Pokémon Into the Moon (PMD Cosmic Horror)

[BestLizard]

17: Truth and Information​

Theory of information. It was a computer science elective I took because it seemed to lean more into math than computer science. I was right, and it ended up being one of the most memorable electives I had.

The course boiled down to “how to compress data”, like zipping a folder or making an image take less bytes. In order to compress data however, one needs a definition of what “data” - or at least “information” - even is. The equation my professor taught represented information was:



For each different item that can show up, you multiply its probability to show up by the logarithmic of its probability to show up, and add this value together for every item that can show up in a set.

“More unpredictability means you have more information,” he said, but it didn’t click until he illustrated an example. “Suppose you have a weather reporter who predicts it will rain, be sunny, rain, overcast, be sunny, be sunny, rain, etc.. She is 60% accurate. Now, imagine a second weather reporter who predicts it will be sunny, sunny, sunny, sunny, sunny sunny, sunny, etc.. She is accurate 80% of the time.”

“Despite the second reporter being correct more often, you would rather listen to the first reporter. It’s not because she is less accurate, but because she gives more information about the day. Meanwhile, the second reporter isn’t telling you anything new.”

The professor went on to explain how this applies to data compression and nuances about the mathematical meaning of “uncertainty”, but this story itself I’ve never stopped thinking about. It’s quite a paradox, to be more correct than people, without saying anything informative. What does that mean for truth? Does knowledge not matter? Is information, even if incorrect, more important than the truth? Is truth not a property of information? Then again, maybe I’m overthinking the concept of “being right by accident.”

---

“Forward.”

Seven rooms in a row, it is always forwards, regardless of other exits presented. Each room is still a classroom, with random layouts of “student” and “desk” crystals. The blackboards still show equations, but they use strange symbols instead of mathematical notation I’m familiar with. When I’m far in, the glyphs wrap their serifs around in dizzying spirals and the strokes become precisely narrow.

“Forward.”

The next room is hollow, missing any tall crystals or statues, and the blackboard has nothing on it. Actually, it is nothing - there’s a rectangular gap in the wall instead of black stone. Walking up and peering out of it is like looking out the window of an apartment, whose windowless black facade extends infinitely in all directions.There is no ground below, no sky above, no stars, no light, nothing.

Is the dungeon in a void? Is the inside of the moon empty? Or does this Mystery Dungeon reside in another dimension?

“Keep moving forward,” the voice says.

I roll my eyes but listen. The next room is empty as well, but the “empty” chalkboard shows a beach instead of nothing. Its waves of brilliant violet shimmer roars and collapses on silky yellow sand. There is a sky this time, of white and red stars.

A beach… My own aura is a beach with crystalline blue waves crashing onto tan sand. I don’t notice my own aura often, like how mons don’t notice the bridge of their own noses, so being reminded of myself gives me goosebumps.

“Forward. It’s still trying to find you,” the voice says. To its credit, I have a habit of being carried away with curiosity. I continue, lecturing myself to not get complacent.

The next room is plastered with blue grey hands reaching out of the ground. They have five fingers and a thumb each, every digit stretched and tapering into a needle-like point. All of them turn their palms to me and waggle their fingers. Each of their auras is a single snowflake in both shape and intensity - it’s only as strong as auras that belong to plants.



In the distance, there’s a faint but shrill scream, and an aura reminiscent of rubbing a finger over salty, oily deep fried food.

“Forward,” it says.

The hands are densely packed with hardly any room to cram my boots between them, so I end up stepping on them. They crunch like glass and I swear there’s a giggling sound too. The ones I don’t stomp on rub their palms across my calf. I can’t feel them through my thick suit but I do rush through to get away from the weirdness regardless.

Instead of opening straight to another room, the door leads into a corridor, the first in awhile. It’s cramped and dark and every step brings me closer to this newer aura. Its greasy, hot sensation feels like it’ll burn the tips of my paws. I’m at least ready for when a figure appears in the darkness ahead.

It’s a half-body monster cut from the waist below, rich blood pooling around over the dark crystals. Its body is thin yet strangely muscular, with long arms ending in three claws each. Its head is the most distorted of all, with an impossible large, open maw, filled with sharp teeth jutting out from glistening gums. Its face is sunken, almost skull-like, with eyes so dark I can’t tell if they’re black or missing.



Despite the grisly appearance, it’s slow, seemingly unaware of its missing legs and helplessly scratching the ground in front of it. It stares at me and makes some high-pitched whiny voices.

“Forward,” the voice says.

“But-”

“Kill it.”

For some reason, this command doesn’t click with me. I just look over its helpless body.

“It’s just a feral Pokemon, like in any other Mystery Dungeon. Kill it,” the voice says.

I hesitate to bring my arms to the aura sphere stance. There’s something wrong about all this. Attacking these monsters has never fared well.

“Kill it,” the voice says. “It’ll kill you if you try to walk past it.”

Despite my chills, I still need to make progress. I charge my aura sphere to a basketball in size and launch it at the “Pokemon.” It splashes its chest and it screams while trying to cover the scorch marks left on it..

“Kill it,” it repeats. “The hunter is closer than you think. It’s approaching.”

It’s hard to get the sense of urgency the voice insists, as all sentences are delivered in the same dry, bassy voice. There is never any variation in pitch or intonation. No emotion. No worry behind the words it preaches.

I fire another sphere. Then another one. And one more. Every strike incurs more screaming agony onto it, its flesh tearing apart on its arms and chest. Its mouth hangs ever wider and shakes side to side as if begging me to stop. It ends up finally turning around to flee, but my last sphere hits its back and it falls over. The greasy, burning aura gently fades from existence.

I do not wait to be told to move forward. That aura fading sensation is the same as if I were to faint a dungeon mon back on earth, and its a feeling that fucks with my head. I feel like I’m dying with it, it’s easier to just move on. At least it’s normal to feel it, according to other Lucarios.

The corridor goes for a long while. The shrill screaming I heard earlier grows stronger and I sense yet another new aura: blood dripping, except the blood is black. Eventually I reach the next room. All the crystals are a uniform shade of hostile red. There were no more “student” or “desk” crystals, just the blackboard with oozing shimmer.

I realize I never saw the blackboard in the last room. Was there even one?

Wait, why do I even care?

“Forward,” the voice says. “It’s trap is approaching but we’ll make it out.”

There is no aura behind me, just one ahead of me. I move into the next room.

It’s violently red as well. Past the blackboard are whirling, rusty sawblades, spinning without making noise.

“Forward.”

The next room is the same, except for the jangling chains past the blackboard over a red and pink sea. The screaming and black blood aura are stronger and now there’s snapping and grinding metal noises ahead too. They’re timed to the shrill screaming.

“Forward.”

Another red room, although instead of doors, there’s dark corridors left, right, and forward. The dripping aura is strong, pouring over an unseen ledge into unknown depths, as my aura senses. I can hear gore and flesh tear apart and the panting in between the screams of whatever the hell is ahead.

“Forward.”

“No,” I said. This is asinine. I’m obviously sensing something very bad, and it’s right beyond that hall. Why am I trusting this voice so much anyways? “There has to be another way.”

“Go forward. Don’t turn around.”

I got its warning too late, I already looked around to the corridors beside and behind me. I’m not alone. A statue stands in the doorway I just came from. It’s hard to make sense of what it’s supposed to resemble, but I think I see a large, unhinged jaw within its cut shapes and abrupt ridges.

The voice says “Do not look away from it, Lucario. You’re in danger.”

 

[BestLizard]

CW: Suggestive Content

---

18​

I gnash my teeth and dig my mitts into my palms while I scan this statue’s hideous contours. It’s hardly a statue, with angular shapes jutting out everywhere, cracks fine and wide all over, and an uneven, porous white surface. It feels like it should just be some rock found in a field, yet I can’t stop seeing a dead, wide maw and piercing eyes around its edges.

“Blinking is fine. Don’t close your eyes for too long though. Wait patiently. I’ll figure something out,” the voice says.

“Why should I trust you? Staying still can be dangerous!”

“Don’t attack it either.”

I shout. “I can’t trust you! You won’t even tell me what the danger is!”

“You are made of matter and material. I do not have the means to explain this Pokemon, it doesn’t exist like you. But-”

“It doesn’t exist?”

“-I do not have the means to explain this Pokemon to you. Do you have the means to explain how you’re real to me?”

I hold a hand over my chest, proudly. “I can be observed and measured.” And I can think, although I don’t think that answer will satisfy it.

There’s a long pause. “I can’t observe you. I am not capable of it. I just know you.”

Getting more riddles than answers makes me growl. But maybe there’s truth that there’s a layer of metaphysics the universe had all along, more complicated than I’d want it to be, and this voice isn’t ready to explain it. If it’s not making excuses up.

It says one last thing. “If you were to look away without leaving the floor, the nightmare will know you exist, and where you exist. I’ll try to do something, but I’ll be gone. Stay put. Don’t attack it. Don’t look away.”

My arms shake in frustration. I’m ready to just smash this thing in regardless. But I can’t be hasty. Breath in. You’re a man of science and logic, use your head…

I am not in immediate danger. The torture sounds and blood aura behind me isn’t moving further away nor closer. No other aura is in my vicinity, and I will know if one approaches. So I can stand and stare for now, but if the voice is speaking the truth and I look away, I’d be in danger. Ergo, the rational thing is to stay.

Although I’m not happy with this conclusion. I sit down, cross my legs, and grumble. “Just why are you helping me anyways?” I ask to no response. It’s gone.

So I wait and watch.

For a while.

The noisy laugh-like screams and rumbling shredding behind me tempt me to look away, especially since I hate looking at this thing. Its visage warps and grows like I’m piercing through ever expanding space, layers of manifold surfaces blossoming within. Worse, the statue hasn’t changed. My eyes are playing tricks.

My stomach growls. This almost trips my focus. A gnawing hunger has been growing for many floors but now that I’m still, it’s hard to ignore it eating through my stomach. Mystery Dungeons make you hungrier faster, and it dawns on me that starving to death before I reach the bottom is a realistic outcome.

My hand wedges a crystal loose from the ground near me and I slam back down into the moon. There must be more productive thoughts to have.

What have I learned so far, coming into the moon?

I replay all my encounters and start making theories. Could those auraless alien monsters be organic machines? They seem to be more interested in picking things up and carrying them than doing anything resembling survival. That would imply something has made them, including the massive ones a few floors back. What?

And the shimmer. What is it? I see it drip whenever something gets voided. Is it a chemical byproduct of that process? If so, what got voided to create all the shimmer through this dungeon?

Maybe the Earth?

My hands grab two more crystals. I squeeze them tight and growl to keep my cool. The theory is bogus, a voided Earth’s shimmer wouldn’t just teleport here. But what is angering me is an intuition that the moon and the disappearance of home are connected.

Disappearance like Kommo-o?

I bolt upright and throw one of the crystals a few feet in front of me. It shatters into glittering splinters that fly towards the feet of the statue. Wait, would that count as an attack? “Aaah!” I hold my helmet and shake my head side to side. Deep breaths. Focus, Lucario. You gotta get through this.

To stare at it with all my mind and body, I kneel onto both knees, lean forward, and rest my fists on the ground in front of me. The tricks of the eyes resume: in its vague edges I see a laughing mouth, and one above it, one below it, but they’re all one mouth. Or is it a person? Actually, it looks like both the top and bottom half of a skull of an unfamiliar Pokemon if I look at it sideways.

To stop the illusions, I count every crack and every edge, twice over. It’s hard to tell what is which, they merge and blend together, yet no matter what, I count the same shapes in the same spots. This crudely eroded edifice is still a solid object.

Just briefly, for far few fractions of a second, The edges resemble a strong, chiseled muzzle of a strong dragon. Of Kommo-o.

“Fuck you!” I shout, leaning further like a predator ready to pounce. The tortured soul behind me lets out a shrill that pierces my ear drums and makes me wince in pain. I seeth through my teeth.

The aura’s still there, not any closer, but it is stronger. It’s a cavern of oozing black blood, now folding over itself like layers of a silk dress. And while I’m tuned into my aura sense, I pick up a new one. A fierce breeze of like many before, coming closer.

I’m feeling faint with how unsteady my breath has become and I’ve almost let my gaze slip away. What the hell is going on? Does this statue mess with minds? I want to blame it, but it has not done a thing. I’m psyching out over nothing. How weak am I?

Now even the crystals around this monster are playing with my vision. Are they far or close? Stretching behind it? Pointing towards it? Was that one always there? No wait, I was looking at nothing.

All the while, the wind aura approaches, much faster than those before. And the blood aura folds itself into suffocating knots while the other makes choking gags.

I’m trying to find the faces I’ve seen within the statue’s form, but now that I’m trying, I only see twisted shapes that change every blink. Come on! Hyperbolic paraboloids, cylinders, ellipsoids, tori, even a Klein bottle…

Then I see him, looking up with a tear rolling down his eye. “Kommo-o!”, but the shape now looks like yet another statue inside. “Bring him back!” Next blink, near his feet, I see an approximation of him, curled up in a corner. I blink again, he stares at me with eyes far too wide.

My eyes well up. “Please. What do you know about him?”

I can’t see him anymore after that. I see some Kommo-o’s but they’re not the one I know, and there’s Pokemon that look like him but are different species entirely. Some flash repeatedly, others fade away like a ghost. All within the same set of cracks and edges.

The wind aura is getting much closer. I hear its shrieking sounds. It harmonizes with the other’s screaming, creating a beautiful, haunting choir. But it is heading towards me, approaching from the left. I stand up and shuffle to the right corridor, feeling for it with arms outstretched. Finding the exit, I hug its corner, ready to run when it arrives. For now, I still stare.

