Aidinza was an even-tempered man, controlled and restrained. Too controlled and restrained in many ways. Prone to introspection over things that he should just let go. He was slow to anger and rare to hate. But the things that did anger him, the things that he learned to hate, he hated with all the immoderate fury of the burning Sun.
That was all to say that Aidinza hated being led around with a blindfold covering his face. Doubly so when he was lifted onto a pokémon's back and carried for who knows how long in the frigid cold.
But he bore it silently, just like he bore the uncomfortable garments silently during his Ritual of the Sun.
Soon he would be rid of this blindfold if the burgeoning creep of the sun across his face was anything to be judged by. A whistle pierces the air, and the pokémon comes to a stop. In moments Aidizna was pulled from the creature's back, and cold boney fingers freed him from the darkness of the blindfold.
He winced as the light of the dawn stung his eyes for a moment. He glanced around the clearing, eyes flicking between the four robed figures and the large hydregion he had been riding. Slowly he blinked; he had not even realised that he had been hovering on his way here.
"Ihakam ni." There was a strange echo to the Elders' words, and Aidinza did not have to understand the instruction for it to feel like a heavy collar closing around his neck. The four figures watched him for a moment before they climbed back onto the hydregion and disappeared into the forest.
Leaving Aidinza alone, with nothing but his trousers and the sound of a waking forest.
Slowly he breathes out, the air misting in front of him. This was far from where he had been taught to survive. A land as radically different to his own as he suspected it could get. But the essentials of survival were the same in any land the Sun touched.
He needed shelter, food, and water.
He straightens up, rubbing his hands together, hissing at the chill that had set in already. The rules of three's, he reminds himself. Three minutes without air, three hours in the elements, and three days without water.
Three seconds without thinking, his sister's voice comes unbidden to his mind, and despite the miserable cold, he manages a brief smile. He needed to keep focused and always be thinking about his next move.
He needed shelter, something to stave off the frost and rime. A lean-to would not be much, but it would be a roof to keep a fire dry and his body heat trapped. From there, he could range out for something better while looking for water.
Time to get to work.
-
"Come on. C-come on." Aidinza begs as he rolls a stick as quickly as his stiff, frozen fingers can manage. The lean-to had been easy enough to get together; the dense forest had enough sticks and reeds to make something almost homely.
A fire to warm that lean-to was slightly less achievable. Finding dry kindling itself had been an exercise in frustration. By the time Aidinza had decided to try to gather something, the morning frost had already begun melting.
He bites out something foul and throws the two sticks down, as another minute of effort yields nothing.
"Three seconds." He breathes out. This was a waste of time, and he knew it. He needed something else to spark the fire.
He straightens up, committing the clearing to memory. He needed to explore the surrounding area.
"Three days without water." Aidinza rubs at his arm, more thankful for the Sun than ever. The touch of its warmth was the only thing keeping Aidinza from being a shivering mess.
Of course, that would change come night. He shook his head harshly and slapped colour into his cheeks. He was getting distracted.
He had to stay focused. He gathers the sticks from the ground and ties them to the roof of the Lean-to. Even if he found nothing useful, they would be slightly drier when he returned.
He looks around the clearing, one final commitment to memory.
Then he was off.
-
If Aidinza was not half naked, on the verge of freezing to death, and without his team, he thinks there would have been a part of him that would have liked this place. He might have hated the cold, and the squelch of the snow beneath his feet would have driven him to murderous hate.
But something was enchanting about the endless stretch of gnarled trees, and endless compulsion whispered between branches that had outlasted dozens of generations. A thousand lifetimes of stories just waiting to be found, if one cared to go looking.
Yes, Aidinza was pretty sure that he would like this place in a different light.
As it was, he was pretty sure he had never wanted to burn something down more in his entire life. What could have been a spellbinding adventure through a forest with a history as rich as the desert he called home turned into hours of stumbling over gnarled branch after gnarled branch. Swearing and cursing as some blasted knot of antediluvian kindling tripped him into the frosty grass.
He shivers as he pushes himself off the ground, lashing out with his foot. The lance of pain through his foot might have chastised him in any other situation, but the satisfying crunch of wood was more than sweet enough to numb that ache.
