By noon the next day, Pharaoh came to the conclusion that they were being followed.
As usual, his group members were oblivious, chattering and smiling and laughing, for stars' sake, but he had felt the unnatural presence in the air, quite literally, ever since they'd left the mountain territory. Now they were skirting the edge of the human territory, moving south so that they could step right into Driftveil without having to weave through the human population.
He was grateful for that; he couldn't imagine trying to herd them through groups of humans and successfully avoiding capture. Just the thought of such an escapade gave him a headache.
Though, he wouldn't have minded losing that chatterbox Maractus or that bastard Escavalier. He, in particular, rubbed Pharaoh the wrong way. Perhaps he'd have an unfortunate accident some time in the future, if he continued getting on his nerves.
A few hours after sunrise, he had noticed a speck on the horizon. He chose to not give it attention, but prickling premonition warned him not to ignore it entirely. Within another hour, the speck had grown into a vague, fuzzy silhouette of a flying creature. Its spindly wings and unnatural form made Pharaoh suspicious. This was not just a normal bird, flying by, possibly passing low out of curiosity, to observe the group.
At that point, he figured he should warn the group of his suspicions. He debated a couple options, knowing the wrong thing would send them all into a panic, and finally decided on, "We're being followed."
Naturally, the group descended into panicked paranoia. "Where? Who?!" Chiluly snapped, baring her claws and spinning in a circle. Pharaoh rolled his eyes. As if that would stop anything.
Hawthorne squeaked and pressed closer to him. For some reason, he didn't feel the urge to push the Sawsbuck away. On a better day, he might've even rested a hand on his back. He found himself slightly less annoyed by Hawthorne than the others. Perhaps it was because he showed potential- unlike the others, already too lost in their own worlds to consider anything else.
Burnout's eyes scanned the forest around them, but at least he didn't jump around like a complete fool. Only Chevali stayed still, watching with suspicious eyes. The suspicion was not pointed towards their supposed follower. "Where are they?"
Pharaoh gestured lazily to the sky above them. The figure had returned to a mere pinprick in the grayish-blue sky.
Chiluly squinted at the dot dubiously. "Eh… really? That just looks like a bird."
"Then why has this bird been steadily tailing us since sunrise?"
She exchanged a glance with Chevali, and irritation boiled in Pharaoh. Wonderful. By the time you get ambushed, I'll already be gone.
"Who would be spying on us, though?" Hawthorne asked. It didn't have the same challenging bite as the other two's jabs. Merely the curiosity of a child, too innocent for the situation at hand.
Pharaoh had his suspicions.
The sky was overcast and gray as the group weaved their way through the overgrown fields. Hawthorne squawked and ducked under yet another wooden beam, having learned his lesson after he nearly knocked himself over on one earlier. Pharaoh found the structures rather strange and unconventional, but they hadn't run into a single human the entire day, much less one willing to demonstrate the use of the odd wooden beams. Chiluly kept glancing over her shoulder, nervously eyeing the figure behind them. It had retreated for now, but it was still much too close for comfort.
"We should find somewhere we can't be seen from the air," Chevali said, slicing through the tall grass with his lances.
"But if we hide, won't it just wait until we come back out?" Chiluly asked, reaching up and tapping the wooden beam.
"Well- what if we found somewhere where we went in one way, but came out another?" Burnout piped up. "There's only one thing following us, so it couldn't be watching both entrances." He glanced towards Pharaoh like he was looking for approval.
Pharaoh kept his eyes on the distance in front of them. He always tried his best to ignore any attempts at friendship, or even alliance, that Burnout inadvertently proposed. Perhaps the Chandelure thought they still had some connection from their years long ago, as an infamous pair of bounty hunters, but his interest in connection with others had long since faded. He was in this merely for the money. And… maybe the thrill of hunting a criminal again. But mostly the money.
"I think that's smart! But where can we hide?" Hawthorne asked.
"There's a tower in the distance," Chevali noted. If he squinted, Pharaoh could make out the looming shape of a cylindrical tower outlined against the fog.
"Towers? I don't like- are you sure there's not anywhere else?" Burnout squeaked, suddenly cowed.
