~\({O})/~
CHAPTER ELEVEN: NIGHT IN THE DESERT
~\({O})/~
Sands of Time Anchorstone
~Espurr and Tricky~
Espurr barely had the time to register what was happening before it happened. She dove out of the way on instinct, landing into a panicking Tricky.
The Void Shadow slammed into some of the stalactites that spiraled up towards the ceiling, causing them to crack and lose some of their integrity. Espurr noticed that the ceiling above them shifted a little, almost as if those stalactites were holding it up…
But there wasn’t time to think about that. The Shadow was already up and at them again, making a hard and fast charge in their direction. Espurr and Tricky jumped up, and did the only thing they could do: run.
The two of them dove behind the white stairs as the Shadow lunged at them once again. They landed a bit too close to the pillar of white radiance—Espurr yelped as some of her fur was singed off just by contact with it. Tricky’s ear fluff had taken a similar hit, and the edges were burned… despite her being fire-resistant.
Then Espurr got an idea.
She quickly jumped up as the Void shadow was busy pulling itself out of the stalactite it had crashed into. From right behind her, Tricky looked like she just wanted to bound out of the way as soon as possible. She glanced at Espurr several times, somewhere between worry and confusion.
“What are you doing…” she whined. “It’s gonna get us!”
“Be ready to jump!” was all Espurr had the time to say before the Shadow broke free from the stalactite and lunged at them—
Espurr and Tricky’s wits were just quick enough to avoid becoming the Shadow’s meal—Tricky bounded out of the way lightning fast, and Espurr followed a split second later. Half the Void Shadow slammed into the large stair pillar. It let out a large screech as the light of the pillar burned through its body, evaporating the pitch-black goo that composed its body with loud crackles and sizzles. The Shadow screeched loudly, pulling its body from the pillar as it crashed into the sand. Something collapsed to the ground after it with a loud thud. Espurr didn’t see what.
The Shadow was missing its left arm, its leg, and some of its head. Where its limbs had once been, there were now gaping holes that leaked thick black ooze. It let out another pained screech, and then loped away on its remaining legs towards the exit of the cave. Espurr ran forward after it, against anymon’s better judgement. She wasn’t going to let it get away! It was inured, but she had to make sure they didn’t lose track of it. If it got away now, they’d never know when it could come back.
She exited the cavern just fast enough to see the Shadow’s escape. It lost physical form, melting down into ropes of black goo that tunneled into the sand and disappeared from view. Espurr wasn’t deterred. A psychic blast blew the sand in that area up into the air, leaving a sizeable indent in the ground. But it was too little, too late. She sprinted over, fell forward, and dug down into the sand, catching the last of the black worms squiggling into the ground. The essence split off into tiny, vein-sized rivulets and seemed to bleed between the individual grains. Espurr continued to dig frantically. But within seconds, her digging yielded nothing but ordinary sand.
Defeated, Espurr stood back up, looking down at the ground. The adrenaline was fading, leaving her feeling ragged and covered in sand that itched against her coat. The Shadow was gone.
Tricky was still sitting there when she entered the cavern again. She was staring wide-eyed at the sand, caught between fear and shock. Espurr sat down on the sand next to her, looking at her in concern. She could feel the grey-blue vibes of shock, tinged with a feeling that made her gut drop just by sensing it.
“Feeling alright?” she asked.
“What…” Tricky’s voice trembled. “What was that? Was that Bunnelby? Was he just a Void Shadow this whole time?”
“I don’t think so,” Espurr said. “He changed after the sandstorm, remember? No bag, no map… He must have been separated from us, and that thing just took his place.”
“But how do we know if he’s still alive?” Tricky asked, half sobbing. “What if it ate him before it copied him?”
“I don’t know,” Espurr answered plainly. And she didn’t. “But if it did, why didn’t it keep his bag?”
She didn’t know how strong that logic was. The Shadows weren’t smart enough to copy everything about a pokemon, just their general looks and demeanor. A bag might not have counted into that. But she wasn’t going to dissect it right now.
They looked at the pillar of shining stairs that sat before them, the ones that had effortlessly shredded half of a Void Shadow. As they approached it, they noticed the loud wavering noise that Espurr had heard earlier—now Tricky could hear it too. She lowered her ears as they approached. Finally, as they got close, they felt the heat. That was what was making the stairs shimmer, Espurr realized: intense heat. She put her paws up near the shimmering barrier, and the heat made her retract them almost immediately. But that heat wasn’t leaking into other parts of the cavern… she stepped back, and it got colder almost immediately.
Then she stepped on something.
Espurr looked down, realizing she was stepping on a bone. She took her foot off almost immediately, quickly getting Tricky’s attention so they could both study what Espurr had found.
It was more than just a single bone. Rather, it was half a skeleton. An arm, a limb, a few ribs, and what looked like a fragment of a skull. Espurr had stepped on an unusually long leg bone, which was connected to another and then the many scattered bones of what she assumed was a foot. She and Tricky stared down at it, unsure what to make of the discovery. This skeleton hadn’t been here before. But then.. the only thing that had been in here with them was…
For what felt like the first time since they had arrived on Sand, Espurr really missed their exploration bag.
“Did the Void Shadow eat that?” Tricky asked.
“I think…” Espurr paused, trying to parse what she was going to say next. “I think it’s the Void Shadow’s skeleton.”
Tricky pawed the sand.
“We should take it back with us.”
“But why was the Shadow here in the first place?” Espurr asked. That was a very pressing question, and she needed to answer it as quick as she could. If one had appeared, why couldn’t others… ?
“Oh!” Tricky suddenly perked up. “I can answer that!”
Without waiting for Espurr to respond, she suddenly ran back towards the boulder in the back of the cave.
“It wanted us to break this large boulder, right?” Tricky asked as Espurr walked over to where she was standing. “Well, I felt a draft, and I took a closer look. look at the cracks…”
Espurr gazed at the spiderlike cracks running across the boulder. Tricky was right: she could see and feel some kind of powerful energy emanating from behind them, along with a draft that seemed to make only that section of the room unnaturally cold. She walked up and inspected the boulder, looking at the cracks up close. These weren’t cracks into solid stone, these were…
They looked more like cracks in a wall. She could see faint glimmers of light behind it, light that had a specific red sheen to it. She could hear the blowing of wind behind it, and smell that it smelled foul. This was a passage to somewhere, she instinctively knew it was a bad place. Her body just knew. She took a step back.
“Tricky?” she asked.
“Yeah?” Tricky said.
“Remember the Crooked House?”
Tricky nodded.
“What if this dungeon is like that one?”
There was silence for a moment.
“Then it wanted us to break the boulder to let more of them in…” Tricky said. It was the conclusion they’d both come to.
“And if one got in…” Espurr trailed off. That made this the most dangerous place in the dungeon to be. Especially if that Void Shadow already in the dungeon decided to come back for them.
