Chapter 1
The black night was still and quiet, with only the occasional caw of a Murkrow penetrating the peaceful silence on the mountain. The light of stars shone on the small village where people lay sleeping in the little log houses. The work was done for the day, and people took their rest as they awaited the coming of dawn to begin their work again.
Riika slowly opened her eyes, blinking a few times through the inky blackness as she tried to see. She sat up and scratched her head, dandruff falling like snowflakes as her fingernails drew across her scalp. Rubbing her ivory-white face, she slipped out from under her furs, trying to not disturb her younger sister that was snuggled next to her. Surveying her family, who lay huddled together under furs and blankets, Riika saw the same expression on each face: an uneasiness, with small frowns slanting over their faces as their eyelids twitched and their hands clenched and unclenched. Bringing her gaze away from them, the girl walked over the dirt to where the door to their house was, and pushed it open. She stepped out into the crisp night air, closing the door behind her as softly as she could.
The night seemed so tranquil and peaceful, the air was still and the stars above twinkled as they stretched their little fingers of light down on the mountain. Everything seemed to be at ease, yet even as Riika stood there, she felt a disturbance growing inside her. She had this horrible feeling of dread that made her want to run away and not ever stop. This was what had awoken her, for she had been feeling this way for over two weeks, and now the feeling had reached such an intensity that she was no longer even able to sleep. She knew she wasn't the only one who felt this either; people in her village were talking about it everyday since they had first started to feel it. Nobody knew what it was or why it started, but every day the feeling intensified and grew stronger. Sometimes, the people would talk about leaving the mountain to settle and find a new life elsewhere.
Riika sat down on the dirt next to a furry black mass, and reached a short arm over to scratch it. A pair of pointed ears perked up, and a large head was raised. Sulfur-yellow eyes blinking lazily, Hiken yawned as he stood and stretched his limbs. He nuzzled the other Mightyena with his grey snout, dampening his fur with his moist cherry-red nose. As soon as both creatures were fully awake, they sat down next to Riika, licking her pale hands with their slobbery pink tongues. The girl petted them and scratched them affectionately, but her mind was elsewhere, and she hardly paid attention to what she was doing.
Two months. It had been two months since her father and other men of her tribe had left for a hunting trip. It was spring, and their trip was likely to be successful, yet there had been no sign of them since they had departed the peaceful mountain for the lowlands. They had only planned on being gone for three weeks.
Most people had accepted the fact that they had been killed, and a long funeral ceremony was performed for the men that were gone. Yet, as reasonable as it was, Riika didn't want to believe that. She had always thought of her father as a strong warrior, able to take down any foe he encountered. When he was with several more men who were of equal or greater skill than he, she had pictured their force as being nearly unstoppable. Although, as a girl of seventeen years who had spent her entire life on the same mountain, she didn't know anything of the Pokemon that lived down in the flat lands. She hadn't pictured them as being much different from mountain-dwellers, or any stronger. However, deep down inside her, she knew that there was the possibility that there could be some creature so great and terrible that could be stronger than all of her tribe.
Riika sighed and stood up, as did her canine-like companions. She turned to go back inside her house, though the chance of her getting any sleep this tense night seemed slim. Con and Hiken watched her, their tails waving back and forth in a way of bidding her good night. Suddenly, Hiken's tail stopped wagging, and his eyes opened to their fullest extent. Every part of his body had gone rigid, as if he were made of stone. Only his hairs wavered as a slight breeze blew. Riika and Con went rigid too, as their eyes went wide with terror and Riika's limbs shook from fright.
No... The one word was the only thought in Riika's mind, the rest was just a mix of feelings of terror and despair, mixed with hopelessness and, to almost a small extent, understanding. She now knew the reason why her father and the other men had never returned. Somehow, she knew what was coming, though she had never smelled the scent that that breeze had delivered to her. As if, by instinct, she knew the dreadful creature that lurked out of sight, just over the top of the mountain. Suddenly, as clear as it was the day it had happened, she remembered seeing the large, white Absol standing on the roof of a village house, barking out a warning that her Mightyena did not believe. She had not believed it either, once they had told her what had been said, but now she knew that the Absol was right. She realized that all of her tribe should have left the village a long time ago, so that they may continue to live instead of dying in this uncomely fashion.
