Apologies for the delay; I moved house and have no internet. This was to be the final chapter, but it's very long, so I've chosen to split it here. The second part will be up in the next couple of weeks, whenever I'm next somewhere with wifi.
TWELVE: I'M DOING THIS TO TASTE THE BLOOD
Listen.
Can you hear them? They're out there, all three. But only one can come through these doors and give me an answer to my question. Who do you think it will be? And do you know yet what it is I am going to ask?
You've been patient. I do appreciate that, although time has very little meaning here. Frankly, you have been a more courteous guest than I anticipated. But I have kept you long enough. Come, Volo. Let us find out how this story ends.
Silent moved first. They whirled, fixing you in place with their mind, and spread their awareness out through all the crevices of the room.
Show yourself, they said. They couldn't find Sonja's mindprint, but that meant nothing; my enemy could easily have hidden it. I have your master. I won't hesitate.
"Straight to the point, huh?" Sonja's voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, as if she was just behind the shoulder of everyone listening. Clair even looked back to check, but she saw no more than Silent did. "Can'tcha give a woman a chance to catch her breath? I was in Jubilife when I got the word. You have any idea how fast we had to fly to make it here in time?"
"Mars," said Cynthia. She did not look surprised, but her mindprint told Silent otherwise. All part of her endless bravura performance. "I'd say 'we meet again', only …"
Sonja cackled.
"Good to see you too, girl," she said. Her voice sounded closer, though it was no louder than before. "And you there, you must be Clair. We ain't met, but I reckon you heard all about me from our mutual friend here."
"Just knock them out already!" you cried, from the crushing depths of Silent's psionics. "We don't have time for this―"
No, said my enemy. You may not respect them, but I do. I told them I would not use such low tricks again, if they came for me.
Their voice entered the room like a wild aggron, with a weight and threat that could not be ignored. Clair drew tight to Lune's side; Cynthia picked up Solomon. You could not move, of course. But Silent stayed still and calm by choice.
You're here, they said, scanning the room and still seeing nothing. Face me, then. As you promised.
"The mission comes first," said Sonja. "Just like on Mount Coronet. Right, Cynthia?"
Cynthia curled her lip.
"If you'd like a rematch, Sol and I are happy to oblige."
"Still sore we held you back for so long, huh? I get it, you're not used to bein' outplayed. Probably you've gone back over it a bunch. Told yourself that there were a lot of us, we used the pass to bottle you, all that. But that don't quite explain it, does it? You still feel like you shoulda got past."
A movement. Silent could not tell what it was, only that it had happened: some slight shift in the way the room lay.
"I suppose you're about to tell me why," said Cynthia.
"It's the desperation. I reckon you've felt it too, though maybe not for a while now. Not a one of those poor kids in Galactic cared if they got hurt, or if they hurt anyone else. And you were just too kind to let 'em."
I am about to start breaking bones, Marsden.
"But you see, that's me too," said Sonja, as if they hadn't spoken. "I'm real desperate. Like you, kitty cat. I'll do anythin', anythin', if it'll get me what I need."
A floorboard creaked. Silent's head snapped toward it―
―and Sonja's arm closed tight around your waist.
"Two for exit, fella," she said, my enemy's magic swirling dimly around her like the shade of a black heron's wings. "And take out―"
There was more. Silent didn't hear it. Their mind couldn't grasp her through the shadows, but they'd have dived through fire if they had to, and they lunged for Sonja with the inescapable momentum of a brick seeking a window.
You were afraid. But you knew that Sonja was ready; you could see her pointing. And when the great black beam lanced out from the darkness around her, you knew where it was headed.
Silent did too. Part of them was weighing the options, even in that half-second before impact. They could see the beam heading for Clair. Could see, too, that there was no psychic force in the world that could have blocked it. Could see, at last, that it would take a truly exceptional power to outrace it.
If they'd had a moment more, they might have thought to push Clair with their mind. But in the one moment they had, without hesitation, they threw their revenge aside and tackled her to the floor.
Overhead, the black beam pulsed, rained down fizzy scraps of disintegrated air. Below, Clair's face had taken on a strange, brittle glassiness, in the manner of one who has almost fallen down stairs, and caught herself, and cannot shake the sense of what it would have been to drop fifteen feet straight onto her face.
"Sa nohge, girls," said Sonja. Silent had an idea that she was gone, but the idea did not make touch with the conscious part of their mind. That was inextricably wrapped around the fact that they'd had her, close enough to grasp, and that instead of killing her they'd saved Clair.
"Cheers," said Clair, after a couple of seconds. "I … I didn't think you'd …"
The world came back, at first by degrees and then all at once. Silent picked themself up, embarrassed and angry and desperately, painfully relieved. As soon as they had, Lune was at Clair's side, wrapping her tail around her arm and pulling her back up.
"Ow, okay, take it easy." Clair sounded like she was grumbling, but she didn't pull away, not even when Lune pressed the vacuum tip of her snout to her cheek and sucked on her skin. "I'm okay, Lune. Thanks, uh, thanks to Silent."
"Yes," said Cynthia, with deep feeling. "Thank you."
