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Description
Continued from Previous Part One

The mountains stretched up into the clouds, their jagged peaks concealed by the thorough covering of coagulated water vapor. Jack took a moment to stop and try to peer beyond the white cloak of the unknown, but failed miserably in doing so. The clouds were thick and unending here. The fact that Jack hadn’t seen the sun once since they exited the city proved this point.

It had been two days since Gold Squad had left the gentle refuge of Post Town for the rocky slopes of the Saltus Ridge Mountains. For two days they had attempted to break through every known and untested pass through to the valley, but so far nothing had worked. From top to bottom, the pass was filled with an impenetrable block of white ice that no one in the squad could even dent. Not even the combined efforts of Calur’s brute strength and Yemda’s fierce fires, the block still stood. Jack had tried using his precious pick until the metal threatened to bend and dull against the unmoving ice. Kida eventually called off the Aggron and Flareon duo before they exhausted themselves in a futile endeavor.

Saltus Valley had truly become a fortress to them, and almost certainly a prison for its inhabitants. Gold Squad was never one to be defeated by the elements. Even in the harshest deserts and pits of magma, they had succeeded. But here, they could do nothing against the barriers. As the visibly depressed squad returned to their humble camp at the foot of the mountains, Kida suddenly climbed up on top of an overturned crate. Her fur reflected the flames of the fire brightly in the dark night as she stamped on the empty box to get the group’s attention.

“Listen, you guys. I think it’s time I told you something about this mission. This isn’t some normal clean-up job, or even a standard search and rescue as it appears to be,” she stated, holding her head low. A low wave of murmurs swept through the attentive Pokémon as Jack stopped his polishing of the sharp end of his pick. Kida took a deep breath before continuing with the declassification of the confidential information.

“I was told by the Senate that we were to find the source of this disaster and secure it for the Kingdom. This isn’t a search and rescue, guys. We’re here to find whatever caused what happened inside that valley,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. Gold Squad was completely silent. The crackling fire was the only sound to break the dark hold of the night. Jack shifted his glance to his sides. The others, Terminance, Efang, and Calur among them also cast unsure looks at each other.

This was hardly the first time the specifics of a mission were withheld from them. Jack bitterly remembered those missions as his neutral expression turned into a scowl. They had nearly failed each and every one of them because they didn’t fully know what to expect. The relatively innocent tasks of cleaning up a chemical fire in the Frosty Forest and repairing a collapsed mine shaft in Lapis Cave had both turned into vicious fights to subdue the final remnants of the belligerents of the Second Bandit War. Why the Kingdom felt that keeping that pertinent information from them, Jack would never rightly know.

What Kida told them didn’t seem as much of a revelation as the previous ones did, but Jack knew something was up. Kida had always been unreadable when she had revealed similar confessions in the past, but now she visibly appeared worried.

“So, wha’ gives then? Why didn’ they tell us that? Why’s it so bad?” Calur asked from the back of the seated group.

“Since there’s no way through the passes, tomorrow we’re going to try going over the peaks. Perhaps we’ll be able to enter the Valley that way...” Kida said, half talking to herself as she turned away from the squad. The Zangoose’s apparent attempt to brush off the Aggron’s question only brought up a flurry of new questions from the Pokémon.

“What’sss up with the peaksss?” Efang hissed as he slithered closer to the fire.

“Yes, indeed. What is really going on, Kida?” Terminance asked, also moving closer to the Zangoose captain.

“Quiet! That’s an order!” The Zangoose’s eyes flashed with the light of the fire as she twisted around on her makeshift pedestal. Her claws curled threatening around the hilt of her Seviper tail weapon as she silenced her soldiers with a deathly stare. Jack crossed his arms as he heard the camp’s volume drop to zero.

“Listen. I realize that I haven’t told you all everything. But that’s how it has to be!” she snapped. The lack of noise made her words echo mockingly against the mountains that impeded them. Jack knew full well that there was more to the story, but decided against vocalizing against the troubled Zangoose as she slowly lowered her trembling hand and the weapon. Before more could be asked, she jumped down from the crate and walked to her tent.

Not one of the hardened Pokémon dared to follow. Instead, they sluggishly returned to the process of setting up dinner for the night. Jack rather enjoyed how there wasn’t one designated cook for the group. Everyone in Gold Squad had seemed to pick up a small tidbit about cooking during their many travels, leading to a unique meal almost every night, even if it was made from the same ingredients. Fortunately they still had a good supply of fresh foodstuffs from the generous residents of Post Town, which contributed greatly to their general meals of dried berries and biscuits, the standard military rations from the Kingdom.

That night it was a humble feast of boiled steak and potatoes taken directly from the productive farms of the Paradise territory just outside the glorified trading post. While he enjoyed the rare food, Jack’s thoughts constantly drifted to Kida as his gaze seemed to draw towards her tent. While the higher-ranked Zangoose was sometimes a pain to live under, Jack knew it was part of her designation. She had been in the Kingdom Army for several weeks before he joined, and ever since then it had been that way.

She had done more than her fair share of work to get to where she was now. Kida deserved the position of captain more than anyone on the team. She had clawed her way up from the very bottom, and despite the stress of the job, Jack could tell that she truly enjoyed the rank and all the glory that came along with it. However, each mission had gotten harder. The stakes rose higher and higher with every new assignment, along with the stress. Kida was hardly the only one on the team to feel it. There had been many sleepless nights before they had to fight outlaw gangs, or contain a situation. Those feelings came and went as they always did, but they never seemed to leave Kida from what he saw.

She always appeared to be burdened by some secret or guilt, and judging by the information the higher-up Kingdom officials told her, his guess wasn’t far off from the truth. He slowly picked at his meal, wondering just what knowledge was so bad that it seemed to be consuming her from the inside out. Jack put down the small wooden platter that held the last morsels of his uneaten food and hooked his ice-ax to the belt of toughened leather around his waist.

