Chapter 13 – The Serpent Denied
Scattered ice and snow littered the scene, cast wantonly all about the stony floor. A deepening violet sky was just barely visible through cracks in the high ceiling above. The sunlight entering the cavern through those breaches was weak and fading fast, yet provided more than enough illumination for the powerful eyes that now beheld this space.
This was the scene into which Solonn and Oth had just entered, and to both of them, it was familiar territory. It was where Oth had been employed by Morgan to Teleport her back home after she had acquired her new Snorunt. It was the place where Solonn had first encountered beings of another race, and where other foreign creatures had later found and taken him from his home.
It had been nearly half a decade since Solonn had last laid eyes upon the Shoal Cave, the caverns that separated the realm of his kind from the world under the open sky outside. During those years, he at first would have never thought that he would be kept from this place for so long, and then later would never have imagined he’d be back here again so soon, if ever at all.
The path that had led him away from home and back had been one of which he could never have conceived. Through it, he had known joy, wonder, friendship, bewilderment, terror, despair, power, deceit, loss, and many other things. Now that it all had come full circle, all those feelings seemed to reunite and fall upon him as one. He’d never quite known what to expect to feel when the day came that would finally bring him back home. That moment had now arrived, and he still knew not what to make of it.
Solonn turned slightly to regard the Claydol at his side, whose form glowed with the ghostly aura cast around it by its own rather meager body heat. “Thank you again for bringing me here,” Solonn said earnestly to it.
-It was the least I could do,- Oth responded. -I know that this is something you have long desired… and I truly believe that this is what she would have wanted, as well,- the Claydol added, its true voice faltering as it rattled softly alongside those last words.
Solonn nodded silently in concurrence. He, too, felt that Morgan would be glad to know that he had ultimately made it back to where he belonged, just as she had intended for him. “Farewell, Oth. Take care of yourself.”
-As must you. Farewell,- Oth returned, and with a burst of ochre light that was gone almost as soon as it had come, the Claydol had vanished.
Solonn turned from the spot where Oth had been, his gaze sweeping the cavern as he sought the ice barrier that marked the entrance to Virc-Dho itself. He located it shortly, and drifted over to it at once. Once there, he looked up over the expanse of the wall, which spread out to nearly twice his width and upward to nearly thrice his height.
Though sizeable, the barrier did look smaller and less imposing than it had when last he had beheld it, back when he was still a Snorunt. This was not only because he himself was much larger, but also because he now possessed power over it that he had not before. Now that he was a Glalie and therefore a true cryokinetic, he could simply shift the ice wall aside and pass through the entrance that it blocked.
Solonn made to do just that, and by summoning his elemental power to the task, the barrier submitted at once to his desire to gain entry, parting at its center and melting seamlessly into the walls beyond. The Glalie crossed the threshold, and proceeded forward into the entrance tunnel for several yards before realizing that he’d forgotten to close the barrier behind him.
Were he not rather drained in spirits after the events of the past couple of days, he might have cursed himself aloud for his absentmindedness, but as it was, he went ahead and forgave himself, turning around to simply correct the matter and move on. However, when he looked back towards the mouth of the tunnel, he saw the wall of ice resealing itself, shimmering curiously as it shifted back into place, solid once more.
Solonn stared bemusedly at the barrier for a moment, wondering if it had always closed on its own like that. At any rate, it had undone any need for embarrassment on his part for leaving the front door open, as it were. Grateful for that, he turned back away from the ice wall and began making his way deeper into the warren.
Though back in his native land, Solonn still had to find his actual home within it once more. Quite swiftly, he realized that this would not be too easily done. Only once had he traveled the route that led from the surface exit to the cavern in which he had lived, and that had been over a decade ago.
He had only a faint, sketchy impression of that memory by which to navigate, and that was rendered even more inadequate by the fact that things had plainly changed around here since he’d been gone. As he made his way through the tunnels, he occasionally passed relatively fresh-looking apertures in the walls; they appeared to be offshoots of the tunnel that were still under construction. They blemished the face of the warren with new landmarks, so that the picture Solonn now received of this place no longer matched the one he held in his memory.
Before long, Solonn acknowledged that he had no sure idea of where he currently was in the warren or where he was to go from there, and resigned himself to the need to ask for directions. The situation seemed less than obliging where that endeavor was concerned, however; he searched throughout the tunnels for a considerable while without running into anyone at all from whom to seek guidance.
Undeterred, he kept searching, until finally, he picked up sounds that suggested people out and about. The source of the sound wasn’t particularly close, but he could discern which way it was coming from. Now, at least, he had a definite direction to take.
Solonn set off towards the noise, which grew louder and more defined as he drew closer. There were definitely people somewhere ahead; those were unmistakably voices, and in considerable numbers. At length, he arrived at the source of the chatter. Through another wall of ice, he could just make out a crowd of shapes moving about.
He moved this barrier aside as he had done to the one before it, and like that previous wall, this one also closed behind him automatically once he’d passed beyond it. Solonn now found himself in a large chamber, easily the size of the cavern just outside the warren. Glalie were gathered here, dozens of them, appearing to do little else other than milling about and chatting with one another. Solonn had just found his way into a gossip-hall, though he did not realize this; the social habits of the Glalie were kept from their unevolved counterparts, and Solonn had not evolved until after he’d been taken from Virc-Dho.
Solonn was aware of many pairs of eyes shifting his way and locking onto him as he entered the midst of the people gathered there; whether their stares were due to his being considerably larger than any of them or simply due to the fact that his was an unfamiliar face (or very possibly for both of those reasons), he could not tell, nor did he particularly care. He also couldn’t tell whether those among them who now watched him avidly were doing so out of mere curiosity or out of fear—he hoped it wasn’t the latter. He really wasn’t in the mood to have to chase one of them into a corner just to get directions.
He approached a small clique and brought himself to a stationary hover before them. The pupils of the three whom he now faced drifted upward to meet his own, and they all held his gaze expectantly and warily.
“Yes?” the centermost of the three spoke up.
“Sorry to bother you ladies,” Solonn addressed them, making a conscious effort to sound as polite and non-threatening as possible (even beyond the office for which they’d been intended, the etiquette lessons given to him by Jal’tai were proving useful). “I need your assistance in finding someone—do any of you know where I might find a Ms. Azvida Zgil-Al?”
He hoped, of course, that one of them would respond in the affirmative, but was prepared for the possibility of having no such luck with these three and thus having to move on. He was certainly not prepared for the response he did receive from them—stares that went from warily questioning to unmistakably hostile. One of the three even hissed at him.
“Up to her horntips in hellfire, as far as I care,” the Glalie in the center replied acidly, her eyes narrowed and smoldering in a venomous glare that she held upon Solonn for a brief moment more before she turned abruptly and began to move away from him, with her two companions following closely behind her.
Solonn was initially too taken aback by the hostility of the reaction to his query to know quite what to make of it, and then found himself battling an urge to cut the three off and demand that they apologize for insulting his mother like that—and perhaps not using his polite and non-threatening tone this time. He managed with an effort to contain his outrage, for he knew that doing or saying anything that could potentially scare the locals would only make it harder to get any information from them.
He knew he would have to ask the same question of others until he learned what he needed to know, but he wasn’t looking forward to making another inquiry, not if the mention of Azvida’s name would garner the same response from everyone else here. Solonn wondered what his mother could have possibly done to make herself so unpopular, but knew better than to ask. He would not trust that story coming from the mouths of people who disliked her; the facts could too easily be distorted by their bias. He reckoned that he would simply have to wait to get that answer from Azvida herself sometime—unless, of course, she made it clear that she didn’t want to talk about it.
