Chapter 30
Dawn
"April!" I cry out, shooting straight after her. The vortex engulfs me, but I don't let her white body out of my sight. Wisps of the black and purple vortex swirl in a helix around our path. I can feel pressure squeezing me, but I fly on. "April!" I call for her attention, but she doesn't seem to hear me. The wisps of the whirlpool close in, making the path so narrow, I can barely squeeze through. Then, as fast as I went into the vortex, I come out.
The last of my tail comes out of the vortex after my body. April has stopped not far from where I am, so I fly next to her. That's when I take in my surroundings. There are rocks floating everywhere, seemingly suspended in mid-air. Greenery grows on them. Some are plants I recognize, some a completely foreign. There is no ground in this new world. There are floating rock formations, sure. But the sky takes the place of the ground, making a dark violet color as far as the eye can see in every direction. I've never seen a place so odd and distorted, yet it triggers something in my mind. I search my memories for anything where I might have seen something like this before, but nothing comes to mind.
I gesture for April to follow me as I slowly float forward. Every sense I have is screaming "Danger! Danger!" But, Blake is in here. My attention wanders to a massive rock formation with many vines crawling over it in strange patterns. If I know Blake, that's the first place he'd check for the Wings of Legend. "April!" I get her attention away from a cluster of floating boulders with bright blue flowers blooming on it. "I think Blake is in there." I nod to the rock formation. She nods back and we dive forward.
My eye catches a hole big enough to fit a large pokemon with the vines that probably once covered it cut away. I fly straight into it with April right on my tail. The hole leads to a tunnel with walls worn down by wind. Probably from the Wings of Legend. It is perfectly straight with no turns at all, completely uniform and unnatural. Oddly enough, it's just as bright in the hole as it was outside, despite there being absolutely no source for the light. "April, take precautions in here. Something's not right." I call behind me to April.
"Okay, Dawn!" She calls back and flies in closer to my side. The tunnel opens up to what I think to be a hollow center of the floating rock. A thick curtain of more vines and many more floating boulders are clustered around the room. The vines create the wall of the cavern, but they look like they'd be easy to push aside. April and I lay flat on the floor of the tunnel to survey the area. There is not much at all from this view. I can tell the curtain is shielding the contents of the rest of the cavern. There is no way that is all there is of the hollow center. "Hey, Dawn! Is that Blake down there?" April points to something down below and a bit to the right. I follow her arm and, sure enough, a black figure is perched on the edge of a floating rock where the vines are separated. His eyes are intent on something in the remainder of the center.
"Follow me." I glide as silently as I can down towards Blake, careful to evade the floating pebbles as if the might explode upon the smallest contact. "Blake!" I whisper a loud as I dare. His keen raptor ears picks up the sound and his head turns to me. I float down next to him while April touches ground on the other side of the boulder.
"Nice of you to join me." He whispers back to me. I just roll my eyes at him.
"Didn't have much of a choice. I couldn't leave both of you behind once April dove in." I jerk my head to April and she grins back at me. "What am I going to do with you two?" I joke. Both of them chuckle under their breath.
"Well, for now, we better keep our voices at a whisper. We've got company." Blake informs us and turns to what he was looking at before, slightly downward. I follow his gaze and my breath stops. I was right about the center being bigger, but I could never imagine a place like this. Inside, vines no longer hang from the ceiling. They hang from the floor, as if we are seeing a series of vines while turned upside down. Rocks that were suspended in the air are now floating in circles around the room. A small pond in the corner catches my eye. It looks to be fed by a steady stream falling from a spring higher up. But, when I get a closer look, the water flows upstream which makes me question where the spring at the bottom gets its water.
"This place is insane." I whisper to myself. Blake chuckles a bit.
"Okay, while you're observing the scenery, I'll keep MY eye on the four birds and dragon in the middle." I glare at him for catching my fault, but get a look at the pokemon in the middle. And he's right. The Wings of Legend are perched on the cavern floor arranged in a uniform triangle with Rayquaza at the tip. The spot between the end pokemon, Zapdos and Articuno, remains bare. Clearly the place where Moltres once was. Lugia and Ho-Oh stand closer together in the middle. Rayquaza stands by himself. The triangle faces a hollowed area wrapped in shadows. I squint to make out shapes in the darkness, but my eyes fail me.
Rayquaza releases a low growl towards the shadow, his razor sharp teeth showing but not out of intimidation. "Are you sure you checked everywhere?" The three of us jump at the low rumbling voice, our eyes widening at the shadow. There's a pokemon in there. I look back to the Rayquaza to see him nod. "They're out there! I sensed them! We will not stop until their capture. Do you understand?" Another nod from Rayquaza and another low growl.
It almost looks as if a shadow itself lurched forward. I flinch at the sudden movement, but Rayquaza doesn't even blink. The shadow's colors show and I see it's not a shadow at all. The creatures glowing red eyes burn into Rayquaza's yellow eyes, his golden mask-like face right up against Rayquaza. "Yes, and we will search ten more years until we find them once again!" The Rayquaza nods with no sound.
I run his words through my head, my mind making a guessing game of who they are searching for? They said they've been searching for ten years. I try to look back ten years ago, but I must have been too young to remember. But, we do have one more crucial piece of information. Rayquaza is not the leader of the Wings of Legend. The shadow-like pokemon is. I turn to Blake. "Abort the mission, you guys." Blake whips his head at me in shock.
"What? Why? We're so close!"
"We came here believing that our target was Rayquaza. We know too little about this new target. We already have crucial information. The mission is a success. Let's get out of here, quietly." April nods obediently and we wait for Blake. He eventually sighs and nods. "Alright. Follow me." I slip around and jump right back into the wall. Blake and April find them right after my short scream. The three of us have our backs against the rock, staring into the four eyes of Lugia and Ho-Oh.