Welcome to Thousand Roads! You're welcome to view discussions or read our stories without registering, but you'll need an account to join in our events, interact with other members, or post one of your own fics. Why not become a member of our community? We'd love to have you!
Back at it again, took me a while because of irl stuff but i’m happy to be reading this again, especially after the triumphant note we ended up on last time, which I’m sure can’t possibly last, lol. I’ll be reviewing chapter by chapter as usual!
Despite the chaos at the end there, this chapter confirms a few things that were very heavily implied during the last one, most important perhaps being Irune’s importance, and that she was the actual ‘treasure’ the roly-poly caravan was transporting, which makes me think maybe all of the other valuables were to serve as distractions? Or maybe not, maybe they were just as important, but Lely’s remark that those berries were an odd thing to transport made me think that.
Like Kate said, it’s understandable the outlaws wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry considering how deep they are into this mystery dungeon, but celebrating so soon instead of scrambling was probably reckless. Though with the joy of a mission well done and all that loot and food to enjoy, even Lely ends up not thinking too much about it, and I don’t blame them. There’s still the question of how exactly the Salamance and his buddies managed to get here so fast if they weren’t tailing the roly-poly crew. I can’t imagine there being any sort of tracking device in this world, at least not a technological one. Was it something in the bag Irune wanted? Or something else? I guess we’ll find out eventually.
I liked how chaotic and frenetic the sudden battle felt. Also that despite the outlaws surely out-numbering their foes, they got completely destroyed because they were both exhausted and had just finished a big meal, which I’m sure would’ve dropped their fighting capabilities a lot. I know I’m not in the mood to move a lot after eating, lol. Feel bad for Myra and Alvin, even if the former realistically probably deserved it. And now we have our team of four finally assembled! What they’ll do from here on I have no idea, but if that excerpt at the beginning is anything to go by, probably carry Irune and use her as leverage to escape the mess they got themselves into. A mess Dalton seems to know more of than he lets on.
The only nitpick I’d have about this chapter is that there are some paragraphs in the narration that feel were a bit too bloated, or longer than I think were necessary. I noticed that the narration usually consists of Lyle noticing stuff and then remarking upon it. Sometimes it helps a lot with contextualizing everyone’s reactions and feelings, but in this chapter specifically I felt like there was a weird mix of Lyle noticing people’s ‘odd’ reactions but being unable to contextualize them, which maybe was the point but it made some descriptions feel like a ramble. This wasn’t really an issue during the calmer parts of the chapter, but this is an example from the chaos of the fighting later that I feel could’ve been edited to be shorter and punchier:
The Rhydon’s jeers were abruptly shut up a blue blur storming in, Lyle screwed his eyes shut and recoiled as something large and bulky stormed in. He flinched as he heard the Ground-type screaming in pain and the sound of something wrenching out of hide and flesh rang out. Lyle cracked his eyes open and saw Parker draw one of her seamitars back, before shoving the Rhydon aside limply to the ground as a dark, ugly red blotch formed around a large stab through the abdominal segment of the soldier's cloth armor.
Specifically I feel like the narration calls too much attention to Lyle’s bodily reactions to the action, you could probably mention it once more briefly and let the scene flow better, but that’s just my opinion and it’s a very small nitpick.
I was wrong before, THIS is how we get our main four together, lol. I misjudged how many of them had managed to escape last time, and it’s sad that it didn’t last long. This was a pretty neat chapter in terms of showing the building dread and exhaustion as the characters get pushed to their breaking point in an attempt to escape, but because it’s sort of a continuation from the situation from last chapter I don’t have much to comment on that front, same with the battles. Though they were very well-written and dynamic, as always.
What I found most interesting about this chapter were the little bits of worldbuilding thrown in, especially about the nature of mystery dungeons and the ‘relics’ found and discussed throughout. It took me a bit to realize what the one they found was, lol, at least until the two parts were described. That’s really cool, and it only makes me wonder what was the reason for all of it. That and what was discussed before regarding the lost ‘gods’ and whatever Irune’s role in all of this is.
This chapter felt like it flowed smoother, the few moments of peace in between all the battles were nice respites and the end there with all the mons exhausted and ready to keel over felt earned; I can’t wait to see what they decide to do now that they probably have nowhere to go back to.
As far as inciting incidents and following premises go, the five chapters before this, all the build-up and the raid gone wrong are very well constructed looking back, narratively speaking. It’s done fast, though not so much so that it sacrifices any character moments or important establishing information. We even got some good fight scenes throughout. It’s a good start to a story I think, at least one of the length I’m imagining this will end up being.
Anyway, onto what actually happens in the chapter, I’m a little bit surprised that none of them even considered the idea of giving Irene back to her captors for a possible pardon/reward, as underhanded as it is. Obviously Dalton doesn’t seem the type, and Lyle isn’t either at least not inwardly, but I feel like Kate would’ve considered it, at least. Maybe it’s all the more obvious to them that it wouldn’t work, that it’s not worth the risk to present themselves to those soldiers again, or to any authority, after what they’ve done before.
They all accepted their new mission pretty fast too, though that’s more understandable considering how hungry they are, and knowing they need to make a decision right now. Irune also gives them something to look forward to; it’s that common social rule where people are all the more eager to do something dangerous twice after losing what they thought they’d gained before. Not that I’m saying Irune is trying to trick them, but it does ring true to how people act, lol. So good work there.
I’m thinking about the quicker pace of this chapter, and I feel like while writing an additional one before they make up their minds would’ve been slightly more realistic, it also would’ve been too much, so I get why you decided to speed things along a little. I’m very excited to see what the start of this new journey will be like, so it worked on me!
I like that I keep finding these very natural stopping points. I’ll be back as shortly as I can, but I like where the plot and the characters are going!
Heya, this one took a little longer than expected to get together, but there was a bit of a bumper crop of feedback this time around from Review Blitz, so let’s just swoop in and get to that first:
-The problem with trying to describe things people just inherently know the names of is that it's often done awkwardly. Case in point, it took me a second to realize you were describing the remains of an airplane. Having it pointed out helps, but I wonder if it's better if that's mentioned out of the gate so I'm not stopping to try and envision what you're talking about.
Unfortunately, such is life when your viewpoint character legitimately doesn’t know what an ‘airplane’ is. I was trying to go for that sense of “what on earth is this thing?” in Sophia’s head, but I suppose it didn’t quite stick the landing there.
-Whyyyyyy are the Xenoblade X robo-suits here? Not that it isn't all "oooh" and "aaah" or anything, but if Sophia's real goal is just going to this reading room then perhaps a bit too much time is being spent on these relics. Unless they're meant to serve as foreshadowing and not worldbuilding.
I mean, it’s not as if there aren’t regularly mechs every other episode in PokéAni. Though beyond having a giggle with Xeno-series references, there’s some pretty big foreshadowing and hints as to the backstory of the setting in the relics scene if you know what to look for.
-I'm guessing some of these names related to Operation Spark are more Xeno references.
-At first I was wondering what the point to this negotiating stuff was, but now I see that's how the team is going to end up at the Royal Library after all. Also, really? Not even spoofing Shiren? Just straight dropping the name? Smh my head.
I mean, you did get a namedrop for 'Shiren' earlier in this story. This is the followup to that.
-So, reading the letter at the end does make me lean more toward cycles of rebirth. With, perhaps, that occurring because there isn't a peaceful awakening and, I dunno, these powers basically destroy whoever they're in from the inside out. Then a period of time passes and a new one appears. And this'll keep happening until they can peacefully find their true self. Perhaps at the Divine Roost.
Presumably with some creative tweaking to passages and entryways, even if I’d presume that it generally aims for an “average student” since it’s a bit hard to make everything 100% accessible for that one Steelix on campus.
-Ahhhh reading a protest against war at a university is a big ol 😰for me given everything that's happened in 2024. Unfortunate real world implications here.
For what it’s worth, the war protests that I had on my mind for that scene were from closer to 50 years ago versus anything more current. I suppose that’s just life when current events overtake your story.
-In general the opening does, once again, feel like there's a bit too much window dressing for worldbuilding's sake. Yes it's sprinkled in with Dalton reminiscing slightly, but it's nothing we haven't really heard up until now.
Hrm, a bit unfortunate that things didn’t quite land there for you.
-Didn't take long for things to turn south after all. Not the violent kind of south, just about a rung or two short of it. Not surprising. Like the narration hammers in that there are no real good solutions here. The fact that Irune's advocating for the one that could have one of the worst outcomes for them is... definitely a flip with her character. She must truly be desperate.
I mean, she wouldn’t be working with literally whoever she could get if she had options.
-Similarly, the rest of the chapter is spent trying to soften up Lacan a bit. It's fine. But then is followed up with him doubling down on their need to catch Irune and not exactly hearing out Sophia surrounding her findings. Baby steps or something, I suppose.
I mean, while the scene was meant to “humanize” (Pokémonize?) him a bit, he is still the driving antagonist in this story at the end. There’s only so much those edges can be sanded down.
-I'm not sure if Kate doodling on those guards is meant to, like, lighten the mood. Because it feels less like that and more like her being a dumbass.
I mean, she does have a fairly well-established daring/reckless streak. Can’t say anything for if it’ll always end well for her or not.
-To be honest, I don't have much to say about this chapter overall. It's a lot of time dedicated to stealthing around the library and grabbing books. Some of the titles of which I'm guessing are shout outs and mythology gags and the like. But a lot of it didn't exactly catch my interest. Even if stealth was different from the usual fighting we've seen, it did still take up pretty much the entirety of this lengthy chapter. The most interesting part coming at the end where they get caught and Sophia outright confirms Irune is Kyurem. Which means I was right. Yaaaaaay.
Hrm, it’s a bit unfortunate that things didn’t really carry your interest there, but I suppose I appreciate your frankness here.
-As a reader, I'm not sure I buy Sophia's claim of Irune caring for the whole team. I could maybe see it with Lyle since they'd had the most time together and it seems like they've mutually comforted one another a couple of times. And I think she maybe had one moment with Dalton? But still, feels like a bit of a stretch.
Well, you’re in luck, since while I can’t do much about that in the earlier part of this arc, it is a decently big chunk of the last two chapters in it.
-I'm seeing a lot of missing paragraph spaces out of the gate here. Think you might've needed to give this one a closer look in a text editor because the pages in google docs or word or whatever threw things off.
Went and touched those up. Those should be fixed now.
-Gotta respect the commitment to them still going with gratuitous German even when being chased down by an entire platoon. By which I mean a part of me wonders if it'd sell the fear/adrenaline aspect more if you had them drop it and just go with slang instead.
It’s intended to be a part of their natural lexicon, even if I suppose I can see the meta argument for trimming it down.
-Anyway, this really was a long extended chapter of fighting and running. And not that much of it actually involved Lacan and Sophia. I realize the situation they were in was going to be a messy one but I do wish there had been a way for the choreography to get compressed or shifted to focus on more important characters and not a bunch of nameless soldiers.
Unfortunately, the layout kinda got in the way there, since as you kinda saw from the two encounters that were there, a long, drawn-out fight with Lacan and Sophia is more or less guaranteed to result in a loss at this point of the story.
-And yes, I'm still convinced that Irune is basically Kyurem and has both Reshi and Zek powers as a result.
-I'm sorry. Are these strangers (who are probably from the other kingdom on an infiltration mission?) implying your gratuitous Rebirth cameo is a— oh, okay, it sounds like it's meant to be a decoy. Good. I hope it stays that way.
Yeah, the cameos in this story that aren’t Xeno-series related aren’t exactly plot drivers. This one is arguably the one that goes the furthest in terms of intersecting with the plot since the cameo here was used as a device to make the gang privy to Operation Spark being a thing.
-Oh, so the thieves really did redirect the group to the Royal Library on purpose. And are probably in interrogation right now and won't be rendezvousing with the team at all. Unless it's as a precursor to this raid.
And with that, I'm officially caught up. The pacing has, I think, been quite brisk. Despite the large average chapter length, which I feel is in part due to an excess focus on combat with mooks and a need to go on worldbuilding tangents that also include Easter eggs to the Xeno stuff inspiring the fic. I'm sure others get more out of that than I do. I'm sure you can agree there's a clear different to how we approach this kind of referential stuff. With the combat, you do have the mooks go down much quicker here than in other works where a lot of mooks seem made of iron. But it seems as though that's been replaced with a larger quantity of them. Understandable given the setting and, well, the protags aren't that powerful. So, of course they're going to struggle. But that puts you in a position where your premise has written you into a bit of a corner.
My personal advice is that you strongly consider if the fic going forward would benefit from trying to pare down the combat. Because it's going to flare up and I'm sure it'll keep being chaotic. And doing so may allow you to focus more on the characters. As I alluded to last time, you could really benefit with some quieter, softer moments to give these characters room to breathe. Because right now I'm in a position where it's hard to really root for anyone. Which is where the apathy comes in. That's prrrrrobably not something you want your readers feeling.
