Thanks for reading, Blackjack! Like the little theories you have going on.
Now, moving to a landmark chapter...
Final Special Episode ~ The Thousand-Year Plan
Nothing was left to chance. From behind the veil of the Worldcore, Owen took hold of the ‘Hand of Fate,’ feeble as it was, and tried to correct the doomed course of his world. I was there to guide him, even if, at first, I was reluctant to interfere with what I knew, as opposed to trying for a grand unknown.
Owen was very persuasive. And I owed him a great deal for granting me full sentience. In the end, I also agreed with him. He took on the responsibilities of being a world’s guardian even more than I had, for better or worse.
For much of those thousand years, we saved our energy. Then, when it was needed most, at the apex of horrible conflicts, and certainly when time ran out for a second time…
We stepped in.
<><><>
Year 1018
The Worldcore distorted Owen’s sense of time. Without the sun, Owen didn’t notice when day became night. Without a true body, Owen did not need sleep or food. And without a true ‘brain’ anymore, things like mental fatigue no longer slowed down his research. Sure, sometimes he would prefer to do something else and would switch to observing parts of Quartz through the ‘eyes’ that the Worldcore had. But other times, most of his time, he spent the days reading one of the stars of the Worldcore.
Each one was a set of arcane rules for the world. Everything from gravity to Pokémon’s innate elements to the way the spirit and body interacted to create aura.
Most of it was far beyond his comprehension. Even to the Worldcore, all these stars were used to change other parts of the sphere. It couldn’t be altered or modified.
Owen quickly found it more productive to treat those stars as a set of broad rules rather than try to understand what every detail meant when it ran through his mind.
The more interesting stars were the ones that were made by someone else. It felt like these were new rules given by Barky and Star atop an old tried-and-true constellation.
“So, they started with the basics,” Owen said, “and added more to it…”
One of the first things Owen did, once he figured out how, was giving himself a pseudo-body to float around the Worldcore’s stars. Charmeleon would do fine. He didn’t need wings but liked the longer arms for pointing. It helped him concentrate.
He wondered, now and then, how much of that was a trick of his spirit emulating when he had a brain. He decided not to think about it; the Worldcore had said that ‘the spirit mimics its old body’ here.
Every so often, when Owen remembered, he checked on Wishkeeper.
As it turned out, the Worldcore had many eyes. Anyone who had interfaced with the Worldcore through divine power also left a trace of themselves in it. Through this trace, Owen could peer through their eyes, through their senses, to experience the world.
All Legends and all who were part of the original population when Quartz was created were part of this set, since it was through direct divine intervention they were born, reborn, or ascended. Like flipping channels through those fancy light boxes back in Kanto, Owen checked on one person or another to see how they were doing.
And if he ever wanted a scenic view, the Tree of Life also had ‘eyes.’ From the treetop, he saw the horizon beyond the ocean.
Owen envied Worldcore for how much it got to see, but he also pitied Worldcore for spending a thousand years not realizing it.
As the months passed, Owen often forgot that Worldcore was there. It was more like a
presence than a person, even with new emotions, and Worldcore didn’t mind. They exchanged notes and viewed different parts of the world in calm silence. Owen commandeered one of the stars—a blank one with no function—to act more like a repository for his notes, plans, scribbles, and visualizations. He’d always reach for it, flow a few thoughts inside, and push it away, like a notepad.
Eventually, the day came when the Dark War would reach its apex. Owen watched through Wishkeeper’s eyes.
“Looks like this is when things will go down a bad path,” Owen said. “Hey, Voice? What do you think?”
Several of the stars brightened and fired a small beam next to Owen. A Charmander of crimson light coalesced next to him, arms crossed and mimicking Owen’s pose.
“This is the path it’s supposed to go,” Voice said.
“No, not supposed to,” Owen pointed out, reaching for one of the stars. It drifted to his hand as if by gentle gravity. Holding it like an orange in one hand, Owen used his other to poke around inside with practiced ease. “The gods don’t determine fate. It’s just… cause and effect in a closed system. If we don’t interfere with any of it… that’s how it will go. But every time we introduce something… it all changes.”
Owen sighed, pacing on an invisible platform. “Cause and effect. Action and reaction… Even the most complex systems…It’s all one thing reacting to the last thing if nothing
external gets in the way.”
Owen looked at the stars again.
“I guess… that’s the closest thing we have for
fate. Except… external includes us. Yeah, we’re part of the same plane, but… when we look into the future, that simulation is with us removed. The very act of
looking at the future… can change it. We have to make assumptions for these predictions—the assumption that we don’t act on what we see. And that’s just impossible. The future we see won’t ever be totally accurate.”
Owen also saw how easily it could change the moment something
outside their perspective could alter that cause and effect. Even the most innocuous things would propagate into dramatically different circumstances the more Owen traced the Worldcore’s predictions.
“If something outside of what we can analyze… interferes—like ourselves, and what
we might do… That’s why… we do so little. So the future we see is as accurate as possible. If it’s bad, we act, and try to change it. Right?”
“It could get worse,” Voice said nervously. His eyes were five diamonds each in the shape of a hand.
Owen had screamed at first, years ago, but now he was used to it.
“Yeah. I know,” Owen said. “And then it’ll take years to analyze the new trajectory. But it’s hard to think of worse than… this,” Owen said. “I need to stop me. If Wishkeeper attacks right now… Unless Necrozma calls on some help
, Wishkeeper will win. Then the Blight will spread right to… here!”
The Charmeleon paced around the celestial dome, kicking up clouds of stardust with every step.
“Are you really thinking about ways to defeat you?” Voice asked. “Isn’t that… a little self-destructive?”
“I’ve been self-destructive for a while,” Owen pointed out. “What’s a little more? Besides… I knew this was going to happen the moment I split myself. We need to figure out how to get in the way…”
Owen shifted through the stars again. Rather than looking for rules, he looked for connections. Humans of the first generation had the strongest connection to the Worldcore, but so did…
“Manny. Didn’t the Blight manipulate Manny into fearing him?” Owen asked.
“He tapped into my connection. He did that a lot,” Voice said nervously. “Back when, you know, I didn’t care a lot about that sort of thing. A command was a command…” He tittered. “Hopefully nobody remembers that Dunsparce incident…”
“I do,” Owen grumbled. “…Anyway, how about… we start with Manny? Let’s give him a dream. An idea that maybe he should… talk to Necrozma, and Necrozma should—ah! I know just what to do!”
Owen ran to one of the stars and picked it up. “Okay, help me with this one. Let’s get Mesprit, Azelf, and Uxie in on this. If they realize the gravity of Wishkeeper’s victory… they’ll have to stop him. No matter the heartbreak.”
Voice gasped, all ten eyes going wide. “You’re going to have
them betray you?”
“They were already unsure. They’re just scared to speak up. If we just gave them that little push…”
“They wouldn’t do that… They’re too loyal to him.”
“No,” Owen said. “They may be the Trio of Mind now… but they’re still my friends. They aren’t loyal to ‘Wishkeeper’ at all.” Owen closed his eyes, sighing. “They’re loyal to ‘Owen.’ I trust them.”
Voice blinked several times, trying to comprehend it, no doubt. Owen was patient. He was new to a full set of emotions; it would take more than a few years to acclimate.
“Then I’ll ‘trust’ you,” Voice said. “It’s… yourself, after all. I’d protest more if… you know, it was anyone else.”
“Thanks.” With a smile, Owen got to work, lining up the stars in the miniature cosmos and murmuring a few thoughts to Manny. He was asleep—the best time to use the energy of this place, and the only time to make a good connection.
“You should talk to Wishkeeper,” Owen said to the little star. He saw Marshadow’s room, with Yen smothering him in his fur. “He might be doing an attack. If you don’t think it’s safe… don’t you think it’s time to do something before it’s too late? This has gone too far…”
The mote of light flickered. Owen winced. Already out of energy? Why was influencing the world so
hard without divine intervention? The help of just one god…
Owen released the mote and sighed. “I think… that’ll be enough,” he said. “That should set things into motion.”
“Sorry you can’t do more,” Voice said. “It’s… just how things are. They didn’t want me acting out. Even this tiny bit of energy is… residual. Leftovers.”
“It’s alright.” At least, Owen hoped it was. “Let’s watch for now. If there’s even a little energy left, we’ll save it for something after Wishkeeper goes down…”
Because now that they’d whispered to Manny, everything about their projections had gone completely awry. The stars were scattered all over again. It would take another long session to make sense of the world’s trajectory now…
<><><>
Year 1019
The Tree of Life rumbled with every earth-shattering blast. Across so many parts of Quartz, the gods clashed. Old friends now fighting to the death, corroded by darkness or emboldened by light.
“Too much of a good thing,” Owen whispered to himself, quickly glancing between several stars, reprogrammed as eyes through more reliable individuals. Rhys, Manny, and Nevren were the best eyes, along with Madeline in her strange pocket realm.
Currently, Nevren was spying on Alexander, who had stealthily taken up the mantle of leader even after his exile. Giving some speech that he didn’t care about. Owen tuned in for some of it.
“This will be our final assault!” Alexander shouted. The Hydreigon stood at the top of the Shadow Fortress, his voice booming from Shadow amplification.
“If the gods wish to destroy the world and dismiss us all as Blights of creation… then we will rise above and become more than Blights! We will be wraiths! The darkness that consumes the unjust light of the gods, and replaces it with our own!”
Cacophonous roars filled the air. Owen snarled, fist trembling. “He stole my speech.”
“…What?” Voice asked.
“I was going to give that speech! I had it all drafted in my room for the final battle! He just… moved a few lines around! I think there’s a law against that!”
“…Wraiths.”
“It… sounded cool,” Owen said, poking his claws together.
“Owen…” Voice crossed his arms, most of his eyes closing. “I’m… new to this ‘emotion’ thing. But with what I’ve learned in the past few years, that’s… lame.”
