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Welp, Review Tag's up to be claimed over at United and there's one chapter newly released since last I visited here. So let's check it out and see how our not-quite-heroes are faring this time around.
(I swear, one of these days when I claim that Review Tag it'll be Fledglings being reviewed. Alas, not today.)
Chapter 23
Could be my prog rock brainrot speaking after listening to that kind of music on loop while doing my uni essays, but my first thought upon seeing that chapter title was the Pink Floyd song of the same name.
Ah, so Lacan plans to use the thieves of Newangle City to lure Team Forager to the library. A good way to delegate duties, especially when as much monpower is needed on the frontlines. (Or maybe not a good way when you consider these are thieves we are dealing with. Then again, I'm gonna hedge a bet now that Lacan could well cut off contact with them immediately once they're done with this job. It wouldn't do if the venerable Graf von Wellenhafen was seen with a band of thieves, now would it?)
Back to the present, and if the cliffhanger from last chapter was anything to go by, looks like our gang are in a tight spot.
When has it been his day? Because every day thus far with him in the story has felt like a right ordeal. Now I'm honestly curious as to when the last 'good day' he had was, where he didn't have to worry about anything or anyone.
Missed opportunity to include a reference to one of the most iconic lines of a certain redhead.
Interesting way for Dalton to just conjure water like that for his Surf attack. Oh well, what works works. And the way it combines with Lyle's Smokescreen proves the two of them do work well as a unit.
Doesn't mean much when one of your enemies has a projectile, Lyle.
Oh, the Roly-Poly Caravan's back. Though somehow I get the feeling they're not gonna easily forget the raid carried out on them many chapters back...Still, anything to get away from these two ruffians.
A new Crobat character, eh? Interesting - I wonder that their deal is?
Her garb carried some sort of shade like the scarves they stole off that ‘Team Pathfinder’, except at the center was some sort of strange crystalline design with hue that reminded him of lavender flowers—a pointed rod, overlaid by a diamond circumscribing a pair of concentric hexagons.
Reference to something spotted, although I'm not sure what exactly it is.
Neat that the Heavy Rotation Specs doubles in this world for the swirly glasses that some Nopon wear (like Muimui from XC2). And nice reference to Pupunin as well.
Well, if that isn't a name that strikes fear into the heart of anyone who's played Xenoblade 3. Although I don't quite know if this establishment is anywhere near the threat that Moebius were. Still, I wonder - could the name imply that this inn is a place of shady dealings?
Neat way for Kate to improvise and get Team Forager out of trouble like that by roping Igna and Ansel in with their room booking. Even if it does mean them getting a little less for their money as a result.
Also I just realised the Crobat's a walking (flying?) reference to Consul X. Nice reference there.
The sighting of Team Forager by the Roly-Poly Caravan isn't going to bode well at all. I guarantee it. The links are gonna be made back to the robbery all the way back at the beginning of the story, and our gang is gonna be tracked by them for that. (Granted, not that they already are by the Grünhäuter.)
And now over to Sophia, who's carrying out her own duties.
The statues that stood guard over the approach to the steps up to the Royal Reliquary came shortly afterwards. First came the four founders of the Generalstab, their bodies all in Awakened states much as if they’d just consumed Empowerment Seeds. King Sansa of course was among them, as was the Absol statue of his trusted confidant, Alweiss the Seer. Then came the Tyranitar and Blaziken statues of Feldmarschall Pritchard the Giant and Feldmarschallin Laulan the Armorer.
Ah yes, I recall seeing this teaser in your fic forum over at Diner. And I'm glad to see you kept it in the end. Absolutely adore the blatant reference, and good species picks for the 'mons in question to resemble the in-universe equivalent of Zanza's Trinity.
Welp, looks like this Herr Friedrich fellow bit the dust some time back. RIP.
“I suppose it could be forgiven, since none of us here expected the ‘Der
Hoffnungsträger₅ von Silberstadt₆’ to be ripped away from us and the neighborhood he so loved.”
I get the feeling this vow is going to be sorely tested at some point in the future, where Lacan's efforts to protect Sophia will be in vain and our resident Corvisquire could well go the way of M.
The way they're talking about these artifacts makes me imagine at least one of them is going to be relevant in the relatively near future. Just had a thought - I wonder if a certain spherical white and/or black stone is among them? Because that would be interesting if the Team Forager gang happens among that and Irune ends up reacting to it.
Now back to the Möbius, where the gang stick out like sore thumbs. Probably few allies to be found here. Also the inn being paired with a playhouse - I see what you're poking at here. Hopefully the gang doesn't wander in on a Malamar soliloquising about 'the endless now' (though I don't think Wander's quite at that stage yet) while watching the scenes of a battle raging on the frontlines between Varhyde and Edialeigh.
Pressing X to doubt they'll be fully safe here, because trouble and Team Forager seem to go hand in hand. Especially after what happened at the last inn they were in, where they got out unscathed, but Kate and Dalton getting drunk did not help matters.
“Regional Leader Baan not have time for such nonsense,” the Togedemaru inside scoffed. “Look, if bird person’s ‘Club Highmore’ need so many Lansat Berries on such short notice, bird person more than welcome to try and find different supplier. Go ahead and tell Baan how that work out afterward!”
Yeeeep. 'Baan' being a dead-on reference to Bana, and there being a gathering called 'Club Highmore' with a bird 'mon in it - this is definitely this fic's equivalent of the Red Pollen Orb quest from Xenoblade 1.
Guess we're not doing any sussing out of that end of things, then. Bummer. (Though at the same time, bet - I wouldn't be surprised if Team Forager accidentally wind up entangled in this thread of events involving Drive.)
Couldn't resist that shout-out, eh? Though interestingly enough, taking a quick gander at the Black Tar lyrics just now and specifically the part: 'Just want live in peace yet/Black tar's gonna keep us restless/Running just to keep our own breaths.' It doesn't sound too different from Team Forager's current plight. I doubt that was intentional, but it is funny how song lyrics can just line up like that.
And since when were you one to complain about bending the rules of professionalism dealing with the scum in this hive?” the second, yipping voice answered.
Some haughty folks, by the sounds of it. Perhaps some nobles who have aforementioned 'shady ties' to the Thieves' Guild as mentioned earlier.
Not a half bad place if these are actual, comfortable beds the gang has got.
The 'Irune shouting out in denial to the rest of the gang and immediately regretting it' is becoming quite the running trend, I've noticed. And now it looks like we're going to see an admittance of truth from her about her past.
Both fire and thunder powers within our resident Axew - a surefire sign of her possibly being the Original Dragon, and not Reshiram like I predicted before, since I forgot about the Thunder Shock attack she dealt to Rankar in Chapter 13. (In my defence, it has been some time since I read those chapters.
Still, guess I shouldn't have been so quick to presume Irune was Reshiram based partially on the fact she couldn't lie to save her life.)
I imagine nicking a couple uniforms wouldn't be too out of the question. And now the image of Team Forager being in uniforms like at Fire Emblem: Three Houses' Garreg Mach Monastery has been conjured in my mind.
Looks like the paths of Sophia and Team Forager are about to cross, if our resident Corvisquire hasn't flown the coop from the place by the time our beloved outlaws arrive.
The 'dared to hope' part of this make it a bit clearer that maybe this was the part where Dalton's life began to go south? Though there's still that everlasting question of how in blazes the Heliolisk went from noble to outlaw.
“Beyond that, some of the books we’d be coming across would be valuable to fence since there’s always a market for texts among students, so there are some practical reasons for us to want to go there.”
I see this world's uni also has stupidly expensive textbooks that encourage many students to take the yo-ho-ho method instead and bypass such fee payments. Some things never change even after humanity is gone, I suppose.
Seems our gang might well be getting in league with the Thieves' Guild. But based on that dispatch at the beginning, there's a trap incoming for Team Forager, one that could deliver them straight into the wings of Lacan and Sophia...
Conclusion
And the end of another chapter. Glad to still be keeping on top of things.
Some more intrigue as matters unfold further in Newangle, with that eventual clash between Team Forager and the Lacan/Sophia tag-team drawing ever closer. As usual, Irune's a walking enigma, and the mystery over what exactly happened with Dalton early on his life to make him turn to thievery still hangs over, yet the latter mystery may well be resolved in the next few chapters.
The personal highlight for me this chapter was the blatant references to Moebius in the Möbius inn, with the Crobat receptionist being a dead-on reference to Consul X and the nod to the iconic playhouse from XC3 being there as well. I also loved the reference to the Zanza Trinity, and it's the little references like this that I love seeing in this fic.
Could be my prog rock brainrot speaking after listening to that kind of music on loop while doing my uni essays, but my first thought upon seeing that chapter title was the Pink Floyd song of the same name.
Huh. I didn’t know that there were commercial musical artists that put out 23+ minute tracks. TIL.
Ah, so Lacan plans to use the thieves of Newangle City to lure Team Forager to the library. A good way to delegate duties, especially when as much monpower is needed on the frontlines. (Or maybe not a good way when you consider these are thieves we are dealing with. Then again, I'm gonna hedge a bet now that Lacan could well cut off contact with them immediately once they're done with this job. It wouldn't do if the venerable Graf von Wellenhafen was seen with a band of thieves, now would it?)
When has it been his day? Because every day thus far with him in the story has felt like a right ordeal. Now I'm honestly curious as to when the last 'good day' he had was, where he didn't have to worry about anything or anyone.
Alas, the thought didn’t occur me to slot that in there. Might have been a bit of a lift given the overall mood of the scene, though.
Interesting way for Dalton to just conjure water like that for his Surf attack. Oh well, what works works. And the way it combines with Lyle's Smokescreen proves the two of them do work well as a unit.
Yeah, in the absence of water around to chuck at others for a Surf, you kinda need to provide your own. This is the prevailing depiction that I tend to roll with for cases where there’s not a convenient body of water nearby to provide the water for making waves.
Lyle: “Look, I already knew that much, but you didn’t have to just go out and say that…”
Oh, the Roly-Poly Caravan's back. Though somehow I get the feeling they're not gonna easily forget the raid carried out on them many chapters back...Still, anything to get away from these two ruffians.
Fortunately for Team Forager, the Pokémon from the Roly-Poly Caravan they ran into this time around weren’t there for the caravan raid, so it made their lives a bit easier.
A new Crobat character, eh? Interesting - I wonder that their deal is?
The design became obvious once you saw the receptionist’s namedrop, but it's meant to be the core pattern that Consuls have on their chest in XB3.
Neat that the Heavy Rotation Specs doubles in this world for the swirly glasses that some Nopon wear (like Muimui from XC2). And nice reference to Pupunin as well.
Yup, that’s indeed why those glasses were there. It was a convenient coincidence for me that the two are so visually similar.
Well, if that isn't a name that strikes fear into the heart of anyone who's played Xenoblade 3. Although I don't quite know if this establishment is anywhere near the threat that Moebius were. Still, I wonder - could the name imply that this inn is a place of shady dealings?
It's actually a twofer since there's a 'Möbius Hotel' as a story location in Xenosaga III, which was what the place was named after. I just realized during development that 90% of the readers of the story were likely to think of the other, more recent 'Möbius' in the metaseries instead, and threw it in since they fit decently well with the overall vibe that I needed the place to have.
Neat way for Kate to improvise and get Team Forager out of trouble like that by roping Igna and Ansel in with their room booking. Even if it does mean them getting a little less for their money as a result.
Correct. Originally I wanted to go for some sort of purple butterfly 'mon, but all the options presently available in the franchise kinda sucked for pulling off a threatening vibe. Going with the 'mon that was a natural mirror to her head's silhouette and decently viable in competitive battling felt like a decent enough compromise. "Iksbat" semantically meaning "X-Bat" didn't hurt with the decision process either.
Also, if you paid attention to some of her dialogue, you'll note that it's very strongly implied that she has company on the job.
The sighting of Team Forager by the Roly-Poly Caravan isn't going to bode well at all. I guarantee it. The links are gonna be made back to the robbery all the way back at the beginning of the story, and our gang is gonna be tracked by them for that. (Granted, not that they already are by the Grünhäuter.)
You see, that’d definitely be a danger if Zazadan or Dabohru were around, but…
Ah yes, I recall seeing this teaser in your fic forum over at Diner. And I'm glad to see you kept it in the end. Absolutely adore the blatant reference, and good species picks for the 'mons in question to resemble the in-universe equivalent of Zanza's Trinity.
I mean, sometimes I’ve just gotta let that inner dumb hack in me run wild. It’s neither the first nor the last time something like this will happen in the story. o<o
Welp, looks like this Herr Friedrich fellow bit the dust some time back. RIP.
Actually, quite recently. Sophia explicitly noted that the date of Friedrich’s death was roughly a month in the past.
Though Zeuge and Friedrich are actually from the subset of OaT’s cast that are outside-story cameos, if focused on a bit more prominently by virtue of the fact that their source of inspiration is a bit more obscure to present-day readers in this fandom. It’s one of those “if you know, you know” things, and some of the little details around them will probably hit differently in a re-read.
I think this part might be a formatting error given how the line suddenly jumps downward.
I get the feeling this vow is going to be sorely tested at some point in the future, where Lacan's efforts to protect Sophia will be in vain and our resident Corvisquire could well go the way of M.
Well, it proooobably won’t be the exact same way there since Sophia’s a bit limited on her abilities to pull bodyswap antics, but…
Though surprised that your mind went to M in particular in light of that vow, since it’s actually a straight lift of a particularly iconic series line as rendered in the German localization.
The way they're talking about these artifacts makes me imagine at least one of them is going to be relevant in the relatively near future. Just had a thought - I wonder if a certain spherical white and/or black stone is among them? Because that would be interesting if the Team Forager gang happens among that and Irune ends up reacting to it.
No, but there are some other things lying around that will probably make you if you notice them. That, and there’s enough that’s been shown in this story thus far, to conclude that it’d be highly unlikely said stones would still be around intact.
Now back to the Möbius, where the gang stick out like sore thumbs. Probably few allies to be found here. Also the inn being paired with a playhouse - I see what you're poking at here. Hopefully the gang doesn't wander in on a Malamar soliloquising about 'the endless now' (though I don't think Wander's quite at that stage yet) while watching the scenes of a battle raging on the frontlines between Varhyde and Edialeigh.
It could be worse, they could always walk in on a kinda unhinged and massively spoilery musical performance there instead. That said, while I wouldn’t put it past “the Proprietor” to get up to similar antics involving stirring up drama, they’re almost certainly a lot more locally focused. Since hey, there are wars of a sort to be had on a city’s streets if given the right conditions to foster them.
Pressing X to doubt they'll be fully safe here, because trouble and Team Forager seem to go hand in hand. Especially after what happened at the last inn they were in, where they got out unscathed, but Kate and Dalton getting drunk did not help matters.
Yeeeep. 'Baan' being a dead-on reference to Bana, and there being a gathering called 'Club Highmore' with a bird 'mon in it - this is definitely this fic's equivalent of the Red Pollen Orb quest from Xenoblade 1.
‘Baan’ has the same relation to Bana as ‘Pax’ does with Padraig, just with the added benefit of his name being rendered through a variant Romanization. Kinda makes that offer he was presented in the teaser of Chapter 2 hit a bit different after knowing that, huh?
Guess we're not doing any sussing out of that end of things, then. Bummer. (Though at the same time, bet - I wouldn't be surprised if Team Forager accidentally wind up entangled in this thread of events involving Drive.)
Lyle: “No, no, I think that we’ve had enough run-ins with the drug runners, thanks!”
Couldn't resist that shout-out, eh? Though interestingly enough, taking a quick gander at the Black Tar lyrics just now and specifically the part: 'Just want live in peace yet/Black tar's gonna keep us restless/Running just to keep our own breaths.' It doesn't sound too different from Team Forager's current plight. I doubt that was intentional, but it is funny how song lyrics can just line up like that.
On one level, it wasn’t fully intentional, but I suppose that I have always been pretty forward about how Xenoblade X is one of the bigger influences on this story, so there might have been some subconscious influence in play. ^^;
Some haughty folks, by the sounds of it. Perhaps some nobles who have aforementioned 'shady ties' to the Thieves' Guild as mentioned earlier.
Kate: “We should piss off local gangs more often at this rate!” ^^
The 'Irune shouting out in denial to the rest of the gang and immediately regretting it' is becoming quite the running trend, I've noticed. And now it looks like we're going to see an admittance of truth from her about her past.
Both fire and thunder powers within our resident Axew - a surefire sign of her possibly being the Original Dragon, and not Reshiram like I predicted before, since I forgot about the Thunder Shock attack she dealt to Rankar in Chapter 13. (In my defence, it has been some time since I read those chapters.
Still, guess I shouldn't have been so quick to presume Irune was Reshiram based partially on the fact she couldn't lie to save her life.)
There’s actually a piece of information about Irune that’s been dangling in this story for a while that would point pretty firmly towards what she is as the Dyad. Thus far, no one has picked up on it yet.
I mean, being hush-hush about them hasn't exactly done you any favours either, Irune, especially with your current allies.
Irune: “Look, it’s a matter of tradeoffs, okay?” >_>;
I imagine nicking a couple uniforms wouldn't be too out of the question. And now the image of Team Forager being in uniforms like at Fire Emblem: Three Houses' Garreg Mach Monastery has been conjured in my mind.
They technically already have one through that scarf that Dalton yoinked off that clothesline a couple chapters ago.
Looks like the paths of Sophia and Team Forager are about to cross, if our resident Corvisquire hasn't flown the coop from the place by the time our beloved outlaws arrive.
Maybe yes, maybe no. There is quite a bit of height in between the Royal Reliquary and Royal Library.
The 'dared to hope' part of this make it a bit clearer that maybe this was the part where Dalton's life began to go south? Though there's still that everlasting question of how in blazes the Heliolisk went from noble to outlaw.
I see this world's uni also has stupidly expensive textbooks that encourage many students to take the yo-ho-ho method instead and bypass such fee payments. Some things never change even after humanity is gone, I suppose.
Kate: “Not really seeing the problem here when it’s a chance to get paid.”
Seems our gang might well be getting in league with the Thieves' Guild. But based on that dispatch at the beginning, there's a trap incoming for Team Forager, one that could deliver them straight into the wings of Lacan and Sophia...
And the end of another chapter. Glad to still be keeping on top of things.
Some more intrigue as matters unfold further in Newangle, with that eventual clash between Team Forager and the Lacan/Sophia tag-team drawing ever closer. As usual, Irune's a walking enigma, and the mystery over what exactly happened with Dalton early on his life to make him turn to thievery still hangs over, yet the latter mystery may well be resolved in the next few chapters.
Can’t give any hard promises on timing for all of these questions, but assuming that my publishing stays relatively on-track, it’ll be a pretty active summer in terms of finally going open with a few things that have been hinted at and teased on-and-off for the past couple years.
The personal highlight for me this chapter was the blatant references to Moebius in the Möbius inn, with the Crobat receptionist being a dead-on reference to Consul X and the nod to the iconic playhouse from XC3 being there as well. I also loved the reference to the Zanza Trinity, and it's the little references like this that I love seeing in this fic.
And thanks for the review! It was a lot of fun reading this one, and I’ll be looking forward to how you enjoy the ride over the next few months. ^^
Though thanks for your patience everybody, though I take it that you all have probably had your fill of “Quiet Intrigue” by now, so today’s chapter will be sending that arc off and kicking off a new one next time where quite a few things will be coming to the fore.
Not that there won’t be a dash of that happening today for the keen-eyed readers, but I suppose the best way of showing that off is just getting straight into it:
Ich freue mich, nach so vielen Monaten voller Fehlstarte endlich einmal eine gute Nachricht zu überbringen. Ein Empath aus unseren Reihen der in der Lage ist, Auren zu spüren, konnte zufällig kurz die Aura des jungen Drachens in der Nähe der Urquellhöhle spüren. Mit der Präsenz, die sie darin fühlte, war es ein untrügliches Zeichen dafür, dass die Dyade nahe ist. Basierend auf dem, was ich und Ihre Untergebenen mit mir zusammengetragen haben, scheint es, dass die Dyade weiter in Richtung der weiter westlich gelegenen Dörfer vordringt und nicht näher an die Front, wie ich befürchtet hatte.
Vielleicht sollte die Sache damit erledigt sein und wir bleiben vor dem Munternplatz auf der Lauer, um auf Sie und die anderen zu warten, aber ich muss gestehen, dass ich beunruhigt bin. Nur einen Tag bevor ich diesen Brief schrieb, wurde ich von einem örtlichen Seher angesprochen, der mich anflehte, Frieden mit der Dyade zu schließen, die wir verfolgen. Dass es unbedingt erforderlich war, dass wir ihn aus den Kämpfen und der Not in unserem Land herausholen, damit er in Frieden erwacht und wir nicht selbst ins Unheil geraten.
Ich verstehe genauso wie Sie und König Sansa das Versprechen gut, das dieses Erwachen der Dyade in unserem Land mit sich bringt. Eine Zukunft, in der die Göttin, die wir „Unsere Tröstung“ nennen, neben einem Gott wohnen kann, den wir „Unsere Friede“ nennen können. Unsere Feinde von jenseits des Meeres erkennen sicherlich auch die Ungeheuerlichkeit der Situation, denn sie haben Himmel und Erde in Bewegung gesetzt, um ihn zu ergreifen, als sein Fluchtversuch sie zu nahe an ihre Positionen brachte.
Nach dem Wenigen, was wir über den Frospino erfahren konnten, scheint er trotz seines Hintergrunds keine besonders starke Affinität zu Ideale zu haben, und er scheint keine bleibenden Erinnerungen zu haben, die darauf hindeuten würden, dass er nicht geeignet ist, Ideale zu zwingen, nach dem Erwachen Frieden zu schließen. Und doch haben wir diesen jungen Drachen, das Gefäß der Hoffnung, auf dem die Hoffnungen des Königs und der Wahrheit ruhen, kaum besser behandelt als den Feind, der derzeit vor unseren Toren steht.
