Ben and Celia came out of the forest on Arcanine’s back. They were bruised, soaked, and singed, but doing alright besides that.
Chansey, Audino, Marcus, and Tim quickly attended to Ceruledge, Armarouge, and Incineroar while Infernape and Arcanine helped warm Ben and Celia up before they changed out of their soaked clothes.
As Tim had predicted, Celia wanted to get out of the area asap, she wasn’t going to stick around long enough to see if Noble Wyrdeer was ready for round two.
Leo and Angela rode on Arcanine’s back while they recovered, though Leo would probably be on Arcanine duty for at least the next few days while the med-tech Marcus had and Pokemon magic from Audino and Chansey did their work.
Apparently part of the reason why his injury wouldn’t take long to heal was because Psychic and normal type energy don’t do lasting or hard to heal damage like some other types.
Marcus ended up launching into an explanation of type interactions before switching to Noble Pokemon as we made our way into the next leg of our journey, a completely treeless tundra.
Things were tense and everyone was kind of jumpy, but I really didn’t know what could be creepier than an endless mob of Stantler silently staring at us in the woods. I shuddered at the thought.
Meanwhile, I overheard Jason trying to connect to the ranger base with his modified walkie-talkie, but he got nothing but static. I wasn’t surprised cause everyone else’s communication devices were fried, but he kept insisting that his device was specifically made to resist any interference.
After a few hours of traveling across this snowy wasteland, Sigilyph and Xatu spotted something in the distance and alerted us.
A minute later, a bunch of brown dots came into view, it was a herd of Mamoswine. Justine informed me that we were going to give them a very wide berth. Mamoswine in the deep wilds were extra aggressive due to the types of predators they had to deal with.
As predicted, a few of the larger Mamoswine turned to look at us with suspicion as we gave their herd a healthy distance while we traveled.
Thankfully they weren’t as trigger happy as the wild Walrein, so they left us alone. Our team really wasn’t in a good enough condition to face a stampede from them.
We were still on the open tundra by the time it got dark, and were forced to camp out in the open. Kenta and I had our dragons replicate the rock wall from earlier, and Abigail had her ice types froze the boulders together while Justine placed her talismans all around the area to ward of ghosts.
While we were in the forest, the trees were able to block most of the harsh freezing winds, not out on the open tundra. The rock wall helped block out the winds, and make our camp seem just a bit warmer. I didn’t envy whoever was going to have to stand guard that night.
----------------------------------------
I jerked awake to the ground rumbling and quickly sat up as I tried to figure out what the rumbling was.
Winnie and Kaiju were already awake and listening as well. Seeing that I was awake, Winnie jerked his head towards the tent door, “that doesn’t sound good.”
“Yeah no shit.” I replied as I scrambled to get my shit together. Even though the tents had their own heating (thank you Devon tech) I had made a habit out of sleeping in my gear, ready to get up at any moment.
The others had made a similar habit due to Celia’s advice, so it only took a minute before I returned Kaiju and got out of my tent, ready to book it if needed.
Turns out I was slow, cause almost everyone else was already outside and scrambling around like a nest of disturbed ants under the dim light of the moon and the campfire.
Celia ran past me and shouted over her shoulder, “Get what your essentials Azalea, there’s a Mamoswine stampede!”
Ahh shit. Just what we needed.
I followed Celia as she joined the others gathered around the campfire, “What’re we gonna do? We can’t outrun them can we?”
“We could probably avoid the herd by flying.” Kenta suggested, glancing nervously in the direction of the approaching rumbling sounds.
“Not an option. That swarm of Cryogonal will either freeze us to death or make us fall to our deaths if we fly.” Tim said, pointing up into the sky in the direction of the rumbling.
In the darkness of the sky, I could see a swarm of hexagonal shapes flying towards us, occasionally firing beams of ice down at the Mamoswine herd. Are they herding the Mamoswine? I didn’t think Cryogonal were that smart.
Collin grimaced and scratched the back of his head, “Too bad the twins can’t freely teleport around in the illusion dome.”
Angela isn’t in any condition to do the same stunt she pulled yesterday either.
Crossing her arms, Celia began issuing a string of orders, “Angela, I need your ghosts.”
Still looking rather drained, Angela dismissively waved a hand for Celia to go ahead, the ghost type master’s shadow rippled as dozens of eyes turned their attention to the team leader.
