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Space, the Moon
The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
-Mythopoeia, by J.R.R. Tolkien
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"Alright, time to blast this demon to dust!"
Above the blank and lifeless moon, Captain Rellus of the Rorian Space Navy directed his five-hundred-strong fleet, taken from the armada posted above Wyndon, to where Eternatus cowered amid a massive storm of energy particles. Lumbering battleships, cruisers, and smaller destroyers, all packed with enough atomics to sterilize Earth itself several times over.
The fleet converged over the vortex of dark particles like an approaching storm. Frigates disgorged hundreds of mismatched craft, each carrying an old-school atomic: a seed of immense destruction.
...
Eternatus waited, sensing the approaching battle force as it healed from the injuries sustained during the short confrontation between the Two Princes and itself. Even without the Blessed Sword and Sheild, the Dark Lord had sustained more wounds than he had expected. Thus, the Moon.
Cypress and Emrett would be too late to launch the hidden megafleet, still growing usable bodies for themselves and other ego-memories. These Rorians would be in Eternatus's hands to destroy.
An atomic neared the vortex, but the winds of pure force in airless space seized it, stripping its shell away, and devouring the resources within, stopping the precision-engineered timed detonation. More bombs suffered the same fate, the shield of energy protecting Eternatus catching each bomb and assimilating their materials into unexplosive slag.
The enormous fleet pressed on, but Eternatus had its own weapons.
If the fleet could not be destroyed, it would have to be moved. Eternatus sent a billow of tachyons at the fleet, blasting it away with a soundless roar on the solar wind. The Dark Lord shuddered. If the fleet returned, it would not have enough energy to attack in such a way again.
...
Rellus stood on the bridge of his command ship, and felt pressing acceleration as the tachyons repelled the fleet, outrunning photons as the entire contingent was pushed away from the Moon. "Hold on until we slow down! Then we'll send in precision bombers on the return journey."
Once the tachyons dispersed, Rellus expected to see the Moon as a distant sphere again, with Earth sitting aside from it. Instead, the bridge deck was filled with blazing light, raging ionized gases, stellar fire.
The tachyons had pushed the Rorian fleet back, and left them in space...plunged into the boiling fringes of the Sun.
The navigation officer shouted, but Rellus could only think of the searing light that had burnt out his eyes, along with everyone else on the flight deck. Coronal loops swirled up and around; convection cells churned plasma below.
The command ship vaporized instantly, along with five hundred other proud battleships.
...
Isle of Armor
...
Bronze had ordered Jake and Tess to come with him to the Isle of Armor as soon as Henry's frantic transmission reached the Association network. Sordward and Shielbert had returned, claiming to be his long-dead enemies, Cypress and Emrett. They had broken bones like toothpicks, absorbed attacks like stone walls. Furious beyond measure that Moon and the Pokedex Holders had been threatened, Bronze vowed to kill the two brothers himself, once the mystery of their sudden change in disposition had been solved.
Hundreds of Rorian soldiers swept the island with the help of the students from the Master Dojo, but found no trace of the two. Bronze set up a permanent guard of war-Salamance and soldiers, in case the demonic twins returned to finish their mission. "If you find them, try to capture them alive! They need to be questioned."
Avery had extracted several liters of creosote sap, and given it to Moon. With trembling hands, she managed to brew a chemical concoction out of already proven treatments for Eternatus's toxin, synthesizing the formula to mass-produce if needed. Klara put the antidote into a set of darts, on hand to carry any substance that might have to be injected into a person or Pokemon.
Casey had fallen asleep again, piled under several thermiblankets in the Dojo. "She's in shock, most likely," Mustard said. "It was only inevitable that she would collapse under the stress of recent times, but the senseless brutality espoused by those two men pushed her over the edge."
"It's remarkable that she remained calm and controlled through the Darkest Day," Bronze said. "I suppose she could have suppressed the trauma, rationalized it. But there was no reason for the bloodshed on that cliff!" He gritted his teeth. Such tactics seemed awfully familiar. Sordward and Shielbert were refined, and would never stoop to such tactics unless absolutely necessary. Where had this power of superhuman endurance come from, as well?
