Elysia
06-12-2015, 11:25 PM
{what the stars said}
She was born dead. That was the strange thing. She was the same all over—too pale, too quiet, freezing in the snow.
He was born dead, too. That was the stranger thing. Even though there was no reason for him to know, separated as they were on opposite sides of a vast mountain—they both opened their too pale, too quiet, too silver eyes simultaneously and began to live.
And, once upon a time, they never stopped living thereafter. That was the strangest thing. Time rolled on, the stars trudged above them in the skies, empires fell—and so they endured, furiously upright as they wandered across the face of an Earth that had simply forgotten to let them die.
“We met before.”
The Rover pulls up short, sinking knee-high into the snow as she does so. This man isn’t the first person to tell her that she looks familiar; no matter how far she roams, she’s bound to cross someone’s path more than once, and there’s something unforgettable in her eyes that her fellow travelers hone in on.
There’s something unforgettable in his eyes as well, though, that cuts short her usual response. “Unlikely,” she almost replies, but the words die on her tongue as she studies him. It’s hard to tell from this angle, but the thick fur looks like the beartic she’s been trailing all winter. In his right hand, he holds a small dagger, tapered and conical and like nothing she has never seen before—carved from bone, perhaps, unlike her rough-hewn mamoswine tusk. Above all, though, she cannot help but be drawn to the set of stantler horns mounted on his head; the way that the tines catch the dying sunlight makes them seem like a second set of eyes hovering a foot on either side of his head. Hypnotic.
She has the nagging feeling, however, that this man is something she has seen before, and that makes her stop and wonder for a moment longer. “Unlikely,” she says anyway, and turns to leave, but something stops her halfway. “Your head-covering.” She cannot understand where it has come from, and there is something driving her to find out. “How did you—” she struggles for the little-used word “—craft it?”
He looks up at the antlers as well. “These?” he asks, pointing, but then stops short, biting his lip. His breath freezes in the cold.
She understands. He doesn’t want to give up the secret of his handiwork without payment. Sacrifice, she thinks, in the same way that her father taught her to thank the mamoswine as it bleeds out into the snow. Its life for theirs. The man in front of her in his luxurious skins has a secret, and she must sacrifice something to learn it. Her secret for his. A price she’s willing to pay.
“I know of how the wolf-guardian of the North Wind begins the snowstorms.” The Rover knows this story well; her mother recounted it to her many times many winters ago.
There is a glint in the man’s eyes, and his brow furrows in interest. “Very well,” he says, beginning to trudge toward a nearby rocky outcropping, where the howling wind is less harsh, and gestures for her to follow. “Tell me of this story. I shall tell you the secret of this decoration of mine.”
When she sees him again, neither of them are a day older, even though many winters have passed. He looks up idly from his meditation in the center of the cave, the rugged palms of his hands facing toward the rocky ceiling. He pauses to think. He recognizes, and then his rugged palms clench involuntarily. “We met before, certainly,” he says at last. His eyes betray nothing even as his breath freezes in the heavy, frigid air.
The Rover dips her head in agreement. “Yes.” She took his secret and struck the stantler bone again and again until it hammered itself into a sharp tip, and the knife has yet to fail her. “You treat me too kindly to be a stranger.” And his gift has treated her kindly as well; she roams the mountains with her stories in tow, learning and trading secrets as she wanders. There is something strange about these lands, something beautiful, and it fascinates her.
She has taken one of the creatures of the snow to follow her—glaceon, she calls it, because she loves the way the word rolls off of her tongue. Their friendship is tentative, and her companion often prefers the company of the blizzards to whatever support the Rover can provide, but she has learned much from this blue, fox-like creature that nimbly calls the mountain its home. She watches the way that the monster walks, lightly on its feet and hardly leaving a footprint in the snow, and she tries to imitate it now, as she treads carefully around this man, the only human who has stayed the same even as the world around them grows. She is fascinated by him, yes, but a little afraid, if only because she cannot understand him yet. “Winter likes you well.”
He shrugs and nods his acknowledgement. The Rover tells the truth, as she often does—he has gathered the strongest hunters he can find in these hostile snowdrifts, and together they have endured. Thrived, even. They have gathered here in these caves, high enough on the cliffs that they are safe from most of the monsters that haunt the mountains. When he works with others, who are like him and in so many ways unlike him, he has realized that he can accomplish far more than he could ever do alone. They work for him. “Things are better.”
They both ponder that for a moment, and then the Rover speaks: “I travelled far and learned much.” This, too, is true. She has roamed, as is in her blood, and has descended from the slopes of this mountain only to climb the hundreds more that rose behind it, until she found a place where the sun began to melt the snow from the rocks.
“I enjoy your stories. Have you any to share?”
The Rover again dips her head, a motion she has learned from her companions in the sunnier lands. “I was taught the secret of trapping the warmth of the sun,” she says, and smiles—another movement she has learned from the sun-lands. Of all the secrets she has learned in her journeying so far, this is by far the most fascinating. Strange creatures haunt the slopes of those mountains, mountains that belch blazing heat and that hide flaming, fox-like creatures with faces that resemble her glaceon’s. Magma, they say in the sun-lands, and flareon. Fire, they call it, and she is all-too-glad to share.
“And in return?” the man asks, gesturing for her to sit across from him in the worn rocks of their cave.
She pauses, bowing her antlered head for a moment. She loves her secrets, and she hoards them fiercely, but their power is never diluted if she shares them. Her stories are meant to be spread rather than caged, and rarely does she ask for a price. “A night in your company and food to sustain me will be sufficient.”
He arches one eyebrow, perhaps surprised at her price, but he shouts for one of his men to bring in the flank of the mightyena they had just slain that afternoon. The flesh is almost still warm from its lifeblood, and he offers it to the Rover, still dripping. “Take, and share with us. Tonight, while we may savor your company, you are my esteemed guest.”
“Thank you, old friend,” she says, and they exchange a glance that no one else in the narrow cave understands.
The snows melt and recede into the rocks they once hid, and still she is the Rover. She walks through the fields of wheat without purpose, gazing firmly up at the vast expanse of blue above her. It has been many winters since she lived under the furious stormclouds of the snow-mountains—so many winters, in fact, that she can hardly call them winters, and the rocks have yielded to oceans of sand beneath her wandering feet. Still, the blue sky fascinates her—there is something so enclosing about it during the day, to make her feel safe as it pins the sun above her to keep her warm and alive. At night, it is even more beautiful, an inky expanse of darkness dotted with tiny pinpricks of light.
She hopes to reach them one day.
“You there! Halt!”
The Rover looks up, unalarmed, at the tall, spear-wielding, dark-skinned man who stands before her. “You resemble the description of a woman our clan leader has decreed as a vagabond criminal. Do you deny it?”
The Rover cannot help but laugh. This clan leader is bold but misguided; if she endured fourteen thousand winters wandering the snow-mountains, she can endure whatever punishment he has intended. Still, she cannot help but smile at the spear this servant holds comfortably in his hand. Stantler bone is no longer the material of choice, as it once was; rather, they have learned to tame the fires of the monsters of the mountains. Everything gains strength from fire, she thinks. She decides to believe that she draws her strength from the stars and sun, blotches of fire that hang above her and guide her on her travels. The people she meets on her travels draw warmth during the nights, even though they have forgotten precisely how harsh winter’s bite can be. The land itself draws its lifeblood from the sun, baking itself into waves of sand that roil in frozen motion to the edges of the horizon. And even the wood of this man’s spear has drawn resilience from the fires of his strange flareon, their foxes dipped in flame.
