Chapter Twenty:
The Nameless Caverns
Their breaths came in heaves which echoed softly against the cold stone walls as the two moved as quickly as they could through the dark, narrow corridor for what felt like minutes until Rowan gasped,
"There...! I think that's...!"
-and Sally managed to lift her head high enough to see what he had seen; an opening, a dim light at the end of the tunnel.
"Is that the way out?" she queried, though she thought it couldn't be; the light was not nearly strong enough to be daylight. They drew closer and closer towards it until at last the walls all around them retreated a good ten feet and their eyes began to adjust to the gleam of the outside world flickering through cracks high upon the walls.
All around the room there were signs of what looked to have once been a mining crew's work, with pickaxes and large, heavy-looking sacks filled to the brim with rocks bigger than a man's head, and strewn about the room there were large crevasses in the walls, some of which looked deep enough for them to pass straight through.
They approached cautiously, Sally trudging on her one good leg until they were well towards the opposite end from the way they'd come, when her fatigue finally claimed the muscles in her good leg and she had to slump down next to a rock and lean her back against it – only for the rock to then slide apart from the pickaxe-strikes it had obtained who knew how long ago.
For the second time that day, she found herself mumbling,
"Stupid rock...!" -and without the perpetual wisdom of her companion to prevent her this time, she smacked her palm across a piece of it, sending it clattering all the way across the room.
"I don't think we should stay here," said Rowan, "All those tunnels... It feels like we're really exposed. Plus we can still see the entrance. If one of those guards or hunters comes in after us..."
She couldn't help but wonder what they were exposed to, exactly, but she saw the sense and let herself be helped to her feet again, and they continued their arduous trek through the cavernous tunnel.
"We shouldn't go too far..." she said once she had managed to recover some air in her lungs, "If Howl can't find us, we'll be-"
"We're just going straight," he cut across her abruptly, with a note of what she thought was agitation, "We'll be fine 'long as we don't wander off. Anyway, he wouldn't let us get aw-
...get too far."
"What... What does that mean?" she asked, curious more at the look on his face than the words he had spoken.
But at that moment his eyes flashed, alarmed. He had sensed something, and upon focusing her ears, she heard the something too, a few paces ahead of them where the corridor came to a close again.
"Sounds like... water." she said uncertainly. But for all her uncertainty, she soon found herself to be proven right.
As they drew into the relatively dim light of the room beyond that of the entrance, their eyes caught the gleam of a tiny stream of water flowing all the way from one end of the room to the other, without any visible source along its trail.
"Hang on..." said Rowan taking a few cautious steps into the room and scouring to left and right.
"OK," he said at last, taking her by the arm and guiding her through into the less-constricting air.
The two of them near collapsed in shock from what came next.
They had barely gone a sole step each over the lip of the corridor's end when there came a crashing sound no further than six inches behind their backs – the clattering of what sounded like a rocky avalanche, and as they whipped around to see what was happening, they each gave their own cries of terror and despair.
The path behind them was crumbling away, stone after stone falling from the ceiling of the corridor, blocking off both the way they had entered it through and the way they had left. The tunnel in its entirety was caving in, sealed off completely, and it was only upon that realisation that Sally had to pull Rowan's arm back in his attempts to try and remove the border of endless rock. Then, as the clattering subsided, before they even had time to register what had happened with steadied minds, the rocks before their eyes suddenly – in but a small number of blinks – crumbled away even further, now a cluster of pebbles, then they were like grains of sand – a wall of thick, dense powder, and then, finally, a gentle gleam like light being played across a mirror swept over the once-open archway leaving a clear, smooth stone surface perfectly alike to the walls before them without a trace of what it had once been.
The two were struck dumb, helpless, and before they could even begin to comprehend what had transpired right before their very eyes, they heard more sounds from all around them – clattering sounds of pebbles bashing against one-another, and as they whipped round, their numbed brains were struck dumb tenfold when they saw the very same effect occurring on two other corridors in the room. Then an area of unmarked wall straight ahead of them, right between the archways disappearing, was rapidly crumbling away to create a fresh new tunnel which they knew for a fact to have not been there before.
The two stood still, gazing transfixed and lost for words for entire minutes before, wordlessly, Rowan motioned for her to remain while he took a couple cautious steps forward, and she found her voice again:
"Rowan!" she hissed, struggling after him against the inertia of her wound, but he reached the other end of the room before she had even reached the little flow of water in the centre, and was enveloped in the veil of gloom before she could draw the breath to call him again.
"Rowan!" she said loudly, unable to mask her fear any longer, "Rowan, get back here! Right now! We can't separate in here-"
-then came a soft metallic clatter, a flicker, and she saw her friend again, lantern held aloft before him at what looked like a corner only a few paces far into the crevice.
"It's a dead-end!" he called out to her, his voice rebounding off the walls, his tone also one of half-concealed distress.
She snapped at him again and beckoned him back once more, and finally he tore himself away, his expression vague, as though his mind and body were in two different places.
"You idiot!" she seethed, "What are you thinking?! We can't separate in here – what if it'd closed behind you?!"
"I-I... I don't..." he replied, no surprise or guilt in his tone, and his expression still a picture of perplexity.
