AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry about messing up my punctuation in the last chapter, I've edited it now.

Chapter 3

"I can't go on much longer," Grovyle groaned, "We have to eat. I'll faint soon… I shouldn't have eaten the apple so hastily."

"We can use your berries," Delta suggested, but it was half-hearted since she already knew what his reply would be.

"We can't afford to waste them, they could be essential. We have to go into a dungeon; we've already left it too late, now we're weak from hunger…" he trailed off, seeming too exhausted and faint to finish his sentence. He closed his eyes for a while and the started again, "We have the escape orb, and we can rush into a nearby dungeon, grab food and use it to get out. A bit of a waste of an escape orb but we can't afford to save it…"

"I told you, the place we're going is a dungeon. It's not that far away… I think…" she stopped and touched a rock, almost collapsing as she used her dimensional scream, "Not far, no, just eat a berry, give me one and then we'll make it."

"At least you haven't used the pass scarf yet, it really affects your belly," he sighed, giving in and throwing her a pecha berry. He ate one himself, but knew the relief would be short-lived. Soon he'd be eating the sleep seed out of desperation, then fall unconscious, unable to defend Delta…

They kept going at a stoic pace, too exhausted to talk, until the food they held in their bellies ran out.

"It's there," Delta sighed in relief, "the entrance. It looked dangerous, but we have no choice."

"To me it looks barren," Grovyle mumbled, too tired to really argue, "Like a desert, I don't think they'll be much food there," but he relented, "I guess we have no choice."

Cautiously, they stepped into "Northern Desert". Once inside they could hardly tell it apart from all of the other dungeons they had encountered, same dark corridors and shadowy walls. It could have been a real desert, once, but after the darkness had come now it was just like everything else, rocks and little else.

In the gloom they were lucky on the first floor, not encountering any foes. Delta wore her pass scarf nervously, having not yet had its power proven to her. Grovyle wondered if his grass type might be of advantage and they'd be a few rock or ground type Pokémon thrown in among the usual dark ones, but he had no faith that his idea could be real.

Luckily in the first room there were two apples on the floor, a godsend. They each ate one but were still unpleasantly reminded of how close to death they'd come and just how easy it would be for them to find no more food at all. Apples were rare, they had been lucky.

Delta insisted on climbing the stairs as soon as they saw them (the second room), insisting that a scan for items would be a waste of effort. Grovyle wasn't so sure, Delta would be no use at all without some sort of throwing item, but at the last minute he realized that the pass scarf he's given her didn't work on ranged attacks, it would only take a bit of bad luck to bring her down. Gulping, he climbed the stairs, hoping he could shield her from any range attacks but not certain he could.

On the second floor they came across their first enemy, a Shuppet. They were found everywhere in the darkness, being one of the few species which benefitted from the darkness, and so its presence told the duo nothing. Not wanting to waste a link move Grovyle used his normal attack, but he gasped in surprise when he felt the pain of the attack it had dealt to Delta. Grimacing, he used leaf blade for an instant knockout, but he really hoped he wouldn't be forced to use link moves all the way. Max elixirs were rarer than apples.

They continued in this way for several more floors, but it was never monotonous because the danger of losing was always there. A few ground and rock type Pokémon started sneaking in alongside the dark and ghost ones, which made it far easier for Grovyle to get through although the Gravellers' self-destruct was dealing serious damage. There was a monster house, but by then they had picked up a few more items and managed to warp all of the Pokémon in that room away and dash for the stairs.

Eventually, they reached the half-way point. Except it wasn't that, all there was a still pit of black sand. Grovyle turned to Delta, expecting her to say they'd taken a wrong turning or they'd gone in the wrong dungeon, but instead she seemed to be looking at the pit, trying to piece things together. After a while she looked up at him and he instantly looked away, embarrassed from watching her.

"Well?" he asked, "Where from here?"

"We need to-" but she was cut off by a feral roar. Turning around in utter terror, Grovyle and Delta expected Primal Dialga, or at least a Nidoking. To their utter shock behind them there was a wavering image of some sort of pixie. It glared at them with insane red eyes. It screamed, then hissed an accusing sentence,

"Yoou… yooou causssed thiiss…"

And then it was gone. Grovyle looked at Delta for some sort of explanation.

"Tha- that wasn't a dimensional scream?" she asked, still cringing from the noise.

"No, no it wasn't." Grovyle couldn't avert his eyes from the position the strange Pokémon had appeared in.

"Maybe it was a vision… some sort of telepathy… or it could have teleported… but I did see it, before. I didn't want to tell you, to put you off coming, but…" she looked at him and then quickly away again, "It was a guardian, once, to the time gear, one of three. I saw visions of it happy… we saw the state of the one time gear… maybe it drove that thing, I think I heard someone call it Mesprit once, off the edge…."

