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Hisui: Ancient Sinnoh. Blessed realm of the Hisuians.
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And with the unwelcome departure of the Two Princes, there was then a great debate between the lords about what should be done in Zacian and Zamazenta's absence. Aelfric, the Lord of the House of the Pillar of Snow, gathered his host about him, a hundred strong and with many more thousands about the surrounding lands at their summons. Theon of the House of the Swan took the side of the King along with all his men and Pokemon that would adhere to him, while the House of the Harp lorded over by Penlod the Valiant put itself in opposition to both parties.
"My lords," Theon pleaded as he stood by the King, the captive Logarian under his watchful eye. "Listen to the words of the King, who rules along with the Two! Now we must begin a line of Kings, and remember the Two far into the time of the Dominion of Men and Pokemon. Other evils there are that may yet come; for the Mbelekoro was himself but a servant or emissary of such things from other worlds. But we must guard our land as much as we may, so that those that come far after us shall have clean soil to till and unspoiled streams to drink from. We will not cower away from these new duties, and the teachings of the Two will be preserved for as long as they may."
"Nay!" Aelfric said. "Men cannot govern themselves, for since Men are not infallible, then eventually a wicked King shall come to power, and our people will suffer greatly. We must find new guidance. It is said that an Elohim of great power and nobility dwells within the Southern Wastes; Calyrex it is named. Our people must appeal to it for lordship, and then the reign of Elohim over Men and Pokemon will begin anew. I do not counsel prudence in this decision, for Calyrex wherever it might be found may be harsher than the Two Princes, and perhaps less wise. But we have no other courses of action now."
"And I say that we must forget the Twin Princes entirely," Penlod said. "And honor their wishes for the beginning of the Dominion of Men and Pokemon to be unspoiled by the memory of the days that came before. We must not have a King, for alone his power was restrained by the Twin Princes who are now gone. We must not be led by an Elohim, for that is against the Will of Arceus. We must be sundered from each other, and each House must be ruled over by a Lord, and then peace will be had."
And this talk went on for quite a while, and blame was cast and doubts voiced, and many times a man from one House would come to blows with another man until the Corviknight threw them apart. It seemed that the King was slinking in his golden throne, and he would not cease to weep. The Logarian had a dreadful grin on his face, seeing as though his enemies were set against each other now that they had their Rulers forcibly taken from them.
It came to pass that Aelfric swore a hasty and terrible oath to leave with all his followers into the Seten-du-ælrâp, the Crown Tundra, to seek Calyrex and its bountiful blessings. There was a blowing of trumpets, and then the lords of the House of the Pillar of Snow withdrew from the Hall to gather their families and Pokemon-kin for the southward march. The King became ever more saddened, but only Theon paid heed to him.
Penlod's faction had the majority, and thus the Line of Kings was to be broken, and the children of Wulfhere were not to inherit the throne. There was an ever greater uproar from Theon's camp, and many men had gathered their weapons from the door-guards.
The Logarian was unguarded, and he crept toward the old King, and grasped the Rusted Sword that lay still upon its throne to slay him. But his hand was burned with a holy light, and he cried aloud and fell backward, unworthy of bearing the blessed blade to do such evil with it. Turning about like a beast, (for beasthood was truly in his heart) he ran for the wide door, screaming in madness and strange joy as he fled.
A guard saw him and cried out, and the Logarian halted. He licked his lips with a long pale tongue. Slowly he rose from his hunch and looked backward as if attempting to see some gap in the ring of his enemies. For the Houses of Penlod and Theon had seen the deed that the Logarian had intended to do, and now they hated the Southman ever more.
Such malice was in the Logarians eyes that men stepped back from him. His hands worked. He bared his teeth, and then with a hissing breath he spat before Theon's feet, and darting to one side, he fled farther down the stair. One guard ran down the flight, and a pair of archers accompanied him. Two Galarian bows twanged, and the Logarian fell dead. Several more lords came to bring the body away and to clean his defilement.
The King had limped to the gates with the aid of his staff, and pointed a shriveled finger at the Rusted Sword and Shield. And he gave a final cry, for a look of wild wisdom that befits the dying came into his glittering eyes.
"They must go to the Weald, both! Ah, a fane, a altar must be made for the Two! But when? I go now to the Halls of Celebi, amid a divided house! Where is the horn that is blowing? Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing? Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing? Where is the spring and the harvest, and the tall corn growing? They have passed, passed like rain on the mountains, like a wind in a meadow. The days have gone down in the West, behind the hills, and into shadow. Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning, or behold the flowing years from the sea? Tell me!"