I don’t see any more shapes or people within the statue. They’re all in my mind now, all of them Kommo-o. He’s hugging me on his lap while we approach the station. Now we’ve arrived and he;s strokes my cheek with the back of his hand. He’s whispering “You’re going to be alright.” Tears well, blurring my vision.

The wind aura’s voices are now a multitude. They’re chanting some sort of name with exuberance, and I think I know whose. I join too, as a prayer to protect me.

Kommo-o nuzzles my cheek. He strokes my back and playfully nips at my ear. I’m laughing, but nervously, as I’ve never been so exposed to someone in my life. But I’m too addicted to this - and too scared of everything else - to stop. He’s stroking a hand down my back while he pulls his lips onto mine.

“Please stop!” I beg the statue, in between my incoherent rambling. Tears streak down my cheeks. The screams behind join the worship too. Even I see the statue praise The One Who Is Not with exuberance.

The wind’s about to enter the room.

Kommo-o pushes me against the wall and pins me with his strong body. My arms and legs curl around him tight. My heart pounds like never before. I’m sucking his lip sloppily, not knowing how to kiss and never willing to stop. His hands rub onto my hips and he breaks the kiss to whisper things into my ear…

“STOP!” I collapse onto my knees. I gasp for air between heavy sobs “I’m sorry Kommo-o! I’m so sorry… It’s all my fault…”

I want to see him again. I need him. I need his warm hold and tender touch. Just take my life so I can feel him again. I have never felt love before and it was taken from me too soon. I love you Kommo-o. I love you so much. I’m going to see you again. I’m ready.

But the wind entity doesn’t enter. In whatever room over, it takes a turn and heads away. It’s taking corridors aimlessly after all. Its chanting placates with distance and even the screaming behind takes a break.

I pant before screaming and it turns into a laugh soon after. I’m light headed especially with my hunger inside. I pound my fist against the ground and work out what to yell at the statue, but I’m no longer a thinking man. I’ve become a monster of norepinephrine, glutamate, and adrenaline. I’m out of control. But I. Have. Not. Lost.

Bony fingers wrap around my neck. Something quiet has come down the corridor by me: another grey auraless alien.

It lifts me up over its head while I gasp for air that does not come. I kick its gaunt arm and smash my fist against its wrist only to hear babyish chortles and coos. It only lets me go once I bash my boot against its humerus and it cracks in half. My side slams into the ground while the alien flails and screams.

My heart sinks. The statue is gone.

The deep voice, now split in two and layered with intense static, radios in. “Run. It now knows you.”

 

[BestLizard]

CW: Blood and Gore

---

19: Stranger Threats​

“Through the corridor behind you, towards the aura,” the voice adds.

I nearly trip turning around so fast, and my legs lunge. Straight towards the multifold aura.

“Pace yourself.”

I could hardly hear it over the banshee-like wailing the mechanical grinding of what must be three or four saws boring into flesh and bone. My whole body tenses ready to face it. I leap into the next room.

The floor and ceiling is coated in a bright, bumpy substance. It reflects enough light to hurt my eyes. My aura sense points me to the corner where the blood-folded entity sits. No taller than a bloomed tulip, it is a mess of constricted black strands and objects hanging from them, clearly too heavy to be supported by these “stems”. They include sets of eyes, a set of clicking gizmos, and black iron “petals” forming a miniaturized megaphone blaring the agonized cries. It moves by slapping its tentacles forward and crawling, very slowly.

The stairs are here too. In my rush towards them, I trip over the top edge, slam my helmet against the wall, and tumble down to the bottom. I end up rolling through the air as I land onto the next floor on my front. Bruising aches spread across my ribs, and my visor is scratched.

“Pace yourself. You won’t escape unless you leave the Dungeon. Forward.”

Ignoring the pain, I run forward again, listening to the voice’s advice this time.

“Left,” “right,” “forward.”

It guides me succinctly as before. I never cross a monster no matter how close to an aura I get, and I arrive to stairs with better efficiency than my first few floors, especially now that I’m running. I’ve already cleared six.

The dungeon’s environment is transitioning again. Crystals are less frequent, exposing the hard yet smooth slate which they grow from. Corridors between each room stretch longer, and the ceiling above grows closer. Bright substance occasionally paints splotches on a wall or ceiling.

The voice has only gotten more hoarse since I triggered the nightmare, although its intonation is as unchanged as ever. “Forward.” “Forward.” “Forward.”

Deja vu hits me, there’s even an aura ahead. It’s a large fishnet, the kind trawlers will scrap along the ocean floor. But instead of being made of fibre, it’s woven with constantly rewritten scripture extolling the virtues of patience, even though I can’t understand the non-existent language.

“Forward. You will encounter a Pokemon. It is the only way to the stairs. You must get by it or defeat it.”

It’s only a few steps before I’m in the next room. The floor and ceilings have swirls etched into their surfaces and shimmer drips out of their centers. In the middle, there’s a monster of steel with large lobster-like claws, no legs, and a bear skull for head: it’s the same kind that trapped me into a dream many floors back, although its eyes are wide and red instead of missing.

It’s tearing apart some sort of corpse of a featherless Cramorant, except it is numerous Cramorant bodies stacking on top of each other into one long body like a Centiskorch. The larger monster’s bisecting its middle, yanking red meat and brown guts out to cram it into its mouth, despite a missing lower jaw. Blood streaked across the floor, telling a story of where it was killed then dragged to the middle, and it now stains its claws and cables dangling from its mouth. Heavy snaps and crunches are made with each impossible bite it takes.

It sees me in seconds. It places both claws in front of the carcass as if to shield it from me, and it roars an aberrant sound, like two layers of wind tunnels smoothly climbing the chromatic scale. It vibrates the ground and my bones.

“Forward. Run.”

I run, but my first step cracks a dungeon item beneath. A sleek, shiny crescent that’s otherwise featureless. The monster thinks this is an attack and runs to me, cracking the ground with the heavy claws it uses to drag its nubby hips. It’s fast. I tuck to weave under its arm, but I don’t even get the chance as it swipes its claw to my side.

I fly, flipping over, and smashing the wall. Crystals dislodge as I fall back to the floor. The pain burns immediately and my head’s blurry. I hear it come: the distance I have flown is shocking. I scramble up only to trip over another dungeon item. They’ve been strewn across the past few floors and are unremarkable until now, where they’ve been a frustrating inconvenience.

In desperation, I pick it up and without looking at what it was, blindly hurl it. It lands in its head and shatters with a flash of red light and a deep, slurping plunging noise. The monster’s upper body is now an orb of swirling red streaks illuminating the entire room with shaking droplets falling up to the ceiling. Its frozen mid-stride, and its aura did not fade, but got plucked entirely.

It’s only then I realized I have confused two auras for one. The net was gone, the weaving scripture remained.

“Run,” the voice said.

I hold my sides to hush down the pain and sprint to the stairs. There’s tack tack tacks behind me as the aura snakes its way to me. I’m a step away when thin, short arms wrap around my ankle, falling me forward. Hitting my head yet again causes me to groan and worsen my dizziness but I still grab the ledges of the stairs to pull me down while it crawls up to me, coiling around my leg sharply. It is the Cramorant corpse centipede: there’s a whole trail of blood behind it with guts that have fallen out from its body along the way. It’s squirming and wringing the life out of my leg while trying to pull me back up the floor.

I shake back and use every ounce of muscle fibre to get me down the stairs, until I dive off the end and free fall with it latched onto me.

 

[BestLizard]

20: The Merchant​

Thud. I land right on my front again. At least the bird centipede is no longer clutched around my leg. Like Pokemon in all Mystery Dungeons, they disappear when you leave the floor. Unbelievable to think of that thing as some undiscovered Pokemon species.

I pull myself up and the pain from the landing spreads fast, worse than my last poor landing. It’s growing on my sides too with how that steel monster tossed me across the room. It’s a warm sensation that stings if I move my arms the wrong way. I must be black and blue all across my torso.

“Run,” the voice says.

It’s always urging me if I’m ever still for seconds. It’s annoying, but it does keep snapping me out of my absent mind. Plus I really don’t want to learn more about the nightmare hunting me. I run awkwardly to keep my bruises happy.

I’m perfectly guided like the previous floors and it’s smoother than ever: “Pokemon” are less frequent and the paths to the stairs are more direct. The downside is that corridors are longer, don’t make clean right turns within them, and rooms aren’t neat rectangles anymore: some have three, five, or even six sides. If it weren’t for my guide, I’d be lost for hours.

The ceiling’s shrinking, too. I could touch it if I jumped, and there’s a few of the larger alien monsters who are crammed in place because of it. There’s no more crystals and the exposed slate surfaces are darker. Etched spirals are a common feature, as well as random splotches of white. I stepped over one of those spots along the way - it was quite dusty.

I must be 11-14 floors past the statue trap and I’m now approaching a room with a new aura. A giant waterfall, except instead of water, what falls is the ability to sense aura itself. The recursion makes my head dizzy, it’s like I’m watching a live stream of what my eyes see, except my eyes are crashing down from high above.

I step inside the room. It is wide and certainly the longest I’ve been in so far, which makes the foot between my helmet and the swirling ceiling more jarring. The walls have dozens of corridor exits spread out neatly, and stretched across the whole floor is a dull orange rug.

I double take. Yes, a rug. Fluffy beige tassels decorate the edge of it and there’s small hills where bumps in the floor are. There’s yellow threads woven across it to form a large grid. They make garish baroque curves with hundreds of embellishments and details, except for when they intersect, in which they have bland geometric patterns that aren’t aligned right. It’s a clash of ugly styles I would never imagine on Earth.

Many dungeon items lie across the entire rug, the most I’ve seen in one place. And across the entire room in the corner, far away enough I need to squint, is the monster making the aura. It's a black opaque shadow in the shape of an hourglass and its edges shiver with outlines of red, green, and blue. It doesn’t move.

“Forward. Do not touch the items.”

There’s an opening to the stairs far into the middle of the carpet. It’s difficult to see as the items are more numerous farther in. I take one step at a time, being careful as my bulky suit makes it hard to tell where my boots are at any time.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

I can’t hurry. It’s already getting denser just a few meters in.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

“I’m trying!” I said annoyed, before needing to hug my sides due to a small bruise flare up.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

I think it actually expects me to rush through this without touching anything. Does it actually not understand how difficult that would be?

A few more meters in, the items are getting numerous enough that I need to really look for a safe space to plant my boot down, and once I do, there’s only inches of clearance. I even thought I did brush my heel against some sort of pink sponge with handlebars, but the shadow doesn’t do anything.

To the side, there’s babyish laughing. An alien monster is stuck in the frameway of a corridor and it's trying to force itself out by clawing the ground.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

Getting an unusual sense of dread, I try listening to it a bit, getting riskier with moving my legs. It’s working well until I step on a spot that’s more uneven than it appears. My body lurches forward and I have to swing my arms to get myself upright and my feet budge in all this. It takes a few seconds for me to let out a breath: thank goodness, I didn’t touch anything.

“Pace yourself.”

What the hell happened to “hurry, it’s hunting you”?

There’s a louder laugh to my side as the alien finally pops through, tumbling like a ball before landing on its weird legs. Some of its skin tore off, exposing red muscle beneath, and it walks with its hands dragging along the ceiling which sheds more skin. It heads towards the rug.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.” There it is.

I take two more steps. Darkness blurs in front of me and there’s horrid screaming right after. The alien must have touched an item, as the waterfall aura is where it stood now and is absorbing it into its darkness by twisting it into a cone. The alien’s limbs flail around while periodically snapping in half to be twisted further in. Crack. Crack. Crack. The scream tells me plenty about the agony.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

I needed that. I move forward, balancing care while wasting as little time as possible. My body wobbles a few times with balance barely held together, especially as I need to take larger steps to get between the items, but I stay up.

There’s a splashing sound. The shadow has grown twice in size and its colourful outline spazzes and shoots out colourful spikes. I can’t see the monster behind its body but I can hear “aa-aa-aa-aa” as its now-warped screaming intermittently cuts out like a crappy recording. And beneath them, shimmer surges.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

Every part of my body wants to go faster, yet I’m forced slower. The landmine is dense now, and it takes me seconds to find safe ground for each step. At least the stairs are close now.

The shimmer is gushing out like a fountain, enough to spread a shin-high wave. It’s pushing items along with it. If it reaches me, they will touch me.

I run into a problem: there’s no more room, at least not without risking a jump. They’re starting to pile on top of each other.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.” Although the shimmer is going to catch me first.

I squat my legs, concentrate on the one free spot, and leap. My head nearly scrapes the ceiling and with my foot awkwardly forward, I land right in the space, but not without barely scraping an item. It was a bunch of long blue fingers all stapled into a row.

Black completely fills my peripheral vision. The shadow monster, now stretched from floor to ceiling and beyond, is inches beside me. Its aura crashes down on me as if to drown me with my own senses. My legs tremble.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

The reminder makes me realize I’m not dead. Despite how close it is, it’s not touching me nor moving closer. I must not have touched it for long enough. The wave is still approaching though, I hear all the items smack and bang against each other. It’s close.

Only three more leaps. I don’t search for a good spot anymore, I just leap at whatever looks like space. My left foot lands, and I leap from that foot without being certain about the next spot. I land on my toes.

I fall forward with too much momentum, towards a whole bed of items beneath me. They have every colour across the rainbow and then some and most have long sharp hooks ready to pierce me. I try to lunge using the momentum to my advantage, although it is a blind leap.

