PARAGON
Remnants of the Great War Arc [25]
Chapter 34 : AZ’s Titans
Trees, shrubs, and stones all whipped past Sabrina in a blur as she glided over the forest floor. The foliage above blotted out the sunlight, and the copses of leaves all around her dampened the sound of the war as it raged on all around her. She’d selected a route she sensed wouldn’t contain any enemies, wanting no delay on her way to the portal.
Last she’d seen, AZ’s hooded acolytes were still surging out of the forest boundaries into an open field, where the Guardians were engaging with them directly. Past the field lie the burning town where she’d broken off from Ash and Riley, and beyond that sat Cameran Palace itself. Although it looked like the Guardians were holding their own, AZ’s forces seemed endless, so sealing off their way in was top priority. She wondered briefly about how and where AZ had recruited such a massive army after spending so long in prison, but she quickly dashed the thought. That was the sort of question she could find the answer to later. For now, she needed to focus on her main objective.
Once she was deep into the forest, she slowed her pace, eventually coming to a stop. There was silence all around her, save for the river that trickled past beside her. She closed her eyes and extended her awareness beyond her immediate periphery. Up ahead lie the portal she’d been visiting every now and then for the past month. And as expected, as her field of consciousness got closer to where it was, she began to sense other people. Enemies. And lots of them. Some stood guard near the portal, while others moved swiftly away from it, no doubt off to engage the Guardians. And as the seconds passed, more presences made themselves known, emerging from the portal at a consistent interval.
Her eyes snapped open, the jade glow of her psychic power fading in her eyes. She knew what she had to do. Her gauntlets whirred, and she disappeared in an emerald flash.
She reappeared in the darkened forest in an area not dissimilar from the one she’d just left. She crouched down and started moving forward. As she moved, the forest thinned around her. After a minute of creeping, only a line of bushes barred her exit from the cover of the trees. Sensing no one looking in her direction, she brushed the bushes aside and peered past them.
In front of her lay that massive canyon created by Albrecht’s, no, Sir Aaron’s Nidoking. On the other side, she could see the psychic dyad, now fully expanded into a swirling gateway of magenta psychic energy. A few moments later, another hooded figure emerged from the portal in a flash, stepping out onto the grass, nodding at their comrades, and racing off down the hill toward the battle.
Sabrina raised her hands, and her gauntlet’s twitched, lighting up. Her fingertips and eyes both became limned in a jade light. From here on the other side of the earthen rift, she could collapse the portal without ever having to engage a single enemy. With any luck, she’d be gone before they even had a chance to realize what had happened.
As she worked, the portal seemed to flicker and dilate ever so slightly, though none of the gathered seemed to notice, minute as the decay was, and hooded figures continued to empty from the portal without delay. One by one, she shattered the nodes of psychic power that kept the portal anchored to reality. However, now that the portal was fully realized, and Sabrina could view its elaborate construction, a pervasive sense of unease coursed through her. This portal was far more complex than any she’d seen before. If AZ’s base was in Kalos as N and Zinnia thought, then creating a long-distance portal all the way to Kanto like this was already extremely advanced to begin with. But this portal was stable, and showed no signs of weakness at all. Unlike most long-distance portals, which were created only to remain open for a few seconds, this one had been active for nearly an hour already. Whatever had created this portal was extremely powerful.
As she was peeling away the layers of outer energy which kept the portal in shape, a dreadful aura suddenly flared up from deep within the chasm before her, and a moment later, a deep black entity came slithering out, tentacles flying wildly as it pulled itself up over the top.
Sabrina’s eyes widened, and she disbanded her hold on the portal, her full attention switching to the monster in front of her. She flung herself backward with her own psychic power, narrowly avoiding a sharpened chop from the creature’s fin. The swipe cleaved all the trees before her from their stumps, sending them crashing to the ground, and fully exposing her. She landed on her feet in a crouch, and she tore a pokéball from her belt, releasing Alakazam.
It looked like a giant upside squid, over five times Sabrina’s height, and more if one counted the wrigging mass of tentacles on its head. Two pitch black eyes were sunk into its oily flesh, and the yellow lights on its smooth body shimmered with an eerie glow.
On the other side of the chasm, AZ’s men had taken notice of her after the sudden commotion, and were pointing at her, though they appeared to be deliberating between attacking her, or leaving her to the giant squid.
