TEEN: - Complete Fixed Paths

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Hi everyone, it’s admittedly been a little while since I kicked off a new published work, but I figured that with the 2025 Weird and Wonderful One-Shot Contest recently posting results, that it was about time to spit shine my own entry and share it with the rest of the world. As those of you who read the contest results likely gathered, it’s basically a tale of N’s Sigilyph living up to Sigilyph’s Pokédex lore and recounting his equivalent of a life story in the process.

As an advisory, but the general mythos that this story leans on isn’t exactly all sunshine and rainbows even before being put under the microscope and explored in more detail, and as such this one-shot has a few scenes that get fairly dark. While I consider it significantly more uplifting in tone than my last contest oneshot that was dark and set in a desert, there are a couple scenes depicting violent conflict and onscreen deaths, and references to the sort of hard-edged nastiness that used to be part and parcel of ancient civilizations in real life which would’ve merited an instant rating bump from the T rating that this story has on FFN and AO3 had they not been kept in the realm of implication and offscreen events. As such, if those sorts of topics aren’t what you’re looking for in your readings, you probably won’t really enjoy reading this one-shot.

I would like to take a moment to extend my thanks to Rusting Knight from Thousand Roads, who beta-read this story’s original contest submission. I am also eternally grateful to Flyg0n, Phoenixsong, tomatorade, and windskull from Thousand Roads for the feedback they provided as contest judges, which helped shape the final release of this story. For the curious, as has become a bit of a tradition of mine, I published an archival version of the story as-submitted to the Weird and Wonderful contest to AO3, which can be read here as Fixed Paths β.

And with that, let’s take you into the sun and sand of Unova's Route 4, through the eyes of a strange bird that has just run into a most strange human…

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

---

Fixed Paths​

---

“Let me hear your voice.”

Our wings shoot out wide and we almost fall from the air. Had it all been our imagination, or had this strange human before us with his shock of green hair spoken to us with his mind’s voice?

No, that couldn’t be right. We carried memories from our prior fledgers of the rare humans who had mind’s voices of their own, and theirs were still in that jumbled, arrhythmic tongue that humans spoke in. This stranger’s voice wasn’t like that, and everything about him was all wrong for that sort of human.

Black spherical necklace aside, his clothing wasn’t particularly different from the humans who crossed our flight paths lately. He wasn’t capable of doing things that humans with mind’s voices typically could like levitating the red-and-white sphere he’d bound us to just earlier. Nor could we sense any hint of a power like ours within him, as we usually were able to with such humans.

And we definitely couldn’t remember the last time such a human kept the company of a Scraggy like the flabbergasted-looking one by his feet—still visibly worn down from the cutting gusts we threw at him earlier in battle.

And yet, as his lips moved, we understood him. Clear as day.

“Human, how did you-?”

“I don’t know the answer to that myself, really,” the human’s voice comes, resonating with some deep fiber within us. “It’s a gift that I have that’s allowed me to befriend Pokémon like you in the past.”

Clearly, even after accumulating thousands of years’ worth of fledgers’ memories, there were still things for us to learn. The desert sands around us are vaguely familiar. Somewhere along the southern flight paths that our kind keeps here, not far from the ancient walls and squares that were there in our earliest memories.

Even so, it’s jarring being plucked from the place where we ought to be. Or at least the place we’ve accustomed ourselves to being in. Given the ball in his hand, this human likely intends to take us much further away to still more disorienting places. A part of us wants to turn and fly away, but from the pattering and slight distortions of light near a patch of sand off to the left behind green-hair that shifts every now and then, we doubt we’re truly alone with just him and the Scraggy.

The other part of us beckons to stay a little longer, curious as to what this peculiar human’s voice has to say. We beat our wings briefly as we use our mind’s power to levitate from the ground slightly, raising our spoken voice.

“Our kind does not have memories that belong to us alone,” we explain to him. “We pass them down to the best of our abilities, from fledger to chick, to preserve them for time immemorial.”

The human blinks at the response, and the suspicious patch of sand off to the left shifts a bit again with a stifled grunt. We can’t speak for whatever lies there, but the human’s reaction is only to be expected. Even the other Pokémon that live in this desert find the way we Sigilyph make our fledgers’ memories our own peculiar, not least of all the cohorts of the Scraggy who is presently rolling his eyes up at us.

“... Yeah, these birds are all just kinda crazy like that, just saying,” the lizard harrumphs.

The human clearly understands the Scraggy from the brief frown he shoots at him, but strangely enough, he seems curious. Eager even, to hear more as he approaches. He holsters the sphere he bonded us to to a belt and warily raises a hand out.

“Well then, let me hear their voices that they passed onto you. I’m about to impose a heavy burden on you and take you from your home for a time. Before I do that, I’d like to understand them first..”

And there it is, the human’s intentions laid bare. We don’t know what to make of it, but if we truly will be departing our set paths, perhaps it is best to fly about them one last time.

… And to get to know this most peculiar of humans a little bit better.

“Follow us, then. As we fly, we will show our voices to you, much as our fledger did to us as a chick.”

We turn, and focus our mind, pushing our body over the sands in a slow glide as the crunch of overlapping sets of footsteps against sand follows after us.

---

As we fly over the desert sands, we begin telling our memories with our mind’s voice—it allows our kind to share our words on a more intimate level, and it is the voice that humans—this green-haired exception aside—generally best understand. As we fly along in search of a familiar path to follow, we opt to start from the very beginning: with our first fledger’s memories. They are hazy and sparse—much like our own memories as a hatchling were before our fledger passed their memories onto us to carry on:

We were fully grown then and fell from a hole in the sky with many others into this desert. Many things have remained much the same since then: the midday heat, the nipping night’s chill, but we had no paths to fly back then. We flew about in aimless confusion, searching for roosts and paths from another place filled with tall cliffs we had the only vaguest memories of.

The desert is a harsh place. Both then and now. The predators that dwell in this desert were strange and unfamiliar then, and for us, the time was full of bewildering terrors that whittled our numbers down.

We had some success after we began flocking together, fighting attackers off with sheer numbers, which worked until the day the humans in black first came to these lands. We drove a few of their scouts away and they massed against us. Marching alongside strange Pokémon from the north: snarling dragons with jagged blue and crimson scales that spewed strange fire, short and tall with red and lavender fur which stood out against the sands that struck with blows swift enough to be difficult to follow with our eyes, and green wraiths with clay-like bodies that lumbered along with them that threw crushing punches.

But the Pokémon with them we remember most is the Volcarona who flew at the side of the Hero of the humans in black.

“Burn!”

The strength of his fire along the cliffs they had us pinned remains seared in our mind. We struggled to stay in the air after our attack failed. The humans’ spears, bows, and clubs studded with black earth-glass, we could fend off. We managed to do the same with their other companions. Some lacked strength of body against us, others were faint of heart against our numbers. But the Hero and his Volcarona were relentless, and soon we discovered that they had the ear of a still-higher power.

A blinding blue light filled our vision, as the sky split with lightning and the black dragon descended upon us. The frightened shrills and cries of our flock filled the air as the inner tail the black dragon had spun and came aglow in blue and the seconds and sparks seemed to slow down before our eyes.

The black dragon was a being of great power, unlike any this place has seen before or since her time here. She could have reduced us all to ash right where we flew back then.

And yet, when she had us at her mercy, she stopped, and the Hero and his companions did too. The black dragon approached and looked at us with much the same bewilderment as green-hair did.

“What are you?” she asked. “And why did you harm my Hero and his acolytes when they were wanderers without shelter?”

Some in our flock shrilled, others turned and tried to fly away. But with all the strength we mustered, we flew forward, looking up into the towering dragon’s red eyes.

“We are much like you,” we said. “Strangers without a roost and without paths to fly, trying to survive in this strange place.”

She hesitated. But I distinctly remember the way her scowl and glare softened as she stooped down and rumbled out the offer that has set our paths since:

“Join us. My Hero and his acolytes are in need of helpers,” she said. “With time, they can provide the shelter and direction you seek.”

---

The black dragon and her humans came to this desert from a colder place in the north. She once had a roost there, one which she shared with another dragon that had a Hero of his own—from the same clutch as the black dragon’s Hero.

There had been a fierce quarrel between the two dragons’ Heroes, which had prompted the black dragon and her followers to journey south in search of a place to make a realm to their liking. A place from which they intended to build an ideal world, a place they trusted our psychic power and wings to defend.

We come across one of our paths that was set for us and turn and follow it, as it stirs up memories of when the humans in black began establishing that realm. They built remarkably quickly, in ways that were alien to the Pokémon that dwell in this place. Along the path we lead green-hair along, we tell him of the things that we saw them build here. Of how they cut channels for water that made the desert bloom in terraced strips. How heaped up stones to make buildings and walls like the ones that used just a short flight ahead. How they even made a roost for the black dragon in the likeness of the one she once called home somewhere far to the north.

The black dragon is in a number of our second fledger’s memories, which stir from the desert sands as we reach the place where tall walls once stood and follow the course it once took. We had a human as a companion then, a warrior posted at the walls who, much like the others, regarded the dragon and her Hero with awe. Encounters with her were joyous occasions for him, and one day in particular when we were by his side lingers in our mind. We watched the dragon together as she looked out past the walls, alongside her Hero and the Volcarona who was his most loyal companion.

The Hero was a fledger with a chick of his own at the time. Or ‘father’ and ‘son’, as humans would call them. His son was still callow and not yet a warrior, though he had already started accompanying his father. The paths for his own life were laid down in those days, including with a Larvitar that had been chosen as a companion for him and dutifully stayed at his side.

“The acolytes are acclimating well to their new home, My Lady,” the Volcarona said. “And they’ve been filling our ranks with new allies, too.”

A party of humans happened to be making their way through the city’s gates under our watch. Laborers in shawls with crops slung upon them in baskets, accompanied by the Pokémon who they had made cause with in their new home: some like Sandshrew and Darumaka who came from the sand to make cause, and others that we didn’t recall see living in the desert in those days like Claydol and Yamask—their kind seemed particularly close to those humans, for reasons why after all these years even we don’t fully understand. There were other companions with the humans who came from further afar, like an orange-and-black boar reared up on two legs that lugged along a large grinding-stone for grain. Others still were ones who had begun their lives after arriving in the desert, including a red-and-yellow furred weasel that was a chick of parents from the north that we saw accompanying a human who was similarly young in years.

We remember the black dragon’s shift in her mood after seeing the last pair pass, along with the disappointment in her voice.

“If the others would’ve just followed us south, they would have loved this place...”

Even well after the black dragon and her acolytes came to this land, there was a part of her that was upset that the Pokémon that she once knew from her roost largely didn’t follow after her. Instead, they had opted to stay at their grounds, or worse still, to follow after her rival in the north. The Hero saw her change in mood then and soothed her, as his companion flitted up and interjected with a low buzz.

