It was a long fall into the pitch black insides of the dungeon, where her eyesight drowned in darkness, her ears popped, and the wind whipped her face, sucking her down like it was taking in a breath. She wasn't quite sure when, but at some point, the wall had gripped her side, cool and bumpy, and it eased her body from a straight fall to a slide down a rapidly leveling tunnel, until she stopped on flat ground at the start of the dungeon.
She blinked in the dark, trying and trying to let her eyes adjust, but down this deep, the sun was so dim that she couldn't be sure it was there at all. The room was still just dancing fuzz, not yet taking shape.
Everything was silent, until she heard a yell up inside the tunnel, abrupt and instantly loud like someone unpaused a video. He slid into her back, giving her a light kick in the rear with both feet. It wasn't until he stopped that she could hear him giggling.
"Oof–" he said, "is that you, Nones?"
"That's my ass you're kicking, yeah," she grunted.
He immediately pulled away, but she couldn't hear if he stood up or not. She squinted at him to try to see what he was doing, but there was no luck. Ronan was just a dark, shifting blob in a whole sea of shifting blobs.
There wasn't going to be any moving until their eyes fully adjusted, so Nona slid into an upright position and tried to massage her aching feet.
"Was Ignis coming with you?" She asked.
"He looked like… I didn't really see what he was doing, actually. I just jumped in after you did."
She groaned, but made it sound like a hum of understanding. Ignis wasn't gonna leave Ronan all alone in a dungeon, but he definitely wasn't gonna be quick to follow Nona.
"Why were you two so mad at each other?" he asked.
Nona didn't bother to answer, instead trying and failing to pick out the stick that had gotten lodged below the toe of her right foot's brace.
She knew why she was mad. What she didn't know was why Ignis was so high strung, so touchy. There was a twinge of guilt at the back of her mind when she thought about what she had said and how she had said it, but she didn't want it there. Why should she have to be the one to make things right, when all she did was mess up one small time, and then apologized for it?
Yeah, just one slip up, just one little word was all they had standing between them– that Ignis knew about at least. Her other slip-up was almost too awful to mention, and even if she wanted to she couldn't; her mouth was run dry by the memories of flames and boiling vomit.
Without nails to grip it with or light to see it with, the stick wasn't budging. If anything, it was only pressing itself deeper against her skin, enough to go past her finger's reach, and for her to have to take the brace off entirely if she wanted it gone, which she refused to do. So it just sat there, just another twinge in a sea of ambient discomfort.
"Fuck," she mumbled under her breath. She glared up at the tunnel they came from indignantly, still not a fleck of light seeping through.
"Why were you mad?" He asked again.
"I don't know; I just was."
"But why?"
"I just told you, I don't know."
"Why don't you know?"
"Ronan." Nona said with finality.
She couldn't see the look on his face, or if he was even looking at her at all. Maybe this was just him being a little shit again and poking her for a reaction, but he was about one more poke away from a headlock.
"I think Iggy was mad cause he fell down the hill," he said.
That was… probably part of it. She wouldn't be in a friendly mood either if she was covered in dirt and rocks, but she had rocks digging into her feet, for fuck's sake! And even then she wasn't the one to start the argument.
"I slid bare-foot down that same hill. The temper tantrum was his choice, not mine."
"You yelled at him too though."
"Yeah, well like I said, my feet burned."
"You can't have it both ways! Either you were both right cause you fell down or were both wrong cause you yelled at each other."
Nona hated that he actually had a point there, and she wished she could see his skull so she could flick it and shut him up. Instead, she grabbed both of her feet, pulling them towards her and massaging her soles, letting her hips and back feel the stretch as she leaned forward.
She heard Ronan shift around, grunting and straining, like he had also heard her stretching and decided to do it himself.
What do little kids have to stretch for? They could fall out of a tree and walk it off in ten minutes.
"Whatever, butthead," she said, trying to lighten the mood.
The air in the dungeon was colder, and maybe not as dry, but the ice she sat on wasn't slippery, like none of it melted against her touch. There wasn't much for air flow either, or any kind of dripping or vibrations you might expect from a cave. It was as quiet as the dead.
Tilting her head back, she closed her eyes and took in a deep breath of the stale cave air. The weight of a dungeon was expected at that point, but not exactly welcome. It was so irritating, feeling like she was just a little more easy to tire out, like her breaths were coming back just a little short of full. She wondered if Ronan noticed it as much as she did.
She sat like that, just taking in the silence, but when she opened her eyes, the world was a little less fuzzy, and a little more formed. Above her, a ghostly glow faded through the ceiling, like they had floated up to the surface of the ice, and the sun was giving them the littlest peek of its light.
"Woah…" Ronan said softly. Nona was actually able to look at him, see his arms stretched above his head, and see the bluish-green glow of the sunlight reflecting off his eyes.
"That glow… That's not Ignis, is it?" Nona stared up at it and tried to blink away the last bits of darkness, looking for any movement to spot a flame.
A few seconds of the still glow passed, until a bright orange light flashed at the top of the tunnel, appearing all at once like flicking on a light bulb. Ignis slid loud and harsh on his claws down the incline, stopping just before he hit Ronan. He held his tail in one hand and the handle of his sheathed sword in the other.
Then, as if in response, the light retreated, cowering from the tiny little flame of his tail all the way to the other side of the room, then fading out until all of them sank again into the dark, this time illuminated by Ignis.
"Was that… was there just light in here?" Ignis asked.
"Iggy, put it away! You'll scare the light off!"
Ronan grabbed at Ignis' tail, and his older brother held him off with his other arm.
"Alright! Goodness, just a second."
Carefully, he held open his cloak and held the flame close to his chest, using the other arm to make a tent in his cloak. They sat there in the dark for almost a whole minute, the only light being the faint glow of fire through the ice at Ignis' feet.
"You gotta cover it up all the way!" Ronan said, pointing at the floor, "the light is still showing down there."
"I–" Ignis looked down and didn't say anything further.
Instead, he took off his cloak and tied the tip of his tail in his hood, leaving one hand inside of it to keep the flame from burning the lining.
It took a whole minute in uninterrupted darkness for the ceiling to respond. Slowly, as if the sun was somehow rising in the late afternoon, the light filtered through with its gentle pond-water green.
"Wha…" Ignis said, pulling his tail back out like there was anything to inspect.
Again the light pulled back, only quicker this time, like it was still jumpy from the torch's first appearance.
"The dungeon took away the light?" Ronan wondered aloud, gawking at the ceiling.
"What?" Ignis asked, taking the moment to put his coat back on.
"The ceiling started glowing just a second before you got here. It was totally dark up until then. I guess it… was reacting?" Nona watched Ignis for any sort of expression while she spoke, but he gave none.
Ronan's eyes lit up. "Ooh– we should put that in the book!"
Ignis blinked. "Oh! Yes, definitely should. Let me see here."
He dug his hand into his coat and pulled out the small cardstock booklet Lurantis had given him that morning, passing it to his other hand and pulling out a thin black pencil next.
While Ignis wrote, Nona took a look at it from the side, the already unreadable runes nothing but scribbles from the sideways angle.
"What all is it asking for?"
Ignis gave her barely a glance, before blinking his eyes back to his pencil, like he only just remembered he was ignoring her.
"It says for the first floor," Ronan began, reading over Ignis' shoulder, "we have to write down what the dungeon is forming itself out of, what spawn there are, how we entered–"
"–All of which, I can handle filling out!" Ignis clapped the book shut. "You don't have to worry about it, Ronan," he said without room for argument.
Funny how quickly he forgot there was a whole other person there. Nona crossed her arms and let out a slow breath, too quiet to make a sound. She didn't bother looking at Ronan, because she knew that if she did, he would be making that same marriage counselor face that she hated seeing. She wasn't going to be the one to fix this, no matter how much he tried to make her be.
The first floor was like if you tried to dig an ant farm out of a hunk of ice, all the way down to the bumpy, dug-out texture of the hallways and "rooms." She hesitated to call them that; they were more like hollows, tiny little compartments in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some were barely wider than the halls, others were bigger than Ignis and Ronan's whole house.
The worst parts were the ones later on that got vertical, where the bubble expanded upwards or downwards into slopes and cliffs that they would have to find a way to scale. On the bright side, the ice still didn't melt to her touch, and she always found a firm grip. On the other, "kill me now" side, her feet still really fucking hurt.
Nona swung a leg up and onto the ledge, grabbing it with the whole right side of her body and hauling herself up. When she was on solid ground, she reached down for Ronan, and pulled him up the rest of the way. As soon as he was up, they both collapsed onto their backs, panting.
"The… dungeon… has you climbing shit… The whole thing is made of ice that doesn't melt when you touch it… The stairs are swirly ice slides to the next floor," Nona heaved. With each sentence, she stuck up a finger on her paw. "Am I missing anything?"
Ronan was quiet for a few seconds, either thinking, catching his breath, or both.
"And it has light, but the light leaves if you bring your own light," he added.
She wasn't entirely sure of the reasoning for why the dungeon went dark again, but she didn't have the oxygen needed to argue. Instead, she just shot up her fourth and final finger– a number of digits that she was only just starting to get used to.