Ich verstehe, dass unsere Mission von König Sansa selbst kommt, aber ich kann einfach nicht anders, als besorgt zu sein. Dass wir uns vielleicht in Angelegenheiten einmischen, in die wir uns nicht einmischen dürfen.
- Dringende Depesche von Oberstleutnant Elly Panzeronstochter an Oberst Kim Brutalandasohn
Much as Zeuge told her, after a brief walk down the hallway and a couple turns later, Sophia came across a broad, open space. It was a part of the ancient building where portions of the floors above had been cut away to form a large chamber that was unobstructed aside from a few supporting beams. Off to her right, light from nighttime auroras filtered through window panes arranged in tall vertical strips onto an open space riddled with shapes lit up by the cool blue glow of Luminous Moss lanterns. It was a bit hard to tell from a glance, but some of them appeared large enough to take up space on a public pedestal much like a statue.
“Well, this is the place along the way to your reading room that I told you about,” Zeuge said. “It’s just on the other side of this display floor and down a flight of stairs.”
The crow let her beak flop open as her eyes adjusted to the room’s lighting and she realized that the shapes were all relics of various sorts. Display cases filled with strange objects inside, signs and banners with ancient glyphs on them, husks of ancient machines that looked like they were fashioned entirely of metal… Why, this made the Royal Museum which was open to the public elsewhere in the Administrative District look like a child’s collection!
“By all means, Frau Kranoviz, feel free to go around,” Zeuge insisted. “It’s a bit of a walk over to the stairs, so you might as well take some time to look at the exhibits.”
Sophia glanced at the Serperior briefly, before pacing forward and making her way past the exhibits as they passed her eyes. There was a set of faded papers behind glass filled within strange runes she couldn’t recognize, along with pictures that looked more lifelike than any painting she’d ever seen. A little further down, there was a display of curious spheres about the size of Apricorns with their top and bottom halves connected by a hinge of some sort. And just past that, there was a set of chipped white cups and a pitcher of some sort placed next to a strange wooden box. Sophia wasn’t sure what on earth the box was supposed to be since she couldn’t see any sign of a lid for it. There were a pair of metal knobs on its face with strange runes labeling an arc-like design behind scratched ancient resin, and a design of a pair of red comets swirling in on each other just below them.
The sigil of ‘Vector Ah-ghee’, which surely meant the little box had quite the story behind it. She supposed that just about everything in this room surely did. After all, they were all little fragments and pieces of a hazily-understood past they could only scratch at. And these were just the ones that Zeuge had found convenient enough to gawk at along the way to the reading room!
“I didn’t know that the crown had all of these,” she murmured. “How on earth did all of this get recovered-?”
Sophia felt her wing brush up against cold metal and her eyes widened with a start. She hurriedly threw it out to steady whatever she might have knocked over, only to gape up to see what looked like large, vacant eye sockets from a metal skull.
“A-Aah!”
Sophia hopped back with a startled caw and batted her wings out ready for battle. Her heart pounded in her chest, only for her to realize that the thing that’d given her such a fright was the gray skeleton of some sort of strange, metal contraption.
The machine had a front that looked much like a beak, and a closer inspection of its ‘eye sockets’ revealed that there were ground-down flecks of broken glass around their edges. Did those use to be windows? Sophia stepped to the side and saw that beyond the front, there was a rust-flecked tube following with faded orange paint at its base that had been riddled with tears and holes, held together with metal latticing. About halfway down its length, there was some sort of cross-brace on top with pods on either end, one appearing misshapen and deformed.
How in Wander had she not seen that thing in the room until now?
“Oh, I see you found ‘Der Stählerne Rabe₁’.”
Sophia turned to see Zeuge slithering up past the display of curious spheres, coming to a stop beside her as he raised his tail and pointed off at the contraption set out on display. She traded glimpses between her guide and the rusted, gouged hulk with a befuddled tilt of her head.
“... A ‘Steel Raven’?” she asked. “Herr Zeuge, I’m not sure if I follow you. Since I certainly am not seeing the resemblance here.”
“It’s a bit of a pet name that we have for it in the Royal Reliquary,” the Serperior explained. “From what we’ve been able to piece together, it was most likely some sort of air carriage from the human era. Except instead of being flown around by Carriers, it used machinery to push air out of those ports at the ends. Much like how a Golurk might.”
This thing used to be an air carriage? Sophia supposed that it should’ve been less surprising when there were stories of humans having wagons that moved without Pullers, but she wasn’t sure what would compel humans to make a machine that looked like this. Why, it looked more like the skeleton of some fearsome monster that’d be right at home laying waste to villages than some sort of transport.
“It’s actually one of the centerpieces of the Reliquary’s collection of human machinery, along with- oh, there it is!”
Sophia walked past a break in the hull of the human transport and came across a metal pod resting against a support pillar. The contraption was about the size of a Cetitan, and had what looked like metal rods attached to it. Three of them were abruptly broken off with shorn metal at their ends, while the final one was still complete and had some sort of almost skeletal-looking metal arm attached to it, complete with five appendages that vaguely resembled fingers.
“So what is this one and what’s it called?” she asked. “‘Der Eisenmann₂’?”
“Well, Herr Friedrich would sometimes refer to it as a ‘Doll’, but from historical record, humans apparently called this machine and others like it as ‘Skells’,” Zeuge explained. “From what we’ve been able to tell, humans used these contraptions as suits of armor that could somehow double as transports. Parts of these machines occasionally turn up even to this day, especially in the desert Provinzen further south.”
The crow blinked at the Serperior’s reply. She supposed that the contraption did sort of look like some sort of skeleton, so she could understand where the ‘Skell’ name came from, if not the ‘Doll’ one. But she failed to see how the thing could possibly function as a suit of armor. The floors of this building had originally been built in mind for human occupants, and had the ones above not been cut away, it never would’ve fit inside.
“... How on earth would a human be able to move around in this thing?” she asked.
“Well, it was a machine, so it had a power source of its own much like Der Stählerne Rabe,” the Serperior explained. “Though unlike most other machines from the human era, this one still has the remains of its power source in it.”
Sophia walked forward and hopped up onto a small wooden stool set beside the center of the ‘Skell’ and looked down into the gash. Inside it, there was some sort of surface with a raised, gray crystal on it that looked like a rod with shortened cross-arms. It was almost like that clip that Eevee from that Exploration Team that she and Lacan bumped into back in her hometown wore over her ear, except it was bigger than she was.
“Wait, but how would this jewel be used to generate power?” she asked.
“Well, the Wehrtürme that the city walls are built around have crystals like these inside them, just much larger. We know those jewels used to generate tamed thunder well into the reign of King Klaus from energy gathered from a distant source, so it’s our current hypothesis that these smaller ones also did much the same…”
Sophia just stared at the Serperior for as he continued giddily prattling on about things that were all arcane gibberish to her. He noticed her vacant expression and began to trail off, before uncomfortably shifting the leaves about his neck.
“Yes, r-right, we’re getting a bit distracted right now,” the Serperior stammered. “Anyhow, we should be headed to your reading room.”
Zeuge hurriedly slithered ahead, prompting Sophia to pace after him. The entire time, she couldn’t help but have her mind turn back to the strange crystal. She had heard of cases where stones had grown charged with electricity, enough to sometimes float above the ground, but to gather power from a faraway place from gods-knew-where?
It was hard for her to wrap her mind around the concept. It would’ve sounded fantastical to hear it attributed to the doings of some divine entity, much less to some sort of machine.
Sophia looked up after noticing the cool blue light around her had grown stronger, and looked up to see that Zeuge had led her into a set of hallways outside the relic chamber. These spaces evidently were more purpose-oriented, with bare concrete and metal along their surfaces evidencing their present users hadn’t seen fit to give them much in the way of furnishings.
Left, then down a flight of stairs and a quick turn to the right. The pair now stood in front of a metal panel with a Rotom standing guard. Zeuge leaned in and passed a few words onto the Rotom, who buzzed back an “Understood” in affirmation before phasing into a scratched, glassy square to the door’s right. The square suddenly came to life with a blue glow and strange glyphs flickered over its cracked surface. A sudden chirp and woosh followed as the metal panel slid into the wall on the left.
Sophia blinked in astonishment. So it was a door, a downright ancient one at that from the way it operated. It was no secret that Newangle City was riddled with relics from the human era thanks to it having the most plentiful and best-preserved ruins in Varhyde, but it never occurred to her that some of them would potentially still be working.
The panel wooshed again and slid shut behind the two with a low click as Sophia looked up to see a room lit with cool, bluish tones from tubes of glass and ancient resin hanging from the walls that had been filled with Luminous Moss. There was a low, featureless wooden table with cushions set on the floor, and precious little else beyond a padlocked wooden chest set out on it. Why, if it weren’t for the expense spent on the lighting, she’d have thought the place was a prison cell instead of a reading room.
Maybe that was the point, especially considering the nature of her and Lacan’s mission. It wasn’t as if the crown would just let her take original copies of letters back to Lacan’s quarters in Newangle City, not when they were still deemed crown secrets a full century after they were initially written.
“It was a bit of an ordeal tracking these old letters from King Sansa’s loyal servants as part of ‘Operation Avalanche’ down on such short notice,” Zeuge chuckled. “But when both the General Staff and His Majesty himself insisted that they be gathered together, we here at the Reliquary could hardly allow their demands to go ignored.”
Sophia tilted her head as the Grass-type hurriedly tugged a small metal key out of a satchel slung alongside his neck and passed it over. The bird gaped down at it, before looking back at the serpent with a puzzled frown.
“Herr Zeuge? What’s this for?”
“Well, you’d hardly be able to read any documents while they’re stowed away in a locked box, no?”
Sophia blinked and made her way up to the chest and slotted the key into it with her beak. After fiddling around with it, she felt it turn with an audible click and stop. She pulled the lid back and looked down, where inside, there were a set of glass panes with yellowed sheafs of paper pressed between them. The Corvisquire took one out and began to rifle through the others in their places in the chest one-by-one. They were all letters bearing dates from the spring and summer of 919. And all bearing the signature and stamped prints of one of two Pokémon…
“... All of these letters are signed by either ‘Oberst Kim Brutalandas’ or ‘Oberstleutnant Elly Panzaerons’.”
She turned back to face Zeuge, who visibly stiffened up and started to fidget his tail in obvious discomfort.
“I-I’m afraid that those names don’t mean anything to me, Frau Kranoviz,” the Serperior said. “Was it not what were you expecting?”
No, these were very much the names that she’d remembered mentioned during briefing for Operation Spark, but… ‘Oberstleutnant Elly Panzaerons’?
She’d heard that the planning for Operation Spark had been drawn up by the Generalstab based on one ‘Operation Avalanche’ conducted near the end of the Advent War, but she didn’t expect that it’d have extended to sharing an operational structure. Why, she even saw a passing reference to a ‘Fähnlein Jugend₃’ in one of the letters!
Sophia eventually made her way to the bottom of the chest and after inspecting it a second time, found it bare after just a small talonful of glass panes. She blinked before turning back to Zeuge, with a dubious tilt of her head.
“Is this really everything that King Siegmund was able to provide? Operation Avalanche surely involved more than just these two, didn’t it?” she asked. “Graf Wellenhafen needs as full a picture as possible regarding what happened with Oberst Kim’s mission. Did King Sansa not ever write back to them? Or any of his confidantes like Feldmarschall Pritchard?”
Zeuge flicked his tongue with a nervous stammer as he dutifully tried to turn his glance away from the table.
“I- I would presume they did, Frau Kranoviz,” the Serperior insisted. “But this is all that we could find in the archives. If there’s anything that King Sansa or his confidantes wrote in reply to these two, they have been lost to the mists of time.”
Sophia paused and narrowed her eyes at Zeuge. The Serperior was visibly squirming now. She knew that she was broaching on crown secrets, but she was getting the distinct impression that the Serperior was hiding something from her. The fate of untold multitudes potentially hung in the balance based on whatever had gone wrong with Oberst Kim’s mission so many years ago, and she could ill-afford Zeuge or anyone else being coy with any records that might be present.
“... Zeuge, is something the matter? You’re acting rather strange right now,” she insisted. “Is there something wrong with the letters that are here?”
“It’s- It’s just that… those letters are supposed to be crown secrets,” the Serperior gulped. “I… actually wasn’t supposed to be in this room when you opened that box.”
Sophia blinked at Zeuge’s reply, before looking at Zeuge’s blue scarf. Right. Zeuge was a scribe, and one who was likely not of high standing in the Royal Reliquary based on how he’d mentioned being Herr Frederick’s pupil. No wonder he’d looked so petrified after she opened the box, all this time, she’d been endangering the poor ‘mon’s job and gods-knew-what else!
The Corvisquire hastily pushed the glass panes behind the box, before raising a wing and giving a reassuring smile up at the scribe.
“... I see no reason why anyone but the two of us needs to know about that, Herr Zeuge,” she said. “Sometimes it’s better to settle matters quietly even if it’s not necessarily in full accordance with protocol.”
Zeuge let out a sharp exhale as it seemed almost as if a weight was lifted off the Serperior’s back. The scribe gave a grateful nod, before raising his gaze to meet her.
“You’re too kind, Frau Kranoviz,” the Serperior said. “Though… for both our sakes, I suppose I should relay the warning I was told to pass onto you.”
The Serperior raised his tail and gestured off at the chest on the table, along with the laminated papers still poking out from behind them.
“The source materials you review here must remain onsite at all times and the only things you are permitted to bring from this room are any things that your sponsoring member of the Hofstaat allowed you to,” the scribe explained. “I don’t know the full story behind it, but the notice we received from King Siegmund insisted that in your case, it is only whatever you can transcribe into your own writing.”
Sophia hesitated a moment. She supposed that the stipulation shouldn’t have surprised her, but something about it still made her uneasy. Just what was in Kim and Elly’s letters such that their contents were still sensitive enough that she needed the King’s permission just to bring notes about them from this place?
She supposed that was why Lacan had trusted her to come here on his behalf: because they didn’t know what was in these records. The very fact that King Siegmund wasn’t able to delivery a summary of their contents to Lacan in advance likely meant that the Mienshao himself didn’t know of their specifics either.
Their fate, along with their mission’s and those of untold Pokémon in Varhyde potentially hinged on whatever their predecessors had written down. The least she could do was take advantage of the opportunity that she had and just get at whatever truth lay within.
“... Understood, Herr Zeuge..”
The Serperior bowed before slithering off for the doorway, knocking on the panel with his tail and calling out for ‘Tommy’ to open the door. The chime and woosh sounded out again in the background and after hearing Zeuge slither off in the hallway and the ancient door woosh and clamp shut, Sophia pushed the chest back on the table and turned her attention back to the glass panes that the letters were pressed in as she moved them along and perused their date headers.
She quickly realized that they’d been sorted by their date of writing, and covered a span of roughly twelve months. Eight of them from before the final battles of the Advent War were fought, with the remainder surely overlapping with the time after Edialeigh sued for peace and hostilities ended.
This was really all that the General Staff had preserved from such a critical watershed of King Sansa’s reign? She would’ve hoped that there would have been more than a talonful of letters from two Pokémon who she only knew of through her mission briefing to try and understand what exactly had gone wrong with Operation Avalanche, but she supposed beggars could not be choosers.
After all, even if Operation Spark succeeded, the records of Fähnlein Stärke and its activities would likely not be dealt with openly until well after most of the Pokémon involved had died of old age. Operation Avalanche had been conducted before the founding of the Generalstab… even if anyone had thought to preserve records relating to the Operation, quite a lot had changed since then. And that wasn’t even getting into the season of tumult the land went through before House Baanders became the present royal line.
Sophia shook her head. She was getting distracted and without the luxury of being able to assume how much time she had to work with, it was best to get straight to work transcribing. She slipped on a writing pad onto her right foot and mounted a charcoal nub into it before turning her attention to the first letter of the lot. She glanced over its header and read it to herself under her breath: 15. Lenzmond₄, 919 nach dem Blitz, before continuing on into the letter’s contents.
Ich muss gestehen, dass ich Zweifel an Ihrem Urteilsvermögen hatte, als ich hörte, dass mein Auftrag mich nach Herbergau führen würde. Da die Hunde von Ideale aktiv unser Land durchstreiften und plünderten, konnte ich nicht verstehen, warum Sie mich mit einem ganzen Fähnlein an Truppen in ein kleines Dorf schicken, das näher an Großnebel als an der Front liegt, auf der Suche nach dieser „Dyade“, von der Ihr Seher sprach.ᴰ¹
The Corvisquire continued reading, carefully transcribing each glyph of the letter’s contents into her own handwriting. It was a letter in Hightongue from Oberst Kim to King Sansa, and while there was nothing wrong with it, she couldn’t help but hesitate after her mind turned back to Zeuge’s warning.
If she were to bring this transcription with her, and Lacan’s mission happened to take them back to Edialeigh, was it really safe to keep this transcription as a reference? It being written in Hightongue would surely be enough to keep its contents hidden from peasants and common Rothäuter, but Edialeigh had an analogue to Varhyde’s Generalstab, and if they were required to study the Hightongue of their enemy much how Lacan and his peers were…
Perhaps it was best to hedge her bets and write a transcription in Commontongue, since even when taking pains to be faithful, some of the quirks of Hightongue simply didn’t translate into it. Perhaps her transcription would never leave this side of the Sundered Sea, but if it did and it were captured, the kneejerk reaction of anyone with actual decision-making importance in Edialeigh’s army who came across it in the language of commoners would surely be to dismiss it as a hoax.
She took another sheet of paper and readied her writing pad, dutifully omitting the date and location heading as she mused aloud a spot translation of the contents into Commontongue until she made it past the first paragraph:
I have no such qualms anymore. When we arrived at Errberk Village, we came across a young Frigibax who had been noted to have one day produced a ball of thunder about him while quarreling with another villager. We attempted to pull him aside for questioning, but it proved unnecessary. He fled our presence, and we saw with our own eyes that he manifested the very same ball of thunder, one whose shape bore the mark of the great tormentor of our land: Desire.
Sophia paused and blinked at the runes on her paper. She stared back at the runes on the original, and sure enough, it said ‘Herbergau’ on it. Her hometown, and the birthplace of untold defenders of Varhyde in her Ritterorden. She couldn’t square away what would’ve compelled that Dyad to flee, until she kept reading.
I still have chills thinking of that encounter, and how humbling it is to witness one of the primal powers that mold our world in the flesh. To think that but a few months ago, this ‘Dyad’ as we have been instructed to call him, had apparently been trailing along in an Edialeigher Tross. I know not if they were already aware of his true nature, but we do now, and my troops and I troops will pursue him to the ends of the earth if need be.
I do not know whether it is possible for this land to hail ‘Desire’ alongside ‘Reality’, but if your seer is right, we have a unique opportunity to secure the favor of both and secure a lasting peace for the Kingdom of Varhyde. After all, I know full well what Edialeigh would do with such favor, and I for one do not intend to stand aside and let them claim it to burn the Throne of Truth a second time
The Corvisquire trailed off as she got to the letter’s signature and stamp as it bore the mark of draconic claws. Something about the letter had been off-putting when she first started reading it, but after writing out a translation into Commontongue, she realized why:
Just from this first letter, the events surrounding Operation Avalanche sounded eerily familiar to their present circumstances. There were obviously details that were different here and there, but Sophia had to admit that the resemblance between her and Lacan and this ‘Kim’ and ‘Elly’ was… uncanny.
Considering what became of Operation Avalanche all those years ago, she hoped that it wasn’t an omen for their future.
She was falling again.
The dreams of this sort all began the same way: with her consciousness returning to her in a dull haze. The first thing that occurred to her was that she was freezing her scales off and everything hurt with a dull pain. She had a vague awareness that her body was curled in on itself, but no matter what she tried or how hard she willed it, she was unable to move. Not even to glance to the side and see her tusks… if she even had tusks in these dreams where she was falling. She hadn’t been able to tell.
The air whistled past her as she spun head over heels and she began to see plumes of smoke and glint of fire below her. It wasn’t until she fell further that she was able to tell the difference between which dream of falling she was having. There was no gray figure in this one, and as her muddy vision made out the ground below, she could see there were no rooftops this time. Just lights zipping back and forth between opposing positions along with dark shapes, and a faint, roaring din in their direction.
“Frau Theresia! Frau Theresia!”
And then of course, came the frantic cry from above. Her body spun in the air when she saw the speaker as she always did: a battered Charizard clad in green Varhyder armor, pitted and torn with gouges, a few of his plates stained in dark colors. The drake’s scarf was torn and frayed to the point where she could no longer tell what rank he had in the army, and yet, the first time Irune had this dream, she remembered feeling a strange relief at the sight of the soldier.
She didn’t know why she would feel relieved when the army had made her life a living hell for the past year since Cade helped her first escape them to flee home. Maybe it was just the freezing feeling making her hungry for any sort of warmth. Or maybe it was because in spite of never being able to make out the words he tried to say, something about the soldier felt strangely familiar.
And strangest still, for whatever reason, the Charizard in her dreams was always bigger than she recalled Charizard being. As if she could fit snugly into his claws which reached out to her for shelter.
“Frau Theresia! Halten sie durch! Ich hab’ sie-!ᴰ²”
She’d stopped feeling that, if only because she’d grown numb to the parts of the dream that followed.
A whistling noise rang out as a dark shape abruptly zipped in. A conical tip, a set of fin-like shapes at the other end. It was the last thing Irune would always see before it found its mark near the base of the Charizard’s left wing.
