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Back at it again, took me a while because of irl stuff but i’m happy to be reading this again, especially after the triumphant note we ended up on last time, which I’m sure can’t possibly last, lol. I’ll be reviewing chapter by chapter as usual!
Despite the chaos at the end there, this chapter confirms a few things that were very heavily implied during the last one, most important perhaps being Irune’s importance, and that she was the actual ‘treasure’ the roly-poly caravan was transporting, which makes me think maybe all of the other valuables were to serve as distractions? Or maybe not, maybe they were just as important, but Lely’s remark that those berries were an odd thing to transport made me think that.
Like Kate said, it’s understandable the outlaws wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry considering how deep they are into this mystery dungeon, but celebrating so soon instead of scrambling was probably reckless. Though with the joy of a mission well done and all that loot and food to enjoy, even Lely ends up not thinking too much about it, and I don’t blame them. There’s still the question of how exactly the Salamance and his buddies managed to get here so fast if they weren’t tailing the roly-poly crew. I can’t imagine there being any sort of tracking device in this world, at least not a technological one. Was it something in the bag Irune wanted? Or something else? I guess we’ll find out eventually.
I liked how chaotic and frenetic the sudden battle felt. Also that despite the outlaws surely out-numbering their foes, they got completely destroyed because they were both exhausted and had just finished a big meal, which I’m sure would’ve dropped their fighting capabilities a lot. I know I’m not in the mood to move a lot after eating, lol. Feel bad for Myra and Alvin, even if the former realistically probably deserved it. And now we have our team of four finally assembled! What they’ll do from here on I have no idea, but if that excerpt at the beginning is anything to go by, probably carry Irune and use her as leverage to escape the mess they got themselves into. A mess Dalton seems to know more of than he lets on.
The only nitpick I’d have about this chapter is that there are some paragraphs in the narration that feel were a bit too bloated, or longer than I think were necessary. I noticed that the narration usually consists of Lyle noticing stuff and then remarking upon it. Sometimes it helps a lot with contextualizing everyone’s reactions and feelings, but in this chapter specifically I felt like there was a weird mix of Lyle noticing people’s ‘odd’ reactions but being unable to contextualize them, which maybe was the point but it made some descriptions feel like a ramble. This wasn’t really an issue during the calmer parts of the chapter, but this is an example from the chaos of the fighting later that I feel could’ve been edited to be shorter and punchier:
The Rhydon’s jeers were abruptly shut up a blue blur storming in, Lyle screwed his eyes shut and recoiled as something large and bulky stormed in. He flinched as he heard the Ground-type screaming in pain and the sound of something wrenching out of hide and flesh rang out. Lyle cracked his eyes open and saw Parker draw one of her seamitars back, before shoving the Rhydon aside limply to the ground as a dark, ugly red blotch formed around a large stab through the abdominal segment of the soldier's cloth armor.
Specifically I feel like the narration calls too much attention to Lyle’s bodily reactions to the action, you could probably mention it once more briefly and let the scene flow better, but that’s just my opinion and it’s a very small nitpick.
I was wrong before, THIS is how we get our main four together, lol. I misjudged how many of them had managed to escape last time, and it’s sad that it didn’t last long. This was a pretty neat chapter in terms of showing the building dread and exhaustion as the characters get pushed to their breaking point in an attempt to escape, but because it’s sort of a continuation from the situation from last chapter I don’t have much to comment on that front, same with the battles. Though they were very well-written and dynamic, as always.
What I found most interesting about this chapter were the little bits of worldbuilding thrown in, especially about the nature of mystery dungeons and the ‘relics’ found and discussed throughout. It took me a bit to realize what the one they found was, lol, at least until the two parts were described. That’s really cool, and it only makes me wonder what was the reason for all of it. That and what was discussed before regarding the lost ‘gods’ and whatever Irune’s role in all of this is.
This chapter felt like it flowed smoother, the few moments of peace in between all the battles were nice respites and the end there with all the mons exhausted and ready to keel over felt earned; I can’t wait to see what they decide to do now that they probably have nowhere to go back to.
As far as inciting incidents and following premises go, the five chapters before this, all the build-up and the raid gone wrong are very well constructed looking back, narratively speaking. It’s done fast, though not so much so that it sacrifices any character moments or important establishing information. We even got some good fight scenes throughout. It’s a good start to a story I think, at least one of the length I’m imagining this will end up being.
Anyway, onto what actually happens in the chapter, I’m a little bit surprised that none of them even considered the idea of giving Irene back to her captors for a possible pardon/reward, as underhanded as it is. Obviously Dalton doesn’t seem the type, and Lyle isn’t either at least not inwardly, but I feel like Kate would’ve considered it, at least. Maybe it’s all the more obvious to them that it wouldn’t work, that it’s not worth the risk to present themselves to those soldiers again, or to any authority, after what they’ve done before.
They all accepted their new mission pretty fast too, though that’s more understandable considering how hungry they are, and knowing they need to make a decision right now. Irune also gives them something to look forward to; it’s that common social rule where people are all the more eager to do something dangerous twice after losing what they thought they’d gained before. Not that I’m saying Irune is trying to trick them, but it does ring true to how people act, lol. So good work there.
I’m thinking about the quicker pace of this chapter, and I feel like while writing an additional one before they make up their minds would’ve been slightly more realistic, it also would’ve been too much, so I get why you decided to speed things along a little. I’m very excited to see what the start of this new journey will be like, so it worked on me!
I like that I keep finding these very natural stopping points. I’ll be back as shortly as I can, but I like where the plot and the characters are going!
Heya, this one took a little longer than expected to get together, but there was a bit of a bumper crop of feedback this time around from Review Blitz, so let’s just swoop in and get to that first:
-The problem with trying to describe things people just inherently know the names of is that it's often done awkwardly. Case in point, it took me a second to realize you were describing the remains of an airplane. Having it pointed out helps, but I wonder if it's better if that's mentioned out of the gate so I'm not stopping to try and envision what you're talking about.
Unfortunately, such is life when your viewpoint character legitimately doesn’t know what an ‘airplane’ is. I was trying to go for that sense of “what on earth is this thing?” in Sophia’s head, but I suppose it didn’t quite stick the landing there.
-Whyyyyyy are the Xenoblade X robo-suits here? Not that it isn't all "oooh" and "aaah" or anything, but if Sophia's real goal is just going to this reading room then perhaps a bit too much time is being spent on these relics. Unless they're meant to serve as foreshadowing and not worldbuilding.
I mean, it’s not as if there aren’t regularly mechs every other episode in PokéAni. Though beyond having a giggle with Xeno-series references, there’s some pretty big foreshadowing and hints as to the backstory of the setting in the relics scene if you know what to look for.
-I'm guessing some of these names related to Operation Spark are more Xeno references.
-At first I was wondering what the point to this negotiating stuff was, but now I see that's how the team is going to end up at the Royal Library after all. Also, really? Not even spoofing Shiren? Just straight dropping the name? Smh my head.
I mean, you did get a namedrop for 'Shiren' earlier in this story. This is the followup to that.
-So, reading the letter at the end does make me lean more toward cycles of rebirth. With, perhaps, that occurring because there isn't a peaceful awakening and, I dunno, these powers basically destroy whoever they're in from the inside out. Then a period of time passes and a new one appears. And this'll keep happening until they can peacefully find their true self. Perhaps at the Divine Roost.
Presumably with some creative tweaking to passages and entryways, even if I’d presume that it generally aims for an “average student” since it’s a bit hard to make everything 100% accessible for that one Steelix on campus.
-Ahhhh reading a protest against war at a university is a big ol 😰for me given everything that's happened in 2024. Unfortunate real world implications here.
For what it’s worth, the war protests that I had on my mind for that scene were from closer to 50 years ago versus anything more current. I suppose that’s just life when current events overtake your story.
-In general the opening does, once again, feel like there's a bit too much window dressing for worldbuilding's sake. Yes it's sprinkled in with Dalton reminiscing slightly, but it's nothing we haven't really heard up until now.
Hrm, a bit unfortunate that things didn’t quite land there for you.
-Didn't take long for things to turn south after all. Not the violent kind of south, just about a rung or two short of it. Not surprising. Like the narration hammers in that there are no real good solutions here. The fact that Irune's advocating for the one that could have one of the worst outcomes for them is... definitely a flip with her character. She must truly be desperate.
I mean, she wouldn’t be working with literally whoever she could get if she had options.
-Similarly, the rest of the chapter is spent trying to soften up Lacan a bit. It's fine. But then is followed up with him doubling down on their need to catch Irune and not exactly hearing out Sophia surrounding her findings. Baby steps or something, I suppose.
I mean, while the scene was meant to “humanize” (Pokémonize?) him a bit, he is still the driving antagonist in this story at the end. There’s only so much those edges can be sanded down.
-I'm not sure if Kate doodling on those guards is meant to, like, lighten the mood. Because it feels less like that and more like her being a dumbass.
I mean, she does have a fairly well-established daring/reckless streak. Can’t say anything for if it’ll always end well for her or not.
-To be honest, I don't have much to say about this chapter overall. It's a lot of time dedicated to stealthing around the library and grabbing books. Some of the titles of which I'm guessing are shout outs and mythology gags and the like. But a lot of it didn't exactly catch my interest. Even if stealth was different from the usual fighting we've seen, it did still take up pretty much the entirety of this lengthy chapter. The most interesting part coming at the end where they get caught and Sophia outright confirms Irune is Kyurem. Which means I was right. Yaaaaaay.
Hrm, it’s a bit unfortunate that things didn’t really carry your interest there, but I suppose I appreciate your frankness here.
-As a reader, I'm not sure I buy Sophia's claim of Irune caring for the whole team. I could maybe see it with Lyle since they'd had the most time together and it seems like they've mutually comforted one another a couple of times. And I think she maybe had one moment with Dalton? But still, feels like a bit of a stretch.
Well, you’re in luck, since while I can’t do much about that in the earlier part of this arc, it is a decently big chunk of the last two chapters in it.
-I'm seeing a lot of missing paragraph spaces out of the gate here. Think you might've needed to give this one a closer look in a text editor because the pages in google docs or word or whatever threw things off.
Went and touched those up. Those should be fixed now.
-Gotta respect the commitment to them still going with gratuitous German even when being chased down by an entire platoon. By which I mean a part of me wonders if it'd sell the fear/adrenaline aspect more if you had them drop it and just go with slang instead.
It’s intended to be a part of their natural lexicon, even if I suppose I can see the meta argument for trimming it down.
-Anyway, this really was a long extended chapter of fighting and running. And not that much of it actually involved Lacan and Sophia. I realize the situation they were in was going to be a messy one but I do wish there had been a way for the choreography to get compressed or shifted to focus on more important characters and not a bunch of nameless soldiers.
Unfortunately, the layout kinda got in the way there, since as you kinda saw from the two encounters that were there, a long, drawn-out fight with Lacan and Sophia is more or less guaranteed to result in a loss at this point of the story.
-And yes, I'm still convinced that Irune is basically Kyurem and has both Reshi and Zek powers as a result.
-I'm sorry. Are these strangers (who are probably from the other kingdom on an infiltration mission?) implying your gratuitous Rebirth cameo is a— oh, okay, it sounds like it's meant to be a decoy. Good. I hope it stays that way.
Yeah, the cameos in this story that aren’t Xeno-series related aren’t exactly plot drivers. This one is arguably the one that goes the furthest in terms of intersecting with the plot since the cameo here was used as a device to make the gang privy to Operation Spark being a thing.
-Oh, so the thieves really did redirect the group to the Royal Library on purpose. And are probably in interrogation right now and won't be rendezvousing with the team at all. Unless it's as a precursor to this raid.
And with that, I'm officially caught up. The pacing has, I think, been quite brisk. Despite the large average chapter length, which I feel is in part due to an excess focus on combat with mooks and a need to go on worldbuilding tangents that also include Easter eggs to the Xeno stuff inspiring the fic. I'm sure others get more out of that than I do. I'm sure you can agree there's a clear different to how we approach this kind of referential stuff. With the combat, you do have the mooks go down much quicker here than in other works where a lot of mooks seem made of iron. But it seems as though that's been replaced with a larger quantity of them. Understandable given the setting and, well, the protags aren't that powerful. So, of course they're going to struggle. But that puts you in a position where your premise has written you into a bit of a corner.
My personal advice is that you strongly consider if the fic going forward would benefit from trying to pare down the combat. Because it's going to flare up and I'm sure it'll keep being chaotic. And doing so may allow you to focus more on the characters. As I alluded to last time, you could really benefit with some quieter, softer moments to give these characters room to breathe. Because right now I'm in a position where it's hard to really root for anyone. Which is where the apathy comes in. That's prrrrrobably not something you want your readers feeling.
I… didn’t think there was that much combat in this arc relative to its length? Though for what it’s worth, I did see where you were coming from with wanting to see the characters bounce off each other more, and hopefully the next couple chapters should be a bit more satisfying to you on that front.
I doubt this is what you want to hear, but these are my honest thoughts on it. I know some folks like Arukona and tomatorade are really enjoying this. So I'm sure they're seeing stuff that I'm not. I'm just one commenter and I've got my tastes and all that jazz.
I mean, I’ll admit, these two reviews weren’t exactly what I was hoping to get as feedback, but I appreciate you calling things as you saw them, and I did make some tweaks to this chapter and the next one down the pipe in light of them. Hopefully you have a bit more fun with them if / when you wind up coming back to this story.
So, rolling into Chapter 9 and I remember exactly where we were last time, our thieving heroes end up going face to face with the first Hunter team they ended up robbing – and damn are they not happy with Forager. And they are no doubt a colourful bunch of characters, to the point I’d almost consider them to be potentially recurring characters. But of course given the distances they are aiming to travel, I’m not so sure about that.
Well, sure is a good thing for Team Forager that there’s a convenient way to shortcut over long distances in this setting, huh?
Nevertheless, diplomacy fails and soon combat ensues… and it’s beautifully rendered combat. It’s to the point, snappy with enough detail to get a clear picture with plenty of stuff going flying all over the place. You can really feel the power in the fight and even better, it’s not just a slug fest. Clever tricks and tactics are used alongside underhanded tricks too, Nils get his jerkass handed back to him in brilliant fashion and poor Hermes is left completely stunned shitless. Cue a frantic escape.
Glad to hear you had fun with that action sequence. It was a lot of fun for me to put together and write. ^^
This leads to my only real issue. This would have been a perfect opportunity to end the chapter… but it continues onwards for a fair bit longer. That doesn’t mean the rest of the chapter is terrible! It’s just as exciting as before! This time, we’ve got an airborne race that is non-stop action throughout the whole thing, cue getting shot down and having to try and make an escape through a nearby Mystery Dungeon.
Yeah, I think that that was an artifact of me feeling that the two parts of the chapter were a bit too short relative to the prevailing average in this story, since it aims for between 7k-10k word chapters, even if it’s been erring a bit on the higher end recently.
This was a really fun read! Action scenes do tend to be favourite scenes of mine! But like I said, there’s almost too much of it. This chapter could quite happily be cut in half without issue and would allow for more digestible chapters, but as far as well… the action goes, it was a really fun read!
Glad to hear that even if the formatting wasn’t fully your cuppa that it still was an enjoyable experience for you. I’ll be looking forward to whenever you come around for more of this story. ^^
The real centerpiece for this section of the fic was the Royal Library, and it makes for an impressive one for sure. You definitely convey an image of the library as a grand, imposing edifice, a rare architectural marvel in a world that's been shattered by apocalypse and constant war. I enjoyed the details about how the whole place works, although in some places it struck me as a little off for a library designed for pokémon--Lyle not being able to distinguish sections because he's colorblind being one example of where the setup doesn't work (perhaps an identifying pattern in addition to color?). Of course, this library was probably intended primarily for humans originally, so it makes sense in a way. I also enjoyed the relics the serperior was so eager to show to Sophia; by now it's screamingly obvious that this is all a post-human setting, but it's always fun to imagine how far-future pokémon might interpret the wreckage of our civilization.
Yeah, I might have overdone it a tad at points in these past two arcs, but this was the point where I went a little nuts about “this is the remains of a twenty minutes into the future world” by virtue of being in the neighborhood where it’ll be the most front and center in the story up until very late in it.
One small detail that I've enjoyed throughout Newangle City are the Zekrom/Reshiram trappings that pop up all over the place; they really help give the place a clear identity and a sense of being elevated above the various settlements we've encountered previously. They also reveal a great deal about the history and current politics of the city in a fairly condensed way--a neat little leitmotif that I think adds a lot of value in this set of chapters.
I mean, it’s kinda a running trend for the setting lands that we care about in this story. There’s a reason why they’re named what they are, especially in “Hightongue”.
It was interesting to see so much of this arc run on dramatic irony; we learn almost immediately about the plan to lure Irune and the rest into an ambush at the library, and then see that play out across several chapters as Team Forager obliviously draws closer and closer to the trap. It's a fun conceit you're able to pull off since you regularly give us a view from the antagonist's side of things, and I think it does make for more fun than springing the reveal on both the readers and the characters at the same time. And it's not over yet! Lyle still thinking about how they can get the books they stole to Igna and Ansel, oy vey.
Lyle: “I mean, we kinda have to otherwise we’re kinda gonna die before we can even try to get out of this place.”
I get the sense that this is kind of "Dalton's arc," as he has the most connection to this place and it's bringing out more of his backstory--and fun to learn a little more about Kate, too! It's good to get some more spotlight on those two... I think I said earlier that I'm fine with Kate remaining kind of a cipher, her lovable impetuous self, but I was really curious about what was going on with Dalton. I liked the sort of melancholy feeling his thoughts lent to the city, as he reflects on what he's lost and clearly wishes he could go back to the way things used to be, for so many reasons. I'm kind of wondering where his character goes from here; presumably if he gets all that treasure at the Divine Roost he's going to do something for his parents' old mill (if it even still exists?) and possibly re-enroll himself at the university. But until then, what's his central conflict? How will this journey change him? Not really sure; he feels mostly adrift.
This should hopefully become progressively more apparent over the coming chapters. Today will at least partially answer some of those questions that you had there.
However, I will admit that Sophia/Lacan are still the most interesting characters to me at this point, heh. At this point I really don't see much hope for Sophia to convince Lacan that they're taking the wrong approach with the Dyad, even if she's able to point to a passage in one of the Operation Avalanche letters that literally says "NEVER EVER EVER TRY TO CAPTURE AND CONTROL THE DYAD HOLY FUCK." It's heartbreaking to see her as pretty much the only voice of reason in the midst of this whole apparatus intent on doing exactly the wrong thing, and while she might theoretically have the power to stop it through her connection to Lacan, in practice I don't expect that to happen. I also enjoyed the additional characterization we got for Lacan here, with his worthiness issues and his watercolor paints (not that he can really enjoy them, RIP), but mostly I'm over here going "oh no Sophia my girl oh no." At this point I think she's definitely going to have to side with the outlaws at some critical moment that leads to their success, or perhaps even team up with them at some point--go full outlaw herself.
I mean, that depends on your definition of “wrong thing” there is, since sometimes outcomes that would be considered bugs to one would be considered features to another.
As for what will become of Sophia down the road, I’ll opt to punt and let that be a story for another day.
I also have to admit that I found the length of this run of chapters rather punishing. The chapters in this fic have been pretty long from the beginning, but in this stretch the shortest of them is scraping 10k, and two are 14k. I definitely feel the drag at that length, and for the amount of character and plot progression we had in this section, it didn't necessarily feel earned.
Hrm, a bit disappointing to hear. Unfortunately, I’ll probably have to just opt to take things on the chin here since while there were a few chapters that were definitely getting up there in length, I couldn’t think of better places to divide up the scenes relative for the chapters that needed to happen.
I don't think you really need to cut back on character backstory or worldbuilding in this section. If you were looking to reduce wordcount a bit, I would look into trimming back sections that involve logistics in one way or another: characters discussing what they want to do, or sequences simply moving them from A to B. A good example of this would be in the library scenes where the characters spend over 600 words discussing whether and how to split the party to find the books. These are the sorts of scenes I often find myself cutting in my own writing--for me they're in there because I'm usually figuring stuff out as I go along, so characters arguing about various options is how I work out what the group is actually going to do. I don't know if it's similar for you, or if there's a desire to head off potential criticisms about characters making bad/stupid choices (splitting the party being a notorious mistake for fictional characters), but regardless of cause I think cutting this back to maybe a paragraph or three of discussion and then the group splits up would be a big improvement; I just don't see enough of interest going on here to justify the length.
This one, I’ll keep in mind for the future. I can’t vouch for how well things turned out this chapter since it… uh… turned out a bit longer than what I was originally hoping for, but it’s not bad advice.
I think you could also streamline the action sequences a bit. They're well-done, with a lot of twists and turns, sudden reversals, unusual strategies/events, etc. And over the course of the story you naturally want to provide a sense of escalation, which is generally going to mean bigger and more difficult scenarios as the story goes on. However, given how long and involved the library sequence here was, I kind of am not sure how you're going to keep going bigger without having novel-length battles in the future! Scaling things back a bit would have been welcome for me; there's definitely a balance to be struck between wanting more mooks/challenges in order for a scenario to feel properly dangerous and not wanting the action sequence to overstay its welcome. Personally, I would have been fine with some streamlining of the initial "getting into the library/finding the books" segment (e.g. the bit with them dealing with the random guards went on a bit long for me), and then the escape sequence would have been perfectly satisfying if they'd managed to escape the soliders on the stairwell, only to have Lacan pounce on them immediately afterwards, omitting the stuff with the lucario and gengar and so on. The events at the library still would have been a big setpiece with plenty of action to go around!
This one I’ll also keep in mind. For what it’s worth, it’ll likely be at least a year in real-world time before there’s another setpiece even in the same ballpark as being as big and involved as the one in the Royal Library, so hopefully that cuts down on the action fatigue a bit.
There was a lot of lore and backstory conveyed during this section, and I really enjoyed that! However, I did feel like the falloff in character progression that I noted in my previous review continued in this run of chapters. At this point Irune seems to still be uncomfortable with her companions' more rule-breaking tendencies, but is nebulously okay with them; and on the flip side the rest of the crew still seems annoyed with Irune's moralizing and difficult demands, but they're also nebulously okay with her. They are working together and not really dwelling on their problems. This works well from a survival standpoint, but narratively speaking it's not hugely interesting to me! I like seeing characters making difficult decisions, and Team Forager was mostly just on the run during these chapters; their toughest dilemma is whether to leave the city despite Irune's protests, but since they pretty much immediately get into a situation where they can't leave the city anyway because they'll be targeted in the Undercity, it ends up not being much of a decision at all. Sophia presents them with a tantalizing offer, but Dalton puts an end to it before the other characters get much opportunity to respond, and other than that, they aren't doing much but trying to gather resources and prepare for the next stage of their journey.
Some of this might be due to the nature of the plot, wherein the characters are under more or less constant pressure, so they don't have a lot of opportunity to talk things through or really process what's happened and instead have to be go-go-go to get away from the next threat. For example, I was kind of expecting that Dalton electrocuting Sophia when she was offering them clemency would lead to some exasperated reactions from the other members of the group. Dalton's actions are definitely understandable, given his history, and none of them like the military or would feel super great about turning Irune over to them. On the other hand, the rest of them going free and having their criminal records expunged is a really attractive offer, and one even Lyle considers seriously. I was kind of surprised that no one so much as snapped at Dalton for jumping the gun and attacking--we're already on to the next thing. This is a place where I'd find a bit more character friction enjoyable; more playing off the differing desires and goals of the cast.
Yeah, I suppose that’s an artifact of the past few chapters being a bit light on “slow” moments. This will hopefully be something that will be a bit less of an issue with the ones that come out this year.
I guess for me, a big part of the appeal of an outlaw story is the idea of doing things you don't want to do to survive, things you don't feel good about, and being forced to make choices where you have no good options. I felt that sense quite strongly at the beginning of the fic, when Lyle is dragged into situations he didn't want to be in, ends up abandoning one of his friends, and doesn't see any options besides diving ever deeper into a life of crime. Recently, though, he's had to contend with way more external danger and conflict, but not a lot that hits him on an internal level. Some minor thievery to gather supplies in Newangle City, like, stealing library books is bad, but it's old hat at this point and largely glossed over. I'm not saying that Team Forager should keep having to murder people or anything along those lines--that wouldn't fit with the tone of the story, and would quickly get old in its own way. It's more like, there hasn't been much recently that feels like it hits Lyle or the other characters where it really hurts, and I'd enjoy seeing more of that in the future. Although it could? Like, it being revealed that the secret Irune's been keeping from everyone is that she's a reincarnated god could come across as a really big betrayal, but the characters just really haven't had the space to process or react to it much yet. The plot's been sweeping them along so fast that they haven't had a lot of opportunities to sort out their feelings about everything that's happening.
Hold onto that thought there, since there’s still a decent amount of what you’re alluding to coming down the pipe in this story, including in this chapter.
Regardless, I'm really curious about where the story goes from here. I was initially thinking that the Newangle arc would be leading more or less directly to the Divine Roost, meaning that we're closing in on probably the last third or so on the story. This run of chapters seems to be hinting that Team Forager is going to get dragged into this spy subplot somehow--maybe even dragged off to Edialeigh? I've for sure wondered what things look like from the other side of this endless war, but not sure how I feel about a potential large detour from the A-plot, heh. From where the characters are now, a final arc to get them to the Divine Roost and the reckoning there seems like an appropriate amount of space for progression, but who knows! One thing's for certain... things were looking pretty grim even before the French showed up.
Well, I’ll just get it out there, but barring a major unplanned shakeup in the story, the plot will remain firmly in Varhyde. Not to say that they won’t wind up seeing more of the war or stuff from the other side one way or another, though. Since as I’m sure you’ve noticed, that forever war hasn’t truly been escapable for our cast.
Also really wondering wtf is going on with these random substitutes. Unless that's just a reference?
I feel like a lot of this review was complaining, and I'm sorry for that--I'm still excited to see more of this world and these characters, especially because like it feels as though we might(???) be getting into the back half of the story and the Divine Roost, which I've been itching to learn more about since the beginning. I am definitely eyes-emojiing over that book about the gods that Irune picked up; the worldbuilding continues to be one of my favorite things about this story. I'll be back once again to see where things go from here--to post-apocalyptic PokéFrance or otherwise!
And I’ll be looking forward to reading what you have to say. Thanks for the review, and I’ll be looking forward to whenever you come back for more of this story. ^^
I’ve been seeing your stories mentioned a lot in the server and around the forum, and after reading your NO AUDIO one-shot I wanted to read more from you long-form, so lucky me! You clearly have a lot of chapters to offer, lol. Decided to start with this story because it seems more to my tastes. I’ll be reviewing chapter by chapter until I gotta go for the day, so let’s get started!
Oh, just wait until you try out my other big PMD fic. /s
But thanks for giving things a shot here, since I know this is kind of a genre jump from [NO AUDIO]
There’s a lot going on in this prologue. I’m a fan of when fic authors decide to use other languages to represent the local culture and customs; I noticed that Fledglings used a lot of Spanish, which I would’ve been better poised to understand than German, but what can you do. I think overall it works pretty well, I can’t remember any inclusion that felt too shoehorned in, they’re all quite natural so far, mostly slang and curses and such. And the little pop-up when you hover over the words to explain what they mean is a very welcome addition.
