Join my p@treon for more chapters
[email protected]/Tempest_29
"Hmm… why is something wet on my face…"
David stirred slowly, awareness returning in fragments. Something warm and rough pressed against his cheek, again and again. Then the memories came back — the fishing competition, the strange man, the pendant's sudden glow — and his eyes snapped open.
Zorua was perched on his chest, licking his face.
Behind it, Lucario and Kirlia stood watching him, their expressions tight with concern. Lapras was nowhere to be seen — the space around them was too cramped, so it had likely been recalled to its Poké Ball.
"Zorua… what's going on?"
His thoughts were still slow and scattered. He could piece together fragments — the man on the Gyarados, something suspicious about him, the pendant flaring with light. Then the sea shaking, a colossal whirlpool tearing open beside them, the man in black swallowed whole. And then David himself pulled in, and after that — nothing.
"Zorua~ Zorua…"
"Are you saying that after we got pulled into the whirlpool, we ended up… here? In some kind of strange space?"
Zorua nodded firmly.
David exhaled and tried to push himself upright — only to flinch sharply as a bolt of pain shot up his left arm. His elbow buckled, and he nearly went down again. Lucario caught him before he hit the floor.
"Hiss — what happened to my arm?"
He looked it over carefully. The damage was obvious once he focused on it: a deep gash along the inside of his left forearm, and beneath it, the dull, bone-deep ache that told him it was fractured. Both injuries had already been treated — the wound cleaned and wrapped, the bleeding stopped.
Kirlia made a soft sound and looked at him with quiet worry. It explained, in its way, that the injuries had happened during the fall into this space. It had used Heal Pulse and Life Dew to close the wound and ease the worst of the damage. The cut was healing well. The fracture, however, was another matter — without proper equipment, Kirlia hadn't dared attempt anything more.
"You did well, Kirlia. Really." David managed a small smile. "I'll be careful with it. It's not as bad as it looks."
He meant it. With his physical conditioning, a break like this would mend in a day or two under normal circumstances. But these were not normal circumstances — he had no idea where he was, or how to get out.
"First things first. We need to figure out where we are."
✦ ✦ ✦
David turned the situation over in his mind. A stable, concealed space like this — self-contained, separate from the outside world — was not the kind of thing that happened by accident. In his experience, such places were almost always the result of a Legendary Pokémon's influence, or, far more rarely, formed when fragments of a collapsed Secret Realm merged with the surrounding world over centuries. The latter was extraordinarily unlikely. And given that this was Belon City, with its deep historical ties to Lugia…
He thought of the pendant. The vibrations. The whirlpool appearing the instant it began to glow. The image of it surfaced clearly in his memory — worn and damaged, but the carved shapes of several bird Pokémon still visible across its surface.
"I need something more concrete, though."
With Lucario steadying him, David got to his feet and looked around properly for the first time.
They were in a narrow passage inside what appeared to be a very old structure. The walls on either side pressed close, and the corridor stretched away in both directions into darkness. The only light came from a faint blue luminescence seeping from the stone itself.
"This looks like some kind of secret passage," David said quietly.
He had Kirlia use Flash. The move filled the passage with clean, steady light, and the details of the walls came into focus — covered entirely in carved patterns, dense and intricate, running from floor to ceiling.
"Spread out. Look for anything unusual."
Kirlia held the light while David and Zorua worked their way along both walls. They checked every section of the passage twice. Both ends were sealed — solid stone, no visible doors, no obvious exits. They were trapped.
"There has to be a hidden mechanism somewhere. A passage like this wouldn't just be a dead end."
"Luca~!"
Lucario's voice cut through David's muttering. David moved quickly to where it stood, near one of the blocked ends, and Kirlia brought the light closer.
There, tucked into an unremarkable corner of the wall — easy to miss among the dense carvings — was a small section of pattern that didn't quite match the rest.
David leaned in. If he was reading the carvings correctly, the patterns throughout the passage depicted the three Legendary Birds of Kanto. But this one corner was different. The shape here was unmistakably Lugia.
He reached out with his good hand and pressed his palm flat against it. Beneath his fingers, the stone felt subtly different — slightly hollow, carrying a faint resonance that the rest of the wall did not.
"This is it."
The divine bird motifs carved here were a style David recognized — common during the middle period of the ancient Cloudspire Empire, used in official buildings and, more tellingly, in temples dedicated to revered Pokémon. The presence of Lugia's image, set apart from the others, in what was clearly a place of hidden significance, left little room for doubt.
This place was a temple. Lugia's temple, or at the very least connected to one.
It confirmed what he had already begun to suspect. David took a slow breath, steadied himself, and pressed his hand firmly against the carving of Lugia.