Day Seven: Cerulean Sacrifice
The days blurred.
From the dense woods outside Pallet Town to the looming face of Mt. Moon and the road to Cerulean City, the world had become a gauntlet of loss. One by one, the wild Pokémon fell. Some disappeared during the night—no blood, no sound, just absence. Others died screaming beneath the stars.
Every time, Dragonair had an answer.
She mourned with them. Whispered reassurances. Pointed to others. Pidgeot had been acting strange, she said. Or Charmeleon left camp just before the attack. She had even helped them catch Eevee. Her voice was soft, hypnotic, like wind on water. The group, broken by grief and guilt, clung to her words like truth. Suspicion became survival instinct.
Dragonair wrapped herself around the last of them—soothing, elegant, cold. In the end, only three Pokémon remained. Ninetails, bruised and wild-eyed. Arbok, hardened and silent. And Dragonair, ever serene.
They waited at the edge of Cerulean City, too afraid to move forward, too hollow to turn back. Arbok didn’t sleep that final night. She coiled atop a broken stone archway, eyes fixed on the stars. She wanted to believe—just once more—that they were safe.
That’s when she saw her.
Dragonair slipped away from camp like a whisper. She moved with the ease of practice, heading for a wooded area nearby. There, in the shadows, something shifted—tall and heavy, cloaked in blood and metal.
The Hunter.
Arbok crouched, ready to spring at him as he headed back towards the camp, where Ninetails slept unprotected—but it was already too late. A blinding flash erupted from below. Electricity cracked the earth. When the dust settled, Ninetails was gone. Only a single torn ear lay in the dirt beside their campfire.
Arbok wheeled in terror, alone now, but there was no escape. Dragonair rose from the gorge with coiled grace, glittering under the stars like a specter.
Arbok called out to her—why?
And for the first time, she answered with her eyes.
Not softness. Not sorrow.
Satisfaction.
The Hunter’s net struck like lightning.
When Arbok woke, she couldn’t move. She was pinned. Around her, the earth reeked of scorched stone and old blood. The Hunter crouched beside her, silent, curious. Dragonair coiled by his side. She nuzzled his hand. The last thing Arbok saw before the blade came down was her gaze—calm, merciless, gleaming with victory.
The Hunter moved on.
The wind howled across the road below, sweeping dust in soft spirals over the blood-darkened stone. Dragonair glided with the Hunter on her back, her flight nearly silent, barely disturbing the air around her. Each movement was deliberate, practiced—like the rhythm of breath, like the pattern of a lie.
She no longer needed to speak. She had said all the right things. She had whispered fear into the ears of the brave, turned friends against each other with nothing more than a glance. It hadn’t taken much. A suggestion here. An accusation there. A body left just far enough away. The truth was never in the evidence. It was in the doubt. That’s what they never understood.
Dragonair looked skyward. The stars were brighter now, with no firelight to compete. No watchful eyes. Just her. And him. The Hunter gazed ahead, silent as always. His weapons slung over his back. His gloves stained. He never questioned her loyalty. He didn’t need to. She had come to him of her own accord.
The wild ones thought the betrayal had been forced. That the Hunter’s Pokemon had been captured by force. Broken. But no—she had chosen this. Not out of cruelty, not out of spite. Out of clarity. The wild were disorganized, impulsive. They clung to weakness, celebrated sentiment. They turned every wound into ceremony. Every slight into a battle. She had offered them structure. Control. Order. And they had tried to burn her for it.
Dragonair smiled—not with her mouth, but with the curve of her movement. Her body shimmered faintly under the starlight, a long, elegant ripple of death. She remembered each of their names.
Metapod. Pikachu. Wartortle. Gyarados. Charmeleon. Dugtrio. Ponyta. Porygon. Pidgeot. Venusaur. Ninetails. Arbok.
They had trusted her. Worshiped her. Feared her. And in the end, she had outlived them all.
With a signal from the Hunter, she settled back to the ground. In the distance, the outline of Saffron City rose in the moonlight. More Pokémon. More chaos. More work to do.
The Hunter climbed down from her back and Dragonair coiled beside him and raised her head, eyes narrowing on the path forward. She wasn’t just his weapon. She was the blade’s edge.
And the night was far from over.