Ears, Book II: The Marriage of Mew

by Mimiga

Finally, after years of hard work and tribulation, the Expedition Society has managed to map out every little nook and cranny in the known world. With their primary goal complete, an uncertain but bright future rests on the horizon. Sometimes dreams do come true. Be wary, for the same can be said about the nightmares.

5. Unholy Unbound

Panne was fully prepared to talk the entire continent if she needed to. No amount of symptoms or fatigue could take that determination away from her. And yet, once everyone else started to slump against rocks and wheeze out their sore throats, the Braixen had no choice but to rest. She hissed through her teeth as she pulled out her canteen and proceeded to take a swig of the precious water within. They didn't have time to mess around like this.

"Son of a..." Pangoro grunted out as he tried to lay backwards over a fallen long, struggling to relax his tightened back. The symphony of their discomfort rang out into the surrounding wilderness. The trek alone was enough to make someone gasp for breath, and it only got worse every time they had to clear their throat or wipe their nose. It was disgusting. Exhausting, miserable, and disgusting. Panne could barely even think to herself without someone hacking up a lung.

But it wouldn't be for much longer. Revelation Mountain menaced above the trees, soon to loom over them as well. For all the experience she's gathered over the years, Panne could safely conclude that something was horribly, horribly wrong here. There was a maliciousness in the air that was almost palpable, like walking on the bad side of Lively City for a little too long. Random noises started to sound more sinister and surprising. Natural formations in the shadows began to look like predators stalking their every move. And it wasn't just her, either. Everyone was glancing over their shoulders and seeing grimacing faces inside of natural shapes.

They were being watched. The monster that took Vallion was stalking them, too-waiting for the right moment to strike. She was almost certain it wasn't a mortal thing, and that was the most terrifying part of it all. Still, she couldn't afford to be afraid of the supernatural right now. Not with what was at stake. Panne grabbed onto the knot of the scarf around her neck and fought off the twinge of grief it caused.

"We have to keep moving," Panne rasped, struggling not to gag.

Meowstic had started to use telepathy to communicate so that she wouldn't have to use her own throat. 'Yeah, yeah. But not all of us have infinite stamina and a mountain-sized willpower, Panne. How were we supposed to fight off the thing that took Val if we collapsed from exhaustion the second we found it?'

"There's not much daylight left," Panne continued, glancing up through the canopy at a sky of fragmented clouds and occasional sunspots. "Do we really want to be out here after dark? By then, it would be even harder to search for Val, and our enemy will have the advantage. I'm just trying to keep the odds in our favor."

Pangoro groaned and punched the log beneath him. "I've already messed up my ankle just getting this far. If we didn't stop, I would have just gotten slower and slower! Just calm your jets for like one freakin' second."

The Braixen glowered at her friends while she capped her canteen and shoved it back into her bag. Why should she be forced to wait in the middle of this stupid forest while their precious seconds burned away? It certainly wasn't their lives in danger, now was it? Val was going to get slaughtered and the only thing these guys could think about was how much their ankles hurt! He was responsible for them being alive in the first place! Just once, it shouldn't be so hard to make a little sacrifice to give thanks for their continued existence. Ungrateful! Lazy! Careless!

"Panne?" Sawsbuck's concerned tone drew Panne out of her thoughts. "You're, uh...whispering pretty violently to yourself over there. Is everything alright?"

"I was...Wait, what? I was?" She hadn't even noticed her lips moving at all. Now that it was brought to her attention, she wasn't really all that sure why she was so angry in the first place. All that blind fury had vanished in an instant, leaving her confused and disoriented with a bad taste in her mouth. Her eyes automatically trained on the dark spaces beneath bushes and between trees, searching feverishly for the force that was stalking them. "I...barely even remember saying anything. That- that thing's screwing with my head! It's gotta be!"

Sliggoo hummed nervously. "I know, but you're supposed to be the leader. Don't let it just do anything it wants. You've got eight years more experience than us, we should be the ones freaking out right now."

Panne hated that he was right. She stood up, mumbled a profanity at the forest, and motioned for everyone to follow along. Even now, a dizziness had manifested itself in her head and wouldn't go away. She'd been manipulated-and so easily, too! It was already very apparent that they weren't just dealing with a common bandit, but the sheer magnitude of what they were up against had only now just started to sink in. As she and her friends got back to hoisting themselves up mossy boulders and trees, there was always a sliver of fear in the back of her mind that her idle thoughts weren't really her own.

