Chapter 314 – Ascend, Children of Coronet IV

Chapter 314 – Ascend, Children of Coronet IV

CHAPTER 314 - ASCEND, CHILDREN OF CORONET IV

"Bwuh."

Maylene raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Uuuuuh."

She nodded. "Uhuh."

"Cece..."

"Yes, I know you want to see her. You'll see her soon when this is all over. Maybe sooner."

"What're you talking...about? She's right here." Grace slowly pulled a hand up, trying to reach nothing.

Maylene quickly put it back down into her friend's sleeping bag, but relented. She'd seen enough of this to know that fighting the ramblings of a delirious girl was meaningless. "You know what, sure."

Maylene was in a predicament.

She'd been ecstatic when the cold had started to wane, slowly but surely, partly because yes, dying was scary, but mostly because she hadn't wanted to look at her new friend slowly get the life drained out of her, bit by bit, especially on her own with her Pokemon. Now that it was getting warmer slowly, Grace was bundled up in her sleeping bag next to her two Pokemon well enough to be out of their Pokeballs— or one, really. Electivire had suffered from the fight with Saturn, but less so than the others, and despite Turtonator's state, the dragon refused to be recalled, going as far as roaring at her when she'd grabbed his Pokeball. There was also that weird Meltan thing, but she decided not to risk releasing an unknown Pokemon without Grace's supervision.

She didn't really like Turtonator. Really, there were only two Pokemon of Grace's that she actually liked. Electivire and Claydol. Maybe Tyranitar on a good day. They all ranged from practically feral to psychopaths.

She'd had to painstakingly tell Turtonator that even though he found it easier to make the place warmer now, getting Grace to heat up too quickly could be dangerous. She'd known Candice long enough to have learned how to make people recover from hypothermia (really, it was basically a requirement for being one of her close friends), and all it would do was strain his already hurt body. With help from Electivire, he'd accepted after a few minutes of arguing. Honestly, this was why dragons were such a pain in the butt. Good luck trying to make anyone who wasn't their trainer order them around. Either they'd throw a fit like this one or just look at you like you were stupid, like Cynth's Garchomp.

Still, it was difficult to be that angry at him when he was curled up next to Grace with such worry. His tail was curved on top of her legs and he would dote on her while Electivire caressed her hair. It made her miss her own team... Maylene felt a surge of pain, deep within her heart, but she controlled it before any aura could flare up at her distress. They were fine, they had to be.

Instead of worrying, she placed one of her water flasks on top of his glowing shell, and she recalled parts of Candice's advice. Warm beverages are always good. Arceus, that girl could ramble for hours on end, but she took the cold very seriously. Tea would have been preferred, but the best Maylene could do right now was warm water while she listened to Grace's delirious ramblings. Most of them had to do with her Pokemon, friends or girlfriend, but sometimes she'd be fighting an imaginary battle or talk to some girl called Bella and someone she assumed was her Pokemon, Nightstalker. These would have been funny if she was drunk instead of almost dead. Nia was kind of the same when she'd drank too much, going from somewhat reserved to someone who just couldn't shut up.

Sometimes she'd remember Maylene was here and thank her for coming along with her, or forgiving her, so that was nice. Hell, she'd even called her a saint who was too nice for her own good, so Maylene didn't really know how to react to that.

She grabbed the gourd, which was scorching to the touch, but still felt like nothing against her palms, and gave it a taste to see if she wasn't about to burn Grace's mouth.

She couldn't tell.

She groaned and clenched the bottle. Being so strong was annoying. Not that she wasn't growing tired, too. Her shoulder where that shard of ice had stabbed her ached, the cold had nearly gotten to her own hands as well, and most of all, she couldn't hear anything out of her left ear. Granted, she'd hidden how much it was hurting her from Grace, since she knew her body could take it and it would just worry her.

"Hey, Electivire— or Honey, I guess," Grace's naming sense was really awful. It felt weird calling a Pokemon by a pet name. "Could you try this out for me?"