Chiluly frowned. "What's wrong with towers? I think they're pretty cool. It's probably abandoned, anyways. Let's get a closer look." Hawthorne and Chevali let her take the lead, but Burnout hung back.
"Afraid of ghosts?" Pharaoh asked dryly. Burnout squinted at him in an irritated fashion.
"You obviously haven't met my family."
Eventually, they stumbled their way out of the maze of tall grass and wooden beams and onto a well-worn dirt path.
"Wow, it's bigger up close!" Hawthorne marveled. It was still mostly obscured by the fog, but they'd veered closer to it on their journey.
Burnout was becoming more and more agitated by the second. Chevali and Chiluly had already tried to grill him on his behavior multiple times, but every time he merely denied the fact anything was wrong.
"I just don't like this," he said, his flames flickering in agreement. "It reminds me of- a not-very-nice place."
"How can you tell?" Chiluly snorted. "All we can see is the silhouette of a tower. Of course it's gonna remind you of every tower ever."
Burnout huffed in annoyance but stayed silent as they neared. As the detail of the building came into focus, he gasped and shouted, "Stop!"
Hawthorne and Chiluly hesitated. "What? What's wrong?" Hawthorne asked. He looked less afraid and more sympathetic for Burnout's anxiety.
"I- know this place," he said evasively, avoiding their gazes.
"Why didn't you say something before?" Chevali asked, immediately suspicious.
"I don't know! I wasn't sure. I haven't been here in a really long time," he muttered. "And what, exactly, is so dangerous about this place?" Pharaoh asked. "Yes, I'd like to know if we're walking into a death trap," Chevali added dryly. The area exerted a certain amount of ghostly aura, but it wasn't malicious.
Burnout shook himself frantically. "No! Not at all. It's- it just makes me nervous. I… ran away from a group of spirits a long time ago..." He twisted his arms, letting the flames cast shadows on the other's faces.
Chevali arched an eyebrow. "And what does this have to do with this?"
Chiluly risked another glance behind them and balked when it appeared that their relentless follower had moved closer. "Uh, y'know, maybe we should just go in. If there's ghosts, it's fine, right? Pharaoh and Burnout are ghosts. They can deal with the- uh- ghostly business." She ushered Hawthorne forward, who seemed just as freaked out by their stalker.
Burnout let out a meager squeak, but the momentum of the group pulled him forward.. Egged on by the closeness of the figure in the air, the group was almost at the tower now. The entrance loomed before them.
Burnout paled further. "I- I think-"
"You think what?" Chiluly snapped, finally losing her patience.
Chevali rolled his eyes. "Can we please-"
"My, my! Do my eyes deceive me? Is that… Burnout?" A new voice intervened, making them all jump.
Their bickering froze as they turned to face the entrance to the tower. In the doorway floated a small, unsuspected Lampent. Despite his sudden appearance, Pharaoh knew he'd been watching them for a while, now.
"St- Styx! Wow, it's- it's great to see you…" Burnout said weakly, trailing off before he could finish his sentence.
Pharaoh stifled the urge to roll his eyes. Really. Burnout couldn't make it any more obvious that he wanted nothing but to run away. That was one fail proof way to make yourself a target to hungry spirits…
"Woah! How do you know Burnout?" Hawthorne asked, blissfully oblivious to the tension boiling between them. Pharaoh resisted the urge to reach out and pull Hawthorne back by the scruff. He wasn't intimidated by this lowly Lampent, but it was never smart to trust a strange spirit whose motives were unknown.
Much to his dislike, the Lampent reached out and patted Hawthorne's nose.
If this fool makes so much as one wrong move, I'll rip him apart.
"Great question, sir! Burnout and I are… brothers, of sorts! Wouldn't you say?"
Everybody turned to look at Burnout, who looked mortified. "Ye- yeah! We're brothers…"
"Wait a minute. Are you guys, like- ghost-brothers, or were you brothers in your past lives before you were turned into ghosts?" Chiluly asked.
