30.
Ingo's Gambit
"That one is Volkner. This one is called Cyllene. Volkner and Cyllene…"
Her name reverberated, like a loose, stale wind stretching into the shape of human speech. Cyllene could feel her pulse racing. Warmth still lingered on her lips where moments before the stubble and scabbing had bitten and latched on tight.
Her knuckles tingled after punching the old coot. So did the nape of her neck. The top of her scalp. Her cheeks. Her chest. He had touched her so many places within those few seconds, though the kiss had been slow and deep, pressing all the way into her mouth and over her tongue until she tasted blood and medicine and gagged.
Darkness surrounded like a thickening mist, unwavering. Ingo's silver eyes never blinked as they surveyed her face and form. This was almost her most vivid vision again, minus the chain that burned and the shadowy claws reaching through her skin to tug at her ribs. Once more, some vast and unintelligible being was expecting to find something, and speaking as if it already had.
"I came for you to interpret my visions, not for you to pick me apart," she forced, stiffening her shoulders within the fourteen fingers' grip. She'd rather feel anything else than watched, though it was probably written all over her face, and both of these warped creatures knew it.
And then, to her surprise, something did start to feel different.
It was a light stinging sensation around the base of her neck, and then a tearing ache that writhed around her collarbone, and a hot, sharp pain that flashed back and forth over the ridge of her spine. Cyllene caught her tongue before she could shriek. One of the oversized hands had released, and now she cupped her own palm around the freed shoulder, knuckles quivering around a firm and swollen bulge of muscle that had not been there seconds before.
"I… it grew," she breathed.
"This one can change her own shape freely," observed Ingo, and took his other hand away to reveal a symmetrical bulge on the other side of her neck, just large enough to press out the the folds of her jacket. The silver disks grew closer until Ingo's face was hovering just above her, beak of a nose just managing to brush her forehead.
"What are you?" hissed the silver disks. "Cyllene. Cyllene. Clearly you were meant to appear before me, but why? How is it that you warp space to change your own shape? The RED CHAIN APPEARS HERE AND NOW! WHY!?"
His voice had grown to a rasping roar. Cyllene glanced over one inflated shoulder. The old coot was still lying there breathless and giggling and begging for death, and her heart plummeted.
"Volkner brought it with him," she said. "From his time. I don't know how. He doesn't even remember how he got here… and now."
And then Eiffel's words echoed accusingly:
Ginter's no gentleman. He's a predator, and he'll make you do something regrettable if you're not careful…
Ginter had… wanted to kiss her?
What else did he want with her?
Why had he carried the Red Chain in his pack? Why did he play ignorant of its powers, claiming the ratty old blue jacket was Hisui's doom? Clearly he would've said something by now, noticing it glowing around her wrist, or hearing tales of what she'd done to Laventon and adamaN. Not just lying there. Not allowing her to keep using it if he knew how dangerous it was!
The darkness throbbed. Or maybe Cyllene's mind was beginning to strain under hunger and magic and adrenaline. A tangible pressure. Something enraged. She wanted to rip that Red Chain off her wrist and leave it beneath Mount Coronet to crumble to nothing. Whisk Ginter back to Jubilife and stay with him until he breathed his last for real. Maybe make up with Zisu, if she wasn't too mortified. Drink a beer and wash her hair and go the accursed to sleep!
And when I die in my sleep, they'll… they won't even care. They'll toss my carcass in the sea with Ginter's, not even knowing he did beguile me after all, and I learned nothing…
NO! I SHALL NEVER RELINQUISH THIS POWER!
"I carry a burden," she whispered to Ingo, shaking off the fantasy gone wrong. "What that burden is, I don't know, but it has something to do with this Red Chain. In all of my visions, I've heard a deep voice telling me I'm worthy of wielding the Red Chain against whatever's up there in the sky trying to kill us all."
The silver disks blinked. Ingo gave a slimy hum in his throat, and the cavern itself seemed to shudder.
"When you heard this voice, did you see… a golden ring?"
Furiously she nodded. "Yes! A golden ring that spins! The first time I saw it, it was when Galaxy Hall burned and I was trapped in the blaze! It's been watching me this whole time!"
