Even as the rich, red light of sunrise washed over the interior of the cave, Dante sat still and continued poring over the map of the mountain range. Although they would likely need to change it as required by the weather, the current plan had them traveling for eight days before they were out of the mountains. Each day would be a grueling ten-mile hike followed by a dungeon. For the first seven stops they were able to choose single-room caves that would result in a dungeon no longer than five floors. However, for the final stop, the only feasible path was a long underground passageway dug specifically to circumvent the impassable edge of the mountain range. Although he couldn't quite remember an expedition to this passage, there was almost certainly a dungeon of considerable length and difficulty. It was the final hurdle for them; the test that decided whether they had survived the mountain range.
"Hey, it's about time, right?" Luca's voice echoed from outside the cave.
"Yeah, I'll pack up and be out in a minute," he called in response. Dante sighed: he wished there was a better solution, but short of them hiding in the mountain range for however many years upon years it took Dante to evolve again so he could fly, there was simply no alternative. He folded the map and tucked it away before standing up. As soon as he had, the crunching of snow just outside the cave told him that Luca was coming back inside.
Suddenly, Dante realized the implications of her reentering the cave. "W-wait!" he shouted. "Don't come inside, stay right there!" The crunching ceased, so he hurried towards the entrance.
Outside, Luca was frozen midway through a stride. Her eyes were wide with terror and confusion as she waited for an explanation.
"Sorry, I don't think I mentioned, the dungeon starts right here," Dante explained as he mimed a line across the ground a foot in front of him. "You can't get back in without clearing it."
"W-why didn't you tell me?" Luca sputtered. "You just let me go outside?"
"We were leaving soon. I thought you knew and just wanted to watch the sunrise. I mean, you've read enough about dungeons to know how they work, right?"
"I didn't even know there was a dungeon!" Luca cried. "I mean, you mentioned the thing about caves almost always being dungeons, but you didn't say you had to carry me through one!"
"Uh, I actually didn't. Unconscious Pokémon behave like objects for dungeon entrance, so they only enter while touching a conscious Pokémon. I was able to cheat it, sort of, by alternating between moving you forward and moving forward myself. Once the dungeon pulled me in and I finished it, I was able to pick you up from the other side."
Luca let herself down into the snow, defeated. "...OK," she sighed.
Dante did a brief mental check that he wasn't leaving anything in the cave before crossing the dungeon threshold and approaching Luca. "Sorry I didn't tell you until just now," he said as he offered a hand. "But we need to get moving. Are you OK to go?"
"...Yeah." Rather than letting him help her up, she instead opted to push herself to her feet. "Lead the way."
Dante took a moment to take in the cold mountain air. It was a surprisingly pleasant day, with no wind or weather to speak of. Dante even found that he was able to actually enjoy the warmth of the sun—especially since the thick layer of snow on every surface reflected it so well. Still, it was difficult for him to guess how a non-fire-type would fare in this weather.
"Let me know if you're getting too cold, then," Dante said as he began forging a path through the snow. They were headed east, directly towards the rising sun, but their path would be going mostly north by the time they arrived.
"So..." Luca said, breaking the silence as they walked. "There were a bunch of White Spine spies in the camp, right? Isle said it, and so did those Pokémon you overheard."
"Seems like it. Why?"
"Who do you think was a spy?"
"What does it matter? And it's not like we could possibly guess."
"It matters because we might come across survivors. I feel like it's useful to establish who we can trust beforehand."
"I see the value in that, I guess, but I still don't see how we can get anywhere just thinking about it. Can we even be certain we can trust each other? Who's to say one of us hasn't been lying like mad?"
"OK, fine." Luca huffed. "Say you are a spy, and everything was orchestrated to get me up in the mountains with you and believing your story. First of all, that's completely insane. Second, to what possible end? Anything you could think of has a solution ten times easier. It's just unrealistic, and you could say all of the same things about me being a spy."
Dante considered Luca's words carefully for a few long, quiet moments. "...I guess that's true."
