Journey of the Chosen
Disclaimer: Don't own pokemon, never have, never will. All rights are reserved to Pokemon and their respectful owners. Only the idea of the story is mine along with said characters excluding original pokemon characters.
Marks of reference: *** means Time laps or paragraph break, ( ) represents thoughts, “” normal speech, < > represents Pokespeech if any, “With faded text” represents psychic/aura speech if any in early chapters.
Chapter One
Evin
Disclaimer: Only the idea of the story is mine along with Evin the main character and all other original names that are involved in the making of this story. I do not own Pokemon, never have and never will. All rights are reserved to Gamefreak and Nintendo the creators of Pokemon and their respectful owners.
This story, like all great stories begins as we find a boy named Evin on this faithful morning during his summer vacation deep within the National Redwood Forest of California USA. A forest that his family has had the extraordinary pleasure of living in, since Evin’s mother is one of the resident park rangers.
Being the energetic fourteen year old he was while standing at about five foot three with brown hair, and blue eyes, Evin had a lightly tanned white complexion from being outdoors most of his life. After turning thirteen his most favorite thing in the world to do for the last year had been mapping out the forest as his father had shown him how to do since he was very little.
Even with knowing how dangerous the forest could be with the other more wild inhabitants, Evin’s father had never discouraged his son’s thirst for exploration and often joined him on his excursions. Being a retired US Marine, Evin’s father Jordan had been teaching Evin how to read maps and map out new territory since age seven.
Being that Jordan had had such a background, he was a real big fan of pushing his son to learn survival training at an early age and insisted that Evin keep his M9 army knife with him at all times while exploring. Jordan had spent a long time showing his son how to survive off the land and treat wounds so that if he had ever gotten lost or hurt he would have the skills to handle himself.
Evin’s other hobbies were martial arts, playing his pokemon gameboy games, anime cartoons, and he was also festinated with medieval art and weapons. He only played his new DSi time to time lately between his other hobbies, being that lately he preferred to be more active. He had just gotten the consol and new game for his fourteenth birthday a few months back in April and had already mostly finished the game. So with most of the game finished, all he ever really did with it anymore was level up the team of pokemon he had put together that consisted of his favorite mystical types; the leaders being his lucario and zoroark.
Evin had been training in martial arts since he was eight and now that he was fourteen he was getting close to his first degree of black belt, an achievement that he highly looked forward to by wanting to please his dad.
It was almost noon when Evin finally returned home after an entire morning of his usual exploration expedition in the forest, since he was always trying to find new places to add to the maps he had. An empty stomach however had been his nemesis for over an hour now, so hasting his steps he ran back to home base to refuel for lunch
While eating a bunch of snack bars along with the sandwich his mother had made for him, Evin took a break from his earlier exploration to sit and watch a pokemon movie that had pokemon rangers in it. Once lunch and the movie were done, Evin was feeling a little on the childish playful side as he took off back into the forest to find where he had left off in his exploration. He had brought his DSi with him this time though and while walking he paid his old pokemon team some long overdue attention as he walked.
Once he got back to where he had left off earlier before going to get lunch, Evin stuffed the DSi into one of his leg pockets of his cargo-jeans and started jogging for a while. Never suspecting that this could be the last time he ever saw home again, Evin kept running until his legs felt tired and his lungs burned for more air.
The area he found himself in after coming to a halt was wildly new and quite different than the other parts of the forest that he had seen up until just then. Evin suspected that no one had been here in a very long time or possibly ever being that there were no beaten trails. Seeing nothing of particular interest after walking around, Evin began jogging again.
Having a small roll of parchment, a compass and a pencil with him, once Evin had found a sort of flat rock to wright on he stopped to record his direction and coordinates while looking for landmarks. Something about this part of the forest however felt strange and made him feel uneasy. Of all the places he had been in the past this place seemed to be stabbing at his instinctual nerves, telling him that he needed to leave quickly.