Owen gasped like he’d been stabbed through the chest. Frantically, Owen looked through other stars to distract himself. It seemed like Alexander was rallying the leading force, but there were already fights breaking out in other parts of Quartz as he spoke. Necrozma, Star, and Barky had all sent divine forces to all corners of the world to stop
something from happening.
“What’s going
on?” Owen whispered. “These attacks are all… randomly placed. But every clash that happens, it’s…”
“Alexander is very strategic. There must be a reason,” Voice suggested. “What effect is each clash having?”
“There was something experimental we were theorizing about,” Owen said. “I wonder if he’s trying to test a theory right at the last moment. If divine energy clashes strongly enough… It might destabilize the fabric of reality itself. Like calling two requests from here at once, and it gets jumbled up.”
“That’s undefined behavior,” Voice said worriedly. “I have no idea what will happen if my powers clash with each other. It wasn’t supposed to work like that…”
“Alexander might be trying that just to distract them,” Owen murmured, “which means his real target would be somewhere that he
isn’t striking. Where would…”
Voice suddenly winced.
“You alright?” Owen asked. “You didn’t get another, uh… overwhelming emotion, right? Dread’s okay, it’s…”
Voice crumpled to the ground.
“Okay! Okay, wait, what’s wrong?!” Owen rushed to his side.
“I’m the target,” he wheezed.
The stars flickered like Luminous Orbs about to lose their power. The chamber around them rumbled from a faraway impact.
“No…! Why is he attacking the Tree of Life?!” Owen shouted. “That wasn’t part of the plan! This place was supposed to be untouched!”
“Looks like he revised the plan,” Voice said gravely. “I… I don’t think we have a defense for this. I
don’t know how to stop this…”
Near the end, Voice’s body seemed to be changing. Darkening. Even his eyes were shifting from their white diamonds to blackened holes in his face. Owen nervously stepped back, but only once. He squeezed his fists.
He could at least
try to stop this.
“…Azelf’s will!” Owen shouted. “We still have that somewhere, right? Uhh, hang on, I think it’s…”
Owen hastily descended from the sphere, feeling suddenly cold. An invisible force pulled him back—he couldn’t stray far from it. But he knew they’d kept that blue marble somewhere…
Voice hissed and gurgled within the sphere before coalescing into a ball of darkness.
“Isn’t that… for backup… for you? Why would you use that for me?”
“You’re the Worldcore. That’s a pretty important backup,” Owen said, digging through the dirt that had settled over the years.
“What’s taking so long?” Voice asked, melting into a ball of darkness.
“I—I’m sorry! The marble’s technically ethereal. My Perceive can’t detect energy! But I know it’s around here somewhere…” He glanced back, seeing that Nate was seeping into the wall. “H-hang on a little longer!”
“I’m burning… my body is burning…”
“The Tree or your soul?” Owen said hurriedly, tossing pebbles and bits of wood. He thought he’d seen something blue, but it was just his spiritual light bouncing off a reflective rock.
The Voice grunted once, then shriveled into a tight ball in the center of the sphere.
“Ah!” And just under it, he found the marble and let the sphere’s magnetism pull him back in. “Here, I—”
But the Voice was already gone.
“Worldcore?”
The Tree rumbled around him. The sphere of lights dimmed. There was a deep, dark patch against the roots of the wall, and for a moment, Owen wondered if he was suddenly in danger. Was he too late? Just like that?
Hold on. I think I’m working something out.
“I have Azelf’s blessing!” Owen said hurriedly, holding up the marble. “Take it! It’ll—”
I don’t think I need it.
“What?” Owen suddenly looked for where the Voice had gone. He was… somewhere, but his voice felt omnipresent.
I don’t think it’s working on me.
“You sound pretty evil, uh, Voice…”
But I don’t feel evil. Everything is normal.
“…So the… crazy buzzing your voice has right now is just a physical thing? …Can you even
get physical things?”
I made that body!
“And where
is that body?”
It melted.
Owen narrowed his eyes.
It’s okay! Let me try to make it again…
That ten-eyed Charmander bled out from one of the tree roots, blackened and shapeless. It sloshed forward, trying to pull itself together, but it only made the vague idea of a Charmander’s body instead. Then, it collapsed.
I don’t… think that works anymore. But I’ll practice! I can do it!
Owen winced. “…Okay. Let’s—”
The tree rumbled again. Owen gasped and prodded at various stars before finding one that gave him a good visual.
Alexander was attacking the Tree directly. And whoever he was looking through the eyes of, they were fighting Alexander directly.
What’s going on? Voice asked.
Owen caught glimpses of the person’s body as they flapped their wings.
“Mhynt…!”
A Lunala facing off against Alexander. But it seemed to be only with brief encounters as she bobbed and weaved past a purple-colored Lugia in the skies.
“Emily, too,” Owen whispered. “It looks like she’s fighting alongside Alexander. She doesn’t know…”
The Blight’s completely consumed her, Voice said.
She’s hardly a Lugia anymore…
Owen tried to move the star that channeled Emily’s vision. The vision distorted and twisted when he did, no matter how much he tried to focus. He tapped it as if it was some electronic to fix, but to no avail.
“Emily!” Owen shouted. “Emily, can you hear me?!”
Owen, don’t! That’s too much energy! She’s not asleep!
Owen winced and pushed the star away. “I can’t sit by…!”
That’s what you chose, Owen. We don’t have a way to help as it is…
Owen covered his eyes with closed fists as the chamber around him rumbled. It was going to collapse soon at this rate. And then…
This wasn’t how it was supposed to
go!
Owen… is that you?
The cosmic Charmeleon uncovered his eyes. “What?”
Did you hear something?
“Yeah!” Owen pounced on the star he’d heard Emily’s voice. “Emily! I don’t have much energy, but you have to listen! Resist it! Fly away! We’ll figure out a way to fix you!”
I… I can’t. I’m sorry. Alexander… he’s…!
So it
was him. But he had no idea what would cause the Blight’s source and Alexander to work together in this way. Was all that effort to make the Blight more cooperative for nothing? All it took was one person like Alexander to harness it, and…
“Challenge Necrozma,” Owen said. “Just do that, and he’ll help you!”
But before he could say anything more, the star flickered out. Was that the most power they could draw?
“Voice, why… why does it seem like we have even less influence than usual?” Owen called.
I don’t know. The world… It feels like it’s falling apart. I’m offsetting some of the Worldcore’s energy to holding it together.
“Observing doesn’t take energy, right?”
Very little.
“Okay. Then just—”
Another rumble. Nothing they could do. He was helpless. “Watch what’s going on out there,” Owen called. “I’m going to see if there’s
any surgical thing we can do where the other clashes are happening!”
Okay!
Necrozma first. It was easy to find him with how bright it was.
In fact, it was a little
too bright. What was going on?
“. . . contingency.”
“This has gone too far, Necrozma. We can’t risk you facing that down directly!”
Necrozma seemed to be injured from some unknown attack. He had one of his wings outstretched while a band of Pokémon held it in turn. Owen recognized many of them. Xerneas and Yveltal; Giratina; even Hoopa seemed to be subdued this time around, suppressed in her much smaller, impish form. The elite of Destiny Tower’s protectors were also there, like Serperior Trina and Corviknight Xypher.
“You think you will lose,” boomed a pensive voice behind all of them. A Torterra, larger than most, and one of the elite defenders of Destiny Tower.
“Forrest,” Xypher warned.
“Don’t talk like that. Necrozma’s just… making contingencies! Like he said!” He puffed out his chest and cawed. Nobody answered the rally.
“That ain’t it,” Marshadow said, arms crossed.
Reshiram, Kyurem, and Zekrom nodded firmly as well. They seemed to trust Necrozma enough to follow through with this contingency.
“We don’t have time for debates. There is no downside to taking this Promise. Now, huddle together. It’s time.”
They recognized the need. With grudging glances at one another, one by one the group of Pokémon came together and held Necrozma’s wing. Soon, there were simply too many, and Necrozma brought another wing down for the rest.
“I hereby Promise to not fall in battle against the Blight,” Necrozma said.
“Do you accept?”
“I accept,” they all replied.
The light became too bright for Owen to watch. He quickly shifted away and checked other Legendary stars. He noticed that one in particular was dimmer than the rest.
He looked into it… and saw Necrozma. So, this was one of the Legends taking on that blessing. What? Why was it dimmer? Who was it? Owen tried to glance at others within sight to deduce, but he couldn’t remember who had been where. It was too bright to see the details.
And then, he lost the connection.
Necrozma had given that Promise to eighteen others. What a peculiar number. Pokémon could be categorized into seventeen elements, but what would be the final one?
Owen couldn’t look at the dim star anymore. The connection was cut. And as the Tree rumbled, Owen realized that fretting over that would do him no good. He returned to Necrozma now that it was possible to observe it again.
This time, through Necrozma’s eyes, he saw Hoopa Willow. The little imp nervously toyed with her rings, juggling with an Oran Berry through the portals.
“So why d’you wanna talk to just me, huh?” Hoopa said.
“I’m not in trouble again, am I? I didn’t try to end the world this time!”
“…This time?” Necrozma repeated.
“U-uhh, just as a prank! And not related to all of this!”
“…We’ll discuss this later. Hoopa, I need your help specifically for one part of my contingencies.”
Necrozma produced one of his light crystals and placed it in Hoopa’s hands. Something about it was different. It was more like glass with a faint glow than something elementally charged…
“Huh? Why me?”
“Think of this as… a wildcard. Untapped potential. An empty piece that cannot be predicted. And I need someone good at fleeing danger to hang onto it. Warping and Teleportation may not work well, Hoopa, but your rings seem to hold some power yet. I’d considered Madeline hiding in the Reverse Realm as well… but she’s too large and noticeable. You can hide. Can I trust you with this power?”
“Not really,” Hoopa said.
“Good answer. That’s why I’m going to ask a Divine Promise of you in conjunction with the other one I’d given you, as further insurance.”
Hoopa pouted.
