Summary: A zoroark survives an attempt on her life. Only one ice dragon stands in the way of her revenge.
Content Warnings: Violence, cursing
It was the ice that called. For some time all she knew was its cold and the burning, a low, deep pain not of fire but of something festering within. The cold could not extinguish it, but it could numb, and for now that was all she had. She fled north, and north, following instinct alone, searching for somewhere free of pain. Inside the cave was ice, real ice in the dregs of summer, and she pressed herself against the dark slick surface, trying to smother her pain in its cold.
She did not question how ice would have come to be here, in thick crusts and hanging teeth, but had come back to herself enough that, when the ice moved, she did not immediately attack. It was cold here, blessedly cold, and the burning had collapsed to an ember, still stinging but dim enough that she could ignore it. She held still, and for a moment imagined the creature hadn't noticed her.
Then huge yellow eyes like headlamps turned on her, and she knew illusion could be no shield from this creature. "Stay back," she growled, leaning forward on claws she'd forgotten she had, present again in a body, if not one that felt her own. Looking up, and up, at the ice-crusted creature above her, she could both be grateful for her restraint and dismayed that she'd spoken at all. Cold rolled off the creature in waves, new ice accumulating beneath their ragged claws. She'd never felt such cold. Whoever this was, they were not to be trifled with. A person of great power, if not actually a great power themselves.
"What are you?" murmured the creature in a voice as deep and empty as the cave, its words plodding slow.
She bared her teeth. "Never seen a zoroark before?" And bit it off there, before she could add something more sarcastic. The fire within burned with the desire to lash out, to strike, but she held now to coldness, and said nothing more.
"Zoroark?"
"That's right. And what are you?"
The glaring yellow lights flicked on and off as the pokémon blinked, what was somehow a ponderous movement. "I am what was left behind."
"Oh, very helpful," she growled. Rude, reckless, but the heat within her was only growing, sparks pricking at her nerves. "Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Another slow blink, and a contemplative silence, and then the Pokémon said, “Some call me Kyurem. That is as good a name as any.”
"Never heard of you."
Kyurem seemed to consider this. "You may stay here if you wish," they concluded eventually.
She scoffed and lowered herself back to the ice, too exhausted to do much else. It came to her, briefly, as her thoughts dissolved into black, that it was odd she hadn't even thought to ask.
Shadows played over the icy walls, dark forms stretching tall, faces splitting into smiles that grew pointed teeth within. Claws clicked and manes whipped as they prowled the perimeter of the room. She bared her teeth back at them, the burning growing beneath her skin. Even shadowy, she knew their faces. She would find them, and the next time they met--the dark smiles opened into screams, oozing red and black, twisting and burning and--
"Are those your illusions?" asked a deep, sluggish voice.
The shadows vanished as though someone had switched on a light. "You can see those? But you can see me, can't you?" she asked, and then cursed the note of panic in her voice. Embarrassment brought burning up to the back of her throat. She was better than this, letting shock and anger unbalance her. Spewing illusion in all directions like some yearling kit.
The light flicked out as Kyurem slowly blinked. "I can see them. I can also see you. You burn bright enough to show through whatever pictures you make to hide you."
Wonderful. This fever--it flared again with her anger, pulsing like a second heart within her. She leaned forward, pressing her skull and then her entire side against the ice-covered wall, trying to take the cold into herself. She had to think. This had to be infection, didn't it? Curse Tobren thrice over. The thought of that traitor with blood-sticky claws made her head pound.
She'd kill Tobren. There could be no lesser punishment for trying to overthrow the matriarch. She would tear Tobren's heart out and eat it in front of her dying eyes. Next she would turn to Tobren's accomplices and--no, focus. Focus. She ground her face hard against the ice. Charging in would get her nowhere. She knew this. She was a wise leader, a level-headed leader. It was Tobren who gave in to anger, who would bring the Green Feather Skulk to ruin. That bitch, that backstabbing bitch. And her sniveling accomplices. It wouldn't do to forget them. She would make sure they witnessed Tobren's fate, and then--no.
This fever. She needed to address this fever before anything else. She was in no state to even contemplate revenge.
Kyurem watched her, expressionless--well, she thought expressionless. Who knew if dragons even felt emotion the same as everyone else? "Do you have healing herbs?" she asked. "Berries?"
"They grow out in the crater, by the water in the eastern corner," Kyurem said in their slow, considered tones. Each word brought with it a blast of frigid air, and she unconsciously leaned forward, luxuriating in the cold. "I fear that I could only bring them to you frozen. Plants wither in my presence."
She wanted to snap that she'd never asked them to go. She didn't need the dragon's help--nor was it wise to accept aid from a great power. Frozen berries sounded amazing, though. For a second she wavered, and in that time Kyurem shifted their great bulk, perhaps readying themself to leave. "I'll get them," she said, and stalked out into the night before she could make any change of mind.
The farther she strayed from the deep chill of the cave, the worse her infection burned. She almost wished to turn back and accept Kyurem's offer. But she was the matriarch of the Green Feather Skulk, and she had not fallen so far as that yet. The least worthy among her skulk had tried to assassinate her, and yet she had survived. All she had to do was keep surviving.
So she dug in the mud herself, pulling up the thick tubers with the curled leaves up top, good for healing of all sorts. She thrashed in bushes and spindly saplings, knocking down late-season berries. They were sour and shriveled, but she didn't hesitate to gobble them down. She'd gone through a good dozen, at least, before an idea came to her. She hauled up more tubers, dripping and muddy, and gathered as many berries as she could hold. Back in the cave, she laid them out on the ice. It wasn't long before they were frozen, and if Kyurem had shifted a little closer to them, perhaps turned their head to breathe more in her direction, what of it? She'd asked for nothing.
She set upon the flash-frozen herbs with renewed gusto, and for a short time her fever was truly banked, her body chilled both inside and out. She felt ready at last to face what had happened to her--what she'd first noticed while out gathering but had tried to ignore.
She ran her claws through her thin fur, which had gone stark white--shock, she supposed. Here and there patches of hairless, gray, frostbitten skin. She probably shouldn't be surprised, given how cold it was in here, but she felt nothing, even when she scraped her claws against the frozen flesh. It was no good staying here, where she might freeze to death, but no good to leave, either, and be tormented by fever. As soon as the berries took effect, she'd be gone. For now the cold felt like the only thing keeping her sane.
Her mane had exploded from its clutch in wild white tangles, and for a moment her heart seized as she clawed through them. The Feather! If she'd lost it--but no, there, tangled in one snarled tail, there was a snatch of deep green. She teased it out gently and held it before her face, running a claw along its two-paw span to reassure herself it was real. The Green Feather. What marked her out as leader of her skulk, even now.
She had to return to them. Who knew what stories Tobren and her conspirators were telling? None of them could claim the matriarchy, not without the Green Feather, but there would be chaos and distress. She had to regain her strength and then return.
She soon gave up on gathering her mane back into something sensible. Perhaps later, when she was less tired, less aching with fever. For now she dragged out one messy lock and wove the Green Feather back into it, in and out in familiar rhythm. Each time she pulled the Feather through she named another punishment for those who had conspired against her, and ran out of Feather long before she ran out of ideas.
"Are those the only illusions you can make?"
"What?" she rasped, opening one gummy eye. She'd tried to sleep, but had only fallen into something like a fever-blurred fugue. And fever it was--it had come blazing back, though it was less now, she thought, than it had been before. Surely it was less. She was getting better. The berries had been old, the tubers weak, but she would get more. As many as it took.
Kyurem waved one comically tiny claw at the wall, where once again spectral conspirators stalked, wide grins stretched across their muzzles. "Can you make pictures of anything else?"
"Of course I can. I can make whatever I want," she growled.
"What about the sun?"
"The sun? What kind of illusion is that?" She put a claw to her head, flinching from imagined heat and light. "I don't even want to think about the sun right now."
"Water, then. The ocean."
She growled again. As though she needed to prove anything to anyone. But to wipe the watching shadows from the walls was almost difficult, for a moment, and suddenly she needed to prove it to herself most of all.
The... ocean. Water. Lots of it. All directions. At night the moon would sparkle from it, black rippled with bright as the waves rolled in. The skulk visited the ocean sometimes, wouldn't it? Of course. Now someone else would have to lead them there. As if those usurpers ever would, as if they understood even one iota of the responsibilities of a leader, as if they could ever rally the skulk behind them, get it moving in a river of dark fur and shining eyes.