A frigid northern wind rolled in and washed over the valley, prickling against the back of their necks like an unwelcome breath. The clouds only got darker as the sun made it's descent behind the mountains. Putting one foot in front of the other wasn't going to be enough pretty soon, and she didn't want to be around in the dark when they were already seeing things in the light. And with the continued severe lack of pokemon around here, it certainly wasn't wildlings they were seeing scurry across the forest floor.

After enough suffering and paranoia, the earth finally began to slant upwards. Stupid mountain. Why did it have to be so goddamn tall? How were they supposed to find Val with all this space to search? Panne let out a very long, rattling sigh, then hiked up her legs and got ready to climb. Most of her friends made a similar sound as they came to the sheer face of clay and roots.

"Okay," Sawsbuck said a few minutes later, once their field of view had opened up a small degree. "Now that we're up here, you've got to point us in the right direction, Panne. Are we gonna split up, or make some kinda base camp to come back to, or what?"

"What, split up here? After what it did to me last time? No way." Panne twisted her arm behind her back and yanked at the wand that was shoved deep into the fur of her tail. After a bit of pulling and some discomfort, she pulled it free and spun it between her fingers. "We got a guiding wand handy, so I'm just going to bet on that instead. Besides, you must be out of your mind to think that I would walk around here alone at night ever again, no matter how much more ground we could cover."

She raised the wand over her head, faintly trembling from just the slight effort of doing so. Her mind focused on the Servine as she clenched her fist around the tool, envisioning him with all her might. After a demanding downward swing, an arc of light emerged from its tip, then gravitated in a northwest direction. Unsure of whether it actually worked or not, Panne started to march in that direction with the assumption that it did. There wasn't any time to doubt the method. Progress was progress, and she was going to take every inch if it was an inch closer to her lover.

Surprisingly enough, they started to actually move away from the base of the mountain. The densely forested landscape thinned out considerably, with the more concentrated pockets of foliage comfortably spaced out throughout grassy fields. The orange-grey cliffs of clay rose up like little mountains of their own, separated by streams made up of equal parts crunchy pebbles and dangerously-slick mud. Another quick swing of the guiding wand assured the Braixen that they were heading in roughly the right direction-or so she assumed, anyway. Either way, it was a much more reasonable hike compared to the steep cliffs they would've otherwise had to scale. Seriously, they didn't have the lung capacity for that kind of thing.

They stopped to refill their canteens along the way, and that cold water was like a gift from heaven for their ragged throats, no matter how earthy it tasted. It was a nice respite and all, but it could only do so much to stifle the impending doom that seemed to linger all around them. To make matters worse, it was really starting to get dark at this point. There was no doubt that Panne would have to scrounge around well into the evening once more, especially since they were all moving at a fraction of their maximum speeds.

'Uh, Panne,' Meowstic's voice manifested in the back of her head. 'I think your creepy friend has it out for us. Look over the ridge up here.'

The Braixen clamored up the clay hill, peered over the edge, and immediately turned her ears back in discontent. Just beyond the valley and a few miles out was a veritable wall of fog, creeping along the base of the mountain and spilling towards them at a gradual but constant speed. She gave a laugh, but only out of hysteria rather than amusement. "Ah. We've pissed it off, haven't we?"

It was inevitable. A quarter of an hour later, they had plunged into a world of murky grey. The transition from clear to mist alone enough to drag a shiver down her back, but it was so much worse while inside. Whatever squabbles they had with one another had suddenly disappeared, and everyone stuck especially close together. The mist only grew thicker as the light dimmed. Forty feet of vision, then thirty five, then only thirty-at this rate, they might as well blindfold themselves and sniff at the ground to get around. The guiding wand only took them deeper into the fog, as if they had any other choice.

"I hate this," Meowstic mumbled out loud. "I really, really hate this. I thought we were just gonna ride up to some stupid psychic type and beat the crap out of him or something."

Pangoro quickly replied, almost like a reflex. "Oh wow, no way? Maybe we should have expected something that can make a whole valley feel like it snorted a flower to be kinda dangerous, huh? Never mind the fact that it successfully managed to snatch Vallion of all people. Yeah, shouldn't have been this bad, huh?"

"Shut up, Pangoro," Sliggoo added.

Panne said nothing. She just kept marching, her brow eternally furrowed above flighty eyes. Why did they have to bicker like this? Was it their enemy's doing, or were they just going at each other's throats for the fun of it? Either way, it was distracting. The milky mists that surrounded them could have hidden away all sorts of danger. What were these idiots even doing? Only one of the pokemon here was written into the textbooks of scribes all over the world, and it certainly wasn't anyone that currently trailed behind the Braixen.

