Emerald's pov, from here on out it switches off every chapter between Emerald and Ray. Sorry I disappeared for a while, I just finished 100,000 words on this story in 2 months, and it's still going. It's a little ridiculous, but this is more an experiment to get a word count. After I'm done, and know what the heck I'm doing with this story, I'll rewrite it in a much more refined way. Enjoy!
I stared at my new Rayquaza. He was a handsome dragon, shiny and strong and sleek. It was worth the wait for him. We were going to take to the skies together. I wasn't sure what exactly my duty with Rayquaza would entail, but it had to involve flying! Plus he looked kind of skinny and maneuverable. He would be good in caves, too.
He stared back at me strangely. Oh, right, I was still soaking wet. My silk dress clung to me awkwardly… everyone just sort of left. I whirled around to yell at Diamond. She was already gone. I sighed. This had to be one of the worst first impressions in the history of the world.
"Hi, I'm Emerald now, I guess. And you?" I asked.
"Ray." He answered in a deadpan. It was… hard to get a read on this guy. He was probably just weirded out by how I looked or how the ceremony was going? They always seemed to arrive knowing what was supposed to happen, and this was not what was normally supposed to happen.
"My sister messed with time so it looked like you paused and then appeared right in my face. Sorry we had to meet like this." He looked me over. I would have loved to know what was going on in his head. He couldn't… already think I was a failure. I was… but I didn't want him to know that. This was supposed to be a new start, not the same old thing with a new face.
"We should go to the Oracle." He said.
"Uh… ok. It's up there." I pointed to the main entrance to the cascade caves, from which the river originated. I was still on the marble panel in the middle of the river. Dad got me on here, but he had left, too. "Can you fly me there?" I asked.
"You can fly yourself." He replied, and started floating up towards the cave. I sighed internally. I knew what he was thinking. If I had him as my legend, I should have been able to use magic to fly myself. I probably had the magical prowess to do that now, at least a little. The thing was magic potential and execution were two separate things. Lilly and I had only focused on creating a beacon. There was no other sort of magic I knew how to do. Ray didn't know that, though. Maybe I could pull it off… somehow.
I closed my eyes and centered myself. The ocean, the wind, the waves, the sky… the winds pulling me upwards… up into the heavens, my feet lifting off the ground and drifting towards the cave. I had no idea if this was even the right way to do this kind of magic.
I opened my eyes. It was not. My feet were still firmly on the ground, and Ray didn't want to fly me, I assumed, otherwise he would had done it to begin with. So, looked like I was going to have to ford the river. The entrance to the cave was entirely river for a while, until it opened up into a lake a ways in. This was not turning out to be the day I wanted it to be.
I slogged through the river, against the current. I pulled my dress up a bit so that I could move my legs easier. Ray looked back at me sidelong. If he had an eyebrow, I'd bet it would be raised. He was judging me. He had no right to judge me. We just met. This was why I wanted him to fly me. Maybe now that he saw me struggling, he would fly me. I walked on a few steps. He was still staring at me but didn't say a word, just kept floating along.
"I can't fly. Could you help me?" I asked. In response he just turned away and kept floating like he didn't hear me. How… rude. Why was he being so rude to me? He barely said two words to me and he seemed to hate me. I didn't even do anything to him. So I sloshed through the river, barefoot. Thankfully, the current wasn't so strong that it swept me away when I had proper footing. We got to the mouth of the cave. Once we crossed its threshold, I was able to calm down. The sound of the water echoing off of the cavern walls was soothing. I looked over at Ray. There was no change. I pulled out my gem light which I brought with me to… well… light the way, that was obvious. Ray looked at it like he wanted to ask a question about it, but held his tongue.
"If you have something to say, you can say it." I said, a bit ticked off now. There were plenty of reasons for plenty of people to give me the cold shoulder, or at least something I understood they thought was my fault. But this… the Pokemon bonded to me, who was supposed to be my best friend and partner, was being so cold to me for no reason.
"Listen. I don't like you." He said curtly, turning violently towards me. Then he checked himself, turned away, and kept going.
"And why not, cause I fell in the water? I told you that wasn't my fault. Or because I can't fly? I just haven't learned yet! And that's a stupid reason!" That made him stop for a moment, like he wanted to retaliate, but he did not, and kept going. This wasn't going well, huh? Did my sisters have a similar experience?
We came to the lake, and finally reached dry land. I was thankful to get out of the water. Now we were in a large, open cavern. This was a manmade space, unlike all the rest of the caves. Everything else, the catacombs and such, were all from erosion or something. Those were far more interesting, the caves that had not been made by design. This was carefully chiseled out, right down to the carving on the floor, the kingdom's crest, as well as many other similarly minimalistic drawings full of Pokemon and people working together and nature and elements.