The moonlight dissolved, the waves receding from dark-furred forms that prowled hungrily across the cavern walls. For a second she and Kyurem both watched them. "Well. You saw," she said gruffly.
"What about a city?"
"A city? A human city?" Her lips pulled up in a sneer. Certainly she knew those. Stone towers, stone walls, stone machines running down stone rivers. There was food, yes, as much for the taking as you were bold enough to steal, and medicine, and strange artifacts of every description. Kyurem watched the ghosts of towers rise, twinkling like cages of entrapped stars.
She had led the skulk to cities, too, when times were lean and their abundance called, or simply for the wonder, for the lights that shone even in the depths of winter night. There was danger in visiting human dwellings, and there was no guarantee of safe return, illusions or no. Who would protect the skulk now when they entered human lands? The usurpers couldn't. Wouldn't. They'd been too cowardly even to face her in a straight fight. How could they hope to defend a zoroark cornered by one of the beast humans with their monsters trained to maim?
"You see? I make whatever I like," she said. Shadowy fox-shapes flitted through the alleyways of her conjured city.
"I do," Kyurem said. They stared into the city like it held the answer to some question they'd been pondering. Just how long were they expecting her to sit there and make pretty pictures for them? It was flattering, seeing someone so absorbed in her work, but her patience had deserted her recently. The feverish heat inside her wanted her to get up, to leave, to plunge back into the world outside this cave instead of projecting it onto the walls.
"What's your deal? Haven't you seen a city before?" she asked when Kyurem didn't move for long seconds.
"I have, but it's been quite some time."
"Oh? I got the impression that all you did was sit around and make ice all day." Impertinent. She needed to find more medicine. She was losing her head again.
"Once, I was one. A being of fire and lightning," Kyurem said wistfully. The yellow headlamp beams of their eyes were trained on her illusion, on its fox shadows that stubbornly refused to dissipate before the light. Kyurem didn't seem to see them. "I flew where I pleased, and I was welcome wherever I passed. None could best me in battle. Even the winds and the dust bowed down to me. But I was fond of humans, and in time I grew close to two young ones, great heroes among their kind."
She made a rude noise without thinking about it, then winced. Kyurem went on as though they didn't notice, voice slow but steady, echoing hollowly around the cave. "Their love for one another was great, as was mine for both of them. But they came to a disagreement, a horrible one, and neither could sway the other. My thoughts, too, were divided, and I could not sway myself. How could I ever choose between them? In time the dissonance became so great that I was split, the fire in me going one way, the lightning in another. From one I became three. Two went then with the human children, to guide them and to see their causes fulfilled. I am what was left behind. No fire now. No lightning. Only this ice you see around you."
"That..." she began, but she couldn't finish. She couldn't tell a great power, "That's stupid." She supposed that these were the sorts of things that happened to great powers, after all. Apparently things got real metaphorical when you were the living embodiment of an abstract concept. "So what now?"
"So now I wait. I wait for my lost pieces to return and teach me all they've learned about the world."
"How long have you been waiting?"
Kyurem sighed out a great plume of cold, head tipping back to shine their eye-lights up towards the stars winking through the cave's cracked roof. "I don't know. Since before the desert stretched below the stars."
She scoffed and left them there to go dig for roots, taking her fox-infested city with her.
It wasn't clear to her whether she'd actually slept or only faded out in fever. It had been days. More than days? She hadn't been tracking time as closely as she ought.
The infection hadn't receded, and by now she was truly worried. She gathered what medicine she could, traveling farther and farther out into the woods to seek it, but she hardly felt better than when she'd first arrived here. The withered stock she was finding wasn't strong enough to help. She would need to seek out human medicine. They could heal anything in their glowing dens, but at what cost?
She spent far too long mulling it over, pacing the confines of Kyurem's ice, constantly losing the thread in fantasies of revenge. She couldn't afford to give up her freedom, not even for her life. There was nothing left for her if she couldn't return to her skulk. In her current state, capture was a real possibility. But what other option did she have?
Kyurem never left the cave. They seemed content to sit back on their haunches for hours, staring at nothing. Thinking. Sometimes they requested an illusion, and she grumbled, but she usually complied. Sometimes, she supposed, it was a blessing to retreat from the fragments of the life before her and imagine for the dragon a forest or a flower.
At last she could put it off no longer and approached them. They didn't invite her to draw near, but neither did they tell her to leave.
"I'm going to human lands," she said. "Will you come with me? I need their medicine, but I'm weak. I would welcome help to keep the humans at bay."
"I can't."
She clenched her teeth. "Why not?"
"Nothing can draw close to me and live. I will not bring death to the innocents who live without."
"Idiot. I'm alive."
But Kyurem made no reply. Probably one of those great power things, like they literally couldn't leave for whatever arbitrary reason, and that was the fairytale they'd come up with to explain it.
Awful heat backed up her throat again. She didn't care. "So what are you going to do while I'm gone, then? Sit in your damn cave and wait and look at the stars or something?"
"I like to watch the stars," Kyurem said in their deep, morose voice. "They remind me of home."
"They are never coming back!" she snarled. "Your pieces or whatever they are! They aren't! Either go out there and find them yourself, or give up on it! Go out and live your own damn life!"
"One did come back, not so long ago. When we were reunited, they showed me all the wonderful things they'd seen. I learned of the people they'd met, the world they've known--"
"And then they left again!" she yelled. "Didn't they! They flew off again and left you in your stupid cave!"
Kyurem said nothing. "They're never coming back! Go off and see your own fucking beaches if that's what you want!"
She turned and stalked away, seething with resentment. What was left behind indeed. No doubt those other parts of themself, if they actually existed, were glad to be rid of them.
A gentle snow was falling outside the cave. Good. The colder the better. She stopped and breathed in sharp, icy air, then bent and scraped up the thin layer of white gathering on the rocks. She gulped it down, one meager handful and then another. She had a long way to go, and the fire inside her threatened to consume her as it was. She couldn't rely on Kyurem's cold to keep the fever at bay.
She at least knew the way to a human city; its light bled over the stars, so as long as night lasted she could follow its trace. She didn't want to think about what would happen if the journey lasted longer than the dark.
It came to her that the crunching of the snow between her teeth was matched by the same out in the forest. Something moving through the flurry. Multiple somethings. Her ears lay back flat. Of course someone else would appear in this remote place just when she needed to make her way out, as quickly and straightforwardly as possible. She stepped back under the cave's overhang, sniffing the air.
The crunches drew nearer, irregular and shambling. At least two creatures, she was sure, and human or pokémon. Too big to be anything else. One of them gave a yip, a hunting signal, and there was no moment of recognition. All she was aware of, from that point on, was that Tobren was here, and that she was moving to meet her.
No effort to be silent. All three zoroark--she knew them, these betrayers--turned in her direction as she bore down. Their illusions twisted and wormed through the air around them, an instinctive attempt to hide, but though she didn't have Kyurem's heat-seeking eyes, no zoroark could fool another that way.
They didn't seem to realize she could see them, not at first. "What the hell is--" one began. Belast, a cousin of Tobren. She knew him, of course, as she knew every member of her skulk. Had cared for them, had fought for them, had watched over them when their illusions were weak. They'd shown her how grateful they were for that. She'd make for Belast next.
But it was Tobren she wanted now, and Tobren who realized, with moments to spare, that she knew exactly where her target was. Tobren shifted, and her swing barely grazed the other zoroark's cheek, but she was burning hot, hot, hot with fever, fever that rolled off her in dark purple waves, and Tobren cried out as they burned her.
She'd been surprised how little she felt her illness; she was burning up but felt better than she had in a long time, the thrill of revenge carrying her on. But a burst of darkness from the third zoroark showed her how weak she'd truly become. She keened in sudden pain, momentarily blinded by a Night Daze that seared worse than any she'd ever faced. She was down in the snow, and then Tobren fell on her, claws raking.
And striking nothing. She actually did laugh at the dismayed look on Tobren's muzzle. Imagine having your enemy lying helpless at your feet, and missing.
She struck Tobren in the face with a burst of darkness, then leapt up and grabbed her while she staggered. The snowstorm intensified while they scuffled, cutting off Tobren's companions and leaving the two of them in their own private struggle.