The census work was a lot more fun than Nona thought it would be. Out of everything she had seen so far in mystery-magic-bullshit-pokemon-land, the dungeons were the simplest, crazily enough. Simple enough to fit nice and neat in a tiny little booklet, one that Ignis unfortunately hoarded like it was made of gold.
"You get all that?" She shouted so Ignis could hear them at the bottom of the room.
"You don't have to yell."
He walked by the side of her vision, the light still in his hand.
"How did you get up here? I didn't hear you climb," Nona said.
He responded by opening the booklet again and jumping between its pages while he wrote, squinting and leaning down to look at the words so comically that she knew he was trying to pretend he didn't hear her. He sucked at it.
Nona rolled onto her belly, stood up on all fours, and went to squint over the edge of the cliff. Well– maybe cliff was too strong a word. It wasn't anything more intense or more vertical than a climbing wall on a playground, but it was a pain in the ass with quadruped proportions and raw feet.
The light glittered faintly in the crags and juts of ice that she and Ronan had to zig-zag through. Just off to the side of the climbing wall, where she first thought it was too smooth to climb, she saw that there was a straight, narrow ladder dug meticulously into the ice, and she groaned.
She couldn't tell what was more annoying, that she could have had a much easier climb, or that Ignis was once again proven right, and no doubt was gonna be even more stuck-up about it.
"Not a bad workout, right Ronan?" She asked, turning to look at him.
He was sitting– as he called it– "cris-cross-applesauce" right next to Nona, and he stared up at her expectantly.
"Can you sense anything with your powers down here?" He asked.
Nona bit the inside of her lip and took in a deep breath. She rolled her head over to look at Ignis. She would have told him about her new sense, maybe actually asked him how it worked, but he was still too busy putting up an act to listen.
"I don't feel nothing," she said flatly.
"You didn't even try!" Ronan said, "last time you were doing it for almost half a minute. Can you please try? Please?"
Even under his bulky skull, she could feel the puppy-dog eyes and big comical frown he was pulling. She wasn't swayed to sympathy, but she knew Ronan was persistent enough to beg for at least seven floors of dungeon– probably more– so whatever. She would try.
Alright, feeling… gonna feel… this time with feeling…
Her head went back to that morning, and she tried to dredge up what muscle she could feel moving at the time. It was something in her face it felt like, but then again she felt every inch of her body too. She tried doing that, focusing on feeling every part of her as if it weren't just a part of her, but something she could feel , something she could sense .
She squeezed her eyes shut and laid down on the ground, trying to just feel something under her. She pressed her temple against the ice on the floor, and then like a twinge of light in complete darkness, a little thumping pulse of a feeling stirred through the ground.
Was it like before, where she was sensing someone coming? She pressed her whole chest into the floor until it hurt, trying to get anything solid enough to catch the rumbling waves.
"I… I can actually feel something! There's something moving… back and forth, back and forth…" She said the last part in rhythm with the swinging beat. Then, as if it could hear her, it stopped.
"Oh, that was me," Ronan said, pulling her out of her focus.
Nona shot her head up to see Ronan sitting in the same way, in the same spot. In response, he clutched his heels and started rocking himself, his knuckles and tail making alternate rhythmic thuds against the ground.
She gave a disbelieving huff. No, of course she wasn't actually getting an understanding of how her new body worked. Just another time where she heard or saw something that wasn't ever there to begin with– what else could it have been? What, did she think that for once something about this world was actually straight forward? That maybe shit was gonna go easy on her for a second? Nope! Why would she! This is mystery-magic-bullshit-pokemon-land!
Ugh. She wasn't even halfway through the dungeon, and already even her own sarcasm was getting tough to listen to. This was going to be a long trip down.
Ignis let out a subtle sigh and turned around, closing the booklet with a bright smile. "I'm ready to go, how about you guys?"
"Yeah yeah, we hear you," Nona grunted, pushing herself off the floor.
Leave it to Ignis to say you're holding him up while he's standing around making faces at a piece of paper. He didn't outright say it– he never does– but she could read it on him like it was stamped on his forehead.
Nona stood on two legs again, instantly feeling the pain and pressure, but her face didn't twitch a single muscle. She held out a paw for Ronan, and helped him to his feet. He ran ahead of her and past his brother, but when Nona went to follow, she heard something faint coming from below.
"Wait, guys, shh–" She put a finger to her mouth and listened.
"Ooh can you sense something?!" Ronan scream-whispered.
Nona slapped a paw over his mouth. Ignis shut his trap too and stood straight as a board, hand on his sword.
At first it sounded like the jangling of keys, loud, sharp, and random. But it only grew louder, closer and more defined until she couldn't mistake them for anything other than footsteps. Hard, clacky footsteps. And they were running up fast.
From the darkness below the ledge, a black blob shot out in a curve aimed straight for them. Before her eyes could even process what was happening, Nona was side-swiped by something spindly and sharp, locked onto Ignis like a missile. Her arm shot out to grab at it, and she got a fistful of dark fur and a shriek for her troubles.
Something else skittered up after it. Unlike the shadow, she caught sight of a little traffic cone of a Drilbur, taking clumsy swings at Ronan. It was only a glimpse though before the dark blob yanked free from her grip and kept up its path of travel.
"What in the name of– what is that?! " Ignis said. He swung his sword up only part way before the figure struck, and its sharp, glittery blades landed a glancing blow on his hilt.
Nona didn't waste time questioning. She threw herself onto her front paws and bounded onto all fours after the one she grabbed. In the light she could see it, frail and weasley, a Sneasel with those same dark, empty eyes. It raised a bladed hand like a pike and brought it swinging down in a sprint towards the unprepared Charmander.
It had to have almost folded in half with how hard Nona headbutt its side. The angle of impact sent it limply careening down the tube into the next room, and it never crawled back up. She would deal with it later.
She whipped around to face Ronan, right at the moment the Drilbur cracked him sideways with a metal claw and sent him spinning. Without a second thought, she shot over, only for her charge to be met with an iron uppercut to the jaw. Her vision flashed white, and her teeth clacked together. She was running without a plan, and she didn't protect the face.
"Fuck!" She choked out, leaning back onto two legs and rubbing her chin.
The moment of pause let the Drilbur hone back in on Ronan just as he let 'er fly. Nona could just barely duck before a bonemerang whizzed over her head and out into the open cavern.
"Aw, I missed!" He said, but she could hear him smiling. The kind of Ronan smile that meant he was up to something.
It was so strange to watch him work, waddling, hopping on one foot, and dancing around like a bird doing a mating dance. He kept his eyes on his club the whole time as it flew through its arc, and his whole upper half looked to be swinging with it. It was like he was mirroring its movements exactly, almost tugging it like he held it on a leash.
In an insane arc, it flew back out of the darkness, missing Drilbur and flying straight to Ronan, his stance wide and his feet planted. It had to have been only a blink between Ronan catching the bone, and it flying at mach speeds right into the Drilbur's skull, launching it back down into the darkness below the cliff. Finished, the bone ricocheted back to clatter on the icy floor.
"Wacha! Hayah! Woohoo!" Ronan had the worst case of the zoomies Nona had ever seen. He ran to his club and spun around with it in excited circles. "Did you see me, Iggy? Did you see that?"
Nona shot a glance over to Ignis, who was sprinting over with a seed over his head at the moment the Drilbur got wiped out. He stood frozen in shock.
"Y-You did– How did you do that? Where did you learn that?" He said.
"I made it up myself!" Ronan hopped excitedly between his feet. "I practiced and practiced and practiced–"
"You didn't even know it was going to work? Ronan, you almost let your bone hit you!"
Though he raised his voice, Ignis sounded different in the way he always did when he talked to Ronan, like a parent who was very, very tired of their kid's shit.
"But– But I didn't!" His smile started to fade. "I– I was careful to catch it just right!"
"You were, and that was really impressive," he started to lower his voice, placing a hand on Ronan's shoulder, "but that Drilbur was walking up on you that whole time you were dancing around and trying to catch your club–"
"I wasn't dancing! I have to do that or else it won't swing around the way it's s'posed to!"
Ignis' face scrunched up in a disbelieving look that even Nona could see, and Ronan pulled away from his hands, crossing his arms tight around his chest.
"We should just go. I don't wanna miss–..." His voice caught the tiniest bit at the end, and he didn't finish his sentence.
Then, for the first time since the start of the dungeon, Ignis met eyes with Nona. They didn't have anything to say to each other with their gaze, but Nona still listened for something. Was he asking for her help? Ronan said that Ignis only wanted someone to do something nice for him, right? Is that what he was asking for? Did he just zone out?
Before she could decide, she blinked away, and the conversation was over. A net zero on information given.
Ignis took the lead of the party again, sliding first down the icy tube to the next room, Ronan second, and Nona third. At first, she thought they had just reached another fork in the tunnel, but when Ignis led them around to explore it, they found that it was actually a big room in the shape of a donut, a massive pillar of ice in the center making up the "hole."
The first thing they found was the Sneasel Nona had sent rocketing down earlier, all crumpled up on the floor. As they approached, she watched it start to steam. At first she thought the dungeon was evaporating it, but then instead it started to sink. The body of the pokemon melted through the floor like boiling water on snow, sizzling and popping its way down before the ice refroze on top of it, and then it was gone.
"That's gotta be in the top ten worst ones, I think," Nona said flatly, getting a chuckle out of Ronan and nothing out of Ignis.
