August 23, 2032

It's been odd, here in Archaea. I've been afflicted with some unknown disease that's eating away at me little by little. On the same note, somehow Frost has cancer. I don't understand how, but Sepullen has been working with Iode to find a potential cure for both of our conditions. Since Isla Delirium, we've heard nothing about Rook, Koncordia, or Roselyn. Venomitus and Frost think they're dead, but Sepullen has been keeping an eye out for any sign of them.

In the meantime, Sepullen spends most of his time in his quarters with that melotic. For a month, I've waited for him to show me the details of Jude's expedition and where they went missing, but he doesn't think I'm well enough to travel. That's why he's so adamant about finding a cure. I guess I'll wait, but for how much longer I'm not sure.

-Branna

I shove my journal into my bag and bite into an apple. It's not as juicy as the ones back home, but it's still good. I coil up in the bed that Sepullen made for me in less than a minute. It's not much, but it's considerably more comfortable than the bundle of straw I usually sleep on, or the dirty metal floor of The Amalgam for that matter.

Fort Ruin is a very strange place. For starters, there are no rooms for living pokemon to sleep in, but there are a lot of prison cells. Sepullen did his best to convert some of them into living spaces, but there are still a few drawbacks. There are still bars covering half of the room, which means there's no privacy, but Frost is the only other pokemon on this level, so I'm fine with that.

Sepullen tried to separate the living spaces by male and female, but Venomitus insisted on sharing a room with Emerald. Besides that, Aurate has no sense of privacy anyway. Every once in a while he'll get bored and stick his head out of the wall. Frost doesn't like it that much, but I don't mind him.

"Oi," Aurate says from somewhere. Thinking about him probably caught his attention. Between him and the Relic Master's telekinesis, it's hard to have any privacy in that respect either. Aurate seems relatively harmless, but I wonder why I can feel Sepullen in the back of my head like he's looking for something.

"Ya better get goin'," he says. "Frost's there already, an' so is everyone else."

Roll call? I guess the rest of them came here to be a part of Sepullen's guild, but I'm not interested in any of that. Frost keeps me company, but she's trying to convince Venomitus to form a team with her. Besides any of that, Sepullen's never had me come to roll call before, because of my sickness.

I almost don't go, but my curiosity gets the best of me. After a few minutes of struggling around Fort Ruin's steep, twisted stairs, I find myself in front of a large stone door. From bottom to top, the door is encrusted with rare looking gemstones. They are various colors, shapes, and sizes, but amber and carnelian are the most prominent. After admiring it for several seconds, I realize that I can't possibly open this door. It's so big and heavy looking, I wouldn't be surprised if the legendary Rayquaza could fit through it.

"Ah, well. This sucks," I say to myself.

As if I said some sort of magical password, the door opens slowly inward. I don't see any machines of any kind, so it must be some kind of magic. When the room comes into full view, the door stops with a loud crash. The pokemon inside all turn toward me in unison. The sudden attention throws my composure off, so I stop moving to prevent myself from doing anything stupid.

"Branna," Sepullen says. "Welcome."

I slither forward, taking a good look around as I do. Sepullen uses this room as a main hall, but from the scratch marks in the stone floor, I can tell it's been used for combat in the past. Unsurprisingly, Aurate's already here alongside Frost, Venomitus and Emerald. Iode, Su, a runerigus, and a solrock stand guard on all sides of their team leader, Sepullen.

I've seen them all around in the past month, but this is the first time I've seen them all together. The runerigus, I think he called himself Lostic, but he talks too fast for me to understand. He tried to hustle me for gold when we met for the first time. The solrock is very reclusive, so I don't even know her name, but I know that she's Sepullen's partner.

"In your bedrest, your friends have become acquainted with Team Ruin," the Relic Master says. "But they yearn to form a team of their own."

"What does that have to do with me?" I ask. "I already said I'm not interested in your little project."

