POKÉMON MYSTERY DUNGEON: GATES INTO SHADOW

Chapter Six: The Death of the Tree of Life

Ambur tells Hazy about their dreamtime apparition, but neither of them knows what to make of it. The road back to town is long and tedious, but as they’re mid debate on whether or not to take a Mystery Dungeon shortcut, they run into a group of Oddish half-buried in the path.

Thankfully, these ones are a lot more friendly than any others they’d encountered before. They ask the Exploration Team when they’re gonna get around to dealing with the forest’s spider infestation, and Ambur explains that they’ve been gathering information on how best to tackle the issue. It’s a really pressing one, though, as apparently other Dungeon residents have been fleeing to the overworld to escape the Spinarak swarm, and they’re causing problems for all the other Pokémon.

They also explain that a little Snivy came through here just a couple days ago, which definitely catches their interest – Cinnamin and their Snivy partner have been missing for a couple weeks now, and while Ambur has been enjoying the absence of their electric guitar cacophony, they should probably go find them. And given the most likely place for them to be lost was the forest’s Dungeon, they might as well take it as a shortcut back to town too.

Using Hazy as a dowsing rod, they quickly find an entrance and dive in. Black Forest Dungeon had changed a lot since their very first visit, and everything feels a lot more dire, more ominous. Imitative trees lifeless, holo-dome sky gray and unmoving, air thick with tension.

True to what the Oddish said, the Dungeon is empty of all its usual residents, their walk remaining uneventful and encounter-less for a solid hour or two. Their first sign of life comes in the form of a pile of rot – a family of Morelull helping a mound of unidentified organic matter compost and decompose. A strap of some undecaying synthetic material sticks out, though, and Hazy makes an attempt to retrieve it – but the mushrooms’ Spores put him to sleep in an instant, leaving him out cold and face-down, and leaving them trapped under his bulk. The few unpinned stragglers start to climb on top and beat up on him, but Ambur swats them away while the Typhlosion stirs awake again, successfully intimidating them into letting him take whatever’s in that pile, in exchange for some of the veggies he keeps in his bag as mid-dungeon snacks.

The fabric belongs to a rucksack, covered in dirt and mold but still mostly in a single piece. Inside, among a pile of unidentifiable, long-decayed items, are a few stray coins, and a hardbound book, its pages pulped into a single unopenable mass, but its midnight-black cover bearing the clear sigil of a luminescent yellow ring.

This is the book Ambur’s been looking for. And it’s entirely illegible. They make a desperate attempt to pry it open anyway – and stuck between rotten pages is another strange card, deep blue with a pale crescent moon. Its presence within the book kept a single page just barely legible enough to make out one single sentence. “I wish I was as smart as Keldeo. Making Entercards lead where intended is oftentimes mystifying.”

Frustrated, Ambur almost throws the book back to the Morelull, but Hazy interrupts them, offering to take it to Licorice and see if the bookworm can recover anything else. He takes the coins, too – it’s still legal tender, probably – then hands the backpack back to the mushrooms.

Later, as they’re taking a brief lunch break in the middle of a forest clearing, Ambur spots a couple yellow specks moving amid the tree branches – and immediately fires off a Dark Pulse, recognising them as the Joltik companions of that Breloom they keep running into. Hazy gets up and helps them chase the pair down, hoping to find their boss – but they reveal he’s lost in here too, deeper in the dungeon, inside the Spinarak nest, having offered his own heroic efforts to assisting the Raichu.

They accompany the Team to the next floor’s entrance, but make a swift exit during a brief scrap with a couple Ariados. Ambur gets webbed up, but with their muzzle still uninhibited, they learn to channel their Dark energy into their fangs and Bite the bug. Hazy, meanwhile, cooks up a spider roast. Past the blackness into the Dungeon’s next floor, they’re accosted by another half-dozen – and with Ambur cocooned, Hazy has to scoop them up like a football and make a mad dash for the endzone.

Hazy snips them out of the webs with his gardening shears, then does the same to any other suspicious bundles in the silk-crafted walls as they make their way through the giant maze-like filter between the dungeon and the nest. Most of them contain nothing but rot, and the rest, bones.

They run into a weird little alien-like creature – an Elgyem. It introduces itself as Dr. Deneb, of the Star League. Hazy asks it to repair his telescope, and it divulges some information on the Star League as it does so. They’re after the Wishing Stones, as the energy they emit can interact in some way with their leyline experiments – and they think this nest contains one.

