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The paths wound back into one another. No, they passed beneath one another. Above. Both. A dance in the dark of crisscrossing causeways and rocky ground that rose above cool and still cave waters. The odd shafts of dramatic light that carved through the stone ceiling somewhere high above Kris impressed on her that it was absolutely worth making the trek here. Yes, it was hard fought. Yes, the caves were ripe with territorial pokemon crying intruder in their own unintelligible tongues of screeches, shouts and screams. And yes, navigation had left her turned around, frustrated, and decidedly much more damp than she would have liked, but the only way to confirm a rumor was to follow it. And that was what she had done.
The togetic beside her let out a quiet chirp of concern, one that was echoed by both the cave and her meganium. Kris brought a soothing hand to the crown of the fairy's head and cooed a gentle reassurance. "We'll be fine, Tama. This overgrown salad over here has done a great job keeping us all safe." Her meganium offered a croon that feigned offense, and turned her head away in mock indignation, but relented when Kris laughed and ran her hand down her neck, offering an apology. "Alright, alright. You're not an overgrown salad, Hana. You're just the size that one should be."
The sound of a low growl filled the cavern around them, and the three froze in their tracks. "Glow up," said Kris quietly. Beside her, the aura of light surrounding togetic intensified, illuminating much more than just a few meters around them, and growing out to roughly twenty meters in each direction. The shadows receded from an imposing figure, bent low and flashing a mouth filled with glistening fangs. An ursaring.
Kris took one step back and said in a low voice, "We're not here to cause trouble."
Whether the bear couldn't understand her or simply did not care became clear immediately, as it took several steps forward and let out a long roar. "You're blocking the only way we haven't checked, so if you're not going to let us pass-" The rest of her sentence was drowned out by a much louder roar as the bear charged forward.
Her meganium tore off towards the pokemon to meet it roughly halfway, but swung her neck down low and then up to whip forward several long vines from her neck. They impacted the underside of the bear's head in quick succession with two muffled thumps and sent it reeling, but only for a moment. The attack appeared to have only angered it further, and it sprinted towards Hana once again, head low to the ground, ready to ram itself beneath the meganium and launch her into the air.
"Get out of the way-" shouted Kris, but even as her pokemon moved to the left to avoid the attack, the ursaring shifted its weight into its left paw and brought it up at the meganium with tremendous force. Rather than knocking the pokemon away, however, the bear instead wrestled the sauropod to the ground, throwing its weight into the pokemon with its other paw and struggling to pin the meganium. "Tama, help-"
Kris did not need to get the rest of the command out, however, as Tama flew forward and gathered several orbs of flashing lights along her arms and hands and then launched them at the bear. They spiraled through the air in a helical pattern before they struck its side, exploding into delicate flashes. Each of them produced a boom that made Kris' ears ring and knocked the ursaring off the meganium and several meters away. The bear struggled to its feet, looking dazed all the while, and produced another roar, though it was lower and fearful now. Kris ran over to her meganium to help Hana to her feet, while Tama flew forward and raised a wing-like appendage up to the ursaring. It began to shine as she moved it back and forth, and when she lowered it at last she yawned.
The ursaring swayed on the spot and yawned as well, then shook its head as if trying to clear it. It leveled a low growl at the togetic and flashed its teeth but then yawned again and swayed on the spot once more. It shooks its head once again, though with visibly less energy as its body swayed dangerously in either direction. The togetic gave the bear a smirk and a wave and the beast collapsed on its side, asleep.
To Kris' relief, Hana's wounds were not deep, though she expected the pokemon to develop a rather nasty bruise where she'd taken the swiep. "Don't know how you managed to avoid coming off worse for the wear in that," she said quietly. She retrieved a spray bottle and several rolls of gauze and began to tend to Hana's wounds. "You're going to be tender here for a while though, I can already tell that much." She wound the bandages around both the meganium's injured leg and as well as around her midsection to cover the scratches in her side before handing the pokemon an enormous sitrus berry from her bag. "Eat up, Hana. If this rumor is true, you're going to need your strength."
As the pokemon munched on the berry, Tama returned and sat down on Kris' head and let out a triumphant cry. "Yes, yes, Tama. You did a fantastic job. Now what say you drop the brightness and we continue on? With your newfound bravery, maybe you can lead."
