I would like to thank everyone who has read this far. It means so much to me that people are enjoying what I have to write. Now that my finals are over, I feel free, though I'll be traveling a decent bit over the break. Thank you to all those in PMD Writer's Union; the link to that Discord server can be found elsewhere.

Anyway, here's Chapter 4, and it's a doozy. A lot happens, so get ready. And please, at the end, tell me what you thought of it.

Current music: Iris - Goo Goo Dolls

I woke up feeling warm and toasty. Every part of my body, from my extremities to my core, felt like I'd been relaxing by the furnace for a while.

Really, it was quite something. Even a sleeping bag couldn't have achieved this level of warmth. Whatever was above me, whatever I was using as a blanket, it was too comfortable to crawl out from beneath.

What did I sleep under again? I was cold last night, so I went into Lennox's tent, and didn't bring my sleeping bag. And now I'm using his ponytail to keep myself warm. That sounds about right.

My brother's ponytail no longer felt cozy the way it once had, though. Now, it was cold and hard, much like a blanket that had been exposed to cold air; it still provided warmth, just not very much of it.

I crawled my way out from beneath the crimson hair and saw the interior of the tent was lighter than it had been before. The sun was not directly overhead, not by a long shot, but it had clearly risen over the horizon. Horizons, of course, did not matter inside a maze.

Lennox was still dead to the world. I couldn't hear any snoring, but his eyes were closed and his body was chilled. Knowing that one's core body temperature tends to drop when they are sleeping, that made sense.

Still, I wanted company.

"Wake up, bro," I whispered. There had been that recent morning, the day when I'd first broached the question of going on this adventure, when Lennox had been knitting by the fireplace before I was awake. In fact, it wasn't like him to sleep late.

Oh well. I guess patterns aren't always the same. Still, he should be awake now.

My brother did not stir. So I decided to take it up a notch; I'd been reluctant to raise my voice for fear that other creatures might find us, but I decided that this risk was now worth taking.

"Come on, Lennox. Wake up!"

Still, my brother didn't show any signs of waking. He wasn't snoring either; he remained in a sleep that was hopefully dreamless and blissful. It had better be worth it, because I wanted him to talk to me.

And then I recalled something else: Mountain rescue Pokémon, typically canine species such as Mightyena, were often tasked with reviving unconscious mountaineers who'd been buried in avalanches. These Pokémon did so by licking the victims' faces.

I hesitated. By doing so, I might cross a line with my brother. But he'd surely understand that I was doing him a favor, right?

Without thinking about it (before I could think about it), I stuck out my tongue and licked Lennox's left cheek. Surely that would be the most sensitive part of his body, right?

I likened the taste to an ice cream cone without any flavor. And that's when I knew that something was horribly wrong.

Panic welling up inside, my heart beating like I was running a 100-meter dash, I put my ear up to my brother's neck and listened for a pulse.

I didn't hear one. At a minimum, if such a pulse did exist, it was extremely faint, not strong enough to keep the blood pumping through Lennox's veins to keep himself warm.

This left two possibilities. Either my brother had entered a weird state of hibernation (which Zoroark weren't known to do), or… the unthinkable had happened.

Dread rose in my throat as I processed what I was telling myself. It truly was unthinkable, but if it was true, I'd be thinking far too much.

Lennox wasn't just dead to the world. He was flat-out dead.

My mouth morphed into an O shape, and much like those kids in old Christmas movies (those nearly unheard-of creatures called humans), I yelled one word: "NOOOOOO!"

If anything could wake my brother, it would be something like that. But it wasn't sufficient. Nothing can wake the dead, after all; should I have been that surprised?

Tears formed and began plummeting out of my eyes. Several of them turned into ice before they hit the floor of the tent.

And yet, there was something even worse. An even more horrific realization sprang into my mind as I opened my brother's left eye (which turned up vacant; there was still the teal iris, but the eye was incredibly glassy, having been shattered just like Lennox's life.)

I killed him.

The fact that I had not meant to didn't matter. I'd made the boneheaded decision to not bring the sleeping bag into my brother's tent, which had resulted in my body instinctively nuzzling up into Lennox's fur coat. And I'd stolen heat from him.

It may have only been through negligence on my part, but either way, my brother was gone. And I was responsible.

I cried. I cried big, fat, ugly tears, many of which got stuck in my tear ducts as they turned into ice crystals. That hurt, but no physical pain can compare to the range of emotions that competed for dominance, which felt like a mace whacking me in the head over and over.

