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[Pokémon] Cracked, or How the Love of Seafood Saved Unova

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
1,030
Posts
13
Years
Interlude: 15

The old Unovan alphabet has 29 glyphs, runic devices borrowed half from the north and half from the south. Fourteen stand for the heroes of old (Hrafnín, Thuri, Sachen the Boar, the Twin Heroes, and so on) and fourteen for the villains (Garendel, Mowain, Apnudd). Household names in this nation, where everyone marches backwards into their future, always facing into the past, reciting the legends and paying the druids.

There is one rune that stands alone. ᚾ. Naudri. It stands for nothing. It falls in the centre of the alphabet, to keep apart the forces of good and evil and prevent the letters from falling to war.

In Roman script, it is written N.

My name, and my destiny.



Chapter Twelve: Of Monsters and Men

Smythe's estimate that it took forty-five minutes to drive to the Gym from the Mandelmort Temple had been based on the assumption, I think, that the driver obeyed the usual rules of driving – stopping for red lights, staying reasonably near the speed limits, and not driving through buildings.

Niamh, however, seemed to have no such scruples.

"Shiiiiiiiit!" shrieked Smythe, as the car shattered a set of glass doors and sped through the lobby of an office block. "You still drive like a f*cking lunatic!"

"You drive like my grandmother," she snorted, expertly weaving between two stunned cubicle workers and racing out of the other entrance. "It's all relative."

"Did I mention I love this woman?" asked Halley, bouncing all over my lap. "This is so much f— fire-eater's birthday fun!"

I tried to mumble some kind of thanks for not swearing, but didn't manage to get more than a word or two out before I had to close my mouth against the rising vomit.

"Blublergh," I ended up saying.

Halley gave me a look.

"You don't do rollercoasters, do you?"

I shook my head mutely and hung on tight as the car careened around a corner and shot into a multi-storey car park. To a fanfare of horns, we zoomed up a ramp, round a bend and out the exit, splintering the wooden barrier arm and erupting into a busy street in a burst of panic and screeching brakes.

Candy screeched into my ear so loudly it hurt, and I quickly wrapped her in my jacket. It had the desired effect, and within thirty seconds she was sound asleep. I only wished I could escape the nightmarish ride so easily.

"I feel like Steve McQueen in Bullitt," sang out Halley with glee. "Christ, Lauren, how're you not loving this?"

"Yulp," I said, trying not to bite my tongue.

"Concise, but hardly erudite," she mused. "Might want to work on your debating skills, I think."

She seemed to be in an unusually good mood; I put it down to either the high speed or my discomfort. At least she was happy, I thought.

Niamh took us over the central island of a roundabout and between two lorries with less than an inch to spare on either side; one of them shifted slightly and we lost a wing mirror.

"Well, we didn't need that anyway," muttered Niamh in answer to Smythe's glare. "Look, Port, if you want to drive..."

"No no," he said, "you keep going. You're – um – the expert, after all."

Niamh grinned wolfishly, and I saw her teeth flash in the rear-view mirror.

"That's right," she said. "Leave the music to the musician and the driving to the driver."

A thin, wailing siren came to our ears, and Niamh sighed.

"Really? They want to try this?"

"Cops spoil everything," sighed Halley.

"Couldn't agree more," she replied. "I mean, their hearts are in the right place but they just get in the way."

"Shouldn't we stop for them?" I suggested diffidently, as we mounted the pavement to avoid a red light. I received three incredulous stares in response.

"If we stop, Teiresias kills your friends," replied Smythe. "We don't stop for anything."

"But – but – OK," I said, shutting up fast before I let any vomit out.

"That's right," replied Halley. "Out of interest, how do you learn to drive like this?"

"There's a course," replied Niamh thoughtfully. "'Stunt Driving for the Modern Mobile Criminal'."

"Where do they teach it?"

"Munich." She paused. "How can you even drive a car?"

"Good question," admitted Halley. "Let's just say I'm working on it."

Niamh dodged a pedestrian with preternatural ease and drove through a wooden fence between two houses; after a blurry ride through someone's garden, we re-emerged through a chain-link one in a car park, narrowly avoiding a Mini.

The police sirens seemed very, very distant.

"I think we've lost them," said Niamh calmly. "Now hold on."

"What?" I asked, suddenly even more afraid. "Why—?"

She slammed her foot down on the brakes, and the headrest in front of me rose up to meet my face with awful speed; dazed, I slumped back into my seat and saw that we had stopped exactly one inch short of a solid brick wall.

"OK," said Niamh, unfazed. "Here we are. The Gym."

I blinked and looked over her shoulder at the clock on the dashboard.

We had made the journey in just seventeen minutes.

---

There was a long and terrible silence.

"Chili...?" said someone uncertainly – Cress or Cilan, Cheren thought. "Chili, is that...?"

"He is not dead," replied Teiresias in its stolen voice. "He merely sleeps." It paused ominously. "For now."

Footsteps. The thing that had been Chili was coming closer, and then all at once ice-cold fingers were cupping Cheren's chin, forcing his head up so that unseen eyes could stare into his.

"I can almost see with this one," murmured Teiresias. "Ah... the living." It sounded almost wistful. "There will come a time when all my hosts have a pulse."

"Did you come over here to talk to yourself or to me?" asked Cheren, as coolly as he could. As much to his surprise as that of anyone else, his voice came out hard and calm, without a trace of concern.

"I will not be drawn into conversation," replied Teiresias. "Let my reasons remain my own, if you wish this man to retain his soul when I leave his flesh."

"You should probably stop asking questions, Cheren," called Bianca, voice trembling. "I think he's going to need his soul later."

"You're probably right," agreed Cheren. "Only I doubt you will kill him, or damage him in any way. That would be too high-profile."

"I do not fear the scrutiny of men—"

"No, but I expect the Party does."

Teiresias was silent, and Cheren was certain that he'd hit home with that one.

"I am outside their command," it replied eventually, voice like frostbite. "I do as I please. If it pleased me to kill this man, then I would."

"All right, then," said Cheren, a sudden bold plan leaping into his head. "What if I kill him? What then?"

Teiresias made a strange coughing noise, like the last breaths of a plague victim. It took Cheren a moment to realise that it was laughing.

"You? Kill him? I sincerely doubt you could kill anyone."

"Lelouch," said Cheren, heart pounding so hard it felt like it might burst. "To his throat."

Presumably Teiresias had only blotted out visible light, not infrared, and so the Snivy slithered briskly up to Chili's neck without giving any sign of getting lost on the way; he settled on his shoulders like a scarf, ready to contract his fibrous body as soon as the word was given.

Teiresias paused.

"You would not," it repeated. "This is a bluff. You mean to make me waste time, so that you can figure out a means of escape before I kill you – as I will now," it added hungrily, "given that the command to spare you has not been given."

"I'll take that body down with me," replied Cheren coolly.

Either Cress or Cilan made some move to protest, but their voices were cut off abruptly; Cheren imagined more of Teiresias' invisible hands clamping across their mouths, or choking their throats, and shivered inwardly.

"I can see your mind, you know," crooned the fiend. "I can see your thoughts, your dreams, your plans... You cannot kill him."

Is that so?

Cheren filled his mind with thoughts of tightening coils, of Chili pulling at Lelouch and then going limp, gently falling to the floor; of Teiresias' ash-grey dust pouring from his body as the life ebbed from it.

"You want to trick me," said Teiresias insistently. "You will not kill this man."

"I will do anything to succeed," Cheren told it, and a strange detached horror rose in him at the the conviction in his voice: it genuinely sounded like it stemmed from truth.

"You will not..." Teiresias seemed less sure of itself now. "You would not!"

"I would," replied Cheren, and his words seemed to fall like lead in the thick air. There was a decisive weight to them; no one could as sensitive to emotion as the demon could doubt their veracity.

To Cheren's surprise, it laughed again.

"In my youth, I left men like you alive," Teiresias said – and now there was a strangely dreamy note in its voice. "You grew to become the leaders and the generals, the scholars and the high priests... Where you went, you brought death and battle, or discovered secrets that should have remained hidden, or sought powers beyond your ability to command. You birthed many of my kind with your ways." Its voice licked the air, tasting it, drifting lazily on a rich stream of reverie. Despite its sinister timbre, it was almost hypnotic; Cheren found himself hanging on the monster's every word. "But in this time... we are born no more, save by our own hands." Teiresias sighed, and everyone present felt as if a door to some unknown paradise had abruptly slammed shut. "You have done well to distract me so long," it admitted. "But I have a task to fulfil."

And all at once there was a great rushing of air, and something unseen began to howl beneath the floorboards, hammering on the wood with massive fists, and Teiresias' voice rose to a strange, high whistle that seemed only to enrage the unseen beast, and now the boards were breaking and Cheren knew that it had all been for nothing, that in a minute the thing Teiresias had called would be upon them and sweeping them into the darkest nights of Córmi's wings—

—and the doors to the Gym burst open, admitting a radiant burst of light, and someone was shouting:

"Stop! I got them, I got them! Stop!"

The howling ceased, and the hammering with it. The darkness shrank in on itself and collapsed into nothing, and all at once everything was as it had been before Teiresias had attacked – save for the clutching of those hideous hands, the thought of which made Cheren studiously avoid looking down.

Chili was staring at the doors, and he looked far more normal than Cheren had expected; evidently demonic possession had fewer symptoms than he had thought. The only hint that Teiresias was still within him was the curious way that the colours of his eyes seemed to bleed out into the surrounding air.

"Why did you not call?" it asked, in that dread voice, and Cheren shivered to see that though Chili's mouth opened to speak, it did not move until a full second after the words had left it.

"White's phone ran out of battery," replied Smythe, making his way further into the Gym. Now Cheren could see Lauren and Halley behind him, as well as a woman in her late thirties with the pale green hair of a true Unovan. "We came as quick as we could."

"Who is she?" asked Teiresias. A wave of force accompanied its pointing finger, and ruffled the hair of the group by the doors. It struck the strange woman hardest of all, and forced her back a step. "I noticed her at the hotel. She watches at keyholes and listens down chimneys," it said threateningly. "Is she one of us?"

Smythe stared idiotically, and made a few gulping motions like a fish out of water; evidently, he had absolutely no idea how to respond to that.

"No," replied the woman in his stead. "She isn't." She stepped forwards and glared at the demon with a vitriol that Cheren wasn't sure he'd ever seen before – in anyone. "I'm here to kill you." She paused. "Well, and that," she said, pointing at Candy, "but mostly you."

"What?" asked Lauren, looking confused. "What was that?"

Teiresias did not give the stranger a chance to reply.

"Kill me?" it hissed, with another peal of that hideous laughter. "I think not."

"Would you like to put it to the test?" asked the woman, unimpressed. "Honestly, I've killed more monsters than you've ever dreamed existed."

"What I dream would shatter your skull," replied Teiresias. "Smythe, why have you brought this creature here? Is this a declaration of war?"

Smythe shook his head so vigorously it looked dangerously close to coming off.

"No," he said. "No no no no no no no—"

"It would seem the circumstances have changed," Teiresias interrupted, apparently talking to itself. "The Kings and the Regent must be informed at once. And as for you, treacherous Smythe..."

With unnatural speed, Chili's body coiled like a cat and sprang across the Gym in a parabolic arc, dislodging Lelouch and landing next to Smythe; before anyone could react to that, his hand clamped across Smythe's face and black smoke oozed from the latter's eyes and mouth. A moment later, Chili slumped to the floor and Smythe, eyes aglow, was gone.

There was silence.

And then there was a lot of explaining to do.

---

"So let me get this straight," said Cilan, holding his head in his hands as if it were about to fall apart. "Harmonia's made some pact with a party of demons and is chasing you and your amnesiac talking cat with the aim of getting information about someone who stole something from his Party?"

"That's pretty much it, yeah," I said, smiling encouragingly. "I know it's really complicated, but—"

"It's not that," he replied, sitting up again and sighing, "it's just bloody insane."

"That too," I agreed, nodding. "But still... you saw what happened."

The Gym had been closed and Chili taken to the hospital by Cress and Max; Cilan and Niamh had just had the salient points of all that had occurred to us so far explained to them, and were digesting them with differing degrees of success. Niamh appeared to be able to believe anything as long as she saw some proof, but Cilian was having more trouble getting his head around it all.

"I did, yes, but... ah, OK," he sighed. "OK. I need to get a message to the League, that much is clear. We haven't been particularly fond of the Green Party's campaign so far – as you've probably guessed – and this finally gives us a reason and a means to do something about it..."

"But you can't really just go and accuse Harmonia of using black magic," pointed out Bianca. "I don't think most people will believe that unless they see it."

"There are more ways than one to scupper a campaign," Niamh said quietly. "I don't imagine the League will be taking the legal one."

"Exactly," replied Cilan. "Wait. Who are you again?"

"My name is Niamh Harper. I'm a professional monster-slayer."

Cilan stared at her for a moment, then uttered a low moan.

"Woden hang 'em," he groaned. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"Absolutely. Here's my card."

Cilan looked at the little rectangle in his hand, blinked, and moaned theatrically again.

"This is too much," he said forlornly. "Too much for one day..."

Candy, noticing his distress, hopped off my wrist onto his shoulder and poked his ear in misplaced affection.

"Ark," she squawked, which might have been comforting to another Archen but which was nowhere near comforting to a human. Especially when screeched into their ear.

"Sorry," I said hurriedly, pulling her away from Cilan before he hit her. "Sorry, she's not used to strangers."

"'Sraven," said Cilan, shaking his head. "I swear everything's just gone completely insane today."

"It actually seems fairly normal to me," said Niamh mildly. "Except for the demon part, but that's a small enough stretch of the imagination."

Something in her voice didn't seem quite right; I studied her face for a few seconds, and saw it almost immediately: beneath the mask of professionalism, she was very, very worried – about Smythe, presumably. I couldn't imagine how she had managed to stop herself running after him the moment Teiresias had taken him from the building; I supposed she forced herself to stay to learn more about her enemy before pursuing it. She must have, I thought, incredible willpower – but then, by her own admission, she killed monsters for a living. She was the kind of heroine I'd never thought actually existed in reality.

"It's not that far-fetched," added Cheren. "Considering the Zero affair and whatever it was that happened in Sinnoh last year, this business actually seems fairly tame."

He was right. Last year, a criminal mastermind styling himself Zero had raised two titanic, hostile Pokémon from millennia of slumber in Hoenn and almost destroyed the world; shortly afterwards, a certain unknown something had occurred in Sinnoh that had made all the clocks in the world run backwards for two days. The Sinnish authorities were particularly close-lipped, even by League standards, and hadn't said much about it apart from mentioning that there had been 'some minor disturbances' atop Mount Coronet – but it was clear that something pretty major had occurred, if only because an ancient temple the size of a small airstrip had been entirely erased from existence.

"Well, yes, but this is Unova, not one of those lunatic Pacific countries," grumbled Cilan. "We don't have buried evils here, or secret monsters, or any of that—"

"Actually, we do," interrupted Niamh. "I've killed quite a few of them."

"And let me tell you, this country definitely qualifies as lunatic in my book," added Halley.

"All right!" cried Cilan desperately. "Enough already!" He slumped back in his seat, took a deep breath, and sat up again. "OK. OK. I'll... I'll send a message to the League, and organise a guard for you three at the Centre tonight in case that thing comes back."

"I'm really not sure that'll stop it," pointed out Cheren.

"It might at least discourage it," Cilan replied, standing up. "And... I guess you've earned this, too."

He held out a little piece of enamel – a Gym Badge, I realised with some surprise.

"You out-thought Chili and a f*cking demon," he said frankly. "You drove it out of its body, convinced it you were about to commit murder and kept us all alive long enough for help to arrive. That's a hell of a lot more than any of our other challengers have ever done."

"Thank you," said Cheren, "but I'll have to refuse that, I'm afraid."

"What?"

We all stared. This was not what we'd been expecting.

"I didn't beat Chili," he said. "I'm not going to accept this as a reward for anything other than skill at Pokémon battling. That's not what it's for."

"You..." Cilan stared for a moment, then threw up his hands in anguish. "What is with all these people today? We've got demons, monster-slayers, kids with stricter codes of honour than a bloody samurai..."

"Don't forget the talking cat," added Halley slyly.

"I'd rather do exactly the opposite," he replied, evidently in some distress. "Thunor, Frige and Woden..." He shook his head again. "I'll just go call the League," he said disconsolately, and trudged off to find his phone.

"If that's all you have to tell, then I think I'll leave," said Niamh, getting to her feet. "I only stayed for information." She handed me one of her business cards. "It has my number. If you find out anything else, please let me know."

She hurried out without saying goodbye; I assumed she was eager to pick up Smythe's trail.

In the ensuing silence, Bianca's eyes slid over to Cheren, and I sensed an unspoken question hanging in the air between them.

"What is it?" he asked, evidently picking up on it too. He sounded a little irritated.

"Well, it's just... um..."

"Spit it out," he said tiredly.

"Er... you weren't really going to kill Chili, were you?" asked Bianca timidly.

"Of course not," he said, eyes widening. "Thunor, Bianca, did you even need to ask?"

"You were – uh – really convincing," she said. "I got worried..."

The last dregs of hostility flowed away from him, and to my surprise he actually hugged her.

"I'm an excellent liar," he said softly. "You know that."

"I know," she replied, pressing her face into his neck. "But still..."

Looking at them, I felt a pang of loneliness; quiet days spent with Anastasia came to mind, sitting in the trees at the northern end of White Forest. I could feel the buttons of her jacket pressing against my head, and hear her heartbeat beneath my ear...

I blinked back a tear and resolved to charge my phone as soon as we got back to the Centre. I had to call her soon, or I'd end up crying tonight, and I didn't think Halley would be particularly sympathetic company.

"OK!" said Cilan, reappearing, and Bianca flinched out of Cheren's arms. "I've called the League, and I got through to Shauntal. Alder's out – as ever – and the rest are renewing the binding at—" He checked himself. "Actually, I probably shouldn't mention that. Anyway, Shauntal heads the PR department, so she should be good enough for now – although Grimsley's really the one we want, since he's in charge of intelligence and espionage." He waved a hand. "Doesn't matter. The point is, she said she'll be here in a couple of hours. The others have taken the jet, but she'll take the helicopter. She wants to talk to you three personally before taking any action."

We exchanged looks. Shauntal, of the Unovan Elite Four? Celebrity author, major politician, and one of the most skilled Pokémon Trainers in the country? That was unexpected – and definitely the kind of help we could use.

"We'll wait here, then," said Cheren on our behalf. "If that's OK with you three...?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "I wasn't planning on going anywhere."

"Guess I wasn't, either," said Bianca.

"OK." Cilan thought for a moment. "I have to make sure Chili's OK," he said at length. "I'll call Tia and Sammy and have them come in first. They can stand guard for now, although it didn't seem like that thing was coming back any time soon. Tia's also an excellent chef," he added. "If you won't accept the Badge, Cheren, you can at least accept a free lunch."

Cheren nodded graciously.

"All right." He looked at Bianca and me. "I think we'd like that."

"Are you kidding?" Halley leaped up onto a table. "We'd love that. Didn't you see the sign outside?" she asked him. "This place has two Michelin stars. It's going to be awesome!"

Cilan smiled for the first time since I'd met him.

"Yes, it should be," he replied. "We pride ourselves on our service. Now," he said, extracting his phone from his pocket, "if you'll just give me a moment to call them, we'll have your meal shortly..."

---

Niamh was angry and terrified and sad, and she was beating the sh*t out of an unfortunate dustbin which had happened to be in her way.

"F*cking – demon – possessing – Port – f*cking – f*cking – f*ck!" she howled, heedless of the attention she was attracting. "Gallows and hammer! 'Sraven, how can – f*cking – agh!"

She kicked the bin aside, leaving the knives jammed into its side, and turned into an alley, fleeing into the bowels of the city; she didn't want to be in the open, not now, not when everyone was around and OK and Portland wasn't and – and—

In the middle of nowhere, she stopped and set her back to a wall, curling up and clutching her head so hard she felt her nails break skin and blood run in her hair. She wanted to scream, but something choked her voice. She wanted to beat herself up, but she couldn't uncurl her hands from her skull. She wanted Portland right now, unharmed and free of demons, and she wanted to hold him tight and know that everything was going to be OK—

Teiresias.

The name rose unbidden in her mind like a spot of spreading blood, and with it came terror, blotting out rage and sorrow in an instant with its great tidal flow. Teiresias. How could she kill something like that? How? She had bullets and knives and that longsword she kept in reserve for those certain beasts who would not die unless killed with silver-lined blades, but all of them seemed so useless against a foe like that – an enemy that hopped between bodies as if the ether between them was nothing, whose real form was likely some gnawing, chaotic abyss that to merely see would be a one-way ticket to madness? Niamh had killed many strange creatures before, things that, in all likelihood, had their origins in worlds not our own, but this... Despite her words in the Gym, she knew that she was at the limit of her ability here.

For the first time in many years, Niamh Harper needed help.

She wrenched her hands free, wiped her eyes and got to her feet. So. There it was. It was simple, really, when you laid it out like that. Portland needed her. She needed help to save him. The logical next step? Find the druids. They knew more about demons than anyone else she knew.

And there was another step she could take, one that lingered in the back of her mind and left her still more uneasy – but she wouldn't think of that. Not yet. Not unless there was no other option left to her.

Niamh stood there for a moment, unsteady on her feet, then collected herself. She pressed her emotions firmly back down with the heretical mind-control trick, until they were at a level she could use to fuel her determination without destroying her peace of mind, and took a deep, shaky breath.

She was OK, she thought. She was OK, and now she had to help Portland Smythe get his body back.

She had to kill a demon.

---

Far away, in the back room of the Mandelmort Temple, Lorcan Peabody flicked from Facebook to Outlook and choked on his coffee.

He had, a few hours ago, sent an email to the presiding druidic librarian at Nacrene's Travison Memorial Library – a little thing about that cute girl who had been in earlier, searching for methods of ridding herself of a demon – and he would have been lying if he'd claimed he was expecting any sort of immediate response.

He had one, however, and it was not the noncommittal reply he thought it would be.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Possible case of demonic activity

Lorcan,

Don't let that girl out of your sight. Keep her within the boundaries of the temple and perform the Nine Herbs on her in case any taint has begun. I'm sending a demonologist over to you right away to escort her here to Nacrene, where we can assess the problem and send her along to Castelia. The abomination she mentions has an entire chapter to itself in the Glasya-Labolas, and if it is has returned to Unova now, at the apex of Jormal's Cycle, then the High Druid must be informed at once.

These creatures may grow weaker or stronger with age – it is variable – and whichever way age has affected Teiresias, it is undoubtedly the most potent threat that has stalked Unova for over two hundred years. Do not take any chances. If it approaches, invoke every circle you can and do not look into its eyes.

Charles

Lorcan stared at the screen for a moment, then scratched his head.

"Well, sh*t," he muttered. "I have totally f*cked this one up."
 

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
1,030
Posts
13
Years
Chapter Thirteen: God Rest Ye

Shauntal Wentworth was everything I'd thought she would be except tall.

She was a lot shorter than TV had led me to expect – only a little taller than me, and I'm not tall by any stretch of the imagination. She did, however, have a kind of cool energy about her that lent her an impression of grandeur, so that you almost found yourself looking up at her despite the fact that she wasn't tall enough to warrant it.

She also seemed to have a weakness for theatrics, because she chose to materialise in a puff of smoke in the exact centre of the room, something that impressed me immensely but which Cheren informed me was nothing but a cheap trick easily perpetrated with the aid of a Ghost-type Pokémon.

"Good afternoon," she said to me, while we were all still in a state of mild shock. "Shauntal Wentworth, Elite Four. You must be Lauren."

"Um – ah – yes," I replied lamely, staring. "That's me..."

"More to the point, I'm Halley," said Halley, unimpressed. "I'm the focal point of this chaos – which is either testament to my popularity or to my infamy."

Shauntal smiled, apparently wholly unfazed by a talking cat.

"A pleasure to meet you," she said. "Aren't you fascinating?"

"Yes," agreed Halley dryly. "Inordinately so."

Shauntal laughed, and turned away.

"And you two are Cheren and Bianca, correct?"

Cheren nodded.

"That's right."

He must have been practically bursting with excitement at meeting one of the Elite Four – to someone with his ambition, they must have seemed like heroes – but his face betrayed no trace of emotion. Bianca, for her part, just stared, eyes wide as saucers.

"All right," said Shauntal, pulling up a chair and joining us at the table. "We've got the introductions out of the way. Now, tell me everything."

There was a silence, during which Cheren, Bianca and I exchanged uneasy look. The abruptness of the request seemed a little odd.

"Well?" asked Halley, staring around at us. "Are you going to talk, or am I going to tell the story?"

Shauntal smiled and shook her head.

"I know, this must seem a little daunting," she said. "But I – oh, hello, Tia. How's the baby? Could I get a black coffee, please? Thanks. Where was I? Oh yes. I know it's daunting, but I really do need to know quickly. There's a saying in Gaunton – the only thing that moves faster than light is Unovan politics. Harmonia will probably know about this by now, and will be taking counter-measures against us; if the League is to capitalise on this knowledge, I have to put the PR department on the offensive within half an hour." She leaned forwards. "So. You understand the rush."

Cheren cleared his throat.

"All right," he said. "Lauren, you'd best begin. We weren't there for the start, after all."

I started.

Right, I thought. OK. Just leave out the part about the world switching around, and you'll be fine.

"Um... OK," I replied. "It was the day before Eostre, and I went to buy some flowers..."

---

Living flesh was even less welcome in the dark paths than dead, and especially so when it was bound to one's essence. Teiresias almost choked upon entering, and came close to falling clean out of Smythe's skull: it had been a long time since it had taken a body that still breathed, and even longer since it had dragged that body onto the dark paths. One might have thought that Teiresias would find its waning ability vexing, given its reputation and species, but Teiresias' alien psychology could not comprehend the idea of being dissatisfied with its own senescence. Time was unstoppable and ageing inevitable. There was no point in railing against it.

Teiresias could, however, feel a little irritated at having to haul this cumbersome burden through such a long and troubling path; however, Smythe had proved himself a traitor to both King and Regent, and while Teiresias cared not for the Regent, King Weland commanded its utmost respect and loyalty. He might have long since been confined to the history books in the eyes of Unova's people, but that was only because he preferred to remain unseen. The Regent's son was the first mortal in fifteen hundred years to set eyes upon him, and only then because of the exceptional blood in his veins.

Teiresias bared Smythe's teeth unconsciously. The Regent's son! There was another King to whom it owed its fealty. He was a higher creature, one of those who in days ancient beyond imagination had been eradicated by the bastard half-breeds. That was before even Teiresias' time, but it had heard the stories, still whispered around the soul-wells to this day; it was a golden age, where his people and those of earth lived in harmony, in Unova at least, and neither ever had to die.

It blinked. There was something about the dark paths that led one's mind to wander, and Teiresias knew that if one's mind wandered here it tended to pull the thinker away with it, dragging them into the endless limbo on either side of the narrow road. It must concentrate, keep its mind on the task at hand. There was important news to deliver, treachery to be uncovered, the League's intervention to be reported.

Teiresias swelled within Smythe's brain like a tumour, and flew onwards into the abyss.

---

"...ran away," Cheren finished. "To inform its masters, I presume."

Throughout the story, Shauntal had sat there silently, listening intently and making copious notes in a black-bound notebook; now, she nodded, drained her cup at a gulp and stood up.

"I see," she said. "I need to start things going at once... You keep going, you three. Talk to the druids at Nacrene tomorrow, and see if you can find out more about this Teiresias creature. It may give us a way into whatever strange pact Harmonia's made. In the meantime, I'll begin an assault on the Green Party and send word to Lenora to expect you and clear the way with the druids."

"I thought the druids didn't like the League?" asked Cheren.

"They don't," replied Shauntal. "I'm hoping they dislike demons even more, though, or we won't get anywhere at all. The Gorsedd is perfectly capable of tying our investigations up in knots if it wants to, especially if there's anything supernatural involved." She frowned. "I'm not certain about it, though... I don't know what Teiresias is, but I think I may have encountered something similar before."

"Really? Do you remember anything about it?"

"No, I'm afraid not. I think I fended it off before it did too much damage, but it did eat part of my memory before it left," she said thoughtfully. "The whole episode is a little hazy." She clapped her hands together decisively. "Anyway! I really can't afford to stay any longer. I'll leave one of my Pokémon to watch over you in case Teiresias returns – she'll be more of a match for it, I think – but that's as much in the way of concrete help as I can offer right now. Hopefully, the political attack will be more effective. Harmonia is large in the public eye at the moment; a bit of leaked information here and there should cause a media storm that will keep him distracted while I get Grimsley to find out more."