“I understand that it is disappointing, but in the end, it’s for the best,” the Volcarona reminded. “You said when we set out for this place that you wanted followers who would join you because of their ideals. Those Pokémon simply didn’t have them, so there’s no need to force the matter.”

That normally would’ve been the end, and the black dragon would’ve moved on into a short flight to quell her mind, but for a stroke of fate that day:

“N-Noooo! Let me go! Let me go!”

Our human grabbed a spear at the outcry and called out to us, pointing our attention downwards towards the base of the walls. It was a group of the Hero’s warriors, wielding spear and bow, accompanied by an Onix and Druddigon who snarled for silence at a set of squirming nets.

When we flew down at our human’s request, we saw the culprit of the outcry: a small bask of Krokorok ensnared in ropes and nets, with one of their number thrashing particularly desperately in a bid for freedom. Their cries fell on deaf ears, as the Druddigon with the humans flared his wings with a low snarl.

“Should’ve thought about that before trying to take a bite out of us!”

While some of the desert Pokémon the Hero and his people had encountered had been quick to join them as allies, the Krokorok and their kind had been particularly stubborn foes that skirmished with tooth and claw. Even back in those bygone times, there were humans who deemed defeat in battle as sufficient grounds to force Pokémon to make cause with them. Then as now, even among humans who were uneasy of such doings, they generally had little sympathy to spare for Pokémon who had come as aggressors.

We’ll admit that we weren’t particularly sympathetic ourselves to the Krokorok in our memories. But at once the air split with a deafening roar, and lightning swirled about as the black dragon was suddenly no longer on the wall and in our midst.

“That’s enough!”

We flew back with a squawk, as the black dragon landed among us and threw the warriors into disarray. The Krokorok flinched and cried out, expecting a swift end. It didn’t come, as the warrior’s gaze turned to their captors and their Pokémon, as she loomed over and leveled a piercing glare down at the Druddigon and the Onix.

“Tell your humans to let them go. Now.”

There was a moment of squeaking confusion from the pair, and their humans were similarly taken aback. The Hero and his companion flew down in a hurry. Then as now, humans generally couldn’t understand we Pokémon well, and it fell to the Volcarona to try and serve as a mediator for them.

“My Lady, what is-?”

“I want followers that fight for Ideals beside me because they want to. That includes them.”

Suffice to say, her acolytes swiftly heeded her wishes. Though perhaps it was for the best, since the black dragon’s humans would later owe this desert’s Krokorok and their peers their lives:

---

We unfortunately don’t have memories of the pivotal moment when those Pokémon delivered the black dragon’s humans, but our fledger from that time gave us ones from the period just afterwards. We were an emissary then, more accustomed to following paths that were given on the fly. As we reach the remains of what was once the main gate, we follow our path with a sharp right, flying over dunes where a great avenue had been and recount the scene that once unfolded here long ago:

We had been tasked to bring a tablet with human glyphs to the black dragon’s Hero, flying between the walls towards a great square set out in front of the black dragon’s roost. The Hero’s warriors in their black garb were all gathered there, along with their Pokémon, leading a procession of scale and fang forward:

Sauntering Krookodile tailed by small basks of Krokorok, with even their young having come along for the occasion. Our once-enemies gathered before adoring crowds, and all stood tall and proud under the gaze of the black dragon, who beamed at them with an approving growl.

“Thank you for heeding my pleas, brave and noble hunters. Your teeth and claws have saved my acolytes from those who bore evil intent against them,” she said. “For that, you will always be welcome inside my roost.”

There had been a crushing weight and dread in and around the Hero’s city for weeks beforehand. An army from the north with warriors clad in white had marched against them and intended to despoil them, with such strength in their ranks that even the black dragon feared she would be overwhelmed. The fear in their ranks had been so severe that some of the humans had proposed performing old rites from before the black dragon came to live with them—ones meant to appeal to absent gods to make themselves known which commanded a price in flesh and blood. They were stopped only by the black dragon’s snarling and thundering displeasure, along with her insistence that even if she too was worried, that their deliverance would come through staying faithful to their ideals.

As the joyous mood that day proved, she had been vindicated. And that deliverance was the reason why we had flown to their high place: to relay a report that had come because of her and her Hero’s doings. She had gone out into the desert in search of allies for her Hero’s people, and had not been left wanting.

We remember the way the Hero’s son marched forward before the crowd, Pupitar at his side, raising a torn white cloth stained with deep red up for all to see.

They and their allies had emerged victorious, and the desert had eaten well because of it.

The crowd roared its approval, both the old faces in it and the newcomers from the desert. Yet throughout it all, the black dragon’s Hero looked ashen and his attention remained elsewhere.

It all seemed so strange. Curiosity got the better of us, and we approached his companion as the Hero’s attendants took the tablet from our mind’s grasp.

“Why is your path-giver so troubled?”

“He is troubled by what happened. Our victory came at a terrible price, and burned away many lives,” the Volcarona explained. “Whether or not the arrival of that army was truly his brother’s doing, he will not be able to overlook its fate.”

The attendants’ own eyes grew wide after seeing the tablet, as they spirited it over to the black dragon’s hero. The air around turned grave as the Hero took the tablet and the others about him gathered around as the Volcarona shook his head.

“He will need to march his people out to war against his brother. He fears what will become of them.”

---

Back in the dunes, green-hair and the Scraggy continue following. The human nods along with our memories, while the lizard with him folds his arms with a disbelieving scoff.

“I’m sorry, why are we supposed to believe this again?” the Scraggy demands. “Every story I’ve heard about the black dragon and the old humans said they were here an uncountable number of years ago. And you just happen to have a memory from all the way back then of your ancestors of meeting her face-to-face?”

We ruffle our feathers and let out a sharp squawk. We Sigilyph pride ourselves on passing our memories on as completely as we can onto our chicks, and we can’t help but feel offended by the Scraggy’s accusation that this is just another desert tale.

We flare out our wings, as green-hair raises his hands and tuts for calm.

“Easy there. You shouldn’t dismiss stories so quickly, Scraggy. Sigilyph’s story happens to line up with many I’ve heard as a human in places far away from here,” he says. “From the detail that Siglyph has in his, I frankly trust his telling more than theirs. If there wasn’t some level of truth to his story and the others like it I’ve heard, my friends and I wouldn’t have made it this far.”

We aren’t sure what to make of that comment, other than to note that the Scraggy relents—turning away with a quiet pout. There’s a brief crunch of sand as the strange-speaking human raises a hand, seemingly towards empty air. We wonder what that’s about, when green-hair turns to us and speaks again.

“I assume that your fledgers were also there to see the Heroes’ war for themselves?” he asks.

We flit in place uncomfortably. Some of our peers have tales of memories of battles from those times, but we don’t. Our memories are more distant ones that this human likely isn’t expecting to hear and would surely find disappointing…

“We’re afraid that we do not. We primarily flew the paths over and about the Hero’s city during that time, watching warriors march out from the black dragon’s roost and watching diminished numbers return,” we explain. “A few of our fledgers acted as emissaries for the city’s warriors and relayed messages back and forth. The closest we can recall of actually fighting in those battles was at the time of the black dragon’s final clash.”

And yet, much to our surprise, the human’s interest piques. He looks at us, with a curious spark in his eyes.

“I’d like to hear more about that final clash, actually,” he says. “What do you remember from it?”

---

It takes us a moment to recover from the moment of surprise, but we begin recounting our experience—of being in an unfamiliar and strange place where greenery sprouted all around and not just along channels dug to let water pass. We were on a broad, rolling plain left pitted and scorched by fire and lightning. The Hero’s warriors clad in black were massed on one end, while his brother’s clad in white were massed on the other, both armies in tense anticipation.

We were with his son at the time, as the Hero left his Volcarona companion to watch over his chick as he warred in the air alongside the black dragon. We remember the way his son bristled with impatience, as his own partner, who’d grown into a towering Tyranitar, mirrored his human’s mood as sand swirled about his scales.

“Just how long are we supposed to wait like this?” the Rock-type snarled. “We’re wasting precious time to strike!”

“Haven’t we seen enough of the consequences of trying that by now?”

The Volcarona gravely gestured up above, where the black dragon and her rival dueled in the air, trailing blue and orange in the sky. Fire and lightning rained down, with charred lumps scattered about the plain marking those who had let their impatience get the better of them and attempted to march forward to attack.

“There’s no way forward until Our Lady emerges victorious,” the Volcarona buzzed. “Perhaps you are content with squandering your human’s life, but I will sooner set this camp ablaze before allowing that to pass.”

The Tyranitar let out a low snarl as his human tensed up and grabbed for a glass-studded club. Up above, we could see the white dragon faltering and retreating. All around us, the warriors and their Pokémon readied to charge, as the Tyranitar lumbered forward with a bellowing cry.

“Our Lady has triumphed! Time to-!”

“Wait! Something’s not right!”

It took but a moment after the Volcarona’s cry for us to also see it. Up in the air, the black dragon had also faltered and turned back. She swooped down low, visibly tired and coated with scorched scales and burns.

And then much to our confusion, her Hero dismounted and in his tongue, he called off our attack.

---

Little had we known it, but that stillborn battle had been the end of a great war. Through another set of eyes, we were present to witness the black dragon’s Hero mustering all his warriors and their Pokémon together in a quiet place a couple hours’ march south, as he appeared before them and spoke to them:

He declared that their war was over. That the black dragon’s ideals and the white dragon’s truth were both incapable of prevailing over each other. That neither was right over the other, and that it was folly to continue fighting to prove otherwise.

We were deeply confused when the Hero’s words were eventually passed onto us in our tongue, with both human and Pokémon alike in the gathering growing similarly befuddled. Some of the voices carried growling and grumbling tones, not least of all the black dragon’s own:

“What is this nonsense?!”

The black dragon stomped the ground, giving a sharp glare down at the human she called her Hero. The onlookers around her shrank back, as irritated sparks danced on her hide.

“Our ideals built your city! It’s the start of the ideal world we’ve dreamed of!” she cried. “Why would you just yield and give that up when we could’ve renewed our battle with our full strength after a bit of rest?!”

Her own grumblings were echoed by others in the gathering, as accusing words in a human tongue long lost swirled around. The grumblers were largely gathered with the Hero’s son, who leveled a sharp glare at his father, which his Tyranitar companion matched.

“It’s worse than that,” the Tyranitar harrumphed. “We were prepared to aid you right then and there. If we and our humans had but been given the chance to fi-”

“Enough.”

The Hero’s Volcarona flared his wings, scattering singing scales as the crowd fell silent. The Hero went up to the black dragon and uneasily patted her, saying words that after a moment’s pause, the moth put his companion’s remark into words that we and the other Pokémon could understand.

“He didn’t yield for any lack of faith in you, My Lady, but for the sake of your servants,” the Volcarona said. “They are tired and weary from many battles, and have suffered greatly for that ideal world we wished for. As unpleasant a truth as it may be, if our ideals compel us to reduce ourselves to ruin and ashes before such a world can be born, what good will it do?”

