The Book of Legends

Down on the second floor, readers grumble that the books are too difficult. A sign asks you not to eat or drink. On the ground floor sits Lucian of the Elite Four, who says that the thoughts written in books can reach across time and space. And up on the third floor, one quiet reader puts it best of all: every book holds someone's memories of other places and other times, so a library is the place where all those places and times are gathered together.

Professor Rowan once climbed those same stairs. He gathered his three young assistants on that floor to tell them about the "mirage Pokémon" of Sinnoh's lakes, and he wondered aloud whether a legendary Pokémon that never evolves is already complete as a creature. Moments later, an explosion at Lake Valor shook the whole city.

This book is a third floor of its own. It holds the oldest stories in the Pokémon world, from the Egg at the beginning of everything to the four masks of a mountain village in Kitakami. But a legend-keeper has to be honest, so before you start, here is how to read it.

On the third floor of the Canalave Library, among the books of myth, sits an ancient volume called The Original Story. It is short. It tells the beginning of everything in three parts, and it never once uses a Pokémon's name. Here is what it says, told closely.

Cynthia explains the three words. Dialga is the guardian of time. Palkia is the master of space and dimensions. Giratina rules the world on the opposite side of ours, "the world of antimatter". The circle at the centre of the stage stands for Arceus, "the origin of it all".

The stage allows a single Arceus and nothing else. So a trainer brought an Arceus up onto the Mystri Stage, chose one of the three circles, and stood in the middle of it. A shining sphere appeared. "Could it be... an Egg?" Cynthia wondered. It was not. The mysterious round object took the shape of a Pokémon: Dialga, Palkia or Giratina, whichever circle had been chosen.

The old man at the cabin says that people in Johto believe Pokémon Eggs are vessels of life, and Arceus is said to have come out of an Egg. Cynthia, watching, went further: an Egg is the cradle of every being, and in a sense, she said, the planet itself is an Egg.

Sinnoh's great mountain, Mt. Coronet, is said to be called "the origin of Sinnoh". A climber will tell you that one theory says the region began right there. A Celestic resident calls it the place in the whole region that is closest to the sky and to space. Hisui's Old Verses speak of "heaven's crown" and "heaven's mount", nearest to almighty Sinnoh. One verse says people and their Pokémon carried stone up to the peak of heaven's mount and carved it into the shapes of ten Pokémon. The verses never name the mountain, but that verse was dug up at the Temple of Sinnoh, high on this very peak, so heaven's mount is almost certainly Mt. Coronet.

Then there is the Azure Flute. It makes echoing sounds that seem not to belong to this world, and nobody knows who made it. Play it at the very top of Mt. Coronet (at Spear Pillar in modern Sinnoh, or at the Temple of Sinnoh in Hisuian times) and a glowing stairway appears, climbing up to the Hall of Origin. That is where Arceus is met.

The book doesn't say who the three were. But Sinnoh has three great lakes, and each one is home to a small Psychic-type Pokémon that hardly anyone has ever seen. Readers have matched them up for a very long time.

There's another old book, this one kept in a house in Celestic Town, that tells of the moment each of the three was born. Amazingly, almost the very same poem was dug out of the ground in Hisui, where it was called Old Verse 6. The same words survived from the age of Hisui to the age of modern Sinnoh.

Very few people have ever been to Giratina's world and come back to describe it. Cynthia is one of them. She says there are no other Pokémon there. Time does not flow. Space is unstable, and the rules are broken. Slabs of rock float in the air and move when you step on them, and she wondered whether "down" even means down in a place like that. She suspected the whole world might be a giant puzzle that Giratina uses to test its visitors.

She wasn't entirely alone. Uxie, Mesprit and Azelf appeared there and helped show the way. Portals from the Distortion World lead back to Spear Pillar and to Turnback Cave.

In the age of Hisui, two clans lived in the land. Their ancestors had crossed the sea to get there, and both clans worshipped a god they called almighty Sinnoh. One day, that name would belong to the whole region.

The trouble was that they disagreed about what almighty Sinnoh was. The Diamond Clan, led by Adaman from their settlement in the Crimson Mirelands, believed it was the god of time. The Pearl Clan, led by Irida from their settlement in the Alabaster Icelands, believed it was the god of space. They quarrelled about it constantly. Both clans even claimed the name "Celestica", although neither was descended from the vanished Celestica people who had really carried it.