She stepped forward and hugged Clair tightly. Silent thought the gesture looked odd on her; for once, there was neither art nor artifice in her movements, just the cold shock of relief. Clair hugged back, but only for a second before Cynthia patted her shoulder and withdrew.
"We can talk later," she said. "You need to go. Silent, you can fly, yes?"
Yes, but it's pointless. They kicked moodily at the wreckage of the table. They warped out.
Cynthia smiled faintly.
"No, they didn't," she said. "The darkrai flew out of the window. And didn't you hear what Mars said?"
"She had to fly from Jubilife to get here," said Solomon. "The darkrai did not warp her in."
"I knew it wouldn't get past you, Sol. I don't think they can warp, not with the distortions breaking up Sinnish spacetime – certainly none of the League psychic-types can handle teleportation near distortions. We tried warping people out of a directional collapse once and the trainer and his kirlia vanished three weeks into the future."
Silent's pupils contracted to thin, dangerous slits. They were still in the game. Sonja's blood could decorate their muzzle yet.
We can catch her?
"You can." Cynthia glanced at Clair. "Go with them. I'll destroy all this, round up Morgan, and rendezvous with the crisis team. With Baby's help, we can close the portal to 2022 and cut Volo and Mars off from their team."
"By yourself?" asked Clair. She wasn't yet over the hug, or having her life saved by Silent, or even really being shot at a few minutes ago. "Are you―?"
Nothing here can stand against Morgan and Solomon. Silent strode to the window, their back to Clair. Recall Lune and hold on. I won't drop you, but I won't go slow.
"But―no, you're right." Clair took a deep breath, sucking in everything she wanted to say and sending it down into her bloodstream, to be summoned up again when there was time. "Lune, go moisten your gills. Gonna need you again later."
She flipped a fin and vanished. Clair glanced at Cynthia – felt her heart swell at the look in her eye – and looped her arms awkwardly around Silent's ribs.
"Be careful, Cyn," she said, partly because she cared and partly because it helped her not think about how close she was to them right now.
"You too," said Cynthia. "
"Night walk with you," added Solomon. "Now go. Before they reach the rift."
Silent didn't have to be told twice. They kicked off the floor and tore up out of the window like flame from a dragon's mouth.
"Hah," gasped Clair, her arms clamping tighter as the wind tried to tear her loose. "You like to fly fast too, huh?"
Silent chose not to hear her over the pulsing of their lymph, a hard, discordant crash like snare drums in heavy use. They still weren't sure what to make of their actions in the farmhouse. Better to focus on the future even now heading towards them, its hands wrapped and ready for the fight.
They were ready too. And so were you, and so was I, and I am not alive in the way you understand it but in that moment I was as close as I had been in years.
How much did you see, bundled up in the dark? Not much. Flashes and flickers, the rags and patches that might under other circumstances have made a complete image. But I could see the whole tapestry at once. My enemy, dragging the two of you down through the ginkgos; Silent coming up behind, a grey and purple comet trailing violent shockwaves of tinted air. Clair clinging on for dear life, aware that Silent was holding her in place with their mind but unable to fully trust in it.
Marsden! howled Silent, leaves erupting from the trees around them in a makeshift mandorla. Stand and face me!
"Cut it out," grumbled Clair, screwing her eyes shut tight. "You're giving me hallucinations."
But there was no getting through to them now. They could see the gap closing ahead, in between the whipping branches. My enemy was fast, but they had two passengers; Silent had one and a wild fury burning through them that sublimated their pain into relentless forward motion.
Ahead, the rift hove into view, jittering and whirling with the sorcery flowing through it into 2022. This time, Silent had no leisure to fear it: my enemy was through and then a half second later so were they, flying blind through the sudden night.
But every aviator must trust their instruments, and Silent was no exception. They cast Keller and her spies from their thoughts and forced their mind out beyond their skull until its tide lapped not just the minds of the wildlife but the hazy, alien shores of the trees themselves. If you could have seen them! Teeth bared, light spilling from beneath their closed eyelids, rising and twisting between the branches like an eel darting through coral; Sinnoh had never seen their like. Breaking the canopy in a geyser of twigs and snow. Hanging there, a silhouette painted on the gibbous moon. Opening their eyes and seeing, at last, the night falling apart around them.
Beneath them, the forest had buckled and twisted upward, space itself swollen and throbbing around the blue cyst of the rift. Around it, the snow was falling up off the branches toward the sky, forming impossible banks on the underside of the clouds.
Silent knew weather. Theirs was a life lived under its wings, from the burnt brown days of high summer to the white-iced nights in the dead of winter. But this was something to strike a note of unease into even their hardened heart.
"Paledrake preserve us," breathed Clair, seeing it too. "This is …"
Over there!
A dark shape, cutting upwards through the falling snow. The instant Silent's eye found it, they were in motion again, the rest of Clair's words crushed from her chest by the acceleration.
Get back here! Silent bellowed. You promised me a fight, and I intend to collect!
The dark shape slowed for a moment, its edges billowing like a bedsheet on a washing line.
Then come and take it from me, said my enemy. But now―
They rose up and vanished into a dense knot of fluttering snow. Silent pressed on – smelled broken spacetime – saw oncoming headlights mere feet away. They cried out and twisted hard to the left, rolling aside so that the bus ruffled the fur of their belly as it swerved past in a gust of rancid city air.
