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~\({O})/~

11.

Special Episode I

The End's Beginning

~\({O})/~

Rescuer's Guild Plaza ~ Air Continent

~Bryony~

~Two Weeks Before Spring~

It was still hours until noon, but the tall, stone halls of the massive Rescuer's Guild were bustling with pokemon of every shape and size. This place hosted rescue teams from and took missions all across the Air Continent, so it wasn't any surprise that it was as busy as it was.

That didn't make it any less annoying for Bryony.

Things were done the old-fashioned way at the Rescuer's Guild. Connection orbs weren't utilized in day-to-day affairs, all paperwork was printed and filed manually, and anything powered by Z-crystals was barred from the guild premises. The legendary hero Wartortle had long held that newer technology was detrimental to the functioning of a proper guild, and only got away with it by threatening to make the Rescuer's Guild independent of any parent organization otherwise. Most suspected he just didn't like HAPPI meddling in guild affairs.

The Rescuer's Guild: One of the only organizations in the world powerful enough to rival the Helping Adventurous Pokemon Prosper Institute. Just the guild building alone stretched far above the trees and down across the land below. The city had been built around it. The forest parted ways for it. As far as anymon was concerned, the guild ruled the entire Air Continent, and some of the Grass Continent too. Perhaps that was why Wartortle got away with as much as he did.

Bryony slid herself through the halls, trying to avoid getting her tail stepped on, her flippers crushed, and her snout batted every which way by other 'mons' exploration bags. Brionne were made for the water, not land-bound halls that they could barely fit in. Too bad you had to haul freight or passenger to make a good living underwater.

So that landed her here. She had a cushy desk job that many other 'mon in the guild might have killed for, but it meant a lot of hall-going. At least she only had to make this trip from her dorm to the office she worked in twice a day, and the halls were much more bearable at night.

She finally freed herself from the neverending stream of pokemon entering the hallway, scooting herself into the guild's head office. The one that belonged to Wartortle.

Wartortle's office smelled like old paper and tea. A window on the far end of the room took up an entire wall, offering a view of the courtyard from three floors up. Wartortle himself was working away at a stack of paperwork as she entered the room, a wooden teacup beside him. Outside of the massive shelves that lined the wall and the violet rug that covered the floor, the only furniture was a pair of maroon bean bags. Neither of them were in use.

"Oh, Bryony," he said as she entered without even looking up at her. "Right on time. Grab a stack of paperwork, any stack, and start signing."

"I've got a message for you."

After a moment of no response from Wartortle other than the scratching of paper, Bryony took that as a cue to continue.

"The storage department received word from HAPPI this morning. They asked me to tell you that they've gotten ahold of that supply shipment that was supposed to come in yesterday."

That made Wartortle glance up from the papers he was working at. "What did they say?"

"It was delayed because they had to go through some storm out on the waters, but it'll be here by one past noon today," Bryony explained.

Wartortle sat up with a heaving breath, beginning to sign papers again. "Well, if it'll be here by one, then we need to get half of these signed by then."

"Sir." Bryony scooted over to a stack, it didn't matter which stack, and started sorting the papers off one by one.

Two kinds of papers came into Wartortle's office. The first kind was the administrative paperwork only Wartortle could sign. Bryony set those aside in a stack for Wartortle to take care of. The second kind was the paperwork about mystery dungeons.

Not all mystery dungeons were created equal. If there had been one big improvement when the Rescuer's Guild had been bought out by HAPPI, it had been implementing a system to mark dungeons by how dangerous they were. The difference between a Class A dungeon and a Class B dungeon was astronomical, and sending a novice team into a dungeon above their rank could easily spell death.

And that wasn't even factoring in the Class Cs.

Few dungeons reached Class C rank. On the Air Continent alone, there were only three, and the Sand Continent had a single one. Those were the oldest and most powerful dungeons, the ones that spread their tendrils out across the land, the ones you could go mad in. Only the most experienced of rescue teams were authorized to enter or escort pokemon through those.

"Wartortle?"

Wartortle looked up from his paper, glancing over at Bryony. "Yes?"

"This paper says they've found another Class C out there."

That was enough for Wartortle to set down the papers he was reading through and give her his full attention.

"Which one?"

"Craggy Reach, sir."