Panne whipped her head back and forth as she tried to shake the toxic thoughts away. Whether they were real or fake, they weren't going to bring her any closer to Vallion. Her eyes scanned what little ground they could in search of clues-or kindling for the coming dusk. What she quickly discovered was that these sparse grasslands, while much easier to walk through, had a severe lack of branches. She scoured the volcanic gravel for even just a twig or two and found little more than roots. To make matters worse, it was much too quiet. She could practically hear her own heartbeat.

The last time she attempted to swing the guiding wand, a pathetic fizzle expelled itself from the tip and fluttered to the ground. She tried again with even less of a response. An icy hand gripped at her insides. Panne gave a furious growl and chucked the useless twig straight downwards, where it bounced a single time before landing in the grass nearby. Huffing and puffing, she stomped over and swiped the stupid stick back up. With a snap of her fingers, the depleted wand was now a very temporary light source. It deserved to burn for letting her down, anyway.

"That's not a very good lantern," Pangoro said.

"Oh, then we'll just use the oil lantern you brought with you," the Braixen snapped back. "Oh wait, you don't have a light source, because none of us were prepared to even do this in the first place. Now hush and start looking for a bigger stick, or we're all going to be stumbling around blind."

Luckily enough, they did eventually find a tree to borrow a limb from. Pangoro hopped up and pulled on one of the branches with all his weight, leading to a crunching snap and a flurry of leaves. Once Panne tore off most of the odd twigs and bits, it was actually a fairly decent torch-though fresh wood never usually burned quite as well as older cuts. She took a deep breath and pushed enough heat into the severed end that it blossomed into a wonderfully warm flame. They still couldn't see too far past the swirling ripples as the fog curled around them, but at least it would be much harder to wander away from one another. Without the guiding wand, though, it felt like they were just wandering in a random direction. That's just how it had to be.

"Stop!" Meowstic frantically whispered all of a sudden. It was like time came to a complete halt as they skid their heels into the dirt, not even daring to take a breath. "There's something out there."

"What do you mean there's something out there?! What is it? How do you know?!" Sliggoo gasped.

There, in the murk, just beyond the reach of the torch. A looming mass of black somehow stood against the darkness like a hole in space itself. As soon as Panne took a single step towards it, the entity seemed to melt into its surroundings and fade into oblivion. Swallowing her fear for a reckless charge, Panne chased after it, but there was no trace left behind at all. No tracks, no smells-not even a vague sense that it was still around. It was almost as if...

"Was that a- a ghost?" Sliggoo said with an audible shudder.

"No, it was right there! I could feel something physical, I swear!" Meowstic hurried to the edge of the torch's light, scouring the emptiness up and down for the figure. "I- I know something was here! You all saw it! You all saw it..."

Several minutes passed with no sign of the creature. If their pace was slow before, then it was practically glacial now. Not only had their visibility dropped into the single digits, but even the volume of their voices seemed like it was being consumed by the fog. Any sounds they made hardly carried over more than a few yards, even when shouting. Panne would have blamed her burning sinuses for clogging up her ears, but then she would have still heard at least a little bit of the echo. Instead, there was a muffled nothing. The darkness had consumed them utterly.

Now that it was unfortunately on her mind, Panne felt the weight of all her symptoms crash down on her all at once. Her eyelids started to droop as the fever drained her energy over the course of a few scant minutes. She swallowed at the spikes in her throat. "So Sawsbuck. Um. You don't happen to feel kinda tired, do you?"

Sawsbuck blinked several times in contemplation, vacant stare trained on the ground. "Oh. Yeah, I think I do. I'm actually...very tired, now that you mention it."

One by one, the others started to notice the same things. They blinked, coughed, and rubbed at their eyes all in unison. It was bearing down on them even harder now. They must be getting close.

"We should take some of those heal seeds before it's too late, then." Panne flipped the torch and planted it deep in the soil, freeing her hands to rummage through Sawsbuck's bag. For as precious as these seeds were, she found that there certainly wasn't a shortage of them. The jar was twice the size of her hand and nearly filled to the brim with the things. The Braixen shot a look at Sawsbuck, who glanced away and huffed through her teeth. The grass type wouldn't have a supply like this if she didn't plan for more adventurous nights. With a shrug, Panne popped one of the seeds into her own mouth and gave out small handfuls to the others.