They cleared out the room in what couldn't have been more than five minutes. Five minutes of walking that Nona could hardly bear on four legs, let alone two.
Nona slumped down on the ground as nonchalantly as she could manage, backing up against the center of the donut. Ignis looked at her, confused, and she raised a shaky paw to wave it away.
"I'm good. I'm good… gonna just rest my legs for a minute," she said.
Ronan actually stopped this time instead of skipping ahead. "But… But dessert…"
Shit. They had a time limit, and that time limit didn't allow for breaks. Her feet were just gonna have to get over it then. She blew on her paws as subtly as possible before trying to stand.
"W-Wait," Ignis said, surprising both of them, "uh… if my head map is right, and it usually is, this room's other two exits both loop back to here. If you wanted, you could stay here and wait while I uh, check it out…"
Nona squinted at him and gave him a cautious head tilt. He didn't make any effort to respond, just looking at her with that same blank face.
"O-Okay," Nona said, "sure."
Ronan slapped his club into his palm decisively. "Then me and you Iggy can go scout out the next few–"
"Actually, Ronan, I think…" Ignis inhaled through his teeth ever so slightly before pursing his lips. "I think I want to go alone for a little bit. I just… need to clear my head."
"But it's dark in here!" Ronan said, glancing around, "Can't I go with you?"
Ignis just wants someone to do something nice for him, right? I can do that.
"Hey, I'm not that bad to hang around, am I?" Nona interrupted from the floor.
"No! No, I didn't say that. I just don't want Iggy to go…"
Ignis gave a soft smile, and pulled him in for a one-armed hug. "I'll be back in just a few minutes, okay?" He looked at Nona, and she stiffened. "You… You'll have Nona there to–… she can protect you."
"But who's gonna protect you? " Ronan said, "you're gonna be all alone!"
Ignis looked down at his feet, and Nona could practically see his head retreating into his collar.
"I can handle myself! Even if Nona hadn't been there to stop that Sneasel, I had a plan to beat it," he said, but even he didn't look totally convinced, "tell you what, I'll take the bag with me, and I'll leave you two with this–"
He pulled the bag up and off Ronan's shoulder without protest, and he dug a hand into it. He pulled out a small glass orb just a little too big to fit in his fist. From its center glowed a small speck of light, refracting to look like a star no matter what angle you saw it from.
"This is a luminous orb. When you smash it–"
"It'll light up the whole floor, and show us where stuff is!" Ronan interrupted, taking it from Ignis and cradling it in his hands, mesmerized. "I never saw one of these before! Where did you get it?"
"Picked it up a few floors ago while you and Nona were checking for traps." He rubbed the back of his neck. "And while Nona was getting jumped on by that Dunsparce…"
"That was fun," Nona joked, "but that should be enough, right? You got me. You got an orb. What more could you need?"
"If anything happens at all, then you can break that orb. I'll see the lights come on, and I'll come running. Okay?"
Ronan's excitement died down a little bit, the light not reflecting nearly as bright in his eyes. He just stared into it for a moment, blinking a few times before giving a solemn nod.
Ignis let his arm fall down to Ronan's hand, and he gave it a reassuring squeeze before he walked off and down to the other side of the room, his light slowly fading as he navigated his way down the tunnel, leaving the other two in the dark.
The darkness made Nona yawn, and she stretched like a cat through it, pushing back on her hips and through her fingers. Ronan, only his upper body visible in the glow, hadn't moved at all from his spot, and was back to staring at the dancing light.
"Only gonna be a few minutes, Ronan."
"Mhm," he mumbled neutrally, but he made no effort to hide the sadness on his face. Either that or he was actually trying but was just awful at it like Ignis was.
It was strange how comforting such a little light was. They couldn't have been there any longer than two hours, but Nona had come to miss the sunlight and its warmth, and she struggled to come to terms with how she felt about the snippy lizard attached to their main light source. Without Ignis there, it was just her and the darkness. Well, her, the darkness, and Ronan– the little kid she was tasked with protecting.
Not that he really needed it. Sure, Nona would come running if anything tried to lay a hand on him, but chances were they would already have a dent in their skull by the time she got there.
She had to say, he was freakishly good with his… club? Was that even the right word for how he used it? It was a staff, a walking stick, a mace, a boomerang– different every time you saw him use it. Unlike Ignis, he wasn't getting any kind of special weapon training, so then where was all of that coming from?
"Hey, I never got to ask… how did you do that thing earlier?" Nona asked.
Ronan's head turned to look at her, and she could only see one half of his face, his eyes going straight to her. "... What thing?"
"That trick with the boomerang."
Immediately, he perked up, and he faced her fully. "You really wanna know?"
She chuckled. "Well why the hell would I be asking if I didn't?"
"Oh–" He looked down at his feet, which she could hear scraping on the floor shyly.
Too harsh.
"Would you like to uh… come over here and tell me about it?"
"No–" He shook his head and hunched his shoulders. "No, that's okay, it's not really important. …Is' dangerous anyways, Ignis said so."
Too… not harsh? Ugh, whatever.
"Hey. Butthead." She sat up and tapped her finger on the ground. "Take a seat over here so I can actually hear you."
Ronan, for once, actually did what he was told, and he walked over to sit next to Nona, his back up against the same wall, his shoulders still in their same spot just below his skull.
"I asked you a question, cause I wanna know how you did it. Are you gonna tell me?"
He mumbled something short that sounded like a yes, but Nona wasn't taking that.
"It'll be easier for me to hear you if you spoke up a little– and actually faced me when you talk."
That time, he still did what he was told, but he did it with an impatient groan. He folded his legs criss-cross again and was clutching his feet like before, rocking slightly back and forth, but not meeting Nona's eyes.
"I don't like having to look at you when I talk," he said.
"Just me?" Nona put a paw to her chest and feigned offense.
"No! No– it's not just you. I just don't like doing it… unless it's Ignis, cause he's just Ignis."
"I don't understand what that means."
"He's just Ignis!" Ronan threw his arms out at his side. "He's just the expectation."
"Do you mean the exception?"
"Yes… that's what I mean," he groaned.
Nona looked him over with the tiny bit of light he had resting between his feet. Even in the dark, he looked like he was physically recoiling from her gaze. She had never actually sat down and had a one-to-one with him, so she never noticed that he didn't actually look at her when he spoke.
"Would it help if I turned the other way while we talked?" She asked.
"But then how am I gonna hear you?"
Nona lifted up her feet a little and used her hands to spin around on her butt. She had to fix her fin-tail afterwards, and it took a minute of readjustment, but she eventually found a comfortable spot.
"You don't have to worry about that," Nona said louder than her normal speaking voice, sending it echoing around the room, "I know how to project ."
She made a big, showy hand movement with the word that made Ronan giggle, and already she felt like she was getting somewhere with him. It was a massive relief.
"So the people have been dying to know," she said, crossing her arms, "how did you do it?"
It was hard to read Ronan without seeing his fidgets and his facial expressions, to the point where it almost felt like she was talking to a different person altogether. She hadn't heard him shuffling around, so she assumed he was sitting in just the same spot.
"I caught my bone when it was flyin' around and I threw it at the Drilbur," he answered simply.
"Yeah I know that; I was there," Nona said, "but I wanna know how . What was cooking up in that brain of yours?"
Ronan made an "i'unno" sound that was probably accompanied by a showy shrug of his shoulders.
Nona sighed. "Aight, then tell me how you first learned you could do that. We'll work our way back from there."
"Umm…" Ronan hummed for a very long time, like he was trying to fill the silence Nona was giving him, "well I know I first threw my bone when we had to fight Electabuzz."
"Mm…" was all Nona said on that.
"And when Ignis would go to sword practice, and you were busy with Feraligatr, I would go outside just a teensy bit off of the road into town, into that little clearing through the woods. You know that one?"
She did recall actually seeing an old, mossy wooden gate just off the street that looked like it once had use, and that there may have been something other than suffocating trees behind it. Never gave it a closer look though.
"I think so?" She answered tentatively.
"Well, I would go there, and I would throw my bone up and into the air, and try to catch it."
"Like you were twirling a baton?" Nona scoffed.
Ronan made a "huh" sound, and Nona remembered that might be too human of a piece of information to share.
"N-Nothing. Just– so that's how you learned how to do that? You just threw it around?"
"Well no," Ronan said shyly, "that's just where I learned that my bone could swing back around to me"
"That it could curve?"
"My bone doesn't change its shape. It couldn't do that without breaking."
"No– Ronan, curving means changing direction in the air, which is what your bone was doing."
"Oh."
That time, it seemed more like a sound of acceptance than of offense, which was progress, Nona hoped.
"So I saw you doing… something– some dance?" Nona made some wavy hand movements that she realized Ronan wouldn't be able to see, so she awkwardly did them at her side. "When you threw it into the cavern, I mean."
"Oh yeah!" Ronan said in a smiley voice, "that's the cool thing. I can't always do it, but if I'm careful like I was back a little bit ago, then I can make the bone swing around the way I want it to so it'll come right back to me."
Nona gave a skeptical squint to no one. "You… You can control flying bones… with your mind?"
"Well it sounds dumb when you say it like that!" She could hear him shuffling around now. He was very passionate about this. "It just– It just listens to me! If I try really hard to show it where to go, then it can follow me to find its way back."
