What is terror? Not fear of a situation or the outcome of said situation, the ill staccato of the heart spasming. Not panic, with its insidious grip slowly choking the senses. Not dread, the creeping feeling up the spine of something wrong, the lightest touch of flight or flight pulsing against someone's neck. Not even despair, where every path forward seemed to lead to malignant ends.
But terror.
Fear so all-encompassing that the heart beats a thousand times one moment and freezes the next. Panic so bone-deep that every sense is overwhelmed, driven blind while barraged with things to see. Dread so visceral that the entire body screams to run to fight to run to escape to be… anywhere else. Despair so consuming that it freezes someone still.
Aidinza had felt dread before; the wrong in chargestone cave had seen to that. He had felt fear, the Plasma in driftveil had sent adrenaline and cortisol stabbing through his veins. He knew panic; his first steps into the tall cities of Unova had been full of it. Despair… that desperate hopelessness…
There was a reason he was in this forest.
None of it had even a moment's thought on the terror that ripped through Aidinza at that moment, seizing his bones and painting his veins.
Terror as ice cracked away under the awesome might of an enraged beartic, his heart twisting and writhing as it tried to desperately pump enough adrenalin into him to escape his icy trap. Terror as the weight of the situation burned into his mind, pressing down and down, until the beartics every twitch was a blur and every glitter of ice sent a dizzy spell through him. Terror as the frozen barrier was ripped away, and the beartic forced its terrible bulk into what it cleared, errant slashes leaving hand-deep gouges in the stone.
Terror, as nothing he did seemed to get him any closer to freeing his trapped limb, nothing he did seemed capable of budging that one further millimetre.
So animal and uncontrollable that it nearly ripped every thought from Aidinza. So potent that it would almost stop a man dead.
Leaving behind only desperate ideas and the base enough motivations to try them. He lunges for the claw again, the feeling as it settles into the laceration that it had torn into his hand excruciating. He ripped it from the earth, and with base-born rationale, he drove it at the seal where the ice was closed around his leg, a desperate attempt to find leverage.
The claw strains against the ice. It cuts through flesh and muscle. It buckles around the bone.
It shifts the ice.
Not just for the terribly powerful beartic ripping through it, tearing layer upon layer out of it with every moment given to it.
No, it shifts upwards, and cracks spread.
Despite the pain that ripped through his body, Aidinza twisted and slammed at the ice with his other leg, a last-ditch, awkward attempt to desperately escape.
The ice gives.
Aidinza explodes forward, with all the fervour of a man dying of thirst offered water. He does not look back or take even a moment to gather himself.
The tunnel thinned and thinned until there was barely enough space for Aidinza to crawl, but he did not stop for a moment, dragging himself forward into the stale air and dark, until all he could feel was the claustrophobic press of the earth on his back.
Distantly, he hears a furious roar, and a truly monstrous blow shakes the ground, the ceiling, and the walls. He hears a distant crack and feels the rockslide as it collapses the tunnel behind him.
He still did not look back. In part, because there was no room, but in most, because terror still held his heart in a vice-grip.
So, he crawled and crawled, a forlorn hope that there would be another exit, and he would not just waste away in the dirt, body to desiccate untouchable by the Sun.
Aidinza had no idea how long he had crawled through those tunnels, had no idea how many times he squeezed his body through tight confines, desperately hoping that this would not be the one too tight that would leave him stuck for the rest of his life. No idea how many times he shaved skin from his body as he contorted around some turn or slid into another deeper tunnel.
Hours maybe… he had boasted earlier today that the Ya'an-ah knew what was underground, but no cavern or cave would ever prepare a man for the brutal, disinterested weight of this crushing labyrinth.
Then, light.
Not much, the tiniest trickle, but compared to the utter dark of the underneath, it was the brightest thing he had ever seen. Fervently he dragged himself forward until fresh air touched his lungs.
Until the evening Sun touched his face.
The opening was a corner of the tunnel, nearly flush against a cliff face. Something had torn the rock apart long ago. An ugly scar on the cliffside that looked more beautiful than anything that Aidinza had ever seen.
He rolled out of the tunnel, sliding down rough terrain into the snow below. He stares at the blue sky above, his eyes stinging as they readjust to the surface. Emotions bubbled up in him, a disorientating cocktail that Aidinza struggled to process.
He breathes in and lets a shuddering breath out.
Then he laughs, laughs and laughs. Just letting everything go until he began to cry. Deep sobs wracked his body until every emotion was spent, and he started laughing again.
Let it all out until he was drained and empty, simply staring at the sky.
Alive.
He sits back, feeling his body ache in every conceivable way. Carefully he inspects himself, examining each laceration and bruise in turn. On the bright side, it seemed he would not bleed to death. His wounds were packed with dirt and congealed blood, as effective a seal as he could have expected. On the dimmer side, his injuries were packed with dirt; if he did not clean them, there would be an infection.
He struggles to his feet, feeling pain lance through his left leg, nearly seeing him collapse back to the ground.
The problem with cleaning his wounds was that after everything that had happened, Aidinza just did not have the energy. He sways on his feet, carefully scanning the surrounding forest. He needed to rest. What came next, would have to come next.
Not now.
First, he would find one of the many 'good enough' shelters and get some rest. He glances at the sun once more and then limps north.
-
Aidinza spent the night huddled in the hollow of a tree's roots, hidden by a thick grotto of entangled moss and vine.
It was not as cold as the open air, but it was not much better. But the constant yowls and screeches that echoed in that dark night struck still any desire to light up fire for warmth. As much as it might have cut at his beliefs, his best protection was the inky night.
So he grits his teeth, keeps his breath even, and tries desperately to hold onto any scrap of body heat he can.
A glow, just the slightest touch brighter than the starlight above, slid into the grove. Aidinza presses himself back into the wood behind him, mouth pressed into a thin line, his hand falling to the claw tangled into his trousers.
Desperately he hoped whatever it was moved on; he was in no state to run and even less of a state to put up any fight.
The glow pressed deeper into his sanctuary, and his hand tightened around the claw.
A familiar, keening noise surprises him. He heard the noise on the first night, moments before the pack of pokémon had broken off.
Wide, yellow eyes peek over the lip of the hollow hiding Aidinza, bright even in the near lightless midnight.
And unmistakable.
The pokémon from underneath the thick ice of the lakeside. The tight line of Aidinza's shoulders relaxes as he places the claw to the side.
The pokémon drifted forward, pausing as Aidinza tensed again, something instinctive in him raising the hair of his nape. The two watched each other for a moment, which dragged on for years, bright yellow eyes meeting bright green.
