The Upholder of Duty
Chapter 11: The Meadow and the Mountain
"So, what do we do now?"
Dragonfire looked up to see both of his companions watching him expectantly. How did he know what to do?
"What? Oh, well, er… I don't know. Plow on to Litaham city, I guess? I mean…" The Shelgon felt awkward. He knew nothing of leadership or journeying; why were they asking him?
"We don't even know where we are," lamented Agnos, for the thirty-sixth time.
The sudden, overwhelming challenge thrust upon Xir'clai in their last battle seemed to have set her mind into a heightened state, and awakened a hereditary technique lying dormant there: Teleport. ("After all," the Kirlia had remarked bitterly, a while later, "all we can do is run.") Beset by the force of septuple Confusions, instinct had taken rein over the Kirlia's mind, and she had blasted the three far away from the Lunatone.
Unfortunately, she had not found the time to aim.
Somewhere in the middle of some unnamed, godforsaken forest, Agnos and Xir'clai fell silent, most likely trying another vain attempt to find their bearings telepathically together. Dragonfire stared broodingly into their campfire. He very dearly wanted to get something accomplished, or at least try, but it was impossible to set himself into motion. Compared to wild standards, their battling was pitiful, but would they truly progress at all even if they redoubled their Sparring? And was it worth the danger to try and engage some of the forest savages into battle? The Shelgon didn't know what spur-of-the-moment thought had brought him out of the safety of Serafoculaton in the first place, but it was certainly not welcome in his mind.
His reverie was interrupted, once again, by Xir'clai. "What do you think, Drakeball?"
"What?" It wasn't lack of attention which caused Dragonfire to ask this time; he certainly didn't remember the Kirlia saying anything before this.
"What?" the Psychic echoed. "Oh, yes, Agnos and I were discussing in our heads exactly what you were whining in yours about. We will have to eventually train ourselves to the normal battling standards, you know."
"Xir'clai," Agnos explained, "was suggesting we head to the outskirts of the woods, where there are just Taillow and Zigzagoon and Pokèmon like them. A lot of them can gladly pick a fight, though, if anyone's willing to battle them."
"And no," said the Kirlia, "we aren't so pathetic that we can't handle a few Wingull."
"Get out of my head!" Dragonfire yelled, as any rational non-Psychic-type would do if a Psychic had picked up two of his private thoughts in quick succession with her Telepathy.
"Well, you're just radiating irrational despair; I can't really block you out, can I?"
Dragonfire shot an exasperated glance at Agnos. Few appreciated the suffering a Pokèmon endured, living with natural telepath. The Bagon failed to sympathetically return the glance, leaving a very irritated, slightly nonplussed Dragonfire back in his brooding silence. Agnos had gained a newfound attachment to Xir'clai after her split-second maneuver out of their match with the Lunatone.
Finally, Dragonfire relented in his determined lack of logic. "About the suggestion… I don't think we should stay at one place for a long time. We need to get to Croyaliton as soon as possible, remember. How about we zip to the nearest peaceful forest community we find, get a bearing on where on earth we are, and continue? Except," he added, his mind reluctantly falling into motion, "we could stay near the borders of the wilderness, so that the sort of Pokèmon you were talking about challenge us from time to time."
There was a period of great, profound thought on the matter, and then a unanimous acceptance of the idea of screwing it all and just doing what Dragonfire had said, whatever it was.
"Down," Agnos said in a bored voice, as another battle-obsessed Taillow fell before his claws. The companions had found a workable supply of weak, warlike Pokèmon to challenge them in the thick of the forest, but civilization and actual intelligence still eluded them, and thus they decided to try and find their way out of the forest and contemplate the scenery from a more open place.
"You know, maybe we should look for more challenging battlers than these," Dragonfire offered.
'Shut up," the disgruntled Taillow offered back as he limped back to his dwelling.
"No, but really…" the Shelgon persisted, once their temporary enemy had dragged himself out of hearing range.
"I think that's getting very, very obvious by now," Xir'clai agreed.
"But it's fun to beat them up!" Agnos protested, then relented before one of Xir'clai's looks (and, perhaps, the ominous Alakazam materializing threateningly from her either side). Dragonfire attempted to exchange another exasperated look in sympathy with the Bagon, but failed for the second time in that day.
"How much have we progressed this training session, really?" Xir'clai called out very loudly and pointedly, attempting to bring order to the assembly. "Maybe we should keep track of that. You know, record just how our skills improve over time."
"Already doing that," Agnos chimed, surprising the Kirlia, which seemed to be his intention. "You're right, Dragonfire, we really aren't progressing at all with these weaklings."
