//------------------------------// // 266. Blood Bathory pt. 2. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Ponyville, Cadence- “So can we just kidnap Twilight and our friends to go to Palicoast together while leaving Luna in charge?” I asked as I sat with several of my friends. “Why are you still friends with Jaded?” Oh Shining, she wasn’t as bad as you think she is. Still, she was pretty bad and annoying to other people most of the time. “She’s actually a pretty good friend when you’re not on her petty kitty list, besides Flurry Heart could use some friends and we can watch her build a sand castle… plus there’s me and you being on a beach?” I watched as it took a moment for Shining to think it over. “The kidnapping wouldn’t even be really that bad as I know the pirates we’re going to be hitching a ride with.” “Okay, we can go to Palicoast with them, but can we not call it kidnapping?” Well okay then Shiny. Yona, a yak I’m vaguely acquainted with, stopped and looked to us. “But Yona signed up for it and wants to be kidnapped by pirates!” Yona stated as she approached us. “Also Yona wanting to see kitty land with Sandbar, Streamy and Gallus.” “See, Yona gets it.” I said holding a hoof out to her. “Don’t make me ask the bridge question Cadence… I know you would jump off one because you have wings.” Shining said with a laugh as he nuzzled against me and I returned the love we felt for one another. “Still don’t like Jaded though.” “Fair, we each have our own friends and we don’t necessarily have to be friends of those friends… did Twilight learn that lesson yet?” I said as we held each other. “Eh, she’ll get there eventually if she hasn’t, Princess of Friendship and all. Probably learned something like that by researching Lambkin.” We can’t even mention the Lambkin around her without her eyes twitching Shining. “So who’s going to watch Equestria while she’s gone?” “Luna.” I just know Jaded set something up since she declared war on the Princess of the Night and Pies, Twilight was more of a Tart and Turnover lover and my particular food hang up was Parfaits. Everyone already knows how Celestia was with Cakes. -Ransei, A short distance from the ominous castle, Pom- With a splash of water, ice spewed forth from Plessy’s horn and an icy ramp appeared ahead of us leading up to the small bit of land floating. A second later Plessy slammed into it and we went sliding up the icy ramp and placed her flipper along the inner edgy to pivot and slide us onto the solid ground loaded with strangely healthy grass at the top. Sea water or salt water shouldn’t lead to healthy grass like this, the briny air would kill grass, weeds and healthy plants. There’s something queer about the nature of the castle as we looked at the open stone archway entrance, it wasn’t just the swirling red clouds meaning that Dynamax energy was in the area either. I hopped off Plessy, followed by Shanty, Dolly, Quetal, Dodo, Shine and Favela, turning back to look at Plessy she nodded to me. “All off? Then I better go keep those Spheals from getting into further trouble and help them deal with the Sharpedos. If I’m in decent health I’ll swing back around with the Spheal and will be waiting below this ledge and we’ll hold the entrance.” In the distance six lights rose up into the sky and lit things up like the sun beyond the torrential downpour I could hardly make out anything else through. “If not try to figure out a way back to the north… huh, it looks like our side are throwing up Sunny Day moves for some kind of plan. Enough Sunny Days can mostly cancel out the move Rainy Day. Good luck in there!” Plessy dove off the ledge into the sea and started to swim back north, leaving us stranded with a castle that was obviously magical in nature. “Let’s take stock of our stuff quickly, we have people to rescue!” With that I motioned for everyone to gather up, everyone in our group had a Reviver Seed and a few Sitrus Berries for personal use. Shine was carrying numerous Sitrus, Oran and Pecha Berries in a pack, there were less Pecha Berries than any other. She was our support, as such she will be at the back. Quetal, Shanty and I were scouts, we’d be testing or moving for traps. Dodo, Favela and Dolly would protect Shine and were our defenders. If any of us get seriously injured then I can use my Rescue Team Badge to send them back to Aurora where Chan was waiting to heal those we were rescuing. “Okay, we are being good to go, then let’s go!” Shanty turned and was about to dart forward when I grabbed her with a hoof and pulled her back. “Shanty…Wha-?!” It was a good thing I did when a sword’s blade erupted from the ground threatening to skewer us. I swallowed loudly at the rust colored blood splatters on it. “Well that’s a trap no one would expect…” Quetal said wide eyed as he