I… didn’t think there was that much combat in this arc relative to its length? Though for what it’s worth, I did see where you were coming from with wanting to see the characters bounce off each other more, and hopefully the next couple chapters should be a bit more satisfying to you on that front.
I doubt this is what you want to hear, but these are my honest thoughts on it. I know some folks like Arukona and tomatorade are really enjoying this. So I'm sure they're seeing stuff that I'm not. I'm just one commenter and I've got my tastes and all that jazz.
I mean, I’ll admit, these two reviews weren’t exactly what I was hoping to get as feedback, but I appreciate you calling things as you saw them, and I did make some tweaks to this chapter and the next one down the pipe in light of them. Hopefully you have a bit more fun with them if / when you wind up coming back to this story.
So, rolling into Chapter 9 and I remember exactly where we were last time, our thieving heroes end up going face to face with the first Hunter team they ended up robbing – and damn are they not happy with Forager. And they are no doubt a colourful bunch of characters, to the point I’d almost consider them to be potentially recurring characters. But of course given the distances they are aiming to travel, I’m not so sure about that.
Well, sure is a good thing for Team Forager that there’s a convenient way to shortcut over long distances in this setting, huh?
Nevertheless, diplomacy fails and soon combat ensues… and it’s beautifully rendered combat. It’s to the point, snappy with enough detail to get a clear picture with plenty of stuff going flying all over the place. You can really feel the power in the fight and even better, it’s not just a slug fest. Clever tricks and tactics are used alongside underhanded tricks too, Nils get his jerkass handed back to him in brilliant fashion and poor Hermes is left completely stunned shitless. Cue a frantic escape.
Glad to hear you had fun with that action sequence. It was a lot of fun for me to put together and write. ^^
This leads to my only real issue. This would have been a perfect opportunity to end the chapter… but it continues onwards for a fair bit longer. That doesn’t mean the rest of the chapter is terrible! It’s just as exciting as before! This time, we’ve got an airborne race that is non-stop action throughout the whole thing, cue getting shot down and having to try and make an escape through a nearby Mystery Dungeon.
Yeah, I think that that was an artifact of me feeling that the two parts of the chapter were a bit too short relative to the prevailing average in this story, since it aims for between 7k-10k word chapters, even if it’s been erring a bit on the higher end recently.
This was a really fun read! Action scenes do tend to be favourite scenes of mine! But like I said, there’s almost too much of it. This chapter could quite happily be cut in half without issue and would allow for more digestible chapters, but as far as well… the action goes, it was a really fun read!
Glad to hear that even if the formatting wasn’t fully your cuppa that it still was an enjoyable experience for you. I’ll be looking forward to whenever you come around for more of this story. ^^
The real centerpiece for this section of the fic was the Royal Library, and it makes for an impressive one for sure. You definitely convey an image of the library as a grand, imposing edifice, a rare architectural marvel in a world that's been shattered by apocalypse and constant war. I enjoyed the details about how the whole place works, although in some places it struck me as a little off for a library designed for pokémon--Lyle not being able to distinguish sections because he's colorblind being one example of where the setup doesn't work (perhaps an identifying pattern in addition to color?). Of course, this library was probably intended primarily for humans originally, so it makes sense in a way. I also enjoyed the relics the serperior was so eager to show to Sophia; by now it's screamingly obvious that this is all a post-human setting, but it's always fun to imagine how far-future pokémon might interpret the wreckage of our civilization.
Yeah, I might have overdone it a tad at points in these past two arcs, but this was the point where I went a little nuts about “this is the remains of a twenty minutes into the future world” by virtue of being in the neighborhood where it’ll be the most front and center in the story up until very late in it.
One small detail that I've enjoyed throughout Newangle City are the Zekrom/Reshiram trappings that pop up all over the place; they really help give the place a clear identity and a sense of being elevated above the various settlements we've encountered previously. They also reveal a great deal about the history and current politics of the city in a fairly condensed way--a neat little leitmotif that I think adds a lot of value in this set of chapters.
I mean, it’s kinda a running trend for the setting lands that we care about in this story. There’s a reason why they’re named what they are, especially in “Hightongue”.
It was interesting to see so much of this arc run on dramatic irony; we learn almost immediately about the plan to lure Irune and the rest into an ambush at the library, and then see that play out across several chapters as Team Forager obliviously draws closer and closer to the trap. It's a fun conceit you're able to pull off since you regularly give us a view from the antagonist's side of things, and I think it does make for more fun than springing the reveal on both the readers and the characters at the same time. And it's not over yet! Lyle still thinking about how they can get the books they stole to Igna and Ansel, oy vey.
Lyle: “I mean, we kinda have to otherwise we’re kinda gonna die before we can even try to get out of this place.”
I get the sense that this is kind of "Dalton's arc," as he has the most connection to this place and it's bringing out more of his backstory--and fun to learn a little more about Kate, too! It's good to get some more spotlight on those two... I think I said earlier that I'm fine with Kate remaining kind of a cipher, her lovable impetuous self, but I was really curious about what was going on with Dalton. I liked the sort of melancholy feeling his thoughts lent to the city, as he reflects on what he's lost and clearly wishes he could go back to the way things used to be, for so many reasons. I'm kind of wondering where his character goes from here; presumably if he gets all that treasure at the Divine Roost he's going to do something for his parents' old mill (if it even still exists?) and possibly re-enroll himself at the university. But until then, what's his central conflict? How will this journey change him? Not really sure; he feels mostly adrift.
This should hopefully become progressively more apparent over the coming chapters. Today will at least partially answer some of those questions that you had there.
However, I will admit that Sophia/Lacan are still the most interesting characters to me at this point, heh. At this point I really don't see much hope for Sophia to convince Lacan that they're taking the wrong approach with the Dyad, even if she's able to point to a passage in one of the Operation Avalanche letters that literally says "NEVER EVER EVER TRY TO CAPTURE AND CONTROL THE DYAD HOLY FUCK." It's heartbreaking to see her as pretty much the only voice of reason in the midst of this whole apparatus intent on doing exactly the wrong thing, and while she might theoretically have the power to stop it through her connection to Lacan, in practice I don't expect that to happen. I also enjoyed the additional characterization we got for Lacan here, with his worthiness issues and his watercolor paints (not that he can really enjoy them, RIP), but mostly I'm over here going "oh no Sophia my girl oh no." At this point I think she's definitely going to have to side with the outlaws at some critical moment that leads to their success, or perhaps even team up with them at some point--go full outlaw herself.
I mean, that depends on your definition of “wrong thing” there is, since sometimes outcomes that would be considered bugs to one would be considered features to another.
As for what will become of Sophia down the road, I’ll opt to punt and let that be a story for another day.
I also have to admit that I found the length of this run of chapters rather punishing. The chapters in this fic have been pretty long from the beginning, but in this stretch the shortest of them is scraping 10k, and two are 14k. I definitely feel the drag at that length, and for the amount of character and plot progression we had in this section, it didn't necessarily feel earned.
Hrm, a bit disappointing to hear. Unfortunately, I’ll probably have to just opt to take things on the chin here since while there were a few chapters that were definitely getting up there in length, I couldn’t think of better places to divide up the scenes relative for the chapters that needed to happen.
I don't think you really need to cut back on character backstory or worldbuilding in this section. If you were looking to reduce wordcount a bit, I would look into trimming back sections that involve logistics in one way or another: characters discussing what they want to do, or sequences simply moving them from A to B. A good example of this would be in the library scenes where the characters spend over 600 words discussing whether and how to split the party to find the books. These are the sorts of scenes I often find myself cutting in my own writing--for me they're in there because I'm usually figuring stuff out as I go along, so characters arguing about various options is how I work out what the group is actually going to do. I don't know if it's similar for you, or if there's a desire to head off potential criticisms about characters making bad/stupid choices (splitting the party being a notorious mistake for fictional characters), but regardless of cause I think cutting this back to maybe a paragraph or three of discussion and then the group splits up would be a big improvement; I just don't see enough of interest going on here to justify the length.
This one, I’ll keep in mind for the future. I can’t vouch for how well things turned out this chapter since it… uh… turned out a bit longer than what I was originally hoping for, but it’s not bad advice.
I think you could also streamline the action sequences a bit. They're well-done, with a lot of twists and turns, sudden reversals, unusual strategies/events, etc. And over the course of the story you naturally want to provide a sense of escalation, which is generally going to mean bigger and more difficult scenarios as the story goes on. However, given how long and involved the library sequence here was, I kind of am not sure how you're going to keep going bigger without having novel-length battles in the future! Scaling things back a bit would have been welcome for me; there's definitely a balance to be struck between wanting more mooks/challenges in order for a scenario to feel properly dangerous and not wanting the action sequence to overstay its welcome. Personally, I would have been fine with some streamlining of the initial "getting into the library/finding the books" segment (e.g. the bit with them dealing with the random guards went on a bit long for me), and then the escape sequence would have been perfectly satisfying if they'd managed to escape the soliders on the stairwell, only to have Lacan pounce on them immediately afterwards, omitting the stuff with the lucario and gengar and so on. The events at the library still would have been a big setpiece with plenty of action to go around!
This one I’ll also keep in mind. For what it’s worth, it’ll likely be at least a year in real-world time before there’s another setpiece even in the same ballpark as being as big and involved as the one in the Royal Library, so hopefully that cuts down on the action fatigue a bit.
There was a lot of lore and backstory conveyed during this section, and I really enjoyed that! However, I did feel like the falloff in character progression that I noted in my previous review continued in this run of chapters. At this point Irune seems to still be uncomfortable with her companions' more rule-breaking tendencies, but is nebulously okay with them; and on the flip side the rest of the crew still seems annoyed with Irune's moralizing and difficult demands, but they're also nebulously okay with her. They are working together and not really dwelling on their problems. This works well from a survival standpoint, but narratively speaking it's not hugely interesting to me! I like seeing characters making difficult decisions, and Team Forager was mostly just on the run during these chapters; their toughest dilemma is whether to leave the city despite Irune's protests, but since they pretty much immediately get into a situation where they can't leave the city anyway because they'll be targeted in the Undercity, it ends up not being much of a decision at all. Sophia presents them with a tantalizing offer, but Dalton puts an end to it before the other characters get much opportunity to respond, and other than that, they aren't doing much but trying to gather resources and prepare for the next stage of their journey.
Some of this might be due to the nature of the plot, wherein the characters are under more or less constant pressure, so they don't have a lot of opportunity to talk things through or really process what's happened and instead have to be go-go-go to get away from the next threat. For example, I was kind of expecting that Dalton electrocuting Sophia when she was offering them clemency would lead to some exasperated reactions from the other members of the group. Dalton's actions are definitely understandable, given his history, and none of them like the military or would feel super great about turning Irune over to them. On the other hand, the rest of them going free and having their criminal records expunged is a really attractive offer, and one even Lyle considers seriously. I was kind of surprised that no one so much as snapped at Dalton for jumping the gun and attacking--we're already on to the next thing. This is a place where I'd find a bit more character friction enjoyable; more playing off the differing desires and goals of the cast.
Yeah, I suppose that’s an artifact of the past few chapters being a bit light on “slow” moments. This will hopefully be something that will be a bit less of an issue with the ones that come out this year.
I guess for me, a big part of the appeal of an outlaw story is the idea of doing things you don't want to do to survive, things you don't feel good about, and being forced to make choices where you have no good options. I felt that sense quite strongly at the beginning of the fic, when Lyle is dragged into situations he didn't want to be in, ends up abandoning one of his friends, and doesn't see any options besides diving ever deeper into a life of crime. Recently, though, he's had to contend with way more external danger and conflict, but not a lot that hits him on an internal level. Some minor thievery to gather supplies in Newangle City, like, stealing library books is bad, but it's old hat at this point and largely glossed over. I'm not saying that Team Forager should keep having to murder people or anything along those lines--that wouldn't fit with the tone of the story, and would quickly get old in its own way. It's more like, there hasn't been much recently that feels like it hits Lyle or the other characters where it really hurts, and I'd enjoy seeing more of that in the future. Although it could? Like, it being revealed that the secret Irune's been keeping from everyone is that she's a reincarnated god could come across as a really big betrayal, but the characters just really haven't had the space to process or react to it much yet. The plot's been sweeping them along so fast that they haven't had a lot of opportunities to sort out their feelings about everything that's happening.
Hold onto that thought there, since there’s still a decent amount of what you’re alluding to coming down the pipe in this story, including in this chapter.
Regardless, I'm really curious about where the story goes from here. I was initially thinking that the Newangle arc would be leading more or less directly to the Divine Roost, meaning that we're closing in on probably the last third or so on the story. This run of chapters seems to be hinting that Team Forager is going to get dragged into this spy subplot somehow--maybe even dragged off to Edialeigh? I've for sure wondered what things look like from the other side of this endless war, but not sure how I feel about a potential large detour from the A-plot, heh. From where the characters are now, a final arc to get them to the Divine Roost and the reckoning there seems like an appropriate amount of space for progression, but who knows! One thing's for certain... things were looking pretty grim even before the French showed up.
