Gyarados coiled its tail and raised wave upon wave of water again, and again brought them down.
"Splooosh—"
A rush of running water passed over, and was swallowed as before by Darkrai's Dark Void.
"Roar, roar—"
Gyarados would not have it. A Twister followed straight after, a howling wild wind blowing across and sweeping over the ground where Darkrai stood.
But as the move that had made its name, this Dark Void held firm as ever, its defensive power enormous.
"Gyarados, Dragon Dance."
Hearing Vance's words, Gyarados began a strange dance where it stood, and as it danced its presence slowly rose.
"Darkrai, Dark Pulse."
Wren had instructions of his own, and a string of Dark Pulses came thundering in one after another. "Behind you — Whirlpool!"
Vance's warning came at its ear; after the Dark Pulses, Darkrai's shape wavered and came in after them.
Gyarados had a move that was attack and defence in one, and a Whirlpool laid itself over it.
"Bang—"
The Dark Pulse struck home and half of it scattered, and with Gyarados feeding power in, the Whirlpool flew up again and wound about its body.
The Darkrai behind Gyarados stepped into it too and took the Whirlpool spinning at full speed.
"Freeze it!"
The spinning force of the Whirlpool froze over all at once, as though blades of ice hung in it, and the ground the Whirlpool covered turned into a zone of ice storm, with countless shards of ice-blade sweeping through.
"Dark Void!"
Darkrai did not take it head-on, but used the same trick again; the Dark Void appeared and swallowed every attack that came, so that it vanished away entirely.
"Roar, roar — that move again!"
Gyarados roared it out.
Just as it was about to raise another attack and break this Dark Void, Darkrai moved: the Dark Void spread outward until the whole field was swallowed inside it.
And Gyarados was naturally inside it too.
Faced with that darkness, Gyarados showed no particular reaction; in point of fact there was no avoiding this move.
The centre of things had already shifted out of reality and into the "world of the mind".
Red eyes lit up, those eyes hanging high in the sky, and a slaughtering, raging force of presence filled the whole "world".
The world was nothing but mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and the reek of it in the nostrils was enough to turn the stomach.
Gyarados stood in the midst of it perfectly composed, with no reaction of any kind, let alone any fright.
The next second the heavens split and the earth broke open, and a vast pair of hands made of corpses and bloody hands appeared and reached straight out to seize it; an ill-omened air wound through the whole space, and, as the thing that space was aimed at, Gyarados could feel directly how the "world" meant it harm, and there rose in it the thought that it might die at any moment, its flesh and blood crushed all over.
The feeling of death rose in its heart.
As far as it could see there were only mountains of corpses and seas of blood, nowhere to flee to and no fleeing from it; it could only become a lump of flesh and blood under that vast hand, to be crushed, to be ground away.
Even that searing pain began, by degrees, to appear in its senses.
Gyarados tried to use a move in answer, and found its power gone; that familiar power in its body had vanished too, and however it tried to call it up, nothing came of it.
"Hhhh—"
Those red eyes in the sky watched without expression, like the god of this world, set high above it.
"You think I'll be afraid? Then you've badly underrated me. Power — back to me!"
The familiar feeling came back into its body; by the sheer strength of its will it found its power again.
"My power is mine in the end. A screen thrown up out of nowhere is enough to take it away?"
Starlight gathered, and a Hyper Beam went out to meet that huge bloody hand.
"Boom—"
The earth thundered, and the whole space broke apart in an instant and split into pieces that drifted off through empty space.
Under the working of some power it came together again.
Before it appeared Pokémon after Pokémon of formidable presence, every one of them a creature that had died at its hands, directly or otherwise.
Dusknoir, Suicune, Shiftry.........
Every one of them uncanny in bearing, carrying its hatred, all charging forward together to tear it to pieces and pay back the killing of before.
"Roar, roar—"
Gyarados was naturally not afraid. It had been able to kill you once before, and it could kill you again now!