The forest suddenly felt horribly oppressing; as if the trees were either getting larger or were moving closer together. His surroundings continued to change, but just then he noticed that the compass was spinning. A horrible feeling gripped his gut and after packing up his stuff he sprinted in the only direction that looked open to him.
He swore as he ran, since he now began to wonder if he had inhaled some kind of hallucinogenic gas in the air or something of the sort since his head was pounding and he felt discombobulated. The trees in this part of the forest were close and dark, which made telling time hard to do with the entire forest floor even at the height of the day in an eternal twilight.
It hadn’t felt like he had been running for very long, but before he knew it the forest started getting very dark. It was as if he were watching one of the time-laps videos from the cameras his mother sometimes used, and by the time he stopped running his surrounding consisted of the sheer darkness of a starless moonless night. He had never realized time could fly by so fast, even if he was somehow hallucinating, but now it was too late to complain about it and swore as he found the closest tree and huddled himself against it to keep warm.
“Mom and dad are going to kill me…” he muttered to himself, utterly crestfallen and afraid of falling asleep.
The night was dark and the sounds of the forest were scary that night; he and his father had always gone camping together for safety, so while he was used to the wilderness, he wasn’t used to being alone in it at night.
As of now he longed to see the light of his front porch again and hoped he wouldn’t get grounded for life once it was all over, but his main concern now was just staying awake till morning.
He knew he should feel lucky that he hadn’t been attacked by any prowling animals. Like the mountain lions, wolves, or bears that inhabited the areas near where he was during all of this, but he still felt like someone played a horrible trick on him as he sat alone and prayed to see the light of day.
As morning light took to the sky, Evin finally got a look at where he was, but he didn’t recognize one ounce of his surroundings as the forest he had grown up in. The trees looked like monsters with the way they were all bent and had limbs like hands, and even the feel of the area still felt unfriendly. The hair on Evin’s neck prickled like he was being watched, so he drew his knife to help steady his nerves.
Feeling the handle of the blade in his hands helped after a few moments, but then he noticed a clearing nearby and decided to check it out. Leaving the trees and entering the clearing also helped his shredded nerves considerably since he no longer felt so boxed in, but now he saw a sight he would not soon forget.
The clearing was lined with strange glyphs, hieroglyphics and runes, some of which seemed to keep the trees at bay by the way they went in a perfect circle around the clearing without being broken. Some of the bigger trees however did have some large outstretched limbs above the clearing, and after looking Evin took note that it was as if the trees were reaching for the middle.
Following the reaching tree limbs Evin then saw that there were a number of tall stones that had even more inscriptions and hieroglyphics etched into them that were sticking strait up right from the ground. With more curiosity Evin looked past the outer stones and saw a slightly larger block of stone in the center.
Evin thought he had found the mother-load of archeological finds with this discovery and at that moment wished he knew where exactly this was so he could add it to the map so he could show his dad. With this he was sure his parents would forgive him for accidentally making them worry all night.
He couldn’t make out what the clearing really looked like from ground level very well, but as he looked around he could see that everything seemed to weave into a cohesive whole. Some things he recognized as Egyptian hieroglyphics from what he had seen on TV, but most everything else was completely foreign or alien to him.
His curiosity roused further, he felt like he had to see what the top of all this stuff looked like as she saw a nice sturdy tree limb above that went to the center. So since he was feeling more like an archeologist at the moment, he sheathed his knife and found the tree that belonged to the limb he had been looking at.
Once in the tree, he tested the limb out before going out on it to make sure it could hold his weight and every so often repeated the test as he got further out. As he climbed out one foot at a time, he kept taking note of how all the writings seemed to weave themselves together, and began to wonder if there were any other places in the world, like this, with so many different cultural writings in one place.
Once he was just about over the strange outcropping of stones, Evin saw that the writings were arranged in a very peculiar pattern. Each of the ancient culture’s markings were in some of the most bizarre shapes and places, and seemed to form a picture of a doorway. Evin moved a bit further along the branch he was on to see the rest of the picture, which ended up with him dangling over the direct center of the ritual site. But in the direct center of the out cropping of rune covered pillars was the largest stone pillar that seemed oddly placed to Evin from his vantage point.
