I Decided To Live Forever Just In Case She Ever Woke Up [PKMN X THE LOCKED TOMB]

Consume and Be Consumed - Part 1

First published as Consume and be Consumed on Ao3, March 2024.
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Akari had been awake before the knock at the door. She was finding it difficult to sleep, anyway, with the waves crashing at the sides of the castle threatening to swallow it, and the wind howling like a hungry spectre, and her ever-absent necromancer, and somebody picking off the League's esteemed guests one by one. So it was no difficult task to slip out of the large, musty bed and tiptoe across the disintegrating rug to greet whoever had come calling in the dead of night. Cyrus was out of the question; if her necromancer had deigned to show his face again he would not have felt the need to knock. The pair from the Sixth House were also unlikely, for obvious cadaver reasons. That left about... well, everyone else staying at the League, one of whom had killed one of the system's best necromancers and also Professor Kukui. It did not fill Akari with comfort. She was deliberate in picking up the beautiful folding knife from her bedside before answering the door.

On the other side of the door stood the Heir from the Ninth House. Irida, daughter of the Guardian of the Locked Tomb, looked exhausted. More so than the exhaustion inherent to every necromancer, but about the expected amount of someone threatened by a murderer on the loose. She lacked makeup, but was not without her several kilograms of formal jewellery.

"Cavalier Primary of the Fourth House's second moon," she announced quickly, taking a bow. Her earrings chimed as they clicked against her necklace. She sounded out of breath, but took no shortcuts in her formalities. On finishing her address, Irida glanced down, noticed that Akari was in her nightgown, and swiftly pulled her eyes back to her face. "At the last dinner before... the incident, my cavalier entrusted the keys we had won with you."

Indeed, Ingo had given Akari the Ninth's keyring for safekeeping, on, he had stated, "a bad feeling," which proved accurate the next morning when the bodies of the Sixth House's representatives were discovered at the foot of the grand staircase. Akari had kept the keyring under her pillow - not on her own ring, which Cyrus had absconded with earlier. Right now, Akari had the urge to lie and say she'd given the keys to him.

"May I come in and retrieve them?" Irida continued. Her expression didn't change - it rarely did.

Akari ran her thumb over the hilt of the knife, hidden just behind the door frame. "I'll go and get them," she stated, and shut the door. The keys were right where she left them, both still on the ring as presented.

Akari hesitated in returning to the door. Why had Irida come to collect them in place of her cavalier? Had she..? No , she told herself, shaking her head, Irida can't be the killer . Even if she was cagey, and there were parts of her story that didn't make sense - how her notoriously protective mother had allowed her only daughter to leave the walls of her miserable keep, or how tight-lipped she was around the status of the Ninth's original necromancer, to name just two - she didn't seem to be the type to kill her peers.

But maybe Akari was just overly trusting when it came to women.

As with her knife, Akari kept the keys out of sight when she opened the door again. Irida had not moved, her hands remaining clasped at her front, and her expression still stoic. She resembled one of the miserable portraits that hung in the foyer of the cavalier training quarters back on the Fourth.

"Where's Ingo?"

The question seemed to shock Irida, for her stony facade cracked a moment, and she blinked.

"My cavalier is, presently, awaiting my return so we may complete the trials," she explained, after a pause. After another pause, she added, "I understand you and my cavalier have something of a friendship. That you have earned the trust of such an honoured member of the Ninth House proves that my prior judgement of you was hasty and inaccurate. I would like to formally apologise for misjudging you, and any mistreatment I may have inflicted upon you during our stay."

Irida's apology was formal and long-winded (traits beloved by the reverent oldheads on the Ninth, as Akari had been told), and though her facial expression remained stony, there was a shine in her eyes that made it feel genuine.

"Okay," Akari said quietly, nodding. In honesty, she hadn't noticed Irida being mean to her or anything. Cold and dismissive, but compared to all the other nobles at the League building, she wasn't outstandingly rude or combative.

Irida frowned. "... "Okay?""

"Okay." Akari shrugged. "You seem cool."

She revealed the keys from behind the door frame, and passed them over to Irida. As Irida took a hold of them, their fingers brushed together. She quickly snatched the keys away, held them close to her chest and looked away, and mumbled a word of thanks to Akari.

Neither of them left first.

"Would you-" Irida started. She stopped, looked away again, took a deep breath. "Akari, would you escort me back to my cavalier? For- for my safety, of course. So that I don't meet the same fate as the Sixth House."

Akari was, in all truth, a mediocre duelist. She was trained for survival before she was reassigned to Cyrus, and it showed, because she'd got her ass kicked by better cavaliers more times than she could count. Unless they got attacked by a wild Ursaring in the hallway, (unlikely, as there were no wild pokemon on the First) Irida was better off going on her own.

But her pleading face pulled at Akari's heartstrings.

"Let me get dressed first," She said. Irida's shoulders dropped and she smiled, setting off a colony of Beautiflies in her stomach.

After closing the door, Akari dug out her cavalier's uniform, which had been discarded in a heap at the foot of her bed. Aware of the Ninth House's heiress waiting outside, she elected to only wear the boots. Over her nightgown she pulled a shirt she'd brought with her in case it was cold; it had been too warm to wear it as pyjamas, and it was too informal to wear in front of everyone else, so it had remained clean. She strapped on her belt and rapier, and tucked the butterfly knife snugly into it.

The cracked mirror in Akari's room got its first use since she'd moved in (in the ten thousand years since the First House had been abandoned, more likely) when she made sure her bangs weren't embarrassingly out of place. She threw on the jacket from her uniform before opening the door again.

"Okay. I'm ready."

Irida had been waiting patiently. She perked up, gave Akari a polite smile, and began down the hall.

"As you know, the League Building has several ports of access to a basement facility," Irida explained, which caught Akari off guard, because she did not in fact know that. It explained where Cyrus vanished off to, at least. Irida continued. "We spent the last week creating a map of the basement floors, so we can easily find the trial rooms. Ingo recognised the lock on a door we found as matching the key we won from the duel with that Seventh cavalier, one he had passed on to you."

"Why leave him down there?" Akari questioned. Irida bristled, fixing her posture.

"Your necromancer," she started. "You and he seem to be distant; is that so?"

It seemed like everyone was aware of how shit a cavalier she was. Akari nodded, which Irida took as an answer.

"Perhaps I've assumed too much," she said quickly. "Well. My apologies. I should be less cagey with you." Her words made Akari feel warm, momentarily distracting her from the question Irida hadn't answered.

"I don't mean to treat you with suspicion," Irida continued. "I understand you want to form an alliance with the Ninth, and I would like you to know I accept that. But in the present circumstances, I would like to keep some details private."

"That's fine," Akari said, because she, too, wasn't eager to be out and about with a killer in the area.