Grovyle was too numb to object that she'd lied to him. Eventually he managed to tear his eyes away from the spot where Mesprit had been, but he was still shaking.

"W-where now?" he asked, his eyes glassy.

"The pit. We have to jump." Delta replied, painfully aware of how crazy she sounded.

"…the pit..?" Grovyle looked at her like she was stupid, "Really? Why? We could be killed… how do you know it was there in the past? We could be trapped down there, anything could happen…"

"No!" she insisted, "I remember they jumped too; there's a cavern underneath the desert. It was called Quicksand Cave, from there I'm not sure what they did but touching something down there will trigger a Dimensional Scream… probably…"

"You can't be certain." He stubbornly replied, "We'd risk everything."

"Yet if we don't jump we stand to lose more. We have to take risks sometimes. You…" the human looked him in the eye, "You have to trust me. The point will come where you have a choice and if you don't trust me then we'll have both doomed the world." Grovyle didn't reply. "Well?"

He held out his hand to her.

"And then where did they go?" Dusknoir demanded, shaking a quivering wreck of a Sableye, "Was it somewhere you couldn't follow to? I doubt it. How could you be LAZY enough to run off like that!"

"I-it w-was a d-d-dungeon," the Sableye spluttered out a reply, "it e-ends in a p-pit, I left the o-others waiting outside…" he shook his head, as though snapping out of a daze, "Outside. I left them outside so that when Grovyle and the human turned around and came back they could follow. I came back to give you a status update, I wasn't running off." He finished defensively.

"You ALWAYS come back to report a failure!" Dusknoir roared. Calming down, he continued, "There could be anything in that dungeon. You say it's a dead end, but with your sloppy work," he cast the Sableye a withering glare, "I wouldn't be surprised if there was a very time gear in there!" Turning away from his disappointing minion he mused to himself, "If only Master Dialga remembered the locations none of these petty precautions would be necessary."

"So, uh, what should I do now?" The Sableye asked, still struggling in Dusknoir's grip. Abruptly, Dusknoir dropped him.

"Go to the end of the dungeon and keep people outside. See if you can see anywhere they could have gone in the dungeon, I'll consult Master Dialga and may deliver you further telepathic instructions."

Nodding, the Sableye scurried off. Dusknoir started casually striding through Dialga's headquarters, not quite delaying but not exactly hurrying either. Eventually he reached the entrance to the ruins of Temporal Tower and knocked.

"GROOOOOOH!" was all of the reassurance he could utter.

"The Sableye have lost them yet again," Dusknoir wrung his hands together nervously, fully aware he was held accountable for any of their errors, "But they entered a dungeon, the desert one. Would you know of anything within it?"

"THERE. IS. A. CAVE. BENEATH." Dialga roared, but it was far loader and seemed to take a lot more effort than it did before. He panted, exhausted, afterwards and then resumed his sentence, "JUMP. IN. THE. PIT."

"Could you send them the message?" the ghost Pokémon queried. The eventual roar of confirmation was delayed; Dusknoir had to wonder whether the darkness was getting too much even for his master. Either way he was becoming far less… controlled.

Momentarily it occurred to him that maybe the organization was due for a change in leadership. Then again, if Dialga died who knew what could happen to time. Things were bad enough already, while the darkness was to his advantage if he could reverse it without he himself disappearing he probably would. Probably...

It didn't matter what he would want to happen, anyway. He'd never have the choice, no matter what crazy things happened. Besides, he was far more replaceable than Dialga, he had to watch his step. Did Dialga's telepathy work in reverse? That thought really unnerved him, but if he could then Dusknoir wouldn't be safe anywhere at all. Dialga's telepathy wasn't affected by distance. Shuddering, Dusknoir decided to check if there was any news about Celebi.

Dialga blinked, trying to grasp onto something to think about, anything. The darkness was surrounding him, drowning him, his link with the world reducing him to its crippled state. He tried to stay still as he felt his body ripping apart, knowing it was just a tremor elsewhere. He only shuddered when Dusknoir had left.

This world… so cold… he just couldn't think right now. Reasons, purposes, motives and results… these all seemed to interlink, but just the sounds not the meanings. All of these unrelated voices ringing in his ears, and this darkness… inescapable…

Confused. So confused. Dusknoir's thoughts rang in his head, "if I could end the darkness, would I?" would Dialga? Go back in time, allow them? But no, no he couldn't. He had to keep things as they were, had to preserve everything as a fly in amber. This world, this darkness was him. He had the link, he had to leave it or he would cease to exist with it. But the darkness…

A small piece of sanity cried out inside of him, mourning the plans he had set in motion to stop Celebi. But the majority had abandoned sentient thought, endlessly crying about this hurt the darkness inflicted upon him.