To make up for my absence, have another update. Go on. It's free.
Interlude: Long Ago
The Goddess of birth and death lives in the stars, where she serves under the One, watching over Creation and keeping all life in order. For there are only so many spaces for lives in the world, and when one is born one other must die. Such is the nature of the Law, as the One in His wisdom intended.
I can hear the scientists talking, a long way away, about how it was badly damaged by the heat and impact of the fall, and from exposure to toxic gases, but the village sage seems so much nearer.
The Goddess's name is Izh, and the name of her Son is son-of-Izh, or Izhlei. Yes, the Goddess has a Son, who she made from a man and one of her own jewels, and who she sent from the stars to Earth through the woman Shiamat.
Recombinant, the scientists say. A survival mechanic, its body falling apart. But their explanation leaves me an aberration, an accident, and the sage says I am a God.
Shiamat could not survive the birth of a God. His power was too great, and when her time came she was consumed by fire. Such was the balance: her life taken as Izhlei's was granted.
It would have been a violent process, impossible for modern medicine to even conceive of. It was a miracle that any living creature could survive it.
At his birth he took three steps to the top of the hill where his mother fell, and raised his head to the sky and said: "I come to bring the Shinowh to glory."
Of course, the results were startling, the scientists continue, as anyone can see. It's no wonder he was thought to be a god – no wonder people bowed before him.
The story is fading, blowing away from my grasp, and now I can hear nothing but the slow, deep rippling of the current – and all at once my eyes open, and I see the fish pass like silver arrows overhead.
Vỏtt. It's happened again.
Chapter Forty-One: In Which Bond Usurps the Monarchy
'The mountains of Sinnoh are among the largest in the world, and also the strangest. Very few others contain predatory forests and an abundance of sentient bells.'
—Carlo Pontani, Mountains: Nature's Finest Children
The Queen of the jagged Veilstone hills saw the metal bird thunder past, and a gleam came into her eye.
She had not named herself, of course – that had been the hikers who passed through the region – but she knew she was the ruler of all she surveyed. Since the long flight south from Stark Mountain many years ago, she had been the undisputed overlord of all the hills and crags from Veilstone to Celestic.
Well, almost undisputed.
There was one beast that dared defy her – another hardwing, she thought, or something similar: a huge bird made of steel, with whirling wings above and a glass face before, that kept cutting in across her territory and snatching up the wounded humans that collected in the ravines and on the slopes. A scavenger, barely worthy of the title of predator, muscling in on her kingdom.
But it was a cunning creature for all that: it always kept a few small humans beneath its steely feathers, and they would pop out and threaten her with thundersticks and lightning monsters whenever she came too close. For five years the Queen had tried to kill the metal bird, and for five years the humans in its hide had defended it, like the biting flies that lived in the thick fur of a Sinnish goat's back.
Now the Queen levelled her yellowed eyes at the bird as it flew by, and saw nothing behind its great glass head.
With a screech like grinding metal, she leaped from her perch, wings rattling, and flapped towards it. Had she been a reader of Shakespeare, she might have commented on how the winter of her discontent had been made glorious summer – but she was not, and so did not. The wind hummed in her feathers and the setting sun gleamed on her battle-worn brow as she directed her wild flight towards the interloper, her eyes shrinking to thin, jaundiced lines. The metal bird had ventured out here alone today, and the Queen was not going to stand for it any more.
---
It was a very calm flight, thought Ellen, once you got used to the noise. Bond sat right next to her, gloved hands manipulating the controls with expert ease, and she could see how the aircraft corresponded to his movements. Yes, she thought, she could handle this.
The sky was quite beautiful, too: it being close to eight now, the sun was setting, and it cast a flaming glow across the clouds. Pink and blue, orange and red, yellow and brown – they all had their place in the sky tonight, and Ellen thought it quite wonderful. Sunsets were still novel to her; while within Wickham Manor, her view of the sky was permanently blocked by the trees, and consequently these were the first she had seen in over sixty years.
"Beautiful," she murmured to herself.
Now the glow was deepening, intensifying to red, as the sun began to disappear behind the hills. A little pocket of black was there too, right at the centre, like the hollow within a candle flame. Actually, the black part was growing, broadening, as if—
Ellen frowned. That was most certainly not part of the sunset.