None of that made any sense, but Nona did have to admit how impressively tight that curve was. Even in the dark, she could see it almost clack against the roof of the cavern. But was it supernaturally impressive?
"Okay," she said, trying to keep her voice neutral, "but then– how did you send it flying straight like that? That was like– like almost a ninety degree angle you sent it in, and it kept its speed after you let it fly."
"Well that's the big one I've been actually practicing at the training place behind the guild. I was thinkin' to myself one day in the woods that it would be cool if my bone didn't have to stop when I caught it, so I kept trying to catch it, but only a little bit, so it kept spinning, just with my hand moving it around."
She could practically hear him trying to demonstrate with his bone in a display that she couldn't see. She could have spoken up about it, but she decided not to.
Nona rubbed her face, just stopping herself from rubbing the bridge of her nose, "so what I'm getting is that… you don't catch it, you just redirect it? Like you keep the momentum, but you just give it a little nudge in another direction, is that right?"
"Yes!" He almost shouted in relief, "if I'm real careful, and I show the bone just what I want it to do, then it keeps the mumen– the moomin– the memen–"
"I know what you mean," she interrupted. Otherwise, they would have been there a few more minutes. Ronan gave a little sigh of relief. "What do you mean you show it what you want to do? How do you show it something? It's a bone of a dead thing."
"That's the thing," he said in amazement, "I don't know! I just do. It's like the way I move tells it what I want, and then it just catches on. I can tell when it doesn't understand, and then it just hits the ground, but then I can tell when it understands me too. It's like a friend who's always with me."
Just like before in the library, Ronan said something so adamantly and in a way that was so genuine that she wasn't even sure if he knew how sad it was. Wouldn't a kid with no school to go to, no other kids to play with, and only a bunch of toys start making up friends for himself?
Still, at the same time, he was one of the most impressive pokemon she had met in this world. He was dishing out beatdowns without ever realizing there were adult pokemon back in town who could never dream of doing the same thing. It made perfect sense why Ignis was so protective of him, so worried all the time to the point that Nona wanted to rip her fin out– a figure of speech that sounded much worse when translated to her new body.
There was a part of Ronan that cried when he dropped his ice cream, that still needed his coat tied by his older brother, and still had words he couldn't form. But then what was she gonna do about the side of Ronan that saved himself almost as many times as Ignis had? The one that could hold his own in a fight, and could notice things even Nona would miss? They both were right there, sitting right behind her, and suddenly she felt like she was the one relieved not to be facing him.
"So yeah," he said, audibly rocking back and forth, "that's how I do it. I just tell it where I want it to go, and it goes there with all the same power it had when it was flying."
"Fucking impressive," Nona laughed in disbelief, "I don't really have much more to add to that. It just is."
"You really think so?"
"Why would I say something I don't mean?"
They were quiet for a little while after that, just keeping each other company while the light twinkled away between them. Nona kept an eye out, since her eyes were able to adjust to the dark without the glare. She still couldn't see jack or shit, but there weren't any fuzzy shapes moving around in the deep blue, so that was good at least.
It was a few minutes later when the clear ice she was leaning against got the faintest bit of glow. She squinted through it, and saw at the other side of the room a ball of light glowing through the wall of the other exit. The wobbly shape of Ignis walked out of it, his tail still in his hand as he scanned around him.
"Over here," she called out. He jumped at her voice, and she got a chuckle out of it.
He started walking around the donut, and Nona could see his whole path through the wall in the "hole." There was something off about it though. As Ignis walked, she saw dark shapes forming right at the edges of his light. At first she thought that Ignis had seen them and was walking past, but then he walked behind one of them, and the light didn't cast a shadow. The wobbly, spindly shapes weren't on the other side of the room, but were instead suspended in the ice pillar.
Ignis turned the corner, and he gave Ronan a small smile. "See? Not long at all."
Ronan stood up to greet him, but Nona couldn't stop squinting into the wall. She cupped her hands around her eyes like binoculars and put them against its surface. With the light on this side, there was nothing she could make any sure claim to seeing.
"What are you looking at?" Ronan asked. She could hear him crouch down next to her.
"There are shapes in the wall." She gave up and pulled her face away. "Like something's frozen in the ice."
"How–… how can you tell?" Ignis asked, holding his tail up to the wall, the reflection only further obscuring the view.
"When you were walking over here, I could see the light on the other side. There were these… I don't even know what they looked like. Maybe… pokemon frozen in the ice?–"
"Don't say things like that!" Ignis just short of scolded, "you're gonna scare Ronan."
Nona huffed, but she bit her tongue instead of saying something snide. "I'm just calling it how I see it."
"Do you think that's where the dungeon puts the pokemon we beat?" Ronan asked, "Or that's where they come out of?"
That was definitely possible, and was definitely a way nicer view than what Nona was assuming. She was imagining more like cold storage for the bodies of those that didn't make it through, something that she couldn't share without getting a swift fin-flick from Ignis.
"Dunno," Nona said, "we should put it down in the book anyway. Probably important."
Ignis let out a long breath through his nose as he pulled out the booklet, like he was annoyed. "I mean, I haven't seen it myself, so there's not much I can put. I guess that's fine ."
So he was only a few degrees cooler than he was before. By then Nona had long accepted this wasn't going to be a very good time, so it was easier to keep her remarks to herself, though they still would jump to leave her mouth all the same.
Ignis had found the transition between floors on his solo mission, and he guided them through the cleared rooms, empty of all pokemon. Nona wanted to ask if he had any run-ins with the spawn, but really there wasn't any point.
"What floor are we going to?" Nona asked, while she brutally stamped a foot down on a Snom's head.
Ignis physically recoiled from the crunching sound. "Can you please not do that? Just knock them out like a normal person."
Why can't you just knock them out like a normal Charmander? Nona thought, some fire would really help right about now.
She rolled her eyes as she bit her tongue for upwards of the 20th time that floor. "Fine. What floor is next?"
Ignis wound up a powerful downward kick and sent another Snom rolling helplessly down the whirlpool of ice, sliding lower in circles until disappearing down the exit to the next floor.
"I really wish you would have just paid attention instead of me having to tell you."
"Next Floor. Tell me it," Nona answered with dwindling patience.
"Next one is gonna be seven!" Ronan interjected, putting himself purposefully between them.
Ironically, Ronan only made it harder for Nona to keep in her usual snark. It was easy enough to shrug off Ignis' passive aggression, but Ronan's endless attempts to do it for her only stood to make her even more annoyed, and she hated how frustrated she was getting with him.
It wasn't helped by what a looping nightmare the floor they just cleared was, every tunnel always seeming to be an upwards climb, and every wild pokemon dead set on causing as much inconvenience as possible. The cherry on top of the shitty cake was the floor being a perfect, massive circle. The last room they reached, the one just a single tunnel away from where they started, was the one with the exit. Nona shook her back leg, and a clump of thin webbing peeled off of her skin, a parting gift from one of the Snom.
"Thanks," she said through gritted teeth, "I'm just about done with six."
"I'm thinking we should take a break here, since this floor's already been cleared," Ignis said. He gave a quick glance around before looking down to the booklet and writing something.
Ronan, who was seated and ready at the top of the slide, rolled back limply and fell flat on the ground with a groan.
"Hey, this isn't for your sake; it's for mine. I need a minute to catch my breath."
To his visual embarrassment, Ignis' stomach rumbled just low enough not to echo.
"A-And to eat something."
Nona wouldn't have said anything about it, but she was pretty hungry too, and she figured a little snack might give her the stamina she needed to not blow up at Ignis.
"Give us the grub," Nona said, padding over to look down at Ronan.
"Can't, I'm dead," Ronan let his head fall limp to the side and his tongue loll out of his mouth. "Bleh."
Nona just stared blankly at him. Ronan was trying to play, and if every step she took wasn't killing her then maybe she would have been game. As it stood though, any horsing around was only dragging out what was already a miserable slog.
"Dude, get up," she said.
She at least expected him to react some, but he just lay there, very much committed to his bit. It felt stupid, but Nona took a careful look at Ronan's chest to make sure he wasn't actually dead. Sure enough, it rose and fell just like normal.
"You wanna be dead? I can make you dead."
That bluff probably wouldn't work. Ronan knew she wouldn't ever hurt him– or at least she hoped he did. Still, he didn't budge.
Nona turned her head to the side and caught Ignis in the corner of her eye. He was just standing there watching her, his arms crossed and eyebrows raised like he was… waiting for her? Judging her? Whatever it was, it wasn't what she needed.
"You think I'm above robbing a dead person?" Nona said in a humorless voice. In a very awkward and difficult pose to do as a quadruped, she leaned over, grabbed the strap of the bag along Ronan's belly, and started shimmying it up to his neck.
What she found immediately was that this little shit was incredibly heavy. Somehow he was only slightly smaller than she was, despite being half her assumed age, and he probably weighed near the same as her too. When she got the strap to his chin, he pressed his head down to hide his neck. That only made it even more difficult to get it over his massive, clunky skull.
"Oh wow, I didn't know dead bodies could do that," she said, a smile sneaking into her voice despite her best efforts, "aren't they supposed to be all stiff when they die? What's that called… Rigor something?"