Then came the deafening burst of multiple Blast Seeds detonating in unison. As usual, there was a flash of heat and wooden fragments dashed against her and the explosion pushed her away. Then her body began to spin in the air, as she noticed something hot and wet fleck her side just beyond her field of view.
She was pretty sure they were blood spatters. And after having had this dream enough times, she was pretty sure they were the Charizard’s.
The last she’d hear of him would be that agonized roar which fell off into the distance, which always filled her with an overpowering urge to scream and cry. And yet, those screams and tears would never come. She was never able to open her mouth to do so. If she even had one.
More shouts and cries. The roar of attacks being thrown between soldiers, of cannons and dart-throwers firing, and still more screams cutting through it all. They grew louder and louder as she fell, sign enough that she was nearing the ground.
A flash from a brilliant beam of light lit up the ground below her. There, shapes crumpled on the ground near the edges of her murky vision as Irune made out a collection of rocks below her with bodies laying limply about it.
The awful roar of battle cries filled the air all about as she fell, before finally seeing the dim blue glow of an abandoned Luminous Moss lantern. There was hard stone waiting beside it, marred with dark, ugly stains.
Irune had never seen what came afterwards in that dream. Since, whenever it reached that point, it always abruptly went black.
The next thing Irune knew, she was jolting up from her bed back in her team’s room in the Möbius. There was a sharp pattering noise, and she whirled over with her heart still pounding in her chest. Kate was there, having jumped back and crouched on the ground. The Sneasel’s eyes opened wide for a moment before she narrowed them back with an annoyed frown.
“Would it kill ya to let us know when you’re going to suddenly wake up like that? she huffed. “Seriously, it’s like you’re trying to scare us!”
Irune panted and looked down at her bed with a quiet shiver as her breaths came out in ragged, uneven pants. She noticed Lyle and Dalton making their way over as Kate stood upright and hesitated. The Sneasel’s red eyes studied her briefly, as the sharp frown on Kate’s face eased and her ears fell.
“You had another nightmare, didn’t you?”
Irune quietly nodded her head back, as the Sneasel and her teammates hesitated for a moment. Gods, she must’ve looked so pathetic to them right now. How on earth were they supposed to think that she could do anything to stop them from pushing her around as they pleased when she couldn’t even keep her wits about her from a nightmare?
The Axew snapped to attention as she felt something stroking under her chin. She looked up, where there was Kate leaning in with a paw cupped past her jaw, as a small smile spread over her face.
“Hey, it’s just until we get that treasure from the Divine Roost, right?” she insisted. “After that, we’ll all get what we came for and all of this will be a distant memory.”
That was right. Once she was there, she’d get her treasure, her key she’d lost to putting her nightmare with Lacan and the army behind her. If they were right about what she really was, it’d be just what was needed to hide that power in her away so nobody could misuse it. So that nobody could hurt others with it. Her teammates would get the loot she’d promised, and hopefully be able to sort out their lives afterwards.
Everything would end on a happy note for once. She didn’t know whether or not these three would really be able to get the peace they were looking for afterwards, but it’d be their own problems to worry about.
She’d told herself similar things in the past. She just hoped that this time, things would finally be different.
“Just one problem with that, Kate,” Lyle’s voice piped up. “The Thieves’ Guild is still on our ass right now. How are we supposed to get anything done in town if we can’t even set foot out the door?”
Irune blinked and looked over at the Quilava as he traded a worried glance with his teammates. Right. Igna and Ansel had chased them in here the other day. And the two were emphatic that they weren’t just going to leave them alone.
How were they supposed to go about the city with them breathing down their backs? Let alone make it to Dalton’s university?
“Dalton, I know that you suggested we pay the Thieves’ Guild off by stealing something from your university, but is it even going to be safe to approach them?” Irune asked.
“No,” Dalton said, shaking his head. “But based on what those two told us yesterday, I doubt we’d need to go far to run into them again.”
Irune quietly set her teeth on edge at the thought of Igna and Ansel just lurking in wait for them outside. The idea clearly unnerved Lyle as well from the way he held his ears back against his skull.
“I was afraid you’d say that,” the Quilava said. “Do we really not have any better options for meeting them than just stepping outside and hoping they don’t tan our hides?”
Dalton paused and blinked for a moment, seeming to weigh a matter over in his head before he tilted his head up in thought.
“Actually, we just might,” the Heliolisk insisted. “The receptionist said while coming in today that no business was to be settled here in the Möbius outside the ‘playhouse’. I’m assuming that that’s normally payment, but I assume that negotiating terms wouldn’t be out of bounds either.”
Everyone’s attention remained firmly trained on Dalton after that, as Irune shuffled off her bed with the clack of glass brushing up against glass. She stood there, and blinked a moment, before giving a curious tilt of her head up.
“Okay… but how do we find it?”
“We ask the front desk, obviously.”
Team Forager retraced their steps down the Möbius’s hallways and steps, and before they knew it, they found themselves back in the inn’s lobby. From there it was just a matter of asking that “Ecks” receptionist where this ‘playhouse’ was and letting her know that they wanted to discuss terms with the Thieves’ Guild there. The Crobat pointed out a corridor beside the steps headed upstairs with a curt “follow the corridor until you reach the lobby, then go left through the doors” for instructions.
She insisted that they wouldn’t be waiting long for an audience. Lyle wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.
They’d barely made it a dozen paces down the corridor before Lyle started to feel his stomach flutter and have second thoughts about the whole idea. The surrounding decor wasn’t exactly helping either. There was worn carpet in some sort of shade of dark red or green that looked almost like blood with dim, circular lights hung from the ceiling or on wall-mounted lanterns that gave the place an ominous air.
Like they were marching towards a dangerous presence.
The Quilava’s ears pricked with every creak and slight sound as they walked. After following the corridor around a right turn and briefly spotting a tight spiral stairwell that headed upwards, Lyle looked back at his teammates and discovered that he wasn’t alone in getting bad vibes from this place… aside from Kate, who looked as unflappable as she usually was. Irune in particular seemed to be on pins and needles as she kept stealing glances around her surroundings, before shooting a worried glance back at him.
“We’re sure this is a good idea?” Irune asked.
“Eh, it’s been a night,” Kate replied. “How mad could those two still be at us? Hell, they’ve probably moved along to mugging some sap in a back alley or something.”
Lyle sucked in a sharp breath and fought back fire from his vents. He sure hoped Kate was onto something there. The corridor made a turn to the left, where there were a pair of wooden double doors that had been left slightly ajar. The Quilava pushed the door open and stepped out waiting for his teammates to file out, as he looked around and discovered that they’d entered a lobby of some sort. He looked across the room as he suddenly failed to hold back the fire from his vents.
It was the helmeted head of an Aggron behind a counter leveling a piercing stare at him. Thankfully, it wasn’t Sheriff Mack—the lack of green armor on his body and the scarf pattern that matched the receptionist’s indicated as much, as did the curious teal shade of the stranger's hide and his eyes that matched his scarf's shade. But even so, there was a dangerous air behind the ‘mon’s eyes that gave Lyle the distinct feeling that if he had to pick a fight with an Aggron, that he’d much rather try his luck with Sheriff Mack, armor plates and all.
“You’re a bit early to see any performances right now, Quilava.”
Lyle glanced over at the walls of the room and noticed that there were posters depicting various dramatic scenes with loose runes labeling their corners: ‘A God-Slaying Story’, ‘A Missing Year’, ‘Founder’s Tale - Part Five’... Were those posters for plays? He knew that the receptionist called this a ‘playhouse’, but this place actually showed plays here?
He was going to go ahead and guess that this was that ‘Wye’ ‘mon that she’d mentioned the other day. He certainly looked like he’d be the sort who’d be called in to deal with problematic guests. Permanently, from the vibe he gave off.
“Y-Yes, but we were told by the front desk that this was a place to handle business at the Möbius,” Lyle stammered. “We were looking to try and talk business with a ‘mon from the Thieves’ Guild.”
The Aggron briefly raised a brow, before shaking his head with a quiet harrumph.
“I’m not sure what you’ve been up to to convince one of Justin’s ‘mons to stop by the theater, since they’re hardly cultured types,” the Steel-type scoffed. “But I suppose that your types are just full of surprises these days.”
The Aggron raised a claw, pointing off at an entrance to the left at a pair of doors left ajar in front of a darkened chamber.
“To the left and into the viewing room,” Wye instructed. “It closes for visitors without tickets fifteen minutes before and after showings, not that I expect you’ll need to wait for long.”
Lyle turned his head and warily made his way through the doors with the rest of Team Forager as they entered the darkened hall. He could see dim light at the end glinting off something at the other end of the room and pushed fire out his vents for illumination. As his eyes adjusted, the room’s features filled into view: a stage with an embroidered purple curtain, plain walls with wood and plaster with flecks of bare concrete showing through damaged parts, and a shock of what he assumed was red carpeting between two stairwells along the walls that held a half-dozen rows of wooden stools.
“Hup!”
Lyle turned his head just in time to catch Kate hopping from the top of one stool to the next to make her way towards the stage. A quick glance revealed the stools had small rungs to help shorter Pokémon up, though from how sturdy they’d been, Lyle could already tell that the stools could hold a decent amount of weight on them. Maybe even enough for that Aggron at the counter to sit in. He sighed and started to make his way down with his teammates, as the design of the embroidery came into view: some sort of floral pattern with rings, it looked like.
Were they just supposed to sit and wait here? And if so, how’d they know if the ‘mon they ran into was from-?
“You’ve been keeping us waiting for a long time, stoat.”
Lyle flared up with a start before whirling around to see the lanky Marowak hop down from the stage as ghostfire sprang to life at the tips of her club. From beside him, Irune’s mouth flopped open.
“H-How on earth did you-?!”
“Side entrances,” the Marowak sneered. “Gotta love them, and there’s one just on the other side of this auditorium where all the actors’ rooms are.”
Lyle’s breath caught in his throat as the strange Marowak sauntered forward with a pat of her club against her free hand. Screw this, he was getting the hell out of here. The Quilava’s nerves failed him and he attempted to scurry back up the steps for the door, only to see a flash of brown dive in and stumble back as Ansel swooped in from the rafters and perched on a nearby stool with a thrust of his sharp beak into empty air.
“You’ve got some nerve to want to talk with us after everything that happened yesterday!” the Fearow squawked. “Wye wouldn’t bat an eye if Igna and I dragged you out the front door to settle things, either. I heard Quilava fur makes for a great rug for ‘mons that don’t ask too many questions about their flooring.”
Lyle gulped as he and his teammates looked to see that they were cut off from both directions on the steps. Igna at the stage below them, and Ansel from above. The only one of them who was in any position to try to slip away was Kate, who was still on one of the stools, with nothing that would provide cover from a Bonemerang from Igna or from Ansel diving at her. The Quilava froze briefly and traded looks with Dalton and Irune wondering what they were to do. A sharp scoff snapped him to attention and alerted him to Kate walking over from the stools with her arms folded. She rolled her eyes as she approached, and blew a puff of icy air up at her ear feather with a low grunt.
“Look, we get it, you two don’t like us and we don’t like you either,” she harrumphed. “Fortunately, we weren’t planning on being here in this dump for long. That’s why we wanted to offer something to help smooth over that whole misunderstanding from yesterday.”
For a brief moment, Lyle thought he saw Ansel’s eyes raise in surprise, only for the moment to fade as soon as it came.
“Pah, what do a bunch of amateurs like you think you can do to impress us?” Igna snorted. “What, were you planning on buying us off with some hatchling’s milk money?”
“Well… the main thing we needed before we were ready to move on were some books from the Universität von Wahrheit,” Irune offered. “Books aside, there’s surely no shortage of things that could be stolen from there. If there was anything in particular that you had in mind, maybe we could work something out.”
Igna raised a brow in reply at the Axew’s reply. While Lyle still got the distinct impression that Igna didn’t care for them, the Marowak seemed to ease up a bit after hearing the proposal. He cast a glance back at her Fearow companion just in time to catch him ruffling his feathers. If Igna was coming around to Irune’s proposal, he certainly didn’t look like it from that piercing glare on his face.
“Yeah sure,” Ansel scoffed. “Why don’t you just steal us a Scheffel of Perfect Apples while you’re at it? How on earth do you expect us to believe you’ll get anything from there? Especially your friend with his messed-up arm?”
Well that was certainly low and uncalled for. Thankfully, Dalton didn’t really acknowledge the comment beyond a small frown, as he reached his free arm for his satchel.
“Well, I can’t do anything about the Perfect Apples, but I know my way around the university, and have a way of looking like I belong there,” Dalton explained. “And I don’t just mean this student scarf that I’m presently wearing.”
He fished around inside it for a brief moment, before pulling out his university badge and flashed it. First to Igna, who paused at the sight of the metal bauble, then to Ansel, who similarly was taken aback by its appearance. After growing satisfied with their reactions, Dalton hardened his expression and continued on.
“We wouldn’t have made the offer if we didn’t have a way of getting in,” the Heliolisk said. “And if we were the ‘amateurs’ you two make us out to be, we wouldn’t have given you the slip yesterday.”
Lyle stayed still, his fur bristling tensely as he expected the two thieves to descend upon them at any moment. One Slumber Orb from either of the two and the four of them were done for.
And yet, neither Igna nor Ansel budged from their places, as the pair continued to eye them carefully. They seemed to be wavering, but not yet convinced. That was probably his cue to try and speak up, especially before Kate ran off her mouth with some sort of lippy remark.
“Look, we get that we stepped on a few toes yesterday, but we genuinely don’t want any trouble before we get out of this city,” Lyle said. “We’ve got the will, the means, and the appetite for risk to try and make up for things. Surely we can work something out, no?”
Igna and Ansel hesitated and seemed to relax their postures, if not their demeanors. Still as gruff and unpersonable as ever, the Marowak folded her arms and turned her snout up with a sharp scoff.
“And what’s your game?” Igna demanded. “Why are you even here in the first place if you’re not planning on staying in the city?”
“We were in the middle of a job outside of it and needed to shake some heat,” Lyle answered. “All we need is to be left alone for a day to snag what we need and figure out a way to get past the walls. From there, it’s just a matter of us diving into a Mystery Dungeon and getting far, far away from this Provinz. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”
The two thieves traded looks with each other, only for Igna’s mood to visibly darken as she visibly tightened her grip on her club. Lyle gulped down a lump in his throat as his vents began to flare to life and he and his teammates drew tighter in towards each other expecting a sudden lunge as the Marowak leveled her bone out with a sharp scoff.
“I say you should learn how to negotiate better, Quilava,” she said. “But fine, we’ll bite… assuming that you’re able to throw on an extra stop to whatever you were planning on doing at that university.”
“... And just what would that be?” Lyle asked.
“Ansel and I need someone to pick up some reading material from the Royal Library,” the Marowak explained. “It’s right on the edge of your buddy’s university, and the rest of you won’t obviously stick out while poking around in it.”
“If you really are in such a hurry to get out of town, we’ll take the goods by sundown, and they specifically need seals showing they came from the Royal Library,” the Fearow said. “We’ve already got a list of things that need to be snatched. Get them however you need to, and bring them back to us.”
Ansel motioned over to Igna as she reached into a satchel of her own and pulled out a folded up piece of paper. She unfurled it and briefly eyed its contents, only to briefly stop and then shoot an unamused frown back at the Fearow.
“The Complete Tales of Shiren the Wanderer? Really, Ansel?”
Lyle blinked and turned his head back to the Fearow, who set his beak on edge, who ruffled his feathers and glanced back with a sheepish shrug.
“What? Nobody said we couldn’t put in personal requests of our own,” Ansel said.
“So why didn’t you ask for something like the latest volume of Founder’s Tale? Or one of those copies of Monado: The Beginning of the World with the extra chapters at the end?” Igna snapped. “Those aren’t easy to find either, and they’re actually age appropriate for us!”
“Oi! Plenty of grown ‘mons read stories about Shiren the Wanderer!” he squawked. “And I’d been looking for a collection of those stories with the one about the desert castle in it!”
Maybe a set of childish stories like that was a bit more fitting than Igna let on from the way they were bickering like this. Kate was clearly having a laugh at the turn of events, as she curled her mouth up into a smarmy grin at the Fearow’s flustered response.
“Easy there, Marowak. It can’t be helped if your partner just has a thing for fairy tales,” she said. “Though on that note, Fearow. Aren’t you a bit old for Day Care stories-?”
“Igna, just give them the list already,” Ansel snapped.
The Marowak rolled her eyes and held out a slip of paper. There was a moment of hesitation between the group before Lyle went up and took the paper, scanning its contents over. Sure enough, there really was a request for The Complete Tales of Shiren the Wanderer on it. There were about half a dozen other entries on it that all sounded like dry reading such as a tome of ‘The Varhyder Chronicles - A Brief History of our Kingdom's Early Years’ or one from ‘The Royal Lexicon of Sciences and Arts’. Had these two had the same idea they’d considered of stealing texts to sell back to students or something?
Though, now that he thought about it… did the Thieves’ Guild really need other Outlaws to take books from a public library? His teammates seemed similarly skeptical, even Kate, who twitched her ear feather and shot an askew glance at the Marowak.
“Okay, and what’s the catch to all of this?” she asked. “You really couldn’t have just twisted the paw of some student from the university to just borrow these books for you and lose it in a back alley?”
“Because security around the university in general’s gotten a bit tight lately and we specifically needed books from the Royal Library, seals and all,” the Marowak harrumphed. “Why doesn’t concern you, but this is really something Ansel and I need taken care of sooner than later. You’re the ones so desperate to get us off your tails, so ‘tonight’ sounds like as good a time to get the goods as any.”
Lyle’s heart skipped a beat. That… was one hell of a catch there. They didn’t even have any idea if word about them had gotten around from their incident in Arsenal Avenue yesterday, and if Igna and Ansel were saying security had gotten tight…
The rustle of feathers and wingbeats rang out behind him, followed by a yelp from Irune. He looked down to see her grabbing at him and looked back to see Ansel had settled on the stairs above them.
“We’re on a bit of a tight schedule, so if you’re going to take this job, we should leave right now,” Ansel added. “There’s a passage to the Undercity behind the stage. Igna and I will lead you through it and to an exit in the Administrative District’s Lower Streets to see you off.”
Going alone? With Igna and Ansel? Through territory that those two were familiar with and they weren’t? That sounded like an obvious trap if he ever heard one.
“We can find our way to the Royal Library on our own, thanks,” Lyle grunted. “Besides, we’d need a chance to prepare and-”
A sharp, flinchworthy thump rang out as Lyle and his teammates glanced back at Igna, who rapped her bone against the floor before tightening her grip on it.
“Bold of you to think that you’re in a position to be making demands here, Quilava,” the Marowak harrumphed. “Need I remind you that you’re the one who’s set to have a very unpleasant time in this city if you leave this place without some sort of understanding with us?”
“Maybe, but if you’re expecting there to be potential trouble around the university, wouldn’t that be all the more reason to want to give us a berth? What do you think would happen if we got followed?”
Lyle looked over and saw Dalton step ahead with a piercing scowl at the Marowak, his body posture tense and seemingly ready to come to blows at a moment’s notice. Ansel beat his wings in response, and until that point, Lyle hadn’t realized how big Fearow were with them spread wide.
“Tch, it’s going to rain later today, you’ll survive,” the Fearow said. “Besides, we’re not a charity and we’re already cutting you four a lot more slack than we normally would already.”
“And you trust that to hold up going around a place that will stay mostly dry?” Dalton shot back.
Everyone stared each other down silently for a moment, each waiting for the other to make a move on each other. The Heliolisk studied the pair, before shaking his head with a low harrumph.
“If they find our scent or trail in the Undercity, it’ll be significantly harder to shake them. Does the Thieves’ Guild really want to risk Grünhäuter rooting around through whatever you’ve got hiding down there?” the Electric-type asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier for us to find our own way and just give you the goods once we’re back? If we get caught, it’d be on us, and we wouldn’t exactly have anything to give up to the local guards.”
Ansel ruffled his feathers and Igna opened her mouth briefly only to catch herself. What on earth was that reaction about? Still, the pair seemed to waver a moment, before Ansel sighed and slung a bag from off his back before fishing through it with his beak.
“I suppose I can’t argue with that,” the Fearow huffed. “Though if you’re planning on getting around peacefully, you’re going to need more than just our good word going for you.”
He reached in and pulled out a scarf of the same design as his and Igna’s that had a small glinting bauble pinned on it. He took a few moments to say a few words under his breath, before throwing it to the ground. Lyle went over and inspected it scarf and found that the bauble pinned to it was a badge, which had the same double-loop design from the inn’s signboard scratched into it.
“Keep those on you someplace a guard won’t find it if you get stopped by another ‘mon from the Thieves’ Guild,” he said. “We arranged for our client to come and close our deal at the Möbius, and picked up a badge from the front desk to check for their arrival. Show them that the story checks out with Ecks or Wye, and they’ll back off.”
Did that thing actually work? He gave it a dubious poke when Irune came over and unpinned the badge from the scarf. She scooped it up, before giving it a firm squeeze.
“Hello? Is this thing on?”
Silence. The Axew shook the badge, before speaking into it again.
“Uh, so do I just leave a message, or-?”
“I heard you the first time! Leave your message and be done with it!”
Irune jumped back with a start and Lyle couldn’t help but flinch himself as he heard the Crobat receptionist’s voice hiss through the badge. He didn’t remember seeing a Psychic on-duty in either of the lobbies they’d gone through, so it meant that someone was handling the messaging on her behalf.
But… who?
“Don’t lose that. And don’t count on getting much help from it either,” Igna said. “Ecks and Wye only answer questions about things like their guest list or room availability. ‘Proprietor’s policy’, they say.”
