September 18th, First Year
I really need to stop sneaking out so late. Akari narrowed her eyes as another gust of humid wind pelted her in the face, forcing her to wither into the cover of a gaping cave. The corners of her lips twisted downward. No, no. I have to keep going. This has been dragging on for long enough.
Only a week had passed and Akari had made up her mind: she had made a resolve to get stronger and with the way she saw it, the only way to prove that she had become stronger was to get rid of Lord Ursaluna and its frenzy. She had thought long into why Giratina had called her into that specific sinkhole and upon stepping foot into the shadows, she had discovered the reason. It had been after Giratina had left, its hulking form having covered a massive cave in the wall of the sinkhole. There had been massive prints scraping along the wall, thin and shaky but deep. Intentional. The grooves had been crusted in dried blood.
Akari steeled her nerves and continued further, one hand reaching toward her Ralts, Pluto, who was charting the way ahead with Psychic. She could do this. She would track down Lord Ursaluna, defeat it in battle, and then… and then… Akari wasn't quite sure what she would do after Lord Ursaluna had been defeated. The Galaxy Team. I'm part of the Galaxy Team. If anything, another noble will be frenzied and I'll just move onto them next. That's how things have been for months now.
Beside her, Pluto paused and used its power to still Akari mid-step. The girl froze, fear twisting in her belly as she tried to peer past the horrifying darkness that filled up the space around her. A quiet chirp rang out in the clearing, inquisitive and calm. A pair of eyes blinked back at her from the darkness before their owner began to toddle forward, something heavy and wet slapping against the floor as it moved.
A Bibarel. The large, clunky pokémon toddled forward on its short legs, a thick branch of semi-shrivelled oran berries clamped between its jaws. Upon sighting Akari, the Bibarel hurried forward, nudging her forward into the ruins as if desperate to get her somewhere else.
"Wow. For once, a wild pokémon isn't trying to hurt me," Akari muttered aloud. She crept after the Bibarel, her eyes catching its every movement as it swept its wary gaze along the cavern, its tail trailing stiff behind it. Maybe it knows Ursaluna was in the cave. Akari blinked. Why would a Bibarel be so deep into a cave and more importantly, why would it be so friendly toward her? "Do you have a trainer, little guy?" The Bibarel turned and gave her an indignant squeak before nodding. "I'll take that as a yes."
The further she moved into the cavern, the more she began to notice the oddities of her surroundings in the faint light of Pluto's projected Psychic, her eyes widening as she took in the horrible curiosities around her. Between the lengthening gaps of exposed paved stones and the jarring amount of smashed pottery and exposed mosaic floor patches, Akari knew it wasn't a cave she had wandered into.
She walked through a decayed cathedral- an abandoned church- a forgotten holy temple sunken deep into the earth having gone an unfathomably long time without the warm embrace of sunlight or the whisper of winds. Broken paths of carved cobblestone and granite all edged in creeping moss and suffocating kudzu grew underfoot, their thick cover encompassing the structure around her from floor to towering ceiling. The space around her suddenly opened up and as Akari stared upward into the foggy darkness, she couldn't make out a ceiling; only draping ivy and the drip of water from far above. Pillars of intricately shaped marble and decaying gold leaf stood withered against the flow of time, some toppled over onto the crumbling floors. Wherever she was, Akari had the impression that she wasn't welcome there. And from a distance, a terrible scraping sound echoed through the ruins.
All around her lingered the signs of something much bigger than her having since been erased from existence. Cathedral walls with intricate carvings and painted murals still preserved despite their age. Cathedral halls filled with moth-eaten banners and water-eroded vases. Hills of broken glass and mounds of destroyed pottery, all dappled in mold and moss and decay. Items littered the floors. Pendants. Banners. Bowls and chalices. Torch sconces hung rusted on the walls, a cold chill having long since settled in as though the ghosts of the inhabitants had taken to following along on her foreboding walk. And from a distance, a terrible thrum echoed through the ruins.
