"Montgomery?" Florian starts, eyes wide. He narrows them. "What are you doing in my room?"
"I was just looking for you," he says, his mouth heavy and dry. His heart is pounding. "I wanted to talk to you."
"So you had to break in?" Florian sniffs, slithering past him and rolling his eyes. "Don't tell me you've lost all your manners out on the road."
Mott watches him. Florian doesn't seem to notice, too preoccupied rummaging through his bag. Swallowing the lump in his throat. His eyes dart down to the family pendant on his neck. He focuses on the black, glittering jewel inside.
"Well? I don't have all night," Florian snips, closing his back and placing it back on the hook. Raising a characteristically haughty brow at him, he demands, "What did you need?"
The black jewel looks familiar. Sickeningly familiar. It's the inscriptions, Mott realizes, with a sense of panicked detachment.
Thunderstorms.
"Montgomery."
His eyes shoot up to Florian's. Florian watches him, a taut hesitance beginning to creep into his features. Florian's gaze becomes needle-sharp, defensive yet probing. Mott can hardly breathe.
"It's you," Mott says, trembling from head to toe. "It's you."
Florian stiffens.
For a long, drawn out moment, neither of them speak. All they do is stare at each other, tense and unblinking. Mott's not sure that either of them even breathe.
Then, with a sharp turn of his head, Florian speaks.
"What are you talking about? Of course I'm me; what did you expect when you came into my room, to find someone else? You've clearly had too much to drink tonight," he states, his tone cold and callous. He sounds nothing like himself. Mott wonders if he even knows Florian's true self to make that judgement. "Why don't you go home and rest. We'll talk in the morning."
Mott nods, numb. He takes a step back, toward the door. Florian watches him, unmoving, unblinking, coiled up tight and ready to pounce.
His heart pounds.
They watch each other.
In a flash, Mott lunches forward with his scalchop, slashing at the pendant.
Florian whips aside, narrowly dodging, but not fast enough to keep the pendant from being sliced from his neck. Mott snatches the pendant from the air, reaching out to rip the jewel from it, but he barely brushes a finger against it before Florian retaliates with a blindingly rapid strike.
Staggering back and crashing into the desk, Mott shakes his head to reorient himself. Florian is gone.
His breath halts in his throat, aching and frantic. He whips his head back and forth in a desperate search, catching a glimpse of green entirely by chance—from the ceiling. Up in the rafters, Florian looms like a gargoyle statue, glowering down at him. It reminds him of the Roselake Museum, of the killer in the rafters—the killer that struck with blindingly rapid speed.
The shadows cast up onto Florian's face in an eerie caricature of the devil.
Mott's never seen this face on his childhood friend.
"It's you," he rasps, somewhere between rage and fear and disbelief. He wants to believe it's not real. He wants to wake up and laugh at himself for having such a silly nightmare. But Florian's tail curls possessively around the pendant, the pendant holding Zekrom's stone. "It was you this whole time?"
"Didn't I tell you to stop with your suicidal quest?" Florian hisses, venom burning in his eyes. "Didn't I warn you?"
Mott's heart threatens to burst into his throat. "Sapphire City. Ada's son. Adelina Birch. You killed them all, you—" His throat constricts, sore and pinched. He can only manage a whisper: "You tried to burn Lenny to death."
"Listen, I tried to keep you out of all of it! But you kept trying to hunt Zekrom, and I couldn't let you put an end to my strongest asset. This power is the only thing keeping my family above the others; it's the only thing that can destroy other family powers and assets in an instant. I needed to do this for my family," he proclaims, fervent and manic. "So just keep in mind when you're looking for someone to blame: this all started with you."
And with that, he lunges straight for Mott's throat.
There's no hope of Mott dodging. In a blur, Florian is wound around his neck, constricting tight enough to cut his airflow. A choked gasp escapes Mott as he feverishly claws at Florian's torso. It's no good. Florian is coiled and Mott is prone, unable to gain enough advantage to throw him off. As a last resort, Mott beats his fist into the desk, knocking things to the ground. Books and paperweights thump against the floor, and one of the inn vases shatter on impact.
The commotion works like a charm. Distantly, past the blood rushing in his ears and the faint buzz of asphyxiation, he hears Torquil's snoring stop with a halt. Mott beats the desk again, knocking down more books. A grumble from the other room, followed by footsteps that grow ever closer.
Florian hears it too. His eyes widen and he scowls down at Mott. Their eyes meet and they both know Florian has enough strength to finish the job. He can squeeze hard enough to snap Mott's neck; he can end it before Torquil gets here and interferes. He could end it before Mott has a chance to expose him, and he can make up some lie about Mott trying to kill him in revenge for being cast out of his family.
It would be plausible. People would believe it. The only person that would raise a fuss would be Lenny, but when faced with Florian's pristine reputation, his words would be mocked and silenced. The case would be open and shut. Florian would get away clean.
He can tell by looking into Florian's calculating eyes that he knows everything Mott does. He knows he can get away with murder. He's always been the chessmaster, aware of every move he can take and choosing the most strategic one.
But by the time Torquil is turning the knob, Florian releases him. Mott gasps, his throat roughened and bruised. Coughing and holding his neck, he wheezes on the ground, hacking air back into his lungs.
Florian retreats back to the rafters, eyes wide. Mott has never seen him make a tactical error before.