Lyle bit his lip. He didn’t like the idea of Igna and Ansel heaping a job on them, especially when they’d already been stirring the pot up to this point. But what else were they supposed to do?
“Last chance to change your minds,” the Fearow said. “Just saying, if you really need to make yourselves scarce from this town after this job, going through the Undercity will be the easiest way for you to pull that off.”
He traded looks at his teammates, only to see Dalton and Irune vigorously shaking their heads back, while Kate seemed tense and hesitant. Truth be told, he couldn’t say that he really trusted these two himself, or liked the idea of letting the two jerk them around like this. But it was hard to see any good alternatives here. Trying to fight their way past Igna and Ansel just meant being stuck in the Möbius when he wasn’t sure if they even had enough money for a second night here. And if things worked out, surely they could talk the two into letting them use the Undercity to get out of this place tomorrow, right?
The Quilava shook his head, before giving a low grunt back at the pair of brigands on the steps.
“Tch, you drive a hard bargain,” he grumbled. “We’ll send a message that we’re on our way once we have the goods.”
Igna let out a quiet snort, turning her head aside with a sharp frown.
“Fine. Just remember that you’re the one who insisted on making this harder for yourselves,” Igna huffed. “And don’t bother showing your faces in this city if you don’t have those books by the end of the night.”
Lyle and the rest of Team Forager grumbled back agreements, before he and his teammates shuffled up the steps and back to the theater lobby. He made his way out past the Aggron behind the counter, past the doors and out onto the street, looking back to see a circular wooden marquee built over the entrance with its name in gilded runes along with that same double-loop pattern. He supposed that this side of the Möbius wouldn’t be hard to miss coming up the street.
Lyle suddenly felt scaly digits tugging at him and looked over to see Irune glancing up while pawing uneasily at her shoulder.
“Why does it feel like we just got taken for a ride back there?”
Honestly, they probably did. And Lyle didn’t like how well their own plans seemed to line up with this job. He didn’t know what on earth Igna or Ansel or the Thieves’ Guild were up to, but that sounded like one hell of a coincidence.
“Let’s… just try and get this behind us as soon as we can,” he said. “We wanted to get out of this city before the guards started catching onto us anyways, so let’s not complain too hard about catching a break.”
“Besides, it’s just grabbing a few books and handing them over,” Kate scoffed. “How much trouble could it give us?”
Lyle pinned his ears back and struggled not to throw a paw over his face.
He could already tell that they would get an answer to Kate’s question soon enough.
Author’s Notes:
Words and Phrases
1. Der Stählerne Rabe - “The Steel Raven”
2. Der Eisenmann - “The Iron Man”
3. Jugend - “Youth”
4. Lenzmond - “March” (archaic), lit. "Spring Month".
Dialogue
D1. “Ich muss gestehen, dass ich Zweifel an Ihrem Urteilsvermögen hatte, als ich hörte, dass mein Auftrag mich nach Herbergau führen würde. Da die Hunde von Ideale aktiv unser Land durchstreiften und plünderten, konnte ich nicht verstehen, warum Sie mich mit einem ganzen Fähnlein an Truppen in ein kleines Dorf schicken, das näher an Großnebel als an der Front liegt, auf der Suche nach dieser „Dyade“, von der Ihr Seher sprach.” - “I must confess that when I heard my assignment would take me to Errberk Village, that I had doubts about your judgment. With Edialeigh’s dogs actively prowling and despoiling our land, I could not understand why you would dispatch me with a full Fähnlein of troops to a little village closer to the Great Mist than the frontlines in search of this ‘Dyad’ your seer spoke of.”
D2. “Frau Theresia! Halten sie durch! Ich hab’ sie-!” - “Frau Theresia! Hang in there! I’ve got you-!”
Teaser Text
Moonturn Square, 21. Erntemond, 919 n. d. B.
Kim,
I’m happy to finally deliver some good news for a change after so many months of false starts. An empath from among our ranks capable of sensing Auras chanced to be able briefly sense the young drake’s Aura around the vicinity of Waterhead Caveᵃ. With the presences that she felt in it, it was an unmistakable sign that the Dyad is near. Based on what I and your subordinates with me have managed to gather, it seems that the Dyad appears to be heading further off towards local villages further west, and not closer to the frontlines as I’d feared.
Perhaps that should be the end of the matter, and we remain camped outside Moonturn Square in wait for you and the others, but I must confess that I have become troubled. Just the day before penning this letter, I was approached by a local seer, who implored me to make peace with the Dyad that we are pursuing. That it was imperative that we spirit him away from the fighting and hardship in our land to awaken in peace lest we bring disaster upon ourselves.
I understand, as well as you and King Sansa do, of the promise that this Dyad awakening in our land carries. A future in which the goddess we call ‘Our Comfortᵇ’ can roost alongside a god we can call ‘Our Peace’. Our foes from beyond the sea surely grasp the enormity of the situation as well from the way they moved heaven and earth to try and seize him when his attempted flight brought them too close to their positions.
From what little we’ve been able to gather of the Frigibax, he doesn’t appear to share any particularly strong affinity with Edialeigh in spite of his background, and he does not seem to have any lingering memories that would hint at him not being amenable to forcing Edialeigh to make peace after awakening. And yet, we have treated this young drake, the vessel of hope on which the King and Varhyde’s hopes rest, little better than the enemy who is presently at our gates.
I understand our mission comes from King Sansa himself, but I just cannot help but find myself worried. That perhaps we are interfering with affairs that are not rightfully ours to meddle in.
- Urgent dispatch from Oberstleutnant Elly Panzerons to Oberst Kim Brutalandas
a. While “Urquell” can indeed be used to refer to the source of rivers or similar bodies of water, it is a term that can more generally mean “source” or “origin”, especially in poetic language.
b. “Tröstung” can also be validly translated as “consolation”. It is generally synonymous with “Trost”, but can additionally be used to refer to the concept of “comfort” or “consolation” in religious contexts.
Unfortunately, I only had time to review one chapter--chapter 13, but it got me back on the thief train, she that's good at least.
Them dungeons and such
So we find ourselves in both a break and non-break chapter simultaneously. There's lots of musing introspection going on, but the undercurrent of the dungeon is still there, which I like. I struggle with whether this counts as a break between action, but I think it does, at least by the standards of your regular actions/breaks.
I like these neat little liminal spaces you conjure up within the dungeon. It adds to the flow, I think, especially because you're a writer who tends to have fairly long dungeon arcs. it breaks up the pacing and avoids some of the traps of older PMD fic which tended to wallow in multiple tens of thousands of words of dungeon trekking without but a mere rest or glimpse of sunlight. Of course, they aren't out of the woods quite yet, but there's a distinct pace shift to differentiate this from the more fighty chapters.
Anyways, I always forget that dungeon winds exist. I sprinted through them so fast in the PMD games that I don't think I ever saw them lol. Interesting that Irune also doesn't know, though I guess I'm not surprised. She's so relatable fr fr.
I do like how you ratchet up the tension here. I think it works better than the threat of other pokemon, if only because the strange machinations of the dungeon are compelling and terrifying in their own special, unthinking way. It also helps that I could never see an obvious out here. I thought there was a legitimate possibility that they could get kicked out and spend the next arc in prison. That's most of this chapter tbh--a series of escalating events with no clear out that manage to just barely resolve.
And then they stumble into the other obscure mechanic I completely forgot about. It comes a bit out of nowhere tbh, but I do remember there being some setup so there's little for me to complain about.
I do applaud your ability to carry the tension over, though. I think it might've been tempting to have everyone tumble into the safe space and all breath a sigh of relief, but there's a slow sort of easing into it here. Somehow I forgot that they were outlaws, but being reminded of that helped keep in mind the stakes here lol. Not to mention how buff those merchants are. I fear them more than the army.
Irune
Well, Irune. Can't say I expected to see this self reflection so soon after the last couple chapters. And no, I doubt they realised what your power is lol.
So Irune gets a bit of POV and much more of a focus here. There are good and bad sides to this decision, I think.
Starting with the bad. First, I dislike how much she makes me aware of her own power. she thinks about it a little too much, I think. Of course, it's been a while since I read the last chapter but I do remember being pretty excited about the 'reveal'. It added onto the general mystery of Irune and her relationship to the pursuers. But the casualness of how she goes over it here kinda deflates that a little bit. Nobody really gets time to speculate or react or process it, I guess. Feels like we're skipping some setup for the payoff. They're busy, to be fair, but I want to lean into the dramatic irony and speculate with the other characters a little more before Irune just comes out and says, yeah I've got sick powers that the army wants.
Jumping to Irune also feels like a reassurance that the story hasn't forgotten about her internal struggle, I think and that she's conflicted on her earlier actions. Some of this is necessary and I do think this is the right moment for it, but I almost feel like it doesn't go far enough considering we jump right back to Lyle Lyle crocodile after. Nothing... changes as a result of the audience getting a glimpse into her brain here, is my point. Aside from my earlier complaint.
Contradicting myself though, it is good to know that she's thinking about her actions lol. Leaving that kind of conflict up in the air for too long can get frustrating, and with how it's been a focus of this dungeon, there needed to be a way to signal that without interrupting everything else going on. And like I said, I think this moment of semi-respite is a good place for it. If I were to suggest changes, it would probably be to include some sort of reaching out on Irune's part. Not necessarily huge, just something to turn her thoughts into actions and make the POV switch feel fully justified and like the info we learned is being used somehow.
Beyond her, everyone is very sad and downbeat lol. I've been waiting for this. It's been my evil plot. We're not close to the end, so I can't help wonder whether the team bond will get better or worse over time. Have we reached the bottom yet? I dunno, I'm fine with either direction. I like the idea of things gettting worse and the team tearing themselves apart, but I also like the idea of the team overcoming adversity and rebuilding themselves from the ashes. Truly, I'm a multifaceted individual.
Though for now, the strain seems to be building and Irune better get to talking soon.
Back to the dungeon lmao
It;s so funny to me that they stumble into the secret Bazaar ragged and suffering and there's just a bunch of dudes hanging out. In general, I like the way this fic has the main protags intersect with many different walks of life and layers of society. You do good work piercing through so many layers of your world at the same time. and forcing everybody to react to our favourite thieves.
Anyway,
Oops Irune. Didn't I say everybody should just let Lyle do all the talking?
This is my favourite part of the dungeon so far. It's what I live for--devastatingly awkward interactions between characters who need to shut up and characters who need to mind their own business lol. I get secondhand embarrasment in the best way. Althought I guess humiliation is the least of their worries here.
There's a wonderful comedy of errors going on here that I find very well structured. I enjoy the escalation of the merchants asking/suggesting increasingly damning things and the team (mostly Irune. sorry Irune) responding in the worst way possible. It feels fairly short, but at this point I understand why. Especially when we get an almost-repeat with the guards later.
Stay classy, golisopod.
Freedom
I like how this dungeon ended. Really, it ended back at the start of the chapter, but you wouldn't know that until after the secret bazaar. It subverted my expectations, you could say.
Extra classy 'do you know drugs are bad?'-tier talk from golispod near the end, too. After getting paid of course. I think everybody in this world sucks lol.
Still in a rough place, though. The stoat don't lie. I enjoy these strategies they have to come up with--debating the merits of following the golisopod's instruciton, wondering whether this town is even a town at all. They're far beyond the fun and games of outlaw life and deep into paranoia, it seems. At least I'm having fun.
We do get some sort of catharsis near the end, here. At least on Irune's end. This is kinda what I was talking about earlier with me wanting a physical manifestation of her thoughts. And I think it ends up being fairly effective as a turning point for the end of the chapter. We get... somewhere. There's promise of some relief next chapter. Maybe we might get a little chat between Irune and the gang if we've been good boys.
And finally someone adds something positive to a conversation besides Lyle, thank you Irune for not getting bagged by the guards.
Bonus thoughts
bric-a-brac is truly a rare collectors-edition word.
Lyle being hit with similarities to his hometown sadge.
Was there an uptick of starting paragraphs with ellipses this chapter or is that just me?
Nah, it’s all good. The average chapter of this story’s on the chunkier side, so I can’t really fault people for choosing to tackle things a chapter at a time. Though thanks for taking this story on as part of Review Tag!
Them dungeons and such
So we find ourselves in both a break and non-break chapter simultaneously. There's lots of musing introspection going on, but the undercurrent of the dungeon is still there, which I like. I struggle with whether this counts as a break between action, but I think it does, at least by the standards of your regular actions/breaks.
Yeah, I suppose that I’m a bit action-heavy as a writer in a lot of my fare, so a lot of my “slow” chapters still have things proverbially blowing up a decent amount of the time.
I like these neat little liminal spaces you conjure up within the dungeon. It adds to the flow, I think, especially because you're a writer who tends to have fairly long dungeon arcs. it breaks up the pacing and avoids some of the traps of older PMD fic which tended to wallow in multiple tens of thousands of words of dungeon trekking without but a mere rest or glimpse of sunlight. Of course, they aren't out of the woods quite yet, but there's a distinct pace shift to differentiate this from the more fighty chapters.
Glad to hear that the progression through the dungeon felt natural for you, since I try to make Mystery Dungeons an interesting place in their own right, but even so, there’s only so much you can do for a premise that canonically can get a tad tedious and repetitive to get through.
Anyways, I always forget that dungeon winds exist. I sprinted through them so fast in the PMD games that I don't think I ever saw them lol. Interesting that Irune also doesn't know, though I guess I'm not surprised. She's so relatable fr fr.
Irune: “... I can’t tell whether that was supposed to be a compliment or not.” [ezerasus]
I do like how you ratchet up the tension here. I think it works better than the threat of other pokemon, if only because the strange machinations of the dungeon are compelling and terrifying in their own special, unthinking way. It also helps that I could never see an obvious out here. I thought there was a legitimate possibility that they could get kicked out and spend the next arc in prison. That's most of this chapter tbh--a series of escalating events with no clear out that manage to just barely resolve.
And then they stumble into the other obscure mechanic I completely forgot about. It comes a bit out of nowhere tbh, but I do remember there being some setup so there's little for me to complain about.
I do applaud your ability to carry the tension over, though. I think it might've been tempting to have everyone tumble into the safe space and all breath a sigh of relief, but there's a slow sort of easing into it here. Somehow I forgot that they were outlaws, but being reminded of that helped keep in mind the stakes here lol. Not to mention how buff those merchants are. I fear them more than the army.
Yeah, things were admittedly a bit more on the convenient end of things that chapter, but glad to hear that the execution didn’t take you too out of things.
And yeah, fighting the merchants that actually outright operate in Mystery Dungeons is probably a bad idea. After all, we’ve all seen how well that goes with the Kecleon...
Irune
Well, Irune. Can't say I expected to see this self reflection so soon after the last couple chapters. And no, I doubt they realised what your power is lol.
So Irune gets a bit of POV and much more of a focus here. There are good and bad sides to this decision, I think.
Starting with the bad. First, I dislike how much she makes me aware of her own power. she thinks about it a little too much, I think. Of course, it's been a while since I read the last chapter but I do remember being pretty excited about the 'reveal'. It added onto the general mystery of Irune and her relationship to the pursuers. But the casualness of how she goes over it here kinda deflates that a little bit. Nobody really gets time to speculate or react or process it, I guess. Feels like we're skipping some setup for the payoff. They're busy, to be fair, but I want to lean into the dramatic irony and speculate with the other characters a little more before Irune just comes out and says, yeah I've got sick powers that the army wants.
Jumping to Irune also feels like a reassurance that the story hasn't forgotten about her internal struggle, I think and that she's conflicted on her earlier actions. Some of this is necessary and I do think this is the right moment for it, but I almost feel like it doesn't go far enough considering we jump right back to Lyle Lyle crocodile after. Nothing... changes as a result of the audience getting a glimpse into her brain here, is my point. Aside from my earlier complaint.
Contradicting myself though, it is good to know that she's thinking about her actions lol. Leaving that kind of conflict up in the air for too long can get frustrating, and with how it's been a focus of this dungeon, there needed to be a way to signal that without interrupting everything else going on. And like I said, I think this moment of semi-respite is a good place for it. If I were to suggest changes, it would probably be to include some sort of reaching out on Irune's part. Not necessarily huge, just something to turn her thoughts into actions and make the POV switch feel fully justified and like the info we learned is being used somehow.
Hrm. A bit unfortunate to hear that Irune’s PoV came off as a bit uneven to you. I’ll admittedly probably opt to leave this chapter be in order to keep moving, but if you have some particular throwaway suggestions in mind regarding the ‘reaching out’ idea, feel free to hit me up and I’ll see if I can edit something in.
Beyond her, everyone is very sad and downbeat lol. I've been waiting for this. It's been my evil plot. We're not close to the end, so I can't help wonder whether the team bond will get better or worse over time. Have we reached the bottom yet? I dunno, I'm fine with either direction. I like the idea of things gettting worse and the team tearing themselves apart, but I also like the idea of the team overcoming adversity and rebuilding themselves from the ashes. Truly, I'm a multifaceted individual.
There’s a definitive point in this story that is meant to be the nadir for the party that is relatively close from the latest chapter that went live today, though we haven’t gotten there just yet. It will likely be decently obvious what that point is when it happens.
Though for now, the strain seems to be building and Irune better get to talking soon.
It;s so funny to me that they stumble into the secret Bazaar ragged and suffering and there's just a bunch of dudes hanging out. In general, I like the way this fic has the main protags intersect with many different walks of life and layers of society. You do good work piercing through so many layers of your world at the same time. and forcing everybody to react to our favourite thieves.
I mean, I try, though it helps that this story’s plot is inherently built around an (unwilling) journey, which is one of those premises that leans itself well to running into people from all sorts of backgrounds and walks of life.
Anyway,
Oops Irune. Didn't I say everybody should just let Lyle do all the talking?
Lyle: “Oh trust me, it’d make my life a lot easier.” [lyleunamused]
This is my favourite part of the dungeon so far. It's what I live for--devastatingly awkward interactions between characters who need to shut up and characters who need to mind their own business lol. I get secondhand embarrasment in the best way. Althought I guess humiliation is the least of their worries here.
There's a wonderful comedy of errors going on here that I find very well structured. I enjoy the escalation of the merchants asking/suggesting increasingly damning things and the team (mostly Irune. sorry Irune) responding in the worst way possible. It feels fairly short, but at this point I understand why. Especially when we get an almost-repeat with the guards later.
Glad to hear that you had fun with the tail end of this dungeon-focused arc, since when you’re a wanted ‘mon, even your conversations can be a potential source of hazards, and I wanted to get into the mindset of someone who’s right on the verge of being able to limp off to (relative) safety, while being blocked by final hurdles they’re not prepared for. Sounds like I pulled it off decently well.
Freedom
I like how this dungeon ended. Really, it ended back at the start of the chapter, but you wouldn't know that until after the secret bazaar. It subverted my expectations, you could say.
Extra classy 'do you know drugs are bad?'-tier talk from golispod near the end, too. After getting paid of course. I think everybody in this world sucks lol.
Well, we’ll see if that opinion holds in a few chapters. Though I suppose being snippy over various things in life grinding one down plus existential dread on a societal level doesn’t gel well with making good first impressions.
Still in a rough place, though. The stoat don't lie. I enjoy these strategies they have to come up with--debating the merits of following the golisopod's instruciton, wondering whether this town is even a town at all. They're far beyond the fun and games of outlaw life and deep into paranoia, it seems. At least I'm having fun.
I mean, the fact that the four of them are all hurt and exhausted is probably draining the “fun and games” aspect of Outlaw life right at this moment. But yeah, for all the freedom that a rogue’s life can have, there’s the times when things are going sideways, which this particular moment was one of the bigger examples of thus far.
We do get some sort of catharsis near the end, here. At least on Irune's end. This is kinda what I was talking about earlier with me wanting a physical manifestation of her thoughts. And I think it ends up being fairly effective as a turning point for the end of the chapter. We get... somewhere. There's promise of some relief next chapter. Maybe we might get a little chat between Irune and the gang if we've been good boys.
And finally someone adds something positive to a conversation besides Lyle, thank you Irune for not getting bagged by the guards.
I didn’t notice it, but there do seem to be a number tightly spaced with each other, especially in the first scene. I’ll put some thought into if the herd can be thinned a bit.
Though thanks for the review! It had a lot of useful feedback, and it sounds like you had a good time with this chapter, and I’ll be looking forward to hearing what you have to say as you catch up a bit more. Speaking of, I’m a little later than I planned with this chapter, but I’ve got a fresh update ready for showtime that kicks off the Episode where everything changes.
So let’s get right into it by checking up on the cast as they start their journey to one of their bigger moments of truth for a while in this story:
Ich muss gestehen, dass ich höchst verwirrt war, als König Sansa mir befahl, hier in Friedenau zu bleiben und nicht mit der Dyade nach Neuengelstadt zurückzukehren. Dies gilt umso mehr, als mir Feldmarschall Pritchard mitteilte, dass seine Entscheidung offenbar auf Ihren Anwalt zurückzuführen sei.
Auch wenn ich keinen Blick in die Zukunft werfen kann, weiß ich doch genau, dass der Dyade nicht mehr lange auf seine jetzige Form warten wird. Er scheint sich dessen selbst bewusst zu sein, denn als wir ihn hier festnahmen, flehte er uns an, nachzugeben und ihn in Ruhe zu lassen, damit er seine Zeit als Frospino im Dorf verbringen könne. Ich gebe zu, dass die Episode meine Gefühle gestört hat. Vielleicht sprechen meine früheren Erfahrungen als Heiler, aber es gibt nur wenige Dinge, die so erbärmlich sind wie ein Kind, das unter Tränen fleht. Mein Oberstleutnant war weniger zurückhaltend als ich und erlaubte ihm in den letzten Tagen, sich frei im Dorf zu bewegen.
