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Castelia City
Now I, Cyllene, saw and heard these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the Elohim who showed me these things. Then he said to me, "See that you do not do that. For I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship Arceus." And he said to me, "Do not seal the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand. He who is unjust, let him be unjust still; he who is filthy, let him be filthy still; he who is righteous, let him be righteous still; he who is holy, let him be holy still."
-The Hisuian Coda
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It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.
As soon as she detected strange readings on the power readings of the ground force artillery Magnolia ran from the medical bay and back to the command bridge. Oleana's body had been put in a bag and stored in the frigate morgue. Bronze had several commanders around his captain's chair.
"Excuse me," Magnolia said. "Forgive me for interrupting, but Tercano, sir, we are getting abnormal readings on our energy meters for the weapons we have down there."
"Our power meters?" Bronze said, incredulous at first, and then grim. "I would normally say that maintenance would be the responsibility of the repair crews, but I have made it clear enough that I know what is about to happen." He turned to Tess. "Send a message out to all our forces to take cover!"
"Sir!" a crew member called. "I've received an emergency transmission for you from the Galarian Seismograph Institute!"
Then, as if Arceus had turned out the lights, darkness. The faint light from the obscured moon and stars winked out under a new surge of black smoke. It was the Darkest Day, but worse, far worse. Even Eternatus's light was quenched. Knowing exactly what was coming, Bronze ordered his crew to take defensive positions.
"We should be safe in the air, but be prepared for the worst hailstorm you could imagine!"
...
Zygarde and Groudon came to the molten core of the Earth, and contorted their bodies in a single great contraction. The wrath of Arceus had fallen on the ecosystem far more than Zygarde had liked, but she hoped that it could be amended in time. Groudon only wished to carry out the Will of Arceus.
Immediately, every single tectonic plate in the world began to slip, causing immense devastation. The faults in the Earth fractured simultaneously, creating such an earthquake that the likes of which had never been seen. There were too few Eclipse loyalists still alive on Earth for the judgment to be solely reserved for them; Arceus had intended for the entire wicked system of culture, governance, and economics to be judged. Not even those that fought against the Eclipse Alliance would be spared this double helping of fury.
...
Henry and Casey raced with Urshifu over shattered roads, broken buildings, barricades, and went around massive weapon stocks and war vehicles. They had just run through a war-torn intersection when the lights went out. A dark sky went to pitch black in an instant. Soldiers quickly turned on the lights on their weapons, but Urshifu saw the crevasse too late.
They were heading toward a fissure in the city that had opened right before them. Henry figured that if they dropped into it they would be killed, but Urshifu seemed to be going too fast to avoid it. Instead of falling to a certain doom, the Elohim leaped over the chasm in a single bound, landing on the other side. Behind them, a tank dropped into the pit and exploded.
The sound was deafening. A thunderous crashing enveloped the city as trucks flipped over and streetlamps, hotel blocks, telephone polls, and skyscrapers fell. Warriors who had survived the earthquake for the moment were running wildly, attacking each other indiscriminately. He heard screams, saw people running, tripping, falling, dying.
How long would it last? Henry was disoriented, although Urshifu had a better grasp of the situation than he did. For surely this Elohim must have heard Arceus pronounce the words of what was to be in Deep Heaven, long ago. None of this was a great shock as it happened. Even then, upheavals that first appeared like peaks that Urshifu could manage suddenly collapsed into blood and asphalt, swallowing up men and machines alike.
...
Fires had broken all over the place. From the L.S. Victory, Bronze saw vehicle crashes, flattened buildings, and the Earth rolling and rolling like an angry sea. The quake roared on and on, a monster that devoured everything in sight. Houses in the suburbs were crumbling. Glass broke. Walls fell. Abandoned restaurants disappeared. Pokemon Centers were swallowed. Office buildings stood at jagged angles, then slowly toppled.
Suddenly there came a meteor shower, as if the sky was falling. Huge flaming rocks streaked from the sky. Bronze had seen it go from day to night and now back to day with the flames. The very heavens opened like a scroll, and the full wrath of Arceus was poured on Earth without restraint. It was the culmination of the birth pangs through the millennia, now mixed into one final disaster.
Monstrous black and purple clouds rolled upon each other and peeled back the very blackness of the night. Meteors came hurtling down, destroying everything that had somehow avoided being swallowed. One landed on the L.S. Victory's command bridge hull, so hot that it partially melted the durasteel. Bronze secured himself in his seat, put on a bracing harness, but he realized how flimsy of a precaution that was against the greatest earthquake the world had ever seen.
