He could scarcely believe his eyes.
A beam of light, cascading down from the heavens, impossibly big.
His home, his town, his family, his friends – all bathed in the blinding radiance.
Then… just as quickly as it had appeared, the light was gone.
And the light took with it… everything.
He dropped down from the tree he'd been climbing, bark clinging to his palms. His legs shook, barely able to support him.
A stone creature, round with cracks in its shell and light-colored protrusions jutting out, floated at his side, similarly stunned into silence.
He started walking, slowly at first. He remembered every cobblestone, every lamp, every shop that made up the streets of Penth. The grocery was supposed to be at the corner, the inn next to it. The blacksmith would normally have her forge going by this time of day, the smell of the smoke weaving through the crowds.
He began to run.
The Pokemon breeder was supposed to be there, the confectioner there…
He left what should have been the market district. A right on what was once named Orrery Lane. Ester's home, gone; Malik's home, gone; Arcana's home, gone…
He stopped in his tracks.
He knew it was coming, but one small part of him had been holding out hope.
His home.
His mother.
The garden where he and Starlight first met, when she crashed down from the night sky.
The kitchen where he'd first tried Berende sprouts and promptly spat them out.
The fireplace in front of which he'd huddled up in a blanket to stave off the bitter winter cold.
The thatched roof that he and Starlight had accidentally punched through trying to see how high she could carry him.
They were all gone.
He fell to his knees, among the grass and flowers that had replaced everything he had ever known. A gentle pressure on his shoulder told him that Starlight was trying to comfort him as best as she could.
He couldn't even cry. The tears wouldn't come. The… enormity of what was facing him… it couldn't sink in. Surely his mother was still out there somewhere, right? He must have just gotten lost on the way home, and only thought he saw his town disappear. That must be it—
"Robin." A hand on his shoulder.
He looked up, his dirt-streaked bangs hanging limply over wide, dark eyes. "Arcana-?" It was her. Then, since she was still here, maybe, maybe everyone else was hiding somewhere nearby—
The hand cupped under his arm and pulled him to his feet. Though she was a few years older than him, Arcana and Robin stood eye-to-eye with each other; while he wore a simple tunic with pants tucked into his boots, she dressed with more of a flourish – a green coat that waved in the wind, black gloves that she liked to adjust dramatically at opportune moments. She fixed Robin with a piercing, amber-eyed stare. "So you're here too," she said in a low voice. "We need to get out of here."
"What? Why?!" Robin said, his voice wavering. "Everyone else has to still be around here somewhere! We gotta find them! We… we have to…" He could feel the tears welling up, now – and there they came, spilling from his eyes down his cheeks and dropping onto the flowers underneath him. "I don't, don't want Mom to be…"
"Gone." Arcana shook her head and turned her gaze away from him. Her voice was as level as it always was, but Robin could see her shoulders shaking. "Everyone's gone. It's just you, me, Starlight, and Opal." At that last name, an azure blue sea lion with a pale fringe around her neck – a Popplio – clambered onto her shoulder, eyes watery. "And we need to get gone before whatever zapped the town decides to blast us to kingdom come too."
"How can you be so, so calm?!" Robin took a step towards her, his hands balling into fists. "There's nothing left!" His jaw was clenched tight, and he could feel his heartbeat pounding in his chest.
Arcana turned her head back towards him, her eyes glittering in the afternoon sun. "I'm calm because someone has to be. Time like this, someone's got to keep her head on her shoulders. And we're in danger here. There'll be time for mourning later. So let's go."
Starlight nudged Robin's arm. "I don't want to go," she said in a quiet voice that echoed inside her shell. She and Robin had been partners, a Minior and a human, long enough that they could understand each other nearly perfectly. "But… I think Arky is right."
"She's calling me Arky again, isn't she," Arcana said, her expression flat.
"If something happens to us," Starlight continued, "then there won't be any hope left. It's only us. Nobody else knows what happened."