She paused for a second, and then for some reason felt her head drift to face Ignis. Never had she heard Ignis say anything about what she was talking about. Still, she knew him to be just the right kind of nerd to know exactly what obscure word she was looking for. He was still right there, stiffer than before with eyes focused just behind her, like maybe he did actually want to answer but chose not to– wouldn't be that surprising given how he was acting the entire time. Whatever.
With one hard tug that ached in her lower back, Nona got enough slack to slip the strap over the nose of Ronan's skull, and then it was just getting the rest out from under him. She gave another tug, and she held the freed bag in her hands.
Finally time to eat. Ignis moved closer to bring in the light. He was moving fast though– was he running?
Nona hardly had gotten the bag's buckle undone when the sharp cry of metal rattled her ears, just inches from her head. She snapped to attention and saw Ignis' sword stabbed into the ground on her opposite side, and something dark and snarling just past it.
The Sneasel had taken a swing at her, and Ignis just barely intercepted the X where its two blades crossed, an inch short of Nona's neck.
She gasped, and before she was on her feet, it went scurrying off into the darkness. It was gone, but the single instance she spent staring at it felt like it was burned onto her eyelids. Its eyes weren't feral black. They weren't IWD purple. They were pink. Bloodshot. It had two pupils, and they stared directly at her, but without direction, like those same feral instincts were all that was driving it– them – they weren't a zombie or a spawn– they were a person . A person that wanted to murder her.
Ronan was up half a blink after she was, and his head spun around wildly. He had seen even less than Nona did, and he looked just as terrified.
"What in the FLYING FUCK–" Nona breathlessly screamed, "was THAT?!"
Her eyes shot to every inch and every corner of the darkness, but the light blinded her to anything outside of Ignis' glow. For all she knew, they were just at the lip of the shadows. Her paw grasped at her neck.
"I–" Ignis yanked his sword out of the ground and held it out shakily. "I don't– What? What? "
There was no dragging Ignis back from his terror, and Nona felt like she was riding the same edge. The panic didn't set in though. She didn't let it.
"Who–" she said, desperately trying to smack some moisture into her lips, "Did anyone see where they went?"
"They?..." Ignis said after a good few seconds of delay.
Nona did everything in her power to send one of his 'are you fucking dumb' looks right back at him. That's what snaps him out of it?
" The person who just tried to kill us ," she spit out through her teeth.
Ignis just gave her that same dazed, stupid look, before something snapped him back into staring into the dark.
"Where'd the bag go?" Ronan whispered.
Nona didn't turn, only crouched down on the ground and felt around where she thought she dropped it, the whole time never taking her eyes off the dark. All she felt was the glassy surface of the ice.
"Wait…"
Ronan said the last word so quietly that Nona wasn't sure he even spoke at all. Something small and bright rolled into her vision from her side, clattering against the bumpy floor all the way to the edge of the room. The tiny little luminous orb slowed to a stop at the mouth of the tunnel they just entered from, and though its light was just barely enough to show the patch of floor it landed on, it painted the feet of a figure in perfect black against the light blue of the walls.
Sneasel's legs folded like snapped twigs, and it shot down to hunch over the light. The whites of their eyes glared into the fading dark. There was something fat and lighter colored at their side, obscuring one of their arms. It was the bag, slung neatly over the shoulder. Something else glinted through the dark near the bottom of its face, but she could hardly see.
The Sneasel's glaring claws moved in fuzzy blinks, silently clattering against the ground like the dancing legs of a spider. They moved backwards with supernatural grace, their dark fur fusing with the darkness as their body climbed up the tunnel.
The glow crept up past their chest to the neck, peaking at the chin. A full face flashed into view, and so did the mouth of glittering teeth, with lips strung thin and raw by a warning smile. And then it was gone.
It felt like the entire room was holding its breath. Even the orb looked to glow a little brighter once they were gone. The rest of the world came into view along with the deafening sound of Nona's heartbeat.
"Absolutely fucking not. " It was all she could say. "Fuck the mission. Fuck the bag. Fuck whatever that was. We're leaving. Now."
Nona turned to slide herself down into the next floor and away from all of that . She could hear as she walked that only one pair of footsteps followed her.
"No!" Ronan whined, "We can't just give up! Lurantis said the Guild was countin' on us."
"They can send someone else, someone with some holy water– or a gun or some shit!"
He just tilted his head at her in a very inappropriate gesture given how batshit insane of a situation this was. "You mean water gun?"
Right. A gun isn't a real thing here. Water gun is though? God– not important.
"I don't know! I don't fucking know, and I don't care! We're leaving."
She said it with finality, but Ronan only stared at her with an angry expression.
"No. I'm not going," was all he said.
"Fine. I'll leave then. Have fun killing yourselves."
She turned and stomped her way over to the whirlpool, plopping herself at the top of its slide. The words tasted bitter in her mouth. Even if she tried to push off and slide down, she knew she was never gonna be able to. But then still she sat there, glaring daggers at both of them.
Ronan stared down at his feet and crossed his arms tightly over his chest. Without another word, he turned and walked over to pick up the luminous orb. Ronan's approach to the edge of the light woke Ignis up from the shock, and he just about dropped his sword running over. Ronan's hand was just wrapping around the orb when Ignis grabbed his other arm.
"Ronan, you need to stay close!" He said.
"Stop grabbing me!"
He was almost like a totally different Ronan, grunting and snarling, yanking and flailing against Ignis like he didn't even care about getting free; he just wanted to thrash.
"We're leaving!" Ignis shouted, "we're not equipped to be fighting a mad pokemon, especially not one that strong–"
For once, Nona and Ignis agreed on something. She wanted to sit there and stew, but she stood up and walked over to stand as close to Ignis as she was comfortable. Maybe a part of her wanted him to know she was there, or maybe she just hated being at the edge of the dark. It didn't matter which.
Ronan looked between them, and he went so stiff he started to shake. He held his breath.
"Why do you only agree when you're mad at me? Why can't I do things right?!"
He was quiet, but he spoke through locked teeth, and she could hear how hard he tried to keep the tears out of his voice. His eyes squeezed shut, and he shuddered like he was clenching every muscle in his body.
"Oh… Sharkie–" Ignis reached out to touch his shoulder, his voice suddenly much softer.
Ronan swooped away from his hand like it was covered in mud. He didn't face them, and he started walking to the other end of the room, still holding himself.
"Ronan, you can't–"
Nona grabbed his shoulder with a reflex she couldn't name. He looked at her, shocked.
"He… needs a minute," she said, her voice unnaturally steady and calm.
Ignis shrugged off her hand. "How would you know what he needs?"
Cause I've been living with him too, dipfuck,she wanted to spit, cause both of us fucking suck at this, and I know that he can't stand being around you any more than I can.
What would Feraligatr or Slowking say if they knew she was thinking like that? Maybe Slowking would have been too patient to give it to her straight, but she could almost hear Feraligatr in her ear: "Get over yourself, get over it, and get out of your own head."
Nona took in a deep, shaky breath, feeling an ache in her diaphragm, like her body was physically recoiling at the thought of de-escalating.
"We need a break," she said, "I'm exhausted, he's exhausted, you're exhausted– I almost died . Can we just– stop for a minute? Please?"
"Take a break, how?" Ignis threw his hands up, his own tears threatening to break through his soft voice, "the bag is gone, that pokemon is still out there, and I don't even know if we can actually get through this dungeon."
"I don't know, man." Another deep breath, this time coming easier. She smoothed a hand over her scalp. "Can we just–... Only like five minutes. Can we stop for five minutes? We'll choose what we do after, when we're not all so…"
He let his head fall back and his eyes shut. He answered a second later, like he didn't have the energy to think about it. "Okay. Yeah, we can take… we can take five minutes…"
The most Ronan would agree to was sitting at the edge of Ignis' light, and even then he held himself into a tight little ball facing away from his brother altogether. The feeling the sight gave him was difficult to describe, like a lurch of the heart from thinking there was one more step than there actually was, but it stuck with him, spreading up and into his head in a grotesque buzz.
"Stop grabbing me!" The words echoed in Ignis' head and swirled in his stomach. "Why can't I do things right?!"
Was that how he made Ronan feel? That he wasn't able to do anything right? How long had he felt this way? How much of it was Ignis' fault?
He couldn't take his eyes off of the freckled clay scales on Ronan's back. His tail lashed against the smooth, icy ground, and his shoulders rose and fell with his breaths. Chances were Ronan could tell Ignis was staring, but he couldn't break his eyes off of his brother– his poor, innocent brother.
His hand tingled, and he flexed it open and closed. The movement was enough to draw his eyes back into the real world. He stared at his calloused palm and clawed fingers, the same ones that held on like shackles when Ronan shook his arm so hard his whole body moved with it.
You've ruined him, Ignis, same as you were ruined. You never left home; you just brought it with you.
Nona uncrossed her back feet from under her and stretched a leg out, reaching down with both arms to pull her foot back in a stretch. She was much more nimble than Ignis was, and it hardly looked like it was a challenge for her at all.
Why would he be surprised? Nothing was a challenge for her. That insufferable jerk was better at everything, so much better that she never had to so much as lift a finger to get everyone else's approval. Ronan even let her sit closer to him in that moment than he let Ignis, and instead of scorching his heart with anger, it sent it sinking down into his stomach. He wanted to give up.