I’m lucky, and I dive straight into the stairs, beating the wave and the items tumbling down with me.

 

[BestLizard]

21: Mad Descent​

Finally, I land on my feet after falling down the stairs. A bunch of odd shapes tumble from above, bouncing off my back but being too light to hurt and no shadow follows up to punish me. I chuckle, both in amusement of my landing but also to blow off stress I’ve built up. It doesn’t last long as sharp stabbing pains come from my bruises again. I hug my sides.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.” No matter how often it repeats itself, it still speaks in the same deep, emotionless tone it’s always had.

I don’t hurry though. I… Laugh again, and I do so in spite of my bruises. An emotional levee broke for next I’m on my knees, arcing my back with a hand on my visor, cackling to the skies with laughter.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you-”

“SHUT THE HELL UP!” I yell at the top of my voice. I grip my chest as pain spikes. Oh hell, it’s a lot too. My arms shake. “Shut up! Ha ha ha ha…”

…
…
…

I come back to my senses, or at least most of them - I can’t get rid of my wide grin stretching cheek to cheek. Why am I so amused? What’s wrong with me?

Well, I need to hurry either way. It’s hunting me.

I get up and go back to running. At least I have had a chance to catch my breath, as this segment of the dungeon is my longest yet.

Every trait about the previous floors progresses manyfold once I’m another ten floors deeper. Every surface has become a dead black obsidian with dizzying interweaved spirals etched through fractures. And most interestingly, there’s no longer any more shimmer, although there’s plenty of dusty white patches instead.

The ceiling is so low that I have to hunch over although it’s not the only thing that’s become cramped. The corridors are more tubes with how the walls are curved and they’re narrower than before. They bend and slink around, not just left and right but also up and down - every direction except straight. And they’ve become so long it takes minutes to jog through some. Every floor, It’s taking longer to reach the stairs.

The rooms are not much better. More than half are as small as walk-in closets. The ones that don't have sloped and uneven floors and have so many exits not just on the sides but above and below. There’s more exits than there is wall. I can’t even fit through most openings. And when I do reach the stairs, they’re only as wide as my body and have irregular, jagged steps. Every one’s a battle not to trip down.

I’ve gotten used to the falls that happen after descending each set of stairs, but they have been getting longer too. My last fall took seven seconds - I counted. It’s long enough that panic sets in each time, although I always stick the landing. I’m not even sure how - I don’t even feel the impact of landing, somehow.

Between the claustrophobic spaces, passing so many floors I’ve lost count, and how much time I’m spending falling, I know I’m far below the surface. There’s no doubt I’m going to pass a kilometer by the final floor.

There’s also much less life down here. There’s one less aura each floor and now I don’t even sense anyone anymore. There’s still aliens, though. They aren’t a threat: most are either too large and impossibly crammed within the cavern walls, or are so small that I can punt them away with my boot.

At one fork, there’s even an arm of one of them fully taking up the left path. Its body must be a gargantuan size, and I can imagine its whole body being stretched out and squeezed like a noodle, and how gory that must be. I really wonder how they end up in places they physically couldn’t fit into, and why the sizes are so varied. Wonder, wonder, wonder. I doubt my journey will unravel any mysteries about these monsters, but at the same time, it isn’t the inner workings of the dungeon I really care about. I just want answers about the universe, ideally why the world has ended and what caused it, or why we exist. And if not that, then what happened to Kommo-o. Then I’ll die satisfied.

“Go right. Hurry, it’s hunting you.”

I listen. I’ve figured out what’s up with its insistence: no matter the context, if I’m stopped for a short bit, it will tell me to hurry. If I ever run out of breath too fast or trip, it will tell me to pace myself. It seems unable to recognize context, just that I have slowed down, and it will always think I need reminding. It’s so odd, this Pokemon-like voice knows so much, yet there’s so little it's aware about. At least knowing it isn’t being impatient makes the reminders less bothersome.

The new corridor has a slight curve that straightens out after minutes of jogging. After that, it’s an unbroken corridor that goes on and on, the longest I’ve ever been in. The walls are uniformly cramped, only inches away from my shoulders. There isn’t a single white patch and the fractures’ patterns repeat after a long time. Something isn’t right.

“Stop,” the voice says.

I do, although I go straight to holding my knees and panting. I haven’t stopped jogging in maybe an hour. “What’s wrong”?

“Give me a moment. I’ll be leaving you.”

“Hey, tell me stuff!”

There’s no response. And in no time my leg muscles start aching. To prevent muscle atrophy, astronauts do work out regularly and that does include myself, but even fit people have limits.

The running isn’t great for my hunger either. All the stress and physical activity has surpassed my appetite but it’s coming back all at once now. My stomach doesn't just rumble - my arms shake in hunger, and I certainly feel irritation.

All this body awareness is so stark to the quietness around me I’ve now noticed. There used to be so much shimmer sloshing and the stomping of the colossal aliens could be heard for many floors. But there’s not a drop of shimmer anywhere anymore, the giants are long past, and there’s no Pokemon to disturb this peace. It’s empty here. Only pain and my panting.

I punch the wall. “I need to keep it up,” I tell myself. Need to keep my sanity up, that is. “The final floor will have something of value. I will find Kommo-o. Or I’ll see some great legendary. Maybe the One Who Is Not will bless me. And if not, I’ll be back on the station with all the knowledge I’ve accumulated and so, so, so much time to analyze it.” I punch it again. “But it’ll mean nothing if I don’t make it to the end! So I need! To stay! Strong! Aaaaaah!”

I bang it a few more times and take a deep breath. This feels so good. Too good. I need to hold back laughter again. That’s when the cracks in the wall catch my eye. There’s a familiar, wide-mouth face sketched into it. After blinking, I see Kommo-o. I squint. Huh?

“Lucario, turn around and run,” the voice said. It is panting, with a quiet wheezing to its breath. “We walked into a trap.”

That’s when I realize that the emptiness around me wasn’t just emptiness, but an aura made of emptiness itself. It was a long distance away, but it didn’t come from either direction of the tunnel: it encapsulated me like a sphere.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, I saw that this story was up for Review Tag on Diner, and I figured that it’d been long enough since I last dove into Lucario’s Super Happy Fun Adventures On the Moon™, so it felt like a way to kill two birds with one stone and get caught up with this story since the part you wanted reviewers to check out happened to start off right where I left off in this story.

Whelp, here goes nothing. Let’s see how that dungeon crawl Lucario was in the middle of the last time I read this story has been going for him:

Chapter 13

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

George Berkeley is a philosopher I often think about.

He wasn’t a mathematician nor a scientist. Yet, much like how science has to do with what is and isn’t real and how that deals with our senses, his philosophy talks about the same subject.

Wait, wait, wait. As in the guy from Ireland? They had a George Berkeley in their setting when they’re a variant of the canon PMD world?

Which, y’know, that’s kinda been a recurring theme in this story now that I think about it.

In particular, his great idea is that to be perceived, is to be. That you only exist as long as someone witnesses you, even if that is yourself. After all, what is the universe, but the sum of our thoughts of it?

Which given that we’re dealing with a cosmic horror story here, color me doubtful that that’s really accurate, since those monsters that Lucario and Kommo-o have been bumping into were very much extant even if nobody else perceived them.

Of course, the logical conclusion of this thought is that if you fell asleep and nobody was looking over your body, you would stop existing. Berkeley argued that people don’t stop existing when they sleep because Arceus is perceiving the universe at all times. A lofty workaround but one that isn’t wrong to their logic.

Although I always wondered. Do we really exist when we sleep? We have dreams, but the time between closing our eyes and opening them is pretty much time cut away from our lives. In a way, we really do stop existing for a brief moment, and the next morning, we exist once more, as we open our eyes and remember who and where we are. Remember that all the dreams we had weren’t real.

Normally I’d just go and dismiss this, but… yeah, this is going to wind up becoming very topical very fast, isn’t it? Since this feels like exactly the sort of story where the whole “do we really exist if nobody thinks about us” would be topical there.

My fall to the next floor takes forever, long enough I realize I’d crush my bones once I land, so I reach out and start hoping to grab one of the many rock outcrops lining this tall tunnel. I catch none, and I land in a thin pool of shimmer. [ ] Somehow, despite the distance I fell, I’m completely fine. I didn’t even feel a landing.

I kinda wonder if it’d have been worth showing a bit more of the perception of what the landing was like off to the readers, since it feels like the sort of surreal experience that would’ve been worth showing off along with the sudden whiplash between “I’m gonna die” and “Oh, I’m alright” going on in Lucario’s head.

The marching thud-thud-thud of the last floor’s massive aliens still ring above and a heavy stream of shimmer pours down from where the stairs were far above. There’s no path forward in front of me, and as I turn around, I finally see the monster in the room. I fall backwards in shock.

View attachment 19493

(Art by Bograbbit)​

Ah yes, hello Bograbbit art. And I see that we’re just going and proving that the saw about a picture being worth a thousand words was onto something, since boy does that capture the

vibes going on right there at this moment of the story.

It’s yet another alien monster, crammed between the two walls of the only corridor out. It’s much larger than the one that chased me two floors ago - too large, in fact. Its body never leaves the hall no matter how much it budges. Its limbs are smushed between its body and the walls except for one outstretched arm reaching for me, swiping the air in front of it.

Lucario: “... Nope nope nope. I’m just going to turn around and go right back up that cliff right about now.”

I shuffle to the back of the room and wait for it to break out, perhaps I can sneak by it once it’s free. I’ll wait hours for my chance, but after only a few minutes, I feel hunger. That’s right, Mystery Dungeons accelerate your hunger. Waiting any longer would be foolish. I stand back up.

The underlined IMO would work better focusing more on the specific, tangible sensations of what Lucario feels as part of that hunger before going into the ‘That’s right’ sentence that follows afterwards.

Without a strong current to throw off my balance, I shoot fully-charged aura spheres at it. Each one blasts the surface of its grey-brown skin, making it flail its arm and scream a babyish cry. But after a volley of a dozen, it shows no exhaustion, my spheres aren’t hurting. Then again, it may not even be alive to begin with, missing an aura and all.

There’s a small tweak to this sequence here that I’d recommend making Though I feel the underlined should’ve been established a bit earlier since it’s a pretty big detail that helps explain why Lucario was caught so badly off-guard by this encounter but it’s kinda glossed over.

The only remaining option is to crawl over it. I’ll be grabbed for sure if I come close, but the rocky walls offer many footholds, I can just go up and over. I breathe long and deep to compose myself and walk up to the wall to plan a narrow path upwards. I pull myself up, one outcrop at a time.

I’ve reached quite high. Letting go and falling down would smash my helmet but I am out of its arm’s reach. I think. I sidle around, getting closer to the whining and moaning monstrosity. Its loose arm reaches up and flails, clawing down the wall hoping to reach me, even dislodging a couple of rocks. Slower and slower I slip through the narrow hallway, the thing’s claw a foot beneath me.

Lucario: “I… really did not need to be reminded of that, thanks.”

CHKT. My footrest slips away and I lose my grip in shock. I fall right into its boney arm but instead of it catching me, its arm bends the wrong way beneath me. There’s crunchy cracks and loud crying as I land on his head, pinning his broken limb between us. It's rocking side to side but still unable to escape the tunnel no matter its pain and desperation. I slip off and quietly get away from the agonizing alien and its agonized cries.

inb4 it turns out that the alien ultimately was harmless in spite of its outward behavior. Though I suppose that’s a lucky break on Lucario’s part there.

[ ] I’m in no danger the next few floors. Although among the usual entities I can sense afar, the alien creatures appear more frequently the deeper I get. They come in different sizes. The largest has filled a whole room while the smallest is as tall as my boot. Not all of them chase me. The ones that do are easy to outrun, while the ones that don’t are either clawing the wall, stomping forward in a line, or carrying strange dungeon items above them. A few even carry statues of Pokemon whose species I can’t make out.

I feel like there should be a bit more transition before getting into the whole “the next few floors” part. Though:

>statues of Pokémon

… Are we in the Voidlands right now? Since I remember where ‘statues of Pokémon’ wound up coming up in PSMD. And boy is that a trippy take on them if that’s indeed the case.

These new deeper floors have rich crimson crystals embedded in the darker stone walls, shimmer dripping out of them with drip, drip drip. Above me I still hear the thud of the infinite alien army’s march, but weaker and more distant.

Which I feel ought to be a potentially worrying sign, since things growing quieter in a place crawling with cosmic horror beasties isn’t necessary a good sign.

The next room has two new curious sights. Some lobster monster lies slightly lurched forward, propped up oversized and disfigured claws. It’s missing legs, having just a wide pelvis where its body meets the ground, and it is missing its lower jaw where a bunch of slick black wires hang out instead. In place of its eyes were two sunken black marks, shimmer bleeding out of it. It is still, however. Dead.

View attachment 19494

Ouch, Zoidberg has sure seen his better days there. Even if I assume that this one’s significantly less comedic relief in nature and probably a lot more mortally threatening.

The other side of the room was a conga line of aliens, all heaving a different statue above their heads with their scrawny arms. Each one mimicked some sort of Pokemon species but were just off enough that I couldn’t identify which ones they were supposed to be. All except for the one above the final alien trailing behind the pack. The stone sculpted braids of scaly plates, a heavy lower body mass, and the maw of a fierce dragon.

[ ]

I rush over. “Kommo-o!”

You sure that that’s a statue there, Lucario? Though I feel that it probably makes sense to show off a bit more of that moment of realization of “Wait, that’s Kommo-o” play out in Lucario’s head.