The young nomad stands there for a long moment, panting, his breath misting in heavy clouds in front of him. He had been walking for hours, and he had found - nothing - if not for the sun, he would be utterly convinced he had been travelling in an endless, pointless circle.
The Sun had long since reached its zenith and would soon reach its nadir. The one thing that had kept this infernal cold at bay would be robbed of him, and he had nothing to replace it.
The shiver that ran up his spine had nothing to do with the cold in the air.
Three seconds. Three seconds. Aidinza clung to the words like a mantra, a helpless blanket against the cold. He had to get back to his camp. He might not have a fire, but shelter over his head was better than nothing; he had to preserve his body hea-
The low growl that filled the forest froze him in a way that no ice could ever manage.
Wood crunched, but there was no satisfaction in how it splintered through the air like a deadly gunshot. His eyes flick over his shoulder, and what he sees would set horror in the heart of even the bravest of men.
A beartic.
Aidinza had seen beartic before. Massive, hulking beasts bulged with muscles, gleaming fur and claws sharp enough to shred mountains.
Aidinza had been closer to beartic. In Iriccus, he had sat around the fires of the Tly'an-yeh, shared in equal measure between man and ursine.
This beartic was not the hulking mass of well-treated bear, groomed and trained by a people as in tune with them as the Naisho'h were in tune with the Krookodile. It stood nearly fifty metres away, beyond thick trees that had stood the test of aeons.
It was ratty; its coat matted and clumped. Its frame too lean by half for the hulking beast it should have been.
Aidinza's heart beat faster than it had ever before in his life.
It snuffs at the air, and through thick arboreal, green eyes meets ravenous black.
It could have been a moment; it could have been an eternity.
His breath slows to a crawl. Every muscle still.
A creak of wood, a shift of snow.
He runs.
The crash of shattered trees told him it followed.
It was a desperate, unrestrained sprint. Uncontrollable in every way, a maddened dash with only a single goal in mind.
Escape.
He bounded from gnarled root to gnarled root and slid between the smallest gaps between entwining trees. He scurried over rock and ducked branches. Every misstep is a step towards his last.
Then he makes the misstep that may very well be his last, as he bounded between the gap of two trees so tightly interwoven as to be one. His leg catches on the lip of the opening, and he goes rolling, back over shoulder, until he comes to a stop with a horrible crunch.
The beartic is seconds behind, its horrible bulk slamming into the tree that had just sent Aidinza to the ground. He watches in shock as cracks spread through the tree, wood buckling underneath the beartic's charge.
But for a moment, it holds.
He stared up at the beast through the gap, watching as it clawed and ripped at the tree in a murderous frenzy. Every swipe ripped through wood thicker than Aidinza's chest. Then, once more green eyes met ravenous black.
The frost that dripped from its mouth began to glow, and something terrible swirled in its maw.
Aidinza threw himself away as something truly frigid cut past his back, missing by mere millimetres, sending a shudder through his body.
He runs, not even taking a moment to gather his bearings or figure out what the beartic just did.
The sound of a tree crashing to the floor with a horrible crunch told him it was the right decision. He had to move, no mistakes, no slowing down.
Not a single misstep.
There was no place for direction or time. No time for thought or plan, just moving and moving until his breath burned in his lungs. His blood screamed in his veins, and the terrible promise of each heavyweight step behind him grew quieter and quieter.
Until it was nothing but a distant taunt in his mind.
His shoulder bounced off a tree, too tired to bother coming to a proper halt. Aidinza grunts as he collapses to the snowy ground and desperately heaves for air. He just lays there for a moment, staring at the thin light of dusk as it breaks through the forest canopy.
He recognised nothing about anything around him. Not a single leaf on a tree even tugged at a memory. He was lost.
The dusklight burned redder and redder as if the Sun itself was castigating him for this… pointless day.
A day for a lost lean-to, a day for no fire, no water. A day for nothing.
Three seconds. Aidinza breathes in.
Three seconds. He takes another breath as his body aches. He needed to get up. Needed to think of something. Needed to keep thinking.
"Three seconds, Aidizna. You can last three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, and three days without water. But only three seconds without thinking, that's true in the wilds and the battlefield." He sits up and mutters his sister's words once again before he pauses as the sound of something lapping at rocks touches his ears.
