Ker didn't know what to do with herself.
She had revolved her whole existence around the Chandelure. He was the only thing she needed in the vapid vastness of reality. How could she need anything more when she had him, someone so unbelievably charming and handsome? Someone who had the most salacious of tongues? Someone who gazed at her so fondly that she actually felt she had a heart? Someone who actually shared her morbid interests instead of shirking away in disgust?
Now he was gone and had taken Ker's reason for being with him.
Ker knew that she could go back to her friends. Bell, Zel, and Adam would probably take her back even though she hadn't seen them in who knew how long. Yet, she couldn't will herself to do so. They had never liked her much in the first place and only now did she realize how flimsy their friendship had been to begin with. They had only tolerated her and were probably glad she was no longer around. After all, had they ever sought her out after all this time? No, they hadn't. Maybe it would be hard to find Ker in the infinite worlds, but if they really wanted to, they could have asked Grim for help. Grim knew where every ghost was at all times.
Yet never once did Grim come for Ker. Ker's so called friends clearly didn't care about her. Gallows had been her only companion in existence. But as of now, the Sableye had nobody.
She went to dimension she first took Gallows to, back when he was pretending to be a frail, weak-hearted ghost. Though there were an infinite number of dimensions she could flee to, this one always gave her a sense of comfort and nostalgia. She always felt at home here and silently thanked no one in particular for sparing this universe's demise each and every time she visited.
The Sableye sat atop the great castle that she had visited with Gallows, The Shadow Alliance main headquarters. She watched members of the organization flow in and out of the stone building in the afternoon sun. None of them noticed her, but not because she had turned invisible Rather, it was because she was so small. If anyone did see her, they probably thought she was just a fellow Alliance member.
Ker watched the members wistfully, too glum to do anything more.
Why did Gallows have to leave her, all because she loved him? Was that really such a big deal to him? Sure, it was unexpected, but the two of them could have worked something out. But no, Ker being in love with him was too much for that Chandelure.
It wasn't like she wanted this to happen. It wasn't like she had a choice in all of this! Nobody ever went "oh I'd like to fall pretty hard for that ghost right over there" and instantly became infatuated. No, it was always the heart that made its own choices against the person's will. When the heart decided it wanted to love someone, you were powerless to its whims. You had to go along with the strong, demanding feelings that it forced into your being. Besides, how could Ker not fall for Gallows? He was charming, suave, intelligent, morbid, and so very handsome. It was his own fault for being too enticing for his own good.
She had a good idea for why he hated romance. Knowing him, it was probably because it had no purpose in a multiverse without meaning. What purpose did love serve in an insignificant existence? Romance novels always went on and on about how love conquered all, how it was what triumphed over all hardships in life. But knowing Gallows, he didn't buy that one bit. Ker could practically hear him sneering at such an absurd concept.
"Love is nothing more than a hormonal reaction to stimulate breeding," Gallows would probably say. "It is a tool nature crafted to bring two creatures together to continue the species and inevitably disappears after the children have been made. It is a lie, a form of madness that mortals eagerly lap up like suckling dogs, mistaking its poison for sweet honey."
Ker sighed. No wonder why he had left her. Her entire being was probably brimming with love's poison, threatening to spill over at a moment's notice. Even still, could he not have given her a chance and not left her so abruptly? They could have found a way to purge all the poison out… they could have been happy together…
She wanted to believe she wasn't actually in love with Gallows, but she knew better. She may have been a ghost, but she'd watched enough love-stricken mortals to recognize she also suffered from their same madness. Somehow not being alive didn't save her from falling in love. She didn't know how that was possible, yet it was.
The Sableye stood up and sank into the castle, slowly drifting down until she reached the flooring where all the Alliance members roamed. A few Pokémon cast her strange gazes, but no one paid her any mind otherwise. They had much more important things to worry about.
Ker wandered through the castle's halls, vapidly taking in the sights as she strolled past the members. Nothing here was really interesting, she had to admit. Sure the castle was decorated quite nicely with tapestries lining the walls and great carpets rolled down the halls, but that was every castle. Even the Pokémon that called this building home were all the same deep down. They were all weak mortals whose minds could never be expanded beyond their limited perspective. Never would any of them understand just how insignificant and futile their lives were, how there were hundreds of thousands of copies of them in different universes and how even calling them a speck would be exaggerating their importance in existence. Everyone here was just a husk, a cage of emotions Ker feasted from.