“We should get out of here,” Tricky said. Espurr agreed.
“Which way did that fake Bunnelby lead us?” she asked as they walked around the large wavering pillar of light and back towards the entrance with fevered haste.
“I don’t remember…” Espurr said. “But maybe if we go back to the spot where the storm was, it’ll help us find the real Bunnelby.”
Tricky nodded, and then they continued out of the room and into the desert’s oddly chilly sandscape once more.
~\({O})/~
Trekking through the halls of the desert labyrinth was an eerie, silent experience. Espurr didn’t say anything as they went, and Tricky was just as quiet. There was only the sound of the sand grains shifting as they trudged over them, and an unnatural wind blowing in the distance. And no indicator of where the Void Shadow was. It could be on the other side of the dungeon, or it could be in the next hall over. Or it could be under their feet, just waiting to grab them. Espurr had started checking the ends of the next halls before she or Tricky continued into the next corridor, and the sand below them for veins of darkness.
And all the while, the search for Bunnelby continued. It looked like the sun was beginning to go down faster than it should have, and soon they could see a shimmering ball of fire setting over silhouettes of ruined buildings in the distance. It cast the horizon into a display of orange, pink, and purple, the stars glittering up above where the sky had turned to night. The warping of the Dungeon made it all look like a painting, ghostly and ethereal among the silence.
The sands turned from dull brown to deep purple as the sun set. Soon they were searching under a bright moon obscured by clouds. It bathed the desert in a strange violet sheen, and the cold only intensified. Soon they could see their breaths in front of their faces as they trekked, and they felt twice as weary as they should have.
It had only been a couple of hours. Espurr and Tricky exited the halls and entered another vast expanse of desert different from the first. Only half-buried wreckage and the ghostly husks of buildings broke up the endless expanse of sand, and the mirage of buildings in the distance that they would never reach.
“I’m so tired…” Tricky whined, as they stopped to rest in a small nook between two collapsed walls that were once attached to something else. Whatever it was had been blown away by time.
Espurr leaned back against the wall, focusing on keeping her eyes open. She had to be strong.
“Me too,” she said.
All that searching, and Bunnelby still hadn’t popped up. They couldn’t keep going forever. Espurr was beginning to worry that her hypothesis was wrong, that the Shadow had indeed eaten him before it tried to impersonate him. Maybe it just ate the bag too. Or threw it away. What if they were running themselves ragged in circles, searching for somemon who was already gone?
The more she thought on it, the clearer it was in her head. They had more reason to believe Bunnelby had been consumed by the Shadow than they had to believe he wasn’t. She didn’t want to believe it, but she could swallow that truth if push came to shove. And the truth was what if they were looking for a ‘mon that was dead, then any direction they travelled lead to their deaths. At the claws of the dungeon, the Void Shadow, or exhaustion itself. The smarter decision was to regroup somehow, before they petered themselves out.
“Tricky…” Espurr started as they rested. “What if it’s a better idea to get out of here while we still can? We’ll get back to the city, and we’ll tell them all what happened. Maybe we can get a search party to look for him.”
Tricky looked at her like she was crazy.
“We can’t do that; he’s still out there!” she said. “How would you feel if it was you being left behind?”
“But we don’t know he’s still out there,” Espurr countered. “He could have been eaten. He probably was eaten.”
“We don’t know that either!” Tricky pointed out. “And I’m going to keep searching. Even if it takes all day and all night!”
“Tricky…” Espurr began. “Aren’t you tired? We’re wearing ourselves out. We don’t have supplies, or any way to find him, or any way to even know if he’s alive… You could die out there looking for him. And none of us will escape.”
Tricky’s eyes blazed with sudden fire.
“But that’s not an excuse to leave him behind,” she said.
“It is if it means two of us getting out instead of none of us,” Espurr countered.
“But three of us could leave!”
“You don’t know!”
“Well, neither do you!”
Espurr paused, rubbing her head. This was going nowhere.
“Well,” she said. “I’m going back to get some kind of reinforcements. We could get a party to search for him, maybe some rest while we’re at it, and we won’t have to worry about the Void Shadow. We’ll spend enough energy just finding the way out of here. We don’t need to spend it looking for him too when we’re so tuckered out already.”
“And that’s why we shouldn’t look for the way out!” Tricky pointed out. “We should be looking for him! He has the bag. If we find him, we’ll find reinforcements and the map!”
“But it’s a gamble,” Espurr said. “And we’re losing it.”
“So is finding the entrance,” Tricky refuted. “We’re losing that too.”
“Well, that’s what I’m going to do,” Espurr said.” She stood up, trying to free her fur of the sand that got everywhere. “Are you coming, or not?”
Tricky shook her head. “No I’m not,” she said. “I’m going to keep looking for him.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
They both turned away from each other.
Maybe it was the cold of the desert, but neither Espurr nor Tricky could bring themselves to walk away. The cold of the desert encroached in the wake of their silence.
Then there was a shifting in the sand. It was subtle, small enough that Espurr only noticed how she had to shift balance ever so slightly to keep herself upright. But it was enough. Espurr couldn’t see anything in the sand, but…
“Tricky,” she said quickly, turning around. Tricky was still standing there, staring down at the sand. “The Void Shadow…”
“What about it,” Tricky mumbled, sounding put out.
“When I chased it outside, it disappeared into the sand,” Espurr said. “Didn’t you feel that—”
The sand shifted again, sending them both stumbling for balance. Then it began to vibrate. Espurr noticed that her feet were beginning to sink into it, and she heard the sounds of crunching stone coming from the collapsed walls above them…
“Run, now!” she yelled.
Tricky looked one way, then the other, then scampered back towards Espurr at the sound of the call.
Vines suddenly erupted out of the shifting sand, ensnaring both Espurr and Tricky in their grips. They started as black tentacles, then quickly formed up into gnarled green roots as they whipped around Espurr’s legs and tripped her. Before she could properly get her bearings, the vines were dragging her back towards the center of the nook. Screams and yelps from Tricky’s side told Espurr the same thing was happening to her.
All the while they could both feel the sand that was beginning to sink away under them. They had to get free. Focusing on the small millimeters of space between her fur and the vines that were currently tangling around her, Espurr conjured a thin blanket of telekinetic energy around her, and let it flow outwards—
The vines were blasted away from Espurr, devolving into black goo that landed on the sand with a hiss. Espurr looked back at Tricky, who was biting down on the last of the limp vines with flaming teeth.
They both ran out of the small nook, struggling to keep their balance upon ground that was turning more and more into an unstable vacuum with each step. Just at the last second, Espurr and Tricky hit the ground, falling to their bellies on stable sand. Looking behind them, they watched in silent horror as brown, jagged points emerged from the sinking sand before them, large teeth emerging as more and more of the sand swirled away. Two sides of a massive, ovular dome rose out of the sand, travelling up towards the sky until they clamped over the two-story-high walls effortlessly. With a loud, reverberating crash, the jaws of the massive trapinch had closed. An eye as large as Espurr and Tricky combined gazed at them. It was pitch-black with a red pupil, its composition unnatural.
