This world is inhabited by creatures that we call pokemon. People and pokemon live together by supporting each other, but now the scourge threatens the safety of the entire region. Kohaku has become a dangerous place, where children stay at home and only brave souls go adventuring.
Welcome to KOHAKU. Come for the nightmares. Stay for the tea and crumpets.
The season is SUMMER. It is easy for survivors to forage for food from the land, as there are entire abandoned farms ready for harvest. On the downside, you can smell the corpses.
swarms
GRAND OPENING !
Welcome to KOHAKU REGION's grand opening! If you're interested in joining, come check out our grand opening giveaway!
Batin didn't think, didn't plan, didn't dwell endlessly over possibilities. He reacted, he was constant motion.
He did not spend time in the Library of Lost Things, digging through Kohaku's secrets for answers to questions he didn't know how to ask.
Perhaps that was why he couldn't find any. Or perhaps it was the fact that the Land seemed to have turned upon him, in wake of his kidnapping Neo.
Either way, he was having no success. Flipping through the latest book he had pulled off the shelf, he tossed it over his shoulder and ripped another off the shelf.
Ethan never asked questions. He demanded answers, wanted reasons, sought closure wherever he could find it. But he found none, and his requests always fell on deaf ears. Perhaps that was why he ended up in the Library of Lost Things more times than not, each time staying a little bit longer than the rest. He wondered, if he was a lost thing, did that give him the right to belong among the books, be a part of the Library itself?
Today was different. Many times it was him, Azazel, and a pile of books that he would read and search through until the blood red clouds bled into black. Today, he roamed around the shelves of books and found himself facing the back of a man he hadn't met before, but felt he might as well start. After all, he wasn't planning on leaving yet, he'd only just arrived.
A book landed by his feet. Aiden picked it up and tilted his head, even though he knew the man couldn't see him do so. "Are you looking for something in particular?"
To be honest, Ethan wasn't sure he could really relate to this man. There were answers that he was looking for, too, but he had only one, impossible question whose answer continued to elude him, time and again.
"And why would you say that? Is there something that makes you doubtful of these questions?"
Maybe they could help each other out, since the Library of Lost things had bore no fruit for his endeavors, thus far.
Aiden didn't know. Ethan didn't know, either. He tilted his head sideways and twisted his lip to one side, deep in thought.
"Because...because of the way I see the world? Those that are the most disconnected from humans should be able to understand the virus - and the scourge - the best. Isn't that what it wants? A strong belief in its purpose?"
"Of course not." His lip curled into a pout. "The virus wants something better than this world, and it needs our help to get to that end goal. Maybe it desires death. Maybe destruction, too. Maybe both are necessary to achieve a state of rebirth, and that's what it really wants."
Aiden scrunched up his eyebrows. He felt like he was taking a particularly hard test.
"A world better than the world we always knew," Batin said. "That's very romantic. We'd have to climb over the bodies of thousands to get there, of course. But romantic. Romantic stories always had a certain kind of flair about them."
Batin decided he quite liked him. He had always liked vision. Maybe that was why he was so fond of EOS.
"I apologize," he said. "I've been quite rude to you. My name is Batin. May I ask yours?"
Something in Aiden's face darkened, he scowled and narrowed his eyes and stared at the floor, but only for a moment. "I understand that." He muttered, rocking on his heels. "It's worth the end result, or so I believe, anyways. If we ever end up getting there."
Maybe he was just chasing an illusion after all, maybe not. It was worth the risk. "My name's Aiden, sir. I visit here a lot." He tilted his head sideways. "I've never seen you around, though."
"I spend little time in the Land of Nightmares," Batin said. "And less in the library. The waking world is what I love, and where I can be found, for the most part. You may have heard of me by a different name however. I was once Zahir, and there are some agents who knew him still."
If it rang a bell, it was faint and unintelligible. "The name doesn't sound familiar, sorry." Aiden shook his head. "I haven't met many agents. The only one I know of is a woman with a mamoswine." And even so, they'd only made eye contact, nothing more. Perhaps it was becuase he spent a lot of time in the land of nightmares. The real world was ugly and uninteresting.
"So Batin is your alias, sir? Did eos discover your true identity?"
"Physis? That's logical. She certainly does get around. Busy like a bee, that one."
He shook his head.
"Batin is not an alias. Batin is who I am. Zahir used to live here--" he gestured to himself. "--but he's a passenger now. I'm someone else than who he was."
"Oh, is that what she goes by? I didn't catch her name before we had to go our separate ways. Are you friends with her?" Everybody needed friends. People like them were sparse and unwanted in the world, so it was natural to make acquaintances with those under similar circumstances.
"You talk about your body like it's a house." Aiden frowned. "Aren't you both one and the same? Zahir is just another name, isn't it?" He wasn't sure he understood.
"I'm not Zahir. He wasn't just another name for who I am. He was another person. But you're right; think of what you see when you see me as a house. Someone else owns it now, entirely separate from Zahir."
Batin didn't think, didn't plan, didn't dwell endlessly over possibilities. He reacted, he was constant motion.