“I cannot,” she says, and allows the spear-wielder to take her back to his village.
Their settlements fascinate her because they are all so different. Here, in the sun-lands by the plains, they have taken to developing a precarious existence with the monsters of the desert. Everything hinges around trade. They trade brief encounters with the monsters with the promises of meat or hidden fruit—hunts, again, but these are more primal and less fair. Before, she would attempt to wrestle down a beartic alone, clutching the tusk of the mamoswine. Now, the humans travel in packs together, and use nets and spears and arrows to down their prey from afar. Still, it is lopsided. Sometimes they all return alive with their plunder. Sometimes they do not. Everything hinges around trade—life for life, still. It is a society that he would like.
The Ruler sits impassive on his stone of throne as his spear-wielder unceremoniously throws the Rover down at the foot of the dais. She catches herself just as she skids to his feet and looks up. Their silvery eyes glint like stars as their gazes meet, and she cannot help but smile even as she bows her head. “Vagabond criminal, you called me?”
The Ruler laughs from his throne and motions for her to rise with his reed scepter. “It is far harder to keep track of you now that the world has grown so big, old friend. But I have so many eyes.”
The spear-wielder in the corner of the room pales in horror as he realizes the contempt with which he has treated his ruler’s ‘old friend.’ As quietly as possible, he attempts to blend into the sandy wall and pretend that he no longer exists.
The Rover arches one eyebrow—an expression she learned from him, now that she thinks about it—“When was it that we last spoke?”
“We crossed paths in Mesopotamia, I think,” the Ruler replies, distractedly gesturing for his guards to leave them in peace. “You gave me some fascinating advice about agriculture that has served me well since.”
“I remember your village there. I am glad to see you took the advice I gave you about digging tunnels from the river for your water.” She pauses, studying the area around her. The Rover nods her head toward the carvings around the walls, a far cry from the cave art that she once helped create when she still wore the horns of a stantler. There is even blue stone inlaid in the walls, something borrowed, something foreign, something new. “You are the Head Scribe in these desert parts, I see. Time still treats you well.”
The Ruler shrugs. “In these lands, they treat me like a god. These mortals have a quaint fascination with recording their history, and I can help them, so they respect me. I thank you for this glyph-based writing, though. It is at least somewhat easy to manage, although ultimately quite troublesome. I cannot imagine why they would be so obsessed with being remembered.” With any luck, perhaps, they would construct him one of their fascinating pyramids after he moved on.
“Perhaps because they are actually considered about ceasing to live,” she replies. She remembers when her parents and those who knew her truly ceased to live, but only barely. It has been so long that, sad as it seems, their lack of continued existence is just as commonplace to her as is the scorching sun. “This seems to be a pressing concern for the rest of the mortals.”
“Have you never considered why we are different from the rest?” the Ruler asks, looking contemptuously down from his throne while still showing genuine interest.
The look in her eyes is the one she always wears before she begins a story for him. Centuries have passed, but nothing has changed. She will tell him the legends she has learned, and perhaps he will grace her with a gift in return. “I have indeed sought the gods. Have you never considered why it is I wander?”
“Egypt. You called yourself Nehut, the Head Scribe, and, yes, they did bury you in a pyramid,” the Rover says without looking up at the man who rides atop a speckled sawsbuck which prances back and forth in front of her. Even though her arms are tied behind her back with vine and one of his guards holds an obsidian knife to her throat, she feels no fear. There are so many more things to notice. “You took my advice about the agriculture.” Her leafeon vanished into the forest when the warriors came for her, but she’s not worried. It is capable of looking after itself, even as humans begin to tame more and more of the monsters that were once so foreign. “You took your love of pyramids and thrones with you, even if it did not quite translate so easily across the land bridge.” Here, the stone structures are wreathed in trees instead of sand, and they are meant to sacrifice the living rather than entomb the dead, but she sees the similarity. “And you took it upon yourself to follow me here. Are you so curious about where we came from that you would abandon your throne in the desert?”
The Ruler—in this time and place, he is Quetzel, priest of the sky god Rayquaza—arches one eyebrow. “You should remember your place and hold your tongue,” he remarks lightly. “Currently, my soldiers are waiting for my command to cut your heart out and sacrifice it to the sky serpent.”
The Rover, too, responds in kind. “The usual price, then? My life, and in exchange, I shall tell you of the legends of the true gods, the ones who formed the land and sea, the ones who control our space and time, the ones who control our life and death. The true sculptors of this shrine of ours, if you will.”
“You have grown poetic since we last spoke.”
“It comes with the storytelling.”
She knows already that her bargain is too tempting to refuse. She has followed the wanderlust here, to the heart of the forests, and she found the central tree that pulses with life, and the great god who lies in hibernation, ensconced in the blossom at the center of its tree. And the Rover knows, as surely as she knows she is alive, that this tree to which her leafeon lead her is the start of her life, and this god is the reason for her continued existence. She cannot fathom why, nor does she try to, but she found herself hypnotized by the life-granting spell in its antlers just as the headdress of the stantler once fascinated her so long ago.
She knows, even though she does not yet know why, where and how she and he came to be.
The Ruler nods. “Your heart for your story.”
It may surprise him to know that they are not the only true gods who roam this land.
The monsters, she realizes, are just as pivotal to her life and her existence as the mortals who share her physical form are. She only realizes it, however, when the mortals construct a shrine to them, the Rover and the Ruler, although their names are different here. The immortal hunter twins, bows in hand to welcome the night and day. Coiled around their feet stand stone visages of their current companions, a polar opposite pair of foxes, day and night. Pale pink like the dawn and deep black like the night, intertwined but forever apart.
“Artemis and Apollo, they call us here,” he says, strolling up to her with hands hidden in his flowing robes. His footsteps echo clearly in the marble hall, as does his voice. “They never seem to get your face quite right, although I’ve tried.”
He’s right, of course. The sister’s face is carved with the same exquisite skill as the rest of the statue, but it seems blank and devoid of detail. The brother’s statue is a perfect replica of its namesake, perhaps for obvious an obvious reason: “Unlike you, I cannot bring myself to reside here inside the temple of Delphi for the mortals to learn my face, old friend.”
The Ruler claps her on the shoulder, one eyebrow arched as always. “Perhaps you should try it. The mortals truly know how to make one feel like a god, but I grow tired of skulking in the shadows, pretending to know the future. I shall live for the present. Perhaps I shall try for king, soon.”
“But I find that I love travelling these lands so much. There are so many strange creatures to see, even still. And the mortals always make something new,” the Rover responds, even though she has learned by now that he will never understand. “How, after all, would you have ever learned of the strange creatures of the western mountains who bequeathed with the steel that won you your kingdom?”
The Ruler smiles at that, and knows in his heart that her words are true. She has brought him the knowledge he needed to forge his glory; he sits on a throne of her stories and shall always owe her that, just as he has granted her her life time and time again. Like the day and night twins, they are diminished without the other, one always on the other’s heels. “Your gift of the alphabet that you brought from across the sea was most appreciated, as well. Do you have any new lessons for me, old friend? We are gods, now.” Laughing at his own joke, he points to their stone visages and imitates the stance of Apollo. “I can grant you anything you require.”
