RITES: Summoning rituals performed by heralds in the past
ARTIFACTS: Griseous Orb, Spectre Plate, Distorted Stone
HERALD: Volo, Cyrus (both past heralds)
giratina is the eldest of the creation trio, first molded from the nothing that surrounded arceus to create a No-Space for palkia to begin their work. in order for Something to exist, there must first be Nothing.
it is a manifestation of the opposing forces of arceus, in order to balance creation at the beginning of things. it was initially tasked with slowing the growth of these new gods and their powers, before the distortion world began to rapidly form and eat at the edges of the material world.
manifesting in the material world causes the world to unravel around giratina wherever it tries to exist, unless it is holding the griseous orb. the distortion world destroys any part of the material world that it touches, causing it to shed into scales of darkness that are then drawn into the distortion world.
if manifested without the griseous orb, giratina is bound to the ground in its altered forme + often appears shrouded entirely in shadow, as exposure to the material world without its artifact is detrimental to its health.
heralds of giratina often seek it for their own gains, affected by an obsessive need to find and summon giratina to the material world. often, this obsession overlaps with an obsession with arceus -- giratina, as the first creation of arceus, is metaphysically close to their creator.
despite its domain, giratina bears little to no ill will to the world. instead, it is intensely curious and delighted by the place it cannot be, and is often spotted peering into the world through the reflective surfaces that serve as portals into the distortion.
any depictions of evil intent from giratina are from moments where it is under the command of humanity with evil intentions.
if manifestations of giratina begin around someone, it has taken a personal interest in their existence and is attempting to observe them even closer.
(snaps a selfie with giratina without permission) this is gonna look SO DOPE on my insta >:)
the picture is a little fuzzy, but you can clearly see an ENORMOUS face peeking over iono with such curiosity. mortals were often seen with little devices for capturing images, and while the lake trio were very shy about being photographed, giratina did not seem to mind.
the photo would never appear in focus, with a distinct distortion to the image, but the red eyes are unmistakable.
I pray you’ve found some peace since before. I’m sorry for what had happened .
I AM SORRY IT HAD TO HAPPEN.
the voice rumbles softer than most would think, lifting from beneath Riley's feet. there is a crackle to it, distorted from Beyond as the Great Old One speaks.
I DO NOT WISH TO BE A TERROR. I WISH ONLY TO DO MY PART.
there is the feeling of a claw touching riley's shoulder, pushing him forward, before it speaks again.
YOU ARE WELCOME IN MY DOMAIN. I WILL ENSURE NO HARM COMES TO YOU, SHOULD YOU SEEK IT.
Does Giratina have an opinion on those who view it as an "evil" entity?
it makes it a little sad, but it also understands why people see it as that. it's something terrifying for humanity. it's The Dark, the Madness, the End. it's an eldritch creature that is hard to understand and it's easy to mark something as evil when you don't understand its necessary purpose.
sometimes people use this perception to their own gain, and the madness that giratina can cause in people does further this idea if it takes particularly intense people as its herald.
it definitely also stems from people who view arceus as an Ultimate Good, rather than a focused observer, and thus view the opposite as an Ultimate Bad.
Non-human view of its own role in the four pillars of creation.
giratina was created as the first of arceus's pillars, and i think not even intentionally created. arceus made Creation, and from that rose the opposite - an emptiness for that impulsive creation to expand into while having a barrier to keep it from being too extreme.
giratina is an aspect of Nothing, which is why the world unravels around it when it crawls into the material world. it made the space for palkia to manipulate and the end point of the time that spawned dialga.
it recognizes its place as necessary in the four pillars, but that doesn't make it less lonely. it is, ultimately, an endpoint and thus is destined to be alone at some point in an unfathomably distant future. it has both accepted this and desperately seeks to look upon and interact with other creatures to soothe that horror.
(cyrus might be there with it now. im not sure how much protection or immortality that its heralds get, but it might choose heralds to have someone at the end.)
