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Part II: The Last Battle
Thus Ended The Annals Of How Macro Cosmos Was Destroyed
And How Eternatus Was Unleashed Again Upon The World.
Now Begin The Annals Of The Penultimate Typhoon Struggle
And The Final End Of All The Stories. For Although There Are More Tales To Tell Always
The Annals Of The Legends Of Pokemon Know Them Not.
Herein The Pokedex Holders United For A Final Time
And Passed Into The Undying West.
Thus A End Came To Them In Story And Song.
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This is the awe-inspiring universe of Magic: There are no building blocks to existence, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here—the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos, a sub-creator in Arceus's own creation.
-Hisuian story-lore
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I have waited and planned and built my strength for three thousand years.
I have evolved.
It is time.
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Wyndon, one day later
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Casey slept for as much as she could on the drive to Wyndon. Bronze gave his statement to the Galarian people, looking appropriately weary and stressed. Tess directed the efforts to restart the massive computer under Rose Tower, hoping to access Macro Cosmos's vast data drives. Squads of beleaguered Rorian soldiers patrolled the region, searching for Henry and assisting with repair efforts.
The reason for the Association fleet's presence in Galar was largely forgotten in the aftermath of the Darkest Day. Instead of suspicion or fear, an outpouring of gratitude flowed from Galar's citizens. Chairman Bronze had saved them again. He could not have possibly done more; he even led his armies into battle! What a brilliant man unlike any politician that came before him!
"Do not honor me in this," Bronze insisted in his address, with startling humility. "I could have prevented the Darkest Day from occurring. Some of you refer to me in heroic terms. Do not do this! My Jihad caused enough death. I do not need another. I am no hero. I am nobody."
"They won't listen to you," Magnolia said. "In this disaster, the people want a strong man, someone they can look up to and follow by example. I've seen enough of the supernatural in my life, but I now believe you are cursed, Bronze Tercano, cursed with terrible purpose. You cannot avert your own choices. You're stumbling in a framework, unable to break it. I ask you: where does that path lead?"
In his youth, Bronze had been called the Seer. It was not oracular prophecy like a Gothitelle, or probabilistic prediction like a Bibliographer, but rather a strong sense of his terrible purpose and where it would lead. He had seen the Rorian Jihad in his mind's eye even before destroying the Eclipse Alliance. As of late, he did not turn to his sense of prescience to aid him, but now he felt the answer to Magnolia's question, as implacable and unsurpassable as a great breaker-wave.
"Death. I feel the walls of my future growing narrower and narrower, chivving me and dragging me into a dark chasm. The walls are closing in on me."
"I can't help you," Magnolia said. "But maybe you can help yourself. Try to find a point where you can break free of this dark road. What mistake are you making, Tercano? Where did you go off the path of Wisdom?"
"Perhaps I will discover what you speak of," Bronze answered. "But it might be too late."
...
The data archives were active by the time the Magnolia RV arrived. Hundreds of bulky servers clustered in rows around a triple-screened plasma console, with a handy neuroelectric stimulation device keeping the Rotom and Porygon maintaining the vast stores of bits and bytes entertained and active. Casey wondered what it would be like to be stuck inside a computer in place of artificial intelligence, but assumed that at least the Pokemon enjoyed the experience.
Oleana unlocked the archives, bound in shigawire cuffs and escorted by Rorian soldiers. "There. Every last shred of data that Macro Cosmos had is yours to sift through. You may ask me or Miss Woodhall to assist you if there is a specific bit of information you require."
It's eerie how cooperative she is. I don't even sense the slightest bit of resistance. Ah, well. All's well that ends well?
Casey accessed the data on the chemical composition of Eternatus's poison that Moon had uploaded to a private Association network. Arriving from Sinnosui only hours ago, Moon hadn't discovered any magic bullet to cure it, but she had at least made some basic conclusions.
After the liquid-borne poison entered the body via pore contact and infected the liver, it produced large quantities of a protein that converted the body's own hormones, such as testosterone and cholesterol, into a compound similar to an anabolic steroid. The liver could not effectively break down "Compound Y" (Moon hadn't had enough energy to give it a more creative name), nor could it be purged from the bloodstream. Since natural hormones were depleted in their conversation into the deadly Compound Y, the body then overproduced them, while the building up of the toxin had striking physical and mental effects.
