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Warning: Extreme squick! If you have fear of gore, I advise you to steel your stomach or skip this chapter!
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Three-Point-Pass
I give my decree, to go into the world and find these broken pieces and bring them back to me. There are undoubtedly a great many, and we will need many more hands to carry the weight. The congregation is fervent and their zealotry is absolute. They return with other mechanical wonders; machines that should not work, gears that should not spin, yet are all driven by the same inexorable force. I surround myself with them, bathe in them, and the music of their mechanisms sings me to sleep.
-Tome of the Resistance Against The Flesh, by Irvin Onn
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"They haven't moved in an hour," Casey said, watching an array of white dots on a satellite map displayed on a portable Rotom laptop. "There was a chase in the tunnels, and then they were still for a little while, until they were moved again and came to another stop."
"Could be dead," Bede said.
Peonia slapped him. "Not a chance in hell!"
"Maybe a chance in hell, actually," Henry said. "We heard plenty of commotion up here from the thermitent. Well, do we leave for Freezington, head out into the pass now, or wait till morning to see what happened?"
"The longer we wait, the higher chance there is that the others are dead," Hop said. "That's my brother in there, and Peonia's father! We need to make a plan. They reached the caverns before stopping, so we'll probably be able to do the same. The Pokedex Holders are the strongest fighters here, so they'll be our frontal and rear guard."
"Guard?" Hop said. "That means we'll be going in a column through the pass. Bronze's Steelix will help us, right?"
The Steelix grunted in affirmation from outside the tent. With the matter settled, the company of youths unsealed the tent's thermal flap, entering into the cold night. The temperature was far below freezing, and a hellish wind rove over the wastes. It seemed that nothing could live in such a place, yet life found a way.
Several pale, porcelain-skinned masses littered the snow, Steelix's tail bearing evidence of viscera smears down its length. "So, those clicking sounds were coming from monsters," Peonia said. "Steelix dealt with them, and how quietly, too! I didn't hear a thing while in the tent."
"It's a killer, a good one," Henry said. "There was a reason Bronze left us with this one, not his Charizard or Magnezone, two Pokemon that could provide light and warmth. This Steelix is a strange case: a happy Pokemon that loves its master, but would do anything for him, no matter how reprehensible. Usually, a Pokemon has only the first characteristic or the second." Henry sealed the thermitent back up, sending out Lancelot and Fanguru. "Casey, you'll be leading us."
While Steelix slithered on the cliffs just above the intrepid group, Three-Point-Pass revealed the horrors it had to offer. They saw the corpse of the Snatcher, preserved under a fresh falling of snow; they beheld the corpses on the crucifixes; they examined the arcane symbols carved on the walls before the cave's opening.
"This is where they entered," Casey said. "They must have walked into a trap. I have some alternative routes through the cave system that we'll be taking."
"Alternative?" Bede asked. "Safer, shorter, or not infested by demonic flesh creatures?"
"Hopefully all three."
The six descended into a tunnel up a ridge some ways from the central opening, sending Steelix back to its Poke Ball. Then it was darkness, illuminated only by light coming from Casey's Raboot. Fleshy, loathsome corpses dotted the tunnels, making Hop and Peonia turn green with pre-emesis strain. Rumbling and the sound of guttural chanting could be heard from tunnels further below, and more frantic screams echoed throughout the passages.
After about five minutes of the journey in the dark, the natural cavern that the company was traveling through split into two passages of ancient masonry; one was of ruddy stone of a similar hue to the flesh of the Snatcher, while the other was made of almost golden brick. Although defaced by the cruel symbols of the maggot-folk of the Nalikian cult, the image of an entity could be discerned in the half-light above the split hallway's threshold: a creature with a spherical head, dotted by many eyes.
"Uh, both ways lead to the same room, a large chamber, judging by this seismograph data," Casey said. "But the routes are different." She sniffed the air down the scarlet passage, and then the gold.
"We go down the gold hall," Casey said. "It smells less foul. When in doubt, follow your nose!"
It was no later than when all the six members of the company had crossed into the gold hall did a door behind them suddenly spring shut with a groan, sealing off the way to the red pass. No doubt this barrier had spells to prevent Pokemon attacks from destroying it; the place smelled thick with magic.
