CHAPTER 177

"N—nice to meet you," I stammered at Decidueye. Every time his eyes met mine, I felt a sudden chill. "I'm Grace Pastel."

Nightstalker has been listening to all of our conversations and observing as well, Hatterene explained. He usually keeps his distance, but I knew he would be intrigued by your ability just as I am.

The grass type silently nodded, carefully shifting his wings. He cawed at Hatterene, who smirked.

And I suppose he wants to replace Simisage for our little experiment as well, she said, turning to Simisage. You may go if you wish. Tell your children I said hello.

Simisage jumped, hanging on a branch before waving at us and leaving. At this point, Jellicent was too astonished to even speak or say anything. These last few days had done a number on him, and he probably just wanted to rest.

That would be a first.

"That's fine by me, he can stay."

He would have stayed even if you did not want to. Nightstalker is no fairy— his lack of hospitality can reach astounding levels, Hatterene laughed.

Her words were spoken through telepathy, but her laughter was vocal. It began as a mere whisper, a delicate trill that danced upon the air like the wind. But as it grew, it twisted and contorted, morphing into something deeply unsettling. It carried an otherworldly cadence, filled with an unsettling, twisted rattle. Her opened mouth revealed a row of wickedly sharp teeth that seemed far too long to fit into her mouth, but they somehow did.

What a rude assessment, she continued. But let us get started with the story, then. It was a legend spoken to me by my mother, her mother before her and so on and so forth. It is common knowledge among some wild Pokemon.

Decidueye offered a quiet hoot in agreement.

"Common? None of the Pokemon I caught in the wild know about it— not even Buddy, and he's lived a long time."

Nightstalker whispered a few words to Hatterene, who nodded in response.

Perhaps the stories are lost, then, she said with a hint of sadness. There once were three humans just like you, thousands of years ago when this land was still called Hisui and death lurked for your kind in every corner. When the world's existence was threatened, they all traveled to different domains, gathering a Claw, a Fang, and a Plume. It is said that Pokemon of untold power had laid there. The boy that received the Claw craved for deeper knowledge, the one that received the Fang had enough ambition to fill the world, and the one that received the Plume's heart was pure enough to befriend all living things. They were all chosen for a greater purpose, but what interests us here is the third boy. It is said that he grew more attuned to Pokemons' feelings and was able to understand them within minutes of encountering them for the first time.

"I can't do minutes," I said. "Days at best. And I was never given anything resembling a feather."

It might have been embellished, or you may get better at it in time. It matters not. That was the only part of the story that is of interest to you, but to summarize, the rest states that they went on to save the world from an unimaginable calamity. Afterward, humans flocked into the land, which is a fact that my mother always despised.

Hatterene paused, and I almost scoffed.

"Is that it? That was a lot less than I expected."

Do you recall feeling strange at any point when visiting an area and gaining this ability afterward? She asked after Decidueye spoke.

"No, it came to me gradually these last few months," I said. "It wasn't just instant. I don't even know where it'd be."

A shame.

Still, any information was good. Hatterene seemed knowledgeable, and I knew that she wasn't misleading me— not when she was so invested in this as well. I didn't know why I would get chosen by anything, and I also didn't know any Pokemon with those capabilities. It was the best explanation we had, but I was somewhat skeptical that it was real. And even if it was, this sounded like a typical 'chosen one' story. I didn't feel like I was that.

There was no way someone like me could be pure of heart.

There was also the mental barrier to worry about. The fact that my mind had been protected without me knowing was even more surprising, and for some reason, it was only when I focused on understand Pokemon. That didn't make much sense to me.

Perhaps… perhaps you draw on something to use your gift, and that is a part of it? It is faint— almost not here, but now that I observe properly, I feel a pull. Eat something, then we shall get back to training, Hatterene said. Nightstalker, stop the rain once again for our dear friends, if you will?

My lips suddenly dried as the grass type flew up with a jump until he was but a dot in the sky. The clouds parted around him, clearing the rain with terrifying speed before he landed back with a loud crash, sending chunks of mud flying my way and dirtying my clothes. Angel tried to protect me with vines but unfortunately failed.

