported us there, but per Arceus' orders I needed to educate them, so Azurite needed to actually see the region and understand where his lake was. As we flew over Mt. Coronet, my ctomache churned and I sped up. I didn't want to think about what must've happened there, with the red chain that monstrous man had made from me and my siblings...

Lake Valor was still a good ways away, and I was quite irritated to find that Azurite was less than willing to let us continue to travel in silence.

"Why don't you want to talk to me and Sage? The three of us are supposed to work together- and be a team! Aren't we?" Azurite asked, flying up alongside me and frowning at me.

I glared at him. "I will work with you only if necessary. But I will not spend time with you just for fun."

"Why not!?" He cried, "you have no reason to be so rude to us! We haven't even done anything!"

I clenched my fists and stopped moving, hovering in the air. Azurite stumbled over himself to stop as well, turning to stare back at me with wide eyes. I bared my teeth, "you have no idea what you're talking about!" I growled, "I'm not going to make friends with my brothers' crummy replacements!"

Azurite blinked at me, and I could sense that he was a bit fearful. Good, maybe that'd scare his need to bother me out of him. But then he steeled his gaze and, to my surprise, he frowned sadly at me. "What happened to them..?" he asked hesitantly.

My rage builded, and I hovered up to him to point a finger in his face, "you will not, ever, ask me that again. Never talk to me about them." I snarled. He merely blinked in return. To my ire, it was clear he was not willing to drop it. I growled under my breath and pushed past him.

"Let's go." I said coldly, and continued flying towards eastern Sinnoh. Azurite hurried after me wordlessly.

As we finally arrived at Lake Valor, Azurite seemed to brighten up at the sight. The lake resided quite close to Sinnoh's only real beach area, and so unlike Lake Acuity's snowy northern space, Valor was warm and quite beautiful in its own right. My bad mood only made me hate how cheery the place looked, it made me just want to go back and lock myself away in Dawns house. Azurite on the only hand seemed quite pleased, which only deepened my anger.

"Well, we're here. This is Lake Valor... this is where you shall live from now on." I grumbled.

Azurite's face dropped slightly, "...where do you live, then?" He asked.

I sighed tiredly, "Lake Verity. It is to the west of here, over Mt. Coronet."

He nodded slowly, taking in the information, "so that's where we go to find you?"

I gave him a curt nod, "yes. But do not do so lightly. I will send you right back here if you do not have a good reason for bothering me with your presence." I glared at him and then before he could respond, I turned and teleported away.

After returning to Dawn's house, I found only her mother fretting over me, saying Dawn had gone out looking for me, afraid my lake had been in danger or something of the sort. I felt a little bad about not telling her what was going on before I left, but once Johanna called Dawn back to the house, she assured me that she was not angry.

Still, I flew into her arms and sobbed about what happened, unable to hold in my emotions at all, it was all just too much. Dawn hugged me and patted my back reassuringly the entire time. She was much too nice to me.

That night I slept rather fretfully, nightmares about losing my siblings and their faces morphing into the golden faces of their successors. Golden, like they were better; different, like my brothers weren't perfect as they were; as if this time things would go better...

I was suddenly shaken awake, and I blinked my eyes open to find the two exact faces I had been dreaming about. Sage and Azurite stared down at me curiously, and I could see Dawn leaning over the three of us with an apologetic look in her eyes.

Of course I couldn't expect her to stop them, its beyond the powers of even a trainer of her stature. These two were my burden and my burden only.

"Since we can sense you, we could find you quite easily," Sage said softly upon noticing my alarmed confusion. Azurite nodded, "we're here for our lessons!" He said, much more chipper that I thought he should be after how I treated him. He was going to insist on always annoying me, wasn't he...

"Alright, well..." I sat up in my bed and rubbed my eyes, "I guess we'll get started..."