Silent stared. Framed inside the yellow-lit windows, the passengers stared back. Then the front of the bus lifted off the ground and they all lurched back hard into their seats.
"The distortion's sucking 'em in!" yelled Clair in their ear. "Do something!"
It wasn't important. Silent could see their real target further down the road, a shadow blotting out the sodium glow of the streetlights. If they were dancing between distortions, then any delay at all risked letting them slip away to the other side of Sinnoh.
The passengers began to fall into the aisle as the bus tilted harder―
There's no time, growled Silent, and yanked the bus back out of the distortion with a savage wrench of their mind. It bounced on its wheels and rolled up onto the pavement, but by the time the driver had managed to stop it they were long gone.
"Cheers," said Clair in their ear. "Thought you were gonna let 'em die for a moment."
Where are we? asked Silent, by way of avoiding the question. This isn't Jubilife.
Narrow streets, broad canals, high sandstone cliffs, all ringed by the cybernetic halo of the solar arrays. Ahead, my enemy skipped lightly over the old bazaar, and some dim bulb flickered on at the back of Clair's head.
"Sunyshore, I think," she said, fighting to be heard over the wind. "Historic port city. Most of the eastbound ships sail from here."
It was also where famed professional trainer Cynthia Mandeville had been born back in 1985, but Clair didn't think Silent needed to know why she'd read the Wikipedia page. Not that they were really listening. They'd asked only to change the subject; their mind was on the dark blot growing ever broader up ahead.
Come on, they muttered, swooping low beneath the telephone wires and startling a cyclist off his bike. Come on!
They skimmed the late traffic, dropped down over the canal and carved a long, trembling V in its surface with one paw. A few dozen metres away, my enemy filled the waterway with their shroud, its black tatters stretching almost from bank to bank. Silent wondered if they were growing stronger with the deepening night, as many spectral pokémon did.
Their teeth bared themselves, all unasked. They couldn't have asked for more. To face Red's killers at the zenith of their power was the ending his story deserved.
Faster. Faster still, the air behind them misted with the spray of their passage across the water. Around them, the boats rocked at their moorings; above, the moon struggled gamely through the clouds; and ahead, my enemy passed beneath a footbridge and did not exit at the other side.
This time Silent was ready: they hit the distortion and immediately pulled up into a vertical climb. On their back, Clair's head clunked hard into their second neck, her brain making a sudden bid for freedom through her nose.
"Blugh," she mumbled, whiplash-woozy. "What the …?"
Cliff.
All was white on black on boiling black, the furious monochrome of nocturnal Sinnish seas. Below, the waves clamoured and leaped like a pack of wild dogs, frothing at the mouth. But their teeth closed on nothing but empty air: Silent could not be held down, and they were flying hard up the cliff face toward the shadow receding at its peak.
"The hell is this?" yelled Clair, though the wind whipped her voice away and drowned it in the crashing water before it ever reached Silent's ears. They couldn't have answered, anyway. Only a few sailors and ornithologists know the name Baydal Spit, a little finger of rock off the north coast where the auks and skuas rest their heads. Fewer still have ever set foot upon it.
A shadow broke off from the mass overhead, dropped towards them. Silent caught it instinctively, brought it close – but it wasn't you or Sonja, it was a terrified teenager who had dropped out of the distortion Silent was even now accelerating towards.
He looked at Silent like a dying goldfish through the side of the plastic bag, utterly emptied out by his panic. Silent had seen this look before. There was nothing to be done for prey in this state except to put a clean end to it.
"Don't even think about it," snapped Clair, shoving her mouth right up against their ear. "If he fell through a distortion, we'll be heading through it soon. Just put him back where he came from."
He's broken―
"He's a kid, not a racehorse! If they get hurt, you don't just take 'em out back and shoot 'em!"
Silent growled, but before they could come up with an answer they'd cleared the peak and emerged into a sudden blissful quiet. The wind died; the waves fell silent; the sea air thinned and melted into the dull human smell of someone's living room.
The family who lived here were still frozen in their seats, staring at the blue void that had swallowed their rug and the monster it had spat out in its place. Silent stared back with equanimity, still floating the boy at their side.
Which way? they asked, setting him down. They saw no broken windows or open doors; the enemy must have fled somehow, but the signs weren't obvious.
The family huddled closer together. After what felt like a generous slice of Silent's immortality, one of the sons cleared his throat.
"He fell from up there?" he said, pointing timidly at a part of the ceiling that, on close inspection, appeared to have learned to breathe. "Where the thing went."
"Don't leave him here!" barked Clair, but Silent had already grabbed the boy again. A half-second later, they pushed through the heaving skin of the ceiling distortion and up through the wreckage of a garden table, still surrounded by teens holding roll-ups and cheap beer. I saw them twice, and I can tell you that they looked more afraid to see their friend come back than they had to see him vanish.
Overhead, a dark shape cut the moon in two. Silent abandoned the boy to his ruined house party and soared up in pursuit, Solaceon shrinking beneath them like an image falling backwards through a camera.
