@sayleeofkanto / sayleeofkanto.tumblr.com
A question I just have to ask, will you ever do a nuzlocke of any of the regions Gen 5 and up? I feel like a run in Unova or Galar might make for a good story.
Hi! This blog is mostly defunct, more for archival purposes, but I have got both Unova and Galar runs--please check out Eternal Enmity, Fight/Flight/Freeze, or Ignoble Idolatry, and check out my newer blog at @chuthulhu-writes for updates about what I'm writing these days!
((I’m back in Scotland so it’s still not 2019 for another six hours or so, but keep an eye out then, because I’m not dead and I have actually been writing...))
Onix are mighty creatures that, by and large, live deep, deep beneath the earth, keeping business of their own far from soft creatures of daylight and water. But upon hearing Lady Mikan’s voice and the pattern of her feet upon the earth, they came at her call, smashing through enemy soldiers as easily as they smashed through the ground before them. Spears and swords and arrows clattered off of their stone hides as if they were nothing at all. Ranks screamed and broke before them, or were crushed to the earth by cascading boulders that moved, connected, like tails. Lady Mikan only smiled, crouching and stroking the steel that had surface beneath her feet, murmuring her thanks for the swift response.
Miyuu responded with rage, as did her green war-Pokemon, from whose neck leaves flew like daggers, slicing through the stone. The Onix bellowed in pain, and Lady Mikan gasped in horror as they fell, one after another, somehow torn apart by mere leaves. I could not have imagined to see such creatures of destruction in my life, and even less could I ever have imagined something bringing destruction upon them.
The steel beneath Lady Mikan’s feet roared and rose up, bigger than any of the Onix and blatantly engulfed in rage. At the same time, Kenya shrieked and dove, her broad wings knocking the green war-Pokemon back. Fang roared, but I screamed for him to stop, for I knew even then that just as the roots of a plant can indeed crack stone, they devour water. But Kenya was a creature of air, and Rock had become one too, and both of them struck at the green creature while dancing around its vicious leaves, distracting it from further harming the Onix, who at Lady Mikan’s command turned their attention back to destroying the Sakaki troops.
Miyuu herself, knocked from her war-Pokemon’s back, laid eyes on me, and when she did so I saw there the deepest hatred I have ever seen before or since. Lady Mikan noticed this too, and asked her dearest friend to deal with this enemy who so threatened her child.
The steel monster’s tail slammed down and the green one only barely managed to avoid it, grabbing Miyuu and turning tail to flee the battlefield. Lady Mikan bid her friend, whom she called King Steel, to let her flee, and bring to Sakaki news that the borders of Asagi were defended well.
It was then that Lady Mikan introduced me to her friends, the clan of Onix who followed King Steel, and explained to me that they were all dear friends on account of her being able to hear the voice of a Pokemon’s heart and respond in kind. This was who she had spoken to in the tunnels, and though I had heard only the groaning of stone, she had heard language that she understood as clearly as her own.
When I asked if she could teach me this language, pointing out my own proficiency, she laughed and laughed and laughed.
I’m sure all of you already know where to find me on AO3 but in the event that tumblr just straight up implodes sometime soon, I’m setting up on Pillowfort under the username Chuthulhu, and I’ll split off a sideblog there as soon as that’s an option without buying urls (or if I feel like buying another invite, they’re cheap and Christmas might turn up some cash).
Lady Mikan sent a runner ahead to tell the soldiers to fall back, and ordered her litter-bearers to proceed to the front lines. I followed, riding on Fang’s back as he lumbered alongside the litter-bearers, not half so graceful on land as he was in water, yet no less intimidating to look upon. Lady Mikan’s health and strength returned to her rapidly, and she was delighted to meet Fang and to learn that he had once been a Pokemon small enough for me to carry under my arm as I stole him. It was she who named Nessie, who to this point I had not thought to name and had thought of only as the witch’s familiar.
When we approached the enemy forces, Lady Mikan told me not to speak, simply to remain at her side as she ordered the enemy commander to turn and leave. When I asked what would happen if the commander refused, her eyes sparkled as she smiled.
