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Caverns Of Castelia
So Arceus said to the Mbelekoro, "Because you have done this, 'Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals!' You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; the Son of Man will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."
-The Hisuian Coda
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Bronze was clutching what seemed to be gravel and striking wildly to cast off the grip that had come around his legs again. Then he was free and fighting: a blind struggle that seemed half in and half out of the water of the pool. Sharper rocks here and there cut into his hands and elbows. Bronze's chandler pistol was gone. THe blackness was filled with gasped curses, some his own, some Cypress's, with yelps of pain, thudding blows, and the noise of labored breathing.
In the end Bronze found himself and his enemy on dry ground. The light from the glowlamps was stronger now; Bronze saw bubbles of blood around Cypress's mouth. The demon's legs had been pummeled, although the creature's ego-mind prevented the pain from sending it into shock. Somehow Bronze had avoided most of the demon's wild clawings, and could stand upright with only soreness in his back.
"So you mean to try strength," Cypress hissed. "That is very foolish. Do you know what I am?"
"I know what you are," Bronze said. "Which demon doesn't matter."
"And you think, Tercano, that you can go man-to-man with me again?" the demon said. "You think He will help you as He helped you every other times? You have never beaten me yourself. Your seeming victory is a technicality borne out of being on the right side of history. Who knows which of us is the better man?"
"You are hideous," Bronze said. "Unless one of my men comes down and binds me, I think I will kill you myself."
"Hideous? I merely acted upon my beliefs in performing what atrocities I did. You sent out your followers on a bloody jihad that you did not even want. The blood of Oleana slain cries out to me from the House Below. You cannot save yourself from me by a battle of right or wrong, as you always like to do. Could He help Himself in the Temple of Hisui against Marcus, even with the Golden Company standing astride? Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani!"
Bronze was certain that the sounds the creature made were the sounds of perfect Hisuian. They were the words that the Evil Djinn had heard Arceus speak, emblazoned in its memory, now coming out of the mouth of its servant in a hideous parody. Before he had recovered from the shock, Cypress was upon him, howling like a gale, eyes opened so wide in the half-dark that they seemed to have no lids, with raven-colored hair rising all on the creature's scalp.
The demon caught him at his chest, with its arms about Bronze's chest, clawing great strips of his uniform off his back. His own arms were inside its embrace and, pummeling wildly, he could get no blow at it. He turned his head and bit deeply into the tendons of its right arm, and it gave a howl, tried to hold on, and then Bronze thrust his knee into its groin. In the next moment he was free again.
Its defense was for an instant unready and he found himself raining punches on its chest, faster and harder than he had supposed possible. Bronze had known that the ego-enhanced clones were nearly invulnerable to brute force combat, but he was making deep wounds. He felt Arceus give him the Strength of Elyon, and knew that he was fighting back with terrific force. He could hear great gasps of air coming from its mouth as he knocked the wind out of its ironclad ribs.
Then its hands came up again, fingers curled like talons. It was not trying to spar; it wanted to grapple. He knocked its right arm aside with a horrible shock of bone against bone and gave it a jab on the fleshy part of the chin; at the same moment its nails tore his right. He grabbed at its arms, and more by grace than by skill he got it held by both wrists.
What followed for the next minute or so would hardly have looked like a fight at all to any observer. The Anti-Arceus was trying with every ounce of power it could find in Cypress's body to wrench its arms free from Bronze's hands, and he, with every ounce of his power, was trying to keep his hold around its wrists. But this effort, which sent streams of sweat down the backs of both combatants, resulted in a slow and seemingly leisurely movement of both pairs of arms. Neither for the moment could hurt the other. Cypress occasionally leaned its head forward to bite, but Bronze straightened his arms out to keep it at bay. There seemed no reason for the lock to end.
Then suddenly it shot out its leg and knocked Bronze behind his knee. He was nearly taken off his feet. Movements became quick and flurried on both sides. Bronze in his turn tried to trip the Anti-Arceus and failed. He started bending the enemy's left arm back by the Strength of Elyon with the intention of breaking or at least spraining it. But in the effort to do so he weakened his hold on the other wrist. It got its right free, and Bronze had just time to close his eyes before the nails tore fiercely down his cheek and the pain put an end to the blows his left was already raining on its ribs. A second later, for he did not know quite how it happened, they were standing apart, their chests heaving in great gasps, each staring at the other.