"Eugh," I groaned.

Nightstalker is not one for subtlety. I apologize on his behalf.

Decidueye dusted off his hood and shrugged.

Well, it was time to train.

—

The hours passed us by quickly, and it was nighttime now.

I couldn't help but smile as Buddy easily struck a conversation with Nightstalker. I was forced to stay and listen, and even though only a few hours had passed, I was slowly starting to understand the grass type's words. It seemed that my estimation of a few days to fully comprehend what Pokemon said was correct. Jellicent loved to talk to Pokemon close to his age thanks to them easily relating to each other. Nightstalker was a lot stronger than he was, but he appreciated the company nonetheless. I had asked him to train some of my Pokemon, but he had refused immediately.

I just wanted to see him in action. Decidueye were known to be extremely quick and accurate archers with the ability to pin an opponent to their shadow. They'd be really interesting to battle, and I wanted to know if a flying Pokemon like Princess would be pinned to her shadow too. And would his power be more powerful at noon? Could he not use it at night too?

He rebuked me, saying that I was annoying and asked too many questions, courtesy of Buddy's translation. At least he seemed to not care about Sunshine at all. The fire type seemed to be in a bad mood these days, and it wasn't due to Hatterene. Being next to beings that powerful made him feel inadequate. At least he could share in his lamentation with Angel, who was beside himself at the fact that Sweetheart just stuck to Nightstalker's side like glue.

"She still loves you, you know," I smiled at them both. "She's just excited about her new shiny thing— err, not that you're a thing," I rectified as soon as I felt Decidueye's stare on my back. It was like a tingle below my shoulders. "Sorry Nightstalker."

He accepted my apology and returned to his conversation with Jellicent. obviously, I could only catch half of what was said, but they were engrossed in how the hell had he cleared the rain so quickly. To me, it'd just been him beating his wings strongly enough to part the clouds, but it was apparently different. The grass type didn't want to give up his secrets, though, which was no doubt learned behavior from Hatterene.

A bright light flashed, and I shielded my eyes and felt the force of Dazzling Gleam brush against my skin even from afar. Princess' attack had powered up so much in just two days that it was as if I had been teaching her completely wrong. Not only that, but the attack would also knock enemies away from her using a burst of wind now. My eyes blinked rapidly, trying to chase out the blotches of blindness still lingering after the flash.

Progress on glamour was slow, but it was steady. She was barely capable of moving a leaf on her own now, but anything else was a faraway goal as long as she wasn't put in a real, emotional situation. Still, now that Dazzling Gleam had been perfected so quickly, Hatterene decided that it was time to move on to a new move.

Moves are too rigid, but they are a good base to build up from. If we had a few months, I would be able to teach you a lot more, but alas, your mother is too obsessed with her badges, Hatterene said before turning to address me. Pieces of metal with no inherent value, just like your money made out of paper. Humans are a strange folk.

"If everyone agrees that something has value, then it does," I explained. "It's not that hard to understand."

Wishful nonsense, she dismissed. Let us get started on Moonblast, sister.

Togetic eyed her teacher and excitedly bobbed up and down.

Control yourself. It is unsightly for a fairy to let her emotions show so strongly. Moonblast is a crude technique, but it is among the most widespread. Do not be mistaken, however. It is complicated to weave. You do not simply have to pack energy tightly into a sphere like the Duskfolk for with their Shadow Ball.

The Duskfolk? Mathilda and Ruth had said something about returning to the Dusk when they died.

"Have you ever seen her that focused?" I whispered smugly to Electabuzz. The electric type chuckled but kept silently watching.

The Duskfolk draw from the Dusk for their energy, but that place leaks into our world like a sieve. Unlike ours, it is a clumsy and savage power not borne from this plane. They do not even have to struggle to use it. Our power is scattered among this Earth, but to gather the amount needed for stronger techniques, we draw from the Moon.

