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Logaria's Honor
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The Chairman felt like a dark speck of foreign matter, expelled from the wider capillaries of the Associaton. Outward he seemed the same man since last year, with twice the wrinkles and half the hair. There were bruised half-moons under his eyes, looking wide and white and staring. The nostrils were half-flared and ugly. The mouth was a purple, twisted line. He felt that everything had reached its worst. A sudden electric-white glow in his head made him think what the hell, and then he walked into the range of the video cameras, pushing through his attendants, and began to speak.
It was with dubious pleasure that Bronze found himself watching the footage of what was likely to be an excellent spectacle. He got a seat in the sidelines along the other nine challengers, with an Alolan named Ciaphas on his right whom he had met once or twice, and a rather inconspicuous newcomer on his left. Tess and Moon thought Bronze, Ciaphas, and the newcomer were the only half-human challengers in the whole bunch, and when they saw the relatively familiar face of Khosrow to the Chairman's right they positively warmed to him. Tess noticed with surprise that Khosrow was standing on a high platform between Yanase and Oak, but did not often look in the direction of the arena, for Khosrow, catching Bronze's eye, had imprudently raised a glass and winked at him. Yanase stood patiently beside Khosrow's platform. For the rest, nothing of importance happened until the anthem had been sung and the Chairman rose to make his speech.
For the first few minutes, anyone glancing down the long rows of the stadium would have seen what we always see on such occasions. There were the placid faces of elderly nobles whom food and wine had placed in a contentment that no amount of speeches could violate. There were the patient faces of responsible but serious men of industry and politics, who had long since learned how to pursue their own thoughts, while attending to the speech just enough to respond wherever a laugh or a low rumble of serious assent was obligatory. There was the usual fidgety expression on the faces of young men and women unappreciative of sitting still and wishing their entertainment would get on with it. There was bright over-elaborate attention on the faces of foreign women who knew their duty to society.
But if you have gone on looking down the tables you would presently have seen a difference on the faces of some, if not half of the people there. There was anger, solid and fixed attention, and a subtle clenching of jaws. Tall men clad in weathered robes touched bulges at their hips. Then as the speech went on, you would have seen face after face look up and turn in the direction of the Chairman. You would have seen first curiosity, then absolute attention, then incredulity. Finally you would have noticed that the stadium was utterly silent, without a cough or a creak, that every eye was fixed on the Chairman, and soon every mouth opened in something between fascination and horror.
To different members of the audience, the change came differently. To Oak it began at the moment when he heard the Chairman end a sentence extolling the virtues of patriotism and loyalty to the state with the words, "as gross an anachronism as to trust to Calvary for salvation in modern war."
Cavalry, thought Oak almost aloud. Why couldn't the fool mind what he was saying? The blunder irritated him extremely. Perhaps...but what was this? Had his hearing gone wrong? For the Chairman seemed to be saying that the future density of mankind depended on the implosion of the horses of Nature.
"He's drunk," thought Yanase in horror. "He went to the bar and had gotten drunk." Then, crystal clear in articulation, beyond all possibility of mistake, came, "The Rorians which resist our rule must be imprisoned and eradicated."
Robert was slower to notice what was happening. He had never expected the speech to have any meaning as a whole and for a long time the familiar catch-words rolled on in a manner which did not disturb the expectation of his ear. He thought, indeed, that the Chairman was sailing very near the wind, that a very small false step would deprive both the speaker and the audience of the power even to pretend that he was saying anything in particular. But as long as that border was not crossed, he rather admired the speech; it was in his own line. Then he thought, "What? That's going too far. Even they must see that you can't talk about accepting the challenge of the past by throwing down the gauntlet of the future."
He looked cautiously down the executive box and out to the stadium. All was well. But it wouldn't be if the Chairman didn't pretty soon. In that last sentence there were surely words he didn't know. What the hell did he mean by aholibate? He looked down the stadium again. They were attending too much, always a bad sign at a speech such as this. Then came the sentence, "The surrogates which have implated themselves at every level of society must be eliminated totally."
Bronze did not at first attend to the speech at all. He had plenty of other things to think of. The appearance of this Chairman spouting folly at the very crisis of his own history was a mere interruption. He was too endangered and yet also, in some precarious way, too happy to bother about the Chairman. Once or twice some phrase caught his ear and made him want to smile. What first awoke him to the real situation was the behavior of those who sat near him. He was aware of their increasing stillness. He noticed that everyone except himself had begun to attend.
He looked up and saw their faces. And then first he really listened. "We shall not," the Chairman was saying to tens of millions across the world, "we shall not, till we can secure the future of Association administration over Roria, ever give a quarter in the policies of armament and re-armament we have so far implemented."
Little as he cared for the Chairman, a sudden shock of alarm pierced him. He looked around again. Obviously it was not he who was mad; they had all heard the words. Except possibly Khosrow, who looked as solemn as a judge on the holofeed. He had never heard a live speech from one of these real toffs before and would have been disappointed if he could understand it. Nor had he ever before drunk much alcohol, and though he did not much like the taste he knew it might have been working away at the Chairman.
Yanase had not forgotten for a moment that there were reporters present. That in itself did not matter much. If anything unsuitable appeared, it would be child's play for the Chairman to say that the reporters were drunk or mad and break them. On the other hand, she might make him let the story pass. The Chairman was in many respects becoming a nuisance, and this might be as good an opportunity as any other for ending his career and to help Bronze. But this was not the immediate question. Yanase was wondering whether she should wait till the Chairman sat down or whether she should rise and interrupt him with a few judicious words. She did not want a scene. It would be better if the Chairman sat down of his own accord. At the same time, there was by now an atmosphere in the stadium and the crowded administrative decks which warned Yanase not to delay too long. Glancing down at the secondhand of her watch she decided to wait two minutes more. Almost as she did so she knew that she had misjudged it. An intolerable falsetto laugh rang out from the edge of sight and would not stop. Some fool of a woman had got hysterics. Immediately Yanase touched the Chairman on the arm, signed to him with a nod, and rose.
"Eh? What's this?" muttered the Chairman. But Yanase, laying her hand on the little man's shoulder, quietly but with all her weight, forced him down into a sitting position. Then Yanase cleared her throat. The woman stopped screaming. People who had been sitting dead still in strained positions moved and relaxed.
"Oh, now Mother's going to have a hand in this," said Moon with a groan.
"Well, the man's going insane," said Tess. "Someone's got to step in."
"Friends, I would like to express my deepest sympathies about the grave tragedy that has occurred here," began Yanase. "The Chairman is an imperfect man, and from that point of view the very idea of something being imperfect, of its not being what it ought to be, has certain consequences. It is not the Association's job to accuse its citizens of conspiring against it, nor to be very concerned at present with blame. Rorians, before the League must begin..."