She stretched forward and by luck caught Tobren's ear between her teeth, and the salt-metal taste of blood in her mouth and Tobren's scream as she wrenched her head sideways were even sweeter than she'd imagined they could be.
Somehow, though, the cold was winning out against the furnace heat of her excitement. She tried to step forward, to press her advantage, but her foot wouldn't rise. Ice, it was ice crawling up her legs, and blizzard-winds roaring through the air around her. Tobren was ripped away from her, stumbling and falling in the sudden storm winds. She could only watch, pinioned by frost, as Tobren's dark shape rose to all fours and ran off through the blowing snow. Two more indistinct shadows followed.
She roared and tore at her frozen prison, the ice that had grown up to her chest, shadows streaming away from her and lashing uselessly after the retreating zoroark. They were here, they were following her, they'd followed her even to this lonely place, looking to finish the job.
They'd come for the Feather, hadn't they? Of course. What would killing her accomplish if Tobren couldn't step into her role? For that, they needed the Green Feather, and they'd failed to secure it the same as they'd failed to kill her.
Well, good. Good that they'd been so foolish as to pursue her here. It saved her needing to track them down later. Now, she could kill them. Now, she could end this. She twisted and struggled and smashed the ice as fast as she could, straining towards where the zoroark had disappeared.
Twin beams of light shone out through the whirling snow. Heavy footsteps came up beside her. As the gusting storm died away she finally managed to tear herself free of the ice, landing in an unceremonious sprawl. "What was that for?" she snarled at Kyurem, teeth bared.
"They were in danger," the dragon said in their deep, hollow voice. "The cold would have killed them. I scared them off."
"If the cold would have killed them, good!" The taste of Tobren's blood still lingered on her tongue, and every fiber of her wanted to pursue, to tear out that traitor's throat. "What about me? Why did you attack me?"
"They were in danger," Kyurem repeated. "You would have killed them. I held you until they ran off."
"Damn straight I would have killed them! What gives you the right to put yourself in the middle of this? They tried to kill me! All I'm doing is returning that to sender!"
"I do not wish to harbor violence."
She screeched in frustration, dragging her claws through the wild tangle of her mane. "And with all that nothing you do, the one time you shift yourself to actually leave your godforsaken cave, it's to get in my way!" She tried to rise, but the ice grew over her again, shackling her legs to the ground. "Let me go! Bastard!"
"Not until the zoroark are free of danger."
"They'll never be free of danger so long as I'm alive! Let me go!" She threw shadows in Kyurem's face--unwise, she thought distantly, dreadfully unwise--but the dragon didn't flinch, and the ice only spread farther.
Kyurem kept standing there, unmoved, while she raged and howled and threw everything she had at her bonds. Ice shattered and regrew. She cut herself on its broken edges. The air filled with shadows and darkness and still Kyurem did nothing, and the ice only advanced.
Finally she fell back panting, defeated. For now. With her frustration exhausted, she was almost feeling good. Elated. The betrayers had fled, and here she remained.
"Ha!" She shook with the adrenaline of it, the searing heat that told her she was alive, alive, alive, again. They'd tried to kill her again, and still she was alive. "Scum! Worthless, cowering kits! Couldn't even finish off a sick old fox!"
She'd have to be careful about her revenge. Quick. Kyurem would be able to find her through any illusion, and apparently it was willing to lumber out into the forest if it meant protecting a pack of would-be murderers. As far as she could tell, they never slept.
But the traitors did. Her white fur--their fault--would hide her against the snow. She'd fall on them while they slumbered, kill them before they could rouse.
Or take it slower. Start with one. Let the other two marinate in their fear. She'd let them see her, just glimpses between the trees. She'd take a second eventually, of course. She didn't want to draw this out so long. Let Tobren be the last. Let Tobren wait on her pleasure for death, knowing what happened to her insubordinates. Let her dread. Let her fear in a way that she herself never had, never expecting Tobren's claws in her back. If Tobren ran like the coward she was, well. There was a certain satisfaction in being proven right. She'd ensure the flight was short.
"What will you do now?" Kyurem asked at length.
"What?" She shook her head, clearing visions of whimpering, pleading zoroark. "What do you mean, what will I do now? I'm going to kill them, of course."
"Why?"
"Why? Why? They tried to kill me! Twice!! Did you miss that?"
"You would be safe here, so long as you did not seek them out. The ice would protect you."
Perhaps that made sense to a great power whose aspect was sitting on their ass. "I'm not going to spend my life crouching in some hole in the ground, waiting for them to go away. My skulk needs a leader. If I don't get rid of those three, they'll see to it it's one of them. I need to make it home. And I need to make sure they never will."
Kyurem stood where they were, blowing out clouds of cold. The same white clouds that rose from her muzzle were hot, practically steaming in the frigid air. The forest around them was sheeted with ice, trees aglitter in the starlight. "What do you intend to do after?" Kyurem asked.
"After? What kind of question is that?" She'd never bothered to consider it. It was obvious, wasn't it? Go back to her old life, the one before the assassination attempt.
"You've changed, haven't you?" Kyurem asked. "Do you believe your people will accept you as their leader once again?"
"I haven't changed, it's this damn fever messing with my head. The skulk will take me back. I still have the Green Feather." Reflexively she reached out to check, and yes, it was still there, twined through her bristling mane.
"Is that enough?"
"Yes, that's enough," she snapped. "What are you getting at? You have something to say to me? Spit it out already!"
“Zoroark, why have you not told me your name?”
"My name?" She almost laughed. "Not important. My name is--"
But there she paused, breath dead over her tongue. Her claws turned up, splayed in a gesture of exasperation. Empty.
No name. She couldn't remember--matriarch of the skulk, her skulk, the Green Feather Skulk. What was her name? She knew their names, Tobren and Belast and Nim, knew their faces better than her own, the betrayers, the ones who would make her skulk their own. She remembered the cowardly moment, the searing stab of claws entering her body, the fire growing and growing as she turned to recognize--
Who else? She struggled to remember another name, another face. Who else was part of the Green Feather Skulk? It was large... grand... Built it herself. How many? Who else? There had to be someone else. Anyone else. Even herself. What was her name?
She looked down at her pale-furred arms, the frostbitten sores that had not closed. She felt nothing. Nothing but the cold without and the fire within, waves of pain traveling the path Tobren's claws had cleaved, still burning with the vileness of betrayal. And now, just now, when Tobren tried to cut her again, the zoroark's claws hadn't missed, had they? They'd gone right through. Found no resistance.
"I’m dead."
Kyurem said nothing. There was nothing more to say.
"I'm dead. All this time I've been..." There had been no assassination attempt. There had been an assassination. "You knew all along, didn't you?"
"Yes. None can brave my cold and live." Kyurem stretched their neck up as if to peer over the trees. "Let us return to the cave. Dawn will soon arrive."
She let Kyurem lead her away, setting one numb foot in front of the other. It all began to make sense. The fever that would never recede, the hatred and bitterness--that was all that remained of her. I am what was left behind. Whoever she'd been, leader of the Green Feather Skulk, was gone.
Hate hard enough and you could return from the dead, apparently. That was nearly as stupid as Kyurem's story about getting split into three.
Kyurem ducked back through the cave's low entrance, shattering a line of icicles that had grown up in their absence. So little time, and the cave had begun to thaw; now everything would ice over again, returned to frozen suspension.
She barely noticed the glow of impending sunrise behind her as she followed Kyurem into the cave. There was nothing for it but to fade for a while and hope her thoughts gave her some rest. She wouldn't sleep. She hadn't slept at all since she'd come here.
"Why don't you show me a pond?" Kyurem asked. "The kind with water lilies on it. Trees around it, trees with drooping leaves. Do you know such a place?"
She didn't rise from her rough scratch on the icy floor. She'd been watching her betrayers' illusions spread themselves along the wall, leaning together to snicker behind bloodied claws. "Getting rather specific with our requests, aren't we?" she asked wearily.
"I knew such a place, once. The twin heroes often met in a garden with a beautiful pond. It was one of their favorite places in their younger days."