“Fiiiine. If I HAVE to save the world, I’ll do it. What’s the Promise?”
“That whatever this power becomes… when you unleash your full potential, you will use it responsibly. In other words, when you Unbind yourself, and this power is at its strongest, you will only use it for good, and you will use it responsibly. And I know
you understand what responsibly means, deep down.”
Hoopa flinched.
“But I can still do pranks when I’m weaker?”
“I understand the nature of compromise.”
Owen detected a grudging tone behind that one.
“Hmm…”
The Tree—or was it Destiny Tower?—rumbled.
“Okay. Let’s do it!”
“And I trust you will know what to do with this power later,” Necrozma said, “won’t you… Owen?”
Owen flinched. What? Did he hallucinate that? Those words sounded different. Were those Necrozma’s thoughts? They were louder. Less distant.
Voice didn’t seem to hear it. Maybe he was focused on whatever was happening outside the Tree. Necrozma’s star became too bright again as the Divine Promise began.
“Hey, Voice?” Owen called. “What, uh… what does Necrozma know about this place?”
What? Well, he was the one who recruited me, gave me some extra programming to facilitate this mini-world, and so on. He knows I exist.
“And he’s probably… aware of some of your properties, then.”
Probably.
“Right.”
Well. Owen was involved in Necrozma’s plans, or… maybe Necrozma was putting his faith in him to do what he couldn’t.
The Charmeleon winced, fist clenching. Even after all this, Necrozma was able to deduce all that? How?
If Necrozma was defeated here, Owen wondered if he’d ever find out.
He spared one last glance at Necrozma’s star. But who he saw next…
“Remi!”
“I dunno about this, Valle,” Remi said, arms crossed. The Sceptile had a radiant glow about her—in a very literal sense. It was like her scales had been replaced with gold.
“You are my final contingency,” Necrozma said.
“Should everyone fall, should the world come to ruin, I will need one last light to persist. I will use my connection to the Worldcore to send you through it… to a place that I have hidden away so you may be reborn. It is the absolute last resort. Eventually, you should reawaken your memories of this time, and you will have my light, and… it should be enough to get a resistance going again.”
“This is a huge reach. What if… literally ANYTHING goes wrong? What if I die before I can do any of that? Or, uh, die again. Since I think if I go through with this, that’s kinda dying, right?”
“It’s not foolproof. I’m trying to make as many backup plans as possible.” Necrozma dimmed.
“I’ve… made many mistakes as an Overseer at this point. I’m in damage control, and even that may not be enough. Admittedly… some of this is through faith in others. Hecto is already scouting as much as he can, but I’ve ordered him to go into hiding, too. We can’t lose both Overseers.”
“Wait, both? So you’re really fighting?”
“Yes. I need to go now. The Tree of Life is already in danger.”
“Wait—you—”
“Stay here, Remi. The ‘rest of you’ is already fighting, I’m sure of it.”
Rest of her. Then… Necrozma must have done the same thing that he’d done to himself.
Maybe that’s how Necrozma guessed about him… No, that was also a stretch. “Why Remi?” Owen suddenly murmured. “Why is Necrozma picking Remi, of all people? There are so many others that could use this extra insurance… No, Necrozma, you’re more methodical than that…”
What? Voice called.
“Oh, sorry. Just talking to myself again…”
You do that a lot.
“Sorry…”
The Tree shook again. Thinking helped keep him calm. The whole Tree couldn’t fall away, right? It was too…
big for that.
“What’s the plan if the Tree goes down?” Owen asked.
I have a backup… I won’t like it, but we can try to flee.
“Uh. What?”
Flee. Take the Tree’s energy and leave. This Tree is to house me, but I don’t need it as long as I keep the power.
“Oh. So that’s why you aren’t panicking…”
What? I thought you had a plan. That’s why I’m not panicking.
“But I thought
you had a plan!”
Another rumble punctuated the silence that followed. The rainbow veins in the roots were noticeably dimmer.
“We… can’t do anything anymore,” Owen whispered. “That faith Necrozma has in us… We… we don’t have the power to enact it. Not against the Blight.”
He sank lower in the sphere, wishing he had a wall to lean on.
Owen wasn’t sure how much time passed afterward. Could have been a whole day of the Tree rumbling against the flames. Legends defending it, Alexander striking it down. Owen couldn’t find it in him to watch, knowing he could do so little. The Tree’s power was dwindling more and more and he’d so wastefully used it for a few useless words. Did anything even help Emily?
After some time, Owen noticed the blue orb floating nearby starting to flicker. Dangerously, too. “What…”
Nervously, he glanced at the stars again. Azelf’s was one of them, but he noticed, worriedly, that several of them were dimmer and…
“Where are they?” Owen suddenly asked. Voice didn’t answer; he must have been preoccupied with something else.
Owen pulled at a few of the stars. He saw through the eyes of mundane Pokémon—the ‘mortal’ halves of the Legends that Necrozma had split off from the Legend hosts. But no matter how many stars Owen looked through, he couldn’t find the Legends themselves anymore. They were… gone. Just
gone. What did that mean?
“Mhynt,” Owen whispered, searching more, wondering if he’d find a single one.
Through the eyes of one, Owen saw a badly wounded, great flipper-wing—Lugia. The deep purple of her body was now only in shrinking patches, revealing white and silver beneath. She was too dazed to do anything else.
Necrozma purified her… or at least saved her from the worst of the corruption.
“What?” Owen mumbled.
And there was a Vaporeon next to Emily. She seemed confused, like she didn’t recognize anything at all, and eyed Emily with apprehension. Vaporeon… Wasn’t that Emily’s mortal form? Were they split… but Emily was spared whatever happened to the rest of them?
Owen, Voice called.
“H-huh?”
I… I’m sorry. I did what I could. But… Remi got caught up in the battle. Alexander was driven away and weakened, but… he…
Owen’s spirit felt like ice. The Voice said something else. He couldn’t focus on any of it.
The stars floated around Owen’s head. He glanced at a few, seeing nothing of importance, but it helped… move time along. Helped distract him as his world collapsed.
But I was able to salvage one part. Some of her spirit is here, Owen. Just like you. But…
Owen perked up. Remi, here? But… No. He couldn’t condemn her to a fate like this. She’d go
crazy in the Worldcore. He was starting to lose it, seeing how helpless he was, but…
“Why?” Owen asked. “I-is there something we can do? Can we… draw her spirit from Alexander’s part, and then she’ll be okay again?!”
I… I don’t know how to do that, but… she isn’t conscious, Owen. She’s fading fast. If she fades completely, then even this fragment will return to Alexander… or the one with Necrozma. But not here. I’m sorry. But… if she can hang on, I can reincarnate her. She will be reborn, tied to the Tree of Life. She wants to wait until she can be reawakened again. Maybe with a piece of divine power.
“But how can she do that? She’s not divine, she never… got that sort of exemption. She…” Owen’s eyes trailed to the flickering, fading blue marble. His imagined heart skipped a beat. “Voice!” Owen cried, tossing the marble toward the stars. “Give her this!”
What?
“Azelf! I think Azelf was taken by the Blight. I don’t know where he is. But his blessing might still be around. It’s fading fast, though. If we can give that—that
divine will to her, maybe—”
I don’t know if that will have any effect, Owen.
“Please, just… try! Maybe it’ll help her!” Owen squeezed his fists. His voice cracked. “What good will it be otherwise?! It had to be useful for something, it had to
mean something!”
His voice bounced off the walls. That crumbling, shattering sound had finally come to an end. Whatever was happening outside was done and the Tree had, for now, survived. The Dark War had reached some kind of standstill. Neither side won, but both sides took heavy, heavy losses.
Okay, Voice said.
If you see no other use for the fading Will of Azelf…
The blue marble disappeared into the Tree. Owen stared at the sky a little longer, the futures of the world murky and filled with uncertainty. The Dark War at a pause, not a halt. And everyone he knew was either missing or in hiding.
But he couldn’t give up. He was still alive. And so long as he remained in the Worldcore, with all the time the world had left, he had to keep fighting.
Quietly, he and Nate analyzed all of the data they’d gathered, the eyes they hadn’t seen in the heat of the moment, to determine, to the best of their ability, what happened. First: Necrozma’s contingency was to very
slightly depower all the Legends by taking a piece of their souls and putting them in normal bodies again. They couldn’t get to all of them in time, but they got most of them.
Second: That the Legends failed. Systematically, the Wraiths took them out. Where they went after was a big unknown. The darkness that Alexander had sided with, that Wishkeeper had once contained, was…
gone. Out of their view. It went to a different plane—the same as the other Legends. What a terrible fate, if they were still in the same place. They had to find a way to figure that out, but from the Worldcore, they were limited to the physical domain.
But, ultimately, Necrozma’s contingency saved the world from totally falling to darkness. Owen did not want to know what it would mean if that darkness got a hold of the
full might of every Legend. Partial power wasn’t enough to override the Worldcore’s base rules.
The third was that the Legend halves were unconscious and recovering, for the most part. Among the Legends were also notable mortals and spirit guardians of Destiny Tower, who were given pieces of Necrozma’s divine power. They would be the new guardians of Necrozma’s third of those rules—the power to tap into the Worldcore’s reality-bending abilities. Arceus called them the Hands of Creation for that purpose.
The fourth and final thing that Owen and Nate gathered… was that a few anomalies were still present in the world. Giratina had disappeared before a clash happened; Lugia was still around, but without memories, and had stolen some of Necrozma’s power, only for it to be taken by the former Dragon of Ideals, Aramé. Still kept her massive size, though, and the darkness’ corruption seemed to melt Lugia’s body into a distortion in the
shape of a Lugia rather than a normal creature…
But that was all they’d gathered. Necrozma lost, but saved the world and bought them all time. The most Owen could hope for now…
He just had to pick up the pieces and try again.
<><><>
Year 1152
It took years, but Owen had organized new connections and ‘eyes’ to see the world. Necrozma’s plan had worked, but only partially.