Espurr and Tricky stared up at it, both paralyzed with fear. Then the sand underneath them began to shift further, and as the colossal mouth slowly opened again, it began to lean down, down, down…
Both of them broke out of their frozen spells, turning the other way and making a break for it. The massive shells of the trapinch landed on either side of them with a tremendous splash in the sand, the jolt throwing them both to the ground. Espurr looked back and saw a large, rope-like tongue thrashing in the air. Except at the end, it wasn’t a tongue. The flesh of the tongue ended halfway, becoming a globby mess of black goo that sprouted countless limbs from countless different pokemon at the end.
The tongue—or whatever it was—lashed down with a whip, and every arm, leg, and pincer connected to its tip reached in unison for Espurr and Tricky. Espurr ducked and rolled, barely escaping the grasp of four huge machamp limbs. The pincer of a krabby nearly cut off her head. Seven ariados legs nearly speared her in various spots. She crawled to her feet as fast as she could, stumbling to a start and summoning a desperate telekinetic blast to ward off the grasp of a large tentacruel tentacle.
All the while, she could see the disappearing light of the moon, obscured by the large dome of the massive mouth slowly closing in around them. Even without the tongue to worry about, they were out of time. She had to find Tricky!
Something crashed into Espurr from the side, sending them both tumbling through the sand. Espurr tried to blast it off, but they were both tumbling too fast for her to concentrate. She fought it wildly with her paws, trying to keep its thrashing legs away from her—
They stopped tumbling, and the other creature stopped thrashing enough for Espurr to see that it was Tricky. Quickly realizing they were locked together, Espurr and Tricky untangled themselves, both panting wildly.
“Outta the way!” Tricky suddenly yelled, as the large tongue rose into the air right over where they stood. Espurr and Tricky again split, as it came crashing down into the sand. Its arms picked it up like a centipede, using hundreds of limbs to skitter after them like a walking snake.
Espurr ran like a shot, rolling and dodging out of the way as five different limbs grabbed for her at once. It was all a blur after that. She knew she had found Tricky at some point, and they had managed to make it out of the trapinch’s closing jaws before it could seal them off from the world for good. And then they were back on the purple sands of the night, running through lilac dunes for their life.
As they ran, the tongue seemed to extend after them. It pulled out of the trapinch’s mouth, beyond it, and then the tongue was absorbing the rest of the trapinch to become some kind of multi-limbed abomination. Espurr glanced back at it as they ran through the night sand. It was no longer a trapinch—it had morphed completely into a massive, snakelike rope, carrying itself via hundreds and hundreds of arms. All those arms made it way too fast—it was going to catch them!
“It’s going to catch us!” Tricky yelled frantically, already ahead of Espurr by now. She was naturally faster and more nimble, and Espurr couldn’t keep up. At this rate, the Shadow was going to grab her any second—
But just before it could overtake Espurr, the amalgamation suddenly tripped. It fell into the sand with a mighty crash, prompting Espurr to look behind her again as she ran to safety. But this didn’t seem to be a calculated move—a hundred different legs spasmed in the sand as the black tongue-creature writhed like an agonized centipede. And then the whole thing suddenly lost all stable form, reverting to a mass of writhing black slime. Whatever was happening to it, it wasn’t going anywhere fast. Espurr wasn’t questioning her good luck; she found the energy within her to pick up the pace and nearly catch up with Tricky.
Neither of them dared to look back again until they were already safely within the confines of the halls once again. She could see the vast expanse of the desert behind them. The mass of black goo, still lacking a solid form, turned into ropes and burrowed back into the sand in silence. Espurr and Tricky just watched it from their hopefully safe distance, too out of breath and frazzled to do much else.
“We can’t leave,” Tricky said with an air of finality. “Not while that’s still here.”
As much as she wanted to just get out of here, Espurr had to admit Tricky had a point. No matter what they did, they couldn’t just walk away and leave that thing alone in there. Who knew what it would do next?
But… Espurr took a seat against the dungeon wall, rubbing her temples and closing her eyes. How? And what should they do next?
“You okay?” Tricky asked. Espurr cracked an eye open, seeing that Tricky was staring at her worriedly.
“I need some time to think,” she said, closing her eyes again and trying to concentrate.
“I can help,” Tricky responded.
“Maybe we’re beyond help,” said Espurr, opening her eyes again. She’d given up thinking. “We’re lost. If we can’t find a way around here, we’ll be aimlessly wandering until it’s daytime before we know i—"
“Daytime…” Tricky suddenly interrupted. Tricky interrupting was nothing new, but Espurr hadn’t seen the furrowed look on her face often.
“What is it?” she asked.
“When it became night…” Tricky said. “The dungeon made that faster than it should have been, right?”
Now that Espurr thought about it… they couldn’t have spent more than three hours combined in this dungeon. And they’d left in the morning.
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s always like that. We go into a dungeon when the sun is high, and it’s sundown when we get out. What about it?”
“So if we spent a little time in here,” Tricky said, “and a lot of time passed out there, then that means…
“What if we could get help, search for Bunnelby, and keep an eye on the Void Shadow all at the same time?” she asked.
She could see Espurr’s eyes light up, catching onto the thread she had ahold of.
“I think I see where you’re going,” she said. “If one of us leaves to get reinforcements, they’d be back in no time at all. And then we could all search.”
“Exactly!” Tricky yipped. “It just means…”
One of them had to stay behind in the dungeon and search.
“I could stay behind,” Espurr volunteered. “It’ll only be a little while, right? You’re faster than me.”
“If you’re sure…” Tricky pawed the ground. She wanted to be the one to look for Bunnelby. But even so, she knew Espurr was right. Of the two, she was the faster one. The faster she could go there and get back, the faster help came for everymon. She just had to be quick on her feet.
“But how do we find the way out?”
That was the kicker. Espurr still didn’t have an answer for that. Except…
It wasn’t entirely true. She did have one idea. It was just so stupid she wasn’t sure if it would work, or get them all killed. But at this point, it was worth trying.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “You said this dungeon wasn’t like the others, right? That it was a maze?”
Tricky nodded.
“Yup! Just like a hedge maze.”
“If it’s like a hedge maze,” Espurr continued. “Then why don’t we just climb the walls?”
There was a moment of silence as Tricky paused, realizing what an obvious solution it was.
“Why didn’t we think of that sooner?” she asked.
In any other dungeon, climbing the walls probably would have led to an untimely death. Espurr still wasn’t entirely sure that scaling this one would leave them alive. But they had to try.
“We just never had to,” she said. “Now help me up!”