looked at the small section of grass it came from, upon closer inspection I was right to feel that something was up with the green grassy courtyard beyond the entrance. I could see various other holes patterned and layered throughout the grass, hard to spot and especially dangerous to be hit by. “Everyone be more careful and cautious, follow me.” I moved to where I saw empty grass area, and moved forward and took a moment to notice there were different holes and even a line in the ground. I quickly swung my hoof over one of the odd holds and a rusty colored tipped lance sprang up. Quickly jabbing my hoof over the line produced an axe that swung through the area quickly. I decided to avoid any more traps like those. -Shanty- We carefully be picking our way through the courtyard, slowly making our way for the wooden doors at the castle entrance. There be traps everywhere! This is exciting, scary and a fairly intimidating place, given that this was being the things we were seeing first. How much more horror be inside? “Wouldn’t want to be fighting out here...” Dodo suddenly leapt forward and pushed me to the left with his head as a chain sprang out of a hole at where my front right leg had been, the bladed chain instead wrapped around Dodo’s leg and dragged him off to the side and a large section of the grass flipped upwards. Dodo flexed out the bladed teeth from within his beak, he be biting through the chain wrapping his leg and while chewing on the links in his beak after freeing himself, he be getting up quickly to run towards us a few steps and then hopped several times avoiding several knife and spinning blade or axe traps. The large section of the grass be sandwiching down on itself where Dodo had been. It be like a massive hammer with how loud the impact was and the shockwave be nearly knocking us all down. Warbling with slightly worry Dodo looked around and whimpered flexing his new metal wings in agitation as he protectively cuddled up against my side. Dolly be barking something and her eyes were looking about as she held her board aloft to block any chains trying to drag us into another smashing trap. “I’m well aware Dolly…” Pom said quietly while staring at the solid block as it slowly started unfolding and settled back into place, the grass on top of the smasher not even be disturbed… it’s either that or that not be grass. “Everyone watch out for more of those bladed chain traps!” In fact, I don’t think I ever be seeing grass grow near salt water… We quietly be circling around to left and then back to the right and in a long circuitous route, Shine narrowly be avoiding another chain trap by phasing her body through the chain as it tried to wrap around her neck. “This castle… it is being intelligently malicious.” I can be feeling it, I did not be having Ocellus’s empathy sense and I don’t think I needed it here. “Just what we needed, a magical genius loci. My paranoia has shot up at least five levels.” Pom stated shivering and eyes darting about as Dodo took the lead triggering chain traps and evading them quickly. Dodo stop as we were on the far right side of the courtyard, he turned back and warbled something to me and I received the image of a rock. “Dodo be wanting something to throw.” It seems that I excited Dodo, because I understood what he wanted to keep me and our group safe. “Can’t you just spit a cupcake or something Dodo?” We not be knowing how his baked goods making ability works Pom, but he probably not be as capable of doing it at the moment. “Also does it bother anyone else that there’s an increasingly large coppery smell coming from the entrance the closer we get to it?” Dodo warbled to Pom sadly, he not be currently capable of as so much as a cupcake at the moment. “Yeah, I smell it too, also if you be needing a projectile…” Favela flick a thick and heavy looking leaf on an arc to Dodo, he be catching it in his mouth. “Then ask for one of my razor leaves!” Dodo nodded came back to us pushing Quetal and Pom back a bit until we were all gather, he then be sending me a mental image of my eyes and ears. “Cover your ears and close your eyes, we should probably should be ducking down too!” I was doing this as I said it and Dodo be flicking his head right and then sharply to the left letting the leaf fly. The leaf spun through the air curving leftward and then swung inwards and struck the ground. I be seeing something pop up from the ground and be quickly closing my eyes as several loud explosions went off. Upon opening my eyes I be seeing several spears, swords, axes, daggers, darts and a whole mess of twisted bits of metal sprayed all over the place. Dodo looked to the left and right slightly and then warbled before moving forward. “… Can we all just take a moment to appreciate the fact that Dodo prevented us from being