The cathedral spanned a massive distance. Akari tried her best to take note of her surroundings but failed, a sharp fear settling in her bones as she lost herself among collapsed doorways and confusing halls. Thick patches of Unknown crawled along the walls like a bad rash, a multitude of eyes reflecting the scarlet light of her Ralts' Psychic as Akari passed. She tried her best not to look at them, not liking the soulless way in which they stared at her, their eyes unblinking and sightless. They floated about the room like spores. Akari yelped as one of them bumped into her wrist, its body cold and fleshy and wrong. And from a distance, a terrible snarl echoed through the ruins.
Akari paused, carefully reaching for a pokéball; those were the same things that she had encountered near the Solaceon Ruins with Volo a few months ago. She could transfigure those and make them into something useful. She shuddered as she threw a pokéball into the center of the growth, flinching as the telltale click of capture exploded through the silent cave. "Okay. I really need to see a bit further. Please, please, please let me turn this into a lantern. Something I can see with." She screwed up her eyes and felt the pokéball morph in her hands, a wave of confusion washing over her as she looked back at her clenched fist. Instead of a pokéball, a new cylindrical item was in her hand, her thumb resting in a comfortable groove near the bottom. "Not a lantern," she grumbled. "What even is this thing?"
As Akari moved her thumb out of the groove, the adjacent piece clicked forward sending a blinding beam of light into the tunnel. Akari blinked. "Oh." She then laughed sarcastically, kicking at a stray pebble. "Real funny, Arceus. I asked for a lantern. Not… whatever it is this is." It'll do, her mind supplied. With the new item- a flashlight- she could now see much farther than Pluto could ever project.
She followed the Bibarel as it proceeded through the tunnel. She ignored the way the light of her flashlight would reflect off the broken glass on the floor or how some of the statues appeared to have eyes that would glow the closer Akari grew to them. She ignored the way her stomach would clench in apprehension as she had to crawl under collapsed doorways or squeeze through narrow tunnels. This place has to be underneath the Solaceon Ruins. That whole place looks eerily similar to here, Akari monologued. But why is it underground? What happened here? And what do the Unknown have to do with this? What even are they? She held still as a low voice drifted up from a space below her.
"The first plague is over. Now, perhaps, we might see the fabled fourth plague: the plague of boils." The low voice paused, an entertained hum reverberating around the cavern. "Yes, I'm aware that's ostentatiously dreary. I am only predicting, my dear." The voice faltered. "Don't make that face at me."
Akari crept into the lower floors. Who would be exploring down… Volo. Akari groaned to herself out of exasperation, being careful not to make a sound as she descended onto the second basement floor, Pluto struggling to levitate her weight before the tiny pokémon was forced to take a break. Of course, he's here! Wherever there's ruins, Volo's sure to be there. Akari had been trying her best to figure out Volo's intentions and now she had the perfect chance to creep closer and eavesdrop.
She found herself staring into a wide circular room, banners of green, white, and gold draped from weathered inaccessible balconies as the figure within stared at a rocky mural. Volo. The man was crouched near an intact part of the mural, a metal lantern flickering at his side as he let one hand move to a notebook by his feet. A tiny Togetic perched on his shoulder, its wings fluttering as Volo pointed first to one section of the mural and then to another.
He wasn't dressed in his usual merchant wear. Instead, Volo wore a black-brown tunic lined with gold silk. Bits and pieces of white fabric hung from the bottom of the tunic- an undershirt- and the merchant now had a similarly dark shawl draped across his shoulders. His pokéball belt consisting of fine leather and metal hooks was only just barely hidden by the long-fringed shawl. His blond hair, usually kept up high near the back of his head, had been allowed to hang low down to the middle of his back. It was in a low ponytail with two loose but intricate braids holding the slack together. A new look, to be sure.
"Here and here," Volo muttered. He gestured toward the engraved wall revealing golden bangles under his long sleeves, running his fingers over the grooves. "The first, eighth, and ninth plague have already repeated themselves, albeit not in the same form and not by the same nobles. They are correlated; that much is obvious… but why are they being triggered in this first place?" He sighed, reaching one hand out to pet his Togetic. "Their influence should not be allowed in this instance… or perhaps, the plagues are not their influence to begin with?" Volo turned, his expression filled with discomfort. "Maybe it's time I visit an old friend."