The walls were stone here, brick there, window in some spots, a jumped-up visage of building pieces and sand that formed nothing. But it did offer just enough of a foothold for Espurr and Tricky to scale the walls. They climbed from window to brick, avoiding the sandy bits that wouldn’t hold and using the stable rock ledges as resting places. But finally, with a little help from Espurr’s telekinesis, the two of them reached the top of the wall.
Once she and Tricky were at the top, Espurr dusted herself off and looked around. All around them, she could see a vast expanse of walls that snaked out from where they were and went on for half a mile. Looking back the other way, an even larger expanse. She could see a thin beam of light that seemed to go up from the center of a clearing far within the maze and end at the top of the painted sky that stretched over the maze like a dome.
“The anchorstone,” she said aloud. That was the only thing she knew of that could be creating light in here. “We can use that to guide us.”
“Where’s the an—” Tricky began, but then stopped herself once she saw the light. “…If that’s the anchorstone,” she began again carefully. “Then the entrance is that way, right?” she pointed in the opposite direction, right down where they had been walking originally.
“What makes you say that?” Espurr asked.
“We never took any big turns from here to the anchorstone,” Tricky said. “We came from that direction, and then we went back. And because this dungeon doesn’t shift, it should still be there…”
There wasn’t a way to be fully sure. Espurr could see a flicker of yellowish doubt from Tricky. But if she knew the way…
The top of the wall was wide enough that if Tricky laid down and spread her tail out, she could cover half of it. Neither of them needed to worry about falling off.
“How do I find you when I get back?” Tricky asked Espurr, who was scoping out her own path.
“I’m going to head for that beam of light,” Espurr said. She pointed up. “Follow it when you get back. It’s what I’m doing.”
Tricky nodded, puffing herself up to look braver than she felt. “Right!”
Without another word, the two of them ran off, heading in their opposite directions to opposite destinations. They could only hope they’d find their way back here in the end.
~\({O})/~
~Espurr~
~Espurr~
Espurr wasn’t ready to admit it, but without Tricky around, she felt twice as unsafe. Tricky was good at spotting all the things she wasn’t, and the two of them would have died for sure if they’d been on their own in half the situations they’d been together. And in a situation like this, being split apart was perilous.
But more than anything it was because of how alone she felt. The purple velvet of the night felt ominous when there was no-mon to watch her back. The stone of the dungeon walls might collapse any second, with no-mon to catch her fall. And the Void Shadow… it was still out there. Waiting. Searching. Espurr thought she was safe on top of the walls… but she couldn’t be sure. What if it had gone after Tricky, and they’d both made a grave mistake?
That thought was powerful enough to make her want to turn around and see if she could still catch up with Tricky. She knew the general direction…
But Tricky must have been just as scared as she was. They were counting on each other. She couldn’t back down now. If only they had a way to stay in contact…
Search the maze for Bunnelby. That was her first priority. If Tricky came back with the rescue before she found anything, she could join them, but if Bunnelby was out there, she needed to find him before something worse did. The walls of the maze decked out where she could see them made what was once an impossible task at least somewhat feasible now. Espurr started to cover the maze in organized blocks, looking on both sides of each wall as she ran across the stone walkways on the tops.
The walls seemed to spiral out and lead into each other in confusing patterns, stone walkways that took twists and turns nearly incomprehensible. Sometimes the paths in between were wide, sometimes they were narrow. One time, Espurr found herself at a dead end, and needed to jump across to the other side. The gap was too far for her to jump on her own, but she managed to conjure a shaky psychic platform that let her hop on thin air. Jumping across gave her unpleasant memories of jumping out of the oak tree back in the School Dungeon. Luckily, she didn’t hit the ground this time.
Soon enough, sounds reached Espurr’s ears. She changed her direction immediately, honing in on the location of where they were coming from. Was it something bad? Probably. But she’d take bad over nothing.
Something was scraping against the sand. It squelched as it galloped along, its pace very quick and frenetic. Espurr quietly fell into step with it, discreetly looking down from up on the rooftop. She didn’t dare to make a sound, glancing down at what was causing the noises: the Void Shadow.
She hadn’t properly seen its true form since it had attacked them back in the Anchorstone. Whatever had happened to it when it fell into the stairway, it hadn’t recovered. It was missing half a head, an arm, and a leg. In place of those were the powerful hind leg of an Arcanine, and the arm of a machamp. It hadn’t fixed its head for some reason, but it seemed to function fine with just half a jaw.
Espurr stopped short when the Shadow did. She saw it spasm—it suddenly devolved into a mass of writhing, black tentacles, reforming into various pokemon for only split seconds—a monferno, a simisear, a tentacruel—before collapsing back into its base form, rasping. Its artificial limbs sprouted from it once more, and it continued to gallop off again.
It was damaged, Espurr realized. No wonder it had stopped out back in the desert—it was too injured to maintain its form constantly!
But what was it doing? She quickly sped up to keep time with it. It was galloping through the halls now, clearly heading somewhere with purpose. And if the Void Shadow had a purpose, Espurr was going to know about it.
Her question was answered soon enough—the Shadow turned a corner and gazed upon a dead end far ahead in the hall. Espurr saw something at the very end; she squinted further to get a better look. Up ahead in the hall was what looked like the crumpled form of… Bunnelby! He’d survived.
But her joy was short-lived; the Void Shadow was closing in fast. He might have been alive against all logic and hope, but he wasn’t going to be much longer unless Espurr did something. As unprepared as she was to face a Void Shadow all on her own, there wasn’t another choice. Espurr steadied herself, and decided to use the element of surprise to her advantage.
A psychic blast of energy barreled into the Shadow from above, causing it to stop and sniff up towards the skies with a snarl. Behind it, Espurr deftly floated to the ground, making sure to land quietly. The Shadow didn’t have eyes; it hunted by smell and sound. She’d have enough time for a second opening before—
The Shadow’s form lost stability once more, shifting into the black writhing mass, and then into something that looked like several different pokemon mashed into one. And it definitely had eyes. Espurr didn’t see what it was, just that it had eyes and it had seen her, the Shadow had seen her—
Before she could charge up an attack to blast it away, the Shadow leapt and pounced. It landed on her and knocked her into the ground, pressing her against the sand with its black clawed arm. All its weight leaned on Espurr; if the sand wasn’t pliable enough for her to sink she thought she might have been crushed.
She might still be crushed. The claws only sunk deeper and deeper, pushing her further into the sand, and she struggled to breathe against all the weight, struggled to conjure up any kind of attack. She managed to summon flickers of mental energy to the front of her head, keeping them in place, holding, waiting…
The Shadow spasmed a third time, and Espurr chose that moment to shove the small amount of raw power she could conjure up into the creature. It stumbled back, formless, large claws leaving her chest, before it shifted into only the trunk of a copperjah and bellowed in pain. Then it lost form completely. Splatters of black slime fell in the sand.
And it wasn’t getting up. Whatever she’d done… she’d bought herself time. Espurr was too winded to get up right away, but she forced herself to stand, and stumbled past the remains of the Shadow before it could put itself back together again.