"Grimsley himself?" queried Cheren. "Doesn't he have people to find things out for him—?"

"Oh, no, quite the reverse," Shauntal answered. "The League is... um... not really as large as it seems." She grinned uncomfortably. "It's just the five of us – well, four, since Alder hasn't shown up for a while... and the Leaders aren't really much help, either," she added confidingly. "This isn't widely-known, but..." She sighed. "You deserve to know what kind of support you're getting."

"Hold on," said Halley, narrowing her eyes. "I don't like the sound of this."

"Well, I'm afraid it's true," Shauntal told her apologetically. "The Unovan League, to be honest, isn't really as substantial as we like to make out. We don't have the manpower or funding that we used to, and the Gym Leaders are increasingly turning away from our central authority. Clay, Elesa, Drayden, Burgh, Skyla, even Lenora – they don't, um, listen to us so much any more. What used to be hobbies for them have become main careers, and the League has suffered as a result. Even here, Chili, Cress and Cilan get more business from the restaurant than the Gym, and they're the most devoted of the Leaders."

She sighed again; the buzzing energy seemed to have faded from her, and for the first time I detected the dark circles around her eyes. How much had the decline of Training affected the League, I wondered. It was common knowledge that virtually all Gym Leaders had secondary jobs these days, but I hadn't thought that this would be so much to the detriment of their main business. It seemed like perhaps we might expect less assistance from the League than I had thought.

"So there it is," Shauntal said, after a pause. "That's it. That's also kind of why we haven't done anything about Harmonia before; we simply haven't had the strength to muster any resistance. To be honest, I don't know how we're going to do it now. We'll do our best – but I'm afraid you're mostly going to be on your own."

"I see," I said quietly. "Thank you anyway. Very much."

I was disappointed, but I understood. The League was doing what it could; I could ask no more.

"Is there anyone else we can go to?" asked Bianca. "For assistance, I mean... the police, maybe?"

Shauntal shrugged.

"I doubt it," she replied baldly. "Harmonia isn't going to be halted legally. He's too well-prepared, and too smart. That weird gold-selling of his is proof of that – it's been investigated, but no one can prove anything. Other than the police, the only other option is the druids, but if he's summoning things like Teiresias, he must have contacts high up in the Gorsedd – meaning it could be dangerous to tell them too much about what's happening."

"Is it me, or is literally everything against us here?" asked Halley peevishly. "Honestly. Talk about a f*cking downer."

"I know, I know," said Shauntal, shaking her head. "It feels that way. But really," she went on, checking her watch, "I do have to go. I have to set some journalists on Harmonia and then get over to— well. That much is confidential, I'm afraid."

"Of course." Cheren nodded. "We understand."

"Thank you for everything," said Bianca. "You've been very helpful."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Thank you."

"Where's this guardian Pokémon you mentioned?" asked Halley.

"She's here," Shauntal replied evasively. "She prefers not to be seen during daylight hours, I'm afraid. She'll probably introduce herself after night falls."

"Right," said Halley. "I'm totally f*cking filled with confidence."

"What Halley means," I said hurriedly, "is thank you very much, to you and your Pokémon." I looked at Halley. "Right?"

She muttered something inaudible.

"It's fine," said Shauntal. "Really. She's not on my main battling team anyway; I can spare her." She gave a wan grin. "Now, I really must go this time."

We said our goodbyes and she stole out swiftly, her footsteps as silent as the Ghosts she trained. A few minutes later, I heard a helicopter passing distantly overhead – and then that was it. Shauntal was gone.

I suddenly felt very alone.

---

"Mr. Harmonia, is it true your Party has links with undesirables formerly part of the Gorsedd—"

"—onia, how do you respond to the allegations laid against you by the an—"

"—what exactly is it that you expect us to gain by your Liberation policy—"

"Mr. Harmonia, what about the—"

"—relationship to Caitlin Molloy, the notorious—"

"—Harmonia, how—"

"Mr. Harmonia—"

"Mr. Harmonia—"

"Mr. Harmonia—"

"Now, if you could please just calm down!" bellowed Harmonia, his artificial eye flitting anxiously back and forth across the seething sea of reporters. "I can't very well answer more than one question at a—"

"Mr. Harmonia!" shouted a reporter, jumping up and down to reach over his compatriots' heads. "What do you have to say about the rumours that your Party is funded by stolen gold?"

"Preposterous!" he replied. "Our bookkeeping is transparent, and we've already passed one audit and investigation by—"

"What about the demons?" howled a new voice, louder by far than any other, and the crowd fell silent for a moment, heads turning to look at the man with the haunted eyes near the back. "Ezra Weiss, investigative journalist," he said, patting himself on the chest. "And Mr. Harmonia, how do you explain the rumours that your Party has had dealings with creatures that do not belong on this earth?"

"This is the sort of accusation I have to defend myself against?" Harmonia uttered a short, barking laugh. "Be serious, man!"

For once, the crowd sided with him, and the hubbub resumed.

"Mr. Harmonia, what about Molloy? And Goodfellow, and Thraice?"

"Mr. Harmonia—"

"I will release a statement in one hour!" thundered Harmonia, eye spinning in its socket. "All will be explained, that much I promise you!"

With that, he vanished into the Party headquarters, and the great black door slammed shut behind him. For a moment, the crowd of journalists seethed at the gates; then, seeing that there was nothing to be gained, it began to disperse. Some of its members left; some lingered a short distance away, waiting for the action to resume. More than a few went in search of coffee and bagels.

Ezra Weiss watched the façade for a while through narrowed eyes, and then turned away abruptly, shivering; he had seen them again – the white eyes at the darkened third-floor windows. The eyes that he knew no one else could see.

"I'm going to find them, Harmonia," he muttered to himself. "I'll prove they're there, all right."

He stalked off past the television crew, and spared a glance for the TV reporter as he passed.

"...stated that a press release would be given later today," she was telling the camera in a serious voice. "It's not yet clear who leaked the information, but it comes at a crucial point in Harmonia's campaign. With the countdown to the general election now measured in days rather than weeks, and his controversial new Liberation policy already unsettling many voters, Harmonia's election chances are shrinking by the minute. What seemed like an unstoppable force has now come almost to a standstill..."

Ezra shook his head, and walked on. Harmonia would win all right – he would win anything he wanted, with those fiends at his back. He should know.

After all, he was one.

---

"...come almost to a standstill. Back to you in the studio."

Cheren clicked off the TV and turned to us.

"Well," he said, "it looks like Shauntal was as good as her word."

"Yeah," agreed Bianca. "I thought she wasn't going to mention the demons, though?"

"It looks like she spread the information quite widely," Cheren replied. "Everyone had a different thing to question him about, didn't they?"

"So she must have found one person who would actually believe he had demons backing his Party," concluded Bianca. "Namely, that Weiss guy. OK, I get it."

"Yes." Cheren grinned. "Spectacular, wasn't it? She must have been wrong about him having heard about events in the Gym just yet; he wasn't prepared at all!"

"I know. He wasn't nearly as smooth when he wasn't in control, was he?"

"Bloopgork," chimed in Munny, whatever that meant, and went back to making slow circuits of the Centre's lounge.

I was silent; I didn't much feel like talking. Once we'd got back from the Gym, I'd charged my phone and had a long, heartfelt conversation with Anastasia that left me feeling hollow inside with homesickness; I'd also found 136 missed calls from my parents, but I hadn't dared to answer them yet. Hopefully Cordelia would have explained to them by now; I wasn't looking forward to telling them what had happened, and any preparation on her part would be welcome.

But it was the call to Annie that really got me. I had forgotten that your heart really does hurt when you're sad enough, and I didn't like being reminded of it. She had been well – fully recovered from the fear Teiresias had projected into her brain – but she'd been worried about me; I hadn't called for days. I'd told her about everything that had happened, and she'd compared the Dreamyard to some game she'd played a year ago; everything had, for one short moment, felt exactly as it had before I'd left – and then I had had to go, and as the line went dead I suddenly realised that I missed her more than I knew how to deal with.

I hadn't felt like eating dinner after all that.

"You know," I said slowly, speaking for the first time since I'd said goodbye to Annie, "I'm feeling kind of tired. I think I might go to bed now."

Both Cheren and Bianca looked at me sharply; even Halley glanced up drowsily from where she was curled next to Candy on the floor.

"I see," said Cheren, and I was unsure exactly how much he saw, as he put it.

"Are you OK?" asked Bianca, more concerned.

"Yeah," I replied. "Yeah. I'll... be fine." I attempted a smile, and almost managed. "Night!"

"Goodnight," said Cheren.

"Night night," said Bianca, brow furrowing.

"Candy. Bedtime," I said, and she climbed lazily onto my shoulder. We left, and an hour and a half later I'd finally cried myself to sleep, Candy's little heart beating fast against my cheek.

---

Tock.

---

Past midnight, and still working. It wasn't unusual for Harmonia nowadays, but tonight it carried with it a special horror; this wasn't just the usual Party business, but a desperate attempt to repair the damage done by whoever it was that had leaked those rumours to the press. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble and considerable expense to put a hole in his campaign, and he simply couldn't think of who might have the resources to do so; luckily for him, he was about to find out – and unluckily, it was not to be good news.

A sheet of dark fire flared on the other side of his desk, and a pale man appeared in the chair laid out there. He was plump and smiling, and wore a neat suit with a bowler hat; he was, however, the colour of chalk, and his teeth distinctly grey.

"A message from His Undying Majesty, Mr. Harmonia."

His voice was every bit as merry as his smile, but carried with it a sickly scent that did not smell like any living creature Harmonia knew of.

Harmonia shut his eyes. Usually his fiendish ally sent one of his more intangible subjects as a messenger; a corporeal one was not only unsettling, but meant something serious had happened. Why the King felt this distinction was necessary was beyond him, but then again, the King had been living in a tomb for the last few millennia, and that sort of thing was bound to colour one's thinking after a while.

"'Sraven," he whispered, feeling sick at the thought of any more bad news. "What is it now?"

"Teiresias has returned," said the Merry Gentleman (for such, according to certain unpleasant parts of a particularly nasty Treatise, Harmonia had taken to calling him). "It brought with it your agent."

"Smythe?" Harmonia tensed. What had the dumb bastard done now? "What do you mean, it brought him with it?"

"It appears Mr. Smythe was a traitor," the Merry Gentleman informed him, his grin broadening. His tongue, Harmonia saw, was blue-black and swollen; he did not know how he spoke, but he was sure that organ wasn't up to the task. "He had informed a friend of his of Teiresias' existence, and very possibly part of His Majesty's plan."

"Our plan," corrected Harmonia. The King might be in the habit of sending rather grisly messengers, but that didn't mean he was going to let himself be pushed around, damn it. If you wanted to dine with the devil, you had to stand up for yourself. That, and purchase a very long fork.

The Merry Gentleman inclined his head.

"Of course. Our plan, therefore, may well be threatened with exposure – particularly as this friend seemed unaccountably unafraid of Teiresias, even when it possessed Smythe to flee and report back. She threatened to kill it, apparently. From what it saw, she appears to be a woman of singular determination."

"Do we know who she is?" asked Harmonia. Woden hang 'em! It was one thing after another today...

"I regret to inform you that we do not," replied the Merry Gentleman. "Teiresias considered it more important to deliver its report than to attempt to follow her, particularly as it had to take with it your man's living body."

Harmonia gritted his teeth. It sounded like the King was blaming this on him – and the really galling thing was that he was right to do so. He should have seen this coming; Smythe had lived the kind of life wherein one makes dangerous enemies, and spectacularly dangerous friends.

"I see," he said, trying to maintain his outward cool. "She'll likely be heading for Nacrene, then, where the nearest copy of the Glasya-Labolas is – she can't know what Teiresias is, surely. We have people there already; I should be able to prepare something to throw her off the trail while we work on her identity."

The Merry Gentleman's smile broadened a second time. It was now almost too wide for Harmonia to bear; it stretched so far across his cheeks that he almost felt the flesh of the Gentleman's face might give way and tear under the strain.

"Very well, Mr. Harmonia," he said. "Teiresias will return here as soon as it is rested, to await direction. It is so very eager to find this Halley," he added, with a small and horrible chuckle.

Harmonia clenched his pen with such force his knuckles looked like they would burst through the skin of his hand.

"Is there anything else?" he asked.

"Yes, just one more thing," the Gentleman replied. "His Majesty suggests the League is behind the recent attack on your campaign."

Harmonia started. What in Middangeard...? The League? With so few people, and with all they had to do right now? How had they been able to afford it? And how had they found out?

"You can't be serious!"

"An understandable reaction," said the Merry Gentleman, "but I must draw your attention to the fact that the altercation between Teiresias and this woman took place in a Gym, in full view of two Gym Leaders and within another's body. Halley and her group were also present – and we doubt that they did not seize this opportunity to seek aid."

Who was this 'we'? Better, Harmonia thought, not to ask – not where the King's Gentlemen were concerned.

"I see," he said faintly. "Is there... anything else?"

"No," replied the Gentleman. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Harmonia. His Undying Majesty sends his regards."

And then he was gone – just like that. None of the theatrics this time; no dark fire or flashing lights. Just gone.

Harmonia waited for a full thirty seconds before he dared breathe again.

"Thunir's hammer," he sighed weakly, resting his head on his desk. "The f*ck is with those things?"

He didn't comfort himself. He knew exactly what was with them, and that was what frightened him.

---

Morning brought another depressingly dreary day – yesterday was apparently an aberration – and the end of our time in Striaton. The druid and Shauntal had both recommended we head to Nacrene, and the four of us agreed that we should be doing it as soon as possible; if we were lucky, we might get there and get a head start on how to defeat Teiresias before it returned from informing the mysterious 'Kings' it had mentioned, whoever they were. Consequently, we'd agreed the night before to be ready to catch the ten o'clock train to Nacrene Central – which of course meant that we didn't leave the Pokémon Centre until about eleven. This put Cheren in a bad mood (he'd been hoping we might be early and get the nine twenty-six, I think) but really, he should have expected it; he was dealing with two teenagers and a cat – neither of which are exactly renowned for their early waking hours.

Eventually, we ended up on the eleven seventeen, and after an hour of boredom – punctuated only by Shauntal's Ghost (who still hadn't introduced herself yet) rattling the windows every so often – I found myself once more in a city centre. That, I thought, was how to travel: cut out all that tedious walking through the forest; just get on a train and go straight from urban heart to urban heart. No need for dirt or sleeping in tents: you stayed in the midst of the comforts of civilisation, every step of the way.

Bliss.

Nacrene itself was very different from Black City. It wasn't quite as new, for the most part, though I knew from visiting Uncle Gregory that parts of it were almost indistinguishable from my hometown, with the same looming skyscrapers and cloud-tickling towers. In the heart of it, though, around the station, I kept looking up and seeing windows that still had shutters, or little baroque swirls of decoration, that would have been thoroughly out of place back home.

Our destination, the Travison Memorial Library, was even more old-fashioned. It was the kind of gigantic neoclassical monstrosity the British had thrown up everywhere when they first arrived, with columns and arches in abundance and a multiplicity of pedimented windows. I wouldn't say it was attractive, but it was definitely impressive. It put me in mind of a vast, many-legged beast forever wrapped up in a smug sense of its own stateliness.

"That is an ugly building," I said, staring up at it.

Cheren looked at me sharply.

"Um... no," he said frankly. "It isn't. It's quite beautiful."

"Yeah," agreed Bianca. "Look at it! It's like a castle."

"I'm on their side," drawled Halley. "It's a damn fine piece of architecture. If it weren't the size of the British Museum I'd probably nick it."

"Ark," put in Candy, uncertain what everyone was talking about but determined not to be left out.

"Huh," I said, feeling vaguely betrayed. "Er... huh."

"Eloquent," said Halley sarcastically.

"You know, we should get you a collar," I replied savagely. "You'd actually look like a tame cat that way."

She bristled, as I'd known she would.

"No one's putting a f*cking collar on me—"

"It's actually quite a good idea," said Cheren. "I should have thought of that before. We'll see what we can do about it after we visit the library."

"Hey." Halley sounded worried. "Hey, you are joking, right?"

"Come on," said Bianca. "We've done enough standing and staring. Let's go in already."

We began to move towards the entrance, Halley circling our heels.

"No, seriously," she said, "you're joking, right? Tell me you're joking."

"It's a shame about the weather today," Cheren said to me.

"I know," I replied "At least it was sunny yesterday, even if it was cold as well."

"Are you listening? You hate me, don't you? I'm sorry for all the mean things I said. But you are joking, right?"

"I don't know... I think it's a bit warmer today," Bianca said. "It feels like it, anyway."

At that point, I noticed the person leaning against a column in the entrance portico and stopped dead. Halley's concern no longer seemed funny to me; I felt the blood roar inexplicably in my veins and my heart pound rhythmically like a cannibal drumbeat.

It was him.

It was the guy whose name I knew without knowing.

It was N, and he was looking back at me with the same fear in his eyes as was crawling in my stomach.
 

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
1,030
Posts
13
Years
Chapter Fourteen: Natural

"Hello, Jared," said N tightly, avoiding my eye.

"N."

We stared at each other for a moment.

"What are you doing here?" I asked at length.

"I went to do some research," he replied stiffly. "What about you?"

"Same."

The air tasted electric; something was wrong between us, as if the universe itself were shivering at our contact. I suddenly felt uncertain about who I was; for one long moment, I could have sworn I was a girl – and then I was back in my own body again, facing N and sweating with unease.

"You were in Accumula, weren't you?" asked Cheren, presumably to break the ensuing silence rather than out of any desire to confirm this.

"Yes," replied N. "We spoke at f— Harmonia's speech." He scratched his chin uncomfortably. "I came here straight afterwards. I've been spending a few days researching the First Kingdom."

The First Kingdom was one of Unova's foremost mysteries. There existed in the Jannsermond Desert a set of ruins that dated back forty-five thousand years: older than any Homo sapiens remains in the country, and in fact more than thirty thousand years before the invention of agriculture. No one knew who or what had created them, but theories abounded and the more plausible ones were taught to all of us in school: that they had been the work of an earlier species of human that was later outcompeted by Cro-Magnons; that they had been the home of an extinct race of intelligent Psychic-type Pokémon; that they were the last physical trace of the ése left on Middangeard.

For years, archaeologists had swarmed over the ruins, but to no avail: there was simply nothing at all left inside them that gave any clue as to their origins. Whatever the First Kingdom had been, it had vanished without trace long before the dawn of recorded history.

"I see," said Cheren, evidently uncertain about why exactly N had decided to mention this. "Uh... why?"

"It's connected to Harmonia's work," N said distantly, looking over my shoulder. "I think it is, anyway... The Twin Heroes, Reshiram, Zekrom – I think it all comes from the time of the Kingdom. And if I'm right, the Kingdom could happen again – harmony, unity, separation—"

He had grown quite animated during the course of this strange speech, but now cut himself off abruptly.

"Well, anyway," he said, looking embarrassed. "Never mind all that. I tend to get quite carried away with my research."

"O-K," said Bianca. "Um—"

I didn't hear what she said: at that moment, an image flared up in my mind and blazed with such intensity I could hardly believe it wasn't one of my own memories. I saw a vast, saurian monster, halfway between a pterodactyl and a sun, burning through the world around me; its jaws dripped with flames and its flanks were wet with golden blood, and as it saw me it screamed three unintelligible words that snapped the sky asunder—

"The White Dragon!" I cried. "It – she—"

"It's you!" cut in N, his icy eyes glowing with unnatural fervour. "You! I – 'sraven!"

"What?" asked Bianca helplessly. "What?"

"I have no idea," replied Cheren, looking from N to me with bewildered curiosity. "Perhaps they're having some kind of fit?"

"She chose you," N said wildly. "No, she didn't... she had no choice – you were born to it..." He shook his head. "I should have guessed! The signs were all there..."

"You have his mark," I told him without knowing what I was saying. "He's waiting—"

"Do you think I don't know that?" he interrupted. "I'm searching! Gods know I'm searching..."

"Where are they?" I asked. "Who are they?"

N shook his head.

"I don't know yet. Give me your phone number. I'll tell you more as I find it out."

"Aren't we enemies, though?"

"I don't know," he repeated. "Not yet, anyway." He gave me a crooked smile. "We'll find out."

We exchanged numbers and he left without another word, melting into the crowd and disappearing as if he'd never been.

I stood there for a long moment, staring at the place where he'd been, and then Candy's screech from my shoulder snapped me back to reality.

"What?" I said, patting her. "What? Where – what?"

"That's pretty much what we're all thinking, I think," replied Halley. "Care to explain?"

"I – uh – don't know," I admitted. "I – we saw a dragon – two dragons – or dinosaurs – and there was fire, or lightning, and—" A wave of dizziness broke over me, and I put out my hand to steady myself against a column. "Uh... Um... Guys, I don't think – I – I'm not sure I can explain that right now," I said eventually. "Give me a moment."

"All right," said Cheren. "Er... do you want to sit down? You look like you need to."

"Yes," I said fervently. "Yes, I would bloody love to sit down."

I half-sat, half-fell onto the stone steps, and put my head in my hands for a minute, trying to contain and slow the whirlwind in my skull. What the hell had happened just then? I had remembered something, I thought – something from before I was born, from the last time N and I had met...

"F*ck!" I yelled, far too loudly, and bit my lip. "This is so f*cking annoying!"

"Jared, are you OK?" asked Bianca, sitting down next to me. "You're... kinda..."

"Crazy?" supplied Halley. "Mental? Take your pick, there're plenty of synonyms."

"I'm about three f*cking nanoseconds from kicking you across the street," I spat at her. "Either you shut up or we find out how many of your nine lives you have left."

Halley stared.

"Awesome," she said happily, scampering out of kicking range. "You've got the badass banter down to a fine art."

"Halley!" cried Bianca. "Shut up!"

"Make me—"

"Collar," said Cheren firmly, and Halley immediately fell silent.

"Thanks," I said quietly, closing my eyes. The sunlight felt too bright; it swelled and stung my retinas. "Ah... OK. OK. I think – I got it." I sat up and took a deep breath. "There's... some kind of a connection between me and N. We're opposites, somehow. There are two dragons, opposites who love and loathe each other more than you can understand, and they – we – I'm not sure of the difference between them and us," I confessed. "But they're dreaming, and restless, and their youth is coming around again..." I shook my head. "Does that make any sense? Because that's all I know."

"It makes no sense whatsoever," replied Cheren. "But it does remind me of something."

"What?"

"The Twin Heroes," he replied. "They loved each other as brothers and loathed each other as men. One had a white dragon banner and the other a black one, remember?"

"No... I didn't remember that part," I said distantly. "Just the twin part..."

There was silence for a while.

"I guess," said Bianca at last, "we have another mystery to solve."

"So it would seem," replied Cheren. "I wish we hadn't let that N guy get away... I'd have liked to question him further." He ground his teeth. "Well, no matter. We're at the biggest library in Europe. There's no better place to begin our investigations."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I... yes." I shook my head. "Ah. Sorry. I feel... dizzy. Still."

"Take your time," said Bianca, patting my arm. "You looked like you were having a heart attack."

"More like I'd seen a ghost, I think," I muttered. "A ghost from Sandjr."

"What?" Bianca looked confused. "Sondyeer?"

"Sandjr," I said. "Wait. What? What's Sandjr?"

"I have no idea," replied Cheren. "Let's add it to the pile of mysteries, shall we?"

"Permission to speak?" asked Halley.

"If it's relevant."

"It's about Sandjr."

I looked at her sharply.

"What about it?"

"Well, uh... Look up," she said, pointing with one paw.

As one, our heads turned skywards.

Inscribed across the front of the Library's great portico was a single line of old Unovan runes – a dedication, I thought, or a memorial to the building's completion – and with a sense of increasing disbelief, I read the five words they spelled out:

DU BEORWÁN YLDFYRD SANDJR WÖEN

"No way," breathed Bianca. "No way..."

"Yes way," replied Halley. "Sandjr."

---

Niamh Harper had a meeting to attend.

From what she'd learned at the Gym, the only place to find information on destroying Teiresias was Nacrene, and so she had headed there immediately after recovering her senses; however, owing to a previous incident involving a clerk, a dinosaur and her longsword, she was persona non grata in the Travison Memorial Library, and was summarily shown the exit as soon as she entered.

This had not deterred her; after all, she was used to gaining entry through alternative means. Monsters often didn't bother with the law, or even with doors, and the same went for those who hunted them. Consequently, Niamh had waited until nightfall, then slipped in through an unguarded skylight in the west wing, and made her way through darkened corridors to the restricted section where the Treatises were kept.

Here, unfortunately, she could get no further. The one entrance was sealed and guards posted; Niamh could have killed them both, had she so desired, but she really didn't think murder would be a good idea, and besides, she knew that neither of the guards would have the key. That would be kept with the druidic librarian, and getting it from him would be out of the question.

Disconsolate and angry at her failure, Niamh had returned to the rooftops – where one of the gargoyles on the roof had turned to her with a tremendous grinding of stone on stone, and said:

"So, you're a monster-slayer, then?"

Niamh did not start; too many monsters had stalked her for that. Instead, she levelled a pistol at the gargoyle's face.

"What the f*ck are you?"

The gargoyle looked at itself.

"A gargoyle, by the look of it," it said – or rather he, for its voice was almost certainly masculine. "You find yourself in unusual places at night, it seems." He cocked his head at her, apparently unworried by the gun. "Anyway. I'm looking for someone with your particular set of skills, and was wondering if perhaps you'd consider entering into a partnership with me?"

Niamh didn't quite know how to reply. She'd seen a great many impossible things, but a creature made of living stone was entirely beyond her experience; doubly so when you considered the offer it was making.

"What?"

The gargoyle sighed.

"Look, this isn't as complicated as you're making it out to be," he said. "Each night, I've been dream-searching for people who might make good allies, and I came across a man who had one of your business cards earlier tonight. It took me a little time to find you, but now I have, and I'm making a proposition.."

"Who are you?" asked Niamh cautiously. Her pistol did not waver.

"I'm..." The gargoyle sighed. "Look, never mind that – I'm not a good dream-searcher and I don't want to damage your subconscious. If you're interested, come to Dunsanay Square at noon tomorrow and meet me there. I'll tell you much more then."

"How do I know this isn't a trap?"

"There's no reason for it to be," pointed out the gargoyle. "Look, if you don't want to come, don't come. I'm not you." He shook his head and settled back into his normal position with a sigh. "Bloody humans," he muttered. "Anything supernatural and their common sense flies out the window..."

Niamh opened her eyes and sat up abruptly. She was lying on the roof of the Travison Memorial Library, a pistol in her hand, and the first faint light of dawn was shining in the east.

She looked around for gargoyles, and found three of them, all frozen in place by the guttering – exactly as one would expect.

She blinked, and put the gun away in a daze.

"What the hell was that?"

There was no reply. Whatever force had animated the gargoyle, it was gone, and as Niamh climbed back down to the ground, she wondered whether or not the whole thing had been a dream. By the time she reached the pavement, she was certain it was – but why had it struck so suddenly? She couldn't have just fallen asleep on the rooftop; that was just not possible. Besides, she had no recollection of doing so.

The issue of the gargoyle had burned in her mind throughout her morning ramblings through the city – ramblings that, she was disconcerted to find, had led her straight to Dunsanay Square, despite the fact that she had no idea where it was.

"Well, f*ck it," she said, checking her watch and finding herself unsurprised by the fact that it read five to twelve. "Let's see if it was a dream or not, then."

She wandered out to the statue in the centre – a four-metre-tall depiction of a bearded god wrestling with an ettin – and sat down on a bench by its plinth.

"So you decided to come," said the man who had definitely not been sitting next to her a moment ago. "Thanks. I appreciate it."

Niamh jumped.

"F*ck!" she cried. "What – where did you come from?"

"I was here all along. You just didn't notice me." The man cleared his throat and offered her hand. "My name is Ezra Schwarz," he said. "I'm planning on assassinating the king of the demons. Are you interested in helping?"

---

"Do either of you remember any old Unovan?" I asked.

"Nope," said Bianca.

"No," said Cheren. "I didn't think it would be useful."

"Figures. No one does."

I was pretty sure old Unovan was the least popular component of the compulsory 'Unovan history and culture' subjects; no one I'd ever spoken to ever remembered anything about it – not even the people who taught it.

"We can ask when we meet the librarian," decided Cheren. "Right now, I think we should go in. Any potential leads are definitely in there."

"Yeah," I agreed. "OK. In we go."

I got to my feet, found I was steady again and followed him through the vast doors into the belly of the Library.

The entrance hall was every bit as grand as could be expected from the façade: so huge was it that it housed half a museum's worth of historical ephemera, from ancient stone tablets and orbs at the back to the titanic skeleton of some ancient Dragon at the front. I might not like the architecture, but I could definitely appreciate the remnants of a colossal monster, and stared awestruck for a short while.

