Lazarus had tried not to pay any attention to the sounds coming from the battlefield, the screaming, the howling, and instead focus on driving even through the constant seismic vibrations threating to derail the rover.
But that endeavor failed when the Salamence used a move to crack open half the mountain.
The final attack made the earth quiver even tens of kilometers away from the impact zone and the rover barely manages to avoid hitting a boulder.
Lazarus feels his heartbeat accelerate, his breathing becomes shallow.
He doesn't know what just happened, but he does know one thing, and it's that all his friends are dead.
He tries not to think of what that means. Not right now. Not when death itself is after him. So, he pushes the accelerator even harder.
Through their psychic link, his Corvisquire warns him of the dragon rushing towards them. Though it didn't need to, Lazarus heard the rumble of the sound barrier breaking loud enough.
His pokémon are scared, and he wants nothing more than to stop the rover and put them back inside their pokéballs, to safety, but he knows they won't stand for it.
And even a second of distraction is dangerous at the speed they are going.
Through the rover window, he sees the world take a yellow hue.
Fire engulfs Corvisquire as it cries out in pain, trying to flap its wings faster, as the flame burns it completely out of existence a second later.
Lazarus screams in agony, his grip on the steering wheel tighten. He can no longer feel his Corvisquire, the psychic link that was keeping him and his pokémon connected has one less participant in it.
He blinks away the tears, he won't be able to see the path with watery eyes.
His treacherous mind brings long forgotten memories out, when his Corvisquire was just a Rookidee.
Of how he took care of his little Rookidee as if it were his own child. The promises he made to his brave bird. All gone now.
The last time he felt this kind of pain was when his mother had died all those years ago. The feeling of loss feels all too familiar.
Lazarus grits his teeth, doing his hardest to banish these memories out of his mind.
And when he seems to get some of his emotions under control, the Salamence decides to land on the ground.
Sunfyre's landing creates a powerful shock wave that sends the rover flying into the air.
The rover spins in the air before crashing hard into the ground, upside down.
The dragon approaches the rover, and casually swipes its claw at it, the impact breaks all the reinforced glass, and even the heavily armored exoskeleton of the rover fails to keep it from being split in half.
Both halves of the rover fly through the air and fall back towards the ground, not far from the dragon.
Lazarus lets out a pained scream as most of his body breaks.
Lazarus, struggling to even breathe properly because of his broken ribs tries look for his pokémon but cries out in pain. He looks down to see a sharp metallic shrapnel impaling his thigh.
He feels the glare of the dragon on him, looking up he sees Sunfyre meet his eyes and opens its mouth to reveal its sharp teeth, strong enough to bite through every known material in the world.
Sunfyre generates flames in its throat to unleash at Lazarus, but stops when it sense something dark and ominous.
Gengar emerges out from the ground near it, covered in dark and chilling shadows.
Sunfyre roars as it sees the Gengar, ignoring Lazarus for now.
Gengar looks at Sunfyre with a look of pure hatred as dark ectoplasm coalesces in its hands.
Gengar shapes the ectoplasm into a swirling orb of shadowy energy with purple and dark blue tentrils coming out of it.
The orb seems to have a world of darkness inside it. Shimmering and flickering.
Gengar sprints towards Sunfyre as it launches the orb at Sunfyre.
The shadowy ball of darkness carries all of Gengar's hatred and malevolence manifested into a nightmare.
The orb hits Sunfyre right in the face, and it feels the depths of Gengar's malice and loathing for it.
Nightmare affects Sunfyre's mind, causing it to hear pained whispers and screams inside its mind.
Gengar wastes no time, and starts assaulting the dragon's body with a shadowy claw.
Not far from Lazarus is his Kirlia and Snover. None of them unharmed, both barely hanging by the thread.
Kirlia manages to lift itself with its psychic power. It looks around, the Snover near it is alive but won't be able to walk. The dragon is unresponsive, it's blank eyes seemingly starting at nothing.
The ball of rage that is Gengar bombards the dragon with one Shadow Claw after another, and they seem to be having some effect. The dragon feels the burn of each Shadow Claw deep in its soul.
Lazarus is trying very hard to breathe.
Kirlia's trainer needs help.
Kirlia knows it's in a race against time, it won't be long before the Salamence snaps out of the nightmare.
Looking around, there are some big boulders nearby, Kirlia can hide it's trainer there, away from the sights of the dragon.
It could probably move it's trainer a few hundred meters away from the dragon which is not ideal but that's the best a psychic pokémon of it's level can manage.
Kirlia wishes it was more powerful.
It forces every ounce of its power to lift and levitate Lazarus telekinetically and push him away from his place.
Almost a minute after Gengar put the dragon under a nightmare, Sunfyre snap out of it.
Sunfyre gives Gengar a look of absolute fury and unleashes its sharp claws at the ghost pokémon.
Just before the claws make contact with it's body, Gengar makes itself intangible, and remains unharmed.
Gengar's body becomes tangible moments after. Sunfyre sees this and prepares to unleash another attack when suddenly a torrent of flame hits it in the back.
Sunfyre snaps it's head back to see a Houndoom sprinting towards it.
Houndoom howls in rage as it unleashes another Flamethrower at Sunfyre. Taking advantage of the distraction Gengar spews copious amounts of toxic sludge from it's mouth at the dragon, purple goo sticks to Salamence's body.
Sunfyre, overcome with rage, unleashes a Hyper Beam point-blank at Gengar's solidified body, instantly vaporising it from existence.
Flame erupts from Houndoom's entire body, and the flammable toxic sludge sticking to to Salamence burns in contact with it.
---
A few hundred meters away Lazarus finds himself in front of some boulders and looks back to see the burning dragon tear through Seth's Houndoom with it's huge claws. Killing the last of the pokémon tasked with protecting the outpost.
Lazarus then spots his two remaining pokémon, Kirlia can barely keep itself floating, Snover still isn't off the ground.
'Rook? Snow? Are you guys okay? Please say something!' Lazarus tries not to scream his worries out loud and instead screams inside his mind.
Instead of answering, Kirlia gathers tiny little pieces of rocks, no more bigger than the size of a finger, that's all it can manage after spending so much energy moving Lazarus.
'Hide! Please hide!' Lazarus begs his pokémon. 'It will ignore you if you run away! Please don't do anything! It will leave you be if you stay still!'
The psychic pokémon decides to face death with dignity and hurls the rocks at the dragon with as much speed and power at it can manage. Which isn't much.
Sunfyre looks at the barely alive pokémon and breathes fire at it.
Kirlia conveys it's love to its trainer and her fellow pokémon before being burnt alive.
Snover cries in grief and forces itself up, controlling the minuscule amount of ambient moisture present in the atmosphere to create spikes of ice, and launches them towards the dragon.
The ice instantly shatter into tiny little pieces when they collide with Salamence's dragon scales.
Sunfyre doesn't do anything for a while and then spews very tiny amount of flames from it's nostril's. A sign of respect.
These two tiny pokémon fought with honor and courage dispute being so small.
Sunfyre brings its mouth closer to Snover and chomps down.
Seeing the last of his remaining pokémon getting eaten right in front of his eyes cause tears to gush out from Lazarus's eyes, he tries not to break out into sobs.
He puts a hand over his mouth to keep himself from making any noise, and crawls behind a boulder with the shard of metal still lodged in his thighs, hiding from Synfyre's sight.
As Lazarus lies there alone and broken, hoping the Salamence doesn't hear him breathe, the sun rises over the horizon.