.

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Battle in Flouruma

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"The time has come, Bronze," continued Cobalion as the predawn dark faded aboveground. "I know that you had doubts, and were never very sure about your plan to begin with. You've moved away from it to focus on this total war. But the battle between the Association and the Alliance is the best thing to happen to you."

"How's that?"

"It weakens the only two organizations that would have the power to resist you from making a reunited kingdom of Logaria. You are on your home turf here. The Alliance will never survive except by total victory. The Association could not deal with you outside of halfhearted calls for mitigation. As long as you don't go as far as annexing the Alolan Islands to further your new Logarian empire, they would rather have an independent Roria with you ruling it than risk a war against the likes of the Aredians. They've grown tired and rotten, and it's up to you, the heir to Tar-Silmathrim and the ancient world, to throw them away."

"I've given this all the thought it deserves," said Bronze. "I hadn't figured out that you were so good at politics, Cobalion."

"Don't flatter me. I've had millions of years to learn about sentient beings from the outside, and I know more than I like to let on. Most of the information tends to be depressing and pessimistic. The Association is fighting at a slower pace than I thought could ever be possible. Many of their top executives and Pokedex Holders are sitting around Anthien, talking about how Cypress's brains are growing or some useless drivel."

"Then you're right," said Bronze. "Once the Rorians see me as an alternative to the Association, they'll welcome back the old Empire. But it was never the Association I was worried about. With Roria gone, the only recruiting grounds left to them are the mountains of Kalos and some parts of Sinnoh. And since they consider having a standing army to actively wage war morally abhorrent, it's not like they'll fight too hard, if it even comes to hot war. Have you ever heard the old Alolan saying that if men are kept out of a village, they will burn it down to feel its warmth?"

"I have, said Cobalion, "but the Rorians have their village already."

"Roria is the only region in the world that has a stable birthrate. The median age is nineteen. Compare that to Kalos, with an average age of forty. Old societies like that don't invent or wage war: it's too demographically expensive. Everything is lining up for the Rorians to begin to wage a worldwide war in this new age of ideology. The Alliance is just a forerunner. Roria is energetic enough to blast through its competitors. It terrifies me, because Roria is so full of hate."

"Hate for what?"

"How they have been treated the past century. Their children are put into Association-run schools that they can't control. There's a drug problem, a crime problem, and high inflation. That's why I thought that they would need me, would welcome me. But now the danger may be stronger than I ever feared. You understand that they don't need the Association if the Empire comes back. The average Rorian family hates the Association's leadership. Jake's mother says they're from the devil himself. Rorians would literally burn the government geneticists and AI researchers at the stake if they could. It's not like the Chairman doesn't know about these problems. He does, but none of his officials do, and that means they can't respond effectively. I've talked to people and they all talk about these things, but could you imagine any bureaucrat speaking with normal Rorians? There isn't any way for societal reform but open rebellion."

"A world war waged by the Rorians?"

"Yes. Imagine the fires of holy war, the blaze of an inferno sweeping across region from region. Jihad. Whole cities sterilized, millions dead, people demoralized, regions wiped out. Entire industries eliminated, and a new society built on blood, anger, and iron. People hate AI and genetic tampering with Pokemon, especially. The Alliance is using evil scientists, but the Association isn't any better. My father has told me about what they've got, and I don't want to talk about it." Bronze shuddered. "It provokes extreme disgust, and why shouldn't a disgust-driven society like Roria kill the researchers making monsters and the machines taking their jobs and disrupting their lives? A machine-smashing craze could send us back to darker times. If the Alliance wins, we're all dead. If the Association wins, the Rorians revolt and cause unspeakable damage. And I'm probably the only one that can stop them."

"But these problems would still be there even with you," said Cobalion. "You'll have to direct the power of the Rorians at something. World wars are demographic explosions."

"I hope to have them crush the last remnant of the Alliance," said Bronze. "The casualties of the war have been comparably low, but they might go into the millions. With the Eclipse leadership destroyed, and the Djinn imprisoned, the surviving officers will have no choice but to use nuclear weapons. I don't know what they'll target. If it's Roria, than the people will revolt. If it's Unova or some other place, the current administration will be voted out. Either way, we're in for it."

"May you be wise in all your dealings," said Cobalion. His voice was mournful, as though he already saw the wrath of the Rorians in his mind's eye. "Do not let your people destroy themselves out of hate. After you gain independence, forgive your enemies. You won't have heard of them, but there are many societies throughout the multiverse that killed what made them great because they devastated themselves in a revolution. The Decolluvmeins, the French, Soviets, Asperains. I hope that your character will be strong enough to lead Roria through the coming decade. I do hope."

"Hope is all we have," said Bronze. "I hope for a peaceful transfer of governments. When the end comes, by Arceus, I hope it's quiet. I'll tell the officials that they built the world they lost."

"Tell the Rorians that being angry doesn't allow you to do the worst things they want to do," said Cobalion. "That kind of revolution won't bring us closer to anything but the hell we're fighting right now. Hold yourself as a man of honor. Every time the winners forgive the losers, they set up their nations to become stable, great powers. If there's one thing I want you to do, it's to take the precedent of the nobler Hisuians, and not the Logarians themselves."

Before Bronze could answer Cobalion straightened. He made a snuffling noise, as if sniffing the air. A light in his eyes grew brighter and with a great cry, he lit the sacred sword from his brow.