He studied the rock formations below intently, but the more he saw the less it made sense. All the stone columns were evenly spaced as if people had arranged them so, but with a more focused look from where he was the pillars protruding strait up didn’t entirely look quite right. At first he had thought there must have been a thick layer of dirt on the ground, but things just didn’t add up with still being able to see the runes that circled the clearing.
A gust of wind then tussled the clearing and blew away the very shallow layer of leaves he had taken as the forest floor, but what he saw was enough to make his heart skip a beat. The entire ground from the circle of runes was solid stone with pentagram lines drawn from each rock with many more strange runes following them to form a star like pattern with the center pillar in the middle. All the thoughts of how this kind of formation could possibly be this way, just made his head spin, but seeing the pentagram on the ground was the last straw.
It was time to leave. The sight of such a start reminded him of witches and wizards along with all the bad things that came with those subjects.
Seeing the pentagram also gave him bad sense of foreboding, like something bad was about to happen. Then an even worst feeling knotted his gut when he heard the sound of something nearby. He looked around frozen with worry, but then saw a large cougar come into the clearing prowling for food. He froze at the sight of it in a feeble attempt to not be noticed, but the cougar didn’t cooperate as it spotted him up in the tree strait away. It looked up at him with scary eyes that made Evin feel like the hair on his entire body was standing on end as he hoped it wouldn’t find the right tree to climb and hoped it would just go away when it got tired.
But as if his fear gave him away, it went strait for the spot he didn’t want it to, right to the same tree he had used to get where he was, where it now nimbly walked towards him, following the same path he took.
Evin drew his knife and prepared to defend himself, but just as the cougar came within ten feet of him, the limb they were on creaked as they heard a part of it beginning to break. The cougar only flicked an ear back over this before it continued at slower pace, but Evin knew they were too far out on the limb for this much weight, as the big cat got closer.
Once it was only four feet away, it took a swipe at him with its big clawed paws, while Evin used the knife to slashed back. Evin was sure this was going to end badly for both of them if the tree limb gave anymore, but all the dumb cat was interested in was an easy breakfast, and continued to paw and swat at him.
Then sure enough, the limb gave another report as it began breaking more, and the cougar took another swipe at him and made Evin loose his balance as the limb shifted. Evin fell to the right side of the limb with his left hand legs wrapped around it so that he was now upside down hanging on with one hand while using his other to fend off the cougar. He took another quick swing at the cougar’s swiping paw with the knife from underneath and felt the blade momentarily sink into something for a brief moment. The cougar jerked its paw back and hissed as it yowled loudly with a menacing curl of its muzzle displaying how mad it was. He had bloodied its paw pad and had now seriously pissed it off.
Evin tightened his grip on the branch with all the strength he had in his left arm from where he dangled above the rocks below, and while he was still trying to hold off the cougar with the knife, the cougar finally got a hit in on his right arm with some seriously long sharp claws. He managed to hang on to his knife, but to add to this sinking feeling now that his right arm was rendered almost useless from the raged gashes he got, his DSi slipped out of his pocket and landed right on the pillar below.
It had been the least of his concerns up until then, but as if this had been what the entire forest had been waiting for, everything seemed to get dark all at once. The cougar stopped what it was doing and looked a bit spooked; for what ever was happening, now had its attention as well.
To Evin’s amazement all the runes and glyphs of all the ancient writings in the clearing began to glow bright silver as some kind of ancient magic became active. The DSi lay on the center pillar vibrating as some kind power from the surrounding area was drawn to it. Then, just like what Evin had seen on an episode of Star gate, a metallic liquid like substance burst out from the circle of stones and then resumed a water like ripple below him as it spread into a perfect circle to the edges of the outer stones.
The cougar fled when the burst effect happened and ran back up the limb which made Evin feel loads better, but at the same time the cougar’s running broke the limb even more as it now bent towards the ground. Evin didn’t know whether to be thankful or more panicked than the cougar that just ran off since the limb now continued to keep breaking.