"What is—"
Ah, said Pigzie Doodle.
How... well, I suppose flying with you two is never uneventful, at least.
"What is it?" she asked, more insistently. "What is that thing?"
Bond spared the growing dot a glance. It was shining now, glittering like a knife blade.
"Some form of wildlife, madam," he answered. "Judging by its colour, a Skarmory – and judging by its size, a very
old Skarmory."
"So it's not very strong?"
"On the contrary, madam. Skarmory grow bigger and stronger with every passing year; the only limit to their lifespan is the weight of their steel skins, which tends to eventually prohibit them from flying and so starve them to death."
Yeah, that's right, said Pigzie Doodle.
And if this one's still flying when it's the size of a pickup truck, it's got to be a really tough one. Like Blackbeard – when he finally went down, he had five bullets and about twenty sword wounds in him. Even then, he came back as a ghost. He's probably still around; not even Ghosts really want to mess with him. He blinked.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. We're in real trouble.
And now the black dot was black no more: it was a rapidly-expanding bead of silver fire, transformed by the bloody sun from a metal crane into the benu bird of old Egypt, flying flaming from its pyre at Heliopolis. (A sound grounding in both poetry and the legends of the Ancient Egyptians were considered vital to a classical Sinnish education, and her governess, long since deceased, had drummed large quantities of both into her head by the effective means of rote learning underpinned by light beatings.)
"Bond, does this craft have any defences?" she asked hopefully.
"I regret to say it does not, madam," he replied. "However, it might be that our illustrious friend has the capacity to return fire, as the expression goes."
Eh? Me? Pigzie Doodle seemed surprised.
Oh. Yeah, I guess I can. I haven't fought anything for years. He drifted over to the door.
One of you get this open, he said,
and hang on, because the wind's going to blast through here faster than a tramp through a—
Ellen slid the door open, held on hard, and watched as the wind blew Pigzie Doodle against the opposite wall.
Hey! he cried.
I wasn't ready! And you interrupted what was going to be the best joke I've made in seven years.
"Just get on with it!" cried Ellen frantically, and he flew back to the doorway, hovering against the raging wind.
All right, he murmured,
let's see what I remember...
---
The Queen was close now – just a few hundred metres off. The metal intruder was veering away from her, heading south over the hills, but it wasn't going to escape: she had chased down Staraptor before now, the fastest things in the Sinnish sky bar Garchomp, and broken their spines with a single blow of her beak. Soon, she would catch up with her nemesis, and then—
A bolt of darkness shot from its flanks and hit her squarely in the breast.
Caught by surprise, the Queen faltered, wings windmilling in an effort to stay aloft; if she once lost momentum, her immense weight would drag her out of the sky. The bird had some means of defence, it seemed – but it wouldn't stop her. The black missile had startled, not hurt her. If she just kept flying forwards, she could take all the blows and power on through.
The Queen threw back her head and screamed out a challenge, readying the steel quills in her wings for discharge.
---
"Ishmael," said Ellen, trying very hard to sound calm, "that didn't seem to be awfully effective."
Well... yeah. What did you expect? I'm a fairly weak Duskull throwing Shadow Balls at an unfeasibly tough Skarmory. It's like chucking rice at a Roman shield wall and wondering why Crassus still annexes you for the Empire.
The Skarmory flapped on towards them, its wings rattling like cutlery drawers; it was far too close now,
far too close, thought Ellen—
"Bond!" she cried. "Fly faster!"
"I am flying as fast as I can, madam, but I suspect that that will only—"
Clang! Clang clang clang!
A spray of steel feathers flew towards them, hitting the helicopter so hard that they embedded themselves in its flanks; one shot through the open door and stuck in Pigzie Doodle's face-plate, and another hit something that gave a horrible grinding whirr.
"—cause it to fire its quills," finished Bond, as something seized up and the helicopter swung erratically to the left, knocking Ellen from her feet.
Aaah! screamed Pigzie Doodle.
My face! My beautiful face!
"Bond!" shrieked Ellen. "Do something!"
Bond hauled hard on the controls, and the helicopter righted itself with a sudden powerful jerk; outside, the Skarmory screeched loud enough to crack the windscreen, and suddenly Ellen saw it shoot out from underneath them, pulling away and banking around for another attack.