There were no more hysterics. The people looked more and more comfortable as Yanase continued; among the visitors there were murmurs of assent. It was what she expected, but what she saw from the Rorians bewildered her. The same too-attentive silence which had prevailed during the Chairman's speech had returned. Bright unblinking eyes and pursed mouths glinted at her from every direction.
Bronze saw this particular ripple of emotion, thought, The people will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations in the state of the modern-day Association who think they can revive the populace in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest fudge shop.
"...double-elimination..."
Nothing is yet in its true form. Not me nor Moon nor the Association.
"...and among the Elite Four there are..."
Oh, Moon. A woman's heart should be so close to God that a man should have to chase Him to find her.
"...your contestants are Ciaphas, Revan, Bronze, Lydia, Unger, Stanley, Alexander, Hyperion, Darius, Peroz..."
No great thing was ever done without sacrifice, Bronze, said Cobalion. Remember that all worlds draw to an end and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.
"Let the League begin!"
Then amen and attack!
...
Tess watched the battles begin from her seat, Ciaphas versus a man named Unger. Yellow had found that their seats had high-powered viewing scopes stashed below them. The scopes, with lenses suspended in a hydrostatic field of hufuf oil, could be adjusted micron by micron, providing unparalleled accuracy in recording images.
Antarah had become aware of a growing contingent of frigates above the arena, glowing hot with threads of atmosphere, collected like thunderheads before a typhoon. He counted two contingents of skycopters, dozens of carryalls, and a vessel large enough to be a superfrigate. They were twice the strength of the Eclipse fleet which had attacked Anthien, but Antarah knew that it wouldn't be enough. The Dark Lord's own forces had swelled to perhaps five or six times what they had been, with few disadvantages in their composition; for anything the Association might have, the Alliance could have something to counter it. But he knew that no sophisticated combat AI in the enemy bots, nor any training regiment, could defeat him and his warriors without regretting the exchange. The desert was its own brutal teacher.
The first battle was over in ten minutes. Unger had been eliminated. A woman named Lydia, a pinched-up hag with a gaze that frightened children, was up against the sanguine-looking newcomer. Bronze was to be in the next battle, fighting against a sallow-faced creature named Revan. He had said nothing and did nothing but look around with a murderous, unappeasable hatred of everything he saw.
It was said (by himself as well as the rumors) that he was from the old Unovan mystic-order of Druzhina, of which Bronze had told a few stories in passing. Once the Hisuians had ruled Unova, but when their control passed, many men were left to pick up the pieces. So the order was born, reveling in assassination, piracy, and torture, becoming sadistic to the extreme. Many hundreds of years ago, Bronze's great-great-times-ten grandfather, Peter the Tall, had driven out the torture-lords with the help of his six high captains and their twenty mighty men, destroying the evil city of Gomor and driven the cultists south, where they disappeared from the historical record.
Whether this Revan was an actual survivor of the old occultic traditions or playing a part Tess didn't know. But she hated the feel of the man. Cypress's body had seemed empty; behind the Djinn there was a corpse, a shred of old consciousness that felt like dusty wastebins, empty wine bottles, mildew-covered drapes, and pitiful decay. The thing she hated was the Un-Cypress, not Jonathan Rowell Cypress, Bronze's old intellectual rival who she had never met, save at the very end when the corruption in his heart had damned him as much before the absorption of the devil than after the deed was done. She had been getting a draw on the most severe forms of evil just by seeing the people they had eaten, reading the patterns on their faces, and facing the decay herself. With Revan she understood that not all evil was the absence of good.
If anything, Revan's face on the close-up video shots reminded her of Emrett before the wizard's own subsumption into the Dark Lord. It agreed with what Bronze had told her about the man's spirit at the Eclipse rally, from the long-ago days when the Alliance was a respected organization. Revan's face was solemn, grim, even, but a great hot passion clapped in his limbs and roared in the man's face. There was a revolting horror in Revan's happiness. She kept still in her seat, feeling that she had vomited, had never felt more raw disgust before. The color drained away from the slight summertime tan of her hands.
What is it that makes you hate this creature?
The camera went to Revan again. He was biting the nail of his thumb, putting down the hand when asked some question that Tess's fury-fuzzed ears couldn't make out clearly. Revan answered with a burning smile, saying how glad he was to be here, that Bronze would be a worthy foe, that he had come to defeat this imposter who hardly needed to shave his stubble. Revan gave a hail to his cult's dark god and howled. Distant and full of terror, she heard someone shriek and then laugh. Revan went back to glaring. The last image was of him pointing a finger gun at a soldier, pretending to fire, and then laughing silently as the audio cut back to the battle.
"Can't wait to see Bronze spill this perv's guts," she heard Gold say.
How did he not see that Revan was so much worse than that? It was all fun and games for Gold, she thought, life being a parade of endless thrills with enough injustice to get angry over. If Bronze beat this hateful monster, it would be one less hippie-perv-weirdhead to bother the illustrious Gold. That grinning face appeared to her again. She felt like screaming, had no voice for it, had no taste for it.
Die! Tess wanted to scream. Die! Shake yourself to pieces! Total yourself! Destruct! Implode! Disintegrate! Do the world a favor!
Her vision turned from the distant and terrified to the narrow when she saw Bronze come up on the watch cams. Full consciousness of her place returned. He was being asked things, she gathered, many things, from why did he come to what his mother had given him for lunch when he was five or if he felt like crying right now, did he have a girlfriend if yes who was the lucky girl and what was his opinion on this or that.
Bronze was acting good for the cameras, but not for the reporters. He was acting good for the Rorians. Tess admired his cleverness. The people might see him only as another hungry young man, full of more promises that could not or would never be fulfilled if things went straightaway to his grand revelation. He had to get a hold over them.
"It would be better to wait before I say what I've been planning," said Bronze with a video-ready smile and a voice so honestly sincere that Tess wondered if he had been training to emulate the right tone. "After I beat Revan, I want to have the people hear what I've got to say."
"You think you'll beat Revan?" said a reporter.
"I'll beat him," said Bronze, declining any further questions.
...
Bronze felt his blood sing with static bubbles as Cobalion spoke to him, the god's voice pitched to his ears alone: "I remind you, Bronze, that the man you'll fight is the worst in this bunch."
He looked at the dark-haired Revan, who was leaning against the stadium barrier. "The one with the flaming eyes, there on the left. As evil a face as I ever saw. Be careful."
"Cobalion, that swine is no more than a beast you'd spurn with your foot and discard the shoe because it'd been contaminated," said Bronze, smiling at Revan when the man made an obscene gesture toward him. "I'll be its executioner."
"It may be a corrupted animal," said Cobalion, "but it is in human shape and deserves human doubt. This is a single elimination championship and his Pokemon will fight hard. Partake in my memory. See the man Revan as you have seen war."
