Chapter 317 – Spear Pillar

Chapter 317 – Spear Pillar

CHAPTER 317 - SPEAR PILLAR

This place was too beautiful for words.

We crossed an arch I recognized very well as I wiped the tears trailing down my cheeks. Boney white, with golden and green peppered throughout the structure. Mesprit's mindscape had had the same structure on their replica of Mount Coronet, but this one was... breathtaking. Brighter, larger, grander in all the ways that mattered, and the sense of nostalgia, of belonging that overtook me had me sobbing like a damn child as soon as I crossed it and set my eyes on Spear Pillar.

Spear Pillar had been carved into the plateau of Coronet out of strange, beige bricks that were covered in cracks that seemed to bleed beyond their edges, yet they felt smooth to walk on. It was surprising, how run-down this place looked. Countless pillars rose from the sides of the bricked path, but jagged crevices and fissures marred their surface. Some of them were broken down or even collapsed, yet everything felt like it was as it should have been. The sky was large. Exactly like it had felt within Mesprit's mind, like it stretched on and on and on. Its tone was a richer, deeper azure blue than what you'd usually see from the ground. The sun still hovered there, signaling how little time had passed in the real world, and of course, there was not a single cloud in sight. There was a thin, golden and white fog at the edges of Spear Pillar that calmly clung there, steering clear of the... path, if you could even call it that. Buddy seemed uncomfortable with this place. His eyes constantly twitched, were dimmer than usual, and he made himself smaller. Asking him why had him say that he felt the opposite of belonging, here. Like he shouldn't have been here.

When I turned to my two companions, I could see that they'd been transfixed by Spear Pillar as well. Cecilia had opted not to wipe away her tears and let them flow onto her bandaged face, but she'd been crying as well. I'd come here with the expectation that we would be attacked right away, but instead, this place seemed to stretch beyond the horizon, somehow. An endless path of broken bricks. Silently, we began to walk against the calm, warm winds sweeping across the plateau. I tried to come up with explanations as to why the Creator's throne would be so run down, even if it did not feel like it, yet my mind came up blank after a few seconds with every attempt, as if questioning the state of this place went beyond any common sense. Still, one had to wonder why such a mundane place was...

The thought was smothered before it could keep going.

Time passed. Nerve-wracking minute after nerve-wracking minute without any signs, whether that be Chase, Mira or the others, or of Team Galactic itself. Could we have been the first ones to make it, after every delay we'd encountered? If that was the case, then maybe the world had a chance. I couldn't shake the feeling a certain sound gave me if I focused for long enough. It was similar to the ringing in my ear, but something else, far off in the distance. While Jellicent seemed unsettled by this place, Electivire and Tyranitar were in awe, staring at every nook and cranny like it was gold. Cecilia's Talonflame dared not to fly off too far, and while she seemed disappointed in her trainer, she took in Spear Pillar's beauty as well, twisting and turning between each tower while Toxicroak had tried to grab a stone to keep, but to no avail.

"Grace," Maylene warned, her grip on Cecilia tightening. "Ahead of us, behind one of the pillars."

I squinted and scanned the surrounding towers of stone while Buddy finally found his gusto and threateningly rippled at his edges. Maylene couldn't exactly point properly, with Cece in her arms, so it took me a bit to see what she was talking about. Not that it mattered anyway, because the culprit shuffled from behind the pillar with a familiar limp and white coat draped over his Galactic uniform. With his usual scowl, Charon glared at us and adjusted his glasses to get a better look. The last time I'd seen this man, near Floaroma, he had terrified me. Today, he was just a bump in the road. Our Pokemon stood at attention, ready to strike. Toxicroak was the last to tense and anxiously bounced herself up and down. We weren't planning on killing him, not when he was so weak and Mira needed him alive, but he had better surrender and get the hell out of the way. His presence meant that Team Galactic had made it here first, which was terrible fucking news. The world was teetering on the edge of oblivion.

"Throw your Pokeballs on the ground—"

Cecilia interrupted me with a harsh, ghastly tone. "Surrender or die."

I blinked, but didn't act surprised so we could present a united front. That had better been a bluff.

Charon took a step backward, and for a moment I thought he'd run, but instead he looked behind the same pillar. "Mars," the Commander pressed, adjusting the tight collar around his neck. "Hurry up and stop them!"

The hair on my neck stood on end, and I nervously licked my lips. Her being here complicated things and meant we couldn't win the coming fight. It also meant that Cecilia would have to use an unruly Hydreigon and I would have to risk Angel's eye just for a hope at survival. The current plan was to test the waters by battling for a minute or two, and running away back to the seventh layer to wait for Chase and the others if the situation was untenable. I was hoping I'd be able to cooperate with Coronet to get what we wanted. Cecilia had called it twisting the mountain's arm, but I disagreed.