Get it out get it out get it out get it out get it OUT! Pigzie Doodle flew back and forth, whirling like a frenzied drunkard.
Aaaah!
"Hold on, madam," said Bond, unperturbed. "And if you get a chance, it might be wise to close the door."
Ellen grabbed hold of the first thing she saw, and clung on so tightly her knuckles blanched even whiter than her dead flesh already was as another deadly rain of bolts whistled towards them—
—and Bond pushed the helicopter into a steep dive.
The metal feathers shot past overhead, Ellen was lifted bodily from her feet in a blast of rushing wind – and still, stabilised by some internal sorcery, Pigzie Doodle flew back and forth, yelling at the top of his telepathic voice.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, save me! Someone get it out! For the love of God!
"I advise you make your way to a seat and fasten the safety belt, madam," said Bond calmly, pulling the helicopter out of its dive ten metres from the ground and sending it roaring up into the sky again, a line of spikes thumping into the dirt behind it. "This may well be rather a hectic duel."
"Duel?" cried Ellen, but Bond was no longer listening; he was solely focused on flying the helicopter.
Is this it? shrieked Pigzie Doodle.
Is this the end for me? I watched Herakles punch the **** out of Cerberus and I get killed by a needle in the forehead?
---
It was faster than normal, the Queen realised – after the first volley, the metal bird had dodged her quills. She was wasting them with further attacks, throwing her ammunition away without thought for the future.
Time to change tactics. The Queen let her feathers fall flat against her body, and lowered her talons.
---
The helicopter spun wildly on its axis as a ton and a half of steel and anger smashed into its flank, bending metal and shattering plastic; for a brief moment Ellen's vision was a blur of helicopter cabins, overlaid atop one another in a crazy, shivering pattern – and then Bond got the craft back under control, and it swung away to the left as the Skarmory peeled off to the right.
"Bond! It's not shooting anymore!" she wailed, crawling across the floor and pulling herself into one of the seats.
"I should not be overly concerned, madam," replied Bond. "It seems that whatever it broke was not essential to our continued flight."
Oh! cried Pigzie Doodle weakly, sinking down onto the floor.
I'm dying! Everything's going dark...
"Madam, I have decided that fleeing is no longer an option," Bond said, as they rose sharply to avoid another ramming attack from the Skarmory. "This creature is not only tenacious but displays an inexcusable ignorance of the nobility of the house of Dennell. With your permission, I shall endeavour to destroy it."
"Fine!" cried Ellen, fumbling with the straps of the seatbelt. She had not really heard him over the howling wind; if she had, she might have thought twice about sanctioning his attack.
"Thank you, madam," said Bond, and cut the engines.
The helicopter continued on for half a second – and then fell like a rock, the wind whistling and howling around it, through the blades and through the opening in the side; Pigzie Doodle shot up and became stuck to the ceiling, and Ellen rose from her seat, held down only by the seatbelt—
—and then they hit the Skarmory.
It was as if they had crashed into a mountain: the big bird crumpled the base of the helicopter and snapped the landing rails to bits; the whole vehicle shook, juddering with the impact, and a set of twisted metallic feathers stabbed violently straight through the floor. An anguished screech resounded in the air, and all at once they were falling that much faster.
Now Bond started the engines again, but they were still falling; the blades needed time to build up the requisite speed to lift the machine aloft, and the Skarmory, now pinned to the underside by its own feathers, was a heavy load. Outside, the ground raced closer and closer, and the wind screamed out warnings to all those aboard to abandon ship—
But now they were slowing a little, just a little, as the blades began to speed up, and now a little more, and a little more – and though the ground still approached, it was now at more of a jog than a sprint, and Ellen thought that maybe they might be able to pull away. Then, all at once, the Skarmory came loose from the helicopter and they shot free, up into the sky, as the steel bird plummeted to earth, trailing a despairing shriek in its wake.
A moment later, Bond had them back on a stable course to the west.
"There," he said, adjusting his tie, which had come slightly loose during the commotion. "Relatively painless."
Pigzie Doodle dropped to the floor with a clatter, and the feather fell out of his face-plate.
Oh, he said, gathering himself.
Oh, I'm fine now. Shall we keep going?
Ellen stared at her companions, and for the first time realised that neither of them were quite what she would have described as normal.