Just like a morning star. That medieval weapon with the ball and chain… yeah, that's what's hitting me repeatedly right now.

As soon as I could summon the strength, I climbed out of the tent. This took some work, since I didn't want it to collapse on my brother's corpse.

I can't leave him like this. Not only might an enemy find it and track me down, but he deserves a dignified burial. We had our disagreements, but he's - he was my brother.

That is the nature of death - everything was now in perfect tense. In the span of three months, I'd learned that all too well.

First my parents, gone after an avalanche had torn down the mountainside of Coronet. Now my brother, dead of hypothermia after I'd sucked heat away from his body. All three of them had been stolen by the mountain - as though the mountain itself had spoken and said, "There can only be one."

"Why me, mountain?" I half-bellowed, half-whined. "If you had to take all but one member of my family, why leave me as the last one standing?"

The mountain did not respond, and why should it have? It was a mountain. It did not have to respect social norms.

Still, as with every loss, life had to go on. Much like how Lennox and I had gotten back on our feet (as much as could be expected, anyway) after the avalanche, it was my turn to process the end of my brother's life, but then move beyond it.

Let's see if there's anything useful in the supplies. I'll have to move it all into my backpack, because I can only carry one of them. Still, there will be more rations for me…

Thinking in such a cold, calculating manner so soon after this tragedy made me feel like a monster. I justified this by reminding myself that this is what Lennox would have done too, had he been in my position. That's just how it works - altruism can only go so far.

After transferring as many supplies as I could carry into my own backpack, I dragged Lennox's body out of the tent. This took a while, since even in death, my brother was far larger than me. And then the work began.

Neither of us had packed a shovel, probably because neither of us had wanted to admit we might need it. This meant that I had to do all the digging with my bare paws. It wasn't long until they bled; one's fur can only go so far in protecting one from the cold, let alone the exertion of digging a grave.

Don't think of the G-word.

As I shifted snow aside, a process that took what felt like hours, I tried not to think about what I'd done. One might think that being busy would make it easier to distract oneself from something one doesn't want to ponder. But that's not true.

Digging a… crypt isn't exactly exciting work. It was exhausting, though, since I had to use all four of my limbs to kick aside hard snow, and because I kept looking over my shoulder. Someone would come, it would happen eventually!

And, I realized with a sickening gulp, if they see me burying a body, what's the most logical conclusion to come to? That I'm giving my brother a dignified, proper burial, or that I'm a murderer seeking for a place to dump the body?

In a way, the second conclusion was also accurate. But I didn't want to consider that, for reasons that should be obvious.

After what must have been a long time, I'd created a hole massive enough to stuff Lennox's body into. It was rather an unpleasant task, since this was my brother we were talking about, and he surely deserved better than this. But I had no other option.

I thought I heard one of his bones break as I lowered him haphazardly into the snowy crypt, but I tried not to care about that. Wherever he ended up, he wouldn't need his bones, anyway.

Regardless, I could barely hold back the tears as I covered my brother's body in snow. From Nexus he had come, and to Nexus he would return. Once the snow melted, of course, the corpse would appear again, perhaps just bones or dust. But again…it was just too horrible to think about.

Once I'd fully submerged Lennox in the white stuff, I took a step back to "admire" my work. By now, the tears were irresistible, and my vision grew blurry and even a bit painful. But I was able to appreciate that my brother was well and truly buried.

Should I say a prayer over him? That's what you do when someone dies, isn't it?

Our parents had taken us to the local diocese of the Church of Arceus weekly, but ever since their funeral and memorial service, I'd avoided the place like the plague. The memories were just too painful.

Needless to say, I didn't know what prayers to say. Would Arceus be offended if I made a mistake? If so, would that doom my brother to a non-peaceful rest?

I found myself getting to my "knees" and thinking the following:

Arceus, if you're up there…just know that I didn't mean to kill my brother. Of course, if you're all-knowing, you'll be well aware of that already. Just, please forgive me, and please see to it that my brother has a better send-off than I was able to give him.

As my legs were trembling from more than one cause, I picked up my backpack. It weighed me down more than it had before, perhaps due to the exertion of burying my brother. But ultimately, I had to keep going. It's just like any other tragedy: Life must go on.

Once back in the thick of the icy maze, I took a random assortment of paths through the dungeon. No longer could I focus enough to remember the strategy my brother and I had used yesterday, nor did I want to.

