39.
Hisui's Doom
Gengar
arezU was walking around the Crimson Mirelands trying to find her husband adamaN.
arezU walked to the Solaceon Ruins.
"I hope I can find adamaN", said arezU.
A Gengar arrived.
Gengar was watching arezU play with her scissors.
It was the end of the world in Hisui.
arezU was adamaN's wife, he turned into a Gengar.
arezU kept walking around the Crimson Mirelands, the Croagunk had all died.
iridA was very sick.
arezU walked to the Solaceon Ruins and saw Gengar.
"I hope I can find adamaN", said arezU.
arezU kept walking around the Crimson Mirelands, the Croagunk had all died.
"I love playing with scissors", said arezU.
arezU kept walking around the Crimson Mirelands, the Croagunk had all died.
Gengar wanted to play with arezU.
Gengar stuck out his tongue at arezU.
Cyllene turned Professor Laventon and adamaN into Pokémon and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Cyllene turned Ginter into a Pokémon and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
arezU continued walking around, the Croagunk and Shellos had all died.
"The Croagunk all died and that's very important and there's nothing anyone can do about it", said arezU.
It was the end of the world in Hisui.
Abra
It was made with yeast and bits of pungent mushroom. Unsuitable for any polite repast and bound to cause indigestion rather quickly.
Yet Abra sipped the watery remedy handed to him in a small stone bowl. It was cool enough when his cochlear fluid still oscillated rapidly. The gravity constant — magnetic fields — rates of acceleration — these things weren't supposed to suddenly fluctuate like reality itself were breaking down. And what a concept — reality. Conscious perception of the immediate physical environment? Is that what so enervated his mistress Cyllene?
They had come to rest within a grotto in the Mirelands — a rocky little crack in the former bog that was dim and dank enough to allow for the flourishing of vegetation — in pots and on the walls. The old Pearl Clan woman prepared all manner of remedies here in her mortars and cauldrons — for Pokémon only. And the wild Pokémon of these parts were aware of her skills. At present, a Hippopotas lay in the corner recovering from the old woman pulling out a rotten tooth. An Eevee who'd suffered burns slept with a goopy salve on its paws.
The Leafeon was particularly disturbed. It had suffered sediment-bloat — a condition known to Grass-types wherein the nourishing earth that encased its organs had swollen to compensate for a lack of moisture. Breathing was difficult. All calabA could do was dip its paws in bowls of clean water and make it sip tea.
As previously mentioned, Cyllene sat enervated and anxious. She'd drunk naught a drip of her antacid. Abra sat beside her, sipping as politely as possible.
"A fire started," calabA announced, popping her head out into the perpetual vermilion gloaming, then drawing it back down, to where green shadows sharpened her wizened countenance.
"Almighty Sinnoh begins Her plan to aid us. Sazaria will burn down, and with it the Fire Clock."
It was more postulation than any worthwhile news. The kind of thing Cyllene would shut out as nonsense — and smart of her for doing so — putting down her bowl and burying her head between her knees. Her hair and garb were soaked in perspiration. She fingered the bloody bracelet hanging off her left wrist.
calabA then came near. Abra reached out three claws in warning, but the old woman merely regarded him with a queer look of pity.
"A wound of darkness. You seek a stable mind to mollify your worn spirit," she inferred of him.
Abra swished his tail. It was nothing like that. Psychic-type Pokémon didn't deal in abstractions like "spirit," much as humans liked to think. True, he was asleep, and in sleep his nervous system effervesced, and he wandered all over the globe, from Galar's turbid moors right down to the elastic lithosphere. It wasn't that he "imagined where he wanted to go" when he teleported. Part of him already was there, and he simply shook his wrists and applied a frank principle of acceleration to bring himself all back together.
Those principles were broken now, as if the physical forces of nature had suddenly flown into tempers and quit. Abra's ears pulled back, and he sneezed.
Submerging himself deeper into sleep, he could sense a Pokémon of extraordinary size and power hiding within these murky chambers. Its temperature was startling, and the humans — (they were humans, for they spoke in reasonably rational language,) — who were trying to contain it argued hurriedly about whether to abscond from the island of Hisui.
"Rise, oh blessèd one," calabA was commanding of Cyllene. "I recognize what You've done. The Sekki will die."
"Just stop it!" Cyllene riposted, to her credit for the fourth or fifth time. "I know what it looks like out there. I'm really just not in the mood!"
