Chapter 30 - Colloids
The wheeze of hydrothermal pressure hissed an invariable echo through Steam Cave's corridors. Gone was the moderate dampness of the forest, replaced with a tangible pressure that irritated the surfaces of scales and fur. Restrained vision that the forest's fog had introduced was resupplied to us at the cost of an ill-conditioned ecosystem that effectively stifled any conceptions of an easy, complacent climb.
Those few hours spent outside in the almost tranquilizing air of the Grass Continent was now transfixed into a mystery dungeon practically designed to accommodate the elephant in the room - one we got closer to with every step. Every drop of humidity that my home continent was so conventionally named for was being put to shame, while the scrutinization of every cranny for clues and hazards hardly civilized the climb. Matted fur and the occasional strained pant raised no morales as floors and temperatures ascended together in a vertical race, my own allergic response dismissing my appetite for light conversation. It wasn't anything like the depths of hell, so to speak, but the loss of electrolytes alone seemed to tease the idea of dragging us there. This place was alive with the blood of boiling liquid, and we were crawling through its beating, boiling arteries - not an ideal place to spend the waning evening.
"Woo- its hot in here!" Helioptile exclaimed only a few minutes in. "We had saunas back in the northern Sand Continent, but this place brings home the bacon."
Mincinno peeked his head around a wayward passage to the right before signaling us forward. "You're not wrong," he said. "It would make sense that this would serve as a home for- what was his name? Volcano-something?"
"Volcanion," I corrected, mostly drawing from memories of the Great Valley encounter. "He called himself 'master of fire and water'."
"Sounds about right," Vulpix said, wiping a bead of sweat off of the tip of her nose. "I had heard a bit about Fogbound Lake when traveling with Comfey and Brionne, but I wasn't expecting there to be some sort of cave in between." She glanced up at one of the openings above our heads that led beyond what we could see or realistically reach. "-Especially a set of catacombs filtering steam to the top that also serves as a mystery dungeon"
"A great explorer once said that you've got to go through hell to see the wonders of this world," Mincinno remarked. "This isn't too far off, huh?"
"Guess not," Leah answered while bouncing one of her twigs to the edge of her lips. "We were prepared for this kind of struggle though, right Sage?"
I shrugged and nodded. "Right. It's... just too bad we aren't here to sightsee. That Pokemon-statue out there by the entrance, whatever species it was when it was alive, proves we're in the right place. We've got to be careful."
As soon as I said this, Mincinno's aqua tail rapidly did away with a wild Marcargo that slithered out of one of the smaller geyser holes sticking out of the craggy corridor we were filed into.
"Damn straight," the normal-type concurred, turning around to see the rest of us. "Watch our angles. These buggers don't seem too tough but there'll probably be more."
Notwithstanding the immediate future - what we would say to Volcanion, or what we would do if things went south - we pushed forward with caution in mind. Of course, we were not alone in our climb, and that first feral was no lone party; fire-types and rock-types patrolled the hissing catacombs intent on seeking out the pretentious intruders tainting their hallowed stomping grounds. They came with the acrimony of a bloodthirsty army but also with the insolence of their kind, and the unorganized chaos accompanying them would at best amount to inflicting a few insignificant bruises and burns before they were forced into submission.
The elemental advantage of the dungeon was definitely not a non-factor as the perspiration intensified with every attack launched, but it could not surmount to the fact that we were prepared with items and proper training. As if my appreciation for the little bulbs of fun wasn't already at its crux, the stock of blast seeds I had at my hip quickly found favor in my jaws against the fire-types that I preferred to keep a distance from. The bursts of energy exploding from my mouth gave me a sore neck from the recoil and burned the top of my gums, but these mild discomforts were nothing compared to the satisfaction of humbling an unsuspecting feral. And while the type matchup planted the tiniest seed of foreboding in our heads about who we were really here for, confidence was always heightened for the briefest moment when another floor was conquered. Enough food was packed to last everyone days, and I even had the foresight to add extra rawst berries to the mix, special commodities that were now proving invaluable.
