As we landed in the next level, the ante was upped once again. It was yet another new and ominous setting that awaited me.
The impact on my way out was softened by the long grass covering the ground. When I looked up, I heaved a sigh of relief at the starry night sky, my wings twitching at the sight. A gentle wind blew across the plain and the rustling of the grass reached my antennae.
Valérie was in front of me, sitting and staring at a large hedge. Other than an opening in front of us, it seemed to span from where we stood to the horizon on either side. She turned to me.
"All the monsters we fought..." She mumbled. I'd never heard her so defeated. Even when poisoned, burned, or immobilized, her voice always had confidence to it.
I nodded slowly. "Apparently. Yeah."
"Is that what's going to happen to us?"
That, I didn't have an answer to. More accurately, I didn't have any answer that would lighten the mood. And even if I could, I wasn't sure if I should. It felt wrong to try to be okay with everything that just happened. Then again, dwelling on it didn't feel better. Gotta keep things short and sweet so one can keep going, I guess.
We waited in silence for the others to show up, and one by one, from instants later to an hour, all haggard faces met us. I'd say no words needed to be spoken, but someone had to break the ice somehow. We couldn't stay here.
"So it's a hedge maze?" Micheal asked, barely louder than a breath.
Gab answered, just as quietly. "We won't know until we go in."
She turned toward the opening as if she was about to walk in, but stopped before taking a step. Nothing had changed in front of us. However, the air grew heavy, with only the sounds of wind and rustling grass reaching my antennae once more. We all stared ahead, no one moving an inch. I caught a glance of Chloe, her Swablu eyes looking alert but still. This wasn't a look of exhaustion. It was one of hesitation.
Really? Even Chloe?
I blinked, glaring down the hedge. We were immobilized, until…
Micheal hesitantly put a paw forward. He took a few steps, tail low behind him. He walked cautiously, slow enough for me to know he wanted us to follow him, but he didn't look back. I made a point to fly next to him instead of walking, the thrumming of my wings a godsend against the silence. It seemed that even the forest we'd been in way back when had more noise than here.
One by one, the rest followed in a straight line. However, what little ground we covered was cut short. No one would enter the hedge maze.
"How big is it, you think?" Micheal whispered. Sure, it was calm here, but we didn't know if there was something waiting just past the entrance.
"I'll try to get a better look," I said. My wings buzzed as I lifted off the ground, rising into a higher altitude flight. That is, I would've if not for an invisible flat surface that I rammed my face into.
Ow!
I hit the ceiling. Not only that, but it broke. Everyone gasped at the crashing sounds and a minor fissure cracking open, and I felt bits of something hitting me on the way down. I fell a few feet before catching myself, and realized the others weren't only gawking at the hole above. They were looking at a new hole in the ground that was identical to the one I'd caused on my way up.
The reason they were alike was because it was the same hole.
What had fallen on me was dirt. Some clumps fell into the hole below, only to come right back through the one in the fake sky. I got out of the way and landed back on the floor. Down there, I could see infinite loops of myself and the others staring down the hole. Another Pac-Man situation like with Gab's backpack in the level up in the clouds. But seriously?! To put the out of bounds areas barely ten feet off the ground? That was cheap. With the ground itself being maybe an inch deep, it would make it very hard to dig and not fall. Flying over and guiding people through the maze might be cheating, but come the hell on! You allow people to die but then get picky when they try to think out of the box? Whoever put us here pissed me off.
I locked eyes with Chloe. Right. That one terrifying vision we'd shared hadn't left our minds since the second level. The image of a helpless Pokémon sobbing as it was torn apart pixel by pixel was hard to forget, especially since we couldn't blink away. It had become our unspoken rule to not mention out of bounds areas because of it, but… we hadn't had anything like that happen again, had we? The idea of thinking about exploring being a crime was really a theory corroborated only by one incident.
As far as I knew.
There was nothing blasted into our eyes or unwanted sounds pounding in our ears. Only silence. Like Gab's notes and backpack looping through the sky, it only appeared to be a case of weird physics. Could we chock up that one event to a glitch, then?
"That looks so out of place," Gab mumbled, pointing at the hole hanging in the air. She was right. From the grass, the night sky looked like any ordinary one. Maybe it was? And then whatever kept us stuck was some weird invisible wall.
Then a white paw stuck through the ceiling hole. Ugh, Lola. She'd practically shoved her whole leg in there!
"Ay! No messing with the out-of-bounds areas," I warned.
"Says who?"
God, I was furious to have to bring this up now, but it was the first thing that came to mind. "Dark Trap commandment."
The Absol nodded without any smirk, or that usual amused glint in her eye. She simply pulled her paw out of the pit. Now what?