I blinked. I knew the move was called Moonblast, but that certainly hadn't been what I expected. Princess had often looked at the moon with wonder, but I just thought that was her being a kid. Hell, when I was a kid and dad drove me around in his car at night I would cry because I thought the moon was following us.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Moonblast is at its strongest during a full moon, but that is not a prerequisite, and it can devastate your enemies during the day as well. The key is to know how to draw that energy. Look at the sky, baby sister.

Togetic craned her neck upward and I mimicked her, but it was not a full moon. I could only see a crescent in the sky that softly illuminated the forest floor. Once she was done, we all stared quietly at both of the fairies with bated breath and awaited for what came next. Nightstalker seemed to be amused, however.

Allow me to demonstrate. I will slow myself down to allow you to see.

Thin, almost transparent threads slowly floated and intertwined. They were so long that I couldn't see where they even began, but they looked to go all the way to the moon itself, stretching far into the sky until they disappeared from view. The threads suddenly shone as Hatterene slowly tied them into intricate knots, each seemingly impossible to mimic. The more I looked, the deeper the structure went, as if I was staring at… there were just no words for it. None of it made any sense. I just couldn't comprehend what I was looking at.

I snapped out of my daze when the entire thing seemingly snapped into place, and then it finally made sense. It was a miniature moon— a perfect recreation with every single crater and dark grey blotch etched into the surface. Faded pink dust and chunks of earth forcefully pulled from the ground orbited around the small moon. Even trees were swerving toward the attack, but the area was still completely silent. If Angel hadn't been wrapping vines around Honey or me, we would have been pulled in toward the attack. Princess herself was being held in place by her teacher's psychic powers.

Hark sisters, Hatterene said. The true form of a perfected Moonblast.

The attack flew forward, and Hatterene summoned a thin psychic barrier all around us, dwarfing what Togetic was capable of without a sweat. The moon trembled and shook as it gathered more and more leaves, dirt and bark around it.

And then it crashed into a large tree, finally exploding with a deafening boom as sound returned to us. I couldn't even see what was going on— it was— it was too bright. I covered my eyes and closed them, but I could still see the light through my eyelids until it was over.

Everything in front of me was destroyed. There was nothing left but a giant crater that was as large as one of the arenas in the Solaceon tournament and a hazy, pink dust that menacingly lingered outside of our protective bubble. And she hadn't even been trying that hard.

"Arceus," I inhaled. My palms were clammy. I'd always know that she'd been strong but seeing it was an entirely different thing. I had negotiated with that.

She had called the technique crude. And it hadn't even been a full moon!

Did you catch it? Hatterene asked Togetic. It is not just pulling the energy, but willing it under your control with belief. You will have to grow better at it if you want to grow past these horrible bindings that humans call moves. Try it.

Needless to say, her first attempt was a terrible failure. And so were her second, and third, and—

—

You are disappointed? Hatterene asked as I softly pet Togetic's hair. She was sleeping like a log, exhausted from all the training. You cannot learn in a day what took me years to perfect. Even if she succeeds in creating a Moonblast, it will not be nearly as powerful or clear as mine.

I smiled gently and muttered. "Disappointed at her trying her absolute best? Of course not," I said. "Plus, she's learned a whole lot already, and we aren't even done. The disappointment you sense from me is genuine, but it is for a different reason. It's about the story. It raises more questions than answers… and I want answers."

To my right, Electabuzz leaned against a tree and watched the current scene with a sly grin. After pestering him for hours, Sunshine had managed to get Nightstalker to agree to a duel. Sweetheart and Angel cheered for the dragon as best they could, with the rock type screaming her lungs out and Tangrowth excitedly waving a dozen vines around.

He wasn't holding back for this one, and the fight was fully contained within one of Hatterene's barriers. Scorching heat constantly warped the air around the fight, and just looking at it made me sweat. Sunshine roared as a Flamethrower flew out of his snout, and Decidueye easily ran up the barrier, somehow digging his talons into the psychic surface. In one smooth motion, he drew an arrow from his wings made out of a sharpened feather, which was quickly submerged by shadows.