---
The Queen staggered upright, bashing one wing into a rock to knock out a dent, and looked up with bloodshot eyes at the metal bird, flying away to the west. It had won, she thought – had smashed into her harder than she had been able to take. And that sort of a blow was something impressive indeed: she had shrugged off rockslides and avalanches before almost without noticing, and this had been far stronger than that.
She threw back her head and screeched, a long, loud cry that acted as a formal resignation of her territory. Then, hoping she could still fly on her crumpled wings, the one-time Queen of the Veilstone hills turned and flew off, leaving the metal bird to enjoy its newly-earned kingdom.
---
When morning came, we set off.
It was amazing, the kind of resources that the League had. I mean, it had its own private jet – used, Jasper explained, in situations such as these – that was essentially free of any obligations to air traffic rules or regulations; we could call it in from Gibbous Island at the drop of a hat, and be flying out on it again within an hour or two. That was exactly what we did, and so it was that I found myself breakfasting at thirty thousand feet at ten o'clock on Sunday morning. If I hadn't been so nervous, I might have enjoyed it.
Because, of course, we were flying to Mount Coronet.
There was already trouble in Veilstone – it had been on the news by the time we got to the airport. Team Galactic had abandoned all attempts to talk to the police or the council about the Drapion incident, and were leaving their building in droves; in addition, a record number of people were driving out of the city. It didn't take a genius to figure out what was happening: Cyrus was evacuating, just as the police started to ask awkward questions.
In short, the final battle was drawing near – and there was
still no sign of Ashley.
The people of Snowpoint Gym were incredibly worried. Despite continued searches, nothing more had been unearthed; Ashley's blood had died in the night, thickening and hardening into something black and rotten, and Riley Stone – the strange man who'd tracked him on Iron Island – was flying in to try and help them. Cynthia had barely slept last night. Nothing, as far as she knew, had ever incapacitated Ashley for as long as this before except the League's own measures – and they needed constant maintenance, or his flesh simply grew straight through the walls and reconnected.
The only good news was that we'd be arriving at Spear Pillar long before Cyrus, which gave us ample time to fortify it and work out a plan of action – not to mention to wait for Ashley. We'd land the jet at the airstrip on the military base north of Celestic Town, requisition a helicopter and be at the summit by five o'clock; Tristan had told us that the Galactics didn't hold out much hope of getting to the Pillar before Monday morning. That gave us time to rest on Saturday night and still be twelve hours ahead of the enemy.
Beneath us, the scree-covered hills of northeast Sinnoh rushed past, an endless sea of brown and green. Somewhere out there, I thought, looking out of the window to the east, was my house. Not that anyone would ever call Corvada Castle a mere
house; it had once been an important defensive outpost protecting against attack from Sicar Isle, and as such was more of a fortress than anything else.
All at once, the desire to return home rose strongly in my mind; I didn't want to fight bad guys on mountaintops, I wanted to go and get drunk in the North Tower; I didn't want to preserve reality, I wanted to curl up in bed and watch TV. At this time on a Sunday morning I should have been nursing a hangover and wondering what exactly had happened last night. Instead, I was sitting in a jet and trying to stop my hands shaking.
"Nervous?" asked Marley. I looked up in surprise; I hadn't heard her approach.
"Yeah," I replied, with a wan smile. "We don't even know what we're doing, do we? Let alone what Cyrus is doing."
"I know what I'm doing," she replied. "I'm going to kill her."
I started. It was very clear that that was not an empty threat.
"What – Liza?"
"Yes." Her eyes were blank, expressionless. "I don't know what Dad felt when she trapped us in that cave. I don't know what he felt when they fought before, when he was young. But I can avenge it."
I didn't know what to say, and a moment later she walked away. All I could think of was how extraordinarily like her father she looked.
Shortly afterwards, we landed at the military base, and, after a late lunch, the second leg of the journey began. This was the more difficult part; the mountains weren't easy to navigate at the best of times and, as they loomed before us, rising out of the pine forest like waking giants, I could see white strings curling around their flanks. From this distance, they looked pretty, but Jasper – who was, it seemed, a qualified helicopter pilot, and hence was driving – clicked his tongue at the sight.
"Snowstorms," he explained, seeing my look. "I suspect the Abomasnow are acting up again."
"Do you think they sense something?" asked Cynthia. "Some sort of danger – from the Pillar?"