The was no diminishing in the motion of the Earth. There were no aftershocks. This thing simply was not going to quit.
...
The Earth continued to shift and roll, but Urshifu just kept going. It carefully carried Henry and Casey through destruction and mayhem. Henry saw in a kaleidoscope daze people with gaping wounds. They tried to hide under rocks that had been disgorged from the ground, but just as quickly they were crushed. A middle-aged soldier, shirtless and shoeless and bleeding, looked heavenward as he was swallowed up.
The docks had to be less than six hundred yards away, but things were still crashing. Huge power lines fell and electrified the blood in the street. Urshifu spent several minutes wading through debris and huge piles of wood and dirt and cement. A meteor fell behind them, and shattered the ground. Urshifu turned to avoid more but another meteor fell in front of it.
And suddenly the earthquake stopped.
Still, the great battlefield was in pandemonium. Tens of thousands at a time screamed in terror and pain and died in the open air. Blood from the sea, now forming into great tsunami waves, poured into the city in temendous amounts, making a river that rapidly formed into a swamp.
But the brief pause was only a false salvation. Suddenly a voice came from the sky, loud and authoritative, but it was not Arceus's.
"It is done!"
Henry recognized it: Wind-lord, Dragon King, Rayquake Sulumno, Lord of the Sky.
Lightning burst from the clouds and explosions of thunder followed. And then came hail, not mere ice chips, not golf-ball or soft-ball sized. The first chunk that Henry saw looked like the size of a dining room table, a foot thick. It landed about twenty feet away and embedded itself a couple of feet in the ground. The concussion sounded like a bomb.
The few remaining Eclipse Alliance soldiers behaved like madmen, tearing their hair, some killing themselves but failing, others begging comrades to shoot them. Another chunk of ice hit a Sudowoodo and flattened it. Soon hundred-pound blocks of ice began to pelt the entire world, smashing bodies, destroying trucks and cars and Pokemon.
...
The royal car, with Cypress and Emrett within and driving erratically, narrowly escaped three chunks, one of which caught a running aid from the head down, crashing him into a pulp. The gigantic hailstones were falling steadily now, and there was no escape. It was as if Arceus was trying to bury the ruined world in a layer of ice.
"Are we getting this hail anywhere else?" Cypress said.
"Everywhere but Galar and Roria," Emrett replied. "They've got threatening skies and are freezing themselves to death, but no hail. The good news is that we can melt these stones down to get fresh water-"
"Shut up, man!" Cypress barked. "Get me underground!"
"But the bunker complex has likely been entirely destroyed by the earthquake!"
"Would you rather take your chances with the hail?"
Soon the entire city square had been crushed under monstrous hailstones. Once the Earth had been suitably pummeled, the hail stopped. The moon came out again, but now the fallout cloud spawned by the Locusts of Darkrai was gone. Apparently, the sun was still engorged, and the moon now shone as bright as the morning sun.
The ice quickly began to melt at a supernatural rate, and the water mixed with a torrent of blood. New Babylon had been entirely destroyed by the wrath of the Earth and the wrath of the Sky. Reddish-brown mud was rising, and many survivors found that their avenues of escape had been blocked off by rising blood that had already risen four feet.
...
Every city across the world had been destroyed by the earthquake. There had been no greater tumult since the time of the War of Wrath. Northern Kalos was gone, and the Crown Tundra was nearly free of ice. Almia and Fiore had foundered in the sea. The Frostveil Mountains had been leveled. Only Mount Coronet stood tall in Sinnosui, although Spear Pillar had been blasted away by the shockwave of the mushroom cloud. Incomprehensible casualties accompanied the quake and hailstorm, a body count that would be tallied for years.
Every city, ruined. Except one.
Anthien City was suddenly the center of attention. Unharmed by the hail and earthquake, the Rorian capital was the last remaining bastion of authority in the world. Although the Vengeance Fleet had taken severe damage from the hail, the Eclipse fleet had suffered worse.
"We move toward Eternatus."
Some soldiers balked at the suggestion. Eternatus seemed unharmed by the hail; here was a supernatural foe that would not even be damaged by the greatest army in history, a foe that had overcome Zacian and Zamazenta. The so-called last battle in Castelia had hardly been a battle at all. With the exception of the initial assault, now both sides were utterly devastated by the judgments.
Cypress, hiding in the ruins of his bunker, sent a radio message to all remaining soldiers. "Our goal still remains and our task is clear! The enemy army is fractured and decimated by the earthquake and the hail. We will retake the city, wipe out Arceus's chosen warriors, and kill Bronze Tercano! This has been my design from the beginning. We have drawn Arceus's wrath out, and now we have Him where we want Him. Remain loyal, remain true, remain vigilant, and you will be rewarded."