After closing his eyes for a moment when he felt himself swing a little, Evin found himself dangling over the silvery liquid that now formed a pristine one inch deep pond in midair just below him.
Evin really didn’t want to know what would happen if he touched it.
But by this point his odds of being able to escape it were diminishing by the second. His mind was reeling as his own thoughts were at odds with reality mix with a landslide worth of panic. He didn’t believe this was even possible and that it must be some kind of a dream, illusion, or something along those lines.
He didn’t have long to contemplate his thoughts however, before he then heard the limb he was still hanging onto, give out more reports as it broke much more. Slowly bending even further down until Evin was once again up right; he was now just inches over the silver liquid below.
Evin hugged the branch as tight as he could with his eyes closed, trying to stay completely still as he slowly sheathed his knife again, while hoping the branch wouldn’t move any closer to what ever that stuff was. His mind was moving at a million miles per-second at this point, as the tips of his shoes were only two inches away from the reflective surface below.
Slowly opening his eyes, he began to slowly try to climb away, but then something caught his attention again and he stopped to listen. He could hear the sound of his DSi coming on with the music in the background and it only momentarily crossed his mind that it was his pokemon game from before. Then he heard a loud (SNAP!) as the limb began to fall towards the liquid below.
To him, it was like slow motion before hitting something when his fall began even while he began to scramble up the broken branch. But even with this heightened state of adrenalin, everything seemed to speed up with a sudden burst of speed in the direction he was running from as the first the branch touched the silver water. Then before he could react, his body was entering the pool, and before he could even scream, he was gone.
Once the pond had consumed him and all had become quiet, the silver liquid shimmered and began to condense into a perfect bright silver sphere above the center of the pillar, where it hovered over the DSi as the game loaded to Evin’s last logged in location. Once the game finished loading, the liquid seeped into to console and both the DSi and liquid evaporated leaving only the clearing of pillars behind before they too wavered out of existence.
To Evin it felt like being underwater as he held his breath for as long as he could in the fast moving currents of luminescent silver, which turned and twisted him this way and that way while he tried to fight it. In near no time at all his lungs were burning for air and the thought of drowning to death crossed his mind.
He tried in vain to hold his breath longer, but inevitably he was soon forced to take a huge choking breath of his surroundings. He thought he would have choked more after reflexively breathing in so much of the liquid silver around him, but strangely enough after inhaling what ever this stuff was, it was like taking a fresh breath of air.
His lungs felt like they had just filled up with something, which still made him cough, but at the same time they felt relieved of his need for air. It was such a strange feeling to him as he breathed in more; one that also frightened him of what kind of effects the liquid could have on him, being that he also knew mercury was poisonous.
After a long while, he began to wonder what was going to happen to him, especially if he could never get out of this watery stuff. He imagined dissolving, he imagined drowning like he first thought would happen, and then he imagined being stuck like this forever. None of these thoughts were encouraging, so he started doing what his dad had taught him to do whenever he felt afraid, to sit and remain calm and breathe in deeply.
The breathing in this case was kind of a nerve wrecker though since with every breath it felt like he was breathing in water, but he managed to organize a few thoughts to the point of actually wondering what this was. The watery current continued to swirl around him and to Evin it felt like hours before the silver liquid settled.
With everything glowing silver all around him, he couldn’t tell if there was a top or bottom, but he felt like he should swim in the direction he thought was up, so he did just that. After a few minutes, he breached the surface, but what he saw only twisted his mind further with mountains of racing thoughts all begging to be answered.
It was like he was in a humongous dark black water cave with the silver water only faintly lighting up the place. But there was one problem, the ceiling looked like outer space and the water he was in made it seem as if his head was just sticking up out of a completely calm undisturbed ocean of silver. But for some reason, even though his head was above the silver ocean, he still had the feeling of being underwater.