"Acknowledged, but a team needs a leader. A leader must have certain qualities that, unfortunately," he looks at Emerald and Venomitus, who are very obviously enjoying each other's company, and Frost, who's facing away and pretending not to be jealous of them, "none of them possess."

"Agreed," Frost says. "There's a reason Vanish was the leader of Team Fade and I wasn't."

"What about Aurate?" I ask. "He seems pretty bold."

"No," Sepullen says. "He doesn't have the makings of a leader, but of a captain. His first mate will be arriving in a few days. Until then, despite your constant refusal, Frost has insisted for the last month that I make you leader."

Frost? Unless I was just out of it, I don't remember her talking to me about it. Why would she ask Sepullen instead of asking me herself?

"Is that true?" I ask her.

Though her face is hidden behind her mask, I can tell that she's smiling at least somewhat.

"I could've asked you myself," she says, "But you wouldn't have listened to me. Something about hearing my opinion from someone else makes you more likely to hear it."

"So manipulation?" I say.

"Hey," she defends. "Aurate's idea, not mine."

I give him a glare, to which he sinks into the floor with a look of fake innocence. As a habit during moments like these, I wait for Lorem to make a dumb quip or make fun of me, but he doesn't. He's been abnormally quiet since I knocked on death's door and no one answered.

"No manipulation was needed, Frost," Sepullen says. "It's about pointing out simple logic. If she becomes your leader, then that means that she is free to search for her daughter."

I was planning on doing that anyway if he didn't let up soon. Sick or not, I'll tear this entire continent in half if I half to. The only reason I haven't left Fort Ruin yet is because this is the first day in a while that I've been able to move.

"Branna," Sepullen says. "I've detected a psychic link between you and Frost. The Destiny Bond is not just handed out like candies. Not only is mental and emotional pain shared, but all your physical pain. She trusts you, Branna."

I thought this whole time that Frost shared the Destiny Bond with me as a way to communicate with me the one time I was unconscious. It never occured to me why she hasn't gotten rid of it after all this time. To think she's been feeling just as sick as I have in the past month and has been able to hide it this well.

"Alright," I say. "Fine, we can form a team, but my priority is Cryptia and Jude."

"It's decided," Sepullen says. "But every team needs a name. Team Ruin is named for a metaphor that my old mentor used to describe this world. He compared it to the old ruins and relics, and how they will all survive the trials of time, but without mortal pokemon around. Come back to me when you've thought of a name that inspires you or represents something important."

Something important? Cryptia, Jude, and Frost are all important to me, but they are like everything else in the world. At the moment of birth, every living thing begins to die, but very slowly. Even now, whatever Lorem's doing to prevent me from dying is only delaying the inevitable. My heart doesn't beat. My breathing stopped at the same moment my heart did, and yet I'm able to move around just enough to avoid Iode and his weird obsession with corpses.

"No," I say. "I have a name now. We will be called Team Decay, because no matter how hard we cling to life, we all die in the end. Some of us die faster than others, but I believe that in a world like this, an immortal like you, Relic Master Sepullen, will die with the rest of us at some point."

For the first time since I met him, Sepullen loses his aura of confidence and ego as he goes into deep thought. He isn't offended at what I said, but appears to be unsettled. Emerald and Frost are the same way, but to my surprise I notice a slight nod from Venomitus. He's wearing a kind of smile that makes it seem like he's… proud?

I came to this continent with the idea that I'd only be here for a few months, but at this very moment, I have a sense of foreboding. From the way events have been unfolding since I've been here, down to reoccuring dreams of my old team late at night, I feel like something brought me here on purpose.

Frost told me about her encounter with Palkia and his agent, Ember. If it was Palkia that brought me here, I have a few things I want to say, but for now I'll stick to my current objective.