The person who emerged from behind the pillar wasn't the Mars I'd expected. What jumped at me was that she was missing her right arm. It had been cut clean off at the shoulder. The stump was covered in dry blood and was leaking small amounts of ghostly energy, but that wasn't it. Mars' entire demeanor had changed. She walked with small, restrained steps, her shoulders were hunched to make herself smaller, her eyes were darting all over the place with dried tears staining her cheeks, and most of all, she looked exhausted. Her Wigglytuff accompanied her, but...

Wigglytuff was hurt. Large swathes of his stomach had been burned— and having both a fire and an electric type, I recognized electrical burns. He had huge lacerations all over his body as well, and though there had been an expectation that since Mars' Pokemon were just projection, injuries like these were meaningless, the normal type actually looked tired. Mars released two more Pokemon— Clefable and Bellossom— and both looked to have been through a battle as well. Clefable was the most intact, but Bellossom was covered in bruises that could only have come from blunt hits; maybe punches.

Mesprit and Uxie were nowhere to be seen.

For a few seconds, there was only silence. Mars had been in a fight, and seeing as Coronet cooperated with Galactic because they'd tricked it using the Lake Guardians, I doubted a wild Pokemon was the culprit.

"Grace." Mars shuffled in place, hugging herself with her only arm. A shy, yet saddened smile took to her lips. "You promised me we would talk for a bit in Mesprit's mind when we met again..."

Damn. That lie had slipped my mind entirely with all of the events I'd been through ascending to the peak. At the time, I'd said it just so she would be taken off-guard if I attacked her suddenly, but I doubted that would work now that she had her Pokemon out. I'd figured that maybe I would have been able to trick her into being defenseless.

"Sure," I said, ignoring Maylene and Cecilia's heavy, surprised stares and my Pokemon's disapproving vocalizations. "I have a few questions, too. Then I'll be all yours."

Charon scoffed. "What are you doing, you—" he was taken by a sickly, wet cough that went on for a few moments as I raised my hands to appear as innocent as I could. "Attack them!" It was obvious to me now that Charon wanted us as far away from whatever was happening behind them as possible.

Mars' voice went cold. "Shut up."

He clicked his tongue and his hands went to his two remaining Pokeballs, yet he didn't release them. He must have known that he had no chance, and there was the possibility of Mars killing him outright if he angered her. She was in quite a volatile mood.

"Grace—"

I turned to Maylene and whispered, "This is important. Her Pokemon are hurt, meaning that she's fought someone to get here and we need to know who. It won't take long, I know what makes her tick."

"I don't like this," she said. "Cecilia, say something."

My girlfriend stayed silent, her eyes glancing at me, then back at Mars and her team. "There's this hatred inside of me," she whispered so low she was barely audible. "This desire to hurt. But even I can think clearly enough to know that talking to Mars... well, it'd be sensible if we could avoid a fight, but that's not her prerogative. Still, I'm intrigued, too."

"That's not what you were supposed to..." Maylene trailed off.

Taking a deep breath, I continued louder. "Mars! You and your Pokemon look hurt."

It was important to keep it open-ended and lead her where I wanted instead of pulling her there myself. As Cecilia had said and despite how unlikely this was, avoiding a fight here was the goal, not fraternizing with the enemy.

The redhead tilted her head, and Wigglytuff's cheeks puffed up beside her. "Interested?" There she was, or at least partly. There was a hint of taunting in her voice that gripped my very being and could squeeze out hatred. "What will you give me for it?"

Cecilia snarled in Maylene's arms. "I've changed my mind. Enough of this."

I held up a hand.

One couldn't—

I inhaled.

One couldn't just ignore such horror dangled in front of them, even if it was bait. I closed my eyes, and the next time I opened them, colors swirled around Mars. As I'd seen earlier, there was a base layer of sadness that I wouldn't expect from her, but climbing joy and pleasure from torturing me with the fate of my friends.

Spear Pillar's peaceful quiet turned eerie. Charon was content to let this play out, watching us with a wary look in his eyes. So long as he could buy time, he was probably okay with this.

"Who was it?" I asked, no, demanded. My throat felt so tight that getting the words out strained my neck. My feet rattled on the crackled beige stones so harshly my soles felt tense. "Who?!"

"She feeds off of your worry," Cecilia said in a whisper. "Respond with fear and she'll escalate in kind because it's all she knows. You know this. Control yourself." When I turned her way with a mix of confusion and apprehension, she added, "Always expect the worst, and you won't be saddled with disappointments and regrets."

Maylene shook her head. "I'm not sure that's—"

"It doesn't matter who it was," I lied to Mars. "You were in a battle with someone." My words were more of a declaration than a question. "Another trainer."

Mars deflated a bit. "Yes."

No subtle movements in her emotions. She was saying the truth.

"Checking for lies?" she wondered in a teasing tone. Like this was all a joke. Yet there was a lack of passion behind it. She was tired. "Ask me more. Ask me the question you really want to know, but say please at the end."

I closed my eyes, took a shaky breath and asked again. "Please tell me who it was."