He took in the sight before him for a few minutes before he heard voices inside his head chanting in mystical harmony. The voices continuously changed from sounding deep and majestic to those of children, but then he also felt its ancient benevolent nature through this contact that it made to his mind.
Feeling his body go cold allover, Evin was nearly startled when one voice announced, “Destiny’s Seeker has arrived…” which silenced all others before it continued, “Thou art bold to disturb this ancient resting place before Seeker’s day. Your time has not yet come.”
Evin felt like what ever this thing was could smother out his life without even meaning to. His own thoughts and fears were so small in comparison to the entity, that Evin felt like he could get lost in an endless current if he wasn’t careful of what it believed to be minor unimportant facts.
Evin tried to reply, but only managed to make a half choked look as he tried to talk. But then as if to answer his dilemma the voice said, “Thy thoughts shall be heard, now answer.” The words seemed to vibrate through him and though he was still panicked Evin then tried to calm himself so he could think and said in his mind, “My name is Evin, I found a strange ritual site and, well ended up here, but why am I here and what do you mean by Destiny’s Seeker?”
The voice did not respond right away, but then after a while, Evin felt like something had just grabbed his brain and was lazily stroking it along one side. His life flashed before his eyes; it was rather short, but it had been good thus far. The entity took a look at his entire life twice before Evin’s head quit throbbing.
Once the after shock throbbing started to quit, Evin felt extremely panicked, violated and no small bit angry as he began to pile two-million questions one right after the other at the entity until the voice returned and commanded “Silence.” and then began to speak again, “You are the One. The One chosen to go to the world at war, where thou shall endure many challenges, some good, others ill; some will have you make hard choices. Go now with the blessing of the Oracle and may your journey bring you and an entire world peace.”
(World at war?) Evin thought, (What’s that supposed to mean? Challenges?) He was now becoming scared of what the voice just said and was about to beg to be sent back to where he had come from, when the silver liquid consumed him again, where he this time felt tremendous pain surge into his body.
It was a pain like no other; a pain so horrible that he couldn’t even comprehend what it felt like as it made him curl into a tight ball, but he had no choice but to endure it, as it seared through his body and soul.
****
After a long while, the pain eventually began to lessen, which finally let him began to relax and gasp for breath, but even then, he could still feel the after glow of the painful experience his body had just had. Before he could gather his mind up enough again to ask what had been done, he felt like he was being pulled down a drain.
****
During the time of Evin’s inter-dimensional experience, a lone riolu was going about her training in her own fashion, as she had always done for a few months now after leaving her parents. The day had started out beautiful, but there were clouds in the distance that signaled a storm would be there that night.
She had been on her own for some time and had been going about her business as she always had as she dealt with other forest pokemon, some of which were good friends while others were more solitary. As she had every day since leaving her parents, she washed in the nearby river after a rigorous training session to keep her fur in nice pristine condition and knocked a berry from a rather bountiful tree.
It had been a tough living for her at first, but she loved it. She had a burning determination to become stronger than her other riolu friends so she could one day find herself a mate worthy of her or vice versa be worthy of him.
After she was done eating her breakfast, she spent most of the rest of the day gathering food, filling her small hollow with berries and what ever else she could find. But something was off this day as she finished her last sweep for food. The storm was brewing up some awful looking clouds much faster than normal that seemed to be encompassing everything and there was also something ominous about it.
Her aura powers were still weak from being under evolved, but she could sense something wrong and had the nagging feeling of being watched as the forest became dark, which also concerned her and rightly so. Because right at that very moment there were a pair of big bright red glowing eyes watching her from a few trees away, with a huge maw dripping with anticipation of having a meal right below them. Still Riolu continued to go about her business of stretching before bed and eventually got into her hollowed out hole in a tree to sleep, where she had been staying ever since she had left her parents den.
Just when she was getting close to sleep, she heard a sound; at first she though it to be just another one of the night pokemon just passing by, but then, she saw the big glowing red eyes stare down right at her from the entrance of her hollow and just as the first thunder strike from the storm that was coming lit the entire forest up for a split moment, she saw the face of a fearsome looking hungry ursaring with big cruel looking red eyes.
