Heroes of Darkness

XXI

ALEXANDER

Alex couldn't sleep that night. The vision played in his mind over and over. Interchanging feelings of sadness, anger, betrayal, and relief washed over him. His aunt, the only member of his mother's family who was left, holding a poisoned dagger to his little brother's throat. If his arm hadn't have been injured, he would have jumped out of his hiding place in the grove, and told her to stop, and to demand further explanation from his aunt.

Would I have, though? He wondered to himself as he wandered down the halls of Mt. Pyre that night. It was easy to tell himself that he would have said something, that he would have stood up to those that would harm his family... but could he do it if it was his own family who held the knife? Alex wasn't sure who he was anymore.

When he exited the entrance to the mountain fortress, he turned down the same path he had followed Leo down earlier in the day, and down to the grove of trees where the confrontation had happened. Occasionally, he looked to his side for Banette, but his Spirit Pokémon was nowhere to be found.

I'm truly lost, he thought to himself.

He reached the grove and looked up at the large tree that Caitlyn had meditated in front of earlier. It brought to him a sense of familiarity, as if he had seen them before, but he couldn't remember when.

Alex gazed up at the tall trunk, leaves seemingly an eternity away as they rustled in the sky above. It helped him clear his mind, he felt. Suddenly, the words came back to him, words that had simply washed over him the first time.

Did you ever wonder how my sister died? Alex's poor mother, she had said. He had been told his whole life of the treachery of Solomon Forrest, his mother's brother who had resisted the Empress in her great Unification of the Hoenn region. He witnessed firsthand his Aunt Caitlyn's admission of guilt. However, his mother still remained a mystery to him.

Alex thought about his mother: who she was, why his father had chosen her as his bride... and then about her death. He turned back and began to trace the steps back to the arrest earlier in the day.

He found the spot where Caitlyn stood over Leo, and saw the shriveled plant life that crunched under his feet where the venom had dropped onto the ground. Seviper venom, he thought.

A tear began forming in his eye. Everything about his Aunt Caitlyn had been a lie, it seemed. Yet for some reason, his aunt's voice quietly responded to this sentiment in the back of his mind. 'And what of your mother? Is everything you know about her a lie as well?'

Alex realized it was the seed of doubt that had caused him not to sleep that night. It wasn't the betrayal of his dearest Aunt, nor the threatening of his brother that kept him up. It was the realization that someone knew about his mother, about what could possibly have happened to her.

He looked across the tree-line, the dark Shadow of Mt. Pyre loomed large. Tomorrow, there would be a trial, where his aunt would be questioned, and a jury would pass judgment, as was the custom of law. "I will ask her," Alex said aloud. "I will ask her what happened during trial." It may be the last chance to hear her side of the story, to gain any inkling of his mother, lest she be locked in a prison for information about the Draconids to be extracted from her. If there truly was no due investigation into his mothers' death, he would most assuredly open up the case.

"A little late for a walk in the woods, no?" came a soft voice, yet strong. Alex could barely separate it from the sound of the rustling leaves. He turned and saw a middle-aged man, younger than his father, but with the experience in his eyes of a much older man. His face was brown and his almond-shaped eyes seemed to pierce into Alex's very soul.