I think now she had hoped that the enemy would continue to attack, and that she was excited to finally let me in on her greatest secrets. I was later to learn that she had only before revealed anything to her husband, and even he had not know the extent of what she was capable of. Perhaps she had only judged me odd enough to appreciate her abilities, though later in life I came to wonder if she had simply desired the deepest possible bond with me.
Whatever her reasons, upon passing through the retreating soldiers, she ordered her litter-bearers to set her down. She was wearing sickbed clothes, not fine robes, and demanded a retreating soldier give her his armour to cover this up. She declared an intent to speak to the enemy commander with only Fang, Kenya, Nessie, Rock and I at her side. I do not think any who looked on Fang could doubt his ability to protect us, but I also believe that her people, quite simply, had faith in her. They believed that, so long as she seemed assured of her actions, allowing her to do as she willed was the best course of action.
So it was that we found ourselves standing in an emptied village, watching the enemy soldiers approach us. Their commander stepped forwards alone, and I was startled to see a girl, older than I yet clearly not a woman grown. Her flaming red hair and angry scowl left no doubt in my mind that she was some kin of Kamon’s, a suspicion confirmed by the appearance of his great green war-Pokemon at her side, now bigger than ever and bearing ragged pink petals around its neck.
Lady Mikan commanded that the girl make her apologies for breaking the treaties of peace that guarded Asagi’s borders and leave, before any consequences befell her. The girl responded that she was Miyuu, of Clan Sakaki, and had been sent by her father to claim this land, but now would not leave without revenging herself on the thief who she believed responsible for the death of her brother Kamon.
She pointed at me, astride Fang’s back, and demanded my head in exchange for her leaving the rest of Asagi unharmed. Lady Mikan did not take kindly to this demand. With such a furious glare on her face, I was surprised to hear her begin to sing a song, a gentle, lilting melody about the strength of the hills and mountains. As she did, she began to dance, a startling thing in a woman who’d been on her deathbed a bare hour ago. Her heels struck against the ground in precise rhythm, ignoring the jeering calls of Miyuu’s soldiers. Fang roared his defiance at them, and the green war-Pokemon roared back, and then the earth itself roared and shook.
Quakes were not common at this time of year, but by no means unknown. The first rumble was light, barely enough forewarning to prompt me to cling tighter to Fang’s back before the second shake flung even him violently to the ground. The soldiers bellowed and screamed in fear and pain as they went tumbling in piles of armour and edged weapons. Lady Mikan continued to sing and dance, seeming to know the quakes before they came, dancing and leaping over the earth as she sang about the ground itself rising to smite those who would stain it with blood.
Then I saw the low rock walls that I had crossed over to enter Asagi coming down the hill, like a sea monster through water, as Lady Mikan finally stopped dancing and the earth fell away beneath her feet to reveal more shining steel than I had ever seen in one place on even the worst of battlefields.
I found Asagi in chaos. On the hills, we could see them, the soldiers marching towards the city, mowing down defensive lines before them. With the seas and skies inexplicably clear, people were swarming aboard the ships floating in the harbour and crowding the beach, now full of fishing boats and the hasty construction of rafts. People screamed and fled at the sight of Fang coming ashore and Kenya and Rock swooping overhead, but I ignored them, leaping from Fang’s back and running up the beach in search of Lady Mikan.
I spotted her entourage easily, taking her aboard one of the larger ships. I employed elbows, feet and not a single shred of dignity in my single-minded determination to reach her, holding the bottle of medicine aloft. Some of the maids, I believe, were delighted to see me safe, while some of the courtiers looked perturbed that I had reappeared from wherever it was I had gone. They argued against feeding Lady Mikan whatever medicine was in the mystery bottle, especially when I insisted that I had received it from a witch, and attempted to stop me. I cried out when one pulled me roughly away from Lady Mikan, and then Nessie, the little Pokemon gifted to me by the witch, lashed out with long yellow tentacles, firmly pushing aside anyone in my way. With her protection, I was able to force the bottle between Lady Mikan’s pale lips and pour the medicine down her throat.
There was screaming all around now as Fang followed the sound of my shouting, though thankfully he simply pushed his way through the fleeing crowds. He attacked nobody, for nobody there dared attack the great beast that had lurched out of the sea. It was the first time since our reunion I had seen him stand next to a house, and the first time I realized there was no longer any chance of him fitting through a door designed for a human.