"Hmm." Wartortle got up from where he had been sitting, walking over and looking at the paper. He took it out of her flippers, signed it quickly, and handed it back to her. "Take this down to mission control. They'll get a team to look at it."

"Sir, wouldn't this just be faster if we used connection orb technology?" Byrony asked. They'd had this argument before. The lines were almost rehearsed.

"It would," Wartortle said. "But we don't use those here. Go on, now."

"Yes, sir." Bryony nodded, hiding her sigh. She stuffed the paper in her sack and got up from where she was, trying to hide her obvious distaste at the idea of more hallways.

~\({O})/~

By some miracle, they had managed to get through just about half the stacks of paperwork in the office by noon. Wartortle counted every sheet, his face falling in disappointment as the last one fell onto the twin stacks.

"Drat," he said. "Almost beat my previous record."

Tomorrow it would be like they hadn't done anything at all.

Noon was when the guild held lunch for the explorers coming back from early missions and the pokemon who helped staff the guild like Bryony. The mess hall was one of the largest rooms in the guild—grand, tall as three stories, and decked out in shades of crimson from the stone floor to the archways above. Long tables that stretched from one side of the hall to the other had been built to accommodate pokemon both large and small.

Bryony slid herself into the hall, dragging her tray of fish along with her in the small wagon she liked to bring around whenever she had to carry things. She glanced around, searching for an empty spot in the impossibly long tables. Her eyes settled upon a worrying lack of an empty spot, but something that made up for it anyway.

"Charlotte!"

A seviper was looped around one of the benches, trying her best to ingest a large slab of meat in front of her. Bryony scooted over and did her best to make a space next to the snake. The sentret sitting next to them that had been nervously eyeing the Seviper gladly moved over for Bryony.

The Seviper looked over as Bryony sat down, swallowing the slab of meat whole before she said anything.

"So what have you been up to lately?"

Charlotte had her head down on the table, her tongue lazily flicking out of her mouth. Bryony took large bites of the fish on her plate. It was fresh and tasted like the ocean, a welcome break from the gross dried stuff they served during the winter months.

"Nothing much," Charlotte muttered. "Just rescue team stuff. You?"

"Believe it or not, I actually have been doing nothing," Bryony said, puffing her cheeks out with fish. "We just got finished filing paperwork for four hours straight."

"That's it?"

"That's it! And let me tell you, it is not always this easy. One day, when the guild got snowed in, we were doing it for eight hours straight just to stay warm."

"You know you two could have just started a fire or something, right?"

"In Wartortle's office? Definitely not." Bryony took another bite of fish.

"So now you have to tell me what you've been up to," she said. "Since I told you about the paperwork."

"Nothing."

"Well, 'nothing' has to be more boring than sitting around, dealing with papers all day," Bryony said through a full mouth of fish. "You've seriously not been doing anything interesting?"

"Me and my team have been taking fodder missions that pay dirt all day," Charlotte said. She had been unsuccessfully trying to ingest the piece of meat on the table for as long as Bryony had been sitting here. She hissed and punched it with her head. The sentret sitting next to Bryony shivered a little and moved over a bit more.

"Somemon needs an escort through the Ardent Ruins," Charlotte continued. "An idiot wandered into the Shifting Forest and needs a team to get them back out again. Someone dropped their sentimental scarf in the Lousy Lake. I think my scales are beginning to dry out from how many times I've slithered through the Lousy Lake. Does any of that that sound interesting?"

"Is it worth it?" The words came out muffled. Bryony was too busy stuffing her face with fish to stop for talking.

"Huh?" Charlotte turned her head towards Bryony.

"I said…" Bryony chomped down on another mouthful of fish. "Is it worth it? You've been working here almost four months, why not quit and get a new job? Tons of exploration teams here do that every year."

"Well… I do like seeing the happy faces on our clients when we get out of the dungeon. And then walking home knowing you've made a pokemon happy. So… I guess it is worth it."

"Then I think it's interesting." One last chomp of fish, and Bryony's meal was gone. "That's the reason I took the paperwork job. Somemon's got to help keep this place organized.

"Wish it was a bit easier to handle, though," she added.

~\({O})/~

Ding

Dong

The bells in their high towers seventeen stories tall tolled loudly and with rhythm. It had been spotted half a mile away: the supply shipment was arriving.