Without treatment, death would occur in forty percent of all patients. Liver failure would be expected, and heart attacks and strokes caused by malignant hypertension would be the main cause of sudden lethality. Theoretically, thyrotoxic crisis would cause the body to simply shut down due to hormonal imbalances in a smaller number of cases. By that point, extreme fever would have driven the victims into a deep coma that would last several days before they stopped breathing. In some cases, tendons easily ruptured, leading to many crippling injuries among the survivors. Thankfully, Chansey eggs and other Pokemon-based medical treatments could cut the lethality down to virtually zero. Piers already seemed close to recovery, along with many warriors. Sordward and Sheilbert had recovered, as proved through their escape. Association forces had launched a manhunt, but still found no traces of the two.
However, Moon had noticed a more exotic symptom. Once the toxin reached the brain, nonlethal delirium and psychosis would set in. Most conscious patients muttered about a guiding muse, telling them what to do and how to recover. "Adaman" for Raihan, "Rei" for Leon, and "Akari" for Nessa. Other specters had set onto the Rorian soldiers: all seemed benevolent. Being the symptom that most concerned her, Moon was working on finding a common link between these cases of group hallucination.
Making more exotic search parameters, Casey searched for chunks of metal in the rough shape of the Rusted Sword and Sheild in the few areas in which the pervasive Omninet-searching system found traces of Eternatus's poison. After ten minutes of calculation, Casey narrowed her results down to two results on a satellite topography map.
"Miss Woodhall, look!" Casey said. "The Rusted Sword and Rusted Sheild are in two different places! The Isle of Armor off the coast of Spikemuth, and the Crown Tundra south of the Southern Terminating Mountains!"
"Very good!" Tess said, checking the calculations and finding them accurate. "Our units in those regions, although spread thin, will find Henry and those two relics. The situation in Galar demands my and the Chairman's attention, however. I will give you and your friends travel passes to those regions, if you wish to travel there."
"Of course! We'll need six, for Magnolia, me, Marvin, Bede, Hop, and Marnie! I and Marvin will go to the Isle of Armor, while the others will go to the Crown Tundra. The Isle of Armor is far safer than the southern wastes!"
"Yes," Tess agreed. "It seems that the Isle of Armor was unaffected by the Darkest Day, and the Crown Tundra was similarly unscathed. Go to Mustard's Training Dojo; I'll curry some favor with him. Our Rorian Commandos go to train there when not in Almia. On the other hand, the Crown Tundra is still mostly unexplored. All places can be made habitable, but no one has yet wished to spend that amount of money terraforming the wasteland. Only a Dynamax Research camp and a small town with a declining and elderly population exist in that forgotten hellhole."
"No matter the dangers, we'll find Henry! Do you hear me, Sword? We're coming to get you!"
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Somewhere in Galar
Victory. Defeat. These are imposters, illusions. Fight fearlessly toward your own death, and Life cannot count you among her hordes of slaves.
-Swordmaster Jake Albans
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Sordward-Cypress and Sheilbert-Emrett lay still as corpses when two three Rorian soldiers approached the deactivated skycopter amid a forest, hoping of finding the two men who had escaped Hammerlocke Hospital in a stolen military craft.
"Looks like it's them," one named Kelian said. "But they're dead. Such a shame. The Grand Bashar would want us to give them a proper burial. Still got your Diggersby?"
"Sure I do," Alon said. "Wonder what killed 'em, though."
In seeming disagreement with the assessment of their deaths, the two men opened their eyes, grey orbs that stared unfocused, and then cleared. They inhaled a drowning-person's breath, and then stood ramrod straight. "Welcome, soldiers," Cypress said with a voice foreign to his host body's vocal cords, "to our stolen skycopter! We have tea, and crumpets, if that's what you Galarians eat."
The three warriors drew their electrablades. Alon sent out his Diggersby. "We're here to bring peace and safety to the Galar region, and erase the terrible memories of the Darkest Day! That is our mission. Once we grind you two traitors to humanity under our heels, I suspect we will be rewarded handsomely."
A ripple of rage swept like a dust storm across Cypress-Sordward's face. He flattened his hand, which became as rigid as steel, and threw a karate chop that cleanly decapitated Kelian.
Even before the body could strike the earth, Emrett sprang into motion. He shoved a dagger through Alon's spine, crushing his sternum and pushing all the way through his chest. The third soldier managed to raise his electrablade, and managed to parry Emrett's blade. A metallic sound rang out, and an unexpected shock nearly jarred the man's arm out of its socket. Jake Alban's sensei mechs had trained him well, but nothing prepared him for these two superhuman opponents.
Cypress grabbed the man's blade with both hands, snapped it in half, then struck a hard blow to his neck, paralyzing him. The soldier fell, still awake, still aware.
