It took less than two minutes to get the rest of the group woken up and on the move. We all raced down the path with Echo in the lead, guiding us towards the source of the screams. Isaac and Charity fell behind quickly, and Florence and I had to recall most of our Pokemon since they weren’t able to keep up either. Only Echo up in the air and Natu zipping along from spot to spot along the side of the path stayed out with us.
Echo swung off to follow a side track that led north of the main path, and my heart thundered even harder than before. Wasn’t this the route that led to Zuri’s family’s farmhouse? Had the monster attacked her parents, or her sister? No; now Echo was veering off again towards the side, aiming for a different farmhouse entirely.
I almost tripped over my own feet as we got close enough to make out details in the darkness. The front of the house looked normal, but I could now see that the side facing to the west had been torn open. The material that had been used for the walls – clay, maybe? – had collapsed into the interior of the building, though there were scattered pieces of wall all over the ground outside as well.
Florence got to the building first. She paused to release Skiploom and Snubbull, then flung the door open and ran inside. I was hot on her heels even as I aimed Pausso’s poke ball to the side, sending him out right next to me. He knew what was coming, so he didn’t ask any questions, but his eyes did start to glow as he prepared himself for a potential fight.
It was mostly dark in the one-room building, though a low fire still burned in the hearth built into the floor. That just barely shed light on two figures that lay on the ground near the broken wall. I looked around hurriedly for the monster, trying to find any hint of where the attacking Pokemon had gone, but there was nothing. We were too late.
Florence hissed in frustration as she came to the same conclusion that I had already reached. She ran towards the hole in the wall and peered out of it, then quickly waved Natu over. “See if you can sense anything moving away from here,” she told the bird.
I didn’t wait around to watch what Natu did, since I was too busy rushing over to the two people laying on the ground. The first one, a man, was laying with his head splayed at an angle that looked wrong. I ignored the wave of nausea that swept over me and put two fingers against the side of his neck. After a few careful seconds I shakily let out the breath I’d been holding. He didn’t have a pulse; he was already dead.
T̸h̸i̸s̴ ̶ o̵n̶e̶ ̴ i̷s̷ ̷ a̶l̸i̷v̷e̸, Pausso thought urgently.
In a heartbeat I had scrambled on hands and knees over to the other figure. She had a massive gash on her forehead that was sluggishly bleeding, but she was still breathing shallowly. I hovered over her, feeling helpless. I didn’t know anything about medicine beyond the first aid basics I had learned in school! What was I supposed to do now?
Bleeding – bleeding was bad, right. I could help with that. My hands shook as I pulled open my satchel, grabbed one of the small bandages, and folded it up. I pressed the cloth firmly against the woman’s forehead, and she stirred slightly and groaned at the pressure.
“Got it!” Florence cried from her side of the house. “We can track it! Monroe, hurry, let us go!”
My hands kept shaking as I looked down at the woman. I couldn’t see her face in detail in the dim light, but unless I’d gotten my directions mixed up she had to be the nice farmer who had given us a couple of yuzu from her orchard in thanks for our warnings the other day. I had told her to stay inside after dark, but clearly that hadn’t helped. The monster had found her anyway.
If we went after the monster now, maybe we could capture it and stop its rampage before the night was over.
If we could actually take it down. If it didn’t kill us instead.
I drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “No,” I told Florence in the steadiest voice I could manage. “This woman is alive. Injured, yeah, but alive. We should stay here and help her.” A flash of insight came to me, and I hurriedly continued with more confidence. “And when she wakes up, she can tell us what she saw. That’s worth the delay, right?”
That made Florence rush over to where I still knelt by the woman. She looked down at us and bit her lip. “It could attack a second time tonight,” she said, though her voice was uncertain.
“It never has before,” I replied. Though it had never broken into a house before either, so precedent didn’t mean much, apparently.
“But if Natu loses the trail, we will not be able to find it again.”