Perhaps the biggest initial struggle was the organized assault not too long after - a monster house that admittedly caught me entirely off my guard. Even then, the tough part wasn't so much dealing with the enemy Pokemon, whose execution and coordination were subpar once my teammates and I gathered our bearings. Our struggle persisted to be one of endurance, for each foot in front of the other gradually drained the energy of our bodies exerting forces in this foreign biome.
At one point, the ferals started to come with decreased numbers and no improvement in strength to make up for it, and then eventually stopped coming altogether. Mincinno and Vulpix were conversing together in verbal stride about how they all must have just given up, when the real reason we weren't encountering any Pokemon was indiscreetly revealed from the heart of the dungeon.
Mincinno shrugged and glanced behind us momentarily. "...I swear, we probably scared them a-"
A vine whip split the air and silenced him mid-sentence. Something in the back of my head tingled, something vividly familiar, and it didn't feel quite right. He turned his head slightly and narrowed his eyes back with an interrogation prepared, but a unnatural vibration preventing his mouth from opening.
The first tick didn't fully register with all of the surrounding sensual competition, but the second and third ticks turned my blood to ice as cold realization set in.
It can't be...
But I knew I wasn't just going crazy. I was certain it wasn't just me hearing things, because I wasn't alone in my surprise. All five of us heard it start at roughly the same time, and my companions froze in their tracks to allow for the frightening revelation to confirm itself as indisputable fact. Leah let out the tiniest of muffled gasps and was caught between a defensive stance and a mortified crouch, Vulpix mirroring her contingency in the moment following. Helioptile and Mincinno froze mid-step and didn't move an inch afterward. Dreadful recognition hit me the hardest, rightfully so considering my previous experiences, and I had to momentarily balance myself on my partner's shoulder to keep from tripping.
Then we waited.
I couldn't be certain whether it was the position we had reached or the pressure of nearing our target that kick-started the sound, but not even the turbulent increase in the vapor's whispering could hush the ethereal clock's rage. This had been the same group of five to hear it for the first time, but that only served to give the insidious sound a symbolic meaning that promised us minimal fortune. This was the second dungeon to literally toy with us like this. Toy with me like this.
I decided that I hated mystery dungeons.
Nobody dared to say a word for at least half a minute. The sound was a constant thunder originating from nowhere, but would it be followed by lightning? We had to be ready for anything, especially now! Sitting still and confirming its existence was so numbing that I'd have sworn that it took hours for someone to finally twitch a muscle.
"Tell me I'm not imagining that," growled Mincinno in a tone that did not request an answer.
It was all too familiar... The cavern, the hampered senses, the dreadful simulation of just being discovered by a predator. The same presence back in that Arceus-forsaken cave was here too. And I could've sworn that this time, the ticking was just a bit faster than before.
To say I was afraid was an understatement, but it was likely for different reasons than the others. The sensation of being connected with the presence was immediately registering in my head, not just being aware of it. As if my lone presence here was causing the bridge between the spiritual and the physical realms to warp into oblivion. Honestly, I wouldn't have been surprised in the slightest if that was the case. It made perfect sense, or about as much sense as anything could make during this enigmatic turn of the tables.
...Is this happening because of me?
If the events from the cave weren't enough to draw concern to myself being targeted, now it wasn't even a question. Clearly whatever force that was so intent on making me go insane did not dabble with coincidences. The same sound from before, here, when we were investigating the culprit of unprecedented crimes? Crimes that began around the same time I was brought to this world? It was like the universe was going out of its way to inform me that everything that's happened so far is tied in a thousand-year knot directly with the stone catastrophe. It was too early on to feel any guilt for something I wasn't sure I was a catalyst for, so sharing the terror of my companions would have to do for now.
"Th-this again..?" with canines just narrowly parted, Vulpix swiveled her neck to scrutinize the edges of her vision. "I don't... do you think Volcanion might be doing this?"
"...Could be," Mincinno whispered back to her. His demeanor was hardly deterred from the new sound, but his voice could not veil his critical discomfort. Even he was shaken up in spirit. "...Probably is. It can't be a coincidence that we're in his domain and this same damn sound is happening again." He nudged my arm and hesitantly took a step forward. "Hey, you following?"
