III. The Dragon
In the land of my mother, beneath the dark pines, there is silence
In the land of my mother, beneath the dark ice, there are secrets
After her initial shock, Moriko was surprised to find that she wasn't scared. She was angry as shit, though.
Ituras—the Gray Prince—had almost killed Russ, once her best human friend. Its servants had hurt him, maybe permanently. She hadn't spoken to him for two years.
Ituras had hurt Matt, maybe permanently.
Ituras's servants had hurt her. A demon called the Spirit of Wrath had killed her parents and tried to kill her.
Pokémon rangers and PRED had almost killed it, and here it was, hiding away again to recover. It was weak.
It was an opportunity.
If the demon god didn't have the good grace to die, it could rot under the care of pokémon scientists.
But normal pokéballs couldn't catch gods unless they wanted, for some reason, to be caught, and a couple of trainers, even good ones, would need far more preparation than she and Polaris had come in with to fight even a weakened mythical like Ituras.
Moriko's hands and teeth itched, and she knew what Vleridin was feeling, looking out at the sleeping or unconscious demon from her eyes.
The ensouled mooskeg laughed. We are bold, are we not, planning deicide?
Moriko smiled to herself. There will be time. But it enraged her to have Ituras escape again. With her career change it was a matter of professional pride, not just a personal desire for justice.
Could rangers or Pan-Regional Elemental Defense soldiers get here in time?
Polaris was watching her. "I get the feeling you know what's going on," he said, nearly inaudibly.
"They're collecting darkwater. It's all darkwater. It's… blood. To make it powerful," she whispered, indicating the motionless purple bulk of Ituras. "It's the demon god. It was… split up by the other gods a thousand years ago or whatever, but they still couldn't kill it, just bury the pieces. Every time it absorbs more it gets more powerful. What it did at Lacuna wasn't even its full power."
Polaris nodded; he ran his hands over his pokéball belt and frowned. "Is your nigriff your only flying pokémon?"
"Thana—my oberant can fly, but carrying me isn't a great flight."
"I want to send a flier after the pokémon that are collecting the black blood—I want to know where from, and I want to destroy or steal it. It gets more powerful when it gets more, so it's not going to get some."
"I think we need to tell the rangers. And PRED," Moriko reminded him. "Let them do it."
Polaris grimaced. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right." He flipped open his pokédex. "No service. Surprise."
Finally, Polaris entrusted his aura monitor and its high-quality scans to his delibird, who waddled away and down the tunnel.
"…Are you sure about her?"
"The thing about delibird is that you don't see them coming," Polaris said, grinning widely. "Myra is a totally harmless and helpful pokémon that no one would prey on. Right?"
"We're in a demon lair, Polaris."
"No one."
"…Let's concentrate on finding the villagers. Can we get through here?"
The pokémon further down weren't white after all; their forms wavered, sections disappearing or changing color until what was left was gray and doll-like while their shadows kept walking. Finally the shadow flowed up onto the quadrupedal forms, leaving them so black that they seemed two-dimensional.
Cryptidex mode initiated. Aura analysis: dark- and normal-type, 60% certainty, dark- and ice-type, 30% certainty, dark-type, 10% certainty. Reduce range to increase certainty. Possible match: Eidolost, the silhouette pokémon. It is said to play tricks on others and to steal from them, and feed off their confusion and fright. Its shadow is the real body. Initiate full scan and upload? (Y/N) Error: No service. Scans will be uploaded when connected to pokédex service.
Flat or not, they had interior space, because one by one they were approaching the dais and vomiting up darkwater to add to the mass in the pool.
Not all of them came willingly; a few had been bound with techniques and were struggling against vines or steel bands or the claws of the others. Eventually they were dragged over and lined up next to the pool.
Moriko wondered which of the pokémon were more susceptible to the darkwater's effects: the ones who were obediently delivering it, or the ones who were fighting to get away. The darkwater had lowered Russ's inhibitions, leading to a number of memorable nights where he'd partied far beyond what was wise or even humanly possible. It had been a far cry from his wallflower days only a few weeks before, at the end of high school. But perhaps the darkwater had had a will of its own; Russ had also rushed them all north despite impending danger, north to where the Gray Prince happened to be.
Something on the ceiling stirred, and the eidolost all froze, heads upturned. Great wings twitched as a long, scaled body appeared, reaching for the ground. Its wings were patterned with stars, nebulae, moons that shimmered against a night-black background. It extended its antennae toward the bound pokémon ever so slightly, and suddenly they were all bleeding darkwater into the pool.
"Take them to recover," it said, in a voice like the void between worlds or the hard light of the stars.
One by one the silhouette pokémon skittered out of the cavern, and the huge pokémon was left alone, rearing over the darkwater pool.
Cryptidex mode activated. Aura analysis: cosmic- and light-type, 70% certainty. Cosmic- and ice-type, 15% certainty. Light- and ice-type, 15% certainty. Reduce range to increase certainty. No matches.
"Come out, then, cousin," it said. "I see you hiding there."
Moriko and Polaris jumped as Karaxil, Demon of Frost and Starlight, slithered out from between the cracks in the ice nearby, its coat shimmering and its wedge-shaped head turning toward the other. Moriko had judged it recovered since the first time she'd seen it imprisoned under a mountain, but she realized the auroraboros was missing something compared to the other demon. Karaxil had atrophied; the other had been growing, absorbing energy, even if it had mostly slept away the years like legendaries did.
"I name you, Acherix, Night's Empress," Karaxil said. "Hail, cousin."
"A trifle rude, cousin," the Night's Empress replied. "You are much diminished since last we spoke."
"The world burned when last we spoke," Karaxil said, its coils bunching up behind it as it seemed to ready itself for some movement, or just for comfort. Its claws scratched at the rock, carefully not touching the darkwater pool.
"And it shall again," the other demon said, pleased. "Come you to rejoin the master?"
"I tried to kill the master, as I think thou well know'st," Karaxil said sharply. "Why dost thou serve it still?"
"Oh, I have no especial love for the old god! But the world is out of balance; it hath been so for aeons. Thou know'st it, or wouldst, if thou hadst not moldered under rock these many years."
"When it lost they caught me and bound me with spirit and iron," Frost said. "I wandered from dream to dream unseeing, useless. Do you this and it will lose again, and they shall catch you and leave you, too, to die there far from light of sun or moon or star."
"It must be done. What must be done? I know not, and the stars answer not," the Night's Empress said, climbing back up to its perch, scales scraping on the ice. "I know only that the imbalance is vast, and action taken must be vaster still. What great work could I make my aim? And so I chose the grandest task I could think of. I shall remake the god who was sundered."
"The god died. That thing is but a shadow."
"Oh, cousin, who ever heard of a god who really died? One can always bring them back. Even they could not destroy it, truly, but hide the blood and leave the fitful shades to wander until the end of the age. The world hath been wrong since it died, wronger still since the humans came. They sit in their cities and bond with minor sparks and think themselves masters of fire. They are fools, and we should show them so. Come, cousin!"
"It will never be the same. What good will it do?"
"I know not," the Empress cackled. "We shall see when it is done! The stars turn and the motion of the planets is meaningless. It amuses me to do. What other reason need I?"
"Hast thou never thought of doing something useful?"
The Empress rounded on the Demon. "Use! Use! Listen to thy words, cousin! Is it useful? Is it economic? Like some crawling ant thou art, fearful of the rain and the change of the season! We were lords, and we were mighty! Thou art grown weak there under stone, weak and feeble!"