Slowly, he breathed in and leaned back.
The ghost took that for the permission that it was, silent as it slithered through the air. He watches as it sniffs, a look of confusion bunching up its face and crossing its eyes.
It twisted around itself as it tried to figure out whatever it smelled. Then, the ghost's attention stilled on Aidinza's leg.
He took a moment to examine it himself in the dim light cast by the pokémon. His shin was… a mess. His last desperate ploy had ended up with the back of the claw digging down into his bone, and the crawl through the tunnels had left the wound a disgusting sight of clotted blood, dark earth and entangled cloth.
The pokémon approached, its shadow green forelimbs touching the edges of the wound for a moment. Aidinza hisses, and the ghost whirls on him, eyes wide with something Aidinza suspected was panic…
And concern.
"I got hurt." He explains as he swallows heavily. "Stumbled into a beartic's den. It, maybe rightfully, did not really appreciate that." Aidinza chuckles; he had got off lightly, in all likelihood. If it had been a ground-type pokémon, he would have never escaped. "I should clean it before it gets worse…." He shrugs as he trails off; he did not have water and hardly thinks digging around his wound with dirty fingers would do much.
The ghost lowers back down to the wound, the look on its face unplaceable. Slowly its two front arms traced the air above his wound, then, with one last snap quick glance at the cautious look on Aidinza's face, it touched the wound.
"What are you doing?" Aidinza nearly jerked his leg away, but a firm look from the ghost stopped him - even if the look was slightly ruined by the way it puffed its cheeks out as it quelled him.
Slowly the serpentine pokémon peeled the cloth of his trousers away, tugging the fabric out of the sticky grip of dried blood with infinite care. So careful that it hardly stung.
Then it framed Aidinza's wound with both limbs, its mouth coming so close to his wound that he was sure it would dig in. The Pokémon's already bright eyes began to glow, patches of shadowy green circles dotting its eyes, expanding until they replaced the yellow. The ghost’s form shudders and wavers, its crisp definition dulling until it was less a defined thing and more of a defined boundary.
What happened next was simple to tell. But Aidinza was not sure he would ever be able to really describe it. The congealed cesspit of his wound began to shift, not as if it was being pulled away. But as if it was tearing itself away.
Whatever it was, the result was the same, the filth slid from the wound, rising into the air before being carefully lowered to the ground. Underneath, clean bone was stark against the air, and healthy pink flesh pulsated. Blood already began pooling as it was exposed once more.
Aidinza winced; he had hardly thought about bandages or what he would think of doing after he cleaned his wound. Nor had the pokémon it seemed.
Or maybe he was giving the pokémon too little credit. The shadow green glow flickers away, replaced by a bright yellow. Aidinza hisses as a heat touches his leg, a flickering spark of something purple slowly pressing to the bleeding flesh.
The heat was not quite hot enough to burn; there was a strange lack of substance, at least Aidinza did not think it was hot enough to burn. Yet the flow of blood began to slow, first to a trickle, then to nothing.
The ghost leans back away from the wound, the ill-fitting boundaries of its form flickering and stuttering. Aidinza reaches out, catching it as it bobs unevenly in the air.
It felt like it would slide through his body for a moment before seemingly becoming properly solid, resting on the platform Aidinza offered.
The Pokémon's body was cold. Almost sapping the warmth from Aidinza's hand. It was also inconsistent, Aidinza was not sure if it was always that way, but as its…, something struggled at the domain of its body, the Pokémon's shape and feel changed relentlessly.
It was an off-putting feeling that clawed at something in Aidinza's hindbrain, screaming that the thing in his hands was wrong. Other.
Carefully, Aidinza pulls the pokémon closer to his body, leaning back against the wood behind him. For a long moment, he stares out the opening into the night sky beyond the thin gaps in the verdure, just wondering what his life had turned into.
He glances down at the cold, strange pokémon held against his stomach by his arm. "Thank you."
The pokémon does not stir, but he feels content enough to let his body relax into as comfortable a position as he could manage in the hollow.
Then, in one blink to the next, he drifted away.
-
Was it ominous or auspicious that the third and final day was so quiet? The first day had been crushing. Pulled in a dozen different directions with no clear path forward to survive, every step forward contending with two steps back. The second… Was there any way to describe it other than terrifying? The cold paranoia drove him to desperately find the perfect location to hide from that pack of pokémon, the white-hot fear as the beartic came moments from ripping him apart.
Aidinza could see the forming pattern. He expected the third day to come with its own brutalism, to find a new way to torment him. A new avenue to grind him into dust.
But as the day passed by, and he prepared for the worst, nothing manifested. Nothing accosted him on his journey to the frozen lake to clean his wounds. Nothing uprooted him from his hideaway as he lashed wood together to make a hatch.
Nothing happened.
Only the ache in his bones from yesterday kept his paranoia in check. But even still, it drove him to be even more surreptitious, digging out a proper fire pit made of two connected holes. One hides the fire from sight, and the second feeds the fire air.
It meant that the final night would not be one of freezing cold and that he would have something - anything - to defend himself if worse came to worst. While also not giving his position away so blatantly.
As the sun broke towards the horizon, its light glittering across the endless forest of Caġaṡakehaƞska Caƞtaƞka, Aidinza came back to the same question that had haunted him throughout the day.
Was it ominous or auspicious that nothing happened on the third day?
-
The Moon occupied a strange position in the Ya'an-ah's culture. It was a conduit of the Sun's will upon the night, but it was an imperfect, tempestuous reflection. The Sun's goals and powers warped in a way that could not be described as malicious but rather mischievous.
It was both a prophet and a trickster. To perform rituals under its auspices was considered by many Ya'an-ah to be one of the best ways to compel the Sun to act. But how it would act… would depend on the Moon's whim.
An object of deep reverence and great suspicion.
The Moon was full. The Sun's power upon this night was unchained, and the Moon's influence unchecked.
Many stories were told about this time. Both grand fables and terrible tragedies.
So it came as no surprise when a hideous sound split the night. A piercing, frightful yowl bounced through the air, a horrible, dizzying noise that seemed to grind into Aidinza's ears no matter how faint it grew.
The call was swiftly taken up by others, dozens at least, with their own, pitched screeches, each more offensive than the last. Aidinza steps towards his fire pit, where a large pile of dirt waits to put it out.