The black dragon glared, before her attention turned out to the crowd. Her attention fell on a green serpent with a leafy tail that visibly trembled in dread, before turning to a human warrior struggling to stay upright from a fresh shoulder wound. Other faces echoed theirs: human, Pokémon, from those coming from the desert, and from coming from her former roost. Her expression softened, and she held her head low with a grudging murmur.

“I… understand,” she said. “I won’t pretend that this decision pleases me, but I will accept it. For your sakes.”

The gathering returned to peace afterwards, though we distinctly recall the Hero’s son turning away and leaving in a sullen mood. We did not think much of it back then, as we saw the quiet relief on other faces among our human and Pokémon allies.

We trusted the black dragon’s judgement. That even if it wasn’t satisfying, that halting that great contest of truth and ideals would work out in the end.

---

The Hero’s son was never quite the same afterwards, and he grew deeply bitter after the war’s abrupt end, which he saw as nothing short of a betrayal to the sacrifices they had made. It shook the Hero’s confidence as well, as our fellow watchers and guardians from that time told tales of him spending long, fretful nights with the black dragon, discussing matters that remained known only to them.

And then, one day, we were met with the shock of hearing that the Hero was sending the black dragon to fly away. He revealed to all that it was her power that had convinced him to do so. It was such that she could lay waste to armies with bolts that could arrive sooner than one could form a thought. She and her rival had already seen what had happened when they wielded their strength from up close, and they feared what would become of their Heroes’ peoples if for whatever reason, there came a time that a Hero who followed them that wouldn’t have the sense to act as a voice of reason for their stubborn natures.

All the city was in an uproar afterwards, but the Hero could not be dissuaded, and the black dragon herself revealed that she had given her assent to the Hero’s wishes. And so it was that the day came for her to depart. As we lead green-hair off to where the great square was, the way she stood in it before her roost is as clear in our memories as the ones we have formed with our own mind. All the city’s people and their Pokémon looked on that day. A few wept and others cried out pleas for her to stay that made her falter and shake her head.

“Don’t cry. Even if I will be away, this won’t be the end,” she said. “As long as you keep your ideals and the righteousness in your hearts, I will watch over you.”

She beat her wings and rose into the air. After she rose sufficiently far above the ground, her tail spun and lightning crackled about her with a wooshing hum.

She shot up into the clouds, and then she was gone.

---

“This is where the square was. The place where we saw her depart.”

We fly over a crown of stony outcroppings. It’s a little off course from where we should be flying, but not far enough to be unduly uncomfortable. To our left, there’s a faint hint of moisture on the wind from the river a short flight northward, while the dunes that have swallowed up the black dragon’s roost are piled up in the distance ahead. Green-hair takes a moment to look about in quiet awe, while his Scraggy gawks about, before turning to us with his face screwed up into a disbelieving scowl.

“Okay, now I know you’re just going and pulling our tails,” he huffs. “This is a bunch of dunes and rocks!”

Green-hair shakes his head in bemusement, as he opens his mouth to speak, and in parallel with his human tongue, that strange, deeper voice within him speaks, too.

“Time has a way of wearing down even the mightiest fortresses, Scraggy. This story happened so long ago, that it’s a small miracle that there’s anything left from it.”

We puff our feathers out and have half a mind to squawk in protest. Even if the black dragon’s Hero and his city are long gone, their works are very much still remembered among our kind. We notice the sands near green-hair are still shifting like they did earlier, with the feeling of a peculiar void in its place. We start to go over to investigate, when the human notices us and steps in our path, before speaking up again.

“The stories you speak of are known far beyond this desert, Sigilyph. By humans and Pokémon alike,” he says. “It’s partly what brought me here in the first place.”

We hesitate and look back at him, unsure what to make of him stopping our investigation, but even more so his comment. We have seen humans come through here for many reasons through our fledging-cycles, but rarely do they come for anything related to the times in our early memories. The Scraggy seems similarly confused, but his attention doesn’t linger on green-hair, but instead drifts back towards us.

“So wait, if you loons had your territories given to you by humans to begin with, why are you still here in the desert, anyways?” the Scraggy asks. “Shouldn’t you all have followed them after they wound up angering the black dragon and left the desert for good?”

We hesitate since the memories concerning the Scraggy’s questions are difficult ones. The green-haired human notices our hesitation and cocks a brow at us.

“... I presume that happened sometime after the story you told us?”

“It did, yes. The time that Scraggy speaks of came a few fledging-cycles after.”

Green-hair looks down at the spheres holstered about his waist briefly. There is a peculiar twinge of discomfort as he does, but he doesn’t reach for them, as he turns his attention back at us before his face curls into a serious frown.

“And during that time, the humans abandoned your kind to their fate?”

“Hardly. Though I suppose the full answer is a story in and of itself,” we reply. “Our path here circles about the places where much of those times happened. We will tell you of them as we fly.”

---

We continue our tale as we fly along, over sands where houses of baked earth had once been. The Hero’s land returned to quiet for some years after the dragons’ final clash as the Hero’s youth ebbed and his hair began to grow gray, until one day, in a year when the harvests were lean, a strange man in white garb came from the north riding a Dragonite winded from hasty flight.

They arrived at the city gates, where the Hero’s son had been that day, staring the strangers down with his Tyranitar alongside many warriors and their own Pokémon companions. The human companion my fledger at the time had stood firm and on guard—one of the chicks of the warrior from our memories of the black dragon along the walls. The other humans did much the same, brandishing spear, bow, and club as a thick tension hung in the air.

We hadn’t realized back then how much the white-clad stranger resembled the Hero’s son. Both in appearance and in temperament. The stranger’s frustration smoldered much like the white dragon’s fire, as his companion attempted to appeal to us to act as mediators for our own humans.

“Your humans must understand, things in the north have become grave ever since the sea grew unsettled and swallowed up the city our human’s father built alongside the white dragon,” the Dragonite said. “Had the white dragon not been there to hold back the waves, my human and the rest of the city would have met a watery grave.”

We recall feeling some degree of satisfaction at the Dragonite’s account. The white dragon’s Hero and his people had brought us no shortage of grief, and in many of our and our humans’ minds, their turn of fortune was much deserved.

“And why is this our problem?” the Tyranitar scoffed. “You and your humans’ ‘truths’ built one city. Go and build another with them.”

“They are in no position to do so,” the Dragonite explained. “Their people are weary and grow hungry. My human’s father insisted that he come and ask your humans’ leader for aid.”

Our attention turned after a terse laugh from the Hero’s child, as he spoke words that made the stranger’s face grow longer and longer. The stranger shouted something back that made the Hero’s child and the warriors with him brace for battle. Our human called for our aid, and we too answered, readying our mind and its powers.

The Dragonite hurriedly came forward to shield the stranger and pulled him back, as the Tyranitar crouched and gave a low snarl.

“‘Aid’? Aid is for friends, you are our enemy,” the Rock-type spat. “Your humans bore ours evil intent and you and your fellows happily helped them along. Go and fill your bellies with that ‘truth’ you slew so many of our companions for.”

The Dragonite’s own face fell as he crouched and let the stranger clamber aboard, before looking back with a piercing glare.

“This is not the end of things,” he growled. “Humans may differ from Pokémon in many ways, but like us, they will not just quietly lay down and die.”

At this point along our path, we happen to pass the place where the Hero’s palace had once been as we finish recounting that tale to the green-haired man. It brings to mind the unhappy ones that came shortly afterwards, which when he asks us, we tell him.

---

Our next fledger had been there when the Hero heard of his son’s dealings, which we learned then had been directed towards his brother’s own son. The Hero flew into a rage and sharply reprimanded his chick, insisting that an emissary be dispatched at once to his brother to discuss what aid his people needed. His child decided that that could not stand, and he held back his discontent no longer, going forth with a band of warriors and Pokémon which included one of our fledgers. They marched forward to confront the Hero to try and talk sense into him—to make it clear that the Hero’s desires, if acted on, risked his own people going hungry.

It went poorly. We looked down on our human, his hollow eyes staring up from the ground as blood trickled from his neck. Other humans and Pokémon were scattered in the chamber in similar states, including the Hero’s partner who lay still, surrounded by blackened bodies and oozing greenish-yellow from a large crack below his wings.

The Hero’s son held his father in his grasp, blood trickling down his brow and eyes unfocused in a daze. He beheld the dying Volcarona and hesitated, before his expression hardened and he spoke to his own companion, panting and flecked with scorched scales.

The Tyranitar hesitated briefly, before his gaze hardened and he turned towards us.

“Bring him to the black dragon’s tower,” the Rock-type instructed. “The Hero has lost both his judgement and the black dragon’s favor and is unfit to lead. If she ever comes back, she can set him straight.”

Even without our human to provide us guidance, we flew up and grasped the Hero with our mind. We were all too eager to lead him away.

---

Our path takes us closer to the river when we recount our next memory. It was that very harvest season, the sky of the Hero’s city was choked with smoke and the air with screams and roars. The stranger and his Dragonite had returned by sea and with many boats, and taken the city unawares to plunder it. The great square before the black dragon’s roost looked much as the Hero’s chamber had but a few months earlier. We remember laying amid broken pots, too weak to lift ourselves as our feathers clumped together with blood.

There was a shrill cry as one of the city’s warriors was overtaken by a fiery white light. They shot backwards and landed in a smoking heap not far from us, their body as blackened as the garb they’d worn.

A sharp scream weakly turned our attention to the opposite end of the square, as we turned our body and saw the Tyranitar with the Hero’s son, red in tooth and claw, throwing aside the limp body of a white-clad warrior. Angry sand billowed from his body, as he turned his eyes skyward alongside his human.

To the Dragonite from the gates, with the child of the white dragon’s Hero on his back.

“I’ll kill you!”

He bellowed out a war cry and charged at his human’s prompting. Our vision faded before we saw the battle’s outcome, but there was one thing that lingered with us before things went dark:

Up in the sky, there was fire smoldering in the clouds.

---

The city changed quite a bit during our flights after that time. Its buildings were rebuilt much the same, and its walls grew taller and thicker, but the character of its humans and Pokémon changed. Their warriors grew ever more numerous, and marched out from their city more and more frequently alongside ever-stronger Pokémon. Including Volcarona much like their once-Hero’s own.

It was said that the people of the white dragon had cast their own Hero aside and banished him, while his son had replaced him as their leader much as had happened with the people of the black dragon. Somehow, in spite of the black dragon’s Hero never leaving his city’s gates, the people that lived in it seemed to forget about him all the same. Had one of our fledgers from that time not been tasked to fly this same portion of the path we are presently taking about the black dragon’s roost to ensure he remained inside, perhaps we would have forgotten him, too.