"I have a theory," Moon explained in the training study. "The cases of psychosis we've been seeing in the other patients may be more than delusions. I think that one of the toxin's properties might make the mind vulnerable to attacks from ego-space: a mental plane where the genetic memory of all humans is kept in every person. We are all related, after all. Some of these ego-memories might have good intentions, others...not as much. It is possible that Sordward and Shielbert were fully possessed by..."
"Fine," Bronze snapped, still trying to process the reality that his two greatest foes might have returned. "How do we kill them?"
"The destruction of the host body's brain should annihilate the ego-memory forever," Moon replied. "This would be permanent, because the genetic data used to bring the ego-memory to life, although poorly understood, should be physical, and thus under the force of entropy. You cannot split your consciousness. All of Cypress and all of Emrett are within Sordward and Shielbert. If those bodies are destroyed, so will the ego-memories go, forever."
"Kill them?" Mustard said. "That will be very difficult." His face grew stern. "They spilled the blood of our family members to reach Henry Sword and Casey Shield. They have a high blood price on their heads. Either we banish them from the island or they repay it by killing those two men themselves. It would be kinder to make them leave this land."
"No, it's me they want." Bronze assumed that if Cypress and Emrett had truly returned, they would be after him and the other Pokedex Holders. "I and those ego-memories have a history together. I don't see how they could pose much of a threat now, but we cannot take any chances. If you encounter them, terminate those men using any methods you know of. Burn the corpses to ashes."
A comsignal reached Bronze's private Rotom Phone, from the earthbound control station of the fleet he sent to destroy Eternatus. "Is the threat entity neutralized?"
"No, sir..." Bronze heard papers being shuffled. "The fleet is...unresponsive and not in our scanning systems. Eternatus seems to be unharmed. We believe that the fleet was destroyed, sir."
Bronze swore like an angel out of heaven, swore until the entire student body looked at him. Never had Mustard heard such swearing. How charming, how delightful.
Rellus was dead. The rest of the men in the fleet were dead. A substantial percentage of Bronze's fighting force had gone into that assault, and now it had been entirely annihilated. Combined with the slight causalities from the initial assault on Macro Cosmos and the battles over Galar during the Darkest Day, Bronze had lost a third of the fleet that had come to Galar.
"There must be some way we can make this situation salvageable," Bronze said, feeling a noose being inexorably tightened around his neck. "Do we have any good news?"
"Yes, sir," Avery said, rushing in. "We found the Rusted Sword."
...
"This is it," Henry said, licking his lips as he saw the relic laid out before him. "Where did you find it?"
"Near the Tower of Water," Avery said. "That's one down. If you're feeling up to it, you could join that other force you mentioned in the Crown Tundra. What makes this thing so special, anyway?"
"Well, it's magic, one of the few really magic things still left in the world," Henry said. "And even better, I can't analyze it or repair it! My instruments just don't work on it. It's like it was forged in heaven: because it was! This thing is an unknown, a relic...something I've been searching for my entire life. Now that I have it, it's a shame that I can't get it someplace else to study."
Henry stood, and caressed the sword with a forefinger. "Yes, such a shame..." His eyes went wild. "But does it have to be? No!" The word was wrenched from his mouth. His chest heaved and voices began to pour from his mouth. "You see! I'm Volo, I'm in charge!" And again: "I'm Jealousy! Give control to me!" And another voice: "Stop the others! I'm Violence! I beat up a woman today. I kicked her and I hit her and-"
"He's going under to the poison!" Moon said, running for the back room where she had left the antidote gun. "Restrain him!"
Still Henry raved under Volo's influence. "I'll kill you, Casey Sheild!" Hideous curses erupted from him. "I'll drink your blood!" The sounds of many languages tumbled from him, distorted and confused. The trainees cowered, made the sign of Arceus with their fingers. He was possessed!
"Henry Sword, I know you're still in your own head!" Bronze calmly said, then again, softer. "This is not who you are."