In reality, it contains two. One with the Ariados, empowering it to grow to its current massive size. The other, still clutched in Hazy’s hand from their previous escapade, secure and somehow still hidden. Their Defense Scarves are glowing pretty bright in response to the dual energy signatures, too, a detail that the Elgyem thankfully doesn’t pick up on at all.

It mentions Dr. Altair, too, and Ambur’s noticeable reaction to that name makes it exposit a little more. Altair is, apparently, the Beast’s caretaker. Whatever that means. They ask if it’s seen a Breloom anywhere, and it confirms there’s one deeper in the nest, so they say their farewells and somehow end the interaction on a positive note.

The Breloom’s burrow isn’t that hard to find, its entrance covered in webbing that easily gives way to Hazy’s gardening shears. Ambur dives down to “have a talk” with him – then quickly de-escalates to reassuring that they’re not here to kick his ass, they know that things have been tough and that he’s still in that crippling debt and that Stax keeps threatening to bust his kneecaps, they’re just looking for – oh, there’s Cinnamin, right behind him, unconscious and very pale. He’s not sure what happened to them, but he’s been keeping an eye on them until help arrives.

Help has arrived, then, and Ambur helps drag Cinnamin back out of the hole – then Hazy huddles them all together, and uses one of the two Escape Orbs they stole from the Gigalith to warp right back out… to the entrance, still a day’s walk from town, with an unconscious and decently heavy Raichu to carry all the way back. So much for that shortcut.

The Breloom retreats back into the dungeon, offering to meet them near the Hot Springs next time they need help.

The walk back to town is long and tedious, taking the good part of an entire day before they get even close. In a forest clearing, Ambur and Hazy take shifts keeping watch while the other sleeps, since they still don’t have proper camping equipment and thus are entirely exposed to the elements. The Umbreon is afforded a rare opportunity to watch the sunrise.

On the outskirts of town, they’re approached by the Guildmaster and Rigatoni, on their way to the Black Forest to rescue the Snivy’s Raichu partner. The Raichu that is currently cradled in Hazy’s arms. They accompany the Team back into town, dropping Cinnamin off at the inn for Strawberry and Honeydew to take care of. They’re in a very rough state, and clearly under the effect of some pretty potent Ariados venom.

Guildmaster Meringue leads them to the Guild Hall, and instructs Team Midnight Crew to explain where they’ve been for the past few days. Ambur proceeds to spill the beans on everything, rattling off explanations on the Wishing Stones and the oversized Pokémon they’ve been facing off against, the Entercards and the Umbreon’s mysterious diary, the Star League and their presumably shady dealings… Meringue, dazed, thanks them for their honesty, but admits that maybe it would be better they kept this information from him – the Regional Guildmaster, Giri, is very buddy-buddy with the Star League, and it’d be best if Meringue didn’t have to knowingly lie to him.

A commotion at the front of town stops them from splitting off to do their own things, and they rush to find the Charmeleon in the midst of another escape plan, running out of the inn blasting Flamethrowers at anything that gets in his way. Hazy tackles and pins him, and Ambur tries to talk him down from his planned suicide mission in the Ariados nest. Words just can’t penetrate the thick fog of his Shadow aura, heart in total darkness, and he Rock Tombs the Typhlosion off him and makes another break for it.

Hazy whites out, as “Eric” takes over. His flames flare teal and the bone club zaps to his hand, and in a voice that isn’t his he calls out, “Chipotle, stop!”

One instant later, the Charmeleon is on the ground, knocked out. The bone drops from Hazy’s hand and he returns to normal. As Strawberry and Honeydew rush out of the inn to carry the unconscious Charmeleon back inside, one among the crowd of Pokémon gathered outside asks Hazy to explain what the hell just happened. Bone’s haunted, he says. His job, back before he got lost in a Dungeon for hundreds of years, was to assist the spirits of Pokémon in passing through to the afterlife – whether that meant leaving this world, or remaining as a Ghost-type Pokémon. And the unruly spirits that refused to move on became Hazy’s lunch.

As Chipotle is being carried back into the inn, Ambur spots a detail of his outfit they hadn’t noticed before – around his neck hangs a pendant of a split metal feather, a Silver Wing, cast in blackened metal.

