Ch 30 'Living Dream'

Personality, some say it's defined by the blood of our parents running in us. That when one reaches the right age, his likes and dislikes will be the same as his ancestors. Yet I think that the things I learned staying up late in the night with my thoughts truly made me who I am. When you lose the world you used to live in, you have a lot of dark thoughts, you don't know what to do, how to live, ideals had to lose all sense until there is only the grey reality you have to face. Today I think the best I could have done then was to turn to someone who could bring some joy, so I wouldn't fall into darkness too much. These days I couldn't find anyone like that because everyone who survived the rise of the curse had to go through hell experiencing tragedy after tragedy. Living amongst sadness, pushing you into depression and then getting the mind is clouded and you float on your feelings, negative feelings that burn you from the inside making you impulsive and aggressive, easy to manipulate, until there is nothing left and then comes the realisation that never really matters, but it's too late already. You can't rise to smile at sunrise telling yourself that everything is alright, knowing what you lost and how wrong was what followed.

As the city had fallen, the dust of destruction fell and the first rays of the sun reflected on the still burning ruins of concentrate, steel and glass I managed to crawl from debris that was once the block where I lived. The building had collapsed during the storm of anomalies while I was inside, I didn't know how I survived. I had broken ribs, leg, and tail, was heavily bleeding. Moving was painful, my lungs felt like they were burned with fire as I inhaled the dust, I couldn't scream or shout and I thought it was my last moments alive. I had crawled through the ruined land trying to survive.

I couldn't remember what I thought or had seen, I would die there without any doubts. However, the curse had different plans for me, coming with dust into my mouth, nose, and wounds it changed me, giving me new, hard bones, strong muscles and wings. The form that comes to help me in hard times, making me endure the worse and keep going, that keeps me alive. I didn't meet anyone this day. Later I learned that under the ruins I spent much more than a single night.

"Ah, how crazy my path had gone to lead me to where I am right now," I mumbled to myself, walking at the edge of the precipice so deep, its bottom was hidden in the darkness. I didn't mean fate bringing me at the edge of this random hole, but the current state of life.

Looking to the past it all seemed quite clear, but those times I was completely confused and lost. I hadn't even notice my form change, wings helping me to keep my balance and making my jumps longer. Not only I was too young to understand it, but also stressed and in shock. I had looked at what was left of the city, but I believe that I truly was seeing it. As if my mind hadn't been able to understand what I had before my eyes, it all felt like a dream I couldn't wake from. I hadn't felt sad, yet, to be honest, I hadn't felt anything, I had been looking at the unfamiliar environment of destruction with a glassy eye, blankly noticing lost limbs laying in the puddles of blood, stinky mush of flesh and lifeless eyes looking back at me as blankly as I was looking at them. All emotions had to cumulate and come back later. I hadn't been able to do anything this day but to stiffly walk slowly leaving the city, I forgot about all natural needs like eating or drinking, sleep or piss. I was like an undead, walking unnaturally in one direction.

I hadn't met anyone this day or the following night, in the morning with the rising sun, my winged form left me making me feel all the pain and exhaustion once again. For now, it was only physical pain. I was without a wound and I had all my bones back, healed as they should be. I had collapsed and slept.

I am asleep quite a lot in my life.

I noticed. As I was slowly nearing the cross to the edge of the world, I saw in the distance tall, white mountains with peaks hidden in clouds. It was a territory of beartic. I liked to call apex predators 'rulers' of some ground, even if they weren't ruling anything. It's a human thing I adapted. Such predators were more or less known on their territory, but they weren't the only inhabitant of 'their' grounds. They had to have something they could hunt on and various kinds of pests. For the snowy mountains, it was usually sneasels and jynxs. Generally, things you rarely eat them, but they exist and can be somewhat annoying than a real problem. It's a bit worse when such pests grow into a more serious problem, for example, when there are snovers on your group. It's nothing, you may hunt it for meat or ignore it, but someday there might be an abomasnow to deal with or anything different that could become challenging to defeat. The more you wait, the stronger a rival you can have, and so there appears the stress of time, and no one wants to be kicked off their own home. That's why I thought that calling apex predators 'rulers' was fitting for them, even if they didn't have anyone to rule. They had to control their grounds and each had as much ground it could control. It could be also the reason I never decided to take some territory for myself, maybe a beartic was a bit too much, but I was sure that with the help of my bewinged form I could become an apex in some region. Yet, I would want the land only in a more 'human' manner, to live in a big comfortable den, unbothered, which was the complete opposite of being a 'ruler' in the wilderness.