The question is hardly real; she always has something new. Her price, even, does not change. “I would like a day’s rations and your fastest steed,” the Rover begins. I do not know which of the creatures in this area your people here have chosen to domesticate now.” But they have done surprisingly well in taming the monsters of the mountains and making them their own.
“Very well. Tell me about this country in the East that you have visited. What possibly could they offer me?”
He speaks with such derision about the most skilled shipbuilders in the world, but he soon learns better than to mock them.
She has never killed for sport before. Even when she hunted back in the snows, it was for survival. An exchange: their life for hers.
Here, though, she can feel her blood roaring in her ears for the first time, and it thrills her even as it disgusts. The man in front of her is short-lived compared to her anyway, and he cannot possibly outlast her on this long trek of endurance that she calls life, so what difference does it make?
It makes all the difference. She knows that. There is something about him that she will always understand but never have, no matter how hard he tries. He, like his mortal brethren, is undeniably curious, and with that wandering mind comes freedom. One day, they will need not be damned to wander like she is, nor consumed to rule like her companion. They will need both, so they will thirst for neither.
But now, it is sacrifice. His life for hers.
The Rover seeks an opening. She always seeks to learn from each mortal she encounters, but this is different. Now, she wishes to learn his weakness.
There is a slight tremor in his right hand when he swings his sword, one that even the enormous stone behemoth by his side—she believes they call it rhyperior in this time—cannot mask. It roars and swings a clubbed tail in her direction, but her umbreon has it under control and blasts it back with a wave of compressed, dark energy. She kicks the sword out of the mortal’s hand and dodges the rhyperior’s fierce lunch, feeling the sharp whoosh of air as its horn barely misses her cheek.
They are frozen for a moment, hovering in time, and then her umbreon recalls the action and lashes out, its tail coated in thick steel plating as it somersaults downward, aiming for the chink in the rhyperior’s armor between its left arm and its torso.
The Rover remembers when she first brought the knowledge of iron to this section of the world, centuries ago, and she smiles at the thought.
She tastes iron, too, as the mortal tries to swing a punch at her and she doesn’t quite dodge out of the way, but no matter.
In the arena around her, the crowd has cheered. Unintentionally or not, the four of them are performing in one of the most exhilarating fights for the day, and the Rover is trying her best to make it at least entertaining.
Her umbreon switches course at the last moment and brings the flat of its tail crashing down into the mortal’s weak arm, sending his sword flying. At the same time, she brings her own sword through the rhyperior’s horn, and the fire-hardened steel makes surprisingly quick work of the stony appendage.
But she is already moving forward even as her umbreon lunges to finish off the weakened umbreon. The Rover approaches the mortal, who is downed and apart from his companion, sword in her free hand.
Without hesitation, she drives her blade into his throat, and he dies instantly.
His life for hers. Sacrifice.
The cheering crowd quiets at once as it realizes what she has done.
“Who dares take the life of a gladiator without first asking for favor of the Sun Emperor?” an enraged voice roars out from a raised viewing box shrouded in purple velvet. From here, in the sandy pit with the clearing dust and bloodlst, she can look past the stunned crowd for long enough to see his livid features and the outline of the pink espeon by his side. So he is sentimental as well about their godhood in Greece, and he has also fulfilled his vows of obtaining a kingdom.
The Rover removes her helmet and smiles fearlessly back up at him, silvery eyes glinting as she sees the recognition dawn across his face.
You will owe me for this. Even from here, she can see the thought form in his eyes as the Ruler sits back in his throne. She will not truly owe him for this, as execution would merely inconvenience her, but the point stands. “Ah, I shall pardon this lowly warrior. Even peasants make mistakes in the heat of battle.”
Later, behind closed doors, she shares a strange concept: monotheism, a world ruled by the single God, Arceus, and the Ruler, laughing, threatens to crucify her if she dares usurp him.
“Why did you spread my finest silk-producing butterfree across the plains?” he asks, one hand stroking the pink, fairy-like fox at his side. The sylveon mewls in protest, supporting its master. “They were my income here. The nobles adore the silk products we can make, and you’ve robbed me,” the Ruler says. He almost sounds angry.
“I merely wished to spread the beauty of their existence for the rest of the world to see,” the Rover responds without remorse. Even though she hates herself for saying it, she cannot help but add, “Have you not considered how much money—and do not deny it, you do love it so very much—you could make if you established a trade route between your kingdom here in the east and your former holdings in the west?”
“For a century?” the Rover asks, one eyebrow raised. “Is my knowledge worth so much, or your money so little?”
“For a century,” the Ruler confirms, one jewel-encrusted finger tapping out an empty rhythm on the edge of his gold-gilded throne. “I will fund your explorations for the next century if you just give me this.”
“I have walked the lands for millennia, old friend,” the Rover says with a small smile. “I have traversed route between the land you call India and your kingdom here in Spain more times than you have churches in your city.”
The Ruler stops his tapping and raises a hand. “I know that you have grown weary of the land-pathways, having walked on them so much,” he says. Little does he know that she will never tire of the ceaseless wheel of human innovation as it splays out beneath her feet. Almost out of habit, one eyebrow arches. “So have I. It slows down trade immensely. I want you to find me this route by way of water. The ocean is still new to you, is it not?”
“Indeed.”
Satisfied, the Ruler bids for one of his servants to bring forward her supplies. The usual. A steed, and supplies for a single day. She and the watery-fox that his Spaniards have called vaporeon vanish into the ocean within an hour.
The electric lighting of the museum fascinates her, perhaps more than it should. Recently invented by a clever genius in America, and brought across the sea by the Rover, they blink like little stars. And yet the Rover is still amazed with the speed at which an idea can travel across the world. With the full power of the flying-monsters harnessed to their disposal, they no longer need rely on her feet to learn. Gone are the days when she could wear her antlers and bring legends to the world.
Books and learning have replaced her. She knew this day would come, even back when she was fighting for her life in the Roman’s gladiator pits. Ever since she saw the first humans in the deserts of Sumeria playing with fire, she understood that they would one day need no gods. She isn’t even a god.
So she finds herself here, visiting the plaque that details the life of the lonely woman and her jolteon who were able to light the world, squinting at the grainy, smudged oil-painting whose features are hardly intelligible.
“They never quite get your face right, do they?” he asks, strolling up behind her. He wears the mortal’s latest invention proudly—pants—hands tucked in their pockets, and his shining black shoes still echo in the exhibition hall.
“I would rather not stick around long enough for them to learn,” the Rover responds.
For once, they are at a loss for words.
“They are losing their need for us,” she says at last, speaking the thoughts that have been weighing on her mind. “They do not need me to teach them, and they do not need you to rule them. Have you spent long in this quaint little country? They speak of this concept called democracy. Consent of the governed.”
The Ruler’s eyebrow arches, as it always does, but this time it soars higher than it ever has. “They always need me to rule, even if they no longer wish to learn your peddler’s tricks. They will always need me,” he says. There is a slight hint of derision in his voice, hardly detectable to all but the trained, and she is trained. “War is coming, I fear. I do not mean for it to, but I think I am powerless to stop it.” They both are.
She has no story to tell him in exchange that he does not already know. And besides, he has only told her what she already knows, as well.
The trenches are filled with smoke, screams, and the blood of the dead.