"I did grow weak," Karaxil said bitterly. "Though not feeble—I learned we could change. That there is great power in bonding with a human being. I have witnessed elementals of terrible power, bonded—and that it could be extended to demons, withal."
The Night's Empress laughed in its face. "My poor mad cousin. You should remain here after I raise the god; stay you here and rest for a few centuries, and enjoy our results thereafter. Your wits are broken."
"Thou art mad, to pursue this destruction to no reward from a broken master."
"Poor, poor cousin. Art thou hungry? There are sleepers in the caves beyond, brought by my servants." Its antennae waved. "Though I sense thou hast brought thine own meals. Perchance I shall steal them from thee."
Karaxil snarled and dove after the Empress. They wove around one another, long bodies rising and falling, and the Demon struck out with its segmented legs and then with beams of ice and light, glittering with auroral energy.
The air shimmered as the Empress's weirdly human hands moved, summoning cosmic-type energy, and black portals of nothing sucked up the auroraboros's attacks, only to reopen and redirect them. The beams scythed along Karaxil's body, altered by their passage through nothingness, and left dark afterimages.
Ice stalactites fell from the ceiling as they battled, exploding into shrapnel, and Moriko and Polaris fled back down the tunnel they came in.
"I didn't completely understand the Empress, but it mentioned sleepers," Moriko said as they hurried. "The villagers?"
"That's my guess," Polaris agreed. "Can any of your pokémon track human minds? Sometimes psychics can learn how."
"No, I'm supposed to catch or trade for a teleporter this summer if I can."
"Hopefully it's Celebi and you'll come back in time to help us," Polaris said lightly. "Atropos can't, so we'll need to do it the old-fashioned way."
They froze as they nearly walked into more eidolost, but the demons missed or ignored them, burbling urgently to one another. They were headed back toward the cave with the Empress, perhaps to help it battle.
"This place is a maze," Polaris muttered. "Let's go the other way."
They followed the tunnel the eidolost had come from, the ice growing rougher and older, and they started to find castoff human artifacts: clothing tags, bits of plastic wrapper, bobby pins, and other debris.
"Breadcrumbs," Polaris said.
They followed the bits of garbage as much as possible as they came to fork after fork in the caves. Their trail marks, scratched into the stone walls, proved invaluable as they backtracked over and over. Moriko was keeping track of the paths on her pokédex, and had to increase the drawing size as the map grew more and more elaborate. Faint booms from the demons' battle sounded through the caves, which they hoped was far behind them.
"I did a rescue where the tunnels changed shape behind us," Polaris whispered, "thanks to the froslass that controlled the cave. That could have been very bad if we hadn't been monitoring the path and the aura readouts."
"I really hope it's not a trap," Moriko whispered back uneasily.
"I doubt it—worse, I think it's a larder," Polaris answered.
The ice ran out as they went deeper on into the mountain; Moriko felt faintly dizzy from all the twists and turns, and exhausted by the turnbacks and blind alleys. Finally, a wide cavern greeted them with icemelt trickling into a pool in the corner, and Moriko's heart leapt with excitement and dread as they saw the furs and synthetic jackets of the missing villagers.
There were a couple dozen of them, lying haphazardly around the chamber. Polaris immediately threw down a couple of pokéballs, revealing his hexx and an olorant, who set up Safeguard barriers around the victims. Thankfully, the villagers all began waking under the influence of the negating technique—but some of them were weak indeed.
"We have to get them out," Polaris said, low. "I'm going to teleport the ones who can't walk. The others will need to be led. Atropos can only do so many ports."
Moriko nodded. "I'll get them out." I'll try, she thought.
The cavern rumbled, far-off.
Just rousing the villagers proved a major task: it had been easier after Sere Island with medics present and later more medical personnel who had taken charge of the knocked-out islanders. Every person seemed to go through the same slow confusion and ask the same questions; it was maddening with demon pokémon somewhere nearby, to say nothing of Frost and the Empress fighting. But Moriko tried to follow Polaris's example, speaking to each person patiently; he even knew many of their names.
The pokémon every adult and child had on their belts were waking up too, and soon the cave was filled with pokémon cries and psychic communication loud enough to wake the dead. Atropos the hexx finally put an end to it with a sharp Follow Me technique. High-level pokémon attacks worked on humans too, and Moriko had to fight to tear her eyes away.
"Quiet, now, and stay with your partners," Atropos announced sternly. "They need our help to get out."
Polaris and Atropos began directing the villagers who weren't recovering well, and teleported the first pair out.
Moriko addressed the remainder. "This is Vleridin," she said, introducing the mooskeg. "She's going to lead us out. I'm going to bring up the rear. Polaris is going to keep teleporting that group out, but the rest of us have to leg it. Ready?"
It was insane, but somehow the villagers were nodding and looking to her instead of going "She's just a kid! We need the leader!"
There was another rumble, and a moment later a wave of fresher, colder air rolled over them. Had Karaxil and the other demon broken open the cavern? She hoped they'd fly up and away and fight outside, and that she could lead the villagers out without resistance. Hoped, anyway.
Vleridin led them through the tunnels—swiftly at first, and then slower as it became clear that the groggy villagers couldn't keep up. They had winter clothing on, but the extended Hypnosis had left a toll on them. Moriko had experienced something similar once, and the attendant doctor had put her through her neurological paces before she'd been cleared to leave town.
Moriko could only grit her teeth as Vleridin reported catching glimpses of fleeing eidolost. To tell others, no doubt, and here she was at the rear of a bunch of bumblers and their confused and squawky pokémon. Tarahn padded silently behind her, watchful. She was beginning to doubt Polaris's judgement, but there was nothing for it: she had to get out, she had to get the people out, and only Vleridin could lead them with her energy senses.
The first of the attackers struck from the rear: Tarahn turned heartbeats before and filled the tunnel with Electroweb, and the unlucky demons at the fore walked right into it. He followed up with a Thunder Wave, the pulses of paralyzing energy bursting on the eidolost as they struggled in the web. It was bizarre to see their false bodies in the shape of antepard and wintris writhe on nothing while the shadows were the part that truly caught.
"Give them Poison Spikes too!" Moriko called.
She hurled pokéballs at the trapped eidolost. One bounced off its target's false body and missed, but the other struck the true shadow and pinged. Tarahn yanked it back with a quick Magnet Pull.
The demons yowled, disorganized and treading on the barbs of the poison-type hazard. The rearward ranks pushed forward heedlessly onto the trap moves, only for their comrades to rush forward next and fall prey to the same or shove those who had just escaped back into the web's sticky strands. Moriko threw another couple of pokéballs and snagged another one, and they all howled at the disappearance. Tarahn fired off another Electroweb and the two of them retreated, catching up with the villagers.
So far the basic principles of fighting wild pokémon were holding: they were disorganized, unwilling to commit to attacks, bluff-charging and breaking off, and they could be held off with crowd-disrupting techniques. She didn't entertain the thought that she'd really caught the ones in the pokéballs, but their disappearance demoralized the remainder, and their fainted spirits couldn't return to a waiting cleric pokémon to be healed for another go. If they wanted a trainer, she was always willing, but somehow she suspected they owed their loyalty to something else already.
Up ahead Vleridin bellowed and ice cracked as she used Rootbind attacks—Moriko could taste the plant-type energy—and two of the villager pokémon helped her with Aurora Beams and Early Frost attacks.