She gave a yelp as it lunged for her, but just as the hungry bear dove for her she jumped up and bound past its head, causing it to howl with rage and back hand her a good fifteen feet across the forest floor before a tree stopped her. She got up in a hurry feeling like she was hit by a fast moving rhydon and ran through the forest yipping for help.
But none of the other pokemon around were brave enough or wanted to get mixed up with something as big as the ursaring. Choosing only to stay in their nests and shiver in fearful cowardice as the little riolu ran by desperately pleading for help while trying to get away from the ursaring that was hot on her tail.
Just after they had run nearly a mile with her dodging as many attacks from the big bear pokemon as she could, she was finally nailed with a hyper beam that tossed her some yards away unconscious. Knowing victory was his, the bear pokemon took a moment to catch his breath then casually began to stomp over to the fallen pup.
But before he took even ten steps, the forest shuddered and got darker; the ursaring hadn’t been paying attention to where they were until this happened, and it was only then he noticed they were in the middle of the Lostlorn Forest. A place many humans and pokemon avoided, due to the strange things that happened there.
The trees all around them groaned with malice as a silver liquid began to form in a sphere in front of the big bear keeping him from his meal. The ursaring fired another hyper beam at the sphere only to have it rebound at him with double the force and blast him back. Injured the bear pokemon runaway thinking that such a scrawny meal wasn’t worth his life and laughed to himself as he ran thinking cruel thoughts. Thinking that whatever that thing was would most likely kill that little pup all the same.
The sphere grew and grew until it was the size of a van, then just as it quit growing, Evin came splashing out on his hands and knees, soaked in the metallic liquid. Just as he hit the ground, Evin began coughing and choking up the liquid that was still in his lunges.
Then the sphere released a bright flash and the forest returned to normal as the liquid splashed down on Evin with enough force that he ended up completely flat face down in muddy grass still choking up large amounts of the watery substance.
Once he was done choking most all of it up and watching it evaporate as it came into contact with the air, he picked himself up off the ground feeling very sick before he bent over a hurled a few times, seeing more of the silver liquid come out. He took a moment to look around where he was, and once again couldn’t identify his surroundings or anything familiar. It was dark and he wondered just how long he was in that stuff, though unlike last time he could now somewhat see a full moon on the horizon.
At first he tried to assess his situation like his father had taught him to do after becoming lost after an accident, but found that his body felt like he had hung onto an electric wire for a long while and felt very weak. Nothing looked familiar, and even the plants were totally different from what he had been raised around.
But what he didn’t notice, was that in all of this he also had a secret audience. Bright blue glowing eyes were watching him with sharp intelligence and curiosity, as Evin stumbled around for minute and still continued to watch as he took a few more steps and collapsed unconscious.
Evin woke on a long padded bench chair and at first he thought everything must have been a nightmare. But just as he opened his eyes the first thing he noticed when his eyes came into focus, was the roof of the inside of a mobile home trailer. His head felt funny, like he was floating in the clouds, and when he sat up he felt excessively dizzy and grabbed his woozy head to steady himself.
But when he looked to the side he saw the small blue and black furred creature laying just across from him on the other side of a table. Evin blinked a few times, and then hit his head a few times, trying to dispel what he saw, but even after refusing to believe his eyes, he could still see a beat up riolu in front of him.
He started to reach out to poke it, but just as he did, a woman came in the door from outside, and while she didn’t say a word, she shook her head as if to tell him not to. He took her advice and asked in a whispered tone, “Where am I?”
The woman said nothing, but just gave him some water. He took the water and thanked her, but then said, “You still haven’t answered me, where am I? Where is this place?” the woman motioned to her mouth and shook her head and after a few seconds, Evin realized what she meant and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, you are not able to talk; right?”
She nodded to this and then tended to the riolu’s wounds; rubbing some herbal salves into the battered fur that covered the young pup. The riolu whined with a bit of pain in her sleep, but then returned to how she was. It was now that Evin finally worked up the courage to ask the question he still found absurd and said, “Is that a pokemon?” the woman turned to him with a sharp glance, nodded and then went outside.
