Chapter 30 – Green Roses In The Garden

“Alright.” Glyph’s eyes sweep the chamber, glancing towards Lexxi, towards Rickety and towards Pixie. “So it’s been agreed upon that we’ll be collecting all the Time Gears together. It’s possible that Dusknoir could be planning to mount an attack on the ancient past at any time, so we need to work as fast and as efficiently as possible.”

“Only question is, which one’re we gonna go for first?” Pixie questions, her wings fluttering, still dripping with a bit of water, having just gotten out of the spring. “There’s a bunch of them, isn’t there?”

Rickety hums, reaching into the Wonderbag and pulling out the map. “Hmm… We could probably go for Underground Lake, that seems to be the closest one.”

“Even with Mesprit gone, though, it’s very likely they placed someone else to watch over the Time Gear.” Lexxi says, rubbing at her head, still a touch distracted by the thoughts from last night. “And if somebody’s guarding it, getting into a fight with them would attract too much attention.”

Glyph peers over at the map, eyes sweeping over it. “We could head to Treeshroud Forest. Its a ways away, but its where I got my first Time Gear when I first arrived.” He says, reaching out to the map, gently tapping on its location. “It’s unguarded, too, so getting it shouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“…That’s kinda weird.” Pixie’s brows furrow, humming curiously to herself. “That’s how the Time Gears are laid out in the future? Some are guarded, some aren’t?” She muffles a laugh to herself. “If we’d known they would’ve been taken so easily, we would’ve hidden them a little bit better. Ah well! I guess that’s the power of hindsight!~ …Or lack thereof! Either one works.”

Glyph scoffs to himself as he glances back at Pixie, then looks back down at the map. “That’s where we’ll be heading, then. Everybody, get whatever you need and let’s move out.”

After a plentiful amount of sticking to the shadows and staying out of the line of sight of any potential locals in the area, the group finally make it to the entrance of Treeshroud Forest, which is, well… Shrouded by trees, whod’a thunk it? A solid dirt path, surrounded by trees leading straight into the forest as the group walk along it.

But Glyph seemed to be rather on edge. His arms were detached from his shoulders, his leaves slowly spinning around, eyes constantly sweeping the area, glancing back and forth as the leaves slowly sway around in the wind.

Pixie notices this, a concerned expression crossing her face, flying over a little closer to Glyph. “Are… You alright, Glyphy? You seem kinda tense.”

“It might just be me,” Glyph glances up at Pixie for a brief moment before his eyes go back to carefully sweeping around the area. “But this place feels different than when I was last here… I think I might know why. Everyone, stand still for a moment.”

Lexxi and Rickety look to Glyph, a slight, confused expression on their face, but they nod understandingly, coming to a standstill to take in the forest, the silence deafening, feeling like the trees were all closing in around them.

“Do you hear that?” Glyph asks quietly, glancing back at the group, his leaves still spinning around slowly.

As they all listen closely, trying to hear something, anything at all, they can’t really seem to pick up on anything. No wind, no birds, nothing of the sort. It’s just an eerie, empty silence. “…No?” Rickety shakes his head back and forth, continuing to walk again.

“That’s just it. There’s nothing.” Glyph says, leading the group along the path once again. “There’s no sound here. You would expect to hear at least something in one shape or form, but it’s completely quiet.”

“Now that you mention it…” The wing-like antlers on Pixie’s forehead droop slightly, arching an eyebrow as she looks around the area. “That does seem odd. No ambient sounds or anything. Auugh, why’d you have to point it out, Glyphy? Now I can’t stop focusing on it.” She groans, shaking her head. “It’s like somebody flipped a switch and turned everything off.”

Lexxi glances up at the leaves above, seeing them all shrouding the sky, covering it and blocking out most of the sun. But the more they walk, the more they seem to completely block the sky, going further, further. “Uh… Is it just me, or is it getting darker?” She asks, before looking forward again.

“It’s only morning, it shouldn’t be getting this dark out already.” Rickety says to himself, feeling on edge too now, all too well aware of the silence enclosing them. “…Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen any Pokemon on the way here either. It’s just been us this whole time.”

Further up ahead, there seems to be a strange… Cut, in the forest, for lack of a better term. It’s a sharp and intense change in atmosphere, as if the forest was divided into two halves. One half which was still dark, but decently lit. The other half much darker, more foreboding.

But what was even stranger was what lay beyond that cut in the woods. A path. A path made out of wood, like a long, extended bridge that laid out a narrow path that stretched out into the darkness. It didn’t just stretch forward, though, its path seemed jagged, moving back and forth in zig-zagged lines with no rhyme or reason.

Glyph’s glowing eyes narrow, metallic body tensing up further. “This was definitely not here before.” He says, slowly stepping forward, the wood creaking as he steps onto the path.

Lexxi feels a claustrophobic sensation washing over her as she looks over the wooden path, looking over the sudden, drastic shift in lighting the path led into, another strange, familiar feeling overtaking her. “I… Think I know what’s going on.” She says. “Rickety and I experienced this before. Sometimes, while we were going through Mystery Dungeons, the surroundings would change to something similar to what we saw in the rifts.”

Pixie glances back at Lexxi as the group warily walks along the path. “You mean like the dungeon itself changed completely? Or just the look of it changed?”

“Just the look of it. The layout was the same… From what we could tell those few times anyway.” She nods her head, glancing over to Rickety, before back at Pixie. “It wasn’t such a stark shift like this, though.”