Plagues? Repeating plagues? Akari grew closer still, crawling into the room behind a pillar so as not to be spotted.
"Water to blood." Volo swept one hand over a wall of engraved markings in a section of the mural. "Lilligant's frenzy. Contaminated water that none could drink. According to the inscriptions here and the old legend, that was supposed to happen first- not third. And yet the water, while not being blood, did choke everything around it. I wonder… did Lord Basculegion secretly play a part in this?" Volo scribbled something down in his notebook and slid to the side, idly reaching into his large pack for a pot of ink and a massive stack of bound papers. "Next, a storm of locusts to consume all plants and crops. Bug-types. Lord Kleavor's frenzy. That plague too was obvious but it did not kill on the same level that it had centuries ago. And did Lord Braviary contribute? I must ask as to what is truly planning these plagues and who's design it comes from."
Volo stood up hastily, his feet taking him past a worn portion of the engraved wall. He muttered as he passed it, hardly passing the text a glance. "The ninth plague: the three days of darkness. A sham, that one. Hardly darkness; more so hallucinations and delusions. The weakest plague of them all. Of all the stories I've read and all the ruins I've touched with my own hands, I would think the modern plagues would be more impressive; or awe-inspiring like their predecessors were." Volo eyed a page out of his book, one silver eye glinting in the light of his lantern as he reached the last section of the wall where the cluster of Unknown were at their thickest.
He reached out a hand clearing the swarm effortlessly, his eyes trailing along the paragraph of inscriptions over and over again as if fascinated by what he was reading. "The last plague," he whispered, his voice threatening to break. "To think, the plagues of old cast my people out of the light of Arceus and into the unknown. Do these ruins tell the truth or are they the mental constructions of something else? Of someone else?" The man, suddenly looking much older than he had any right to be, reclined against a pillar, his arms crossed as he regarded the walls with disgust. "Cowardly. To hide yourself behind examples of your power instead of doing as you say… as you said." He crossed his legs, shutting his eyes as his Togetic fluttered at his feet. "I will get that truth, no matter how long I must bide my time. I will reach you eventually and when I must bring you down to answer to mortals, I will uncover everything you've hidden. I will have my revenge and then maybe I might be content to construct a world anew. A better one; better than the one you failed at."
Togetic flew upward to hold its trainer's face, its chirp melancholic as it rested its head atop Volo own. Volo chuckled lowly in turn, reaching out to cradle his pokémon as he regarded the wall once more. "… I know. The waiting is long, but we will be finished one day. Just a little longer and we will have our day, my dear… Just a little longer."
Bibarel nosed its big head into Akari's lap, using its teeth to pull her away from the great hall. She didn't want to take her eyes away. Here was a version of her friend that Akari had yet to see, an essence that she strove to understand. A softness. A confusion. Vulnerability, the likes of which Akari had never had extended to her… and now she would have to turn her back on that possibility.
What had he been talking about? What are the plagues and… Akari froze. Ah. Her next question would have been redundant. Plagues were the reason for why the Ancient Celesticans had vanished. That made sense in itself, but why were they so vague? Volo had mentioned a plague of bad water and of locusts. Akari turned away from the large room. She was there for something else. She trusted that Volo would tell her in his own time- hopefully soon- or that he wouldn't suspect her if she asked him a question asking him about strange ruins. After all, they were due to run into each other again soon enough.
Akari continued to follow the beaver pokémon deeper into the ruins, the constant twisting of her guts lessening to a dull ache as she weaved through the moss-covered pillars. The constant scraping along the walls grew louder and louder the further Akari descended into the cathedral. If the Solaceon Ruins had been a sprawling abandoned city, then the cathedral must've been a temple of some kind. Cathedrals weren't supposed to have so many basement floors, that much Akari knew but as she descended, the familiar textured brick walls began to turn into coarse walls of gravel and chipped stone, Akari swallowed back her fear. She would be okay. She would survive whatever came ahead.