Five minutes until the arrival. The guild's halls were a-scramble with pokemon in a frenzy to get every which way to their important posts. Byrony was almost squished as she tried to fight the flow of the crowd to reach the entrance of the courtyard.

Seventy of the guild's present staff shuffled out into the vast front courtyard, scrambling to get into proper formation. Bryony once again found herself struggling not to get stepped on, whacked by bags, and tripped over as she made her way through all the chaos to get ready. Soon enough, every pokemon present in the courtyard had lined up into two neat rows. In front of them, Wartortle stood, dressed in the fancy robes he always wore when a large event happened at the guild.

The courtyard was surrounded by walls two stories tall, and was vast enough to hold an army. A loud, full horn blew from one of the watch towers in front, announcing the coming of the supply shipment. In the distance beyond, Bryony could hear marching, barely audible from the other side of the distant walls. The loud clinking of chains, and the massive gates of the guild slowly began to rise up, revealing the path beyond. A long caravan of wagons tromped through, the first cart entering the plaza and pulling to a stop. It was painted bright white, and pulled by a burly-looking machamp. On the wagon's side was the golden three-ringed badge, the insignia of HAPPI.

As the tromping of hooves and feet died down around them, it became clear that the caravan had rolled to a halt. The courtyard was deathly silent, and stayed that way. Wartortle strolled out into the plaza, walking up to meet the pair of gliscor that flapped down from the lead wagon's helm.

"Paperwork here, please," he said without introducing himself. There was no need. The gliscor silently handed him a clipboard full of papers for him to sign. No matter how much paperwork there was, it never stopped coming. There was a clipboard for every wagon.

Once everything had been signed, it was time to start unloading the wagons. The pokemon who staffed the guild quickly split up amongst themselves, opening the first wagon and unloading the freight systematically. Bryony couldn't carry the large crates on her own, but she was able to help carry some of the lighter ones with a helper.

"Hey," the buizel that Bryony was helping whispered as they carried one of the boxes away. "Don't those workers creep you out any?"

"What workers are you talking about?" Bryony whispered back. There must have been nearly a hundred pokemon in the square; did he expect her to suddenly gain the psychic type and start reading minds?

"The ones that rode in with the wagon," the buizel said, his voice still low. "Those gliscor. You didn't notice anything wrong?"

Truth be told, she hadn't been particularly looking.

"I didn't get a good look at them," she said. "What's wrong?"

"Well, they've been getting a good look at us," the buizel said. "They've been staring at every pokemon that goes in or out of the place. Gives me the creeps."

They were coming back to the wagon now, and buizel quickly quieted down. Now Bryony could see it too. The two gliscor were standing off to the side, intently studying everymon who walked in and out of the wagon. Something in their stare sent chills down Bryony's spine, but it was their eyes that sealed the deal: dull, vacant, and without pupils.

"What do you mean we have to unload these one by one?" A croconaw complained, folding its arms in annoyance. "Don't you have pokemon overseeing these wagons?"

"You don't just drive a caravan over here with only two pokemon!"

"It'll take the whole day!"

"It's our guild—let us do things our way!"

The gliscor looked at each other, then back at the angry Rescuer's Guild workers.

"There's only two of us," the gliscor said tonelessly. "these wagons will be unloaded one by one."

The first wagon was begrudgingly unloaded, then the second.

Large mubray and machamp pulled each new wagon up to the front of the line when the previous one had been unloaded, while the empty wagons made wide turns back towards the gate. Bryony often looked at the 'mon pulling the carts, but none of them would meet her eyes. Some of them had the same vacant stares as the gliscor. The others looked traumatized. Not a single one uttered a word to her.

Eventually, the caravan drew to an end. The last wagon in the train looked more beat-up than the others. It was scratched all over, there were pieces of wood missing, and every so often Bryony thought she saw it jostle. Was there something alive in there?

Perhaps against better judgement, she decided to take a look. This wagon was completely unattended, tied to the wagon ahead of it by only a few ropes. Bryony inspected its side, looking at all the scuffed paint and small cracks that ran up and down the wood. Then she saw a hole. It was too small to put a flipper through, but big enough to let some light in. Bryony peered in through the hole, looking to see what kind of freight was being hauled here.

