PXFire-- Creative Writing

[K'sariya]

Username: K’sariya
Team: Avalon Apostles
Entry: Fusion

Spoiler:

“He’s eaten the sun, mi’lord.”

Frozen horns capture the firelight as slumbering head raises, turns. Yellow eyes, pupiless, glow a bit brighter as he focuses on the familiar figure sitting before him in the vast cavern. His thunderous growl echoes deeply, infinitely, against the icy walls.

Slim muzzle rises and she gazes back steadily with ruby eyes, eyes that flash with the fire that swirls slowly between them. Before her, a sturdy wooden staff spins slowly in the air, fire licking at one end. Her left ear flicks. Its oversized tuft of auburn ear fur billows behind it, lagging behind the motion. The Delphox lets the silence, broken only by the crackling of the flames, settle for a few more moments. Then--

“Would you like to see?” Her voice echoes in his thoughts again, softer this time. One of his feet takes a heavy step forward, its three claws grating against the elevated pillar of ice that he rests upon. He takes a look around the fire-lit dome of ice surrounding them, gazing apprehensively at the glassy darkness beyond, then long neck cranes his ice-plated head low, toward her.

Voice so guttural, gravelled, and deep that when it booms out into the cavern, it’s almost indistinguishable from his previous growls. “Yes.”

She closes her eyes. Psychic spin of the flame gradually slows, then reverses. It picks up speed until the disc of devouring flame forms shadows, then shapes, then images within its portal. Kyurem takes another step, cold heart heavy with dread.

A lion crafted from golden steel, mane bursting like the sun, thunders with long strides across the darkness. Thick black armor locks around pure blue eyes like an obsidian mask. Shadowed arms, clawed like wings, spread from its similarly shackled back. The beast stops in the black void, swings its head from side to side, as if looking for something, then brings cerulean eyes to meet its viewers’.

The Delphox gasps, eyes flying open as she brings furred arms clapped close about the fire. It extinguishes and plunges them into darkness. Through the cavern crafted from his own icy essence, he feels her paws slip, and the ice behind her erupts to catch her fall backwards. He feels her catch herself on the chunk, though her stick clatters to the ground. The beast rumbles, and this time, there’s something comforting about the sound.

He knows what he must do. “Summon Reshiram,” comes the order, as Kyurem turns to lunge from the platform. His landing shakes the massive cavern of ice.

“I don’t think she’ll--”

“Now, Kichonne.”

Unflinchingly, she glares, then slowly lowers herself down upon her crossed legs. She retrieves her staff, takes a deep breath, then exhales flame gently onto the limb. Palm holds the staff outward and it drifts, weightlessly, still for a moment before it begins to spin…

***

His domain parts for him, ice crackling and popping as it seems to peel away from his very gaze, tunneling him up, up, upward. In the pitch black darkness, he doesn’t even realize that he’s close to the outside until he hears the low drone of the howling wind. It echoes down the path he’s left in his wake, hollow and mournful like the haunting calls of wind whispering through a seashell. He presses on, and opens the tunnel to the weather. Snow blasts his features, and he takes the blow without flinching, only pausing to realize fully how much worse things had become. He steps out into the blizzard created by his own domain.

Whiteouts, the humans had once called these storms. Snow so thick and driving that it was all you could see, unable to tell up from down and left from right. But now, it was only black, without an ounce of light for even the snow to reflect.

Nostrils set on draconic maw flare, then from them bursts a snort of air. In the pitch, the blizzard recoils from his form, exploding away from him as if it’d been struck. It casts itself out a mile, its whirling edges waiting far in the distance, hiding his domain from the outside while giving him a clear, funneled view up into the sky within.

There’s nothing. It’s still black, like tar. If it weren’t for the roar of the wind moving to the distance, he wouldn’t even be able to tell that he’d done anything at all. It makes sense, though--without Solgaleo to chase the sun, the moon had no brilliance to reflect, leaving a dark and empty sky. Even if Lunala were foolish enough to herd the moon and make herself vulnerable to the light-devouring Necrozma, there wouldn’t be any light to shine. Kyurem’s yellow eyes narrow, adjusting again to the light just enough to be able to see the faint, almost nonexistent twinkle of the stars. He’s surprised that Necrozma hadn’t eaten, too.

