Chapter 16
The Gang Fights the Devil Part I
—August 2nd, 128 CR
Maia and Bjorn ripped out of their pokéballs, snarling, and Tarahn and Rufus followed suit: they bristled with energy and bellowed defiance at the gray man with the strange power, their minds filled with Matt's distress and Moriko's confusion.
"Oh, my dear," the man said, stepping off the dais into the now-dry darkwater pond, "did you think we were going to have a pokémon battle?"
And he said—something—and Rufus, Tarahn, and Maia were all hurled bodily down the tunnel. Bjorn roared, galloping in and rising to his hind legs, dwarfing his human opponent. He brought one of his paws down in a slash attack that should have cut the man from throat to groin and spilled every drop of his blood, but the ursaring's ten-centimeter claws skittered uselessly over a barrier.
"Ghost and normal," the gray man muttered, and he created an enormous orb of dark energy as Bjorn flailed at him. The eight-foot ursaring was slammed away after the others like a toy.
"Run, recall them and run, damn you!"
Moriko was dimly aware that Haladana was yelling at her; the meditant disappeared into the tunnel, carrying Matt, with Maia close behind her. Moriko fumbled with the pokéballs, dizzy from trying to watch both men and see where she was going. This wasn't right; she should have yelled at Bjorn to keep him from attacking a human being. What was happening?
The gray man raised a hand as Moriko made it to the tunnel, but he and other spun to face another opening as earth and dust billowed into the room.
Moriko staggered as Vleridin leapt out of her body like a ghost. She summoned a rock-type nature power, and their tunnel's walls cracked ominously, dark fractures spiderwebbing along the surface.
"Run!" Vleridin said, pushing Moriko ahead of her and away.
The tunnel mouth collapsed. Dust and roaring chased them up the tunnel, chips of rock clattering on the floor.
Liona and Sylvia greeted them with concern at the shaft entrance, looking back and forth between Haladana and the furious, frightened Maia.
"What's happening? What's wrong with Matt?" Liona asked.
"We need to go," Haladana was saying. "He can't ride and I can't carry him, flying—"
"Give him to me! Give him—" Maia reared up on her hind legs, her fins bristling.
Moriko waved her arms. "Maia! Stop! We have to—"
A tremor made everyone stumble, followed by a breath of displaced air.
"We have to go, now!" Haladana screeched.
"Sit on my back! Hold him and help me," Sylvia said, and the meditant awkwardly bundled Matt aboard, riding astride.
Moriko held Maia's pokéball. "Maia! Please! We'll get to the top, we'll get away—"
The tibyss made a frustrated, ripping growl, but recalled herself.
Moriko grabbed Liona again, and Vleridin phased into her body. Moriko felt a wave of vertigo, clutching the nigriff's feathers as they shot into the air ungracefully.
Below them the tunnel glowed with fire and shadow energy, but they fled until it was just a red and purple star far beneath them.
I had no idea you were both here, a voice intruded—Moriko felt sick—although I can't imagine why you thought you could face me, Matthew. I thought I made it clear how you would feel if you brought on trouble…
Liona and Sylvia accelerated and Haladana added her power, the air rushing past faster and faster. Behind them came a cacophony of thunder, roars, and distant laughter. At last they reached the top of the hole, and the earth shook under them as they alighted on the edge.
"Run! We must reach the queen!"
Moriko recalled the flyers and followed. She felt the cool touch of Maia's energy as she watched their progress. They were thrown to the ground repeatedly by quakes, and breaths of burnt, ashy air pushed past them.
Matthew! Please, when I'm finished with her—here a bellowing, as of multiple pokémon, and a concussion that left them staggering—won't you introduce me to your friend? She has so much energy!
The tunnel walls suddenly glowed. Haladana pulled Moriko down into a depression, and Kalamatos the reginant appeared. She was buzzing a war cry, the tunnels groaning as she shoved the walls aside to accommodate her bulk. Moriko saw her armored underside briefly and then she was past them, belching teal dragonfire.
They rose again, their pursuer's wild laughter echoing behind.
"Matt! Who is he?" Moriko gasped out, but he hung limply in Haladana's arms, haloed by psychic energy.
The sounds of battle finally started to recede and soon they met the hive's lesser forces: sarjant, pyrant, and soldant, marching in the queen's wake. Thanasanian was leading them; she stopped and gestured for the rest to go on.
The ant pokémon parted and flowed around them, and Haladana put down Matt and sat, sighing. Thanasanian's antennae darted over Matt's body; he didn't notice, curled up with his hands crossed over his head and his whole body shaking.
A pokémon stepped out of the shadows, and the oberant and the meditant looked to it: a reclusant, another upright bug with glowing yellow eyes and a dark covering like a cloak.
Reclusant, the nightrider pokémon. A bug- and dark-type, it evolves from privant near level 25 if its speed and physical stats have good potential. It strikes from the shadows, using its modified wings to cover and camouflage itself. Its bold coloration confuses and distracts the opponent.
She examined Matt briefly and then hissed between her mandibles. "Cursed," she said. "Keep going." The reclusant stepped into shadow again and was gone.
There was a distant thunderclap and a sighing noise deep in the tunnels. "The queen needs me," Thanasanian said. "Keep going to the resting chambers, the human is there. Run!"
Russ was looking far worse when they found him, guarded by a few sarjant and privant minders. Haladana set Matt down on the sand before running her antennae over Russ.
Maia burst out of her pokéball again and stood over Matt, groaning unhappily and snarling when the ant pokémon tried to approach. Sylvia followed suit, her wings furled tight, and she crouched by Russ and whined, nosing his limp body.
"It is accelerating—he has… hours, maybe," Haladana said.
Moriko held the darkwater canteen out to the meditant, but she backed away.
"No, I cannot touch it. It—you—you… must not feel it."
"Feel what? Haladana—what is this? Why—who is that man? What'll happen to Russ?"
"That man… those men, the gray and the red, are demon elementals in human form. And the gray one took up that energy, all of it, energy we could have used for years had it been safe to do so—"
"Haladana. They were demons. What will happen to the small demon, when—?"
The meditant trembled, clicking to herself. "I don't know," she said. "The gray one was ghost-type, and the red one dark, and only the gray one used the darkwater—"
"What do I do?"
"I don't know," Haladana said miserably. "I wish the queen were here."
A tremor reached them faintly, stirring loose pebbles and causing sand to fall in hissing whispers.
"Decide, Moriko," Maia growled from the corner. "Make a choice."
Moriko looked at Matt, but he didn't move. She looked at Russ and saw anew the waxy pallor of his skin and his narrow chest rising and falling. Sylvia looked at her beseechingly. She loosened the top of the canteen.