But no one could answer his lament. And he looked to the clouds, and then fell. In the arms of his wards, he grew weary of grief, and died.
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Now, Wild Area
Whatever our bodies do affects our souls, which I am afraid to say is a sincere and truthful statement. However, the best deception occurs not by putting things in a Man's brain, but by keeping the Truth out. No one may know the Truth if it is guarded well enough.
-Emrett Dialogues, compiled works
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"It happened about a year ago, I suppose," Henry said to Bronze. "There was a place that I had business in, so I tried to go there. The Slumbering Weald, west of Postwick. Do you know anything about that place?"
"Yes," Bronze presently said. "It is a haunt for spirits and dark Elohim, holdouts of the Mbelekoro's armies. They pose no threat, and the legends surrounding the Weald have convinced many that it is the home of dangerous Pokemon. It would be a waste of resources to send in our exorcists and purge the evil there. What madness brought you to the Weald?"
"I will tell you! Please, listen..."
...
Henry and his Farfetch'd stood before the yawning gates to the Slumbering Weald. Lines of rotting trees stretched over the rising hills, and the unmaintained dirt path was shrouded in mist, brick-wrought hedges degrading into disrepair far down the road. An old wood gate, paint weathered with age, blocked the lone entrance. "So, they should be here..." Henry mused. "The Rusted Sword and Rusted Shield!"
A notice was placed by the gate, dimmed with the ravages of age. "Enter thee not without countenance." Henry tried the gate, and found that it was locked with heavy bonds. "I suppose that means we shouldn't enter recklessly, Farfetch'd. What shall we do?"
Two glimmers of light shone out of the dark forest, burning fair and bright. Henry wondered what had caused the strange flash, when a sudden cry made him turn.
A girl was hastily running toward the gate with her company of Pokemon, not seeming to notice the wooden blockade. "Out of the way! Beat it! Flee!" The girl and her Pokemon rammed into the gate, with Henry safely to the edge of a wall. "Are you alright, miss?"
She scrambled up. "Yes! Did you see those flickers of light? The Wishing Stars, I mean! I saw two super shiny things in the forest! I always suspected there were some Stars in the Weald, but no one would go there to look! But now I have proof, proof, I tell you! Now, I must get them!"
The gate opened as Farfetch'd cut through the lock with its leek, and then went forward into the accursed Weald. "This is problematic," Henry mused. "My only Pokemon has gone into the Weald. Now, I must follow. What is to be done?"
"There could be wild Pokemon in there," the girls yelled. "Or worse things! Me and my Pokemon can follow you around, we'll go with you! My name is Casey Shield, and yours?"
"Henry Sword, quite charmed, miss."
The path became overgrown but not overtly hostile after a short walk, and Pokemon lived untroubled. Casey pointed to a few. "That's a Skwovet, a Normal-type! It always has berries in its cheeks, which makes it tougher than it looks. That one in the bough is a Rookidee, a Flying-type! It's quick and tiny, and able to stand up to foes much bigger than itself."
A strange girl, Henry thought. "You know much, eh?"
"Yes! I want to be Professor Magnolia's assistant, so I have been studying as much as I can! You know that she is the leader in Dynamax Research, right? I need those Wishing Stars to help her, they aren't exactly a renewable resource. Why were you at the Weald's entrance, Henry?"
"There is a legend that I have heard..." Henry began. "Have you heard of the Rusted Sword and Rusted Shield? They are what I am looking for...my family works on the tools that Pokemon use...their gear. We are a clan of Swordsmiths, descending from Theon Havensmaster himself. I was taught how to maintain weaponry, and it said that the Rusted Sword and Shield have incredibly special properties: the ability to produce entropic effects or to change the chemical composition of things that they touch. I hope to see them if they truly are in the Weald."
Over by a boulder, Farfetch'd was standing over some object that had drawn his attention, and Casey noticed it. "Henry, there's your Pokemon. What's it looking at?-"
She saw the Wishing Stars, two of them.
Like crystals of adamant light and dark pearlescent hue they appeared, yet they shone more brightly than diamond, and they could not be dimmed by cloud or shade of night. Luminous waveform beams of phosper-light emitted from their shifting cores, like the sheen of undulating amethyst and pale opal. They made the white rock shine ablaze to light at their base, and the magic light was like a perfect and dextrous glass-sheen.