Anyway, returning to my thoughts about how I became the Walking Disaster, as some more probing in my background was calling me. I woke up very late, before sunset, and I hadn't had any idea what to do next. I would naturally go back home, but this time I didn't have one, so I just sat there the hole in my heart appeared. It had been only the beginning, the hole was small but had kept growing for many months and years.

I wasn't sure if the hole ever closed, maybe I just grew to ignore it, waiting for something to trigger it again.

I had become nervous. These days I was like a year or two old, too young to know how to deal with negative and powerful emotions differently than reacting with aggression, recklessly empowering my dark typing, dangerously pushing myself toward something defined as a feral dark type, or what was more popular in the wild, mad darkling. Negative emotions are a power for dark types, being strong and powerful feels amazing. All this energy leaving your mind, not bothering you anymore, running in your veins, making everything better. Outside it could look terrible, but inside it was a very relaxing state.

It was a bit like with alcohol amongst humans, you could make it great for you, but it also could end terribly. I thought I shouldn't be scared of negative emotions, but aware of where they could lead me if I don't stop at the right moment. It wasn't so dangerous in the past, but the curse based on the dark type energy, dark type in such a bad condition produces a lot of such energy with very little control over it. The curse was like a disease or parasite like with the vulnerable darkling, it was always spreading whenever it could.

Types which didn't have anything in common with dark types were safe, psychic and ghost types being weak against dark types usually surrendered to the curse much faster than the others. Psychic also had their complicated telepathy that was just another way for the corruption to jump onto another victim.

Though, as a dark type, I'm supposed to be resistant against my dark energy. Guess I will never truly learn how the corruption exactly worked, maybe it was even better than gaining some more attention and some unfortunate day be visited by the anomaly.

The anomalies also changed a bit since the days of my home's destruction. I hadn't seen any blinding bright spheres like in the metro under the city centre, there were more corrupted pokemon now.

Not everyone tried to avoid becoming corrupted, some wanted it. Some were willing to sacrifice themselves for some extra strength and abilities that the corruption could grant. By wishing for the curse they could achieve much more visible and unnatural changes, even a new type, depends on what they wished for and what purpose the curse had for them. Meeting any of these abominations never ended well, not many kept any of their intelligence after the change and even fewer were willing to use it for peaceful purposes.

At least, they weren't easy to find and there were groups of pokemon willing to meet them, or rather, searching for them. Even if wild pokemon didn't invent money, there were many other things they could exchange and some organised packs were usually willing to make some deal to hunt down some abomination in their area. Food was quite common and always needed goods, sometimes there was a chance to get a working flashlight, dryer or similar simple device left by humans. In rare cases, the reward could be even greater, like the part of the territory or rare stone. Pokemon weren't interested in minerals like humans, but some stones could help with evolution, there was also this weird... stone, pearl or sphere? Whatever it was, the Light of Midnight Zar had helped me to steal. It had to be something special too, but it didn't seem to be human-made, I would recognise it if it would be.

Today's special treasures were quite common stuff, on my first days as a survivor, I didn't care about them at all, yet I had had to find some food. I had been searching for some shop, as shops always were full of food. I had walked so far away from the city centre I didn't have any chance to find any supermarkets, but my hungrily improved sense of smell had to lead me to something that had used to be a meat store, before it was a pile of bricks I had to dig through to find something to eat. My claws weren't used to doing work these days, Aria used to keep them trimmed so that I wouldn't immediately cut everything I touch, like the couch or carpet. The horn also couldn't be of help. An absol's horn grew since birth, gaining its general shape in the first year, but it needed to grow a few years more to achieve a thickness that would make it hard enough to be used safely without breaking. These days, my horn was a thin curve, not a scythe.

The digging had taken me a great effort, but I finally found a line of sausages and something that looked like breast fillet. This day I discovered that cold, unprepared meat doesn't taste so good. My appetite didn't mind it and I ate everything I could find and even if it once was a shop with meat, I hadn't found that much. Many times, I had been returning to the places of ruined markets, looming for food that wasn't rotten, digging in the ruins hoping that somewhere there was still a working, dark-type powered fridge with many tasty things inside. Sometimes I was lucky, other times I had to face long times of hunger. But it was when I was on my own, in the first days after living in the wild, I had to join the survivors.

There weren't many of us, mostly mightyena with younger poochyenas, and sneazel that from the beginning seemed to be here just for food, but all the time was a true wild pokemon, an umbreon or two that were very a popular choice for humans' pet, but their chances to survive were much smaller than stronger dark types. I remember one had a broken limb and didn't manage to survive, there was also a third eeveelution, unusual pokemon for the city, a fire type, flareon. A very strong one, he had to be trained for police service or something.