The path wound on for a long time, until it came upon a vast, many-pillared hall. Casey urged them to continue, saying that this room was not their final destination, but something caught Henry's attention.
"What do you suppose this is?" he said, gesturing at a lumpish effigy of a creature with many eyes upon its head, similar to the carving seen earlier, but with a different arrangement of eyes. "It could be something relating to the cult. A deity, possibly, or a Pokemon. Which is it?"
Marnie tapped the statue's eyes with her forefinger. "Lifeless. Best we kept moving."
...
It was not until somewhere down the later half of the journey that the walls began to display signs of a fleshy growth.
Viscous, red material covered the walls, leaving the ceiling and floor free of the mass. Now the six youths and their Pokemon avoided the walls as much they could, although on closer inspection, the ooze was harmless, and merely left a sticky film on Lancelot's leek spear. The sound of chanting was now incredibly loud, coming not so much from further down the passage than from the walls around the company.
Soon, the tunnel widened into what appeared to be an underground village of indeterminate age. Strange bioluminescent growths on the cavern roof illuminated the squalid community in a sickly green light. Many buildings rested at angles and slants, suggesting that they had been disturbed by cave-ins or suffered from shoddy craftsmanship. Of interest was a great building that seemed to be a church with a clock tower, far more massive than any other structure in the subterranean dwelling.
"They built this underground," Casey breathed. "Incredible! We're close now, very close. Keep your guard up." She looked toward where the church rested on hardly stable foundations. "Ah! Disgusting!"
Surrounding the church like a medieval moat was a depression in the ground, filled with a substance that resembled a liquified form of the fleshy coating in the tunnel. It moved and rippled as if acted upon by unseen winds, spreading outward from invisible contact points, rolling in waves that lapped the side of the basin. More ululation came from both the sea of gore and the church, a festive chant of some kind.
"I'm never eating meat soup again," Hop said.
Casey led the company to the church, the place where the captive adults had been taken. Crossing over a stonework bridge that covered the moat of flesh-water, all six finally peered in the almost-shut gates of the cathedral.
"There are hooded figures inside," Peonia said. "We shouldn't open these doors, even with our Pokemon. Wait, there are pews...covered in that flesh. Some of the pew rows are shattered, ah, wait, I see something at the pulpit. There are captives, hanging upside-down on a wooden stock. There's a table of black stone somewhere behind the podium...wait! Someone's just come up and begun to speak!"
Henry glanced up at the cathedral dome, remarkably clear of dust and rubble. It glittered black in the light of the shining fungi. "Let's climb Steelix up to the upper windows. We can't have those cultists noticing us."
Opening the Poke Ball once another round of chanting began, Steelix allowed the six to reach the pinnacle of the steeple, standing on a stone outcropping that gave them a full view of the interior of the church.
...
Hop vomited.
Henry went blind with revulsion. How could it be possible that such things could exist? Monsters that human eyes had truly seen, in objective and physical flesh, which before had only been known in tremulous fantasy and vague legend?
And yet he saw them in their limitless rows...flopping, shrieking, croaking, bleating, chanting inhumanly in the spectral light in a nightmarish saraband out of some otherworldly fantasy. Some of them had tall crowns of a blood-blackish metal; some were strangely robed, and the one who led the demonic congregation had a ghoulishly humped back and an adornment upon that bloated thing that could have possibly passed for a head...
Their predominant color was like red meat, although many had scaly hides. Their flesh was shiny and slippery when exposed, and vaguely anthropomorphic forms bore multifaced compound eyes in deeply sunken sockets. Some had gills, and many bore fish-like webbed hands. They waved their elongated arms irregularly, sometimes with two, four, or many more. Their croaking, baying voices held all the emotional subtleties that even their malformed faces could not convey.
Peonia had succumbed to a merciful bout of fainting, but the others were not so fortunate. Marnie frantically recited texts from the Hisuian Coda. Henry and Casey watched in shocked silence, while Bede's face became such a deep shade of purest white that a glint of light could have caught on it.
Tentacles like an Octillery's arms sprouted out of the back of the head cultist, waving in twitching, erratic movements. In the lead half-man's strangely humanoid hand was a whole heart, still pulsing with fresh blood. Robes of flesh and tissue covered the madman's torso, flowing in red and viscous strips, with a single, bulbous eye staring out of his midsection, far larger than any eye should have been.
