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Description
Darkness. It's everywhere. It's in the sky, so deeply gray it's almost black enough to erase the world from view. It fills everything beyond the cliff at my side so I can't see beyond the narrow plane I walk. It's in the earth and craggy walls, consuming them, staining them, wasting them away. Draining their color until all that's left are faded hints of the soil and stone's former hues beneath a sickly, gray pall. These walls used to be a deep, bluish slate, this earth a rich brown. Now their depth and richness have faded, leaving them empty as shells.

It's in the lonely, dead tree that sits precariously at the cliff side. The tormented remnants of the soul in its bark stop me until all I can do is stare. No leaves tip the bereft twigs, no sap lies in the broken limbs. No reprieve is offered for the twigs and branches that stand erect as if thrust to the sky in their thirst for sunlight. Perhaps it's the instinct of the Treecko I've become, the bond a Grass-type shares with plants, but I can almost hear the story that clings stubbornly within the empty hollows of the bark, a last futile stand in defiance of the darkness that tortured it and robbed it of its life. The story of a tree that died choked and strangled by the loss of the sun that fed it energy and life, dead the day the sun fled this world.

There is no sun, not in this world, this perverted future of a world that used to be so beautiful, so lively and cheerful. No sun, no moon, neither stars nor clouds in the sky. No day - no rising, no setting. Not even night, when night would be preferably to this time-frozen stasis. No wind, no rain - but silence. Silence not of a peaceful night when the world is sleeping, but of a planet that is lost, lonely, dead. No warmth, no chill - but cold. Cold not of winter, nor of an autumn chill or even a spring shower, but the bitter, hollow cold of a void, of emptiness, nothingness. Of absence. Even time is gone, dead with the sun and moon and stars that kept mark and record with it. Or perhaps it's the sun and moon and stars that died when time came to a collapse.

Darkness. Cold. Emptiness. Hollowness. Leeching this world, leeching this sky. Leeching the broken soil, the crumbling stone walls and mountains. Leeching sun-deprived trees that died ages ago.

Leeching me.

...

How long will it be until I become like this tree - withered, hollow, cold? Nothing? Perhaps that's what I already am. Perhaps I'm already on the way there. I can feel the darkness pressing against me, squeezing through the pores of my skin, seeping its way into my veins, through every inch of my body. It's taking me, slowly and surely. I already know the effects. I can't remember the last time I smiled, the last time I laughed, the last time I wasn't tempted to accidentally slip on a rock and fall over the cliff so the fall could take me before the darkness or the Sableye could. Before Dusknoir could.

...

Dusknoir. With one name, sorrow gives way to rage. That murderous, back-stabbing...

A roar sounds. I flinch and turn around on the spot. Echoes trickle through the air, and as they fade, the returning silence is unnerving. I scan the area with heightened senses, waiting for an alarm from the sixth-sense instincts I've come to associate with being a Pokémon. But the area is as empty as before. Whatever it was, it was off in the distance. Probably a wild Pokémon from one of the dungeons, asserting its territory. Arceus knows how many territorial monsters we've run into since we escaped the stockade.

A moaning whisper sighs at my side, the words too quiet for me to catch. I turn to my partner, my best friend, to see his arms huddled against his chest, posture limp with helplessness, face drawn with lines of sorrow and sleeplessness. His red eyes, once sparkling like rubies with cheer and laughter, are dull, almost unseeing. Withered leaves ready to fall from a tree. Moisture coats his eyes, but even the unshed tears don't shine. Shadows cover his face, filling every hollow, every depressed line. Already the darkness has all but consumed him, and I know I can't look much better off.

I wish I could chase his sorrow away from him, let him dump his tears on my shoulder, hold him close and rub his back and comfort him until my Roran, the best friend I've known and loved like a little brother in the months I've known him, comes back to me, full of the sparkle I've come to know him by. But I can't; I'm in no position to. Shadows can't chase away shadows. Darkness can't light up the dark. Like him, I'm too far gone, and we both know it.

