Aftershock

[Praxiteles]

I read back to it, and now I see that the writing was very ambiguous and confusing. Perhaps this is just me, but could you decipher anything of the actual series of events from this chapter? I think my style here was very misleading.

Well, yes, the chapter was aloof from the rest of the plot. In contrast, the chapters before and after it refer heavily to this one, seeing as the events here have crucial consequences for further events.

<---WARNING: POINTLESS RAMBLE CONCERNING SADISTIC AND DISGUSTING SUBJECTS AHEAD--->

The idea of decomposing alive, I think, is not an uncommon one. And if it is, it seemed most rational to me, and I was very anxious to depict it at least once. Thus, I looked up decomposition online (watching an educational .avi file depicting the stages of decay in pigs), and twisted it as well as I could into my purposes. If you're curious, the entrails digesting into mush was the process of autolysis, where bacteria and resident stomach acids digest the digestable inner portions into a delicious wholesome porridge. The gases building beneath its paper skin were two simultaneous features of the processes of bloating and drying, where the decomposing bacteria respire the subtle, sweet perfume of death and bloat the pig/Rattata from the inside out, and the difficult-to-decay portions (hair, skin, bones) dry up and are finally eaten by the hardier agents of decay. In fact, the bloating and drying processes are distinct stages, and I doubt any bloating occurs during the drying stage or vice versa. Even so, I decided to combine the two ideas since I had so little space with all the abstract ideas floating around.

<---END RAMBLE ON OBJECTIONABLE SUBJECTS--->

Anyway, I see why the idea of feeling accomplished is an uncertain one. Aaand that takes up the majority of my post.

Thanks for the wishing of good luck, by the way. The writer's block seems to be an effect of a cold which had been lying dormant for a while, and I think life will return to normal when I recover.

 

[MondoTR]

'I could still sense a vague hint of pity radiating from my Kadabra, a concept entirely alien to me at the point. Of course, no one, not my Pokèmon, could ever hope to outdo my grimness and apathy.' I think 'at the point' might be better as 'at that point'. And I think 'not my Pokemon' should have an 'even' between 'not' and 'my'.

Anyways, this fic has turned out to be a type I tend not to read and I'm not sure if I'll like it. However, I feel it unfair to leave abruptly and I do want to know what happens so I'll continue nonetheless. ^_^;

 

[Praxiteles]

Ah, I was hoping I wouldn't have to respond to reviews one-by-one this time.

Your grammatical point-outs are helpful, thank you. And don't keep reading on my account. If the fiction isn't your taste, you can easily leave if you want. I don't want to force anyone. ^.^

 

[MondoTR]

Well it may not be my usual style of fics but I have to know what happens so I'll continue.

 

[Praxiteles]

I leap back from the dead!

Unexpectedly, I haven't had a chance to get much of anywhere on the forum lately. Enough, even, to make me miss an update. And YES, I CAN DODGE YOUR PITCHFORKS! *runs* Anyhow, better late than never, I suppose.

I don't like this chapter at all. I always thought the theory was a passable one, and that I had much opportunity to go into character insights this time 'round, but I rushed it in that despicable way I tend to do. Attempts to flesh it out, furthermore, were met with failure. And any reason to call this a pokèmon fanfiction, rather than merely a novel with vegue references to the canon, are quickly falling apart. I'll have to see outside opinions, I suppose.

Aftershock​

Chapter 10: Old Acquaintances​

It was soon after that tainting, that true shattering of my self, baptizing me entirely into the damnation I had chosen, that I realized it time to be renamed.

In a shadowed, forested corner of the world, roaming as we did so often in the dark and the silence, I and Lepena neared a depression of a black cave to see it lit with crimson light. Meditating upon their lot in the deepest niche was a most familiar grown Quilava and Kadabra.

We considered each other for the slightest of a moment, before turning to the cave-mouth to contemplate our surroundings.

Strategizing our roaming, my last sane Pokèmon and I had developed a policy of chasing the winter cold to wherever it would lead, and synchronizing ourselves to a near nocturnal biological clock. Thus, at any given point, sufficient cold would exceptionlessly surround us as we marched, and the dim twilight of night-accustomed eyes shade us in our waking hours. This particular winter presently shied away from prospects of snow, but a fine stream of mist emerged from our breaths (and from Angin’s flames), and invisible patches of frosted ground would unexpectedly crunch underfoot as we trusted our footing to them. Above us, the stars were cold, distinct points of razor light, but even this was light, and I felt then the oxymoronic craving I had begun to regard all radiance with: I hated it, shying away from its outright, uninhibited glory; but inside I lusted after its wholesome influences as a desert-marooned beggar after water. Ah, but I was already unsuited to its overwhelming presence.

The Razor Leaf of canopy above which shielded us from the wrath of the starry night was frozen, yielding not an inch to the wishes of nearby breezes. Even so, the weather was entertainingly cold and bleak. I and my Mightyena moved into the dimlit cave, sparkling faintly with the effect of orange fire; Ytarrik and Angin stood face-to-face, a bonfire between them.

I realized a crisscross of telepathic links set up between this motley reunion, courtesy of Ytarrik.

[It’s been a while,] I began.

[Indeed,] replied Angin, [it must be at least sixteen years now.]

[Not for me, it isn’t,] Ytarrik growled faintly. [I wasn’t hoping to see you again for at least a few decades.]

[Now, that’s a little unfair,] Angin attempted to interfere.

[No, no, I don’t think so,] replied the Kadabra. [I declared my allegiance to Amaren Kelanis, beginning trainer, not you.]

[But why?] said I. [Why all this enmity; you were doing so well with the morally blinded rampage of thoughtless destruction for a long time.]

[No, I wasn’t,] he spoke, his mental voice rising imperceptibly. [I thought I could accompany you, but this life isn’t mine. It’s a human’s life, not a Kadabra’s.]

I half-ignored this. [If all my lies are falsehood, and I really am a sinking ship, you undeniably are the foolhardy captain who chained himself to the mast.] My speech was growing dangerously loud as well, but I hid this under the guise of a fit of cold mirth.

He blinked his (almost) lidless eyes. [I didn’t chain myself.]

The tall, black-jacketed man laughed. A hollow laugh, devoid of both the warmth of laughter and the malice of a cackle. [Don’t be quite so heartless. If I’d known, all that time ago, what was to happen to Ruki and me, I wouldn’t have brought any Pokèmon along for my descent into hell.]

[I certainly didn’t throw myself at your Pokèball, all that long ago in the burning forest.]

[I was trying to save your blessed little skin from combusting.]

[Considering the alternative, I’m not sure I accept your intentions.]

[But that’s the whole point; it wasn’t my fault.]

Ah, this was precious! Exactly as the traditional disorganized arguments between groups in those coming-of-age tales. Except there was no grand cause to unite at the last moment for the sake of. Merely a spiral to our deaths!

Ytarrik seemed filled with retort, but he calmed himself. [It wasn’t either of our faults. Blame it to chance, as so many fools do worldwide.]

We stared at each other for a long while, and then turned to our side. Lepena and Angin were watching us blankly, entirely excluded from the conversation.

[Ytarrik narrated the story of your life suitably,] Angin began, and continued when no objection was forthcoming. [So I suppose it’s my story that no one’s heard of yet.]

[Of course, Angin,] I urged her for narration, as Lepena slinked into his customary corner.

[What else can a trainer’s Pokèmon do, after she leaves? I trained, of course. They say wild Pokèmon are no match for trained, but I met up with some fierce competition even here. You just have to look. Of course, I make my way to the Cinnabar Gym every now and then; there are good arrangements for wild Pokèmon, as long as they’re coherent enough to understand.]

I had not seen her thoughts ever before, though this was a most unceremonious moment to do so. They possessed, unexpectedly, not the particular species of fire which had accompanied Ruki so long ago, but a more reserved form. Judiciously applied, but powerful in its own right. I noticed, for the first time, an alternate possibility to my own – Angin had mustered her strength towards repairing her loss, and while she yet carried unmistakable old wounds, she was conspiring adequately towards healing them. I considered this possibility for myself, but immediately dismissed it: if Ruki’s death had only partially destroyed the old Cyndaquil, it had certainly killed off Amaren Kelanis entirely. This being inhabiting his body was an outsider: I couldn’t have brought the old occupant back to life without the faintest trace of his existence. Not the greatest artist could spontaneously generate life from nothing, let alone Luphinid Silnaek.

[I know,] the Quilava replied to my determinations; [how different are our paths.]

[And I’m in the middle,] remarked Ytarrik, [teetering on the divide. Of course, I would join Angin if I could, certainly.]

And leave me? I thought inwardly. [You wouldn’t be whole, then. Even Angin still isn’t whole; she never will be what we once were.]

[I guess so,] she sighed.

[Don’t deny it, Ytarrik,] I hissed. [You’re as much the monster’s pet as a Kadabra, and much more. Chance still binds us together, you’ll understand eventually.]


At last, after long struggle and refusal, I relented in my efforts to seduce Ytarrik to my side. Matters turned to the affair of my name, and all three Pokèmon fell silent, thinking. At last:

[Remana,] remarked Angin.

[Luphinid,] Lepena growled with trademark hatred.

Ytarrik suggested last, waiting (as he had once done) for the court to silence sufficiently for an announcement of this grandeur. [Silnaek,] he said.

[Luphinid Remana Silnaek,] I determined.

And it was decided.

[{//\/\/\/\/\//\\//\\//\/\/\|/|\|/\/\/\\//\\//\\/\/\/\/\/\//}]​

While most wild Pokèmon strove to few peaks of outward intelligence or development in the magnitude of the arrogance of humans, a fine network of nomadic groups or tiny villages stretched across the faces of the continents, each consisting solely of one particular species and somehow sharing its inherent characteristics with the countless others spread worldwide. Thus, each type of Pokèmon possessed its own intrinsic culture and language, and often also common traditions and customs, which were shared by the worldwide settlements of its more progressive members.