"Chase Karlson and Denzel Williams fought me. They killed Snuggles. They killed Twinkles. They killed Dusky." Charon's eyes went wide next to her, and he started spewing insult after insult, calling her daft for revealing this until she scared him by making a brusque motion his way. "But," she said with a twisted smile. "I killed Chase, too. Star over here took care of him." She patted the Clefable on the back. "Mr. Wiggly took care of that Abomasnow. Boring Denzel was pretty badly injured, too. He might have died from his injuries."

I looked at her.

I looked...

At her.

She wasn't lying. Her statement was even more ironclad than the last.

The ringing in my ears overtook everything and grew so loud I could barely hear myself think.

"Would you have felt something if this was true?" I calmly asked Cecilia.

I didn't hear her answer over the ringing, but her lips read 'I don't know'. She was crying again— and it seemed that when she cried, now, her face and voice would stay unresponsive and she would just let the tears out.

Once, twice, thrice, how could one take loss again and again? How could one not run out of sorrow and not give way to hopelessness? My heart was so heavy. Like a piece of lead that had learned to expect the loss, weighing me down, yet it hurt the very same every single time. I wanted to scream. To claw at my chest until I had gouged myself of everything that made me human. My legs wobbled and Maylene's hand rested on my shoulder.

The ringing in my ears stopped as soon as she touched my skin.

"I'm— I'm sorry," Maylene said. "And I know this is harsh, but maybe Cecilia can still..."

"I will try my best to get Azelf back," she said, still crying. "Once one is freed, whatever process Cyrus is currently going through might be interrupted or slowed."

There was a beat of silence, and my Pokemon gathered around me. My fist clenched so harshly I could feel the outline of my nails through the gloves and the bandages on my hands.

"I just want you to understand," I said, my voice rising into a scream. "You took everything from me! I have never, ever hated someone as much as you!"

I wanted to say more. To dismantle her using words, push at her weaknesses. To tell her about how not only did Cyrus not love her— something he had learned to know and understand— he had been manipulating her and grooming her all along for his nefarious plans. That I would tear apart everything she loved, piece by piece just as she'd done to me and make. Her. Watch and listen. Bellossom's wails when Sweetheart stomped on her body until she was mush. Wigglytuff's guts spilling out of his stomach and soaked Spear Pillar in blood. Clefable, slowly swelling until her very body gave at the seams and Buddy smothered the life out of her.

But I was just...

So tired. So exhausted that I just wanted to lay down and sleep. My body hadn't felt this way since I'd just been brought to the Lakes after the bombs, and that seemed like a lifetime away, now.

"Hate and love are separated by a very, very, thin line," Mars answered back with a mad yell. Her only hand caressed the side of her face and her eyes seemed to glint in Spear Pillar's light. "And if you hate me," she said with tears welling up in her eyes, "it means I matter to you. That I matter to someone!"

The energy I needed for this battle wasn't there.

So I would just steal it.

Changing my own emotions was impossible, but I'd seen many times that I could get affected by the emotions of others during my travels alone. Less so now that I was used to my gift, but I'd learned that too many anxious people bunched up in one place would spread their anxiety to me in turn when I'd been near a traffic jam in Sandgem during rush hour. My finger twitched, and a smoky yellow bled off of Mars. Within a second, it hit me. Enough excitement to make my heart pump twice as fast, to make my breaths shallow and my fingers tremble. A smile crept up my lips and I shivered. Legends above, it felt so good. I would most likely incur a small emotional debt afterward, but the thrill coursing through me was very real and it allowed me to channel my rage toward the only individual who mattered.

Mars.

I inhaled. "Cecilia!"

Maylene flinched when she heard so much life in my voice. The battle began with a whimper with all of our exhausted Pokemon sizing themselves up, but Cece snapped a finger that reverberated across the plateau, and Talonflame was the first to go on the offensive. The air roared as fire burst from every inch in the air around her and began to orbit her form as she flew toward Mars. A thin barrier shimmered around the Commander, who pushed Charon out before he could join her in Clefable's protective shell, and thick, thorny roots spread out from below Bellossom's skirt. Seeing Charon so vulnerable, Talonflame ended the fiery tornado that had been building up around her. Instead, a row of feathers on her wings sharpened, glimmering under the sun's light, and flew toward Bellossom with tiny shockwaves— past the speed of sound. The grass type screeched when the first few penetrated past her skin, but a clump of roots came together to block the rest. Another— one without thorns, wrapped around Charon's neck and held him up in front of the grass type, forcing Talonflame to end her assault.

She knew. The older Commander desperately clawed at his neck, but Bellossom's hold only tightened until all he could get out of his mouth was choking and pained moans.

"Looks like you were right, Charon," Mars gleefully said. "Your niece did want to save you, and they care. How nice. Mr. Wiggly, Mimic!"

The air around Wigglytuff shimmered like an optical illusion in the desert, and the normal type summoned his very own Heat Wave. Cecilia calmly ordered Talonflame to fight it off like she hadn't been about to die, but Maylene dragged her behind Sweetheart's back, placed her on the ground and dragged me by the hand before I could even take three steps. The rock type barely reacted to the warmed air, and with Talonflame's help, the nascent Heat Wave didn't burn us beyond making us feel like we were in a desert, but the goal here was to keep us locked down behind her. Mars had the disadvantage of numbers here, and pinning down one of our Pokemon was a great boon for her.