"Whoa," breathed Bianca. "It's amazing... Have you ever been here before?"

I shook my head mutely.

"Impressive indeed," agreed Cheren. "That's a Dragonite skeleton, I believe. Not the modern species, though – it's far too big. It must be the extinct subspecies..." He launched into a short explanation, but I wasn't listening. There was too much to take in for me to bother with one of his lectures right now.

"Hello!" said an unexpected voice from the right. "Welcome to the Travison Memorial Library!"

I looked, and saw a short, balding man with Coke-bottle glasses beaming at us.

"I see you're admiring our exhibition," he said jovially. "It's on loan from the Nacrene Musuem – all except the skeleton, that is. That's ours."

"Isn't the Museum part of the library?" asked Cheren. "I thought it was."

"Well, sort of," replied the man. "It's on the south side of the building. The two places are connected, you know. The library has the more impressive entrance hall, so we tend to borrow exhibits every now and then to showcase them here. Makes an impact, if you know what I mean." He clapped a hand to his forehead. "Oh, but I'm running away with myself! My name is Hawes. I'm the director of the museum."

"Shouldn't you be working, then?" I asked. "I mean, isn't that a fairly major job?"

Hawes shrugged.

"It is and it isn't. Today is one of the days when it isn't – and besides, I'm here in my directorial capacity, to meet some esteemed guests who are supposed to be arriving today. My wife is the head librarian – and the Gym Leader – and she asked me if I would guide them through to the restricted section to meet her and Charlie. That's the Gorsedd representative here," he added. "Lovely chap. Very knowledgeable about cheese, but then I'm told druids go in for that sort of thing."

It was clear that if one of us didn't interrupt him Hawes would continue to jabber on for the foreseeable future, so I said:

"Um... these guests. They wouldn't be enquiring about reading the Glasya-Labolas, would they?"

Hawes paused.

"Good grief," he said. "Now, how the devil would you know that?"

"I think we might be them," I told him. "I'm Jared Black, and—"

"Ah!" cried Hawes exuberantly. "Wonderful, wonderful!" He shook my hand so vigorously I feared for the integrity of my elbow. "So you must be Cheren Perng, then, and Bianca Aaronson?"

"Other way round," said Bianca carefully. "I'm Bianca, he's Cheren."

"Of course, of course," replied Hawes. "Silly of me." He bent down. "And you... you must be Halley."

"The one and only," she replied.

"Marvellous," he breathed, quietly for once. "You really can talk... Quite extraordinary." He stared at her, rapt, for so long that Halley became visibly uneasy; Bianca took pity on her, and drew Hawes' attention by saying:

"Um... so... you were going to show us to the Treatises?"

"Ah! Of course, of course," replied Hawes, straightening up. "I do apologise – I tend to get rather carried away, you know. Right this way, please!"

He spun on his heel – something I'd never seen done before in real life – and headed off down the hall at such speed that it was an effort to keep up.

"Perng?" I asked Cheren quizzically as we hurried after him. "Really?"

He gave me a strange look.

"My dad is Taiwanese," he said. "Can't you see it?"

It was true. I hadn't noticed it before, but there was something vaguely exotic about his features; I couldn't have placed it, though. I supposed he must have taken after his mother.

"By the way," asked Bianca, "we were wondering what the inscription on the front of the library meant. Do you know?"

Hawes stopped abruptly.

"Do I know?" he asked. "Do I know? I'm the director of the museum! Of course I know. Du beorwán ydlfyrd Sandjr wöen: for the minds of the Unovan people. It's a quote from a philosophical tract by the scholar Volun in the twelfth century—"

"I see, but what does the word Sandjr mean, exactly?" I asked. "It, uh, seems familiar."

"It's an archaic term for Unova," replied Hawes. "You may have come across it in school – the great poets of the nineteenth century were fond of using it to give an ancient ring to their work. Originally, it comes from the old legend of the Twin Heroes. In the earliest transcriptions of the story, Unova is referred to as Sandjr before the Heroes conquer and unite its peoples. It's given a new name as a mark of a new beginning. Why do you ask?"

"Just... uh, curious," I said. "Anyway... carry on. We were going to see the Treatises?"

"Ah, of course," replied Hawes. "Come on, come on!"

He hurried through a little door marked 'Staff Only' to one side of the hall, and beckoned us through after him; beyond was a nondescript little corridor that, it soon transpired, was the entrance to a vast network of identical nondescript little corridors. Had we not had Hawes to help us, I'm sure we would have become lost forever in there, and eventually starved to death; however, with his help, we negotiated a dizzying array of twists and turns in record time, and eventually ended up outside a reinforced steel door marked 'RESTRICTED'.

"Here we are!" he announced happily. "It's just through here."

He pushed open the door, and ushered us through into a small circular room that was practically wallpapered with bookshelves, each bursting with fat, ancient books under sheets of toughened glass. In the centre of the room was a little round table with a green-shaded reading lamp, and sitting at this table was a plump man in white robes with half a salad on his head. This, I presumed, was the druidic librarian, and he got to his feet as we entered.

"Jared Black, I presume," he said. "Charles Lewis. I look after the library here." He looked at the others. "And you must be Cheren Perng and Bianca Aaronson."

"Don't forget me," said Halley, jumping onto the table. "Halley, um... just Halley."

"And Halley, of course." He stared in fascination for a moment. "'Sraven. A talking cat."

"I know. Ninth wonder of the world, that's me."

"Ninth?"

"Eighth is Kong. Obviously." Halley yawned. "Anyway. Show us your books."

"Er, no, it's not quite as simple as that," said Charles, slightly frantically; it seemed to me that Halley often had that effect on people. "First, I need to make sure that everything is as it's been claimed—"

"A mind-reading, yeah?" I said.

"Yes," he replied. "That is, if that's acceptable."

I considered. Given all that was riding on this, it seemed ridiculous to refuse, even if the thought was discomfiting.

"All right," I said cautiously. "I suppose that's OK."

Charles nodded, and motioned towards a door on the opposite side of the room; a moment later, it opened to admit a short and curiously ugly woman in a long black dress who moved as if on oiled castors.

Wait, no. Not a woman, a Pokémon – this must be a Gothitelle, then; I'd never seen one in real life before, but I had a vague idea of what they looked like. Her face was incredible; it was at once human and bizarrely alien, as if it were the product of a sculptor who'd had a reasonably accurate description of a human given to him but no picture to work from. She looked at me from under heavily-lidded eyes with an utterly inscrutable expression, then made a series of swift signs with her shapeless hands.

"What?" Charles frowned at her. "There's—"

The bookcases rattled, and a low wind sprung up; a spot of darkness began to coalesce in the middle of the room – and all at once, I remembered the Ghost Shauntal had left to watch us.

"Uh, I guess that's Shauntal's," I said. "I don't think the Gothitelle likes her."

The half-formed blob growled, and the Gothitelle hissed in return, making a series of gestures that I surmised must mean something incredibly rude in whatever sign language she used.

"Calm down, please," cried Charles. "Anita! This belongs to Shauntal. It's on our side—"

The Gothitelle flung her hands up in the air in inexpressible rage and stormed out.

Shauntal's Ghost, for her part, gave a satisfied humph and faded away again.

We looked at each other.

"Well, that didn't quite go as planned," said Bianca brightly. "Shall we try again?"

---

"So let me get this straight," said Niamh, frowning. "You're a demon?"

"Yes, I suppose that's what you'd call me," replied Ezra. "Not like Teiresias or that bastard Weland, though. I'm much less keen for humanity to be subjugated by the Shrouded Court."

"What?"

Ezra sighed.

"Sorry. It's been a long time since I last tried to explain this to anyone. I'm getting everything all mixed up." He leaned back in his seat. "Do you smoke?"

"No."

"Do you mind if I do?"

"No.

Thin plumes of tobacco smoke began to trail from Ezra's mouth, though there was no evidence of a cigarette to produce them.

"All right," he said. "First of all, you have to understand that I can't tell you everything. The king I want to kill has certain abnormal powers, as you might expect of a demon, and he'll know if I mention certain things. But I'll tell you everything I can." He paused and exhaled a large smoke-ring. "Demons are real. You've worked that much out already. What you don't know, however, is that we have a society of sorts. There's a king – Weland the Undying – and his court. They've been underneath Unova for thousands of years, watching humans developing above them, and they don't much like it."

"Why not?" asked Niamh.

"You know how some people believe radio is better than TV, and books are better than radio, and so on?"

"Yes...?"

"Weland's that sort of person. He comes from a time before people, and he firmly believes that no people is better than people. And since Weland thinks like that, all of our kind in Unova have to think that too or face execution."

"You don't," observed Niamh. "Unless this is a trap, and you're working with Teiresias."

"You've seen what we can do," replied Ezra levelly. "You saw Teiresias, and you must have realised by now that I put the location of this place into your head. If I wanted to kill you, you would have had an unfortunate heart attack in the small hours of the morning and never woken again."

Niamh looked at him. If demons were anything like humans – and so far, Ezra at least seemed to be somewhat similar – then her senses told her he wasn't lying. For whatever reason, he had chosen not to harm her.

"All right," she said. "But you don't side with this King Weland."

"No," replied Ezra. "I don't. I think Weland is insane and vengeful, and his regime is hideously oppressive. We have the right to think what we want, don't you agree? He's a cancer in the heart of Unova, and his continued rule is bad for demons and humans alike."

So far, thought Niamh, he was being reasonable enough. She couldn't fault his argument.

"OK," she said guardedly. "Go on."

"Thanks. Anyway, between the Gorsedd and the Pokémon League, Unova has always been too well-defended for Weland to do much about the so-called human scum crawling about on the roof of his kingdom. But somehow this man Harmonia found out how to contact him, and between them they've come to a little agreement. Weland is lending his power and knowledge to Harmonia's campaign, and in return, Harmonia's Liberation policy will force the dissolution of the League, clearing the way for Weland's forces to attack."

Niamh frowned.

"What does Harmonia stand to gain from that? He'd be Prime Minister of a dead country."

"Actually, he wouldn't," replied Ezra. "He would gain absolute power over what remains of the Unovan people, more or less. I'm afraid I can't go into the details of that, or Weland will overhear, but I promise you that it's true."

"Right." Niamh wasn't sure whether she totally believed him or not, but there were more pressing issues at hand. "What does any of this have to do with my friend Portland?"

"Smythe, right? The Party man." Ezra sighed and blew another smoke-ring. "It's my guess that at the moment he's a prisoner of either Weland or Harmonia. You won't get him back without my help – but equally, I can't even enter either of their lairs without your assistance; alone, all I've been able to do is harass Harmonia – rather ineffectively, I have to say. So I'd like to make a deal."

"I get Smythe and you get close to Weland, is that it?"

Ezra nodded.

"In a nutshell. Although I was going to add that I'll pay you one tonne of gold as well. No hidden catches."

"A tonne of gold?"

Ezra shrugged.

"That is, if I manage to kill Weland. If I don't, I won't be able to get the gold out of his treasury and you'll have to settle for just having your friend back."

"That's enough for me," said Niamh immediately. "I—"

"Before you answer," interrupted Ezra, "I need to give you a little more information. This is an extremely hazardous enterprise. You'll be risking, life, limb, soul and sanity – not to mention your ability to dream and to see the colour red. I will have to possess you at least once, as well, although I'll try not to do so unless there's no other option."

Niamh wasn't stupid; she didn't rush into things, even when Smythe's safety was concerned. Ezra seemed truthful, but she knew better than to take it for granted; he was a demon, after all.

And yet he was peculiarly human, too – far more so than the ancient, cosmic thing that called itself Teiresias. It might be an act, but if it was, it was the best Niamh had ever seen; the alien and the human were balanced with incredible expertise in Ezra, and she was certain that fine edge could not be falsified. Whatever he was, she was surprised to find, she trusted him.

"Did you make me trust you?" she asked suspiciously.

Ezra smiled.

"You're learning," he said. "Rule Number One: question everything where demons are concerned. And no, I didn't. I don't have that much power over human minds. I was always bottom of the class when it came to mental command."

"Demons have schools?"

"Not as you understand them," replied Ezra. "But yes, we do." He paused. "Well, then. It's been a pleasure talking to you, Ms. Harper."

He stood up and shook her hand.

"What? But you haven't heard my answer yet," she said, puzzled.

"You need to think about this carefully," Ezra replied. "You don't want to make a mistake. I'll find you at dawn tomorrow and you can give me your final answer then."

"But—" Niamh blinked. Somewhere between him finishing and her starting to speak, he had disappeared, though she had no recollection of him vanishing; he was just, inexplicably, gone, and Niamh was left staring out at the bustle of pedestrians, not quite certain of anything except a sense of thorough confusion.
 

Daydream

[b]Boo.[/b]
702
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So I had a hop, skip and a jump to Google translate and it turns out Weiss and Schwarz mean White and Black in German, respectively. You are a wily one.

I'm rather enjoying the way you're weaving in the different perspectives to tell the story, it definitely adds intricacy to your plot. I've also noticed that Lauren seems more introspective in her narrative than Jared does. A clever way of showing the differences in their characters, I think.
 

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
1,030
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So I had a hop, skip and a jump to Google translate and it turns out Weiss and Schwarz mean White and Black in German, respectively. You are a wily one.

I thought everyone knew that? Perhaps it's just me. The real question is why Ezra's name changes with the shifting world, when the only other person that does is Jared/Lauren.

I'm rather enjoying the way you're weaving in the different perspectives to tell the story, it definitely adds intricacy to your plot. I've also noticed that Lauren seems more introspective in her narrative than Jared does. A clever way of showing the differences in their characters, I think.

Well, I usually end up thinking of most of my characters as the main ones, so it's no surprise that I've ended up spreading the story across their eyes again. As for Lauren and Jared... well, I didn't actually notice that until you pointed it out, but yeah. That seems to be the case. It makes sense, really, given that I'm operating with a fairly strict set of parameters with the way I write each of them.

F.A.B.
 

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
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Chapter Fifteen: Plasma

Imprisonment was nothing new to Portland Smythe.

Entombment, however, was.

He had awoken from uneasy dreams to find himself lying at length upon something hard and cold, and in an absolute darkness; there was no room to move his hands or indeed anything at all, and his attempt to sit up ended prematurely when his nose thumped fleshily into solid stone.

A lesser man would have panicked. Smythe, used to inconveniences of the most fearsome kind, did not – although he was far from calm. He had been possessed by Teiresias, he recalled, and returned to the care of Harmonia – or, potentially, to that of Weland; while doubtless despicable, Harmonia didn't strike him as the type to bury people alive.

Christchristchristchristhewasburiedalive

No. Smythe had been down that road before, long ago. Panic was a one-way ticket from a Bad Situation to a Very Much Worse one. There was no sense in boarding that particular train.

"Deep breaths," Smythe said aloud, trying to calm himself. His voice had a peculiar muffled echoing sound to his mind – or was that just his knowledge of the severity of his situation getting in the way of his senses? No, it was – it wasn't – it was— wait! "Not deep breaths!" Smythe cried. "Definitely not deep breaths. Conserve air. Shut up!"

He clamped his mouth tightly shut and took a series of tiny breaths through his nose; a minute later, dizzy with lack of oxygen, his will broke and he gasped convulsively.

Calm down, he told himself silently. Calm down, Portland, calm down... They don't want to kill you! They'll want information – they'll... oh, sh*t.

They'll want to know about Niamh.

Smythe bit his lip.

Christ. Niamh.

He had personally seen her escape the clutches of the Czech Pokémon Champion while decapitating a surgically-created minotaur sewn together from bits of bull and gorilla, and heard tales from her that required no embellishment to astound – but still... This time she was up against more than mere monsters. The creatures to whose attention she had come weren't really flesh and blood – weren't even really mortal, not in the conventional sense of the word.

Niamh had killed everything life threw at her before, but Smythe had a horrible feeling that she wasn't going to be able to kill this one. Not without help, anyway.

"Right, then," he muttered, an icy determination suddenly coming over him. "That makes it simple, then."

Niamh couldn't possibly kill a demon without help. Smythe was in the very heart of the demons' lair.

From here, quite conceivably, he could find a way to destroy a demon, and thus save Niamh.

All he had to do was escape.

---

It took a long time for Anita and Shauntal's Ghost to become reconciled to each other's presence; Charles spoke volubly to the former, and Cheren attempted to argue with the latter, although she didn't actually deign to become visible again. Threats, bribery, reason – every possible avenue of attack was tried; at length Anita agreed, in aggressively choppy sign language, to perform the mind reading – but only if the Ghost was banished from the room while she did it.

At that, the Ghost shrieked so loudly she set the bookcases rattling, which seemed to be indicative of disagreement, and it wasn't until much further argument had passed between her and Cheren that she consented to leave the room – but only for sixty seconds, she said, because she didn't trust 'that f*cking Goth b*tch' any further than she could spit her.

I hadn't realised before quite how much Psychic- and Ghost-types hated each other – something to do with a long-standing argument over which was the true master of the mental world, Cheren told me later – so I suppose you could say it was quite informative; mostly, though, it seemed the most pointless waste of time I'd ever encountered.

Finally, though, the Ghost was outside and Anita was (moderately) happy, and the Gothitelle pressed her hands to my temples.

"Now, if you could just relax," said Charles, but his voice already seemed to come from immeasurably far away; I had lost sight of anything but Anita's eyes, which I was plunging towards like a stone into a tropical lagoon, and which now I crashed into with a mind-fracturing splash—

"Would you like to put it to the test?" asked the woman, unimpressed. "Honestly, I've killed more monsters than you've ever dreamed existed."

"What
I dream would shatter your skull," replied Teiresias. "Smythe, why have you brought this creature here? Is this a declaration of war?"

Smythe shook his head so vigorously it looked dangerously close to coming off.

"No," he said. "No no no no no no no—"

"It would seem the circumstances have changed," Teiresias interrupted, apparently talking to itself. "The Kings and the Regent must be informed at once. And as for you, treacherous Smythe..."

With unnatural speed, Chili's body coiled like a cat and sprang across the Gym in a parabolic arc, dislodging Lelouch and landing next to Smythe; before anyone could react to that, his hand clamped across Smythe's face and black smoke oozed from the latter's eyes and mouth. A moment later, Chili slumped to the floor and Smythe, eyes aglow, was gone.


—I burst out of the other side and crashed back into my body with what felt like enough force to snap a rib; I stumbled back a few steps and would have fallen onto Hawes had Bianca and Cheren not grabbed my arms.

Anita turned to Charles and made a few sulky-looking signs, then swept out with an air of aggrieved majesty.

"All right," he sighed, evidently much relieved to have the whole thing over with. "There's sufficient evidence there to suggest that yes, you are being stalked by a demon."

The door rattled, and though the world was still somewhat hazy, I thought I detected a barely-perceptible blur cross the ceiling as Shauntal's Ghost slithered back in.

"Yeah, thanks," I murmured sarcastically. "Glad we cleared that one up."

I blinked and struggled back to my feet.

"So," I went on, the room slowly ceasing to rock back and forth beneath me. "Can we have a look at the Glasya-Labolas now?"

---

Two hours later, we were sitting around the table, the Glasya-Labolas beneath the reading lamp, and an unpleasant chill creeping through our souls.

Teiresias had some considerable space devoted to it in the grimoire, much of which dealt with, in a tone that seemed almost gleeful, its long and atrocity-strewn past. From Jericho to Uruk, Athens to Rome, London to New York – it had slipped on shaded wings from one metropolis to another, staying always in the most advanced cities it could find, feasting on fear, hatred and the occasional entire soul. Its diet, however, wasn't really the main issue; we'd guessed that much already.

No, it was what it did in its free time that concerned us.

There were things described in the Glasya-Labolas that simply did not seem possible; things that the human mind could not withstand unless sustained by some supernatural force – and Teiresias, with spirited curiosity and careless spite, was perfectly capable of providing that force even as it peeled layer after layer from the psyche, examining each shred of consciousness minutely before ingesting and categorising it.

It had been a scientist, of sorts, the book said casually.

Not only that, but it was proleptic – could occasionally see the future. This wasn't that unusual – I knew a girl at school who had prolepsia – but it was unsettling news. Proleptics' visions were most usually concerned with avoiding danger; it was a kind of psychic self-defence mechanism, often preparing the seer for some calamity that would occur in the future – and so far, Teiresias' visions had kept it one step ahead of the countless people who had attempted to destroy it. In 1760, its last recorded appearance in Unova, it had driven an entire Council of the Gorsedd murderously insane a week before a concerted effort was to have been made to banish it; the eighty-one druids affected had gone on a killing spree that nearly wiped out an entire village, and was only stopped by the fact that they ended up killing each other.

That was where the trail ended. One year after that, there were hints that Teiresias had been badly injured in some titanic fight, and it had disappeared from the face of the earth. The author of its entry, writing sixty-five years later, even suggested hopefully that it had died from its wounds. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, as we could attest.

The silence deepened. We could have used Hawes to break it, but he had left earlier to see to some directorial taks.

"Well, it does seem to have weakened a bit since then," said Charles at length.

"It's killed over two hundred druids," I replied hollowly. "It doesn't matter if it's weakened a bit, it's still lethal."

"That's not to say it can't be beaten," said Cheren. "And it doesn't want to kill you or Halley, anyway."

"No, it wants us alive," replied Halley. "Which is, if anything, an even more horrifying thought. Look." She stalked across the tabletop and flipped to the relevant page in the Glasya-Labolas. "One year towards the end of the fifteenth century," she read, "it is believed that the fiend held in a state of the most fearsome captivity a family of nine from Naples, the sole survivor of which, upon escaping by the most fortunate of circumstances, was imprisoned for life when it became apparent that, in the course of his prior experience, his state of mind had become singularly deranged, best characterised by a taste for cannibalism..." She looked up. "I could go on. There's plenty of similar stuff here."

"Yeah, don't," Bianca said hurriedly. "I think we've heard enough."

"Yes," I agreed. "We definitely have."

"Teiresias doesn't want you two insane either," pointed out Cheren. "Well, perhaps you, Jared, but definitely not Halley – since it's from her that Harmonia's going to get this information."

"How monumentally f*cking reassuring," I muttered under my breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," I replied, and swiftly changed the subject. "Look, we can talk about Teiresias' atrocities til the cows come home, but what are we going to do now?"

"Well, it says here that Teiresias' weaknesses were never fully uncovered, so the only method that might have any effect on it would be a full-scale attack by a massed group of druids," said Cheren thoughtfully. "So. I'm not really sure there's anything we can do." He turned towards a corner of the room that was slightly darker than the rest – the one containing the Ghost. "You might wish to return to Shauntal," he told her. "I think if it actually comes to a fight, you might well be destroyed by this thing."

Evidently she then spoke in his head, because a moment later, Cheren said:

"Well, if that's what you want I can't really force you... No, I understand. Fine." He turned back to us. "She says she'll check with Shauntal before she goes. She's uncomfortable about just leaving. It smacks of unprofessionalism."

"How would she check with Shauntal without leaving?" I asked.

"I don't think you're meant to ask that sort of question," he replied. "It's a Ghost thing."

"Oh," I said, mystified. "OK."

"That's not the point," snapped Halley. "Have you forgotten the whole lethal f*cking demon aspect? There's still that to deal with."

"I don't see what we can do about it," said Cheren. "Except what we've kept on doing this entire time. If we try and organise any kind of attack on Teiresias, it'll foresee it and avoid it or kill everyone beforehand. The only way it could conceivably be fought is completely randomly."

"So we just carry on and ignore it?" asked Bianca incredulously. "Is that all we can do?"

"I don't like it any more than you do," he replied. "But... Charles. You're a druid. Anything we can do?"

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"Well, we haven't really done much in the way of laying demons to rest for quite some time now," he said evasively. "Nothing as strong as Teiresias has come to Unova for... well, 1867, I think, when something called Ammit swept up out of Egypt and stole the hearts of everyone in Anville Town straight out of their chests. It left straight afterwards. No one noticed for about a month."

"Don't change the subject," said Halley forcefully. "What can we do?"

"Er, well, not a lot," admitted Charles. "Not with something like this. We can offer charms of protection, but—"

"Hang on," said Cheren suddenly. "Is the Gorsedd really that complacent? Didn't you ever think that perhaps demons might start popping up again?"

"It rather seemed to us that their time was past," answered Charles unhappily.

"Well, f*ck," snapped Halley. "What's the use of druids if they don't have any power?"

"We can cure athlete's foot," offered Charles hopefully.

"So can my doctor," she growled, and turned to face me. "This was a waste of time," she said. "Let's leave. This guy, this book – less use than a chocolate f*cking teapot."

"Hey!" cried Charles, something of his crushed dignity reasserting itself. "I won't be spoken to li—"

"And why not?" asked Halley crushingly. "Have you achieved anything at all of worth today – in your entire life? Oh, you recategorised an errant book! You stopped people reading a Treatise for no reason whatsoever! Whoop-de-f*cking-doo."

She jumped off the table and stalked over to the door, where she paused.

"This would have been a lot more effective if I could open the door and stalk out," she mused. "Jared...?"

"We're not leaving yet," I said firmly. "We need to figure out what—"

Something that sounded like the storming of the Bastille came to our ears.

"What in Neorxnawang...?" cried Charles. "Did that come from the entrance hall...?"

"It sounded like it," said Bianca, looking worried. "Was—"

A gunshot. Someone screamed.

It sounded like Hawes.

"That's it," said Cheren, getting to his feet. "Bianca! Jared!"

"Coming," I replied, following suit.

"Is this a good plan?" asked Bianca doubtfully.

More gunshots now, and a horrible wrenching sound, like tearing metal.

"No," said Cheren, "but it's the right one."

Damn, I thought. I wish I'd thought to say that.

It was of no importance now anyway; Cheren opened the door and Bianca and I followed. It sounded like the Library was being subjected to a full-scale invasion, and even this place didn't have the security to handle that: the guards would need all the help they could get.

"Wait!" cried Charles, but none of us listened; the commotion was even louder now, and I heard breaking glass and frenzied voices. It reminded me of Regenschein's, and instinctively I grabbed a fire extinguisher from a bracket on the wall; it wasn't the best weapon I could think of, but it was heavy enough to hit people with, though its potential for exploding if shot was slightly worrying.

Cheren picked his way through the corridors with unerring accuracy; I had no idea how he knew the way back to the hall, but we traversed it, if anything, even faster than we had on the previous journey. Despite this, however, the noise seemed to be fading as we approached – and by the time we burst out into the hall, Lelouch and Munny fanning out ahead of us, the place was empty and the great doors were slamming shut.

"Sh*t," snapped Cheren, which startled me; I hadn't heard him swear before. "Look!"

The place was a wreck: the Dragonite skeleton had been torn from its metal moorings and scattered liberally around the room, and several display cases had been smashed; a couple of ancient stone tablets had been shattered and strewn across the tiles – and near the front desk, shirt red and slick with blood, was Hawes.

"F*ck," breathed Bianca, wide-eyed. This, if anything, was even more startling than Cheren swearing, but the circumstances more than justified it. "Hawes!"

We ran across to him, Cheren calling for an ambulance as we went, and found him in a seriously bad way: his breath was ragged and there was so much blood matting his clothes it was hard to find the wound.

"Lelouch, tourniquet," said Cheren curtly, and the Snivy coiled tightly around Hawes' thigh, just above the bullet hole. "Bianca—"

"Already doing it," she said. "Munny, calm him."

It drifted down to land on Hawes' head, and blue light began to pulse steadily from its flanks into his cranium.

"He's still losing too much blood," muttered Cheren. "Tighter, Lelouch!"

He obediently tightened his grip, and the gush slowed to a trickle. Seeing that there was nothing I could do, I crossed to the doors and flung them open, hoping to catch a glimpse of the people who had been here—

"Woden hang 'em," I gasped, staring. "What the hell is going on?"

The square outside was full of smoke and flames; two cars had been overturned and set ablaze, and I could hear the roar of a mob coming from somewhere down the street, out of sight. I listened, and thought I could distinguish something in the hubbub – a chant of some kind – but the words eluded me.

"Plasma," said Halley, materialising by my side. "They're yelling 'Plasma'. What's with that?"

"I don't know," I said, grabbing Candy from my shoulder and setting her down on the front desk. "But I'm going to find out."

"Hey, I'd appreciate it if my bodyguard didn't go on suicide missions," began Halley, but I wasn't listening; I was hurtling down the steps, taking them three at a time, heading down towards the street and the roaring crowd. I saw a cricket bat lying on the ground near the flaming cars and snatched it up as I passed in case of danger; it felt wet to the touch, and I realised with a jolt that there was blood running down it.

I reached the road and stopped dead; there was no traffic, but what I could see further down the street left me frozen.