"Wake Tess," he said. "Gather your Pokemon, for Flouruma is no longer wholesome to us. I fear we'll have quite a fray."

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It had begun getting wetter in the cave throughout the night as it rained outside. The loamy earth had been cut up moisture (for Flouruma has few paved roads) and the water had accumulated here and there in the hollows of the city as if in casks; at some points the supports of the houses were buried in dirt, and the walls of the Gym were dripping with liquid mud.

Partially for this inhospitable and unpleasant environment discouraging the presence of human security in any large quantity, the Eclipse Alliance had approached the city from two roads: the main gate, whereby many deep networks of spies, was breached and now held against both men escaping from the city and the possibility of any counterattack from outside, and the southwestern pass that the company had passed through earlier. It is not certain of what became of Jack's old encampments or the rest of the addicts, but the settlement does not exist today, and was believed to have disappeared sometime the Reconstruction and High Imperial periods. Certainly, the Alliance did not use time or create a disturbance by exterminating the population or removing their trailers.

Eclipse Commander Spyro's force was full of raw recruits. There was in the Eclipse technical infantry, particularly apart from the mercenary divisions, great more fanaticism than practical skill. Here I must, again, speak technically. These young soldiers were valiant in the presence of supporting machines and Pokemon; their inexperience extricated them intrepidly from the dilemma; they performed particularly excellent service as skirmishers. The soldier skirmisher, left somewhat to himself, becomes, so to speak, his own general. These recruits displayed some ingenuity and fury, with them and their Pokemon having a form of dash. This displeased Spyro.

So simple was the plan of these merciless enemies of the human soul that it is very easy to envision. A block of a hundred at the main gate, a hundred from the side gate, and a hundred under Spyro advancing to the police station. The first attack would be on the Gym, using explosives. The city could be held and taken from the Association; it would be a city difficult to retake, and many a Rorian Association voter would be demoralized that one of their cities had fallen. Cobalion had not misjudged the safety of Floruma: he had merely misjudged their war plan. Moreover Darkrai was with them and clouded Eclipse movements to heavenly intelligence.

...

The surprise attack came to a point. The first blast leveled the Gym with a defeating dispersal of kinetic energy, which served to startle Tess out of the lingering sleepiness that was left after Bronze had awoken her with the urgency of a man who has received word that a close friend had fallen deathly ill. She heard the hot metallic scream of durasteel flying into shards, flying into granules that became nothing. Smoke rose from fireballs that rose from a crater that had once been the Gym, like a cliff dugout collapsed on itself. Already screams multiplied, not by degree, but orders of magnitude.

They were out of the house. It is impossible to describe how exactly the fighting began because a hurricane is untrustworthy. What is an escalation, and oscillation? There was something new, so it must be sought. Tess had thought that duels predominated battle, and discovered that it is usually skirmishes.

A whole line of orange-and-black uniforms were rushing at her with their Pokemon. Immediately Bronze's Charizard charged out to meet them, slashed one's legs out from under him, and with the same claw-stroke hacked off his head. Now Electivire was among them, stooping low and swinging its hands. Gabite charged. Overhead came a hissing of shells and energy attacks, and with Cobalion fighting at the left, and the horrible cloud that is called battle was definitely joined.

Bronze realized that they were against not a raiding party, but a whole invading company. If he had been expected, then the force would have been larger. It was gigantic and tiny all at once. No time to think! Already he had been recognized and Eclipse men were shouting, stumbling over the bodies of their fallen, throwing away weapons to tackle him with their might. They swarmed toward him across the muddy field like a company of locusts, with lozenge-red mouths and outstretched hands with dirt-caked nails. He felt that they meant to suffocate him.

His eyes were opened and he screamed in hate. The demons which had their claws in the heads of the ambling Eclipse men were ancient and freakish, their warlock faces warped with teeth growing wild, their mouths propped open by fangs as thick as his wrists, their wrinkled and stubbled chins slick with blood and scraps of meat. Then, as in the space between time and space at Anthien when he would have fought the Un-Cypress, he felt himself once more tossed upward like something without weight, blown out of his own mind and body like a bit of cobweb or a fluff of dandelion thistle. For a moment he tried to flail his way back, like a swimmer trying to buck a strong current just long enough to reach the shore, but it was impossible. Then he laughed with no hesitation, knowing that he could kill.

His evolved Magnezone launched a metal disc at one of the rushing men without hesitation. It moaned through the steamy, brilliant air and took off the thrall's head with gory precision, just above the Adam's apple. The headless body bucked first to the left and then to the right, like a stage comic accepting a round of applause with a whimsical move, and then collapsed. His Pokemon were lethal, cutting through enemies as smoothly as a knife through cakes of lard.

He and Cobalion began to fight back to back. Bronze threw his dagger and it sheared through a subcommander's neck, putting an end to his blabber. Perhaps a gallon of blood was flying from various necks and torsos onto Charizard's tail, evaporating on its hot body, sizzling and sending up a horrible charred smell. The Logarian dagger stopped in midair when Magnezone froze its metal in place with a pulse, and then it returned to Bronze's hand. Along the way the dagger cut through an Eclipse man's neck. The head slewed to the left on its neck and then tilted backward, but didn't come off. The man, easily a mutant seven feet tall, took two stagger-steps to his left and embraced the sizzling body of Charizard. The head tore loose a little further, now lying on his right shoulder, one eye glaring up at the mist-wreathed ceiling. The heat sealed the mutant's hands to the body of Charizard and they began to melt. Then the thing fell forward into the open flames left in Charizard's wake.