Bracing himself for more unfriendly responses, Solonn asked others among the crowd for Azvida’s whereabouts. Only one of those whom he queried responded with anywhere near the venom of the first Glalie he’d asked, but they all still plainly displayed some degree of dislike or at least unease at the mention of his mother’s name. Those who gave any answer at all said that they had no clue where to find her, though whether they were honest in that claim or simply did not wish to be of any help where she or anyone associated with her was concerned, Solonn could not be certain.
Meanwhile, he also kept an eye out as he moved throughout the chamber just in case Azvida was actually here in person. He did not spot her, though, and was not surprised that he didn’t. It did seem unlikely that she would want to be in a place that would probably not welcome her, after all.
Eventually, Solonn grew weary of asking and searching in vain, despite how earnestly he still wished to reunite with his family. It seemed that no one here would be of any help, and he figured that he might be better off just looking for Azvida throughout the warren on his own. True, he might find himself lost a couple of times before having any success, but he was beginning to find that option preferable to staying here with the stares, the unsociable silence, and the dark things that were likely being muttered behind his back at that very moment regarding someone about whom he cared very much.
“Hey. I overheard you asking about an Azvida Zgil-Al,” a voice sounded from behind him, a male voice whose tone was difficult to read.
Solonn hesitated a moment before turning to face the speaker, half out of a desire not to startle this person in case he turned out to be friendly, half out of reluctance to possibly have to deal with another who was not. There, he found a man hovering, looking up right into his eyes—just looking, not staring; the light of the newcomer’s eyes was soft, not seeming to burn into Solonn as had that of many of the other eyes that he’d found upon him in this place. There was, however, a peculiar look on this Glalie’s face, one that Solonn found as hard to interpret as the man’s tone had been.
“Yes, I was,” Solonn confirmed, speaking somewhat slowly, cautiously. “Do you know where I might find her?”
The Glalie before Solonn only gave a quick, minimal nod in response, as if feeling the need to be inconspicuous about it. “Follow me,” he said in an undertone, and turned away, making for the exit at once.
It seemed a curiously sudden resolution of what had been such a long and draining search for answers among these people, but Solonn was presently disinclined to be picky. Help was help, he figured, and so he followed his newfound guide out of the gossip-hall without question or delay.
“All right, just keep following me, and you’ll reach your destination just fine,” the guide said once he and Solonn were well away from the gossip-hall. “Now, I will warn you: it’s not exactly a short trip from here.”
“That’s fine,” Solonn responded. “Better than staying back there, at least.”
“Ugh, I second that,” the guide concurred. “Hledas drags me there almost every day, but I usually manage to give her the slip pretty fast.” He chuckled to himself. “She’ll give me a good minute of hell for it back home, but I’d take that over listening to the idiotic chatter in that place any day.”
“Hm. What I heard in there was worse than just ‘idiotic’,” Solonn commented.
“Yeah… Gods, you’d think people would let it go already; it’s been months now, for the gods’ sakes.” The guide sighed. “I hate seeing her treated like that. She’s a nice lady; always was.”
Solonn nodded in agreement. It was a relief to finally encounter someone here who regarded his mother the same way that he remembered her. “So, how do you know her?” he then asked.
“Old friend of the family,” the guide replied, by which he was indicating himself. “I’ve known her since I was a kid.”
He stopped and turned to face Solonn then, his eyes ablaze with a peculiar, dancing light that suggested barely-contained excitement. “Now, how do you know her?” he countered, his voice reflecting that same strange, sudden brightness.
“Relation,” Solonn answered. “She’s my mother.”
The somewhat restrained fire in the guide’s eyes surged into full intensity at that response, and he burst into roaring laughter. “Ha!” he cried triumphantly. “Knew it, knew it, knew it!”
Solonn held a rather bewildered stare upon the guide, who was in the throes of a fairly insane-sounding fit of joyous laughter. When that finally abated, the guide met Solonn’s gaze once more, relatively calm and quiet now but still wearing a massive grin.
“Yeah, I figured it was you,” he said once he’d caught his breath. “Always were a big guy, weren’t you?”
Flags rose within Solonn’s mind, and he found himself possessed of strong suspicions regarding the man with whom he was talking. “…I know you, don’t I?”
The guide grinned even more broadly. “Don’t believe I’ve bothered to introduce myself, Mr. Zgil-Al. Name’s Zilag Shal-Zirath,” he introduced, inclining his face almost parallel to the floor in an exaggerated bow.
“Ah, of course, of course.” Solonn could not help but smile, even if only faintly. “Apologies for not recognizing you sooner…”
“Psssh, it’s fine,” Zilag responded dismissively. “We’re neither of us like we used to be, after all. I wouldn’t have expected you to recognize me just because I recognized you; I just happened to find someone your size asking around for Azvida and put the pieces together. Anyway, she is going to be absolutely ecstatic to see you,” he said, and resumed leading Solonn through the tunnels then. “She thought you were lost forever—we all did.”
“Does she have any idea at all what happened to me?” Solonn asked. He thoroughly doubted that Azvida or anyone else here could possibly know of all that he had experienced in his time away from Virc-Dho, but wondered if they did at least recognize that he had been abducted, that he had been taken into the custody of foreign beings. He wondered if they had assumed that he’d been alive all this time and had been wondering how he was doing, or if they had eventually just presumed him to be dead.
“Oh yeah,” Zilag confirmed. “She knows because I told her. Soon as I got away from my sister and her gang, I went and told her what they’d done to you. Azvida saw it necessary to bring in the authorities on the matter, but I tried not to get too worried. I was still sure that we’d find you right where Sanaika had left you—that is, until they found that you weren’t…”
He gave a sudden shake, as if to snap out of a funk. “Whatever,” Zilag said brightly. “You’re here now, right? Looks like there’s a happy ending to all this after all.”
“Hm,” was all Solonn could say to that, in a tone that just managed to convey agreement. Zilag was right, really—after all that Solonn had gone through in the years that had separated him from this place, things were finally going as he had long hoped that they one day would. The fact that his family would now be made whole once again was an undeniable light amid the recent sorrows.
As Solonn continued to follow Zilag, he noticed that their path had simplified dramatically. The tunnel sloped gently downward in an almost perfectly straight line at this point; there were no more offshoots branching away along its walls. The ice lining it was duller, its surface more uneven, suggesting that this part of the warren was not as well maintained.
Its neglected feel gave Solonn the impression that this route was not often traveled—perhaps, he could not help but consider, because people were inclined to avoid it. He wondered if Azvida might have encountered so much hostility from the public that she had felt it necessary to take refuge in this forsaken sector—or worse still, she might have been forced to go to this place. Perhaps this was a place to which those rejected by the community were sent—a shunned place, for shunned people.
Something boiled in him at the thought of his family being cast out like that. He still knew not what on Earth could have turned the community against his mother; he couldn’t imagine anything that she could have possibly done that would deserve this kind of treatment.
He had known better than to ask the people at the gossip-hall about it, but reckoned that he could trust Zilag to give him a straight, bias-free answer regarding how Azvida had come to be so unpopular. “Just what was it that happened months ago?” he asked. “What could my mother have possibly done?”
“Well, she didn’t actually do anything,” Zilag answered. “What happened was that this… this creature came asking around here for her—something that scared the hell out of the public. Since this thing was here looking specifically for her, everyone blames her for bringing it here.”
“That hardly seems fair,” Solonn remarked, frowning in disapproval. “Did she even actually ask for this ‘creature’ to come here?”
“Don’t know. She doesn’t really like to talk about that whole situation, so…” Zilag trailed off. Solonn made a wordless noise of understanding; he had suspected that Azvida was not inclined to discuss that topic. “At any rate, I doubt anyone really cares whether she actually summoned it here or not,” Zilag went on. “I think the thing freaked them out beyond all logic and reason.”
“Just what sort of creature was this, anyway?”