Her eyes had turned bright red, and the bracelet coiled tightly around her arm. Abra's body lurched to one side as the same distortions exacerbated in this subpar subterranean refuge.
"I don't care about your war with the Diamond Clan. I think fighting a bloody war over poetry and wanting to kill an innocent teenage boy is stupid, and if I could lay waste to all of Hisui right now, I just might figure out how to do it out of spite. So don't test me."
"Hardening sound, hardening sound," the Cascoon burbled stupidly from inside the pack at Cyllene's feet.
calabA's countenance darkened dramatically. She kneeled down and tipped Cyllene's chin up with her own wizened digits to survey the transformation of her irises. Cyllene's fingertips twitched now — the air about them thickening into a shimmer.
"I will test you, girl. Because you have just proven the diamonD claN's god is as real as the Almighty, and now we must destroy him."
"What, you can't just get along with the Diamond Clan? You really haven't met adamaN, have you? Maybe he called me a 'female infidel' too many times, but he's as afraid of what's in that hole up there as you are. How do we know the god of Time is the evil one and not the god of Space?"
"Your transformations!" the old woman responded simply.
Cyllene scoffed at the limits of the Pearl Clan's tongue. She pointed one tense finger at the Leafeon. Its turgid stomach pulsed once, twice, and then quickly deflated into a svelte, healthy shape. Its ears and tail grew crisp and green again, and it squeaked in curious confusion at its surroundings.
"There. I reversed time and removed a grave illness. Tell me how that's evil."
Abra cringed. He saw the quirk in Cyllene's lip — the quick glance down at the pack with the Cascoon inside.
"You must erase The Sekki," calabA suggested.
And Cyllene argued back: "I'll erase you if you don't leave me alone."
calabA's eyes had turned glassy.
"Oh, my Almighty!" she cried, now prostrating herself.
"Good. Show me the respect I deserve. If you make me turn into a Wurmple again, then I'll crawl off somewhere you'll never find me and d—"
The word came out truncated. Cyllene was trying to control her thoughts and see the fault in her own warped desires. Replace that insecurity with a violent new strength. Even in his Poké Ball, Abra had witnessed every criticism of his mistress' demeanor, from that doughy Eiffel to the twitterpated Ginter.
(Abra happened to enjoy Cyllene's snark. He wouldn't remain if he didn't. His kind were flighty and fickle that way.)
He reached up and placed those same three claws on her shoulder. She was unresponsive. Lost in a storm of expectations and reality. A tiny, slimy whimper brewed in her throat as her hands began to shake and swell in size.
The Leafeon took interest. As carefully as it could, it lifted its paws from the hydroponic saucers and limped toward Cyllene. It licked the stretched skin, tail wagging.
Cyllene stared at it for a long moment, and the shapeshifting slowed. "You're… adamaN's Leafeon. How did you get here?"
It was, perhaps, rhetorical. Obviously a space-time distortion had delivered it to the Mirelands, and it was only a question then of sheer probability. One could call it nonsense. Just like whatever was happening to his mistress. A clever snare, that Red Chain. Abra would snatch it fast and deposit it deep in the oceans of Unova, but then Cyllene would be inconsolable.
She enjoyed the power; she wanted to keep it.
"The Sekki's small pet," calabA said, in that odd way of conforming to a set number of syllables. Her masseter popped. She lifted herself from the ground and trundled off near the grotto's opening, returning shortly after with her largest rusty pair of gardening shears. With one hand, she seized Leafeon's deciduous tail, and with the other she prepared to snip it right off at the base.
"What are you doing?" Cyllene asked, going rigid.
SNIP.
The shears cut empty air. Abra grumbled to himself as a torrid wind rustled his velveteen fur. He had teleported to somewhere in the burning bog, and Leafeon dangled from where Abra's claws clenched around his tail, still attached.
Flakes of ash and dust irritated his sinuses. He sneezed while the verdant creature flailed and squealed out some base poetry beneath him.
That was another thing humans didn't understand, and perhaps what further necessitated Eiffel Laventon's Poké Dex: Pokémon did not understand each other inherently. Abra didn't speak the same language as Leafeon, just as he couldn't understand a Snorlax, who "spoke" more in borborygmi than phonetics, and comparing the cognitive capacity of the Psychic-type Abra to, say, a Gengar composed entirely of poisonous gasses, was not only inaccurate, but rude.
"A Gengar arrived," the Gengar half-submerged in the shadow of a burning tree bubbled. "All the Croagunk had died, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. arezU was adamaN's wife. 'I hope I can find adamaN', said arezU. arezU kept walking around the Crimson Mirelands. It was the end of the world in Hisui."