Sally clutched her hair in her fists, wanting to shake him at the shoulders, yell at him without restraint, waste not a breath informing him of the fool he was, and perhaps she may well have done so had it not been for a distant noise across the room from deep within one of the remaining tunnels, echoing through the near-silence that reigned.
The sounds were unmistakeably from the throat of a living creature, and certainly not that of a human's. They only needed to listen another moment before they realised just what the noises meant.
"That's a Feral Pokémon, isn't it?!" said Rowan, the light returning to his eyes and now dancing with panic, "It is! It's gotta be-!"
"Keep quiet!" she hissed, "We've got to move. If it finds us...!"
Rowan extinguished the glow he still held in his hand and slipped her arm across his shoulders and together they hastened as fast as they could towards one final crevice that remained unexplored to them, and into the dark they plunged once more just as Sally craned her neck to see the outline of the creature slowly drawing into focus before her view was obscured by the enclosing nature of their path.
The tunnel was shorter than those they had taken before, and as they hastened through it to where it twisted leftwards, Sally waited with baited breath, straining her ears as she knew her companion to be, wondering if the way behind them was about to close again and seal them off from that which would do them harm.
Yet not a sound came.
She clenched her teeth to keep her voice under control and forced herself to move onward even as she heard the creature now drawing to at least the middle of the room. They turned a corner and pressed on into the all-consuming dark, wishing they could make use of Rowan's lantern again, but neither of them daring so much as a whisper to one-another let alone stopping in place to create a glimmer of conspicuous light.
Then she heard Rowan give what sounded almost like a whimper, and before she was left long to ponder, she noticed what he had straight ahead in the dark.
A solid wall of stone. Another dead-end.
Rowan's voice carried gently to her ears, though no words could be distinguished, and despite her attempt to hold him steady with her arm across his shoulders, he shook her off and she heard his palms brushing and patting the barrier before them frantically. She drew to his level and held him close, squeezing his shoulders, trying to calm him without uttering a sound and praying beyond all comprehension that whatever Pokémon was nearby did not have a keen sense of smell.
Her pleas, however, turned out to have been for the wrong salvation, for the noise that fell next struck a blow at her heart.
The sounds of tumbling rock as the entrance to their tunnel was sealed off at last.
"No."
She heard her friend's voice that of the purest, most disbelieving horror while she herself could barely process what had happened. She heard movement and received a shock to her nerves as she felt Rowan shift past her with such speed and lack of care that she lost her footing and fell to her hands on the ground, her head scraping painfully against the wall upon her descent.
Rowan's panic-stricken voice resounded from one end of the tunnel to the next as he pummelled and beat at the wall which had appeared, though through what Sally could tell, it made no effect. She heard his voice rise to even further frenzy and struggled to form his name in her breathless throat as she got carefully to her feet again, beginning to feel her own terror rise in her chest.
Then, just as she was beginning to feel some stability within her limbs and the gears in her brain starting to snap back into motion, there came one final noise from out of sight to send her back into the depths of uncertainty once more. The sound of clattering stones for – she had lost count of how many times now – and her friend's high yelp of surprise, followed by what sounded like the thud of a body falling flat.
"Rowan?"
She leaned against the wall and followed after her companion, hearing his breathless voice grunting and gasping erratically, and as she turned the corner, her legs nearly gave way again:
There Rowan lay amidst a scattering of rock, his brand-new garb mercilessly covered in dust and his battered body shaking from head to toe as he pushed himself away on his back into the centre of the most brightly-lit room yet; for the wall that had sealed shut had come down again, though it had not led them back into the place they had tried to flee from. The little flow of water was nowhere to be found; and there was only one crevice across the room, not counting the large hole high above through which the sun's gentle rays glimmered like golden, translucent blades in the surrounding dark.
"What..."
Instinct and bafflement were what moved her against her fatigue, and the sight of Rowan at her feet was all that could convince her to stoop to help him up.
"But... How...? W-We were just..."
-but as she made to grasp his hand in her own, Rowan suddenly whirled round onto all fours and all the fear he had been fighting to keep down overpowered him at last, and he had to clutch his chest and vomit copiously.
"Oh... Rowan... buddy..."
She could manage no more. Nothing before had driven the severity of their situation so strongly into her heart than the nauseating sight that fell before her eyes.
Breathing deep and battling her emotions, she put a hand cautiously on his back, ready to retrieve it at a moment's notice as Rowan coughed and heaved.
"Can't be real...!" he gasped in a high voice unfamiliar to her ears, "Can't be... It isn't... All a freakin' nightmare...! Has to be...!"
"Shh, Rowan... Be quiet. Save your energy..."
"We're gonna die! We're stuck in this - th-this...!"
"Don't say that!" she half scorned, half pleaded, "It's not true! We are not gonna die! We just... we're lost and don't know where to go, so we'll stay put. 'Long as we don't keep moving about, Howl will find us, you know he will."
"Oh, great!" he suddenly snapped, teeth gritted and brow furrowed as low as it could go, "That's a real impro-... A-Agh...!"
He wretched and clasped a palm over his mouth, eyes bulging until he shut them tight again.
"What?" she said, "What are you saying? You can't... Are you saying you still don't trust him?!"
