Chapter 0
All he could see was shadows. An 11 old Ash stood shakily on a surface of some kind, he knew that. It was sturdy, if a bit surreal as he surveyed his surroundings. It wasn't dark, despite his prior analysis. The space he was in stretched near ceaselessly, a wall of shaded waves and winds blowing into an ethereal plane; dark crests splashing off of jagged, floating pedestals and moors like new moons providing a lighter shade of gray to an otherwise ambient black. Despite that, Ash felt no discomfort from his environment. The fact of the matter was, he felt a general sense of detachment, much like floating in a pool or waking from an unremarkable dream.
With this sense of calm, Ash also had the sense of being watched. Almost by opposition to human instinct, Ash closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and spread his arms wide like a young man finding enlightenment. He fell, slowly, backwards towards the solid getty he could feel beneath his feet, and yet, instead of slamming his body against angled rock, he sank slowly, "like a cloud," Ash mused internally and continued through until he breached the other side of his foundation, descending into a paced freefall. The weight of whatever was observing Ash intensified with this strange action, something that Ash felt a mixture of fear, and oddly a dim satisfaction for. Ash's free fall continued for longer than he expected, or even could reasonably comprehend for that matter. It felt like an eternity had gone by until finally, with a sudden jerk, he halted in midair. There was no pain from his sudden stop, though Ash registered on a certain level that at the least, he should have some severe whiplash from such a halt. Silence was his only answer to Ash's actions, though that silence clung to him. Ash felt it within that silence; the feel of a gaze beyond his understanding weighing onto him and finding… approval? Suddenly, he fell to another platform, the same as the one he'd been on previously and a silhouette of something seemed to manifest out in the greater darkness, just on the edge of his vision, and yet everywhere.
"મારા ક્ષેત્રમાંના એક માટે, તમે ખૂબ જ બોલ્ડ છો. જો તમને તેનામાં આરામ મળે છે, તો તે તમારી સાથે એક યુવાન સાથે લઈ જાઓ અને સંપૂર્ણ માંસ તરફ મારી ઇચ્છાના પાત્ર બનો."
Ash was suddenly beset by an incredible pressure, and forced nearly to his knees. Where most would have become terrified, Ash simply was intrigued, even curious. He could feel the change coming over him, as though his new mindset that he'd found within was settling into his waking being, as though his peace within the shadows of this thing, this being, this God he'd found himself in the presence of had transcended his own life in moments, and it wasn't a bad feeling.
Ash quickly felt the presence recede, but not leave. He stood as the pressure fell away and brushed himself off, then looked around. The shadows were still pooling in waves against darkened tors and ancient obelisks of things beyond him. The ambient shades were still beyond a spectrum he could truly comprehend, but at the same time it seemed that the shades were no longer just splashing through the air. The dark winds seemed to caress him, the crests running through his hair, and for the first time since awaking in this otherscape, Ash smiled.
આગળ ઉપરાંત
"Ash! Ash! Wake up! Please wake up!" Delia Ketchum was understandably upset.
Her night had been going fairly normal for a while. Her son had gone to bed early, around 9:30 pm, she'd finished maintaining their moderate sized home and just settled into a recliner in the living room with one of the latest breeding papers detailing the latest changes to interbreeding between psychic and dark type pokemon. Her espeon and starter from her own training days, affectionately curled into her lap and rumbling, had just fallen asleep, and her Mr. Mime was asleep in his own little corner of her humble home. Then all hell broke loose.
Espeon awoke with a startled scream just as Mr. Mime stood quickly, a startled look in his normally whimsical eyes. The lights began to flicker violently creating dark pools of light where there should have been none that writhed and twisted as though being torn from their bond to the earth, and beyond that all, Delia felt pure, bone deep terror. It was as though a monster had stepped into the space that her house was one and opened the floor beneath her, allowing her an unfettered gaze into the deepest pits of hell, and there she saw nothing but death. Delia was nothing if not a devoted mother however. Despite her fear, she quickly stood, the hardened look that only a mother could have upon realizing that her son was in the same building she was, her Espeon quickly syncing into her thoughts and jumping up with her racing up along side her towards and up the stairs to Ash's room.
The phenomenon had only grown worse the closer she got. The door itself was ajar, but there was no light in Ash's bedroom. If anything, there was an absence of light pouring from the door, swallowing the light from the flickering hall light upstairs. She barreled through, brushing aside the fear from feeling the shadows somehow be solid and screamed upon pushing into Ash's room. Her son was cocooned in darkness, wreaths like cloth spiraling around him leaving him barely visible. It seemed attached to the walls and floor of his space, similar to veins attached to every surface, pulsing a disturbing ichor through them, seeming to draw from the darkness already spreading through the rest of her home.
"Espeon! Use Dazzling Gleam! Try to clear some of this away!" Delia yelled struggling forward into a burst of darkened wind that had sprung up from the cocoon around her son. Espeon leapt forward and a blast of multi-colored light emanated from the gem on its forehead. The shadows seemed to recoil as though physically struck, and seeing some success and even more so, a lightening of the pressure against her, Delia called for the attack three more times. With enough ability to move, Delia reached into the cocoon of darkness and grabbed Ash, physically pulling him from the wrap and dragging him out. Upon his removal, the wraps slowly began to dissipate, disappearing into thin air, and with their removal, the rest of the shadows arcing around Ash's room and into the house seemed to be eliminated as well. Delia felt tears poor from her eyes as her son remained unresponsive and she began to shake him.
"Ash! Ash! Wake up! Please wake up!" She cried over him. Espeon came over to Delia's side, even as she sobbed into her son's chest and laid a paw on her, concern radiating from Espeon's tired eyes. Then, for a moment, a miracle. Ash breathed deeply, and his eyes fluttered open.
Delia hugged him to her chest quickly. "Oh thank Arceus! Ash, are you ok?"
She pulled him away to look at him and gasped in shock. Ash blinked back at her confused and tilted his head but the damage was done.
"What's wrong Mom?" He asked quietly, his hair a mess from the winds that had previously torn through his room, his clothes askew, and his formerly hazel eyes now a dark, endless sky of shadows and darkness.