Yet as she kept wandering down the halls and passing through multiple courtyards, the nostalgia she had for this world never faded. Despite there being nothing here that she couldn't find on any other world, she felt good walking through the castle like a mortal. She wouldn't call herself happy, but she certainly felt content and it distracted her from the bitter ache of her broken heart.
Eventually, she found herself nearing the office of the Guildmasters, a Luxray and Zoroark if memory served right. There was also an Umbreon that served as a Guildmaster, but she was young and more of a protégé. The Sableye could tell that all three of them were behind the door; she could feel their presences from the other side. Ker was about to pass the door and continue on her aimless stroll, but she stopped. Something compelled her to spy on the Guildmasters.
Well, she supposed she had nothing better to do. Besides, she liked watching these Guildmasters, especially the Zoroark. They were an amusing bunch and certainly held more entertainment than the gossiping, shallow-minded members of this Alliance.
The Sableye turned invisible and stepped into the door, phasing right through the wood. When she stepped out, she found herself in the spacious room. As she had suspected, all three of the Guildmasters were gathered around a large desk with a map and several pieces of paper stacked next to it. The Luxray was pointing to several areas on the map with his claws while the Zoroark took notes. The Umbreon silently looked over each spot the Luxray pointed to, nodding occasionally.
"Are we in agreement to making these locations new divisions?" the Luxray asked.
"I don't have a problem with it, but I can't help but wonder who's going to run them," the Zoroark said. "Even if one of us went to each new division, no one would be running this one."
"I realize this," the Luxray said with a thoughtful swivel of his tail. "Therefore, I think we should interview a few potential candidates."
"And who exactly did you have in mind?" the Zoroark asked as she made a new note on her paper.
"Noc and Lume, for starters," the Luxray answered. "They both seem competent enough and from what Yimtri implied back in the day, they took good care of his own Fellowship while he was away."
"Yeah… they did," the Zoroark said quietly. "He told me he could trust them with anything."
The Zoroark smiled wistfully. A bittersweet taste oozed out of the Zoroark and filled the room. Ker frowned. She always hated that taste, that potent mix of longing and fondness. It was one of the worst emotions to feast upon, right next to disgust with its cyanide taste.
"I also think we should interview Moxie and Sterling too," the Umbreon piped up. "They're both good at managing their team. You have to be good leaders if your team is twenty Pokémon big!"
"A fair point," the Luxray said with a nod. "Let's put them on the list too then. Anyone you'd like to recommend, Zekra?"
"Uhhhh… I honestly don't really know," the Zoroark said after a while. "I haven't really been paying much attention to everyone lately…"
"Hmm. So I see," the Luxray said dismissively. "Maybe tomorrow you'll think of someone. Until then, I think we're done for today unless we have more to talk about."
"Nope, I'm good," the Umbreon said.
"Same," Zekra answered as she neatly set her notes beside the map.
"Then this meeting is adjourned," the Luxray said. "See you both tomorrow."
With that, the Zoroark and Umbreon exited the office and went on with their day. The Luxray went back to reviewing the map, humming to himself. Ker watched him silently. She couldn't help but stare at his left eye, which had three long, jagged lines running through it.
He got those from Entei.
The thought appeared so suddenly that Ker almost didn't hear it. Then the thought soon repeated in her mind and with more clarity.
Entei wasn't happy with Len, so he clawed Len's eye as punishment.
Right, that's what had happened. Also, Len was that Luxray's name. The Zoroark was Zekra and the Umbreon was Crystelle.
Ker had watched this world progress throughout the eternity of her existence. She had watched the demonic creatures take over the land and the Pokémon futilely repelling them. She had watched those very demons sheltering their own opposition under the guise of a guild wanting to fight the demons. She had watched a valiant group of Pokémon slowly grow over the years and come together. She had watched them overthrow the conspiracy, watched them steal away the opposition's greatest weapon, and watched them kill the plague that controlled the world.
She had watched them struggle, watched them give into despair, watched them fight one another, watched them die to the claws of the enemy, watched them succumb to eldritch power. She had watched it all over the years as an outsider, never allowing herself to be involved. To her, it was all a story that had already been written and she could do nothing but let it unfold before her eyes.
