she stops dreaming.

it's jarring, the first night it happens. there is no peaceful sleep. there is simply the final act of closing her eyes and then the rapid blink into the dawn. she is exhausted that day, but she thinks nothing of it - exhaustion, at this point, is an old friend. 

but the next night, she blinks and again, six hours have passed. she swings her legs out of bed, presses her palm to her chest, feels the babump-babump-babump of her heart. moxie lay curled by her pillow, still slumbering.

the third night, she addresses the hotel staff about it. she asks if any wayward ghost pokemon have found their way in. she runs security sweeps. ana had found her way into her room; what's to say someone else, with more sinister intentions, hasn't?

but her dragons sleep peacefully on and she simply attributes it to stress.

the fourth night, when she blinks and reawakens, dawn has not yet come. shadows stretch, long and imposing, from open blinds - hadn't she closed them? - and when she stands to yank them back down, she hears it. 

that growl. that whisper in the back of her head, reaching down to the lizard part of her brain where her fear lives. her adrenal glands squelch and release cortisol, send clumsy muscles to the far corner of the room where she crouches, quivering like prey, ears straining. 

hearing only the blood in her ears.

hours pass like that. she doesn't remember blinking. she installed a false bottom in the hotel dresser and when fright loses its grasp on her, she darts towards it, fishing for the burner phone. he's always been her weakness. 

but above his name, the only name she's ever kept on the phone - KING WAYLAND - there is an unknown number.

WE ARE WATCHING

her knees give way. she sinks to the ground and runs through a list in her head of those who may know her secrets, and those who may betray them.

she does not respond. instead she crushes the burner phone with her lamp and crawls back into bed. it doesn't matter. KING WAYLAND hadn't been answering her texts anyway. when she blinks, gray light streams through drawn curtains.

it's drizzling in slateport when she lands. her noivern slips back into its ball and she draws her hood up, welcoming the reason to hide her face. no official business brings her here and those three words still eat at her. 

there's a thrift store a few blocks away from nameless. they have an old-timey tv in the window, always off, used mostly as a vintage display for scarves and boas and bowknot hats. 

SPOILER: Click to show

it flickers. despite the power cord wrapped around the vhs compartment at its front, it sputters to life as she passes. and that draconic growling returns. the toe of her boot hovers over the pavement, frozen midstride, gold eyes mesmerized by the static.

it devolves into a frozen maw. blood dribbling from a gash on her neck. horns and mist and entrails and broken porcelain and knives like teeth and - all the objects of her nightmares. 

WE ARE LISTENING

she blinks and the static is gone, resolved into a pixelated scene of a street corner. a thrift shop. a woman with her hood up, standing before it. she cranes her neck back, eyes trained, and the figure mimics her movements. 

the camera pans. zooms. settles on a phone booth - did slateport still have phone booths?

palms sweating, she turns. there is no trick of the light. it has an ash grey exterior, window panes weathered and opaque. when she looks back at the thrift store window, the tv screen is inert. blank as it always was and always has been.

the receiver is in her hands - grasped tightly at its neck, the other cupping its bottom, fingers spread to make room for the cord, booth door shut behind her. her breath curls, but the unseemly cold is not what makes a shiver run down her spine. 

SECRETS ARE SECRETS FOR A REASON

"who are you?" she whispers.

ALLIES, MISS ZINNIA

she abandons the phone. she abandons the booth. she abandons the city, too horrified of the implications. that someone might know her. that someone might find her. that someone might get to him. 

and the bar is broken, crumbling, all ruin, king gone and gone and she has no idea because she has so many secrets.

and yet and yet and yet - 

she no longer sleeps and the things she's kept in their cages have gotten out. they skirt in her periphery, hungry and prowling. they wear the faces of her loved ones. and she thinks, humorously, have i finally gone mad?

lyune begins to see them too.

he snaps at the world-eater, silences the planetary grumbles, but he has no cure for her unraveling anxieties. keeping secrets nearly destroyed her. they killed her love. they saved his life. they are her end. they are her salvation. 

she says, into the broken pieces of her burner, "i must no longer accept being a stranger to you."

she grasps the receiver. fingertips press against ashen glass. there is a drizzle outside and she feels so, so cold, but there is a hearth-fire in her too. 

YOU HAVE BEEN ALONE A VERY LONG TIME

electricity sparks. a tilted, sizzling smile drips from the cord, pooling in the air. a shape fills the space; neon eyes blink vapidly and she exhales. her lashes flutter. 