Dribbles of the thick substance immediately forced their way out.
"What the—"
"Out! Get out!" Haladana buzzed at the other ant pokémon, and they scattered obediently out into the tunnels. A shield shimmered around the room.
The darkwater burst the cap off the canteen, and Moriko threw it to the ground. It crawled, flexing across the gritty rock, oily fingers grasping, extending. She searched her pockets for a card, a utensil, something, and tried to pick it up with a knife, but it parted around the metal. Finally she grabbed the glob and almost immediately dropped it.
It was cold, awful, like touching a toad's belly, and it slithered and wriggled in her hand. She started to walk over to where Russ was lying, and she stumbled as the darkwater got heavier, and waves of nausea hit her like blows.
Another shield shimmered into effect around her hand and the darkwater flexed even more violently, but the nausea subsided.
"I think you should hurry," Haladana said, and Moriko looked past her and saw that the privant were skittering around the outside of their screened bubble—and beginning to attack it. "I told you how it—calls."
"Can't you stop them?"
"I am, and every moment it gets harder. Go!"
Moriko looked at Maia and Sylvia again, the two pokémon rigid and bristling and wide-eyed. She squeezed the globule and brought it close to Russ's back, where the restrained paraslit had its breathing holes, and suddenly the darkwater calmed.
What the fuck—
She gripped it, uncertain, panicking—like calls to like?—would it work, would the type opposition drive it out, would it gain power, would it evolve—
Make a choice.
She smeared it over the holes, and it sat on Russ's back like a streak of oil, black and shimmering, before darting into the breaks in his skin.
Russ struggled immediately. Moriko tried to hold him down but his skinny limbs were filled with a terrible strength, and she was left gasping as he hit her in the stomach. His elbow shot out and caught her on the nose, and she saw stars, her face hot and cold and heavy. And then Matt was there holding him down as well, and Sylvia put her forepaws on him, and the paraslit flailed Russ's body uselessly as he sank into the sand under their combined weight.
The room filled with a painful keening. There was a glow from the breathing holes, and then a ball of light shot out of Russ's back and landed on the floor.
It reformed into a pokémon—a fist-sized bug, grub-pale and soft with bruise-colored spots, and long metallic antennae several times its body length. It darted around the room like a cockroach under a sudden unfriendly light.
Cryptidex mode initiated. Aura analysis: bug- and psychic-type, 85% certainty. Bug- and ground-type, 15% certainty. Possible match: Paraslit, the parasite pokémon. According to legend, it is responsible for erratic behavior and disappearances in humans.
Moriko sank to the floor, panting, a nosebleed dribbling past her mouth. Matt's eyes were sunken, and his face was half-crusted with vomit, one detail of their flight that she'd missed but maybe Haladana had noticed a little too well. Sylvia sighed and crouched by Russ, putting her head down on her forelegs.
"And there it is," Matt managed to croak out, putting out his arms to hug Maia as she curled around him.
Moriko spat and wiped her face, smearing blood over her arm. "I should kill it. I should kill it and eat its energy. Fuck that thing."
"It is a cryptid," Matt said, as the paraslit flitted around, squeaking. "It should be characterized. For science, and to protect others."
"Eat it or don't," said Haladana, her voice flanging as she held the barriers, "but do something!"
Moriko sighed out her nose, spraying blood. "For science," she said finally. She reached into her pockets and found a standard pokéball, which closed around the paraslit without a fuss. "Gotcha, bitch," she said, picking it up.
The room exploded.
The shields protected them from the worst of it, but they were left coughing in whirling grit. Daylight was visible through the dust, and battle sounds were audible once again: war cries, the whanging of beam attacks, and skittering noises as stone and dirt crumbled around them. Privant and sarjant were already struggling out of the rubble.
Haladana took down the barriers and sat. "Henceforth," she said gravely, her voice even more buzzing and distorted than usual, "all fulgurant shall be instructed to ignore human travelers, regardless of their distress, and regardless of any rare entities they have encountered."
"Haladana—thank you. You saved us. We would be dead, and Russ as well."
The meditant dipped her head at that briefly, before snapping up to look at the now-exposed sky. "Ah—I am dreaming. Let's take shelter before another beam—"
The coal-black man with the burning eyes appeared at the lip of the crater.
"Matthew," he said, and raised his hand.
Matt levitated again, surrounded by an ugly, mottled energy. Maia charged at the red demon, roaring as she made a huge leap, but he buffeted her aside with a gust of air.
"Gkk—run!" Matt choked out. Limp, like a doll, he was raised out of the pit.
"Matt!" Moriko yelled. She grabbed Liona's pokéball, stopped, looked helplessly at the unconscious Russ, at Sylvia whose head swiveled between her trainer and Matt.
Haladana stepped forward. "I'll protect him. The red demon is not at full power… with all your strength, all your fighters—"
Moriko scrabbled in her pockets and turned out a potion dispenser. "Take this—restore your energy—his wounds—Maia! Maia! We'll attack together! Wait!"
"Move your ass, then!"
Moriko threw down Liona's pokéball and leapt onto her back. "Fly up high! I want to see what the hell is going on up there! Come on, Sylvia!"
Three—four giant pokémon were battling with another much smaller figure. The sunlight glinted off a steelix's dull metal carapace; there was a deepwater-blue gyarados sending out huge pulses of water; Kalamatos launched bug- and sound-type attacks that made the air waver; and swooping in for an aerial attack, there was a black charizard spewing blue flame.
The desert was a battlefield covered in fused glass and smoking craters: these were high-level attacks, legendary-level attacks, and they could kill.
The gray man blocked powerful beams with a succession of barriers before countering with shadow ball techniques and piercing shadow lances, but the four pokémon were pushing him back. And striding toward them was the second demon, pushing Matt ahead of him like a puppet.
"Let's get him," Moriko said.
Sylvia dropped onto the red demon from the sky, swirling with air- and dragon-type energy, and it let go, letting Matt slump to the ground. Maia was a streak of blue, placing her body between Matt and his captor, summoning water from cracks in the earth to cradle him.
The man bellowed, a sound like a furnace opening, and threw Sylvia off him with a double fire punch. As he turned toward Maia, Rufus seized him from behind and crushed him against his metal-plated chest, oblivious to the surrounding wreaths of black-red fire. The man kicked Rufus with his heels; he didn't have the leverage to use his full strength, but the blows were punishing.
A beam from the other battle went wide, blue-white energy searing the ground and exploding hot dust and glass into the air. The man spat as Maia herded Matt away, and a flame wall sprang up in front of them—Matt stirred, finally, on his pallet of water, covering his face from the heat.