She noticed the stench first. As they came upon a vine-covered archway, Bibarel reached up and held a dirt-streaked paw across her mouth, deliberately flicking its head at the darkest corner of the cave ahead. Akari was careful to stay silent, her knees going weak as she fully emerged into the deepest cavern. There, where the trail died into a sea of pointed stones and dried blood, were bits and pieces of bones. Shards, plates, phalanges. Some were dark like the Unknown. Others were a pale yellow. Fresh. Recently put there.
The cavern beneath the cathedral opened up into a truly massive cave, stray beams of light shining into the depths. So large, that the whole of the Diamond Settlement and Jubilife Village could've fit snugly inside with room for a cattle pen or two. On the far side of the sinkhole surrounded by fallen marble and piles of gravel was a dark golden shape reared up on its hindlegs, its long claws digging endlessly into the walls. That was what was causing the scraping and snarling noises. Lord Ursaluna turned gold in its frenzy tunneled endlessly beneath the earth on a platform of unidentifiable sculptures and clay objects lost to the river of time.
The putrid stench of death clung to every rock and every pebble of gravel in the cave. Akari kept close to the wall, following after the Bibarel as she took in the sheer amount of gore around her. She had heard from Adaman that the Pearl Clan had been searching for their deceased warden and that most had lost a few party members. As she crept around the decaying bodies strewn about the floor, some bloated and others picked apart like carrion, she began to understand the air of defeat and disgust amongst the departing parties, even sigting the equipment of those who had never returned. There wasn't an inch of the cave that hadn't been decorated with the remains of the dead and to those without the guidance or trust of pokémon, there was nothing they could do to go after their taken clanmates.
There, trapped under the earth in watery graves of mud and clay, were countless bodies. Most were rotting, bits and pieces of their corpses missing or half-chewed as if some wild pokémon hadn't finished their meal. Two piles sat across from one another, the first emitting such a horrifying stench that Akari resorted to plugging her nose just to avoid gagging. The first mound was nothing more than a hill of rotting flesh with various pokémon droppings scattered about the base. The bodies of those who had fallen before her were picked apart at the base, their forms broken and battered and showered with maggots.
And in the other corner of the cave where the light shone the brightest was a mound of bleached bones, picked clean by slavering teeth. Skulls, femurs, rib bones, and pelvises all stacked in neat towers, weeds and bits of ivy poking through. And lying despondently atop it as if sitting upon a throne surrounded by wreaths of shriveled berries and dying flowers was Warden Calaba's corpse. Akari hurriedly looked away, biting her lip with her teeth in order to distract her mind from her growing fear. So this is where the noble was keeping her.
Bibarel- Calaba's Bibarel- pulled Akari closer still to the bone-mound, carefully creeping up the clattering pile until it had reached Calaba's weathered body. It dropped the berry branch and began to pull them off one-by-one, carefully crushing the berries before letting the pulpy mass slip into the late warden's mouth as if attempting to feed her. To Akari's surprise and utter horror, Calaba's body twitched, a weak groan escaping her as she turned her head toward the source. Akari carefully crept up onto the bone-mound, taking to breathing only through her mouth as she studied Calaba's condition.
The warden's exposed feet, fingers, and legs were black and withered with necrotic tissue. Patches of skin were covered in oozing lesions, a white-green fungus creeping into the exposed wounds as maggots fell to the ground like errant pebbles. The skin around her face and throat were red and puffy and her eyes were swollen shut. Calaba was caked in dried mud, blood, mucus, and other materials Akari didn't dare to dwell on. "How are you still alive?" she whispered in shock. "Doesn't matter. I need to get you out of here."