"Right, so let's speculate," Luca said. Even without seeing her face, Dante could tell that she was excited. "My first question is: is it even possible to be a spy without being a dark-type when psychic-types exist?"
"Almost all psychic-types don't have the skill to read surface thoughts adeptly, let alone entire minds like Mini. Plus, for what it's worth, Absol is very thorough about him getting consent first. It's very possible for non-dark-type spies to have gone undiscovered, especially since we suspected nothing."
Luca didn't respond. He had probably ruined her entire theory, and she was either scrambling to repair it or had given up. Either way, Dante had a moment to scan the horizon. The hilly terrain meant he couldn't be sure there were no wild Pokémon near, but he could see absolutely nothing other than snowy hills surrounded by snowy mountains, save for what looked like a Skarmory flying lazy circles above a peak. Behind him, Luca followed with a concentrated expression, apparently deep in thought.
"Mini being a spy makes very little sense considering he told you to escape with me," Luca said abruptly, again breaking the silence. "And if he told you that he was fighting alongside Absol and Lann, they're probably both clear as well."
"Couldn't they just be temporarily fighting to avoid being found out?"
"I'm not sure any spy would commit to staying undercover during an attack meant to entirely wipe out a camp."
"Hmm," Dante hummed, considering. "You're right, I guess we can conclude things. We'll assume that Absol, Lann, and Mini are safe. This is fun, actually—what else?"
"Maybe nothing as concrete," Luca admitted. "I was thinking about where you'd want a spy to be. You wouldn't want a spy in an exploration squad, right? They'd have such a narrow view of the organization. You'd want someone in a more administrative or support position—since we've already discounted you, Mini, Absol, and Lann, Tabunne and the analysis division come to mind. I'm not saying we can entirely discount the squads, but I think it's a higher risk lower reward position for a spy and that you'd need at least one elsewhere to get any real information."
Dante nodded in agreement. "So, we'll be more suspicious if Tabunne or an analyst claims to be a survivor. That especially makes sense given that they were meant to be in camp while a lot of squads were out on missions, meaning it's less likely that they got away. Speaking of squads, though, we should talk about Violet's."
"Oh yeah, I was just thinking: they probably made it out, right? They said they were leaving on a mission that night."
"Generous of you to assume they're not spies. I actually wanted to talk about how it's likely that they are spies."
"What?" came Luca's confused voice from behind him. "But they're—"
"They're close to us and we trust them, right?" Dante guessed. "That's precisely why they're suspicious. Assume that they were spies. Taking me on expeditions when no one was would—me, who has the most unrestricted access to information in camp—makes so much more sense. Then, as soon as we find you—you, who ends up being a high-priority target—they get exponentially friendlier. Explainable by a desire to make you feel comfortable in a new world and by curiosity, but suspicious after the fact, wouldn't you say? I mean, we gave them a lot of information just through friendly chats. Maybe Isle found you with Giratina's help alone, or maybe she received a tipoff from the only squad who knew about you before the announcement that came out barely before she arrived."
Dante was met with only the soft crunch of snow beneath their feet as they walked. "Luca?" he asked, half turning around.
"I'm thinking," she said. "But I'm not sure I'm enjoying the speculation anymore."
"Ah," Dante said as he turned back and continued his way through the snow. Luca had wanted to speculate mainly to clear those she cared about, not to implicate them. Now he had soured it, and now silence had fallen over the two of them.
In fact, the silence between them persisted throughout most of the day, even as the terrain slowly changed. From snowed-in plains to a ridge trail above a precarious drop, then even further to a frozen forest they walked. They had been going for hours upon hours, and while Dante hadn't heard a peep from Luca about feeling too cold, he himself was beginning to feel the exertion of travel. His Charmeleon form afforded him much greater stamina, but even it had a limit to the rough terrain and steep hills it could take him over—let alone the fact that he was pushing his way through deep snow at times. By the time they were walking through the frozen forest he was finding each step more difficult than the last, so when Luca whispered to him conspiratorially, Dante had been staring at the ground and focusing only on walking for quite some time.