An old woman named Cogita, who kept Hisui's myths, put it simply to a young traveller: the two clans' beliefs together make up the universe, and neither can exist without the other. And in the end, the truth was bigger than either clan. The real almighty Sinnoh was Arceus. Each clan had mistaken one of its creations (Dialga for the Diamond Clan, Palkia for the Pearl Clan) for the god itself. Adaman and Irida came to realise that the quarrel had been between the two of them, not really between their clans.

All over Hisui, people dug up old poems: the Old Verses. There are twenty of them, and something about them is very strange. They all appear to be in the same handwriting, as if one person wrote all twenty. And they turned up buried all across the land.

In the days of Hisui, an enormous space-time rift tore open above the peak of Mt. Coronet. It could be seen from every corner of the land. Smaller space-time distortions began to appear here and there, bringing rare Pokémon and strange objects with them. The noble Pokémon went into frenzies. Unusually large "alpha" Pokémon appeared. As the crisis grew, even the colour of the sky changed.

And the rift pulled a person out of another time and dropped them into Hisui. They fell out of the sky.

Cogita had a story she had kept for a long time: the gifts of the three lake guardians, brought together at the Shrouded Ruins, would form a Red Chain able to "bind the world". So the traveller went to each lake in turn, and before every visit people remembered the old belief that when each guardian first flew, humankind gained emotion, will or knowledge.

Professor Laventon's Hisui notes tell of the wind and the lightning. Thundurus has fought Tornadus "since time immemorial", and its lightning enriches the soil. Tornadus is said to turn the seasons by stirring up the air, and Laventon suspects its humanlike form is not its true one. When the two clash, Landorus arrives to end it, and afterwards the land has rich harvests.

And then there is Enamorus, the Love-Hate Pokémon. It flies in from across the sea to end Hisui's bitter winter, and legend says its love makes new life bud all over the land.

In Hisui, every Plate carried its own engraving, including lines that were never recorded in modern Sinnoh. Tap a Plate to read what it says (told closely, not word for word).

On Cinnabar Island stands the Pokémon Mansion: burned, abandoned and empty. A scientist on the island says his mentor once lived there. Scattered through its floors, explorers found four pages from a diary. Read them in order, and a whole story falls out.

About seven hundred years ago, the people of Ecruteak built two towers, one in the east of the city and one in the west. Each rose nine tiers high. They were built, the sages say, to foster friendship and hope between Pokémon and people. The western tower, the Brass Tower, was said to awaken Pokémon. The eastern tower, the Tin Tower, was where Pokémon were said to rest.

A book called History of Ecruteak, kept in a house in the city, says that each tower was the roost of a powerful flying Pokémon. Sage Masa of the Wise Trio adds that an immense, silver-coloured Pokémon was said to roost on top of the Brass Tower, and the sign at the Tin Tower says that a legendary Pokémon is said to roost there.

Three sages called the Wise Trio (Gaku, Masa and Koji) call themselves the protectors of the legendary Pokémon, and they let through only people who have "the power and soul of truth". One of them says legend holds that the beasts cannot be seen while they sleep.

A researcher named Eusine chased Suicune for ten years. He heard that Ecruteak's legendary Pokémon test chosen humans by letting them come close, and that Suicune's mystic power summons the rainbow-coloured Pokémon. One Tin Tower sage believes Suicune is the beast closest to Ho-Oh, and he has heard there may be a link with the Unown too: he thinks they must share a cooperative bond with Suicune. Hold on to that thought for the next chapter.

In Cianwood City, people say that a mythical sea creature hides among the four islands on the sea route from Olivine, the Whirl Islands. They believe the creature itself makes the whirlpools that swirl around them. And they say you can only see it if you carry a Silver Wing. One girl has her own guess about why: the wing must have the same scent as the creature.

The scientists at the Ruins of Alph Research Center say the ruins are about 1,500 years old, and that no one knows who built them or why. The Research Center was founded by Professor Silktree, whose photo still hangs on the wall, and its computer counts the years of study: it reads Exploration Year 10. Outside the ruins, one visitor admits that nobody even knows whether the Pokémon statues mean anything.