They were both sorry-looking men. Doubtless Bronze was covered in blood, and the enemy's eyes were nearly closed with swelling, and, under the remains of the Anti-Arceus's uniform, a mass of forming bruises. Bronze had been astonished to find the Cypress-thing no stronger than he. He had expected the strength in the clone body to be purely diabolical, and could not be stopped by anything less than a massive explosion. But now Bronze knew that on the purely physical plane the battle was between a Logarian sixty-year-old and a middle-aged man in good health. It evened out with the addition of Bronze's superior combat experience.
The next bout started with Bronze attacking first. There were no rules, no restraint, no arbiter, and no spectators, but pure exhaustion from time to time forced Bronze and the Anti-Arceus to a standstill, only to renew their battle. Ego-strength to the Power of Arceus, there was no reason why either should ever win. Victory and defeat melded in a great swamp of delirium as Bronze went against the Cypress-thing for what seemed like the thousandth time.
Then an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over Bronze: a torrent of perfectly tuned and lawful hatred. The act of hating, never before felt without some guilt, without some knowledge that he was failing fully to distinguish the sinner from the sin, rose into his arms and legs till he felt that they were pillars of burning blood. What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which Willpower was attached only as a tool. Ages ago it had been a man, but the ruins of personality in it now survived only as weapons at the disposal of a furious automation.
It is perhaps difficult to understand why this filled Bronze not with horror but with a kind of roaring triumph. As a trainer rejoices in finding a perfect bond with his Pokemon, so did Bronze rejoice in finding the perfect link between his emotions and the object they were directed at. Bleeding and trembling even as he was, he felt that nothing was beyond his power. The Strength of Elyon came forth in a mighty stream of righteousness, and Bronze found the link between himself and Tor and Embla, the First Man and First Woman, and the living Death of Celebi that he had learned not to fear.
...
His arms seemed to move quicker than his thought.
His hands taught him terrible things.
He felt its rib break, he heard its jawbone crack.
He thought the whole creature seemed to be crackling and splitting under his blows.
He realized his own pain, where it tore him, no longer mattered.
He felt that he could so fight, so hate with a perfect hatred, for all of eternity.
He poured every last ragged shred of fury into the body of the Anti-Arceus, the Beast, Jonathan Rowell Cypress.
...
All at once he found he was hitting the air. He was in such a state that at first he could not understand what was happening, and could not believe that the Cypress-thing had fled. His momentary shock gave it a headstart, and when he came to his senses he could see it vanishing into the dark, with a limping, uneven stride, with one arm hanging useless, giving its doglike howl. He dashed after it.
The chase seemed to last for ages, although Bronze felt like he and it were running along the length of the pool. Both runners tripped and stumbled in the dark on pebbles and loose stones, and the Cypress-thing screamed out a blasphemous name each time it faltered. As the sprint became quicker Bronze found that he was shouting out lines from the Hisuian Coda that the Anti-Arceus tried to drown out with its own screams.
Bronze found it at a slower spot in the run, for its leg was broken. He tackled it from behind and put his hands around its throat. He resisted its animal thrashings to continue squeezing. Only once before in his life had he been forced to press like this, but that had been in self-defense against an assassin, not to kill. The creature continued thrashing, but Bronze did not dare loosen his grip.
Once a final and intolerable snap had echoed through the cavern, and Bronze was quite sure that it was no longer breathing, he finally loosened his tired hands from their chokehold around the animal's neck. He started groping about, felt the power of Arceus drain away like a stream of water from a broken dam, and collapsed beside the thing's body.
Bronze's non-flowmetal foot hurt far worse than any other part of his body. The Cypress-thing had certainly bitten him there at some point during the struggle, and now it was bleeding profusely. The fact that it had not clotted gave Bronze an idea of how long the fight had taken; perhaps an hour at most, although several years might have passed in the duel to his perception. Where were his men?
Suddenly a roar of sound reached his ears, bangings and falling rocks and explosions. His mouth opened automatically as a respirator was strapped to his face. He saw a light increase in brilliance as faces passed by his agonized body. His arms met no adversary and his legs were lifted onto something soft. He became aware that he was moving upwards, and this gave him hope.