The Rover is in hell.
The war to end all wars currently shows no sign of ending all wars.
“Dugtrio squad detects seismic activity in sector twelve! Incoming enemy!” the sergeant screams, just before the wall of the trench before him erupts into a shower of rubble. Rocks fly in every direction as a steel-headed mole rolls from the trench, its claws tucked ahead of it to form the tines of its drill.
One of the survivors, blood streaming from his right eye, proceeds to empty the magazine of his gun into the excadrill’s body, only to have his struggle ended by a reflected bullet that raced away from the sleek armor of the creature’s midsection.
The Rover rolls out of the way as one of the other soldiers throws something toward the monster, which looks up from mauling the corpse of a fallen mortal a second too late to spin out of the grenade’s blast radius.
Her ears screaming in protest from the explosion, the Rover vaults out of the trench, ignoring the way that her uniform shreds on the barbed wire that litters the ground. She’s already moving even as the shrieks begin to piece their way through her receding deafness. At first, she thinks the anguished shrieks are byproducts of the explosion; as her head clears, however, she knows they are the unmistakable cries of the dying.
A single glance at the trench behind her, which an enemy weezing has already begun filling with noxious, purple smoke, tells her all she needs to know.
“Look what we have wrought, old friend,” she murmurs to the war-torn sky, even though she knows for certain that he would never be this close to the scene of carnage. Her revolution was known as an industrial one; his is one that burns. Their world has outgrown thrones, but the Ruler always knows where the seat of power really stands.
And here, in a trench filled with soldiers who are rapidly turning into corpses, nothing stands save for the Rover.
“You told me that the last war would end this fighting,” the Rover says, barely keeping her anger in check. She cannot remember the last time she was this angry, or even angry at all, and the fire threatens to consume her. “And yet here you are, beginning this bloodshed again. How far will you go for power?”
“As far as I must,” the Ruler replies stiffly. “They still need me.”
“They have grown greater than us. I will help them stop you at every turn.” It is not a question. It is a promise. She lost her purpose when they finished mapping out the Earth together, but she can forge a new one. She brought them their secrets and nurtured their trades, and now she will exchange her purposes, as she always has.
He doesn’t bring himself to respond aloud, perhaps out of politeness, or perhaps out of a tiny modicum of shame for what is to come. Instead, he points with a single hand toward the window.
His eyebrows do not arch. “But you are late, old friend, for once.”
The Rover frowns but approaches the glass, where she expects to see the gentle sun, her guiding star, rising over the sleepy countryside.
When she thinks back, she wonders what she would’ve done with those extra handfuls of moments had she reacted faster. Perhaps she could’ve saved a few. Perhaps. But, really, she doesn’t know if there was ever anything she could’ve done.
After all, she’s had decades, even centuries—millennia, perhaps—to stop the Ruler from reaching this point. A few more moments would never have been enough. Squinting against the star-splattered darkness spread out against the window, she realizes they are hours too early for the dawn.
Then, she understands it all. She understands what he means to do, how little the mortals mean to him, how many he is willing to sacrifice so he can remain the Ruler. She has lost her title of the Rover, but she would never dream of—
Finally, she sees the light, but it definitely isn’t what she expected.
The quiet countryside of Japan is burned into her eyes in a blast of light, and then it recedes into nothingness as the explosion travels outward and consumes them both.
“I should thank you, you know,” the Rover says with biting sarcasm, after she has t[/own open the double doors to his ‘domain’ in an abandoned grocery store, littered with scorched tins and bits of lead. Even after he has personally ended the world, he still has the audacity to give himself a throne. There is no laughter in her voice anymore, no smile in her eyes, and she can hardly look at him straight. Nor will she be able to do so again, she thinks, not after he ended the war that was meant to end all wars.
“I didn’t mean to,” he lies.
“I had feared that the world had grown tired of me, that it no longer needed to adventure, that all the new discoveries had been discovered. They had almost reached the stars before you blasted them back into the dust,” the Rover says, her smile so sad that it is invisible. “And then you give me another one of your gifts. You take the knowledge I give you and you defile it. Even the knowledge of our creator, the life-deer who hid itself in the eternal forest in the Mayan ruins, is not sacred to you.” Her voice shakes. “And, as your gift, you wipe out the entire world I surveyed. All of the lands, you choose to reshape. Almost all of the creatures, you turn to dust, either to fuel your weapon or in the aftermath. Most of the mortals, you destroy. That is your gift to me. Shall I tell you a story in return?” She mocks him this time, but he cannot argue.
“I’m sorry.”
The Rover turns to walk away. “I shall wander again for many thousands of years, I think, thanks to your gift. I have to rebuild.”
The Ruler looks at her for the first time. Their shared silvery eyes are mirrors of each other, now, both filled with burning regret coupled with insatiable determination.
“I am already wandering in penance for my crime, old friend. Please—”
The Rover cuts him off, the Ruler of dust, her anger sharper than the iron she once taught him how to find from the hide of the aggron, now extinct. “Wander. Perhaps it will teach you something, as it once taught me. They name you after the ashes you left in the wake of your weapon. They call you Az, now, do they not?”
The Rover strides in. “Ash, they call you now. Champion. I never thought you bold enough to embrace the destruction.”
“I didn’t expect to see you here. I thought you were off somewhere, tinkering with your Pokédex project.”
“I put it in the hands of a fellow roamer. That aside, I didn’t expect you to wait so long to return to your throne, but perhaps I should have known. A thousand years a nomad is hardly enough to temper an arrogant god.”
“Could we not return to the time when we were friends?”
“I see you gathering your forces, corrupting the League I strove to create. If the Indigo Plateau falls, that will only be another empire of mortals you destroyed. I will not let that happen anymore. Bring your Gym Leaders. Bring your Elite Four. Bring your Champion. I will stop you at every turn, and, when the mortals are strong enough and no longer need me, they will destroy you as well.”
“I should’ve let the Giratina destroy you,” the Rover whispers.
“Cynthia, they call you now. Seventy thousand years, and you finally have a name I can use. And I see you’ve taken on my old title. Cynthia, Sinnoh’s Champion. Have you turned to ruling rather than roving, my old friend?”
“Names mean nothing to us. You go by Cyrus, now, and in eighty years, if I am successful, Cyrus's legacy will be forgotten. The humans don’t need to be ruled. They move on from their conquerors. They rise from the ashes. It was never our place. We are not gods, nor were we meant to be.”
“I wished to escape this world, nothing more. Why do you thwart me?”
“You wished to destroy it, and to take the humans with you. I swore to help them, and I shall.”
“But you will not destroy me yourself. Do you still value our relationship, old friend? Do you still feel guilt because I saved your life so many times?”
“I do not destroy you now because it is not my place any more. The humans are strong enough now to vanquish you wherever you spawn. Come wearing whatever face you wish. Giovanni, Archer, Maxie, Ghetsis, Lysandre. In a few weeks, I will resign to a Champion even stronger than I, for they are ready again at last. There will be a new Champion who will turn you into the dust you love to create. I will help them stop you at every turn. I swore it. I am the mortal’s spirit of wanderlust, and this is what I say: knowledge is power. Curiosity will prevail. Hope begins now.”
Pause.
“So be it.”