The Diggersby saw the mangled corpse of its trainer, and ran away in fear. Emrett raised his hand to throw his bloodstained blade, but Cypress stopped him. "Hold! Let that one escape. Imagine the faces of the others when they realize that three of their companions will never return!"
Emrett lowered his dagger, leaned close to the fallen man's face. "We are Jonathan Rowell Cypress and Emrett, servants of the Mbelekoro! Our memories have lain hidden in ego-space for decades. Now, before I finish killing you, tell me exactly what has happened in the intervening years. We know that our old enemy, Bronze Tercano, became the Chairman of the Pokemon Association and caused a bloody Jihad. We have heard that Tessa Woodhall and Jake Albans are still alive and well, the bastards. We know that a disaster happened in Galar, a region discovered only a little while after our deaths. But we need to know everything."
The soldier clamped his mouth shut.
"Tell me." Emrett bent down, extended a forefinger, and began to toy with his eye.
...
The man had been reluctant to divulge any information relating to the remnants of Team Eclipse or worldwide affairs, but he did eventually, once Emrett had been forced to extract several of his teeth with his fingers.
"We can forgive ourselves for our impatience," Emrett said, feeling the tackiness of dried blood on his fingers. "I am restless, and this lack of biological limitations resulting from our possession of these two bodies is a wonderful thing to behold."
Thanks to the information the soldier gave between his screams, Cypress and Emrett knew the basic story of the aftermath of the Battle of the Demon's Tomb, the Rorian Jihad, and the Darkest Day. According to the soldier in his last gurgling revelations, not a single Pokedex Holder had died in fifty-two years. It was high time for vengeance.
"I have found a way to restore your former military strength," Eternatus said through its mental link. "But you must find a surviving stronghold of the Eclipse Alliance. There is one near the Isle of Armor, the largest still remaining. It was abandoned in the early days of the Eclipse Jihad, but was made functional by chance events fifty-two years ago, after the Battle of the Forest of Elmoth, in which your most hated enemy, Bronze Tercano, participated."
"Yes, that stronghold," Cypress remembered, powering up the skycopter again. "I built it on a whim, as part of Project Lethe, to research a set of immortality experiments. Lots of cloning tanks there, genetic samples from prime bloodlines. Giovanni, Ghetsis, Lysandre...the Pokedex Holders, Red most of all. (Oh, what a costly task it was to gather those cells off discarded garments!) But if that is the largest of our outposts left, then dear Bronze was very thorough with cleaning up the remnants of our organization."
The 'copter lifted off, heading to the Isle of Armor. "I cannot wait until Tercano sees us again," Emrett chuckled. "I think we will transfer our consciousnesses into ideal bodies that resemble our old ones once we reach the outpost, and abandon these forms. How he will shake with fear!"
Cypress checked the holocube data again, smiling. "I can think of far sweeter ways to break him. He's made two new Pokedex Holders, or so the Omninet says. Those will be amusing to meet. And he has a wife, the Pokedex Holder named Moon...no children, though. Unfortunate. Godson, ah...Wilhem Berlitz. I intend to visit his family one day, so that we can show our full appreciation!"
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Wedgehurst Station, two days later
Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
-the Bibliographer's Creed
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The preparations had been made. Casey and her companions set out for the wilds of the Crown Tundra and the warrior's paradise of the Isle of Armor. They boarded the repaired monorail, and passed away from their friends and family.
Bronze watched them leave as he stood by Moon, felt his mouth go dry. For a moment, he tasted the smoke of a devastated future that resulted from this decision, terrible death. His intuition and future-sight were eavesdropping on stones and flesh that were not his. Ever since his first encounter with terrible purpose as a Pokedex Holder, he had peered into the future, hoping to find peace.
There existed a way, of course. He knew it by heart without knowing the heart of what it was...a plan of escape, strict in its meaning, yet unreachable by any means he knew: leave, disengage, disengage, disengage...
Remembering his dialogue with Rose yesterday, Bronze still found it hard to believe how obstinate the man could be, even in defeat. Aloof even in Bronze's presence, Rose thought that since his goals had been accomplished and Galar would have enough Tachyon Particles for time immeasurable, he did not care about what Bronze did to dispose of Eternatus. Giving no helpful information, Rose was sent to a prison complex on Almia.
"Have you seen this journey?" Moon asked, the tone of her voice obviously referring to future-sight. "Do you know what will happen?"
"No, not to Casey or Henry's fate," Bronze said. "But the boy is alive. My heart tells me so...the reason he was brought away was to preserve him from the blast, along with the Sword and Sheild. There is another being, one on our side. We might encounter it before the end."
