Chapter Three – The Foreboding Forest

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3.

The Foreboding Forest

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This wasn’t the way back at all, Espurr was quickly realising. The buildings of the village had long since turned to dense trees that blotted out the sun and cast everything into various shades of blue and purple. It was darker than the foggy green forest she’d woken up in before, more ominous and looming.

“Are you sure this is the way back to school?” she asked Tricky, who was sniffing something out on the ground as they walked through and brushed aside blue and purple ferns and underbrush.

“Yep! Toootally. We’re taking the loooooong way around,” the fox remarked, her eyes and nose glued to the trail ahead. Espurr could see her mental smirk. She drilled holes into the back of Tricky’s head with her suspicious gaze.

“What sort of shortcut takes us further awa—”

“Stop!”

Tricky suddenly perked up straight, sticking out a paw and her tail to stop Espurr from heading any further.

“I’m going in after him!” the sound of voices through the underbrush up ahead caught Espurr’s ears.

“No! You c-can’t! We… we’re not gonna let anything bad happen to you!”

“Like you didn’t let anything bad happen to Goomy?”

There was a scoff, followed by the clip-clop of someone backing away.

“Save it. You two go in after him if you’re so chivalrous.”

“W-why do we need to do that? I’m sure he’s fiiiine, he’s just late.”

“You eejit, he should have been back hours ago!”

“You brought us here?” Espurr snapped under her breath at Tricky. The corners of her vision were tinted with magenta annoyance, and rightly so! Now they were certain to get in trouble, and if those strange creatures happened to be lurking around… “I thought we were going back to the school!”

“Well, yoouu weren’t going to come on your own…” Tricky said. “Soo I had to improvise!”

“But…” Espurr stopped, at a loss for words. She glared daggers at Tricky, stomping the ground. “If I wanted to come,don’t you think I would have said so the first time? You can’t just—”

“But this is way more fun than sitting around in the school!” Tricky pleaded, almost like she was trying to convince herself. “You wanna have fun, don’t you?”

Cold anger laced Espurr’s face, lashing across her eyes as ice blue. She made sure as much of it pierced through as possible. If she’d had laser eyes, Tricky would have been a pile of dust.

“I guess we have very different ideas of f—”

“Who’s that?” Deerling yelled loudly towards the brushes, stealing the voice out of Espurr’s mouth. “Show yourselves!”

Tricky bounded forward, throwing apart the blue-purple leaves of the foliage. Espurr brushed past them, following her out into a small, overcast clearing.

“Oh…” Deerling, standing in the middle, relaxed as Espurr gingerly picked some twigs out of her fur. “It’s you two.”

“You guys left without meeee…” Tricky pranced forward and whined, her voice theatrically sad.

“Well, I didn’t see you signing up to help,” Deerling pointed out, staring daggers at Tricky.

“Well, no-mon told me!” Tricky whined.

“There is a good reason for that,” Deering snapped, turning around. She nodded her head down at Tricky’s silently cramping tail, which she was walking stiffly to avoid provoking. “Besides, you’re injured. Just go back to the school clinic.”

“Yeah! We don’t need a loser like you taking up precious space when we’re short on time,” a third voice interjected. The words had come from a pancham who leaned against one of the trees, his arms folded. He was chewing a twig in his mouth like he thought it made him look cool. One look and Espurr could tell they weren’t going to be friends.

“Who’s the new kid?” Pancham asked, twirling the twig around in his teeth.

“Nurse Audino’s child,” everyone but Espurr replied in unison.

“Hmm,” said Pancham, spitting his stick on the ground. Espurr looked at the wad of spit and suppressed a shiver of disgust. They definitely weren’t going to be friends.

“Look, we’re on a clock here!” Deerling stepped up. “Goomy should have been back hours ago. He could be in serious trouble! You know what happens when pokemon stay in mystery dungeons too long. And if you don’t want to get grounded for life by your parents…” she glared pointedly at Pancham and Shelmet. “Then it’s our responsibility to help him!”

“Hey,” Pancham said, raising his arms. “Dad’s outta town, he ain’t gonna do jack squat. Besides, it’s not a big deal. You’re freakin’ out over nothing.”

“I am not freaking out over nothing, Pancham!” Deerling growled at him. “You know that! You all know that! We can’t leave him in there, we can’t have a repeat!”