Hey, there! New to writing fanfic for this community, not to writing fanfic in general. I wrote this for Week 1 of WAR. Feedback greatly appreciated; hope you enjoyed!
thing's authors say idk things things stuff
She was born dead. That was the strange thing. She was the same all over—too pale, too quiet, freezing in the snow.
He was born dead, too. That was the stranger thing. Even though there was no reason for him to know, separated as they were on opposite sides of a vast mountain—they both opened their too pale, too quiet, too silver eyes simultaneously and began to live.
And, once upon a time, they never stopped living thereafter. That was the strangest thing. Time rolled on, the stars trudged above them in the skies, empires fell—and so they endured, furiously upright as they wandered across the face of an Earth that had simply forgotten to let them die.
“We met before.”
The Rover pulls up short, sinking knee-high into the snow as she does so. This man isn’t the first person to tell her that she looks familiar; no matter how far she roams, she’s bound to cross someone’s path more than once, and there’s something unforgettable in her eyes that her fellow travelers hone in on.
There’s something unforgettable in his eyes as well, though, that cuts short her usual response. “Unlikely,” she almost replies, but the words die on her tongue as she studies him. It’s hard to tell from this angle, but the thick fur looks like the beartic she’s been trailing all winter. In his right hand, he holds a small dagger, tapered and conical and like nothing she has never seen before—carved from bone, perhaps, unlike her rough-hewn mamoswine tusk. Above all, though, she cannot help but be drawn to the set of stantler horns mounted on his head; the way that the tines catch the dying sunlight makes them seem like a second set of eyes hovering a foot on either side of his head. Hypnotic.
She has the nagging feeling, however, that this man is something she has seen before, and that makes her stop and wonder for a moment longer. “Unlikely,” she says anyway, and turns to leave, but something stops her halfway. “Your head-covering.” She cannot understand where it has come from, and there is something driving her to find out. “How did you—” she struggles for the little-used word “—craft it?”
He looks up at the antlers as well. “These?” he asks, pointing, but then stops short, biting his lip. His breath freezes in the cold.
She understands. He doesn’t want to give up the secret of his handiwork without payment. Sacrifice, she thinks, in the same way that her father taught her to thank the mamoswine as it bleeds out into the snow. Its life for theirs. The man in front of her in his luxurious skins has a secret, and she must sacrifice something to learn it. Her secret for his. A price she’s willing to pay.
“I know of how the wolf-guardian of the North Wind begins the snowstorms.” The Rover knows this story well; her mother recounted it to her many times many winters ago.
There is a glint in the man’s eyes, and his brow furrows in interest. “Very well,” he says, beginning to trudge toward a nearby rocky outcropping, where the howling wind is less harsh, and gestures for her to follow. “Tell me of this story. I shall tell you the secret of this decoration of mine.”
When she sees him again, neither of them are a day older, even though many winters have passed. He looks up idly from his meditation in the center of the cave, the rugged palms of his hands facing toward the rocky ceiling. He pauses to think. He recognizes, and then his rugged palms clench involuntarily. “We met before, certainly,” he says at last. His eyes betray nothing even as his breath freezes in the heavy, frigid air.
The Rover dips her head in agreement. “Yes.” She took his secret and struck the stantler bone again and again until it hammered itself into a sharp tip, and the knife has yet to fail her. “You treat me too kindly to be a stranger.” And his gift has treated her kindly as well; she roams the mountains with her stories in tow, learning and trading secrets as she wanders. There is something strange about these lands, something beautiful, and it fascinates her.
She has taken one of the creatures of the snow to follow her—glaceon, she calls it, because she loves the way the word rolls off of her tongue. Their friendship is tentative, and her companion often prefers the company of the blizzards to whatever support the Rover can provide, but she has learned much from this blue, fox-like creature that nimbly calls the mountain its home. She watches the way that the monster walks, lightly on its feet and hardly leaving a footprint in the snow, and she tries to imitate it now, as she treads carefully around this man, the only human who has stayed the same even as the world around them grows. She is fascinated by him, yes, but a little afraid, if only because she cannot understand him yet. “Winter likes you well.”
He shrugs and nods his acknowledgement. The Rover tells the truth, as she often does—he has gathered the strongest hunters he can find in these hostile snowdrifts, and together they have endured. Thrived, even. They have gathered here in these caves, high enough on the cliffs that they are safe from most of the monsters that haunt the mountains. When he works with others, who are like him and in so many ways unlike him, he has realized that he can accomplish far more than he could ever do alone. They work for him. “Things are better.”
They both ponder that for a moment, and then the Rover speaks: “I travelled far and learned much.” This, too, is true. She has roamed, as is in her blood, and has descended from the slopes of this mountain only to climb the hundreds more that rose behind it, until she found a place where the sun began to melt the snow from the rocks.
“I enjoy your stories. Have you any to share?”
The Rover again dips her head, a motion she has learned from her companions in the sunnier lands. “I was taught the secret of trapping the warmth of the sun,” she says, and smiles—another movement she has learned from the sun-lands. Of all the secrets she has learned in her journeying so far, this is by far the most fascinating. Strange creatures haunt the slopes of those mountains, mountains that belch blazing heat and that hide flaming, fox-like creatures with faces that resemble her glaceon’s. Magma, they say in the sun-lands, and flareon. Fire, they call it, and she is all-too-glad to share.
“And in return?” the man asks, gesturing for her to sit across from him in the worn rocks of their cave.
She pauses, bowing her antlered head for a moment. She loves her secrets, and she hoards them fiercely, but their power is never diluted if she shares them. Her stories are meant to be spread rather than caged, and rarely does she ask for a price. “A night in your company and food to sustain me will be sufficient.”
He arches one eyebrow, perhaps surprised at her price, but he shouts for one of his men to bring in the flank of the mightyena they had just slain that afternoon. The flesh is almost still warm from its lifeblood, and he offers it to the Rover, still dripping. “Take, and share with us. Tonight, while we may savor your company, you are my esteemed guest.”
“Thank you, old friend,” she says, and they exchange a glance that no one else in the narrow cave understands.
The snows melt and recede into the rocks they once hid, and still she is the Rover. She walks through the fields of wheat without purpose, gazing firmly up at the vast expanse of blue above her. It has been many winters since she lived under the furious stormclouds of the snow-mountains—so many winters, in fact, that she can hardly call them winters, and the rocks have yielded to oceans of sand beneath her wandering feet. Still, the blue sky fascinates her—there is something so enclosing about it during the day, to make her feel safe as it pins the sun above her to keep her warm and alive. At night, it is even more beautiful, an inky expanse of darkness dotted with tiny pinpricks of light.
She hopes to reach them one day.
“You there! Halt!”
The Rover looks up, unalarmed, at the tall, spear-wielding, dark-skinned man who stands before her. “You resemble the description of a woman our clan leader has decreed as a vagabond criminal. Do you deny it?”
The Rover cannot help but laugh. This clan leader is bold but misguided; if she endured fourteen thousand winters wandering the snow-mountains, she can endure whatever punishment he has intended. Still, she cannot help but smile at the spear this servant holds comfortably in his hand. Stantler bone is no longer the material of choice, as it once was; rather, they have learned to tame the fires of the monsters of the mountains. Everything gains strength from fire, she thinks. She decides to believe that she draws her strength from the stars and sun, blotches of fire that hang above her and guide her on her travels. The people she meets on her travels draw warmth during the nights, even though they have forgotten precisely how harsh winter’s bite can be. The land itself draws its lifeblood from the sun, baking itself into waves of sand that roil in frozen motion to the edges of the horizon. And even the wood of this man’s spear has drawn resilience from the fires of his strange flareon, their foxes dipped in flame.