The alien’s arms tremble and let go, dropping the hefty statue onto the ground, smashing it into a hundred pieces. “No!”

[ ] I say and get onto my knees to scramble the pieces back together. None of them fit together, and after a pause to look over everything, I realize something about the pieces. The shapes of the pieces don't look like they could have possibly belonged to a statue of Kommo-o. Did I only imagine that?

Another spot where I think it’d be worth expanding a bit with what’s going on in Lucario’s head, especially to capture and show off more of that sense of panic overtaking him there.

I groan for tricking myself. I chuck a piece and get up to turn around. Yet once I do, I’m face to face with the lobster corpse’s dead eyes. It has moved and I now unwittingly stare deep into its void gaze.

Things go black. Then I wake up somewhere very different.
View attachment 19495

(Art by Shanna (BestGirlDucky))​

… Not really convinced that this is an improvement over where you used to be if this is what you’re coming face-to-face with in the new place.

Chapter 14

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

View attachment 19496
Cold, coarse asphalt rubs against my fur before I even open my eyes. I’m in a parking lot back on earth in the thick of night with the only light being overbearing moonlight above and a sole streetlamp a distance off. It’s soulless otherwise without a single car or person around. Its only building - a cinema - stands alone with no lights turned on inside. It is plastered with stretches of white cloth where oversized posters should be.

I’m in my fur again just as if I’m truly back on Earth. The richness of cool nighttime air fills my sinuses when I breathe in. Everything is so real.

Oh, so that’s why the quote about dreams was a thing in the last chapter. Whelp, time to see just how trippy and deranged things wind up getting here.

What do I do? I wonder while getting up and heading to the lone lamp to get my bearings. A thick forest surrounds me in all directions and there’s a car I couldn’t see before. A brown one, only a few steps away, and parked improperly across parking lines. A faint radio plays from it. I approach to hear better, but its peppy country-pop song is sung in a foreign language. Which one, I’m not even sure. When I turn back, a figure stands under the light.

He’s a Riolu, one approaching his preteen years. His feet are planted and his neck is craned far up. “Hello?” I ask, but he doesn’t even blink. I wave a paw in front of him, no reaction. So instead, I look up to where he was - straight to the gorgeous, perfect moon.

Wait, is Lucario seeing himself the way that he was when he was younger, or…?

Yes, my memories are returning. I’ve been here before, many times. Me and my family would watch movies at this cinema and it was always dark when we left. The moon would enchant me the entire way back to the car. My head glued against the window to admire it as we drove home. I was always curious about what’s up there, what’s in there, and what’s beyond there. My aspirations to be an astronaut were probably born because of this parking lot.

Yeah, that would explain a few things. I had a feeling that the sudden Riolu that we saw in this scene would wind up being him as a kid.

The moon meant even more to me than wonder, actually. When I was bullied or alone, I found comfort in standing under the moon. It would always console me, whether it’d be struggling with school, with moving out, or when I lost my father. It was my only friend where I’d otherwise struggle to make them. And once again it’s here for me, as it melts away the stress of my survival. I’m okay, so long as I’m looking upon its grace. I’m home.

So does that mean that he also howled at the moon as a kid? /s

The radio interrupts this precious time. It's louder and I think I even hear it speak my name. I’ve now just realized how much I zoned out: I didn’t even notice the Riolu kid was no longer beside me, or anywhere.

“Lucario. Oh Lucario!~.” It sings over instruments and static. I walk back to the car’s dark windows. These new lyrics still play to the peppy melody.

So wait, is this set to any song in particular? Since if so, it might have been worth potholing it here.

Oh Lucario, you’re in danger /
Look around you, you’re trapped in a dream /
Don’t you see things are much stranger? /
Listen to me before it gets extreme!

Well, I wasn’t expecting things to take a turn into the songfic realm in your little cosmic horror story there. Even if somehow, I doubt that that was how that song went when Lucario was a kid.

I listen and look around. At the edges of the forest are shadowy monsters standing on thin, needle-like blades, looking onwards with white eyes. The lyrics continue, its pitch drifting out of tune from the song.

Lucario: “Noooooope nope nope.”

It’s still on the hunt for you, you must listen to me. /
Roll under the car, count down from thirty. /
Shut tight your eyes. /
And I’ll see you on the other side. /

Oh Lucario, you’re in danger. /
Oh Lucario, you’re in danger danger danger…

Oh, it’s a musical survival guide. How convenient. If more than a little suspicious given that trusting anything in this entire Mystery Dungeon is probably a bad idea in general.

They walk closer, their nimble legs whiplashing around. I could make a break through their ranks before they circle me - the radio could just be another component of the trap after all. But radio voices led me astray before, and I can’t think straight.

I crawl under its rusty underside and lie on the frigid ground. I shut my eyes tight and I count down in my head. 30, 29, 28…

I kinda feel like the sequence of Lucario getting under the car should’ve been shown off as a bit more of a process, especially if he’s having to do anything to squeeze in like be careful with his spikes or something.

The radio joins in with me. “27, 26, 25, 24, 23…”

I hear clicking far off in the distance. Those things are approaching faster than they should be.

“18, 17, 16…”

A cacophony of clacks surrounds me on all sides, like toolboxes of screws dropping onto the ground. They thump against the car as they fight for space. A thick stench of rust comes from them.

Lucario:

“Do not open your eyes. 13… 12… 10…”

Needles pinch and poke my sides as they make way under the car. They slowly pierce my flesh. I let out whimpers of pain as blood trickles out.

Well damn, that was a fast confirmation there.

“7… 6… I’ll see you soon…”

A rubbery cable constricts my neck out of nowhere. I gasp for breath. No air comes through.

“3… 2… 1…”

Lucario: “Note to self, don’t blindly trust voices on the radio.” X_X

Chapter 15

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

I gasp deep and clutch my chest. I grab my suit’s communications panel instead, however, not realizing I’m back in my suit. Opening my eyes, I’m back in the moon, surrounded by its dark cave walls, crimson crystals, and dripping shimmer. The lobster corpse is gone, but not the statue rubble.

Were we sure that thing was dead, Lucario? Since that’s the sort of thing that’s usually a tell-tale sign that it wasn’t dead. .-.

There’s no punctures in me nor does my neck feel touched, yet I still pant to get my breath back. Once I’m calm, I lie my hand on my helmet, groan, and rest. What happened? It was too realistic to be a dream, I think, but it certainly didn’t happen either.

Especially given the whole philosophical spiel about dreaming and the nature of reality back in the very opening of Chapter 13.

The only answers would be further in, though. I need to move on. I get back up yet again and walk to the hall in front of me but a short beep and a bassy, cold voice interrupts me.

“Stop. It’s waiting for you on the other side.”

I flinch in confusion, before remembering I’ve heard this voice twice before. Maybe even three times. [ ] I reach for my comms button-

“Don’t call. Just listen to me. It’s trying to find you. Go right.”

Wait, wait, wait. Is that Kommo-o, or-?

This voice isn’t Kommo-o’s, but whose is it then? I’m stunned with suspicion. [ ]

But after a while, I head right.

Ah. Yeah, it might just be an artifact of me coming back to this story after an extended break, but I do wonder if it’d have been worth giving a bit more of a reminder of when Lucario heard this voice, and to also get into his head a bit more about the stuff that’s going on here and what he makes of it.

Chapter 16

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

“Left.”

“Forward.”

“Take a U-turn.”

“Wait and count to twenty. Turn right.”

The dreadful voice leads me through as many as fifteen floors, and quickly too. I’m always guided to the stairs down within four rooms and I don’t see a single monster along the way save for occasional distracted aliens, although I still sense auras from afar. Throughout it all, the voice shows no emotion in his voice or anything to suggest a personality. Only orders and no elaboration. All my questions are ignored.

I kinda wonder if there should’ve been a bit more shown off of Lucario following the voice around than this, but I’ll say that it does have the benefit of speeding things along considerably.

I must be twenty-five floors deep in the dungeon overall. The longer known dungeons are usually forty floors before a resting floor. I could be halfway to the end. And the environment has changed again this far deep. The floor, wall, and ceiling are dominated by long, short, thick, sharp, disjointed, and every other shape and size of crystal jutting out like plants fighting for sunlight. Their hues range from moody indigo to a cold blood red. When I step on them, they make a glassy crunch.

Ah yes, he’s blundered into Area Zero at this rate. /s

“Left,” the voice orders. However, there’s no pathway into a corridor anywhere. Or at least not until I look over more carefully and spot the outline of a door within all the crystals. There’s no handle, but it opens to a light push. It's attached to the wall by out-of-place brass hinges.

Lucario: “Wait, how on earth did you even know that was—”
Voice from Beyond: “...”
Lucario: “Right, it’s not answering questions. Because of course it isn’t.” >_>;

The mess is more organized inside. The crystals never grow beyond a medium length, they’re spaced evenly, and all point in the same direction. Pairs of tall crystals grow out of the ground in an orderly six by four grid arrangement. There’s a few statues whose species I can never make out, their dreary surface clashing with the vibrant decor. They all “face” one wall at the front, where the wall is cleared of crystals to give way to the black wall beneath. Scratched on the surface is:

View attachment 21069

Pfft. What? It’s Einstein’s equation of general relativity, the one that describes gravity as a curvature of spacetime instead of a force. Central to my line of work, even if it never comes in maintenance. But why here?

Wait, wait, wait. They have an Einstein in their setting? Dunno if that’s just an incredible case of happenstance, or else if the PMD world somehow periodically gets exposed to human knowledge. (Which I suppose they canonically have a means of having happen through the humans that come to their world periodically.)

“Forward,” the voice says uncharacteristically late.

Well, the dungeon has already messed with my memories. Maybe it knows what I know? Regardless, it’s a clue to piece together later on. That, or these statues really are taking modern physics classes.

My money’s on your first hypothesis there Lucario, just saying. Though that’s probably not a great sign for who the voice from beyond is given that they led you here.

I move to the next room, which is also divided by a pushdoor. It’s similar, just larger and the tall crystals jammed into rows of ten with more statues behind them. There’s another blackboard too.

View attachment 21065

It’s basic stuff about operations on the imaginary number - the square root of the negative one. Seeing these brings up nostalgia for my early years of university, where classes were easy enough that I just coasted by and spent most of my time getting to know the professors and fellow students. They were my least lonely days. It’d be nice to relive them.

Careful what you wish for considering where you’re at right now, Lucario.

“Forward,” the voice says.

“Yeah, yeah.” I stare fondly at the equations for a few more seconds before entering the next door. Yet another classroom, but quite small. On the blackboard:

View attachment 21066

“Forward,” the voice says, but I ignore it to remember the details of this equation.

It is Shannon entropy, an equation that lets you measure how much information a set of data has - or how much uncertainty a set has, if you’re a glass half-empty person. This was from theory of information, a computer science elective I took at the very end of my bachelor’s. These strange classrooms must be pulling from my memories.

Huh. That’s a rather specific equation to remember there. I wonder if this is the Mystery Dungeon sending messages to Lucario in some capacity. Even if that makes me wonder just how hard those math classes really were since I would not have expected this to be taught in a class that was ‘easy’.

“Keep going,” the voice insisted. I can imagine the impatience underneath that dull tone.

The next room stuns me. Instead of a wonderful mosaic of crystalized hues, every crystal is a single shade of crimson glowing bright and hurting my eyes. The tall crystals still form tens of neat rows, but all the statues are huddling around the blackboard instead. They lean forward, crammed despite this being the largest room so far. On the blackboard:

View attachment 21067

Zero. All of these equations equal to zero, or at least equal to zero in assumed contexts. Other than that, they don’t belong to a shared branch of physics. These “zero” equations trail all the way down, and at the very bottom, one more line is written:

View attachment 21068

Oh, well. That’s not ominous at all there. /s

“Forward,” the voice says.

“S-sorry,” I say, unsure why.

As I push open the exit, he adds one last comment. “May the One Who Is Not guide us.”

Lucario: “Um… am I sure that I want to be following this… thing’s instructions here? Since boy did that last bit there not sound positive at all there.” O_O;

Chapter 17

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

Theory of information. It was a computer science elective I took because it seemed to lean more into math than computer science. I was right, and it ended up being one of the most memorable electives I had.

The course boiled down to “how to compress data”, like zipping a folder or making an image take less bytes. In order to compress data however, one needs a definition of what “data” - or at least “information” - even is. The equation my professor taught represented information was:

View attachment 21070

For each different item that can show up, you multiply its probability to show up by the logarithmic of its probability to show up, and add this value together for every item that can show up in a set.

I kinda wonder if it’d have made sense to go into a bit more detail explaining that equation. Though wait, how is Lucario viewing this at the moment? Like is it in the background right now? Is it flashing through his mind? I assume the latter, but it might make sense to be a bit more explicit about that.

“More unpredictability means you have more information,” he said, but it didn’t click until he illustrated an example. “Suppose you have a weather reporter who predicts it will rain, be sunny, rain, overcast, be sunny, be sunny, rain, etc.. She is 60% accurate. Now, imagine a second weather reporter who predicts it will be sunny, sunny, sunny, sunny, sunny sunny, sunny, etc.. She is accurate 80% of the time.”

“Despite the second reporter being correct more often, you would rather listen to the first reporter. It’s not because she is less accurate, but because she gives more information about the day. Meanwhile, the second reporter isn’t telling you anything new.”

Huh. That feels like a rather specific thing to work into the story, I take it that this is coming from your IRL experience? Since if not and you researched all this specifically to work into your story, that’s some impressive dedication there.