A duo of tears sprang to and leaked out of Riika's eyes, reflecting the stars twinkling above the trio on this moonless night. She felt as if her bones were locked in place, that she couldn't move, no matter how much she might have wanted to.
Like a monster coming alive from the worst nightmare, like the incarnation of evil, terror, and tyranny, a great creature loomed over the mountaintop, a black shape silhouetted by the navy sky and its glimmering asters. Riika drew in a sharp breath of horror as fear lanced through her body, numbing her senses and filling every cell with the horrible, awful feeling of dread.
She could make out one large part of a body, with three enormous legs protruding from each side. There was a smaller part, which she assumed was a head, with a great horn pointing to the sky from the top of it. It was too dark to tell what color it was, but not too dark to make out the eyes. Its eyes were like two giant eggs, each three times the size of a house, and milky white, as if the creature was blind.
It emitted a horrible, ear-shattering shriek from the mouth kept between its two pincers. Doors from village houses flew open, and each person stood in the same irrevocable horror that entrapped Riika and her Mightyena. Globs of saliva flew over the village, disintegrating any object they touched. A very small one flew through the sky and burned the tip of Hiken's bushy black tail. Hiken let out a yelp as the substance burned away a patch of skin, pain spiking through his body. His body now capable of moving, he turned to run away, but saw that Riika and Con were still immobile in their stances. Turning, he gave the two of them quick bites, only strong enough to break the skin, before turning and sprinting away. A small stab of agony spiked through Con's and Riika's bodies, bringing them back into reality. Their senses now returned, Riika grabbed a fistful of Con's fur and hauled herself onto his back as he chased after his brother.
The two Mightyena's thick legs flew forward, propelling them through the village as the forest grew closer to them. They could still hear the shrieks of the monster that was behind them. Con and Hiken panted loudly, breathing very quickly as they flew past trees and plants, down the slope of the mountain, Riika clinging on desperately with terror in her heart.
Con, who was running a little in front of Hiken, stumbled as he tripped over a root of a large white birch tree. He slowed, and was almost able to pick himself up before Hiken had crashed into him, and the two Pokemon and the girl went tumbling down the mountainside. Branches and burs clung to their hair, and Riika nearly screamed with fright as they sped down at a breakneck speed.
Riika heard a splash, and gasped as she felt something icy and wet touch her. She, Con and Hiken rolled downhill with the stream, and Riika's fear intensified as she felt herself grow very cold from the chilling water. She tried to untangle herself from her companions, but tumbling around on the ground gave her no sense of coordination, and her arms became more entangled in Hiken's thick back legs and Con's fluffy tail.
Her shin scraped against a rock, adding more pain, along with all the other cuts and bruises she had received in her downhill tumble, to her body. She felt very frightened and insecure rushing down the rough terrain of the mountain, and her mouth tore open as she felt she could bear to roll down on the ground no longer, but her cries were lost among the yips of her fellow Mightyena and water flooded her mouth at odd intervals.
She almost cried aloud again, this time in her self-misery, but before she could even begin her cranium collided with something hard. She felt the back of her head as if it was in an explosion, and her vision went completely black as she fell senseless.
Mist drafted upwards from the grass-coated ground, allowing sunlight to touch the floor in thin shafts. Dewdrops glistened on the trees, the sun glinting off of their surfaces so that they appeared as thousands of tiny crystal orbs. A droplet on a dark-green leaf of a maple tree fell, but was never able to touch the ground, for it landed on a patch of skin instead. A tongue as red as cherries' skin slithered out from between two parted lips and licked away the drop of clean liquid on the skin above it. A sigh escaped from the girl, and two pale eyelids slowly lifted to reveal slate-grey eyes gazing groggily at the canopy of leaves overhead.
