Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Hands of Creation

Chapter 100- The World's Eyes

33. Badly injured. Consciousness fading.

89. Three mutants laying waste to Milli Town. Abandoned. Seven casualties. Three saved, four dead.

1. Continue duties as normal. Requesting status report from 44 on northern vortex.

44. Northern vortex is stable. Dark Matter does not appear to be active.

1. Requesting report from 23 on Lugia.

1. Requesting report from 23 on Lugia.

1. 23?

52. 23 is unconscious at sea. Rescue?

1. Let it die. Continue duties as normal.

Hecto sighed and brightened his red eye, returning his attention to the surrounding aura sea. Roughly a tenth of his copies had been killed during the sudden crisis, which was a serious uptick in deaths compared to his usual casualty rate. A decimation. Most of it was due to the mutants, but the few Zygarde assigned to Lugia had all slowly perished. Those memories were not pleasant to recall.

That wasn't all. Most worrying was how empty the aura sea had become. The passage of spirits from the living world to beyond had been interrupted.

Hecto stood in the now lightless void that was once the glimmering aura sea. All Guardian realms were under attack or disappeared completely, though thankfully those who remained alive were able to fend off the wraiths.

But the likes of Owen, Enet, Gahi, and Eon, whose realms had completely disappeared from the aether, Hecto was less optimistic. He did not know where their spirits went, but it was not across the sea.

Where were they?

Arceus theorized that Dark Matter was taking them, somehow. And if so, to where?

Even more worrisome was that any attempts to locate Step were met with death. He supposed being Ground-Dragon did not help matters, but being in the path of destruction of mutants as the Ice Guardian hunted them down was not easy. Only once did he get injured by Step's residual attacks, but the mutants, who were openly hostile and berserk, possibly agitated by Step's own aura, were much more lethal.

More memories he preferred to not recall.

When mutants died, they did not go to the aura sea for long. Their spirits were tied to Quartz and the Reincarnation Machine. Hecto did not remember how such a machine came into Eon's possession and that irritated him, too, but that was not relevant at the moment. There was something more troublesome.

There had not been a single new incubation since Dark Matter's attack.

The implications were very inconvenient.

More inconvenient was being unable to reach Step to deliver this news in a timely manner. She was ignoring everyone, and traversing the spirit world was dangerous with wraiths out and about. His individual fragments were not powerful. He was meant to watch the world with his hundred pairs of eyes. But perhaps it would be appropriate to gather himself, should his actual power be needed...

Not yet. He had more use spread thin.

1. Requesting report from 62.

62. Nearing Yotta Outskirts. Parts of the forest are frozen over. It is not due to incoming winter cold.

1. Continue following the path. Use caution. Shout if you must if you get close.

62. There are others. The town is populated.