In the aftermath of when the world had paused, Owen slowly waited with the Voice for the Worldcore to regain some of its energy. However, that process was a slow crawl, and during that time, the world deteriorated into something unrecognizable.
Forests withered away to a strange, purple miasma that had cropped up from fissures in the ground. Yet, paradoxically, the forest also expanded at the same time, an overgrowth that carried over much of the world’s landmass… and then beyond, overtaking oceans and driving that further away.
It was like the planet itself was
growing in response to a surge of incoming matter. Owen had no idea what to make of it nor where it was coming from. It was out of the Worldcore’s range.
Anything that resembled the old civilization was buried in this expanding forest. Pockets of that old civilization survived where the strange creatures of the forest didn’t reach.
They weren’t Blights anymore. These things had melted into a black sludge, losing all semblance of what they had once been. They were Wraiths.
Destiny Tower had been hit hardest. It had decayed and eroded by a harsh twister that blew around it, locking Barky inside, as well as Manny. By the time the cyclone had finished, it was eroded into a giant spire of stone. More like a cave; even the insides had been eroded… and it lost connection to the upper half of the Tower, which was located in the aether.
The Legends’ mortal halves remained. Valle was missing, as were several others. Emily had lost her memories; Owen wasn’t sure how that happened, but he was pretty sure Uxie was involved in the same way they’d weaponized her powers against Wishkeeper. That would hold for a while.
Hecto had also survived. Owen wasn’t sure how many of him did, but thanks to being so widespread, his weakened aura was also much harder to detect amid normal, mortal Pokémon.
Barky had been badly injured in the battle but had saved Star. While the former went to Destiny Tower for safety, his wounds seemingly never recovering, Star scoured the world of Quartz for survivors.
The first few years were energized. Morale was high, despite the devastating losses they’d taken. Then, as the dead forest grew, the sky shifted red, and no substantial changes emerged, that morale died a slow, withering death.
More than a century later, many mortal Pokémon alive didn’t know what a blue sky looked like. There was only one place in the world that pierced that red miasma that shrouded the world: the Tree of Life.
Pokémon braved the Wraith-infested lands to make a pilgrimage to the Tree of Life to strengthen themselves and see ‘what the world used to be like.’ At around the same time the miasma had covered the whole world, Pokémon took longer and longer to evolve… except when near the Tree of Life.
But being weak, and having to go past Wraiths that guarded the Tree’s perimeter, made for a deadly combination. The world’s population… dwindled.
And for each death that happened, a dark power’s influence clutched at the hearts of the living, growing ever stronger. Soon, that power would eclipse the Voice’s… and Owen, within the Worldcore, had spent all that time preparing for the Blight’s resurgence.
Today felt different.
Owen sighed to himself, staring at his favorite two stars. From one, a Sceptile remained hidden, shrouded in a Psychic barrier that kept all Wraiths away from her. From another, a feral Arcanine guarded her pup from a Wraith, fending it off with practiced ease.
Mhynt had survived, though she, like Barky, had been severely weakened, and the miasma prevented any hope of regaining their lost strength.
Remi, the one whose spirit was tied to the Worldcore, had reincarnated into an Arcanine this time and had gone through several lives beforehand. Remi’s spirit was strong; she always grew up with a tendency toward kindness, intense curiosity, and defiance.
She died a lot. But her spirit pressed on anyway.
“Voice?” Owen called. “Do you feel that?”
I do.
With Necrozma gone, spirits flowed to the Tree of Life directly, like a repository. They magnetized to the leaves, little wisps curling up and nestling within as they slept the years away. It was peaceful. Owen gently sorted through their memories to learn more about the outside world now that his old stars had become… limited.
And what they felt was the darkening of recent spirits, as well as fewer and fewer coming to the Tree. The Voice described them as ‘budding agents of the Blight’ with how some of them seemed to
embrace that dark force.
Considering the Wraiths thrived in this environment… Owen couldn’t blame them, to an extent. It made the simple act of breathing easier if one took in that darkness.
“I’m going to do another check,” Owen said. “Let’s see if we can’t find the Blight source again. It’s getting too big to hide, gotta be…”
Don’t waste too much energy on it.
“I know. The same amount as usual. I’ll keep it small.”
Scans had become very efficient thanks to Owen’s methodology. He could get it done without using even ten days’ energy, and in only a few minutes, too. They’d been “saving” energy for a century, and they’d started to stockpile it fifty years ago. They had enough for a few dramatic endeavors once it was time to fight.
And today…
“A-ah!”
Was that day.
What? What do you see?
Owen slammed his fist into another star, digging through it and wiggling his claws. Deftly, he triggered several procedures that he’d managed to program into the Worldcore.
Owen?!
“Sorry, no time!” Owen said. “I’m alerting everyone!”
Why? What’s happening?
The chamber around Owen lit up. The leaves of the Tree of Life did the same, doubling the radius of the blue skies like a beacon. Owen glanced at several of the stars in the Worldcore… Yes, that caught the attention of Star. That’s what he needed.
“The Blight’s coming this way! It’s about a mile out, but he’s closing in fast!”
It was this close?!
“That must be why those spirits were so dark,” Owen said. “Good thing I trusted my gut…”
Not that he had a true gut anymore. Still felt the same.
“It’s been something we’ve anticipated for a long time, Voice. The Blight’s back, and—h-how long has it been? A century? I think I lost track…”
The Worldcore tends to do that.
The Tree of Life rumbled with activity. Owen heard whispers in the roots as spirits arose from their slumber. They, too, wanted to help—even the ones that had been tinged by darkness seemed willing to fight by the others’ side. Owen wasn’t sure what happened in that mysterious realm within the Tree—he wasn’t allowed inside, lest he get lost in the afterlife—but they tended to help those who had become lost souls swiftly.
And they’d need every single one of their help to counter the Blight.
I’m noticing something strange down below, Voice said.
“Uh? Down below? What does
that mean?”
I… I don’t know. It just feels like “below.”
“Like, underground?”
No. Below.
A pause. Owen didn’t know what to make of that. “Uh, okay. Let me know if that changes.”
More important things to worry about.
Owen muttered to himself small reminders. How certain stars worked. The way he had to line certain ones up and activate them all at once. Occasionally, he called for spirits to make sure they were all in position within the Tree’s leaves and roots. The Blight was closing in.
And for a short moment, Owen considered one last saving throw.
“…Hey… are you there?” he called. “It’s me. Owen.”
He checked the stars. The Blight slowed. It heard him.
“I don’t know what you want anymore. The way the world’s becoming… Is that because of you? Why are you destroying the world when you wanted to save it?”
Slower and slower. Was Owen getting through to him? After all this time?
He tried to get a better visual of the Blight. At this point, he didn’t need other eyes to do it. He could see through the buds of some of the Tree’s flowers, gathering light that way.
Spiritomb again. Maybe the same one? Or maybe that was simply his favored form. And just behind him… Alexander, the Hydreigon of flame.
Owen’s entire body felt hot, his spirit blazing at the sight of the one who’d taken his daughter. The torment she’d been put through, the experiments Alexander had tried against her amnesiac self… claimed her spirit…
I found you.
Owen gasped. The Blight fired a beam of darkness before he was ready—right when he’d been distracted—and struck the base of the Tree. The little Charmeleon sprite jumped out of the Worldcore and held up his arms just in time to block the dark lance that had burrowed through the roots.
But it was just short of hitting anything. Owen didn’t know if his Protect
worked anymore as a spirit, but… he supposed he wouldn’t have to find out.
Instead, what remained of the dark lance was a small puff of black smoke. Watching. Floating. It didn’t dissipate.
“…Is that you?” Owen asked quietly.
“I’m sorry for this,” the dark mote said.
Its cadence suggested he wasn’t truly there, but was a message left behind. Owen listened in silence.
“I tried it your way. I tried to gather the Hands to reshape the world and free me from its suffering. I know you are trying, but lack the power. Alexander… showed me the truth that you hid from me, Owen. That in the end, power and power alone is what matters. And look. Look at the progress made in such a short time. The gods cannot touch me if they are even alive anymore. And when I claim the Tree of Life, everything will fall under my power. Then… I can fix things.”
“He’s not there to help you,” Owen hissed, but of course the mote, just a message, would not listen. “He’s using you! Alexander—”
Don’t waste the energy, Owen! He’s advancing!
“Ugh!” Owen winced and shot into the Worldcore again, grasping at familiar stars with practiced ease. “Okay, okay, let’s see, uhh, I know I hooked up a few of these to—there!”
Direct anything and everything to stopping him. That’s the source of all this!
“Okay. Okay. It’s… it’s not him anymore. Just someone led astray by Alexander. If… if we kill him, that’s… we can help him in the Overworld, or something, right?”
Even as Owen murmured, he charged the Tree. It used a lot of power, but he’d been prepping for its weaponization for a while. Channeling the energy of all the spirits within, all the energy saved, all the residual power from the world over decades, into concentrated blasts…
That would eliminate anyone.
“I’m sorry,” Owen whispered.
He pressed a hand forward and into a star, clenched his fist, and pointed.
In his mind’s eye, he saw the Blight the closest he’d ever seen it. A great, black miasma with a single red core in the center; looming over it was Alexander, sneering at the Tree and murmuring something to the orb of darkness.
Everything around them was withering into black ash. Even feral Pokémon unfortunate enough to be in the way went from healthy to skeletal in seconds.
No. Such a thing could not exist unchecked.
He should have listened to Necrozma.
Owen made another gesture with his hand, controlling the Tree’s energy. “Get ready, Voice!”
The root’s veins are open. Fire!
Dragon energy would do. Nothing truly nullified it, and even if that strange orb had acquired Steel, the power of a Dragon was mighty and consistent. Owen had configured the Tree to focus on its Dragon element as much as possible. Prior, it had been about plants and psionics to match Xerneas’ tendencies… but with Xerneas gone, Owen worked with what he thought was better.