Ker knew everything there was to know about this world because she had silently watched everything from afar.
The Sableye felt the urge to follow after Zekra. She had always found Zekra to be the more compelling of the characters in this story. Maybe now that she had lost Gallows, she could spend the rest of her eternity following Zekra like a loyal shadow. It would at least bring her some entertainment.
Ker disappeared back through the door and spotted the Zoroark retreating deeper into the castle, probably wherever her bedroom was. Ker trailed her silently, keeping up her invisibility all the while. Sure enough, Zekra arrived at her bedroom, a decently sized room that could probably fit a team of three. The entire room felt awfully blank, lacking any furnishings. There were no treasures collected on the walls, no chests containing valuables, and no magical scarves or capes. There was only a bed of straw, something that Zekra collapsed into not long after shutting the door. She sighed deeply as she removed the black cloth tying up her mane, letting the long, red hair flow out wildly.
Zekra's eyes glimmered softly, and a light rippled over her form. Ker anticipated that the Zoroark would drop her illusion and reveal what she truly looked like. After all, that was what Zekra did, wasn't it? She made herself look like a normal Zoroark in the presence of others even though she looked like a monster thanks to gaining power from a demon in the form of a Mismagius, as ridiculous as that sounded. She put up this illusion so everyone would stop being afraid of her.
But it just turned out to be a trick of the light because Zekra's form never changed. She still looked like a perfectly normal Zoroark.
Ker stared at her, perplexed. She could have sworn that was always what Zekra did when she was alone. It was the one time she dropped her illusion to be herself, when she could stop pretending around everyone. Yet Zekra kept looking like a normal Zoroark.
Whatever, it wasn't important. Maybe Zekra wanted to keep looking normal. Maybe she wanted to delude herself into thinking she was normal and not an abomination that should have been purged from existence like the rest of her kind. Ker didn't know because, although it would have been nice, she wasn't a mind reader.
Zekra closed her eyes as she held the black cloth to her chest. It looked like she was going to bed already even though it was still pretty early in the day. Well if she was going to do that, then there was no reason to stay with her. Sure, Zekra was interesting and worth shadowing, but only when she was awake. Ker saw no reason to leave the Zoroark be and explore the rest of the guild and maybe the world until Zekra finally woke up.
Ker was about to disappear through the door when Zekra muttered a something under her breath. Something that stopped the Sableye dead in her tracks.
"Why did you leave me, Ker?"
The Sableye turned back to Zekra to find her eyes still closed and holding onto that cloth tight. If Ker had a heart, it would have stopped beating.
"What did you just say?" Ker asked frailly.
Of course, Zekra didn't hear her because she was still invisible to all mortal sense. At least, that was how it was supposed to be. However, in that moment of weakness, Ker dropped her verbal invisibility and let Zekra her hear speak.
Zekra's eyes snapped open as she abruptly sat up. She hastily looked around the room, clutching the black cloth tighter. Ker backed into a corner, grimacing.
"Venri? Venri, is that you?" Zekra called out desperately. "Venri, answer me!"
Venri. Zekra had said Venri, not Ker. Of course she had. Venri was the demon that Zekra had befriended and abruptly vanished not long after the plague upon the world had been vanquished. Of course Zekra had been wondering about that Mismagius. She got like that when she became wistful.
Ker left the panicking Zoroark all alone, feeling beyond stupid. Ker had just misheard the name, that was all. Of course Zekra would never utter her name when she had never met Ker. The Sableye just wanted someone to call her name because it meant someone actually cared about her.
Ker had just that not long ago. She had Gallows and that was all she ever needed. But she had chased him away because she had developed stupid feelings for him. Now she was never getting him back and no one would ever want her again.
She had no one to share her morbid thoughts with. No one that could understand her almost better than she understood herself. No one for her to cherish more than anything in all of existence.
No one to keep her company in this ever expanding network of universes that didn't care about her existence one bit.
And it was all her fault.
For the very first time in a very, very long time, Ker wanted to cry.
It was difficult to say exactly where Nyarlathotep was right now. As a being with multiple masks who could be everywhere at once, narrowing down his single location was impossible. For instance, one mask of his had just finished taunting Jera in the form of a shadowy Banette while in Abel's dimension. Another mask of his, a more ethereal version of himself without any real form, had just left Glace's body before she had been assimilated. And yet another mask of his, so commonly called Grim by the ghostly ones of the multiverse, was ripping a Marowak's soul out of his body and transforming him into a Haunter.