Immobilize them and go past if you can—we'll take over.
Please, I've got them, Vleridin said smugly, but Moriko had Tarahn fill the temporarily-empty leg of tunnel with hazards anyway.
They were taking the long way around, avoiding the main cavern where the legendaries were. They started to encounter minor passages too small for adults that seemed to go in the right direction, but Vleridin led them past, keeping more or less toward the south and the exit.
They were even avoiding the demon pokémon, but it was too good to be true—eventually Vleridin stopped mid-tunnel and hissed at the villagers to stay back.
Problem? Moriko asked her.
Gods all damn it, she replied. Come and see.
Moriko pushed through the crowd—fear was bouncing from person to person like lightning the longer they were stopped—and then the aura from the obstacle around the bend hit her, meager as her senses were.
What felt like all the demon pokémon were waiting for them up ahead.
"Fuck," Moriko muttered. "We'll, we'll—"
"There is another way out," Vleridin murmured. "But it intersects with this path. They may simply pursue us and cut off exits until we're trapped."
"You need a diversion."
"I will come with you—"
"No."
"Moriko—"
"Only you know the way! Only you can see the way to get them out! Lead them out and then come back for me. Okay?"
Vleridin swore and stamped a hoof, leaving a crater in the ice. "The gods save me from fools—"
Moriko turned to face the villagers. "There's a big one up ahead," she said. "You need to follow Vleridin out another way. I'm staying."
The headwoman looked like she wanted to say something, but Moriko raised her eyebrows. "Feeling heroic?"
"You need help," she said quietly.
"I'm trained for this, and my pokémon are too. Please."
A couple of the kids were crying silently already, and the headwoman seemed to realize the danger of a panic. She called to the group to follow in another language, and Moriko watched them trickle away behind Vleridin.
"Here we go," Moriko whispered, throwing down Thana's pokéball.
The oberant rushed the waiting eidolost, startling them and leaving behind a cloud of Distraction Dust that swirled into dragon's heads and looming figures. Several of the eidolost backed off, crowding their fellows, while one screeched indignantly and charged through the dust.
It and the others that followed hit the traps Tarahn had just finished setting up, pulses of electrical energy firing and then bursts of poison sludge. As they turned to retreat they found themselves walking on Poison Spikes; the spikes didn't actually hurt the eidolost's false bodies, but the resulting squirts of poison fell onto their hidden shadows. The fake bodies had mass and took up space, though, and the tunnel dissolved into confusion as the demons breaking free from Thana's Distraction Dust lurched forward and ran into their own allies.
Thana followed up with a Dazzling Gleam that filled the tunnel with light pink fairy-type energy, and Tarahn fired off bolts of electricity into the mix.
"I just love it when a plan comes together," the raigar told Moriko brightly.
"You jinxed it," Moriko said, fond, but her breath caught as she sensed something else coming up the tunnel. "Come back!" she barked.
Tarahn and Thana fell back, standing protectively on either side of her, but the eidolost didn't follow; in fact, they seemed to be milling around in confusion, squeaking to one another.
They were saying something like "The Elder!"
All at once the demons melted away, and something else moved into view.
In the tunnel loomed a tall, thin figure. It was emaciated and yet potbellied, the tendons all standing out under its thin skin, its mouth slightly open to reveal pointed teeth. It wore a ruff of bone and pine boughs, and it raised its sunken eyes to look at Moriko.
Cryptidex mode initiated. Aura analysis: ice- and ghost-type, 85% certainty. Ice- and dark-type, 15% certainty. Reduce range to increase certainty. (WARNING: HIGH LEVEL DO NOT APPROACH UNLESS FAINTED) Possible match: whitikhan, the starving pokémon. In mythology, it was created by famine caused by greed. The more it eats, the more its body grows, so it will never be satisfied.
The whitikhan watched her, its breath whistling.
"Face me, demon," she told it, trying to make herself feel regal and competent. She threw down Rufus' pokéball, the oxhaust's bulk filling up the tunnel as he reformed.
"This is a demon, Ru," she to him. "Are you ready?"
Rufus straightened with a bellows-breath of air, his internal flames glowing, and he looked up the tunnel at the whitikhan. "Easy work," he grunted, shifting into a battle stance.
The whitikhan advanced on all fours, its too-long limbs leaving its knees and elbows high in the air. Moriko recalled Tarahn and Thana to protect them from area effects; she might need them yet.
"Fool slave," the demon said. Its voice was like an early frost or a late one. It sounded like hunger. "You serve the wrong master."
Rufus snorted, flames flaring, and tossed his head in invitation and challenge.
The whitikhan attacked Moriko instead, her pokédex screaming an aura warning as shadow feelers shot out from it and swiped at her. She hurled herself out of the way, but it wasn't only aiming for her body; she felt long cold scratches as if on her heart, on her marrow, and stumbled as a chunk of her energy was stolen. Rufus bellowed and charged the demon as she stumbled further down the tunnel, acutely aware of her blind spots.
Fire lit the tunnel; Moriko threw down Ganny's pokéball. No point in playing fair if their opponent wasn't. The emboar threw up a Heat Shield to protect her.
"Ach! What has it done to you?" Ganny asked.
Moriko was growing dizzy—hungry, in fact, her stomach doing the flip-flop of crashing blood sugar—and she gritted her teeth as her vision wavered.
"I'll get better," she said. "Can you watch the rearward?"
"Of course," Ganny said, positioning himself to block the tunnel. "The legendaries are still fighting," he said over his shoulder, "but away. In the air, I think."
"Thanks, Ganny." Moriko had fiddled through her pockets and pulled out an electrolyte capsule that she dry-swallowed. "Can you feel Polaris?"
"Not specifically. But I sense humans… and teleportation."
"We haven't lost yet. They need a little longer. Rufus! Fire Spin!"
The oxhaust had been trying to grapple with the demon, but the whitikhan was too agile, attacking from afar—Rufus had enough sense not to be drawn away from their stand, at least. He obeyed Moriko, summoning the spinning ring of fire. He was unpracticed with it, though, managing only a small ring that the whitikhan broke out of quickly, sending up waves of jagged ice up the tunnel.
Moriko grit her teeth again—if he'd been at school with them, he'd have been able to make a Fire Spin as big as a house or small but white-hot—and told him to shuffle backward. Meanwhile the whitikhan was pelting him with ice shards and shadow tendrils, draining his energy. This couldn't go on.
"Rufus!" Moriko called. "At a distance!"
He stopped, crouching, and for a moment nothing happened. The whitikhan fired off a couple of Shadow Balls that burst into purple unlight on Rufus' armor, and started to charge up a maximum power one.
Moriko gasped, grabbing Liona's pokéball off her belt. He wasn't going to last through more direct hits. I'm sorry, Ru… you need training. And it's my fault that you don't—
Moriko… help me.
She was the fish; she was the pool; she was both. Behind her, fire; before her, fire; beyond him, shadow.
In me, there is… the forest.
Green hair, hunter's eyes. Moriko extended a vine—not a wave, not her soul's heart, but just a hand, thrown in aid.
The whitikhan watched her, wreathed in shadow, and it laughed at her clumsy display.
Then it was screeching as a pillar of fire burst to life in its pine-bough ruff.
Green fire.
Rufus exploded ahead with a Flame Charge, ice barrier shards flying, and caught the whitikhan a titanic blow with a Fire Punch. Its aura readouts on Moriko's pokédex were just guesses, but they'd dropped precipitously.