"Overwhelm her!" I ordered.

While our team had been reeling from the heat and slowed by the wind, we couldn't play her game. We had to keep her reacting, not do the reacting ourselves. I saw Honey blur in a flash out of the corner of my eye, and Buddy propelled himself forward with a weakened Water Sport above us. Toxicroak was right below, taking the scraps of his water that made it down without evaporating to cure herself until the ghost himself saw what he was doing and redirected more of it to her. Sweetheart couldn't pull any stones from these sacred grounds, but she bellowed, shifted a foot, and shook the earth in Mars' direction. A dim, white glow overtook her when I whispered another, secret order to her. We were unable to peek and check what was happening, but I did hear the sounds of fighting, easily recognizing the sound of multiple Hydro Pumps and Thunderbolts or Thunders.

Ten, twenty, thirty seconds later, Wigglytuff finally gave up on the Heat Wave and I finally managed to glance at the fight. It had spread out some, with Wigglytuff being a few dozen feet away. Even when covered in burns, Toxicroak was relentless, constantly jabbing in his direction with her poisoned claws. Wigglytuff's body contorted and shrunk wherever she struck, and when the fighting type belched poison from her sack, he simply opened his mouth and inhaled. I warned Jellicent not to go inside of his mouth despite my desires, just in case glamour fucked with him and did some irreversible damage. Talonflame occasionally sent flaming feathers as support, but it was the other part of the fight, that had me worried.

Electivire was collapsed against the ground, and his body moved with each wave of Clefable's finger. Not only was approaching her tough, but the fairy type distorted every attack sent her way. Jellicent's Shadow Ball spaghettified into a thin line and dissolved as it spun around her, and a bolt of electricity from Clefable's other finger hit him square in the head. The fairy type swept her arm up, and Honey went flying into Buddy, sinking slightly into his head. Bellossom had thrown Charon next to Mars, and she had her one free arm around his neck. The grass type stood at attention propped up on her roots, shimmying back and forth as if to figure out how to best approach Sweetheart or occasionally sending what looked like Energy Balls to support her teammates.

Mars was using our teams' exhaustion to run circles around us. The status quo had to be broken. Not only would our likelihood of winning be lower the longer this battle went on, we were also on a very tight timeframe.

"I noticed something," I said.

"What is it?" both girls asked at the same time.

Having gotten up, Honey opted to go help Toxicroak against Wigglytuff instead, leaving Bellossom and Clefable to Talonflame and Buddy. In a flash of light, he sank his fist into the normal type's blubbery skin, but it simply bounced off and staggered him. Blunt hits were useless. Toxicroak managed to sink one of her extending, poisoned claws into Wigglytuff's flank and jumped away before the Hyper Voice could hit her too hard.

"When Honey was pinned down, Bellossom could have used her thorns to stab into his back and kill him. I was ready to recall him, if that happened," I whispered. "In fact, I wanted her to do it so Buddy could have an opening. But she didn't."

Maylene blinked and shifted uncomfortably. "So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying she's milking this for all it's worth and having fun, because she thinks we have a connection and believes this might be the last time we'll see each other," I said harshly. "Maylene, pick Cecilia up in your arms again."

As soon as the two were ready, I looked at my daughter.

"Sweetheart," I said. "Rock Polish is done?"

The rock type turned her head my way and grinned, flashing countless rows of teeth.

"Go kill."

Maylene's eyes widened. "Wha—"

With a burst of speed and an expulsion of sand behind her that swarmed us, and clung to my nose, hair and the inside of my mouth, Tyranitar dashed toward Mars and Clefable with a roar that rippled across Spear Pillar. Immediately, Bellossom pushed herself between them and her thorns shimmered with a brilliant green, all lashing out like they were alive. The majority simply pushed against Sweetheart, but some also wrapped around her thick legs and arms.

It was all for naught.

This was where she excelled. The sharpened thorns barely scraped her armor, she ripped and bit them away from her limbs, and she kept going like an immutable force, her rhythm having barely slowed from all of the momentum she had gathered. Sweetheart would have rammed into Bellossom had she not moved away and narrowly dodged, but the plant-like Pokemon had for all intents and purposes misunderstood what we were doing. She would not be bait, because we didn't care about her, and Talonflame used the lapse in attention to dive into her roots and slice them to ribbons with countless bits of sharpened air, causing her to fall back to the floor. Wigglytuff inflated and tried to blow himself toward Mars, but Toxicroak poked holes into his skin and he went flying uncontrollably like a deflating balloon who was easy pickings for Electivire and Jellicent to harass him from afar.

Clefable was the final obstacle, and Sweetheart fell upon her influence with a crash. Gravity pushed against dozens of tons of shifting stone platings that covered every inch of her skin. I would not allow Mars to take anything else from me. I would not allow her to wound, let alone harm. I could see the pink dust vibrating around Sweetheart's plates as she continuously broke apart Clefable's belief.