Evin was in shock; he didn’t understand how this was even possible and thought, (This was all supposed to be just a game. A made up world of fiction. yet the little blue furred riolu in front of him looked as real as any other animal he had ever seen in his life.)
Then he wondered back to his memory of before being swallowed up, remembering the sound of the game and what his thoughts had been just as he entered the silver liquid, then he came up out of his contemplation and exclaimed, “I’m in the game!” the woman quickly came back in at his exclamation. Evin remembered a few things about the game he had been playing and where he had logged off and said, “You… you are the woman in Lostlorn Forest right?” the woman looked troubled, but nodded.
Then Evin realized that this woman had to be the fabled in game Zoroark in her illusion form. Evin then said, “Zoroark.” The woman seemed to growl a bit as she though he had seen through her illusion. Then she transformed back to her original form and a telepathic voice said, “So what gave me away, and what do you intend to do?”
Evin was kind of stunned at hearing another voice in his head and seeing her image take on the form he suspected, but said, “Do? I didn’t intend to Do anything. I just remember this stuff because of where I came from. In my world this was all Only a game on some little hand held device and a cartoon show on TV.”
Zoroark seemed to just think about it for a few seconds before she started laughing and telepathically said, “Dose this look like a game?” and gestured all around them, “Dose this feel like a game?” then softly poked him on the chest with a red claw, “Dose this sound like a game?!” then roared the sound her kind made, Evin was feeling a bit scared by this point not knowing what would happen next.
Then everything around them shifted and the trailer became a hole in a rock boulder face and it was only then that he felt that he had been slowly accumulating stress in the back of his head, which lessened and went away after the illusion was gone. He then tried to calm the zoroark down and said, “Ok, ok. Its not a game… at least it isn’t anymore.”
Zoroark growled a little and said “So you are possibly from another world then? Why have you come?” Evin put his hands up in a shrug and said, “Honestly, I don’t know Why I am here, but what’s strange is, when you dropped your illusion I felt it and I don’t even know how to describe the feeling.”
Zoroark sighed and said ,“So you can also sense my powers. You are a most troublesome human, you know that.” Evin just scoffed while half laughing and said, “You have no idea; I somehow got lost in the forest near my house when something strange happened, and my parents are going to be worried sick if I don’t get back home soon. I would give pretty much anything just to get back to them, or at least get them a message so they don’t die of worry and heartbreak.”
Zoroark’s stance changed and she then said, “I feel sorry for you, but on the bright side, you are alive and you now have a goal.” Zoroark was silent for a moment before continuing, then said, “Though I may regret telling you this, I suggest you make your way back to town and take that little pup with you. She needs help at the center there because she has been fighting for her life all night as I treated her; then from there you should go to the pokemon lab farther to the south.
You will need to become accustomed to this world if you are to survive. That is all the advice I can give you, I don’t interact with humans often, but have been around long enough to know their ways.” She then picked the riolu up off the cave floor and handed her to Evin and then told him, “Good luck” then quicker then his eyes could keep track, she disappeared into the forest.
Evin was not too thrilled about the situation as a badly injured riolu had now been thrust upon him; he didn’t even know the first real basics of how to really take care of a pokemon in real life. But then again it wasn’t hard to tell the little pup was in bad shape; so from there he wasted no time in leaving the forest.
He had the map in his head from remembering what the game’s map looked like, but to his exasperated exhaustion, it still took him many hours to advance down what he would have thought to be short paths. He walked on for hours like this with more and more thoughts than he could handle train wrecking in every part of his mind.
By the end of the day he had only just about reached the road ahead when the riolu began to stir and squirm in his arms. Once the riolu started to realize her surroundings, she started by trying to use a karate chop on Evin from where she was in his arms. But he caught her paw with one hand and said knowing she might not understand, “I’m not going to hurt you, you are badly hurt. I was told by Zoroark to take you to the pokemon center for treatment.”