The man's skin cracked, glowing lines zigzagging across its black surface. His limbs bulked and lengthened, wider than Rufus's, his face lengthening into a snout, and black, curling horns spiraled out of his orange hair—
Cryptidex mode initiated. Aura analysis: Fire- and dark-type, 75% certainty. Reduce range to increase certainty. (WARNING: HIGH LEVEL DO NOT APPROACH UNLESS FAINTED) Possible match: Aricaust, the infernal pokémon. A pokémon out of old legends, it was said to be uncontrollable and bent on destruction whenever it found humans. Its unholy fire could melt steel and stone.
The demon slammed Rufus to the ground, cracking the rock and throwing up a cloud of sand. Moriko could feel the heat as it blasted up toward where Liona hovered.
Tarahn joined, lashing the demon with thunderbolts and a thunder wave that it shrugged off, and he darted out of reach as it came after him. The aricaust was slow, as heavy as Rufus without the excuse of steel armor. Vleridin approached from behind and set up a water sport technique, surrounding Tarahn with a protective bubble of water. The aricaust bellowed its furnace roar again and punched its fists into the ground, blasting away sand and driving its arms into the rock up past the spikes at its elbows.
Attackdex mode initiated. Supervolcano, a high-level fire/rock attack of various pokémon lineages including magmortar, magcargo, groudon—
Run! Moriko sent, as strongly as she could, but Vleridin and Tarahn could tell that something was coming and had retreated. Rufus rose and braced himself as the ground exploded, spewing molten rock. The oxhaust's body flared amid the swirling dust, and he caught and cast some of the magma back at his opponent, who scarcely seemed to notice. The rest sizzled and smoked, melting the sand around the battlefield. Liona flew higher, dodging hot gusts of air.
There was a distant explosion, and the oncoming-train roar of the steelix at the other battle. Keigan joined next, his spiral horns sparkling as he used a fairy wind attack; this seemed to enrage the aricaust, and the springbuck bounded into the air and away, wings flittering.
Fire and dark, Moriko thought, as Sylvia hit the demon with a dragonbreath. Keep it guessing! she sent to them. Don't get hit!
Moriko's pokédex buzzed as the aricaust used uncatalogued attacks: whirling gouts of black-red fire burned across the sand followed by rains of hot ash; globs of lava splatted onto the ground as superheated trapped air expanded and burst.
Maia and Vleridin worked together, glowing blue, and there was a rumble as a huge water attack blasted out of the ground. It enveloped the aricaust and flashed to steam. Tarahn returned with thunderbolts and acid, hopping away out of reach as Rufus drew close to try a fighting-type attack, but his opponent's strength was enormous and he caught a blow to the chest that sent him reeling.
The other pokémon approached again as Rufus and the aricaust struggled, and their shadows grew long and shuddering. Out of the aricaust's shadow the reclusant appeared, throwing back her cloak and unfolding like a butterfly knife. Under a brutal torment technique, the demon faltered, its attacks suddenly halting and uncoordinated, and the reclusant stabbed it in the back.
A massive sand tomb attack shattered the earth, dropping the aricaust into a sinkhole. It had to be the work of dozens of pokémon—privant and sarjant were scattering—and ranks of big quarzant and rhinant appeared, each tanking the demon pokémon's attacks briefly and allowing the distant attackers to bombard it.
Thanasanian swooped in, flattening the aricaust with a pulsing moonblast attack from the air. Fulgurant and pyrant squads attacked with humming bug buzz techniques from the edges of the sinkhole, at a safe distance—until the aricaust roared again, a dark pulse scattering the surrounding pokémon like toys, and rose up on a wave of sand.
Gods all damn that thing! It was like battling a legendary, and they were hopelessly underlevel—one or two attacks were enough to leave a defending pokémon barely upright, and it was suicidal for Moriko to try to get down to get them a quick potion or full heal.
Maia seemed the least injured and had a type advantage at least—Maia, she tried sending, hoping Matt's pokémon could catch her thoughts—can you distract—
"I see you, demon," a strange, high, ringing voice said.
Celeste stood on the scorched plain, a spot of shining color, her skin reflecting the cloudless sky and her fiber-optic mane glimmering as the wind caught it.
Moriko clutched at her belt, and at Russell's belt hanging loosely on top of it. "Get back in the ball!" she shouted. "You're like level twenty!"
"I dreamed you, demon," the celestiule said. "I dreamed your end."
Her sky-skin whirled, and suddenly the sun was shining directly out of it. A beam of light like a sword pierced the aricaust, and it screamed in pain, transfixed.
The others sprang into action despite their burns and fatigue: Maia and Vleridin pummeled it with jets of water, and Tarahn arced with electric energy while Rufus belched fire. The reclusant struck with razor claws, laying into her trapped opponent as Sylvia hit it with dragonbreath. Keigan tried another fairy wind while Thanasanian delivered a ferocious moonblast, and the aricaust, under this multi-elemental barrage, finally began to fall back.
The demon shrank, his transformation subsiding and falling away into ash—
A thick barrier suddenly turned the attacks aside. The gray man appeared, rising up out of a phantom force teleportation.
"Just when I was beginning to enjoy myself!" He waved his hand, pushing the team back and disrupting their readied attacks, and picked up other man bodily.
There was a roar behind them: the gray man's opponents in pursuit, catching up to him.
He cast his gaze among those assembled and cocked his head at Matt. "Our visit was cut short tonight, Matthew—but I hope we can speak again soon about your obligations." He smirked and dropped back into his shadow, racing over the desert to the horizon.
A squadron of fulgurant passed overhead, green and yellow and glittering, pursuing at Kalamatos' order.
Moriko and Liona finally landed. "Matt, what was—" Moriko stopped, seeing Matt's contorted face. He was crying, furious, grinding his knuckles into the coarse grit on the desert floor. Maia groaned, seeing him, and he threw his arms around her neck.
Moriko set about checking the pokémon, applying hasty mists of potion on the worst injuries, and recalling them. Kalamatos and the three giant pokémon approached them, the battle-evolved charizard alighting delicately, and—it glowed and split, two forms sliding parallel to one another, the charizard, and... a woman.
She was very tall, deathly pale with severe white hair framing her face, and she had a pair of dark goggles masking her eyes. She was dressed in black, hard-used traveling clothes, and she was barefoot.
Matt stood suddenly; Maia rose to a battle crouch, surprised.
"Too slow!" he yelled, his voice breaking. "Every time! Useless!"
The woman cocked her head at him, just as the gray man had. "Hello, Matthew."
"You," Matt said, poisonous. "You—you—you think—you think you get to speak to me. What—fucking—what platitudinous word vomit do you have for me on this latest, most illustrious visit?"
"You should calm yourself, Matthew. Your distress only feeds him."