"Another one," grumbled Clair, squinting against the wind. "How many of these bloody hoops are we gonna have to jump through?"
As many as it takes.
"Don't suppose you feel like shooting them down? I know you can use Aura Sphere."
And let gravity take my revenge for me? I think not. Besides, there's no sport in a shot in the back.
"Fucking freak! Okay then, hurry it up."
Up ahead, there were trees growing sideways from midair, shedding peanuts and mealworms from a bird feeder in the branches. My enemy shrank as they approached, all their swirling substance contracting to fit through the hole of the birdhouse; Silent slowed, uncertain, but the birdhouse would not be resisted, and they and Clair stretched out into a gloopy slug of matter that spiralled into the birdhouse as if washed down a drain.
You went through too. I don't need to tell you how profound the terror of that transition was. But you also know it only lasts a moment: a heartbeat later, they were through, back in their usual shapes.
"Ah," breathed Clair. "That was …"
She didn't finish; Silent didn't answer.
"Yeah," she said, reading their silence correctly. "Same."
They were hovering in someone's garden, the trees and bird feeder looking all too innocent at their backs. Before them, suburban housing stretched away toward the frozen bogs of south central Sinnoh. And, flickering over the rooftops―
Found them.
Back in motion again, over rooftop and roadway, streetlights passing below in flickers of orange and black. Huge, dim shapes loomed threateningly in the middle distance; as they approached, they could see a truck and several cars, all drifting through the air at the serene pace of soap bubbles. The space between them was flecked with people and pokémon, grasping desperately at thin air for any means to pull themselves back down to earth.
"Silent," began Clair, but they shook their head.
The League is responding.
Trainers in Pastoria Gym-branded windbreakers were gathered around the edge of the degravitation, directing chimecho and magnezone to bring the victims and their vehicles down. They did not appear to be meeting with much success.
"It'll take you two seconds," said Clair. "What would Red do?"
Don't you dare! snapped Silent, but she had planted the seed and in the time it took them to reach the degravitation it could not help but bear fruit. They circled the distortion once, ignoring the shouts and stares from down below; they lifted both arms high; and as they brought their hands down, everything the degravitation held slipped its grip and slithered back down to earth.
"See? Two seconds," said Clair, lifting a hand in acknowledgement of the thanks being shouted from the ground.
Two seconds in which they could have warped again. Silent circled frantically, eyes and mind scanning the horizon, but their quarry was nowhere to be seen. If we've lost them …!
"Yeah, yeah, you'll kill me. Look, they're going distortion to distortion, right? Maybe there's something in the degravitation?"
It was a good thought, though Silent could not admit it. They grunted and soared up into the heart of the distortion, adjusting their psionics to compensate for the lack of gravity. Nothing struck them as amiss, or not more so than the laws of physics ceasing to apply; but then Clair cried out and pointed and they flew straight up along the line of her finger.
Where? they asked, staring unseeing at the faint, reddish crack splitting Ursa Minor in two. I can't see―
"You don't have to. Keep going – left a bit – there, we're headed right for―"
The world flashed puce and cream and ochre.
"―it."
Sinnoh fell away from them on all sides, swept away by the richly-jewelled cloak of the night. There was no light pollution here, and no clouds; the stars clustered thick enough to pick out the edges of the shattered pillars in a fine, silvery glow.
"The Spear Pillar," breathed Clair, her words coming out silver in the frozen air. "Top of Mount Coronet."
The weakest link in Sinnoh's tattered timeline: the House of the One, from where the Celestica sorcerers had directed the network of distortions that let one walk from coast to coast in under ten minutes. Which the tribes had found later and recognised immediately as holy ground. Which, after twelve hundred years of standing firm against the harshest of Sinnoh's elements, finally gave way to the wrecking ball of your arrogance. Which, just two short years ago, Cyrus had attempted to crack open, only to be cracked open in his turn.
You made it, said my enemy. They were hovering between the half-melted pillars, eyes burning from their depths like a deer's last fatal glimpse of oncoming headlights. Very good.
Silent answered with their whole body, light sticking thickly to their skin as they swooped―
No, said my enemy. Not yet.
The black beam was almost invisible in the night. Only at the last moment did Silent see it; they rolled too hard and too fast, lost their grip on the air and spun out at pace into a pillar.
Something cracked. And Clair screamed out a curse like she was going to reach down into the abyss and choke out the paledrake itself.
I will be waiting, said my enemy, as Silent thumped down hard on the icy tiles. Find me, little misbegotten creature. Let me see those skills you boasted of.
They turned, and the world turned with them. Silent felt all of Sinnoh shaking beneath them, like a ship trying to ride out a storm surge, and then all was still in a way that made their bones hurt.
Clair?
"Think I broke my leg," said Clair, through gritted teeth. "When you smashed me into that massive hunk of rock."
Silent rolled over and sat up. They were sore, but intact; the warehouse had been worse. Clair, propped up against the pillar with her leg stretched out unnaturally before her, did not look so fortunate.
I was trying to stop them vaporising us.