N̸o̷t̷ ̸ n̸e̸c̵e̷s̶s̷a̸r̴i̸l̴y̵, Pausso interjected. I held out my free hand to make Florence pause and looked over at him. S̷h̶e̸ ̴ h̶a̸s̵ ̶ f̷o̷u̷n̴d̴ ̴ t̵h̷e̸ ̴ e̵n̷t̵i̴t̶y̶ ̶ o̷n̸c̸e̷;̷ ̸ s̴h̶e̶ ̴ c̸o̷u̷l̶d̴ ̵ f̸i̴n̷d̷ ̸ i̵t̵ ̴ a̵g̴a̷i̷n̴ ̴ i̵f̵ ̸ w̴e̴ ̴ g̵o̴ ̸ l̴o̶o̴k̶i̶n̸g̴. He turned to say a few words to Natu, and the bird chirped in agreement.
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I passed his words along to Florence, then attempted to smile. “See? There’s no rush. We can help this woman and go after the thing that hurt her in the first place.”
She hesitantly nodded, which filled me with relief that was mixed with the tiniest bit of shame. I resolutely ignored that feeling. I was just making sure we gathered proper information before we went into a dangerous situation. It was a perfectly logical thing to do.
And if it also felt a bit like I was stalling for time… well, that was just a coincidence.
~
Charity and Isaac caught up to us a few minutes later, and the four of us quickly got to work. Florence was sent off to Cianwood to fetch the herbalist, who also doubled as the town’s doctor. I stayed next to the injured woman and kept a close eye on her while Charity ran around fetching water and blankets and other useful things to keep the woman alive. Isaac hovered over us at first, but when it became clear that he couldn’t offer much additional help he turned his attention to the rest of the house instead, using our spare lantern to examine and jot down notes about every little bit of evidence he could find from the fight. He also found a blanket to put over the dead man’s body, which I was personally grateful for. Every time I saw him out of the corner of my eye, it made me feel sick all over again.
I sent Echo out to patrol the area, just to make doubly sure that the monster hadn’t attacked again, and worried myself sick until she came back with a confident squeak that meant all was well. Then, oddly enough, I found myself feeling sleepy of all things. I hadn’t gotten any rest yet that night, and just sitting there silently waiting wasn’t particularly interesting.
Still, I managed to stay alert and keep watch over the woman until Florence got back with Esther the herbalist in tow. The old woman took one look at the farmer and tutted, then leaned down and started examining the woman’s body with efficient care. Everything went smoothly when she was checking the farmer’s breathing and heartbeat, but that changed when she picked up the woman’s hand to feel along her arm. Out of nowhere the farmer woke with a gasp and immediately screamed.
“Broken,” Esther said in a clipped tone. She carefully set the woman’s right arm down and moved to pick up the other arm as the woman breathed raggedly. “Do you remember your name?”
“Cla…ra,” the woman said slowly in a groggy voice. We had put our main lantern down next to the woman’s head, so I could see her more clearly now. Her eyes looked unfocused, which made me anxious.
“Good. Clara, do you remember what happened?”
“S’all fuuuuuzzy,” she slurred. “Head… hurts.”
The old woman grimaced and carefully set Clara’s left arm down, then held her hand out two feet away from the injured woman’s face. “Here, try to touch my hand.”
Clara shakily raised her left arm, but she missed Esther’s hand by several inches. “Huh?” the woman said, sounding confused.
Esther tsked and gently pushed Clara’s arm back down again. She quickly felt along the woman’s legs, ignoring Clara’s incoherent mumbling. Then she nodded and turned to Charity, who stood nearby with Maisy clutched tight in her arms. “You – boiling water, bring it to me as soon as it is prepared. And you –“ now she gestured to Florence and me – “you are trainers. Are any of your majū adept at healing?”
Florence shook her head silently as Charity raced off to put water in the kettle above the hearth. I rubbed the back of my head. “Drowzee could put her to sleep with Hypnosis,” I suggested tentatively.
“Forced sleep will not help in this case,” Esther told me, and I wilted a little. “She needs natural rest. I can clean and bind the wound on her head and help reduce her pain, and after that we will set her arm. That is all we can do for now.”