Bronze stood completely still by the benches, the world's eyes off him, and shared the vision. The moment was endless. Objective time was replaced by something else. For Bronze it had never been this strong, never. Everything came at him at once, crammed together and screaming like some terrible black freight train highballing through a narrow tunnel, a speeding engine with a single glaring headlamp mounted up front, and the headlamp was knowing everything, and its light impaled him like a bug on a pin.
Then all of it, pictures, images, and words, broke up in the swelling, soft roar of oblivion. He seemed to smell some sweet, coppery scent, like burning high-tension wires. Cobalion's disembodied voice steadied him, guided him through the mist...
Revan was a walking, smiling clone of Jonathan Rowell Cypress. In Castelia City he was known as James Frink, and his claim that he was a man of the people had never been disputed, although his family was very rich. He and an Unovan veteran of the Terramist Wars, a man with enough cunning and bile to make up for his missing right arm, had killed six officers in Nimbasa and Virbank. In Kalos he was called the Caeser's Man, a distant descendant of a dead Rumhoth noble, and with his frenzied companions, he had participated in four demon summonings, a castration, and the burning of a peasant shanty town. But that had been long ago, before Bronze was born. Revan sometimes thought that he might have been born in the strife that resulted when the Djinn returned. He certainly could not remember much that had happened to him before that, except that he came originally from Johto and that he had once attended high school classes with a red-haired, bandy-legged boy named Cao Tan. He remembered the Terramist Wars better; the beatings, the bloody night raids, the churches that had exploded as if some miracle inside them had grown too big to be contained. He remembered drifting down to Roria and training with the other members of the old order, remembering the Logarians that had destroyed their stronghold in Unova, becoming a demented young man handing out radical pamphlets and filling himself with all the hate he could take.
He had written speeches for terrorist groups, and on several occasions, those speeches had ended in riots, overturned cars, massive strikes, and violent demonstrations. He caught four Pokemon and made them no different from himself. He had helped lay plans that resulted in the kidnapping of an heiress in Sinnoh, and it had been he who suggested that the heiress be made crazy instead of ransomed. Then, coming south like a dark, moving tower, he beat every Gym in Roria. Even for men like Aaron and women like Brynn, who reduced the most insane of contenders to simple ciphers and sent them away screaming and defeated, they had been beaten. Aaron had suffered from a headache for a day after. Brynn felt cold, so cold that she would never be warm again. And now he was here, hunting the heir to Logaria, and if anyone would get in his way then he would take care of problems as he always did: with maximum contempt.
Bronze awoke. Cobalion made his voice harder. "One thing, Bronze, if you wish it. Sometimes a dangerous person is prepared by our intelligence division when they stand in the way of Arceus's plan. If I am permitted, I could utter one word-sound into his ear and he would die, muscles gone flaccid. If you wish it."
"I want no special advantage for this creature," said Bronze. "Step back out of my way."
Cobalion spoke to him: "Why are you doing this? Do you think to get yourself defeated and achieve martyrdom? Is that what clouds your reason?"
Bronze looked as his chewed-up boots, realizing that he did not know fully why he took this course. He could feel death in the air and knew that the Alliance was coming. Every talent within him focused on the need to protect his friends and divine right, but there was nothing he could do while this evil man Revan was alive.
"Is it this religious prattle?" insisted Cobalion. "True prattle?"
"Be silent," whispered Bronze. "And pray."
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"...will be double-elimination. May Bronze Tercano and Revan Commoragh approach the field!"
A flurry of robes, scraping of feet, low-voiced commands and protests accompanied obedience to the command. Association officials remained standing near the communications equipment. They distantly frowned at Bronze in obvious indecision.
They're accustomed to seeing the future, thought Bronze, moving to his spot on the field with a neutral expression on his face. In this place and time they're blind, even as I am.
And he sampled the crowd, sensing the hidden turmoil, the storm nexus that now focused on this moment and place. Even the faint gaps were closed now. Here was the unborn jihad, he knew. Here was the race consciousness that he had known once as his own terrible purpose. Here was reason enough for a Logarian Emperor or a new prophet or even the halting schemes of the Association. The race of Logaria had felt its own dormancy, sensed itself grown stale, and knew now only the need to experience turmoil in which the genes would mingle and the strong new mixtures survive. All of humanity was alive in one organism this moment, experiencing and unconscious connectivity that could break any barrier...in his favor.
Bronze saw how futile were any efforts of his to change any smallest bit of this. It could have been avoided in the past, definitely, and he had many choices to stop it, but always he chose to go on, buying into the lie that there was a little time left. He had thought to oppose the jihad within himself, but the jihad would be. His imperial legions, not yet founded, would rage out from Roria even without him. They needed only the legend he already had become. He had shown them the way, given the Aredians mastery and hope. That would be enough.
A sense of failure pervaded him, and he saw through it that Revan had slipped out of his torn leather uniform, stripped down to a fighting girdle with a mail core.
"Is the scum ready?" called Revan.
Bronze chose to answer him in the Logarian way: "May thy blade chip and shatter!" He pointed the Logarian dagger at his enemy, indicating that Revan should advance and take it.
Keeping his attention on Bronze, Revan took out a poke ball, balancing it a moment in his hand to get the feel of it. Excitement kindled in him. This was a fight he had dreamed about; man against man, Logarian against Druzhina, skill against skill with nothing intervening. He could see a way to power opening before him because the Association or Alliance alike surely would reward whoever bested, or 'accidentally' killed, this troublesome Pokedex Holder. The reward from the Alliance might even be a haughty position as regional governor and a share of their power. And this yokel boy, this back-country adventurer, could not possibly be a match for a twisted man trained in every device and every demonic treachery by a thousand arena combats. And the yokel had no way of knowing he faced more weapons than a Pokemon here.
Let us see if you're proof against my treachery! thought Revan. He saluted Bronze with the poke ball, said: "Meet your death, Rorian fool."
The crowd whispered at that.
"Shall we fight, then?" asked Bronze. And he cat-footed forward, eyes on the waiting poke ball, his body crouched low with his own tan-bladed knife standing out as though an extension of his arm.
They circled each other, booted feet making imprints on the clipped grass floor, watching with eyes intent for the slightest opening.
"How beautifully you dance," said Revan.
He's a talker, thought Bronze. There's a weakness. He grows uneasy in the face of silence. Perhaps overconfident. Those are natural advantages for me that I'll gladly accept.
"Have you still your testicles?" said Revan.
Still, Bronze circled in silence. And Lily, watching the fight from the press of the executive suite, felt herself trembling. Her son had been picked to face the madman. It might mean that the Association wanted him crippled, defeated or rendered helpless, perhaps even killed. But her prayer forced her to focus on the only thing that mattered to her and Bronze.
This could be a major catastrophe for the Grand Plan if he was defeated at the hands of one such as Revan.
"Perhaps you have only pagan rites from your home," said Revan. "Would you like my Pokemon to prepare your spirit for its journey?"
"Get on with it!" someone yelled.