YOUR EYES ARE YET TO OPEN

WE CANNOT OPEN THEM FOR YOU

DO YOU ACCEPT?

liquid in her hands. a disassembling of shapes. she grasps it in both hands, draws it on either side of her head, and she opens her eyes to the technicolor dawn. gold burns a brilliant blue. 

YOU, THE HERMIT, HAVE BEEN CHOSEN. WELCOME TO SEELE.

location slateport
object of power half-moon pendant
secrets almost ruined her. not knowing what's out there haunts her. she's made her choice.

☉

"i could be wrong, but - " she says, sweeping aside a fern. a distinct set of footprints - three front talons could be anything, but it's the odd smear of dirt behind them, as though fur brushed against heel, that makes her think of the dragon from the tera caverns underneath the league headquarters. 

she doesn't finish her sentence, distracted instead by his pleasantries. she stands and motions to fafnir to follow. 

"tired. busy. same old. gym summit was a shitshow. that reminds me - have you used dynamax yet?"

Greyson Connors
RXY5QoGq

☉

from birth, he'd known bits and pieces. maybe he didn't have the full truth, but it's more than she ever got, and envy is a worm that's lived inside her all her life. albeit, perhaps, it's starving these days.

she shakes her head. 

"he was theodore's - my step-father's - but i think, maybe, he wasn't always." maybe, just maybe, he'd been her mother's in this life too. 

"i was adopted by the morningstars at sixteen. and i took their name when i turned eighteen. that's when he gave him to me. it's hard to imagine my life before him. before them."

she ghosts her fingers over the tablet again while she mulls over her next question. 

"you've seen dynamax, yeah? would you...do you think we should be using it? would you use it on balmung?"

Roy Aker

☉

it was a startling realization, knowing that there are so many people she now trusts to accompany her into a place like this. people who have proven, time and time again, that she can rely on them to have her back. and more startling is her desire to take the plunge with them. 

fafnir stands attentively nearby. her salamence are too big (save for ori) and her roaring moon will draw unwanted attention to them down here. 

she squats, sygna suit inert but still providing protection from the elements as she assesses unfamiliar footprints in the ground. 

"have you seen these before?"

Greyson Connors
j7gaR0pD

☉

"that's the funny thing about dreams, isn't it? you can have a good one; you can have a bad one, and still we call them dreams. but when does a bad dream become a nightmare? 

"sometimes i feel we're doomed to suffer, that every happiness we feel is temporary, interspersed between the inevitable turning point of bad turned nightmare.

"and most of the time, i'm okay with that. those spare moments of happiness, as far and few they are, they're so good. they're what makes all the bad so bearable. 

"do you mind if i lay down while i talk? it's been a long day.

"i used to dream about being important. and that meant getting stronger. that meant doing everything myself. i never thought it'd need people, that it would ever feel okay to need people.

"i dream about them a lot. ki - the people i've lost. the people i'm trying not to lose. but sometimes, when i close my eyes, when i fall asleep, they're not there. there are too many other lives inside of me. other freyas, who've done right, who've done wrong, and it's getting harder to - to not let the lines blur.

"he told me, before i left, that i haven't come back from that place. he wasn't entirely wrong. i burned galar into myself. as punishment, i think. but the place i hadn't come back from is from before. that frozen-over hellscape. 

"...

"thanks. sorry, the fire's warm. that's what i see, most of the time, when i dream. and it's not always bad, but most of the time it is, but that's okay. dawn always comes, in the end."

"crorown!"

TALES BENEATH THE DYNA TREE
2/18 - dreams

☉

she would like to say that the sword cuts through the bell like butter, but reality is more gruesome than that. her wrists ache as they meet hard resistance, blade squealing against the solid membrane. she throws her shoulders into it and when it bursts, ichor sprays down her front. 

it mats in her hair. it gets in her teeth. she sinks deeper, one slippery hand coming off the sword to reach for the girl. heaven releases her; she falls into her arms and the weapon clatters to the ground, spattering dark viscera, globs of golden membrane. 

the start of her name comes - a blessing - and then baki turns abruptly; black matter joins the blood on the deck. freya dare not let her go. 

her hands are on both of tsubaki's arms, urgent. still for a second, roughly pulling her against her the next, chin to crown, eyes squeezed shut, embracing her against the cold steel of a dormant sygna suit, but behind that, a beating heart. 

"i'm sorry," she says. "baki, i'm sorry."