in the middle of that horrifying kill zone?” After Pom said this, we did just that and praised Dodo. It be making him quite happy that we were alive and alright. “These traps look like they were designed to maim and or completely shred and bleed a person out. That Bathory is really… something else.” I think Pom wanted to be saying something nastier, but she be looking my and Favela’s way. It not be like I don’t know how to curse like a sailor already, but Favela might need to take some pirating lessons before she can be a good number two. Pom is still being more innocent than I am, not that I be entirely losing all my innocence in one go, I still be having a scrap of that somewhere around here in my head. Also we be making it to the entrance without any further trouble. -Quetal the Sneasel- I pushed the door open and the creaking noises sounded vaguely off, as in not ancient, enough so that I jumped back. This made me avoid getting skewered by a bar of spikes swinging down from above the doorway. It seemed it would only do so if the door is opened fully, the spikes were low enough to puncture legs or torsos of smaller Pokémon. Also the overpowering smell of blood was getting worse, not that I didn’t notice all the spikes on the bar had the same rusty colored tips to them. How many people have these traps killed and were we walking into what was an obvious death trap the size of a castle? “Not very welcoming is it?” I said blandly to Pom who looked nervous and very much alert. What does she have to be scared about exactly? I know she isn’t invincible, but she managed to mostly match a powerful Lucario while they were Mega Evolved on her own and she has insane reflexes. Sure she pulled every muscle in her body doing some weird attack, but she was likely to survive this… unless she got herself killed trying to keep us alive… I flinched slightly and brought my left claws up to my chest, taking a few deep ragged breaths trying not to relive history here. Not when we were in a very dangerous place where I could almost feel the maliciousness in the air. “Where to first?” I asked as I didn’t move to go inside. “The castle has four towers, but I doubt any of them are primarily where the captives are held. We’ll start from bottom to top… we will need to find stairs or something that can possibly lead into a dungeon or a basement that’s likely to be here.” Well it certainly did feel like it had to have a basement Pom. She carefully stepped over the bar trap hanging in the way of the right doors entrance. “Also, we are not splitting up. No matter what happens, we group up, we move cautiously and we do so quickly. Dodo, thankfully enough, can sense the traps he’ll take point.” The strange ground bound Skarmory like thing made a strange noise and immediately moved forward into the castle while sweeping its eyes left and right. It then looked around in a circle at the ceiling and at the floor, it stretched its right foot forward and tapped something while swiftly hopping back. A wide axe like blade dropped from the ceiling and crashed into the floor with thunderous force splitting the stone flooring with minimal little effort. “A guillotine?!” Pom stated as the rest carefully entered the castle behind her over the spiked bar. She studied the brown edge of the metal. “Okay… not what I expected… but let’s not walk under any chandeliers with tons of pointy bits, for very obvious reasons. Be wary of anything that moves and isn’t us, including the floor! Continue Dodo.” The thing that wasn’t a Pokémon responded to Pom and then moved forward while looking around, it was very bright and it triggered some traps and after that the area was slightly safer to move through. We passed by the two staircases leading to the upper floor and didn’t go through the hallways to the left or right, we instead went straight entered a central room of the castle… which had a large fountain filled with a viscous, thick and churning red liquid that smelled of blood and probably was. “Is that a fountain of… I, Favela, am going to be sick.” The poor little grass type goat paled and shivered, I however just reminded of what I’ve lost looking at the sickening pool. “It’s not a fountain… it’s a bathtub with a fountain in the middle, I can faintly smell some chemicals to keep the blood from coagulating.” Pom stated with a wide eyed certainty. “Any nicks or cuts we get in the castle are now a priority to deal with if all the traps have that anti-coagulant chemical in them or else we’ll continue bleeding until we bleed out.” “Agreed.” The rest of us stated as we gave the giant bathtub a wide birth and moved on to what should be the throne room… it wasn’t. The throne room must be up the stairs then, since what we saw was exactly what we wanted. The staircase into the basement of this