Robin grit his teeth and wiped his sleeve across his eyes, leaving damp trails. "You're… you're right." He looked at the flowerbed where his home had been only earlier that day. "I'm coming back though, you hear me? I'm not gonna just… leave everyone like this!"
"Less platitudes, more hoofing it," Arcana said, grabbing Robin by the hand and running in the direction of the forest. "There's a sanctum not far outside of town. We can at least be out of the open there." She slowed to a stop, though, when Opal tugged at her jacket's collar and muttered something into her ear. Arcana turned around to look – across the field, examining the flowers, was a woman, tall and elegant, wearing a simple white dress. Everything about her screamed slender, from her arms to her face. She plucked a flower from the earth and held it to her nose, breathing in deeply.
"Who's that?" Robin whispered. "Is she the one who…?"
"Shh!" Arcana held a finger up to her lips and crouched, concealing herself in a patch of tall grass. After a moment, she pulled Robin, who clearly had not gotten the hint, down too.
The woman tossed the flower over her shoulder and cocked her head upwards, as if listening to something. Then she turned and stared at the tall grass.
"Don't move," Arcana hissed through clenched teeth. Robin stayed frozen in place as the woman took slow deliberate steps in their direction…
…and then turned away, evidently satisfied that there was nothing there.
Robin let out a breath that he didn't know he'd been holding. "That was close," he whispered, but before he could get back up, a yank on his collar did that for him. A Marowak, its skull scarred and cracked, hauled him to his feet, smacking him in the gut with its bone when he didn't move quickly enough.
"Ah," said the woman without turning around. "I knew there were some stragglers here and there." Her voice was faint and airy, like wisps of smoke drifting out of her mouth. "Good job, Sorrow... bring them here."
The Marowak prodded Robin with its bone a few times, and he stepped from the grass. Arcana followed him, her face awash with calculation. "You're the one who did this," Robin growled, trying to stop the tears from coming again. "Fix it! Bring everyone back!"
The woman put her hand to her mouth, letting out a slight laugh. "Oh dear… you don't know what's going on at all, do you? This wasn't my doing, child."
"Child?" Robin narrowed his eyes. "I'm 15!"
"Not the time, Robin," Arcana hissed.
"The person behind this act," the woman continued as if Robin hadn't interrupted her at all, "has long since departed this place. Well before anyone had any hope of stopping him, in fact. I'm just here to ensure that anyone left over is… taken care of." She stretched out one graceful arm. "To that end, Sorrow… you may begin."
Robin backed up a few paces as Starlight drifted in front of him. "Are you sure?" he whispered to his companion.
"No," Starlight said simply, "but I'm doing it anyway."
Arcana muttered something to Opal at the same time, and the Popplio jumped down from her shoulder to likewise stand in between her partner and the threat. "I think you'll find," Arcana said, adjusting her gloves as her coat waved in the breeze, "that we're not so easily dispatched."
Sorrow leapt at them, hurling its bone through the air before slamming its fist, crackling with electricity, into Starlight. The bone slammed into Opal on its way past her, then once again on its way back, leaving her dizzied and stumbling. In one attack on each of them, Sorrow had left them much worse for the wear.
"Starlight!" Robin cried as cracks splintered across the Minior's shell. She swiveled around to glance at him, and he knew that she was winking at him, even if he couldn't see her face.
He knew what she was going to do.
Robin and Starlight had known each other for five years. Neither of them were especially enthused at the idea of fighting, but they'd still practice here and there, if only for the purposes of self-defense. Starlight was the only Minior many people in Penth had ever seen, and rumors abounded – Minior were spirits of the stars, Minior were sent from the heavens, Minior couldn't survive for too long if their shell cracked open. Robin had been concerned about that last one, and even though Starlight wasn't convinced it was a real problem, they trained for it regardless. Finally, they had it – a way to turn Starlight's shell breaking to their advantage.
"Starlight," Robin called, "SHIELDS DOWN!"