The electric type answered with a series of grunts and words she didn't understand, but that tired, thankful smile on his face was universal. One of the strange things about Grace's team was how vocal they were. Pokemon usually relied more on body language and pointing at stuff to communicate with trainers they didn't know. Maylene supposed a year with a girl who could literally understand their every word, along with the words of every Pokemon she had met, had warped their understanding of how to talk to people.

Honey poured a little bit of water on one of his fingers, which were bereft of fur, and he gave her a thumbs up.

"Thanks. I guess the metal just heats up faster than the contents inside." Electivire handed her the bottle and she looked at the grown toddler she had to take care of. "Hey. Grace, can you drink something?"

"Stop being so loud," she moaned.

Maylene chuckled and tapped a finger on her forehead. "Hey, don't blame me for the voices in your head. I need to know because your mask will be off. Can you drink? Warm water'll be good for you."

It took another few attempts to get a straight answer, and even then, Maylene decided to get another yes out of her. It'd be really stupid if Grace died now, choking on water after having made it through all of this. At least, though, she drank the water without incident. Seeing her face for the first time in over a day revealed that she was dangerously pale, and there was some dried blood on the side of her ear she hadn't noticed.

Was her ear screwed up too? Stupid. Of course it was messed up if hers was. Grace was just an ordinary girl. Squishy and weak.

Maylene grabbed one of the few remaining cloths they had and wiped the blood away with warm water before quickly slipping the mask back on. The air up here was thin, even for her, so it was best to keep it off only for a few seconds at a time.

"You'll have to eat something soon. I'll skip lunch... or dinner, or whatever it is. We were running low on food because of me anyway."

She sat cross-legged next to Grace and initiated a few breathing exercises her father had taught her as a young child. Meditation, he said, was the key to master her emotions and with it, aura, but they served to help her breathe up here too. It was Electivire, a few minutes later, that interrupted her. Turtonator had fallen asleep, but seeing as he was warming the surrounding area slowly but surely and was still listening to her, Maylene decided not to recall him. It sickened her, to see his crushed hands and legs, but he made it look easy.

"What's up?" she asked.

The electric type tapped a finger on his chin and spoke.

"I don't get you, sorry. Back in the day, they said some people with Aura could understand Pokemon because it's intrinsically tied to emotion, but not anymore." She shrugged and closed her eyes again. The stone floor here reminded her of the tough mats at her Gym— Legendaries, she missed her Gym, which was a crazy statement considering how she'd felt like she'd been drowning there half a year ago. Routine was what she craved, now. "If Cassianus wasn't resting, it'd be fine, but they are, so... yeah."

Electivire snapped his fingers and smiled before pointing at the backpack. She grabbed it and threw it with a one-handed throw, glad that since it was League-made, it wouldn't tear, and the electric type paused his stroking of Grace's hair to rummage through it. He pulled out a pen and a small notepad that the League must have shoved down this humongous bag. Electivire scribbled down a few things and then showed her the paper.

It took her a little aback. Not every trainer bothered to let their Pokemon learn how to read and write— granted a lot of them weren't interested in the first place, so it wasn't just on the trainers.

Thank you for being her legs and hands during that battle. Your very cool.

The grammar itself was... mostly correct, but the handwriting was horrible. She didn't say that, though.

"Well, one's gotta make themselves useful. That fight would have been a lot easier if I had my team." Her fingers traced the contours of the cave's floor. "It's the least I could do."

He wrote again. Fights like that suck. I dont like hurting people.

She smiled sadly. "Yeah. They do suck."

Good bonding experience. You two are friendly now.

Maylene guffawed and held onto her stomach because of how out there the statement was. 'Yeah, you almost died, but at least you're closer!' was hilarious, in a morbid kind of way.

"You were in your Pokeball, so you didn't know, but we were friends before that. We all could have gone without that fight."

Electivire paused, thinking of how to answer, so Maylene looked behind her. It was too dark to see Saturn's body, especially when away from the edges of the pillars which was where the light came from, but she could still see a shape flickering in the shadows. Bile built up at the back of her throat until her head whirled back around by reflex. Out of sight, out of mind. Out of sight, out of mind. She hadn't killed anyone today. She hadn't.