Well, I’ll just get it out there, but barring a major unplanned shakeup in the story, the plot will remain firmly in Varhyde. Not to say that they won’t wind up seeing more of the war or stuff from the other side one way or another, though. Since as I’m sure you’ve noticed, that forever war hasn’t truly been escapable for our cast.
Also really wondering wtf is going on with these random substitutes. Unless that's just a reference?
I feel like a lot of this review was complaining, and I'm sorry for that--I'm still excited to see more of this world and these characters, especially because like it feels as though we might(???) be getting into the back half of the story and the Divine Roost, which I've been itching to learn more about since the beginning. I am definitely eyes-emojiing over that book about the gods that Irune picked up; the worldbuilding continues to be one of my favorite things about this story. I'll be back once again to see where things go from here--to post-apocalyptic PokéFrance or otherwise!
And I’ll be looking forward to reading what you have to say. Thanks for the review, and I’ll be looking forward to whenever you come back for more of this story. ^^
I’ve been seeing your stories mentioned a lot in the server and around the forum, and after reading your NO AUDIO one-shot I wanted to read more from you long-form, so lucky me! You clearly have a lot of chapters to offer, lol. Decided to start with this story because it seems more to my tastes. I’ll be reviewing chapter by chapter until I gotta go for the day, so let’s get started!
Oh, just wait until you try out my other big PMD fic. /s
But thanks for giving things a shot here, since I know this is kind of a genre jump from [NO AUDIO]
There’s a lot going on in this prologue. I’m a fan of when fic authors decide to use other languages to represent the local culture and customs; I noticed that Fledglings used a lot of Spanish, which I would’ve been better poised to understand than German, but what can you do. I think overall it works pretty well, I can’t remember any inclusion that felt too shoehorned in, they’re all quite natural so far, mostly slang and curses and such. And the little pop-up when you hover over the words to explain what they mean is a very welcome addition.
Glad to hear that the multilanguage content and the hovertext were doing their job there. It’s always one of those things in my writing that people either like or don’t, but I like it and it lets me raid TPCI’s bin of alternative Pokémon names, so good enough.
Lyle gets to show off a lot of his personality this chapter thankfully, mostly from all the interactions he gets with other mons in very different situations. You give him good depth even just in the prologue. There’s still a lot I don’t know about him, obviously, and much about his values and way of thinking I’m interested in, but he makes a good showing here, desperate but savvy and mostly agreeable until things don’t start going his way. Definitely the ‘retired criminal’ type. I guess we’ll see how far that desperation carries him!
Well, it’s carried him for 30 and counting chapters, so… ‘quite far’, apparently. ^^
Also god damn, seventy years of war? That’s outrageous, it looks like Pokemon aren’t much better than us in that regard lol. It doesn’t surprise me at all that morale is so low and recruitment so difficult, I figure this society isn’t too far from either some riots or complete collapse as drafting becomes a higher necessity that just can’t be met. Really interesting stuff!
You’ll get to find out more about this as the story goes by, but yes, there is meant to be a whole ‘hanging by a thread’ vibe to Varhyde and its inhabitants.
I also got a good glimpse of the other mons in Lyle’s life, though for a prologue at the end I felt like it was maybe a little bloated with character introductions and interactions, but I guess there’s no helping it when all of them are necessary to end where you did, a natural hook for the prologue. Still, it’s a very small nitpick, I’m very impressed and eager to read more.
Well, glad to hear that in the end, things won you over. Sounds like that Prologue did its job there. ^^
Another really big and eventful chapter! I like the fast pace of this story, there’s a lot going on but without sacrificing detail, as the narration does a good job of providing nice descriptions when it’s needed and also some exposition and info about everything else. We get a clearer look at Lyle this time, seeing his recklessness and the scoundrel nature that he clearly wasn’t able to shake off as easily as he thought. I like how he kinda immediately falls back on that when he spends a little time with the outlaws. It comes almost as second nature to him. In the end Kate didn’t need to do much more convincing, lol.
Wouldn’t be an Outlaw-focused story if he couldn’t get back into the swing of things easily. :V
The depiction of the mystery dungeon was good, I could imagine the wet crevices and the darkness of the cave without trouble, and the ‘pockets’ and the mist were easy to understand even to a PMD newbie like me, though I didn’t imagine they’d be that big! I also wasn’t expecting such a huge cast so quickly. When I read that there were so many bands of Pokemon I was wondering what the hell kind of caravan merited such firepower, but then we got the explanation for that. Must be a really powerful band of little rodents for this to be so touch and go, even with so many Pokemon.
Well, that and said rodents also had quite a bit of muscle to hide behind as I’m sure you found out later.
Despite the large cast though, it’s good that you focused mostly on a select few, the band leaders and a couple more ‘mon that Lyle is familiar with. I wish we’d gotten some more scenes with Kate, but I figure there’ll be enough time for that soon, assuming the raid doesn’t start immediately in the next chapter haha.
The fight scene with Lyle and the Sammurott was really well written. It felt dynamic but not overtly drawn-out, a good deal of moving around and strategizing before striking in a very brutal manner, I could feel that hit that Lyle took. And he’s right, it was pretty reckless, but it looks like it’s just what he needed. I hope we also get to see more of Alvin and his relationship with Lyle, feels like the plot’s moving almost too fast at some points. But the fic’s just gotten started, so we’ll see.
Very impressed with the worldbuilding again! The more you outline about this corner of the world, the more I want to learn.
I mean, I suppose that I always have been a bit of a sucker for action sequences and worldbuilding. Glad both of them left a good impression on you.
God damn, what a dynamic and fun chapter! Now I get why you were trying to get to this so fast, lol, and you managed to write it so well. Obviously writing a long and exhausting raid with so many Pokemon is a challenge, but thanks to all the previous introductions and the way the plan was explained I was able to understand everything that was going on with little trouble. The battles were easy to follow and very entertaining to read, especially around the Zangoose and the Aerodactyl. It did feel like the fight was spread out more than I initially thought, but it was still really cool.
Also nice to see more of Kate in action! I guess she ditched the job of scout just so she’d be able to work alongside her old friends, which shows she’s just as sentimental as Lyle in that way, and she definitely pulled her weight. So did everyone except that poor Scyther and Mismagius. Also I loved the way the Togedemaru talked, I can’t lie, I would be too struck by adorableness to be able to rob them, but I guess that’s the point.
Well, it’s also a walking Xenoblade reference, but yes, the dippy speech patterns putting others off-guard is indeed the point.
Not much else to focus on since so much of this chapter was action, but the introduction of the Axew that appears on the cover means we now have all of our protagonists! Though it’s unsure what will bring them together, I’m sure that’ll become clear soon enough because there’s no way everything went so well without a hitch.
I mean… you did pick up on what the writer of that letter said about where they’d be relative to that caravan, right? But yeah, it was never going to be that easy for the gang.
Also speaking of that Axew… weird. Obviously there’s something to her, 20-thousand is a lot of money to waste on keeping her secure and hidden, and if the whole realm depends on her being locked up I can’t imagine what kind of secrets she’s got going on. Hopefully I can get some answers soon.
Well, you’ll get some, even if it’ll be a while before the full story comes out.
This was a super fun chapter to read! You’re really good at fight scenes, something that I just happen to adore, so I know I’ll enjoy this.
Despite the chaos at the end there, this chapter confirms a few things that were very heavily implied during the last one, most important perhaps being Irune’s importance, and that she was the actual ‘treasure’ the roly-poly caravan was transporting, which makes me think maybe all of the other valuables were to serve as distractions? Or maybe not, maybe they were just as important, but Lely’s remark that those berries were an odd thing to transport made me think that.
The ‘mon who contracted the Roly-Poly Caravan basically intended to smuggle her along with a normal shipment to avoid attracting outside attention. They originally assumed that those Togedemaru would do a better job at keeping potential hazards at bay.
Like Kate said, it’s understandable the outlaws wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry considering how deep they are into this mystery dungeon, but celebrating so soon instead of scrambling was probably reckless. Though with the joy of a mission well done and all that loot and food to enjoy, even Lely ends up not thinking too much about it, and I don’t blame them. There’s still the question of how exactly the Salamance and his buddies managed to get here so fast if they weren’t tailing the roly-poly crew. I can’t imagine there being any sort of tracking device in this world, at least not a technological one. Was it something in the bag Irune wanted? Or something else? I guess we’ll find out eventually.
It’s actually mentioned in the teaser / its translation from Chapter 2. Said Salamence and his underlings were shadowing a short distance away by walking and specifically instructed the caravan to message for help if they were in trouble. The fact that said message was smothered is the primary reason why Lyle and the rest of the Outlaws had any head start at all to get back to their encampment.
I liked how chaotic and frenetic the sudden battle felt. Also that despite the outlaws surely out-numbering their foes, they got completely destroyed because they were both exhausted and had just finished a big meal, which I’m sure would’ve dropped their fighting capabilities a lot. I know I’m not in the mood to move a lot after eating, lol. Feel bad for Myra and Alvin, even if the former realistically probably deserved it. And now we have our team of four finally assembled! What they’ll do from here on I have no idea, but if that excerpt at the beginning is anything to go by, probably carry Irune and use her as leverage to escape the mess they got themselves into. A mess Dalton seems to know more of than he lets on.
Yeah, “Outlaws vs. better-equipped soldiers” was always only ever going to end one way, really.
The only nitpick I’d have about this chapter is that there are some paragraphs in the narration that feel were a bit too bloated, or longer than I think were necessary. I noticed that the narration usually consists of Lyle noticing stuff and then remarking upon it. Sometimes it helps a lot with contextualizing everyone’s reactions and feelings, but in this chapter specifically I felt like there was a weird mix of Lyle noticing people’s ‘odd’ reactions but being unable to contextualize them, which maybe was the point but it made some descriptions feel like a ramble. This wasn’t really an issue during the calmer parts of the chapter, but this is an example from the chaos of the fighting later that I feel could’ve been edited to be shorter and punchier:
[...]
Specifically I feel like the narration calls too much attention to Lyle’s bodily reactions to the action, you could probably mention it once more briefly and let the scene flow better, but that’s just my opinion and it’s a very small nitpick.
Hrm, I’ll keep it in mind, but this might be something that I opt to just leave for now since I admittedly didn’t have any firm ideas of how to condense this offhand at the time of replying.
I was wrong before, THIS is how we get our main four together, lol. I misjudged how many of them had managed to escape last time, and it’s sad that it didn’t last long. This was a pretty neat chapter in terms of showing the building dread and exhaustion as the characters get pushed to their breaking point in an attempt to escape, but because it’s sort of a continuation from the situation from last chapter I don’t have much to comment on that front, same with the battles. Though they were very well-written and dynamic, as always.
What I found most interesting about this chapter were the little bits of worldbuilding thrown in, especially about the nature of mystery dungeons and the ‘relics’ found and discussed throughout. It took me a bit to realize what the one they found was, lol, at least until the two parts were described. That’s really cool, and it only makes me wonder what was the reason for all of it. That and what was discussed before regarding the lost ‘gods’ and whatever Irune’s role in all of this is.
This chapter felt like it flowed smoother, the few moments of peace in between all the battles were nice respites and the end there with all the mons exhausted and ready to keel over felt earned; I can’t wait to see what they decide to do now that they probably have nowhere to go back to.
As far as inciting incidents and following premises go, the five chapters before this, all the build-up and the raid gone wrong are very well constructed looking back, narratively speaking. It’s done fast, though not so much so that it sacrifices any character moments or important establishing information. We even got some good fight scenes throughout. It’s a good start to a story I think, at least one of the length I’m imagining this will end up being.
Yeeeeah, this is going to be a chunkier story length-wise. For reference, I’m just now getting to around the midpoint of the story about 330k words in. Granted, some of that second half might go down a bit faster than the first, but it definitely turned out a lot bigger than I initially imagined.
Anyway, onto what actually happens in the chapter, I’m a little bit surprised that none of them even considered the idea of giving Irene back to her captors for a possible pardon/reward, as underhanded as it is. Obviously Dalton doesn’t seem the type, and Lyle isn’t either at least not inwardly, but I feel like Kate would’ve considered it, at least. Maybe it’s all the more obvious to them that it wouldn’t work, that it’s not worth the risk to present themselves to those soldiers again, or to any authority, after what they’ve done before.
It’s intended to be the “it wouldn’t work” given that they were just forced to run for dear life from those ‘mons so turning around and going “here’s your Axew” would be a recipe to just get captured. I might go back and hotpatch in an explicit acknowledgement of that.
They all accepted their new mission pretty fast too, though that’s more understandable considering how hungry they are, and knowing they need to make a decision right now. Irune also gives them something to look forward to; it’s that common social rule where people are all the more eager to do something dangerous twice after losing what they thought they’d gained before. Not that I’m saying Irune is trying to trick them, but it does ring true to how people act, lol. So good work there.
Glad to hear. Though yeah, such is life with operating off of a sunk cost fallacy.
