Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Altered Bonds
Special Episode 2 — Looming Threads
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Most days Butterfree pitied Ariados, even if she had issues with her troubled line of thinking. Years had gone by without them managing to see eye-to-eye on matters.
Today broke the streak.
“Spreading rumors about a human in our village!” she exclaimed, a poor Masquerain the subject of her irritation. Butterfree could’ve sworn the patterned false eyes on her drooping antennas were averting their gaze. “I’d expect this from Ariados, not the lot of you! Am I the only one here who sees the foolishness of this?”
“I-I didn’t s-say anything!” Masquerain managed to squeak out, her pink face reddening and her four wings buzzing with anxiety. “I n-never went outside—”
“You better not have!” Butterfree clasped Masquerain, the flying water strider shifting as if electrocuted by the touch. “Whoever did it, they best pray I don’t find out! What do I know anyway? Maybe you said something that made someone else do something, or maybe you could’ve stopped that something from happening in the first place! Maybe—”
Butterfree stopped herself, growing self-conscious of how unhinged, how Ariados-like, her rant was becoming. Around her, homes decorated with string and silk-woven articles stood as firmly as ever, the dwellings of hardy village folk who had picked themselves up despite the worst. The orange dungeon sun above gazed in wonder at their continued defiance. Perhaps it wondered, too, if such defiance could still last after the events of yesterday.
“No, I shouldn’t be blowing steam on you.” Butterfree let go of Masquerain, forcing upon herself a sense of sorely needed calmness. “Sorry about that. I fear yesterday was, well, a bit too much for me.”
Masquerain shied away a little, toward the door of the little wooden hut she had marked as her home. “I-it was a lot, wasn’t it?” she said. “I n-never thought I would s-see—”
“A real human? Or two Abhorrent chiefs?”
Larvesta, the large moth larva, had crawled over to the twosome with a gaze almost as haggard as Butterfree’s. “I don’t know how to process it either,” came her quiet voice. “I know the matriarch had warned us to prepare for a human’s arrival, but I never thought she’d ever be right about her superstitions. And yet, for her to let go of the human — to actually be furious at whoever spilled some of what happened here?”
If Butterfree hadn’t caught a livid Ariados returning to the village, yelling at the village for spreading rumors behind her back, she herself wouldn’t have believed it. This part of the streets had emptied out at her wrathful tone, so quickly had villagers scurried away to their dwellings. Her reluctance to raise the alert about a human had been just as startling as said human herself, and the Abhorrents that had shown after.
A human. The emotions it brought upon Butterfree left her hollow and conflicted. An actual human that casted magic. An ill omen.
A pitiful girl, cursed by a very real prophecy. The child clearly hadn’t even known of magic, considering how her shock had mirrored the entire village’s.
A human guarded by an Abhorrent Eevee with soulbound ghost siblings. The Aerodactyl who tried to mutate Lugia too. And an armored Mew monster?
No fever dream could match it all. Scyther had known a little lore about Legendaries — apparently the Mew’s form was reminiscent of the Legendary Necrozma, the light giver and devourer that wandered through Ultra Space. And the source of the power that made Z-Crystals.
Like the mutagen-infused crystals that Abhorrents wielded. “Ariados almost became like the mutants,” Butterfree said without thinking. “The human and her guardian jackal—”
“T-they saved her,” whispered Masquerain.
“Technically the Eevee did too,” added Larvesta.
An uncomfortable silence wedged itself between the threesome. And in that silence, all Butterfree could do was question everything. Everything she had known of Abhorrents and humans, not least of all their sense of morality.
“Do you think t-that’s why?” Masquerain blanched when Butterfree and Larvesta focused their gazes upon her, yet pushed onward. “W-why Ariados let the human go? Why she doesn’t want us talking?”
It had some influence, that was for sure. But Ariados’s reasons surely had a logical component too. “Telling the archipelago would only go poorly, Masquerain,” said Butterfree. “What will any of us get from it? Mass hysteria? Their Highnesses coming to imprison her for their own whims and fancies? Heavy scrutiny on our village? What would be the point, if the girl lives to unleash her prophecy?”
Larvesta’s five red horns curled at the thought. “Could we even kill her, if she was the prophecy?”
Butterfree had no answer to that. She didn’t know how such things worked. And perhaps that uncertainty was exactly the root problem at hand.
How did one fight a prophecy? How did one start in the first place, and how could it be averted? Fables and folk stories loved to poke fun at the idea of people trying to change a predetermined destiny, only for it to backfire tremendously. But even so, what if she’s not the ill omen Ariados fears she is?
