Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Hands of Creation

Chapter 22 - The Endless Forest

"Wh-what's going on?" Owen said.

He was weightless – nothing was around him except a swirling, blue-black void in all directions. He looked up; he saw blackness with a flickering, cyan mist. But then, when he squinted, he saw that this mist also had brighter spots in it. "Are those..." They reminded him of Rhys' paws when he was meditating or fighting. "Are those auras?"

"Yep," Star said.

"W-wah!" Owen jumped, losing his balance in the void. "Where'd you come from?" He was stuck rotating laterally.

"Oh! Sorry. I got distracted along the way; nearly lost you, ha!" The Mew chuckled, patting him on the back. She grasped him gently by the shoulders to halt the spinning.

Owen sighed. "Don't—don't do that! Just tell me where we are!" Owen pointed at the mist but then noticed his arm. It looked blurry. "What's...?" He brought his left hand on his right arm; it passed right through. The scales flew off like dust in the wind—along with everything else in him. His hand went first, the little fingers washing away like a wad of mud in a river. There was no pain—and for some reason, that made it worse. "What's happening?!"

"D-don't panic, Owen! You're fine!" Star said, holding his right shoulder. "Uh—oops." When Star pat him, his entire arm fell away, floating in front of him. It dissolved into a fine, cyan mist. Owen stared helplessly as his body faded into light. While it didn't hurt it didn't feel good, either. He lost all sensation. He tried to move his arm—but he no longer had an arm to move.

After the arm, everything else advanced much more rapidly. His claws and tail, then the legs. Did he have a head? He couldn't use his arms to feel for his head, because those were already long gone. His torso floated past his vision like smoke. He tried to gasp with the lungs he no longer had.

He tried to talk, but it didn't work. He didn't even know how he was seeing anything—he had no eyes. No eyelids to blink with—no mouth to speak with, nothing. Nothing.

"Just—just talk with your thoughts, Owen. It's okay," Star eased. "You're in the aura sea right now, Owen. You're pressed up against the edge of, uh... the living world."

Owen struggled to work with this new sort of communication. It felt like it was all he had left. What do you mean, the edge? Isn't that just the Grass Orb, and the other Orbs?

"Yes and no," Star said, rubbing her head. "C'mon, stay by me, okay? Or you'll get caught up in the flow."

Flow... right... Owen reflexively tried to look down at his hands. Not only did he not have hands, but he also didn't have a head to look down with, or a neck. He didn't know what nothing felt like, but this was as close as he'd ever gotten to it.

"Don't worry, don't worry. This'll all go back to normal soon. It's just, weaker auras don't last very long here. They dissolve into their most basic component, the flare, which encapsulates their spirit."

Owen adjusted. He looked at the many others who looked exactly like him. They were moving in the opposite direction that he and Star were, toward some other void. Where are... they going?

"Oh, just the spirit world," Star said. "This is sorta the passageway from the point when an aura passes on, to the spirit world."

So this is... I heard legends about this...

"Legends? Huh. Once a mortal gets here, there's no going back, usually. I guess some of them just guessed correctly."

Something else was floating ahead. A hulking creature, to be sure, with a gray body with yellow stripes and a single, glowing, red eye. Dusknoir. Owen hesitated on advancing, but when he fell too far behind Star, he felt a strange force pulling him toward the void that the other auras were heading. He tried to call out to Star with his nonexistent mouth.