"This Grand Bashar who flits about in the air quoting ancient fairy-tale texts and forcing sycophants to mindlessly run along worshiping him will soon meet his end. He is no match for the risen lord of this world and for the fighting force in place to face him here. It does not even trouble me to make public our plan, as it has already succeeded. These despicable people have long been Arceus's chosen ones, so we have forced Him to show His wrath, to declare Himself, to vainly try to defend them or be shown for the fraud and coward that He is. Either He attempts to come to their rescue or they will see Him for who He really is and reject Him as an impostor. Or He will foolishly come against my immovable force and me and prove once and for all who is the better man!"
"While I do not expect this to be an extended campaign, as this is the last battle I ever hope to wage, I am bringing in the whole of our resources. Every man and woman under my command and every armament and munition at our disposal shall be employed to make this the most resounding and convincing military victory in history. My pledge to you, loyal citizens of the New Eclipse Order, is that come the end of this battle, no opponent of my leadership and regime will remain standing, yea, not one will be left alive. The only living beings on planet Earth will be trustworthy citizens, lovers of peace and harmony and tranquility, which I offer with love for all from the depths of my being."
Bronze watched the royal car slosh through blood and gore as it partially emerged from the bunker. Surprised that the Eclipse stronghold was even partially standing, Bronze wondered how many executive clones and loyalists were still alive.
Emrett steered the bulky car out into the ruined streets once he was sure that the path was safe. Behind came a long procession of Eclipse warriors: freshly cloned and brainwashed with a T-Probe. Tauros and Rapidash, also cloned, were ushered out like a final line of troops. "All surviving soldiers are to prepare for my coming," Cypress said, stepping out of the car, his leathers none the worse for wear, his garish sword unsheathed in his hand. "I will lead the next charge against Zacian and Zamazenta on horseback!"
Eternatus boomed his approval. "This is my only and begotten son, who I find favor in. He will crush the so-called Two Princes, and then no one will be able to oppose us again!"
Emrett exited the car, wearing a too-long robe that billowed in the blood swamp as he walked. Cypress was forced to step through several yards of filth before he mounted a Rapidash. "Ah! It's cold!"
"Of course it's cold!" Emrett said. "It has ice in it!"
It was all Bronze could do to keep a straight face in that strangely hilarious moment, but then he remembered that there was deadly peril. These men were ego-memory enhanced, and they could very well navigate the ruined city and defeat the already weakened Zacian and Zamazenta. The robot frigates that remained, about a thousand, fired again on the Vengeance Fleet, and Bronze was forced to pull into the battle.
News from multiple fronts reached the L.S. Victory. Association forces were decimated in the west, with X and Y having been killed in the firefight. Gold and Sapphire were missing, but the other Pokedex Holders were still accounted for. A third of the Army of Humanity had been killed in the earthquake and the hail. Very few still had the energy to fight, and now Cypress was making another attempt of taking back the field.
Surely, at least Emrett had read the Hisuian Coda. He had to know that all this had been prophesied, and even the predicted outcome. Yet they brazenly set the stage for the next fulfillment of old scripture, and in spite of the mass executions of his forces, he still had the gall to believe that he would prevail.
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Castelia City (New Babylon)
I heard a voice coming from the four corners of the Earth, saying, "Set free the four Elohim that had been waiting at the Great River Sereghir." They had been kept ready for that hour and day and month and year. They were let loose so that they could kill a third of unrighteous mankind still living, and all their armies in the air. The army was two hundred million soldiers on horses, for I heard their number. I saw the horses and the men on them. The men had iron over their chests. They were red like fire and blue like the sky and yellow like sulfur. The heads of the horses looked like the heads of lions. Fire and smoke and thunder came out of their mouths. Their tails were like the heads of snakes and with them they could bite and kill.
-The Hisuian Coda
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Atop a ruined building that Urshifu had climbed, Henry and Casey watched the ten-thousand-strong offensive against Zacian and Zamazenta be carried out. It would be a demonic version of the charge of Calyrex that had turned the tide at Armageddon. Zacian and Zamazenta were fighting in the Western Quarter of the city, and Cypress had nearly a clear shot for a calvary charge.
The Eclipse Lord twirled his sword above his head, raising a whoop from his troops. Emrett leaped upon a dark black Rapidash and settled himself. "Charge, charge to the Western Quarter!" he cried. "Upon our command, open fire!"