Water.
Aidinza moved with all the desperate speed he could muster. Water was not what he needed, but it was something. Something resembling a chance of a hope of a dream to survive this.
But of course, there was no such thing as unpunished hope in this thrice-damned forest. Because no matter how far he ran, there was nothing. No water, no nothing. Just the mounting sound of water that almost seemed to mock him as it grew louder and louder.
He collapses to his knees, the sound of water so tantalisingly close. So so close. So close that he should be on its very shore. So present that it was insanity for him not to see it.
The young man lets out a frustrated scream, his fist punching into the snow, a fit of pique more befitting a chil-
*crack*
Aidinza stills as pain stabs through his knuckles. He pulls his hand back, examining the blood dripping from the back of his right hand. His left-hand reaches out, brushing away the top layer of snow.
Ice.
He had found water, but it was frozen. Frozen in a layer as thick as Nihanlo's icy shell.
That does not stop him from trying to break it. He heard the crack and saw the thin webs spread through the ice. His fist comes down to smash at it again and again. A desperate need to shatter his way through to the water below consuming him, choking away every thought.
But it earns him nothing, just cosmetic cracks and blood coating his hands.
Something insane takes him at that moment, and as he stares at the red-tinged ice, all he could do was laugh. Laugh and laugh. A gripless, desperate chuckle because there was nothing else he could do, sitting on his knees before yet another mockery.
He was never going to see his sister again. He would never get to see his team or his tribe or go back to Iriccus and meet with Brycen again.
He would never meet the expectations of his people.
He lied to Tsesei.
He would never even begin to fix the malaise that was slowly bleeding the Ya'an-ah into irrelevance.
Over what? The refusal to just admit that he could not see something? The inability to swallow his pride and accept what was there was not his to see?
It was mad.
Insane.
And all he could do was laugh about it. Because otherwise, he would sit there until the snowy night stole his last misty breath crying.
Something moved under the ice.
He should have moved. The forest alone was dangerous enough, but whatever pokémon would be here would be pokémon savage and brutal enough to survive in a forest that gave rise to dragons.
He had already met one, fled from one already.
In the penultimate moments before twilight, as the sun threatens to crest the final horizon.
He stays.
Whatever the pokémon was, it exuded a soft shadowy green glow, a luminescence that softly danced through the red-stained ice. He stares at the pokémon for a long moment as it shifts beneath the icy surface. It was difficult to make out any details of the creature through the opaque surface beyond its vaguely serpentine body and sharp, pointed head.
But that should have been enough of a warning to leave; Aidinza was not a man close to the water. But even he knew how dangerous water pokémon could be. The endless rage of Gyarados brutalised even the thin coasts of the Ya'an-ah desert.
"I hate this forest." He confessed to it instead. Maybe it was the blood dripping from his knuckles sending him dull. Maybe it was just the desperate need to vent. But for a single insane moment, it was all he wanted to do. "It's too cold, and its trees… blasted things."
The glow beneath the ice paused as if listening to his words. "And the pokémon…." He can not resist a flinch at even the barest reminder of the sheer terror that had choked at his being. Then his eyes traced the languid dance performed beneath the frozen lake. "Maybe I'm one for one for that."
He choked out a laugh as the glowing pokémon below shimmied, lazily treading in a circle underneath the ice as if responding to Aidinza. He leans back, looking away from the mesmerising glow of the pokémon below the ice, towards the transient twilight. Already he could feel the chill in the air grow, unchecked by the light of the Sun.
"Just needed steel." He mutters before shaking his head, drawing one knee up into his chest as he sits there. He looked back at the pokémon below the ice; he was so… so tired. "Or dry sticks."
He swayed on his knees, feeling his eyes grow heavy. "I have to keep moving. I need to… they need me… I have to stop…? Start?"
Things were… fuzzy. The sway of the pokémon beneath the ice was endlessly entrancing.
He bites his tongue, forcing himself back awake as the taste of copper warms his cold mouth. "Can't stop." He gasps out, forcing himself to his feet. "The Ya'an-ah… My people need me. Need me to keep going. Not going to f-fade into… N-not going to just let us fade into history. N-no more deep d-desert. Gonna bring it all back..."
