Emerald's POV

"Whoa, hello?" I looked back and forth wildly. What in the name of all that was good in the world was happening? One moment I was in a jungle with the old man and Strider and Ray and the Flygon and… now… now I didn't know where I was, but I was alone.

"Hello?!" I yelled out, but the words just echoed back at me through the maze of buildings made of dull gray stone. It looked a little weird, so I touched the closest building. It had a texture I had never experienced before. Was this some material or method of building I did not know about? That wasn't hard to do, most of the buildings in the kingdom inside the walls… were just carved out of the stone, or they lived in the caves. They were well furnished, but they were in caves. This stuck up from the ground out in the open, and there looked to be hundreds of them, all identical. They seemed to go on forever, forever and ever. There were some rectangles cut out, windows, they must have been, but they didn't have any glass, they were just open. There were no doors, the lowest opening was ten to fifteen fee up in the air, and the walls were sheer and smooth. I… It was possible that I might be able to climb up there. I didn't know if it was possible. There was only one way to find out, go and attempt a climb. Just like in the caverns of my kingdom.

Well, it wasn't really my kingdom anymore, was it? Was this my kingdom, now? A kingdom of nothingness and weird buildings. The walls were at really exact right angles, and it was actually kind of intimidating for a reason I could not understand. There were a lot of things I seemed to be feeling that I couldn't understand. What was this place? This was… where Strider sent me, where the old man told Strider to send me. The trial of the affliction, or the afflicted, or something like that. What was that supposed to mean? Who or what was afflicted, and what did it have to do with the buildings?

I backed up as far as I could without backing up into another building, then ran up to a building and jumped as high as I could. I could not reach the lowest window. I tried several more times, with the same result. I frowned, something I couldn't scale, and there were no foothold anywhere, unless they were invisible or covered in cloaking magic. This was a test. And I guessed part of the test was trying to figure out what exactly I was supposed to be doing for the test, and what I was being tested on. Oh, sorry, not test, trial, he called them the trials. I needed to climb something? Maybe? I needed to do something with the buildings, that was obvious… they were the only thing here, for Arceus' sake! But what was I supposed to do with them? Maybe I was supposed to find one that was different? All the ones I could see were the same, but maybe there was another one somewhere that had some sort of different markings or a window low enough for me to get to or a wall I could scale?

I didn't feel very safe here without Ray. It was weird, I had been in way more overtly threatening situations without him, in caves and such, exploring… it was dangerous work, but having a big dragon that felt inclined to protect you, even if he wasn't that powerful… because of me. Still, even without the magic and powers he'd had in his own world, he had size on his side, and claws and teeth and such. The point was, he was intimidating, and having a being like that to protect me made me feel safe, and then having that presence be taken away suddenly. Was that a part of the trial. I wondered if Ray felt the same about being taken away from his wife. I wondered what she was like. I imagined a slightly smaller, more slender Rayquaza, with maybe a slightly lighter green color.

It was useless to think about that right now. I started to walk. Everything was just sort of… static, nothing changed, I felt no wind, and the air seemed stale. I dragged my hand along the buildings as I walked along. Perhaps my hand would hit a bump or crack or something, something that would give me some sort of foothold to climb.

"Hellloooooo!" I called out again, just in case. Nothing came back but my own echo. What a boring trial. Maybe it would get more exciting when I actually got to the part that was supposed to do. Yeah, actually doing something would probably help.

As I walked, I began to hear… something. It wasn't really a sound I could identify. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before. It was like… um, how could I even describe it? It was high pitched in nature… and sounded, um… it sounded, I guessed, like when a teleportation panel was broken, like when it didn't, um. To be honest, I didn't know how those things worked, or how they broke, but they made a weird noise when the pictures and words wouldn't move. We had to get dad to come fix it. He seemed to be one of the only people who actually knew how that technology worked. Did that mean there was a teleport panel somewhere? Well, even if there was, it was pretty useless to me. What could I do with a broken panel and no way to fix it?

I kept walking. I wasn't sure what I was doing, or what I was supposed to be doing. I felt even like I was losing myself a little in the massive city, and the loud noises, the super loud, high pitched noises, and low pitched noises too, but they were all very, um… discordant. Unnerving. And then, in the distance, I finally saw something different.

One of the buildings was cracked. There was a foothold, sweet! I could actually get up there, that was enough like a real rock formation or cave for me to climb. Didn't even need my light, cause it was out in the open. The lighting was really white, and made everything kind of stark and harsh and the shadows were sharp. I could not see where the light was coming from. It was coming from the sky, of course, but I couldn't see a sun or clouds or anything like that, nothing that would generate or obfuscate light… there was just… light.

