XXX

Before I go on, it is perhaps best that I describe here something that, if I do not, will raise many questions as to why it is not in here, especially from those who know it, and would be what I feel as a great disrespect to the person concerned.

A while before I met Multehx again in the basement archives of the Aurorium, I had befriended another mortal. She went by the name of Dragon, though her real name was Riu. She was a blue-skinned Darikuri: a race of Yoshies that had evolved wings, black-coloured eyes, and a sickle-like blade on the end of their long tails. She considered herself the last of them, until she discovered her child-like companion, DraStar. Being the last adult of her kind seemed to have an impact on her, as when I met her, she seemed to be quite lonely. Dragon grew fond of my company and over time, my impression of loneliness disappeared. Like me, she had gained friends in the pantheon, mortal and immortal alike, but it seemed to be me that she gave the greatest attachment to.

Naturally, I picked this up. Here was a chance at what I had told Nase at the Seniors’ Ball that I would not get on Fa’Diel: the opportunity to find someone to fill that hole Multehx and Ark could not. I started to feel for her, but I did not let this out to her in case I scared her away. She had put trust in me that I did not want to destroy with the words that determine so many lives.

So you can imagine my surprise when she told me that no matter how much I could be her friend and talk to her, there would be something missing from her life.

“What’s that?” I asked her.

“Someone to love,” she replied, looking at me.

It was both a feeling of relief and of having my prayers answered. Dragon had the same feelings that I had. I needed someone to love, too, and I had her. I confessed my feelings, and the two of us became boyfriend and girlfriend, falling into the intoxication of that universal need’s fulfilment.

She was amazing. Seeing her, lying with her, just being with her is something that I still cannot match. There are too many happy memories to put here – that alone would take an entire book – so I will cut to perhaps the most important two of them.

I took her to Fa’Diel a number of times. She knew about the pain of Ark’s loss and had committed herself to helping me locate him. Midsummer had hit Kippo, one of the most beautiful times of the year there. Importantly, though, the stream was at its slowest and smallest, which provided an excellent opportunity to try to get into the caves.

I flew down the hole on Nessie’s back with her beside me, then got Quake to tunnel through the hole, making it wide enough for us to crawl out of. Dragon was going to wait there for me to come back. Once I had slithered down the passage, I turned on the Boomerang’s lantern, making everything glow cyan.

The waterfall hit a fairly deep pool after it fell through the gap, so Ark would have landed fairly safely. It was that the passage also ended over, so I jumped in, and looked around once I surfaced.

Luminescent mushrooms lined the river tunnel. I followed it for some way, when I caught sight of a piece of wood sticking out of a small alcove. I grabbed it, seeing a thin string and a rusty hook at the end of it: a fishing rod. It looked handmade, out of scavenged bits and pieces. It had been covered with mud, and as it had dried, it had left the impression of three fingers and a thumb made in it.

So, if it was as crude as this, and had the appearance of being placed somewhere, and had this impression, it could only mean one thing:

Ark – had – survived!

I whooped for joy. I then caught myself as I heard it echo around. I tried calling for him for a while, but there was no answer.

I bit my lip. Ark had survived the flood, but was he still alive? I saw no bones. Perhaps he was elsewhere in the cave system, alive or dead.

“What’s going on?” Dragon called. “I’m getting cold and wet…”

It had been near sunset when I entered the cave, so I figured that I would come back another day and start mapping out the system, and try to find him.

I put the rod in my Storage, called out Nessie and got him to fly me up to the hole. I recalled him to his Pokéball and slithered back up to the last of the sunlight.

“He survived,” I said, showing the rod to Dragon. “But, I don’t know if he’s still alive.”

Although I did not have the answer I was looking for, I had part of it. Life seemed to be getting even better, and the other of the two important memories with Dragon would make this even more certain.

On our next trip to Fa’Diel, still in its summer, I took her to my special spot at the waterfall upstream from Kippo: quite easy to get to by air compared to the fighting with the logs crossing the stream. She was taken aback by its beauty – it was her first time there, since I had been saving the visit for this occasion.

“You’ve been keeping this place from me…” she said as she noticed my smile.

“Well, yes,” I answered. “I love here, but, not as much as I love you.” She sighed happily, but I continued on with, “Riu, I know I may seem to have my attention focused on finding about what happened to my brother rather than you at times, but really, you are where my love is. When I’m with you, everything seems complete.”