A lose-lose. Either the girl was an innocent life shed without reason, or someone bound to unleash everlasting consequences even if she did die. And for all the terror the human’s presence had inflicted upon her at first, Butterfree couldn’t stand a human dying just to potentially thwart a terrible future. Besides, what if killing just delayed things? she fretted. Could another human take her place as the omen?
“D-does it even matter?”
Masquerain’s question. The bug looked around her with trembling, haunted eyes, Butterfree and Larvesta grimacing as they half-consciously did the same. Houses and workstations and a few brooding villagers who hadn’t fled inside at Ariados’s rage, they all stood against the whims of the dungeon that encapsulated them. “Aerodactyl could’ve taken it all away,” whispered Masquerain, “if n-not for the human.”
It all came back to this subject. The human was a likely ill omen — Elder Rabsca had been certain of it.
But she kept our home alive.
She felt hot. Her face felt hot, so hot. Butterfree turned, and the world warped before her steaming eyes. Earth breaking, dimensions twisting, red-purplish wisps rupturing out like newborn geysers eager to consume and destroy, it all charbroiled her like a Blast Burn. Trees withered as wisps gobbled them whole, buildings splintered and crumbled and snapped into pieces, villagers screamed—
The screaming. God, the screaming. Pokemon were hardy, but being crushed by your own house was more debilitating than people thought. Worse so when the literal fabric of the universe was itself folding on you, rending itself apart. And the holes left around where the red-purplish wisps came! And the things watching! The things!
Things, distortions, shadows. They had tried to scoop them up. Her up! Her up! As if they were little little playthings to toy with. They tried to pull her deep into a chaos of colors with no sky or ground, make her feel feelings she couldn’t describe, hurt her in ways that felt so so wrong. They, they, they—
Butterfree sputtered as water splashed her, Masquerain’s eyes large and full of concern. Her wings touched her, impossibly soothing. The touch of someone real and alive in the dead world they’d taken as their home. “Y-you were hyperventilating,” she whispered.
Had she? She hadn’t noticed. “T-thanks,” Butterfree managed to say.
“We were all there too, you know. Though it probably was worse for you.” Larvesta’s horns were drooping the lowest they’d ever been, appearing to writhe like worms stabbed by knives. “M-maybe we shouldn’t speak about this. You need something, Butterfree? Tea? I have leftover mint leaves if you’d like.”
A heave left Butterfree. Her wings tapped mid-flap against the wooden structure behind her, and somehow, that made her more nauseous. As if she couldn’t stomach the reminder that all their dwellings — their foundations, not so much the decorations — were just conjurations of the dungeon. Created by the matriarch, instead of using real materials that’d break and fall on them.
“I-I’m going to see Ariados.”
Butterfree gently pried Masquerain’s wings away. With no small amount of effort, she schooled her face toward pure neutrality.
“I want to see Ariados.”
“With Rabsca.” Larvesta pointed with one of her digits, all the way to the giant tree with the gated knothole leading out of the dungeon proper. “I saw her there last before coming over.”
Good. Something to busy herself with. Butterfree went over at once.
She didn’t hurry, of course. There wasn’t much to see in their humble dungeon abode, but Butterfree could still admire the sights, if at least to relax herself. Over there, Galvantula’s house could be seen, the electric spider herself weaving a silky piece of fabric. Not too far off, dust kicked up from the barren field in the center of the village, Butterfree catching Heracross and Spidops clashing in a fierce duel that locked horn against limbs. The purple butterfly came upon Scyther picking up a bag of berry fruits from Swadloon at his home, his other scythe-like arm cradling a sleeping Metapod.
Scyther threw her a loving smile as she passed by, and Butterfree returned it full force. Her husband shifted as if to fly over and offered to leave Metapod in her care, but she gently shook her head, gaze lingering on their child for a short, strangely excruciating moment.
The graveyard wasn’t far from here. Right on the outskirts, a notable detour away from where Ariados should be. Butterfree hadn’t meant to wander this way, but there it was: a small area surrounded by black wire fencing, with a few tombstones for the fallen. All but one had been briefly displaced by the dungeon formation, requiring new graves to be dug for the remains of the deceased.
The exception stood in the center. A youthful Beedrill who had died near-instantly when her home collapsed and warped inward on her, crushing her between the earth and stony rubble.
A dead Pokemon. Many had been injured or scarred, physically and mentally. But usually, it took severe sickness or old age to take down a Pokemon.
Yet it happened. Pokemon liked to think otherwise, but their powers and endurance didn’t make them invincible.
They could get killed too.
It could’ve been my little Caterpie.
