Chapter 8 – Writing on the Walls

Butterflies fluttered in my stomach more than I had every felt. I was in a three-match battle with Falkner, and Sparx was struggling.
It was hardly a great start, since I decided to begin with my new Bulbasaur. I’d forgotten that grass what weak against flying, but Ivy still managed to poison his Hoot-Hoot. That was a quick victory as I sent Sparx out, and he flattened his Dodrio. Now he’d sent a Pigeot out and… he was… just too fast for him. And that was saying something.

“Sparx!” I called to it, “Stay still until I say!”

Sparx looked at me with disbelief, but obeyed. I watched the Pigeot circle, and I waited.

Falkner began to get impatient, and called, “Quick Attack!” to his Pigeot.

The Pigeot was flying faster than I had ever seen, but I shouted “Thunderbolt when he hits you!”
The second it made contact with the Jolteon, sparks flew, and a yellowy white flash blinded. The screams of the Pigeot pierced my ears.

I sighed sadly, Sparx was thrown to the other end of the ring like a doll, but half of my plan worked. The Pigeot now seemed to be flickering yellow sparks from its wings, which was a sure sign it had endured some paralysis. Sparx struggled to get up.

“Sparx? Are you okay?” I asked to him. She really was weak. I thought it would be best if he sat the rest of the match out. I picked up a pokéball from my belt, and I returned him.
“It’s ok, you did really well,” I said proudly to him.

“That’s what we call a battle suicide. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” Falkner told me, half in disbelief, half in awe. It was only now I really appreciated how solemn he looked. His face always seemed straight, but it had something that could make any girl’s heart skip a beat.

I looked at my last pokéball, and then I had a rush of excitement, “Go Flare!”

I finally named her Flare. Don’t ask why, probably something as simple as her back flaring when she battles, but I realized how good she was when I had a small practice match before this one.

The little Cyndaquil shook her snout, and looked up at the Pigeot that was on the ground through mousy eyes.
“Pigeot! Quick Attack!” Falkner called.
“Flare, Quick Attack, and then a strong Ember!” I called back.
The Pigeot tried to move quickly, but it couldn’t, since Sparx had already paralyzed it. The Cyndaquil dived quickly, and burst fire from her mouth. It engulfed the large bird, and then it fell to the floor and fainted.

To put it simply, a woosh of relief spread across my body. I had actually won a gym match. My legs were shaking like jelly, and they nearly gave way as my Cyndaquil pounced on me. I hugged her tightly back, and I nearly threw her off again. Her body shone a brilliant white, and it moulded into another form. I didn’t even blink, even though the light was blinding me.
I was now holding in my hands a rather small Quilava. I smiled widely. I couldn’t say she was as big as normal as her species would be, but that made her feel unique to me, so I wasn’t too fussed.

“She must be a quick evolver,” Falkner said to me, as he came closer. He held out his hand, and showed me a shiny graphite looking badge, “That’s the Zephyr badge, keep it in a safe place as they’ll ask for it if you enter the league.”
“Cool,” I smiled, “Thanks!”
”Just remember to hand your pokédex in at reception so it’s registered on that too,” he added, as I walked away happily with my Quilava.

Walking out of the double doors with Jasper, I was looking at my new badge. It looked to be a set of wings, and it shimmered in the light.
“Where do you keep yours?” I asked.

He unzipped his bag, and pulled out a small box. Pinned to it were two badges, one like my own, and a red one with red dots. It almost looked like a ladybird.

He put it back into this bag.

I couldn’t think of anywhere to keep mine, so I attached it to the inside my wallet for the time being.

“Did you say you wanted to visit the Ruins of Alph?” Jasper asked me as we left the city.
“If it’s on the way,” I shrugged.
“It’s just there,” he smiled, pointing at it.

It just looked like a bunch of caves to me, though looking closely; I noticed an arch, like it was made in Roman times. We walked towards it, and right through it. Upon the inside, it looked like tombs and caves. There was a modern building at the edge, which looked to be a science laboratory.

“What is it supposed to be?” I asked, looking around.
“No one knows really, but if you in that cave, you can see loads of old statues of old Pokémon in there. There are also lots of writing on the walls. They look like old letters, and you get scientists trying to understand what they mean. A lot of it is basic stuff, but some of them are really hard to figure out, look I’ll show you,” Jasper said, pulling me by my arm.

Flare scratched at my jeans, and I knew she wanted to go back in her ball. I held out her pokéball, and let her back inside.

Jasper led me into a chamber, and there were some old rickety ladders leading down into it. It was a very large underground tomb. It was strange because upon going down the ladders, the walls only went halfway up to the ceiling, and it looked like a maze. It smelt musty and mouldy.
Upon reaching the ground, it was lit by torches all along the sides.
“They never go out, and if they do, they re-light on their own,” Jasper said.
”Creepy,” I said sarcastically. I wasn’t really one for being superstitious, and I couldn’t really take anything seriously… probably because my outlook on life was so blunt. It was creepy, but it wasn’t like I felt unsafe or nothing.

Under one torch, I began looking at the words encrypted onto it. All the letters seemed to have an eye in the middle, and it was kind of eerie, as they all seemed to be looking at you.
“They usually repeat themselves, but there are a lot of words to go through…” Jasper said again, breaking the uneasy silence.

Some parts of the walls had hundreds of little letters on them, with lots of lines going across, while others only had one large sentence running across. I bent closer to one of the tiny letters.