He felt as though the surface was too far away, and that he could not hold out until he reached it. He tried to stop his breath, to roll over and die, but his Willpower would not let him. This is a man dying, he thought. Dying like all the good heroes, after killing his enemy.
But this phase of despair passed. He felt warmth, and heard a mixture of voices. Another lump spilled out into his vision as the Cypress-thing was brought into the upper tunnels. An injection entered his arm, and he fell asleep. His last thought was that he hoped that the Anti-Arceus was not trying to trick him again.
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Alpha Warhead Zone
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Avery, slowly and almost courteously, entered the code into the chamber's door keypad, barely legible through the spots of dried blood. It opened with a click. Within the chamber was a trio of nuclear bombs frozen in stasis, with monitors and controls positioned all around them. The surfaces were coated in dust, and cobwebs had colonized the circuitry. He was now as deep under the earth as he need to be.
There came a time in the charge when he was faced with an old man wielding a pool cue. A laughable soldier, that one. Avery had seized the man by both arms, and then tore him in half. He remembered the death far more fondly than he felt when considering the prospect of his own imminent demise.
Two pincer arms extended to insert the key fob into the authorization panel. The segments were shaking so badly that he could not put the key in. He tried again to steady his arms, and failed. Then Avery shut down his thoughtrode connections and had the segments act independently of his fear-ridden brain. The signals from his synapses would not even obey that command.
The next moment Avery drew back. He was afraid of death, even though he knew that the battle was lost. He decided to wait a little longer to give time for the others to escape. And he waited, hunched in a crab-like shell, for thirty minutes. The battle would have been won or lost, he figured, and there was no hope for him to escape. Or perhaps there was a way to activate the bomb from afar? Would Emrett or Cypress have some kind of remote detonator?
One thought struck him: "Do it now." It did not come from his floating brain, but he no longer cared. He clack-clacked forward again toward the console and lifted the burdensome arms once more.
Then he realized that something was moving along with him. Could it be that he had not shut the door? He did not remember doing so. It could be possible: everything was becoming rapidly abnormal. The next moment he drew back from the console and lifted up his metal arms for protection. An enormous creature like a bear came on its hind legs, mouth open, eyes flaming, its paws spread out in an embrace.
Was this what Urshifu had become? It was certainly possible. Everything seemed possible in this world of magic and monsters. Urshifu lunged, and Avery felt that tiresome illusion, his consciousness, protest at its imminent doom, but his body had no power to attend to those cries. Like the metal figure he had chosen to become, his brain felt stiff and terribly cold.
Not until then did his controllers allow him to realize that death itself might allow one to escape from the torments of earthly life, but rather an entrance into another world where torment and illusion ran unchecked. Escape for the soul, if not for the body, was offered. He became able to know, and simultaneously refused the knowledge, that he had been wrong from the beginning, that souls and personal responsibility existed. He half saw; he wholly hated. The physical torture of the severing of his mechanical body from the canister was hardly fiercer than his hatred of that. With one last effort he flung himself back into his illusion. Eternity overtook him as sunrise overtakes trolls in the old tales and turns them into stone.
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Bronze awoke, and with no visible surprise saw his friends and family clustered around him. It was day outside. It seemed that he was on an improvised bed beside the harbor of the ruined city, surrounded by hundreds. How long had he been asleep? It was only one of many unresolved questions that he held in his mind.
The next thing that came was the soreness, although it felt dull, as if he had been exposed to some numbing narcotic. "How long have I been unconscious?"
"Three hours, Son of Tor," Zacian said. "You should have died, but here you are among us. Your Absol was also found in the cave; it is under our care."
"Are you tired?" Moon asked. "Is the pain bad?"
"Not very bad," Bronze said, sitting up with a sudden burst of strength. "And it isn't that which is bothering me. What is he doing here?"
Cypress was lying, broken and torn, against the ground. Dialga and Palkia had two hands on his shoulders, not to protect him, but to prevent him from running away. But the Anti-Arceus could not have made it more than a few limping paces before a hundred Pokemon tackled him. The Anti-Arceus's neck had been awfully twisted, but he still moved. Blood stained every inch of his disheveled uniform.