In the mythology of the Mightyena, Lepena’s kin, a Luphinid is a preternatural creature like to a Mightyena in basic features, but unnatural and ungodly in its dark abilities. It makes a habit of terrorizing smaller, weaker groups of the species and its lower evolution, and thus is seen in a largely menacing light. Remana, in the tongue of Typhlosion and their family, is a somewhat contemptuous label for one who is unusually reserved and introverted, a trait not often praised in their fire-based society. Silnaek, on the other hand, is one of the few physical words spoken by the elite Kadabra and Alakazam to heighten their meditation; it is specifically used in attempts to transcend into the state of omniscience, a highly appreciated achievement in their circles. Ytarrik had told me of his vague endeavors towards all-knowing during his time, but I could (and would) not foresee what it had to do with me.

Deprived of the victory of persuading my starter to rejoin me, I was once more fired with the need for a productive task (in relative terms). It was a simple endeavour to turn back towards the nearest sign of civilization and dive into a record of righting documents, in search of another project; and this opportunity I took not to summon another wrong, so close after my first brush with death, but to study the secrets of anomalies – a crucial, if little-known, practice of righters, so often perceived as they were as mere hunters of the abominations.

The most common and obvious manifestation of a wrong is, unexpectedly, the phenomenon of ghosts. A ghost is born out of an incomplete death; not to such a level as mine, where the soul is primed slightly for death but instantly thrown back inside the still-living body, but to the point of the death of the physical manifestation, and an incomplete assimilation of the spirit. The body is decayed entirely, moving perfectly through the death stages, but a certain portion of the naked soul is forced to remain on the earth, be it a single memory of the original consciousness (which replays itself at regular intervals after the death), or an entire vagabond mind, possessing all faculties of the whole living except physical form. This is not to say, in fact, that the later form is unable to affect earthly matters; it may create illusions within the minds of others using inherent telepathy of a physical form which it prefers, and thus communicate using that body. A whole ghost, rarely as it is found, may even possess the bodies of others, ejecting the original occupant into the vagabond state.

The reason for my sudden interest in this subject was that, moving out of the shade of the forest I and Lepena had been tramping through, we encountered a low cliff immediately outside the forest boundaries, belonging to a shallow canyon with a road at its very bottom. If one jumped down into the main road, as we did without incident or injury, and moved east through the dirt path, one would soon encounter a small, steep valley with a minor settlement on its flat surface. Lavender Town. I withdrew the unobjecting Lepena, and walked through the scattered houses to the showpiece of the village.

The Pokèmon Tower, a memorial to dead spirits, was an antique weathered affair of ancient spires and stone sentinels, having been left untouched by renovation projects for over five centuries. It was indeed a mark of the preserving forces of the numerous ghosts it harboured that the building was still stable and safe for human entry, if any were bold enough to attempt so. As I walked across its walled courtyard over the single, cobblestone path, the cracked and scattered stones underfoot shifted ever so slightly, as though acknowledging their soundless lacks of welcome to my presence. Rows of gravestones I passed, monoliths commemorating the withering of the husks of life underfoot; and the pupilless eyes of the stone Pokèmon guardians hunched over each tomb stared accusingly at my intrusion, their proud expanses belying the intended strength of their limbs. As I put each tombstone behind me, a sunless, musty wind would hiss through the stone carvings, whispering into my sensitive ears tales of blood, betrayal, sordid trickery, and cold-blooded murder.

At last, I arrived at the granite double-doors, which opened at my nearing by themselves, creaking eerily, though their hinges were oiled stone. I gazed into the darkness inside – to meet a gruesome set of blood-red eyes, leering shockingly into me.

I fixed my eyes onto the phantom face and glared back with such malice that the unfortunate Haunter appointed to this illusion turned tail and fled, back into the confines of the twilight tower.

I entered the guardless foyer to meet a collection of still more graves, more ornately carved and plated with the dusty marble of the floors. A single spiral staircase stabbed through the center of the room into every storey of the tower, and as I watched and waited the colourless figure of a small child could be seen descending down this structure, trailing (besides her long dressing-gown) the purple fireballs of cowering Ghost-types which surrounded her as moths to a sustaining fire.

The Ghost-type was no result of incomplete death; it was a perfectly natural phenomenon, an evolution of certain Pokèmon to mimic the tendencies of hostile spirits. Thus, large collections of such types would usually be found headed by a true, complete ghost, from which the Pokèmon learnt the secrets of their type and fulfilled their mortal needs. At this point, it seemed this tiny child-ghost was the head of this settlement.

As she approached, her figure seemed occasionally to flicker and skip forward seconds in time, like to an old film reel. Within seconds, therefore, despite her leisurely pace, we were face to face, scrutinizing each others’ eyes. The fine-carved skin was as the ivory of early childhood, but the large, sad eyes betrayed her age to my experienced gaze; the cascading stream of once-golden hair was pale silver under the desaturation of lifelessness. This ghost was no less than a century old, its experience and knowledge uncounted.

She cocked her head slightly to the side. “Kindred spirit.”

The two kindred wraiths walked back through the courtyard, into the Lavender main. The moon was up in full tonight, its light casting faint shadows on the grassy ground, but I suffered the moonlight to warm me in its subtle manner. All around us, doors were locked and windows boarded (their houses’ occupants all inside), saucer eyes of the humans gaping through the cracks – all but for one old man with a young Cubone hiding behind his legs, standing outside his door and watching us with distinct understanding.

“Does it not bother you,” I began, “that your true age is hidden by the size of your form?”

“Does it not bother you,” she questioned in reply, “that not your physical appearance, let alone anything else, has not escaped the ravages of time?”

“But you’re not harbouring any hidden youth within yourself, are you? Your form is only an illusion; it doesn’t make you younger.”

“I may be endeavouring towards a cause I will never reach, but you are not acknowledging it at all. Lies aside, your position is the same as mine. Perhaps you should cease denying, as I, that you wish for youth at all.”

But I do wish for it! I wanted to shout. I wish it with all my heart!

“All those years,” I managed. “Your wisdom, your memory of every minute crack in the stonework of the Tower, it must be monumental.”

“Yes, but what of it? It would be a cruel jest to consider passing on my knowledge. My age would come with the packet, of course.”

“But surely you must have the power to move mountains! How could you ignore that?”

“As easily as you ignore your own abilities. At least, I presume so?”

“I… I’m not entirely certain…”

I raged inside. The things I was saying! This was not the aged, withered ghost at my core; I was veiling my true thoughts, and I could not learn how to unveil them for this fellow of mine to see. Did I wish for the withering which slowly overcame me, the dark vapours clouding my body? I had been barring myself against their influence, but a quick brush with the maleficent emotions would effectively harden my heart against them, teaching me their true darkness.

I allowed the Mightyena blood to enter my mind in an imperceptible trickle – and slipped. Before I could react, a torrent of vicious thought and emotion was sweeping away my judgment, filling me with the intoxication of bloodlust, and I knew no more: merely the eyebrows of the ghost beside me, rising in vague surprise.

 

[porygon181]

I didn't notice the pokemon-ness dying quite yet. Maybe I wasn't supposed to yet, but still.

I almost freaked when I saw Angin mentioned. I was like, "No way!! He said she was gone!"

Then I actually paid attention to what it said, and I understood.

I found it very interesting that the anagram of his name actually meant things. So it was like he was destined, named from the beginning to go crazy.

How sad. =(

 

[Praxiteles]

Well, the slow death of pokèmonness was never exactly planned, though I wouldn't like a reader to notice it quite yet. That has nothing to do, of course, with how it was planned. As for Angin, some surprise was planned to come at her appearance, but I think the sort of surprise you had is different from plan, and in fact disturbing in the light of the lessons about lucidity Act was stressing on in her concrit review.

Well, the attributes of his new name were already prevalent and obvious in him when his name was actually chosen, excepting the case of Silnaek. (As a hint, the reason the Pokèmon suggested names for him out of the order in which he used them was because they were trying to depict the story of his life in chronological order. He rearranged it so that it reflected three sides of his personality, in descending order of prevalence. So his biography could be summed up in the words Remana Luphinid Silnaek, but his personality at the time - or, more specifically, what he thought of his personality at the time - could be described with his actual name. This really means that his name becomes an outdated description of him as time goes on.)

Anyway, Aftershock doesn't believe in destiny, and I fervently agree with it and hope it'll give me a few scraps at dinner for writing it down on paper, and forgive the fact that I did the job rather badly. It was going to be much more detailed and fresh and original and electric than this when I planned it out in my head, believe me.

 

[Praxiteles]

HOE SHNAP.

Aftershock is disintegrating, I spy. This is the third time I haven't updated in time, and my writer's block doesn't seem to be letting up. Point of No Return is the last complete chapter I have!

Of course, I mean in no way to let it die. No,m that just doesn't happen with my fictions, I think. it just might have to suffer a hiatus of indeterminate duration, while I catch up with my original pace. Ahhh... this fiction has been the fastest to progress, but also the fastest to lose fire out of all my works.

Well, keeping that morbid note in mind, let us commence with chapter 11! More gore this time, the usual staple of horror movies, though I hope this version differs sufficiently from that particular bird of prey.

Aftershock​

Chapter 11: Point of No Return​

The earliest remaining memory, immediately after my blackout, was of a blurred, pale-yellow figure hunched over my form.

As my senses focused back into vividness, I realized I was lying on my back in a deserted section of some unknown city, my clothes arranged in tatters over my body. I remembered again how to swivel the pupils of my eyes, and a dusty alley stretched out before and behind me, showing not a sign of life. I could barely make out the distant knives of silver, camouflaged with the reflections of the setting sun which shone directly into this rift – Saffron City’s steel skyscrapers.