As such, it wouldn't surprise me if I backtracked on numerous occasions. All I know is that before long, my legs felt like jelly. They wouldn't be able to hold my weight much longer; that much was for sure.

Some of the corridors were slicker, whereas others allowed my paws to get more traction on the snow. Some were wide enough that they felt as open-air as the Spruce Village bazaar; others were so narrow that I could spread my legs and touch both walls at once.

All of them, however, only increased my anxiety to a fever pitch. I couldn't help but become convinced that I was being watched.

Every time I stopped to take a swig of water (which sometimes froze before I could drink it), or eat a piece of Oran berry leather, I knew I was wasting time. If a feral Pokémon had seen the supplies left in that room, the patch of snow that looked just a little less solid than the rest of it, or the Zoroark corpse within that patch, they'd be right on my tail. And in my current state, I felt powerless to fight back.

That's why, a little after midday (at least, what I thought was early afternoon), my knees buckled when I heard a voice that wasn't my own.

I crumpled to the ground, falling face-first into the snow. I might have blacked out briefly from the shock, or I might not have. All I know is that when I came to my senses, my brain processed words for the first time.

"Man, it's cold in here!" a male voice exclaimed.

I tried not to chuckle at that Captain Obvious-tier observation, but I mentally heightened my sense of sound in an effort to make out more words. And I felt a momentary sense of relief.

Maybe they're not feral Pokémon. After all, feral creatures cannot be reasoned with - at least these creatures can use their words.

The keyword above, however, is momentary. In other words, my relief was short-lived, to be quickly replaced by dread as a female spoke up.

"You know, Requiem, you're from pretty close to where I grew up. You shouldn't be complaining about the cold."

"Well, my fur coat isn't as thick as yours, Jade! I think you're comparing Oran berries to Cheri berries, quite frankly!"

Okay, so right now they're having a petty argument about the weather. There's no need to be too worried about that - it doesn't concern me. Maybe I should stop eavesdropping.

The next thing said, however, shook me to the core. It was from a third voice, and after I heard it, my brain vibrated as though my head were a gong.

"Guys, we should focus on what we've already seen. There was a patch of snow that looked a lot looser than the rest of it. And I thought I saw some fur poking out."

"What color was the fur, Stu?" the other male voice enquired.

I gulped as I heard the other male voice (evidently belonging to someone named Stu) respond.

"It was dark red. Crimson. The color that appears on a Zoroark's ponytail."

He knows, I thought desperately.

"That's rather odd, to be sure" the female replied. "I don't know why a Zoroark would be buried in the snow, or why it wouldn't get out immediately."

"Maybe it died," the male voice that wasn't Stu said. (I thought it belonged to someone named Requiem, for what it's worth. Then again, names don't matter as much as what "Requiem" had just uttered.)

"That's what I think too" Stu told the others. "It seems that Mount Coronet has claimed another victim, so we'd be wise to exercise extreme caution while we're in this Mystery Dungeon."

"I just wish we could build a fire here," Requiem muttered.

"We'll bring matches next time" Jade promised her teammate. "But right now, we've got to focus on one thing, and one thing only: Finding the Temple of the Sun."

There were those words again: Temple of the Sun. I thought Lennox had mentioned something about it before, but wherever he was now, I'd missed my chance to ask him.

"Without the three, we won't be able to see it," Requiem pointed out. At least, I thought it was Requiem; I'd managed to distinguish between the voices of Requiem and Stu. (For what it's worth, the former voice was far deeper.)

What are the three? What the hell are they talking about?

"It doesn't matter," Stu responded, in a tone that was a mixture of snappishness and excitement. "We're Team Morningstar, and we all know what that means!"

I barely suppressed a groan at the somewhat cheesy team name, and instead dug my heels into the snow. I would stay here all day if I had to, even if it meant being trapped in the labyrinth for another night. Curiosity had won out over fear.

"And what does it mean, Stu?"

"It means", Stu replied with what must have been all the confidence in Sinnoh, "that we rarely fail at anything we attempt. We've got a 96 percent success rate, meaning that we get hired for a reason!"

The mathematical side of my brain ran through a quick calculation. Supposedly, twenty-four times out of twenty-five, Team Morningstar achieved their goal, whatever it was. In other words, if they discovered me, I was probably dead meat.

Nonetheless, I dug my ankles further into the white stuff, to the point that they practically had miniature crypts. Of course, there was another word for crypt, one I didn't want to consider…one that started with the letter G.

