Ow ow ow.

  I hissed and grimaced as I finished wrapping the gauze and bandages around my burns.

  Kōjin had done his best to avoid hitting me with his fire, he really did, but there was only so much he could have done, considering the circumstances.

  My spelunking outfit had also done a good job in stopping the fire from doing too much damage, so by the time I finally managed to figuratively stop, drop, and roll, the worse I’d gotten was a first degree burn.

  Unfortunately, that burn still hurt quite a bit.

  Kōjin whined and tried to lick my hand, but I just smiled down at him and scratched behind his ear.

  “No, you did good. Without you, it would be a lot worse than just a burn.”

  It wasn’t even the worst injury I’d taken during my Journey so far. In fact, whatever the Mismagius had done to my emotions was far more painful than the burn was.

  After the Mismagius had fled, it’d taken several minutes for the effect to wear off, and afterwards the mother of all headaches had landed squarely around my temples.

  Then all of my emotions came swirling back to fill the void where they had left, and every time I felt something, anything, it was scraping against a raw wound.

  Had it… eaten my emotions in some way?

  I didn’t know how I felt about that, but no matter what, I was hurting more internally than I was from the burns.

  Finally I finished with the burn heal and tucked it back into the first aid kit, before scooping Kōjin up and holding him in my lap.

  “You were very brave.” I said as I continued to pet him. “You saved my life. And probably the lives of everybody else.”

  Kōjin yipped happily, but I could tell just by his body language that he was still upset about the whole thing.

  Which was entirely fair, considering that I was still upset about the whole thing. I was just trying to put on a brave face for my little fire dog.

  So for the next twenty minutes or so while the both of us recovered from the ordeal, we just sat there on the side of the pathway. I’d set up a lantern as a light source in lieu of a campfire, and I was snacking on some chocolate to try and feel better while Kōjin was doing the same with a Poffin.

  Eventually though, we needed to keep moving, so I packed up the lantern and the food, making sure we didn’t leave any trash.

  When we got moving again, I made it a point to keep a much closer eye out for any wild Pokémon.

  Thankfully, Kōjin’s display earlier seemed to have scared off most of the local wildlife, not that we’d seen much to begin with. This part of the mountain was well-enough travelled by the tourists to have made most Pokémon stay away, although the Rangers warned people to be wary of random attacks nonetheless.

  I’d have to mention the Mismagius, because that was entirely too close for comfort.

  The fear that ran through me edged up against the emotional wound, and I gritted my teeth through the pain. The chocolate had helped a lot, as well as the rest, but there was still a little bit of soreness that came with feeling.

  Although, I supposed that was just being human, at the end of the day.

  Kōjin must have noticed something, as he looked up at me with concerned eyes barely visible behind his fringe.

  “I’m okay.” I smiled weakly down at him. “Just recovering.”

  He whuffed noncommittally, and I laughed as we continued up the path.

  /^\

  “You have got to be kidding me.” I said, staring up at the pile of stone filling the passageway. “How did nobody tell me about this?”

  There was a little placard with yellow and black hazard stripes, and a cheerful cartoon Geodude saying “Closed Due to Rock Fall! Will Open Next Season!”

  Next to it was a hastily carved tunnel in the rock, just big enough for me to walk through, and looked like it had been dug recently by some wild Pokémon.

  “This is a prank, right?”

  I reached out and touched the pile of stones. It felt real enough, and I waved my other hand through the passageway’s entry.

  My hand passed through empty air.

  Frowning, I pulled Venus’ Poké Ball out and released her in a flash of light. She yawned and stretched, before looking up at me with a question in her yip.

  “Can you like, see if there's any Psychic illusions or anything here?”

  Venus stared up at me like I’d grown a second head.

  “I mean, you’re a Dark-type, you resist Psychic-type moves, and you were able to tell that… tell….”

  I frowned, feeling something in the back of my mind nag at me. Had I forgotten something? Why did I get the feeling that chalk was on my fingers?

  “You were the one to… you…”

  I shook my head.