It didn't help much with the hallucinations, though. Once the night had fully taken hold, mysterious churning motions and unexplained snippets of noise became far too common. There always seemed to be something just out of sight, constantly there but never approaching. Panne tried her best to ignore it, sometimes even trying to accept it, but found herself violently swinging the torch in random directions with a racing heartbeat in her ears. It took all her strength not to lob fireballs into the mirages the moment they appeared. If it didn't come at them, it wasn't a threat. Even if it was real, whatever wasn't outright attacking them might as well not be. She just had to keep telling herself that.

The landscape transitioned from grassland back into the mountainous verticality she knew all too well. They came across the base of a cliff and stuck to it like glue, extremely thankful to have one less side to be terrified from. One of Panne's hands held the burning branch aloft while the other grabbed longingly at the scarf around her neck. It was one of the rarest materials on the planet and it still had no power to bring him any closer. This stupid leaf might as well have been rough-spun burlap right now. Why didn't the scarves gravitate towards one another or something useful like that?

Maybe because it was probably too late.

"Shut up," Panne snarled at the mists, just low enough that no one else could hear. Her tongue and lips still moved with the full viciousness of her words. "I know you're listening, bastard. I won't let you have control over me anymore. And I won't let you hurt anyone else."

Though the darkness didn't respond to her, there was an undeniable presence looking over them. They were a flock of Cutiefly waltzing into the Spinarak's web. Whatever this thing was, it had to have a weakness. Every living-or unliving-thing had one. And besides, if it was busy hounding them, that means it wasn't busy hurting Val. There was power to be taken from that.

"Ow, watch it!" Pangoro's outburst nearly made Panne jump a foot in the air. "I already told you, my ankle's hurt! Quit stepping on it or else you're gonna be the one carrying me home!"

"Quit being a baby. I barely touched you," Meowstic replied in turn.

"Uh, guys?" Sliggoo ushered them to simmer down with a bob of his head, never taking his eyes off a point in the distance.

"Barely touched me? What does that even matter? I'm barely limping along as it is! I don't need you kicking my legs out from under me! Watch where you're stepping next time!"

"I think it's back..." Sliggoo muttered.

"Will you two shut up already?" Sawsbuck shouted from her ragged throat. "You're going to get us killed at this rate! Why don't you just put up with one another for one more stupid night and never speak to one another again?"

"Don't. Move." Panne didn't have to shout for her point to get across. Everyone snapped out of their confused rage and froze in place. She raised the torch towards the emptiness and saw the churning of something amorphous, blacker still than the darkness that surrounded it. A cloud of smoke in the steam. The fight or flight response that shot up the Braixen's spine was like a bolt of lightning, but she merely stood there, petrified in the gaze of something absolutely sinister. What was she supposed to do? What was she..?

Something between a scream of terror and a wail of survival exploded out of Panne's mouth. She swung the torch downward and released a wild plume of flame in the general direction of the mass. The reaction was catalytic, pulling yelps out of everyone at the same time they took combative stances. Then it was over. The panic lasted all of just a few seconds, and there was nothing left of the gaseous figure once the embers faded away. The omnipresent silence had once more fallen over them. For the first time in half a minute, Panne tried to take a breath, and immediately fell to her knees.

All the air had been ripped from her lungs and replaced with a cold, disgusting feeling. The deepest parts of her sinuses began to sting and burn, which was more than enough to activate her gag reflex. The only thing that kept her from crumpling to the ground was the support of the branch. Resisting the urge to vomit, the Braixen gathered the strength to stand up and glare out into the mists through teary eyes.

"Oh no! Panne, are you okay?" Sawsbuck was at her side as soon as the sheer horror of the event fell to the wayside. "I didn't even see it move! Did it manage to hurt you somehow? I've got more first aid in my pack, can anyone reach in and grab it? It's the red case-should be on the side!"

"Don't bother..." Panne managed to say with what little breath she had. Whatever the creature did, it drained the absolute crap out of her. She probably wouldn't have been standing if not for those heal seeds earlier. Unfortunately, they didn't exactly protect her from it, either. This thing didn't fight with claws and teeth. It fought with bodies. Mental, physical, and emotional-she felt every kind of fatigue bearing down on her all at once. Even just the act of breathing alone was a laborious one. Even so, in spite of it everything that had been thrown at her, Panne puffed out her chest and spat a glob of mucus at the mist.

"It's threatening us. I think we're near where we need to be."

...