Cobalion cut off a grunt's skull at the upper jaw. The top half of the head toppled through the air and into a mud puddle with a splash, reddish eyes still blazing. A single sturdy thrust from Bronze's trusty Logarian blade found its mark between a grunt's ribs. The feeling jarred his's arm and made him bite his lip till blood came, but he withdrew the weapon, let fall the body, and played his cards. A Poke Ball opened, and almost before the Eclipse men had warmed up to their work that they began to give way around the police station.

Tough-looking warriors turned white, gazed in terror not at Cobalion, but at something above them, and then clutched their weapons, shrieking. But soon neither their cries nor the sound of artillery could be heard anymore, for both were drowned in the ocean-like roar of the Steelix as it poured its vastness into the now-routing ranks of the Eclipse men, and then on in pursuit. It was so vast that, end-to-end, nearly the entire cave was enveloped. It dived up, hit the cave roof, and then white light like reflected crystal came out of its mouth in stunning beams among the fleeing men so that they lost limbs and bodies and the ashes of the dead fell among the rows of living like a shower of shriveled autumn leaves.

Tess glanced at Cobalion a moment and her world broke. The holy light, steely eyes, and steady voice were gone. In its place was an apocalyptic animal, hardly godlike or human or anything she could know, the void filled with teeth and horn and unconquerable hide. He was like a forest that moved and slew, a tower of defense, a place where neither the Eclipse men or their Pokemon dare tread. The mud was strangled with bodies with various limbs missing, faces cloven, eyes gone, hands chopped off, severed with the fineness of a plasma garrote. A bullseye ring of blood mixed with the dirt as Cobalion fought at every side. It was like seeing a stuffed bear kill with knives, and it was this antithesis, not any blast of gore, that made Tess feel like crying.

As they ran before Steelix the grunts opened their own Poke Balls for the first time, orange and black devices with hearts of darkness. Then dozens and dozens of creatures came running at Bronze and Tess and Cobalion, mutant creatures so hideous they hardly knew how to look at them. Even Charizard and Electabuzz drew back a little, and the citizens who had been fearfully watching the melee through their windows screamed and ran to rooms far from the sight outside.

One was some freakish warthog, with tusks rising from the sides of its heavy, grey-lipped mouth. Dewlapped cheeks hung in great warty swags of flesh. The fact that the creature was wearing a black restraining harness and a modified horse's bridle somehow finished the nightmare, sealed it beneath a coat of varnish. Beyond this apparition, nearly lost in the rising steam and fire, other things came. One was a monster housecat on legs, laying back its ears and hissing. Another was some mass of fur with bared teeth, slick with viscera.

"Evil geneticists, huh?" yelled Bronze at Cobalion.

"What the hell?" screamed Tess, and then she pushed Gabite forward with all her force. Gabite cut open the cat-thing and another vampire-man beside it, the Pokemon's claws like electric swords. For a moment the vampire was there, still staring at the Pokemon that had looked so much like useless baby to begin with, and then its aura whiffed out. The thing's flesh went with it. For a moment there was nothing where it had been but an empty shirt tucked into an empty pair of blue jeans. Then the clothes collapsed.

"Kill her!" screamed Spyro over the freight train sound of Steelix, reaching for his Ninetail's Poke Ball. "Take Tercano alive! But kill her! Kill the bitch!"

Electabuzz put a single shot of electricity in a hawkman's head. Blood and feathers flew. Bronze grasped the dagger, moved behind an Eclipse man and stabbed him twice in the back of the neck, one for his parents, one for Jake. The man's spinal cord shattered in a fury of blood and brains. He grabbed the ground, scrabbled at mud filled with a hundred bodies, and went down dead. But there were too many men, too many monsters. He was already beginning to tire. Guns were being set up by the houses and the first of the bullets soon to come in killing volleys hit the dirt past his knee. They were only buying time.

The largest of the evil things was a spider more hideous than any spider to have ever walked the earth. Tumors swelled along the black thing's sides, some having bursted into extruding legs. A red blob like the crimson brand on a black widow spider's belly was on its abdomen. But a white excrescence rose from the spider's back. In it Tess could see a tiny, deformed face and blue sparks that were eyes. Its mouth chewed wet and loud as it digested the shriveled remains of severed arms and legs. She quickly vomited, thankful that she felt something, anything at another horror instead of numbness.

Coblaion dealt a holy sword-stroke at it, but his hooves stumbled over the hawkman's outstretched hand as he did. The strike that would have never missed in the Spirit World, would have killed the abomination went a little awry, clipping off one of its eight hairy legs instead. A yellowish-red fluid, more like pus than blood, poured from the place where the leg had joined the body. The thing screamed at the three in pain and surprise. The audible portion of that scream was hard to hear over the endless cycling blast of Steelix's Hyper Beams, but Tess heard it in her head loud and clear.

"I'll pay you back for that! My dark father and I, we'll pay you back! Make you cry for death, so we will!"

"You ain't gonna have a chance, sugar."