The Lampent laughed. "Yet another great question! Why don't I explain it inside? It is rather foggy out here…" Noticing Burnout's hesitation, he beckoned in a relaxed manner. "Come on, now, brother. I know Candella would love to see you."
Hawthorne and Chiluly were already heading into the tower, so Pharaoh followed, wanting to keep an eye on them. The idea of leaving Hawthorne at the mercy of these creatures made him unreasonably angry. He could feel them all around, watching their approach from every angle. For the moment, not aggressive, but curious. But Pharaoh knew more than anybody that could turn on an ancient, gold-plated dime.
"Come, sit! Please, please!" the Lampent, who Burnout referred to as Styx, said, pulling them towards a group of oval-shaped stones inserted into the ground. They were neatly arranged, all identical and calculated in their shape and placement.
As they neared, Chevali's discomfort heightened with the realization that the shapes weren't rocks, but tombstones.
"Uh… I'll stand, thanks," Chiluly said, showing her first outward signs of wariness.
Chevali stifled a sigh. He needed to teach her the art and importance of constant vigilance sometime soon, if their journey continued the way it was going. Starting with appropriate suspicion, of course.
"Are- are these… graves?" Hawthorne squeaked.
"Of course not, my friend!" Styx assured him in his comically commercial voice. It sounded like he was trying to sell them something with every sentence. "Merely memorials. There are no bodies housed in the Celestial Tower. Just memories."
The last line made Chevali's skin crawl for a reason he couldn't pinpoint. Chiluly shuffled slightly closer to him.
"Ugh, Styx! You're scaring them!" another, more femenine voice interrupted. A flickering blue flame, followed by the rest of another Lampent's body, appeared beside Styx.
Styx huffed. "I am doing no such thing! What's wrong with a warm welcome?"
The other Lampent's expression turned into what Chevali imagined was a smirk. "Nothing, if you do it right."
With a wave of her arms, the entire floor illuminated with violet flame swirling up around them and surrounding them in elegant swirls and breathtaking crests. More Lampent and Litwick burst from the shapes, surrounding them cheerfully, waving and saying hello.
"Wow!" Chiluly and Hawthorne were laughing and smiling, gazing up at the light show with wide eyes, but Chevali caught Burnout huddling closer to Pharaoh's side, whispering something frantically. Pharaoh muttered something back he couldn't hear and pushed Burnout away.
Styx sighed. "Well, well. Now that that's out of the way, why don't we eat?"
Chevali and Chiluly exchanged a confused glance, but before they could resist a full-length ballroom table fell from the ceiling and floated to a stop in front of them, supported by blue will-o-the-wisps. Various other blue-and-purple dishes and silverware followed, but none of them were filled. They had the same ghostly, opaque hue.
"It's just for show," Styx stage-whispered. "Take a seat, everyone!"
"I'm starting to think you just have it out for ghosts," Chiluly muttered to him, so quietly he could barely hear. "These guys seem super nice."
Chevali's gaze worked its way down the table. They'd long gotten introductions and reasons for visiting the tower out of the way, but the ceaseless chatter continued. Hawthorne was talking animatedly with some of the Lampent, who seemed to be enjoying his company. A couple more spirits were fawning over Pharaoh, trying to flatter him, but he barely glanced in their direction. Burnout was no longer cowering, but still stiff as a board. None of the Lampent or Litwick were trying to talk to him, which he took as a decidedly bad sign.
"And yet Burnout's going into shock."
Chiluly shrugged him off. "Well, they are family. Maybe they had a really bad fight the last time he saw them, and he's worried they'll still be upset."
Chevali didn't have the energy to argue with her. It was no use shouting at a brick wall, and the excitement of yesterday and today was finally catching up to him. "Be vigilant," he muttered back, making her scoff and return to conversation with a Lampent.
He let himself stare into empty space as the exhaustion tugged at his eyelids. Why was he so tired, all of a sudden?... Even a fast-paced fight with a group of Liepard shouldn't have been enough to keep him down.
After an indiscernible amount of time had passed, the muffled voices of the crowd blurring together any sense of seconds, minutes, or even hours, the tap of metal on glass made him jerk his head up. Styx was tapping a spoon against a drinking glass. Immediately, the hall fell dead silent.