The Golduck shifted his gaze from the glowing fires that his comrades huddled around and talked about what challenges and trials lay ahead of them to the glorious black titans that stretched into the sky. The mountains had perpetually blocked their passage and stymied their mission for the last two days. Jack had spent long hours amongst the drafty crags and cravasses with the others, forever searching for a passage to their goal. None of them were accustomed to this sort of blockade when it came to missions.

Why did the Kingdom send us? The question sat on his mind like a gluttonous Snorlax, refusing to budge until its desire had been slaked. The demolition teams of Steel Squad or the phasers of Translucence Squad would have been far better suited for the task of forging a path through the impenetrable ice. Gold Squad specialized in containing disasters that were out of control, not breaking into inflicted areas. It simply wasn’t their forte and the government bureaucrats knew it perfectly well.

Is this just some sort of training exercise? Did they send us here as a sort of boot camp? he pondered as he looked up past the shadowed peaks into the clouded skies above. Jack grew annoyed with the weather. He had wanted to see the stars, especially on this stressful night. It had become a tradition to spend at least one night before an operation stargazing, but now it this simple pleasure was being denied to him. While Jack wasn’t one to believe in the claims of some of the so-called “star-mystics” he’d met on his travels, he held the abstract constellations in high esteem. They were the friends who would never truly leave him and were always keeping an eye out for him.

He had tried to get several of the others to join him with his observations of the nightly skies, but try as they might, none of them found the glowing pinpricks of light as soothing as he did. Calur and Terminance had both tried their hardest to sit and stare into the void with him on occasion, however they claimed they received their fill of the astrological wonder only a few minutes in. As he stared up into the roiling clouds on this night of fate, he wondered just how those mystics would claim his stars aligned. Was tomorrow etched into the numerous patterns of the nebulae, or had it yet to be ordained?

Jack didn’t know. All that he knew was that tonight would be one of unease under the starless sky. Tomorrow’s dawn would bring little relief, as the indomitable giants glared mockingly down at them. The mountains dared him to surpass them. To transcend their lofty heights to reach the limitless glory just beyond them. Unable to stand another moment in their glare, the Golduck went back into his faded, green tent. He unrolled the small, thick blanket made of refined Mareep wool designed to retain heat without the coarse, staticy feeling.

As he closed his eyes and let the wispy mistress of sleep take him away, the stars danced and shifted in their celestial promenade behind the opaque curtain of clouds. The long hours of the night passed all too quickly as the first dim glow of the dawn soon pressed against the purple mountains. Calur’s booming voice echoed through the camp, the Aggron had been assigned the mocking position of “Wake-Up Officer” from Kida after he lost to her in a duel last year in Delgura City.

In a whirlwind of actions, Jack found himself hastily scarfing down a breakfast made of a healthful mush of a plethora of berries plucked from near their camp. Calur had never been excellent at cooking, and so the slightly blue mixture in front of him had been developed by the Aggron as a way to avoid having to put effort into a disaster. Jack had found that he could stomach virtually anything Gold Squad had to throw at him, and was delighted to see that his friend’s food was not ranked at dead last in terms of edibility. It was quickly established that Terminance was not fit for food preparation by the fact that he tried to argue that topsoil could provide basic sustenance.

Within ten minutes of waking up, all breakfasts had been forced down as Kida got the day’s expedition of the mountain range moving at a breakneck pace. Jack had his small backpack filled with necessary supplies such as rope, rations, a small skin of water, and his blanket. The pack rested comfortably on his back as he aided the others in securing the camp while they would be out for the day and packing their own supplies. Within twenty minutes of waking up, the entirety of Gold Squad was mobilized and ascending the rocky base in the shadow of the mountain.

Jack unclipped his ax from his belt and gave it a light swing into the hard granite of the edifice. It stuck with a reassuring thud and Jack marked his first foothold on this third day of rock climbing. The others were taking the rapid climb well by the observations Jack made as he nimbly scaled towers of rock and crawled up sheer faces on the mountain with ease. His Zangoose leader was close behind him as he offered her a hand up onto the stable ledge. This was the one event that he excelled in more than she, and he took every opportunity to make sure she knew it well.

Her paw tightly grasped his and he hoisted her up onto the rest ledge.

“So, in about thirty minutes, we should be at the summit?” he cheekily guessed as he glanced up at the towering spine of the mountain range in the dim morning light. Kida scoffed in reply as she nudged a small pebble off the steep edge of the embankment.

“For you, maybe. The others will take two hours to get there at the very least,” she said as the two of Pokémon watched the rest of their team claw, slither, and fly up the rock path. Calur could easily be up there with them if he wanted to, being immediately at home among the mountains, but the Aggron had taken it upon himself to carry some of the less dexterous of Gold Squad as he half-charged-half-burrowed a winding path through the steep slope.

Again, Jack noticed that the dark clouds that seemed to brood over the Zangoose disappeared for an instant as she stood on the edge. The two of them took in the cold, bracing winds as the smell of the land below filled their noses with the scents of growth, pine, and early summer. It was calming and almost intoxicating. Their weariness fled like the darkness in the rising sun.

“This mission isn’t normal, is it?” Jack didn’t hesitate with the question. He knew that he had to ask her while he was virtually alone with her. The Zangoose known formally as Kalitka stiffened as her claws curled up into her paws.

“It’s dangerous. The hazard level for this one was through the roof, Jack. They were desperate, the Senators. Both Diamond and Platinum Squads had already refused on the grounds that they would throw their lives away.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper caught in the wind of the crisp mountain dawn. Her back slumped against the rock face behind her.

“Then why accept it? You’ve rejected dangerous missions before, why not now?” Jack inquired as he leaned up against the mountain beside her. Her mouth pressed in a stern frown as she seemed to mull over an answer in her mouth.

“I ... I don’t know. Nickolas came to me himself, Jack. How can I refuse the king? And with all the rewards and promotions they promised to our squad if we succeeded ... Well, I couldn’t say no.” She stopped for a second as she turned her head away from him.