The world rumbles beneath your feet. The source is well-known to you, in the depths of Turnback Cave. The shadows here grow thick even in torchlight, bouncing in strange movements that evoke the sense of something walking alongside any traveler that ventured within.
In the deepest depths of the cave lies a pool of still, black water. The air is still - not stagnant, but still, like someone holding their breath. The silence is broken by a ripple in the water, echoing deep sounds like whale song beneath the earth.
A single, enormous eye opens on the water, turning it to burning scarlet.
YOU COME HERE AGAIN.
The great labyrinth of Turnback Cave was deeply intimate to him, as if he were navigating his own body-- tracing along visible veins, these twisting paths were no longer a means of fooling his senses. Volo could traverse this route blind, if need be, after all of the times he has made this pilgrimage. Through the dense fog, past crumbling pillars who's stone masons and architects had long become dust to the earth again, he finds himself in the deepest depths of the subterranean chamber, standing before the pool of black ichor.
Giratina's voice envelopes the herald's senses entirely, that primordial bellowing filling his ears and hitting his chest like a quake of the churning mantle beneath earth's crust.
"I come when I'm drawn to do so, hasn't it always been like this?" Volo asks, bringing himself down to one knee, an arm draped over the other one.
That kindly smile that Volo always donned remained a part of his visage for a moment, until his features relax into something more focused and neutral.
"I've been troubled with nightmares, recently. Horrible ones. I need you to help me decipher what they're trying to tell me," Volo requests.
His herald. His tether to the world beyond his prison plane of madness. Volo drops to one knee before him, reverent and wonderful as always, and the eye closes for the shadows to shift overhead.
The serpent emerges from the waves, cloaked in shadow except for the burning red of its eyes, and drags itself to the edge of the pool to look at Volo more closely. The world shimmers, stress fractures forming in the space around it.
The shadows flake off and dissipate into Nothing. Giratina rumbles another whalesong tone as it speaks.
DREAMS. I KNOW SOME THINGS ABOUT DREAMS. IT IS THE DOMAIN OF MY MORTAL BRETHREN.
Its words conjure shapes of crescent moons and quiet singing in Volo's mind, before it fades away. There is curiosity in Giratina's movements, a tilt of its head. Another shadow flakes into Volo's vision.
The drone of soft growls and cries drum up louder than her echoing footsteps. Those that had given up waiting, this is their legacy, to be wraiths and fingerprints of who they once were. Giratina had been witness to their attempt at fleeing their own doom, only to cast themselves into the waiting jaws of an eternal torment. It makes sense why they could only ever find pieces of this city. Some of it had been spirited away to this no-space.
Gaburias snarls as the echoes of the things that shouldn't be start up from the crowded streets. There were symbols championing gladiators carved into the now golden walls, absolutely ancient hopes and dreams. It's what made her stop last time, because the mundane-ness of it made her eyes water in sympathy.
Gaburias snarls, and chomps at a long, shadowed limb that extends towards Shirona. The limb splits into two and disintegrates with a moan from whatever spawned it. The dragon's much more prepared now than she was last time, alert and moving her electricity sensing hammer head back and forth as she stuck close to Shirona.
"The power of desperation... Is desperation in your portfolio then, Old Friend?"
It is. She knows it is. If it was not, there would not be a man with a funny hat, and she would not have been set on a path to greatness. She didn't know if Mr. Ginkgo had plans for her, or if there was a plan.
IT IS IN MY NATURE TO INSPIRE DRIVE IN THOSE WILLING TO LISTEN. OFTEN, ONLY THE DESPERATE LISTEN.
often. sometimes the one who listens is curious and cunning, and that one is who walks these sacred streets again. her monster snaps a shadow in two, leaving it to be swallowed by the small serpents that gather in her wake as she quickens her step.
the things that begin to follow her in the streets look at first like great stone pokemon, their hides carved with sigils of the ancient people that once thrived here. they lived, stories say, as guardians of this space. they wail and thrash now, their charges long dead or asleep or mutated into the other things stalking her.
those are the source of the warbling cries that echo so loudly. they look like they might have been human once, twisted by the shadows until they stand tall and pale, dragging arms like long imperial sleeves behind them as they follow the pinprick point of life that swelled from its herald.
her monster snarls and it raises its great head once more, peers over the edge of the city to extend one enormous claw to her.
on the ruby claw of it was a small, inky stone.
