"Is that glowing rock also a Pokémon?" Hoopa noticed Terapagos immediately.
"It is. It's called Terapagos." Lucien walked forward and crouched beside the crystal platform, looking at the sleeping form within it.
"Is it dead?"
"No. Sleeping."
He lifted Terapagos carefully. It did not react. That made sense: even in the records he carried, Terapagos only woke when people reached the Underdepths after the Zero Lab had been built and the time machine was operational. That was more than two thousand years away.
The tectonic upheaval two million years ago had driven the Terapagos species to extinction, and only this one had survived, having crystallized all of its energy into a protective shell at the critical moment and endured the catastrophe inside it.
He explained this to Hoopa briefly.
Hoopa listened, and its expression shifted into something softer than usual. "How sad. It has been here alone all this time, with no one to talk to."
There was a pause.
"Lucien, let's take it back to the castle."
Lucien looked at Hoopa. "Why?"
"Because it's been waiting here alone with no one to play with it." Hoopa seemed to find its own reasoning entirely obvious. "That's sad. I know what that feels like."
It had not said something like that before. Lucien looked at it for a moment, and felt something warm settle in his chest.
"All right. We take it back, and we find a way to wake it up so it can play with you and Mew."
Hoopa's face brightened completely. "Yes!"
Terapagos secured, there was nothing left to do in the Underdepths. Unfortunately, Koraidon and Miraidon had not appeared in Area Zero. Lucien thought about that for a moment. In the original course of events, the only specimens in Area Zero had been summoned by the researchers through a time machine built far in the future, drawing them forward from ancient and future times respectively.
Before the machine existed, they did not exist in the present. There was nothing to be done about that.
Finding Terapagos was a substantial gain in itself.
"Let's go back," Lucien said, tucking Terapagos carefully into his coat.
He was not concerned about removing Terapagos from the space. The Underdepths were already filled with Tera energy at a concentration that would support continued crystal formation indefinitely. When Professor Sada and Professor Turo eventually reached this place, they would find more than enough to work with.
"Directly back to the castle?" Hoopa began forming a ring.
Lucien thought for a moment, then shook his head. "To the Paldean capital first."
Hoopa tilted its head. "Why?"
"I want to see how the people here live."
Hoopa opened the ring without further comment, and the pale yellow light swept around them and deposited them in an instant onto a smooth, dark grey paved road at the heart of the Paldean capital.
It was nothing like Area Zero.
The city was built against a mountainside in stone and brick, the rooftops covered in warm orange ceramic tiles that caught the afternoon sun and held it. Wide, straight roads were lined with broad-leafed Paldean trees providing green shade, their leaves moving in the wind alongside the sounds of a busy city.
Travelers, merchants, residents, children holding parents' hands — all of them moving through streets that were not tense and not quiet and not afraid of anything in particular.
Pokémon were visible throughout. Cyclizar carrying riders along the roads, Squawkabilly perched on market stalls, Mabosstiff walking calmly beside their people. On one side of the street, an exploration outfitter displayed climbing boots and expedition packs in an open shopfront.
On the other, a bakery's smell of fruit and warm pastry filled the surrounding air, drawing children to press against the counter.
Lucien walked through it without drawing attention to himself, observing.
Paldea had not experienced the wars that had shaped Kalos and Galar. It had its own political structure and its own history of hardship, but the particular devastation of organized military conflict had not touched it the same way.
The people here were prosperous and adventurous, and the relationship between humans and Pokémon had developed in this environment into something that, while different in character from what Lucien had built elsewhere, had arrived at a similar warmth through its own path.
Hoopa disappeared into the market almost immediately. It surfaced periodically beside Lucien carrying something it had acquired from a stall, a string of local fruit, a small carved object, a round pastry, eating and watching and pointing things out with genuine enthusiasm.
"Lucien, look at the Cyclizar! They're racing!"
Lucien looked. A group of riders were moving through the square in a loose, competitive circuit, Cyclizar light and quick on the paving stones.
He walked on through the streets, unhurried, watching. The particular vitality of a place that had been left to develop in its own direction, rich in resources and relatively free from the pressures that had driven other regions into conflict, had produced something genuine. He was glad to see it.
He did not introduce himself. He did not intervene in anything. He simply walked through it as a person passing through, and let the city be what it was.
Eventually he stopped in a stone sculpture square and looked out over the view.
Paldea was safe and well. That was what he had come to see, and he had seen it. There was nothing here that needed him.