Glad to hear that the multilanguage content and the hovertext were doing their job there. It’s always one of those things in my writing that people either like or don’t, but I like it and it lets me raid TPCI’s bin of alternative Pokémon names, so good enough.
Lyle gets to show off a lot of his personality this chapter thankfully, mostly from all the interactions he gets with other mons in very different situations. You give him good depth even just in the prologue. There’s still a lot I don’t know about him, obviously, and much about his values and way of thinking I’m interested in, but he makes a good showing here, desperate but savvy and mostly agreeable until things don’t start going his way. Definitely the ‘retired criminal’ type. I guess we’ll see how far that desperation carries him!
Well, it’s carried him for 30 and counting chapters, so… ‘quite far’, apparently. ^^
Also god damn, seventy years of war? That’s outrageous, it looks like Pokemon aren’t much better than us in that regard lol. It doesn’t surprise me at all that morale is so low and recruitment so difficult, I figure this society isn’t too far from either some riots or complete collapse as drafting becomes a higher necessity that just can’t be met. Really interesting stuff!
You’ll get to find out more about this as the story goes by, but yes, there is meant to be a whole ‘hanging by a thread’ vibe to Varhyde and its inhabitants.
I also got a good glimpse of the other mons in Lyle’s life, though for a prologue at the end I felt like it was maybe a little bloated with character introductions and interactions, but I guess there’s no helping it when all of them are necessary to end where you did, a natural hook for the prologue. Still, it’s a very small nitpick, I’m very impressed and eager to read more.
Well, glad to hear that in the end, things won you over. Sounds like that Prologue did its job there. ^^
Another really big and eventful chapter! I like the fast pace of this story, there’s a lot going on but without sacrificing detail, as the narration does a good job of providing nice descriptions when it’s needed and also some exposition and info about everything else. We get a clearer look at Lyle this time, seeing his recklessness and the scoundrel nature that he clearly wasn’t able to shake off as easily as he thought. I like how he kinda immediately falls back on that when he spends a little time with the outlaws. It comes almost as second nature to him. In the end Kate didn’t need to do much more convincing, lol.
Wouldn’t be an Outlaw-focused story if he couldn’t get back into the swing of things easily. :V
The depiction of the mystery dungeon was good, I could imagine the wet crevices and the darkness of the cave without trouble, and the ‘pockets’ and the mist were easy to understand even to a PMD newbie like me, though I didn’t imagine they’d be that big! I also wasn’t expecting such a huge cast so quickly. When I read that there were so many bands of Pokemon I was wondering what the hell kind of caravan merited such firepower, but then we got the explanation for that. Must be a really powerful band of little rodents for this to be so touch and go, even with so many Pokemon.
Well, that and said rodents also had quite a bit of muscle to hide behind as I’m sure you found out later.
Despite the large cast though, it’s good that you focused mostly on a select few, the band leaders and a couple more ‘mon that Lyle is familiar with. I wish we’d gotten some more scenes with Kate, but I figure there’ll be enough time for that soon, assuming the raid doesn’t start immediately in the next chapter haha.
The fight scene with Lyle and the Sammurott was really well written. It felt dynamic but not overtly drawn-out, a good deal of moving around and strategizing before striking in a very brutal manner, I could feel that hit that Lyle took. And he’s right, it was pretty reckless, but it looks like it’s just what he needed. I hope we also get to see more of Alvin and his relationship with Lyle, feels like the plot’s moving almost too fast at some points. But the fic’s just gotten started, so we’ll see.
Very impressed with the worldbuilding again! The more you outline about this corner of the world, the more I want to learn.
I mean, I suppose that I always have been a bit of a sucker for action sequences and worldbuilding. Glad both of them left a good impression on you.
God damn, what a dynamic and fun chapter! Now I get why you were trying to get to this so fast, lol, and you managed to write it so well. Obviously writing a long and exhausting raid with so many Pokemon is a challenge, but thanks to all the previous introductions and the way the plan was explained I was able to understand everything that was going on with little trouble. The battles were easy to follow and very entertaining to read, especially around the Zangoose and the Aerodactyl. It did feel like the fight was spread out more than I initially thought, but it was still really cool.
Also nice to see more of Kate in action! I guess she ditched the job of scout just so she’d be able to work alongside her old friends, which shows she’s just as sentimental as Lyle in that way, and she definitely pulled her weight. So did everyone except that poor Scyther and Mismagius. Also I loved the way the Togedemaru talked, I can’t lie, I would be too struck by adorableness to be able to rob them, but I guess that’s the point.
Well, it’s also a walking Xenoblade reference, but yes, the dippy speech patterns putting others off-guard is indeed the point.
Not much else to focus on since so much of this chapter was action, but the introduction of the Axew that appears on the cover means we now have all of our protagonists! Though it’s unsure what will bring them together, I’m sure that’ll become clear soon enough because there’s no way everything went so well without a hitch.
I mean… you did pick up on what the writer of that letter said about where they’d be relative to that caravan, right? But yeah, it was never going to be that easy for the gang.
Also speaking of that Axew… weird. Obviously there’s something to her, 20-thousand is a lot of money to waste on keeping her secure and hidden, and if the whole realm depends on her being locked up I can’t imagine what kind of secrets she’s got going on. Hopefully I can get some answers soon.
Well, you’ll get some, even if it’ll be a while before the full story comes out.
This was a super fun chapter to read! You’re really good at fight scenes, something that I just happen to adore, so I know I’ll enjoy this.
Despite the chaos at the end there, this chapter confirms a few things that were very heavily implied during the last one, most important perhaps being Irune’s importance, and that she was the actual ‘treasure’ the roly-poly caravan was transporting, which makes me think maybe all of the other valuables were to serve as distractions? Or maybe not, maybe they were just as important, but Lely’s remark that those berries were an odd thing to transport made me think that.
The ‘mon who contracted the Roly-Poly Caravan basically intended to smuggle her along with a normal shipment to avoid attracting outside attention. They originally assumed that those Togedemaru would do a better job at keeping potential hazards at bay.
Like Kate said, it’s understandable the outlaws wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry considering how deep they are into this mystery dungeon, but celebrating so soon instead of scrambling was probably reckless. Though with the joy of a mission well done and all that loot and food to enjoy, even Lely ends up not thinking too much about it, and I don’t blame them. There’s still the question of how exactly the Salamance and his buddies managed to get here so fast if they weren’t tailing the roly-poly crew. I can’t imagine there being any sort of tracking device in this world, at least not a technological one. Was it something in the bag Irune wanted? Or something else? I guess we’ll find out eventually.
It’s actually mentioned in the teaser / its translation from Chapter 2. Said Salamence and his underlings were shadowing a short distance away by walking and specifically instructed the caravan to message for help if they were in trouble. The fact that said message was smothered is the primary reason why Lyle and the rest of the Outlaws had any head start at all to get back to their encampment.
I liked how chaotic and frenetic the sudden battle felt. Also that despite the outlaws surely out-numbering their foes, they got completely destroyed because they were both exhausted and had just finished a big meal, which I’m sure would’ve dropped their fighting capabilities a lot. I know I’m not in the mood to move a lot after eating, lol. Feel bad for Myra and Alvin, even if the former realistically probably deserved it. And now we have our team of four finally assembled! What they’ll do from here on I have no idea, but if that excerpt at the beginning is anything to go by, probably carry Irune and use her as leverage to escape the mess they got themselves into. A mess Dalton seems to know more of than he lets on.
Yeah, “Outlaws vs. better-equipped soldiers” was always only ever going to end one way, really.
The only nitpick I’d have about this chapter is that there are some paragraphs in the narration that feel were a bit too bloated, or longer than I think were necessary. I noticed that the narration usually consists of Lyle noticing stuff and then remarking upon it. Sometimes it helps a lot with contextualizing everyone’s reactions and feelings, but in this chapter specifically I felt like there was a weird mix of Lyle noticing people’s ‘odd’ reactions but being unable to contextualize them, which maybe was the point but it made some descriptions feel like a ramble. This wasn’t really an issue during the calmer parts of the chapter, but this is an example from the chaos of the fighting later that I feel could’ve been edited to be shorter and punchier:
[...]
Specifically I feel like the narration calls too much attention to Lyle’s bodily reactions to the action, you could probably mention it once more briefly and let the scene flow better, but that’s just my opinion and it’s a very small nitpick.
Hrm, I’ll keep it in mind, but this might be something that I opt to just leave for now since I admittedly didn’t have any firm ideas of how to condense this offhand at the time of replying.
I was wrong before, THIS is how we get our main four together, lol. I misjudged how many of them had managed to escape last time, and it’s sad that it didn’t last long. This was a pretty neat chapter in terms of showing the building dread and exhaustion as the characters get pushed to their breaking point in an attempt to escape, but because it’s sort of a continuation from the situation from last chapter I don’t have much to comment on that front, same with the battles. Though they were very well-written and dynamic, as always.
What I found most interesting about this chapter were the little bits of worldbuilding thrown in, especially about the nature of mystery dungeons and the ‘relics’ found and discussed throughout. It took me a bit to realize what the one they found was, lol, at least until the two parts were described. That’s really cool, and it only makes me wonder what was the reason for all of it. That and what was discussed before regarding the lost ‘gods’ and whatever Irune’s role in all of this is.
This chapter felt like it flowed smoother, the few moments of peace in between all the battles were nice respites and the end there with all the mons exhausted and ready to keel over felt earned; I can’t wait to see what they decide to do now that they probably have nowhere to go back to.
As far as inciting incidents and following premises go, the five chapters before this, all the build-up and the raid gone wrong are very well constructed looking back, narratively speaking. It’s done fast, though not so much so that it sacrifices any character moments or important establishing information. We even got some good fight scenes throughout. It’s a good start to a story I think, at least one of the length I’m imagining this will end up being.
Yeeeeah, this is going to be a chunkier story length-wise. For reference, I’m just now getting to around the midpoint of the story about 330k words in. Granted, some of that second half might go down a bit faster than the first, but it definitely turned out a lot bigger than I initially imagined.
Anyway, onto what actually happens in the chapter, I’m a little bit surprised that none of them even considered the idea of giving Irene back to her captors for a possible pardon/reward, as underhanded as it is. Obviously Dalton doesn’t seem the type, and Lyle isn’t either at least not inwardly, but I feel like Kate would’ve considered it, at least. Maybe it’s all the more obvious to them that it wouldn’t work, that it’s not worth the risk to present themselves to those soldiers again, or to any authority, after what they’ve done before.
It’s intended to be the “it wouldn’t work” given that they were just forced to run for dear life from those ‘mons so turning around and going “here’s your Axew” would be a recipe to just get captured. I might go back and hotpatch in an explicit acknowledgement of that.
They all accepted their new mission pretty fast too, though that’s more understandable considering how hungry they are, and knowing they need to make a decision right now. Irune also gives them something to look forward to; it’s that common social rule where people are all the more eager to do something dangerous twice after losing what they thought they’d gained before. Not that I’m saying Irune is trying to trick them, but it does ring true to how people act, lol. So good work there.
Glad to hear. Though yeah, such is life with operating off of a sunk cost fallacy.
I’m thinking about the quicker pace of this chapter, and I feel like while writing an additional one before they make up their minds would’ve been slightly more realistic, it also would’ve been too much, so I get why you decided to speed things along a little. I’m very excited to see what the start of this new journey will be like, so it worked on me!
Yeah, in retrospect, you’re probably onto something there, but I figured that the readers had waited long enough and that good old-fashioned desperation would’ve sufficed to smooth things over.
I like that I keep finding these very natural stopping points. I’ll be back as shortly as I can, but I like where the plot and the characters are going!
And thanks again for stopping by to check this story out. It was a lot of fun to read your feedback. ^^
And the viewcount seems to have shot up a bit in the past year since that next 10,000 views to 20,000 (plus an extra thousand that snuck over the line) sure flew by fast. To commemorate the occasion, I made a fresh batch of trivia to accompany today’s update:
Author’s Note: This trivia section was written under the assumption that readers had caught up with the full length of the story up to this point and touches frankly on major spoilers. If you’re stumbling across this from before Chapter 29, strongly consider revisiting it sometime after catching up.
How did you come up with Lacan?
Lacan in the very earliest pre-planning of this story was a character that was developed in parallel with Sophia with the working name “General Jerk”. From the very beginning, he was intended to be an implacable and mission-oriented antagonist working to try and seize Irune to use her power for his superiors’ ends in battle by any means necessary. Only two candidate species were ever considered for him—Dragonite and Salamence—with the former getting reused for his patronym and later for Hermes’ species casting.
Around the time that this story made its fateful decision to throw subtlety out the window about making Xeno series references, it occurred to me that there was a recurring character archetype from it that closely mirrored the role and personality “General Jerk” needed. One bout of rationalization along the lines of “well, Path of Valor has a ‘Yuna’ and a ‘Seifer’ and nobody bats an eye at them” later, I decided that "General Jerk" would be a “Lacan”, the name of a character who originated the archetype in Xenogears. It is generally accepted that said character is named after French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, with a more involved explanation provided in the below block for those who are so inclined and less spoiler-averse:
Lacan in Xenogears is a fallen hero character with a split personality named ‘Grahf’, or ‘Graf’ in the original Japanese, who attempts to break a cycle of eternal recurrence through heinous means. Lacan in this story is a broad-strokes adaptation of that archetype which drew influence from both aspects of that character, with his noble rank and callsign both intentionally evoking his namesake’s alter ego.
As such, a few of the characterization details of Lacan are very on-brand for a ‘Lacan’, including his fondness of painting and his clingy and protective tendencies towards his confidant. He also drew influence from some of the other incarnations of his namesake archetype character, which if you notice said parallels, ought to give you an idea of who a few other characters from later Xeno games that are built around this character archetype are.
How did you come up with Sophia?
In the very earliest drafts, Sophia was cast as a "reluctant villainous underling" archetype I've played around with before back in my days play-by-post RPing in We Are All Pokémon Trainers called "Csiki", with the first firm detail to be settled on being species casting as a Corvisquire for a ‘knight and squire’ dynamic with early-draft Lacan. Her casting as “Sophia” was settled on around the same time that it was decided to give the story a “Lacan”, with it similarly being the name of a character in Xenogears that started a recurring series archetype. In Sophia’s case, her namesake is named after an important concept in Gnosticism related to the human soul and feminine aspects of God. Once again, a more involved explanation can be viewed in the below block for those reading along who are less spoiler-averse:
Sophia in Xenogears is a star-crossed love interest to Lacan who ultimately sacrifices herself in battle to save him and their allies' lives, with his inability to move on from his grief afterwards precipitating his fall as a heroic character. This story's Sophia originated as a character composite between her and a few other characters from Xenogears that she is intimately linked to, plus some characters from later in the series who were built around the same archetype. It happened to be quite amusing once Xenoblade 3 came out since its own “Sophia” character in its cast wound up turning out fairly close to the one from this story.
Once again, the characterization details for Sophia are very on-brand for a ‘Sophia’, including her recurring issues with self-doubt and pushing back on things she is uncomfortable with. Like Lacan, Sophia’s baseline characterization also drew influence some later incarnations of her namesake character’s base archetype, which astute readers will likely be able to identify parallels to.
How did you come up with Newangle City?
Newangle City drew heavy influence off of a few different locations from the Xeno series, but chief among them all was New Los Angeles from Xenoblade X if the district naming scheme didn’t already make it obvious, with its layout essentially being a splice of NLA’s beta concept along with a bland-name near-future Frankfurt. The name itself is a disguised reference to NLA, with the ‘Neuengelstadt’ it is rendered as in German semantically meaning ‘New Angel City’.
Obviously, as a repurposed husk of a near-future settlement that can no longer keep the original lights on, it opened the door to other influences, in particular Morytha from Xenoblade 2 for the ‘decrepit, decaying human structures’ vibe. Specific districts were influenced by various places from the series with the palaces atop the Administrative District leaning particularly heavily on Alcamoth for vibes, and Shift Square leaning on the scruffier parts of Nortune from Xenogears.
What about all those characters and places from Newangle City’s Underworld?
Newangle City’s underworld figures were built around the need for a local criminal syndicate for Team Forager to butt heads with and a “safe place” for them to crash at while they were in the City. The Thieves’ Guild filled the former, and drew influence off of the various “Blood Lobster” subplots from later Xenoblade games. The two members of it that we care about, Igna and Ansel, are fairly transparent nods to some recurring overworld enemies from the series that share names and broad-strokes appearances.
The Möbius, representing the other major branch of Newangle City’s underworld, originated in planning with a working name of “the Continental” referencing the location from the John Wick series. While the name is indeed a series reference, contrary to what most readers have guessed up to this point, it didn’t originate as a Xenoblade 3 reference, but to the much older “Möbius Hotel” from Xenosaga: Episode III. The decision to lean into Xenoblade 3 parallels to the villainous faction of the same name with different spelling, was done fairly late under the logic that it would be what 95% of the more series-savvy readers would default to. Ecks, Wye, and the unnamed proprietor are nods to the three core members from Xenoblade 3’s “Möbius”.
How did you come up with Irune?
Irune in initial planning was intended to fill the same meta role as that character from Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon, but with her true identity being the primary driver for the broader plot. That identity being the “Nameless Dragon” was actually originally a throwaway placeholder for her identity, but settled on early on for lending itself particularly well to a backdrop of a land being in a forever war with an implacable rival.
Irune’s underlying character also significantly predates the process of building out the party’s roles, and in original drafts she was more or less a take off an old RP character I used to write that was basically Elh Melizee from Solatorobo, but as a Fraxure. She drifted a bit from that baseline as the story got more fleshed out and heavy on the Xeno-series references, and wound up drawing from some characters in that series into a composite. Her species was a detail that took a bit of settling on, other than that from the moment her true identity was settled, I knew that I wanted Irune to be an Unovan dragon. Axew was the one ultimately chosen due to wanting to do something different from another Druddigon main character, and carrying “partner” vibes due to it being a selectable species in Gates to Infinity.
As for her name, that was a detail that fell into place more or less the instant I saw it, and has been a quiet bit of meta foreshadowing as to what the mysterious power lurking within her is: it is a name of Basque origin with the semantic meaning of “Trinity”.
Why have a ‘Nameless Dragon’?
For those of you wondering why this story doesn’t refer to the Original Dragon under such terms, the answer to this was alluded to in Chapter 26. In more literary prose in German, “nameless”, or "namenlos", is a way of expressing something so great or strong so as to be unable to be named or put into words, akin to usages of “untold” in English. The meaning fit both in German to describe an entity of untold power, and in English for the name of a being that 15 years on, still does not have an official name in franchise media. Thus a ‘Nameless Dragon’.
Are there other fanfics that this story draws influence from?
Well, other Pokémon fanfiction, for one. As those of you who read through the first Trivia likely gathered, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rebirth and Knightfall’s works such as Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Overthrown helped influence the final direction and tone that the story took, and have a number of character and location cameos worked in in the background throughout the story. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Path of Valor, while being more influential in terms of meta premise, is a bit lighter on outright cameos. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Power Trip falls into a similar bucket and is the origin of the “Carrier” profession and depiction of how air travel works, along with a running trend of background characters having names derived from clippings of English and German localization Pokémon names..
What’s with those weird terms like ‘tay-emm’ and ‘ah-ghee’ that pop up in this story?
These are phoneticizations of various acronyms in German, in an attempt to depict concepts where Wander’s Pokémon remember approximations of what they would be called, but not their semantic meanings. Their proper renderings can be seen in the German language dialogue (e.x. ‘TM' and ‘AG’ for the examples above), which for the eagle-eyed can tip off small nuances that aren’t brought up right away
What’s up with the weird superscript on the chapter headers?
Those are alt-titles in German as rendered in a Kurrent font. They all are valid translations of the main titles, but occasionally carry subtle differences in nuance such as Chapter 3’s ‘Zusammenstoß’, which can also be used to refer to clashing or fighting. A chapter-by-chapter listing of alt-titles began a phased rollout as part of today’s update for the curious, along with brief explanations for differences in nuance where necessary.
Do you have headcanon VAs for any of your characters?
Text box dooting. /s
More seriously, the core cast tends to be hard for me to pin down, but as a story swimming with characters that are transparent homages, it makes imagining their voices a bit easier. In no particular order:
Cruz - Ben Diskin
Vilma - Caitlin Glass
Nellie - Cassandra Lee Morris
Bel - Ray Chase
Lacan - I waffle between Brian Tochi and Harry McEntire depending on my mood
Sophia - Moira Quirk or Anna Koval depending on Lacan’s casting
Oh yeah, and Pax I totally imagine as Matt Roberts/Jimmy Livingstone for obvious reasons if his dialogue didn’t already make it obvious. :V
In den frühen Jahren nach dem glühenden Blitz gab es in unserem Land Pokémon, die versuchten, das Wissen der Menschen zu bewahren, die einst unter ihnen gelebt hatten. Diese ersten Schriftgelehrten sahen sich mit der Aufgabe konfrontiert, Wissen zu bewahren, das nicht mündlich überliefert werden konnte und bei dem schon kleine Unstimmigkeiten dazu führten, dass es für immer verloren war.
In den frühesten Aufzeichnungen unseres Landes wird berichtet, dass unsere Vorfahren zuerst versuchten, die Weisheiten ihrer plötzlich verstorbenen Gefährten in menschlichen Schriften zu archivieren. Zu ihrer großen Enttäuschung erwies sich das Schreiben mit solchen Schriften für Pokémon wie uns als mühsam - sie waren das Werk von Wesen, die ihre Bedeutung nicht wie wir Pokémon aus Unterschieden in Rhythmus und Intonation, sondern aus Veränderungen des Klangs ableiten konnten. Selbst Versuche, menschliche Schriften in ursprünglichen Schriften wiederzugeben, wie die Icognitorunen, die wir heute zur Wiedergabe von Wörtern mit unbekannter semantischer Bedeutung verwenden, erwiesen sich als unzureichend, da ein umfangreiches Training erforderlich war, um die Bedeutung solcher Wörter aus ihren einzelnen Glyphen zusammenzusetzen.
Etwa zur gleichen Zeit begannen die ersten Zivilen dieser Welt, ihre eigenen Runen zu bilden, die besser für ihre Zunge geeignet waren. Sie fertigten Glyphen für einzelne Ideen und Konzepte an, die sie aus den Pfoten und Krallen ihres Körpers formten und die sie „Fußabdruckrunen“ nannten. Diese Runen verbreiteten sich von ihren Ursprungsorten aus stückweise über ganz Wunder, und selbst die erbitterte Feindschaft zwischen den Ländern der Wahrheit und der Ideale reichte letztlich nicht aus, um ihre Zivilen daran zu hindern, einen großen Bestand an gemeinsamen Runen für ihre Schriften zu verwenden.
Solche Fußabdruckrunen waren zwar für Wesen wie uns leichter zu verstehen, aber ohne Druckerpressen oder die fleißigsten Schreiber nur mühsam wiederzugeben. Daher begannen die Pokémon, diese Runen im Alltag in Kurzschrift wiederzugeben, und vereinfachten sie zu Strich- und Punktfolgen. Mit der Zeit erreichten diese Praktiken die Höfe der Monarchen dieser Welt, die zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten in der Geschichte ihren Segen dazu gaben, dass die Kurzschriftformen für ihre Reiche standardisiert wurden.
So umständlich diese alten Runen auch zu interpretieren sein mögen, viele Weisheiten vergangener Generationen sind ausschließlich in ihnen wiedergegeben, zusammen mit Details und Nuancen, die in der modernen Schrift verloren gehen. Für Gelehrte, die versuchen, die Wahrheit über die Vergangenheit unserer Welt aus der Ferne zu ergründen, ist eine gute Kenntnis dieser Schriften auch heute noch unverzichtbar.
- Auszug aus »Das königliche Lexikon der Wissenschaften und Künste«
Dalton thought that after a long day being run ragged, somehow managing to steal all the books on Igna and Ansel’s list, and just barely avoiding capture by the scales of their teeth, that sitting down with a stack of books would’ve been a welcome reprieve. Perhaps it’d still have been one had he not constantly had his attention drifting towards the door or windows overlooking the alley for any sign of Igna and Ansel’s arrival, or worse still, of snarling Pokémon in green plates who were coming for them.
He and the rest of Team Forager gathered around the copy of The Explorer's Handbook to Mystery Dungeons that they’d stolen—an unabridged edition from how visibly thick it was. Those mythology tomes they’d stolen were lying on the side for if they managed to get the chance to look at them, while Irune was snout-deep in some sort of weathered brown book that she’d peck at with a small nub of charcoal.
Except not even ten minutes after they’d settled into their room at the Möbius and started plotting out their course, the wounds he’d picked up from their fights earlier that day started catching up with him. Judging from their occasional winces and uncomfortable squirms, his teammates were in similar straits themselves. Maybe the adrenaline from their earlier escape and then the incident with those spies down the hall had finally worn off. Or perhaps getting thrown around in that human ruin by that Earthquake from Lacan had done more damage to his broken arm than he’d expected. Either way, the Heliolisk found himself flinching from every little shift or movement through his splint and could barely hold his attention to the pages in the book.
It was a sign that it was time to treat his arm again, and before he knew it, the Heliolisk was stooping in front of a low-slung cabinet just opposite the beds and rooting through their bags for a healing berry or two with his teammates. The items that they fished through had a way of blurring together between the places they’d gone to and marks they’d robbed to get them, but one thing that stood out was that there was a worrying lack of anything to heal themselves with. There were Seeds and an odd Max Elixir or two, but much to Dalton’s alarm, the Oran Berry he’d applied to his arm in the morning before leaving the Möbius had been the last one in his bag.
The others’ reactions said it all. Lyle and Irune both looked just as taken aback as he was, while Kate paused and stiffened up briefly before the Sneasel pulled her head out of her bag with a quiet grimace.
“I don’t suppose any of you also have any Oran Berries to spare?” she asked.
“You’re also out?” Lyle asked. “What happened to all the stuff we stole from those two soldiers?
“Well, they had some berries, but...”
Kate pulled her paw back, revealing a pair of Oran Berries in her grasp. There was a moment of blank silence, before the Sneasel shook her head with a low sigh.
“They’re not enough for all of us right now,” she said. “The Berries and Seeds were the main thing that we didn’t get around to stealing from that market the other day, and you have been using quite a few to treat that arm of yours since it broke, Scales.”
Dalton quietly sucked in a breath and traded looks between his teammates. They didn’t exactly have any broken limbs, but between the scrapes flecking their bodies and the occasional sway in their gait, they were obviously worse for wear themselves. He noticed Lyle briefly hesitating and staring down at the berries with his teeth visibly on edge, before he shook his head with a low sigh.
“We’ll just have to make do with what we can, then.”
Dalton opened his mouth to ask just what Lyle was proposing, only for the Quilava to cut him off by passing one of the berries over. He pushed Kate’s paw away, and motioned back at the bag.
“Let Dalton do what he has to for his arm. The rest of us are better off trying to sleep off what we can of our wounds,” Lyle said. “We’re better off holding onto that last berry for if we need it on the way out of here.”
