[ti]solo[/ti] Starcourt

Morgana reached out, a strange expression on her face.

She stopped, fingers just short of brushing the midnight shell. Indigo swirls of cosmic gas seemed to shift across its surface like passing clouds, as if it could sense the danger.

What was she doing?

What did she want to do?

End this.

The thought flickered like a distant lightning bolt. Intrusive, unwanted. Thunder followed, rumbling, whispering. Hypocrisy. Who are you to play Mother or God? Who are you to determine whether another life comes into being? For what purpose? For leisure? For self-image? For nostalgia? It wasn't enough. No reason was enough. No reason was ever good enough, would ever justify the cruelty of inflicting existence upon another creature.

Poor, wretched thing.

"I changed my mind. Let's kill it," said Morgana.

Senga hefted her hammer, interested.

"No, I changed my mind again. We can't kill it," said Morgana.

Senga lowered her hammer, disappointed.

The villainess paced around the castle room. The furniture items here were all familiar— they resembled those Chryssa had at home, in her own bedroom, in her own universe. They were far too low for her here. They were for someone much shorter, someone normally seated, someone with no need for rugs or carpeting because they would get caught on wheels; someone who spent their days watching the sky for signs, polishing silver.

"Muir, I need you."

A humanoid figure appeared as if stepping out of thin air. It was a woman—older than Morgana, perhaps in her late thirties, clad in breastplate and tabard with tassels on the sleeves. She had a thin, steely look, and bore a filigree blade at one side. Once, she had been a Honedge— Bergamot supposed she still was, save for the Noble Seal which gave her the illusion of human form.

<You let me go.>

"And you came back. I knew you'd be here," Bergamot said. She was remembering things, slowly. Things she shouldn't have been able to know. Things from other worlds, other lives, other pasts. Things reflected in the eyes of serpents, things spoken beyond iron doors. She had made someone a promise. She had left someone behind. "I left you here, didn't I? I… forgot." Had she been to the Dream World before? She must have, to find her own Pokemon here. No, not a Pokemon.

Not exactly.

"I need your help. I need to know what to do with this egg."

Muir looked at her, blue-eyed, unblinking.

"I've been trying to hatch it this whole time," Bergamot said, beginning to pace again. "Exposing it to starlight, bringing it to the Precipice Shrine. It must be close to hatching. If I tried just one more thing, I'm sure that would do it."

<You were planning the last step, then.>

"Oh, yes, I was going to do a transmutation." The girl's hand moved in the air, selecting something in her UI. The grayness in her gaze receded. "I have this new power called Alchemist—it's the Midas Touch, essentially. It transforms nonliving things into gold. I thought it would be fitting for Cosmog, since Solgaleo is an alchemical symbol."

<But an egg is not nonliving.>

Morgana turned.

"Are you sure about that?"

Her expression was masked. Delicately, like removing dead petals from a blossom, she peeled away one of her white gloves. "If it isn't, it dies," she said softly. "If it is, it may someday come to live."

Muir began to move, circling around the bed. Clear, measured, military strides. Bergamot matched her pace, circling the opposite side. <You have a theory,> the woman said, clipped. It was not a question. <Tell me.>

"Oh, it's simple enough. What has never lived cannot be killed." Bergamot's—no, Chryssa's eyes narrowed. Fervent. Fanatical. "It's the only way out of a one-way bargain. An egg is the perfect state—the perfect being. The Egg is the World. The Egg is God."

<You're losing yourself. Remember your choice. Remember the serpent.>

The girl blinked. She wet her lips with her tongue. The memory was faint, but important. "I did choose, didn't I? What did that path represent again? Choosing my reality for myself?"

<Perhaps.>

"So I can choose this reality, too."

<This is the Dream World. There is nowhere better.>

It was a difficult pill to swallow; the idea that you chose your own reality. It was defined by your decisions, your thoughts, your perspective. If she chose to be radical, to be justified, to use the Cosmog Egg in her own cosmic war against the Creator, it would become real. If she chose to relent, to relax, to give the unborn Pokemon a chance to find its own brilliance even in a world that sought to crush it, that would become real too.

Morgana thought carefully.

Then she reached out— purposeful, powerful— and touched the egg.

Nothing happened.

"You were right," said Morgana, taking her hand away. She pulled her glove back on, averting her eyes. "It's alive after all. Don't get me wrong—" the girl looked up, narrowing her eyes, "—I could still kill it. But I won't. I shan't," she corrected herself. Something was subtly changing in her. Changing back.

<Danger narrowly averted,> said Muir. <A fortunate soul indeed.>

There was no alchemy performed that night. In the back of her mind, Bergamot had decided not to take that final step. She could have done something less drastic—transmuted a piece of the nest, perhaps, or the page of a book— but she didn't. She would not be the one to propel the unborn Cosmog into UNOVR, or else condemn it. She would leave that final piece in the hands of God, or the gamemakers, or perhaps the game itself.

"Live," she said, counting the stars on the midnight shell with a golden fingertip, "Don't live."

"Live."

"Don't live."

Live…