The Statement of Albert Fitzgerald

The accused Azumarill, as accurately transcripted by P. N. Wells of the Onkanay County Police Department on the 23rd of January, 1931.

I tell you once again, gentlemen, that your questioning is fruitless. Take me as a scapegoat, if you must; detain me in your jails and try me in your courts; I tell you the truth and nothing but. I do not know the fates of Avery Greengrass nor William DuPree, as much as you insist that I must, and I can only tell you what I observed before I lost sight of the two of them. I will tell you what happened one more time, if only to stop your inquiries, but I will warn you that it is no different from what you have already heard of me. 

It is true, as you have pointed out to me many times before, that I was a close acquaintance of both Ms. Greengrass, the Skiploom, and Mr. DuPree, the Larvesta. We were not in an exploration team together—none of us were members of any sort of team—but we regularly carried out contracted work from the Guild in Lakehill City. We met by pure happenstance about three years ago at MacDouglas’ Pub in that town after a heavy night of drinking, and we sobered up together in Greengrass’ flat on Windport Avenue. DuPree was an intern at the guild, a paper-pusher from what I gathered, and rapidly introduced us to the racket he had organized for his friends; low-risk, well-paying jobs destined for the guild’s regular members were swiped by him before they could make their way into the system, which were subsequently offered to his friends in waiting to earn a quick buck. Greengrass and I joined in on this circuit, as we were both in need of money quite desperately, and took them at a rate close to twice per month. Typically, it was just Avery and me doing these jobs, though William stepped in occasionally when he could find the time to do so. I am aware this likely amounts to some sort of fraud where I assume some portion of liability, though I feel that the situation I have found myself in takes precedence over financial crime at this moment.

Starting six months ago, or thereabouts, William offered us the first in a series of jobs from an Espeon by the name of Carl Edward West. Initially I knew little of West, but William informed us that he was some sort of wealthy eccentric with an affinity for the occult. The dark artists of several hundred years ago often found a sense of peace in the chaos of Mystery Dungeons, or so he said, and many of their writings and spiritual possessions were left when they fled for one reason or another. He, of course, wanted these artifacts, and hired us through the guild to retrieve them. The jobs were somewhat difficult, admittedly, but paid an amount ludicrous even by guild standards. After recovering a chalice from the thirteenth floor of Gengar’s Keep, Avery and I were awarded 4,000 Poké each, with the promise of similar pay if we were able to locate another. As such, the two of us began working quite regularly for Mr. West, and we eventually managed to get William on board as well. 

The more I—and Greengrass, to an extent—worked for West, the more daunting of a figure he appeared to be. He had an entire room dedicated to the spoils he’d managed to acquire over the years, only a small fraction of which were supplied by us, and he talked of each off-looking statuette or volume as if it were more vital and important than his own life. Some of your investigators have called the three of us ‘complicit’ in his studies; I feel that term strong, even by your standards. None of us, not even West himself, truly knew the foul forces we had found ourselves messing with. Perhaps we should have read some of the tombs we had acquired for him, even if only to realize the stupidity of picking up the damned books in the first place.

Two days before Greengrass and DuPree disappeared, I received a telegram from West urging me to visit his flat at once. This was not an unusual request from him, particularly in the weeks leading up to that moment, so I visited him without much concern. He claimed to have uncovered the location of a new artifact, a pendant made by hands ‘not ordinary in nature,’ and placed a bounty of 10,000 Poké upon its arrival. I inquired about its origin, for which he said it was either made by Human hands or divine will—or perhaps something in between. This was a high, though not unusual, price for him to offer; I contacted Greengrass, and the two of us readily agreed to depart the following day to unearth it from its tomb. It was in a dungeon I had not heard of before, a so-called ‘Bitterfrost Woods’ near the mountains up north, but research proved a trek there to be easily completable in one day’s time. The following day, shortly before we were to depart, I visited DuPree and asked him to accompany us, for which he accepted. It is obvious that this was an outrageous error on my part knowing what I know now, but I suppose fate works in mysterious ways to cause such horrid things to occur.

The trek was long. Not exceedingly bad, but far more than I ever cared to travel on foot. We took Routes 21 and 521 up to the McCoy River before following that stream up to the base of Truewood Mount. By that point the sun had long since set and we, figuring that we were no more than a league away from the dungeon at hand, decided to rest the night away in a makeshift encampment near the riverbed. If you do not take me for a fool, I cannot possibly speculate why you still suspect me of foul play after you found evidence of our stay; should I have wished to kill the two of them, as monstrous of an idea that may be, I could have simply slashed them right then and fled upstream towards Lake Onkanay without going through any of this headache. String whatever narrative you want to build, evidence and logic be damned, if you want.