"He is alive," Dialga said. "But only just. He was worse than you when we found him." Now the god turned to Cypress. "Stand up and face judgment!"
Cypress did not stand. A gargling laugh came from his mouth, and Bronze saw that most of his teeth were missing. He crawled a bit away before Palkia threw him back. Still the Anti-Arceus raised his eyebrows, and smirked. "I will not stand! I do not answer to you!"
"Do stop mewling and stand," Magnolia growled. "In the name of Arceus, stand!"
The Anti-Arceus was jerked upward as if he had been hooked by a fisherman's line at the chest. He stood, hobbling on a broken leg, furious. Yet he exuded no fear or humility and Palkia advanced to one side of him, and Dialga the other. Pathetic and frail, Cypress spat at Moon, but his saliva did not reach more than a foot. He began drooling at the mouth, dribbling slick trails of spit down his misshaped chin.
"Disgusting," Jake said. "Dialga, Palkia, sirs, may I strike him down?"
Dialga gestured toward the Abyss out in the bay. "Behold the Lake of Fire, and the Second Death. His sentence is eternity in the Abyss, and nothing you can do will spare him from such a thing. Wait for the Dance of Death to come hither, and then we will have retribution."
Red raised his hand to speak. Bronze put him at ease instead of waiting for Dialga or Palkia, causing many to shift in alarm. The gods seemed to find the faux pas amusing, and Red went on.
"I am quite old, my friends, and I fancy that I will die within this decade. I should tell Bronze that the struggle with my double in the stronghold nearly killed me, but there came a time in the Pokemon battle when it became clear that his cloned Pokemon had only a semblance of a bond, and after that, I won easily. There is a matter that I would like to ask the gods for help with."
"Ask, and receive," Dialga said. "However, Arceus has told me what you wish, so if I give it to you, there must be a cost until then. I set a seal upon you, so that you may not fight in battle against any foe until the appointed time."
"That is alright with me," Red said. "Of course, it wouldn't matter what I want or anything, but it's good that I don't need to do anything extreme. I wish for safe passage into the Undying East."
Such words shook Bronze. How did he know of Beulah? How many others would go? It was nearly time for Bronze to depart, but he had only thought of taking Moon with him on the journey. Perils existed in the Deathless Land of a different sort than Earth. Who but the righteous could pass through the sea-forests of Lur, or cross the Delectable Mountains of Avalon?
"You will be given passage," Dialga said after a long silence of consulting with Arceus. "But it will be a costly sail. We will speak of the price at a later date."
"Speak of the price?" Casey said with far too much hope than the situation warranted. "Does that mean you aren't leaving?"
"We will leave when we must," Palkia said, and then spoke no more.
"This is not just about winning," Diamond said. "This is also about justice. Cypress must be judged!"
The cry went around the multitude. Dialga stood before Cypress with a chain in his hand, his diamond spear in the other. Cypress did not protest or beg for pardon, but merely lowered his head a little.
"You became a willing tool for the Mbelekoro," Dialga announced.
Cypress nodded. "That is true."
"You were a rebel against the things of Arceus and His Kingdom. You caused more suffering than anyone in the history of the world. Arceus bestowed upon you gifts of intelligence, beauty, wisdom, and personality, and you had the opportunity to make the most of these in the face of the most pivotal events in the annals of creation. Yet you used every gift for personal gain. You led millions to worship you and your father, the Dark Lord. You were the cunning destroyer of Arceus's followers and accomplished more to damn the souls of men and women than anyone else in your time."
The excitement was like a sudden strike to the soul. As the judgment continued, omens of doom from a more ancient time were revived. Not a few men heard an older Watchog say to a younger Patrat, "Look away when the dead come." Once these signs began to occur, the children that had been rescued from the prison crates were brought far from the harbor, or at the very least their eyes were covered.
"Ultimately your plans and regime have failed. Now, who do you say that Arceus is?"
In a proud voice, Cypress said, "I spit on the name of Arceus! I declare that He is not the Son of the Original One, who died for the sins of all in the Temple of Hisui and rose again to recover the Plates, as the scriptures predicted!"
"And what does that say about you and your life?"