Another hair-raising wretch and an aversion of her gaze was the response she received.
"Rowan! Answer me!"
"It's not..." he gasped, still looking away, "I didn't... say that..."
"Don't you even try that. Look at me, will you?!
Rowan, what's the matter with you? Why are you so determined not to-"
"I'm not the problem!" he said, suddenly flaring up again,
"Why do you trust him?!"
"I... Are you kidding me?" she said, "After everything that's happened? And didn't you trust him enough to you invite him over for dinner the same day you met-"
"Stop reminding me of that! If I'd known who he... if he was..."
"What?" she demanded with all the force she could muster, but Rowan suddenly sprang back up to his feet and moved dazedly away until he had to steady himself on the wall some paces away.
She stood up and followed after him slowly, waiting for him to break the silence or turn to meet her eye.
"What's the matter, Rowan?" she asked when the latter finally occurred,
"What's happened all of a sudden? You were warming up to him again this morning, - yes, you were. I know you were. Don't give me that look. What is it about him now?"
And when still he gave no answer, she moved soundlessly to his side, shifted his arm out towards her and curled her little finger around his, giving his arm a gentle pull as though it were the cord connected to a doorbell,
"Come on, Rowan..." she said, the memory dancing swiftly across her mind as she spoke:
The abandoned, run-down house.
The torrent of rain carried past the boarded-up windows by the blistering winter winds.
The glowing fire in the hearth.
The two a mere eight and twelve years old, hands extended out to each-other from beneath their warm blankets over the open book that lay beside them.
Their little fingers coiling around one-another, cementing the words passed between them before she had passed her arm around the skinny, rag-clad child, wrapping him beneath the sheets over her own shoulders and holding him close to share her warmth.
"No keeping secrets from each-other," she said gently, "You remember that, don't you?"
He muttered something, and when she asked him to speak up, he answered, still averting her eyes,
"Of course I do..."
"You're not gonna break that promise, are you?"
"No... but I..."
"What?"
"You won't believe me. You'll think I'm lyin' or... something..."
"Shut your pie-hole!" she retorted with a smirk.
He hesitated a few moments more. Then he met her eye at last, drew a deep inhale and recounted for her what had happened amidst the chaos that had ensued in the once-peaceful town.
When he was finished, she said at once,
"Well... that is upsetting, but... I doubt he really meant it. He wouldn't really-"
"You didn't see him," Rowan replied stubbornly, "You didn't see the look on his face when he said it."
"As opposed to the usual look on his face, you mean?" she replied, forcing her lips into an uncomfortable smile. A look which Rowan seemed to take to heart.
"So you do think I'm lying!" he snapped.
"No, Rowan! That's not it... it's just I don't understand... Why?"
She became aware suddenly of her fingers lingering close to her throat as she spoke, and couldn't repress the memory of what had happened the previous night, hard as she tried. It had affected her more than she cared to admit.
Rowan's words broke through her reverie.
"What do you mean 'why'? I mean... isn't it obvious?"
She looked at him, plainly bewildered.
"He doesn't really view us as anything special," he said grimly, "He doesn't really trust us at all. He keeps saying we're his clients and all that, but we're still humans, we're still technically his enemy."
"No."
"We're deadweight, and he just wants to get back to his forest and-"
"Stop it."
She hadn't looked at him or even raised her voice, and yet there had been something in it that had made him break off at once.
"Don't even pretend to believe those things," she said, her tone surprisingly cold, "He's had chances to leave us, he's given us the choice more than once... He saved our lives, Rowan."
"But that's about where he draws the line, isn't it, at keeping us alive?! He said it to me himself, he'd knock us out if we tried to help!"
"But... he wouldn't re..." Yet Sally found herself unable to commit to the final word, and only managed that time to clench her fist upon the folds of her cloak to prevent it going up to her throat again.
"Even you don't believe that!" said Rowan hotly, "You talk like we should trust him and you don't even know for sure if he'll be willing to hit us if we step out of line!"
"He's not a danger to us," she said, meeting his glare with one of her own, "He might have been affected cuz of all the stuff that was happening, but if he did mean what he told you, I know he'd be doing it to keep us safe. Not because we're 'technically his enemy'."
"You can't know that. You can't peer into his brain and see how he really feels."
"I know that much, Rowan. I'm not dumb."
"How do you know?"
-and it was all Sally could do to prevent herself from saying 'because of how sincerely he apologised for what happened last night'. So instead, she looked him full in the face and said in one clear breath,
"I just know."
-and that sentence she was able to commit to in full.
There was no need for Rowan to respond. She could see in every line of his features what he thought of her at that moment, yet she stood defiant, staring him down, until his expression was that of what she could only guess as being in the near-hundreds of venomous doubts and fears, and he stalked away, recovering his wits with a little jolt before he unwittingly stepped into one of the tunnels. Then he cast around briefly, threw up his hands in defeat and found himself a patch of wall to fall back upon with a slump, avoiding her gaze the entire time.
Sally's mind was a myriad of gloom watching the display, and as she shifted her weight uncomfortably, she finally became aware again of the fact that her leg had been struck multiple times during the chaos which had ensued, and now after having waited so long for treatment that had not been administered, the once-tolerable searing across her shin had spread all the way up to the adjoining side of her hip, which was now little more than a dull, unrelenting throb of persistence.