Ten percent of the Tree’s energy was used up from this blast, but it would be more than enough at this proximity. Alexander’s eyes widened, but the Blight shrouded him in darkness and expanded, taking the blast directly.
“Yes!” Owen laughed. “A direct hit!”
Dragon energy scorched the ground, turning soil into flaming, indigo fields. A crater a hundred feet wide, smoldering in the center, remained.
Oh.
And in the middle was the Blight, and Alexander, completely unscathed.
It nullified your attack.
“What?” Owen murmured. “How? I’m
sure I used Dragon, not Normal, but he acts like I’d struck with Hyper Beam or something…”
Try an analysis. He’s close enough.
Owen fiddled with the stars. The Spiritomb body had returned, though instead of its usual stone anchor, it was replaced by that red sphere—the Blight’s core.
“I’m seeing signatures from Shedinja,” Owen reported. “I think he’s using the power of other spirits he’d possessed… and he’s integrating them into his body.”
Shedinja? But that means…
“It means that as a Spiritomb, no normal attacks get through that barrier. It completely nullifies any energy that doesn’t directly counter that shield… ah! But it doesn’t protect against disruptions!”
Owen quickly reconfigured the Tree. He called upon a few Tyranitar who had settled within, asking to lend their power.
No, that won’t work, Voice interjected.
No…! He has Rayquaza’s…!
“You’re kidding,” Owen whispered.
The Tree rumbled again. The Voice shrieked in pain—that was a hard hit. Alexander and the Blight were on the offensive.
“Voice!” Owen cried.
I—I’m okay, Voice said back.
Sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. I can’t fight against this!
Owen kept checking. All the planning, all this prep, and it was all falling apart around him. This was supposed to be the world’s effort, and it was being completely nullified by the Blight’s raw power. But not only that…
“I should have known,” Owen said, breathing hard. A few pieces of wood fell through his ethereal body. The Tree of Life was falling. “He wouldn’t have come here without a plan for everything.”
In one of Owen’s visuals of the decaying forest, Star had appeared. She was trying to fight the Blight off, and, from the horror Owen saw in her eyes, she must have realized his invincibility.
The Blight is a pessimist in nature, the Voice said.
If he thought anything could have gone wrong, he planned for it and assumed it would happen. He… covered everything. Every time I think of a weakness, he seems to have a counter. I’m even calling for Pokémon with abilities that ignore abilities, but he seems to have a counter for that, too!
“The only thing that would’ve worked was Radiance,” Owen said. “There’s no resistance to that. Spiritomb would be weak to that. Everything is,
especially Shadows, but…”
But hypotheticals wouldn’t work now. With Necrozma gone, much of that ‘Radiance’ he held also went away. Even the fragments of Necrozma, embedded in eighteen trusted Guardians, lost much of their light. They’d retained only a glow, some psionics, and a boost in power and levitation. That was it. That was
nothing compared to the Blight.
Another tremor interrupted Owen’s thoughts. The Voice cried in pain. The Tree was on fire once more. It had barely recovered from the last time. The roots darkened.
“This is practically cheating,” Owen said, slamming his hands against the stars. “What are we supposed to do against this?! We prepped for everything!”
“This is goodbye to the old era of gods, as its last artifact is toppled!” Alexander declared.
“Long live the Void King!”
With flames of darkness behind him, Alexander drew a javelin of darkness from thin air in his smaller left head. He rolled his shoulder back.
Owen closed his eyes and held back a sob. He saw no way out of it. The Blight had won, against all his planning. He’d lost his way too early and his tiny fragment wasn’t enough to right those wrongs.
In one sense, it was Owen’s punishment. But he could not accept that—because so many others suffered far more than he had. He had to fix it so that wouldn’t happen. Now… it was all just bitter, senseless failure.
The attack never came.
For a few seconds after, Owen waited, somewhere between confused and braced. He dared to check the stars again…
A gold ring had intercepted the javelin, and another gold ring appeared behind Alexander, where the Javelin had exited and impaled him. Alexander’s eyes were wide not with pain but surprise and anger.
“HA!” shrieked a booming, yet high-pitched voice.
“Forget about ME?!”
Hoopa—a towering, Unbound djinn—crossed her arms and smirked a jagged, toothy grin.
“Willow?!” Owen pressed his hands against the wall of the Worldcore in disbelief. “I thought she… but we couldn’t…!”
“We knew you’d come here, Blight,” called another voice, emerging from the shadows. Giratina—the same Giratina who’d been plunged into darkness with Hoopa during the Dark War a century earlier.
“We waited, ever patient, for you to reveal yourself.”
Giratina disappeared into another realm when the Blight tried to strike at Giratina with a hazy, black tendril. A realm beyond Owen’s sight—the Reverse World, on the other side of Quartz.
“Of course,” Owen whispered. “I… But who else is there?” he wondered, his heart swelling with hope.
And just then, another Legend appeared, this time with a great downpour of moonlight. Lunala. Owen could cry.
And on Lunala’s shoulder… was Sceptile Mhynt. He had to confirm it when checking her star—but yes. The holder of Necrozma’s Psychic shard—one of the strongest that resonated—had
survived… However, Owen noted a nasty-looking scar along Lunala’s wings from a slash long ago. It reminded him of torn paper somehow brought back together.
“We planned and waited,” Lunala said, but then erupted into light. Her body dissolved and returned to Mhynt, who closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath. She floated without wings, aglow with Necrozma’s light…
But, frowning, Owen sensed that this light was too weak for the Shadows. It wasn’t ‘complete’ without Necrozma himself present. They still wouldn’t be enough.
“’Tina!” Star cried, Teleporting to her side when she emerged from a black portal again.
“Th-thanks for the backup, but… the Tree, I think it’s alive! And trying to fight back, but even its strongest blast isn’t enough…”
“Kuhuhu…” Hoopa pointed at the Blight and Alexander, both of them seething. The Hydreigon removed his javelin, spilling black blood far below. The wound closed itself in seconds.
“That’s why I’M here. As the ultimate wild card, I have—I mean, you have no idea what I’m going to do!”
“Wild card…” Owen whispered. The gears turned in his mind.
The Blight, an eternal pessimist, had prepared for every single thing that the world could have thrown at it. Every rule, every elemental matchup, every possibility had been accounted for.
The only thing the Blight
couldn’t defend against… was the impossible. Was a new rule.
Owen had to cheat, too.
The Tree of Life trembled.
Owen, what are you doing? Don’t touch that!
“Sorry, Voice,” Owen said. “But I need to do something with that wild card!”
The earth rumbled again. Giratina, Mhynt, Star, and Hoopa had combined their efforts to fend off the Blight and Alexander, buying time, but a delay was all they could accomplish on their own. They needed a miracle. They needed that
wild card to pay off.
They needed something that could pierce the invincible state the Blight had created for itself… and, probably, something to defeat Alexander just as well.
An empty shard, waiting to take on a new form. The blank check that Necrozma had given in the hope and faith that Owen would find a use for it.
“Necrozma,” Owen said quietly. “I hope… I hope this is enough!”
He wasn’t sure about his exact thought process anymore. He thought of something strange, unpredictable, scary. Something that could trick and pierce the darkest of powers, ignore the specters, and conquer Dragons. The antithesis to Alexander, the exception to the Blight’s immunity that came with its Dark and Ghost shards that it had taken from Necrozma.
With the world’s rules at the tips of his claws, Owen rewrote the rules to the Voice’s direct protest. All of its power from a century of saving it up, as the very fabric of the world became its most unstable state, with no other options left on the table, Owen tapped into Hoopa’s wildcard and rewrote reality.
And he created a weakness out of thin air.
BOOM!
A pink shockwave lit the skies. The Tree of Life charged a new beam that siphoned its very life force to perform. Hoopa’s blank crystal glow shifted to that same, mischievous pink. Alexander roared in sudden pain, covering his eyes as a glimmering, dazzling light shredded his scales and wings. The Blight, too, recoiled in pain and shriveled at the sudden onslaught of energy that cleaved through all of its shields.
“Huh?” Hoopa said.
“I mean—yeah, take THAT! How’s my wild card now?!” She balled up her great fist and brought it back, punching Alexander in his main face. Black blood spattered on her knuckles as she liquefied his muzzle with an audible
squelch, but even that wasn’t enough to knock Alexander out. He gurgled a snarl and used his smaller heads to blast at Hoopa at close range.
Mhynt and Giratina stepped in next, striking Alexander while the Blight continued its roaring from the Tree’s onslaught. Suddenly, the whole battle had reversed: The Blight backed away, desperate for distance, and Alexander couldn’t handle the hidden Legends.
I’m detecting a rift into the Reverse Realm. Giratina’s trying to pull them away!
“What? Why?!”
Even with all these attacks, I don’t think they can defeat him… They’re going to seal them away!
“No!
No, we can do it!” Owen screeched. He pressed into the nearest star—it happened to be Giratina’s. “Giratina! Madeline! Listen! Stall a little longer! We can do it!”
No response.
“Madeline?” Owen called again. “Giratina?”
The star flickered and dimmed. In the weakening light of Owen’s last connections to the outside world, he saw Madeline and the others pulling the Blight and Alexander into a black portal conjured by Giratina. Hoopa’s power, in direct contact with the Blight, was waning, even after the wildcard had activated.
“Not… yet,” Alexander said, his muzzle solidifying from pure Shadows.
“I’m not… falling here…!”
He grasped at the root of the Tree just outside the portal. The Voice yelped. The stars dimmed even more. The world around Owen was almost completely black. A void.
He heard Alexander’s voice over the collapse of the Tree.
“My final plan…” Alexander pushed the Blight toward Giratina and used that momentum to break away.
“By my Divine Decree…!”
The Voice wailed. Owen stared at his own hands. They were fading. Alexander was siphoning the Tree’s power using the divine power of the Blight… He was trying to use the anti-Hands to do the Hands’ work and write a rule into the Worldcore! But why? What was he planning to do?