There must have been two or three hundred people there, coursing down the road in a huge crushing wave of shouts and yells and gunshots, and they looked like they were in the process of doing as much damage to the city as was humanly possible. Shop windows were kicked in and cars torched; the sound of breaking glass mingled with screams and strange, savage war-cries – and over everything rose that endless, manic chant:

"Plas-ma! Plas-ma! Plas-ma!"

"Thunor," I said shakily. "There's..."

"A riot, yeah."

I started, and turned to see a tall man with wild brown hair and oddly protuberant eyes standing next to me. He scratched his head, staring at the chaos, and continued:

"Did you see an old man going past here? Robes, big white moustache, funny hat?"

"Uh... no," I replied. I felt like reality was rapidly flying away from beneath my feet; a riot, unlikely as it was, I could handle – but random questions about old men in funny hats? Right now, it seemed so incongruous that it made me want to hit him.

"He's the ringleader," explained the man. "I was just about to visit the Museum when I saw him lead a crowd into the Library. They smashed up the place pretty good, and then they scattered. Looks like the— duck!"

He pushed me aside, and a hubcap sailed through the air where we'd been standing a moment before.

"So yeah, looks like the riot's a cover for whatever the old dude's up to," he continued, apparently unfazed – although his weird eyes made his expression hard to read.

"Did you see which way he went?" I asked. It couldn't be a coincidence – this unprecedented riot, culminating in an attack on the Library, on the very day we were visiting? This had to have some kind of link to the Green Party, I was sure of it – and that meant the old man might have answers. Answers that, hopefully, could be beaten out of him with a cricket bat – although my experiences at Regenschein's had always left me wary of the elderly. They were tougher than most people thought, and if this old man was leading an army through Nacrene, he'd definitely be one of the tough ones.

"I'm not sure," said the man, "but I think he went—"

He was cut off by the sound of hooves; we both looked around at the same time, and simultaneously stepped back into the square fronting the Library to let a wave of mounted police pass. I had never seen them before – had never even seen a horse before – and stared open-mouthed as they surged forwards, truncheons and shields at the ready. They sounded like an army as they passed – and judging by their numbers, they were an army. Padding with a muted click of claws at the head of each column of officers was a gigantic hound; each had dark blue flanks and a great mass of beige fur on their backs and heads, with shaggy moustaches that trailed on the ground. I had never seen them before, either, but I knew what they were: Stoutland, the Pokémon you resorted to when attack dogs just didn't cut it.

"Right on time," commented the man. "Come on. They'll deal with the riots soon enough – we'll go after the old man."

"We?" I asked. I wasn't thinking properly; the riot, and the weird guy, and the mounted police with their burnished shields and Stoutland, had all combined to stupefy me and leave my brain feeling somewhat like jelly.

The man looked at me in the same way as a teacher when they know you haven't been listening.

"You're after him too, right?" he asked. "It seems obvious enough."

"Oh. Uh, yeah. Yeah, I am." I had let the bat drop to my side; I hefted it now and swung it back into a ready position. "Right. Where did you say he went?"

"I think he went this way," said the man, crossing the road. I started to follow, then heard a ferocious cry go up from the right and stopped to stare down the street at the pitched battle that was now raging. I couldn't see much past the cavalry and the smoke, but I saw the white flowering of tear gas, and heard the thunderous baying of the Stoutland amid the shouts and screams—

"Hey!" cried the stranger. "Are you coming or not?"

"Yeah," I said, voice trembling slightly. This was worse than Regenschein's – bigger, bloodier and so horribly, unexpectedly sudden – but I could handle it. As long as I didn't go into the heart of the mob itself, I could handle it. "Yeah, I'm... I'm coming."

I turned and ran across the street after him. There was no time to waste standing around. I had an old man to catch.

---

"Hello. Ms. Harper?"

"Speaking."

Niamh could never fathom why Mr. Boares – for such was the name of her employer at Ingen – seemed incapable of remembering her voice. He had heard it often enough, after all; she'd been taking their contracts for years. But for whatever reason, whenever he called her, he began the conversation with the same question. It had started to annoy her after a while, but, having decided that Mr. Boares was a moron of the first water, it had long since ceased to seem anything other than a symptom of his inescapable idiocy.

She sipped her coffee and waited for him to speak.

"We were wondering," he said, "how your mission was going? That Archen is an obsolete version – and, more to the point, a wholly unlicensed genetic product, with our markers in its DNA. If it were to fall into the hands of the GLA..."

Doubtless Mr. Boares thought trailing off like that was ominous. In actual fact, it just made him sound like he'd forgotten what he was talking about.

"If it were to fall into the hands of the GLA what?" asked Niamh peevishly. Ingen and their petty demands irritated her at the best of times – and now, with Smythe in danger and a would-be regicidal demon courting her interest, they were more of an annoyance than ever.

"Oh." Mr. Boares had not been expecting this, it seemed. "Um, well, you know. It would be traced back to us and we would face an inquiry into why we are producing unlicensed creatures, not to mention a fine – and the inquiry might uncover other, more – um – secret secrets."

"More secret secrets?" Niamh tried very hard not to laugh at him, and just about succeeded.

"Yes. More, um, secret secrets than the Archen." Mr. Boares paused. "Well. How is, ah, that matter of the Archen proceeding? You assured us it would be dealt with within a few days."

"Ah," said Niamh, thinking hard. "Um... do you remember that business at the Striaton Gym yesterday? It was in today's papers. One of the Leaders was hospitalised."

"Oh yes?"

"That was the Archen," said Niamh, as seriously as she could. "It's, er, more dangerous than you told me it would be. Seems to have some fairly unearthly abilities."

"Oh dear," said Mr. Boares. "The Archen... did that?"

"Yep," said Niamh. "Spat these weird lumps of darkness at him. I tried to hush it up – kept the details out of the papers."

"Lumps of darkness...?" Mr. Boares sounded close to tears. Niamh imagined him, plump and distressed in his office, picturing a full-scale government inquiry into why International Genetics had released a Gym-Leader-eating monster bird into Unova, and suppressed another chuckle.

"Yeah. You sure it only had eagle and Archen DNA in it? I should think there was something else in there, you know."

"Oh my," said Mr. Boares faintly. "Oh my... Well, ah, please do your best, Ms. Harper... if you'll excuse me, I think I need to speak to my manager now."

"Sure," she said, with a wicked grin. "I'll get right on it."

She hung up and leaned back in her chair, taking a victory draught of her coffee.

"Fan-tastic," she said to herself. "That'll keep the bastards off my back for a while. In fact, let's celebrate it." She glanced across the café at the waiter. "Hey, can I get a blueberry muffin?"

Whether or not she could proved something of a moot point, since at that moment the sound of chanting and and car alarms came to her ears, and a rubbish bin was hurled through the window.

Immediately, Niamh kicked over her table and ducked behind it, glass flying overhead; a moment later, she heard twin thumps by the window and slammed her shoulder into the underside of the table, sending it sliding towards the men who'd just entered and knocking their legs out from under them.

It wouldn't hold them for long, but Niamh was loath to end lives that didn't belong to abominations, and seized the moment to vault the counter and head back through the kitchen to the back door; a moment later, she burst out into a small courtyard between the backs of three shops, and slipped through an archway out onto Burgher Street.

Here, she saw for the first time the scale of the problem: there was, for whatever reason, a riot in progress, and the street was a seething mass of shouting men and women, brandishing guns and less sophisticated weapons, all yelling out at the top of their voices:

"Plas-ma! Plas-ma! Plas-ma!"

"Bloody anarchists," muttered Niamh, whacking one who'd come a bit too close over the head with a brick. "I really wanted that muffin."

A couple of other rioters had seen her flooring their companion, and rushed at her with a cricket bat and a broken bottle; Niamh lobbed the brick at the bottle-wielder and, ducking under the sweep of the bat, broke the nose of his companion with a well-placed punch. He recoiled, swearing and whining, and Niamh took the opportunity to slip back through the archway and take cover in the courtyard before any more of the rioters came after her. She had no doubt that in a one-to-one fight with any of them she could emerge the victor – but there were over two hundred of them and only one of her, which did not make for reassuring odds.

Unfortunately, it seemed that this was not going to be enough; the man with the broken nose staggered through the archway and pointed at her, yelling something inaudible over the roar of the mob. Niamh didn't wait for his companions to follow; she jumped up onto a bin, grabbed hold of a drainpipe and made for the roof. As she crested the gutter and hauled herself up onto the slates, a bullet zipped past overhead, and Niamh flung herself flat on her belly, worming her way behind a chimney-stack before getting to her feet and running.

"Sh*t!" she yelled, half in anger at the morons chasing her and half at herself for provoking them. "Not a good move!"

From here, she could see smoke rising from multiple points around the city, and hear shouts and screams spiralling out of the chaos that weltered in the street below. Car alarms – flames – breaking glass – cries of pain – deep, coughing barks and the swish-thump of truncheons...

"'Sraven," she muttered, leaping carefully over a yawning alleyway and landing on the flat roof of a kebab shop. "What brought this on?"

No one seemed to have followed her up here, so Niamh took the opportunity to look around; she appeared to be above quieter streets now, and she dropped lightly onto a fire escape and hurried back to ground level.

A few streets away, she stopped to catch her breath in the shadow of a statue, and a fire engine tore past, siren screaming – followed, seconds later, by another. The whole city seemed to be collapsing around her, reflected Niamh, and hurried on; she did not want to be caught out by the oncoming mob.

The streets were eerily deserted, which she supposed made sense, given how dangerous it was to be out right now – but wasn't there anywhere safe in the city? The riots couldn't have spread right across Nacrene, could they? They must be confined to a few districts at least, even allowing for opportunistic looters to have taken advantage of the situation and started more of them.

Niamh kept going, heading in any direction where the smoke was thinnest and the hubbub quietest, but soon found that wherever she went, the roar of the crowd swelled again. It seemed, she thought, that she was surrounded – which meant she would have to make a break for it around one of the mobs. She saw no reason why it wouldn't work: she was fast and agile, and they weren't out to get her in particular. With the minimum of effort, she ought to be able to effect a quick getaway around one or other of the groups.

"All right," she said, gritting her teeth and rounding a corner onto Memorial Street, "let's go."

Immediately, she was struck by a wave of heat, pouring from a pair of wrecked cars; ducking around them, Niamh saw that she'd stumbled across a battle between the police and the rioters. As she watched, a constable was dragged from his horse and vanished amid a thrashing of limbs; another was shot in the arm and fell – only to be saved by a Stoutland, the great dog brutally headbutting the aggressor out of the way and catching the policeman gently in its jaws. A short distance away, white plumes of tear gas rose up amid the chaos, and a panicked rush began as the rioters pushed away from them.

Niamh shook her head.

"So f*cked up," she said to herself, creeping along the street in the shadow of the buildings. "What the hell do they think they're achieving?"

No one answered, but she hadn't expected them to.

The tear gas had moved the battle closer to her, but had not ended it; some rioters, she now saw, had gas masks similar to those of the police. Not for the first time, Niamh wondered who these people were: several things about them, from their weaponry to their preparedness, struck her as more indicative of a pillaging army than a simple angry mob.

"Strange," she murmured, though she could not hear her voice over the cacophony of the fight and the chant.

Now the battle was upon her, and Niamh wound her way around its side, thrusting one or two rioters – and an overzealous policeman – out of her way with a swift series of punches; for the most part, however, it was easy to overlook one thirty-something woman in the heat of battle, and Niamh emerged unscathed from the other side. She ducked into an alley and headed down it, not knowing where it led and not caring, either; she did not look back, and in a couple of minutes the hideous sounds of battle had faded in her ears. There were people in the streets here, and they were going about their lives as normal, as yet unaware of the chaos reigning in the northern district; with a sigh of relief, Niamh let herself fall into their midst, and vanished into the crowds.

---

Far away, on a train speeding through the forest, a boy with green hair and grey eyes was dreaming of dragons.

And twice as far away again, in a tower under the watchful eye of the one who stole it, a dragon was dreaming of him.
 

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
1,030
Posts
13
Years
A thousand apologies for the lateness of this chapter. It was finished on time, but I've been entertaining a guest for the past few days and didn't have a chance to post it.


Chapter Sixteen: Gormless

A boardroom – drawn blinds, sun in cracks across the table, polished mahogany and black velour.

Middle-aged white men. Worried.

It was not every day that an emergency board meeting was called. The last time had been a response to the accidental escape of an ancient and terrifying evil cloned at Volundr's Anvil, and had ended when said evil crashed through the window, intent on eating their brains. They had every reason to be worried.

"Gentlemen," said the chairman, rising to his feet at the head of the table. "We appear to have a problem."

"Is it the raptors?" asked one. "It's the raptors, isn't it? I told you. They're too bloody dangerous. They should all be destroyed."

"No, Robert," sighed the chairman. "It's not the raptors. They've never caused one iota of trouble, as you well know." He leaned on the table, shoulders stretching the cloth of his suit. "It's the Archen."

"The Archen?"

"Yes, the Archen." The chairman indicated the pile of documents in front of each board member. "SN407, I think the number is. It was an experimental model that was apparently destroyed two years ago. Except it wasn't, and it just hospitalised a Gym Leader in Striaton."

Silence. No one was quite sure how to respond to that.

"Woden hang 'em," said someone at last. "What's it made of?"

"Archen, mostly – as much as we could use, anyway," replied the chairman. "Patched with golden eagle where the DNA was missing or unusable."

No revived 'fossil' Pokémon were the real thing, of course. Aerodactyl, Cradily, Anorith, Kabuto – there existed no complete genome from which to clone them. They were patchwork facsimiles – very good facsimiles, and ones physically almost indistinguishable from the real thing, but facsimiles all the same. Subject SN407 was no different; Archen were a dead species, gone from the earth forever. Ingen had made something very similar to them, but it was patched with bits of other creatures' DNA, and modified for saleability: disease resistance was added, and accelerated growth, and specially-engineered white cells programmed to rove about the body and swallow up the tumours that were the inevitable result of Ingen's low-cost 'rough and ready' sequencing techniques.

"Anything else? Anything that might have given it... unusual abilities?"

The chairman shrugged.

"There's a touch of dodo in there, but that's all." He sighed. "It seems that this ability to throw people into comas is an innate ability of Archen themselves. Which is no doubt fascinating news for palaeontologists, but rather bad for us."

"Have we sanctioned a clean-up operation?"

"Of course. We did that even before the Striaton incident – as soon as we became aware that the Archen was still at large." A look of irritation crossed the chairman's face. "Look, have any of you even looked at the papers in front of you? They're not decoration, you know – they do actually contain all this information."

Everyone abruptly started busying themselves with their documents, a sudden wash of collective guilt suffusing the room. The chairman pinched the bridge of his nose and silently asked Thunir to give him mental fortitude, or, failing that, the upper-body strength necessary to pound these cretins into meatloaf. (The saying is an old Unovan one, and it's said it loses a lot in the translation.)

"Gentlemen!" he cried, trying to recapture their attention. "That's not the point. Read the documents at your leisure. The point is, we still have samples of the genome on record, and we're thinking of putting together a retriever."

The rustle of paper ceased. Twelve pairs of anxious eyes turned to him.

"I realise this is an extreme step to take," he said, "and that is why it requires a unanimous vote of approval from the board."

"The last time we built a retriever Doctor Wu wired its brain wrong," said Robert in a low voice. "It ate every lollipop man in Nacrene before our agent shut it down."

"It also ate Doctor Wu," pointed out the chairman. "So it seems unlikely he'll be making that mistake again." He sighed. "Just agree on it, damn it. Our agent is on it, but given the magnitude of the problem, I think we should have the retriever ready, just in case. If she gets the Archen, it doesn't matter and the retriever can be deprogrammed and sold on to Mister Bones. If she doesn't, then we activate it and send it out there. Easy."

"Yeah, you make it sound that way," muttered Robert.

"All those in favour?" asked the chairman, pointedly ignoring him.

Eleven hands rose. Twenty-one eyes came to rest on Robert.

"Fine," he grumbled. "But against my better judgement, OK?"

"Sure. Fine. Got it." The chairman nodded. "Excellent, gentlemen. If you'll excuse me, this meeting is now over. We've work to do."

The men rose from their seats and filed out without a word. Ingen lay under serious threat of the one thing that could possibly shut its operation down, a GLA investigation, and that weighed heavier in their minds than any of the monsters they had spawned.

---

Nacrene was ablaze.

Through burning streets we ran – past overturned cars, past shattered windows and broken lampposts. Around us rose blank-faced buildings, staring down at the carnage in the streets with eye-like windows; once, a group of rioters flitted past, shouting and swearing, and a moment later a Stoutland came bounding after them with a deep coughing bark.

All order seemed to have vanished. There was nothing left except hellish chaos.

We rounded a corner and came head to head with a gang of looters; they charged us, whooping and yelling like madmen, and I readied the bat – but before they'd even crossed the space between us, something green flashed across my vision and the men all hit the ground at once, as if their legs had been cut from under them. A second later a lithe green figure materialised at the stranger's side; I started and stared, and only realised a moment later that it was actually a bug-faced Pokémon rather than an abnormally short ninja.

"I should turn them in, but we don't have time," said the stranger, scratching his head and looking at the struggling figures on the ground. "Come on! We have to find that old man."

As we ran past, the strange insectoid Pokémon keeping pace with us, I saw the reason for their fall: the looters' legs had been enmeshed in a tangle of gluey-looking cords. I shot it a sidelong glance, and saw its arms tapered to fine blades at the tips; I suspected it could have done a whole lot more to them than immobilise them if it had wanted to.

"You're a Trainer?" I asked the stranger.

"Yeah," he replied. "Name's Burgh. I lead Castelia Gym."

"You're a Gym Leader?" I asked incredulously, so surprised that I almost forgot to keep running. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Didn't think it was particularly relevant," he said. "Why? Is it?"

I shook my head. He was clearly either an idiot or a lunatic, but I'd had extensive experience with both recently and so I knew better than to contest the point.

"Thunir," I muttered. "You—"

"Look!" he interrupted, pointing eagerly. "There!"

I looked ahead, and saw an old man in a tall hat and bulky robes at the end of the street; he had a large bag on his back and an impressive beard on his face, and was currently engaged in hotwiring a motorbike.

"That's him?" I asked.

"That's him," confirmed Burgh, speeding up. "Leif! Stop him!"

The old man looked up at the sound of Burgh's voice, swore violently and jumped on his bike; a moment later, the Pokémon caught up, but it barely brushed the rear wheel before its quarry zoomed off in a cloud of smoke, making it recoil in peculiarly refined horror.

"Leif!"

But it wasn't beaten yet: leaping forwards, it got one claw in the old man's cloak and hauled itself up onto the back of the bike; before I could see any more, however, the motorbike rounded a corner and roared out of sight.

I looked at Burgh.

"Do we keep running?"

"Nah," he said. "There isn't much either of them can do to get each other off the bike without killing themselves. We'll get ourselves a car and follow."

"Get ourselves a car? How?"

"Well," said Burgh thoughtfully, pushing a brick through a car window. "I say 'get'. I mean steal."

I stared.

"Twice in as many days," I muttered. "Everyone's a bloody car thief..."

"It's this or lose him," he pointed out. "I'm commandeering it in the name of the League. You coming?"

I sighed, and swung the bat up onto my shoulder.

"Fine," I replied, walking around to the passenger door. "I'm coming..."

---

"At last! It took me forever to find you – it's so much harder when you're awake."

Niamh turned around, and was unsurprised to find Ezra standing there, looking vaguely impatient.

"You again? I thought you weren't coming back until tomorrow morning?"

"The situation has changed," he said tersely. "Look. You've thought about this and you want to work with me. Am I correct?"

"Yes, but you said—"

"Forget what I said," he interrupted with a curt gesture. "There's very little time. Harmonia's making his move early – right now. This riot is a cover-up, initiated by him, in order to steal something he needs from the Nacrene Museum—"

"What? What the hell kind of cover-up is that?"

"I know. None of it makes any sense, but that's the only explanation I can put together right now," he replied. "The fact that he's behind it, though, is certain: I passed Molloy earlier, though until the riots started I thought nothing of it..." He gave her a steady look. "You've heard of Caitlin Molloy?"

"Of course," answered Niamh. "Everyone has. Is she – she's with the Party?"

"Undoubtedly," said Ezra. "I've seen her going to and from their headquarters. Disguised, naturally, but nevertheless there. The point is, we need to stop the thief – who, by the way, is fleeing the city as we speak – and prevent this artefact from getting into Harmonia's hands. I could do it alone, but I thought that as you're here..."

"I get it," said Niamh. "OK. Where are we going?"

Ezra smiled and extended a hand.

"Hold on tight," he said. "We're going to take a very direct sort of route..."

Niamh would have asked what this meant, but she'd already taken his hand, and the sudden absence of air as the world vanished around them made it rather difficult to speak.

"Don't breathe," said Ezra, voice somehow travelling through the vacuum to her ears. "Your body will panic if you breathe. Just hold your breath; you'll find you don't run out of air."

After a moment of mind-numbing terror, Niamh had control of her lungs, and was able to look around – not that there was anything to see, given that they were currently in the middle of a featureless abyss, travelling along a path that only appeared to be visible for a few centimetres around the points where Ezra's feet touched it. What little she could see of it looked like flat bluish light, scarcely visible against the blackness; it was, all told, a distinctly unnerving roadway.

"Where are we?" mouthed Niamh silently, unable to make a sound.

"'All the world's a stage'," quoted Ezra. "We've gone behind the set. Humans can't come here normally, but a few creatures can: demons, obviously, and cats – it's why they say they have nine lives; they step out of reality before aggressors harm them, and step back again a little later. A few Pokémon come this way, too – Gothitelle, mostly, and Unown."

"What? Behind the set...?"

In the distance, Niamh saw a few faint shapes making their blurry way through the void; she supposed they were traversing dark paths of their own.
"If the world is a play, this is backstage," Ezra clarified. "Or, to put it another way, these are the rat-tunnels in the wainscot of reality."

"I see," said Niamh, which was mostly not a lie.

"We are outside space and time," Ezra went on. "Or at least, almost all the way outside. You, a material being defined wholly in spacial and temporal terms, wouldn't survive if I took you all the way outside the universe – the prerequisites for your existence simply don't exist there. Perhaps the best way of putting it is that time and space are flexible here, rather than rigid as they are in what you so quaintly term reality." He smiled to himself. "It really is quite cute how you guys keep calling it that," he added. "As if anything you saw there equated to the deeper reality of things at all..." He shook his head. "Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah – space and time. Here," he continued, "journeys can be compressed into shorter periods of time, and shorter distances too – with the result that in only a few minutes, we can—"

---

I've never left a city so quickly by car before.

The rioters had coordinated their movements so as to clear the streets for the old man without getting in his way, it seemed; there was nothing to slow the motorbike – and consequently, nothing to slow us. Burgh, while not quite as insane a driver as that Niamh woman, was fairly erratic (to say the least), and more than once came close to reducing the pair of us to red smears on the inside of the windscreen, despite the lack of obstacles.

"I didn't even see what it was that time!" I cried, after he almost crashed into something for the fourth time. "What is it that you keep nearly hitting?"

"Not sure," he replied thoughtfully. "I do this a lot, I think. I'm not actually a qualified driver."

"'Sraven," I muttered. "Not even..."

"I don't suppose you can drive?" he asked diffidently. "I'm really not that confident behind the wheel of a car."

"How can you be able to hotwire a car but not drive one?" I cried.

"Standard League training," he replied. "We have to be able to deal with situations, and sometimes those situations involve commandeering other people's vehicles. Would you believe that I also know how to put a nuclear sub into meltdown?"

"Yes," I said firmly, shuddering at the thought. "Yes, I would. Sh*t – left!"

Burgh turned right, almost hit a hospital, pulled of an incredibly tight U-turn and shot off down the road after the motorbike.

"What the hell was that?" I shouted. "I said left—"

"Well, do you want to drive?"

"Yes!" I cried. I didn't actually know how, but I was damned if I was any worse than Burgh. "But we don't have time to stop. Just keep going!"

"All right, all right," he muttered moodily. "Some people..."

The buildings fell behind on either side of us, disappearing as we zoomed out on an overpass and swooped down towards the woods, bypassing the suburbs; here at last there were other cars, and the motorbike was forced to slow a little. Unfortunately, it forced us to slow quite a lot more – especially since Burgh seemed to be having a mild panic attack at the sight of so many over vehicles and the bike began to gain ground, inching ahead with the slow implacability of a Terminator.

"We're losing him," I said. "Faster!"

"If I go faster, we end up smeared over the back of that Transit van," he pointed out, irritation in his bulging eyes. "I don't know about you, but I'm pretty keen to stay in one piece."

"Then we – wait, what's he doing?"

Maybe the old man had decided the motorway was slowing him down; maybe he was simply trying to shake us with something unexpected; maybe he was just crazy – whatever it was, he abruptly turned left, cut across a line of traffic to a fanfare of blaring horns, and drove down the embankment at the side of the road, where he jumped off his bike and took off into the woods.

"Did you see that?" I asked. "He's in the woods!"

Burgh paled.

"But how do I stop and go down after him—?"

"Turn left and pray!"

"Seriously? That's your best idea?"

"Do you have any others?" I asked, with considerably more confidence than I felt, and closing his eyes tightly, Burgh spun the wheel.

Something did hit us, that much I'm sure of – the back half of the car lurched violently halfway through the turn. But the traffic to our left had mostly come to a standstill when the motorbike cut through it, and we slid between a lorry and a Volvo to shoot over the lip of the embankment—

—and come crashing down onto the grassy sward two feet below. The force spiked straight through me and made me bite my tongue so hard it bled; Burgh's head smacked into the roof, but his ridiculous hair protected it from any serious harm.

The engine suddenly dead, the car rolled forwards silently for a metre and a half, and stopped gently against a log.

"Thit," I moaned, trying to pat my tongue and failing. "Michael Thumacher you definitely are not."

"Urrgh..." groaned Burgh, rubbing blood off his head. "What was that?"

"Nothing."

I felt like in the last few minutes I'd become a human version of Halley; did it happen to everyone who got dragged along with someone else as a sidekick, perhaps? Maybe I should be a little more understanding towards her, I mused – then shook my head clear of thoughts. Now was not the time.

"The old man!" I cried. "We have to follow him and get back what he thtole!"

"What's with the lisp?"

"I bit my tongue," I said frostily. "Look, jutht get out and let'th find him already!"

We staggered free of the battered car and towards the abandoned motorbike, from underneath which Leif was struggling to get out; I pulled it away from the ground enough for the Pokémon to slide free, and it straightened up, brushing down its flanks fastidiously as it did so. It didn't seem any the worse for wear for its experience, although it had a few small insects splattered across its face, and immediately set off into the forest, following some trail that neither Burgh nor I could detect.

"Who flees into the forest like this?" murmured Burgh. "I mean, it's easy to lose pursuers in here, but really... You could do that in a city, too, if you got to the populated part. And it's not exactly safe here. There are Sawk and Throh here, and you know what they're like."

I shivered. Yes, I knew exactly what they were like, I thought, recalling Steve's Throh back at the old Sytec plant.

"Yeah," I said. "Nathty."

Leif forged on ahead, slicing branches from our path in almost total silence; Burgh and I, in contrast, blundered on like concussed elephants. In Burgh's case, I guess he might actually have been able to plead concussion, but I was genuinely clumsy. I thought I'd got free of the forest when we arrived in Striaton; I should have known it wouldn't be so easy. Unova was mostly woodland outside the major settlements, after all.

"How much further?" asked Burgh; Leif clicked its mandibles and waved one gauzy wing. I wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but presumably it had some significance, because it seemed to satisfy Burgh.

"What did it thay?" I asked.

"I have no idea," he replied. "Probably nothing. He is an insect, after all."

Just then, Leif stopped abruptly, and held its scything claws wide apart, ready to snap together; its legs bent and its wings hummed, and it vanished upwards.
"Where'd—?"

"Ah, sh*t!"

Burgh and I exchanged looks.

"There," I said, and we ran, blundering through the undergrowth, pushing past branches, heedless of the thorns and burrs, to see—

—Leif crouched over an old man in the leaf litter, one blade at his throat. A tall and stupendously ugly hat lay on the ground nearby.

"Got you!" I cried, keeping the bat ready to swing. "Who are you?"

"Get your f*cken bug out my face and I might just tell you," he spat. His voice was accented – Irish, I thought.

"I don't really think you're in any position to make demands," Burgh pointed out.

"You're not going to kill me," he said. "You're not murderers."

"No, but I might whack you over the head with a cricket bat," I replied. "You can call Leif off. I've got him covered."

The Leavanny's head rotated on its shoulders to face Burgh; below the neck, it remained motionless.

"Yeah, OK," he said. "Back off. I'll trust, uh, this guy's word."