"Who are you to say who I am, old man?" Henry-Volo asked, and his voice was of a quarrelsome man, and an autocratic and natural facsimile of a human being that had departed too far from the Light. "And who are you to give me a choice?" Then it was Henry again, pleading in little boy-tones of the child who was now gone. "Help! Help! What do you want me to do? Help me."
"Demon!" Mustard yelled. "Let the boy go!"
"Help yourself," Bronze said, seeing the shattered hopelessness of Henry Sword, a glaring hatred that looked out at him, and was gone. "Moon is waiting for you. Run to her or leave."
Henry clutched his head, opened his mouth as if to scream, but moved in a jagged, sticklike walk toward where Moon now stood. "Stop!" Volo cried. "Stop, I say! I command you! Stop it! Feel this! Don't do this! Stop and I'll help you! I have a plan. Stop! Wait!"
But Henry pulled his hands away from his head, seized the antidote-filled dart gun from Moon's hands. He pointed it at his arm, and fired in one jerking motion.
Volo screeched, gurgled, died. Henry fell unconscious, landing on the training mat with a sodden thump, smiling.
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Freezington, the Crown Tundra
My definition of an army? Why, tame killers, of course!
Emrett Dialogues, compiled works
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Freezington was a barren hovel amid an icy waste, a town of small extent and hardy construction, yet without a good view of visible life. From the tangle of chiminy pots scarcely a wisp of smoke came, and the three tall steeples of the mayor's house loomed stark and decaying against the grey horizon. Hop saw that the decay was worse near the edges of the town, with the rusted, snow-covered remnants of an abandoned monorail line near the outskirts. Leaning telephone poles without wires and the half-obscured lines of old smuggler roads from pre-colonial times dotted the plains south of the town, vanishing into the frosts.
In the center of the squalid town square, Hop saw a quarried statue, labeled "The Lord of Bountiful Harvests." It was ruined, but still held the tumbledown likeness of a Pokemon or other sort of crowned creature. He would have to ask around to find out what it was supposed to represent.
Arceus! How dilapidated this town was! No Omninet connection, and a meager handful of permanent residents. The only house that still held some semblance of grandeur aside from the mayor's hut was a large shack named the Freeze Inn, with a banner hanging outside its thermiseal door. "We're lucky this place even has a connection to the monorail network," Marnie said. "Well, time to get hunting for any clues we can."
Magnolia departed from another monotrain car to establish a presence at the Freeze Inn, while Hop and the others went to the mayor's house on their errand. The door was open and not even thermally sealed, revealing the bedraggled remnants of a sort of open concourse devoid of people or Pokemon inside the faded walls that led into another door, this one closed.
Bede reached the squat entrance first, and tried the door. Seeing that it was unlocked, he sent out his Rapidash, as if expecting a battle. "Anyone who lives in a filthy place like this has fallen out of my good graces!"
Before Hop could fully observe the masonry desk in the small, cluttered office, he heard a faint wheezing voice. "Hey, kids!" Hop turned, and saw a wiry, immensely aged man stooping by the desk, clutching a Poke Ball in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other. "Y' ain't supposed to be here!"
"Oh, we're here on Association business," Hop said. "Being here on the order of Chairman Bronze Tercano, we want to know if you've seen anything like a rusty sword or shield around, anything that might be considered strange."
"Quiet!" Marnie hissed. "Can't you see he's drunk?"
"Drunk?" the man said. "Arrrr! I ain't drunk! I'm Nathan Allen, th' mayor o' Freezington!" He stood, and Hop noted that he was not swaying. "Me alcohol tolerance is second t' none! And you comin' here and talkin' baout a sword n' shield? Oh-hohoho, thars some odd things fur you kids to go out and see in th' wastes! C'mere, I'll tell ya everythin'..."
The trio sat on a aging couch, almost amused at what this heavily wasted man had to say. "Tell us about that statue in the town square."
"Tis' supposed t' be Calyrex Tor-Oyarsa, th' Lord o' Bountiful Harvests. Well, this place ain't seen summer nor shine in centuries! Lemme tell ye about th' legend and folks n' Pokemon involved in recent yars that make me n' some othars think it's true!"