The Quilava looked visibly hesitant, and it was frankly hard for Dalton to fault him. They didn’t have a firm idea of how they were going to get out of this city, and it was hard to imagine that after everything that had happened earlier that day, that they’d get another chance to steal supplies from their surroundings on the way out.
“You did say that we were tight on time, Scales. Patch yourself up a bit here. Lyle and I will look over that map in that handbook a bit more,” Kate said. “Shame that the book those Hunters had didn’t have this version of the map in it. Those drawings make it a lot easier to understand what’s going on!”
Dalton sighed and turned his attention to the berry in his hand. Yes, he supposed time was a precious commodity right now, and if he was feeling unwell to the point that he couldn’t stay focused looking at a map, he probably wouldn’t be in any shape to run around again. He grabbed a linen left out on the top of the cabinet and made his way over to his bed, settling down on its mattress as he fumbled with its rind. He tried to wedge a nail from his good arm’s hand under it, only for the fruit to roll out of his grasp.
“Ach, um Himmels Willen…”
He tried again, but the Berry was surprisingly hard to manipulate with his non-dominant hand. He gouged at the rind with fits and starts, as he heard Lyle narrating the map to Kate in the background.
“It’s just like in that Handbook we stole earlier from those Hunters. The dotted lines point out Links between Mystery Dungeons, and the arrowheads let you know which directions they go in between them…”
Dalton looked up just in time to see Lyle trace his paw along the pages of the Handbook as Kate looked on. There was something almost childlike about the way the Sneasel watched him at rapt attention. It was almost like when his parents would read to him back when he was younger, or those times when Dieter—
He caught himself and pushed the thought from his head.
He didn’t want to think about Dieter right now. Not while his broken arm was throbbing and the world around him felt like it was pressing down on him. The conversation between Lyle and Kate in the background blurred together as he turned his attention back to the Oran Berry, but for the life of him, he couldn’t get this damned thing to—
“Here.”
Green scales suddenly appeared at the corner of Dalton’s vision. He briefly stiffened up and turned, where there was Irune holding the Oran Berry in her hands and staring up at him.
“You looked like you were having trouble peeling the berry,” Irune said. “Let me help you apply it.”
Dalton held his tongue in reply, before narrowing his eyes with a low huff.
“I thought you were helping Lyle and Kate look over Mystery Dungeons for a route to the Divine Roost,” the Heliolisk said. “And since when did you care so much about the problems of a ‘repulsive leech’ like me?”
The Axew briefly flinched under his gaze as the Heliolisk idly shuffled his tail against the mattress. He wasn’t sure why he was letting that comment of hers from Primordial Woods stick with him so much, especially when it was utterly trivial compared to his broken arm bones he was still grappling with.
… Perhaps it was because it sounded an awful lot like what a part of him would’ve said about himself. One that he’d long since tried to ignore.
“I suppose I have a way of doing things that I wind up regretting. Especially if I really am this Dyad,” Irune murmured. “I… should’ve been more gracious about things back then. Since I’d probably be on a ship on the Sundered Sea right now if it weren’t for you three.”
Dalton briefly hesitated. It was a roundabout and evasive apology, but it seemed earnest enough. The fact that Irune hadn’t turned into a stuttering mess while saying it was a good enough sign she wasn’t faking things. He watched as the Axew averted her gaze briefly, before looking up with an almost pleading expression.
“I was serious when I said I needed help to make it to the Divine Roost earlier,” the Axew said. “You were already hurt before Lacan hit you with that Earthquake earlier, are you sure you don’t need me to help at all?”
Dalton felt the ends of his mouth start to curl down. Irune was fairly obviously trying to butter him up right now. Probably because she was afraid that he and the others would see her as a liability and cut her loose.
He supposed that there was some sense in them doing so, but he didn’t know if he’d be able to stomach following through on it. He certainly wasn’t back in the library. It also didn’t change anything about the throbbing pain in his arm, or how much trouble he’d been having trying to treat it.
He sighed, before holding out his good arm and holding it out for the Axew to grasp.
“I suppose that I’m not really in a position to say ‘no’ to a helping hand right now,” he sighed. “Just try and keep the berry juice on the linens, since I’d like to not sleep in sticky bedding tonight.”
Irune nodded and took his good arm’s hand, as Dalton helped her up onto the mattress. The Axew made her way around him from left to right, peeling back the rind of the Oran Berry before raising it above the top of his right arm’s splint. She wedged the fruit up against a tusk and pressed down, bleeding blue juice down that worked its way down under his splint and stung as it passed the break in his bones.
Dalton briefly fought back a wince and steadied himself. He breathed in and let his eyes drift to the floor as the stinging sensation faded, when he noticed Irune hesitating with the fruit and staring at him.
“Why did you do it?” she asked.
“Do what?” Dalton replied, tilting his head.
“Attack Sophia back in the Royal Library,” the Axew said. “She was going to let you go if you’d just let her take me. How come you didn’t even consider her offer?”
Dalton held his tongue. He didn’t know if he would go so far to say that it was worth running into Irune on that fateful night just outside Waterhead Cave, but knew the way the army worked. With Sophia’s insistence on top of it that they needed to draw out Irune’s power at the right time and place, it all seemed to be pointing towards one thing:
“Because they were going to make you fight. And I’d rather have gone down fighting than just accept that.”
A long silence followed afterwards. Much to Dalton’s surprise, Irune didn’t look as startled as he was expecting her to be. He doubted she understood why, but perhaps she’d already suspected that that ‘offer’ hadn’t sat well with him.
Even if Irune was somehow some sort of primordial god, or trio of gods, or however this ‘Nameless Dragon’ was supposed to work, something about the idea of the army sending a little child like her off to war just made his scales crawl. Perhaps it was just sentiment that he’d just inherited from his parents. Much like them, he’d always felt uncomfortable hearing stories about youngsters tagging along with the Trosse that followed after army units and their encampments. There were no shortage of tales about them meeting unfortunate fates when their wagons and caravans wound up being less safely behind the front lines than their members thought.
He could only imagine how much worse it’d be to actively throw one into the same maelstrom that’d stolen Dieter away from him.
He snapped to attention after feeling another dash of juice run past the break in his arm. The Oran Berry was looking fairly spent now against Irune’s tusk as she bled it, probably a sign that it was time to eat its leftover pulp. He saw it resting on the linens and reached out for it, as Irune took the linens just afterwards to try and wipe off the juice from her tusks. Dalton raised the pulp to his mouth, only to pause when he noticed Irune briefly wincing herself. He spotted a patch of damaged scales on her hip and briefly hesitated… when the Axew’s voice broke the silence.
“Is… that what happened to your brother? And why you’re always so bothered by the Grünhäuter whenever we run into them?”
Dalton snapped to attention and saw Irune giving a curious glance up at him. Her eyes briefly widened, which from how sharply he could feel the ends of his mouth curling down, he supposed was a sign his reaction had startled her.
“You shouldn’t go prying into things that don’t concern you, Irune. But no, he was about my age when he entered the army, not that it helped him much,” he harrumphed. “Though do you really expect me not to be bothered by Pokémon who have ruined the lives of more friends than I can count? Ones who would at best stuff me into some cramped cell for years?”
“No, no, I understand that part,” the Axew replied, flusteredly waving her hands. “But you’re bothered by things that they do like the way they take bribes, and…”
She trailed off and pawed at her arm with an evasive glance aside.
“It just seemed a little strange for an Outlaw to care about that,” she said. “I was just a little curious if it came from somewhere for you.”
There was a long pause between the two on the bed. He probably ought to have just brushed her off and scarfed down that Oran pulp, but something about the question lingered with him.
There was no logical reason for him to be so bothered. Why, the disgraceful conduct of the Gendarmen and army types in general even helped them on a couple occasions since the night they made it out of Waterhead Cave.
Maybe it was sentiment? No, Dalton liked to think it was something deeper than that. He didn’t need to be a law-abiding ‘mon to know when something was wrong… that it wasn’t just… that it wasn’t as it rightfully ought to be.
“I suppose that it’s just force of habit from before I became an Outlaw,” he replied. “I grew up in a world where soldiers and Gendarmen were supposed to be there to protect others. To be loyal to king and country even when it was difficult. I guess there’s always been a part of me that’s never gotten over the disappointment of seeing the Pokémon I was raised to look up to falling so short of the ideal of who they’re supposed to be.”
He trailed off, shaking his head with a mirthful chuckle.
“I suppose that makes me a bit of a hypocrite, doesn’t it?” he said. “When I first became an Outlaw, I thought that it’d be something temporary. That I’d just do a couple jobs and steal from Pokémon who had things coming to them before I could go back to my normal life…”
“… Not anymore than the rest of us.”
Dalton cast a sideways glance towards Irune and saw her averting her gaze, looking down at the bedspread underfoot.
“It’s hard sometimes, knowing how things ought to be and wanting it, while being powerless to do anything about it,” she murmured. “I… don’t really know what specifically made you an Outlaw, but I have a feeling that I’d understand why you did better than I gave you credit for originally.”
Dalton wasn’t really sure what to make of that. Would Irune be able to understand him? Yes, she had been on the run from the Gendarmen and that Fähnlein for a while now, but she was hardly a normal Pokémon. If Irune really was the Nameless Dragon as the Corvisquire alleged… would she really know what she herself wanted?
Even when not being used to speak in reference of the gods, wish and reality were often separated by a yawning chasm. And in times like theirs, truth and ideals were often every bit as much so. Could someone who somehow had the embodiment of both slumbering inside of her really not just swing from one yearning to its opposite?
“Scales, not to be rude, but how long does it take to apply a berry? You’re the one who was worried about us running out of time before Igna and Ansel came back!”
Dalton back at the table and saw Kate and Lyle staring with puzzled flicks of their ears. He supposed that was a sign that things had been dragging on long enough. He slid off the bed, passing the remains of the Oran Berry over back to Irune.
“Here, you should have the rest,” he said. “You’re not exactly in great shape yourself, and you’ll need your health for the sort of journey we’re facing down.”
The Axew stared back befuddled for a moment before taking the berry pulp and scarfing it down. As she slid off the bed and followed after him, Dalton had the feeling that there were other things Irune had going on with herself that she still wasn't telling them.
He supposed that now wasn’t the time to try and suss them out. They had a general idea of where they needed to be going, they just needed to settle on a route… and somehow make it out of the city in good enough shape to take it.
Kate flicked her ears and glanced over at Dalton and Irune on the opposite side of the table. A part of her felt a little bad for cutting short whatever those two were talking about on the bed, but it surely could wait until they were out of this city and with a head start over those Grünhäuter that were currently searching for them. She turned her attention back to the pages of the ‘Explorer’s Handbook’ and the map in it.
It wasn’t quite the same as the one in their old handbook. For one, there were a bunch of artsy-fartsy drawings on the map, especially on the locations of the Mystery Dungeons themselves. She still couldn’t read most of the writing even if they were definitely all Varhyder Runes and not whatever Torchic scratch those Hunters from Team Pathfinder or whatever it was had scribbled into the margins. She wasn’t sure why their copy didn’t have these drawings, since they made it easier to get an idea of what the places looked like. She was able to identify Newangle City in its place towards the center of the kingdom, along a river that ran east of what Lyle told her was the Lesser Mist.
“So… we’re down here right now,” she said, pointing a claw at a little illustration of a ring wall fencing in a set of towers. And the Divine Roost we need to get to is all the way over there in the middle of the sea.”
Kate traced her claw along the page to a floating hunk of earth, which unlike most of the other Mystery Dungeons on the map, wasn’t wreathed with whitish mist, but by a haze that was black almost like smoke. She’d vaguely remembered hearing stories in the past of how Mystery Dungeons whose presence and openings to the outside world would shift around by noticeable distances and were supposed to be more treacherous and unpredictable to travel through.
It was strange, since she could’ve sworn hearing in the past that Mystery Dungeons with black fog like that were usually either ones that had just formed or else were ones that were on the verge of dissipating. The Divine Roost was supposed to be a place that had been around since at least the time of the Great Flash. How had it lasted for over a thousand years in such a state?
Her ears swiveled at the sound of something rubbing against paper and glanced over. Lyle and Dalton were looking over at Irune, while the Axew poked her head out from behind that worn-out book of hers with charcoal nub in paw. ‘To help take notes’, as she’d insisted.
Kate didn’t know how much she believed that, but after the way they’d soaked that first handbook they’d stolen, it probably didn’t hurt to have a spare of some sort.
Except a spare of nothing was still nothing. Even with the lines sprouting off from the Divine Roost, most of them were dotted—which Lyle said were a marker that the Links they were depicted were known to be seasonal or else appeared only erratically. None of the Mystery Dungeons that weren’t that way were anywhere close to them right now, and she had a bad feeling about how none of those Mystery Dungeons with a stable Link to the Divine Roost were wreathed with a normal whitish mist.
"I don’t think we’re going to get away with hopping a boat and floating down the river to get there, and I doubt Lacan’s just going to let us go touring the countryside like some apprentice on a Wanderjahr,” the Sneasel said, shaking her head. “You’re the ‘mon who seems to knows these Mystery Dungeons out in the middle of nowhere the best, Scales. How exactly do we narrow things down here?”
“By looking for other Mystery Dungeons that will get us as close as possible to one that connects to the Divine Roost,” Dalton replied. “Just from a casual glance at this map, I think we already have a few choices to pick from.”
She watched as the Heliolisk moved his uninjured hand out over Newangle City and brought it up towards a set of fog-shrouded woods off to the north.
“If preparedness wasn’t an issue, the route which would minimize our time going about the countryside would be to go north and go through Newmoon Wildwood and then take the Link inside to Great Icefield to reach the Divine Roost,” he explained. “We’d only need to travel overland for about a day to reach Newmoon Wildwood, and the Links between them are stable and would take us to the Divine Roost without touching the surface.”
Kate blinked at Dalton and saw Irune pick up her charcoal nub ready to write down something. That was the route that had caught her and Lyle’s eye earlier, and the way Dalton described it made it, it sounded perfect for a route! But with the way that Dalton was hesitating right now and nervously pawing at his splint…
“Alright, what’s the catch, Scales?” she asked. “Since you’re looking a lot less excited than I thought you’d be about a route where we only have to travel for a day before getting off in the clear.”
“Both Newmoon Wildwood and Great Icefield are supposed to be fairly grueling Mystery Dungeons to traverse,” he explained. “I’m not a Hunter, but back in my hometown, the Pokémon from the Exploration Guild would tell stories of how even Gold-Rank teams would get overwhelmed by the Wilders there.”
Everyone around the table froze as soon as the words left Dalton’s mouth. Irune dropped her charcoal nub and shot a wide-eyed stare over, while Lyle abruptly lit up.
That… was one hell of a catch there. Though Dalton clearly wasn’t always on the wrong side of Hunters if that comment was anything to go by. Kate thought to ask further about what that was all about, only to dispel the thought after seeing Lyle flatten his ears with a tense shake of his head.
“I don’t think that ‘grueling’ is really something any of us need right now after we got chewed up in one forest full of angry Wilders,” the Quilava muttered. “Is there another route we can work with that you know won’t put us through something like that, Dalton?”
“That’s all very relative since we’re talking about Mystery Dungeons here,” the Heliolisk harrumphed. “Short of leaving things to fate, all the ones that have known consistent Links to the Divine Roost will be challenging to get through. But…”
The Heliolisk looked down at the map and put a finger on the pages, moving it off eastward towards a set of fog-shrouded falls as he mused aloud to himself.
“We could go through Sunset Falls and take the Link inside to Blue Bluffs. Once we came out the other end of it, it’d just be a brief detour overland, go through Shivering Sands, which has a Link to Blacksteel Ruins that starts forming around this time of year and lasts through to the end of winter,” the Heliolisk said.
Kate watched as the Heliolisk followed a set of lines up to a set of human ruins that seemed to poke out of what looked almost like a pillar of dark clouds and black fog and frowned. Could that place have been any more obviously less inviting?
“None of those Mystery Dungeons aside from Blacksteel Ruins should be much worse to get through than what we dealt with to reach our hideout in Waterhead Cave,” Dalton explained. “It’d also give us plenty of opportunities to forage for supplies along the way, too.”
That didn’t sound like a half-bad idea either. The Sneasel was about to speak up in favor of the idea when she noticed that there was a large gap between Newangle City and Sunset Falls, and an even bigger one between Blue Bluffs and Shivering Sands that looked almost as far apart as Moonturn Square and Toya Square were on the map.
She wasn’t going to hold her breath on them being able to hire another Carrier again, so…
“Wait, Scales. I thought you said we should be trying to find ways to get around by Links.”
“We are, but some of the alternative routes aren’t traversable entirely through Mystery Dungeons,” the Heliolisk said. “There’d be stretches where we’d have to spend two or three days traveling over normal land and find places to hunker down in whenever we needed to rest.”
… Two or three days? When they’d been struggling to keep Lacan and his damned Fähnlein off their tails for more than one? Gods, Dalton was not making these choices easy. Kate stared down at the map when she noticed that just a little ways north of that ‘Shivering Sands’ Mystery Dungeon was another with lines sprouting off of it, including one which lead up to a town with a wedge-shaped tower along the coast just on the other side of the Lesser Mist from where they were. There were at least two other Mystery Dungeons in its general vicinity that looked like they couldn’t be much further than the journey from Waterhead Cave to Moonturn Square and they both had all sorts of Links sprouting off of it to other Mystery Dungeons up and down the Lesser Mist!
“Wait a minute, Scales. What about these Mystery Dungeons next to this seaside town down here by ‘Something-or-Other Port’?” the Sneasel asked. “There’s Links between them and a whole bunch of Mystery Dungeons this side of the Lesser Mist! I’ll admit that just getting to the first Mystery Dungeon to reach that place looks like it could get a bit dicey, but we’d never need to be out in the open for more than a day at a time before making it to Shivering Sands.”
Kate flicked her ear feather briefly and looked over at her teammates as they all seemed to visibly pale at the suggestion, with Lyle coming alight with a start and staring at her with his mouth hanging open.
“Kate, ‘Something-or-Other Port’ there is Port Velhen!” the Quilava exclaimed.
“Yes, and?”
“Th-That’s the same place that Lacan is Graf over!” he spluttered. “What do you think the ‘Wellenhafen₁’ in his title refers to?!”
Kate bit her lip and stiffened up. Now that she looked at the runes by the town with the wedge-shaped tower, she supposed the drawing was right by the sea and the one in front of ‘port’ did kinda look like ‘waves’... which would explain the ‘Wellenhafen’ from that name for the town in Hightongue.
… But was that necessarily a bad thing? Even if it meant sneaking through the home of their scaly pain-in-the-ass who was hounding them, it wasn’t as if he was there right now to push the local Grünhäuter around, right?
“Wait, but couldn’t that work out for us?” she asked. “We managed to get into Newangle City just fine since nobody expected us to be here, so-”
“It’d be a suicidal idea even if it weren’t Lacan’s Grafschaft,” Dalton harrumphed. “Port Velhen’s one of the main ports where the military dispatches ships from and deploys soldiers off to Edialeigh. It’ll be crawling with them, especially now...”
Nevermind then, going towards Port Velhen really was a bad idea. Kate quietly sucked in a breath and made a note to herself that she’d have to get around to finishing learning how to read her runes one day… maybe sooner rather than later with that irked side-eye that Scales was shooting at her right now.
“I can’t think of any reason for going there other than to worsen our odds of making it to the Divine Roost,” Dalton harrumphed. “The Riparian Raiders quit that general area a couple years back for a reason, and there’s no reason to assume…”
Dalton trailed off briefly and Kate flicked her ears as she heard something sliding loudly against paper. She turned her attention over towards Irune where she saw her scribbling up a storm. The Sneasel cocked a brow, before turning over to her Axew teammate with a befuddled frown.
“... Irune? What are you doing?”
“Making a copy of the map, of course!” the Axew insisted. “That way if something happens to it, we’ll have a spare of it!”
Kate and the others traded looks with one another as Irune brought out her book and set it on the table, dutifully holding down the edges of the pages. Wasn’t that her diary? She was surprised Irune would be so open about showing—
The Sneasel suddenly noticed Lyle and Dalton double-take with expressions that briefly made her think she somehow saw sweat rolling down the sides of their heads. She tilted her head to get a better look at the pages, and saw what’d made them so unimpressed:
Irune’s “map”, if it could be called that, was a mess of crude and childish scrawls. She supposed the coast kinda resembled the ones on the atlas’ map and it was labeled with numbers she guessed were related to distances, but the Mystery Dungeons were all over the place. Newangle City looked closer to Toya Square than where it was supposed to be, and the less said about the confusing mess of lines between things that were probably supposed to be the Links, the better.
She shot a sidelong frown at the Axew and stared briefly… At least she seemed to write down some sort of notes about where to find the Links in each Mystery Dungeon? Maybe? Though with how messy and tiny Irune’s writing was, she’d be surprised if even Dalton could read them.
“Yeah, don’t go quitting your day job there, Shiren,” Kate snorted.
Irune flushed a flustered red and snatched back her journal, clamping it against her chest with a quiet grumble under her breath. Back with the handbook, Lyle ran a paw over the pages between Newmoon Wildwood and Sunset Falls, with a look over his face that reminded her of times she’d remembered seeing the Quilava when he’d had to walk past deep water.
“Do we have any other options that would be about the same difficulty as if we headed for Sunset Falls?” Lyle asked. “We really shouldn’t push ourselves after what we went through in Primordial Woods, but us traveling over normal land for days at a time with all those soldiers after us…”
“There isn’t, unfortunately. Everything else I can saw from a glance on this map would either require going through more dungeons, more difficult ones, or through more exposed distance on land,” Dalton said, shaking his head. “Unless you see another route that really catches your eye, the one through Newmoon Wildwood and Sunset Falls are the only ones really worth considering.”
Gods, what a choice there, and with Dalton’s arm still busted, no less. At least they could pace themselves by hiding out in Pockets and moving around? If it were just her, she’d be confident with their chances going through either route even if it meant going overland since whether in a Mystery Dungeon or outside of it, she’d always had up a leg on sneaking around on their old crews. But Lyle had a tendency to quite literally lose his cool when under stress, and with Dalton still injured…
The Sneasel glanced at her teammates as they looked down at the atlas’ pages uneasily. She followed their eyes, and from the way they drifted northwards of Newangle City on the map, she gathered that they’d made their choice.
“We were lucky just to make it back here tonight,” Irune murmured. “I know that Primordial Woods wasn’t easy on us to get through, but Lacan and his soldiers are surely looking around for us right now, and I’m not sure how well we can stay ahead of them outside of a Mystery Dungeon. Especially one they wouldn’t be worried about going into…”
“That’s another vote for Newmoon Wildwood, I guess,” Lyle murmured. “I just wish we had more than a night to plan this out.”
“Meh, beggars can’t be choosers,” Kate remarked. “What about you, Scales? You’re the injured ‘mon, do you have any objections to going through Newmoon Wildwood?”
The Heliolisk looked down at his splinted arm briefly and seemed to visibly wrestle with his thoughts. For a moment, Kate thought that he was going to protest, only for him to sigh and close the handbook and push it aside with his left hand.
“I suppose we don’t need to make a firm choice until we actually get past those city walls. Since for all we know, the process of getting out will make it for us,” he said. “Though I think I can manage either way as long as we have a chance to get some actual healing items on the way over and pace ourselves in the Mystery Dungeons.”
Kate watched as Dalton tucked the handbook back into his bag when she felt a yawn come over her. She was normally pretty good about staying up later into the night since her kind was supposed to adapt easily to nocturnal life… but the day’s chaos was starting to catch up with her. The Sneasel yawned and pawed at her ears, before getting up and turning her gaze for the beds.
“Well, I’m bushed,” she said. “I’m going to go and crash for now. Wake me whenever Igna and Ansel come by for their kiddie book-”
“Wait.”
Kate’s ears pricked up at the sound of Irune’s voice and the Axew’s seat grinding as she scooted it back along the floor. The Sneasel looked back just in time to see the Dragon-type beelining for Dalton as he and Lyle were in the middle of getting up, when Irune pulled a tome from the table right as the Heliolisk was about to take it.
“Irune, what are you-?”
She gave no reply to the Heliolisk other than to push the book out into the center, revealing an apple-colored cover with what looked like footprints on it in lines.
“I know it’s late,” she said. “But didn’t you say that we’d look at that book Lacan was trying to find if we had a chance?”
Kate looked down and frowned after seeing the book looked visibly thick, and the only runes on it that looked normal were tiny enough that she had to squint to see them under the footprint-looking ones.
“That was Lyle that said that,” Kate replied. “And can this really not wait until tomorrow? You can’t seriously expect us to get through that tree-killer in a night, can you?”
“This is one of the books we have to hand over to Igna and Ansel, remember?” Lyle said. “Though I don’t think we have read the entire book. It’s called ‘The Collected Legends from Wander’, remember? Wouldn’t Lacan only be interested in a pawful of them at most?”
Kate blinked at the Quilava’s explanation. She supposed it wasn’t as bad as she was worrying, but…
“Fair point, I guess. But what sort of legends would he even be looking for?”
“Sophia said I was a reincarnation of the ‘Nameless Dragon’,” Irune mused. “Wouldn’t looking for legends about a god by that name or something about reincarnation be a logical place to start?”
The others on Team Forager traded looks with each other before Lyle finally stepped forward. Kate was a little surprised that it was him who jumped in to read instead of Dalton, since she’d have thought a nerd like him would be all over things. The Quilava reached out and slid his paws onto the cover. He pulled it back, musing to himself as he pawed through the first couple pages.
“There’s usually a table of contents in books like these near the start that we can check-”
Lyle flipped through the first pages and then blinked with an uneasy twitch of his ears. Kate cocked a brow and walked up beside the table with a puzzled frown. She’d always thought that Lyle never had any problems reading, but he looked about as lost as she did whenever she was presented with a sheet full of runes!
“Lyle, what’s wrong?” she asked. “You barely touched the book so far and-”
The Sneasel made her way forward and saw that on both the left and right pages, there were lines of what looked like little footprints broken up by small illustrations of gods and other Pokémon.
… Those were those old-style runes that sometimes showed up on plaques or Bildstöcke. They seriously made books with them? From Lyle’s expression, she was guessing he couldn’t read any of this Torchic scratch himself, much less Irune who stared blankly before pointing off at the page.
“I mean, there’s some modern runes here at least,” Irune said. “But how come they’re only over some of these Footprint Runes and not all of them?”
“It’s because the book was most likely printed back when it was still common to use Footprint Runes for technical writing. There were still examples of books being made that way as late as the early years of King Sansa’s reign before his reforms during and after the Advent War,” Dalton explained. “Those runes you see in the margins are meant to help explain runes whose meanings might be unclear or else changed with time for Pokémon less familiar with them.”
Kate shot her eyes between Dalton and back down at the strange book. She should really be less surprised that an obvious priss like Dalton would read this script, but it never occurred to her that it’d actually be put out on paper like this.
“Wait, you mean Pokémon actually used to write like this?” she asked. “Since when?”
Dalton rolled his eyes and reached his left arm out for the page with a low scoff.
“Since ancient times, after Pokémon started moving on from using scripts of human origin,” the Heliolisk explained. “Even if it’s obviously easier to render with a printing press than as a manuscript, every ‘mon who hopes to get educated past a stint at a village school has to learn how to read in Footprint Runes. There’s a whole host of old books and documents pre-dating the formation of our modern runes that are written solely in them.”