She sighed and rubbed her face with a freezing-cold paw. The illusory zoroark faded with reluctance, their shadows spreading out to form a clear night, the moon reflected in pond waters, white lily-flowers glowing with its light. Moments later zoroark reappeared, pacing the garden pathways, never in focus but always there, watching.
"You were right to wonder whether I could make any illusion I wanted. Who knows how long I'll be able to make something like this, before I forget how to imagine this sort of thing, too?"
"Can you show me your people?" Kyurem asked. "Anyone you can remember, besides those three?"
She tried. She tried with every fiber of her being to remember, to pull illusion from memory. The zoroark ringing her sneered, white teeth gleaming back at her from every reflective surface. There was nothing. No one else.
"They took everything from me. My life. All the people who made it worthwhile. And they left me obsessed." She shifted to better face Kyurem but did not rise. "There's only one way to end this. I have to kill them."
Kyurem extended one skeletal arm. "In an ideal world, everyone would be prepared to change for the better. People would learn from their mistakes and grow into something new. They would repent and begin again."
They stretched the other arm out in the opposite direction. "But in truth, not everyone can or will change. There are some who will inflict misery every day of their lives. Even if they wish it otherwise, they may never see another way."
"Ha! There it is." Her muzzle twisted into a cruel smile.
"The trick is not to misjudge a person. In either direction." Kyurem pinned her in the spotlight of their gaze. "Do you think you know so well that there can be no path for these three save death?"
Yes yes yes yes, the hot fury at the heart of her whispered. She swallowed it down, then said, gruffly, "I guess not." But surely they deserved pain. They deserved to pay in some way for what they'd done to her and her skulk. "But I have to be sure they don't return. I can't have Tobren do to the next matriarch what she did to me. You understand that, don't you? What am I supposed to do?"
She realized her mistake in the millisecond before Kyurem began to speak. "The ice will--"
"Yes, yes, the ice will protect me. I can't stay here. I..." She trailed off. If not here, then where would she go?
The skulk needed a leader. Not her, she had to admit with a stab of resentment so fierce it left her dizzy. She could never be the leader she once was, with no thoughts but for revenge. Whether she killed the usurpers or not, she had to ensure that the skulk had someone to guide it. But what good would it do to elect another if Tobren simply killed them, too?
That was why the traitors had to die. Not for her, but for whoever came after.
And once she killed them... That would be the end of it, wouldn't it? There wasn't much left of her but bloodthirst anymore. Without it she would surely fade. But before that--before--she had to see to her clan. Letting go wasn't an option; if she gave up her grudge, she'd be gone, and Tobren would roam free. And she couldn't linger forever, hiding with Kyurem in endless resentment. The only way to move was forward.
"If you won't let me kill those three, will you at least distract them? Hold them with your ice?" she asked.
"Not forever," Kyurem said. "But for a while, yes. This I can do for you."
"Good," she said. "I need to return to my skulk and find a successor. I don't remember who would be any good at leading, but I have the Green Feather. I can give it to whoever seems most trustworthy, and they can work it out from there. And then... then I can stay. And defend them. If those three ever think to show their snouts around the skulk again, then I'll kill them. That seems fair, doesn't it?"
Kyurem was silent for a time, but finally they said, "What you do in your own lands is not something I can change." The politest condemnation, she supposed. That was probably the best she could ask for.
Now for the hard part. "There's a problem. I've been staying here because of the cold. It helps me think. Whenever I leave it's like my brain overheats. I can't concentrate on anything but revenge. I'm afraid that if I even make it back to the skulk, I won't remember what I need to do. I'll just turn around and set out to murder Tobren again, and whatever happens, happens." Kyurem had no comment. Of course. They were going to make her ask. "I was wondering if you would come with me. At least long enough for me to return the Green Feather to the skulk."
"I can't. I must wait here."
She bared her teeth but couldn't hold back the surge of bitterness that erupted into words. "You left your cave just now, didn't you? And what do you know, the world didn't end. I'm not asking you to be gone long. Two days, maybe three."
"It was nice," Kyurem said wistfully, "to see the full sweep of the stars again. But I can't. The farther I go from this place, the more disruptive my power becomes. I do not wish to bring death. My place is here, waiting."
"Always waiting," she said. "Do you think those other pieces of you care that you're waiting? Do you think they value your devotion?"
"It does not matter whether they think of me. It does not matter whether they intend to return. My aspect is balance." The dragon raised their claws once again, holding them up at equal height. "Balance is static. It is a set point. What is in balance is waiting."
"Oh?" she growled. "Heat balances cold, right? If your other pieces are out there doing things, shouldn't you be, too? If you're hiding away from the world, there's no one to balance them." She fixed Kyurem with her fiercest stare. "Is this really about the ice? Or are you just afraid to leave after all this time?"
Kyurem's glowing eyes pinned her in place. Drifts of cold air spilled from their mouth to bathe the rock below. For a second she imagined they might thunder, or let off a wave of ice so frigid it would snuff her at last, but when they spoke it was in the same even tone as always. "Inaction balances action. It is my pieces' role to grow and change. It is my role to stay the same."
"I see," she choked out. And she did, unfortunately. There was nothing she could do to sway a great power.
They both sat a while, lost in their own thoughts. Her illusions surrounded them, leering and laughing, eternally pacing just out of reach. Finally Kyurem bowed their head, gangly neck all extended, chin scraping against the icy cave floor. Their spindly arms reached up, up, claws straining to grasp the icy ridge down the back of their neck. After a brief struggle, they snapped off a piece and held it out to her. "You may take this. It will keep you cold while you return to your people."
She took it, and it was cold even against the cold air of the cave, so cold it stuck to her skin and peeled up patches of fur when she shifted it. "How long before it melts?" she asked.
"It won't melt until I do. That should give you plenty of time."
"Ha! I'll bet." She held the shard uneasily. She couldn't carry it the whole way, held between her claws, and she had nothing to store it in. Bury it in her mane with the Feather? But when she tried, the fur flash-froze, then shattered.
There was something she could try, perhaps. The thought made her queasy in an almost giddy way. She pressed the shard experimentally against her arm, and it sank through--not painlessly, but sink it did. That was convenient.
She felt around behind her at the place Tobren stabbed her, the injury that throbbed even now with angry heat. She had to hesitate, even determined as she was, but then she drove the shard home in one forceful motion, tracing the same path the assassin's claws had taken not so long ago.
The ice held, and her fever withered before it, a wonderful chill replacing the seething bitterness that had gnawed at her mind. She stretched unconsciously, feeling the cold shift and twist inside her but not recede. Then she glanced up at Kyurem, who after all had simply been standing there, watching the entire proceedings. "Thank you. This feels much better."
"I'm glad," Kyurem said in their slow, ponderous voice. There was a long pause. "I suppose you will be leaving now."
"Yeah. I guess." The night wasn't getting any younger, and she'd been away from home so long already. Who knew what she'd be returning to?
It felt empty to simply walk away, but there wasn't anything more to do. Nothing to gather, no companions to rally. It would be her, alone, for as long as the dark held out. Outside, the snow fell gently. The footprints she and Kyurem had left were long gone. She stood and looked out, but that couldn't be all. She had to say something.
"Thanks. Again," was all she could come up with. It was a beginning, though, and then the rest came easier. "I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't found you. Or to my skulk. You've helped me much more than I deserved." A head full of vengeance hadn't made her the most pleasant company, she was sure. "And, look, I was angry when I said it, but I meant it, all right? You shouldn't have to live like this. Go find your other pieces... or give up on them. Live life for yourself."
It took Kyurem several seconds to answer. Nothing new there. "It has been some time since I've thought so much about the outside," they said. "Perhaps we shall meet again."
Good enough, she supposed. Nothing better. She nodded once. "Goodbye."
Then she set out. Slowly at first, stalking through the rising snow. But the cold was invigorating. She was lighter than air, finally stretching towards a future that made sense. She felt good, not sick at all. And she began to run, dropping to all fours and tearing through the snow.
Kyurem didn't want her to hurt the traitors. Fine. But no one said she couldn't scare them a little. She howled, loud and reckless, an eerie sound that rang out clear through the crooked trees. She crashed through snowdrifts in a whirl of ice and darkness, daring anyone to challenge her, to try and delay her on her way. She came around the edge of the pond where she'd dug up useless herbs and saw again the cave. Not looking back--never looking back. And there was Kyurem, at least two steps beyond the entrance, looking up at the stars.