cursed and haunted castle of traps. -Shine the Ghourgeist- This place had some interesting aesthetics to me, but then again that’s just the inner ghost type side of me that likes spooky places. This place was horrible for anyone who couldn’t simply phase through all the deadly traps and if they were even deadlier because you wouldn’t stop bleeding if hit by them… yeah. This place was both scary and not nice. Even the spiraling staircase down into, what I assume to be the dungeon or a torture, possibly both, was covered in traps that Dodo thankfully could see and or somehow predict. Pom even had us walking along the wall when there was a trap that would turn the staircase into a slide, where being skewered or stabbed on the way down was an exceedingly high likelihood. Wire with barbs, swords with jagged bits of metal, axes with gleaming edges, large clubs covered in metal thorns, we were seeing all sorts of ways to be bled dry on the way day. It’s a good thing we won’t have to carry any captives back on the way up, but still it was going to be hard for us to escape personally. We were going as fast and as safely as we feasibly could, even then the battle outside was probably far more horrendous and growing more hectic. We’d be late to the party, but we’d join in if the fighting was still going. We finally reached the bottom step and a barbed spear sprang out of the ceiling, no one was hit, but it did spook us a bit as it was something that Dodo didn’t catch. Favela was the one that pulled Dodo back to safety with her vines while looking up and shivering. -Favela the Skiddo- This place was an adventure, but not the kind I wanted to go on. This was the serious, we’re going to die if we make a mistake kind of stuff. Still we managed to disable or bypass some of the worst traps, the floor slanting slide one was particularly notable to me. I looked to Shanty and she looked to me, we both cautiously squeezed by the barbed spear that fired into the floor and moved into what looked like a place from a nightmare, it was the entrance to the castles dungeon. Thinking about it, was the spear aimed at where you would stop if you were to slide all the way to the bottom of the… best not to be thinking about it then. There was watching my step and watching someone else’s steps as well, we kind of needed that here as we moved forward into a room with implements I didn’t even want to think about how they were used. “Torture room… Bathory is definitely one of ‘those’ kind of problems.” Pom stated quietly as I stuck with Shanty who was looking about curiously, barely looking far less fearful than I was feeling. We started looking around the circular space with various things in it like crates, barrels, even a table with some wine and a few other odds and ends on it. Wine that I noticed Shanty sniffing before putting a cork back on the bottle while making a gagging noise. Dodo didn’t seem to find anything problem in the surrounding room so we relaxed a little. A lot of the center of the room was taken up by some very strange large objects, so we heard the voice before we saw them. As we walked clockwise around the central obstruction blocking our view of them. “No… she can’t be back… not now…” Someone whispered and my ears flickered to a rack where a Pokémon covered in scars was hanging from bindings wrapped around her flipper arms. The Pokémon opened their eyes and she didn’t seem like she could understand what she was seeing before her. “Not… Carmilla… thank… goodness.” “Carmilla?” Pom immediately made her way over to the bound Pokémon that I recognized as being a Primarina. “You learn… a lot… when…” She started breathing heavily, tears spilled from her eyes. “Please, be real…” “Shine, we found a captive over here, we need a Sitrus Berry!” Pom moved up to her and gently ran a hoof along her body making her flinch at the gentlest of touches. “Open your mouth please.” “O-okay.” She was already whimpering, this Primarina had seen better days. Scars ran along her body tarnishing what was once a beautiful Pokémon, her hair was seemingly haphazardly hacked to her shoulders and her limbs seem to not have much strength in them. Pom slowly pushed the Sitrus Berry into her mouth and she quietly bit down and started chewing the berry. Once she swallowed her battered and scarred form heal up slightly, but she still looked very horrible. “… you’re real, all of you… you… you came to save us… from HER.” The Primarina suddenly had some more life in her eyes, the look in them prior to eating the berry was haunting. “Favela gently wrap your vines around her torso, Quetal cut her bindings… one at a time and slowly lower her to the floor.” Pom instructed and we followed that up. “Who are you and what’s been happening here, I’m Pom Lambchop of Rescue Team Harmony. We will get