"Dante," her voice came. Although Luca was speaking as quietly as she could, it cut through the cold silence maintained by the soft snow surrounding them. "I think we're being followed. I felt emotions from at least three distinct Pokémon, but I only felt curiosity and... a sense of duty, I guess I'd describe it. What should we do?"
Although he wasn't quite sure if she'd receive it, Dante tried to make himself feel a strong pulse of reassurance as he continued walking. This time, he kept watch straight ahead instead of staring at the ground. The emotions Luca described sounded nothing like Pokémon on the hunt, but even if an ambush was in store, simply expecting something to happen was a massive advantage.
As it turned out, they didn't have to wait long. Within only a few dozen paces, Dante's eyes were drawn to sudden motion far above the ground. Straight ahead, a single Sneasel was crouched on a low tree branch. They were on one of the patches bare of snow, so there would be no trace of their presence.
"Do you know what forest you're in?" the Sneasel asked. Their voice was entirely androgynous, but Dante could recall that the longer ear feather meant they were physically male, at least. Despite his cold eyes, the Sneasel's tone was remarkably unchallenging.
"No, we don't," Dante answered, forcing his voice to not betray his exhaustion. "If this is your territory, we apologize—we're not familiar with this area and have been forced to travel through it."
"Forced to?"
"Yes. The camp just inside the Great Forest was wiped out, and the only escape was through the mountains. We're only trying to survive by making our way through."
The Sneasel's eyes flickered for a moment, briefly glancing somewhere into the forest behind them. "...Do you have specific travel plans?"
"Yeah, we have a map."
Once again, the Sneasel paused to glance to the forest for a moment before responding. "Show me," he said before leaning into a fall. While the landing was deft, he seemed to lose his breath a bit. He recovered quickly and carefully approached Dante.
Dante waved for Luca to come closer without breaking eye contact with the Sneasel. He sensed her approaching on his left. After a brief rustling she offered him the mountain map, having apparently remembered within which pocket it was stored. He wordlessly accepted the map and held it up for the Sneasel to see. Then he summarized their travel plans, specifying within which caves they intended to rest.
"That path will work," the Sneasel affirmed. "Make sure you aren't travelling at night on the fourth day, and on the sixth day you'll be walking through the territory of a pack of Snowver. Most of us in the mountains have transitioned to relying on the dungeons for food, but the Snowver still hunt. I doubt they'll try to hunt a Charmeleon, though."
"Wait, really?" Dante asked. "You all switched entirely to dungeon meat? I suppose that explains why we're even talking right now."
"That's right," the Sneasel nodded. "And there's currently a debate in our tribe about whether a wide territory is even necessary. For now, you're lucky enough to get a free pass."
"Ah. But still, even if you're letting us through, you didn't have to give us travel advice like that. Thank you."
The Sneasel nodded again. "Good luck in your travels," he said as he turned his back. "Your first stop is about half an hour more."
After a running start, he leapt to run up a nearby tree trunk. After a few steps using his momentum, he hooked the sharp claws concealed within his soft paws around a low tree branch. He pulled himself in an arc around the branch, and the motion finally ceased when his feet firmly caught on the bark precisely where they had before. Then he leapt away, with the only indication that he was ever there the small imprints in the snow made by skinny, clawed feet.
"...I think we're alone now," Luca reported. "You heard me, right? You knew there was multiple?"
"Yeah," Dante confirmed, finally turning towards her. "If they weren't hunting us, we wanted them to feel in control of the situation—as they clearly needed to, given their formation.
"You're really comfortable with this kind of stuff, huh? That went amazingly well."
Dante felt himself smile despite his burning muscles. "We got lucky."
"Oh, don't sell yourself short. You were cool back there. Although come to think of it, it would have been pretty nice to know why we shouldn't travel at night during the fourth day specifically."
"...Yeah, maybe. Too late now, so let's get going before my legs lock up."