“Those who are good with Confuse Ray, use them on the Mamoswine. Convince them that there’s a cliff face where out campsite is and that they should go around it to avoid crashing into a wall. Focus on the herd leaders, the others will follow.”
Ahhh, herd mentality.
A clutter of dark shaped broke free from Angela’s shadow and darted away in the direction of the herd. I noticed a small shadow from Justine darted away to join the others too.
Celia then pointed to Winnie, Zoroark, and Angela’s shadow, “Zorua, Zoroark, and ghosts who are good at illusions, I need an illusion of a cliff-face where we are prompto. Go!”
Winnie and the others sprung into action, the white fox jumped onto one of the rock walls and began running around it, weaving an illusion as he went. Zoroark, a Mismagius, and a Chandelure joined him as they created a pretty bg illusion of a cliff face where our camp was.
Despite not being able to see the herd stampeding, I could hear a change in the cadence of the herd’s footsteps. They were close, but I didn’t know how close. They could crash through our rock wall any second. This was nerve wracking.
Keeping calm, Celia issued another string of orders, “Ben, Kenta, Abigail, I need you three to work on getting rid of the Cryogonal scaring the Mamoswine.”
Ben saluted and quickly sent out Charizard and Talonflame, hopping onto the former before they flew off. “I call first shots!” The fire type specialist yelled over his shoulder as Abigail send out Corviknight and Froslass while Kenta sent out Dragonite and Flygon.
I watched as they flew off towards the swarm, Celia turned to the rest of us, “We need to get started on Plan B, Tim, get your Diggersby out. Azalea we need Garchomp’s help as well. We’re digging a tunnel to hide in, in case the Mamoswine don’t turn enough.”
I nodded and sent out Sahara while Tim sent out his Diggersby and the two began digging.
----------------------------------------
The stampeding Mamoswine herd was still a little less than a mile away, but they were approaching fast.
Dusknoir rose of the the ground, followed by multiple Banette, a Chandelure, a Gengar, a Hisuan Typhlosian, a Cofagrigus, and a Yamask.
“I’ll take the one at the herd point.” Dusknoir told the others before flying at the herd, conjuring a ray of light between its hands and flicking it at the Mamoswine leading the charge. The Banette followed Dusknoir’s lead.
Chandelure and Cofagrigus followed suit, the lantern ghost creating Confuse Rays above each of its flames while the coffin ghost created one per hand.
“The ghost with the lowest confuse count gets night duty!” Chandelure shouted to the others at it fired off the Confuse rays at the herd.
“Nu uh!” Gengar shouted back, darting forward to confuse a few Mamoswine.
Typhlosion stood back with Yamask and watched. It glanced behind it as a rather large and realistic looking illusion of a cliff face appeared, replacing their campsite.
“Hmm, that’s an impressive illusion isn’t it?” Typhlosion commented to Yamask. The mask ghost shrugged and crossed its arms, “I bet I can do better.”
“Mmhmm.” Typhlosion hummed, it raised a paw and sharply flicked it upwards as the Mamoswine began to get a little too close for comfort.
A myriad of ghostly fireballs flickered to life and moved around the herd. Seeing the fireballs, the lead Mamoswine squealed in anger and panic before veering sharply to the right to avoid running through this sudden wall of fireballs and the cliff face that suddenly appeared.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
It didn’t remember there being a cliff face there. It blinked its eyes as another wave of dazzling lights hit it in the face. No, wait, that cliff face was always there. It made sense there there was a cliff face in the middle of the flat tundra, they should turn right a bit more to avoid crashing into the cliff face!
The herd began to turn but were startled again by a few Ice Beams from the Cryogonal who had been attacking them. The Cryogonal wanted them to go straight, but they would crash if they went straight!
As all this went on, a group of Pokemon flew out of the campsite, going straight for the swarm of Cryogonal.
“I can get them away from the herd! You guys focus on eliminating them!” Ben shouted to the others, “Talonflame, Sunny Day! Charizard, Heat Wave!”
Talonflame squawked, sending a ball of fire into the sky with a flap of its wings. Charizard roared and sent a wave of fire at the swarm Cryogonal, forcing the living snowflakes to scatter, else they’d be evaporated.