HOLD THIS, AND STEP THROUGH SHADOW IF YOU NEED. IT WILL TAKE YOU QUICKLY AND LEAVE YOU INSUBSTANTIAL TO THEIR HARM.
She turns with the great monster, looking at the tower in the heart of the city. It is much taller than anything else, the exact geometry of it shifting and twisting in the sunlight. The rampart-like roofing along the spine of it bounced light in complex directions. While it was a marker, it constantly switched its position in space... and time.
This place certainly was a city of conjunction as well as on the very fringes of time and space.
"Yes. I remember the way."
The eerie quiet that follows partners with the sun. As before, she didn't have much in the way of time here, not to get what she came for. Shirona held up a single finger, wagging it in the cloudy air.
"Well, anything worth doing is worth doing at least four times, however, I'd like to get it in a simple two. I think I got it this time. Gaburias will not be caught unaware by those memories."
She did turn on her heel, watching the dark patterns in the bricks slowly begin to follow her footsteps.
"The ancient Celestican people having the power to create something like this..."
She had precious few theories on the subject, and Mr. Gingko did not have answers he either remembered or even knew in the first place. She had exhausted her typical research avenues. The only way forward was through.
"Through" was her footsteps echoing down the street of the suspended city. She pressed a button on her belt, and Gaburias erupted from it, already hunched, bladed arms forward and deep growl emanating from her. As the buildings began to populate the streets, she counted her paces, and pressed her palm against a wall that began, jutting out from a completely separate structure.
Follow the wall to the tower, no matter where that wall went.
time and space. things that existed separate and yet were only whole together. it thinks of its kin: great empty space and great ticking time and their endless feuds.
if one listens close, they can hear the beating pulse of palkia's heart here - or they can hear the ever present tick of dialga's presence. this was made with their powers, if not their knowledge. (they make many things without thinking about it.)
the ancient people who do still sleep here are swaddled in shadows. those same shadows dog shirona's steps as she begins walking, leaping as tiny serpents from the darkness between the bricks and the space of her shadow in the false sun.
the great darkness itself swims beneath the city, carving a golden path through the abyss as it follows so very slowly. it is attached to this one, it seems, as it has been attached in the past.
the city shifts, but if she remembers the way, then the way will be there. the stones groan, like trying to turn in their sleep, and the wall guides her past statues of ancient monsters and the people nestled in their claws.
perfect balance, some might say. a city held in perpetual dreaming, until such a time that the dream would end. giratina imagines the cities in its domain were like this before ruin fell to them.
there are footsteps here, though - monsters that were once people and people who were once monsters. in a time long past, people weren't so different from pokemon. they lived in harmony alongside one another, until a great ending was foreseen.
then, they began to build.
THE ANCIENT PEOPLE SAW RUIN AND WISHED TO FLEE. IT IS THE POWER OF DESPERATION THAT BREEDS THE GENIUS OF THIS CITY.
The sound that it makes rolls through her bones in a way that inspires real terror and awe. When they say such things like a body breaching the sky are eldritch, it is because there were no words to describe the emotions watching the tendrils of darkness rise out of the below and just get bigger, and bigger.
There's no real end to this creature. Not here.
A voice filled her head, at first, in old, old language, and then molded and shifted until it was something understandable and harmonizing.
Cynthia rose a hand above her eyes, shielding them from the gleam off the metal of the beast as it reflected the light of the sun that did not actually exist.
"Yes," she said, her fear melting into the familiar calm of wanting to look and know, "Yes, I have. I've come back to collect what I had found earlier. A mercurial basin, with your blessing of course."