The only soldiers left in the city were the ones surrounding Lady Mikan, and at the courtiers’ command were the first to turn weapons on Fang, forcing me to stand between them to prevent one from attacking the other. I must confess that I somewhat enjoyed the fear in the eyes of the courtiers who hated me when they realized that I now had the loyalty of four Pokemon, one being bigger and fiercer than the other three combined. The situation grew tenser by the second until Lady Mikan’s voice interrupted it.
Weak though it was at first, the shock of hearing her voice for the first time in weeks was enough to still us all. She seemed to come alive before our eyes as she sat up, colour leeching back into her hollow cheeks, light sparkling in her eyes again as she cleared her throat and demanded an explanation of what was happening.
When she received it, she ordered the servants carrying her litter to turn around. She had no intention of fleeing, not when the land itself would heed her call and destroy the invaders.
When first she spoke to me, her voice sounded so like my mother’s that I began to cry from shock. I am grateful that she did not bear my mother’s appearance, however, simply appearing to be a very nondescript adult woman in old, worn clothes. She walked with her hands on the trees around her, reaching out as she knelt carefully before me and commented on what an odd cry the baby had. It was then that she was close enough for me to see her pale, completely colourless eyes and realize that she was blind.
I told her that Rock was not a baby, but a young Pokemon, and that he was upset by something. She reached a hand in Rock’s direction, but he smacked it away with surprising strength, suddenly placing himself between the stranger and I. Before my eyes I saw his head suddenly reach out from his shell at the end of a long neck, his stubby arms and feet elongating, and tiny, buzzing wings appearing from his back, holding him up in the air between us. His tears were gone, and in their place was a fierce glare.
I could not account for this dislike of the woman, and both Fang and Kenya seemed equally nonplussed, though after a short time Fang seemed to decide that if this woman was somehow upsetting Rock, she was a threat. He advanced, snarling, and I had to command him to stop, warning the woman that my Pokemon somehow disliked her, and then I asked if this was because she was a witch.
She did not hesitate to confirm that she was, and said that it was rather unusual for Pokemon to dislike her. She did not seem upset by Rock’s dislike of her, stating that Pokemon were wise and that she liked them rather more than humans.
I desperately wanted her help, and told her of Lady Mikan’s illness, asking if it was true that the witch brewed a medicine that could cure any sickness. She assured me that she could, but at a price, and asked what I would pay. I told her that, as Lady Mikan’s ward, I had access to many fine things, gold, food, art, but she was interested in none of these things.
She asked me for a promise. She said that she could see in my eyes that I had been cursed with many blessings, and she wanted my word that I would one day pass something on to her. This made no sense to me, and I asked what such a thing meant, but she was dismissive, saying that I did not need to know how or why. She only wished for my word that one day, when she asked for something, I would give it to her, whatever it was.
I agreed, for I knew no better at the time. It does not do to make promises which you do not understand the nature of, or to trust blind people who claim they can see things in your eyes.
I departed soon after with a bottle of medicine in my hands and the weight of a promise on my shoulders, in the form of a small yellow Pokemon that lived inside of a red rock, whom the witch said, would protect me until it was time for me to pay her back. All the way back to Asagi, the waters were still, the skies clear, and Kenya and Rock flew overhead in the light of an unusually beautiful winter’s day.
citylitlena replied to your post “Knife Ridge Scrolls, Fragment 6-b”
Mate I found the thing after being tumblr followers for ages dammit i need ot learn teach me how to tumbl senpai
((You scream into the void and then you tag it))
Whatever happened to the Mirror, Mirror series?
((I do have plans for it, but most of planned scenes are relevant to stuff that hasn’t happened yet in the main series timeline! It still exists and will be updated again in time, I promise!))
So what's Giovanni up to these days?
Still avoiding facing justice for his crimes.
((He’s keeping busy.))
The trees were grey and barren, and I could hear the crash of waves no matter how far into the forest we went. Kenya perched on Fang’s back rather than flying overhead, perhaps fearing, as I did, to be too far from his might. The only sound at all was our footfalls and the sea, with no sound or sign of any wild Pokemon at all, nor any other human. After a time, I began to fear that the pirates had lied to convince us to leave them alive, but I forged onwards regardless, for I was too afraid to abandon hope.
