A/N: I still don't own Pokémon or Dungeons and Dragons, and won't in the foreseeable future.
-X-
Relim gasped. A green, insectile beast, with swords for arms, stood in front of him. It looked around curiously, and then turned into a flash of red and returned to its ball. Joey looked pleased with his share of the treasure, and walked back out of the room. "The rest's all yours," he threw back over his shoulder.
The three party members who didn't summon weird monsters inspected their treasure. Artan grabbed a magic halberd, Maranus found a ring of fire resistance, and Relim helped himself to a suit of enchanted leather armour.
The sacks of coins were split evenly, and then the room was empty again. A large part of being an adventurer was knowing when to take all the treasure and then leave quickly before more things turned up and tried to kill you. Relim planned to be over halfway back to town before any other monsters realised what had happened to the Kobolds and their treasure.
By the time that everyone had left the Kobolds' treasury, though, they had already encountered difficulties – as they rounded the corner, they walked right into six orcs! Without hesitation, Relim rolled forwards and stabbed the first two with his daggers, then spun on one heel and slashed a throat. Artan had also exploded into action and had cut two orcs down with a single mighty swing. Maranus had chanted something, then grabbed the last orc's face. Cuts erupted all over his body and he fell to the ground, dead. Joey stood there gaping at everyone else's reactions. "How did you get to be so fast?" he asked.
"Well," Relim explained, "when you see a few slower people get gutted before they know what his them, it makes you a little more nervous and quicker on your feet. I hope you get to learn a different way, though."
Artan cut him off with a glance. "This isn't just a group of orcs. They're scouts for a larger force, and it looks like they're coming from the exit! With this large a scouting party, there must be over 50 orcs on their way here."
"So, what do we do?" Maranus asked. "Try to cut through, go round, or find another exit?"
"We should try to go around using the tunnels down here", Relim said. "They can't block all the passages with a large enough force to stop us at once, and it's unlikely they'll try since they shouldn't know we're here."
"Whatever we do, we need to hurry," Artan added. It was decided. Relim led his companions off down a side tunnel that went around the main part of the dungeon, then doubled back towards the entrance.
-X-
It was impossible, Relim decided. There was no way in the Nine Hells that orcs could be smart enough to trap an adventuring party. There must be another force at work here. He looked back to Maranus and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Then, he guided the group back to the last intersection. The map he had showed that all routes that led out were blocked. There was nowhere to go but further down.
Maranus closed her eyes and carefully used her natural, carefully-hidden powers to reach out and around with her mind, looking for intruders. It only took her seconds to spot a huge presence that glowed purple. It noticed her and suddenly disappeared. She opened her eyes and prepared to announce to the group that they were definitely being remotely tracked, and this intelligence was probably linked to the orcs, when she felt a powerful wave of energy blast her.
-X-
When Maranus came to, she was being carried by Artan. She looked up and saw that they were in a different part of the dungeon. "What… what happened?" she asked.
Joey looked at her. "You had a weird trance, and when it was over, you screamed and collapsed."
Relim nodded, adding "You've been unconscious for about an hour. We've been forced deeper into the dungeon, although I don't understand how or why."
"I saw something," Maranus explained. "A psychic presence, really powerful, which took me by surprise. I think it's controlling the orcs. They're arranged so that we can't get through without a fight, and each group is big enough to cause serious problems."
Artan looked thoughtful. "The best way out is to find a weaker point in their lines, and hit them there on a battleground of our choice. Or we could go deeper and deeper into the dungeon."
After a quick discussion, it was decided. A weak point would be found and exploited, and the group would make a break for the surface. However, none of them knew where a good point to attack would be.
Artan, as always, was the clever one. "So you say this presence felt very intelligent, correct?" Maranus nodded. "Ergo, he will have a troop distribution that is optimal against us. We need to defeat his orcs on our terms, which means breaking his expectations. And the one wild card we have is Joey."
Joey was very surprised, it appeared. "What can I do?" he asked.
"It's simple," Relim said. He was proud of the way he'd been able to follow and use Artan's reasoning – sometimes the ugly fighter had 'mad old wizard' levels of genius. "We use a battleground that your secret monster can make good use of, and then use it to swing the battle our way. What kind of terrain do you need?"