...

I'm supposed to be the leader, the one he can look up to as a role model and a guiding light. The one who always has a plan. The one who will never admit defeat, who will never allow him to be defeated, to accept any less than what he is capable of, to accept less than what I'm capable of. But I'm already being defeated. Slowly, but surely. The fight is still there, but it's drowning, sinking deeper and deeper into murky waters until I can barely see it. The darkness is eating me from inside. I feel it - a chill in my veins, dull throbs and tremors through my skin every once in a while, and a hollowness I've never felt before. Even when I force back memories of our near-death at Dusknoir and the Sableye's hand, or images of what will happen if we're caught again, my mind is left with nothing but emptiness and dread. I'm so tired, so done, so lost. So worthless. I look at Roran and know he is too.

Even worse than me, I realize, as that first tear finally falls from his eyes.

...

No. He can't be. I can't let him be done like this. The fight in me struggles against the murk. Maybe I've given up fighting for myself, but I won't let Roran give in. Maybe holding onto him will bring me back, and my return will encourage his rescue, as well.

Alone, we're not enough to save ourselves. But together, we can do it. We need our friendship now more than ever.

I struggle against the weight of my tired arm to place a tentative hand on his shoulder. All I can manage is a whisper. "We should... keep moving."

...

Insert heavy internal sigh. Just when I need to be strong for him, my words are so empty. He must have noticed it, too. He nods slowly, but his eyes are even duller than before, if it's even possible. He knows, and in spite of how hard I'm still trying to fight it, I know it, too. We can run all we want, but time - such a meaningless word to use in the first place when it doesn't even exist anymore - is running out for us. Even if Dusknoir and the Sableye don't catch us first, this world soon will.

...

Arceus! How did our world end up like this? What in Dialga's name did we do to deserve a future like this? We fought to save the world from paralysis. We got the Time Gears back. I know Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf were going to put them back where they belong. There's no way they wouldn't have, not after how hard they fought to keep them safe. So what are we missing? What went wrong? Somehow, something or someone must have escaped the equation.

No. I know what's wrong. Dusknoir lied to us, that's what. Not only did he betray us, he played us from the start. I saw it when he ordered the Sableye to kill us. His eye, his face, his entire demeanor, inside and out - every inch of him was covered in darkness. But it wasn't the kind I feel consuming me, a moody self-pity that swings between bouts of depression and frustration. It wasn't the kind I see slowly destroying my best friend, sheer despair and helplessness. Dusknoir's darkness was crushing, threatening, dripping with evil. And he's fully embraced it, to the point where I can't believe I didn't see it in the past until it was too late. Even though I always was suspicious of him, somehow he fooled me. Somehow, I let him fool me. Let him fool all of us.

But then, why did he help us get the Time Gears back, if that was the case? We know taking them caused time to stop in the places from which they were stolen. So why did he stop Grovyle from getting the last one? And why did Grovyle steal them to begin with? I always knew he wasn't as bad as Dusknoir made him out to be. At first, I thought maybe somehow I felt sorry for him because I was a Treecko and he was my evolved form. That's what everyone else thought, at least. But even then I could sense the difference, though I wasn't aware of it at the time. He had a darkness within him, but it was fading. And it was never like Dusknoir's. Never even close.

It was the darkness in me, the darkness in Roran. And only now can I fully recognize it.

...

But I still can't understand it. I know he wasn't evil, that he didn't steal the Time Gears to throw time into flux. So why did he do it? He seemed to believe he had good intentions - though I suppose all criminals do - and he apologized more than once for his crimes, in spite of his coldness and his questionable actions. But the theft of the Gears started the collapse of time in our world, right? And I'll never forget how badly he injured us when we fought him at Azelf's Lake. He did all of us in with one move - not just Roran and me, but Crystal and Bells, and even Azelf. He would have killed Roran, too, had Dusknoir not shown up at the last moment.