The cracks spidered across Starlight's surface faster, until they all paused at once, for just a moment. The shell exploded outwards, pelting Sorrow with sharp fragments of rock and only narrowly avoiding Opal. Sorrow stumbled back as Starlight revealed her core – a black sphere with white nubs, with wide spiraling eyes and a small smile.
"Hey, watch it," Arcana said with a scowl. "You almost got us with that. Opal, you know what to do." Opal padded forward and spat a stream of water from her mouth, one that slammed into Sorrow's helmet.
Sorrow shook off the water and debris, letting out a growl. It didn't need any more instruction from its partner – it began lashing out wildly, landing blows with its bone and its fists alike. Without her shell, Starlight was easily thrown by just a single strike – and Opal followed soon after.
The woman laughed again, a haughty, pretentious noise that burned like fire in Robin's mind. "Oh, you actually thought you stood a chance… the looks on your faces! Such wonderful despair…"
Robin screwed his eyes shut, unable to keep watching. The Marowak's growl echoed in his ears, and he tried to drown it out with his own internal voice. Please, if there's anyone out there, he thought, help us! Help me! She's… we can't stop her!
Sorrow quieted – in fact, everything did. A pinprick of warmth gleamed in his heart, then spread through his veins, calming his nerves. "Um, Robin?" he heard Arcana say, but faintly, muffled.
He opened his eyes.
The woman had backed away, her eyes wide and her pupils shrunk, with an incredulous smile on her face. "Incredible… that's why you survived the erasure…"
Robin looked down at his hands. They had turned from his normal light brown to the color of midnight, with claws like daggers, and in one was a bent wooden club that looked like it would pack a punch. A light yellow, almost white, cloak had appeared around his shoulders, with a hood to cover his head.
Even Sorrow took a step back.
"So you can call upon Divine Favors too…" the woman said, her voice somewhere between laughing and crying. "That makes things more… complicated. Sorrow, let's fall back for now. This wasn't in the plan." Before Robin or Arcana could move, she and Sorrow both took off running, disappearing into the forest.
"What… happened, Robin?" Arcana asked. It wasn't often that Robin heard uncertainty underpinning her words, and even less often that he caught her looking confused.
Robin turned his attention back to his hands. They… didn't look like his, but when he wiggled his fingers, the claws wiggled just as they should have; when he moved his arm, the arm formed from inky darkness moved the same way. "I, um, I dunno. I was trying to block out the sound of the Marowak, and then… this happened."
A rustling in the grass drew his gaze to Starlight, who was reforming her core from the shattered rock. "I think it suits you, Binny," she said, flashing him a smile before that section of her face got covered up. "You look like a Mimikyu."
"A Mimikyu?" Robin said, furrowing his brow.
Arcana snapped. "That's it, a Mimikyu!" She drew a pencil and a small stack of papers loosely bound together from one of her pockets and began sketching hurriedly. When she finished, she turned her paper around: it was a rough drawing of Robin, his face obscured completely in shadow except for his eyes, wearing a cloak that covered him all the way to his feet, with two ears and two red spots on the hood.
And then… the cloak dissolved into nothingness, and Robin turned back to normal.
"Aww," Starlight said, her core reconstructed. "I liked it, too."
Robin could only keep staring at his hands, baffled. "What's… going on?" he muttered.
"I might be able to tell you." The voice belonged to the wizened man who'd approached them without their noticing; he balanced on a cane and his steps were slow, deliberate, and, crucially, quiet. "Please, why don't you come with me? I'm the healer at the sanctum near here. I rather think the four of you could use a rest, hm? I've got a stew going, and I can hopefully enlighten you a little over some dinner."
Robin glanced at Arcana, who shrugged, as much at a loss as he was. "It's where I wanted to head anyway," she said.
"Okay," Robin answered. Before taking off, he looked over the empty field, his home, one last time.
He would come back.
He would fix everything.