Abra lowered Leafeon safely to the ground, where it cautiously approached the grinning Gengar. Gengar's ears pulled back. His limber tongue shot out from the orifice and nearly slapped the photosynthesizing mammal before Abra teleported between them, cochlear fluid once again roiling and tinnitus startling his neurons.
"Cyllene turned adamaN into a Gengar, and there was nothing anyone could do about it," Gengar laughed.
"And you'll prolong that fantasy, won't you?" Abra replied. "An incorporeal Pokémon was the perfect shape to contort your flesh into, adamaN of the Diamond Clan. This is the most inoffensive transformation my mistress could manage, besides, perhaps, the corpse of a Shellos. I cannot praise Cyllene enough. The question becomes, are you yet intelligent enough to turn this to your advantage?"
Inconceivable. Gengar went right on repeating his favorite phrases, and when arezU, the object of his obsession, stumbled into this corner of the bog to escape the smoke, he went right on terrorizing her.
arezU
She was exhausted.
There was no use anymore for crying. She didn't want to know where adamaN was, nor if he intended to return to Sazaria. She just hoped her husband was safe. If she never saw him again, she hoped it was because he'd fled the island with the Galaxy Team. Surely none of the settlers saw a future in Hisui. arezU wasn't sure she had a future here, when the gentle iscaN screamed in pain and fear.
Back in the spring things were normal. Now we're all on the path to going insane like suzU, or falling asleep and never waking up again.
arezU shuddered and pressed a hand against her scabbing collarbone. She wondered about Rampardos. Was it on high enough ground to survive when the flames were melting through the sheen of Shellos skins? Could she find a path back to it with calabA's remedy, or were they trapped at opposite ends of the burning waste?
ad…amaN, she coughed, the moisture in her breath instantly evaporating. The Solaceon Ruins were near, with nothing even to declare them "ruins." Only a ten-foot-high diamond-tipped wooden pike stuck in the ground — a memorial to the Pearl Clan members lost in the last war, and a reminder of the quick deaths the Diamond Clan wouldn't give them.
Through the haze, she couldn't see anything. arezU coughed again right before a pair of pudgy purple arms squeezed around her stomach and lifted her high up in the air.
"AAGH! NO, GO AWAY, GENGAR!"
"Gen-garrr!" the creature laughed, squeezing her even tighter. It flew up, up, over the clouds of smoke. It had been following her ever since it caught her outside Sazaria, and it didn't understand the concept of urgency.
Then all at once, Gengar vanished into thin air, and she dropped. arezU screamed. The diamond-tipped pike was right beneath her, its sharp tip gleaming in the ever-present evening. Would it pierce her back? Her stomach? She flailed as she plunged, crying out the name that tasted like dry, bitter ash.
"ADAMANNNNN!"
"Gen-GAR!" the bloated ghost answered, coalescing and catching her a split second before the pike ran her through. Gently, it descended and set her gently on the ground, patting her down with that manic grin.
arezU crossed her arms, her face sticky once again. "Was that a prank!?" she spat. "What is a creature of darkness like you even doing out during the day!? You're not helping!"
The Gengar blinked. It cocked what it had for a head, frowning, then looked down worriedly at its misty claws and muttered quickly to itself.
"Gengar? Geng… Gen-garrre… GarrrezU?"
arezU choked. Her lungs were full of smoke now; there was no escaping it when iscaN's Buizel had breathed in too much and had to abandon her. The fire would reach the Coastlands by nightfall — if nightfall still existed.
Her eyelids felt heavy. Already she could see the world of her sleepwalking dreams — it was a deep, dark crack in the earth, where gems glittered if she squinted. Her hands felt larger. Her whole body denser and stronger. Her vision grew blurry…
"GENGAR!"
arezU was shocked awake by Gengar's icy arm reaching right through her stomach, claws digging in the dust behind where she sat. Its ears were bent. It looked… sad? Fearful?
"Leave me alone," she whimpered. "When I sleepwalk, I usually wake up in caves, where I'm safe from the Nobles. I dream I'm someone who likes spelunking. Maybe this time I'll get lucky."
"Gen-garrrezU…"
She heard it clearly. It was trying to say her name. Gengar withdrew its arm, then raised one pointed claw and pointed to a place above its left eye. It made a cutting motion, the claw only managing to disturb the purple smoke.