The monster released a repulsive aura that chilled Sabrina to her core. The sunlight seemed to dampen around it, and it literally looked darker around its writhing form. Although she didn’t know what it was, she could immediately tell that this was this creature that had created the portal. She could sense the fellow psychic in it, and this one was terribly old, and terribly powerful. So powerful that it was unthinkable that she hadn’t detected its presence immediately upon getting so close to it. Clearly, it’d been hiding deep in the chasm, keeping a watchful mind’s eye on its portal to ensure it remained intact, but even if it had been suppressing its presence, there was no way it could’ve hid this much power from someone like Sabrina.
Which meant it was probably a dark-type as well, hidden to her psychic radar.
Sabrina swallowed, dread coursing through her veins. She felt bad for Alakazam, as she was surely transmitting her anxiety to him, but she couldn’t help herself. Even the squid seemed to notice her anxiety, and its eyes narrowed in malicious amusement.
The spots on its body pulsed, and she felt her body turn weightless as she was lifted into the air. Then, her arms and legs snapped outward, and she felt a burning agony in her shoulders and thighs. It was about to rip her in half.
Alakazam! she pleaded.
Beneath her, Alakazam raised his spoons, levitating off the ground. A barrage of blinding stars shimmered into existence around him, and he cast them forward with a flick of his prone arm.
As the attack closed in, Sabrina felt the squid’s hold on her loosen as it allocated some of its attention toward defending itself. She flared her psychic power, her eyes searing, and a moment later, she shattered its hold on her. Sabrina dropped to the ground beside Alakazam, but quickly zeroed back in on the fearsome creature.
Alakazam’s Swift impacted against the squid’s skin, each one exploding in a brilliant flash, but behind the newly created smoke, Sabrina heard a low chortle. She couldn’t tell if she was hearing it through her ears or her head, but either way, the monster was unfazed.
Her mind reacted before her body did, spawning a barrier of crystalline energy at her side just as an inky tentacle shot at her. The tentacle glanced off, but before it could curl around and wrap around her, she lifted herself high into the air, and Alakazam followed her up. With a brief respite from the creature’s assault, Sabrina looked down across the fissure. Hooded figures were still flooding out of the portal, but there was no way she could shut it down now. Not until the creature was defeated.
It burst into the air as well, wriggling and trembling with power. Before Sabrina could begin to formulate an idea of what to do, she once again felt herself engulfed in its invisible embrace, cold and slimy. And beside her, she saw Alakazam wince as he suffered the same. The monster laughed silently, filling her consciousness with its noxious evil as it crushed them both.
In gym battles of the past, Sabrina usually just decimated her challengers with Alakazam or Gengar alone. Apparently, gym leaders were supposed to have a diversity of pokémon to choose from to accommodate a range of badge counts, but Sabrina only ever used the two. They were also supposed to center around one type. If Sabrina herself wasn’t a psychic, that rule probably would’ve been completely broken, rather than just horribly bent. However, the League left her alone, and her gym soon gained the reputation of being one of the strongest in Kanto.
They did require her to put limiters on her pokéballs, however, and she obliged. So, some were able to earn a badge from her. But, the ones that did were usually trainers with powerful dark-types. And she’d never cared enough to develop a countermeasure to them.
At least until she was forced to come up with something to take down Cynthia’s Spiritomb before joining Paragon.
The strategy was simple, if not psychopathically demented.
Sabrina grit her teeth, straining against the squid’s psychic hold. She forced her head to turn, bringing the creature fully into her sights. Its cruel mirth slithered inside her senses like poison, as if its very existence sought to deny her of any hope. Her eyes flashed as a fierce emerald light ringed her pupils. Slowly, the light morphed into a darkened purple, and her gauntlets creaked as they whirled ferociously around her wrists, sparks pouring off.
“Cerebral…Maze!” she bit out.
In an instant, the world began to crumble around her, fragmenting and falling, all its color draining away like rain down a storm drain. First it turned gray, then it turned black, and all its definition faded away. Before long, she found herself drowning breathlessly in an endless void. Blackness, pure and flat, stretched out all around her, without a single pinprick of light.
This was the darkness within dark-types. The unreachable, untouchable nothingness that no psychic could ever hope to snare. The darkness swallowed up psychic power like birds into a plane engine; the only thing that awaited it here was annihilation.
But, rather than try to grab hold of Spiritomb or inflict psychic attacks on Spiritomb, Sabrina had a different idea. An idea most psychics would find downright appalling, if not suicidal.
