Stone ran her paw along the ground and frowned. The map the council had given her had pointed out where she stood as the first location to check. They'd said it would "almost assuredly" have some Runestone to toss into the bag they'd given her. She lifted the burlap sack up and scowled at it. Cyan thread had been used to create more runes she couldn't decipher.
"Just toss the stone in, that'll take care of everything," she grumbled, pulling her map out of its case and unfurling it. She stood up straight and groaned, stretching her back out. "Have to find the shitty little things first." She lined up the features drawn onto the map - a bizarre rock formation that looked like a half sphere with a cube growing out of it that then turned into the other half of the sphere. It had a bunch of tiny runes scribbled in next to it, but she sure as shit couldn't read them. Stone rolled the map back up and shook her head, setting off towards the landmark. "Every time I have to do this kind of shit, Grass just gets fucking weirder."
The trek was quiet, as expected. At least when she wandered with the Runewright she could ask him questions and find stuff to argue about. Learning about runes was interesting enough - at first anyway. But eventually it all became so theoretical. Resonance this, alignment with universal states that…
She stared down at the river she'd come to and lapped up several sips of water. "And I can't get it out of my head. What a drag," she said to her rippling reflection. "At least seeing bits of Mist and Sand was cool." She trudged over to a nearby tree and sized it up, then took a deep breath and reared back. One. Two.
She headbutted the tree and sent it toppling over. Didn't hurt much that time, she thought, rubbing her head. Maybe she'd end up with a stiffer mane and thicker skull. As she crossed the makeshift bridge, she pulled splinters of wood from her fur and hummed.
It wasn't really a tune. Or at least, she was pretty certain it wasn't. It came from somewhere - felt familiar. Probably from something obscured by amnesia.
The amnesia. "Just had to go and bring that up, Ran," she said aloud. "You and Outrider both." She reached into a pouch at her side and pulled a piece of jerky free. "Can't believe they care so much about it. Doesn't really accomplish anything to pull back that fuckin' veil." She tossed the jerky in her mouth. "Besides, what if you find out you were really shitty? Or really boring? At least the mystery means there's always something to spur the imagination."
She stopped and looked skyward, trying to find the sun. It had been an hour. She hadn't even said all that much. But when you're the only pokemon around that'll respond, what's the rush? A feeling of melancholy lapped at her heart, striking out from her stomach. Why was this work always done alone? In Nomad there was at least an excuse. It was hard to spare someone when everyone already had something to do, after all.
But Crag had bodies to spare. Dozens. The Committee of Rune Prospecting, Crafting and Recovery alone had a bunch of worthless, overfed pokemon sitting behind counters looking at reports, sifting through rocks, sizing up anchors, and a bunch of other worthless shit. They could do with the exercise and threat of danger. Burns off the fat fast. Maybe cinccino were just that fluffy.
Stone growled. Who does paperwork for rocks? What's the report for? Who even reads the reports? She dropped her face into her paw and sighed. "Really, who the fuck reads a report on rocks? I'll give them a pass on inventory and type. But that's it. You don't need much more than that."
She looked around at the trees looming above her and consulted her map again. No, this was the right path. Or it should have been, anyway. She pressed forward, and the brush around her ended rather abruptly and left her blinking in a meadow with the stone formation she was looking for.
It was enormous. How had she not seen it on the horizon? No. No, that bothered her. That bothered her immensely. It should have been visible. It was taller than the trees, she couldn't have possibly missed it, she's not blind. Stone stared the strange formation down like it was a snarling wildling and raised a paw, pointing at it with an air of vicious accusation. "What the fuck are you?"
As she drew closer she felt the hardened tips of her mane begin to quiver. Had none of the rune scouts they'd sent out here been able to sense weird shit in the air? Who were they sending out in this direction, a bunch of drednaw? Stone smirked. Probably.
The structure was just a few paces away from her now, and the vibrations in her mane had begun to audibly harmonize. "That's not supposed to happen," she mumbled, reaching up and grabbing the largest, sharpest, densest point on it. She let go and began to circle around the enormous structure. The harmonizing stayed relatively constant, pitching up or down if she stepped closer or further away.