Uneasiness brewed in Chevali's stomach, but it was dulled by his inability to focus. He waited for the parting-of-ways speech, but instead, Styx began, "Well, Burnout! Welcome back to the Celestial Tower. It's been a long time."
The rest of their audience stayed silent, every eye focused on Burnout. Understandably, he looked terrified. "Well- um-" he squeaked. "It has been, hasn't it? Quite. A lot of time, I mean."
An uncomfortable silence followed.
Finally, Styx spoke again. "Found a Dusk Stone while you were out exploring, I see." It was no longer a question.
Chevali tried to clear his foggy head, but nothing would come into focus.
"The Head Candelabra wouldn't be too happy about that, especially when you have the audacity to come back here and flaunt it."
"It- it was an accident!" cried Burnout, shrinking back. "And I- I didn't think I'd-"
"You didn't think you'd come back?" Styx said accusingly, leaning forward. "Not even for poor little Candella?"
Something stirred in the eerily lit rafters of the tower. Slowly, flames began to flicker to life in the darkness above them. Violet hues, like the Lampent, but overlaid with feathers and talons. He heard Chiluly gasp, but Chevali couldn't even process what he was looking at. The shape of a bird was perched there, but instead of golden brown or gray feathers, it was covered in violet down. Its eyes were soulless, and a haunting flame burned atop its head and in its tail plumage.
"A guardian!" Burnout gasped in horror. "How- how could you do this? That poor creature-" he broke off as if it was too much to bear.
Styx ignored his words. "But Candella is lonely, Burnout. She needs a friend," he murmured, and suddenly everything sprung into terrifyingly vivid clarity.
Chevali saw himself covered in purple and flame, with empty eyes.
"Run!" shrieked Burnout, and suddenly Chiluly was shoving him forward as every flame in the room lunged for them, including the horrible bird. He heard its shrieks echoing off the walls.
In front of them, the spectacular dining table and all its empty dishes burst into raging violet flames and dissipated through the halls, obscuring their vision with its blinding brightness and forcing the room in chaos. Chevali lurched forward, but his balance abandoned him and he crashed to the floor with a terrific shriek as his armor grated on the stone. Claws fastened under his arms and dragged him a short ways forward, but he was too heavy and they dropped him again.
"Please! Grab him!" somebody familiar shrieked, and there was another explosion of violet before a stronger pair of arms grabbed him and dragged him away roughly. The fire rushed past them, but despite its proximity he felt nothing but bone-chilling cold.
"No! I want THAT ONE!" someone else screamed, and suddenly Chevali felt himself fall out of his own body and into darkness.
The sound of something shattering made him jolt awake.
Chevali's blurry vision returned just enough for him to see what appeared to be a wounded-looking Lampent drag itself away from him and disappear into the shrubbery, glowing weakly.
He gasped, feeling like he hadn't taken a breath in years, and felt somebody's hands on his arm. He found the claws connected to Chiluly's form, outlined by the dying evening light. "It worked!" she cried.
"Did you kill that Lampent?" Hawthorne whimpered out of his line of sight.
"No," Pharaoh's voice rumbled. "It had his soul and refused to let it go, so I took it by force."
"What?" Chevali groaned, sitting up. Chiluly leaned on his back for support.
"They were trying to make him a guardian," Burnout whispered hoarsely. He looked distraught.
"What's a guardian? And what was that scary bird?" Hawthorne asked, pinning back his ears. "Actually, can we start from the beginning?" Chiluly interrupted. "Because I am so confused. Burnout, why the hell didn't you tell us that they were gonna- do whatever they did to that bird to us?"
"I didn't know!" he said defensively. "I- I was scared because nobody in the clan is supposed to become a Chandelure unless permitted to by the leader. I left the Celestial Clan a long time ago, for reasons exactly like what just happened.
I was just expecting some cruel words, maybe even an official banishment by the Head, but… nothing towards any of you. I didn't know about Candella. About- about the guardian bird, I mean. That happened after I left."
"So… they took Chevali's soul, and they were gonna put it into a Lampent? So that he became something like that?" Hawthorne asked.