Nyarlathotep was not a singular being, but rather, a being that could be multiple persons at once. It was a difficult concept that most mortals failed to grasp, but it was true all the same.
But if one had to ask where the main Nyarlathotep one, the one Glace, Sonata, and Yore had first met seemingly an eternity ago, he was in Ker's home dimension, that unsettling realm only ghosts could visit. After all, he was the very dimension itself and only manifested in the form of a Sableye to communicate with anyone he found amusing.
He was currently enjoying himself by watching all of the remaining fragments' progress across the multiverse. He knew exactly where every single one of them was. Dimia was waiting for darkness to come over Cinder's guild so she could snatch the little Torchic away and assimilate her. Jera and Abel had just left the Shinx's dimension and were now emerging into Caran's world. Caran himself was sitting amongst the elderly of his tribe and seeking knowledge in regards to why they evolved into either a Gardevoir or Gallade. Peony was having a lively conversation with a Bulbasaur and Chikorita that aspired to grow such a sprawling, blooming botanical garden like the Bayleef. Nexus was hidden within the shadow of a Mienshao, copying all of its moves so that he might be ready for the fragments that would soon be after him.
And then of course there was Ker, Nyarlathotep's favorite of the group.
Right now, she was sulking in that dimension once filled with monstrous beings. He knew she would go there after everything that had happened with Gallows. That was her true home, the one place she found comfort in, and for good reason. Nyarlathotep could never stop laughing at how perfectly he had made that world, how beautifully it catered to Ker.
Yet as he watched her loom through that world so sullenly, he couldn't help but feel the least bit terrible about it. It was always fun teasing her, messing with her mind, enjoying her to the brim. Oh yes, he found no greater joy than playing with Ker in a myriad number of ways even she wasn't aware of. But seeing her so broken with her heart torn in two put a damper on his elation. He found no joy in seeing her like this and it only left him feeling rather downtrodden himself.
Everything had been growing too personal between them. Ker had grown fond of him and maybe that was the point of everything. He always knew she'd fall for that Chandelure mask of his. How could she not when Gallows was everything she wanted in a romantic partner?
But then something changed, something that wasn't supposed to happen. He had thought ending things with her would solve the problem, but it was just making things worse.
He knew he could just direct Dimia to go after Ker at this point. That Braixen was so easy to manipulate. He could fix her visions toward that Sableye and make it seem she had to be next or else the Braixen's world would fall apart too quickly. Dimia could fix everything so easily.
Unfortunately, he didn't have the heart to do it. No, though it would be the best and easiest thing to do, he couldn't erase Ker from existence.
Nyarlathotep looked into the multiverse through each of his masks again. He especially peered into the lives of the fragments, determining how long he had until they were all one being. From the looks of it, he was running out of time. Dimia was determined and blessed with seer sight and magic his Faceless God mask had gifted her. She'd probably have Cinder assimilated very soon and if following the narrative he had given her, would immediately go after Caran, where she'd also have a grand opportunity to assimilate Jera and Abel with that Kirlia. Peony would give her no trouble at all afterwards. He was never a good fighter and would probably put up a pitiful resistance. Nexus could potentially hold Dimia off since he had gained the power of nightmares from a Darkrai not too long ago, but Dimia had unfathomable willpower. Nothing would stop that Braixen from saving her home world, not even if she had to disappear from existence. She could overcome Nexus if he wasn't careful enough. After that… Ker was next. She stood absolutely no chance against that Braixen. Dimia would be too strong at that point, even with her mind overwhelmed with the voices and memories of all the other fragments.
If Nyarlathotep wanted to save Ker, he needed to act now. He hated the idea of altering the narratives he had so carefully laid out for these fragments, but he'd have to for Ker's sake.
But before he could do any of that, he'd need to don his Gallows mask again. He had an important job to do as that Chandelure for any of this to work.
Nyarlathotep found Gallows drifting through the corridors between realities, deciding which world to visit in order to satiate his never-ending hunger. Nyarlathotep as Gallows hurried back to the dimension Ker wallowed in.
It was time to tell Ker the truth about everything.