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Aidinza stumbles back and shakes his head. "Three seconds." He mutters, then repeats it as firm as he can manage. Night in truth, was minutes away, and the cold burned at his exposed skin.
He had to get moving, and he had to figure something out, fast.
If he found the lean-to he had made earlier and the wood he had hung up to dry…
He stumbles away from the ice and the soft glow underneath it. "Three hours." He mutters, three hours of this freezing cold night to make something stick, in spite of the fog touching at his mind.
-
It took him thirty minutes, by his reckoning to retrace his steps to where he had first encountered the beartic. Not because it was some great distance, nor was the path of the beartic particularly subtle, but because running into the beartic again would be the final nail in the coffin.
From there, it had been a much quicker journey to where he had made 'camp', Aidinza had always had a keen eye for the paths of the dunes, and that took a sharp mind for details and memorisation.
The small clearing was exactly as he had left it, down to the footprints of the elders when they had pulled Aidinza off the hydregion. Slowly the young desert native limps towards his lean-to, a desperate prayer that the wood he had tied off earlier today had dried enough to be usable as firestarters.
He pauses as he approaches the tree he had used as a support. Something had been stabbed into it. Carefully he turns around, eyes slowly raking over the ground around the tree, then to the branches above.
His attention returns to the object, and he gives it a leery stare before another shudder passes through his body and presses the hanging blade of freezing closer to his neck. He steps up to it, a finger coming up to tap against its base.
The slightest ting of metal filled the clearing. His eyes widened, and his hand closed around it, his other bracing against the rough bark. He rips it out of the wood, hissing as it cuts into the side of his knuckle.
It was a claw of some kind, razor-sharp and slightly hooked. But most importantly to him, it gleamed in the starlight with a veneer of steel. Urgency clutched at Aidinza as he ducked underneath the lean-to, grabbing a dark rock he had found earlier in the day.
He stumbles out of the lean-to, breath misting heavily.
His shaking hands tried to strike the flint against the steely claw, but his fingers were too numb and stiff.
He swears and tries again and again. Each attempt, more desperate than the last, cuts building up across his palm as a specious whisper that it would not work cut at him. Ripped at the last vestiges of hope sputtering inside his chest.
Then.
A spray of sparks fills the clearing.
A tremulous smile spreads across his face as relief thunders through him. The insidious certainty of the cold, the malignant promise of failure burning underneath a new hope.
He turns to the fire pit he had made earlier.
"Three hours without shelter."
-
Aidinza clung to the fire's warmth like a baby clings to a mother's bosom. He let it heat his bones and redden his skin. Anything to get away from the frightful cold that set in as the moon reached its apex.
He tried to sleep but could only manage fitful bursts; between the open moon-filled sky only a half roll from him and the uncomfortable forest floor, it was a doomed prospect. So he did the best he could to at least try to relax. Letting his mind calm as he watched the fire flicker and dance in the moonlight, trying to find rest in that rather than just sleep.
Meditation, he thought it was called, vaguely recalling looking it up in the aftermath of his fight with Honoured Leader Clay.
If he was being honest, it was more effective than he expected it to be, the flicker of the flame was soothing, and as his heart slowed, Aidinza could almost be lulled into enjoying the night. Could almost feel the hours sli-
The rustle of leaves cuts through his tranquillity. Louder than the soft swish of the wind through the treetops.
Slowly he looks away from the fire, eyes tracing the impenetrable blackness of the canopy. Another rustle, branches swaying under an alien weight.
He licks his dry lips and swallows softly.
A strange high-pitch chirp echoes through the air, and a piercing whistle calls back in reply. Aidinza's hand begins lowering to the campfire, where the end of a stick juts out.
The sound of edge scraping down the edge freezes him for a moment, the sound cruel in his ears, sending a shudder down his spine and setting a calm heart racing in his chest.
There was no mistaking that malignant noise for anything but what it was.
Hone Claw.
Aidinza's hand latches onto the stick, and he hefts it into the air, firelight cast just high enough to reach the tall branches.
Dozens of ruby red eyes glittered back at him, gleaming with an inhumane light as they stared at him from the canopy.