Ambur heads into the library alone once the crowd disperses, presenting Licorice with the moldy book they’d found in the Black Forest, and asking if there’s anything the bookworm could do to… recover it. They’re very unsure, but if the book’s as important as Ambur says it is, they’ll try their best – but it just might require a specialist, like someone they know up in Nori.

Meanwhile, Hazy returns home, burying the Wishing Stone they stole from the Gigalith in his own garden, hidden safely among all the plants. He also goes to Mike and Ike to get the unidentified Orb Ambur found among the Gigalith’s stash appraised. It’s a Foe-Seal Orb.

The next few days are spent resting and resupplying. Team Midnight Crew gathers at Lavender’s Café, having their mid-afternoon breakfast together, before peeking in on their guests at the inn. Cinnamin’s still out cold from the intense Ariados venom, and Chipotle’s being taken care of. Ambur and Hazy bring the two Wishing Stones they’d found to Carson, to see about getting their Defense Scarves enhanced. He freaks out about having three Stones in one place, but Ambur reassures him that they’ll probably have one more soon. It doesn’t help.

On Carson’s advice, they drop by Mike & Ike’s to grab some tree-leather, bringing it to the town blacksmith, Truffle, to make into armor. He hurriedly throws whatever he’d just been hammering out into an oil bath to cool off, acting very sketchy when they ask him what he’s working on. Hazy pulls it back out as Ambur’s getting the armor fitted. It’s a sword. He’s been smithing a ton of those recently, with the Black Forest’s ongoing spider problem making him paranoid and antsy to arm the whole town.

It takes another day for Carson to work his magic with the scarves, so it’s not until the next morning that Ambur and Hazy can carry out their plan. They knock on his wagon’s door and, realizing they should probably start speaking in more coded language, ask him for “the balls”. He gives them their scarves back – the material’s not quite strong enough to upgrade their defensive properties, but he at least managed to add a resistance to poison – and then hands over the two Wishing Stones they’d left with him. Hazy ties the scarf around his arm, and Ambur wears it around an ear, clipping the Wishing Stone brooch to the inside of their bag for safekeeping and easy access.

Truffle helps them properly don their armor, well-fitted around all their more vulnerable areas. Ambur reassures him he probably won’t end up having an immediate need for all those swords after today. The blacksmith isn’t so sure, but he wishes them good luck anyway.

Armored up, they enter the inn, Hazy announcing that they’ve come for their guest. Chipotle is very tired, still having refused to get any proper rest, but he’s nonetheless raring to go burn down a spider-nest.

They’re barely a half-hour past the edge of the forest when Hazy vibes an Entrance nearby, and Ambur, reasoning that it’s well within the Black Forest Dungeon’s metaphysical leyline-gravitational pull to lead to the same place, dives right in, with the other two jumping in quickly after them. They try to navigate, but Chipotle seems a lot more confident, walking down the most Morelull-infested paths possible – risky, but it seems to be getting the job done.

At a fork in the road, Ambur offers their navigational advice again, reasoning that both paths lead to more or less where they need to go, but one meanders quite a bit, while the other has a giant red-and-white mushroom blocking the path. Chipotle goes for the shorter, more dangerous road, blasting a Flamethrower at the oversized Parasect, which, along with the surrounding Morelull, retaliates with a heavy cloud of Sleep Powder. Ambur falls asleep near-instantly, the sleepy Umbreon finding the influence hard to resist – but their ability to Synchronize any affliction knocks out the entire clearing, with Hazy as the only Pokémon still standing. With a sigh, he picks up his two companions, and just carries them for a little while.

Eventually, the trio comes across a familiar clearing, closeby to the Exit leading to the Hot Springs outside. Ambur remembers the Breloom’s offer of assistance, and looks out for him, easily finding his little hideout. He’s very hesitant to follow along on their quest to take down the Ariados’ nest, but accepts when Ambur suggests there’s probably some loot there that he’ll have free claim over. The Breloom’s got to pay off his debt to Stax somehow, since assumedly Cinnamin’s offer to let him have the Wishing Stone is off the table.

Cinnamin offered to what?

The squad rests up in that little clearing, having a little snack, while Chipotle and the Breloom argue on the best course of action. They take the lead in navigation, despite Ambur’s protests otherwise, and they come to the Umbreon’s same conclusions a good couple minutes after they first offered them. The Joltik parked atop the Breloom’s head are probably helping him cheat, anyway.