Ytarrik, presumably, had sensed my sudden peril and followed me here, for he was beside me once again, looking out (as I did) into the dying sunlight. In any case, he claimed to have been shut from my mind for the entire duration of the lapse, and I wondered what truly I had done.

Regaining control of my limbs, I jumped smoothly from my prone position and strode quickly out of the side-path, Ytarrik seeming not to follow. I had little distance to erase before I suddenly emerged into a large expanse of space, a center in the city; looming impressively over me, as they had always, were the old mansion and laboratory of Professor Kalens Oak. In the twilight which was soon enveloping the city, the great rows of arched windows were melancholy eyes peering into withered night, and the turrets and chimneys, both indistinguishable from the other, seemed to carry the weight of the skies on their weary heads. The domed conservatory adjoining was darkened by the deprivation of light, though faint signs of Pokèmon movement were still emanating for close perception to see. These invisible flashes of light only served to make the gloom all the more prevalent.

The continuous sunlight on my eyes and the previous exertion had subdued the strength of my Mightyena blood, but it was soon regaining its parasitic footing on my wasted limbs, following the dominating night. The vapours returned to whip about over my body with characteristic lust, and a severe dehydration of a pain, induced from the continuous influence of sunlight in my senseless daze, made its existence apparent only by leaving rapidly. As I raised a hand to shield my eyes, an unusual flare of vapour leaped out to obscure my view for a moment.

I stopped in mid-stride.

The glimpse was infinitesimal, but the change so sheer and vast that it imprinted itself vividly into my memory. Through the lens of the translucent mist, the greenhouse glass had shattered, and its metal frame melted into the main mansion, as though blown apart by an explosive force from its right. The fallen glass of the conservatory dotted deformed, melted shards over the main wreckage, a wilderness of ash-mounds and unrecognizably charred figures: which bird, or beast, or fish or plant they had once been, no observer can say. Vast, near-unrealistic piles of skulls, larger and stranger formed than human components, lay over mangled jumbles of indiscriminate bones in varying sizes. However, it was to the mansion that my attention was chiefly given.

The vast majority of the building was crumbled to its foundations, but the general structure of the double staircases of the entrance hall still remained, and their outstretched arms cradled the lone remains of a human, standing out from the fallen glory. The soot-blackened bones were strung together weakly by the fuse of persistent bits of charred ligament, and the black, withered muscles hung loosely from the limbs, but it was upright with an unnatural energy, its permanent grin lit with an abominable glint. Balanced within the eye-sockets were half-molten spheres of gold, slowly falling apart, oozing down in splatters across the hollowed cheekbones; within the ribcage reclined a pulsating heart, its severed openings occasionally sputtering with the remains of dried blood which caked the surrounding bones. It was difficult to determine, but I believe I saw flanking the organ a set of withered lungs, wheezing and secreting a trickle of some unknown fluid. As I stared at the figure, my interest piqued, a pair of sapphire pupils squelched out of the midst of the melting eyes to gaze at me accusingly – and the vapours passed, and the vision was gone.

Profoundly intrigued, I entered the atrium.

Kalens Oak, certain as the blood poisoning my own, was standing before me in the hall, a melancholy smile on his aged features. He wore a tweed coat and tie, and the bowl hat on his graying hair served to accentuate his resemblance to the old trainer Gentlemen on their world-voyages. I was given entirely to his frail harmlessness, taken by the quiet twinkle of hidden knowledge within the fragile frame, and it was with a sinking feeling that I walked towards him.

“Hello, Amaren,” he said levelly. “I see you’ve regained consciousness.”

I replied with a blank look of puzzlement.

“But not your wits yet, I see. Well, perhaps my recounting of the tale should demonstrate.

“What you see with your naked eye,” he continued, “is a detailed illusion set up by myself; what you can see through the filter of your vapours is my true situation. I made this illusion to prevent the consequent shock of raising my hands to eye level.” All this was said with polite amiability, as though discussing the weather.

“Why, what have I done?” I exclaimed.

“To be precise, you entered my house at half-past midnight, superhumanly powerful and unreasonable under the influence of Mightyena blood. After speaking to me at great lengths about the darkness of your soul (if I recall correctly), you stripped the container off the base of my blender, exposing the naked cross-blades, turned on the motor, and made quick work of the majority of my vital organs. After that, I can only suppose you set the conservatory and the house to fire and left me here to burn.”

I slumped against the wall, my head spinning. “Kalens, I’m sorry. How are you…”

“Alive?” he finished.

I nodded gratefully.

“It seems your influence was so strong as to lend some of your invincibility to me. From what I surmise, at this point, any number of injuries can befall me, but my general form will remain the same. Of course, I can additionally never die, though I am not exempt from pain. Currently, certain of my nerve endings are still keeping connections to the mind; but once they die out, I shall be capable of no physical feeling. What led you to such a delirious state, however?”

I grasped control of my vocal chords. “I was letting down my guard against the Mightyena isolation, but I slipped. Went too far. After that, I don’t remember anything…

“How did my assimilation come to affect you, though?”

He gazed at me for an intent moment. “Amaren, do you really not know? This is no chemical component of the flesh of a Dark-type; it is the naked substance of the very soul of the element. What you are injecting into yourself is only metaphorically blood!”

“You mean – “

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. The poison running through your blood is what makes a nip on the shoulder by a Poochyena so lethal; not a venom on their teeth, but a portion of their very element! Under appropriate influences, any object your mind is even directed towards will be infected.”

“But – I should have known! I never even considered that possibility! Kalens, why didn’t you tell me?”

“You never gave me a chance to,” he sighed.

“This is all so monstrously wrong; I’d never thought I would be this deep! Surely, I made my farces, I told you, so many times, that I would never be the same, but…”

“It is impossible to estimate exactly the business you are considering until it’s too late, unfortunately.”

I raised my hands, coated in a writhing mass of shadow. I had used these very hands to sentence living creatures to death by torture; I had so often shed the blood of uncooperative strangers into these collectors, but to think, mere moments ago, that I had sprayed them with the innards of my last remnant of old Saffron…

I stepped back, into the shadow of a cabinet; and, as the shadowy vapours sprung into greater life, some of my old strength returned. My barriers began to reform.

“Why am I shocked?” I suddenly said aloud. The professor instantly saw the state of affairs, and replied with a look of resignation. He had suffered enough.

“The merry tale of lies I had been stirring of my lot has finally come true, I think.” I laughed insanely, harshly. “I’d always wanted to be the sufferer of a thousand wrongs, out on his bloodthirsty rampage of vengeance into the arms of hell, and now I am!”

The grief was welling up inside me as the welling of intestinal fluid within the Rattata’s papery skin, but it went no farther; my insides, raging in self-pity and horror, were entirely separate from the overtaking entity within my face, turning it into a maniacal, craven mask.

“Listen, Amaren,” Oak pleaded, struggle coming back into his weary eyes. “You can work out of this. Everything can be healed! Come with me, I’ll – “

But he saw me raise a tendril of vapour once again to my eyes, signaling the darkness of my deeds, and faltered.

“Give up, old man. You can restore a corrupted Amaren back to his original form, you say? Can you bring him back to life? This isn’t Amaren, this is a Luphinid, the Luphinid!”

“No,” he defied. “No, I’ll never believe that.” And, bothering to hear only a fragment of his parting words, I whipped out of the mansion.


As though suffering the very swings of mood of the Rattata I had subjected to torture, at the beginning of my illustrious career, all anger, or hatred, or bitter-spirited cynicism, emptied out of me as water through a sieve. I was wasted, a dead leaf to the mercy of my assimilation’s whim, and as soon as I exited the house I melded into the darkness as I could so skillfully do, moving instantaneously through patches of shadow out into the darkened grassland.

The rosy glow that had lit the sunsetting field in my memories was removed entirely, and the artificial shine of the night-city and the chalky moon bathed the stalks in the light of long-past glory; a sea of writhing, phantom tentacles persevered fruitlessly to drown me in their suffering. I sunk into the darkness of the ever-shifting wind itself, the cold remorseless whisper of winter, and seas of viridian, dotted with blurs of cerulean, vermillion, abysmal navy, fuchsia, all crumbled away in my wake, leaving only the dark gray-blue of the night sky as legacies.

I fell into the shores of Route 19, the merciless eye of the vigilant moon pursuing me through all my suffering, and I saw fully the bitterness of my thought, that such a dazzling silver should burn me so repugnantly. From within the cover of this coverless wasteland of sand protruded a single, disease-ridden hand, embracing this never-warming light though it scalded him with a passion. I broke out of all restraint, running out onto the shimmering sands and the furnace of silver fire, burning, my skin on a fire more agonizing than hell, more divine than heaven, and I didn’t care that I was slowly shriveling into ash, that my flesh was nothing without the influence of the shadows which rapidly deserted my pain…

Do you feel alive now? asked the slowly-roiling waves, and I ignored their sarcasm. Yes, I felt alive; alive with the agony and the ecstasy of perspiration, alive with the last remnants of the fire which burned so brightly once, which now simmered remorsefully in its dying embers, never forgetting past glory. As I ran across the sands, it seemed as though the entire ensemble of the original party emerged from the trees to run with me, dancing around me as harmonies to my thought; Ytarrik, and Angin, and Lepena and Akale, their emotions fluorescing in my own to rise above their differences and transcend into a dark climax of brilliance.

My melody rose above all the rest, buttressed and complemented by theirs; and it was a symphony of feeling, of life in all its glory and defeat, such that the land shook in surprise at the beauty of this display which sprung so unexpectedly from my darkness. Rainbow threads of light branched out from our surrounding halo, spiraling around us in a canopy of shimmering colour, meeting together at our apex, our receptacle, our focus for the last memory of beauty which still thrilled our aching bones; all our power and life gathered for this blow, falling into the single, skyward Hyper Beam, seconds before wiping us out in an explosion of joy –

The sea rose up to engulf me as I stumbled into its frigid arms, and all our creations crumbled as ash before the wind, losing their complexity and falling back into our straining bodies. I had never truly known joy; I had never truly been alive. As the dark, inhospitable womb of the nighttime sea covered me whole, and the last filtering beams of moonlight dissolved into oblivion, I knew that no trace of light had ever permeated my essence; the show of light I had endeavoured towards was merely a farce.