  “You’re good at detecting illusions. Could you make sure that some Psychic-type isn’t playing a prank on us?”

  Venus and Kōjin both stared up in concern at me.

  “I’m fine, really.”

  My Umbreon snorted, but she did turn around and poke her nose at the passageway and the pile of rocks.

  Then she gave me a very, very unimpressed look.

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  “Alright, alright.” I grumbled. “Blame a girl for being cautious, will you? Would you mind being a light? This one isn’t going to cut it, I don’t think.”

  I shook the lantern, the flame flickering as I did so.

  Venus rolled her red eyes, but her yellow rings began to glow. At first it was their normal, relatively dull glow, but then as she channeled the Type Energy it grew brighter, and brighter, until I had my own portable floodlight.

  “Thank you.”

  She sneezed.

  “Alright, let’s see if this detour is actually worth anything.”

  /^\

  “We’re not lost.” I told Venus and Kōjin, in what was feeling like an increasingly common situation. “We’re not.”

  Strictly speaking, it was only half true.

  I knew exactly how to get back to the original trail that had been blocked off. I could leave at any time I wanted.

  The problem was that moving forwards was a bit more challenging.

  Whatever Pokémon had created the detour had done a decent enough job. It was smaller and rougher than the main tunnel, sure, but it also had been clearly carved out by hand - or claw, rather.

  It twisted, it meandered, but it was a fairly straight shot up, over all.

  And then whomever had been carving the tunnel had encountered a natural warren of lava tunnels, and had decided that their work was done.

  We walked up to another branch in the passageways, and I frowned as I looked at the walls.

  “Okay,” I muttered, running my fingers over several chalk marks. “So, we’ve been through… all of these tunnels except for… that one.”

  I pointed at the rightmost passage, and we started down the path. I drew a line with an arrow on the wall, making sure to put it on the leftmost side of the passage. That way, if I ever got turned around, I knew that if I saw a mark on the right side of the passage, I would be leaving the tunnels.

  It was an old Minecraft trick I had picked up once upon a time, and was proving surprisingly useful now.

  Soon enough we passed through the tunnel, only to end up in… another area with branching tunnels.

  And, most annoyingly, several of them had white chalk marks that meant I’d been through here before.

  My shout of frustration echoed throughout the passageways.

  “This is worse than the Onix tunnels!” I fumed, cursing up a storm. “How does this even happen!?”

  Some of them were lava tunnels, I could tell by the smooth sides and vaguely rippling shapes formed by where the magma had passed through. Others were carved by Pokémon over the course of centuries. And some were carved by the Rangers or the Pokémon League, but I wasn’t sure which ones were which, and I resolved to submit a formal complaint once we got back.

  “This is ridiculous.” I muttered, and pulled out Jira’s Poké Ball.

  She emerged into Venus’ light with a roar, and looked around with excitement once she noticed we were in a cave.

  “Hi Jira.” I said, kneeling down beside her.

  Jira chirped, and rubbed her head against my leg.

  “We’re in a bit of a bind here.” I said, and she looked up at me curiously. “We need to get out of these tunnels, but we need to go up. Can you help us?”

  Her head turned from one side to the other. Then she chirped, and headed down one of the tunnels.

  “Uh Jira, we already went down that one!”

  She paused, then turned, and tried another tunnel.

  /^\

  After a couple of hours, Jira was getting frustrated, stomping her feet with every step as she tried to find her way out.

  Truthfully, I’d been a little worried that this might happen.

  Larvitar were known for being born underneath a mountain, then having to dig their way back up to the surface. But Jira had hatched above-ground, and never had to use her instinctual compass.

  Eventually I sighed, and sat down in the middle of the passageway.

  Jira and Venus both stopped to look back at me as I fiddled around with my bag, pulling out Venus’ Poké Ball and the lantern.

  Kōjin had been withdrawn, for as much energy as he seemed to have, it wasn’t infinite, and he’d already burned a lot of it earlier in the day.

  “Venus, come on back, I want to talk with Jira for a second.”

  She gave me the side-eye for a long moment, but eventually padded over and pressed her nose against the ball, disappearing for now.