Kate frowned and pinned her ears back. She wasn’t sure how anyone was supposed to manage writing these out without a stamp collection or a hell of a lot of time to burn, but clearly Pokémon in the past didn’t have all their marbles. She noticed Irune blinking off on the side, when the Axew gave a curious glance off at the Heliolisk.
“Wait, so then these runes are related to the ones we use today?” she asked. “But they look so different!”
“That’s the thing, they’re actually not that different if you take time to look at them closely,” Dalton explained. “Most of our modern runes actually evolved from shorthand forms Pokémon would use while writing these Footprint Runes out, and…”
Oh gods, they did not need to get into a tangent about how ancient runes worked right here and now. Kate thumped the table with a claw, narrowing her eyes over at the Heliolisk as she piped up with a sharp hiss.
“Scales, you’re not at that artsy-fartsy university of yours anymore and it’s getting late,” Kate harrumphed. “So how about you put those reading skills of yours to use for us?”
She locked eyes with Dalton before noticing him faltering briefly. A quick glance off towards his gaze revealed Lyle shooting an unamused stare at the Heliolisk. That seemed to get the message across, as the Electric-type cleared his throat and sat down beside the table.
“... Right, anyway, let’s see what we’ve got for chapters here.”
The Heliolisk ran a claw along each line, studying each one closely as he hesitated briefly with each one and spoke his findings aloud:
“To an Unknown God: Comparative Myths of the Origins of the World and Cosmos... Order and Chaos: Tales of a Primordial Era and the Forming of Ways and Kinds of Pokémon... The Great Mediators: The Human Era and the Seeds of Our Civilization...”
Each title sounded about as frilly and pretentious as the last, and every now and then, the Heliolisk would murmur something in Hightongue under his breath before speaking up, which Kate assumed meant the book was meant to be read in it originally and Dalton needed a moment to figure out how to translate it. So it was boring and a pain in the ass to read, what a combination for a book there.
Dalton trailed off as his finger stopped abruptly on a line with a couple annotations above them and his eyes briefly widened.
“... ‘Göttliche Seelenwanderungen₂’...?”
The Sneasel blinked and turned over to the Heliolisk, looking down at the mass of footprint-like shapes on the page and then up at the lizard’s startled face. The chapter was something about gods from what she’d overheard, but wasn’t a huge chunk of this book anyways?
“Scales? Why’d you suddenly stop?” she asked. “There’s more writing further down the page from where you’re at.”
“It’s the title of this chapter I found,” he explained. “Divine Metempsychoses: Observations of the Lives and Deaths of the Gods.”
A long silence hung in the air as the Heliolisk read the footprint-shaped runes aloud. Lyle should’ve been less surprised that a book about myths and legends would also have tales about the rebirth of gods in them, but it was still startling to see it right in front of him.
“What… does that chapter say?”
He turned his head at the sound of Irune asking the question, and flicked his ears after the creaks of wood rang out—from Kate pushing Irune’s chair over for her to get a better look. The stoat got up and drifted over himself. He’d… never been any good at reading Footprint Runes beyond a pawful of really basic ones, but from the tension in the air, he was starting to think that this chapter was going to be important.
“Uh… well, I’d need to find my place first…” Dalton replied. “Lyle, can you help me turn to page 251? I’d do it myself, but…”
The Heliolisk pawed at the shoulder of his splinted arm, when the Quilava sighed and stepped forward and looked down at the glyphs on the line, and noticed a glyph that looked much like a Nidoking’s footprint pointing upwards before flipping through the pages. He studied the bottom corners carefully as he flipped through the pages, slowing down as he noticed the leading glyph started to double up when he turned the page and abruptly stopped.
There, on the left, was an illustration that took up the entire page of Ho-Oh falling from the sky with bloodied wounds. He caught Kate quirking a brow from the corner of his eye and stared down at the page himself. He knew that he’d heard stories that Ho-Oh had been among the gods that had been summoned by Reshiram and come from afar to fight on Varhyde’s behalf decades ago… and she was supposed to have died in battle. Even so, it still felt a little strange to see a book about Varhyde’s myths and legends not talk about its patron goddess’ rebirths.
Maybe he should’ve been less surprised that Ho-Oh would’ve died sometime beforehand, too. Even if it made him wonder how long ago this death had been if this was the first time he was hearing of it at all. He and his teammates turned to Dalton briefly, who ran a finger along the runes and began to read aloud in a slow, measured pace.
Throughout the ages, there have been tales of Pokémon of myth and legend that have been cut down in battle or forced to sacrifice themselves in the course of their duties upholding their domains and the order of the cosmos. It is not known how many times such a fate has befallen the gods of our world, as the age of even known younglings among their ranks can extend into the centuries. As such, the few passages of a Legendary to and from the mortal coil which have not been lost entirely to the mists of time have a tendency to quickly grow muddled by stories of their other feats.
A tense silence filled the room as Dalton reached the end of the page. Lyle knew that there were stories of Pokémon being reborn, with the gods being the ones who were known to come back as an observed reality. Even so, after decades of silence with not a single one of the gods who’d fallen in war between Varhyde and Edialeigh having been reborn… it was a bit hard to believe sometimes that any of them ever would. Or that if they did, that they’d just be reborn somewhere else in Wander with them no one in Varhyde any wiser. After all, the stories of the past rebirths of Reshiram and Zekrom always had been a bit hazy and felt more like tales his parents would tell him than actual history.
“This book must be pretty damn old,” Kate mused. “Not that there’s any gods that have come around in Varhyde after everything that’s happened with the war. You’d think that it’d at least have more to say about the last time a god was reborn around here.”
Lyle briefly bristled at Kate’s comment. She was no doubt referring to the way that their patron goddess and her counterparts were reborn around Freeden Village. But for an event that happened just over a century ago, even it sure felt more like a legend than something that actually happened. There was barely anything said about the specifics of whatever had happened in books—or in general for that matter—beyond conflicting stories about why and how his hometown had been cursed by them…
The Quilava turned the page, which on its left had another page filled with those strange footprint-like runes. On the other, there was a picture of a young Pidgey awkwardly trying to fledge herself from a branch, with the wings casting a shadow of a Ho-Oh on the ground below.
He quirked a brow and peeked over at Irune and her shadow cast on the wall from their lantern. It was still the same old Axew. He supposed the book’s writer must’ve done that for dramatic effect. Kate visibly furrowed her brow and traded glances between the young dragon and the illustration and opened her mouth to ask something, when Dalton brought his left hand up to the page of runes and began to read the passages aloud.
The afterlife and what comes beyond it for mortals remains ill-understood, as it remains unknown whether or not we too shall be as gods and someday begin our lives anew. For the gods in our midst, we know that there seems to be a rough degree of predictability for their deaths and rebirths based on the misfortunes they have had to bear in our unsettled world. Upon death, their bodies decay away much in the same fashion as those of the mortals who pay them reverence, but their souls still slumber, often for many years until they can be born anew into a vessel of mortal stock.
Irune abruptly shot upright as Lyle and Kate turned and stared at her for a long while. The Axew was visibly trembling at the text. It wasn’t hard proof, but just from her reaction, he could already tell that those hopes of hers that Lacan and his goons had somehow gotten things wrong about her were just about gone.
But something about this still didn’t feel right…
“A… vessel?” Kate asked. “As in that ‘Nameless Dragon’ or whatever is inside Irune right now?”
“Kate, she is that ‘Nameless Dragon’,” Dalton reminded. “Sophia even told us so.”
Maybe he was overthinking things. After all, Lyle had been a Cyndaquil once, and now he was a bigger and stronger Pokémon. He’d be even moreso if he ever evolved into a Typhlosion sometime when he wouldn’t have to worry about scrounging enough food to feed that still-larger body.
Did this mean that Irune would turn into this Nameless Dragon? Much like how he or Kate could still evolve?
He saw Kate blink and cast a glance over at Lyle as he stared blankly at Irune, who was visibly shrinking back. That was right, that crow had specifically called Irune the reincarnation of this ‘Nameless Dragon’, which somehow was related to Reshiram and the other gods she was tied to. Kyurem and…
Zekrom. The dreaded Endbringer that his parents would tell him and his brother stories about to shut them up and go to sleep.
Sophia specifically said that this ‘Nameless Dragon’ would beget Reshiram and her counterpart gods. What on earth did that mean? Would she somehow become all of them at once? Would she somehow stay together as some completely different being?
He heard uneasy tapping and saw Kate drumming a set of claws against the table. The Sneasel cast a wary glance over her shoulder at the Axew, before turning back to Dalton and quietly sucking in a breath.
“What… else does it say in there?” Kate asked.
Lyle helped the Heliolisk with the next page, where there was another illustration that made him freeze. There, on the drawing, was the picture of the Pidgey at the center of a ball of light in a wooded clearing with Pokémon looking on from the surrounding bushes. Her wings were spread wide, as the figure of Ho-Oh stood behind with the same pose.
It… looked like a drawing of an evolution. Not that evolutions looked like that, but little kids when attempting to draw an evolution would sometimes overlap the shapes of Pokémon’s bodies like this. So did folk paintings by older Pokémon for that matter.
It is not known what power deigned for gods to re-enter our world in the bodies of such lowly, vulnerable creatures, or if they similarly did so in the ages when they shared our world along with us with mankind. Various theories have been offered by sages throughout history: that it is a fundamental part of their lifecycle, that it is a prerequisite for them to ascend of some higher form. Others believe this to be the doing of a higher being, a God of Creation who remains unknown to us: some who hold that belief say it is to impart humility, to make penance for past misuses of their power, to pass on a respect for the Pokémon that pay them reverence.
A ‘God of… Creation’? Lyle wasn’t sure what sort of god that could be when he’d never seen a shrine to such a being. All of the gods he’d heard of had very clearly defined domains. Just what would a god that was above them even be like…?
He briefly overheard Dalton murmur a few words in Hightongue under his breath, before the Heliolisk continued on:
Whatever the cause, a god reborn in such a fashion will retain the form of its mortal vessel until its power has fully awakened. And in a great glow of light and power, it will regain its true form and nature and reveal itself to the world, ready to use and resume its role as a god.
Lyle gaped down at the book’s illustration and then over at Irune, who was looking down blankly at the table. So then Irune really was some sort of god? He knew that something had been up with her from those strange fire and electric powers they’d seen her use, but it was just so hard to wrap her mind around the idea that this was real and actually happening.
His breaths tightened and he felt his blood start to grow hot. He didn’t know why the army was hunting Irune down like this. Why the army had been treating her as if she were a common criminal when even King Siegmund would be bowing and scraping to her if she’d had her true form.
… No, that wasn’t right either. Criminals didn’t have entire military operations set up around them. The way they were treating her was like she was dangerous, like a batch of Apricorn shot, or a Blast Seed shell.
He didn’t know why any of this was the case, but he set his teeth on edge as one realization above them all crowded out his other thoughts:
“You knew about this, didn’t you?”
Lyle turned over to Irune with a piercing glare and fire smoldering from his vents. He didn’t know what on earth he was supposed to do being angry at a god, but the wagon, the raid on the encampment afterwards…
All of it… all of it…
“When you went along with us that night back in Waterhead Cave, you knew that you were this god and you kept it to yourself, didn’t you?” the Quilava demanded. “And you deliberately hid it from the rest of us! Why?! Why would you do that to us?!”
The way that Irune squirmed and shrank back seemed all but confirmed his suspicions, and both Kate and Dalton also seemed to be on edge from the exchange. His head began to spin, as Lyle subconsciously grit his teeth and dug his paws into the table’s wood.
“I-I didn’t know for sure I was a god! Y-You wouldn’t have believed me if I told you that I was!’” Irune stammered. “All I knew was that it’d been a year since the army put me on the run after they said I was a ‘Dyad’. I just desperately wanted to believe that they were wrong, that the Psychic who helped them find me to begin with was just a crank and wasted their time…”
The words seemed to come naturally enough to the little Dragon-type. Lyle didn’t know whether that was a sign she was telling the truth or if she’d gotten better at lying. Either way, he felt a pit in his stomach as uncomfortable questions started rising to the surface.
What else had Irune been hiding from them? Did she even see them as teammates? Or as scum that she just had to put up with while she was stuck in this body that wasn’t even really hers?
His mind turned to the treasure that she had said was out there at the Divine Roost. The slim reed of hope they’d been clinging to all this time, the one that Irune insisted that she get first pick on when they got there.
He got up and loomed over the Axew with a fierce scowl. They all knew that Irune couldn’t tell a convincing lie, so maybe it was time to just have her spit things out about why they were going through all of this.
“What is the treasure that you’re looking for at the Divine Roost?”
Her eyes visibly widened in response and Lyle could’ve sworn that she was starting to visibly squirm right in front of him.
“H-Huh?”
“The treasure. The one that is so important that you want it before any of the rest of us,” Lyle insisted. “The one that we’ve been sticking our necks out to help you try and get and have been hiding from us. The treasure our friends got captured over. What is it?”
He waited for a reply as his teammates stared at the two of them, with Kate pinning her ears as she must’ve realized where this was going. Alvin… Artem… all those other Pokémon who had been there at Waterhead Cave… had Irune knowingly doomed them all over that little jewel or whatever her pendant was a lookalike to?
The Axew didn’t say anything and looked away. Lyle set his teeth on edge and felt his vents start to heat up. It occurred to him that his vision was starting to grow fuzzy and the corners of his eyes were starting to feel damp.
“Look, I don’t care what you are or if that damned Graf is right about you or not. But I need to know. Why?” he demanded. “Why do you need that treasure so damn badly?”
There was a lingering silence he trailed off a moment, and let his eyes fall towards the ground with a low murmur.
“And why us?”
Still silence. From what he could see of Irune from the corner of his vision, she looked much like a child caught stealing sweets by her parents. Like he did when his parents confronted him right before kicking him out of the house. The Axew wavered and brought a hand shakily up to her face, and opened her mouth to speak.
“I-I-”
Tak tak tak
Lyle sprang back from his seat and crouched poised with fire pouring out of his vents, his teammates similarly jumped to their feet with a start at the sharp knock. His eyes quickly turned alongside theirs for the door, where a low, rumbling voice called out from beyond it.
“Are you all enjoying yourselves?”
His heart briefly stopped from how similar it sounded to Sheriff Mack’s only for it to dawn on him that it was probably that Aggron receptionist from the playhouse—‘Wye’, or something like that. Kate brushed past him and made her way over warily to the door. She opened it and sure enough, just past it and taking up most of the space beyond the doorframe, was that red-eyed Aggron and his teal hide, staring at them with an unamused scowl that made Lyle’s fur stand on end.
The hell was he doing up here? And why did Lyle have the distinct feeling that this was bad news right now?
“We… weren’t making too much noise, were we?”
Lyle briefly cocked her head to see Irune pawing at one of her tusks with an ashen expression and quietly grimaced himself. Had Wye heard them arguing earlier? He didn’t think that they’d been that loud earlier, but…
“Hrmph, I didn’t hear whatever you were talking about if that’s what you’re asking,” the Aggron scoffed.
Thank gods. It took all of Lyle’s willpower to not breathe out a sigh of relief right then and there as the receptionist turned in the hallway, and placed a claw on a pull-cord to the door outside..
“I just wished to inform you that your associates sent word that they wish to meet you at dawn in the Playhouse,” the Aggron said. “Ecks is currently preoccupied with some other matters right now, so it fell to me to pass word along.”
Lyle blinked in reply. At dawn? That wasn’t what they’d agreed on with Igna and Ansel, so what was going on?
“That’s later than what they told us this morning,” Kate harrumphed, folding her arms. “If they were able to tell you to pass word onto us, why can’t they make it now?”
“Because they informed us of their state of affairs by letter. It seems that you four caused a bit of trouble while conducting your business with them earlier tonight,” the Aggron said, narrowing his eyes with a sharp huff. “They say that it won’t be viable to conclude whatever deal you had between each other tonight, and dawn is the soonest they can manage.”
Lyle bit his lip at the receptionist’s explanation and saw flashes of unease go about his teammates. He hoped that Igna and Ansel weren’t seriously planning on trying to smuggle them past the city walls during the daytime. He knew they said there was a passage to the Undercity at the back of the Playhouse, so maybe things could work out that way, but Dalton had mentioned that the Gendarmen still made use of them sometimes. Would it really still be smooth sailing going through that place when Lacan was surely tracking down every green-plated leech here in Newangle City to try and hunt them down?
The Quilava hesitated and briefly glanced at his teammates, who seemed every bit as uneasy as he was. He shook his head, before looking up at the Aggron with a stern frown.
“... Tell them we’ll be there. We’re sure they want us out of their fur by now,” Lyle said. “We don’t have the means to stay here past tonight even if we wanted to.”
“So be it, then,” the Aggron harrumphed. “Don’t keep them waiting tomorrow.”
Wye pulled the door shut with a forceful thump, leaving Kate to go up as the Aggron’s thudding footsteps went further and further down the hallway as the Sneasel went up and kept her ear against the door. Lyle dropped back to all fours and turned his attention back to Irune, who avoided his gaze before she grudgingly spoke up.
“About the treasure I was looking for. I… I’ll tell you all about it when we make it to the next Mystery Dungeon.”
Lyle felt the corners of his mouth droop as the Axew turned back to him and his teammates. She had a pleading gaze, along with an expression that made her look like she was stuck out in a morning frost.
“J-Just please trust me that all of this is for an important reason.”
Damn it, why was she just refusing to spit things out right now? Was this because she didn’t trust them? Because she was afraid of how they’d react? He opened his mouth to press on, only to notice Kate eyeing the books on the table.
“So… uh, were we going to read the rest of those books to see what was up with Irune right now?” Kate asked. “Since just saying, it was over an hour past midnight when we set foot back here and dawn’s not that long from now.”
Lyle turned his attention to his teammates and saw that everyone looked tired and uneasy, and must’ve surely been as exhausted as he was. They’d all had a harrowing day that he still wasn’t sure what to think of after everything that had happened, and tomorrow was bound to be no less of an ordeal.
There was a long silence, before turned away from Irune and walked past with a sighing shake of his head.
“... Fine, I suppose I can wait a little longer. It’s not like Igna and Ansel asked for that other book about that Nameless Dragon anyways, so we can look at that later,” he said. “Let’s just get some rest. Since I can already tell that tomorrow’s going to be one of those days where we’ll need whatever energy we can spare.”
He headed off for his bedding and settled in as his teammates did likewise. As Lyle sank into his bed, he stared up at the ceiling. He briefly stole a glance from the corner of his eye at Irune as she settled in, who didn’t bother to get out her baubles to sleep with that time.
Were Lacan and Sophia right? Was Irune really a god of some sort? If so, how did she ever get into this situation with the army? Why had she hidden all of this from them?
… And most importantly, why had she trusted them to help her?
In the early years after the Great Flash, there were Pokémon in our land who attempted to preserve the knowledge of the humans that had once dwelt amongst them. These first scribes found themselves faced with the task of having to preserve knowledge that could not be passed down orally, where even minor discrepancies would doom it to be being lost forever.
In the earliest records of our land, our forebears are recorded as having first attempted to use human scripts to archive their suddenly departed companions’ wisdom. Much to their dismay, writing with such scripts proved burdensome for Pokémon such as us—they had been the work of creatures who didn’t discern meaning from differences of rhythm and intonation as we Pokémon do, but from changes of sound. Even attempts to render human writings in more primordial scripts, such as the Unown Runes we presently use to render words of unknown semantic meaning, proved insufficient as extensive training was required to piece the meanings of such words together from their component glyphs.
At roughly the same time, the first Civils of this world began to form their own runes better suited for their tongues. They made glyphs for discrete ideas and concepts, fashioned from the paws and claws on their bodies, which came to be called ‘Footprint Runes’. These runes spread far and wide through Wander in piecemeal fashion from their places of origin, with even the bitter enmities between Varhyde and Edialeighᵃ ultimately being insufficient to keep their Civils from eventually using a large body of shared runes for their writings.
While such Footprint Runes were easier for beings like us to comprehend, they were troublesome to render without printing presses or the most diligent of scribes. As such, Pokémon began to render those runes in shorthand in their daily lives, and simplified them into sequences of strokes and dots. With time, these practices reached the courts of the monarchs of this world, who at various points in history, granted their blessing on shorthand forms to be standardized for their realms.
As cumbersome as these ancient runes can be to interpret, much wisdom from bygone generations remains rendered solely in them, along with details and nuances that are lost in modern writing. For scholars seeking to tease out the truth of our world’s past from a far distance, a healthy knowledge of such scripts is indispensable even to this day.
- Excerpt of ‘The Royal Lexicon of Sciences and Arts’
a. In the original text, this is more accurately translated as “the Lands of Varhyde and Edialeigh”
The beginnings of the plot-critical lore™, though it's only some vague stuff. I'd say this is foreshadowing what the final challenge will be... but you keep your power scales low. So, don't think anyone's fighting God in this fic. Certainly not this band of idiots. Though it seems the vague confirmation has caused a flip in the dynamics. Lyle used to be the most... respectful toward Irune, with Dalton the least. And now it seems Dalton has gotten softer while Lyle turned prickly.
I did expect that it would be Irune to get Dalton to open up slightly more, just because she's generally the more empathetic of the protags here. It was still talked about in relatively vague terms, but it's more or less hit at the heart of Dalton's bitterness. This was as good a time as any to explore it. I'm not sure how it'll really effect things going forward. Perhaps that anger will bubble back up to the surface next chapter. Since they are clearly walking into an ambush. Unless it starts with them just hightailing it because the agreed on time was changed. Even if they do that... they're still running into the army again. It is... inevitable.
Hello, hello! It’s been quite a while since I leapt back into this fic, and with a review event going on in PMDiner, it’s a good chance to get caught up with those three chapters that have released since I last checked in. Plus on your fic side of things I’ve been reviewing a lot of Fledglings recently and while that fic’s been a lot of fun, I figured I’d take a break from it, hop back into this fic and see how our outlaw heroes are getting on.
Which if the last chapter’s cliffhanger was anything to go by, not very well. It seemed to be quite a climactic cliffhanger that’s been building up for a while now, so I’m eager to see just what these chapters have to offer in terms of payoff for the setup.
(Also how fitting that on the day of beginning the writing this review, Xenoblade X Definitive Edition was released. Funny coincidence, isn’t it?
)
Chapter 27
Two entities, Wish and Reality, themselves and their lands forever at odds with each other…But there’s nothing saying wishes can’t be bound in reality, and that reality does not have to remain unyielding for people’s wishes. What would it take for this world to realise that, I wonder? Somehow I doubt it’ll stop any time soon, and whether our not our gang of four can do anything to bring the war to a halt is a rather doubtful notion. Then again, things have potential to change a lot between now and the fic’s end.
If the Nameless Dragon is called the Nameless Dragon, then would that not mean it does in fact have a name? (I always have great fun making this joke whenever something’s called ‘Nameless’ in media. See, for instance, the Nameless Cavern in ORAS.)
Welp, if that chapter title, along with the cliffhanger end to the last chapter, is anything to go by, we have a hell of a confrontation on our hands with the two most pressing threats of the story so far. Although I’m betting what Sophia’s learned in the past few chapters may prove instrumental to her actions here, in terms of being swayed…
And now the truth about Irune comes out for Lyle, Kate and Dalton to learn, to which they are understandably flabbergasted. After all, Pyra, to which Irune shares an archetype, was upfront that she was someone special in being the Aegis, so Rex didn’t have any illusions about that. Granted, Irune herself hasn’t been sure of just what she is, so no doubt that’s why she’s kept mum this whole time. I wonder if there’s a hint of mistrust in it all, given that she and the other three have quarrelled in more than one occasion. Plus they have only known each other for a short while and strangers aren’t the kind of people to be sharing earth-shattering secrets with.
Though you’d think the other three would’ve cottoned on that she’s mystical in some way based on the evidence thus far. Perhaps they’re in denial too about Irune in this confrontation with Sophia.
Sophia sure is pretty good at cornering Team Forager in terms of corraling the truth and proclaiming it loud and clear, refuting their every argument. She might make a good attorney - although that’s a crossover with the wrong video game universe.
This, to me, definitely feels like a scene where I could picture Towering Shadow from XC1 playing. And while this song is most remembered in playing in that major plot twist (you know the one ) and this scene doesn't quite have that same gravity to it, the feeling of Sophia revealing to Team Forager the truth behind Irune does feel like a fitting moment for a song like this.
“Verpiss dich₁, Grünhäuter! Nimm dein Angebot und steck's dir sonst wo hin!ᴰ¹”
Lyle rolled out of the way as a thick bolt of electricity zipped along the corridor and caught Sophia in her throat. The crow staggered with a pained squawk, stumbling back spread-winged.
And there the negotiation goes out of the window at the sound of lightning bolts from Dalton. Intriguing to think of the ‘what if’ should Irune have given herself and Lyle, Kate and Dalton be allowed to walk free - but as Lyle thought, that wouldn’t change their situation one iota regarding their current status of having to continue their lives of stealing.
Creative use of the objects in grabbing distance. Whatever works to hold off the enemy.
But just as Sophia’s dealt with, Lacan shows up with all the ferocity and menace of a Salamence. His snarling delivery certainly gives off N vibes, and given that I’ve compared Sophia to M a lot, perhaps I haven’t done enough comparisons for her partner. I do recall you once saying in a TRCord storycrafter question that one of your imagined voices for Lacan was Harry McEntire. And honestly? Yeah, in this scene, I can hear it.
The preservationist in me cringes at the thought of a Fire-type and a fire-breathing dragon fighting in a library. Some books aren’t gonna make it out of here alive, that’s for sure.
Back to the stairwell we go, and goodness, Dalton’s in a fiery mood this fight to be firing off all these Electric attacks. It must be his grudging thoughts about the Grünhäuter that’ve been alluded to in the past few chapters that’s now bubbling over into a raging incandescence.
Their exact location had just been given out to every soldier in this damned library and if they couldn’t get out of this hallway soon, they were going to get mobbed. The only way forward then was to fight their way past whoever was in the way and get out before their buddies upstairs caught up.
Oh hey, just like a Ganglion fortress battle. Wow, they really did aggro everyone in the vicinity, just like how it tends to go in Xenoblade X.
In that case, if we are pulling Ganglion fight comparisons and moving away from Lacan and Sophia into a battle with rank-and-file Grünhäuter, then perhaps this song might be a bit more apt.
I like the plan Team Forager’s cooking up here. Fingers crossed they can execute it without interruption.
I’m quite a fan of how the Slow Orb is effectively a powered up String Shot. Nice way to depict it instead of it just randomly making them sluggish.
Not often we see a Lucario mook in PMD fics. Normally they’re among the main cast.
Lyle tried to get onto his feet, only to feel something heavy pinning him down, and looked up panting for air to see the Lucario from the stairwell holding him down.
Hmmm, there’s something about ‘pinning him down’ and ‘holding him down’ in the same sentence that feels slightly repetitive. Perhaps something like ‘only to feel a heavy weight upon him’ that could replace the first instance?
Ouch, poor Lucario. Getting his fur burned off and having his unconscious body be used as a doorstop - what a way to go.
