The stairs were steeper than they looked.
They wound around the great pillar in a slow spiral, each tread polished to a soft shine by centuries of sandalled feet. Kai went up with one hand on the railing, and the other instinctively braced near the wall, because the whole staircase moved with the pillar — not enough to throw him off, but enough that he kept feeling like the next step had drifted half an inch to one side while he wasn't looking.
Sandshrew rode his shoulder in silence. Its claws were back to gripping his jacket properly now, making sure to keep his own balance.
He reached the top of the flight, ducked under a low beam, and stepped out onto the floor.
It was darker up here. The paper screens were smaller, fewer of them, and the light came in thin ladders across the boards. The pillar took up the centre of the room as it had downstairs, only narrower, and the tendrils were more active up at this height — pale green feelers, some thin as a finger, others thick as Kai's wrist, drifting and curling in the still air like they were tasting it.
Kai could also see plenty of wild Pokémon spread around the floor.
A Bellsprout, low to the ground, half-tucked behind one of the support struts. A Hoothoot perched on a beam near the ceiling, asleep on one foot. A Rattata, busy with something in the corner — chewing on a fragment of fallen wood, cheeks working.
Kai stopped where he was and just looked at them, holding his breath for a second.
A Bellsprout. Right there. Maybe four metres off. Kai said to himself.
He thought, very carefully, about one of the free Poké Balls on his belt.
But he didn't get the chance to use it.
The Bellsprout's bell-shaped head snapped up the second he so much as shifted his weight. It saw him, the way the wild Mankey had seen him on the road, the way nothing in the games ever saw you. Its leaves rustled against the wood. Then it was gone, vine-whipping itself sideways into a dim corner with a scrape and a thin wet sound, and through a gap in the boards behind a beam that Kai hadn't even noticed was there.
The Rattata went next. One whisker-twitch and then a streak of purple along the wainscot, vanishing under a panel.
The Hoothoot opened its eyes, looked at him with one perfectly round, deeply unimpressed yellow lamp, and then unfolded its wings and dropped through a gap in the eaves so casually it almost looked rude. He saw the flash of brown through one of the high screen-windows as it cleared the building entirely.
Then he was alone with the pillar and the creak of the wood, not a Pokémon in sight.
"Right..." Kai said, mostly to himself.
Sandshrew made a small huffing noise in his ear that was definitely a laugh, getting Kai's attention.
"Yeah, alright." He said, not taking it to heart.
He stood there for another second, weighing it. So much for that. He'd half-expected at least one to hold its ground. After all, in the game you had to actually run from wild Pokémon, they didn't run from you. But of course they did here. Of course they did. They lived in the tower. They had to know what came up these stairs, not interacting with humans very often.
He let out a slow breath and made himself unclench around the disappointment. There were more floors, and still plenty of time. There was also the porch and the gardens outside. There were all of Route 31 and 32, and the slopes around Union Cave still ahead of him. So plenty more Pokémon for him to sniff out.
"Welcome, young trainer," A voice came from the far side of the pillar, taking Kai by surprise.
Kai turned to see who it was, already having an idea.
The monk had been standing there the whole time, or near enough — older than the two at the gate, maybe in his sixties, in the same plain ochre robe but with a darker sash around his waist. He was small. Wiry and had a bald head. His hands were folded into his sleeves, and he held himself with the loose, settled stillness of someone who'd never once in his life been in a rush.
He'd been watching the wild Pokémon flee, Kai thought. He'd been watching that whole scene, and Kai hadn't even clocked him.
"Morning," Kai said.
"Good morning." The monk inclined his head a fraction as a smile crossed his face. "You won't be going any further, I'm afraid. Not without a battle that is."
Kai had been expecting that. Even so, hearing it out loud made his stomach do the little tight squeeze it always did before something serious, his adrenaline kicking in.
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Kai asked, feeling confident.
"It is not personal," he said. "It is the way of the tower. We do not let trainers pass who have not earned their passage. The next floor will not be kind to you if this one was."
He lifted one hand free of his sleeve, and there was a Poké Ball already in it.
"My name is Brother Anh. Are you ready?"
"Yeah," Kai said with a nod.
"Then we begin."
He underhanded the ball toward the floor, letting it drop before it burst open with a flash of light.
The Bellsprout that came out of it was nothing like the one that had fled into the wall of the tower.
It was bigger, for a start — taller than Sandshrew by a fair stretch, leaves a deeper green, bell-head set on a stem that hummed slightly with tension the moment it was free. It's little black eyes were fixed on Kai with the same flat, purposeful attention as its trainer's. It didn't sway. It didn't fidget. It just stood, knee-bent, leaves cocked, ready to battle.
Kai felt for his Pokédex without looking down, something that had become a habit every time he saw a new Pokémon.
He brought it up and pointed it at the Bellsprout. The screen woke up with a small, clean blue bloom of light and the pleasant, slightly grandfatherly voice.