Even as encased in the snow as they were, my paws couldn't stop shaking. I was no longer rooted to the spot; I feared I would fall over. I could hardly believe what my ears had been telling me.

"The Temple of the Sun is at the top of this mountain," the voice of Stu continued. "And it seems that some are highly motivated to reach it; just look at the price that Zoroark was willing to pay!"

And then Stu did something that I couldn't ignore. He laughed.

You imbeciles, I thought bitterly, not knowing what word would better describe them. You all deserve nothing but hell.

Suddenly, I didn't care if they found me. I didn't care if they were able to inflict a massive amount of suffering on me. All that mattered was making them pay, no matter the cost.

But I had no way of finding them. Their voices sounded close, but in a maze such as this one, that might as well have meant nothing. Just because they were close as the Flying-type can propel itself through the air, that didn't mean they were easily accessible to me.

I dropped my backpack to the ground and took a drink from my penultimate water bottle. At least, it was the next to last one that I hadn't either guzzled or frozen over. Had I still been with Lennox, I would have been in a world of hurt.

My disgust with Team Morningstar swiftly turned into self-hatred. How could I dismiss my grief so casually?

Speaking of Team Morningstar, the voice of Requiem was the next one to speak.

"I think I heard a noise nearby. Sounded like something hitting the ground." He knows. He knows I'm close - or rather, that someone is close. But again, how much does that really mean?

"Should we investigate?" Stu replied, and though I couldn't hear his face, I pictured him smiling from ear to ear. That's what his tone suggested, at least.

"If we find the spot, then sure," Jade told him. "But it can't be our highest priority. The layout of a Mystery Dungeon is unpredictable, seemingly random - we can't count on finding what we're looking for."

"Well, that sucks," Stu said.

That's when I decided to have some "fun." Of course, that's only to the extent that anything in my state could be considered fun. This story is a very solemn business, after all.

"It certainly does," I replied.

I could practically hear the heads rolling as Jade spat the following words: "Was that you, Requiem?"

"No, it wasn't. My lips never moved! And Stu wouldn't respond to himself. That makes no sense!"

"Perhaps it doesn't" Requiem replied. "That means it was someone else in the maze. Do you think it's the corpse's brother?"

Yep, it is. I thought those words, but I didn't say them out loud.

"We've got to keep moving," Jade muttered. "We're wasting daylight, and that's a pretty important commodity in a Mystery Dungeon. This team will find him eventually, and then he'll get what he deserves."

I won't lie: My first instinct was to shout a number of expletives at Team Morningstar, blowing my cover even further. It would have been an honor and a privilege to fight them, to make them suffer for what they'd said about Lennox.

But respect for Lennox was also a reason why I shouldn't confront them. There were at least three members of Team Morningstar, and while I didn't know their species (or even types), I did know that three against one didn't constitute good odds, especially for a Zorua who hadn't yet evolved.

I'm tougher than they think. I'll show them who's boss. But I can't throw my life away just to avenge my brother; he wouldn't want me to do that.

So I lifted the backpack again and settled it on my back as effectively as I could. Then, I started bolting through the maze once more.

Just like I had that morning, I took a mostly random route, not caring what direction each path led. I might only end up getting myself lost at best, in serious danger at worst. But from my perspective, no path seemed better than any other.

At any point, it seemed, I might come face-to-face with Team Morningstar. I didn't know whether to approach this possibility with excitement or dread, which was perhaps the scariest part of all.

Quickly, my legs grew exhausted. No longer did I step as high off the ground as I once had, but I kept running until I was certain I'd lost them.

Taking another bite of the Oran berry leather, I told myself that I had one minute to rest. For all I knew, my enemies might be taking a more direct route through the icy labyrinth than me, and we might meet up again.

I savored each second of that minute like they were the last sixty seconds of my life. For all I knew, they might be; my heart pounded so forcefully that my brain practically vibrated in my skull.

When the minute was over, I sprang back up, sprinting so rapidly through the snow that I barely got any traction whatsoever. More than once I slipped and fell, and even crushed my tail once (which made my eyes water), but I knew I was making progress. That made all the pain worth it - knowing, or at least believing, that I would soon escape this Mystery Dungeon.

The shadows on the ground grew longer, which added some consternation; I knew that this could only mean one thing. I was running out of time to reach the end of the maze. If I wasn't fast enough, I would end up sealed in for the night, and then I'd run further risk of discovery by Team Morningstar.