Rakete, huh? They a high-ranking Grünhäuter or what? Thinking about it, I honestly wouldn’t mind seeing more names be put on their faces. We haven’t had too many soldier namedrops outside of Sophia and Lacan (and Pax, of course. Can’t forget the Padraig expy).
An em dash at the end here would help. Especially considering the next line tells of Lacan bursting the door open where the Lucario’s body is, it would help convey the suddenness of the crash even more.
Team Forager sure is efficient at creating makeshift doorstops. Though I suppose it comes with the territory of being a thief on the run.
He widened his eyes and jolted up onto his hindlegs, looking down to see the edge of the scaffolding… and the ground so far below that it was murky from his vision’s farsight. Gods, if he had kept going forward just another step or two…
Yikes, that was a close call. And frightening imagery on precarious scaffolding - that certainly unnerves me, as one who’s not fond of heights when mixed with wobbly surfaces. :WhipGulp:
Gotta admire the dogged determination of our heroes to keep going and find ways out of being cornered for the umpteenth time. That, or the Grünhäuter really need some lessons in competence. Lacan ought to get on that if so. Or maybe they need a Vangarre expy to do fifty laps of squat jumps around Newangle.
The Quilava looked the other way as hoarse panting reached his ears, and saw Irune panting for air, with Dalton staring at the Liepard frozen in place, the soldier’s tail erect and his fur visibly standing on end.
“A-Aah…”
Irune let out a roar which wouldn’t have sounded all that impressive had it not been for how feral it sounded.
There’s something about this scene that doesn’t quite gel with me, and I think it’s two things. Firstly, the Liepard in his dialogue not showing him being in enough of a panic or shock after Irune’s attack. If instead of “A-Aah…”, his line was something along the lines of, “Y-You…Wh-What did you do?” in response to Irune’s sudden electric burst. Secondly, if we could hear Irune’s buildup of anger before she lets out her feral roar, with something like, “Stay…away from him…!” Might be my more dialogue heavy style speaking, but I feel those are two ways in which this interaction could be spruced up.
And a frantic dash off the scaffolding, while the Liepard and Gengar suffer the consequences of the burning. Also wow, they still haven’t killed anyone yet, even by accident? Noah would be proud of that level of pacifism.
Huh, and there was me thinking either Lacan or Lyle would be the one starting a fire during this fight. Clearly I forgot our little Dyad has fire powers within her too.
Oh hey, would those be ether nets just like how Nia and Dromarch were caught in Torigoth in XC2? The Grünhäuter sure do pull comparisons from all the rank-and-file soldiers of the Xeno series, from the Homs soldiers of XC1 to the Ganglion of XCX to the Ardainian troops of XC2 to the Moebius-controlled Kevesi and Agnian troops of XC3 (and also whatever troops exist in Xenogears and Xenosaga). I rather like that cross-series influence taken and meshing that into something new.
So they don’t want to harm Irune, but surely they’d be going ham on the other three? Then again, given their wanted posters, turning in any one of Kate, Lyle or Dalton would net a tidy profit for whoever caught them, so grievously harming them wouldn’t be the best play either.
No doubt if this escape part were a Xenoblade map and the Grünhäuter were patrolling it, there’d be a Unique Monster among ‘em - maybe something like the Black Triad in XC3. (Looking it up to refresh my memory on them, I find it funny that one of them happens to be called Thunderclap Dalton. It would be funny if that’s what our resident Heliolisk would become known as in-fic if the gang kept up this endless evasion. )
Hopefully you guys don’t hang around Newangle City for that much longer, otherwise a certain mysterious vigilante might start calling you and warn you of their incoming detonation. Leave that nonsense to someone else - trust me, Team Forager do not want to go through the misery of finding a hundred of these.
Especially with the realisation that Newangle is mostly ruins, meaning there’d be a lot more hiding places to put them than there’d be in the not-ruined city of NLA.
Ah, a human door. As I’ve said before, I like the allusion of the inhabitants of this world filling in the gaps with what their guesses when it comes to humans.
Oh shit, Sophia’s cornered them and Irune’s trapped in the ether net.
And right when they got the upper hand against Sophia, Lacan shows up with every intent on pulverising them. That attack he’s charging - is that Draco Meteor? Good thing Irune helped interrupt it, because that would hurt if it landed.
But now his Berserk Button’s been activated, and he’s packing heat and destroying everything in sight. The gang’s gonna be lucky if they make it out of this without any injuries.
Which they are! 🎉 But they’re not out of the woods yet; there’s still this building, along with the rest of the uni to escape from. So let’s chart the course from here, and see where the gang end up in their efforts to get out of here…
Chapter 28
Looks like the army has contingency plans ready to spring on the gang. Always gotta have plans for everything, huh? Then again, given this mission’s importance and the capture of Irune being supposedly instrumental in ending the war, backup plans are definitely a necessity. And when Team Forager endlessly evade them, backup plans for said backup plans.
Intriguing how Lacan brings up the secrecy needed for this mission. It would certainly be quite damaging for him and Sophia if the truth about the mission leaked to the public - but on the other hand, Team Forager would have a lot more folks targeting them for Irune and they would be even more savage in their methods to do so.
Now back to Team Forager themselves, where the escape continues. Also wow, that's a lot of floors this place has.
Since they’re not in active combat but still in enemy territory, I could see it being a Hostile Colony (Field) moment in terms of background music.
Bold of you to say that when luck hasn’t exactly been your friend this whole adventure, Dalton. Sure, they’ve had glimpses of it here and there, but Victini (my closest interpretation of a luck deity in Pokémon) hasn’t exactly been keeping a watchful eye over them. Maybe it’s karma for their thieving.
I presume that wooden door's an older Pokémon installation? Surely a human created wooden door wouldn't survive the Great Flash.
Looks like the gang's ride is in sight. Now here's hoping they can get on board without anyone, whether it be the Camerupt or the Grunhauter.
Oh dear, Lyle almost got left behind. I'm willing to bet that's gonna be a giveaway for the aerial forces as to where Team Forager ended up in after this.
Ewwwwwwww, the hay's stimky. At least they'll be able to mask their scents with that musk, even if it isn't an ideal approach. Hopefully the eventual shower is clean and thorough (which our resident Quilava will no doubt find miserable).
Oh dear, a checkpoint. Don’t get caught, don’t get caught, don’t get caught…
Was it Meinrad the Camerupt saying this? I felt this could be highlighted in some way, even if I do get that from Irune’s POV here, there’s not much description to take in from her end. Still, the rule of knowing who’s speaking should apply here too.
A surprisingly formal wording from Irune here; honestly, this wouldn’t be out of place on Melia. Maybe as the powers of the ancient dragons within her awaken, her dialogue begins to become more posh and old-school.
Interesting how Irune appears so disgusted at the lies and untruths - the Reshiram within her’s certainly coming out. Although if she is the Nameless Dragon reincarnated, then I do wonder when the Zekrom within her will start showing. Maybe when the gang end up going to Edialeigh, if they do have to go through it on their way to the Divine Roost.
I was literally thinking the same thing before this line dropped. Though again, that shower afterwards when the coast is clear is gonna need to be a long one. And judging by what Lyle says next…
Yeah, that shower’s not gonna be a pleasant one for him. Although would Lyle even take showers as his method of cleaning? Would he use a fire bath to burn off the dirt and grime like I’ve seen other fics do with their Fire-type characters?
I mean, this is a hay cart, Kate. Not exactly what one would call a luxurious ride. What were you expecting, one of King Siegmund’s carriages with opulent cushioning?
Man, gotta feel sympathy for Kate here with those memories. With no dad and her mom slowly becoming more cynical and snappish, no wonder she had to turn to this life. It does make me hope that she, Lyle and Dalton all do somehow get a happy ending by journey’s end, even if I struggle to envision what said happy ending would be.
Ooooh, a crimson aurora. Just like in Sylvalum. :FenneOooooooh: Hopefully this doesn’t mean that a huge Copperajah tyrant will randomly ambush them. Although with Dalton implying in the next line they’re a sign of bad luck, that doesn’t bode well for that end of things. In fact I do wonder if the appearance of the aurora is a foreshadowing for how the next part of the story’s gonna go…
And off the smelly cart they go. Now for the usual back-alley hideaways until they step out into the open and are accosted by the Grünhäuter.
Oh right, they have to go back to the Möbius to turn in the books for Ansel and Igna. Fingers crossed they can do that and get out of Newangle posthaste, because staying in this place any longer means their chances of capture remain sky high.
Plus there’s also the fact that Igna and Ansel were collaborating with the army in their plot to capture Irune, and that could well mean we’ll have a proper confrontation once our gang meets them in the playhouse. One the Möbius employees would probably watch with interest, given how much their in-game equivalents loved watching battles play out on a big screen.
Well, in terms of safe places, those are in short supply for our not-quite-heroes, and I doubt the Thieves’ Guild would be willing to take them on, especially considering how having Irune in their party would effectively be painting a target on their heads. That’s not even counting their current dispute with Igna and Ansel.
Berry incense burning? It must create a nice aroma, although I can only hope the burn of chesto berries doesn’t create some kind of insomnia effect. I notice that Irune calls them cheri berries in this instance - is that a mistake or is that her sense of smell being different? Part of me wonders if it might be the latter.
What a surprise that the Möbius would have a special clock in their establishment. Would destroying it mean freeing the employees here from the control of the endless now?
“We’d hardly be able to maintain a customer base if we just casually gossiped about their dealings with every Pokémon that poked their head in from off the street.”
Well, no duh, because I definitely get the feeling the authorities would want to have a word if they got a hold of the general shadiness of what was going on in this place.
“It was a bit of a mess for the Proprietor to sort out and it forced him to spend time away from his more normal pursuits. I can’t imagine he’s happy about it.”
And what would those ‘normal pursuits’ entail, exactly? Hopefully not executing secret plans to overthrow the king and trap Wander in an endless now with reincarnation cycles. That would be a Not Good outcome if it ever came to be, although that said, with war ongoing anyway, it still feels bleak on that end of things.
Hmmm, would these aliases be a reference to anything in the games? I’m drawing a bit of a blank for anything exact. Also I sympathise with Lyle and Irune - if I was given some basic-ass alias I didn’t agree with, I’d be a bit disgruntled too.
I’m willing to bet these signed names will be found out by Lacan and Sophia and used as evidence for Team Forager’s movements. That, or Ecks is gonna sell them out - which would be in line for someone like her. Or maybe the Proprietor will get involved by that stage - who I’m betting now will be a Malamar named Zed.
And yet there’s probably still an allure to it that keeps people coming - that ol’ Moebius Möbius charm. That, or their clientele are desperate souls, given the less than morally sound people that stay here for the night.
I recall speculating in a previous review that if Lacan and Sophia were reincarnations of Kim and Elly, then Team Forager might possibly have similar incarnations here. But even if that theory doesn’t come to fruition, there’s still the giveaway that Irune may have known someone like Dalton in the past. Another Heliolisk, maybe? Or given that Dalton’s from a highborn family, maybe he’s a descendant of someone who helped Irune in the past? Fascinating stuff to be theorised here.
“I’m telling you, Hesper. We need to make our move now before those Varritaean scum get that big mission of theirs rolling. So let’s grab the ‘mon and get out of this dump!”
Huh, weren’t these the same voices that were talking through the walls upon the gang’s first visit? But the fact that they’re talking about ‘grabbing the ‘mon’ has rather worrying implications.
I reckon the Varritaeans could be another way of saying Varhyde, meaning these folks, whoever they are, could maybe be Edialeighers? And if they’re trying to nab Irune for themselves…then maybe they have their own version of Operation Spark. This could actually be an interesting pipeline into the gang going over to Edialeigh and seeing what that culture’s like.
“Pourquoi est-ce si difficile à croire, Hesper? Attends-tu que les paysans le révèrent dans la rue? Les signes sont là; le 'mon est un Reptincel et on sait qu'ils appellent leur grande mission secrète 'l'Opération Zundfünke'."ᶠ¹
French jumpscare - after seeing German the whole fic, I can’t say I expected this. Though maybe that was to be expected given the diametric opposites each country was. But hang on a minute. Are they implying that the Charmeleon is also a Dyad, given how they speak of reverence? More and more curious…does Varhyde have a plan to capture him too?
Though there’s a later passage uttered by one of them about the Charmeleon being a decoy. Hmmm…how strange. Definitely more to that Charmeleon than meets the eye, and I reckon we’ll be seeing him in the not too distant future.
An Umbreon in a dull-colored scarf, green or red, tensely scanning her surroundings, along with a similarly-garbed Gabite sniffing at the air, before turning to the Umbreon.
If I had a nickel for every fic that had a Gabite and Umbreon duo that end up crossing the protagonists in some way, I’d have two nickels. Funny in that the other fic is also one of your favourites in the whole PMD fandom. Was that an intentional nod? Actually, it would have to be, given that one of them’s a bit of a flirt and I remember that particular Gabite (his name eludes me right now) being something of a womaniser.
“In the middle of a scummy inn that the local criminals use as a gathering place?” the Umbreon answered. “Where the staff explicitly warned us not to settle ‘business’ outside their ‘playhouse’?”
I shiver to think what the punishment would be if one does breach these rules. Being forced to obey their orders, indicated by a glowing red eye? Being stabbed in the back and mud clones being made of their bodies? Perhaps we’re better off not knowing…
And thankfully, crisis averted when the spies have second thoughts. You know, I take back what I said earlier about Victini not looking down on them, but Team Forager are both the luckiest and unluckiest people in Varhyde. I swear, they keep ending up in these scenarios - see Lyle’s giveaway earlier - yet somehow they always find a way out whether through sheer determination or lucky instances of the enemy’s haplessness like this.
Gods, he needed a freaking drink, except none of them had a flask to work with and it sure as hell wasn’t a good idea to go out and look for a tavern now.
Besides, given what happened last time you lot all drank, I don’t know if you’d want a repeat of that. Especially in the Möbius, where drunken fighting in the rooms would probably fall under ‘punishable by trapping in an endless reincarnation cycle.’
Seems Irune’s quite shaken, although is that from the close encounter with the spies or does she know something about Operation Zundfünke?
And looks like the gang’s got some fact finding in these big books. Fingers crossed they can find out the truth about Irune before Igna and Ansel come knocking.
Chapter 29
Ah, the old pain of putting scripts together. Must’ve been tricky back in ancient times coming up with one that everyone unanimously agreed with. Funny, I remember this being a topic in Fledglings too, about the translation of such runes being an absolute pain. Then again, with Team Forager having the Dyad by their side, maybe this might not be too huge a problem for them?
Now back to the present day, where the gang are diving into the books. Good thing they can read, because somehow I’d imagine there’d be folks in Lyle’s former berry-harvesting job that wouldn’t have literate skills.
Alas, the gang’s low on berries. That’s one more stop to make before hightailing it out of Newangle, then.
All these minor injuries could turn into infections if they’re not treated, and then Team Forager would be in a world of pain, alright.
Just a pity this isn’t like normal Xenoblade where the wounds can simply be walked off after the battle’s over.
“You did say that we were tight on time, Scales. Patch yourself up a bit here. Lyle and I will look over that map in that handbook a bit more,” Kate said. “Shame that the book those Hunters had didn’t have this version of the map in it. Those drawings make it a lot easier to understand what’s going on!”
Dalton sighed and turned his attention to the berry in his hand. Yes, he supposed time was a precious commodity right now, and if he was feeling unwell to the point that he couldn’t stay focused looking at a map, he probably wouldn’t be in any shape to run around again. He grabbed a linen left out on the top of the cabinet and made his way over to his bed, settling down on its mattress as he fumbled with its rind. He tried to wedge a nail from his good arm’s hand under it, only for the fruit to roll out of his grasp.
“I was serious when I said I needed help to make it to the Divine Roost earlier,” the Axew said. “You were already hurt before Lacan hit you with that Earthquake earlier, are you sure you don’t need me to help at all?”
Dalton felt the ends of his mouth start to curl down. Irune was fairly obviously trying to butter him up right now. Probably because she was afraid that he and the others would see her as a liability and cut her loose.
Same thing here about two paragraphs. With Dalton’s injury being the most prominent of the party members, he’s definitely been through the most of the party members for the length of this journey (discounting Irune’s prior experiences before being found by our trio).
I rather like this interaction between Dalton and Irune. Makes Dalton almost seem like a big brother of sorts to her, willing to protect her against the army trying to use her for their own ends.
Much like them, he’d always felt uncomfortable hearing stories about youngsters tagging along with the Trosse that followed after army units and their encampments. There were no shortage of tales about them meeting unfortunate fates when their wagons and caravans wound up being less safely behind the front lines than their members thought.
Oof, yeah. Alas, not every army’s like a Fire Emblem motley brigade full of capable young men eager to resist their tyrannical invaders. Because at least those people were willing to fight, whereas these folks mentioned seem to just be here for the ride and not have much in the way of combat capabilities.
I mean, Sophia did seem willing to pardon you…But then as Dalton said, there’s nothing keeping them from rescinding that promise and locking him up, or doing an Eclipse Homecoming and line him, Kate and Lyle up for execution while Irune’s taken away before their eyes.
From both the interpretation that soldiers and the army aren’t the honourable ‘mons that Dalton thought them to be, as well as Dalton falling into the cycle of thievery, we can certainly deduce that corruption is a vice that’s near impossible to get out of, and near inevitable for those among the upper ranks.
She was able to identify Newangle City in its place towards the center of the kingdom, along a river that ran east of what Lyle told her was the Lesser Mist.
Are Team Forager gonna get an upgraded ship from a Togedemaru mechanic that’ll take them there? Although given that they’ve said they’re gonna use Mystery Dungeons to get there, it seems more like a Gates to Infinity approach, minus the Entercards. Also, if the Divine Roost is across the sea, does that mean Team Forager are gonna have to go through underwater Mystery Dungeons to get there that’ll be a bit like the Subway from Fledglings? If so, that’s a big ooof for Lyle.
Oh right, Kate doesn’t know about Irune’s diary yet, even though Lyle does. Little things like that make me appreciate the small POV changes that occur every once in a while in this story.
I mean, it worked out well for you guys last time you did it. And Boudewijn did turn out to be a kind soul. Still, lightning doesn’t have a tendency to strike twice, especially when remaining unpredictable is the best option for this lot in their escape from the Grünhäuter. So there probably won’t be any luck there.
“None of those Mystery Dungeons aside from Blacksteel Ruins should be much worse to get through than what we dealt with to reach our hideout in Waterhead Cave,” Dalton explained.
Three words come to mind, and they are: Famous Last Words. :copyka2 These Dungeons will give them hell to pay, no question.
Oh, Kate can’t read very well, which is proving interesting in this instant where she can’t read Port Velhen. I figured with the mention of scripts at the beginning of this chapter that this might come into it at one point.
Hey, a crude map is still a map. As long as it doesn’t lead the gang off course, they should be fine.
Not many choices being afforded to Team Forager here, but as Kate said, beggars can’t be choosers.
I did have a thought about journey’s end: in Xenoblade 2, the central objective was to reach the World Tree, and in Xenoblade 3, the main objective was to get to the City (until Chapter 5, where they do reach it). Both are similar enough goals to Team Forager’s in trying to reach the Divine Roost, and it does make me wonder, particularly in the context of Xenoblade 3, where there was still a good bit to go after reaching the City: will reaching the Divine Roost be journey’s end for the gang? Will Irune get her power back, and will it be a safe haven for Lyle, Kate, and Dalton who can chill there without fear of being apprehended by Varhyde or Edialeigh? Or will there be more to settle after reaching there? I suppose we’ll see where we’re at when our four do reach there at last.
Oh dear, looks like this book is written in Oldspeak. Fingers crossed Irune can read it, because it doesn’t look like Lyle and Kate can.
Well, it turns Irune doesn’t need to when we have a translator in Dalton to put his skills to use.
Oh boy, given how many Legends there are, that one sounds like quite a page-turner. No wonder this tome’s as thick as it is. Though for the neeeeerds interested in this kind of thing, that would no doubt be a challenge they would relish and absorb the information like a Vileplume using Giga Drain.
So Ho-Oh died in battle? I wonder if that’s an indicator that she’d rise from the ashes, just as phoenixes tend to do? Or maybe she left behind a load of Sacred Ash that her followers used to revive the dead of battle.
Upon death, their bodies decay away much in the same fashion as those of the mortals who pay them reverence, but their souls still slumber, often for many years until they can be born anew into a vessel of mortal stock.
Hmmmmm.[i/] A good indicator as to the state of our resident Axew. But I can’t help but wonder: the Charmeleon that the spies from before mentioned, is he one of these two - a Legend using a mortal body as a vessel?
He’d be even moreso if he ever evolved into a Typhlosion sometime when he wouldn’t have to worry about scrounging enough food to feed that still-larger body.
Part of me still wonders if this’ll end up happening. Maybe at some point Lyle might feel some sensation to indicate evolution will happen if he lets it, and he’ll panic and shrug it off due to his fears about it, only for later on for the gang to be backed into a corner where the only solution to overpower their enemies would be for him to evolve. I’m admittedly a sucker for evolution ex machina, and would be more than a bit curious as to what Typhlosion!Lyle would look like. Of course, if it’s not to be in the story, it’s not to be, but I remain curious regardless.
And continuing on that matter, I would equally be curious as to what Weavile!Kate would be like. I am vaguely aware from mentions in passing you’ve used her in an RP campaign (I think it was Blacklight?), so technically this has happened in an AU somewhere.
In any case, hopefully the team do reach an endpoint where they don’t have to worry about things like food or money - it would be a shame if Lyle and Kate never ended up evolving due to having that constant worry of having to feed larger bodies.
Whatever the cause, a god reborn in such a fashion will retain the form of its mortal vessel until its power has fully awakened. And in a great glow of light and power, it will regain its true form and nature and reveal itself to the world, ready to use and resume its role as a god.
Not too unlike Pneuma… After all, she could certainly be called a god among Blades.
I just hope that if the Nameless Dragon does awaken within Irune, that she won’t lose herself to madness or have her body taken over by a conscience within her, which would in turn result in a heartwrenching battle that would go to the theme of A Tragic Decision or Words That Never Reached You.
“When you went along with us that night back in Waterhead Cave, you knew that you were this god and you kept it to yourself, didn’t you?” the Quilava demanded. “And you deliberately hid it from the rest of us! Why?! Why would you do that to us?!”
I mean, can you blame her, Lyle? If you were secretly a god, that’s not the kind of thing you would go trotting out to every ‘mon curious about you - especially if said ‘mons were thieves, aka people with not exactly the most moral of intentions. I completely get Irune’s decision to keep mum at first, even if as the journey went on, she ought to have been a little more open with her suspicions, particularly with instances like the Kyurem statue where her inability to tell a convincing lie really came to the fore.
Dang, just before we could hear what that treasure was, Wye had to come in and interrupt everything. (Even if the Aggron fan within me is more than a little at him returning for another appearance.)
So the meeting’s been delayed. Well, that’s a bit annoying - a delay’s surely the last thing the gang needs, especially when time is of the essence in getting out of Newangle and resuming the journey to the Divine Roost.
Good decision to get some rest, because if today was a long one, I have a sneaking suspicion tomorrow will be even longer. I’m betting on at least one more encounter with Sophia and Lacan before Team Forager manages to escape Newangle.
Conclusion
And that’s that for now. Phew, caught up once again.
I’m glad we finally got the clash with Sophia and Lacan the story’s been hinting at for some time now. And the ensuing escape from them and the Grünhäuter was a rather exciting sequence, full of tension and crafty plans made on the spot. I quite liked that. As well as that, the revelation of Irune being a god to Team Forager was good - a long time coming, but we got it in the end - and seeing their reactions to it, namely Lyle becoming more fired up about Irune not telling them about this. The dynamic shift between Dalton and Irune into something more mellow and almost like a big brother/little sister relationship was also nice to see.
I’m more than a bit curious as to where the story’s gonna go after this. I’m still predicting that they’ll be captured at some point and there’ll be heartbreak when Irune’s taken away from them, and then it’ll either be a rescue mission to get her out or Sophia will come him and give the gang a hand (a wing?) in their efforts to get her out. I wonder if there’ll also be a non-confrontational scene with Sophia and the three, with her wondering, “Why are you putting life and limb out for someone you’ve barely met?” And then upon seeing their resolve, she’ll maybe have that change of heart for real. (I’m only realising now that I filched that idea from Ace Attorney Investigations 2, when Verity Gavèlle has her own Heel-Face Turn after speaking one-on-one with Edgeworth.) I await to see how Sophia’s doubts come to the fore and influence her movements from here on.
Now for some criticisms, and there were some. Firstly, something more minor in that Chapter 29 has some formatting where some paragraphs aren’t cleanly separated from one another. I presume this was a porting issue, and hey, it happens. It’s happened to me a few times as well.
Now for a bigger criticism I’ve formed over the past couple of chapters: I am feeling something of Arc Fatigue. I feel that we’ve spent a bit too many chapters in Newangle at this point when there’s still a whole world out there we haven’t seen yet, along with a whole other country we still don’t know a whole lot about, only getting our first glimpses of its inhabitants through Hesper and Deva, along with the Charmeleon from before. Yet the gang are still in the capital, going through many steps before they actually get into the library, get the books, and get back out. And looking back, they’ve been at this for about 100k words now, and I kinda have to admit that is a bit much, and I’m reckoning there’s gonna be at least two more chapters in Newangle - one for Team Forager to make their deal with Igna and Ansel and be escorted out, and another where there could well be one last confrontation with the army before the gang finally get out of the capital. Don’t get me wrong, I love Newangle in the sense of its ruined nature and the Pokémon’s interpretation of said ruins and living within them, and I really like the locations in it, especially the Möbius. But even the best of areas can overstay their welcome, and I want to see what else Varhyde and Edialeigh have to offer. Getting bogged down in the one location isn’t the best for a story’s flow, admittedly. At least we’re showing signs of moving on, so that’s at least good.
In spite of that, I still enjoyed this batch of chapters. Now that I’m caught up, I’m gonna make more of an attempt to keep up through doing Review Tag and whatnot over the next while. Good work with these chapters, and I look forward to seeing where the fic goes next.
The beginnings of the plot-critical lore™, though it's only some vague stuff. I'd say this is foreshadowing what the final challenge will be... but you keep your power scales low. So, don't think anyone's fighting God in this fic. Certainly not this band of idiots. Though it seems the vague confirmation has caused a flip in the dynamics. Lyle used to be the most... respectful toward Irune, with Dalton the least. And now it seems Dalton has gotten softer while Lyle turned prickly.
Well, they’ll just have to git gud at some point, now won’t they? Or else have a run of good luck. That works too, and usually is a part of any guile… well, sorta-hero’s toolbox.
I did expect that it would be Irune to get Dalton to open up slightly more, just because she's generally the more empathetic of the protags here. It was still talked about in relatively vague terms, but it's more or less hit at the heart of Dalton's bitterness. This was as good a time as any to explore it. I'm not sure how it'll really effect things going forward. Perhaps that anger will bubble back up to the surface next chapter. Since they are clearly walking into an ambush. Unless it starts with them just hightailing it because the agreed on time was changed. Even if they do that... they're still running into the army again. It is... inevitable.