Mom gets a little crazy with revenge. The mountain would have pushed the encounter together eventually.

'Mom' gave her whiplash, but she elected to push past it. It was one thing to see Grace refer to them as her kids and another to see them reciprocate. "I guess. I'm surprised you oppose the revenge stuff."

Violence is bad, he answered. My first parents taught me that. Now I'm her consience and I have to stop her if she ever gets lost in it again.

'Consience' as in conscience. "Oh. Honestly, I thought you were all like her. Sorry." She asked for the backpack back, which he threw and she caught, and she leaned against it to rest her back. "Your first parents, huh? I guess parents always leave a strong imprint on their kids whether they like it or not."

Her need to handle everything herself, to work so hard, even her preferred style of battling, it was to impress her father, yes, but he'd also behaved almost the exact same way.

"Not that you're worse off for it. Legendaries know that girl needs some positive influences in her life... no offense to your other teammates. Or her friends. Or parents. Or, uh, anyone else for that matter!"

Honey giggled, and his laughing made his handwriting even worse. I love my family but they need me. He turned the page and looked at Grace, who was mumbling about her Dad buying the wrong kind of cake. This is embarrassing but do you want to talk about martial arts?

Maylene beamed. She knew from Volkner's Electivire (who was a provocative asshole) that they could get quite good at fighting type moves, and they had a good body type to master martial arts. "Oh, sure! Shinwa's the birthplace of most martial arts, and I basically know all of them. Is this about training or—"

He'd already been writing. I watch a cartoon called the Legendary Fighting Type and it's really cool but I don't understand a lot of the techniques. Kinda ruins the enjoyment.

What?

Oh.

Maylene deflated like a balloon. "So you don't want to train to get better at fighting type moves? You use Cross Chop, no?"

Dont you just hit people harder and win?

"No— what?!" Her back straightened. "A good fighting type will also have technique along with strength!"

Not interested. Sorry. You should watch the Legendary Fighting Type. This newest part of the show is...

Maylene stopped reading.

A cartoon? Really? She stared at Grace, sleeping like nothing was happening in her sleeping bag (she'd made sure to listen to her breathing by turning her head) and realized that she might have been more literal than she thought when she called her Pokemon children.

Well, nothing to do but to pass the time and engage with this.

—

Screams.

How many?

The squelch of flesh, torn apart. The crunching of shattering bones. The smell of burning flesh, tingling in her nose. It was all too familiar to Cecilia by this point. Her and Maeve's trek up the mountain had been marked by battle after battle; at least one per layer. Most of the times, the groups of grunts had been small and too weak. Huddled against their fire types to survive the cold like vermin desperate to survive through a coming upheaval. She'd studied the Great War during her childhood, and though every single tutor had a different take on who was at fault, who had won or lost, or there had even been victors at all, it was not the large scale of the conflict nor the politics behind it that flashed in her mind, in this moment.

She remembered the description of the great pits where bodies were burned to ash en masse. Grainy pictures in black and white of men and women with their Charmeleon, Ponyta, whatever fire type they might have, or even an artificial flamethrower, burning bodies without a care in the world, asking herself, how could one be willing to ignore the sanctity of life so?T/his chapter is updated by nov(ê(l)biin.co/m

Well, they weren't burning bodies, but the point was, one could turn killing into routine. It was not a good thing, nor was she proud of it, but it just was.

Oh, Cecilia was cold too, inside and out, even if the temperature had begun to rise steadily and warmth had slowly come back to her fingers and feet that she was still barely capable of moving. Without Talonflame, Slowking, and Maeve's Infernape and Starmie, they would be dead— frozen husks of meat shriveled up, their last positions no doubt having their faces begging for an ounce of warmth. It was Slowking's expertise in barriers and him keeping away from exerting himself in battle, that had kept them truly safe and the little heat they could get contained. Cecilia's Pokemon hadn't seen much fighting aside from supporting Maeve's. Her comrade in arms had asked them to keep their distance so they could save their energy for a battle that truly mattered, and so it was her Pokemon, who were beaten and battered. Her Infernape, whose shoulder had been torn so harshly by a Hitmonlee's kick that he could no longer move his right arm. Her Drapion, whose abdomen kept leaking green blood and whose tail had been frozen and ripped away by a Piloswine. Her Gligar whose wings had been perforated by darts.