But he pauses; he… should wait. The young nomad sits by the fire pit, warming his hands on the intense heat that emanates from within. He glances to the sky, tempted for a moment to speak a prayer to the moonlight that broke through the thick canopy above. Tempted to roll that hand of fate.
Another screech breaks his thoughts, sending a flinch through him as he glances around. That was closer.
He freezes as the sound of plants rustling touches his ears, a terribly familiar sound of branches swaying under alien weight.
Carefully his eyes trace through the canopy, his hand drifting to the heavy wooden stick by his side as a terrible silence reigned. He found nothing in the canopy, but he could not shake an ill feeling in his gut that he was in some sort of standoff with some creature he could not see as the hair on the back of his neck raised.
Another rustle of leaves, then three high-pitched chirps. Another long beat of silence before a snarl and the sound of metal clashing against metal, followed by a low whine.
The presence of the pack of beasts from the first night set Aidinza's heart thundering in his chest, and he inches closer to the fire pit, preparing to light the end of his stick.
A rustle of flora.
Aidinza lights the stick, surging to his feet, eyes wild, expecting once more to be surrounded by black-furred creatures as firelight flickered through the branches.
The canopy was empty.
For minutes Aidinza stood there, carefully scanning the hoarfrost-lined trees for any sign of the pokémon from the first night, torch burning brightly.
Yet none manifest. From the corner of his eye, he glances towards the Moon, wondering for a moment if he was addled.
Another yowl.
Followed by an achingly familiar keening noise, so hauntingly ancient as to be unmistakable.
The lakeside ghost.
Something sunk in Aidinza's gut, something that only grew heavier as the scrape of claw on claw rasped through the air.
In that moment, he should have kept his head down; put out his torch and hoped that he was left alone in the aftermath. He was just a human, an injured one at that. He was strong… debatably, he carried more than his fair share through the sands. Fit, undeniably. But all of that was irrelevant before the first fact.
He was a human.
Out there were pokémon, creatures capable of reshaping the earth in their wake. More potent than he would ever be, faster than he could ever think to contend with… and hungry. Interposing himself would achieve nothing. He had nothing to offer.
He should keep his head down.
That same voice, its tenor of such a disparate epoch, cried out in pain.
Aidinza was outside his fortress grove in moments, lingering between the thin fork of a tree, his eyes scanning through trees lit by the trickster moon, torch held bright and hot by his side.
In the distance, a hazy green glow panicked and flickered as it shambled through the snowy forest, pursued by the glint of moonlight off steel-laced claws.
He moves.
-
The greatest difference between the Ya'an-ah and the Tly'an-yeh could very easily be said to be their stance on hunting. To the Tly'an-yeh, it was a matter of great honour, an expression of their connection to the land to delve into the cycle of life and be a part of it. To the Ya'an-ah, it was a last resort, an act that must be carefully considered. One that would only be glorified for the reasons, not the action.
That was not to say that Aidinza had never participated in a hunt. The desert sands were, in nearly all things, poised to cause desperation. That was the fierce love of the land. As the numbers of the Naisho'h dwindled, those who were able to do right by the tribe did so too. Sometimes that meant that only he was left to do right by his tribe. Even their connection with the desert crocs only went so far.
He always made it dignified and respectful.
What the pokémon were doing as they chased down the lakeside ghost… was not a hunt. There was no dignity in how they would play with the spirit, batting it around as it fled, keeping just close enough that it could never relax but never moving to finish it. There was no respect in the baleful rasp of claw on claw nor in their yowling taunts.
This was not a hunt. They were tormenting the ghost; they were not trying to bring it low, to feed on it as gruesome as that might have been. That would have been easy enough. They outnumbered it by a dozen fold and were faster.
No, they were trying to terrify it, to pick it apart until all that was left was a cowering wreck.
A feat they were not too far away from achieving. The lakeside ghost was a fitful mess of frightful incorporeal panic; every malignant rasp of claw saw the thin boundary defining the ghost as present wane. Every flicker of moonlight off false swipes drove the delicate power keeping the ghost animate in the air to greater and greater strain.
Until it was too much.
The lakeside ghost careened into the snow, at times flickering through the snow, at times ripping a furrow through it as it tumbled to a stop at the base of a stumped tree. The ghost had turned into a writhing mass of something, an aggregation of shifting otherness, little more than flickering dim light and being.
Moonlight gleamed off steel-laced keratin as one of the black-furred creatures lunged at the mass, a ravenous, ecstatic gleam in its beady red eyes. A triumphant yowl ripped from its throat.
Until Aidinza's boot slammed into its salivating jaw.
The Native's chest heaved, his green eyes burning in the torchlight as he swung at another, the fire forcing the creature back with a hiss. There was a moment as the pack of creatures contended with Aidinza's interruption, dozens of ruby eyes staring down with fury dancing in their depths.
Another surged forward, ripping through the air with feral intent. Not towards Aidinza, but the mess of frightened ghost behind him.
It screeched as the stick caught it in the ribs; for a moment, its thick, slick fur, meant for resisting the coldest of winters, touched fire. The beast was thrown metres through the air, flame engulfing it.
It was not for long; Pokémon were built far too tough for normal fire to do severe damage.
But that was more than enough of a statement to give the pack pause, tempered by their reckless comrade's quick, painful admonishment.
Then, as they did the first night, they began circling. A slow encompassment as the creatures slipped into Aidinza's blind spots, pressing in as his attention flickered between them.
The Ya'an-ah boy simply set his feet, twisting slightly, so he stood over the lakeside ghost as its shape slowly redefined itself. The pokémon were far more cautious. When Aidinza turned his attention on them this time, they flinched back beyond their initial encroachment.
It was a stalemate. One that Aidinza had no recourse but to maintain. He could not fight a dozen pokémon and the moment they realised that was the end of it. No, as much as the cold might be setting in, as much as his sweat might be crystalising to his skin, this stalemate benefited him. If only because the longer time went on, the infinitesimally slight chance that something happened to drive the pokémon off rose.
He glanced towards the pokémon between his legs; it looked like itself again or at least did not look like a mass of shadowy other. But it was indistinct, flickering from one moment to the next. He doubted it would be able to run.
A branch creaks behind him, and he whirls towards it with a sneer, fire arcing through the air as it sends the beast skittering back into the canopy.
A creature, the first he had accosted, drops to the ground, snarling at Aidinza as its claws ripped through the earth. Aidinza growls back, throat taken by the feral dominance he had used to teach Sandile.
He was claiming this ground, this forest, this ghost. It was his.
The pack grew ever wilder, hissing and snarling, a furious cacophony of yowls as they savaged at whatever they could reach. Seething as they were denied.