I mean, the teaser all but screams that they have a hostile encounter inbound. Where that goes, I’ll leave it to you to find out.
It was admittedly a bit hard for me to tell whether or not you were having a fun time with this chapter from your review, but thanks for taking the time to check things out anyways.
Hello, hello! It’s been quite a while since I leapt back into this fic, and with a review event going on in PMDiner, it’s a good chance to get caught up with those three chapters that have released since I last checked in. Plus on your fic side of things I’ve been reviewing a lot of Fledglings recently and while that fic’s been a lot of fun, I figured I’d take a break from it, hop back into this fic and see how our outlaw heroes are getting on.
And thanks for taking the time to check things out. You certainly had me eating good for feedback from Review Event, and it’s always a joy to read your reviews. ^^
Which if the last chapter’s cliffhanger was anything to go by, not very well. It seemed to be quite a climactic cliffhanger that’s been building up for a while now, so I’m eager to see just what these chapters have to offer in terms of payoff for the setup.
(Also how fitting that on the day of beginning the writing this review, Xenoblade X Definitive Edition was released. Funny coincidence, isn’t it?
Don’t remind me. I still have XB3FR to finish up beforehand, even if life and reviewing have been keeping me busy lately. ^^
Chapter 27
Two entities, Wish and Reality, themselves and their lands forever at odds with each other…But there’s nothing saying wishes can’t be bound in reality, and that reality does not have to remain unyielding for people’s wishes. What would it take for this world to realise that, I wonder? Somehow I doubt it’ll stop any time soon, and whether our not our gang of four can do anything to bring the war to a halt is a rather doubtful notion. Then again, things have potential to change a lot between now and the fic’s end.
Well, they’d certainly have trouble doing that as they are at the moment, yes. Though there is a reason why Varhyde’s army and crown have been getting increasingly:
about trying to steer things to a definitive resolution.
If the Nameless Dragon is called the Nameless Dragon, then would that not mean it does in fact have a name? (I always have great fun making this joke whenever something’s called ‘Nameless’ in media. See, for instance, the Nameless Cavern in ORAS.)
The backstory behind this is actually mentioned in the most recent trivia on the story. Let's just say that "Nameless" can take on different meanings depending on what language you're saying it in.
Welp, if that chapter title, along with the cliffhanger end to the last chapter, is anything to go by, we have a hell of a confrontation on our hands with the two most pressing threats of the story so far. Although I’m betting what Sophia’s learned in the past few chapters may prove instrumental to her actions here, in terms of being swayed…
And now the truth about Irune comes out for Lyle, Kate and Dalton to learn, to which they are understandably flabbergasted. After all, Pyra, to which Irune shares an archetype, was upfront that she was someone special in being the Aegis, so Rex didn’t have any illusions about that. Granted, Irune herself hasn’t been sure of just what she is, so no doubt that’s why she’s kept mum this whole time. I wonder if there’s a hint of mistrust in it all, given that she and the other three have quarrelled in more than one occasion. Plus they have only known each other for a short while and strangers aren’t the kind of people to be sharing earth-shattering secrets with.
You probably got an answer to this later on in the chapters you read. Though while she undoubtedly wound up drawing heavy influence from Pyra, Irune’s not quite fully built around her character archetype. Make what you will of that.
Though you’d think the other three would’ve cottoned on that she’s mystical in some way based on the evidence thus far. Perhaps they’re in denial too about Irune in this confrontation with Sophia.
It’s a mix of denial plus “seriously, what are the odds?” in action, yes.
Sophia sure is pretty good at cornering Team Forager in terms of corraling the truth and proclaiming it loud and clear, refuting their every argument. She might make a good attorney - although that’s a crossover with the wrong video game universe.
I mean, what did you expect from a knight fighting for a land where ‘truth’ is literally in its name? :V
This, to me, definitely feels like a scene where I could picture Towering Shadow from XC1 playing. And while this song is most remembered in playing in that major plot twist (you know the one ) and this scene doesn't quite have that same gravity to it, the feeling of Sophia revealing to Team Forager the truth behind Irune does feel like a fitting moment for a song like this.
I actually had the second section of the Ganglion theme from Xenoblade X in mind for this moment, but your pick does work quite well, yes.
And there the negotiation goes out of the window at the sound of lightning bolts from Dalton. Intriguing to think of the ‘what if’ should Irune have given herself and Lyle, Kate and Dalton be allowed to walk free - but as Lyle thought, that wouldn’t change their situation one iota regarding their current status of having to continue their lives of stealing.
Alas, the gang’s probably not quite as heroic as the last party that scenario has happened to in the Xeno series, so it’d likely be a fast track to a BAD END™
I see your XB1 music and raise you the Keves Castle Battle theme.
Creative use of the objects in grabbing distance. Whatever works to hold off the enemy.
But just as Sophia’s dealt with, Lacan shows up with all the ferocity and menace of a Salamence. His snarling delivery certainly gives off N vibes, and given that I’ve compared Sophia to M a lot, perhaps I haven’t done enough comparisons for her partner. I do recall you once saying in a TRCord storycrafter question that one of your imagined voices for Lacan was Harry McEntire. And honestly? Yeah, in this scene, I can hear it.
N vibes, huh? Well, I can't say that's unfitting since he literally shares a Xeno-series character archetype, even if a couple snippets of his dialogue went a little further than just vibing after N in that chapter.
The preservationist in me cringes at the thought of a Fire-type and a fire-breathing dragon fighting in a library. Some books aren’t gonna make it out of here alive, that’s for sure.
Back to the stairwell we go, and goodness, Dalton’s in a fiery mood this fight to be firing off all these Electric attacks. It must be his grudging thoughts about the Grünhäuter that’ve been alluded to in the past few chapters that’s now bubbling over into a raging incandescence.
Well, that certainly isn’t hurting his motivation at the moment, no.
Oh hey, just like a Ganglion fortress battle. Wow, they really did aggro everyone in the vicinity, just like how it tends to go in Xenoblade X.
In that case, if we are pulling Ganglion fight comparisons and moving away from Lacan and Sophia into a battle with rank-and-file Grünhäuter, then perhaps this song might be a bit more apt.
Indeed. While it’s been muddled a bit by competing influences, Fähnlein Stärk did huff the Ganglion vibes quite a bit from the very beginning of this story. Also I really should start up that XBXDE playthrough to get to the new content sometime.
I like the plan Team Forager’s cooking up here. Fingers crossed they can execute it without interruption.
I’m quite a fan of how the Slow Orb is effectively a powered up String Shot. Nice way to depict it instead of it just randomly making them sluggish.
This actually isn’t the first time one’s appeared in this story, even if it was a bit blink-and-miss all the way back in Chapter 10. When you’re tracking a “totally a normal Axew” across the countryside, it makes sense to have a mook capable of seeing through things to some extent, which was also briefly implied in Kim and Elly’s letters we’ve seen so far.
Hmmm, there’s something about ‘pinning him down’ and ‘holding him down’ in the same sentence that feels slightly repetitive. Perhaps something like ‘only to feel a heavy weight upon him’ that could replace the first instance?
Technically, his fur is still attached to his body if now smoky. But yeah, it’ll be a while before he’s able to report for duty.
Rakete, huh? They a high-ranking Grünhäuter or what? Thinking about it, I honestly wouldn’t mind seeing more names be put on their faces. We haven’t had too many soldier namedrops outside of Sophia and Lacan (and Pax, of course. Can’t forget the Padraig expy).
That was just Sophia's callsign, as revealed in Chapter 10. For the eagle-eyed readers, it was foreshadowing that the main antags hadn't quite exited stage left yet.
An em dash at the end here would help. Especially considering the next line tells of Lacan bursting the door open where the Lucario’s body is, it would help convey the suddenness of the crash even more.
Yikes, that was a close call. And frightening imagery on precarious scaffolding - that certainly unnerves me, as one who’s not fond of heights when mixed with wobbly surfaces. :WhipGulp:
Lyle: “Oh trust me, you’re not the only one who had a problem with it!”
Gotta admire the dogged determination of our heroes to keep going and find ways out of being cornered for the umpteenth time. That, or the Grünhäuter really need some lessons in competence. Lacan ought to get on that if so. Or maybe they need a Vangarre expy to do fifty laps of squat jumps around Newangle.
To be fair, their leadership is certainly a cut above, as I’m sure you saw later on.
There’s something about this scene that doesn’t quite gel with me, and I think it’s two things. Firstly, the Liepard in his dialogue not showing him being in enough of a panic or shock after Irune’s attack. If instead of “A-Aah…”, his line was something along the lines of, “Y-You…Wh-What did you do?” in response to Irune’s sudden electric burst. Secondly, if we could hear Irune’s buildup of anger before she lets out her feral roar, with something like, “Stay…away from him…!” Might be my more dialogue heavy style speaking, but I feel those are two ways in which this interaction could be spruced up.
I also reworked this sequence a bit based on your suggestions.
And a frantic dash off the scaffolding, while the Liepard and Gengar suffer the consequences of the burning. Also wow, they still haven’t killed anyone yet, even by accident? Noah would be proud of that level of pacifism.
And a heaping dash of dumb luck, even if I wouldn’t be terribly shocked if there was a body count from the raid on Waterhead Cave. Though this was a deliberate meta choice, since a certain plot watershed likely would’ve gone very differently had they had an outright kill to their name.
Huh, and there was me thinking either Lacan or Lyle would be the one starting a fire during this fight. Clearly I forgot our little Dyad has fire powers within her too.
Oh hey, would those be ether nets just like how Nia and Dromarch were caught in Torigoth in XC2? The Grünhäuter sure do pull comparisons from all the rank-and-file soldiers of the Xeno series, from the Homs soldiers of XC1 to the Ganglion of XCX to the Ardainian troops of XC2 to the Moebius-controlled Kevesi and Agnian troops of XC3 (and also whatever troops exist in Xenogears and Xenosaga). I rather like that cross-series influence taken and meshing that into something new.
More a vanilla net, though this is based a bit on one of Corvisquire’s dex entries back in Gen 8, just with some fancier tooling.
And yeah, “military mooks that (usually) cause problems for the protagonists” is definitely a Xeno-series enemy trope all the way back to Gears. While not everything surrounding the Varhyder Army is deliberate homage, I certainly wasn’t wanting for material or opportunities to work some in.
So they don’t want to harm Irune, but surely they’d be going ham on the other three? Then again, given their wanted posters, turning in any one of Kate, Lyle or Dalton would net a tidy profit for whoever caught them, so grievously harming them wouldn’t be the best play either.
They would be, except they’re on a rickety ropeway and attempting to go ham on the other three risks sweeping up Irune as collateral.
No doubt if this escape part were a Xenoblade map and the Grünhäuter were patrolling it, there’d be a Unique Monster among ‘em - maybe something like the Black Triad in XC3. (Looking it up to refresh my memory on them, I find it funny that one of them happens to be called Thunderclap Dalton. It would be funny if that’s what our resident Heliolisk would become known as in-fic if the gang kept up this endless evasion. )
I mean, I had to inject some levity into all of this. o<o
Hopefully you guys don’t hang around Newangle City for that much longer, otherwise a certain mysterious vigilante might start calling you and warn you of their incoming detonation. Leave that nonsense to someone else - trust me, Team Forager do not want to go through the misery of finding a hundred of these.
Especially with the realisation that Newangle is mostly ruins, meaning there’d be a lot more hiding places to put them than there’d be in the not-ruined city of NLA.
Fortunately, the Substitutes (probably) aren’t explosive. Astute readers likely picked up on the party that’s been responsible for putting those things around.
Ah, a human door. As I’ve said before, I like the allusion of the inhabitants of this world filling in the gaps with what their guesses when it comes to humans.
And right when they got the upper hand against Sophia, Lacan shows up with every intent on pulverising them. That attack he’s charging - is that Draco Meteor? Good thing Irune helped interrupt it, because that would hurt if it landed.
And since Draco Meteor is an AOE attack in PMD games, it was a chance to do a reference to that attack from XB3 as wielded by that game's visual expy of N's ur-counterpart. You will get to see it in proper action in the future.
But now his Berserk Button’s been activated, and he’s packing heat and destroying everything in sight. The gang’s gonna be lucky if they make it out of this without any injuries.
Though more seriously, the only way that Salamence could have happened to turned out to be any more fitting for Lacan’s character casting in terms of overlapping vibes would’ve been if it was somehow capable of also using punching attacks.
Chapter 28
Looks like the army has contingency plans ready to spring on the gang. Always gotta have plans for everything, huh? Then again, given this mission’s importance and the capture of Irune being supposedly instrumental in ending the war, backup plans are definitely a necessity. And when Team Forager endlessly evade them, backup plans for said backup plans.
I mean, they have been getting the run-around for a year and this is literally the best chance they’ll get to get her back, so… yeah. Lacan and Sophia are pulling out all the stops to try and put their Axew back in her box.
Intriguing how Lacan brings up the secrecy needed for this mission. It would certainly be quite damaging for him and Sophia if the truth about the mission leaked to the public - but on the other hand, Team Forager would have a lot more folks targeting them for Irune and they would be even more savage in their methods to do so.
Bold of you to say that when luck hasn’t exactly been your friend this whole adventure, Dalton. Sure, they’ve had glimpses of it here and there, but Victini (my closest interpretation of a luck deity in Pokémon) hasn’t exactly been keeping a watchful eye over them. Maybe it’s karma for their thieving.
And the whole “having to navigate a dangerous world chased by the army with a whopping team of four to work with”. No fancy power sharing for our gang here.
I presume that wooden door's an older Pokémon installation? Surely a human created wooden door wouldn't survive the Great Flash.
A newer installation, but yes. This was retrofitted onto an existing human doorframe. Give or take some surrounding concrete.
Ewwwwwwww, the hay's stimky. At least they'll be able to mask their scents with that musk, even if it isn't an ideal approach. Hopefully the eventual shower is clean and thorough (which our resident Quilava will no doubt find miserable).
I mean, he might find it a bit more tolerable if it’s a hot spring? But yeah, Lyle’s not exactly a fan of getting soaked.
Was it Meinrad the Camerupt saying this? I felt this could be highlighted in some way, even if I do get that from Irune’s POV here, there’s not much description to take in from her end. Still, the rule of knowing who’s speaking should apply here too.
A surprisingly formal wording from Irune here; honestly, this wouldn’t be out of place on Melia. Maybe as the powers of the ancient dragons within her awaken, her dialogue begins to become more posh and old-school.
That wasn’t fully intentional, but yeah, I could buy it.
Interesting how Irune appears so disgusted at the lies and untruths - the Reshiram within her’s certainly coming out. Although if she is the Nameless Dragon reincarnated, then I do wonder when the Zekrom within her will start showing. Maybe when the gang end up going to Edialeigh, if they do have to go through it on their way to the Divine Roost.
Bold of you to assume the Zekrom part of her hasn’t already been showing at a couple points in this story.
I was literally thinking the same thing before this line dropped. Though again, that shower afterwards when the coast is clear is gonna need to be a long one. And judging by what Lyle says next…
Yeah, that shower’s not gonna be a pleasant one for him. Although would Lyle even take showers as his method of cleaning? Would he use a fire bath to burn off the dirt and grime like I’ve seen other fics do with their Fire-type characters?
He's probably more of a fan of dust baths. I suppose ash baths wouldn’t be out of the question.
I mean, this is a hay cart, Kate. Not exactly what one would call a luxurious ride. What were you expecting, one of King Siegmund’s carriages with opulent cushioning?
Kate: “I mean, I wouldn’t be complaining if it somehow happened.” ^^;
Man, gotta feel sympathy for Kate here with those memories. With no dad and her mom slowly becoming more cynical and snappish, no wonder she had to turn to this life. It does make me hope that she, Lyle and Dalton all do somehow get a happy ending by journey’s end, even if I struggle to envision what said happy ending would be.
You’ll get some better ideas of what that sort of happy ending could potentially look like for the gang down the pipe, even if the gang has a bit further to go before they hit rock bottom in this story.
Ooooh, a crimson aurora. Just like in Sylvalum. :FenneOooooooh: Hopefully this doesn’t mean that a huge Copperajah tyrant will randomly ambush them. Although with Dalton implying in the next line they’re a sign of bad luck, that doesn’t bode well for that end of things. In fact I do wonder if the appearance of the aurora is a foreshadowing for how the next part of the story’s gonna go…
I mean, it was a bit of an XBX in-reference, but this was more or less a giant hint that Team Forager is due to have a nasty hostile encounter in their not-too-distant futures.
Oh right, they have to go back to the Möbius to turn in the books for Ansel and Igna. Fingers crossed they can do that and get out of Newangle posthaste, because staying in this place any longer means their chances of capture remain sky high.
I mean, they already weren’t trivial at the moment, so… ^^;
Plus there’s also the fact that Igna and Ansel were collaborating with the army in their plot to capture Irune, and that could well mean we’ll have a proper confrontation once our gang meets them in the playhouse. One the Möbius employees would probably watch with interest, given how much their in-game equivalents loved watching battles play out on a big screen.
Well, in terms of safe places, those are in short supply for our not-quite-heroes, and I doubt the Thieves’ Guild would be willing to take them on, especially considering how having Irune in their party would effectively be painting a target on their heads. That’s not even counting their current dispute with Igna and Ansel.
Almost as if they’ve never been safe all along, huh?
Berry incense burning? It must create a nice aroma, although I can only hope the burn of chesto berries doesn’t create some kind of insomnia effect. I notice that Irune calls them cheri berries in this instance - is that a mistake or is that her sense of smell being different? Part of me wonders if it might be the latter.
That’s a mistake, yes. They are now both ‘Chesto’ berries.
What a surprise that the Möbius would have a special clock in their establishment. Would destroying it mean freeing the employees here from the control of the endless now?
Nah. This is actually based off a historical type of clock that used to be common before clockwork became widespread.
Well, no duh, because I definitely get the feeling the authorities would want to have a word if they got a hold of the general shadiness of what was going on in this place.
And what would those ‘normal pursuits’ entail, exactly? Hopefully not executing secret plans to overthrow the king and trap Wander in an endless now with reincarnation cycles. That would be a Not Good outcome if it ever came to be, although that said, with war ongoing anyway, it still feels bleak on that end of things.
Nothing that the plot is likely to get into. I wouldn’t rule out their involvement in something akin to what was going on with the “Siegmund” from the proper Xeno franchise, though. Especially since there’s a blink-and-miss it detail in this teaser that leaves the door open to such a thing happening.
Hmmm, would these aliases be a reference to anything in the games? I’m drawing a bit of a blank for anything exact. Also I sympathise with Lyle and Irune - if I was given some basic-ass alias I didn’t agree with, I’d be a bit disgruntled too.
This is a mythology gag to an old RP that I used to be in once upon a decade ago, with the names belonging to characters I remembered who were of the same species. A couple of these names pop up in my other writings here and there.
I’m willing to bet these signed names will be found out by Lacan and Sophia and used as evidence for Team Forager’s movements. That, or Ecks is gonna sell them out - which would be in line for someone like her. Or maybe the Proprietor will get involved by that stage - who I’m betting now will be a Malamar named Zed.
For reference, it's unlikely to come up since it's out of scope for the plot beyond maybe giving a couple threads to yank for a hypothetical followup if I feel like it, but 'The Proprietor' is absolutely a 'Zed', yes. Can neither confirm nor deny what his species would be, since it'd boil down to what aspect I'd want to play up as a reference. Since hey, Porygon-Z wouldn’t be a wholly unfitting reference either considering what ‘Zed’ from Xenoblade 3is.
And yet there’s probably still an allure to it that keeps people coming - that ol’ Moebius Möbius charm. That, or their clientele are desperate souls, given the less than morally sound people that stay here for the night.
And criminal scum looking for a quiet place to carry out their nefarious dealings, but that doesn’t hurt as an income stream, yes.
I recall speculating in a previous review that if Lacan and Sophia were reincarnations of Kim and Elly, then Team Forager might possibly have similar incarnations here. But even if that theory doesn’t come to fruition, there’s still the giveaway that Irune may have known someone like Dalton in the past. Another Heliolisk, maybe? Or given that Dalton’s from a highborn family, maybe he’s a descendant of someone who helped Irune in the past? Fascinating stuff to be theorised here.
Huh, weren’t these the same voices that were talking through the walls upon the gang’s first visit? But the fact that they’re talking about ‘grabbing the ‘mon’ has rather worrying implications.
One and the same. I didn't stop to bring them up to not do anything with them later on. ^^
I reckon the Varritaeans could be another way of saying Varhyde, meaning these folks, whoever they are, could maybe be Edialeighers? And if they’re trying to nab Irune for themselves…then maybe they have their own version of Operation Spark. This could actually be an interesting pipeline into the gang going over to Edialeigh and seeing what that culture’s like.
Even if these characters in particular likely won’t be the vector for any such glimpse into that culture since they admittedly are from a meta bucket that I prefer to keep in the realm of one-and-dones for this story.
Ah, so one’s a confident, flirtatious type. I don’t know their faces yet, but wouldn’t be surprised if they’re expies of Mikhail and Patroka.
Alas, not quite. It would’ve been a decent candidate spot to slot them in, even if it’d certainly be a different friend circle than the original Mik and Patroka had.
French jumpscare - after seeing German the whole fic, I can’t say I expected this. Though maybe that was to be expected given the diametric opposites each country was. But hang on a minute. Are they implying that the Charmeleon is also a Dyad, given how they speak of reverence? More and more curious…does Varhyde have a plan to capture him too?
They're implying that Deva thinks he's 'the' Dyad, with Hesper giving out some arguments about how things are not adding up with his hypothesis.
Though there’s a later passage uttered by one of them about the Charmeleon being a decoy. Hmmm…how strange. Definitely more to that Charmeleon than meets the eye, and I reckon we’ll be seeing him in the not too distant future.
I will decline to comment about the Charmeleon other than that: A: he's cut from a similar cloth as Deva and Hesper, B: barring a major shake-up of planning, if he shows up again in the future, it will be towards the very end of the story as a background thing.
If I had a nickel for every fic that had a Gabite and Umbreon duo that end up crossing the protagonists in some way, I’d have two nickels. Funny in that the other fic is also one of your favourites in the whole PMD fandom. Was that an intentional nod? Actually, it would have to be, given that one of them’s a bit of a flirt and I remember that particular Gabite (his name eludes me right now) being something of a womaniser.
Guilty as charged, though the other six or so references to that other story lurking around in the background didn't already make it obvious? :V
I shiver to think what the punishment would be if one does breach these rules. Being forced to obey their orders, indicated by a glowing red eye? Being stabbed in the back and mud clones being made of their bodies? Perhaps we’re better off not knowing…
I would imagine that the luckier souls get banned from the establishment and the less lucky ones have a tendency to abruptly poof out of existence from the perspective of the outside world.
And thankfully, crisis averted when the spies have second thoughts. You know, I take back what I said earlier about Victini not looking down on them, but Team Forager are both the luckiest and unluckiest people in Varhyde. I swear, they keep ending up in these scenarios - see Lyle’s giveaway earlier - yet somehow they always find a way out whether through sheer determination or lucky instances of the enemy’s haplessness like this.
Almost makes you wonder how much longer that luck will hold out for them, huh?
Besides, given what happened last time you lot all drank, I don’t know if you’d want a repeat of that. Especially in the Möbius, where drunken fighting in the rooms would probably fall under ‘punishable by trapping in an endless reincarnation cycle.’
Ah, the old pain of putting scripts together. Must’ve been tricky back in ancient times coming up with one that everyone unanimously agreed with. Funny, I remember this being a topic in Fledglings too, about the translation of such runes being an absolute pain. Then again, with Team Forager having the Dyad by their side, maybe this might not be too huge a problem for them?
Bold of you to assume that when Irune has been in proximity to ancient scripts earlier in this story and displayed zero proficiency in reading them. Almost as if skills and memories are lossy across lives, huh?
Now back to the present day, where the gang are diving into the books. Good thing they can read, because somehow I’d imagine there’d be folks in Lyle’s former berry-harvesting job that wouldn’t have literate skills.
You now have me mentally calculating whether or not I can slot in some point in the future where we get to see Irune’s skills at food preparation.
Same thing here about two paragraphs. With Dalton’s injury being the most prominent of the party members, he’s definitely been through the most of the party members for the length of this journey (discounting Irune’s prior experiences before being found by our trio).
I rather like this interaction between Dalton and Irune. Makes Dalton almost seem like a big brother of sorts to her, willing to protect her against the army trying to use her for their own ends.
Yeah, the feedback up to this point was mentioning that things were going a bit too nonstop action, so I figured showing more character on character interactions was in order. It also helped me split up what otherwise would’ve been a chunky chapter, so it’s all good.
Oof, yeah. Alas, not every army’s like a Fire Emblem motley brigade full of capable young men eager to resist their tyrannical invaders. Because at least those people were willing to fight, whereas these folks mentioned seem to just be here for the ride and not have much in the way of combat capabilities.
Which is a depressing reality of camp followers historically. War’s all fun and games until you’re the one bleeding in a ditch.
I mean, Sophia did seem willing to pardon you…But then as Dalton said, there’s nothing keeping them from rescinding that promise and locking him up, or doing an Eclipse Homecoming and line him, Kate and Lyle up for execution while Irune’s taken away before their eyes.
Yeeeeeah, Sophia kinda flubbed her persuasion check there given that Dalton’s DC was a bit higher than the rest of the party’s.
From both the interpretation that soldiers and the army aren’t the honourable ‘mons that Dalton thought them to be, as well as Dalton falling into the cycle of thievery, we can certainly deduce that corruption is a vice that’s near impossible to get out of, and near inevitable for those among the upper ranks.
More like a wall of mist/Mystery Dungeons forming a physical barrier on the overworld.
Are Team Forager gonna get an upgraded ship from a Togedemaru mechanic that’ll take them there? Although given that they’ve said they’re gonna use Mystery Dungeons to get there, it seems more like a Gates to Infinity approach, minus the Entercards. Also, if the Divine Roost is across the sea, does that mean Team Forager are gonna have to go through underwater Mystery Dungeons to get there that’ll be a bit like the Subway from Fledglings? If so, that’s a big ooof for Lyle.
Unlikely for the Togedemaru mechanic since they’d have to actually pilot the thing afterwards. Won’t be ruling anything out for those Mystery Dungeons up ahead on the pipe, though.
Oh right, Kate doesn’t know about Irune’s diary yet, even though Lyle does. Little things like that make me appreciate the small POV changes that occur every once in a while in this story.
And glad to hear that you’ve been enjoying them. It was admittedly a bit of a leap of faith to make this a third person limited story, but it does allow me to do some things narratively that I can’t in my stories that aren’t written in that perspective.
I mean, it worked out well for you guys last time you did it. And Boudewijn did turn out to be a kind soul. Still, lightning doesn’t have a tendency to strike twice, especially when remaining unpredictable is the best option for this lot in their escape from the Grünhäuter. So there probably won’t be any luck there.
Kate: “... We’ll get better at getting through them by then? Maybe?”
Oh, Kate can’t read very well, which is proving interesting in this instant where she can’t read Port Velhen. I figured with the mention of scripts at the beginning of this chapter that this might come into it at one point.
This was actually established all the way back before the gang entered Moonturn Square, even if I suppose it has been a while since it was touched on in the story.