Butterfree floated up, gazing upon the village at large. Much smaller than it had once been. And unusually silent and grim, even compared to what she had grown used to since the dungeon had swallowed everything. As if yesterday’s near-repeat of their home’s destruction had knocked the wind out of everyone, destroying what little spine they had held onto.
We’re spreading rumors about a feeble human girl instead of the Abhorrents themselves. What’s wrong with us?
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Butterfree shook her head. She shifted, before pausing, finding herself inspecting an even plainer tombstone, somewhat to the right of the Beedrill’s.
Webwill Ariados. The old matriarch. Natural death, of course.
Much earlier than expected though.
Meandering as she was, she eventually had to arrive at her destination, the great tree serving as the dungeon exit. Larvesta had been right — there Butterfree went, and there Ariados was. The matriarch conversed in hushed tones with Elder Rabsca, the wizened scarab Pokemon with a knowledge of many things ordinary and extraordinary. Even prophecies.
The Elder gave one last nod before departing, returning back into the thick of the village. Ariados collapsed once he had gone, her legs bending until her body was only inches from crashing into the ground. One of her arm-leg appendages on her back was adorned with that blue and green-striped scarf of hers, the matriarch appearing to have taken a liking for the Warp Scarf as a vanity item.
Seconds passed, before Ariados sighed. “You came to speak with me?” came her silky, hollow voice. “Veildust?”
Her nickname. This was going to be one of those conversations, wasn’t it? “Weaverwish,” replied Butterfree.
“Nobody’s called me that in years.”
“It’s been years.”
“Since I became your matriarch?”
“Since we drifted apart.”
A dull hum. Ariados raised her head, slanting it toward the sky, and Butterfree’s heart seized up at her posture. Exactly the same as when Aerodactyl had threatened to mutate her. Wasn’t this the exact same spot too, come to think of it?
Only her emotions held no resemblance. Not a shred of terror touched her cold eyes, only unease, overlain by a veneer of calm that masked her volatile thoughts. “The human’s under Team Heavendust’s protection,” she said.
The team with a Mythical. “Wasn’t she with them before?” Butterfree inquired.
“They hadn’t known her secret then. Now they do. They accepted her and the Eevee mutant.” Ariados’s little laugh brought chills into Butterfree’s wings, contrasting with the remnants of heat that still burned her face. “I showed them my shard.”
The shard. The heat grew unbearable yet again, worsened by the chills. Only once had Ariados shown her the blue shard, covered in red-purplish veins with a mantle of shadowy mist coating it. A node of distortion that somehow controlled the dungeon. Ariados had found it by sheer luck — the object had practically appeared in front of her, drilling itself into the warping earth.
It was all that allowed the villagers to stay here. Ariados had only shown her the shard out of extreme trust and her role in handling village affairs, and due to old bonds. Barring important figures like Elder Rabsca, the matriarch had never let anyone so much as get a glimpse of it. Even explorers.
Until now. “I-it really is that bad then, isn’t it?”
“The Abhorrents have a Mythical in charge. You saw.”
“You think they’re more of a threat?”
“They’re a threat we can do something about. That we need to do something about.”
Focusing on the Abhorrents. Not the human or her prophecy. A week ago, Butterfree couldn’t have imagined anything like this.
What’s gotten into you, Weaverwish?
Ariados rubbed her injured leg, still healing from the bruising the human’s Lucario guardian had given her. “Team Heavendust hopes to send the girl away. They might fail. They might have to kill her or do something to stop the shattering she’ll cause.”
“Might cause,” corrected Butterfree.
“Might.” Another laugh. “I can’t do anything, Veildust. The prophecy eludes me. I don’t even think anyone’s meant to break her so early on, that something wrong will happen first before anyone can break the human. How much do I know, anyway? Rabsca’s only heard a stanza and little pieces of the full prophecy. But the Abhorrents—”
Ariados stopped herself, her mouth squirming. Her legs dug a little deeper into the dungeon soil, displacing crumbs of dirt.
“The Aerodactyl nearly took me. One prick from his crystal, just one, and it would’ve been done. I almost thought the human and Lucario would’ve let it happen too.”
The Lucario might have entertained the thought, sure, but Butterfree questioned the thought of him allowing such a thing, even against an adversary. Certainly not the human. It was not the first time the twosome had done something that had protected their home, technically speaking.
The Mew called them out on their work in stopping Aerodactyl from turning Lugia into a mindless monster.
And now, they owed the ill omen for keeping their village intact. From preventing a second warping that would surely end it for good. Earth breaking, tears opening, things, things watching—
Butterfree had thrown herself on the ground, a deep intake of air giving her mind needed clarity. Ariados regarded her with deep concern, the larger spider shifting a little closer to her.