At this, the togetic immediately became timid once more, the brilliant light shining from it dropping down to something resembling lamplight, and Tama once more fell in beside Kris and resumed looking uneasy. "You're more timid than a growlithe that's peed on the rug, you know that?" noted Kris. The togetic waved one of its little flippers dismissively and replied in a musical series of squeaks before looking ahead in surprise and pointing at a gentle bend in the path ahead that seemed to lead them upward.
Hana made a noise of displeasure as she traced the sloping path up and out of sight somewhere in the darkness and rubbed her head against Kris' arm, whining. The trainer rolled her eyes and pulled her pokeball free to recall her. "Alright, alright. But only because you got injured. You have to stay out though, Tama. I need your light." A flash of red engulfed Hana and disappeared as quickly as it came.
At the bottom of the incline, Kris looked up into the dark and saw a pinprick of light somewhere far above them. She let out a long sigh and then looked at Tama. "You know, you're lucky you can float. Fly. Both." She pointed down at her legs, "But I've got to use these." Tama gave her a smug grin and set off up the incline turning back now and again to beckon Kris to keep up. It was slow going, and the path became slippery with loose stones now and again, but Kris did her best to maintain pace with her smug togetic. Now and again the path would shift dramatically in grade, sometimes becoming nearly flat and sometimes becoming so steep she needed to employ a climbing pick to help her ascend. It was during such one instance that she paused, panting, and tried to gauge just how far up she'd climbed during this particular section of the path. Her chest burned and her legs ached, but the sight of Tama floating beside her looking supremely smug drove her onward.
As she continued her climb upwards, the light emanating from Tama began to mesh with the increasing levels of ambient light around her. The temperature began to drop, but it hit her like a cool breeze, even as Tama began to shiver by her side. "Spirits around us, I can't wait to be done with this part." Her togetic replied with a short series of squeaks. "Don't mention going back down, I don't wanna think about that right now."
Her ascent was grueling now, the grade having dropped any pretense of appearing as such and instead settling on simply being a rock wall to climb. She was glad she'd thought to wear microspikes. Every meter she ascended brightened her surroundings, chilled the air, and soon she could see her breath misting before her. "Definitely changing when we get to the top. I'm going to be soaked and I'd rather not freeze."
At last, the wall became a steep slope once more, and after several more minutes of careful climbing, the ground had flattened out enough for Kris to get to her feet, panting. Her clothes felt soaked through, and the biting cold in the air surged into her consciousness all at once. Shivering uncontrollably, she pulled her pack off and pulled dry, warm clothes free and over her now soaked, thinner layer. Kris privately noted that, if nothing else, she could at least say she'd experienced what true cold was.
Now dressed in several layers and considerably warmer, if not drier, Kris pulled her pack back on and turned to Tama, who floated beside her looking miserable. "Chilly?" she asked the togetic. When the pokemon responded with a series of rapid nods, Kris reached out and pulled the pokemon into her jacket and nestled her against her chest to keep her warm. "Come on. It'll be just like when you were a togepi." Tama replied with several pleased coos and drew the jacket closer to her body gleefully.
The two made their way through the tunnel for some time, the path now sloping only gently upwards. All the while, the tunnel began to fill with progressively more, grayish light. The crunch of the rocks beneath her mixed with the muffled sound of the winds, and the thinning air had kept her from properly catching her breath from her intense climb. At the end of the tunnel, where the wind was loudest and the light shone brightest, she reclined against a wall and did her best to catch her breath. She dropped her head back against it and muttered, "You alright, Tama?" she asked.
The togetic replied with a squeak filled with false bravado.
"Makes two of us, I guess, huh?" she said, half-laughing. "By Suicune's grace, this had better be worth it." She got up and marched outside into the gray light of partially overcast skies alive with rushing, cold winds. Sunlight reflected off the snow in patches, bothering her eyes now and again. She rummaged about in one of the smaller pockets in her bag and pulled a pair of tinted goggles free and pulled them on. The sight before her was as beautiful as it was bizarre.
The tunnel had let out onto a long, snow-covered path that rose gently up to a flattened section some fifty meters up. Towering above that flattened section and capped with the colors of Johto was the peak of Mt. Silver. She'd made it. As she stepped out of the protection the walls of the tunnel offered the winds around her picked up in intensity, buffeting her and making the once spacious avenue of snow-covered rock before her appear significantly narrower. Several terrified squeaks from Tama gave Kris pause and had her reach for a pokeball at her side to tap the button on it, recalling the togetic before tapping another pokeball.