Tricky’s ears quickly flattened, and out of nowhere Espurr was blindsided by a cloud of haze that coloured her vision blue and blotted out her thoughts. She realised that it was coming from Tricky, who looked distressed. Desperate to get free of the mind-fog, she moved away from Tricky, and it lifted just enough for Espurr to think again. Soon after, it was gone, and Tricky had settled back into her normal peppy self. Espurr looked at Tricky with concern: what was that?

But Tricky was trying to ignore her.

All the overlapping voices and arguing that had been going on in the meantime were making Espurr’s head hurt in more ways than one. All she wanted more than anything was to be back safe somewhere quiet at the school. She hadn’t signed up for this! But at the same time… Espurr looked towards the forest ahead of her, and saw the dark, tangled mass of trees that lay ahead. Even from here, she could tell something was wrong with it. There were little things off; how it hit the light and seemed to shimmer, how it smelled, musty with a hint of black rot fuzzing around the corner. And there was another kid just like her stuck in there…

What if the Coneheads got him?

The thought of going in after him made her stomach flip. She didn’t even have both of her arms right now. But the thought of going back to the school knowing there was someone stuck in there just like her made it flip more. She couldn’t just leave him alone in there, could she? She’d never forgive herself.

“He’s gonna be fine!” Pancham shouted dismissively over the rest of the yelling. “All of this because—”

“We’ll go.”

The clearing fell silent. Everyone looked in surprise at where the voice came from. Tricky’s mouth fell open in awe and stayed that way. Espurr looked around to make sure everyone’s attention was on her, then put her good paw down.

“…Are you sure?” Deerling asked, eyeing Espurr’s cast. “You don’t look too good.”

Espurr’s attention was drawn back to her cast, and the dull maroon throbbing of her bone that was slowly beginning to become sharper. She had a feeling she was going to regret this. A lot.

“Well, you need a volunteer, don’t you?” she pressed. “I don’t see anyone else… unless you want to get an adult involved?”

Now that she thought about it, that was a very good idea, why didn’t they run with that?

“No,” said Tricky, Pancham, and Shelmet all at once. Espurr wilted inside. There went that. And she didn’t quite want to go back to Audino empty-handed anyway.

“Then I guess it’s settled,” she said.

“Hey, we won’t stop you.” Pancham said, gladly stepping aside. Shelmet quickly followed suit, bobbing his shell with a wide grin.

Deerling sent them a quick glare, then cleared a path for Espurr and—reluctantly—Tricky.

“Have fun getting killed!” Shelmet yelled after them.

“Shelmet!” hissed Deerling back with vitriol. Shelmet disappeared into his shell with a squeak. “All of you, back to the town. We’re getting some more help.”

As they walked in, the bushes began to close up the way back. Espurr looked back as they curled up around each other, creating a dark wall of blue leaves behind them. From here on out, the forest looked like it wanted to tear them limb from limb.

Maybe it did.

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Foreboding Forest – Area I

“I’m gonna be honest with you…” Tricky excitedly scampered all around Espurr and Deerling as the three of them made their way through the shadowy forest. “That was amazing! I didn’t think you were the exploring type! Now we can be fellow explorers together, and brave mystery dungeons together, and even join the Expedition Society together! When we grow up, of course. The Expedition Society doesn’t accept children.”

Espurr was still cross with Tricky, and it was written on her face. She stumbled over her own feet with a squeak again, for the seventeenth time that day. Sure, the ground was littered with all manner of trip-friendly objects, but she could tell that wasn’t the problem. How she wanted her old feet back…

“We’re just here for Goomy,” she said firmly. They were only here for Goomy. She didn’t know if Tricky heard her or not. “It’s not exploring.”

If Tricky had heard her, she didn’t show it.

Espurr looked up at the woods, noticing the utter lack of wind, how the forest seemed to stare down upon them with a thousand evil eyes, the rancid scent of decay that once again filled the air… Something was wrong here.

“This place doesn’t want us here,” she finally said aloud, shuddering. Her tail dipped low, just above the ground. “Can you feel it?”