“I forget how unpleasant your experience with the dungeon’s creation had been,” she said.
Her body burned. Her mind spun. Her spirit churned. Butterfree slowly brought herself onto her feet, for once knowing what it must’ve felt like to be Ariados. Afraid of the world, and afraid of what terrible things it hid. “I would hope,” she said, “your experiences were but a candle to mine.”
“You saw beyond the fabric of the dungeon. The liminal. I haven’t.” A third laugh, softer this time. Less agonized and more defeated. “Better that I haven’t, isn’t it? Better to have an Abhorrent breathing down your face, claw sunk into your abdomen and a mind-breaking mutagen in the other, perhaps?”
Butterfree held silent. They both did for a moment, in respect of each other’s traumas. One light moment, under the strange shimmer of the dungeon sun, the world windless and still. Like a painting frozen in time.
Ariados grumbled. It seemed strangely friendly. “What did you want from me, Veildust?”
Fair question. “I-I don’t know,” said Butterfree. “With everything that happened, well, I needed to clear my head, talk with someone—”
“Someone whose behavior and attitude you have difficulty working with?” came Ariados’s dry response. “About what, the human I can’t do anything about? The Eevee that for some reason happens to be one of the few actually decent Abhorrents, who’s using the girl for some far-flung cure? The accursed Mew that acts strangely benign and intolerant of his Aerodactyl hound for his attempts at wanton destruction, despite also being the very being responsible for creating the awful Z-Crystals that contain the Abhorrent mutagen? What exactly?”
“I don’t know!” repeated Butterfree. For a moment their conversation had lost its sacred, personal touch, on the precipice of devolving into a feud between the estranged. “You just had to be right for once, didn’t you? There just had to be a human here, and some dumb prophecy that dooms us through her! And on top of that, the Abhorrents somehow knew you have a dungeon-controlling shard! Twin to-be-disasters in our home — we may as well have the literal Calamitus descend upon us! How do you expect any of us to hold ourselves together against this? What—”
She silenced herself, before the burning took over for good. Her arms covered her mouth. Her mind, aching, sought desperately to ward off the madness. The certainty of doom hanging over her head.
Afraid, afraid. So afraid. So terrified.
When will I ever feel safe again?
Ariados stared at her for a long while, before returning to the scene of the village before them. “They say humans mature slowly,” she said. “Not only do their bodies develop like animals do, instead of in stages like us Pokemon, but they typically don’t reach physical adulthood until their age reaches the double digits. And still with room to grow afterward.”
A distraction. Not the irritated response she expected from Ariados, nor one of distress that matched her own. But a tangent, meant to divert Butterfree from her free-falling thoughts. “The human girl you found?” she asked, latching onto her kind gesture.
“I never asked,” replied Ariados. “But chances are she’s not so far from our own age.”
That old? The girl had seemed much younger in Butterfree’s eyes. Then again, there had been a spark of maturity and wisdom from the girl, and thoughtful compassion too. She had forced her Lucario guardian to show restraint when he had been furiously pummeling Ariados, hadn’t she? And was it not her who had shown the bravery to Disable Aerodactyl, making an opening for said Lucario to disarm him of his mutagen crystal?
Bah, age. It was like Levels, a silly number people loved to use to make generalized assumptions about people. A decent marker for hinting how much of an adult someone might be, but nowhere as useful compared to the way one actually conducted themselves.
She should know as a Bug-type. And as Ariados’s former friend. “You still feel you were too young to take up leadership of the village?” asked Butterfree.
“Too early. Not too young, even if I was little then.”
A small quaver had crawled into Ariados’s voice, and suddenly Butterfree wished she hadn’t broached such a touchy topic to Ariados. She opened her mouth to dissuade her, but the matriarch silenced her with a look. “I had thought Mother would live long,” she said. “It came upon me too suddenly, having so many responsibilities hoisted upon me. Elder Rabsca and the rest of you were nothing less than a godsend.”
Butterfree remembered that. She and Scyther had been prominent helpers for Weaverwish Ariados. Still are.
“I don’t know how I handled it then. Or now. It’s not even the leading part that gets me, but the pressure. The stress.” Ariados was lying down as low as she possibly could, crumpled under invisible weights. “Making sure I’m doing everything right. That I’m being the person everyone needs me to be.”
“I’m amazed you handle it at all,” said Butterfree. “You’re certainly better at it than I.”
Ariados smirked. Yes, that was a smirk on her face. “You really think I’d believe such a fib?” she said.
