[ti]solo[/ti]STARLESS

Bergamot Gristleborg stood on the precipice, like so many who had come before her. The gulf yawned like an empty eye socket, black as ice across a frozen lake. Dark as always, save for the faint, soap-bubble sheen that marked the entrance portal to the Dream World.

"If we wait for night, the stars will be reflected on the surface," Bergamot said to the egg. "...or maybe not. I came here in winter last time, and I suppose that doesn't happen anymore." Not since the Endless Night had lifted. How many years had it been now since that fateful solstice?

The egg was not in her arms like an infant, but sitting on the ground next to her. Some might say as equals. Some might say it was more like a spare suitcase. Its blueish surface was obscured at the moment, though there were times whole galaxies spiraled across the shell. A few white specks peeked out as the villainess watched, as if stars were just appearing through a gap in the clouds.

Morgana knew that there was a different world in the Precipice Shrine's belly, a world she had once descended into on a staircase carved of stone. A world, or maybe the absence of one. Wasn't that what a dungeon was? A perfect alignment, a once-in-a-lifetime chance never to occur again.

During the event they had unlocked a "bonus round", a Wheel of Fortune as brutal as it was bountiful. They had torn stars from their companions to make that dream a reality. One prize door on the wheel had never opened-- since UNOVRCon, the rumor was that that unclaimed Cosmog had been the one who got away.

She touched her lips. She'd tasted starfire, and heartsblood. She'd slain Celine for a chance at escape, torn out the last light in her eyes, and the celebrity had still sacrificed herself to save her.

Go on, she'd said.

"I suppose it's time for a lecture," Bergamot said. She was strangely subdued, as she often was when she was by herself. No Pokémon. No audience. Just herself, the void, and The Egg. "You're from this place, in a way. I suppose we both escaped, and that makes us connected."

"But people died to get me out. Your conscience is clear." The villainess didn't budge. She didn't close her eyes. Her gaze was steady, flintlike. "She was just a celebrity Pokemon pun made of metaphorical stardust. But she's gone, and I'm still here."

Saying "it's just a game" now rang false in every way. Why was that where she should draw the line? Just because Celine Dionyx wasn't hers, wasn't even a distinct Pokémon NPC? Because she was probably just a redundant part of her subconscious taken shape? Was that any reason not to still be shaken, more than a year after she'd felt the world fade to black and died in UNOVR for the first time?

Chryssa didn't believe in any one reality. All other lives were equally insignificant to her. Expendable. Sacrificial. People, Players, NPCs, Pokemon, apparitions, plot devices. The only thing she could know was real was her own experience--perhaps that's why she valued her life so intensely. It was also the reason she tested it so rigorously. When you wanted to know where your world ended and another's began, you had to push your consciousness to its limit.

"Do you want to go?"

Her voice was quiet. Hard. Eyes gray as ghosts, as stone, as fading starlight. The cheerful pink flowers that ringed the Precipice Shrine had grown cold and still as granite, their colors paled. Petrified.

Like skipping a stone across a pond, she moved; first a step, then as raindrops on pavement, one after another.

She knew no Starcatch waited for her and the egg on the other side, no other universe, no secret dungeon. Only a kingdom of dreams, ruled by a bird with a beard and the game's little sister.

But how different could they be?