I glanced at him with an expression of iron, and quickly subverted my gaze to once more scan the finer details of the room. His subsided words only continued to unsettle me as the ticking showed no signs of stopping and was now an unmistakable force in the room. The mystery churning around it confiscated all judgement; I felt both called forward and rebuked from this place at the same time. I was being torn in half spiritually, given no time to prepare for the battleground of emotions running through a skull that still lacked answers.
Standing in the middle of the cavern as if lost, our initial burst of confidence was now essentially exhausted, and indecision quickly replaced the rush. Vulpix and Mincinno scanned the walls twice as meticulously as before, but the resolve that the former had developed and that the latter always carried had been snuffed at the source. Helioptile, while not one to lose his lax composure often, hardly looked sure of himself now. And Leah was stone-still the whole time, something unidentifiable clouding her eyes. I simply idled and attempted to convince myself that this must be real.
"Uh- uh... Should we clear out of here?" Helioptile threw the idea out in the open. "We might've made it out okay last time, b-but I assume the circumstances here are way different, you feel me?"
Mincinno opened his mouth to put the suggestion down when his ears twitched and his eyes locked gravely onto something behind me. A moment passed where nothing happened. His ears twitched again, and then twitched once more, and he bared his fangs and furiously lashed his tail in a circular motion. Static electricity became a tangible entity as he tamed the swirling blue sparks formed so effortlessly, the shock wave attack being principally directed towards the nearest rock formation near a corner of the room. I watched alarmed as the electric attack cracked into the rocks and spread their entrails all around, electrocuting anything nearby. A handful of grunts could be heard from behind the hiding space, and I quickly deduced that we were not alone.
"Come out!" his voice bounced off the walls and overtook the ambient hiss of steam. "We know you're there!"
A couple of motionless seconds passed before there was movement to part the swirling vapors. From behind the steaming rocks emerged a tall bulky Pokemon that lumbered a couple of steps towards us. Flanking his backside were two strikingly similar Pokemon of a rudimentary evolution stage to the larger one, the similarities between them sustaining the notion of obvious relation. Out of the corner of my eye I caught two more emerge from a dip behind an active geyser hole that had been left unchecked during in the disoriented reaction to the ticking.
"Form on me," the normal-type sharply directed as the group of four Magmar positioned themselves to completely surround everything in the room. The Magmortar completed the pentagon that extended only about ten meters from our much smaller one, confirming that there would be no swift escape by foot. Each of us tensed up upon assessing the current change of events; they were already I n prime position to blast us with fire and force a break in formation, and we had hardly even had time to react.
There were five of us and five of them, and the way we were positioned indicated that the best way to handle this would be five one-on-ones. Not a single super-effective move on fire was known among the five of us, and we held three weaknesses with Helioptile's ability in play. Avoiding a fight was certainly ideal, but mere type-disadvantages were hardly enough to deter our confidence.
Situations like this were not uncommon in particularly hazardous dungeons after all, where some of the anomaly's inhabitants might not be confined to the same primitivism as most. Encounters with Pokemon of a higher intelligence was something that always must be prepared for, since elaborate strategy and logical reasoning were not above these enemies. But even with this in mind, I was not so naive to assume this encounter, similar to the direction this expedition was going, would end in a peaceful exchange of words. Just because they could comprehend passive gestures didn't mean they would be returned.
The sight of the enemy Pokemon coupled with the timing of the mysterious sound stirred something within me that manifested at the surface as anger. I took a step forward, the negativity in the air urging me to ignore the muddled situation.
"Are you the ones causing this?" I demanded, part of me weary that such brash opening words would end up badly for me.
"Silence..!" the Magmortar rasped, his tone so low that it barely outpaced the eternal background noise. Yet it was still plenty sufficient to get across an unmistakable conception of distaste directed at our presence. "You! Not another step further!"
The unabridged hatred lacing the blast Pokemon's voice made me want to flinch, but the way he perceivably struggled to cough it out made me more curious than anything. When taking a good look at the speaker, it really wasn't hard for us to determine why this was.