you and everyone in the castle out of here alive.” The Primarina barked with laughter and tears, it was as if she didn’t believe Pom’s words. “How are you going to do that, you’re trapped in here with us. This castle breathes, it wants us all to bleed for ‘HER’…” She shivers as she was freed and left lying on the floor, which was pretty cold come to think of it. This ‘HER’ sounding fairly scary to me, is it the same one who is holding that massive battle on the Peninsula? A battle that we are not a part of to be here? -Pom- “Who is she? Is it Bathory? Also why didn’t she put you under her control?” The answers we would receive probably wouldn’t be the most pleasant things in the world to hear. Not from this poor seal like Pokémon that looked to have bene vigorously tortured. “You know what, tell me while we’re rescuing the others being held in the cells down here. Dodo scout and tell me if there are any traps ahead, if this is a dungeon there are likely cells with Pokémon that need an emergency rescue.” Dodo went to do so and I turned back to the sea lion, mer-pony Pokémon who gained my attention by trying to move towards me slightly. “She likes to hear woman scream as she flays us with sharp instruments, the controlled don’t react how she wants them to when it comes to carving us to lick up our vital fluids. She bleeds us out and licks our wounds to drink our blood. She talks quite a bit about who she is, was and her history.” She was shivering and looking around for safety, most of us here were female and she’s been very badly hurt by one so she sought out Quetal who seemed a little surprised she would focus on him. I would be surprised to because he has claws and she had scars. “She calls herself Elizabeth Bathory, but her name is Carmilla the Blood Countess, the very master of this castle. She summoned it here, a castle full of traps to bleed anyone that gets trapped inside. She’s very much haughty, arrogant even to the point she wouldn’t stop talking about how great she was even as she stabbed me in the tail and told me how we should all be glad, proud even, to be a delicious snack for her. She said we wouldn’t be able to get out, to escape capture, that we’ll be trapped in an enclosed space like she was at the end of her life whatever that meant. She even revels in the idea of bathing in the blood of females and whatever appearance of her you saw, it is a lie… since she’s using my appearance before she captured me.” The Primarina was just shy of hysterical as she told us about them and holding onto Quetal who was trying to avoid hurting her with his claws. “Quetal, can you get her to calm down? I’ll be busy rescuing the Pokémon from the cells.” I left the Primarina to him and saw Dodo waiting for me with Favela and Shanty by one of the open cells, inside was a badly injured fox like water Pokémon with fin laying on her side. She woke up as I approached her. “Mmhhhh… Doggy… Messiah? You came for me…” The tail weakly flopped and wagged the cross between a fox and a fish seemed excited to see me despite how painful it was to move. I held up the Rescue Team badge and in a pillar of light the blue Pokémon disappeared back to Helper’s Hamlet. The first rescue from this castle. I made my way into the next cell, it look like a blue little crocodile. “Huh… someone actually came… Motochika… for…ever…” In fact blue was becoming a recognizably prevalent color among water types at this point for me. I sent the little female crocodile on their way and hoped Chan was ready because those injuries looked nasty. -Bathory Battle- “What?!” Bathory noticed something was wrong as signs of life began disappearing from her castle, she knew of all of the life within her castle and could feel every inch of it. Bathory was angry that someone was taking away her toys somehow. Maybe they were killing them to put them out of their misery or maybe they were being teleported out. Whatever the cause, Bathory had to nip that in the butt and was upset that they think they can succeed in saving the already damned. With a mental flick Bathory activated the castle to actively go after the intruders and thereby raised the castles threat level several degrees to active traps instead of her usual passive ones, since apparently the passive traps that normally make up the malicious location that was her castle weren’t quite enough at the moment. If Pom’s team were to head back to the entrance of the castle, they would see why going out the front door just became functionally impossible. Bathory turned her focus back on the battle in front of her, her enemies were being quite resilient to the assaults she kept pressuring them with. The six suns creating the daylight on the northern side of the battlefield were glaringly bright and the clouds of the rainstorms her controlled