“I-I wasn’t—”
“Don’t hide it, Veildust, I was already problematic even before the dungeon formation. After? I was a complete mess, stressed over little problems and superstitions and snapping at every inconvenience that came our way. You couldn’t stand my antics, thought I was proving a poor leader—”
She turned her head away.
“I never understood why you befriended me when we were little.”
Butterfree’s heart burned, but not in the way the scarring memory of the dungeon closing in on their village did. She pulled Ariados’s head back, the matriarch squirming as she caressed her cheek.
“There was a cute, shy little Spinarak who was scared of change and new things, and worried her head off about everything in life,” said Butterfree. “I thought she needed someone at her side.”
Ariados shifted a leg, before deciding not to fight the touch. “You need one just as much,” she commented. “I may jump at Ghosts, but you dread the Dark. You all do.”
Butterfree knew that particular metaphor. Clever, whoever had thought of it. And she knew it was true. “The dungeon forming over our village was enough,” she muttered. “Knowing there’s an ill omen of a human out there, or that the Abhorrents seem to want more shards like yours for who knows what — it’s like everything is going to collapse on us before we know it. I don’t know how you cope with it.”
“I hardly cope at all.” A sigh. “But I suppose it’s better this way. I no longer need to wonder if we’re going to be destroyed, because now I know.”
That was when Butterfree decided something truly had changed with Ariados. She had sensed as much ever since she allowed the human to walk free yesterday. Her encounter with Aerodactyl and Mew, had it been the catalyst? Had something else been, beforehand? For a brief time, Ariados had surprisingly dropped her murderous fear of the human and considered letting her hide in Stringed Forest Village, to keep tabs on her and to hopefully send her back to where she came from.
Long had Ariados jumped at shadows, at threats that didn’t quite exist. Perhaps the unknown being finally known to her had done something. Perhaps facing her nightmares had quelled something in her. The same jumpy spider still stood in front of her—
But now she didn’t need to imagine the danger. In the wake of a near-certain shattering of their world, be it from Abhorrents or prophecies, she’d been drained of her panic, left with nothing more than the will to do something. Anything.
Whatever would stop their archipelago from crumbling apart.
But neither of them were legends. At the end of the day, Butterfree knew they were but cogs in the wheel of a greater design. “Team Heavendust is handling the human, right?” she asked. “They know of the Abhorrent menace, don’t they?”
Ariados slowly nodded. “I asked them to stop the mutants.”
It eased the clamping that had been constricting her chest for so long. A gentle breath, and Butterfree felt better. So much better, knowing there was something that could possibly hold against the great tide of destruction that threatened to wash all of Haven Archipelago away.
“Maybe we’ll make it then.” Butterfree took in her home, her still-standing home, alive despite the tragedies that had beset it. “But until then, we have our own battles here, don’t we? Your people still need to be kept in line.”
Dumb rumors. They were but a nuisance for everyone, including the human girl. The trouble they might cause was unpredictable. The Abhorrents would catch wind of it, Butterfree thought with a numbness. If they mutated the human, would that contribute to the prophecy? They’d chase after her like crazed dogs, wouldn’t they?
She might’ve spiraled back into her terrible thoughts, if not for Ariados’s harsh poke into her side. “Dreading the Dark, are we?” she said. “The rumors won’t spread, Veildust, I’ll make sure of that. I will not tolerate annoyances that only serve to make this whole situation even more chaotic.”
For all her flaws, Ariados still had that sense of leadership within her. Butterfree admired that. She’s the matriarch for a reason, she thought.
Ariados pulled herself back onto her four legs, her vigor restored. And yet, as always, there was that little trace of concern digging into her. “Cursed, blessed human,” she muttered. “I sorely wish I could go out and keep an eye on her, Veildust. I don’t know what might become of her—”
“Jumping at Ghosts, are we?” Butterfree crossed her arms. “Weaverwish, you’re needed here, and you’ll be more of a wreck by chasing after rainbows. Unless you plan to kill that human after all?”
Ariados shook her head with such certainty, Butterfree would’ve thought she had never considered murder in the first place. “Then forget about her,” she said, shaking her head too. “For goodness’s sake, I think we all need to forget about her. Whatever happens with that human, it’s out of our hands now.”
“Yes, b-but—”
“Please promise me you won’t abandon your village just to go after the human. We need you.”
Ariados grimaced at the ultimatum. Positioned as she was, dungeon trees shaded half her body, the other half illuminated by dungeon sunlight.
“I can’t do promises.”
She shifted away from the shade, and toward the light.
“But for all your sakes, old friend, I’ll fight my urges till the bitter end.”