He hissed back, his countenance as feral as the creatures above him, another slow growl built in his chest as he whirled on another beast, spearing out with his blunt stick and sending it screeching into the snow. He lets it out as his back straightened and his eyes flashed in a primal display more fitting of a krookodile than a man.
It was enough that the creatures wavered. They might have been able to rip Aidinza to shreds in truth. But as they picked and skittered at the edges of his reach and were rebuffed each time, they seemed to begin doubting that.
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With fire and bluster, it almost seemed like he was moments from dissuading the pokémon.
Aidinza whirled around once more, torch borne high, his eyes containing the same apex primalism that had ruled distant sands for hundreds of thousands of years, the physicality that was borne from a hard life of sun-scorched labour on full display.
But at that moment, so terribly critical, the worst happened. Maybe he moved too fast, maybe the fire just waned at the wrong moment, maybe it was just the Trickster Moon revelling in chaos.
But the torch sputters and dies in the wind.
His eyes flick to it, and at that moment, the words that come from his mouth would curdle a sailor's blood.
Aidinza did not give a moment for the unfortunate loss of his weapon to register with the creatures about him. In one smooth motion, he had pulled the lakeside ghost into his chest, ignoring the terrible otherness about it, and had thrown himself into a dead sprint forcing himself through the awful pain in his leg.
The pack hunted.
-
Aidinza's entire body burned. His legs screamed for a break, and his lungs begged for a moment's rest. His aches and cuts throbbed and bled thick rivulets of blood. He needed to stop.
But he could not. A single moment's pause, a single stuttered stride… it would be his end.
The creatures showed no sign of hesitation as they dogged him; they were natural-born hunters, as at home during a knife's edge as Aidinza was at home in the sands. They cut him off, corralling him into uneven dangerous grounds. Constantly keeping him under pressure as they forced him to exhaust himself running uphill. Waiting for him to expose a single weakness they would ruthlessly exploit, the most minor chinks to dig into.
Aidinza knew it was only a matter of time. At some point, all the discipline and dogged, pertinacious will to live would fail him as his body simply lost the ability to keep going.
If the way his left leg flinched and tightened with each step was any indicator, it would be a matter of sooner rather than a matter of later. He needed to do something. He clutched the ghost tighter as his eyes flickered through the thicket, desperately searching for something to rip him from this spiral.
His eyes caught on something in the distance, and pure desperation made it appealing. He twists his stride, only avoiding stumbling in the loose snow with a lifetime's experience in shifting ground, breaking for the forest's edge.
He had hardly taken a step before three of the black-furred cretins reacted, darting from the tree tops, interposing themselves between Aidinza and his new direction. He doubted they knew what he had planned; they were just taking cruel delight in ripping any semblance of control from his hands, knowing he would not dare run straight into the pokémon hunting him.
In another circumstance, they would be right. Even if he did manage to get past them, there was little doubt in his mind that it would result in him being injured, and no doubt it would take bare minutes before they were on him again. It would be too much risk for too little reward.
Aidinza hardly broke a stride, throwing himself at the roadblock with a single-minded brutalism. He crashes into one, using as much weight and momentum as he could to crush it into the tree behind it. Without wasting a moment, he turns on the next, using the stick that had once been his torch as a bludgeon to bat it away as it lunges at him, catching it in its teeth and sending spittle and splinters flying through the air.
For humans, being crushed into a tree or taking a tree branch as thick as Aidinza's arm to the face would put them down for the count. As it stood, Aidinza knew that he had mere moments before the disorientation of the hits wore off, and the pokémon were left no worse for wear.
So he did not allow a moment to go to waste, desperately throwing himself back into a dead sprint no matter how much his body begged him to just take a moment. Unfortunately for him, he had forgotten one key detail in his exhausted rush.
There were three pokémon blocking his way.
As he crosses from forest to an open plateau, the last creature crashes into his back and sends him tumbling into the snow in a tangle of limbs. Frantically he tries to fend the beast off with one arm, slamming his fist into its side to no effect.
The black-furred pokémon loomed over Aidinza, its ruby red eyes filled with cruelty and savage anger as it snarled in his face, its rotten breath feeling like it was moments away from freezing the moisture in his eyes.
Then in a flash of moonlight, pain blossomed along the arm keeping the lakeside ghost hidden against his chest. He screams as his arm is wrenched away, claw scraping against bone.
A beat passes, then something… heavy and wrong touches the air. Hidden by the creature's bulk, he feels as the lakeside ghost twists and contorts. Then what feels like a hundred thousand skittering legs pour off it, over his skin and onto the clawed creature poised over him. While he could not see what it was, he certainly saw what it did to the creature. It screamed in terror, powerful claws tearing at its fur as it panicked.
Aidinza tossed the creature from his body as it madly scratched at itself, tearing out clumps of fur as a hideous mass of skittering black poured over it. He did not take a moment to figure out what it was, forcing his brutalised arm back up to cusp the lakeside ghost to his chest and then forcing himself to keep moving.
Already he heard the rest of the pack screeching behind him, trees rustling as they descended to the ground to chase him. But they were too far away as Aidinza approached what he had seen through the trees.
Pushing him uphill had been an intelligent tactic to exhaust him, sapping at his strength far more than just running along flat forest ground would have. But unfortunately for his pursuers, uphill inevitably became downhill.
Snow sprayed as he skidded to a stop, eyeing the drop before him with trepidation. It was far from a sheer cliff face, but there was no chance he would have anything beyond the barest hints of control beyond the first six steps.
He glanced over his shoulder at the approaching horde and felt his lips pull into a sardonic smile. The barest hint of control was better than no control at all, he supposed. He takes a single look at the ghost still clutched to his chest, half coated in blood from where his arm had been stabbed.
It nearly looked like the ghost Aidinza had first met. But it was clear it was exhausted as a single yellow eye cracked open to peer up at Aidinza. He gives it a reassuring smile that he was pretty sure was just too many shades beyond mad to be anything akin and covers it with his arm once more.
And jumps.
He managed all of eight steps before the momentum ripped his legs from under him, and he was left to tuck his limbs in and hope that whatever he hit at the bottom was soft enough not to break him.
For nearly three minutes, he tumbled down the hill, rolling and rolling and rolling, able to do little more than hiss in pain as his already pummelled body was thrashed further, as thin shrubbery sliced at his skin, and he was slammed again and again into the ground.
