Chapter 5

Back in the forest Sera decided to check the spot where Sera and Alzack had fought with Lugia, maybe she could get some clues there. Furret slowed when they arrived and gingerly walked around the battlefield. Sera could see the spots where the mighty Lugia stood and battled with their pokemon. She could also see the blood stain on the ground where she had laid dying three days ago. She shuddered and dismounted Furret.

"Go see if you can find his scent." She told him. Furret turned around and began sniffing the air, the ground, the trees. Sera walked passed the puddle of blood trying hard not to think about it. Looking at the turned up ground and the footprints she could reimagine the fight in her mind and played out what happened after she lost consciousness.

From what she could tell Alzack had continued to fight Lugia but it was unclear who won. She followed his footsteps out of the clearing and into some bushes. When she approached the bushes they rustled, she gave a whistle and Furret came running. Out of the bushes white wings appeared, delicate singing filled her mind. Her eyelids grew heavy and she could no longer hold up her body. Sera fell to the ground, sleep began to overtake her.

Before she lost consciousness she saw Alzack coming out of the bushes with his Altaria. But it wasn't Alzack, it was someone...something else. Alzack turned black, then so did her vision.

Sera woke up in a daze. Her head still felt sleepy but she forced her eyes to open. When they did she caught a glimpse of a dark figured creature in the moonlight. Her vision focused and she noticed what pokemon stood before her, Zoroark?! What's going on? She wondered and sat up only to find her hands and feet bound by very flexible tree roots. The Zoroark turned to her then.

If she was correct in assuming it was smiling, as it's lips peeled back in such a manner it showed it's fangy teeth, the Zoroark looked very creepy. She didn't know where Furret was, she didn't even know where she was! One thing was for sure that Zoroark must have been the one to bring her here.

The pokemon spoke before she could ask anything. "Finally awake? I've been waiting for you to wake up." The Zoroark spoke but it was strange, pokemon didn't normally talk let alone sound exactly like her dead brother. "Come with me, now. We can play together like the old days. We can have fun together. Isn't that what you want Seraphina?" Even though the Zoroark spoke with her brother's voice she felt a chill run up her spine from something much worse than thoughts of home. Sera had to make a conscious effort to not cringe as she spoke or spill her stomach right there in front of Zoroark.

"No! What I want is to know where my brother is!" She knew it was hopeless, her parents had told her he was dead...and she almost believed them...but yet something still tugged at her. A deep longing for closure that never came.

"Sera, I'm right here." The Zoroark changed form, he know not only sounded like Alzack he looked exactly like him, only younger this time. Not the grown up version she'd met in the forest, no that version was a fake. An illusion made up from broken memories.

"You're not my brother…" She said darkly, her words were enough to make Zoroark stagger as if he'd been punched.

"S-sera…" It reached a hand out to her, she tried to crawl away but the tree roots had her on a tight leash. The illusionary Alzack frowned and the roots tightened. "We are supposed to love each other. We were so close before you left for the pokemon league...All I ever wanted was to be close to you again…"

Sera almost shed a tear but she couldn't, not when she knew that this Alzack wasn't the real thing. "No! You're not my brother! My brother died a long time ago! Just go away!" She screamed closing her eyes in the hopes that this would all go away.

The reminder that this nightmare was real hit her harder than she thought it would have. The air was ripped from her lungs when she heard those words leak from Alzack's mouth. "Don't you love me, big sis?"

Memories of a time long passed hit her like a train. Aside from being a pokemon everything Alzack said and did was spot on. It made her wonder how a Zoroark could have gotten such a spot on description of her brother. She got her answer when she looked up at Alzack's begging face. There was something off about him, something almost dead. One of Alzack's eyes hung limply like a broken marionette puppet and spinned just a little when the other one moved. The eye looked dead, then she noticed the dark glow surrounding him. She'd seen that dark glow somewhere, somewhere deep in the forest at night when the ghost pokemon liked to come out and play.

Her mind flashed back to a Phanthump cold and alone in a dark forest, calling out for the family it lost when it wandered into the forest and died. Most Phanthumps, she discovered, did not know they were dead, they only knew of memories of a family they lost. Any child to get lost in the woods was at risk of becoming one, a ghost of dead memories.