"Well," mumbled Stone, stopping and staring the structure down. "Nothing ventured, I guess." She raised her paws and brought them less than an inch away, then stopped. "You know, Magnus would kill me if he saw me doing this." She laughed, and pressed her paws against the half-sphere.
The harmonizing sounds around her pitched up and out of her hearing range. What were these lights in her peripheral vision? Oh. I'm glowing.
She felt her entire body shake and then with a soft foof, cyan dust exploded out of her fur and compacted itself together in front of her, taking on the form of an icosahedron. The cyan light pulsed once and then the newly formed rock fell to the floor.
The harmonizing had become a single constant note. She picked it up and looked it over. The sound wasn't unpleasant, at least, but if this stupid rock was going to be making this sound for the rest of her outing, she was tossing it into a river as soon as possible.
"Oh. Oh," said Stone, comprehension dawning on her. She smiled. "How deep do I have to scrub to get magically active dust out of my fur?"
She laid a paw on the structure again, but nothing happened. "At least you do a good job," she said to the mess of shapes. "Why the hell are you here anyway?" Silence pressed itself against her ears. "Yeah, whatever." She turned away, scoffing. "Silent cunt."
The movement of the sun told her it had been another two hours.
Two hours of speaking to herself for lack of anything better to do. Anything feasible or realistic anyway. There was always something to do, one way or another, but there was never a time or place for it in the wilds. A low rustle from a nearby bush froze her in place.
Stone dove behind a tree and peered around it, locking her eyes onto the still shaking bush. She placed a paw down onto the ground and gripped the tightly packed dirt, claws digging in and forming cracks far larger than they should have.
It was a vileplume. And four oddish bouncing around her, chasing one another in a game of tag. Stone smiled and continued to watch. The vileplume stopped and admonished the smallest oddish for bumping into her.
Some of the words were almost understandable, but it was just off. Sounds that were almost words, sounds that were nothing at all.
Stone deflated against the tree, but did not loosen her grip on the dirt beneath her. No luck. They were wildlings. Maybe not hostile, but that was impossible to know until the attack came. She frowned, continuing to watch them as they disappeared into another bush. The rustling and crunching of leaves and twigs grew distant in the silence of the forest and when it had nearly disappeared, she stepped out from behind her tree and resumed her journey.
"Wonder why some of them can almost communicate," she mumbled, looking up at the sky. Maybe six more good hours of daylight before she had to consider setting up camp. Or rather, digging a camp. She pulled her map loose again and traced her path past that weird mashup of shapes. She should technically be close to her next marker. It looked like it was a very large natural quarry, but after how the last "landmark" just snuck up on her, she was less than certain.
Her breathing picked up - the gentle grade of the hill was getting steeper, and when she finally crested it, she let out a long sigh of relief. Partly because she could sit down on a conveniently placed boulder, and partially because she could see the quarry before her. The depression it sat in reminded her of a crater more than anything else. She pulled her waterskin to her lips and took a sip and tried to size up her approach as she drank. Down the hill. Don't trip. Forest ends, no ground cover. Hmm. She squinted at the quarry proper, its soft greys sticking out against the browns and greens of the grassland around it. No use, it was impossible to tell what was moving around out there without some kind of help.
Bet Magnus would have some weird little thing to help him out here. Like that telescope he got when we were wandering around Sand. She smirked at the memory. It should have cost them a fortune. But that merchant was so certain he'd keep pace with the frenetic dance of Magnus' haggling. By all means, he'd practically stolen it from that poor ninetales.
As she made her way down the slope she felt the pangs of loneliness strike her again. She really liked that ninetales. He was weird and spoke in a 'historical desert accent' that she was pretty sure he'd just made up, but that was what made him cool to talk to. Glittering Splinters was a weird town name but it made perfect sense once she saw their artisans producing glass.