Content Warnings: Violence, cursing
What Was Left Behind
It was the ice that called. For some time all she knew was its cold and the burning, a low, deep pain not of fire but of something festering within. The cold could not extinguish it, but it could numb, and for now that was all she had. She fled north, and north, following instinct alone, searching for somewhere free of pain. Inside the cave was ice, real ice in the dregs of summer, and she pressed herself against the dark slick surface, trying to smother her pain in its cold.
She did not question how ice would have come to be here, in thick crusts and hanging teeth, but had come back to herself enough that, when the ice moved, she did not immediately attack. It was cold here, blessedly cold, and the burning had collapsed to an ember, still stinging but dim enough that she could ignore it. She held still, and for a moment imagined the creature hadn't noticed her.
Then huge yellow eyes like headlamps turned on her, and she knew illusion could be no shield from this creature. "Stay back," she growled, leaning forward on claws she'd forgotten she had, present again in a body, if not one that felt her own. Looking up, and up, at the ice-crusted creature above her, she could both be grateful for her restraint and dismayed that she'd spoken at all. Cold rolled off the creature in waves, new ice accumulating beneath their ragged claws. She'd never felt such cold. Whoever this was, they were not to be trifled with. A person of great power, if not actually a great power themselves.
"What are you?" murmured the creature in a voice as deep and empty as the cave, its words plodding slow.
She bared her teeth. "Never seen a zoroark before?" And bit it off there, before she could add something more sarcastic. The fire within burned with the desire to lash out, to strike, but she held now to coldness, and said nothing more.
"Zoroark?"
"That's right. And what are you?"
The glaring yellow lights flicked on and off as the pokémon blinked, what was somehow a ponderous movement. "I am what was left behind."
"Oh, very helpful," she growled. Rude, reckless, but the heat within her was only growing, sparks pricking at her nerves. "Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Another slow blink, and a contemplative silence, and then the Pokémon said, “Some call me Kyurem. That is as good a name as any.”
"Never heard of you."
Kyurem seemed to consider this. "You may stay here if you wish," they concluded eventually.
She scoffed and lowered herself back to the ice, too exhausted to do much else. It came to her, briefly, as her thoughts dissolved into black, that it was odd she hadn't even thought to ask.
--
Shadows played over the icy walls, dark forms stretching tall, faces splitting into smiles that grew pointed teeth within. Claws clicked and manes whipped as they prowled the perimeter of the room. She bared her teeth back at them, the burning growing beneath her skin. Even shadowy, she knew their faces. She would find them, and the next time they met--the dark smiles opened into screams, oozing red and black, twisting and burning and--
"Are those your illusions?" asked a deep, sluggish voice.
The shadows vanished as though someone had switched on a light. "You can see those? But you can see me, can't you?" she asked, and then cursed the note of panic in her voice. Embarrassment brought burning up to the back of her throat. She was better than this, letting shock and anger unbalance her. Spewing illusion in all directions like some yearling kit.
The light flicked out as Kyurem slowly blinked. "I can see them. I can also see you. You burn bright enough to show through whatever pictures you make to hide you."
Wonderful. This fever--it flared again with her anger, pulsing like a second heart within her. She leaned forward, pressing her skull and then her entire side against the ice-covered wall, trying to take the cold into herself. She had to think. This had to be infection, didn't it? Curse Tobren thrice over. The thought of that traitor with blood-sticky claws made her head pound.
She'd kill Tobren. There could be no lesser punishment for trying to overthrow the matriarch. She would tear Tobren's heart out and eat it in front of her dying eyes. Next she would turn to Tobren's accomplices and--no, focus. Focus. She ground her face hard against the ice. Charging in would get her nowhere. She knew this. She was a wise leader, a level-headed leader. It was Tobren who gave in to anger, who would bring the Green Feather Skulk to ruin. That bitch, that backstabbing bitch. And her sniveling accomplices. It wouldn't do to forget them. She would make sure they witnessed Tobren's fate, and then--no.
This fever. She needed to address this fever before anything else. She was in no state to even contemplate revenge.
Kyurem watched her, expressionless--well, she thought expressionless. Who knew if dragons even felt emotion the same as everyone else? "Do you have healing herbs?" she asked. "Berries?"
"They grow out in the crater, by the water in the eastern corner," Kyurem said in their slow, considered tones. Each word brought with it a blast of frigid air, and she unconsciously leaned forward, luxuriating in the cold. "I fear that I could only bring them to you frozen. Plants wither in my presence."
She wanted to snap that she'd never asked them to go. She didn't need the dragon's help--nor was it wise to accept aid from a great power. Frozen berries sounded amazing, though. For a second she wavered, and in that time Kyurem shifted their great bulk, perhaps readying themself to leave. "I'll get them," she said, and stalked out into the night before she could make any change of mind.
The farther she strayed from the deep chill of the cave, the worse her infection burned. She almost wished to turn back and accept Kyurem's offer. But she was the matriarch of the Green Feather Skulk, and she had not fallen so far as that yet. The least worthy among her skulk had tried to assassinate her, and yet she had survived. All she had to do was keep surviving.
So she dug in the mud herself, pulling up the thick tubers with the curled leaves up top, good for healing of all sorts. She thrashed in bushes and spindly saplings, knocking down late-season berries. They were sour and shriveled, but she didn't hesitate to gobble them down. She'd gone through a good dozen, at least, before an idea came to her. She hauled up more tubers, dripping and muddy, and gathered as many berries as she could hold. Back in the cave, she laid them out on the ice. It wasn't long before they were frozen, and if Kyurem had shifted a little closer to them, perhaps turned their head to breathe more in her direction, what of it? She'd asked for nothing.
She set upon the flash-frozen herbs with renewed gusto, and for a short time her fever was truly banked, her body chilled both inside and out. She felt ready at last to face what had happened to her--what she'd first noticed while out gathering but had tried to ignore.
She ran her claws through her thin fur, which had gone stark white--shock, she supposed. Here and there patches of hairless, gray, frostbitten skin. She probably shouldn't be surprised, given how cold it was in here, but she felt nothing, even when she scraped her claws against the frozen flesh. It was no good staying here, where she might freeze to death, but no good to leave, either, and be tormented by fever. As soon as the berries took effect, she'd be gone. For now the cold felt like the only thing keeping her sane.
Her mane had exploded from its clutch in wild white tangles, and for a moment her heart seized as she clawed through them. The Feather! If she'd lost it--but no, there, tangled in one snarled tail, there was a snatch of deep green. She teased it out gently and held it before her face, running a claw along its two-paw span to reassure herself it was real. The Green Feather. What marked her out as leader of her skulk, even now.
She had to return to them. Who knew what stories Tobren and her conspirators were telling? None of them could claim the matriarchy, not without the Green Feather, but there would be chaos and distress. She had to regain her strength and then return.
She soon gave up on gathering her mane back into something sensible. Perhaps later, when she was less tired, less aching with fever. For now she dragged out one messy lock and wove the Green Feather back into it, in and out in familiar rhythm. Each time she pulled the Feather through she named another punishment for those who had conspired against her, and ran out of Feather long before she ran out of ideas.
--
"Are those the only illusions you can make?"
"What?" she rasped, opening one gummy eye. She'd tried to sleep, but had only fallen into something like a fever-blurred fugue. And fever it was--it had come blazing back, though it was less now, she thought, than it had been before. Surely it was less. She was getting better. The berries had been old, the tubers weak, but she would get more. As many as it took.
Kyurem waved one comically tiny claw at the wall, where once again spectral conspirators stalked, wide grins stretched across their muzzles. "Can you make pictures of anything else?"
"Of course I can. I can make whatever I want," she growled.
"What about the sun?"
"The sun? What kind of illusion is that?" She put a claw to her head, flinching from imagined heat and light. "I don't even want to think about the sun right now."
"Water, then. The ocean."
She growled again. As though she needed to prove anything to anyone. But to wipe the watching shadows from the walls was almost difficult, for a moment, and suddenly she needed to prove it to herself most of all.
The... ocean. Water. Lots of it. All directions. At night the moon would sparkle from it, black rippled with bright as the waves rolled in. The skulk visited the ocean sometimes, wouldn't it? Of course. Now someone else would have to lead them there. As if those usurpers ever would, as if they understood even one iota of the responsibilities of a leader, as if they could ever rally the skulk behind them, get it moving in a river of dark fur and shining eyes.