Four arrows buried themselves inside of Sunshine's shadow that had been created by his own flames, and the dragon type reeled as if he'd been hit. Nightstalker was clearly holding back here, but he was still having a decent amount of fun. He spun around a Dragon Pulse and took flight, somehow being engulfed in a sea of ghostly energy and phasing out of reality right before another stream of flames reached him.

Stories are often lacking in substance, but they are still important. The longer a story is told, the more power it holds. And if anything, it gives you a lead.

"Power? How does a story have power? Do you mean its value?"

Yes. They are bargained for at heavy prices, among other things. But let us move on to more related, but important matters. Let me introduce you to the concept of presence—

"Wait, how do you do that? Like, that word, it felt like it had weight to it."

That is a matter for a different time, baby sister, Hatterene smiled, gently rubbing my hair with her claws. It was the first time she'd even touched me. Presence is not exclusive to fairies, but the knowledge is heavily kept within our circles.

She paused, and I understood immediately. "I won't tell a soul."

When a powerful Pokemon stays rooted somewhere for a long period of time, it will slowly accumulate power and the terrain will change to their liking. That is what you call a domain and what I call a fief, but the concept as a whole is called presence. The more powerful a Pokemon is and the longer it alters an area, the more presence it has. Its existence is etched into reality and becomes a fact.

"Wait, what? Isn't that just a complicated way of saying that the longer they stay, the more powerful they get?"

No. It is a way of explaining why that is the case. They do not grow in power because of battles, but because their very presence becomes a law of the world. I am such a case. I have altered this region to my liking and the longer I stay, the more powerful I will become. Can you take a gander at what the end of it is like?

The end… so her final state? Maybe Mount Coronet—

Hatterene's tentacle tensed. You dream far too big. The forces at play in that blasted peak do not follow the rules and are horrors beyond even my comprehension.

It took at least twenty seconds for me to digest those words, but that certainly lined up with my experience when I had fallen deep inside of the mountain. And we had been relatively close to the exit. It got worse the closer to the peak.

"Uh, what about Eterna Forest?" I nervously asked.

Yes, she proudly said. At the center of Eterna Forest sleeps a being more powerful than I. For all I call that blasted Champion Cynthia horrid, she would beat me quite handily, but I am sure she would have a harder time against the creature that lurks in the forest. It is far older than even Shiftry was, and its roots go back to before Hisui. Luckily for you humans, it seems satisfied to sleep at the center of the forest it has built. I am but a fledgling child gesturing in the dark trying to find a familiar place to anchor myself compared to the scale of the world.

I suddenly felt very nervous. I had walked through there and lived. Thousands of people did so every year. "What Pokemon is it?"

Don't get greedy now. Think of another example.

"The Iron Island seemingly never run out of ore," I muttered, thinking of Chase. "What about them?"

Correct. Another good guess, but you think too rigidly. The fog to the northwest of here, the permanent snowstorm to the far north that ebbs and flows, but never stops. The burning summer heat around Stark Mountain even though it lies at Snowpoint's latitude and should be a frozen wasteland. These Pokemon are the strongest below the Legends of old, having rooted themselves in history and their presence reinforced by the world thinking that they belong there. Reaching their status is my goal.

"And there are more than this?" I asked, thankful that none of them had attacked a city before.

Oh, far more, some big like the ones I described, but most are smaller like I, or even smaller than that. It pains me to admit my irrelevance, but I am no wyrm. My pride can take a hit, Hatterene smirked. Do you see what I meant when I said that stories hold power? The more these tales are told, the more their presence is reinforced.

I nodded silently. All of these unexplainable effects on different routes actually had an explanation. If I had to guess, there was no way that these Pokemon would let themselves be seen by any scientists looking to figure out why there was so much fog on route 210, for example. And it was the same… in every region. Old Pokemon amassing power and altering the world around them, changing entire ecosystems. Thinking about it now, it was obvious, but I had never thought it was possible at such a scale. Routes were so much larger than cities. Shiftry's outburst was insignificant compared to this.