“But, I’ve been dealing with this feeling of dread. That something terrible is going to happen to all of us and it’ll be out of my control to stop. No one knows what happened in Saltus Valley, so we’re going in there blind. We’ll have to be careful,” Kida allowed as she looked up at the foreboding peaks. There wasn’t much farther to go until they reached the summit and it would be easier finding a path down into the valley from there. Jack watched the rest of Gold Squad climb over the final ledge and reach the small rest stop. They were all blissfully unaware of the doubtful thoughts Kida had just shared with him.

“Alright! Catch your breath and let’s hit it double time, you lot! The Kingdom isn’t paying us to watch the sunrise! I want us to be halfway to the summit before it comes past the horizon!” the Zangoose ordered as she went through the small crowd of gathering Pokémon. Jack went behind her as he congratulated the others on their climb, saying trivial bits of encouragement as he went.

Someone among the group, probably Efang, opened up a small sack of Aspear Berries and passed them around. Kida grumbled that they were wasting time, but Jack observed as she gave in and chomped into her own fruit. His own berry was gone behind his beak in no time at all as he felt the warm, insulating feeling beneath his skin that the juice provided.

Once they had all properly celebrated their accomplishment near the edge of the mortal world, Kida quickly ushered them all back on course up the remainder of the mountain. Despite its lofty position as the crown of the mountain, the peak was much easier to climb than the initial ascent. Even as Jack removed his pick from the last foothold before he grasped the very pinnacle of the mountain, the others were only five minutes behind him, Kida being only a few feet below him.

His eyes grew wide at the sight he beheld from the top. To the east, the sun’s fully awakened face just separated from the chains of the horizon and had begun its fiery ascent to the realms of Elysium in the sky. And, to the west, towards destiny, towards Saltus Valley, was a vast plain of white. Jack had to shield his eyes from the very beginnings of the harsh glare from the rays of the rising sun.

“What in the name of Azelf’s tails happened here? Where’s the damn Valley?” Kida swore as she gazed out on the pure white landscape. She was right; Saltus Valley was gone and replaced by this void of white nothingness. They both stood there in stark disbelief as the last eighteen members of Gold squad reached the summit. Jack heard their shouts of confusion, but he did not look back at them.

Instead, his foot took a single stride forward on to the unknown white mesa from the rocky mountain. His webbed toes did not slide through the mist-like substance, but rather pressed down a few inches until it stopped. It was almost like snow, except it was far more airy.

He took another step, and then another as he blazed a trail into the mysterious field of white crystallized air. Despite the vague sense of instability that came with every crunching step, he continued into the unknown wilds. After he had taken roughly twenty strides away from the summit, he turned around to face the anxious Gold Squad.

"Seems stable! Some type of snow from how it feels! It's packed pretty tight, so it should hold," Jack called as he reported on his qualitative observations. Back on the rocky precipice, Kida nodded as she waved her claws forward. The crowd around her interpreted her signal and gingerly began inching their way onto the plain.

Jack held his breath as his Aggron friend took his first step into the solid white mass. Calur's massive tree stump-like foot sank into the wispy element before crunching to a halt only one foot beneath the visible surface.The Aggron allowed a rocky smile to form on his mouth as he let out a gravelly laugh of triumph.

Seeing that the weird landscape would hold them all, Jack turned back to the path ahead. This was their destiny: to search and find the source. If the impetus keeping their righteous march true was to remain, they would have to cross this vast field. Jack was feeling unusually good at that moment. Despite having climbed a mountain in the very early hours of the waking dawn, his body still remained primed with energy. In that point in time, he would not have refused an offer to run the Royal Highway across the Kingdom. Something about this alien land sent waves of energy up through his feet, like he was walking on the very essence of air.

There comes a time in the course of events that the threads of Fate cross and intertwine in such a way that brings forth the worst possible scenario. It was then, as Jack took another step into the white void of faux-snow that the threads coiled and snapped, letting the chaos of the universe rush in and have its way. From far beneath the surface, a fierce shudder shook the plane. The Golduck swore it sounded like the feral roar of a dragon that rose up from the core of the world.

Jack fell to his side as his legs were jolted out from beneath him. His ice-ax flew from his grip and clattered across the powdery substance. The rumbling continued to shake the land as Jack struggled to pick himself up from the ground. He crawled over the unstable floor, his blue hands and knees crunched with every slow step he took to regain his lost tool. Far behind him, he saw Kida, Calur, Terminance, Efang, and the others in the same predicament he was in, stumbling and clawing for some sense of stability.

The roar beneath the land grew louder and louder with every passing second. Jack’s lungs worked harder than before as he flailed over the shifting mass to his beloved ax. The clear skies above the strange anomaly turned from the endless blue of the approaching dawn to darkened grey as roiling clouds rushed in from the west to block out the sky. A bitter chill swept over Jack as the feeble rays of the rising sun were overtaken by the opaque cloak sent from the heavens. It was then that his mind had the epiphany.

Wait ... This isn’t snow. We’re too high up for it to be snow ... This is ... Luiga preserve us... his mind whispered as he looked down at his hands pressed into the white crystallized land. Jack pushed away from the material like lightning and shakily stood on his feet as the world continued to crumble away. He waved his left arm high in the air in his fevered try to attract his teammates’ attention while he dug inside his bag with his other hand. He brushed aside the supplies of food, bandages, and rope as his webbed hand desperately searched for one item in particular.

“It’s not snow! Get back! Get back!” he shouted as loud as his voice would allow. He could only watch as they continued on without hearing him. They were too consumed in their own survival of the immediate quake that they were blind to the underlying danger that would soon reveal itself. As his hand closed on the small glass sphere, he knew exactly what he had to do, but something inside him made him hesitate. His action would hurt them, but the wounds they might suffer at his hands would be a fraction of what they would gather if they continued as they were.

“Kida! Calur! It’s not snow! They’re clouds! They’re frozen clouds! Get everyone back!” he screamed as he readied the small glass Orb in his hands. The artifact filled with the compressed energy of the wind would activate as soon as it hit something hard enough to crack its fragile surface. He had to make sure his aim was accurate, otherwise his efforts would be for nothing. Beneath his feet he felt something akin to a bolt of lightning shoot through the deteriorating web of frozen water.