Even his iron discipline could not force him to do anything more than lie there in the furrowed snow and groan as he finally came to a rolling stop at the foot of the hill. After a long moment, he feels the lakeside ghost in his arms stir, and he carefully rubs a thumb across its half-existent head.
Aidinza grunts as he sits up, his left arm rubbing at his thigh where it had landed on a rock during his descent. He glances to the side, seeing that he had avoided breaking his back on a frozen pond by mere metres. Then he glances up the hill, a vindictive part of him hoping to see the black-furred wretches seething at his escape.
But this blasted, demented place would never be so kindly. He felt despair stab through him as the miserable creatures raced down the hill, their long claws anchoring them as they went. He sighed and glanced down to meet yellow eyes, it still flickered and jittered beyond the boundary of its own body, but it was only a stone's throw from seemingly being fully recovered.
"You should probably get a move on." He mutters with cold, stiff lips as he staggers to his feet. The ghost just stared up at him, wide-eyed. "I can't get away from them, couldn't before, sure shot won't be able to now. But it'll take them a moment, hey? Maybe that's enough of a head start."
Something catches in his throat, and he forces himself to swallow down a hopeless noise. "Just do me a favour? You know the Pheyan'atho? They have my pokémon. I need you to… tell them I'm sorry. Tell Naazin to look after the others, no leaving Nihanlo to just freeze somewhere, a-and tell Shandíín not to give any reason for the others to beat him up too much."
He rambles, the words spilling from his mouth in an endless tide. "Tell Pawniard, and blast it even, Mawile. I'm sorry that I didn't have enough time. That even if they weren't around long, they're still part of the team. Tell Astazhei I'm proud of him, a-and Nihanlo has to look after the team, but Astazhei has to protect them, alright? And to do that, he needs to look after himself."
He pulls the ghost from his chest, lifting it in the air. "And Sandile… tell him he was right, and I'm sorry I shouldn't have left him behind…." He hangs his head for a moment. "and I'm so so glad it was him that day. I'm sorry we fought before I left, and I love him, tell the entire team I love them, alright? A-and tell Astazhei to find a Corviknight in the Ya'an-ah desert; she can lead them to my sister."
His eyes flick to the hill again, the pack closing in with every passing moment. "You have to go." He looks back at the ghost as it curls around his arm, staring at him wide-eyed. "You have to go. Tell them, please." He begs as he tries to push it into the air.
It does not move.
The rasp of claw on claw fills the air.
It was too late.
Aidizna sighed and pulled his right arm across his body again, hiding the ghost from view. He made it this far, may as well see how long he can make it take.
He lets his gaze slip over to the approaching pokémon, his green eyes flinty. The sneak of pokémon approached with languid intent, they knew as well as Aidinza did that he was not getting away after a fall like that. His eyes paused on one as it stepped forward, chest puffed out. It was bigger than the others, older maybe, or a leader of some sort. A clump of fur on its chest was burnt away, exposing bleeding leathery hide underneath. He flashes teeth at the creature and feels a malicious rush of satisfaction as it flinches back.
This might have been the end of the line, but Aidinza had made sure that they would remember him for a long time, and even though he knew that antagonising them would only make things worse, he would take what victories he could get at this point.
"Not like it could get much worse." He mutters, carefully controlling his breath as it misted in the freezing air in front of him.
The moment of weakness seemed to infuriate the black-furred mustelid as the pack paused to snicker, and it surged forward with a furious squeal. Claws trailed along the ground, sending a snow spray drifting into the air.
It seemed to be little more than a wasteful display, something to desperately assuage the wound to its pride. Unfortunately for the creature, it made it child's play to jilt out the way. He sidesteps the wild charge with a twist of his feet, his boot stomping in its back and sending it sprawling metres away.
In a moment, it was back on its feet, its ruby-red eyes flashed with fury, and a steely light slowly spread down its claws. There was no doubt that it was livid.
A low growl filled the clearing, the mustelid froze, and Aidinza realised he had managed to live long enough to regret his words, as a large figure stalked out of the forest.
It was a beartic, filthy, dishevelled, but no less brutally imposing. Its mouth peeled back, exposing jagged teeth as its roar shook the forest. The pride-fouled leader twisted around to face it, hissing as it attempted to puff itself up.
The ice bear hardly gave it a second glance as its mighty paw slammed into its body, sending the long-clawed creature crashing into a boneless heap metres away.
The beartic snuffs at the air once, and then beady black eyes lock onto Aidinza.
Aidinza remembered those eyes just as well as they remembered him. But last he saw them, they were filled with such red-hot fury that they stilled his heart. These eyes were not filled with red-hot rage. No, this was far colder… darker. The beartic was not angry. It was filled with hate. Unrelenting black hatred, cold and focused.
The beartic was going to rip him apart. Not just because he was food or because he had invaded its territory. But because it was going to personally revel in it. Because it wanted to.
It limped forward, its left paw a mangled mess of exposed flesh and crushed claw. It must have been injured by the cave's partial collapse, Aidinza realised.
It blamed him for that.
In most circumstances, that would have been terrible. The absolute worst possibility, a wild pokémon actively wanting you dead, usually only ended one way, especially for someone with no pokémon to protect them. But… Aidinza's attention drifts, ever so slightly, to the pack of pokémon that had just spent the last hour hunting him through the forest.
For a moment, all the smaller pokémon did was shifted awkwardly. They had been off put in a simple standoff with a human hardly able to harm them against a brutally behemothic beartic; they were thoroughly unnerved, hardly daring to breathe.
The beartic turns on the creatures, its eyes filled with burgeoning madness, as a possessive, hateful growl rips from its throat, sending the pack flinching back. It wanted Aidinza for itself and wanted nothing to interfere with that.
A moment passed as a tense standoff formed between the three parties, and Aidinza studied each in turn.
First, the pack of pokémon not wanting to give up their prize so easily. They had hunted him and the lakeside ghost for hours, tormenting their prey through icy, dark forests. Aidinza knew the teetering edge of hunger that wild pokémon often existed on; this much energy expended with nothing to show for it… it boded poorly for their winter.
Aidinza's feet slowly shifted in the snow, his breath carefully controlled as he angled himself away from the pack. Despite the hate and power behind the beartic, he suspected the pack would be the biggest danger to him getting out of this alive.
The second was beartic, a barely restrained abyss of hateful insanity swirling in its eyes, a cloying desperation to take revenge into its own potent claws. It had been slighted, its home invaded and if Aidinza had to guess, partially destroyed when it caused that cave-in. He might have even been sympathetic if it was not his neck on the line.