After years of work, one researcher came to a surprising conclusion: the ruins seem to have been built as a home, a habitat, for Pokémon.

The ruins have four small chambers. Each holds a sliding stone-panel picture of an ancient Pokémon, a carved description, and, on the far wall, a word written in Unown letters. Explorers discovered that each word is a key: do what it says, and a hidden room opens. Read the carving, guess the word, then tap the chamber to check.

They are two of the smallest Pokémon in this whole book. Celebi stands 0.6 metres tall, about thigh-high on a ten-year-old, and weighs 5.0 kilograms, a little lighter than a Pikachu (6.0 kg). Jirachi is just 0.3 metres tall and weighs 1.1 kilograms, about as much as a bag of sugar. You could carry it in a backpack.

And yet both of them are tangled up with time. Celebi travels through it. Jirachi sleeps through a thousand years of it at a stretch. Both are Psychic types. Neither has ever been found to be male or female, and neither has ever been found with an Egg. Both know how to throw an attack into the future and let it land later. And in battle records, the two are perfectly equal in every kind of strength.

You learn the most about a legend from the people who live beside it. Around Ilex Forest, nobody needs to say the name "Celebi". Everyone already knows who "the protector" is.

The second record is stranger still. It is the only account in which we can say exactly where in time Celebi went: a trip into the past, three years back, and then forward again.

It began, of course, with a warning at the shrine. Follow the trip, one stop at a time.

Researchers have written nine different entries about Jirachi. Most of them repeat the same great promise, that it grants wishes, and notice how carefully almost all of them choose their words: "legend says", "it is said", "people believe". But almost every record also adds one new detail of its own.

Mt. Pyre is where the people of Hoenn come to calm the spirits of Pokémon that have passed away. From its summit you can see all of Hoenn. At the top lives an old woman whose job is to pass Hoenn's legends on to the people of the future, and for a long time she told the legend one way.

Then came the crisis in Sootopolis. Afterwards, she said the legend had been rewritten.

The keepers at the summit of Mt. Pyre guard two glowing orbs said to hold an ancient power, with a deep link to the Hoenn region. The orbs, they say, must never be separated. One telling says the Blue Orb was found buried inside the Cave of Origin in Sootopolis; another says it was the Red Orb. Either way, the orb's Pokémon seems to be linked to that cave.

The keepers also say something strange: the orbs' true owner is said to still exist. Nobody knows whether that owner is a human or a Pokémon.

Wallace, who was once the Gym Leader of Sootopolis, explained it in the Cave of Origin. Groudon and Kyogre are "super-ancient" Pokémon, and there is a third: Rayquaza, which is said to have calmed the two fighters long ago. When Steven saw it, he marvelled that the two rampaging giants had fled from it.

The Draconids are an ancient people of Dragon-type trainers whose home was the waterfall of Meteor Falls. Their last Lorekeeper, Zinnia, told their history while climbing the Sky Pillar, and the tower's mural tells it too. Here it is, as the Draconids tell it.

Both are highly intelligent. They understand human speech and can talk by telepathy. They live in small groups of just a few, and they vanish if they sense enemies. During the recent Hoenn crisis, one of them asked a young trainer and Steven for help, and flew them to remote Southern Island, south of Hoenn, to protect the other.

In Snowpoint City, Sinnoh, stands Snowpoint Temple. People say it was built in ancient times to honour the Pokémon of rock, ice and steel that shape the land, and only "the chosen" may go inside. The locals have a story about their own city: Pokémon dragged Snowpoint City to the place where it stands now, and the temple is their resting place.

At its very deepest level, five floors down, stands a powerful statue. Engraved on it is a riddle about a body of rock, a body of ice and a body of steel. When the three gather, it says, "the king" will appear.

In Galar's Crown Tundra, Peony speaks of "dot-faced giants" sleeping in ruins. At the Split-Decision Ruins in Three-Point Pass, there are two giants, and only one of them can ever be woken. Whoever comes to wake one has to choose.

Long ago, before there was a Unova, there was a single dragon Pokémon. It helped two heroes, twin brothers, bring a new region into being. The older brother sought truth. The younger brother sought ideals.