Now that Espurr could see Bunnelby up-close, she could see that he wasn’t conscious—he was crumpled up in the sand at the end of the hall, several meters away from the Shadow. She pushed herself to sprint all the way to him, then dropped down to her paws and knees on the sand. His exploration bag, miraculously untouched, lay on the ground next to him. Espurr wasted no time opening that up—Bunnelby had packed this thing so full he couldn’t carry it; there had to be something in here she could defend herself with.
She found it quickly: A stick with grooves that glowed with energy. A wand! Unlike the ones in Gabite’s bag, this one glowed a bright blue. It looked and felt like a powerful weapon, but Espurr didn’t know how to handle it. Not that she had a choice, there was nothing else in the bag that looked like a weapon at first glance and she was short on time. Here went nothing…
The sound of heavy rasping in the distance alerted Espurr to the fact that they weren’t alone anymore. Glancing behind her, she saw that the Shadow had pulled itself back together, and was now standing. Its replacement limbs took form from dozens of swirling black threads, changing texture and completing themselves within seconds.
Espurr spun around and stood to her feet, carefully brandishing the wand in front of her. The Shadow sniffed the air, fixating on her from all the way across the hallway. Then it was off like a shot—
The Shadow ran in her direction so fast that Espurr barely had time to react. She thrust the wand out, but it did nothing. Short on time and unsure of what else to do—she didn’t have Tricky around to light it like the last one—She threw the stick towards the Shadow. As it soared through the air, a psychic blast cleaved it in half.
The stick blew apart, tons of water-based energy flowing outwards from it and engulfing the monster. It was like a self-contained flood, only taking up a very specific portion of the hallway but nearly drowning the Shadow within. When the water had dissipated, the Shadow, mangled and thrust on the floor, could only let out a pained hiss. To Espurr’s surprise, it scampered back off into the halls, leaving them clear alone. She would have chased it, but there were more important things to worry about.
With the Shadow gone, she lowered herself back to Bunnelby, placing a paw to his chest to make sure his heart was still beating. Luckily, she could feel it. The warmth radiating from his body, the beating of his heart and the rise and fall of his chest, as well as the purple-tinged shade of sleep she got off him. She sighed, an earnest sigh of relief. He was okay. They were all going to be okay.
Bunnelby seemed to be sleeping off whatever had happened to him in the sandstorm back there. Espurr thought it rude to jar him out of it, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and she needed him awake. When poking him in the chest, then shaking him roughly didn’t work, Espurr resorted to closing her eyes and using her sixth sense to reach into his mind. With a single mental poke from her, Bunnelby suddenly restarted, coughing to life as his eyes flew open.
“What…” he choked out, still coming to his senses. “Wha… what…” he went cross-eyed, then focused on Espurr in front of him.
He trailed off, just sitting up in place and breathing heavily. Espurr let him recuperate, sitting next to him and folding her arms idly as she waited.
“Where’s fennekin?” Bunnelby asked, once he had recovered enough to take in more of his surroundings.
“We split up,” Espurr said. “Tricky went off to get help. I stayed behind to look for you.”
And to keep tabs on the Void Shadow. Which was still somewhere around here. She cast a look back to the hallway at its thought.
“Right,” Bunnelby said, grunting in pain. He lowered his left ear to hold his arm delicately. “How long until the rescue gets here? I think my arm is…”
Espurr could feel the secondhand pain from him; she looked closer at the arm and saw it was hanging in a weird position. Was it disjointed?
“It should be soon,” she said. She stood up, and pointed towards the large beam of light in the sky. “They’ll meet us there at the anchorstone. We need to get there before they do.”
Bunnelby tried to get to his feet. He was still clutching his arm with an ear; he couldn’t pick up the bag. Espurr picked it up for him, and did her best to sling it over his shoulder. It wouldn’t work without agitating his arm, so she took it instead. It was a little heavier than her old bag, the straps digging into her shoulder. But it felt nice to have a bag on her shoulder again.
“That black shadow thing,” Bunnelby said, as they began to walk at a middling pace down the hall. “Do you know something about that?”
Espurr didn’t see what good keeping the truth from him would do. She nodded again, letting Bunnelby infer the rest.
“Well?” Bunnelby asked. “I think you better fill me in.”
~\({O})/~
Sand Continent Barrens
~Tricky~
Sand Continent Barrens
~Tricky~
Tricky was used to go going off on her own. She’d done it for years before. But now, something was different. Maybe it was just the dark of the night talking, or the situation they were in. But she just didn’t feel as safe on her own anymore. She didn’t feel as safe without Espurr to watch her back.
The walls in the distance were a long while off, only as tall as half her leg from here. That meant she had to be faster. She broke out into a run, trying to ignore it as the dungeon got further and further behind her. She needed to be quick, she needed to swift. It would take a while for anymon to come back with her, and she couldn’t waste time out here.
Tricky had never run this fast for this long before; five straight minutes. Already, she was wearing out, and it was beginning to show. She was panting hoarsely, and by the time that she was within earshot of anymon at the wall, her burning legs trembled and she could barely stand. The walls stretched above her so high she could barely see anything but the night stars above them. They were large, monolith, and black as night—in fact, they blotted out the night sky. And the gates, their only way through, were sealed shut.
“Hey!” she called up at the walls, not sure how else to get anymon’s attention. Her voice echoed through the sand and up towards the wall, but no-mon answered. “Anymon?
“Berry crackers,” she mumbled dejectedly, when only her own echoes met her. Now what?
And so Tricky ended up sitting there at the large doors, intensely aware that every second out here was costing her valuable time. Half of her wanted to sulk and hope that somemon would notice her sulking around. The other half wanted to turn around and run straight back to the dungeon to help out.
But that wouldn’t do anything, Tricky realized, because even if Espurr and Bunnelby got out of the dungeon, they’d have to get on the other side of this wall to get back to the city. But it was okay—she could solve this! She just needed to slow down and think…
Now that she was slowing down, the thoughts came easier. If Bunnelby went into the dungeon, and it was only a couple of hours in there until it turned dark, then that must have meant they could have come back during night. He had a way to get over the wall, right? And… and it couldn’t be in his bag, because they had to get the guards’ attention to open the gate! So…
Tricky scampered up to the gate, and studied the wall more closely. As she looked closer, she noticed that next to the gargantuan opening of the gate, there was a button and what looked like a large grey disc thing. She didn’t know what a button was doing all the way out here, but if anything that was a way to get somemon’s attention. She scampered the rest of the way—hopped up because the button was too high for her—and managed to mash it down with her snout.
A small red light next to the dome lit up. Tricky was jarred by the sound of speech coming through the grey disc thingy.
“Hello? Who is this? Anymon out there?”
Tricky realized just in time that was her que to speak up. “Yes—Yes, it’s me!”
“Who?”