Akari got her hands underneath Calaba's head and legs, finding it surprisingly easy to lift up the old woman as she made her way down the mound as quietly as humanly possible. She ignored the way her nails dug into the warden's inflamed skin and the quiet but haunting rasp of Calaba's agonized voice, instead waiting for Pluto to lead the way out with Psychic. What happened instead was a pair of eyes being lit up as her tinier pokémon activated its ability.
A blood-chilling roar echoed through the cavern. Akari only had seconds to move out of the way as Lord Ursaluna came barreling toward her, its jaws slavering with saliva and old blood. She wasn't fast enough. Lord Ursaluna lunged at Akari and swiped, the floor beneath her feet turning to sludge as she tripped. White hot pain lanced through her chest and Akari was sent sprawling to the floor, hearing Calaba's body slam down a few feet away. A pair of teeth set in Akari's leg as the noble wrestled her upward, one massive paw slamming her face into the floor as with ease it shattered her femur and split open her skull.
Akari screamed, clawing for some purchase as she fought to get away. Blood bubbled in her throat. The grips of that white hot pain lessened as the noble was bodily forced away from her, blood splattering onto the ground as a fierce heat washed through the cavern. With bleary eyes, Akari forced her eyes open and looked on dazedly, recognizing the white-hot flames of her Rapidash as Mars impaled the noble from its shoulder through to its back with its curved horn.
A blinding white light flashed through the cavern and before Akari could think, she was back on her feet, her wounds gone but her body remembering the indescribable pang of pain from only moments before. Arceus's protection. Just like with Lord Kleavor! Akari reached for her pokéball belt, the thrum of fear inside her belly swelling into one of an undeniable desire to escape.
She tried to move, her limbs heavy and slow as if weighed down by quicksand. Instead, she called out for her pokémon. "Mars, Agility and then Hypnosis! Neptune! Brine!"
Out of its pokéball, Neptune exploded into action wasting no time in blasting the noble with a beam of harsh, acidic water. Mars followed suit, quickening before rearing onto her legs, a fierce scarlet light enveloping the clearing. Lord Ursaluna merely snarled at the duo, focusing its attention back on the alpha Rapidash as it charged. Hypnosis hadn't worked.
The ground quaked underfoot. Large boulders whizzed past Akari's face, only missing by a hair as she ducked back behind an alcove. All around her, ground and rock-type pokémon emerged from the earth, an Onix slithering into view as it rattled its tail at her. Showers of stones and gravel began to rain from the ceiling.
Akari dodged a wave of debris, a familiar sense of exhaustion settling into her bones as she suddenly became over encumbered by an unknown force. Almost immediately, a stray boulder slammed into her exposed hip and sent her tumbling across the floor screaming in pain. The familiar white light flashed and once again, Akari was back on her feet, phantom pains tearing at her flesh like cruel claws as she struggled to move out of the way of the next blast.
Lord Ursaluna was a force to be reckoned with. Unlike the previous nobles that were prisoners in their own arenas, mindless to wander or mindless to act, Lord Ursaluna had turned the cavern into a massive cage where Akari could not hide or duck out of the way. It was always faster than her. Always. So too were the reinforcement pokémon that the lord had called in.
In every movement that she made, no matter how agile she thought she could be or how many times she had managed to stack Agility on Mars, both Akari and her team would consistently become slowed down by the softened mud underfoot, being torn apart by flying shrapnel, crushed to death by the angered pokémon, or drowned in the rains of sand and gravel. Akari couldn't move fast enough. She couldn't duck out of the way fast enough. She was forced to watch as her pokémon became weakened and slowed, their wounds festering and bleeding until they collapsed in the dirt one after another.
Akari's Rowlet- Jupiter- emerged in a storm of leaves and loose feathers, quickly blending into the sharp shadows of the cave before attaching itself to the noble's face, digging its talons in deep as it clung on. The noble thrashed, reaching up to tear the small bird off its face. The two turned and in finality, Lord Ursaluna tore the owlet off by its wing and tossed it into the sinkhole without so much as a backwards glance.