But the brothers began to fight over which of them was right, and their quarrel split the young region in two. In that desperate hour, the dragon split its own body in two as well: into a white Pokémon and a black Pokémon. Reshiram, who seeks truth and a new world of goodness. Zekrom, who pursues ideals and a new world of hope.

Drayden ends the story with his own thought: ideals and truth don't need to be opposed at all.

But there is a darker ending, and it was told in Opelucid too. In that telling, Drayden says the two dragons, once the same being, battled on and on until they were exhausted, and that the twin heroes declared that no one side was right and stopped fighting. Then Iris took up the story. The two heroes' sons, she said, started the battle again. In an instant, Reshiram and Zekrom destroyed Unova with fire and lightning. And then the two dragons disappeared.

Drayden says the story goes that a third dragon, Kyurem, came into being in that same era. His family treasure, the DNA Splicers, may be the proof: Professor Juniper found that the materials in them date from the same era as the materials of Dragonspiral Tower. Then Drayden asks a question out loud. Could Kyurem be just a husk, a shell left over after the split?

Notice that it's a question. Now listen to a very different story.

Lacunosa's town sign says the town values safety through order and routine. And Professor Juniper wondered something else. Zekrom was revived from a rock called the Dark Stone (Reshiram, in another telling, from the Light Stone). Suppose the meteorite in the old tale and that stone were one and the same? Elements from the same era turn up at both Dragonspiral Tower and the Giant Chasm.

Later, the storyteller's own grandchild came to a conclusion: Grandma's stories had really been about Kyurem, it seems.

A very tall man named AZ was being held prisoner in a cell in Lysandre Labs. From that cell, he told a story about a man who lived long ago.

Long ago, he said, there was a man who loved a Pokémon very much. Then a war began, and the Pokémon was taken away to fight in it. Years later, the man received only a tiny box.

He wanted his Pokémon back, no matter what it cost. So he built a machine that gave it life again. But his anger didn't fade. He could not forgive the world. So he turned the machine into the ultimate weapon, and became the destroyer who ended the war.

And the Pokémon he had brought back? It realised that the lives of many Pokémon had been taken to restore its own. And it left him.

Lysandre noticed two things. AZ shared the name of a king who lived 3,000 years ago. And around his neck, AZ wore the key to the ultimate weapon.

Later, after AZ battled the new Champion in Lumiose City, he said that he finally felt free. And then his Floette came back to him, and AZ said it had been 3,000 years. The man in the story was AZ himself, the ancient king, kept alive all that time by his own machine.

In the Malie Library there is a book of verse called The Light of Alola. It is said to come from the collection of Acerola's family. More than one copy survives, and the copies don't quite agree. Here is what the poem tells, in this book's own words.

The poem's story came alive again in our own time. Alola has two flutes. The tones of the Sun Flute are said to have been offered in thanks to the Legendary Pokémon of the sun, and those of the Moon Flute to the Legendary Pokémon of the moon. At the far end of Vast Poni Canyon on Poni Island stands an altar (the Altar of the Sunne, or of the Moone) said to be closely tied to the Legendary Pokémon of local folklore.

There, the Sun Flute and the Moon Flute were played together, and two tones rang out across the altar, just as the poem says they once did for the ancient kings. A girl named Lillie had a Cosmoem she called Nebby. On the altar, it evolved, and the beast of the old poem stood there again: Solgaleo, or, in the other telling, Lunala.

Necrozma isn't the only thing to come through the sky. The International Police keep files on Ultra Beasts: life-forms from other worlds that arrive through Ultra Wormholes. They give each one a "UB" code name. The very first, UB-01 Symbiont, is properly called Nihilego, and it has been sighted in Alola's past.

In a hotel in Motostoke stands a statue of the hero who once saved Galar. Sonia, the granddaughter of Professor Magnolia, explains the legend everyone in Galar learns. Long ago, a great black storm covered Galar. People called it the Darkest Day. Gigantic Pokémon attacked the land. But a single young hero, carrying a sword and a shield, defeated them.

Nobody knew what sort of sword and shield they were. Nobody knew what the black storm really was. Keep both questions in your pocket.