Frustration aside, they eventually come across the Entrance to the nest proper – behind a field of Morellul, content and well-fed on the decaying victims of the Spinarak gate-guards. Ambur spots a few clear spots amid the field, and steels themself for a hop-skip-jump across, pausing in the middle for a failed attempt to very politely ask the little mushrooms to move aside. Hazy instead offers them a few veggies to compost, successfully bribing his way through, while Chipotle and the Breloom follow Ambur in hopping across safe-spots.

A trio of treebound Spinarak greet them on the other side. Ambur’s Dark Pulse is met with a cocooning String Shot, Hazy’s Flamethrower knocks a spider out of its tree, and Chipotle’s Shadow Flamethrower blasts a hole through the trunk and lights the entire thing ablaze. The Breloom trips on the last jump, landing face-first into a blanket of Sleep Powder – though quickly shocked awake by the Joltik’s zappy-bites. Ambur bites their way out of the cocoon, and they ignore the Charmeleon’s attempt at starting a forest fire, rushing into the nest.

Billows of smoke follow them through the gate, collectively abandoning stealth or navigation in favor of burning their way through. Flamethrowers lead the way, blazing a path through the spider-silk walls of the maze surrounding the deepnest, as Ambur, the Breloom and his Joltik friends ward off any Spinarak that get too close. Hazy’s flames begin to falter – then, with renewed resolve, focus down into a piercing Hyper Beam, sweeping destruction across the nest as they all force their way through into that final clearing.

Ambur points out “Eric”’s skull somewhere amid the higher branches of the white tree-nest, and Hazy launches the bone-club toward it, catching it on an adjacent branch. Chipotle charges ahead, eager to take revenge against the giant Ariados that killed his friend, and Hazy follows along, reaching into his bag for the Wishing Stone. Ambur and the Breloom turn and hold the line, preventing the Spinarak swarm from encroaching on the clearing as the Typhlosion grows fivefold.

Purple flames burst from the Charmeleon below, and a piercing golden beam blasts from Hazy above, aimed squarely at the Ariados entrenched within the tree’s thick silk covering. The rush of energy within the nest seems to draw the attention of something else, some higher power, as pillars of light burst from the ground and for a brief moment focus around Hazy, the force of the forest itself amplifying his fiery spirit.

The divine light seems to quell the Spinarak swarm, frightening them back from their attempts at entering the clearing, and Ambur, content that the Breloom had it all handled, channels the power of their own Wishing Stone and charges at the tree. Giant Umbreon fangs, reinforced with Dark-type energy, bite down around the Ariados’ head, piercing exoskeletal armor and, with great force, pulling. Hazy, catching his breath from that hyperpowered Hyper Beam, reaches in for the assist, helping yank it out at least a little bit before his Dynamax begins to falter. Ambur tugs it out the rest of the way as the Typhlosion clambers atop, at least a couple of the Ariados’ limbs cracking and bending at unnatural angles at its violent rending.

They disengage as their own Wishing Stone energy fades, shrinking back down to their standard size – sensing, as Hazy once did, a strange entity from beyond take notice of them… before it’s casually swatted aside by the mysterious other force casting light across the clearing. They rather ungracefully land on the ground, spotting, to their surprise, two silhouettes approaching from the side opposite the nest’s entrance.

Chipotle clambers up one of the Ariados’ legs as Hazy mounts its back, quelling its flailing slashing limbs with bursts of flame as he firmly grips the Wishing Stone embedded in its back and removes it, grappling with the spider as it shrinks back down to size while the Charmeleon blasts it with a constant Flamethrower stream until it simply stops moving.

The mysterious silhouettes clarify as they approach. The smaller of the two, wearing the pristine white coat of Star League researchers, offers a slow, congratulatory clap at the team’s victory, while the taller, a strange quadruped clad in angular metal armor, simply observes.

The slow-clapping intruder is Dr. Deneb. It congratulates the team on their hard-won victory, then politely demands they hand over the Wishing Stones – both the one they stole off the spider's back, and the two they used to power up already.

Hazy ignores it, preparing to climb up the tree toward Eric's skull and bone, while Ambur outright rebuffs the Star Leaguer's demand. The Breloom, panicked, explains that the quadruped – armored, an axe-like crest atop its head and a spiked wheel around its neck – is Stax’s boss. Or, it was. Deneb calls it the Beast.