A flying dart spoke a single time. The iron-tipped pool cue took the spider in the center of its forehead, completing the ruin of its ruined face. As it was flung backward, Tess saw its flesh turn to greenish smoke as ephemeral as a hornet's wing. For a moment she could see the spider's floating teeth like a ghostly ring of coral, and then they were gone.

...

"Up, and aim straight!" the same voice cried, coming from a figure that leaped into the thick. A sudden regiment of men, not among their foes, who had been lying flat in the thick bushy trees down the eastern route out of the city sprang up, and a cloud of bullets and firebrands riddled the Eclipse ranks and whistled around the three. The new arrivals hurled themselves forwards, and the final carnage began. In the middle of the field, Spyro felt that his force was losing ground all about it, and in the vast shock of the rout he heard the desperate flight which had taken the place of the cries calling for blood and the Djinn's favor, and, with flight behind it, it became depleted, more crushed, losing more men at every step that it took. None hesitated in the final scurry, no timid men in its ranks. Not a man was missing in that suicide.

But not all the demons had been driven off. The ancient ones who had been driving their slave's heads forward suddenly burst into fleshform, shrieking through the great fangs that propped their deformed mouths forever open. Their eyes were as black as blindness, unlike the sulfur-yellow of their lesser cousins, the skin of their cheeks and brows, even the backs of their hands, tumorous with wild teeth. Like the angels themselves, they were surrounded with auras, but these were of a poisoned violet so dark it was almost black. Some sort of ichor dribbled from the corners of their eyes and mouths. They were gibbering and several were laughing: seeming not to create the sounds but rather to snatch them out of the air like something that could be rent alive.

And Cobalion knew them. Of course he did. Had he not walked side by side with their number in the deeps of time when there had been no rebellion? Here were the true adversaries, the Barons of Hell, kept like a secret and now loosed on the soldiers in a desperate throw.

Cobalion ran in front of Tess as the demons ran, the shades not halting in the slightest when Gabite tried to get in their way. His blade was lit with a brilliant bluish-white glare. The two ancient things in the lead had been about to grab Tess and draw her into their midst. Now they drew back instead, shrieking with pain. Bronze glanced over and saw the surface of their skin sizzle and begin to liquefy. The sight of it filled him with savage happiness.

"Get back from us!" cried Cobalion. "You take upon flesh because the ban is gone. But I will make you fear again! The power of God commands you! The power of Arceus commands you! The names of the Saints command you! The power of the Light commands you!"

One of them darted forward nevertheless, a deformed skeleton in an ancient, moss-encrusted suit: Ka-Oxus of Kanto, the medium-demon of Volo in ancient times. Around its neck it wore some sort of sinister ward. It swiped one of its long-nailed hands at the spot where Cobalion's sword emerged from his brow. He jerked his head down at the last second, and the demon's claw passed an inch above it. Cobalion lunged forward drove the tip of the blade into the yellow parchment of the thing's forehead. The shining sword went in like a red-hot skewer into butter. The fallen god in the rusty suit let out a liquid cry of pained dismay and stumbled backward. Cobalion pulled his sword back.

For one moment, before the elderly monster clapped its claws to its brow, Tess saw the hole Cobalion had made. Then a thick, curdy, reddish stuff began to spill through the ancient one's fingers. Its knees unhinged and it tumbled to the earth. Its mates shrank away from it, screaming with outrage. The thing's face was already collapsing inward beneath its twisted hands. Its aura whiffed out like a candle and then there was nothing but a puddle of red, liquefying flesh spilling like vomit from the sleeves of its jacket and the legs of its pants. Oxus went up in red smoke.

"H'row it aside!" one of them cried, its hands held up to shield its face. "Nasty 'word of the 'heep-God, h'row it aside if you dare!"

"Nasty sword of the sheep-God, indeed!" said Cobalion for the benefit of the soldiers listening. "If so, why do you cringe?"

Cobalion turned his sacred sword toward the thing which had dared to speak. "I needn't stake my faith on the challenge of such a thing as you, " he said, his words ringing clearly in the great cave about the tumult of Steelix. He had forced the old ones back almost to the patch of air through which they had come. Great dark tumors had appeared on the hands and faces of those in front, eating into the paper of their ancient skin like acid. "And I'd never throw away such an old friend in any case. But put it away? If you like." And he withdrew the sword.

Several of the demons lunged forward immediately, their fang-choked mouths twisting in what might have been grins. Cobalion held his head out toward them. His hooves glowed, as if they had been dipped into blue fire. The eyes of the god had likewise been filled with light.

"Stand away from me!" cried Cobalion. "The power of Arceus and the White commands you!"

A demon's head exploded like a gourd filled with blood, spraying the creatures who had been crowding in behind it. There were screams of horror and disbelief. Savage howls echoed, no longer of hunger, but of fear and anger. This servant of the living God daunted them, filled them with a pain beyond agony. A bluish-white glare glimmered as Cobalion gave a thundering cry and charged. A light was about him and his sacred sword. The remaining demons in the cave, material or not, released their grips and bolted like terrified flies. Their cold and bloodless breath was buried in the scent of Deep Heaven, and they screamed as their flesh peeled away into ribbons of red smoke. Cobalion had never felt so strong, even when dueling the great demon Enamorus millennia ago.

"War at last!" he thought, and his light-blooded body was filled with hot and human feeling. If only Terrakion and Virizion were by his side to see the demons die. "Great Arceus-Elyon almighty, I am fighting at last. Then I believe this is redemption for my refusal to test Woodhall."