The whitikhan Faded Out, trying to escape, but Ganny's Fire Spin erupted around it, trapping it in this plane and the elemental one. It skittered from side to side, probing the trough side of the Fire Spin energy wave, and finally burst out.
It rounded on Moriko.
She hit it with an anti-pokémon charge. The electrified net exploded out, clamping onto its skeletal face, and she turned, tossing the empty cartridge away, and ran down the tunnel behind Rufus.
The oxhaust snorted a jet of nearly-invisible blue fire, angry. He advanced on it.
The whitikhan's long body lay curled up like a dead spider, and it watched Rufus with its sunken black eyes as he approached.
"You serve the wrong master," it said again.
"Why do you serve Ituras?" Moriko demanded. "I watched it pay back his servants once: the Gray—its human host, it left starving and wasted, and it killed a paraslit. Why? Why suffer for it?"
The whitikhan's thin chest heaved. "Who among us does not suffer? We all know hunger. We all know loss. We all know defeat. We all know death. But through the master we shall be more."
"You did lose," Rufus said. "An' you'll lose every time you try to hurt my friend."
The whitikhan hissed, and Rufus Iron Punched it into the ground one more time.
Moriko tossed an ultra ball at it, the advanced pokéball casting a wider and more powerful capture net than the standard, and Rufus picked it up when it stopped moving.
"Nice work, Ru." Her heart hurt, for many reasons.
He grunted, handing her the pokéball. "You gonna train it?"
She shook her head. "No, can you imagine it ever listening? Demons get turned over to Prof. Maple."
"Excellent work, my students!" Ganny called to them. "Perhaps you would care to"—he grunted—"render me assistance?"
A pack of eidolost had sneaked up behind them, but with the defeat of the whitikhan they were wholly disorganized. Rufus and Ganny's Flamethowers were enough to scare them off back into the tunnels.
"Can you see Vleridin?" she asked Ganny, her own nascent energy sense helpless in the confusion and adrenaline.
"I cannot. But… I think I see a way out."
The tunnels were quiet; they saw no more demons, and felt or heard no referred attacks from Karaxil and the Night's Empress, their battle over or moved off.
Still. Moriko walked quickly, Ganny trotting alongside her and Rufus's breath loud in the silence.
Her heart leapt when she saw daylight at last, and Vleridin's silhouette in the cave mouth was welcome indeed. The mooskeg fussed over her, lipping her hair, and she hugged her neck. Moriko turned back to Rufus and took his hand, too.
Polaris had led the villagers to the shelter of a ridge nearby; it was meager protection against a pokémon attack, but it was better than the featureless plain and something of a windbreak. He rushed forward, seeing them approaching, and he clasped Moriko's hands warmly.
"Moriko… I can't thank you enough," he said, proud and not a little relieved.
She nodded. "Let's bring your seconds, next time," she said dryly.
Polaris laughed. "My seconds will be telling me that, too, when we get home."
"Don't jinx it." Moriko looked at the clear sky. "Where is Karaxil?"
"It will have to fight its own battle," Polaris said. "The incoming rangers know about it, but it's passed off my pokédex range."
"Vleridin?"
"I have not sensed them for some time," the mooskeg said.
"They—oh my gods. What about Ituras?"
x.x.x.x.x
An empty cavern, back in the demon pokémon's hideout. The aura of the residual energy was black, grimy, used—but the demon god was gone, and the cave was full of twisting and confused ghost-type energy trails. More sophisticated aura detectors or elder aura-sensing pokémon could probably tease it out eventually, but all Moriko saw on her pokédex was a scribble of dark purple lines, while Vleridin and Ganny sneezed and bickered.
No, Moriko remembered that Ituras could use Phantom Force to travel rapidly through shadow. It had always been skilled at running and hiding, unless the Black Queen was the one bad at finding, as Moriko had sometimes darkly suspected.
She was angry, angry at herself for being too weak neutralize the elder demons; angry at PRED for being too slow; angry at the Black Queen for not killing Ituras decades ago; but she couldn't say she was surprised.
The Black Queen and the Gray Prince had ascended to legend, joining the legendary pokémon in a seasonality that spanned decades rather than years. Moriko had not seen the Black Queen in two years, but having seen the demon god, she wondered if she would again.
She hoped both of them would stay far, far away.
She wished all this demon shit would stay far, far away. But she'd see it again, inevitably. Rangers kept humans and pokémon safe from the things that went bump in the night. The demons' greatest weapon, even beyond their ability to prey on humans, had always been their ability to maintain secrecy: to strike in darkness, to confuse guardian pokémon, to influence minds, and even to somehow silence their living victims.
But Moriko knew, now, about what had happened to Matt, and presumably dozens of others; and Ituras had acted to put thousands of people in danger instead of just a scattered few. The trap had to be tightening; people knew.
Still. It had been a chase over a century, if the rumors about the Black Queen were true. The solution might be on that order of years, too.
Moriko couldn't help waiting anxiously for Karaxil even as the ranger jumpcraft were landing. It was a strange feeling, thinking of it as an ally, but it had proved itself several times over. It had had the chance to rejoin the other demons and refused. Maybe humans were the only faction that hadn't mistreated it.
Moriko reminded herself that legendaries with multi-thousand-year lifetimes could play a long-ass con indeed. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" was playing with fire even with comprehensible humans, let alone ancient intelligences like a legendary pokémon.
There were other things to worry about: the pokéballs on her belt containing the whitikhan and the eidolost felt as heavy as lead. She worried what thoughts were passing between them; if they could figure out how to self-open the capture balls; and whether they were already draining her energy. An aggressive drain would be obvious, but who knew what kinds of subtle vitality theft they were capable of.
They are quiescent, Vleridin told her. They will feel my hooves if not.
Moriko told Vleridin how she had managed to connect energetically, properly, with Rufus, and vowed to practice more when they had time.
Good! You are learning something from me at last.
Moriko got cold at that. You will lose yourself, she'd been told, about ensouling.
Had she learned? Or had Vleridin-Moriko bled further together?
Would she be able to tell?
x.x.x.x.x
: ) Thanks for reading!
FAQ
Q: Keleri why did you have the demons lapse into Early Modern English
Short A: Because you can't rudely thou* someone in Modern Western Canadian English anymore and that's a shame. If yeh don't like it my son we can have a tilly about it there eh b'y
Long A: They don't liiiiiiiiterally speak EME so much as- well, all the pokemon speech in the story is a translation. No pokemon has spoken modern english in the story except for the mewtwos in G&D over the radio. Even all the modern english dialogue in the story is a translation because english in the year-of-our-Arceus 2207 is going to sound different than that in 2019, the way that the dialogue in "Some Like It Hot" (1939) sounds rapid-fire and bouncy today in 2019.** Technically EME isn't even old enough given the demons' pedigree, they should be speaking entirely in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse but I'm not that hardcore.
Anyway, tl;dr a couple of evil grandparents are fighting in that scene and I wanted their dialogue to sound sufficiently grandparent-y.
This is what I could pick up from reading Shakespeare in high school and flipping through the KJV as well as trying to consult actual grammar guides, so if you're a scholar of English and want to offer corrections please feel free.
*Singular-you in English used to be "thou", but you also used "plural-you"*** to refer to others above you in station or to be polite, and "thou" for underlings or as an insult. When the demons switch second-person pronouns it's because they want to say "you idiot" instead of "you"
**Maybe, the internet and mass media may have ruined this
***Plural-you in English has been replaced by "y'all"
In the land of my mother, beneath the dark pines, there is silence
In the land of my mother, beneath the dark ice, there are secrets
After her initial shock, Moriko was surprised to find that she wasn't scared. She was angry as shit, though.