-X-
The leader of this orc group looked confident. Life had been good lately. He had been given an even larger group to control, he was going to receive a lot of treasure, and he was working for a very cunning and powerful chief. As always, he couldn't remember the new chief exactly, not that he cared much. Life was good.
The dozen or so orcs behind him thought the same, although to a lesser extent. They had some loot, some food and beer, and an enemy. As the group marched down the long, winding corridor, they were in fairly high spirits. Up ahead was a cave where they could have a rest and relax in the water pool.
As the group entered the cavern, an ear-splitting screech echoed around the room. The whole group huddled together, some dropping weapons and shields to clap their arms over their ears. A handful of arrows and slingstones shot out at the orcs, coming from behind some of the large stalagmites that adorned the room. The leader, sensing his moment for glory, charged, and most of his followers came after him. All that stopped, though, when some of the boulders on the floor turned into a huge monster that drove its horn through the first orc's chest, and then flailed its tail – which had somehow turned to metal – through the charging ranks, dropping many.
The ambushers had used surprise effectively so far, and now they moved in to finish off the rest on foot. A shadow darted out from behind a pillar, slitting a throat before disappearing again. Another foe simply used a huge polearm to deal out death from behind the monster, while a third was using a glowing mace that flung orcs against the cavern walls. But the scariest of all was the youngling who simply rode the boulder-wyrm that was causing so much havoc.
From a hidden passage on the other side of the cavern, over 30 human bandit reinforcements poured in and massed in front of the battle, awaiting the command to join the combat. At a barked order they moved forward to attack. Too late, the brigands saw the trap. The rock beast reared up and slammed its entire length into a stalactite patch, sending the whole lot down onto the new arrivals! Their officer could glimpse, through the dust, the orcs getting slaughtered by the trio of adventurers, before he fainted from the blood loss of both legs being crushed.
Only four of the reinforcements reached the fight, and they were barely in time to watch the last orc fall. The darting shadow took one bandit down, a second fell to a well-placed blow by the big burly fighter, and a heavy mace ended the third one's life. "All yours!" the fighter shouted to the wyrm-rider. A flash of red, and the monster disappeared. Another flash, this one white, and a huge purple snake was in its place. A single darting motion, and there were no more orcs in the cavern.
"Well, that was a lot easier than expected!" Relim said. He held his arm over to Maranus, so she could inspect and heal the long gash from an orc's dagger.
Maranus looked up from Artan's leg, which had a spear-tip embedded in it. "We should be all healed and able to move in 5 minutes. I was surprised at the number of people in the second wave. How did you guess there would be reinforcements, anyway, Artan?"
"We were being herded around by a force that was stronger than us, but split up into several weaker groups. It made sense that we could fight our way through, and if I can figure it out, so can the mysterious yet very clever enemy leader. To stop us, he'd have to know where we were going to attack and send more troops there. Since he's aware of this, and he's managed to mobilise a large number of orcs – probably the hardest race to take control of for creatures that are clever rather than strong – it seemed likely for him to have some other troops too, who would be shadowing the orc forces."
Relim nodded. He'd figured it out himself, after some hints from Artan. He turned to loot the bodies and make sure they were all dead.
"Knowing this, I planned our battle to defeat two separate waves of foes – the first in open combat to lure out the reinforcements, the second (more numerous) wave with a trap. If we'd trapped the first group, then the second group would be more prepared. Also, it's likely that the second wave would be stronger than the first as they were the force that was meant to defeat us."
Artan looked at Maranus. "Do you understand what I'm saying?" At her puzzled look, he sighed. "Never mind. By the way, Joey, what was that creature's name that you used?"
"It's an Onix!" Joey said. "It's immune to lightning and strong against physical attacks and fire, but it's weak against water and plant attacks. It's also, as you may have noticed, rather big and strong."
"It definitely came in handy," Relim admitted, back from his grisly business. "I think without it, we'd have been in serious danger."
"All healed!" Maranus said. "Let's get out of here before more enemies turn up."
The four adventurers turned and left the cave, empty except for the bodies of the fallen.
-X-
A/N: Please review this if you enjoyed it. If I don't have any reviews by the end of Chapter 3, I'll probably make Chapter 4 the last one. Also, I'm thinking about having one of the three 'normal' adventurers get a starter Pokémon – not necessarily one of the starters from the games – and first person to request one of the characters to start their Pokémon adventure gets their wish granted.