[Bellsprout. The flower Pokémon. Its thin, flexible body sways and twists to dodge incoming attacks. It hunts by spitting acidic fluid that softens its prey before it strikes.]
A short list of moves scrolled up the side, faintly. Razor Leaf. Vine Whip. Acid. Wrap.
Kai clocked them and put the Pokédex away in a single movement. He could feel Brother Anh watching the exchange with mild interest, like an examiner watching a candidate set out their tools.
"Sandshrew, sit this one out, buddy."
Sandshrew dropped off his shoulder onto the floor without complaint and trundled to the edge of the open space. Doing as Kai asked.
Kai unclipped a different Ball, already knowing who he would choose.
"Zubat, let's go."
The Ball cracked open with a flash of red, and Zubat unfurled into the dim air above the floor, wings out, mouth open, the small high chittering sound of it rebounding off the wooden beams. It was right at home up here, Kai realised. Indoor light, low ceiling, dust in the air. It hung above him with one little adjustment of its wings and waited for the call to battle, knowing what was going on.
Brother Anh's eyebrows went up a quarter-inch.
"A Zubat," he said. "Interesting choice."
"Now, Bellsprout use Razor Leaf."
There was no warm-up. The Bellsprout didn't tense, didn't take a breath — it just snapped its leaves forward, and a fan of green blades was suddenly cutting through the air toward Zubat, fast, sharp-edged, a blur the eye barely got a fix on.
"Zubat, quick fly up and dodge it!"
Zubat dropped its left wing and rolled hard, pushing into the air with all of its might. The leaves hissed past underneath it, one after the other. One clipped a beam behind it with a thock and stuck there, quivering from the force. Two others embedded themselves in the tower wall behind Kai, almost hitting him.
However, Kai didn't even flinch, too focused on the battle before him.
"Supersonic. Right at it."
Zubat's mouth opened wide, and the tower's quiet shifted a gear.
The sound came out of Zubat as a thin, hard ripple — not loud, but painful, a frequency that made the wood beams hum and one of the loose tendrils on the pillar twitch sharply away from itself. Kai felt it through his teeth, behind his ears. Brother Anh went very still and let it pass over him like a man who'd felt it before, hardly reacting at all.
The Bellsprout did not.
It took the full pulse straight in the bell of its head, and the effect was instant — its leaves went slack, its stem started to weave in a circle like it was drunk, and one of its little eyes drifted out of sync with the other. It tried to right itself, but leaned the wrong way and nearly fell over.
"Recover, Bellsprout, and use Vine Whip."
The Bellsprout obeyed — sort of. Two thin vines lashed out from the base of its leaves, hard, fast, and accurately aimed. At Brother Anh. They smacked the front of his robe and snapped back in confusion.
The monk did not flinch. He just looked down at his own torso, then at his Pokémon, with a small, dry expression that suggested this had happened to him before in a long career of training Pokémon.
"Not me, Bellsprout, again at the Zubat."
But Kai had other plans than to let it get off another attack.
"Wing Attack. Finish it."
Zubat dropped out of the air like a thrown blade.
Its wings drew back — a half-second of held tension as its wings started to glow — and then it sliced forward and across, low, as the leading edge of its left wing went straight through the Bellsprout's stem in a clean, glancing arc, scoring a direct hit.
The Bellsprout flew sideways across the floor in a tangle of leaves and wet sap-smell, hitting the foot of the pillar — Kai winced, remembering the rule as Bellsprout bounced gently off it, and didn't get back up.
A long, slow second passed before brother Anh let his breath out through his nose, which was either a sigh or a chuckle or both.
"Return Bellsprout.
The Bellsprout dissolved into red light and went back into its Ball with the small obedient whup that healthy Pokémon made.
Zubat circled once over Kai's head, did a small triumphant loop, and then settled itself onto his outstretched arm with a smug little chitter.
"Good work," Kai murmured, and Zubat butted its head against his thumb.
Brother Anh re-folded his hands inside his sleeves. Then, slowly, he bowed.
"Cleanly done," he said. "Move with care between the screens. The boards on the western side of the floor are uneven." The monk said before he smiled.
"You may pass."
"Thank you," Kai said, happy with his victory.
"Brother Tien is on the eastern half of the floor. He will be expecting you."
"Right," Kai said, recalling Zubat to its Ball with a soft click.
Sandshrew was already trundling back to him without being asked. It scrabbled up his trouser leg and back to his shoulder and gave Brother Anh a slightly cocky look that Kai pretended not to notice.
Kai bowed back, the way he'd seen the porch monks do it, and Brother Anh's mouth ticked up at one corner.
Then Kai walked on.
One down, he thought. One left on this floor — and then whatever the third one had waiting for him above. Sandshrew shifted on his shoulder, watching the curve of the pillar with him as it came around, claws still tight in the fabric of his jacket.
"Alright, let's take on the next trainer."