"Yes! Yes! There it is, we're talking for twenty fucking seconds and already! Already the tone-deaf and impenetrable bullshit appears, torrents of it! I do believe this is a record!"
"You should have stayed in Johto, Matthew. You were safe there. There were allies."
"Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you."
The woman in black shrugged, and the steelix and the gyarados, looming and enormous, turned to light and flew into her body, behind her sternum. She tapped her collarbone, briefly exposing something bright and opalescent embedded in her flesh, and the charizard shrank, losing its battle evolution, before it dissolved into energy as well.
She turned to Moriko. "Your friend was embedded by a paraslit. I must see him."
Moriko glanced at Matt, who glared daggers even as he clutched Maia around the neck, both exhausted. "I need—who are you? Where did you come from? Do you know the demons? How do you know Matt?"
The woman held up a hand. "After. Your friend first."
At the crater, the woman inclined her head and the ground dipped, excavating a path down into it. Haladana stood cautiously. Russ had risen into a sitting position and was drinking water, but didn't seem to notice them approaching. Sylvia went to him, and he patted her absently.
The woman froze. She turned slowly to look at them. "You—fed him—some of the gray essence." She sighed, a long exhalation. "This is dangerous."
Moriko's stomach dropped.
"Of course!" Matt shouted, swaying. "We did it wrong! What else have we done wrong? This fatal illness—possession—what could we do but treat it incorrectly! Yes!"
"I wish I had known earlier," the woman in black said evenly. "I might have—well. Too late."
She went to Russ and crouched in front of him, raising her goggles. Moriko flinched away at the sight of her eyes.
She had at least a dozen: her own seemed to share their sockets with the eyes of her ensouled pokémon.
"It is only a small amount," the woman said, half to herself. She put her goggles back on. Russ watched her, dreamily, as she stalked away.
"So mysteeeeeeeeeeerious and inscruuuuuuutable!" Matt screamed after her.
"Humans! Attend again to us!"
Moriko scrabbled up the dirt ramp in response to the reginant's summons, Matt's tirade continuing in the crater.
"Ah—y-your majesty, you're injured."
Kalamatos' jagged chitin was broken and burnt, and her energy was low according to Moriko's pokédex. The reginant made a sweeping motion with her antennae, dismissive.
"So are you, my child. Allow us to be direct—did you lead those demons, the gray and the red, to us and our hive?"
The reginant suddenly seemed very large and very strong to Moriko, and all around were her soldiers, dozens of them, and Moriko's pokémon were weak and her friends could not be left behind.
"No," she breathed, and then more strongly, "no, I've never seen them before. They wanted—they appeared when we were collecting the darkwater, and the gray man, he, the red—the gray man consumed the pool of it, and came out of it stronger."
"As Haladana reported," the queen agreed. "But the gray demon called your friend by name."
"…Yes… they seem… to know one another. And the woman with the white hair."
"And how long have you known your friend?"
"He—Matt—for about two months. Russ I've known for years."
Moriko flinched as Kalamatos drew close to her. She saw her face reflected in the facets of the queen's eye. "Be careful, little earth's daughter," the reginant rumbled.
"I don't know what's happening," Moriko said helplessly.
"I hope you find out," Kalamatos said, and drew away.
The desert plain smoked, scarred by high-level attacks. Ant pokémon buzzed or skittered to and fro as they tended to their hivemates' injuries and began repairing the damage.
The queen conferred briefly with a pyrant. She turned back to Moriko. "I spoke to you earlier of demons. Those two, the red and the gray—I believe they are demon lieutenants, to be precise: consuming energy and defiling it, and dispatching servants to corrupt and kill, like the one afflicting your friend. Is he free of it?"
"Yes—and I caught it, to bring back as evidence. There might be more in Gaiien—" Moriko frowned. "I have no idea how we'd help others—"
"There are… less risky methods to remove a paraslit successfully," said the white-haired woman; she'd crept up on them soundlessly. "If you give it to me, I can have the knowledge disseminated quickly."
Moriko's hand jerked toward the ball. Yes! Get rid of it! But... who are you? What are you?
She licked her lips, thinking of the huge pokémon the woman commanded. "No," she said, and it came out a squeak. "I'll give it to a professor in the next city, but please pass on the technique you keep hinting at."
The woman tilted her head and let the pause drag uncomfortably. "Very well," she said finally.
Moriko nodded, trying not to let her relief show.
Kalamatos buzzed a call that seemed to have an excess of harmonics, and several pokémon joined her: Thanasanian flew down, the eyespots bright on her white wings; Haladana approached slowly, still weak, although she had used the offered potion; senior-looking pyrant and soldant broke off from nearby discussions; and the reclusant materialized from a shadow.
"Search the tunnels, free anyone trapped or fainted in the rockfalls," the queen said. The soldant's antennae swept an assent and it clattered off. "Burn away any energy residue from the demon battle," she said to the pyrant. "It is unclean, no one should try to consume it."
The reclusant fixed Moriko with a piercing look, her yellow eyes staring out from her camouflaging wraps. To the reginant, she said, "Shall I restrain the humans? I have smelled deception on them since they entered the hive."
"No, Valanaru—the humans have not been wholly truthful with one another, but they are not allied with the demons. We might all have been destroyed had they not been here to lead Haladana to the darkwater and observe what there transpired."
"Understood."
"Thana, go with the humans when they leave."
The oberant's feathery antennae twitched with surprise. "My place is in the hive, surely?"
"I need intelligence from beyond the desert. The demons are not a local problem. And it has been long and long since I lived with humans," the queen explained. "Learn their latest tricks and report back—and find their queens, and tell them of demons."
Thanasanian bowed stiffly, and turned to Moriko. "I suppose I shall go with you," the oberant said. "Will you use one of your capture devices?"
"O-only if you want to. It's… convenient."
"I will take you three to Port Brac. Tonight," the woman in black broke in, speaking to Moriko. "Your friend—all three of you—need medical care. And I need to speak with a loremaster."
Moriko's head whirled. Was this person safe? But who could defend them if she wasn't? And Moriko desperately wanted away from this place, away from the desert, where everything had at last gone undeniably wrong.
"Our bags are still at the weather station," she said, finally.
"Let us retrieve them, then," the woman said. Two spheres of light flew out of her body, forming into an aerodactyl and a hydreigon. "Ready to fly?"
Moriko stared, not used to seeing someone else ensouled, and realizing how disconcerting it was. The woman in black inclined her head; Moriko shook herself and nodded. "Let's go get Matt and Russ."
Thanasanian bowed again to the queen, who buzzed a farewell.
The white-haired woman's body glowed, turning to light, and when the brightness faded, the black charizard flapped its wings, clearly impatient to be off.