“Again, don’t know; I didn’t actually see it myself. All I know is what I’ve heard, and what I’ve heard is that it was big—as in, huge—and bright silver. A couple of them who claimed they got really close to it said they could see their reflections in its hide. I don’t know how much of what’s said about it is fact and how much is just exaggeration, though.”
Solonn couldn’t say how accurate or trustworthy the accounts of the mysterious creature were, either, of course. Rifling through his memories of the many races he had encountered while living and working in Convergence and of those he had learned of during the course of his education there, he tried to guess what the being that had shaken up the community could have been. He could think of only a couple of species among those of which he knew that could be potential matches. His memories of them were not perfect, but he recalled enough to recognize that any of those creatures would certainly have caused a stir among the people here.
“So, whatever became of the creature?” Solonn inquired.
“As far as anyone knows, it just left. Whether or not it ever did find Azvida is anyone’s guess.”
“If it left, then there’s really no good reason for everyone to keep holding it against her,” Solonn said with a fair amount of disgust in his tone.
“I know,” Zilag concurred with a sigh. “But, like I said, they seem to be beyond logic and reason where all that’s concerned.”
Solonn said nothing more from this point, his mind too weighted with thoughts of the injustice that had befallen Azvida. At length, the long, monotonous path that he and Zilag traveled split off into numerous directions. Zilag led Solonn into a rightward branch, and then to a dead end shortly thereafter.
“We’re here,” Zilag announced. That they were anywhere other than at a wall was questionable; the ice that stood before them was very thick and clouded with pale sediment, offering only a hazy view of nondescript darkness beyond. “Of course, we have to let them know we’re here if we want them to let us in… HEY!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, making Solonn wince inwardly.
Several seconds passed, and there was no indication that anyone had even heard Zilag’s call, let alone that anyone was doing anything about it in response. “Maybe no one’s there right now,” Solonn supposed.
“No, they’re there,” Zilag assured him. “They don’t go out very much anymore, as you can imagine.”
Something in what Zilag had just said caught in Solonn’s mind; only now did it seem to register, despite it not being the first time that Zilag had used that word. “…Did you say ‘they’?” Solonn asked; Zilag responded to this with a nod. “Who else is there with her?”
“Just her mate,” Zilag answered. Solonn abruptly turned to face Zilag, his eyes wide with surprise, but before he could say or ask anything about what he had just learned, “Ah, see? They’re letting us in,” Zilag said, and directed Solonn’s attention towards the wall before them with the dip of a horn.
Slowly, the thick ice obstructing their way peeled away in layers, melting away into the sides of the tunnel a few inches at a time. The two made their way forward incrementally as the receding barrier gradually allowed, until finally, the last of it disappeared into the walls and revealed the open space beyond.
From what Solonn could see of it, the chamber at which they had arrived was quite spacious and orderly—it actually looked rather nice, not at all like the miserable hovel he’d been expecting due to the condition of the path leading here. First and foremost in his vision and attention, however, was the unfamiliar male hovering right inside the entrance—Azvida’s mate, Solonn presumed.
“Hello again, Zilag… and who’s this?” the man questioned as his gaze shifted from Zilag to Solonn and lingered there, raising a single, ice-glazed eyebrow.
“Go get Azvida,” Zilag said, grinning.
The man in the entranceway held an odd look upon Zilag for a moment, then turned around and set off into the chamber, disappearing into one of its diverging tunnels. Conversation in hushed voices was briefly audible from deeper within the residence, and then the man returned, accompanied now by someone very familiar.
Her eyes found Solonn at once and fixed there upon him; within their sharp, flickering light, Solonn could plainly see something at work behind them. Maybe she, like Zilag before her, had already guessed whom he was, but perhaps she didn’t quite dare to believe it. There was something else in that stare, too; this, Solonn could not interpret.
“He’s back,” Zilag told her, his voice quavering slightly with excitement.
Azvida’s eyes doubled in width and flared brightly. Her mouth opened tentatively, and it worked mutely for a moment before she found her words. “Are you really…?” she finally managed almost breathlessly, trailing off as she continued to stare at Solonn.
Solonn found himself having to find his voice as well before he could respond. “Yes, Mother,” he confirmed softly.
“Oh, gods…” Azvida’s voice cracked and trembled, and her eyes seemed to sparkle in the way that those of many other species might as a prelude to tears. Glalie as she was, nothing poured from her eyes but the light that was always present, burning with a tremulous yet powerful glow in her overload of emotion. “Oh, merciful gods, it’s a miracle!” she cried, and surged forward, her head lowered against Solonn’s side, shaking in dry, silent sobs.
“Well, I think I’d better be on my way,” Zilag said then, smiling at the reunited mother and son. “Hledas is probably going crazier by the moment wondering where I’ve gone to, and if I don’t get back to her before much longer, I won’t want to.” He punctuated that statement with a laugh, albeit a nervous one that told that he might not exactly have been exaggerating. “Take care, folks,” he said, and departed.
Azvida remained close to Solonn for a few moments more, uttering a string of grateful murmurs unto the gods for his return. She looked up at him before she had quite calmed, her eyes glittering with joy as she beamed brightly. “Welcome back, son,” she said warmly. She turned towards the main chamber. “Come on in, sit down and relax,” she beckoned him with a backwards glance. “You’ve most certainly earned it.”
Solonn followed Azvida away from the entrance and sat down with her in the main chamber. He noticed that the third among their number had not come to join them there, and glancing back from whence he’d come, Solonn found him still lingering by the entrance. It seemed that this ice barrier, unlike the others, did not close on its own; Azvida’s mate restored the thick wall in its entirety before joining the others.
“Here,” Azvida said, and caused a decent-sized chunk of ice to form in front of herself and the others. Each of them could have just as easily generated their own ice, of course, but it seemed that Azvida was in a rather generous mood at the moment. Solonn was quite in the mood for refreshments, and he thanked Azvida for providing the ice before he set about partaking of it, as did Azvida’s mate.
“I suppose you’re wondering who he is, aren’t you?” Azvida spoke up then, indicating her right, where her mate sat giving the occasional, mildly interested nibble of his ice. “This is Jeneth Avasi-Ra. We’ve been together for almost two years now.”
“Ah. Nice to meet you, Mr. Avasi-Ra,” Solonn said, inclining his head respectfully.
“Likewise,” Jeneth returned. “Jeneth will do, by the way,” he added amiably. His full attention was now on Solonn; the ice before him lay forgotten for the time being. With an avid, rather appraising look leveled at the giant Glalie, he said, “I never thought I’d actually meet you in person, you know? I’d always wished that I could—Azvida’s told me all about you. You definitely seem like an interesting person to know.”
“…Thanks,” Solonn responded, doing an admirable job of concealing a sudden unease. The thought that Azvida might have truly told Jeneth all about him wasn’t particularly comforting, nor was Jeneth’s description of him as “interesting”.
“I’m sure the two of you will get along very nicely. I’m just beyond grateful that you’ll get the chance to know each other—just grateful beyond words that you’re home again,” Azvida said, and the glow in her eyes began trembling again. “I never stopped wishing that I’d see you again, but after finding out that it was the creatures from above who had you… Gods, I’d never worried so much in my life. I had nightmares about what might be happening to you out there—horrible, horrible things—and I couldn’t help but fear that I’d lost you for good.”
She sighed in what was a very long-due relief. “But the nightmare is over. You’re back where you belong now, thank the gods.”
“Seems everything comes back around in time, doesn’t it?” Jeneth said then, sending an odd, significant glance Azvida’s way. Azvida was dumbstruck at first, then shot him an alarmed, piercing look that told plainly that he’d crossed some line.
She took a deep breath and turned back towards Solonn, the sudden shock fading from her face as she did so. However, there was still something distinctly amiss behind her eyes. Though she was clearly trying to conceal it, she could not help but look a bit troubled. “I shudder to think what you might have endured out there,” she resumed then, leaving the matter of the peculiar exchange she’d just had with Jeneth behind without any explanation. “So, how did you finally manage to get back here?”