I didn’t want my strength! I didn’t want the instantaneous speed, or the infinite wisdom, or the invincibility; even the maturity I had developed prematurely I would happily forego for the last flare of the summer sun, lazing under the golden fields of Saffron with the fragrance of clean, living flesh surrounding me and the beauty of a peaceful forest wafting from the nearby outskirts. If only I had ever had a choice, if only I had lived a true, formed life, if only I had never been stunted from the beginning, perfect as Ruki was in her short time – but speculation was vain. Surely, I would endure infinite losses to regain the life of Amaren, but I would never have the opportunity, would I? As my body hit the dark, sunless seafloor, and I deemed it time to swim out of my weakness and back to shore, I knew that not a single connection lay between my life and his, and no opportunity to bridge the distance. I was Luphinid Remana Silnaek, indestructible, monstrous, unforgivable, malformed, infected, and so I would eternally remain.

For there was no merciful one to forgive me. What angel would sink from the land of light to deliver me?

[{//\/\/\/\/\//\\//\\//\/\/\|/|\|/\/\/\\//\\//\\/\/\/\/\/\//}]​

Over the ensuing decades, I devoted the vast entireties of my life to the sole act of righting, my techniques growing more ruthless and effective with every wrong, my certainty in my sentence setting deeper into concrete. Several times I considered returning to Oak, but in all my beleaguered visits to his ruined mansion never did I waver in my conviction, force-feeding myself the lies which had formed all my essence: that he was tainted with my blood, and incapable of true deliverance, so deep into my quicksand; that only one element of the world would heal me, and it was so removed from my life that the possibility could never occur onto my path; that it was unlikely in any case that the professor yet truly believed in me through all my wrongs and refusals. What matter was it that I could have been healed; that a simple admittance to a dear friend could have brought me back to some semblance of sanity? These were possibilities, but I was positive they would never transpire, and content in the assurance of my dark depression.

Certain metamorphoses had been crawling sluggishly through my body, result of my sins, my abhorrence of warmth, and my frequent brushes with lethal wrongs and addictive assimilations. I have been describing them disconnectedly at moments when they came to prominence, but perhaps it shall be more decisive and detailed to depict their long-term results at this point, though we are far from the end of my tale. Soon after an almost opaque peak of domination on the part of the Dark vapours over my hands, they withdrew entirely into my arms, leaving the flesh of the palms entirely untouched, though infused with a distinctive pallor. After the decimation of my velvet jacket, I took to the old-fashioned cloaks of ancient times, almost magelike, trailing in kingly drapes behind me; and over the unnatural silver hands I drew black gloves to hide the lustre. Though a hood deigned to obscure my face in half-shadow, streak by streak, shard after shard, my once-mellow dark brown eyes transformed into a piercing silver, more unnatural and more dazzling than the whites of my eyes; and they shone out in contrast from the dimmed vagueness of my features under the darkness of my attire.

I gained several vague, nameless abilities to do with the Dark type: superhuman strength, instantaneous speed through shadows, even the weak manipulation of light to shine away from a given object. Through a cold night wind I could twist my speed into flight, and move ambiguously high up into the heavens, skirting past the innumerable stars as a bodiless concept of no concrete shape or position. This was not to say, however, that I was free of limitations: continuous exposure to any natural, celestial light burned me (slightly, first, then at increasing degrees of harm), and I fell prey to many such senseless lapses of reason and memory of the kind which destroyed Kalens Oak. But for the most part my changes were almost inconsequential to few but me, harming me in subtle ways. Over time, my biological clock, the very permanent machinations of my body, shifted to an entirely nocturnal schedule, and I woke up well into the midst of midnight and moved into sleep at the arrival of the sunrise, taking care to insulate fully from the light. Indeed, in the later portions of my transformations my very respiration dipped into shallower and shallower gulps, until with vague surprise, near my one hundred and fiftieth year, I realized I had stopped breathing.

Ah, I seem to have forgotten to mention: assimilation had also granted me longevity, as though a human’s life of my infernal existence was too little. An assimilation heightener of the Mightyena is granted, on average, two hundred years, during which he rises to greater and greater levels of power before suddenly self-destructing. At the final moments before death, the skill and ability of the human is almost godly, and many choose this opportunity to perform their final act: a spectacular finale of their twisted, glorious life.

And revel in the glory I did, the reaches of my long arms growing greater and more precise with every heightening, every obliteration of a wrong. It seems I had been entertaining a species of involuntary hope before the moment of Kalens’ defilement, forsaking the possibility of salvation while still unhealthily attached to memories of those days. Shortly after the half-death of my mentor, however, in my despair (as though I had taken the thoughts of a man moments before near-inevitable death and held on to them for my eternity), I accepted the impossibility of clean, beautiful joy and made do with the alternative: power-lust, and vanity, and the adrenaline of near-death. They served a type of emotional fuel very similar to assimilation heightening in its efficiency at driving my deprived struggle on as long as I wished. I had no future; no harm could be done in practices which ruined it beyond recognition.

It was, therefore, this introduction into the full philosophy of my life which made the time ripe for a certain influence to take me by storm.

 

[porygon181]

Dizzam.

So basically he's a totally badass vampire now? Too cool. Do the pokemon live as long as he can in his righted state? I'm starting to understand why you didn't want us attached to your amazing characters at the beginning now - they seem to drop like flies.

The whole ordeal with Kalens threw me for a loop, but it was interesting. I really got the image of a Banette when you described dead-Oak, except for pulsing organs visible through lacerated skin. Very disturbing. I felt horrible for Luphinid, though.

The Hyper Beam of Happiness was described beautifully. I was trying to figure out if the random appearances of Ytarrik, Lepena, Angin, and Akale were metaphorical or literal forever, though. I just really, really liked that scene. Now if only it wasn't immediately followed by a hundred-year jump through time and some loss of sanity.

So I'm horribly interested to find out what his new life philosophy is, and why it took him a century and half to come up with. XD

 

[Praxiteles]

Yep, he's a vampire. To be precise, he has heavy influences from the Vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, whose books I had taken an obsession to when he was still forming. And yes - Aftershock has no sense of the value of human lives. I've always wanted someone to invest in the amazing potential for murder of a blender's cross-blades, though. (In fact, Kalens Oak Redux is mainly a skeleton, with some vague pieces of flesh to hold his body together. I should have mentioned the word skeleton, but I decided not to.)

Ah, and we didn't really jump a hundred and thirty years forward in time. As Luphinid says, he's describing the whole process of metamorphosis on a time-frame separate from the main time scale. He's deliberately getting ahead of himself, going on fast-forward, so that the reader can see these large-scale changes in his body scaled down. The next chapter shall begin when he is aged forty-five. It takes him merely 18 years to find a new obsession, which is not to say his new philosophy isn't... interesting. And the appearances of his party are living metaphor, let's just say. They disappear when the Hyper Beam does.

Say, by the way, has the guy become too... angsty over the chapters? The Hyper Beam is borderline masochism, and it seems I've been giving him too few happy thoughts. That shall change in the next chapter, but even so I don't want his performance during thiese chapters to be bad quality.

 

[porygon181]

Oh, well geez. Metaphorical life! You should have just said so!! XD

...has the guy become too... angsty over the chapters?

I feel that this question is basically a moot point. His angst goes with the tone of the story... well, I guess it kind of is the tone in itself. But I think it's been fine. I think you may be worrying just because he never gets a chance to talk for five seconds before he kills everyone. When he actually talks, he has this nice dry, bitter sarcasm. It's not as angsty, but it still fits the story's tone.

So yeah. At least let him talk to himself or something.

Oh, and I do recall reading a story or role-play once about someone that was murdered with a blender. Someone just shoved their entire head into the blender. I found it delightfully unbelievable.

So you're not alone in your interest in the power of blenders. ^^

 

[Praxiteles]

An announcement: Atershock is rising from its ashes, slowly but surely. Work on the twelfth chapter is being done, but it won't be finished by tomorrow. As compensation, it will be far on the high end, in regard to length. This always happens when I lose fire halfway through a work.

I feel that this question is basically a moot point. His angst goes with the tone of the story... well, I guess it kind of is the tone in itself. But I think it's been fine. I think you may be worrying just because he never gets a chance to talk for five seconds before he kills everyone. When he actually talks, he has this nice dry, bitter sarcasm. It's not as angsty, but it still fits the story's tone.

So yeah. At least let him talk to himself or something.

My anxiety mainly stemmed from the fact that depressed characters (or even people) are not very popular, apparently, with mainstream society. It is the tone of the story, and I am given to wonder whether this angst, like so many others, is as unbearable and overwhelming to outside audiences. Perhaps the unpopularity is against those who complain about their lot in life without valid reason, in which case Luphinid's angsting could be justified. I don't know.

Luphinid has never been much of a talker. He does, however, muse upon his lot quite a lot more now. I hope that compensates.

Ah, and my blender-idea pales in comparison to that. Wow, shove someone's head into a blender?

 

[SnoringFrog]

“A pokèball!” she exclaimed, as though it was something quite as treasured as Amaren felt it to be. “Do you know how rare these things are?” She peered intently at some invisible marking at its bottom, and gasped.

“Late 1990’s, this is! I don’t even know if we have a Recovery Machine to fit it! Hold on – “

This instantly got me more intrigued to this story; it'll be interesting to see what all you do with this in the future.