The Gang Fights the Devil Part I
—August 2nd, 128 CR
Maia and Bjorn ripped out of their pokéballs, snarling, and Tarahn and Rufus followed suit: they bristled with energy and bellowed defiance at the gray man with the strange power, their minds filled with Matt's distress and Moriko's confusion.
"Oh, my dear," the man said, stepping off the dais into the now-dry darkwater pond, "did you think we were going to have a pokémon battle?"
And he said—something—and Rufus, Tarahn, and Maia were all hurled bodily down the tunnel. Bjorn roared, galloping in and rising to his hind legs, dwarfing his human opponent. He brought one of his paws down in a slash attack that should have cut the man from throat to groin and spilled every drop of his blood, but the ursaring's ten-centimeter claws skittered uselessly over a barrier.
"Ghost and normal," the gray man muttered, and he created an enormous orb of dark energy as Bjorn flailed at him. The eight-foot ursaring was slammed away after the others like a toy.
"Run, recall them and run, damn you!"
Moriko was dimly aware that Haladana was yelling at her; the meditant disappeared into the tunnel, carrying Matt, with Maia close behind her. Moriko fumbled with the pokéballs, dizzy from trying to watch both men and see where she was going. This wasn't right; she should have yelled at Bjorn to keep him from attacking a human being. What was happening?
The gray man raised a hand as Moriko made it to the tunnel, but he and other spun to face another opening as earth and dust billowed into the room.
Moriko staggered as Vleridin leapt out of her body like a ghost. She summoned a rock-type nature power, and their tunnel's walls cracked ominously, dark fractures spiderwebbing along the surface.
"Run!" Vleridin said, pushing Moriko ahead of her and away.
The tunnel mouth collapsed. Dust and roaring chased them up the tunnel, chips of rock clattering on the floor.
Liona and Sylvia greeted them with concern at the shaft entrance, looking back and forth between Haladana and the furious, frightened Maia.
"What's happening? What's wrong with Matt?" Liona asked.
"We need to go," Haladana was saying. "He can't ride and I can't carry him, flying—"
"Give him to me! Give him—" Maia reared up on her hind legs, her fins bristling.
Moriko waved her arms. "Maia! Stop! We have to—"
A tremor made everyone stumble, followed by a breath of displaced air.
"We have to go, now!" Haladana screeched.
"Sit on my back! Hold him and help me," Sylvia said, and the meditant awkwardly bundled Matt aboard, riding astride.
Moriko held Maia's pokéball. "Maia! Please! We'll get to the top, we'll get away—"
The tibyss made a frustrated, ripping growl, but recalled herself.
Moriko grabbed Liona again, and Vleridin phased into her body. Moriko felt a wave of vertigo, clutching the nigriff's feathers as they shot into the air ungracefully.
Below them the tunnel glowed with fire and shadow energy, but they fled until it was just a red and purple star far beneath them.
I had no idea you were both here, a voice intruded—Moriko felt sick—although I can't imagine why you thought you could face me, Matthew. I thought I made it clear how you would feel if you brought on trouble…
Liona and Sylvia accelerated and Haladana added her power, the air rushing past faster and faster. Behind them came a cacophony of thunder, roars, and distant laughter. At last they reached the top of the hole, and the earth shook under them as they alighted on the edge.
"Run! We must reach the queen!"
Moriko recalled the flyers and followed. She felt the cool touch of Maia's energy as she watched their progress. They were thrown to the ground repeatedly by quakes, and breaths of burnt, ashy air pushed past them.
Matthew! Please, when I'm finished with her—here a bellowing, as of multiple pokémon, and a concussion that left them staggering—won't you introduce me to your friend? She has so much energy!
The tunnel walls suddenly glowed. Haladana pulled Moriko down into a depression, and Kalamatos the reginant appeared. She was buzzing a war cry, the tunnels groaning as she shoved the walls aside to accommodate her bulk. Moriko saw her armored underside briefly and then she was past them, belching teal dragonfire.
They rose again, their pursuer's wild laughter echoing behind.
"Matt! Who is he?" Moriko gasped out, but he hung limply in Haladana's arms, haloed by psychic energy.
The sounds of battle finally started to recede and soon they met the hive's lesser forces: sarjant, pyrant, and soldant, marching in the queen's wake. Thanasanian was leading them; she stopped and gestured for the rest to go on.
The ant pokémon parted and flowed around them, and Haladana put down Matt and sat, sighing. Thanasanian's antennae darted over Matt's body; he didn't notice, curled up with his hands crossed over his head and his whole body shaking.
A pokémon stepped out of the shadows, and the oberant and the meditant looked to it: a reclusant, another upright bug with glowing yellow eyes and a dark covering like a cloak.
Reclusant, the nightrider pokémon. A bug- and dark-type, it evolves from privant near level 25 if its speed and physical stats have good potential. It strikes from the shadows, using its modified wings to cover and camouflage itself. Its bold coloration confuses and distracts the opponent.
She examined Matt briefly and then hissed between her mandibles. "Cursed," she said. "Keep going." The reclusant stepped into shadow again and was gone.
There was a distant thunderclap and a sighing noise deep in the tunnels. "The queen needs me," Thanasanian said. "Keep going to the resting chambers, the human is there. Run!"
Russ was looking far worse when they found him, guarded by a few sarjant and privant minders. Haladana set Matt down on the sand before running her antennae over Russ.
Maia burst out of her pokéball again and stood over Matt, groaning unhappily and snarling when the ant pokémon tried to approach. Sylvia followed suit, her wings furled tight, and she crouched by Russ and whined, nosing his limp body.
"It is accelerating—he has… hours, maybe," Haladana said.
Moriko held the darkwater canteen out to the meditant, but she backed away.
"No, I cannot touch it. It—you—you… must not feel it."
"Feel what? Haladana—what is this? Why—who is that man? What'll happen to Russ?"
"That man… those men, the gray and the red, are demon elementals in human form. And the gray one took up that energy, all of it, energy we could have used for years had it been safe to do so—"
"Haladana. They were demons. What will happen to the small demon, when—?"
The meditant trembled, clicking to herself. "I don't know," she said. "The gray one was ghost-type, and the red one dark, and only the gray one used the darkwater—"
"What do I do?"
"I don't know," Haladana said miserably. "I wish the queen were here."
A tremor reached them faintly, stirring loose pebbles and causing sand to fall in hissing whispers.
"Decide, Moriko," Maia growled from the corner. "Make a choice."
Moriko looked at Matt, but he didn't move. She looked at Russ and saw anew the waxy pallor of his skin and his narrow chest rising and falling. Sylvia looked at her beseechingly. She loosened the top of the canteen.