Solonn had thoroughly expected that Azvida would want to know such, as well as what had happened to him during his absence. He was somewhat reluctant to share all the details of his experience away from Virc-Dho, however—some of them were quite outrageous things to expect anyone to digest, after all, and some of them were of the nature that he would prefer not to speak or think of them again if he could help it.
He decided that he’d just give a minimal account for now, and perhaps elaborate more on the story another time. Perhaps. “One of the Pokémon I met out there was able to bring me back. It would have been able to do so sooner, but I was dragged away from it and thrown into someone else’s affairs. Eventually, I got away from that and back to that Pokémon, and… well, here I am.” Some part of his mind silently congratulated him for coming up with that nice, succinct, euphemistic response.
Azvida nodded slowly, absorbing that. “You’re very lucky, Solonn,” she said. “It’s a good thing that there was someone around who could help you out—most of those who were taken by the creatures from above aren’t so fortunate. Gods, imagine if you’d shared their fate… some of the things that those creatures put people through are just horrible…”
Part of Solonn’s mind began to wonder at once how Azvida knew that, but he had another response to her words that was stronger and more immediate. “Not all of them were so terrible,” he said. “The one who took me was actually very nice, very reasonable.”
He paused and inhaled deeply before continuing; he’d known that talking about Morgan would be difficult, but he insisted on defending her character. “She was even willing to let me go once she realized I wanted to, but I was stolen from her before she could. Stolen by Pokémon,” he felt it necessary to emphasize. “I know she always wanted for me to be happy, and I know she would have helped me return here… she just never got the chance…” His throat constricted painfully, and he could say no more.
Azvida held a saddened expression in silence for a moment, seeming to recognize the weight of that subject upon her son. “As I said,” she finally responded, “you were very fortunate.”
From that point forward, Azvida did not ask anything more of Solonn regarding his abduction, keeping the conversation geared towards things that had happened in Virc-Dho while he had been away. She told of how Sanaika and his gang had escaped punishment for what they had done to Solonn by fleeing up into the Shoal Cave somewhere, never to be seen again. She told of how she had met Jeneth, and of how Zilag had been set up with Hledas by his parents, who wanted to assure that “at least one of our children didn’t end up with a damned fool,” in Ms. Shal-Zirath’s own words.
Curiously, the discussion remained solely between Azvida and Solonn; Jeneth said nothing more in the wake of the comment that he apparently should not have made. He merely sat silently with something clearly working behind his eyes, something he wanted to say but held back.
Eventually, it reached an hour at which everyone agreed that it was time to call it a night. Solonn was shown by Azvida to a spare chamber in which he could stay for the time being. He bid her goodnight, and she smiled at him as he entered his room for the night.
Azvida then followed Jeneth into the sleeping chamber that they shared on the opposite side of the main cavern, where she immediately set herself down in the soft snow blanketing its floor and sighed blissfully. Something long thought hopeless had actually been set right in the end, and she was sure that she’d rest all the better for it from now on.
“The gods have sent you a miracle today, haven’t they?” Jeneth said as he moved over to her side.
“Yes, they certainly have,” Azvida responded. She waited for Jeneth to set himself down beside her as usual, but he did no such thing. Puzzled, she turned to where he remained hovering, with a look that asked if something might be the matter.
“They’ve sent your son back, safe and sound—and so soon after the last thing they sent you,” Jeneth said, seemingly musing aloud. Yet he was looking pointedly right at Azvida, his keen, azure gaze imparting a particular significance to his words. “Maybe they’re trying to tell you something.”
The blissful relief that had enveloped Azvida just moments before retreated at those words. “I’ve already made my decision where that’s concerned,” she said, sounding quite discomfited. “I made it long before you came into the picture; you know that.”
“And you’ve questioned that decision ever since it was made. You know that,” Jeneth countered. “You know you made it for all the wrong reasons; you’ve known it all along, but you just wouldn’t own up to those mistakes.”
Azvida winced and turned away from him, but Jeneth circled around to face her, refusing to let her escape his gaze. “The chance to make this right has practically been lined up and laid out right in front of you. You know you can do this. And you know you should.”
“But… Gods, imagine what he’ll think. He’ll never forgive me for it,” Azvida objected, her voice constrained. “I’ve only just gotten him back. I don’t want to lose him again now…” she whispered.
“Maybe he won’t forgive you. But then again, maybe he will. There’s only one way to know. And as I said, you’ve been given the chance to make up for your mistakes. The gods have done their part, as has he. Now all that’s left is for you to do your part. Tell him, Azvida, please,” Jeneth urged firmly, yet softly. “He deserves this, especially after all that he’s surely been through.”
Azvida stared back at him with a very cornered expression, at a loss for words. Some faction of her mind set about searching frantically for a fresh supply of protests, but disobligingly, it could conjure none. This was a matter that Azvida had always feared to share with Solonn or with anyone else; she would never have shared it with Jeneth, but he had insisted on enlightening her mate. Now, though she could not deny the truth in Jeneth’s words, she was nonetheless just as terrified as she had ever been of the revelation he was asking her to make and of the consequences that it might bring. Deep inside, she had always known that her son should know of this and wished that he could, but had never felt that such was safe.
“…I’m sorry,” she whispered finally. “I just don’t know if I can do this.”
Jeneth did not respond to her at first, silently holding her in his solemn gaze. Finally, he let out a sigh of disappointment. “I don’t think you can deny what you know is right forever,” he said quietly, “but I also think that he’s been denied the truth for far too long. I want you to reconsider this, Azvida—I want you to look into your heart and pay heed to what it tells you. Hopefully, you’ll do the right thing by this time tomorrow. If not, I will do it for you,” he told her with a distinct note of finality in his voice, and then turned away.
Azvida’s jaw dropped open in the wake of Jeneth’s ultimatum, but all objections failed her. His tone had told plainly that he would not debate the matter further. He had made his decision, and he was clearly determined to carry it out.
With a powerful anxiety now roiling inside her, Azvida rolled onto her back without another word as Jeneth finally settled down at her side. She closed her eyes, but knew that sleep would not come. Her dread of the coming day haunted her throughout the night, for she knew that the truth that she had been evading for over two decades would catch up with her at last then. The only thing that ached more than knowing that this was going to happen and that there was nothing she could do to stop it was suffering the anticipation of that inevitability.
* * *
The new day found Solonn sitting alone in the room he’d been given, watching the ice on the walls shift and transform subtly as he idly manipulated it. Sleep had abandoned him early and left him awake throughout much of the morning, and during that time he’d found himself feeling rather bored. There was simply not much of anything to do around here while no one else was awake with whom to interact. Too many years as a Human, he reckoned, considering the lifestyle he had had while in that form: when he hadn’t been busy with his education and later with his work, there had been music, books, television, and a number of other things available to keep him occupied.
He began humming to himself as he guided the ice, wordlessly resurrecting one of his old favorite songs. His cryokinetic manifestations shifted to reflect the tune; as if carved by an invisible chisel, swirling patterns etched themselves into the walls. The lines snaked continually through the ice, ever shifting, ever moving, and created a hypnotic image that changed by the second right before their maker’s eyes.
Then, in an instant, both his song and his cryokinesis were halted as he saw what he had unconsciously done. The once abstract patterns in the walls had taken on a definite shape; they now depicted twisting branches covered in delicate flowers—Sitrus blossoms.
The significance of what he saw did not escape him. The music of the band whose song he’d been humming had been introduced to him by Morgan. She had come to recognize that it was his favorite, and so they had listened to it together on many occasions. Sitrus branches had given them shade during those listening sessions… and Sitrus blossoms had floated on the wind during his last moments with her. Those songs were associated in his mind with his memories of her; he got the feeling that they always would be. A low, mournful sigh escaped him as he let the conjured image vanish back into the wall.