She unsteadily followed his footsteps and sat down a few feet apart from him, swinging her luggage down beside her and rummaging inside for something to treat it with, and, closing her hands round the first thing she found, she pulled out a little glass jar of some lime-green substance, and it was a minute before she realised just what is was and felt her grip tighten convulsively; remembering the ride in the wagon, the kindly, good-natured family...
The mother, Mrs. Mason.
Suddenly her hands were trembling too violently to unfasten the top, and she had to battle the desire to smash the jar against the wall behind her.
She saw the woman's face flash before her eyes again, the caring smile and fretful eyes as they had gone their separate ways.
Then the face filled with despondence, and the one, heartbroken shake of her head.
Sally threw the jar away from her as hard as she could and it soared the length of the room before it bounced on the floor and rolled – away and away until it hit the opposite wall with a resounding clink, but did not break.
Rowan's head, until that very moment, had remained sunk onto his chest, but at the noise which had transpired, followed by Sally's growl of frustration and thump of her fist against the wall, he finally looked up to see what was ailing her. Another minute passed in silence, Sally feeling as though her anger had, if anything, deepened by the lack of shattering from the object she had thrown with such vehemence.
Rowan stood and strode across to where the jar lay, picked it up, and brought it back to her, knelt down at her side and motioned for her to let him treat her injury.
It was Sally's turn to be the one avoiding the other's eye.
She felt ashamed at her outburst already, though she knew Rowan of all people would understand.
He spoke to her softly, green eyes only glancing up in case they should meet, but otherwise locked on her wound,
"You get this stuff from the market?"
She was almost tempted to smile, for she knew he was perfectly aware of how she had obtained this ointment, and that this was his way of offering her the chance to speak of what was troubling her.
She shook her head to reply, and said simply,
"The family."
"...Oh."
"The mother... she gave it to me for my leg."
"That was nice of her. They were nice people, treating all our dings and bumps when they had no idea who we were."
She scoffed bitterly.
"When they realised who we were though..."
She paused briefly to see whether Rowan wanted to speak on the matter, and when he gave no more than a glance up at her before returning to his ministrations, she clenched a handful of her cloak in a fist and vented on before she could think of preventing herself,
"Why?!
How could she just...
How could she do that to us?! After acting so worried and being so friendly, how could she just whip round and-"
"I'll bet they thought they were doing the right thing. Just turning in criminals an' obeying the law."
"But they... I thought for sure they knew we were alright-"
"Sally."
Rowan at last ceased averting her gaze and lifted his head, and his expression, while calm, was full of deep meaning.
"You know that lady wasn't... her."
"Of course I know that, Rowan! But she still-"
"We were all strangers. They were nice people, and she happened to be real motherly when she saw us in pain. It got to you, of course it did. Me too, a little... I think. But you... well,"
-he made a vague, palm-held-out gesture towards her, and Sally opened her mouth to retort, but the breath caught in her throat before she could do so.
"...She looked at us like she was all disappointed," she said after a minute, glaring down at nothing, her mind's eye still a perfect reflection of the face Helen had made,
"Like she was the one hurt by us..."
"Sally," said Rowan with a touch of asperity in his tone, looking up at her with a stern, furrowed brow,
"It wasn't her."
She shook her head as though trying to throw the thoughts out of it, and proceeded to gasp sharply when Rowan bound the bandage up tightly without so much as a warning.
"It..." she said in a quiet voice, "It affected you too, Rowan...?"
"Yeah," he replied, "Sorta. Just a little bit, though. I mean, I wouldn't really know what a proper family like that is like, so... but you... well..."
He hesitated for a moment, searching for the right words to convey thought, and eventually shrugged blandly and said with the relaxed air of plain-spoken truth,
"I consider you family enough."
Finally it was easy to meet his eye again, and she gave him a weak smile and squeezed his wrist as she responded,
"Yeah... me too."
He returned her smile with an equally strained look on his ashen-pale face.
"We're gonna be OK, Rowan," she said, "Don't worry. Our demon guide will be here, invading our thoughts again any moment now."
She had barely finished the word 'now' when they heard a scuffling of rock and the sound of footsteps fast approaching and they scrambled to their feet at once, Rowan stood at her side towards the open space of the room while Sally's opposing arm half-rested on the wall beside her, each human braced to back into it or run or leap out of harm, and there they stood in wait, jaws set, hands clenched until their knuckles shone white, hardly daring to blink as the footsteps thundered towards them.
A human blundered into their view; an unfamiliar face, a monster hunter judging by his garb. A sword was clasped in his trembling hand and his face was gleaming with sweat. His dilated pupils fell upon them and he grit his teeth and thrust his sword-arm out, pointing it wildly at them, saying in as loud a shout as his breathless, near-hysterical voice could bring forth,
"You!"
Sally and Rowan each shifted backwards a little, though they couldn't help but notice neither his tone nor his glare held the light of familiarity at their faces, and the way he jerked his weapon from one to the next portrayed his fear to them plainly, though only one of them in the room was armed.
"Are you real?! Are you monsters too or are you some kind of trick, or, or-?!"