"Jared," I said. "My name'th Jared."

Leif took a step back, but kept its multifaceted eyes firmly on the old man as he struggled to his feet.

"Better," he said. "Always easier to talk without a f*cken knife at your throat."

"Less of that, now. Who are you?"

"Gorm," replied the old man. "Gorm, of the Seven Sages of Plasma." He chuckled drily, a smoker's rasping laugh. "There's a riddle for you."

"Plasma? Sages?"

"Didn'tcha hear them in the street?" he asked. "Plas-ma! Plas-ma!" He shook his head. "Crazy, but they serve their purpose."

"What are you talking about?"

"Let me," I said, stepping forwards. "Thtop talking in f*cken riddleth, or I'll start breaking boneth."

"Threats aren't so effective when you lisp 'em," Gorm said. "But whatever. I can see this particular jig is up." He reached into his bag and pulled out, of all things, the skull from the Dragonite skeleton in the Library hall. "Guess I'll have to give this back," he said.

"What did you want with that?" I asked, puzzled.

"D'ya want it or not?"

"Yes," said Burgh. "Hand it over!"

Gorm grinned evilly.

"Here," he said, tossing it into the air. "Take it."

Burgh and I, conscious of its value and fragility, leaped to catch it at the same time, crashed together in midair and went down in a tangle of limbs; Gorm laughed, spun on one heel and vanished into the undergrowth, throwing his cloak over Leif and immobilising it in its folds.

"Thit!" I cried, struggling free of Burgh only to have a gigantic, panicking bug collapse on top of me. "Where ith he?"

"I think he got away," muttered Burgh, clutching the skull tightly. "But at least we got back what he stole."

"Yeah," I agreed, pushing Leif off and staggering to my feet. "But thtill... Why would he go to all the bother of organising those riotth jutht for thith thkull?"

"I have no idea," replied Burgh, untangling Leif. "Leif, keep up the search, and String Shot him if you see him; I'll be back later." It nodded and flitted off into the forest. Burgh turned to me. "As for us, I think we'd better get this to Lenora, and see if we can find out why someone would want to steal it."

I nodded.

"Cool," I said. "Jutht one quethtion."

"Yeah?"

"How are we getting back to the thity?"

His face fell.

"Ah..."

---

Niamh fell over and landed face-first in a heap of mulchy leaves.

"—cross entire cities," finished Ezra, helping her to her feet. "Sorry about that. I'm not used to taking passengers with me."

"Where – where are we?" she asked, looking around. They were obviously in a forest, but that didn't really help much. Most of Unova was covered in the stuff.

"Pinwheel Forest," replied the demon. "This is where I sensed the thief... quick! There!"

Niamh turned to see an elderly man moving through the woods with surprising agility given his advanced years and heavy robe, and with commendable presence of mind she tackled him to the ground and put a pistol to his skull.

"What the f*ck?" he yelped. His voice, she noticed, sounded oddly strained – not quite natural.

"Give back what you took," she said.

The old man grinned. His teeth were awful, she noted.

"Too late," he said. "Already did that."

"He's lying," said Ezra. "I know what you have in your bag."

The grin slipped a notch.

"What?"

Ezra crouched by his head.

"It's perfectly simple," he said. "You picked a bad time to steal her, my friend. She's more conscious than she has been for years; I can feel the glow of her dreams, like the warmth of a radiator."

The old man's face fell.

"Sh*t," he said. "You're not human, are you?"

Ezra shook his head sadly.

"No," he replied. "I'm afraid I'm not. There's no lying to me." He turned to Niamh. "Would you pull him forwards, please? I'd like to get at his bag."

She did, and Ezra withdrew from the old man's rucksack a perfect white sphere, the size of a basketball.

"Ah," he sighed, staring at it. "I feel her..." He looked at the old man sharply. "What does Harmonia want with this?" he asked.

"I don't know, do I? I'm just the f*cken thief."

"Why go to the trouble of causing a riot?" asked Niamh. "What was the point of all that?"

"To draw attention." The old man grimaced. "We wanted to be followed – there're people who we wanted to delay while we worked on stuff."

"Could you be more specific?" asked Ezra. "Please remember that my associate here has a gun pressed against your head, and would have zero qualms about ending your miserable little life."

This was not the case, and Niamh was pretty sure Ezra knew it, but she didn't let her face give anything away. She wanted this information as badly as he did; anything they could glean about Harmonia's plans would be useful, given how little they knew.

The old man looked into Niamh's eyes, judged that there really was a killer behind them, and swallowed nervously.

"Uh, OK," he said. "Uh... Look, I don't know much. All I know is that the boss got a message from someone he has in the field. Told him something that made him decide he'd better secure that orb there. And he also wanted to distract some people who'd buggered up an operation we'd run in Striaton – some woman – while he worked on her identity—"

Niamh's eyes widened imperceptibly; that was her, she realised. In part, she had been the cause of the riots.

"—and there were some other people as well that we wanted to lead off the scent. So we set up some riots to make it look like we were trying to cover our tracks, but I actually made it easy to follow me – you know, make them think they're winning when they're just doing what we want."

"Huh. Looks like you succeeded there," muttered Niamh under her breath. "Fine. Anything else?"

"That's it," he said. "That's it, I swear." He looked very old, suddenly; old and frail. "Please don't kill me."

"I'm not going to." Niamh looked at Ezra. "Do we turn him over to the police?"

He shook his head.

"He'll never make it to court. Harmonia has hands everywhere. Just let him go."

"Shouldn't we do something?" she asked.

"What do you suggest?" replied Ezra. "Send him to the police, he'll walk free in a few hours. Short of killing him, there's no way to stop him getting back to Harmonia – and I will not kill humans. You may, if you wish. But I won't."

"No, I don't want to either," she said, wondering what reason a demon could have for not wanting to kill humans when he was perfectly willing to kill his own kind. "Fine." She got up, but kept the gun trained on the old man's face. "I guess you're free to go."

He got to his feet quickly, shakily, as if unable to believe his luck; Niamh had seen that look before. He took a few steps away, looked at her and Ezra – and then, realising that he really wasn't about to get shot in the back, he fled into the forest.

"OK," said Niamh, turning to Ezra. "I have quite a lot of questions, and you're going to answer them."

He nodded.

"Of course. But first, this." He held out the sphere. "This must be returned. And then I will buy you dinner, and I will answer any questions you have left."

Niamh looked at her watch.

"It's nowhere near time for dinner," she said, puzzled.

"It will be by the time we get back to Nacrene," he replied cheerfully. "I can't take this artefact through the dark paths."

Niamh's heart sank.

"You mean...?"

"Yes," confirmed Ezra. "We're walking."

---

A few miles away, Gorm shrugged off his robes and packed them away into his bag. Beneath them, he wore blue jeans and a green shirt, and the body that filled them was not that of an old man.

"It's me," he said into a mobile phone – and his voice was no longer accented, or indeed deep. "Good news and bad, I'm afraid. I lost the Orb to the woman, but both groups bought the story completely, and I have some information to pass on when I get back. And as for our little army... Well." He grinned, the make-up on his face cracking. "That was absolutely spectacular. I think we can safely say that that experiment was an unqualified success..."
 
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12
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  • Seen May 12, 2021
First, allow me to apologize for my rather unexpected reprieve from being present in commenting on these. I had things going on that prevented me from checking in on this. And, let me say, it was a delight to catch up again. So much has happened since last I read.

I still have to say Lauren is my favorite character. I dont really have much else to say about that except that I am loving how she is developing as a character.

On the other hand, we have Halley. She worries me. Apart from being a talking cat, something is off about her. She knows far more than she lets on. Im going to guess that she is intimately involved with the plans of regicide, and I also claim that she remembers everything but chooses to say she is amnesiatic (which I have decided is definitely a word) to claim innocence. Her over-interest in the changing of the worlds seems to further this theory. Everybody else exists in both, yet Halley alone, so far, remains cognizant of the distinction between the two. Also, her incredible hostility to the Gorsedd, druids, and her innate reaction to side with Ghetsis are all factors that cast her in a negative light. I definitely dont trust her.

Then there's N. I love N. Everything about him. Especially here. I just.....love it. He rivals Lauren as my favorite character.

I have no idea what to say about the Sages and Ghetsis's plan at this point. I see parts of this staying true to the game, yet others veering way into the speculation I love about your stories. But still, the difference between game Ghetsis's plan and this Ghetsis's plan worries me.

One thing left to say: I love Cheren and Bianca. And all the other minor major characters. They are all characterized brilliantly and eloquently. Great job with this. I am so glad I took the time to come back and read it.
 
Last edited:

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
1,030
Posts
13
Years
First, allow me to apologize for my rather unexpected reprieve from being present in commenting on these. I had things going on that prevented me from checking in on this. And, let me say, it was a delight to catch up again. So much has happened since last I read.

Hello again. It's been a while, hasn't it? I'm glad you returned to find everything to your liking.

I still have to say Lauren is my favorite character. I dont really have much else to say about that except that I am loving how she is developing as a character.

She's nice, isn't she? I know someone who's actually like that in real life, which helps.

On the other hand, we have Halley. She worries me. Apart from being a talking cat, something is off about her. She knows far more than she lets on. Im going to guess that she is intimately involved with the plans of regicide, and I also claim that she remembers everything but chooses to say she is amnesiatic (which I have decided is definitely a word) to claim innocence. Her over-interest in the changing of the worlds seems to further this theory. Everybody else exists in both, yet Halley alone, so far, remains cognizant of the distinction between the two. Also, her incredible hostility to the Gorsedd, druids, and her innate reaction to side with Ghetsis are all factors that cast her in a negative light. I definitely dont trust her.

I think you mean 'amnesiac', which in this case can act as an adjective. And, well, I won't be inveigled into talking about Halley. I've worked fairly hard to make the clues about her as invisible as possible and I'm determined not to spoil it. For once.

Then there's N. I love N. Everything about him. Especially here. I just.....love it. He rivals Lauren as my favorite character.

We haven't seen much of him yet, but he'll crop up more and more often as time goes by. He's a singular young man.

I have no idea what to say about the Sages and Ghetsis's plan at this point. I see parts of this staying true to the game, yet others veering way into the speculation I love about your stories. But still, the difference between game Ghetsis's plan and this Ghetsis's plan worries me.

Mm. Harmonia's plan is actually pretty much the same as it is in-game. It's not the actor on the stage you need to watch out for; it's the man waiting in the wings with the glass dagger and ragged teeth.

One thing left to say: I love Cheren and Bianca. And all the other minor major characters. They are all characterized brilliantly and eloquently. Great job with this. I am so glad I took the time to come back and read it.

I'm glad you enjoyed it; it's always heartening to hear that someone liked something you made. More should be on the way soon enough - I usually post a chapter a week, which is going nicely so far.

F.A.B.
 

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
1,030
Posts
13
Years
Chapter Seventeen: Here Be Dragons

"Woden hang 'em," I sighed, leaning back and closing my eyes. "This whole thing is getting more and more confusing."

We had gone back to the Library to find Hawes gone and a stern woman with an attendant Herdier hanging around in the hall with Cheren, Bianca and Halley. This, it transpired, was librarian, archaeologist and Gym Leader Lenora Hawes, wife of the talkative director with the bullet problem; she'd taken the skull almost without noticing and proceeded to tell us that her husband was in the hospital. After she'd said this eight or nine times without variation, Burgh decided he'd better take her home, and told us that he was sorry but there was no way any of this was going to get sorted out until tomorrow at the very earliest, and asked us if we wouldn't mind going home and coming back another time.

Halley hadn't liked that, but Cheren had cut in with his impeccable ice-cold politeness, and now we were at the Pokémon Centre, where we had taken over one corner of the lounge. Behind us, two girls with brightly-dyed hair were watching Skómst on TV and arguing over whether Max Vackers or Sebastian Bounding was more attractive. Despite their viciously penetrating voices, I was doing a fairly good job of tuning them out; I had to, really, or they'd have long since driven me insane.

"Hey," said Halley, with a sidelong glance at the two girls to make sure they didn't hear. "By the way. What's with this 'hang 'em' thing? As far as I can work out so far, you stab people on a big rock here, not hang them."

"Hanging is special," Bianca replied. "That's for Woden."

"God of the gallows," said Cheren. "Hang a man and stab him with a spear. When the ravens come, you know Woden's accepted it."

"So what's with the rocks?"

"The sun," explained Cheren. "Our religion is somewhere between Celtic Druidism and Old English paganism. Sacrifices on the menhirs are mostly for the sun, and none of the other gods require blood. Córmi takes his tithes at death. Frige is happy to see our lives settled and ordered. Eostre draws her strength from feasting and new life. Thunor takes power from the storm-festivals. But Woden is the Allfather. He needs lives, twitched out on the gallows."

Halley tipped her head on one side, a curiously avian gesture for a cat.

"Huh," she said, and curled up on Bianca's lap. From my head, Candy eyed her soft flanks and scratched her neck thoughtfully.

"If that's all, then I suggest it's time to review the day," said Cheren.

"Review the day?" I asked. "We've never done that before—"

"We haven't had a day like this one before," he pointed out.

With her stubby claws, Candy marked out an estimate the distance between herself and Halley, and cawed pensively.

"He's right," agreed Bianca. "Uh... today we met N again, you had a weird vision thing, found out Teiresias is basically unkillable, saved Hawes' life, ran through riots in the streets, caught an old man who stole a skull apparently for no reason and met two Gym Leaders. That seems to be a day worth reviewing."

"Point taken," I said. "OK. Let's summarise."

Candy leaped from my head, stretched out her wings and glided inelegantly down onto Halley with the grace and speed of a falling stepladder. She crowed exultantly, Halley yowled angrily, and the resulting explosion of feline fury flung Candy to the floor. Before she could get up again, Halley leaped down from Bianca's lap, landing paws-first on the Archen's chest.

"Don't shout," Cheren said quietly, as she opened her mouth to deliver what would doubtless have been an tongue-lashing of rare vitriol indeed. "There are two people behind me."

Halley glared at him, then turned her burning gaze on me, claws still on Candy's neck.

"Later, I am going to wring her neck and eat her like a sparrow," she mouthed at me.

"That's enough," I said, pushing her away with one foot and picking up Candy protectively. "Leave her alone."

"Ark," squawked Candy smugly.

"That goes for you too," I told her quellingly. "You jump on sociopathic wildcats, you get what's coming to you."

"Damn f*cking straight," murmured Halley ferociously, stalking back to her seat on Bianca's lap. "If she...!"

"Sh," said Cheren. "Now. Review time..."

---

"So," said Ezra, which made Niamh jump. Despite her attempts to inveigle him into conversation, he had remained resolutely silent throughout their journey. "You said you had questions."

"Yeah," she replied, and was about to ask them when she was forestalled by the arrival of the waiter.

"Are you ready to order?" he asked brightly.

"Yes," answered Ezra. "Two of the stuffed crab platters, please."

"OK," he said, noting it down. "I'll be back in a mom—"

"Ah, you misunderstand," Ezra cut in. "Those two dishes are both for me; I have a singularly voracious appetite. I have no idea what my companion wants."

"Oh. Er, OK." The waiter turned to Niamh. "Madam?"

"Uh... the wild boar terrine, please."

"OK. Shouldn't take too long. I'll be back soon."

He disappeared, and Niamh returned her gaze to Ezra.

"All right," she said. "What's so special about the ball that the old man took?"

"It's more than a ball," he replied. "Do you know the legend of the Twin Heroes?"

"Yes, of course. The warlords who united Unova."

"Very good." Ezra leaned forwards slightly. "The end of Sandjr, they say – although Sandjr, of course, ended a long time ago, when the First Kingdom fell. But I digress. Do you know the next part of the story?"

"Yeah. The brothers fall out, fight each other. Unova's almost destroyed again, and it isn't until the sky falls and kills them both on the battlefield that the country picks itself up and gets on with it."

Ezra nodded.

"That's right. Legends that were once histories – except that as the actors were forgotten, the truth began to seem too fanciful, and the stories were toned down to stay believable."

Niamh frowned.

"You're saying those legends represent something even weirder? Most historians believe they represent something less obviously fictional."

Ezra grinned.

"The Twin Heroes," he said. "When they fought as one, they flew the banner of black and white dragons entwined. When they separated, their armies marched beneath the mark of each individual dragon. That's what the legend says – but the truth is that the armies moved in the shadow not of banners, but of an actual dragon."

"What? Like... a Dragon-type?"

Most Pokémon were an unusual species of a family of more conventional animals – Raichu were exceptionally large and voltaic rodents for instance. Dragon-types were the exception. No one was entirely certain what they'd evolved from; most people inclined to the belief that it was probably dinosaurs, but there was still a lot of mystery surrounding them, and Niamh could well imagine that there were strange and exotic Dragon-types roaming the skies in ancient times.

"It's entirely possible," Ezra said. "I usually tried to stay out of its way, so I never got a good look. But based on what people were saying at the time, I would say it was actual dragon. Unova's last real dragon, and possibly the world's.

"Anyway, when the Heroes fought, the great dragon split in half, each one of the resultant pair of dragons following one of them. They fought, which must have been a bit odd. Some First Kingdom thing, I expect. The legends mention something about sons at that point, but the sons are irrelevant. The sons never had the dragons; they fought, it's true, but with conventional armies. The Heroes fought, the dragons clashed – and they tore the land apart, until the sky fell and killed the Heroes.

"At least, that's what the legend says. In actuality, it was something else, some monster that crawled out of the earth near the Patzkovan border. It flung the clouds themselves down on the Heroes, tonnes and tonnes of ice and water, and killed them both. The dragons, their powers spent, went into stasis, waiting for... Well." He shrugged. "I'm not sure what. The point is, this is what the ball, as you so eloquently put it, is. It's the white dragon of fire."

Niamh stared.

"That thing was a dragon?"

Ezra nodded.

"Yes. Still is, albeit in diminished form. And one day it will be a proper dragon again. Perhaps sooner than anticipated, if Harmonia is after them." He sipped his wine thoughtfully. "Presumably he's after the black dragon too, although I'm not sure where that one is. It's something to think about; I have no idea how they might be awakened, but the dragons aren't something to take lightly. They seem to be inimical to, well, everything; they may not have come from this world." He shook his head. "Anyway. I've answered your question about the stone. What next?"

Niamh tried to remember. Ezra had said a lot of very strange things just then, and her brain was still trying to sort them all out; thankfully, the waiter returned with their food at that moment and she got a reprieve.

"Mm," said Ezra, delicately crunching through a crab leg without bothering to remove the shell. "Lovely."

"I got it," said Niamh suddenly, ignoring her terrine. "The next question. Teiresias was intangible – it possessed things to get around. Does that mean that you...?"

She let it hang in the air. It seemed almost rude to ask whether Ezra was the name of the demon, or of the body it was currently in possession of.

He sighed.

"Niamh, Teiresias is not one of my kind – it hails from Greece, from the nightmares of the Mycenaean priests. It isn't an Unovan demon. With his sort, their power waxes with age, but as it does the universe starts to reject them – they become detached from the physical world. More and more, they find themselves having to possess bodies in order to stay on Earth and out of the dark paths.

"I, on the other hand, am an Unovan – mostly. Like all Unovan demons, I have a real and substantial body, although I'm hiding it at present due to the fact that it really is rather terrifying. The man you see before me is the shape I prefer to adopt when I go out among humans, because otherwise I attract a lot of very unwelcome attention, and cause an alarming number of heart attacks."

"How can you be mostly Unovan?" asked Niamh, feeling much more at ease; if Ezra wasn't stealing bodies, she was fine with whatever face he wanted to present to the world. "Surely you're either Unovan or you're not."

Ezra swallowed a chunk of carapace and scratched his head.

"How do I explain it...? I'm really not sure how it all fits together. I suppose you could say I'm an immigrant, of sorts. I was born in Germany – or what would later be called Germany. At the time, it was more a seething mass of angry people with pointy sticks. Though that would describe most of the populated world at that point fairly well, as it happens," he added. "I came to Unova aboard a slave-ship, as part of an army meant to invade. Once we'd been fairly comprehensively defeated, I made the point to my captors that I hadn't wanted to invade Unova, and had, in fact, been very much against the idea of invading Unova, and would gladly serve the Unovans if they would kindly not execute me. Thus, I was reborn as an Unovan demon."

Niamh swallowed a mouthful of meat, tried to digest what Ezra had just said, and failed.

"What?" she asked. "I don't follow you. You were... reborn?"

Ezra sighed.

"It's tricky to explain," he said. "I don't remember it very well – the rebirth has that effect on you. Think of the Unovan demons as a bit like very, very evangelical missionaries. They convert you – totally. Scarcely a shred of the original Germanic me remains in here." He indicated himself.

"Right," said Niamh, wondering if she could afford to discard this information and decided that she could, if only to spare herself a headache. "Uh... OK. Next question." She thought for a moment. "Damn it! You keep making me lose my train of thought."

"Sorry." Ezra finished his first crab and began on the second. "I realise that a lot of this demon stuff is hard to get your mortal head around. It's very alien. We operate on levels of reality that most of you don't even suspect exist."

"Mm. So I see." Niamh took a deep breath and a gulp of wine. "OK. Next question. Are the gods real?"

Ezra raised his eyebrows.

"I wasn't expecting that one."

"Well, the demons are, so... how about the gods?"

"It depends what you mean by 'real'." Ezra laid down his knife and fork carefully. "Have you ever been to Australia?"

"No."

"Does it exist?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"How do you know, if you've never been there?"

"Well... I know it exists," said Niamh, suddenly feeling very young and frustrated next to him. How old was he, anyway? He'd spoken as if he'd been around when the Twin Heroes were fighting.

"A great many people 'know' that the ése exist," replied Ezra. "In that sense, they're as real as Australia."

"Bullsh*t. I don't buy that," retorted Niamh. "I could go to Australia and prove it exists, if I wanted. Can't do that with the gods."

Ezra raised an eyebrow.

"Can't you?"

"No. There's nowhere I can go and prove to myself that they're real." She looked at him, suddenly uncertain. "Is there?"

"I don't know," he replied. "But if you went to Australia, what would you expect to find there?"

"Uh... sun. Kangaroos. The seasons are backwards, and there are crocodiles and wombats and the people talk lahk this—"

"That's an idea of Australia, not the actual place," he observed. "You could no more prove that that exists than you could the gods."

Niamh glared.

"Could you just tell me straight, please? I'm not really into philosophy."

Ezra shook his head.

"But asking whether or not the gods are real is a matter of philosophy," he pointed out. "And we're only scratching the surface here. There's a great deal more under that."

"Whether demons are real or not doesn't seem to be a matter of philosophy."

"We're not a sophisticated theological concept," he replied. "We're just a primitive superstition: easy to prove or disprove. Simple. Ése, on the other hand... They're a bit more complicated than that."

"So I see," said Niamh dryly. "I think I'll stick to monsters, thanks. At least those bleed."

"And if they bleed, you can kill them," agreed Ezra with a smile. "I'll drink to that."

So he did, and Niamh drank with him, and ate her cooling terrine without asking any more questions. She didn't feel up to handling his answers.

---

Tick.

---

"... cause is as yet unknown, but arrests continued to be made throughout the night and are still being made as I speak," the newscaster said. "The Nacrene Police Commissioner released a statement earlier this..."

I stopped paying attention as soon as it became clear that nothing meaningful had happened since the last news broadcast an hour ago; I'd woken early today, and come down to the lounge a little before six to wait for the others. I wanted to see if anything had been discovered about the riots, but so far it seemed like nothing had. They were as much a mystery as ever – in fact, I think Burgh and I knew more about them than anyone else. The police had made no mention of Gorm, for example, and had even gone so far as to say that they had had no success in identifying potential ringleaders.

"Nothing, right?" asked Cheren, joining me. There were grass stains on his hands; I guessed he'd been up early, training Lelouch and Justine.

"Nope," I replied. "Nothing at all."

I was about to click the TV off when Cheren's hand held me back.

"Wait," he said. "Look."

"...Harmonia is growing in some cities," the newscaster said. "A concerted effort was launched yesterday by several organisations against the Pokémon League, pointing to figures concerning Pokémon and human welfare and calling for its immediate disbanding."

"Harmonia's counter-attacking," remarked Cheren, raising his eyebrows as the newscaster reeled off a list of supporting organisations. "Look at this! There must be fifty-odd groups there – some of them big ones. That's quite an attack force."

I recognised some of the names myself, which was, if anything, a testament to how influential they were. Not much news penetrated the leafy walls of White Forest.

"Do you think the League will fall?" I asked tentatively.

"Not unless Harmonia comes into power," he replied. "They're too old – too much a part of the country. But based on what Shauntal said, they've got less than twenty employees, not counting Gym Trainers – an attack this size is going to keep them occupied for a while."

"Lenora's probably out of action, too," I said, thinking of Hawes and feeling sad. "Poor woman... I hope Burgh managed to calm her down a bit."

Cheren nodded.

"Yes." He sighed. "This just keeps getting better. We know nothing, Harmonia knows everything, and the world is getting steadily crazier. I—"

The window shattered and ragged skeins of black and blue flew past us, keening miserably. They hit the far wall, coalesced into a sorry-looking puddle and dripped onto the floor.

I was still staring, but Cheren was already on his feet, Lelouch and Justine before him; something looked a bit odd about Lelouch, but I was far from ready to waste time staring at him. I panicked for a moment, looked around wildly, and fell off the sofa.

"Pax," said a horrible, familiar voice, and a silhouette appeared at the window: two triangles atop a series of circles, the unmistakeable outline of a cat. "I am not here to fight, but your watchdog is a little overzealous."

I scrambled to my feet and looked at the puddle of shadow on the floor; I saw now that it was struggling weakly to rise into the air, and pockmarked with shreds of blue fire. Not an attack, then – it must have been Shauntal's Ghost.

A noise from the window drew my attention back over there again, and I turned to see a large, very obviously dead wildcat slinking through the gap, apparently unconcerned by the fact that it was missing its jaw. I saw little white things writhing in its fur, dripping from the hole in its face like odious, wriggling saliva, and tried very hard not to be sick.

Don't be scared, Lauren, I told myself, clamouring to be heard over the pounding of my heart. It's not here to hurt you. It said so just now. Just stay calm and listen for a moment.

I transferred my gaze to Cheren's Pokémon instead, focusing hard on them to avoid looking at the necrotic thing by the window. Lelouch was staring at it with the glassy-eyed implacability of a snake, and – was he longer than before? Actually, he seemed to be physically growing as I watched, getting longer by the moment. There seemed to be buds on his back, too – buds that I hadn't previously noticed.

Justine looked more lively; she shifted from foot to foot constantly, eyes flicking from Teiresias to Cheren and back again. Come on, she seemed to be saying. Come on, let me at him. I remembered that Purrloin didn't really like wildcats at the best of times; I imagined she must have felt even more animosity towards undead ones.

"What do you want?" asked Cheren. His voice was expressionless. If he was scared, he didn't show it; instinctively, I stepped behind him.

Teiresias tipped its sickening head on one side with an audible crack. As if from a great distance, I noticed that the TV was still on, the newscaster twittering about the recession.

"I am here to deliver a message," it said. "From the King of all humans."

"There's no such person."

"There is," replied Teiresias without emotion. "He is merely waiting for his birthright to be recognised."

Cheren snorted.

"Fine. Get on with your message and leave."

"It is not for your ears," said Teiresias, and I knew with a sudden horrible jolt what it was about to say, and I willed and willed it not to be so but still it said: "It is for White alone."

Cheren looked at me.

"I'm not leaving her alone in here with you," he said. "I'm not stupid."

"I know," replied Teiresias. "Your little stratagem in Striaton proved that much." It twitched its tail, and the tip of it fell off. "But nevertheless, I must ask you to leave. The King's word is law."

"I'll – I'll tell Cheren and Bianca what you say anyway," I said, clutching desperately at straws. "There's no point in hiding it from them!"

"I know. But I have my instructions, and unless you wish to follow the example of that unfortunate creature, Cheren Perng" – here, Teiresias jerked its head in the direction of Shauntal's Ghost – "you will vacate this room. Now."

There wasn't much you could say to that. Cheren squeezed my arm awkwardly and retreated to the door, which sprung open at his approach and slammed shut after he and his Pokémon had passed through. Before it closed, I caught a brief glimpse of worried faces on the other side; other people must have heard the crash of the window breaking, I realised. I hoped the audience would encourage Teiresias to keep its word and not attack – though even as I thought it I realised how futile a hope it was. It would do as it wanted; no human onlookers would ever make it change its mind.

"Now we can talk," it said. "The King wants you to know that your challenge has been accepted. You will not be actively pursued by Harmonia's forces any longer – though if you interfere with the operations of those forces, the King cannot guarantee that they will not take steps to stop you." It levelled blank white eyes at me. "Is that clear, White?"