Das heißt aber nicht, dass wir ihm freie Hand lassen. Wo auch immer er hingeht, bleibt er unter den wachsamen Augen von mir und meinen Untergebenen und kehrt jeden Abend in unser Lager außerhalb des Dorfes zurück. Was auf dem Spiel steht und nach all den Schwierigkeiten, die er mir und meinen Truppen bereitet hat, als sie ihn durch das Reich jagten, haben wir nicht vor, diese Erfahrung zu wiederholen. Bisher war er kooperativ und die relative Freiheit scheint seine Stimmung merklich gehoben zu haben.
Ich weiß nicht warum König Sansa oder seine Vertrauten mich so lange ausgeschlossen haben, aber wenn es Ihnen gelingt, das Ohr des Königs zu gewinnen, lassen Sie ihn wissen, dass ich daran glaube, wenn die Dyade nicht nach Neuengelstadt gebracht werden soll es im Interesse des Reiches liegt, ihn hier zu behalten. Dies ist ein friedliches Dorf, weit genug von der Front entfernt, dass wir uns lange vor drohenden Unruhen an sicherere Orte zurückziehen können. Sie können einen Blick in die Zukunft werfen, nicht wahr? Wäre es nicht einfacher, auf diese Weise die Gunst der Kräfte zu gewinnen, die in ihm schlummern?
Aber ich verstehe, dass es nicht meine Aufgabe ist, diese Entscheidung zu treffen. Auch wenn ich meine eigene Meinung deutlich zum Ausdruck gebracht habe, werde ich als sein Diener treu an allem festhalten, was König Sansa beschließt.
Ich bitte ihn nur seine Wünsche mir gegenüber offen zu äußern.
- Brief des Oberst Kim Brutalandasohn an Hoher Seher Alweiss Fremdersohn
Much to Dalton’s surprise, the journey from Shift Square back to the Administrative District was surprisingly uneventful. For all his worries about Pokémon from the Thieves’ Guild, they had a single run-in near the bridge over the river which the scarf Igna and Ansel gave them quickly got them out of. Beyond that, there were a couple occasions where they made a point of giving approaching Gendarmen a wider berth just in case the student’s scarf around his neck and the others they’d pilfered off that clothesline wasn’t disguise enough for moving around, but the biggest headaches they’d had while going back to his old university had been the hurried bathing they’d done in that dingy communal chamber to try and tamp down their scents before leaving the Möbius, and simply navigating the crowds along the way.
It’d been years since Dalton had been back here, but everything was much as he’d remembered it. There were the same grounds and wood-and-stone built between and into the bases of ancient towers. There were the same streets on the ground which laid in the shade of the ones that were built on the remains of ancient bridges above.
And of course, there were the same Pokémon in university garb heading about their lives. Well, perhaps not truly the same since terms in University weren’t indefinite, but even if younger, they did much the same things he and the Pokémon he remembered did: talking with companions, hurrying off to try and make it to lectures, or just stopping to take in the world passing around them amidst the reclaimed ruins. A little glimpse of everyday life that could almost make one forget that there was a war grinding the Kingdom down even from across an entire sea.
“Dalton, are all of these buildings part of the University?”
Dalton glanced back over his shoulder towards Irune staring up at him wide-eyed. She had an awed, curious look that Kate and Lyle shared, even if theirs were directed more towards their present surroundings.
He supposed that was one way to tell that the novelty of Newangle City hadn’t worn off on them.
“Well, some of these are housing or shops catering to the students, but otherwise yes,” the Heliolisk answered. “This is the Universität von Wahrheit, my old university before I had to leave it to help with… family matters.”
He instantly felt a twinge of regret as soon as the words left his mouth. He could see the curious look in the others’ eyes, and it was always a story that he hated retelling… precisely because it would get him thinking about how far away he was from having a chance of giving his story the conclusion a more idealistic part of him still yearned for.
He shook his head, eager to try and shift the topic of attention.
“But that’s getting beside the point. The Royal Library we need to pay a visit to later is actually on the Upper Streets at the west end of the university,” he explained. “It’s a bit of a climb up, so naturally, we’d be better off searching for those books that Irune’s looking for here at the university first before going to take care of that job Igna and Ansel gave us.”
Kate cocked a brow and folded her arms in reply, giving an idle twitch of her ear feather.
“Really, Scales?” she asked. “With the way you’ve been holding onto that badge of yours all this time, you can go ahead and just admit that you’re nostalgic for the hoity-toity life right now.”
Dalton frowned at the Sneasel’s remark. Even if he didn’t like the way she characterized it, he couldn’t say it was really wrong. Back in university, it was easy to think one was a world away from the war and all the troubles afflicting the Kingdom, much less from the life he’d been living the past few years.
The rational part of him knew full well that those feelings would’ve ultimately been fleeting, even if everything with his parents and their textile mill hadn’t happened…
“Well, maybe I am. But I was serious about it being better to start searching here in the university,” he insisted. “I can think of a few places where we can look around for the sorts of myth and folklore texts that Irune was looking for.”
“Yeah, well can you hurry it up a bit?” Lyle asked. “Since I’m not really liking the look of those clouds above us.”
Dalton turned his head up and noticed that the skies above were gray and overcast, noticeably moreso than when they’d first left the Möbius in the morning. He supposed that was a sign that rain Ansel told them about would arrive soon, so of course a Fire-type like Lyle would be particularly eager to hurry along.
Fortunately, based on the ancient tower coming up just on their left, it didn’t look like he’d have to keep Lyle waiting for long. Dalton followed it down with his eyes to a stone and timber building built into its base, and raised his unsplinted arm up to point off at it.
“We’ll want to go through there then,” he said. “The first place that I had in mind was a set of bookstores, and it’ll be quicker to cut through that building over there to get to them.”
Dalton went up the steps and through a set of open doors. He let his eyes adjust to the light as his surroundings gave way to a hallway with wooden columns that suddenly opened up into a large shaft that looked like it was taller than the Möbius itself inside. Its contents made no secret of the building’s age, with walls that were a mishmash of ancient concrete and wood and mortar balconies and extensions built on top of them or else to fill gaps.
That was certainly the History Department’s atrium that he’d remembered from his university days, yes. And the hallways splintering off also looked familiar to him, too.
“That one,” he said. “We want to go north right now.”
After briefly pointing out one of the hallways, he and the rest of Team Forager set off pattering their feet against wooden flooring. Judging from how quiet things were, they had come in between lectures, as the hall was barren aside from the occasional Pokémon or two seated near a door in a hallway reviewing books or papers—students still got in last-minute cramming, he saw.
The snippets of chatter he overheard coming from doors left ajar sounded familiar, too. There was one where he lingered long enough to peek past the door, where he glimpsed a lecture about the remains of a human machine that resembled a modern Stückofen¹ used to smelt iron and other metals. The Heliolisk vaguely recalled from an old Anthropology course that they those Stückofen-resemblings machines had a curious tendency to be found with crystalized Ether inside them—‘Gems’, as they were called. He’d forgotten much of what he learned about them, but he distinctly remembered that they were rarely encountered in nature, outside of some tales of how they allegedly turned up relatively frequently in caves from the mythical land of Annal.
He couldn’t help but smile as memories of happier times came to him, and before he knew it, Dalton and the rest of Team Forager reached the end of the hall. There was another set of doors in an entrance hall built in a more modern style with timber and stone fittings. The push-pad gave way after leaning into it with his good arm, letting him and his companions step out into the fresh air outside.
The university really was much the same as he remembered it—
“How are you all not just tired of this?!”
Dalton jerked his head up after hearing a harsh shout come from beyond the door before it’d opened more than a crack. There was a flash of worry amongst his teammates, with Kate in particular seeming particularly uneasy as they followed him out, with Lyle brushing past him and rearing up just beside to try to get a better view.
“Huh? What’s-?”
“Every day for years, we’ve been told that victory is just around the corner! That if we bleed and sacrifice a little more, that next year we’ll be in Lumena!”
Dalton let the door close behind them and looked down the steps for the source of the voice: it was a golden-furred Ninetales perched on an outcropping in front of a small crowd of onlookers. She was wearing a student’s scarf like him, and stamped the pedestal and flared her tails in visible agitation.
“There’s a levy going around this city right now! I say that I don’t give a damn about whatever fields are captured in Edialeigh, the fastest way that this madness ends is if we just say ‘no’. To tell the army and whoever wants to keep this going that we’re done! To tell them that we won’t go!”
Dalton averted his gaze as a few scattered cries came in affirmation from the crowd, which were more than drowned out by worried murmurs in it.
He supposed that some things had changed from when he was here as a student. When he was there, the kingdom’s present invasion of Edialeigh was still relatively young, and even if Pokémon were tired, there was still enough hope for progress that sentiments like this against the war were kept in the realm of quiet grumbles or posters that could be quietly put up while nobody was watching.
There were times after Dieter’s death when he wanted to scream out his feelings to the world. That those green-plated Mistkerle had taken his brother’s loyalty to Truth and Kingdom and wasted it for nothing.
And yet, he always shrank back at every moment of truth. There was always too much to lose from going outside the boundaries expected of a future Edler. For himself and his parents…
Until there suddenly weren’t.
“Scales, I think that we should get going.”
Dalton turned his head after Kate gave a sharp tug at his shoulder. He looked off after her where he saw an Amoonguss and a Poliwrath in green plates approaching from the edge of the crowd, with others in similar attire prowling forward elsewhere on the street.
He already knew what would come next, and that even if they weren’t presently wanted ‘mon, that it was best for them to stay out of things and not get involved.
“Right, this way.”
Dalton led them down a set of side steps and briskly walked away from the Ninetales and the rest of the crowd. They had scarcely made it to the end of the blocks when shouting and the sounds of a general disturbance rang out from behind him. Dalton glanced back towards his teammates and saw Lyle tugging Irune along, who looked visibly drained of color, while Kate kept her ears pinned and her teeth set on edge.
Dalton turned his head back and held his gaze low, deciding that he didn’t want to know what was going on back in front of the History Department. A part of him felt disgusted with himself for just turning away and ignoring things when the difference between him as a student and the Ninetales was that the fox had merely been braver about voicing her ideals publicly.
He supposed that was a freedom that Mystery Dungeons and the hinterlands offered to those who were at odds with ‘normal’ life. He must’ve adjusted to the change of lifestyle more than he thought if he was finding himself yearning for it barely even a day away from those places where he could just melt away.
No matter. With a little luck, they’d be back there and free to worry about their next leg to the Divine Roost come sunup—
“Hold it.”
Dalton’s heart skipped a beat as he raised his head and saw a Skuntank and Ludicolo approach from the left and cut them off. There was a moment of tense silence as the guards studied them closely, before the Skuntank swayed his tail back and forth with a sharp frown.
“We saw you four skulking around the History building,” the Skuntank said. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
Dalton held his breath as the Skuntank’s pungent musk pricked his nose and stole glances at his teammates. They had been caught about as off-guard as he had. It wouldn’t be hard to get away from these two, but how many of their companions were nearby? How many more would be coming in light of the disturbance up the street?
Dalton hurriedly went through his satchel and passed his university badge over. He didn’t know if those bookstores would still work out, but right now, they just needed to get the hell away from these two guards.
“Ich bin Dieter, ein Absolvent von hier. Ich hatte gehofft ein paar Freunden hier rum zeigen zu können, bevor ich die Königliche Bibliothek besuche.”ᴰ¹
Dalton swallowed down a lump as Dieter’s name left his throat. It wasn’t the first time he’d used his brother’s name as an alias, but every time he did always made a part of him feel unwell hiding behind him like that. He tried to block out those feelings and keep his attention on the guards as the Ludicolo took the badge and sized it up, but still felt a flash of heat behind him. … Lyle must have been venting fire from stress again.
The Ludicolo briefly played around with his badge before tossing it back with a sour grunt.
“You can spare me your frilly Hightongue,” the Ludicolo scoffed. “Though don’t waste your time with that trip up to the Royal Library. It’s closed to the public today, including for students.”
Dalton briefly flared his frill in surprise only to fight it back with a wince as his teeth set on edge. Closed? The Royal Library?
“Wh-What?!” he protested. “But it’s the middle of the day! Why on earth would the Royal Library be closed right now?!”
“Hell if I know,” the Skuntank said. “A bunch of soldiers apparently went through it right before it shut for the day, so your guess is as good as mine.”
Dalton blinked for a moment at the Skuntank’s reply. Soldiers went to the library earlier? As in the Pokémon from the Army and not just the city Gendarmen?
What on earth would ever compel them to do that? He felt cool fur brush past his flank and saw Kate slipping past. She had her ears pinned back, and her mouth hung open with an incredulous frown.
“Really? The army has nothing better to do than to mess around with a library?”
“You’re welcome to not believe me if you want, but the point is that you’re not getting in there today,” the Ludicolo chimed in. “It’s not going to kill you to wait a day and come back tomorrow.”
It… honestly just might. The four of them couldn’t afford to go back to Igna and Ansel without those books from the Royal Library. Especially if they didn’t feel like getting their hides tanned by those two and the Thieves’ Guild, potentially literally. Not that their predicament was something to go blurting out loud to these two at the moment.
“... Right, thanks for the advice,” Dalton sighed.
Dalton started to head off and noted his companions shadowing him. He walked along, his paces coming tense and calculated, if consciously avoiding going too fast just yet.
“Sepp, are you sure that we should just let them go like that?” the Ludicolo’s voice asked from behind. “Since I could’ve sworn that I saw those four somewhere, especially the Axew.”
Dalton picked up the pace and fought the urge to break into a run until he lost sight of the guards. He dropped all pretense of hiding and then ran ahead like his life depended on it. His mind spun as the streets flew by and he heard footfalls mixed in with the sounds of passersby.
There was no way in hell they were just going to be able to walk up to those bookstores, and right then, he didn’t know if it was even safe to go looking around the university at all.
He led his teammates up the street and then right, then left, then right again down a back alley lined with bins and then past a little alcove where there was a door to a concrete shaft up to a bridge running through an ancient ruin above. The metal door and frame caked in rust were the same, and so was the wall that was clearly much, much older than them.
The padlock wasn’t. That was certainly new to him.
He paused to catch his breath, as Irune went up to him worriedly.
“Dalton, where are we?” she asked. “This doesn’t look like a set of bookstores at all.”
“It’s not. It’s a stairwell that leads up to the Upper Streets near the Royal Library,” he replied.
He turned to his teammates as they gathered around with puzzled frowns, and shook his head with a low sigh.
“We’re in a bit of a tight spot and are going to need to make some hard decisions,” he said. “So let’s take a moment to try talk through our options.”
“I mean, is it too late just to go through the Undercity and get out of here?” Kate asked.
A grave silence hung in the air. Even if Dalton didn’t trust the two further than he could throw them, perhaps they’d been a bit hasty blowing off Igna and Ansel when they insisted on going through the Undercity. But how would they ever explain going through there without ever setting foot into the Royal Library?
“I’m not sure if we’ll ever see the light of day again if we try that, Kate,” Lyle said. “If some random Grünhäuter have been tipped off about us, what are the odds that we’d make it through the gates without getting caught?”
That was right. If the Gendarmen here had been informed of their identities, someone had surely put two and two together that they’d likely been smuggled in through one of the main gates.
… All the more reason why they would want to be able to travel the Undercity without worrying about constantly fighting off ambushes.
“But we can’t just leave without trying to find out about those powers in me!” Irune protested. “We’ll never get another chance if we do!”
Dalton raised his head and saw Irune’s expression had taken on a desperate tinge. It made him a bit uncomfortable to see like that, and he didn’t want to leave her dangling like this, but it was hard to see how abandoning the Axew’s effort wasn’t the lesser of two evils.
Heavy footsteps came from the far end of the alley, prompting Dalton and his companions to freeze and duck behind a bin. An armored Hariyama walked past the alley’s mouth and briefly scanned it before moving along. Dalton held his breath and waited until the guard moved along, when he cautiously emerged along with his teammates and turned his attention back to the padlock.
“Let’s go someplace else. Someplace a bit further where we can talk a bit more freely,” he said, before running the padlock between the fingers of his left hand.
“Kate, can you-?”
“Way ahead of you there, Scales.”
Kate went up to the lock and fished out her Iron Thorn from her belongings, fishing around for its pin before it gave way and the padlock came undone. The chain was easy for them to pull off afterwards, along with the door, with Lyle doing the honors of using his natural fire to lead the group up the ancient stairs until they reached the top. Dalton waited for the Quilava to step out first before following along with the others into a tunnel with flat walls and a roof, along with a raised walkway that overlooking a road about an Aggron’s height below them. The place was just as Dalton had remembered from his time at University. Why, it was even still dimly lit by Luminous Moss lanterns hung from the center.
“Dalton, what on earth is this place?” Lyle asked.
“It’s a tunnel that’s part of an ancient ramp up to the Upper Streets,” Dalton explained. “It’s still relatively intact, so Pullers use it to bring cargo up to the portions of the Upper Streets that are still accessible. More importantly for us, the rest of the stairs up towards the Royal Library are just a ways down from here.”
Dalton began to look off down the tunnel when a loud clatter rang out and suddenly filled it. Amidst the dim lighting, he briefly saw a Camerupt pulling along an open-backed cart laden with hay, the Heliolisk just making out a low grumble as the Camerupt passed.
“Ach, du lieber Himmel², since when were there checkpoints around here?”
Dalton blinked and tilted his head after the Camerupt as the Puller lumbered along with his hay cart. Maybe he was just still on-edge from running into those two Gendarmen earlier, but ‘checkpoints’?
A sharp tug at his scales reminded him of Irune’s presence. She was staring at him now, visibly fidgeting her claws nervously.
“Dalton, if we’re not looking around in the university, how are we supposed to find those mythology books?”
The Heliolisk paused briefly. He was a bit iffy about the idea, but he supposed there was still one way to try and help Irune with her search…
“... We’d have to try and find them the library,” he said. “One of the books on the list that Igna and Ansel gave us was The Collected Legends of Wander. We’d naturally find it shelved with other books about myths and folklore, so there’s a good chance that something about these powers of yours will turn up.”
Or at least it ought to be a good chance, anyways. The Royal Library wasn’t small, but they were putting a lot of eggs all into one basket right now. He studied his teammates’ reactions and while Kate didn’t seem bothered by the suggestion, Lyle looked tense and had his ears pinned firmly back against his head.
“Dalton, I don’t like this. We get here, the place is swarming with guards, and now the Royal Library’s closed on top of things?” the Quilava asked. “Did Igna and Ansel know about this? If they did, why didn’t they tell us?”
The Heliolisk sucked in a breath and set his teeth on edge. Maybe it was all just a coincidence, but Lyle was onto something, and things weren't adding up here. If Igna and Ansel really needed these books on such short notice, wouldn’t they have brought up a detail this significant so they could better prepare and increase their chances of successfully bringing those books back?
“But this is the only chance that I’ll have to know for sure what my power is!” Irune insisted. “And what are we supposed to do if we go back to Igna and Ansel empty-handed?”
Dalton caught and thought back to the threats that the Marowak and Fearow made the other day… along with the ones they made just before sending them off. Whatever the story was behind Igna and Ansel not telling them about the library being closed, it didn’t matter. Unless they were going to try and flee Newangle City right here and now with the inadequate supplies they’d gathered in the past day, they had to bring those books back to them.
He studied his teammates’ reactions and saw that they were on-edge like him… aside from Kate, who still seemed unfazed all this time as she tapped a foot and folded her arms with a skeptical frown.
“Wait, but what exactly is the problem here? If this library’s closed, shouldn’t it just be a matter of breaking in without getting spotted?” Kate asked. “I mean, I get that it’s not some random shack, but I made my way through an army base on my own once. It can’t be harder than that, right?”
Dalton had to fight not to roll his eyes at the Sneasel’s remark. Lyle seemed like he was similarly unimpressed as he turned to the Sneasel with a sharp harrumph.
“Kate, this is a place that’s run by the King and the Hofstaat. Be realistic,” the Quilava huffed. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to expect there, but I doubt we’re going to be able to get in just by breaking a window.”
Dalton paused as his mind turned back to what he remembered of the Royal Library and its surroundings. It was certainly true that they wouldn’t be breaking in through any windows around its main entrances, but…
“Actually… that might not be as impossible as you think,” Dalton said. “It’ll be a bit risky, but if things haven’t changed much since the last time I was in this city, it’s at least theoretically doable as long as we’re quick about it.”
Everyone else perked up to attention after that. Maybe he should’ve talked a bit more about the risks, but it was too late now. They were all staring at him with incredulous gapes, and it was obvious that they all wanted to know more.
“Wait, we can?” Irune asked. “Dalton, just how would that work?”
Sophia lowered her head into the pool’s water and threw it back, letting the beads of water roll down her feathers. As odd as it felt to be bathing deep within the bowels of a human ruin, much less one which housed quarters for nobles when they were summoned by the Hofstaat, in some respects it was just like any other bath she’d taken before in her life.
Just like every other time she got this wet, her plumage was everywhere. The Corvisquire could already tell from the water still dripping from her beak and wingtips that she’d need to spend some time preening the vanes of her feathers before she’d be optimally flightworthy again. She made her way up to the edge of the basin, and brought her beak up to her flight feathers to begin to tend to them.
And as she always did whenever she preened herself, she could see those ugly gouges in her chest plumage and under her left wing that she’d picked up during the homefront campaign. How long had it been since then? Almost a decade? And yet here they still were, an uncomfortable reminder of that first brush with death. And of the trials she’d endured undergoing muscle therapy to fly again afterwards.