He spluttered from word to word with nary a breath between them, and when Sally opened her mouth uncertainly, intending try and calm or reassure him, he jerked his blade towards her as though he expected her to suddenly rush at him.
"No," she said at once, surprising even herself at the steadiness with which she spoke,
"No, we're jus-"
"Don't you come near me!" he snarled over her, looking terrified to have even heard her speak, "You hear?! One step closer and I'll cut you to ribbons! Not one closer!"
"Wait," she began, her pulse quickening, but before she could finish, their came a high-pitched sound from the tunnel through which the man had come, and his gaze leapt back upon it in an instant and he muttered something she couldn't hear.
"Don't you start followin' me," he snarled, audibly choking back his fear and breathing erratically,
"I'm leaving. I'm gettin' outta this nightmare and if you try an' stop me-"
The high-pitched sound intercepted the rest of his warning and he shuffled backward towards a third tunnel, head and sword alike snatching from them to the direction of the sound and back again before he reached the threshold of the opposite tunnel and abandoned caution, turned, and sprinted away out of sight, hit feet thundering through the echoing chamber with every step.
The sound drew close to the room in what felt like the mere seconds the confrontation had gone on, and Sally had just enough time to turn her head in fear, retreating back into Rowan's hurried approach, and before either of them could decide what to do, source of the noise absolved itself before their eyes.
It was small, brown-bodied with a crest of cream-coloured feathers on its chest and small, vigorously fluttering wings.
The bird Pokémon whom their guide had freed.
Sally would never have guessed throughout their travels thus far that she would feel such a rush of joy at seeing just any familiar face, be it a human's or Pokémon's.
The little Pidgey recognised them too and give a chirrup of happiness, circling around and around their heads before continuing to chirrup for several seconds. When neither of them gave a reply, it fluttered down to Sally's ear and she felt it clutched in the Pokémon's beak and pulled with surprising strength for something so small.
"I think," she said through gritted teeth as the creature let go before the sight of her raised hand, "Feathers wants us to follow."
"What makes you say that?" Rowan asked with a wry smile as the Pokémon chirruped around their heads again and fluttered towards the tunnel she had entered through.
Sally tensed as she hovered in wait right under the lowered ceiling of the tunnel, wondering if the rocky avalanche was about to come crashing down upon the unfortunate miniature.
Rowan seemed to think similarly, for he took hold of her arm and moved them both across the room without so much as a pause for her permission, glancing over each of their shoulders and peering over his back as though checking the surroundings for unperceived attackers.
"We're gonna be fine," Sally whispered between gasps for air, speaking to herself more than anyone else as they drew level with the little Flying Pokémon, who chirped once and darted forth into the tunnel ahead of them,
"It's... She's... She's gonna take us to Howl. We'll be safe now. We will."
And indeed, it was only after the tunnel had stretched on, winding to left and right and turning back onto itself that she eventually found herself to be proven right.
At first she had been alarmed and even frightened at the sounds that had issued from their surroundings, with she and Rowan both coming to an abrupt halt in the near-total dark of the corridor to listen, but as their ears had adjusted to it, they realised that what they heard were the sounds of battle. The sounds of Feral Pokémon among human cries and roars as they struck and were countered back, and among them Sally recognised a certain voice not anything like that of a humans; familiar rough grunts which issued forth from a growling throat, and the Pidgey gave a little chirrup and hurried ahead, forcing them to quicken their own pace, and they rounded the final corner of the tunnel to see their guide entangled in battle against not just Feral or monster hunters, but both at the same time.
Sally could count two Feral in the room and at least three humans, one of whom was being brought to the ground by a viscous Sandslash, the human struggling to keep its dagger-length claws at bay while the other two were alternating seemingly at random between battling Howl and a Feral Nidoqueen, who suddenly lunged at Howl when his gaze was turned and aimed the Move Iron Tail at him which he was unable to avoid in time, and he was sent tumbling away, but managed to recover himself and flip up onto his feet again even as the momentum carried him, as though the mighty bashing of that great tail had been little more than a swift jab to the rib, and rushed back into the fray, leaping towards the Nidoqueen and repaying her strike with a Force Palm to the head, and as she stumbled away, he caught the advancing hunter before he could raise his blade and shoved him into his companion, then Howl closed in and rammed their two skulls together with brute strength, incapacitating them, and the Nidoqueen made to hit him with a stealth attack again, but this time he was ready for it and jumped up high, spun round and threw an Aura Sphere back down at his foe, who was unable to recover from the shock, however weak, which landed right between her eyes, and as the Demon of The Forest landed down, he shuffled backwards on his feet, charging a fresh Sphere as he did so, and hurled the more powerful variant at the Nidoqueen just as she was beginning to open her eyes again.
The Sandslash's cry rent the air as Howl turned to see them bound in a cruel, spiked lasso, with what looked like venomous little pins stabbed into its shoulders and leg by their human quarry, who had a savage glare on his face as he pulled and pulled at the rope, drawing a dagger from his belt as he did.
Howl snarled and ran at them, and before they could even react, he was upon them, claws digging into the exposed flesh of their arms as he drew back his fist and knocked the hunter out before he had finished the inhale required to yell.
