and that's your own fault, she wants to snap. the rope that is her patience is long, snaking around hours of preparation and mental endurance for this very battle. she always knew she'd be able to take him on the field. he's an elite four for a reason, but he's so quick to rely on his patron, to work his frustrations out with brute force. 

she used to be the same. 

lyune's flames grow hotter. confusion rattles him, but that does not stop the draconic blaze that sweeps over the field, pluming as her patience snaps in twain. 

every fiber of her being shudders in anger. her sygna suit glows and embers spark around her mouth. 

lyune's wrath overwhelms her - nests ripped apart, dragons fallen, bones of kin swallowed by darkness, spirits wayward, their connection to the draconid fading. 

"you fucking handed my home to the enemy," she roars, "and yet you want like a child after my trust. let me tell you something, silph. you are enough as you are.

"and you are nothing."

MATIAS SILPH

☉

she wants to burn him alive. she wants to hurt him in every imaginable way possible and she wants it to last for hours, decades, eons. she wants him to know pain and loneliness and fear and the horrible sensation of what it means to be unmade. 

peel back the skin and infest him with self-loathing. watch him writhe in a foetid pool of his own cyclical destruction. string his ankles and his wrists and hold him aloft for the world to see, with a smile on his face, and make him fight. 

fight to make it right. fight to make it through the day. fight to remember who he is. 

her heart breaks. 

"i can never take that back!" she weeps. "i can never undo my inaction, but i can do better now, and gods know i've been trying. gods know i've been fucking trying."

lyune circles and his hum is not a ballad of anger. there are no winners to be had here, on this field. 

only sorrow.

MATIAS SILPH

☉

try harder. 

she laughs, cruelly, in his face. he has dredged up her ghosts and those will always haunt her, but he will find no purchase on her present. she does not need to face this alone. 

she has ana fell. Eva Morales. Isaac Merlo. ollie morales. Caleb Harcourt. Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki. Roy Aker. illeana reyes. and she sees their faces now. she feels their bonds. she feels that which gives her strength. 

"we're not dragons. the first thing we do when we're born? we cry." her gaze flickers over to cygne. "we ask for help.

"that's strength, i think. knowing when to ask. knowing that you should. admittedly, i'm...quite bad at it."

she looks upon him now and he is alone. and he is small. and he is asking her for the one thing that may save him. 

help. 

but there is another face - toothy smile, crooked nose, and the brightest blue eyes - that matters to her above all else and as long as she loves KING WAYLAND, she can never lay a stone to repair the bridge she'd burned with matias. 

the z-crystal in her hair sprays a cosmic purple and lyune's spirit glows. 

dragon's fury

salamence empowers itself to its maximum potential. primal fury overtakes it as it razes the battlefield and opponents before it, eliminating all terrain effects.

the nova he gathers in his mouth is an elegy to the man he could have been with her help. 

MATIAS SILPH

☉

shrapnel plinks off of lyune's armored chest. some of the heavier boulders slam into his forearms; one hits his wing and makes him dip in the air, but his defenses have been bolstered by the kerosene wrath gassed into his fire. 

"yes. i wear my failings like an albatross. you wear them like a badge of honor." fire pours, molten white, tinged blue, eating at the air in the room.

but they are, at the end of the day, chains. the dead and the wronged and the scorned will tear him down if he doesn't tear himself apart first. 

MATIAS SILPH

☉

"only five minutes ago, you said you would live in your shame and be humbled," she says with another skittering laugh. lyune twists about in the air, but no matter where he goes, the hitmonlee does not miss. and so she snaps; the last of his bullet punches meet a hexagonal barrier. 

a courtesy of his brother's gym badge.

"or have you forgotten that lie already?"

smoke curls around the field. bits of it still burn. and the last of lyune's barrier disintegrates; behind it is another swell of fire. 

MATIAS SILPH

☉

to think that his pokemon could harness that which dragons are born from. he may be the volatile, but when she came into this world, it was kicking and screaming, and the blood she took was the first stain of many. the close combat draws the hitmonlee near, but lyune surges backwards just as easily, wings flaring and catching the thermals provided by the heated landscape. 

reptilian eyes flash and so too do the golds of his trainer's. he banks hard, tucks his wing, and dives down, shattering the earth with a thunderous clap. an earthquake fans out in all directions. 

"oh, but no one can humble you, can they?" she says. "to put it simply, i won't waste my breath. words are nothing. it's your actions i'm more concerned about."

MATIAS SILPH

☉

despite his meddling, she overcomes. it's a shallow victory and every bit as emotionally exhaustive as she thought it would be. they exchange few words, though she thinks for a brief moment she sees murder in his eyes when lyune finally lands back down on the ground, chest heaving. 

the dragon and his draconid accept their commendation with little more than curt nods, and then they're gone. 

she does not kid herself in the aftermath. she does not deign to think she made any sort of lasting impression. she may have cracked him, broken through and burrowed under the exterior, but he has a habit of shifting tectonic plates and wiping the slate clean.

MATIAS SILPH

☉