A hard realization hit her like a train as she looked over the vision of her brother. She'd never heard of other pokemon becoming possessed by childrens souls but she supposed it wasn't too far fetched for the soul of a child turned into a ghost pokemon.

"Alzack…" She spoke his name tentatively as if it could break any second. The boys eyes lit up like a christmas tree. He looked happy like a child in his blissfully ignorant years, which she supposed he still was if he really had died. "You're dead."

Alzack's face was no longer happy. The smile was wiped off his face as easily as it had appeared. "Don't say things like that, big sis. I've been looking for you for ages. When I came back out of the forest and you weren't there I thought you had gone back to look for me so I came to look for you. I've been looking for so long and I finally found you big sis!" He flashed her a big toothy grin. It didn't make her feel any better, in fact it creeped her out. "Now we can play together again!" He held out a hand and the tree roots retracted. She was freed from their grasp but she didn't move.

Sera stayed put, staring at Alzack's extended hand. "Alzack...You died!" She put more emphasis on the word as he clearly hadn't gotten it the first time.

"No I didn't sis. I'm right here why would you say that?" He sounded extremely sincere, just like a lost child...She thought. Sera stood up and so did Alzack. She backed away from him a step but he instantly moved toward her. Tears threatened to fall out held back by only the pain from her bleeding lip. He looked so sincere, so innocent. The more Sera looked at him though the more obvious signs she could find that Alzack was dead. His mouth fell with his dead eye and was ripped from lip to chin, she could only guess that's what killed him as it looked like the wound alone would cause profusive bleeding.

That foolish kid must have fallen on a tree limb and ripped his mouth open… She closed her eyes again trying to control her breathing, her fists tightened. How many times had mother and I warned him about the dangers in the woods? Sera had lost count that's for sure. Still every time Alzack had entered the forest to play he would come out with a cut or bruise, this time he didn't come out at all.

"Please stop!" She yelled at the advancing child. "You are not him! You are not my brother! My brother died! HE'S DEAD!" She repeated the words as if trying to convince herself and console herself at the same time.

Sera didn't dare steal a glance at the crying form of her brother. "NOOOO!" Alzack screamed with all his might. His form shimmered and for a few precious seconds she could see the Zoroark he'd possessed, then the phanthump he had become when he died in the forest, finally under the dark layers in his earth bound soul she could see the ten year old kid he once was, matted, bloody and broken. Alzack kept screaming, the more he screamed the faster his form changed and the less consistent it was. "I'M NOT DEAD!" His voice screamed, no longer a child's voice, it was raspy, cracked, and slightly smothered like the voice were talking through a thin bed sheet. "I'M AS REAL AS YOU!"

Alzack's scream nearly broke her ear drums, his voice grew in pitch and volume until she had to check if her ears were bleeding. They weren't but she had to get out of here. Furret was no where to be found, she was worried. Surely the noise they were making was enough to attract Furret's attention even if he were a mile away.

Sera turned to run but stopped dead in her tracks. She looked back with covered ears at the screaming, crying form that pretended to be her brother. She couldn't leave him like this, if she simply abandoned her brother in the forest nothing would change. He would continue to wander as a restless spirit always searching for it's big sister to take him home and play. She couldn't let her brother's soul be tortured as it wandered aimlessly never at peace.

Tears cut streams on her cheeks. The ghostly wailing coming from her brother did little to stop the incessant beating of her heart. With her heart in her throat she grabbed a stray branch off the ground, broke it in half and aimed the jagged end at him. She let a pathetic whimper escape her lips, the first in a long time. Then more came, Sera was sobbing, tears glistened in the moonlight.

She didn't know how this would help but she had to put her brother spirit at rest, Sera hardened her feelings and bit her lower lip harder. With many broken steps and a single fluid movement she pierced Alzack with the stick. Alzack's blue eyes looked up at her in betrayal. She whimpered again, the tears wouldn't stop...She could see it in his eyes, his broken bloody face showed Sera the betrayal he felt.

Sera could never forgive herself for this, she regretted her actions the minute she did them. Alzack's cut up mouth opened but he said nothing. "I'm sorry!" She sobbed, throwing herself on top of her brother who only disappeared at her touch. Smoke swirled as his form evaporated.

Sera was alone, in the dark she sobbed staining her collar and sleeves with attempts to dry the tears. They kept coming, the tears fell until she lost consciousness.