Besides, as the losers, how did you dare come back at all?
And coming back again would mean winning, would it?
How naive. It was a great deal stronger than it had been, and if it could kill you when it was as weak as that, how much the more now?
Was this nightmare trick all there was to it?
Gyarados had lost count of how many times it had fought them down, and out in the world only a second or two had gone by.
"Good, good."
Feeling that Gyarados was in fine condition, Vance nodded in satisfaction. It was worthy of having been raised by his own hand, to face a nightmare of this Darkrai's and still put up a showing like that.
Set against his satisfaction, Wren was not satisfied at all.
"Damn it, why hasn't the mental defence been broken yet?"
Wren said it viciously.
Once a Pokémon was dragged into the nightmare by Darkrai, its mental defences broke in an instant, and after that came the Dream Eater.
And any Pokémon it was used on, if it did not lose consciousness outright, would at the least be in a badly wounded state.
"Darkrai, use everything you have. All that matters is winning."
The Darkrai inside the shadows moved its blue eyes once, and they slowly turned red; a shadowed Dark Void, more overbearing than the one before, came down again, and what stood facing it changed its shape.
"Oh? So this is you 'spending its life'. No care for the Darkrai either?"
Vance's thought sounded at Wren's ear.
He had caught the change in Darkrai: in using this move of higher difficulty, its life energy was draining away as well.
Wren heard it and looked over at Vance, and answered.
"So you've spotted it. There's a great deal to be said for ability users. If the side effects weren't so heavy, I'd like one of my own."
In any case the task he had been given from above was to take the championship of this tournament, to make a name in the Kanto region and increase his own influence, so as to help the Sacred Order in what it did afterwards.
To take the championship of the tournament, a somewhat higher price was acceptable.
So long as the goal was reached, what was lost could be got back; it was no more than expendable material, and all that mattered was that it be spent to some purpose.
Vance turned his eyes to Gyarados. Under Darkrai's "spending of its life", something in Gyarados had changed; an unsteadiness had appeared.
The scene formed again: a filthy ditch, and it had become a Magikarp that could do nothing but flop about.
Drifting along in the foul water, muddle-headed the whole day long, achieving nothing, never caught, and that boy in its memory never appearing.
A thought rose in its heart.
"There is no fierce and mighty Gyarados out in the world. That is only the daydream of a Magikarp muddling its days away — a foolish fancy and nothing more."
What chance had it to go out into the world, and what talk was there of ranging freely? A filthy ditch was where it belonged.
In that daze Gyarados was afraid. This time there really was fear in it.
What it feared was not its own circumstances, but that the bond with that Trainer, "Vance", and with Slaking, Blaziken, Zweilous and the rest of the Pokémon, was fading by degrees out of its mind.
It did not fear bleeding and fighting; however many enemies there were and however strong, it feared none of them. What it feared was losing these things.
It seemed not to know them at all — and yet the fixed thing in its heart was saying something, and all it knew was that losing these things would make it wretched and hurt it terribly!
Under that nameless power, the sense of being stripped away grew heavier and heavier.
Once the terror was born, that boundless "fear" was on the point of drowning it.
"Gyarados... Magikarp... Trainer... Roar, roar—"
"Done, is it."
Wren laughed out loud. One look at Gyarados's state and you knew it had fallen into the nightmare, gone off into the dream it feared most.
It had been worth having Darkrai burn its life force and strengthen itself to snipe at Gyarados.
Once Gyarados was out of the way, the rest of his Pokémon after it could be handled the same way; they would not hold against Darkrai.
Before coming he had had Elder Vayne reinforce the control over Darkrai, so there was no trouble in burning it several times over; there would be no instability.
"I'll grant you are a great deal harder to deal with than Aurelian and Elspeth and that lot. But the championship of this tournament today — I'm having it."
Wren had found his old confidence again.
"Is that so? As sure of it as that?"
Vance rubbed his nose and said it quietly.
"Naturally."
Wren said it flatly.