Riika sat upright, then groaned in regret as she placed a hand on the back of her head. Dried blood caked her noggin where the rock had hit her, and congealed bits clung in her hair. She wasn't quite sure, but somehow, she felt different, even when not including the pain she felt from the numerous wounds on her body. She felt as though as though some weight had lifted from her, and that she was freed from some sort of oppression.
Riika removed her hand from her head and rubbed her eyes. Looking around, she found herself in a forest, with trees over four meters tall stretching upward from the grassy ground. A stream ran to her left, quietly flowing over moss before splashing over a rocky cliff. Hiken and Con lay nearby, their cloud-grey ears twitching as they dozed peacefully beneath the deciduous covering.
Suddenly aware of the great thirst that she held, the seventeen-year-old crawled over the stream. Cupping the clear water in her petite hands, she drank greedily, constantly scooping more of the wonderfully thirst-quenching liquid into her hands before transferring it to her mouth. She drank long, for though she felt herself becoming full, she still craved the mountain water, seeming to never be able to get enough. As soon as she was aware that she was not stopping after she had taken so many handfuls, she forced herself to stop, berating herself for allowing her wantings to overcome her self-control. She took in but one more handful to cleanse her face, then stepped away from the shallow stream and sat beside her canine companions.
She rubbed a white hand over the Mightyenas' ebony fur, switching back and forth between the two. Placing her chin in the palm of the other, she closed her eyes as she concentrated, trying to recollect her thoughts from last night's events. It had seemed so long ago, and yet it was impossible to say that it had not happened. She clearly remembered waking up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep because of her disturbance--
The disturbance!
Riika's eyes snapped open as she suddenly realized what was different: she no longer felt the horror that had settled over her body for the past months. She had, for the first time, felt
normal. She felt unshackled, without any mental tension restricting her in any sort of small way. She felt
free.
Riika almost gave a laugh with relief, until it came to her that there was nothing to laugh about. She was relieved of the disturbance, but why? Why had it, after growing stronger as time went by, went away? Reflecting on these questions, the black-haired female could only suggest to herself that it was related to the appearance of last night's creature.
A shudder ran through Riika's body as she thought of the mysterious figure from the night before. Of how everything had seemed so awful when it became visible to the eye, and how it had felt as though the end of the world had come. Screams resounded through the girl's head as she remembered the shrieks the creature had emitted, and she remembered with a chill as the monster had started toward her.
She took her hand off Con's fur and hugged herself, as if to provide comfort to her own body. Oh, those
eyes! She may not have paid attention to them much at first, for she was much too overcome by the monster coming and the power it exerted, but as she remembered them now, they seemed so appalling. Being entirely pupil-less, they were so different from any eye Riika had ever seen. They had seemed to spell out your death to you, and leaving you to wait as it would shortly come. She dimly wondered if anybody else that saw it was as horror-struck as she was....
Her head snapped upward as the thought of other people filled her mind. What had happened to them? And her village, what happened to that? The forest was still here, and in seemingly perfect condition, but what about everyone at home? The pre-matured girl's heart chilled as she pictured her family, lying awake screaming as they and their home dissolved from the creature's acid.
As soon as she even touched that image, Riika sprung up from the ground and set off at a sprint, leaving her Mightyena looking back at her for a second before they got up and went off after her.
As soon as Riika had stood up, she felt odd parts of her body ache, but she tried to ignore them, as she told herself that she must know that everybody else was alright before she worried about herself. But as she pressed on, the pain grew worse, and she was only able to go at a sort of hopping-limp after twenty meters.
As she limped along, Riika looked down at her legs and was surprised to see that some of the scabs had cracked open and were bleeding. Many greyish-purple bruises dotted her legs and arms. Riika quickly looked back up, worried that if she inspected them any closer she may find something nasty and try to treat it before going home.
Hiken walked beside her, for he and his brother had caught up to her shortly after they had started running. Hiken kept on trying to lick the blood off of his mistress, but was only barely able to touch the red liquid before he was shooed away. Con walked slightly behind Riika, preparing to catch her if she fell or stumbled backward and support her if she grew too weak to keep walking by herself.