“There’s no time. I have to do this!” Jack shouted to himself as he reared his right arm back with the specialized Orb in hand. He had to aim for the one target he knew would activate the item and that would be the most likely to forgive him after the fact. Even as his legs were constantly shifted by the growing faults in the immense cloud, he took a deep break to calm his beating heart. Jack tried to think back to the numerous snowball battles he had fought with his brothers as a young Psyduck. He was feared for his accurate aim then, he hoped now in this crucial time that it would save his squadmates.

Without a second thought, he hurtled the sphere directly over the expanse of white at Calur, the Aggron still trying to find balance in the collapsing ground. Jack watched the path of the projectile as the thunderous cracks continued to spread beneath him. He would save himself as soon as the others were out of harm’s way. The electric-blue object spun in the air as it caught the few rays of light that still shone from the sky in its reflection. Jack held his racing breath as it began to descend towards the struggling Aggron.

Jack didn’t even notice the fact that his own feet were starting to drop through the cracking layers of solidified, aerated water as the Orb slammed into the back of Calur’s steely head with a clear shattering noise. The effect was instantaneous. From within the mystical core of the blue sphere, the awesome might of a terrible gale ripped across the plane. Jack could only brace himself as he was thrown backwards by the rushing wind, away from the safety of the mountains. The panicked screams coming from his friends and comrades filled his ears as they were all forced back against the stable peak of the mountain range.

The Golduck felt his back hit the rumbling cloud with a crunch that gave way to a loud crack. Thunder roared against his throbbing ears as he fell through the frosty layers. White flew by his eyes as he descended beneath the surface of the collapsing cloud bank. Jack didn’t even know if such meteorological formation was even possible, but it hardly mattered now. All that mattered now was his own survival. He tried to focus his disorientated body as he twisted himself over in midair and spread out his hands and feet to try and slow his freefall. He had been forced to learn a few basic strategies for surviving falls while in training, but he had never expected he would have to use them from falling from the sky.

Jack took a quick glance at the land below him. It was hard to make out in the darkness from the falling chunks of cloud and the grey sky, but he saw enough. The land below was as frozen as the clouds had been, completely coated in a thick layer of white frost. This was their ground zero. At last, this was Saltus Valley. A scathing wind tore past his falling body, trying hard to rip away his precious bag of supplies strapped to his back and the ice-pick he grasped tightly in his frozen hand.

This is it. This is where I die, isn’t it? At least it’ll be quick and painless, his mind observed as he tried to maneuver himself to a place where the land didn’t seem to be frozen solid. He didn’t have much choice as he plummeted to the forest below. As the ground came closer and closer to him, the Golduck gave up trying to change his course. In the final moments before impact, Jack closed his eyes and prayed to the Guardian of the Seas that he be kept safe.

Agony shot through the left side of his body as the thin branches of the flash-frozen trees whipped against him. Jack let out a shriek as he continued to rocket downwards, slamming into more and more branches as he went. There was no stopping the intense flood of torture that filled his nerves. The frozen tips of the tree limbs tore deep gashes all across his body or simply whacked against his unprotected skin, leaving a series of angry welts at random intervals. Jack was certain that more than several of his bones were shattered.

His falling form shot past the final series of branches that tore off the bag from his back. Jack landed facing up with a bone-crunching thud in a thick pile of snow. A red haze misted over his vision as the sudden onset of packed snow embraced his battered and broken body. His breaths were short and shallow and his mind felt like it was lost in a deep fog. He knew he had to move. He knew that he had to find help quickly. Otherwise, he would die.

Even though his mind screamed for him to move, it was several, long minutes of throbbing agony before he was able to twitch his right arm. Air playfully eluded each gaping gasp of his mouth, each failed attempt to breathe felt like a hammer slamming against his blood-spattered chest. His vision quickly flickered between black and white as he stared unblinking into the crumbling sky. Beams of sunlight streamed through the patchwork of unfallen clouds and the gaping holes left by the aerial avalanche.

One of these beams struck the packed snow beside his right hand and reflected a metallic gleam. He didn’t have to see it properly to know exactly what it was. The golden shine only could come from one object: his exploration badge. His neck felt as if it was shoved inside a furnace as he moved it a few degrees up to confirm his suspicions. The circular insignia was only inches from his fingertips. He could easily reach it and activate it without shifting his fragile body too much.

And besides, the damage is already done, right? What’s the worst that could happen? his blurry thoughts slurred as the Golduck suddenly rolled his body to the right and grasped the badge. He felt like he had just been slammed between a cliff and a wall of flaming steel. His body seized up as fresh blood began to seep from his recent wounds. His hand refused to let go of the metal circle, though. His survival depended on its mystical communication properties. Every heaving cough that came from his bruised lungs brought forth a spray of dark red blood onto his scarring chest and crimson snow around him. But, Jack knew what he had to do.

He brought his stiff, cold hand closer to his mouth as he jabbed the center button in the badge. Words came surprisingly clearly from his mouth amid the spurts of internal blood from his damaged innards.

“This is Corporal Jack Golduck.” A scream of agony. “I request immediate rescue. Medical care needed.” Jack let out a haunting cry that echoed through the dead Valley. “Situation: dire. Estimated time until expiration is--” Another scream that seemed to tear out what remained of his lungs. “One hour ... Forty-five minutes if internal bleeding persists...”

There was nothing left. He had foolishly challenged Saltus Valley.

“This is Jack Golduck. Corporal, Gold Squad, Army of the Kingdom.”

Saltus Valley had accepted and swallowed him whole. His screams now were met with the vast emptiness that resonated from the frozen forest.

“Requesting immediate assistance from any Rescue Team that can hear me. Multiple military personnel in danger. Please respond!”

His words were carried along the sorrowful winds to be forever destined to echo among the lonely crags and peaks. The pleas he made would never make it through to a rescue relay. Much like him, they were cut off from the source.