The inside was nearly pitch-black, but just light enough to see that there wasn't anything like cargo in there. Instead, there was something that looked almost… glossy. Like it was reflecting the light, but was also darker than the inside of the box. Bryony squinted, and peered in closer. The Rescuer's Guild never got anything like this…

Whatever was in the wagon suddenly moved—

Bryony yelped loudly, springing back from the wagon almost immediately. The noise was enough to attract the attention of the two gliscor at the front. They immediately left their supervising perch and flew over to Bryony.

"No touch!" one of them hissed, perching atop the wagon. "This wagon is off-limits!"

"Off-limits?" Bryony spat, half out of fear and half out of confusion. "So you can hide whatever you've got in there?"

"We haven't got anything in there," the other gliscor said. "Nothing mattering to you."

"What's the matter here?"

The voice was Wartortle's. He walked up to the wagon, looking up at the gliscor that had perched on top of it. "Did I not sign the paperwork for this wagon?" he asked.

"This wagon cannot be opened right now." The gliscor on the left said.

"Well, if it's brought onto our guild premises, I reserve the right to know what is inside," Wartortle said.

"…Carrots," the gliscor on the right said after a pause. "Carrots from a farm."

There was a bump from inside the wagon that made it jostle.

"The carrots fell over," the gliscor halfheartedly explained.

"I think I should take a look anyway," Wartortle said, walking up to the doors of the wagon. "I trust that won't harm your carrots?"

The two gliscor didn't look amused, but didn't stop him.

The carriage lightly jostled more as Wartortle undid the rope holding the doors shut. The jostles were coming from inside the carriage. As he threw open the doors, something that sounded like a squelch came from inside.

But Wartortle threw open the doors on a perfectly normal stack of crates. Bryony watched from the outside as he walked in, inspecting the crates. He knocked on one for good measure. It sounded slightly off.

Wartortle closed the doors, and walked back out of the carriage. The gliscor flapped down on either side to meet him, almost as if surrounding him.

"Just carrots, yes?" the one on the right asked.

"Who appointed you to these positions?" Wartortle asked. "You two aren't our normal providers. We would have been notified of a change."

"Last minute change," the one on the left said. "Director of HAPPI authorized it. Wanted us to deliver this carriage."

"Priority! Priority!" the other one cried out.

Something changed in Wartortle's look at that point.

After the next-to-last wagon had been unloaded, Bryony made her way over to where Wartortle was, helping pull a particularly large crate in towards the entrance.

"Sir," she began in a hush. "I saw something in there and it wasn't carrots, it was big and black and—"

"Quiet," Wartortle hushed her in a tone soft enough that only Bryony could pick it up. "In my office after this is done. It's not safe to talk here."

~\({O})/~

Guild Halls

"Have the last wagon delivered expelled from the premises," Wartortle said to a team with a gold rank badge in the hallway. "Destroy whatever's inside."

"What's inside, sir?" one of the team members, an X, asked.

"Carrots, apparently," Wartortle said. "All the same, be on your guard. Trust nothing. Bryony, with me. The rest of you:" he now addressed the thirty or so pokemon who had been unloading the carriages. "Take the supplies down to the storage department. Sort through it. Thoroughly. Look for any sign of sabotage."

"Sir, what is this about?" Bryony asked, scooting herself the best she could after Wartortle as he walked down the hall. Thankfully, most everymon was busy unpacking what had been unloaded on the wagons, so the halls were clearer.

"In my office," Wartortle said, rounding the corner quickly. It took Bryony a minute to catch up with him.

They reached the door to Wartortle's office, which he quickly pulled open and walked inside. Bryony caught up, using her flippers to prop herself up on the open door.

"Sir, do you know what was in that carriage," she asked, with emphasis.

"Sit here," Wartortle said. "Close the door. I have a task for you."

Bryony did as she was told, shutting the door behind her and joining Wartortle at his study's wall-size window. Down below, they could clearly see the courtyard where the last of the HAPPI wagons were beginning to depart through the gates.

"Let me share a secret with you," Wartortle said. "For many years now, ever since our benefactors brought the Rescue Federation crumbling to its knees, I have long known they are harnessing a power they shouldn't be."

He pointed to an old poster that hung on one of the shelves, marked with the slogan "HAPPI Makes Pokemon Smile!"

It was a far-fetched statement, a conspiracy theory even. If Bryony dared to call it that. HAPPI managed the world's guilds, and supplied the world's connection orbs and power crystals. If something was wrong, wouldn't more pokemon have noticed?

