13.

Ʌ Rumor of KleɅVor


"You say this means war," said Kamado.

"War," affirmed the spindly man beside him, his gaze growing fierce. "Bloodshed. Strife. Cataclysm. Almighty Sinnoh's darkest hours. Darkest days."

The black mustache twitched.

"But you have never fought in a war, have you? Nor can you fully even grasp what the word means, despite your flowery synonyms."

He looked the young Diamond Clan member up and down. He was lanky and delicate — pearly skin stretched over spindly fingers and a diamond face. Long, feathery eyelashes, a thin, pert nose and lips, long, wavy curtains of periwinkle hair he kept down and flowing over the chest of his deep blue tunic…

Warden tsubakI, he had called himself. An old word for camellia, of all things, and it suited the young man well.

"My ancestors fought the pearL claN, sir," tsubakI spoke slowly and shrilly, discomfited by the Commander's insistence on direct speech. "My great-grandfather was a Sekki, and his brother, adamaN's great-grandfather, became Sekki after his death. Both of them killed pearL claN Wardens. One of them killed The Kkai. The pearL claN leader. The woman of power, in a red nacre tiara. Slowly and with care, with a dull stone, as Almighty Sinnoh expects."

Kamado scoffed. He wanted to throw the boy — see how far he could fling the slight body.

"You don't have the guts to kill," he growled. "Your ancestors have sinned, you think, yet you benefit from the peacetime they created. Indeed, everything has all evened out. Prejudice is no more, hatred but a fairytale and fear an illusion. You despise talk of war."

tsubakI shook his head, utterly offended.

"We have always lived in the vast, expansive shadow of the Kkai. Her false god. Her impulses. Her lust for destruction."

"So your elders say. They saw real violence for themselves. You listen to them because you respect them. But what do you make of their threats?"

The man — boy — flailed his arms, gesturing at the waste all around them. Long, soft prairie grasses and vivid purple wildflowers sagging in the sun where towering trees once stood. All gone brittle and breaking in the heat.

"Have you ever seen Hisui differently than this?" asked the Commander.

tsubakI shook his head. He was shaking now, gripping the handle of the dagger hung on his belt. Their walk had taken them closer and closer to the heart of the matter — across a little tributary bridge and up a steep set of switchbacks leading to the lookout point known as Deertrack Heights.

A different question, then. Kamado raised a Poké Ball, squinting at the summit, where people in blue tunics and hoods were all marching, slowly and somberly.

"Lord Wyrdeer sleeps during the day, like all of the frenzied Nobles," tsubakI said. "He still doesn't know his Warden's mortal time has expired."

"But you're sure Lord Kleavor was responsible?"

"Only Lord Kleavor of the pearL claN could inflict such wounds. Injuries. Painful abrasions. His axes are made of black augurite. They leave a strange rash, or a mark, on the skin when they cut, or slice, or part it with sharpness, letting blood spurt out from the gashes."

The boy stopped, then, those delicate lips twitching in dismay at his own imagery. He withdrew the dagger. Skuntank, his brute of a partner, growled behind him and raised its bristly tail.

"War," he whispered. "Almighty Sinnoh wants us to begin our ancestors' war anew. He has blessed the Nobles with His lightning, and raised the sleeping to be their prey. Like days of old, our Lords and Ladies will begin the bloodshed, with all of us to follow. To think, I will become a legend... a week-song. If I kill a Warden, a year-song."

Kamado shook his head. "Your Noble Pokémon are hunting the sleepwalkers."

tsubakI grunted in reply. "In their frenzy, their blind rage, they only hunt sleepwalkers. They ignore anyone truly sleeping or truly awake. The Kkone was asleep when she died. She could not defend or protect herself. The sleepwalkers in our settlement in the Mirelands couldn't either. I tried to fight the pearL claN lord. I tried to battle him. I attempted to attack him. But like my own Lord Electrode, Sinnoh has granted him unusual strength… Might… Vigor… And…"

His synonym listing fell silent at the summit. Dozens had yet to arrive, but the funeral had already begun. Elders were weaving and tying a meticulous net of dead wild grasses around the young woman's mangled body, uttering a prayer that had begun before sunrise and would last a week, while they had the energy to recite it.

No one was crying. That wasn't permitted. Grief, the Diamonds believed, was something that took months to set in. It was created from an emptiness in time — the absence of a loved one, felt on cold winter nights with more firelight flickering upon snow, or sticky summer mornings with less sweat in the sheets. No one would mourn The Kkone until the proper time of ritual, when stories of her time on earth would be shared, and her mummy would be set adrift in the bay of the Coastlands, to sink and become part of the bedrock forever.

"She was my and adamaN's cousin, and also our sister," tsubakI said gravely, placing a spindly hand on Kamado's arm. "adamaN will seek revenge, when he learns what happened. He will select or choose a stone, a rock, a piece of hardened earth, and try to kill The Kkai, leader of the pearL claN, for what her Lord has done."

"He is not permitted to kill while he is in my village," Kamado snarled. "And if this war he starts threatens any of my people, I will make sure it ends swiftly, and with impartiality."

A man in an angled, red-eyed mask began to play the flute. First tremolos, then eerie tones as long as he could diffuse his breath. The Diamond Clan were disrobing now. Nervously, tsubakI undid his belt and pulled off his tunic like the rest, then lay prostrate, with his head pointing in the direction of his sister's corpse.

A copper stain was soaking through the grasses. Soundlessly, an elder woman pressed her fingertips over the thin, pale lids, sealing a pair of eyes the color of the sky, and then took a needle and began to sew them shut.

Kamado watched silently, a heat growing strong in his chest. He had met the girl a year before, when she visited the village. maI, women called her. Kind, yet strong, they said. She could wrestle boys and win. She had a laugh like a rusted hinge. She liked the smell of campfires and eating extra dumplings and spoke loud and long about anything and everything. Munchlax was her partner.

And now she was dead, the Commander thought. Murdered in her sleep by a beast of poison axes.

"We will let ourselves burn in the sun now," tsubakI said shakily. "We will roast under the heat of day. Feel the burden of time on our souls. Please, fetch adamaN."

"Get up," Kamado commanded, wrenching the boy up by the shoulders and hastening him back down the path they had come.

"Kamado, I must burn."

"There's no time to get a sunburn at your cousin's funeral!" Kamado hissed. "We're going back to Jubilife. You will tell me everything you know about Kleavor and these other Noble Pokémon. Including how they might be destroyed."


~N~

Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net July 23, 2023. Please don't repost. Please do review!