"All right, Hoopa," Lucien said, resting a hand briefly on Hoopa's head. "We go back to the castle. And when we get there, we start thinking about how to wake this one up."
"Even a creature that has lived a hundred million years deserves to see the world," Lucien said.
Hoopa's eyes lit up and it nodded with enthusiasm. A pale yellow ring opened in front of them, and through it, the familiar courtyard of Lucien City Castle was visible.
Lucien took one last look at the busy, prosperous streets of the Paldean capital, then turned and stepped through.
Back in his room in Lucien City, Lucien set things in motion quickly.
"Elif," he said, as the old butler appeared at the knock.
"Your Majesty, you've returned."
"Send an envoy to the Paldea Empire. Inquire whether the King is willing to cooperate with us in establishing a Pokémon League and deepening the connection between humans and Pokémon there."
"Yes, Your Majesty." Elif bowed and withdrew.
Lucien sat down and took out the Terapagos crystal. Then he released his Pokémon: Dragonite, Serperior, Volcarona, Kyurem, Hoopa. He looked at Kyurem.
"Of everyone here, you have existed longest. Do you know how to wake a Pokémon that has been sleeping like this?"
Kyurem lowered its head and examined the gem, which emitted a faint, unusual glow. Its voice came inward rather than outward, settling directly in Lucien's mind.
"Its fundamental energy is depleted beyond what can be replenished by ordinary means. It has been sustaining itself through sleep for an incomprehensible span of time. I cannot address something like this. But Calyrex might.
The power of life and faith, brought to sufficient concentration, could give it something to recover toward."
"Calyrex," Lucien said.
He looked at Hoopa.
"Leave it to Hoopa." Hoopa was already forming the ring before it finished speaking.
In moments, Calyrex arrived from Galar, its expression composed, the Power of Faith that surrounded it heavy and present and filling the room with a quality of solemnity the moment it entered. It had grown considerably in strength since the days in Galar.
Three major regions now knew its name and held it in reverence, and that collective faith had accumulated into something far beyond what it had carried before.
"Lucien, what brings you to need me?" Calyrex's gaze moved to the crystal almost immediately. It stepped forward, paused. "This is a life form from an ancient era."
It could feel it: deep within the crystalline shell, a trace of primordial energy, barely present but entirely intact, preserved across millions of years of sleep.
Lucien explained Terapagos's origin and circumstances briefly. Hoopa nodded along beside him, its expression earnest.
"It's been alone for so long," Hoopa said. "You have to help it."
Calyrex was quiet for a moment. "I understand." It looked at Lucien. "The Power of Faith can nourish it. I can draw on the prayers and belief of the people who know me, channel that as life-sustaining energy into its body, and support its recovery. The damage is extensive, but not beyond reach."
"Then please try," Lucien said.
Calyrex closed its eyes. The Power of Faith moved from its body in a slow, expanding wave, transforming as it reached the crystal into something softer: a golden stream of light that wrapped around Terapagos completely and settled against the surface like warmth settling into cold stone.
The crystal trembled, very slightly. Its light, which had been nearly still, began to shift and brighten.
Kyurem watched from the side without speaking. Dragonite and Serperior gathered closer, examining the glowing crystal with open curiosity. Mew drifted to its surface and pressed its small head against it gently, as though it could feel what was inside.
Hoopa leaned in as close as it could get without touching, eyes wide and unblinking. "Wake up. Wake up and come play with Hoopa."
The light continued to build. Time moved in the strange way it does when something slow is happening that matters: both dragging and suddenly over. Then the crystal's glow reached a peak and Calyrex's channeling stopped.
The crystal began to change.
The hard shell dissolved in the light, and from within it a small, delicate Pokémon appeared. A round head, a rhombus-shaped blue crystal horn at the top, two large eyes with pale blue irises and star-shaped pupils.
Its back was covered in a pale green crystalline growth, its edges lit from within, a Tera-shaped star embedded at the center. Its entire body gave off a soft, gentle glow.
Terapagos.
Lucien looked at it. Nothing ferocious, nothing ancient in the threatening sense. Simply a small, quietly luminous creature that had somehow survived the end of its entire species and an incomprehensible span of darkness, and had now opened its eyes for what might have been the first time in two million years.
Terapagos looked around at the faces surrounding it with the particular bewilderment of something that had woken somewhere it did not recognize. Then its gaze settled on Lucien.
It seemed to find him the most interesting thing in the room. It raised its small limbs and walked toward him.