But maybe I want that.

No. It's just like I told myself earlier - my brother wouldn't be happy with me if I just gave up like that. I have to escape.

The path became even more slippery, perhaps because my anxiety was spiking. I couldn't tell you how many times I slid like the ground was an ice rink, but it wasn't that long before the unexpected happened.

Just ahead of me, the air was filled with an ethereal sort of mist. I recognized it right away - that's what it had looked like at the start of the dungeon!

I've made it to the end, I realized.

My cheeks welled up with pride as I thought about what that meant. I had done what my parents could not - I'd proven my courage to them. My brother, too, would be incredibly proud of me.

That is, if they had still been alive. As such, my smile was short-lived, and it rapidly turned upside down.

Yes, I'd reached the end of the dungeon, but at what cost? As far as I was concerned, it might well have been the ultimate cost.

Nonetheless, I walked through the mist without much hesitation.

Immediately, the air shifted from merely "pretty cold" to "absolutely freezing." My first thought was that a place called the Temple of the Sun shouldn't be this windy and frigid. It made no sense.

But then I got a better view of my surroundings and saw that I was standing on a snow-covered mountainside overlooking a lightly forested valley. The sun was setting in the distance, covering the snow in a bright hue of amber.

It would have been quite a beautiful sight, except for my internal monologue. As it turns out, a bad mood can ruin just about anything.

The part of the mountain I stood on wasn't the summit. Not even close. In fact, the summit was still several thousand feet above me, which I discovered by turning my head up and eyeing the pinnacle of rock that stretched up towards the heavens.

How?

It was bad enough that I'd lost so much in even attempting the climb. What made matters worse was that I hadn't even succeeded.

Of course, mountaineers turn back all the time. Perhaps they get altitude sickness, or maybe a storm comes that makes it too dangerous to reach the summit. But I'd had so much to prove, and I'd sacrificed a great deal, just for a chance.

I allowed myself a quick cry. My tears froze before they hit the ground.

Okay. Buck up, Bladen, because nobody's going to feel sorry for you. Not least because nobody sees you right now.

Yes, that was the unfortunate truth. I had to keep going, whether it was back to Spruce Village or somewhere else. I couldn't let my brother's sacrifice be in vain.

It wasn't a sacrifice, Bladen. You killed him!

But I didn't mean to! I was doing what it took to stay warm, and I didn't think it would take heat away from my brother!

That doesn't matter. Negligent homicide is still homicide, you know.

The angel and devil had a fight within my mind, and the devil won. Before long, I crumpled down in the snow, shivering both from the cold weather and the grieving process. To anyone who walked by (which was precisely zero other Pokémon, feral or otherwise), I would have looked like someone who belongs in a padded room.

But I stood back up eventually and began trudging through the snow towards the rock wall that constituted the side of Mount Coronet. My thought process was that there had to be a cave there I could use as a natural shelter (both tents were still in the maze; I hadn't possessed the presence of mind to bring one for myself.)

Walking through the white stuff was like trying to cross a river in the water. Since the area sloped downward, gravity wanted to pull me down the mountainside. I was forced to dig my heels in further, which meant that each step required more effort than it had in the maze.

Once I reached the vertical part of Mount Coronet's "facade", I hugged the wall until there was an opening. Finally, I reached one that was just wide enough to admit a Zorua such as myself.

Hopefully I don't evolve while I'm in this cave, I thought with a bitter laugh.

Of course, there was no reason to think that would happen. If a Zorua evolved when it had reached a certain level of happiness, I was probably about as far from evolving as I'd ever been.

Nonetheless, the cave was warm; at least, it was warm relative to the outside world. I couldn't build a fire in the enclosed space, but that had been true inside the dungeon as well. Plus, there was nothing with which to start a fire; the flint and knives were, like so many other things that could be considered useful, still with Lennox's corpse.

Although it wasn't that late, my body demanded sleep after all my mind had been through. The day had not only been physically demanding, but it had been incredibly emotionally taxing as well.

So, to sum everything up: I buried my brother after finding out that I stole his body heat from him. I eavesdropped on a team that probably wants me dead, and now I'm in a cave in the middle of nowhere. Can things get any worse?

It's never a good idea to assume that things can't sink any lower. It's always unwise to believe that just because you're in a bad state, that means you've hit rock bottom and there's nowhere to go but up.

Because it's just not true.