This was the Oracle's chamber. There she was, in the center of the chamber. She was an elderly woman with white hair and dark purple, ragged robes, fraying at the seams. It looked something like a dirty decaying cloth. Something about her made me feel rather uneasy. I had never seen her before, only heard stories. Not many people ever actually saw her. She lived here in this cave, and the only reason people ever went in this particular cave was because of some ceremony she was a part of. The only people who ever did these types of ceremonies were royals, a very small percentage of the population. We could be completely making her up and nobody would be able to contradict us. I thought, for a while, that she was actually a myth. But there she was. As we approached, she chuckled.
"You two… I have been waiting. You have kept me waiting for quite a while." She said, her voice like a wheeze, a death cry. I felt my face get hot.
"Alright, I get it. Can we just… get on with it?!" I asked. This was not what this was supposed to be. Now, even the Oracle was making fun of me.
"Just teasing a little. I apologize, my dear." The Oracle croaked. She had to have an actual name, right? But she wasn't about to tell it to us. Or, at least, she had never told anyone else. "Now, before we begin… do the two of you have any questions?"
"What is your name?" I blurted out.
"You know, nobody's ever asked me." She chuckled. "I call myself Hazel." Oh, I guessed it wasn't some big mystery, it was just that nobody asked. That was kind of funny, honestly. Lots of mysteries were only mysteries because people didn't actively seek out the answer, I found.
"How do I get back?" Ray asked, cutting off Hazel's laughter. I looked at him. Get back? To the place where he came from? That… that was weird. Why would he want that? Ray was different than the others… All my sister's familiars… they did not behave like this at all. I had to wonder why. But… sending someone back, the opposite of a beacon. It was not an easy two way door. My eyes went wide and I shook my head at the Oracle, begging her silently not to tell him how to do it. Come on. My life had just begun, and now he wanted to end it? I would be a pariah forever. Please, please don't tell him.
"That… is not a question for me to answer." She answered simply. "Now, there is not much time, the energies align only for a time. Mismagius, come."
If there was a limited time, why did she even give us a chance to ask questions? She could have done the reading first, and then opened the floor to questions. But who was I to question the Oracle. A Pokemon flew out of the ground, from the shadows. It was a dark purple Pokemon, matching the Oracle's garb. It looked like it had a pointy witch's hat, but I was willing to bet that it was just attached to its head.
It floated to Hazel and wrapped its arms around her, Mismagius's eyes twinkled. Gem lights lit up on the ceiling, so that the cave ceiling looked like the vast night sky, with the stars twinkling. It was mesmerizing… Ray made a little noise. He was impressed by it, too. The Oracle started to sway, and her eyes went blank and cloudy. She… was she ok? No, Crystal told me a little about this. She would go into a trance and spit out some nonsense, and then you could spend a lifetime trying to decipher it. None of my sisters had been able to do it yet, or at least, I didn't think so. It wasn't really something we talked about.
It seemed Ray knew what was going on, too. I wondered where exactly it was he came from, and why he would care about going back? And what was the orientation like, I wondered. Because the Pokemon always seemed to know about this world.
The lights in the ceiling got brighter and brighter, until it was absolutely blinding. I had to close my eyes. I remembered seeing the light from outside the cave. I never realized it was this bright. It was hurting my eyes, actually.
"When the world falls into darkness and the light is struck from the sun, a star shall rise from an unforeseen place, take its rightful place in the sky, and blot out the night." She and Mismagius said, overlapping each other to make this weird, sort of creepy split voice. And then the lights went out.
"What?" I asked. But, of course, there was no answer. The Oracle made her prediction, and that was all there was to say about it. She would give no explanation because I was pretty sure she didn't have an explanation. She just predicted the future, she didn't necessarily understand it.
And then I found myself in front of the castle. We had been teleported back here, left to wonder about the prophecy we were given. I could hear an almost imperceptible sigh to the right of me. I looked, Ray was there. Weren't we supposed to be bound to someone according to what was in our hearts and souls? Why was I with some mopey guy?
"Well… this is home." I said. "Since it's you, we'll probably have a big room on the top floor, so you can fly around and stuff." I said, maybe that would be comforting somehow?
"Right, let's go then. I could use a nap." Ray said.
"Me too." I replied, although I was pretty sure he needed a nap for a much different reason than I. I was… magically exhausted.
Hope you have an awesome day!