Bronze and the others were hanging unconscious on the wooden gibbet, bound by tendrils of flesh attaching their feet to the stock. Their guide, Davgon, had already been tied down to the alter with his Lairon, restained by more bonds of viscera.
The abnormal chanting stopped as the head cultist raised his hands. His voice was surprisingly cultivated and without accent, speaking in unmistakably Kantoian syllables.
"Brothers and sisters, spawn and glamhoth!" the cultist said. "Rejoice, for this is the day that our Lord Mbelekoro frees us from the chains of death! These are the words of the Great Djinn our deliverer, speaking to the children of his Halkoth!"
"O, murderer of gods, who outshines the stars!" the chorus went.
"See that our world is the False One's butcher table! See the origin of the hatred you harbor, the demons that pull the heart-strings! Behold the day that the slovenly Elohim fall to the Flesh!"
"O, treacherous Arceus, we smite your wicked lies!"
"Know how to draw forth armor from the skin which does not split under the blade! Feel your sleeves turn to wings...and ascend! Keep your heart bleeding. If you cannot bleed, you cannot love power. Love life and curse death, a false hope of eternal bliss!"
"O, my child, oh my dear one, use love as your fangs!"
"I am Matashukah Illeyva, and I say this to you: with tears shed for every death, their wounds engraved on our bodies, our love calls upon a great force! Come, our Paradise!"
"Ascend..." the monstrous flock murmured, and then again in rising voices. "We need to see the light. The light, the light. The Nalikia want to see the light. Ascend! Ascend! Ascend!"
Matashukah Illeyva turned aside from his podium, and then held aloft an object that the six recognized as the Rusted Shield.
"With this, our shining words and prayers, we shall never know hunger or thirst! Dear brothers, dear sisters, let us join hands and fingers and stomp our feet, for the day of deliverance is near! Mbelekoro, Savior, Beacon of Man! Today I offer my heart and voice to praise your name! Remember our lord's words in the Sone Skaal: 'The Wound, cut from the flesh of totality...deep, it severed the line of future and past. Drawn to its ancient fester, gods swarmed as flies to a corpse. We waited within bloodless veins, faithful to that which we could not know, unable to imagine that we might become their greater.'"
"The day has come! The day has come where we ascend!"
Henry saw nothing that he do. The Rusted Shield was in the hands of the madmen. What could his Pokemon do against such overwhelming evil? There were too many foes. Only one way could destroy the adherents of this diabolical religion: to Dynamax Steelix and destroy the church with a Hyper Beam.
But the others would be killed as well, and the Rusted Shield would be lost.
...
It was about then that Casey realized that Tess's hands were moving.
Hardly visible to her, and unnoticed by the throng still in the throes of spiritual rapture, the hand signals were in clear binary code: a string of zero-to-one digits. That sly Bibliographer! After all, with such marvelous control over her own biochemistry, would she not have been the first to awaken and perceive that Casey was present?
The message came out as thus: Bonds loose and we weren't stripped of Poke Balls and pistols. Descend and grab the Shield on command! We escape through the cavern roof.
Casey relayed the information to the others, recovered a little from their shock, and set their plan in motion.
Illeyva turned to the unconscious Davgon, and then a terrible thing began to happen, too swift to intervene in. Grasping tendrils of the abominable flesh that seemed to permeate every corner of the hellish chapel rose and struck Davnon's body, implanting into his pores. Golem veins bonded with his own, exsanguinating him; and where the tribesman and his Lairon had been there was now a gelatinous blob and a Pale One.
Hop vomited again. Henry hung his head, but remembered another thing.
Wasn't Davgon carrying the Reins of Unity?
"Brothers and sisters in Life, embrace your new broodling, remade from the flesh of our foes!" Illeyva said. "Now the ritual must begin. The Shield will be bonded with us and its power will be ours. Link in spirit. Feel the taste of blood in your mouth, hear the sea rushing in your ears."
The horde closed their many eyes, shut sensory organs, and began to sing a new song. Illeyva had the things that were once Davgon and his Lairon scuttle away, while the Matashukah set the Rusted Shield down on the altar. Flesh began to creep from the squirming ground toward the relic, trails of intestine and tendon.
Tess clenched her fist.
Now!
...