But this was Wartortle, who knew everything. Wartortle, who was centuries old and had built this guild from the bottom up. Wartortle, who was almost always on-point and sharp with his judgements. And after what she had seen today… could she really pass it off as a joke?

"What do you mean by that?" she asked. "Sir," she quickly added afterwards.

"I meant what I said," Wartortle replied. "HAPPI is using powers they shouldn't be. You saw it down there today, with the gliscor. HAPPI were the ones who pulled a new substance the world had never seen out of their tails, the ones who always knew just where to poke to make the world bend at their whims and rival guilds fall to their feet. You don't do that naturally, I wager. Not in only a few years. And… I've known ever since HAPPI's director tried to use it on me in my own office."

"She what?" Bryony couldn't stop herself from asking.

"Of course, she wouldn't dream of it now," Wartortle said. "This was back when she was younger. Inexperienced. Sloppy." He took a sip of the tea he always had by him, then set it down. "But I know. And she knows I do."

He got up. "We ban Z-power crystals and connection orb technology from the premises because the Rescuer's Guild cannot afford to rely on HAPPI like the rest of the world. We can't trust her. Years ago, when she told me the Rescue Federation was no more and that my only hope for this guild to stay afloat was to join HAPPI, I focused on making this place as independent as possible. The only official contact we have with Helping Adventurous Pokemon Prosper Institute are supply shipments, and an ownership contract that can be severed at my own discretion."

He looked back out the window, watching as the mighty gates below closed behind the last wagon.

"The Rescuer's Guild is the only guild under HAPPI control that could separate from the organization and stand strong. The director knows this; she considers it a threat. She's thrown various pieces of legislation at me over the years, and I've batted it all back. But I always knew it would only be a matter of time before she decided to move against us in less conventional ways. That day is here."

He walked over to a shelf, and pulled out a thick, dusty book. From behind that, he pulled out a letter that looked almost as aged as most of the older sheets of paperwork in the office did.

"This is a letter to be sent to a contact of mine in Baram Town. He'll mail it to what remains of the Rescue Federation on Grass. If anything happens to me or this guild, that letter has all the important information that must make it into safe paws."

He dusted off the sealed envelope, dropped some poke for flying fees on it, and handed it to Bryony.

"Go down to the post department, and have this mailed to the address on the envelope with utmost speed and priority. Tell them not to let anymon open it until it gets there. Do you understand, Bryony?"

He was looking directly at Bryony for that one, and his gaze was the most serious she had ever seen it.

"Wouldn't it be faster to us—" Bryony's muscle memory kicked in for her conventional argument, but stopped herself mid-sentence when she realized she had just been told why not. She instead nodded. "I understand."

Wartortle nodded.

"Very good. Go! Make haste!"

Bryony slid out through the hall, happy that for once there was actually adequate space for her to scoot around without getting stepped on every which way.

A stunky fiddled with one of the guild's hall phones as she passed it.

"Hey," he said as she passed. "You know if this thing's broken?"

Bryony tilted her head at that. "I'm pretty sure it just had maintenance done on it a few days ago…"

The stunky slammed the phone back on the hook. "Well, I'm pretty sure it broke again."

"What's the issue?"

"I can't reach our outpost on the south side of town. That's where the caravan left from. I was told to contact some gold-rank team that went out there, but the phone isn't picking up…"

"Well, I'm on my way to the mailing department," Bryony said. "If you can't reach them with the phones, we can send a messenger tailow to go look."

"No thanks," the stunky said. "I'd like to keep my pocket money, it's probably just broken. There's another phone on the other side of the guild, maybe I'll try that…"

He hopped down from where the phone was and scampered off. Bryony shook her head and continued on towards the mailing department.

~\({O})/~

Before long, there was a pelipper flying off with the letter Wartortle had given Bryony to mail. It left the same way the caravan had gone, back to Baram.

She wasn't looking to take the long way back through all those halls again, so she took a shortcut. A door off to the side connected the mailing department with the storage department, and then led into the hall that would take her straight to Wartortle's office. The storage department was busier than she had ever seen it, filled with tons of pokemon unpacking the supplies and diligently checking it for any signs of tampering. A large pile of opened and cleared crates and boxes sat near the back, dwarfed by a much larger pile of sealed ones.