Sabrina immersed herself in the darkness. But this was no neutral darkness, which would have incinerated her consciousness on its own. This was the monster’s darkness. She’d submerged her consciousness within its own. Through conversations with Alakazam, Sabrina had learned that experiencing a sensation like this for even a moment was an entirely unbearable prospect for any psychic. The empty darkness was the very antithesis to the active mind. It would drive a psychic mad if it didn’t kill them first. It was as illogical as sunbathing at midnight, with a full set of clothes on, a hundred feet beneath the ground, on a bed of broken glass.
Useless.
Self-destructive.
And excruciatingly painful.
But not for Sabrina. Within the void of this creature’s mind, like it’d been with Spiritomb, she felt liberated, like she was naked. She didn’t feel any pain. In fact, she felt nothing. Her whole body was numb. Not that she was even sure she had a body here. She couldn’t see it, at the very least.
And it wasn’t useless either. Not to her. Within the dark, she could sense something. And she pushed herself toward that something. How she was able to move, she could not say. She couldn’t even tell if she was moving on instinct, or if there was some rhyme or reason to her path across the void. That was the ‘maze.’ Every now and then, she’d change directions, though which direction she’d been going and which direction she was now going were impossible to differentiate. All she knew was that as she moved, that something got closer. In a purely one-dimensional sense.
Oh, and this thing was called Malamar. There were things she learned while in the dark. Names, hopes, dreams. Likes and dislikes. Love, hatred, and indifference. The emotions fleeted by her like sand, falling through her porous consciousness, but at least the name she could remember. Maybe because it existed beyond this place.
This place, she surmised, was a dark-type’s soul. And she was frolicking through it as if it were her own.
Alakazam had frowned at her for coming up with such an invasive strategy, merely for conquering dark-types. Yet he offered no criticism. He never did.
Bathed in darkness, she swam, enjoying this blissful soul for the time she spent here. She’d spend forever here if she could, but she always needed to keep moving. Stop, and she really would be consumed by the void like any other psychic attack.
That something…that soul within a soul, shined like a pitch black orb against the pitch black in her mind. It made no sense. But she had no interest in learning about it. All she knew was that upon touching that soul, she would be removed from this place. And her opponent would be defeated. No dark-type ever had reason to protect themselves from a psychic. Which meant they were vulnerable to a mere touch from a psychic upon their most sacred spot.
There it was before her. She couldn’t see it. Couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t hear, smell, or taste it, but she knew it was there. Slowly, she extended herself.
The soul suddenly lit up in all white, and Sabrina realized she could see it. Because she went blind instantly. She didn’t even have time to wonder what had happened before her consciousness was suddenly assaulted by a deluge of old memories, and more. She felt herself dissolving, disintegrating, dying, and the creature’s soul fell further and further away from her with each passing second. Feelings she had once felt and pain she had endured flooded back like a waterfall, beating down on her relentlessly.
“That is not my daughter, that is a monster!”
“Don’t talk to her like that, you’ll make her think she’s like us.”
“She’s a freak! Did you hear what she said?!”
As her head smashed against the beer-stained floorboards of her house, sticky black tears bled down her face, and Sabrina cried out silently, but there was no one here. Consumed in this monster’s void, she was like an infant dying in the womb, with its mother none the wiser.
Her childhood rushed back to her in a nauseous storm, and she was suddenly returned to a place and time she’d thought she’d never have to experience again. Perhaps this time, her mother would finish the job.
Lucario’s Force Palm sent a hooded grunt hurling backward, slamming into a rock and slumping to the ground. Riley confirmed the defeat of his Furfrou, then moved on, leaving trainer and pokémon unconscious on the grass.
War raged on all around him. In the open field surrounding the town of Rota, Guardians fought back against the invaders in chaotic patches. The air stunk of smoke, upturned dirt, and fading elemental attacks. He nearly fell as he stumbled over a crater in the ground, hollowed out by some stray attack, but Lucario caught his arm, and they kept moving together. Up in the sky, the enemy rode atop Talonflame, Skarmory, Braviary, Honchkrow, Dragonite, and other assorted flying-types as they swarmed the Guardians, pelting them with rays of scorching energy and sharpened gusts of wind.
Riley ducked and spun on his feet to avoid fighting as best he could as he ran toward Albrecht Manor. He just needed to cross this field. Once he entered the forest on the other side, it would just be a short, likely peaceful run the rest of the way there. It felt like a needle pricking his heart every time he saw one of his brethren fall, but he’d made a promise to protect Anabel, and he intended to keep that promise.