“The Legends… and all who fall into the void of the Reverse World… shall be… FORGOTTEN!”
Owen’s heart iced over. If they
forgot… Alexander would have all the time in the world to recover.
He’d still know.
And with a final push, and a final roar of anger from the Blight, Alexander separated himself from the pull of Giratina and the Legends.
“No!” Giratina shouted.
“Just pull!” Mhynt said, jamming her blade into the Blight’s core. It cracked, spewing darkness in all directions.
“We got the Blight… That’s good enough… we can let the rest of the world deal with Alexander…”
The deeper they went into the portal, the weaker Owen’s connection to them became. And he realized too late that upon creating that new type to counter the Blight, just to
weaken it… he’d used up all of the Tree’s power. They couldn’t hear him.
He hadn’t even thought to speak to Mhynt again until it was too late. Speak to… speak to…
“We were so close,” Owen whispered. “We could have ended all of this right now. Saved everyone. Fixed everything.”
The Tree of Life was dying. Its wood had rotted from the inside and that rot had made it to the base of the Tree. The Worldcore, pelted by falling debris, dimmed.
“What was the point of all this?” Owen said, staring at his wispy hands. “What was the point of any of this?! Why did I spend… a century underground, with my hands
right next to the rules of the universe, only to FAIL AT THE END?!”
He ineffectually slammed his hands into the ground, trying to pull up dirt and rocks.
“I rewrote…
reality itself… and still THIS!” He laughed slamming his hands over and over into nothing, flipping in the air with his ethereal momentum.
“A-and… and what was it that Alexander said?” he said. “Anyone who enters somewhere… is forgotten. And… the Legends?” Owen rubbed his head nervously. “Did… did we ever have Legends? Who… who did we forget? Voice?” Owen looked up. His heart ached. His very soul wanted to cry out. “Who did we forget?”
I… I can’t remember. I’m sorry.
“You? You can’t? But… but you’re this world, Voice…!” Owen tried to piece together the flickering orbs of the Worldcore, so drained of power. “We have to remember! Please, just… override it! Undo it!”
You know I can’t do that, Owen…
“BUT WHAT DID WE FORGET?”
I don’t know! I’m… I’m sorry, Owen…!
Owen paced nervously. “I—I can’t forget. I can’t forget that. I can’t forget what I was doing here. I… I rewrote something, right, I had to defeat… Alexander? Just Alexander? Right, the… the thing I made, it was… because—Remi. Because of Remi! My… daughter! With… with…!”
Ice filled his ethereal body.
“…Who is her mother?” he whispered.
But when Owen tried to think about Remi’s mother, all he saw was a black void in his mind. Someone who… wasn’t.
The feelings. He remembered the feelings of warmth and love and pain and anguish. But no memories beyond it. Someone who was there, but not anymore.
Owen, Voice said tentatively.
I’m sensing something in… in the aftermath of whatever happened here. We must have fought to get it. I’m seeing… a few shards of something divine. Maybe of… of someone that used to be here.
“…It must be left behind for something…” Owen closed his eyes. “Maybe… a message…”
One resonates with Psychic power. I think… I’m going to give it to some of my oldest spirits. The Unown. They should be able to protect it. Another one is of Dark energy. They won’t like that, but… maybe I can hang onto it.
But that last shard… it’s so dark. I don’t think anything should interact with it. I’m going to relocate it. I think it used to be… Ghost. Didn’t Giratina have this one? Ghost and Dark… that must be where the darkness got those elements to gain immunity to so much of what we threw at it. Psychic from Mhynt… Dark, didn’t that go to Xypher? I think I saw him get taken down by one of Alexander’s elite troops. But I don’t know where he went… Must have been defeated.
But why is Ghost so… corrupted? I don’t want to study it. That might leak into the Tree. We’re too vulnerable.
The Tree of Life groaned as its trunk struggled to support itself. The Voice stopped rambling to focus on keeping it together.
“What’s the point?” Owen said. “If the Tree goes, won’t the world fall apart? It’s held together by divine power. If it goes, the world will…”
I have… one last backup that I can do. I’ll have to take the Tree within me and let its power exist in the crater it leaves behind. Within me. It’ll… buy time. I’ll have to hide. I’ll use this Dark power to do it.
“Okay,” Owen said, defeated. “If it’ll… buy time.”
A flickering light caught Owen’s attention. He glanced at one of the last, dim stars in the Worldcore. A view from the Tree itself.
The red miasma was clearing away. It was like something had… broken away. The blue sky peeked out of the once thick, red clouds all over a ruined world.
“I’m so tired,” Owen admitted. “I’m… I’m so tired. And I can’t even remember why.”
Rest, Owen. Let me handle this for a while. And when you have the energy again… Let’s figure out what to do.
There is… one thing I still see in the Worldcore that’s bothering me.
“What?” Owen asked.
There’s a timer for a thousand years. It went off a century ago. And I know that corresponds to something we had to do. Something we’ve been doing… And the timer. It’s cyclical.
“Cyclical?” Owen repeated. His mind buzzed with what little energy he had left. “Wait, then… this might happen again. Or
something will happen again, maybe even—a hint?”
Yes. After the timer resets again in a good… nine centuries or so. Something will happen again.
“Nine… centuries.” Owen laughed. “Nine centuries. Okay.” He closed his eyes and leaned back. The Voice’s body was absorbing the Tree and, with it, the Worldcore.
I hope you can handle it, Owen…
“I need to know those answers,” Owen said. “And one thing I didn’t forget was… that I needed to repay the world for something. I’ll protect it from whatever’s coming. And until then… I’m not gone. I’m still here.”
That’s familiar. I think we’ve done this before.
“And I remember it was worse before,” Owen said, glancing at the clearing sky. “Maybe… maybe something good happened.”
We won’t know until that timer resets.
“Yeah.” Owen nodded. “If that’s the case… It’s time to recover.”
I’ll do what I can. Owen sensed a smile in his tone.
…Thank you for helping. I’ll still need your guidance… okay?
Owen closed his eyes. Even in the darkness of the underground, the projection of the expanding blue sky warmed his spirit. “Wouldn’t want it any other way.”
<><><>
Year 1321
Today, Remi died in the cold, after getting lost from her herd of Stantler. It was a sad and early death, and Owen whispered small comforts as she lay dying in the snow, but he also knew that sometimes, such misfortunes were the natural outcome of a feral life.
Society had rebuilt from scratch. Small civilizations at first scattered throughout the world whose name was forgotten, becoming villages and small towns. Technologies and relics of old found and reverse-engineered by the smartest of Pokémon.
Remnants of distortions from an unknown clash scarred the land, but those blessed with an equally unknown, golden power helped to counteract it. Most of all, a great Goodra who wandered the land. Owen knew her as Madeline, but much of her past was a heavy and frustrating fog.
Owen had been semi-dormant for a while now. He’d lost track of the time. At least, without a mortal body, he was also free of mortal boredom. He seemed to have no trouble drifting through the abyss that had become the Voice’s realm with little grief.
Watching the outside world through flickering stars was his entertainment. It was peaceful. It bothered him that surely things he’d forgotten were missing, and he also knew Alexander was somewhere in the world with Remi, so he still had things to fix. But compared to before… he had to appreciate the small victories to stay sane.
The Tree of Life had instead become a great pit of darkness that Pokémon tended to avoid due to how ominous it seemed. There was also a similar pit that was
actually dangerous to approach just west of the Tree’s old location. That one had formed from the distortions during the forgotten war.
“Hey, Voice,” Owen said. “I think I’m starting to think a little more again…”
That’s nice, Owen.
“No, for real this time!” Owen said, recalling vaguely that he’d said that many times before in a half-lucid state. “The world is really… stable. But that just means Alexander is still planning something, and once he gets what he wants, he’ll make a move again. Do you think… we should start trying to mobilize, too?”
…Oh, you’re awake this time, Voice conceded.
I’ve been trying a few things for now. But Star and Barky figured out most of it. Right now, Alexander needs to be kept away from divine power as much as possible.
“Far away… But I think Tim—uh, I mean… Eon he’s calling himself now… He’s gearing up to gather that divine power, too…”
Yes. But Eon… His genetic augmentation project is going wrong and he’s not realizing the sacrifices he’s making, Owen. But he isn’t the one paying for it…
“Well, that Divine Decree messing with his form was more an… advanced payment,” Owen muttered. “I
know he wasn’t always a Ditto. He must have been a Mew, and then…” He tried to think again, tried to vocalize his
feelings, but that void in his memory would not brighten.
I don’t know what to do from here, Voice admitted.
Maybe you should get back to resting. I’ll monitor as much as I can until something new happens. Besides… the less energy you use, the more you save for when it matters.
That cold uncertainty returned. That was what happened last time. Waiting, waiting, waiting for the right moment to expend everything… Was that the right thing to do?
“Hey, what’s that?” someone whispered in the stars.
Owen squinted at the noise.
In the fading, flickering star of Remi’s current life, an orange flame cut through the whiteout of the snowstorm. Remi was too weak to move.
It was a Charizard, his form twisted by experiments, but the general shape and appearance remained. Slimmer, with crazed eyes and a more pronounced muzzle, pointed horns, and enhanced musculature. A mutant Pokémon built for battle and little else.
But this time, there was kindness behind that enthusiastic energy.
Behind the Charizard was an Alakazam. A psionic barrier protected him from the snow, forming a bubble of ice.
“It’s a fallen Pokémon, Owen. This is a harsh storm.” He hummed, tapping his chin.
“I suppose we could use some extra food back home. Would save me the trouble.”
Owen winced. Well, that’s gonna be awkward to recall… but that was the cycle of life. Remi happened to be part of it. It wasn’t really… “Remi” anymore anyway. Not right now. He pushed the star away, not wanting to witness that regardless.
“I’m worried about them,” Owen admitted. “They’ve forgotten the real purpose behind what they’re doing and don’t even realize it. Even Michael—uh, Nevren doesn’t realize it. And it’s not like whispering in their dreams works, either… What do we tell them?