The lakeside ghost stirred, its body slowly coiling around his arm. He could escape the beartic he had managed the first day. He was injured… but so was the beartic. It was just a matter of getting somewhere he could leverage his superior agility. His legs tense as he carefully scans the surroundings, his heart sinking as he realised that the closest treeline was where the Beartic had emerged from and that behind him was open ground. Both doomed prospects unless…
The last of this little triumvirate was, of course, Aidinza, not wanting to die in some frozen hellhole. Selfish, he knew. He hoped that the Sun could forgive him for his lack of consideration. With a touch of something mad rearing up in his mind, Aidinza laughed at his own joke.
It was a little thing, little more than a chortle and a snort. But it was enough to break the tense air. The beartic surged forward with a furious roar, spittle flying everywhere as powerful muscles threw it forward metres in moments. The pack split between defending 'their' meal and fleeing in the face of such a powerful pokémon do both, some scampering away, others lingering to watch the beartic.
Aidinza, for his part, twisted on his feet and bolted for the tree line as fast as his ruined body could. It was a pretty impressive speed, but compared to the beartic, it was almost like he was standing still.
He would never make it to the tree line.
But then, as his feet hit slick ice, that was not his goal. His grip tightened around the claw, wincing as it dug into his bandages, and he desperately hoped it was in good enough shape.
Whoever said that only Trainers taught pokémon and not vice versa?
Aidinza lets his feet slip out under him, momentum carrying him for a moment over the slick ice as he twists in the air. Behind him by a mere metre was the beartic, and Aidinza liked to think if its face was not burning with so much hate, it would have been confused as its target dropped right in front of it.
With all the force he could muster, he slammed the claw into the ice, grunting as it stabbed through, and momentum nearly ripped his shoulder from its socket. Then he ripped himself forward and dove for the beartics' left side.
It attempts to stop itself, to fight against the incredible momentum it had already built up, and whirl around to crush Aidinza. But it makes a critical mistake. It puts its total weight on its left paw.
The leg, mangled by whatever happened in the aftermath of Aidinza's escape, buckled and collapsed from underneath the massive bear, sending it crumpled into the ice.
Aidinza did not waste a second, scrambling to his feet and making the mad dash to the far closer forest from which the beartic had emerged.
Which put him in the path, once more, of the black-furred hunters. Few had stuck around, but those who did wasted no time trying to take advantage of the opportunity. For another insane moment, Aidinza wondered what even their plan was, the beartic had tripped, not been laid low, and already he could feel the shake of the ground as it began moving again. Even if they managed to kill him, the beartic was so consumed by hateful vengeance that it would probably rip them to shreds for it.
Aidinza would probably never find out. Thankfully, rather than because they managed their first step, it was because the oppressive wrongness of the lakeside ghost once more touched the air.
Once again, a tide of skittering things - bugs, Aidinza realises, but none of what he had ever known - spills from the lakeside ghost, dropping from Aidinza's chest to form a carpet of scurrying black.
Whatever the move was, it was effective in repelling the pokémon. But it seemed to exhaust the ghost further, its once nearly fully defined shape once more going strange around Aidinza's arms.
Something that he could process later, or maybe he would just try to desperately forget the horrible feeling of that many insects crawling over him. For now, he simply focused on getting away.
The relief that flooded Aidinza as he crossed into the forest made him wonder if this was how people with Verdanturf syndrome began to feel about their captors? Not even a sense of safety, but of slightly less danger sparking a feeling of intimacy.
When all this was over, Aidinza was going to have to make sure that he did not have any lingering attachment to this blasted place.
Of course, that was all theoretical, as the beartic reminded him mere moments later as it crashed through the tree line behind Aidinza, sending splinters flying everywhere.
He was not out of the woods yet in the most literal interpretation of matters. He ducked and weaved through heavy underbrush and thick roots, pushing his thrashed body for all it had left.
All he had left was not much. He was running on two hours of sleep at best, even if it had just been three days of gruelling physical exertion and surviving extreme cold that would have left him exhausted enough. But add to those hours of running and tormentation, a tumble down hundreds of metres of hill, and the injuries he had wracked up from the cave?
Aidinza was lucky to be moving and, in very frank terms, doubted he would be moving for much longer.
But he managed to move far enough as he stumbled past a tree; taking a moment to prop himself up on it, he listened carefully. When several moments passed, and he did not hear a single tree felled by the monstrous strength of the beartic, he felt relief flood through him.
He collapses to the ground, taking desperate heaves of air, chasing the terrible burn from his lungs for what feels like minutes. It was only the lakeside ghost stirring, unwrapping from his arm, that pulled him out of his recovery.
Aidinza glances down at the ghost, trying to blink the exhaustion out of his eyes. Was it… smaller? The lakeside ghost had never been particularly large, but now it was downright diminutive, or maybe his bone-tired mind was playing tricks on him.
He dazedly shook his head, trying to focus as the ghost tugged at his wrist, barely able to do much more than budge his arm. He studied it again for a moment, wondering if it had something it was trying to tell him.
Slowly his attention slides up to where it was tugging him 'towards'. He blinked as a rush of recognition hit him; he was close to his first camp. Close to where he had first arrived at this horrid place.
"I have either gone a very long distance or a very short one." The lakeside ghost tugs at his wrist again with as much urgency as its own exhausted body could muster. However, it was also spent from the brutal night, slumping out of the air to hang off Aidinza's wrist.
He's distracted from the ghost as something solid drops from the air, bouncing off his shoulder. He grabbed it; it was a small piece of "Hail?" He blinked, brow furrowing. It had been snowing non-stop since he arrived, but thankfully the weather had been mercifully uneventful. A moment later, more pieces of hailstone began to fall, the beginnings of a hailstorm.
His attention slowly drifts back to that familiar tree. "You might be onto something." He mutters towards the ghost before he sways to his feet, pushing through the continuous ache that pervaded his body as he limped in the vague direction of his once-camp. It did not take long; the lean-to he had made two days before stood firm, even if it was coated in a thick layer of snow and a growing layer of hailstone.
Hail crunches as he sits down underneath the lean-to, and a yawn cracks his jaw. With a moment's peace, the adrenaline flooding his veins fled, and he was left moments away from crashing in its aftermath.
With leaden limbs, he reaches out and brushes the snow from the fire-pit, there was not much as it had been covered by the weaved roof of the lean-to, but even that meant that the kindling underneath was damp and cold.
He sighs and leans back as his eyes grow heavy. The Moon had nearly slipped from the sky, and the slightest hint of the Sun's glory purpled the slightly cloudy sky. Dawn would break soon, and this would all be over.