The moonlight dissolved, the waves receding from dark-furred forms that prowled hungrily across the cavern walls. For a second she and Kyurem both watched them. "Well. You saw," she said gruffly.
"What about a city?"
"A city? A human city?" Her lips pulled up in a sneer. Certainly she knew those. Stone towers, stone walls, stone machines running down stone rivers. There was food, yes, as much for the taking as you were bold enough to steal, and medicine, and strange artifacts of every description. Kyurem watched the ghosts of towers rise, twinkling like cages of entrapped stars.
She had led the skulk to cities, too, when times were lean and their abundance called, or simply for the wonder, for the lights that shone even in the depths of winter night. There was danger in visiting human dwellings, and there was no guarantee of safe return, illusions or no. Who would protect the skulk now when they entered human lands? The usurpers couldn't. Wouldn't. They'd been too cowardly even to face her in a straight fight. How could they hope to defend a zoroark cornered by one of the beast humans with their monsters trained to maim?
"You see? I make whatever I like," she said. Shadowy fox-shapes flitted through the alleyways of her conjured city.
"I do," Kyurem said. They stared into the city like it held the answer to some question they'd been pondering. Just how long were they expecting her to sit there and make pretty pictures for them? It was flattering, seeing someone so absorbed in her work, but her patience had deserted her recently. The feverish heat inside her wanted her to get up, to leave, to plunge back into the world outside this cave instead of projecting it onto the walls.
"What's your deal? Haven't you seen a city before?" she asked when Kyurem didn't move for long seconds.
"I have, but it's been quite some time."
"Oh? I got the impression that all you did was sit around and make ice all day." Impertinent. She needed to find more medicine. She was losing her head again.
"Once, I was one. A being of fire and lightning," Kyurem said wistfully. The yellow headlamp beams of their eyes were trained on her illusion, on its fox shadows that stubbornly refused to dissipate before the light. Kyurem didn't seem to see them. "I flew where I pleased, and I was welcome wherever I passed. None could best me in battle. Even the winds and the dust bowed down to me. But I was fond of humans, and in time I grew close to two young ones, great heroes among their kind."
She made a rude noise without thinking about it, then winced. Kyurem went on as though they didn't notice, voice slow but steady, echoing hollowly around the cave. "Their love for one another was great, as was mine for both of them. But they came to a disagreement, a horrible one, and neither could sway the other. My thoughts, too, were divided, and I could not sway myself. How could I ever choose between them? In time the dissonance became so great that I was split, the fire in me going one way, the lightning in another. From one I became three. Two went then with the human children, to guide them and to see their causes fulfilled. I am what was left behind. No fire now. No lightning. Only this ice you see around you."
"That..." she began, but she couldn't finish. She couldn't tell a great power, "That's stupid." She supposed that these were the sorts of things that happened to great powers, after all. Apparently things got real metaphorical when you were the living embodiment of an abstract concept. "So what now?"
"So now I wait. I wait for my lost pieces to return and teach me all they've learned about the world."
"How long have you been waiting?"
Kyurem sighed out a great plume of cold, head tipping back to shine their eye-lights up towards the stars winking through the cave's cracked roof. "I don't know. Since before the desert stretched below the stars."
She scoffed and left them there to go dig for roots, taking her fox-infested city with her.
--
It wasn't clear to her whether she'd actually slept or only faded out in fever. It had been days. More than days? She hadn't been tracking time as closely as she ought.
The infection hadn't receded, and by now she was truly worried. She gathered what medicine she could, traveling farther and farther out into the woods to seek it, but she hardly felt better than when she'd first arrived here. The withered stock she was finding wasn't strong enough to help. She would need to seek out human medicine. They could heal anything in their glowing dens, but at what cost?
She spent far too long mulling it over, pacing the confines of Kyurem's ice, constantly losing the thread in fantasies of revenge. She couldn't afford to give up her freedom, not even for her life. There was nothing left for her if she couldn't return to her skulk. In her current state, capture was a real possibility. But what other option did she have?
Kyurem never left the cave. They seemed content to sit back on their haunches for hours, staring at nothing. Thinking. Sometimes they requested an illusion, and she grumbled, but she usually complied. Sometimes, she supposed, it was a blessing to retreat from the fragments of the life before her and imagine for the dragon a forest or a flower.
At last she could put it off no longer and approached them. They didn't invite her to draw near, but neither did they tell her to leave.
"I'm going to human lands," she said. "Will you come with me? I need their medicine, but I'm weak. I would welcome help to keep the humans at bay."
"I can't."
She clenched her teeth. "Why not?"
"Nothing can draw close to me and live. I will not bring death to the innocents who live without."
"Idiot. I'm alive."
But Kyurem made no reply. Probably one of those great power things, like they literally couldn't leave for whatever arbitrary reason, and that was the fairytale they'd come up with to explain it.
Awful heat backed up her throat again. She didn't care. "So what are you going to do while I'm gone, then? Sit in your damn cave and wait and look at the stars or something?"
"I like to watch the stars," Kyurem said in their deep, morose voice. "They remind me of home."
"They are never coming back!" she snarled. "Your pieces or whatever they are! They aren't! Either go out there and find them yourself, or give up on it! Go out and live your own damn life!"
"One did come back, not so long ago. When we were reunited, they showed me all the wonderful things they'd seen. I learned of the people they'd met, the world they've known--"
"And then they left again!" she yelled. "Didn't they! They flew off again and left you in your stupid cave!"
Kyurem said nothing. "They're never coming back! Go off and see your own fucking beaches if that's what you want!"
She turned and stalked away, seething with resentment. What was left behind indeed. No doubt those other parts of themself, if they actually existed, were glad to be rid of them.
A gentle snow was falling outside the cave. Good. The colder the better. She stopped and breathed in sharp, icy air, then bent and scraped up the thin layer of white gathering on the rocks. She gulped it down, one meager handful and then another. She had a long way to go, and the fire inside her threatened to consume her as it was. She couldn't rely on Kyurem's cold to keep the fever at bay.
She at least knew the way to a human city; its light bled over the stars, so as long as night lasted she could follow its trace. She didn't want to think about what would happen if the journey lasted longer than the dark.
It came to her that the crunching of the snow between her teeth was matched by the same out in the forest. Something moving through the flurry. Multiple somethings. Her ears lay back flat. Of course someone else would appear in this remote place just when she needed to make her way out, as quickly and straightforwardly as possible. She stepped back under the cave's overhang, sniffing the air.
The crunches drew nearer, irregular and shambling. At least two creatures, she was sure, and human or pokémon. Too big to be anything else. One of them gave a yip, a hunting signal, and there was no moment of recognition. All she was aware of, from that point on, was that Tobren was here, and that she was moving to meet her.
No effort to be silent. All three zoroark--she knew them, these betrayers--turned in her direction as she bore down. Their illusions twisted and wormed through the air around them, an instinctive attempt to hide, but though she didn't have Kyurem's heat-seeking eyes, no zoroark could fool another that way.
They didn't seem to realize she could see them, not at first. "What the hell is--" one began. Belast, a cousin of Tobren. She knew him, of course, as she knew every member of her skulk. Had cared for them, had fought for them, had watched over them when their illusions were weak. They'd shown her how grateful they were for that. She'd make for Belast next.
But it was Tobren she wanted now, and Tobren who realized, with moments to spare, that she knew exactly where her target was. Tobren shifted, and her swing barely grazed the other zoroark's cheek, but she was burning hot, hot, hot with fever, fever that rolled off her in dark purple waves, and Tobren cried out as they burned her.
She'd been surprised how little she felt her illness; she was burning up but felt better than she had in a long time, the thrill of revenge carrying her on. But a burst of darkness from the third zoroark showed her how weak she'd truly become. She keened in sudden pain, momentarily blinded by a Night Daze that seared worse than any she'd ever faced. She was down in the snow, and then Tobren fell on her, claws raking.
And striking nothing. She actually did laugh at the dismayed look on Tobren's muzzle. Imagine having your enemy lying helpless at your feet, and missing.
She struck Tobren in the face with a burst of darkness, then leapt up and grabbed her while she staggered. The snowstorm intensified while they scuffled, cutting off Tobren's companions and leaving the two of them in their own private struggle.
