.

.

.

Wyndon

Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.

-Emrett Dialogues, compiled works

.

"Heresy!" a delegate shouted. "That is what you are speaking!"

Crystal watched Emerald give his address to the Priesthood Convention, vocal amplifiers sending his voice booming over the cavernous council hall. Crystal felt the tremors of it within her bones, and began to listen to his words with growing fascination.

"Not heresy, not heresy for saying what the Grand Bashar has admitted himself!" Emerald said. "He is not the Chosen Prophet of Arceus! But he is more than a man, and deserves our devotion. I found myself in the Desert of Power, and Arceus commanded me to make that place clean and full. For we provoked this desert, and grieved in the desert, and we are tempted by this wilderness to forsake our ways."

Looking through the faces that filled the seats surrounding Emerald's podium, Crystal saw White, tears still drying from when she learned of Black's death. Wilhem Berlitz was there as well with Diamond and Platinum, watching the proceedings unfold. And what a proceeding it was!

"Wild beasts lie upon our lands, creatures of metal and steel," Emerald said. "Doleful creatures fill our houses, refugees from foreign lands. You who have fled your homes no longer multiply on the Earth. Yea, those who go against the Will of Arceus will die in a fouled land. But those that heed my call will be taken by the Original One through a land of pits to the Mountains of Beulah! Yea, Arceus will lead you!"

Cries and shouts arose from the crowd. Emerald-the Preacher-was speaking against Bronze's divinity. The Preacher paused, swinging his eyes across the stirred masses. Then he raised his arms and spread them wide, crying: "O Arceus, my flesh longeth for Thy way in a dry and thirsty land!"

An old woman in front of the Preacher, an obvious refugee from the patched and worn look of her garments, held her hands up to him, pleading. "Help us, Preacher, help us!"

"You are the ones that must help!" Emerald cried. "Only with a rallied populace might we resist, and a united Priesthood that no longer torments the Grand Bashar with a delusion of divinity! The One admits it Himself! O my friends, Arceus has commanded me to say this. Make straight a highway in the desert for our Lord, for I am the voice that cometh to thee from the dry wilderness! Our foes will bring a desolation for us, a land where no man dwelleth, and no man passeth by!"

The crowd stirred uncomfortably. He could start a bloody riot! Crystal thought. Well, let him. The people need a spark...and the Priesthood needs to be tamed.

She saw the five priests then, a knot of yellow robes working up the steps toward Emerald's podium.

"The water which we spread upon our land has become blood," the Preacher said, waving his arms wide. "Blood upon our land! They come for violence, these men of the Eclipse Alliance! Their faces are closed to the first winds of the Typhoon Struggle. They suck the abundance of the Earth to make their machines. Behold them as they go forth and do their evil work. It is written: 'And I stood upon the sand, and I saw a beast rise out of that sand, and upon the head of that beast was a blasphemous name!'"

Angry murmurings spread. Fists were raised, shaken. "What is he doing?" Wilhem whispered.

"I wish I knew," Platinum said, feeling the fearful excitement of this heretical sermon. The crowd would turn on Emerald if he kept this up!

But the Preacher half-turned, aimed his finger towards the southern wall. "A blasphemy remains!" he screamed. "Blasphemy! And the name of that blasphemy is the Rorian Priesthood!"

Shocked silence gripped the plaza.

Emerald remained with his hand pointed.

His words were too much for the priests, however. They broke the silence with angry shouts, stormed up the steps, thrusting people aside. The Preacher turned, too late. There was the sound of a Poke Ball opening, cast by a yellow-garbed hand. A Honedge was brandished, and Crystal saw it strike downward, burying itself in Emerald's chest.

An eerie quiet fell over the council room. One body lay by itself, slumped over the podium.

"The Preacher!" a voice screeched. "They killed the Preacher!"

"Arceus," Crystal quavered. "Arceus! They killed him! We should have stopped-"

"A little late for that, don't you think?" Ruby said, looking grave.

Crystal whirled. "That was Emerald they killed! That was your friend! My friend! Why don't you mourn?"

"There's no Emerald anymore. He's the Preacher now. His old name was forfeited when he surrendered himself to a lie. Now that he admitted he was saying falsehoods, his people turned on him for it. He isn't a Pokedex Holder. The Preacher has become a shattered mass of bloody rags in the Wyndon council chamber."

What callousness!

A priest had taken the podium, kicking Emerald's corpse away. "The heretic has been slain! The blood of his life runs on the ground like water from a shattered dike! Pay no heed to his words. In our war against the Forces of Darkness, treason has ever been our greatest foe. The Grand Bashar is Arceus's anointed! Speak no other thing!"

