Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: The Forest Temple (Ch4)

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Corrupted Forest Shrine


	The trio stepped off the stairway and into a large square room, and looked around in surprise. This room was notably different from the rest of the dungeon, in several respects. Its floor was dirt like the last two floors, but the walls appeared to be covered in—or perhaps made out of—thick roots coming down from a dirt ceiling about a dozen feet up above. In addition, there were no torches anywhere, but the roots themselves seemed to have small glowing specks of green light all over them, scattered all about like stars in the night sky. With their light, the room was illuminated even brighter than the dungeon with its torches. The trio stood at one end of the room, but there was nothing else in the room, and no corridors leading off from it.

	“I think this is the dungeon’s end,” Cyndaquil remarked. “That’s a surprise. This was the shortest dungeon I’ve ever seen.”

	“This dungeon must be brand-new,” Skitty said. “It must not have had time to grow.” She turned to Clefairy, gesturing around the room with her long tail. “Clefairy, do you recognize this place? We’re not in the dungeon anymore. Are we back in the Temple?”

	“I don’t think so,” Clefairy said, looking around the room nervously. “This doesn’t look like any room inside the Temple. The Temple is carved from stone, like I said earlier, and the walls are all smooth stone. There isn’t a room with walls covered in roots like this. Unless something changed in the last few days since I came here last.”

	“That’s a real possibility,” Skitty noted. “When places turn into mystery dungeons, they can become unrecognizable. Mystery dungeons are distortions of space and time, after all—it’s completely possible that the Temple got distorted, and this is actually a room inside it, but it just looks different.”

	“Well, what do we do now?” asked Clefairy. “There’s no way out of this room. And the stairs we just went down are gone too. We’re not…” Her voice suddenly grew shaky, as a frightening realization set in. “W-we’re not trapped here, are we?”

	Cyndaquil waved an arm dismissively. “Relax. There’s always a way out of mystery dungeons. They never drop you off in a dead end. We just have to look around for the exit.”

	“Cyndaquil, maybe you should try burning away these roots,” Skitty suggested. “They might be growing over something.”

	The Fire-type shook his head vigorously. “That’s a bad idea. If I did that, the fire would probably spread to the other roots, and they’d all light up. And then all the air in this room would get burned up too, as the fire drew it in for fuel. We don’t have a means of putting out fires, because your Water Pulse is Normal-type. We’ll just have to look for an opening.”

	The three Pokémon started to walk around the perimeter of the room, looking closely for any gaps in the roots that they could get through. But within a few moments, they all began to hear a deep and barely perceptible moan. The trio paused, the droning and disturbing sound freezing them in place. Clefairy and Skitty perked their ears up and listened, while Cyndaquil looked around nervously.

	“Do you hear that?” Clefairy asked. She began to shiver. “A-and feel that?”

	“The air’s getting colder,” Skitty said. She began to shiver too, her fur doing nothing to insulate her. “At least, I think so. Do you feel it too, Cyndaquil?”

	“Of course. You’re not just imagining it,” Cyndaquil said, as the fires on his back flared up, giving off warmth and fending off the cold that was seeping into the room somehow. “I’m a Fire-type. I can sense temperature changes pretty well, and I can tell for certain that this room is getting colder. How, though, I can’t say.”

	“Maybe it’s because of that!” Clefairy said, pointing towards the center of the room. The two Delvers spun to look at what she was pointing at, and stared in surprise. A single glowing red light, hovering in the air at a height of several times that of any of the three Pokémon, had appeared in the center of the room. It stayed there, motionless, and the three Pokémon observed it warily.

	“What is that thing?” asked Clefairy.

	“It might be another Ghost-type,” Cyndaquil said, the fire on his back growing taller and brighter. “Get ready. It might attack us.”

	The three Pokémon braced themselves, and watched as the floating red light began to glow brighter. A shape started to materialize around it, turning into a form vaguely resembling a tall tree with a pair of arms growing out of its sides like branches. The red orb became a single eye set high on its torso, and the three Pokémon finally recognized what this shape was.

	“That’s a Trevenant!” Skitty said. “It’s part Ghost-type. That’s a problem. Cyndaquil, you’ll have to—”

	“I’m on it,” the Fire-type said, attacking the Trevenant with his Flamethrower. The flames struck the Ghost/Grass-type, and Cyndaquil expected the Pokémon to be staggered, if not defeated outright. But as the flames dissipated, it became clear that the Trevenant was completely unfazed by the attack. It began to slowly walk towards the trio, its six short legs scuttling along the dirt floor of the room.

	“It… it didn’t take any damage!” Cyndaquil shouted. “Or at least, every little. But that was a super-effective attack! How did it withstand that?”

	“Hurry!” Skitty cried. “Try again!”

	Cyndaquil breathed another stream of fire at the Trevenant, but the enemy shrugged it off like it was nothing, walking right through the flames and towards the trio. The three Pokémon stumbled back as the Trevenant advanced on them, and they soon found their backs against the wall of roots behind them.

	“What do we do?” Clefairy asked in a panic.

	“My Flamethrowers aren’t doing anything,” Cyndaquil said. “And if they can’t do anything, I’m not sure what can.”