“Hurricane!” Kenta shouted, Dragonite flapping its wings harder and generated a whirlwind that with a sudden gust, turned into a howling storm of wind. The Cryogonal clattered with crystalline sounds as they were blown away like leaves in the wind.
Flygon flew in and fired off a Fire Blast at the swarm, evaporating even more Cryogonal, Abigail and her team came in with a Hyper Beam from Corvinight and a salvo of Shadow Balls from Froslass.
Identifying the fire types as the biggest threat, a few individual Cryogonal flew straight at Ben, their bodies glowing bright white as they prepared to explode themselves.
A red laser dot appeared on the frontmost Cryogonal. There was a baritone hum and a VWOOOOOMM as a railgun beam of electricity tore through the Cryogonal and evaporated them before they could kamikazee themselves.
Ben looked back to the camp where a Porygon-Z, a Manectric, and a Kilowatterel were, just outside the illusion. The fire specialist waved back at them before returning to the battle at hand.
The swarm scattered and reformed like a school of fish, swirling together and clattering angrily as they collectively gathered an insane amount of ice type energy.
Abigails eyes widened as she recognized the move, “It’s preparing for a Sheer Cold!” She shouted to the others before saying a quiet order to Froslass. The ict ghost hummed as it raised its head flaps and created a large Light Screen in front of them.
“Overheat!” Ben shouted to his team. Charizard and Talonflames opened their mouths wide and shot white-hot geysers of fire straight into the center of the ice type swarm.
“Heat Wave!” Kenta added, Flygon and Dragonite roared as they send a double wave of fire at the swarm.
There was a loud hiss, like water landing on hot coals. A gout of steam rushed up into the sky as the swarm was evaporated.
The team sighed in relief.
Kenta looked below at the herd, who had been successfully diverted and were now heading away from their camp. The illusion of the cliff face was beginning to dissipate.
“The herd’s been diverted too. Lets head back.” Kenta said.
----------------------------------------
Due to the incident with the herd, we had an early start that day. Winnie was exhausted from having to keep up an illusion that large so he was sleeping in my hood.
I had no problem with that, plus, walking across a tundra was a lot easier than climbing up and down icy slopes in the forest.
Everyone was in a pretty good mood after our success, though the mood went down a bit as we began seeing more Cryogonal. The snowflake Pokemon didn’t mind us, as they flew past us int he same direction we were going, which was fine. The problem was that it was a constant stream of Cryogonal flying past us. It was like they were gathering for something big.
Abigail told us that the Cryogonal were most likely gathering into a larger swarm than before, which was strange. Large swarms were not common in the wild, Cryogonal didn’t have the capabilities to communicate with each other long distance in order to gather that many in such a short amount of time.
It began to lightly snow after a while. I kinda went into the zone and didn’t pay my surroundings much mind until I nearly bumped into Justine. The group had stopped.
“Whats going on?” I asked no one in particular.
Justine turned and shrugged, she was fiddling with her energy detector-a-tron, but Kenta answered, “We’re not going anywhere. You see that dead tree?”
Kenta pointed at a tree that looked like it had been struck by lightning, “We’ve passed that like five times already.”
(Az scratches the back of her head) “Shit.” I looked down and realized that there were footprints from previous loops we had walked around.
“It’s an illusion.” I heard Justine mutter under her breath as she scanned the energy waves in the area. I patted my hood to wake Winnie up as I walked up to the front where Celia was talking with Tim and Marcus.
“Do we need Winnie or Zoroark to do something about this?” I asked the three of them. Celia. “Yeah. Go get Zoroark and maybe one or two of Angela’s ghosts for backup.”
Yawning, Winnie hopped up onto my head and I explained the task to him as I went to fetch Zoroark and some of Angela’s ghosts. He nodded with a determined look.
We have to move a lot slower from then on, but at least we were making progress.
Winnie and the ghosts were able to sense sections that were illusions and unweave them, then Zoroark would take control of the illusion strands and destroy them using dark type energy.
At least that’s how I thought it worked from how Shuppet explained it to me. She, some of Winnie’s ghost gang, and Yamask helped out with the unweaving and destroying. The teamwork made the progress faster than it originally would’ve been.
About half an hour in, I felt a chill, the hairs on the back of my neck raised and I looked around. The others must’ve sense it too. We were being watched again. Not by the steady stream of Cryogonal woh were still flying by, but something else.