End Chapter One

Description
Continued from Previous Part One

The mountains stretched up into the clouds, their jagged peaks concealed by the thorough covering of coagulated water vapor. Jack took a moment to stop and try to peer beyond the white cloak of the unknown, but failed miserably in doing so. The clouds were thick and unending here. The fact that Jack hadn’t seen the sun once since they exited the city proved this point.

It had been two days since Gold Squad had left the gentle refuge of Post Town for the rocky slopes of the Saltus Ridge Mountains. For two days they had attempted to break through every known and untested pass through to the valley, but so far nothing had worked. From top to bottom, the pass was filled with an impenetrable block of white ice that no one in the squad could even dent. Not even the combined efforts of Calur’s brute strength and Yemda’s fierce fires, the block still stood. Jack had tried using his precious pick until the metal threatened to bend and dull against the unmoving ice. Kida eventually called off the Aggron and Flareon duo before they exhausted themselves in a futile endeavor.

Saltus Valley had truly become a fortress to them, and almost certainly a prison for its inhabitants. Gold Squad was never one to be defeated by the elements. Even in the harshest deserts and pits of magma, they had succeeded. But here, they could do nothing against the barriers. As the visibly depressed squad returned to their humble camp at the foot of the mountains, Kida suddenly climbed up on top of an overturned crate. Her fur reflected the flames of the fire brightly in the dark night as she stamped on the empty box to get the group’s attention.

“Listen, you guys. I think it’s time I told you something about this mission. This isn’t some normal clean-up job, or even a standard search and rescue as it appears to be,” she stated, holding her head low. A low wave of murmurs swept through the attentive Pokémon as Jack stopped his polishing of the sharp end of his pick. Kida took a deep breath before continuing with the declassification of the confidential information.

“I was told by the Senate that we were to find the source of this disaster and secure it for the Kingdom. This isn’t a search and rescue, guys. We’re here to find whatever caused what happened inside that valley,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. Gold Squad was completely silent. The crackling fire was the only sound to break the dark hold of the night. Jack shifted his glance to his sides. The others, Terminance, Efang, and Calur among them also cast unsure looks at each other.

This was hardly the first time the specifics of a mission were withheld from them. Jack bitterly remembered those missions as his neutral expression turned into a scowl. They had nearly failed each and every one of them because they didn’t fully know what to expect. The relatively innocent tasks of cleaning up a chemical fire in the Frosty Forest and repairing a collapsed mine shaft in Lapis Cave had both turned into vicious fights to subdue the final remnants of the belligerents of the Second Bandit War. Why the Kingdom felt that keeping that pertinent information from them, Jack would never rightly know.

What Kida told them didn’t seem as much of a revelation as the previous ones did, but Jack knew something was up. Kida had always been unreadable when she had revealed similar confessions in the past, but now she visibly appeared worried.

“So, wha’ gives then? Why didn’ they tell us that? Why’s it so bad?” Calur asked from the back of the seated group.

“Since there’s no way through the passes, tomorrow we’re going to try going over the peaks. Perhaps we’ll be able to enter the Valley that way...” Kida said, half talking to herself as she turned away from the squad. The Zangoose’s apparent attempt to brush off the Aggron’s question only brought up a flurry of new questions from the Pokémon.

“What’sss up with the peaksss?” Efang hissed as he slithered closer to the fire.

“Yes, indeed. What is really going on, Kida?” Terminance asked, also moving closer to the Zangoose captain.

“Quiet! That’s an order!” The Zangoose’s eyes flashed with the light of the fire as she twisted around on her makeshift pedestal. Her claws curled threatening around the hilt of her Seviper tail weapon as she silenced her soldiers with a deathly stare. Jack crossed his arms as he heard the camp’s volume drop to zero.

“Listen. I realize that I haven’t told you all everything. But that’s how it has to be!” she snapped. The lack of noise made her words echo mockingly against the mountains that impeded them. Jack knew full well that there was more to the story, but decided against vocalizing against the troubled Zangoose as she slowly lowered her trembling hand and the weapon. Before more could be asked, she jumped down from the crate and walked to her tent.

Not one of the hardened Pokémon dared to follow. Instead, they sluggishly returned to the process of setting up dinner for the night. Jack rather enjoyed how there wasn’t one designated cook for the group. Everyone in Gold Squad had seemed to pick up a small tidbit about cooking during their many travels, leading to a unique meal almost every night, even if it was made from the same ingredients. Fortunately they still had a good supply of fresh foodstuffs from the generous residents of Post Town, which contributed greatly to their general meals of dried berries and biscuits, the standard military rations from the Kingdom.

That night it was a humble feast of boiled steak and potatoes taken directly from the productive farms of the Paradise territory just outside the glorified trading post. While he enjoyed the rare food, Jack’s thoughts constantly drifted to Kida as his gaze seemed to draw towards her tent. While the higher-ranked Zangoose was sometimes a pain to live under, Jack knew it was part of her designation. She had been in the Kingdom Army for several weeks before he joined, and ever since then it had been that way.

She had done more than her fair share of work to get to where she was now. Kida deserved the position of captain more than anyone on the team. She had clawed her way up from the very bottom, and despite the stress of the job, Jack could tell that she truly enjoyed the rank and all the glory that came along with it. However, each mission had gotten harder. The stakes rose higher and higher with every new assignment, along with the stress. Kida was hardly the only one on the team to feel it. There had been many sleepless nights before they had to fight outlaw gangs, or contain a situation. Those feelings came and went as they always did, but they never seemed to leave Kida from what he saw.

She always appeared to be burdened by some secret or guilt, and judging by the information the higher-up Kingdom officials told her, his guess wasn’t far off from the truth. He slowly picked at his meal, wondering just what knowledge was so bad that it seemed to be consuming her from the inside out. Jack put down the small wooden platter that held the last morsels of his uneaten food and hooked his ice-ax to the belt of toughened leather around his waist.