"Yeah, well, you're two for two on that tonight. As well as breaking people's legs." She sighed, probed her throbbing shin, and swore. "Some dragonmaster I am. One little fall and … well, anyway, I think this is about as far as I go. Lune and me will guard the Pillar in case … I dunno. Just in case. But you gotta keep going. Down there."
She nodded at a point beyond their shoulder. Silent turned to find the far end of the Pillar gone. Just gone: no distortion, no rift, just a profound absence that the eye slid over without comprehending. An absence like that cannot be seen. But it can be felt, as Silent felt Red's. As they felt the absence of the end of the Pillar.
What is that?
"Dunno. But that's where they went. Where you gotta go, if you wanna end this."
Silent did want to end this. But when they got up, something pulled them back.
You, they said, crouching at Clair's side. Will you be …?
"What, me?" She almost laughed, but couldn't quite manage it. "Alone on a frozen mountaintop with a broken leg and no way of calling for help? Yeah, I mean, it's not great. But I'll deal with it."
Silent did not move. The absence flickered, the end of the Pillar rematerialising for a moment.
I could, they said, pulling each word out of themself like a surgeon extracting bullets, fly you back.
There was no attempt at laughter this time. Clair just looked at them, lips slightly parted, loose strands of hair flopping unheeded into her eyes. Her mindprint was a cloud of squid ink around her head, dark and diffuse.
"You're the last one left to stop 'em," she said. "And I think whatever that thing over there is, it's not gonna stay open long. So you gotta go."
She was right. Silent should have been overjoyed: freedom to go it alone, without anyone to hold them back or report their excesses to Keller. And yet, looking from Clair to the absence, they could not tell which direction their heart was pulling.
I … I do. They stood up. I will. But I will come back.
"I bet." Clair hesitated, then reached for her belt and drew her knife. "Here. You better take this."
Silent cocked their head, confused. They could sense that she meant something more than what she said, but they weren't human enough to figure it out. I am sure I don't need to tell you that Clair was trying to come with them, the only way she could.
I don't need a weapon.
"Everybody needs a knife," she said, pressing it into their hand. "Now go, killer. And try not to do too much murder."
The absence flickered again. Silent looked at it, then at the knife, then nodded.
I will come back, they said, unaware that they were repeating themself. I will …
They had no idea what to say. So they fell back on their old friend, silence, and leaped headlong into the void.
I will give you this much: you are clever. You had thought all was lost when your attempt to manipulate Cyrus into opening the Hall of Origin failed; you had seen your erstwhile ally ride to the rescue of their younger siblings and known that Dialga and Palkia were off-limits. But, as I say, you are clever. You made a new plan, elegant in its simplicity and stunning in its scope. Chain the distortions, one into another into another. Fold and refold spacetime until it wore through at the weak point atop Mount Coronet and dropped you out of the world.
A beautiful plan, and a desperate one. I can't imagine the strength it takes to close one's eyes and jump out of the universe, not knowing for sure where one will land or if that place is livable. It's one thing to work out such sorcery on paper. It's quite another to lay one's life on the line for it.
But Silent matched your courage every step of the way: through each distortion, each slice of the island's night, each patch in the tattered quilt your ambition had made of Sinnish spacetime. There was nowhere you could run where they could not follow. At the time, you didn't understand that. Now you have heard my story, I think you do. You, who killed and fled, who smashed up more people than Silent ever managed and never once saw justice – you have realised at last that there are some consequences that can never be outrun.
God may have abandoned you, Volo. But Silent never will.
Silent dissolved into the nothingness like sugar in water, their hands sloughing away in flakes before their eyes. It didn't hurt. It didn't feel like anything, because their head was dissolving too, and both their hearts, and then there was nothing but the deepest hush that anyone had ever known.
Most of us have felt something, at one point or another, that unmade us. As if our bodies were not our own, but only smoke rising from the flame of the grief, or the love, or the hate. This is as close as I can get to describing Silent's fall through the space outside the world. They were simply gone. If there was anything left, it was only the merest, hardest kernel of themself, the parts too tough even for the nothingness to devour: a hunger, a half-remembered melody, a bright, sharp chip of pain.
It might have been forever, or a heartbeat. But then something opened up below and they landed face-down and corporeal in the dust.
You came. Good.
Silent tried to jump up, but their body didn't quite respond as it should; the best they could manage was to roll over and get up on their knees.
Where … where is this?
An antechamber. A maintenance passage. It depends on how you view it.
They lifted their head. It looked like they were back on the Spear Pillar, only there was no mountain below it and no sky above; beyond the broken columns was a dim, infinite glow that receded as far as Silent's weak eyes could make out. At the far end was Sonja and my enemy. Past them, hurrying down a set of stone steps floating in the glow, was you.
You were worried, I could tell. You had been expecting the stairs to lead up, into the Hall of Origin. But perhaps the stories were wrong. After all, so few had ever been taken into Arceus's confidence; what store could you set by rumour and conjecture?
Besides, you could not turn back now. All you could do was keep going and hope.
"Don't even think about it," said Sonja, seeing Silent looking. "What you done is real impressive. But this is the end, kitty cat."
Yes. Silent gathered their strength and pushed up onto their feet. Far below, you looked back, but you could not see the Pillar any more; you just had to trust that your rearguard would hold. It's time. You will give me back what you've taken now.