"Oh, great Latias above, thank you dearly for granting your wisdom to this hopeless cause…" There was, perhaps, a note of genuine sincerity in Xir'clai's jest, but it was lost in the bout of snickering which followed, and Agnos' own somewhat dominating opinions on the matter. Dragonfire waited patiently for the Bagon to finish explaining his outlook somewhat physically, and could not resist laughing out loud when he failed to do so due to the overwhelming amount of Barriers Xir'clai had suddenly piled upon herself.
The Shelgon was half-tempted to join in the impromptu Sparring match when Xir'clai suddenly seemed to remember her element, and the sort of civilities which were expected by those who dwelled in it. She proceeded to very civilly incapacitate Agnos with a well-placed Confusion, turn, with infinite dignity, to the stretch of forest still remaining before them, and wait patiently for her companions to follow.
The trauma to his mental faculties seemed to snap Agnos out of his fascination for Xir'clai. Rising shakily, he grumbled for a few minutes about Psychic-types and sheer insanity, then finally paid back to Dragonfire the stockpile of exasperated looks which had been growing throughout the day. Ah, the Shelgon said to himself, relieved, the Agnos we all know and love.
Not so much love, admittedly, but still… echoed Xir'clai's thoughts, rebounding through Dragonfire's head jarringly. A bout of insane, irrational happiness very abruptly bled through the telepathic link, overflowing from her mind, and the Psychic shouted slights at both of her companions before sprinting lightly off into the woods.
"MUST WE LOSE ONE TO GAIN ANOTHER?" was the general opinion of both of those who were forced to attempt to catch up with her.
Eventually, however, after many such incidents contributed to dispelling boredom and despair, the inevitable finally reported for duty, and Dragonfire and his dysfunctional companions began to near the forest border. They sprinted quickly through the ever-lightening jumble of trees, faster as it became clear that freedom was coming at last, and then stopped in their tracks as the trunks before them finally cleared out.
Before them was a land completely unrecognizable by any of their memories. They were still looking horizontally at a shore-side route; but a fairly steep cliff quickly rose up to border the inner side of the road leading to their left, and, after running purposefully forward for a sizable distance, the route itself maneuvered a ninety-degree turn, hugging the similarly shaped cliff, to lead to the direction opposite to the one they were facing.
It had been so long since their last lesson in cartography and angles of perception that trying to make sense of all of this taxed their minds rather heavily.
"Dragonfire," Xir'clai shot, "how often are Serafoculatonian maps updated?"
"Huh? Oh, I don't know. It depends on how far the place is from Serafoculaton, I guess. They usually don't keep them outdated any more than a century, though."
"A century?" was the incredulous reply. "All right, well, you wouldn't have very major geographic changes in a century, correct? It usually takes billions of years to form a cliff or raise a mountain."
"I – I guess…"
"Where are we?" Agnos suddenly blurted, with his trademark shrewdness.
Xir'clai ignored him. "Unless… it wasn't a natural change. This could be something we know very well, but… but…"
The Kirlia's voice sank, trailing off to seemingly fruitless mental pursuits.
"We're never going to find out, are we?" Agnos continued, and Dragonfire agreed despondently. The Shelgon's prior brooding was returning twofold, and it seemed to latch on to Agnos and Xir'clai with equal ferocity. How on earth had he ever accepted the idea of this suicidal journey, and why had he let his friends join in the fruits of his stupidity? A sudden, paralyzing wave of despair fell over him, blocking out all thought; and if a passerby had cared to look their way at that moment, he may have marveled about the expertness of the three burdened sculptures which stood to the path to the forest.
The campfire stood up from the gloom around it with a near unbreakable certainty, glowing brilliant cyan. Cyan with dragonfire, cyan with the spirit of the Salamence… How dearly Pyroken Serafoculus longed for the fire of the Dragons of Serafoculaton! The only fire in all this gloom was their own weak spirit, barely lighting the center of the bleak clearing where they rested.
Not one of the trio had seen the benefit in moving forward at all after their supposed defeat, and thus they had set up rudimentary camp close to the forest border itself, expending just enough energy to get them through the night. Dragonfire alone, seemingly, felt the urge to talk in all the stifling silence, and his desire eventually grew greater than he could hold inside him.