Oh, I new this would happen. I started reading this, and became interested in it, now I've got to stick with it. Not that that's completely a bad thing, it's just another thign I'll add to my list fo thigns to do this break, catch up on Pyroken Serafoculus's fic as well as the one's I was actualy asked to review as well. Well, I've finished the first 3 chapters, and I'm hoping to find time to read the other 8 soon as well.

 

[Praxiteles]

Thank you for your review, SnoringFrog. This may be belated, but the story takes a huge turn from what it foreshadows in the beginning...

Well, then. It was rather fortunate that Chapter 12 could be finished on a Sunday; now, perhaps, I can restart the old schedule. A little gory detail at the ending for this one. Ah, and there is a song playing momentarily in the background: I Am the One You Warned Me of, by the Blue Oyster Cult. While the lyrics suit no part of Luphinid's life in particular, the tone of the song is very much like the tone of his mood at the time; and anyways the song was far too fun to pass up.

Aftershock​

Chapter 12: Warm Hospitality​

I was looking into information concerning my next anticipated wrongs, and updating records on previous of my accomplishments, when I noticed a recurring name among the rolls of sordid honour: a strange, renowned fellow by the name of Seymul Colt. In fact the list of his rightings was well-known, at least in mention, by most world-wise anomaly hunters, and I had taken no interest in him simply for his fame before I realized a certain strange fact around him.

The list of wrongs which I had finished, and was intending to finish, was exactly identical to his own roster: a coincidence I found to be meaningful, in a thoughtless, idle way. This was a sufficient hook of interest for me, and remained so long enough for me to learn of him more stably absorbing details: his singularity, like to my own in many ways, and his inhuman strength and skill, even for a Righter. Thus, I was kept in some species of awe for a sizable amount of time, before realizing that most accounts of his life were, if not entirely apocryphal, certainly disputable. Even so, his one indubitable history – the list of attempted and succeeded rightings – caused me to regard him with a fair amount of kinship, and I decided, idly but truly, to lead my life in his footsteps. (It would save me several long hours of contemplation upon my next course of events, as much as I realized all prospects of novelty would fly out the window.)

Why, the both of us had allegedly run from a mentally scarring rendition of the anomaly 0A1, early in our life, only to discover our noble occupation and begin work on 3S1, closely followed by research on ghost phenomenon, and the Righting of wrongs 2G3, 2H5, and 3A1. Ah, I seem to have misled you. When I mentioned beginning work on these various wrongs, I don’t mean to say both I and my new role model righted these projects, one after the other. I was merely set to work upon his failed goals, of which there were countless. As these leftovers were most often too difficult for the young Seymul (and, therefore, for most righters of his age at the time), my training was harsher and steeper that his, and far more effective, seeing as I did manage to survive each successful Righting.

Colt’s traditional image was that of a large, powerfully-built man with a sharp face and bold, perceptive eyes. However, in the light of some of his papers upon the subject of righting, I was obliged to see him in a more sophisticated, subtle light – his actual appearance was lost to all visible records, and I allowed imagination to take reign over this trivial matter. In my mind, therefore, he was shaped in the influence of Kalens Oak, touched with far greater youth than the decrepit and infinitely wronged professor, and surrounded in logical tendrils of black and pale white vapour, due to the combination of Psychic- and Dark-type assimilation he claimed to participate in. A Gardevoir invariably stood by his side, his apparent starter, and served purpose only in implication. Even so, the aura was one of deep impressiveness, and remained to be so for the entirety of my life.

The refined scholar kept his Gardevoir by his side, and what did I, the sequel to his esteemed existence, have with me? The Ralts line is unmatched in empathy by all others, but Ytarrik served in fair sympathy to my cause, soon after the desecration of the poor Professor Oak. While he left my side in ‘peacetime’, as I call it, to train long hours at the Saffron Gym, he remained with me for all eventful occasions, aiding me with the majority of my anomalies, and pretending convincingly to join me in my lightless beliefs and chains of thought. As for his inner views on my matter, I was no longer concerned with the whole truth in affairs other than necessity, and felt not the least bothered of what lay beneath his supportive face.

It was this very face of his which had suggested the idea, spotting with his loyally keen analysis a most interesting failure of Colt’s. A merging anomaly, was it? How on earth had the man survived failing its righting? Ah, but this was the perfect thing to marry with my other ideas.

And so I sent it through the grapevine of the more sociable that the Legendary, Famous, Inhumanly Skilled, and Intensely Profitable to Befriend Luphinid Silnaek was organizing and hosting an event, a mass get-together with a thousand undefined attractions purposed to grab the interest of any and all who wished to come – provided they were righters. Only an unsociable fool, or rather a useless hunter, failing in his one pathetic obsession, would dare miss the extravagant pomp of this new development. Everyone worth knowing would depart immediately for the abandoned Riquanne Halls in the heart of Celadon, or face the royal wrath of social disagreement.

And, anyway, who’d want to refuse the irresistible master of all things wrong called Luphinid?

For that while, I had abandoned the dreary old fashion of my decrepit cloak for a swanky tailcoat, dipped in indigo, and an almost ridiculous top hat for good measure. A bowtie perched on the collar of my white inner suit, and a mock cane, silver encrusted with Espeon rubies, I held loosely in my hand. How loving the caress of my vapours upon those relics of their psychic ability, as they (almost!) hid their parasitic hold upon the rubies, leeching slowly the energy collected in the ‘charms’. The old styles of the 1800’s, though next to impossible to find, were the only alternatives I would entertain from my usual heavy, outdated cloak.

This attire was perhaps entirely based on the venue of its employment, though I had been using clothes to its like from far back. The Riquanne Halls were a set of buildings in a previously bustling portion of high-class society within Celadon City, and they possessed a main structure by their name in which all social meetings were once held. Now, for reasons I wished not to know, the great cavern of a room lay in vague disrepair, and yet was all the more fitting for later meetings by such social parasites as righters. A vast curtained, gold-enameled space held a hundred fine tables, which converged around the showpiece: a dais at the very center, displaying musical accompaniments or announcements. For the purpose of this party, I had installed several sources of light which pretended to originate from the vast, intricate chandeliers, and their golden radiance, tinged with the unearthly pallor of all my objectionable techniques, supplied the exact degree and species of mood to befit this gathering.

How outwardly melodious, the tinkling of the crowd; and how rotten the core within!

I leaned against one of the alcove walls, despite my accumulated fame, looking out with extravagantly shaded eyes in a manner almost furtive, obscure. From all external perceptions (including my own) I was entirely at ease in my corner of the hall, untouched by the physical notice but vaguely amused out of the concern for my absence of the guests. My entertainment came from the sole act of watching, from fixing upon each tale of sordid woe which played out under affable guises, one by one, and seeing their cold hearts wither a degree further with every word. The comedy was hidden in the realization that these creatures actually believed wholeheartedly in their pathetic causes, in the notice of a sudden, secret flick of thought from Ytarrik’s part to manipulate them into greater lows, in the abdication of all reserve as I joined him in his tricks.

The gates admitted another group of visitors, and the majority of the shadow of an exceptionally muffled niche in the right wall vacated its temporary abode. A man in a navy coat appeared from no distinct point of origin to greet the newcomers, silver honey on his tongue.

“Ah, the Lady Veleama,” I crooned, bowing to breathe on the leader’s hand. I offered vague mentions on her two acquaintances, attempting to remember their names. “I was waiting especially for your visit.”

The self-styled Lady was an especially unpleasant specimen of high-class righter, who had seen the ill fortune of doing me a bad turn on several past occasions. It was indeed on her arrival that I had been waiting, sunk patiently into my deep corner of obscurity.

I glided to the central dais, and played a single, dull stroke on an awaiting wineglass with the tip of one thumb. Once all attention had been presented to my half-unnoticing gaze, I began the formalities.

“So glad you all could come,” I said; “it’s an honour to have the presence of so many illustrious ladies and gentlemen.” I widened my dangerous smile for a fraction of a second as the flies in the spider’s web simpered.

“After all, we have some of our finest arrayed here. I’m sure much of what I say is unworthy for your audience, but let me speak a few minutes more.” Idle fun to watch them raise themselves on pedestals, each the solitary pillar of radiance in their minds. Ah, but this would not do for my plans at all. Even so, I flapped their vanity some degrees further, as far as their distancing would not visibly affect the itinerary. The extent of my parading was the period of time before I noticed the vast crates of alcoholic beverage left to collect dust in a deserted corner, at which I ended my speech and leapt into the fray.



Those who have never done it before can see none of the frivolous but severe entertainment of pretending to be drunk, while your guests diligently accumulate on actual booze. There is a very fine distinction between this art and its truer version, but one which made all the difference to me: where the latter is an unnerving experience, capable of extreme recoil damage if timed badly, the former is only a fraction of a measure below its twin in terms of fun and allows the doer to alternate between two mental states at will. As I piled higher with prodigious quantities of grape juice, singing the occasional snatch of song which wandered in my head, I found it immensely difficult to believe those I entertained could have let their guard down so fully in my presence.

A possible explanation presented itself to me, and soon I was mentally staring in mock admonition at Ytarrik, who exuded the aura of a mischievous child, caught in his wrongdoing.


[So I confounded their minds a little,] said he, [so what? It only serves your purposes better, and anyway I can take them off my telepathy once they’re drunk enough.]

I caught hint of an old memory, of a certain Abra and a fourteen-year-old trainer on their trickster escapades, and of the sardonic humor which chose to be their form of affection for that instance.

[But, of course,] I mentioned to the observant Ytarrik, [the two of them were razed to the ground, weren’t they?]

[Razed to the ground,] he agreed.

[Razed to the ground, as I said, and not a trace of them! We all go to hell in the end.]

[We all burn.]


“Whose agents,” I sang physically, “could not ever see / His hilly eyes and two green rings…”

The boisterous din of the branding irons of hell swayed to my magnetic influence, all naturally entirely ignorant of my control. I sang a few more lines, and gave up the chorus to a band of musicians who nobody could really find, anywhere within or without the hall.

