Lyle stared at the statues puzzledly. There didn't seem to be any sort of mechanism to them at all to put in physical objects. Were they enchanted or something? Since it was hard to see how putting any sort of physical object was supposed to accomplish anything in those little trays.
Though then again, this was already a world with these mystical shadow and light powers. Who was to say that there
wasn't some sort of mystical effect to how the statues worked?
... Maybe it was reaching, but he figured that it was worth at least floating the idea.
"Could the statues be meant to react to something related to the two?" he asked. "Back in my world, we had statues like these... or at least of Reshiram. Back there, she'd sometimes be called 'Reality'..."
Lyle blinked and trailed off. He could've sworn he'd said
Wirklichkeit there, but it didn't come out that way. He supposed she was still called 'Reality' sometimes even if it didn't carry
quite the same meaning.
"Anyhow, in my world she was a goddess of truth and the way that things actually are and being able to find it and show it to others. While Zekrom was supposed to be a god sometimes called 'Wish'. A god of ideals and the things that one wished and desired to bring into being."
He pawed at the side of his head and trailed off a bit.
"I know that this is going to sound kinda stupid, but... in my world, it was tradition to leave messages with some sort of truth you normally wouldn't share with others to ask Reshiram for aid," he explained. "Maybe the statue's looking for something like that? If so, then the Zekrom one might be looking for sharing something we want that-"
Silver crossed his arms and stared intently at the two stony dragons, wracking his mind to figure out what kind of puzzle they needed to solve. As he focused completely on the white statuette, faint memories of something he saw on the news resurfaced: a white dragon circling the overtaken Unova League and breathing out a stream of blue fire. An intensely
bright blue flame.
“…Light and darkness, perhaps?” he wondered out loud, tilting his head and tapping his chin with a claw. “It’s just… they’re opposing forces with similar attributes, and you literally
can’t have one without the other. You might dim a light or brighten a shadow, but neither will truly be gone.”
He glanced at the Cyndaquil. “Lyle could light some fuel or something flammable with his fire — that could provide our, well,
light.”
Then he glanced at his claws. “As for the darkness, well…”
Silver took a deep breath, then grunted as soon as he latched onto some of his least pleasant memories: his failures.
He never d
efeated th
at dra
gon-obs
essed
Cham
pion. He ne
ver defe
ated
Hibiki.
He never destroyed Team Rocket.
Silver Focused his Shadow.
Sheer spite swirled into Silver’s mind like a ravaging storm, pumping just enough power without making him lose control, and black venom began dripping from his claws. “
We kn
ow where we
could
get so
me…”
Laura looked sidelong at Silver, her whole body tensing up and her tail thrashing.
"...I wouldn't be so sure of that," she warned. "Fire and Shadow aren't exactly equal and complementary opposites..."
That, and she wasn't too sure that whoever built this temple gave offerings of Shadow to Zekrom, assuming the black dragon was indeed Zekrom. If the receptacles could take energy, then maybe they'd need Electric-type energy...? Or maybe—
"You'd need Radiance," said a familiar voice, from behind them. A tailflame cast a long Charmeleon-shaped shadow across the room.
Laura looked back over her shoulder. "...Shira? You followed us. You're pretty stealthy for someone with a lit flame on them at all times."
Shira shrugged. "I can put it out for a minute or so at a time. It's like holding my breath." Her eyes narrowed. "You didn't tell me you were Shadow pokémon."
"We're not," said Laura, with a sinking feeling. "We just... picked it up from fighting so many of them."
More or less true. Even if the thing that has cinched it was rather more sinister. And embarrassing.
Lyle... hadn't considered the possibility of Radiance and Shadow being options at all, and honestly felt a little stupid considering how the entire Abbey they visited was all about that Radiance power.
But first things first, he had a crabby Charmeleon to settle down.
"Easy. None of us are doing anything crazy here," he said. "We're just using the means we have to try and get by in this world. It's just how things are sometimes, since we can't always do things the way we find them ideal."
Except from Laura's comment, it didn't sound like Radiance and Shadow were the things the statues were looking for either. He supposed it was worth at least
trying the fire angle since both Laura and Silver considered it, and he made his way over towards Reshiram's tray and let the fire from his vents out, just in case...
Maybe it was best to get things straight from the source here.
"Though since you're here, what
do Reshiram and Zekrom stand for here in this world? Since just from the way these statues are set out, I'm not sure if they're the same as they were in mine," he said, looking at Shira. "Are there any particular symbols or things associated with them here in Forlas?"