	“Just keep attacking it, Cyndaquil!” Skitty said to her partner. “Don’t give up!”

	Cyndaquil nodded at her and charged up another Flamethrower, but before he could launch it, the Trevenant spread its arms wide and leaned back, and let out and earsplitting screech that filled the room. Skitty and Clefairy lowered their heads and clamped their big ears down in a futile attempt to block out the sound, while Cyndaquil just hunched over and gritted his teeth. Their ears were ringing loudly as they looked up and saw, to their shock, the Trevenant raise its arms, readying an attack. The arms turned pitch-black, and dark smoke drifted from them, looking like no attack they could think of.

	“Scatter!” Skitty screamed. The three Pokémon dove to the sides, and the Trevenant unleashed slammed its arms down where they had been standing. The impact of its arms on the ground shook the room, and the three Pokémon stumbled as they tried to gather together again behind the Trevenant. The Ghost/Grass-type slowly turned around to face them, and the trio backed away slowly once again. The Trevenant’s arms returned to their normal black, brown, and leafy green coloration, but dark smoke continued to drift from them.

	“Was that Wood Hammer?” asked Cyndaquil. “It looked like it was, except for its arms turning black, and that black smoke it gave off.”

	“What could that smoke mean?” Clefairy asked her companions. “Is it because of the fire attacks you were using, Cyndaquil?”

	“I… I don’t think that was it,” Skitty whispered. “I think I know what that smoke really means.” Her voice grew low, and she began to shiver again. “Oh, please don’t tell me it’s—”

	“Skitty, I think this is an Abyssal Pokémon,” Cyndaquil said.

	“I just told you not to tell me that!” Skitty snapped.

	“What’s an Abyssal Pokémon?” asked Clefairy. “I’ve never heard of something like that.”

	“Bad news, that’s what,” Cyndaquil replied. “Skitty and I ran into one back at the Tree of—well, that’s confidential guild business. I probably shouldn’t talk about it with you here, Clefairy. But, simply put, we once took a mission to a place corrupted by the Abyss, which caused it to turn into a mystery dungeon. And it was guarded by an Abyssal Pokémon at the end. Abyssal Pokémon have been corrupted by the Abyss just like the places that are becoming mystery dungeons, and that corruption makes them very aggressive and very powerful.”

	“The Abyss? Come to think of it, you did bring that up before we came to this place,” Clefairy said. “I’ve heard a bit about it, but mostly just in legends. It’s some alternate world of darkness or something scary like that, right?”

	“That’s right,” Skitty said. “And it’s been intersecting with our world for the last month and a half, or so. That’s why so many mystery dungeons have been spawning lately.”

	“So, you’re telling me this is some kind of super-powerful corrupted Pokémon… and it apparently barely takes any damage from even a super-effective attack?” Clefairy suddenly yelped as she bumped into the wall, having backed up from the Trevenant enough to finally reach the other side of the room. Her companions glanced back and saw that they had indeed run out of room, and the Abyssal Trevenant was looming over them again. Its arms turned black again, and it spread them wide.

	“Run!” Cyndaquil shouted. As the three Pokémon dove to the sides again, the enemy swung its arms in a Shadow Claw attack, and the trio just barely dodged it. Clefairy shouted out in fear as she felt frigid air blow over her back, displaced by the Abyssal Trevenant’s swinging arms. She was unharmed, though, and regrouped with her companions behind the Abyssal Trevenant. Once again, they backpedaled slowly as the Ghost/Grass-type turned and advanced on them again.

	“We can’t keep doing this,” Skitty muttered. “We can’t keep dodging forever. We have to think of something.”

	“But what are we supposed to do?” Clefairy cried. “How can we even damage it?”

	“Don’t panic,” Cyndaquil said. “Last time Skitty and I fought an Abyssal, we were able to defeat it. So there’s still hope. These things are not invincible.”

	“But we also had a lot of help last time,” said Skitty. “We had four other Pokémon with us, and we were able to defeat it by overwhelming it. But this time, I don’t know if just the three of us can defeat it.”

	“Then what do we do?” Clefairy shouted. “Are we just helpless? Is it hopeless to fight?”

	“There’s always hope,” said Cyndaquil, sounding notably confident. “We’ve just got to find where it is.”

	“And that’s the hard part,” Skitty said, sounding much less confident than her partner. “But if we keep dodging, we might be able to buy enough time to think of something we can—wait, what’s going on?”

	They had reached the center of the room, but the Trevenant had stopped approaching them, instead standing still near the wall and closing its eye. As the trio watched, it raised its arms and moaned quietly. As it did, the trio noticed that the ground had begun to shake, and they glanced down in confusion. Right under Cyndaquil, the ground looked like it was splitting open, a small crack appearing in the dirt ground directly under his chest.

	The Fire-type stared and started to step back. “What is th—”

	In an instant, his inquiry turned into a blood-curdling scream as a jagged, inch-wide spike erupted from the ground and impaled him through the chest.

	“Cyndaquil!”

	Skitty shrieked the name of her partner as she stared in shock at the sight of him getting run through. The spike lifted Cyndaquil several feet off the ground, going straight through him and out his back. For a few seconds, he flailed his limbs spastically, letting out a strangled scream of pain.

	Then he went limp and fell silent.


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