I’m thinking about the quicker pace of this chapter, and I feel like while writing an additional one before they make up their minds would’ve been slightly more realistic, it also would’ve been too much, so I get why you decided to speed things along a little. I’m very excited to see what the start of this new journey will be like, so it worked on me!
Yeah, in retrospect, you’re probably onto something there, but I figured that the readers had waited long enough and that good old-fashioned desperation would’ve sufficed to smooth things over.
I like that I keep finding these very natural stopping points. I’ll be back as shortly as I can, but I like where the plot and the characters are going!
And thanks again for stopping by to check this story out. It was a lot of fun to read your feedback. ^^
And the viewcount seems to have shot up a bit in the past year since that next 10,000 views to 20,000 (plus an extra thousand that snuck over the line) sure flew by fast. To commemorate the occasion, I made a fresh batch of trivia to accompany today’s update:
Author’s Note: This trivia section was written under the assumption that readers had caught up with the full length of the story up to this point and touches frankly on major spoilers. If you’re stumbling across this from before Chapter 29, strongly consider revisiting it sometime after catching up.
How did you come up with Lacan?
Lacan in the very earliest pre-planning of this story was a character that was developed in parallel with Sophia with the working name “General Jerk”. From the very beginning, he was intended to be an implacable and mission-oriented antagonist working to try and seize Irune to use her power for his superiors’ ends in battle by any means necessary. Only two candidate species were ever considered for him—Dragonite and Salamence—with the former getting reused for his patronym and later for Hermes’ species casting.
Around the time that this story made its fateful decision to throw subtlety out the window about making Xeno series references, it occurred to me that there was a recurring character archetype from it that closely mirrored the role and personality “General Jerk” needed. One bout of rationalization along the lines of “well, Path of Valor has a ‘Yuna’ and a ‘Seifer’ and nobody bats an eye at them” later, I made the decision was to make him a “Lacan”, the name of a character who originated the archetype in Xenogears. It is generally accepted that said character is named after French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, with a more involved explanation provided in the below block for those who are so inclined and less spoiler-averse:
Lacan in Xenogears is a fallen hero character with a split personality named ‘Grahf’, or ‘Graf’ in the original Japanese, who attempts to break a cycle of eternal recurrence through heinous means. Lacan in this story is a broad-strokes adaptation of that archetype which drew influence from both aspects of that character, with his noble rank and callsign both intentionally evoking his namesake’s alter ego.
As such, a few of the characterization details of Lacan are very on-brand for a ‘Lacan’, including his fondness of painting and his clingy and protective tendencies towards his confidant. He also drew influence from some of the other incarnations of his namesake archetype character, which if you notice said parallels, ought to give you an idea of who a few other characters from later Xeno games that are built around this character archetype are.
How did you come up with Sophia?
In the very earliest drafts, Sophia was cast as a "reluctant villainous underling" archetype I've played around with before back in my days play-by-post RPing in We Are All Pokémon Trainers called "Csiki", with the first firm detail to be settled on being species casting as a Corvisquire for a ‘knight and squire’ dynamic with early-draft Lacan. Her casting as “Sophia” was settled on around the same time that it was decided to give the story a “Lacan”, with it similarly being the name of a character in Xenogears that started a recurring series archetype. In Sophia’s case, her namesake is named after an important concept in Gnosticism related to the human soul and feminine aspects of God. Once again, a more involved explanation can be viewed in the below block for those reading along who are less spoiler-averse:
Sophia in Xenogears is a star-crossed love interest to Lacan who ultimately sacrifices herself in battle to save him and their allies' lives, with his inability to move on from his grief afterwards precipitating his fall as a heroic character. This story's Sophia originated as a character composite between her and a few other characters from Xenogears that she is intimately linked to, plus some characters from later in the series who were built around the same archetype. It happened to be quite amusing once Xenoblade 3 came out since its own “Sophia” character in its cast wound up turning out fairly close to the one from this story.
Once again, the characterization details for Sophia are very on-brand for a ‘Sophia’, including her recurring issues with self-doubt and pushing back on things she is uncomfortable with. Like Lacan, Sophia’s baseline characterization also drew influence some later incarnations of her namesake character’s base archetype, which astute readers will likely be able to identify parallels to.
How did you come up with Newangle City?
Newangle City drew heavy influence off of a few different locations from the Xeno series, but chief among them all was New Los Angeles from Xenoblade X if the district naming scheme didn’t already make it obvious, with its layout essentially being a splice of NLA’s beta concept along with a bland-name near-future Frankfurt. The name itself is a disguised reference to NLA, with the ‘Neuengelstadt’ it is rendered as in German semantically meaning ‘New Angel City’.
Obviously, as a repurposed husk of a near-future settlement that can no longer keep the original lights on, it opened the door to other influences, in particular Morytha from Xenoblade 2 for the ‘decrepit, decaying human structures’ vibe. Specific districts were influenced by various places from the series with the palaces atop the Administrative District leaning particularly heavily on Alcamoth for vibes, and Shift Square leaning on the scruffier parts of Nortune from Xenogears.
What about all those characters and places from Newangle City’s Underworld?
Newangle City’s underworld figures were built around the need for a local criminal syndicate for Team Forager to butt heads with and a “safe place” for them to crash at while they were in the City. The Thieves’ Guild filled the former, and drew influence off of the various “Blood Lobster” subplots from later Xenoblade games. The two members of it that we care about, Igna and Ansel, are fairly transparent nods to some recurring overworld enemies from the series that share names and broad-strokes appearances.
The Möbius, representing the other major branch of Newangle City’s underworld, originated in planning with a working name of “the Continental” referencing the location from the John Wick series. While the name is indeed a series reference, contrary to what most readers have guessed up to this point, it didn’t originate as a Xenoblade 3 reference, but to the much older “Möbius Hotel” from Xenosaga: Episode III. The decision to lean into Xenoblade 3 parallels to the villainous faction of the same name with different spelling, was done fairly late under the logic that it would be what 95% of the more series-savvy readers would default to. Ecks, Wye, and the unnamed proprietor are nods to the three core members from Xenoblade 3’s “Möbius”.
How did you come up with Irune?
Irune in initial planning was intended to fill the same meta role as that character from Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon, but with her true identity being the primary driver for the broader plot. That identity being the “Nameless Dragon” was actually originally a throwaway placeholder for her identity, but settled on early on for lending itself particularly well to a backdrop of a land being in a forever war with an implacable rival.
Irune’s underlying character also significantly predates the process of building out the party’s roles, and in original drafts she was more or less a take off an old RP character I used to write that was basically Elh Melizee from Solatorobo, but as a Fraxure. She drifted a bit from that baseline as the story got more fleshed out and heavy on the Xeno-series references, and wound up drawing from some characters in that series into a composite. Her species was a detail that took a bit of settling on, other than that from the moment her true identity was settled, I knew that I wanted Irune to be an Unovan dragon. Axew was the one ultimately chosen due to wanting to do something different from another Druddigon main character, and carrying “partner” vibes due to it being a selectable species in Gates to Infinity.
As for her name, that was a detail that fell into place more or less the instant I saw it, and has been a quiet bit of meta foreshadowing as to what the mysterious power lurking within her is: it is a name of Basque origin with the semantic meaning of “Trinity”.
Why have a ‘Nameless Dragon’?
For those of you wondering why this story doesn’t refer to the Original Dragon under such terms, the answer to this was alluded to in Chapter 26. In more literary prose in German, “nameless” is a way of expressing something so great or strong so as to be named or put into words, akin to usages of “untold” in English. The meaning fit both in German to describe an entity of untold power, and in English for the name of a being that 15 years on, still does not have an official name in franchise media. Thus a ‘Nameless Dragon’.
Are there other fanfics that this story draws influence from?
Well, other Pokémon fanfiction, for one. As those of you who read through the first Trivia likely gathered, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rebirth and Knightfall’s works such as Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Overthrown helped influence the final direction and tone that the story took, and have a number of character and location cameos worked in in the background throughout the story. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Path of Valor, while being more influential in terms of meta premise, is a bit lighter on outright cameos. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Power Trip falls into a similar bucket and is the origin of the “Carrier” profession and depiction of how air travel works, along with a running trend of background characters having names derived from clippings of English and German localization Pokémon names..
What’s with those weird terms like ‘tay-emm’ and ‘ah-ghee’ that pop up in this story?
These are phoneticizations of various acronyms in German, in an attempt to depict concepts where Wander’s Pokémon remember approximations of what they would be called, but not their semantic meanings. Their proper renderings can be seen in the German language dialogue (e.x. ‘TM' and ‘AG’ for the examples above), which for the eagle-eyed can tip off small nuances that aren’t brought up right away
What’s up with the weird superscript on the chapter headers?
Those are alt-titles in German as rendered in a Kurrent font. They all are valid translations of the main titles, but occasionally carry subtle differences in nuance such as Chapter 3’s ‘Zusammenstoß’, which can also be used to refer to clashing or fighting. A chapter-by-chapter listing of alt-titles began a phased rollout as part of today’s update for the curious, along with brief explanations for differences in nuance where necessary.
Do you have headcanon VAs for any of your characters?
Text box dooting. /s
More seriously, the core cast tends to be hard for me to pin down, but as a story swimming with characters that are transparent homages, it makes imagining their voices a bit easier. In no particular order:
Cruz - Ben Diskin
Vilma - Caitlin Glass
Nellie - Cassandra Lee Morris
Bel - Ray Chase
Lacan - I waffle between Brian Tochi and Harry McEntire depending on my mood
Sophia - Moira Quirk or Anna Koval depending on Lacan’s casting
Oh yeah, and Pax I totally imagine as Matt Roberts/Jimmy Livingstone for obvious reasons if his dialogue didn’t already make it obvious. :V
In den frühen Jahren nach dem glühenden Blitz gab es in unserem Land Pokémon, die versuchten, das Wissen der Menschen zu bewahren, die einst unter ihnen gelebt hatten. Diese ersten Schriftgelehrten sahen sich mit der Aufgabe konfrontiert, Wissen zu bewahren, das nicht mündlich überliefert werden konnte und bei dem schon kleine Unstimmigkeiten dazu führten, dass es für immer verloren war.
In den frühesten Aufzeichnungen unseres Landes wird berichtet, dass unsere Vorfahren zuerst versuchten, die Weisheiten ihrer plötzlich verstorbenen Gefährten in menschlichen Schriften zu archivieren. Zu ihrer großen Enttäuschung erwies sich das Schreiben mit solchen Schriften für Pokémon wie uns als mühsam - sie waren das Werk von Wesen, die ihre Bedeutung nicht wie wir Pokémon aus Unterschieden in Rhythmus und Intonation, sondern aus Veränderungen des Klangs ableiten konnten. Selbst Versuche, menschliche Schriften in ursprünglichen Schriften wiederzugeben, wie die Icognitorunen, die wir heute zur Wiedergabe von Wörtern mit unbekannter semantischer Bedeutung verwenden, erwiesen sich als unzureichend, da ein umfangreiches Training erforderlich war, um die Bedeutung solcher Wörter aus ihren einzelnen Glyphen zusammenzusetzen.
Etwa zur gleichen Zeit begannen die ersten Zivilen dieser Welt, ihre eigenen Runen zu bilden, die besser für ihre Zunge geeignet waren. Sie fertigten Glyphen für einzelne Ideen und Konzepte an, die sie aus den Pfoten und Krallen ihres Körpers formten und die sie „Fußabdruckrunen“ nannten. Diese Runen verbreiteten sich von ihren Ursprungsorten aus stückweise über ganz Wunder, und selbst die erbitterte Feindschaft zwischen den Ländern der Wahrheit und der Ideale reichte letztlich nicht aus, um ihre Zivilen daran zu hindern, einen großen Bestand an gemeinsamen Runen für ihre Schriften zu verwenden.
Solche Fußabdruckrunen waren zwar für Wesen wie uns leichter zu verstehen, aber ohne Druckerpressen oder die fleißigsten Schreiber nur mühsam wiederzugeben. Daher begannen die Pokémon, diese Runen im Alltag in Kurzschrift wiederzugeben, und vereinfachten sie zu Strich- und Punktfolgen. Mit der Zeit erreichten diese Praktiken die Höfe der Monarchen dieser Welt, die zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten in der Geschichte ihren Segen dazu gaben, dass die Kurzschriftformen für ihre Reiche standardisiert wurden.
So umständlich diese alten Runen auch zu interpretieren sein mögen, viele Weisheiten vergangener Generationen sind ausschließlich in ihnen wiedergegeben, zusammen mit Details und Nuancen, die in der modernen Schrift verloren gehen. Für Gelehrte, die versuchen, die Wahrheit über die Vergangenheit unserer Welt aus der Ferne zu ergründen, ist eine gute Kenntnis dieser Schriften auch heute noch unverzichtbar.
