Kingdom Calendar, Year 153, Month 6.
Slumbering Town, the lord's main hall.
Nearly two months had passed since Lucien first arrived in the Galar Region. He set down the latest letter from Elif and looked up at Chelsea.
"What is the Galar Royal Family doing?"
Chelsea reported quickly. "Your Majesty, news of Slumbering Town has spread throughout the entire Kingdom. Citizens from other cities are arriving in a steady stream, hoping to settle here.
The Royal Family has responded by cutting taxes in various regions, opening granaries, and distributing food. They have not attempted to stop the people from coming."
"A sensible choice," Lucien said, without particular surprise. "It seems Paty IV is sharper than he first appeared. If the Royal Family had continued managing things the way they always had, it would only have accelerated things on our end."
He leaned back slightly, thinking it through.
The Galar Royal Family reducing taxes and opening granaries was a response to pressure, not a change of heart. And that pressure came entirely from comparison.
The moment ordinary Galar citizens heard about Slumbering Town, the question that would form in their minds was unavoidable: we are all Galar people, so why can they eat and live that way while we cannot? That question, once it took root, did not go away.
"What should we do, Your Majesty?" Chelsea asked.
"Nothing, for now. Wait."
Paty IV was not the only power in Galar. The noble families still existed, and cutting taxes and emptying granaries meant those losses fell somewhere.
The nobles would absorb it for a time, but their tolerance had limits, and in their eyes, the common people and their serfs had always been property. The idea of treating those people as equals, of giving them food that the nobility felt entitled to, would generate friction. All of that friction would eventually land on Paty IV.
Chelsea was uncertain, but Lucien's calm steadiness was enough to settle him.
"Our next focus is Calyrex," Lucien said. "Have your merchants work their routes and gather what they can about Calyrex, Zacian, and Zamazenta. Quietly."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"One more thing." Lucien stopped Chelsea before he reached the door. "In my name, spread word about Calyrex among the people of Slumbering Town. Tell them about the King of Abundance, a being whose blessing brings fertile harvests to those who know of it and believe in it. Keep it simple. Just let the people know such a being exists."
If Calyrex's strength grew with belief and knowledge, then giving it believers was the most direct approach.
"Yes, Your Majesty." Chelsea bowed and left.
The hall was quiet. Lucien sat alone with his thoughts.
Paty IV's situation was its own problem for now, and not an urgent one. What Lucien needed to consider was the longer arc.
Even cornered opponents will fight when pushed far enough, and the Galar nobility, if pressed to the edge of what they could accept, might decide that a destructive last stand was preferable to a slow loss of everything they considered theirs.
He needed to remain in the Galar Region for the time being, close enough to respond if the situation shifted.
There was also the question of Eternatus. Its awakening was not imminent, but it was not something to ignore. Preparation now was better than crisis management later.
And before any of that, there were Zacian and Zamazenta.
The two Legendary Pokémon of Galar were said to be resting in Slumbering Weald, east of the city. Cross the open plain, climb over a range of high peaks, and you reached what the people of Slumbering Town described as a permanently fog-covered forest: wild Pokémon throughout, almost no visibility, and a reputation for being a place people entered without returning.
"Let's go," Lucien said to his Pokémon. "We're going to take a look at Slumbering Weald."
Dragonite and the others expressed their agreement cheerfully. Lucien recalled them into their Poké Balls, walked out of the hall, and mounted Kyurem.
On the streets of Slumbering Town, heads turned as Kyurem spread its wings and lifted into the air, the downwash stirring dust and flower petals across the road.
"Is that Lord Lucien?"
"He commands that terrifying Pokémon like it's nothing!"
A merchant from Hammerlocke City watched the ice-blue shape climb against the sky and shook his head with something between envy and wistfulness. "If Lord Lucien were managing Hammerlocke..."
Kyurem accelerated east, carrying Lucien over the city walls and across the wide barley fields that had replaced the wasteland outside the town.
Below, deep green plains stretched out in every direction, and ahead, a jagged range of mountains rose against the sky. Wild Pokémon moved through the mountain passes at ground level, and as Kyurem's shadow passed over them, each one went still and pressed itself into cover without making a sound.
Then the mountains fell away, and the forest appeared.
Dense, vast, and completely buried in white mist that clung close to the canopy and diffused the light into a faint, sourceless glow. From above, the whole thing resembled something sleeping: enormous, still, and carrying in its silence the unmistakable quality of something that was not entirely safe.
Slumbering Weald.
Kyurem descended to the clearing at the forest's edge and landed. Lucien stepped down and looked into the mist. Deep within the trees, something moved: a low sound, half growl and half shift of weight, mixed with the rustle of leaves in air that was otherwise completely still.
"Kyurem. Can you sense them?"
Kyurem was quiet for a moment. Then: "Two presences, deep in the forest. One carries an edge like a drawn blade. The other is heavy and settled, like something built to hold against pressure."
"Yes." Lucien had already been certain. "Zacian and Zamazenta."
Kyurem turned to look at him with a slight question in its expression.
"They are similar to Reshiram and Zekrom in nature," Lucien said. "Among the highest-order Pokémon in this region. Legendary Pokémon, in human terms."