Allen told them of Calyrex and its powers, and how the descendants of Aelfric's tribe had come to the Crown Tundra. The people in Freezington were descended from them, but legend said that another group still lurked in the wastes, armed with primitive weapons and without Poke Balls. Calyrex was said to still dwell with them, although no man still living could report to have seen it...although many odd things had happened forty years ago, concerning the voyages of one Captain Kidd, a native Galarian when the colonization of the region had hardly begun.
...
"Thar's whar it all begun—that cursed place of all wickedness whar the deep suthern water starts. Gate o' hell—sheer drop daown to a bottom no saoundin'-line kin tech. Ol' Cap'n Kidd done it—him that faound aout more'n was good fer him in the Saouth Sea islands. Never was nobody like Cap'n Kidd—old limb o' Devil! Heh, heh! I kin mind him a-tellin' abaout furren parts, an' callin' all the folks stupid fer goin' to Arcean meetin' an' bearin' their burdens meek an' lowly. Says they'd orter git better gods like some o' the tribal folks in the wastes or islands—gods that ud bring 'em good fishin' in return for their sacrifices, an' ud reely answer folks's prayers."
"Wal, kids, Matt, Kidd's fust mate, he says the natives araound them south islands had all the fish they cud ketch, an' sported bracelets an' armlets an' head rigs made aout of a queer kind o' gold an' covered with picters o' monsters n' Pokemon jest like the ones carved over the ruins on the geoglyphs 'n Turfield—sorter horse-like creatures or snow-deer things that was drawed in all kinds o' positions like they was human bein's. Nobody cud git out o' them whar they got all the stuff, an' all the other natives wondered haow they managed to find fish in plenty even when the very next islands had lean pickin's whe. Matt he got to wonderin' too, an' so did Cap'n Kidd. Kidd he notices, besides, that lots of the han'some young folks ud drop aout o' sight fer good from year to year, an' that they wa'n't many old folks araound. Also, he thinks some of the folks looks durned queer even fer them Emskimis.*"
"It took Kidd to git the truth aout o' them heathens. I dun't know haow he done it, but he begun by tradin' fer the gold-like things they wore. Ast 'em whar they come from, an' ef they cud git more, an' finally wormed the story aout o' the old chief—Sorbjorn, they called him. Nobody but Kidd had ever a believed the old yeller devil, but the Cap'n cud read folks like they was books. Heh, heh! Nobody never believes me naow when I tell 'em, an' I dun't s'pose you will, young fellers—though come to look at ye, ye hev kind o' got them sharp-readin' eyes like Kidd had."
"Sorbjorn, he shewed Kidd a lot o' rites an' incantations as had to do with the things them Emskimis worshiped, an' let him see some o' the folks in the village as had changed a lot from human shape because o' that. Somehaow or other, though, he never would let him see one glimpse of the reg'lar thing from right aout o' the snow in an old castle. In the end he give him a funny kind o' thingumajig made aout o' blue ribbons or something, that he said ud bring up the snow-deer Calyrex thing from any place in the world whar they might be a need of 'it. The idee was to drop it daown with the right kind o' prayers an' sech. Sorbjorn allaowed as the thing was scattered all over the world, so's anybody that looked abaout cud find a need an' bring 'it up ef it was wanted."
"Arceus, what I seen senct I was thirty year' old—Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin!—the folks as was missin', an' them as kilt theirselves—them as told things in Wyndon or Hammerlocke or sech places was all called crazy, like you're a-callin' me right naow—but Arceus, what I seen— They'd a kilt me long ago fer what I know, only I'd took the fust an' secon' Oaths o' Evil offen Kidd, so was pertected unlessen a jury of 'em proved I told things knowin' an' delib'rit . . . but I wudn't take the third Oath—I'd a died ruther'n take that—"
Hop saw that he was lapsing into madness, speaking of things he had never talked about nor led up to. Allen was really screaming now, and Marnie released her Grimmsnarl. "Calm down, sir! Tell us about this Oath! What did you see? Did this have anything to do with the group of South Islanders Kidd found?"