Rickety shivers, hands clenching into fists as he follows along, eyes darting around the forest, constantly looking at the spaces inbetween the trees. “Whole place has a really similar feeling to the rifts, too. Just this really unnerving, negative energy that just wraps around you.”

Pixie’s eyebrows furrow, her body tensing up as well, floating a bit closer to Glyph. “…That’s not right. They should be confined to the rifts. If they’re bleeding out into the real world like this, things must be getting bad. If they’re only confined the Mystery Dungeons for now, that shouldn’t be too bad, but if it spreads further, we’ll really be in deep trouble.”

The walk continues to be eerily silent. There seems to be very little in the way of scenery. Just a wooden path that seems to be going in whatever direction it feels like going, as if it had a mind of its own, if it were an incredibly indecisive mind.

The further they went, though, the stranger things seemed to become. The surroundings changed slightly, the trees opening up, the space between each tree becoming larger and larger, along with the trees themselves, deprived of their leaves, now with strange, tattered cloths hanging off of them.

They all seemed to have lost their color, all fading to a pallid gray or ashen white. They dangled lifelessly, hanging off the trees, all dirty, muddy. They looked as if they’d seen some good use in their years, but at the same time, knowing everything they know, did these ever see any use at all?

_{“You know, the further we go, the more glad I am we chose to come here during the day instead of last night.”} Rickety mutters, each step taken with caution, seeing something off in the distance. Something moving, hanging off one of the trees.

It looked like a group of Faceless Burmy and Wormadam, hanging from their trees, idly swaying back and forth as they hung from the branches. More of them seemed to appear as they kept walking along the trail, all of them turned in their direction, slowly turning, as if watching them, even without their eyes.

Lexxi, now with the knowledge that she had almost become one of these things, felt even more uneasy around them than she had before. Her ears droop against her head as she stares at them longer than she comfortably should, staring at their smooth, blank surfaces where their faces should be.

“You said these things were territorial, right?” Glyph says quietly, making sure to move as slowly and as quietly as possible, not wanting to attract too much attention from their Faceless overseers. “Any ways to deal with them?”

“Just stay quiet, don’t make any sudden noises, and don’t bother them. If you leave them alone, they should leave you alone too.” Rickety says quietly, just above a whisper.

_{“Well, seems the respect is mutual, at least. Good for them.”} Pixie says, nervously glancing back and forth between each of the Burmys and Wormadams hanging from the trees. “Let’s just… Try to get this over with as soon as possible, shall we?”

As the path continues to twist and turn, winding back and forth, the forest does seem to start brightening up again, albeit something else begins to seem off now. They reach the end of the wooden path, another sharp contrast present where the path breaks off. Instead of light, there seems to be a lack of color, faded, a muted hue of what everything should be.

_{“That’s not good.”} Glyph mutters to himself as he steps off the wooden path, the rest of the group swiftly following suit.

Once again, the tension and feel in the air had changed. Instead of the deafening silence they had just experienced, it was a different sort of silence. A stillness. The once blowing leaves and swaying of the tree branches were now completely motionless

Lexxi and Rickety both feel a knot forming in the pit of their stomach as they take in the new surroundings, quickly following behind Glyph and Pixie. “…This reminds me of what we saw back in Underground Lake after Glyph took the Time Gear.” Rickety says. “Same looks, same energy, same energy.”

Lexxi glances nervously at Rickety. “But I thought Azelf and Uxie said Dusknoir returned the Time Gears? If it’s still like this even now, that means-“

“Time is still suspended.” Pixie says, her voice laced with a tone of seriousness. “The structural stability of the timeline has gotten so strong that it’s even beginning to override the presence of the Time Gears, even in their rightful places.”

“What?!” Rickety exclaims, eyes widening. “So it doesn’t even matter if the Time Gears are back in their rightful spots anymore?!”

Pixie shakes her head back and forth, expression falling, gazing down at the ground. “With the way things are, their purpose in these parts of world have all but become null and void. They’re more or less fancy paperweights now.”

The group all approach the Time Gear, hung up on the wall at the edge of Treeshroud Forest, though its glow had noticeably faded, nowhere near as bright and vibrant as it was before. It was reduced to a weak, flickering pulsing that didn’t showcase even a fraction of its power.

Glyph reaches out for the Time Gear, firmly grasping it in his hands as he removes it from its place on the wall, the surroundings all around them growing just the slightest bit dimmer, though hardly anything else seems to change aside from that. “Situation is looking a lot more serious than we thought.” Glyph mutters to himself.

He lets out a sigh, shaking his head, hanging the Time Gear off to Pixie, who looks down at the Time Gear in her hands sadly. Glyph turns to face Rickety. “Rickety, there’s something I’d like you do to.”

“Huh?” Rickety turns his attention back to Glyph. “Y-Yes, Glyph?”

“Before you return back to Sharpedo Bluff, I’d like you to scope out Treasure Town, listen in on what people are saying and gather whatever information you can while you’re there.” He glances back at the space where the Time Gear was, before turning back to Rickety. “I doubt this is an isolated incident.”

Rickety pauses for a moment, sratching at his head, turning to Lexxi, who gives a soft smile at him, nodding. He turns back to Glyph, nodding as well. “You got it.”

“Everyone thinks you’re probably all still stuck in future land.” Pixie says, still holding the Time Gear as she floats a bit closer towards Glyph, floating next to him. “So you might still need to lay on the down low. Just, get whatever you can and report back to us when you’ve got a good idea of what’s going on. I think I already know, but…” She glances down at the Time Gear again. “We need to be absolutely sure.”