We would see him at the windows occasionally, with naught but the Pokémon appointed to watch over the black dragon’s roost and those like us who brought him his food as companions. One memory in particular from those times stands out more than the rest. It was on a day when black clouds lingered in the distance. Our human had tasked us to bring the Hero his meal, and we went to him as we had many times before, floating it down onto the stones in front of him. He regarded us with a tired smile and stroked our feathers, before his face fell and he looked out at the square below.

His people’s warriors were there, marching before baying crowds as they brought forth other humans clad in white, followed by Pokémon ensnared in nets that mirrored their companions’ states. They were primarily of strange stock from outside these lands: a steel-feathered bird with a wing held out stiff and injured, a long-necked reptile that resembled a flying tree that was dragged forth visibly trembling, an otter with a shell-helmeted head that valiantly fought against being step forward to no avail… along with Pokémon of the same kinds the Hero and the black dragon had first come from the north with.

His son had been successful against the white-clad humans from the north of late, and had brought back many captives. He had rebuilt his father’s city on the strength of such beings in bondage, and with their flesh and blood, he sustained its defenders and the old rites that appealed to the city’s absent gods.

Every time, the city’s inhabitants, young and old, greeted his son’s deeds with approving roars that reached the Hero’s ears. Even as his people reveled, there was a deep sorrow in the Hero’s eyes that day, and he spoke words in his tongue that our fledger happened to understand:

‘My child, what have you led our people into?’

We left him and departed afterwards, as we had many times before.

Except, that day, the heavens thundered their displeasure with lightning in the clouds above.

---

Days later, the skies of the city-that-was were choked with smoke once again and thick with screams that fell silent after deafening thunderclaps. We were in the air with others of our kind as the Hero’s child and his warriors—originally meant to join a decisive battle against their northern rivals to determine the kingdom’s fate on the plain where the dragons fought—massed along the great passage to the black dragon’s roost.

And then she came. Throwing blinding bolts at the ground below which left blackened streaks and turned patches of earth into glass. We remember her bellow and the chill that ran through our body as she flew forward, trailing sparks from a tail aglow with blue lightning that left an angry hum in her wake.

We shrilled and froze, our companions in the skies above and ground below staring in stupefied terror as the black dragon snarled and readied her thunder. As she saw us and the other Sigilyph in the air, her expression and the lightning about her briefly wavered.

“Fellow strangers to this land, flee and turn back,” she spoke. “This land is inhabited by a wicked people who have lost their ideals and the righteousness in their hearts. One whose kingdom I once helped build which I have come to unmake. I beg of you, don’t share in their judgement.”

We tried to be dutiful to our human then. To stay in the air for the others who counted on us as an ally. But we knew full well through our fledgers’ memories of what the full strength of the black dragon’s might was like.

And we knew we were no match for it.

“E-Everyone, fly away!”

We desperately cried out to our human, to the others in the air with us, to anyone who would listen: that our cause was lost, and there was nothing we could do but flee.

Few heeded our cry, fewer still among the humans that couldn’t understand our words. A spray of stones suddenly flew up from the ground as we saw the Hero’s son and his Tyranitar standing firm, and his warriors casting spear and bow into the air alongside their Pokémon’s blows.

We flew away after that. The last memory we have of them is the crash of lightning bolts intermingled with their screams.

---

The black dragon left naught but ruin behind. In the memories passed down from our fledger after her return, meager, lonelier times followed as the sky grew dark and choked. Those who better understood human tongue spoke of stories of the white dragon coming back to his own Hero’s people there. They claimed that when the white dragon returned, he found them consumed with greed, and in a rage, he poured out his fire onto their kingdom until only ash and rubble remained—with such force that a tall mountain in their kingdom ruptured and spewed soot into the sky alongside the great fires which burned in the north.

Here in this desert, the Hero’s city irrevocably changed. Its inhabitants were much reduced in number, along with our own flocks. With their leader slain, the humans seemed to lose their direction. The streams that fed the furrowed channels largely went dry, and the sun’s light grew dim and cold from the ash-choked skies, leaving the once-green fields to grow bare and fallow outside small pockets where the warmth and light of the few Volcarona who remained let their crops to cling to life. Their companions similarly grew few in number, as scarce food prompted their humans to turn them away.

We count ourselves fortunate among them, for we Sigilyph had grown accustomed to the desert’s harsh burdens. Some of the other Pokémon we lived with were able to claim the places that the humans abandoned for themselves. Others, including many of the humans’ first companions, were left to march off for distant places to fates unknown. The only beings we remember growing in number in those days were the Yamask—whose spirits were noticeably unsettled compared to those of their kind that came before them.

We continued flying the paths that had been given to us—passed on through our then-fledger’s memories: over walls with gouges blasted into them. Over scorched piles of rubble where the humans’ nests had once been. Over sand-choked passages that had once been the approach to the black dragon’s roost—the sole structure that, amid its blackened scars, still stood tall. Much as the black dragon had promised them, it became a haunt for the Sandile and the other Pokémon whose own fledgers had once watched over it.

And one day, at a time when our wings grew heavy and we mulled flying away entirely, the black dragon’s Hero returned to his city. He returned old and weary with age, his garb tattered and his gait frail. We were surprised then, and in a moment of recognition, we left our path for but a moment to fly before him, finding him clutching a round, black stone in his grasp.

Our fledger’s understanding of human tongue was weak then, but it was enough to understand what he had to say:

‘I have brought the black dragon back to rest in her roost. Thank you, noble guardian, for staying to watch over this place. As hard as the days may be now, better ones lie ahead.’

---

We finish recounting our memory just as we fly up to what was once the rooftop exit of the black dragon’s roost. We turn behind as the green-haired human continues to follow us. He comes and stares into the gaping void, as we beat our wings in place and tilt our head forward at the darkness.

“This is the place that the Hero brought her,” we say. “Buried in the sands far below.”

He seems to grow contemplative, before there’s a sharp yip, and an uneasy voice cuts through the air.

“Um, N? I don’t think it’s a good idea to go down there.”

We whirl around as in a flash of magenta light, the sands beside green-hair suddenly grow more crowded. Alongside his Scraggy, there’s a large shock of slate-gray and red fur. Where there was once empty space, there is now a fox-like being crouched with his fur standing on end.

“I know that I’m supposed to watch over you and bail you out if this journey of yours to wake one of the dragons hits a snag, but just saying, the other one didn’t destroy its own roost,” the fox says in a nervous titter.

We shoot back into the air with a start at this stranger who seemingly materialized from thin air, while the Scraggy trades wide-eyed looks between the two.

“... I’m starting to think that it’s not just the bird that’s the crazy one here,” he pipes.

“He is a friend of mine, and he speaks of a path that I myself follow and have been seeking others to join me on,” the human says in that strange, primal voice. “I’ll admit, it sounds fanciful, but I am indeed seeking out one of the ancient dragons to lend me their ear. It’s a bit of a long story, but I suppose that I’ll be able to explain myself in due time.”

Green-hair has a path that he follows as a human? Surely he must be using some manner of figure of speech, since in all our lives, we had not seen even the most meticulous of humans keep a path better than a newly-fledged chick. Their routes would vary day by day, and even modest inconveniences would easily force them to change course.

He goes up to us and brushes against one of our wings. Hesitantly at first, then again and again as our feathers flatten and our earlier alarm subsides. A puzzled look comes over his face.

“Forgive me if I’m being rude, Sigilyph, but you mentioned that memories among your kind are not fully your own,” he says. “Just how many others’ do you carry with you?”

“286,” we reply. “When it comes time for us to have chicks and pass our own memories down, they will carry 287.”

Both the strange fox and the Scraggy recoil and shoot uneasy looks at the human, who himself seems taken aback, before giving a flustered smile.

“... While I do enjoy these stories you’ve been telling us, perhaps it’d be wise to summarize some of the memories you haven’t told us yet and focus on the ones which stand out to you more,” he says. “This desert is harsh on creatures that don’t dwell in it, especially friends like Zoroark here.”

A part of us finds it strange that he doesn’t just cut us short and insist we finish our story someplace else. He has the means to do so with that red-and-white orb, and from the exasperated scowl on ‘Zoroark’s face, this most tricky friend of his clearly wouldn’t have objected.

“Most of my fledgers’ memories afterwards tell stories that differ by degrees and build upon each other,” we explain. “They watched the sands grow taller and taller and bury more of the city with each life, while the water for the fields increasingly dried up even after the skies cleared and the sun came back.”

We turn about, glancing off at the sea to the west as memories of the last meager boats pushing off and away from this place linger in our mind.

“In the end, the humans who built this place left it entirely when there was no more water to be had. We don’t know what became of them, since all the humans who have come since then have all come speaking different tongues and wearing different garb,” we explain. “They don’t seem to value this land or remember its history, and usually come for a short time before leaving. Some violate the territories we fly over and we find ourselves in battle with them, while others come with snares and evil intent.”

As soon as the words leave our throat, a weight seems to come over the ‘Zoroark’ and his fur bristles. The human’s face also falls, and a hardened glint comes to his eyes.

“Could you tell me about some of those humans that you’ve seen come here with evil intent?”

---

We hesitated at first. We only had a few such memories ourselves. But even after the Hero’s people left these lands, every so often humans would come through seeking Pokémon to follow their paths. To this day, most come and bring one or two away much as the green-haired man has come to. Even if they do not understand our tongue and we generally do not understand theirs, such humans usually wished for the Pokémon they encountered to join them of their own desire.

It is the humans that didn’t which linger the most in our memories. Through all the years in our memories, we have seen them lead away every kind of Pokémon under the desert sun with net and snare at one point or another.

One of those times happened while flying not far from this sanctuary, in an age that would be but a distant memory to a human or even to most other Pokémon. The black dragon’s roost still stood half-exposed from the sand back then, and we had gone about flying our paths around the remains of the Hero’s city when we suddenly heard a dreadful cry.

“Help! Help!”

We stopped briefly and saw humans in strange garb, with spear and net, with white and orange grubs writhing within—descendants of the Hero’s companion and the others of his kind. They had grown sought after following the ash-clouded days, to the point where humans came from far away to lead them off from this desert. Their captors were no exception, and they had come with strange Pokémon from outside these lands, including a red and white bird with sharp talons and a piercing cry.

“Quiet! Quit your whining!"

We remember growing uneasy at the sight, and at first we drew closer, when we noticed the bird’s feathers were singed. A sign he had fought with the grubs’ fledger and emerged victorious, and that he was far stronger than we could hope to match.

We decided there was nothing we could do, and we returned back to our apportioned path and flew off. In this desert, attempting to insert oneself in others’ quarrels is a quick path to a life cut short.

Perhaps it was naive of us, since for over a hundred fledging-cycles, the Volcarona and their chicks have been but like mirages in the desert. Fleeting in appearance, and ever further away when approached.

And just as our path takes us past a stony pile. We are reminded that many years afterwards, the gods deemed it our fate to be led away as well.

---

Our memories from that time come from a fledger who lived when humans first began to craft their rolling boxes, back when they typically came with narrow wheels with spokes. We had been overpowered and were dragged along the sands, until we were thrown in the back of a metal tray covered with a strange tent, lying among others like us who were ensnared in nets.