She stretched forward and by luck caught Tobren's ear between her teeth, and the salt-metal taste of blood in her mouth and Tobren's scream as she wrenched her head sideways were even sweeter than she'd imagined they could be.
Somehow, though, the cold was winning out against the furnace heat of her excitement. She tried to step forward, to press her advantage, but her foot wouldn't rise. Ice, it was ice crawling up her legs, and blizzard-winds roaring through the air around her. Tobren was ripped away from her, stumbling and falling in the sudden storm winds. She could only watch, pinioned by frost, as Tobren's dark shape rose to all fours and ran off through the blowing snow. Two more indistinct shadows followed.
She roared and tore at her frozen prison, the ice that had grown up to her chest, shadows streaming away from her and lashing uselessly after the retreating zoroark. They were here, they were following her, they'd followed her even to this lonely place, looking to finish the job.
They'd come for the Feather, hadn't they? Of course. What would killing her accomplish if Tobren couldn't step into her role? For that, they needed the Green Feather, and they'd failed to secure it the same as they'd failed to kill her.
Well, good. Good that they'd been so foolish as to pursue her here. It saved her needing to track them down later. Now, she could kill them. Now, she could end this. She twisted and struggled and smashed the ice as fast as she could, straining towards where the zoroark had disappeared.
Twin beams of light shone out through the whirling snow. Heavy footsteps came up beside her. As the gusting storm died away she finally managed to tear herself free of the ice, landing in an unceremonious sprawl. "What was that for?" she snarled at Kyurem, teeth bared.
"They were in danger," the dragon said in their deep, hollow voice. "The cold would have killed them. I scared them off."
"If the cold would have killed them, good!" The taste of Tobren's blood still lingered on her tongue, and every fiber of her wanted to pursue, to tear out that traitor's throat. "What about me? Why did you attack me?"
"They were in danger," Kyurem repeated. "You would have killed them. I held you until they ran off."
"Damn straight I would have killed them! What gives you the right to put yourself in the middle of this? They tried to kill me! All I'm doing is returning that to sender!"
"I do not wish to harbor violence."
She screeched in frustration, dragging her claws through the wild tangle of her mane. "And with all that nothing you do, the one time you shift yourself to actually leave your godforsaken cave, it's to get in my way!" She tried to rise, but the ice grew over her again, shackling her legs to the ground. "Let me go! Bastard!"
"Not until the zoroark are free of danger."
"They'll never be free of danger so long as I'm alive! Let me go!" She threw shadows in Kyurem's face--unwise, she thought distantly, dreadfully unwise--but the dragon didn't flinch, and the ice only spread farther.
Kyurem kept standing there, unmoved, while she raged and howled and threw everything she had at her bonds. Ice shattered and regrew. She cut herself on its broken edges. The air filled with shadows and darkness and still Kyurem did nothing, and the ice only advanced.
Finally she fell back panting, defeated. For now. With her frustration exhausted, she was almost feeling good. Elated. The betrayers had fled, and here she remained.
"Ha!" She shook with the adrenaline of it, the searing heat that told her she was alive, alive, alive, again. They'd tried to kill her again, and still she was alive. "Scum! Worthless, cowering kits! Couldn't even finish off a sick old fox!"
She'd have to be careful about her revenge. Quick. Kyurem would be able to find her through any illusion, and apparently it was willing to lumber out into the forest if it meant protecting a pack of would-be murderers. As far as she could tell, they never slept.
But the traitors did. Her white fur--their fault--would hide her against the snow. She'd fall on them while they slumbered, kill them before they could rouse.
Or take it slower. Start with one. Let the other two marinate in their fear. She'd let them see her, just glimpses between the trees. She'd take a second eventually, of course. She didn't want to draw this out so long. Let Tobren be the last. Let Tobren wait on her pleasure for death, knowing what happened to her insubordinates. Let her dread. Let her fear in a way that she herself never had, never expecting Tobren's claws in her back. If Tobren ran like the coward she was, well. There was a certain satisfaction in being proven right. She'd ensure the flight was short.
"What will you do now?" Kyurem asked at length.
"What?" She shook her head, clearing visions of whimpering, pleading zoroark. "What do you mean, what will I do now? I'm going to kill them, of course."
"Why?"
"Why? Why? They tried to kill me! Twice!! Did you miss that?"
"You would be safe here, so long as you did not seek them out. The ice would protect you."
Perhaps that made sense to a great power whose aspect was sitting on their ass. "I'm not going to spend my life crouching in some hole in the ground, waiting for them to go away. My skulk needs a leader. If I don't get rid of those three, they'll see to it it's one of them. I need to make it home. And I need to make sure they never will."
Kyurem stood where they were, blowing out clouds of cold. The same white clouds that rose from her muzzle were hot, practically steaming in the frigid air. The forest around them was sheeted with ice, trees aglitter in the starlight. "What do you intend to do after?" Kyurem asked.
"After? What kind of question is that?" She'd never bothered to consider it. It was obvious, wasn't it? Go back to her old life, the one before the assassination attempt.
"You've changed, haven't you?" Kyurem asked. "Do you believe your people will accept you as their leader once again?"
"I haven't changed, it's this damn fever messing with my head. The skulk will take me back. I still have the Green Feather." Reflexively she reached out to check, and yes, it was still there, twined through her bristling mane.
"Is that enough?"
"Yes, that's enough," she snapped. "What are you getting at? You have something to say to me? Spit it out already!"
“Zoroark, why have you not told me your name?”
"My name?" She almost laughed. "Not important. My name is--"
But there she paused, breath dead over her tongue. Her claws turned up, splayed in a gesture of exasperation. Empty.
No name. She couldn't remember--matriarch of the skulk, her skulk, the Green Feather Skulk. What was her name? She knew their names, Tobren and Belast and Nim, knew their faces better than her own, the betrayers, the ones who would make her skulk their own. She remembered the cowardly moment, the searing stab of claws entering her body, the fire growing and growing as she turned to recognize--
Who else? She struggled to remember another name, another face. Who else was part of the Green Feather Skulk? It was large... grand... Built it herself. How many? Who else? There had to be someone else. Anyone else. Even herself. What was her name?
She looked down at her pale-furred arms, the frostbitten sores that had not closed. She felt nothing. Nothing but the cold without and the fire within, waves of pain traveling the path Tobren's claws had cleaved, still burning with the vileness of betrayal. And now, just now, when Tobren tried to cut her again, the zoroark's claws hadn't missed, had they? They'd gone right through. Found no resistance.
"I’m dead."
Kyurem said nothing. There was nothing more to say.
"I'm dead. All this time I've been..." There had been no assassination attempt. There had been an assassination. "You knew all along, didn't you?"
"Yes. None can brave my cold and live." Kyurem stretched their neck up as if to peer over the trees. "Let us return to the cave. Dawn will soon arrive."
She let Kyurem lead her away, setting one numb foot in front of the other. It all began to make sense. The fever that would never recede, the hatred and bitterness--that was all that remained of her. I am what was left behind. Whoever she'd been, leader of the Green Feather Skulk, was gone.
Hate hard enough and you could return from the dead, apparently. That was nearly as stupid as Kyurem's story about getting split into three.
Kyurem ducked back through the cave's low entrance, shattering a line of icicles that had grown up in their absence. So little time, and the cave had begun to thaw; now everything would ice over again, returned to frozen suspension.
She barely noticed the glow of impending sunrise behind her as she followed Kyurem into the cave. There was nothing for it but to fade for a while and hope her thoughts gave her some rest. She wouldn't sleep. She hadn't slept at all since she'd come here.
--
"Why don't you show me a pond?" Kyurem asked. "The kind with water lilies on it. Trees around it, trees with drooping leaves. Do you know such a place?"
She didn't rise from her rough scratch on the icy floor. She'd been watching her betrayers' illusions spread themselves along the wall, leaning together to snicker behind bloodied claws. "Getting rather specific with our requests, aren't we?" she asked wearily.
"I knew such a place, once. The twin heroes often met in a garden with a beautiful pond. It was one of their favorite places in their younger days."
She sighed and rubbed her face with a freezing-cold paw. The illusory zoroark faded with reluctance, their shadows spreading out to form a clear night, the moon reflected in pond waters, white lily-flowers glowing with its light. Moments later zoroark reappeared, pacing the garden pathways, never in focus but always there, watching.