The sounds of scuffling came from the direction of the Sandslash and Howl exhaled sharply, leaping upright and readying his fists, turning to meet the source of the sounds with whatever savagery they had left.
But to the surprise of every observer in the room, it did not launch into attack again, but struggled on wobbly legs to hold itself steady, glaring at the Pokémon stood across from it with a glazed look in its eyes.
Howl tensed briefly, then decidedly lunged and struck towards the creature's head, but it dodged out the way and fell over clumsily, glancing wildly over its shoulder at its attacker, and scurrying away from them all and into one of the tunnels that awaited it along the walls.
Sally and Rowan watched it go, and Howl relaxed his stance at last, rolling his shoulders stiffly and massaging his knuckles in the opposite paw as he turned to meet the eyes of his clients.
"There you are," he said, as calmly as though this were a mere detour.
The Pidgey chirruped and swept towards him, circling around his head twice as heartily as she had done for Sally and Rowan, who approached cautiously as Howl spoke to the little Pokémon,
"See? I told you you could do it. Just had to follow the instructions to the letter and it all worked out just fine."
He turned his gaze upon them, switching back to his telepathy at the moment before Sally had hurled herself around his shoulders again and hugged him as tightly as her tired arms could muster.
Neither human understood the words he had shouted up towards the ceiling, but they each understood the tone, and sure enough his voice was within their minds once more, confirming their shrewd suspicions.
"Seriously! Do I look like a hugger to either of you?! I have a spike on my chest, for crying out loud!"
He placed his paws resolutely at her shoulders at freed himself from her clutches, and try as she might, Sally was unable to prevent a sharp inhale and a noticeable wobble from her unsteady leg as she was moved away.
"What's the matter?" he asked, almost as soon as it had happened.
"N-Noth-..."
She had been about to try and dismiss his concerns, but felt her breath catch, for the merest glance towards his furrowed brow and crimson glare convinced her he had already worked out the truth for himself.
"Injured," he said, not as a question, but as a statement, "On your leg, I presume?"
She exhaled through her nose, but said glumly,
"Yeah..."
It was no use trying to hide it. If Rowan had been able to see through her ruse, she supposed Howl would be able to too, and those flame-red eyes always made her feel unsettled when their scowl was fixed into her own eyes; as though they were piercing straight through them and watching her every thought pass by.
"Which leg is it?"
"It's not a problem," she said, breaking from the gaze and shaking her head, "We treated it already, I promise, there's no need to-Augh!" she cried out, for rather than waiting for her to finish disregarding the concerns, Howl had delivered a rough tap to her shin with his foot, almost as hard as a kick.
"That one," he said offhandedly,
"Alright, sit down, let's have a look."
"No!" she said angrily, and a little louder than she had meant to,
"I told you it's fine! We treated it!"
Amidst his reply, she had caught Rowan's voice saying her name in a worried tone as she had spoken so defiantly, but felt her attention drawn from intrigue back to the speaker in front of her before she had time to address it.
"I heard you, no need to shout. Just want to check how bad this injury is."
"There's no need to-"
"I'll decide that for myself, thank you."
-and such was the finality of his words that she gave in and allowed him to guide her down.
She saw Rowan out the corner of her eye take a half-aggressive step closer, but hesitated before he could commit to acting on whatever emotion had been flowing through him.
Howl made to unravel the bandages with his paws, but she stolidly pushed them away and settled to do it on her own, for her feelings towards the Pokémon were not amiable in those passing moments.
Howl gave a disgruntled groan and she saw his snout twitch as he inquired,
"What is that smell?"
"I guess... the medicine?" she ventured, "The- ...We got it in the town."
He leaned closer and sniffed curiously at the green powder around her wound, which had now begun to stain it with blood and tinge it a dark-brown towards the centre of the dosage.
"Hmm..." he murmured, continuing to sniff at the ointment until she felt a little uncomfortable,
"The leaves from a Sitrus berry... some honey, I think... and something else I can't identify. 'Suppose it's harmless if it's being sold as medicine..."
He tilted his head a little to the side, and the corresponding ear followed suit as he asked,
"This cut looks pretty old... when did you get it?"
"U-Uh..."
This was the question she had been dreading, for if her guess was correct, he would not be pleased by the answer, even less so as more time had passed since its topic had first occurred.
"At least a... good few hours old..." he continued quietly, and when she failed to meet the glare as he looked up into her face again, she heard the lowest, softest rumble from the depths of his throat. She furrowed her brow and set her lips, prepared to retort whatever criticism he may have in store for them, but his tone was something afar from the anger in his growl.
"You have water in your flask?"
She blinked in surprise. "Yeah?"
"Let me borrow it, please."
"Borrow?" she echoed, utterly perplexed, but handed it to him all the same and once he had unfastened the stopper, another gasp of pain was forced from her as he poured a small stream of its contents over her injury, washing away the medicine they had dressed over it.
"What are you doing?!" said Rowan at last, beating her to the question, and she couldn't help but feel some reproach at the level of anger in his tone. When Howl gave no reply to either of them, Rowan strode forwards with purpose and had stretched out his arm towards a paw held aloft over Sally's leg, when a sudden white light began to glow from the ends of the Pokémon's fur across his entire forearm, and before their complete reactions had passed at that, the two humans were both gazing in unsuppressed wonder at the effect of Howl's Heal Pulse Move.