Her voice was so small compared to the entity she had the privilege of beholding. Giratina, the banished one, the destroyer and balance keeper.
It is dangerous here. Very dangerous. The shades and horrors of this place had forgotten themselves and their original shapes, and floated half mad through the space, and indeed, would kill her if she did not keep her wits about her.
A difficult thing to do with all of the narrative carved in the place.
Cynthia straightened her coat against the pressure of the rising wyrm.
"If you recall, I had limited time last time."
She couldn't dislodge the basin from its pedestal in time. The monsters that had chased her through this place had caught up to her. She had to recall out of the impossible city with Spiritomb's assistance.
this place was not the distortion of its domain, but it was a place ancient enough for giratina to reach into without unmaking it wholly. the shadows cling to it, making it appear as if the darkness is moving between the shining gold, and it lifts its head to peer at her with eyes fathomless deep and burning red.
the people here await something. time has erased that purpose down to the act itself: they wait, and do little more. those who do not wait do not remain themselves.
DO YOU REMEMBER THE WAY? EVEN IF YOU REACH IT, THE CITY WILL NOT STAND TO LOSE A PIECE OF ITSELF.
it turns slowly by virtue of its size, looking into the distance. there is a tower in the center of this city, pointed as a spear to the heavens, acting as the only true landmark in the space.
the howling dies away, but that does not mean it is gone. only that it is doing what things here do best: waiting.
the basin, it remembers, shines like silver and bears ancient writing on the edges of it. in times past, it was used for all manner of work: scrying, invoking visions of grandeur and crafting marvelous items.
once upon a time, an orb of lead lay within it. when removed, it had turned to gold in the palm of a magician.
in the right hand, the gold would turn to platinum.
I CAN ONLY ACCOMPANY YOU FROM AFAR. MY REACH IS LIMITED WITHOUT TRAPPING YOU WITHIN THESE WALLS.
There is a deep rumbling under her feet, like whalesong in the dark...
Her feet stopped on the golden brick of the causeway when she heard it, an impossible sound below the spiderwebbing roads hanging in mid-air.
In this place, the unknown float around, listless, some sleeping and most without perception or direction through a rolling, golden mist. The sun here is an artificial one, radiating light to illuminate the final construction of a bygone age.
Below it, far below the clouds and these impossible structures, the geometry of them wilted and distorted, and beyond that was darkness that filled her with as much curiosity as it probably did the old architects that conceived this place. The architects she imagined, also looked at that yawning dark below her black boots with the most pure fear that ever could be felt by anything with a mind.
There's a flicker of fear, as much as there is the fear of getting lost as she knelt over the precipice of the completely alien road simply floating in the impossible sky and looked down.
Cynthia pulled the majority of her hair back, twisting it into a rough shape and re-tying the ornamented band into it.
She stuck her fingers into her mouth and whistled, loudly in response.
the sun that shines here shines of the accord of ancient whims, because the people had demanded a sun - and so they were given it. they demanded a space to save them from something inevitable, and they were given it.
all things come with a price, they say, and that price drifts through endless darkness in the abyss beneath their feet, singing of the day it would eclipse that sun and draw them back into primordial, whimpering blackness.
the people who once walked the golden streets knew fear in great measure. fear of the unknown, of the unbending dark, and of the unfortunate future that awaited them.
the one who walks there now knows fear, but also curiosity. it is a familiar feeling to the one that swims in the abyss, the burning urge to see and learn and know. she is familiar to it in the same way the rain is familiar to a flower.
she whistles and it sings back. the noise is too low to be called anything but a rumble, the bellow of something ancient and lonely. the sound announces the arrival of it, enormous golden ribs and six claws of shadow that part the darkness below like a whale breaking the surface.
YOU HAVE COME BACK, it says. VERY FEW WHO KNOW THIS PLACE COME BACK. IT IS DANGEROUS.
indeed, it was dangerous. whatever lay within, human or pokemon or other, howled loud enough to fill the streets with sounds enough to make your skin crawl.