- Auszug aus »Das königliche Lexikon der Wissenschaften und Künste«
Dalton thought that after a long day being run ragged, somehow managing to steal all the books on Igna and Ansel’s list, and just barely avoiding capture by the scales of their teeth, that sitting down with a stack of books would’ve been a welcome reprieve. Perhaps it’d still have been one had he not constantly had his attention drifting towards the door or windows overlooking the alley for any sign of Igna and Ansel’s arrival, or worse still, of snarling Pokémon in green plates who were coming for them.
He and the rest of Team Forager gathered around the copy of The Explorer's Handbook to Mystery Dungeons that they’d stolen—an unabridged edition from how visibly thick it was. Those mythology tomes they’d stolen were lying on the side for if they managed to get the chance to look at them, while Irune was snout-deep in some sort of weathered brown book that she’d peck at with a small nub of charcoal.
Except not even ten minutes after they’d settled into their room at the Möbius and started plotting out their course, the wounds he’d picked up from their fights earlier that day started catching up with him. Judging from their occasional winces and uncomfortable squirms, his teammates were in similar straits themselves. Maybe the adrenaline from their earlier escape and then the incident with those spies down the hall had finally worn off. Or perhaps getting thrown around in that human ruin by that Earthquake from Lacan had done more damage to his broken arm than he’d expected. Either way, the Heliolisk found himself flinching from every little shift or movement through his splint and could barely hold his attention to the pages in the book.
It was a sign that it was time to treat his arm again, and before he knew it, the Heliolisk was stooping in front of a low-slung cabinet just opposite the beds and rooting through their bags for a healing berry or two with his teammates. The items that they fished through had a way of blurring together between the places they’d gone to and marks they’d robbed to get them, but one thing that stood out was that there was a worrying lack of anything to heal themselves with. There were Seeds and an odd Max Elixir or two, but much to Dalton’s alarm, the Oran Berry he’d applied to his arm in the morning before leaving the Möbius had been the last one in his bag.
The others’ reactions said it all. Lyle and Irune both looked just as taken aback as he was, while Kate paused and stiffened up briefly before the Sneasel pulled her head out of her bag with a quiet grimace.
“I don’t suppose any of you also have any Oran Berries to spare?” she asked.
“You’re also out?” Lyle asked. “What happened to all the stuff we stole from those two soldiers?
“Well, they had some berries, but...”
Kate pulled her paw back, revealing a pair of Oran Berries in her grasp. There was a moment of blank silence, before the Sneasel shook her head with a low sigh.
“They’re not enough for all of us right now,” she said. “The Berries and Seeds were the main thing that we didn’t get around to stealing from that market the other day, and you have been using quite a few to treat that arm of yours since it broke, Scales.”
Dalton quietly sucked in a breath and traded looks between his teammates. They didn’t exactly have any broken limbs, but between the scrapes flecking their bodies and the occasional sway in their gait, they were obviously worse for wear themselves. He noticed Lyle briefly hesitating and staring down at the berries with his teeth visibly on edge, before he shook his head with a low sigh.
“We’ll just have to make do with what we can, then.”
Dalton opened his mouth to ask just what Lyle was proposing, only for the Quilava to cut him off by passing one of the berries over. He pushed Kate’s paw away, and motioned back at the bag.
“Let Dalton do what he has to for his arm. The rest of us are better off trying to sleep off what we can of our wounds,” Lyle said. “We’re better off holding onto that last berry for if we need it on the way out of here.”
The Quilava looked visibly hesitant, and it was frankly hard for Dalton to fault him. They didn’t have a firm idea of how they were going to get out of this city, and it was hard to imagine that after everything that had happened earlier that day, that they’d get another chance to steal supplies from their surroundings on the way out.
“You did say that we were tight on time, Scales. Patch yourself up a bit here. Lyle and I will look over that map in that handbook a bit more,” Kate said. “Shame that the book those Hunters had didn’t have this version of the map in it. Those drawings make it a lot easier to understand what’s going on!”
Dalton sighed and turned his attention to the berry in his hand. Yes, he supposed time was a precious commodity right now, and if he was feeling unwell to the point that he couldn’t stay focused looking at a map, he probably wouldn’t be in any shape to run around again. He grabbed a linen left out on the top of the cabinet and made his way over to his bed, settling down on its mattress as he fumbled with its rind. He tried to wedge a nail from his good arm’s hand under it, only for the fruit to roll out of his grasp.
“Ach, um Himmels Willen…”
He tried again, but the Berry was surprisingly hard to manipulate with his non-dominant hand. He gouged at the rind with fits and starts, as he heard Lyle narrating the map to Kate in the background.
“It’s just like in that Handbook we stole earlier from those Hunters. The dotted lines point out Links between Mystery Dungeons, and the arrowheads let you know which directions they go in between them…”
Dalton looked up just in time to see Lyle trace his paw along the pages of the Handbook as Kate looked on. There was something almost childlike about the way the Sneasel watched him at rapt attention. It was almost like when his parents would read to him back when he was younger, or those times when Dieter—
He caught himself and pushed the thought from his head.
He didn’t want to think about Dieter right now. Not while his broken arm was throbbing and the world around him felt like it was pressing down on him. The conversation between Lyle and Kate in the background blurred together as he turned his attention back to the Oran Berry, but for the life of him, he couldn’t get this damned thing to—
“Here.”
Green scales suddenly appeared at the corner of Dalton’s vision. He briefly stiffened up and turned, where there was Irune holding the Oran Berry in her hands and staring up at him.
“You looked like you were having trouble peeling the berry,” Irune said. “Let me help you apply it.”
Dalton held his tongue in reply, before narrowing his eyes with a low huff.
“I thought you were helping Lyle and Kate look over Mystery Dungeons for a route to the Divine Roost,” the Heliolisk said. “And since when did you care so much about the problems of a ‘repulsive leech’ like me?”
The Axew briefly flinched under his gaze as the Heliolisk idly shuffled his tail against the mattress. He wasn’t sure why he was letting that comment of hers from Primordial Woods stick with him so much, especially when it was utterly trivial compared to his broken arm bones he was still grappling with.
… Perhaps it was because it sounded an awful lot like what a part of him would’ve said about himself. One that he’d long since tried to ignore.
“I suppose I have a way of doing things that I wind up regretting. Especially if I really am this Dyad,” Irune murmured. “I… should’ve been more gracious about things back then. Since I’d probably be on a ship on the Sundered Sea right now if it weren’t for you three.”
Dalton briefly hesitated. It was a roundabout and evasive apology, but it seemed earnest enough. The fact that Irune hadn’t turned into a stuttering mess while saying it was a good enough sign she wasn’t faking things. He watched as the Axew averted her gaze briefly, before looking up with an almost pleading expression.
“I was serious when I said I needed help to make it to the Divine Roost earlier,” the Axew said. “You were already hurt before Lacan hit you with that Earthquake earlier, are you sure you don’t need me to help at all?”
Dalton felt the ends of his mouth start to curl down. Irune was fairly obviously trying to butter him up right now. Probably because she was afraid that he and the others would see her as a liability and cut her loose.
He supposed that there was some sense in them doing so, but he didn’t know if he’d be able to stomach following through on it. He certainly wasn’t back in the library. It also didn’t change anything about the throbbing pain in his arm, or how much trouble he’d been having trying to treat it.
He sighed, before holding out his good arm and holding it out for the Axew to grasp.
“I suppose that I’m not really in a position to say ‘no’ to a helping hand right now,” he sighed. “Just try and keep the berry juice on the linens, since I’d like to not sleep in sticky bedding tonight.”
Irune nodded and took his good arm’s hand, as Dalton helped her up onto the mattress. The Axew made her way around him from left to right, peeling back the rind of the Oran Berry before raising it above the top of his right arm’s splint. She wedged the fruit up against a tusk and pressed down, bleeding blue juice down that worked its way down under his splint and stung as it passed the break in his bones.
Dalton briefly fought back a wince and steadied himself. He breathed in and let his eyes drift to the floor as the stinging sensation faded, when he noticed Irune hesitating with the fruit and staring at him.
“Why did you do it?” she asked.
“Do what?” Dalton replied, tilting his head.
“Attack Sophia back in the Royal Library,” the Axew said. “She was going to let you go if you’d just let her take me. How come you didn’t even consider her offer?”
Dalton held his tongue. He didn’t know if he would go so far to say that it was worth running into Irune on that fateful night just outside Waterhead Cave, but knew the way the army worked. With Sophia’s insistence on top of it that they needed to draw out Irune’s power at the right time and place, it all seemed to be pointing towards one thing:
“Because they were going to make you fight. And I’d rather have gone down fighting than just accept that.”
A long silence followed afterwards. Much to Dalton’s surprise, Irune didn’t look as startled as he was expecting her to be. He doubted she understood why, but perhaps she’d already suspected that that ‘offer’ hadn’t sat well with him.
Even if Irune was somehow some sort of primordial god, or trio of gods, or however this ‘Nameless Dragon’ was supposed to work, something about the idea of the army sending a little child like her off to war just made his scales crawl. Perhaps it was just sentiment that he’d just inherited from his parents. Much like them, he’d always felt uncomfortable hearing stories about youngsters tagging along with the Trosse that followed after army units and their encampments. There were no shortage of tales about them meeting unfortunate fates when their wagons and caravans wound up being less safely behind the front lines than their members thought.
He could only imagine how much worse it’d be to actively throw one into the same maelstrom that’d stolen Dieter away from him.
He snapped to attention after feeling another dash of juice run past the break in his arm. The Oran Berry was looking fairly spent now against Irune’s tusk as she bled it, probably a sign that it was time to eat its leftover pulp. He saw it resting on the linens and reached out for it, as Irune took the linens just afterwards to try and wipe off the juice from her tusks. Dalton raised the pulp to his mouth, only to pause when he noticed Irune briefly wincing herself. He spotted a patch of damaged scales on her hip and briefly hesitated… when the Axew’s voice broke the silence.
“Is… that what happened to your brother? And why you’re always so bothered by the Grünhäuter whenever we run into them?”
Dalton snapped to attention and saw Irune giving a curious glance up at him. Her eyes briefly widened, which from how sharply he could feel the ends of his mouth curling down, he supposed was a sign his reaction had startled her.
“You shouldn’t go prying into things that don’t concern you, Irune. But no, he was about my age when he entered the army, not that it helped him much,” he harrumphed. “Though do you really expect me not to be bothered by Pokémon who have ruined the lives of more friends than I can count? Ones who would at best stuff me into some cramped cell for years?”
“No, no, I understand that part,” the Axew replied, flusteredly waving her hands. “But you’re bothered by things that they do like the way they take bribes, and…”
She trailed off and pawed at her arm with an evasive glance aside.
“It just seemed a little strange for an Outlaw to care about that,” she said. “I was just a little curious if it came from somewhere for you.”
There was a long pause between the two on the bed. He probably ought to have just brushed her off and scarfed down that Oran pulp, but something about the question lingered with him.
There was no logical reason for him to be so bothered. Why, the disgraceful conduct of the Gendarmen and army types in general even helped them on a couple occasions since the night they made it out of Waterhead Cave.
Maybe it was sentiment? No, Dalton liked to think it was something deeper than that. He didn’t need to be a law-abiding ‘mon to know when something was wrong… that it wasn’t just… that it wasn’t as it rightfully ought to be.
“I suppose that it’s just force of habit from before I became an Outlaw,” he replied. “I grew up in a world where soldiers and Gendarmen were supposed to be there to protect others. To be loyal to king and country even when it was difficult. I guess there’s always been a part of me that’s never gotten over the disappointment of seeing the Pokémon I was raised to look up to falling so short of the ideal of who they’re supposed to be.”
He trailed off, shaking his head with a mirthful chuckle.
“I suppose that makes me a bit of a hypocrite, doesn’t it?” he said. “When I first became an Outlaw, I thought that it’d be something temporary. That I’d just do a couple jobs and steal from Pokémon who had things coming to them before I could go back to my normal life…”
“… Not anymore than the rest of us.”
Dalton cast a sideways glance towards Irune and saw her averting her gaze, looking down at the bedspread underfoot.
“It’s hard sometimes, knowing how things ought to be and wanting it, while being powerless to do anything about it,” she murmured. “I… don’t really know what specifically made you an Outlaw, but I have a feeling that I’d understand why you did better than I gave you credit for originally.”
Dalton wasn’t really sure what to make of that. Would Irune be able to understand him? Yes, she had been on the run from the Gendarmen and that Fähnlein for a while now, but she was hardly a normal Pokémon. If Irune really was the Nameless Dragon as the Corvisquire alleged… would she really know what she herself wanted?
Even when not being used to speak in reference of the gods, wish and reality were often separated by a yawning chasm. And in times like theirs, truth and ideals were often every bit as much so. Could someone who somehow had the embodiment of both slumbering inside of her really not just swing from one yearning to its opposite?
“Scales, not to be rude, but how long does it take to apply a berry? You’re the one who was worried about us running out of time before Igna and Ansel came back!”