The Magmortar looked absolutely awful, as if he was succumbing to a disease that was rotting him from the outside in. He looked like he might fall over right in front of us! His Magmar lackeys hardly looked any better, a couple of them actually having deteriorated to a point that made their leader look almost desirable. What I assumed were supposed to be striking red and yellow colorations were reduced to dulled variations of their originals. Skin was flaking off and malnutrition was evident through visible ribs and thin appendages. The signature smirk one usually brandished on the lips of their species was absent in place of whitened cheeks and unsteady eyes. The look wasn't the type of malice that a predator sported when sizing up its prey; rather, it seemed more like the aversion that prey might feel towards a predator during its final moments. The scene was like an elaborate rehearsal designed to amaze trespassers but that had never been practiced. Growing tension aside, I wasn't sure if feeling intimidated was an appropriate reaction.
"Who in the hell are you? And what do you want?" Mincinno demanded. He was facing the Magmortar with a look of defiance on his face, his ears still pricked to catch any unnatural vibrations. The rest of us each faced a Magmar, each of the fire-types eyeing us with the same spite as their leader.
Their hostility suddenly multiplied at the sound of Mincinno's questioning. The Magmortar took another step forward, and a dim radiation begin to lick at the barrels of his two arm-cannons. He didn't aggressively point them at us yet, which was hopefully a sign that an exchange of words might hold some place in this encounter. But the act was enough to make all of us flinch.
"Fools! You bring death upon us and yet you have the-!" he struggled to speak, momentarily putting his arm over his stomach in evident pain. "Gah- you have the nerve to ask who we are? Do you have any idea... do you- argh! Make it stop!"
His face twisted into something foul, and he placed his arms to his temples in emphasis of what sounded like excruciating pain. Every syllable brought with it a new standard of outrage as he discarded what he was saying entirely just to writhe in some kind of internal agony. The fire locked in the Magmortar's cannons suddenly became easily visible from any angle, the flames now expanding from their chamber and threatening to be released by their host. His mannerisms wielding them around, caught between keeping us under duress and cradling his forehead, only further indicated that this was exactly what he planned to do.
I quickly tried to think of a way out of this mess, or maybe try to puzzle together these unusual accusations, but my thoughts refused to flow lucidly. Too many senses were being clogged and not enough sense was to be made of the words reaching my ears above the hammering in my skull.
Tick... tick... tick... I can't think straight with all this ticking! It's- it's making my head spin!
The sound of Mincinno's voice brought my focus away from myself and back to the scene unfolding before me.
"What in Arceus' name are you talking about? We just wa-"
"Now you attempt to claim innocence?!" the Magmortar suddenly screeched, the tribulation in his voice doing more to silence Mincinno than the aggression. "We knew you intruders were coming with your cancers! Now here you are, right on time!"
The fuming beast raised his arms slightly towards us and intensified their fireworks to match the summit of his emotions.
"There shall be no more excuses from you!"
With the sound of the first explosion came the sobering realization that the conversation was over. I took my eyes off of the nearest Magmar to witness the Magmortar's arm-cannons release white hot flames with unrelenting firepower. The gaseous energy became a boiling red mess - a contortion of blinding colors that the Magmortar's skin would've mirrored if healthy - and flew through the air as one large star-shaped projectile.
The fire blast attack existed for barely long enough to brace for before it collided with Mincinno's protect shield, one that he had the foresight to prepare upon our adversary's commencing declaration. Fiery entrails were sent spiraling at five different angles to connect uselessly with the walls and ceiling.
What followed was utter chaos.
Roasting me alive was the clear intention of the Magmar across from me, who was now approaching at a steady pace with embers licking his lips. Right away, however, I concluded that it was not in the right condition to make such an attempt. It was clearly subject to its own form of inertia due to the obvious extra effort it exerted with each heavy step. Whatever sickness it was dealing with was not restrained to visual symptoms alone, and I didn't need to know the fine details of why in order to take full advantage. I was not the instigator here.