And that only makes everything even more confusing. Why did he do it? Why did Grovyle steal the Time Gears, if he was as sorry about it as he claimed to be? Why did he apologize to us more than once, but show no qualms about harming and even killing us when we stood in his way? Why did Dusknoir save us, only to drag us into the future with him to kill us here? What am I missing?

...

Everything. That's what I'm missing. Everything before the evening Roran found me passed out on the beach. Thirteen whole years of my life. My identity beyond a name and the fact that I was once human. My former place in life. My purpose, if I had one.

For all I know, the missing link, the reason time collapsed despite everyone's best efforts to stop it, mine included...

...

For all I know... it could have been me...

...

"Leah?" Roran whispers.

His voice draws me back. His face is no less shadowed; in fact, the darkness of his despair seems to have grown even thicker in these few minutes... or whatever they're called in a world where time doesn't exist. But his eyes are wide with concern and even a hint of fear, and I know these emotions are directed toward me.

I'd beat my head against the stone slope beside us if he wasn't watching right now. Not only does he have to worry about if we'll ever make it home again, if we'll see our friends and teammates again... if we'll ever lose Dusknoir and the Sableye... if we'll ever resolve all the other burdens he's - we've both been carrying on our shoulders... Now, on top of everything else, he has to worry about me... because as much as I've been told I'm easy to read, he must have seen the emotions of my internal conflict on my face.

...

I was trying to help him, and instead I've only made it worse. The darkness really is closing in on us. Both of us. And it scares me, even worse than the thought of being recaptured. It's almost as if this whole world itself - this cold, dead, empty world - is slowly trying to kill us with its poison. In all our despair and self-pity, we've almost forgotten the two things we always clung to in spite of the odds that were constantly stacked against us. The two things that got us through all the fights in the past with outlaws and even legendaries as dangerous as Groudon (even if it was an illusion) and as crafty as Mesprit.

Hope... and each other.

I look him in the eyes, and as phony and useless as it seems, I force the corners of my mouth up in a worthless attempt at a smile, begging him to see it, to remember that those two beautiful things I dug up from their prison in the dark are still there. To prove to me that it's still there...

...

And then he returns it. The smile. It's just as small, just as fake, just as helpless and worthless. But it makes all the difference in the world. Before I know it, my phony lip-twitching has grown into something bigger, something genuine, and a warmth I've forgotten I'd lost rushes through me.

And at last, at long last, his own smile reaches his eyes, and some spark returns to the ruby irises. He's back at last. My Roran. He's back - and I am, too. I can feel it in my smile, and I can see it reflected in his eyes. Next thing I know, we're both laughing, and we pull each other into a tight embrace. And here we stay, laughing and hugging each other with an almost choking grip, drinking in the warmth of our friendship until at last the compressing, all-encompassing darkness starts to recede. It's still there. It's always there. I can still feel it skulking and slithering through my body, ready to take me over again in my next moment of weakness. It'll never leave me, never leave us, not as long as we're stuck here in this dead, perverse future of our world.

But the fight in me has finally broken the surface of the murk that threatened to drown it, and though it can't climb out, it's swimming its hardest to keep its head above the water. And right now, it's showing no signs of tiring.

I finally pull back from him, a few tears leeking from laughing so hard. But even as I drop a hand to wipe them away, the grin on my face never fades. He's no better off, beaming and losing a few tears as mirthful as mine.

"Come on," I tell him - in a voice above a whisper. "Let's get going."

He nods, still smiling as he wipes his own cheeks. Even as I let him go, my hand slips down into his paw. Squeezing it to bolster both our spirits, I take the first step, and he moves with me. We look at each other again, and the reaffirmation of our bond is as clear in his eyes as it feels within me.

