ID: 2
Username: [Redacted until voting finishes]
Title: Cold that Gnaws like Hunger
Winters in Orre were snowless, hot, and paradoxically frigid.
A man could wander the dunes during the day, sweltering under the heat, only to find himself shivering when night falls. The midnight gales sucked warmth and the cold could gnaw a man to the bone like a frenzied hunger. He’d seen men lose themselves when the cold came. Bury themselves in sand and start fires with what little the land could offer.
His warmth was living and breathing. His brothers and sisters, his friends, his family.
But now, as he laid in the sand, he felt that gnawing cold again. His family was far away now, gone into the disorienting sands with the dust at their backs. Far from here, far from him. The sun was still high, stealing moisture as his sweat and blood pooled on the sand–yet the cold was there. A revenant haunting him, taunting him, waiting for him.
Welcoming him.
His chest rattled and a wet cough brought red to his lips.
A man with blue-hair crested the dune, doubling back alongside a heracross with a mighty horn.
He grinned.
The horn turned what little remained of him into viscera, but Wes cackled all the while.
ID: 3
Username: [Redacted until voting finishes]
Title: Fading Ghost
Withered hands gripped the gnarled cane as the aged woman struggled down the hall. Her knees screamed in agony with every step as ruined lungs cried out in misery. Her body had failed her, finally succumbing to the damnation sewn into her the day she was born.
But she wasn't dead yet.
Wails of agony echoed down the halls of the wretched pyramid, pleas for mercy callously ignored as her spectral companions vented their frustration and grief on the scum who had set up base here. Burning plumes of reversion scorched the soiled stones, purging them of death’s filth.
Her time was running out. The last few grains had come tumbling down the hourglass. Even now she felt her flesh fading, dissolving as her spirit could no longer sustain it. Not even her faithful Shadow could delay the coming end. She had no fuel left to burn, had nothing left to give.
Loving shadows wrapped around the fading woman, gently guiding her to the floor. Fear filled her, the oh so human terror gripping her as the end drew nigh. In this dying moment, she had never felt so alive.
With a final, hacking, cackle, Agatha gave up the ghost.
ID: 4
Username: [Redacted until voting finishes]
Title: Dying Blaze
Everything changed as the clear night turned to smoke and haze.
There was no saviour, no Indigo to wash this mess. No star in sight.
There was only him. So he burnt everything.
Flames scorch and the red would lurch - the eruption started it all.
Screams of help falling deaf under slag. A world on fire.
Toxic fumes mix with dying souls, both innocent and not.
Waves crash upon melting hearts.
The sandy beach, ever white and pure. Now stained in soot and blood, their innocence washed away.
By sunrise, they call him a star, a hero ever so bright and radiant.
But he’s no hero and he knows just that.
No, he was a blaze. So he burned brighter and followed the wind to East.
Seared eyes are riddled with stars as foreign lands are left broken and burnt.
His body folds and crumbles, reigniting, just begging to die.
In his dreams, he’s drowning. Charred faces call him murderer.
Come morning and he forgets it all with a swig of liquor, the lives buried under his flame.
By the time he gets back home, things would never return.
A star's light would wane and dim.
A blaze becoming ash.
ID: 5
Username: [Redacted]
Title: Redemption
He had believed at first. They all had.
How could they not? Since childhood, they’d been told how great and just Unova was. How the other regions stagnated from corruption, and how their citizens buckled under the yoke of oppression.
Lies! All of it, accursed lies!
They were no noble Escavaliers! They were no shining city on the hill, to be admired and entrusted with freeing those who could not free themselves from their shackles.
They were the oppressor, would be tyrants trampling the other regions beneath their boot.
Truly they’d earnt their rampaging Hydreigon insignia.
And yet, yet he had believed.
Oh, he and his friends, what fools they had been! So eager to join and do their part to save the world.
It had not lasted long, the deception crumbling under the weight of so many dead, and the burnt villages the true fanatics left in their wake.
And so, he now acted. Bodies of so-called “comrades” lay broken around him, caught unawares by his actions.
Perhaps, through this, this first step down the path to heal the damage they had done to the world, he’d earn some redemption.
Now, Alder awaited, and with him, a better world.
ID: 7
Username: [Redacted until voting finishes]
Title: To Draw Blood From Steel
Flannery blinks up at his approach, and ponders slugging an ex-Champion across the jaw. It’s only the ensuing split-second of consequence weighing that lets Steven choke out his unwelcome words.
“And I wish he could have lived to bring even a fraction of that brightness to a world in such desperate need of it. Fino was the heart of Hoenn, a truly wonderful man, a-and it’s our responsibility to keep striving in his memory … despite that it seems bleak, like the sun won’t shine properly again...” He stumbles and stutters through the speech with fists clenched so tightly they tremble, retching the words into being. Their misshapen familiarity resounds with her, and she’s halfway to shouting at him to leave when the realisation hits like a dagger.
