As Kate was briskly walking through the corridor, she noticed the red walls that were streaked with orange and yellow to show vibrant flames. The torches on the walls were much more brighter compared to the corridor connecting the entrance to the separation chamber. Fire type Pokémon were crudely drawn onto the walls, who looked to be dancing and celebrating in the flames. 'Perhaps they were celebrating the fiery destruction of their adversities?' she thought to herself with interest and intrigue. But imagining such a thing had sent a shiver down her spine, so she began to run instead of briskly walking.
Now Kate was a hasty, intelligent Braixen who proclaims herself as the leader of the trio. She values her time here on this yet to named region very highly, wanting to fill every second with something meaning. As a result, she may come off as impatient and bossy, but she has a caring, sensitive side. We'll see as the series progresses.
As Kate reached the end of the corridor, she stopped just in time before a slope that lead deep into the underground. The slope was like a slippery slide, covered in some sort of transparent, slimy film that Kate inspected before wiping it off on the wall with disgust. Red arrows were painted at specific intervals along the slide in the downhill direction.
"Well, here goes nothing," she said as she sat on the corridor's sandstone floor with her legs over the slimy slide. With a push from her paws, she slid down the slide and accelerated at a frightening pace.
Kate was sliding so fast that it left a wake trail of slime behind her, spraying in a V-shape. At this speed, it was difficult to move around, but that wasn't necessary as the course was just a straight line as far as Kate could see.
At the exit, Kate was thrown into a pit of Goomy slime, which was sticky instead of slippery because it had been left there for many years. It was a practical, yet revolting way to slow one's momentum.
The stickiness was so strong that Kate was unable to stand; she had to struggle her way to the pool's edge and pulled on it as hard as she could in order to break away from the slime's pull. After a few minutes, she was finally free.
With gooey slime covering her entire body, Kate wasn't exactly the happiest of Braixens. In the room she was in, there wasn't a single water source anywhere, so she had to deal with it and move on. And the only place to move was to the adjacent room, so off she went.
As Kate stood under the doorway between the rooms, she could see that the new room was very dark. From the light provided by the slide exit room, she couldn't see any way to light it up.
While Kate was pondering, the sound of grinding stone was heard from both sides. The door was beginning to close in on her like an elevator would, so she jumped forward. Since the doors closed in so slowly, Kate wasn't really in any real danger; she spent about 10 seconds watching the sliver of light between the door getting thinner and thinner until there was complete darkness.
After unsticking herself from the floor, Kate stood up and walked backwards towards the closed door to put her back to it. From her astute hearing from her large ears, she could hear the sound of rushing wind and loud rumbling. Combined with the darkness, the atmosphere made Kate quite panicky and distraught.
"Hello?" she called out to the darkness without expecting any sort of reply.
She stuck herself against the wall, figuratively and literally, and tried to think of something that would ease her worries of any hostile life.
She then began to feel around her tail, in order to take out the stick that was placed in it. As she took it out, the stick ignited and quickly brightened up her surroundings.
Immediately, Kate noticed jars. A lot of jars. They were little ceramic jars with cute little lids at the top. But what's probably in them aren't so cute, considering this was a burial tomb and all. These jars were aligned neatly in rows, and with a quick calculation, Kate concluded that there were 719 jars altogether. These jars were surrounded by a border of raised sandstone tiles, so they seemed to be really important.
The other things that caught Kate's interest were the walls that were completely covered with inscribed symbols. To the unenlightened, they looked to be a bunch of gibberish. But Kate wasn't unenlightened.
"I think I've seen these before," she said to herself as she went over to one of the walls to study the symbols. The most eye-catching thing about them were that each of them had a circular part with tiny black dot in the middle; it looked like an eye. Flipping through the memory archives section of her mind, Kate realized that they were the Pokémon Unown.
Unown were black Pokémon that came in various shapes and sizes. And conveniently enough, they resembled the English Alphabet. And obviously, Kate knew her English Alphabet; she could say it backwards in half the time she could forwards (That was a compliment.)
So Kate wasn't completely in the dark about what was going on in the room. In fact, almost everything to Kate was as bright as a Dazzling Gleam.
But the one thing that wasn't was a way out of the room. But by reading the symbols, she thought, they might point her to the exit, directly or indirectly.
She started at the left side of the door that had locked her in, and began making her way clockwise around the chamber.
Unusually, a lot of the text had no place of being in a burial tomb. There were things like song lyrics, mushy love poems and even a fanfic. It was just so bizarre that Kate couldn't help being taken aback in shock.
