This story was co-developed by Titan127 and beta read by ShonnaRose and JhinoftheOpera.
[10-3] Myths of the Universe
Saber's lingering hesitation was beaten into retreat by his desire to know more.
He lumbered through the center of the sparse, green-patched ground, having to stall his legs to keep pace behind the diminutive Professor Carolina. Her life wasn't gripped with hurry as his was, and she was offered the mercy of controlling her pace. There was no demand that she move faster than her legs could support, stuck in this preserved moment of time in the ruins of Celestic Valley.
If only he was afforded such luxury, but he'd already tangled himself in his chase, with an unsettling claim that left him shaken, even though he wasn't a professional investigator. He wanted to drop his tip with the International Police, but he had no way to approach them without offering himself as a criminal and thus invalidating his information.
Eventually, he couldn't take the tension anymore and broke the silence. "What do you know about Dr. Cassius?"
"Sinnoh's researchers are always welcome here," said Professor Carolina. "Berlitz, Rowan, Kenzo, Roseanne. Even Steven Stone graces us, once in a blue moon. His knowledge of rare stones is valuable, but we rarely extend permission to non-Sinnohans. Most of them visit to corroborate research and request funding from ASPI. Assuming, of course, that their research is related to our interests."
"And Dr. Cassius?" he pressed.
"Now, now, young man," she said, "Don't be impatient. Rushing too fast might end up more harmful than not."
Saber threw his hands behind his back, fiddling his fingers for lack of a better distraction. He confirmed her claims of the valley as a former strip mine, seeing where the earth had been opened and then poorly patched with sods. The sparse trees could hardly be called a landscape. It was a monument to Sinnoh's past—an industrial age that had hardly slowed and came to blows with natural wonders it conspired to bury.
He could see their location upcoming, a university-like building laying on a pad of white. A fine layer still hung on its slanted roof, awaiting when it would slide free. Professor Carolina spent her lungs pulling herself up the short stairs at the building's porch, and then fumbled with a set of keys to twist open the five separate locks on the door. When he stepped inside, Saber was greeted with an intimately familiar position as the center of attention.
Just as when he fought in tournaments or braved the paparazzi alongside his father, he bore the weight of judgement as an other. He was an outsider to everyday life, more a symbol of intrigue than a person. It wasn't until Professor Carolina waved her cane in sharp motions that the researchers in the lobby of the building returned to their business, though not without second glances.
"None of them will tell you were here. Our organization exists to keep secrets. We would be damned if we couldn't keep yours," she said. He had stepped forward, and he felt her jam her cane into his back to push him forward.
They tracked down sterile hallways, past collection rooms where stone fragments were arranged carefully on tables for inspection or logging, large glass cases locking away artifacts that weren't safe to touch according to their golden strips of warning tape. Professor Carolina turned them down one more hallway, where a researcher—armed with capsules on his belt—exchanged a nonverbal conversation with the elder. Eventually, he stepped aside of the sliding door, and Professor Carolina let a sensor read her identity from her fingertip.
The metal barrier slid open, and inside were two pedestals standing in the center of a dark room. Saber stumbled forward, beckoned by the whispering voices of the shining stone within one pedestal's glass case. Its glimmer piercing his pupils, he couldn't take his eyes off it.
"The Lustrous Orb," he whispered, withholding every instinct to trigger an alarm by placing his hand on the glass. It was one of two artifacts cherished by the past. Historical accounts claimed that they could bring kings and lords to their knees in worship, and the items resting in front of him, while impossible to confirm, were believed by the anthropological community at large to those same fragments of history. They were associated with creator deities, and myths told that they could even summon them.
Whether or not their existence in the present inspired disappointment at their use as paperweights or fear at their power depended wholly on faith. Saber fell, rationally, into the latter category. The past had been claimed, but no matter the theories people dreamed, their only deifying qualities were their beautiful appearances.
It didn't escape his attention, of course, that the opposite case was empty.
He glanced at the vacant pedestal, and then back to the professor, who seemed amused by his trance-like state. She ordered the door closed behind her and spoke only in a whisper once they were finally severed from the outside world.
"Albert was one of the minds I frequently collaborated with, but he never allowed me the courtesy of acquaintance," she said. "He wrote multiple theories on the orbs and their connection to origin myth and was one of few people who had regular access to this very restricted room."
She stepped up to the artifact's ghost, examining it closely. Her fragile fingers traced over the empty cushion.
"Do you believe in Legendary Pokémon?"
Her question summoned an eerie echo, from when those same words—mostly—had escaped Dr. Cassius. Saber couldn't bring himself to believe myths over history, even if they informed each other. They simply didn't exist.
"Your mother did," she said, "because she'd seen them."
He hesitated. "Is this some joke?"
"The Adamant and Lustrous Orbs were first delivered to us by her. It was after that Galactic fiasco two years ago," Professor Carolina explained, circling the pedestals with purpose. "They were unearthed in the subterranean areas of Mt. Coronet by those uncouth fellows. Do you know why?"