"Huh?" Luca stopped, confusion warping her face. "What do you mean? Are you hurt?"
"I've been pushing my way through snow the entire day. It's a miracle I'm even standing."
"You seem perfectly fine to me."
"The perks of evolution, I guess. I feel terrible."
"Wait, will you be OK to do the dungeon?"
"It won't be many floors; I'll be fine if we just hurry.
Luca full-body shivered. "Let's get going, then."
And so, they continued their trek. Somehow, the brief break from walking made it even worse for Dante. His muscles had been aching horribly beforehand, of course, but it had begun to be a numb pain. Now he could feel it all, and he was beginning to genuinely worry that he would entirely run out of energy before they reached their destination. Dante did his best to set his worries aside and simply keep walking.
Once his body finally realized that it was not quite time to rest, the travel went by mercifully quickly once again. The sun slowly began to set as the forest ended in favor of a steep incline, and by the time Luca pointed out a dark opening in a sheer cliff, it was dark enough that they likely wouldn't have spotted it without the light of Dante's tail flame.
"Ready for a dungeon, then?" Dante asked as they stood at the mouth of the cave. He could see inside, and it was indeed tiny—more of a stony burrow than anything else.
Luca kicked aside some of the snow, clearing a bit of cold, bare ground. "You don't want to rest? We can take a moment if you're tired."
"Stopping will make it more difficult to go on."
"OK." Luca offered him a paw. "Shall we?"
A twinge in Luca's stomach told her precisely when she had entered the dungeon. Before her very eyes, the small, natural cave melted away. For a moment she could see nothing but an incomprehensible mix of color: the black of darkness, the grey of stone, and the soft warm hues of Dante's flame. Although she could still feel him gripping her hand, Dante himself was gone from her vision, lost in the headache-inducing mesh of her surroundings. It moved constantly and violently, reminding Luca of a kaleidoscope lacking any symmetry or centering.
Then, the swirling nonsense stabilized as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Dante was back, still gripping her hand in what was now a different cave. The walls were unnaturally smooth, as if they were in a room hand-carved within the stone. The cave entrance behind them was gone, of course—the only exits to be found were two dark hallways, waiting for them patiently. They were afforded no light whatsoever by the dungeon itself: the only reason they could see at all was thanks to Dante.
"Urrk," Luca heaved, losing her balance a bit from the dizziness. She pulled her paw out of Dante's grip and brought it up to rub her already closed eyes.
"Luca? What's wrong?"
"I kept my eyes open," Luca choked out, forcing down the urge to vomit. "Big mistake."
"Ah, yeah, that's the second stage of getting used to the dungeons. If you continue to keep them open, you'll be used to it within a handful of transfers."
"OK," Luca said, shaking the dizziness out of her head. "OK. I'm fine. Let's go."
Dante nodded. "I'll lead," he said as he walked down the left hallway. "And remember—we're looking for something we can eat."
Luca was reminded of her very first day in the Pokémon world. Things were so different: Dante had evolved and was now twice her height, and every ounce of the uncertainty and fear in his stride that defined their first encounter was erased. Now she understood what was happening (at least, as much as one could understand the dungeons) as well as understood the world she was in. But still, here she was, following a tail-flame through yet another hallway.
Luca's ruminations were cut short by shrill screeching from two distinct sources—one behind and one ahead. She turned back just in time to see a blue and purple blur hurtling towards her face. It came far too fast for her to react and, in an instant, sharp fangs were embedded deep her snout.
Luca snarled with rage and jabbed a paw upwards towards the weight now firmly latched on her face. It connected, and the impact yanked the fangs out as her assailant was flung away. It righted itself with its wings and hovered at a short distance for a moment, giving Luca her first good look at it.
The light behind her was unstable as Dante undoubtedly fought his own, but before her was a Zubat. It was massive—about the same size as her—and without eyes its face appeared strangely passive for a feral. Letting out another ear-splitting shriek, it launched itself into another blind dive towards Luca's vulnerable flesh.