The professor went on to explain how this applies to data compression and nuances about the mathematical meaning of “uncertainty”, but this story itself I’ve never stopped thinking about. It’s quite a paradox, to be more correct than people, without saying anything informative. What does that mean for truth? Does knowledge not matter? Is information, even if incorrect, more important than the truth? Is truth not a property of information? Then again, maybe I’m overthinking the concept of “being right by accident.”

I mean, given the track record of your last flashback and how it wound up tying into an experience in the Mystery Dungeon you had like five minutes later… yeah, you’re not overthinking things there at all.

“Forward.”

Seven rooms in a row, it is always forwards, regardless of other exits presented. Each room is still a classroom, with random layouts of “student” and “desk” crystals. The blackboards still show equations, but they use strange symbols instead of mathematical notation I’m familiar with. When I’m far in, the glyphs wrap their serifs around in dizzying spirals and the strokes become precisely narrow.

Are those even discernible symbols there? Or is it just random gibberish there.

“Forward.”

The next room is hollow, missing any tall crystals or statues, and the blackboard has nothing on it. Actually, it is nothing - there’s a rectangular gap in the wall instead of black stone. Walking up and peering out of it is like looking out the window of an apartment, whose windowless black facade extends infinitely in all directions.There is no ground below, no sky above, no stars, no light, nothing.

Lucario: “Boy, it’s like this place has a mind of its own that consciously goes out of its way to casually violate as many laws of physics as possible.”

Is the dungeon in a void? Is the inside of the moon empty? Or does this Mystery Dungeon reside in another dimension?

“Keep moving forward,” the voice says.

I roll my eyes but listen. The next room is empty as well, but the “empty” chalkboard shows a beach instead of nothing. Its waves of brilliant violet shimmer roar and collapse on silky yellow sand. There is a sky this time, of white and red stars.

I actually wonder if he can go through the thing and onto that beach there.

A beach… My own aura is a beach with crystalline blue waves crashing onto tan sand. I don’t notice my own aura often, like how mons don’t notice the bridge of their own noses, so being reminded of myself gives me goosebumps.

“Forward. It’s still trying to find you,” the voice says. To its credit, I have a habit of being carried away with curiosity. I continue, lecturing myself to not get complacent.

Huh. I didn’t realize that Lucario aura carried distinct “images” to them. Kinda wish that this had been shown off a bit more earlier on in the story, since you’d think this would be something that Lucario would’ve shown off to Kommo-o at some point.

The next room is plastered with blue grey hands reaching out of the ground. They have five fingers and a thumb each, every digit stretched and tapering into a needle-like point. All of them turn their palms to me and waggle their fingers. Each of their auras is a single snowflake in both shape and intensity - it’s only as strong as auras that belong to plants.

View attachment 21071

Oh, well that’s not concerning at all there. /s

Lucario: “I’m… just going to scoot far, far away from those things, thanks.” O_O;

In the distance, there’s a faint but shrill scream, and an aura reminiscent of rubbing a finger over salty, oily deep fried food.

“Forward,” it says.

Lucario: “Look, can’t you take just a moment to stop and explain to me what the hell is even going on here?”

Voice from Beyond:

The hands are densely packed with hardly any room to cram my boots between them, so I end up stepping on them. They crunch like glass and I swear there’s a giggling sound too. The ones I don’t stomp on rub their palms across my calf. I can’t feel them through my thick suit but I do rush through to get away from the weirdness regardless.

Uh, yeah. I’d run too, since that feels all sorts of creepy and off-putting there.

Instead of opening straight to another room, the door leads into a corridor, the first in awhile. It’s cramped and dark and every step brings me closer to this newer aura. Its greasy, hot sensation feels like it’ll burn the tips of my paws. I’m at least ready for when a figure appears in the darkness ahead.

It’s a half-body monster cut from the waist below, rich blood pooling around over the dark crystals. Its body is thin yet strangely muscular, with long arms ending in three claws each. Its head is the most distorted of all, with an impossible large, open maw, filled with sharp teeth jutting out from glistening gums. Its face is sunken, almost skull-like, with eyes so dark I can’t tell if they’re black or missing.

View attachment 21072

Lucario: “Oh, well that’s a face that’s going to stick in my nightmares if I somehow survive all of this.”

Despite the grisly appearance, it’s slow, seemingly unaware of its missing legs and helplessly scratching the ground in front of it. It stares at me and makes some high-pitched whiny voices.

“Forward,” the voice says.

“But-”

“Kill it.”

Lucario: “Um… can you narrow down how I’m even supposed to start here?” .-.

For some reason, this command doesn’t click with me. I just look over its helpless body.

“It’s just a feral Pokemon, like in any other Mystery Dungeon. Kill it,” the voice says.

Lucario: “That thing is a Pokémon? Just what sort of Pokémon even looks like that?!”

I hesitate to bring my arms to the aura sphere stance. There’s something wrong about all this. Attacking these monsters has never fared well.

“Kill it,” the voice says. “It’ll kill you if you try to walk past it.”

Okay, yeah. That sounds like a really good reason to kill that thing off there. And fast.

Despite my chills, I still need to make progress. I charge my aura sphere to a basketball in size and launch it at the “Pokemon.” It splashes its chest and it screams while trying to cover the scorch marks left on it.

“Kill it,” it repeats. “The hunter is closer than you think. It’s approaching.”


It’s hard to get the sense of urgency the voice insists, as all sentences are delivered in the same dry, bassy voice. There is never any variation in pitch or intonation. No emotion. No worry behind the words it preaches.

Not really sure if this is going to age well in like a chapter or so since this voice hasn’t exactly demonstrated itself to be fully trustworthy in the past two chapters, but yeah. I’d go to town on that ‘Pokémon’ too rather than taking chances.

I fire another sphere. Then another one. And one more. Every strike incurs more screaming agony onto it, its flesh tearing apart on its arms and chest. Its mouth hangs ever wider and shakes side to side as if begging me to stop. It ends up finally turning around to flee, but my last sphere hits its back and it falls over. The greasy, burning aura gently fades from existence.

I do not wait to be told to move forward. That aura fading sensation is the same as if I were to faint a dungeon mon back on earth, and its a feeling that fucks with my head. I feel like I’m dying with it, it’s easier to just move on. At least it’s normal to feel it, according to other Lucarios.

Ah yes, I can see why Lucario opted to go off to space instead of staying more groundbound and going into the dungeoneering business, since literally feeling your enemy’s fainting/dying vibes sounds like a deeply unpleasant experience to have to take in over and over again.

The corridor goes for a long while. The shrill screaming I heard earlier grows stronger and I sense yet another new aura: blood dripping, except the blood is black. Eventually I reach the next room. All the crystals are a uniform shade of hostile red. There were no more “student” or “desk” crystals, just the blackboard with oozing shimmer.

I realize I never saw the blackboard in the last room. Was there even one?

Wait, why do I even care?

Because it’s a potential clue as to the nature of this place you’re in and whether or not sticking with Mr. Disembodied Voice is really a good idea?

Granted, I think your sanity might have fallen a bit far to really stop and consider that, but still.

“Forward,” the voice says. “It’s trap is approaching but we’ll make it out.”

There is no aura behind me, just one ahead of me. I move into the next room.

It’s violently red as well. Past the blackboard are whirling, rusty sawblades, spinning without making noise.

“Forward.”

Lucario: “I’m sorry, but why do I want to keep going deeper into-?” .-.
Voice from Beyond: “Forward.”

The next room is the same, except for the jangling chains past the blackboard over a red and pink sea. The screaming and black blood aura are stronger and now there’s snapping and grinding metal noises ahead too. They’re timed to the shrill screaming.

“Forward.”

Another red room, although instead of doors, there’s dark corridors left, right, and forward. The dripping aura is strong, pouring over an unseen ledge into unknown depths, as my aura senses. I can hear gore and flesh tear apart and the panting in between the screams of whatever the hell is ahead.

“Forward.”

Well, that got really dark and disturbing really fast.

“No,” I said. This is asinine. I’m obviously sensing something very bad, and it’s right beyond that hall. Why am I trusting this voice so much anyways? “There has to be another way.”

“Go forward. Don’t turn around.”

Lucario: “Oh for crying out loud— you can at least tell me what I’m getting into if you expect me to—!”

I got its warning too late, I already looked around to the corridors beside and behind me. I’m not alone. A statue stands in the doorway I just came from. It’s hard to make sense of what it’s supposed to resemble, but I think I see a large, unhinged jaw within its cut shapes and abrupt ridges.

The voice says “Do not look away from it, Lucario. You’re in danger.”

Lucario:

Chapter 18

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

CW: Suggestive Content

… Wasn’t expecting that one for this chapter. Let’s see what we’re getting into here.

I gnash my teeth and dig my mitts into my palms while I scan this statue’s hideous contours. It’s hardly a statue, with angular shapes jutting out everywhere, cracks fine and wide all over, and an uneven, porous white surface. It feels like it should just be some rock found in a field, yet I can’t stop seeing a dead, wide maw and piercing eyes around its edges.

Lucario, you do realize that there’s at least half a dozen evolutionary lines of Pokémon that are literally casually mistakeable for being random rocks, right? You sure that maw and eyes aren’t really there?

“Blinking is fine. Don’t close your eyes for too long though. Wait patiently. I’ll figure something out,” the voice says.

“Why should I trust you? Staying still can be dangerous!”

“Don’t attack it either.”

I shout. “I can’t trust you! You won’t even tell me what the danger is!”

Since just saying, this is an absolutely terrible way of trying to get someone who doesn’t really know you to trust you while in a dangerous environment.

“You are made of matter and material. I do not have the means to explain this Pokemon, it doesn’t exist like you. But-”

“It doesn’t exist?”

Oh, so it’s basically a Gnosis from Xenosaga, since boy does this premise sound familiar to me right now.

“-I do not have the means to explain this Pokemon to you. Do you have the means to explain how you’re real to me?”

I hold a hand over my chest, proudly. “I can be observed and measured.” And I can think, although I don’t think that answer will satisfy it.

There’s a long pause. “I can’t observe you. I am not capable of it. I just know you.”

Oh, so our Voice from Beyond is similarly a Gnosis one of these “not quite real to Lucario’s universe” Pokémon. Duly noted.

Getting more riddles than answers makes me growl. But maybe there’s truth that there’s a layer of metaphysics the universe had all along, more complicated than I’d want it to be, and this voice isn’t ready to explain it. If it’s not making up excuses up.

It says one last thing. “If you were to look away without leaving the floor, the nightmare will know you exist, and where you exist. I’ll try to do something, but I’ll be gone. Stay put. Don’t attack it. Don’t look away.”

Which sounds an awful lot like heeding the Voice’s instructions is going to get very difficult and uncomfortable in short order. But here goes nothing for Lucario here.

My arms shake in frustration. I’m ready to just smash this thing in regardless. But I can’t be hasty. Breath in. You’re a man of science and logic, use your head…

I am not in immediate danger. The torture sounds and blood aura behind me aren’t moving further away nor closer. No other aura is in my vicinity, and I will know if one approaches. So I can stand and stare for now, but if the voice is speaking the truth and I look away, I’d be in danger. Ergo, the rational thing is to stay.

… Okay, so just how fast are things going to wind up going off the rails here, since I don’t believe for a moment that Lucario’s really going to get away with just sitting and staring at this freaky rock this chapter. Especially with that CW at the top of the chapter.

Although I’m not happy with this conclusion. I sit down, cross my legs, and grumble. “Just why are you helping me anyways?” I ask to no response. It’s gone.

So I wait and watch.

For a while.

Lucario: “How did I even get myself into this?” >.<

The noisy laugh-like screams and rumbling shredding behind me tempt me to look away, especially since I hate looking at this thing. Its visage warps and grows like I’m piercing through ever expanding space, layers of manifold surfaces blossoming within. Worse, the statue hasn’t changed. My eyes are playing tricks.

My stomach growls. This almost trips my focus. A gnawing hunger has been growing for many floors but now that I’m still, it’s hard to ignore it eating through my stomach. Mystery Dungeons make you hungrier faster, and it dawns on me that starving to death before I reach the bottom is a realistic outcome.

Lucario: “Which might explain a thing or two about why my mind’s playing tricks on me, since I’m pretty sure that hallucinations are a symptom of starvation.” >_>;

My hand wedges a crystal loose from the ground near me and I slam back down into the moon. There must be more productive thoughts to have.

What have I learned so far, coming into the moon?

I replay all my encounters and start making theories. Could those auraless alien monsters be organic machines? They seem to be more interested in picking things up and carrying them than doing anything resembling survival. That would imply something has made them, including the massive ones a few floors back.

... What?

I think that the “what” should be its own thing if it’s meant to be a belated realization on Lucario’s part. Though does this make the aliens that Lucario’s running into basically the equivalent of much freakier and eldrich-themed Paradox Pokémon?

And the shimmer. What is it? I see it drip whenever something gets voided. Is it a chemical byproduct of that process? If so, what got voided to create all the shimmer through this dungeon?

Maybe the Earth?

I mean, the Earth did straight-up vanish on you, so it’s as good a theory as any there.

My hands grab two more crystals. I squeeze them tight and growl to keep my cool. The theory is bogus, a voided Earth’s shimmer wouldn’t just teleport here. But what is angering me is an intuition that the moon and the disappearance of home are connected.

inb4 this really does turn out to be a “the Voidlands acted up” episode. Since we did see a couple things that felt like they might be pointing in that direction.

Disappearance like Kommo-o?