Gab sat down, leaning on the tightly woven hedge behind her. "So we can't check from above. We can do like the tunnels back there and leave stuff at crossroads and corners, then?"
"If the dirt is soft enough, I can just dig holes with this," I gestured with an arm stinger.
Chloe's feathers were still visibly on edge despite the obscurity. "It might damage the grass around it. Which— yes, I know, don't look at me like that— isn't super important… bad for environment, good for us. Extra visible."
Poison from those stingers were just toxic to anything, I'd learned. If it turned a river purple and made someone faint, it was just lethal by definition, no biochemistry required. The danger felt realer now. I'd had to deduce how to control the amount of poison in my stingers since. I didn't know what gland or organ secreted the venom, but it seemed to be something I could mentally order my body to monitor. At the moment, my stingers were half dry, except the back one. Usually, I'd only call upon my arm stingers for boss battles. Outside of those situations, they got inconvenient at best and dangerous to others at worst. I might've complained once in a while about arms irritated by burns, but it was better than that and poisoning Micheal when I picked him up.
I looked upward, high above the physics-defying hole. I didn't want to be reminded of the first portal right now. The stars were plentiful and the moon was nowhere to be seen. There was no dawn in sight and the whole sky was pure black with tiny specks of light. Though initially foreboding, there was something serene about being in the open rather than in the maze. The breeze was present but gentle. The rustle of the grass ruffled the soundscape in a way far softer than that of the sizzle of lava. Time was still.
Most of us were on the outer side of the wall now, not in front of the entrance. I was tired too. Making twists and turns in the darkness felt counterproductive, and so agreed the people starting to shift into sitting positions.
"Let's wait until the sun gets up," Lola suggested.
I guessed that settled that. We'd explore in the morning. We'd have to brave the routine again, whether or not sleep would come.
Except Valérie kept marching.
"Valérie?" Micheal called. "Valérie, we said we were staying the night."
She didn't reply. She laid a hand on one side of the leafy opening. The Meditite slowly stopped walking, and turned her head to look at us from over her shoulder. A few seconds of that glare felt like days. She faced the opening again, entered, and walked to the left.
"Hey!" Chloe shouted. "We need to stay together!"
The Swablu flew low, almost sweeping the grass with her talons. A left turn, and then her voice was muffled by the hedge that separated us from her. It didn't take long for Micheal, Lola, Gab and I to scramble upright and chase after them.
Luckily, the hallway on the left was long and straight with no turns I could see. Maybe they were near the end of the path?
Dear God, we better not be dealing with one of those mazes where the walls change!
At the sudden thought, my eyes leapt to the entrance. They landed on Gab, who was still very near the opening and staring at it, hands wringing together. She shot me one worried look but gave me a thumbs up and an awkward smile. We'd thought of the same stupid fantasy book trope. I sighed and turned away, flying toward the rest of the group.
Valérie had fortunately stopped, leaning against a hedge with her arms crossed. She was clearly humouring Chloe by hearing her out, though no one could be sure Valérie would listen to anything. There'd be many an eye roll even in this situation, but I couldn't tell for sure in this deep of a night.
The sky was even darker than before. If you squinted and looked at just the right angle, it was obvious you were looking at a cloud, since the colour was slightly different. However, it was so dark out that it was easy to think the stars were dying. One by one, like a wave, they were being extinguished. It had been a while since there had been so little light.
"It won't do any good to go in right now!" I called after Valérie. I was getting close but still had a bit to go, and now was as good a time as any.
Closer now, I could discern Micheal's black fur against the shadows, and Lola's glowing eyes helped to pinpoint her.
"We always take a break!" Valérie shouted back. "We always decide we should take it easy because something bad happened last level. And then— and then, bad stuff happens anyway! It catches up to us if we rest!"
I'd reached the team and landed on shaky legs. A bad time for a clumsy landing. As I straightened myself upright, Gab finally completed the pack.
"It does make a difference if we run ourselves ragged!" Lola growled.
Gab nodded. "We need to— especially after that— we need to— to—"
Chloe pitched in. "We need to slow down," she stressed.
"What if it had been me? What if I'd only joined you guys there?" Valérie cut through.
This brought the uproar of counters to complete silence. Valérie held her fists clenched, eyes sternly staring down each of us.
"I know you all hate me," she said, the words clearly hurting her more than us. I had a feeling she knew it, but her stone gaze was kept up, relentless. She grinned. "I'm opinionated. I'm impulsive. If I'd shown up for barely one level, would you guys have cared?"
I didn't know how to process that outburst. On one hand, my teammate and friend clearly had some things she needed to sort out. On the other, I wanted to shake her until she understood that this wasn't about her.