The sound of claws rasping against each other filled the still air, a brief spark lighting up the canopy for a brief moment, exposing the pokémon in full for a fleeting second. It was bipedal, with blue-black fur and prominent feathers jutting out in front of its ear in a way eerily reminiscent of Astazhei's crown. Aidinza's eyes were drawn to the two wickedly sharp claws that had produced the sparks as the pokémon flexed them in the dim light before his eyes traced down to its other arm, where its claws were hidden in the thick gnarled branch it was perched on.
Aidinza did not recognise what the pokémon were, but there was no mistaking the gleam in their eyes for anything good.
Another chirp filled the air, and this time there was a harsh hiss in response.
Aidinza struggled not to flinch as the indistinct figures above him began to move, his eyes barely making out silhouettes as they began circling him from above.
A sharp crack freezes his heart as he pivots around, his makeshift torch leaving a trail of fire in the air as he goes. Another hiss and he watches as the pokémon above him retreat slightly from the fire.
They were off-put by the fire. Ice-types then, or maybe steel judging from their claws…
Another crack and he whirls around to face it, brandishing his fire as a ward against them, the pokémon retreating at its attention.
But he could hear the pokémon behind him quickly grow bold again, hearing them skitter forward. He turns to face them, but when they retreat, it was not even half the distance they had taken.
They were beginning to drop lower, taking branches only half a head taller than Aidinza, closing in on him.
This was not going to end well.
A keening noise breaks through the quiet encircling of Aidinza, an old noise filled with depthless nostalgia that calls to a part of Aidinza that remembers quiet days swimming through an oasis with his sister.
The pack of pokémon perk up at the noise, and a volley of chirps and whistles break the silence.
Then, in one moment to the next, they break away. Scurrying into the trees and away from Aidinza's camp.
He collapses to the ground, the weight of helplessness crushing him to the floor, as he stares wide-eyed at the fire in front of him, his once serenity irreparably broken.
This forest…
He hated it with every inch of his soul.
-
The light of the red dawn came and with it came a number of tasks. The first of which was to find somewhere else to camp. The pack of pokémon from last night may not have descended onto him, but there was no guarantee for tonight, and he would rest much easier if the pokémon did not simply have to retrace their steps to find him.
Difficult because Aidinza had no idea what had drawn them to him in the first place, baring the light from his campfire, and going without that was a non-starter.
The second was that he needed water. He could already feel the dry parch at the back of his throat and the creeping headache dizzying his vision. It was manageable, but difficulty thinking was the last thing he wanted to deal with in this forest.
Luckily, this was the easier of the two. He knew where the frozen lake was and still had the partly metallic claw to start a fire. If he found something to act as a container, then he would have all he would need for safe drinking water.
If not… Aidinza would figure something out.
He rolls his shoulders, body stiff from sitting still for most of the night, before casting a glance to the tree tops above.
In the light of the Sun, the aftermath of the pokémon from last night was clear. The trees had been torn to shreds, with claw marks and gouges ripped from the old wood. Most seemed to be random, careless and arbitrary. But some of the marks struck Aidinza as too… uniform. Deliberate.
He does not linger on the thought for long, turning northeast towards the river from yesterday. He knew that daylight was ever fleeting, and he needed to make every moment count.
"Three seconds." He mutters before he takes off.
-
The lake stretched endlessly east to west. A stretch of thick ice that glittered and gleamed in the sunlight, frozen so suddenly that Aidinza could swear he saw waves caught still in motion
It was a strange sight, and the very idea that some place could freeze so quickly that the water itself did not have time to settle… it boggles the mind.
Just as surely as it boggled Aidinza's that he somehow missed it the last time he was here.
Carefully he knelt next to the frozen edge, fingers running along the slightly wet - snowless - surface. His eyes flick to the back of his hand, his knuckles scabbed over during the night…
He takes a step back and digs into the snow edging the bank of the river, finding nothing but earth beneath.
A flicker of light catches his eye, and when he glances over, it is to see the same glow he had found yesterday, the shadowy green exactly as he had remembered it.
His eyes linger on his knuckles, then the unmistakable sight of a lake frozen in motion, before falling to the glow beneath the ice as it sat nearly perfectly still, a strangely contrite image for how simple it was.