"It..." Sally breathed, and once the light had begun to disperse from her shin, she cursed under her breath at the sight that befell her eyes. Howl's ears twitched at the word, and he smiled wryly, with a little shake of the head as he did.
"It's... It's gone!" Rowan cried.
Sally could hardly believe it herself. Though she still felt some considerable pain in her leg, there was no longer any wound to speak of! The flesh seemed to have regrown over it again, pink and fresh, her fingers felt nearly as cold as ice as she brushed them over it.
Howl grasped her by the shoulders suddenly and lifted her to her feet again, gaining a surprised yelp from her at how weightless she had seemed in the motion.
"How's it feel?" he asked her, "Put some weight on it."
She did as instructed.
"It... feels fine," she answered, digging in her heel as an experiment.
"Can you walk on it now?"
"Yeah... Yeah I think so."
He nodded and looked past her shoulder.
"And you?" he asked Rowan, and she couldn't help but perceive a change as he'd spoken; a vague softening of his usual gruff, straight-to-the-point manner of speech.
"I'm good," was the response of her out-of-sight companion, and again she noticed a subtlety in his voice; an awkward tremor, something akin to reluctance.
"You look pale," their guide persisted, "You haven't been attacked in here too, have-"
"I said I'm fine." Rowan cut across him with a bitter impatience Sally had no difficulty picking up on.
She craned her neck to her companion, then back to their guide, whose ears had drooped a finite amount that only she could have noticed, close as they were to her, and with a scowl she opened her mouth to interrogate - and perhaps even scold them both when there came a noise across the room.
With ears held high again, their guide whipped round towards the opposite end of the room while the two humans looked wildly to left and right, unaware of what direction the noise had come from, then the Pokémon growled at them to follow and led the way towards the tunnel closest to them, even as Sally voicelessly began,
"But... we came through there-"
But the red eyes flashed her a warning look, and she held her tongue, even as their guide grasped a tight hold on their wrists and pulled them along swiftly in his wake, Pidgey bringing up the rear.
They had turned the familiar corners and headed down the same long passages when there was a faint glow at the farthest end, and the Lucario finally relinquished his hold on them.
"That was the growl of a Feral coming our way," his voice sounded, "Best to avoid them if you can. There's usually quite a pawful of 'em this kind of place."
The glow then became a light, which they had to narrow their eyes against until they had exited the tunnel and were enveloped in it fully.
Sally blinked for a minute or two, saw the room around them, and at last her voice was forced out of her breathless throat.
"What the...? But we... we were just here! This isn't-" and before she could complete her announcement, the mouth of the passageway behind them was suddenly buried beneath an onslaught of stone which for just the one moment she had forgotten about completely and gave a startled yell, recoiling from the crevice as it promptly became one with the surrounding wall.
"Howl...!" she stammered, hands running through her hair before she could save face and hold them down,
"Wha...!
Just where in the world of fever-induced nightmares are we?!"
But their two Pokémon companions had uttered separate tones of alarm and turned their gazes towards an archway to their left, and after Howl had squinted through the dark that pervaded it, his fangs shone at something - or someone he had seen within it.
He charged an Aura Sphere between his paws and hurled it through into the infinite dark, and among the rush of air as it exploded upon its mark, they distinctly heard a human cry, and knew it had been either a guard or a hunter.
Howl growled at them to follow and made course for a tunnel at the other end of the room, and as they started after him as fast as they could, a Move suddenly cracked through the air inches before his snout and hit the adjacent pillar of stone which stood close by.
"An Electric-Type Move... In a rocky cave like this..." Howl pondered aloud, and then called through the tunnel,
"Pachirisu! Is that you, kid?!"
There came a responding voice from the opposite end, punctuated by a snarl and a cry of pain.
"Come on!" he commanded, and they struggled after him, calling him back desperately as the mouth of the tunnel collapsed in their wake the moment they had followed him into its depths.
Through the darkness they heard sounds that sent waves of cold down their spines, and by the time they had reached the dimly-lit room that awaited them at the opposite end, silence had fallen again, and all around them was the evidence of what those noises had been: humans and presumably-Feral Pokémon lay unconscious in heaps across the room, fresh cracks and smoking fissures in the walls and along the ground on which they lay.
Howl's voice came through to them, and they saw its owner on his knees beside a small-ish, limp figure on the cold ground towards the middle of the enclosure.
"Stay quiet," Howl told them as they began to approach, and held his right paw aloft over the body that lay in front of him, which Sally had only just noticed in the dark to be still breathing hoarsely.
Howl's forearm shone once again with that mysterious pale light, and glimmering droplets of luminescence floated down like falling snow onto the unseen creature, travelling over it like shining ripples across the surface of a pond until they came to an abrupt halt, and Howl gave a haggard grunt, and by a swift movement they saw him holding his right paw up with his left, struggling to carry out the treatment of his patient, and seconds later with what sounded like no less than a pained growl, the lights began to fall once more until the moment there came a faint sigh from their mark, when the Demon of The Forest gave a rasping breath and collapsed onto a tremulous paw, battling with what little strength he still possessed to keep his breathing under control.