"So it must be," Ingo concluded. "What you hold is the real Red Chain."
She narrowed her eyes. "Yes, the 'real' Red Chain. Do you know about it?"
"Little," Ingo admitted, and collected all of his wandering limbs until he was once again the tall and crooked form of a man again beside her. A stray beam of red light had fallen through a crack in the ceiling, and it stained his nape of his neck beneath feathery white hair.
"The Red Chain was used in the universe's creation, to bind and direct the powers of timE and spacE. I was there at the very beginning to witness this, though billions of years are rather lost on my crude form of memory. Much of what I do know comes from the past ten years and my life with the pearL claN. To them, the universe was created by Almighty Sinnoh, who is naught but an embodiment of spacE. Time is an irrelevant byproduct."
Cyllene drew back her sleeve and let the chain dangle off her wrist like a rusted, sticky worm that oozed brownish blood from its clasps. She gave him her best blue moon glare at such a ridiculous claim, but he seemed quite serious, so she grilled him further:
"What about the Diamond Clan and their Sinnoh? Could there be two Almighty Sinnohs who created things together? I hold power over time as well."
The question seemed profound, and would make too much sense. It was always two voices circling in Cyllene's head, who seemed to oppose one another. Each accusing the other of burdening her with the Red Chain.
And only one of them has spoken to me directly. The one with the deep, kind voice. But… it said the one hunting me was "He," and both of them sound so similar… Shouldn't one of them be female, if both Clans are right?
She shook her head, more confused and annoyed than before, and Ingo began pacing and muttering to himself.
"Cyllene, in my cavern, within the time of the red sky, possesses the Red Chain because she is inhuman and lacks eyebrows. She rightfully wields its power to direct the universe. But to bind? Would the Red Chain bind again? As it did at the Beginning?"
"I HAD EYEBROWS ONCE!"
The Red Chain snapped forward, thrown by Cyllene's own wrist. It lashed out like a glittering snake, sizing itself just right to loop around Ingo's waist and immobilize him. But Ingo dodged it entirely, leaping twenty feet up in the air, then diving down and landing far behind her. Only Luxio's crackling snarl told Cyllene the worst before it happened.
The Foundling of Ice had seized Ginter by the greasy gray scruff of his head. Before the old man could even scream, he had vanished in a silver blur. Luxio, too, disappeared shortly after. And then in a silent flash Ingo returned for Cyllene. His limbs melted into shadows as he lunged for her, and his pupils shrank to pinpricks of darkness within white burning stars.
"You will not touch ME—!"
There was no time to even throw a punch. With incredible speed Cyllene was thrown over his shoulder, and then gravity seemed to fail. Cold dug into her sides and pierced her lungs. Damp poured over her face. She moaned as she felt her shoulders shrink back to their previous size, muscle nonetheless bruised and aching. Her heart could've given out realizing the potential of that pain.
I can… transform my own body…!?
She was out of the cave and into the terrible stagnant red stain spilling across the sky. It was like no time had passed at all. Not even the sun and moon had changed their positions. Still staring each other down from opposite rims of the world. Full and blinding.
"This is Moonview Arena, former Noble Seat of the mighty Lord Electrode," Ingo's voice boomed from… somewhere. She imagined he was still in the vicinity, but still moving too fast to see.
"Show me the Red Chain's true power," he told Cyllene, "and perhaps it will jog my memory a bit more."
Rocky walls rose up a hundred feet almost in a perfect circle around a space a hundred yards wide. Cyllene was sitting at the very center of it, on a cracked, dirty plate of what may once have been a stone temple floor. Similar pillars of stone stood leaning and crumbling around her, with a single enormous oak tree taking up residence in one lonely corner.
She stared up at it, taking in gnarled limbs and leaves that reached higher than any in Hisui. Nowhere had she ever seen a tree this tall or wide. It was one treasure the Diamond Clan must have protected during the old war. Still towering now, but lacking any companions its age, especially at this altitude.
"I was born without spirit, of course," Ingo continued. "I won't care what becomes of this world. I feel neither triumph nor loss. But for whatever I truly am, the pearL claN have repurposed me as a Warden. To The Kkai I show allegiance. For her I shall fight in the war these frenzies restarted."