"Can't do that," she said, genuine regret in her voice. "But we can make it quick."
I think not.
Silent closed their eyes. Felt, as if through a thick fog, Sonja's mindprint grow tense and nervy.
I see you, they said, marshalling their psionics. I see you!
They opened their eyes: the light of the Miracle Eye burst out of them in a searing wave that swept the length of the Pillar in an instant, scorching the shroud from my enemy's back and revealing, in its place, a dull grey drake that looked nothing like Cynthia's darkrai photo.
What? Silent blinked, let the light fade. The dragon was thickset and six-legged, and did not sit comfortably on reality; sometimes they looked small and close, sometimes gigantic and far away, all without ever moving from Sonja's side. You … are not a darkrai.
The dragon spread their shapeless black wings, from the edges of which curved the three vicious claws that Silent had glimpsed in the warehouse.
Is that what you thought I was? Why, because I can cut open the path to their nightmare realm? They slashed the air with one taloned wing, black slime oozing from the split. Child's play. I learned to move between worlds at my parent's knee.
Then why hide?
The humans of your future do not remember me, now that they have destroyed the knowledge of the clans. I prefer to stay forgotten. As, I believe, you do yourself.
Silent curled their lip.
Just give me a straight answer. Who am I killing today, if not a darkrai?
The dragon waved a wing, wiping away the slime and the hole it came from like a smudge from a mirror.
As you know, I oppose the tyranny of names, they said. But out of respect for your commitment in following me here, I will tell you: humans have given me many. The Renegade, the Grey Hush, Arceus's Shadow. I am the firstborn of God. They leaped into the air, legs dissolving and wings separating out into six serpentine plumes of taloned ink. And I am the end of all creation, they said. I mean no disrespect when I say that you will not survive me.
They left out their hated Celestica name, of course. But I see no reason to play coy any longer, not when you and I both know it: Giratina, death of the deathless. The living promise that this too will one day come to an end.
Silent looked them up and down, from the intricate gold cage of their skull to the spiked tip of their tail. They could not sense their mindprint, but now that their shroud was gone they could feel a terrible, grasping cold radiating from them, like dead hands reaching out of a grave.
This felt like it might be beyond even them. But they had not come this far to back down.
You killed Red, they said, cracking their knuckles. Now I will kill you too.
I would be honoured. But it is not to be.
Giratina moved first, one of their tentacles whipping forward to launch another black beam straight at Silent's face. Silent leaped aside, already gathering sparks between their hands; their psionics caught the air, the beam punched a perfect circle through the floor, and Silent flung a double fistful of Will-O-Wisps directly into Giratina's chest.
He taught me this move, they said, as Red's memory flared from their scorched palms. Now I give it back.
Giratina's answer came surging bonelessly toward them like some deep-sea creature bursting from its lair, all clutching coils and blazing eyes. Silent was a wrasse dancing in the mouth of a shark, ducking the first beam, jumping the second, squeezing sidelong between the third and fourth. They could smell their fur burning, but there was no time to think: the world was playing allegrissimo, blood singing and beams flying and Giratina's ribcage reaching out to crush them like a crawdaunt's claw―
Silent cut their psionics. As they fell, Giratina swept by overhead, their ribs crunching tight through the space where they'd been a moment before. Unburned, despite the oils oozing from their cracked skin. And no wonder: when they passed, Silent felt the full force of their freezing aura, so intense that for a moment their psionics guttered and died like candles in the wind. The Will-O-Wisps had never stood a chance.
If they lay around like this, nor would Silent. They cudgelled their brain back into motion and rolled back onto their feet, backing out of Giratina's aura before it could drain them any further.
You know the footwork, said Giratina, wheeling around in a cloud of their own coils. But entropy comes for all God's creatures in the end.
No god had a hand in me, growled Silent. And all my creators are dead.
They arched their back, lymph swelling up from heart to skull and horn to horn. Around them, the air split open along vivid purple seams, each one resonating with its own note in Silent's head; and, with a clench of their fist, their chord hummed its violent way down Giratina's body.
A living creature would have been vaporised. As it was, Giratina's coils spasmed, oil flicking from their skin and spattering the stones. They reared up high, surprised or hurt or both; emboldened, Silent let a second Psystrike fly, and a third, and would have followed up with a fourth had Giratina not recovered and shot out two of their tentacles at their chest.
You wield the same silence as I do, they said, as Silent kicked off the first tentacle and grabbed onto the second. But all such destruction comes from me. You cannot drown the ocean; you cannot unmake me.
Silent had just enough time to be dismayed before Giratina whipped them against a pillar, hard enough to smash both it and their barrier to pieces. They fell choking through the dust, hands clawing desperately at the wreckage, but it was not enough. The ground hit them hard in the thigh, and then harder still all up and down their body.
Definitely surprised, then. Not hurt.
Something moved beyond the fog of pain and atomised stone. Silent was too stunned to recognise it, but their body was a well-tuned instrument and it yanked them to the right a scant beat before Giratina's claw embedded itself in the floor beside them.