And they sang, a song of lost eras out of the far past from the beginning of the Count of Time when all things came into being at the spoken Word of the Original One. Full of the magic and might of Westernesse, none would guess that they had come from something that was in truth Evil, yet they were untainted in themselves, being only used by the Dark Forces for a strange purpose yet unknown.
"Oh! Oh!" Casey cried, collapsing. "Two, hidden all this time? No wonder we haven't been attacked, the power of the Stars is preventing the evil of this place from taking foot! I only need one, Henry. You should take the other one as a gift, who knows what you could forge or hammer out of it?"
Henry held aloft the Jewel of Heaven in his hand. "Very nice...how beautiful. I ought to make it into a Dynamax Band. A quick stop to Macro Cosmos will be all it will take to be able to Dynamax my Pokemon anywhere! Chairman Rose made the band based on Professor Magnolia's theories, right?"
"Bingo!" Casey yelled. "If you want to get a band for free with that Wishing Star, you can come and see Magnolia herself! She won't charge a penny...it's getting foggy, isn't it?"
Rolling shreds of mist had converged around the two from an unknown source, obscuring the forest in a thick blanket of unnatural quiet. A stillness had settled on the Weald, and nary a single Pokemon could be heard. Chill winds blew, ruffling Henry's shirt and hair. Then Henry realized that they had gone off the path. "Which way did we come from, again? Maybe this is why people don't come here..."
Casey promptly began to walk away from the boulder where they had retrieved the Wishing Stars. "Let's try going this way-"
Henry advised her to stop. "We must gain a bearing on our surroundings. I assume that since we removed the Wishing Stars from the ground, their protection has ended in some way. I feel a presence, a higher will somewhere near."
"Huh?" Shield yelled, turning. "I don't feel anything-"
Then she saw them. Out of the mist-shroud two somber creatures had come forth. There were canine in appearance, but to call them dogs would have been far too insulting. They were glorious with the splendor of their cyan and scarlet hides, and the crest of each about the neck resembled a sword and shield in passing. In their eyes was an unbroken sort of Willpower, and deeper still a tornado of sheer valor could be seen. Dwarfing the two children, they crept forward on their legs to eye the impish intruders in their domain.
"These must be the Weald Guardians!" Henry breathed. "Don't show fear or disrespect. These Pokemon or Elohim are judging us, I can feel it. We cannot go anywhere until they let us pass."
"No!" Casey yelled. "We can't risk being injured! It's do or die! Everyone, attack! Use your most powerful moves and try your hardest! Kilo, Scald! Tera, Shock Wave! Peta, Blizzard! Mega, Metal Claw! Giga, Rock Smash!"
Neither heat nor frost nor force brought the beings low. The attacks passed through the two guardians as if they were made of the same mist that now surrounded the two children. The two creatures roared, and then they attacked, even though they were without bodies. Space contracted, and for a moment the children saw the true nature of the Elohim as they defeated every last one of Casey's Pokemon. Darting pillars filled with eyes, lighting pulses of heavenly flame, claws and muzzles and billowy masses that suggested infinite snow, volleying through cubes and heptagons into a luminous expanse of light. The battle had ended.
"Wha-?!" Casey gasped, overcome with fear as she beheld the eldrich sight. "The moves...they went through them! Are these illusions? But they attacked, I think...I can see something! Henry, do you see them?"
"Of course I see them," Henry challenged.
"Don't be dense!" Casey said. "Behind the two! I see an altar, something that wasn't there before! Look!"
Henry peered into the narrow space between the two Elohim, and saw what had not been perceived before. Although surely the two children had not moved more than a few feet, now a ruin had appeared in the fog when before there was only dense foliage before the sudden arrival of the two Elohim. A narrow slab of white marble with a minuscule flight of four half-foot high steps could be seen, and after that a double-layered dais upon which laid the vague outlines of a sword and shield at the narrow base of an indistinct altar. "Yes, I see them...a sword and shield!"
In the white void, Henry took a step toward Zacian and Zamazenta, despite Casey's protests. "Are you two protecting the Rusted Sword and Rusted Shield?" he asked, his hands raised. "I'm not here to steal them unwarranted! I just want to look at them."
"And why should we welcome you, Smith-boy?" Zacian boomed in a perfectly articulate, yet stunningly inorganic voice. "Many enter. They do not return. Consumed with a passion they were, a passion for our keepsakes. We may unbody you as quickly as a reed snaps in the hand of a strong man. Why do you dare to pass?"
"Because you know that in my heart I tell the truth. And would you kill children?"