I am the one you warned me of…​

I passed like a ghost through the masses, slipping into conversations unobtrusively and slipping out, without leaving a single recollection of my presence. The atmosphere and substance played on the faculties of the mind in fresh, unpredictable ways and added a new tone of interest into my usual gamboling; it additionally destroyed my mental guards, allowing me to think thoughts I had kept dark and skinless in the deepest corners of my mind. At the moment, this circumstance seemed not so much inconvenient as thrilling.

Conversing inadvertently with Ytarrik was a peculiar practice. If not for the unreserved, near-dissociated nature of the replying thoughts, I could have easily maintained the illusion of a simple mental discussion with the self; and this trick of the mind was a perfect habitat for my experiments.

I anchored myself mentally to those around me, ensuring that any particularly obscene thought entering my mind would impress itself upon my guests, spreading the discord of which I was so famed. While it was doubtful whether obscenity would be the main driving force behind my musings this night, any thought at all could cause havoc when injected forcefully into a sufficiently disagreeable specimen of human stupidity.

Five fingers have I, to play them like ten.​

I was no longer certain where the old Luphinid had fled to. I was still an unstable sociopath, and I desired the life of the late Amaren no less than before, but I was not particularly abhorrent of this life anymore. No, indeed I was; I hated the life of Luphinid Silnaek with a passion, but perhaps this hatred was borne mainly out of Ytarrik’s repugnance of what I had become. (In any case, the precise thought in those musings which declared my hatred was almost certainly Ytarrik’s, and as he shared my mind only partially he was prone to overestimations.) I wished that Ytarrik would stop allowing his emotions to cloud our judgment while we were hard at work upon this logical project. It was my place to wreck reason with anger and hatred, not his.

Ten fingers have I, to play them again.​

As the Kadabra impressed upon me his revulsion of what I had become, a cool and efficient young man to our right suddenly realized the futility of some unnamed efforts which he had been mentally planning during the party and broke down, sobbing about the pointlessness of his life and how dearly he would wish to start over from the beginning, when he was still working through puberty and engaging in such practices as I did not want to hear of. A secluded righter had begun some calculations as to the quantity of assimilation heightening required for a righting project, and as I lingered mentally on the thought of allowing emotion to cloud my judgment, he felt an irrational surge of fear and miscomputed the quantity by several hundred milliliters, ensuring lethal failure in his next righting. And I laughed and shook my head.

Oh, where was I? I was certain I had been thinking of my opinion about my life before I interrupted myself… Ah, yes, thank you, Ytarrik. I did not like the state of affairs in my life, but (in sheer contrary to the doctrines of the Lavender ghost) I was beginning to wonder whether it was exactly sin to milk the opportunity of my abilities to their full. If I was damned from my very beginning, there was no reason not to take the advantages of damnation while they still existed.

No, what thoughts was I indulging in? This life was despicable—all right, perhaps that was Ytarrik’s bias, but the doctrines of the ghost at Lavender were entirely opposed to this philosophy. I had to choose either her mode of life, which I was so certain I was destined for and the ghost had seen within me as common ground between us, or this new world of mad, swinging lights and thrilling dangers. No, but I was accepting this on my fundamental level with the greatest height of difficulty, wasn’t I?

I directed my mind to Amaren. I had never given the matter a second thought, but an entirely beginning trainer of average skill would require half a year of practice to defeat a lower-end gym leader, let alone such a formidable trainer as the leader of Saffron. Regulations had been passed to lighten the load on novices in recent times, but they had not reached any level of effectiveness by the time of Amaren and Ruki’s challenge. I knew not why no acknowledgement had been made for their achievement, but they had very certainly gained the Marshbadge within their second month.

If life had continued at this pace, the two trainers would have become champions. I wonder, in retrospect, which one would have proved superior in the final match—whether Amaren Kelanis and his Alakazam, Ytarrik, or Ruki Ferena with Angin the Typhlosion would become the champion of Kanto.

It was vaguely amusing to see exactly the manner in which my thoughts affected the characters around me, but as two guests went so far as to challenge each other to a pokèmon battle at random, I decided the idle fun had run its course. It was time to execute the grand finale.

I leapt up to the stage.

“Order, people, order,” I said, forcing back a hiccup, “I’ve got something to say. Finally, I mean.

“This party really is the best in our century or something. Don’t you agree?” I called for a mass cheering, and I received. “And I think, personally, something this big of a blast”—I directed my vapours to run up my arm, and Ytarrik shot telekinetic force into the outcrop to explode it into a few hundred shards—“deserves something… else that’s really just as big of a blast. Therefore, ergo, hitherto, I call for A MASS RIGHTING!”

More cheering, this time uncalled for. Welcome, however.

Social gatherings were great patrons of the mass righting, in which large groups of righters synchronized their minds almost entirely to tackle a major wrong by their collective effort. Individual though, though discouraged, was still very possible, but the majority of the brainpower and psychic skill would be directed towards a common goal, set (with the consent of the whole) by one conductor, myself in this case. I had some extremely unorthodox plans for this righting, and I would not seek the consent of the crowd before executing them.

I detailed to the guests a fictional Water/Fire type pokèmon which originated from a certain wronged ‘generator’ of organisms in the theoretical plane; it would be highly unstable and self destruct soon after creation, and therefore a large amount of momentary, concentrated power would be required to ban its generation before it ceased to exist. (It should be elucidated that few righters practiced their art to benefit the world by preventing wanton destruction. There was no conceivable way to invoke the wrath of most existent wrongs unless one was doing so deliberately, but hunters righted these anomalies nevertheless for the thrill of the chase.) I then rose up to the conductor’s podium of their souls, and linked each of their minds to my own with a telepathic link, waiting as they abdicated most thought and allowed my mind to override their will.

Why, already I was leaving tradition, and already laughing at the blunt daze my guests must have suffered under, to be insensitive to my departure. Righting has a very rigid and precise set of instructions for carrying out any of its incarnations, and any deviation from this is almost certainly the death of at least one of the participants. By sitting still in the human plane and shepherding the righters remotely, I was refusing the usual convention of personally leading my army directly into the fray, and suggesting ulterior motives to the nonexistent none who sensed my lack of presence. To speak the truth, my entry was from another angle.

The theoretic plane encompassed several levels of complexity, each holding and dealing in one particular attribute of the existences in the universe. It was never my style, of course, to take the most beaten path; it was always quite too sunny, far too populated, entirely too healthy for me. Thus, I shunned the main ‘interface’, as it were, and plunged into a level of complexity with the exact purpose as my requirements needed—the entire withered expanse of the proximate minds’ interconnected thoughts stretched out before me.


that haughty self-aggrandizing fire/water instability assurance of purple Curtains gold distractions aim mucH unnEcEssary boredom prevalent blank buffoonS thoughtlEss gormless beliefless speech-contradictions psychic assimilation superior over dark immature uncivilized drunkard unlike messself—I AM ONE AND BEYOND LEVELLINGS—egos far below me littering the expanse like lowly unfitting for my (my) my [my] my {my} [[NOBLETY]]

(Is this how my thoughts translated? I apologize profusely. I know that they seemed far more orderly when I saw them assembled there.)

[this life is]d[lost among greater matters]e[destructive]s[musty degradation, deformation, beyond all possible laws]pi (A cushion of mental blocks protected the core of my consciousness from the ravaging effects of a hypnagogic trance, and as my worst fears and petty desires raged around me as voices to a schizophrenic, my sanity was allowed to sail unmolested.) ca[this is no life]b[pathetic illusions]l[and no death]e[despicable]

skreeeaothelodhuuuuuuuu
[i need but to wade to a set of adjacent minds most similar in thought and experience]
uuuuuuuuhdolethoaeeerks


What does Silnaek mean in this pointless exercise?
I wish I knew where that Luphinid was taking me…
It seems imperative to me that I find his full intentions!
I have to know what he means to do!
I have to know his intentions for leading us here!
I have to know his intentions!
What is this theatrical wait?
This is ridiculous!
Are we performing a righting or a play?

A h, (im)perfect. Exactly to plan. Swoop down, just a little nudge…

I have to know what he means to do!
I have to know his intentions!
I have to know his intentions!
What is this theatrical wait?

If any two minds, adjacent in their mental ruminations, could make the infinitely improbable coincidence of thinking in exactly the same concepts and emotions at the same time, it would constitute the seed for a specimen of anomaly set B80-99, in which notwithstanding the vast differences in memory and other mental faculties nature would come to refer to both minds as the same, resulting in deep problems of an uncertain nature. This set of wrongs is unsafe and untrodden by the reckless standards of righters themselves, and any hypothetical creature who would attempt to invoke one of these wrongs by telepathically affecting the thoughts of two similar minds can immediately be taken to be profoundly and dangerously unstable in sanity.​

I herded the guests wordlessly back to our plane, and took refuge once again in the plane safest for my sanity—a section of the theoretic plane, this time, one unrelated to but with a prime bird’s-eye view of the pandemonium in more complex scales of existence. And I watched, feeling to be an overexcited trickster impatient with the results of his own trickery.

As the ladies and gentlemen slumped in their chairs awoke with confused exclamations, the Brothers Traula and Vesperta Kobbit stood up rigid but unnoticed, eyes wide and blank. The alcohol-dulled senses of the partygoers endeavored with characteristic difficulty to focus on the peculiar psychic manifestation forming over their heads, but no further struggle was required of them.

The Kobbits opened their mouths simultaneously, and a concept emanated in the form of sound from every surface of the hall, screeching metallically off the glassy marble floor, thrumming from the great curtains with a violence to suggest a resemblance to speaker membranes. It was a grainy condensate of two separate lives, mixing sloppily two sets of insoluble memories and experiences, but the graceless monotone of its harsh frequencies ruled the minds of all who heard it with a force like no other.