And what was a fairy, when their belief was shattered?

Nothing. I would know.

The barrier broke apart like glass as soon as Sweetheart spread the dark blotches of sands across its surface, and the dark type bit. Clefable tried to jump back, but a sudden shake in the earth slowed her just enough for Tyranitar to seize her by the arm, and it was as if the very air shook with the sound of her Crunch— a terrifying snap of bone and sinew that went against what Spear Pillar was supposed to represent. A harsh, grating sound of teeth grinding through everything until they met again with a snap followed by a disbelieving scream sputtering out of Clefable's mouth.

There was no technique after that. Clefable tried to fire back with an Ice Beam from her other hand, but Sweetheart flipped her over and toppled her, allowing her bloodied teeth to sink into the fairy's stomach while Mars watched with a dead look in her eye. It wasn't like she could do anything. Her other two Pokemon were tied up with the rest of the team, after all.

My friends' sacrifice had allowed for this. Dusknoir's death had allowed for this, and Mars had been so focused on hurting me that she didn't opt to hang his potential presence over our necks the entire battle— or at least could have tried to, given that Honey could feel ghosts.

And so, with each savage jerk of her neck, Sweetheart tore away more and more of Clefable until there was nothing left but viscera, blood, torn skin and leaking purple smoke. Maylene couldn't bear to look at it, but I did. I looked and searched for the hurt in Mars' eye and found it delightful to notice, especially when Clefable's blood started to disappear. Clefable was the one who'd killed Chase.

A grin split my face.

She got what she fucking deserved.

"St—Star," Mars sobbed.

But the battle wasn't over.

While her Pokemon were locked down, Mars herself still held Charon hostage, and her hold hadn't even loosened after witnessing her Pokemon being murdered.

"Stop the fight. Keep going, and I kill him," she sniffled.

What, had she expected me to play along and not kill her Pokemon? Or maybe she thought we'd be more weakened from our climb here. And a bluff, this far into the battle? Only Honey hesitated at those words, and I had him keep going with a nod. Hesitation would be the death of him now that Mars' Pokemon had stopped not going for the kill. A wide thorny vine scraped across the electric type's back like a whip, and he staggered to his knees. Flames overtook Talonflame, and the bird launched herself at Bellossom like a missile whose shockwave shook me to my core. Within an instant, she had rammed into the grass type at full force and exploded, yet the damage to her own body was minimal. She had turned her feathers to steel and had added to her weight to punch as hard as Cecilia's heaviest hitters—

"Grace!" Maylene screamed.

I looked at her exasperatedly. "What?!"

"Are you okay with this risk?" she asked, her hold on Cecilia tightening with her rising nervousness. "I mean, isn't this your friend's uncle—"

"Quiet down. Incoming," Cecilia whispered.

In the midst of the nascent argument, Mars had jumped over Sweetheart's tail and had started to run, not away from us, but toward us, carrying Charon under her arm like he was a rag. Wigglytuff opened his mouth and inhaled again, this time with more strength than before, and both Talonflame and Jellicent had to propel themselves with air and water not to be swallowed up by the normal type. A root wrapped around Honey's wrist and pulled to force him to stay where he was and an Energy Ball hit him in the back while another stabbed him in the— shoulder, since he rotated to prevent her from hitting his spine or neck.

Cynthia began to chant specific words Volo had. They were not some sort of spell or ritual but the exact words her ancestor had said the moment he had seen true madness, when he had stared at the abyss and it had stared back in full.

Sinnoh's Champion looked directly into the water. "I must know the truth behind the world, I must peer through the water and see further," she muttered under her breath as she crouched and stuck her face closer and closer to the water. The air above Cyrus began to scream every breath it took, and shook so much that she struggled not to plug her ears with the palm of her hands. "Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters—"

—

They weren't dead! Or at least they haven't been when Mira had sent Pauline and Emilia on their way to get them help. They were horribly wounded, but they weren't hurt. For once, it felt like something good had happened, and I was so unused to that that I almost didn't believe it. I'd had to check on Mira to see if she wasn't lying to me to make me happier before we had to possibly take down Cyrus— not that I'd expected her to. I just needed to leave no stone unturned, and since Mars had said the opposite and also not lied. The only reason I'd found for this discrepancy was that Mars had actually believed Chase would die from his wounds, and therefore not lied.

I'd known this to be a possible loophole, but hadn't expected it to come to pass in the most important hour.

"Don't celebrate too early," Cecilia had warned. "Nothing's been confirmed yet."

"But the League's their best chance to live." I tried to keep frustration out of my tone, but probably failed, given how she looked at me. "This... I just want to have this."

"Even though you've felt the crushing sense of that hope being snatched away from you once already with Justin?"

I nodded with an accompanying hum. "I choose to believe in the good of the world."

Spear Pillar's homogenous form was changing, now. Not only was the path widening, there were fewer and fewer actual spires around us. The bricks were becoming smoother and smoother with damage in the stone being rarer than not. The strange sound I'd been hearing also grew louder the more we approached, and it was not until another four minutes that we came upon another set of stairs to a raised platform. Water that looked too transparent to be natural dripped down the platform and looked to be as deep as a puddle; my reflection within was clear as if I was looking into a mirror.