"Maybe," he replied. "We won't know until we get closer. The fabric of reality is weak around Spear Pillar; occasionally, small rifts open, and strange things are blown through – from different times and places. Any one of those things could spook the Abomasnow; it's not necessarily Cyrus' plan."
I didn't realise it at the time, but his sentence set off a chain of thoughts in the back of my head. They were to grow there for a while, to feed on scraps of information I'd gleaned over the last few days, to digest them and finally to mature into a single, crystalline realisation.
Unbeknownst to me, I'd just become a detective, and I'd just solved the mystery of Ashley's origins.
---
The exiled Queen was a fast flier, even on deformed wings, and as dawn broke she beheld something that looked startlingly similar to the land of her birth: a vast rock face, sheets of stone and snow heaped one atop another to form a colossal chain of mountains. A few Staraptor wheeled around above the lower slopes, searching for easy prey below; in the heights, the rising sun played across vast forests of snow-encrusted pines. Not forests, the Queen realised, for the trees were walking, grinding slowly across the mountainside. She focused her keen eyes on one, and perceived the glint of eyes in the middle.
Animal-trees, then. Prey, and height, and no competitors. With an exultant shriek, the Queen swept past the Staraptor, her razor-edged wings sending one to the great hunting grounds in the sky, and prepared to assume ownership of this new and glorious territory.
Unfortunately for her, Lady Fortune wasn't yet done with her – and the end of her bad luck was nowhere in sight.
---
Tristan was worried.
He had told Buckley, Gideon, the
strülden and the kid everything he knew about Team Galactic's plans – which was, in his opinion, quite a lot. Now, as he sat in the back of the helicopter, caught up in violent opposition to the very cause he believed in most, he worried about what this would mean for his future.
After all, he had no illusions about his captors' chances of success. The end of time was a foregone conclusion; by Tuesday morning, Cyrus Maragos would have stopped the clocks and created his finished reality. The League couldn't stop him; the Diamond couldn't stop him; Pearl Gideon couldn't stop him. Not even the universe could stop him.
But that meant that all the things Cyrus didn't want in the new world would be destroyed, and Tristan had a funny feeling that 'things that Cyrus didn't want in the new world' would include people who betrayed the Galactics to their enemies.
And that meant, if Tristan was following his train of thought correctly, that he was fairly likely to be destroyed.
Now, he was understandably keen to avoid this fate. Complete and utter personal destruction does not feature highly on the list of many people's chief desires, and Tristan was no exception. He had to find a way of getting out of this situation, and he had to find it before they reached the Pillar.
Escape wasn't really an option, he decided. There was no getting out of this helicopter unless it landed – and even if he found a parachute or something, he'd still be stuck in the middle of nowhere, miles from Mount Coronet's peak. No, the best course of action would be to let the League team take him up to the Pillar, then slip away and rejoin the Team once they'd got there. Perhaps during the inevitable confrontation between the two forces, he would be able to make his escape and start fighting for his rightful side again. Yes, that seemed likely. Maybe someone would have brought Jackie along from the headquarters, and he could rejoin him. Ah, now
that would be satisfying, he thought – everything all smoothed out, all the details settled, and the world put firmly to rights.
Tristan sat back, reasoning that since there would be no action for some time he might as well relax now, and was just getting into some high-quality daydreaming when an alien screech shocked him out of his seat with a bump.
---
No. Not again. Surely it couldn't be...?
It wasn't. It was a different one, the Queen saw. A different individual, bulkier and slower, but definitely a member of the same species.
Fed, rested and even partially repaired, she glared at the intruder from her new perch atop one of the lesser peaks of Coronet. At her feet was the corpse of one of the strange white dogs that she had found gathering here; currently, its internal organs were making a progress through her gut, and ordinarily very little would have disturbed her peace in such a replete condition.
However, another metal bird had shown up, and this time the Queen was determined that it would not get the better of her. She had lost her kingdom of twenty-seven years last night due to underestimating her opponent's physical strength; she would not make the same mistake this time. This one was carrying humans behind its feathers, too – another hazard, but there was no question in her mind of turning back. The foe had to die, or she would.
The Queen flexed her dented wings, and flung herself off into space, feathers ready to launch.
---
"What the
hell was that?" I asked, gripping my seat so tightly my knuckles threatened to pop through my skin.