Then it leaned it close, its poison smelling strangely sweet — like lilacs, or…
Camellias and Shellos slime…
Awkwardly, Gengar floated upwards and placed a slobbery kiss on arezU's forehead.
"Oh," she breathed, scared stiff. Its tongue was freezing. Its lips — did it have lips?
"Almighty Sinnoh has placed a curse upon adamaN's body," iscaN had warned. "He must reveal himself and accept his ultimate fate. The spirits speak the name of sazariN."
arezU trembled, reaching out to take the Gengar's pudgy hand. Claws gripped her fingers. The smoke became solid.
But sazariN was only a myth! A fable and a warning about wasting one's life. The story said Sinnoh punished adamaN's ancestor for his idleness. No matter how great he made himself, he would still eventually fade from history, irrelevant in the grand design of the universe. Likewise, all of sazariN's descendants were cursed to live and die the same way. Every person on earth was born to die, and only Sinnoh — Time Himself — was eternal.
No Sekki had ever kept the title well into adulthood. It was too risky, when Hisui grew a bleaker place with every generation. There were some, like tsubakI, who believed immortality and relevance really could be achieved. adamaN's faith kept the Diamond Clan together, even if he'd never seen proof of the Almighty. But it was also easy to cut your son's eyebrow. Give someone else a murky fate and the responsibility of making oneself into a patriarch…
If that were even possible…
"Gar-rezU."
arezU stared.
"My loquacious one?"
No Gengar was ever ashamed of being a plump purple prankster, but this one immediately burst into tears and melted into a bubbling puddle of shadow. This Gengar was…
"Oh, adamaN… Sekki… my loquacious one… one I refer to… iscaN said sazariN's fate is about to become yours. You've seen Almighty Sinnoh, haven't you!?"
In the distance, a jack pine exploded in a shower of sparks. Flames arched higher than the mythical Hisuian forests arezU had heard of in her youth, racing across the plains with daunting speed. The hole in the sky above the mountain pulsed and twisted and darkened to the hot, turbulent color of blood. arezU coughed again. She looked down at her hands. Dainty. Manicured. Feminine. Gloved. Rugged. Dirty. Masculine.
"We can go underground," she whispered, mind going hazy and muscles reanimating. "No one'll ever… fuck with us… in the mines…"
Suddenly, she was underground. Cold only from the slick ancient sediment, and not from Gengar struggling to lick her awake.
Cyllene
SNIP.
calabA's shears bit empty air. The old Pearl Clan Warden looked surprised for a moment, before turning her oddly indifferent stare upon Cyllene.
"Should I give up on ninety years of a broken heart, girl? Should I forget what The Sekki did to my Clan? Is that what you want, you ignorant outsider? Peace? Does our centuries-old conflict annoy you to the point where think you know better than us?
"I told you why I came here to the Mirelands with more provisions than usual. Half of Melomak is beneath us in these caves, ready to march on Sazaria and raze it to the ground. That was our plan as soon as that storm appeared. It was why I scolded iridA about wanting to visit your village. So that she'd insist upon it.
"She was always unfit to be The Kkai. Too kind. Too innocent. Too easily told that if she ate one pickled Mantine egg too many then Sinnoh would abandon our people. If The Sekki hasn't killed her yet, he'll soon have every reason to grow a spine."
She hobbled to the slippery wall. Stooping down, she picked up a crossbow hidden behind two potted ferns.
"And then I'll hunt him down and shoot him through the back with my poisons."
Cyllene's heart dropped. The tingling in her fingertips suddenly sharpened until hot sparks shot out and singed holes in her leggings. She tried sitting on her hands, but they'd swollen enough to feel hard and bony beneath her.
I'm human. I'm Cyllene.
She tried to picture Cyllene, but couldn't. She hadn't seen her reflection since finding the Red Chain, and that seemed like eons ago, when the golden ring in her vision was bright enough to obscure whatever she would've looked like then.
No eyebrows. Plain. Sweaty. Just ugly.
Ugly. Like Hisui. Like all the people living there, whether clansmen or outsiders.
Cyllene Selenelion was a shy, pretty, bookish girl picking at trees in Fall Harbor, Hoenn and scoffing at the idea of owning a sword. No. She was a stoic, hard-hearted Captain of the Galaxy Expedition Team who berated old men and children for slighting her. No. She was a lonely, bitter young woman who'd been duped, who loved no one and could be loved by no one, and that was all her fault. She was a bully. A witch. A prophet. A proxy. She was a queller of frenzies. The savior of Hisui. She had powers like Almighty Sinnoh, or The Original One, or whoever decided she should turn into a creepy little Wurmple and get wrenched back into human form again.