Dribbles of the thick substance immediately forced their way out.
"What the—"
"Out! Get out!" Haladana buzzed at the other ant pokémon, and they scattered obediently out into the tunnels. A shield shimmered around the room.
The darkwater burst the cap off the canteen, and Moriko threw it to the ground. It crawled, flexing across the gritty rock, oily fingers grasping, extending. She searched her pockets for a card, a utensil, something, and tried to pick it up with a knife, but it parted around the metal. Finally she grabbed the glob and almost immediately dropped it.
It was cold, awful, like touching a toad's belly, and it slithered and wriggled in her hand. She started to walk over to where Russ was lying, and she stumbled as the darkwater got heavier, and waves of nausea hit her like blows.
Another shield shimmered into effect around her hand and the darkwater flexed even more violently, but the nausea subsided.
"I think you should hurry," Haladana said, and Moriko looked past her and saw that the privant were skittering around the outside of their screened bubble—and beginning to attack it. "I told you how it—calls."
"Can't you stop them?"
"I am, and every moment it gets harder. Go!"
Moriko looked at Maia and Sylvia again, the two pokémon rigid and bristling and wide-eyed. She squeezed the globule and brought it close to Russ's back, where the restrained paraslit had its breathing holes, and suddenly the darkwater calmed.
What the fuck—
She gripped it, uncertain, panicking—like calls to like?—would it work, would the type opposition drive it out, would it gain power, would it evolve—
Make a choice.
She smeared it over the holes, and it sat on Russ's back like a streak of oil, black and shimmering, before darting into the breaks in his skin.
Russ struggled immediately. Moriko tried to hold him down but his skinny limbs were filled with a terrible strength, and she was left gasping as he hit her in the stomach. His elbow shot out and caught her on the nose, and she saw stars, her face hot and cold and heavy. And then Matt was there holding him down as well, and Sylvia put her forepaws on him, and the paraslit flailed Russ's body uselessly as he sank into the sand under their combined weight.
The room filled with a painful keening. There was a glow from the breathing holes, and then a ball of light shot out of Russ's back and landed on the floor.
It reformed into a pokémon—a fist-sized bug, grub-pale and soft with bruise-colored spots, and long metallic antennae several times its body length. It darted around the room like a cockroach under a sudden unfriendly light.
Cryptidex mode initiated. Aura analysis: bug- and psychic-type, 85% certainty. Bug- and ground-type, 15% certainty. Possible match: Paraslit, the parasite pokémon. According to legend, it is responsible for erratic behavior and disappearances in humans.
Moriko sank to the floor, panting, a nosebleed dribbling past her mouth. Matt's eyes were sunken, and his face was half-crusted with vomit, one detail of their flight that she'd missed but maybe Haladana had noticed a little too well. Sylvia sighed and crouched by Russ, putting her head down on her forelegs.
"And there it is," Matt managed to croak out, putting out his arms to hug Maia as she curled around him.
Moriko spat and wiped her face, smearing blood over her arm. "I should kill it. I should kill it and eat its energy. Fuck that thing."
"It is a cryptid," Matt said, as the paraslit flitted around, squeaking. "It should be characterized. For science, and to protect others."
"Eat it or don't," said Haladana, her voice flanging as she held the barriers, "but do something!"
Moriko sighed out her nose, spraying blood. "For science," she said finally. She reached into her pockets and found a standard pokéball, which closed around the paraslit without a fuss. "Gotcha, bitch," she said, picking it up.
The room exploded.
The shields protected them from the worst of it, but they were left coughing in whirling grit. Daylight was visible through the dust, and battle sounds were audible once again: war cries, the whanging of beam attacks, and skittering noises as stone and dirt crumbled around them. Privant and sarjant were already struggling out of the rubble.
Haladana took down the barriers and sat. "Henceforth," she said gravely, her voice even more buzzing and distorted than usual, "all fulgurant shall be instructed to ignore human travelers, regardless of their distress, and regardless of any rare entities they have encountered."
"Haladana—thank you. You saved us. We would be dead, and Russ as well."
The meditant dipped her head at that briefly, before snapping up to look at the now-exposed sky. "Ah—I am dreaming. Let's take shelter before another beam—"
The coal-black man with the burning eyes appeared at the lip of the crater.
"Matthew," he said, and raised his hand.
Matt levitated again, surrounded by an ugly, mottled energy. Maia charged at the red demon, roaring as she made a huge leap, but he buffeted her aside with a gust of air.
"Gkk—run!" Matt choked out. Limp, like a doll, he was raised out of the pit.
"Matt!" Moriko yelled. She grabbed Liona's pokéball, stopped, looked helplessly at the unconscious Russ, at Sylvia whose head swiveled between her trainer and Matt.
Haladana stepped forward. "I'll protect him. The red demon is not at full power… with all your strength, all your fighters—"
Moriko scrabbled in her pockets and turned out a potion dispenser. "Take this—restore your energy—his wounds—Maia! Maia! We'll attack together! Wait!"
"Move your ass, then!"
Moriko threw down Liona's pokéball and leapt onto her back. "Fly up high! I want to see what the hell is going on up there! Come on, Sylvia!"
Three—four giant pokémon were battling with another much smaller figure. The sunlight glinted off a steelix's dull metal carapace; there was a deepwater-blue gyarados sending out huge pulses of water; Kalamatos launched bug- and sound-type attacks that made the air waver; and swooping in for an aerial attack, there was a black charizard spewing blue flame.
The desert was a battlefield covered in fused glass and smoking craters: these were high-level attacks, legendary-level attacks, and they could kill.
The gray man blocked powerful beams with a succession of barriers before countering with shadow ball techniques and piercing shadow lances, but the four pokémon were pushing him back. And striding toward them was the second demon, pushing Matt ahead of him like a puppet.
"Let's get him," Moriko said.
Sylvia dropped onto the red demon from the sky, swirling with air- and dragon-type energy, and it let go, letting Matt slump to the ground. Maia was a streak of blue, placing her body between Matt and his captor, summoning water from cracks in the earth to cradle him.
The man bellowed, a sound like a furnace opening, and threw Sylvia off him with a double fire punch. As he turned toward Maia, Rufus seized him from behind and crushed him against his metal-plated chest, oblivious to the surrounding wreaths of black-red fire. The man kicked Rufus with his heels; he didn't have the leverage to use his full strength, but the blows were punishing.
A beam from the other battle went wide, blue-white energy searing the ground and exploding hot dust and glass into the air. The man spat as Maia herded Matt away, and a flame wall sprang up in front of them—Matt stirred, finally, on his pallet of water, covering his face from the heat.