"Er…" he signaled, casting about for a subject not already canvassed out of all its taste by their internal voices; "How are you… what do you think… I mean…"
The looks Agnos and Xir'clai chose as reply did little to assist him in this task. Eventually, however –
"You know, I just noticed, but I couldn't help wondering… my Twisters, they seem to be getting more and more controllable even though I barely use them nowadays. Isn't that weird, you know, I just don't practice but they still improve, it's like getting a continuous flow of dragonfire, not me, but the fire itself," – he laughed nervously – "without having to recharge, you know what I mean? I mean, it's like…"
This outburst of incoherence elicited such looks from his companions that conversation was, this time, completely thrust from his mind. Several minutes of awkward silence ensued, at the end of which Agnos finally obliged.
"My dad said skill at making Twisters usually grows on its own or something."
Though the taut silence could not be completely freed by this one statement, a faint hint of ease was discharged into the atmosphere. It was enough for Dragonfire to work with.
"Really," he continued, "did he say why?" The Shelgon began with the first idea which entered his mind, desperately.
"I don't really remember. There was something about occasional stimulation causing continuous growth, and this apparently happened only with that one move."
Dragonfire proceeded with another pause, in which he tried, once again, to look for things to say. He opened his mouth, and Agnos chose that very time to add on to his previous statement.
"Oh, and he said there were exceptions, but he didn't tell me which ones."
"Oh," Dragonfire blurted. "Cool."
The silence threatened to return with full force, looming over them with greater menace than ever before. It pushed back their defenses, defeating their feeble army of words, gaining to within a hair of their central fortresses –
"My Teleport's like that, too," Xir'clai suddenly blurted.
"Really?" Agnos ejaculated, surprised that the Kirlia would talk about herself so openly. She immediately remembered her usual guards, and a tiny flush crept up the sides of her face from her prior mistake as she covered it up.
"I thought we were gone for sure back then, Xir'clai," Dragonfire said fervently. "If it wasn't for your thinking, we could have died."
"Yeah," Agnos agreed, though with a bit of uncertainty, "that was really good thinking."
Xir'clai immediately cocked her head to the side. Her expression (or, rather, the aura she could not help but exude) was one she often employed when she had picked up something objectionable with her telepathy
"I know I'm the cause for most of our problems right now," she said, with a hint of irritation, "but I did the best I could under the circumstances. You know that, right?"
Agnos suddenly looked mortified. "I never blamed you for any of this – "
"Say that to someone who isn't a telepath," the Kirlia replied rather unpleasantly, though she seemed unsure as to whether she meant offense at this stage.
"All I'm saying is that if you could have given a [Ilittle[/I more thought…"
"Yeah, right, as if that really was the time for thought-out, reasoned decisions. It was life or death – "
"How much would a second's thought have cost us?"
" – life or death, and there was only so much I could do – "
"Just a second's thought!"
" – with seven expert Confusions bearing down on me as I tried simultaneously to discover a hidden technique in my mind – "
"You're the Kirlia here, your mind must be much more complex than ours – "
" – AND NOT ONLY THAT, BUT I HAD TO SAVE YOUR USELESS HIDES – "
Dragonfire had been stunned into silence before this, but he suddenly noticed the towering bonfire before him, flaring with every emphasis on Agnos' words, and the shrill burst of slight psychic pain which pulsed in rhythm to Xir'clai's exclamations. Recognizing danger, he intervened.
"STOP IT, BOTH OF YOU!"
Both arguers realized their faults with a jerk, and, chagrined, fell into their own bitter thoughts. All four eyes looked to the ground beneath them, but, in a sudden rush of instinct, Dragonfire forced them into contact with his own.
Agnos was the easier to coax.
It was no use to try and talk to him privately, so Dragonfire said it out loud: "I know Xir'clai can be exhausting, I know how she can play on the strangest of things, but remember that inside, she's like every one of us. Yes, you do think she didn't do right when she Teleported us out, but everyone thinks that somewhere deep inside. You need to learn how to let that remain inside you, so it doesn't come out and affect the way to behave. It doesn't matter that a part of you hates her for not aiming, just don't let that part control you."
The words seemed to come and go as if they had a mind of their own, and left a peculiar memory in Dragonfire's mind, so alien that he was not sure whether he had even spoken them. And yet, inexplicably, they carried the whiff of new opportunity, as if they were only the first hints of a whole new world.
Agnos blinked, stunned. He raised his downcast head, seemingly so affected by this display that his bad temper was dispelled for the moment.
Xir'clai was next. "You did good, Xir'clai. It doesn't matter what others say, that was some wonderful thinking, and" – he locked his eyes with hers, impressing the truth of his words with indubitable fullness – "there was nothing more you could have done."
The sudden altered state of consciousness expended itself, but the deed was done. Bewildered, unsure, defenseless, Dragonfire, Agnos and Xir'clai would see this dark journey to the end.