The second thing I remember is the void. Floating in an endless expanse of black, feeling more than seeing some sort of warm glow at my back, with other, smaller glows appearing and disappearing, drawing nearer and fading farther away as time passed...but above all, the largest, brightest glow remaining ever steadfast at my back. It took some time for more sensation to start trickling in, for me to start to be able to differentiate each of the glows into distinct entities, to know that I was sensing their...energy? Soul? Aura? The last one felt the most right, for some reason. Some deep-seated sense, almost unfurling from within with a sense of correctness when my mind stumbled upon the word as I began to puzzle out what I was sensing.

  I don't know how long I spent, floating in a nebula of inky shadow and fleeting glimpses of aura like stars winking in and out of existence before the not-quite sun at my back, but little by little I grew more and more aware of the world beyond this...place. Voices beginning to trickle in, bits and pieces and scraps of words, slowly becoming complete sentences. Matching them to the auras that drew closer when being addressed, some closer than others.

  The ones I became most familiar with was Zain, whose aura was always at my back, radiant and soothing, who spent hours at a time with the same handful of others, occasionally relaxing and goofing around, other times giving orders and commands I did not yet have enough awareness to understand the purpose of. There was Regina, the only girl of the main group that was always nearby, her aura often seeming almost intertwined with Zain, as if draped across him. Icarus, who came closer to whatever I was in than any of the others outside of Zain and Regina, seemingly checking the status of it every so often and reporting that I "was not yet ready". There was Kaiteki, who's aura seemed the calmest, a sea of peace when Kaiteki was goofing off with the more energetic aura called Raven, and the last was Vrast, whose aura seemed almost as immense as Zain's, though at times incredibly distant.

  There were others that occasionally flickered in and out of my awareness, and occasionally a veritable sea of them, colours and sizes and noise swarming like a moving field of flowers, but most of the time it was just the seven of us, at least within the range of what I could sense, and the sounds of nature (albeit, one unknown to me). The group I was with apparently did not spend much time in cities, it seemed.

  Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

  Eventually, the void seemed to....shrink. Or at least, I began to have the desire to stretch, to move, and while the void was no less comforting as it had always been, it no longer seemed to be enough. And so, I pushed, and strained, and with what felt like tremendous effort and yet no effort at all, heard a crack and fell ungracefully to the wooden floor, shards of some sort of large egg around me. I stood, unevenly at first, but then more surely as I examined my (new, strange) body, hands paws coated in golden fur turning over to show what appeared to be metal plates embedded in the skin on the back of them, a pinkish sheen catching the light and reflecting my face, with too many ears and large, red eyes.

  I turned when I heard a slight noise, and that's when I first saw them, the ones who had always been near. Regina, quite literally draped across Zain's shoulders, a large, regal looking violet serpent, gold accents pairing well with the few bits of jewelry adorning her scales, and Icarus sitting next to Kaiteki, the former a large black and white canine with a horn while the latter was black with blue rings. Vrast, looking vaguely bat-like except significantly larger than any bat I had ever heard of by several orders of magnitude, looking in while perched on the sill of a large window of the cabin we appeared to be camped out in, and Raven, leaning in the open doorway, looking almost like a knight in blue armor, but with a burning flame on his head.

  And there, crouched down right in front of me, the only human in the group, was Zain, blue eyes level with mine, smiling as he spoke, his words both calming my jittering nerves and banishing any final doubts I may have had that I had been indeed reborn into a completely different life than my old one rather than just undergoing some obscure form of medical treatment.

  "Glad to see you finally hatched, Riolu. Welcome to the team."

  Then again, I suppose reincarnation shouldn't have been all that surprising, in the end. After all...

  The first thing I remembered was dying.