“Well, duuuh.” Tricky was blasé, trotting cheerfully. “We’re in a mystery dungeon.” She dismissed it with a flick of her ears. “I should know, I’ve been through, like, 30 of these and come out just fine! You’ll always know you’re in a mystery dungeon when the wind stops blowing, and everything smells bad, and you get that kinda creepy feeling, like somemon’s watching you…”

Tricky’s word vomit blended in with the background noise as Espurr walked. How far in was Goomy from here? And what did he look like, for that matter? She just hoped he wasn’t too far from the entrance…

“…And you know it’s time to leave once this really thick fog starts creeping in…” Words finally stopped sprinting out of Tricky’s mouth, the fennekin falling silent as she saw the same thing Espurr did: A thick mass of fog slowly crept between the trees, thick and dense, obscuring all it touched.

“…Exactly like that,” Tricky quietly finished. She suddenly looked a lot more frantic. “Already?” she yelled to all the trees around them. Her voice echoed up into the hollow, painted canopy. “We were only here for five minutes! How come there’s already fog?!”

Espurr watched the treetops above crackle violently, blown by a strong wind that had come out of nowhere. The hackles on her tail rose.

“Tricky?”

“Yeah?” The normally hyperactive fox glanced back at Espurr.

“What happens if you stay in a mystery dungeon for too long?” Espurr asked, her voice wavering with just a hint of fear.

“Well, first, this really freaky wind starts to blow out of nowhere,” Tricky started, her tail stiffly curling behind her. “And it just gets stronger every time it comes back. And then if you don’t leave after that, then the dungeon starts lashing out at you itSELF—”

Both Espurr and Tricky, jumped a combined total of six feet apart as the trunk of a giant tree suddenly splintered apart, falling to the ground with a deafening crash and flattening the area of ground they had previously been on.

Shaken, Espurr quickly made her way around the tree trunk to where Tricky was still picking herself up.

“Maybe I should just stop talking…” Tricky finally conceded, still catching her breath from the sudden incident.

“Good idea.” Espurr readily agreed.

~\({O})/~

This had all been such a bad idea. He’d only wanted to prove himself to the other kids. He was nine! That was… a big kid’s age for sure! But no-mon ever seemed to realise that. Deerling only coddled him, and Pancham and Shelmet bullied him more than the others, and Tricky… No-mon liked to talk about or to Tricky. Not that Goomy hadn’t tried. Three months ago—the first and only time he’d attempted making friends with her—she had roped him into stealing unripe strawberries from her Pop’s berry patch. That didn’t end well for either of them.

But this was just as bad, if not even worse! Pancham and Shelmet had told him to do it. If he could find the paper they had left in this dungeon from the last school field trip, write his name on it, and bring it back to them before nightfall, they said, then they would finally recognise him as one of the Big Kids and stop teasing him! It was too good to be a dream, so he’d taken the dare.

And he’d found the paper too, on the first floor of the dungeon, no less! Watchog had taught him that dungeons always kept anything you dropped in there until somemon picked it up, and he was proud for remembering it. But then this really creepy fog began to roll in, and suddenly everything felt scarier than it should have, and he couldn’t bring himself to move! He was too scared to.

And it just got worse the longer he sat there. The fog, the drafts of wind, the scary feeling coming from everywhere… He had heard that there were wild pokemon who lived in mystery dungeons, wild pokemon that would eat you all up for breakfast if they caught you, wild pokemon that had been brainwashed by the Dungeon Wraith and set out as its personal hunting slaves…

No matter how confidently Deerling told him the Dungeon Wraith was just a story made up to frighten little kids into staying in the towns, Goomy couldn’t help but wonder if the off-kilter howls he heard travelling through the woods really were just apparitions. They didn’t sound like the howls of any pokemon he knew, off-pitch roars and screeches that rustled through the trees like the moans of ghosts.

Goomy didn’t like ghosts. He trembled again, keeping the paper close just in case a sudden wind came up and blew it away. Was he going to die here?

“GOO-MY!”

Off in the distance, to Goomy’s left. He looked in that direction, but couldn’t see anymon through the thick, prowling fog.

“GOO-MY! WHERE ARE YOU?”

His heart leaping with sudden joy, Goomy realised where he had heard that voice before. It was Tricky!