Hey, a crude map is still a map. As long as it doesn’t lead the gang off course, they should be fine.
Lyle: “Just saying, I’m not trusting my life to that thing if I don’t have to.”
I did have a thought about journey’s end: in Xenoblade 2, the central objective was to reach the World Tree, and in Xenoblade 3, the main objective was to get to the City (until Chapter 5, where they do reach it). Both are similar enough goals to Team Forager’s in trying to reach the Divine Roost, and it does make me wonder, particularly in the context of Xenoblade 3, where there was still a good bit to go after reaching the City: will reaching the Divine Roost be journey’s end for the gang? Will Irune get her power back, and will it be a safe haven for Lyle, Kate, and Dalton who can chill there without fear of being apprehended by Varhyde or Edialeigh? Or will there be more to settle after reaching there? I suppose we’ll see where we’re at when our four do reach there at last.
I mean, it wasn't entirely planned from the start, but "journey to a plot-important high place" has been a feature of Xenogame plots since the very beginning, so those vibes are definitely fitting.
I’ll decline to comment on where the plot will go other than that barring a major shakeup of the story’s planning, we probably won’t see much of Edialeigh directly in this story’s scope since Team Forager would have some serious life and limb problems if they were yeeted there through the most conventional means.
Not to say that it’s impossible to show off snatches of it, since there’s certainly a few perspectives in this fic that would lend themselves to it. And when in doubt, the “jump around”-y nature of Mystery Dungeons gives an off-the-shelf excuse to shake things up if I feel like it.
Oh dear, looks like this book is written in Oldspeak. Fingers crossed Irune can read it, because it doesn’t look like Lyle and Kate can.
That would be ‘Hightongue’. Nobody native to this side of the Sundered Sea calls their old timey language that. :p
Oh boy, given how many Legends there are, that one sounds like quite a page-turner. No wonder this tome’s as thick as it is. Though for the neeeeerds interested in this kind of thing, that would no doubt be a challenge they would relish and absorb the information like a Vileplume using Giga Drain.
Oh yeah, if it weren’t for the fact that they’re on a tight schedule, I’m sure that Dalton would be eating all this right up.
So Ho-Oh died in battle? I wonder if that’s an indicator that she’d rise from the ashes, just as phoenixes tend to do? Or maybe she left behind a load of Sacred Ash that her followers used to revive the dead of battle.
More that it was the example provided by the book about how the whole rebirth cycle for Legendaries works in this setting.
Hmmmmm. A good indicator as to the state of our resident Axew. But I can’t help but wonder: the Charmeleon that the spies from before mentioned, is he one of these two - a Legend using a mortal body as a vessel?
There have actually been some subtle hints elsewhere as to who he could be, but there’s only one reincarnated god strutting around that this story cares about.
Part of me still wonders if this’ll end up happening. Maybe at some point Lyle might feel some sensation to indicate evolution will happen if he lets it, and he’ll panic and shrug it off due to his fears about it, only for later on for the gang to be backed into a corner where the only solution to overpower their enemies would be for him to evolve. I’m admittedly a sucker for evolution ex machina, and would be more than a bit curious as to what Typhlosion!Lyle would look like. Of course, if it’s not to be in the story, it’s not to be, but I remain curious regardless.
And continuing on that matter, I would equally be curious as to what Weavile!Kate would be like. I am vaguely aware from mentions in passing you’ve used her in an RP campaign (I think it was Blacklight?), so technically this has happened in an AU somewhere.
In any case, hopefully the team do reach an endpoint where they don’t have to worry about things like food or money - it would be a shame if Lyle and Kate never ended up evolving due to having that constant worry of having to feed larger bodies.
I just hope that if the Nameless Dragon does awaken within Irune, that she won’t lose herself to madness or have her body taken over by a conscience within her, which would in turn result in a heartwrenching battle that would go to the theme of A Tragic Decision or Words That Never Reached You.
Lyle: “Uh… yeah. ‘Battle’. That sounds more like a fast way to die.”
I mean, can you blame her, Lyle? If you were secretly a god, that’s not the kind of thing you would go trotting out to every ‘mon curious about you - especially if said ‘mons were thieves, aka people with not exactly the most moral of intentions. I completely get Irune’s decision to keep mum at first, even if as the journey went on, she ought to have been a little more open with her suspicions, particularly with instances like the Kyurem statue where her inability to tell a convincing lie really came to the fore.
I’m sure that were he a bit less wound up over the whole “reliving one of the worst events of his life” thing, that he’d likely be a bit more understanding.
Conclusion
And that’s that for now. Phew, caught up once again.
I’m glad we finally got the clash with Sophia and Lacan the story’s been hinting at for some time now. And the ensuing escape from them and the Grünhäuter was a rather exciting sequence, full of tension and crafty plans made on the spot. I quite liked that. As well as that, the revelation of Irune being a god to Team Forager was good - a long time coming, but we got it in the end - and seeing their reactions to it, namely Lyle becoming more fired up about Irune not telling them about this. The dynamic shift between Dalton and Irune into something more mellow and almost like a big brother/little sister relationship was also nice to see.
And glad to hear that you enjoyed things! Sounds like the mix of action and character moments wound up working quite well. ^^
I’m more than a bit curious as to where the story’s gonna go after this. I’m still predicting that they’ll be captured at some point and there’ll be heartbreak when Irune’s taken away from them, and then it’ll either be a rescue mission to get her out or Sophia will come him and give the gang a hand (a wing?) in their efforts to get her out. I wonder if there’ll also be a non-confrontational scene with Sophia and the three, with her wondering, “Why are you putting life and limb out for someone you’ve barely met?” And then upon seeing their resolve, she’ll maybe have that change of heart for real. (I’m only realising now that I filched that idea from Ace Attorney Investigations 2, when Verity Gavèlle has her own Heel-Face Turn after speaking one-on-one with Edgeworth.) I await to see how Sophia’s doubts come to the fore and influence her movements from here on.
You’ve admittedly been a bit spoiled on this question by virtue of being the beta reader for today’s chapter, but hold onto some of those thoughts there.
Now for some criticisms, and there were some. Firstly, something more minor in that Chapter 29 has some formatting where some paragraphs aren’t cleanly separated from one another. I presume this was a porting issue, and hey, it happens. It’s happened to me a few times as well.
Yeeeeeah, I blame myself for being in a rush to hit a deadline, though for what it’s worth, I appreciated you pointing out those goofs that you noticed.
Now for a bigger criticism I’ve formed over the past couple of chapters: I am feeling something of Arc Fatigue. I feel that we’ve spent a bit too many chapters in Newangle at this point when there’s still a whole world out there we haven’t seen yet, along with a whole other country we still don’t know a whole lot about, only getting our first glimpses of its inhabitants through Hesper and Deva, along with the Charmeleon from before. Yet the gang are still in the capital, going through many steps before they actually get into the library, get the books, and get back out. And looking back, they’ve been at this for about 100k words now, and I kinda have to admit that is a bit much, and I’m reckoning there’s gonna be at least two more chapters in Newangle - one for Team Forager to make their deal with Igna and Ansel and be escorted out, and another where there could well be one last confrontation with the army before the gang finally get out of the capital. Don’t get me wrong, I love Newangle in the sense of its ruined nature and the Pokémon’s interpretation of said ruins and living within them, and I really like the locations in it, especially the Möbius. But even the best of areas can overstay their welcome, and I want to see what else Varhyde and Edialeigh have to offer. Getting bogged down in the one location isn’t the best for a story’s flow, admittedly. At least we’re showing signs of moving on, so that’s at least good.
Oh hey, it's a sign that I'm writing a proper Nortune arc. /s
More seriously, unfortunate that things dragged a bit, but nah. This arc's just about done. There was one chapter left for the current EP, and while I suppose you're not wrong about it taking 2 chapters to properly get past the city walls, I'm pretty confident that the way that that exit from Newangle City happens will fix up that building arc fatigue nice and good.
In spite of that, I still enjoyed this batch of chapters. Now that I’m caught up, I’m gonna make more of an attempt to keep up through doing Review Tag and whatnot over the next while. Good work with these chapters, and I look forward to seeing where the fic goes next.
And thanks for the review! I'll be looking forward to going through your thoughts again next time. ^^
Though I've kept you all waiting for long enough. This arc has gone on a bit longer than I'd initially planned, so let's do the proper thing and send it off with a bang:
Ich habe Ihre Nachricht über die Informationen erhalten, die Ihnen diese Kontakte zu unseren Zielen weitergeleitet haben, und konnte diese bestätigen. In der Salemstraße 5 gibt es tatsächlich ein Gasthaus mit angeschlossenem Theater, und die Beschreibung stimmt in jeder Hinsicht überein.
Ich versammle alle Fähnlein, die ich finden kann, die sich in der Stadt befinden und noch dienstfähig sind. Wir brauchen diese Kontakte jedoch, um eine möglichst vollständige Liste möglicher Fluchtwege aus diesem Gasthaus zu erstellen, da ich durch die Erkundung der Umgebung nur begrenzte Informationen finden kann. Die Dyade ist uns heute Nacht einmal durch übersehene Ausgänge entkommen, und wenn sie uns ein zweites Mal entwischt, riskieren wir, ihre Spur vollständig zu verlieren.
Ich weiß, dass du dir nach unserer Beinahe-Katastrophe heute Abend Sorgen um mich machst, aber ich bin zuversichtlich, dass wir die Leute, die direkt mit dem Versteck in Verbindung stehen, erledigen können, sobald wir von ihnen erfahren. Die weitere Umgebung ist eine andere Sache. Wir werden wahrscheinlich die Hilfe der örtlichen Gendarmen brauchen, um alles zu sichern.
Ich verstehe, dass uns nicht viel Zeit bleibt, da wir im Morgengrauen aufbrechen müssen, aber ich werde Sie in Ihrer Wohnung treffen, um zu versuchen, alle Planungen abzuschließen, bevor ich Anweisungen an Fähnrich Rank und die anderen weitergebe.
Ich gestehe, dass es noch weitere Gründe für ein Treffen gibt. Als Ihr Untergebener, als Ihr treuer Begleiter, liegen mir einige Wünsche zum Umgang mit unseren Zielpersonen nach der Gefangennahme auf der Seele, die ich gerne vertraulich besprechen möchte.
Ich werde mehr dazu sagen, wenn wir uns treffen, aber es geht um einige Bedenken hinsichtlich des mentalen Zustandes der Dyade. Ich verstehe, dass sie aufgrund ihrer Natur als unberechenbares Wesen wahrscheinlich unabhängig von unserem Handeln unter einem gewissen Druck stehen wird. Einige der Aufzeichnungen, die Sie mich heute vorhin überprüfen ließen, bereiten mir etwas Sorge. Ich bin mir nicht sicher, ob wir ihre Macht durch übermäßige Belastung zu früh entfesseln könnten, um sie für unsere Mission nutzen zu können.
- Dringende Depesche von Ritterin von Herbergau, Sophia Krarmorstochter an Graf von Wellenhafen, Lacan Dragoransohn
Kate laid on her back and stared up blankly at the ceiling. It should’ve been the easiest thing in the world to fall asleep right now: she physically felt beat from getting thrown around in their escape from the Royal Library and she was sleeping on the nicest bed she’d ever been on in her life—even if she could’ve done without Dalton pointing out yesterday that the blankets looked “blood red” in color. The room was quieter right now than most places she’d dozed off in in recent memory. Nobody was snoring, and it was close to pitch black from the curtains they’d drawn shut—just in case an Air Marshal or some other green-plated pest somehow did a flyby over the alley.
And in spite of it all, she just couldn’t fall asleep. No matter how she closed her eyes, Kate kept finding herself tossing and turning and tensing at every little creak or bump.
The entire time, she just kept seeing and hearing flashes of the day earlier and how narrow their escape from the Royal Library had been: the way her heart stopped after those times that gottverdammter Salamence had cut them off, the dumb shock when she’d watched the scaffolding on that tower collapse and thought for a moment that Lyle and Irune had fallen to their deaths far below, that helpless feeling after seeing Dalton lying on the concrete in the bones of that human ruin as her mind went blank in panic.
She’d always been confident in her ability to stay ahead of trouble, but it’d honestly felt like she’d only made it through this last night from dumb luck. Other Pokémon would sometimes say that a “cat had nine lives”, but she’d known for a long while that saying was full of crap. Lisha back in the Foehn Gang sure didn’t have nine lives back when their encampment was raided. The Mistral Marauders had had others who could’ve said the saying applied to themselves, and yet she was the only one to make it out when even Boss Myra wasn’t able to.
To say nothing about Mom and Dad… Kate didn’t know what things had been like when Dad was finally captured on that last job he did, but she had seen luck run out for Mom. After everything that had been happening lately, it was hard to shake the feeling that she too, was on borrowed time.
The Sneasel turned onto her side and curled up, trying to push those uncomfortable thoughts out of her mind when she heard a faint creak. Her eyes shot wide and she sat up in her bed, reflexively jerking her head after the sound. There was a flicker of orange light, fiery light. She slid off the bed and crept along, the thought occurring to her that Lyle must’ve also been up, which a quick glance at the cabinet confirmed. Sure enough, the Quilava was there reared up and rooting through the cabinet’s contents.
“Lyle?”
Lyle suddenly sprang back and his vents came awash with fire. Kate couldn’t help but recoil herself from the stray cinders as the Quilava landed on all fours, panting, before shaking his head with a sharp scowl.
“Götterblut! Kate, don’t scare me like that!”
Kate supposed that was one way to tell that she wasn’t the only one who was on-edge at the moment. She pawed at her eyes, before glancing at the cabinet and their bags jammed inside.
“It’s kinda hard for you to fall asleep if you’re not in bed,” the Sneasel said. “What were you even up to, anyways?”
“I was trying to find something to help knock me out, but I couldn’t find any Sleep Seeds,” Lyle sighed. “I don’t know how Irune and Dalton are managing to stay asleep after everything right now.”
Kate followed Lyle’s gaze off back at the row of beds, where Dalton and Irune were sound asleep; Irune a bit more restless than the Heliolisk from the way she’d shift around under her blankets.
She quirked a brow briefly, when she held out a paw in the air. The room’s temperature did feel a bit nippy at the moment. For such a swanky place, it was clearly draftier than she’d expected.
“Must be the weather,” she said. “It is getting pretty late into fall, and cold temperatures are supposed to put coldbloods like those two out like a light when they’re tired. It always did with Alvin…”
Kate trailed off as soon as the words left her mouth as her mind turned to memories of them all yukking it up together back when they’d first met… and then the way they’d just left him behind while that Zangoose Grünhäuter kicked him around. The light beside her dimmed a bit, and she noticed Lyle turning his head away and letting his gaze fall towards the floor.
A long silence lingered between the two of them and she herself couldn’t help but droop a bit. Everything that had happened to Alvin and the others was something she’d known could happen, that she’d seen happen before, yet it was still hard to set aside. What on earth was she supposed to say back to Lyle when that was his first experience as an Outlaw after the Foehn Gang broke up?
Her thoughts were interrupted when her Quilava teammate finally sighed and shook his head.
“How on earth do you do it, Kate?”
“Do what?” she asked.
“Just keep going on like this. Not letting yourself get shaken by the things you’ve seen.”
She fell quiet and let her own eyes drift towards the floor and shook her head in reply.
“... Heh, you give me too much credit. I suppose things stop fazing you after you see them happen enough times,” the Sneasel said. “Being an Outlaw’s just what I’ve known all my life. Having to keep going on after losing someone’s just something you have to do after you’re at things for long enough.”
Kate could already tell from what she could see of Lyle’s expression that the answer hadn’t helped his mood, but what was she supposed to say? Just blurt out the blunt truth that even she didn’t know how to go on at times other than that being a thief was the one thing she knew she was good at and that she just didn’t have other choices at this point? To get his hopes up with some idealistic sop about how they could make things work out with enough grit and determination?
… Gods, she was killing her own mood at this rate. Kate turned her attention and began to paw through the bags. She didn’t really know what on earth she could say to lift the mood right now or if it was even possible. But if it was, maybe she didn’t need words to accomplish that…
“Lemme double-check my bag. I could’ve sworn I lifted a flask off that Lycanroc back in the Royal Library. Maybe it’s just the thing we both needed to finally nod off.”
Kate grabbed her bag and tugged it free, only to suddenly feel a heavy weight hit her feet. She stifled a cry and jumped back and saw that she’d accidentally drug out another bag in the process that’d spilled out onto the floor. Some normal odds and ends for dungeoneering, along with a lot of glass beads that immediately tipped her off to its owner.
“... Good thing Irune’s asleep for this right now,” she sighed. “Hold my bag a sec, Lyle.”
She passed her bag over and pushed the contents back in, when she noticed a worn brown book poking out of a paper sleeve. The same one that Irune had been drawing in earlier that night.
“Wait…” she murmured. “Wasn’t this that notebook or whatever that Irune drew that ‘map’ in?”
She blinked and brought the book up to her face, cracking it open. Much to her surprise, there wasn’t any sign of a map inside on the pages. Instead, there were runes on both pages, along with some sort of black scrawled figure with wings and a dart-tail along with eyes that looked the same color as her bedding on the left.
… Was that a drawing of Zekrom?
“What in the-?”
“Kate, put that away!” Lyle hissed. “That’s Irune’s diary!”
The Quilava grabbed the book and sharply tugged it away from her grasp. Kate looked down at her claws and blinked for a moment, shooting a skeptical frown in reply.
“Wait, she seriously drew a map in a diary?” Kate asked. “Though I don’t understand why she’d be worried about me going through it. It’s not like I can read most of what she wrote-”
“That’s beside the point!” he snapped, fire sparking from his head vents. “Let’s just put it back before she…”
The Quilava trailed off and stared down at the pages briefly as his head’s fire illuminated the pages. There was a brief pause as his attention lingered on the right side of the book, before he smothered his flames and snapped the diary shut. Kate blinked for a moment as her eyes adjusted back to the darkness, just in time to see Lyle hurriedly putting the diary back into its sleeve and shoveling it back into Irune’s bag.
“… What on earth was that about, Lyle?” she asked. “Did you see something in there?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
The reply was too hasty. Kate narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
“Okay, now I know you saw something in there,” she harrumphed, folding her arms. “And don’t tell me it was that Zekrom drawing, since you were looking at the opposite page. So come on, spit it out.”
The Quilava pushed Irune’s bag back into the cabinet and hesitated a moment, clearly weighing thoughts over in his mind. Kate opened her mouth to press him further, when Lyle pinned his ears back and let out a low sigh.
“She apparently wrote about a dream that she had, about an Ampharos that she didn’t recognize who spoke some mumbo-jumbo that went over her head and called her ‘Ophion’,” he explained. “Some friend of hers from her village called ‘Cade’ told her that he understood a couple of the words that she remembered from her dream.”
Lyle seemed to drift in his thoughts for a moment. Maybe he’d found that passage strange, too. ‘Mumbo jumbo’? Irune didn’t strike her as being that educated the way that Dalton did. Had the Axew been referring to Hightongue? Or…?
“And how does her friend understand these weird words that she doesn’t?”
“I don’t know. It’s probably something from a past life of hers or something like that,” he sighed. “Look, the point is, don’t get too hung up over it, and don't bring it up. She already got mad enough at me the last time I read her diary.”
Kate clicked her tongue and took her bag from beside Lyle’s feet to return to searching through it. All the while, she couldn’t get his comments out of her mind, along with that Zekrom drawing in the diary…
Was that who this ‘Ophion’ was? But wasn’t Irune supposed to be some other Nameless Dragon in her last life? So why would she have memories of-?
Her thoughts dispelled as her claws tapped against metal. She pushed her paw in further and wrapped it around an object that she grasped and pulled. Sure enough, there was a small drinking flask inside, scuffed and scratched from being handled by a prior owner who had claws of his own. She undid the cap and brought her nose down to sniff and caught a strong odor of alcohol and wheat, before bringing it up to her mouth and giving a tentative taste.
“... Kornbrand¹. Hasn’t been cut with water, either,” she said. “I can’t say anything for how well either of us will feel in the morning, but it can’t possibly hurt for nodding off.”
She held the flask out in front of the Quilava, who pinned his ears and reached a paw out for it.
“... What the hell, I’ll take it.”
She passed it over as Lyle took a swig from it and gulped down a portion of the contents. He returned it and it was her turn to help herself to the pilfered spirits. She threw the flask back, letting the bitter fluid wash over her mouth and letting the warm feeling in her body circulate before she pulled it away and raised it with a mirthful chuckle.
“Here’s to getting through another day,” she said. “And to getting the hell out of this dump.”
She gave the flask back along with the cap as she drifted off back for her bed. If Lyle drank the rest, she frankly wouldn’t blame him. He surely needed a drink after everything they’d been through in the past few days. As she settled on the mattress and curled up on her side again, Kate noticed that her head was already starting to feel fuzzy from the Kornbrand working its way through her body.
Maybe it was a sign that she’d finally get some sleep tonight.
Kate had been right about the Kornbrand putting him out, but that was about where the drink’s help ended for Lyle. He didn’t know whether or not there was something wrong with the drink, but the entire time after nodding off, his mind kept drifting to him being in a ruined encampment amid flattened tents. Screams to his left, screams to his right, with shouts mixed in with the sight of Grünhäuter engaging in running battles with Pokémon who were attempting to flee.
At first he thought that he was back in Waterhead Cave, except the faces didn’t look like the Pokémon from the Terra Tyrants or the other gangs there, and they were clad in orange. Against his will, he looked up where the cave ceiling should’ve been, where he saw trees around him along with stars above instead.
Lyle froze in dread as he instantly realized that he remembered all of this. Where this place was. When this was.
It was the Foehn Gang’s encampment in the forest. On the night when the Grünhäuter raided them.
A bellowing cry rang out as Lyle jerked his head back over his shoulder—to the way that Boss Gunter plummeted out of the air from the Stone Edge that that damned Rhyperior used to put him down. He remembered the stunned looks on his comrades’ faces, as even those still able to stand lost their will to fight after that.
Everything afterwards played out with uncomfortable familiarity. The way he turned and ran among burning tents and past bodies slumped over on the ground. There were always those few faces that stood out in the blur that particularly haunted his memories: there was Poe the Hitmontop screaming as a Braviary in green plates who’d snatched him up and carried him off into the air, then there was Lisha the Floragato lying limp in his path and the sticky feeling of blood on his paws after he had to step over her body to get away.
“Lyle! Lyle!”
And then he remembered seeing Kate and Alvin at the treeline, the pair frantically hiding in the brush as the Marowak motioned with his free hand to follow.
“There’s too many of them! Come on! We need to get out of here!”
He panted and started forward, when that snarling Mabosstiff stepped out in his path. Everything seemed to slow down afterwards as the memories came flooding back:
His body’s fire pouring out of his vents. His breath tightening and his heart pounding in his chest. The spittle from the dog’s jaws just missing his neck. The scream he let out as he tore away for dear life through the brush as Alvin’s voice called out after him.
“Wait, Lyle! Not that way! Come back! Come back!”
Lyle shot up from his bedding, gasping for air as his heart raced in his chest. He felt heat behind him and hastily rolled over its source, smothering cinders that had landed on the blanket. He righted himself, looking down at a set of blackened spots he’d left behind as he tried to steady his nerves and breathing. He tried to tell himself that that was just a memory, that he wouldn’t be here if things hadn’t all worked out in the end.
It didn’t really help much. There was more that came after what he’d remembered in the dream; the way he’d spent the rest of the night hiding and cowering in an abandoned Wilder’s den as those gods-awful sounds from the encampment eventually went quiet. The way his breath caught and his heart stopped as Grünhäuter prowled the woods right outside it. The dirty and shivering mess that Kate and Alvin found him as in the morning afterwards. The way they’d bickered afterwards and hurt looks the two had after he’d bluntly told them that he was getting out while he could and that the two of them were on their own.
Maybe there was a reason why his nightmare never made it far enough to reach those points.
“Are you okay, Lyle?”
Lyle turned at the sound of a growling voice and saw Irune at the side of his bed. The Dragon-type looked up at him for a moment, before glancing away with an awkward paw at her tusk.
“I… didn’t realize that you’d also been having nightmares lately.”
“I’ve seen a few things in life that stuck with me, what’s your point?” he asked, pinning his head back with a low grumble. “It’s not like there’s a shortage of other Pokémon that have gone through the same.”
Lyle paused, before noticing his teammates were still dozing off and a dim ray of light was peeking through the fringes of the curtains from its bottom. The sun must’ve been in the process of rising, and if Wye’s comments from last night were right, that meant that Igna and Ansel were likely already downstairs waiting for them.
He took that as a sign to get up and slid out of bed.
“I guess it’s just as well that you’re up right now,” he sighed, starting over towards Kate’s bed. “We should hurry and wake the others up—”
“... What was yours about?”
Lyle blinked and shot an askew glance back at the Axew, as she uneasily pawed at the floor with her feet.
“What?” Lyle asked.
“Your nightmare. What did you dream of?”
Lyle felt his face sag, before turning aside and folding his arms.
“What makes you so curious?” he asked. “I thought that our relationship was strictly business. And how did you manage to beat any of the rest of us awake—?”
“Because I also had a nightmare last night.”
Lyle fell quiet and looked back as the Axew uneasily ran a hand along a tusk, avoiding eye contact.
“Or at least I think it was a nightmare,” she said. “I suppose I shouldn’t reflexively assume that anymore after what Sophia told us yesterday.”
Lyle quirked a brow at the Dragon-type’s reply. He got the feeling that Irune was trying to say something, but for whatever reason, she just wasn’t spitting it out.
“Where are you going with this?”
“... You said that I hide too many things from you and the others,” Irune explained. “I… suppose that I just needed practice with how to explain those things I don’t like talking about and thought this would be a place to start. If I tell you about my nightmare, will you tell me about yours?”
The Quilava fell quiet, before shaking his head with a low sigh.
“If you can make it quick, I guess. Though what on earth does a reincarnated god have to be afraid of?”
“It’s about something that I think that I did. Or else that I’m afraid I’ll wind up doing.”
There was a tense silence as the pair stared at each other, before Irune lowered her head and carried on.
“... In my dream, I was a black dragon over a battlefield where Pokémon were fighting outside of my hometown,” she said. “I had an Ampharos friend with me that spoke to me in a language whose words I don’t recognize and… a lot of Pokémon died because of us.”
Lyle stared blankly for a moment before he looked down and noticed he was reflexively trembling, and he knew that it wasn’t just because this sounded like that passage from Irune’s diary he’d read last night. He hadn’t paid much attention to stories about gods and their ilk after he evolved, but if Irune really was from Freeden Village like he suspected... then did that mean that the ‘Nameless Dragon’ was Zekrom? How on earth did that make sense when the Nameless Dragon was supposed to make him?
“There are other nightmares that I’ve had, too. Some where I was a white dragon with a Charizard friend, and others where I was a gray one that was alone,” she said. “But in all of them, I was always around my hometown and no matter who I was… And whenever I saw the town was damaged, I always felt really upset and afraid for it in my dreams.”
Lyle turned and stared at Irune. He couldn’t say anything about what had exactly happened, but Freeden Village was supposed to be the place where Reshiram and Zekrom had last slain each other in battle, and Kyurem was supposed to have met the same fate there too while trying to intervene.