Ituras—the Gray Prince—had almost killed Russ, once her best human friend. Its servants had hurt him, maybe permanently. She hadn't spoken to him for two years.
Ituras had hurt Matt, maybe permanently.
Ituras's servants had hurt her. A demon called the Spirit of Wrath had killed her parents and tried to kill her.
Pokémon rangers and PRED had almost killed it, and here it was, hiding away again to recover. It was weak.
It was an opportunity.
If the demon god didn't have the good grace to die, it could rot under the care of pokémon scientists.
But normal pokéballs couldn't catch gods unless they wanted, for some reason, to be caught, and a couple of trainers, even good ones, would need far more preparation than she and Polaris had come in with to fight even a weakened mythical like Ituras.
Moriko's hands and teeth itched, and she knew what Vleridin was feeling, looking out at the sleeping or unconscious demon from her eyes.
The ensouled mooskeg laughed. We are bold, are we not, planning deicide?
Moriko smiled to herself. There will be time. But it enraged her to have Ituras escape again. With her career change it was a matter of professional pride, not just a personal desire for justice.
Could rangers or Pan-Regional Elemental Defense soldiers get here in time?
Polaris was watching her. "I get the feeling you know what's going on," he said, nearly inaudibly.
"They're collecting darkwater. It's all darkwater. It's… blood. To make it powerful," she whispered, indicating the motionless purple bulk of Ituras. "It's the demon god. It was… split up by the other gods a thousand years ago or whatever, but they still couldn't kill it, just bury the pieces. Every time it absorbs more it gets more powerful. What it did at Lacuna wasn't even its full power."
Polaris nodded; he ran his hands over his pokéball belt and frowned. "Is your nigriff your only flying pokémon?"
"Thana—my oberant can fly, but carrying me isn't a great flight."
"I want to send a flier after the pokémon that are collecting the black blood—I want to know where from, and I want to destroy or steal it. It gets more powerful when it gets more, so it's not going to get some."
"I think we need to tell the rangers. And PRED," Moriko reminded him. "Let them do it."
Polaris grimaced. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right." He flipped open his pokédex. "No service. Surprise."
Finally, Polaris entrusted his aura monitor and its high-quality scans to his delibird, who waddled away and down the tunnel.
"…Are you sure about her?"
"The thing about delibird is that you don't see them coming," Polaris said, grinning widely. "Myra is a totally harmless and helpful pokémon that no one would prey on. Right?"
"We're in a demon lair, Polaris."
"No one."
"…Let's concentrate on finding the villagers. Can we get through here?"
The pokémon further down weren't white after all; their forms wavered, sections disappearing or changing color until what was left was gray and doll-like while their shadows kept walking. Finally the shadow flowed up onto the quadrupedal forms, leaving them so black that they seemed two-dimensional.
Cryptidex mode initiated. Aura analysis: dark- and normal-type, 60% certainty, dark- and ice-type, 30% certainty, dark-type, 10% certainty. Reduce range to increase certainty. Possible match: Eidolost, the silhouette pokémon. It is said to play tricks on others and to steal from them, and feed off their confusion and fright. Its shadow is the real body. Initiate full scan and upload? (Y/N) Error: No service. Scans will be uploaded when connected to pokédex service.
Flat or not, they had interior space, because one by one they were approaching the dais and vomiting up darkwater to add to the mass in the pool.
Not all of them came willingly; a few had been bound with techniques and were struggling against vines or steel bands or the claws of the others. Eventually they were dragged over and lined up next to the pool.
Moriko wondered which of the pokémon were more susceptible to the darkwater's effects: the ones who were obediently delivering it, or the ones who were fighting to get away. The darkwater had lowered Russ's inhibitions, leading to a number of memorable nights where he'd partied far beyond what was wise or even humanly possible. It had been a far cry from his wallflower days only a few weeks before, at the end of high school. But perhaps the darkwater had had a will of its own; Russ had also rushed them all north despite impending danger, north to where the Gray Prince happened to be.
Something on the ceiling stirred, and the eidolost all froze, heads upturned. Great wings twitched as a long, scaled body appeared, reaching for the ground. Its wings were patterned with stars, nebulae, moons that shimmered against a night-black background. It extended its antennae toward the bound pokémon ever so slightly, and suddenly they were all bleeding darkwater into the pool.
"Take them to recover," it said, in a voice like the void between worlds or the hard light of the stars.
One by one the silhouette pokémon skittered out of the cavern, and the huge pokémon was left alone, rearing over the darkwater pool.
Cryptidex mode activated. Aura analysis: cosmic- and light-type, 70% certainty. Cosmic- and ice-type, 15% certainty. Light- and ice-type, 15% certainty. Reduce range to increase certainty. No matches.
"Come out, then, cousin," it said. "I see you hiding there."
Moriko and Polaris jumped as Karaxil, Demon of Frost and Starlight, slithered out from between the cracks in the ice nearby, its coat shimmering and its wedge-shaped head turning toward the other. Moriko had judged it recovered since the first time she'd seen it imprisoned under a mountain, but she realized the auroraboros was missing something compared to the other demon. Karaxil had atrophied; the other had been growing, absorbing energy, even if it had mostly slept away the years like legendaries did.
"I name you, Acherix, Night's Empress," Karaxil said. "Hail, cousin."
"A trifle rude, cousin," the Night's Empress replied. "You are much diminished since last we spoke."
"The world burned when last we spoke," Karaxil said, its coils bunching up behind it as it seemed to ready itself for some movement, or just for comfort. Its claws scratched at the rock, carefully not touching the darkwater pool.
"And it shall again," the other demon said, pleased. "Come you to rejoin the master?"
"I tried to kill the master, as I think thou well know'st," Karaxil said sharply. "Why dost thou serve it still?"
"Oh, I have no especial love for the old god! But the world is out of balance; it hath been so for aeons. Thou know'st it, or wouldst, if thou hadst not moldered under rock these many years."
"When it lost they caught me and bound me with spirit and iron," Frost said. "I wandered from dream to dream unseeing, useless. Do you this and it will lose again, and they shall catch you and leave you, too, to die there far from light of sun or moon or star."
"It must be done. What must be done? I know not, and the stars answer not," the Night's Empress said, climbing back up to its perch, scales scraping on the ice. "I know only that the imbalance is vast, and action taken must be vaster still. What great work could I make my aim? And so I chose the grandest task I could think of. I shall remake the god who was sundered."
"The god died. That thing is but a shadow."
"Oh, cousin, who ever heard of a god who really died? One can always bring them back. Even they could not destroy it, truly, but hide the blood and leave the fitful shades to wander until the end of the age. The world hath been wrong since it died, wronger still since the humans came. They sit in their cities and bond with minor sparks and think themselves masters of fire. They are fools, and we should show them so. Come, cousin!"
"It will never be the same. What good will it do?"
"I know not," the Empress cackled. "We shall see when it is done! The stars turn and the motion of the planets is meaningless. It amuses me to do. What other reason need I?"
"Hast thou never thought of doing something useful?"
The Empress rounded on the Demon. "Use! Use! Listen to thy words, cousin! Is it useful? Is it economic? Like some crawling ant thou art, fearful of the rain and the change of the season! We were lords, and we were mighty! Thou art grown weak there under stone, weak and feeble!"