There was no time to dawdle. The sounds of battle was deafeningly loud in my right ear, and lights of every color shone right beyond the stairs. Charon's mouth gaped in disbelief as soon as we dragged him and ourselves up the stairs.

Cynthia was here, knees and forehead against the water as if she was searching for something as she whispered words I couldn't hear under her breath. The image was so absurd it took a moment to register what was happening.

Every member of her team was throwing everything they had at Cyrus. There were so many simultaneous moves here that I could barely hear myself think or even understand most of what she was throwing at him. If she was already here, why hadn't she come across Mars and Charon? Had they managed to hide from her? Cyrus was—

FREE THE GUARDIANS.

THE GUARDIANS OF THE LAKE.

THE OTHERS WILL PROTECT YOU.

YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR.

The voices took over everything. It dug beneath my scalp, beneath my skull and spread from my brain to every inch of me. There were too many whispers to count, but also screams. Voices in every tone and inflection, women and men, separate, but working as one to convey a sense of urgency that my body wanted to prioritize above all else. They could manufacture anxiety and horror by unraveling every secret, every insecurity you wanted to keep buried and never think of again. Sweat dripped down my forehead and drenched my back and armpits. When I remembered to breathe, it shook and barely made it through my tightened throat.

I wanted to get away from here. To be anywhere but here. And this was when they weren't trying to hurt me mentally when I knew they very well could have. This feeling— this pressure— was like I was teetering on the edge of a cliff. I knew Spiritomb could see my deepest shames and worries, and it made being close to them an exercise in willpower. If they wanted, they could ruin my friendships right then and there. Tell Mira that the thought of killing her uncle had crossed my mind, tell Maylene that for a moment, I'd found her annoying for even worrying about Charon's fate or that I'd wanted for her not to be here so I could have Mars to myself.

That was just the surface of me. I'd changed for the better, but I was still Grace Pastel.

All of my friends had heard Spiritomb speak, yet I was the only one whose teeth was chattering. Mira and Maylene were pale, but held strong while Cecilia looked entranced by the spinning of the purple and green gas spewing out of the keystone.

"Cece, can you do this?" Mira asked.

"I think I can," she said. Once she held out her hand and froze, I knew she'd passed onto Azelf's mindscape.

Thank the Legendaries.

Due to the number of attacks, I couldn't actually see Cyrus nor any of the Lake Guardians, but I could feel Mesprit to the man's right, hovering in the sky above his shoulder. My fingers twitched, and I plunged deep into Mesprit's mind for what I knew would be my third and final try.

—

"Mesprit."

My grey fingers rasped against the wide, boney arch. It still looked like a child had scribbled it on a piece of paper, without any of the detail, but it was obvious to me now that Mesprit had done their best to recreate what they remembered of Spear Pillar, which wasn't much. Now that Mars no longer holding onto Mesprit using the Red Chain, the cabin in the wood had disappeared. Instead, it had been replaced by... well, nothing. There was an office door where I stood, which was at a plateau of fake Coronet, but the best way to describe this structure was a white box. It had no windows, no imperfections, and was perfectly smooth.

"May I come in?" I asked. I did not bother being respectful with my tone. Instead, I let my true emotions show. Most of it was pity for this being who was so powerful, yet so childlike all the same. All they'd wanted was to see Arceus again, and they'd been tricked and manipulated again and again.

"Who is this?"

"Grace. I want to talk to you, face to face."

The Legendary's voice resonated throughout the door. "I remember you. You're the girl who was no fun. My Shard."

"That's me," I said.

Mesprit paused. "Come in, then."

There was a click, and the door opened on its own, leading me into the most non-descript room I'd ever seen. It was just as boring as the outside. A white room with literally nothing inside of it but Mesprit, hovering there, and a bright lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Cyrus was as blank on the inside as he'd been described, then. He was, surprisingly, nowhere to be seen, but letting my guard down right now would be...

Well, it's not like it would matter. Unlike the first two times, I had no arguments prepared, no pros and cons list, no plan to convince Mesprit to open their eyes and see the truth behind their actions.

I made my way toward Mesprit, who hovered in the center of the room, and sat on the floor.

I patted the ground in front of me. "C'mere."

The Legendary lowered themselves and stared right at me. Their bright yellow eyes were unsettling, and I glanced away uncomfortably. "Sorry, I'm not great with eye contact from Gods."

Mesprit's tails intertwined and they spun around me. "What do you want? Why are you here over and over? Don't you know when it's time to give up?"

I drummed my fingers against the white floor. "I'm chiseling at a stone, I guess."

"Comparing me to a stone is rude," Mesprit groused.

"It's how I feel, though. I'm carving away at you in hopes that one day I'll get right there." I tapped Mesprit in the chest, where their heart would have been if they had one. Their skin felt smooth like ceramic, yet could still bend. "I don't know if it'll work, but I hope so. It'd be a shame if everything ended."