The Golduck shifted his gaze from the glowing fires that his comrades huddled around and talked about what challenges and trials lay ahead of them to the glorious black titans that stretched into the sky. The mountains had perpetually blocked their passage and stymied their mission for the last two days. Jack had spent long hours amongst the drafty crags and cravasses with the others, forever searching for a passage to their goal. None of them were accustomed to this sort of blockade when it came to missions.

Why did the Kingdom send us? The question sat on his mind like a gluttonous Snorlax, refusing to budge until its desire had been slaked. The demolition teams of Steel Squad or the phasers of Translucence Squad would have been far better suited for the task of forging a path through the impenetrable ice. Gold Squad specialized in containing disasters that were out of control, not breaking into inflicted areas. It simply wasn’t their forte and the government bureaucrats knew it perfectly well.

Is this just some sort of training exercise? Did they send us here as a sort of boot camp? he pondered as he looked up past the shadowed peaks into the clouded skies above. Jack grew annoyed with the weather. He had wanted to see the stars, especially on this stressful night. It had become a tradition to spend at least one night before an operation stargazing, but now it this simple pleasure was being denied to him. While Jack wasn’t one to believe in the claims of some of the so-called “star-mystics” he’d met on his travels, he held the abstract constellations in high esteem. They were the friends who would never truly leave him and were always keeping an eye out for him.

He had tried to get several of the others to join him with his observations of the nightly skies, but try as they might, none of them found the glowing pinpricks of light as soothing as he did. Calur and Terminance had both tried their hardest to sit and stare into the void with him on occasion, however they claimed they received their fill of the astrological wonder only a few minutes in. As he stared up into the roiling clouds on this night of fate, he wondered just how those mystics would claim his stars aligned. Was tomorrow etched into the numerous patterns of the nebulae, or had it yet to be ordained?

Jack didn’t know. All that he knew was that tonight would be one of unease under the starless sky. Tomorrow’s dawn would bring little relief, as the indomitable giants glared mockingly down at them. The mountains dared him to surpass them. To transcend their lofty heights to reach the limitless glory just beyond them. Unable to stand another moment in their glare, the Golduck went back into his faded, green tent. He unrolled the small, thick blanket made of refined Mareep wool designed to retain heat without the coarse, staticy feeling.

As he closed his eyes and let the wispy mistress of sleep take him away, the stars danced and shifted in their celestial promenade behind the opaque curtain of clouds. The long hours of the night passed all too quickly as the first dim glow of the dawn soon pressed against the purple mountains. Calur’s booming voice echoed through the camp, the Aggron had been assigned the mocking position of “Wake-Up Officer” from Kida after he lost to her in a duel last year in Delgura City.

In a whirlwind of actions, Jack found himself hastily scarfing down a breakfast made of a healthful mush of a plethora of berries plucked from near their camp. Calur had never been excellent at cooking, and so the slightly blue mixture in front of him had been developed by the Aggron as a way to avoid having to put effort into a disaster. Jack had found that he could stomach virtually anything Gold Squad had to throw at him, and was delighted to see that his friend’s food was not ranked at dead last in terms of edibility. It was quickly established that Terminance was not fit for food preparation by the fact that he tried to argue that topsoil could provide basic sustenance.

Within ten minutes of waking up, all breakfasts had been forced down as Kida got the day’s expedition of the mountain range moving at a breakneck pace. Jack had his small backpack filled with necessary supplies such as rope, rations, a small skin of water, and his blanket. The pack rested comfortably on his back as he aided the others in securing the camp while they would be out for the day and packing their own supplies. Within twenty minutes of waking up, the entirety of Gold Squad was mobilized and ascending the rocky base in the shadow of the mountain.

Jack unclipped his ax from his belt and gave it a light swing into the hard granite of the edifice. It stuck with a reassuring thud and Jack marked his first foothold on this third day of rock climbing. The others were taking the rapid climb well by the observations Jack made as he nimbly scaled towers of rock and crawled up sheer faces on the mountain with ease. His Zangoose leader was close behind him as he offered her a hand up onto the stable ledge. This was the one event that he excelled in more than she, and he took every opportunity to make sure she knew it well.

Her paw tightly grasped his and he hoisted her up onto the rest ledge.

“So, in about thirty minutes, we should be at the summit?” he cheekily guessed as he glanced up at the towering spine of the mountain range in the dim morning light. Kida scoffed in reply as she nudged a small pebble off the steep edge of the embankment.

“For you, maybe. The others will take two hours to get there at the very least,” she said as the two of Pokémon watched the rest of their team claw, slither, and fly up the rock path. Calur could easily be up there with them if he wanted to, being immediately at home among the mountains, but the Aggron had taken it upon himself to carry some of the less dexterous of Gold Squad as he half-charged-half-burrowed a winding path through the steep slope.

Again, Jack noticed that the dark clouds that seemed to brood over the Zangoose disappeared for an instant as she stood on the edge. The two of them took in the cold, bracing winds as the smell of the land below filled their noses with the scents of growth, pine, and early summer. It was calming and almost intoxicating. Their weariness fled like the darkness in the rising sun.

“This mission isn’t normal, is it?” Jack didn’t hesitate with the question. He knew that he had to ask her while he was virtually alone with her. The Zangoose known formally as Kalitka stiffened as her claws curled up into her paws.

“It’s dangerous. The hazard level for this one was through the roof, Jack. They were desperate, the Senators. Both Diamond and Platinum Squads had already refused on the grounds that they would throw their lives away.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper caught in the wind of the crisp mountain dawn. Her back slumped against the rock face behind her.

“Then why accept it? You’ve rejected dangerous missions before, why not now?” Jack inquired as he leaned up against the mountain beside her. Her mouth pressed in a stern frown as she seemed to mull over an answer in her mouth.

“I ... I don’t know. Nickolas came to me himself, Jack. How can I refuse the king? And with all the rewards and promotions they promised to our squad if we succeeded ... Well, I couldn’t say no.” She stopped for a second as she turned her head away from him.