Calypso was also beautiful but she tried to not remember that. Not after she'd fucked up her chances as badly as she did that one night where she broke that vase. He wasn't mad but she was pretty sure she'd managed to actually break a part of his spirit.
There it was. The large expanse of grassland with little in the way of cover. The second she saw wildlings she'd dive behind a tree and wait. She didn't have to wait long.
There were a lot of them. Sitting together, sitting apart, wandering here and there. Easily two dozen of them were in view from behind her tree and she wasn't even close enough to see the rest of the quarry yet. Lots of different wildlings though. I expected something more fitting for a quarry.
A few eevee, two wandering lickitung with taillow riding on their heads. A girafarig raised its head up from a tall patch of grass, chewing and searching around.
She knew that they weren't all hostile. But she didn't know which of them were. Sure would be nice if some of them decided to not be wildlings anymore. She still didn't know what caused it, and given that Magnus didn't either, it was unlikely that anyone alive did.
She dropped down on all fours and began to crawl her way forward through the grass as best as she could. At least it was overgrown, but once she got close enough it was going to become very obvious that "stalking" was not a part of her skillset.
Something began to ring in one of her pouches and she felt her skin crawl. "No, no, no, what the fuck," she whispered in a panic. "It better not be what I think-" She pulled the icosahedron from her pouch and stared at it angrily. "Calamity take you. What the fuck do you think you're doing?" she whispered at it.
Stone raised her head just high enough to find the wildlings walking around the quarry and was relieved to see none of them seemed to care. The tone had to have been too quiet for them to hear still. Or they simply didn't care. Maybe they weren't hostile. She could just give them a wide berth if they weren't, that always worked.
They had to not be hostile first, though. She grit her teeth and barely kept herself from growling. She hated impasses. Fuck it, just pick something. Crawl a bit closer. If it gets louder you can leave and maybe just walk around the entire quarry and see if anywhere is less dense. She began to ease her way forward, but the icosahedron did not seem to hum any louder. It did, however, begin to glow brighter. Nothing too intense, but it was certainly noticeable.
She really should have just walked around the entire quarry, but she had been entertaining the idea that perhaps she'd just return to Crag instead of making camp for the night. She'd be back later than any sensible pokemon had any reason to be wandering the wilds, but she'd be home and that was enough. As she crept closer, she could see the shapes of the wildlings in the distance growing clearer through the grass. The eevee had wandered away except for one, which appeared interested in sleeping more or less in front of her path. Cunt.
She adjusted her path and kept going. The lickitung were moving away now and the taillow were going with them. The girafarig though. It had turned its head towards her. Was it mad? Fucking grass, can't see shit. Stone was doing her best to cut through the center of the two pokemon, but the grass was starting to get shorter. This had to be grazing territory for the wildlings. As her cover diminished she began to feel anxiety balling itself in her gut. This was stupid. She could take a girafarig and an eevee if they wanted to front. She was chiseled from gods damned stone. That's what Magnus had told her.
They lycanroc got to her feet and stood up straight, locking eyes with the girafarig. The wildling stared back at her, still chewing, though the strange head on its tail turned to look at her and bared its teeth. Stone rolled her eyes. "Your head is busy stuffing its face, drop the tough guy act," she called out.
The giraffe part of the girafarig continued to gorge itself on a berry bush in front of it, foliage and all. Twigs snapped and cracked in the still air, and the little black head eventually stopped snarling and resumed its lazy contemplation of the sky. Stone sighed and took a tentative step towards the quarry. The eevee sleeping a dozen meters away or so stirred and opened its eyes, eventually focusing on Stone before yawning and rolling over.
"Wish it was always this easy," she muttered. As she began her walk into the quarry proper, she peered over her shoulder now and again to see if either of them were following her. Far from it - the eevee had become lost in the grass and the girafarig appeared to have wandered even further away in search of more treats. Good.
