Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Hands of Creation

Chapter 129 - New Home

Diyem shook his head. "Perhaps she is hiding on purpose. Or perhaps someone is holding her captive. Or any number of things like that."

"But she's alive."

"She must be."

"She's not... just... gone, right?" Owen asked, cold dread filling every part of him at the prospect.

Again, he shook his head. "Every soul is cursed with immortality. It, like the memories tied to them, are eternal. I have tried to defy this. Believe me."

Somehow, Owen could. Perhaps this, with everything he knew of Diyem, was a truth that proved itself.

"So, if you can't destroy a soul, you can hide one, or seal it, or..."

"Or make them forget, for a time," Diyem completed, "much like your fate."

More silence. Owen wasn't sure what kinds of questions he could ask. Should ask.

"Where is the part of her in the Voidlands?" Owen asked. "You must know where—"

"I do not," Diyem said. "I only know that she escaped it, somehow."

"Then she's... she survived leaving the Voidlands? I thought people who did that... burned away and returned here."

"She was able to sustain herself." He frowned, as if pensive. "I don't know how."

Or he was choosing not to tell him, but... No. He'd have no reason to withhold that at this point.

Owen noticed that Diyem was starting to fade out. They were out of time.

"...That's all, huh?"

"I need to recover my strength."

"...I have to deal with Alexander now, don't I?"

"You do."

"I'll hang in there."

"What is your plan?"

"Watching and waiting," Owen said. "My friends... won't be sitting still. I'm going to wait for them."

"After what you learned about their past?" Diyem asked skeptically. "Demitri, Mispy, and Gahi betrayed you utterly."

"They did," Owen replied. "...But I had betrayed them, too."

"For what you considered to be the right thing to do."

Owen stared, frowning. "And they thought the same, right?"

"Tch... Only one of you can be right, at most."

"At most," Owen echoed, mostly to himself.

He was taking this very well, and Owen knew it. Because he simply did not have the time nor energy to try to reestablish who his enemies were, who his friends were, or what halves of his friends were one or the other. To him, he had too little information. And he would just block it out until he had time alone to think. And meditate. Until then, they were still his friends. That hadn't changed.

Besides, it didn't really matter until they were in danger of reuniting, right?

"...What matters is they'll try. We can talk about the rest of it... later."

Diyem rolled his eyes, and that was the last he'd seen of him before his presence disappeared from the forest.

After what felt like reliving his whole life as Wishkeeper—that whole millennium and then some—it was finally time to wake up and face the present.