Gold Mine, Village of Fortune

An empoleon and a metagross sit across from each other at a cartography table. Usually, the table displays the eight continents of the pokemon world in great detail, but at the moment, it's being used for a popular board game among more intelligent pokemon. Called dominion, Rodium favors it to chess for its superior complexity.

It shares the black and white checkered pattern of a chess board, however, it has a forty-eight by forty-eight square board, and thirty-six different types of pieces arranged in a specific order across the first four rows on each side. Most pokemon would never think of challenging Rodium to a game of dominion, but of course, Metal Claw is a living computer.

"I cannot process why you try persistently to achieve victory," the metagross says. "Current trend indicates that any outcome alternate to stalemate has the same likelihood as our late companion appearing before us."

"I know," Rodium says solemnly. "But I can't stop thinking about it. Mr. Money was my best friend, Metal Claw. Not only that, but… Ember was supposed to be my friend. Ever since then, I've been dreaming about our younger days."

He reaches across the table and carefully moves a rook across the board toward the center. Metal Claw watches closely, taking not only thinking of a way to counter his move, but what his future moves might be. He doesn't know how to express it, but Metal Claw is always impressed with Rodium's ability to keep up with all four of the metagross's brains.

"Do you know how amazing it's been?" Rodium asks. "Mr. Money and I fought Dialga, saved the world, met you on Temporal Tower. The same thing happened a year later when Team Life Energy helped us defeat that darkrai. I believe we met Ember in the Spatial Rift around that time."

Metal Claw uses psychic energy to move the piece known as the grandmaster two spaces to his left. He isn't very good at expressing himself, but he's hoping that his plan will cheer up Rodium by at least a small margin. Thankfully, Rodium is too distracted in his nostalgia to notice.

"I've been dreaming about our old adventures, and the people we've met. I miss Drae, and that celebi. I even find myself missing Loir even after what he did to us. As far as I know, they're gone now, and so is Mr. Money."

Absentmindedly, Rodium moves his queen in range of Metal Claw's king. He's snapped out of his thoughts when he realizes that Metal Claw can't move his king anywhere. All spaces adjacent to his king wouldn't put him in any position to win.

"I thought you said there was no chance of checkmate on either side," Rodium says.

The empoleon trusts in his friends calculating ability, but he also knows that Metal Claw doesn't lie. He doesn't know how he could have possibly won, when he's never one or lost in any of the hundreds of games they've played over countless weeks.

"Correct," the metagross says. "That is what I said, but under the circumstance that the conditions of that calculation remain constant. However, there are variables that I can control. Example: willingness to achieve victory."

"You let me win?" he asks, somewhat baffled.

"I am unable to dream, so I am unable to relate to your memory, but I exist, so I am able to understand your reality. Kindness exists in reality, and is stored in memory. If you can remember the objects of your dreams so fondly, then let this kindness become a memory."

He shakes his head and smiles in amusement. Rodium may have won the board game, but Metal Claw won the game he was trying to play. To him, happiness is as simple as a smile, and dopamine and endorphins he can detect being released into the body. Rodium is happy for the moment, but Metal Claw isn't.

He's better at dealing with his emotions than other pokemon, but he still has a soul. How he felt about Mr. Money was more than just an attachment. After they came to Archaea from Poales, Mr. Money became a symbol of something good in an otherwise terrible continent. Metal Claw found that inspiring, and he was glad that he could call the person he looked up to his friend.

"You're something else, Metal Claw," Rodium says. "Thanks for everything."

"We have learned, grown, and gained experience together. You have no need to thank me, because you have given me everything I have."

For the rest of the night, the two pokemon talk about their memories and experiences. Though late in the night, they aren't alone. Felicia and Aphot lay quietly in the shadows, waiting for an opportunity to get past the last two remaining members of Team Gold. They're more interested in the cell in the basement floor of the house. Concealed within the cell is a broken salamence who has lost the will to live.

"Dear oh dear, what have we here?" Aphot says in a whisper. "We'll have use for you yet, little Ember."