Mostly good. The quarry had nothing in the way of cover, meaning the wide berth she gave wildlings had to be extended even further to make it difficult to make out that a not-so wild lycanroc was poking around looking for treats to take. "Not really stealing, is it? Not like anyone out here owns this but shit." She paused at a very bizarre formation that had exploded out of an enormous cracked surface geode. The crystals in the geode looked exactly as she'd expected, but the formation that grew from it was something else. Roughly trident shaped and glittering in the sunlight, it reminded Stone of a crystal, but it was the color of a deeply red ruby. She grabbed hold of it and tried to snap it free from the unremarkable formation it had come out of.
Crack.
Easy enough. She glanced around. And no one was losing their minds. Perhaps it was worthless, but it was pretty and that was enough. She'd lost the few pretty things she'd collected in Nomad.
Back to searching for anything that responded well to rune magic. But there's just fucking nothing to find. Surface deposits of iron now and again, yes, even a few more odd geodes. But any kind of Runestone or Anchors? Nothing. Her frustration mounted. She wasn't getting home at any reasonable time at this rate. She'd have to go to the next recon point. Fuck. As Stone glanced around, desperate to find any Runestone, it occurred to her that she'd penetrated a considerable distance into the quarry. Was she more than halfway through it? She had to be.
The sun hung ever lower and her anger rose ever higher. But then- there. Finally. She rushed over to a gently hovering formation of stone. The cracks on its surface pulsed cyan at a regular interval and the ringing coming from her pouch became a steady hum. "Hauling this is going to be stupid," she mumbled, looking it up and down. It wouldn't be hard. She could manage it pretty easily, all things considered. She'd hauled Nomad's anchor a long way without help and she was only too sore to use her arms for a day or two.
The bag she tucked through her belt came to mind. "Oh, that's right," she said, pulling it free. "I can just stuff you in here and the bag will do the rest." She knelt down to inspect the cracks in the surface of the Runestone and began to note where she'd have to strike to break it down into pieces small enough to fit into the mouth of the bag. Three strikes would do. Ideally, anyway.
One. Two. Three. Four. "Whatever, close enough," she said, scowling at the pieces of Runestone floating before her. At least she'd remembered to hold them in place and not launch them away like she did that one time. As she stuffed them into the bag, she looked up at the sky. The sun was low but not too low. She could make it back. How much Runestone did they need her to bring back, anway? Enough to fill the bag up?
The sack was actually quite full. Perhaps the Commission knew that "reconnaissance" didn't guarantee results or spoils. If that's the case, fuck it. I'm going back to Crag. She yanked on the drawstrings of the sack and tied a knot before pulling a length of rope free and tying it through the two metal loops that had been stitched onto the bag. Improvised and somewhat uncomfortable sling completed. She pulled it around her body and stopped for a moment. The Runestone felt much lighter in the bag. "Guess they weren't lying when they said it would take care of things." She shook her head and set off back in the direction she came.
And made it all of five steps before a low growl filled the air to her left. She looked over, scowling. "What the fuck do you want?" she snapped.
The lairon staring her down snarled and lowered its head, ready to charge.
"Alright, fine," she groaned, pulling her bag off her body and unbuckling her belts to lay them atop it. "Get at me, fucker." She tightened the bandana around her arm that bore the two-tone colors of Nomad and stomped a foot into the ground, but her eyes focused on a patch of stone a few paces in front of the lairon.
As expected, it charged straight into the explosion of shining stalagmites as they erupted up around it, and the lairon went soaring into the air. With a devastating crash, it landed in a pile of geodes, sending sparkling bits of minerals up into the air that reflected the sunlight in blinding whites and soft purples.
She snickered. "Figures." She drove her fists into the ground several times in a wide arc around her, breaking the surface of the quarry and creating dozens of sharp stones. With one wide sweep of one her feet the shards bounced into the air and short jabs and she launched them around her and all around the stirring lairon. Their pointed tips quivered as they floated perpendicular to the ground, waiting for Stone to launch the lairon into a group of them. Armored or not, some of them would find purchase.
The pokemon rolled to its feet again and stomped towards Stone once more.
"Again?" she asked aloud. She stomped her foot into the ground once more, the muscles in her leg tensing in anticipation from the charge. It did not come. "The fuck are you-" The lairon cut her off with a screech, and shards of metal exploded off of its body and flew straight at her.