"I would rather have a question I can't answer than an answer I can't question," Platinum said, standing in wrath. "You corrupt priests! It is you who are heretics against Arceus, the true Original One! I denounce you, with the support of my sister's husband, the Grand Bashar! Let the false Priesthood wither and your robes be torn!"

"Silence this woman!" the priest cried. "I demand order-"

"Will you kill us as you killed the Preacher?" Diamond bellowed. "You will not touch the Holy Family, the kin of the Grand Bashar! We will speak our minds, and will come to violence and battle if need be. Let Platinum speak!"

"Bronze Tercano has only kept your order intact because of his love for the Preacher, and because the people of Roria believed your lies for too long," Platinum said. "You thrust a godhead upon Bronze! Curse you ten thousand times for this! I damn the Priesthood! I damn the false religion that surrounds Bronze Tercano! I damn the bloated adherents that would seek to spread it even after Bronze's death! That is what I say. People of Roria, Galar, and other lands! The time has come to defeat this wicked Priesthood!"

The people cried out in rage. The priests called for order again, but were drowned out in the frenzy. "Down with the false Priesthood, the murderers of the Preacher! How have we been so blind?"

At that moment, the Priesthood fell. The religious intelligentsia that had maintained the cult of personality around Bronze was now discredited. Decades of resentment and lies had been released at long last. It was a glorious riot, one that freed all the people of the world from a lie.

"This was Emerald's plan!" Crystal said, feeling the tears on her cheeks. "He wanted to die. It was the only way to stop the Priesthood from keeping power! Bronze is free from the false prophets that surrounded him, forever!"

.

.

.

Crown Shrine

Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs. Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the grace of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have gained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past examples of oppression, and the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unless renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is a basic key to my life.

-Bronze Tercano, private journals

.

Peony entered the high doorway before the Crown Shrine, and called out to whatever lay within. "Hello! We come in peace!"

"Asbjørn naw-dock!" an alien voice cried from the Shrine's depths. "Vaśńa sarvi nu Mbelekoro? Gettem u'lovarakka Pokemon! Yon davgorun!"

"Looks like they speak another language, Chairman, sir!" Peony called back to Bronze. "What should we do? Are we to take the anthropological approach to these southern tribesmen?"

"I can understand them," Leon presently said, to the shock of everyone present. "They're asking if we're telling the truth, and if we serve something called the 'Evil Djinn. They say our Pokemon look fierce and ready for war."

Moon sputtered. "I understand fifteen languages, living and dead, and this speech is hardly recognizable! Why do you know their words?"

"I don't. But Rei does. It's a sort of proto-Hisuian dialect, hardly understandable even to him, but I can act as a translator, along with Raihan." Leon called back, in a series of guttural vocalizations in the same language.

A man stepped out of the door to the Shrine, moving past Peony and facing Leon. He had a Lairon by his side, decorated in patterns of red berry juice that suggested an artisan culture. The man's garb was of Beartic fur, obtained from a shipping lane somewhere, Henry surmised. The native had scars running over his face, but not in a symmetrical pattern typical of ritual scarification. He spoke back to Leon, asking something in his own tongue.

"He wants more proof that we are friends," Leon said. "Show him those reins that supposedly were a gift from the tribe to Captain Kidd."

Marnie revealed the Reins of Unity, and the primitive's eyes went wide. "Yes! Those are the tokens of our folk, we servants of Calyrex Tor-Oyarsa," Leon translated. "I am Davgon. Come in, for you bear a thing that has wealth beyond your understanding. It is a gift well-received in past years and well-returned. Follow me, and speak only if you have something to say."

...

Davgon led the company into a spacious dwelling within the Crown Shrine, resting upon a pile of blankets that lay before a statue of Calyrex Tor-Oyarsa. He sat, and base the others to do the same. Other natives made themselves known as a formality, and then slipped away to other parts of the Shrine. Food and berry wine was brought out, to Hop's delight. "I haven't had anything to eat in far too long!"

"Perhaps, young master, but we have business to complete," Bronze said. "Leon, translate my speech. Davgon, may we ask a few questions?"

"You may, outsider."

"Has your community heard rumors of a shield of great power being found in the ice desert?"

Davgon put up his hands. "Ai! Ai! The ones who practice liluru'kuruk, have it, if our wisdom has not left us. They are the flesh-shapers, the evil ones who use the power of demons for majesty and glamor. Murderers and rapists, every one of them. They spit on Arceus-Calyrex and His ways. They are devourers that feast while the masses starve. Wicked Naikalia! Our scouts report rumors of a ritual involving a shield, and two Elohim."