I bolt upright and throw one of the crystals a few feet in front of me. It shatters into glittering splinters that fly towards the feet of the statue. Wait, would that count as an attack? [ ]

“Aaah!”

I hold my helmet and shake my head side to side. Deep breaths. Focus, Lucario. You gotta get through this.

This paragraph IMO would work a bit better getting separated into parts and showing more of Lucario’s thought process before he screams in frustration there.

To stare at it with all my mind and body, I kneel onto both knees, lean forward, and rest my fists on the ground in front of me. The tricks of the eyes resume: in its vague edges I see a laughing mouth, and one above it, one below it, but they’re all one mouth. Or is it a person? Actually, it looks like both the top and bottom half of the skull of an unfamiliar Pokemon if I look at it sideways.

Small wording tweak here that I’d recommend making in this section here.

To stop the illusions, I count every crack and every edge, twice over. It’s hard to tell what is which, they merge and blend together, yet no matter what, I count the same shapes in the same spots. This crudely eroded edifice is still a solid object.

Just briefly, for far few fractions of a second, The edges resemble a strong, chiseled muzzle of a strong dragon. Of Kommo-o.

[ ]

“Fuck you!” I shout, leaning further like a predator ready to pounce. The tortured soul behind me lets out a shrill that pierces my ear drums and makes me wince in pain. I seeth through my teeth.

I think that this moment here would’ve benefitted from showing more of the process of Lucario starting to get angry here, since the current way things are written is very abrupt going from him trying to stay focused and keep his eyes open to starting to get mad.

The aura’s still there, not any closer, but it is stronger. It’s a cavern of oozing black blood, now folding over itself like layers of a silk dress. And while I’m tuned into my aura sense, I pick up a new one. A fierce breeze of like many before, coming closer.

I’m feeling faint with how unsteady my breath has become and I’ve almost let my gaze slip away. What the hell is going on? Does this statue mess with minds? I want to blame it, but it has not done a thing. I’m psyching out over nothing. How weak am I?

Lucario, you do realize that literally everything in this place is a potential culprit for that right? Including your own empty belly right now.

Now even the crystals around this monster are playing with my vision. Are they far or close? Stretching behind it? Pointing towards it? Was that one always there? No wait, I was looking at nothing.

All the while, the wind aura approaches, much faster than those before. And the blood aura folds itself into suffocating knots while the other makes choking gags.

Um… do I want to know what sort of choking gags those are given the provided CW for this chapter?

I’m trying to find the faces I’ve seen within the statue’s form, but now that I’m trying, I only see twisted shapes that change every blink. Come on! Hyperbolic paraboloids, cylinders, ellipsoids, tori, even a Klein bottle…

Then I see him, looking up with a tear rolling down his eye. “Kommo-o!”, but the shape now looks like yet another statue inside. [ ]

“Bring him back!”

Next blink, near his feet, I see an approximation of him, curled up in a corner. I blink again, he stares at me with eyes far too wide.

I think that this second paragraph should be broken up and slow down a bit, since it was admittedly a bit hard for me to follow what was going on with the appearance of Kommo-o there.

Granted, that might have been a feature and not a bug considering how Lucario is doing well™ at the moment.

My eyes well up. [ ]

“Please. What do you know about him?”

A moment where IMO you had a bit of a missed opportunity to get into Lucario’s head a bit more, especially for showing off how much he’s being affected by being separated from Kommo-o at the moment.

I can’t see him anymore after that. I see some Kommo-o’s but they’re not the one I know, and there’s Pokemon that look like him but are different species entirely. Some flash repeatedly, others fade away like a ghost. All within the same set of cracks and edges.

Lucario: “The hell is this freaking rock anyways?”

The wind aura is getting much closer. I hear its shrieking sounds. It harmonizes with the other’s screaming, creating a beautiful, haunting choir. But it is heading towards me, approaching from the left. I stand up and shuffle to the right corridor, feeling for it with arms outstretched. Finding the exit, I hug its corner, ready to run when it arrives. For now, I still stare.

I don’t see any more shapes or people within the statue. They’re all in my mind now, all of them Kommo-o. He’s hugging me on his lap while we approach the station. Now we’ve arrived and he;s strokes my cheek with the back of his hand. He’s whispering “You’re going to be alright.” Tears well, blurring my vision.

Lucario: “I should probably be more worried about this Mystery Dungeon messing with my mind, but I just can’t take this anymore.”

The wind aura’s voices are now a multitude. They’re chanting some sort of name with exuberance, and I think I know whose. I join too, as a prayer to protect me.

Kommo-o nuzzles my cheek. He strokes my back and playfully nips at my ear. I’m laughing, but nervously, as I’ve never been so exposed to someone in my life. But I’m too addicted to this - and too scared of everything else - to stop. He’s stroking a hand down my back while he pulls his lips onto mine.

Oh, so this is where the suggestive themes CW is going to start coming into play, I can already tell.

“Please stop!” I beg the statue, in between my incoherent rambling. Tears streak down my cheeks. The screams behind join the worship too. Even I see the statue praise The One Who Is Not with exuberance.

The wind’s about to enter the room.

Kommo-o pushes me against the wall and pins me with his strong body. My arms and legs curl around him tight. My heart pounds like never before. I’m sucking his lip sloppily, not knowing how to kiss and never willing to stop. His hands rub onto my hips and he breaks the kiss to whisper things into my ear…

… Lucario’s making out with the freaky rock alien right now, isn’t he?

“STOP!” I collapse onto my knees. I gasp for air between heavy sobs “I’m sorry Kommo-o! I’m so sorry… It’s all my fault…”

I want to see him again. I need him. I need his warm hold and tender touch. Just take my life so I can feel him again. I have never felt love before and it was taken from me too soon. I love you Kommo-o. I love you so much. I’m going to see you again. I’m ready.

Wind Aura:

But the wind entity doesn’t enter. In whatever room over, it takes a turn and heads away. It’s taking corridors aimlessly after all. Its chanting placates with distance and even the screaming behind takes a break.

I was joking about that.

I pant before screaming and it turns into a laugh soon after. I’m light headed especially with my hunger inside. I pound my fist against the ground and work out what to yell at the statue, but I’m no longer a thinking man. I’ve become a monster of norepinephrine, glutamate, and adrenaline. I’m out of control. But I. Have. Not. Lost.

I dunno there, Lucario. Since that current mental state that you're in right now sure doesn’t sound like winning there.

Bony fingers wrap around my neck. Something quiet has come down the corridor by me: another grey auraless alien.

It lifts me up over its head while I gasp for air that does not come. I kick its gaunt arm and smash my fist against its wrist only to hear babyish chortles and coos. It only lets me go once I bash my boot against its humerus and it cracks in half. My side slams into the ground while the alien flails and screams.

My heart sinks. The statue is gone.

The deep voice, now split in two and layered with intense static, radios in. “Run. It now knows you.”

Lucario: “Oh yay me. This is why you were supposed to tell me about what the hell I was dealing with!”

Chapter 19

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

CW: Blood and Gore

Oh yeah, this chapter’s gonna go places, I can already tell.

“Through the corridor behind you, towards the aura,” the voice adds.

I nearly trip turning around so fast, and my legs lunge. Straight towards the multifold aura.

“Pace yourself.”

Lucario: “Voice, you’re supposed to tell me that before I start running!”

I could hardly hear it over the banshee-like wailing the mechanical grinding of what must be three or four saws boring into flesh and bone. My whole body tenses ready to face it. I leap into the next room.

The floor and ceiling is coated in a bright, bumpy substance. It reflects enough light to hurt my eyes. My aura sense points me to the corner where the blood-folded entity sits. No taller than a bloomed tulip, it is a mess of constricted black strands and objects hanging from them, clearly too heavy to be supported by these “stems”. They include sets of eyes, a set of clicking gizmos, and black iron “petals” forming a miniaturized megaphone blaring the agonized cries. It moves by slapping its tentacles forward and crawling, very slowly.

Huh. Shame there’s no doodle to help visualize this, since this thing sounds really freaky right now.

Lucario: “O… kay, I think that I’m fine with pacing myself right now.”

The stairs are here too. In my rush towards them, I trip over the top edge, slam my helmet against the wall, and tumble down to the bottom. I end up rolling through the air as I land onto the next floor on my front. Bruising aches spread across my ribs, and my visor is scratched.

“Pace yourself. You won’t escape unless you leave the Dungeon. Forward.”

Which is… uh… going to be a bit easier said than done given that Lucario’s effectively partially blinded himself there.

Ignoring the pain, I run forward again, listening to the voice’s advice this time.

“Left,” “right,” “forward.”

It guides me succinctly as before. I never cross a monster no matter how close to an aura I get, and I arrive at stairs with better efficiency than my first few floors, especially now that I’m running. I’ve already cleared six.

Small wording change that I’d recommend there.

The dungeon’s environment is transitioning again. Crystals are less frequent, exposing the hard yet smooth slate which they grow from. Corridors between each room stretch longer, and the ceiling above grows closer. Bright substance occasionally paints splotches on a wall or ceiling.

What sort of bright substance? Like does it have a particular color / appearance? Since this is a bit vague at the moment.

The voice has only gotten more hoarse since I triggered the nightmare, although its intonation is as unchanged as ever. “Forward.” “Forward.” “Forward.”

Oh, so it does have modes other than its monotonous default. Though the fact that it’s getting hoarse sounds like a pretty bad sign there. .-.

Deja vu hits me, there’s even an aura ahead. It’s a large fishnet, the kind trawlers will scrap along the ocean floor. But instead of being made of fibre, it’s woven with constantly rewritten scripture extolling the virtues of patience, even though I can’t understand the non-existent language.

“Forward. You will encounter a Pokemon. It is the only way to the stairs. You must get by it or defeat it.”

Which considering the CWs for this chapter… uh… that’s a sign that that fight’s going to be an experience and a half there.

It’s only a few steps before I’m in the next room. The floor and ceilings have swirls etched into their surfaces and shimmer drips out of their centers. In the middle, there’s a monster of steel with large lobster-like claws, no legs, and a bear skull for head: it’s the same kind that trapped me into a dream many floors back, although its eyes are wide and red instead of missing.

Lucario: “Oh, you’ve got to be freaking kidding me-”

It’s tearing apart some sort of corpse of a featherless Cramorant, except it is numerous Cramorant bodies stacking on top of each other into one long body like a Centiskorch. The larger monster’s bisecting its middle, yanking red meat and brown guts out to cram it into its mouth, despite a missing lower jaw. Blood streaked across the floor, telling a story of where it was killed then dragged to the middle, and it now stains its claws and cables dangling from its mouth. Heavy snaps and crunches are made with each impossible bite it takes.

Ah yes, there’s our Gore CW there.

Lucario: “Oh gods.”

It sees me in seconds. It places both claws in front of the carcass as if to shield it from me, and it roars an aberrant sound, like two layers of wind tunnels smoothly climbing the chromatic scale. It vibrates the ground and my bones.

“Forward. Run.”

I run, but my first step cracks a dungeon item beneath. A sleek, shiny crescent that’s otherwise featureless. The monster thinks this is an attack and runs to me, cracking the ground with the heavy claws it uses to drag its nubby hips. It’s fast. I tuck to weave under its arm, but I don’t even get the chance as it swipes its claw to my side.

Um… they build spacesuits for Pokémon in this setting to resist getting rips and tears while getting thrown around, right? Since if not, boy is Lucario in for a world of hurt right now.

I fly, flipping over, and smashing the wall. Crystals dislodge as I fall back to the floor. The pain burns immediately and my head’s blurry. I hear it come: the distance I have flown is shocking. I scramble up only to trip over another dungeon item. They’ve been strewn across the past few floors and are unremarkable until now, where they’ve been a frustrating inconvenience.

In desperation, I pick it up and without looking at what it was, blindly hurl it. It lands in its head and shatters with a flash of red light and a deep, slurping plunging noise. The monster’s upper body is now an orb of swirling red streaks illuminating the entire room with shaking droplets falling up to the ceiling. Its frozen mid-stride, and its aura did not fade, but got plucked entirely.

Wait, wait, wait. Did Lucario just chuck an Itemizer Orb there? Since that sure feels like a a more Eldritch version of an Itemizer Orb in action there.

It’s only then I realized I have confused two auras for one. The net was gone, the weaving scripture remained.

“Run,” the voice said.

I hold my sides to hush down the pain and sprint to the stairs. There’s tack tack tacks behind me as the aura snakes its way to me. I’m a step away when thin, short arms wrap around my ankle, falling me forward. Hitting my head yet again causes me to groan and worsen my dizziness but I still grab the ledges of the stairs to pull me down while it crawls up to me, coiling around my leg sharply. It is the Cramorant corpse centipede: there’s a whole trail of blood behind it with guts that have fallen out from its body along the way. It’s squirming and wringing the life out of my leg while trying to pull me back up the floor.

I shake back and use every ounce of muscle fibre to get me down the stairs, until I dive off the end and free fall with it latched onto me.

I kinda wonder if this was a bit too abrupt and if it’d have been a bit more dramatic to show Lucario fighting against the “Cramorapede” a bit more before throwing himself forward.

Chapter 20

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

Thud. I land right on my front again. At least the bird centipede is no longer clutched around my leg. Like Pokemon in all Mystery Dungeons, they disappear when you leave the floor. Unbelievable to think of that thing as some undiscovered Pokemon species.

I’d contest that, but then I remembered Ultra Beasts exist, and those are basically more ESRB-friendly Eldritch abominations themselves, so…

I pull myself up and the pain from the landing spreads fast, worse than my last poor landing. It’s growing on my sides too with how that steel monster tossed me across the room. It’s a warm sensation that stings if I move my arms the wrong way. I must be black and blue all across my torso.