Another paranoid round of heal seeds later, the party had left the imaginary safety of their cliff and crept down a rocky hill, now fully prepared to strike out at any hallucination that seemed a little too real. The flames of the torch lapped twice as high as Panne struggled to control her shallow, shaking breaths. Pangoro had notched a blast seed into his slingshot minutes ago. Sawsbuck had permanently lowered her head into a defensive stance. Meowstic's eyes glowed a faint blue as she scanned the area for anything that dared to move. Sliggo was slithering backwards along the ground, not looking away from their flank for even a second. The monster made a grave mistake in attacking so early. This time, they would be ready.

As they came to the bottom of the hill, some kind of electrical sensation hit them like a punch across the face. It was so intense that Panne almost expected a strike of lightning to suddenly blast them apart. As they waded deeper into the strange energy, the very air seemed to hum to the tone of some distant resonance, buzzing against her teeth and reverberating inside her bones. The mists appeared to swirl more vigorously in response to it. There was something powerful here. Something so intimidating and so primal that she couldn't even muster the words to question the sensation out loud. Whatever it was, she got the feeling that it had been pooling between these hills for quite a while now.

The vegetation became noticeably thicker as they pressed towards the source. Hidden beneath the covers of ferns and vines were things that made her stomach twist into horrible knots. Corpses littered the forest floor here. Sparsely at first, but with increasing frequency as they drew closer to the source. Some were clearly older kills, whose decaying stench wafted through the air and made everyone gag on their own snot and saliva despite their weakened senses of smell. Some were much fresher-probably couldn't have been lying there for more than a day or two. The fact that no scavengers had come down to pick these free meals clean was more frightening then the fact that they existed in the first place.

"There's so many poison types..." Sawsbuck nearly had to shout just to speak over the hum of the energy.

She was right. Of all the species Panne could identify, a vast majority of them were poisonous in some way. There were Arbok whose scales had shrunk over their rib cages and Venomoth who had long since become an empty shell of cartilage and chitin. There was even a relatively fresh Scolipede draped over the mossy stump of a dead old-growth tree. She'd seen a lot of heinous things in her travels, but there were very few things that even came close to this. They had wandered into a disturbingly specific graveyard.

Pangoro gulped. "Oh. We're so dead."

The frequency of the airborne energy had reached a point where the very foliage had nearly started to vibrate. The group came to a sheer face of red clay and vines, eventually coming across a peculiar depression in the wall. The first thing that gave the entrance away was the breeze. There had been no wind currents for a majority of the journey, yet the wind that blew past them now felt like a cold breath as it traveled down her neck. Panne pushed the foliage aside and gazed right into the iris of a black void. The stale air that poured out from the cave was as thick as syrup.

Panne hacked up a ball of mucus and growled as loudly as she could. "Val! Val, we're coming! Just hold on!"

The cave immediately deafened their senses-not in the same that the mist had stifled all sound, but rather from the buzzing sensation that bounced off the narrow walls like a million Beedrill. It was such an overwhelming sensation that Panne had a difficult time just trying to think while crawling through the tight passage. Inner dialogue fizzled out before she could complete a single sentence to herself. Even visualizing a memory was far more difficult than it should have been. It felt like her eyes were going to pop right out of her goddamn head.

As the cavern finally began to open up, the walls went from looking natural to having a chipped and rugged exterior, almost like they'd been excavated out manually some long time ago. She held the torch up and revealed an inner chamber far larger than the light could travel across. One by one, her friends emerged from the tunnel and joined in with her gawking. The drone certainly seemed less violent once they were the full way inside, but the pressure it exerted on her skull remained. The chamber was filled with all sorts of strange boulders and stones, but none compared to the six foot monolith that stood alone in the center of it all.

For a brief moment, Panne forgot all about what she came here for. "Hey guys. Come check this out," she said, wandering slowly towards the peculiar rock. Tiny shadows pricked up from its marbled surface as little carvings stuck out in the light. She squinted at the markings and tried her best to piece them together, brushing away at the dust and clawing at its ice-cold surface. Her vision blurred as she began to interpret the ancient language word by word. The massive crack that snaked down the center of the rock made some of the characters impossible to read.

"What the hell is that?" Meowstic grunted, leaning in disconcertingly close to one of the incantations that dotted the boulder.

The Braixen tapped at the side of her head, concentrating as best she could in spite of the constant psychic noise. "I think it's some sort of keystone..? It's hard to tell exactly what it was, but judging from some of these violent-looking seals, I don't think whoever put this here ever wanted whatever was inside of it to get out. I'm pretty sure they used to use these things to make what eventually become Spiritomb. But I've never seen them in anything larger than an apple!" She traced her finger over the edges of the fissure. The stone was positively chilled on the outside, but once she tried to poke a finger into the crack, the heat was almost equivalent to that of a roaring campfire.