Luckily, now that Luca knew that it couldn't see her without the loud shrieks, she simply sidestepped the dive. As it passed she slammed it with a backhand, using the firm bone on her wrist as a weapon.
To her surprise, the Zubat took the blow in stride and used the momentum gained from it to fly a tight loop. Before she had even rebalanced, it was already upon her. She made a feeble attempt to bring an arm up to intercept, but it was no use: the Zubat once again sunk its fangs into her face.
This time, Luca panicked: she knew that every second the Zubat was latched onto her she was losing blood. She reflexively brought her paws to either side of it and tried to pull it off, but without thumbs she couldn't get enough of a grip to do much of anything.
Then, all at once, the weight on her face was gone. Luca opened her eyes to see Dante holding the struggling Zubat's tiny body with a large clawed hand. He slammed it against the hallway's wall once, twice, three times before it finally went limp. He tossed the unconscious feral next to its twin he had dispatched just before.
Luca brought a paw up to pat the right side of her face. Drawing it back, she saw four blots of blood. She must have looked terrible, with a total of eight puncture wounds.
"Are you feeling OK?" Dante asked. "Dizzy at all? Lightheaded?"
Luca felt at her face again. It didn't feel wet as a whole, at least. "No, I feel fine. Do we need to use bandages?"
"No, I don't think so. Looks like there's no more blood flow."
"Good. So, can we eat these?" Luca said, gesturing to the Zubat. "They don't have a lot of meat on them, I guess, but..."
"We can't regardless. They're poison type, so eating a full meal would likely kill us."
"Ah."
Dante led on without further comment, leaving the unconscious Pokémon behind. The dark hallway continued on perfectly straight for a few meters before bending in a sharp right turn. Immediately after, the hallway opened into a room. While Dante did a quick left-then-right check of the room, it didn't come with any of the fear or apprehension that had defined it before. Now he oozed confidence, and every action felt casual—even when he was in combat. Even so, Luca felt a burst of fear from his Aura.
After checking the room, Dante turned and brought a single digit to his lips. Then he brought a flattened hand down, miming to Luca to sneak. Into the room she followed him, both of them producing as little noise as possible. Upon seeing what was in the room, she was dearly glad for Dante's warning: no less than eight Zubat hung from the ceiling of the room. Even worse, a massive Golbat—a magnitude larger than even Dante—hung among them, its eyes closed. They all appeared to be sleeping despite the shrieking just down the hallway, but even as they went undisturbed, their sleep appeared restless with endless twitching.
Luca's breath escaped her when she saw them. A single Zubat had felt impossible for her to defeat, likely because doing any damage to a poison/flying type as a fighting type was difficult to say the least. Dante seemed to dispatch them effortlessly, but a veritable swarm of them plus a Golbat would have them almost certainly dipping into their limited berry resources—if Dante was even able to prevail at all.
The pair of them made their way through the room, slowly and quietly. Luca was keeping her eyes on the pack of bats, but when a blue shine appeared in the hallway her gaze—as well as Dante's, given that he stopped in his tracks—was instantly attracted to it.
The blue shine was an Amaura. Though it was at the edge of the light's reach, both its sleek blue scales and its beautiful rainbow sails shone brilliantly. It seemed confused, its eyes squinting as if it had never seen light in its entire life—and for all Luca knew, it hadn't. The blinded Amaura hadn't recognized them as enemies yet, but it was only a matter of time before it did, and an open combat would doubtlessly wake the sleeping bats just beside them.
Dante bent his tail, bringing his tail-flame in front of him. He continued sneaking just as carefully, but he motioned with his left hand. A sharp wave towards the dinosaur Pokémon told Luca that he wanted her to go ahead.
With her smaller and more athletic body, Luca was able to sneak much more quickly than Dante. Producing no more noise than the soft tap of her feet, Luca rushed forward. She skirted around Dante and made her way towards the Amaura, praying she wasn't going to make too much noise.