At the very least, he did not envy Ash’s job of engaging AZ. Riley wasn’t sure how or why Ash and his friends had gotten mixed up with AZ, but clearly it had something to do with the World Champion, who he’d only recently found out was actually Sir Aaron himself. As one of Rota’s senior Guardians, he was among a select few called to an emergency meeting a couple weeks ago, and it was there that Queen Ilene revealed the World Champion’s secret. Even after seeing Albrecht physically transform into Sir Aaron, it was still difficult to believe that their king truly had returned. However, his depthless Aura brooked no doubt. He was the real deal.
As for why AZ was attacking them, Queen Ilene’s explanation had been brief. The Guardians were AZ’s sworn enemy during the Great War, and it seemed even the expanse of three thousand years had not quelled his hatred for them. In between training sessions and war councils, Riley tried to slip into the library to learn more about the Great War, though he’d only had time to gain a surface understanding of the conflict. When this ended, he hoped to return to the library to devour as much knowledge as he could about this three millennia-old foe that dared to disturb their peace.
Lucario knocked Riley aside and caught the jaws of a Druddigon in his spiked paws, barking to wake Riley from his thoughts.
“Sorry, Lucario!” Riley grunted, hauling himself to his feet. Close Combat! I’ll back you up.
Lucario nodded and lay into the Druddigon, punching and kicking with a savage fury as blue Aura wafted off his limbs. Behind him, Riley summoned an Aura Sphere in his hand, then hurled it forward with a snap of his wrist. It arced around the Druddigon and landed on its hooded trainer behind it, throwing them to the ground. They did not get up.
Druddigon snorted in anger at being unable to defend its trainer through Lucario’s onslaught, and in a fit of rage, it knocked Lucario off of it.
Ice Punch!
Frost swirled on Lucario’s fist and he launched forward, closing the distance in an instant. Shockingly, Druddigon’s fist ignited in a Fire Punch, and their punches collided, releasing a plume of steam.
Riley grit his teeth and waved the steam out of his face. When he could see once again, he was surprised again to see Druddigon’s maw burning, rearing its head back to sink a Fire Fang into Lucario’s neck. The dragon had his pokémon by the wrist, and Lucario wouldn’t be able to escape in time.
Ice Punch on its neck! Riley commanded. If he’d had to deliver the command verbally, he never would’ve made it in time.
With his free hand, Lucario jabbed Druddigon in the throat, and the dragon stumbled back, releasing its grip. Lucario surged forward again and slammed a full powered Ice Punch into its chest, sending it flying across the field and landing a ways away, ice coating its skin. It did not get up.
Riley and Lucario both admired their handiwork for a moment, before Riley took off again, Lucario in tow. That Druddigon wasn’t nearly as weak as I’d expect for a force this large. It was well-trained. It continued to attack smartly even without orders from its trainer. Riley took another cursory glance at the battle around them. It appeared to be a stalemate for now, but he could see hooded figures continue to pour from the tree line in the south, with no end to them in sight. Sabrina, please tell me you’ll have that portal down soon. If this keeps up for much longer, they’ll be overrun…
Riley suddenly clapped his hand over his nose as a rancid stench filled the air. His eyes started to water, and he felt hot bile well at the bottom of his throat. Around him, his fellow Guardians had similar reactions, coughing and sneezing. However, their hooded enemies seemed unfazed, and continued to press the attack in the Guardians’ moment of weakness. Several more Guardians and their pokémon fell, but Riley’s vision was blurry, and he couldn’t even spare a pang of regret beneath the sudden assault of this odor of death. Riley spit on the ground, hoping he wouldn’t throw up, as he forced some semblance of clarity back on his body. He heard several of the invaders snickering as he rose shakily, and Lucario glanced around in concern at the uniform shift in momentum toward the enemy’s side.
“His Grace’s pokémon are here,” one said.
Riley’s blood ran cold, but before he could fully process what’d been said, his attention snapped toward the sky as a shadow passed overhead.
Emerging from the southern forest, floating high into the sky, was the largest pokémon Riley had ever seen. It was wispy and dark, with tangled knots like rotten roots, hanging from its tenuous limbs. It floated silently, looking like an emaciated angel straight out of a nightmare. As it got closer, the stench got worse. Two thin winglike fronds wavered at its sides, and the locks of black rot hanging from its body blew in the wind, worsening the smell. Rather than seeing its tiny eyes, Riley could feel them sweep over the field, judging everyone in its line of sight. A low croak escaped the putrid nozzle that seemed to be a mouth hanging off its putrid head.