She smiled and hugged me, and I returned the gesture, but stepped back soon afterwards. “Let me finish,” I smiled in return, raising a finger. “You are my rose, and because you are, I cannot help but love you, and I love you even more for letting me love you. As I’ve said before, I give you my promise.” I got down on one knee. “When you are alone and your tears are flowing, I will be by your side as fast as I can. My shoulder is always free. But know that above all, I want you to be happy, and if you are happy, then I am happy. I want to share in that happiness. I want to be with you forever. Why? Because I love you more than anything else, anywhere. I will be with you forever, if you let me.”

My Mana Storage was quite heavy with the little velvet box I pulled out of it: even with it gone, it still felt quite heavy. My heart was racing. My whole being was focused on one little thing. I showed the box to her and opened it, revealing a diamond ring. Dragon was taken aback.

“This is a sign of that, to let you remember my pledge I make to you today. Dragon, Riu, my rose, my Darikuri, my love, will you marry me?”

Through her happy tears, she nodded and spoke, “Yes.”

So, she became my fiancée. We kept our announcement secret from the pantheon until we had told Markior. Since we were both good friends with him, we wanted him to marry us. Surely, there could be no Yoshi greater to officiate a wedding. Needless to say, he was happy for us both.

We were to be married before the Super Happy Tree, the essence of Yoshi happiness and well-being, in the fields of Olympus. It was going to be beautiful: Markior was even going to give the Fa’Dieli blessing, in Pandoran, complete with the symbols of the Elementals supplied by the other gods and goddesses. Save Ark’s inability to be there, life could not be better.

In his wisdom older than his juvenile age, Ark had once told me, “The higher you soar, the further you will fall, the faster you will hit the ground and the further you will go into it.”

How right he was.

This run of great blessings comprised of the Boomerang, my house, my Pokémon, my meeting the gods and goddesses and becoming friends with them, particularly Markior, my close friendship with my former “nemesis” Multehx, my discovery of Ark’s survival and my engagement with Dragon, all had to end somewhere.

I do not know if it is a natural reaction of trauma management that my brain refuses to remember the events of those next few months. Was my head was bumped? Was some other force was at work? I do not know. There are small flashes amongst the darkness, however. Admittedly, it is this part of my autobiography that has taken the longest to write, as I have waited and probed for these memories before and during its writing, and paid close attention to my dreams, with long pauses between writing each fragment. I am sure I will be trying to get my memories to surface long after it is published.

Here we go. I’ve tried to make this as coherent as possible.

It was the usual sort of day that this began, one where I would head up to Olympus and hang out with my mortal and immortal friends. I bumped into Klongo in the Aurorium, who told me that Markior had gone to the planet Aiur to fight, as he does from time to time since he is a great warrior of the Protoss people of that world.

As this is published, it’s been two and a half years since that’s happened now, and the Markior has not returned. I am not sure if Klongo told me he returned briefly and had a battle at his Lair and lost, but that seems ludicrous that he should drop the fight on Aiur, return to Yamauchi for a spar, and then go back.

I have another memory of freeing Markior from watching a screen of ghastly images, only to have one of his nemeses come along and kill him. I feel this is not true, because I have another memory of being part of the creation of a Protoss city with him. I seem to remember giving him some empty Pokéballs and watching him make a small robot termed a Probe, which summons Protoss structures. I remember seeing these structures appear before me.

I also have dreamt of him piloting a Carrier, a great Protoss airship, on a suicidal course with a crashed Mana Fortress-style ship, his words telling me, “This is how it is meant to be…En Taro Adun, Lich, when we meet again.” The dream seems quite vivid. If he sacrificed himself in the vain of one of his heroes, Tassadar, then it would explain his absence. But, the effects that his death would have upon the Yoshi Archipelago and my race have not occurred, so I doubt the truth of this, as I’m sure many other devout Yoshies would also.

I do distinctly remember that there was a storm when I left the Aurorium, though. I raced through it to Markior’s Lair and as I crossed the bridge, lightning struck the rope supports behind me. The bridge collapsed beneath my feet and I toppled head over heels down it, managing to catch myself on the last plank of wood with one hand, precariously dangling above the glacier far below. I climbed back up it, and on the way up, I saw an inscription on the Lair-side cliff face. I took a photo of it with that function I installed on the Boomerang and once I got to the top, I saw that it read:

Greetings to you with the cyan arc, the six beasts and the ways of water, light and essence. Why do I write? I have someone here who longs to see you, apart from myself, of course. In fact, two people, both asking why. They want to meet you.

The picture seems to be scrambled from here, except for one other part:

seek the sunken city of Dinokan. You will find your next instructions there. If no, well, let's not think about that.

How this inscription fits me like this, I do not know exactly, but these days, it does not seem surprising. I will explain this later.