Far off, an orange glow illuminates the towering wall of the blizzard, a lick of fire blasting through it. Good. Another fiery glow dances on his own icy wings behind him. Kichonne emerges behind him, ablaze staff clenched in her paws.

”She’s here,” comes the telepathic message, dryly. Kyurem’s underbitten jaw juts forward, sets hard with his resolve.

The pure white dragon alights before them, wingarms scattering powdered snow. Blue gaze glares at them beneath her long, split crest, its ends billowing behind her. Her light emanates from her thick, cylindrical tail, glowing with fire that bursts from between the tail’s containing bands. The fresh snow melts a bit beneath her two legs from the heat.

In the cold, steam pours from heated form. ”Kyurem. You’re sure that we’re safe here?”

He nods. ”The blizzard protects your light from his view, as long as you were careful outside.”

Reshiram gives a soft snort of derision. If things were less dire, perhaps she’d be more insulted by the implication that she’d be the one who would get them killed. She knows why she’s here, but she asks anyway. ”You called?”

”We have to stop him.”

Reshiram’s tail flares more fiercely as her expectations are confirmed. ”Why we? You know it’s the humans who woke him. Let them face their own consequences, let them stop him themselves.“

”They don’t have that kind of power.”

”And we do?”

Silence.

“...perhaps not,” he ventures gruffly, “but is this—“ Heavy skull swings to gesture at the imprisoning clouds that whirl around them in the distance. “—how you want to live?” If there was one thing that he knew Reshiram was afraid of, it was darkness, and begin consumed by it.

The thin lines of Reshiram’s mouth twisted downward. She sighs.

“Alright, then.” Head lowers, snowy wings folding back against her sides. Eyes drift close, then one opens to peer at him. “Try not to get us both killed, Kyurem.”

He nods. Stance widens, bracing his heavy form against the ground. Icy appendages on his back contort, cocking forward. Brilliant blue electricity sparks between the icicles at their ends, lunging across his form. He closes his eyes. Streaks of frozen light surge forward and arc about the other dragon’s large form. They tighten about her, constricting, and sap the fire from her blazing tail, pulling it back to Kyurem.

Their bodies begin to glow, the light intensifying into an all-devouring light, brighter than this world has seen in a long time, so bright that it pierces the thick wall of snow and clouds curled about them. When it fades, only one remains.

Kyurem’s stance has straightened, his stature grown taller. Left arm has extended to one with a white-feathered wing, the left half of his crown flowing back in a billowing plume. His right blossoms into a bracer of ice.

A horrendous screech tears the world asunder, a cry so piercing and wrenching that even Kyurem White cannot help but flinch. Heart thunders within frozen chest at the sound. He turns, slashing his arm out in Kichonne’s direction. She gives a knowing nod, then begins whirling her flaming staff more fiercely. A funnel of flame whirls from it, blasting through the snow and down to the neglected grasses beneath.

The ring of fire circles them. Kyurem dips his head to her in thanks, and then she withdraws into the shelter of the cave. He closes the entrance behind her.

Steel lion appears above, its steel and obsidian body glimmering in the firelight. It touches down in the snow several yards away. The light of their fusion had drawn a visitor.

Kyurem stares into the glossy black mask, so smooth and crystalline that it reflects his features back to him. He stares at the mixture of his and Reshiram’s expressions, a rare mixture of emotions coursing through him. They would either save the human race from themselves, or they would die trying, though he’d be foolish to think that they were doing this for fully selfish reasons.

”Your creator would be disappointed in you,” Kyurem says. The great steel lion gives a snort of contempt. The sound rings and echoes clearly within glassy mask.

”I am my own creator.” That same screech from earlier echoes beneath lilting, alien voice, quieter, but still enough to make Kyurem’s ears ring.