No ticking-induced lethargy would keep me grounded once all order in the room was cast aside. Carefully watching the Magmar's eyes as we rapidly approached each other, I sidestepped to the right and witnessed him follow me with his snout, which had opened half an inch in response. He had expected me to dodge low to the ground in one of two directions, and a quick pivot off of my right foot in the opposite direction would reveal that he had predicted wrongly. I spun to the left as the flamethrower landed uselessly to the right, the flames flowing at an angle well off-target. Momentum was carried into a pair of unsheathed vines, the following contact audible throughout the whole floor. The centrifugal snap connected with the fire-type's temple at a point favorable for delivering force efficiently, and I briefly smirked at the satisfying sensation of vine on skull.
The Magmar impulsively raised a claw to the sensitive place of contact, a small trail of blood leaking from a critical point below his ear. His parting glare wished me nothing less than a painful death before the defeated Pokemon fell to the floor face-first.
I stood there with raised vines for several cycles of the background ticking, expecting the bastard to show some sign of life and fully intending not to miss a beat if he did. But he would not move an inch further, and a one-hit victory was all but confirmed. Had it really only taken one vine whip to knock this poor guy out? Even if he was sick and I racked him good on the side of the head, I was still at a type disadvantage, and it's not like I was an offensive juggernaut to begin with. That fight had been much easier than it should've been. It was finished in only a single motion.
What could've possibly happened to these guys?
Memories of that cave back in our first long-distance expedition filled my head again. Those five villagers that were dying (or perhaps that had already died) from the effects of some plague had all succumbed to rotted skin and liquidized bones. The grass-types from before could not have been more different in biology than these fire-breathers, and yet the resemblance of exterior deterioration was beyond question.
"Sage, duck!"
Torn back to reality by the sound of Leah's desperate cry, my nose kissed the ground at the same time that an unbearable pain drenched my tail. The dreadful realization that I had spaced out in the middle of a fatal fight and failed to completely avoid the flanking attack was more than enough to suspend any curiosities I might have had about the situation. I gasped as the screaming nerves at the end of my body numbed just as quickly as they had been brought to life, and I swerved my backside to pull my tail out of the beam of flames above me. My eyes fell upon it during the effort, and I gaped as the appendage began to feel as though it were frozen in ice despite the contrasting state it was in.
My tail! My tail is on fire!
Horror strangled my gut as much of the three-leaf clover situated at the end of my body, the irreplacable facilitator of all balance and movement, was charred into a blackish color that was repulsive in both sight and sensation. Somewhere in the confusion I scrambled for a rawst berry to toss into my mouth, which I nearly gagged right back up. It didn't really have a very profound effect anyway, and I instead resorted to repeatedly slamming my tail into the ground in a manner that brought tears to my eyes.
Through blurred eyes I caught a flash of desaturated red above me, and reflexes took control of my limbs in order to dodge what appeared to be an oncoming fire punch. I couldn't tell who it was that must have lost track of their delegated Magmar, but in the following moments I inwardly cursed them along with my useless tail. Rolling away was simply an impossible maneuver without the leverage it usually provided, and a strike to the stomach drove the air out of my lungs and sent me tumbling several feet.
The explorer bag swung off of my shoulder with the momentum of the tumble and spilled out most of its contents along the way. A couple of orbs fell out and rolled to a stop beside an apple and a pair of seeds, all near enough to me for quick use. My peripherals would reveal the Magmar stomping his way over to me with his maw wide open, an orange flame developing in his depths of his throat. He was only a few feet away now and was already rearing his head back to let his attack loose.
There would be no dodging a third attack. In a last-ditch improvisation, I snatched the closest sleep seed up with a vine. I forced myself up and tossed it right down into his throat as the first of the embers were being released in my direction.
The Magmar's eyes widened in surprise for a moment, having failed to factor in the use of items, and violently choked on the seed now caught somewhere in his jugular. The chemicals within the seed in his mouth went to work immediately, extinguishing the flamethrower attack along with any aggression packed behind it. The fire-type fell to his knees as his he desperately fought against the urge to surrender consciousness, allowing for a wayward psybeam to crack him on the forehead and accelerate the inevitable.
I managed to roll onto my stomach and view the clearing-turned-battleground, hoping not to get caught off guard a second time.
To my relief, the conflict was already winding down. The crippled figures of four Magmars lay sprawled out on the crag, with Mincinno delivering the finishing blow to the skull of a disoriented Magmortar. Everyone else looked relatively unharmed besides a new bruise on Vulpix's shoulder and a mild burn that parted Mincinno's chest fur.