I do remember that I was quite driven to go to Dinokan. I remember being in a boat, going to its lone spire sticking out of the Strait, and then scuba-diving. I do not remember surfacing, nor finding anything. Its main library seems to linger as an important presence in my mind.

I remember that I had come across Multehx during this time. He would appear and then disappear for one reason or another: the first time this happened was immediately after another memory that comes out of this blackness, and it is perhaps this chilling one that the trauma mechanism has been created for: I believe I saw the Dark Lich twice.

I would be branded as mad on Fa’Diel for saying this, but my saving grace is that it is perhaps only a dream. If it is a dream, it is better for being so, because this experience, real or imaginary, scares me. He accused me of destroying the honour of his name and he turned me to stone. On the second encounter, changed back to normal by some way I don’t know, I was teleported into the middle of a desert. This desert seems quite important and acts as my rock in my memories, because of what occurred there and what came out of it.

I think I was captured by a slave train and that once we reached a desert city – I believe it had some long name beginning with “T” – I was branded. My shoulder aches when I think about this. Of all people who should buy me, it was Theutes Whalki, Guardian of the Fire Palace, though he seemed to be altered: I remember him being cruel with no mirth and no mischief in his features. He bought me, my Yoshi friend Vector who had come later, and also a Koopa nicknamed Tob I had befriended.

My slavery seems to have come to an abrupt end when Markior and his Protoss forces advanced on the city. With him was Dragon – I seem to remember this bit by the surprise of seeing her. Shortly afterwards, I think the Boomerang was taken from me in a desert battle, but Multehx returned it to me somehow.

I know that Tob died in my presence, consumed in an explosion, because that memory haunts me to this day and is just too vivid to count as not being true. This is cemented by the fact that he left me relics in the form of some community service medals, perhaps my most tactile piece of the hole in my memories.

What seems to be the largest proof of this time is that when I next returned to Fa’Diel, I discovered that Theutes had disappeared and they had installed a new Guardian of the Fire Palace, namely Zulan Tipsot. My next trip to Fa’Diel came in the middle of the rush of news about Theutes’ reappearance, reinstatement and Zulan’s repositioning to Guardian of the Desert, a hastily created role that remains as one of the only exceptions to the Fifth and Sixth Guardian Vows. What is even more extraordinary is that Theutes has holes in his memory, too, and seems to remember me as his slave too, though he dismisses it as a bad dream. He terms the place and the whole experience as “Zolott”. Of course, this is Theutes Whalki, and I do not always agree with what he says.

All the while, I seem to remember casting spells I never knew I could, particularly those away from my Elements I studied. Why I feel this happened, I don’t know.

Some more uncertainties come out of this time that may not necessarily be as such. An adult Ark ready to kill me with robots and then to have him by my side with his Spear of Darkness when I showed my love for him is something that I don’t know is true or not. Seeing him run across a battlefield with a blue rose in his hand seems to be something more out of a symbolic dream than anything else. Having him clutching me as we rode on Nessie through an aerial battle with Dragon next to me also seems to be a dream. One thing is certain, though.

The day my memories return started off with me lying on a beach in my scuba-diving gear. I remember looking at my two watches and seeing that a lot of time had passed, especially judging on how when I returned to my house I needed to clean out my refrigerator, weed my gardens and cut the long grass on my lawns.

With that done, I went up to Olympus and discovered that Markior’s Lair had been destroyed by one of his enemies. Klongo told me that he had retreated to Markior’s spaceship which hovers above the planet and that the Lair’s door acted as a portal there. However, there was no sign of the Markior – for all intents and purposes, he is still on Aiur. Why has he made no contact? I hope he is alright.

After organising the party where the question about my name was asked, and discovering that no-one had seen Dragon for about the same time as me, I came back to Yoshibane around sunset and started to probe my memories. Suddenly, the doorbell rang. I opened the door and was tackled to the ground.

“I’ve found you!” cried Ark.

Ark Beruga Yoshi, soon to be Yoshi von Kippo, my blood brother for whom I had hoped and wished and prayed and believed would return even when others had left him for dead, was holding me in his arms. My marriage faded into insignificance. This is the sweetest moment of my life: holding and being held by my brother after years and years of separation. Nothing will ever come close to it.

It is all very well that my marriage did fade, because it never happened. I even went to the Super Happy Tree on the day and waited, and waited, to see if she would show. She did not, and has not.

Nor did my best man, Multehx. Ark would take over that role, as Sixtyfourhundred, the God of Warriors, would take over Markior’s role.