Maeve watched those wounds happen with barely any emotion, though it was difficult to tell when her face was hidden behind a mask she'd taken from the same ACE she had looted her lidar from. They'd had to share oxygen tanks, and Cecilia did not know whether they would have enough to both reach the top or not. Cecilia cracked her neck and watched the few remaining grunts be torn apart by Pokemon who should have barely been capable of fighting, yet who still stood anyway, and she took in the beauty of this place instead— the sixth layer.

The terrain underfoot shifted from rugged stone to a carpet of silver dirt that sparkled subtly, as if sown with stardust, and a strange golden glow shone from the sky above, washing everything in color that could not be superseded by anything else. Their climbing gear, their Pokeballs, the skin of the grunts and all of their Pokemon appeared gilded. It was... quite godly, if that made any sense. It gave her a feeling that they were getting close, and Cecilia knew the light was coming from above, so the seventh and final floor of this mountain before they would make it to Spear Pillar. She could feel the hair on her arms rise at the thought of seeing the seat of such power.

This place was no barren wasteland, though. Trees, tall and slender, rose as taller than the largest Cecilia had seen in Eterna Forest and were covered in shimmering, golden leaves that rustled with the sound of... drums which shook her to her very core and made her somewhat self-conscious. They were not exactly like drums, but it was the closest instrument Cecilia had found. She had touched their iridescent barks a few times and it seemed more solid than it should have been. Like she was touching metal, yet she knew it was still organic—

"Cecilia." Maeve's hissing, distorted voice shook her out of the daze that seemed to take her every time she got lost into the looks of this place, and Cece stared at the masked girl. "There's... you might want to look at this," she said, waving to next to one of the golden trees. She recalled unconscious Pokemon— or those that were alive anyway— with her other. She'd regained her senses faster than Cece had. She was hardier, and willing to push through more pain than Cecilia was.

The Unovan's eyes narrowed when she saw what Maeve was pointing at. A shivering girl next to a Musharna with frost claiming her every breath. Her eyes were nearly sown shut by crystal-like ice and snot had solidified below her nose, but the strange thing about her was—

Her similarity to Grace. It was difficult to tell when everything was basked in golden light, but one could call them doppelgangers if they were generous. Her face was longer, and she was most likely a few years older, but she had... scars in the same place. Burns going along the left of her face, down to her neck, and below her sickening uniform. There were hints of cuts on the bit of her wrist she could see, which meant she have had the cuts all over her left arm as well.

Bile built up at the back of her throat, and Cecilia blinked. Her feet suddenly felt heavier in the cosmic soil she stood on. With each step she took, she carried a soul-crushing guilt that had instantaneously appeared. This wasn't Grace, and even if it had been, they had agreed on this; on what had to be done. It had been an oath sworn on the death of Justin.

And yet...

Cecilia crouched in front of the girl with Slowking and Talonflame at her side, and she contemplated asking her what— why she was like this. The grunt looked at her in fear, but she was too cold to even crawl away or run. Her legs just... flailed around in the dirt and her shoulder scraped against one of the trees she'd been leaning against. There was another beat of a drum, and Cecilia felt as if something was judging her. Par for the course, in this place.

"Just tell her," Maeve hissed.

"I—I don't know much, I promise!" she squealed, waving her arms wildly. "We've barely spoken, and I only saw her fight a few times!"

Cecilia clicked her tongue, yet she persisted.

"Do you think," she began with a forming grin, her hand on Lehmhart's Pokeball, "that it would be able to resist a song that kills?"

—

"I can walk."

"Grace, don't be an idiot."