Solonn was about to go and check yet again to see if someone else was awake now, but the question answered itself before he could even so much as turn around.
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Azvida noted from just outside the room, saying the very thing with which Solonn would have greeted her had he noticed her first. There was a distinct note of trepidation in her voice that Solonn noticed right away, and when he turned to face her, he saw that her behavior matched that tone. She was just hanging there at the entrance, her brows drawn together and the light in her eyes fluttering in clear unease.
“Is something the matter?” Solonn asked concernedly of her.
There most certainly was, as far as Azvida was concerned; this was something that she’d never thought she would ever do of her own accord. She knew that she couldn’t allow herself to dwell on that fact, however. What little resolve she had managed to gather would not return if she wasted it this time by hesitating too long, and she could not bear to dread this revelation any longer.
“There’s something I need to talk about with you,” she said, her voice very weak and constrained. “Something that’s long overdue.”
Solonn frowned worriedly at her. Whatever it was that Azvida intended to talk about, her strong reluctance to do so could not have been plainer. She still hadn’t moved one inch into his room and was now shaking on the spot. Solonn managed with difficulty to present a less troubled façade in an effort to calm her, but inwardly, he still had a less than comforting feeling about what Azvida was going to say.
“I’m listening,” he told her, and sat down. Azvida gave a nod of acknowledgement and finally managed to coax herself nearer to him. The moment she entered the room, she felt as though the chamber’s exit had just been blocked behind her by a large stone, trapping her in this room with her obligation. She set herself down beside her son, unwilling to face him, and several breaths escaped her before she was able to give word or voice to any of them.
“When you were very young,” she began, feeling an almost irresistible urge to drag each word back into silence as it was spoken, “I told you something that was… not true. I told you that your father had died just after you were born.” She swallowed hard. “He’s still alive, Solonn. He only left us… and I was the one who drove him away.”
Her words registered with a considerable delay, and Solonn’s belief of them lagged further still behind his absorption of them. Once they sank in fully, they struck deep and hard; had Solonn not already been seated, he might well have dropped from the air. He turned an astonished, incredulous stare at Azvida, or tried to; she avoided his gaze in a swift motion, wincing sharply as if in pain.
“My gods,” Solonn breathed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Unbelievable… all this time, and you never said anything… Why did you do it, Mother?” he asked her plaintively, but also with a dark, heavy edge that spoke of betrayal.
Azvida shrunk further still from him at the hurt in his voice, but managed to quell the urge to flee from his presence altogether. “There’s something else you need to know about your father,” she told him. “You can’t understand why I did what I did unless you know the whole truth about him.”
She forced herself to face him; it was all she could do not to turn right back around when she saw the raw, earnest demand for answers in his eyes. “I told you that I never really got to know your father. That wasn’t true, either; I knew him very well. His name is Grosh Argrosh, and he’s… he’s not of our kind. He’s something very different from you or me… Here, let me show you.”
She lowered her gaze to the floor of the cavern—and a second later, the ice there rose to meet it. At Azvida’s guidance, it grew upwards and took form, lengthening while crystalline facets shaped its surface. Seconds later, her work was done. Sitting there between the two Glalie was a two-foot-long model of a segmented, serpentine creature.
Solonn was at a loss for words as he looked upon the sculpture, but his mind was racing. Less than a day before, his thoughts had fallen upon the very creature that was depicted before him—it had been one of the species that he’d considered as the possible identity of the Pokémon that had disrupted the community of Virc-Dho months ago. It was astonishing to think that he could be related to such a creature… that he was the son of such a being…
“A Steelix,” he identified, almost breathless with astonishment.
“You know of his kind, then?” Azvida said.
“I know of many kinds,” Solonn muttered rather distractedly in response. He continued to stare at the tiny model Steelix, imagining it in its true dimensions—immense and imposing, the kind of creature that would absolutely terrify people who could not possibly conceive of such an incredible being. “He was here recently, wasn’t he?” he asked then.
“Yes,” Azvida confirmed. “Just months ago… he came back for us, Solonn,” she said, her voice laced with anguish on that statement. “But when he found out that you were gone and that I’m with Jeneth now, he left again.” Something odd flickered in her eyes then, and she averted her gaze once more, allowing the miniature Steelix to disappear back into the floor.
“Ever since he returned, everyone else has resented me very deeply for the fact that I’m the one he came here for,” she said. “His presence surely frightened them, but… well, there’s more to it than just that. I think that enough of them correctly guessed what my connection to Grosh was.”
She hesitated before proceeding. “There are certain attitudes held by much of our society about mating with other races. And those attitudes are not favorable. It’s considered not only immoral, but also very bad luck. And… Gods, I’m ashamed to admit this…” She sighed. “I never really agreed with those old prejudices and superstitions, but I was still very afraid of what people would think of what I had done with Grosh, and it was because of that fear that I pushed him out of my life and yours,” she admitted, her voice breaking in the midst of her confession.
For moments on end, Solonn sat in stony silence, stunned by what he’d just heard. That his own mother had lied to him for his entire life and denied him from knowing his family as he should, all in the name of an idiotic social taboo with which she didn’t even agree…
“I know it was wrong,” Azvida said, her voice weighted by the gravity of her shame. “Wrong to cast him away, and wrong to lie to you about him. I’ve always known. I’ve just been too much of a coward to do the right thing; too scared of what people would think and say and do about me, about both of us… and too afraid of how you might react if you ever learned that I had lied to you.” She looked Solonn right in the eyes. “I’ll understand if you never forgive me.”
There was a very long pause as Solonn wondered what in the world to make of this situation. He knew that he would likely never be able to condone Azvida’s cowardice and deceit. At the same time, however, he also recognized that she acknowledged that what she had done was wrong, and she did seem sincerely remorseful about her actions… but still…
In the end, Solonn finally supposed that if Azvida could find the courage to own up to her mistakes, then he should try to find the grace to forgive her, difficult though that might prove to be. At least she’s finally let go of the lies, he thought wearily. At least she did the right thing in the end.
“I will try not to hold the past against you,” he said quietly.
Azvida closed her eyes. She had feared that her son would hate her for what she had just confessed to him, and yet here he was, seemingly willing to forgive her. Silently, she thanked the gods for this chance to make right what she had done wrong, and also inwardly thanked Jeneth for giving her the final push she had needed to do what she had to do.
“I know that I’ve kept you from knowing someone you’ve deserved to know all your life, and it shames me more than I can express,” she said quietly. “Nothing can give you back those years you two should have had together, but there is a way that you can have what you’ve been due all this time. I can take you to him, Solonn.”
Solonn’s eyes shifted her way slowly. Their color was muted with weariness, but their light gave the faintest sparkle of hope. “You said that he left when he saw that I wasn’t here,” he reminded her. Azvida nodded, making an affirmative noise. “So, you know where he went, then?”
“Yes,” Azvida answered. “Grosh said that he was staying in the caverns above, to a place where he and I once briefly stayed together… he said that if you ever managed to make it back somehow, that he hoped you could come and visit him there. I will take you to him if you wish, Solonn. It’s the least I could do after how I’ve wronged you.”
Inhaling deeply, Solonn rose from the floor, looking heavily but not unkindly down upon his mother. “I am still very disappointed in some of the choices you’ve made in the past,” he told her reproachfully. “But I do thank you very much for giving me this chance now.”
Ever so briefly, the ghost of a smile alighted on Azvida’s face. “Again, it’s the least I could do.” She ascended and made her way towards the chamber’s exit. “Come on, then,” she said. She knew that if there was any time to do this, it was now, while her resolve was so strong. “I think he’s waited more than long enough to meet you.”