Dalton back at the table and saw Kate and Lyle staring with puzzled flicks of their ears. He supposed that was a sign that things had been dragging on long enough. He slid off the bed, passing the remains of the Oran Berry over back to Irune.
“Here, you should have the rest,” he said. “You’re not exactly in great shape yourself, and you’ll need your health for the sort of journey we’re facing down.”
The Axew stared back befuddled for a moment before taking the berry pulp and scarfing it down. As she slid off the bed and followed after him, Dalton had the feeling that there were other things Irune had going on with herself that she still wasn't telling them.
He supposed that now wasn’t the time to try and suss them out. They had a general idea of where they needed to be going, they just needed to settle on a route… and somehow make it out of the city in good enough shape to take it.
Kate flicked her ears and glanced over at Dalton and Irune on the opposite side of the table. A part of her felt a little bad for cutting short whatever those two were talking about on the bed, but it surely could wait until they were out of this city and with a head start over those Grünhäuter that were currently searching for them. She turned her attention back to the pages of the ‘Explorer’s Handbook’ and the map in it.
It wasn’t quite the same as the one in their old handbook. For one, there were a bunch of artsy-fartsy drawings on the map, especially on the locations of the Mystery Dungeons themselves. She still couldn’t read most of the writing even if they were definitely all Varhyder Runes and not whatever Torchic scratch those Hunters from Team Pathfinder or whatever it was had scribbled into the margins. She wasn’t sure why their copy didn’t have these drawings, since they made it easier to get an idea of what the places looked like. She was able to identify Newangle City in its place towards the center of the kingdom, along a river that ran east of what Lyle told her was the Lesser Mist.
“So… we’re down here right now,” she said, pointing a claw at a little illustration of a ring wall fencing in a set of towers. And the Divine Roost we need to get to is all the way over there in the middle of the sea.”
Kate traced her claw along the page to a floating hunk of earth, which unlike most of the other Mystery Dungeons on the map, wasn’t wreathed with whitish mist, but by a haze that was black almost like smoke. She’d vaguely remembered hearing stories in the past of how Mystery Dungeons whose presence and openings to the outside world would shift around by noticeable distances and were supposed to be more treacherous and unpredictable to travel through.
It was strange, since she could’ve sworn hearing in the past that Mystery Dungeons with black fog like that were usually either ones that had just formed or else were ones that were on the verge of dissipating. The Divine Roost was supposed to be a place that had been around since at least the time of the Great Flash. How had it lasted for over a thousand years in such a state?
Her ears swiveled at the sound of something rubbing against paper and glanced over. Lyle and Dalton were looking over at Irune, while the Axew poked her head out from behind that worn-out book of hers with charcoal nub in paw. ‘To help take notes’, as she’d insisted.
Kate didn’t know how much she believed that, but after the way they’d soaked that first handbook they’d stolen, it probably didn’t hurt to have a spare of some sort.
Except a spare of nothing was still nothing. Even with the lines sprouting off from the Divine Roost, most of them were dotted—which Lyle said were a marker that the Links they were depicted were known to be seasonal or else appeared only erratically. None of the Mystery Dungeons that weren’t that way were anywhere close to them right now, and she had a bad feeling about how none of those Mystery Dungeons with a stable Link to the Divine Roost were wreathed with a normal whitish mist.
"I don’t think we’re going to get away with hopping a boat and floating down the river to get there, and I doubt Lacan’s just going to let us go touring the countryside like some apprentice on a Wanderjahr,” the Sneasel said, shaking her head. “You’re the ‘mon who seems to knows these Mystery Dungeons out in the middle of nowhere the best, Scales. How exactly do we narrow things down here?”
“By looking for other Mystery Dungeons that will get us as close as possible to one that connects to the Divine Roost,” Dalton replied. “Just from a casual glance at this map, I think we already have a few choices to pick from.”
She watched as the Heliolisk moved his uninjured hand out over Newangle City and brought it up towards a set of fog-shrouded woods off to the north.
“If preparedness wasn’t an issue, the route which would minimize our time going about the countryside would be to go north and go through Newmoon Wildwood and then take the Link inside to Great Icefield to reach the Divine Roost,” he explained. “We’d only need to travel overland for about a day to reach Newmoon Wildwood, and the Links between them are stable and would take us to the Divine Roost without touching the surface.”
Kate blinked at Dalton and saw Irune pick up her charcoal nub ready to write down something. That was the route that had caught her and Lyle’s eye earlier, and the way Dalton described it made it, it sounded perfect for a route! But with the way that Dalton was hesitating right now and nervously pawing at his splint…
“Alright, what’s the catch, Scales?” she asked. “Since you’re looking a lot less excited than I thought you’d be about a route where we only have to travel for a day before getting off in the clear.”
“Both Newmoon Wildwood and Great Icefield are supposed to be fairly grueling Mystery Dungeons to traverse,” he explained. “I’m not a Hunter, but back in my hometown, the Pokémon from the Exploration Guild would tell stories of how even Gold-Rank teams would get overwhelmed by the Wilders there.”
Everyone around the table froze as soon as the words left Dalton’s mouth. Irune dropped her charcoal nub and shot a wide-eyed stare over, while Lyle abruptly lit up.
That… was one hell of a catch there. Though Dalton clearly wasn’t always on the wrong side of Hunters if that comment was anything to go by. Kate thought to ask further about what that was all about, only to dispel the thought after seeing Lyle flatten his ears with a tense shake of his head.
“I don’t think that ‘grueling’ is really something any of us need right now after we got chewed up in one forest full of angry Wilders,” the Quilava muttered. “Is there another route we can work with that you know won’t put us through something like that, Dalton?”
“That’s all very relative since we’re talking about Mystery Dungeons here,” the Heliolisk harrumphed. “Short of leaving things to fate, all the ones that have known consistent Links to the Divine Roost will be challenging to get through. But…”
The Heliolisk looked down at the map and put a finger on the pages, moving it off eastward towards a set of fog-shrouded falls as he mused aloud to himself.
“We could go through Sunset Falls and take the Link inside to Blue Bluffs. Once we came out the other end of it, it’d just be a brief detour overland, go through Shivering Sands, which has a Link to Blacksteel Ruins that starts forming around this time of year and lasts through to the end of winter,” the Heliolisk said.
Kate watched as the Heliolisk followed a set of lines up to a set of human ruins that seemed to poke out of what looked almost like a pillar of dark clouds and black fog and frowned. Could that place have been any more obviously less inviting?
“None of those Mystery Dungeons aside from Blacksteel Ruins should be much worse to get through than what we dealt with to reach our hideout in Waterhead Cave,” Dalton explained. “It’d also give us plenty of opportunities to forage for supplies along the way, too.”
That didn’t sound like a half-bad idea either. The Sneasel was about to speak up in favor of the idea when she noticed that there was a large gap between Newangle City and Sunset Falls, and an even bigger one between Blue Bluffs and Shivering Sands that looked almost as far apart as Moonturn Square and Toya Square were on the map.
She wasn’t going to hold her breath on them being able to hire another Carrier again, so…
“Wait, Scales. I thought you said we should be trying to find ways to get around by Links.”
“We are, but some of the alternative routes aren’t traversable entirely through Mystery Dungeons,” the Heliolisk said. “There’d be stretches where we’d have to spend two or three days traveling over normal land and find places to hunker down in whenever we needed to rest.”
… Two or three days? When they’d been struggling to keep Lacan and his damned Fähnlein off their tails for more than one? Gods, Dalton was not making these choices easy. Kate stared down at the map when she noticed that just a little ways north of that ‘Shivering Sands’ Mystery Dungeon was another with lines sprouting off of it, including one which lead up to a town with a wedge-shaped tower along the coast just on the other side of the Lesser Mist from where they were. There were at least two other Mystery Dungeons in its general vicinity that looked like they couldn’t be much further than the journey from Waterhead Cave to Moonturn Square and they both had all sorts of Links sprouting off of it to other Mystery Dungeons up and down the Lesser Mist!
“Wait a minute, Scales. What about these Mystery Dungeons next to this seaside town down here by ‘Something-or-Other Port’?” the Sneasel asked. “There’s Links between them and a whole bunch of Mystery Dungeons this side of the Lesser Mist! I’ll admit that just getting to the first Mystery Dungeon to reach that place looks like it could get a bit dicey, but we’d never need to be out in the open for more than a day at a time before making it to Shivering Sands.”
Kate flicked her ear feather briefly and looked over at her teammates as they all seemed to visibly pale at the suggestion, with Lyle coming alight with a start and staring at her with his mouth hanging open.
“Kate, ‘Something-or-Other Port’ there is Port Velhen!” the Quilava exclaimed.
“Yes, and?”
“Th-That’s the same place that Lacan is Graf over!” he spluttered. “What do you think the ‘Wellenhafen₁’ in his title refers to?!”
Kate bit her lip and stiffened up. Now that she looked at the runes by the town with the wedge-shaped tower, she supposed the drawing was right by the sea and the one in front of ‘port’ did kinda look like ‘waves’... which would explain the ‘Wellenhafen’ from that name for the town in Hightongue.
… But was that necessarily a bad thing? Even if it meant sneaking through the home of their scaly pain-in-the-ass who was hounding them, it wasn’t as if he was there right now to push the local Grünhäuter around, right?
“Wait, but couldn’t that work out for us?” she asked. “We managed to get into Newangle City just fine since nobody expected us to be here, so-”
“It’d be a suicidal idea even if it weren’t Lacan’s Grafschaft,” Dalton harrumphed. “Port Velhen’s one of the main ports where the military dispatches ships from and deploys soldiers off to Edialeigh. It’ll be crawling with them, especially now...”
Nevermind then, going towards Port Velhen really was a bad idea. Kate quietly sucked in a breath and made a note to herself that she’d have to get around to finishing learning how to read her runes one day… maybe sooner rather than later with that irked side-eye that Scales was shooting at her right now.
“I can’t think of any reason for going there other than to worsen our odds of making it to the Divine Roost,” Dalton harrumphed. “The Riparian Raiders quit that general area a couple years back for a reason, and there’s no reason to assume…”
Dalton trailed off briefly and Kate flicked her ears as she heard something sliding loudly against paper. She turned her attention over towards Irune where she saw her scribbling up a storm. The Sneasel cocked a brow, before turning over to her Axew teammate with a befuddled frown.
“... Irune? What are you doing?”
“Making a copy of the map, of course!” the Axew insisted. “That way if something happens to it, we’ll have a spare of it!”
Kate and the others traded looks with one another as Irune brought out her book and set it on the table, dutifully holding down the edges of the pages. Wasn’t that her diary? She was surprised Irune would be so open about showing—
The Sneasel suddenly noticed Lyle and Dalton double-take with expressions that briefly made her think she somehow saw sweat rolling down the sides of their heads. She tilted her head to get a better look at the pages, and saw what’d made them so unimpressed:
Irune’s “map”, if it could be called that, was a mess of crude and childish scrawls. She supposed the coast kinda resembled the ones on the atlas’ map and it was labeled with numbers she guessed were related to distances, but the Mystery Dungeons were all over the place. Newangle City looked closer to Toya Square than where it was supposed to be, and the less said about the confusing mess of lines between things that were probably supposed to be the Links, the better.
She shot a sidelong frown at the Axew and stared briefly… At least she seemed to write down some sort of notes about where to find the Links in each Mystery Dungeon? Maybe? Though with how messy and tiny Irune’s writing was, she’d be surprised if even Dalton could read them.
“Yeah, don’t go quitting your day job there, Shiren,” Kate snorted.
Irune flushed a flustered red and snatched back her journal, clamping it against her chest with a quiet grumble under her breath. Back with the handbook, Lyle ran a paw over the pages between Newmoon Wildwood and Sunset Falls, with a look over his face that reminded her of times she’d remembered seeing the Quilava when he’d had to walk past deep water.
“Do we have any other options that would be about the same difficulty as if we headed for Sunset Falls?” Lyle asked. “We really shouldn’t push ourselves after what we went through in Primordial Woods, but us traveling over normal land for days at a time with all those soldiers after us…”
“There isn’t, unfortunately. Everything else I can saw from a glance on this map would either require going through more dungeons, more difficult ones, or through more exposed distance on land,” Dalton said, shaking his head. “Unless you see another route that really catches your eye, the one through Newmoon Wildwood and Sunset Falls are the only ones really worth considering.”
Gods, what a choice there, and with Dalton’s arm still busted, no less. At least they could pace themselves by hiding out in Pockets and moving around? If it were just her, she’d be confident with their chances going through either route even if it meant going overland since whether in a Mystery Dungeon or outside of it, she’d always had up a leg on sneaking around on their old crews. But Lyle had a tendency to quite literally lose his cool when under stress, and with Dalton still injured…
The Sneasel glanced at her teammates as they looked down at the atlas’ pages uneasily. She followed their eyes, and from the way they drifted northwards of Newangle City on the map, she gathered that they’d made their choice.