"I did grow weak," Karaxil said bitterly. "Though not feeble—I learned we could change. That there is great power in bonding with a human being. I have witnessed elementals of terrible power, bonded—and that it could be extended to demons, withal."
The Night's Empress laughed in its face. "My poor mad cousin. You should remain here after I raise the god; stay you here and rest for a few centuries, and enjoy our results thereafter. Your wits are broken."
"Thou art mad, to pursue this destruction to no reward from a broken master."
"Poor, poor cousin. Art thou hungry? There are sleepers in the caves beyond, brought by my servants." Its antennae waved. "Though I sense thou hast brought thine own meals. Perchance I shall steal them from thee."
Karaxil snarled and dove after the Empress. They wove around one another, long bodies rising and falling, and the Demon struck out with its segmented legs and then with beams of ice and light, glittering with auroral energy.
The air shimmered as the Empress's weirdly human hands moved, summoning cosmic-type energy, and black portals of nothing sucked up the auroraboros's attacks, only to reopen and redirect them. The beams scythed along Karaxil's body, altered by their passage through nothingness, and left dark afterimages.
Ice stalactites fell from the ceiling as they battled, exploding into shrapnel, and Moriko and Polaris fled back down the tunnel they came in.
"I didn't completely understand the Empress, but it mentioned sleepers," Moriko said as they hurried. "The villagers?"
"That's my guess," Polaris agreed. "Can any of your pokémon track human minds? Sometimes psychics can learn how."
"No, I'm supposed to catch or trade for a teleporter this summer if I can."
"Hopefully it's Celebi and you'll come back in time to help us," Polaris said lightly. "Atropos can't, so we'll need to do it the old-fashioned way."
They froze as they nearly walked into more eidolost, but the demons missed or ignored them, burbling urgently to one another. They were headed back toward the cave with the Empress, perhaps to help it battle.
"This place is a maze," Polaris muttered. "Let's go the other way."
They followed the tunnel the eidolost had come from, the ice growing rougher and older, and they started to find castoff human artifacts: clothing tags, bits of plastic wrapper, bobby pins, and other debris.
"Breadcrumbs," Polaris said.
They followed the bits of garbage as much as possible as they came to fork after fork in the caves. Their trail marks, scratched into the stone walls, proved invaluable as they backtracked over and over. Moriko was keeping track of the paths on her pokédex, and had to increase the drawing size as the map grew more and more elaborate. Faint booms from the demons' battle sounded through the caves, which they hoped was far behind them.
"I did a rescue where the tunnels changed shape behind us," Polaris whispered, "thanks to the froslass that controlled the cave. That could have been very bad if we hadn't been monitoring the path and the aura readouts."
"I really hope it's not a trap," Moriko whispered back uneasily.
"I doubt it—worse, I think it's a larder," Polaris answered.
The ice ran out as they went deeper on into the mountain; Moriko felt faintly dizzy from all the twists and turns, and exhausted by the turnbacks and blind alleys. Finally, a wide cavern greeted them with icemelt trickling into a pool in the corner, and Moriko's heart leapt with excitement and dread as they saw the furs and synthetic jackets of the missing villagers.
There were a couple dozen of them, lying haphazardly around the chamber. Polaris immediately threw down a couple of pokéballs, revealing his hexx and an olorant, who set up Safeguard barriers around the victims. Thankfully, the villagers all began waking under the influence of the negating technique—but some of them were weak indeed.
"We have to get them out," Polaris said, low. "I'm going to teleport the ones who can't walk. The others will need to be led. Atropos can only do so many ports."
Moriko nodded. "I'll get them out." I'll try, she thought.
The cavern rumbled, far-off.
Just rousing the villagers proved a major task: it had been easier after Sere Island with medics present and later more medical personnel who had taken charge of the knocked-out islanders. Every person seemed to go through the same slow confusion and ask the same questions; it was maddening with demon pokémon somewhere nearby, to say nothing of Frost and the Empress fighting. But Moriko tried to follow Polaris's example, speaking to each person patiently; he even knew many of their names.
The pokémon every adult and child had on their belts were waking up too, and soon the cave was filled with pokémon cries and psychic communication loud enough to wake the dead. Atropos the hexx finally put an end to it with a sharp Follow Me technique. High-level pokémon attacks worked on humans too, and Moriko had to fight to tear her eyes away.
"Quiet, now, and stay with your partners," Atropos announced sternly. "They need our help to get out."
Polaris and Atropos began directing the villagers who weren't recovering well, and teleported the first pair out.
Moriko addressed the remainder. "This is Vleridin," she said, introducing the mooskeg. "She's going to lead us out. I'm going to bring up the rear. Polaris is going to keep teleporting that group out, but the rest of us have to leg it. Ready?"
It was insane, but somehow the villagers were nodding and looking to her instead of going "She's just a kid! We need the leader!"
There was another rumble, and a moment later a wave of fresher, colder air rolled over them. Had Karaxil and the other demon broken open the cavern? She hoped they'd fly up and away and fight outside, and that she could lead the villagers out without resistance. Hoped, anyway.
Vleridin led them through the tunnels—swiftly at first, and then slower as it became clear that the groggy villagers couldn't keep up. They had winter clothing on, but the extended Hypnosis had left a toll on them. Moriko had experienced something similar once, and the attendant doctor had put her through her neurological paces before she'd been cleared to leave town.
Moriko could only grit her teeth as Vleridin reported catching glimpses of fleeing eidolost. To tell others, no doubt, and here she was at the rear of a bunch of bumblers and their confused and squawky pokémon. Tarahn padded silently behind her, watchful. She was beginning to doubt Polaris's judgement, but there was nothing for it: she had to get out, she had to get the people out, and only Vleridin could lead them with her energy senses.
The first of the attackers struck from the rear: Tarahn turned heartbeats before and filled the tunnel with Electroweb, and the unlucky demons at the fore walked right into it. He followed up with a Thunder Wave, the pulses of paralyzing energy bursting on the eidolost as they struggled in the web. It was bizarre to see their false bodies in the shape of antepard and wintris writhe on nothing while the shadows were the part that truly caught.
"Give them Poison Spikes too!" Moriko called.
She hurled pokéballs at the trapped eidolost. One bounced off its target's false body and missed, but the other struck the true shadow and pinged. Tarahn yanked it back with a quick Magnet Pull.
The demons yowled, disorganized and treading on the barbs of the poison-type hazard. The rearward ranks pushed forward heedlessly onto the trap moves, only for their comrades to rush forward next and fall prey to the same or shove those who had just escaped back into the web's sticky strands. Moriko threw another couple of pokéballs and snagged another one, and they all howled at the disappearance. Tarahn fired off another Electroweb and the two of them retreated, catching up with the villagers.
So far the basic principles of fighting wild pokémon were holding: they were disorganized, unwilling to commit to attacks, bluff-charging and breaking off, and they could be held off with crowd-disrupting techniques. She didn't entertain the thought that she'd really caught the ones in the pokéballs, but their disappearance demoralized the remainder, and their fainted spirits couldn't return to a waiting cleric pokémon to be healed for another go. If they wanted a trainer, she was always willing, but somehow she suspected they owed their loyalty to something else already.
Up ahead Vleridin bellowed and ice cracked as she used Rootbind attacks—Moriko could taste the plant-type energy—and two of the villager pokémon helped her with Aurora Beams and Early Frost attacks.
Immobilize them and go past if you can—we'll take over.