I don't remember much about him, he left quite quickly, even before we started to fight for food.

There were also four absol, each of us was a stranger to each other, but thanks to the hidden curse inside of me I became the strangest of them.

Food had split us, into smaller and smaller groups, until every species was on its own, able kill another for a bottle of water, a part of the ruins, or a cold and dirty sausage. Each of us had to slowly change from fluffy couch pet to wild pokemon, but we didn't know the rules of wilderness and so we could easily overdo changing fighting for survival into pure cruelty.

I pushed the thought from the past away as I entered beartic territory. Even if I wasn't expecting any fight, I didn't want to be surprised or give any possible advantage to the apex predator of this ground just by being lost in focus.

The main point of this ice-type territory was a peaked mountain, much higher than the others in the area. That was where the den had to be. This beartic lived a lonely life and hadn't a female or offspring, it wasn't anything surprising claiming territory at the edge of the world. Nother Oblast, in general, is poorly populated and empty, good for everyone who wants to be away from eeveelutions pack, oozing from the ruined city curse, and possible competition in being dominant.

However, it felt a bit warmer here than beyond the edge, it was still cold, but the snow felt wetter, and much more sticky, no longer having a salt like consistency. It felt nicer to step on, giving a feeling of softness, also making the walk easier as my wide paws weren't sinking in anymore, leaving only a slight mark behind me.

Yeah, it was almost a perfect environment and climate for an absol. Just the mountain was too small.

The mountain range with eight peaks that were surrounding the green forest would be perfect for me, a mountain environment that require a few days to pass through, not the pitiful one that was before me that I needed only an hour or two to get around. Living on the Eight Peaks would be a great life, especially on its eastern side, the western range was a bit close to the city that didn't seem to be so safe, after I learned that something lives there and can be dangerous. But the eastern part had to be great, I had only a short glance at it, but I saw these beautiful land with plenty of food and territory to take. I could see it shortly after leaving the city's dusted grounds and before the eeveelution pack noticed they don't have humans as neighbours anymore and claimed it all for their great pack. Competition between packs happen in the wild, but usually, the pack had to have ten, maybe fifteen adults to be considered as a big one, but eons seemed to not care about any number and the mountains were swarmed with glaceons pushing everyone out of, now, their glorious land.

Feeling unable to do anything about it was terrible, I hoped I will never again feel so powerless against changes in my life, but since leaving the mountains, because of the glaceon, I just kept feeling that my life was just kept getting pushed by some invisible waves of fate, and all I could do was to allow them to carry me whenever they wanted. Since then I didn't like eeveelutions, I didn't have some special hatred toward them like some others species or packs that crossed their paths and were just pushed away, I just didn't like them, didn't like their ways and pride they had of being in such a big group. Like, what pride was it of being one of many similar creatures, running around, outnumbering every other species and 'retaking' their territory. That's how I heard few glaceon calling their spreading. It wasn't conquering or invading but retaking. But truth be told, they were quite effective at what they were doing, such an organisation in a big group was something completely unexpected from wild pokemon. Survivors from the city didn't manage to work together, even if we split into smaller groups we still had a problem to make decisions together. I would say they have a really strong leader, but considering how short an eeveelution's life was, I had to outlive at least two leaders and their pack didn't lose any strength. They had to create some sort of system to organise, some order, to keep so spread pack as one. I wouldn't call it civilisation, but a phenomenon of wilderness. Wild pokemon were sometimes uniting, but for a short period, usually for a simple goal of surviving. Situations like these were triggered by typing and fight of domination, something that was happening in the forest where I met Zar, but it wasn't even close to what was required to create a functional pack that could last more generations.

I could only imagine how humans would be freaked out if they would find this out.

Though at the second thought, maybe it would be better if they would never have found this out. Eeveelutions were rare in every region and finding out such a big group of them in a single place would end with massive catching and even if I was domestic, I didn't like the idea of changing wild pokemon into pets. Those who are wild should stay wild while those born amongst humans should stay with them. This way I have seen these two worlds staying happy as wild one in a first and second generation would fit for civilised life. Eating from a bowl, going on walks, sparring or generally obeying any commands and living life in its way.

Being honest, I thought I was quite lucky that I never had to spare with caught wild pokemon as today I know they just don't lose. Losing in the wild is dying, following this rule, caught wild pokemon could make a lot of harm to itself or someone.