"What do you mean? I'm just going to see Him soon."

"Hm. And how's that going?"

"Huh?" Mesprit said with narrowing eyes. "Are you doubting me?!"

"No, I'm just... genuinely asking," I said, feeling at the smooth ground below. Grey paint had nearly overtaken my hands. "I've been wondering, you know, about what you'd ask Him if you could. I think I have a good guess as to what that is."

"Hmph!" Mesprit pouted, crossing their arms. "Entertain me, then."

It could have been why? Why did He stay so far away, why did he never speak to them, why had He condemned them to an eternity of boredom and misery at the bottom of a lake, when so many Legendaries had free reign over where they went or lived. Ho-Oh traveled the world, occasionally roosting in Ecruteak. Lugia, though it had been seen much less, roamed the oceans and sometimes made itself known near a coastal town. The Tapus sometimes joined festivals in their name in Alola, the Legendary birds were as free as could be and acted more in the name of destruction than anything else, and there were probably many more that I had no idea about.

And yet...

But this was Mesprit, herald of emotion we were talking about. Questions such as these would fit Uxie, but not them.

"You'd tell him you love him more than anything else, no matter what," I guessed.

Mesprit made a strange, surprised noise. "You actually..."

"It's not answers you want. I mean, they'd be nice, but you want someone to connect to. Something real. I guess Arceus being your father figure is the most obvious thing to look at." Speaking His name made my throat feel warm. I'd half expected them to get angry, but instead, they just stared, dumbfounded. "That's why Mars promised you all of that, but she's dead now. What has Cyrus promised you?"

"The... same thing. It's what I'm being made to do right now— summoning Time and Space to get Him to join us on His throne."

A sad smile stretched across my lips. "No originality, huh? All he could do was steal Mars' plan, because he doesn't understand you."

"What do you mean?"

"Why do you think he isn't here? He's a shell of a human. You called him that," I said. Half of it was guesswork, really, but I truly believed what I was saying. "Mars could understand you. She was a terrible human being who deserved nothing but pain, but she was also lonely, just like you are. She wanted a connection, but that was never going to be you, either. What you want isn't Arceus, Mesprit. You want a friend."

Mesprit stayed quiet, but they winced.

"Assuming that this plan to bring Arceus into the real world is real," I continued. "He's beyond you. He's beyond all of us, and Cyrus sure as hell isn't going to be your friend. He doesn't even know what that is."

"Shut up!"

The yell threw me back, and had me rolling on the ground, but this world wasn't real, and I felt no pain. It felt weird, hearing so clearly and having no ringing in my ears. I calmly stood up and bit the inside of my lip.

"You're lashing out because I'm making sense."

"So what?!" Mesprit cried out. "It's not like you want to be my friend!"

"Your definition of friendship is very different from mine," I acknowledged with a tight nod. "And you want me to do things that I'm not comfortable with. The first time we met, you forced me to love you and asked me if I wanted to brainwash all of my friends and my girlfriend. You're a Concept, and you're stuck to your ways, so it's not really your fault, but even if you stopped when I asked, that first impression is a hard thing to get past for people." I approached Mesprit, getting close enough for them to feel my breath on their body. "I'm not saying everything will be perfect; that as soon as we get out of here, we'll be inseparable and that you'll find me fun like Mars or Atreus, but I am saying that I'm willing to give this a try. I'd honestly be doing this even if the world wasn't about to end, or at least I think so."

I wrapped my hands around the tiny Legendary, and they froze in my arms. Such a fragile body for a God of such power.

"Atreus, Mars, Cyrus, they all used you for power, whereas all I've ever wanted was to be normal. I won't ask you to change, but in return I ask you that you do the same for me. It'll be hard to see eye to eye, but I'll give you something no one ever has done before. I'll try."

Something broke. Lights of every color and more I'd never seen before enveloped Mesprit and radiated out of them. They were back.

"You make good heart-to-heart speeches, Shard!" Mesprit giggled. I could feel their emotion bleeding out of their skin and making me happy, too— close to the happiest I'd ever been in my life— so I let go and smiled. "Maybe you weren't such a regrettable choice after all! Let's get out of here!"

The spell was broken.

I grinned. "Let's."

—

It was a white, blank room that met Mira when she finally convinced Uxie to open the door. The trek here had been long in the first place because she just wasn't used to having a single mind any longer, and her body was already starting to blur, glitch and disintegrate at its edges, so having to beg a God to be let in a room had not been ideal. The girl froze when she saw Cyrus standing next to Uxie. It was her first time actually seeing Team Galactic's leader with her own two eyes. He donned Team Galactic's uniform, had gelled, spiky blue hair and defined cheekbones that made his face look thin. His eyebrow ridge was defined, even if the hair itself was shaved, and they cast a perpetual shadow over his eyes.

"Mira Compton." His voice made her extremely uncomfortable. Somehow, it was even worse than Justin's had been. It was like speaking to a computer program, and not a human. "Let us get on with this farce."