A few minutes later, we came across a massive gorge that according to our maps, shouldn’t be there. The energy detection devices showed that it was an illusion, and Winnie and Zoroark helped guide us across it.
I wasn’t scared of heights, but even I was nervous to step into thin air that was supposedly actually solid ground, but surprise surprise, it really was solid ground. We walked on what looked like thin air across the illusion gorge, only to be met with a massive golden Wyrdeer.
I swear Celia looked like she was about to have a heart attack before Zoroark and Mismagius stepped forward and deleted the illusion.
----------------------------------------
I sat watching the fire dance and crackle, petting Winnie as he rested on my lap. Glados floated above, constantly scanning the tundra around us while Absol and Infernape were patrolling the perimeter of the campgrounds.
Night duty was pretty boring without anyone to talk to. Winnie and the ghost gang were pretty tired from the day’s work so they were all asleep, which felt weird cause they were usually most active at night.
Besides the constant illusions, there hadn’t been a peep from any potential attackers for a few nights. Some members of the party were relived by that, while others were even more unsettled. Celia said that she felt like the mountains were winding up for something big.
Everyone was still a bit on edge, especially Celia and Tim. Each time the previous expeditions had failed it was right after encountering a Noble Pokemon. Number one was due to the same Wyrdeer we had faced in Creepy Stantler Forest, and number two was to a golden Braviary.
They were worried due to Noble Wyrdeer’s warning about stronger Noble Pokemon. I was worried about there being a Noble Hisuan Electrode. The last thing I wanted to face was a living exploding ball Pokemon.
As for good news, Leo’s ankle and foot had gotten better thanks to the constant healing from Audino and Chansey and he was now able to walk, though he’d still sometimes have to take a break on Arcanine. I’ll admit it was a really good idea to bring dedicated healing Pokemon with us. Angela had also fully recovered from the energy drain that Spiritomb sapped from her when she was controlling it thanks to Chansey’s soft boiled eggs and a lot of berries. Those things worked like magic. Probably because they were kind of magic.
Kaiju snorted as a snowflake landed on his nose, I looked up at the dusting of snow that had begun to fall. A soft breeze blew through the snow, shifting them to be diagonal for a few seconds.
Winnie’s ears twitched and he got up, sniffing the air. “something’s changed.”
“What changed?” I asked.
Taking another sniff of the air, Winnie shrugged, “I can’t tell exactly what, but something seems different.”
“Driiffftloooooon~” We looked up at a few Driftloon floating by. They gave the campsite a wide berth due to Justine’s talismans, but still eyed us greedily until we left their line of sight.
“Sol!”Absol shouted over to us. We hadn’t bothered to put with particularly high walls this time around, so I could see a group of black shapes running towards our camp.
I stood up and stretched, “Weaviles again? This isn’t the same pack as last time right?”
Absol glanced back at the pack running towards us and shook its head. “Thought so.” I replied. The last two packs that were brave enough to try a raid were either eaten by Angela’s Spiritomb or beat up into pulps by Collins fighting types.
I turned to Infernape, “You wanna have a go at them?” Infernape had been itching for a fight ever since Ceruledge had bragged to him about fighting Noble Wyrdeer head-on.
Infernape grinned and nodded, the fire monkey’s mane of fire intensifying for a moment. With a hoot, Infernape dashed off to meet the Weavile pack in battle.
It didn’t take long for the fire monkey to disperse the dark type pack and send them packing with their tails between their legs.
The rest of the night was rather uneventful, and Collin took the shift after mine. By morning, the light snow had switched gears into a raging blizzard, dumping another few feet of snow outside in a matter of hours.
The wind howled and tore at our clothes and equipment as everyone got their stuff together to continue the journey.
We weren’t able to send out flying types like usual due to the vicious winds, not that they could see much. The snow was so thick that we couldn’t even see our own hands in front of us. Celia quickly handed out a long rope for everyone to tie to themselves so that we wouldn’t get separated from each other.
The twins send out a Hatterene for danger detection and a Mr Mime to use Light Screen to dampen the harshness of the blizzard.
Our progress was quickly slowed due to the blizzard continuously dumping snow on us to the point that we were wading through piles of snow up to our waist. In my case, past my waist, having a shorter stature made it harder to wade through snow.