I already almost reached the wall of the mountain and started to go around it to pass on the other side. The environment was quite empty, snow, ice, and some rocks. Rather nothing besides the mountain was blocking the view on the horizon. White colour was melting into a single mass of white and someone who wasn't here before for sure wouldn't know that the ground was slightly lowering at some places and the mountain was between two small valleys. There was also the third valley on the opposite side of the mountain created by the river that was appearing here seasonally, in the middle of summer when the some of the snow melted, but it never was warm enough to see bare ground here. The hottest temperature at summer here could reach even 10 degrees, but the layer of the snow that gathered during the winter was just too thick to disappear completely.

My balance shifted momentarily and I almost tripped, as my now longer claws hooked against the harder snow, but saved myself with a flap of wings that just appeared.

"Now?" I wondered, mumbling to myself not understanding this sudden change.

I looked around and sniffed the air, but I didn't discover anything new.

Maybe I cough some flu or other illness which to fight off I needed my greater form.

I shrugged, fold my wings on my back so they could rest there peacefully.

The snow beneath me exploded just after one step forward and I found myself flying limply until I hit the ground. I yelped with pain as I felt on my left-wing, however, I jumped back on my paws as quickly as I was able to.

I still could fully move my wing so it wasn't broken, yet the pain remains. I looked at the hole the explosion created and beartic that already managed to get out of the hole he created.

"Have you lost your mind?! Do you want to die?!" I realised my anger at him as my horn darkened from build up energy. Ice-type didn't react at first and kept looking in a completely different way, then he suddenly snapped and unnaturally twisted his head as his neck cracked a few times. I looked straight into two circles of an endless abyss in the place where his eyes should be and my anger disappeared. Beartic opened his jaw showing half-rotten tongue surrounded by rows of fractured teeth and made a sound that was something between squawk and croak that scared me more than mighties beartic roar. The smell itself almost made me to pass out. I was sure that I had faced creature changed by corruption, an abomination.

When did he give up to the curse? Or how did the curse reach so far?

My wonders had to wait for later as the ice type dashed forward, trying to crush me with his weight. I jumped back and pushed the air with my wings to double the distance, avoiding his massive body and longs paws whose claws would reach me if I didn't put my wings into work.

"Trying to feed the parasite, huh? It hurts when you have nothing to give and it starts to consume you?" I teased him, seeing a few more places that had started to rot, exposing flesh and parts of bones.

"Frr-frr, feast on you," squawked beartic, his voice was modulated but without a functional tongue and barely understandable. He did his best trying to roar again, and started charging at me on all fours. I provoked him just for it, when he was close enough to I pretend to dodge his attack again, but this time I flapped my wings, pushing myself forward in mid-air. The force of beartic made my horn go through his flank like through butter and I kept pushing it until I cut through the whole length of his flank. What I didn't expect was that the beartic didn't care about the wound at all, but with doubled fury turned around and attacked me again. Only the luck that I slipped on the ice saved me from being crushed in the jaws of the ice type, but it wasn't all that beartic had for me, as he kept biting, clawing, and smashing forcing me to keep backing away, trying to save my life. It wasn't fighting anymore, but furious cutting. I tried to defend by blindly attacking with my horn, hitting form left to right, from left to right still going backwards. I kept cutting his paw and his maw until the dripping blood from my scythe covered whole my view, but nothing seemed to be enough, this abomination finally getting on my throat and I felt I couldn't keep up with his barrage. I jumped high in the air and tried to fly up to buy myself at least a second of breath, somewhere where he couldn't reach me, but his powerful jaws gripped on my tail. The beartic brought me back down to the ground and smashed me against the ground; a loud crack made it sure now that at least one wing is broken. Not letting go of my tail, the ice type lifted me again trying to smash me against the ground again. As I didn't feel the ground, I was struck with the pain of my broken wings now spreading. I unleashed the pain in scream and furry that focused in my tail, creating a shadow ball inside the beartic's maw that exploded, spraying everything around in red dots of blood. I fell on the ground, again free from his grasp, and with the last of my strength I stood up. The beartic tried to stand up too, but his lower jaw was lying in the puddle of blood next to him, completely ripped off.

I didn't wait for him to understand what happened, I jumped in the air again, culminating my pain, fear, anger, and furry in my horn as it glows in a black flame and lowered it onto the beartic's neck, cutting off his head, but it didn't feel like enough. I shot a shadow ball at the newly created opening in the ice type's body, then another and another, until there was nothing left to shoot in and there was only huge wet blood or red on the snow.

I wanted to walk away, but after just a few steps I fell on the ground. All I managed to do was to take care to not lie on the wings.

Breath, breathing was all that I could do now and it was enough. All that mattered now was that I was alive, and the beartic wasn't. I was happy.