"More or less. It's complicated," Burnout said, shuddering. "But I don't think it's right. And Candella… she was my friend. But now she's that monster."
"I'm sorry, Burnout…" the Sawsbuck shuffled forward and nudged him gently, carefully avoiding his flames.
Burnout gently patted his snout. "It's okay. What matters is that we saved Chevali from becoming like that, too. I wouldn't want to lose another friend like that."
Chiluly faked an over dramatic gasp. "Chevali… is Burnout's friend?"
Chevali tossed his head in mock disapproval. "Tsk, I don't have friends. I don't even know what that word means."
Hawthorne and Burnout giggled. Chiluly's laugh hummed against his back. "I didn't know you had a sense of humor!"
"I-" Chevali broke off as pain laced through his side.
"Ohh, I worried about that…" Burnout floated down to be next to him. "Side effects of- well, it could be the side effects of anything that just happened, really. I imagine having your soul thrown around makes you feel a little queasy."
"We can get medicine in Driftveil! I'm sure we could find someone willing to share some soothing herbs," Chiluly said. "It's still a ways from here, but we could probably make it by tomorrow."
"Oh, yeah, and we lost our follower, so we don't have to be all sneaky!" Hawthorne added. "Going into the tower had one benefit, at least." It was meant to comfort Burnout, but it only deflated his posture further.
"Well, maybe we should just head for Driftveil right now. I mean, we're supposed to see it in the dark, right?" he mumbled. "We lost a lot of time because of me."
Chevali wanted to argue with him, but he was too tired to get emotional. In actuality, if it was anyone's fault, it was the rest of the group's for not paying heed to Burnout's fear.
"Jeez, how long has it been? It felt like we were trapped there for ages, but at the same time, no time at all," Chiluly grumbled, squinting into the setting sun.
Chevali couldn't say, since he'd been unconscious, but he imagined it had been at least a full day since they'd entered the tower, and a little more because it was almost night time.
Everybody gawked when Pharaoh said, "Approximately six hours."
"I- you're telling me just this morning, we were running from a weird stalker bird?" Chiluly stammered.
Hawthorne hopped up immediately, wagging his tail. "That's great! We barely lost any time at all! We can move slowly so that Chevali can keep up, or we could even wait until tomorrow to move. The latter could be more helpful if Chevali recovers overnight." Chevali had forgotten that Hawthorne was a messenger, used to a tight schedule and surprisingly good with his own time management.
"We should leave now! If Chevali's okay, that is," Burnout added quickly, wanting to prove himself helpful.
Chiluly nodded thoughtfully, creasing her brow as she considered their options. "I mean, the sun hasn't even set yet. We could have another ten hours of moonlight, and Driftveil's night market goes until sunrise. So, even if it takes us a while to get there, we'll still have a couple hours to ask around."
"What do you think, Pharaoh?" Hawthorne asked, cocking his head. It wasn't out of desperation for validation, like how Burnout looked to him after suggesting something. Merely a willingness to include everybody in the decision. Chevali found he liked Hawthorne more with every interaction. He was young and inexperienced, but still respectable and showed much potential.
"I think you're all smarter than you allow others to think," Pharaoh said dryly. It held a note of approval that sounded strange on his tongue. "Leaving now is our best option."
"Great, let's go!" Chiluly said, hopping up. Chevali slowly moved upright, secretly appreciating that the Maractus stayed by his side for support. "Okay!" Hawthorne chirped.
"And if you get tired, maybe Pharaoh can carry you again-"
"Absolutely not."
"Again?" Chevali blinked in shock while Chiluly cackled.
"Oh, it was soooo cute! Pharaoh holding Chevali in his arms like a wittle baby-"
"Quiet!" Pharaoh and Chevali snapped in unison, making the rest of the group dissolve into fits of laughter.
Trying not to let the moment ruin his pride, Chevali tossed his head and headed off in the direction Chiluly had pointed to, purposely snagging her cape and smirking when she squawked. "I won't need carrying, thank you very much."
The rest of the group filed after him, their tension giving way to good spirits as they trudged into the setting sun.