There were a few illusion avalanches that were so obviously fake. Seriously, an avalanche on a flat plain? Zoroark was able to get rid of those illusions by himself.
I tucked my scarf in again as another harsh gust of wind battered at our group, and I felt Winnie snuggled deeper into my hoodie. Why does it feel like the temperature is dropping?
“Cryooooo~ Cryooooo~ Gonaaaaaal~” A bunch of voices like crystals ringing and grating off of one another began to chant above us.
“Urgh, not them again.” I grumbled to myself.
“I swear I’ll be glad to never see a Cryogonal again when we’re done.” Kenta said in agreement.
We looked up but couldn’t see much besides a few hexagonal silhouettes moving in patterns around in the sky, it was slightly reminisce to how the Unown moved.
The temperature continued to drop and I heard Celia shout something over the storm, “Ben, get rid of them!”
There was a muffled affirmative sound from Ben as he directed Ceruledge and Armarouge to use Fire Spin to trap the swarm of Cryogonal. Two massive spirals of fire erupted, twisting into the sky and through the clouds to where the snowflake Pokemon floated.
The Fire Spins were followed up by a double Heat Wave that was hot enough to temporarily warm me up and melt most of the snow in the area.
There was a loud hiss of water evaporating, but it was to no avail.
The temperature dropped again, but the blizzard slightly softened before coming back full force as even more Cryogonal flew to take the place of the evaporated ones, singing their tune even louder then before.
Another few attacks from Ben dispersed even more, but it didn’t seem to deter the Cryogonal from egging on the blizzard and singing their name over and over again.
Celia eventually called it quits, we just had to ignore the Crygonal and keep going like we were before until the Cryogonal give up. Except that they didn’t. They didn’t attack and only kept that raging blizzard up while continuing to hum that undulating tune.
The singing quickly began to rub on everyone’s nerves. I could hear Celia in front of me grumbling about that stupid song. Abigail had put some sound canceling ear plugs in, while Collin looked like he wanted to punch something. Ben was as cheerful as ever.
We went on like that for a few hours before we all heard Celia shout for a stop through the snow. Something was approaching, but I couldn’t see shit through the snowstorm.
Something roared, “ABOMA SNOW! SNOOOOW!” It’s voice echoing and booming strangely through the area.
“its saying that the lord of the mountain ordered for us to leave or die.” Winnie translated. That wasn’t reassuring.
I repeated the Abomasnow’s words to the others. Celia looked annoyed and gestured for Collin and Ben to go deal with the Pokemon. She wasn’t as worried because it wasn’t a Noble Pokemon
The Cryogonal’s singing became more intense as I saw a few flashes of fire and felt the ground shake. The battle didn’t seem to last long, cause before long we heard something large moving away
“Abomasnow aboma!” The Abomasnow shouted above the howl of the wind before it picked up the pace and fully fled.
“What did it say?” I asked Winnie.
“it said that the eyes of the guardian are always watching, intruders will now be slain without mercy.”
That was even less reassuring.
As we began moving again, the blizzard intensified even more than I thought possible and the storm became a full blown white-out. It was THE white-out.
We suspected that it was also an illusion, but it wasn’t. It was just a good ol regular white-out.
Despite the conditions, we pushed onwards. We’d be in more danger if we stopped than if we continued onwards.
Ben’s team was tasked with occasionally dispersing the Cryogonal swarm to mitigate the storm for a short while. The problem was that despite the Cryogonal being evaporated, the temperature was cold enough for them to immediately refreeze, good as new.
Eventually, the singing changed into a more guttural chant. “Translation?” I asked Winnie.
“They’re saying Lord of Ice over and over again.” The fox Pokemon replied, he shook some snow off of himself.
“Hmm…” I frowned, that was worrying. Hearing my hum of concern, Celia gave me a questioning look.
“The Cryogonal ware chanting Lord of Ice over and over again. You know anything about a Noble ice type Pokemon?”
I was surprised when Celia looked relieved, “Yes, actually I do. We’re getting near his territory.”
“And that’s good?” I asked skeptically.
Celia nodded, “I’ve encountered him before. He’s part of the reason the second expedition had no casualties. Hopefully he’s doing well.”
That’s good to hear. A friendly Noble Pokemon. I wonder what that’ll be like.