He heard the approaching feet of his human clients, but they had heeded his words and made not a sound, nor spoke a word to voice the apprehension he saw on their shadowed faces. He managed a weak smile to reassure them, and cursed himself bitterly for ever allowing himself to neglect practising Heal Pulse with Mist. Indeed, he reflected, it was an oversight that would never have been allowed in the guild: in his addled mind he could almost see Chatot flapping his wings straight into his eyes and bellowing with all the breath in his lungs at the knowledge he had been so careless.
A croaked question came from the body on the ground, and in answer, Howl responded in Pokémon tongue:
"It's me, kid. Lie still a moment. Let your strength come back on its own, don't try to force it."
"No..." the Pachirisu refused, and tried to climb unsteadily to her feet,
"We can't wait... we have to-"
She collapsed flat on her front before she could finish what she'd been struggling to say, but even the two humans had caught wind of the fear in her voice, and Howl said at once,
"What's happened? Where are the others?"
"We... we got split up... you said to stay close by... b-but we-"
"Yes, I know. That happened. Where are they now? Why aren't they with you?!"
"A Feral..." she coughed and gasped, "Me and... that Charizard guy... w-we found the exit... b-but..."
"You found the way out?!"
"Y-Yeah, b-but-"
"Where?! Do you remember the landmarks?! How can we find-"
"There was a Feral... this... huge Pokémon... wouldn't let us leave... tried to... tried to escape, but lost the others... found Ivysaur and Houndour... but then we..."
Her breathing was too sharp for her to carry on, and her chest was inflating and deflating rapidly to the point she looked as if he might burst from it, and Pidgey twittered at her a plea for calm.
"Do you know what Pokémon it was?"
The Young Pachirisu shook her head, unable to lift it off the ground so that her chin scraped roughly back and forth with the movement.
"What Type was it?"
The Pachirisu gritted her teeth with her response,
"I-I... I'm pretty sure it was... a Steel-Type... or a part-Steel-Type, anyway."
"Ah. Good! In that case, a Fire-Type like Charizard had the advantage. He might have even dealt with the problem already."
"No...!" she beseeched, "We ran... We had to...! It was so tough...! We couldn't even put a dent in that thing!"
"A dent?" Howl repeated, but before he had the chance to question further, the Pokémon had resumed her heaving, rapid breaths until she slumped flat on the ground, passing not another word or response.
Pidgey gave a high screech of avian terror that spread to the opposing ends of the enclosure and returned to them aloft from the smooth stone walls as she fluttered round in a frenzy above the limp Pachirisu's head.
Howl reached up with a swift paw and caught her out of the air roughly.
"Calm down!" he snapped, thrusting her down towards the Electric-Type's face, "She's fine. She just passed out."
He felt the little one's heartbeat slow down and he decided to let her go.
With the flutter of her wingbeats rolling around their heads once more, Howl straightened up again, turned to meet his human clients - and then suddenly felt as though a wave of heat had surged through his brain and staggered sideways, managing to just steady himself before he crossed over an unconscious body that lay in his accidental path.
Sally and Rowan started forwards, but he was ready for them and asked, in as casual a voice as he could muster,
"Do you have water, either of you?"
After draining the flask for every last drop of its contents, he felt a renewed strength flow through his legs, and after a brief explanation of the side effects of an amateur Heal Pulse to his companions, he had conceded to allowing Sally and Rowan to carry the Pachirisu between them and continued to lead them through into even deeper shades of dark tunnels. He had begun to allow his Aura to glow and light their way, but before he could complete the action, he heard a clatter from behind and saw that Rowan had lit his lantern, and decided to allow himself this minute relief from further effort as they trekked on in hushed voices through the inky blackness all around, until their path brought them to further rooms of varying sizes and heights, and their guide continued to perplex them with his careful examination of the cavern's mouths before deciding on which to choose.
Always, he would halt them at every corner, every entrance, every exit, and peer out with supreme caution before signalling them to follow.
And yet, for all his watchfulness, he was no longer curt or brusque with either of them; on the contrary, throughout all their travels, they had never seen their guide so utterly at ease than in this den of twisting, turning corridors, alternating rooms and constant attack from humans and Feral alike; as though this were his own element, his own home, his own battlefield in which he commanded the changing tide.
Then, quite suddenly, as they trod through the silence of yet another winding tunnel, he stopped dead in his tracks, and with his curt tone suddenly returned in full, he shushed their questions with a snarl.
"Put out the lantern," he said quietly.
"But..." Rowan protested, "But how are we supposed to see withou-"
A noise carried to their ears from what seemed a great distance away. A distant crash, the faintest of pained cries, the sound of rocks breaking into fragments under debilitating impacts.
And roars too.
Roars from a non-human throat.
"Put it out!" Howl said again, with bared fangs.
Sally heard the metallic clink, and then the flickering flame was extinguished, and her eyes could form no shapes out of the all-consuming shadow.
"Here, I'll take Pachirisu.." his voice said, and she felt the weight of the Pokémon relinquished from her shoulders as Howl took hold of their burden.
"Stay close, and keep quiet."