Previously noticing me get hit, Leah bounded over to my side with a mortified look on her face. She must have been referring to my tail.
"Holy- are you okay?!"
Determining that the threat was neutralized, the members of Team Carbon followed her, all grimacing at the sight . Vulpix already had her mouth in her bag, digging further into our dwindling stash of rawst berries to treat the wound.
"I'm good, for the most part," I coughed, motioning towards my scorched clover. "It's just m-my... a-ah!"
I hissed through gritted teeth the moment Vulpix smashed together two rawst berries and applied the extract to the center-mass of the wound. She spread the juice around as delicately as her soft paws could manage, trying in vain to ward away the pain. Adrenaline receded much quicker than I'd have preferred, and the numbness from before remained but also adopted a new sensation of painful unpleasantness. This was not unlike the harrowing experience back in the Serene Village schoolyard when fighting the Litwick.
"Ouch, dude," Helioptile frowned. "That looks like it hurts."
I squeezed my eyes shut, exhaling through my nose and grimacing. My expression alone served as a wordless agreement. It felt like a volcano had gone off on my tail now, and although the pain was slowly recending with the chill of the juices soaking into it, the anesthesia encompassing one of the more significant limbs of my body continued to unsettle my stomach further.
"Good thing Vulpix knows medical stuff," Mincinno remarked. "You look like you might need it with that shit."
"Well... I'm certainly no medic, but I did learn a few things traveling with Comfey and Brionne," Vulpix chimed in before she breathed frosty air onto the worst of the rawst-covered charring. "This should help minimize the damage, although..." she nervously avoided my gaze. "This is a deep burn, and your tail is so thin. We'll just have to see."
"You'll be fine, right?" Leah fretted as she hesitantly placed a comforting paw on my shoulder and continued to grimace at the blackness. "That looks pretty bad..."
"Yeah, can you walk?" Mincinno said after inspecting the damage himself.
I shook my head, trying my best to shove the awful sensation out of focus. "I-I'm fine. My legs still work just fine," I brushed their worries off and held out two vines. "Help up?"
Leah and Helioptile each grabbed one of the green fibers and together hoisted me to my feet. I had initially anticipated that my balance would be effectively nullified without a stout tail to keep the distribution of weight steady, but staying upright actually wasn't that hard once I got on my feet and moving. Keeping it from dragging on the ground wasn't difficult either since it was only the clover part that had been burned instead of the muscles towards the base. There was a blatant handicap in agility, so fighting would be difficult, but I could still make this work for the time being. I could still be useful as long as I maintained my balance.
"What in the world was that Magmortar rambling on about?" Vulpix asked no one in particular as she placed her medical supplies back into her shoulder bag.
"I don't know, but it sounded like they were expecting us," Leah answered nervously while I gathered together the spilled contents of my own bag. "Why would that be? A-And this ticking still hasn't stopped either."
"Then it's probably not going to... I don't like this place at all, but I think we're getting close." Mincinno glanced briefly at his Society gadget and motioned for us to follow him. "Yeah, we should be pretty high up now. Only a handful more floors. Everyone ready?"
We all nodded. Having gathered everything we needed and clearing the room, it was time to get moving again. No more Pokemon would reveal themselves as we easily cleared the floor and moved on to the next.
The following floors were barren of all life. We expected as such, and yet not even anticipating this very outcome could rectify the eerie atmosphere of an empty mystery dungeon, where a new unsoundness of mind made every corner and puddle seem like an ambush in waiting. Even if ferals no longer roamed the maroon halls or say waiting in the boiling pools for unsuspecting trespassers, the threat of another conflict was not out of the question.
In fact, it was the sheer lack of other life forms to give the dungeon animation was in and of itself a pinprick in my brain. The humid conditions clearly weren't hospitable to the average Pokemon, but surely there were some fire and rock types who would be inhabiting the corridors even this high up? That was how all of nature's dungeons worked, and yet it hadn't really struck me as too terribly odd back in that one cave where the five of us had located those villagers. Why were there no Pokemon here?
