Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Hands of Creation

Chapter 70 - Aftershocks

The idea that she could have trusted Star at all was one of the worst thoughts Zena had ever entertained.

For tens, perhaps hundreds, of years, she had sat, holed up in the middle of some quiet cave, fearing for her life that she had long overstayed. Wasting it away doing nothing but meditating and sleeping the generations away. Yet that in itself was a torture that still frightened her in the back of her mind.

In hindsight, she didn't know how she dealt with it. She had slipped into that eternal cycle without realizing it. Sleep, wake up, see nothing. Sleep, wake up, see nothing. Was it really sleeping? No, because she never felt rested when she did. She didn't need to rest. It was more some strange, twisted form of thoughtless brumation. The only thing that kept her from closing herself forever was the possibility that a Hunter would come to disturb her slumber.

And then the times someone did trespass. A curious little feral, or a bothersome treasure hunter. Star told her that it would be a bad idea to get them involved. The caves didn't have a lot of life in it—it was meant for spirits and, being within a Dungeon's stable pocket, didn't have much for the ferals. And the treasure hunters, well, they would be meddlesome at best and dangerous at worst. In a morbid sense, Hunters counted as spelunkers of the violent variety.

She said it all so convincingly. So earnestly. Yet if Zena could go back and tell that young, frightened, confused, new Water Guardian what would happen if she listened... perhaps she could have found a better approach.

Anything to avoid that torment that she had to endure. She hadn't realized it at first—Star told her that it would be like nothing. That she would be able to rest and be dormant for a while until it all blew over. When would it blow over, and for what? What exactly was there to blow over? Zena didn't know, even now; Star simply didn't want the Orbs to meet.

What Star didn't tell her was that it wouldn't be true dormancy. No. Every visitor, every trespasser to her old abode, every feral and every explorer, woke her up. Every new visitor brought her a new sense of fear, or annoyance, that she couldn't waste her eternity away. Every time she awoke, she'd wonder how much time had passed, how far away her old life had become, how many revolutions the world had taken without her. How trapped she had become, and how much further trapped she was.

Even though they were all false alarms, aside from when Elder had appeared, but in hindsight, Zena learned something else. Every time they visited, and every time she had to will herself to go back into that eternal darkness, she sometimes wondered if those feral Pokémon could have visited her. Or the explorers, selfish as they may have been in search of treasure, could have been good for conversation.

But Star was a convincing one. She told her that it wouldn't be a good idea to be discovered; to keep her glow as weak as possible, to be dormant so she wouldn't be discovered at all. So her spirits frightened them away. The last set of explorers that she had scared off was Team Alloy themselves. It was the first time that explorers had been so determined to go inside, like they were aware of her presence. Their aura were unlike the others—though now she knew why—and Star said that she'd have to scare him off quickly. Yet that was what brought Owen right back to her later. Yelled at her sprits, even!

She didn't really know what to do after that. She'd stayed in the lake, like she always had, until inevitably the explorer would get bored and leave after seeing no treasure there, only the empty lake. Yet Owen didn't leave. He knew she was there, and he started... talking.

Zena shook her head. Without him even realizing it, he'd been the one to finally break that cycle of darkness for her. All that lashing about, all that self-imposed isolation, so easily broken because he had said a few sad words. How when they'd moved her into Hot Spot, he had offered to rest near her lake on that first night. Their games of marbles, the books he had read—even if most of them had been a bit boring—it had all been something that she had needed.