“I- I—” Goomy’s voice stuttered and died in his throat. No! He couldn’t be too scared to call for help, not when it was so close! Too scared to move, too scared to talk… Pancham had been right. He really was just a little kid after all. Maybe he deserved to be teased and coddled. He’d take that over sitting alone in this dark and scary dungeon any day.

“GOO-MY!”

With a sudden pang of fear, Goomy realised the shouts were coming from his right now. They were passing him!

“I- I… I—I’m HERE! I-I’M OVER HERE!” he yelled out, his voice returning to him with a hoarse crack. His stutter, the one he just couldn’t ever kick, returned with it. His antennae, already flopped down against his head, sunk down a little further in response.

An excruciating ten seconds passed. Goomy didn’t hear a response. The colour was draining out of his slime. Had he not been loud enough? Did they not hear him?

But all his fears were dashed when two shadows approached through the clouds, the fog parting to reveal—

A pair of furfrou. They leapt out of the clouds in sync, their eyes vacant and their mouths dripping with drool, both aligned in permanent snarls. Goomy couldn’t stand it anymore. He broke down in tears, collapsing into a puddle. He was going to become some wild apparition’s lunch!

“Begone, foul beasts!”

Tricky’s voice whistled through the air again, and the furfrou were suddenly sent running off once a pair of twin embers blasted through the fog and set both their scruffy heads alight. They howled and snarled, tendrils of fog seeming to snuff the fire out as they scurried off. Tricky pounced out of the mist, followed by an espurr Goomy didn’t know but was just as glad to see.

“T-Tricky!” Goomy happily slimed over to Tricky, giving her his best attempt at a non-slimy hug. Despite the warmth from Tricky’s fur, he couldn’t stop himself from shivering, his slime trembling from the echoes of fear. He’d never get over his cowardness, would he…

Happiness was short-lived, however. The mystery dungeon let out a bellowing screech that blew through the trees and nearly knocked the three of them off their feet.

“Uh-oh…” Tricky looked up at the trees, rattled. “It’s getting mad. We should go.”

~\({O})/~

“In my two years of service as the esteemed Vice Principal of this school…”

The luminous orbs were uncovered in the Principal’s Office, one of the rooms in the back of the School Clinic. They shone with a warm yellow glow, illuminating the coat of Watchog as he paced the office like a military madmon. All three of the other teachers in the room tiredly sat in front of him as he did it. “In my two flipping years of service… one student has been the very bane of my existence.”

Espurr, Tricky, and Goomy were all seated in front of Principal Simipour, the head faculty member of Serenity Village’s school. He watched Watchog pace back and forth through the office through sleep-worn eyes, the same tired smile adorning his face as he did it. A short stack of papers decorated his desk, blank sides up.

Watchog suddenly spun on his feet, pointing a paw directly at Tricky.

“Thievery, trespassing, cutting school… And now she’s corrupting the newcomers! She’s making them think they can do whatever they want, whenever they want…” Watchog let out a hysterical chuckle. “Just think, the next generation: A bunch of scummy layabouts who steal and pillage and trespass to their heart’s content! Are you all just going to sit back and let this be the future?” he questioned the teachers, gesturing broadly to the trio of students in front of him. “This needs to be nipped in the bud, right here, right now—”

“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt your… maniacal rant,” Farfetch’d started carefully, clutching his stalk in his wings. “But is there a reason you’ve summoned us teachers and these three poor students here after nightfall, when they should be sleeping safely in their beds right about now?”

“Ha!” Watchog squeaked out a sudden laugh, cutting Farfetch’d off with manic eyes. “Oh, I assure you, Farfetch’d, sleep is the last thing on these little devils’ minds…”

“Wanna remind me why you made him Vice Principal again?” Espurr heard Audino mutter to Principal Simipour. She sounded quite irritated.

“As it happens,” Watchog continued, “I didn’t have these students dragged from their beds. Rather, I got a tip-off from our very good student Deerling and ran into them on their way back…” he paused for dramatic effect, “…From the Foreboding Forest.”

Silence fell over the room, as the other three teachers tried to digest that. Espurr held in a scowl. So Deerling had gone and gotten help… why hadn’t they done that first?

“But what were they doing in the Foreboding Forest, I hear you ask?” Watchog continued. “Why, none other than… a dare!”