  That just left me and Jira alone in the tunnel, with only the soft, warm light of the lantern illuminating a small circle around us.

  “Come here.” I said, and Jira stomped over. “I can tell you’re upset, but do you understand me? Like, more than just the commands?”

  Jira cocked her head as she stared up at me.

  I wasn’t sure exactly how… aware Jira was, for lack of a better term. She could follow my orders, Pokémon learned quickly, but I didn’t know if she fully understood me or not.

  “If you can, I want you to close your eyes and listen to me.”

  I waited for a long moment, and a milky membrane slid over her eyes.

  Right, she doesn’t actually have eyelids.

  Larvitar were a lot like reptiles in that respect.

  “Okay. Now, I want you to empty your mind. Put aside all of your emotions. I know you’re upset, I know you’re frustrated, but that doesn’t matter right now, okay?”

  She shuffled uncomfortably.

  “I know it’s hard, and you don’t want to, and everything else. But right now I need you to help us find a way out of here, okay? Just… don’t think. Don’t feel anything. Listen to your gut, the little part of your brain that just knows these things. I know you have it in you to find the way out of here. You just need to trust that you can do it. And if you don’t trust yourself…”

  I smiled.

  “Then believe in me, because I know you can do it.”

  Jira shuffled around for a second, then stilled, her breathing slowing.

  “That’s right. Remember when you were standing in the rain, looking up into the sky? Do you remember what that felt like? Get yourself into that same headspace. You can do this. You just need.. You need…”

  I scrambled for a word to fit the situation.

  “You need the will to see this through. You can do this.”

  She seemed carved from the very stone around her, unmoving except for the slight rise and fall of her chest.

  Then Jira’s third eyelids slid open, and I saw pure resolve shining in her eyes. She turned one way, then the other, nose up and sniffing at the air.

  Then she started walking towards one of the corridors.

  My heart fell, and I was about to call out to her, to get her to turn around, because there was a chalk mark on that tunnel.

  She beat me to it, stopping before the entrance. Then she turned, and with a fire in her eyes, started up another path - this one without a mark.

  I smiled, and hurried after her.

  Atta girl.

  It was another hour before we finally left the caves, but Jira never steered me wrong. Once she’d finally gotten out of her head she was able to make real progress, and we made good time through the convoluted tunnels of the mountain.

  There were a few close encounters with wild Pokémon, but at a single look or roar from Jira they quickly turned the other way, unwilling to interfere with a Larvitar on a mission.

  When we finally reached the other end of the passageways, where they rejoined the main pathway maintained by the Pokémon League, Jira finally seemed to lose the energy that had been driving her.

  I carefully picked her up, grunting at how much she weighed, and carried her the last few hundred meters to the opening that led to the outside of the mountain.

  A few steps before I actually crossed the barrier, Jira wiggled, and I put her down. She stumbled forwards, taking the last bit of the distance herself.

  I followed her, and my breath was taken away.

  Cold air blew from above, and there was a layer of snow on the ground, but all of Sinnoh was laid out before us, from the base of the mountain all the way to the coast. I could make out individual cities, and if I squinted I thought I could even make out the coast of the next island over, separated by the channel.

  Jira squared up in the snow, planting her feet firmly and tilting her head back.

  When she roared, it wasn’t her usual reedy, almost tinny Larvitar roar.

  A strong, deep call rolled off of the mountainside, and my skin prickled in primeval alarm.

  That was the sound of an apex predator, of a Pokémon that came from a different time. A tougher, more challenging time, where strength of will was what mattered most, not how many badges one had.

  It was the sound of a Tyranitar, asserting her dominion over the world.

  “Jira.” I whispered as she stood there, and in my mind’s eye was the image of a massive green Pokémon, proud of her daughter who had come so far from the caves of Iron Island.

  “Queen of the Monsters.”

  so much for your support over these past years, I cannot explain how much it means to me. I also want to take a second here and publicly thank Ondmos once again - without their support and ideas, Into the Dark would likely have burnt out a while ago.