They remain hidden, disinterested in human affairs as I am. It is simply not worth it. They are powerful— incredibly so, but they are not invincible. Many have fallen in the past, and many will fall in the coming centuries or millennia, either to a challenger within their domain or trainers powerful enough that seek them out. And when they do, another will take their place, drastically changing the area in a few years.

Which on an ecological scale was basically the blink of an eye. This was such a fascinating topic— what would a normal type doing this look like? What about a flying or psychic type? I had so many questions, but no answers.

And I do not have the answer either. I know a lot, but nothing beyond what my mother told me in my young age. The old ways are dying out, slowly but surely. Cities grow larger and humans encroach on us, the air is slowly choked by machinery but what can we do but wait? Perhaps one day, a Champion will push back on constant expansion and protect our homes.

I chewed on her words for a few minutes and stroked Togetic's head while Hatterene stroked mine. She'd grown attached to me in just a few days, but I'd lie if I said I didn't feel the same.

"I'm surprised more of you haven't lashed out," I said.

Lash out and get the noose around our necks tightened further? She said. For all I talk about violence, you humans have a monopoly on it. Pokemon follow your every order, each for different reasons. Some see it as a shortcut for power. I cannot deny that a Pokemon will grow faster with a trainer by their side, and not all of them share Nightstalker and I's long lifespan and can afford to take a slow approach, although lifespan is a tricky affair that can be extended if you accrue enough presence. If we struck back, we would be destroyed. We all know it.

"Well I'd like to say that I'll become the Champion and help you, but I know it's more complicated than that. I'd have to convince gym leaders, mayors and the people living in the cities. I'd have to fight corporations that thrive on city expansion… it's just… hard. For all people say that Pokemon are hard to understand, human society's a thousand times harder. Plus, I don't think I'll win the Conference this year, let alone beat Cynthia in five… but I sympathize."

And that is appreciated. Making a promise you are not certain you can fulfill would not be wise.

I sighed. That had given me a lot to think about, but I had one more question.

"Say… is there some way I could use glamour?"

Use it? No. Humans and Pokemon are fundamentally different. You can not pull on the forces we do, Hatterene answered. But thanks to your halfling state, you will be able to understand and see it with enough training. If you can see and understand it, you can potentially train your daughter without my guidance. Unfortunately there is not enough time. We will reach Veilstone in two more days, and the learning process would take months. It would be shorter if you were a full-fledged fairy.

I exhaled and placed my head against her hair-robe.

Don't make that face. You are always welcome, she said. I will seek you out if you come back.

"How about this summer? After the Conference?" I asked. "I could come back before too if I have time after the eighth gym. When Princess evolves, she'll be able to fly me."

I said always, did I not? If it was up to me, you would have joined my gathering. The wyrm would have to go, however.

I chuckled. Sunshine was already on the ground, his chest going up and down as he wheezed heavily. Decidueye had taken him down with a few feathers burned, but other than that he hadn't broken a sweat.

"You love him, don't you?" I asked. "I think I can tell. He's the only one you look at so fondly."

An accurate observation.

I did not bother to ask if it was romantic, familial or platonic, but love was love. I did not need to know. They had a lot of history together. I wondered how he'd gone from attacking her to force her to help his trainer to joining and rebelling along with her.

It is nigh time I properly introduce myself, Hatterene suddenly said, her eyes unmoving. My name is Bellatrix, the Keeper of the Sacred Woods.

I felt pride bubble in my chest. "It is nice to meet you… sister."

To you, Grace Pastel, I bestow the title of Friend of the Forest. It is a title that holds weight and may it carry you far. You are now my disciple. Human, halfling, gifted or whatnot, it does not matter. I declare you an honorary member of the fae.

I stood up, Togetic still sleeping in my arms, and bowed my head in respect. All of my Pokemon were watching now. Even Sunshine.

"Thank you, Bellatrix."