Here, staring at the beast that has devoured Solgaleo against his will, Kyurem sees that it is this that he could have become. Had Arceus not intervened when the humans had fused the power of the DNA splicer into him, he might have become just like Necrozma: hungry, insatiable, tearing the world asunder. Somewhere within, he feels pity for the alien creature, the alien creature that is not so different from him.

He sees himself reflected in obsidian mask in the moment before it charges.

Kyurem’s foot stomps heavily on the snow, summoning ice from beneath. Pillars rip from the ground in front of him, blocking the lion’s lunge, but not for long—it swings its black steel tail into the pillar as it lands. The ice shatters, shards flying, but Kyurem doesn’t flinch. He parts his maw and from it ripples a roar.

The sound booms across the snow, echoing back on the distant walls. Necrozma takes a step back, its own crystalline body reflecting the Noble Roar painfully about it. It’s then that Kyurem ends the calm, and all at once the blizzard comes rushing in once more, roaring like a beast finally let loose.

In the cover of the whiteout, things fall dark. He shrouds himself in snow as a soft orange glow whisks over his body, a deep burgundy aura wrapping about him as he charges the Ice Burn.

A blast of metal bursts through the snow. The Mirror Shot cracks square against his shoulder. Icy left bracer shatters, its shards ripped away by the wind. He reels with a cry, upper body curling forward in pain for only a moment before black shadow streaks from the darkness.

Kyurem coats his left wing arm with steel just in time to raise it up to shield his body. The lion collides with it, metallic mane braced against Kyurem’s wing. The force drives the ice dragon’s feet into the snow, but he feels himself slipping, faltering, sliding back. Necrozma surges forward, breaking the guard with a toss of his head, sending him flying hard onto his back and tail. He lunges forward to finish the downed dragon, but pillars of ice and rock erupt once more beneath the leaping creature. The ring of ice on metal screeches out as the glacier impacts the alien’s stomach. Necrozma lands on the snow with a thud.

The dragon stumbles upright, orange glow sweeping about him once more, and this time, he makes it—the Ice Burn forms a ball of freezing light in front of him, and he launches it at Dusk Mane. In the glow, he sees the lion rise, its maw gape—

—and then the ball has stopped in front of him, and it’s shrinking as Dusk Mane Necrozma devours the light.

Stunned, Kyurem summons the blizzard’s full force. The wind screams as it whirls snow around them, but the alien creature isn’t deterred. Kyurem charges forward, the fire of a Fusion Flare erupting from his tail, charging what he hopes will be the only thing that can stop the inevitable—

Necrozma reaches the threshold, and explodes with blinding light.

”Now, Kyurem!” Kichonne’s voice thunders in his head.

Kyurem blasts blue-hot fire through the creature as it ascends.

The blizzard clears, and the world, illuminated with light, grows still.

Ultra Necrozma hovers, its tall, spindly-winged form seemingly frozen in time above them, stories tall. It’s very being, formed with unbridled light, drifts in the air, split in two by the fiery blow that had torn it asunder mid-burst. Slowly, the two pieces slide apart, and then in another explosion, the beast imparts the light that it had stolen back to the world.

Where Necrozma had been standing, Solgaleo opens his eyes, and where Kyurem had stood, he stands now with Reshiram, leaning heavily on the white dragon beside him.

The sun-chaser staggers to his feet. Blue eyes turn upon the two dragons before him, and the creature, ever prideful, offers only a begrudging nod of thanks before taking an unsteady step, then bounding away.

“You almost lost,” Reshiram observes lowly. Kyurem gives a soft snort, bumping his head against her stomach before pushing carefully away from her.

”But I didn’t.”

They’re interrupted by a light in the sky as the sun finally rises.

Other:

Spoiler:

I’ve been on a Necrozma kick recently, so a light/dark theme was a perfect way for me to fulfill that. Kyurem/Necrozma are parallel in their fusing powers. Reshiram acts out of fear of the darkness, and Necrozma out of fear of the light.

Sad I had to rush this in the end to meet the deadline (had to make a long drive yesterday, and was carsick the whole time so didn’t get to work on it like I wanted to). But hopefully it’s not too bad. Thanks for hosting <3