"Such a delay…"

A lucario impatiently tried to undo the harness he was strapped to, fumbling with all the straps and buckles and missing all his marks. The carriage he was strapped to shook from his efforts, making it almost impossible for him to undo everything right. Bryony signed, scooted over, and helped hold the carriage still so the lucario could free himself. Once he had, he hopped out of the harness with glee, landing next to Bryony.

"Thanks," he panted. "Thought I was never going to get out of that."

"Don't mention it." Bryony took a look at the sigil on the lucario's cart: Ten interlaced rings surrounding the head of a lizard pokemon. "You're delivering for Kecleon's?"

"Yeah," the lucario said. "His wares were supposed to go out last week, but the shipment never came through. He was supposed to get them today, but at the rate this—" he gestured to the commotion around them "—is going, it's probably gonna be tomorrow."

He leaned back against the cart and sighed. "Isn't it a mess?"

"Huh?" Bryony looked back. "What's a mess?"

"The way we're doing things," the lucario said, gesturing around him. "We're doing stuff like we did it 50 years ago. If we had the tech here, we'd have already been through all this backlog.

"Truth be told, I'm thinking of applying for a transferal to Pokemon Paradise," he continued. "Heard it gets freezing at night, but it's better than living in the past here.

"Well, we don't have the tech for a reason," Bryony said.

"Yeah, I know, 'technology drives us apart'," said the lucario, making air quotes with his paws. "It's not like we're any better off without it, though? You know how much paperwork this is gonna be, right?"

Bryony knew the lucario was just annoyed at the delay, and that he'd have to leave in the middle of the night. She couldn't blame him for that. The bit about paperwork struck a chord within her.

"A lot," she replied, a hint of dejectedness sneaking into her tone.

"And wouldn't it be nice to live by electrical lights, instead of by moss at night?"

"Yeah," Bryony admitted. "It would."

"There's lots of pokemon in the guild who feel the same way," the lucario said. "Seems to me, if there's a problem, it lies elsewhere. Only problem I can see is that it takes us six hours to get sorted through all this mess because we're working with paper and claws."

~\({O})/~

Bryony returned to Wartortle's office, and the sorting of the paperwork began. Wartortle kept his cool the best he could while they worked, but she could tell he was uneasy anyway. They continued until night began to fall, and by the time the candles needed to be lit and the luminous moss uncovered, nearly all the paperwork was sitting in neat stacks, waiting to be carted off to the archives. But it would all be back by the beginning of next week, because the paperwork came faster than either Wartortle or Bryony could keep up with it.

The bells of the guild rang to announce dinner. The amount of explorers coming in from late night missions were much, much larger than the amount of explorers coming in from earlier ones, so Bryony knew the halls would be packed to bursting. She helped Wartortle pack up all the loose stray objects in his office before they both left for the mess hall.

Bryony had to lock up after Wartortle. She was about to close the door and do up the latch when a loud 'thunk' rang out in the room behind her. There was the sound of fluttering paper, and that meant whatever it was had knocked over some stacks of paperwork.

Great.

She was almost convinced to leave before the halls got too crowded, and her stomach called to her too. But leaving it tonight would mean more work tomorrow…

With a sigh, she opened the door, and scooted her way back in to deal with the mess.

Two stacks of paperwork sat around the east corner of the room in a spilled-over mess. In the middle sat a book that Bryony had never seen before. It didn't look anything like the books on Wartortle's shelves, and there wasn't a gap in his bookcases anyway. It was thin and made of what looked like animal leather, and there was a thick metal latch holding the book closed. Had somemon thrown it in the window? There wasn't a hole in the window, nor shattered glass on the floor. And she would have heard that anyway.

Bryony undid the latch on the book. It spilled open, and she barely caught it in her flippers. It was old, and the smell of dust and must hit her straight in the face. She flipped through its contents, skimming it over. It was paw-written, not printed with a press. The illustrations were claw-drawn, but detailed and horrifyingly realistic.

Some of them were pokemon. As Bryony poured through the book, barely stopping to read the words on the pages, the illustrations became more and more grotesque. They featured pokemon that seemed to be half pokemon, half twisted into a gruesome black shape, and monsters that didn't look like pokemon at all. The only consistency amongst all the drawings were the eyes. The hollow, sunken eyes. The eyes that looked familiar to Bryony. Where had she seen those before? Where?