"I confess that some here might think my life worthless, a wasted opportunity in which I rebelled against the Original One, who I never knew loved me. But that is not what I say. Rather, I name myself the Lord of the Earth, the very antithesis to the Son. I will rise again with Eternatus and the Mbelekoro once the thousand years are over, and then you will see my final victory!"
Dialga shook his head, and Bronze saw a kind of spiritual sadness in those icy features. "You are responsible for the fate of billions. You and your False Prophet, with whom you shed the blood of the innocents—His followers, the prophets, and His servants who believed in Him—shall be cast alive into the Lake of Fire."
"What False Prophet?" Cypress said. "Tell me, do all of you know where Emrett is?"
The pause was interminable, the silence deadly. Until now everyone present had possessed a vague notion that Emrett had been captured and was waiting for his turn to be damned, like the next link in a well-ordered and long-awaited system of holy wrath. But the rumor soon came over the people that Emrett was indeed missing. Only Cypress was present of the two.
The spell seemed to have been cast upon Dialga, but now it was broken. "We will attend to him at a later date. Bow and proclaim Arceus as Lord."
Cypress spat again, this time onto Dialga's armor. "I will not and I will never do so!"
The Prince and Power of Time swung his spear wide, and for an instant Bronze thought he would strike Cypress dead, but instead Dialga cast it into the sea. "'And I saw a great star named Wormwood, blazing like a torch, fall from heaven. And the waters gave up the dead that were in them.' Behold the souls of the Dead!"
For what seemed to be the hundredth time in the past week, heaven opened. The Star Wormwood fell into the sea with a blinding flash, and the waters parted, revealing a portal to another part of Heol. Beside the raging pillar of fire that was the Abyss, a pit of fog had been ignited and now burned with blinding violet flame. Water was roaring, sea was crashing, and mobs shouted.
From the fire came shades much like the ones that had come with the Incense of Celebi, but these were of a different kind. A great horde that seemed to be in the thousands swelled into a host of millions of smoky specters, coming forth in a limitless stream. The Dead were silent, but they came forth like a cold wind, and soon Cypress was wailing. Bronze and the other Living stepped away, knowing what was to take place.
The Dead reached Cypress, and seized him in their claws. Upon being touched Cypress let out a scream, and the tide of the Dead rose before him like a sudden wave. He was carried from the dock. Then the whole of the dead rose up in a great arching wave, trembled, and came down upon the Anti-Arceus with all their anger and noise. Cypress was submerged for a moment, and then he was launched up high into the air.
As he fell, Cypress screamed, "Arceus is Lord! Arceus is Lord!" and then fell into the Abyss, clawing at the air. His screams caught on within the murmurings of the Dead, faded, and then died out. The Lake of Fire rumbled, and the Dead returned to the Underworld in a ghostly dispersing of mist.
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Emrett had always been more than a mere administrator; he had caused the growth and propagation of the Eclipse Alliance. Cypress was far more militarily inclined than he was. But as soon as he emerged from the escape tunnel and saw Cypress's judgment from afar, he knew that he was in terrible trouble. He certainly did not wish to stay behind and fight such an effective enemy.
The False Prophet scuttled into the ruins of the city, finding them deserted. The main bulk of the population had gone to the docks after the bunker had been taken at a great loss. It would only be a little way until he found a waiting spaceworthy battleship parked within the streets. He hurried across the windswept ground, reaching a single abandoned Association craft.
He jumped into the pilot's deck, seeing the signs of recent habitation. Knowing that he was now the sole survivor of the Eclipse Alliance's leadership, Emrett had to get to space. There were surely outposts in the final frontier where he could hide, change his facial features, or even learn spellcraft again. He powered up the engines, ready to fly away from the ruined planet.
He was not a coward, but a pragmatist. The New Eclipse Order had fallen, and he intended to return in a century or two with an overwhelming force from the stars, or even another universe. He and his reinforcements would easily destroy the remaining rabble, and then they would move on from this unpleasant defeat.
His ship rose into the empty sky, and Emrett felt free and safe.
...
After Cypress had been sent to the Lake of Fire, scouts and fast-flyers reported that a single unheralded Association craft had left the city and was now on a rapid trajectory with the upper atmosphere. When the pilot did not respond to any attempts at contacting the ship, Bronze knew who was piloting it.
Even if he had not known the only man who would attempt to escape the battlefield at this time, another sign proved what still needed to be done. The Abyss had not closed.