I bit the inside of my lip and ignored the irritation rising within my chest. Yes, my legs felt very weak and wobbly, but I'd already been out of it for the last... few hours. Honestly, most of it had been a blur. Flashing lights, loud sounds and voices who I could barely recognize and had associated with people I knew. It was shameful to have been seen in such a weak state, to have been so out of it that I'd hallucinated in front of Maylene, Honey and Sunshine, but at least I'd lived.

I knew from the way we hadn't died from the cold that the Hoarfrost had been beaten, thank the Legends above.

The fact that the League had succeeded was a huge relief that had me breathing easier, even if it had been too close for comfort, but the crisis still wasn't over, even if in someway, it felt like it was getting close. I could see Saturn's charred corpse in the distance. The dragonfire had left his skin blackened and unrecognizable, and the flesh hardened and shrunken against the bones beneath.

The tired satisfaction I'd felt earlier was gone, but I'd let Sunshine admire his work while Maylene had packed and he was as giddy as ever, albeit exhausted. The fire type bled away in a flash of red as I recalled him. He deserved the rest, and Coronet was no longer lethal without him to keep us warm.

I glanced away from the dead body. "What if we try—"

Maylene shoved the folded sleeping bag back in the backpack and closed the zip. "Grace, just get on your damn Electivire's back and stop wasting time." Her complaints had been synced with Honey's, who had spoken at the same time as her to essentially say the same thing.

I shrunk back. "Sorry. I guess I just hate feeling useless."

"You—" She threw her hands up. "Stop sulking. Honey, get her already. Gently."

Electivire quickly listened, grabbing me by the arm and propping me up on his back. He asked if I was well enough to hold on without his help, and I agreed for now, wrapping my arms around his neck and sinking my head into his fur.

"Thanks for watching over me," I softly said.

Honey said that it was mostly Maylene's and Sunshine's work that had kept me alive. He was humble, as always.

"Thanks, Maylene. For saving me."

The Gym Leader strapped the backpack around her shoulders and tapped her feet against the ground. "Well, I wasn't just going to let you die—" she paused, cleared her throat and scratched her arm through her torn gear. "Uh, no problem."

We— or I supposed it was Maylene and Honey— began to walk in earnest, using me for directions. There was something different about traveling now, and before Saturn's death. It felt like I was a part of Coronet again, as if it had realized that Saturn and his loons had tricked it after their deaths and it was rewarding me for my service by... returning to the status quo instead of giving me a little boost.

Capricious as always, but this was better than nothing.

When Honey and Maylene started crossing the first bridge I'd pointed them toward, Maylene peered over the edge and screamed out her name. A few seconds later, the voice came back twisted, like a pale mockery the actual thing just like what had happened to that Sawsbuck.

"Huh. Funny how that works." She cracked her knuckles and touched her left ear. "Hey, is your hearing...?"

My ear hurt, and there was a permanent ring that was starting to annoy me. Hell, I couldn't hear fully out of my right, either, but in my left, the loss was total. Luckily for me, Maylene was a loud speaker and conversation was still possible without many problems.

Arceus, my body hurt.

"My left is fucked," I groaned. "My right... well, it could be worse."

"Oh. My right's already—" Maylene froze and looked at me. "Wait... no. No." The word was full of loss in a way that was torturous to hear. It reminded me of our Gym Battle, and the sudden sickness in my stomach vanished when my brain realized I wasn't at fault.

"What's wrong?" I patted at Honey's back so he would let me down and I slowly approached her. She was tearing up. "Maylene?"

"If my right ear's already recovered," she said in between sobs. "Then it— I think it means my hearing on my left is screwed forever."

Oh.

I'd come to terms with that already, knowing I would worry about it later, but this was Maylene. She was an Aura-user, someone who basically never, ever got hurt in any serious way. Hell, she'd been stabbed in the shoulder earlier and was walking like nothing had even happened.