Was five minutes over? He already knew that he was going home, but he had no idea how he was going to get Ronan to come with him. He couldn't grab him again– not after that.
Nona took in a deep breath and rolled back up to a straight sit. "Which one of you wants to explain what dungeon bullshit that was? Or was that just a crazy person?"
Ignis definitely didn't want to have to explain that, but it didn't seem like anyone else was going to. To be entirely honest, he wasn't sure if Ronan was even ready to hear it himself. And why would he? He's still only nine!
"... Both. It's both of those things," was how Ignis chose to explain it after careful deliberation.
Nona didn't say anything after that, but out of the corner of his eye Ignis could still see her looking his way, and he knew she expected a fuller answer.
"That was a person, driven to madness by the dungeon and trapped here inside of it, forced to act on the same feral instincts that drive the spawn."
That was a much more succinct answer, Ignis thought. It was all he was willing to give her. Still, though he didn't spare a look her way, he could feel her eyes burning on the side of his head like the heat of a fireplace.
"This is–" Nona started to say something, only blocked out by the muffling of her hands rubbing up and down her face. "That's– There has to be a line, okay? I mean, I can take sentient dungeons and fake people and a whole lot of other shit that I really shouldn't have to be okay with– but that? Fuck that."
Ignis exhaled out a laugh that he couldn't tell the truthfulness of.
"And what do you expect me to do about it? That's just how the dungeons work."
They met eyes, and he saw Nona's hackles raise, and a mean frown spread all the way across her wide face.
"I expect you to–" For a moment, the real Nona jumped out, angry and ready to shout, but she actually stopped herself this time. Her dark eyes fell on the back of Ronan, still holding himself solemnly at the edge of the light, and she made a show to bite her tongue. "– freaking tell me about this stuff. That scared the absolute shit out of me."
"We were all scared!" He tried not to shout back, "I-It was– I thought that it was gonna– I didn't think I would even get there in time to stop it. I…"
Ronan stirred, squeezing tighter and tighter into that furious little ball, and Ignis couldn't bring himself to say anything further. He hated how instinctively he turned to Nona, like he was just watching for her reaction to things, trying to pick at what she thought because he didn't know what to think himself. It was awful. He hated it, and he did it anyway.
Why did he even try? When all she gave back to him was that same dumb look, like she had no clue what was going on, that she didn't understand Ignis or why he did what he did. Totally clueless; useless.
"Did… Did you see the way that pokemon moved?" Ronan piped up, quiet but steady, and only a little bit of tears left in his voice.
There wasn't much to see. Ignis was just looking out into the dark, letting his eyes make dancing shapes, until there was something other than darkness. It was as fleeting as the tiny little glance he caught of it. If he moved his head just right, he would catch it again, only for it to swoop away as if it knew the light caught it. Two little dots flashing green in the dark, the eyeshine of a cat pokemon. He had strung the thought together much earlier than when he finally moved, but how was he to move? It was staring right at him, stalking them like a hungering beast. It got to the point where he couldn't bear to stand still anymore, and it just so happened the Sneasel pounced at the same time. It was his training that kicked in right at the last second and saved Nona from… from having her throat…
"Like a fucking ghost?" Nona said, exasperated in a way that Ignis was sure Ronan would take personally.
Even if Ronan did see something, it didn't matter. Not when staying to find out meant putting their lives in danger. He desperately wanted Ronan to see that, but he already felt so terrible…
"I didn't really see it," Ignis said, trying not to look too happy to see him talking, "I mean, in the dark like that, there wasn't anything to see. They moved… like she said, a ghost."
"Not just that…" Ronan straightened up a little, and Ignis could see the darkened sockets of his skull. "When I threw that orb down there, and I saw it backing up into that tunnel, it didn't just go into the dark."
Nona gave Ignis a confused look in a way that made him sure she was expecting one back. He only gave her a glance, keeping his face as neutral as possible.
"It went into the dark, yeah, but it was like it started to melt into it– like it disappeared!" He said the last part with awe, like he thought he was putting something together.
"I saw the same thing you did," Nona butted in, "that's what happens when things step out of the light, you stop being able to see them. Crazy shit, I know."
She ended on a playful note that Ignis couldn't help but feel distaste for. She was talking to him like he was an idiot.
Ronan shook his head slowly. "Nuh-uh, it wasn't like when the light rolled up to Sneasel's feet. It was different."
"Different how?" Ignis asked before Nona could retort.
"Just… different. I– I dunno how to explain it…"
There he went again, lowering his head and wrapping his arms tight around himself, retreating further and further away the more Ignis tried to reach him. This entire conversation was complete and utter torture.
Nona skooched up on her rear with a few pushes of her arms. She didn't turn to face Ronan, but they were shoulder to shoulder.
"So what are you saying?" She asked.
Ronan didn't move at all in response, and Ignis couldn't see his expression.
"I think that… Sneasel is a dark pokemon. So I think that it did something magical and…" his hands started swirling around vaguely. "It just went inside of the dark, instead of just going into it."
"That sounds like the same thing," she said neutrally.
"I don't know how to say it… I just don't think it was normal."
Ignis bit his lip and squinted back out into the dark, to which he saw absolutely nothing. Now that he was thinking about it, he had read once that Charmander hadn't developed over the millenia to have very good night vision, given their natural sources of light. Maybe Ronan had a point that he had seen something more than he did, if only because of his biology. But that didn't mean that something could just phase into the dark… could it?
Another book came back up in his mind, an encyclopedia of moves he had once skimmed through– had to have been years ago, just a little glance at one of the paragraphs on some dark move.
"I feel like I've read something similar to that… somewhere…"
Ronan actually turned his head to the side, and Ignis saw the faintest reflection of light coming from inside his skull socket. He was looking at him now, at least.
"I think it was that… I remember it said that the move couldn't miss– it used something similar to what Ronan was saying, like blending into darkness in a similar way to how spirit pokemon can become intangible, or some water pokemon can phase into water."
"We can do what ?" Nona leaned back onto her hands and gave Ignis a disbelieving look.
Ignis rolled his eyes. "Not all of you can do that, but what I'm saying is that some can."
"So you're saying that I was right?" Ronan hopefully held his bone to his chest.
"Well…" Now Ignis had backed himself into a corner. Ronan did actually seem to notice something the other two didn't, but it wasn't hard at all to put together that he was hopeful to find some way to chase after this thing. Something Ignis absolutely did not want to encourage.
"I'm saying you might be right. Maybe. I don't know though–"
"So if you would cover your tail again and let the light come back, then Sneasel wouldn't be able to move so fast! And we could catch up to them!"
That was what he was afraid of, made all the worse by Ronan's luminous optimism and clear hope that Ignis would like the idea. He didn't want to smash Ronan's confidence, especially not after he was already so unhappy a few minutes ago, but really? Chasing after that thing?
Ignis swallowed his pride and sent a pleading look to Nona. Her eyes went a little wider, and her cheeks puffed out, like she wasn't expecting to have to engage. Ignis tried to hide his frustration at that.
Ronan noticed what Ignis was doing almost immediately, and his face went sullen. He turned back to the dark, rolling over all the progress Ignis had managed to make.
"Maybe he has a point," Nona said.
"What?" Ignis asked as steadily as he could.
Nona threw her hands up defensively. "I don't wanna try to fight that thing any more than you do, but we're not gonna make it all that far without the bag. And besides…"
She tilted her head towards Ronan and arched her eyebrows. He needs this, she looked to say.
That is SO unfair! How could she turn him against Ronan like that? Ignis knew that he needed the confidence, that he needed to believe in himself, but that boost wasn't gonna come from beating a mad pokemon. Absolutely not happening.
"Ronan, that's a great observation," Ignis said in a clear, mature voice, "one that we can share with one of the senior teams when we have them come to retrieve our bag."
Immediately, Ronan wrapped himself up in a ball again, like he knew what Ignis was going to say before he even said it. It stung to see him so upset, but this was what he needed. This was what was best for him.
"Let me get my spare escape orb," Ignis said, reaching a claw down to his sword loop.
In preparation for exactly this kind of scenario, Ignis had read up on sewing so he could attach a pouch just next to Ellaine's sheath. He undid the button and pulled out a marble-sized orb.
The idea formed that maybe Ronan would be more excited about it if Ignis let him shatter the orb himself, but when he was just about to offer, he saw Ronan already facing him, another familiar orb in his hand.
"Are you gonna cover your tail?" He asked.
"What? Of course I'm not going to–"
It took a moment for him to realize that Ronan wasn't asking a question, he was negotiating. The luminous orb painted shadows over his skull, and he couldn't see Ronan's eyes in the darkness at the edge of his tail's light.
"Ronan."
Ignis absolutely wasn't going to let this happen. He raised his eyebrows and shot Ronan one of his looks. To his surprise, he didn't even flinch. What had gotten into him?
"Nona, can you grab that from him?"
Immediately, Ronan's head swiveled to Nona, and he clutched the orb between his crossed legs to protect it. But Nona didn't make a move to try. In a movement that made Ignis' blood boil, she put her hands up again.
"I'm not gonna try to take it from him!" She said, and Ronan relaxed a little. "Just– can we hold on? Can we not make this into a hostage situation?"