The gliscor. This looked exactly like that. Where had this book come from?

But as she stared out into the city, something odd caught her attention: There were no lights. No candle lights, no luminous moss, not even the odd electrical light somemon had brought in from the outside. The entire city that should have been a beacon of brightness in the night was dark.

A rippling boom that sounded far off. A brilliant flash of orange lit up beyond the walls of the courtyard below. It took Bryony a moment to register what it was: an explosion. Not one of fire, but rather move energy.

Something was going on.

All of the sudden, noises were coming from below, even outside the room. Screams, yelling, the blasting of attacks. Bryony dropped the book and headed towards the doors to see what was the commotion—

—A passing group of pokemon ran back down the hall, inadvertently slamming the door back in her face before she could open it. There was a series of loud blasts, and then the noise in the hallway gradually died down. Bryony stayed completely silent throughout, listening in silent terror as the amount of voices beyond the doors rapidly dipped. Had any of them made it?

And away from what?

Something stomped through the hallway, the only sound left. Bryony had to fight the urge to panic. She restricted her breathing as whatever it was got closer to the room. She could hear it breathing, heavy, raspy breaths that accompanied a low snarl. Then everything went quiet.

There was deathly silence. The cries outside were gone. Not even whatever was on the other side of the door made any sound. Bryony stayed still, not daring to move, breath, or risk any chance of whatever was out there finding out she was in there.

Bang. Something threw itself against the walls of the room. It made Bryony jump despite herself. She immediately returned to being still, hoping she hadn't accidently alerted it to her presence.

A wrenching sound against the door, like the paint was being ripped off, told her otherwise. She crawled behind one of the stacks of paperwork, trying her best to hide herself for when whatever was out there eventually made its way in.

The wrenching sound continued, accompanied by the splintering of wood and the fracturing of the doorframe. Then there was a sound Bryony could only assume was the door being torn clean off its hinges.

There was a moment of silence, punctuated only by Bryony's own breathing and the low, raspy breaths that came from whatever was in the room that she couldn't see.

What was left of the door flew over her head and thunderously crashed through the window. Bryony was pelted with glass and splinters of wood. They cut through her skin and stung like pins.

The monster took one step into the room, then another. She heard it sniff, and tried to restrain her sobs of fear and pain against the stinging of all her cuts.

Another step. Then another. It was getting closer to her. And soon, it was over her. She couldn't see it, she refused to, she wouldn't open her eyes. But she could hear it, and it was right above her. All she could do was whimper and huddle in further into a ball.

The creature's arms closed around her, and she could hear the telltale hum of energy bring gathered for an attack. She was resigned to it. The attack blasted into her, and for a split second everything was pain.

And then she felt nothing.

~\({O})/~

?

Bryony came to soon after. She stood in the same room she had been, completely unharmed. But she was the only thing that was unharmed.

All around her, degrading stacks of paperwork rotted away. The walls were jagged and only reached half the room's original height, and all the bookcases were either gone or toppled over. Books were everywhere, but only half of them were in readable condition. And they were all covered in rust-red dust.

But more than any of that, what scared Bryony was the sand that flowed everywhere and got in between her flippers, and that the sky was a deep, dark red.

Where was this place?

She walked her way down the guild's hall, trying not to make a sound or panic. Everywhere around her was the same as it had been in Wartortle's office: devastated, deserted, and covered in red sand. Even the mess hall had been torn to shreds, filled with the decimated ruins of those long tables and the rubble of the upper half of the walls and archways. The guild was a shadow of itself, a ruin that only stretched half as far as it had once stretched in jagged peaks.

As she scooted herself down the hall that lead towards the courtyard, she began to pick up on the sounds of voiced. Lots of them. Bryony rushed through the hall and towards the large, missing doors that led outward into the plaza.

She emerged into the only room in the guild that was populated by any pokemon other than herself. Every guild worker she had seen or come to know under her time working at the guild was here, looking around and talking to each other with the same uncertainty that Bryony had. There was clear unease everywhere; from the whispers and hushed voice circulating around, it seemed like no-mon knew anything more than she did. She wormed her way through the crowd, looking for somemon familiar.

Flashes of dark green scales through the crowds. Bryony recognized who they belonged to.

