Prologue
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Prologue
~
The cave swallows the sound of my boots as I run.
Steel ribs arc overhead, bolted into blasted rock, the walls still bearing the black scorch-marks from when the frantic excavation team had punched this tunnel into the mountain's guts. Water seeps between the supports, catching the orange glow that moves ahead of me. The glow emanating from Pyroar, his mane blazing low and controlled.
We run through the cave together.
The footsteps behind me have been getting louder for two minutes. I don’t look back. Looking back is how you die.
Then they appear from around the corner ahead. There's two of them, blocking the mouth of the tunnel, matching black uniforms, faces set with the particular blankness of people who've been told that this is the easy part. It's just one man, and one Pokémon. How hard can it be?
Why don't we find out, fellas?
The first one throws his Poké Ball without a word. Golbat erupts from it, wings snapping wide, shriek bouncing off the rock-steel walls in overlapping echoes. The second opens her hand and a Magneton drops into the air, its three eyes spinning, already crackling with pre-charged static.
Pyroar doesn't wait for a command, he knows better than that. He plants all four paws and the mane ignites. The move is Overheat, and its not the careful dim light of before but something sudden and total, a column of orange-white fire that fills the tunnel from wall to wall. Golbat catches the edge of it and folds like paper, slamming into the rock wall and sliding down in a heap of limp leather. Magneton absorbs more of it, its three bodies glowing cherry-red for a second before the magnetic cohesion fails and it drops, each disc clanging separately against the tunnel floor.
Six seconds. Maybe seven.
I step over the Magneton pieces without stopping. I glance at the two trainers, standing dazed, backing against the wall, and make a choice. I don't have time for them. I jerk my head sideways. Get lost.
They scramble past, back the way we came. Running. Good.
Pyroar falls back into step at my hip and we cover the last stretch of tunnel at a dead sprint, the exit brightening ahead… and then we're out, and the air hits me wrong. Too cold. Too electric. The smell of ozone and something older and mineral, like the earth itself burning from the inside.
We stop.
The summit is a wide flat shelf of rock, and the sky above it is the colour of a bruise; deep purple from horizon to horizon, the storm clouds coiling in a slow deliberate spiral that has nothing to do with weather. Lightning moves through them without sound. The light is wrong. Everything is lit from no direction in particular, shadows pooling at odd angles.
The thing standing at the centre of it all is calm.
It wears the skin of a man, but I know it's not human. The man-thing is dressed simply. No grand theatrics, no cape, no wicked smile or evil laugh. He's wearing business casual and a bored expression. He could be anyone. He's smiling with the patient ease of someone who arrived early to a meeting and has been waiting a pleasantly long time.
To his left: a Garchomp. Massive, still as a painting, fins held flat. To his right: a Salamence, wings half-spread, body coiled low.
Their eyes are white. Not cloudy, white. A total, depthless absence, as if whatever had lived behind them had simply been moved aside. Their expressions carry no tension, no aggression, no animal wariness. If you didn't know any better you might have thought they were statues.
And behind him… behind all of it… a giant. Thick red plates, long vicious claws, white empty eyes. Groudon.
The man-thing's smile deepens. He points at Pyroar. One finger. A small gesture. Almost polite.
The Salamence's head turns. Slowly, the way a gun turret tracks.
I feel it then. The thing I've been keeping in a locked room at the back of my mind the entire climb, the entire mission, every frantic step through that blasted tunnel. It floods through me now as I looks at that Groudon, as I can't tear my eyes away. Dread. This whole mission we have been trying to keep the Company from getting to Groudon first.
In the movies, the books, the legends, the heroes get there right in the knick of time. Maybe it looks like they're down, but they fight back and they fight hard. And they always clinch victory from the jaws of the enemy. No... not this time. This time we've not only lost, but we're not even close.
So this is it, then. We don't stand a chance.
Pyroar looks at me.
The mane burns. The amber eyes wait. Endlessly loyal.
I breathe out through my nose. Set my jaw. Feel the fear compact itself into something denser and more useful. "Pyroar," I say. "You wanna try anyway?"
Pyroar nods. “Let's do it, then.” I point to Salamence, and Pyroar charges.
For a moment it almost looks like it might not be a complete shutout game. Pyroar is fast, faster than anything that size has a right to be, and the Flamethrower he shoots mid-stride is accurate and fierce, a clean stream of fire aimed directly at Salamence's chest.
Salamence doesn't dodge. It just takes it. The fire washes over its scales and the white eyes don't even blink, and Pyroar lands in a wide stance. The man in the suit calls out a command: Dragon Rush. Salamence moves with sudden violent speed, body wrapped in crackling blue-white energy, closing the gap in a fraction of a second. The impact throws Pyroar sideways across the rock.
I shout a command, this time: Hyper Voice. Pyroar finds his feet faster than he has any right to, shakes his head once, and the roar that comes out of him rolls across the summit like a physical wave, low and enormous.
Salamence staggers. One wing drops, and for a moment…
But a moment is all it is, and without mercy it ends.
The white eyes refocus. No pain behind them. No animal instinct to retreat from hurt. The thing using Salamence's body doesn't feel what Salamence feels. It just calculates and continues. Dragon Claw this time. Fast, precise, the three talons of each forelimb raking across Pyroar's flank. Pyroar answers with a bite, jaws clamping on the edge of a wing membrane and pulling, but Salamence twists with mechanistic patience and an Aerial Ace lands across Pyroar's back with a crack that he hears from thirty feet away.
Pyroar goes down to three legs.
"Up," I command, voice tight. "Come on. Up."
Pyroar gets up. My heart breaks for him.
The glow of its mane is dimmer now. Still burning with heat, but colder, like a fire that's been doused. Pyroar launches another Flamethrower, shorter, the edges ragged, and Salamence walks through it. It literally walks, slow and unhurried, and delivers a single lazy Dragon Tail to the side of Pyroar's head that snaps it sideways and drops him full to the stone.
Pyroar lies still.
The heat radiating from the fire Pokémon burns low, flickering, threatening to blow away with the wind. The lion's ribs lift and fall with the last breaths he's ever going to take.
I'm already moving before my brain has finished the thought. The rock under my boots, the cold air, the purple light, it all smears past me. I cover the ground in long strides, get close enough to see the way Pyroar's ear twitches at the sound of my feet, and I drop to my knees, reaching...
The Salamence's shadow falls over us.
I hear the build-up. Everyone knows that sound. It's a deep cyclic whine. The air pressure drops, the charge of a Hyper Beam illuminating out shadows. I look up.
The white eyes look back. They're the last thing I see.