He whipped out the paper with Goomy’s slimy paw-writing on it, making sure the other teachers could see it.

“And here’s the proof!” Watchog crowed triumphantly. “A sheet of paper, straight from the school’s stores! And there’s only one pokemon who would propose a dare as stupid as this…”

Watchog cast his narrowing eyes down towards Tricky, who immediately looked appalled.

“I-it wasn’t me this time! I swear!” Tricky cried out in her defence, but found herself breaking under Watchog’s intense glare.

“You said you found all three of them exiting the dungeon together;” Principal Simipour spoke, his expression as infuriatingly cheerful as ever. “Yet only one has written their name on the sheet of paper?”

Watchog suddenly looked a lot less confident. “…Yes,” he conceded, suddenly losing a good portion of his bravado.

“And assuming the point of this dare was to write one’s name on this sheet of paper and bring it back to the village…” Simipour turned to Goomy for confirmation, which Goomy readily provided with a nod. “Then I think it’s safe to say these two were not part of the dare in the first place, wouldn’t you agree?”

“…Yes,” Watchog concluded, looking suitably cowed.

“And knowing that,” Simipour continued, “What would you then say they were doing in the dungeon?”

Tricky piped up before Watchog could.

“We were saving Goomy! Pancham and Shelmet dared him to go in and he didn’t come back out, so me and Espurr volunteered to go in after him, and we saved him from getting eaten by dungeon ‘mon!”

A wave of uneasiness passed through the teachers at the mention of dungeon ‘mon.

“See?” Tricky told Watchog indignantly. “The dungeon was only one floor anyway…”

“Then, I think it’s settled,” Simipour concluded.

Watchog caught his jaw just in time to stop it from falling open in shock. “You aren’t seriously going to let them go unpunished, Principal?!” he asked in shock.

“Oh, certainly not,” Simipour replied, clasping his hands. “Children going into mystery dungeons unsupervised is grave misbehaviour indeed. But…”

He glanced towards Tricky, Espurr, and Goomy.

“…The cause was noble, and I have a hunch little Goomy here won’t be venturing outside the bounds of the village on his own anytime soon. Therefore, excessive punishment is unnecessary. A week’s worth of detention will do.”

“Detention for a week?!” both Tricky and Watchog cried out.

“But we went in to save someone,” Espurr said. She figured she might as well plead her case. “How come we’re being punished?”

“For leaving the school without permission while you were injured,” interjected Audino sternly.

“Dungeons are incredibly dangerous places. You should have come to an adult instead,” Simipour replied.

“Like the adults would ever set foot into a dungeon…” Tricky huffed out of the corner of her mouth.

“One week is final. And unless you’d like me to make it two, I highly suggest leaving it there,” Simipour finished, pointing his half-closed eyes towards Tricky.

With little more than a squeak of fear, Tricky disappeared out the door, only stopping once to groan in pain as her tail cramped halfway down the hall.

“Wait!” Audino called out after her, grabbing her exploration bag and dashing out after Tricky. “You still need healing! I’m ordering you back to the clinic!”

The door slammed shut behind them, leaving only three teachers and two students in a silent office.

“I-I think I s-should be going,” Goomy finally stuttered out, his antennae slightly floppy. The excitement of the day’s events must have been finally beginning to get to him.

“I agree,” Simipour replied. “If I remember, you live in the same area as Farfetch’d, correct?”

Goomy thought about it for a second, then nodded. His antennae bounced back and forth. Simipour turned to Farfetch’d.

“If you would do the honours…” he asked. Farfetch’d nodded and left without another word. Goomy slimed off in his wake.

“W-what about Pancham?” Watchog sputtered as the door closed. “Aren’t we gonna punish him too? I say two weeks’ detention.”

“Now now, Watchog,” Simipour said. “Pancham and Shelmet’s family has been historically difficult when it comes to punishments.”

“W—” Watchog began. “W-well we can’t just not do anything!”

“You know his father,” Simipour yawned. “The Kecleon merchant folk are a hassle to deal with, and that’s from a distance. Lecture him, tell him to clean the school clinic tomorrow, and leave it at that.”

Espurr looked at Watchog as he silently mulled over his orders. A moment later, he stormed out, letting the door swing shut behind him.

“Espurr, was it?”