"The next time my heart fails, I'll be gone, and then it'll be up to you whether you reverse time and watch me die again."
She held Volkner's life in her hands, and if she finally admitted it to herself, she'd rather lose him than keep him.
"The fire is just another sign," calabA continued. "As well as you, the one who brought us all here, whether you think you did or not."
"I'm not helping you destroy the Diamond Clan," Cyllene forced.
"But you're here. In this place. In this time. You have no more excuses, child. Almighty Sinnoh is watching us from just within that storm. Use your powers for their purpose, or I'll test how human you really are."
The walls of the grotto trembled. An anguished roar echoed somewhere far beneath where she sat, and Cyllene scrambled to her feet, slipping the pack on over her shoulders.
ZING! An arrow whizzed right by her ear. ZING! Another nearly pierced her thigh. The veins in her hands gleamed like flowing lava. She flicked her left wrist, and the Red Chain broke free, spinning like a halo around her waist.
calabA was notching another poison arrow. "Good girl. You'd understand if you had faith like mine. Ninety-nine years are a long enough wait to meet the Almighty."
Frustrated, Cyllene snapped her fingers. The plants withered and crinkled, instantly aged into dust. The cave walls crumbled around her until red sunlight blazed and a horrid heat poured down the back of her neck. Hot ash flew up her nose and down her throat. She clenched her fists. The tingling exploded into a writhing, pleasurable itch deep in her bones.
"I sɅid… DON'T TEST ME!" she roared, glaring daggers into the old woman. Space slipped at her command, and she watched calabA scream and throb and shrink until the crossbow clattered before a curled-up Wurmple.
"Ʌnd you'll stɅy like thɅt."
The feeling reached her heart, and she gasped, collapsing to her knees. The Red Chain pulsed as it floated like a halo around her body. It was a pleasure like nothing she'd felt before. She was radiant. Pure energy. Comets and planets and ice and fire and lightning. Time and Space were suddenly beneath her.
The fire. It had to be the fire confusing her. Cyllene raised her head. The Crimson Mirelands were one vast sea of flame and smoke — a thousand times larger than the fire in Galaxy Hall, if not more. She clutched the straps of Ginter's pack, drawing it onto her shoulders and rising in a daze.
"Ʌre you there?" she asked softly. "Is Ʌnyone there?"
Reality throbbed in response. An impossibly deep humming settled over the land. The flames jittered, sharpening into jagged shapes, then smoothing out into curtains that melted whatever plant life was left on the plain. Cyllene went toward the most solid object she could find — a vertical wooden pike that glittered at its point. Smoke entered her lungs, but she could barely feel it. The Chain's embrace kept her pleasantly warm. Pleasantly powerful.
She reached out both hands, shaping them like claws, and tore at the inferno. It peeled away from the landscape, feeling weirdly sticky on her fingers before dropping to the scorched, smoking earth as strings of ash.
"Cyllene's brilliance confounds her. She chooses the worst times for deliberation."
"She's scared, Commander."
"We're all scared. Toughen her for me."
Space bent like loose gravel, or maybe like clay. A few more swipes, and she'd clawed a pathway through the fire. Then she plucked the flames away in handfuls, stuffing them into the same folds she'd found to stuff Ingo. She stepped over the skeletons of bushes, their dry limbs flushing with moisture and leaves. Loose teal oran flowers sprung up in her footprints. The bog thickened and started to bubble and sink.
In the far distance, for just a moment, she heard the gulp of a Croagunk.
Then she looked toward the sky. The haze had diminished, but the heat remained, and the strange wound, whose center was infected. At one horizon, the full moon turned blood-red. At the opposite, the sun burned a scorching white.
"It's Ʌn eclipse," she realized, a hand on her heart. "The selenelion."
And then came the pressure in her mind. It sent her spiraling, spinning deeper into the strange, cosmic sensation. All this before the sky trembled, cracked, and broke open entirely, greenish lightning violently flickering as it fell down to lick the scorched earth.
"Cyllene."
It was the deep voice again. A pair of red eyes opened at the center of the wound. They were slitted like a dragon's, and glittered like glass, and growing larger when something had begun to emerge.
"Seek out the source of light
Where SINNOH shows true might
From One Ʌre mɅde Two
Two liVe within One
When six rings Ʌre tripled
The world is begun."