“I cannot,” she says, and allows the spear-wielder to take her back to his village.
Their settlements fascinate her because they are all so different. Here, in the sun-lands by the plains, they have taken to developing a precarious existence with the monsters of the desert. Everything hinges around trade. They trade brief encounters with the monsters with the promises of meat or hidden fruit—hunts, again, but these are more primal and less fair. Before, she would attempt to wrestle down a beartic alone, clutching the tusk of the mamoswine. Now, the humans travel in packs together, and use nets and spears and arrows to down their prey from afar. Still, it is lopsided. Sometimes they all return alive with their plunder. Sometimes they do not. Everything hinges around trade—life for life, still. It is a society that he would like.
The Ruler sits impassive on his stone of throne as his spear-wielder unceremoniously throws the Rover down at the foot of the dais. She catches herself just as she skids to his feet and looks up. Their silvery eyes glint like stars as their gazes meet, and she cannot help but smile even as she bows her head. “Vagabond criminal, you called me?”
The Ruler laughs from his throne and motions for her to rise with his reed scepter. “It is far harder to keep track of you now that the world has grown so big, old friend. But I have so many eyes.”
The spear-wielder in the corner of the room pales in horror as he realizes the contempt with which he has treated his ruler’s ‘old friend.’ As quietly as possible, he attempts to blend into the sandy wall and pretend that he no longer exists.
The Rover arches one eyebrow—an expression she learned from him, now that she thinks about it—“When was it that we last spoke?”
“We crossed paths in Mesopotamia, I think,” the Ruler replies, distractedly gesturing for his guards to leave them in peace. “You gave me some fascinating advice about agriculture that has served me well since.”
“I remember your village there. I am glad to see you took the advice I gave you about digging tunnels from the river for your water.” She pauses, studying the area around her. The Rover nods her head toward the carvings around the walls, a far cry from the cave art that she once helped create when she still wore the horns of a stantler. There is even blue stone inlaid in the walls, something borrowed, something foreign, something new. “You are the Head Scribe in these desert parts, I see. Time still treats you well.”
The Ruler shrugs. “In these lands, they treat me like a god. These mortals have a quaint fascination with recording their history, and I can help them, so they respect me. I thank you for this glyph-based writing, though. It is at least somewhat easy to manage, although ultimately quite troublesome. I cannot imagine why they would be so obsessed with being remembered.” With any luck, perhaps, they would construct him one of their fascinating pyramids after he moved on.
“Perhaps because they are actually considered about ceasing to live,” she replies. She remembers when her parents and those who knew her truly ceased to live, but only barely. It has been so long that, sad as it seems, their lack of continued existence is just as commonplace to her as is the scorching sun. “This seems to be a pressing concern for the rest of the mortals.”
“Have you never considered why we are different from the rest?” the Ruler asks, looking contemptuously down from his throne while still showing genuine interest.
The look in her eyes is the one she always wears before she begins a story for him. Centuries have passed, but nothing has changed. She will tell him the legends she has learned, and perhaps he will grace her with a gift in return. “I have indeed sought the gods. Have you never considered why it is I wander?”
“Egypt. You called yourself Nehut, the Head Scribe, and, yes, they did bury you in a pyramid,” the Rover says without looking up at the man who rides atop a speckled sawsbuck which prances back and forth in front of her. Even though her arms are tied behind her back with vine and one of his guards holds an obsidian knife to her throat, she feels no fear. There are so many more things to notice. “You took my advice about the agriculture.” Her leafeon vanished into the forest when the warriors came for her, but she’s not worried. It is capable of looking after itself, even as humans begin to tame more and more of the monsters that were once so foreign. “You took your love of pyramids and thrones with you, even if it did not quite translate so easily across the land bridge.” Here, the stone structures are wreathed in trees instead of sand, and they are meant to sacrifice the living rather than entomb the dead, but she sees the similarity. “And you took it upon yourself to follow me here. Are you so curious about where we came from that you would abandon your throne in the desert?”
The Ruler—in this time and place, he is Quetzel, priest of the sky god Rayquaza—arches one eyebrow. “You should remember your place and hold your tongue,” he remarks lightly. “Currently, my soldiers are waiting for my command to cut your heart out and sacrifice it to the sky serpent.”
The Rover, too, responds in kind. “The usual price, then? My life, and in exchange, I shall tell you of the legends of the true gods, the ones who formed the land and sea, the ones who control our space and time, the ones who control our life and death. The true sculptors of this shrine of ours, if you will.”
“You have grown poetic since we last spoke.”
“It comes with the storytelling.”
She knows already that her bargain is too tempting to refuse. She has followed the wanderlust here, to the heart of the forests, and she found the central tree that pulses with life, and the great god who lies in hibernation, ensconced in the blossom at the center of its tree. And the Rover knows, as surely as she knows she is alive, that this tree to which her leafeon lead her is the start of her life, and this god is the reason for her continued existence. She cannot fathom why, nor does she try to, but she found herself hypnotized by the life-granting spell in its antlers just as the headdress of the stantler once fascinated her so long ago.
She knows, even though she does not yet know why, where and how she and he came to be.
The Ruler nods. “Your heart for your story.”
It may surprise him to know that they are not the only true gods who roam this land.
The monsters, she realizes, are just as pivotal to her life and her existence as the mortals who share her physical form are. She only realizes it, however, when the mortals construct a shrine to them, the Rover and the Ruler, although their names are different here. The immortal hunter twins, bows in hand to welcome the night and day. Coiled around their feet stand stone visages of their current companions, a polar opposite pair of foxes, day and night. Pale pink like the dawn and deep black like the night, intertwined but forever apart.
“Artemis and Apollo, they call us here,” he says, strolling up to her with hands hidden in his flowing robes. His footsteps echo clearly in the marble hall, as does his voice. “They never seem to get your face quite right, although I’ve tried.”
He’s right, of course. The sister’s face is carved with the same exquisite skill as the rest of the statue, but it seems blank and devoid of detail. The brother’s statue is a perfect replica of its namesake, perhaps for obvious an obvious reason: “Unlike you, I cannot bring myself to reside here inside the temple of Delphi for the mortals to learn my face, old friend.”
The Ruler claps her on the shoulder, one eyebrow arched as always. “Perhaps you should try it. The mortals truly know how to make one feel like a god, but I grow tired of skulking in the shadows, pretending to know the future. I shall live for the present. Perhaps I shall try for king, soon.”
“But I find that I love travelling these lands so much. There are so many strange creatures to see, even still. And the mortals always make something new,” the Rover responds, even though she has learned by now that he will never understand. “How, after all, would you have ever learned of the strange creatures of the western mountains who bequeathed with the steel that won you your kingdom?”
The Ruler smiles at that, and knows in his heart that her words are true. She has brought him the knowledge he needed to forge his glory; he sits on a throne of her stories and shall always owe her that, just as he has granted her her life time and time again. Like the day and night twins, they are diminished without the other, one always on the other’s heels. “Your gift of the alphabet that you brought from across the sea was most appreciated, as well. Do you have any new lessons for me, old friend? We are gods, now.” Laughing at his own joke, he points to their stone visages and imitates the stance of Apollo. “I can grant you anything you require.”