Stone couldn't dodge all of them - there were simply too many. She felt shrapnel embed itself in her forearms as she brought them up to shield her face, but it meant that several impacted her stomach and legs. The sounds of metal breaking apart and clanging to the ground hit barely registered with her over the blinding pain in her body. The shards were not embedded too deep. But they were still embedded deep.
She lowered her arms and her eyes went wide at the sight of the lairon less than eight paces away from her, sprinting full-tilt, its armored carapace discarded somewhere far behind it. She threw herself to the side, the awful pain that met her upon hitting the ground be damned. The lairon rocketed past her but turned in a wide arc to charge again.
Sure, now it was attacking with dumb charges, but that explosion of metal shards earlier and its discarded carapace shouldn't have been possible for a wildling. She bared her teeth and held her arms up, ready to receive the charging pokemon. This would end it or end her. Maybe it's good you're not here Magnus. She matched the lairon's bellow with a scream of her own, and right before its head made contact with her, her fists made contact with the top of its head.
The crunch of its skull fracturing beneath her paws blended with the crack of its head breaking through the quarry floor. And then the rest of its body came up to meet her and slammed into her chest, sending her stumbling over and flat onto her back. The stones all around her clattered to the floor as exhaustion and pain gripped her. And still she managed a weak laugh. "Got you good, fucker."
Stone stared up at the sky, alternating between panting and wincing. Really, she should have just run. Sure, she'd won, but what if the rest of the wildlings had decided that this death would not go unpunished? Stone looked around her as best she could from her spread-eagled position on the floor and swallowed hard, still trying to catch her breath. No one seemed to care. She chuckled, and it sent shocks of pain through her torso, prompting her to stop immediately. "No one gives a shit, huh? No solidarity among wildlings, I guess."
By the time Stone had found the strength to sit up and stagger to her feet, the sun had crawled along the sky enough to confirm she would either be back in Crag very late, or digging a burrow for the night. No matter the decision she made, it wouldn't be in this burrow. "Fuck this place," she mumbled, limping over to her belts and Runestone sack. "Not sticking around long enough for someone to change their minds." The belts came on easy enough, but tossing the sack around her body was awful. At the very least it was light.
"The second I'm not fucking surrounded by wildlings," she mumbled, setting off back along the path she took into the quarry. "I'm patching myself up."
Watching Valor sleep on her lap gave Ran a vague sense of comfort. The events of the day had exhausted him enough that even his own guilty conscience couldn't keep him up. Her own eyes felt heavy, but she had promised herself she'd stay up with Outrider to wait for Stone to return. To her surprise, Thea had decided to stay until the lycanroc showed up again as well.
Perhaps it was out of some sense of guilt? It was difficult to say. The braixen had not said much over the night. What few questions they had for her did not have answers that cleared their consciences. But as Outrider had said, the answers at least were well-reasoned justifications.
Ran agreed. The Children of Mother would take any chance had they had to kill them. Or capture Valor. Or both. Violent self-defense being their only real option didn't make it go down any easier, though. She looked up from the chespin's head and focused on her hand. Garbage, like the last two deals. She shook her head. "Thea, are you sure you don't know how to manipulate cards?" she asked.
The braixen looked up from her own hand and offered Ran a weak smile. "I wish I could. I'd be able to do tricks with my wand that don't require me to hold it," she replied. She laid her cards out. "Flush. Knave high."
Ran tossed her cards down and said, half-laughing and half-exasperated, "Shit, fuck all."
Outrider set his cards down and gave them both a small smile. "Straight flush."
Thea joined Ran in groaning as the lucario won his seventh consecutive hand. The braixen gathered up the cards and stuck her tongue out at Outrider as she shuffled them. "I can at least manage this," she said, looking at Ran. Her brow furrowed and she clenched her right hand into a fist for a moment. The wand sticking out of her tail became wreathed in a warm orange glow and lifted out of her tail. It stayed floating there for a moment, and then flicked itself forcefully forward, into Thea's waiting hand.