"It is extremely important that Emrett does not get away!" Bronze said. "Get me a ship with guns and a crew, immediately! Jake, lead a squadron to head them off!"
"Bronze, you are in no state to pilot," Tess said. "Let me fly for you!"
A fast-flyer from the L.S. Victory was brought down, and Tess got comfortable behind the controls. The surviving Pokedex Holders followed her into the hold, tossing away loose items to compensate for their added weight. The shuttle shot out of the dock landing bay, following the trail of Emrett's ship in an upward path.
...
The g-forces of the acceleration made Platinum and Red go unconscious, but Bronze was incapable of moving his head with the path of the force. He stayed alert but felt more of his ribs break. Ahead of them, Emrett's ship rocketed out of Earth's close gravitational field and began to enter the ionosphere.
When the last surviving Eclipse Lord saw that only one small vessel pursued him, a mere scouting ship, he turned his vessel and came back. "Bronze Tercano," Emrett said over a comchannel. "You are responsible for this mayhem! Stop following me and leave me to my own devices!"
"I am only one man. You and Cypress's history make up a debt that one person can't make up for."
"You know that I can easily destroy your ship," Emrett said, as if a single threat would deter the Army of Humanity from final victory. "Those scouting vessels were never designed to withstand an attack by an Association vessel."
"Maybe, but we're a lot more maneuverable."
Tess adjusted the gas mixture in the fast-flyer's fuel tanks, and went forward in a red-hot missile toward Emrett's ship. She peppered his hull with a volley of bullets, and then changed course in a backward loop to bypass the larger vessel's cumbersome retaliatory shots. The Pokedex Holders swept in from behind and harried the warship by launching four explosives that damaged one of Emrett's engines.
The Eclipse Lord turned and opened fire, and this time his blasts grazed the fast-flyer's armored hull. Tess tumbled in a wild spin through the atmosphere, picking up incredible amounts of heat. She accelerated blindly until the ship regained control and could fly straight again. She turned around, with Bronze taunting the remaining foe over the comline, hoping to delay him. Emrett launched another shot that exploded across the fast-flyer's windshield.
Another vessel, like a demonic reptiloid, hurtled from Earth toward Emrett's ship. The flying colossus swooped from the lower airs, opening fire with explosives that sent the enemy frigate reeling. Jake had arrived.
The fast-flyer and Jake's ship came together in a pincer motion, while Emrett picked up speed, hurtling back down to Earth. Layers of gases and swiftly thickening clouds blinded Tess as she calculated a safe path through the heavens. The three ships came down over Castelia again, and Bronze saw what Emrett was attempting to do.
"He wants to have us crash into the ground!"
It was true. Tess noticed that Emrett's craft was tilting its nose for a low sweep; since the fast-flyer was traveling at a greater speed than Emrett's ship, it would have to decelerate rapidly to avoid being destroyed. It would be simple for Emrett to escape to the outer solar system from there.
"I won't let him escape," Jake said above a garble of static. "I won't let him get away!"
Jake went on a collision course with Emrett's ship. The False Prophet tried to pick up speed and escape his enemy, but one of Emrett's engines was damaged, and the Association craft that Jake was flying was far superior. As he closed the distance, Jake launched projectile after projectile after projectile, pummeling the fleeing Eclipse Lord.
Even as he neared his target, Jake did not slow. His engines went beyond full power, hurling the enormous vessel like the burning-hot Hammer of Regigigas. Bronze watched in wordless shock as Emrett's hull buckled and Jake's battleship slammed into it, still accelerating. Jake ejected at the last moment, soaring away into the water.
The light was blinding. Over the Castelia City harbor, both vessels erupted in an expanding cloud of flames. Scarlet filled the sky as the ruins fell to the sea.
Like a falling star, Emrett fell as his master had fallen when being struck out of Deep Heaven. A fiery figure, the Eclipse Lord's skin was gone, and his arms had been severed. All that remained of his eyes were empty sockets filled with smoke. A scream came from his charred throat as Emrett plummeted into the Abyss, which devoured him in a burst of blue fire. The screams continued until the ground, at last, sealed the rift, echoing with a satisfied belch. The False Prophet and Anti-Arceus were no more.