The infestation spread like wildfire through the crowd as the contents of minds were overwritten, twenty at a time, and replaced with that abominable screech. Conscious matter began streaming exponentially to fuel the massive super-consciousness above, and the air twisted violently with every amplifying wave of sound, beating at the hall with layers upon layers of solid wind. Vibrations churned the matter inside the bodies of the humans; bones buckled under the massive thrum of liquefied organs; the marble of the hall splintered, cracked, crumbled over the pulpy human remains, sloshing noisily with all the consistency of soup.

The super-consciousness disintegrated at last, its fire deprived of further fuel, and released its composite energy in a massive burst of thought, reducing the Riquanne complex to ashes.


At last, after my utter exhilaration had run its course, I enlisted the strained help of Ytarrik and created a block over that particular frequency. If ever any trickster (but me) should attempt to try what I had done, his consciousness would be annihilated by the same construct which annihilated minds after their bodies had run their course. And anomaly B85 was righted.

I returned to our plane, jerking awake from the center of the dais to find the trustworthy Ytarrik loyally guarding over my body with the finest example of Barrier I had yet seen. In this existence the massacre had only just begun, different planes of complexity carrying different time frames, and my audience was already beginning to recognize my beautiful craftsmanship. I flashed once again my dangerous smile, bowed to the shocked glares all around me, readied (as did Ytarrik) the exact type of thought required to teleport us out of the carnage—

And a faint strain of sound floated past the barrier, into our ears.

The teleport swept us away.

 

[porygon181]

That was intense.

...the Legendary, Famous, Inhumanly Skilled, and Intensely Profitable to Befriend Luphinid Silnaek...

And that cracked me up.

I was glad to see that Ytarrik still isn't totally out of the picture, and their little moment of catharsis or whatever was cute. I also liked Luphinid's musings of what could have been with Ruki and Amaren had they continued.

And the structure of the non-linear thoughts and whatnot in the theoretical plane was interesting. Especially the one with "despicable" spread out throughout the thought. Very cool.

It was quite a long wait, but it was worth it.

Question: How powerful are these theoretical planes? Could he jump into a theoretical plane of what would have happened without Ruki going ka-boom?

 

[duncan]

Nice. I apologize for the really, really late review, but now that I've finally caught up I'm quite liking this.

Description is quite good, even scary at times. Particularly the surreal parts (Oak was really quite scary, the way you described him) make this seem so much better than it might otherwise be.

Plot...well it's certainly unique. There are some problems, but I'll leave that for later. When I read the beginning, I had no idea how this would go, but the way you've done this...very dark indeed.

The imagery is really something I'd like to touch on here. The Rattata exploding was really something...interesting, I'd say. Much of this fic is surreal, and I love every second of it (the surreal-ness, I mean).

However, it wouldn't be a proper review without pointing out things to improve on. A major detraction for me is that it is somewhat confusing. Time skips are used a little too often in my opinion, which is not so much confusing but gives (me) the impression that the skip serves no real purpose. It's a small thing, but something you might want to keep in mind.

I was looking into information concerning my next anticipated wrongs, and updating records on previous of my accomplishments, when I noticed a recurring name among the rolls of sordid honour: a strange, renowned fellow by the name of Seymul Colt. In fact the list of his rightings was well-known, at least in mention, by most world-wise anomaly hunters, and I had taken no interest in him simply for his fame before I realized a certain strange fact around him.

This is a case of show, don't tell. You can say he was doing this or that, but showing us would make the fic a better experience. However, this seems to be your style, so I suppose it works okay enough. Just a bit of advice.

Why, the both of us had allegedly run from a mentally scarring rendition of the anomaly 0A1, early in our life, only to discover our noble occupation and begin work on 3S1, closely followed by research on ghost phenomenon, and the Righting of wrongs 2G3, 2H5, and 3A1.

Haha. In almost any other fic, that would have meant complete nonsense. XD

The theoretic plane encompassed several levels of complexity, each holding and dealing in one particular attribute of the existences in the universe. It was never my style, of course, to take the most beaten path; it was always quite too sunny, far too populated, entirely too healthy for me. Thus, I shunned the main ‘interface’, as it were, and plunged into a level of complexity with the exact purpose as my requirements needed—the entire withered expanse of the proximate minds’ interconnected thoughts stretched out before me.

Very interesting. I quite liked your description of the theoretic planes.

Well, again I'm sorry that this review took so long, and that I couldn't have been more in depth. But rest assured that I'll continue to read now that I've caught up, and that this is quite good. Very nice job, for sure.

 

[Praxiteles]

porygon: Ah, my eternal encouragement-er. No, Ytarrik will still play a few parts in the story. I have to say I've pushed him out of the story rather unjustly.

Question: How powerful are these theoretical planes? Could he jump into a theoretical plane of what would have happened without Ruki going ka-boom?

Oh, dear, I've been too vague.

The theoretic plane is like a set of blueprints, or more accurately like the DNA in a living being. It holds all the mental attributes of the world, and those thoughts and ideas which, when projected to our level of complexity, form physical objects. I am going to clarify this completely a little later, but it should be out into the open, I think. This plane holds all the theoretic 'coding' of the world; our 'practical' plane holds the things themselves. Therefore, this plane is as limited to this universe as our complex plane, and cannot bring about alternate realities.

And, in any case, what would he do if he jumped into one of those planes? It would be too much to go into, say, the Champion's house and announce to him that Luphinid is his alternative form from another reality.

duncan: Ah, yes, thanks for taking all that time and effort. Is my fiction really this long?

Well, the time skips are rather because Luphinid is writing all this in one sitting. He wants to touch on only the salient points of his life, illustrating one example from every phase that he goes through. The biography shall not go on much longer, being brief and skimming. Even in his frozen state, there's only so long you can write until you get terribly bored. Same is for the tell-instead-of-show instances; the writer of this autobiography just doesn't have the fortitude for tackling every anecdote that led to his vast store of information, and so he merely lists the facts.

 

[porygon181]

And, in any case, what would he do if he jumped into one of those planes? It would be too much to go into, say, the Champion's house and announce to him that Luphinid is his alternative form from another reality.

You weren't really vague, I understood the context and everything that you were using the planes with. This was just my delusional, optimistic hope for a happy ending in some awkward way. Like I could see him letting Ytarrik and Angin and such pop into this theoretical dimension so that they wouldn't have to suffer his craziness anymore.

But then again, that's just too easy. I know better than to expect something like that.

 

[Praxiteles]

porygon: You are very concerned with reassuring my doubts, aren't you?

Anyway, here follows the next chapter. It's awesome and like not gory at all. Isn't that awesome? Like really awesome. Oh, and it's the penultimate chapter of Luphinid's life. *ducks from bricks, laughing madly*

Aftershock​

Chapter 13: Ruin to the Truth!​

Hiding something never erases it.

It always hangs somewhere in the back of your mind, rotting away, and where a human being hardens and twists to cynicism in the absence of light, a single matter only grows more and more tender with time. You may grow as calloused a shell for yourself as you like, you may tell yourself it’s a weak, sordid issue, that it has no place in your world-wise mind, that it was just a childhood disappointment only painful to the most spoiled and bratty children, and the death the well-deserved destruction of two hopeful, sheltered fools, but the thorn refuses to come out of my wound, and it’s only pushing deeper with every mean-spirited word I shove into it.

And I know that whatever ploy I may use next to hide the truth from myself, whether lust, hatred, or madness drowns out the subtler ring of the pain, everything shall fall but not this one keystone of my identity. Not because I would cease to be Luphinid Silnaek, if the one deepest portion of my existence is cut out from me, but because nothing in my life exists with the warmth to heat this core, which shallow passions can never dream of touching. I am only pain, pain with the clothing of malice, and the incandescence which propagates itself so effectively through minds with even the smallest seed and the undefeatable will that constitutes its nature is entirely absent from me.

Is there light somewhere in the universe? I remember it streaming from the open skies and scattering into a million dazzling shards at the mention of the old Saffron buildings, and I can swear something made its wandering way through all the dark holes of the encircling forest, transforming carbon-based organic matter to what I could see as nothing less than pure angel’s gold, but certainly that was only the complex manifestation of energy particles in the theoretic plane. I saw happiness in its true form in consciousnesses in that plane, and it was nothing more than emotion. A thought bent into a certain shape and purpose, invoked in response of the mind’s personal experience to favourable stimuli. Or should I say the destructive and selfish passions of the average pond scum? I don’t know what I should think. Being entirely truthful robs me of identity, more mildly than but as inevitably as healing certainly would.

And so now I stand, fallen from the rights of the meanest beggar. Is it possible that I may have a connection thicker than memories to Amaren Kelanis? Anything I say to myself towards the contrary sounds like an empty lie, but why is it that I can’t see one fraction of his joys and sorrows? I can connect the dots; the overprotectiveness of his family leading to his thirst for accomplishment and action, his mind drowning the stagnant grief of their death by this very thirst and leading him to pokèmon training, and the collapse of this system when grief finally overpowered his nature and devastated him; I know every inch of his mind, but I can feel nothing that he felt. All I have is a longing for his life, which I have glorified beyond reason. This is me.

And I am so foolish, so very foolish, to hide this. Ah, but so typical. It is sin to milk the opportunity of my abilities to their full! It’s a betrayal of my very self, a betrayal of the ghost at Lavender—and we know where betrayers go to after death: the ninth circle of hell, and its deepest and darkest. I only wish I could hold it off at least so long as I live.

[{//\/\/\/\/\//\\//\\//\/\/\|/|\|/\/\/\\//\\//\\/\/\/\/\/\//}]​

This is as far as I remember of the events immediately after the teleportation. My uncertain theory is that I slipped into a strange state of unconsciousness, in which a large amount of experiences and thoughts passed through me in the form of dreams, but some quantity of delirious musing remained for me to sully the paper with its nonsense. (Poetic nonsense notwithstanding.)