"And it is good, is it not?" said Arceus. "It is good indeed."

...

At a pause in the battle, Bronze found his way through the smoldering mess of bodies to meet one of the soldiers. "Do you come from the Association?" he yelled. "You do, don't you?"

"Yar," the soldier said. "Came from Anthien, I did. Now I'm regretting this mess. Sad as I am, I don't want to die. Commander Gold didn't expect to find the town full of nasties."

"Gold?" said Bronze, but this time two mutants tried to come at him at once and momentarily jammed together, shoulder to shoulder. Magnezone launched two metal discs and watched them crisscross in the steamy air, beheading both newcomers just as they came too close. They fell backward dead and he started talking again.

"Is Gold with you?" he asked. "What about the guns?"

"Yeah, big guns. You're not a quiz-kid if you didn't hear the shots come through. Gold's the one who had the big idea to get here." He looked at the ragged remains of the Eclipse men, Cobalion carving up black and purple into red, Steelix batting away enemies with its chain-link tail. There were more gunshots from the soldiers and the buzzing whine of a ricochet.

Spyro, bewildered, great with all the grandeur of accepted martyrdom, offered himself to all blows in that tempest. He had his Ninetales blasted out from beside him by one of Gold's Pokemon. Perspiring, his eyes aflame, foaming at the mouth, with uniform unbuttoned, his plaque with the great eclipsed sun dented by a bullet; bleeding, bemired, magnificent, an expended pistol in his hand, he said, "Come and see how a servant of the Great Djinn dies in battle!"

But he was not allowed to die. Freezing his blood came the heavy roar of Cobalion. A sword like a colored rocket flared before him and pierced his side with the agony of a frozen pellet of poison. He fell, seeing the furious god rearing up before him, all as the last of his men were hunted by the soldier's Pokemon. Steelix slithered near Bronze, and he jumped on its newly loyal head, riding forward like a god. Shots, hews, slashes, killing, extermination. Genetic monstrosities littered the mud and occasioned massacres. The Eclipse lions were converted to goats.

Tess watched, stunned, as the field was clear of living foes. The soldiers were bayoneting all the Eclipse men that still crawled through the mud, shooting the ruined heaps of monsters till they were unrecognizable and organs flew, scoured them again till their bullets were gone and their Pokemn exhausted, and stamped their scattered entrails into the wet earth. A measurable thawing in her body began. She collapsed, saw the eyes of a dead soldier looking at her as through a kaleidoscope, vomited again, and knew nothing.

...

If Gold's Togekiss who served as a guide to the Pokedex Holder and his host of men advised him to arrive by the main gate or side gate, instead of landing their shuttles at the unguarded mountain pass, the entire shape of the coming story would have been different. At least one of the three, Tess or Bronze or Cobalion, would have likely fallen at the Battle of Flouruma. By any other route than the mountain pass, the Association would have come out upon passes held against them, useless to dislodge as long as the enemy's artillery remained fast. Such are the risks of war, proportioned to an incomprehensible infinite.

"We'd have died if it wasn't for you," said Bronze, shaking Gold's gloved hand with his own bloody one. He pulled away and gazed at the graveyard and the other men milling around, the citizens of Floruma reluctantly creeping out of their houses. "But if these Eclipse soldiers keep fighting as poorly as they did, we'll have no trouble killing more."

"You're the talk of the Association, Bronze," said Gold, flicking a strand of dark hair off his nose, "and also the one I came to find. I thought I'd help you fight."

"Why? Love of country?"

"Hell no."

"Think I'm going to pay you?"

"No."

"What, then?"

Gold sighed and flicked a small tentacle off his ammo vest. "I wanted to kill the people who are killing other people, and I thought that you'd show me how to do it more effectively."

"It was the Association's quibbling that brought you to me," said Bronze, digesting the meaning of this.

"Yeah. Thanks to you, I've already had a good, easy run that won't keep me up at night. They're hardly even human, right?"

"Not at all," said Bronze, speaking quickly, feeling breathless as his adrenaline ebbed away. "I feel a little guilt for killing people, you know, but it keeps getting easier. It isn't like there's anything wrong with me." He turned to Cobalion. "Nothing at all, right?"

"You will not regret what you did here," said Cobalion, sounding blank. "Arceus will not hold it against you."

Gold looked at the god and remembered Black's and Blake's stories about the Swords of Justice. What was this heavenly archon of knightly warfare doing with Bronze Tercano? Now he would be apart of whatever scheme Bronze had conjured. Something about the boy startled him. A mist had clouded his eyes, and the casual way he spoke of killing worried Gold. There was a hatred there that would set trees and hanging vines a-burning. And what about that Woodhall girl that had fainted? How could she endure this combat?

The trussed body of Spyro was pushed in front of Gold and Bronze. Without waiting Bronze wiped his knife, and put it to Spyro's cheek, raising another fist to his forehead. "You will tell me everything you know, and I will consider letting you live. If you do not speak, I will remove your fingers and then your toes." Liquid , worrying excitement rushed through his head. It was almost the same threat that he had made to Linda all those weeks ago. That had been only child's play. Here was the real moment of tension when he would torture a man himself. So easy, so easy to cut flesh, but he had not figured out WHY, and this gave him terrors that he was turning into an imperial sadist in the meanwhile. But not now.