I didn't know. Fear of Teiresias competed with a strange echo of the weird half-memories that had bubbled up within me yesterday, when I had spoken to N; part of me wanted to tell it that I had never made any challenge, and another part wanted to say that the challenge stood and I was glad the King had accepted it. In the end, I settled for a feeble sort of nod.

"Good." Teiresias turned and stalked back towards the window. "Then we are done here. I'll see you again, I'm sure. But," it added, pausing on the windowsill, "not as a messenger."

With that, it was gone, and the door burst open and Cheren and some other people I didn't know rushed in, and I sat down on the sofa amid a buzzing storm of commotion and put my head in my hands, lost to the alien emotions swirling in my mind.

---

Neither Lenora nor Hawes met us at the Library – in fact, no one did: the place was closed. We knocked for a while, then waited, and then knocked some more – and finally, nearly twenty minutes later, one of the great doors inched open.

"What do you want?" asked the half-face visible through the gap. "Please, we're not open today—"

"Yeah, we kinda noticed that," said Bianca. "Can you let us in, please? We really need to do some research."

"Well, we need to clear up our ruined hall, restore a priceless fossilised skeleton and somehow sort out the mess that our director has left us in. Now, go away and leave us alone."

"Really, we can't afford the delay," Cheren said. "This is vitally important—"

"Yes, I'm sure it is," replied the librarian. "And so is this. We're closed, kids."

The door clunked shut, and we looked at each other. Candy huddled close to my neck, sensing the tension in the air; she seemed to be feeling timid today – probably as a result of Halley's attack on her the night before.

"Unbelievable," muttered Cheren. "Didn't anyone leave any instructions behind about us?"

"Evidently not," said Halley. "What, you thought you were someone special just because you saved the director's life? Nah. You're still an annoying customer."

Cheren glared at her.

"Do you remember the walk I took yesterday evening? About seven o'clock?"

"Yeah...?"

"I stopped at a pet shop," he said vindictively, and took out a red leather collar from his pocket.

"You know, that statue over there looks fascinating," said Halley, sauntering away with exaggerated nonchalance. "Think I might take a closer look."

"Yeah, I thought so."

I watched with a small smile. It was nice to see Halley deflated every once in a while; it was good for her ego, kept it from swelling too much. Better she had a more modest sense of self-worth than that she got herself into trouble over it one day.

Cheren put the collar away and returned his gaze to us.

"Well," he said. "Shall we try again?"

"Sure," replied Bianca. "We don't really have a choice, right?"

"Fair enough."

He knocked again; the door slid open a crack; the face reappeared.

"Look," he said peevishly. "We really are very busy here. We don't have time for you lot – even if we were open, we can't spare any staff whatsoever."

"We don't need your staff," replied Cheren patiently. "We just need books."

The man on the other side of the door sighed.

"No," he said. "Not my decision, anyway. We're closed."

"Will you open up for this?" asked a familiar voice behind us. I turned to see Niamh there, the green-haired monster-slayer from Striaton – and in her hands a basketball-sized sphere of pure black stone.

Someone said something. I saw Niamh's lips move, but no sound came out; the world had turned to treacle around me, trickling slowly away from my perception, thick and pale, centred on a dark circle right before my eyes: the black orb, gleaming like an eye staring back at me—

I was the lightning.

I flung myself across the sky, half gliding, half surfing the lightning bolts that converged on my tail, powering my endless onwards flight; the storm raged above and below, clouds of rain in the sky and of fire on the ground.

She was here, my sister, my brother, my twin, and she was waiting.

I hovered, claps of thunder buoying up my wings; in the hollow in my back, I felt myself shifting, tugging, and my head snapped from right to left, my gaze taking in a great swathe of the horizon. The ground boiled and burned with the touch of my sight; the I who was I now lacked the skill of my former selves, did not know how to contain my strength – and the fission had damaged the restraints, too.

She came.

Flying up out of the flames beneath me, wings back and tail blazing, she met me in a whirl of feathers and fangs; I bit deep into her neck, lightning cracking out across her body from mine, searing her feathers as her fires scorched my scales, and now we were both falling, flying, up and down at once, the storm howling around us like a living thing, like the body we both once were, and miles away cities fell and towns were pounded to dust...

"Lauren?"

I blinked.

"Lauren?"

"What is it?" I mumbled. "Where is she – he?"

"Who?"

"Her," I replied. "Him."

"Enough of that sh*t." The voice seemed to be rapidly losing its sympathetic tones. "I know how to deal with this..."

I felt four small sharp somethings dig into my cheek, and started fully awake with a jolt.

"Ouch!"

Halley grinned at me from atop my chest.

"You can thank me later," she said. "F*cking professional, that's me."

"What – where are we?" I asked, trying to sit up and failing; Halley seemed like far too great a weight right now. I felt like I'd shrunk, like I was tiny; I could barely lift my own arms like this, let alone a large cat.

"Hospital," she replied. "You've been unconscious for seven hours."

"What?"

With a huge effort born of shock and desperation, I sat upright, knocking her from her perch – to find myself lying on a sofa, surrounded by bookshelves.

"This... isn't the hospital," I said, puzzled.

"I know. I lied."

"Why?"

Halley stared.

"You honestly don't know?"

I shook my head.

"No..."

She sighed.

"In which case, never mind. The point is, Niamh brought back some stolen exhibit, and then you fainted, and as a combination of all that they said we could come in and do some research. That's the grossly simplified version, of course – but hey. History's complicated, and there ain't space in the books to write it all."

I frowned.

"Is Niamh still here?"

"No, she left. She had something important to do."

"Did she say what that... thing... was?"

"The big stone ball? Nope. The librarian seemed to know, though; he took it and scuttled off like a scarab beetle with a ball of sh*t."

"Halley..."

"Sorry," she said, wholly unapologetically. "Anyway. I said I'd watch you; Cheren and Bianca are doing some research across the room."

I looked up, and realised that we were in some kind of small reading room, detached from the main body of the building; it was strewn with desks, comfortable chairs and green-shaded reading lamps, and seemed in all a pretty nice place. I couldn't see the others, but I assumed they were on the other side of one of the bookcases.

"They weren't worried enough about me to watch themselves?"

"No sense wasting more than one set of eyes," Halley pointed out. "Candy's watching you too. Uh... Somewhere." She looked around. "OK, I guess she got bored and wandered off. Huh. There's glory for you."

"What?"

"It's a quote. Anyway, what was all that about him and her? You were muttering stuff when you woke up."

I frowned again.

"I... don't remember," I said, suddenly feeling very lost. Something had deserted me, I thought; something I needed to remember if I was going to get anywhere with this mystery...

I shook my head in frustration. This was getting silly. Yesterday, with N, and earlier today, after Teiresias left, and now, with this orb – these strange feelings were coming more and more frequently, and they were starting to scare me. In fact, they'd been scaring me since they started – but now, as they became more common, they were a source of increasing concern. Something was wrong – something only N and I could sense. Something was happening, something connected with me and my other self, the enigmatic Jared Black – and it seemed that, despite my centrality to the whole issue, no one would or could tell me what it was.

"Lauren! You're awake!"

I turned to see Bianca coming around a bookcase, Candy on her shoulder. At the sight of me, the Archen squawked loudly and leaped into my arms; I stroked her head and told her to be quiet.

"Yes, I am," I replied.

"And before you ask, she doesn't know how or why or anything about her fainting fit," added Halley, stalking away across the parquet flooring. "Useless."

"Are you OK?" asked Bianca, ignoring her.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

I swivelled around so I was sitting upright, then stood and stretched, Candy hopping out of my hands onto the arm of the sofa.

"Ah... a bit stiff," I admitted. "Mostly fine."

"Good," replied Bianca, smiling warmly. "Just at the right moment."

"Why?" I asked, suddenly excited. "Have you found something?"

She grinned happily.

"We think so," she said. "Look!"

And she led me around the case to Cheren, who looked up from the notes he was making and pointed to a huge leather-bound book, yellowed with centuries of storage – and on the open pages of that book I saw the illustration he was pointing to, hand-drawn in browning ink by some long-dead scribe. It was a picture of a young man's face, looking out of the book as if he could somehow see me through the long years that separated us.

It was the face of the boy with the icy grey eyes.

It was, impossibly, the face of N.
 

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
1,030
Posts
13
Years
Chapter Eighteen: A Smell of Petroleum Prevails Throughout

Needless to say, Smythe's plan had not exactly worked out.

Escape from a solid stone sarcophagus with a two-tonne lid was, as he might perhaps have expected had he been thinking properly, not really possible, and he had lain there, exhausted from his exertions, for several hours before he saw light again.

The lid was removed by a pallid gentleman with bad teeth and a cheery grin; he did not require assistance to move the stone slab, Smythe noted, and so he chose not to attempt to overpower him as he was hauled from the tomb.

"Your master wishes to speak to you," the merry stranger told him. "Through there."

Smythe's eyes followed the pointing finger to a doorway some way off to his left. It punctuated a worn stone wall; his current location was uncertain, but that wall indicated he probably wasn't at the Party HQ in Castelia. He looked around for other clues, but found none; the sarcophagus was located in a small stone room lit by the fitful rays of a guttering torch.

He had no idea where he was, but presumed it was Weland's base of operations.

This did not bode well.

"Through there," repeated the man. His smile did not waver. "Now."

Smythe gulped, and went.

The adjoining chamber was slightly larger than the first – it required two spooky torches to light it fully – but otherwise indistinguishable. There seemed to be no door; Smythe wondered how he had been brought here. A second smiling man, slightly thinner than the first and just as sallow, stood before him; while the one who had extracted him from the sarcophagus stood at the door, this one stepped forwards in spoke in the rich, unmistakeable voice of Ghetsis Harmonia.

"Hello, Smythe."

Smythe's eyes widened.

"Sir...?"

The grin deepened.

"Weland has kindly granted me this proxy to interrogate you through," he said, still in Harmonia's voice. "You're quiet far from civilisation at the moment, you know. I can't possibly come all the way down there to talk to you in person."

Down there...

Smythe felt the prickle of sweat forming on his forehead. He glanced up involuntarily; how far down was he? Was this one of the antechambers of Hell? Did Weland lurk beneath his feet, a hideous anvil on which the immense weight of earth above would crush him?

"Christ," he muttered weakly.

"Quite. Now, Smythe," said the smiling man, "you are going to tell me everything you know about the woman you brought to the Striaton Gym a couple of days ago." (A couple of days? He'd been here that long?) "The same woman who wrecked our Museum robbery yesterday."

Despite his obviously parlous situation, Smythe couldn't help but grin. That was Niamh, all right; he knew some of the details of that operation, and it would have taken someone truly extraordinary to scupper it.

"Glad you find it so funny," snapped Harmonia through his proxy's smile.

"The way you're grinning, so do you," replied Smythe in his momentary good humour, and instantly regretted it.

The man froze.

"Well," said he. "Well, well, well. It's clear where your sympathies lie, isn't it?"

"Um, well, I—"

"Tell me about the woman." The man lurched forwards with the clumsy power of a clockwork toy. His face was very close to Smythe's now, and with a thrill of horror he realised that no breath issued from between those greying teeth.

"N-no," said Smythe stubbornly.

The man stared. His eyes had no lustre.

"What?"

"No," repeated Smythe, voice growing stronger. "You said it yourself, you know where my loyalties lie. You'll get—"

A freight train drove into his belly – or at least, that was what it felt like; Smythe shot backwards like a cork out of a bottle and hit the wall so hard he bounced.

The grinning gentleman stepped forwards, towering over him as he unclenched his gloved fist.

"Now, Smythe," said Harmonia, voice dangerously soft. "I think we'll have to try that one again..."

---

I stared.

"But – how... how old is this book?" I asked, voice trembling slightly.

"About six hundred years," replied Cheren. "Modern Unovan – just about intelligible. More than that, the drawing is of a legend that seems to go back as far as the Twin Heroes – maybe further. Bronze Age, perhaps."

"So... it's a coincidence that it looks like N?"

Cheren smiled grimly.

"Let me read it for you," he said. "In the days of the ancients, before the Heroes brought the warlords together under the banner of the dragon, there were a certain people in the west, who dwelt in halls of granite and porphyry, and had all about them the semblance of the great and noble ones who went before. For once their empire had been vast and its towers numerous beyond imagining, but now they remained only in their halls in the west, a fragment of their former might, reduced thus by the predations of the unworthy and the tyranny of evil men.

"Their king was as to men as men are to beasts, and to beasts as a brother; his sagacity and might were—" He broke off. "I'm modernising the trickier words as I go along," Cheren explained, "but I don't know what buorag means. It's not an archaic form of a modern word, it's just completely alien."

"Never mind," I said. "Go on."

"I think it's 'unrivalled' or something like that," he said. "Anyway. His sagacity and might were unrivalled by any who came after; the kings of today were as nothing to him, for he was the last of the noble scion of Sondjr, and his name was Naudri, the Keeper of the Peace."

Cheren lowered the book.

"Naudri," he said. "Fifteenth letter of the Unovan runic alphabet. In Roman script: N."

"And... and that's his picture?" I asked, pointing at the drawing.

"Yeah," he replied. "It's taken from a statue from the western halls where these people were meant to live, I think – but the story goes on to recount how Naudri's people were overrun by the Heroes' armies when they refused to submit to them, and the city was razed to the ground. The statue's gone."

There was a brief silence.

"So... who is N?" I asked tentatively.

"We don't know," replied Cheren. "But one of this legendary King's titles was 'King of All Humans'. I think N sent Teiresias to speak to you, Lauren – and that means he's connected to Harmonia."

"Teiresias said the King would stop Harmonia chasing us," I said, suddenly seeing the ilght. "And that means N has—"

"Quite a lot of influence with one of the most dangerous men in the country," finished Cheren. "Yes."

There was another silence.

"Well," said Bianca cheerily. "I guess we'd better go find N."

---

When we left the building shortly afterwards, it was noticeably brighter than before; it looked like the weather might finally be warming up a bit.

"How long was I unconscious?" I asked, looking around. A tangle of police tape blocked off the whole street to the left; a pair of Conkeldurr with white city council sashes lumbered about beyond it, clearing debris and patching holes with concrete.

"Not long. Half an hour, perhaps? Munny said you were only sleeping, so we didn't take you to hospital."

I looked above Bianca's head as she spoke, and saw the Munna hanging there, inscrutable as ever. I gave it a smile and it blooped back at me.

We stopped for lunch at a small café on the way back, where I had half an excellent prawn mayonnaise sandwich, the remainder of which was stolen by Candy; as we were leaving, my phone rang, and, seeing who was calling, I answered with some trepidation.

"Hello, Mum," I said uneasily, and was immediately bowled over by a battering ram of anger, love and parental concern. It hammered relentlessly at my ear for three whole minutes without giving me a chance to respond, and then cut out abruptly as my phone battery died.

It wasn't quite the conversation I'd had in mind, but at least it proved that everyone at home was OK – something I'd been more than a little concerned about, given Teiresias' tireless determination and total lack of morals. I had thought that perhaps it might have crept back to White Forest in the dead of night, slipping through the shadows like an eel through wet grass, rising above my brother's bed with those white eyes smoking in the skull—

I put the thought from my head. Enough, Lauren. It hadn't done that. Harlow, Cordelia, Mum, Dad – all fine, I was sure.

"Everything OK?" asked Bianca.

"Yeah," I answered. "I think so, anyway."

"Good," she replied, and I felt she really meant it. She turned the conversation tactfully away to the subject of locating N, and shortly afterwards Halley had an idea.

"He gave you his number, didn't he?" she asked. "Just call him and find out where he is."

I felt a little silly for not having thought of that immediately, but I accepted it with good humour and decided to give it a go when we got back to the Centre and I could charge my phone up again.

"That thing's bloody useless," muttered Halley. "Runs out of battery so frequently you'd think it did it on purpose."

"It's old," I said. "Leave it alone."

"All the more reason to attack it," she retorted. "Now, Jared, he had a nice phone – iPhone, you know, all the bells and whi—"

"Who's Jared?" asked Cheren.

"Uh, someone I know," I replied. "More into technology than I am."

"A guy who knows when to talk, and when to hit stuff with a stick," pronounced Halley. "My kind of guy, in other words."

"How come you both know him?" Cheren asked, eyes narrowing a little.

"He lives in White Forest," I answered, feeling my cheeks redden. "We passed by on the way out."

"Hm," said Cheren, raising his eyebrows. "All right."

I had a feeling that that might have been my opportunity to segue into the topic of the Dream World, but it seemed I'd fluffed it; I hoped Cheren would probe further at some point, since he obviously wasn't satisfied, and I didn't know how to broach the subject on my own.

Presently, we arrived back at the Centre – where we were told by the receptionist that Shauntal's Ghost had reconstituted itself with a roar of anguish, cursed our names and departed for the League in high dudgeon, which seemed only fair after what we'd put it through – and after a couple of minutes of charging my phone was capable of making calls again. I put it on speakerphone so that everyone could hear, and called N.

It rang for a long time.

Eventually, there was a click, and that smooth, familiar voice said:

"Yes? Lauren?"

"N," I replied. "Uh..." What did I actually say to him? I couldn't outright accuse him of being the reincarnation of a two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old king, could I? "We've been doing some research," I said at last.

He knew what I meant immediately.

"Ah," he said. "Yes. Yes, I suppose you would have done, after all that happened yesterday." He sighed. "Then I suppose you're asking me for answers?"

"Well, yeah. Basically."

"That isn't going to happen, I'm afraid," he replied. "It's not that I don't know. It's that it's not how these things work."

"Opposites," I agreed, not knowing where the words came from. "Division and unity."

"Quite. You're divided, I'm united. I shall unite; you wish to maintain the divide. Do you see how it works? We can work together, but neither of us can inform the other. Reality wouldn't permit it."

"I see," I said. "What can we do, then?"

"Chase me," replied N. "Chase me, and you'll learn. Chase Harmonia, learn his plan; chase me, learn my goals; chase the dragons, and find the thief. I have the information already because I'm united – all strings in the web lead to me. You are divided, however – at the wrong end of the cord, on the fringes of the web. You'll have to do the searching, I'm afraid."

"I see." I really did. It was blindingly obvious: this was the way the universe worked. I stood for division; N for unity. Everything else followed on from that. "All right, N. Thank you."

"It's no problem, Lauren," he said. "I'm sorry I can't say more." I could almost hear his grin down the phone line. "I'm looking forward to this."

"I'm scared," I admitted frankly. "I can't imagine I'm going to like it."

"It's what you were born for," he replied. "When the time comes, you'll be ready. It's the way of things."

"Yeah, I suppose..." I sighed. "OK. Well, I shouldn't keep you. I expect you're busy."

"Very," he agreed. "I'll see you later."

"Bye."

"Goodbye."

I put the phone down and looked up. The others looked like they hadn't been able to follow the conversation at all, and I didn't blame them.

"You stand for division?" asked Bianca, puzzled. "What does that mean?"

I looked at Halley.

"Halley," I said pleadingly. "Help me explain. I still don't know how to do this."

She jumped onto my lap and cleared her throat.

"Always happy to blow apart someone's expectations of reality," she said cheerily. "Gather round, kids, I got a story for you..."

---

Teiresias smouldered.

It lay on a rooftop, all bilious fogs and noxious fumes, and thought.

Why was it no longer allowed to chase White and Halley?

On the surface, it knew the answer: the King had decreed it; it was part of his plan, he said, and the Regent was not to worry, for the thief would be found soon enough by the workers in his great web. Harmonia hadn't liked that, but he had to admit that his own efforts to grab Halley and White had been attended at every step of the way by failure, and had grudgingly allowed the King to use his own methods to locate the stolen artefact.

Besides, the King had said, there was no need to rush things. The election wasn't the point, after all. Harmonia hadn't liked that, either – but he couldn't very well argue, not when he wanted to keep the truth from him. And Weland had backed the King, as well, telling Harmonia that there was more than one way to take power, and a general election was possibly the most pathetic way imaginable.

But even knowing all that, Teiresias felt something was wrong.

It wanted Halley, it realised. It needed her for... something. There was information it might be able to extract from her that it needed, in order that it might find... them.

Teiresias' surface frothed into a veritable maelstrom of anger. What? Who was this mysterious 'them'? And why did this thought bother it so much?

It did not know, but as it rose into the skies, it knew where it was going.

It was going to find Halley, and she was going to tell it the truth.

---

"There are two worlds?" asked Cheren. "Two entirely separate, twinned realities that switch over each night?"

"At midnight, yeah," confirmed Halley. "One day you have what I like to call White Unova – this one, where everything is technologically backward and there's a forest in the Grimveldt – and then the next you have Black Unova, which is a global superpower on the cutting edge of technology and has a megalopolis where White Forest is." She jumped down from my lap. "But they're not entirely separate. They're linked. What happens in White Unova alters what happens in Black Unova, and vice versa – history rejigs itself a little to fit the new world when they swap over. And there are little lumps of reality that sometimes get left behind, like flies preserved in amber. Harmonia's eye, for instance – nowhere in White Unova is there anyone with that technology, is there?"

Cheren blinked.

"Well, no, I mean— Actually, where the hell did he get that?"

Halley grinned, displaying a large number of sharp white teeth.

"See? There's also the matter of the state of Training in White Unova. It shouldn't be failing this badly in a traditionalist country – I think it's doing it because modern society has swept it away in Black Unova, and it's carrying over here somehow."

"Thunor," breathed Cheren. "You're right... It's been puzzling people for years. There's no obvious reason for the decline..."

"Then, most interestingly, there's my pet human over here." Halley leaped up onto my head, which Candy didn't like but which she put up with, fearing feline reprisal. "As I said before, in White Unova there's a girl named Lauren White. Shy, easily scared, introverted and with poor taste in mobile phones. In Black Unova, there's a boy named Jared Black, who's outgoing, almost idiotically courageous, and has no trouble picking the best and most expensive mobile phone going. Lauren's a girl, Jared's a boy; Lauren's gay, Jared's straight; Lauren's athletic, Jared's not – I could go on. The point is, everything around the two worlds centres on them. These two people occupying the same point in reality – they symbolise every aspect of the division of Unova." Halley jumped down onto my lap. "They even drew you two towards them: Cheren, whose name means 'black', and Bianca, whose name means 'white'. That ain't coincidence, kids, that's f*cking fate."

"Halley," I muttered, but my heart wasn't in it. It was oddly distressing to hear myself compared so thoroughly to Jared; it made me think uneasily about whether or not I had free will, whether I had chosen anything in my life, or whether the universe had picked it out purely so as to be opposite to Jared.

"In case you hadn't noticed, I stopped caring about that a while ago, Lauren." Halley turned back to the others. "Now. Compare that to N. He's absolutely one. He's right: he's connected to Teiresias, to Harmonia, to the riots, probably – in other words, he sits in a spot in reality where every single line of information converges. He's the absolute opposite to the Jared slash Lauren entity. Now, I don't know about you, but that and the way they react to each other suggests to me that there's some serious reality-bending fate-of-the-universe sh*t going down here."

"I don't know," began Bianca, but Cheren held up a hand for silence.

"No," he said. "No, I think... Thunor, I think she's onto something." He looked at her askance. "How long have you been working on this theory?"

"Since I woke up after the first day and found the worlds had swapped around," replied Halley. "You know," she added acidly, "despite what you might think, I'm not dumb. It takes a smart girl to be as acerbic and hilarious as I am."

Bianca raised an eyebrow.

"I think you forgot arrogant," she said.

"That too," agreed Halley, who apparently didn't take that as an insult.

"It explains everything," Cheren said, typing something frantically on his phone. "I'm sure I read it somewhere... ah! Yeah, here, in an article in the New Unovan a few months ago. It's about research into the Dream World – says that in every case of Unovans monitored during sleep, REM sleep patterns start occurring at midnight exactly." He looked up, and Halley looked back.
"Yep," she said. "You only start dreaming when the worlds switch over. It looks like you're subconsciously aware of it, even if you can't really process it."

"Oh!," cried Bianca. "And it explains that weird feeling you get sometimes, when you suddenly feel life is a lie and there's some huge secret being held just out of your reach."

"Nah, I'm pretty sure that's just teenage paranoia," replied Halley. "You'll grow out of it. Although after that you'll get adult paranoia, which is less angsty but more soul-sapping."

"Oh." Bianca's face fell.

"Never mind that," said Cheren. "This is... this is much more than that. This is..." He looked at me. "You're the kind of hero you only get in legends," he said frankly. "Halley's right. Lauren, you're the centre of the universe."

---

Naturally, I couldn't really accept that.

The thing was, I couldn't really deny it, either.

Centre of the universe. Me. Lauren White, perhaps the very definition of unremarkable.

Then again, did the centre of the universe have to be remarkable? After all, there was nothing special about the centre of a circle. It was just a point that happened to lie in the middle of it. Perhaps that was me: I simply happened to occupy the spot in reality that formed the centre.

Nothing special. Just random chance. It could have been anyone.

I didn't believe myself.

It wasn't true, it just wasn't – I really was different. Every time I spoke to N I felt it in my bones: the humming of reality, the buzz of space folding and dividing around me. Frige only knew what would happen if our conversations lasted longer; I almost thought we might destroy time.

It wasn't luck, or random chance. It couldn't have been just anyone.

I was born to this, and instinctively I shied away from it. Too big. Too much. Perhaps appropriate for Jared Black, but not for Lauren White.

Or was I Jared Black? We were the same person, after all. Were we incomplete individually, each forming half of some greater personality? What was I? Who was Lauren White? Being the centre of reality seemed to destroy any personal existence I might have; I couldn't be that and still be me.

Or could I?

All this and more flashed through my head in the seconds after Cheren spoke, posing question after question and answering none of them; with a concentrated effort, I pulled myself together and managed to reply.

"I don't know," I said forlornly. "I... I can't—"

That was when I started crying. I couldn't take it – couldn't stand it – couldn't be something less than real – couldn't be...

Bianca hugged me, and I felt Candy put feathery arms as far around my neck as they would reach; I leaned into both of them, feeling all the strange emotions that had been building in me since I had first met N finally boiling over and flooding out, and wept.

"I'm sorry," I heard Cheren saying, over and over again. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – but it's true, you are—"

"Shut up, Cheren," muttered Bianca in exasperation. "Just shut up for a minute..."

"Sorry," I said abruptly, pulling away. "It's – it's stupid of me – ah, sorry..."

"It's not," replied Cheren quietly. "Believe me. It calls a lot of things into question. About what you are, who you are... about free will. It isn't stupid to react like that. It's just... it is true."

"I know," I replied, staring at the floor.

"Ark," chirped Candy consolingly, burying her beak in my hair. I reached up with one hand and rubbed her flanks. "Crawk ark."

"You too," I told her, kissing her on the forehead. She went cross-eyed trying to follow my face and fell off my shoulder with a surprised squawk. Despite myself, I had to laugh; it couldn't have been funnier if it had been scripted.

"It doesn't necessarily change anything," Cheren said. "You know that, right? You're still Lauren White. You've always been this way – only now you know it. Whatever the truth is, it has no bearing on how you have to act."

"I suppose not," I agreed, wiping my eyes. "I suppose not..." I looked up at him and smiled. "Thanks."

He blinked.

"It's fine."

Not exactly the most appropriate response, but this was Cheren I was dealing with; he was more an adventurer and tactician than a people person. I took his reply for what it was intended to be, an honest acknowledgement of my thanks, and nodded at him.

"OK." I wiped my eyes again and sniffed deeply. "OK. Um... So this... doesn't change anything, does it? Not really."

"No, not really," he replied. "We still keep going after N, I guess. There's no other choice, whatever you are." He smiled. "So. I propose we go to Castelia."

"To Castelia? Why... oh, because of the Green Party?"

"That's right. Harmonia's based there, and Harmonia's the easiest way into this web of information that N talked about. We know where he is and what we can do to find him. It's the logical entry point."

"Go to Castelia and infiltrate the enemy base? Now that sounds like fun," said Halley. "Can we get some of those little radio earpieces and a guy in a darkened room hacking the cameras and talking to us?"

"Probably not," said Cheren. "But we'll do what we can." He glanced at his watch. "It's four now... Should we wait until tomorrow, or go today?"

"No point hanging around," said Halley. "Come on! Let's go go go!"

"I think maybe Lauren might want to rest first," pointed out Bianca, but I waved her concerns aside.

"No," I said. "No, I want to know what's going on."

I felt stronger just for having said it: I was finally taking some control, actively seeking out information where I'd previously been following others, as passive as you can get. I might not be Jared Black, but I could at least take some initiative here. It didn't matter whether or not I was a tool of the universe – I didn't necessarily have to act like one.

"See? She hasn't got a problem with it," said Halley. "Come on! To the big city, boys and girls!"