The next known fact was that of standing bemusedly in the middle of some species of melancholy garden, looking out over the surface of an artificial pond paved with marble towards the silhouette of a sycamore tree. This was quickly amended to one of looking away bemusedly from the silhouette on account of the direct glare from an early evening sun, and further the bemused expression and emotion was also omitted. I was never known for losing my bearings, and I required something to keep my record.

Fruitfully, I spotted a sign placed upon an austere-looking adjoining building: “House of Kobbit”. The gaps in the muddled past events began to fill.

Nearing the moment when the exact destination of the teleport would be summoned in my mind and read, a strain of that despicable merging sound had entered my mind and wreaked havoc with my memories. The single compressed thought which comprised the Kobbits’ life, faint as it was, imposed itself onto mine, and merged with the thought then prevalent from my own consciousness, the thought always prevalent in my mind: my memories. I presumed that the emotion most matched to my own was best represented in their minds by this place: their old house. And so, my usual instinct to envision a destination place when teleportation demanded it was responded with this.

One shred of information still remained out of my reach: my physical conditions during my dream-state, which were known to be notoriously jumbled in such situations. I could obviously see my imperfect envisioning of a teleport destination did not give me any embarrassing side-effects, i.e. any split limbs or scattered body parts around all the vague places I might have supplied, but one never knew what other oddities one could pick up. Certainly an extra finger would be taken for granted until I closely scrutinized myself, and if I was in fact in a dreamscape or the fantastical universe of a deranged man, I would be faced with an entirely unique set of problems. What would I do when the dream decided to terminate?

It was, therefore, at this moment of complete recognition of my physical state, that reality entirely impressed itself on me. (Alternately, it was possible that I had exited some earlier dream-state and entered fully into reality.) The sunlight! I felt my skin beginning to recoil, and fled, only half-noting at the time that the burn was little more than that of keeping a normal hand in sunlight for any large amount of time. In retrospect, perhaps this was the reason for my endurance outside for the considerable time I spent in looking for shelter.

At last, I swooped into a sealed furniture shop and ran to a convenient mirror. I saw only subtle differences: a possibly imagined growth in stature, mainly height; a concentration of my overgrown hair into an outcrop of black invading the small of my back; and a suddenly realized amplification of both psychic and physical stamina, which had apparently remained outside my notice until this moment. Also, I remembered looking into the mirror moments before the Riquanne Halls party to see only one remaining streak of certain brown in the pupil of my right eye; this had disappeared with the other changes to form a homogeneous dazzling silver with only the vaguest hints of grey.

All these details could be explained with a dusty calendar hanging on the wall above the mirror: while it seemed badly outdated, the year written conspicuously at the top was at least fifty years from my last known time. Whatever strange mental realm I had come into, I had remained in unconsciousness there for (as confirmation later proved) exactly sixty-five years.

Some of my more shrewd readers may see the relentlessly fast and reckless pace of my life. Not only do I write only the chief events, which either represent or affect my personality as it evolves over time, but the very style of this story is more rushed than a man in my position may naturally make it. I wish to make this clear, so that no reader assumes this is the result of only impatience on my part: my life is themed exactly as it seems to the reader of this biography, my memories recalling clearly only the most major events of my lie, while merely sketching less important themes. I seem only an old book, once read with no great attention and largely forgotten with time, its composite parts hardly meaningful to any perception (though only my own perception can attempt to confirm this).

And so little shall be said of my immediately following thoughts: apathy, for the most part, eager as I was to reach the finale and the end of my two-hundred year life. I continued life as usual, quickly acclimatizing to the shifts in technology and cultural systems, and responding with characteristic amusement to the shock of the few acquaintances I still had. I did not particularly create a wave with my return through any circle, righting or otherwise, and so it was no triviality when the Gym Leader of Saffron summoned me to the gym.

[{//\/\/\/\/\//\\//\\//\/\/\|/|\|/\/\/\\//\\//\\/\/\/\/\/\//}]​

Decades had passed, but no insistence on city maintenance would change the sight of that ancient establishment. I saw with an expression of blatant disinterest what Amaren had looked out at with awe, perhaps ninety years ago: the dark, cavernous room, with its inadequate rows of giant lighted candles and bleary-eyed hospital beds, and the shabbily dressed old man who hurried anxiously to my side. Material extravagance might not be distinctly necessary for psychic enlightenment, but experience had taught me it proved no hindrance, and sensibility demanded it.

The eternally exploring distinction of a mind practiced in the psychic arts touched my own, and the old man to whom it belonged gave a start.

[Is that really you, Amaren?] he relayed to me, in a distinct style of communicative thought (mainly) unburdened of the contradictions of any language. Physically, he peered at me as though unsure his failing eyes were serving him correctly. [I remember clear as day when you first came, and I herded you to your own preliminary test. What happened?]

[Oh, come on,] I replied, [you know you psychic pushovers will coax it telepathically out of my mind anyway.]

He recoiled slightly, and made an expression as though bracing himself. [Follow me, then,] he murmured telepathically.

He led me to an invisibly unobtrusive portion of wall, directed an invisibly unobtrusive concentration of thought towards it, and the two of us ducked into the wall with an invisible unobtrusiveness, entering a hall which satisfied my standards of physical extravagance.

The carpet was lush red, embroidered with gold thread which ran past the edge of the cloth and up the sides of the walls, giving the impression of a solid gold building. Curtains lined the wide arched french windows, two on each wide wall, their position making it apparent that the windows were never meant to be doors. True lighting filled every corner of the room, giving it an otherworldly sparkle, originating not from any single object but from everything at once—to the style of my own decoration during the Riquanne Halls. At the very head of the hall (with a vanity greater than even my generous expectations), lying limp on an expensive throne, slept—

[Sabrina,] I said with mild amusement. Of course, there was no unconsciousness about the young figure but a superconsciousness, a state of heightened psychic awareness.

[Tell me,] I continued, [how did you manage to prolong your existence this far? Certainly your highness didn’t subscribe to the coarse practice of assimilation heightening.]

She ignored this. Investigation yielded that the ancient creature had been sustaining herself entirely on thought converted into energy, and that her true physical form had been covered discreetly with a less nauseating illusion, as that of the old professor.

Even so, her illusory image was intimidating in its own right. The same subdued eyes peered out of the same refined face as in the old illustrations of her form, and the lack of her sinister animated doll did nothing to dilute the dark introverted glory of her thoughts.

Ah, typical Luphinid. Comparing all things with himself. This figure did not awe me personally in the least.

[You have heard,] said she, [of my earlier crisis with multiple personalities, very early in my life.]

[What about it?]

[I realized some time later that my existence in that form could have went on, and very agreeably. That young child, my other personality, craved release from my utilitarian lifestyle, and she was slowly attaining this. With every passing day, I and my opposite were becoming more and more separate and distinct, and I predicted a time when the girl would disengage entirely from myself and become an independent living being.]

[Ah, how clever. I read about your persistent attachment to art. I suspect this would be the greatest form of the ‘creation’ you have such a fascination for.]

[Correct. And so I began perfecting this new art, creating not a piece of writing or painting but complete, functional organisms. I made DID into an art!]

[And what on earth did you bring me here and tell me this for?]

[I haven’t finished yet. It seemed my practise held intense side-effects—I did not divide as a cell might, with no losses to either myself or my creation, but as a piece of inorganic matter. What experiences I used to shape my creations were lost from myself, and what I omitted from the creations were entirely absent from their own minds. I (and the resultant being) would look back to see gaping holes in my memories and thoughts; several portions of my life were wasted away through this.]

[Well, you reap what you sow.]

I still had no conceivable idea what she could have meant with this story, and made such apparent; but, keeping me ignorant still, she turned to another subject abruptly.

[I hear you are planning to take on the anomaly 0A1 at some point in your life.]

[If ‘hear’ is synonymous with ‘fish telepathically in my mind’, then yes.]

[Then do you know that death may not be the only possible reward for failing to right this.]

[What do you mean?] The Mightyena’s ears rose, tense.

[You may be subjected to any number of fates, some of which both death and your species of half-life pales in comparison to.]

A long-held hope suddenly collapsed. No death? All my bankings had concentrated to this beacon of faint release from my existence, and where cynicism could crush all other lights in my perceived future, nothing had held me from basing every shred of what little still remained in me to this one assurance.

No, but this was simple.

Death was still possible for a victim of the wrong. It would be inevitable. I didn’t care what little proof I used to hold this up, but I knew it would come. I had all faith.

 

[duncan]

Good chapter. A bit short, but it was plenty good enough to make up for that. But this is the next to last chapter? Oh great. XD

At last, I swooped into a sealed furniture shop and ran to a convenient mirror. I saw only subtle differences: a possibly imagined growth in stature, mainly height; a concentration of my overgrown hair into an outcrop of black invading the small of my back; and a suddenly realized amplification of both psychic and physical stamina, which had apparently remained outside my notice until this moment. Also, I remembered looking into the mirror moments before the Riquanne Halls party to see only one remaining streak of certain brown in the pupil of my right eye; this had disappeared with the other changes to form a homogeneous dazzling silver with only the vaguest hints of grey.

Here again you show off your excellent description skills.

A long-held hope suddenly collapsed. No death? All my bankings had concentrated to this beacon of faint release from my existence, and where cynicism could crush all other lights in my perceived future, nothing had held me from basing every shred of what little still remained in me to this one assurance.

No, but this was simple.

Death was still possible for a victim of the wrong. It would be inevitable. I didn’t care what little proof I used to hold this up, but I knew it would come. I had all faith.

This was the defining moment in the chapter, for me. Sabrina was also quite interesting, but Luphinid's mindset right now really does interest me. Where his head is...we'll see next chapter.

I apologize for the short review, but all I can say was that I can't wait for the last chapter. Should be pretty good.