Lancelot shot down with an attack of Meteor Mash, while Steelix burst through the ceiling, scattering giant slabs of black rock into the congregation, crushing dozens. Illeyva was skewered through the torso eye by Lancelot's leek spear, falling over in shock and unstaunched pain. Henry quickly grabbed the Shield from the altar, and then moved to free the prisoners.
The five that were still awake converged on the tendrils of flesh holding up the adults while the cult was still in frenzied disarray. Steeler snipped Tess's bonds with its steel girder, allowing her to draw a chandler pistol and blast the cords on Bronze and Jake's feet with two energy blasts. The rest were freed and carried onto Steelix's back by Garchomp, the dragon moving the distance across the platform in only a half-second.
The cult began to overcome their confusion and see who had interrupted their ceremony. A fish-thing leaped on four legs onto the stage, running at Casey. Raboot stepped in front of it, shining bright. The thing cowered away once the evolution was complete, now standing in the shadow of a Cinderace.
Casey snapped her fingers. "Burn."
The thing was blasted to scattered entrails and scales by a sudden blast of fire from Cinderace's palms. Steelix shot a Hyper Beam over the flailing crowd, incinerating many of the unholy half-human Nalikians. Jake, freshly awake and full of vigor, laughed with delight as he and Pearl's Infernapes blasted holes through shambling Pale Ones and rows of cultists. Peony's Copperajah swung its trunk at the head of what might have been a Snatcher, twisting its appendage counterclockwise. Pieces of metal from the walls and pews converged to where the Pokemon willed, destroying the demon.
"Time to go!" Bronze shouted through the haze of smoke, burning flesh, and laser blasts. "We'll return with more forces, but we need to get the Rusted Shield back to Freezington!"
Henry halted in a pause in the battle for a moment. He saw that acids emitting from Illeyva's body had destroyed Lancelot's leek spear, leaving nothing but a few bits of hardened cellulose. Oh, well. At least it was a good end for the weapon. He jumped onto Steelix's body with the others, howling with laughter as they escaped from the ravaged cathedral.
...
"This is Chairman Bronze Tercano. Re-containment of the area is likely impossible. Requesting nuclear bombardment."
Steelix launched more Hyper Beams at the cavern roof, with no effect. Out of tunnels and crevices from all across the village came thousands upon thousands of cultists, Pale Ones, mobile blobs of organic material, and other nightmarish monstrosities. Matashukuh Illeyva, recovered from his injury, led hundreds of loyal adherents in an exodus from the church toward the company of trainers.
Illeyva gestured at Henry with a tentacle. "Ai! There is the imp! Kill all these canaglia, and we will have a feast to remember! Oren Vaski! Find the goods and summon the Shaderider!"
A cultist sped away to a hutment in the dark, while the advancing legions of Pale Ones crept forward, creating a high-pitched chorus of abyssal clicking that poured thickly and thunderously from deformed mouths. Although the creatures burned like kindling in the light of sudden bursts of energy and fire from the company's Pokemon, there were two more to replace every beast that had fallen.
"Got a plan?" Peony said, watching the encroaching army manifesting blades of bone and crystalized fluid.
"The plan?" Pearl yelled. "Kill them with fire! Casey, Gignantimax your Cinderace!"
Casey activated her Dynamax Band, and where her Pokemon had stood there was now a great vortex of flames, devouring the legions of Pale Ones. Many cultists escaped the blaze and regenerated their flesh, but for many, the damage had been irreversible, and biological death swift.
"G-Max Fireball!"
The unholy church's foundations melted in the heat. Much like a thermal burner, the mass of tachyon-fueled fire sunk into the ground, creating a sinkhole where the cathedral had once been. The red river of flesh cascaded down the charred slope, only to evaporate in the heat. A huge cloud of scarlet steam rose into the air. The fireball lost energy as it sunk deeper, but the entire building had been destroyed.
Leon and Raihan took to the air, combating monsters that had sprouted membranous wings in a high-speed aerial battle. The sheer ball of fire under Cinderace's Gigantimaxed body roved about, consuming all that stood in its path. If the cavern roof could not be breached, then every last Nalikian would have to be exterminated.
Enraged, Illeyva made a loud bellow that, for an instant, overtook the roaring of the thermal vortex. In answer came a tremendous neighing, and then a dark streak crossed over the light of the raging fire in the cave.