"Six rings," Cyllene repeated. And she remembered. It was the poem she'd written in her sleep. The being in the sky was almost chanting it at her, until the calm, masculine drone began to crackle and change into something more whispery and vile.
The wound in the sky was bulging, and slipping out like a slimy sort of worm was a Pokémon. It was scaly and striped and serpentine, with horny mandibles made of gold and hundreds — thousands of wriggling, spiky legs. When it touched the air, it shuddered and melted into a shadow that streaked down through the atmosphere until it coalesced again and hovered right above where Cyllene floated, at least a hundred feet from the tips of its horns to the center of its snaky belly. Six long black tentacles ending in claws served as its wings. They quivered and waved in the lightning — excited by the strange, new world.
For a cold moment, she met the creature's gaze. The red eyes stared at her. They contemplated the Chain she wielded and the energy encircling her hands.
And then, with the sound of ice being dropped into flame, the mighty Pokémon hissed at her.
Her voice caught in her throat like the world beyond her fingertips. Space and Time had no meaning in this creature's presence. They were rippling madly — tearing apart. Snapping. Breaking.
Cyllene screamed. All the pleasure of before — all the power she'd adored playing with — suddenly evaporated into nothing. In a panic, she flicked her wrist. The Red Chain stretched and coiled around the Pokémon's body, catching on its silver scales until they began to flake and burn. Its golden mandibles parted, revealing a wicked beak beneath. A plume of hot red static charged up within, and Cyllene just managed to somersault out of the way before a thunderbolt blew her to bits.
Except her somersault missed its mark. The pack was too weighty. She landed badly on her bruised shoulder and screamed even louder. The pressure of distortion pushed her hard against the ground. It was hateful. Enraged. One of those massive tentacles was reaching toward her now, blocked only by the whiplike length of the Red Chain hovering close around her body.
"DESTROY IT!" Cyllene cried. But her words couldn't find the power to work any further effect on the Chain. The wet blood burned the Pokémon's skin like acid. Scales scraped off and fell to earth smoking and melting. It thrashed and hissed and glared at her with a malice unrivaled by any earthly grudge.
The warped whisper formed into the idea of words:
"You think you cɅn destroy Me with thɅt ChɅin? I Ʌm the 0riginɅl 0ne. I Ʌm your CreɅtor! I Ʌm eternɅl!"
She clenched her teeth. The sky seemed to burn, then darken, as the creature spat lightning left and right. Now the ground was rumbling. Bottomless fissures in the earth broke open. Landslides tumbled down the mountains, and the sea quaked and boiled before flattening into a placid, eerie curtain.
It's lying. There's no way this is Almighty Sinnoh.
Unless Almighty Sinnoh was a being of darkness and ugliness that pitted two Clans against each other until they destroyed the land it was supposed to rule.
The creature laughed, deeply, with the sound of scraping metal.
"I'm not Ʌlmighty Sinnoh, Cyllene. You'll find THɅT on the other side of the portɅl. If you don't die with the others, thɅt is…"
And then it bulged and hissed again, managing to slither out of the Chain's grip while she was distracted. The shadowy Pokémon was flailing its thousands of legs. Its body expanded until darkness filled the sky where the sun had once baked the land. Its eyes gleamed. Through the gloom poured only one light source — the blood-red moon. It fell in a single beam upon the ruin of the Mirelands, where slowly the sound of muddled voices was moving in.
Sleepwalkers. At least a dozen, and more limping out of the shadows and distortions, muttering to themselves about things and people that weren't there. Cyllene tried to rise and look at them, but the angry pressure kept her glued down. Obedient, the Chain shrank and retreated onto her wrist.
Cyllene's heart skipped a beat.
"I dream when I sleepwalk. I have these vivid dreams that I'm wearing a crown and people are trying to steal it from me. And there's fire. So much fire. It's all around me. It's burning my clothes. I'm breathing in smoke and coughing cinders."
Zisu marched among the accursed. Her clothes and face were burned.
And there was the Commander. And Choy, Tao Hua's son-in-law. Rye and Captain Colza. Matron Pesselle. sabI, the little Diamond Clan Warden who liked numbers more than words. Young liaN of the Pearl Clan, who had once survived Lord Kleavor's axes. All three bandit sisters, who looked gaunt as they stumbled forth.
Cyllene tried to find Rei, but by that point there were too many, and their dreams were too chaotic to sift through. They all stopped and waited when they reached the diamond-tipped pike. Suddenly a new pressure stiffened. Every blade of dry, dead grass slowed its waving as the hot winds ceased. Mount Coronet stopped crumbling. In the Icelands, the glaciers rumbled to a halt. In the Coastlands, the spirits quieted their gossip.