It buries deep, twists mercilessly, and out of the wound is torn the last of her strength, falling to her seat as Steven drops to kneel before her with bone-white knuckles. “And you deserved to hear that from me. Not Metagross, not there. I’m sorry I couldn’t honor him properly, Flannery. I’m such… I’m so…”
Flannery throws her arms around his shoulders, and only then does the Champion finally weep in earnest.
ID: 10
Username: [Redacted until voting finishes]
Title: I’ll make my heaven to dream upon the crown
The camera zoomed in on the newly-crowned Champion’s proud grin, buoyed by deafening cheers.
A cold-faced man silently sneered at his television, before he suddenly clutched his right shoulder. Grimacing, he reached for his painkillers with his trembling left arm.
The physical pain, like jagged glass carving his flesh, dulled eventually; but frustration and humiliation that long burned in him still choked his throat. He too had dreamed to wear that legendary crown; before his team’s strength proved lacking, before his body's weakness proved permanent.
The powers-that-be wouldn’t allow a hateful creature like him to clamber onto the throne... but he could seat a pliant puppet on it, he mused, glancing at the invitation to her Cabinet lying on the table. This narcissistic fool was so convinced of the destiny he wove for her that she followed his every word faithfully. She’d even spark war unprompted, considering the rant on "making Unova great again" grating at his ears.
All according to plan. The Champion's left hand, an unassuming bureaucrat, will soon command Unova's elite to sacrifice themselves. On the altar of his ambition. For the glory of his empire.
That thought made a cruel smirk bloom on Ghetsis’ young face.
ID: 11
Username: [Redacted until voting finishes]
Title: Light in the Darkness
Aron’s world was darkness.
He didn’t mind. The Big Ones watched over him and showed him the songs of the stone, softer than sound but vibrating through everything. The Big Ones showed him how to sing back so the stone would help him when he needed it. But most of all, they showed him how to find the light.
Together they listened for the purest notes, sung by the light hidden deep within the stone. They said they were the Big Ones, the Bright Ones, because they found the light and took it into themselves, wearing it as armor. It was their job to bring light to the darkness, to stand firmer than stone. Now it was Aron’s job too.
Then they left. And while the songs stayed, while Aron could still find the pure notes and become brighter, everything seemed a little darker than before.
Until something new lit the darkness. The Tall-Soft one surrounded by strange Big Ones, who shone with a different light than the ones Aron knew. The Tall-Soft one offered him something he’d never dreamed of: a world beyond the darkness.
Aron’s world became light. He would have to grow much brighter to match it.
ID: 15
Username: [Redacted until voting finishes]
Title: Desire
Awake, I sleep. Swaddled by their corpses. Desire outlives them all. Empty sockets do not stare, yet I hear them plead.
“Save me! ”
“From my enemies! My obligation! My loneliness! From Land and Sea!”
Every bone, hollow and brittle. Every sinew, shrivelled and dry. I remember them all. I know who you are, what you desire of me.
“Free me!”
“From my obsessions! My hunger! My weakness! From our slumber!”
I love you as a child loves a parent.
I trust in you.
I love you as a parent loves a child.
To protect you brings me joy.
A child steps onto children's bones to call my name. Why is he afraid?
“I have something for you.”
Thoughtful child. I want for nothing, but you give. This is love. Pure and true. To put another before oneself.
“I have a lot of stories.”
I already know your stories, Ash Ketchum. I dream your dreams. I sing the song of your heart. Stay with me and live in bliss. I desire your comfort. Wish upon me and I will save you. I will save your family. I desire this for you, because I love you.
It is as simple as that.
ID: 16
Username: [Redacted until voting finishes]
Title: After.
Immortality grasped by temporary desire. A spark, brilliant, bright and blinding to the very gods above kept the night at bay, burning at mortality for a chance to persevere beyond, a stark defiance.
Never forget what they built.
Burn away the corruption, those that threaten that which he built. Those that spit upon his grave and threaten thrones upon his bones.
Committed to memory, from memory to action.
A flickering flame of iced fire, bound by chains soaked in blood of those who came before, for those who would come after.
The shadows of dark days stained the walls but not his eyes.
Everchanging fire, clearing the overgrowth for newer seeds to thrive. The world renewed in that cleansing flame, torn from darkness and into the light.
And yet. They preserved. Cooled the procession of the universe, the progression of time. A frozen moment.
What was there left of him after a thousand years?
The separation between life, and death. A single breath to die and be born anew.
Had his vision ever truly been?
Perhaps. It had come time to burn again.
To change.
To breathe.
Her brother in stone lit a beacon, and she followed.
To live again.