We don’t remember…”
I don’t know, Owen. But keeping an eye on these powers as they develop will be important.
“Yeah…”
“Owen, what are you doing?”
Owen tilted his head and, morbidly, checked Remi’s star.
He was trying to feed Remi an Aspear Berry.
“I’m trying to warm her up,” Charizard Owen explained.
“For what purpose?”
“To help her!”
“Why, precisely?” Nevren asked, a hint of impatience in his voice.
“Well, because she’s hurt…”
The light in Remi’s star was brighter. After a few minutes of treatment from a combination of Aspear Berry juice and Owen’s body heat from a full embrace, Remi’s star was brighter than ever.
“I don’t see the point in this, you know,” Nevren chided.
“Nature would have taken its course. The herd would be stronger in the end.”
“I know, but… this was a freak storm, right? Maybe she was just unlucky.”
“Hrm. Well, I suppose that is also true.”
“And,” Owen went on,
“Dad always said that people like us, we’re also part of nature. And if we choose to save another part of nature, isn’t that also nature taking its course? Deciding for ourselves… and not what higher powers dictate? Nature’s kinda a higher power, right?”
Nevren sighed.
“It shouldn’t be applied that way, but… I’m not going to convince you, and it’s not a serious strain on our resources. Go as you like, Owen.”
Owen gently held the Stantler, who exhaled over Owen’s shoulder.
“Don’t listen to him,” he murmured.
“You’re gonna be fine… in fact…” Owen perked up.
“I think I sense tracks nearby. She got lost, but the herd’s pretty close!”
And a moment later, another Stantler cried far in the distance, and then another. Remi’s star flashed and she bellowed out a call, startling Owen into wobbling away.
Owen nervously laughed,
“H-hey! Looks like your energy’s back!”
Remi was on her feet. She was winding up to jump away but hesitated to look at Owen again. She trotted close and pressed her forehead against his chest.
Nevren flicked his wrist, Teleporting a notepad into his hands as he wrote a few things down.
“Fascinating,” he murmured.
“Now, I suppose that will be all for this excursion, Owen. Perhaps we should return home.”
“Yeah…” Owen scratched his cheek. Gently, he ran his claws through her fur.
Owen paused, transfixed until Remi stepped back and galloped away.
The star’s luminosity returned to normal. Owen, watching from the Worldcore, noticed little sparkles falling from his face and sniffed. “Oh—” he mumbled.
Are you okay, Owen?
“Uh—yeah. Sorry.” Owen wiped his face again. “Anyway… um… we’ll just watch,” he said. “Watch and… and wait.”
Silence, for a time. Then,
The mind forgets, but the spirit remembers the broad strokes. I think that’s what happened there, Owen. Perhaps… you were drawn to each other this one time. And it may happen again.
“…Yeah. Sorry, I just… wasn’t expecting any of that.” He sank into the Worldcore again, enjoying its comforting darkness. His flame illuminated so little of it. “I’m going to rest a while…”
Good night, Owen.
<><><>
Year 1520
Today, Owen cried in “Nate’s” arms. It happened now and then over the years, but this one felt worse.
In just one year, he’d witnessed misfortunes happen to all three fragments of Remi. Yes, the feral one was just a routine illness that finally claimed her, but the others… It was too much.
The ten-eyed, red-flamed Charmander gently patted Owen on the back, murmuring quiet assurances that everything would be okay.
“It’s going to be okay,” Nate said. “It’s just a small setback. Plenty of time to recover before the timer ticks down. We’re only a little past halfway. So much can change in those centuries.”
Owen took a long, slow breath. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah… It’s just, a lot suddenly happened right this year. Why? Is it… is it coincidence? Can’t be, but the stars didn’t show me anything…”
Nate shook his head. “I’m not sure, either,” he said. “But I think once one person makes a move, a lot of other plans start falling into place, too. It was a second war, all in just this short time…”
The ten-eyed Charmander gestured to the stars, expanding a few to make displays of a few of the chaotic events. A Goodra, son of Madeline, acquired the Ghost Orb that had been abandoned. The same Ghost Orb that connected to the Reverse World—and, therefore, the place they assumed many tainted spirits had been placed.
There had been some sort of battle. The loser was pulled into the Reverse World; Owen had no idea if they were friends or foes, but with how everyone claiming victory was someone Owen liked… it must have been a great enemy.
But not without immense sacrifice along that path.
Mispy and Nevren had a close encounter with that Goodra. And while nobody knew the full extent of what he held, Nevren would be observing him closely. Growing nervous, Eon had accelerated the mutant experiments and the efforts in “fusion” to ascend a mortal past a god’s strength. And that ended up breaking the minds of Owen and his friends irreparably.
Another fated encounter between Owen and Remi happened—but this time, with a different fragment. Without anyone’s notice, another reincarnation had been cycling through the Aura Sea—the new afterlife that Star and Barky made after the old one—presumably—vanished. And that new life… attached to a Guardian.
And Owen killed her without recognition, his mutant body warping his soul. Perhaps when it was wiped clean of any ancestry, that connection to Remi had also been destroyed. Now, Owen suspected that only he, in the Worldcore, retained that connection.
Not long after, someone was doing… experiments with Remi. Owen couldn’t remember the details anymore. But it was to create something from her light and that person’s darkness. That cascaded into a serious clash between that person and Eon’s group, the Hunters, and… the death of the mutant, Owen. It was a tragedy, in a way: Rhys had planned to take Owen out of there after the Grass Guardian incident, only for Alexander to injure Rhys and kill Owen. Nevren had never looked so upset.
And now they couldn’t even remember what caused it. Owen dreaded what false memories, conjured by their physical minds, would fill in the gaps.
“It looks like all the Guardians are scattering again,” Nate said. “That—hm…”
He drifted through the dark and pushed a star to Owen. “Wait, Owen. I found something interesting in this one.”
Owen tilted his head and peered inside.
“Oh… don’t worry about that. I think I can see you now… but I’m fading fast.”
Owen’s heart skipped a beat. It was distorted, but that voice… “Remi!”
The one that had been… taken by someone. By that forgotten person.
“What?” whispered a Hydreigon next to the speaker. Based on the surrounding, lava-filled environment, this seemed to be the Fire Orb’s interior.
“Mother, what happened to you?”
“Nate,” Owen said. “We can’t usually see inside an Orb Realm. Why is this happening?”
“…Oh, goodness,” Nate whispered. “Look!”
And hiding behind a rock, trembling with fear… was Owen. Dead—the mutant killed in the fight.
That was why. He had direct access…
He returned to the conversation.
“I’ll take care of Owen,” a Gardevoir with blue hair said.
“But why?”
“He’s going to be needed for the world later,” Remi replied. “The person I’m trying to stop… I know he’ll try to return. And Owen’s the only one left who can do it.”
“Who is this evil person?” asked a Dusknoir nearby—Owen recognized him. Hecto.
“Sorry… I don’t know anymore. He was sealed away, and memories of him disappeared when that happened. Just like me. Ah… sorry… I…”
Owen pulled away, claw to his chin. “Remi…”
“That confirms it,” Nate said, nodding with all eyes closed. “I trust Remi’s intuition. She’s been with this person for far longer; she must be thinking of a plan she’d overheard, or was unwillingly part of it.”
“Hmm…”
“We need to get ready for that. The Guardians will have to come together again to defeat this person. Let’s remember that.”
“Right.” Owen nodded, tuning back into the star.
“I feel like someone just exited this domain,” Gardevoir said.
Owen tilted his head. Why was he watching them so intently before, again…?
“You would naturally be very aware of such things,” Hecto said.
“Who left?”
“I don’t know. It’s like I had miscounted this whole time…”
Hecto turned his attention to his arm. Owen squinted, trying to get a look himself.
“Hm. There’s a message on my hand.”
“Oh, goodness! Are you injured?”
“It is not a bother. It says, ‘Remi.’”
Alex’s heart fluttered.
“Remi… Is that a name?” He held his chest.
“Why do I… feel…”
“…Remi,” Owen whispered. “She’s… somewhere else. And…”
“I can’t remember,” Nate said. “Gods, that Decree is so strong. For someone to have made it that way… we
definitely need to gather the Guardians. The Guardians, and Star and Barky. All the Hands together, if we can afford it.”
“But if the Reverse Realm is tied to the Ghost Orb, isn’t that already tainted?” Owen bit his cheek. “That’s a huge risk…”
Especially since the Ghost Orb’s holder was forming the dominant kingdom. If he expanded to all of Kilo, that could get ugly if that darkness spread to the other Guardians.
“Ngh…” Owen rubbed his head. “We’d need to time it to the timer. That’s five hundred years from now, but… when the timer goes away, everything will weaken, and we can start doing bigger things again. Step in to stop the darkness from spreading.”
Nate nodded eagerly. “Yes. But if the Guardians are thinking about drifting apart again for some reason… maybe to make sure
nobody can have that divine power… it’d be playing right into the Reverse’s hands!”
“Right… which means… we have to somehow stop them?”
“And that works right into
my plans for
you, Owen.” Nate grinned.
“Eh?”
“I think it’s about time you socialized.”
“S-socialized?” Owen repeated.
Nate gestured to the stars. “With that forgotten enemy gone, we have a surplus of energy. I can afford to spare a tiny amount for your mental health, Owen. You spent five hundred years cooped up in the Worldcore. Sure, you don’t have the same fatigue a mortal mind would have, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a few… windows, anyway?”
Owen hummed, unsure, and drifted to a few of the stars. He saw a forest of pastel colors through the eyes of a tiny, tiny Joltik. A Lopunny was resting in a sunny, arid field. A Torterra in a seemingly endless salt flat. And, of course, he saw the Gardevoir of Fire’s realm most clearly of all. Several other stars were inaccessible—notably, the ones strongly tied to Barky. Maybe that was a natural defense…
“I can only speak in their dreams, though,” Owen remembered aloud. “It won’t… mean anything.”