"All right, all right," said Cheren. "Well, then, I suggest we head back to our rooms, Bianca, and pack up. It looks like we're going to Castelia."

---

"So." Niamh looked at Ezra. "What do we do now? Head over to Castelia and get into the Party HQ?"

He nodded.

"I suppose so," he said. "That's probably where your friend Smythe is, at any rate. Although..." He twisted his mouth in thought. "Harmonia tried to seize the dragon. That worries me. You know, there is another one out there somewhere; he may try again."

They were talking over the remains of a late lunch outside a restaurant on Vine Street, in Shadhall; Niamh wasn't sure she approved of all this lounging about and eating, but apparently the effort of maintaining a human form was quite taxing for Ezra, who had, it seemed, never been the best at altering his shape. Privately, she was beginning to wonder if Ezra was any good with any of his demonic powers, but she didn't say so; for now, at least, she needed his help, and that was probably dependent on his goodwill.

"I'm guessing it's a bad thing if he gets hold of them, right?"

It seemed a fair assumption. The Twin Heroes had destroyed entire cities when they pitted the dragons against each other in battle; even one of them would make a formidable weapon.

"Yes," said Ezra. "It would." He paused. "Not only that, but the fact that he wants them implies he knows how to wake them. Where did he get that knowledge? Certainly not from Weland; none of my race know anything about how the dragons work." He blew a meditative smoke-ring. "This is bad," he stated. "Harmonia evidently has other Powers than Weland at his disposal. To stop him and get at Weland, we'll have to find out more..."

"I see," said Niamh. "If there's information anywhere, though, it's going to be in Castelia. They're a political party: they must be swamped with bureaucracy. Their HQ is probably filled with paperwork detailing pretty much everything we want to know, in one form or another."

"An excellent point," agreed Ezra. "To Castelia, then, Niamh!"

He held out a hand, and she regarded it with some trepidation, remembering her last trip along the dark paths; her hesitation was momentary, however, determination winning out over nerves, and she took his hand as the world folded in on itself and compacted to an imperishable blackness.
 
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  • Seen May 12, 2021
I love this. I love all of this. I don't have much to say about this though.

Halley, though she still irritates me beyond belief, is hilarious. I love her quote about teenage anxiety. That was beautiful.

I love N. I love how he speaks, how he acts, just how he is. He is still my favorite character, and I love how he interacts with the others.

Everything is moving so fast. It's beyond belief. I feel like just a minute ago they were having an innocent gym battle when Teiresias attacked them. This is incredibly fast-paced right now. At least to me.

I only have one question though. Either I forgot or wasn't paying attention, or it hasn't been revealed yet, but who is Weland? Apart from that just spectacular. If not for the interspersing of Pokemon here and there, I would forget this was a fanfiction. Beautiful work.
 

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
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I love this. I love all of this. I don't have much to say about this though.

That's OK. I'm just glad you're enjoying it.

Halley, though she still irritates me beyond belief, is hilarious. I love her quote about teenage anxiety. That was beautiful.

Good! That's the sort of angle I'm aiming for with her - obnoxious, but funny. Good to know my shots are landing somewhere near the mark.

I love N. I love how he speaks, how he acts, just how he is. He is still my favorite character, and I love how he interacts with the others.

Glad you like him, though I'm really not sure why. Reading back what I write, I never see anything particularly special in N; he's a bit weird, but that's all.

Everything is moving so fast. It's beyond belief. I feel like just a minute ago they were having an innocent gym battle when Teiresias attacked them. This is incredibly fast-paced right now. At least to me.

I see. Interesting - other people have expressed the opinion that very little's happening. In a way, I suppose both they and you are right at the same time: sometimes it seems that not much is happening, but every time you look back you see the past is actually quite distant.

I only have one question though. Either I forgot or wasn't paying attention, or it hasn't been revealed yet, but who is Weland? Apart from that just spectacular. If not for the interspersing of Pokemon here and there, I would forget this was a fanfiction. Beautiful work.

Weland his His Undying Majesty, King of the demons. Ezra explained all about him in his first appearance, and he's been referenced quite a lot by him, Teiresias and Harmonia since.

And as for the rest... Well, I don't see that there is much of a difference between fanfiction and a regular novel, really. It's not like anyone should put less effort into fanfiction just because it's based on a set of ideas that originally come from somewhere else. Fanfiction at its core is a celebration, after all - a celebration of everything the author loved about their source material - and a celebration deserves all the effort that author puts into it.

F.A.B.
 

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
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Chapter Nineteen: Infiltration, Act One

Trains to Castelia were the best you could get in Unova; in fact, they were probably on a par with trains in other countries, Castelia being relatively large and modern, and by six o'clock the train was clattering through the suburbs, a haze of smoke lying thick in the distance over towers aflame with sunset.

As I stared out of the window, I felt a sudden and uncharacteristic sense of excitement growing in me; I'd only ever visited Castelia twice in my life before – had only left White Forest a handful of times before Halley had appeared, in fact – and it still seemed to me to be a huge, glittering fantasy castle, all turrets and bright lights and magic. We all felt the same way, I think; Bianca had her nose pressed up against the window, looking at the angular, light-drenched pillar of the Mondelsson building standing tall to the north, and even Cheren kept taking short, darting glances at the scenery as we passed. Justine, Munny and Candy vied for positions on the table between the seats, each staring at the unrelenting sea of shining buildings with mingled fear and wonder; the only two unaffected were Halley, who was asleep on the seat next to me, and Lelouch, who was both too incurious to care and too preoccupied with his coming evolution – as Cheren had explained earlier, that was why he'd sprouted those small buds along his spine; he was beginning the process of changing his shape to a more mature form.

"We need to discuss what we're going to do when we get there," said Cheren at last, tearing himself away from the passing suburbs. "I think we're going to have to try and get inside the Green Party HQ."

I blinked and looked up from the window.

"What? How are we going to do that?"

"Well, therein lies the issue," he replied. "I haven't a clue. If Harmonia has agents like Teiresias at his disposal, I dread to think what the security on that place is like. Not to mention the fact that presumably every single member of the Party knows who we are by this point."

"That's true," said Halley, stretching luxuriously. I started; I thought she was asleep. "None of you have a chance of getting in there. I guess what you need is an infiltrator. Someone who can skulk."

Cheren raised his eyebrows.

"Halley, you have no thumbs. You're not exactly an ideal agent."

"The information will be on computers or some sh*t like that," she said, waving his concerns aside. "I can type. It'll just take me slightly longer with paws. And let's face it," she continued, "the chances of any of you getting past Harmonia's security undetected is nil. Whereas I can hide inside a desk drawer if I have to."

"You're not that small—"

"Yes, but I'm a cat," she pointed out. "That makes me an honorary liquid: I can fit into pretty much anything." She sighed. "Look, I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm just telling you that I can get in there and you can't."

"Cheren, I think she's probably right," said Bianca. "I mean... how are we going to get in?"

He sighed.

"I suppose you're right," he said. "I just don't really like the idea of trusting the job to Halley."

"Hey!" cried Halley. "I'm right here, y'know. I can hear everything you're saying."

"I know. I don't care."

"I trust Halley," I put in, thinking of our walk through the forest and the concern she had shown then; I was certain that her acidity was mostly an act. "I'm sure she can do it."

"There you go – Lauren's seal of approval," said Halley. "What more do you want?"

"Hmph," muttered Cheren. "All right, all right. You're right, there doesn't seem to be any other way." He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Halley, if you deliberately screw this up—"

"Being the extraordinarily perceptive young man that you are," she snapped, "it surely hasn't escaped your attention that I've got a vested interest in the Party documents. I want clues to my past as much as anything else – amnesia, remember? And since I can't do it myself, I'm going to need you guys to help me out with whatever clues I find, so you have a guarantee I'll get what I can about N as well, and come back with it." She glared at him, and I could almost feel the air writhe away from her eyes, trembling as if on the first breath of a thunderstorm. "Happy now?"

"No. But I am satisfied."

"Good. Now go back to staring out the f*cking window and let me sleep."

She curled up again, flicking her tail moodily, and said no more; whether she really was asleep or not was open to debate, but it was clear the conversation was at an end.

"Right," said Bianca, voice strained with forced brightness. "That settles that, then. Anyone want to play I Spy?"

It was a futile attempt to recover the atmosphere and she knew it. No one said anything more; even the Pokémon began to shift uncomfortably, and the silence only deepened as the train clattered on.

---

"I don't think going backstage agrees with me," said Niamh, losing her footing and falling headfirst into a wall. "I feel drunk."

"Yes, I've heard it does that," replied Ezra sympathetically. "Never mind. You'll get used to it."

"I'd rather not. Can't we take a train next time?"

Ezra shrugged.

"We got from Nacrene to Castelia in twelve minutes this way. Can you do that by train?"

"Fair enough."

Picking herself up, Niamh looked around and found herself utterly incapable of working out where they were; if Ezra hadn't told her so, she wouldn't have known that they had left Nacrene at all. A streetlamp, a pavement, two rows of old terraced housing; they could have been in any of Unova's larger cities. It wasn't until a little later, when she saw the flash of the Mondelsson building's spire above the rooftops, that she felt she really had travelled anywhere at all.

"Right," she said, blinking groggily. "Where are we going now?"

"To the Party HQ," replied Ezra. "We did discuss this, didn't we?"

"Well, yeah," she answered. "But aren't we going to wait until night? It'll be easier to go unnoticed in the dark."

Ezra smiled.

"No," he said. "It won't." He patted himself on the chest. "We're nocturnal by nature," he said. "When we do sleep – which is infrequently, I'll grant you – it's during the day. Once the moon is up, we won't be able to get within half a block of the building before we're spotted. And trust me," he said, "we do not want to be spotted."

"Right. You know," sighed Niamh, "it doesn't seem to me like I'm really much help to you here. The rules are different with you demons – my 'talents', as you put them, don't seem to apply."

"Not so. This is where you come into your own, Niamh." Ezra took her arm and began walking down the street. "You know how to infiltrate a building, don't you?"

"Yeah...?"

"Well, frankly I don't," he replied. "But what I do know how to do is evade demonic sentries and any traps that might have been laid for us. I also don't know how to deal with human guards without outright killing them; I always blast them a little too hard. Makes rather a, uh, a mess, too..." He shivered. "Never mind that. The point is, we need to pool our resources to get in. And that," he said, "is why I need you."

Niamh stopped. There was something about what Ezra had said that she wasn't entirely sure she liked.

"'Pool our resources'?" she asked cautiously. "What exactly do you mean by that? Because it's not like I can take another person in there with me, you know..."

Ezra looked at her.

"What? No, I really can't take you in with me." She looked back, puzzled. "I know how to get myself in, but I don't know how to break someone inexperienced in with me..."

"You don't have to," he told her. "I'll simply possess you."

Niamh's eyes widened.

"You can do that...?"

"Yes, I can," he replied. "Don't worry, I won't crush your free will or devour your soul or anything like that – I'll just be riding in the back of your head as an advisor. Occasionally I might require control over one of your hands to aim a spell or something, but other than that I promise I won't get in your way: you are, after all, the expert."

"Won't you be detected?"

"Only if I take full control over you," he replied. "Otherwise, your mind should shield me from anyone looking for a demon where there shouldn't be one."

"That implies they'll be able to detect me," Niamh pointed out. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"I don't think so. I should be able to keep your mental profile relatively low without giving myself away."

"All right," said Niamh, who was now running out of objections, "I guess that's all my questions for now."

"Good," replied Ezra, leading her down a short passage and out onto a broader street lined with large, old-fashioned townhouses. "Because we are now in Gaunton, three blocks from our target." He pointed down the road. "It's just down there." He turned to her and smiled reassuringly. "Now, I appreciate that this is an intimidating prospect, but really, it won't hurt, and I won't read your mind any more than I have to. Just, um, close your eyes and try to relax. The more worried you are, the more chance there is that this will go catastrophically wrong and I'll accidentally burst your soul."

"Really?"

"No, not really," said Ezra with a grin. "I'm joking."

"Ezra, you might want to avoid making jokes about that sort of thing in the future," she said, voice strained. "Just a little tip."

"Really? All right," he said mildly. "I'll bear that in mind. Now, shut your eyes and relax. This won't hurt at all."

Niamh had no doubt that it wouldn't hurt. She did, however, have some qualms about allowing a demon – however harmless he might seem to be – into her mind. In fact, she thought, she should probably mention that; it was best to get these things out in the open, after all.

"Ezra," she began, opening her eyes – and saw that he was gone.

What is it? he asked.

Niamh started. That had sounded a lot like her interior monologue – but not in her voice. In fact, she realised belatedly, it sounded like—

My voice, yes, said Ezra. Macbeth's mind might have been 'full of scorpions', but it doesn't hold a candle to yours; it's bursting at the seams with monsters. You certainly do have a lot of personal demons, don't you?

"I have one more now, it seems," Niamh said, trying very hard to feel Ezra's presence inside her head and failing. "Uh – I thought you weren't going to read my mind?"

I'm trying, replied Ezra testily. But if your anxieties will insist on attacking me, I can't very well not defend myself. I thought I told you to relax? The more tense you get, the more aggressive your mind's defences get – and that means I have to try harder to stay in here. If I try too hard, then I'm going to end up erasing parts of your mind – so please, try to relax a little.

"OK, OK." Deep breaths, Niamh told herself. In through the nose, out through the mouth; in through the nose, out through the mouth; forget about the demon in your skull; in through the nose...

Thanks, said Ezra. Right. I have some information that might prove useful to you – close your eyes, please.

Niamh did, and in the darkness behind her eyelids an image of a huge, rambling building appeared, all odd angles and strange colours. To her, unacquainted with architectural design, it seemed equally likely to be either a stupendous work of art or a waste of masonry; little did she know that not even experienced critics could agree on which category that particular edifice fell into. The appearance of the image itself was a surprise – but then she saw that it was moving, that the grass on the lawn was waving gently in the breeze and the CCTV cameras were sweeping their glassy eyes back and forth, and she could not refrain from gasping gently.

This is Hawthorne House, where the Party has its headquarters, Ezra told her. It stands alone within a tall iron fence – this promptly appeared on the design – but don't worry about that; I can get you over it. What angle do you want to approach from? And how do you want to enter the building itself?

"Can you—?"

Yes, I'll rotate it; just tell me when to stop. By the way, you don't need to vocalise what you want to tell me; I can pick it up in your thoughts before the nervous impulse reaches your mouth.

Niamh grinned.

"This—"

Yes, agreed Ezra. It would be a useful thing to have ordinarily, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, technology has a long way to go before it can replicate anything like this, so, well, enjoy it while it lasts.

Yes, she might as well, thought Niamh; after all, Ezra didn't seem to be poking his nose into anything that didn't concern him, and he was providing her with tools that she would have killed to have in her ordinary line of work – so why not take pleasure in it? No point in worrying.

Ah, that's better, sighed Ezra. Your mental defences are at an all-time low. Looks like you're getting used to this. Right! Image stopped.

"There," said Niamh, forgetting that the image did not exist on the same plane as her fingers and trying to point at it; the sharp pain of attempting to poke a brick wall brought the error home to her. "Ah, sh*t!"

I know where you mean, said Ezra. A red line traced a circle around a first-floor window at the back of the west wing. Why here? Ah, I see, a CCTV blind spot. Fascinating. I didn't know you knew so much about security cameras – although I suppose in your line of work it's quite helpful.

"Yeah," replied Niamh. "If we can get in over the west fence, that'd be good – if we time it right, we can avoid the sweep of that camera there and get over to the drainpipe before it comes back. And if we stay close to the wall, that camera's field of vision should be just slightly too narrow to pick us up."

Yes. There's no need to say it out loud, but I get the idea. Right. Take a look at this.

Hawthorne House slid to one side, and an elegant neoclassical townhouse appeared next to it, standing a little way off on the other side of a paved path, as if reluctant to be associated with so outlandish a building.

Get to the front door of this building, Ezra told her. I'll take it from there.

"OK," said Niamh, opening her eyes and smiling amiably at a passerby who had seen her talking to thin air with her eyes shut and given her a worried look. "Let's go, Ezra."

She walked on, leaving the passerby staring in bewilderment after her, and watched the street get busier and more wealthy-looking around her; the buildings got taller and more elegant, and the distant rumble of protesters and journalists surrounding the Party HQ grew steadily louder. Gaunton was government town; though they had started life as townhouses, the buildings here all housed ministries or committees of some sort, and the area seethed with media people, flitting from event to event and congregating like flies on big stories – like Harmonia's electoral campaign and attendant Liberation policy.

"Whoa," murmured Niamh, as Hawthorne House hove into view. "It looks even more... uh... whatever it is up close."

Yes, agreed Ezra. It has to be seen to be believed, I think.

"How do those two roofs fit together?" she wondered.

Best not to think about it. It's said the architect perceived the world in six dimensions rather than the usual four.

"How is that possible?"

Well, I perceive it in five, he said thoughtfully. So I assume it works somehow.

It did not take much thought for Niamh to decide that she really didn't want to ask too many questions about that.

"Right," she muttered. "We're here."

The townhouse, even more elegant when viewed up close, stretched away above her; as if to offset the serious mood of the façade, a spyhole winked conspiratorially at her from the centre of the shiny black door. Niamh liked this building; you knew where you stood with it.

All right. Relax your right arm.

Niamh did, and tried hard to keep from tensing her muscles as it began to move of its own accord, her fingers curling into a fist and her index finger extending to touch the keyhole. She felt a certain indefinable something leave her fingertip – and then her arm fell back to her side as if exhausted.

"That was f*cking horrible," she said with feeling.

Yes, well, my apologies – but it did let me atomise the lock, Ezra told her. So! Time to enter, before people wonder why you're standing on the doorstep like this.

Niamh took hold of the handle and pushed; the door swung freely open, and she walked into an oak-panelled hallway.

Keep going. Act like you know what you're doing and hopefully no one will stop you. Turn left at the end of the hall; there should be a window at the end of the passage there.

Niamh had done this sort of thing before, and did it now with panache: she smiled at the receptionist as she went past her desk, as if they knew each other, and spun herself through a doorway with one hand on the frame as if it were a familiar ritual. No one so much as glanced at her, and in a couple of seconds she was walking past a small group of myopic civil servants towards the window.

Good. This is where we might get noticed. Relax; I'm taking over.

For one moment, Niamh slumped on her feet – but then her body began to move without her input, stalking towards the window with a fluid grace that no human ever possessed before; her limbs seemed to roll and flow as if they were part smoke, and Niamh wondered exactly what Ezra was made of that he should move like this.

Spirit, mostly, he answered. With a little blood, although there's precious little of that left in me these days.

Niamh opened the window without conscious thought and climbed out and up onto the exterior wall with the alacrity and agility of a spider, her fingers digging impossibly into the stone. Her head swivelled back and forth, collecting glimpses of the ground, the wall and the street beyond so quickly that she felt herself becoming dizzy.

"What in the fields of Neor—?"

I have to get you over the fence, he said. Can't climb it or destroy it – they'd notice if we touched it. I can't jump it – the force of taking off would break your legs. So we have to gain a little height, and—

Niamh's limbs twitched with a convulsive jerk, and she flew in a graceful backwards somersault over the iron railings; a moment later, without quite realising how, she was back in control and automatically moving through the blind spot between the cameras, reaching the cover of the rear wall of the west wing.

Good, said Ezra. Commendable presence of mind. Your turn again, as you've discovered. I don't think we've been spotted, which is nice. We shouldn't show up on the camera facing that house's wall as anything but a blur; we were going quite fast.

"All right," said Niamh, glancing up at a camera wedged between the junction of the west wing and the main building and judging that it was currently occupied in looking at an ornamental flowerbed. "Good." She took hold of the drainpipe and began to climb; it passed near the first-floor window, and with a jump that could only have been undertaken by the suicidally brave or the very experienced gained its windowsill.

I'll open this, said Ezra, bringing her hand up to the glass. A network of fine black lines traced a cobweb of cracks over the pane, thickening and branching and growing more and more numerous until there was no glass left at all, just a mass of solid darkness; then, abruptly, he took her hand away, the blackness dissolved and a fine vitreous dust blew away silently on the wind.

"Impressive," murmured Niamh, swinging herself through the window and whacking a surprised clerk over the head with his keyboard. "Wish I could do that."

Trust me, the trade-off isn't worth it, sighed Ezra. You have no idea how much you miss being able to taste food until you can no longer do it.

She might have enquired further about what he meant by that, but she was a little preoccupied in arranging the clerk to look like he had fallen asleep at his desk; a moment later, after checking that the rest of the office was clear, Niamh stole out of the room and into a red-carpeted corridor with more twists and turns than Gideon Mantell's spine.

"Who the f*ck is Gideon Mantell?" she wondered aloud.

That was one of my thoughts, Ezra said. Sorry. Our minds are pretty close to each other right now; you can appreciate that the odd thought slips across one way or the other.

"Right," said Niamh, glancing at an enamel sign on the wall and deducing that Harmonia's office was on the top floor of the main part of the building. "Friend of yours, is he?"

No, he died around 1850. British palaeontologist. We never met, but we exchanged letters – scholarly debate, that sort of thing. Stop!

Niamh froze.

"What?"

Look.

Her hand pointed at a smoke alarm on the ceiling.

"A smoke alarm?" she asked, puzzled.

No. It's a curse. Hang on, I think I can show you... I'll just have to find your optic nerve. One moment!

A second later, Niamh's eyes began to feel very dry for no real reason; she blinked, and when she opened them again she saw a small cluster of rotating, razor-edged teeth where the alarm had been.

"'Sraven," she muttered, staring in fascination as it drooled onto the carpet. "That's a curse?"

Yes – or rather, it's a rat. I mean, it was a rat before some demon got to it and made it into a curse. Can't make something from nothing, you know. Anyway, I'd better disable it, or it'll probably do something vile to your skull.

Niamh felt her hand rise and saw to her astonishment that a series of flat, translucent grey bands were rotating around it like electrons around an atom; as she watched, they peeled away, one by one, and wrapped themselves lovingly around the curse, smothering it and solidifying into something that looked like linoleum. The teeth twitched frantically and from somewhere in their depths came a panicked squeak – but the bands did not let go, and a moment later the remnants of the curse fell away from the ceiling and landed softly on the carpet.

Niamh nudged it experimentally with the toe of her boot. The bands had taken on the texture of asphalt, and the whole thing was smoking gently. Of the curse, there was no sign except for one protruding tooth.

"Huh," she muttered. "Impressive."

Keep moving, said Ezra. Daytime security here is mostly mortal, but there's bound to be at least one demon somewhere in here, monitoring the curses. Depending on how lazy they are, we may not have long before they realise one has been tombed.

"Tombed?" asked Niamh, heading down the corridor towards the main building; at the end was a stairwell, each flight separated by a spacious landing.

Technical term. It's what I just did to that curse. Over there! That man looks like he doesn't think we should— Yes, that should do it, finished Ezra, as Niamh pushed the body down the stairs. Looks like he tripped and knocked himself out now, doesn't it?

"It will," she agreed, heading upstairs. "For about five minutes, until someone realises the bruises are on his neck instead of his skull. We have to be fast."

She hurried past two young men in grey suits who were going down to investigate the noise; they scarcely looked at her, as she had hoped, and she reached the upper floor without trouble. Here, a crescent-shaped hallway served as a junction between three or four passages, and a helpful plaque on one wall informed her that the one she wanted was to the left.

"Why all these signs?" Niamh muttered under her breath, walking past a stern-looking woman who was attempting to tame a particularly truculent Blackberry. "Surely the people who work here know where everything is?"

I suspect memory loss is common here, Ezra replied. I expect that the lower echelons of the Party don't know about the demons, and have their memories wiped quite frequently. They must forget all sorts of things.

Niamh shook her head and headed down a corridor where the doors were made of steel.

"This is f*cked up," she said, slightly too loudly; the corridor's other occupant, a young man with a serious face, gave her an odd look.

Keep walking, said Ezra sharply. Oh, you do not want to see her real face.

"Demon?" murmured Niamh, so quietly it was barely vocalised.

Very much so, replied Ezra. Probably the one who made the curse, judging by the extent to which she's altered her appearance.

"You can look like a human too—"

No, her real appearance. Moulding the flesh of a living creature is tricky, and moulding one's own essence is not only tricky but downright risky. I can create an illusion that makes me look human easily, but I wouldn't dare try to shift my real shape without a lot of skill. That demon there... Niamh felt a shudder run down her spine, and knew it was Ezra's rather than hers. She's spent quite some time customising her appearance. If she caught us, you would not be human by the time she was done with you, and I would not be a demon.

Niamh caught a flurry of distant images at the edges of his thought – needles and long fingers, flesh running like candle-wax and knots tied in bones – and decided not to think about it.

Good idea. Look!

"I see it," she said. "'G. HARMONIA, PARTY LEADER'."

Yes. Judging by the distance from the edge of the house, there must be two rooms here: presumably Harmonia's secretary's office, and his own beyond it.

"Got it," said Niamh, running over possibilities in her head. "I'll take it from here."

She knocked on the door and waited for a reply; someone called 'Come in' and she complied, waiting until the door had closed behind her before she moved.

"Who—?"

Harmonia's secretary was young and pretty, but she was not a martial arts master, and so did not get very much further than saying that before Niamh had choked her into unconsciousness. That done, she quietly barricaded the doors both to the main corridor and Harmonia's office with filing cabinets and waste-paper bins, then sat down in the secretary's chair, took a gulp of her coffee and began to investigate her computer.

Nicely done, said Ezra admiringly. It always pays to go to the professionals.

Niamh made a noncommittal noise in reply; she was currently mired in emails.

"Who are these? They sound weird; are they demons?"

Hmm? Sage Gorm, Sage Rood, Sage... well now, this is strange. I've never heard of any demons calling themselves sages before. Some do like to boast of their sagacity, but none have ever outright called themselves 'Sage' before. Harmonia does have a lot of meetings scheduled with these people, though, doesn't he?

"Yeah. And these: M. Gentleman. Lots of meetings with him – and that's got to be the weirdest fake name I've ever come across."

It's not fake. Ezra did not seem to appreciate the joke – in fact, he sounded rather worried. It stands for Merry Gentleman. I think that's what the author calls them in the druids' book on demons – the Glasya-Labolas Treatise. I know them as fetches.

"So M. Gentleman is a demon?"

Not quite. It's one of Weland's slaves. But that isn't the worst of it: look at this. Harmonia's meeting with M. Gentleman today. Right now, in fact. Ezra paused. We are standing less than fifteen feet from an emissary of King Weland the Undying.

Niamh started.

"OK," she said slowly. "Is it tough?"

Ordinarily, no. They have no supernatural abilities save occasionally making their smiles broader than their face – I could tomb them easily. But I can't do that without alerting Weland to my presence – and if I do that, we're both dead.

"What about if I go in there, beat it up and drag some information out of Harmonia?"

That is the sort of plan that only someone who didn't know that fetches have superhuman strength would come up with. I won't be able to use a single power, not even to increase your strength: you'll be killed. Ezra hesitated. Niamh, why are you dismantling the barricade in front of the door to Harmonia's office?

"I have a plan."

No you don't. I'm inside your head, Niamh – you can't lie to me.

"Ezra, the secretary obviously doesn't have access to the information we need. I want to know where Smythe is, and I want him released. Harmonia can do both of those things. All I have to do is throw this fetch out the window or something, and I can interrogate Harmonia at my leisure—"

Don't be an idiot! cried Ezra in agitation. You can't match this thing in combat, and if you or I die we both lose out: no Smythe, no dead Weland—

"I have guns—"

You could shoot it until it's fifty per cent lead, it won't matter – the damn thing probably died five hundred years ago! Ezra paused, evidently reining in his emotions; when he spoke again, his voice was calm. I'm not putting my mission above your own, he said quietly. But there really isn't much you can do against this thing.

Niamh moved the last filing cabinet out of the way and paused with her hand on the doorknob. No guns, she thought; well, fine. She drew a compact silvery rod from her pocket instead.

"Relax," she told Ezra. "You hired the monster-slayer for a reason, right?"

So saying, she flung the door open and walked in, extending the telescoping blade of her sword to full length with an expert flick of the wrist.

---

Harmonia, sitting back in his chair, eyes closed.

Tall, cadaverous-looking man before the desk, facing the window.

Niamh's eyes roved across it and absorbed it all in less than a heartbeat, and before the door had even hit the wall her sword was whistling towards the man's head—

Without looking, he reached out a hand and grabbed the sword by the blade. To Niamh's surprise, this stopped it as surely as if it had hit plate steel. She heaved at it for a moment, and found it, much to her consternation, immoveable.

"Oh, sh*t," she said.

"An assassin," said the man, turning to face her – and Niamh saw for the first time the unnatural pallor of his skin, the fixed, merry grin, and the dead eyes; saw it all, and wondered. He flung her sword down on the floor so hard it bounced; before it hit the ground again, Niamh had snatched it back up and had settled into a fighting stance.