"We have killed children, men, women, lords, Pokemon, and Elohim," Zamazenta said without any particular pride or sorrow. It said them plainly as though it were part of a drearily necessary day's routine, now being revealed to one with little knowledge of the high duty to which the two Princes aspired toward. "Attempt and pass if you wish to see that our state of incorporeality will spare you from the Hand of Doom."
"If I must."
Henry walked forward at a normal pace, and then passed through the two Elohim unharmed. The two vanished without any physical effect. "You did it!" Casey yelled,, sending back her unconscious Pokemon with a rapturous gesture of her Poke Balls. "Why did they disappear like that?"
The fog became much lighter, although it was still absolute in concealing the path. Suspecting a sort of enchantment was at work that had moved them through the forest, Henry tried to mark his steps as he walked over towards the altar, built in the decadent style of Old Galar. He went forward in the fog, peering intently at the silhouettes of the Rusted Sword and Rusted Shield.
Casey and Henry had about reached the artifacts when they were caught by a blinding light so piercing and total that their eyes could not even adjust to overcome the vivid hues. Their retinas were flooded, and all went pale white. Musing upon how light is sometimes no different than dark, Henry passed into oblivion.
...
"BOOM!" Casey screamed, jumping on her feet. "And that's how it happened! We lost consciousness, both of us!"
"And our senses weren't the only things that we lost," Henry said to Bronze. "Once the incredible light and shock had passed and we woke up, the fog had cleared away. But..."
"...the Rusted Sword and Shield were gone!"
"What?" Bronze cried. "Are you saying that you had an encounter with two suspected Elohim in an anomalous location, communicated with them, saw two extranormal artifacts, and then were attacked by some unknown force that stole them, and you never reported this? Magnolia, what could have conspired you to take that road?"
"Oh, we tried," Magnolia said. "I didn't think that you or your advisors would want to be troubled about this, and you were off in Roria last year! And there was another issue. Casey's Pokemon also had disappeared."
"Yes," Henry said. "We searched all of the next day in the Weald, but we found none of their Poke Balls. We thought they washed down a stream in the forest, but we also found nothing there. We decided to see Magnolia because of this, but all of our reports to the Bureau of Lost Pokemon came up empty. We named the two Pokemon or Elohim that we had encountered the "Sword and Shield Pokemon." Either they took them for some reason, or were blasted away by the light. I wanted to support Shield because I felt guilty about getting her into that mess with the light, and Magnolia knew Casey from when she was young. We became Pokedex Holders, and have been going around Galar aiding Magnolia with her research ever since."
"And that's why we wanted to join the League!" Casey yelled. "Even though we haven't found my team, we've gotten so much attention that even Team Yell tried to harass us! We fought them off, sir, we don't need any of your protection. While we're in the League and we spread the word, we almost certainly will be able to gather my missing Pokemon if everyone is looking for them!"
Bronze nodded and signaled to Jake in a specialized Rorian battle-language. The coded gestures said to send out a message to all available personnel to look for lost Pokemon that fit Casey's descriptions. "That actually might work, and we here at the Association are glad to aid you. Woodhall. Can you make an inference as to what caused that light?"
Tess came out of her Bibliographer mental state, and shook her head. "Nothing. Everything rescues upon itself, I am getting lost along strands of irrelevant thought. I cannot make an accurate prediction based on an incomplete data set. This is a futile exercise."
Jake stood, ready to leave the posh interior of the Magnolia RV. "If we're done here, I want to tell you kids that I like what I see. I was definitely trying to see you fail when I had you take a go at that sensei mech. But I think that you have guts, real guts, and more potential than most folks have. Maybe it's the Pokedex, maybe it's something else. We will be following your movements and helping you in ways that you will never quite understand."
"It is tempting to manipulate you," Bronze said. "But I do not wish to become like my enemies. I suppose I could ask you to condemn...the enemy in question right in the middle of a Gym Battle, but that would be completely unnecessary and rather sickening. It would be distasteful to have children to adult work. Now, I must get to the opening ceremony for the League Challenge! Good day, Henry Sword and Casey Shield. We shall meet at a later date. Magnolia, I thank you for the tea."
Without any further pleasantries, the three Association executives exited the Magnolia RV.
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Author Note: This story is going to be like a book where there are minor action scenes for the first two-thirds or half of the story, and then it turns into pure, all-out battling and chaos. Don't worry about it being too slow right now, things will get better if you are following it in the long term. The Then storyline is going to be wrapped up soon.