The man's skin cracked, glowing lines zigzagging across its black surface. His limbs bulked and lengthened, wider than Rufus's, his face lengthening into a snout, and black, curling horns spiraled out of his orange hair—
Cryptidex mode initiated. Aura analysis: Fire- and dark-type, 75% certainty. Reduce range to increase certainty. (WARNING: HIGH LEVEL DO NOT APPROACH UNLESS FAINTED) Possible match: Aricaust, the infernal pokémon. A pokémon out of old legends, it was said to be uncontrollable and bent on destruction whenever it found humans. Its unholy fire could melt steel and stone.
The demon slammed Rufus to the ground, cracking the rock and throwing up a cloud of sand. Moriko could feel the heat as it blasted up toward where Liona hovered.
Tarahn joined, lashing the demon with thunderbolts and a thunder wave that it shrugged off, and he darted out of reach as it came after him. The aricaust was slow, as heavy as Rufus without the excuse of steel armor. Vleridin approached from behind and set up a water sport technique, surrounding Tarahn with a protective bubble of water. The aricaust bellowed its furnace roar again and punched its fists into the ground, blasting away sand and driving its arms into the rock up past the spikes at its elbows.
Attackdex mode initiated. Supervolcano, a high-level fire/rock attack of various pokémon lineages including magmortar, magcargo, groudon—
Run! Moriko sent, as strongly as she could, but Vleridin and Tarahn could tell that something was coming and had retreated. Rufus rose and braced himself as the ground exploded, spewing molten rock. The oxhaust's body flared amid the swirling dust, and he caught and cast some of the magma back at his opponent, who scarcely seemed to notice. The rest sizzled and smoked, melting the sand around the battlefield. Liona flew higher, dodging hot gusts of air.
There was a distant explosion, and the oncoming-train roar of the steelix at the other battle. Keigan joined next, his spiral horns sparkling as he used a fairy wind attack; this seemed to enrage the aricaust, and the springbuck bounded into the air and away, wings flittering.
Fire and dark, Moriko thought, as Sylvia hit the demon with a dragonbreath. Keep it guessing! she sent to them. Don't get hit!
Moriko's pokédex buzzed as the aricaust used uncatalogued attacks: whirling gouts of black-red fire burned across the sand followed by rains of hot ash; globs of lava splatted onto the ground as superheated trapped air expanded and burst.
Maia and Vleridin worked together, glowing blue, and there was a rumble as a huge water attack blasted out of the ground. It enveloped the aricaust and flashed to steam. Tarahn returned with thunderbolts and acid, hopping away out of reach as Rufus drew close to try a fighting-type attack, but his opponent's strength was enormous and he caught a blow to the chest that sent him reeling.
The other pokémon approached again as Rufus and the aricaust struggled, and their shadows grew long and shuddering. Out of the aricaust's shadow the reclusant appeared, throwing back her cloak and unfolding like a butterfly knife. Under a brutal torment technique, the demon faltered, its attacks suddenly halting and uncoordinated, and the reclusant stabbed it in the back.
A massive sand tomb attack shattered the earth, dropping the aricaust into a sinkhole. It had to be the work of dozens of pokémon—privant and sarjant were scattering—and ranks of big quarzant and rhinant appeared, each tanking the demon pokémon's attacks briefly and allowing the distant attackers to bombard it.
Thanasanian swooped in, flattening the aricaust with a pulsing moonblast attack from the air. Fulgurant and pyrant squads attacked with humming bug buzz techniques from the edges of the sinkhole, at a safe distance—until the aricaust roared again, a dark pulse scattering the surrounding pokémon like toys, and rose up on a wave of sand.
Gods all damn that thing! It was like battling a legendary, and they were hopelessly underlevel—one or two attacks were enough to leave a defending pokémon barely upright, and it was suicidal for Moriko to try to get down to get them a quick potion or full heal.
Maia seemed the least injured and had a type advantage at least—Maia, she tried sending, hoping Matt's pokémon could catch her thoughts—can you distract—
"I see you, demon," a strange, high, ringing voice said.
Celeste stood on the scorched plain, a spot of shining color, her skin reflecting the cloudless sky and her fiber-optic mane glimmering as the wind caught it.
Moriko clutched at her belt, and at Russell's belt hanging loosely on top of it. "Get back in the ball!" she shouted. "You're like level twenty!"
"I dreamed you, demon," the celestiule said. "I dreamed your end."
Her sky-skin whirled, and suddenly the sun was shining directly out of it. A beam of light like a sword pierced the aricaust, and it screamed in pain, transfixed.
The others sprang into action despite their burns and fatigue: Maia and Vleridin pummeled it with jets of water, and Tarahn arced with electric energy while Rufus belched fire. The reclusant struck with razor claws, laying into her trapped opponent as Sylvia hit it with dragonbreath. Keigan tried another fairy wind while Thanasanian delivered a ferocious moonblast, and the aricaust, under this multi-elemental barrage, finally began to fall back.
The demon shrank, his transformation subsiding and falling away into ash—
A thick barrier suddenly turned the attacks aside. The gray man appeared, rising up out of a phantom force teleportation.
"Just when I was beginning to enjoy myself!" He waved his hand, pushing the team back and disrupting their readied attacks, and picked up other man bodily.
There was a roar behind them: the gray man's opponents in pursuit, catching up to him.
He cast his gaze among those assembled and cocked his head at Matt. "Our visit was cut short tonight, Matthew—but I hope we can speak again soon about your obligations." He smirked and dropped back into his shadow, racing over the desert to the horizon.
A squadron of fulgurant passed overhead, green and yellow and glittering, pursuing at Kalamatos' order.
Moriko and Liona finally landed. "Matt, what was—" Moriko stopped, seeing Matt's contorted face. He was crying, furious, grinding his knuckles into the coarse grit on the desert floor. Maia groaned, seeing him, and he threw his arms around her neck.
Moriko set about checking the pokémon, applying hasty mists of potion on the worst injuries, and recalling them. Kalamatos and the three giant pokémon approached them, the battle-evolved charizard alighting delicately, and—it glowed and split, two forms sliding parallel to one another, the charizard, and... a woman.
She was very tall, deathly pale with severe white hair framing her face, and she had a pair of dark goggles masking her eyes. She was dressed in black, hard-used traveling clothes, and she was barefoot.
Matt stood suddenly; Maia rose to a battle crouch, surprised.
"Too slow!" he yelled, his voice breaking. "Every time! Useless!"
The woman cocked her head at him, just as the gray man had. "Hello, Matthew."
"You," Matt said, poisonous. "You—you—you think—you think you get to speak to me. What—fucking—what platitudinous word vomit do you have for me on this latest, most illustrious visit?"
"You should calm yourself, Matthew. Your distress only feeds him."