The rock wall beside us never grows any less gray. The horizon beyond the cliff side never becomes any clearer. The earth we tread is as dry and cracked as we've seen it before. The few trees we pass are just as dead, just as twisted with the sunless agony they underwent before they died. The sky is no less dark, the air no less still, the sun and moon and stars no more likely to return to life in this place than Wigglytuff would ever be to turn down a Perfect Apple. The silence is no more comforting, and the threat of being captured again is just as thick in the air as it ever was.

But in spite of all the darkness this world throws at us, the warmth still glows in our palms, still flows from our linked hands through my weary body. As we walk, my eyes trace every crack in the ground, every line in the face of the craggy slopes, and for the first time, I realize why I can see every line, crack, and fault in such great detail. For the first time, I look up to the dark sky, so deeply gray it's almost black... and realize why it's so important that it isn't completely black. This world is far beyond dying - it's dead, and not just in the sense of frozen time. But somehow, this world itself is lit up against the darkness, every detail more clearly visible and every color more discernable than our world in the past ever was at night, even under a full moon and a cloudless sky. It never needed to be back then, since day was always just around the corner. But with no sun here, this world found other means of forcing back the dark.

Somehow, life continues to inhabit this place. We've encountered many Pokémon in the dungeons we've crawled through here, and the rooms were just as willing to supply fruit and berries as the ones back home. Dead though this world may be, it still stands in defiance of the darkness. The Pokémon here are struggling for their existence, diminished to their primal roots in a survival-of-the-fittest setting. But they are fighting, and they aren't showing any signs of giving up. Somewhere ahead of us, I know Grovyle is fighting too, and though his intentions still aren't clear, the thought of his refusal to give up is bolstering. The darkness affects them all, these Pokémon who were born here and lived here their whole lives - but they've learned to cope with it. They've found their own light, or whatever variation of light they need to keep them going. And they're holding fast to it.

As I give Roran's hand another squeeze and he returns it, I know that no matter what we face on the road ahead, no matter how hard the darkness tries to strangle us, we'll make it back. Our hope is somewhere just a dungeon or two ahead of us. And our guiding light is in each other.

Description
Darkness. It's everywhere. It's in the sky, so deeply gray it's almost black enough to erase the world from view. It fills everything beyond the cliff at my side so I can't see beyond the narrow plane I walk. It's in the earth and craggy walls, consuming them, staining them, wasting them away. Draining their color until all that's left are faded hints of the soil and stone's former hues beneath a sickly, gray pall. These walls used to be a deep, bluish slate, this earth a rich brown. Now their depth and richness have faded, leaving them empty as shells.

It's in the lonely, dead tree that sits precariously at the cliff side. The tormented remnants of the soul in its bark stop me until all I can do is stare. No leaves tip the bereft twigs, no sap lies in the broken limbs. No reprieve is offered for the twigs and branches that stand erect as if thrust to the sky in their thirst for sunlight. Perhaps it's the instinct of the Treecko I've become, the bond a Grass-type shares with plants, but I can almost hear the story that clings stubbornly within the empty hollows of the bark, a last futile stand in defiance of the darkness that tortured it and robbed it of its life. The story of a tree that died choked and strangled by the loss of the sun that fed it energy and life, dead the day the sun fled this world.

There is no sun, not in this world, this perverted future of a world that used to be so beautiful, so lively and cheerful. No sun, no moon, neither stars nor clouds in the sky. No day - no rising, no setting. Not even night, when night would be preferably to this time-frozen stasis. No wind, no rain - but silence. Silence not of a peaceful night when the world is sleeping, but of a planet that is lost, lonely, dead. No warmth, no chill - but cold. Cold not of winter, nor of an autumn chill or even a spring shower, but the bitter, hollow cold of a void, of emptiness, nothingness. Of absence. Even time is gone, dead with the sun and moon and stars that kept mark and record with it. Or perhaps it's the sun and moon and stars that died when time came to a collapse.

Darkness. Cold. Emptiness. Hollowness. Leeching this world, leeching this sky. Leeching the broken soil, the crumbling stone walls and mountains. Leeching sun-deprived trees that died ages ago.