Pangoro turned away towards the darkness, his slingshot still notched. "Well there we go, then. We've just been dealing with a stupid Spiritomb all along. Let's just put it back in the rock and be done with it, then."

Panne just shook her head. "That's not how it would work, Pangoro. Spiritomb dissipate when the keystone that anchors them to this plane breaks. And did you wanna tell me how to fix a keystone, then? Cuz this one's a single good hit away from cracking the rest of the way down the middle. What would a Spiritomb want with Val, anyway? We've just got more questions than answers."

The keystone was certainly suspicious, but it was just an empty shell right now. All those meticulous spells and wards weren't holding in jack. It didn't seem like it was the source of all this infernal humming, either. While inspecting the keystone, Panne noticed that their torch was a fraction of its original size, with maybe only a few minutes left before it crumbled to ash. She suddenly regret not having mutilated another tree before coming in here. Whatever, that just meant that they had to work fast. If Vallion wasn't in here, then there's probably plenty more places to look outside.

"Panne! Up!" Sliggoo was staring straight at the ceiling. She then realized that there was no ceiling. "Something's in here with us!"

She hadn't noticed that the roof of the cavern was moving. A black cloud swirled above them like a raging typhoon, barely visible in the already pitch-darkness. It easily covered the entire span of the chamber and an indescribable measure deep. Almost as soon as they had noticed it, the monster began to swell over their heads in the same way that blood that rushed from a wound. The faintest sound of a fired slingshot somehow managed to pierce the overwhelming hum. One long second later, an explosion ripped through the center of the cloud of shadows. The sound it made was like a dozen metal voices scraping against a chalkboard.

"Don't just stand there!" Pangoro yelled as he notched another blast seed. "Send this thing to the abyss, you idiots!"

Just like that, instinct replaced the terror. Panne threw the worthless nub of a branch to the ground and withdrew the luminous orb Meowstic had given her earlier in the day. She raised the tool above her head and obliterated it against the broken keystone. A blinding flash burned into her eyes as the orb's power flooded the chamber. The floor began to glow a resilient blue, creeping up the walls and into every crack and cranny of the cave until passing onto the ceiling, where the massive black mass had spread itself thin like an impenetrable layer of smoke. It was then that she saw a long, familiar shape floating in the middle of the monster.

Val.

The Spiritomb tried to reconstitute itself around the Servine as if to hide him away, but Panne's hands were already aflame. She sucked in as deep of a breath as she could, fought off the urge to cough, and let loose a billowing stream of flames. The roar of the fire mixed with the ear-shattering screech that the ungodly creature made in response. She grit her teeth and pushed more and more power into the flamethrower, carving Vallion from the cloud like a knife gouging flesh. After several sustained seconds and the help of another blast seed, the Servine's limp body slipped out and started to fall.

Panne scraped her legs on the jagged ground as she slid to catch her lover. Trembling, she buried his face into her chest and postured herself protectively over him. He had barely stirred from the whole ordeal, and his skin was dangerously cold, but god dammit he was alive. In the constant blue light that emit from every surface in the cave, she almost didn't notice the tiny golden particles that drifted up past her head.

The Braixen rushed Vallion over to a corner. She could hardly hear a thing above the buzzing, but the sound of fighting just a few feet behind her was clear. As soon as the Servine had been set safely between her and the wall, she whipped around prepared to suck in another gasp of fuel. Her vision filled with black before she could even react. What little flame she managed to conjure was promptly snuffed as the Spiritomb swung its body into her. The vaporous arm consumed her at first, but the kinetic force behind the blow came shortly after, knocking her away.

Panne clattered to the cave floor. Though she scrambled to a stand on muscle memory alone, it was like the subterranean air had been stripped of all its oxygen. Her sinuses and throat began to burn like someone had injected boiling acid up her nose. She was forced to the ground once more, unable to push through the unbearable pain. Through blurry eyes, she managed to see Meowstic pull Vallion away with telekinesis while Sawsbuck and Sliggoo blocked its path. In response, the Spiritomb expanded around them and collapsed back onto the Servine, washing her friends away in the process.