At the same time, there were things that were different about this bath. Even while preening, it was hard to not notice how the light of lanterns hung up around the chamber was the only thing illuminating the white-and-gray tiling placed over ancient walls underneath—the chamber was too deep inside the ancient tower around it to see natural sunlight. The water in the pool she’d just exited had been warm to the touch much as if it were a hot spring. According to Lacan,the water for nobles’ quarters built in towers like this one in the Administrative District was heated by furnaces that heated air vented underneath the floors, much like they would be in some more elaborate countryside manors. As incredible as it first sounded when it was explained to her, there were apparently a set of ancient internal cisterns which fed pools like these through piping which had been patched up and rebuilt with the ages.
In the time of the Founder, a set of pumps driven by tamed thunder brought the water up all the way from the base of the tower. They had worn out centuries ago and nobody knew how to repair or replace them, while all the alternatives driven by Pokémon or wind had proven wholly inadequate to move the water up so many metri above the ground. In modern times, the cisterns were fed from rainwater captured on unused rooftops or blocks of ice brought in from ice houses which melted above the topmost cistern to cascade down to the others below.
Sophia had heard of the needs of the war forcing even nobles to do without in some cases, but she never imagined something as simple as water would ever be one of them. And yet, here in this tower where Lacan’s visiting quarters in the city were, the cisterns’ water was strictly rationed to the point that the bathing pool she was in was filled for just a few hours a day. And precious enough that it was set aside for communal usage by all the Pokémon that were housed in this sliver of floors far above the ground…
“Frau Kranoviz?”
… including for the garrison of soldiers who posted to keep watch over those nobles’ quarters, which Sophia had completely forgotten about. The Corvisquire let out a startled caw and reflexively shielded her scars on her chest with her wings. She always hated it when she didn’t have her breastplate on and other Pokémon saw those ugly, lingering gouges in her feathers. It was why Lacan had suggested coming to bathe while the pool was still in the process of filling up and it’d be mostly empty.
Not as empty as she’d wished, it seemed.
Sophia sucked in a breath and turned her head up towards the voice only to freeze with a surprised blink. There, waiting further down the edge of the pool were a Raichu and Haxorus in green armor plates who hastily saluted with paw and claw over their hearts. The same ones who had guided them through Heldenschloss to the King’s quarters the other day.
“Graf Brutalanda sent us to fetch you and help prepare you to head out,” the Raichu said, his gait and demeanor visibly strained. “He says that you have a mission of some sort to get to.”
… What on earth were those two doing here anyways? Guards usually had regular assignments at specific posts even in settlements far smaller than Newangle City. King Siegmund’s palace was on a whole different tower hundreds of metri further up into the sky, hardly a post these two could just conveniently go back to on their own…
“... Aren’t you two a bit far from the gates of Heldenschloss right now?”
The Haxorus pawed at the back of his neck uneasily, and looked aside with an uneasy hem and haw.
“Erm… w-well, we are, but King Siegmund thought we didn’t put our best foot forward when dealing with you and that Graf,” he explained. “He… uh… strongly insisted that we take a break from our normal duties to make a better impression on you two before you left the city.”
“Max, you can just tell her that we’re being punished,” the Raichu harrumphed. “Really, what else are you supposed to call suddenly doing the work of servants and being stuck getting snapped at by a bitter pill of a Salamence-?”
The Raichu was cut off by a small swat from the Haxorus’ tail along with a sharp glare. The Haxorus turned back to the Corvisquire, as she noticed the dragon force an overeager smile onto his face.
“I-I assure you, we didn’t mean any offense, Frau Kranoviz,” he insisted. “Being able to protect His Majesty is just a high honor a-and we were just trying to do our utmost to live up to it.”
Sophia narrowed her eyes and noted for a moment that the pair seemed to be strangely on-edge. The Haxorus for whatever reason seemed almost frightened and was nervously pawing at the armor plate over his belly. Just what sort of warning could the King have given the pair to make them this uneasy?
It then occurred to her that this was around the time of the year that the last levies went out for soldiers to deploy to Edialeigh before winter set in. The King hadn’t gone so far as to threaten these two with that, had he…?
She decided that it was best not to wonder too much about whatever King Siegmund had told the pair. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t her place to interfere, and the sooner she could finish preening her feathers and get into the air again, the better.
“I understand, Herr Maxax,” she sighed. “I will dry myself off and report to him immediately-”
“A-At least let us help you put on your armor!” the Haxorus insisted. “Graf Brutalanda told us we were supposed to help you, and it’s not like you can put those plates on all by yourself with just wings and a beak, right?”
The Haxorus’ Raichu counterpart shot him a sideways look briefly, before pausing and shaking his head.
“It would go by faster for us to take care of your straps, Frau Kranoviz,” the Raichu said. “We just figured that since it sounds like Graf Wellenhafen is in a hurry to meet you, that it’d be a bit better for all of us if we didn’t give him more things to be giving us earfuls over.”
Sophia paused at the Raichu’s response. Had Lacan gotten a lead as to where the Dyad and her companions were? Though if he were in such a rush, why didn’t he come and fetch her himself? Did something happen?
Sophia glanced off at her armor and belongings sitting by the pool, along with a purple Eviolite necklace sitting on top of it along with her scarf… and the notes she’d taken from reviewing the records at the Royal Reliquary barely tucked away in her satchel. Gods, she had been such a fool to not put that away before bathing. What if one of the papers had gotten loose in front of those two?
She glanced over at the two guards and noted that they seemed every bit as on edge as her. Perhaps it was a bit daft, but maybe it’d be for the best to try and soothe the two’s nerves a bit before leaving. Especially if it’d help keep them safely ignorant about any of those findings about Operation Avalanche she’d spent most of the past days gathering.
“That’s fine,” she sighed. “Just let me do the hard work of slipping my breastplate on.”
The Haxorus and Raichu traded puzzled glances with each other but otherwise didn’t contest things. Sophia beat her wings out and ruffled her feathers to try and shake some of the lingering moisture off, before hurriedly shoving the contents of her satchel deeper and turning to her effects. She stooped down and nudged her head into the loop of her Eviolite necklace. Then came the hole for her breastplate, and then finally her scarf.
The crow lowered her head and pinned her beak against her breastplate, before approaching the Haxorus and Raichu. Perhaps it was paranoia of hers, but she felt more comfortable with it the plate hugging up against her, where no one could see those ugly wounds on her body...
“... I’m ready.”
The pair set to work at once, the Haxorus tending to her helmet, while the Raichu set about setting her back plate into place. The Corvisquire remained still as the straps came together, and raised her right wing when prompted. She then saw the Haxorus circle around to her left and stoop down only to pause and awkwardly clear his throat.
“Frau Kranoviz, I need you to lift your other wing for me in order to finish putting on your straps.”
Sophia stiffened up and grimaced. There were also those scars on her left side of her body as well. They weren’t as noticeable as the ones on her chest, but…
“I don’t suppose it’d be possible for you to put those on without looking, would it?”
“I… don’t think I can do that, Frau Kranoviz,” the Haxorus said. “These straps a bit more involved, and I kinda need to see what I’m doing to make sure your armor is securely fastened.”
Sophia knew that, but she always hated getting that answer. It was just a reality that she would have to bear for as long as she was still a Corvisquire, even if it didn’t make it any more pleasant to face.
“... Just make it quick,” she sighed.
Sophia raised her wing and felt the Haxorus link up her straps. He hesitated a moment, before hurriedly finishing and tightening them. She clamped her wing against her body the moment the drake’s claws left her side.
Sophia stepped forward, looking up to see the Haxorus visibly squirming. She hardened her features into a frown, only to pause after she noticed a streaking scar poking out from the right of his armor plate over his belly. From how much it widened before his cloth armor covered the rest, it must’ve continued into a large gouge. One that would be hard to miss on the Haxorus’ bare hide.
… Sophia looked aside with an uncomfortable ruffle of her feathers. A part of her felt selfish and childish for having been so insistent with the soldier earlier. It hadn’t even occurred to her that the Dragon-type would also be able to relate to having an ugly wound lingering on his body, let alone one that he didn’t have a hope of shedding upon another evolution as she did.
“Thank you for your patience with me, Herr Maxax,” she said. “You got things done faster than I would’ve managed.”
The Haxorus let out a sigh of relief. Sophia smiled back briefly before hastily gathering up her satchel, or at least she hoped it was a smile. It had been hard to derive much joy from her efforts as part of Operation Spark lately. Those readings at the Royal Reliquary the other day certainly didn’t do anything to change that….
“... Something else on your mind, Frau Kranoviz?”
Sophia turned and saw the Raichu soldier staring at her, uneasily pawing at his shoulder. She faltered a moment and wondered if she should say something, before deciding against it. She slung her satchel across her back with a cawing sigh, taking a moment to inspect her wings for stray moisture.
“Just work matters. Nothing you need to be concerned about,” she said. “Take your time with returning to Graf Wellenhafen’s quarters. I understand that it’s a bit more difficult to reach for Pokémon that can’t fly.”
She stopped and ran her beak over a few stray spots on her wings, before making her way to the door where the bathing chamber’s exit was. The hallways of the ancient space seemed to blur together as the Corvisquire retraced her steps, and she all but ignored the decorative friezes and mosaics as troubled thoughts swirled in her mind:
Ever since leaving the Royal Reliquary, she’d had trouble getting Kim and Elly’s letters out of her mind. She knew that she’d been ordered to review them and that learning from their mistakes could very well be the key for Operation Spark to succeed where Operation Avalanche had gone so horribly wrong in the past. Why, it was already a small miracle that the Dyad’s trail provided them an opportunity to stop and review them.
Sophia had to stop partway through yesterday and then again a little past noon after returning in the morning, which a part of her was quietly thankful for. The last letter she’d been able to review before leaving the Royal Reliquary was one sent after Kim and Elly penned the past Dyad in Freeden Village. It mentioned some surprising details about how the two had dealt with that Dyad, but what struck her the most was how similar it all sounded. Yes, Kim and Elly were different, they were both of commoner stock and Kim apparently had a background as a healer, but the whole time, she just couldn’t help but keep thinking of just how much the two’s situation sounded like their own. Why, it was almost as if she were reading something from a prior life!
That was what made it all the worse, since that last letter had been written roughly just a couple weeks before the destruction of Freeden Village. The time and place of the great disaster that cowed Edialeigh into making peace and ended the Advent War.
A part of her hoped that they’d be forced to chase after the Dyad again away from this place. That she wouldn’t get the chance to read the rest.
Just from what she read so far, she was already afraid of what she would find in the letters she hadn’t gotten to yet.
“Gottverdammt, since when does it rain like this in Herbstmond?!”
Kate supposed that it was only natural that their luck would run out at some point. The climb up from the ancient tunnel Dalton led them through brought her and the rest of Team Forager to a second stairwell that passed a series of doors that all refused to budge no matter how much they were pushed. When they finally found a way out onto the Upper Streets, they emerged into an alleyway formed from the alcove of an ancient tower… along with a gray, overcast sky that was still pouring buckets of rain onto them.
They’d at least found an awning further down the alley to hide from the elements, but as the droplets of water she recoiled from reminded her, it was an imperfect shelter, to say the least.
She brushed the droplets from her pelt and moved away from the edge of the awning to get a better view of what lay ahead past its mouth. There, on the other end of a crumbling concrete bridge just off to their right, was their destination: a facade with a pillared portico and steps made of gray-and-white stone sprouting out from a place where the Upper Streets intersected with an ancient tower that continued up skywards. Except, even with her muddy farvision, she could already see a number of things ahead aside from the awful weather that were going to make the walk over difficult.
“Scales, are there normally that many guards posted around the Royal Library?” she asked. “I thought that Igna and Ansel said that they were hanging around university recently.”
Kate originally hoped that it was her vision playing tricks on her, but a longer examination quickly brought them back to earth. At every corner around the library, there were green-plated guards posted keeping watch and occasionally milling about. Really, the only silver lining was that there didn’t seem to be many fliers keeping tabs from the heights above. Probably because the weather would bog down anyone who couldn’t stay in the air after inevitably getting soaked.
This… was definitely going to be harder than that army base she’d snuck into back in the day. She looked over at Dalton, who quietly sucked in a breath before shaking his head.
“That’s admittedly more guards than I was expecting to be on-duty,” he said. “Especially if the library really is closed.”
Well, that certainly sounded promising. Not. At this rate, they’d probably have had better luck trying to swipe armor from Arsenal Avenue and then bluff their way into the guards’ rotation!
Kate flattened her ears and looked back, seeing Irune casting anxious glances around. Right, this was their last shot at finding out whatever Irune wanted to about those freaky powers of hers. Of course the Axew would be cagey about the idea of sneaking past even more Grünhäuter than back on the Lower Streets.
“Dalton, weren’t we supposed to get in by breaking a window?” Irune asked. “How on earth are we supposed to manage that when all the entrances are on the same streets as those guards?”
“By entering from below.”
Dalton raised a hand and pointed off just below the ancient bridges. It took a moment to make things out from the distance, but there was a patch of wooden scaffolding and tarps that had been built along the side of the ancient ruins. Why, there was even a ropeway that headed off somewhere a couple floors below them on their present tower. Kate squinted to get a better view, when she suddenly noticed something weird about the construction site:
All the scaffolding and tarps looked downright ratty, like they’d just been rotting there for some time.
“... Just how long has all of that been down there anyways?” the Sneasel asked.
“Since before I first went to university,” the Heliolisk explained. “The tower the Royal Library is in and the ones nearby were apparently in the process of being recladded a few years before the Benzen Revolt. For obvious reasons, the project’s been in limbo since then.”
A quiet chill went up Kate’s spine at Dalton’s mention of the ‘Benzen Revolt’—the first of a series of uprisings that happened right before the last invasion of the Varhyde by Edialeigh. Kate hadn’t been alive to see any of them herself, but her parents had told her that that was the point at which they’d been forced to leave their old lives behind.
Neither mom nor dad liked talking about what had happened during the Benzen Revolt or the years immediately following it much. And from the little she’d been able to glean from them while they were still around and from the stories she’d heard from others, Kate didn’t blame them.
She shook her head to try and push those thoughts aside, before turning and seeing Lyle quietly frowning at the Heliolisk.
“Wait, but how would that help us get in, Dalton?” he asked.
“Because a number of windows and partitions which were put up where that scaffolding is are temporary panels that were never properly replaced by stone cladding,” Dalton explained. “They’re both further out of sight from where those guards are posted and would likely be easier to break into. Back when I was back in university, a number of the ones with windows didn’t have proper glass panes on them.”
Well, that would certainly make things a bit easier, since it’d be nice to not have to worry about getting cut up by glass shards after breaking in. There was just one problem: the scaffolds Scales pointed out were well below the height of the Upper Streets that they were presently on. Looking around, Kate could see a couple cantilevered platforms sprouting from ancient supports coming off the bridges—probably meant for objects to be lowered onto them by winches or pulleys—but no obvious stairs down.
“Oookay, and just how are we supposed to get there again?” the Sneasel asked. “Since that looks like a hell of a jump down there.”
“By getting to that ropeway,” Dalton explained. “It looks like it should be accessible just a few floors below us.”
Kate tilted her head and looked back towards the platforms. It was a bit hard to make out since most of it was blocked from view by chunks of the Upper Street, but there really was some sort of rope bridge down there. There was a wordless moment where there was no sound but the rain pouring in the background as Kate tried to size up the odds in her mind. Irune must’ve been doing the same herself judging from that puzzled tilt of her head she was giving Scales right now.
“Wait, but then we had to have passed that floor on our way up,” Irune said. “Why didn’t we try breaking in through one of the doors in the stairwell?”
“One, those doors are sturdier than they look. Two, I don’t know what exactly is on the other side of them, so it wouldn’t make sense to alert any Pokémon that might be nearby,” Dalton explained. “And most importantly…”
The Heliolisk trailed off as he peeked his head around a corner and motioned leftward. Kate crept up and stole a glance around the corner, flicking her ears impatiently.
“Scales, what are you-?”
She saw it almost immediately: the ancient concrete span just outside the alley had a sudden break with a pair of wooden spans built over them… along with one that hugged the side of the attached tower that was noticeably lower.
“There’s a way onto that scaffolding from here that’s much easier to reach. We just need to make it over and not get spotted.”
Kate stared out at the pouring rain as a soft thunderclap rang out. She looked at her teammates and saw that everyone other than Dalton didn’t look particularly enthused about the idea. Irune was warily putting a hand out to test the falling rain, while Lyle’s vents were pouring fire with his face sporting an expression like a Grünhäuter had just walked in on them.
She flattened her ears and clicked her tongue with a low sigh.
“If it’s really our best shot, I suppose we might as well get this over with,” Kate said. “Lead the way.”
Dalton waited a moment as a Pidgeot flew past the sky past the alley’s mouth, before poking his head out and then hurrying left. Kate followed after him along with her teammates followed one by one. The street was fortunately on the quieter side and looked like it was taken up with offices for bookkeeping or something frilly like that rather than the bustling shops and dwellings they’d encountered on their way to the overlook with the Reshiram shrine… not that this seemed like great weather for going out and about in general.
Another peal of thunder rang out as Kate gave an involuntary shudder. She wasn’t one for getting rained on like this, but why was this bothering her so much? She felt water under her feet and heard a splash, as the reason suddenly dawned on her:
It brought back bad memories.
Of frantically running away in the refugee camp as shouts rang out on a night which poured rain much like it was right now. The night when the Grünhäuter finally caught up with her mother and took her away.
“Kate, hurry up already!”
The Sneasel snapped to attention at Lyle’s voice and saw him staring at her from the top of the lowered walkway. She hurriedly vaulted over the ledge and landed with a thump and looked down to see she was on the top of a set of scaffolding. She hurriedly scooted under the concrete of the ancient street overhead, just in time judging from the sound of approaching footsteps. She held her breath as the footsteps grew louder and then slowed to a stop, when a pair of voices rang out from above.
“That’s strange, I thought that I saw someone down here,” the first voice said.
“It’s probably nothing. Just have Otto do a flyby to do a check.”
Kate quietly set her teeth on edge as her heart pounded in her chest. She hadn’t realized that they were that close to being discovered. She didn’t dare to move a muscle as she waited for the voices to leave, only turning her head when they sounded suitably far away. Her teammates seemed shaken themselves, and were similarly panting and stealing tense looks around. She brushed water off her fur, as Lyle shook himself dry vigorously and warily glanced up.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to hang around here and wait for that ‘flyby’ to happen,” Lyle murmured. “Where are we supposed to go now?”
Kate looked down the length of the scaffolding, when she noticed that there were a set of ratty tarps up ahead, along with a ramp headed downwards.
“Well, heading down seems like as good a place to start as any,” she said. “Will that help us get in, Scales?”
“... It’s worth a shot, at least.”
Dalton got up, taking a moment to carefully adjust his weight and avoid brushing his splinted arm as he led them down along the ramp. When they reached the next level down, they saw there was another ramp laid out in a switchback. And then another, and another. Though Kate supposed it made sense: after all, stairwells in buildings usually went up and down multiple levels in one place, so why wouldn’t the Pokémon that made these scaffolds have the same idea?
The walls beside them also seemed to change as they went further down, going from crude panels with windows and shutters where Pokémon obviously lived and worked to vacant gaps starting around five levels down, and what looked like a black abyss further within. Dalton stopped at one of the gaps, before motioning along at the others to follow.
“Come on,” he said. “I think we can make the rest of the way down from here.”
After exiting the bathhouse, Sophia emerged into a towering shaft where rain was pouring down in heavy drops. She hesitated a bit and looked upwards towards the rain, seeing the entire circular shaft was ringed with balconies that stretched up floor after floor to a large hole where large windows might have once been present in ancient times.
She braced herself and sprang up, beating her wings. Lacan’s quarters thankfully weren’t that far above her in the grand scheme of things. While the height gave her a much-needed chance to spread her wings from the cramped corridors, this rain definitely made the flight up more of a chore than it normally would have been.
The floors’ layouts and their balconies changed as she ascended, the spacious floors fitted with nobles’ quarters giving way to closely-spaced housing for servants and guards, and then to gutted levels with exposed concrete and steel. It was apparently common for floors that were too far away from water or practical access for terrestrial Pokémon to be left in a derelict state, and with no sign of use beyond a few ladders and service entrances for the occasional cargo lift here or there, these were hardly exceptions. Not that one would ever know looking from the outside in: the stone cladding on the tower’s exterior hid their decrepit state from the world. Sophia didn’t know if King Agarez’s efforts to beautify the Administrative District’s spires had ever extended to interior chambers like these, but if so, they’d clearly rotted away centuries ago.
And eventually, as she began to approach the ceiling the floors began to show signs of being settled again. This time, the quarters for commoners came first, with the nobles whom they waited on being built above them, likely because they were closer to the access on the roof. Lacan’s quarters lay in the middle of the settled band, and before she knew it, Sophia was coming to a stop on a wooden railing that filled in a missing patch of ancient concrete just in front of it.
She hopped off under the cover of the balcony and ruffled her feathers dry, before hopping down to the balcony. Her destination was not particularly hard to find: a set of double doors left open for her in waiting marked the site of Lacan’s quarters.
She hurriedly preened her feathers of undue moisture before making her way into the apartment’s entrance hall. These quarters, and most others of their ilk in Newangle City, were allocated to nobles and their families by the King and Hofstaat, as it was the law of the land that any noble was to appear before the ruling monarch of Varhyde when given a summons as soon as reasonably possible. As such, the interiors of these apartments lacked the personal touches of manors in the countryside, and tended to look much the same beyond any decorations their owners had brought in…
Which much to Sophia’s surprise, Lacan’s chosen decorations consisted of paintings hung along the wall. The entrance to a darkened canyon at sunset, a path running through a forest with mountains in the distance, a stripped tree on a grassy knoll… she didn’t remember seeing any of these hung up the last time she had come to the Salamence’s quarters before they were brought on to Operation Spark. She supposed that with his familial manor still in ruins that Lacan would’ve paid more attention to differentiating this apartment, but how on earth had he found the time to commission all these paintings?