Bronze smiled, circling to the right, alert, his black thoughts suppressed by the needs of the moment.
Revan flicked his arm and an Umbreon leaped. Bronze led with Magnezone. Umbreon feinted with its right paw, but its claws also extended in a blur on its left.
Magnezone dodged easily, noting the subtle aggressiveness in Umbreon's strike, as if built for swiping and tearing deep strips of flesh rather than making controlled wounds. It was a kind of conditioning that Bronze had seen only in the Alliance's military Pokemon, and it made him alarmed: it was evident that this Pokemon had fought frequently before against non-Pokemon opponents.
In other words, I've got to watch my ass, he thought.
"Does the Rorian run or stand and fight?" called Revan.
Bronze resumed his silent circling, not moving to attack. His father's words came back to him, the words of training from the long-ago practice floor in the Mitis training gym. "Use the first moments in study for the battles that really matter. You may miss many an opportunity for quick victory this way, but the moments of study are insurance of success. Take your time and be sure."
"Perhaps you think this dance prolongs your life a few moments," said Revan. "Well and good." He stopped the circling and straightened. "Why don't you speak?"
Bronze continued his probing circle, allowing himself a cold smile at the tone of unease in Revan's voice, evidence that the pressure of silence was building. The protests and whispers of the crowd had been tuned out by both of the trainers. It was only the two of them in an odd capsule of silence, sharing a twisted communion, each scrying the other's spirit. Both found in the other what they fought against.
"You smile, eh?" asked Revan, and Umbreon leaped in mid-sentence.
The clash turned into an abattoir. Magnezone was fleet of flight, but Umbreon was clever and vicious. Both clashed with blows strong enough to rend a man to shreds many times over. Magnezone's iron became rent and pitted, opening up gashes through which pulsing organelles could be seen: blue-gold biological conduits that throbbed in a rapid beat, some spewing out gold blood. It fought for the honor of Logaria as much as Bronze. Umbreon was covered in burn patches, looking like a patchwork of black and amber, its eyes glowing crazily, mouth foaming yellow from its pink gums. A laser blast had clipped off half of its tail, causing the stump to trail splashes of blood behind it as it went on its whirling path.
Bronze had never felt such hate from a Pokemon. The aura was like a carnivorous mantis, ripped away from the benevolent herd passions and replaced with a mindless desire to maim. There was another front to the battle that he could not see but could feel, as real as antique gunpowder scent in the wars of old. Cobalion hovered above the two fighters, killing whatever demons came near. Some of the smaller, harassing spirits flitted about the stadium trying to see what people were thinking, and grinning, scowling, cheering, or cursing accordingly. Watching from above, Zeraora could envision three or four of their wiry little necks in his fists.
A flock of hissing, clicking demons were trying to attack Bronze at every side, while Cobalion's sword reaved through their ranks, scattering the demons into gust of crimson smoke. Their yellow organs poured out before disintegrating, but still the deadly circle whirled. In his head Bronze heard a shrill, high scream, a scream that turned into a horrible laugh of triumph. He saw a spiral of ecthriod, red eyes swimming in his vision, seeing scaly hands with smoky scimitars jutting from closed fists. Cobalion cut down five and ten more took their place. There were always more demons to descend from the rage-filled canopy of ivory talons and leathery hides.
Cold, so cold. Shrieks! Thunder! Fangs bared to bite! The demons exploded in an invisible radius from the ground, air, Umbreon and Revan's bared and slobbering mouths, every nook of the space around Bronze and like arrows went for his heart.
A blinding flash! Then another, then another! The whitest hot light traced brilliant fiery arcs, a searing edge that cut through the flock of evil spirits like a scythe. Parts of demons tumbled into nothingness; other demons imploded and vanished in instantaneous billows of red smoke. Waves of spirits still poured down upon the one lone boy who stood there in reasonless terror, but suddenly this boy was surrounded by four heavenly warriors robed in glorious light, their crystalline swords unfurled like banners over their charge, their swords blurring into waving, swirling sheets of brilliance.
The air was filled with the deafening cries of hideous creatures as blades met flanks, necks, torsos, and demon after demon was flung aside in pieces that instantly disintegrated and vanished like vapor. Cobalion, Virizion, and two other gods, Terakkion and Keldeo, darted, feinted, spun, batted away one spirit and sliced another, thrusting their blades in a myriad of directions. The lightning from their swords flashed against the walls, bright enough to bleach out all of the Unseen World's colors.
Terrakion gutted one demon and sent it spiraling through the sky, leaving a red trail of vapor until it vanished. With his sword he slashed; with his four legs he crushed and bashed demons by their heads. Keldeo and Virizion whirled in a high-powered blur, mowing through demons as through grass. Cobalion threw himself, his full cherubic self, against Bronze and kept his flaming wings spread to protect the boy.
"Push them back!" shouted Terrakion, and he began to charge into the black-armored horde, feeling a giant clump of demons spatter onto his head, feeling the shock of his hide striking other demons with the rhythm of a stick on a picket fence.
The demons began to shy back; half the numbers in the sortie were now gone, as was half their zeal. Virizion, Keldeo, and Terrakion started flying a tight spiral around Bronze, their swords knifing through the fading demonic ranks. One demon shot straight into the sky with a wail of terror. Keldeo got right after it and quickly dispatched it like a slaughtered gamebird. She remained above the arena for a time, containing any fleeing spirits very neatly and abruptly, swatting them out of existence as if they were fast-served tennis balls.
And then, almost as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. No demon in the horde remained; none had escaped. The moving sky screamed and cursed, but no new warriors came to fight.
"One on one now!" yelled Bronze at Revan. "I'm free, you bastard!"
"Arrogant waip, you will pay for the insult of trying to stand in the path of the Druzhina," said Revan. "The mere thought of brushing my feet against the same dirt you tread sickens me. I will take your imminent screams of dying anguish as your crude attempt at an apology."
Bronze strained, hearing the silent screams in his mind, his cell-stamped ancestors demanding that he must have Cobalion attack Umbreon and Revan, to slow him down or kill him, to save himself.
"I will not say it!" gasped Bronze.
Revan, started, flicked his eye up and instant to the Chairman's box. The Chairman returned the gaze. Revan met his stare: gray eyes against green. The thought lay there clearly between them, their sudden association since a week ago so necessary and urgent that understanding could be achieved with a glance.
Kill this usurper for me, the Chairman was saying. The boy is young and resourceful, yes, but he is also tired from long effort and he'd be no match for your Scolipede, anyway. You know the way of it if you lose. Kill him.
It would be done, thought Revan, and he knew this for a truth. I could kill him. But he hadn't liked the light of knowledge in the boy's eyes. And what the deuce could he have meant by being free?
Static lightning crackled from Magnezone's eyes and the spark flashes of Umbreon's dark-matter shields being shorted out by the thunder's charge could be seen through the haze. A flashing cloud rose, filled with wind-blown sparks and the sound of steel ringing.