It was a shockingly furious question, and Saber stuttered, melting under its heat. "I don't, ma'am."
"Your mother witnessed it. They summoned the great creators. They tried to annihilate the universe."
He waited for the wave to break—any moment, her tone would slip free of its tension, and she'd laugh off her little qip. However, she made no such concessions. Every crease in her cheeks and beneath her eyes said she was speaking truth, or at the very least, what she interpreted as such.
His mother purported to have seen the creators of reality itself. He never heard any such claim, and shortly after the Galactic Company thoroughly unsettled the Pokémon League by establishing major presences in Eterna and Veilstone, his mother made little mention of anything about Mt. Coronet.
She was hardly the person to make outlandish assertions like that, especially not ones she hadn't thoroughly put in writing, and he could confirm she had no papers, published or otherwise, about the physical evidence of gods themselves. It wasn't that he didn't trust his mother—he would have trusted her with his life, and her devotion to peace would never prove his trust unwarranted. Rather, he could not find reason to trust this stranger's filtered recollection of his mother's experience.
"Some months ago, Albert graced us and demanded we hand over the orbs. He was always obsessed with them and legendary figures. Yet, I'd never seen him so… frantic. When I couldn't provide, he stormed away. Then, it happened." Professor Carolina seemed to pray in a moment of silence. She still held the mortal disgrace of outliving a generation that was supposed to carry on her legacy. As a grandmother, not as a researcher, she must have been devastated, though she never let it loosen the firm grip on her cane. "Shortly thereafter, the Adamant Orb was stolen."
"I hadn't heard about this," he said quietly. In fact, he was completely dumbfounded, blindsighted even. He had consistently followed the news since he "escaped", looking both for more information about the case and the scramble for a Champion, and for such a sensational heist to fly under his radar was unheard of. Or, perhaps, the former was exactly the reason for the latter.
Professor Carolina must have sensed his thought process. "It didn't reach those stuffy TV executives, I suppose. There were more important things to turn their cameras to. How dreadfully convenient."
"You mean to suggest that this was planned?" asked Saber.
"Like you, I hold little hard evidence. It's simply a hunch," replied Professor Carolina. She tapped her cane hard on the floor, enough that Saber was certain she could split the planet in two. "But, you may be searching for the one who took my family and the artifacts I live to protect. It's my duty as your great-grandmother to help you."
Without another word edgewise, she knocked on the sliding door, and when it opened, beckoned him to follow her through the remainder of the building, past sealed labs where other research assistants were hard at work. It was hard to imagine, for how fervent they worked, that none of them contained the blood of the village—adopting it as their own, they sought to respect it when none were left to.
Professor Carolina barked at an assistant standing in the hallway. "Gather all our catalogued material on the site's Unown inscriptions."
"Of course, director!" said a man through furious nods.
"Tell me why you're interested in the language," said Professor Carolina, returning her attention to him.
What resistance he had was quickly cracked by her spearheaded attitude. Even if he didn't believe what she said about Legendary Pokémon—though he found his hands a little more restless than usual, trying to gasp onto his arms or his shoulders or anywhere to ground himself—the connections to his mother made it impossible to keep what he knew from her family. Saber retrieved his mother's notebook and revealed the final page to Professor Carolina, holding it long enough for her eyes to wander the mural of symbols. She seemed intent on finding meaning herself, but she eventually nodded and implied for him to put it away.
"My granddaughter wrote that?" she asked.
"It's chronologically the final writing she ever—" Saber stopped himself, when he realized how the missing segments of her notebook challenged the claim swirling in his head. "It's the latest note of hers in my possession. I believe it may shed light on the situation, since she wrote it only hours before she… passed, and it's a nearly unbreakable code by most people."
"A final clue. How poetic of her."
With a whirlwind of activity behind them as the researchers pushed and shoved to their conclusions, Saber and the professor stepped back out into the snow.
His mother's research ever on his mind, Saber recalled an aside to the institute's puzzle. "Professor, what do you know of the third orb?"
The third artifact, linked not to a creator, but an unmaker. It was less well-known than the Adamant and Lustrous Orbs, not the least because its patron deity was considered an omen rather than a blessing, but writings suggested it was formed alongside its siblings at the birth of the universe.
She spat a laugh within a cough. "Sharp, boy. Officially, we have no record of the Griseous Orb's existence, only its writings. The good doctor demanded we tell him its location as well, but, of course, we couldn't provide that information even if we had it."
"Officially?" That qualifier was his first and last clue, and her knowing smirk told everything she didn't.
"Your mother claimed to see many things that day. She said she spent a year in only an hour, wandering through a place where neither time nor space had providence. And when she came to, she told me, she was just outside of Veilstone, in Turnback Cave."
