"Have you any way of putting this right?"
Vance said it evenly, and Wren knew well enough what he meant by it.
"No. Only Elder Vayne could do that. I can't."
Wren answered at once. Having seen what the man could do, he did not dare try anything and told him straight.
"Mm."
Vance gave a nod, said nothing further, and looked at Darkrai.
It still had the air of something half out of its mind, held fast by Alakazam.
"I killed him too soon."
Vance murmured it under his breath. Too soon — he meant Elder Vayne; though by the look the man had had about him, he would never have cooperated anyway.
Too soon, then, and there was an end of it. He had a way of freeing the creature himself; it would only cost him a little more effort.
He moved off and came to stand in front of Darkrai, raised two fingers held straight as a sword-blade, pointed them at its forehead, and a green light rose at his fingertips and went straight through to the mind.
It was like driving through layer upon layer of darkness to come out into a barren black world.
Everything here was withered; there was not a trace of vitality in it, nothing but a dead stillness with no life in it at all. This was the space of its consciousness, and where the soul of its mind lived.
"So it isn't only the foundation that's been hollowed out. Even the will is in this state."
Vance said it after a look round.
They had not treated it as a Pokémon at all, but as a puppet.
From body to soul, it had been hollowed out.
"If I walk away from this one I'll be badly out of pocket. Well, never mind, never mind. Running into it counts as fate, I suppose. Call it laying up a little goodwill."
Vance set both hands to the ground, and the Viridian Power came surging out.
Outside, a green radiance rose from Vance's body and sank into Darkrai's.
"Haaah—"
Darkrai's body checked. Its eyes went to Vance, and it grew quiet.
With the power inside Darkrai's body, Vance found more than ten places about it where something had been done, and set his strength to work breaking them open one by one.
The legs, the upper body, the shoulders, all the way up to the head — and there he stopped.
"Are you awake?"
"Haaah—"
Its pupils had gone back to a clear blue, and the white hair-like growth on its head rolled and rolled without stopping.
"Let's break this binding together."
Darkrai nodded, gathered its strength, and drove at the binding in its mind alongside Vance.
"Boom!"
After the muffled crash a wave of air rolled out.
"Rooar—"
Darkrai let out one roar of pure relief, then staggered and very nearly went down.
Its body was drained to an extreme degree — put simply, it was empty.
As though the body had been hollowed out.
Always giving out, with nothing ever put back.
Its strength was falling with it: from something close to Near-Champion down to the level of one newly come to Elite-Four-class, and still trending downward.
Just then Vance's Viridian Power settled over it, making up what the body had lost and checking the slide.
The Viridian Power had a great many uses, and above all in repairing life force.
"Haah!"
Darkrai gave him a grateful look and let out a long stale breath.
Under the nourishment of the Viridian Power it came round little by little.
When it was nearly recovered Vance stopped feeding power into it.
This was as far as treating Darkrai could take it for now; what came after, touching the foundation and the source of it, would have to be built back slowly.
Marvellous as the Viridian Power was, it had an end to it too.
"Th... thank you."
Darkrai said it awkwardly.
"Mm."
Drawing his power back, Vance went off to one side, found a rock and sat down. The hard fighting with Elder Vayne and the rest, and then the healing — even with Master-class Viridian Power in him, the load was no small one.
Tiredness showed in his face, and he set about recovering slowly.
Darkrai hung in the air above the ground, looked at how tired he was, and then looked at the ground, changed out of all recognition.
This had been a hilltop to start with; the fighting had turned it into one great pit, and no small one either.
Loose particles of energy still drifted in the air, many of them and all in disorder.
One look told you a savage battle had been fought here.
And it had been one of the principals in it. Now that it had recovered, Darkrai had its memories, and at the time it had been in the thick of it.
And now it had been saved by him again; what it felt about that was hard to name.
It looked round, and saw Wren, and the fury in it went up at once like a fire.
The sight of him brought back every humiliation it had suffered, experiment after experiment, and being ordered about like a dog.
"Haaah—"
Darkrai burst up and shot for the place where Wren stood.
"Let it."
Vance opened his eyes to say the one word, then closed them again and went back to steadying his breath.
Whether Wren lived or died was nothing to him. Not killing him earlier had never meant letting him go.
Since Darkrai felt so, he would not put out a hand to save him.
"Help— ah!"
Wren's shriek came from over there, and after it the sound of flesh being torn.
"Hsss, hsss, hsss—"
"Die!"
In less than ten seconds Darkrai had torn Wren apart, and the blood ran red over its claws.
With the man who had ordered it about disposed of, Darkrai felt somewhat easier.
But it was not enough.
There were a great many more of those people, not him alone, and Darkrai remembered every one of them.
"That Darkrai is nothing like a soft-hearted or a kindly creature."
Doing it that way had shown the other Pokémon what it was.
Having got that much out of itself, Darkrai did not leave at once but stayed where it was and waited.
It looked at Vance, sitting there steadying his breath, and its eyes sank into thought; what it was thinking, nobody could have said.
The minutes and the seconds went by, and an hour passed.
After that hour of it Vance broke off and stood up.
Seeing him stand, Darkrai drifted up in front of him, its body bent as though in a bow.
"My thanks to you again, human Trainer, holder of the Viridian Power."
"There's no need. Do you still remember where they are? Where the research was done on you?"
Vance shook his head, and then raised that subject.
"Where..." Darkrai fell into thought, and then shook its head.
"I don't remember. I have my memories, but of where the way in and out of that place lies I have no impression at all. The few times I came out after the experiments, what lay outside was thick forest and mountains, and sometimes a boundless blue sea. Where exactly it was, I don't know."
"Mm. Never mind, then."
Vance had been prepared for that, and felt no regret about it.
Even if he had got it out of the creature, with his present strength he would not have dared go.