"That's certainly something," said Ran. "I expected it to catch fire, actually."
Thea kicked Ran's knee in mock reprimand. "I'm not some freshly evolved, wide-eyed little fox." She looked meaningfully at Outrider for a second before she began to deal the cards again. "Though I did turn most of my wands to ash when I was first learning to do that." She smiled sheepishly and looked at her hand.
Ran stared down an actually good hand. Well, "good." Given the night she'd been having, three of a kind might as well have been a royal flush. She tossed a knave out, hoping she'd get either another seven or a three. The former netted her a four of a kind - the latter, a full house.
The door to their apartment burst open, revealing the ragged, exhausted form of Stone. Bits of her fur had been stained with blood, and several rolls of bandages had been wrapped around her arms and legs. She bore a large burlap sack on her back and looked like she was a few steps shy of passing out.
"Stone!" said Ran, moving to stand up but stopping when she remembered Valor was still using her lap as a pillow. "What- are you okay? What happened to you?"
Stone dropped her belts and the sack by the door with absolutely no grace and trudged over to the pile of hay they slept on and fell backwards onto it with a thud and a low whine. "Fuck, that was stupid, everything still hurts," she groaned.
"Stone, do you need anything from us?" asked Outrider, getting to his feet and heading over to her to inspect her wounds. "How deep are these wounds? Where did you get them?"
"I mean, you could remember to lock the door before you go to bed, I guess." She wriggled around on the ground, trying to get comfortable. "Good thing you keep it unlocked even when you're home." She closed her eyes.
"And the rest of those questions, Stone?" asked Outrider, his tone stern.
"Oh for-" she whined. With a very loud groan of discomfort, she sat up and rubbed her eye. "Beat a wildling out in the quarry I had to investigate for Runestone. Lairon. Tough little fucker, but they don't take to having their skulls caved in and their heads being driven into solid stone too well." She paused and picked at one of her wounds, eventually pulling a shard of metal free from it and tossing it aside. The white fur around it slowly began to stain red as the wound bled. "Ate a full helping of metal shrapnel for my trouble." She pulled another piece free and sucked air in through her teeth. "Fuck, that stings."
Outrider began applying bandages to her wounds, frowning. "We'll need to request more medical supplies," he said, looking at Ran.
"That's easy enough to do. Just go to a clinic and ask for the Medical Requisitions Office," supplied Thea at once, standing and stretching. "And with Stone back, my duty of sticking by my subordinates in times of duress is considered fulfilled. See you all tomorrow."
"What are we doing tomorrow? The same patrol?" asked Ran.
"Nothing tomorrow. Day after, it'll be a different one. We might brush against a possible outpost, but it'll probably belong to The Unbroken," she replied.
"I'm not sure if that sounds better or worse than Children of Mother."
"They're idiots," said Thea, dismissing the thought with a wave. "We run into an outpost they have and it'll be a short fight."
"How are they still around then?"
"More stubborn than a sleeping gigalith. Until tomorrow, Assistants!" The braixen left their Communal, closing the door behind her.
"What's she coming back for tomorrow? We don't have a mission," said Ran.
Outrider shrugged and finished dressing Stone's wounds before he went to lock the door. Ran, meanwhile, carefully picked up Valor and handed him over to Stone, who brought the chespin to her chest and laid back in the hay.
The weavile extinguished the fire crackling away in their hearth and then made her way to bed, sidling up next to Stone.
"You sure you're okay? I expected you'd be excited to tell us what you did," asked Ran.
"Tomorrow my enthusiasm will be so great you'll tell me to shut up so you can tell your own story," said Stone, a smirk forming on her face. "But that will be tomorrow."
Ran rolled onto her back and closed her eyes. "You're not going to want to hear what we did," she muttered, her stomach churning lightly.
"I spread a lairon's brains across a quarry. Can't be that gross."
"We… might have killed some little ones in self defense. Or a very old chingling and houndour." There was a long pause. "Stone?"
"From Sand to Grass, some shit never changes."