He had to.
A beam of light, cascading down from the heavens, impossibly big.
His home, his town, his family, his friends – all bathed in the blinding radiance.
Then… just as quickly as it had appeared, the light was gone.
And the light took with it… everything.
He dropped down from the tree he'd been climbing, bark clinging to his palms. His legs shook, barely able to support him.
A stone creature, round with cracks in its shell and light-colored protrusions jutting out, floated at his side, similarly stunned into silence.
He started walking, slowly at first. He remembered every cobblestone, every lamp, every shop that made up the streets of Penth. The grocery was supposed to be at the corner, the inn next to it. The blacksmith would normally have her forge going by this time of day, the smell of the smoke weaving through the crowds.
He began to run.
The Pokemon breeder was supposed to be there, the confectioner there…
He left what should have been the market district. A right on what was once named Orrery Lane. Ester's home, gone; Malik's home, gone; Arcana's home, gone…
He stopped in his tracks.
He knew it was coming, but one small part of him had been holding out hope.
His home.
His mother.
The garden where he and Starlight first met, when she crashed down from the night sky.
The kitchen where he'd first tried Berende sprouts and promptly spat them out.
The fireplace in front of which he'd huddled up in a blanket to stave off the bitter winter cold.
The thatched roof that he and Starlight had accidentally punched through trying to see how high she could carry him.
They were all gone.
He fell to his knees, among the grass and flowers that had replaced everything he had ever known. A gentle pressure on his shoulder told him that Starlight was trying to comfort him as best as she could.
He couldn't even cry. The tears wouldn't come. The… enormity of what was facing him… it couldn't sink in. Surely his mother was still out there somewhere, right? He must have just gotten lost on the way home, and only thought he saw his town disappear. That must be it—
"Robin." A hand on his shoulder.
He looked up, his dirt-streaked bangs hanging limply over wide, dark eyes. "Arcana-?" It was her. Then, since she was still here, maybe, maybe everyone else was hiding somewhere nearby—
The hand cupped under his arm and pulled him to his feet. Though she was a few years older than him, Arcana and Robin stood eye-to-eye with each other; while he wore a simple tunic with pants tucked into his boots, she dressed with more of a flourish – a green coat that waved in the wind, black gloves that she liked to adjust dramatically at opportune moments. She fixed Robin with a piercing, amber-eyed stare. "So you're here too," she said in a low voice. "We need to get out of here."
"What? Why?!" Robin said, his voice wavering. "Everyone else has to still be around here somewhere! We gotta find them! We… we have to…" He could feel the tears welling up, now – and there they came, spilling from his eyes down his cheeks and dropping onto the flowers underneath him. "I don't, don't want Mom to be…"
"Gone." Arcana shook her head and turned her gaze away from him. Her voice was as level as it always was, but Robin could see her shoulders shaking. "Everyone's gone. It's just you, me, Starlight, and Opal." At that last name, an azure blue sea lion with a pale fringe around her neck – a Popplio – clambered onto her shoulder, eyes watery. "And we need to get gone before whatever zapped the town decides to blast us to kingdom come too."
"How can you be so, so calm?!" Robin took a step towards her, his hands balling into fists. "There's nothing left!" His jaw was clenched tight, and he could feel his heartbeat pounding in his chest.
Arcana turned her head back towards him, her eyes glittering in the afternoon sun. "I'm calm because someone has to be. Time like this, someone's got to keep her head on her shoulders. And we're in danger here. There'll be time for mourning later. So let's go."
Starlight nudged Robin's arm. "I don't want to go," she said in a quiet voice that echoed inside her shell. She and Robin had been partners, a Minior and a human, long enough that they could understand each other nearly perfectly. "But… I think Arky is right."
"She's calling me Arky again, isn't she," Arcana said, her expression flat.
"If something happens to us," Starlight continued, "then there won't be any hope left. It's only us. Nobody else knows what happened."