So to actually be hurt in a permanent way was shocking to her. Unthinkeable, even, but Aura or not, Pokemon were stronger than her. I limped toward her, suddenly glad I hadn't been walking because of how weak my legs felt, and I gave her a short hug while I patted her on the back so she could get all the tears out of her. It was weird with the mask on, but it was better than nothing.

"There are... surgeries, right?" I said, unsure of myself. "Implants, or whatever."

She sniffled. "Grace, surgery is fucking terrifying. They cut you open and stuff, I hate it."

"Yeah, but you don't feel—"

"I know, I just hate the idea of it." Maylene shivered. "Gives me the creeps."

"I guess."

She wiped her eyes. They were red and her lower eyelids were puffed up. "Let's just keep going. Get back on Honey."

"I can—"

"You can get back, yes. Don't think that just because I was crying I didn't see you struggle to take a measly five steps."

Sighing, I agreed and Honey picked me up after patting Maylene on the shoulder.

The next layer awaited us.

—

It was difficult to hum with the heavy sounds of Garchomp's steps. Cynthia had taken to piano when she'd first become the Champion as a hobby she could actually get into even when her days had been spent stuck at the Lily of the Valley. Easier to play piano than to go explore whatever new ruins had been found that year, which was funny because as soon as she'd gotten the authority to actually get clearance to access those, she'd been chained to a desk to work. The plan had been to create herself a theme— something to announce her entry when a challenger reached her, yet none had done so yet, even when the Old Guard preceding her Elite Four had attempted to throw matches to unseat her. Bertha had been enough to hold any challengers away, back then.

She had missed this. Her and her team in the middle of nowhere with no one to buzz in her ears about whatever crisis she needed to attend to immediately. Despite the situation being quite the catastrophe, Cynthia found herself in a better mood than she'd been in months. Garchomp treaded through the golden fields of Coronet's final floor, groaning in annoyance at Glaceon, who was sitting around her neck, tail swishing across the dragon's back. It was good that the cold was receding. It had been a gamble, to send Flint, Aaron and Craig without her, but it seemed like it had worked out.

Though the possibility of one of them being dead was not zero. Cynthia ignored the pragmatic side of her brain she could never shut down that immediately started to calculate which person would be the most expendable, which death would be the worst for Sinnoh as a whole, and not her own feelings. She'd deal with that when the time came, even if a pit of anxiety had been growing deep in her stomach.

Golden fields as far as the eye could see, yet a single archway at the center of this layer would lead them upward— right below the ball of raging fire that acted as this place's sun, and from which all light filtered down the mountain. It hadn't moved in the few hours she had been here, and Cynthia knew that this place knew not what night was. This was only her first time getting to Spear Pillar through the inside of the mountain, and the breadth of life she'd seen here had been lower than in the reports. Granted, Regice had been acting up, but this place was meant to be home to a plethora of normal types, along with a few dragons, fairies and ice types, and Spear Pillar being so close should have kept Regice's reach at bay, at least in the early stages. Instead, it was simply a stretch of golden grassland with a few hills and depressions thrown in-between.

"Nothing but grass, hm? We should be close enough, now."

Cynthia took off her oxygen mask, her hood, and shook her head to untangle her hair. Garchomp purred with a deep trill in her throat at the sight of her trainer's face, but her purring took a worrying tone soon enough.

"You're right, but something tells me it's supposed to be this way. It's like I said before. There are echoes of remembrance... they give me goosebumps."

Glaceon hopped off Garchomp's back, which the dragon was very grateful for, and rubbed the side of her head against Cynthia's knee. It was thanks to her, that Cynthia hadn't had to bother fighting against the cold.

"Not visions. Nightmares. The distinction is important."

The ice type laughed, an ethereal and distant sound she'd long grown used to.

Cynthia ran her hand along the prickly tall grass. "Oh, I know they mean something. Otherwise I wouldn't have been a part of this. I wouldn't feel the tug."