"For your glory and that of the master of the Earth!" Cypress cried, urging his ride onto a full gallop, clacking over the stone ground. The last and greatest contingent of the New Eclipse Order's armies came charging at the Two Princes, making way for armaments and ready to fire on the Elohim. Association soldiers attempted to stop the charge, but Cypress and Emrett showed their skills in combat with the rest. The Eclipse Lord's sword went snicker-snack, and a man's head flew away from his body. Casey moaned in grief.
"Attack! Take the Western Quarter! Destroy the Two!"
But when the horsemen whipped their mounts, they did not make way. Rather, the Rapidash and other mounts bolted as if blind, snickering, whinnying, rearing up with a great scream. They brayed and bucked, kicking, spinning into each other, running headlong into shattered walls, throwing riders.
"Make way!" Cypress screamed. "Make way!"
The riders not thrown from their mounts struggled with the Pokemon and tried to control them with loud commands, but even as they struggled, their flesh began to dissolve. Their eyes melted, their tongues disintegrated. As Henry watched, the soldiers stood briefly as skeletons in intact uniforms, and then dropped into heaps of bones as the blinded Rapidash continued to fume and rave.
Seconds later the same plague affected the Rapidash, their flesh and eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, before they too rattled onto the pavement.
"Reinforcements!" Cypress cried, waving his blade. "Charge! Charge! Fire! Fire! Fire!"
But every Pokemon and rider had suffered the same fate. First blindness and madness on part of the horses, then the bodies of the soldiers melting and dissolving, then the falling and piling of bones.
Henry stood, mouth agape, noticing that neither Cypress nor Emrett's Pokemon had suffered the same fate. "Retreat back!" Emrett called out. "We'll make more soldiers. We're not defeated yet! Return!"
Plainly disgusted at having to run away from the tide of battle, Cypress urged his mount back, looking past the bones of his decimated army. He lifted his sword and cursed Arceus, but suddenly his attention was drawn above.
Henry followed his gaze to see twelve Vengeance Fleet ships bearing down on the Eclipse Lord, guns ready to fire. It might have ended once and for all then if a blinding crimson flash had not run through the street at supersonic speed, grabbed Cypress and Emrett, and then vanished into the depths of the Eclipse bunker again before the first plasma salvos blew the street to oblivion.
...
Scarlet dropped the Eclipse Lords in the very deepest points of the bunker ruins, and then turned back to fight in the battle. Over ninety percent of the tunnels beneath the city were still somewhat intact, as if protected from the divine judgment of Arceus. Also protected from the hail, the Eclipse bunker was now the last remaining part of the city entirely under New World Order control.
The rumble of the earthquake still echoed underground. Dust fell from reinforced steel beams. Cypress strode back to his council room, robes soiled with blood, to reveal the next phase of his ever-infallible plans.
"As long as Eternatus remains, we will win eventually," Cypress told Avery, Colress, Ghetsis, and Emrett. "Our objective is to remain here and fight off any assault! With our atomic weapons and the valuable prisoners, we still have control over whatever happens."
...
As he charged through the battle now raging once more, Scarlet could feel the awareness of a wild change in him expanding. He felt the energy of his ego-self grow. He saw himself in a whirlwind rampaging through the Association army, leaving bodies in his wake, Swordmaster and Commando among them. Every street he went through looked like an abattoir when he left.
For each man he killed, more would have to be killed. When he came toward a woman his imprinted memories called Pokedex Holder Green, he suppressed the fool-self within him and ran with murderous intent.
...
Green saw the blur speeding toward her from over the ruins. She suspected danger even before the first laser beam arced out of a weapon in the arms of the thing that was making the blur, slicing through her legs below the knees. She fell heavily onto a concrete slab, her legs completely severed.
Another beam slashed out at her, slicing at an angle across her hip. In an abrupt roar of displaced air, the blur rushed past her and into the ranks of International Police Officers. Green clutched the slab, shunting her agony aside. The heat of the beam had cut off the blood flow by cauterizing the wound but the pain was great. That helped, but she knew that she was doomed. She heard shouts and multiple sounds of violence all about the street now.
She crawled on her arms toward her Blastoise that was still trying the keep the city block free of the blood by blasting it away with water. The Pokemon turned, and then darted over toward its trainer. Green said nothing, but put her forehead to the Blastoise's temple, whispering instructions on how to escape, to warn the others of this mysterious new threat.
One of them might yet escape.
...