“We were lucky just to make it back here tonight,” Irune murmured. “I know that Primordial Woods wasn’t easy on us to get through, but Lacan and his soldiers are surely looking around for us right now, and I’m not sure how well we can stay ahead of them outside of a Mystery Dungeon. Especially one they wouldn’t be worried about going into…”
“That’s another vote for Newmoon Wildwood, I guess,” Lyle murmured. “I just wish we had more than a night to plan this out.”
“Meh, beggars can’t be choosers,” Kate remarked. “What about you, Scales? You’re the injured ‘mon, do you have any objections to going through Newmoon Wildwood?”
The Heliolisk looked down at his splinted arm briefly and seemed to visibly wrestle with his thoughts. For a moment, Kate thought that he was going to protest, only for him to sigh and close the handbook and push it aside with his left hand.
“I suppose we don’t need to make a firm choice until we actually get past those city walls. Since for all we know, the process of getting out will make it for us,” he said. “Though I think I can manage either way as long as we have a chance to get some actual healing items on the way over and pace ourselves in the Mystery Dungeons.”
Kate watched as Dalton tucked the handbook back into his bag when she felt a yawn come over her. She was normally pretty good about staying up later into the night since her kind was supposed to adapt easily to nocturnal life… but the day’s chaos was starting to catch up with her. The Sneasel yawned and pawed at her ears, before getting up and turning her gaze for the beds.
“Well, I’m bushed,” she said. “I’m going to go and crash for now. Wake me whenever Igna and Ansel come by for their kiddie book-”
“Wait.”
Kate’s ears pricked up at the sound of Irune’s voice and the Axew’s seat grinding as she scooted it back along the floor. The Sneasel looked back just in time to see the Dragon-type beelining for Dalton as he and Lyle were in the middle of getting up, when Irune pulled a tome from the table right as the Heliolisk was about to take it.
“Irune, what are you-?”
She gave no reply to the Heliolisk other than to push the book out into the center, revealing an apple-colored cover with what looked like footprints on it in lines.
“I know it’s late,” she said. “But didn’t you say that we’d look at that book Lacan was trying to find if we had a chance?”
Kate looked down and frowned after seeing the book looked visibly thick, and the only runes on it that looked normal were tiny enough that she had to squint to see them under the footprint-looking ones.
“That was Lyle that said that,” Kate replied. “And can this really not wait until tomorrow? You can’t seriously expect us to get through that tree-killer in a night, can you?”
“This is one of the books we have to hand over to Igna and Ansel, remember?” Lyle said. “Though I don’t think we have read the entire book. It’s called ‘The Collected Legends from Wander’, remember? Wouldn’t Lacan only be interested in a pawful of them at most?”
Kate blinked at the Quilava’s explanation. She supposed it wasn’t as bad as she was worrying, but…
“Fair point, I guess. But what sort of legends would he even be looking for?”
“Sophia said I was a reincarnation of the ‘Nameless Dragon’,” Irune mused. “Wouldn’t looking for legends about a god by that name or something about reincarnation be a logical place to start?”
The others on Team Forager traded looks with each other before Lyle finally stepped forward. Kate was a little surprised that it was him who jumped in to read instead of Dalton, since she’d have thought a nerd like him would be all over things. The Quilava reached out and slid his paws onto the cover. He pulled it back, musing to himself as he pawed through the first couple pages.
“There’s usually a table of contents in books like these near the start that we can check-”
Lyle flipped through the first pages and then blinked with an uneasy twitch of his ears. Kate cocked a brow and walked up beside the table with a puzzled frown. She’d always thought that Lyle never had any problems reading, but he looked about as lost as she did whenever she was presented with a sheet full of runes!
“Lyle, what’s wrong?” she asked. “You barely touched the book so far and-”
The Sneasel made her way forward and saw that on both the left and right pages, there were lines of what looked like little footprints broken up by small illustrations of gods and other Pokémon.
… Those were those old-style runes that sometimes showed up on plaques or Bildstöcke. They seriously made books with them? From Lyle’s expression, she was guessing he couldn’t read any of this Torchic scratch himself, much less Irune who stared blankly before pointing off at the page.
“I mean, there’s some modern runes here at least,” Irune said. “But how come they’re only over some of these Footprint Runes and not all of them?”
“It’s because the book was most likely printed back when it was still common to use Footprint Runes for technical writing. There were still examples of books being made that way as late as the early years of King Sansa’s reign before his reforms during and after the Advent War,” Dalton explained. “Those runes you see in the margins are meant to help explain runes whose meanings might be unclear or else changed with time for Pokémon less familiar with them.”
Kate shot her eyes between Dalton and back down at the strange book. She should really be less surprised that an obvious priss like Dalton would read this script, but it never occurred to her that it’d actually be put out on paper like this.
“Wait, you mean Pokémon actually used to write like this?” she asked. “Since when?”
Dalton rolled his eyes and reached his left arm out for the page with a low scoff.
“Since ancient times, after Pokémon started moving on from using scripts of human origin,” the Heliolisk explained. “Even if it’s obviously easier to render with a printing press than as a manuscript, every ‘mon who hopes to get educated past a stint at a village school has to learn how to read in Footprint Runes. There’s a whole host of old books and documents pre-dating the formation of our modern runes that are written solely in them.”
Kate frowned and pinned her ears back. She wasn’t sure how anyone was supposed to manage writing these out without a stamp collection or a hell of a lot of time to burn, but clearly Pokémon in the past didn’t have all their marbles. She noticed Irune blinking off on the side, when the Axew gave a curious glance off at the Heliolisk.
“Wait, so then these runes are related to the ones we use today?” she asked. “But they look so different!”
“That’s the thing, they’re actually not that different if you take time to look at them closely,” Dalton explained. “Most of our modern runes actually evolved from shorthand forms Pokémon would use while writing these Footprint Runes out, and…”
Oh gods, they did not need to get into a tangent about how ancient runes worked right here and now. Kate thumped the table with a claw, narrowing her eyes over at the Heliolisk as she piped up with a sharp hiss.
“Scales, you’re not at that artsy-fartsy university of yours anymore and it’s getting late,” Kate harrumphed. “So how about you put those reading skills of yours to use for us?”
She locked eyes with Dalton before noticing him faltering briefly. A quick glance off towards his gaze revealed Lyle shooting an unamused stare at the Heliolisk. That seemed to get the message across, as the Electric-type cleared his throat and sat down beside the table.
“... Right, anyway, let’s see what we’ve got for chapters here.”
The Heliolisk ran a claw along each line, studying each one closely as he hesitated briefly with each one and spoke his findings aloud:
“To an Unknown God: Comparative Myths of the Origins of the World and Cosmos... Order and Chaos: Tales of a Primordial Era and the Forming of Ways and Kinds of Pokémon... The Great Mediators: The Human Era and the Seeds of Our Civilization...”
Each title sounded about as frilly and pretentious as the last, and every now and then, the Heliolisk would murmur something in Hightongue under his breath before speaking up, which Kate assumed meant the book was meant to be read in it originally and Dalton needed a moment to figure out how to translate it. So it was boring and a pain in the ass to read, what a combination for a book there.
Dalton trailed off as his finger stopped abruptly on a line with a couple annotations above them and his eyes briefly widened.
“... ‘Göttliche Seelenwanderungen₂’...?”
The Sneasel blinked and turned over to the Heliolisk, looking down at the mass of footprint-like shapes on the page and then up at the lizard’s startled face. The chapter was something about gods from what she’d overheard, but wasn’t a huge chunk of this book anyways?
“Scales? Why’d you suddenly stop?” she asked. “There’s more writing further down the page from where you’re at.”
“It’s the title of this chapter I found,” he explained. “Divine Metempsychoses: Observations of the Lives and Deaths of the Gods.”
A long silence hung in the air as the Heliolisk read the footprint-shaped runes aloud. Lyle should’ve been less surprised that a book about myths and legends would also have tales about the rebirth of gods in them, but it was still startling to see it right in front of him.
“What… does that chapter say?”
He turned his head at the sound of Irune asking the question, and flicked his ears after the creaks of wood rang out—from Kate pushing Irune’s chair over for her to get a better look. The stoat got up and drifted over himself. He’d… never been any good at reading Footprint Runes beyond a pawful of really basic ones, but from the tension in the air, he was starting to think that this chapter was going to be important.
“Uh… well, I’d need to find my place first…” Dalton replied. “Lyle, can you help me turn to page 251? I’d do it myself, but…”
The Heliolisk pawed at the shoulder of his splinted arm, when the Quilava sighed and stepped forward and looked down at the glyphs on the line, and noticed a glyph that looked much like a Nidoking’s footprint pointing upwards before flipping through the pages. He studied the bottom corners carefully as he flipped through the pages, slowing down as he noticed the leading glyph started to double up when he turned the page and abruptly stopped.
There, on the left, was an illustration that took up the entire page of Ho-Oh falling from the sky with bloodied wounds. He caught Kate quirking a brow from the corner of his eye and stared down at the page himself. He knew that he’d heard stories that Ho-Oh had been among the gods that had been summoned by Reshiram and come from afar to fight on Varhyde’s behalf decades ago… and she was supposed to have died in battle. Even so, it still felt a little strange to see a book about Varhyde’s myths and legends not talk about its patron goddess’ rebirths.
Maybe he should’ve been less surprised that Ho-Oh would’ve died sometime beforehand, too. Even if it made him wonder how long ago this death had been if this was the first time he was hearing of it at all. He and his teammates turned to Dalton briefly, who ran a finger along the runes and began to read aloud in a slow, measured pace.
Throughout the ages, there have been tales of Pokémon of myth and legend that have been cut down in battle or forced to sacrifice themselves in the course of their duties upholding their domains and the order of the cosmos. It is not known how many times such a fate has befallen the gods of our world, as the age of even known younglings among their ranks can extend into the centuries. As such, the few passages of a Legendary to and from the mortal coil which have not been lost entirely to the mists of time have a tendency to quickly grow muddled by stories of their other feats.
A tense silence filled the room as Dalton reached the end of the page. Lyle knew that there were stories of Pokémon being reborn, with the gods being the ones who were known to come back as an observed reality. Even so, after decades of silence with not a single one of the gods who’d fallen in war between Varhyde and Edialeigh having been reborn… it was a bit hard to believe sometimes that any of them ever would. Or that if they did, that they’d just be reborn somewhere else in Wander with them no one in Varhyde any wiser. After all, the stories of the past rebirths of Reshiram and Zekrom always had been a bit hazy and felt more like tales his parents would tell him than actual history.
“This book must be pretty damn old,” Kate mused. “Not that there’s any gods that have come around in Varhyde after everything that’s happened with the war. You’d think that it’d at least have more to say about the last time a god was reborn around here.”
Lyle briefly bristled at Kate’s comment. She was no doubt referring to the way that their patron goddess and her counterparts were reborn around Freeden Village. But for an event that happened just over a century ago, even it sure felt more like a legend than something that actually happened. There was barely anything said about the specifics of whatever had happened in books—or in general for that matter—beyond conflicting stories about why and how his hometown had been cursed by them…
The Quilava turned the page, which on its left had another page filled with those strange footprint-like runes. On the other, there was a picture of a young Pidgey awkwardly trying to fledge herself from a branch, with the wings casting a shadow of a Ho-Oh on the ground below.
He quirked a brow and peeked over at Irune and her shadow cast on the wall from their lantern. It was still the same old Axew. He supposed the book’s writer must’ve done that for dramatic effect. Kate visibly furrowed her brow and traded glances between the young dragon and the illustration and opened her mouth to ask something, when Dalton brought his left hand up to the page of runes and began to read the passages aloud.
The afterlife and what comes beyond it for mortals remains ill-understood, as it remains unknown whether or not we too shall be as gods and someday begin our lives anew. For the gods in our midst, we know that there seems to be a rough degree of predictability for their deaths and rebirths based on the misfortunes they have had to bear in our unsettled world. Upon death, their bodies decay away much in the same fashion as those of the mortals who pay them reverence, but their souls still slumber, often for many years until they can be born anew into a vessel of mortal stock.
Irune abruptly shot upright as Lyle and Kate turned and stared at her for a long while. The Axew was visibly trembling at the text. It wasn’t hard proof, but just from her reaction, he could already tell that those hopes of hers that Lacan and his goons had somehow gotten things wrong about her were just about gone.
But something about this still didn’t feel right…
“A… vessel?” Kate asked. “As in that ‘Nameless Dragon’ or whatever is inside Irune right now?”
“Kate, she is that ‘Nameless Dragon’,” Dalton reminded. “Sophia even told us so.”
Maybe he was overthinking things. After all, Lyle had been a Cyndaquil once, and now he was a bigger and stronger Pokémon. He’d be even moreso if he ever evolved into a Typhlosion sometime when he wouldn’t have to worry about scrounging enough food to feed that still-larger body.
Did this mean that Irune would turn into this Nameless Dragon? Much like how he or Kate could still evolve?