“I can’t fly!”

“Get it off! Get it off!”

We shrilled and cried out, with the voices in our throats and in our minds. But the humans remained unmoved, as did their companions. There was a strange red and yellow creature with them. One who that had a long brown snout that smelled of soot. He looked at us briefly, before snorting embers with an impatient scowl.

“Can I shut them up already?”

The humans briefly admonished him before closing the tent on us and plunging us into darkness. Their box growled and started rolling away, unhearing to our cries.

---

We remember being brought to a strange place after that with human-made cliffs and rises by the sea. Full of towers much like the black dragon’s roost, and so full of humans that they could’ve raised an army which would’ve shamed those of both the dragons’ heroes in their time. In our fledger’s memories, our captors separated us from the rest of our flock and passed us to a human who regarded us as a trinket and kept us shut up in a most peculiar palace.

Our memories of that time are hazy, perhaps something happened to make our fledger forget them. Perhaps they couldn’t bring themselves to pass it on. We remember it being a lavish place full of treasures the black dragon’s hero would’ve envied, and yet more confining than the tower he was eventually shut up in. The entire time, we were unable to fly about in paths out under the open skies and were constantly under the watch of strange humans and hounds with great whiskers.

And then one day, when the palace’s humans grew inattentive, we flew away.

We ignored their cries and flew through the humans’ city-canyons. False stars all around made it hard for us to tell where the sky truly began. All we knew was to keep going up, and up, until the city’s streets were but faint lines below, before we flew north. Back to the paths in the desert that had been appointed to us.

We were the only one to return from our flock.

---

As we finish recalling our memories, we notice the green-haired man isn’t following us and stop. When we look back at him, we see his fists are balled up and slightly trembling. There’s a fire in the green-haired human’s eyes that takes us aback, with a flash of anger in them that reminds us of the same ones we saw in the black dragon’s own.

His expression eases as he pulls his cap low over his eyes, and averts his gaze.

“I’m sorry that they had to bear that.”

The Scraggy with him seems puzzled, while the ‘Zoroark’ with him echoes his human’s mood. His own expression is tense, and as he raises his voice, even without being able to glimpse into his thoughts, his bitterness in his words is palpable:

“Tch, I see humans don’t change much, no matter where you are,” he mutters. “Though how long ago was that last memory, Sigilyph?”

“From eight fledging-cycles in the past,” we explain. “The Sigilyph whose memories we carry from that time has long passed, and from what we know of their lifespans, everyone else in them likely has as well.”

Green-hair averts his gaze briefly. There’s a hesitation about him as he looks at us at his companions, and then back at us with a tired, forlorn expression.

“I wish that I could say that we humans have changed since then, but I have met no shortage of Pokémon who have suffered the way you describe,” the green-haired man speaks, before trailing off.

“But what about you yourself, Sigilyph? How have humans treated you?”

A peculiar question, coming from a most peculiar human. We gathered that green-hair intended to take us away from our appointed paths. From what we have seen and know of other humans, typically they try to have the other Pokémon with them attempt to calm the Pokémon they intend to lead away and talk them into coming along.

Except it almost feels like this human’s trying to talk himself into leaving us behind.

Maybe that isn’t right either, since he seems to be enjoying hearing our memories. It is the first time we’ve ever come across a human who could understand them so fully, and a part of us would be a bit disappointed if he were just to cut that short and abruptly leave.

Perhaps the best thing for us to do is simply to answer his question and see what we can glean from his reaction.

“We are not sure,” we say. “We have seen Pokémon that follow humans’ paths grow quite strong, but we had never wanted to join them before. Some who came across us were content to leave us to fly our paths, while others actively impeded us.”

He pauses briefly, and raises a brow back at us.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s simply what we’ve seen ourselves,” we say. “And it’s why we fly these paths we presently do about these ruins.”

---

We explained to the green-haired human how when we were first fledged, we flew a different path further north. One that went about a place that overlooked a desert plain which for many, many fledging-cycles had been barren but for the ghosts of fields and villages past.

And then one day, humans in hard hats came and upended them.

They laid down strange, black stone through the desert, to form a trail for their rolling boxes that cut across our paths. We did not suffer the disruption lightly and attempted to drive them off, and managed to turn smaller groups of them away a few times.

They kept coming back. And every time we fought them served only to anger them more and more.

“Get lost, you stupid birds!”

We remember being swept up by electrified threads drooped over our feathers, and amidst jolts and blinding pain, flew off in a panic from a great yellow bug that hissed after us. Other Pokémon stood alongside her, glaring and flashing fangs and claws at the behest of the humans with the hard hats. They had many short moles with them, who set upon our nests and tore them asunder—twice we returned, and twice they drove us off.

Except the last time, they collapsed the bluff our nests were built on, leaving it but a mound of dirt and dust. It was from there that we made our way south, to the paths we remembered from our older memories.

---

Green-hair’s expression turns grave afterwards as the corners of his mouth fall, and he gives us a probing stare.

“... This is something that’s just happened to you?”

“Oh, no, not at all. We were still young when we lost our old paths,” we reply. “We have flown these older ones from our memories for many moons now. Even if we sometimes wonder if we truly belong here.”

His Zoroark seems to find our remark particularly strange, as he quirks a brow in reply.

“How so?” the fox asks. “Didn’t you mention earlier that your kind adapted to this place?”

“They simply aren’t the paths we were meant to fly when we were fledged,” we explain. “And we sometimes see glimpses of Pokémon that fly other paths and what they have become.”

---

We tell our listeners of a skirmish that we had just earlier that week, with a wandering human from afar who came along with a Scolipede. We had attempted to give battle after they intruded on our path’s grounds, but we were swiftly overwhelmed.

It had not been the first time we had been bested like that, but there was something about our defeat that stuck with us. We suspect it was what the Scolipede said as we roused.

“Ugh, how much longer do we have to wait on this bird?”

We woke and wearily stirred from the sands, looking up at the Scolipede that still loomed over us, his human looking on from afar. After seeing us stir, the Bug-type turned away with an impatient hiss.

“Fight’s over, and my human doesn’t want to train you,” he said. “Get going before your enemies find you like this.”

We told green-hair of how we flew away after that, along with the lingering feelings of unease that remained with us afterwards.

---

“We suppose that is part of the reason why we appeared before you,” we explain. “For some time now, we haven’t been at ease. Our paths we would feel most natural flying are not ours to travel anymore, and we are not sure if there are others that are more fitting for us.”

The green-haired man frowns at us and shakes his head.

“But Sigilyph, why are you so set on following these paths anyways?” he asks in that strange voice. “What right did those first humans in your memories have to make you fly them instead of letting you choose the ones you wanted?”

We hesitate and tilt our body, our three eyes blinking at the strange human and his stranger-still question.

“It is our kind’s nature to fly paths handed down to us, and to only deviate from them by the smallest of degrees outside of times of great need,” we explain. “Those humans found us at a time when we were without paths and directionless. Their paths gave us purpose when we had none.”

That one makes the companions with him tilt their heads. The Scraggy’s we expected from knowing the workings of their kind, though clearly ‘Zoroark’ aren’t too different in mind judging from the befuddled expression on the fox’s face.

The human’s face mirrors them briefly, before a flash of recognition comes over him. He goes over to the Zoroark and hands something off to him. The fox briefly quirks a brow before going back a short ways and down the sand dune we’re on, bringing the Scraggy along with him. We can hear the Scraggy briefly asking what they’re doing, but green-hair doesn’t answer.

When they turn back, we see that the red-and-white sphere green-hair captured us with earlier is in the fox’s claws. As for green-hair, he’s before us on his own—eyes on us, as he shakes his head with a serious frown.

“But things don’t have to be like that. I want to help you choose your own purpose, without humans imposing it on you,” he insists, before trailing off and looking away.

“It’s just that my friends and I don’t have the strength to do it on our own.”

We aren’t fully sure what green-hair means, only to think back to his earlier comment about seeking to rouse one of the ancient dragons. The thought crosses our mind that perhaps he intends to ask for their help, even if it feels strange to be putting one’s hopes into beings that have slumbered for untold years.

But in spite of it all, there’s a determination to him as he looks back at us. The human wavers briefly, before a flash of will pushes him on.

“I’m sorry that I had to impose on you like this to begin with. This isn’t the way I’d normally have wanted to befriend you, Sigilyph… but you have some experience flying beyond this desert, don’t you?” he asks. “Will you do it again and help me? Even if it’s just for a time?”

It dawns on us that he is speaking of our prior memories as an emissary. We suppose that it is not unfitting, and we have heard from others that those of our kind who follow after humans often think of the new paths they follow in similar terms. We glance over at his companions, and notice his Scraggy cupping his hands over his mouth to speak up.

“Or you could just not join,” he chimes in. “I won’t complain if you don’t, since it means more free food for me.”

The Zoroark pins his ears back and scowls down at the lizard, as it occurs to us that the human is visibly wavering. We raise our mind’s voice to ask, when it dawns on us that we already know why:

He’s struggling with whether or not to bring us away.

We’re not sure what to make of that, other than that green-hair truly is a most strange human. So eager to want to know us further, and yet he keeps going out of his way to make it difficult for himself to impose his will on us to let himself do so at his leisure. For the first time since we began talking, we truly are alone with each other. Without the sphere he bonded us to, he wouldn’t be able to keep us from returning to our rightful paths right here and now if we felt like it. And his companions are far enough down the dune that it would be easy to slip away from them by flying over its crest.

If we felt like it, we could just leave here and now and that would be the end of things.

And yet, there’s something about green-hair that is most strange. More than just his understanding of our tongue, something about the way he sees us and how his and our kind are meant to be is different from all the other humans in our memories. And we are not quite ready to part ways from him without better understanding why.

Curiosity gets the better of us, and it is just what we need to blow away those last lingering threads of hesitation and answer him.

“Very well. Show us this path that you wish for us to fly.”

 

[kintsugi]

(sorry lol my emoji game on bulba is kind of a potshot and to this day idk how they work--to me the gold star is a good thing)

heya, here for book club, and yooooo, xeno Unovan desert lore fic featuring one of the weird little bird guys and going into the weird little lore things they do?? eating good today!

I'm so excited to see anyone else mention Abyssal Ruins, let alone draw the comparison to Relic Castle and present them as the two former seats of Unova. I have so many questions about why this info was left in the postgame, but suffice to say I think the parallels you draw between the two ruins are really apt--obviously so much of Reshiram/Team Truth's side of the story is told through the grapevine, but it's metal as hell that both dragons decide more or less to just start things over.