An Amaura's head was nearly twice as high as a Riolu's, so as she approached, Luca wasn't obscuring the light at all. The ice/rock type's eyes were finally beginning to properly open as it grew used to what was really a dim light. With every passing instant it was closer to howling with rage at the unwelcome visitors, and Luca aimed to get to it first.
As she entered the Amaura's personal space, Luca took a moment to harden her heart. This wasn't a spar; it was a life-or-death confrontation that she was hoping to keep from escalating to a brawl. She had to go for maximum damage. Pokémon were much more difficult to outright kill than humans, but even if she killed it, it was a dungeon Pokémon—feral and unthinking. Luca reeled back, preparing a punch towards the base of the Amaura's neck. It was at a comfortable height, but Luca was also hoping it would stifle any kind of noise the Amaura may make.
The instant before her strike connected, Luca noticed the Amaura's eyes change. The confusion was gone, replaced by the familiar rage of a feral. More prevalent than rage, however, was fear. Still, it was far too late: Luca's right hook connected squarely with a meaty thunk.
The Amaura took it poorly, its entire body yielding to the punch's momentum. A quiet, strangled gasp escaped from its throat as its legs buckled. The weight of its tipping body pulled its head down, but Luca could still see consciousness in its half-lidded eyes; as its head fell, she delivered an uppercut to its skull with her left paw—this time, a sharp crack echoed throughout the cave.
Finally, the Amaura hit the ground. It was out cold, and Luca relaxed. She turned to look back at Dante. He was watching the bats carefully—although Luca heard disturbed screeching from the room, because she was now too far into the hallway to see them herself she waited patiently for any indication of emotion on Dante's face.
It came quick as Dante glanced forwards to Luca. In his eyes was something that she had grown very unaccustomed to seeing in the powerful Charmeleon: fear. Only a single word was said, and only a single word was needed. "Run," Dante whispered, his voice wavering with fear.
Luca turned tail and ran down the hallway. Her light source swayed behind her as Dante followed, creating a mess of dancing shadows on the wall directly ahead. The rhythmic tak-tak-tak of Dante's claws against the smooth stone floor behind her momentarily ceased, shortly followed by the roar of flames as the light behind her intensified.
The hallway abruptly turned right, and without Dante's light being closer, going further would plunge Luca into pure darkness. She stopped at the corner and turned back to check Dante's status.
She had turned around just in time to see the last licks of flame dissipate, returning the cave to relative darkness. Dante was already taking a deep breath once again, but this time, he aimed his exhale at the ground. Rather than flames, thick, black smoke was expulsed—upon touching the ground, it billowed forth, completely obscuring everything immediately before him. The high-pitched angry chattering had been steadily increasing in intensity, but it had now reached a new peak: every sound in the cave was entirely drowned out by the angry bat Pokémon, and the echoing was making it entirely impossible to think clearly and rationally.
Dante resumed his fleeing, leaving the dark smoke hanging in the air. "Go!" he shouted underneath the overpowering noise, abandoning any sense of secrecy.
Luca hesitated, waiting for Dante's light. She let him pass and, staying as close as she could, followed him into the next room.
Ahead of them was precisely what they needed. The room was perfectly empty, save for the dark opening of a staircase going down. Luca kept pace beside Dante and placed a paw on his shoulder. Together, they stepped onto the first stair.
The deafening screeching behind them was washed away in the swirl of colors. In fact, despite the dizziness, the contrast in sound jumped out at Luca: it was completely and eerily silent when changing dimensions. Even the subtle ambient noise of the cave was absent, creating a thoroughly strange experience. Regardless, Luca kept her eyes open and tried to stomach the sickening swirl of warm and dark colors as well as absence of sound.
A few long seconds later she was out, again lightly holding a paw against Dante's shoulder in a strangely uniform cave room. She wasn't even given a moment to recover from the transfer: before she could react, a blur of movement crashed into her. Luca toppled, and suddenly she was on the ground with an intolerably heavy Pokémon on her chest.