As if the forest itself was rebutting him, the hail grew heavier, the sound of it bouncing off the trees near deafening.
The lakeside ghost tugged at his wrist again, and when he looked down, its wide yellow eyes were staring up at him. He smiles at it, his other hand coming to stroke along its body, the terrible sinking hopelessness when it did not flee before long since fallen away. "We're safe; this is going to be over soon."
It seemed to visibly gather itself and tugged on his wrist again, the simple act seeming to exhaust it. Aidinza's brow furrowed; it seemed… worried? His eyes linger on where it was still clinging to his arm. Even exhausted as it was, it refused to let go of him. Did it… want to come with him?
A warm joy bubbled up in his chest; he had grown attached to the lakeside ghost, and if there was anything that would leave him with fond memories of this place, it would have been meeting the serpentine pokémon. "If you want to come with m-."
Humans can not physically keep up with a pokémon; some pokémon they could maybe briefly overpower if surprised, and if they had momentum on their side, Aidinza proved that. But the moment their strange energy came into play, there was little a human could do to compete.
Except when it came to reaction speed, especially when it came to Trainers. They dedicated hours every day to trying to keep up with pokémon, and so their reactions were honed to a fine edge.
That reaction speed was the only reason Aidinza was not crushed under his own lean-to. He throws himself forward as a towering form shatters the wood into splinters, crushing through the weaved lean-to with contemptuous ease.
Adrenaline floods through Aidinza, the dark edge encroaching on his vision ripping away as he rolls over his shoulder, twisting around to see his assailant.
The beartic.
Of course, it was the beartic.
In the dwindling hailstorm, it was nearly invisible, just a looming figure of gaunt ribs and potent muscles. But the hateful murder that poured off its every twitch was unmistakable.
Aidinza attempted to throw himself into another run, it would have been fruitless at this distance, but it would have been at least an attempt. But the moment's rest had cost him; his tired muscles and strained nerves had cooled and were no longer primed to the intense effort that had been needed to keep Aidinza alive throughout the night.
His calf spasms and tightens into an excruciating stitch.
He crashes to the snowy ground, back cracking painfully even through the thick snow, all but left immobile as the homicidal beartic stalks forward. Aidinza drags himself backwards through the snow, a last-ditch effort to keep the space between him and the ice type. But it only takes a few seconds for him to bump against a tree, the solid wood a terrible condemnation.
Lacking anything better to do, he pushes himself upright, back against the tree, as he watches the beartic stride forward. For a moment, Aidinza wondered if it was savouring its victory or if it was simply making sure that he had no hope of escape.
With as much subtly as he could manage, he tries to shift the ghost off him. Hoping that it realised that even if it had not fled the first time Aidinza offered, that now was different. With his other hand, his fingers closed around the claw in his trouser.
Aidinza and the ice-types eyes met for one last time, the demented hate-filled black meeting grimly defiant green.
A powerful paw glowed white as the beartic reared up.
A low, mournful, keen filled the air as the ghost twisted around his arm.
Aidinza lunged forward, claw held like a dagger, one last obstinence as the paw crushed down through the air.
The red dawn touched the horizon.
Both met nothing but air.
Three intensely bright beams slam into the beartic's side, digging into pinched ribs with macerating force and sending the ice type flying off to the side.
His head snaps to the source, his stomach turning strangely as both relief and innate fear curled through him. In the air hovered the three-headed figure of Unova's most feared brute. On its back, a robed figure sat.
The Pheyan'atho.
The beartic was on its feet in moments, a terrible roar shaking snow loose from the trees, and it charged forward. For the hydregion or Aidinza, the young nomad could hardly tell.
Mostly because it did not get far, a whistle pierces the air, and once again, three orange beams - hyper beam his dizzy mind recognises - lance through the air and crash into the beartic, sending it toppling to the ground.
Weakly it attempts to push itself to its feet, the black hate in its eyes burning away under a helpless rage as its prize was ripped from its grip at the last moment. Despite himself, Aidinza found himself impressed. Hydregion was the apex of Unova for a reason; even taking an attack from one was beyond what most pokémon could dream of mustering.
To get up after two? Especially one as powerful as hyper beam - his tired mind was still rolling over the consecutive uses - that really did speak to the beartic’s commitment.
Granted, that was a commitment to rip Aidinza limb from limb. But in that moment of terror, exhaustion, and relief, he found himself flippant enough to look past that.
The third barrage was too much even for the beartic; it collapsed into the snow, breathing but unmoving.
Footsteps pulled Aidinza's attention away from his attempted killer, and he felt the ghost slip away as the figure approached him. He resists the urge to try and catch the ghost, merely staring down the approaching elder.
It might have stung, but it was the lakeside ghost's decision.
"You're alive." Unktehila's words were not precisely pleasantly surprised, but they were close. More like his expectations were met, but he was not sure what his expectations really were.
Aidizna leaned back against the tree behind him, dulled green eyes meeting calculating brown. He should have gotten to his feet and greeted Unktehila as his status as another tribe's elder deserved. Under most circumstances, he would; Aidinza was nothing if not polite.
"Take me back to the village; I want to get back to my pokémon." This was not most circumstances, so all the elder got was a flat demand.
If that offended Unktehila, or his two companions, they did not show it. The elder merely inclined his head and whistled once more, a higher pitch this time.
The hydregion approached, and Aidinza climbed onto it.
They were gone in moments.
-
Flying on the back of a hydregion, without being blindfolded, gave Aidinza an appreciation for many things. First and foremost, how smooth the wingless flight of the Unovan Brute was. The second was that it was no surprise that the Pheyan'atho stood on the precipice of Unovan dominance so many times throughout Unova's history. The sheer speed of the dragon type was a terrifying combination with its absolute power.
It had taken the dragon only twenty minutes to clear the icy forest, and the relief that flooded Aidinza as they broke the treeline was indescribable. All the tension and stress bled from his body between one breath and the next.
He was looking forward to indulging in the comforts of society, a good tent and enough food to fill his belly.
A few minutes later the hydregion lands in one of the many clearings that dotted the village of dragons.
One already filled with waiting Pheyan'atho.
Carefully Aidinza slips from the dragon's back, wincing as he landed on pained limbs. A mutter passes through the crowd, low and pointed. Unktehila is not far behind Aidinza, something which only causes the muttering to intensify.