"Nona!"
Ignis couldn't hide his incredulity. Why was he even surprised? She was never on his side. All of that she said– about protecting Ronan, about Ignis not being alone, about her being there for him– He wanted to be furious and to shout, but if only to make him feel more angry, tears threatened to pearl at his eyes instead.
"Ronan, give me the orb." His voice was still steady. He tried as hard as he could to sound in control. "We're going home."
Ignis made a move to stand up, but he stopped when he heard a tiny cracking noise, just barely loud enough to register in his ears. His head shot up.
Ronan held his hands at his chest with interlocked fingers. He pulled them apart, and the glowing powder remains of the orb sifted onto the floor. Within a second, the entire dungeon lit up with teal light, and Ignis' hands shot up to cover his eyes.
"Hey!" Nona shouted, "Ronan, stop– we shouldn't split up."
Ignis blinked his eyes open in panic, ready to sprint off after him, but the picture that blurred into view was that of Nona, still seated in the same spot, and Ronan just a few paces away from her. She hadn't so much as touched him, but he stood there, arms crossed, like he couldn't leave. Like he actually respected Nona enough to listen.
"Ignis–" Nona turned to him with the same cautious look, like she expected him to argue or run away himself. Like HE was the one causing problems here, and SHE was the one keeping things together. It made him want to throw up.
Ignis didn't make an effort to say anything, or to take his eyes off of the ground. In the corner of his vision, he saw Nona just staring at him, unreadable. She turned to Ronan instead.
"So what now?" She asked in that same neutral, steady tone.
"Now, we wait for it to come back," he said after a pause, once he was sure Ignis wasn't going to scold him, "and then we take back our bag."
The plan wasn't exactly clear, not that Nona ever expected things to be clear with Ronan, but just like he always said, she could learn on the fly.
"The dungeon wants us to get moving so it can eat," he had told her, "that's probably why Sneasel took the bag, so we would chase it."
"Why did it try to kill me then?" Was her retort.
She slid down a familiar tunnel, her second time through the dungeon illuminated by an ethereal and directionless glow emanating from everything. As she did, she thought back to Ronan's response.
"I dunno why they did that," he said earnestly, "but that's all we got."
At least he was honest.
"So you're gonna go down that path over there." He pointed to the tunnel to the starting room. "And just go through the dungeon like we just did. You'll find Sneasel that way, and then you just follow them all the way to the end and to me and Ignis. There won't be any other way for them to go."
"And then?"
"We jump 'em!"
Nona wanted to roll her eyes then. Ignoring how he only used that word because he heard Nona say it one time, it was a half-baked plan with plenty of room for reality not to match up to his idea, but he might have been onto something. Maybe Ignis would have even agreed if he was inclined to say anything at all. Ronan yanking away the reigns seemed to shut him up for the foreseeable future.
"What if they just attack me instead?" Was the angle she chose to attack his plan from.
"It woulda done that when the lights were off if that was the plan," he said without pause. Again, a surprisingly good point from a surprisingly smart kid.
A sharp sound rang from the room ahead, interrupting the eerie silence. She sped up a little to turn the corner to the next room, only to find it empty. The sound didn't leave though, weaving itself into the low pattering of her footsteps, stopping when she did, like it was waiting for her to move. It was so little that she could have easily brushed it off, but she had too much faith in Ronan's plan to not press on.
Her confidence could have easily been misplaced. After all, he responded to being asked about his 'jumping' plan with a shrug.
"I'll figure it out!" He said with a confident little laugh.
It was the room just before the last that Nona saw it, that same scraggly figure, a black silhouette against the yawning mouth of the tunnel. It was staring down when its head snapped to Nona. The whites of their eyes glaring out just the same as it had before. It was only a moment of pause, just looking at each other, feeling the chill of the moment creeping down her spine.
In a blink, it disappeared into the depths, skittering down the straight ramp towards Ronan. The question was just which Ronan would be waiting for it on the other side? The one that brought down a giant, or the one that still woke up crying from the nightmares about it?
The thought chased away the creeps like a hot wave of alcohol on an empty stomach. Her two front paws met the ground, and she shot off after it. She wasn't gonna let it take a leisurely stroll into the last room. She would send it into the trap with a blind eye and a panicked mind.
She heard it jump at her sudden speed. From the mouth of the tunnel, she could see it halfway to the bottom, scrambling to pick up the pace.
Please let 20 minutes be enough time to think of a plan.
With everything faintly aglow, there were no shadows to hide in, but Ronan was smart enough to see that the wall behind a corner would work just fine. The familiar shape of his bone shot out just as the Sneasel was entering the room. The end of his club clotheslined its head, and its limp ragdoll of a body flailed into the center of the floor.
Nona was only a second behind, and was just barely able to hug the ground before meeting the same fate herself. She slid to a stop too, just a breath's distance from the wrecked bag of bones.
She was shocked to suddenly have to duck, but when she thought about Ronan's plan, she wasn't the slightest bit surprised. If anything, she felt stupid she didn't see it coming. She almost laughed, but her nose filled immediately with a sinus-burning stink of musk and wet dog, and she almost gagged.
She jumped back to two feet, if only to put as much distance as possible between her nose and the Sneasel. "Eugh–! How come I couldn't smell it coming last time? That's so foul."
"Woohoo!" Ronan jumped up and pumped his fist in a movement that brought a feeling of ghostly nostalgia. "It worked!"
Nona looked around and saw Ignis, covering his tail around the opposite corner to the one Ronan was hiding behind. His shoulders rose ever so slightly when they met eyes, only for a second before he stared solid at the body.
"Are they out?" He asked in a tiny voice.
Ronan stopped for a second to look too. He started walking towards it with his bone extended to poke it, but Nona put a hand on his shoulder before he could, easing it away to poke it herself. It didn't move in response.
"They should wake up just fine…" Ignis continued, daring a few steps closer and uncovering his tail.
Nona wasn't excited to get any closer to the stinking pile of Sneasel, but they had spent almost thirty seconds just staring in silence, and she couldn't stand it any longer. She stepped around to what she was pretty sure was the face side– it was hard without Ignis getting closer– and tried snapping her fingers.
"Hey." She raised her voice to almost a shout. "Wake up."
"We gotta get 'em a berry," Ronan said, crouching down on their other side to unbuckle the bag, "maybe I swung too hard."
Nona pursed her lips and decided not to look Ronan's way. She sure hoped he didn't. She was not in the mood to have to explain to a nine year old that he committed manslaughter. Luckily, the shuffling of the bag seemed to do the trick.
Out of the mangy ball, a pointy head rose, their eyes forming two tiny slits in their black fur.
"Wha…" Their voice was so scratchy, she was surprised they didn't exhale dust. "Whappen…"
What didn't happen to this guy?The voice was relief enough for Ignis to come closer, and the light brought Sneasel's full face into view. The skin was stretched across their skull like a ghoul, and what little flesh still hung to their bones bloated around their right eye.
"You… You must have been here a very long time," Ignis said. With sudden determination, he grabbed the strap across Sneasel's hunched chest and unlatched it from the bag itself, allowing him to pull the entire thing out from under them.
How am I just now learning it can do that?
Ignis flipped open a bulging side pocket and pulled out a canteen. Carefully, he held it to Sneasel's lips, seemingly unbothered by the smell, and used his other hand to lift their head. They started off with small sips, quickly becoming greedy gulps, and their two bladed hands came up to grasp at it as it went bottoms up, dripping down their chin.
They gasped free from the empty canteen, and no sooner did it fall out of their hands did Ignis hand them another one, gulped down only the slightest bit slower, this time leaving it nearly empty while they panted for breath.
"Slow down!" Ronan said, trying to get them to grab an oran berry, "you're gonna 'frow up if you drink it all at once."
Sneasel didn't seem to listen, spearing the berry out of Ronan's claws with their hand and just short of shoving the entire thing into their mouth. They shredded it in seconds while they rose to a crouch. It wasn't until the berry was gone and their face was stained purple that they actually took notice of the other people there.
"What… happened? …" They uttered. Their fuzzy palm cradled their quickly swelling black eye, and they swayed.
"What do you last remember happening?" Ignis asked before Nona could tell them that they just got jumped.
It took a few seconds for their eyes to drift over to Ignis. They stared at him and squinted in thought.
"I was… sent on a rescue mission. My team and I were–" Suddenly their head shot straight up, and their eyes went wide. "Wh– Where are they? Did they make it out?"
"We don't know. We found you here in the dungeon. You were… The dungeon madness got you." Ignis started to lose steam at the end of his sentence, anxiously kneading his hands.
The face Sneasel made was that of concentrated disgust and horror, no doubt made infinitely worse by a throbbing head and an empty stomach.
"What's your name?" Ronan asked.
Sneasel took a deep breath that took them a few good seconds to let out, then they opened their eyes and answered.
"I don't tell people that," they answered flatly, "but… fuck it. I owe you one. Call me Jeanne."
"My name's Ronan!" He said in a gentle, encouraging voice like he was talking to a toddler. "And this is my big brother–"
For once, Ronan actually stopped before saying Ignis' name. The two brothers made eye contact for a moment, before Ronan looked like he was remembering something and instead turned to Nona.
"And this is my… hmm… my friend. This is my friend."