Metal Burst! thought Bronze, sharing his thoughts with Magnezone. His thoughts were broken by a sudden metallic roaring. A ringing crash shook the cloud apart. A roll of ball lightning bounced away from the center there, crackling as it collided with the arena pit's walls. The smell of burned insulation swept through the stadium. When the bright lights cleared both Magnezone and Umbreon lay unmoving, neither victorious.
"Fetch yourself another plaything, Tercano!" Revan screamed over the noise of a hundred thousand cheering men and women. "The one you had seems to be broken."
Bronze remained silent, knowing he had another minute to send out a Pokemon before he was disqualified. If it could be possible to avoid Revan's mortal attack, then all would be fine. Cobalion would be at the ready. But how the attack would come and from where he did not know.
"I remember you talking with a girl yesterday," said Revan. "My friends said you were doing it in the gardens. The little one from Sinnoh. Is she something special to you? A pet perhaps? Will she deserve my special attention?"
"Logaria!" Bronze cried, sending out Steelix at a full charge.
It moved so fast that Revan almost failed to see that he was in its path. Its body missed him by a tiny fraction. By the Outer Darkness, I've not seen a Steelix so huge, he thought. The fool's caught on, he has. You'd better finish him, Revan, if you don't want to end up in the House Below.
"Scolipede it is, fool!"
Out came a creature like a vermiform truck, slithering with poison dripping from its jaw, tentatively moving its antennae. Then, apparently not liking its chances against a creature nearly a quarter mile long, it turned laboriously round and began circling back to Revan's side from which it came. Bronze saw the last section of its body wobble on the edge of the arena, then finally tip upward with its dagger-shaped tails in the air, dripping with a clear liquid. It struck forward, battening onto Steelix's body with its legs, holding onto the beast while Steelix rushed around the arena like an animated corridor train.
Poison, will it be? thought Bronze. Then I will give him his own moment of fear.
Steelix bellowed and butted its head into the rows of onlooking seats. Ray shields fired up and turned a crackling red with the strain of restraining the impact. Then the snake twisted around and dashed between Revan and Bronze. Steelix's tail flashed out to Revan's body, just slightly enough to be mistaken for an accident, but close enough that Revan had to duck sideways, out and away, his jaw pale with acid pain from where Steelix's polished segment had cut him.
"Treachery!" shouted Revan. "He's poisoned me! I do feel poison in my wound. Burns! Dear gods, it burns!"
Lowering his cloak of silence again, Bronze said, "Only a little scratch to counter the toxins in Scolipede's fangs."
Revan matched Bronze's cold smile, lifted his left hand to his forehead for a mock salute. His eyes glared rage behind the wall of dust that Steelix's path had drawn up. He stepped closer so that Bronze could hear his words alone.
"You see the poison that I wield?" whispered Revan. "Your death, fool. When Scolipede comes around, it'll stop your muscles and your own Pokemon will finish you in its frenzy. There'll be never a trace left to detect!"
Steelix was covered in bites that contained venom, does of poison that were corroding away its multipartite body, overcome with rage, smashing itself against the walls and ray shields to remove the persistent Scolipede. Steelix's mouth was emitting churning clouds of crystalline dust, eyes bulging from their sockets. The Scolipede had latched onto the sensitive, unarmored flesh between its fifth and sixth rock segment and was striking at the body there, Steelix's desert-born instinct preventing it from turning onto its back and crunching the foe underneath it, fearing the irritant of invisible sand rather than the subtle venom that was working its way into mind. The monster twitched and struggled on, fighting against the annoying parasite, but Scolipede held on.
For another time the furious Steelix went toward Bronze. Revan clucked his tongue, and Scolipede picked up the vibrations over the din of the Steelix's freight-train body. Scolipede shifted its venomed tail across the segment it was maiming to face Bronze, leaking poison behind it, gyrating wildly but steady enough to aim its venom with deadly purpose. Bronze had three seconds, two...
Do it, he thought.
Cobalion struck Scolipede rather than Revan. His blade took physical form for a fraction of a fraction, cutting into one of Scolipede's grasping winds, knocking it loose in a chain reaction of instability that dislodged all its legs from Steelix's body. Steelix missed Bronze and headed on another lap, still in pain from its wounds. Scolipede went flying faster than either Bronze or Revan could duck, thrown at a hundred miles an hour.
Immediately ray-shield drones attempted to activate, but too late. Both pointed ends of Scolipede's tail bored into Revan's chest like a drill. Both went flying into the plazcrete arena wall. Revan shrieked with a last noise as his blood and gobbets of flesh spewed everywhere. They collided with the wall, Scolipede's horns impaling Revan straight through.
Revan gasped and slumped against the wall. He raised a hand to his chest and felt blood seeping through his fingers. He put one hand weakly around the shaft of a horn and tried to pull it, but had no strength left to do so. He coughed, and blood pooled in the back of his throat. His body felt numb, and his limbs began to grow cold and lifeless. His vision became blurred, and each breath became shorter and harder. Red foam began to drizzle from his lips.
Scolipede tottered backward and collapsed, while the venomed tails tore free. "Burns," Revan said in a low voice, and then he could say no more. His throat swelled, and his tongue shot out of his mouth. He collapsed, shuddering in his death throes.
When Bronze sent back Steelix, his head racing, he expected to hear screams of terror that had been going on while he had stood frozen and shell-shocked. Despite the evil that Revan had intended, and that Bronze had no visible role in the man's death, one of them was alive and the other was dead. He was guilty enough as all survivors are. There had not even been time for the medivac drones to take Revan away when he realized what had happened.
"Cobalion, what have I done?" he whispered.
Then as the silence was broken by the soft droning of hovercameras flitting about his implacable face, he knew it was time. It was what he had struggled, strived, suffered and sacrificed to achieve: total attention. Bronze looked down the arena for a second or two in silence, feeling his grip on the audience. He saw that he already had them in hand. There would be no sudden hysterics about the death of Revan. Then he began to speak.
.
.
.
So the beginning of the end is finished.
.
"For a month, you have been asking: Who is Bronze Tercano? This is Bronze Tercano speaking. I am a man who loves his life. I am a man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who you have been awaiting, and the man the Association wishes to destroy, and if you wish to know why you are perishing in the face of the Eclipse Alliance, I am the man who will now tell you."
The chief radio engineer was the only one able to move; he ran to a television set and struggled frantically with its dials. But the screen remained unchanged; two spirits were preventing the electric signals from going through, their unseen, angelic hands tampering with the control knobs. Only Bronze's voice filled the airways of the region—of the world, thought the chief engineer—sounding as if he were speaking here, in this room, not to a group, but to one man; it was not the tone of addressing a meeting, but the tone of addressing a mind.