"Woah, guys, what's going on?" Torquil exclaims, clueless to the atmosphere. He helps Mott up. Mott keeps his eyes locked on Florian's with frantic persistence, and Florian does the same with equal ferocity. "Don't tell me you're fighting again; I thought we moved past this..."
It strikes him suddenly that the pendant is gone. Florian just had it; where did it go? His eyes dart around the room in a desperate search until they land on the corner of the room—there. There, fallen in a heap on the floor, is the broken pendant. Florian must've dropped it when he was strangling him.
Just as Mott lunges for it, Florian does the same. Torquil shouts at them, grabbing him, trying to intervene—and for a heartstopping moment, Mott worries he won't make it. That Florian will reach the pendant and escape. But then there's a blur of green and Florian goes flying back.
Standing between Mott and Florian, poised and ready to strike again, is Lenny.
"What in tarnation is going on here?" Lenny demands, standing his ground.
"The pendant!" Mott cries as Florian coils upward once more. "Get the pendant!"
Florian shoots himself at Lenny, lashing out in a brutal attack. A yell of protest escapes Torquil as Lenny crashes into the wall. Racing over to Florian in an attempt to placate him, Torquil tries to get between the fight—only for Florian to thrash at him in a berserk impulse.
Torquil staggers back, holding his wounded arm. "Florian, what...?"
He doesn't deign to offer Torquil and explanation, instead dashing aside and bulletting toward the pendant. Summoning a burst of water, Mott halts him in his path temporarily while Lenny reorients himself and dives for the pendant. Florian recovers quickly, though, and slips past Mott just in time to whack Lenny aside. Lenny retaliates in a flash.
The battle swiftly morphs into a push and pull between their blinding speeds, a constant gain and loss of the upper hand. Every movement is made without hesitation and with a lightning fast pace. It's a deadly dance in which one error could lead to a devastating loss. In the middle of it all, the pendant remains untouched.
Not for long.
Mott rushes forth, reaching a hand out to grab the jewel. He feels Florian's gaze shoot to him, furious and wild, before Florian too darts for the pendant. Mott is no match for his speed; he knows the race is a lost cause. But in challenging Florian for the pendant, he distracted him just long enough for Lenny to land a dire blow, putting an end to their rapid dance of death.
Florian, struck, goes flying out the window. The sound of shattering glass rings all around them as the window bursts into shards that crash to the floor. It's so loud that Mott imagines all of the town could hear it.
After that, silence. Silence and the heavy rise and fall of their labored breath.
"What... what the hell was that?!" Torquil demands, throwing his hands in the air. He then winces at the motion, placing a hand over the cut on his shoulder. "You just threw Florian out the window, man!"
"He had the stone," Mott utters, his head still clouded by shock. Torquil makes a face at him like he's speaking absolute gibberish, so he turns to Lenny with a feverishly grave expression and repeats, "He had the stone; he had it all this time. It was him."
He watches as his explanation dawns on Lenny—first the astonishment, then the disbelief, and finally the horror.
"Uh, hello?" Torquil snaps, rubbing his arm. "Can someone explain to me what's going on?"
He doesn't know why, but the thought of explaining all this to Torquil destroys him. The thought of breaking the news to him and fighting not to see that little tepig he used to know, with the large, sad eyes—it breaks him. Especially when he'd be thinking about the squeaking snivy they both used to know.
Thankfully, Lenny explains everything. It doesn't spare his heart all that much pain. He still has to watch as the veil is brutally torn from Torquil's eyes and the gruesome truth is shoved in his face. By the end of it, Torquil's expression of agonized terror and disbelief is enough to haunt Mott for the rest of his life.
Torquil laughs. It's an unsteady, broken sound; a nervous mimicry of amusement. "You're joking. You're joking, right Mott? It's not funny, man, cut it out."
Neither Lenny nor Mott say a word. They simply share a grim glance, communicating nothing and everything. Torquil's face falls and pales.
"It's not true," he exhales, almost to himself. Then, more desperately: "It's not; it's just a misunderstanding!" Coming closer to Mott with an imploring, pleading smile, he begs, "Right? It's all just a misunderstanding. I mean, come on—it's Florian, we know him." Choking, he repeats, "It's Florian, Mott, it's just Florian!"
"He has the stone," Mott croaks, his voice raspy and rough. Torquil shakes his head, lost, muttering no to himself over and over again. Clearing his throat, he says, "Grab the pendant, I'll show you."
"Mott," Lenny pipes up. Turning to him, he startles back at Lenny's pale face. "The pendant is gone."
His heart stops.
"What do you mean it's—?"
A bellow of thunder and a vicious bolt of lightning crash down on the city in the blink of an eye. The sheer volume rattles the heavens and quakes the earth, forcing Mott to grit his teeth and cover his ears. It doesn't stop the ringing in his ears or the pounding in his head, as if the loud burst of noise shoved a storm into his skull.
It's so loud it's almost blinding.
It almost rips the breath from his lungs.
When he comes to, he's on the ground. So are Lenny and Torquil, still covering their heads. A storm is raging outside, with thunder and lighting and torrents of merciless rain. And just outside the window, Mott catches a glimpse of something that makes his stomach churn: Zekrom, thrashing just behind the surface of heavy, gray clouds, racing forward to the call of Florian and his stone.
Their final battle has begun.