Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Quenched Torch

Chapter 31: Uncertainty

I'd just like to get this off my chest real quick. Despite my excitement of being near the sea on the trip here, I don't think I'd be touching Basculin Strait with a fifty-foot-long pole for a good long while. I'd had too much cold seawater splashed on me, encountered one too many Seismitoads, and rivers in these places? I had only encountered dungeon rivers twice, and both experiences had seen me almost dying. My general consensus was that they could die in a hole. In short, I didn't want anything to do with this place for a long, long time.

Well, actually... it's complicated.

On one hand, the place had that damn dungeon. On another, it was one of the nicer places I'd seen in my time here. The pleasant ocean smell mixed with pine aroma, the noticeable lack of ferals outside the dungeon, the sleepy but friendly little town of Littora, and the brilliant sunrises over the beach helped add to my uncertainty of how to remember this place.

Unfortunately, that bit about the sunrise was only reserved to a quick look out the window before Ms. Linoone gave me a light rap on the side, scolding me for moving. As the light of dawn crept through the windows, she took the grounded mix of Oran and obscure herbs she held in her paws and pushed it down my ears with her long claws, massaging it in vigorously as I whined uncomfortably.

"Now, Oshawott, you need this if you want your ears to heal. You're lucky you came here when you did, any later and you would have needed a lot more than berries to fix you up," she said.

"Halp," I croaked out in response, sending a pleading look to a seated Rye as he rubbed his earlobes, having already gone through this procedure. The Treecko mouthed an apology as he shrunk back, leaving me to this cruel beast's torture. Soon enough, Ms. Linoone took her claw out of my ear and wiped her paws, giving me a friendly smile.

"Well, now, I reckon that oughta do it. You should be able to go back to your guild without too much hassle now. Just don't stick anything down your ears or listen to anything too loud and you'll be right as rain by sunset!" she piped. Unsuccessfully reaching for my aching ears, I begrudgingly forced a thanks out as she packed up the berry-based medicine by her side.

"Now, then, I'll just be getting these back to Roselia. Ziggy will be outside gathering firewood if y'all need anything," she called back as she headed out the door. Now that we seemed to be alone, Rye took a glance around and bit his lip.

"So, Beck. Uh... about that nightmare you had?" he asked.

I clenched my teeth. Since I'd waken up from what definitely seemed to be a vision, I had refused to go back to sleep, giving me plenty of time to try to explain what had happened to Rye. It had taken a lot of broken words, drawing, and warding off the curious Linoone family to get it across to him, but all I had managed to communicate was that a temple had been attacked, Xatu was there, something had been stolen, and that someone had been killed. With that little info, Rye couldn't provide much help, but he had at least gotten the gist of my present worries.

"D-did the temple look familiar? Did anyone say where you were? Maybe we can figure this out easier if we know a bit more about where this was," he pondered.

I sat there for a minute, trying to scour my memory for anything I might have seen or heard. Any visual landmarks wouldn't help, since the ones that weren't shrouded in smoke were unfamiliar to me. Maybe someone said something that... wait!

"You have desecrated the Dialgite Temple."

"D-Dal-gah!" I blurted out. Rye's eyes widened.

"Dialga?!" he gasped.

"Dialga...?" a third voice squeaked from the door. We immediately spun around, recoiling as we found someone observing us: Zigzagoon, his face becoming panicked as he shrunk back behind the doorframe. Rye immediately scrambled to his feet and led me outside, where Zigzagoon seemed to realize running wouldn't be an option and gave a forced innocent chuckle.