Sophia turned her head and stared briefly at one painting that looked like a bunch of chaotic, fiery swirls that she wasn’t sure what it supposed to be, when she suddenly bumped into a hard surface bump with her right wing. She batted it out in surprise when a loud clatter followed that made her flinch.
Corvisquire set her beak on edge and looked down and to her right. She’d stumbled into a small bureau… and knocked over a case with a pad set on top along with a small, ornamental box.
“A-Ack!”
Sophia grimaced and looked over the case and the small box with a lifting strap. The pad looked like the writing pads that Pokémon like her used to hold the likes of charcoal nubs with their feet to write runes, except there were curious small straps around it. A quick glance at the case revealed brushes and little jars spilling out of it… right, Lacan’s father had apparently been a hobbyist painter, so the case was likely a paint set. Given how prominently they were displayed, the box and case were likely family heirlooms.
Except, she didn’t remember ever seeing Lacan with any of these after he came to live in Errberk Village. Sophia supposed that Lacan not using the paint set would make sense at least, since it would’ve been too large for him to use back then as a little Bagon. But she would’ve thought that little box would’ve stood out more.
The Corvisquire stooped down to gather up the belongings when she couldn’t help but wince after noticing a scratch on one of the small box’s sides. She braced herself and nervously opened the box, dreading whatever smashed-up contents she’d find inside that she’d have to explain to Lacan when he found it.
When she did, she discovered some sort of contraption with gears, metal pins lined up with each other, and a small cylinder with bumps on it, which much to her astonishment, began to rotate. Human machinery. From how finely made the components were, it had to have been made from scavenged parts, since she wasn’t sure if there were artisans anywhere in all of Wander who could still make them this cleanly and precisely in modern times.
Sophia abruptly stiffened up after hearing soft chiming coming from the box. After a few chimes, she realized it was a familiar melody coming from the box itself. It was a song in Hightongue she remembered her parents singing on a couple occasions when she was younger, about a great tree and the flowering earth reaching out for the sky for a loved one…
♫ Wenn der Baum dort die Wurzeln breitet aus…
Trägt er meine Seele und Erinnerung…ᴰ² ♫
She trailed off as the box continued to chime. The song had always struck her as sounding sad even when her parents were still alive, and the crow couldn’t help but feel her eyes grow damp thinking back to those bygone times together.
Times she’d never experience again in this life.
“Oh,” a rough voice harrumphed. “You found my paints.”
Sophia jolted upright before she saw a set of claws shoot in and unceremoniously clamp the music box’s lid closed. The Corvisquire blinked as she looked up and saw Lacan frowning at her, and squirmed, lowering her head out of shame. The Salamence remained silent, before he turned away with a low sigh and bent down to lift the box with its strap with his mouth. He carefully returned it back onto the top of the bureau, before turning to the case with brushes and paints and slipping a set of claws into the pad to pick it up.
Sophia noticed that the pad fit the Salamence’s claws perfectly, and between that and his passing comment, it dawned on her that he’d called them his paints…
“Wait, those are your brushes?” the Corvisquire asked. “I always thought that they were your father’s.”
“No, they’re mine, even if I haven’t used them lately,” Lacan tersely corrected. “Father’s equipment was destroyed when I was a child during the last sack of Port Velhen. As were his works.”
Sophia set her beak on edge. Right, Lacan’s title as Graf von Wellenhafen was inherited from his parents, who had stayed behind during Edialeigh’s last invasion of Varhyde to defend their Grafschaft on behalf of their subjects… and paid with their lives for it it. Now that she thought of it, Lacan always did seem to spend quite a bit of time fretting over the state of his Grafschaft when he wasn’t preoccupied with campaigning. She’d walked in on him sending messages relating to rebuilding the town’s squares and houses, but curiously enough, never his parents’ manor he always spoke so fondly of.
It suddenly dawned on her: if Lacan wouldn’t put his own pleasures ahead of the rest of his Grafschaft, there was only one Pokémon the Salamence would’ve entrusted to make those paintings. She even knew that Lacan played with paints when he was younger, but somehow the thought had never crossed her mind earlier that…
“Then… you made those paintings?”
“If you can call them that,” the drake scoffed. “I mostly keep them around for sentiment. Especially the ones I made while recovering from that wing injury during our last deployment.”
Sophia nudged over at one of the loose brushes as Lacan stooped to shove it back into the case. That injury had been… a little over two years ago, was it? She remembered like it was yesterday how Lacan had gotten his left wing torn up while shielding her during that ambush. It was bad enough that he was sent back here and spent much of the following year in physical therapy just regaining his flight.
It had been a small miracle that she was able to convince their superiors to let her return from the frontlines to help watch out for him. Sophia remembered that he was deeply depressed and stir-crazy when they met again, and vaguely remembered encouraging him to do something during quieter moments to keep his sanity.
She thought from the way he’d shut himself up for long stretches of time, that Lacan spent it catching up on the studies required of members of the Generalstab he’d had to skip due to the war. She supposed that it explained the paintings that would occasionally pop up in the hallway back then, and how Lacan’s mood always seemed to improve whenever a new one was added.
Though when on earth did he ever become this skilled at painting? It was certainly a far cry from the scrawls she remembered him making as a Bagon. But he was proud of his work back then and would show off while his present efforts were a massive progression. So why did he regard them so harshly?
“You shouldn’t talk yourself down like that, Lacan,” Sophia insisted. “They’re very well-made, enough that I’d offer one to my Ritterorden for public display if you were comfortable with it. I never would’ve guessed they were made by a Pokémon with a bodyplan like yours.”
Lacan paused and looked up from his brush case briefly, before letting out a low harrumph.
“No, they’re all quite deeply flawed, really,” he remarked. “The perspectives on most of them are faulty, the brushwork is a mess, and the less said about their lighting and shadows, the better.”
Sophia blinked as the Salamence carefully set the case and pad back on the bureau next to his other mementos. He sighed before glancing away with a shake of his head.
“They’re just my attempts at matching what my father used to be capable of,” Lacan said. “Except these paintings don’t do any good for this Kingdom other than to waste paint and gather dust on a wall.”
Sophia cracked her beak open to protest, only to swallow her words. While it bothered her to hear Lacan tear his own hard work down, he didn’t sound like he was in the mood to change his mind at the moment. Perhaps it was best to just let things be for now. After all, Lacan was more familiar with painting techniques than she was, perhaps they really were more flawed than she thought.
The Corvisquire perked up after hearing a loud clatter, and looked over to see Lacan had gone over and pulled open a set of wooden shutters over a portion of the wall, creating an open gap with a balcony with an unobstructed ledge that looked out over Newangle City and its ramparts as the dull roar of rain outside came filtering in. The Salamence turned his head, and gave a stern glance back at her as he took his place at the edge.
“Fähnrich Rank and the others should have finally made it past the gates with the rest of the Fähnlein,” he said. “We should hurry along if we were planning on going to the Royal Library ourselves. The weather’s been deteriorating faster than I thought it would.”
Sophia warily made her way forward onto the balcony with the Salamence, looking out at the overcast skyline. This was it, the moment of truth when the snare they’d set for the Dyad would either work or fail.
And yet, she couldn’t help but hesitate as her mind kept turning back to the letters she’d read at the Reliquary.
A clattering noise rang out as Lacan was back at his shutters and tugging a pull cord with his mouth to slide them shut along their track. The Corvisquire faltered a moment over whether or not now was appropriate to speak up, before she warily raised her voice.
“Lacan, I realize that our mission for Operation Spark is still focused on recovering the Dyad, but… are we sure that we haven’t been overlooking anything?” the Corvisquire asked.
Lacan quirked a brow, before turning from his shutters to face her.
“What are you getting at, Sophia?” the Salamence asked.
“It’s just… using the Dyad and the powers that slumber within her as a weapon is already a desperate solution as it is,” the Corvisquire murmured. “And when we can’t even be frank about it with our own subordinates….”
“Wasn’t that why I asked you to review the records for Operation Avalanche?” the Salamence asked. “Precisely so we could avoid any unexpected surprises in our mission.”
The drake beat his wings, and turned a stern, expectant gaze down at the Corvisquire.
“Sophia, did you come across something in your readings at the Reliquary that I should know about?”
Sophia hesitated. She didn’t know the full details of how Operation Spark was supposed to work, just that it involved using the Dyad’s powers to mount a decapitation strike on Edialeigh’s crown. But there was one line in particular from Kim and Elly’s correspondence that had stuck with her:
The two had been worried back then that they were toying with powers that weren’t theirs to interfere with.
She hesitated, before turning her beak up. Years ago, she had promised to be at Lacan’s side. If she really was to do that, surely it was her duty as a Ritterin, as a friend, to be open about those lingering misgivings she had…
“... It’s about the Dyad that Operation Avalanche was focused on. The last letter that I was able to review today said that the Oberst who was tasked with tracking him down allowed him to go to Freeden Village. Peacefully.”
A lingering pause hung in the air, as the rain continued to pour outside the window and the autumn wind blew with a nipping chill. Sophia ruffled her feathers and hesitated a moment, before looking up at the Salamence Graf with a worried stare.
“Lacan, are we sure that the Dyad couldn’t have already found out about her nature and how to control it some other way?” the Corvisquire asked. “If the power that the Dyad has had something to do with what happened because of Operation Avalanche so many years ago...”
“It’s not safe to assume anything, Sophia. That’s why Rank and Helmholtz are helping to coordinate the checkpoints around the city just in case the Dyad and her companions attempt to flee,” Lacan answered. “But she isn’t exactly familiar with Newangle City, and King Siegmund arranged for the other libraries in the cities to transfer the copies of all the books on that list he drew up of titles the Dyad would likely find topical to the Royal Library.”
Lacan shook his head, and walked up to the ledge. He dug his claws against the floor’s tiles at the edge of the platform. He glanced out at the surrounding cityscape for a moment, before giving a low grunt.
“If we’ve learned nothing else about the Dyad from the past year, Sophia, it’s that she’s stubborn. Just as one would expect from a dragon, and of a being of her true nature,” he said. “We might as well try to use that stubbornness of hers to our advantage.”
The Salamence leapt forward and spread his wings, flying off through the rain and into the cluster of ruined spires. After a moment’s hesitation, Sophia did much the same, beating her wings against the rain and chilly air as she flew off among the towers of the Administrative District.
Whatever her misgivings, there was no fretting about Operation Spark when it couldn’t proceed in the first place at the moment. Even if part of her was growing worried over what it might entail, it was hardly right to deny succor to a land that had bled for 70 years. Not when this was their only hope.
The future was not yet written, not when the present still hung in the balance. She just hoped that with how much the past had felt like prologue, that they’d only have to consider those tragedies in the past from a far distance.
Author’s Notes
Words and Phrases
1. Stückofen - A type of bloomery used for smelting metal utilizing water-driven bellows to save labor. A more general bloomery would be referred to as a ‘Rennofen’.
2. Ach, du lieber Himmel - Interjection of surprise / exasperation analogous to “(Good) Heavens!” or “Goodness gracious!”
Dialogue
D1. “Ich bin Dieter, ein Absolvent von hier. Ich hatte gehofft ein paar Freunden hier rum zeigen zu können, bevor ich die Königliche Bibliothek besuche.” - “I’m Dieter, an alumnus from here. I was hoping to show some friends around before visiting the Royal Library.”
D2. “Wenn der Baum dort die Wurzeln breitet aus… Trägt er meine Seele und Erinnerung…” - “When the tree spreads its roots there… it bears my soul and memory…”
Teaser Text
Freeden Villageᵃ, 4. Herbstmond, 919 n. d. B.
To High Seer Allweiss,
I must confess that when King Sansa ordered me to remain here in Freeden Village and not return to Newangle City with the Dyad, that I was most confused. Even more so when Feldmarschall Pritchard informed me that his decision was apparently due to your counsel.
Even if I cannot glimpse into the future, I know well enough that the Dyad is not long for his present form. He seems to be cognizant of it himself, since when we apprehended him here, he beseeched us to yield and leave him be that he might live out his time as a Frigibax in the village. I’ll admit that it bothered my sentiments, perhaps it is my past experiences as a healer speaking, but there are few things as pitiful as a child pleading in tears. My Oberstleutnant was less restrained than I, and in recent days began to allow him to freely traffick the village.
That is not to say that we are letting him have free reign. He remains under the watchful eye of me and my subordinates wherever he goes, and he returns to our camp outside the village every evening. With the stakes involved and after all the trouble he has given me and my forces chasing him about the realm, we don’t intend to repeat that experience. Thus far, he has been cooperative and the relative freedom seems to have noticeably lifted his spirits.
I don’t know why King Sansa or his confidantes have been shutting me out for so long, but if you are able to gain the King’s ear, let him know that if the Dyad is not to be brought to Newangle City, that I believe it is in the realm’s interest to keep him here. This is a peaceful village, far enough from the frontlines that we should be able to withdraw to safer places well in advance of any oncoming trouble. You are able to glimpse into the future, are you not? Would it not be easier to win the favor of the powers that slumber in him this way?
But I understand that it is not my place to make that decision. While I have made my own opinions clear, I will uphold whatever King Sansa decrees faithfully as his servant.
I just ask him to be forthright with his wishes to me.
- Letter from Oberst Kim Brutalandas to High Seer Allweiss Fremders
a. Derived by phonetic corruption. A more semantically accurate translation would be “Peace Village (by a River)”
Hello. Heartache has a challenge and I need the gold to buff up Nova. Batch review means bullet points! 🎉
19
-So, what, was it just "Angle City" beforehand? That's almost as bad as Newangle. Newangle. Newfangle. No wonder this kingdom's in such terrible shape. No creative minds.
-ALOLA CONF1RM3D!
-Irune wants to fly because she's actually a big winged derg.
-lmao wow that was a reeeeeaaaal lucky break that Boudewjin decided to be the bigger 'mon. I know the story had to continue and these are a band of thieves and all, but it does make rooting for them a wee bit harder when one of them was so ready to stick it to the first genuinely helpful guy they've come across in quite a while.
-For consistency's sake, with Kate's POV you're better off either having the prose constantly call Dalton "Scales" or just sticking to the nickname in dialogue. It's confusing otherwise.
-The logic that changing scarves is meant to make them more difficult to track is hilarious for all the wrong reasons. It just makes me think every member of a particular species looks exactly like one another.
-That said, I don't recognize the reference with Irune's scarf.
-... Oh my god it was just Angle City. THAT WAS A JOKE.
-Overall I don't really have a lot to comment on, however. It was just kinda a big walking tour of this big city with a lot of lore getting explained by Dalton. Much of it has yet to truly connect to the main plot so it's just kinda there at the moment.
20
-So, the wealthy live in higher levels while others are on the lower streets, huh? That's just Midgar. You're describing Midgar, but with a real monarchy instead of a corporate overlord.
-Oh, hi, Not!Daedalus and Not!Flame. 👋 That was a rather strong armed cameo.
-Not!Flame is even a soldier taken in by the enemy. There's affectionate and then there's bordering on ham-fisted and this feels like the latter.
-Yes, Lyle, you have been pushing your luck too much. Fortunately you have an armor so strong money can't buy it: plot armor.
-Similarly little to say about the whole move tutor thing. It practically feels tutorialish in its nature and we're already a good ways into the fic.
-Welp, guess the army knows they're here now. I give it another chapter before shit hits the fan. Again. But maybe it'll be delayed because Lacan is getting sent to the principal's officethe palace to see the king.
21
-A lot of internal monologue to start this one, some of it I feel like overlaps with the sweeping descriptions of the sprawling cities that we've already had. Ditto the stuff about the childhood injuries being told through the prose. I don't know if there's a more organic way to bring that stuff up outside of pure prose, but it would've been nice to see.
-Bumbling raichu and haxorus guards, huh? [squint]
-Pfbt. Lyle. Evolving? If past work is anything to go by, he'll be very lucky if he gets to that point.
-Pfbt. Irune. Evolving? Yeah, maybe to a concerningly large icy shell of a dragon. But, like, she's honestly right. Even if she can get moved around, Protect's helpful. I'm surprised no one pointed out that Dalton's Rain Dance would interfere with Lyle's moves. Like, rain's rain. I don't think your universe works to where Dalton gets his own personal shower that doesn't affect his allies.
-Oh, hey, look at that, they ran into trouble. From the giant tyranitar they stole from. Who could possibly have seen this coming? I was expecting slightly longer peace and it's not the exact party, but close enough.
-Kate really just fails all her persuasion checks under pressure, doesn't she? XD
-Reshiram's Fur? C'mon, Lyle, don't be a wuss. Call it crotch fuzz like the outlaw you are.
-Are they, like, heading into the ruins of underground tunnels (like for cars) or a sewer system? This makes me think of one of those.
-I'm still not sure what this mysterious company sigil is. Maybe you just made it up for this fic since this is an OC region? Missed opportunity to reference the games proper if so.
-I'm guessing Sansa and Maynus are supposed to be glorified XB1 references and this war they triggered is like that game's war.
-Ah, yes, a great way to introduce a ruling monarch character. With an ominous pipe organ! I guess listening to Alcamaoth tracks was the right decision. :V
22
-So the DNA Splicers get a fancy name. That I will continue to forget.
-More historical lore that gets interspersed with the actual plotting and maneuvering that Siegmund is up to. It's not a bad plan. I don't expect it to work, but it's not bad. I'm also 👀at this crown prince and wondering if he'll be showing up at some point.
-Lmao Lacan's even being offered the same big, life-changing promotion that Lyn got in exchange for successfully capturing the plot device character.
-Oh, thank goodness, they were able to outrun the underground bandits without things devolving into a big ball of violence. Yes, more of this, please.
-I think I got more out of the religious musings and the crudely made curse than I did out of the politics in the first scene. If only because it makes me wonder how much of Irune's either Kyurem is begging for there to be some form of unity in the world. I know Zygarde's the balance legend, but shhhhhhh.
-Same thing as before. Should be consistent with Kate's POV calling Dalton by name or nickname in the prose.
-No, Kate, you don't get to hate this dump. That's entirely on you. Forget outlaw instinct, where's your survival instinct?
23
-Oh, cool, these guys are apparently the bandits they escaped from underground. I guess we didn't dodge the ball of violence. Just delayed it. ^^;
-Kate, you don't get to curse this situation out. You're DIRECTLY responsible for it. >_>
-Mobius as a thieves' guild lacks the same menace as its referential namesake, I think?
-Well, at least the ball of violence didn't last long. And, no, Kate doesn't get points for getting them into that room with smooth-talking. Since she woulda fucked them over if they didn't have plot armor.
-RIP historian guy. But at least we got a big banana snake scribe in his place. Not all was lost. o7
-Yassss, Dalton, drag that sneasel. #Slay.
-I know it's supposed to be ha ha funny nopon speak, but "bird person" just makes me think of the Rick & Morty character. Unfortunate.
-And the rest of the chapter is planning for things to come. Part of me hopes they can actually have some modicum of success since the king's planning on them going to the Royal Library and not a snobby university. But perhaps this plan just means there will be too many hindrances for them to use the university one.
Hello, hello! Back again for another review towards getting caught up since I've fallen behind a wee bit, and with a Review Tag up for grabs over at Diner, now's a good opportunity to get stuck back into the saga of thieves, threats and trouble. So let's see if this'll be the chapter where Team Forager becomes ensnared by Sophia's trap...
Chapter 24
I had a feeling Kim was a reference to something, so I looked them up and it turns out they're a Xenogears character. Neat reference.
And reading through this opening passage, I think I can determine a few things. One: this appears to be a letter from the past, judging by the fact that King Sansa is mentioned as though he is still alive. Two: presuming this is a past letter, the Dyad appears to be able to take on different forms, and at the time of this letter's writing, they appeared to be a male Frigibax, not a female Axew like Irune is in the present day. Three: the way the writer pens the letter, wondering whether they are 'interfering with affairs that are not rightfully ours to meddle in,' I can't help but ponder if this attitude might be fostered in some of the Grünhauter of the modern day, and if some of them truly are comfortable chasing Irune to the ends of Wander. And four: I spy a wee reference at the end in that the one penning the letter is named Elly, which I know for a fact is also the name of a character from Xenogears. (See, I'm not completely clueless! I know some things about those games, ehe~)
Now to the present day, where Sophia's being shown around the library. At some point paintings are mentioned, and that makes me wonder if perhaps there's a Pokémon-ified version of this painting from a XC3 quest somewhere in there:
She hurriedly threw it out to steady whatever she might have knocked over, only to gape up to see what looked like large, vacant eye sockets from a metal skull.
“A-Aah!”
Sophia hopped back with a startled caw and batted her wings out ready for battle. Her heart pounded in her chest, only for her to realize that the thing that’d given her such a fright was the gray skeleton of some sort of strange, metal contraption.
Not quite so sharp there, Sophia. You'd think being near someone that can be as fierce and menacing as Lacan can be would make her somewhat null to scary-looking things, but I guess not.
“From what we’ve been able to piece together, it was most likely some sort of air carriage from the human era. Except instead of being flown around by Carriers, it used machinery to push air out of those ports at the ends. Much like how a Golurk might.”
“Well, Herr Friedrich would sometimes refer to it as a ‘Doll’, but from historical record, humans apparently called this machine and others like it as ‘Skells’,” Zeuge explained.
It was almost like that clip that Eevee from that Exploration Team that she and Lacan bumped into back in her hometown wore over her ear, except it was bigger than she was.
Ah, so pretty futuristic, by the looks of it. Seems this was an advanced humanity that perished when the Great Flash occurred. Would the year in which it happened have been 2054, by any chance? (I forget if the year was mentioned at all in an older chapter.)