A bright light flashed from the pit. Where Lord Ursaluna once stood came a storm of sharp needle-like leaves. Like a serpent, the storm of leaves twisted across the cavern bringing with it a river of spilled blood and torn feathers. The frenzied noble broke through, its golden pelt stained red with fresh blood. Its eyes, pierced by the needles, were sewn shut. The noble thrashed about, missing the newly evolved Jupiter as the avian flew back to Akari, its eyes refusing to leave the great brute.
Akari reached out to push her pokémon out of the way, taking the brunt of a critical Rock Toss as the large boulder slammed her into a nearby wall and crushed her ribcage like a ripe grape. This time, when her flesh had been woven back together, she remained pinned by the boulder, blind and forced to listen as her Dartrix attempted to wear the boulder down with no success.
"Iron Head!"
The boulder pinning Akari was suddenly shattered, a dark blue tail swiping the debris clear from her body. A pair of beady black eyes stared worriedly down at her before the new pokémon reached down and pulled her up to her feet. A pair of rough hands seized her by the shoulder and bid her behind them, Akari recognizing Volo's form as the merchant moved to protect her.
"Gabite, Bulldoze! Roselia, Giga Drain!"
Akari fell in beside her friend as Volo's two pokémon moved to follow orders. She moved to restore Neptune and Jupiter's health now that she had proper protection, relieved that she had thought to reorder her team with more type coverage. "Brine! Razor Leaf! Volo, keep an eye on your surroundings! We've got company!"
"Got it!"
With Volo as her backup, Akari felt a twinge of relief and an ebb of fear. If Volo got hit from a spare Rock Toss, he would certainly die. He didn't carry the same kind of protection that she did. "Stay behind me!" she barked. "I can't afford to let you get hurt so let me take all the damage when it comes our way!"
"I can't-" Volo was interrupted as a large boulder thudded into the earth where Akari had been standing a second earlier. "Gabite, clear out the lesser pokémon! Rain Dance and then Metal Claw!"
The dragon-type flew forward into the walls of the sinkhole, calling down a tumultuous storm as a river above ground broke into the cavern. In a flash, Volo's Gabite began to leap from wall-to-wall, cracking apart any Onix or Geodude that hadn't moved out of the way fast enough. In turn, Volo's Roselia teetered forward, dodging through wave after wave of debris until it had gotten close enough to anchor into Lord Ursaluna's back. It pushed itself up into the Lord's fur, a mass of vines twisting and digging into the bear's skin as the Roselia began to leech energy from the noble.
When Akari pushed, Volo would follow, the two throwing as many status moves as they could at the noble before launching wave after wave of assaults. Lord Ursaluna nearly absorbed all of them, hardly flinching when Volo's Gabite had headbutted the noble hard enough to seemingly split its skull in two. And when finally, Akari thought that the pain flickering underneath her skin would finally take her out of the fight- when her pokémon could no longer handle the brunt of battling- Neptune pulled through.
It struggled to stand once more, its feathered wings a mess of torn flesh and loose feathers. Neptune teetered forward, picking its way over Gabite's fainted form past Roselia's ripped-apart visage. When it could move forward no longer, it let out a final blast of scalding hot water, forcing the great noble backward into the open pit it had created.
The cave shuddered. The earth underneath the wounded noble cracked apart sending the great bear down into the depths of the cave. It gave a deafening roar of fury and fear as it plunged down the cliffs, a horrible splash ringing out in the clearing. Akari rushed forward, her bloodied hands gripping onto the weathered cliff edge. She stilled.
Lord Ursaluna, still frenzied, thrashed in the turbulent current, furiously striking out at the walls and at stalagmites as it became trapped in a vicious whirlpool. River water poured over top of the great beast, submerging the large pokémon again and again and again. After minutes of watching the lord fight to escape, its body being tossed back-and-forth in the unpredictable current, the golden glow of its body ebbed and vanished softly- softly unlike in the usual nature that nobles escaped their furies. Lord Ursaluna then thrashed harder than it ever had, its eyes lighting up with unspeakable fear as it cried out to the two onlooking pokémon wielders for help. And before Akari could gain the notion to help, the cavern floor cracked under the pressure of the waves.