The two of them drifted into the main chamber, where Jeneth was sitting near the exit of their home. His eyes followed them as they approached the thick barrier separating them from the warren outside, and as they stopped there before him, a proud, knowing smile spread across his face.
“We’re going above,” Azvida informed him. “We’ll be gone for most of today and tonight.”
Jeneth nodded in acknowledgement. “Take care, both of you.”
“We will,” Azvida assured him. The ice barrier began receding at her silent command, and she and Solonn departed home for the warren beyond.
As Azvida and Solonn made their way upward through Virc-Dho to the Shoal Cave, they were undisturbed in their travel through minute after minute, yard after yard. Azvida seemed to know just which route to take to avoid notice, which certainly made everyday errands much more tolerable for someone who was generally disliked by the local population.
“Now, there is something you should keep in mind when you meet Grosh,” Azvida said to Solonn as they traveled. “He doesn’t know of your… talent. You know the one.”
“You’re advising me not to tell him about it?”
“I’m not saying that he’s untrustworthy or anything,” Azvida clarified quickly. “I just think that it would be best to be extremely careful about revealing that ability… you know, considering what happened last time…”
“Don’t worry,” Solonn assured her. “I’ve learned my lesson well where that’s concerned. I don’t think I’ll be using that old trick ever again.” His linguistic talents had been what had pulled him from Virc-Dho in the first place, and had been the root of all the trouble he’d gotten into since. Now that things seemed to be going back to something at least similar to how life had been before he had revealed his talents, he decided that he would prefer to leave them in the past.
Something else occurred to Solonn then, something of relevance to the topic at hand that had caught his attention the night before. “Jeneth doesn’t know either, does he?”
“Not at all, and I have no intentions of changing that,” Azvida replied.
“Good,” Solonn exhaled in relief, “good.” And with that, both he and his mother fell silent once more as they continued towards the caverns above Virc-Dho. Only once had Solonn ever been taken up to the surface exit via a proper route from the warren, and eventually, he came to recognize the route through which he was being led. This was the part of the warren that Sanaika and his gang had once haunted. Even though those unsavory characters had left their old territory behind, it seemed that people still did not dare to come here; there were no signs of recent development here. Nothing had changed from the last time Solonn had laid eyes on this sector, all those years ago.
Soon, the tunnels that had once belonged to Sanaika merged via a discreet passageway into the path that led to Virc-Dho’s uppermost border. Azvida moved the ice guarding the exit aside, and she and Solonn passed through into the massive cavern outside.
“We’ve still got a fair way to go,” Azvida told him. “Much of the distance between our home and where we’re going is through the caverns beyond this one.” She proceeded onward, leading Solonn over a vast expanse of ice until they reached the far side of the cavern. There, half-concealed behind a broad, flat stone formation that jutted sharply outward from the wall, a passageway curved inward.
The passageway was short, and opened up into territory that definitely did not belong to any Glalie. The stone surfaces of these caverns were entirely bare, no ice glazing the walls, no snow blanketing the floors. Solonn noticed a crisp, salty scent on the air that he recognized as that of the ocean, and the further the two progressed, the stronger that scent became. Eventually, he even began to see tiny seashells and other minute remnants of marine life scattered about, further evidence of the sea’s proximity to this place.
There were also natives about, the creatures that called these caverns home. The occasional Zubat winged by overhead, while less frequently, Spheal and Sealeo appeared in Solonn’s field of vision. The Ice/Water-types immediately made a shuffling, ungainly bid for shelter the moment they caught sight of the two passing Glalie, for which Solonn could not help but feel a pang of guilt despite never having done any harm to any of their kind. It seemed a shame to him that these beings were raised to live in fear of his kind, but the fact remained that the rift between his people and theirs was just part of the natural order around here.
Solonn had lost track of time in following Azvida through the Shoal Cave when she finally stopped before him and turned to face him. Fleetingly, a sign of some strange discomfort crossed her face, but it was gone so quickly that Solonn wasn’t altogether sure that he’d actually detected it.
“So, is this it, then?” he asked of her.
“No,” Azvida answered. There was that flash of unease in her eyes again; Solonn could not dismiss it this time. But before he could inquire about it, “Stay here,” Azvida instructed him. “There’s something I need to take care of, but I need to do this alone.”
Azvida departed then without explanation, but Solonn gave it little thought. They had been traveling non-stop for quite some time now; the need to take a break was perfectly understandable. He set himself down for the time being, taking advantage of the pause to give himself a bit of rest while awaiting Azvida’s return. Though fairly worn and hungry after the distance to here, Solonn was ready to resume the journey as soon as his mother came back, for he felt that they must surely be drawing near to their destination by now.
Several minutes passed before the grey-and-white form of one of his own kind returned to the vicinity. Once Solonn noticed Azvida moving into his peripheral, he rose and began to turn to regard her. The moment he fully absorbed her into his sights, however, he abruptly froze in midair with a stunned expression, his thoughts arrested by what he saw.
Silently, Azvida lowered her head, allowing a small, indigo shape to fall from her jaws. There, on the floor before her, a Zubat now lay, its limp form unmoving… or rather, almost unmoving; its chest was rising and falling with deep, serene breaths. It was still alive.
Solonn knew immediately why Azvida had brought the Zubat to him—Gods, she brought it here for me, he thought with a shudder of revulsion. He fumbled for a moment before he managed to gather his words, and when he found them, they came forth even more forcibly than he’d intended.
“Take it back,” he said flatly. “Take it back and leave it be.”
Azvida’s brows drew together worriedly. “I see that certain of your sensibilities are the same as they ever were.”
“Yes, they are,” Solonn confirmed. “Now, please… just take it back. Please. I don’t want this.”
“Solonn… how long ago did you evolve?” Azvida asked, concern evident in her tone.
“Not long after I was taken,” Solonn replied. “And yes, I know that this is something that we’re all supposed to do once we’ve evolve, but I’ve never liked it, and I can’t imagine that I ever will.”
“Did you do any hunting at all during all that time?”
“Not really, no.” Solonn vividly recalled the one occasion when he’d nearly made a predatory kill, and he gave another shudder at the memory. He found himself glad that he did not also have a memory of actually going through with the act to haunt him. During his time away from Virc-Dho, he had been grateful that he had been given an alternative to feeding on live prey, and later, during his time as a Human, he had enjoyed the option of being able to abstain from eating the flesh of other creatures altogether. “Food was always provided… I never had to kill anyone to get it,” he said darkly.
Azvida sighed. “But that was there and then,” she pointed out. “Others may have fed you up until now, and I may have brought food to you today, but the fact is, you won’t always have someone to provide for you. Ultimately, you will have to hunt for yourself. And you’ve known that for a long time, too. This is the way you must live now that you are a Glalie, and now that you’re here again. Sooner or later, you will have no choice but to accept it.”
Solonn only stared at her at first, letting his gaze bear down imperiously upon her as if some part of him thought that he could somehow silently will her to rescind that statement. In reality, he knew better than to expect such, for he knew that Azvida was right. He’d always known in the back of his mind that returning to Virc-Dho would require him to become an active predator, but he wondered now if being nearly as far removed from such a lifestyle as was possible for so long had perhaps caused him to lose sight of that eventuality. And such had certainly been far from his mind when he had made the decision to go back to his native land following his reversion and the Human tragedy. Now that fact had caught up to him at last, and he found himself all but cornered by it.
“…I know,” he said finally, wearily. “It’s just so hard to accept…”
Azvida closed her eyes and nodded, in a way that suggested a sort of knowing sympathy. “I understand, Solonn. Believe me, I really do.” She opened her eyes. “When I first began hunting, I also had some difficulty accepting the fact that I had to take lives to sustain my own. I wished that it wasn’t necessary, but knew also that I had no other choice and that I would just have to come to terms with that necessity.”