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

too far gone. she's too far gone and the cherubs are being whipped into a frenzy. one look over her shoulder and she can see freedom. lathliss will take her back, away from this horrible place, and a new creature will haunt the lucis. 

one time you're gonna die and it'll stick. oh, child, how rare the dead stay dead these days. 

how unavoidable it is that she fall prey to this tangled web of gods and monsters. tsubaki's cry is synchronous with her angel's, but she's still there. and she's scared and she's hurt and freya's going to have to do a whole lot worse to get her out of here.

there's no pulling her out now. not with words. 

lathliss shoves her head back through the busted wall and freya whips out the sword in front of her maw, snarling, "drocar." flames spurt, spill over onto the metal, superheating it to its hilt. 

and with it still glowing, she darts forward and swings. 

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

vines spread in a tangle as soon as the new pokemon hits the battlefield. miirym is choked in the undergrowth as weeds take root. her body flits, transparency rippling down her shape as she shrugs her corpus through the briars.

onto the field. exposed. she has an out if she needs it, but she takes the offensive, fueled by her mistress' growling laughter.

"thats the thing, matias. we don't. no one owes you anything. you want respect? you want trust?

quit demanding the world cater to you and earn it."

MATIAS SILPH

☉

"she's brilliant," she says with a shrug of her shoulders; as nonchalant as she tries to be, though, there is a pride in her shoulders. there is a smile hidden between the lines. 

her hand goes to the pommel, fingers suddenly needing something to do when he mentions Eva Morales. her thoughts immediately turn to the cheek kiss, that bare moment of intimacy - a reminder of a past the professor doesn't and will never remember. 

"yes," she says and her other hand betrays her, fingers slipping on the offered arrow. it plinks to the ground and, embarrassed, she bends to pick it up. 

"our schedules never sync." by design. "it was nice to catch up."

a pause and then, more guardedly, "alex, why? why the pleasantries now?"

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

fists fly in frustration against a ghastly whisper. there's a glint of cerulean scales, shadows struggling against each other, and freya runs her tongue along her teeth. a sharp snarl from behind her teeth and miirym is granted her window. 

he ignores her in favor of his own desires - an answer, in all honesty, to her question or a misguided attempt at misleading her, she isn't sure.

"you could start by not killing your colleagues' pokemon."

miirym burrows her fangs through steel.

"or cheating on your partners."

the infestation swarms.

"or listening when someone tells you to pay attention to your match."

MATIAS SILPH

☉

brute strength can find no purchase on whispers and shadows. leering swings are marked, outlined on brief flashes of white, as miirym dismantles the twisted creature and its false claim to her dominion.

glowing yellow eyes emerge from the shade, jaw parting, a phantom come to devour its offering.

freya's hands curl to fist. every run-in, he has proven brash and tactless. this is out of left field. his anger is not the wildfire she's become accustomed to. what's changed?

she hates this man. she hates what he's done, what she knows he's willing to do again. and she hates that, in this moment, she sees herself in him. that fragile, unkillable self that tells her you will never find redemption.

"only if you let it be," she says, lips curled in a half-snarl. "focus on the match. your lucario's fumbling."

MATIAS SILPH

☉

her brows shoot up as incredulity breaks the tense anger on her face.

"there is a gross misunderstanding if you think my intentions with any part of this meeting have been to win you, or anyone else, over. i am doing my job, alexei."

she does not miss the hushed mumble by one Josh Devlin, the returned glare from Alexei Ivanov after the former finishes informing her about several pokemon that have become more common as of late. Michael Navidson steals the words from her mouth and she ignores the exchange entirely.

"the fact of the matter is that this legendary could have made a difference and you have withheld it based on assumptions and paranoias. i will grant you that these anxieties are not baseless, but if you were worried about security at that point in time, you could have, again, gone to dahlia goode or FERNANDO SILPH.

"you could have used it in the ultra deep sea to secure the seal stone.

"on route 120 to fight our enemies.

"on mirage island to secure the remnants of regice.

"instead, you hid it because a gym leader from years ago was compromised? and this gave you cause to mistrust everyone else in this room?" her eyes narrow. 

CIAN MAHER emphasizes the importance of trust and she wearily looks back at FERNANDO SILPH. gone, she supposes, are the days where he might look upon such impudence and say something out of pocket, tone clipped, tongue a razor's edge. 

she sighs. "no, there's no changing that now." 

so much bloodshed. so much infighting. she wonders, briefly - and sourly - if rocket meetings fall prey to the same cycles. if it's just the human condition. 

"though i implore the both of you to be up front and honest now."

GYM JAM

☉