Leeching me.

...

How long will it be until I become like this tree - withered, hollow, cold? Nothing? Perhaps that's what I already am. Perhaps I'm already on the way there. I can feel the darkness pressing against me, squeezing through the pores of my skin, seeping its way into my veins, through every inch of my body. It's taking me, slowly and surely. I already know the effects. I can't remember the last time I smiled, the last time I laughed, the last time I wasn't tempted to accidentally slip on a rock and fall over the cliff so the fall could take me before the darkness or the Sableye could. Before Dusknoir could.

...

Dusknoir. With one name, sorrow gives way to rage. That murderous, back-stabbing...

A roar sounds. I flinch and turn around on the spot. Echoes trickle through the air, and as they fade, the returning silence is unnerving. I scan the area with heightened senses, waiting for an alarm from the sixth-sense instincts I've come to associate with being a Pokémon. But the area is as empty as before. Whatever it was, it was off in the distance. Probably a wild Pokémon from one of the dungeons, asserting its territory. Arceus knows how many territorial monsters we've run into since we escaped the stockade.

A moaning whisper sighs at my side, the words too quiet for me to catch. I turn to my partner, my best friend, to see his arms huddled against his chest, posture limp with helplessness, face drawn with lines of sorrow and sleeplessness. His red eyes, once sparkling like rubies with cheer and laughter, are dull, almost unseeing. Withered leaves ready to fall from a tree. Moisture coats his eyes, but even the unshed tears don't shine. Shadows cover his face, filling every hollow, every depressed line. Already the darkness has all but consumed him, and I know I can't look much better off.

I wish I could chase his sorrow away from him, let him dump his tears on my shoulder, hold him close and rub his back and comfort him until my Roran, the best friend I've known and loved like a little brother in the months I've known him, comes back to me, full of the sparkle I've come to know him by. But I can't; I'm in no position to. Shadows can't chase away shadows. Darkness can't light up the dark. Like him, I'm too far gone, and we both know it.

...

I'm supposed to be the leader, the one he can look up to as a role model and a guiding light. The one who always has a plan. The one who will never admit defeat, who will never allow him to be defeated, to accept any less than what he is capable of, to accept less than what I'm capable of. But I'm already being defeated. Slowly, but surely. The fight is still there, but it's drowning, sinking deeper and deeper into murky waters until I can barely see it. The darkness is eating me from inside. I feel it - a chill in my veins, dull throbs and tremors through my skin every once in a while, and a hollowness I've never felt before. Even when I force back memories of our near-death at Dusknoir and the Sableye's hand, or images of what will happen if we're caught again, my mind is left with nothing but emptiness and dread. I'm so tired, so done, so lost. So worthless. I look at Roran and know he is too.

Even worse than me, I realize, as that first tear finally falls from his eyes.

...

No. He can't be. I can't let him be done like this. The fight in me struggles against the murk. Maybe I've given up fighting for myself, but I won't let Roran give in. Maybe holding onto him will bring me back, and my return will encourage his rescue, as well.

Alone, we're not enough to save ourselves. But together, we can do it. We need our friendship now more than ever.

I struggle against the weight of my tired arm to place a tentative hand on his shoulder. All I can manage is a whisper. "We should... keep moving."

...

Insert heavy internal sigh. Just when I need to be strong for him, my words are so empty. He must have noticed it, too. He nods slowly, but his eyes are even duller than before, if it's even possible. He knows, and in spite of how hard I'm still trying to fight it, I know it, too. We can run all we want, but time - such a meaningless word to use in the first place when it doesn't even exist anymore - is running out for us. Even if Dusknoir and the Sableye don't catch us first, this world soon will.

...

Arceus! How did our world end up like this? What in Dialga's name did we do to deserve a future like this? We fought to save the world from paralysis. We got the Time Gears back. I know Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf were going to put them back where they belong. There's no way they wouldn't have, not after how hard they fought to keep them safe. So what are we missing? What went wrong? Somehow, something or someone must have escaped the equation.