Aidinza's hand falls to the claw stabbed through one of the belt rings in his trousers, and the glow begins to slowly shift in a way that Aidinza could only describe as a nervous pace. He steps forward and drops into a squat at the edge of the frozen river.
There's a moment's pause before the glow beneath the ice - the pokémon - creeps forward, pressing closer to the ice dividing the two of them, then through it. Aidinza watched, fascinated as the pokémon seemed to treat the thick ice as more of a suggestion than a barrier, rising through it until it was just beneath the surface.
Aidinza would have to be a fool not to recognise that sign for what it was. This was a ghost pokémon, one of the terrifying revenants of the night, the subject of horror stories and legends of avarice and cruelty. He could almost remember the crackle of fire as he was bewarned of the dangers of ghost types, of their capricious nature, formed by their nature as Other from the world.
The ghost was small, it would be able to curl up along Aidinza's forearm, and its thin serpentine pale green tail would barely even approach his elbow. Three dark green fins protruded from its tail, rigid and unmoving, and it had two bent flippers that it used to tread the ice it had slipped into.
Its head was flat in a vaguely reptilian way, with two horns jutting out the sides, tipped with pink. Underneath the horns were four more pink protrusions that seemed to wave in a current despite the ice it was floating in.
But its eyes were what really caught and held Aidinza's attention, yellow like Naazin's but wide and open in a way that made Aidinza long for his starter.
His hand tugs at his belt loops, the absent weight like a keen stab to his heart.
The ghost hummed to itself, the sound old in a way that Aidinza struggled to articulate, like the sound of a cave moments before its collapse, or… or like
Like the last words of someone whose time is soon to pass. Dignified, in a word he supposed.
Which was somewhat juxtaposed by the fact the pokémon began chasing its own tail, the shadowy green glow flickering from the pokémon's translucent skin dancing between the thick ice.
Aidinza groans slightly and lets himself rock back to sit on the ground, settling in to watch the pokémon enjoy itself. The mere presence of a pokémon settling into some subtle crook of Aidinza's soul, some aspect of his being that had formed over the last months of being a trainer that only felt properly comfortable when there was a pokémon nearby.
Carefully he breathes in and exults in the sunshine playing across his bare chest, the warmth of the sun a welcome companion to this quiet moment of peace. The pokémon began swimming through the ice in increasingly complex patterns, sometimes truly surfacing as if breaching water, other times diving deep until it was little more than a twinkle in the ice above it.
Every now and then, it would return to the river bank, staring up at Aidinza with wide yellow eyes as if to confirm he was still there before returning to its play, each time seemingly just that bit more energetic.
It was a nice way to spend some time, though Aidinza knew it could not last long; as much as he might have wanted to linger in this Pokémon's presence, he had things he needed to do.
But for a few minutes, no more than half an hour, he let himself relax back and carefully controlled his breathing.
Just… relaxing.
-
Aidinza was used to dehydration. It was a fact of life in the desert, some days, you would simply not have enough water for the tribe, and people had to make sacrifices. He learned to deal with the chapped lips and the dizzy spells. To keep himself focused and push away the throbbing pain of a headache.
But what he could never get over, and probably would never be able to get over, was just how sweet water tasted after a day or more without. It was one of the greatest experiences in the world, as close to tasting life and joy itself as Aidinza reckoned was physically possible.
He sips again from the makeshift plate he had ground out from a flat stone, and groans as the water wet his dry throat again. Now that Aidinza had the step of the land, he was starting to grow almost… comfortable, if not for the infernal chill in the air. His eyes slip close for a moment before an echo of the wicked rasp of sharpened claws sent a flinch through his body.
Slowly his eyes slide open, and he looks towards the sky as he takes a shuddering breath, hand tightening around a heavy stick by his side.
He needed to find somewhere else to spend the night, somewhere better, hopefully, but somewhere elsewhere, definitely. He glances off into the distance towards the frozen lakeside in some vain attempt to see the ghostly pokémon once more before he turns south, his heart just beating that slightest tempo too fast.
He could not rely on something distracting those pokémon tonight.
-
Between the easy access to a firestarter, and the water quenching his thirst, most of the absolutely pressing issues had been dealt with. So, Aidinza allowed his search for a new shelter to be absolutely meticulous, not stopping even when he found places that would, in all likelihood, be more than good enough.
