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The first thing you saw when you woke up was his face. He ran a gloved thumb along your cheek and gazed upon you in a way he hadn’t before. He was so much bigger than you now. Your powers must have changed him.
Swiftly you realised it was not his body that had changed, but yours. Your front legs had snapped and compressed and now ended in useless blunt claws. You lacked your fine coat, and your pink body was clad in a flimsy sheet. Your very bones weighed you down from inside. All the time spent in your cocoon for your new body to be hideous!
“My love,” Lysandre whispered, “you are beautiful.”
How warped his view of beauty must be, you felt. How sickeningly true that would prove.
You placed your new hand, tiny and delicate, over his, and pulled it away from your face. Your lips moved on instinct. You asked him, “what have you done to me?” To speak felt like swallowing gravel.
He grew grim and brushed over your mane. “It was necessary,” he explained, “to keep you safe. After the fusion your body was unstable. I had to transfer your spirit into the closest body.”
You twisted your head. The remnants of your cocoon sat not around you, as you had thought, but behind you. It remained intact. Within it you could make out the shapes of a body, a horn here or hoof there, illuminated by the faint red glow. Your new throat closed up.
He put a hand under your chin and pulled you back to face him, only him. “Don't look,” he said quietly.
It was then - once the shock of your new body, the shock of seeing your old bodies dead and dying, unviable to hold you, had worn off - that you felt it, or rather, did not feel it. You could always feel the life force of the denizens of the world, from the Pokemon to the humans to the plants themselves. It came to you like breathing or the beating of your heart. But now all was silent. At first you thought it was another horrible failing of your new body, that it was unable to connect to the wellspring of all creatures. But a worse option presented itself to you, and you wished so deeply it was not the case.
“Where is everyone?” You asked.
“My love,” he began slowly, and you knew before he could tell you.
Your claws gripped around his arms, wrinkling the sleeves of his black coat. “Why did you kill them?”
“We,” he emphasised, squeezing your new hand. “We had to. They were killing you, my love.”
You did not feel saved, not with the world so deafeningly empty. You stared at him and his big wet eyes and wished you could hate him.
“I know there were good people in the world, hands clean of the cruelty done to you,” he said. His eyes drifted from your face as he spoke. “We can bring them back, and the Pokemon; I promise this to you.”
He pried his arms from your grip, and stood, and so gently took your little hand in his and lifted you to your new feet. He guided you through the ruins of his cavern. Its roof had collapsed and the sunlight fell on the floor in a cruel mockery of the forest canopy. He set his other hand at your waist when you struggled to walk on plantigrade legs, and lifted you over piles of detritus, and finally he took you out of the laboratory.
The world above was changed. The ground was charred. The sky was burnt red, and the air hurt your throat when you breathed. He set a gentle hand on your back.
“Apologies, my love,” he said softly. “A side effect of the Weapon.” He elaborated no further.
Part of you knew that all things must die, by your wings if they must. Part of you screamed for your beautiful world. Your body released only tears.
You walked with him anyway. You toured his new world, passing dried rivers and glassy sands, shining towers collapsed into themselves, humans and pokemon alike turned to ash. “Is this what you wanted?” You asked him. You did not receive an answer.
When Lysandre did speak to you, it was as he had when you were metamorphosing; softly, lovingly. He hummed you songs and ran his fingers through your hair, and murmured promises of a beautiful new world, even now the old had died. At times he called you by another name. He did not seem to notice, and it did not happen often enough for you to think it was intentional. One morning, as waves lapped against the shoreline of a beach you had come to, you asked after it.
“Who was she?” You asked. He was facing away from you, feet in the surf. When he heard you he turned back.
“Who do you mean?”
“Diantha.”
He startled, coughing. His face drained of colour, and his eyes were overblown, and then he shut his mouth tightly. He strode out of the water to sit by your side on the rocks. He did not tear his eyes from you. He rarely did.
“When I told you I used the nearest body to hold your spirit, I was not quite honest. There were other bodies, nearer, easier to place your spirit into. But,” he placed a hand to the side of your face, angling it towards him, “none of them were worthy of being you.”
He continued. “The lady Diantha was an actress. There was no doubt in my mind that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. When we had the chance to meet in person I feared she would not be as lovely as she appeared on screen. I was right, for Diantha was even more beautiful than I could have imagined.” A smile played briefly on his lips, but it vanished as soon as it appeared.
“But as she grew older she would not receive as many roles, as she could no longer pass for the young maiden lead. I raised this fear to her on occasion, though she did not find the prospect of the loss of her beauty as worrisome as I.” He looked back out at the ocean.
“Diantha was among those who came to oppose me at Geosenge Town. Before I used your power. She would not see reason.” He ran his thumb over your hand. When you looked at his face you saw a deep melancholy in his eyes.
“When I fired the weapon - when you lent me your power, I could feel the life force of every single inhabitant on the planet, running through me. I was a conduit, a proxy for you. And in that moment I was closer to you than ever before. I felt you dying, and in that one, single moment where I held dominion, I set your spirit into the body of the most beautiful woman in the world. The one person alone worthy to be your face.”
To punctuate, he ghosted his fingers along the side of your face. Diantha’s face. You wanted your power back.
When he stood up from the beach he took your hand. You didn’t protest. You followed him, even when you saw what he had done to your world. Because you and he were the only ones left, or because you had loaned your power to him and he had it now and didn’t know how to give it back. Perhaps you didn’t know how to square the man who had taken such good care of you with the man who had killed the world.
For whatever reason, you stayed.
PhobicNova Mon 24 Mar 2025 11:46AM UTC
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