I exchanged an anxious glance with Pausso, then looked back at Esther. “Do you think she’ll be able to remember what happened better later?”
“Perhaps,” the old woman replied as she leaned down to more closely inspect Clara’s eyes. The injured woman blinked slowly in response. “Perhaps not. It varies with head injuries.” She glanced towards the side, to where the dead man still lay, and grimaced. “If you need information from her, you may as well ask now. I suspect things will get worse before they get better.”
By that point Isaac had joined our cluster of people, so I tried to motion for him to ask the questions, but he gestured at his notebook and then motioned back at me. Florence was no help either, as she just shrugged when I looked at her. I sighed, feeling incredibly out of my depth, then crept forward a bit so I could see Clara’s face better.
“Hi, Clara? It’s Monroe. I visited your house the other day to talk to you about the recent attacks.” She tried to turn her head to focus on me, but she grimaced and stopped after moving only a tiny bit. “Do you remember anything about what happened? It’s really important.”
“S’blurry,” she told me.
“I know. That’s okay. Anything you can tell us would help.”
“Ahhh… we wer’talkin after eeeating. Mar-Martin said…” she trailed off, and her eyes widened. “Maaaartin? Wher’is he?”
My stomach sank into a pit of awfulness, and it took a huge amount of self-restraint for me to not look at the dead body off to the side of the room. I knew we’d have to tell Clara what had happened eventually, but surely ‘eventually’ didn’t have to mean now. “Try to focus,” I told her as gently as I could. “Did you see what attacked you?”
“Came through th’wall,” she said groggily. “Dust ev-everywhere. Big gray thing.” She reached forward and clumsily grasped my sleeve, and her eyes finally focused enough to meet mine. Mew help me, she looked haunted. “Th’eyes! Red eyes!”
Isaac was already writing down the details furiously, so I tried to focus on Clara. “It attacked you, right? What did it do?”
“Threw somethin’,” she mumbled, “hit m’head. It, it pick’up Martin and… and…” suddenly her eyes filled with tears, and she quietly started to cry.
“That is enough,” Esther said gently as she moved forward. Clara’s hand loosened its grip, and I hastily backed up to give her more space. The old woman glanced back at me and motioned with her head towards the door. “If you wish to discuss this, please do so outside. She needs quiet.”
I was all too willing to get out of the room by that point. The others followed me out; even Charity left her post by the hearth to join us, though she hovered by the door so she could listen for when the kettle would go off.
“That does narrow things down,” Isaac said in a low voice once we had all gathered together. “A large gray majū with red eyes, capable of throwing and likely generating rocks –“
“Rocks?” I interrupted, confused. “She didn’t mention rocks.”
“There was one on the other side of the room with traces of blood on it,” he said by way of explanation. “It must be the thing that hit her.”
“So the monster must be a rock type,” Florence said with a nod. “But which one?”
I frowned as I thought. Golem, Rhydon, and Aggron all came to mind, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what any of their eye colors were, or if any of them were supposed to be common in these mountains.
“Does it matter?” Isaac pointed out. “We know it is a large rock type capable of attacking with thrown projectiles and brute force. And we know it can be found up on the mountain.”
“And we can track it now,” I added reluctantly. “Well, Natu can, and maybe Drowzee can help give her a boost if she needs it.” My starter wagged his trunk in agreement.
Florence turned towards me and nodded, looking determined. “We know what we are facing, now, and we know where to find it. That means we can go after it and stop these attacks once and for all.”
One look at her face and I could tell that I wouldn’t be able to make her wait much longer. Besides… she was right. We had delayed once already in order to get more information, and all of this had happened as a result. I felt sort of responsible for that man’s death, even though the logical part of my brain knew it wasn’t my fault, and I didn’t like that guilty feeling at all.
Part of me worried that even if we did our best, we’d be the next victims in this string of deaths. But I couldn’t let my fear get in the way of what had to be done.
“Okay,” I told Florence. Then I swallowed hard. “Tomorrow morning, we go after the monster.”