"No need for that," said Cobalion, and he looked at Bronze as to say he was a little disappointed that the young ward's emotions had bettered him. "No earthly punishment will deter him. He's already succeded in his view. He's killed the Gym Leader and destroyed the town. The people are terrified and many of these Association soldiers will not recover. Earthly torment will not give us anything we can use."

"Then what is left?" said Bronze.

"I will show him the worst thing possible, as I did with you and war," said Cobalion. His eyes met with Spyro's. A convulsion knocked him asprawl from the soldier's hands and they scrambled to pick up the bound commander. His face turned into a silvery mask as his mouth frothed. A moment later he began to smoke and twitch.

"Crescent Island, crescent, crescent," he screamed, before literally boiling up. Then, as Bronze and the others scrambled to get away, Spyro simply exploded outward, one arm tearing free of his body and landing palm-up in the dirt. "Aw, what happened?" said Gold.

"He couldn't survive what I did to him for long," said Cobalion. A distant part of Bronze's mind wondered what Spyro had seen. "But we've got what we need. The Eclipse command base is in Crescent Island."

"Crescent Island is a lot north of here," said Gold, "and a lot east. We've got no time to go there, not with Bronze."

"Could you get that information to the Association?" said Bronze.

"Sure. We've got to make a deal. I'll go back to the Association so they know where to fight. You can go on to the next Gym, if that's still your plan." Gold took out a green badge and flicked it at Bronze. He caught it and saw that it was for Flouruma Gym.

"They had one of those badges in a storehouse in Anthien," said Gold. "I nicked it on the way out. Considering that the current Gym Leader is otherwise incapacitated," He gestured to the ruin of the Gym. "And that you went through something tougher than any Gym battle, you deserve this. That ambition counts in my book."

"Why not give me the remaining two?" said Bronze. "Didn't you think to take those?"

"I don't want you to be the Emperor if you can't fairly complete the League," said Gold. "You'd agree, right?"

Bronze said nothing and clutched the odious badge tight. The sickness was coming now, the feeling of uselessness. The sense that he would fight this battle or battles like it over and over for eternity, perhaps losing a finger to a monstrosity here, or an eye to a demon there, and after each battle he would sense the kingship of Roria a little farther away instead of a little closer. And all the time the dry twist would work its way into his heart.

"Stop that," he told himself. "It's nonsense, and you know it."

"Will they send more, Cobalion?" he asked at last.

"They may soon have more need to send," said Cobalion. "If they do, there'll almost certainly be fewer of them. The Alliance will not boast of this place. And now you know the trick to killing them, don't you?"

"What trick?"

"Point and shoot," said Gold, watching Spyro's hand quiver uncontrollably in the dirt, as with palsy. Gold's Sunflora picked up a largish chunk of rock and, as cool as night in the mountains, brought it down on the remains of the limb. The hand stilled immediately and the low hum in the air around it stopped.

Cobalion snuffed the air and said the demons were gone. "Gold, you and your men tell the Association where to look. I wish you triumph of it, and bring them to Crescent Island as you will. Tell the citizens of Flouruma the danger here's over, and let those who don't believe count the Eclipse dead."

"And from this day on, you are a king's man," said Bronze. "All your men are freed from the Association and serve the Emperor of Logaria. Are you willing to accept that?"

"I'll say nothing till the girl wakes," said Gold. "You're brave, but that isn't enough to make me serve you, to go the way of the Aredians."

"Gold," said Bronze, "I need to protect her. Not you. I don't care who's going to be on my side or not if it comes in the way of that. I don't care about my parents, the Association, or the Emperor of Earth. As far as reality goes, she's all that I need safe. I need to keep her safe." His voice dropped. "Help me, Gold."

If Tess is still alive, he thought. If I can keep her that way, and if she'll come back to herself. If and if and if.

Bronze took Gold's arm. "Please," he said. "Please don't make me try to do it a little more alone. I love her so much. Help me protect her."

Gold smiled. It made him younger. It seemed to fill the cave with its own light. All of Elyon's ancient power was in that smile: the power of the White. Yes," he said. "I serve you."

And then he said again, all the affirmation necessary in this dark place.

"Yes."

.

.

.

Eclipse Base Prime

.

Ever since he had escaped the wasps, Jake found that the Un-Emrett's treatment of him had changed. As the days passed (he coult tell the time, for he was being fed at what appeared to be regular intervals) he was getting many meals daily. The food was surprisingly good, with meat at every third meal. He had been moved from the computer hall to the Objective Room at times, and from the Objective Room to a comfortable warren to sleep in. He was being treated well, and this frightened him.

They had given him a white slate with a stump of pencil tied to the corner. At first he made no use of it. Even when he was awake he was completely torpid. Often he would lie from one meal to the next almost without stirring, sometimes asleep, sometimes waking into vague reveries in which it was too much trouble to open his eyes. He had long grown used to sleeping with a strong light on his face. It seemed to make no difference, except that one's dreams were more coherent. He dreamed a great deal all through this time, and they were always happy dreams. He was in the Golden Country, or he was sitting among enormous glorious, sunlit ruins, with his mother, with Tess, with Bronze: not doing anything, merely sitting in the sun, talking of peaceful things. Such thoughts as he had when he was awake were mostly about his dreams. He seemed to have lost the power of intellectual effort, now that the stimulus of pain had been removed. He was not bored, he had no desire for conversation or distraction. Merely to be alone, not to be tortured or questioned, to have enough to eat, and to be clean all over, was completely satisfying.