"You were right to wonder whether I could make any illusion I wanted. Who knows how long I'll be able to make something like this, before I forget how to imagine this sort of thing, too?"
"Can you show me your people?" Kyurem asked. "Anyone you can remember, besides those three?"
She tried. She tried with every fiber of her being to remember, to pull illusion from memory. The zoroark ringing her sneered, white teeth gleaming back at her from every reflective surface. There was nothing. No one else.
"They took everything from me. My life. All the people who made it worthwhile. And they left me obsessed." She shifted to better face Kyurem but did not rise. "There's only one way to end this. I have to kill them."
Kyurem extended one skeletal arm. "In an ideal world, everyone would be prepared to change for the better. People would learn from their mistakes and grow into something new. They would repent and begin again."
They stretched the other arm out in the opposite direction. "But in truth, not everyone can or will change. There are some who will inflict misery every day of their lives. Even if they wish it otherwise, they may never see another way."
"Ha! There it is." Her muzzle twisted into a cruel smile.
"The trick is not to misjudge a person. In either direction." Kyurem pinned her in the spotlight of their gaze. "Do you think you know so well that there can be no path for these three save death?"
Yes yes yes yes, the hot fury at the heart of her whispered. She swallowed it down, then said, gruffly, "I guess not." But surely they deserved pain. They deserved to pay in some way for what they'd done to her and her skulk. "But I have to be sure they don't return. I can't have Tobren do to the next matriarch what she did to me. You understand that, don't you? What am I supposed to do?"
She realized her mistake in the millisecond before Kyurem began to speak. "The ice will--"
"Yes, yes, the ice will protect me. I can't stay here. I..." She trailed off. If not here, then where would she go?
The skulk needed a leader. Not her, she had to admit with a stab of resentment so fierce it left her dizzy. She could never be the leader she once was, with no thoughts but for revenge. Whether she killed the usurpers or not, she had to ensure that the skulk had someone to guide it. But what good would it do to elect another if Tobren simply killed them, too?
That was why the traitors had to die. Not for her, but for whoever came after.
And once she killed them... That would be the end of it, wouldn't it? There wasn't much left of her but bloodthirst anymore. Without it she would surely fade. But before that--before--she had to see to her clan. Letting go wasn't an option; if she gave up her grudge, she'd be gone, and Tobren would roam free. And she couldn't linger forever, hiding with Kyurem in endless resentment. The only way to move was forward.
"If you won't let me kill those three, will you at least distract them? Hold them with your ice?" she asked.
"Not forever," Kyurem said. "But for a while, yes. This I can do for you."
"Good," she said. "I need to return to my skulk and find a successor. I don't remember who would be any good at leading, but I have the Green Feather. I can give it to whoever seems most trustworthy, and they can work it out from there. And then... then I can stay. And defend them. If those three ever think to show their snouts around the skulk again, then I'll kill them. That seems fair, doesn't it?"
Kyurem was silent for a time, but finally they said, "What you do in your own lands is not something I can change." The politest condemnation, she supposed. That was probably the best she could ask for.
Now for the hard part. "There's a problem. I've been staying here because of the cold. It helps me think. Whenever I leave it's like my brain overheats. I can't concentrate on anything but revenge. I'm afraid that if I even make it back to the skulk, I won't remember what I need to do. I'll just turn around and set out to murder Tobren again, and whatever happens, happens." Kyurem had no comment. Of course. They were going to make her ask. "I was wondering if you would come with me. At least long enough for me to return the Green Feather to the skulk."
"I can't. I must wait here."
She bared her teeth but couldn't hold back the surge of bitterness that erupted into words. "You left your cave just now, didn't you? And what do you know, the world didn't end. I'm not asking you to be gone long. Two days, maybe three."
"It was nice," Kyurem said wistfully, "to see the full sweep of the stars again. But I can't. The farther I go from this place, the more disruptive my power becomes. I do not wish to bring death. My place is here, waiting."
"Always waiting," she said. "Do you think those other pieces of you care that you're waiting? Do you think they value your devotion?"
"It does not matter whether they think of me. It does not matter whether they intend to return. My aspect is balance." The dragon raised their claws once again, holding them up at equal height. "Balance is static. It is a set point. What is in balance is waiting."
"Oh?" she growled. "Heat balances cold, right? If your other pieces are out there doing things, shouldn't you be, too? If you're hiding away from the world, there's no one to balance them." She fixed Kyurem with her fiercest stare. "Is this really about the ice? Or are you just afraid to leave after all this time?"
Kyurem's glowing eyes pinned her in place. Drifts of cold air spilled from their mouth to bathe the rock below. For a second she imagined they might thunder, or let off a wave of ice so frigid it would snuff her at last, but when they spoke it was in the same even tone as always. "Inaction balances action. It is my pieces' role to grow and change. It is my role to stay the same."
"I see," she choked out. And she did, unfortunately. There was nothing she could do to sway a great power.
They both sat a while, lost in their own thoughts. Her illusions surrounded them, leering and laughing, eternally pacing just out of reach. Finally Kyurem bowed their head, gangly neck all extended, chin scraping against the icy cave floor. Their spindly arms reached up, up, claws straining to grasp the icy ridge down the back of their neck. After a brief struggle, they snapped off a piece and held it out to her. "You may take this. It will keep you cold while you return to your people."
She took it, and it was cold even against the cold air of the cave, so cold it stuck to her skin and peeled up patches of fur when she shifted it. "How long before it melts?" she asked.
"It won't melt until I do. That should give you plenty of time."
"Ha! I'll bet." She held the shard uneasily. She couldn't carry it the whole way, held between her claws, and she had nothing to store it in. Bury it in her mane with the Feather? But when she tried, the fur flash-froze, then shattered.
There was something she could try, perhaps. The thought made her queasy in an almost giddy way. She pressed the shard experimentally against her arm, and it sank through--not painlessly, but sink it did. That was convenient.
She felt around behind her at the place Tobren stabbed her, the injury that throbbed even now with angry heat. She had to hesitate, even determined as she was, but then she drove the shard home in one forceful motion, tracing the same path the assassin's claws had taken not so long ago.
The ice held, and her fever withered before it, a wonderful chill replacing the seething bitterness that had gnawed at her mind. She stretched unconsciously, feeling the cold shift and twist inside her but not recede. Then she glanced up at Kyurem, who after all had simply been standing there, watching the entire proceedings. "Thank you. This feels much better."
"I'm glad," Kyurem said in their slow, ponderous voice. There was a long pause. "I suppose you will be leaving now."
"Yeah. I guess." The night wasn't getting any younger, and she'd been away from home so long already. Who knew what she'd be returning to?
It felt empty to simply walk away, but there wasn't anything more to do. Nothing to gather, no companions to rally. It would be her, alone, for as long as the dark held out. Outside, the snow fell gently. The footprints she and Kyurem had left were long gone. She stood and looked out, but that couldn't be all. She had to say something.
"Thanks. Again," was all she could come up with. It was a beginning, though, and then the rest came easier. "I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't found you. Or to my skulk. You've helped me much more than I deserved." A head full of vengeance hadn't made her the most pleasant company, she was sure. "And, look, I was angry when I said it, but I meant it, all right? You shouldn't have to live like this. Go find your other pieces... or give up on them. Live life for yourself."
It took Kyurem several seconds to answer. Nothing new there. "It has been some time since I've thought so much about the outside," they said. "Perhaps we shall meet again."
Good enough, she supposed. Nothing better. She nodded once. "Goodbye."
Then she set out. Slowly at first, stalking through the rising snow. But the cold was invigorating. She was lighter than air, finally stretching towards a future that made sense. She felt good, not sick at all. And she began to run, dropping to all fours and tearing through the snow.
Kyurem didn't want her to hurt the traitors. Fine. But no one said she couldn't scare them a little. She howled, loud and reckless, an eerie sound that rang out clear through the crooked trees. She crashed through snowdrifts in a whirl of ice and darkness, daring anyone to challenge her, to try and delay her on her way. She came around the edge of the pond where she'd dug up useless herbs and saw again the cave. Not looking back--never looking back. And there was Kyurem, at least two steps beyond the entrance, looking up at the stars.