Please, I've got them, Vleridin said smugly, but Moriko had Tarahn fill the temporarily-empty leg of tunnel with hazards anyway.
They were taking the long way around, avoiding the main cavern where the legendaries were. They started to encounter minor passages too small for adults that seemed to go in the right direction, but Vleridin led them past, keeping more or less toward the south and the exit.
They were even avoiding the demon pokémon, but it was too good to be true—eventually Vleridin stopped mid-tunnel and hissed at the villagers to stay back.
Problem? Moriko asked her.
Gods all damn it, she replied. Come and see.
Moriko pushed through the crowd—fear was bouncing from person to person like lightning the longer they were stopped—and then the aura from the obstacle around the bend hit her, meager as her senses were.
What felt like all the demon pokémon were waiting for them up ahead.
"Fuck," Moriko muttered. "We'll, we'll—"
"There is another way out," Vleridin murmured. "But it intersects with this path. They may simply pursue us and cut off exits until we're trapped."
"You need a diversion."
"I will come with you—"
"No."
"Moriko—"
"Only you know the way! Only you can see the way to get them out! Lead them out and then come back for me. Okay?"
Vleridin swore and stamped a hoof, leaving a crater in the ice. "The gods save me from fools—"
Moriko turned to face the villagers. "There's a big one up ahead," she said. "You need to follow Vleridin out another way. I'm staying."
The headwoman looked like she wanted to say something, but Moriko raised her eyebrows. "Feeling heroic?"
"You need help," she said quietly.
"I'm trained for this, and my pokémon are too. Please."
A couple of the kids were crying silently already, and the headwoman seemed to realize the danger of a panic. She called to the group to follow in another language, and Moriko watched them trickle away behind Vleridin.
"Here we go," Moriko whispered, throwing down Thana's pokéball.
The oberant rushed the waiting eidolost, startling them and leaving behind a cloud of Distraction Dust that swirled into dragon's heads and looming figures. Several of the eidolost backed off, crowding their fellows, while one screeched indignantly and charged through the dust.
It and the others that followed hit the traps Tarahn had just finished setting up, pulses of electrical energy firing and then bursts of poison sludge. As they turned to retreat they found themselves walking on Poison Spikes; the spikes didn't actually hurt the eidolost's false bodies, but the resulting squirts of poison fell onto their hidden shadows. The fake bodies had mass and took up space, though, and the tunnel dissolved into confusion as the demons breaking free from Thana's Distraction Dust lurched forward and ran into their own allies.
Thana followed up with a Dazzling Gleam that filled the tunnel with light pink fairy-type energy, and Tarahn fired off bolts of electricity into the mix.
"I just love it when a plan comes together," the raigar told Moriko brightly.
"You jinxed it," Moriko said, fond, but her breath caught as she sensed something else coming up the tunnel. "Come back!" she barked.
Tarahn and Thana fell back, standing protectively on either side of her, but the eidolost didn't follow; in fact, they seemed to be milling around in confusion, squeaking to one another.
They were saying something like "The Elder!"
All at once the demons melted away, and something else moved into view.
In the tunnel loomed a tall, thin figure. It was emaciated and yet potbellied, the tendons all standing out under its thin skin, its mouth slightly open to reveal pointed teeth. It wore a ruff of bone and pine boughs, and it raised its sunken eyes to look at Moriko.
Cryptidex mode initiated. Aura analysis: ice- and ghost-type, 85% certainty. Ice- and dark-type, 15% certainty. Reduce range to increase certainty. (WARNING: HIGH LEVEL DO NOT APPROACH UNLESS FAINTED) Possible match: whitikhan, the starving pokémon. In mythology, it was created by famine caused by greed. The more it eats, the more its body grows, so it will never be satisfied.
The whitikhan watched her, its breath whistling.
"Face me, demon," she told it, trying to make herself feel regal and competent. She threw down Rufus' pokéball, the oxhaust's bulk filling up the tunnel as he reformed.
"This is a demon, Ru," she to him. "Are you ready?"
Rufus straightened with a bellows-breath of air, his internal flames glowing, and he looked up the tunnel at the whitikhan. "Easy work," he grunted, shifting into a battle stance.
The whitikhan advanced on all fours, its too-long limbs leaving its knees and elbows high in the air. Moriko recalled Tarahn and Thana to protect them from area effects; she might need them yet.
"Fool slave," the demon said. Its voice was like an early frost or a late one. It sounded like hunger. "You serve the wrong master."
Rufus snorted, flames flaring, and tossed his head in invitation and challenge.
The whitikhan attacked Moriko instead, her pokédex screaming an aura warning as shadow feelers shot out from it and swiped at her. She hurled herself out of the way, but it wasn't only aiming for her body; she felt long cold scratches as if on her heart, on her marrow, and stumbled as a chunk of her energy was stolen. Rufus bellowed and charged the demon as she stumbled further down the tunnel, acutely aware of her blind spots.
Fire lit the tunnel; Moriko threw down Ganny's pokéball. No point in playing fair if their opponent wasn't. The emboar threw up a Heat Shield to protect her.
"Ach! What has it done to you?" Ganny asked.
Moriko was growing dizzy—hungry, in fact, her stomach doing the flip-flop of crashing blood sugar—and she gritted her teeth as her vision wavered.
"I'll get better," she said. "Can you watch the rearward?"
"Of course," Ganny said, positioning himself to block the tunnel. "The legendaries are still fighting," he said over his shoulder, "but away. In the air, I think."
"Thanks, Ganny." Moriko had fiddled through her pockets and pulled out an electrolyte capsule that she dry-swallowed. "Can you feel Polaris?"
"Not specifically. But I sense humans… and teleportation."
"We haven't lost yet. They need a little longer. Rufus! Fire Spin!"
The oxhaust had been trying to grapple with the demon, but the whitikhan was too agile, attacking from afar—Rufus had enough sense not to be drawn away from their stand, at least. He obeyed Moriko, summoning the spinning ring of fire. He was unpracticed with it, though, managing only a small ring that the whitikhan broke out of quickly, sending up waves of jagged ice up the tunnel.
Moriko grit her teeth again—if he'd been at school with them, he'd have been able to make a Fire Spin as big as a house or small but white-hot—and told him to shuffle backward. Meanwhile the whitikhan was pelting him with ice shards and shadow tendrils, draining his energy. This couldn't go on.
"Rufus!" Moriko called. "At a distance!"
He stopped, crouching, and for a moment nothing happened. The whitikhan fired off a couple of Shadow Balls that burst into purple unlight on Rufus' armor, and started to charge up a maximum power one.
Moriko gasped, grabbing Liona's pokéball off her belt. He wasn't going to last through more direct hits. I'm sorry, Ru… you need training. And it's my fault that you don't—
Moriko… help me.
She was the fish; she was the pool; she was both. Behind her, fire; before her, fire; beyond him, shadow.
In me, there is… the forest.
Green hair, hunter's eyes. Moriko extended a vine—not a wave, not her soul's heart, but just a hand, thrown in aid.
The whitikhan watched her, wreathed in shadow, and it laughed at her clumsy display.
Then it was screeching as a pillar of fire burst to life in its pine-bough ruff.
Green fire.
Rufus exploded ahead with a Flame Charge, ice barrier shards flying, and caught the whitikhan a titanic blow with a Fire Punch. Its aura readouts on Moriko's pokédex were just guesses, but they'd dropped precipitously.