By degrees he came to spend less time in sleep, but he still felt no impulse to get off the bed. All he cared for was to lie quiet and feel the strength gathering in his body. Reluctantly at first, he began exercising himself regularly and surprisingly he was given weights and equipment to encourage this. He began to grow actually proud of his body, and to cherish an intermittent belief that his muscles were growing in an ideal way. His mind grew more active. He sat down on the plank bed, his back against the wall and the slate on his knees, and set to work deliberately at the task of re-educating himself, to become a swallower of drivel, and concealing his true thoughts.

He had capitulated to the Alliance, that was agreed. In reality, as he saw now, he had been ready to capitulate long before he had taken the decision. From the moment when he was inside the Objective Room (and yes, even during those minutes when he and Tess had stood helpless in the Anthien Muesum while the iron voice from the holoscreen told them what to do) he had grasped the frivolity, the shallowness of his attempt to set himself up against the power of the Alliance. He knew now that he had been watched like a beetle under a magnifying glass. There was no physical act, no word spoken aloud, that they had not noticed, no train of thought that they had not been able to infer.

The torture was now shame-based. They had played soundtracks to him, shown him photographs. Some of them were photographs of Tess and himself. Yes, even in his fantasies they could reach. He could not fight against the Alliance any longer. Besides, the Alliance was in the right, if nots its leaders. It must be so; how could the immortal, collective brain be mistaken? By what external standard could you check its judgments? Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought. Only!

The pencil felt thick and awkward in his fingers. He began to write down the thoughts that came into his head. He wrote first in large clumsy capitals: ARCEUS IS THE DJINN. Then almost without a pause he wrote beneath it: MEN ARE MALLEABLE. But then there came a sort of check. His mind, as though shying away from something, seemed unable to concentrate. Something or someone was trying to make him forget. He knew that he knew what came next, but for the moment he could not recall it. When he did recall it, it was only by consciously reasoning out what it must be: it did not come of its own accord. He wrote: GOD IS POWER.

Suddenly he accepted everything. The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. It had never existed, he had invented it. He remembered remembering contrary things, but those were false memories, products of self-deception. How easy it all was! Only surrender, and everything else followed. It was like swimming against a current that swept you backward however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case. He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled. Everything was easy, except...

Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. Could the Un-Emrett float off the floor like a soap bubble? Jake worked it out. "If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens." Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: "It doesn't really happen. We imagine it. It is a hallucination." He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a "real" world where "real" things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.

He had no difficulty in disposing of the fallacy, and he was in no danger of succumbing to it again. He realized, nevertheless, that it ought never to have occurred to him. The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive.

He set to work to exercise himself in attaining this mode of thought, both on his own and under the Un-Emrett's encouragement in the Objective Room. He presented himself with propositions: "the Alliance says the Earth is flat", "the Alliance says that Bronze is wrong," and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them. It was not easy. It needed great powers of reasoning and improvisation. The arithmetical problems raised, for instance, by such a statement as "two and two make five" were beyond his intellectual grasp. It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors. Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.

This helped him. In the first days he had hidden a heretical mind beneath an appearance of obedience. Now he had retreated a step further: in the mind he had surrendered, but he had hoped to keep the inner heart inviolate. For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that could be given a name. From now onwards he must not only think right; he must feel right, dream right. And all the while he must keep his hatred locked up inside him like a ball of matter which was part of himself and yet unconnected with the rest of him, a kind of cyst.

...

The steel door of his cell swung open with a clang, and an Eclipse guard with the eyes of a cat surgically implanted into his sockets ushered him out. He had been seeing monsters in the halls, monsters talking to humans, mutants, and demons. The Djinn had been busy with all the technology available to it, and an unlimited power of sinister thought. He must conceal his disgust as much as possible.

He was brought to a well-furnished bedroom. There was another man there, looking the part of a martyr, different than Jake remembered him. Robert Tercano's face had taken on a new shape. There were deep furrows in the cheeks, the cheekbones were sharper, the nose flattened, and the skin paler. They were locked in the room without instruction and stood looking at each other.

"Are you Jake?" said Robert. "Or another one of their tricks?"

"Are you Robert?" said Jake. "Or one of their tricks?"

"Well, if you're real or not, they won't get anything new out of me," said Robert with a grin. "I tell you, they'll get nothing new. Are they trying to interrogate you, Jake?"

And his look embraced Jake in such an apparently gleeful conspiracy that it warmed the heart. He wasn't sure of what to say to Bronze's father. Believing this matter to be now sufficiently clear, Jake began, "No, they've been trying to educate me..." only to be met by a pantomime of secrecy, a finger to the lips.

"Careful," whispered Robert, moving across the room and brushing his bearded face against Jake's temple. "There's bound to be cameras and microphones in here. They're sensitive enough to pick up the sound of your heartbeat, if you're near enough. But they can't hear anything if you speak directly into my ear."

"Alright," said Jake, imitating his mode of speaking. "We're both in considerable danger. I've been trying to think out some sort of plan."

"Same as me, eh?" said Robert with a level calmness. "How'd you get here in the first place? How's Bronze doing?"

