Early the next morning, on the lawn of the villa, Vance opened out the Viridian Power and treated Darkrai; after ten minutes or so he stopped, took out a potion he had mixed up, and held it out in front of it.
"Drink this down. In your condition it can only be made up slowly. You're far too badly drained."
"Haaah—"
Darkrai took it and drank it straight off.
When it had finished, a warm current ran through it, warm all over and reaching right through to the mind, and very pleasant it was.
"I've looked over the state of your body and worked out these training methods."
Once it had drunk, Vance set the ground out a little and then told it so.
"Haaah—"
Darkrai nodded. That Vance should take so much trouble over it moved it somewhat.
Vance demonstrated the movements and the essentials of the training once through.
Darkrai followed at once, and did them very correctly too.
As it went it noticed something not quite right, and altered several of the movements, changing the way the energy ran.
The power inside its body flowed faster for it.
"Good."
Darkrai's grasp of a thing was genuinely strong, and it could take one point and draw three more from it; carrying out the training Vance had laid down, it got more out of the training than had been intended.
After a few rounds of it Vance had it show its moves.
Move after move, it went through the whole of them.
"That will do."
Vance signalled, and only then did Darkrai draw its power back.
"I have a rough idea of your condition now. What matters next is still making up the foundation of the body."
"Arrange it as you think best."
Darkrai said it plainly, leaving it entirely to Vance to arrange, giving him its whole trust.
Perhaps it was that Vance carried the Viridian Power, which drew it in spite of itself; or perhaps it was that Vance had saved it, and had shown once again what remarkable strength and what skill in raising Pokémon he had.
At any rate, Darkrai was thoroughly convinced of him.
Having left Darkrai to itself, Vance went over to Sandslash and the others to direct their training.
"Still nobody come looking, then."
Vance said it over a cup of tea during the rest.
It seemed yesterday's business had not got about, which spared him some trouble.
However you put it, the right of the matter was on his side, and with the League there would be no great difficulty.
The problem was the Godbeast Gang's side of it, since they were not people who troubled about the rights of anything.
At lunch Darkrai was as full of wonder at it all as Sandslash and Onix and the rest had been when they first arrived.
"It may be very strong, but it's still a country bumpkin."
So said Sandslash, holding something like a large loaf in both claws.
During the morning's training the presence coming off the creature had frightened it and put a chill down its back.
Now, seeing it clumsy and at a loss over how to eat, Sandslash wanted to laugh.
It had not even opened the tin, but had put the whole thing straight into its mouth. Surely that spoiled the taste of it?
"Hiss-heh—"
Haunter came up beside it and joined in the jabbering.
"Squeak, squeak — you reckon so too? Aye, so do I."
Sandslash said it over and over.
"Knock, knock—"
Two crisp raps on the head — Haunter got one the same as the other — and the hand that gave them was Vance's,
"Weren't the pair of you just the same, back then?"
"Hiss-heh—"
The two Pokémon laughed sheepishly and drew back.
"Those two little ones mean no harm by it."
"Haaah—"
"That reminds me. Darkrai, if you can weave nightmares, can you weave good dreams?"
Vance sat down beside it and asked.
"I am afraid not. The moment I enter a dream I affect the one whose dream it is, and it shapes itself towards nightmare of its own accord."
"True enough — that will be the gift of your kind. But you could hold the nightmare's effect down as far as it will go and build a training ground inside the dream, with conditions that are hard to come by in the real world; and at the same time work on the mind, on technique..."
Vance put forward a training notion that he thought a very good one.
"That could be done."
Having heard Vance out, Darkrai said it was worth a try and ought to be manageable.
It would only need a subject to try it on, to see what the effect was.
"Those two will do. A little grinding won't hurt them."
Vance pointed at Sandslash and the other one.
"Hiss-heh—"
Haunter cried out that it had been careless.
"If it works well, all the rest will be having it too. We'll begin with you."
Vance took hold of the slippery Haunter first and started the training.
Yes — this Haunter was never very keen when it was set to train, and was for ever fond of slacking. Put the training inside its dreams, and let us see how it slacked then.
"Hiss-heh—"
Haunter had not the least power to resist. The world swam in front of it, and it was standing on a patch of open ground under a pitch-black sky that gave off an air of ill omen; being there weighed on it.
And this was with Darkrai holding its nightmare power back as far as it could — that was why Haunter got off as lightly as this.
"Let's start with a volcano simulation. Have Haunter cross it, with lava flying about along the way..."
Vance had appeared inside the dream as well, and said it to Darkrai.
"Haaah—"
Darkrai heard him out and did it at once.
"Hiss-heh—"
Before Haunter had taken it in, the scene changed. A wave of scorching heat came at it — how had it got into the middle of a volcano?
There was no time to think it over. It floated up off the ground, turned and tried to run.
But the flying lava followed it the whole way, close enough almost to graze it, so that it felt the heat and the pain of it without ever being touched, and struggle as it might it could not get free.
"Hiss-heh-heh—"
Haunter moved through the volcano swearing as it went.
There would be no slacking now.
"Carry on. In a simulated setting you can let it feel power of a higher order at a deep level — not only its own power, but what a move is capable of."
"Haaah—"
One attempt after another, and the results of them left Vance very pleased.
This way, training in moves and the tempering of the mind went forward together.
This Darkrai was a Legendary Pokémon and no mistake — it was simply strong.
With it here, they could train inside dreams.
Alakazam had been able to do it before, but the effect had fallen a step short of Darkrai's.
In the field of nightmares Darkrai was the stronger, this being where the gift of its kind lay.
Darkrai had another name as well: the Nightmare God!
Inside the nightmares it wove, the weight of them, the feeling of suffocation, were no different from the real thing.