“But, I’ve been dealing with this feeling of dread. That something terrible is going to happen to all of us and it’ll be out of my control to stop. No one knows what happened in Saltus Valley, so we’re going in there blind. We’ll have to be careful,” Kida allowed as she looked up at the foreboding peaks. There wasn’t much farther to go until they reached the summit and it would be easier finding a path down into the valley from there. Jack watched the rest of Gold Squad climb over the final ledge and reach the small rest stop. They were all blissfully unaware of the doubtful thoughts Kida had just shared with him.

“Alright! Catch your breath and let’s hit it double time, you lot! The Kingdom isn’t paying us to watch the sunrise! I want us to be halfway to the summit before it comes past the horizon!” the Zangoose ordered as she went through the small crowd of gathering Pokémon. Jack went behind her as he congratulated the others on their climb, saying trivial bits of encouragement as he went.

Someone among the group, probably Efang, opened up a small sack of Aspear Berries and passed them around. Kida grumbled that they were wasting time, but Jack observed as she gave in and chomped into her own fruit. His own berry was gone behind his beak in no time at all as he felt the warm, insulating feeling beneath his skin that the juice provided.

Once they had all properly celebrated their accomplishment near the edge of the mortal world, Kida quickly ushered them all back on course up the remainder of the mountain. Despite its lofty position as the crown of the mountain, the peak was much easier to climb than the initial ascent. Even as Jack removed his pick from the last foothold before he grasped the very pinnacle of the mountain, the others were only five minutes behind him, Kida being only a few feet below him.

His eyes grew wide at the sight he beheld from the top. To the east, the sun’s fully awakened face just separated from the chains of the horizon and had begun its fiery ascent to the realms of Elysium in the sky. And, to the west, towards destiny, towards Saltus Valley, was a vast plain of white. Jack had to shield his eyes from the very beginnings of the harsh glare from the rays of the rising sun.

“What in the name of Azelf’s tails happened here? Where’s the damn Valley?” Kida swore as she gazed out on the pure white landscape. She was right; Saltus Valley was gone and replaced by this void of white nothingness. They both stood there in stark disbelief as the last eighteen members of Gold squad reached the summit. Jack heard their shouts of confusion, but he did not look back at them.

Instead, his foot took a single stride forward on to the unknown white mesa from the rocky mountain. His webbed toes did not slide through the mist-like substance, but rather pressed down a few inches until it stopped. It was almost like snow, except it was far more airy.

He took another step, and then another as he blazed a trail into the mysterious field of white crystallized air. Despite the vague sense of instability that came with every crunching step, he continued into the unknown wilds. After he had taken roughly twenty strides away from the summit, he turned around to face the anxious Gold Squad.

"Seems stable! Some type of snow from how it feels! It's packed pretty tight, so it should hold," Jack called as he reported on his qualitative observations. Back on the rocky precipice, Kida nodded as she waved her claws forward. The crowd around her interpreted her signal and gingerly began inching their way onto the plain.

Jack held his breath as his Aggron friend took his first step into the solid white mass. Calur's massive tree stump-like foot sank into the wispy element before crunching to a halt only one foot beneath the visible surface.The Aggron allowed a rocky smile to form on his mouth as he let out a gravelly laugh of triumph.

Seeing that the weird landscape would hold them all, Jack turned back to the path ahead. This was their destiny: to search and find the source. If the impetus keeping their righteous march true was to remain, they would have to cross this vast field. Jack was feeling unusually good at that moment. Despite having climbed a mountain in the very early hours of the waking dawn, his body still remained primed with energy. In that point in time, he would not have refused an offer to run the Royal Highway across the Kingdom. Something about this alien land sent waves of energy up through his feet, like he was walking on the very essence of air.

There comes a time in the course of events that the threads of Fate cross and intertwine in such a way that brings forth the worst possible scenario. It was then, as Jack took another step into the white void of faux-snow that the threads coiled and snapped, letting the chaos of the universe rush in and have its way. From far beneath the surface, a fierce shudder shook the plane. The Golduck swore it sounded like the feral roar of a dragon that rose up from the core of the world.

Jack fell to his side as his legs were jolted out from beneath him. His ice-ax flew from his grip and clattered across the powdery substance. The rumbling continued to shake the land as Jack struggled to pick himself up from the ground. He crawled over the unstable floor, his blue hands and knees crunched with every slow step he took to regain his lost tool. Far behind him, he saw Kida, Calur, Terminance, Efang, and the others in the same predicament he was in, stumbling and clawing for some sense of stability.

The roar beneath the land grew louder and louder with every passing second. Jack’s lungs worked harder than before as he flailed over the shifting mass to his beloved ax. The clear skies above the strange anomaly turned from the endless blue of the approaching dawn to darkened grey as roiling clouds rushed in from the west to block out the sky. A bitter chill swept over Jack as the feeble rays of the rising sun were overtaken by the opaque cloak sent from the heavens. It was then that his mind had the epiphany.

Wait ... This isn’t snow. We’re too high up for it to be snow ... This is ... Luiga preserve us... his mind whispered as he looked down at his hands pressed into the white crystallized land. Jack pushed away from the material like lightning and shakily stood on his feet as the world continued to crumble away. He waved his left arm high in the air in his fevered try to attract his teammates’ attention while he dug inside his bag with his other hand. He brushed aside the supplies of food, bandages, and rope as his webbed hand desperately searched for one item in particular.

“It’s not snow! Get back! Get back!” he shouted as loud as his voice would allow. He could only watch as they continued on without hearing him. They were too consumed in their own survival of the immediate quake that they were blind to the underlying danger that would soon reveal itself. As his hand closed on the small glass sphere, he knew exactly what he had to do, but something inside him made him hesitate. His action would hurt them, but the wounds they might suffer at his hands would be a fraction of what they would gather if they continued as they were.

“Kida! Calur! It’s not snow! They’re clouds! They’re frozen clouds! Get everyone back!” he screamed as he readied the small glass Orb in his hands. The artifact filled with the compressed energy of the wind would activate as soon as it hit something hard enough to crack its fragile surface. He had to make sure his aim was accurate, otherwise his efforts would be for nothing. Beneath his feet he felt something akin to a bolt of lightning shoot through the deteriorating web of frozen water.