Once the toxins had taken hold, the Braixen felt her consciousness begin to sway dangerously. She vomited up water and bile, slapped herself in the face, and pulled herself up a nearby boulder to stare the monster in the face. Or what appeared to be the shape of a face mixed into the amalgam of black. "What...What do you want with Val?! Why won't you let him go?!"

When the dark spirit tried to speak, the incorporeal boom of countless distorted voices scraped the room. "THE HUMAN. IT IS POWER. WE WILL HAVE REVENGE."

Her ears twisted backwards as another wave of nausea smashed into her guts. The blackness began to condense, swirling vapors crushed together into stilled images in the chaos, and all the while its heinous laughter overtook the hum and echoed throughout he chamber. Two clear depressions formed where its cruel eyes would be, glaring through her like she was nothing-like the fading ripples of a pond, so temporary and meaningless. The gaze was so intense that she entirely forgot about the urge to cough.

"WE WILL HAVE REVENGE!" it repeated with a thousand vicious voices. "YOU, MEW. YOU ARE IT'S PARTNER. YOU ARE WEAK. WE-"

A brief explosion ripped across the Spiritomb's gaseous body. Its form hardly even shimmered. Pangoro bared his teeth as he loaded yet another round. "Quit ignoring me! Just because she's a part of some freaky legacy doesn't make her any more important than we are! She isn't the center of the goddamn universe!"

While the Spiritomb didn't seem particularly harmed, its body twisted in annoyance. "SPECK. LESS THAN DUST. BEGONE."

The black cloud dispersed and launched a tendril of smoke in Pangoro's direction. He barely managed to dodge out of the way of the first swing, but a secondary surge knocked him to the floor. Without much to do against the intangible form, Sawsbuck moved to defend the downed dark type. A burst of blue energy rippled across the Spiritomb as Sliggoo slipped by, hoping to distract it further. Meowstic was positively shimmering with psychic power as she probed into the shadowy mass, trying to yank Vallion's body free.

There was something else wrong. Panne hadn't payed them any mind until now. There were tiny, yellow particles drifting through the air, gently pulsing to the oscillations of the energetic buzz. It was such a subtle thing, but the realization of what those sparks meant chilled her to the core. She knew what that light was. She remembered it from years and years ago-on that sunny, somber morning before her soul folded back into Mew's body. It meant that they were running out of time. Vallion was going to die if they didn't get him away from here.

The Braixen ignored the burning sensation in her lungs as she forced the air to stay down. Two small flames were born in her palms, but with another deep breath they grew to the size of her whole hand, then they traveled even further down her arm. The heat mixed with the tingling sensation of the adrenaline, spurring her forward in a maelstrom of desperate fury. "Give him back! GIVE HIM BACK! GIVE HIM BACK!"

Swing for swing, step for step, Panne charged forward and unloaded blast after blast into the Spiritomb. Flames splashed for meters around, scorching every particle of dirt and dust within her radius. The monster tried to retaliate against her-to snake in an attack using its malleable body-but there was no space left uncovered by her rage. Only after it was clear that her intent was to pummel the ghost into oblivion did it spread itself thin to try and escape. As soon as the Braixen saw the mist disperse outwards, she plunged through her own fire and stuck her arms out to grab at anything she could. Her fingers touched scales.

A caustic stinging sensation erupted on every part of her body as she burst out the other side of the cloud. She felt Vallion's weight in her arms, and that was all that mattered. Blinded and deafened, Panne positioned herself over him and bore through the pain. She wasn't about to be put to sleep and yanked off like last time. She wasn't going to let that happen ever again. If the Spiritomb was going to kill him, it had to take her along with. Even through closed eyelids, she could see the golden lights.

The shouts of her friends were buried beneath the wavering hum of Vallion's soul teetering on the edge of his body. There were more concussive booms behind her, but she couldn't really care less. Even with her own immune system twisting in knots over whatever poisons it was putting in her body. Even if she couldn't breath, see, hear, or move anymore. As long as she kept holding on, he was gonna be safe.

"IT'S TOO LATE."

The world was spinning. Panne felt herself be lifted off the ground. It took almost all her remaining strength to keep her arms around her lover as she dangled helplessly in the current. The darkness consumed them like a cocoon, until even the glow of the luminous orb was lost to a black sea. Even now, the golden lights were nearly blinding, flashing by with such a warm and pleasant color. Vallion suddenly began to stir. He flinched and writhed in her arms, his muscles contracting in sheer opposition to the force that surrounded them. He let out a scream right beside her ears. She had never heard him scream like that before, and from that second onward she decided she never wanted to hear it again.

