The wooden door fell free of its hinges as Ivory's Bisharp sliced them apart, stepping in ahead of us. The space immediately within wasn't small, but it was claustrophobic. Tables ran the outside of the room and were stacked haphazardly with books, drawings, photographs, notes, and tools of strange design. On the wall hung a charcoal rubbing of some kind of carving. Donavan stepped past us into the room, noting the rubbing verbally.

"Looks like a sword." He muttered, his gravely voice raking the silence like a fork across a plate.

"Forget the sword." Ivory barked viciously as he tapped the apricorn against Bisharp's head to recall it. His armor made such a racket as he moved, in stark contrast to Donavan's footsteps which traced silently along the floorboards scattered with plates and crumpled papers. "Find the professor. If the woman at the inn wasn't lying, he'll be here."

"And if she was?" My eyes followed Ivory, not yet daring to take a step into the horrid overcrowded space.

"Then we show her how we feel about liars in Empir." Ivory turned his emotionless helmet to look over his shoulder at me before addressing Donavan. "Get us a light, Peters."

"The professor might have this place rigged to explode, Lord Ivory. Executioner could set that off." Donavan shook his head. Ivory turned instead to me and I nodded, producing my Sylveon, Designer Doll, and giving a small gesture to her. In reply, she produced a Light Screen that lit up the room. Ivory nodded to me and then went about his work, testing anything he could for a space the professor might be hiding in by slamming his sabatons through it. While Donavan poured over the notes left in the lab, I moved to the study. A much better kept area than the lab, the study's windows allowed light to stream in and illuminate the mahogany desk that sat at the far side of the room, though the desk was scattered with papers as well. I moved to examine them, finding letters to and from people I had never heard of, half-finished essays on the behavior and use of Ghost type Pokemon, a correspondence with Emperess Caligina Styg, and several notes in reference to work done by an apprentice. Oscar Woolherder. I had heard that name before, but my thoughts on that were immediately turned into surprise and fear as I picked up a letter with a name I most certainly knew. My eyes lingered on the calligraphy, trying, praying, wishing it were not true, but every stroke of the quill was truly irrevocably hers.

Yours Inquisitively,

Allison Fayeri

The letter crumpled like an accordion in my hands. Why would she be sending letters into Ombrea in the first place? Why to this man? I turned, looking around into the empty air for answers as though they would form out of the dust that was lit softly by the diagonal beams of filtering daylight. Outside, an Unfezant chirped and I remembered where I had heard that name before. I turned back to the desk, smoothing the letter and pouring over it though my panicked brain only absorbed bits and pieces.

Jackson has acquired a Shedinja-

Jackson was his name. The Ghost Hunter. The one who must have pointed my dear sister to this dark path.

-though clearly a Bug type, he insists it must be a Ghost type-

Allison harboring a Ghost type Pokemon? No. Jackson was the one harboring it.

-flawed system of type detection through blood sampling and behavioral patterns, I have had a suspicion that perhaps a Pokemon may be able to have more than a single type. My own Kirlia is a Fairy type through these two methods, yet I often see Future Seekers with Kirlias that they insist are Psychic type by those same methods-

More than one type? I looked up from the letter and my eyes refused to focus, darting frantically around the space. While it was true you could find Pokemon of one type as a different type in the wild, properly bred Pokemon were always the same type. I stared down at the letter without actually absorbing any further information or creating any proper thoughts, deciding suddenly to stuff it in my pocket and return to the papers, only to find more letters from my poor coerced sister.

-yet another flawed system used by the church, Jackson was able to convince the filekeeper that his Shedinja was a Dark type, despite the filekeeper knowing for a fact that Shedinja are Bug type-

-Through the methods you provided of move-typing, color-matching, and visual ques, I have come to the conclusion that Excalibur, the sword Pokemon you sent to Jackson, is a Ghost and Steel type-

-Excalibur-

-Ghost type-

-Jackson-

The words struck me with pride. Allison had outed the Ghost type Pokemon sent across the border before we even-

-has become a valuable asset to our team-

-useful in many regards-

-not particularly dangerous to us-

I pressed the letter to my face in dismay. She had been tricked by this professor, or by Jackson, or both. He must have sent a letter that warped her mind, turned her into a hostage in her own body. Or perhaps this letter was sent while under possession by this Ghost type sword. It joined the other in my pocket, only for me to find yet another.

-Excalibur may possibly be absorbing any effects left over by Jackson being cursed-

-heading to the capital-

-I wonder how Jackson will fare, seeing something so opposite of his previous farm life.

