[ti]private[/ti]Sweet Dreams are made of Keys

Zac was lost.

He's missed the turn off to Briarbane on his way back from Misty Timberland, and had ended up wandering, out, long, and far away from home. He's trekked through acres of grassland, skirted towers of steel that punctured the clouds like giant staples, and had been attacked by Yanma on three separate occasions.

As Zac approached the ring of obelisk stones he didn't notice Verai, but Petal did! The Chikorita was perched on his shoulder, giving him much needed guidance.
"Left! Around the rock!"
"Ow!"
"Sorry. More left."
"This is one hell of a rock!"
"Yeah it's super tall."
"Like the big metal bastard we hit earlier?"
"No this one is smaller and blacker. Hey there!" Chikorita waved to Verai and Kitten with one vine, the buds around her neck blooming in joy.

Zac made no attempt to dodge as Kitten launched themslves upwards, and the cat hit him right in the face, making him stumble. "Ah! More Yanma!"
"No that's just Kitten."
"Oh. That means that Verai is here?"

It was a strange question to ask, but when Kitten got a clear look at Zac's face they would notice something odd: Zac's eyes weren't the vibrant green they'd been last time. Instead they were a pure, milky white.

"I can bite someone," Zac said, nodding at the sage advice. "Nice and easy fix. Who do I start with?"

Chikorita helped him navigate to the center of the obelisks, where he (approximately) faced Verai. Apparently Seers received supernaturally acute senses in exchange for their eyesight, but Zac's were still coming in. All he'd gotten so far was heightened taste and smell.

"I'm all good. Just can't see anything," Zac clarified. "And I don't know what a Mistra is. I was just wandering around in the forest, tripped and hit my head on a Shuckle, and then I had a dream about a weird deer thing in the snow."

He paused for a second, as if he were a patient describing his symptoms to a doctor. "Did the same thing happen to you?"

"Big portal to the North? Shrine? Friend? Nah we definitely haven't been to Mistra then," Zac said, and Chikorita shook her head to confirm. "The land of darkness where it's always night rings a bell, but that may just be wherever this is." He gestured around himself and banged his arm on one of the obelisks.

"Watch out!" Chikorita warned, way too late. "And this is the Surge Steppes."

"Yeah that's what I said," Zac complained, rubbing his arm.

Verai kept talking (an admirable trait, in Zac's opinion), and he grasped on to passing pieces of conversation like a man drowning in the shallow end of a swimming pool. "Yeah the sudden darkness! That's what happened to me!" he said loudly, and Chikorita bent away from his mouth, looking displeased. "Wait you can't see anything either? Well how do you get around. Oh! Kitten, that's right. Good thing we both have the help of these little felines."

"That reindeer..." Zac said, restless mind finally settling on a topic for more than a few seconds. "I feel like it was a very powerful Pokemon. Like it moved with strength, power, and gravitas. Have you ever seen Queen live? It was like if Freddie Mercury was a deer. I got this sense that it was making a grand entrance." He tapped his foot, deep in thought. "And that gate. Now I haven't been around a lot but it sure didn't seem familiar to me. Is there a gate like that in the settlement or something?"

Kitten interrupted with breaking news and Zac felt excitement bubble in his chest. "Evolve? I didn't know we could do that!" This Kitten was a Pokemon, so it only stood to reason that it would be the undisputed authority on evolution. "I didn't grow bigger...I don't think, but hey I've been telling people all my life that I was the final stage of human evolution. Now I can back it up!" He laughed, full of triumph.

"Blue?" Zac said, shocked by the revelation. "I'm not a fan of that. Nothing good can come of blue." He nodded his head towards Petal to indicate he was talking to her. "I saw a documentary that said that there was no color blue in nature."

"What about the sky?"

"Nope. Apparently it's clear. Blue is just how our eyes interpret the lack of color."

Petal frowned. "What about the ocean?" she asked cautiously.

"More of a sea green. It's in the name, actually. Good try though." Zac wandered towards Kitten and Verai. "So this blue door, what else do we know about it? Is the light cold? I don't mess with cold light. Not since the operation-"

"Watch out!"

Zac stepped straight through the doorway and fell into a marsh. He sank two feet into the ground (depth, not anatomical description) and bent forwards, arms waving comically as he slowly fell into the reeds.

"Don't fall!" Petal yelled. Vines show out of her neck, grabbing the reeds into great sheaves and anchoring herself and Zac to them to prevent the pair from falling into the mud. Now stable at a 45 degree angle, Zac took stock of the situation.

It smelled of mud, and not the expensive kind. It was the kind stolen in barrowloads from a mangrove swamp, mixed with bath bombs and then sold to a massage house. It was the kind used to bury unwanted birthday presents. It was the kind of mud that crabs lived in.

And unknown to Zac, unseen by any but Petal, was the blue. Everything in the marsh had an odd blue afterimage. The reeds swaying around them left strands of blue on her retinas, as if stamping them with inky needles, and the sky itself was a shocking shade. It was like the world had crashed and the sky was displaying the Blue Screen of Death. Only there were no words. No clouds either. And definitely no sun.

"I don't think we're in Asper anymore," she whispered.

"Don't worry about that," Zac said, "just keep a lookout for any damn crabs!"