They climbed to their feet, slower than they wanted. (Their leg throbbed, almost gave out, did not.) The last time an enemy had downed their barrier had been a rogue deoxys, eight years ago. The time before that, Red's charizard, nineteen years prior. It had taken both of them hours, and Giratina mere minutes.
They saw him again, then. Not as he was, but as he had been in that cave, at eleven, wide-eyed with fear but never once thinking to retreat. If they died now, there would be no one left to remember that, and he would be gone in a way that no amount of blood could make right.
Again, they said, lifting from the floor. You won't kill him a second time.
Ahead, Giratina's eyes burned through the settling dust. The sight had reduced many to numb panic over the years, but to Silent they were mere targets: they took aim and accelerated. Giratina's tentacles lashed, but Silent held true, skipped from one to the next like a bow across the strings, and at the apex of their leap turned to fling a crescent of violet energy into the soft, gungy tissue behind the claw.
There was no time here, but the world did slow in recognition. Giratina stared; Silent howled; and slowly, like a clod of magma oozing free of hot rock, the end of Giratina's tentacle fell heavily to the floor.
Ah, me. Giratina brought the oozing tip of the tentacle close to their face, as if inspecting a gem for faults. Below them, the severed chunk was rapidly melting over the stonework, the claw an oil-choked seabird in its depths. This avatar has not been damaged in a long time. How I have missed the feel of my own blood!
They can be cut, murmured Silent, not listening. Not disintegrated, but …
A flick of their hand and a second Psycho Cut spun out toward Giratina's face. Their eyes flashed, spurting black flame that devoured it in midair, but Silent was never parsimonious when it came to violence, and several more were already tracing iridescent paths toward Giratina's neck and ribs.
And they came close. I cannot deny it. But when they hit that withering aura, each one crumbled into flakes of light and fell away, mere confetti bouncing off a copperajah's hide.
There is no need for that, said Giratina, calm as a slow winter's morning. You are one of four to have ever harmed this avatar. You can do no more. We are finished.
It ends when I say it ends! snapped Silent, embedding another Psycho Cut in an oncoming tentacle. You will bleed for me!
Blades burst from nowhere all around them, arcing up and falling down toward Giratina in an eviscerating rain of violet knives―
―that sank three dozen harmless notches into the ground.
Silent blinked, but their eyes were not deceiving them. Giratina had been there, and now they weren't. No flourish, no fiery theatrics, just sudden and total absence.
What? They turned, mind questing in all directions, but there was nothing there except Sonja, and like anyone who wished to retain all their limbs, she was keeping out of this fight. What is this? Show yourself!
And then Giratina did: right there before them, an extinction event in grey and black that screamed out of nowhere and slammed into Silent's side.
Behold your end, they whispered, voice booming through the wall of their chest. Rest with your friend, brave one.
Silent couldn't answer. Could barely hear, flattened against Giratina's scales and ripped apart by their murderous aura. They flew away from the impact in a grisly red parabola, shedding bits of themself all the way down to their brutal terminus at the base of a pillar.
The impact flashed across their eyes, black and white and grey at the edges. There was no moving, no recovery. They did not need conscious thought to know that Giratina had just bitten away most of their immortality in one clean mouthful.
"Is it over?" Sonja asked, staring.
Perhaps. Giratina gathered themself in midair, coils pooling as if on a cushion. But life runs strong in them. Taste that blood! They lifted their head, a snake scenting the air. No, they live yet. The first to survive my embrace in seven centuries.
"What? They're alive?"
They were. Their blood was humming as it flowed, stem cells and psionics desperately clutching at the scattered fragments of their body. Silent breathed in. Stopped, as the broken rib caught. Started again, after their psionics pulled it back into a better position. And opened their eyes.
Only one gave them any kind of vision. I could tell you what the other looked like, what Giratina's aura had done to that whole side of their head, but we have only so much time here and at any rate, I am not interested in the empty misery of physical trauma. They could see, more or less, Giratina hovering before them. Sonja beyond them, one hand on her sword in the manner of one who never relaxes until certain the coast is clear.
All unharmed. While Silent lay there, dying. While Red lay on that cold metal table, so far from the warm shores of his adopted hometown. While his remaining pokémon waited, masterless and blissfully ignorant, for a return that would never come. While you got away with murder.
While Clair was sitting on that mountain, hoping.
No, said Silent, bringing their shaking vision into focus. No, not yet.
I understand, said Giratina. I too believe in opposing even the inevitable: I back Volo, despite knowing he will never even see the face of Arceus. So, if you choose, I will take as many lives from you as you have to spend.
Silent tried to get up, but only managed to roll over, the pain squealing out in them like rusty metal at every movement. They needed to move. If they could move, they could fly. If they could fly, they could … well, what? None of their ranged moves seemed able to withstand Giratina's aura.
Their body might, though. For a few moments. Until their healing powers were exhausted.
Silent propped themself up on one hand. It shook, but it held, and they could at last see they were lying in the rubble of the shattered pillar. All around were chunks of marble and the toxic mess left where Giratina's tentacle had been. And, lying where it had fallen when they arrived here, Clair's knife.
They bared their teeth. This was no kind of plan. But they never were one for strategy.