Ursaluna was tossed against the walls of the sinkhole by the waves, its large body getting stuck in a narrow alcove. It twisted and fought to free itself, waves surging over its head and into its mouth. Lines of bubbles exploded from the cold depths and Akari could only watch as eventually the bubbles faded out and the lord's body grew still and lifeless. The sinkhole finally collapsed, whisking the noble's body out of sight into the darkness of the unknown depths.
Akari let Volo pull her back from the edge, unaware that her breathing had grown fast and labored. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held on tight, unable to make words to describe the helpless relief and fear that coursed through her veins. And in her abject lack of emotions, Volo hugged back, his tight grip the only comfort that Akari could find. The battle was over but the pain remained.
Silently, the two restored the health of their pokémon. They wrapped Calaba in as much cloth as they could find and carried her to the surface and out of the abandoned cathedral. When they emerged topside into a vicious storm, Akari was quick to move them all into an elevated cave where the floodwaters wouldn't reach. She laid Calaba next to their makeshirt hearth, Volo using a flint and steel to light the fire as they desperately tried to get warm. Only then could Akari wither at the intense phantom pains of battle.
Her head was pounding. Her peripheral vision was greatly diminished. Her entire torso and right left burned so completely that Akari would've been grateful if the nerves around those areas would've been severed permanently. She focused her mind off of the pain, breaking the silence between them. "Should we… how are we going to get her back to the clans?"
"I sent Togetic," Volo muttered. "She would've been no good in that fight. Hopefully, she gathers a party large enough to carry Warden Calaba back." His eyes traveled to the warden's decrepit form, her Bibarel tucked in close to her corpse, before shriveling back. "...She's alive then."
"Just barely… Her Bibarel was taking care of her."
Volo huffed. "Stalling her death, then. Berries won't fix crushed bones." He took a deep breath. "All of your pokémon have fainted?"
"Not Saturn. She's still okay. What about yours?"
"I've still got Growlithe left. At least we both had a mind to keep one pokémon ready to go." Volo then gave Akari a fleeting glance, his eyes flickering to Calaba's form. In a quieter tone, he asked, "What were you doing in the cathedral?"
"Is that what it is?" Akari shook her head. "The storm chased me in. Calaba's Bibarel found me and led me straight to her. I mean, I found some clues that Lord Ursaluna was hiding underground and I planned on fighting it alone-"
"You planned on fighting it alone?" Volo asked incredulously.
"I did. Thank Arceus you came in when you did, though."
"Don't thank them," Volo grumbled. "Thank the good echoing qualities of the cathedral. I thought some poor pokémon was being torn apart underneath the floors." In a much quieter tone, he added, "Don't do that again." He moved to grip Akari's shoulder, his touch stern but careful. His hands were shaking and so too was his voice. "You nearly scared me half to death when I found you… crumbled underneath that boulder."
Akari chuckled awkwardly. "Apparently, Arceus won't let me get injured too badly so… nothing to worry about there."
Volo paused, his one silver eye focusing on hers. "And what is that supposed to mean?" he asked angrily. "Have you been deliberately putting yourself in harm's way? And how does that power even work?"
"Don't be angry with me," Akari started, immediately hushing when Volo's gaze sparked with a quiet fury unbefitting the usually gentle merchant. "Uhhh… as for the power, it's… it's complicated. I'll tell you more about it when I'm feeling better," Akari waved him away. She then sent Volo a stern look, turning so that she was directly facing him. "But hey, here's a question. I don't think you noticed, but I snuck past you when you were in that room with that weird wall going on and on about a plague and about getting revenge on Arceus. I've been wondering lately… What's your deal with Arceus?" Akari asked quietly. Gently. "Why do you hate them so much? And what were the plagues? What do they have to do with today's nobles?"
Volo went silent for a long, long while. When he finally spoke again, he had a tired edge to his voice. "...Maybe, perhaps, it would be wise to teach you about the Ancient Celesticans... I think you're ready to learn about what really happened to them."