I mean, at least you don’t feel yourself actively bleeding in your suit, so there’s that? ^^;

“Run,” the voice says.

It’s always urging me if I’m ever still for seconds. It’s annoying, but it does keep snapping me out of my absent mind. Plus I really don’t want to learn more about the nightmare hunting me. I run awkwardly to keep my bruises happy.

I’m perfectly guided like the previous floors and it’s smoother than ever: “Pokemon” are less frequent and the paths to the stairs are more direct. The downside is that corridors are longer, don’t make clean right turns within them, and rooms aren’t neat rectangles anymore: some have three, five, or even six sides. If it weren’t for my guide, I’d be lost for hours.

Oh hey, cue the theme music for this moment right now:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq8FK9Z_RGQ

The ceiling’s shrinking, too. I could touch it if I jumped, and there’s a few of the larger alien monsters who are crammed in place because of it. There’s no more crystals and the exposed slate surfaces are darker. Etched spirals are a common feature, as well as random splotches of white. I stepped over one of those spots along the way - it was quite dusty.

Lucario: “The scientist in me should probably stop and ask what on earth was in those things, but I’d really, really like to not die in this place right now, so…”

I must be 11-14 floors past the statue trap and I’m now approaching a room with a new aura. A giant waterfall, except instead of water, what falls is the my ability to sense aura itself. The recursion makes my head dizzy, it’s like I’m watching a live stream of what my eyes see, except my eyes are crashing down from high above.

Boy, that must be a trip for him. So he’s seeing something that looks alive but isn’t alive according to his Aura senses there.

I step inside the room. It is wide and certainly the longest I’ve been in so far, which makes the foot between my helmet and the swirling ceiling more jarring. The walls have dozens of corridor exits spread out neatly, and stretched across the whole floor is a dull orange rug.

I double take. Yes, a rug. Fluffy beige tassels decorate the edge of it and there’s small hills where bumps in the floor are. There’s yellow threads woven across it to form a large grid. They make garish baroque curves with hundreds of embellishments and details, except for when they intersect, in which they have bland geometric patterns that aren’t aligned right. It’s a clash of ugly styles I would never imagine on Earth.

Lucario:

“I know that this place basically has its own rules, but seriously, what the hell did I just run into here?”

Many dungeon items lie across the entire rug, the most I’ve seen in one place. And across the entire room in the corner, far away enough I need to squint, is the monster making the aura. It's a black opaque shadow in the shape of an hourglass and its edges shiver with outlines of red, green, and blue. It doesn’t move.

“Forward. Do not touch the items.”

Oh, it’s a Kecleon Shop. Or the warped, eldritch equivalent one of them there for this Mystery Dungeon.

There’s an opening to the stairs far into the middle of the carpet. It’s difficult to see as the items are more numerous farther in. I take one step at a time, being careful as my bulky suit makes it hard to tell where my boots are at any time.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

I can’t hurry. It’s already getting denser just a few meters in. [ ]

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

[ ]


“I’m trying!” I said annoyed, before needing to hug my sides due to a small bruise flare up.

I feel like this sequence here would’ve benefitted from showing off Lucario’s thought process a bit more than what you do here, especially to show off both his franticness for trying to get out of dodge and his increasing frustration building up.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

Lucario:

I think it actually expects me to rush through this without touching anything. Does it actually not understand how difficult that would be?

Honestly, considering how the Voice from Beyond has been vibing is fairly eldritch themselves… Lucario might actually unintentionally be onto something there. ^^;

A few more meters in, the items are getting numerous enough that I need to really look for a safe space to plant my boot down, and once I do, there’s only inches of clearance. I even thought I did brush my heel against some sort of pink sponge with handlebars, but the shadow doesn’t do anything.

To the side, there’s babyish laughing. An alien monster is stuck in the frameway of a corridor and it's trying to force itself out by clawing the ground.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

Lucario: “OH MY GODS! SERIOUSLY, CAN YOU NOT ALREADY?!”

Getting an unusual sense of dread, I try listening to it a bit, getting riskier with moving my legs. It’s working well until I step on a spot that’s more uneven than it appears. My body lurches forward and I have to swing my arms to get myself upright and my feet budge in all this. It takes a few seconds for me to let out a breath: thank goodness, I didn’t touch anything.

“Pace yourself.”

What the hell happened to “hurry, it’s hunting you”?

The nightmare pissed off the proprietor of the “Kecleon Shop” by disturbing its items, didn’t it?

There’s a louder laugh to my side as the alien finally pops through, tumbling like a ball before landing on its weird legs. Some of its skin tore off, exposing red muscle beneath, and it walks with its hands dragging along the ceiling which sheds more skin. It heads towards the rug.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.” There it is.

Lucario: “Oh great, another thing to stay burned in my nightmares for the rest of my life.”

I take two more steps. Darkness blurs in front of me and there’s horrid screaming right after. The alien must have touched an item, as the waterfall aura is where it stood now and is absorbing it into its darkness by twisting it into a cone. The alien’s limbs flail around while periodically snapping in half to be twisted further in. Crack. Crack. Crack. The scream tells me plenty about the agony.

Lucario: “Noooope. Nope. Nope. Nope. I don’t even want to know right now.”

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

Lucario:

I needed that. I move forward, balancing care while wasting as little time as possible. My body wobbles a few times with balance barely held together, especially as I need to take larger steps to get between the items, but I stay up.

There’s a splashing sound. The shadow has grown twice in size and its colourful outline spazzes and shoots out colourful spikes. I can’t see the monster behind its body but I can hear “aa-aa-aa-aa” as its now-warped screaming intermittently cuts out like a crappy recording. And beneath them, shimmer surges.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

Honestly, I’m a little surprised that Lucario isn’t screaming a bit himself there, since you’d think that the “Hurry. It’s hunting you.” would start driving him crazy here.

Every part of my body wants to go faster, yet I’m forced slower. The landmine is dense now, and it takes me seconds to find safe ground for each step. At least the stairs are close now.

The shimmer is gushing out like a fountain, enough to spread a shin-high wave. It’s pushing items along with it. If it reaches me, they will touch me.

I run into a problem: there’s no more room, at least not without risking a jump. They’re starting to pile on top of each other.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.” Although the shimmer is going to catch me first.

Lucario: “Look, can you at least give some actual instructions right now-?!”
Voice from Beyond:

“Also, hurry. It’s hunting you.”

I squat my legs, concentrate on the one free spot, and leap. My head nearly scrapes the ceiling and with my foot awkwardly forward, I land right in the space, but not without barely scraping an item. It was a bunch of long blue fingers all stapled into a row.

Black completely fills my peripheral vision. The shadow monster, now stretched from floor to ceiling and beyond, is inches beside me. Its aura crashes down on me as if to drown me with my own senses. My legs tremble.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.”

Lucario: “VOICE, I KINDA HAVE SOME BIGGER ISSUES RIGHT NOW!”

The reminder makes me realize I’m not dead. Despite how close it is, it’s not touching me nor moving closer. I must not have touched it for long enough. The wave is still approaching though, I hear all the items smack and bang against each other. It’s close.

Considering the sheer amount of stress, physical exertion, and not-so-subtly mind-breaking experiences he’s gone through up to this point, I’m probably going to take the under on Lucario ever willfully wearing this spacesuit a second time if he somehow gets out of this alive. ^^;

Only three more leaps. I don’t search for a good spot anymore, I just leap at whatever looks like space. My left foot lands, and I leap from that foot without being certain about the next spot. I land on my toes.

I fall forward with too much momentum, towards a whole bed of items beneath me. They have every colour across the rainbow and then some and most have long sharp hooks ready to pierce me. I try to lunge using the momentum to my advantage, although it is a blind leap.

I’m lucky, and I dive straight into the stairs, beating the wave and the items tumbling down with me.

Lucario: “Oh thank gods, it’s finally ov-”

- Peeks up at chapter listing and sees there's a 21st chapter -
Lucario: “Oh come on!” >.<

Chapter 21

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

>dat chapter title

Oh yeah, that’s a good sign™ if I ever saw one there.

Finally, I land on my feet after falling down the stairs. A bunch of odd shapes tumble from above, bouncing off my back but being too light to hurt and no shadow follows up to punish me. I chuckle, both in amusement of my landing but also to blow off stress I’ve built up. It doesn’t last long as sharp stabbing pains come from my bruises again. I hug my sides.

Lucario: “Gack… I knew I shouldn’t have skipped those Heal Pulse lessons…”

“Hurry. It’s hunting you.” No matter how often it repeats itself, it still speaks in the same deep, emotionless tone it’s always had.

Lucario:

“HOW?!

I don’t hurry though. I… Laugh again, and I do so in spite of my bruises. An emotional levee broke for next I’m on my knees, arcing my back with a hand on my visor, cackling to the skies with laughter.

“Hurry. It’s hunting you-”

“SHUT THE HELL UP!” I yell at the top of my voice. I grip my chest as pain spikes. Oh hell, it’s a lot too. My arms shake. “Shut up! Ha ha ha ha…”

Yup, there’s our ‘Mad Descent’ that our title was referring to. Even if I kinda wonder if things would’ve benefitted by taking some extra time to get into Lucario’s head and show that he’s starting to become unhinged in a bit more of a process.

…
…
…

I come back to my senses, or at least most of them - I can’t get rid of my wide grin stretching cheek to cheek. Why am I so amused? What’s wrong with me?

Because you’re losing your sanity in live-time assuming that you haven’t already?

Well, I need to hurry either way. It’s hunting me.

I get up and go back to running. At least I have had a chance to catch my breath, as this segment of the dungeon is my longest yet.

Every trait about the previous floors progresses manyfold once I’m another ten floors deeper. Every surface has become a dead black obsidian with dizzying interweaved spirals etched through fractures. And most interestingly, there’s no longer any more shimmer, although there’s plenty of dusty white patches instead.

Wait, wait, wait. What are those dusty white patches anyways? Since they keep coming up frequently enough that a part of me wonders if they’re pointing towards something greater there.

The ceiling is so low that I have to hunch over although it’s not the only thing that’s become cramped. The corridors are more tubes with how the walls are curved and they’re narrower than before. They bend and slink around, not just left and right but also up and down - every direction except straight. And they’ve become so long it takes minutes to jog through some. Every floor, It’s taking longer to reach the stairs.

Lucario: “Great, now I’m starting to wonder if that weird voice has been deliberately messing with me all this time again.” >_>;

The rooms are not much better. More than half are as small as walk-in closets. The ones that don't have sloped and uneven floors and have so many exits not just on the sides but above and below. There’s more exits than there are walls. I can’t even fit through most openings. And when I do reach the stairs, they’re only as wide as my body and have irregular, jagged steps. Every one’s a battle not to trip down.

So wait, at what point does this stop being a maze and become more of an open space with pillars considering the description of the sheer number of entrances all opening up here?

I’ve gotten used to the falls that happen after descending each set of stairs, but they have been getting longer too. My last fall took seven seconds - I counted. It’s long enough that panic sets in each time, although I always stick the landing. I’m not even sure how - I don’t even feel the impact of landing, somehow.

Something something non-euclidean Eldritch Location something something. Since really, a lot has happened up to this point that would normally make one question how they haven’t died yet?

Between the claustrophobic spaces, passing so many floors I’ve lost count, and how much time I’m spending falling, I know I’m far below the surface. There’s no doubt I’m going to pass a kilometer by the final floor.

Wait, wait, wait. Just how tall has the average dungeon floor been all this time? Since that feels like a bold assumption if I ever heard one there. ^^;

There’s also much less life down here. There’s one less aura each floor and now I don’t even sense anyone anymore. There’s still aliens, though. They aren’t a threat: most are either too large and impossibly crammed within the cavern walls, or are so small that I can punt them away with my boot.

Huh. So life is getting smaller and smaller with each floor down. I wonder if that’s pointing at anything in particular there.

At one fork, there’s even an arm of one of them fully taking up the left path. Its body must be a gargantuan size, and I can imagine its whole body being stretched out and squeezed like a noodle, and how gory that must be. I really wonder how they end up in places they physically couldn’t fit into, and why the sizes are so varied.

Wonder, wonder, wonder. I doubt my journey will unravel any mysteries about these monsters, but at the same time, it isn’t the inner workings of the dungeon I really care about. I just want answers about the universe, ideally why the world has ended and what caused it, or why we exist. And if not that, then what happened to Kommo-o. Then I’ll die satisfied.

I feel like this paragraph effectively has two things going on in it that probably would be worth rendering as separate paragraphs from each other.

“Go right. Hurry, it’s hunting you.”

I listen. I’ve figured out what’s up with its insistence: no matter the context, if I’m stopped for a short bit, it will tell me to hurry. If I ever run out of breath too fast or trip, it will tell me to pace myself. It seems unable to recognize context, just that I have slowed down, and it will always think I need reminding. It’s so odd, this Pokemon-like voice knows so much, yet there’s so little it's aware about. At least knowing it isn’t being impatient makes the reminders less bothersome.

Which is a pretty good sign that it’s also an Eldritch Pokémon of some sort, even if what sort of Pokémon remains pretty unclear so far.

The new corridor has a slight curve that straightens out after minutes of jogging. After that, it’s an unbroken corridor that goes on and on, the longest I’ve ever been in. The walls are uniformly cramped, only inches away from my shoulders. There isn’t a single white patch and the fractures’ patterns repeat after a long time. Something isn’t right.

“Stop,” the voice says.