“De uƞkitawapisni hokṡina yuha ni Haŋhépitúwe. Isw-" Unktehila begins, his voice low and solemn. But as the crowd parted before a tall, white-haired figure, he fell silent.
Aidinza did not blame him; Drayden's face might as well have been carved from stone, his countenance giving almost nothing away. But there was a flicker of something furious in his yellow-brown eyes. For a long moment, he says nothing, simply staring down Unktehila.
"The outsider has completed his Haŋhépitúwe, Itaƞcaƞ wicaṡta otokahaƞ. Three days and three nights until the red light of dawn." The elder's voice was, perhaps on the surface, respectful. But even Aidinza could feel the poison dripping from each word.
"This was not what I meant, Unktehila." Drayden's voice was measured but far from calm. Each word chosen carefully lest they flare up into an uncontrolled tirade.
"You demanded proof. I give you proof. His heart beats, his lungs rattle in his ribs. Makipaƞ ituƞṡnis'a." Another hush of whispers, whatever Unktehila had just declared, it seemed to carry with it a heavy weight.
Drayden's demeanour shifts, and he all but snarls at Unktehila before turning to Aidinza. The look on his face was fearsome, and if Aidinza had not just spent three days staring down pokémon hellbent on tearing him limb from limb, he would have been cowed.
As it was, tired green eyes met furious burnished gold with an indolent stare.
A few moments pass, before Drayden recollects himself, his face imperious.
"Have you learned what you came for, Ya'an-ah?" There was something cruel in Drayden's eyes, like he was moments from revealing a sick trick. Aidinza's mouth opens, a half-formed mind to tell Drayden to shove his head up Unktehila's ass before the words register and his indolence flees.
Had he?
Between the terror, and helplessness and freezing cold. Had he learnt something? Had he learned what Brycen told him to learn?
He stood there, searching in himself. Searching for something fundamental about him that had changed or some truth that three days of torture had revealed. In that moment, he found nothing.
Three days.
Wasted.
The thought almost drives Aidinza to despair as his eyes trace the assembled Pheyan'atho…
Elders.
…
He scans the gathered people again and casts his mind back to the near week he had spent with these people. As he looks, he meets Jha'y'zéča-den's eyes, the brown-eyed boy seems lost, but when he realised he had Aidizna's attention, he simply mouths, 'are you okay?'
Aidinza just stares at the boy for a while as he nervously shifts.
For a moment, he just looked.
"There is nothing for me to learn here, is there, Drayden?" Brycen did not send him here to search for a lesson steeped in wisdom. "Or nothing I wanted to learn."
He sent him here to learn a lesson steeped in warning.
"Where is your next generation Drayden?" His own tribe had blinded him to this, he realises. The Naisho'h were old, or they were young. They were a tribe in decline as their adults fled deeper into the desert.
The Pheyan'atho were not far different. But it was not a fervent adherence to faith that had brought them low.
"Don't try this, boy." Drayden's voice was filled with a deadly calm. A warning that Aidinza would not like what happened if he kept this up.
"Do you even know? Do you even care?" Aidinza pressed on regardless, and the way Drayden's nostrils flared told him all he needed to know. "You don't even want to know. How long would you have let me stumble around deluded to think that I would want my people to be like yours? Are you even really a people Drayden? Your own leader runs from his name, what else does he flinch from?"
And there it was.
That flicker of shame in his eyes.
Aidinza felt his anger build, his tired eyes growing sharper. Maybe it was exhaustion, maybe he had just gone over an edge, chasing after a delusion in his mind… Unktehila might have almost gotten him killed, but if what he thought was happening here was true…
Drayden was spitting in the face of the whole point of Aidinza's journey.
"Why do you deny Jha'y'zéča-den?" Aidinza hears the boy's sharp intake of breath but keeps staring down Drayden. The question related to his friend, but it was not for him. "Where are your people? Do they even know who they are?"
"You have no idea what you're talking about. Tokatahaƞ." Drayden's voice shivered, his hand wavering between his belt and chest as his eyes began flickering from Aidinza to the empty air around him.
“Itaƞcaƞ wicaṡta otok-.” Unktehila speaks; his voice is soft, consoling even. But Drayden interrupts him.
"No. I have had enough of this." Drayden's head snaps to Unktehila, his voice a low growl. "Unktehila, you have done enough damage today. We'll talk about your role in this later. Ya’an-ah, Tokatahaƞ.” He spits out, as he looks at Aidinza. "You have gone behind my back, abused my hospitality, and accused me in my own lands. I will not deny you a gym battle, but I will deny you my home. Leave."
The gym leader turns sharply, his head held high and the crowd once more parts before him. Aidinza could almost be fooled into thinking that Drayden thought he was in control, was almost fooled into thinking that the retreat did not burn like bile in the Gym Leader's throat.
"Two days," Aidinza calls after Drayden's retreating back, his lips pressed into a thin line.
The gym leader did not pause his stride, merely scoffing as he continued to walk away, the door of one of the many houses dotting the valley slamming shut behind him.
The young native stands there, staring at where Drayden had disappeared, as the Pheyan'atho mutter among themselves.
"Jha'y'zéča-den." He glances over to the boy and watches as it takes him a long pause to snap out of his daze. Aidinza jerks his head and lets a grin cross his face as the boy rushes over. "In order, I want my pokémon, I want enough meat to feed a snorlax, and I want my tent. Reckon, you can help with that?"
"Uh, what do you feel about something greasy?" The boy seemed half torn between disbelief and concern, close enough to see the full extent of Aidinza's injuries.
"I don't know what that is." But it sounded absolutely perfect to Aidinza's ears at that moment.
"I know a burger place in Opelucid that has an open pokémon seating area." Jha'y'zéča-den gestured towards the mouth of the valley, where Aidinza imagined if his vision was not swimming, he would see Jha'y'zéča-den's bike.
He steps off.
"Pokémon, then burg-." Black encroached on the edge of his vision, and his legs collapsed out from underneath him. Only Jha'y'zéča-den's quick reactions stopped him from slamming face-first into the snow.
"Aidinza, I think you need to go to the hospital." Jha'y'zéča-den hoisted the Naisho'h upright, pulling Aidinza's arm over his shoulder as he did so.
“Pokémon, burger, tent.” Aidinza insisted as he tried to limp forward.
"You're bleeding." Jha'y'zéča-den held him back by his arm, studying the hand that had been ripped apart by repeated uses of the claw. "By Zekrom, I can see bone Aidinza."
"Pokémon, burger, hospital?" He offered, after a moment of thinking.
The younger Pheyan'atho boy groans.