Zaxarie

Hedy ran as quickly as his paws would take him. Behind him came the metallic clunks of an Ancient machine, its many legs thundering along the white-tiled floor, a single, red eye staring at him, growing brighter and hotter. Ancient machines were not so inelegant and primitive as to make some sort of noise to signal that they were about to kill you. It made their attacks hard to gauge, hard to dodge, especially when one’s back was turned. Luckily, when Hedy had been packing his gear from his last trip to Sonderrime, determined to go to Dead Mountain and do something instead of sitting on his paws and cry about how terrified he was, someone had decided to stow away in his bag. Eryl the Beeper quivered from his place buried in Hedy’s mane, watching with beady eyes as the mechanical spider’s eye got bigger and brighter, until the heat was nearly unbearable, and then cried out in absolute terror. At Eryl’s signal, Hedy threw himself on the tiles on all fours, sliding sideways as a bolt

Bronte’s head buzzed. Iroha passed a finger from one side of his vision to the next, frowning at apparent jitter in his gaze. “We weren’t exposed that long.” “It’s not the bloody powders,” Bronte said with unearned confidence. He couldn’t explain it — had no idea how she didn’t hear it, feel it pressing at the walls of her head, filling her ears from the inside, some sort of pressure that hummed. “Then what is it?” “Look at Wildfire,” Bronte said, grimacing as he did the same, the hybrid’s flame cutting through the not-quite-pain in his head, sparking something that did hurt like a knife in his skull, making him want to succumb to the quiet, the dark, to lose himself in it. That, he sensed, would be unwise. Wildfire was staring down into the dark of a mossy stairwell, ears perked forward and pupils small in the black sclera of his eyes. He leaned forward on his front hands, entire body braced in anticipation. “Wildfire,” Iroha said gently, reaching out a hand, only for him to

As they descended into the dark of the temple, their overlapping exteriors faded away, leaving them in stale air, dark, entombed in crumbling bricks of ancient stone. “I’ll lead,” Bronte offered at the beginning, already shouldering his way to the front, assuming she would follow tamely along. Iroha had smiled, thin-lipped, and said only, “As you wish.” Arguing would serve little purpose. Either Bronte was extremely unwell and had mistaken his current location — assuming he was in Unova rather than Alola — or there was something much bigger going on. Powerful Pokemon were known to cause immense disruptions; it wasn’t impossible, surely. Either way, it made her feel better to have the freedom to backtrack to the door. Or, it would have, if they hadn’t gotten seriously lost in the labyrinth in the depths of the temple. Light started to return to them, and both Iroha and Bronte looked up as Wildfire clambered along the top of the maze walls. A fire licked along his back, and dark