"This is bad. This is really bad." was the only thing going through Phoebe's mind as another wave of screams and pain-filled garbles shook through the ritual room. Another slash of metal against soft flesh, another body hitting the floor amid the chaos and confusion.
The enraged Aegislash causing the brunt of the disorder was stationed in the center of what remained of the seance circle, flanked by two Doublade's and a handful of Honedge's currently taking their fury on the surrounding Hex Maniacs and Channelers. What Pokemon they sent out in their defense were quickly cut down by the merciless blades of the stronger Ghost-type Pokemon or absorbed by the swirling violet vortex resting beneath the Aegislash.
The entire ordeal was meant to be nothing more than a simple contact between the land of the living and the realm of the dead. A meeting between both worlds to exchange greetings and news of either side. As well as a welcome to the Hex Maniacs visiting from faraway Kalos coming to say hello to their sisters native to Hoenn. Both sects at the moment, sadly, being massacred by the foreign swords they had brought with them. An unforeseen consequence of Pokemon unused to the ghostly energy housed in Mt. Pyre reacting to the merger of the twin realms in the worst way imaginable.
One of the still-living Maniacs attempted to soothe her ceaseless companion, a Honedge, as it spewed spheres of dark matter and metallic fury around the crypt. Big, bulging, and tear-stained orbs of swirly violet misery resting above a shaking frown. Snot filled with fear and wet worry dripped from her runny nose as she begged for her friend to calm down and stop hurting people, to stop hurting their shared family.
The single eye of her Honedge stared thoughtlessly at her for a moment, and then it answered her.
Her head fell to the floor, and after a moment, so did the rest of her. Features to forevermore be stained with heartbreak and the shock of being murdered by your closest of friends. Wide-eyed purple peepers with a whirlpool of a pupil, never to blink again.
Phoebe cursed bitterly, infuriated that she had left the majority of her team, save for Dusknoir, at the League. Maybe if she had them alongside her right now, all these lives being lost could have been saved.
Such thoughts are as pointless as the regret that fuels them, however, and Phoebe was more than well aware of that. With that train of thought on her mind, she took a deep breath and became determined to not shame her status as an Elite Four member any longer. She was going to help these people or die trying.
"Dusknoir, use Imprison!" shouted the spectral Master as she tossed out her Pokeball, bellowing out a monstrous cyclops of ectoplasmic anger. The behemoth did as it was commanded and ushered out a seal to confine the hazardous arms into the center of the room.
"There's your shot! Take it and get the hell out of here. Now! I don't know how long the seal will last!" Phoebe screamed at the survivors. A haunted gaggle of girlish bodies flew out of the crypt as quickly as their legs would allow them to. Injured carrying injured stumbled out morosely behind them as all but the deceased or soon to be were left.
The bindings were being broken far faster than Phoebe had hoped. She had prayed to the spirits that they would remain long enough for help to arrive or at least a moment for her to think of a solution, but her prayers were left unanswered as the furious clangs of temperamental steel shattered the barrier standing between her and Dusknoir and them.
Phoebe looked on at the small armory before her and then issued a grim order to her partner. "Dusknoir, if things go bad, you know what to do." she said with calm acceptance unfit for the youth of the one holding it.
The enormous phantom trailed its single eye toward her for a moment, staring, and then back to the problem at hand. A single nod being the response to the decisive command his trainer called out.
The blades were dissatisfied with the spoils of meat and red their earlier victims had given them. They wanted more, a thirst unquenched and filling the corrupted swords with a senseless requirement of sheer and total violence against the living. With a hunger for more shrieks of despair and crimson copper coating their metal, they aimed themselves towards the spirit dancer and attacked.
With two tiny words, the rampaging swords stopped despite the haze of hatred clouding their minds and hesitantly looked upwards at the ceiling, just as the heavy stone began to fall on top of them and the rest of the cramped mausoleum.
"Dusknoir, Earthquake!" she grinned, as the walls fell.
The foundation of a building over hundreds of years old began to crumble and break as the force of the ground began to shiver throughout the ancient stone. Moss-covered tombstones and dusty urns broke apart and shattered as the surface they stood upon split into two. Glints of steel and tainted purple flew through the air as those wielding them tried to avoid the onslaught of earth assaulting them, but their balance was broken and their defenses smashed as they were buried underneath hundreds of pounds of heavy rubble and dirt.
Phoebe took solace in the fact that the shadowy tormentors were firmly stopped even as the exit of the old crypt was blocked by what seemed like a mountain of brick and mortar. Far too large to pick through or climb over as the rest of the ceiling became the floor. Her Dusknoir looked at her with what she could only envision to be a frown on his grim visage.
She smiled back towards him and then sighed. Being a Ghost-type without a wholly physical form, Dusknoir could turn intangible and avoid the collapsing debris, unlike his trainer. One would assume that he could spread such powers to his trainer, but that was simply not how it worked. Interacting with the physical world, in this case, carrying his trainer through the ever-growing piles of detritus, would require him to become solid, susceptible to the rocks hurling themselves downwards, which would doom the both of them to a fate amongst the forgotten stones.
With depressed energy, Dusknoir stared at his trainer for a single moment that seemed to stretch on for ages, and she did the same to him in return.
With one more nod towards Phoebe, just as he did before, he left her there just as she had commanded him to.
The masonry made into a makeshift coffin continued to crumble and fall around Phoebe. Her last thoughts before the coming weight of stone crushed her was a simple wish that she could have been danced underneath the pale moonlight of Mt. Pyre one final time.