2 – The Listener
It was a difficult process, a kidnapping. What really makes it difficult is not hurting them. They have no hands, as the humans do, and after grabbing them, have to settle for the floating the human after them into this realm. Their limbs were bound with telekinesis. Not that this mattered, the human had passed out the second Giratina had gotten hold of them. How had they managed to torture the little pixies beyond recognition in that state? It was a mystery they would have to unwrap.
Perhaps it was because this human was stupid, but they were fairly compliant in all aspects. There was no need for food in this universe, it came from within, and all the water sources were toxic in any respect. The creature likely wouldn't die. Not immediately. When they did, they would become a ghost and haunt this place. Perhaps then it would pay its respects to the living, as it so obviously had not.
Or they should kill it now. Was a thought. But they wanted to decipher it first. What was their world like now? Mere glimpses every century or so was hardly enough to tell.
It didn't wake from consciousness immediately, which gave them a chance to analyze, calculate. The thing, aberration rather, slept with breaths that almost seemed calculated. Could a human forcibly calculate their breathing, their power? Giratina wondered. Mortal lives were so finite as it was. Perhaps it was subconscious. Perhaps it was desperation for order of some kind. For the moment, it was all irrelevant, until they awoke.
They waited an indeterminable amount of time. They heard the soft cries around their head, pleading and gentle and pained.
The Children of the Lake. The new guardians of those errant fools they called siblings. Poor creatures.
"Do you want justice?" they asked the three. The cries went quiet. "I can offer you justice. I can offer you his head, eventually."
One cry. A second reply. "That is unnecessary."
Oh? Not vengeful pixies? How strange. "The gods have changed over time, it seems."
Another cry. "We are tired. We have tried to break him of these notions. We have failed. That is our own folly."
"Does he not deserve to pay for such a folly?"
"Is the afterlife not punishment enough?"
The afterlife? Their domain? How laughable. If Giratina truly owned the dead, the seas would be full of them to bursting, calling for vengeance and haunting their dreams. The dead were endlessly sleeping after all. Surely their dreams would have crashed and met and they would have had a connection. "You make it sound as though it is crowded in here."
"You may not have noticed, is all. You have enough to do."
Oh, did they? "I beg your pardon?"
There was no response, but the human made a sound like a groan. It was instantly controlled by teeth, as if it couldn't bear to express itself in such a manner.
Giratina swiveled to a halt, turning like a young seviper in the grass to look upon its prey rather than devour it. Not that the prey reacted with much. An open then closed mouth greeted them. Then the human moved to something like a sitting position in rough limb pushes. It was jerky, like a puppet. Did this human know how to walk? Were they defunct in some manner? Was that something you wondered about?
The human looked up at him with those dead finneon eyes and the urge to simply devour it grew back in intensity, all over their body. They almost were opening their jaws.
"You are the other."
Their mouth opened wider, beyond offense. The statement sounded just so typical, like they had heard it a thousand times before now. There was nothing like being compared to your siblings in such a casual way.
"You are the one scrubbed out from the stories."
Giratina closed their maw slightly. They inclined their head. "I am."
"You are stopping me from completing my ambition." It was not a question. The human was not very good at asking questions.
"It isn't much of an ambition." Just another petty, feeble excuse to end the world. To be fair, the human had gotten quite close, unlike most. But it was only temporary. The universe would have made things right somehow, even if it wasn't through Giratina themselves.
"Destroying the spirit of the world is not an ambition?" The human pauses as if in disbelief. "hanging the world for the better is not a grand cause."
Giratina exhales despite having no lungs. "You are not the first. You are not the last. Get used to disappointment."