"Yes! Yes! There it is, we're talking for twenty fucking seconds and already! Already the tone-deaf and impenetrable bullshit appears, torrents of it! I do believe this is a record!"
"You should have stayed in Johto, Matthew. You were safe there. There were allies."
"Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you."
The woman in black shrugged, and the steelix and the gyarados, looming and enormous, turned to light and flew into her body, behind her sternum. She tapped her collarbone, briefly exposing something bright and opalescent embedded in her flesh, and the charizard shrank, losing its battle evolution, before it dissolved into energy as well.
She turned to Moriko. "Your friend was embedded by a paraslit. I must see him."
Moriko glanced at Matt, who glared daggers even as he clutched Maia around the neck, both exhausted. "I need—who are you? Where did you come from? Do you know the demons? How do you know Matt?"
The woman held up a hand. "After. Your friend first."
At the crater, the woman inclined her head and the ground dipped, excavating a path down into it. Haladana stood cautiously. Russ had risen into a sitting position and was drinking water, but didn't seem to notice them approaching. Sylvia went to him, and he patted her absently.
The woman froze. She turned slowly to look at them. "You—fed him—some of the gray essence." She sighed, a long exhalation. "This is dangerous."
Moriko's stomach dropped.
"Of course!" Matt shouted, swaying. "We did it wrong! What else have we done wrong? This fatal illness—possession—what could we do but treat it incorrectly! Yes!"
"I wish I had known earlier," the woman in black said evenly. "I might have—well. Too late."
She went to Russ and crouched in front of him, raising her goggles. Moriko flinched away at the sight of her eyes.
She had at least a dozen: her own seemed to share their sockets with the eyes of her ensouled pokémon.
"It is only a small amount," the woman said, half to herself. She put her goggles back on. Russ watched her, dreamily, as she stalked away.
"So mysteeeeeeeeeeerious and inscruuuuuuutable!" Matt screamed after her.
"Humans! Attend again to us!"
Moriko scrabbled up the dirt ramp in response to the reginant's summons, Matt's tirade continuing in the crater.
"Ah—y-your majesty, you're injured."
Kalamatos' jagged chitin was broken and burnt, and her energy was low according to Moriko's pokédex. The reginant made a sweeping motion with her antennae, dismissive.
"So are you, my child. Allow us to be direct—did you lead those demons, the gray and the red, to us and our hive?"
The reginant suddenly seemed very large and very strong to Moriko, and all around were her soldiers, dozens of them, and Moriko's pokémon were weak and her friends could not be left behind.
"No," she breathed, and then more strongly, "no, I've never seen them before. They wanted—they appeared when we were collecting the darkwater, and the gray man, he, the red—the gray man consumed the pool of it, and came out of it stronger."
"As Haladana reported," the queen agreed. "But the gray demon called your friend by name."
"…Yes… they seem… to know one another. And the woman with the white hair."
"And how long have you known your friend?"
"He—Matt—for about two months. Russ I've known for years."
Moriko flinched as Kalamatos drew close to her. She saw her face reflected in the facets of the queen's eye. "Be careful, little earth's daughter," the reginant rumbled.
"I don't know what's happening," Moriko said helplessly.
"I hope you find out," Kalamatos said, and drew away.
The desert plain smoked, scarred by high-level attacks. Ant pokémon buzzed or skittered to and fro as they tended to their hivemates' injuries and began repairing the damage.
The queen conferred briefly with a pyrant. She turned back to Moriko. "I spoke to you earlier of demons. Those two, the red and the gray—I believe they are demon lieutenants, to be precise: consuming energy and defiling it, and dispatching servants to corrupt and kill, like the one afflicting your friend. Is he free of it?"
"Yes—and I caught it, to bring back as evidence. There might be more in Gaiien—" Moriko frowned. "I have no idea how we'd help others—"
"There are… less risky methods to remove a paraslit successfully," said the white-haired woman; she'd crept up on them soundlessly. "If you give it to me, I can have the knowledge disseminated quickly."
Moriko's hand jerked toward the ball. Yes! Get rid of it! But... who are you? What are you?
She licked her lips, thinking of the huge pokémon the woman commanded. "No," she said, and it came out a squeak. "I'll give it to a professor in the next city, but please pass on the technique you keep hinting at."
The woman tilted her head and let the pause drag uncomfortably. "Very well," she said finally.
Moriko nodded, trying not to let her relief show.
Kalamatos buzzed a call that seemed to have an excess of harmonics, and several pokémon joined her: Thanasanian flew down, the eyespots bright on her white wings; Haladana approached slowly, still weak, although she had used the offered potion; senior-looking pyrant and soldant broke off from nearby discussions; and the reclusant materialized from a shadow.
"Search the tunnels, free anyone trapped or fainted in the rockfalls," the queen said. The soldant's antennae swept an assent and it clattered off. "Burn away any energy residue from the demon battle," she said to the pyrant. "It is unclean, no one should try to consume it."
The reclusant fixed Moriko with a piercing look, her yellow eyes staring out from her camouflaging wraps. To the reginant, she said, "Shall I restrain the humans? I have smelled deception on them since they entered the hive."
"No, Valanaru—the humans have not been wholly truthful with one another, but they are not allied with the demons. We might all have been destroyed had they not been here to lead Haladana to the darkwater and observe what there transpired."
"Understood."
"Thana, go with the humans when they leave."
The oberant's feathery antennae twitched with surprise. "My place is in the hive, surely?"
"I need intelligence from beyond the desert. The demons are not a local problem. And it has been long and long since I lived with humans," the queen explained. "Learn their latest tricks and report back—and find their queens, and tell them of demons."
Thanasanian bowed stiffly, and turned to Moriko. "I suppose I shall go with you," the oberant said. "Will you use one of your capture devices?"
"O-only if you want to. It's… convenient."
"I will take you three to Port Brac. Tonight," the woman in black broke in, speaking to Moriko. "Your friend—all three of you—need medical care. And I need to speak with a loremaster."
Moriko's head whirled. Was this person safe? But who could defend them if she wasn't? And Moriko desperately wanted away from this place, away from the desert, where everything had at last gone undeniably wrong.
"Our bags are still at the weather station," she said, finally.
"Let us retrieve them, then," the woman said. Two spheres of light flew out of her body, forming into an aerodactyl and a hydreigon. "Ready to fly?"
Moriko stared, not used to seeing someone else ensouled, and realizing how disconcerting it was. The woman in black inclined her head; Moriko shook herself and nodded. "Let's go get Matt and Russ."
Thanasanian bowed again to the queen, who buzzed a farewell.
The white-haired woman's body glowed, turning to light, and when the brightness faded, the black charizard flapped its wings, clearly impatient to be off.