"Them Emskimis? Naw! Them Calyrex-folk what fightin' against the evil ones! Thar are cults in th' wastes. Big uns. I fund me with 'em back in th' day. But th' real horror ain't what them demons 'ave done, it's wat they're-a gonna do! Thars been talkin' in recent days bout o' bunch of them bad folk gettin' a Shield that thar gonna do somethin' with! Them devils an' what they are brigin'—an' when they git ready...I say, when they git ready...say, ever hear tell of the Mbelekoro?"
"No!" Hop cried. "What is it?"
"Its th' thing them bad cultists worship! They're saying things abaout Tercano comin' to kill em. Thar plannin' something with that shield I hear 'bout!"
That fear-frozen face twitched, fumbled with a drawer on the desk. He took out a set of blue reins, set them in Hop's hands. "Ar! These be them reins Kidd got frum them Emskimis...take 'em!" He let go, fell backwards. "Them cultists...they took all of 'em Shaderoot Carrots we ad! Wit th' Darkest Day happenin' nothang we said made anyone give us a' ear. Hey, y'hear me? Go an' do sumthin'!"
"We need to run," Marnie said. "Get Magnolia! Tell her that something is about to go down in the Crown Tundra!"
*Emskimi: racial slur for primitives living on the southern edge of the Crown Tundra, descended from Aelfric's tribe.
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Eclipse Base Lethe
Take the breath/make the plunge.
-song lyrics
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Cypress and Emrett watched their new host bodies grow in cloning tanks, made of retrieved genetic material. Cypress and Emrett's genetic code hadn't been stored at the site, but a Ditto would make the chemical composition of their DNA in the growth process. Dozens of other less-formed bodies floated in ghosty green nutrient fluid, the first batch of vessels for the ego-memories of Neo Team Eclipse soldiers.
After another hour of still waiting, a robot announced that datalinkage could begin. Now, here came the tricky part.
The two sat down on a dissection table, were put under anesthesia. A robotic Bisharp cut out their brains, and suspended them in a tank of nutrient fluid. Eternatus's poison leaked out of the grey contours of the brains as a violet haze through the liquid, merging with the pores of the new host bodies that looked like Cypress and Emrett's old selves. The memories would possess the lifeless minds of the clones, carrying on the linkage.
Soon, the clones began to breath through tubes, and opened their eyes. The liquid in the clearplaz tanks drained, and attendant robots brought Cypress a uniform, and Emrett his choice of robes. "Finally, we have truly returned!"
Drying off, Emrett eyed the corpses of Sordward and Shielbert on the bloody operation table. "What do we do with those?"
"Throw them into the incinerator," Cypress said, feeling the bridge of his nose. "They'd be a waste of space otherwise."
As the bodies of the once-mighty Sordward and Shielbert were dragged away by robots to be burned, Emrett and Cypress, now a duumvirate of Eclipse Lords, accessed the control panel for the outpost. A two-pronged switch with a fingerprint scanner marked Transmitter Array was the only thing that concerned the two.
Cypress activated the scanner. It worked. He selected Tartarus Fleet on the plastiglass screen, out of the few remaining options. On the count of three, and with goading from Eternatus, he flipped the switch.
...
A heavy hatch on the island that had not been opened for decades slid to the side, and the receiver dish of a giant transmitter rose through the island mist. It locked in position and sent out its message. It was not meant for human ears, so it was neither heard nor felt. Still, it was powerful.
Penetrating.
The signal lasted only a microsecond. One short pulse of gamma radiation.
...
On the Isle of Armor, Tess perceived the signal with her abilities, and screamed in terror. Bronze ran over, saw her looking at the sky. Night was coming, and the Moon had already risen beyond the horizon.
"Tess, what's wrong?"
"The moon! Look to the skies!"
...
On the Moon, Eternatus felt a vibration, then thousands more in unison. The ground shook and overturned as thousands of hulls and explosives muscled their way to the surface with striking suddenness.
It was a glorious fleet, five thousand massive vessels with countless thousands of smaller craft stored within them. Each carried incredible firepower, enough to destroy a small city. In the hard vacuum, the noses of the frigates pointed toward Earth as they received more orders from Eclipse Base Lethe.
They fired their engines, moving toward Earth.
Toward war.