“But when both the General Staff and His Majesty himself insisted that they be gathered together, we here at the Reliquary could hardly allow them to go disappointed.”
I don't know if I'm feeling the description here; perhaps if it was something like, "we here at the Reliquary could hardly allow their demands to go ignored." Or something to that effect.
Looking it up - yup, a Xenosaga reference! I might be getting the hang of recognising some references from Xenosaga and Xenogears, even if I haven't played the games in question.
“I- I would presume they did, Frau Kranoviz,” the Serperior insisted. “But this is all that we could find in the archives. If there’s anything that King Sansa or his confidantes wrote in reply to these two, they have been lost to the mists of time.”
“The source materials you review here must remain onsite at all times and the only things you are permitted to bring from this room are any things that your sponsoring member of the Hofstaat allowed you to,” the scribe explained. “I don’t know the full story behind it, but the notice we received from King Siegmund insisted that in your case, it is only whatever you can transcribe into your own writing.”
Ah yes, typical procedures in an archive. Having sourced stuff from archives during the writing of my uni thesis, I can understand the insistence for delicacy in handling those documents from Zeuge's point of view.
I mean, if we're presuming King Sansa isn't too different from the one his namesake takes after, then I can't imagine preservation of documents would be a high priority for that administration.
The mention of the Great Mist in the first letter reminds me a bit of the sea in which Origin lies in Xenoblade 3. I'm presuming there's folktales of people being spirited away in those foggy lands, never to return.
Perhaps it was best to hedge her bets and write a transcription in Commontongue, since even when taking pains to be faithful, some of the quirks of Hightongue simply didn’t translate into it.
And so it goes with language translation, where colloquial quirks and oddities get lost in translation and it comes out the other side having lost some of the flavour of the words.
When we arrived at Errberk Village, we came across a young Frigibax who had been noted to have one day produced a ball of thunder about him while quarreling with another villager. We attempted to pull him aside for questioning, but it proved unnecessary. He fled our presence, and we saw with our own eyes that he manifested the very same ball of thunder, one whose shape bore the mark of the great tormentor of our land: Desire.
There were obviously details that were different here and there, but Sophia had to admit that the resemblance between her and Lacan and this ‘Kim’ and ‘Elly’ was… uncanny.
Getting self-aware with archetypes, are we, Sophia?
I joke, but actually...this could be an implication for something big. A theory's forming in my mind - could it be that Lacan and Sophia are a reincarnation of Kim and Elly? It sounds like ancestry could be an explanation, but I don't think it's that. As I've said many times, I've not played Xenogears, but I am somewhat aware of some passing details, and among them, I believe, is that there's a '500 years ago' storyline involving XG!Sophia and XG!Lacan, which no doubt has implications for the present day story of Xenogears. I can't help but wonder if there's a parallel to be drawn here - that Lacan and Sophia are reincarnations of Kim and Elly with no memories of what happened during King Sansa's reign when they were chasing down the Dyad previously.
And now I'm thinking back to what I said earlier - about Elly's second thoughts about chasing the Dyad down, that the attitude might be fostered among some Grünhauter. Seems like those thoughts might well begin to fester within our resident Corvisquire....
Though now that I'm thinking about it some more, would that not be too unlike how M, who follows the same archetype as Sophia, felt uneasy with N's schemes in XC3 and worked out a way to save the protagonists in a form of self-sacrifice? I wonder if she might end up being sympathetic to Team Forager's plight and help them out in some way later on. Although given M's ultimate fate, that doesn't bode well for how Sophia's gonna end up...
Now over to Irune, who's having odd dreams. And it seems she's falling from the sky - what, was there a massive explosion from a fortress above where this battle in the dream is happening?
And strangest still, for whatever reason, the Charizard in her dreams was always bigger than she recalled Charizard being. As if she could fit snugly into his claws which reached out to her for shelter.
Hmmmm, an Alpha Charizard, perhaps? Or is it just Irune's dreams playing with her mind? Maybe she's a smaller 'mon in this dream, since it's been established that the Dyad can change forms over time. Perhaps this dream was from when she was a Frigibax?
A conical tip, a set of fin-like shapes at the other end. It was the last thing Irune would always see before it found its mark near the base of the Charizard’s left wing.
Then came the deafening burst of multiple Blast Seeds detonating in unison. As usual, there was a flash of heat and wooden fragments dashed against her and the explosion pushed her away. Then her body began to spin in the air, as she noticed something hot and wet fleck her side just beyond her field of view.
She was pretty sure they were blood spatters. And after having had this dream enough times, she was pretty sure they were the Charizard’s.
A flash from a brilliant beam of light lit up the ground below her. There, shapes crumpled on the ground near the edges of her murky vision as Irune made out a collection of rocks below her with bodies laying limply about it.
A subconscious summoning of her power that killed a number of soldier surrounding her, if I had to guess. And we know that the power of thunder lay within the Dyad even back then, as proven by Elly and Kim's letters.
How on earth were they supposed to think that she could do anything to stop them from pushing her around as they pleased when she couldn’t even keep her wits about her from a nightmare?
“Hey, it’s just until we get that treasure from the Divine Roost, right?” she insisted. “After that, we’ll all get what we came for and all of this will be a distant memory.”
And how close are they to the Divine Roost, exactly? It's going to take another long while at the very least, and even once they've gotten there, I get the feeling their problems will be far from over.
Rather nonchalant about going to somewhere that in the games it's referencing, it was a final boss arena. Here's hoping the attendants at the Möbius aren't quite as bloodthirsty as their in-game counterparts.
They’d barely made it a dozen paces down the corridor before Lyle started to feel his stomach flutter and have second thoughts about the whole idea. The surrounding decor wasn’t exactly helping either. There was worn carpet in some sort of shade of dark red or green that looked almost like blood with dim, circular lights hung from the ceiling or on wall-mounted lanterns that gave the place an ominous air.
Like they were marching towards a dangerous presence.
And by the description, a shiny Aggron, too. I'm guessing this is Wye, which reference-wise would fit with how Consul Y was big and bulky in his Moebius form, and also with how he was enthusiastic in plays and acts in his dialogue in XC3.
As his eyes adjusted, the room’s features filled into view: a stage with an embroidered purple curtain, plain walls with wood and plaster with flecks of bare concrete showing through damaged parts, and a shock of what he assumed was red carpeting between two stairwells along the walls that held a half-dozen rows of wooden stools.
I do wonder if that's a standardised thing, for seating in the Pokémon world to have to be weighted for certain heavier 'mons like Aggron or Tyranitar. Or would they have to be forced to stand in establishments that couldn't afford that kind of standardisation? That would suck if so. Proof that being big isn't all it's cracked up to be.
“You’ve got some nerve to want to talk with us after everything that happened yesterday!” the Fearow squawked. “Wye wouldn’t bat an eye if Igna and I dragged you out the front door to settle things, either. I heard Quilava fur makes for a great rug for ‘mons that don’t ask too many questions about their flooring.”
“So why didn’t you ask for something like the latest volume of Founder’s Tale? Or one of those copies of Monado: The Beginning of the World with the extra chapters at the end?” Igna snapped.
Ah, I see this world has plenty of 'people of all ages enjoy it' book series. (Come to think of it, did I say this in a previous review? I vaguely remember saying this somewhere...)
“Because security around the university in general’s gotten a bit tight lately and we specifically needed books from the Royal Library, seals and all,” the Marowak harrumphed. “Why doesn’t concern you, but this is really something Ansel and I need taken care of sooner than later. You’re the ones so desperate to get us off your tails, so ‘tonight’ sounds like as good a time to get the goods as any.”
Going alone? With Igna and Ansel? Through territory that those two were familiar with and they weren’t? That sounded like an obvious trap if he ever heard one.
Totally not an indication they might get up to shady business behind everyone's backs when no one's looking. Is there an operation to create an 'endless now' happening under everyone's belts, orchestrated by these guys? :P
And now that's the Möbius behind the gang, although part of me does wonder if we'll see their faces again. If not, at least that was a nice little rabbit hole of references to go down.
And Lyle didn’t like how well their own plans seemed to line up with this job. He didn’t know what on earth Igna or Ansel or the Thieves’ Guild were up to, but that sounded like one hell of a coincidence.
Those are famous last words if I ever did hear them.
Conclusion
More great intrigue with a slew of references to go it. I was certainly eating well this chapter, that's for sure.
I think the most major allusion this chapter was the uncanny resemblance between Lacan and Sophia with Kim and Elly from the past, implying some kind of reincarnation is going on this world. I get the feeling that whenever the truth is revealed on that front, it's gonna come as quite a shock. That then makes me wonder, out of sheer curiosity; could other characters have reincarnated forms from the past, just like Lacan, Sophia and Irune? Hell, now I have the crazy thought that Team Forager might have the same thing, in spite of them being more ordinary folk than the other three I've mentioned. I'm really curious to see how this plot thread could unfold.
Good job, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where this goes.
Hello again, Fobbie! P-Wheel over at PMDiner called, and now I have a reviewing assignment to do for one of your fics. So I figured I'd use this as an opportunity to get caught up at last with Once a Thief, since I've been wanting to get back to this fic for a while now since the last time I reviewed back in July.
So let's dive back in and see what our not-quite-heroes have gotten up to since last time, and whether or not they'll finally fall into that trap that's been teased for a good few chapters now...
Chapter 25
A quarter of the way to a hundred. I wonder if this fic will get that high in terms of chapter count? (Probably not, would be my guess.)
Meanwhile, I see we're beginning with another letter from Kim.
Looks like Sansa's Trinity were just as fond of mysterious actions behind the main heroes' actions back in the day. I'm now picturing something akin to this cutscene from XC1 involving Laulan and Alweiss (although whether there was a Shulk equivalent to talk about back then remains to be seen).
Confirmation that Kim is not the Shulk equivalent.
So the Dyad back then was an outright child? As opposed to Irune who's a bit more of an adult. And I see that him being 'not long for his present form' could be a reflection of similar musings from Irune in the modern day, and maybe it's a sign we might see her shift to another form soon.
I mean, it is a circumstantial thing. Unless it's like the Dimension Scream from PMD2 (and to an extent, Shulk's visions in XC1) where touching something gives you future sight relating to said location or object.
And now away from past letters and back to the present day to the outlaws we all know and love.
but the biggest headaches they’d had while going back to his old university had been the hurried bathing they’d done in that dingy communal chamber to try and tamp down their scents
I can't imagine there's an equivalent of the Alba Cavanich hot springs here, is there? At least not in this part of town, anyway.
This talk about the observations of uni students here gave me the lulzy idea of a Once a Thief high school AU taking place here at the Universität von Wahrheit.
it was always a story that he hated retelling… precisely because it would get him thinking about how far away he was from having a chance of giving his story the conclusion a more idealistic part of him still yearned for.
A pity we cannot turn back time to see a more successful Dalton make it big and not have to wallow away in the unenviable life of an outlaw. Although if he had, there's a good possibility he'd just be another stuck-up noble among Varhyde's elite. So, uh...Maybe this isn't the worst timeline for him?
He supposed that was a sign that rain Ansel told them about would arrive soon, so of course a Fire-type like Lyle would be particularly eager to hurry along.
Its contents made no secret of the building’s age, with walls that were a mishmash of ancient concrete and wood and mortar balconies and extensions built on top of them or else to fill gaps.
the hall was barren aside from the occasional Pokémon or two seated near a door in a hallway reviewing books or papers—students still got in last-minute cramming, he saw.
There's always folks looking for last minute look-sees of papers before exams, or layabouts rushing to get deadlines done because they spent too much time goofing off and procrastinating.
Oh hello, it appears we have an anti-conscription demonstration going on here. Leave it to uni students to stage such a protest when no one else in Varhyde dares. (Though when clearing landmines is a punishment for prisoners, who would blame them for not wanting to protest conscription?)
He looked off after her where he saw an Amoonguss and a Poliwrath in green plates approaching from the edge of the crowd, with others in similar attire prowling forward elsewhere on the street.
Yeah, best to make haste there. At least the putting down of the demonstration is going to absorb the attention of the Grünhäuter enough for our outlaws to make a quick getaway.
Clever strat, using Dieter's identity. Although that's a disguise that'll fall apart if someone either recognises Dalton or remembers who Dieter is and sees through Dalton's attempts to pull the wool over their eyes.
Aaaaand now things have just been made a lot more complicated. But hey, our gang's hardly averse to sneaking into places, so looks like they'll have to do some totally lawful breaking and entering.
A padlock on a rusty door is practically a recipe for a weak spot by which thieves will find a way past.
Oh yeah, almost forgot that they have a deal with Igna and Ansel and so they have to break into the Royal Library, even if the other goal of Irune's desire to find out her identity is technically not an absolute must at this time. So they have to do this whether they like it or not.
I mean, they've done a great job slipping out of such situations, but I get the feeling that at some point their luck's gonna run out and we'll have a prison arc a bit like the end of Chapter 5 of XC3 (though perhaps not quite as heartbreaking as that part of the story. But given all we still don't know about Irune, I suspect it won't be free of it either).
Must be awkward for the steel dinos of Newangle City if they have to crouch everytime they come across pathways such as this. Oh, the woes of being tall.
Would be a pain if a ruin happened to collapse because of overuse by the 'mons here. I'd imagine there'd be a warning system in place if such platforms were in danger of collapse and required reinforcement and/or replacement by the Pokémon's means.
Amidst the dim lighting, he briefly saw a Camerupt pulling along an open-backed cart laden with hay, the Heliolisk just making out a low grumble as the Camerupt passed.
I see that they might be catching onto the fact that they're walking headfirst into Sophia's trap. But even if that wasn't the case, do you really think two thieves would give a shit about the finer details, Lyle?
I can only imagine the chaos of this noodle incident. I can hear the yells of "You're done!" "Behave!" and "Think you can take me?!" from the Grünhäuter in that army base.
I'd say that might be a good move in this case. because if the risks were detailed, no doubt the others would argue and stall time more which would lead to an increased chance of them being caught.
As odd as it felt to be bathing deep within the bowels of a human ruin, much less one which housed quarters for nobles.nobles’ quarters for when they were summoned by the Hofstaat,
Iin some respects, it was just like any other bath she’d taken before in her life:
Mmmm, this part looks a wee bit messy. Maybe glossed over in editing? Oh well, things like these happen every once in a while. I presume it was meant to look something like this:
As odd as it felt to be bathing deep within the bowels of a human ruin, much less one which housed quarters for nobles when they were summoned by the Hofstaat, in some respects it was just like any other bath she’d taken before in her life.
How long had it been since then? Almost a decade? And yet here they still were, an uncomfortable reminder of that first brush with death. And of the trials she’d endured undergoing muscle therapy to fly again afterwards.
Oof, sounds like a rough time she's had. That 'first brush with death' - I'm presuming that's a reference to Wounds, the oneshot you did for the PMDiner Oneshot Collection? Looking back, yeah - Gohto did leave quite the mark on her with those slashes.
Interesting explanation about the heating, and a reminder that alas some facets of human technology are irreparable even with the patchwork solutions that Pokémon have developed. Always a shame when things are lost to time like that.
I don't blame her; scars like that would dredge up bad memories of encounters with death. Although I imagine there would probably be some battlehearts in the army that would wear their scars like a badge of honour.
It then occurred to her that this was around the time of the year that the last levies went out for soldiers to deploy to Edialeigh before winter set in.
Hmmm, is this implying that winter being soon might mean snowfall and frigid temperatures before long? Because that might make things a lot more interesting - and a lot more trying - if the gang is impeded by wintry weather along their travels.
Ah, so that would explain why Sophia's not a Corviknight yet. Though whatever compels her to hold her evolution back? There's something yet to be uncovered here...one which earlier chapters have also alluded to, if memory serves.
Looks like Sophia's not the only squeamish one about scars. Herr Maxax here isn't too keen on them either.
It mentioned some surprising details about how the two had dealt with that Dyad, but what struck her the most was how similar it all sounded. Yes, Kim and Elly were different, they were both of commoner stock and Kim apparently had a background as a healer, but the whole time, she just couldn’t help but keep thinking of just how much the two’s situation sounded like their own. Why, it was almost as if she were reading something from a prior life!
Maybe you are, Sophia. Now it's just a question at this point of when the penny will drop. Maybe Lacan has similar feelings regarding the similarity of it all...It'll be interesting to see what he'll have to say in reaction to this.
Truths of the past that could shake Varhyde to its core, possibly. At the very least, it'll certainly be an eye-opener for Sophia and Lacan, as well as Team Forager if they ever somehow get hold of this info.
Speaking of Team Forager, back to them where they appear to have been stricken with bad luck. Again. I swear, you could make a drinking game out of the amount of times they've gotten unlucky.
Although I do wonder if the rain might be to Dalton's liking given that as a Heliolisk, his Dry Skin might mean he appreciates it.
Can't forget that Sneasel are cat-like and thus would find water most repellent. Although I imagine Lyle would be far more miserable in these conditions, given his typing.
Lotta guards here that our gang have to sneak around. Now I'm reminded of that one XCX affinity mission where the crew have to sneak into Jair Fortress to get secret info - which is also a location teeming with high level enemies that you have to sneak around. Not fun.
An ambitious project left to rot - a pity when such things never come to fruition. Unless the proposed design is ugly as sin.
Oh...a sad backstory with a backdrop of pouring rain and thunder. Many a time has it been done, yet such a scene rarely fails in its quest for the feels.
I hear 'refugee camp' and a certain beautiful yet wistful song comes to mind. Yet there's nothing beautiful about this context of running away from the Grünhäuter and Kate's mother being lost to her.
The walls beside them also seemed to change as they went further down, going from crude panels with windows and shutters where Pokémon obviously lived and worked to vacant gaps starting around five levels down, and what looked like a black abyss further within.
Gaps in the building - ah yes, in video game terms, almost certainly a recipe for finding secret loot in a treasure chest in an alcove along this building. Alas, this is not a video game, and such obvious treasures would have been pilfered long ago.
And now back to Sophia again, where she's finding her way back to Lacan.
Sophia didn’t know if King Agarez’s efforts to beautify the Administrative District’s spires had ever extended to interior chambers like these, but if so, they’d clearly rotted away centuries ago.
Times change, and no doubt bigger priorities like the wars of the present day leave such beautification projects by the wayside. Truly a shame, given the decayed state of these ruins.
As such, the interiors of these apartments lacked the personal touches of manors in the countryside, and tended to look much the same beyond any decorations their owners had brought in…
Okay, let's see here. The last one's definitely Elysium from XC2. I think the first one could be Everblight Plain from XC3, and meanwhile I'm not super sure about the second one. Gormott's the closest one I'm drawing an equivalent of, although as in the case of when I find a reference I don't get, I'll just hit the "It's probably from Xenogears or Xenosaga" button.
She supposed that with his familial manor still in ruins that Lacan would’ve paid more attention to differentiating this apartment, but how on earth had he found the time to commission all these paintings?
I mean, maybe he just left it up to the artists while he was off busy with his various duties?
I know from my experience of commissioning artists that sometimes it's best to leave them to it instead of peering over their shoulder every five minutes to make sure that every minute detail is accurate. And Lacan certainly wouldn't have time for that, given his duties.
Oh hey, it's the lyrics to 'So Nah, So Fern,' from Xenoblade X. Nice reference there. No, I totally didn't have to Google that at all, no sirree, I didn't.
The song had always struck her as sounding sad even when her parents were still alive, and the crow couldn’t help but feel her eyes grow damp thinking back to those bygone times together.
Now that she thought of it, Lacan always did seem to spend quite a bit of time fretting over the state of his Grafschaft when he wasn’t preoccupied with campaigning. She’d walked in on him sending messages relating to rebuilding the town’s squares and houses, but curiously enough, never his parents’ manor he always spoke so fondly of.
Well, good thing Lacan's not one of those nobles that'll prioritise himself over his people, like so many other nobles in Varhyde no doubt are. Perhaps it's the want to live up to the people of his Grafschaft to the point of neglecting his own manor that compels him to do this.
The Corvisquire perked up after hearing a loud clatter, and looked over to see Lacan had gone over and pulled open a set of wooden shutters over a portion of the wall, creating an open gap with a balcony with an unobstructed ledge that looked out over Newangle City and its ramparts as the dull roar of rain outside came filtering in.
“But she isn’t exactly familiar with Newangle City, and King Siegmund arranged for the other libraries in the cities to transfer the copies of all the books on that list he drew up of titles the Dyad would likely find topical to the Royal Library.”
A remarkably elaborate trap by the King himself. Proof, perhaps, that he really does want the Dyad by all means necessary, even if it means employing strategies that some might question as odd. I imagine there'd be some librarians that would be a bit
Well, unfortunately, tragedy has a way of creeping up on us, and by the sounds of it, we'll have heartbreak at some point down the road. I'm still clutching my 'Sophia's gonna die' card, and I'll be holding onto it until something happens with her.
Conclusion
And that's the end of that chapter. Another good one, seeing Sophia bear her soul a little more (though not in the 'perform everywhere and overcome her anxieties with a Torigonda' way of bearing her soul), seeing that Lacan has a painter side to him and unfortunately with it comes the typical self-deprecation (), and more close shaves with Team Forager and the Grünhäuter. And now that they're right next to the library, hopefully that trap set for Team Forager should be sprung soon, and then we'll have more action between Lacan, Sophia and them. Then we'll see if Sophia's doubts about capturing the Dyad come to anything, and if it'll lead to a split between her and Lacan.
Only slight criticism is that I felt the chapter could've used another editing pass or two in light of some of the corrections I made at points during this review. But oh well: it happens.
Apart from that, this was a good chapter, and I look forward to seeing what happens next.
Still, guess I shouldn't have been so quick to presume Irune was Reshiram based partially on the fact she couldn't lie to save her life.)