He needed to find somewhere safe. Better than good enough.
Perhaps it was only natural then that it was only when he stumbled across what seemed to be an abandoned warren that his shoulders relaxed from its tight line. It would be hidden from the trees, and if nothing else, he would not be surrounded again.
Besides, if there was one thing that the Ya'an-ah knew outside of their desert, it was what was underneath their desert. Entire days had been spent sheltered from sandstorms, just exploring with his sister the under earth.
He pauses for a moment at the entrance, remembering days of trying to puzzle out the nature of whatever cave the Naisho'h were in with his sister. His hand ghosted along the rough stone, making up the entrance to the underground. This was not a durant cave by his reckoning; the entrances of their caves tended to be almost aggressively smoothed over, ground down by their tough steel bodies.
Maybe this was a sandslash cave? There were only a few sandslash populations in the Ya'an-ah desert, dotting the southlands. But their presence would explain the harsh scratches along the wall, though not why the cave's ceiling was high enough for Aidinza to stand up nearly straight.
Though, maybe he was too quick to judge the scratches as something a Sandslash would make. They were too… deliberate, almost like the intricate carvings of an excadrill, but what he remembered of Gowteel's excadrill, it would never let its warren's walls become so scratched.
Too orderly for a sandslash. Too chaotic for an excadrill. Did Aidizna even know a pokémon that would fit that description?
Just the tiniest spark of excitement filled Aidinza as he wandered deeper into the warren, trying to figure out the little mystery in front of him. There were very few pokémon that dug this close to the surface. Most pokémon that did significant tunnelling would do it far below the earth like Onix, or in the mountains like graveller.
He pauses as the warren widens into a large circular room before it diverges into two tunnels, one much larger than the other. That meant diglets were right out; their ground manipulations usually produced a single long straight line from which their personal burrows would branch off.
He squats down to examine the wider tunnel, fingers tracing the scratches in the wall. A distant memory of exploring a Krookodile's warren when he was young filled his head, watching as its claws scratched through the markings of its previous ow-
Aidinza freezes, hand hovering over the scratches in front of him. Tentatively he sniffs at the air.
A heady, musky odour greats him, breaking past his cold, numbed nostrils. He feels the blood drain from his face. He had gotten… overconfident was not the right word, lulled into complacency by the familiarity of the under earth. Deceived by exploring something that so closely reminded him of home.
The warren had not been abandoned.
The sound of burdensome steps above Aidinza rattles the earth.
It had been taken over.
This was an excadrill's warren, the usually smooth lines left behind by their shockingly careful technique roughened by age and the poor attempts to widen it by its new owner.
The sound of heavy breathing echoes through the cave as something truly ponderous enters, the sound of its bulk inadvertently crashing into the ground around it, rattling the floor beneath Aidinza.
A terribly familiar snuff at the air freezes the blood in Aidinza's veins, and the grim growl that follows horrifies him to his very bones.
The beartic.
He was in a beartic den.
He was on the other side of a beartic, inside a beartic's den.
Now that he had the full pictures, he could see the signs clear as day of a larger pokémon moving in and clumsily expanding a cave to fit their needs.
His attention snaps to the second, smaller split in the warren, his mind desperately racing. Did excadrill make multiple entrances to their warrens? Would the tunnel lead to anywhere, or just into the depths of the underground? Did he even have a choice if it did?
Another low growl rips him out of his thoughts, and Aidinza glances over his shoulder to see the tremendous form of the beartic, its powerful form brushing up against the sides of the cave.
When he had seen the beartic yesterday, it had been ravenous. The pinched gaunt of its ribs reflected in the glint of hunger in its eyes.
He had been prey, an absent target by simply being there.
Today, its eyes were not hungry.
They were furious, its jagged teeth bared in a brutal snarl, its eyes wide and bloodshot. The ice-type's paw crushed through stone as its muscles bunched up. The moment of its charge stretched to a tortuous length as adrenaline flooded Aidinza.