“T—” Tricky stopped herself just in time, realizing she hadn’t told every guard in this place her name. “I’m Fennekin Tricky! One of the explorers that went outside the walls today! Everything went wrong and we need a team to come back with us and help search for somemon!”
“I think I have you on record…” came the tinny voice from the grey disc thingy. “Yeah. Here. Hey, listen… we’re going to open the gates now, and then get you safe on the other side of this wall, okay?”
Tricky perked up for a minute. Did that mean they were going to send a team in her place?
But she wanted to go along. She’d promised to go back and find Espurr with them; she wasn’t leaving until they were all out of the dungeon.
“But why do I have to be on the other side of the wall?” she asked. “I want to help.”
“Help with what?” came the tinny voice.
“Help with the rescue expedition!” Tricky said.
“I’m sorry,” came the voice. “But there’s not going to be a rescue expedition.”
“Wait, what?”
“We can’t help your friends,” came the grey disc thing. “But we going to get you on the other side of this wall.”
“Why not??” Tricky cried out.
“Everymon who goes past these gates has signed a waiver. You understand and accept that beyond these walls, you are on your own. The Archeology Division doesn’t have the resources to allocate to dungeon rescues for a dungeon as expansive and volatile as the Sands of Time. These walls exist for a reason.”
“That’s… that’s heartless!” Tricky spat. “How can you just leave pokemon that need saving back in that dungeon?”
“Listen, I don’t make the rules,” said the voice over the microphone. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Tricky could feel her indignance burning in her chest. These pokemon were heartless. And if they weren’t going to give her the help she needed…
“I haven’t lost anymon,” she spat at the microphone. “And I’m going to prove it. With or without your help.”
“Wait, don’t—” the microphone began, but by the time the pokemon on the other side had finished speaking, Tricky was already speeding back towards the dungeon.
~\({O})/~
The Sands of Time
~Espurr~
The Sands of Time
~Espurr~
With Bunnelby’s arm in the state it was, Espurr couldn’t exactly climb them both back up onto the tops of the walls again. Luckily, they had the bag, and the bag had the map in it. It didn’t take long to figure out where they were, since Espurr had memorized the general layout of the walls around them and quickly pointed out a spot.
She had told him all about the Void Shadows. It was a fantastical story, and under any other circumstances she wouldn’t have blamed Bunnelby for not believing her. But after the encounter with the Beheeyem in the city and the sandstorm that happened today, he seemed shaken but willing to believe it.
“And that’s what it can do,” she said to Bunnelby as they walked through the halls, at the end of her story. “This one’s injured. If we run into it again, we have an advantage.”
But an advantage wasn’t saying much when a Void Shadow was already so powerful.
“So how do you…” Bunnelby began, looking winded. Espurr couldn’t blame him. She was just as winded as he felt. “Defeat a Void Shadow?”
“I don’t know,” Espurr said. And it was true. She didn’t know how she’d defeated Nyarlathotep back in the Crooked House. She just… had. This one didn’t seem like it was going to go out the same way.
Unless…
“…The Anchorstone,” she said aloud.
“Anchorstone?” Espurr was so focused on her thoughts that Bunnelby’s voice reminded her that he was still here. “You made it to the Anchorstone?”
“Y-yes,” she said, coming to her bearings quickly. “I know how we can kill it. When Tricky and I were back in the Anchorstone, there were these stairs. It crashed into them and half its body got roasted away. That’s why it’s injured. If we can trick it into running into the stairs again…”
Then they could kill it. And they’d have to act fast, because Espurr had no idea how the reinforcements Tricky was bringing would match up against a Void Shadow. Especially if the Shadow found them before Espurr and Bunnelby did.
“How did you get there?” Bunnelby asked. “The maze is so elaborate you can’t navigate it without a map.”
“The Shadow knew the way,” Espurr explained. “It impersonated you and took us there.”
A wind stopped them in their tracks. It blew through the halls, the only wind that had blown in this dungeon. It smelled like something rotting. And if the wind was here, then that meant…
Fog was quickly rolling in. They could both see it, creeping over the walls of the corridor just up ahead. Espurr wasn’t deterred.
“We head for the anchorstone,” she said determinedly, marching ahead. Only when she’d nearly turned the corner up ahead, did she hear the sound of something scraping against the sand.
They stopped. Espurr made herself scarce behind the back of the hall’s corner, and Bunnelby followed suit. She peeked out, able to see the spasming form of the Void Shadow in the hallway ahead.
It wasn’t doing much, just standing there in the fog. But then, slowly, as Espurr watched, something slunk out of it.
Whatever it was didn’t seem to have solid form. It was long, deformed, and Espurr couldn’t make out what was what because it seemed to shift composition and parts every few seconds. But they could both see that something was there. Silence descended over the hall, as they both watched to see what would happen next.
A loud roar, not unlike the sound of something screeching, suddenly ricocheted through the hallway. It made Espurr jump in fright, nearly catapulting herself back into Bunnelby. The roar made the spasming Void Shadow stumble closer towards the mist, bridging the rest of the gap between itself and whatever was in the fog.
My servant… they have hurt you.
The words weren’t spoken, but they drilled themselves into Espurr’s forehead like sledgehammers. Bunnelby didn’t seem to be affected; he was still staring ahead in something between abject horror and shock. Had he heard any of that?
The Void Shadow uttered a single raspy whimper, lowering its head before the dungeon wraith extended a shadowy limb out. It took form into a swirling claw, which it lowered towards the Shadow.
Allow me to heal your wounds.
Every word gave Espurr a larger headache. She was clutching her forehead, breathing hard, trying to fight off the pain that was fading but was intense. She recovered just in time to peel her eyes back onto the Void Shadow. Somehow, the wraith’s limb was healing it. As spindly shadowy claws swept over the Shadow’s form, the black goo that composed it was beginning to flow back into place. A new arm tore out of the Shadow’s left midsection, rising up and cracking into place as it flexed towards the sky, A new leg sprouted out of the Shadow’s spines at the bottom, while its ovular head that had been halved became whole once more. The Void Shadow stood up once more, now completely healed. Like it had never been touched.
The Dungeon Wraith’s limb retreated into the fog, and the shadow essence that composed it began to rise up into the mist. Espurr watched as the spindly set of claws rose up into the air once more, but this time they weren’t pointing at the Shadow, they were pointing at the corner of the hallway—
Now kill them.
Before Espurr could even react, the Void Shadow bounded at them with stunning speed. It scaled the corner in seconds and leapt at them, and Espurr was barely fast enough to create a psychic shield.
A searing pain blew through her head, as the Shadow’s strength smashing into it broke the barrier apart. Espurr was thrown back onto the sand. She cried out as the Shadow roared and hit the ground right in front of her. Black claws made to rend her midsection—
But the Shadow’s aim was thrown off at the last second. The claws hit the sand right next to Espurr, puncturing the ground to a degree that made her eyes widen with fear. Bunnelby’s ear had grabbed the Shadow by the neck, holding it in a strong chokehold. It was too late to act by the time Espurr realized how much of a mistake that was.