The whitikhan Faded Out, trying to escape, but Ganny's Fire Spin erupted around it, trapping it in this plane and the elemental one. It skittered from side to side, probing the trough side of the Fire Spin energy wave, and finally burst out.
It rounded on Moriko.
She hit it with an anti-pokémon charge. The electrified net exploded out, clamping onto its skeletal face, and she turned, tossing the empty cartridge away, and ran down the tunnel behind Rufus.
The oxhaust snorted a jet of nearly-invisible blue fire, angry. He advanced on it.
The whitikhan's long body lay curled up like a dead spider, and it watched Rufus with its sunken black eyes as he approached.
"You serve the wrong master," it said again.
"Why do you serve Ituras?" Moriko demanded. "I watched it pay back his servants once: the Gray—its human host, it left starving and wasted, and it killed a paraslit. Why? Why suffer for it?"
The whitikhan's thin chest heaved. "Who among us does not suffer? We all know hunger. We all know loss. We all know defeat. We all know death. But through the master we shall be more."
"You did lose," Rufus said. "An' you'll lose every time you try to hurt my friend."
The whitikhan hissed, and Rufus Iron Punched it into the ground one more time.
Moriko tossed an ultra ball at it, the advanced pokéball casting a wider and more powerful capture net than the standard, and Rufus picked it up when it stopped moving.
"Nice work, Ru." Her heart hurt, for many reasons.
He grunted, handing her the pokéball. "You gonna train it?"
She shook her head. "No, can you imagine it ever listening? Demons get turned over to Prof. Maple."
"Excellent work, my students!" Ganny called to them. "Perhaps you would care to"—he grunted—"render me assistance?"
A pack of eidolost had sneaked up behind them, but with the defeat of the whitikhan they were wholly disorganized. Rufus and Ganny's Flamethowers were enough to scare them off back into the tunnels.
"Can you see Vleridin?" she asked Ganny, her own nascent energy sense helpless in the confusion and adrenaline.
"I cannot. But… I think I see a way out."
The tunnels were quiet; they saw no more demons, and felt or heard no referred attacks from Karaxil and the Night's Empress, their battle over or moved off.
Still. Moriko walked quickly, Ganny trotting alongside her and Rufus's breath loud in the silence.
Her heart leapt when she saw daylight at last, and Vleridin's silhouette in the cave mouth was welcome indeed. The mooskeg fussed over her, lipping her hair, and she hugged her neck. Moriko turned back to Rufus and took his hand, too.
Polaris had led the villagers to the shelter of a ridge nearby; it was meager protection against a pokémon attack, but it was better than the featureless plain and something of a windbreak. He rushed forward, seeing them approaching, and he clasped Moriko's hands warmly.
"Moriko… I can't thank you enough," he said, proud and not a little relieved.
She nodded. "Let's bring your seconds, next time," she said dryly.
Polaris laughed. "My seconds will be telling me that, too, when we get home."
"Don't jinx it." Moriko looked at the clear sky. "Where is Karaxil?"
"It will have to fight its own battle," Polaris said. "The incoming rangers know about it, but it's passed off my pokédex range."
"Vleridin?"
"I have not sensed them for some time," the mooskeg said.
"They—oh my gods. What about Ituras?"
x.x.x.x.x
An empty cavern, back in the demon pokémon's hideout. The aura of the residual energy was black, grimy, used—but the demon god was gone, and the cave was full of twisting and confused ghost-type energy trails. More sophisticated aura detectors or elder aura-sensing pokémon could probably tease it out eventually, but all Moriko saw on her pokédex was a scribble of dark purple lines, while Vleridin and Ganny sneezed and bickered.
No, Moriko remembered that Ituras could use Phantom Force to travel rapidly through shadow. It had always been skilled at running and hiding, unless the Black Queen was the one bad at finding, as Moriko had sometimes darkly suspected.
She was angry, angry at herself for being too weak neutralize the elder demons; angry at PRED for being too slow; angry at the Black Queen for not killing Ituras decades ago; but she couldn't say she was surprised.
The Black Queen and the Gray Prince had ascended to legend, joining the legendary pokémon in a seasonality that spanned decades rather than years. Moriko had not seen the Black Queen in two years, but having seen the demon god, she wondered if she would again.
She hoped both of them would stay far, far away.
She wished all this demon shit would stay far, far away. But she'd see it again, inevitably. Rangers kept humans and pokémon safe from the things that went bump in the night. The demons' greatest weapon, even beyond their ability to prey on humans, had always been their ability to maintain secrecy: to strike in darkness, to confuse guardian pokémon, to influence minds, and even to somehow silence their living victims.
But Moriko knew, now, about what had happened to Matt, and presumably dozens of others; and Ituras had acted to put thousands of people in danger instead of just a scattered few. The trap had to be tightening; people knew.
Still. It had been a chase over a century, if the rumors about the Black Queen were true. The solution might be on that order of years, too.
Moriko couldn't help waiting anxiously for Karaxil even as the ranger jumpcraft were landing. It was a strange feeling, thinking of it as an ally, but it had proved itself several times over. It had had the chance to rejoin the other demons and refused. Maybe humans were the only faction that hadn't mistreated it.
Moriko reminded herself that legendaries with multi-thousand-year lifetimes could play a long-ass con indeed. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" was playing with fire even with comprehensible humans, let alone ancient intelligences like a legendary pokémon.
There were other things to worry about: the pokéballs on her belt containing the whitikhan and the eidolost felt as heavy as lead. She worried what thoughts were passing between them; if they could figure out how to self-open the capture balls; and whether they were already draining her energy. An aggressive drain would be obvious, but who knew what kinds of subtle vitality theft they were capable of.
They are quiescent, Vleridin told her. They will feel my hooves if not.
Moriko told Vleridin how she had managed to connect energetically, properly, with Rufus, and vowed to practice more when they had time.
Good! You are learning something from me at last.
Moriko got cold at that. You will lose yourself, she'd been told, about ensouling.
Had she learned? Or had Vleridin-Moriko bled further together?
Would she be able to tell?
x.x.x.x.x
: ) Thanks for reading!
FAQ
Q: Keleri why did you have the demons lapse into Early Modern English
Short A: Because you can't rudely thou* someone in Modern Western Canadian English anymore and that's a shame. If yeh don't like it my son we can have a tilly about it there eh b'y
Long A: They don't liiiiiiiiterally speak EME so much as- well, all the pokemon speech in the story is a translation. No pokemon has spoken modern english in the story except for the mewtwos in G&D over the radio. Even all the modern english dialogue in the story is a translation because english in the year-of-our-Arceus 2207 is going to sound different than that in 2019, the way that the dialogue in "Some Like It Hot" (1939) sounds rapid-fire and bouncy today in 2019.** Technically EME isn't even old enough given the demons' pedigree, they should be speaking entirely in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse but I'm not that hardcore.
Anyway, tl;dr a couple of evil grandparents are fighting in that scene and I wanted their dialogue to sound sufficiently grandparent-y.
This is what I could pick up from reading Shakespeare in high school and flipping through the KJV as well as trying to consult actual grammar guides, so if you're a scholar of English and want to offer corrections please feel free.
*Singular-you in English used to be "thou", but you also used "plural-you"*** to refer to others above you in station or to be polite, and "thou" for underlings or as an insult. When the demons switch second-person pronouns it's because they want to say "you idiot" instead of "you"
**Maybe, the internet and mass media may have ruined this
***Plural-you in English has been replaced by "y'all"