Thankfully, Dante was quick to act. He spun, slamming his sturdy tail against the feral. The weight was off of her, and Luca was able to sit up and see her assailant properly.
Before them was an Aron, rolling to its feet. Luca didn't have much time to identify it, however: Dante was already engulfing it within a cone of fire. The Aron lurched, but by the time Dante's fire petered out it had settled to the ground, unconscious.
"Arceus," Dante cursed, his posture relaxing as his head swiveled to check the rest of the room. "I think it's over. That was rough, are you OK?"
"I'm perfectly fine," Luca reported. "And the berries are uncrushed as well," she added, briefly peeking into the satchel still across her chest.
"At least the dungeon seems to be trying to apologize for that whole mess. Look."
To Luca's surprise, the stairs were just behind her. It was uncommon but far from unheard of for the very first room on a floor to have the exit, but far more interesting to Luca was the object laying innocuously on the cave floor.
"Is that a satchel?" Luca asked, gesturing towards leather-looking object. "Here?"
"Looks like it." Dante moved towards it while Luca finally stood up. He unceremoniously bent down and began rooting through it, methodically checking each and every pocket. "Empty," he sighed. "We could have really used some extra supplies."
"Wh—you're missing the point! What is it doing here? Dungeons reset daily, so was someone in here earlier today?"
"Huh?" Dante said, confused. "I guess you didn't come across object finds in the reports you filed? That's not too surprising, I guess—it's super rare. But yeah, sometimes items left in dungeons for the reset turn up later in other dungeons."
"What? That doesn't make any sense."
"Yeah, dungeons don't make any sense in general. If you think they do, you don't know enough about them," Dante shrugged. "I guess we might as well take this satchel just in case we have need of it."
"OK," Luca said as Dante shouldered the empty satchel. "Shall we go to the next floor or search for edible Pokémon? I'm assuming this little guy isn't."
"Let's go to the next floor. Worst case scenario we'll have to come back in."
Together, they stepped down the stairs. As the now-familiar mess of color surrounded her, Luca noted that while she did still feel the urge to vomit, the few seconds of transfer felt much less intolerable and never-ending. It really was strange how quickly her body was adapting to the dimension transfers—on the very first day, she had vomited without even opening her eyes. It was as if Pokémon were naturally designed to adapt to it quickly, though perhaps humans were as well. She had no way of knowing.
This time, at least, they weren't ambushed. There was a total of three hallways in the first room of the new floor—one straight ahead, one behind, and one to the left. Dante walked towards the one behind them having apparently decided for them, and once again Luca was following his gently swaying tail-flame through a dark corridor.
It was a total of four lonely rooms before they came across another feral. They heard it before seeing it as they approached a bend in a hallway—a barely perceptible murmur, almost mistakable for the ambient air in the cave. No words were discernable—in fact, the longer Luca listened, the more it seemed to be simple babble, as would come from a human baby.
Dante had stopped in his tracks, his head perked up to listen. "...What is that?" he whispered.
"You don't know?"
"Most of my practical knowledge comes from hunting in open skies. I have no idea what could be making that. Do you want to scout it out?"
"I can't see without your flame."
"Right. Stay close, then."
Dante peeked around the corner, moving his tail-flame just beyond it. Then he continued, sneaking around the corner. Staying close, Luca watched as the impenetrable darkness in the room ahead faded away, slowly driven back by the approaching light. It revealed a pale pink shape huddled down and shaking with apparent fear in the center of the room. It was facing away from them, and Luca couldn't quite identify which Pokémon it was initially.
At the approaching light, the feral spun in place. It was a Whismur, its strange plus-shaped eyes unchanged by the blind rage of a feral. Its mouth, however, was excessively expressive, trembling with a primal fear. Before either of them could react, it extended its long rabbit-like ears, took a deep shuddering breath, and began to cry.