"Who are these ones?" Bronze asked, wondering what the untranslatable words meant. "Where could we find them, if not to destroy them?"

"They are a cult of the Evil Djinn," Davgon said, his Lairon growling at the word. "A cult that never died over the centuries. They take our women and young men who are lost in the wastes and sacrifice them on their cruel alters. But this is not the worst of what they do. They are not even fully human. They shepherd the flesh. Liluru'kuruk. Their bodies are moved at a will. They know how to make their skin into armor that withstands blades. The Split-Decision Ruins are theirs."

Bronze thought of all the deeds he had done to eradicate surviving cults loyal to the Mbelekoro. How likely it was that one remained in the Crown Tundra where he had never hunted. Flesh-shepherds! It reminded him of something that he had learned from Tess, something about an order of extrauniversal cults called the "Sarkics." Was this an iteration of that religion, here in Galar?

"Tell me more about these evil men," Bronze said. "How might we fight them?"

"Their sins are beyond count. They hunt their old and sick and consume their flesh. They have their woman in common. Part of what they say is that there is power in the flesh...power for them to harness. They consume divinity. Become Arceus, they say. All of them fear death. They say that only worse things lie afterward, and it is better to live forever. Only Pokemon can kill them." He pointed at his scars. "My Lairon slew one of those animals while I was but a stripping. I got a scar for it."

"We have armies," Bronze said. "If you will help us get this shield, this cult will die by our hand. No more will your people be tormented. And what is Calyrex?"

"Calyrex is the Lord of Bountiful Harvests," Davgon said. "He rides afar on his steeds. Only Glastrier comes now, and we have not had a verdant summer in living memory. Spectrier is the thrall of the Naikalia. And I regret to say that we do not know where Calyrex, our lord, is dwelling. I have seen him, but in recent years he comes less and less as the power of the cult increases. As for your armies, these wicked men have spies and ways of evading you. Such power will not aid us."

"This is worse than I thought," Ego-Adaman said. "There is indeed a wide waste of time between the Shrine and the Ruins, between this place and the other. But the gap in the knowledge of the Wise is being filled at last. Yet too slowly, for the Mbelekoro still works in the world through his servants, although he himself has been cast down. The Tree of Darkness grows larger than I feared."

"Well, I think that we've gone through much danger and can face what lies before us," Bronze said. "Some of us are young, but are doughty. If the shield might be in the hands of the Naikalia, whether through fate or misfortune, we will ride out to meet them!"

.

.

.

Dyna Tree Hill

And to his flock, Mbelekoro thus spoke: I have stepped beyond the Floe of Dreams, and stood before the Old Ones within their own desolate domain.

I have endured their intolerable force, across countless eons.

I have seen the infinite dead worlds, murdered death herself.

I have read the entrails of our Creator, beheld eternity unfurled.

Know that our paradise draws near.

And with our own flesh shall we birth it.

-the Sone Skaal, texts of the Naikalia

.

Moving under the waves in a shuttle at speeds that no ordinary biological could withstand, Jonathan Rowell Cypress wondered, only for an instant, what it would have been like to have chosen a different path in his long life.

The time in ego-space, the memories of which only accessible to this particular genetic iteration of him, had made him desperate, but now he felt a sort of grudging respect for what Bronze Tercano had accomplished...and a feeling of pride at how quickly Cypress had torn it down.

Surfacing at the place called Ballimere Lake, Cypress exited the vessel, approaching the Dyna Tree by walking down the short path laid out for him. The tree was a behemoth, with massive leaves of crimson pink, and fruits grown fat on Galar Particles. Sturdy boughs stretched toward the pale sky, and Cypress noted that the ground around the tree's base was lush and had no snow.

The Three would be here.

Of old, three Elohim had sworn allegiance to the Mbelekoro, but had been exiled to Galar by another three of their Kantoian brethren. Now that the first Dark Lord was gone, Eternatus commanded his surviving legions. Cypress, being the human representative of the Dark Lord, would have to summon them back to his troth.

Cypress pressed his hand against the old tree's bark, wet with melted frost. Surprisingly, the wood, charged by Galar Particles, squirmed in the Eclipse Lord's hand, elongating, stretching. As he moved, Cypress felt three presence-consciousnesses in the tree reach out to him, connecting with his own ego-mind in a thread that fit the vision that Eternatus had shown on how to perform the ritual.

