The party travels to Silvertree...hopefully

As the stampede subsided, Zandrophin looked down to see Marcus still attached to the cliff. He cracked a small smile and said,

"Well....whaddya know...he's still alive. Alright, fearless leader...haul your ass up here...or....we go down there...I'm....not really sure which direction we're supposed to go anymore; you were supposed to keep track of that, being the leader and all. Either way, let's get moving....we won't do anybody a lick of good to freeze out here due to your indecisiveness."

Maya sighed, glad that the danger, at least for now, was past. In the meantime she kept away from the ledge and stood, legs much more stable this time. She listened to them bicker, nothing new there. She smiled at Marcus's comments though.

Dororo rolled his eyes at their banter. He had heard enough of it too. However, Maya caught him shivering slightly, the cold and dry air clearly starting to get to him.

"You gonna be okay, Oro?" She questioned, rubbing his head.

"Froooooga!" He replied, nodding.

"Okay... but if I see you shivering again you're gonna have to go back in the Pokeball okay?"

Marcus looked down. Well, I am closer to the ground than the top. but then again, it would be a bit hard to traverse all the fallen trees... -sigh- All right, up we go...

Marcus pulled out his hammer and tapped at the top of the spikes until they loosened up, then took them out of the cliff, threw them over his shoulder; still attached to the rope, and started to ascend. Foothold, tree root, rock, Marcus made his way up. There was a time or two that his hand slipped on a rock he didn't notice was icy on top, but otherwise, he was fine. He wasn't even tired when he pulled himself up to join the others.

Marcus breathed a second, then took Sofa out of his ball. Looking around frantically, he saw that everyone was okay and then gave Marcus a great hug. "All right, all right. It's okay, buddy. You're welcome." Marcus knelt down a put his makeshift climbing tools back into his backpack, pulled out a bottle of fresh water, took a swig and tossed it to Maya. "Drink. It's super dry up here despite all the snow, as you know Maya, and it's easy to dehydrate. So...shall we?" Marcus gestured past the group to start their trek once more.

Without looking at him, Marcus tossed the bottle to zandrophin, holding a slight smirk on his face as he looked at Maya,
"Yeah, I'm okay. I just, uh...had some problems earlier. Too many things going on at once, not being able to make a decision..." Knowing I couldn't save all of us. "It's fine, it just took Sofa here to get me to snap out of it," and accept that you were going to die and save myself. "speaking of friends, it looks like Oro there has grown a bit. He really did wonders back there to get you. I didn't even see how he did it, he would have had to have fallen into the stampede to grab you. It's like a miracle."

Zandrophin caught the bottle and drank. He was becoming irritated by this line of conversation.

We're wasting time. Every minute we lose endangers our mission here, Mentus.

It'll be alright, Sir...we'll still make it. We're just going to be a bit delayed.

Delays...Zandrophin hated delays. He was a professional...and yet here he was....standing around with these two...talking about almost dying. He'd had enough,

"Alright, alright...so we're not dead. Can we get a move on, perhaps? I'd rather not stay out here if I don't have to. Let's keep going!"

She noticed that Marcus held Sofa back, which was odd. She thought Sofa would go on leading the group, considering how well he had done so far. She looked at Dororo for some sort of explanation. The Frogadier just shrugged back.

Maya sighed and pulled a bag of dried Magost berries and dried Pinap berries for Dororo. She popped the shriveled pink fruit in her mouth and handed a yellow shriveled one to Dororo who happily munched on it.

"Can someone just lead the way?" She asked with a heavy sigh.

Marcus tried to imitate zandrophin's "ta-da" face back at him as best as he could until he turned back around. "Welp...now that we're on our way...-yawn- we can relax and enjoy the scenery again." Marcus looked to his right and saw the devastation that was left after the Mamoswine tore through the forest.

"I wonder why they were stampeding...There had to be something that startled all of them, and from a long way back too, they don't fit in this forest. They're not that easily startled..." Hope we don't find out...