The Shadow only seemed to grin, before its head tilted upwards and didn’t stop tilting. Grey and brown fur began to sprout from the black goo of its neck, the head bubbling up and growing larger until it wasn’t a head anymore—it was the large arm of a diggersby. Which grabbed Bunnelby by the throat, lifted him up in the air, and began to squeeze.
Espurr got to her feet, coughing and trying to fight past the pain of her headache and how everything ached all over. She let out a gasp of horror, seeing Bunnelby up in the Shadow’s chokehold. He was clearly struggling to breathe, as the diggersby ear clamped further and further around his throat. Until it would snap, she realized.
Splitting up had been a bad idea. She wished that she had Tricky with her, whose fire the Void Shadows feared. Or something, anything to help her. Were there any more wands in that bag. She didn’t have the time or headspace to check.
And then she came up with it. A plan, a stroke of brilliance, something that was risky but was better than what was happening now. The only problem was that she’d be down for the count after this. It would all be down to Bunnelby. But it was her or him, and given all the risks she was already taking…
…She could take one more.
“Bunnelby!” she yelled as loud as she could, all the while searching for the mental snag in her head that she knew by now. She didn’t know if Bunnelby heard her, given he was being strangled, but she had to make sure this got through. “Get us both to the anchorstone! I’m going to—”
She found the snag, and pulled. A pulse of blinding, all-consuming pain split through the center of her head, and her vision went white, and then black.
~\({O})/~
~Bunnelby~
~Bunnelby~
The explosion of vibrant pink energy rippled outwards from Espurr’s ears, barreled into the walls, sliced clean through the Void Shadow, and blew dunes of sand up int the air. The sound was deafening, the energy battered Bunnelby around and threw him to the ground, and all he could see amongst the waves of expanding purple energy was Espurr, floating in the air nearly as high as the walls. Her ears were unfurled and shone purple; nearly white, and he couldn’t see the pupils of her eyes.
Ṱ̸̌h̶̠͎͆͜ę̶̛̼͍ ̵̗͍̬͑̔ȃ̷̠̭ṇ̷̌͝c̴͙͔̓̽h̴͕͙̐̃̒ͅo̵͉͒r̸͙̫̈́ş̴͉͎̋̅̏t̸̝̠̙̔̔o̷̡̹̚ņ̴̫̫̃e̶̟̻̊
Came the words from Espurr’s mouth, but it didn’t sound like Espurr.
C̴̬̊a̷͚̩͍͐̀ṙ̴͙̊͘r̷̦̈y̵̼̹̐ ̷̝͑̾̕u̶͕͠͝s̴͕̠͖͋̑ ̷̲͑̚t̴͇̦̘̓̍͝ò̵̻͛̀ ̸̺̌̀t̷͙̓̍͒ḧ̵͙̟̞́è̶̻̈̓ ̷̪̉̆͛ȁ̷̧̦n̷̝̏c̸̮̙̏͋̕h̷͖̹̺̐̆ọ̵̰͛ŗ̵̻͒̀̾s̸͍̹͝t̵͓͇̓̆̓ǫ̶̲͔̏n̸̏ͅę̷̠̂͆
The Void Shadow had long since retreated with a squeal of pain, even the fog that was encroaching around them had slithered back. Then it ended, the world went dark again, and all of the sudden Espurr had dropped a clean five feet to the ground and crumpled up in a heap.
Bunnelby wasn’t in any condition to be getting up, especially his arm, but none of them were. He got up from the ground and quickly hobbled his way over, falling to his knees and checking up on Espurr. He wasn’t a doctor, and she was clearly unconscious, but she seemed alive… for the moment.
For a moment, Bunnelby sat there, unsure of what to do. In the absence of light the fog was beginning to close in on them, and he was beginning to realize he might just have been in over his head for this one. But that didn’t mean he was going to give up.
Bunnelby didn’t have the spry power or energy of the fennekin he hoped was okay, or the wits and psychic parlor tricks of Espurr, but he did have willpower and tenacity. And so even though his arm needed healing, even though the bag was pulling him down and he could barely carry the unconscious Espurr, he slung the bag’s strap over his good shoulder with his ears, and then picked Espurr up in them.
One paw held the map. The fog was thick, and it wasn’t easy to see too far ahead of him, corridors obscured by mist and shadows. But he soldiered on anyway. Espurr had said a rescue would find them at the Anchorstone. Bunnelby knew one wasn’t coming. Going there would only endanger Tricky on the return journey, and that was if she was coming at all. Their first priority had to be getting out of there alive. They were closer to the Anchorstone than they were to the entrance, but going to the Anchorstone in this dungeon, where the distortion was strongest, spelled death. So Bunnelby made for the entrance instead.
The terrifying monster Espurr had referred to as a Void Shadow hadn’t appeared yet. He realized fully now from the holes in the sand that it had absorbed itself into the ground, and could be anywhere. Miraculously, it didn’t attack him at any point during his journey no matter how vulnerable they were; perhaps it was weary of another explosion. Whatever the reason, Bunnelby was relieved and thankful, if on guard. He couldn’t fight off that monster on his own. If it appeared again, they were both done for.
He trudged on, through halls of stone and destroyed buildings and dunes of sand. The fog obscured the jagged remains of ruined structures, making them only shadows in the fog. At some point, Bunnelby became unsure if he was going the right way, or if he had gotten turned around and was wandering aimless dunes of sand now. The fog made it impossible to tell where the beacon of light Espurr had pointed out was coming from, and he was now in the dark.
As he walked through a large expanse of sand and jagged ruins, the wind blew, making ghostly noises in the fog. It smelled of decay. Bunnelby became acutely aware that he wasn’t alone now, but it wasn’t the Void Shadow. Whatever this was was subtler, weaving its way through the fog, comeing to him in silence. Enveloping him with its sheer size.
Not a sound was uttered, but the fog seemed to whisper to him as he walked, walked and tried not to act on fear, every instinct telling him to run but that would only alert It that he knew It was there. He didn’t hear the words right, they seemed to slip through his ears and past his brain much like what was in the fog did. But somehow he knew what they were saying. They told him of things that didn’t make sense, but slowly made more sense as he walked, but he didn’t understand how they made sense.
They said that he should stop walking and turn around, it would be better that way. Better to abandon all this fear and all this hardship that had injured his arm, was weighing heavy on his ears now. They told him I could take that all away. They told him I Will Take It All Away. They told him I Can Make The Dungeon Your Home. I Can Kill That Hardship Inside You. You Want To Rest You Know You Want To Rest. Turn Around And Let Me See You. Let Me Make You Better.
And somehow all Bunnelby wanted to do was turn around. Let It make him better. It was an alien pull, but one that felt weirdly familiar, like the pull of his body to rest.