I stood for a moment, staring at the letter as the pieces fell slowly into place. Jackson, from farm life, encountered Allison in the Church Of Arceus, joined her team as a Ghost Hunter, so must have had a Dark type Pokemon. The most common Dark type Pokemon were dog-like. We had encountered a Houndour on our way out of Ecclessi City, owned by a boy on a farm of Wooloo. The letter fell from my hands as the realization came to me. I snarled and punched the desk, splitting my knuckles horribly as blood splattered across the leftover paperwork. Designer Doll hopped back and went on guard immediately, her tendrils whipping like angry Tentacruel tentacles as she tried to locate the source of my outburst. He slid into the room without any noise and would have gone unnoticed by anyone but me or Ivory.

"We walked right past him." I muttered darkly without turning to Donavan. "He was standing right in front of us and we didn't even know it. Right under our noses."

"The professor?" Donavan's question dripped with concern as he took a step towards me. "Lord Ivory and I have-"

"That boy. At the farm."

"More specific. Lots of boys, lots of farms."

"Outside Ecclessi City. That boy."

Donavan scowled, baring his teeth like the Houndour that had barked at us all that time ago. "The boy who dismissed us." I nodded. Donavan had wanted to go back and teach him a lesson for being so rude to us, but I had talked him out of it. Stupid me. "He had the Ghost?" I nodded again. "Then I suppose he's in hiding right now, since he knows we're-"

"He's in Oppida Prima." I turned slowly to look at him. We had walked into Ombrea for no reason. Come all this way for no reason. Risked war for no reason. Had my sister's name sullied for no reason, wasted our time for no reason, spent days, hour, minutes, seconds, moments waiting for permission to enter this horrid region to find the person who had sent a Ghost across the border from these unholy lands that sat unworthy in the shadow of the lands of Arceus Himself for no. Reason. I moved to walk past Donavan. "Find the professor. I'm going to write a letter and send Zacian back to the capital."

"We've already found him." Donavan informed smugly, causing me to stop in my tracks. "But seeing as you found all the info we need up here, I suppose we don't have much use for him anymore."

"I'm sure I can think of something." I returned to my stride, finding Ivory had bound the older gentleman at the wrists, his graying hair frazzled and falling over his face as he sat on his knees at our feet. I stepped closer to him and knelt down, pushing his hair back away from his glasses and looking into his eyes, hooded with disappointment. "Oh, goodness me, you were holding out hope, weren't you? Hoping we'd get tired of searching this place and give up, go back home and tell the Emperor we couldn't find anything." I tsked, puckering my lips and shaking my head. "But everyone pays for their sins at some point, Professor."

"Why would Arceus have allowed Mew to create Ghost type Pokemon if He did not want us to use the-" I cut him off by punching him in the throat. I scowled as he heaved and coughed.

"I didn't ask you to talk, Professor." I cooed uninterestedly. "We already have what we need. We have you, and we have the location of the little Pokemon you sent into Empir. You may have your Hex Writers here in Ombrea, and the Empress may even have her Immortal Guardian, but in Empir we don't put up with the antics of Ghost type Pokemon. We don't invite our citizens to get possessed, or look at death as a simple inconvenience. Oh, no, Professor. In Empir, death is permanent. In Empir, when you die, Arceus The Creator claims your soul, and what happens after that is only for Him to know." The professor let his head drop, no longer looking at me, so I grabbed his cheeks and forced him to look back up. "But here in Ombrea, there's another. And we know this. We know it well. It claimed one of our own some time ago. Here in Ombrea there's a serpent who will snatch you up. Seize your soul from the light of The Creator and damn you to whatever pits it crawled up from. We don't have a name for it in Empir. We simply would not put up with such a thing in Empir, no, no. But here in Ombrea, here you have a name for it." The silence hung heavy in the room as I coaxed the professor to finish the thought for me. To say the unholy name of that Arceus-damned snake. After an eternity, finally he spoke it.

"Giratina." The professor whimpered.

"That's right." I smiled sweetly at him. "We three, we've met it. It possessed one of our friends. It took her over, made her a walking force of death itself. But it made a fatal flaw that day. It did not know that the person it had possessed had been a puppet long before she was ever used by it. When I shot its vessel with an arrow and killed it, and it began to look for a soul to reanimate itself-" I shook my head, licking my teeth slowly before looking back at him. "I personally damned that snake back to its pit. In the name of Arceus The Creator, I sent His worst creation, the only thing He must truly be ashamed of, back into the dark corner of death that it belongs in, and Professor-" I stood up. "-today you're going to meet him."