Jeanne looked around at them and chuckled groggily. "This dungeon must have been a… not a tea party– not a cakewalk for you guys."
Nona hadn't noticed up until that point, but she stood with her jaw clenched tight and her arms crossed. She could feel the ache in her forehead from furrowing her brow, and she tried her best to rub it loose.
Ignis, though masking it well with his caring demeanor, still showed clear as day that he had something on his mind.
"You can call me Ignis," he said after a long pause, offering Jeanne a hand and pulling her to her feet.
Nona wasn't exactly against the idea of giving out her name, but she put it on herself to keep a careful distance from Jeanne for the sake of her teammates. She definitely wasn't going to let them walk into another Team Eviscerate situation.
"We were just finishing up floor six," Ignis said, handing Ronan the bag in preparation to leave.
Jeanne bit down on her metallic knuckle in thought, putting her weight onto one scrawny leg. "Last floor I remember before getting knocked was eleven… so we still have a bit of a way to go."
Nona wanted to groan, but she kept it in. Ignis couldn't contain a forlorn sigh.
"We have another person with us now though, so it should be easier!" Ronan said with a little skip, "oh– I shoulda asked Jeanne, will you be ok to fight with us?"
"Oh definitely," she didn't hesitate to say, brandishing her dull claws, "dungeon won't get the jump on me a second time, I can tell you that much."
Three quick floors told Nona a few things about their new friend. She seemed a little less bold than her abilities allowed, and her feet always toed the edge of the dark like she was scared to let herself out of the light. But the few times she did, she was like nothing Nona had ever seen. One second you would see her phasing into the shadows, the next you would see her molding back into the light, the sounds of KO'd pokemon hitting the floor rattling through the room. Nona found it much easier to take up the back of the party since they didn't need the help, which she preferred. It let her keep eyes on Jeanne.
It was near the end of the tenth floor when Nona saw Ronan start to slouch under the bag. Didn't they take a break just a few floors ago? Ignis seemed to notice at the same time she did, though he didn't make any signals to Nona about it.
"Yoink."
Nona snuck up on his side and swept the bag up and over his skull, slipping it over her head before he could even react.
"Hey!" He said with a stomp of his foot.
"Gotta be quicker than that," she said with a playful shrug, "you're losing your touch, rookie."
Ronan huffed and started dragging his bone on the ground, a sign that Nona probably could have approached that a little better. He started walking ahead, and he almost passed by Ignis and Jeanne, but his older brother spoke up.
"It's only fair that Nona takes the bag," he said matter-of-factly, "you think up the plans, Jeanne knocks out the pokemon, and I give the light. Nona needs a job too."
Now Nona was the one offended. Had Ignis just roasted her? She was about to say something sarcastic in response, but Ronan let his shoulders drop and slowed his pace down. What Ignis said had worked, so there was only so much she was willing to argue with it.
Ronan turned back around to walk with Nona at the back of the party, this time less sulky, twirling and twisting his bone in his hand instead of letting it drag against the ice.
It was then that Nona felt the dryness of the air again, and she reflexively turned to Ronan to ask for him to toss her a bottle of water. She remembered then that she was the one with the bag, and she unlatched the flap to dig around inside.
She wasn't used to being in charge of the items, so she had no idea where anything was. There were a few compartments of seeds and berries and orbs– a tiny purse for any money, and a flap on the side for papers. All of these compartments were vaguely organized, with several items finding their homes in the wrong places. Still, no water.
Ronan stuck his arm under the flap hanging off the back of the bag and pulled out a small wooden canteen, one of the same ones Ignis handed to Jeanne.
"Oh, this one's empty," he said. He tried a few other ones from different outer pockets, until he shook one and heard it slosh. He handed it to Nona.
"That's a lot of water for just one trip," she said, unscrewing the cap, "not that I'm complaining."
Ronan tilted his head and gave her a questioning look. "Ignis only packed so many for you."
"Yeah– What?"
"Yeah, we don't need so much water," he said, pointing to himself and Ignis, "he told me we're both pokemon that spent a lot of time in dry places a long time ago, so we don't need as much as a amphi– amphil– no– am-phi-bi-an ." He said the last word in careful parts.
Nona stopped mid drink and let the canteen fall from her lips. She just stared at it, then over to Ignis, who was having a very animated, almost friendly conversation with Jeanne. Nona never knew that she needed more water than anyone else. Sure she was thirsty all the time, but she had just assumed it was the weather… Had Ignis really noticed that and packed extra for her without even needing to be asked?
She put the cap back on and took a hard swallow of the last bit of water in her mouth. Then she carefully shimmied it back into its side pocket, trying as hard as she could to pack it as well as Ignis did.
"So… that was your plan?" Nona asked neutrally, looking ahead instead of at Ronan's eyes.
"Uh-huh." She could see him nodding in the corner of her eye.
"So what were you thinking?"
If it were Ignis she were talking to, she knew that would probably be interpreted as cynicism, but Ronan was smart enough to know what she meant.
"I wanted to set up a trap, but we didn't really have anything there to use with the bag gone. I said that to Iggy, and he said that all we had was our coats and my bone. I thought maybe I could use our coats for something, but I remembered something Guildmaster said to me 'fore."
Ronan started walking a little bit ahead, holding out his bone and letting it swing like a pendulum to his feet, kicking it between them to keep it in motion.
"'You don't gotta make it harder than it has to be' is what he said. So I just thought that I could probably catch it good enough with just my bone, and I didn't need to make it any tougher. Maybe I coulda done better though."
"Hey, it worked, didn't it?" Nona said with a smile, "if it weren't for you, we would have been stuck going through this part all on our own, and without a bag. You're pretty smart, rookie."
He started kicking his feet against the ice and folding his arms behind his back all embarrassed. "I guess so."
They reached a sharp turn in the tunnel they were walking through, and when they turned the corner, Ignis spun around to face them while he walked.
"Mental map says this is just gonna be a straight shot into the last room." He tapped his temple and got a tiny little smile on his face. "Just… we're gonna have a lot more walking to get there. It's pretty long."
Ignis' mental maps were impressive, and almost never wrong. She wasn't sure how he did it, but it was probably the reason he spent so much of his time in the dungeon fidgeting and zoning out. Keeping up a map like that was something she was totally hopeless with.
"Bet it wouldn't be so long if we ran!" Ronan said, head flicking up to Nona.
Nona gave him a half-lidded look. Her feet definitely weren't in running condition, and even after taking a break to eat and rest, she was still tired as fuck.
"I guess we won't find out."
"Are you scared I'm gonna beat you?"
He asked the question so earnestly that Nona found it hard to tell if he was actually teasing her. She looked down at him and saw him swiveling on his feet with his arms still behind his back, like he was up to something but trying not to look like it.
"You're not gonna beat me," Nona said, looking down to inspect her non-existent fingernails.
"Yeah-huh! I've gotten a lot faster!"
"Nah, not any faster than me, that's for sure."
"Prove it then!"
He held his bone in both of his hands now, excitedly jumping from foot to foot at the thought of competition. It was at that point she knew that she wasn't ever gonna be able to say no. She would never admit it, but she was awful at resisting those little puppy-dog eyes he could give, to the point where she still avoided eye contact.
"If I win, then you gotta play Team Charm with me when we get home, deal?"
"And what's in it for me?" She asked, nonchalantly rubbing her chin.
"I won't bite you."
"What?– Ow! Hey!"
Ronan snatched up her arm and gave her a surprisingly strong play bite. Nona swung her other hand to swat him, but he was too fast and ducked out of the way. He ran ahead a few paces before slowing down to wait for her. He kept facing her with those same excited hops of his feet, like he really wanted her to chase him.
"Oh you little shit! " Nona couldn't hold in her laugh on the last word.
Ronan just short of shrieked with glee. He shot off ahead into the dark just a second after Nona started running. It took her a second to tell that he was gaining distance, and when she did she felt a sudden burst of competitive energy. Even on two legs he still leaned forward when he ran like some kind of raptor, and it made it hard for her to reach for the neck of his coat when she got close. Still, it was only a few seconds before she was an inch away from grabbing a fistful of fabric and stopping him all at once.
It was then that he leapt forward with both hands, breaking seamlessly into a quadruped run and shifting his coat down and out of her reach. He bounded ahead in a blazing cheetah sprint, and Nona was left in the dust.
She was only vaguely aware of Ignis shouting at her and the familiar pain in her back feet. All of her attention was focused on not losing the race, and she threw herself onto all fours again.
It was almost impossible to see what was right in front of her. The whole time though she could hear Ronan just ahead. No matter how much her proximity to him gave her bursts of competitive adrenaline, she never gained on him an inch.
The faint ghost of Ignis' light on Ronan's back showed him slide down an incline just a few meters ahead, and the thought of not needing to run any longer gave her another burst of speed.
All through the tunnel she could hear the echoing sounds of Ronan whooping and laughing, and despite her empty lungs, she laughed too as she slid down on her belly, letting the feeling of weightlessness ease the embarrassment of losing to a nine year old.
There was a loud crack at the bottom of the slide, followed by Ronan's voice.
"Ow!"
Ow?
The thought processed a half-second before she saw the ceiling-high dark shape waiting for her at the end of the tunnel, and only a second before the ice pillar made contact with her face.