But it was an alien pull, and in his heart he knew it. He didn’t know where he pulled the strength to resist from, but he did. His steps became strained, transformed from a healthy walk into labored steps, on feet that wanted to Turn Around. Maybe the only reason he didn’t was because he could see up ahead a place where the fog wasn’t as thick and invasive. A place It hadn’t infested yet.
No Turn Around Right Now Turn Around Turn Around TURN AROUND
The command was so strong Bunnelby’s head physically jerked to the side. He held it back as it tried to turn around all the way. Espurr’s limp body turned with it. The shadows nearly got her. He couldn’t see them but he knew they nearly got her.
Another step. And then another. He had to keep going. Another step. Another step. Another step. He repeated it like a mantra in his head, using it to blot out the encroaching darkness in his mind. Each step was another step. Every Another Step brought him closer. Another step. Another step.
And somehow, before he knew it, he was out of the fog. The darkness lifted from his mind in an instant, and Bunnelby almost looked back—
But he didn’t dare to. He knew that would be his mistake. So instead, he ran. Ran for his life, and ran for Espurr’s. The fog seemed to follow him—he could feel its coldness on his back, hear the unnatural dungeon winds as they howled and propelled it, but he was faster. And he had a map.
Bunnelby didn’t stop running until he’d outstripped it, run far away from the fog and its scary voices. He shivered, couldn’t stop himself from shivering all over. Not from coldness, but from terror. He’d never sleep soundly again, not after… that.
The entrance couldn’t be too far away now, if he was reading this map right. Only a turn or two away. Bunnelby fit the map back in his bag, and went forward. He was as eager to get out of here as anymon, but… it was times like these he wished he wasn’t alone.
“M-Mr. Bunnelby?”
Like his prayers had been answered, Bunnelby suddenly perked up. Running down the corridor towards him was Fennekin!
“Fennekin?” Bunnelby called out, not daring to believe his eyes and ears. “Is that you?”
“Yup!” cried the fennekin, rushing forward until she had closed the distance between herself and Bunnelby. “I couldn’t get re-enforcements, so I came back to help you guys myself!” she panted raggedly; it looked like she was out of breath. “So lucky I found you! The entrance is just back that way, so we can leave now. Come on!”
She stuck close to Bunnelby, nudging him on with her head. Espurr, still bundled up in his ears, twitched in his grip. It seemed like she was beginning to stir. Bunnelby began to follow, but all the time he kept his eyes on Fennekin, because something didn’t add up. He’d watched these two interact over the couple of days he’d seen them at the Society; where was Fennekin’s boundless energy? If she’d come here and back, why did she look so freshened up and rested when the rest of them were run ragged? Where was her blue scarf, the one she hadn’t taken off since the day they’d arrived? And most importantly, why hadn’t she even asked to see Espurr?
And that was what tipped Bunnelby off: This wasn’t Fennekin. This was the Void Shadow.
But what was he going to do? He had Espurr in his ears; he couldn’t fight and protect her at the same time. They were only a corridor away from the entrance; the Shadow wasn’t going to let him just walk out of here.
Another step. Another step. The last bend of the corridor got closer and closer. Then Bunnelby noticed something turning the bend of the corner that was still several meters out. The creature’s yellow fur stood out plainly among the purple dunes of sand and the stone grey of the halls—it was Fennekin!
He heard a guttural growl of displeasure rise up out of the fennekin right next to him, one far too deep for a creature that size to have made. It occurred to him just in time to get back—
Large, clawed arms and a head lined with spiny teeth exploded out of the small fennekin body and zoomed for Bunnelby. Clumsy as he was, Bunnelby managed to run out of the way in time. He didn’t know how.
The real fennekin, still bounding towards him, let out a frightened yelp and stumbled back as the Shadow slammed into a wall and lost half its form.
“Stay back!” Bunnelby yelled in her direction. “Don’t come closer!”
He placed Espurr on the ground and thrust her limp body across the sand towards Fennekin.
“But… but…” the fennekin stammered, looking between Bunnelby, then Espurr, then the Void Shadow that was peeling itself off the wall.
“It’s alive again!” she yelled, prancing frenetically between two spots on the sand as the Shadow lunged for Bunnelby again. With less weight dragging him down now, Bunnelby was nimbler. The Shadow once again missed its mark.
Bunnelby landed on his arm. He grunted in pain. From where he was, he watched Fennekin drag the unconscious Espurr behind a sand dune, taking cover out of view. Good.
His mangled left arm didn’t appreciate him landing on it, but Bunnelby was in no situation to worry about that right now. Thank whatever higher powers there were that the bag had never been rezipped. His good arm dug in, pulled something out. There was confusion for a split second; he could have sworn he had two…
But the Shadow was unpeeling itself from the wall now. There was no time to worry about where the second one went, focus on using the first. As the Shadow made one last desperate lunge for him, claws outstretched and in the air, Bunnelby pointed the glowing blue wand up, and .
A concentrated explosion of water so powerful it blew Bunnelby back a bit barreled into the Void Shadow. The force corroded the Shadow’s outer slime, peeling away flaky black layers from limbs and ripping holes into the monster’s torso. Its head tore at the neck, nearly separating from the rest of its body. It lost its foothold on the ground just as the last of the wand’s energy left the stick, blasting the monster all the way across the corridor. Back the way they’d came. It was so far off Bunnelby didn’t even see where it had landed.
The stick dropped to the ground beside him, now dark and motionless. Its energy had been used up. Breathing hard and trying to calm down, Bunnelby pulled himself and the heavy bag to his feet, and limped his way over to Tricky.
Amber rays of dawn were creeping over the sand now, turning the dunes a brilliant flame orange. Bunnelby sat down on the dune that Fennekin was hiding behind, letting her slowly pop up from behind it.
“Is it gone?” she asked. Bunnelby only nodded, letting out a breath that quickly turned into a cough.
“Let’s get out of here, yeah?” he said to Fennekin, disguising the strain in his voice.
Fennekin nodded happily, but then her eyes widened.
“Look out!” she screeched. Bunnelby noticed what she was seeing a second too late; the Void Shadow, tattered, injured, barely standing, galloping at him with claws outstretched and ready to kill, and it was already too late to do anything—
A straight stream of fire burst out of Fennekin’s mouth and hit the Shadow point blank in the torso. That was the final blow. The fire seemed to seep between the cracks of the Shadow’s wounds, filling it from the inside out completely. It let out a loud screech of agony that tapered off into nothing, its body disintegrating into black flakes that scattered to the wind.
Wind that smelled like decay and rot. If that was here, then the fog wasn’t far off.
“Let’s not waste any more time,” Bunnelby breathed. He picked up Espurr’s unconscious body in his ears again, and the two of them steadily continued through the corridor, towards the shining light of day.
Safety was only a corridor away.
~\({O})/~
Music of the Week!
Visions of Chani – Hans Zimmer
Explosion of Mob's Feelings – Kenji Kawai
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