What happened next was explosive. In one moment, Aidinza was crouched in front of the forked path as a beartic began an unstoppable charge. In the next, he had thrown himself towards the smaller tunnel in a mad dash, rolling underneath a glowing blow that shattered the stone above him. Avoiding being crushed against the wall by the skin of his teeth, the entire cave shuddered as the bear's insane bulk crashed into the mangled stone.
He pauses for a heartbeat of a heartbeat as he finds his feet, watching over his shoulder as the beartic turns its head to him, the ice clinging to its mouth beginning to glow with a stygic light.
Aidinza threw himself forward in a dead sprint as the Beatic ripped its claw from the wall of the cave, sending chunks of dirt and stone flying through the air. Then, as the glow emanating from its icy 'beard' reached an apex, a harsh white mist spilled out of its maw, almost like a crashing wave, crystalising a thick rime on everything it touched as it raced after Aidinza.
The boy himself, however, had not wasted the time the Beartic had been trapped by his own blow against the earth itself, barrelling down the smaller tunnel, hunching over as the height of the cave all but collapsed in on itself. Trying to put as much distance between him and the raging ursine as possible.
It was not enough distance.
He screams as freezing pain lances up his leg. He crashes full to the ground, biting down on his pain as his ankle twisted in some insane grip. Choking down a sob of pain, he glances over his shoulder, half expecting a beartic moments away from mauling him.
But all he saw was a wall of ice. Whatever move the beartic had used froze the air solid, and his leg had been caught by it.
Aidinza bites out a foul word. The icy wall might have separated him from the beartic's sight but also left him trapped, and he could already feel the chill searing through his trousers, his flesh prickling and growing painfully numb.
He might not be currently being mauled by a beartic, but losing a leg to frostbite, then himself to whatever came next, was maybe even worse. As if to remind him that the two were not mutually exclusive, the cave around him rattled, dirt coming loose from the ceiling as the beartic smashed at the earth.
Aidinza pats down his body, trying to figure out if he had something - anything - that could get him out of this. He had the claw and a piece of flint. He had the rock he had used as a plate to boil his water and…
Not much else.
He grunts as he forces himself up into an awkward kneeling position. He gathered everything he had and arrayed it in front of him before twisting around to push at the ice encasing his leg. It hardly budged.
He reaches out, hand hovering over his stone 'plate' before he grabs the piece of flint. He brings it above his head and then smashes it down on the ice. It chips slightly, but the impact makes him drop his flint and sends a brutal lance of pain through his leg.
That was… something. He brushes a hand over the site of the impact, scowling at how little ice had actually been smashed off.
He needed to… to soften the ice somehow, melt it slightly. That should make it softer right? Another slam on the cave wall, the noise pressing down on Aidinza like a physical weight as he desperately tried to figure out what to do.
He needed heat. He had no kindling but… friction? Friction generated heat. He grabs the claw and seizes the hem of his trousers, cutting away a square of fabric. He twists around and desperately rubs at the lattice of ice encasing his leg, it was awkward and unwieldy, but he could already fe-
The sound of another blow rattles Aidinza's teeth, and he stares wide-eyed as a network of cracks spreads through the ice wall. He fumbles for the flint again, desperately hacking at the ice with the rock, chipping away at his prison in a surge of strength.
Another smash, yet more frantic, cutting at the ice trapping him. His hand scrambles for the claw, pressing it into thin cracks that he had made and attempting to twist into them and leverage them free.
The ice shifts.
Aidinza is jerked backwards, dragged across the ground as the ice wall is torn backwards. Driven by panic, he stabs the claw into the ground, a white-knuckled grip barely slowing down the terrifying strength pulling him back.
He tries to twist free, tugging on the weakened ice. Tries to pull himself away with the anchor of the claw that was sunk into the earth.
Another heave on the ice dragged him nearly a metre back, ripping him away from the claw as it cut through his hand. He claws for a handhold, anything to stop the inevitable.
Then, it stops.
That was not a good thing. The ice, once flush with the cave walls, now had nearly a handspan of air between it and rock. Aidinza tries to peel away the ice as his eye flicks between his trapped leg and the gap between the ice and the cave, smearing streaks of blood across the harsh bluish lattice with rubbed raw fingers.
A broad white paw reaches into the gap, cruel black keratin digging into the ice like fingers through sand.
The cracks in the ice spread.