She lowered her gaze onto the Zubat before her, who still lay there unconscious and completely unaware of the mortal peril that faced it. “We are all as we must be according to the laws of nature,” she said. “There is nothing right or wrong about it; it’s just the only way that works. Every one of our kind must accept this aspect of our nature. It’s the only way that we can survive.”
There was a small part of Solonn that understood and agreed with these concepts completely, one that had done so ever since his evolution. His eyes remained transfixed upon the Zubat, and as he stared at it he tried almost wholeheartedly to convince himself to accept what he was seeing as food, to just give in to the inescapable reality of what he was and get that first step towards full acceptance of it behind him. His predatory instinct approached him from a myriad of angles: At least you didn’t have to go catch it this time. Maybe she’ll kill it for you. It doesn’t have eyes; that makes it a little easier, doesn’t it?
But none of those little details made it any easier, not in the slightest. He hungered, and he knew that eventually he would have to attend to that need… but as far as he was concerned, he would put it off as long as he could get away with doing such. “I know what I have to do,” he said softly. “I know I can’t escape this forever, but… just please, not yet. I’m still not ready.”
Azvida drew a very long breath, releasing it slowly, heavily. “All right,” she said, sounding troubled, but not at all surprised. “I got the feeling that you weren’t. That’s why I kept it alive.”
“Thank you for that,” Solonn responded. “But next time… don’t hesitate to do it, all right? I don’t think I’ll be quite willing to… to take one at first.”
Azvida nodded in acquiescence. Her eyes told that a part of her wanted to keep trying to convince her son to accept predation now, but she said not a single word more, instead picking the Zubat back up and carrying it away in silence.
You’ll get used to it, Solonn tried to reassure himself silently. Somehow, you’ll get through this. But there was a part of him that still could not help but doubt that he ever would, and the notion that his only choices were to do something that he hated or else to perish was very difficult to bear.
Azvida returned shortly, this time without the Zubat, and immediately began moving onward again. Solonn followed her with an eagerness that belied his weariness of both body and spirit, hoping that he was right in guessing that their journey was near its end. He figured that the prospect of actually meeting his father after believing him to be dead for all these years would certainly help to take his mind off of his own terrible physical obligations, at least for a while.
Just as he had expected, they soon reached their destination, but the relief that Solonn had anticipated would come at their arrival was dampened somewhat when he actually laid eyes upon the place itself. He and his mother now hovered at the edge of a fairly wide and deep hole. According to Azvida, this was where Grosh lived, meaning that anyone wishing to visit him would apparently have to take quite a plunge.
“All right… so, exactly how do we go about getting down there?” Solonn questioned, peering cautiously into the dark chasm. His query went unanswered, and when he turned towards Azvida to perhaps find out why, he recognized at once that she was deeply focused on something. Her eyes were nearly closed, letting only a sliver of azure light seep through.
A strange, slithering, scraping noise began to emanate from the chasm then, and Solonn looked towards the noise to see a flat, glistening platform rising up through the hole. It came to a stop once it was level with the ground, and it was only then that Azvida emerged from her seeming trance.
“Move onto the ice,” Azvida instructed Solonn. “I’ll lower you into the chamber that way.”
Solonn did as he was instructed at once. He set himself down upon the platform, making sure to leave enough space on it for Azvida to join him there… but Azvida did no such thing. Puzzled, Solonn turned a questioning gaze upon her, and Azvida’s eyes shifted aside awkwardly.
“I think I’d prefer to wait outside,” she said very quietly. “This time, at least,” she added hastily upon seeing the way her son’s brows drew together in what was likely disappointment. “I think that maybe this moment should be just for the two of you, after all these years apart.”
Solonn saw right through her reasoning, though, and she knew it. “I’m sorry… I just don’t think things have quite healed enough between us yet. I’m not quite ready to face him again,” she admitted, “but, if you really want me to…”
Solonn held a saddened gaze upon her a moment, wishing that she hadn’t put her decision into his figurative hands like that. He rather liked the idea of having both of his parents brought together with him, a complete family once more, if only for a short time… but at the same time, he didn’t really want to drag Azvida into a situation that might make her uncomfortable, especially after she had already had to battle her fears just to give him this opportunity.
“No, that’s all right,” he conceded softly. You’ve done enough for me today, he added silently with a weary heart.
Azvida smiled in response, but the expression was somewhat diminished by her attendant sense of guilt. Nonetheless, she said nothing more and slipped back into her trance again, and the ice platform on which Solonn sat began to descend. Moments later, it reached the floor of the chasm, where it dissipated into vapor just as Solonn resumed his levitation.
The shaft through which he had descended opened into a pair of large caverns that formed the shape of an upended hourglass, with two chambers that connected to one another via an imperfect archway. The chamber in which Solonn found himself was entirely empty, but he could hear something in the adjacent one, a rushing, rumbling sound with a distinct rhythm. He could also make out the form of something that stretched clear across that room, something that gave off a dim glow of body heat.
Slightly gingerly, Solonn approached the metallic form in the other room. That he was about to meet his father was incredible enough, but the exact nature of the creature whose presence he was about to enter impressed itself upon him now more than ever. He knew of Grosh’s kind only from films—he had never encountered anything so massive and imposing live and in person before. As he drew nearer, he began to feel a deep, very primal anxiety welling up inside him. With a faint annoyance and only partial success, he silenced the instinct. His element isn’t important, he told himself firmly. He had never let the matter of type stand in the way of friendship before, and he was certainly not going to let it get between him and his own family.
He passed through the rough-hewn archway, and at once, his perception was monopolized by the presence of the enormous, metallic serpent occupying the chamber beyond. The Steelix literally surrounded Solonn almost completely, his long, segmented body wrapped in an open ring around the stone chamber. Grosh was fast asleep, oblivious to the presence that had just joined him.
Solonn wasn’t altogether certain about the prospect of waking the great serpent from his slumber; interrupting a good nap might not be the best first impression to make. On the other hand, he was certainly eager to make his father’s acquaintance after over two decades.
He remained torn between these two angles for a short time, until the Steelix stirred unexpectedly, his segments rotating lazily with an accompanying grinding noise as he stretched. Grosh’s broad head lifted slowly, and his heavy jaws opened to release a yawn of such volume and magnitude that the walls and floor shuddered at its sounding. He opened his eyes partway, blinking slowly with his gaze turned towards the wall, seemingly unfocused.
Now that Grosh was awake, Solonn figured he did not need to hesitate any longer, ignoring the instinct within him that still begged to differ with that idea. His heart racing, he drew closer to Grosh, trying to calm himself with steadying breaths as he approached. He took in one last, great quantity of air, and then, “Father?” he ventured.
His overcharged nerves had weakened his tone somewhat, and he wondered at first if Grosh had not heard him, for the Steelix gave no indication that he had. He watched the Steel serpent with baited breath and was about to try to get his attention again, but then saw Grosh’s head perk up suddenly, rising almost completely to the ceiling in a single instant. Solonn looked up towards him and saw his father’s dull, crimson eyes widen and shift his way in their deep, dark sockets, locking into his gaze.
“Hello, Father,” Solonn addressed him again, more steadily this time.
Silence hovered over the room. Then, it was shattered to pieces as a peal of thunderous, positively jubilant laughter came roaring forth from the serpent’s mouth, reverberating powerfully through the chamber.
“Well, I’ll be!” Grosh exclaimed heartily in a bottomless, metallic-edged voice. “Solonn, right?” he presumed, at which the Glalie nodded. “Ah, I’d hoped to death that I’d get to see you again someday!”
Solonn could not help but smile in the wake of his father’s elation at meeting him, as the Steelix slithered in a circle around him, looking him over. “By God, look at how you’ve grown since the last time I saw you!” he remarked animatedly as he stopped to face the Glalie again, his eyes glittering with tears of pride. “To think it’s been more than twenty years since then…” He sighed wistfully. “I reckon we’ve got a lot of catching up to do, then,” he said, and gave a deep, slightly growling chuckle.