We left no later than ten on that day—nine-thirty if I were to offer my best guess. We departed and left quite rapidly, if only to shorten our expedition as much as possible, and arrived at Bitterfrost without any issue in time or navigation. Avery’s timepiece read ten-thirty-seven as we entered those depths, and I have no reason to doubt its authenticity. West could not give a precise location of the amulet’s location, though he offered an estimate of floor seventeen or eighteen when I pressed him for one. The dungeon was dank; though its surroundings were frozen solid by the frigid temperatures of the region, the entire wood dripped in musty water somehow unaffected by the cold surrounding it. It was colored in shades of green and brown, clearly once vibrant, though long since decayed into a mix of putrid grays. It was certainly offputting, to me at least, but I tried to pay it no mind as we descended further into the dungeon’s reach.

Pokémon were sparse throughout the entire trek. The few we did encounter—Driftblim, Muk, and Todescruel were by far the most abundant—had a level of sloth unparalleled by any other dungeon I had ever ventured into. They were sluggish and dull, as if they were dying, waiting for their inevitable fate with an excited tiredness. On many floors we saw no Pokémon at all, and the ones we did see offered up very little fight for their apparent level. The deeper we delved into Bitterfrost, the worse it got; what little color the trees had faded, the ground grew more and more damp, and a noise akin to a broken radio started to assault our ears. It was faint at first, but slowly grew in volume and attack as we carried on. By the fourteenth or fifteenth floor, I was struggling to hear what Avery or William were trying to say, and not long after my own thoughts started to get muddled in that deafening slurry of nothingness. It was on the seventeenth floor when, after many minutes of hopelessly shouting at each other, we finally managed to find the pendant West had requested of us.

The pendant was somehow stranger than the land that surrounded it. Though West had not described it to me in great detail, I was certain that it must have been what we were looking for, as the noise invading my ears was practically deafening standing right next to it. It was golden in hue, though I doubt it was made of the material, and it was about the size and shape of a TM’s disk with a lanyard cord punched through its top. The word ‘Carcosa’ was crudely written on one side with black ink, and a strange symbol was physically etched onto the other. The latter consisted of three lines converging on a single center point, itself hailed by three half-moons, all curved and distorted in a way that somehow seemed both ordinary and perplexing. We all stared at it for a minute before William went ahead and grabbed it, and I immediately noticed something was wrong after he did. DuPree was always bitter—hardened to the world, you might call it—but the moment he picked it up, he instantly changed into a completely different Larvesta. He perked up, a smile plastered across his hidden face, and the discomfort Bitterfrost gave us seemed to have completely left him. The noise around us somehow became more staggering in volume, nearly knocking me back in shock the moment William had grabbed it. I couldn’t hear a word he was saying, but I knew something was horribly wrong by that way he acted toward us. He quickly offered the pendant to Avery; she was to accept it, but I pulled her away before she could touch it. DuPree almost seemed amused at this and offered the thing to me instead; I smacked the damn thing out of his hand.

He went to pick it up again for Arceus-knows what for. I bolted out of the room we found ourselves in, Avery quickly following suit. That was the last I saw of DuPree—should the world be merciful, I hope he found death rather quickly afterward. Even if you did manage to find him, he would be changed, and I fear not for the better. Avery and I traced our steps back quickly, rushing out of whatever misfortune happened below us and trying to put in some distance in case DuPree followed the two of us. The noise began fading, thank the heavens, and after a few levels of climbing back I could finally, finally hear the world around me again. I stopped to catch my breath and talk to Avery; much to my surprise, she was quite annoyed at me. She wanted to save DuPree, thought he could even be saved, and would have done so in a heartbeat if I didn’t practically force her against doing so by running back so quickly. I do not know if she was naïve or if we were acting on completely different spectrums, but I found what she was saying to be utterly idiotic and urged her to follow me out of the dungeon instead. She refused and told me that, come hell or high water, she was going back to help him. I plainly told her that I was not going to die in that dungeon and, much as she’d care for me to, I would not follow her if she decided to look for him. She grunted and turned back towards the way we’d come, back towards DuPree.

As I saw her walk off, eventually out of view, I couldn’t help but feel an immense guilt for not stopping her. I don’t know if I could’ve, but I didn’t even think to do so until she was long gone. Of course I never saw her again, and I think I knew it at that moment too, for I started to rage at the stupidity expressed by both myself and Greengrass. I knew there was nothing I could do, but I had too much anger within me to stand idly by. I shouted in vain, knowing that she wouldn’t hear me but hoping she may anyway—

“YOU FOOL, WILLIAM IS DEAD!”