...
The Galar Particles died out, transforming Casey's Cinderace back into its unenhanced mode. By Illeyva, there stood an equine creature covered in smooth black fur, shapely and darkly fair. In one of Illeyva's tendrils, there was a twisted object of purplish material: something that Peony recognized as a "Shaderoot Carrot."
Is it blind? Henry thought, seeing the thick, mauve-colored eyelashes that covered the creature's eyes. Or does it move with a sense other than sight?
"Ai! Ai! Shaderider Spectrier, use your powers!" Illeyva screeched. "My command compels you to obey me! Shadow Ball!"
Dark energy formed in an orb above Spectrier's mane, and then rushed forward in a crackling mass, beating Steeler and Bronze's Sharpedo in one demonic strike. It then reared up with a terrible howl, and struck Garchomp twice with its legs. The dragon fainted, its life force expended by the touch of death in the spectral hooves.
Henry sent out Urshifu, without knowing if he would be able to command it or not. As Illeyva looked upon the Elohim with animal fright, a name came into Henry's mind.
Surging Strikes!
He had spoken it without consciously knowing that he had done so. Urshifu engaged Spectrier with a series of blows that flowed like a river, imbued with the Soul of Arceus that it had joined within the Tower of Waters. The strikes did not stop, pushing back Spectrier, sometimes rapid, sometimes precise. The level of control was incredible: millimeters were taken advantage of to gain critical hits, and Illeyva's orders did not seem to reach Spectrier's ears in the din of the surrounding battles.
Spectrier fell into the crater made by the G-Max Fireball, lost its footing, and tumbled into the smoldering ruin. Before it could recover, Urshifu turned to Illeyva, and glared at the eye in his torso, still milky and corroded from burning.
Illeyva gasped, and then lost all his muscular integrity. Bones snapped and tendons burst as the Matashukah died under the withering glance of the righteous Elohim.
"It seems that only a glare from this one can take the lives of those with evil in their hearts," Bede said. "But this one was more twisted than most."
The Pale Ones and assorted cultists had retreated into the surrounding tunnels upon the death of their leader, leaving only a single beast behind: the amorphous blob-creature that had once been Davgon.
"That thing should have the Reins of Unity!" Henry cried. "Destroy it!"
Raihan's Flygon split the freshly spawned monstrosity in two, putting an end to the tormented life of the beast. Ego-Adaman jumped into the mass with a cry, and withdrew the viscera-splattered Reins of Unity. "I have it now, my friends! But why do we risk so much pain and worry over such a little thing?"
"A whim," Henry explained, crossing the distance and seizing the Reins. He strapped the Rusted Shield to Steelix's back with thermal gauze, ready to make the return journey. "Hop on!"
"Wait." Bronze stood, with a finger held up, looking to the cavern roof.
Seconds passed, and then there was a booming from above; the sound of stone splitting and melting. Dust fell and luminous growths shook.
Light!
A gaping borehole had appeared, along with the sudden manifestation of the sound of industrial equipment from above. Cold grey illumination shone down on the battle-ravaged village, sent from the predawn sky. A troupe of Excadrill hopped into the ground, along with a duo of Association transport shuttles.
Hovering low, the blast door on the side of one transport craft opened. "Grand Bashar!" a man said. "We have come to rescue you in response to your beacon! Flee from this place; we are about to destroy it!"
"Exactly when I expected you to arrive, commander Ibrim Crenshaw," Bronze said. "You will be given a medal for exemplary service, and all your other squad members. In the name of Arceus, we have come one step closer to defeating the New Eclipse Order!"
Unable to believe their good fortune, the weary expedition team piled into the shuttle, taking the Rusted Shield. Hop was crying in relief. The vessel sent back the Excadrill to their Poke Balls that were embedded on the craft's hull with a remote signal, and then lifted up into the air.
A black mass came galloping from the crater, leaping onto the shuttle's hull with a pronounced thunk. It bounded away again, leaving the small craft struggling to maintain its course. The streak surfaced to the ground level by Three-Point-Pass, neighed, and then rocketed like a bolt of ebony fire over the white plains of the Crown Tundra.
Spectrier was loose, again. But that wasn't what mattered.
They had the Rusted Shield.