He felt the bark become thin, a living tissue covering his hand. He would have to be one with the tree in order to awaken the sleepers. He felt the wood covering more and more of his skin, every cell supersaturated with evil. Delicately Cypress adjusted his enzyme levels, matching the tree's own nutrients. At the same time he blended himself with the wood, feeling it, feeding it, learning it.

Eternatus's vision provided a template, and he followed it precisely.

He felt the frenzied squirming of the wood on his flesh. No, this was not normal wood anymore. It was tougher, stronger. Leathery roughness insinuated itself into his body.

Cypress felt the pulse of the three Elohim, quickening in pace. A curious excitement suffused his body as his mind opened up to the minds of the legendary birds. The membrane connected him exactly as the vision had predicted.

"In the name of the Mbelekoro and his servant Eternatus, my power compels you to join me!"

"Why should we do such a thing?" the three answered in synchrony. "We have no master in this place. What do you look like?"

Here was where he would trick them into revealing themselves. "Come out and see. Or are you afraid, petty Elohim?"

Now the vision must be tested.

The Dyna Tree shook as the wooden membrane withdrew from Cypress's body. He had three Master Balls: only three, because that was what the vision demanded. He heard the hissing of flames, growing nearer as his movements attracted the source.

Articuno, Moltres, and Zapdos had emerged from the great tree. No, not wholly Articuno, Moltres, and Zapdos. These were different; their antithesis. And now Cypress would take them all. The Eclipse Lord raised a fist in challenge. "Do the Elohim accept my summons?"

"It is only a Man, a Follower, the lesser of the Children of Arceus," Articuno said, airborne on a field of pure psychic power. "Watch me, brothers! See how it will crumple under my blade-wings!"

Beams of energy emitted from Articuno's eyes, and Cypress was frozen solid on the ground. Articuno flew low, cold and callous as it brandished its razor-sharp wings to deliver a killing stroke.

Psychic power, when not from the mind, can be overcome by a greater power! Cypress thought, with milliseconds to spare.

He forced his ego-body to go unconscious, breaking free from the psychic hold. In his fall, Articuno swung a razor-wing, but the tips shattered when they hit Cypress's body, the innate power within them dulled to becoming useless. The Eclipse Lord returned to waking, and threw a Master Ball at the back of the bewildered Articuno. There was a flash of light blue, and then a snap of a Capture Device closing.

Without requesting answers regarding the circumstances surrounding the capture of its comrade, Zapdos moved at Cypress with the speed of a rampaging Kantoian bull. It kicked at Cypress in the span of a half-second, giving a strike that should have shattered the Eclipse Lord like a sheet of rice paper tearing.

But Cypress wasn't there! Zapdos moved quickly, but the Eclipse Lord had anticipated the blow in a basic chain of personality/action deduction, and was already on the ground, brandishing a chandler pistol. Once Zapdos turned after realizing that its enemy was not smeared on its claws, Cypress had already aimed the weapon from the ground, and fired at the Elohim's eyes.

The yellow eyes began to bleed golden ichor, and Cypress threw another Master Ball. Zapdos began to immensely regret taking on an incarnate form as its soul was reflected in countless prisms of data-based infinity, shrinking down to a manageable size.

Two were captured in less than fifteen seconds. Now, only one remained.

Moltres floated to the ground, exuding magenta, flame-like bursts of energy from its black wings. The spiritual darkness coming from the demon-Pokemon was so great that even Cypress felt an effect, but the Eclipse Lord had once been the physical host of the Evil Djinn himself. No lowly Elohim could make him quaver with an oppressive aura.

The flaming wings spread, and Cypress felt his mind being thrown into a vice of fatigue and panic, his energy burning out from within. Once his life force had been consumed, Cypress would be a husk, a burned-out shadow of his former self. Moltres gave a laugh as Cypress twitched on the ground before it, his aura expended. This one had fought well, but all those who stood against the Three were humbled.

Moltres withdrew, satisfied. It had taken such a copious amount of life force from Cypress's body that he should never be able to survive. At least, that was the plan. Cypress calmly stood, and threw his Master Ball.

"And the pride goes before the fall," Cypress said, watching Moltress vanish. "I am a memory. I have no life-force to drain. Now, you are mine."

Cypress seized each Master Ball from the ground. The dark hearts of the three demons writhed inside, but now they were under his, and Eternatus's, control. "I name thee Baal, Ashtaroth, and Belial!" Cypress cried. "Now you serve me, and no other but the Dark Lord. You will be my heralds of woe before the Typhoon Struggle!"

.

.

.

Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.