No. I know what's wrong. Dusknoir lied to us, that's what. Not only did he betray us, he played us from the start. I saw it when he ordered the Sableye to kill us. His eye, his face, his entire demeanor, inside and out - every inch of him was covered in darkness. But it wasn't the kind I feel consuming me, a moody self-pity that swings between bouts of depression and frustration. It wasn't the kind I see slowly destroying my best friend, sheer despair and helplessness. Dusknoir's darkness was crushing, threatening, dripping with evil. And he's fully embraced it, to the point where I can't believe I didn't see it in the past until it was too late. Even though I always was suspicious of him, somehow he fooled me. Somehow, I let him fool me. Let him fool all of us.

But then, why did he help us get the Time Gears back, if that was the case? We know taking them caused time to stop in the places from which they were stolen. So why did he stop Grovyle from getting the last one? And why did Grovyle steal them to begin with? I always knew he wasn't as bad as Dusknoir made him out to be. At first, I thought maybe somehow I felt sorry for him because I was a Treecko and he was my evolved form. That's what everyone else thought, at least. But even then I could sense the difference, though I wasn't aware of it at the time. He had a darkness within him, but it was fading. And it was never like Dusknoir's. Never even close.

It was the darkness in me, the darkness in Roran. And only now can I fully recognize it.

...

But I still can't understand it. I know he wasn't evil, that he didn't steal the Time Gears to throw time into flux. So why did he do it? He seemed to believe he had good intentions - though I suppose all criminals do - and he apologized more than once for his crimes, in spite of his coldness and his questionable actions. But the theft of the Gears started the collapse of time in our world, right? And I'll never forget how badly he injured us when we fought him at Azelf's Lake. He did all of us in with one move - not just Roran and me, but Crystal and Bells, and even Azelf. He would have killed Roran, too, had Dusknoir not shown up at the last moment.

And that only makes everything even more confusing. Why did he do it? Why did Grovyle steal the Time Gears, if he was as sorry about it as he claimed to be? Why did he apologize to us more than once, but show no qualms about harming and even killing us when we stood in his way? Why did Dusknoir save us, only to drag us into the future with him to kill us here? What am I missing?

...

Everything. That's what I'm missing. Everything before the evening Roran found me passed out on the beach. Thirteen whole years of my life. My identity beyond a name and the fact that I was once human. My former place in life. My purpose, if I had one.

For all I know, the missing link, the reason time collapsed despite everyone's best efforts to stop it, mine included...

...

For all I know... it could have been me...

...

"Leah?" Roran whispers.

His voice draws me back. His face is no less shadowed; in fact, the darkness of his despair seems to have grown even thicker in these few minutes... or whatever they're called in a world where time doesn't exist. But his eyes are wide with concern and even a hint of fear, and I know these emotions are directed toward me.

I'd beat my head against the stone slope beside us if he wasn't watching right now. Not only does he have to worry about if we'll ever make it home again, if we'll see our friends and teammates again... if we'll ever lose Dusknoir and the Sableye... if we'll ever resolve all the other burdens he's - we've both been carrying on our shoulders... Now, on top of everything else, he has to worry about me... because as much as I've been told I'm easy to read, he must have seen the emotions of my internal conflict on my face.

...

I was trying to help him, and instead I've only made it worse. The darkness really is closing in on us. Both of us. And it scares me, even worse than the thought of being recaptured. It's almost as if this whole world itself - this cold, dead, empty world - is slowly trying to kill us with its poison. In all our despair and self-pity, we've almost forgotten the two things we always clung to in spite of the odds that were constantly stacked against us. The two things that got us through all the fights in the past with outlaws and even legendaries as dangerous as Groudon (even if it was an illusion) and as crafty as Mesprit.

Hope... and each other.