"Turn him off, dammit, turn him off," yelled the engineer, but turned not to find scrambling underlings nervously working to shut Bronze Tercano down, but two strangers, a man and woman standing in the open doorway, holding the control team hostage with their Pokemon.
"You ain't going nowhere," said Ruby.
"Sit down and enjoy," said Platinum.
...
"You have heard that this is an era of crisis, of high gas prices, high inflation, college debt, iron cities filled with smoke. An era of despair. If there is any emotion to describe what I feel when considering the state of Roria, my beloved nation, it is despair. Sloth, decadence, complacency, pettiness, sadness, and apathy also come to mind but I would say that the dominant emotion is just despair. For hundreds of years we have fought amongst ourselves about religious controversies, succession, and the remaining scraps of what once was the glorious Empire of Logaria. Our leaders and community fathers have been made to grovel at the feet of the Association, begging to be given a few feeble privileges and continue our meager existence. We have supplicated at their feet for years as they dismantled our martial vigor, sapped our people's treasuries, destroyed our culture, prostituted the Arcean faith, and spread their materialist heresies throughout our land.
"Now, even all those humiliations are not enough. The Association cannot preserve the rest. Our enemy, Jonathan Rowell Cypres of the Eclipse Alliance, wants our very lives. He has pledged to conquer Roria and convert us into slaves. He wishes to crush the last vestige of Arcean and Rorian culture from the land. Whatever truth they may accidentally spew, and how much they fight, both the enemy of the Association and the Alliance is the mind of the Rorian man. Whatever else they fought about, it was against the Rorians that both these parties have stood united. It is the Rorians that all their schemes and systems were intended to despoil and destroy.
"Our region is in ruin. The legacy of wealth bequeathed to us by our ancestors has been squandered on decadence, corruption, ill-conceived adventures, and bribes to foreign dignitaries. Our economy is moribund. The population of our cities is dwindling as the opportunities for work have vanished; our currency is virtually worthless; the grand public buildings of our ancestors mock us with the glories of time past. The people are moving to the countryside where at least there is hope for survival. They are as rats fleeing the sinking ship.
"With the loss of populace, the tax revenue has dried up. We are barely able to pay the wages of our pathetically small military, only twenty thousand strong. As such, we have only a tiny army and an even smaller navy. For this reason the Alliance has been allowed freedom in Roria to butcher her people with its guns and genetic mutants. There is practically no money for new buildings or to maintain the ones we already have. Our roads have decayed, our buildings have crumbled, our fleets have rotted, and our outposts are abandoned. We have virtually no control or intelligence outside of the borders of our region. Trade agreements of old have been forgotten in the chaos that has taken our lands through the years. Representatives from other regions don't even bother to pay respects to our own diplomats.
"We are terribly alone. Lost in a sea of the Eclipse Alliance and swimming against an irresistible tide. The glory of our ancestors is just a faded memory. If Adunakor or Tar-Elrosi could see us now, they would weep.
"Our enemy is the Alliance, unquestionably the strongest military power in the world. They stride like a malevolent colossus between the regions, and everywhere they are expanding. They are strong in every facet of arms and have a virtually limitless pool of manpower and money to draw from. If they lose one army, they send two more. Lose one general, and three more sprout up in his place. They are like the hydra of old and they are committed to our doom. The Association has been no help. Only the valiant soldiers of Roria here today were willing to take up arms; otherwise we would have no military at the stadium today, leaving us prostrate to the armies of the Alliance.
"Blind for too many months to the threat, the other Association armies are now fighting against the Alliance's rising tide but have nearly given us up for dead. And, perhaps we are. But I swear by the holy name of ARCS that we will not go down without a fight.
"I am Bronze Tercano, a Pokedex Holder.
"I am the son of Robert Tercano, from the noble family Tercano, from Rosecove City in Roria proper. Many, many years ago, the Logarian Empire, the land of our birth, was strong with the power of mighty Atun-Kaah, the city of Caves, or Otoch-Kaah, Tower of the Moon. Ours is a rich culture full of military virtue that gave birth to such mighty men as Berothrim, Arnithrem, Targon, Adunakor, Haurgon, and Silmathrim, men who defeated the evil of Dor Daedeloth at its zenith. The Logarians were the backbone of Adaman's army that conquered the world.
"I am a Logarian of the line of Silmathrim and Elrosi, but through my mother's side, I am also Hisuian. I am the heir of Adaman, Kamado, Cyllene, Rei, and Elwin. More directly, I am the heir of Saint Lian the Apostle and his descendants. Men who shaped the world to their designs. Men who conquered the pagan lands and brought the light of culture, learning, and virtue. Now, we are all that is left of the light that is fighting the darkness that surrounds us.
"But who is our true enemy? What darkness lies are the heart of the Eclipse Alliance? The Alliance, who call their poisonious teachings a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man and Pokemon? They seek to help him, they say, against his pain, and they point at the torture rack to which they've tied him, the rack with two wheels that pull him in opposite directions, the rack of the doctrine that damns his soul and body. They serve the devil.
"And that is the whole of their shabby secret. The secret of all their esoteric philosophies, of all their dialectics and super-senses, of their evasive eyes and snarling words, the secret for which they destroy civilization, language, industries and lives, the secret for which they pierce their own eyes and eardrums, grind out their senses, blank out their minds, the purpose for which they dissolve the absolutes of reason, logic, matter, existence, reality—is to erect upon that plastic fog a single holy absolute: their Wish.
"They want to cheat the axiom of existence and consciousness, they want their consciousness to be an instrument not of perceiving but of creating existence, and existence to be not the object but the subject of their consciousness—they want to be a little, false Arceus they created in their image and likeness, who creates a universe out of a void by means of an arbitrary whim. But reality is not to be cheated. What they achieve is the opposite of their desire. They want an omnipotent power over existence; instead, they lose the power of the intellectual reason. By refusing to know, their leaders condemn themselves to the horror of a perpetual unknown. And so we can win.
"Did you ever wonder what is wrong with the world? You are now seeing the climax of the creed of the Hideous Strength, the Dark Lord. All his gangs of mystics, of spirit or muscle, are fighting one another for power to rule you, snarling that damnation is the solution for all the problems of your spirit and that a whip is the solution for all the problems of your body, they who have agreed with Satan to have no mind. Granting man less dignity than they grant to cattle, ignoring what an animal trainer could tell them: that no animal can be trained by fear, that a tortured elephant will trample its torturer, but will not work for him or carry his burdens. They expect their plans to continue to produce electronic killers, supersonic airplanes, atom-smashing laser guns and interstellar warships, giving their slaves a ration of meat for reward and a lash on his back for incentive.
