Other than our footsteps, the ruins were utterly silent. It was eerie, the lack of sound so apparent that it sent shivers down my spine and the dancing flame on Charm’s tail didn’t help matters. It only made things worse, the movement making the shadows it cast dance and move, creating the illusion that the darkness around us was filled with strange monsters, just waiting to jump at us.
At some point, I had taken one of Charm’s claws in my hand, seeking comfort and a physical assurance of his presence. The knowledge that I wasn’t alone in this place lifted a tremendous weight from my heart. Just a few steps later, my other hand was grasped by Wera, her hand feeling a little cold and clammy. Knowing that she likely felt the same things I was feeling, I gave her hand a gently squeeze, trying to project some comfort over to her. If Charm could comfort me, I should be able to comfort Wera.
“What’s that?” Wera asked, nodding towards the wall. Following her gaze, I noticed that the previously smooth, clean-grey wall had some odd markings here, almost like a painting but due to the lighting in this place, we could only see a small part of it.
“Charm, move a little further into the chamber, so your light illuminates the whole thing,” I ordered my partner, moving alongside him in order to get a good look.
The result made me draw in a sharp breath, the figure quite familiar to me and incredibly life-like. If the depiction of Palkia on Professor Carolina’s portal had been life-like and intimidating, the one here made me think the Pokémon would step off the wall in the next moment and tear into us.
“Wow,” Wera muttered next to me, awe and terror warring in her voice.
“Incredible,” I agreed, studying the mural. There were quite a few strange symbols around the artwork, a few somewhat reminiscent of letters, others completely foreign to me. I couldn’t even tell if they had some meaning or if they were simply decorative, they integrated into the artwork seamlessly, enhancing its imposing atmosphere.
“I wonder just what this place is,” I admitted, before pulling Charm back towards the wall so we could continue.
“I don’t know,” Wera replied, her voice still filled with awe and wonder, “I’ve never seen something like that, even the basic details seem to be impossible. Something as simple as the floor and the walls, it’s as if they are made from one perfect whole, I have no idea how that could work,” she muttered, her analysis amusing me to no end. We were in a possibly ancient, unknown complex, with murals of a legendary Pokémon on the wall and what was she focusing on? The construction of the walls and the floor.
But at the same time, she made some sense, the construction was impossibly smooth, nothing that indicated carving or any of the construction methods I had heard of before. Granted, I knew next to nothing, but still, it was odd.
Soon, we arrived at a portal that led into a hallway, deeper into the mountain. There was a set of stairs, going down, and the corridor leading alongside the wall of the chamber we had been in.
“Let’s stay on this level for now,” Wera suggested, glancing down the stairs.
“Agreed, who knows how big this place is,” I agreed. As I looked down the stairs, I noticed something, or rather, I noticed the lack of something. The room we had entered before had some dust inside, but here, there was no dust, nothing that disturbed the pristine environment. It was as if someone or something had carefully cleaned everything in here.
Further, into the complex we went, keeping close contact with the wall on our left side, even as it made us move in a slightly strange fashion.
As we followed the hallway, we came to a small room, barely five on five metres end, and, as almost everything in here, empty and bare.
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“What’s that?” I asked, stopping dead in my tracks. In the room I had thought of as entirely empty, there was a small piece of material, the colour slightly different from the bare stone all around, just a little lighter, barely noticeable in the flickering light of Charm’s flame.
“No idea,” Wera followed my gaze, her face twisted into a frown.
Curious I walked over, picked the piece of trash up and looked over to Wera, feeling confused and stunned.
“It’s a piece of trash…” I muttered, recognising the material as the packaging of the ready-to-eat meals Cliff had initially preferred. It was made from some cardboard-material, quite sturdy and water-resistant but nothing really special. In this place, it stood out like a sore thumb as something that didn’t belong.
“We’re probably not the first people who got here,” Wera reasoned, the presence of a common-place item for us, in a place that seemed to be utterly alien a clear indication of that.
“Let’s look a little more,” I suggested, carefully packing away the piece of trash, paying much more attention to it than it deserved on its face.
We continued on our exploration and before long, the hallway we were in opened in yet another room. This one was almost as large as the one we had originally been in but the major difference was, that this one wasn’t empty. There was a strange structure in the middle, either a table, altar or something along those lines, made from the same stone we had seen everywhere here, decorated with the same, strange symbols.
Curious, we walked into the room, only for me to freeze before we could get close to the altar. With Charm’s light illuminating it a little better, I noticed that there was something weird about it, a soft, almost imperceivable purple tint to the air, wafting around as if moved by an unseen wind. Having seen something similar before, I pulled out my Pokédex, activating the scan function.
The result was just as expected, the readings corresponded to a Spiritomb and while the power readings weren’t off the charts, they weren’t far off either. As if disturbed by my actions, or maybe by our presence, the mist started to coalesce, drifting towards us as if there was a malicious purpose behind it.
“Charm, Dragon Breath, let’s run,” I ordered, hoping that the primal nature of the Dragon Breath would be enough to briefly paralyse the Spiritomb
Charm immediately spat out his breath, the strange fire not burning the Spiritomb, but enough to push it back, even as creepy, green patterns started to form in the purple mist. All three of us started running, carefully tracing our steps as getting lost could be fatal.
As we ran, I suddenly noticed that there was more noise, noises that hadn’t been there before, as if something had been awakened by our encounter with the Spiritomb.
In the darkness, I could see a pair of glowing, yellow eyes and as Charm’s flickering flame briefly illuminated the area, I recognised a Bronzor, one of the disk-shaped, steel Pokémon we had occasionally encountered in the mountains outside.
Only here, instead of looking vaguely interested, the Bronzor looked at us with sheer menace, its body already glowing with psychic power. For a moment, I felt myself stumbling as all of us were struck, the Bronzor not caring who it hit in the slightest. I was about to send Charm against it, hoping to quickly deal with it, when I noticed that past that first Bronzor, there were more eyes, all glowing in the dark. Some were the small, yellow eyes of Bronzor, others were larger, deep red and with patterns inside, the dim light just enough to reveal the bell-shaped bodies of a pair of Bronzong.
If fighting one of the Bronzor was definitely possible, fighting a group, plus a pair of Bronzong would be utter madness. To say nothing of the malicious presence of the Spiritomb, somewhere behind us, possibly just waiting to seep through the darkness and tear into us.
Pulling Wera along, we just kept running, occasionally staggered by the psychic influence as the Pokémon started to randomly bombard the area around us.
We staggered to the hole we had crawled in through and I almost shoved Wera out of it, barely taking the time to wrap the rope we had used around her.
“Charm, burn them!” I ordered, hoping that he’d be able to buy just a little bit of extra time. We needed to get through it, or we’d be in big trouble.
With my help and a lot of brute force, Wera managed to get through it, as behind me fire was blooming. Charm was doing his best, sending wave after wave of embers into our pursuers, forcing them to deal with burning pain, even as they repeatedly struck back, their assault quickly ramping up and almost knocking Charm to the floor.
“Charm, come back,” I called, halfway through the hole, pointing the Pokéball back in order to get my partner out. Looking over my shoulder, I could see that he had been beaten to the floor, no longer moving, as the red beam struck him, pulling him back into safety.
Just as I was about to get out of the opening, another of their blasts struck me, sending me forward, outward. Down the mountain.