Anyways, I checked my pockets, I was in a white dress like during the ceremony, but I had shoes for this one. No pockets… My gem light had been in a pocket of mine. Hadn't really needed it this whole time, and didn't know where it went now. I hoped I found it, eventually… me and my little floating light had been through a lot of things, and I liked having it with me. It was… good memories, with the kids and by myself in a cave, seeing all there was to see, not being a screw up, being good at something.

I put my hand on in the cracks in the tower, and pulled myself up, then foot, hand over foot over hand over foot, and so on until I went up to a window, or what I was pretty sure was a window, it could be a weird sort of, um… door, I supposed? No, no, that was stupid, it was a window, or, actually, it really didn't matter. I peered in and saw… nothing, absolutely nothing. That was weird. It was just blackness in there. I peered in a little further… nope, still nothing. Huh… something about this was… drawing me in…

I climbed higher, the rest of the windows were the same, just blank, nothing in there, but there had to be something there because it was… something was calling me. I got to the top of the tower… it was taller than all of the others by far, reached all the way up into whatever counted as sky, and inside, for the building had no roof, none. It was just a hollow rectangular prism of darkness. Shadow inside, shadow inside…

And I stood at the precipice and stared down into the void, and it stared back at me, it seemed… And I wanted to jump in, but instead, it came up to meet me, a black shadow exposing me, consuming me, in my soul. It was comforting. The distortion got worse, the sound got worse, it was like distorted screaming, screaming at me. A dud, a failure, screaming at me, consuming me.

The buildings fell, crumbled under my feet, and I fell, fast and free. I didn't feel anything about this, and I didn't know why. I was going to die, now. I was going to die, and in a pretty bad way, too. There were better ways to die. I guessed this was the old coot's way of saying I failed the trial. It seemed it was too hard for me. I was going to be forgotten in this city of nothing. I was falling and … and the world was distorting around me in patches, and I thought I could see… symbols, symbols and stars. Was this even real, or was I dreaming? Color flickering in and out, and then I hit the ground.

I did not die when I hit the ground. Instead, I just stood back up, and everything was a bright red. Blood. Everything was blood, everywhere? Scarlet… crimson… blood… why did it fascinate me so, why was it calling me? I wanted more of it, more of it, all around. I ran into another building, it popped and splattered, it, too, was blood, warm, no longer smooth, held together by membrane, living. The buildings were alive, the world was alive.

What was wrong with me? What the hell was happening?! What was happening, what was happening?! The word was screaming at me, and I might have been screaming back. Or, maybe… I was silent. I could no longer tell. Every nerve in my body pulsed with an energy I and never felt before, something I would never feel again, something that was only here. I was here, and I was not, and I was so very right, in this place, it was right. It was right here, for once in my life I was in the right place at the right time, I wasn't a mess up. Blood, bathed in blood, my face… shining with it.

Madness… this was madness, wasn't it, this was what happened when you mind started to unravel, but I couldn't make myself care about this. So… I did fail the test, didn't I? Or was this part of the test? Well, the high pitched, low pitched, the distortion was gone, the buildings were gone, too. It was only a sea of blood, about ankle deep as far as I could see in any direction. The obstacles were gone, the obstacles were gone all around, and now there was nothing.

No, no, that wasn't acceptable. I couldn't just… I couldn't have nothing, something, I needed something to hold on to. There was a wall behind me, now, the same stone sort of but not really stone walls, and it was… it was pushing me forward? Why was it pushing me? And there were other walls too, closing in all around, closing me in, and the blood, too…until there was a giant building of blood, keeping me in suspended animation for a long time… forever.

Something disturbed my eternal slumber… or, I thought it was eternal, it wasn't necessarily eternal, I had no idea if it was, I had no sense of time. Something disturbing it, cracking the walls of the building, the thick walls around me. There were spikes, something on long strands… it cracked the edges, the shadows leaking in… My blood capsule, I liked it in here, I did not want to be disturbed. But something was doing something vines were coming in spikes on vines. I could have screamed, but the second I opened my mouth, blood came rushing in… and then it came rushing out. And there I was on the ground, and there was Ray, looking at me in a puddle of blood. Oh, there he was.

"Hi Ray." I tried to say, but I couldn't say a thing, because I was face down in blood. It was just a thick sort of gurgle. It tasted weird, not good, pretty bad, actually, but it was already a part of me. The blood was in me and about me. I… I could not think straight. There was too much red. In fact, in fact I did not even know if Ray was even there, I just sensed his presence. He was there, he was all around me, it seemed, and he was so far away. So far away, his soul did not reach me. Did he even have a soul right now? I could not tell. I couldn't tell anything, and I couldn't tell anything, couldn't speak, couldn't live, couldn't breathe. I felt like laughing until I died. Or perhaps I was already dead. Who could say?

"Steal away her life…" I could hear, in a hoarse, hash whisper. Ray was coming.

Have an awesome day!