Disgust turned to disbelief, and Riley’s hand dropped back to his side of his own accord. He wasn’t the most knowledgeable when it came to pokémon species, especially the Paldean ones, but this one he did recognize…he thought.
“Impossible,” he breathed. “How could it be this large?”
What is it, Master? Lucario asked.
Riley swallowed as the creature’s head sunk downward. Its entire decrepit form hung, limned in a cold malevolence.
“That’s a Dragalge.”
The question of protecting Anabel was now officially a tertiary concern. He wasn’t even sure he’d be able to protect himself if he continued advancing. He wasn’t even sure he could make it out of this field alive.
Internally, Riley could only apologize. Anabel would have to wait. Abandon Dragalge, and it would murder every last Guardian here in an instant. Albrecht Manor wasn’t far, and from its vantage in the sky, it would be a simple task for this dread dragon to simply float over there, over the forest, and obliterate it, if it caught wind of where he was headed. And he could tell it was acutely aware of everything in this field. Escape was impossible.
As Riley unclipped Aerodactyl’s pokéball from his belt, he prayed none of the hooded invaders had found Albrecht Manor, and if they had, that they hadn’t found Anabel. Because if they had, he could never face Ash again.
And from what he’d seen of Sabrina’s Aura, she might be the last person he ever faced, should anything happen to Anabel.
Ash’s legs were on autopilot as he raced through the forest. He could sense AZ’s presence ahead, just like before. All he needed to do was will himself forward. Pikachu scampered at his side, sporting his usual determination, and Ash was glad for it.
Over the past month, Pikachu had undertaken perhaps the biggest burden between him and all of his pokémon. As the sole electric-type on the team, Ash had turned to him for counsel, if you could call it that, more times than he could count. Oftentimes, that meant acting as a guinea pig for all of Ash’s off-the-wall ideas for how to use the Electric Plate. There’d been many nights where Pikachu collapsed from sheer exhaustion after being assaulted by Ash’s untamed electricity all day. Not only did he never complain, though, but he continued to keep up his training regiment as best he could alongside the others.
All of them had evolved over the course of these past thirty or so days, Ash most of all. Now, they all felt ready to defeat the monster who’d once stood in their way.
And now, he was just beyond this thicket of trees.
Sunlight glinted off metal, and that was the only warning Ash had before his body was suddenly jerked to the side, his face inches away from a spinning slab of steel that hurled down from on high, slicing clean through the trees and carving a deep rent into the earth before his feet. Pikachu screeched beside him, leaping back as the upturned dirt showered back down to the ground.
Now on the ground against a newly created tree stump, Ash felt himself regain full control over his body again. He exhaled, keeping his nerves in check as he processed the situation before him. Thanks, Gengar, he thought, and he heard Gengar’s giggling acknowledgement within him. Gengar had finally figured out how to insert himself into Ash without harming him due his poison, though with his body already fragmented among all of Ash’s other pokémon, he could do little more than nudge Ash’s body in the right direction when an attack came their way. But since Gengar’s senses and reaction time far outstripped Ash’s, a single extra moment of awareness was all he needed to be able to dodge a surprise attack like this with ease.
He rose back to his feet, and Pikachu joined him, cheeks crackling dangerously. They both looked up, sizing up the opponent that stood before them.
An Aegislash, as tall as the trees that surrounded it, floated motionlessly before them, its brass shield hanging in front of it. Black runes were etched upon the silver edges of its golden blade, and the shadowy arms that extended from its hilt thrummed in tune with its solitary eye. It was an unmoving wall, and its message was clear. None would pass to approach its master.
A grim smile slid onto Ash’s face, and he pulled a pokéball off his belt and enlarged it. “Looks like we have a warm up round first. Let’s deal with this quickly before AZ reaches the palace!” He released Annihilape, and a moment later, Ash, Annihilape, and Pikachu’s skin all started to spark with electricity.
Aegislash unsheathed its ghostly blade from behind its shield, metal grinding against metal with a wailing keen. As much as a sentient sword could, it bowed in respect, before angling itself straight at its three enemies.
A second later, they all charged.
Next — Chapter 35 : Blood of the Slumbering Storm
Riley’s Pokémon
- Lucario
- Aerodactyl
- Metagross
- Ursaluna
- Absol
This is Riley’s in-game team from Platinum, but I exchanged Salamence for Aerodactyl since Zinnia already has a Salamence. Also, I replaced Ursaring with Ursaluna because why not.
