Early in the morning, Wera and I made our way up the last stretch from a good campsite to the rockslide she had to clear up. The path followed a narrow valley, likely carved by some creek in the distant past only to suddenly end in what could only be described as a mess. The walls of the valley had been shattered, massive boulders filling the path and making it completely impossible to traverse.
“Wow,” I could only mutter, the sheer scale of the destruction far greater than I had anticipated, far beyond anything one of my partners could currently solve.
“Looks like a mess,” Wera grinned, her smile a little sardonic, “This’ll take a while, I think it’s even worse than anticipated.”
She stepped up to the pile of rubble and started to gently prod and poke, her actions making me worry that she might shake something loose. If she did, there wasn’t anything I’d be able to do to save her, she would get the honour of an instant burial.
“Are you sure you should prod that?” I couldn’t help but ask, my eyes shifting to the slopes on either side of us, wondering which would be easier to escape upwards.
“I’m careful, but this will take a while. Take a look if you see an easy path to climb past it, please?” she asked, continuing to probe.
Doing as asked, I began to actively look for a path, staying nearby just in case a Pokémon jumped out from somewhere.
After maybe fifteen minutes of looking and sliding down the slopes, I thought I had a good path to ascend a slightly elevated ledge up there. Getting up there would be a pain, requiring a combination of crawling and climbing, but I thought it would allow us to bypass the mess ahead so Wera could work on it from above.
“Found something,” I called over, starting to crawl up the slope, in order to test the path. Below me, Wera walked over, just in case I needed help. “Here, take this,” she told me, retrieving a length of rope from her pack. Looking at it, I felt like an idiot, realising that I had missed the forest due to the trees.
“Charm, come out,” I called, the Pokéball depositing Charm up on the ledge after pushing myself to stand with Wera’s help and extend my arm upwards. With my partner up there, it was a piece of cake to lob up the rope and have Charm hold it while I quickly pulled myself up. With the rope, an annoying climb that would have left me with bleeding knees and hands was accomplished in half the time and with no fuss.
From above, the rockslide looked just as problematic, at least to my untrained eyes but at least we’d be able to circumnavigate it, so Wera could work on it from above, just in case things suddenly went downhill.
“What’s that up there?” Wera asked once she had climbed up as well. Contrary to my expectation, she wasn’t focused on the rockslide but further upwards, into a strangely weathered area.
“What do you mean?” I asked, not really seeing what she meant. From the way the rock looked, I thought it might be newer rock, only exposed to the elements for a little bit, the point of origin for the rockslide, but other than that, I had no idea.
“There's something up there, I can’t really see what,” she frowned, staring into the area, “There are a few edges that look smooth and straight,” she muttered and I focused upwards, trying to see what she meant.
“I don’t see it,” I admitted, squinting as if that would help to see. No such luck and given the distance involved, getting up there would be quite the pain, so something to be dealt with later, if at all. For now, Wera had a path to clear.
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The ledge I had discovered allowed us to bypass the rockfall, even if we had to be incredibly careful due to the loose soil and treacherous ground, threatening to send us tumbling down into the valley with the slightest misstep. We worked carefully, both of us moving separately, secured by the rope with a Pokémon helping to brace while the other moved across.
With that, it took almost thirty minutes to cross the maybe hundred metres and by the time we managed both of us were quite sweaty and a little exhausted from effort and stress.
“I think I’ll try to anchor that path a little while you work,” I told her, looking at the short distance and the trail we had left. With a bit of effort from either me or maybe Charm, it would hopefully work out.
“You do that, as long as you keep an eye out,” Wera grinned, “This’ll be loud and incredibly attention-grabbing so it’s quite likely that some Pokémon will wander over and it’ll be up to you to send them off,” she reminded me, before pulling out one of her Pokéballs again.
“Silvester, your turn,” she called and in a burst of red light, the squat, incredibly durable body of her Golem appeared in the valley below, eyeing the rocky mess they had to deal with.
“Silvester, first break the rocks up somewhat, I doubt we’ll be able to actually move them,” she ordered and the Golem immediately pulled its arms, legs and even head in and started to roll forward, clad in slate-grey energy.
With the force of a small avalanche, it crashed into the rocks, crumbling some of them and shoving them forward, not moving a whole lot of material, but starting something. I recognised the move he had used, Rollout, and knew that he’d probably be able to keep going, a guess that was directly confirmed when Silvester used the rebound to spin up the steep slope of the valley, gathering momentum on the down-turn and crashing into the rocks again. It was a violent operation, the impacts strong enough to be felt through the ground, and I decided that trying to stomp a path across the area would have to wait until Silvester stopped trying to shake the earth.
Under the repeated impacts, the fallen rocks started to shift, some breaking, some moving aside but all together, very little changed from my perspective. After a couple of rounds of impacts, Silvester had to take a break, while I helped Wera to climb down, getting a closer look at her progress.
Just as she did, yet another of the ubiquitous Starly came flying by, probably attracted by the ruckus caused by Golem. Remembering my duties, I called out Su and sent him to tackle the bird, my feline fighter bristling with energy.
Faced with the sparking charge of Su, the Starly quickly thought better of the idea to attack the slightly exhausted Silvester and banked, trying to get away from the furious feline. A quick burst of electricity from Su, not truly powerful but just strong enough to cause the Starly to lock up for a moment, put an end to the bird’s flight, sending it tumbling to the ground, out of sight on the other side of the valley.
“Su, come back, don’t pursue,” I called, using my Pokéball to bring him back in.
“Thanks,” Wera called up from where she was working and I decided to make myself as comfortable as possible, we’d probably be here for a while.
It turned out that making myself comfortable was the right call, even if it was almost impossible on the hard, rocky slope. For most of the day, I continued to watch Silvester and Wera slowly whittle away at the rocky problem, starting to open up a path so the rocks could be moved down and out of the way in a controlled fashion. In the few moments where I wasn’t watching them, I was either directly helping Wera climb back up the slope or sending off one of the Pokémon her work attracted, mostly Starly that Su dealt with, but also a couple of other Pokémon that either Vio or Charm had to handle.
Altogether, it was curiously boring and exciting at the same time. Exciting because the sheer impact of Silvester was something else, the pure, explosive power on the rocks making my blood boil in excitement. On the other hand, it was boring because other than the few Pokémon that came to make trouble, nothing really happened.
But boring or not, I had a task to fulfil and so I kept watching Wera, while occasionally glimpsing up the slope, trying to see what she had pointed out to me earlier, those weird, unnatural structures in the rock.
Maybe we’d have some time to explore them once we had finished dealing with the rockslide and the road was cleared up again. But for now, guard-duty it was.