The only sound left in this timeless void was the grating voice of a Gengar, who was dragging one last struggling sleepwalker through the listless horde, until he dropped her before Zisu.
"That has to be ɅdɅmɅN," Cyllene said. The smallest twinge of guilt wracked her senses, but she forced it down with the rest of her.
The cloud of darkness hissed, and the Gengar began to morph. His body rippled and swelled and stretched. He screamed in pain as his organs condensed from gas and his bones bristled, sharp and solid. Pudgy purple limbs pulled out at odd angles as they came to have human knees and elbows and ankles. His back arched. Vertebrae blossomed under a warped series of smudges that once told the days and months of the year.
adamaN pushed himself up on his side, quivering and vomiting all over his pale, human hands. He was completely naked. Even his blue hair fell in greasy strings between his eyes.
"A… arezU…" he choked out. "Where are you? arezU? I'm here! I'm… I came back for you!"
Cyllene raised her left hand and pointed toward The Sekki, at least to erase the memory of waking up this way around strangers.
The pressure knocked her back, slamming her against the ground and knocking the wind out of her.
The light of the blood moon vibrated. It illuminated adamaN's trembling body. He coughed and spat, the name of his wife growing faint on his lips as he strained to breathe in his human body.
The earth fell away in a ring around the accursed, trapping them on a round plateau. Out of the fissure crawled Pearl Clan sleepwalkers, and after then lumbered an absolute beast of a Pokémon. On two legs, it was over ten feet tall. Claws like daggers marked each paw, and fangs like small swords filled its maw. A pelt of brown fur was caked in mud and grime from sleeping underground.
It sniffed the air and roared, loud enough for the whole fallen world to hear it. A circle like a bloody moon lit up on its forehead. It turned furious eyes to the hairless human lying in the dirt, and its furry brow tightened.
Cyllene raised her hand. The Red Chain glimmered faintly, blood oozing and coating her fingers.
"GAH!"
The pressure squeezed her even tighter. Tendrils of darkness shot through her body and forced her to be still. She tried changing shape. Her muscles swelled until they nearly burst through her skin, but she was exhausted. The Blood Moon Beast, whatever kind of Pokémon it was, was in a golden frenzy. It was the same as all the other Nobles, who turned murderous in the night…
Or anytime… even when Time had finally stopped.
Cyllene shielded her eyes. She knew what was coming. It was just like Clover and Sneasler. It was just like Ingo. It was just like this shadowy Pokémon. All of them caused a crisis and laughed and thought it was her fault for not stopping it.
"Zisu," she whimpered. "We should've never come here..."
The almighty serpentine Pokémon spoke:
"WhɅt did I tell you, son of sɅzɅriN? I hɅVe seen your fɅce before. Now die."
adamaN dropped limply to the ground. The Blood Moon Beast roared again, then swiped one paw and tore open The Sekki's stomach. Then it went on a rampage, mowing down every sleepwalker in its path.
Cyllene turned away. The pressure had lessened, somewhat, and she was able to sit up slowly. The demon was distracted with its bloodlust, hissing and spitting and melting into even more clouds of roiling shadow.
This carnage… this world-ending catastrophe… this was the crisis she'd been wishing for all this time.
And it felt…
"Abra?"
Abra popped in beside her, thank goodness. She reached out and hugged it close. It latched onto her immediately, claws curling around the back of her neck. It kissed her ears and looked at her with glassy golden eyes — fully awake and in the present.
With three claws, it pointed to another Pokémon skulking near. An imposing feline twice the size of Luxio, with bluish static flickering along the pitch-black strands of his mane.
"Lux-rrrgh," he purred, as if introducing himself, and then sniffed at the pack where the Cascoon was still glued with silk to the old blue jacket at the bottom. His fur began to stiffen and spark. Luxray looked to Cyllene with a golden glare that sent shivers through her skin.
"If I change him back, he could die," she said.
Luxray blinked. He padded to where Cyllene sat and scraped his stinging tongue against her cheek. Her whole face went warm and numb.
"Do you remember everything about Volkner now?"
"Rrrgh," the cat rumbled, swishing his star-tipped tail. He reached out and placed a paw on the pack. His claws dug in. His whiskers twitched.
Abra crossed its arms at the sight. Or it tried. It fell against Cyllene's chest, claws clutching its own forehead as the pressure of distortion bore down in waves.