"Go away!" Panne shouted the words, but couldn't hear her own voice. She swung and kicked and clawed at the mist, but it was only air. Fire instinctively started to spiral out from her hands. The more she screamed, the quieter it got, and the more fire spilled forth from her desperation. The light felt like it was piercing her flesh and somehow searing the bones beneath. There were more flames, more and more and more. Enough fire to drown out the light. Enough fire to blow the demon away. Enough fire to fill the entire cave. Enough fire to scorch the entire world. More. More! MORE!

She let go. She took a deep, deep breath of the noxious tempest, and yelled as loud as possibly could. An inferno spilled out of her maw. Past the point where it felt like her chest was going to implode, the fire kept coming. Her vision must have gone red at some point, causing the flames to burn a bright, bloody color.

Then it became dark. No gold, no red. Nothing.

...

The silence was even more unbearable than the noise was. Panne was certain that she was dead as she laid motionlessly on the cave floor, wracked in pain while her body fought off a cocktail of poisons. It wasn't until her friends began to stir nearby that she realized the darkness wasn't actually a void to float in. The Braixen moved her hands, then her arms, and soon she found Vallion was laid beside her. He was alive. He was breathing. Oh thank the Tree of Life.

It took a long time for Panne to gather the might to stand. She picked herself up, vomited up nothing no less than twice, then shuddered as she struggled to get Vallion's limp body over her shoulder. This was not the place to fall unconscious. Her work was not yet done.

Panne snapped her fingers and conjured the faintest of lights to see by. As she limped her way towards the tiny exit of the cave, the coughs and groans of her friends served to fill the unrelenting emptiness, and they began to slowly follow her out. Nobody had the strength to speak-they wouldn't dare waste breath on the attempt. It was a train of broken pokemon, crawling on their knees along the sharp cavernous floor to follow one tiny beacon out. It was so quiet. The world didn't make a sound, waiting with bated breath as she laid the Servine in the grass outside.

He looked so troubled as he stirred, a pained expression stuck on his face after such a long battle. Panne brushed her free hand across his cheek, causing him to stir even more. The Servine then spoke for the first time since they'd been separated.

"So...thirsty..."

Without hesitation, Panne ripped her bag off of her back and snatched up her canteen. Fighting against her trembling arms, she poured the water past his lips, but still managed to spill a depressing amount onto the green scarf around his neck. The Spiritomb hadn't even bothered to remove it while he was in captivity. Seeing it at all filled her with hope.

Vallion gradually opened his eyes to the dim light. Panne was the first thing he would see, so she tried to put on a smile in spite everything that had happened. "Morning, sleepyhead. We're not dead after all."

"What...Where am I?"

She thought about that for a moment. "Somewhere around Revelation Mountain. No idea, really. Don't worry about it yet, dear. We'll figure out the way back in the morning. Just rest for now, kay?"

"How...Are- are you a talking pokemon?"

The Braixen choked, but quickly shrugged it off. Who knows how long he'd been stuck in those nightmares, anyways? If the monster could force him to remember what it was like to be in a human body, then surely it could wreak all sorts of confusing havoc after such a long dream. It was a very reasonable thing to assume. "Heh. Come on, Val. Get yourself together. It should all be over now, I think. We've still got a lot of vacationing to do."

"Val..? Like, Vallion? How do you know my name?" His eyes were completely lost, like he was staring at a puzzle without an answer. "Seriously, what's going on? Who are you, and how are you talking like this?"

A hysterical giggle bubbled up from her throat, but it was actually the sound of her heart breaking. "C-come on! Don't you dare kid around at a time like this! It's me, Panne! I love you more than anything else in the whole world, remember? And you love me, too! Geez, this joke is Pangoro levels of cruel!"

The bewilderment never left his eyes. Not even for a second. There was not even a sliver of recognition to be had. He was looking into the face of a complete stranger. "Love? But I...I have no idea who you are. Or what- Huh? Where are my arms? Wh-Where are my arms?! What's happened to me?!" He glanced down at his own body in absolute horror, simply unable to comprehend that he had been a Servine all this time.

Panne tried to understand-she really did. She tried to figure out exactly what that demon had done to him, even though the answer was right there in front of her, staring at her like a displaced child. What had happened to all those years they spent together? What happened to the dreams they conquered together as they grew up side-by-side? What happened to the memories of a thousand adventures, or the thousand nights they had spent in each other's arms? Every stint of drama, every quiet moment, and every explosion of joy. All of that was gone, and the only things that proved that he was him were these stupid leaves around their necks.