“There’s no time. I have to do this!” Jack shouted to himself as he reared his right arm back with the specialized Orb in hand. He had to aim for the one target he knew would activate the item and that would be the most likely to forgive him after the fact. Even as his legs were constantly shifted by the growing faults in the immense cloud, he took a deep break to calm his beating heart. Jack tried to think back to the numerous snowball battles he had fought with his brothers as a young Psyduck. He was feared for his accurate aim then, he hoped now in this crucial time that it would save his squadmates.

Without a second thought, he hurtled the sphere directly over the expanse of white at Calur, the Aggron still trying to find balance in the collapsing ground. Jack watched the path of the projectile as the thunderous cracks continued to spread beneath him. He would save himself as soon as the others were out of harm’s way. The electric-blue object spun in the air as it caught the few rays of light that still shone from the sky in its reflection. Jack held his racing breath as it began to descend towards the struggling Aggron.

Jack didn’t even notice the fact that his own feet were starting to drop through the cracking layers of solidified, aerated water as the Orb slammed into the back of Calur’s steely head with a clear shattering noise. The effect was instantaneous. From within the mystical core of the blue sphere, the awesome might of a terrible gale ripped across the plane. Jack could only brace himself as he was thrown backwards by the rushing wind, away from the safety of the mountains. The panicked screams coming from his friends and comrades filled his ears as they were all forced back against the stable peak of the mountain range.

The Golduck felt his back hit the rumbling cloud with a crunch that gave way to a loud crack. Thunder roared against his throbbing ears as he fell through the frosty layers. White flew by his eyes as he descended beneath the surface of the collapsing cloud bank. Jack didn’t even know if such meteorological formation was even possible, but it hardly mattered now. All that mattered now was his own survival. He tried to focus his disorientated body as he twisted himself over in midair and spread out his hands and feet to try and slow his freefall. He had been forced to learn a few basic strategies for surviving falls while in training, but he had never expected he would have to use them from falling from the sky.

Jack took a quick glance at the land below him. It was hard to make out in the darkness from the falling chunks of cloud and the grey sky, but he saw enough. The land below was as frozen as the clouds had been, completely coated in a thick layer of white frost. This was their ground zero. At last, this was Saltus Valley. A scathing wind tore past his falling body, trying hard to rip away his precious bag of supplies strapped to his back and the ice-pick he grasped tightly in his frozen hand.

This is it. This is where I die, isn’t it? At least it’ll be quick and painless, his mind observed as he tried to maneuver himself to a place where the land didn’t seem to be frozen solid. He didn’t have much choice as he plummeted to the forest below. As the ground came closer and closer to him, the Golduck gave up trying to change his course. In the final moments before impact, Jack closed his eyes and prayed to the Guardian of the Seas that he be kept safe.

Agony shot through the left side of his body as the thin branches of the flash-frozen trees whipped against him. Jack let out a shriek as he continued to rocket downwards, slamming into more and more branches as he went. There was no stopping the intense flood of torture that filled his nerves. The frozen tips of the tree limbs tore deep gashes all across his body or simply whacked against his unprotected skin, leaving a series of angry welts at random intervals. Jack was certain that more than several of his bones were shattered.

His falling form shot past the final series of branches that tore off the bag from his back. Jack landed facing up with a bone-crunching thud in a thick pile of snow. A red haze misted over his vision as the sudden onset of packed snow embraced his battered and broken body. His breaths were short and shallow and his mind felt like it was lost in a deep fog. He knew he had to move. He knew that he had to find help quickly. Otherwise, he would die.

Even though his mind screamed for him to move, it was several, long minutes of throbbing agony before he was able to twitch his right arm. Air playfully eluded each gaping gasp of his mouth, each failed attempt to breathe felt like a hammer slamming against his blood-spattered chest. His vision quickly flickered between black and white as he stared unblinking into the crumbling sky. Beams of sunlight streamed through the patchwork of unfallen clouds and the gaping holes left by the aerial avalanche.

One of these beams struck the packed snow beside his right hand and reflected a metallic gleam. He didn’t have to see it properly to know exactly what it was. The golden shine only could come from one object: his exploration badge. His neck felt as if it was shoved inside a furnace as he moved it a few degrees up to confirm his suspicions. The circular insignia was only inches from his fingertips. He could easily reach it and activate it without shifting his fragile body too much.

And besides, the damage is already done, right? What’s the worst that could happen? his blurry thoughts slurred as the Golduck suddenly rolled his body to the right and grasped the badge. He felt like he had just been slammed between a cliff and a wall of flaming steel. His body seized up as fresh blood began to seep from his recent wounds. His hand refused to let go of the metal circle, though. His survival depended on its mystical communication properties. Every heaving cough that came from his bruised lungs brought forth a spray of dark red blood onto his scarring chest and crimson snow around him. But, Jack knew what he had to do.

He brought his stiff, cold hand closer to his mouth as he jabbed the center button in the badge. Words came surprisingly clearly from his mouth amid the spurts of internal blood from his damaged innards.

“This is Corporal Jack Golduck.” A scream of agony. “I request immediate rescue. Medical care needed.” Jack let out a haunting cry that echoed through the dead Valley. “Situation: dire. Estimated time until expiration is--” Another scream that seemed to tear out what remained of his lungs. “One hour ... Forty-five minutes if internal bleeding persists...”

There was nothing left. He had foolishly challenged Saltus Valley.

“This is Jack Golduck. Corporal, Gold Squad, Army of the Kingdom.”

Saltus Valley had accepted and swallowed him whole. His screams now were met with the vast emptiness that resonated from the frozen forest.

“Requesting immediate assistance from any Rescue Team that can hear me. Multiple military personnel in danger. Please respond!”

His words were carried along the sorrowful winds to be forever destined to echo among the lonely crags and peaks. The pleas he made would never make it through to a rescue relay. Much like him, they were cut off from the source.

End Chapter One