And Jake told him the tale. It drew on for hours and hours, so they were obliged to sit on the bed when their legs became sore from standing. Robert's questions were very procedural, asking about the nature of the places they had gone and whatever dialogue Jake could remember, and rough approximations of conversations or people that he met not mentioned in this history. His memory ended at being taken from Anthien City, but he was sure that Bronze and Tess were still alive and away from Anthien. The Un-Emrett habitually dropped strange hints of this. Of the young emperor's doings beyond Anthien he had no clue.

"Ah," said Robert approvingly, "that's my son." Then instead of pressing the question Robert let Jake endeavor to discover something of Robert's and particularly how and why he had been brought to the Eclipse base. This was not easy to do, for whatever security concern that Robert had deducted, he never got the story in so many words. Robert insisted on talking as if Jake knew it already, and any pressure for a more accurate account produced only a series of nods, winks, and highly confidential gestures.

The entire psychology of Robert was a mystery. Jake could never find in his face the evil he was looking for; but neither could he find any of that virtue which would, for him, have been the danger signal. Something had turned Robert from a father into a man he had never met. The dupe, the terrified victim, the toady, the would-be accomplice, the rival, the honest man with loathing and hatred in his eyes, were all familiar to him. But not this unjudgemental eccentricity.

He made out the business of the Bottle and the Brick and their respective histories. Robert had, by observing Cypress's and Emrett's transformations into complete devils, that the Djinn was free, but the Brick was not yet in their hands. Jake never met Lily in this period but Robert did, and he learned nothing new from her either. The general shape and scope of the war was beyond them, save that the stakes were deeper and the world growing darker.

It was these meetings that helped save Jake. Whenever he found himself in the company of Robert, his first sensation was an unexpected lightness of heart. It was not that he had any release from fears about the future. Rather, in the very midst of those fears, a strange sense of liberation had sprung up. The relief of no longer trying to win these men's confidence, the shuffling off of miserable hopes, was almost exhilarating. The straight fight, after the long series of diplomatic failures, was tonic. He might lose the straight fight. But at least it was now his side against theirs. And he could talk of "his side" now. Already he was with Robert and Tess and all they symbolized. Indeed, it was he who was in the front line: Tess and Robert were almost non-combatants.

These demons of which Bronze had spoken, and he did not doubt now that they were locally present with him in the complex, breathed death on the human race and on all joy. Not despite this but because of this, the terrible gravitation sucked and tugged and fascinated him towards them. Never before had he known the fruitful strength of the movement opposite to Nature which now had him in its grip; the impulse to reverse all reluctances and to draw every circle anti-clockwise. The meaning of certain pictures in the Objective Room, of the Un-Emrett's talk about "objectivity," of the things done by witches in old times, became clear to him. The image of the Un-Emrett's face rose to his memory: and this time he did not merely loathe it. He noted, with shuddering satisfaction, the signs it bore of a shared experience between them. It also knew. It also understood...

At the same moment, it came back to him that he would probably be killed. As soon as the thought of that, he became once more aware of the cell, the little hard white empty place with the glaring light, in which he found himself sitting on the floor. He blinked his eyes. He could not remember that it had been visible for the last few minutes. Where had he been? His mind was clear now at any rate. This idea of something in common between him and the Un-Emrett was all nonsense. Of course they meant to kill him in the end unless he could rescue himself by his own wits; What had he been thinking and feeling while he forgot that?

Gradually he realized that he had sustained some sort of attack, and that he had put up no resistance at all; and with that realization a quite new kind of dread entered his mind. Though he was theoretically a theist, he had all his life believed quite inconsistently, and even carelessly, in the freedom of his own will. He had seldom made a moral resolution, and when he had resolved to hate Emrett always and forever days earlier, he had taken it for granted that he would be able to do what he resolved. He knew, to be sure, that he might "change his mind"; but till he did so, of course he would carry out his plan. It had never occurred to him that his mind could thus be changed for him by the Objectivity Therapy, all in an instant of time, changed beyond recognition.

If that sort of thing could happen...it was unfair. Here was a boy trying (for what seemed the first time in his life) to do what was obviously the right thing, the thing that Bronze and Tess and Arceus would have approved of. You might have expected that when a man behaved in that way the universe would back him up. For the relics of such semi-savage versions of Theism as Jake had picked up in the course of his life were stronger in him than he knew, and he felt, though he would not have put it into words, that it was "up to" the universe to reward his good resolutions. Yet, the very first moment you tried to be good, the universe let you down. It revealed gaps you had never dreamed of. It invented new laws for the express purpose of letting you down. That was what you got for your pains.

The cynics, then, were right. But at this thought, he stopped sharply. Some flavor that came with it had given him pause. Was this the other mood of renwed therapeutic moralism beginning again? Oh not that, at any price. He clenched his hands. No, no, no. He could not stand this much longer. He wanted Tess; he wanted Bronze; he wanted more of Robert. He wanted somebody or something.

"Oh don't, don't let me go back into it," he said; and then louder, "don't, don't." All that could in any sense be called himself went into that cry; and the dreadful consciousness of having played his last card began to turn slowly into a sort of peace. There was nothing more to be done. Unconsciously he allowed his muscles to relax. His young body was very tired by this time and even the hard floor was grateful to it. The cell also seemed to be somehow emptied and purged, as if it too were tired after the conflicts it had witnessed, emptied like a sky after rain, tired like a child after weeping. A dim consciousness that the night must be nearly ended stole over him, and he fell asleep.