The Friendly Battle & Other Pokemon One-Shots

The Walls of Khthon

Okay, so it's not that I don't love my job—

—Well, okay, I don't love my job.

Let me start again.

My job gives me a certain amount of money for a certain amount of work that is a certain amount of fulfilling. Some parts are great! Some parts are . . . this.

Some parts are camping.

"Salandit?"

"Yes, Eli?"

"How come the sky's . . . not moving?"

"Because we've gone very far beyond Khthon's walls, Eli." I can see Caitlyn give the slightest eye roll. Okay, very far is, maybe, an exaggeration when you consider how large the world is, but it's certainly very far from where I want to be for the night.

Look, I'm not going to say that kids don't need field trips. I went on field trips as a kid. I just wish that they were over now that I'm an adult. The main point of leaving Khthon like this is to appreciate how great being in Khthon is as far as I'm concerned, and while I'm sure there's no end of people could stand to think about that, I don't need the reminder!

It's easy to not pay attention. I get it, I do. It's easy to take even something as amazing as the walls for granted when you see them day in and day out, but they're beautiful the moment you stop to really look at them. The way stone of the walls, so white it practically glows, goes up and up until it touches the gentle ripples of the sky. That's the kind of thing I do love about my job—the wonder. Teaching about the glories of the world around you means you get to keep yourself open and aware of it too. It's just I prefer to keep my awareness to the wonders of modern civilization over the prehistoric wilds.

Consider the stone of the walls itself. Just gathering it was such an amazing feat! I mean, it may seem obvious to point out there's nothing like the walls of Khthon, but really, take a moment to think about just how deep that goes. Have you ever seen any stone anything like the walls around? No, you haven't. Nowhere around Khthon had this stone. It was mined out in of mountains so far off you can't even see them even if you were standing on the top of the walls! Each and every massive block was cut far away to exacting specifications, and brought in with enormous effort and coordination. A triumph of civilization.

I'm brought out of my thoughts by a return to the original topic. "Above you are the real stars!" gushes Caitlyn, who actually wants to be here. Okay, okay, she's into astronomy. Astronomy nerds are always moaning about how they can't see the sky properly in the city, and I'm glad she's pumped because someone should be. Personally, I love the city's sky, and from the slight frowns on the kids' faces, Caitlyn's enthusiasm isn't enough for them to see what's so great about this. "You said this isn't moving, Eli, and that's such an interesting observation! Our sky back home may shift around much more, but the stars, the sun, the clouds, everything you see up there is actually unmoving." She skips over mentioning Folly, the image of a flying pokemon who can also be seen up there. Bit controversial for kids so young. "They're made up of snapshots of the sky during the building of the wall. Now, the stars you see above you right now? That's what the starts look like today. That's also why they're so much brighter."

"It's not brighter!"

"We're not just calling out, Fay."

She waves two hands in the air wildly as her other four limbs drum against the ground. Spinarak, still and patient? No one who met Fay would believe that stereotype.

"Yes, Fay?"

"It's not brighter, Minccino! The sky's brighter back home!"

"Well, the black spaces aren't black back home, you're right about that! But let's look up at all those individual stars. Even though many of the stars you see up there existed back then too, some of them are very hard to see and some can't be seen at all. The projections across the city don't produce light as strong as the real stars. Now, I was talking about the sky moving. You can't tell here, but the stars move in the sky very slowly over time."

Everyone stares up.

Inevitably someone says they see it, and all of them are shouting they can see the stars moving. Caitlyn tells them the stars don't move fast enough to see, which reduces this down to mumbles about how they're sure they can.

Jake tugs at my side with his tail. "Yes?"

And I wait. Jake is slow.

Oh, I don't mean like that! 'Slow as a corsola' and all that talk—no, no. People make the worst assumptions sometimes. Just because a kid takes a while, even a long while, doesn't mean he's dumb. He just spends time thinking before he speaks, and really, more people could stand to do that! What I mean is, you know with Jakey not to assume he changed his mind about speaking, or lost his thought. He'll get there.

"It's not the sky's brighter at home because it's not the sky. It's between us an' the sky."

"Yea," manages Aimie, more of a little huff through her fangs than a proper word. She's not going to say more—usually you don't hear more from her than giggles—but I can make a guess what else she's learned already. She's a helioptile, but her father's a noibat.

"Yea," I say back with a grin. "You're both right. What you see at the top of the walls isn't the sky itself. It's a little like a windowpane."

"Rain comes through!" shouts Fay.

"Rain does come through," I agree. "Does anyone know what can't come through, though?"

"Bad people!" shout a good two-thirds of the kids.

"Right! The only way in or out of Khthon is through the gates in the walls. If any bad guy tries to sneak in by climbing up the walls or flying in, they won't be able to get past it." Well, their body might, if they fling themselves through, and if you want to get very precise, I've heard speculation that it might be possible for someone who got very lucky to still be alive after brief contact and live on for the few seconds it takes their unconscious body to hit the ground.

And that's 'Folly'. Not that whoever Folly was died in some absurd attempt at entering Khthon. There's not even evidence Folly, whoever they were, was involved at all. I mean, those revisionist things about Folly being a part of Khthon from the founding are garbage, sure, but there were plenty who were just living their lives and staying out of it. It's a persistent misconception that when we say the sky is what the sky was when the walls were built we mean literally the sky right above, but of course it's not. Really, how ghoulish it'd be if they'd been installed up there still alive. No, it's the sky above the various pools and lagoons the corsola lived in, right when they stopped being lived in.

I mean, I don't mean to say everyone uncomfortable is just misunderstanding how it happened. Some people are uncomfortable with the facts, and I don't blame them! But it was a different time back then. Hundreds of years ago, and think of how many lives have been saved in that time by making sure Khthon's walls could never be surmounted? To say nothing of how much more productive the drained land was and still is. All the people those farms feed! There wouldn't even be a city without all that.

And, well, I mean. . . It was hundreds of years ago, and they're still up there, still protecting the city. People say slow as a corsola, but corsola go beyond slow. Or went, I suppose I should say. It's just, I mean, well, it's like what they say. Fool me once, shame on you. But fool me forever. . . Well, is that anything to feel bad about, really, you know?