Oh, well. That one is definitely new coming from the Voice from Beyond there. Not sure of that’s a good sign or not.

I do, although I go straight to holding my knees and panting. I haven’t stopped jogging in maybe an hour. “What’s wrong”?

“Give me a moment. I’ll be leaving you.”

Yeah, pretty sure that’s not a good sign there.

[ ]

“Hey, tell me stuff!”

I feel like it probably makes sense to show off Lucario having a bit more of a reaction than this to the Voice from Beyond’s statement, since he’s vibed as starting to grow attached/dependent to the voice, and he’d presumably be fairly startled and/or agitated right about now here.

There’s no response. And in no time my leg muscles start aching. To prevent muscle atrophy, astronauts do work out regularly and that does include myself, but even fit people have limits.

The running isn’t great for my hunger either. All the stress and physical activity has surpassed my appetite but it’s coming back all at once now. My stomach doesn't just rumble - my arms shake in hunger, and I certainly feel irritation.

So… when should I start expecting the new hallucinations to start kicking in? Since just saying, that’s a symptom of starvation there, just saying.

All this bodily awareness is so stark to the quietness around me I’ve now noticed. There used to be so much shimmer sloshing and the stomping of the colossal aliens could be heard for many floors. But there’s not a drop of shimmer anywhere anymore, the giants are long past, and there’s no Pokemon to disturb this peace. It’s empty here. Only pain and my panting.

Lucario: “Is… Is this really it right now? I’m seriously just going to starve to death here?”

I punch the wall. “I need to keep it up,” I tell myself. Need to keep my sanity up, that is. “The final floor will have something of value. I will find Kommo-o. Or I’ll see some great legendary. Maybe the One Who Is Not will bless me. And if not, I’ll be back on the station with all the knowledge I’ve accumulated and so, so, so much time to analyze it.”

[ ] I punch it again.

“But it’ll mean nothing if I don’t make it to the end! So I need! To stay! Strong! Aaaaaah!”

Yeah, that’s some Grade-A Sanity Slippage if I ever saw it. Though I feel like this is another spot that would benefit from showing off more of Lucario’s thought process and emotions as they’re playing out here.

I bang it a few more times and take a deep breath. This feels so good. Too good. I need to hold back laughter again. That’s when the cracks in the wall catch my eye. There’s a familiar, wide-mouth face sketched into it. After blinking, I see Kommo-o. I squint. Huh?

Really, I’ll be more surprised if this isn’t a trap somehow.

“Lucario, turn around and run,” the voice said. It is panting, with a quiet wheezing to its breath. “We walked into a trap.”

Yeah, I figured. Even if I do wonder if we’ll ever get to see Kommo-o again in this story, or if it’s going to turn out that he’s been dead for like a dozen chapters at this rate.

That’s when I realize that the emptiness around me wasn’t just emptiness, but an aura made of emptiness itself. It was a long distance away, but it didn’t come from either direction of the tunnel: it encapsulated me like a sphere.

Lucario: “Oh, yay me. Seriously, how the hell did you just miss this the entire time?!”

Alright, and it’s time for the part where I summarize my thoughts and feelings about my readings in case that big wall of impressions up there is a bit dense to take in all at once. But this story very quickly reminded me of why I liked it after I started getting into things again, since I’m still in awe about the way that it manages to make itself work on such a constrained amount of words per chapter without many hugely distracting issues. I thought that you did a really good job with these chapters at getting us to grow invested in Lucario and his struggles, and to root for him as he goes through his increasingly alien and deranged surroundings. I’ll admit that I raised a brow at the sequences where you had him go into apparent classrooms, but it wound up working quite well and selling the sense of a very unpredictable and chaotic environment where nothing is as it seems and it may or may not be actively responding to and messing around with Lucario’s head. Like the moments where he gets hurt or at the end of his rope are often legitimately wince-worthy to read and very effectively get us to empathize with him. There were some spots where the descriptions were a little uneven, but by and large you did a really good job at selling how alien and eldritch the surroundings and the “Pokémon” going around in them are, especially with moments like the dream sequence in Chapter 14 and the way the Mystery Dungeon goes back and forth between more outwardly mundane and more surreal and deranged environments as Lucario gets deeper and deeper into the Mystery Dungeon. It does a good job at selling a sense of tension and dread, since I was honestly expecting him to be in worse shape by the end, and that ending “oh no” realization hits like a truck. I also felt that the embedded media was a nice touch and added a lot to the reading experience, since they certainly help a lot with visualizing things and lean in hard to the “creepy, otherworldly, and things we weren’t supposed to know” vibes that have permeated this story since the very beginning.

That said, I did feel like there were some spots where things felt a bit uneven in this chapter. The really, really big one that I noticed was that you seemed to miss a number of opportunities to get into Lucario’s head more and play up the sense that he’s getting ground down by his experiences. Since without any other real personalities for Lucario to bounce off of in these chapters aside from the Voice from Beyond, the most interesting for the readers to see aside from the obvious of his surroundings would be himself and the workings of his mind. Since a big part of cosmic horror literature is the effects of the cosmic horrors on the minds of the people who come across them, which while it was kinda there in the prose at the time I wrote this review, definitely felt like there was a lot more hay that could’ve been made of it. Also, while I get that this story aims for compact and easy-to-read chapters, I felt that a few parts were a bit too accelerated even with a more compact writing style. One of the more standout example moments I can think of is the sequence when Lucario gets grabbed by the “Cramorapede” and fights against it before flinging himself to the next floor. Presently, it’s basically handled by two very perfunctory paragraphs, while showing things play out and more of that panicked struggle to force the thing off before falling to the next floor might have made the ending a bit more tense and impactful to read. Lastly, some of the moments and creatures that were described but lacking illustrations were a little hard to follow. It’s not an evenly distributed problem since in some other parts, your description was very vivid and easy to follow, which made it a bit weird to see. Granted, I suppose there’s a chance that that could’ve been a feature and not a bug there since it’s an eldritch environment where Lucario very clearly can’t fully comprehend a good chunk of the stuff he’s running into, which I suppose would also carry over to his ability to visualize things.

Though altogether, I feel like those weaker spots ultimately didn’t knock the story off-course enough to keep it from being an enjoyable read, and I’m glad to finally catch up with this story again, since it really has been far too long since I read and reviewed it. It’s every bit as trippy, disconcerting, and unique as a read as when I first started reading it, and you’ve clearly been having a lot of fun with these past chapters throwing Lucario far into the deep end. And with that ending note that you left off on at the very end of the most recent chapter… yeah, that’s a pretty effective advertisement to come back and see where things go since clearly Lucario’s in for a world of hurt in the imminent future.

Hope this feedback was helpful @BestLizard , and I’ll be looking forward to seeing where you take this story and your other writings in the future.

 

[Flyg0n]

Hey there! I was feeling in the mood to try something new and decided to read some of this, the concept sounded incredibly cool and what a great setting! Since you didn't list crit requests, I'll divide this into two parts.

The first bit is just general thoughts, and I'll put my critique below that, in case you're not interested. Don't feel obligated to read or accept the crit either, if you're not looking for it. Anyways, I read through chapter 8 to get a feel for the overall fic and the story.

I have to say, I absolutely love the set up and concept! A post-science PMD world thats invented stable space travel is incredible. There's a working Mars base? There's moon expeditions? Satellites and spacesuits designed for different species? Mystery dungeons in SPACE? Thats sick. Not that i read a ton of PMD but I have never seen one try to approach the whole space travel thing.

You do a good job putting in some solid grounded details that make this feel tactile. The comms, the moving across the moon, the descriptions of gravity and awkwardness of the spcaesuits. There's also a lot of details that feel thought through. Lucario and Kommo-o having to modify their bodies to fit in the suits is a pretty nifty one. It adds this uneasiness and weight to the idea of being a space explorer. It makes it feel very real and a good balance of tech and "realism".

The story kept me gripped and kept me reading. The pacing and short chapters were nice because it made the story feel quick moving and plenty happening. As someone who can be a bit wordy myself, I appreciate when a story can move along and it made it satisfying to move through the story and learn more about the world and characters and the situation.

On one hand, I love "in media res" openings. On the other, I did find it a slight shame to start in media res, since it was hard to grasp the horror as well. I never knew what society looked like before the moon went wonky. I think it lessened a bit of the impact of their dire situation. Throwing two ordinary travels into the edges of a perilous survival situation is pretty interesting though, and a good way to force a degree of closeness. I could tell early on the two had some feelings for each other. It does also save time to jump right into the aftermath.

I was really surprised though that Lucario calls Kommo-o "boyfriend" and then later was taken aback by "I love you" and then I find out they only knew other 3 or 4 days! Maybe it was intentional, but there was some jarring dissonance for me because I assumed they at least knew each other a good while if he called Kommo-o "boyfriend". Still, I do enjoy their loyalty and mutual support with each other.

I also liked the references to technical details, like programming languages and 'Moncrosoft'. I definitely get the feel that aspects of the science and technical aspects are important to you, and that made it fun, even if it went over my head a bit. There's also definitely thought behind aspects like communication, satellites and even the reference to how the Mars base has limited supply, and that kind of detail is good. I appreciate that kind of stuff a lot.

There some other horror bits that I thought were great ideas. Finding out the entire earth is gone would be scary! The invisible aura ghost that attacked them was intense, especially since it seemed only Lucario could see it. And the strange behaviour of objects near it. Kommo-o disppearing when they entered the dungeon was super spooky and unnerving, and the descriptions of the dungeon entering part were very ethereal.

I also gotta say I do appreciate that being scientists, they have that innate curiosity and urge to explore the unknown. To understand the secrets of the universe and why this happening. Its a very fun trait to play with, and it makes sense. Also I respect the bravery of diving into the unknown instead of returning to Mars and safety. Making characters make hard choices is a great way to showcase who they are.

All in all it was very cool and very eerie.

Spoiler: Crit thoughts

I hope none of this comes off too harsh and you find something helpful in here! Please feel free to ignore this if you're not focusing on crit right now. I really enjoy the bones of what you have and many moments throughout, along with the sick art. Mainly I write this since I found myself enjoying the story and hope my thoughts will be useful to you.

So I had a think, and I believe my biggest struggles as a reader were the prose, exposition and internality of the characters.

On the prose side, I noticed things like dropped prepositions and tense switches very occasionally, but frequently enough that it did hiccup my reading. It may be worth asking someone who is a grammar nerd or brushing upon this (I am admittedly also guilty of this!)

Lunar astronaut Lucario is far away from disaster when the moon tears open and the world around him is consumed with anomalies. Not happy leaving the world without answers, he travels inside the now-hollow moon where discovers many things.

In your summary, for example, you're missing a "he" discovers many things

Our break takes longer than five minutes. We shouldn’t be pushing the luck we had that we were far away from *** when the moon cracked open. When we arrived back at our base, nobody was there. There were only black holes around and puddles of pink ooze that trail away. All the spacecraft there had those uncanny blemishes and wouldn’t work as if essential components stopped existing.

"far away from [it?] when the moon" something is missing here. Maybe you meant "far away from the explosion" or perhaps "rift" or simply it? This kind of lapse in phrasing happens periodically throughout enough that I had to pause to figure out the meaning and struggled to appreciate the cool setting or innate horror of the situation.

In addition, parts like this I think would hit a lot harder if we saw Lucario experience them. The moon cracking, Lucario rushing back to base, everyone gone and only ooze left behind... thats some scary stuff! If we open on a normal day at the base and then heading out for an excursion and come back to that... thats peak horror. I love when characters are far from any help and dealing with something utterly unheard of.

This leads into my next thoughts as a reader, but I struggled a lot to get into Lucario's head and known how he felt. The entire earth and whatever thousands or millions (billions?) of lives that were presumably on it are gone. Yet to him it merely "stung". The moon has been torn about and the slime ooze is spreading, but there's a detached factor to how he observes all this. But maybe he's meant to be detached? it was a little unclear to me if he's supposed to be detached as a coping mechanism or not.

For me, part of what adds to horror is seeing how the character grapples with the terrifying situation. Pushing down emotions? Freaking out? Having a near-psychotic break? Any one of these would be reasonable. For example, you even mention Kommo-o having regrets and pain, but this is shown primarily via summary. Elaborating on moments like that can make it scarier by highlighting the intense emotion for the reader. Perhaps we see Kommo-o reduced to a blubbering mess and sobbing over lost family. Letting Lucario comfort him then will also strengthen their relationship. I think how these are focused on will help you enhance the horror a lot, since you've got a fantastic backbone in your setup.

Showing more character emotion, even if that means showing that they are suppresing an emotion can dial up that cosmic horror energy. The unkow, the vastness of space, the confusion of everything you know being torn away.

Some exposition will also help, in my opinion. I think you've got the right idea to stay in the moment and not interrupt with long blocks of text. But conversely, the lack of exposition about the way the world works in your setting can lessen the impact of the horror. Part of horror that you've got right is fear of the unknown. Part of what makes this work though is establishing the known so when the divergences happen, they are truly terrifying.

Since we start after the onset of the disaster, I found myself working more on piecing together what was normal about this world instead of on the fear and terror of being on the moon, half-stranded and pursued by some unknown force. I find myself wondering if writing a proper chapter before everything goes to the pits might go a long way towards enhancing the fear? We could see how space travel, moon exploration and the ordinary world work, and then wham! rip all that apart and throw our heroes into the middle of things.

At any rate, thats just one idea! Its by no means the sole one.

Hopefully some of this helps, as I said.

Overall, a very sick and scary idea and a lot of great details and scenes, cool art, good mystery and intrigue!

Happy writing!