“It will burn… while one remains,” I muttered to myself, and then stood up to look at Jasper, “They’re talking about Brass and Tin Towers aren’t they?”
“Yeah,” Jasper nodded, “But the Ruins of Alph has always been here, for like… thousands of years, but the fire happened something like 150 years ago.”
“So it was telling the future?” I asked, intrigued.
“That’s why they are doing so much research on it,” Jasper said, “It was a lighting bolt wasn’t it? No one knows when they’ll strike.”
”Unless something carved it in after,” I shrugged. Again, I have a blunt outlook.
“Whatever, but I’m going to go down further into the cave, see if I can have a look at the planet’s future,” Jasper grinned.
“Go for it,” I shrugged, “This place smells horrible. I’m going back upstairs.”

I didn’t waste anytime getting out. I felt really closed up in there. Getting back outside in the brilliant sunshine, I had a look around. There were some caves I noticed, but they looked more… constructed. I didn’t really want to go in again, so I stayed where I was.

Leaning against a solid rock wall, I looked up to the sky dumping my bag to one side. I then felt like I was slipping back. I jumped from the wall. I pushed it slightly. It seemed to respond like it was alive, and bounced. It became a small archway, similar to the big one before we came in. I looked around at the few people that were exploring like me and Jasper was. Some glanced at me, and smiled as they walked past, but seemed like only I noticed the change.

I carefully walked in, glancing around at the dark interior. It suddenly turned pitch black as the archway snapped shut behind me with a large bang. I screamed, and ran towards it. Not knowing where the end wall was, I smacked my head right into it.
Cursing loudly, hoping someone would have heard me; I felt the wall with the hand I wasn’t using pressed on my forehead. It was solid. The inside of the wall felt waxy, like it had been melted. I stood still, trying to hear something, but… nothing. Not even the voices of visitors outside, all I could hear was the soft pinging noise behind my eardrum, and the flow of the blood rushing to my brain. Before I heard it, the cave lit up, with a flaming torch.
Inside seemed a lot better kept than the underground cave. There were pillars on every corner, and the walls seemed lined with beige blocks engraved with those strange letters. There was also a shrine in the middle. The walls also seemed to have other markings on them; the first one I noticed was a crescent moon, which seemed to have a handprint underneath. This was repeated all the way along the chamber, each with a different symbol. I walked along them, my heart beating in my throat. The handprints seemed to be different sizes too, not by much, but like they were tailor made for an individual.
Following past the moon symbol, there was a circle, with what seemed lines on it. The best I could describe it was almost like landmass, like the earth. I then saw a leaf, which something dropping from it, like a raindrop. I moved onto a snowflake, also with some raindrops, a fireball, a thunderbolt, an arrow, like the type you’d see on the weather vane, a spider, wings with a tornado in front, something that looked like a fist, and one that looked like a dragonhead. Approaching the last two there was one that looked like a plain diamond, and finally, a sun.

There was a screech from behind me, and a jumped around, leaning on the wall. I was still alone in the cave, but it seemed to come from the shrine in the middle. I looked at the writing on it in the strange language.

OUR END IS THEIR BEGINNING

I was really getting nervous. Not because of anything strange… it was just that it was so quiet. I was waiting for someone to jump from behind a wall saying they’d got me, but it never happened.

Standing frozen on the spot, the ground began to shake beneath me. It was the panel I was standing on. I fell right through the hole, and landed hard on the ground of the cavern beneath. I recognized it instantly to be the one Jasper and myself were in. I looked up from where I fell, and the small square from where I fell seemed to heal up using vines and rocks.

I sat up, my knees tucked into my chest. I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to understand what I had just seen. Looking back up, a huge white eye was looking at me. I jumped back, and so did it. It looked just like the writing on the wall. It was in the shape of an A. Another flew through, in the shape of on E, and so did three others. They flew in by the shapes of R, T and W. They hovered in a circle around me. They made a screeching noise like the one back in the cavern, but not as loud. They moved faster, and I shielded my eyes with my arms. I screamed loudly, I just wanted then to go away. It wasn’t scary as such; I just gave me a creepy feeling.
Something ran towards me, and covered me with itself. I grabbed hold of it’s jumped with my hands, grasping it tightly.
“Come on, we have to go!” Jasper shouted at me.

Running through the maze, I wondered for a moment if we’d even ever get out. Jasper then yanked me up the ladder, and I fell to the floor once we made it back outside. I breathed shallowly… yeah, I’m quite unfit.
Looking back into the cave, the things that were hovering around me were at the mouth of the cave. They weren’t alone, as there were now a few more with them. They then turned, and went back into the cave.

“You had some too?” I said dryly.
“Yeah, I had eight of them,” Jasper said, though she seemed to be taking it a lot better than I did.
“I had five, an A, E, R, T and a W,” I said, standing up.
“A, D, E, K, N, R and two S’s,” Jasper said, “Where did you go? How did you get back in? What happened?”
“Through there,” I pointed at the wall I lent on.

Jasper looked at me like I was making a joke out of it, and strode to the wall, feeling it just about where I fell into it.
“Its just… rock” he said quietly, as she got a funny look from a passer-by.
“I know what I saw,” I said forcefully, “It went all funny, then it turned into an arch that only I could see. I went in, and it closed up on me, it went all solid, and I couldn’t get out. When a torch lighted, it… well… there were symbols with the writing, there was about a dozen. A moon and… others but I don’t remember them. Then it made a weird noise from a little shrine in the middle, and it fell through, when I sat up, those… things were there.”
“I think they’re called Unown. Scientists research them, but they almost never see them, especially in the day time…” Jasper told me.

“Can we go?” I asked after a moments silence, wanting to leave.
“Yeah,” Jasper agreed, thinking along the same lines.

I rushed to get my bag. I still felt uneasy. Seriously, this had to be the creepiest place I had ever been in. I left under the huge arch with Jasper. He seemed to be lost in thought, so I decided to remain silent.