“I suppose we do,” Solonn agreed, still smiling.
“So. What sorts of things have you been up to all this time, hmm?” Grosh asked.
“Well, not really much,” Solonn replied, “at least, not before I was found by a Human.” He proceeded to give Grosh an abridged, euphemized recount of events from the day that he was captured by Morgan onward that was similar to the one he had given Azvida, still less than comfortable with the idea of discussing some of the stranger and more terrible of his experiences, still mindful that there were certain details in that story that he should probably never relate due to their connection to his talent.
Still, he did feel a bit guilty about keeping things from someone who had waited so long just to get the chance to talk to him; he figured that Grosh at least deserved some explanation for the withheld information. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’d like to go into more detail, but… well, I’ve only just gotten away from it all. I don’t feel like I’m quite ready to talk about some of the things that happened.”
“Understandable,” Grosh said in a kindly tone. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t feel comfortable with. Well, then, I reckon it’s my turn. How about I start by telling you how your mother and I met, and where I’ve been all these years?”
“Sure,” Solonn replied. He was earnestly curious about those things, particularly regarding how Azvida could have gotten involved with such an unlikely person as Grosh, someone and something that one would never expect to find in a place like this. He set himself down and looked attentively towards the Steelix.
“All right,” Grosh said, and settled himself back into a more relaxed position. “Now, I warn you: it’s not the happiest story you’ll ever hear, but it’s the truth. Your mother and I met in a very unpleasant place after we’d both ended up in the hands of the same Human, who stole us from our original captors.”
“Wait… my mother has actually encountered Humans before?” Solonn questioned incredulously.
“That’s right,” Grosh confirmed. “She got caught by one when she was about ten years your junior, I believe.”
There was another thing that Azvida had never told him. It was incredible to think that she had been taken by Humans at one point and had later been taken from the one who had originally caught her, just as he had. He wasn’t really all that surprised that she hadn’t told him of this before, though; it was undoubtedly because of that event’s connection to her involvement with Grosh that she had never mentioned it.
“Anyway,” Grosh resumed, “the Human who kept us made us fight Pokémon belonging to the other Humans in that place for hours nearly every day, and when I say fight, I mean hard. Those were rough times, and Azvida and I were each all that the other had. I looked after the poor girl, did everything I could for her, and she put all her trust in me.
“We were forced to serve that creep for quite a while, and then one morning, he decided to go and toss us into the ocean while we were in our capture balls for the night. Can you believe it?” he said with a chuckle.
“Hm, yeah, that is pretty strange,” Solonn agreed. “Do you have any idea why in the world he did that?”
“Well, what I suspect is that someone must have found out that he’d stolen us, and so he ditched us to get rid of the evidence. Ah, I hope that slimebag didn’t get away with it in the end, though… So. These Grass Pokémon found our capture balls out in the water, brought us back to their island, let us out, and told us what had happened. They also mentioned that they knew of a cave to the north where Azvida’s kind was rumored to live. We didn’t know for sure if it was really the place where she’d come from, but after her ordeal, she wanted to go back home badly enough to check this cave out. I decided to go with her, just to keep an eye on her and help her stay safe… I’d come to care about her quite a lot by then.” He smiled wistfully in the wake of that last statement.
“Two of the Grass Pokémon swam to the cave, carrying us in our capture balls, and let us out once we were there,” he continued. “Azvida and I searched through the cave for some time, looking for signs of her home… and it was during that search that, much to our surprise, we found ourselves in possession of your egg.
“Well, Azvida had been acting strangely nervous ever since she had been told of this cave, but once the egg was laid, her nervousness easily doubled. It came to a head when we finally found the border of her homeland—that’s when I found out what it was that she was so worried about.”
Solonn averted his gaze, feeling a strange sense of vicarious guilt come over him at the thought of what his mother had done to Grosh and why. “I’m sorry for the way she treated you,” he said sincerely.
“Don’t be,” Grosh consoled him. “You know you’re not at fault here, not in the least. I’m not even entirely sure it was her fault, either—the things fear can make people do… Some part of her really seemed to want me to go ahead into her people’s territory with her, regardless of what anyone might think, but the rest of her was just too scared of what they might do. In the end, I agreed to leave despite how I wanted to stay—I didn’t want for you and your mother to have to live in fear of others’ hatred.
“She still felt bad about the whole thing, and said that maybe I could sneak in sometime and see you after you were born. I took her up on that offer, but just once. I was there when you were born, but I left right after.” He drew a long, slow breath. “I was too worried about possibly causing trouble for her… and I thought it would be easier for me to endure giving you two up if I didn’t give myself much of a chance to get too attached to you,” he admitted almost voicelessly. The Steelix bowed his head very deeply in shame, his long neck nearly doubling over on itself. A deep, shuddering sigh passed through his throat, and tears began to trace the contours of his armored face as they slid floorward.
It was a while before either of them seemed able to speak again. Grosh remained overcome by his tears for moments on end, while Solonn was hushed by the weight of the serpent’s sorrow. Finally, “It’s all right,” Solonn said quietly. His father’s gaze lifted slowly from the floor, his already crimson eyes reddened further and still shedding silent tears. “I don’t blame you for anything you did. I understand… you have nothing to be ashamed of,” Solonn told him.
A low, metallic noise resonated deep within the Steelix’s chest, and uncertainty suffused itself through his features. “I don’t know about that,” he said doubtfully. “I think I most definitely ought to be ashamed for not trying to get back into your life even once during all those years—especially considering that I’ve been here all this time.”
Solonn was momentarily stupefied—how on Earth had a thirty-foot-long metal serpent been living in the area all this time without anyone noticing? “So… what have you been doing all this time?” Solonn asked once his wits congealed once more.
“Oh, you’re not going to like the answer to that…” Grosh half-sighed.
“Try me,” Solonn said evenly.
“All right… all right. I knew that it was going to be damned hard to resist the urge to come back to you two, so I sent myself into hibernation here. Some desperate part of me actually thought that if I let enough time pass me by, then it’d be easier to live without you two. I should’ve known better.” He gave a sad smile. “When I finally couldn’t stay dormant any longer, your mother and you were the very first things on my mind, and when I realized how much time must have passed, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I rushed right into that warren, made a huge scene looking for her after I found she no longer lived where she used to—I was so worried once about getting her into trouble, and then look what I went and did.” Grosh shook his head, growling to himself in shame. “I abandoned you both to try and protect you, only to fail you to that end. I don’t think I could ever quite apologize enough.”
“Yes, you can,” Solonn responded softly. “As long as you mean it, you only need to apologize once.” He lifted himself from the floor and moved closer to the Steelix, until he hovered directly under the serpent’s gaze. “You have nothing to worry about,” he assured his father, looking right into the crimson eyes above him with a strong, steady gaze. “Whatever anyone thinks of you, whatever they try and do about it, I can take care of myself, and I’ll take care of my mother, too. You haven’t ruined things, Father. Your coming back into the picture was the first step in setting everything right again.”
Grosh stared silently into his son’s face for a moment, into the resolve and sincerity in those bright, azure eyes. A broad grin spread slowly across the great serpent’s face, and he swallowed back a fresh volley of tears. “You’re right,” he said proudly. “There’ll always be people who’ll hold on to wicked ways no matter what we do. We can’t let them get to us anymore.”
He sighed peacefully. “Guess this is like starting over, in a sense,” he said. “I made my mistakes, she made hers, and we’ve both paid for them by missing out on the family we could have had all this time. Now, it’s like we’re getting a second chance. From now on, we’re going to live by the love of family, not the hatred of fools.”
Next time: Both Solonn’s family and the Virc community at large face events that will impact life as they know it forever. See you then!