He didn’t know why the dreams would conflict like that since the different dragons were each their own god, and Sophia had made it sound like Irune was something different from them as this ‘Nameless Dragon’… but if Irune was already a reincarnated god, then was it really safe to assume those nightmares were merely dreams?
“Hey, Irune. I… know this is going to sound crazy, and I don’t really know how to explain it…” Lyle began. “But I think those dreams of yours might have been mem—”
A heavy pound at the door rang out as Lyle and Irune froze. Heavy enough that even Kate and Dalton both suddenly jolted awake from their beds. Lyle could already hear Dalton wincing from accidentally putting pressure on his broken arm, and turned and saw him getting up from his bedding as Sneasel slid onto her feet with a groggy paw at her eyes.
“Whuh? What’s going on?”
“Hey! Are you all going to give us our goods or what?”
Lyle stiffened up at the sound of a cawing voice at the door when he suddenly put two and two together. So much for meeting Igna and Ansel downstairs… He briefly wondered if it was really a good idea to go and answer them, except Dalton was already shambling over to the door.
Sure enough, after the Heliolisk opened it, Igna and Ansel were there on the other end, looking as ‘cheery’ as they always were.
“Igna? Ansel?” the Heliolisk yawned. “What are you two doing here at our room?”
“To collect what you promised us and get you out of our scales,” Igna scoffed. “We were supposed to meet at dawn.”
“... You did get all of the books on that list, right? Including those folktales about Shiren the Wanderer I asked for?” Ansel snapped. “Because if you didn’t...”
“We did! We did!” Irune insisted. “It’s right here!”
Irune hurriedly went over to their bags piled in the cabinet and fished through Kate’s bag, pulling out the book of folklore with its Grovyle and Mienfoo on the cover and all but running back over with it. Lyle briefly looked back at the doorway and reflexively stepped out in the Axew’s path to stop her.
“Hang on just a moment, Irune,” he insisted. “Don’t give them anything just yet.”
Igna and Ansel’s demeanor felt weirdly impatient, especially for ‘mons who had stalked them for an entire night once already for a chance to get even. After sizing them up, Lyle noticed that their postures were stiff and tense, and their eyes looked like the two of them were both visibly short on sleep.
Something was up with them right now, and he wasn’t sure that he liked it.
“Hrmph, we wouldn’t be taking the goods here anyways,” the Southern Marowak said. “Ecks and Wye are sticklers about the rules of doing business here in the Möbius, and I don’t feel like getting my tail stomped for closing a deal outside of the Playhouse.”
“Also, more importantly for you, the terms of our deal have changed since last night,” the Fearow chimed in. “Once you give us back what’s ours and turn over the goods, you need to get the hell out of town.”
Lyle felt himself flare up and noticed that his teammates were all staring back wide-eyed. Something was definitely wrong here. He knew that he and the rest of Team Forager had drawn a lot of heat on themselves from that job in the Administrative District, but hadn’t they gone through all this trouble specifically to get the Thieves’ Guild off their back?
The others clearly had found the change suspicious as well, as he noticed Dalton and Irune tense up, while Kate folded her arms and narrowed her eyes in reply.
“... And just where is this coming from?” the Sneasel demanded. “You gave us a scarf and badge to get your buddies off our backs yesterday, so what changed?”
“Whatever you did out in the Administrative District got the Grünhäuter all up on our asses,” the Fearow said, glaring daggers at them. “We got pulled aside for questioning last night because of you.”
Lyle quietly chewed his lip. Right, that Crobat from the front desk had mentioned that Igna and Ansel had been accosted by the Gendarmen the other day. He wasn’t sure how much their boss was really on board with this book run or not, but these two naturally would want to keep them at paw’s length after a scare like that...
“They weren’t able to pin anything on us, but the Thieves’ Guild isn’t in any position to make promises for your safety at the moment. And you’re not going to have a good time if you try to leave this place…” Igna trailed off.
“Or at least if you try and leave on the surface, anyways.”
The Marowak motioned down at the floor with her club as Lyle followed after it with his eyes. His stomach knotted up as he put two and two together for what the slender Marowak was getting at: Right, the Undercity. Igna and Ansel claimed there was an entrance to it backstage at the Playhouse the other day, even if Lyle couldn’t tell whether or not the two were being truthful or they had just been full of crap.
A low scoff turned his attention over towards Dalton, who turned his head and tilted his snout up with a sharp frown.
“I’ll have you know I’m no stranger to this city,” the Heliolisk reminded. “I know routes that will take us out of this city just fine out on the streets. Why on earth should we accept this ‘offer’ of yours? You’ve hardly come off as being trustworthy the entire time we’ve met each other, especially after changing the terms of this job we agreed to.”
“Because even if you wouldn’t be a risk to us if the Grünhäuter caught you, does that route you have in mind include a way of getting past the city gates?” Ansel demanded.
The way that the Heliolisk stiffened up and partly flared out his frill before his injuries forced him to stop told Lyle everything he needed to know—Dalton didn’t. From the way Igna and Ansel’s eyes narrowed, they clearly had gathered much the same themselves.
They began heading for the door afterwards, as Ansel drifted off into the hallway, while Igna lingered behind with a hand on the doorposts.
“I thought so. I don’t expect you to like us, but I expect you to be able to read the writing on the wall,” she harrumphed. “You can take our offer or leave it, but you don’t exactly have much time. Meet us down in the Playhouse if you’re down for taking our way out. Oh, and change your colors from whatever you wore to the library.”
The dark-hided Marowak drifted off, pulling the door shut behind her with a flinchworthy slam. Lyle just stood there for a moment, staring blankly at the door, sucking uneasy breaths in and out, when he felt a tug at his side. He looked down, and saw Irune worriedly staring up at him.
“Can we actually trust them?” Irune murmured.
“Of course not,” he huffed, venting a few stray cinders. ”But I’m not sure that we have a choice.”
Lyle turned his attention back to the table and their bags spilling out of the cabinet. He made his way over, and began rifling through his bag, finding little else besides books, that stolen scarf from Team Pathfinder, the depleted remains of his coin purse, and a stray Blast Seed inside.
“... What do we even have left for items to work with anyways after last night?” he asked.
“I know I’ve got a Luminous Orb left that we swiped from that Houndoom and his buddy,” Kate said, before rooting around in her bag. “A couple Iron Thorns… and a Gravelerock.”
“I gave all of my battle items to you three last night since I can only do so much with them with one healthy arm,” Dalton said, unconsciously pawing at his splint. “The only things I still have in mine are healing items and a couple Elixirs.”
“I… uh… might still have a Wand in mine?” Irune said. “I didn’t really get a chance to check it last night, though…”
… So they had enough to help them out with one encounter where they were in over their head, maybe two at most. For an entire trip through a set of ancient tunnels where they would be dependent on two ‘mons who were ready to kill them just the other day for guidance. That wasn’t exactly confidence-inspiring no matter how hard he tried to look for a silver lining.
Lyle sighed, when he heard voices coming from further outside and went up to the window. He pulled the curtain back and peeked out. Out on the street at the end of the alley, there was a small party of Pokémon in green plates led by a Darmanitan, while overhead, he saw similarly armored figures circling in the sky a few blocks away.
He quietly set his teeth on edge, before backing away from the window and drawing the curtains shut. He went back to his teammates, before shaking his head with a low sigh.
“Double-check the items we’ve got in our bags to make sure they’re in easy-to-reach places. Make sure that whatever Wonder Orbs we have left are primed and ready to use, too,” the Quilava said, shaking his head as his eyes drifted to the red and silver scarf on the table.
He couldn’t believe that holding onto those things would have wound up helping them for once.
“... And slip into our old scarves, I guess,” he said “I don’t exactly have a great feeling about this right now, and any little thing we can do to give ourselves an edge will help.”
The way back down to the Möbius’ playhouse was much as Lyle remembered it the first time: full of creaks and bumps in hallways trimmed with worn, blood-colored carpets and walls that seemed to do their best to make his fur and the fire from his vents stand on end. He tried to explain his nightmare to Irune to try and get his mind off things, only for her to brush it off and insist on hearing it sometime when she felt more at-ease. When that would be, Lyle had no clue.
When they reached the lobby, Ecks was on-duty behind the counter again, though she wasn’t particularly talkative and didn’t acknowledge them beyond a wordless stare along with what Lyle swore was a smirk curled up at the end of her mouth.
He took that as a sign that it was a bad idea to stop to talk with her and quickly turned down the passage to the Playhouse. The entire time, Lyle could’ve sworn he heard voices somewhere off in the distance and saw footprints on the carpet he didn’t remember from the other day. When he passed the spiral stairwell halfway over, he picked up a scent that reminded him of those Delphox and Braixen healers from that riverside village a couple days ago, just less smoky.
He subconsciously pawed at the Blast Seed in his bag afterwards, verifying that it was still near its mouth, and saw his teammates similarly checking their belongings. The scent was probably just from another ‘mon who’d rented a room in this place or the local staff, not that that was really much of a relief. Thankfully, the lanternlight eventually gave way to rays of natural sunlight, as the lobby to the Playhouse began to come into view. Wye was already behind his counter bright and early, as the teal-hided Aggron idly perused a book from behind it.
Lyle consciously kept his distance from the counter as a stale smell hung in the air. He didn’t know why, but the staff here at the Möbius had always given him the creeps. Like that they were the sorts of ‘mons who’d kill someone as effortlessly as he might snuff out an errant cinder if they ever felt like it. He began to turn for the entrance to the playhouse, when he noticed Irune lagging and staring off at the wall.
“... ‘24 Hour Happy People’?”
The Quilava paused and followed her gaze where there was a poster hung up that he didn’t remember being there the day before: one showing off a scene with a Grovyle and Eevee in a marketplace in the shadow of towering human ruins that looked weirdly like those two ankle biters from that Team Pathfinder that ‘Elma’ or whatever her name was was called…
He noticed Dalton giving a puzzled stare at the poster, before turning over towards the counter.
“Herr Stahlboss, what is that play about?” he asked. “I’ve seen my share of them before, but I’ve never heard of one with a title like that.”
“It’s an adaptation of a biographical play set shortly after the time of the Great Flash,” the Aggron replied, idly looking down at his tome. “It’s a series of vignettes following a Rescue Team that gets sucked into various unusual encounters about the city while trying to purchase meat.”
Lyle supposed it wouldn’t be that hard to imagine getting into strange encounters like that, especially in light of that threat Igna and Ansel made them the other day of winding up in the inventory of a Leichensammler. But if Wye was telling the truth, this play’s story had to be around a thousand years old! Clearly Pokémon hadn’t changed that much through history. Though what was with the lighthearted colors and presentation on the playbill for a play following a trade that even many Outlaws were wary of in that case…?
He shook his head and dropped down to all fours, when he realized that his paw was touching a smudged three-toed footprint on the carpet that was bigger than his head, with others going about here and there. No wonder why there had been a stale smell in the air, this place had been more well-trodden than the mat in front of his parents’ glassblowing shop after a market day!
He wasn’t the only one who noticed, and felt Irune subconsciously brush up against him uneasily. Kate and Dalton briefly looked down themselves, the Sneasel shooting a sidelong glance over at the Aggron behind the counter.
“Hey, ‘Wye’, right? Did we miss something earlier?” Kate asked. “Since this carpet of yours is a mess and it smells like an entire crowd of ‘mons stomped all over it.”
“This is a theater, Sniebel. There’s always Pokémon coming in and out of it; both to watch the plays and to ensure that the shows will go on,” the Aggron harrumphed, idly glancing up from his book. “What do you think allows it to be such a convenient place for our clientele to facilitate their dealings here?”
Lyle supposed that made sense. A bunch of scents overlapping with each other would make it harder to identify Pokémon in the crowd after the fact, and with the way it was raining last night, it would’ve potentially affected the way that smells lingered on the rug…
It just would’ve been more reassuring if it’d come from just about anyone other than this Aggron or his Crobat counterpart up at the front desk, especially with the almost impatient air that the Steel-type had as he set his book down and got up with a steely frown.
“There’s others waiting for you and your companions in there right now, Igelavar,” Wye rumbled. “I do hope that you let them know that you’re coming to them in different colors today. From what I saw of them, I don’t think they’re the types you should keep waiting without good reason.”
No, Lyle supposed that he knew enough from their past meetings with Igna and Ansel to know that Wye’s read was very much accurate. He shook his head and set off for the doors, glancing back over his shoulder to his teammates.
“Come on, let’s just get this over with and get out of here.”
He made his way forward, briefly rearing up onto his hindlegs to push the door open as the others passed and he slinked around as it closed behind them. He let his eyes adjust to the dim lighting and began to push his fire out of his vents for illumination, only to suddenly pause.
The playhouse had changed quite a bit since they’d last seen it. The walls were still the same patchwork of wood and plaster over ancient concrete, but the purple curtain on the stage had been drawn back this time and was lit up by strong lights, with some sort of set depicting waves and a boat left out. Stranger still, all of the stools that had been set out yesterday had been pulled aside and stacked up in the corners, leaving bare, red, carpeting as far as Lyle could see in the audience chamber.
“Took you long enough!” a voice squawked.
There, about two-thirds of the way down to the front of the stage, were those southern Marowak and Fearow thieves from the day before, with a door along the right wall left ajar evidencing the route they’d taken to get inside. The two of them were every bit as ‘personable’ as they’d been back at their room, with the Fearow of the pair beating his wings out and giving an impatient scowl as he motioned forward with his beak.
“You four are just lucky that we really needed this stuff,” the Flying-type harrumphed. “Hurry up and give us the goods. The sooner Igna and I get you out of our plumage, the better.”
Lyle looked over at Dalton as the Heliolisk made his way forward. The Quilava saw Kate reach for her bag briefly and he patted the top of his as Dalton handed over the books from his bag one by one. That last Slow Orb was still inside at the top where he’d left it. He made sure not to jostle it too much lest it hum, but it was hard to resist the urge to grab it.
“... Nice scarves, by the way,” Igna said. “How come you didn’t use those yesterday?”
“We expected that we might need a replacement set,” Dalton replied. “You weren’t exactly asking for a small job the other day.”
The Marowak kept a keen eye on the Heliolisk as she and Ansel kept going through the books, with motions that were still rigid and guarded like they were back at the hotel room. There was a sudden creak that made them stiffen up briefly, before they went back to reading through the titles.
… Something wasn’t right here. The playhouse supposedly had been unkempt from a busy night, so why was cleared out with a stage set for a play already? There were other faint creaks in the distance that Lyle couldn’t place, and weirder still, whenever the Quilava looked at the stage, he swore he saw the light there ripple a couple of times.
He must not have been the only one to notice it from the way that Irune was clinging to Kate for dear life. The Marowak and Fearow took the last of the books, before Igna slung them into a bag over her shoulder, leaving Kate to flick her ears with an impatient tap of her foot.
“Alright, there. There’s your stupid books,” the Sneasel harrumphed. “Are we good now? And can we hurry up and see that way to the Undercity now?”
“Oh, you won’t be seeing much of anything down there today.”
Lyle’s eyes widened at the sound of a rough, growling voice coming from behind. Lacan’s rough, growling voice. Suddenly, there was a magenta flash from all around, as the surroundings were suddenly bathed in blinding light. He and his teammates cried out, as Lyle squinted his eyes from the sudden light and opened them at the sound of wingbeats and rattling mail. As his vision stabilized, he could see up in the perch above the entrance, there was a Zoroark in army plates peering down at them next to a set of stagelights that were trained straight at them.
And there, raising his head and flaring his wings out from a couple rows above them, was the Salamence himself. The Graf narrowed his eyes into a piercing glare, before turning his gaze slightly away from them.
“Marowak. Fearow. You two have done your part,” the Salamence harrumphed. “Now begone before you outweigh your usefulness.”
Lyle whirled around and saw that Lacan was looking at Igna and Ansel. His heart raced and his vents poured out startled fire as in the background on the stage, he spotted eyes reflecting light in the dark and saw figures—armored figures—moving into position for what looked like a shield wall.
How the hell had they even gotten there?! And how the hell were they supposed to get out of this?! Lacan would already be too much of a fight for them to handle right now, let alone all those other Pokémon!
“Gebt auf. Ihr könnt nicht mehr gewinnenᴰ¹,” the Salamence growled. “I won’t tell you and your friends to yield a second time, Dyad.”
He saw the same look of blank shock on his teammates’ faces as the dragon’s snarl hung in the air. Dalton was the first to snap out of it, he whirled towards the Marowak and Fearow as they began to head off. Sparks built up along the Electric-type’s scales, along with a glint in his eye that reminded Lyle of the Heliolisk had had after cornering that Inteleon in Waterhead Cave…
“Igna! Ansel! What the hell is this?!”
The two thieves briefly slowed, glancing over their shoulders but otherwise not changing their course with a pair of terse scoffs.
“The Thieves’ Guild has an understanding with the Gendarmen in this city,” Igna explained. “They let us do our thing as long as we don’t rock the boat too much, and once in a while, they call in a favor from us they can’t have their own paws on.”
“And the last one they called in was that we needed to hand you over to these guys,” Ansel explained, gesturing with a wing. “It was part of a deal that was very persuasive. So… yeah, sucks to be y-”
A deafening crack split the air as yellow bathed the surroundings, as Dalton suddenly threw his frill wide and the air in front of Lyle filled with electrical sparks. There were a pair of sharp yelps and the Quilava barely had a moment to register the Heliolisk fighting back a pained grimace with an expression of pure hatred, as Lacan sharply pulled up into the air.
“Everyone, close your eyes!” Kate cried.
The Quilava had barely managed that when suddenly, blinding light crept in from past his eyelids. Lyle heard shouts of confusion and Lacan’s wingbeats faltering when his eyes saw the door to the right still ajar.
He hurriedly dug into his bag and smashed his Slow Orb to the ground. He didn’t bother to wait and see where the silk flying around landed and took off running.
“Q-Quick, this way!”
He tore ahead into a dash that went by so quickly that his surroundings blurred. A flying stone landed just by his feet, then a Hydro Cannon just barely missed him from behind., And then the barrage stopped as much to his confusion, the soldiers on the stage were hurriedly falling behind a wall of Protects.
GRAAAAAWRRR!
He’d barely made it to the door when he saw a fiery blue flash from the corner of his eye and felt something burning slam into his hip with a crushing blow. He screamed in pain, his teammates did the same themselves. The next thing he knew, he was in the air, the world suddenly flipped around in his vision as he rolled on the carpet and looked back through the door to see what looked like comet after comet of dragonfire hitting the ground past the doorway.
He staggered up and saw the ground still smoldering as everything flickered in front of his eyes: smoke curling up from the charred carpet. Igna and Ansel lying slumped over and covered in burns, while Kate and Dalton were motionless on the ground halfway to the door with no sign of life beyond some feeble groans.
And there was Irune, cowering behind a Protect as Lacan turned his gaze towards her and the lights of the Protects on stage began to wink out.
Lyle spewed a Smokescreen up just above the Axew’s head by reflex and grabbed her, running for dear life through the door as he felt attacks miss his body by hairs as he charged back through the door. His throat tightened and his eyes began to grow muddy as Irune’s voice frantically cried out.
“L-Lyle! K-Kate and Dalton are still-!”
“I know they are!” the Quilava cried. “J-Just stay with me right now!”
He was leaving them behind. Again. Because as his sputtering fire reminded, none of them were strong enough to do anything other than just run or get mowed down. The doors flew past him along the way as a bellowing roar and shouts came from the direction of the Playhouse.
Wh-What the hell were they even supposed to do right now?! Where were they supposed to go?!
His foot brushed against a loose, blue feather as he saw grimy footprints running opposite their direction on the carpet from a door at the end. He briefly let go of the Axew, as fire wreathed his pelt and he dove at it with a blazing charge.
CRACK!
It flew open as Lyle’s eyes grew disoriented from the sudden change of lighting. There was daylight coming down in a strip from above when it dawned on him: he was in that alley they saw from their window.
His ears swiveled at voices coming from behind him as he briefly saw Irune running for the doorway. He reflexively took off and made it forward a few paces as he heard Irune’s feet pattering against the cobbles on the alley and begin to pick up pace. He dropped onto all fours to sprint faster and lunged ahead into another blurring dash to try and build up distance, when he heard her scream from behind.
“Lyle! H-Help!”
The Quilava turned and saw Irune pinned to the ground, with a Chesnaught from the hallway crouched and holding her down. Without thinking, he turned back and spewed fire at the Chesnaught’s arm. The Grass-type winced and lost his grip briefly as Lyle ran ahead, reaching out for the Axew to pull her up.
Time seemed to go by at a standstill when Lyle briefly spotted a pinkish ray coming from the corner of his eyes. The next thing he knew, he felt an unseen force slam into his body and he tumbled to the ground, his head pulsing in agony. The Quilava bit back pain, summoning angry fire in his throat when a blue and black blur zipped in corkscrewing through the air.
He felt a stabbing pain at his side and his feet left the ground. Then came the thudding smack of the back of his head into a brick wall, before he fell to the ground. He lay in a daze and wheezed for air, watching as the muddy shape of an Espeon in army plates entered his vision, before glancing off rightward.
“Good hit there, Oberstleutnant,” the Espeon’s voice said. “I was honestly surprised he was still able to get up after my Psybeam.”
Lyle’s eyes briefly widened, but his vision remained as shaky as ever as he saw a Corvisquire in green plate with an army scarf with a blue Stabsofficier crystal step forward. The Corvisquire stared down at him briefly, before shaking her head and averting her gaze.
“... What a waste,” she murmured.
“C-Come on, Lyle! Please! Get back up!”
Irune’s voice was crying out in the background. Lyle’s breaths came ragged and short as something about it sounded scared.
“Lyle, please! Don’t let them take you too!”
… ‘Him too’? Lyle reflexively tried to force himself onto his feet, only for talons to press down on his body and stop him. The Corvisquire hesitated for a moment, when a sharp thump rang out and a low growling voice filled the alley.
“Feldwebel Helmholtz, stop staring and help Fähnrich Rank secure the Dyad and get her back indoors. We can’t afford any more unexpected surprises after all this time.”
Lyle woozily looked up and saw Lacan poking his helmeted head out past the doorway. The Espeon stiffened up at attention and drifted off as Lyle reflexively tried to build fire up in his throat to force the Corvisquire off of him, only for nothing other than wheezing smoke and sparks to come out. He looked up where for a brief moment, he saw the Flying-type looking down at him and shuffling the hem of her scarf up towards her mouth with her wing.
Perhaps it was his spinning head, but Lyle could’ve sworn that something about her expression looked tired. Almost sad.
“All units, this is Rakete. Sucher and I are at an inn at Schiffsplatz, Salemstraße 5,” she said. “We have the Dyad. Bring the transport so we can get things out of public view…”
Sophia’s words began to slur together after the address. He heard Irune cry out again, but now her words were too muddled for him to make out. With the last of his strength, he turned his head and saw Pokémon in green plates carrying Irune off back into the Möbius as he felt someone doing the same to him.
And his captor’s grasp slipped. He fell forward and his head hit the ground, and then the world went black.
Author’s Notes
Alt Title
Kapitel 30 - Zugzwang*
*‘Zugzwang’ is a term meaning ‘forced move’ originating from games like chess where it is a rule that players cannot forgo moves, and entered English as a loanword as chess terminology in the early 20th century. In both languages, it is usable as a term to referring to situations where one is forced into making a disadvantageous move.
Words and Phrases
1. Kornbrand - A type of distilled spirit traditionally made in the Germanosphere primarily from wheat or rye. Also frequently called “Korn” or “Kornbranntwein”, with some names being preferred for varieties with higher or lower alcohol by volume.
Dialogue
D1. “Gebt auf. Ihr könnt nicht mehr gewinnen.” - “Give up. You can’t win anymore.”
Teaser Text
Newangle City, 20. Herbstmond, 1027 n. d. B.
Lacan,
I received your message about the information that those contacts forwarded you about our targets and was able to confirm them. There is indeed an inn attached to a theater on Salemstraße 5ᵃ, and everything about the description they provided matches up.
I’m gathering everyone I can from the Fähnlein who’s in the city and still able to serve right now, but we need those contacts to provide as complete as possible a list of potential escape routes from this inn, since there’s only so much I can find by casing its surroundings. The Dyad escaped us once tonight from overlooked exits and if they elude us again a second time, we risk losing their trail entirely.
I know that you’re worried about me after our close call earlier tonight, but I’m confident that we can deal with the ones directly attached to the hideout once we know of them. The wider surroundings are another matter. We will likely need the help of the local Gendarmen to help secure things.
I understand that there is not much time to work with since we need to make our move at the break of dawn, but I will meet you back at your apartment to try and finalize any planning before relaying instructions to Fähnrich Rank and the others.
I confess that there are some other reasons for wanting to meet beforehand. As your subordinate, as your loyal companion, there are a few requests about how to handle our targets after capture that have been weighing on me that I’d like to discuss off the record.
I’ll explain more when we meet, but they have to do with some concerns about the Dyad’s emotional state. I understand that she will likely be under some level of duress regardless of whatever we do due to her nature as an inherently volatile being. Some of those records you asked me to review earlier today have me a bit worried about whether unduly distressing her would risk her power emerging too soon for it to be used for our mission.
- Urgent dispatch from Ritterin von Herbergau, Sophia Krarmors to Graf von Wellenhafen, Lacan Dragorans
a. German convention for formatting an address. Roughly equivalent to “5 Salem Street” in English.
Wow, this chapter felt... surprisingly shorter than the usual ones. I guess the word count being around 25% smaller will do that, even if it is still a high number by PMD fic standards.
There's a certain irony that this fic has now also seen the outgunned protags' luck finally run out... temporarily, at least. I'm sure there will be some sort of wild and crazy circumstances that will allow them to escape captivity. Otherwise the fic's just kinda over. And it doesn't feel like we're in the late or endgame yet, despite your desires for this fic to be on the sorter side. (I guess it is still a fair bit shorter, but I'm expecting it to blow past half a million words anyway.) The best guess I can offer is that Irune does go berserk with her powers and that creates an escape opening. It would follow up with the recent reveals. And is also a method that I feel would involve the least amount of bullshit given how outmuscled and outgunned the protags are. It's fun to root for underdogs, yes, but I think you've swung the pendulum perhaps a bit too far in that direction, to where their miraculous escapes have kept breaking my willful suspension of disbelief.
But hey! At least Irune is owned up to the fact she's the original dragon. I'm not sure if you're actually gonna show it as a fakemon of some sort or if the best we're getting is White/Black Kyurem. I've seen, like, one original dragon design that I actually vibe with. I'm fairly picky in that regard.
Or maybe she'll just keep manifesting powers without turning into the dragon(s). I don't really know how it works for Pyra/Mythra. I guess if Irune turns into an entirely different dragon that's more tsundere, I'll have an answer.
Guys. For the love of god. The scarf stuff doesn't help. It's been 30+ chapters. You've done scarf changes several times. As long as you're together, you're like a walking fingerprint. Cut it out.
They let us do our thing as long as we don’t rock the boat too much, and once in a while, they call in a favor from us they can’t have their own paws on.
interested in this kind of thing, that would no doubt be a challenge they would relish and absorb the information like a Vileplume using Giga Drain.