More importantly, why did I feel like we still weren't alone?
Whatever was waiting for us must have driven them away with a similar method to how it was calling us forward. None could deny the negative connotation of this realization; at some point it went unspoken between the five of us. I found myself no more at ease than I had been when tackling the toughest of dungeons I could remember, even at points where death was clawing at my feet. The barrier between halls full of Pokemon that take offense to the heartbeat of an intruder and halls full of nothing was a fine line to walk when picking favorites. As we walked onward and onward, that line grew thinner, before eventually I found myself wishing this could just be like the average dungeon run-through. What I would've given to encounter a wild Pokemon just to give this place a sense of normalcy.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
It wasn't getting any slower. But it was slowly getting louder.
The act of acknowledging its existence - an involuntary awareness similar to breathing or feeling the ground beneath my feet - was somehow enough to vindicate almost every ounce of mental concentration I had in me. I simply couldn't think with it constantly there! Marching transitioned into an unconscious movement as I began to feel like I was no longer in Steam Cave at all, almost as though I were outside of my own body. It was some kind of superficial state: I could see the twists and turns of the hall and follow the path, I could see my friends walking beside me and faring little better, but I felt as though I wasn't the one doing the walking.
Several empty floors passed and the sound never ceased or showed the slightest sign of irregularity. In an asylum of sharp corners and tricks of the mind, this was the one constant. The vapors constricting the air were not solitary in their deed as the tension itself could now be felt. Rock formations and geyser holes were passed by with the same regard as before, but even they seemed to reverberate in the presence of encompassing dread. The non-organic substances of the dungeon were all that remained to pay homage, and they snarled at our declining group for having the gall to face the unknown. The dungeon itself was conspiring against as in a manner far worse than any feral assault. Naturally, I wrote these swirling emotions off as a natural reaction to the pressure of the situation. It was perfectly normal to react like this, no?
No.
As the five of us reached the final stretch of the cave, the ability to think for myself was no longer something to be taken for granted. Something hidden within the mist was willfully causing me to lose my mind, and yet all any of us could do was keep moving. Mild paranoia was shifting into a nightmare that had the potency to affect judgement and kill all morale. There was more noise now, ringing off the walls and through the air, but I knew it wasn't real. None of this was real, I knew this. I couldn't shut out the plethora of negativity that threatened to disintegrate the last fragment of balance I had left. The bulwarks of my everything: trust, confidence, sanity itself, all eroding under the winds of a presence that was right on top of us but just out of sight. Only whispers of nonsense passed through the steam.
You are being lied to.
Time is running out.
I was drowning in such a stupor that I wasn't quite certain whether the voice was a figment of my imagination or if something was actually within the distant fog speaking to me. Nor would I get the chance to dwell on it for long.
"We- we should stop," Vulpix's exasperated voice sounded, pulling me out of a mental spiral that threatened to knock me over. The weight of her words was severely compounded by the weight of her tone, as it seemed she could barely manage to choke out coherent speech. She was experiencing the same sluggishness that I was.
I looked over and narrowed my eyes in concern upon seeing the perspiration that marred the integrity of Vulpix's white pelt. I cursed inwardly; I hadn't realized how taxing this would be on her. This dungeon had proven to be longer than anyone expected, and even though she was as well-conditioned as any of us, the rising heat was doing its worst on the poor fox born in the ice mountains. Granted, all of us were perspiring heavily, and it would be ideal to stop for everyone's sake. But none of us had the biological disadvantage that she had, not even me with my grass-typing in a place where vegetation could never thrive. I didn't want to think about what would happen to an ice-type that overheated, especially if they were a close friend of mine.
Mincinno glanced at his teammate before shaking his head no and pointing forward. "Look."
I looked. We had finally reached what appeared to be the end of the dungeon. Still surrounding the five of us were walls of crag, but at this point the geysers had disappeared from the path as it widened out substantially in all directions to create a vast open room. The surrounding cave by now had lost its clayish tint, now donning a grey so unsaturated that the only real color to be seen was that of each other's fur and scales.