Robin grit his teeth and wiped his sleeve across his eyes, leaving damp trails. "You're… you're right." He looked at the flowerbed where his home had been only earlier that day. "I'm coming back though, you hear me? I'm not gonna just… leave everyone like this!"
"Less platitudes, more hoofing it," Arcana said, grabbing Robin by the hand and running in the direction of the forest. "There's a sanctum not far outside of town. We can at least be out of the open there." She slowed to a stop, though, when Opal tugged at her jacket's collar and muttered something into her ear. Arcana turned around to look – across the field, examining the flowers, was a woman, tall and elegant, wearing a simple white dress. Everything about her screamed slender, from her arms to her face. She plucked a flower from the earth and held it to her nose, breathing in deeply.
"Who's that?" Robin whispered. "Is she the one who…?"
"Shh!" Arcana held a finger up to her lips and crouched, concealing herself in a patch of tall grass. After a moment, she pulled Robin, who clearly had not gotten the hint, down too.
The woman tossed the flower over her shoulder and cocked her head upwards, as if listening to something. Then she turned and stared at the tall grass.
"Don't move," Arcana hissed through clenched teeth. Robin stayed frozen in place as the woman took slow deliberate steps in their direction…
…and then turned away, evidently satisfied that there was nothing there.
Robin let out a breath that he didn't know he'd been holding. "That was close," he whispered, but before he could get back up, a yank on his collar did that for him. A Marowak, its skull scarred and cracked, hauled him to his feet, smacking him in the gut with its bone when he didn't move quickly enough.
"Ah," said the woman without turning around. "I knew there were some stragglers here and there." Her voice was faint and airy, like wisps of smoke drifting out of her mouth. "Good job, Sorrow... bring them here."
The Marowak prodded Robin with its bone a few times, and he stepped from the grass. Arcana followed him, her face awash with calculation. "You're the one who did this," Robin growled, trying to stop the tears from coming again. "Fix it! Bring everyone back!"
The woman put her hand to her mouth, letting out a slight laugh. "Oh dear… you don't know what's going on at all, do you? This wasn't my doing, child."
"Child?" Robin narrowed his eyes. "I'm 15!"
"Not the time, Robin," Arcana hissed.
"The person behind this act," the woman continued as if Robin hadn't interrupted her at all, "has long since departed this place. Well before anyone had any hope of stopping him, in fact. I'm just here to ensure that anyone left over is… taken care of." She stretched out one graceful arm. "To that end, Sorrow… you may begin."
Robin backed up a few paces as Starlight drifted in front of him. "Are you sure?" he whispered to his companion.
"No," Starlight said simply, "but I'm doing it anyway."
Arcana muttered something to Opal at the same time, and the Popplio jumped down from her shoulder to likewise stand in between her partner and the threat. "I think you'll find," Arcana said, adjusting her gloves as her coat waved in the breeze, "that we're not so easily dispatched."
Sorrow leapt at them, hurling its bone through the air before slamming its fist, crackling with electricity, into Starlight. The bone slammed into Opal on its way past her, then once again on its way back, leaving her dizzied and stumbling. In one attack on each of them, Sorrow had left them much worse for the wear.
"Starlight!" Robin cried as cracks splintered across the Minior's shell. She swiveled around to glance at him, and he knew that she was winking at him, even if he couldn't see her face.
He knew what she was going to do.
Robin and Starlight had known each other for five years. Neither of them were especially enthused at the idea of fighting, but they'd still practice here and there, if only for the purposes of self-defense. Starlight was the only Minior many people in Penth had ever seen, and rumors abounded – Minior were spirits of the stars, Minior were sent from the heavens, Minior couldn't survive for too long if their shell cracked open. Robin had been concerned about that last one, and even though Starlight wasn't convinced it was a real problem, they trained for it regardless. Finally, they had it – a way to turn Starlight's shell breaking to their advantage.
"Starlight," Robin called, "SHIELDS DOWN!"
