dawns and skullbones
9.
Turnback Cave swallows them up: the entourage of one human and seven pokemon. Technically, a trainer's not even supposed to have seven pokemon on hand, but Empoleon's not hers. It's just one of the many loopholes that can be exploited.
There's also the current Champion of Kanto, whose pikachu hates getting into its poke-ball and so whenever he's in an official match with six pokemon but not using his pikachu in the line-up, he's technically carrying seven. But there aren't many cases like theirs.
In any case, no-one's really going to enforce the rules in Turnback Cave. Her electronics aren't working: her phone or her poke-dex. She supposes the poke-balls won't work either, but she doesn't exactly need them to work.
She hopes her medicines will still work. Or, rather, the medicines Professor Rowan had outfitted her with, since she'd been all out. She can do without technology in a cave, but if there's anything to battle, she can't do without the medicines.
Especially since they can't go back without finding the pillars first, or so the records tell.
The mouth of the cave has closed up behind them. Infernape's glowing mane lights the way and, for the moment, none of them move. Giratina's eyes glint from the front… at least, in this moment where they still have their bearings. But when they move deeper into the cave and lose track of where the entrance once was, it won't matter what is front or behind unless they've marked their way.
If the technology that underpins the Escape Rope won't help them, then they can only use it as a rope without the enhancements. But it's too short to be anything but a marker.
It can do for a marker, assuming the entrance can't move. She hopes not. Or she hopes they'll find the entrance through some other means, when the time comes.
But, for now, they don't need the entrance: they need the pillars, further in.
And the wall where the entrance once stood says the same thing.
"...Past three pillars...," she reads aloud, "to the sleeping... ...before 30 is surpassed..."
There are words missing everywhere, but the message is clear enough. 'Right, three pillars.' The records at Canalave assume the thirty to be rooms in the cave: doorways and walls.
Giratina sets off. They all follow after him: a mess of misshapen paws on the cave floors. They pass one room and one pillar, then another room with another and then a third.
And at the fourth, they stop. There's an altar there, where the floor dips and then climbs back up again. There are stairs, coming from all sides: down, and then up.
There's something on the altar. And something around the altar, as well. The air shimmers: like it's unsteady, like it's shaking.
Giratina walks there: down the stairs, and up the stairs.
The rest of them follow silently.