Tears formed miniature brooks as the coursed their way down Riika's pale cheeks. Her teeth gritted as she tried to push the increasing pain behind her, but the more she kept her pace up the side of the mountain, the more she hurt. She stumbled frequently as she clenched her eyes shut, as if that would shut off the pain along with the scenery. But she had to open them again to try and avoid anymore stumbles as she went along. Each time she tripped over some plant or rotting log, Con or Hiken were able to catch her before she hit the ground. They would look at her with worry and concern showing in their saffron eyes. But she refused to stop, she was too stubborn to let minor injuries hinder her if somebody she cared about was needing her.
She slowed down several times, for though she tried to not feel it, the agony and blood loss was leeching away her strength. She gasped, trying to gulp in enough air to fill her lungs. She stopped and rested on her knees, cursing her ill condition. She raised her eyes to the heavens, cloudy and deep with gloom, and said a few pleading words to nobody in particular. Then, feeling as though she had accomplished nothing, she resolutely stood up, and placing her hands on her Mightyena for balance and support, continued on.
After walking on for over an hour, Riika, a bit bloody and bruised, flopped onto her back and covered her face with her hands in shame. Her two companions, seeming in near-perfect condition, went over to try and clean her wounds using their slobbery tongues. Riika kicked them away before they were able to touch her, however, and shouted out ,"Stop it!", from between her enclosed fingers.
Riika widened the gaps from between her fingers so that she was able to see the coniferous canopy of needled branches above her. She deeply rued leaving her home that night, for being stuck without any knowledge as to how her family was doing was an ache for her mental health. She wished, more than anything at that moment, that she was safely with them and caring for her smaller siblings.
At that thought, images of the youngest villagers swam through Riika's head. She saw her neighbor's baby, who had been born with a twin that shortly died after birth; her aunt's child, who had only lived through six summers so far; her friend's little brother, with brown eyes in the shapes of perfect circles that would always be so curious and cute that one couldn't help but love him. Then she saw her own siblings: Jinju, her nine-year-old brother that had once chopped down a tree; Marriet, who killed a Buneary with a stone and sling when she was only four; Kâtert, the six-year-old boy who was always quiet, but a logical thinker; Jöhann, only a two-year-old, and always such a good brother that tried to protect Cecilia. And Cecilia, oh sweet Cicily, always so cheerful, always full of such positivity that it seemed to radiate from her and make others gleeful too. Whenever the day was rainy, she was always able to make the sun come out in some way. It was almost impossible to be upset around Cecilia --at least, when she was a good mood.
At the thought of her youngest sister Riika gained the ability, through sheer determination, to raise herself to her feet and walk forward again. Riika knew that if she was going to be the older sister she was supposed to be, then her siblings couldn't die --
nobody could. Whether she would be able to save anyone from the aforementioned fate, she knew not, but if it was possible that she could, then she had to try.
After another ten meters of walking, Riika's strength drained from her again, and she would've fallen flat on her face if it wasn't for Con, who hurried toward her and broke her fall. She lay sprawled over his crouched form, eyes closed as her lips moved silently. Re-opening her eyes, she threw her left leg over Con's back, so that she was in a position to ride him.
"Con," her whisper carried to his ears, "I know we haven't ridden much, but I need you to carry me back to the village. I know it will be hard, but please Con,
please you've got to do it. If I wait until I recover and find out that . . ." She broke off, and her mouth closed in a convulsed scowl. "Please Con, just do it." She wrapped her arms around his thick, muscled neck. "For me."
The Mightyena leapt forward, his powerful legs propelling him through the forest and up the mountain much faster than a human could have gone. Muscle rippled beneath silver fur as the Pokémon drove himself forward, his brother following close behind. Riika was jostled and jolted as she rode, and winced more than once, but refused to complain. She was, at the very least, happy to be making actual progress.