“Who’s to say?” Nate suggested. “The world is healing. And sure, maybe what Remi said is true, and that person will return. But if that’s the case… all the better to recover. Mentally, spiritually… I guess you can’t recover physically, um…”
The stars twinkled as if to invite Owen to peer into some of them. The little spirit closed his eyes.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Maybe it’ll help them, too.”
He picked one at random and happened to enter the Joltik’s dreams.
Shortly after, he elected never to go there again.
<><><>
Year 1998
To Owen’s surprise, it was quiet for many centuries. The world entered another era of peace. The son of Madeline, Goodra Anam, re-sealed the rips into the Reverse World that had been formed by old clashes of divine powers, turning them into “Dungeons” that kicked anyone out who got too close to the spirit realm.
Nate gathered a lot of his power from the residuals of Kilo—renamed after its old title was lost to the destruction of the Dark War. Some of it came from the sun, though Owen knew that wasn’t truly the sun. It was divine power that Barky, supposedly, had left behind, as this realm was too small to have a true solar system. The closest thing to ‘stars’ was right in the Worldcore for Owen to use.
Today, Owen was visiting the realm of a relatively new Guardian, a Milotic named Zena. She was a lonely Pokémon who readily shared her dreams with him, though she was rarely lucid.
The centuries had taught Owen how to navigate the dreams of other Pokémon with ease. He’d peer into their stars while asleep and slip into those little realms, projecting himself with little power.
When Owen visited today, Zena had been at the bottom of a dark, cold pit of the ocean, shivering and alone in a recurring nightmare. When Owen arrived, his first act was always to light that darkness and coax her into happier dreams. It took many visits to figure out what worked, and eventually, he found that tapping into her Milotic instincts worked the best. He’d ask, simply, for a performance. When that happened, everything in her world lit up.
Zena often swam in spirals around him with fine displays of bubbles and jets of water. They reminded him of the Worldcore’s stars, though with more upward force.
He could breathe underwater—which was strange and disorienting, but he got used to it—and he’d always clap and waggle his tail to applaud her performances. Then, as dreams always did, it would transition into another scene.
Today, it was her underground abode, in a Dungeon formed around her Orb’s power. Cold, lonely, and occupied only by her spirits that had largely become extensions of herself. Owen could only sympathize for her, listen to her problems, and hope
some of it carried into her waking world.
Often, the dreaming Pokémon spoke total gibberish, or, when they said something coherent, it had no relation to the next sentence. Navigating a conversation with a sleeping Pokémon was more like walking through a hall of mirrors.
“I heard the rain,” Zena said.
“Oh, the rain?” Owen echoed.
“Does it still rain?”
“It does.”
The Milotic stared at the ground and the stone. “Wet stones are like rain.”
“They are?”
“The stones are wet like rain.”
“You must like the rain.”
Zena stared directly into Owen’s eyes. He shrank back, dwarfed by her size.
Suddenly, Owen’s body melted, then evaporated, until he was just an orange cloud with eyes. His tail remained, flickering gently.
“I guess I’m rain now,” Owen conceded.
“Why do you visit all the time?” Zena asked.
That was… surprisingly lucid for once. “I want to keep you Guardians company,” Owen said, bobbing in the air. She had an expectant look. Concentrating, Owen acted like he was conjuring flames—and, to his surprise, it began to rain in the cave instead, making the glowing stones sparkle like the night sky. Transfixed by this, Zena stopped talking and watched them.
In that comforting silence, Owen sighed and considered all the other Guardians he could contact. Of them all, Zena tended to be the most lonely and receptive to Owen’s approach. She had so little else. He wished he could guide her to some other Guardian to socialize, but she was afraid, heeding the advice of Star… who sometimes had to coax her into staying away from Eon, who had been driven into hunting Guardians to get the mutant Owen back.
Such a mess. Owen had a feeling that was going to be the thing that broke the peace…
“I want to see them,” Zena said. “I want to see the stars again.”
“Go. See them,” Owen encouraged.
“I can’t. I can’t.”
The same cycle. It was hard to change someone from their dreams if they were afraid. Even if they wanted to change, fear held them back. Fear kept everything from moving onto that next step, for better or worse.
Just another century or two… then Owen could make more moves. Then, maybe, more would change.
Suddenly, the world dissolved around him and Owen plopped onto the wet stone as a Charmander. Zena was waking up, or maybe she was simply tired of meditating. It was hard to tell with Guardians.
With a sudden gasp, Owen returned to the Worldcore. Taking a minute to gather his bearings, Owen stretched and said, “Zena’s the same as always.”
No reply.
“…Nate?” Owen called.
You’re going to want to see this.
Owen tilted his head and drifted to the star Nate had brightened. He peered inside…
But it was dark, save for a sliver of light from half-open eyes. He saw an orange flame. The flicker reminded him of a Charmander’s tail… Was he looking through his other self’s eyes?
Then, he heard his own voice, but with a different cadence
. “How are you supposed to open this thing?!”
Eon. It must have been Eon, transformed into his body… carrying his other self? What happened?
There was an incident with the Electric Guardian. His spite for Star had reached… devastating levels. And… Owen, Remi took the Orb when he perished.
“She WHAT?!” Owen blurted, pulling away from his star. “Remi? She’s… a Zoroark right now, right? But why was she—how did—”
She always had a strong spirit. I think Ra was drawn to that, and gave his Orb to her to spite Star. This… complicates a lot of things.
A flash of red in the Worldcore congealed into Nate’s ten-eyed form. He landed with grace and offered another star to Owen for him to see.
Remi—now a Zoroark—was trying and failing to bring down her frizzing mane from all the static electricity.
“Great,” Owen mumbled.
O Holy Creator Mew. I call upon you to hear my prayer.
Owen flinched. That… was the sound of a prayer passing through. It sounded like Eon.
A few days ago, Owen failed to become a Heart again. Didn’t pass Anam’s final check. Flying colors with the practical exam… yet never past Anam himself. Always the same story, year after year. No wonder he took on this horrible mission, just to prove that he could do a Heart’s job.
Is that your plan? When Anam deems Owen worthy of becoming a Heart, he’s ready for the Orb? And do you think he’ll be ready for what comes next, too?
“He sounds pretty fired up,” Nate said nervously, poking his claws together.
“No, no, not yet…” Owen winced. “We’re so close. I wonder if…”
“He might feel it, too,” Nate said. “Out of everyone, I remember Eon was tied the strongest to this clock. I can’t remember
why, or
what he was, but…”
“But whatever it is, he must know, down in his spirit, that time is running out. But… Eon, don’t… do this…!” Owen winced.
Star… if we find an Orb first, we’ll figure out how to take the rest. And your defenses won’t be enough once we have the power of one Orb. When that happens… you better be ready. Because I’m done
waiting.
Owen pushed the star away. He’d heard enough. Nate sat in silence, pensive.
“Is it all going to fall apart again, right at the last moment?” Nate whispered. “Maybe… maybe we waited too long.”
Owen had watched the world grow and change. Heal from what he thought would have been a mortal injury. And, yes, while that history was lost and the world had been knocked back several centuries of advancement… it was catching up. Life marched on. Not the same, but marched.
And if things were different in the lead-up, maybe things would be different in the outcome, too.
“Does it matter?” Owen finally said. “We… have to try anyway. I have an idea.” He reached into the stars. “We already did a lot of prep. We just need to move a few things around and trigger them with more… careful timing. First thing… the Guardians can’t stay isolated anymore. Whether Eon or someone from Kilo Village gets it, that doesn’t matter. But we need to get other-me awakened.”
“In such a short time?” Nate asked. “Well, maybe if we try to channel some power into him…”
Owen closed his eyes. “Once he gets all his memories back, that
should reawaken his Radiance and Shadows, too. Put those together and he’ll hopefully gather enough power to stop whatever’s coming. We know that these blights have
something to do with… one or both of those divine forces. Mastery over both is crucial. Once that seal weakens, maybe
we can remember, too.”
“What about the Guardians?”
“We need to gather them. I’m familiar with most of them in their dreams—maybe… their spirits will remember that. They might join other me pretty readily if they’re more discoverable.”
“More discoverable… That’s risky, Owen. Anyone could find them.”
“I know. But that’s better than isolation. The more power, the more they can band together against the Reverse World’s threat. Hmm…”
“Even if they die to Eon?” Nate asked.
“Yes.” Owen looked at Nate, more serious this time. “You know as well as I do that they aren’t happy like this. Those Dungeons are a prison and they’ve… outlasted how long they should have lived anyway. It’s time to move the world forward.”
Nate nodded uncomfortably. “…You asked them already, didn’t you? In their dreams?”
Owen nodded with a grave expression. “The more lucid they were, the more willing they seemed, too. Forrest, especially.”
“Forrest? The Torterra?”
Owen nodded. “He said he wanted to help if he could, but from the other side. He might accept a death just to do that.”
“Use his death strategically… Hm.” Nate nodded. “What did he want to do?”
“Forrest thinks there might be a key to all of this hidden across the aura sea—the new afterlife when the old one vanished. He might want to find it.”
“Well… alright.” Nate nodded. “Whisper to people where you can. I’ll work on illuminating the Orb Dungeons. But once the Reverse World makes its move…”
“We use all of our power on whatever comes out.” Owen nodded. “That part of the plan hasn’t changed.”
“Light of Ruin…” Nate shuddered. “It’s a legendary power, you know. Other worlds used that sort of power to end wars, but the destruction… It was a divine energy that was converted to Fairy thanks to your, um… modifications. And it’s going to hurt us in the process.”
“As long as we’re the only ones hurt,” Owen said. “What do your spirits think?”
“Well, since they’re the ones who are helping to
power it…” Nate nodded. “We’re all resolved.”
Owen smiled and faced the Worldcore’s stars.
“Then, once again, Nate…”
He reached into the stars and lined them up.
“Let’s get to work.”