He saw Kate blink and cast a glance over at Lyle as he stared blankly at Irune, who was visibly shrinking back. That was right, that crow had specifically called Irune the reincarnation of this ‘Nameless Dragon’, which somehow was related to Reshiram and the other gods she was tied to. Kyurem and…
Zekrom. The dreaded Endbringer that his parents would tell him and his brother stories about to shut them up and go to sleep.
Sophia specifically said that this ‘Nameless Dragon’ would beget Reshiram and her counterpart gods. What on earth did that mean? Would she somehow become all of them at once? Would she somehow stay together as some completely different being?
He heard uneasy tapping and saw Kate drumming a set of claws against the table. The Sneasel cast a wary glance over her shoulder at the Axew, before turning back to Dalton and quietly sucking in a breath.
“What… else does it say in there?” Kate asked.
Lyle helped the Heliolisk with the next page, where there was another illustration that made him freeze. There, on the drawing, was the picture of the Pidgey at the center of a ball of light in a wooded clearing with Pokémon looking on from the surrounding bushes. Her wings were spread wide, as the figure of Ho-Oh stood behind with the same pose.
It… looked like a drawing of an evolution. Not that evolutions looked like that, but little kids when attempting to draw an evolution would sometimes overlap the shapes of Pokémon’s bodies like this. So did folk paintings by older Pokémon for that matter.
It is not known what power deigned for gods to re-enter our world in the bodies of such lowly, vulnerable creatures, or if they similarly did so in the ages when they shared our world along with us with mankind. Various theories have been offered by sages throughout history: that it is a fundamental part of their lifecycle, that it is a prerequisite for them to ascend of some higher form. Others believe this to be the doing of a higher being, a God of Creation who remains unknown to us: some who hold that belief say it is to impart humility, to make penance for past misuses of their power, to pass on a respect for the Pokémon that pay them reverence.
A ‘God of… Creation’? Lyle wasn’t sure what sort of god that could be when he’d never seen a shrine to such a being. All of the gods he’d heard of had very clearly defined domains. Just what would a god that was above them even be like…?
He briefly overheard Dalton murmur a few words in Hightongue under his breath, before the Heliolisk continued on:
Whatever the cause, a god reborn in such a fashion will retain the form of its mortal vessel until its power has fully awakened. And in a great glow of light and power, it will regain its true form and nature and reveal itself to the world, ready to use and resume its role as a god.
Lyle gaped down at the book’s illustration and then over at Irune, who was looking down blankly at the table. So then Irune really was some sort of god? He knew that something had been up with her from those strange fire and electric powers they’d seen her use, but it was just so hard to wrap her mind around the idea that this was real and actually happening.
His breaths tightened and he felt his blood start to grow hot. He didn’t know why the army was hunting Irune down like this. Why the army had been treating her as if she were a common criminal when even King Siegmund would be bowing and scraping to her if she’d had her true form.
… No, that wasn’t right either. Criminals didn’t have entire military operations set up around them. The way they were treating her was like she was dangerous, like a batch of Apricorn shot, or a Blast Seed shell.
He didn’t know why any of this was the case, but he set his teeth on edge as one realization above them all crowded out his other thoughts:
“You knew about this, didn’t you?”
Lyle turned over to Irune with a piercing glare and fire smoldering from his vents. He didn’t know what on earth he was supposed to do being angry at a god, but the wagon, the raid on the encampment afterwards…
All of it… all of it…
“When you went along with us that night back in Waterhead Cave, you knew that you were this god and you kept it to yourself, didn’t you?” the Quilava demanded. “And you deliberately hid it from the rest of us! Why?! Why would you do that to us?!”
The way that Irune squirmed and shrank back seemed all but confirmed his suspicions, and both Kate and Dalton also seemed to be on edge from the exchange. His head began to spin, as Lyle subconsciously grit his teeth and dug his paws into the table’s wood.
“I-I didn’t know for sure I was a god! Y-You wouldn’t have believed me if I told you that I was!’” Irune stammered. “All I knew was that it’d been a year since the army put me on the run after they said I was a ‘Dyad’. I just desperately wanted to believe that they were wrong, that the Psychic who helped them find me to begin with was just a crank and wasted their time…”
The words seemed to come naturally enough to the little Dragon-type. Lyle didn’t know whether that was a sign she was telling the truth or if she’d gotten better at lying. Either way, he felt a pit in his stomach as uncomfortable questions started rising to the surface.
What else had Irune been hiding from them? Did she even see them as teammates? Or as scum that she just had to put up with while she was stuck in this body that wasn’t even really hers?
His mind turned to the treasure that she had said was out there at the Divine Roost. The slim reed of hope they’d been clinging to all this time, the one that Irune insisted that she get first pick on when they got there.
He got up and loomed over the Axew with a fierce scowl. They all knew that Irune couldn’t tell a convincing lie, so maybe it was time to just have her spit things out about why they were going through all of this.
“What is the treasure that you’re looking for at the Divine Roost?”
Her eyes visibly widened in response and Lyle could’ve sworn that she was starting to visibly squirm right in front of him.
“H-Huh?”
“The treasure. The one that is so important that you want it before any of the rest of us,” Lyle insisted. “The one that we’ve been sticking our necks out to help you try and get and have been hiding from us. The treasure our friends got captured over. What is it?”
He waited for a reply as his teammates stared at the two of them, with Kate pinning her ears as she must’ve realized where this was going. Alvin… Artem… all those other Pokémon who had been there at Waterhead Cave… had Irune knowingly doomed them all over that little jewel or whatever her pendant was a lookalike to?
The Axew didn’t say anything and looked away. Lyle set his teeth on edge and felt his vents start to heat up. It occurred to him that his vision was starting to grow fuzzy and the corners of his eyes were starting to feel damp.
“Look, I don’t care what you are or if that damned Graf is right about you or not. But I need to know. Why?” he demanded. “Why do you need that treasure so damn badly?”
There was a lingering silence he trailed off a moment, and let his eyes fall towards the ground with a low murmur.
“And why us?”
Still silence. From what he could see of Irune from the corner of his vision, she looked much like a child caught stealing sweets by her parents. Like he did when his parents confronted him right before kicking him out of the house. The Axew wavered and brought a hand shakily up to her face, and opened her mouth to speak.
“I-I-”
Tak tak tak
Lyle sprang back from his seat and crouched poised with fire pouring out of his vents, his teammates similarly jumped to their feet with a start at the sharp knock. His eyes quickly turned alongside theirs for the door, where a low, rumbling voice called out from beyond it.
“Are you all enjoying yourselves?”
His heart briefly stopped from how similar it sounded to Sheriff Mack’s only for it to dawn on him that it was probably that Aggron receptionist from the playhouse—‘Wye’, or something like that. Kate brushed past him and made her way over warily to the door. She opened it and sure enough, just past it and taking up most of the space beyond the doorframe, was that red-eyed Aggron and his teal hide, staring at them with an unamused scowl that made Lyle’s fur stand on end
The hell was he doing up here? And why did Lyle have the distinct feeling that this was bad news right now?
“We… weren’t making too much noise, were we?”
Lyle briefly cocked her head to see Irune pawing at one of her tusks with an ashen expression and quietly grimaced himself. Had Wye heard them arguing earlier? He didn’t think that they’d been that loud earlier, but…
“Hrmph, I didn’t hear whatever you were talking about if that’s what you’re asking,” the Aggron scoffed.
Thank gods. It took all of Lyle’s willpower to not breathe out a sigh of relief right then and there as the receptionist turned in the hallway, and placed a claw on a pull-cord to the door outside..
“I just wished to inform you that your associates sent word that they wish to meet you at dawn in the Playhouse,” the Aggron said. “Ecks is currently preoccupied with some other matters right now, so it fell to me to pass word along.”
Lyle blinked in reply. At dawn? That wasn’t what they’d agreed on with Igna and Ansel, so what was going on?
“That’s later than what they told us this morning,” Kate harrumphed, folding her arms. “If they were able to tell you to pass word onto us, why can’t they make it now?”
“Because they informed us of their state of affairs by letter. It seems that you four caused a bit of trouble while conducting your business with them earlier tonight,” the Aggron said, narrowing his eyes with a sharp huff. “They say that it won’t be viable to conclude whatever deal you had between each other tonight, and dawn is the soonest they can manage.”
Lyle bit his lip at the receptionist’s explanation and saw flashes of unease go about his teammates. He hoped that Igna and Ansel weren’t seriously planning on trying to smuggle them past the city walls during the daytime. He knew they said there was a passage to the Undercity at the back of the Playhouse, so maybe things could work out that way, but Dalton had mentioned that the Gendarmen still made use of them sometimes. Would it really still be smooth sailing going through that place when Lacan was surely tracking down every green-plated leech here in Newangle City to try and hunt them down?
The Quilava hesitated and briefly glanced at his teammates, who seemed every bit as uneasy as he was. He shook his head, before looking up at the Aggron with a stern frown.
“... Tell them we’ll be there. We’re sure they want us out of their fur by now,” Lyle said. “We don’t have the means to stay here past tonight even if we wanted to.”
“So be it, then,” the Aggron harrumphed. “Don’t keep them waiting tomorrow.”
Wye pulled the door shut with a forceful thump, leaving Kate to go up as the Aggron’s thudding footsteps went further and further down the hallway as the Sneasel went up and kept her ear against the door. Lyle dropped back to all fours and turned his attention back to Irune, who avoided his gaze before she grudgingly spoke up.
“About the treasure I was looking for. I… I’ll tell you all about it when we make it to the next Mystery Dungeon.”
Lyle felt the corners of his mouth droop as the Axew turned back to him and his teammates. She had a pleading gaze, along with an expression that made her look like she was stuck out in a morning frost.
“J-Just please trust me that all of this is for an important reason.”
Damn it, why was she just refusing to spit things out right now? Was this because she didn’t trust them? Because she was afraid of how they’d react? He opened his mouth to press on, only to notice Kate eyeing the books on the table.
“So… uh, were we going to read the rest of those books to see what was up with Irune right now?” Kate asked. “Since just saying, it was over an hour past midnight when we set foot back here and dawn’s not that long from now.”
Lyle turned his attention to his teammates and saw that everyone looked tired and uneasy, and must’ve surely been as exhausted as he was. They’d all had a harrowing day that he still wasn’t sure what to think of after everything that had happened, and tomorrow was bound to be no less of an ordeal.
There was a long silence, before turned away from Irune and walked past with a sighing shake of his head.
“... Fine, I suppose I can wait a little longer. It’s not like Igna and Ansel asked for that other book about that Nameless Dragon anyways, so we can look at that later,” he said. “Let’s just get some rest. Since I can already tell that tomorrow’s going to be one of those days where we’ll need whatever energy we can spare.”
He headed off for his bedding and settled in as his teammates did likewise. As Lyle sank into his bed, he stared up at the ceiling. He briefly stole a glance from the corner of his eye at Irune as she settled in, who didn’t bother to get out her baubles to sleep with that time.
Were Lacan and Sophia right? Was Irune really a god of some sort? If so, how did she ever get into this situation with the army? Why had she hidden all of this from them?
… And most importantly, why had she trusted them to help her?
In the early years after the Great Flash, there were Pokémon in our land who attempted to preserve the knowledge of the humans that had once dwelt amongst them. These first scribes found themselves faced with the task of having to preserve knowledge that could not be passed down orally, where even minor discrepancies would doom it to be being lost forever.
In the earliest records of our land, our forebears are recorded as having first attempted to use human scripts to archive their suddenly departed companions’ wisdom. Much to their dismay, writing with such scripts proved burdensome for Pokémon such as us—they had been the work of creatures who didn’t discern meaning from differences of rhythm and intonation as we Pokémon do, but from changes of sound. Even attempts to render human writings in more primordial scripts, such as the Unown Runes we presently use to render words of unknown semantic meaning, proved insufficient as extensive training was required to piece the meanings of such words together from their component glyphs.
At roughly the same time, the first Civils of this world began to form their own runes better suited for their tongues. They made glyphs for discrete ideas and concepts, fashioned from the paws and claws on their bodies, which came to be called ‘Footprint Runes’. These runes spread far and wide through Wander in piecemeal fashion from their places of origin, with even the bitter enmities between Varhyde and Edialeighᵃ ultimately being insufficient to keep their Civils from eventually using a large body of shared runes for their writings.
While such Footprint Runes were easier for beings like us to comprehend, they were troublesome to render without printing presses or the most diligent of scribes. As such, Pokémon began to render those runes in shorthand in their daily lives, and simplified them into sequences of strokes and dots. With time, these practices reached the courts of the monarchs of this world, who at various points in history, granted their blessing on shorthand forms to be standardized for their realms.
As cumbersome as these ancient runes can be to interpret, much wisdom from bygone generations remains rendered solely in them, along with details and nuances that are lost in modern writing. For scholars seeking to tease out the truth of our world’s past from a far distance, a healthy knowledge of such scripts is indispensable even to this day.
- Excerpt of ‘The Royal Lexicon of Sciences and Arts’
a. In the original text, this is more accurately translated as “the Lands of Varhyde and Edialeigh”