"Make no mistake about the character of the Alliance. To undercut your salvation has always been their only purpose throughout the ages—and power, the power to rule you by force, has always been their only lust. From their twisted rites, which distort reality into grotesque absurdities, stunting the minds of their victims and keeping them in terror of the Dark Lord, dominating every one of their impulses, to their supernatural doctrines that teach apotheosis, to their seedy little smiling professors which assure you that your brain has no capacity to think, that you have no means of perception and must blindly obey the will of that ancient evil, the Great Djinn—all of it is the same performance for the same and only purpose: to reduce you to the kind of pulp that has surrendered the validity of its consciousness, melting you down for their demonic slavedrivers to consume.
"They are unquestionably evil, and we must defeat them for the sakes of our families and friends, drive the last atomic remnants of their officers and patron spirits from the darkest, deepest corners of creation. But they are only our newest oppressors. The Association and the Alliance are two sides of the same coin, different in certain ways, but impossible to appreciate without looking at both faces. Both have worlds that they wish you to live in against your volition.
"I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished Associaton gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities; but this is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity and God.
"It is for a broader class of laborers than the elites that I speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and our posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!
"The Association has become tyrannical: every one of their officials are bureaucrats, and every one of their bureaucrats a potential dictator. A bureaucrat craves obedience from men, not their consent and respect. He wants them to surrender their consciousness and culture to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims—as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with the Rorians by means of atheism and force—he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of faith and trust. Our marital vigor is the enemy he dreads and, simultaneously, considers precarious: our passion, to him, is a means of deception, he feels that men possess some power more potent than his—and only their causeless belief or their forced obedience to the Association can give him a sense of security, a proof that he has gained control of the mystic endowment he lacked. His lust is to command, not to convince: conviction requires an act of independence and press on the absolute of an objective reality. What he seeks is power over reality and over men's means of perceiving it, their mind, the power to interpose his will between existence and consciousness, as if, by agreeing to fake the reality he orders them to fake, men would, in fact, create it.
"No matter whose welfare he professes to serve, be it the welfare of Roria or of that disembodied gargoyle he describes as 'The People,' no matter what ideal he proclaims in terms of some high, politically liberal dimension—in fact, in reality, on earth, his ideal is death, his craving is to kill, his only satisfaction is to torture.
"Destruction is the only end that the Association's political creed has ever achieved, as it is the only end that, you see them achieving today the same intellectual hurdles committed by the Eclipse Alliance; and if the ravages wrought by their acts have not made them question their doctrines, if they profess to be moved by love, yet are not deterred by piles of human corpses, it is because the truth about their souls is worse than the obscene excuse you have allowed them, the excuse that the end justifies the means and that the horrors they practice are means to nobler ends. The truth is that those horrors are their ends.
"You who are depraved enough to believe that you could adjust yourself to the Association's dictatorship and could please him by obeying his orders—there is no way to please him; when you obey, he will reverse his orders; he seeks obedience for the sake of obedience and destruction for the sake of destruction. You who are craven enough to believe that you can make terms with a mystic by giving in to his extortions—there is no way to buy him off, the bribe he wants is your life, as slowly or as fast as you are willing to give it in—and the monster he seeks to bribe is the hidden blank-out in his mind, which drives him to kill in order not to learn that the death he desires is his own.
"You who've never grasped the nature of evil, you who describe them as 'misguided idealists'—may the God you think I have invented forgive you!—they are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth or freedom that they're after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against humanity, life, Arceanism, and the family.
"For centuries, the Association has existed in Roria by running a protection racket: by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring culture and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners. We, the keepers of the ancient ways, were the unnamed victims of their creed, we who were willing to break their moral code and to bear societal damnation for the sin of hope—we who thought and acted, while they dithered and wished—we descendants of downfallen Logaria who were outcasts for thousands of year, we who were bootleggers of glory when glory was held to be a crime—while they basked in moral glory for their own selfless governance, governance with nightsticks and thousands of mindless technicians who at this moment are desperately working to cut this transmission.
"Now we are chained and commanded to serve by savages who do not grant us even the identification of sinners—by savages who proclaim that we do not exist as a culture and race, then threaten to deprive us of the life we don't possess, if we fail to provide them with the fear they don't deserve. Now we are expected to continue running their railroads and work their machine of industry, we are expected to continue running steel mills and to know the molecular structure of every drop of metal in the cables of their bridges and in the body of the airplanes that support us in mid-air—while the tribes of their grotesque little nobility, the Association and Alliance, fight over the carcass of our region, gibbering in sounds of non-language that there are no principles, no absolutes, no knowledge, no mind, one hardly worse than the other.
"Do you think they are taking you back to dark ages? They are taking you back to darker ages than any our history has known. Their goal is not the era of pre-science, but the era of pre-language. Their purpose is to deprive you of the concept on which man's mind, his life and his culture depend: the concept of an objective reality made by a Supreme Being.
"The Association's conspiracy is a conspiracy without leader or direction, and the random little thugs of the moment who cash in on the agony of one land or another are chance scum riding the torrent from the broken dam of the sewer of centuries, from the reservoir of hatred for reason, for logic, for ability, for achievement, for joy, for God, stored by every whining anti-human who ever preached the superiority of the government over the individual Arcean, Rorian, nationalistic man and his wife and children. A dying government is one that interferes too much, not too little; a dying religion interferes more than it ought in the lives of its adherents, not less. The Association has lost their mandate over us by participating in this meddling conspiracy, a conspiracy that will eviscerate us if we do not abolish it.
"It is a conspiracy of all those who seek, not to live, but to get away with living off the backs of the Rorian people, those who seek to cut just one small corner of reality and are drawn, by feeling, to all the others who are busy cutting other corners—a conspiracy that unites by links of evasion all those who pursue a controlled environment as a value: the professor who, unable to think, takes pleasure in crippling the mind of his Arcean students, the businessman who, to protect his stagnation, takes pleasure in chaining the ability of Rorian competitors, the neurotic politician who, to defend his self-loathing, takes pleasure in breaking the men in our region of self-esteem, the incompetent who takes pleasure in defeating our achievement, the mediocre who takes pleasure in demolishing our ancient greatness, the spiritual eunuch who takes pleasure in the castration of all our pleasure—and all their intellectual munition-makers, all those who preach that the immolation of virtue will transform vices into virtue. Death is the premise at the root of their theories, death is the goal of their actions in practice—and you are the last of their victims.
"And it cannot be done to you without your consent. If you permit it to be done, you deserve it.
"When they disregarded our freedom and attempted to rule man's minds by force, those who submitted had no mind left to surrender; those who had, were men who did not submit. Do you hear me, Tessa Woodhall and Jake Albans, my first friends, my fellow fighters, my fellow outcasts, in whose name and honor I speak? It was the three of us who started what I am now completing. It was you who resolved to follow me even to the death, so I might avenge and resurrect my lost empire, and to release its imprisoned soul. Do you hear me now, Mother and Father, the greatest of the victims of the Alliance I will avenge?