I also really like the idea of fledgers and the sigilyph lore that you've incorporated + crafted in general. They're just so WEIRD, and first person plural is a really fun narrative choice, and I love them haha, but I think in general the additions you incorporated are really nice--the network of memories being passed down across generations feels very fitting for a flock of psychics who hew to their paths and traditions despite the world being basically remade ground up a few times over beneath their witness. Shared memory as a theme feels very powerful in a story that's so deeply about myth and story, and idk in the context of the dragons picking heroes based on traits rather than blood, I think it fits well into an idea of a collective Unova. It's a really fun way to tell this story and give it a sense of, idk, scale and weight without relying on one (presumably immortal) narrator, while also giving plausible deniability for why they wouldn't be able to get the complete story.

I also like how you give the sense of the unfolding world, gradually going towards and away from destruction--there's some really earnest moments like Emboar with their big boulder trying to help, and there's no shortage of bad decisions, but overall I think the sense of scope lends itself really well to a world trying to figure itself out.

This review is about to kind of all over the place tbh! big picture, overall I really enjoyed myself + want to emphasize that before jumping into like four separate tangents; I think there's a lot of stuff here that really left me thinking about the story and the world you were building, which is always my favorite place to be with oneshots.

misc quotes/thoughts

Spoiler

Black spherical necklace aside, his clothing wasn’t particularly different from the humans who crossed our flight paths lately. He wasn’t capable of doing things that humans with mind’s voices typically could like levitating the red-and-white sphere he’d bound us to just earlier. And we definitely couldn’t remember the last time such a human kept the company of a Scraggy like the flabbergasted-looking one by his feet—still visibly worn down from the cutting gusts we threw at him earlier in battle.

I found this elaboration to be a little awkward for as early as it appears in the story--earlier, the narrator notes that this just isn't telepathy, it's a different thing, so I found it odd to drill in on N presumably not being a telepath. I also wasn't sure if "he wasn't capable of doing things [...]" just meant like, N didn't open the battle by levitating a pokeball for cool points like the psychic trainer class does, or if the narrator can tell he doesn't have latent psychic energy--if it's the latter, I think the latter is kind of easier to say + makes more sense as something the narrator is ruling out (vs like, he just hasn't levitated anything yet).

We were fully grown then and fell from a hole in the sky with many others into this desert. Many things have remained much the same since then: the midday heat, the nipping night’s chill, but we had no paths to fly back then. We flew about in aimless confusion, searching for roosts and paths from another place filled with tall cliffs we had the only vaguest memories of.

I love how matter of fact this is! It feels so mythological to have like, some strange origination story, but nope that's definitely the way that it happened, it was actually pretty straightforward don't worry about it it definitely wasn't wormholes. And I like the little kind of cautionary/moralistic bit at the end, [the young world was different/worse than it was now]. All in all feels delightfully lore-ish.

The Hero had what humans call a ‘son’. He was still callow and not yet a warrior, though he had already started accompanying his father.

ymmv on this one, and I think we kind of vary a little on what things are called out as weird in xenofic--I just thought it was weird to airquote 'son' and not 'father', and tbh I think [son=chick, fledger=father, just minus the memories bit and maybe some weirder reproduction details] is a straightforward enough that idk if calling out the xeno POV here felt like it added much.

“You said when we set out for this place that you wanted followers who would join you because of their ideals. Those Pokémon simply didn’t have them, so there’s no need to force the matter.”

“My Lady, what is-?”

“I want followers that fight for Ideals beside me because they want to. That includes them.”

I found Volcarona's confusion in this bit kind of weird, because he so recently pointed out that their camp doesn't want pokemon who don't match their ideals. I think maybe there's some extra connective tissue about, idk, the "right" way to catch a pokemon with a net (be the protagonist) that Volcarona might've experienced and is leading him to not see the parallels in his words a few paragraphs earlier and now, but the story doesn't really delve into that (and doesn't have to).

We chance to come across one of our paths that was set for us and turn and follow it

I think this is technically okay grammar-wise, but could be "we come across" or "we chance across" w/o much context lost. I also don't really know if either of these words really make sense in the context of "fixed paths"--if the paths are so known and well-trod, and in the previous scene the narrator closes with "best to fly about our fixed paths one last time", there shouldn't be any surprises or chance, yeah?

Sigilyph’s story happens to line up with many I’ve heard as a human, if with greater detail

I do think it's a bit odd of N to ignore the primary source eyewitness in lieu of citing human stories as fact. Idk if the word is ooc exactly; more like, he clearly cares enough about the veracity of pokemon storytellers to go out of his way to seek them out (despite having human storytellers prior to this), that is the conceit of why he's here, so to go straight to the source and then say it corroborates with an objectively less factual source feels kind of silly.

there’s a large shock of slate-gray and orange fur

Zoroark is very red or maroon to me, or at least not orange, so it took me a sec to realize this was referring to one.

Surely he must be using some manner of figure of speech, since in all our lives, we had not seen even the most meticulous of humans keep a path better than a newly-fledged chick. Their routes would vary day by day, and even modest inconveniences would easily force them to change course.

I love this so much! Sigilyph sighing in consternation as I double back to get a hat, wondering how silly little humans can possibly do anything lmaooo

-

I think there were some pieces of the story that don't quite click in the way I think you wanted, and it's probably a mix of--1) running into the word count (the ending feels a lot more vignette/less narratively focused than the beginning), and perhaps the contest time limit; and 2) this kind of weird cluster of three interwoven things that complement and oppose one another. very unova core tbh:

truth and ideals

“‘Aid’? Aid is for friends, you are our enemy,” the Rock-type spat. “Your humans bore ours evil intent and you and your fellows happily helped them along. Go and fill your bellies with that ‘truth’ you slew so many of our companions for.”

I wanted a bigger sense of what drove the two Heroes into conflict. I think truth and ideals come up often in this story, and fairly so; however, I don't really think they come up in ways that feel distinct and in opposition. The above sentence could just as easily be "go and fill your bellies with those 'ideals' you slew so many of our companions for" and I don't think I would really feel anything would change. On a macro level, I think the only truly idealistic thing that the Hero/dragon does is spare the sigilyph:

She hesitated. But I distinctly remember the way her scowl and glare softened as she stooped down and rumbled out the offer that has set our paths since:

and there's an inherently cool/vulnerable moment there in her choosing to see the better that is not yet here. And I think, perhaps, the Hero hoping that they can avoid war could be seen as idealistic--but so much of that happens offscreen or in someone else's head that it's hard to see to what extent that's idealistic or the son is just warmongering*. And at the same time that the Hero sees the ideal of peace, Zekrom sees the ideal of "if I just smash them hard enough with lightning, they will see the reason in my words", which is idealism in another sense and yet totally opposite to his--it just feels kind of vague and nebulous.

Part of this feels kind of similar to the game dialogue, where they basically write things like "the WHITE/BLACK dragon appeared to the hero of TRUTH/IDEALS and you should also live your TRUTH/IDEALS without forgetting about your IDEALS/TRUTH"--and in that regard I can see paying homage to the source; I just think that, at some point, if the conflict of the longform written story is going to focus so heavily on the conflict of these two concepts, they cannot simply be mad libs interchangeable with one another.

And I think it's kind because ideals can be malleable; the Hero's idealism can lead him to pacifism while Zekrom's idealism can lead her to war. But it's kind of narratively unsatisfying to have these guys rallying around a concept that's only in their heads** and is so diametrically opposite--does the story build towards suggesting one of them is pure idealism, or is the point that everything is muddy shades of grey, even among the heroes who are mythologically not meant to be? I find the latter is kind of hand-wavy and unsatisfying without more buildup, though ofc your mileage may vary there. Because everyone's ideals are going to be basically "what works best for me", which isn't really noble heroism and is actually quite selfish, I think the story has some responsibility in suggesting an overarching ideal of "what works best for the world".

Some things that would help clear this up for me--what specific ideal did the Hero want so badly that he would lead others to build a city in a desert (and that would presumably split the original dragon)? What specific truth did he have to reject in the process? How did these things conflict so badly that intermittent war was the only possible resolution?

***I also think part of why I found this thread hard to follow is specifically because so much of the, heh, truth of why people are making decisions is really lost to the narrator, leading nicely into:

narrative vs action

“... While I do enjoy these stories you’ve been telling us, perhaps it’d be wise to summarize some of the memories you haven’t told us yet and focus on the ones which stand out to you more,” he says. “This desert is harsh on creatures that don’t dwell in it, especially friends like Zoroark here.”

I do feel like the narrative kind of drags in the second part too/this feels kind of lampshaded in an odd way--like Zoroark was in a pokeball, so presumably unaffected by the harsh desert, until N decides to send them out, yeah? But the more interesting knot for me is:

Even as his people reveled, there was a deep sorrow in the Hero’s eyes that day, and he spoke words in his tongue that our fledger happened to understand:

I, haha, sorry, think this is kind of a similar callback to Dragonspiral's Children--which honestly I would take as more endemic to how hard it is to satisfyingly tell a story with a narrator who can really only effectively communicate with at most half of the cast, which in turn is kind of just the pit with pokemon fanfic--but I found the narrator's inability to engage with the plot at times kind of hindering. I think it also leads to the feeling of a pretty stark split between the front of the story, which is wrapped up pretty closely in the mythos of Unova, and the back, which is brief snippets of the narrator's suffering via humans.

Part of it is kind of length/weight--I get the feeling that the buildup to the schism was the main thing you wanted to cover here, and it's hard to really follow up the fracturing of a country--but I also think part of it is relevance to the narrative. The narrator is, really, just the narrator for so much of the front half, and they're mostly relegated to witnessing the events of the past + nodding along in polite confusion when N does something weird in the present. Again, really sympathetic to this specific pit, but I also feel like Volcarona ends up kind of being conflated with the Hero solely because it's necessary to have someone talking that the narrator can understand/interact with--but neither of them can speak to the Hero, or the humans who more or less still drive the plot, so it feels a little like window dressing. So much of the conflict buildup hinges on knowing the internal thought processes of the parties choosing to declare war, but we don't really end up privy to those, so it feels kind of foregone as a result. Solid themeing in this kind of story ofc, and I do think a lot about how the actual motivations of war remain opaque to most, but it does make for a less satisfying story.

And I think this dovetails well into the next thing actually--narrating events inherently feels less satisfying than following along with someone choosing to shape those events. I see how the past storyline is kind of locked in + I'm not even totally against the idea of a protracted flashback sequence where the narrator does end up passive in a way they've since come to regret, but I think, broadly, at some point a coherent story should have the protagonist make a choice that affects the world in some way.

(luckily I think there's actually a pretty obvious candidate here)

choice

“Let me hear your voice.”

I like this as an opener and it does really give BW2 trailer vibes, but at the same time, I think phrasing N's role here as demander/commander undermines a lot:

The other part of us beckons to stay a little longer, curious as to what this peculiar human’s voice has to say. We beat our wings briefly as we use our mind’s power to levitate from the ground slightly, raising our spoken voice.