A red flash produced the form of a donphan. An enormous donphan. Easily twice the size of a standard member of the species, the pokemon appeared at Kris' side with a loud trumpeting sound, and gave her a goofy grin. "Ganko, we need your help." She gestured at the path ahead. "You can cross this with me riding - well, laying on top of you, right?"
Ganko considered the path for a long while before snorting and trumpeting once more. "That's the spirit. Gonna take more than wind to knock you over, huh?" With another loud trumpeting sound, Ganko stepped forward and waited for Kris to climb on his back. She did so immediately, winding her hands around his head to grab hold of his tusks with her hands and clenching as best she could onto either side of his body with her legs. Once she'd secured herself as best she could, she shouted, "Show the wind why I named you Ganko!"
With a loud growl, the donphan set off down the path, stomping forward with tremendous deliberation. The sound of snow and rock crunching beneath his feet was barely audible over the sound of the wind in Kris' ears, leading her to shout her encouragement over the din. Ganko, however, seemed to hardly need it. Neither the wind nor their precarious situation as they crossed this peculiar rock pathway seemed to faze him, and they arrived at the end of the path in mere minutes.
Ganko came to a stop and made a muffled rumbling sound deep in his throat that was just barely audible over the wind. He reached out and tapped his trunk on the narrow, roughly hewn stone steps in front of him and then made the same rumbling sound again. No amount of determination would see him up this narrow set of stairs when a single foot was easily thrice the size of a single step. Kris got up and patted him on the head fondly. "You got me halfway there, Ganko. No need to worry. Besides, you'll want to save your energy." She raised a ball and tapped its button. "See you soon."
The flash of red light left Kris alone at the base of the steps, swaying in the wind. She stared up towards the top of the stairs and the peak that loomed beyond them and took a deep breath, then once more began her ascent.
Though not as exhausting as her climb in the mountain, ascending the steps was infinitely more demanding of her attention. The steps were of varying widths and angled up and down randomly, almost never actually offering a perfectly flat surface to step upon, and as she drew closer to the top, became steeper to ascend, until she was once again climbing the stairs as much as she was walking up them. Still, the nature of the steps filled her head with questions.
Who had made them? How? Why? Much like the path Ganko had helped her cross, these were not natural. Much of the path that neared the peak of Mt. Silver had not appeared natural. Perhaps part of her climb while still within the mountain was the result of lava tubes, but eventually the ascent had changed. The naturally hollowed out cavern had turned into an irregularly shaped tube. As if something had made them, though inexpertly. Or perhaps, something irregular had made them. Her thoughts drifted to the irregular shapes of the boulder-like segments that comprised onix and steelix.
Mt. Silver was off-limits as much for its natural landscape as its constructed one. The path she'd been on for the last few hours was designed, not discovered. As she clambered up the last step of the stairs and crawled out onto the unnaturally flat top that greeted her, silence pressed itself upon her ears.
The winds had died completely atop this flat section, when they should have been at their loudest. A lone figure stood several meters away, a pikachu perched on its shoulder and a charizard standing before them, happily eating its way through handfuls of berries. It caught sight of Kris and paused mid-bite and let out a low, soft croon. Its trainer turned about and met Kris' eyes. His cap was pulled down over his eyes and, despite the weather, he wore only a thin jacket and climbing gloves over clothing that looked better suited to a couple thousand meters ago.
Kris approached him, unsettled by the stillness in the air and tossed out Hana, who fell in beside her immediately. The trainer before her considered the meganium for a moment and then cast his eyes towards his charizard before shaking his head and instead looking skyward and letting out a long, shrill whistle that did not echo. A chill ran down Kris' back.
A tan blur from on high streaked down from the heavens and stopped abruptly less than a foot from the ground. The force from the pidgeot's wings flapping to stop its screaming descent kicked dust and rocks up all around them, but it settled as quickly as it had come. The bird touched down gently and clicked its beak once, turning to look at its trainer. Red shifted his gaze from the pidgeot to Hana and nodded once, earning him another click from the pidgeot as it turned to face the meganium and prepared to take off again.
Kris clenched her hands into a fist and said bracingly, "Hana. Get ready. But, before we start!" She pointed at Red, who remained impassive. "You're really hard to find, you know that?"
The barest ghost of a smile crossed Red's face. "I know."