I look him in the eyes, and as phony and useless as it seems, I force the corners of my mouth up in a worthless attempt at a smile, begging him to see it, to remember that those two beautiful things I dug up from their prison in the dark are still there. To prove to me that it's still there...

...

And then he returns it. The smile. It's just as small, just as fake, just as helpless and worthless. But it makes all the difference in the world. Before I know it, my phony lip-twitching has grown into something bigger, something genuine, and a warmth I've forgotten I'd lost rushes through me.

And at last, at long last, his own smile reaches his eyes, and some spark returns to the ruby irises. He's back at last. My Roran. He's back - and I am, too. I can feel it in my smile, and I can see it reflected in his eyes. Next thing I know, we're both laughing, and we pull each other into a tight embrace. And here we stay, laughing and hugging each other with an almost choking grip, drinking in the warmth of our friendship until at last the compressing, all-encompassing darkness starts to recede. It's still there. It's always there. I can still feel it skulking and slithering through my body, ready to take me over again in my next moment of weakness. It'll never leave me, never leave us, not as long as we're stuck here in this dead, perverse future of our world.

But the fight in me has finally broken the surface of the murk that threatened to drown it, and though it can't climb out, it's swimming its hardest to keep its head above the water. And right now, it's showing no signs of tiring.

I finally pull back from him, a few tears leeking from laughing so hard. But even as I drop a hand to wipe them away, the grin on my face never fades. He's no better off, beaming and losing a few tears as mirthful as mine.

"Come on," I tell him - in a voice above a whisper. "Let's get going."

He nods, still smiling as he wipes his own cheeks. Even as I let him go, my hand slips down into his paw. Squeezing it to bolster both our spirits, I take the first step, and he moves with me. We look at each other again, and the reaffirmation of our bond is as clear in his eyes as it feels within me.

The rock wall beside us never grows any less gray. The horizon beyond the cliff side never becomes any clearer. The earth we tread is as dry and cracked as we've seen it before. The few trees we pass are just as dead, just as twisted with the sunless agony they underwent before they died. The sky is no less dark, the air no less still, the sun and moon and stars no more likely to return to life in this place than Wigglytuff would ever be to turn down a Perfect Apple. The silence is no more comforting, and the threat of being captured again is just as thick in the air as it ever was.

But in spite of all the darkness this world throws at us, the warmth still glows in our palms, still flows from our linked hands through my weary body. As we walk, my eyes trace every crack in the ground, every line in the face of the craggy slopes, and for the first time, I realize why I can see every line, crack, and fault in such great detail. For the first time, I look up to the dark sky, so deeply gray it's almost black... and realize why it's so important that it isn't completely black. This world is far beyond dying - it's dead, and not just in the sense of frozen time. But somehow, this world itself is lit up against the darkness, every detail more clearly visible and every color more discernable than our world in the past ever was at night, even under a full moon and a cloudless sky. It never needed to be back then, since day was always just around the corner. But with no sun here, this world found other means of forcing back the dark.

Somehow, life continues to inhabit this place. We've encountered many Pokémon in the dungeons we've crawled through here, and the rooms were just as willing to supply fruit and berries as the ones back home. Dead though this world may be, it still stands in defiance of the darkness. The Pokémon here are struggling for their existence, diminished to their primal roots in a survival-of-the-fittest setting. But they are fighting, and they aren't showing any signs of giving up. Somewhere ahead of us, I know Grovyle is fighting too, and though his intentions still aren't clear, the thought of his refusal to give up is bolstering. The darkness affects them all, these Pokémon who were born here and lived here their whole lives - but they've learned to cope with it. They've found their own light, or whatever variation of light they need to keep them going. And they're holding fast to it.

As I give Roran's hand another squeeze and he returns it, I know that no matter what we face on the road ahead, no matter how hard the darkness tries to strangle us, we'll make it back. Our hope is somewhere just a dungeon or two ahead of us. And our guiding light is in each other.