It's presented as if the narrator is at first sticking with N and telling these stories out of a sense of confusion/curiosity, interested in this strange guy who does speak and could tell strange stories, but it's also kind of suggested that this is more of a coerced effort:

Or at least the place we’ve accustomed ourselves to being in. Given the ball in his hand, this human likely intends to take us much further away to still more disorienting places. A part of us wants to turn and fly away, but from the pattering and slight distortions of light near a patch of sand off to the left behind green-hair that shifts every now and then, we doubt we’re truly alone with just him and the Scraggy.

I read these + a previous line about "battered with air slashes" or similar as conveying that N has used a pokeball to relocate the narrator after the narrator lost a battle with his pokemon. This leaves me assuming that the rest of this conversation is taking place under soft coersion--the narrator could choose to try to leave, but presumably either the pokeball or the sandile lurking beneath will prevent them from doing so.

“Well then, let me hear their voices that they passed onto you. I’m about to impose a heavy burden on you and take you from your home for a time. Before I do that, I’d like to understand them first..”

Even back in those bygone times, there were humans who deemed defeat in battle as sufficient grounds to force Pokémon to make cause with them.

(there's two periods at the end of the first quote, but more importantly) I think these sentiments also feel at odds with one another--if supposed great listener N shows up guns blazing with a demand after [deeming defeat in battle as sufficient ground to make the narrator make cause], it's hard to see the world as any different then and now. I think there's potentially a takeaway that N prides himself in listening so carefully to pokemon and yet so thoroughly manages to avoid taking any of their opinions into account bc idk Team Plasma I mean Ghetsis is rotten to the core, or a less malicious/ignorant hypocrisy read that he's hesitantly adopting the tools of his enemis because he does acknowledge their efficacy and reasons there will be inherent worth in compromising his ideals (heh) in the long term or st--but the story doesn't really feel about this. The story feels like it's about:

“But Sigilyph, why are you so set on following these paths anyways?” he asks in that strange voice. “What right did those first humans in your memories have to make you fly them instead of letting you choose the ones you wanted?”

And I think it's a powerful question, especially from a guy who did just admit to wanting to force the narrator to fly a path of his choosing, but one that remains hollow in the ending, as the narrator still focuses on the implications of N's choice rather than their own:

as it occurs to us that the human is wavering over whether or not to bring us away. If we felt like it, we could just fly off and that would be the end of things.

Except it almost feels like this human’s trying to talk himself into leaving us behind.

The point that the narrator could just fly off feels kind of moot given the earlier fears that they might be relocated with the pokeball or the sandile might stop them--it doesn't really feel like N's done anything to defuse those notions, and it's unclear if the narrator was just being paranoid or if N opening with a non-consenual relocation and then a demand should be read as if N isn't taking the narrator's choices into account. And more importantly, it's N's mind that appears to have been changed here, which is fine and could also happen, but I think the more neat/tidy storytelling structure here would be to emphasize that the narrator's mind was what changed here, that choosing to remember and tell these stories to a stranger, and to engage in the resulting conversation, is what in turn leads them to choose to go with N--this is instead them answering "what right the first humans had to make them instead of letting them choose" with a choice of their own.

In that light, I think it matters much less what N thinks in the end, if N is considering leaving them behind, as it lets the decision be more on the narrator's terms rather than out of wanting to please someone else or miss a closing door. I also think this choice would land a lot heavier if it was always a choice, rather than one that N offers out of regret for hearing how poorly the narrator has fared--if telling the stories was also a choice, and N had not engaged in the practices of the bygone times/deemed defeat made the narrator unworthy of having a say here, if the narrator stays for their own reasons rather than the coersion of the pokeball or the sandile, if it felt like the narrator was always free in this one instance to say no as well as yes, then I think this ending kind of clicks for me and makes the ending feel more intentional and related to the stories that came before.

-

BUT LIKE again I think this is the best kind of story knot for me; there's so much to love here and it really did leave me thinking about some of the bits I didn't quite click with, how these pieces were trying to be. I love the little bits of sigilyph lore and I think there's some really fun bits of prose. My personal standouts were "that stillborn battle had been the end of a great war", Zekrom dropping hot bars before deciding to unmake her own kingdom, and "we were still young when we lost our old paths", but I think in general there's a lot of bangers! Glad the contest got some gears turning for you + hope you placed well! Thanks for sharing!

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, so I kinda do this thing where I go around and clear out all the reviews that build up on my stories that I'm not actively bumping immediately before and after a big reviewing event elsewhere on the internet. I figured that it was as good an opportunity as any to properly respond to my last review, since it definitely gave me quite a bit to chew on as a writer.

@kintsugi

Spoiler

(sorry lol my emoji game on bulba is kind of a potshot and to this day idk how they work--to me the gold star is a good thing)

Don’t feel too bad, most of my emotes I use in my reviews are actually straight-up image potholes. ^^;

heya, here for book club, and yooooo, xeno Unovan desert lore fic featuring one of the weird little bird guys and going into the weird little lore things they do?? eating good today!

Which was exactly what I was going for with this story when I submitted it to that contest way back when this past summer. I admittedly went a bit out on a limb with some parts, but for something that I basically did on a whim to try something new, sounds like things turned out decently enough.

I'm so excited to see anyone else mention Abyssal Ruins, let alone draw the comparison to Relic Castle and present them as the two former seats of Unova. I have so many questions about why this info was left in the postgame, but suffice to say I think the parallels you draw between the two ruins are really apt--obviously so much of Reshiram/Team Truth's side of the story is told through the grapevine, but it's metal as hell that both dragons decide more or less to just start things over.

Yeah, I did more than a little bit of scouring of fine details regarding Unova setting lore for this one-shot, on top of some past scouring for some other stories in my portfolio in the past. It was a pretty target-rich environment, especially when starting to go down the rabbit hole of localization hopping. That’s how the one-shot wound up coming up with some of the deeper cuts about its portrayal of Unova-that-was with stuff like how both Reshiram and Zekrom once had a presence at Dragonspiral Tower or the Taos barbecuing a region over a crashout about the antics the Heroes’ sons were getting up to, so sounds like things paid off there. ^^

I also really like the idea of fledgers and the sigilyph lore that you've incorporated + crafted in general. They're just so WEIRD, and first person plural is a really fun narrative choice, and I love them haha, but I think in general the additions you incorporated are really nice--the network of memories being passed down across generations feels very fitting for a flock of psychics who hew to their paths and traditions despite the world being basically remade ground up a few times over beneath their witness. Shared memory as a theme feels very powerful in a story that's so deeply about myth and story, and idk in the context of the dragons picking heroes based on traits rather than blood, I think it fits well into an idea of a collective Unova. It's a really fun way to tell this story and give it a sense of, idk, scale and weight without relying on one (presumably immortal) narrator, while also giving plausible deniability for why they wouldn't be able to get the complete story.

Yeah, Sigilyph are one of those weird Pokémon where a lot of their portrayal all follows downstream from what on earth one assumes the things are to begin with. Since they’re one of those Pokémon that can basically be summed up with:

My fundamental assumption was that they were organic beings originating from nature, if not necessarily Unovan nature, which then begged the question of how they would wind up being weirdos that would care so much about specific flight paths that they weren’t alive to be given. Thus the premise of having a conception of self that is partly inherited from those that come before you and all that entails.

I also like how you give the sense of the unfolding world, gradually going towards and away from destruction--there's some really earnest moments like Emboar with their big boulder trying to help, and there's no shortage of bad decisions, but overall I think the sense of scope lends itself really well to a world trying to figure itself out.

I suppose that’s a sign I ought to tighten that one bit of description up given that that was supposed to be an implied grindstone that the Emboar was lugging around. ^^;

Though that general vibe was more or less the intent with what I was going for there, yes. Glad to see it came through.

I found this elaboration to be a little awkward for as early as it appears in the story--earlier, the narrator notes that this just isn't telepathy, it's a different thing, so I found it odd to drill in on N presumably not being a telepath. I also wasn't sure if "he wasn't capable of doing things [...]" just meant like, N didn't open the battle by levitating a pokeball for cool points like the psychic trainer class does, or if the narrator can tell he doesn't have latent psychic energy--if it's the latter, I think the latter is kind of easier to say + makes more sense as something the narrator is ruling out (vs like, he just hasn't levitated anything yet).

I slipped in a small bit where Sigilyph goes “... nope, definitely not psychic” in the part you’re referring to.

I love how matter of fact this is! It feels so mythological to have like, some strange origination story, but nope that's definitely the way that it happened, it was actually pretty straightforward don't worry about it it definitely wasn't wormholes. And I like the little kind of cautionary/moralistic bit at the end, [the young world was different/worse than it was now]. All in all feels delightfully lore-ish.

Also, it was a little nod towards the biggest limb I went out on for portraying Sigilyph in this story, namely that they originated from the other side of said wormhole given that you can find them in such a place canonically.

ymmv on this one, and I think we kind of vary a little on what things are called out as weird in xenofic--I just thought it was weird to airquote 'son' and not 'father', and tbh I think [son=chick, fledger=father, just minus the memories bit and maybe some weirder reproduction details] is a straightforward enough that idk if calling out the xeno POV here felt like it added much.

That’s actually a good point, and I tweaked things accordingly a little bit. While I do think it still makes sense for Sigilyph to use those terms a bit more naturally after the first use of the terms as a meta thing, ‘chick’ and ‘fledger’ would be the reflexive terms that the narrator would parse things as.

I found Volcarona's confusion in this bit kind of weird, because he so recently pointed out that their camp doesn't want pokemon who don't match their ideals. I think maybe there's some extra connective tissue about, idk, the "right" way to catch a pokemon with a net (be the protagonist) that Volcarona might've experienced and is leading him to not see the parallels in his words a few paragraphs earlier and now, but the story doesn't really delve into that (and doesn't have to).

I think the angle I was going for was more that they were the aggressors and he was confused over why Zekrom cared so much over some Pokémon that caused problems for her acolytes and not just:

-ing over things. I slipped in a brief blurb that should hopefully make those vibes come across better.

I think this is technically okay grammar-wise, but could be "we come across" or "we chance across" w/o much context lost. I also don't really know if either of these words really make sense in the context of "fixed paths"--if the paths are so known and well-trod, and in the previous scene the narrator closes with "best to fly about our fixed paths one last time", there shouldn't be any surprises or chance, yeah?

I went with “we come across” there.

I do think it's a bit odd of N to ignore the primary source eyewitness in lieu of citing human stories as fact. Idk if the word is ooc exactly; more like, he clearly cares enough about the veracity of pokemon storytellers to go out of his way to seek them out (despite having human storytellers prior to this), that is the conceit of why he's here, so to go straight to the source and then say it corroborates with an objectively less factual source feels kind of silly.

I think that this is an artifact of a wording fail on my end, since the intended note that N is meant to take here is basically “No, he’s not crazy, Scraggy. I’ve heard stories told by humans that agree with his. His is just more detailed and includes details that the tellers of the ones I heard forgot about” such that it’d show deference to Sigilyph’s account.

I went and played around with things, hopefully what’s there hits those intended notes a bit better.