"A Skarmory," said Jasper in some astonishment, pointing out of the window. "It just appeared from behind that mountain. How peculiar. It's very far from Sicar Isle."
Cynthia spared it a glance and sighed.
"Hang on," she said. "I'll get rid of it."
She felt in her bag for a Poké Ball, found one and cautioned everyone to be careful of the wind. Then she opened the door and tossed it out into the howling wind.
It burst open in midair, a huge, nebulous creature expanding out of it in a flash of blue light; the monster looked a bit like a bird, a bit like an egg and a bit like an enormous ball of candyfloss, and circled the helicopter once, almost silently, before Cynthia pointed it ahead of us. I followed her finger, and stared.
Now, I'd never seen a Skarmory in real life before. I knew what they were, and I'd watched them on nature documentaries. But I had never realised that they were so big, so fast – and so terrifying. The thing bearing down on us seemed more like a small plane than anything living; it looked like something that might be carrying
missiles rather than claws. By contrast, Cynthia's fluffy bird looked about as threatening as a prawn cracker.
That is, it
did – until it glided lazily past the Skarmory, and the steel monstrosity fell out of the sky.
I gaped. I'd seen the tiniest of flashes pass between the two birds, but that was it: nothing more. And yet it had felled the Skarmory like a direct hit from a howitzer.
Cynthia stuck her arm out of the door, recalled her bird and sat down again if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. In the silence following the closing of the door and exclusion of the wind, I felt as if my stare actually made a noise; at least, she noticed it, and turned around to face me.
"What?" she asked. "I'm the
Champion. What did you think would happen?"
"What did you do?" I asked.
"My Togekiss hit it with a Thunder Wave," she said. "Skarmory rely on a combination of momentum and vigorous flapping to stay in the air. Paralyse them and they just... fall." She mimed something crashing with one hand and turned back to the window.
I didn't really know what to say to that. There didn't seem to be any way I could could communicate to her exactly how unbelievable what had just happened was for me. I was not a member of the League. I was a university student who knew a bit about philosophy and German and a lot about getting black-out drunk. Yet somehow the two worlds had intersected, and now I was in a helicopter with the sort of people who, in ancient times, would have cheerfully wandered out of the village to slay some dragons – as
light entertainment.
In the end, I leaned back and shook my head. There just weren't any words I could use to reply.
---
Half an hour later, after we had penetrated the outer layer of mountains and were getting closer to the taller peaks at the centre, Marley spoke.
"The police are raiding the Galactic building."
Cynthia and I sat bolt upright, jerking out of our respective daydreams in an instant, and Tristan looked up sharply, biting his lip. I presume Jasper was surprised too, but he didn't show it.
"What? How do you know?" I asked.
"Amazingly, I get a signal here," she said, holding up her phone. "Here. Read."
I beat Cynthia to it, grabbed it and saw the NoS website.
"Anonymous tip... kidnappings... illegal possession of a dangerous species... damages... yeah, they're in trouble," I surmised. "But apparently they're all gone. I guess they all drove out this morning, before anyone started looking."
"Yeah," agreed Cynthia. "They've got to travel cautiously now, in secret – which means they'll be moving much more slowly, especially carrying all that equipment. More advantage for us, I guess."
"Yeah."
"We're getting close," said Jasper. "Look. You can see the Coronet peak from here."
We crowded around to look, and there it was: a vast shadow over the minor peaks, blue-white against the sky. On the top, I could just about see a faint blur that I supposed must be Spear Pillar.
"That is spectacular," I breathed. "Wow."
"I know," said Cynthia. "Gets me every time."
"It's big," Marley concluded, somewhat anticlimactically, and we flew on through the cold air.
There wasn't much further to go now, and about twenty minutes later, we were within a few miles of the peak.
"Ah," said Jasper. "I... I think you might want to look at this."
Cynthia, Marley, Tristan and I got up to see what it was he was talking about—
—and froze.
"No," said Cynthia. "No, that can't –
how?"
"I don't know," I said. "It's... Cal. I don't know."
"I believe we
may need to rethink our plan," murmured Jasper.
Because there on the mountaintop, amid the ruins of high stone walls and long-collapsed columns, was a swarm of silver suits and blue hair.
Team Galactic had done the impossible.
They'd beaten us to the Pillar.