For a half moment he thought she had understood what he said, but as he suspected she might do, she started to struggle again. She growled at him for a few minutes before he finally came to a stop and sat Indian style while holding her in front of him. She barked at him to release her, which he did, and for a moment he thought she might dash away, but as it so happened when she tried, she fell flat on her face and whined with frustration.
She barked at him again to stay away when he began to move to help her, while she struggled back to her feet. Her fur was still ruffled all over, which gave her a real ragged out of the garbage look, and when she tried to lick her wounds, she found that the herb salves in her fur tasted horrible and made her tongue sting as she held it out for a minute.
Evin thought she actually looked cute like that for a moment and then began to move again and this time she paid him no heed as he walked over to her. Once he was close he kneeled down and pat her head and said, “It’s ok, I’m not going to hurt you.” And just then it was almost like he could sense her feelings and pain.
The feelings he felt shocked and startled him so bad that he fell backwards on the ground with a thud, and Riolu reacted as well, for she also felt the shift of what he felt and knew that most humans weren’t able to do that. This made her curious of him, for he seemed to share a trait of her kind and gave him a questionable bark as if to ask if he was ok.
Evin saw the confusion in her face, but didn’t know what to say and it was only then that he noticed his arm where the cougar had nailed him with its claws wasn’t hurt anymore, but then he thought that the cuts must have healed while he was in that silver liquid and thought nothing of it.
Evin sat back up without a word as he still contemplated what just happened and what was to come, all the while letting the riolu decide whether or not she would come near him. After a short while she did and limped over to him and sat against his legs.
Once again coming in contact with the furry pup he felt her feelings again, but even more then the pain, he felt her growing curiosity over him and he then said to her in a tired tone, “If you’re wondering how I know how you feel, then I should tell you I’m just as confused as you.”
She tipped her head back into his Indian style sitting position so that her head was lying on his left leg and looked at him. What she saw with both her senses and eyes, was the turmoil and confusion he had within him. She didn’t know what troubled him so, but then decided to leave well enough alone and try to relax instead.
Evin then asked, “How did you get hurt? The only thing I remember before I appeared in Lostlorn was that I was coughing up a lot of the silver liquid that I had been consumed by.” Riolu growled at remembering the ursaring that attacked her and destroyed her home, and of the terror the giant bear had delighted in invoking in her.
There had only been a few times in her life she had been truly scared, but that one time had taken the cake for all of them all, and she hated the ursaring all the more for it. Evin didn’t know what she was thinking exactly as he listened to the growling coming from the little pokemon, but did feel her anger about something.
He decided to try and calm her by petting her a little on her one uninjured shoulder and from this contact she froze. But after a few moments of a shoulder rub she relaxed again and tried to lean into his delightful massaging fingers. Evin could feel relief on so many levels that it was scary for him, because he not only felt her physical muscles beginning to unknot from being tense and sore allover, but he felt it from her point of view as well.
When he was done, she wished he could do more, but they both knew that her wounds wouldn’t permit him to go any further, so she sighed and fell asleep right there soon after. Evin was loath to disturb her after she began sleeping so calmly, but his legs were getting cramped and beginning to hurt from sitting with them crossed, so he had to pick her up as he moved, which didn’t seem to disturb her too much, as he went to a nearby tree to sleep against, where he laid down and set her on his chest. There they slept for the night on the uncomfortable ground as Evin’s consciousness tried to figure things out by giving him some very weird dreams.
****
Back at Evin’s house in the world he had now left behind, Evin’s father, mother and little sister had been going crazy with worry over why Evin was still gone. Evin’s father Jordan packed up his army gear for hiking long distances and told everyone not to panic and that he would be back with Evin in a day or two. And then added that he would only be gone longer if he didn’t find him right away, but reassured his wife Tracy that he would call time to time to check in.
Jordan was confident he would find Evin in at least a day if not two and intended to ground him for a month if he didn’t have a good excuse.
****
