"Oh come on, you're cheating!"
"She's not cheating! Don't tell me you forgot to update your board!"
"What are you implying here, [Azelf], I did not forget to update my board!"
The spike of anger in Mesprit's mental message has Azelf sputter a wave of indignation over our psychic connection.
"Woah! Back off, sis!" Azelf doesn't cower for long, and he pushes back hard. He manages to transmit the image of his game board angrily.
I cross-reference it with the board I put up at its usual place: under the great willow tree with branches that reach down into the waters of Fogbound Lake. As expected, my own board reflects Azelf's perfectly—I have no trouble keeping up with our game session.
I lean back and check the position of the sun. It's already late afternoon, and the sun's red light slowly mixes with the glow of the Time Gear hidden deep beneath the surface of my lake.
Usually, game day would have been long over—Mesprit isn't a strong opponent. But against all odds, today's game already lasts over an hour, and she's fighting viciously for victory. It seems obvious to me that her dwindling number of pieces is her only reason for calling the board into question. She and I both have our own board for reference, but Azelf acts as the referee, and only what's on his board counts.
While Mesprit and Azelf bicker over the discrepancies, I pick an apple and lean back in the soft breeze. A steady hum fills the air as the native illumise and volbeat return and prepare for their evening dance. None of them possess even a sliver of intelligence.
It would have been a very lonely assignment, watching over a Time Gear that no one is supposed to know about, far away from my siblings. But we aren't three powerful psychics for nothing. It took us only a few weeks to set up a psychic network and a few decades more to invent a game that could be played remotely.
I let my mind wander past the edge of Fogbound Lake and into Foggy Forest below. I can feel the feral minds of pokémon living in the every-present fog. I've watched them for hundreds of years now, and rarely the inhabitants in and around Fogbound Lake develop any sort of intelligence. Even if they do, the harsh terrain offers little in regards to agriculture. So they leave to make a good life past the mountain range that separates Foggy Forest from the civilized regions of their world.
"Alright, [rock] to Fire-7," Mesprit says and snaps me out of my musings. Her telepathic addition clarifies which of the two rocks she wishes to move.
I pick up her pink token with telekinesis and move it to the designated tile, then contemplate the board for a while. "I move my [psychic] to Water-5."
"Hah, I knew it! Fairy to Water-5!" There's only one fairy, so she doesn't need to specify.
It's an interesting play and I grow silent as I go through my options.
Meanwhile, Azelf can't help himself. "Wait, [Mesprit], are you absolutely sure you updated Uxie's play?"
"Do you want me to come to your lake and beat you up?"
I can feel the smile in his message. "Just checking."
As I inform them where I move my dragon, I come back to the telepathic sweep of Foggy Forest. A flickering thought has caught my attention and I zero in on it. What...?
It's another psychic! A chimecho! Just at the base of the mountain. A chimecho with intelligence and memory. I withdraw from her thoughts before she can spot my intrusion. She's travelling with two companions and I focus on their thoughts instead.
Mesprit distracts me with her move, and I silence her.
"Hold on a second, I have intelligent life forms entering the forest!"
Activity on the psychic plane dies down to let me examine the intruders at the edge of Foggy Forest. I'm not one to pry into the private thoughts of my fellow pokémon, but the Time Gear is too important. I limit myself to surface thoughts and dive into the mind of the corphish next to Chimecho.
"They're looking for Fogbound Lake," I say a minute later. It doesn't come as a huge surprise. Why else would anyone travel into this inhospitable area?
"Do they know about the Time Gear?" Mesprit asks, sounding deceptively neutral.
Azelf doesn't try to hide his alarm. "Screw that, who are they? Can you take them on?"
I send out two quick, telepathic bursts that roughly translate as "[Mesprit, I'm working on that.] [Azelf, three intruders. Chimecho, dugtrio, corphish.]"
"That doesn't sound too bad," he acknowledges, but otherwise lets me do my thing.
"Nothing about the Time Gear," I say finally, leaving the unassuming trio behind and returning to myself. "But they think there's an unspecified treasure at Fogbound Lake."
"You're too soft," Mesprit chides. "Never should have left the weavile with that knowledge. Now you have to deal with a bunch of lunatics every year."
"It's not happening every year," I say, somewhat defensively. "You know dark types are hard to affect."
But she's right. A couple of decades back, I erased the memories of an exploration team that came too close to Fogbound Lake. As I had to learn a year later, I didn't do a good enough job on their dark type leader and now a rumour's spreading about how I was watching over a treasure in Fogbound Lake—and that I was prone to erase memories.
I sigh heavily. One mistake and I'm still feeling the consequences decades later. But I still feel queasy at the thought of killing to protect the Time Gear.
"Oh well, you got that fog of yours," Azelf says." That has beaten pretty much all of your visitors so far."
"And even if they get to your lake, you know what to do, "Mesprit adds, nonchalant.
They shouldn't talk like that. They rarely have visitors. I cross my arms and say, "Of course." Some of my irritation tints the message and my siblings retreat from my thoughts.
"So, you know I moved that rock again, right?" Mesprit pipes up after she left me to myself for—in her eyes—an adequate amount of time.
I bristle. I've already mapped out my way to victory. "[Psychic] to Ice-4."
Even as our game continues, I can't help but come back to the invading trio. Something about their buzzing surface thoughts and light conversation seems off to me.
Three turns from victory, I realize why the situation worries me so much.
I fill my message with a psychic reminder of who I'm talking about. "[They] are part of a bigger group! There's more of them coming!"
It's enough to startle Mesprit from her game. "But why?! What do these people think they'll find?!"
"Who else is coming?" Azelf asks, pragmatic as always.
I hesitate and they read my apprehension in the silence.
"Oh, you can't be serious!" Mesprit snaps, adding an image of her rolling her eyes. "Just read their frickin' thoughts! As you keep saying: you're the best telepath among us!"
"Dialga is counting on us," Azelf adds when I say nothing.
The privacy of three random pokémon is not worth Dialga's sanity, I remind myself.
As a psychic-type herself, Chimecho might pick up on my long-distance prodding so I focus on her companions again. I never liked to read the thoughts of cluster pokémon. There's something unpleasant about beings with multiple brains—I stay away from Dugtrio. Corphish it is.
He has a few mental barriers—no doubt the work of his psychic-type friend—but obviously no clue how to use them effectively. A lesser telepath would have run into the walls and alerted him to the intrusion. I slip into his mind without him suspecting anything.
Corphish is a proud member of the Wigglytuff Guild. There are many guilds out there, but he knows that the Wigglytuff Guild is the best. He's easily irritable and prone to cut others off, but he'll do anything for the ten other members of the guild and the two allies that also came along on the expedition. Wigglytuff is an eccentric guild leader and he launched the expedition to find the treasure of Fogbound Lake. Everyone is very excited about the treasure. No one is sure what the treasure is.
I leave his memories once I have an overview on who else to expect in Foggy Forest in the next few hours. For an inexplicable reason, the guild administration thought it a good idea to split up their party into multiple groups. The three that arrived early seem motivated enough to bear the fog for a significant amount of time. At least there's no dark-type this time around and I ready myself for a smooth memory deletion in case they stumble upon Steam Cave.