The question is hardly real; she always has something new. Her price, even, does not change. “I would like a day’s rations and your fastest steed,” the Rover begins. I do not know which of the creatures in this area your people here have chosen to domesticate now.” But they have done surprisingly well in taming the monsters of the mountains and making them their own.
“Very well. Tell me about this country in the East that you have visited. What possibly could they offer me?”
He speaks with such derision about the most skilled shipbuilders in the world, but he soon learns better than to mock them.
She has never killed for sport before. Even when she hunted back in the snows, it was for survival. An exchange: their life for hers.
Here, though, she can feel her blood roaring in her ears for the first time, and it thrills her even as it disgusts. The man in front of her is short-lived compared to her anyway, and he cannot possibly outlast her on this long trek of endurance that she calls life, so what difference does it make?
It makes all the difference. She knows that. There is something about him that she will always understand but never have, no matter how hard he tries. He, like his mortal brethren, is undeniably curious, and with that wandering mind comes freedom. One day, they will need not be damned to wander like she is, nor consumed to rule like her companion. They will need both, so they will thirst for neither.
But now, it is sacrifice. His life for hers.
The Rover seeks an opening. She always seeks to learn from each mortal she encounters, but this is different. Now, she wishes to learn his weakness.
There is a slight tremor in his right hand when he swings his sword, one that even the enormous stone behemoth by his side—she believes they call it rhyperior in this time—cannot mask. It roars and swings a clubbed tail in her direction, but her umbreon has it under control and blasts it back with a wave of compressed, dark energy. She kicks the sword out of the mortal’s hand and dodges the rhyperior’s fierce lunch, feeling the sharp whoosh of air as its horn barely misses her cheek.
They are frozen for a moment, hovering in time, and then her umbreon recalls the action and lashes out, its tail coated in thick steel plating as it somersaults downward, aiming for the chink in the rhyperior’s armor between its left arm and its torso.
The Rover remembers when she first brought the knowledge of iron to this section of the world, centuries ago, and she smiles at the thought.
She tastes iron, too, as the mortal tries to swing a punch at her and she doesn’t quite dodge out of the way, but no matter.
In the arena around her, the crowd has cheered. Unintentionally or not, the four of them are performing in one of the most exhilarating fights for the day, and the Rover is trying her best to make it at least entertaining.
Her umbreon switches course at the last moment and brings the flat of its tail crashing down into the mortal’s weak arm, sending his sword flying. At the same time, she brings her own sword through the rhyperior’s horn, and the fire-hardened steel makes surprisingly quick work of the stony appendage.
But she is already moving forward even as her umbreon lunges to finish off the weakened umbreon. The Rover approaches the mortal, who is downed and apart from his companion, sword in her free hand.
Without hesitation, she drives her blade into his throat, and he dies instantly.
His life for hers. Sacrifice.
The cheering crowd quiets at once as it realizes what she has done.
“Who dares take the life of a gladiator without first asking for favor of the Sun Emperor?” an enraged voice roars out from a raised viewing box shrouded in purple velvet. From here, in the sandy pit with the clearing dust and bloodlst, she can look past the stunned crowd for long enough to see his livid features and the outline of the pink espeon by his side. So he is sentimental as well about their godhood in Greece, and he has also fulfilled his vows of obtaining a kingdom.
The Rover removes her helmet and smiles fearlessly back up at him, silvery eyes glinting as she sees the recognition dawn across his face.
You will owe me for this. Even from here, she can see the thought form in his eyes as the Ruler sits back in his throne. She will not truly owe him for this, as execution would merely inconvenience her, but the point stands. “Ah, I shall pardon this lowly warrior. Even peasants make mistakes in the heat of battle.”
Later, behind closed doors, she shares a strange concept: monotheism, a world ruled by the single God, Arceus, and the Ruler, laughing, threatens to crucify her if she dares usurp him.
“Why did you spread my finest silk-producing butterfree across the plains?” he asks, one hand stroking the pink, fairy-like fox at his side. The sylveon mewls in protest, supporting its master. “They were my income here. The nobles adore the silk products we can make, and you’ve robbed me,” the Ruler says. He almost sounds angry.
“I merely wished to spread the beauty of their existence for the rest of the world to see,” the Rover responds without remorse. Even though she hates herself for saying it, she cannot help but add, “Have you not considered how much money—and do not deny it, you do love it so very much—you could make if you established a trade route between your kingdom here in the east and your former holdings in the west?”
“For a century?” the Rover asks, one eyebrow raised. “Is my knowledge worth so much, or your money so little?”
“For a century,” the Ruler confirms, one jewel-encrusted finger tapping out an empty rhythm on the edge of his gold-gilded throne. “I will fund your explorations for the next century if you just give me this.”
“I have walked the lands for millennia, old friend,” the Rover says with a small smile. “I have traversed route between the land you call India and your kingdom here in Spain more times than you have churches in your city.”
The Ruler stops his tapping and raises a hand. “I know that you have grown weary of the land-pathways, having walked on them so much,” he says. Little does he know that she will never tire of the ceaseless wheel of human innovation as it splays out beneath her feet. Almost out of habit, one eyebrow arches. “So have I. It slows down trade immensely. I want you to find me this route by way of water. The ocean is still new to you, is it not?”
“Indeed.”
Satisfied, the Ruler bids for one of his servants to bring forward her supplies. The usual. A steed, and supplies for a single day. She and the watery-fox that his Spaniards have called vaporeon vanish into the ocean within an hour.
The electric lighting of the museum fascinates her, perhaps more than it should. Recently invented by a clever genius in America, and brought across the sea by the Rover, they blink like little stars. And yet the Rover is still amazed with the speed at which an idea can travel across the world. With the full power of the flying-monsters harnessed to their disposal, they no longer need rely on her feet to learn. Gone are the days when she could wear her antlers and bring legends to the world.
Books and learning have replaced her. She knew this day would come, even back when she was fighting for her life in the Roman’s gladiator pits. Ever since she saw the first humans in the deserts of Sumeria playing with fire, she understood that they would one day need no gods. She isn’t even a god.
So she finds herself here, visiting the plaque that details the life of the lonely woman and her jolteon who were able to light the world, squinting at the grainy, smudged oil-painting whose features are hardly intelligible.
“They never quite get your face right, do they?” he asks, strolling up behind her. He wears the mortal’s latest invention proudly—pants—hands tucked in their pockets, and his shining black shoes still echo in the exhibition hall.
“I would rather not stick around long enough for them to learn,” the Rover responds.
For once, they are at a loss for words.
“They are losing their need for us,” she says at last, speaking the thoughts that have been weighing on her mind. “They do not need me to teach them, and they do not need you to rule them. Have you spent long in this quaint little country? They speak of this concept called democracy. Consent of the governed.”
The Ruler’s eyebrow arches, as it always does, but this time it soars higher than it ever has. “They always need me to rule, even if they no longer wish to learn your peddler’s tricks. They will always need me,” he says. There is a slight hint of derision in his voice, hardly detectable to all but the trained, and she is trained. “War is coming, I fear. I do not mean for it to, but I think I am powerless to stop it.” They both are.
She has no story to tell him in exchange that he does not already know. And besides, he has only told her what she already knows, as well.
The trenches are filled with smoke, screams, and the blood of the dead.
The Rover is in hell.