could create wouldn’t push any further northwards, those suns were well enough to shine through the dark rainstorms she tried to increase in strength, the light of those created suns made her skin itch. -Dungeon cells, Pom- “Thank you.” The Floatzel in the cell said before she disappeared in a bright light, I asked about any other captives and most of them were down here in the three cell blocks. I moved to the next cell and saw a monkey like face and she was already at the bars of her cell and giving me a hopefully smile as she stretched out an arm. To me, probably saw me needing to be close to a weakened target to rescue them. “If you are healthy enough, help the others I’ve already rescued with the injured.” The monkey nodded and I rescued her, sending her away from this dark and disturbed place. It was quickly becoming quite apparent to me that all those that we rescued were female, covered in scars and had been bled out several times… so that bathtub with the fountain we saw on the way in. I wanted to throw up, I wanted to cry and not be in the middle of this mess, but I had a job to do and more Pokémon to rescue. “Pom, we be hearing something strange sounds, it is being like the castle is shifting about!” Shanty drew my attention to the large staircase that lead down here. “She know, SHE KNOWS!” The Primarina wailed out and continued to whimper and pulled the much smaller Quetal into a tearful hug. “And is coming for us…” “Do you want to be rescued?” I held up the Rescue Badge. The Primarina nodded and tried to use it on her to send her away. Only… it didn’t work. “That’s, not good. It didn’t work.” “Don’t worry we’ll still get you out of here.” Favela was joined by Shanty and Dolly in agreement. I silently thought it too, no one that was stuck here was going to be left behind to these horrors. We have to check the towers, upper floor and the throne room, but before we did that we’d at least get the Primarina outside and into the sea to freedom. It took about five more minutes of checking, but none of the cells here had any more Pokémon. We had already rescued about fifty seven so far. It just made me wonder how many we would find in other places, Dolly also found a journal or diary belonging to Elizabeth and after perusing its pages for a good ten minutes I learned all we needed to know about Elizabeth Bathory. Why this was found in the torture room was obvious, this was her favorite place to be as sickening as that might sound. Bathory was not someone that was nurtured by nobles that looked down on the peasantry, was overly spoiled and the story led up to how she became what she is. The journal also pointed out she was a reincarnated soul that was given another chance in this world. She even remember how she died several times previously. Her first death… she sealed in a room all alone, barely surviving off whatever food they the people who put her there gave her and after three years of karmic torment to match the ones inflicted on the people she thinks of as below her… she died, lonely, insane and tortured herself. This led to her being summoned from beyond death as a vampire with a draconic power over sound from how her voice had led many to their deaths in her first life. It was the knowledge about how she became Carmilla because of how history saw her, she literally became what the world she was in thought of her in legend after death before being called back from beyond the veil… she went from stuck up noble to a blood sucking demoness due to cruelly bathing in the blood of other females and history seeing her as a monster. Thus a monster she became. Carmilla didn’t have to be that monster when she was reincarnated into this world, but she chose to become the monster again in this world to. Leading me to think she was far too stuck in her ways. It was sad and I can kind of pity her, even if she was a total monster judging by some of the implements she had here. -Bathory Battlefield- “Okay, hit it, let’s give this discordant note a rocking and take back the field!” Motochika shouted and some drums started playing. He soon joined in on the guitar “We’re not going to take it~. No, we aint going to take it~. We’re not going to take it, anymore~!” Across the field the pupils in Bathory’s eyes shrunk as she felt the song of rebellion wash over her. Memories of being stuffed into a small room in a tower until she died. Autophobia and Claustrophobia as the battlefield seemed to shrink before her eyes and even with all the controlled around her, the pressure of loneliness threatened to struck her down. “Stronger than fate.” Bathory said with conviction as she continued to force her controlled army to take down the forces of Fontaine and Aurora once and for all. She reached up and gripped the necklace she wore bearing a Dynamax Stone.