There came a beat of silence, save for the crackling of Voltorb gawking at her from the tree, and the high mountain wind still glittering with faint flakes of snow.
"Then the Clans are at war again," Cyllene understood.
Manifesting above her, Ingo tried to emulate a smirk. His fangs fit too perfectly together, like knitted bone, as he seethed:
"tsubakI the pretender is dead. Your Commander killed him after all. And I believe you remember what your own powers did to adamaN. He can't lead his clan as a Pokémon."
Cyllene was speechless. She whipped her head around, like she'd done so many times before, searching for that blue-and-yellow cap. For Ginter the sane one, insane as he was to kiss her without reason. (And didn't that teach her anything, Eiffel would say! And she'd say nothing! Because she was…)
"You knew I was coming," Cyllene growled, her eyes and her fingertips sparkling red. "iridA wanted peace! That's why she sent adamaN and I to see you together!"
"The same adamaN who repeatedly threatened The Kkai's life time and time again? I have read every letter he sent her. He wanted to become Hisui's immortal sovereign. Ask any of the blue-tunics to tell you the tale of sazariN the foolish, and see how important it is for the diamonD claN to have violence."
Ingo played a familiar tremolo on his flute, and in seconds Cyllene could feel the heat radiating from all the way at the top of the rocky wall. The Red Chain bit at her wrist like fire, and suddenly it was wet again, dripping as golden light stained her surroundings a putrid smokey orange.
She turned around and shielded her eyes. All the way up, between the ledge and the sky, stood Lady Sneasler. The lanky, clawed beast was still bathed in all the light of a killer frenzy, and hissing like hot coals in water when her slitted eyes settled on the center of the arena.
"My Lady will not fight you willingly," said Ingo, drawing himself with stretched-out limbs to the top of the nearest pillar and perching with that fake smile still plastered in place. "She desires only the blood of sleepwalkers, which I have divined you are not. So I found this diamonD claN girl wandering the Highlands by herself. What either of you does to her is of little consequence. Maim her. Mangle and morph her. I am not made to flinch if she dies. I only desire that Sneasler is given a proper rival, and learns what happens to infidels. The choice is yours, One Called Cyllene. I cannot help you if you don't show me more."
Cyllene felt all her muscles seize. "I remain impartial—"
"YELLOW DOES NOT GO WITH RED! DIDN'T I ALREADY TELL YOU THAT!? IT'S GOING TO MESS UP THE ENTIRE TABLEAU AND EVERYONE ELSE HAS ALREADY CHANGED TO BURNT ORANGE! TAWNY OR UMBER IF THAT'S ALL YOU CAN FIND!"
There was no mistaking that grating voice. Cyllene swiveled and only noticed the seven-fingered hand for a second before it plopped Clover of the Miss Fortunes on another cracked piece of ancient flooring. The black-haired bandit looked tense, yet her eyes were glazed, mouth gaping. Her fingers wiggled loosely and awkwardly at her sides, lacking their deadly dagger. She stumbled toward the cliff where Sneasler stood, taunting it with her kicking gait. Almost beckoning.
Sneasler stretched a genuine grin, then pounced.
and the usual people...
~N~
I'M BACK! I WAS KNITTING DRAYTON'S JACKET FROM THE INDIGO DISK DLC! IT'S FOR SALE ON MY ETSY STORE NOODZKNITTING!
This technically serves as the second half of the previous chapter, since I wanted to separate Ginter and Cyllene's POV in the leadup to Ingo's betrayal. (Ingo is too sympathetic in fanon. Would you trust him? I wouldn't.) Next time we get the Sneasler battle. I had some help with ideas in the Pokémon Fanfiction Discord and think it'll be fun to write. ^^
Also it was pointed out to me that the illustration on AO3 appears to depict Ginter as grabbing her boob, and so I apologize to those readers. I have now included that detail in the narrative, so you're welcome. 💀
All my love to anyone who's been following my fanfiction long enough to remember the other character with "feathery white hair." ❤️
Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . net and by scrivenernoodz on AO3 February 5th, 2024. Please don't repost. Please do review!