It was only at the wall on the far opposite side of the entrance that Kate finally found something relevant. In between two haikus were a couple of phrases that looked to be clues.
"Count us"
"Organ Vessel"
"Region"
"So cryptic," Kate uttered as she recited the phrases over and over in her mind. She wanted a better place to decipher these clues, so she sat at the raised sandstone bricks and wedged her stick in between a gap between the bricks.
In the illuminated radius of the fiery stick, Kate took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and began to focus with great concentration.
"Now, let us begin deciphering the clues." she said aloud in her mind.
"First, let's begin with the phrase 'Count us'... what does 'us' really mean?"
"Considering it was written in the Unown language, I'm thinking that I have to count the Unown."
"But there are so many of them on the walls! There must be an easier way!"
"Hmm... perhaps I could interpret 'count' in a different way?"
From 'Count Drapula' to Yarn counts, Kate tried to think of how the word could be used, but none of them were suitable.
"It's no good," she continued to say aloud in her mind. "I've hit a dead end. Perhaps I should move on to the next clue."
"The next one is 'Organ Vessel'. Now unlike 'count', these two are much easier to interpret in different ways."
"Take 'Organ' for instance. Organ can refer to a musical instrument, or a part of the body, and a vessel can refer to a ship or a container. The jars in the room fit the description of a container, and considering this is a burial tomb, there are most likely body parts in them. Gross."
"So if I interpret this correctly, then the clue tells me I have to perform an action with these jars. I think this is where the third clue comes in."
"The third clue is 'Region'. I don't have to think too hard about this one, because if you think it out aloud, it says 'Reach in'."
"So I have to reach into one of these jars. But which one? I'm not going to try every single one. Why? Because one, it might trigger a trap, and two, I don't want to risk touching a dead guy's guts."
"As I calculated before, there are 719 jars in the room. This number must symbolize something, but what?"
"Call it a coincidence or not, but it might be referring to the 719 species of Pokémon. Perhaps this might give me a new lead for the first clue."
"So if I want to count Unown, how does the number of Pokémon fit into this?"
"Out of curiosity, how do we know that there are 719 Pokémon in the first place? It's not like we can line up all the species in a row and count them. Like I count Bulbasaur as one, Ivysaur as two, and..."
"..."
"..."
"THAT'S IT!" she suddenly yelled in her head in sudden realisation. If she actually yelled, it probably would've caused the entire tomb to collapse.
"Unown's count! That's it's Pokédex Number! I can't believe that actually got me somewhere! I'm a genius!"
"And a genius would definitely know Unown's Pokédex Number! It's 201!"
"Now if I can bring all the pieces together, the clues will tell me what to do in a single statement! And that statement is..."
"Reach into the 201st Jar"
With a purpose as clear as Clear Smog (as oxymoronic as that sounded), Kate stood up, broke away the sticky slime that bound her to her seating place, and marched over to the nearest jar. On the side of the jar was a number that read '654'. Unfortunately, it wasn't '1', but at least it was a start.
After a few minutes of searching, Kate found the 201st Jar. It was simple, brown and ceramic with a removable lid. She took off the lid and reached into the jar with her right arm without hesitation, as she had utmost confidence in her deduction.
And she had every right to do so; inside the jar wasn't a part of a corpse, but a pressure plate that she could push down on. And upon doing so, the part of the wall which had the clues inscribed revealed an opening.
"Yes! Finally!" she celebrated with both fists in the air, one free and one stuck in a pot, because well, you probably know by now. As she happily skipped towards the exit (with the fiery stick placed back into her tail), she showered herself with verbal praises of how much of a prodigy she was.
The new corridor had exactly the same look as the one before the slimy slide; it had torches, red walls and sandstone brick flooring. The difference was that at the end of the corridor were some blue figures that resembled Water Pokémon shooting out streams of water in order to douse the flames. The red figures were trying to defend themselves or were outright fleeing. In a way, it seemed like the red passageway was coming to an end.
What was also at the end of the corridor was a closed door with a red glowing jewel in the middle of it. She did the obvious thing of touching it, but nothing seemed to have happened.
It was only after several minutes that something did happen. As Kate spent those few minutes inspecting the intricacies of the door, the door opened by itself. There was white light through that door, and Kate wouldn't know what was on the other side unless she went through it.
And so she did. With great confidence in her wide knowledge base and sharp intellect, she felt prepared for what was to come.
AN: You have two options here; you can proceed to the Final Chamber or choose another passageway to see the other character's POV. It's your choice.