"Neither they nor the rest of us will rest until the road is clear to rebuild this region: until the wreckage of the evil morality of Team Eclipse and the dying Association has been wiped out of our way. A country's political system is based on its code of morality. We will rebuild Roria's system on the godly moral premise which had been its foundation, but which the Association treated as a guilty underground, in their frantic evasion of the conflict between that premise and their mystic morality: the premise that man is made in the image of God, not the means to the ends of others, that man's life, his freedom, his happiness are for his enjoyment by inalienable right. Do you hear me, Cypress?
"Then this country will once more become a sanctuary for a vanishing species: the Arcean man. The political system I will build is contained in a single moral, monarchist premise: that in a democracy most of the people must be wise for society to be virtuous, but in a monarchy, only one man must be. Which is more likely to be true? Do you hear me, Pokedex Holders?
"The last few of my words will be addressed to those heroes who might still be hidden in the world, those who are held prisoner, not by their evasions, but by their virtues and their desperate courage. My brothers and sisters in spirit, check on your virtues and on the nature of the enemies you're fighting. Your destroyers in the Association hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, your love to them: the endurance that carries their burdens—the generosity that responds to their cries of despair—the innocence that is unable to conceive of their evil and gives them the benefit of every doubt, refusing to condemn them without understanding and incapable of understanding such motives as theirs—the love, your love of life, which makes you believe that they are men and that they love it, too. Only the love of Arceus can save you now. But the world of today is the world they wanted; you are the object of their hatred. The conditioners have come to despise the conditioned. Leave them to the death they worship. In the name of your magnificent devotion to Roria and your God, leave them behind with me. Don't exhaust the greatness of your soul on achieving the triumph of the evil of theirs. Do you hear me...my love?
"There is still strength in our lands and our people. I know it. They lack only a ruler and a steady hand to guide them back to glory. For too many years, we have fought each other. No more. We will turn whatever energies we have left to fight against the enemies of the Empire and the Church. The road I have committed to is extremely difficult but not impossible. We must rebuild our army and our economy. We must somehow hold the lands we have and drive back the invaders. We must reclaim our former territories and spread the true faith. If Logaria could rise from a small village scratched out of the dirt by Tar-Elrosi to conquer the world, so too can we.
"There exists freedom and safety unmeasured in the new Empire of the Logarians. It will be a state where the people of this continent will live as freemen, and not be shackled by the bonds of the Association's false right to nobility by the folly of our forefathers. It will be a state where Arceus will be honored. All the wealth of Alola and Crescent Island, which we can will, will be yours; the fields of Brimber, the foothills of the Frostveil Mountains, and the fertile floodplains of the Cunaxa River in Aredia are your god-given possessions; Atun-Kaah and the old cities of the empire should belong to you; you will own the riches of the trade fleets of Rosecove, the technological marvels of Anthien, the treasures of the inner deserts, and the outer ocean. You will be governors, you will be generals, you will be captains. As for me, what will I receive from all my labors? Merely the title of king and a crown.
"The strength of our army is in our infantry. We have been exposed to the ways of war of the South for so long; they have become almost second nature. The days of the calvary-dominated Logarian legion are but an ancient memory. We must use our valor and strength to our fullest advantage. We must strike like a red-hot hammer from on high where the enemy least expects it. We will use the strength of our generals. My father is a good man, a brilliant administrator and a visionary leader. He will lead the Rorian legions alongside me. Any man who commands a force in our armies must lead from the front. Cowards will not be tolerated. Our soldiers must see their leaders share in their hardships and risks. In this way, they will be inspired to fight hard and continue to press regardless of the odds or the mission assigned. I, of course, will set the example. My life is worth nothing compared to the rebirth, and, hopefully, the total restoration of the empire. Still, we cannot be careless. We are too few against the numbers of the Alliance and the economic power of the Association.
"Unfortunately, for all the strengths of our nation's army; our foes are stronger. The Association levies alone outnumber us at least ten to one. They have more and better Pokemon, more and better frigates, more and better assault craft, more and better infantry, and their artillery are something that could spell the end of any heroic charge. The Alliance's armies may not be veterans but they have a diverse range of horrors to throw at us. They have seen many galleries of fighting and are fanatical and deadly. Their morale is high and they expect victory. They will fight hard and not break easily. Finally, they are relentless.
"So, we must outthink them and put them at a disadvantage if we can. Make them move or stay as we wish. Dart around their flanks and make them hesitate. When we have weakened them with bullets and fire, moved them to bad terrain and disrupted their plans, then we will swarm them from all sides and crush them. I will lead any armies that wish to join me.
"Compassion and mercy are not luxuries that we can afford. We must hold the lives of our evil enemy in contempt no less than they. We must burn their genetic monstrosities with holy fire, destroy their unthinking robots into scrap, and slaughter their warriors. No prisoners will be taken. Even the lives of our own soldiers are not something that can concern us too greatly. They must commit themselves to the same path as I or they are of no use to me. We will sacrifice what we must for victory. Discipline and valor are our touchstones. Fear is a useful ally, too. Let them fear us as long as they obey.
"We must bring fire and sword to our enemies. We must cleanse them of their heretical faiths, strip their lands of wealth to pay for the military and the reconstruction of our territories, and utterly destroy their ability to make war ever again on the Rorian people. Those who fight with us will have no better friend. Those who fight against us will have no worse enemy.
"I am Bronze Tercano, who is the king that the gods spoke of, whose herald you heard in the heavens. I return and claim this land for my own! Let the enemies of Logaria beware. We are not the same rabble that they have fought in the past. Warriors of Roria and Arceus, He who gave His life for you today demands yours in return. These are combats worth of you, combats in which it is glorious to conquer and advantageous to die. Illustrious servants, generous defenders of the faith, remember the example of your fathers who conquered the Evil Djinn and whose names are inscribed in Heaven.
"I am amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation or sport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all; to lay down, for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honor and my blood. We have before as battle of great blood and suffering. You may ask what our military policy is. I can say. It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the horrific catalogs of human and devilish crime. That is our policy.
"We shall go our way into battle, and we shall be accompanied by the spirit of millions of our martyrs, our ancestors tortured and burned for their faith, our murdered fathers and butchered mothers, our murdered brothers and strangled children. And in this battle we shall break the enemy and bring salvation to our people, tried in the furnace of persecution, thirsting only for freedom, for righteousness, and for justice. When our forefathers stood against the Enemy in the Great War, they had no such resources as we have now; they held onto the little they even had, and then it was by wisdom rather than by good fortune, by daring rather than by material power, that they drove back the Shadow and made their empire into the glory that it was an what it still may be. Though long struggle and suffering are ahead of us, we must live up to the standard they set: we must resist our enemies in any and every way, and try to leave to those who come after us a Roria that is as great as ever.
"Let them come with the armies of Hell; they will not pass! And when this day of battle is ended, we meet again in Heaven or on the field of victory. I am Bronze Tercano, Emperor and Autocrat of the Logarians. Who stands with me?"