The cold was the first thing I felt, an icy wind blowing past my face, sending shivers all across my body. Blinking, I managed to open my eyes, a part of my mind flashing back to the first day I had spent here, the first day I could recall. The Uxie had given me quite a bit to think about, especially given that the information it had presented had been almost incoherent, with an emphasis on weird areas that made no sense to me. Why a hyper-focus on the citrus taste of the tea, while there was a person at the edge of the memory, wouldn’t that be more important?

Before I could lose myself in the vast amount of information it had vomited all over me, the memory oddly clear and embedded within my mind, I realised I had to take care of my situation first.

Pushing myself up, I looked around and saw a whole lot of white, with some browns and greens providing dashes of colour. A snowed-in forest, likely the forest around Lake Accuity. But the snow was new, there either had been a rather sudden shift in the weather or I had lost some time while meeting the Uxie.

Maybe I was still in the area where the mist had enveloped me, but I couldn’t tell, there were no traces around me, nothing that hinted how I got here. Why did that feel so much like Deja Vu, why did legendary Pokémon enjoy dumping me into snowy forests? Once was an accident, and twice was the beginning of a pattern. And not a pattern I enjoyed, I was already getting cold, despite having Cynthia’s cloak wrapped around me.

Standing up, I noticed my backpack leaning against a tree and a swift check confirmed that I still had all of my Pokéballs attached to my belt, or at least that I had six, my four partners and two spares, just in case.

Unwilling to simply hope that these were my Pokéballs, I took them out one by one, calling out my partners. They all appeared and immediately swarmed towards me, Aura hugging one of my legs, Vio the other, while Charm placed his claws around me, wrapping me in a protective cocoon of heat and lizard. Even Su rubbed against my leg for a moment, before taking a few steps back, as if he couldn’t believe that he had willingly shown affection.

“Guys, it’s all right, I’m fine, I’m here,” I tried to calm my frantic partners, though their behaviour was worrying. I remembered Vio helping, and healing, me in the Uxie’s realm, but other than that, I wasn’t sure why they were acting this way.

When my stomach started to rumble, I decided to push the question back and picked out a nice fir tree, with a thick coat of needles and a wide base, slipping under the branches to get some shelter. For a moment, I considered calling Charm back into his Pokéball to make sure he wouldn’t accidentally set fire to my shelter but the look on his face made me reconsider. My partner was worried and only my presence would assuage that worry. Calling him back, while possible, would simply be cruel. Instead, I pushed up one of the branches as much as possible, allowing him into the shelter and arranging his flame to be away from anything flammable. The biggest advantage of that was, the small space under the tree, now filled with Pokémon and myself, quickly warmed up, my partners’ body heat driving away the biting cold.

As I was eating, one-handed so my other hand could alternate which of my partner got some cuddles, I tried to go through the memories the Uxie had engraved into my mind. Some were images, some were ramblings, nothing I could easily interpret or use. No simple and easy solution to my problem, but a whole lot of breadcrumbs to follow and I even had a place to start looking. Kanto. If only I was strong enough to travel between regions.

However, the one thing that stood out in stark clarity was the last piece of advice the Uxie had given to me.

‘The Renegade Lord does not act needlessly. You are here, in this land, at this time, for a reason, a reason important enough to make the Renegade Lord move. Once that reason becomes apparent to you, you will need to be ready,’ Or so its warning went, though I had a feeling that the ‘reason’ wasn’t as clear-cut as I might like. Why would a creature powerful enough to violate the boundaries of Space and Time, the Renegade Lord of the Distortion Realm, need a human? Why would they move me, or rather rescue me?

I had no idea, but I also had no idea why the ‘Mischievous Maker’, an unfamiliar name, would push me through a portal, causing me to end up outside the realms of space and time. Maybe a prank, the Uxie had postulated, but didn’t a prank need to be amusing?

Shaking my head, I decided against trying to guess the motivations of what I assumed to be some sort of ancient Pokémon, something at a similar level to the Renegade Lord. It was an exercise in futility, especially given that, from what I knew, Pokémon didn’t think along the same lines as humans did. We could learn to understand each other if we were so motivated, but the fundamentals of our minds were simply too different.

To be ready when ‘the reason’ became apparent, the Uxie had suggested. And not only suggested, looking at the memories it had engraved into my mind, it seemed that it had also given me some means to achieve that.

Parsing those memories, I felt my forehead twist into a frown. The memories were strange, there were two sets of them. One of them contained primarily images, similar to a movie, showing what I was supposed to do, and how the trained Pokémon had to move. In addition, there was an oddly familiar voice, one I was confident I had heard before but couldn’t place at all, showing the different Pokémon in those memories how to move. I could recognise most of the Pokémon’s species, but the environment in the images was too common to give me further clues about where the images were from. From what I could see, whoever was guiding these Pokémon knew what they were doing, some of them looked like absolute monsters and yet, they were easily pushed and prodded into some rather straining exercises by that voice, sometimes even bodily moved by a pair of slim, yet tanned and scarred, hands.

Whoever they were, or maybe had been, I was pretty certain they knew what they were doing with their ‘mon’s, making me itch to use some of the exercises, just as the Uxie most likely intended me to.

The other set of memories was just as strange, or maybe even stranger. Instead of images, it was just words, not even spoken or written, simply a litany of thoughts. The easiest I could compare it to would be reading, but reading a text without seeing it, the words simply flowing through my mind. It was not as directly practical but filled with information about a wide variety of Pokémon, how they developed and evolved and what could be done to encourage a particular direction in their growth. The Charcoal I had been given for Charm was among the suggestions, but others were far less intuitive. Nurse Joyce had told me how some minerals were useful in a Pokémon’s diet and could promote growth, but the memories I was given were even deeper, more detailed. In some cases, the growth was broken down into numbers, with averages and projections depending on diet and hundreds of different factors. I couldn’t even begin to make sense of it all, not in the way it was presented. If I wanted to actually use the knowledge, I would have to painstakingly write it out, slowly work my way through the entire litany and commit it to paper. Fun.

But first, get somewhere where I can replenish my supplies, hopefully to Snowpoint City. Calling everyone but Vio back into their Pokéballs, I crawled out of my shelter, already feeling better thanks to being fed and warm. A quick glance to the sky, luckily mostly sunny, allowed me to get the position of the Sun and my compass told me that the position was roughly south-south-east, meaning it was around noon, giving me most of the day.

Given that Snowpoint City was located on a mountain, with the sea north and east of that mountain, I could simply move North-East, until I either hit the mountain, the sea or Lake Accuity. From there, I would be able to get a better idea of my position and make my way back to town.

“Come, Vio, we’ve got places to be,” I took my partner’s hand, her presence helping to ground me in reality, preventing me from slipping into the deluge of memories the Uxie had crammed into my mind. Luckily, my skull had been mostly empty before, maybe that was why the tales always mentioned memory loss, the Uxie needed some space to put what you sought.

Or maybe it simply enjoyed messing with people, I didn’t know. But I had learned quite a bit, I only needed to make sense of it.