… But wasn't it? It was about all of us. If we needed to survive together, the responsibility fell on all of us to make sure everyone was okay. That was what the other girls had been preaching, right?
I shot in my two cents. "Isn't it proof that we would've cared? We're upset that—"
"That he died? That someone died, Kieran? Whatever happened to Pokémon not dying, huh?"
Now the words cut through me to the bone. Why blame me?! After all we'd been through, was I still her scapegoat? Well, may God strike me down next time I try to be reassuring!
"We didn't know!" I snapped. I didn't have anything more I could say.
"And you," Valérie reprised. Her head slowly turned toward Micheal, face unreadable. The Litleo hadn't said a word the whole time. He met her eye with a stare, barely moving, but I knew he'd heard her by the way his fur suddenly bristled. Valérie's hands flew up to hide her eyes and she sank down lethargically. "We thought you were going to die too. I'm so— so mad at you."
At that point the Meditite started to outright weep. I heard another sniff from beside me, then Lola paced toward her. She laid down and put a front leg around Valérie, pressing her against her fluffy white chest. Chloe flew over, eyes dry but staring through the ground. Headstrong, fearless Valérie could only turn inward and hide, when even Gab joined the formation.
I stood to the side, unable to contribute. I wish I could've. I hoped she knew that.
Micheal was hovering around the group, never stepping within a foot's distance. I approached him cautiously.
"You okay?" I whispered.
"… I smell something," he blurted out, voice empty.
I noticed it too. Sweet, but not enough to cause a headache. A note of bitterness here and there. It smelled both woody and like morning dew, as if fresh water was the flowers of some unknown and fantastic tree.
"… maybe there's a berry bush close?" Gab suggested tentatively, her tone far heavier than her meaning.
Little by little, we all were standing again. Better a short trek than a long winding road, I guessed. A fair compromise if it made sure to attenuate further breakdowns. Gab started up Flash, a soft crackle of electricity accompanying stark white light. I don't know why the hedge maze felt more threatening with light than without. Maybe the deep and plentiful shadows did the trick. The slightest movement of anything physical caused thousands more from the dark.
Valérie and Micheal locked eyes for a second and he padded to her. She put out her hand and leaned on his back.
"Let's go, okay?" She said, so tired. He nodded.
The pack moved as one and I kept a stinger jabbing into one of the walls. Unlike regular hedges, the leaves were arranged closely together for what I assumed to be the whole depth, not just the outside. Probably to keep people from crossing through. Hopefully my poison could mark our path with dried up leaves or a purple tinge.
The scent grew stronger when we breached a clearing, or chamber, rather. It was a big open room, but something blocked the majority of the sky: a fruit tree. Fantastic.
Before this, I'd assumed all Pokémon berries we'd come across came from bushes and shrubs. This tree was massive, its trunk as thick as a school bus. It had a weeping willow look to it, with long, rope-like leaf arrangements drooping down around it. The canopy took up most of the clearing's view of the sky. What was visible of it, anyway. Here and there, hanging on gnarled branches, red spheres gleamed in the light of Gab's Flash.
… Apples? That wasn't what an apple tree looked like. Apple trees weren't gloomy. Whatever fruit was up there would have to wait until anyone had the energy to climb up and pick them. It was something else that was drawing us closer to the tree.
There was a huge hollow carved into the trunk, with a similarly sized but thin hunk of wood laid out on the floor. Was that a door? Possibly man-made, at that? Usually, if things were this intricate and unique, the boss Pokémon showed up. However, there were no staticky sounds, or red squares, or intimidating screeches when we'd entered the room. As we got closer, the calmer and calmer the mood became. If anything, I think we were all too exhausted to think of more awful scenarios. Right then, imagined bad news felt just as bad as the real thing.
Backpack berry time.
The food was flavourless and I'd already eaten plenty from our medical break. Whether or not we needed a pit stop, it happened anyway. Sometimes no one had a choice in the matter. There was a tension in my arms that I couldn't decide was restlessness or exhaustion. I stood up and looked around as much as I could without the sun.
The earth was smooth and loamy. I felt my feet sink slightly into the ground. Off to the side, there was a small brown twig and a long-dried piece of what I assumed was an Oran berry. Squinting to focus further, I noticed the earth had been tampered with. I didn't see any sprouts or plants outside of the tree and the grass, but in the patches of dirt I spotted tiny wooden stakes dividing the area into square plots.
"What's that mean?" Micheal asked in a hushed voice.
"There was someone here," Gab said solemnly. "Maybe."
There was barely any further conversation. Our stomachs had been filled, and silence was as heavy as our eyelids. Soon enough, the whole lot of us walked into the tree hollow, closed the door, and went to sleep.