Kyurem considered this and nodded.
"The legendary sword and shield, right here," Lucien said, and stepped into the forest.
The ground underfoot was deep with old leaves, soft and silent. Ancient trees spread their branches overhead until the sky disappeared entirely.
The deeper they walked, the thicker the fog became, and the air grew heavy with the damp smell of moss and bark and something older beneath that. Kyurem moved silently beside him.
Two auras pressed against them from within the mist, present and watchful without quite revealing themselves. One was sharp and decisive, like a blade that had already been drawn. The other was dense and immovable, like something built to receive whatever came at it.
The two forces had enclosed the clearing around Lucien and Kyurem entirely, but made no move toward them.
They've found us, Kyurem said into Lucien's mind.
Then, from somewhere deep in the fog, two sounds rose simultaneously: low and resonant, like howls shaped by something that had long ago moved beyond ordinary animal expression. Close and distant at the same time.
Lucien stopped walking.
"Zacian. Zamazenta." His voice carried into the mist without strain. "I am Lucien. We come without hostility. But I have good reason to believe that in the not-too-distant future, this land will face a crisis unlike anything it has seen before. A threat capable of bringing genuine destruction to Galar."
Silence.
The fog moved in long, unhurried drifts. The two auras neither advanced nor withdrew, as though their owners were sitting with the words, weighing them.
Then the mist brightened from within. Two auras intensified at once, and white light came through the fog in long shafts, and two large, powerful shapes moved toward them through the light.
Zacian came first. Pure blue fur, its mane flowing, white patterns across its body that looked like old scars long since closed over. Its ears were absent, replaced by something that continued down to a tail-like extension behind it. Its golden eyes were sharp, measuring, carrying in them an innate authority that did not need to announce itself.
Zamazenta came behind and to the side. Red fur, a crest of hair rising from its head, features harder than its sibling's, its shield-like face framed in fur, its long limbs planted firmly in the leaf-covered ground. Its eyes held the same cold wariness as Zacian's, but where Zacian was all edge, Zamazenta was mass and resistance.
They stopped several paces away and looked at Lucien. Then they looked at Kyurem.
The moment their eyes found Kyurem, something shifted in both of them. The cold that radiated from Kyurem's body was not aggressive, but it was deep, and the depth of it told them everything they needed to know about what they were standing near.
Both siblings went very still in the particular way of powerful things that have just recognized something more powerful.
Kyurem returned their gaze without expression.
Lucien stood quietly between them, his own presence unremarkable and human, and let them look as long as they needed to.
Zacian's voice came without sound, the way Legendary Pokémon communicated, moving directly from thought into understanding.
Outsider. What is this danger you speak of?
"Eternatus," Lucien said. "A being that fell to this land from beyond the sky, a very long time ago. It has been sleeping since it arrived. But Eternatus carries a power that can cause ordinary Pokémon to grow to enormous sizes and lose themselves to it.
If it wakes, that power will spiral beyond control, and everything living in Galar will face destruction."
His tone was plain and without performance. He held Zacian's gaze directly.
Zamazenta's brow tightened slightly.
How do you know this?
Lucien paused. "Would you believe me if I told you I witnessed it myself?"
The two siblings looked at each other. Their expressions made the answer clear.
Lucien accepted that with a small, slightly rueful expression. "Then consider this: even without my saying it, you have both already felt something. An aura. Purple, faint, pressing from somewhere beneath the land. You've tried to locate its source. You haven't been able to."
The silence that followed was a different kind than before.
Zacian and Zamazenta went still in the particular way of beings who have just heard something they already half-knew spoken aloud. The human was right. That aura had been there for a long time, somewhere beneath the surface of things, too deep and too diffuse to trace directly. It had the quality of a threat that was not yet moving but intended to.
Zacian's golden eyes settled back on Lucien.
Then why have you come here today?
"To meet you," Lucien said simply. "And to ask whether we might cooperate."
Meet... us? Both siblings showed the same faint confusion.
Lucien smiled. "I've heard stories about you for a long time. I've been thinking, since I arrived in Galar, that I'd like to find you if I could. My more immediate purpose today is a proposal."
He kept his voice straightforward. "I cannot sense when Eternatus will wake. I am not from this land, I am a king from another region entirely, and I cannot remain in Galar indefinitely. If Eternatus wakes while I am elsewhere..." He let the implication complete itself.
Zacian and Zamazenta understood. They had already felt it: the human and the Pokémon beside him carried a combined power that surpassed anything they had encountered. If they were present when Eternatus woke, the outcome would not be in doubt. If they were not, relying only on their own strength against something of that scale was a different calculation.
"I would like us to work together," Lucien said. "And as a gesture of good faith, I will forge weapons for you."
He knew what Zacian and Zamazenta were capable of. Both Pokémon could absorb metal and integrate it into their bodies as weapons for combat.
With properly made weapons given to them, and in time with Calyrex's power added to the arrangement, they would be able to move from their current forms into something altogether different: Zacian the Crowned Sword, Zamazenta the Crowned Shield.
The forms that the old stories had always meant when they spoke of a sword-bearing dog and a shield-bearing dog standing between Galar and its ending.