That was until I spotted the opening ahead that laid bare the unmistakable darkness of the naked sky. It sucked up the color of the room like a black hole, and relief so fantastically intense threatened to suck me forward as well. If not for the frigid breeze of midnight air that blew through the room, I might have mistaken our escape for another hallucination.
"That must be where the lake is!" Leah exclaimed. "We're finally out!"
Fatigue lingered in her voice that would've normally surprised me if not for the dreamlike state I was currently tugging against. One quick glance of my companions and it was made clear to me that I was not alone in this unexplainable struggle - they felt its presence too. This was nothing like that cave back then, nothing at all. We had been scared then, but here I felt like... like I was dying. I felt no difficulty thinking about how everything could go wrong, but trying to think optimally was a chore that became more and more tedious. I prayed to every holy being that this would all be over once we stepped outside. All we had to do was step outside...
"It better be," Mincinno rasped in response. "I-I don't think we can take much more of this. This dungeon, it's..."
The normal-type trailed off suddenly.
Helioptile tilted his head looked on with a confused expression. "What-"
"Shh!" Mincinno exalted a silencing paw and held it at eye level. His eyes flickered to the walls and ceiling, inspecting the barren room from every possible angle. Scrutiny of the surroundings proved, however, to yield the same result as they had on the lower floors. The only thing in the mundane room was the five of us and a heavy silence.
Silence and nothing else.
"...It stopped."
The statement already went unspoken for all of us, but a dreadful chill still coursed through every bone in my body. It just... stopped. Just like that. Perhaps it was just the breeze, or perhaps it was the unnatural silence crushing us like we were at the bottom of the ocean that suddenly made my scales feel so cold. I wasn't quite sure the exact moment when the ticking had ceased, but it had to have been just moments prior. With its retreat went most of the dark influence it had so maliciously imposed on anything living, and a sigh of relief almost escaped my lips when I realized I could form rational thought without feeling as if I was trudging through quicksand. A massive burden had been lifted from my shoulders, but leaving no explanation as to why or how.
"...It stopped," Mincinno said again, his voice barely rising above a whisper as to not disturb the turbulence brought with the new silence. "Just like that, it's gone... Arceus almighty, what is this place?"
"I-I'm beginning to think that it isn't the dungeon causing whatever this mental assault could be called," a shaking Vulpix reasoned. "I've never heard of such a thing before, and it's happened to us twice now but in two different places."
I was already walking forward, resolve carrying my legs now that any artificial premonitions had departed. "It doesn't matter. We're here to find out for ourselves. There's no time to worry about it or wait for the others."
A few seconds passed. Finally, Leah was the first to agree. "Alright," she nodded, padding forward. "Let's go then."
"There could potentially be a fight, as I imagine Volcanion won't be so welcoming. If he's here, that is," Mincinno said. He glanced around once more. "Everyone ready?"
Everyone nodded and no objections were made. Even if the malevolence had died down, the heat and water trapped within the walls was doing nobody any favors. Succumbing to a heat stroke would be almost comically disastrous when there was likely much to come of a far greater danger. The breeze ahead was enticing to a fault anyway.
Forming together into a crude arrow with Mincinno at the point, the five of us trudged our way forward towards the breach. The heavy air dissipated in favor of a colder breeze as we made the transition to where Fogbound Lake supposedly sat waiting.
A/N: That's a wrap. I apologize for the wait.
I think I'm going to expand the time frame of usual uploading by another week or two. It's become clear I have difficulty maintaining the previous schedule, and uploading weekly is pretty much a dead prospect with school, basketball, and work on my plate. I don't have a chapter buffer, not anymore at least, so I'm operating on an upload-immediately schedule as it is. Sorry if this is keeping a lot of you on hold and is consequently hampering your interest in the story. I'll try to aim for an update per two weeks.
Part of what took me so long was how I went back to re-read and then lightly revise the older chapters. I was mostly just fixing an old tendency I had to use second person, and also a bad habit of using the present tense whenever Sage wasn't locked in a thought bubble. There were a few dialogue changes here and there, but not nearly enough to warrant that you should go back and reread everything if you've already reached this point beforehand. No significant plot changes were made. Still, if you had issues with some of the blatant imperfections in the text, then those should mostly be gone.