Espurr glanced up at Simipour, who still wore the same, lethargic expression on his face. His eyes were shut like he was an inch from sleep. She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“I heard about your predicament last night,” he told her, still seated. “I must say, it was rather reckless of you to charge into yet another mystery dungeon only the day you got here, especially with that arm.”

He opened a drawer below his desk and put the stack of papers in front of him into it.

“The pokemon who chased you have been sighted several times in the past several days searching the area. Highly dangerous, do not approach.” Simipour’s voice lost its airiness. “That is why, for the time being, I strongly implore you to stay within the bounds of this village. For your own safety, of course.”

Espurr suddenly felt jittery, almost like she wanted to puke. She barely kept it together.

“You mean… they’re lurking around here?” she asked.

“Quite possibly.” Simipour closed the drawer and leaned back in his seat. “But, for now, I think it best that you stop allowing such thoughts to clog up your mind, and take kind Nurse Audino up on her offer to let you stay at the School Clinic.”

Left to mull over the very frightening prospect of potential boogeymon murderers lurking around the town limits, Espurr nodded silently, and politely bid Principal Simipour good night. She looked back once on the way out, but Simipour was already snoozing with his head on his desk.

~\({O})/~

“And I mean it this time.” Audino stopped at Tricky’s straw bed on her way into one of the clinic’s other rooms. “Stay in your beds, or I’ll see what I can do about extending that weeks’ detention to a month.”

Satisfied at the suitably frightened look on Tricky’s face, Audino draped a thick tarp over each of the high-up baskets containing luminescent moss that lit the room with a bright blue glow, then continued into the clinic’s other room, leaving the door open just a crack behind her.

“It’s so unfaaiiir,” Tricky whined once they were alone, flopping down on the bed. “We save Goomy once and we get thrown in detention. The adults never do anything right!”

Espurr carefully helped herself to one of the berries on the plate between them, and took a bite as she tuned Tricky’s whining out. She felt very calm while eating, which was odd considering the past few days. It seemed like she should feel more of anything, really. Fear, fright, desperation? Instead, she felt untethered, detached, weirdly floaty, like her mind was still sorting through it all.

“What’s wrong?” Tricky asked. Espurr realised rather than eating, she was staring down at her half-eaten berry with a stricken stare.

“Nothing,” Espurr said. Another thing she couldn’t say aloud. “Just the dungeon.”

“I know what you meeeaan,” Tricky groaned, flopping herself backwards on her bed of straw. She really didn’t. “That dungeon was so cool, though. I’ve only been in it twice before. Usually it has more floors than that…”

What replaced the emptiness, and Tricky’s endless droning, was a hollow feeling Espurr slowly realised was homesickness. The more she learned about this place, the further away everything she did know seemed. How would she ever be able to make her way back home from all of this?

A little while later, Espurr glanced at Tricky, who had drifted off to sleep through her rambling. She was still muttering gibberish in her slumber, the half-eaten celery stalk resting idly at the foot of her dangling paws. Espurr just lay awake in bed, watching nighttime branches grasp along the wooden ceiling that was so unfamiliar compared to the one she knew. What a strange place she’d ended up in, and how she wished for the comfort of her room again…

Dear diary,

I’m writing to you in my head because I don’t have a diary right now. I don’t know if I’ll ever have a diary again. Or if I’ll see another book. I don’t think they read books here, I didn’t see a single one. That’s awful and horrifying! I think I would die if I never saw books again. Or a library.

I never thought I would say it, but I miss home. Everything’s strange here. I miss my house, I miss the library, I miss all the buildings in my town and the stupid cornflakes for breakfast that I hate. I even wish my maths teacher was there to scream at me. I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on. I wish someone would just tell me what was going on!

I’m keeping where I come from secret because I don’t know how the people who live here would take it., I don’t know if there’s anyone else like me. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe I’m stuck here forever. I’d give anything to go back. I’d do anything if I could just be human again, and if there weren’t any mystery dungeons, and if I wasn’t in a strange room with a talking fox that no-one else even likes.

Maybe it’s a dream. Maybe it’s a dream? Please god, please let it all be a dream. I just want it to be… be a… dream…

~Sincerely, Espurr

~\({O})/~

Music of the Week!

Feels Like Home (Harry Potter 1) – John Williams