Carved into a hillside at Turffield is a huge geoglyph of what looks like a gigantic Pokémon. The part that showed the black storm has mostly worn away. Sonia supposes people 3,000 years ago could just have imagined giant Pokémon, but she thinks it looks far too much like Dynamax to be a coincidence. That's where the date comes from: the Darkest Day happened about 3,000 years ago.

In the vault at Hammerlocke, cared for by Gym Leader Raihan, hang four old tapestries that tell how a kingdom in Galar was created. Look at them in order.

The last clue did not come from a tapestry or a mural. It came in our own time. Chairman Rose of Macro Cosmos brought about a new Darkest Day, and Galar finally learned the answer to the second question in your pocket. The black storm had never been a storm at all. It was a Pokémon: Eternatus, which had come to Galar inside a meteorite 20,000 years before.

Two young trainers stood against it. And the heroes of the tapestries woke to help them: Zacian, the sword, and Zamazenta, the shield. About three thousand years after the first Darkest Day, the old story happened again, and this time people saw with their own eyes who the real heroes were.

Sonia published a history book, Galar: A History, saying the real heroes of the Darkest Day were Pokémon. Not everyone liked it. Two brothers, Sordward and Shielbert, called themselves "the new kings of Galar" and claimed to be descended from the first kings. They called her book lies. They said one of their own ancestors had made the old replica mural, and accused Sonia of changing history. To "prove" Zacian and Zamazenta were brutes, they even tried to drive them wild with Galar particles.

At the great academy in Mesagoza (Naranja Academy in some accounts, Uva Academy in others), Ms. Raifort teaches history, and one of her lessons is a Paldean fairy tale.

There was once a king who loved collecting treasures, especially treasures from faraway lands. One day a merchant from the East laid four treasures out in front of him: a vessel, a sword, a set of tablets (wooden planks for writing on) and a string of beads. The king was overjoyed. He showered the merchant with gold coins and took all four.

But the four treasures were really four Pokémon. Passed from hand to hand, they had been tainted by hubris and greed, and the king's own greed finally woke them, as disasters. They rampaged, and the king's castle was destroyed. The king called on renowned Pokémon wielders, who after a fierce battle subdued the four and sealed them away, somewhere in Paldea.

Paldea's Pokédex says something darker than the fairy tale. Each treasure of ruin is a human feeling that took on a body.

Heath's original manuscript tells what the published book left out. Separated from his team in the depths of the crater, he found a strange being. He couldn't tell whether it was a Pokémon, or even whether it was alive. It had a shell of overlapping hexagons, gleamed brighter than any gemstone, and as a whole looked like a brilliant disk. He named it Terapagos, and suspected its body was made of the very material that makes Pokémon shine and crystallise.

That whole section was blacked out of the published book. The original manuscript now belongs to Heath's descendant, Briar, who later told the story in her own book, The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero. The treasure more valuable than anything else wasn't gold or gems. It was a living Pokémon. Extinct, the records say, and yet one was found alive, deep in the Underdepths of Area Zero.

Long ago, a fearsome ogre lived on the mountain behind the village, and it frightened everyone who went there. One day it came down in a terrible rage. By luck, Okidogi, Munkidori and Fezandipiti were there, and they gave their lives driving the ogre back up the mountain. The grateful villagers named them the Loyal Three, buried them, and raised statues over the place. Every year since, Kitakami has held a Festival of Masks in their honour.

There was one more secret. The Loyal Three, the Retainer Pokémon, owe their powers to toxic chains. Okidogi's chain built up its muscles into a powerful body, and it can smash anything by swinging it. Munkidori's chain made its psychic powers bloom, and it makes foes dizzy from a safe distance. Fezandipiti's chain gives it its beauty and its lovely voice, and it scatters a scent that captivates people and Pokémon. And their master was Pecharunt.

For a long time, Pecharunt slept in Mossui Town, looking like nothing more than a decoration. Then it woke, and used its mochi to put the villagers under its control. The "real villain" of Kitakami's legend had been sitting in plain sight all along.

It didn't last. At Loyalty Plaza, right beside the statues of its old retainers, Kieran held back a crowd of mochi-controlled villagers while a young trainer from Paldea battled Pecharunt, defeated it and caught it. Everyone under its control was set free, with only vague memories of what they had done.