It had been subtle, at first. A barely audible whisper behind an ear. Now that she was so close to the summit, however, it was a veritable force that pulled her, as if someone had wrapped a rope around her waist and was guiding her to the stairway up to Spear Pillar. She had never felt this before, not the first and only time she had touched Spear Pillar with her own two feet, but she supposed she hadn't known about her predecessor back then, and the world hadn't been about to end. Cynthia did not like putting much importance on stories. She believed that its core, the world was a chaotic mess where individuals could break free of the chains it had imposed onto them. A fairy's reliance on a story was a weakness, a weakness that could be exploited very easily, because it made them predictable.

Either way.

This one? This one had weight behind it. The weight of a bloodline originating thousands of years before she'd been born. It had been Grace, who had first told her about Volo through Mesprit. His last name had not been Collins, as far as she knew, but he'd somehow had a child before going insane and deciding to reach Godhood, and now here she was, generations later, attempting to save the world where her ancestor had attempted to destroy it entirely.

Coronet recognized her. It had led her up, even after the Lake Guardians had entered the mountain, sowing chaos in every corner, and she knew what paths would lead to the summit. She'd slept a few times here, and she'd been wracked by dreams from Volo's point of view. Fragments alone did not mean much, but as a whole, they formed a detailed picture of what had happened all those thousands of years ago.

She had relied on the Lake Guardian's chosen, and they had failed. Twice. So Cynthia had devised a plan. A last-ditch effort to save the world, though she was certain it would entail some... problems in the long term. Still, better that than losing the entire universe.

"It should only be an hour away, now," she warned her two Pokemon. Three, if you counted Spiritomb's inactive state. They'd tried flying toward, both with Garchomp and Togekiss, but Coronet prevented them from reaching Spear Pillar from the skies. They had been forced to walk.

She did not bother asking them if they were prepared. Her Pokemon would unfortunately not be a part of her plan, though they would buy time for her if Cyrus got any ideas. She had an inkling the man had already reached the summit, or was close to it. Garchomp squinted at the sun and growled irritatingly.

Cynthia laughed. "Let's not pick fights with Godly constructs, shall we? I've had enough of that for a lifetime."

Glaceon chuckled alongside her, and Garchomp mimicked stepping on her to squash her head. The ice type bled into ice, becoming a small tuft of snow that reformed to Cynthia's right, the opposite side that Garchomp was flanking her on.

"A real question," Cynthia hummed, shielding her eyes from the sun as she stared upward. She couldn't see the cave's ceiling from here. This place mimicked the sky, except that it was golden. "Pokemon, or not?"

Glaceon tilted her head and murmured.

"It could be a domain holder, but I doubt it? Not much can get influence this close to Spear Pillar. If I had to guess, it'd just be a thing. Not alive."

Garchomp grunted with a shrug that resonated with the grinding of her scales, and grass bent under her feet.

"That's the beauty of it, isn't it? We don't know," she said with a satisfied smile. "And I think that's wonderful. The unknown, that is. It'd be depressing to live in an era that knows everything."

The dragon rolled her eyes.

"Come on. You used to be just as curious as I was. What's wrong with a little childlike wonder?"

Glaceon snickered and climbed back on Garchomp's shoulders. She was, as always, too lazy to walk herself.

"It's a good thing Milotic isn't here to reign me in, then," she agreed.

Alas, her carefree climb up Coronet was coming to an end. Wind blew across her flapping, dark coat and she passed the time by talking about the wonders of this place and Zoroark, which was a topic for another day. They were making progress, but he would be of no use here.

Soon, she came upon the stairway.

They were golden and almost transparent, albeit hewn from Coronet itself. She could tell from the way her feet felt on the stairs that they were made of stone. Their edges and state were still pristine, almost as if they were completely new. No dust, debris or cracks had touched these stairs, and none ever would. With each step, the sound of her own footsteps echoed off the clear stairs, a solemn drumbeat heralding her approach to the summit from which Arceus had crafted this entire planet. The trek up was endless and instantaneous at the same time, and like the first time she had been atop Spear Pillar and crossed that same arch woven in boney white, gold and green that needed to be walked through from no matter where you approached—

Cynthia broke down into tears and inhaled the warm air.

This was too moving for words.