"Charlotte!" she yelled out. Her attention caught, Seviper Charlotte's head swung back to where Bryony was. Her eyes lit up, and she immediately slithered towards Bryony. The two pokemon embraced, and didn't want to let go.

Wartortle was at the front of the courtyard, looking like he was silently pondering his options. He opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by the sounds of several gasps.

Behind Wartortle, visible through the wrecked gates of the guild's plaza, a figure was stealthily advancing towards them through the blowing winds and sand.

It walked in complete silence, its footsteps making no sounds in the sand. It looked nothing like any pokemon Bryony had seen before. It was pitch-black from head to toe, and a mountain of sharp spines stuck out of its back. Its arms were bulky, and its claws looked large and sharp enough to impale a small pokemon completely. But more unsettling than anything else was the complete lack of any eyes on its face, the tube-like face adorned with rows of sharp teeth.

Wartortle turned around. As the figure continued walking towards them, he took a look back at the employees of his guild.

"Spread the word back," he said to the frontmost of the crowd. Bryony heard him. "Be ready for violence." Then he took a step forward, facing the approaching creature.

"We come in peace!" he announced loudly, his voice echoing around the courtyard. "Are you a friend or a foe?"

The figure stopped. It was a good twenty feet away from them. Bryony watched it carefully. It seemed to be studying them somehow.

"Are you a friend or a foe?" Wartortle repeated loudly. "Do you understand what I am saying?

The figure was completely still and silent for a few seconds longer. Almost like it was studying them.

Then it threw back its head, and let out a long, piercing screech that drilled into Bryony's ears like knives. She tried to cover her ears with her flippers to blot it out, but the screech droned through it.

The call was met with several others in the distance from all sides. Bryony had never heard it before, but somehow she knew what it was by instinct: A hunting call.

As the inhabitants of the Rescuer's Guild braced themselves for a fight, the figure opened its spiky-toothed maw, then charged.

~~~~\({O})/~~~~

The end of Part I.

~~~~\({O})/~~~~

~Some Ramblings From The Author~

Since its publishing in late 2019, these eleven (twelve) chapters have gone through… checks five different revisions. That's because I considered this the most problematic arc of anything I've ever written. A lot of the characters used to either read as blissfully incompetent or downright toxic, I straight up did not have good explanations for a few major events that happened, and the pacing was molasses and made it all a slog to read through. I've managed to change nearly all of that, but I've come to accept there will probably always be some issues I can't perfectly tweak.

It can likely be attributed to the fact that this is the first time I've ever published a "season" of something this big and made it all the way to the end. But also, so much of this changed conceptually through the writing of this first arc that by the fifth (currently sixth) chapter, I had abandoned my outline completely and was writing on the fly. Mawile, Archen, and the rest of the Expedition Society were never supposed to have a spotlight or any screentime at all; I added it in based on a throwaway line in the initial conversation with Ampharos. I didn't know what Tricky's backstory was until the chapter I wrote it. Chapter Seven was basically a big loose cannon, where I sloppily tried to abort the old trajectory (which involved a character plot between Espurr and Watchog, as well as a wildly different version of Part II) and set it on the current one. But the biggest conceptual change came back when I was writing the prologue.

The original prologue looked basically nothing like the current one. It would have seen Espurr wake up in the middle of a cranky landlord's house within the proximity of the village, and then become a slice-of-life/sitcom fic situated entirely in Serene Village. I retooled that scene for an afternoon, decided it wasn't interesting enough to publish, and stuck her in the canon opening instead. So I guess it really went off-track from the very beginning. I've since added in/smoothened a bunch of things, including the loose cannon that was Chapter Seven, adding in something hidden into the three dream scenes to foreshadow their true purpose, and improved the pacing of the chapters based on user feedback. The special episode is also a recent addition, one I've been revising for a while. I think it's stable now.

If I sat down to write this arc again with my current level of experience, I think I'd definitely be putting greater emphasis on balance, pacing, and character direction. A lot of those things were out of whack in the original version of this, and if you looked too hard at it in the wrong place, it all fell apart. But it's been a learning experience! I don't think I'll ever get this arc perfect, but if you've made it this far, the bumpiest part is over.

I'm glad you've enjoyed (or read) this far, and I hope this story can make it all the way to the end!

Music of the Week!

Herald of The Change, Film Version – Hans Zimmer