Annoyed by their refusal of its offer, Deneb shakes its head disappointedly – then unsheathes a gleaming, impossibly pure sword, arcing with electricity. It commands the Beast to charge at Hazy, then teleports behind Ambur, sword raised. Chipotle intercepts the charging quadruped with an Aeroblast, giving Hazy an opening to start clawing at its armor, while Breloom slaps at Deneb immediately post-teleport, distracting it enough for Ambur’s Dark Pulse to connect.

Frustrated, Deneb dashes at Hazy, who suplexes the Beast in its direction, knocking them both to the ground for a brief second. It sics the Beast on Ambur, but despite it pinning them to the ground with slashing claws, they still focus their Dark Pulse on Deneb, hitting simultaneously with a Shadow Claw from Hazy.

Chipotle’s about done catching his breath after that Aeroblast, and Ambur tells him to aim for the little guy next. Deneb raises its sword, the metal gleaming the same way Syr Rigel's had when he reached the leyline convergence, but Hazy rushes at it, grabbing the sword as another Dark Pulse makes Deneb fumble it. An instant later, the space where Hazy had been – the space where Deneb still is – is engulfed in another Aeroblast, tearing a clean path through the nest’s wall, and the surrounding forest.

Deneb, barely conscious, commands the Beast to fetch and flee, and it picks the Elgyem up off the ground and dashes off through the newly cleared path. Ambur lets them go, declaring that a warning shot.

Hazy returns his attention to the tree, ready to climb toward Eric, but the moment he touches it, the divine light still shining around the clearing flashes blindingly bright. Some tall figure, majestic, antlers shining with chromatic iridescence, bows gratefully. The light fades, and everyone’s feeling better. Including all the bones.

The thick webs covering the tree are gone, its white fluorescence unbound. Eric drops out of the tree into Hazy’s arms, while Ambur tries to take charge of the sudden crowd of Pokémon in the clearing, lost and confused. They explain that they all died, but they’re all better now. It doesn’t go over well. Their call for anyone who needs to get out of the forest to gather around the Typhlosion does get a fair few responses, though.

Eric takes Chipotle’s hand, and the shadowy aura around the Charmeleon cools just a fraction. Escape Orb gleams, and the small crowd of Pokémon pops back out on the edge of the Black Forest. Hazy lights up some Herb, offering it to anyone who needs to calm their nerves a little, while they all begin the walk towards town.

Any sense of victory vanishes as they spot smoke trailing from Pannacotta. They book it towards town, and cross Truffle, who warns them that the townsfolk aren’t gonna be very friendly toward Hazy – after all, it was his “friends” who caused this.

The smoke is mostly Carson’s wagon, still smoldering. The Guild Tower’s missing chunks of wall, and what’s still there is gouged deep with slashes. Market Square’s been ransacked, storefronts wrecked. They work through the crowd gathered outside the inn, ignoring their glaring at Hazy, and declare their intent to help. The Dungeon stragglers stay downstairs at the Inn’s restaurant, staffed by Mint, while Team Midnight Crew and their companions are told to head upstairs, where Meringue’s being taken care of.

Honeydew welcomes them in, and Ambur’s calling on the Moonlight brings him from unconscious to barely conscious. They recount their victory over the Ariados, but despite having literally brought back the dead, it doesn’t seem like much of a triumph with the town still in danger. Meringue explains that Carson’s been taken to Old Oak, with Strawberry caught in the scuffle. He got hit with a ghostly curse while trying to fight the invaders off.

They all leave to let him rest, and Ambur struggles on what to do next, desperate for a break. Eric reintroduces himself as Turmeric, declaring himself and Chipotle as Team Spicerack. Ambur instructs them, and the Breloom and his Joltik – whom they dub “Team Dirtbag” – to go help out around town however they can.

Hazy also breaks off, going to show Truffle the sword he stole off Deneb. The blacksmith’s amazed at its perfection – it can’t have been forged, not by any traditional means. Its gleam is too pure, its edges too sharp. He helps make a sheath for it, since Hazy’s just been carrying it around by the blade this whole time.

Ambur, meanwhile, checks in on Cinnamin, who’s still out cold from that Ariados venom. Rigatoni’s by his side too, and a little beat-up, having helped Meringue in trying to fight off the ghostly raid. They just sit together for a moment, Ambur congratulating the little grass-noodle on doing his very best.