Gyuratem

The cavern was a glacier in the pit of a chasm, an Antarctic grotto which life fell short. This cavern was decidedly minuscule—not the yawning miles of tunnel in which spelunkers reveled, but an indent, a pit on the far side of an isolated valley. The ground before it was thick and rigid, being composed of minerals mixed with roots of ice, and the surrounding air stung as though one’s hide might have been torn off. Within this lethal chamber lain the creature responsible for these chilling conditions, a beast few have ventured to, and none have returned.

One pokémon would take that risk; a hexapedal, lizard-like dragon, its scales a warm shade of gray highlighted with scarlet stripes; its figure was framed by golden plates that composed of its head crest, neck casing, and feet. Black, amorphous wings sprang from its torso, tipped with similar scarlet spikes. It reached this remote rift with the intention of meeting the creature at the heart of this chill.

This pokémon did not care of the normally deadly temperature that other organisms abandoned; it trampled the permafrost under its claws and pierced past the chilled wind, ambling into the cavern. Inside, it did see what it expected to find; another dragon, lain as still as a preserved carcass, along the floor at the far end of the cave. It was withered enough that its anatomy visible was through its pale skin. What seemed like ice locked its head, chest, and tail, which grew lopsidedly; the right side of the frozen regions was much larger than the left. The only sign of life were in its blank yellow eyes, which jerked as the stranger entered.

“Kyurem.” defined the visitor. “I almost thought you were myth, seeing as I haven’t heard from you for decades, it would seem.”

Kyurem gave a dry hiss as it lurched, first craning its head up, shivering and staggering under the ice it rested in. It took a moment to observe what this pokémon was, adjusting its eyes that have not seen change for ages. Long body, six legs, gray-red-yellow coloring… “Giratina,” it deciphered, after it took time to recall.

“Yes, I am,” telegraphed the outsider, taking a short bow in the meantime. “You’re still alive after all these years, even after the legends said your life was sacrificed for the goodwill of this region.” Giratina looked at this chamber and compared it to the remaining lands it observed on this trek.

Kyurem shivered as it attempted to upright itself; the imbalanced mass of the frozen blocks on half of its body necessitated it force its poise left, to equally distribute this load. “Alive…” It twitches, suddenly distressed by Giratina’s statement. “What powers that be that I still survive after I divided myself among those two!” it swung its head rightwards, “That I still preserve some energy, some will of sorts to sustain my existence.” It swayed its head toward Giratina and unstabilized itself. “I don’t suppose you realize the cause of my depletion.” Kyurem pulled itself to relative equilibrium from the tilt.

“I know, my friend,” Giratina responded, “The original embodiment of the legendary dragons of this region, Reshiram…”

Kyurem followed along the end of the sentence, “and Zekrom.”

Giratina continued, “Instead of taking sides when those humans quarreled between themselves, you chose to appease both of them and allow the best side to triumph.” The dragon looked at Kyurem, who gave a jolt of a yes-nod. Giratina added, “Though you still remain…”

An icy gale gusted by Giratina when it said that; the dragon grimaced and looked at Kyurem, who was frustrated by this continued enlightenment. Kyurem declared, “My purpose is done—what fate I behold lies with my two counterparts.” It questioned, “Do you not see I have tried to bring death upon myself? In this detached crater, I strived to release my unneeded life, by releasing what energy was left within me. Only… only this has only brought cold to my surroundings, forsaking my time here as frozen, agonizing torture.”

Giratina sympathized, “‘The power’ that you mentioned does not treat me with mercy, either. You see, the form you see is just a distortion, a shadow of my original appearance. Arceus had positioned me to thrive in an alternate dimension; both this realm and I acted as a balancing force to the world you all know and subside in.” It gestured to its limbs to display their awkward anatomy and resumed, “I wouldn’t survive in this world in my native form, so hence this, well, altered form.”

Kyurem had faced away from Giratina, only taking a brief moment to glance at the pokémon before turning away again. “I know why Arceus has judged you so, Giratina. My condition has no resemblance. I had yearned for Arceus to send some sort of demise. Days—months?—would go by with this thought, and yet nothing would transpire.”

Giratina inquired, while pacing toward Kyurem, “Well, you say that you have no purpose to exist. That is the sole reason for your ‘yearning’?”

“Enough, enough! Let my misery perpetuate without your intrusion; my life is finished—nothing more will come out of it,” Kyurem dismissed.

“I wouldn’t say nothing is left,” Giratina said. Having walked up to right behind Kyurem, Giratina brushed one of its wisps of wings against it. “Arceus has granted you an alternate escape by my presence.”

Kyurem blinked and refaced Giratina, its yellow eyes spread wide with alacrity. The frozen dragon exclaimed, “You’ve come here to rid me of my existence?”

“Not quite,” Giratina said, “I’ll make what’s left of you a boon to both you and me.” The wing that Giratina placed on Kyurem’s back submerged into its shriveled skin.

“Then what are you doing?” Kyurem continued to ask.

Giratina did not reply immediately, though; the entirety of one of its wings was now consumed into Kyurem, and the golden bands about its neck clasped to the surface to allow the rest of its self to follow. The spectral dragon gazed at Kyurem with its intense, scarlet eyes as time lapsed. A ways through this merge, Giratina answered, “Both you and I will become fulfilled.”

“What—what does that mean?” implored Kyurem; it was frightened that this ethereal dragon, as much as a servant to Arceus as it was, was… possessing—no, fusing with it? Kyurem felt temporarily that it could not move, that it was weighed by this other being coming into its self. In fact, Kyurem’s mass expanded; instead of being shriveled as it was before, Giratina’s energy had broadened its corporeal figure and shaped it into a form the phantom dragon was accustomed to.

Its head became uniform in breadth, and a long, balancing tail jutted where its socket of a coccyx was, both gaining a serpentine flexibility. Icicles protruded through the skin at segmented intervals, as well as the head and wings, balancing the matter out and reforming them to a more graceful appearance. Kyurem found it could stand erect, no longer under its strain of moribund discharge.

Kyurem’s panic subsided under Giratina’s imposing calm; the once-lopsided dragon held realization that Giratina was giving it a fresh, separate existence; it thought—or was it Giratina’s thought?—that it could live truly in this world, rather than being forced into isolation. It was as if some new purpose had burrowed into its mind and obsessed it to thoroughly forward life.

Water thawed from the sheets of tundra that once composed of its cave thawed, causing it to dismantle into normality. The new pokémon was now alert and cautiously stepped out, birthed from its recluse into the sun of the outside world. The monotone ice which imprisoned it decayed to the verdant flora, a splendorous sight the dragon beheld with a new light. The pokémon could scarcely recollect why it remained in that impasse when it could see the world with freedom of identity and body. So, it did that, unfurling its wings and throwing itself into the skies.

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I had an idea that I would form into a drabble to go along with the sprite, and I ended up with a short story 1,337 words long (by chance!).

I must say, I think this sprite works well in idea and artistic detail. Not too confident in physical matters, though, as I had difficulty making the fusion look balanced.

Kyurem and Giratina, this sprite's components, are Game Freak's characters. I do not claim ownership by being creative with their ideas and mythologies.