No Markior, no Multehx, and no Dragon. No contact from any of them. To this day, even with Ark’s return and the discovery of my role in prophecy, it does not dull the fact that my three closest friends are gone or missing: Dragon, my fiancée, Markior, my saviour, and Multehx, my other brother. It seems that for Ark’s return, I am made to pay in triplicate.

Yes, I have a role in prophecy.

During my time, I think I remember falling down a hole into a cave system and discovering the tomb of Recugrian Yoshi. This seems to have come as a precursor as to how to find it, because I did later with a few of the gods and goddesses. The inscription on his tomb reads:

If thou art a Guardian robbed, a bearer of six beasts not present, though their houses lie around thy waist, and born of another world with parentage on this one, then I tell thee of thy fate.
If thou art of these conditions, then thou art the chosen one. He, who lieth here, is thy father of nine generations.
There is a Prophecy, and thou shalt fill it. It is written by soothsayers, "The time shall come to pass when the ninth direct son of Recugrian will be born off this world. He shall come back from the dead, holding the fates of his two worlds in his hands. He will fight for them, yet on another world altogether."
That is what thy fate is. Thou holdest the fates of the world of your birth and this world in thy hands.

That prophecy is the Prophecy of Two Worlds. My coming back from the dead was my disappearance during this hole in my memory. I seem to remember reading this the first time meeting its conditions of not having the Boomerang or my Pokémon.

Nevertheless, I had my DNA tested against the bones in the sarcophagus: there was a match. I believe that Recugrian Yoshi is my direct great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, and this is the reason for my natural battling talents. I also believe that my role and being of existence is to fight to save Fa’Diel and Yamauchi together. How and when I will do this, the Yoshi Palimpsest does not say.

However, what am I saving? Olympus has changed since I first arrived there, thanks to the influences of some trusted mortals. Multehx’s warning came true. While I have my friends there, I no longer feel welcome. I don’t go there often these days. Since that time of darkness, I have been spending my days searching for them, when I have not been taking Ark under my wing as he trains to be the Guardian of the Ebony Lance, of a Spear of Darkness he acquired – he says he does not know how he did it either. We found out that it is also the Spear of Fa’Dieli legend, given as a gift from Sage Luka to the Mana Knight. It is quite ironic that he should have a weapon opposite to the Cyan Arc; a brother of light and a brother of shadow, both rooted deeply in our home world’s history. He too, has changed: he feels colder, harder, quieter and more introspective, retreating to his robotics laboratory in the basement of my house for days on end, finding solace in his machines. I guess years of separation from your family would do that to you, too. However, I love him, and he loves me, and that is all that matters. He is my vestige of happiness.

So, that’s it. This is where the story ends. What can I say about it? What have I learnt from my life experience? I guess this is that part of the autobiography where the writer says these things, and I shall follow suit.

When I think that life had given me all it had, it always finds some new surprise. Sometimes, that surprise is good. Sometimes, that surprise is bad. But, it is always a surprise. I guess I have been quite lucky, or blessed, in that regard. Not everyone gets to be a Guardian, be friends with the pantheon of Yoshi Olympus, make amends with someone to have them become your closest friend, and has their brother, presumed dead, to return to your doorstep. I have also been quite unlucky. Not everyone has their brother washed away in a flood, has friends die before their eyes, be tormented by a bully and consider him out of your life only to have him give you a shocking defeat on the battle floor and have him as your sergeant in the army you’ve been conscripted into, nor lose your fiancée and two of your closest friends amidst a sea of memory loss.

It all comes down to checks and balances. These awful incidents come as the price for the wonderful events, and how you remain happy in life is your view of it all. If you view it that the higher you go, the worse your fall, you won’t find happiness. But if you view it that if you go down, you will always come back up again, then there is the start of the path to happiness. My name is the embodiment of that fact: a lich has to die before it ascends to greatness. You will only find greatness through hardship, consequential or inconsequential, and only if you push through that hardship and come out the other side. I am Lich, and I am happy.

What had started as an answer to a simple question about my metaphorical name has become much more, a light amidst the shadows in my head. Thus it has taken me until the very end to name this piece of work: Light and Metaphor. You can take the meanings of “Light” and “Metaphor” and apply them liberally to my life.

I hope that this book, in some way, illustrates to you that life is not that bad after all. Your purpose in the cosmos will come. You will find your happiness. They will only come if you believe they will, and if you let them come. Let them come. In Pandoran, we have a word for this: Iolotate. Believe with conviction that they will come! Iolotate!

~Dyluck Thanatos “Lich” Yoshi von Kippo Ph.D. Yos. Ana (Yoshiville),

Guardian of the Cyan Arc, Spoken of the Prophecy of Two Worlds