Luca staggered: the Whismur's voice was supernaturally loud, as if amplified by loudspeakers. It was startling, but not necessarily dangerous. Still, Dante darted forward as if stopping it was life or death—and within a few short moments, Luca understood why. Already the loud noise was being amplified by the acoustics of the cave, doubling it, tripling it, quadrupling it... countless soundwaves pounded against Luca's skull from every direction, quickly overwhelming her senses entirely.
Then, all at once, she was released. It didn't make much sense to Luca for the echoing sound to become silent in an instant, but it did. Only then did the pain start, her head throbbing with sharp protest at the missing abuse. An unbearable headache was welling up on her.
"Are you OK?" Dante's voice came, barely audible under the white noise of Luca's damaged hearing. "Luca, can you hear me?"
"Augh," Luca coughed, shaking her head. "I'm—I'm OK. Head hurts."
"It'll pass. We'll be OK. Let's just take a minute."
Luca let herself fall to the ground and simply waited. Over time, pain became dizziness and dizziness faded. Within a minute she was fine and finally opened her eyes.
Dante was sat aside the now unconscious Whismur, cradling his head with a single hand. He was watching Luca, and when he saw her looking over his eyes flickered with recognition. "Feeling fine now?"
"Yeah. You?"
"Mhm. It was really dangerous that the Whismur saw us so soon, but at least neither of us was knocked out. Plus, now we have something to eat."
Luca inspected the round fleshy body of the Whismur. It was certainly big enough for the two of them, but it wasn't exactly appetizing. "Are we sure that it was a feral?" Luca asked, still staring. "It didn't have the rage of the other ferals, just fear. Plus we found that satchel—do you think this could be a Pokémon from outside? Exploring the dungeon, lost and afraid after being attacked?"
"No, I don't," Dante said flatly. "The ferals act according to their wild instincts—for most Pokémon that means rage and being territorial, but Whismur act precisely as we witnessed. And if this pack was lost in this dungeon today, why was it entirely empty? Why aren't we finding any supplies whatsoever? I get why you'd be worried, but rest assured: we aren't about to accidentally commit murder."
"...OK. I guess we need to kill it now, right?"
"Right. Or at least before we leave the dungeon. You can look away, if you'd like."
Luca shrugged. She was going to be eating it, so looking away seemed pointless.
Dante stood, looming over the feral. Luca wasn't quite sure what to expect, but his chosen method of execution was unexpectedly tame. After feeling for the location of its windpipe with a scaled hand, Dante lifted a heavy foot and pressed all of his weight onto it. There was no struggling, and even no discernable change: he simply held his weight down, and a few minutes later took it off.
"OK," Dante sighed. "I'll carry them, but you may have to act quickly if we come across ferals. I'll tell you what to do. Deal?"
"Deal."
The two of them marched on, but it turned out there wasn't much dungeon left. The very next room held the stairs, and the dungeon itself turned out to only have three floors total. One dizzy spell later, Luca was back in the real world—or at least back in the Pokémon world, in a cave high in the mountains.
"Is it OK if I cook and prepare the meat?" Dante asked as he placed the Whismur's body down. "I don't know how humans take their meat, but we don't exactly have a way to clean the blood off if we eat raw—especially when it comes to your fur."
"Oh, um... humans actually have to cook their meat. They get sick or get diseases otherwise."
"They? Not we?"
"Yeah? I mean, I'm not exactly a human anymore, am I?"
"I guess not. I'll get to work."
Luca found a nice stretch of the cave wall to lean against and settled into watch the process. She absentmindedly rubbed her face since it was beginning to itch, and a stark stinging protest reminded her of her injuries. Perhaps the word 'injuries' was a stretch, as she had gotten off fairly easy if reading countless reports about dungeon expeditions told her anything about how bad it could get. She would definitely have to be more careful: anything more serious could threaten her life while they were in the mountains. Still—Luca was proud that they managed to survive their first day with little to no serious issues. They still had to survive seven more, but an initial success was definitely encouraging. It was beginning to look like they could actually do it.