The war to end all wars currently shows no sign of ending all wars.
“Dugtrio squad detects seismic activity in sector twelve! Incoming enemy!” the sergeant screams, just before the wall of the trench before him erupts into a shower of rubble. Rocks fly in every direction as a steel-headed mole rolls from the trench, its claws tucked ahead of it to form the tines of its drill.
One of the survivors, blood streaming from his right eye, proceeds to empty the magazine of his gun into the excadrill’s body, only to have his struggle ended by a reflected bullet that raced away from the sleek armor of the creature’s midsection.
The Rover rolls out of the way as one of the other soldiers throws something toward the monster, which looks up from mauling the corpse of a fallen mortal a second too late to spin out of the grenade’s blast radius.
Her ears screaming in protest from the explosion, the Rover vaults out of the trench, ignoring the way that her uniform shreds on the barbed wire that litters the ground. She’s already moving even as the shrieks begin to piece their way through her receding deafness. At first, she thinks the anguished shrieks are byproducts of the explosion; as her head clears, however, she knows they are the unmistakable cries of the dying.
A single glance at the trench behind her, which an enemy weezing has already begun filling with noxious, purple smoke, tells her all she needs to know.
“Look what we have wrought, old friend,” she murmurs to the war-torn sky, even though she knows for certain that he would never be this close to the scene of carnage. Her revolution was known as an industrial one; his is one that burns. Their world has outgrown thrones, but the Ruler always knows where the seat of power really stands.
And here, in a trench filled with soldiers who are rapidly turning into corpses, nothing stands save for the Rover.
“You told me that the last war would end this fighting,” the Rover says, barely keeping her anger in check. She cannot remember the last time she was this angry, or even angry at all, and the fire threatens to consume her. “And yet here you are, beginning this bloodshed again. How far will you go for power?”
“As far as I must,” the Ruler replies stiffly. “They still need me.”
“They have grown greater than us. I will help them stop you at every turn.” It is not a question. It is a promise. She lost her purpose when they finished mapping out the Earth together, but she can forge a new one. She brought them their secrets and nurtured their trades, and now she will exchange her purposes, as she always has.
He doesn’t bring himself to respond aloud, perhaps out of politeness, or perhaps out of a tiny modicum of shame for what is to come. Instead, he points with a single hand toward the window.
His eyebrows do not arch. “But you are late, old friend, for once.”
The Rover frowns but approaches the glass, where she expects to see the gentle sun, her guiding star, rising over the sleepy countryside.
When she thinks back, she wonders what she would’ve done with those extra handfuls of moments had she reacted faster. Perhaps she could’ve saved a few. Perhaps. But, really, she doesn’t know if there was ever anything she could’ve done.
After all, she’s had decades, even centuries—millennia, perhaps—to stop the Ruler from reaching this point. A few more moments would never have been enough. Squinting against the star-splattered darkness spread out against the window, she realizes they are hours too early for the dawn.
Then, she understands it all. She understands what he means to do, how little the mortals mean to him, how many he is willing to sacrifice so he can remain the Ruler. She has lost her title of the Rover, but she would never dream of—
Finally, she sees the light, but it definitely isn’t what she expected.
The quiet countryside of Japan is burned into her eyes in a blast of light, and then it recedes into nothingness as the explosion travels outward and consumes them both.
“I should thank you, you know,” the Rover says with biting sarcasm, after she has t[/own open the double doors to his ‘domain’ in an abandoned grocery store, littered with scorched tins and bits of lead. Even after he has personally ended the world, he still has the audacity to give himself a throne. There is no laughter in her voice anymore, no smile in her eyes, and she can hardly look at him straight. Nor will she be able to do so again, she thinks, not after he ended the war that was meant to end all wars.
“I didn’t mean to,” he lies.
“I had feared that the world had grown tired of me, that it no longer needed to adventure, that all the new discoveries had been discovered. They had almost reached the stars before you blasted them back into the dust,” the Rover says, her smile so sad that it is invisible. “And then you give me another one of your gifts. You take the knowledge I give you and you defile it. Even the knowledge of our creator, the life-deer who hid itself in the eternal forest in the Mayan ruins, is not sacred to you.” Her voice shakes. “And, as your gift, you wipe out the entire world I surveyed. All of the lands, you choose to reshape. Almost all of the creatures, you turn to dust, either to fuel your weapon or in the aftermath. Most of the mortals, you destroy. That is your gift to me. Shall I tell you a story in return?” She mocks him this time, but he cannot argue.
“I’m sorry.”
The Rover turns to walk away. “I shall wander again for many thousands of years, I think, thanks to your gift. I have to rebuild.”
The Ruler looks at her for the first time. Their shared silvery eyes are mirrors of each other, now, both filled with burning regret coupled with insatiable determination.
“I am already wandering in penance for my crime, old friend. Please—”
The Rover cuts him off, the Ruler of dust, her anger sharper than the iron she once taught him how to find from the hide of the aggron, now extinct. “Wander. Perhaps it will teach you something, as it once taught me. They name you after the ashes you left in the wake of your weapon. They call you Az, now, do they not?”
The Rover strides in. “Ash, they call you now. Champion. I never thought you bold enough to embrace the destruction.”
“I didn’t expect to see you here. I thought you were off somewhere, tinkering with your Pokédex project.”
“I put it in the hands of a fellow roamer. That aside, I didn’t expect you to wait so long to return to your throne, but perhaps I should have known. A thousand years a nomad is hardly enough to temper an arrogant god.”
“Could we not return to the time when we were friends?”
“I see you gathering your forces, corrupting the League I strove to create. If the Indigo Plateau falls, that will only be another empire of mortals you destroyed. I will not let that happen anymore. Bring your Gym Leaders. Bring your Elite Four. Bring your Champion. I will stop you at every turn, and, when the mortals are strong enough and no longer need me, they will destroy you as well.”
“I should’ve let the Giratina destroy you,” the Rover whispers.
“Cynthia, they call you now. Seventy thousand years, and you finally have a name I can use. And I see you’ve taken on my old title. Cynthia, Sinnoh’s Champion. Have you turned to ruling rather than roving, my old friend?”
“Names mean nothing to us. You go by Cyrus, now, and in eighty years, if I am successful, Cyrus's legacy will be forgotten. The humans don’t need to be ruled. They move on from their conquerors. They rise from the ashes. It was never our place. We are not gods, nor were we meant to be.”
“I wished to escape this world, nothing more. Why do you thwart me?”
“You wished to destroy it, and to take the humans with you. I swore to help them, and I shall.”
“But you will not destroy me yourself. Do you still value our relationship, old friend? Do you still feel guilt because I saved your life so many times?”
“I do not destroy you now because it is not my place any more. The humans are strong enough now to vanquish you wherever you spawn. Come wearing whatever face you wish. Giovanni, Archer, Maxie, Ghetsis, Lysandre. In a few weeks, I will resign to a Champion even stronger than I, for they are ready again at last. There will be a new Champion who will turn you into the dust you love to create. I will help them stop you at every turn. I swore it. I am the mortal’s spirit of wanderlust, and this is what I say: knowledge is power. Curiosity will prevail. Hope begins now.”
Pause.
“So be it.”
Hey, there! New to writing fanfic for this community, not to writing fanfic in general. I wrote this for Week 1 of WAR. Feedback greatly appreciated; hope you enjoyed!
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