Zoroark is very red or maroon to me, or at least not orange, so it took me a sec to realize this was referring to one.

Hm, yeah, not sure how that one slipped past me. ‘Red’ it is.

I love this so much! Sigilyph sighing in consternation as I double back to get a hat, wondering how silly little humans can possibly do anything lmaooo

You’re now tempting me to do an omake where they do just that after a stray gust carries away N’s baseball cap or something like that.

I think there were some pieces of the story that don't quite click in the way I think you wanted, and it's probably a mix of--1) running into the word count (the ending feels a lot more vignette/less narratively focused than the beginning), and perhaps the contest time limit; and 2) this kind of weird cluster of three interwoven things that complement and oppose one another. very unova core tbh:

Though I suppose that getting told about the things that didn't quite work is just part and parcel of a review, so let’s get right into what didn’t quite stick the landing for you:

truth and ideals

[...]
I wanted a bigger sense of what drove the two Heroes into conflict. I think truth and ideals come up often in this story, and fairly so; however, I don't really think they come up in ways that feel distinct and in opposition. The above sentence could just as easily be "go and fill your bellies with those 'ideals' you slew so many of our companions for" and I don't think I would really feel anything would change. On a macro level, I think the only truly idealistic thing that the Hero/dragon does is spare the sigilyph:

[...]

and there's an inherently cool/vulnerable moment there in her choosing to see the better that is not yet here. And I think, perhaps, the Hero hoping that they can avoid war could be seen as idealistic--but so much of that happens offscreen or in someone else's head that it's hard to see to what extent that's idealistic or the son is just warmongering*. And at the same time that the Hero sees the ideal of peace, Zekrom sees the ideal of "if I just smash them hard enough with lightning, they will see the reason in my words", which is idealism in another sense and yet totally opposite to his--it just feels kind of vague and nebulous.

Hrm, I feel that this might be an artifact of two things:

A: The story being originally capped at a strict 10k wordcount (which the original contest submission used every last one of) and me not having the patience to retool things into a full-on multishot.
B: Me not beating those other “idealistic” moments over the readers’ heads hard enough through Sigilyph’s narration/perspective. Since there were actually a few other moments in the story that were meant to code similarly such as:

• Zekrom nixing the Krokorok episode instead of just shrugging her shoulders and going “vae victis” about Pokémon that were in conflict with her acolytes.
• Zekrom nixing the implied blood sacrifice that her hero’s acolytes considered doing at a grim moment when things looked impossible to handle even with her help
• Zekrom/her Hero ultimately getting around the above by making peace and working along with erstwhile rivals/enemies
• Zekrom ultimately sidelining her own personal desires regarding duking it out with Reshiram out of respect of her Hero and his people

I’m admittedly a little unsure what can really be done about it short of a major structural rework, so I think that this is just a flaw that I’ll opt to live with with until if/when Fixed Paths (redux) potentially becomes a thing sometime in the hazy and indeterminate future.

Part of this feels kind of similar to the game dialogue, where they basically write things like "the WHITE/BLACK dragon appeared to the hero of TRUTH/IDEALS and you should also live your TRUTH/IDEALS without forgetting about your IDEALS/TRUTH"--and in that regard I can see paying homage to the source; I just think that, at some point, if the conflict of the longform written story is going to focus so heavily on the conflict of these two concepts, they cannot simply be mad libs interchangeable with one another.

And I think it's kind because ideals can be malleable; the Hero's idealism can lead him to pacifism while Zekrom's idealism can lead her to war. But it's kind of narratively unsatisfying to have these guys rallying around a concept that's only in their heads** and is so diametrically opposite--does the story build towards suggesting one of them is pure idealism, or is the point that everything is muddy shades of grey, even among the heroes who are mythologically not meant to be? I find the latter is kind of hand-wavy and unsatisfying without more buildup, though ofc your mileage may vary there. Because everyone's ideals are going to be basically "what works best for me", which isn't really noble heroism and is actually quite selfish, I think the story has some responsibility in suggesting an overarching ideal of "what works best for the world".

Some things that would help clear this up for me--what specific ideal did the Hero want so badly that he would lead others to build a city in a desert (and that would presumably split the original dragon)? What specific truth did he have to reject in the process? How did these things conflict so badly that intermittent war was the only possible resolution?

Yeeeeeah, I think that that’s an artifact of me keeping things deliberately open-ended for readers to inject whatever they wanted into the blank for the Hero of Ideals’ motivation. It is strongly implied that they had utopian leanings given that the city they founded was meant to be a springboard for an ideal world as per that consistent bit of ‘dex fluff that’s popped up since B2W2.

narrative vs action

I do feel like the narrative kind of drags in the second part too/this feels kind of lampshaded in an odd way--like Zoroark was in a pokeball, so presumably unaffected by the harsh desert, until N decides to send them out, yeah? But the more interesting knot for me is:

I, haha, sorry, think this is kind of a similar callback to Dragonspiral's Children--which honestly I would take as more endemic to how hard it is to satisfyingly tell a story with a narrator who can really only effectively communicate with at most half of the cast, which in turn is kind of just the pit with pokemon fanfic--but I found the narrator's inability to engage with the plot at times kind of hindering. I think it also leads to the feeling of a pretty stark split between the front of the story, which is wrapped up pretty closely in the mythos of Unova, and the back, which is brief snippets of the narrator's suffering via humans.

Part of it is kind of length/weight--I get the feeling that the buildup to the schism was the main thing you wanted to cover here, and it's hard to really follow up the fracturing of a country--but I also think part of it is relevance to the narrative. The narrator is, really, just the narrator for so much of the front half, and they're mostly relegated to witnessing the events of the past + nodding along in polite confusion when N does something weird in the present. Again, really sympathetic to this specific pit, but I also feel like Volcarona ends up kind of being conflated with the Hero solely because it's necessary to have someone talking that the narrator can understand/interact with--but neither of them can speak to the Hero, or the humans who more or less still drive the plot, so it feels a little like window dressing. So much of the conflict buildup hinges on knowing the internal thought processes of the parties choosing to declare war, but we don't really end up privy to those, so it feels kind of foregone as a result. Solid themeing in this kind of story ofc, and I do think a lot about how the actual motivations of war remain opaque to most, but it does make for a less satisfying story.

Yeeeeeeah, that’s unfortunately just an artifact of the assumptions that I made for how Pokéworld works in my depictions of it. I do think that this is one of those things that I’ll just take on the chin since I’m not sure if it can really be addressed in full without converting this story into something a bit bigger than a oneshot.

choice

I like this as an opener and it does really give BW2 trailer vibes, but at the same time, I think phrasing N's role here as demander/commander undermines a lot:

[...]

It's presented as if the narrator is at first sticking with N and telling these stories out of a sense of confusion/curiosity, interested in this strange guy who does speak and could tell strange stories, but it's also kind of suggested that this is more of a coerced effort:

[...]
I read these + a previous line about "battered with air slashes" or similar as conveying that N has used a pokeball to relocate the narrator after the narrator lost a battle with his pokemon. This leaves me assuming that the rest of this conversation is taking place under soft coersion--the narrator could choose to try to leave, but presumably either the pokeball or the sandile lurking beneath will prevent them from doing so.

The ‘Sandile’ was the Zoroark that revealed himself a few scenes prior. Fortunately, I feel that this is something that I can actually address relatively easily by having N waver more with doing something he’s clearly uncomfortable with and telegraphing that he wouldn’t really fight Sigyliph if he flew off harder.

(there's two periods at the end of the first quote, but more importantly) I think these sentiments also feel at odds with one another--if supposed great listener N shows up guns blazing with a demand after [deeming defeat in battle as sufficient ground to make the narrator make cause], it's hard to see the world as any different then and now. I think there's potentially a takeaway that N prides himself in listening so carefully to pokemon and yet so thoroughly manages to avoid taking any of their opinions into account bc idk Team Plasma I mean Ghetsis is rotten to the core, or a less malicious/ignorant hypocrisy read that he's hesitantly adopting the tools of his enemis because he does acknowledge their efficacy and reasons there will be inherent worth in compromising his ideals (heh) in the long term or st--but the story doesn't really feel about this. The story feels like it's about:

I mean, he basically does that in the canonical narrative by basically “that didn’t count”/“they must be mistaken”-ing his way through what the protagonists’ Pokémon say throughout the entire game, so…

And I think it's a powerful question, especially from a guy who did just admit to wanting to force the narrator to fly a path of his choosing, but one that remains hollow in the ending, as the narrator still focuses on the implications of N's choice rather than their own:

[...]

The point that the narrator could just fly off feels kind of moot given the earlier fears that they might be relocated with the pokeball or the sandile might stop them--it doesn't really feel like N's done anything to defuse those notions, and it's unclear if the narrator was just being paranoid or if N opening with a non-consenual relocation and then a demand should be read as if N isn't taking the narrator's choices into account. And more importantly, it's N's mind that appears to have been changed here, which is fine and could also happen, but I think the more neat/tidy storytelling structure here would be to emphasize that the narrator's mind was what changed here, that choosing to remember and tell these stories to a stranger, and to engage in the resulting conversation, is what in turn leads them to choose to go with N--this is instead them answering "what right the first humans had to make them instead of letting them choose" with a choice of their own.

In that light, I think it matters much less what N thinks in the end, if N is considering leaving them behind, as it lets the decision be more on the narrator's terms rather than out of wanting to please someone else or miss a closing door. I also think this choice would land a lot heavier if it was always a choice, rather than one that N offers out of regret for hearing how poorly the narrator has fared--if telling the stories was also a choice, and N had not engaged in the practices of the bygone times/deemed defeat made the narrator unworthy of having a say here, if the narrator stays for their own reasons rather than the coersion of the pokeball or the sandile, if it felt like the narrator was always free in this one instance to say no as well as yes, then I think this ending kind of clicks for me and makes the ending feel more intentional and related to the stories that came before.

re: defuse concerns: Yeah, hopefully what’s there now sells things a bit better than the version that you read, though thanks for pointing this out.

BUT LIKE again I think this is the best kind of story knot for me; there's so much to love here and it really did leave me thinking about some of the bits I didn't quite click with, how these pieces were trying to be. I love the little bits of sigilyph lore and I think there's some really fun bits of prose. My personal standouts were "that stillborn battle had been the end of a great war", Zekrom dropping hot bars before deciding to unmake her own kingdom, and "we were still young when we lost our old paths", but I think in general there's a lot of bangers! Glad the contest got some gears turning for you + hope you placed well! Thanks for sharing!

It actually turned out pretty well scoring-wise, which I suppose it’s just as well since one of your stories was actually a pretty big influence on this one in terms of narrative structure. And thanks for the in-depth feedback. Even if I ultimately had to punt on addressing some of your criticisms, it was very informative and a lot of fun to read.

Thanks again for the review, and for your patience waiting on a response. I'll be looking for opportunities to pay things forward in the not-too-distant future. ^^