I'm ready, they said, pulling themself up with what remained of their psionics. They could feel fractures cascading down their legs, but as long as their mind held, they could stand. Are you?
Giratina spread their tentacles wide.
Your friend will be proud, they said, although he would not have been, not of everything Silent had done in his name, and they vanished into thin air.
Silent waited. Held out their hands―
―Giratina appeared―
―Clair's knife and the severed claw flew to Silent's grip―
―the aura plucked at Silent's skin as they stepped aside―
Get fucked, said Silent, and plunged both blades deep into Giratina's neck.
It was almost as bad as getting hit: their psionics went dead on impact, leaving them clinging to their fragile handholds for dear life as Giratina banked into a hard ascent.
You have some teeth left, they said, with every evidence of pleasure. Show me the strength of your jaw!
There was no time to listen. Giratina's aura was already eating at Silent's hands, ripping the skin from their fingers as they dangled and bounced against their hide. Silent tried to find purchase with their feet – failed – took a deep breath that burnt their lungs and pulled out Clair's knife. It burst free in a great gout of black ichor that numbed them where it touched; they slipped, almost fell, and just about managed to stab the knife back in further up Giratina's neck.
This is novel, said Giratina, as they repeated the trick with the severed claw. Is that your best? Can you not strike harder?
The wounds didn't seem to bother them at all, but Silent could not think of that right now. Their world was nothing but the climb, hand over gore-soaked hand, up the oil-slick cliff face of Giratina's skin.
I feel almost alive, Giratina murmured, as Silent crested the curve between shoulder and skull. But how long can you last in my embrace?
Not long. Their body was healing as fast as it could, but it could only buy them a few seconds. Silent was choosing not to notice. Not to see the scraps the ichor washed from their fingers or the blood slicking down their fur. But they were up there now, straddling Giratina's golden skull, getting a finger over the edge of their horn; and they were pulling themself up and over until they looked straight into those unbearable eyes; and they were falling but they caught themself; and the world around them was changing, spinning wildly with colours Silent had never seen before as Giratina trembled through dimensions; and their horn crunched and the ring they wore in it fell away in crumbly silver chunks; and Silent screamed with ruined lungs and drove both blades into Giratina's eyes.
The world froze. Turned black. Turned white. Silent kept pushing, lost their grip on the knives, started ripping with their bare hands, pulling black and grey lumps out from the ichorous bog of Giratina's eye sockets. They were still screaming, but they couldn't hear it. I do not believe Giratina could, either.
Their left hand found something hard and pulled it loose: a dirty orange rock, its facets glinting at impossible angles to one another. Predator that they were, Silent never hesitated. They put it between their jaws and bit down until their teeth snapped and the rock cracked in half.
And then, without warning, they were back where they'd begun, standing on the facsimile of the Spear Pillar. In front of them was Giratina, sprawled on the paving stones with the humped stillness of a beached whale.
Silent's mouth slipped open. Bits of stone and tooth spilled out and made a sticky landing in the blood pooling at their feet.
I understand now, said Giratina. Their body did not move, but the oil on its surface did; it rose up in a thin, greasy vapour, pulsing in time with their speech. I have often wondered why my future self will intervene to stop Cyrus from fulfilling Volo's plan. But if he succeeds then, this moment will never happen. I, who destroy all, will never know the sweetness of receiving the silence I bring to others. No, they added, as Silent raised shaky fists. No, you've won. You cannot stand against my true self, but it cannot harm you, either; I am imprisoned outside your world, tasked with gardening its roots.The only way I can affect you is to operate the avatar you see before you. An avatar whose connection to me has, for the first time in its history, been severed.
Silent stood, swaying, not quite comprehending. They had lost a lot of blood. More than that, too, but they had lost too much to even recognise that loss. All they were sure of was that they were one-third of the way to their revenge.
I killed you, they said.
Yes. I scarcely thought it possible. But when you survived my presence, I simply had to let you try. The vapour twisted, tugged away by some private wind. Below it, the corpse was starting to liquefy, craters of black ichor opening all over its surface. It will take me many years to rebuild my avatar. While I wait, I will be watching you. My future will meet your past, a hundred years hence, and I will study you from womb to grave. Give me something to savour, god-slayer. I do not like to be disappointed.
I killed you, said Silent, again. They couldn't think of anything else.
Yes. The cloud of vapour whirled indistinctly, Giratina's attention shifting toward Sonja. I must apologise. You have been a faithful companion; I would help you if I could. But my goals were never yours.
She stared mutely, every bit as undone as Silent. What could she say, to see the end itself ended?
Farewell, said Giratina. Until we meet again, brave one.
Silent felt nothing, but the vapour bent hard to the side, as if in a sudden wind; it streamed out into the glow and dwindled into nothing. By the time their remaining eye had traced its passage and returned, Giratina's body was no more than a dark stain on the stonework.
Thirty feet away, at the head of the stairs, Sonja took a very steady breath.
"Well," she said. "I reckon you're gonna kill me now."
Yes, said Silent. I think I am.
This week in Silent's headphones: Special Interest's 'Kurdish Radio'; Super Heroines' 'Black Wedding'; Divide and Dissolve's 'Oblique'.
Next time: an ending, a beginning, the final judgement.