Terrible purpose brushed past him. It whistled through the framework of his being. His body knew things it never learned in consciousness.
"Moon, beloved," he whispered. "Do you know what I would have spent to end that damnable Jihad, to separate myself from the godhead my own priesthood forces on me?"
"You have but to command it."
"Oh, no. Even if I had died before the Jihad, my name would still lead them. When I think of the names of House Tercano and House Berltiz tied to this religious butchery-"
"But you are the Grand Bashar! You could-"
"I'm a figurehead. When the godhead's given, that's the one thing the so-called god no longer controls." A bitter laugh shook him. "I was chosen. Perhaps at birth, certainly when I received my Pokedex. Certainly before I had much say in it. I was chosen."
"Then un-choose," she said.
His arm tightened around her shoulder. Unshed tears burned his eyes. "In time, beloved. Give me yet more time."
I never wanted to be a messiah, he thought. I wanted only to disappear like a jewel of trace dew caught by the morning. I wanted to escape the demons and the damned and leave for Heaven on Earth. Then no strain or net of human or Pokemon devising could ever catch me again! I renounce my twisted religion! This glorious instant of free will is mine! I'm free!
The cloud of thought fell away.
What empty words!
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Leon was lost in ego-space. The grotesque frenzy of memories swirled around him, only kept at guard by a valiant protector, a light of will and indomitable love shining in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The other millions of ego-memories fled from it, or joined the being's side to keep a sleepless vigil. The poison's physical effects were being battled from the outside, and his guardian protected him from the multitude of predatory ancestral memories.
"Who are you?" Leon asked. "Why are you helping me?"
"Ah, Leon is your name," the being, definitely another ego-memory, said. "It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to! Thus it is in this place. I am only a memory, but a strong one. My sunlight drowns out all but the brightest stars. I want to be a healer and guard, and love all things that have breath and are not barren."
"That is very good to hear," Leon said, and in his mind's eye he sat in the void. "But what is your name? What was it like when you were alive?"
"I am Rei Berlitz, the Plate-bearer, said to be the greatest of the Golden Company that overthrew the Evil Djinn, although I think this false. Now that his servant walks abroad once more, it is my duty to protect those that would oppose this Eternatus."
"The Golden Company? That's just an old wive's tale!"
"Then you should pay heed to the tales of old wives! It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know. But I see why you have little knowledge of me or my fellows. Some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two thousand years, the deeds of the Golden Company passed out of all knowledge."
"I don't know whether to trust you or not," Leon said. "Are there other protectors like you?"
"Yes. They watch over your friends as they lie ill. But I have grim tidings. Two old foes of your kind have left this place and into the upper world. They wish to put everything under a Great Darkness. When you awaken, tell all that will listen to this. But even in the end it is only a passing thing; this shadow, this darkness. Even it must pass."
"You lived in Hisui," Leon said, taking an opportunity to find out about life in ancient times. "What was it like? I suppose you didn't go on your great quest on a whim."
"That is so," Rei said. "I should never have gone to defeat the Evil Djinn at all, if I knew where I would have ended up or known a bit more about the path when I started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old songs and tales, Leon, adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull and their Pokemon not strong enough, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind."
Rei continued, laughing like the ringing of clear steel. "But I expect they had lots of chances, like me or you, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on, and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same; like myself. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we've fallen into, here in these times that are strange to me?"
"I wonder," Leon said. "But I don't know. And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to. But in these times, we know where our adventures go: to places of Death."
"Then your times are full of darkness and peril," Rei said. "But of a different kind than the past, I assume. Still, someone must always carry on the story. Deeds are not less valiant because they go unpraised. And now I say that you must join with me if you are to receive my Knowledge, and you will walk free in the waking-world with me looking out of your eyes as a welcome guest."
"Why?" Leon asked. "Why should I do this? I fear possession; I cannot tell if you are trustworthy."
"I would not take over your body," Rei insisted. "But Arceus compels me, a mere memory of thought and whispers, to do this thing. This would be a small act, yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. Fear nothing! Have peace! Heed no dark imaginings!"
"Well, I'm going back to the open air," Leon said. "To see how Galar and my friends are doing! You can come with me if you would like."
"I bless you for this. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend: such would be my fate even if I betrayed your trust. I wished to be loved in this weary state, but I desire no man's pity! We are truth-speakers, we Men of Hisui. We boast seldom, and then perform, or die in the attempt. I take these words to be as a vow, and woe to me and my kin if I should ever break it. Now, sleep."
"Things are becoming stranger and stranger," Leon wondered. "But if this is strange, then I suppose we could all do with a little more strangeness in our lives."