Delysia - Caverns of Mt. Silver
Rather than heading up further up the slopes of the mountains, Delysia led the pair deeper and deeper into the tunnels beneath the mountain. She wasn't quite sure why, but she was glad that the pair had ended up following her. Probably because of the past few weeks spent nearly alone. Having her pokemon with her helped, but there was something about having other human beings around her. Even the sound of another voice came as a joy to her, even if she wasn't happy with what was being said. She still didn't like the guy, Gray, but the girl Val seemed okay. Loyal to a fault perhaps, and perhaps stuck in the past with her weapons. Then again, she wasn't one to talk, still using blades over guns.
She vaulted over a boulder dropping to the floor a half dozen feet below. Pulling out a crudely drawn map, she glanced at the mess of lines, numbers, and letters that she had marked down, then at the three passages that the cave split into. She searched the wall at the entrance of one of the passages, relieved to see the markings that she had made with a sharp stone about a week ago, last time she had taken the path. It was easy to get turned around in places like these. The larger pokemon, donphans, aggrons, and even the rare tyranitar had carved tunnels like these through the years leaving a confusing mess of caves and caverns. One wrong turn would leave you hopelessly confused if you weren't being careful. Tucking her map back into her pocket she said, "Watch your step here, a stream meets with the tunnel and the rocks can get a bit slippery."
True to her words, a few hundred feet further down the tunnel a stream quietly gurgled out of a small gash in the rock wall. It spilled down into a small pool, then turned flowed down one side of the tunnel, occasionally meandering from one side of the tunnel to the other. After a few times hopping over the stream as it wove through the tunnel and another half mile later, she turned off her electric lantern, making not of where her feet were before she did so. "The pokemon will get startled with any sudden new source of light. Keep your right hand on the wall and be extremely careful with your feet. We only have another couple hundred feet to go." She traced the raged rock wall with her hand as she moved forward, carefully sliding one foot before the other.
A minute later, as they drew closer to the cavern that she knew lay before them, a hazy green glow began to suffuse the tunnel, making the edges of the rocks on the path vaguely more perceptible. Another fifty feet later the glow was enough to make out the details in the cave, and then they turned a corner and the source of the light became apparent. Before them and fifty feet down was a massive cavern with various tunnels leading off in various directions, and water flowed from a few of them to form a clear lake at the bottom of the cave. From the ceiling hung strands upon strands of luminous vines, their leaves casting off the green glow they had seen from the tunnel. The light illuminated the cavern giving it an eerie light, and giving the lake a sickly green color. Various fish pokemon could be seen swimming around in the lake and a half dozen large pokemon roamed around the cavern eating the lower hanging vines.
"Here is the place where I have found the strongest pokemon in the mountain so far", she said to her two companions. "There are maybe a dozen of the strongest pokemon who have their own territories in the cavern, and another dozen weaker pokemon that they in turn protect. If you attack one of the leaders, be prepared to deal with their friends too. Similarly, if you attack one of the weaker pokemon, the leader will probably come to protect it. These probably aren't the strongest pokemon physically in the mountain, but they are the most difficult to fight because they all work together. Numbers and coordinated attack are how they survive here." She looked back at them, "Not that they aren't pretty strong on their own of course." She smiled at them, then gazed back down at the beautiful cavern that lay out stretched before them. "Alright then, lets get a move on." With that she started to climb down from their tunnel to the cavern floor, carefully picking out her hand and footholds down the steep slope.