"Can you take us somewhere safe? Abra, you have to try. Before that evil Pokémon sees."
Abra squealed and shook its head before it fell into her lap, stunned.
"I'm sorry. I don't deserve you as a friend."
She recalled Abra into its Poké Ball, then turned to the pack, all her fear coming out in one tearful whimper. With her free hand, she reached into the pack. The silk melted between her fingers. She tried not to gag at the stickiness, or the warmth of the creature living inside the silvery strands.
"Volkner… turn human again."
The change was immediate. He burst out of the pack, writhing and moaning just like adamaN had. Only Volkner — Ginter… came out shriveled. His hair, when it grew out again, was dry and gray. His blue eyes were pleading. His cracked lips trembled.
"Cyllene," he rasped. "And… Luxray, my old friend. It's been so long. I missed you. You look… amped-up as ever."
Luxray licked the old man's cheek. Ginter smiled, reaching up the best he could to stroke his partner's mane. The static skittered up his arm, and he seemed to relax.
"Why are you crying?" he grunted.
"I'm not crying," said Cyllene. "I'm concentrating. Just… don't say anything." She put her left hand on his chest, the Red Chain slipping off her wrist and coiling itself onto his neck like a choker.
Big mistake. Her bones felt heavy and dead. Sleepiness and nausea suddenly overtook her, and she was forced to grab the Chain again to protect herself.
"Two bracelets. Tie us together," she told it, and it complied.
"C-Cyllene… I think I know how I got here."
Cyllene clenched her eyes shut. She gripped the Chain, her mind racing. She could age him backwards. She could try to warp them safer herself. But that hateful creature was everywhere. It was like Hisui was suddenly cut off from the rest of the world. She couldn't feel anything beyond the island anymore.
Except for…
"The storm!" Ginter forced, breathing going shallow. "Sinnoh is in the storm!" He grabbed her hand, yanking her.
"Take me into the storm, Cyllene. Don't you get it? It's a… it's a portal to Sinnoh. I must have fallen through it!"
"Sinnoh?"
"Sinnoh," Ginter gasped, his hair turning white and his bones crackling and splitting just under his skin. "Sinnoh is… what they call this island in the future. Sinnoh is… my home."
He gasped. His body throbbed, then relaxed completely.
Luxray sniffed him. He bit at him, his whole feline body lighting up blue. He put both front paws on his trainer's chest and let out a mighty electric pulse. Ginter's muscles popped and twitched, but he didn't say anything more.
Cyllene looked toward the sky. The storm still swirled. It was shrinking now, while the shadowy Pokémon drank in the deaths of the sleepwalkers — their screams turning into clouds of pure darkness and slithering into its beak.
Then she saw it. Beyond the clouds and around the rim pulsed a very faint spinning golden ring.
"There are two gods," she breathed. Then to Ginter's body, she whispered, "Watch your head."
One mighty yank brought the Red Chain encircling all four of them. "Okay… now… the summit of Mount Coronet. To the Temple of Sinnoh."
Her fingertips sparked. The air shimmered, and she jumped.
The atmosphere tingled as she fell onto a patch of weathered gray stones. A ruined, roofless temple spread out around her. Shattered columns pointed toward the sky like spears. Not straight up, but curving inward, toward where the golden ring spun and pulsed around the steadily closing wound.
There was no ocean beyond Hisui. Only a growing darkness. The land itself had split into a host of islands floating in the formless murk. Fires raged, then died, then raged again, as little whorls of time flickered like static in the void.
"I don't want to die," she insisted, and she wasn't sure she meant it, but it was better than wishing for a crisis that came when it was called.
Then, looking toward the shimmering light, Cyllene closed her eyes, clutched Ginter's body as tightly as she could, and let the golden ring devour her.
where it neVer rɅins...
~N~
I'M SO EXCITED FOR WHAT I FINALLY GET TO WRITE NOW. :D If you've made it this far and thought the whole fic was gonna be grimdark I PROMISE IT'S NOT. SERIOUSLY FUN THINGS ARE COMING.
Anyway, it's the perfect day to post this. It's the 5th anniversary of the ending of my first major fic Hetafata. I love that my magical tales are still connecting with readers! Thank you so much for giving me your time. :) And go see the AO3 version for my illustration of "the serpentine Pokémon" that turned out inappropriately cute. XD
Published by scrivenernoodz on FFN and AO3 July 4th, 2024. Don't repost.