After a time, Rock awoke suddenly and began to whimper, quickly escalating to flailing and wailing frantically in my arms. I could not account for it. He was not a human infant who regularly soiled their clothes, and radiated such heat that he could not be cold. When hungry he would simply begin to gnaw on the nearest inanimate object, often my clothes, until I fed him, though he seemed capable of digesting whatever he took it into his head to consume. I wondered if perhaps he was frightened of something, but I could see nothing, and even Kenya and Fang seemed confused.
Rock, I know now, is singularly sensitive to children, even as an apparent infant himself. He had often grown suddenly upset when we were accosted by bandits, upset not due to recognizing the imminent danger of weapons but due to feeling the ill will towards me. At those times, the source of his upset was readily apparent, so I had never thought on it much.
Had I known then what it was that upset, I would have realized that it was not being able to see a threat that upset him, but sensing it, and that he was growing so upset without anything in sight meant that we were drawing closer to a greater ill will than we had ever before encountered.
But I could know none of this at the time. I cuddled Rock close, attempting to console him, when I ought to have fled.
I awoke surrounded by corpses. This was not the first time I had done so, nor in fact would it be the last, though it was unusual in that the corpses had not been there when I fell asleep. In fact, I could not recall falling asleep at all. I had been aware of clinging tightly to Fang’s back with Rock tucked under my arm as we ploughed through the frigid, stormy seas, and as I recalled this I immediately felt around in a panic for Rock. I was beyond relieved to find him still in my arms, and radiating warmth as he had when I was an egg, which accounted for the front of my clothes being warm and dry though the back and legs were damp and chilly still, despite the warmth all around me. It then came to me that I was warm and sheltered by some soft weight, and this likely accounted for my not having passed in my sleep from the chill. Kenya was sitting on me, roosting as a mother Pokemon did over her egg, protecting me from the cold air and the spray of the sea. She was also eating something that I did not enquire as to the nature of. Fang was curled up not far away. Both of them were splattered with blood, likely from the fresh corpses all about.
I ought to have died of the foolishness that drove me to take to a stormy sea at night, in winter. I ought to have died of choosing to travel to the largest island in a sea where I knew that pirates roamed, and must surely have a haunt in which to wait out the winter. I ought to have been another corpse on that beach. I lived through all of these things due to the care of Fang, Rock and Kenya, and what were blessings to me must have been nightmares to the pirates, who could not have known as they went to rest the night before that they would never see the following dawn. Fang and Kenya alone, against more pirates than I dared to count, and not all of them were human, though many of those that were were so muscular and hairy it was hard to tell them apart from the Pokemon they must have commanded. I cannot think how Kenya followed us through the chill rain, but she did, and had energy still to make short work of the strong, murderous fighters awaiting her and Fang on the other side.
I did not wish to be around the unpleasant bodies anymore, so I followed the only path available to me, the one which Fang had been sitting and growling at. It was well-trod, and not far into the forest led to wooden palisades. A small handful of survivors stood behind them, bows drawn, and when they saw us, one screamed to fire. Fang leapt, as ever, to my defence, and seemed not to notice the arrow that did manage to stick between two plates in his hide, while the rest clattered off leaving no more than scrapes. Then he lunged.
I was as shocked as the pirates when he stopped at my commanded, but I quickly buried my relief and told them that I would let them live if they let us pass and told us what we wished to know. One of the survivors was a mere boy, in truth, only a couple of years older than I when I recall now, though at the time this was sufficient difference to make him seem grown to my child’s eyes. His voice was high and shaking when he asked what I wanted. I can hope that such fear drove him to some more honest trade, far away from the sea and all its monsters, though the land crawls with just as many.
I asked if it was true that a witch dwelt on the islands, one who could cure any illness. They told me of one such woman who lived deep in the forests, and warned me that she was capable of great and terrible magic. I, made bold by their fear of Fang and Fang’s obedience to my command, simply set off in the direction I had been given, determined to seek out the witch and save Lady Mikan.
I awoke surrounded by corpses. Oh boy… This reunion with Fang is going so well…
Ghost’s life continues to be an absolute carnival of delights!