The fetch tilted his head. He wore a neat suit and a bowler hat that somehow amplified the sinister nature of his face; had he been tattooed with tribal designs and dressed in animal skins, Niamh didn't think he would have been nearly so distressing.

Unheimlich, said Ezra. Or, as you call it in English, 'Uncanny'. Now is probably not the time to explain, though – now is the time to get out of here.

"You must be Smythe's woman," said the fetch. "How fortuitous."

It should not have had such a good vocabulary. (Niamh now thought of it as 'it', not 'he'; it was not human enough for 'he'.) It should have spoken in guttural snarls or some primitive grunting language; but it was so human, and so intelligent, and so alien...

Niamh plunged her sword into its chest, but the fetch just stared and smiled.

"Deadly," it noted, running a finger down the side of the blade and watching its skin split open. No blood issued from the wound; it was simply a red line on a white field. "If you only knew the rules of our kind, you would make a formidable opponent."

Niamh pulled the sword out and lashed out again, scoring a long gash across its throat; the fetch did not, apparently, care.

Stop sticking it, said Ezra urgently. If you must fight it, try and cut a limb off – it won't die, but it won't be able to move any more.

"His Undying Majesty will be interested in you," said the fetch meditatively, turning to face her as she moved around it, slowly manoeuvring herself into the position she wanted. "He'd love to meet you, I suspect. Who would have thought a human could penetrate so deeply into this building? There are curses at every approach, and Grimalkin is stationed in the corridor. Security here is impressive."

Niamh shrugged.

"I've bypassed better," she said, and pinned its neck to the desk.

It cried out in surprise and kicked out wildly, its hands flying to its throat, but Niamh had already released the pin that kept the sword extended and the spring inside it retracted at speed; the blade collapsed and the hilt slammed into the fetch's neck with a crack of breaking bone.

Knives materialised in Niamh's hands and she transferred one into the fetch's wrist as fast as it appeared, nailing it to the desk and severing a tendon; the other knife missed its mark, and the other hand caught her in the chest and knocked her flying.

Niamh hit the far wall and jumped straight up again, ignoring the pain in her shoulder and rushing back towards the fallen fetch—

Her own sword was at her throat.

Niamh stared and swallowed. The fetch had apparently freed itself and sprung to its feet in less time than it had taken her to recover from the fall, which was itself less than three seconds; its hat had fallen off, and the knife was still stuck through its wrist, but other than that it seemed to be in exactly the same condition as when it had started the fight.

"That would probably be how you bypassed the security, then," said the fetch with a grin. "How perfectly marvellous. The King will be most amused."

Niamh's hand uncurled; her knife fell to the carpet.

"Surrender already?" asked the fetch. "You do us an honour—"

The hand was rising, and grey bands of light were writhing around it.

The fetch could not blanch, for its skin was already the colour of milk, but its omnipresent grin slipped a notch.

"Ah," it said. "Ezra."

It erupted in a sheet of black flame as the bands snaked towards it; they drew together, clutching and grasping, but closed on nothing: the fetch had disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a few dark sparks and Niamh's blades, which fell to the floor from the spots where its wrist and hand had been. Cheated of their prey, the grey bands squeezed themselves into a singularity and disappeared with a mournful hiss.

There was a silence.

"Thanks," said Niamh, after a moment or two.

Niamh, said Ezra, his voice very quiet and very intense. Run. Now.

It seemed a good idea. Grabbing the sword, the knife and Harmonia's laptop, Niamh hurried to the door and took to her heels as if all the fetches in Unova were lunging at her back.
 
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I stumbled upon this work this last weekend, and spent around two or three days, locked in my room reading through all of your stories and occasionally doing other things, like eating. You sir, are a gem amongst fan fiction writers. Your characters are excellent and engaging, your plots are brilliant and impossible to guess, and your prose and dialogue is witty and charming, and changes effortlessly between characters. If this were Youtube, you could consider me 'subscribed', but as it is, I will definitely be checking back, often and impatiently, for the next part of your story.
 

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
1,030
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13
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I stumbled upon this work this last weekend, and spent around two or three days, locked in my room reading through all of your stories and occasionally doing other things, like eating. You sir, are a gem amongst fan fiction writers. Your characters are excellent and engaging, your plots are brilliant and impossible to guess, and your prose and dialogue is witty and charming, and changes effortlessly between characters. If this were Youtube, you could consider me 'subscribed', but as it is, I will definitely be checking back, often and impatiently, for the next part of your story.

Thanks! I'm glad you like it. There is, I think, a definite progression in quality as you trace the stories forwards in time, which means that I'm not particularly fond of a lot of the earlier ones - but still, I'm glad they've entertained you. That's what I'm here for, after all.

New chapters are posted roughly once a week for this story, if you're interested in continuing your reading; sometimes they're a little late, and very, very rarely they're a bit early, but there's almost always something new each week.

F.A.B.
 

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
1,030
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13
Years
Chapter Twenty: Infiltration, Act Two

Harmonia was not happy.

While he had been in the trance, his mind hundreds of miles away in one of the Merry Gentlemen, it appeared the other Gentleman standing guard over him had been put to flight and his computer stolen.

This was a Bad Thing, and everyone who had come into contact with him that evening had had this impressed on their minds quite forcibly.

To make matters worse, Smythe had proven remarkably resistant to questioning. Harmonia had, at length, been forced to end the interrogation session when his normally quiescent sense of morality had started stirring in his heart; while not normally a man to flinch from the unnerving – his HawkEye was more perceptive than the manufacturers knew, and had opened up a dark and strange hidden world to him – he was not wholly comfortable punching a man to death, and had left Smythe alone when the blood and bruises became a bit too much. Despite his wounds, the man had grinned as Harmonia departed; this woman was, evidently, a point on which he was determined to remain silent. His grim non-cooperation had startled Harmonia as much as anything else; he hadn't known that Smythe was capable of such recalcitrance. Although, he told himself now, he should have known; he knew his history, after all, and he knew that Smythe had undergone worse than what he had submitted him to. He might be afraid, but he faced the objects of his fear with philosophical stoicism; however much of a coward he seemed, experience had proved his mettle and made him a braver man than most.

This oversight on his part soured Harmonia still further, and he snapped out commands for the heightening of security with such venom as would have done credit to a particularly vindictive cobra. Human underlings scurried away like frightened mice; their demonic counterparts glared balefully, drifting off to their duties with hissed assurances that their King would hear of this. Complaints and fears aside, however, Hawthorne House was soon bursting at the seams with security measures.

Curses and tomb-traps bristled from walls like fearsome clusters of carnivorous barnacles; teeth and tentacles trailed across floors and corridors, invisibly stroking the faces and shoulders of the security guards who patrolled in the corridors. They could not see them, of course, but Harmonia with his HawkEye and a few others with their natural gifts could, and this Party elite smiled grimly at the guardian terrors that grew and clicked in the shadows.

And then there were the things that not even they could see properly: the men and women with a sardonic wit in their eyes – the ones who looked as if they knew a dark and grisly joke at at humankind's expense, and enjoyed it immensely. Their true shapes were uncertain, but those with the eyes for it could sometimes, just for a moment, catch a glimpse of gold through bloody cracks in their flesh. Then, of course, the moment would pass, and they would flash you a knowing smile from an unbroken face, and walk on their way.

By eight o'clock that night, therefore, Hawthorne House practically radiated menace, and it was through a subdued atmosphere that Caitlin Molloy made her way to see Harmonia.

"Evening, Ghetsis," she said. "How're you feeling?"

"How do you think?" snapped Harmonia. "It's a complete and utter f*cking disaster! Whoever's got hold of that computer, they've got access to everything!" He thumped a fist down on the desk. "That damn kid! If it turns out it's White and Halley who stole this when he made me stop chasing them—"

What Harmonia might have done had that turned out to be the case proved something of a moot point, however, as it was at this juncture that Caitlin thought she probably ought to interrupt.

"We know who did it," she replied. "And it wasn't them. It was your mystery woman."

Harmonia paused, fist stopping halfway through another thump of the desk.

"Oh?"

"I've been over the security footage," she said patiently, "and while I have no idea how she got into the building, she was less careful on the way out – I suppose because the Gentleman left and she thought he was going to Weland for backup."

"He was," replied Harmonia sourly. "When I came back to my body I found half a dozen embalmed dogs sh*tting all over the carpet and barking like mad. It seems Weland forgot that a sense of smell decays with the nose; they couldn't track a damn thing. It took me f*cking forever to get them sent back."

"Ah. I see." Caitlin paused. "Well, um, anyway. Sairse was apparently in the west wing fiddling with a broken curse – I think the woman must have disarmed it somehow – but a couple of the regular guards tried to stop her. Doesn't seem like they got very far with that, but they remember her face, and the route she took out of the old drawing-room in the east wing took her right past one of the external cameras." She placed a blurred photograph, evidently enlarged and sharpened as much as was possible, on the desk before him. "And here she is."

Harmonia snatched it up eagerly and perused it for some time.

"I see," he said at length. "And do we know who she is yet?"

"That's where I come in," replied Caitlin. "The way she dealt with the security here shows she's a professional, which means she must pass through the same spheres of life that I do. I've put out feelers among my contacts; we'll have answers some time tomorrow."

"Good," said Harmonia with feeling. "The sooner we get this mess sorted out, the better."

"Yes, of course." Caitlin hesitated. "There is one more thing, Ghetsis."

"Which is?"

"There's someone waiting outside to see you," she replied. "One of Weland's people."

"Well? Send him in, then."

"If you're sure," she said. "It's just that he isn't any of the normal messengers."

Something cold curled snugly around Harmonia's heart.

"No?" he asked, trying hard to keep his voice as level as he could.

"No," replied Caitlin. "He says he's the Chief of the Palace Guard, and he needs to talk to you about the rebels."

---

"I am the night," muttered Halley to herself, slinking along the fence that separated Hawthorne House from the rest of the King's Road. "None shall see me coming, and when my vengeance is visited upon them, yea, they shall sh*t themselves in terror." She paused and scratched her head. "I think that sentiment might be missing something in terms of poetry. Well, whatever."

It was half past eleven, and back at one of Castelia's Pokémon Centres Cheren, Bianca and Lauren were waiting with bated breath; they had, in fact, been waiting for some time now, as Halley had taken the scenic route and stopped to listen to a lonesome jazz saxophonist, playing to the moon atop the Telborn Bridge. She had been gone about two hours already, but saw no harm in making them wait. After all, she had decided, it would be interesting to see what they might notice if they were awake at midnight.

Reaching a brick pillar at the corner of the square enclosure, Halley coiled and ran vertically up it; such was her speed that she almost crashed head-first into the urn on top of it, but she checked herself in time and wound around the edge of it, dropping down to the other side.

"There," she said to herself. "Fence surmounted. I'd like to see you do that, Cheren."

She picked her way across the lawn, pausing to push over a small and peculiarly hideous piece of statuary, and reached the shadow of the wall without incident; here, thinking over her actions and deciding that maybe the little statue was some kind of demonic idol, she doubled back and set it back on its feet.

"No sense in tempting fate," she said, patting it on the head and finding out too late that it had sharp little horns. "I could do without – ouch! – calling down the furies of hell on my head."

Back to the wall, then, and up onto the sill of a ground-floor window; from here, it was the work of a moment to reach the window's hood-moulding, and from there leap across to the roof of the porch, where she had a startling encounter with a large bat.

"Eeek!" it shrilled, rising up from the slates like a materialising demon.

"Sh*t!" yelped Halley, jumping backwards and almost losing her footing. "Ah – what the f*ck? Oh," she said, finally realising what it was. "Oh, just a bat."

"Eeek!" repeated the bat insistently. It looked something like a fox and something like an octopus; Halley was by no means an expert on chiropteran biology, but she was pretty sure that bats like that weren't normal.

"Unova," she said, regarding the bat with disgust. "Full of weird sh*t, isn't it?"

The bat shrieked again, and wobbled its tentacular nose.

"Not impressed," replied Halley, stalking past it. "Find someone else to bother."

Realising that it had failed to intimidate the intruder, the bat – which was indeed of a species unique to Unova – seemed to deflate, and flapped off hurriedly into the night.

"Good riddance," said Halley, scrambling up the edge of a cartouche with an imperious-looking Latin inscription on it. "Rats with wings. And squid arms, apparently."

She looked around. There were just a couple of sets of windows between here and one of the lower roofs, and somewhere on that roof was a skylight that was just asking to be broken.

"Piece of cake," she said confidently. "Harmonia won't know what hit him."

It took only a couple of minutes for her to reach the gutter, and from there it was the work of a moment to gain the security of the roof. She padded along the slates towards the nearest skylight, feeling more smug than perhaps she ought to have felt, and then stopped dead when the clot of darkness welled up from nowhere in front of her.

"Halley," said Teiresias.

"Sh*t," said Halley.

"I have been waiting," replied the fiend. Halley made a half-hearted attempt to flee – but those unseen hands held her paws tight, as she knew they would.

"So I see," she replied. "Uh... so. Weren't you meant to not be chasing us any more?"

The darkness seemed to roll, as if its surface were composed of waves, and two lights of indeterminate colour appeared somewhere in the middle of it.

Halley had good night vision, but she still could not see what Teiresias really looked like, and for that she was grateful.

"I am not here on behalf of Harmonia. I come here as a private individual." Something like a paw, or perhaps more like a wheel, extended from the mass of darkness and scraped along a slate. "You have information that I require."

"And what might that be?"

"Their name is not to be spoken here," Teiresias went on, its voice lowering to a hiss like the shifting of shrouds in silent tombs. "But they are the stranded. And I must find them."

"Listen, I have no idea what you're talking about there," replied Halley. "I'm an amnesiac, in case you hadn't worked that one out already. It may be that I know something about these 'stranded' you mention – but if I ever did, I've forgotten it."

Teiresias was silent. This was, Halley thought with a sense of rising panic, far more intimidating even than its grave-mould whisper.

"But," Halley went on desperately, "inside this building is information that might jog my memory." She gave it an earnest look. "So, y'know, if you were to just let me go on my way without eating my soul or whatever it is you demons do, I'd be much obliged."

"Memory," said Teiresias, a slow anger rising in its dead voice. "They took your memory to hide from me..."

Something cracked loudly at its core, and the two halves of a bone clattered down over the slates and into the gutter. Halley did not look too closely, but she saw enough to know that it was human.

"I cannot let you go," said Teiresias, as if nothing had ever happened. "You will not survive the trip to the offices; security is tight here, and it has been tightened following a recent break-in."
Halley snorted – partly in derision, and partly as a way of putting the bone out of her head.

"So what? I can avoid security with my eyes shut—"

"Not when the guardians are of my kind," said Teiresias, calm and implacable. "I cannot let you go in there. You will have to remember, and tell me now."

"Not possible," replied Halley. "I can't just force memories back into my skull at will."

"You have no choice—"

"Or what, exactly? You're going to kill me?" Halley laughed. "You won't get anything if you kill me, will you?"

Teiresias was silent for a moment.

"I could kill White," it said. "Or your associates."

"Kill them, then," replied Halley, lip curling back over sharp white teeth. "It's not going to jog my memory or anything."

It paused.

"I see," it said at length. "This is a difficult situation."

"No, it isn't," she replied. "You just let me go in there and root around, and I'll be back, and if I remember anything I'll tell you. Simple, right?"

"No." Teiresias hesitated for a moment. "I shall assist you."

"No, you just let me— hey, what did you just say?"

"I shall assist you." Having finally decided on a course of action, the demon's voice seemed stronger; it had not sounded so sure of itself before. "You would never survive this on your own: I will have to come with you, and ensure your survival. And when we are done, you will tell me where I can find the stranded."

"Uh... OK," agreed Halley, nodding feverishly. "Sure, sure. You got yourself a deal."

"Then let us go," said Teiresias, and Halley could just about make out it shifting within its cloak of shadow. "There is little time to waste."

It swept over to a skylight and the hands that held Halley dissolved on the air; she stretched for a moment, then followed Teiresias as it slipped down through the space where moments ago there had been glass.

A moonlit corridor; a tall, dark figure orbited by bands of greyish light – and then blackness, as the huge shadow of Teiresias swept across Halley's vision, overcoming the dark figure before it could so much as turn. A moment later there was nothing except a gigantic crouching shape, indistinct even in the silver light, and two great blind eyes hanging in the middle.

"Dead," rumbled Teiresias. It had two voices now, Halley noticed; one was its own, and one was something a little more human, that echoed its words in a distant, despairing scream. Perhaps that was the soul of the thing it had just devoured, she thought, and instantly regretted having the idea. "Follow me." (Follow, follow, aaagh follow... me...)

"All right," she said shakily, and stalked along in Teiresias' wake. It cast no shadow, she noticed; the moonlight seemed to swerve around it and join up again on the other side.

They made their way around a corner, and a few tooth-studded tentacles rose up from thin air on either side of them, hissing, Halley retreated, but Teiresias stood its ground – and a moment later, black rot spread up the tumorous limbs from their bases, and they dwindled into little heaps of mould that soaked into the carpet like ditchwater.

"My power waxes," said Teiresias, half to itself. (Waxes, waxes, power waxes...) "The King is as good as his word." (Word....)

"What was that?"

A man's voice, and a door opened to the right; a blue-jacketed guard stepped cautiously through, stared in incoherent terror and vanished beneath the cloak of Teiresias' pounce.

Halley looked away. She was not particularly averse to violence, but what Teiresias did was not for mortal eyes.

They left what remained of the body and continued until they reached a stairwell; twice more did fleshy tendrils attempt to ensnare them, but each time Teiresias destroyed them without moving.

"Two nights' time," said Teiresias. "In two nights the moon will be dark. And I will be whole once again."

Two voices echoed its own now, and one was unmistakeably that of the fallen guard.

From atop a newel post, something almost but not quite like a flayed owl hooted a soft warning; something dark and solid arced from Teiresias' core and scooped it into the fiend's body.

The hooting stopped.

Halley shivered.

"Up," commanded Teiresias. (Up, up, up... Up up...)

Halley followed it as closely as she dared, hesitant about coming too near and wary of falling too far behind; Teiresias was deadly, yes, but it was currently on her side. However afraid of it she might be, her enemies had far more to fear.

And fear indeed they did: in a small room two floors above them, the demon Sairse felt her curses blink out of existence one by one – and yet there came no report of increased demonic presence in the building. The only demons here were those who had been present all night.

Silently, she called out to them, voice resonating down the dark paths, and silently they came, gathering on the upper floor, counting each other, working out who was missing.

And they realised who was missing from the count.

As one, they turned and fled.

---


Teiresias paused.

"They run," it said. "My comrades fear me." It did not sound sad, merely pensive. "It seems my association with the King is at an end." (An end, at an end, an end... The King is at an end...)

Halley didn't quite dare ask what it meant; she had a feeling that if it remembered she was there, it might turn around and consume her as it had done the guard.

"I regret that," Teiresias went on, tearing something bloody from a wall and crunching it with unseen mouthparts. "For a long time it seemed to me that he must command my loyalty. But I see now that my needs must come first. I am not of his kind; I am a useful footsoldier to him, but no more." (No more! No more, no more... please, God, no more...) The stairs ended and gave way onto a landing with several corridors leading off it. "I must do what is best for myself," it said. "I am not Unovan. I care not for the fate of this land." (Fate, fate... The fate of this land...)

Teiresias stalked towards the left-most passage and something like a coil of entrails slipped down from the ceiling to strangle it; it passed straight through the fiend's body, and with a small, tinny wail it was sucked in and vanished.

"Anybody there?"

Halley winced. Not again.

Two guards, approaching from opposite corridors, guns raised; their eyes converged on Teiresias, a motionless totem of unremitting darkness, and they opened their mouths to say—

Something dragged them beneath the floor.

It was far too fast for Halley to see properly: a flicker of movement like the lightning strike of a snake, and then the carpet closed over them like water. But she saw enough to know that the clutching things were no serpents; they were hands, though their fingers were too many and too flexible to be human. As they began to move on once more, she thought of the hands she had felt clutching at her ankles in the past, and shivered. Those wounds the Glasya-Labolas had mentioned were clearly healing now, though it seemed to have taken several hundred years; it had gone from strength to strength since they had last met.

"The office," announced Teiresias, coming to a halt. (Office, office... Office...)

Halley looked up. The door they stood before had Harmonia's name on it, and there was a considerable quantity of blood soaked into the carpet. Whatever had been guarding this door, Teiresias had destroyed it fairly comprehensively, and had done so before she had even seen it.

"OK," she said. "I'm... going to search in here now." She paused. "There isn't anything waiting for me in there, is there?"

There was a crack and the door fell off its hinges, revealing an empty office beyond.

"No," replied Teiresias. (No, no, oh please Woden no...)

"All right, then," said Halley, and padded cautiously in. There was a computer on the desk, and that seemed a good place to start; she jumped up onto the chair, and then climbed onto the desktop. "OK," she said, a sudden grin twisting her face in two. "Time to do what I do best."

She pressed a paw down on the keyboard, and the screen lit up. A few swift keystrokes, and the Green Party's digital security came apart in shreds; a few more, and Halley was looking at a map of Unova that only Harmonia was supposed to be able to access. There was a little blue dot blinking in the eastern half of Nimbasa, and, puzzled, Halley sought the map's legend.

She read it, and her eyes widened.

"Well now," she said slyly. "Harmonia, what have you been up to...?"

---

"So where is this... Tomb-Gaol?" asked Niamh.

Ezra looked grave.

"In the court of King Weland the Undying," he said. "Specifically, it's comprised of a complex accessed via the Great Western Transept."

They were once more two people, and were ensconced in the relative safety of a hotel room Niamh had booked in her name; once she had reached it, Ezra had detached himself soundlessly from her mind and taken up a seat in the only chair, forcing her to sit on the bed. A quick look through Harmonia's files indicated that Smythe was being held in the aforementioned Tomb-Gaol, and it was on this topic that Niamh was now questioning Ezra.

"So let's go there," she replied. "Actually, no. You're about to tell me why we can't do that, aren't you?"

Ezra inclined his head.

"You know me so well," he said. "By forcing me to attack the fetch, you've given us away to Weland. He knows we're coming; the Court will be locked up so tightly that not even the wind can pass in or out without being intercepted."

"Ah." Niamh felt her cheeks redden; it had been pretty foolhardy of her to charge the fetch – but then again, it hadn't been the sort of monster she had thought it would be. She had learned now; in future, she would leave that particular kind of threat to Ezra. "That would be my fault, then."

"Yes." Ezra sighed. "Never mind. You were only doing your job, I suppose; you're a monster-slayer, after all." Cigarette smoke started curling from between his lips. "We're going to have to change our plan," he said. "Although I have to confess, I'm not sure how."

"Can we lure Weland out?" asked Niamh. "Or another member of the Court that we could hold hostage, and then exchange them for Portland?"

"While I probably could contain most of Weland's subjects individually," replied Ezra, "I doubt Weland cares enough about their well-being to give up Smythe for them. His plan to retake Unova is more important. However," he added, "we do have one advantage. Our enemies don't know that there are two of us; I expect they'll think that you are just a body I happened to possess. It wouldn't occur to most of my kind to leave the mind of a host intact. Our appearance at Hawthorne House, in addition to yours at the Striaton Gym, will make it seem as if they have only to deal with me."

"Does that help us at all?" asked Niamh.

"I have no idea," replied Ezra. "But I thought we might count it. Oh, wait," he said, face falling. "They must know there are two of us. That old man saw both of us in the forest, and it was quite clear we were working together." He sighed. "Oh well. I wasn't sure what the advantage was anyway; I suppose I can hardly be sad to lose it."

"Yeah." Niamh scratched her head and clicked through a few more of Harmonia's emails. "Hey," she said abruptly. "There's just one king in Unova, right? Weland."

"Yes...?"

"Well, there's something here about another one," she said. "Look – 'Sairse said it would be an honour to serve under the Regent to the King of All Humans, in recognition of the compact between our peoples.'" She looked up at Ezra. "Make any sense to you?"

Ezra stared.

"The King of All Humans?" he queried. "It says that?"

"Read it yourself," she said, handing him the laptop. "Look."

He did, and his eyes widened still further.

"But that's impossible," he said, brow creasing. "I saw him die – I saw them all die." He bit his lip, and the cigarette smoke dissipated. "This changes everything," he said. "If they have returned..." He looked up. "Niamh," he said, "we have to find this man – this King. We can stop Harmonia if we can explain to him what Weland is trying to do. He will listen; his kind always did."

"What? Who is this person?"

"Before the dawn of civilisation – before even prehistory – there was a kingdom here in Unova," replied Ezra. "It was destroyed when the first tribes of modern Unovans came here; the survivors covered their retreat by unleashing the last dragon and fled to their last fortress in the west. And there they lived in peace and seclusion as the country fell into war – until the Heroes came, and tamed the beast, and razed the last city of the First Kingdom to the ground."

"The First Kingdom," breathed Niamh. "It was real?"

"Very real," he said. "It was the greatest civilisation ever to rise up on earth, and the greatest that ever will. Its kings were the Kings of All Humans – Kuningor va Jorwal, in the old tongue – and their bloodline was eradicated in the Bronze Age by the Twin Heroes. And," he added, with great emphasis, "they have apparently returned from the grave."

Niamh sought desperately for words, and eventually came up with:

"Oh."

"Oh indeed," replied Ezra. "Something impossible is happening, Niamh, and we need to get to the bottom of it. If we can find this King and tell him what Weland is doing..." He paused. "Well. He will stop Harmonia and may even break the pact with Weland. Which could well result in a full-blown revolution in the Shrouded Court, as my people are forced to declare sides. In other words—"

"Chaos," finished Niamh. "And a way into the Court."

"Where we can kill Weland and rescue Smythe," agreed Ezra. "Exactly." He grinned. "Now," he said, "let's see what else Harmonia's laptop has to offer..."

---

"Why are you doing this?"

That was not Teiresias' voice, thought Halley in alarm.

She looked up and around the edge of the monitor, and saw that a cluster of tall, indistinct figures had appeared outside the office; the more closely she looked at them, the harder they were to see, and after a moment she found that looking at them out of the corner of her eye worked best. Each carried an object of uncertain shape in its right hand, around which grey bands of light orbited ceaselessly; the only other detail she could easily make out was that each was topped with a burning red pair of eyes.

"I serve no master," replied Teiresias, undaunted. "Jormal's Cycle comes to its peak, and my power returns." (Returns, returns... My power returns...)

"You have made an enemy of His Undying Majesty, Teiresias."

"I know how this ends," said the demon. "I saw it all earlier tonight." (Saw it all, all... Tonight...)

That was right, thought Halley; Teiresias was proleptic. It could see the future. It must have seen that these beings would come for it, and she was willing to bet that it knew it was going to kill them all.

The indistinct figures drew back a little, hesitant.

"Ah," said one, who seemed a likely candidate for the leader. "I don't think I need your gift to tell me that we ought to be elsewhere."

"It's too late," Teiresias told it with undisguised delight, and swept forwards in a great curling rush of shadow—

The figures broke and ran, but the souls were screaming out already – Too late! Too late! – and Teiresias came crashing down like the wrath of the gods—

And Halley knew that once it was done, it was going to come after her looking for answers that she couldn't supply, glowing blackly with the power of freshly harvested souls, and she knew that if she couldn't give it the answers it wanted something very bad would happen, and so before it had a chance to notice she slipped across the room and up onto the windowsill – and a moment later she was gone, leaving nothing behind but an open window and a ringing alarm.
 

Cutlerine

Gone. May or may not return.
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Interesting twist.

aside:
I just realized your sig resembles the nvidia logo.

Intriguing! So it does. There's probably a conspiracy in there somewhere.

Thank you for reading - both you, and everyone who reads but doesn't reply! (At least, I assume there are people who read but don't reply. If there aren't, teamVASIMR has viewed this thread 5,206 times for virtually no reason.)

Anyway, thank you all for reading, whether you reply or not. I appreciate it. And thank you, teamVASIMR, for taking the extra time to let me know what you think. I appreciate that, too.

F.A.B.
 
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Posts
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  • Seen Nov 9, 2013
There's probably a conspiracy in there somewhere.
nvidia

Thank you for reading - both you, and everyone who reads but doesn't reply! (At least, I assume there are people who read but don't reply. If there aren't, teamVASIMR has viewed this thread 5,206 times for virtually no reason.)

Anyway, thank you all for reading, whether you reply or not. I appreciate it. And thank you, teamVASIMR, for taking the extra time to let me know what you think. I appreciate that, too.

F.A.B.
Well thanks for replying to our short reply.
At teamVASIMR we believe that all replies are good replies.
We appreciate that. Thanks.
 
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