As the trio went on, there was a dramatic change in the scenery. The thick blanket of grass that coated the ground eventually thinned out and became bare. Streams occurred less frequently, and were there used to be some, they were now gone. Ground was torn up and trampled as though a herd of Pokémon had stampeded through it. But most noticeable of all were the trees: Originally tall and sturdy, with moss layering their trucks and their leaves a solid verdant, they were now completely naked. Bark and moss had been stripped from their bodies, exposing their paler wood beneath. The branches were now bare, like dry bones that had lain in an empty sepulcher for centuries. Further on past them, entire trees were completely gone, with only the acrid smell of burning wood wafting from black patches.
To Riika, it seemed to take an eternity to get to her village. She had lost track of time, and had no idea how long she had been riding. She found it hard to believe that she had actually fallen so far.
Eventually, there were no more trees. The ground was black, like ash left from a long-gone out fire, or it was naked. All foliage near her house was gone, and where they had once been, Riika was able to see at least eighty meters to where her village was.
Or, rather, where her village had been. Every house that lay before Riika on the leveled-out mountainside was destroyed. Many houses were crushed, as if they had been stepped on. Parts were blackened and burned away, and some were entirely gone, leaving sooty marks. Con had stopped running as soon as they came up to the ransacked and crushed village and stood, panting. For a moment, Riika could only stare at the place where her home once stood. Mixed feelings of confusion and shock ran throughout her, and she finally leapt off the Mightyena and ran forward.
Sprinting through the destroyed homes and piles of charred soil, Riika stopped where her house was. The roof was crushed inward, and the top of every wall was burned away. The door was still intact, and stood open, exposing the blackened and empty insides of her old home.
Riika stared at her hold home, she felt tears begin spilling down her face. Old memories of happiness flooded her mind as she remembered growing up, always in that same house, always with her family and friends. Lifting a pale hand, the girl wiped her tears away and turned her head towards the other houses and their surrounding area. Though this scene of devastation saddened her, she turned her thoughts towards what she thought was most important: Where was everyone?
Riika shut her eyes for moment, trying to form a legitimate reason as to why nobody was there. Perhaps they had gone into the forest, to flee from the thing from last night. Though that also made the girl wonder why they had not come out by now, as she had. Surely the people would want to come back to their home, to re-build, to salvage what remained, or perhaps even move on? Despite that thought, Riika called Hiken and Con over, and told them to help her search the forest for her people. Dread clung to the maiden's heart like roots clung to tightly-packed soil, but she walked over to the forest and began to look around, not willing to give up hope that they were alive.
Riika gripped Hiken's fur as they trudged back toward their once-was village. They had found nobody, and as Riika glanced up, she saw that the sun had nearly reached its zenith, meaning she had been searching for over an hour. The pair sat down, and Riika fought back negative emotions as hunger began to eat itself through her thoughts.
From not far off, she heard a howl. Her heart leapt, and Riika grew hopeful. She pulled herself onto Hiken's back as he cantered to where the noise had come: about five meters into the dead woods. Once Hiken had reached Con, Riika dismounted and frantically asked her Mightyena why he had called them. The mournful saffron eyes sighted a small figure sprawled on the ground, whose lower half was hidden by a leafless bush on top of it.
Rushing over, Riika gripped the figure -- a woman, her neighbor Tot -- and a wail escaped her throat as she saw that Tot's lower body wasn't hidden under a bush; it was that there was no lower body. At her waist, where her lower body had been severed off, was a nasty black mark that let loose a most foul smell. Riika immediately released her grasp and covered her mouth, gasping. Tot's empty eyes seemed to stare through Riika, and the girl ran back to the ashy ground of her old village and ran inside her home.
Once she was there, she stopped running, and sank to her knees, gasping as the woman's face continued to stare at her. Finally shunning her optimistic attitude aside, Riika withdrew her hands from her mouth and dug her fingers in to the dirt, clenching and unclenching them. Tears poured profusely down her face as Riika, at last, let herself believe what she had refused to for the past couple of hours.
"No... no...." Raising her head skyward, she let loose a strangled
'NO! Bowing her head, the maiden cried out her sorrows. Her Mightyena kept their distance as they respectfully left their mistress alone in her mourning, their ears flattened against their bowed heads as they, too, remembered the villagers.