Bronze could see Zacian and Zamazenta making their way toward Eternatus, far too slow for comfort. They walked through the bones of their foes, head held high as they turned into their glorified forms again. At every moment, the self-declared enemies of Arceus were utterly destroyed, except for the Dark Lord, the Anti-Arceus, and the False Prophet.
Castelia was now filled to the bursting with the gore of the dead. Hundreds of thousands had been slain there, many in most disturbing ways. There was stench, blood, and flayed flesh, not to mention the skeletal remains of the ten thousand horsemen. Battle scars, earthquake-ruined buildings, jagged edges from bombs and Pokemon attacks, and uneven heights were everywhere.
Belial, Baal, and Astaroth were flying about the city, fighting for the Eclipse Alliance where the surge of combat was thickest. They attacked indiscriminately, knowing that since the Association attackers vastly outnumbered the remaining New Eclipse Order forces, their attacks were more likely to wipe out hundreds of Army of Humanity soldiers instead of friendly soldiers.
The Swords of Justice were worried that the Eclipse fleet would overcome Bronze's fighters in the air. Only five hundred ships from the Vengeance Fleet still remained, and the Eclipse Alliance had twice that number, along with Eternatus. There seemed to be no way that the Army of Humanity would gain aerial supremacy.
Then Latios and Latias went over the skies, crying a warning. "Woe, woe! Horses come over the horizon! Smoke and fire come from their mouth! Beware, for the Four Elohim that have been waiting at the Great River Sereghir have been released at this very hour!"
...
Tornadus, Thunderous, Landorus, and Enamorus made their path of devastation from Roria northward. Three of them hated that they were being forced to do Arceus's bidding, Enamorus most of all, but Landorus kept them in check. The two-hundred-million-man demonic army spread over the seas and lands, killing yet another third of the wicked population of the world. The Eclipse Alliance had already been essentially destroyed; now the unrighteous in general would be included in the judgment.
...
Henry watched, transfixed, as thousands and thousands of demonic horsemen, the most monstrous and muscular things he had ever seen, went through the air from the south, meeting the robot frigates in battle. Flames came from their mouths and nostrils, and thick yellow smoke billowed. The fire illuminated their majestic lion's heads with enormous teeth.
He trembled, trying to take in the scene. The first flank of steeds was backed by thousands more, and once again he assumed that they were demons in the form of biological creatures. The riders themselves were proportioned every bit as large as the animals. They appeared human but were at least ten feet tall and weighed five hundred pounds.
Urshifu snorted in a distasteful way, grabbed Henry and Casey again, and brought them out of the path of the army. A horseman looked at them for an instant, made a sort of stuttering stop, and then moved on. The lion-horses breathed great clouds of black and yellow smoke that corroded the Eclipse frigates to rust, and even damaged the Eclipse robots that had somehow remained operational until now.
As the smoke billowed through the city and the entire world, people all over burst from homes, gasping, coughing, and choking. Here and there the horses snorted enough fire to simply incinerate any structure that somehow remained standing, or incinerated the partially intact ruins of a building to absolute nothing.
There would be not a single human-built structure remaining in any region but Galar and Roria. Not a sliver of infrastructure would remain. With millions dead, Henry realized that the battle was not really between the Vengeance Fleet and the New Eclipse Order, but between Arceus and the human population itself.
Henry had once heard that Arceus had intended to destroy humanity at the Battle of the Sinjoh Ruins many decades ago, but His attempt had been thwarted by the Pokedex Holders Gold, Silver, and Crystal. Now nothing would stop Arceus as He removed every last foe of His Kingdom from the world in preparation for the coming age, if Henry had understood the prophecies right, of unparalleled world peace and prosperity.
"It feels so capricious," Casey said. "Why the earthquake? Why the horsemen? Why the locusts? This can't possibly be the best solution to defeat the Eclipse Alliance that Arceus has."
"It's not just against the Eclipse Alliance," Henry added. "It's against all the evil in the world. It's a hard pill to swallow, but do you really think that people would ever realize that Arceus needs to be obeyed any other way? These judgments are His way of getting our attention."
"Or getting us out of our comfort zones," Casye said. "Say, have you ever heard of the Scattering?"
The last bits of the Eclipse fleet exploded under the attack of the horsemen. Waste frigate scrap added to the swirl of rubble in the ruined city. Satisfied, the horsemen moved into the east, seeking out more prey. Eternatus screamed as he saw Zacian and Zamazenta below him, fresh and ready for another battle.
And the Army of Humanity moved ever closer to the Eclipse bunker as a rash of fire, smoke, and noxious, sulfur-smelling emissions killed thousands over the globe. The Four Elohim of the Winds moved on.