Saber pursed his lips, trying not to echo the secret he'd just been invited to. It was likely grave, the same kind of secret his father kept for years, and she had just offered it freely. His duty as an academic was to share knowledge and to pave the future with truth, but he simply bent and upheld the promise of family. "You vowed to keep secrets. I shall keep yours."
Professor Carolina didn't humor him with a 'thank you', as if she expected his reply all along.
A massive stone facade appeared only a few paces beyond the building, casting shadows from the setting sun. A series of reflective plastic tarps were hung on wooden frames to preserve the stone from bleaching light, so he could only barely see worn inscriptions and stained designs behind them. None of them were in recognizable Unown.
Professor Carolina eventually raised her head again, after looking down to guide her footsteps as she pulled him towards the only lapse in the stone structure. It was a dark void carved into the rock, leading to some hollow space within the terrace.
"Well?" she asked. "You wished to see the ruins. This is your opportunity, young man."
Saber squeezed his mother's notebook under his arm, as hard as he might without smudging the layered pages within. He was still imagining a broken model, merely a whirlwind of words and symbols with only the barest of meanings between them. If he was to find out what exactly his parents wanted to tell him, he had to dedicate himself to finding answers. He had collected works from a few monuments on Mt. Coronet, Solaceon Ruins, and every piece of written material he could grab from the Grand Archives. If only he had taken his pick from the stored research at the Sinnohan Regional Library in Canalave.
His great-grandmother reached into her coat and offered him a small, mountable flashlight, which he clipped to the belt of his slacks. She equipped one of her own and led the way, her body casting a cone of light down the entrance to the cave. He switched his on and trailed her into the squeezing throat of this ancient creature. The carved walls were preserved better than the facade by the natural light conditions in the cave, hardly cracked or marred in any way. Saber walked a tight line as close to the center of the path as possible, afraid to venture closer and enrage the specters of the past as he treaded on holy ground.
The entire ruin—or what had been excavated of it—was quite small, no more than the square meterage of an average house. He could pace from one wall to another in seconds, the perfect environment to match his brain to the rhythm of his footsteps. The bright cone at his waist slowly revealed the back wall of the ruin as he approached, photons catching in the recesses of some decorative glyphs.
"The Lake Spirits," he said to himself. The linework resembled three humanoid figures, each with a pair of tails extending beneath them. He felt the deep, chiseled pits of their eyes invading him, judging his worthiness as an invader. The three spirits surrounded a small recess in the center, likely not meant to hold anything judging by the coating of worn, red dye. "What's this?"
"According to your mother's writing, it represents emotional sway. It's the intangible dominion Azelf, Mespirit, and Uxie have over living beings. In myth, they were powerful enough to control the beings of creation," said Professor Carolina. "But your mother herself apparently saw a physical artifact that served that purpose, and I prefer that theory. It would certainly make my job more interesting. Now move along, that's not what you're here for."
She pointed her cane close to the edge of the hollowed cave, where the unmistakable symbols of the Unown language hugged a wall—the wall was actually dirt, not stone, implying that another yet uncovered hall branched off from the main room, potentially with more carvings beyond. What was visible from the mural was missing a few pieces that had likely been collected by the institute. Saber's entire, glorious will took hold to prevent him from reaching out a hand and leaving proof of his visit in the wall's dust coat.
Just like the other sites he had visited, it was more than just a relic of the past. For him, for his sister, for Sinnoh, it was the means to a future. It was the only way he might find out what exactly his parents were hiding, and why exactly it was worth the price of their lives. Riots and criminals had made the streets their home since that day, and the Region couldn't move forward—he couldn't move forward—until the killer was found.
Immediately, he got to work. He unloaded his textbooks, papers, and scrawlings from his bag and spread them out over the stone floor, dust gathering on his shins as he did so. The gears turned. All other elements of his life, obligations, relationships, hobbies, even his memories, faded away, replaced with the structures, meanings, connotations of the Unown symbols, and all that his mother had left him.
This civilization that had used the Unown Language was lost to time, their record in the present barred by the protection of the language itself. All he had was basic assumptions in his mother's writing that he might work backwards from to find answers.
"This symbol from the mural is used in another passage I've assumed is a declaration of household rules, based on the presence of other characters for 'home', 'property', and 'faith'," he said, absently. "It's repeated multiple times in both, so it must be either a structural phrase or some essential concept in everyday life! If I consider…"
Though he was barely aware of it, he heard Professor Carolina speak. "Good to see a young researcher so eager. While my fellows deliver what we have in our catalog, I can arrange someplace for you to stay." She paused for a moment. "But I believe that may not be necessary."
He didn't hear her walk away, nor did he notice her light vanish. He was already entranced by the secrets of the past, reversing thousands of planetary revolutions. To him, he was standing not in a monument of dust and mold and stone but a freshly dedicated ode to civilization.
This was his world now. He would not abandon it until he had the truth.