The cracks spidered across Starlight's surface faster, until they all paused at once, for just a moment. The shell exploded outwards, pelting Sorrow with sharp fragments of rock and only narrowly avoiding Opal. Sorrow stumbled back as Starlight revealed her core – a black sphere with white nubs, with wide spiraling eyes and a small smile.
"Hey, watch it," Arcana said with a scowl. "You almost got us with that. Opal, you know what to do." Opal padded forward and spat a stream of water from her mouth, one that slammed into Sorrow's helmet.
Sorrow shook off the water and debris, letting out a growl. It didn't need any more instruction from its partner – it began lashing out wildly, landing blows with its bone and its fists alike. Without her shell, Starlight was easily thrown by just a single strike – and Opal followed soon after.
The woman laughed again, a haughty, pretentious noise that burned like fire in Robin's mind. "Oh, you actually thought you stood a chance… the looks on your faces! Such wonderful despair…"
Robin screwed his eyes shut, unable to keep watching. The Marowak's growl echoed in his ears, and he tried to drown it out with his own internal voice. Please, if there's anyone out there, he thought, help us! Help me! She's… we can't stop her!
Sorrow quieted – in fact, everything did. A pinprick of warmth gleamed in his heart, then spread through his veins, calming his nerves. "Um, Robin?" he heard Arcana say, but faintly, muffled.
He opened his eyes.
The woman had backed away, her eyes wide and her pupils shrunk, with an incredulous smile on her face. "Incredible… that's why you survived the erasure…"
Robin looked down at his hands. They had turned from his normal light brown to the color of midnight, with claws like daggers, and in one was a bent wooden club that looked like it would pack a punch. A light yellow, almost white, cloak had appeared around his shoulders, with a hood to cover his head.
Even Sorrow took a step back.
"So you can call upon Divine Favors too…" the woman said, her voice somewhere between laughing and crying. "That makes things more… complicated. Sorrow, let's fall back for now. This wasn't in the plan." Before Robin or Arcana could move, she and Sorrow both took off running, disappearing into the forest.
"What… happened, Robin?" Arcana asked. It wasn't often that Robin heard uncertainty underpinning her words, and even less often that he caught her looking confused.
Robin turned his attention back to his hands. They… didn't look like his, but when he wiggled his fingers, the claws wiggled just as they should have; when he moved his arm, the arm formed from inky darkness moved the same way. "I, um, I dunno. I was trying to block out the sound of the Marowak, and then… this happened."
A rustling in the grass drew his gaze to Starlight, who was reforming her core from the shattered rock. "I think it suits you, Binny," she said, flashing him a smile before that section of her face got covered up. "You look like a Mimikyu."
"A Mimikyu?" Robin said, furrowing his brow.
Arcana snapped. "That's it, a Mimikyu!" She drew a pencil and a small stack of papers loosely bound together from one of her pockets and began sketching hurriedly. When she finished, she turned her paper around: it was a rough drawing of Robin, his face obscured completely in shadow except for his eyes, wearing a cloak that covered him all the way to his feet, with two ears and two red spots on the hood.
And then… the cloak dissolved into nothingness, and Robin turned back to normal.
"Aww," Starlight said, her core reconstructed. "I liked it, too."
Robin could only keep staring at his hands, baffled. "What's… going on?" he muttered.
"I might be able to tell you." The voice belonged to the wizened man who'd approached them without their noticing; he balanced on a cane and his steps were slow, deliberate, and, crucially, quiet. "Please, why don't you come with me? I'm the healer at the sanctum near here. I rather think the four of you could use a rest, hm? I've got a stew going, and I can hopefully enlighten you a little over some dinner."
Robin glanced at Arcana, who shrugged, as much at a loss as he was. "It's where I wanted to head anyway," she said.
"Okay," Robin answered. Before taking off, he looked over the empty field, his home, one last time.
He would come back.
He would fix everything.
He had to.