For a few seconds, she felt scared to answer. There was this way Cyrus had of carrying himself: the straightened back, his look, his darkened eyes, the way he loomed over everything, it all had this effect where you didn't want to speak out of line, and it was stupid, because he couldn't even feel anger.

This isn't real. He's not going to sic his Pokemon on me, Mira thought with a deep breath. "Uxie. Let me set the record straight, I know there are an infinite number of questions you want to ask Arceus, but that's not what's happening here." She was using the same tactic that had brought her so close to victory last time, when uncle Ernie had been controlling Uxie, and not Cyrus. This time, her mother wasn't there to break her. "What this man desires above all else is to be a God—"

Cyrus shook his head. Just that single action had Mira nearly sowing her mouth shut, and now she finally understood how a man without emotion had built this cult. There was this magnetic property about him.

"You misunderstand me, Mira Compton," he calmly said. Or she supposed this was just how he always sounded. "Being a God is a simplification of my goals and an assumption that is bereft of your intellect."

Her intellect? Had Uncle Ernie spoken to him about—

No! Don't get lost in his game.

"I— I don't care what you want!" Mira forced out. "The crux of the matter is, you won't let Uxie ask Arceus anything. Hell, I doubt He'd even fucking answer, anyway!" When Uxie just hovered there silently, she clenched a fist. "Uxie, say something."

Knowledge tilted their head. "I am thinking. Do not disturb me."

She gulped. For a moment, she thought Uxie would open their eyes, but instead their gems began to glimmer. She was a little stumped, but that didn't last long. The most important thing was to keep talking.

"What is your plan, then?" she asked Cyrus.

"To strip the world bare from all of its inessential properties," he answered without missing a beat. Then, he looked around the white room. "Take this room. What the universe needs is a place much like this one. This place will never change. Nothing will ever happen here, unto eternity."

Mira scoffed, glancing at Uxie. They'd better be listening to this. "That's... I mean, that's just fucking awful?"

"Think about it. A world where nothing happens means a world built for me. A world without spirit or emotion. A world where I alone will rule." He looked at his hand and softly clenched it. "That is what I want."

"What about the others?" Mira asked. "What about Charon, the other Commanders, or your grunts?"

"Meaningless, worthless fodder." He shrugged. "They were never going to be a part of it in the first place."

A strange, grave sound rang out, like the shattering of a gem, and Uxie's eyes shone through their eyelids.

"I have heard enough."

Cyrus frowned. "I don't understand."

"Begone."

He disappeared in an instant, and Uxie smiled thinly at Mira.

"The lack of emotion can sometimes be a strength, but it is mostly a weakness, my dear Mira," Uxie said. "He fundamentally cannot understand, because he was born a broken man. Possibly the only one of his kind. I have analyzed him, in our short time together. His case of alexithymia is so extreme it shouldn't even be possible."

Mira didn't know what that was, but there was no time.

"We need to go."

—

In a world so vast it might as well have been endless, a place that had tried to keep her trapped everywhere she had gone, Cecilia banged her fist against the metallic door. Her arms and legs were burning and actually hurting her. It had been a part of her trial, to see if she could bear through the pain and push on in spite of everything.

"Worthless. I barely recognize you."

Meaningless.

It was all meaningless. She fell to her knees and allowed the dark emotions that constantly swirled around her head to take hold. Jealousy, regret, loss— it hurt so badly that she wanted to tear her heart out and crush it between her palms so the pain could stop. Physical harm, she could handle, but ever since she'd come back to life, it was as if her negative thoughts would always overtake the positive no matter what she tried. Thoughts that would have normally stayed intangible or that she wouldn't have acted on.

She had failed. All she could do was wait.

—

When I opened my eyes, I saw Mesprit and Uxie spinning around the rift, the vibration in the sky that was growing wider and wider. I'd characterized it as a scream before, but I knew it to be inaccurate now. It was as if the world was breathing, in and out, but it had just been so loud that I'd been mistaken. My relieved smile turned to horror when I saw that Azelf hadn't moved yet, but they were slowly, slowly beginning to glow as well. Seeing as Cecilia was still frozen in place and Maylene was holding her up, she'd...

Yeah, she either wasn't done yet or had failed. Maylene had been staring worryingly at Cynthia, and Lucario hurriedly told her to let her be and fired another blast of concentrated aura mixed with liquid metal. Now that Mesprit had slipped through Cyrus' fingers, Cynthia's Pokemon were actually churning through the barrier. Ten, twenty more seconds, maybe, and they'd break through!

Mesprit and Uxie were singing, dancing and laughing, for they were free at last, and their joy reached their sibling, slowly but surely, as they worked to free Azelf from Cyrus' influence. I wished they could do both at the same time, but I knew they were entirely focused on containing Dialga and Palkia, at the moment. I just hoped that they—

The world holds its breath and stops moving.

A God crawls out of the firmament and roars, stretching across the sky. It is too much to look at, too much to even describe, for how could a person describe Time?

One cannot. It is everything they've ever known, and everything they would ever know.

But they can witness fragments of it.