Chapter 297: Chapter 297: I have been to the mountain

It has been about a week since then.

 

The wizard-girl, exhausted, lifts her arms to cover her eyes to shield them from the pelting, frigid winds that press against her body. The icy torrent surges down the cliff-face which she presses herself against, the winds pushing against her frame, trying to throw her off of the precipice. The thick layer of clothing covering her small gestalt billows in the gale, the fabric covering her face to shield it from the cold, pressing against her nostrils and making it troublesome to breathe. But it’s better than the alternative.

 

It got out. They were too late. They couldn’t stop it in time. The thing had escaped the darkness in which it was chained.

 

The wind surges, as if the mountain itself were blowing her away like an insect off of its shoulder. She yelps, her footing giving way, as her body suddenly lurches towards the distant world below them.

 

A strong hand grabs her wrist.

 

“Watch your step!” lectures the monk, pulling her back up onto the rock-face that they are traversing.

 

Feeling a pool of cool sweat building beneath the layers of fabric that she’s wearing, she lets out a relieved sigh, feeling her legs wobbling beneath her. “Thanks,” says the wizard. The monk nods to her and the two of them keep going.

 

They’re too late to stop it from happening. But they can still control the damage.

 

It has been about a week since then.

 

Since she had escaped the dungeon. Since the monk had escaped the dungeon, after pushing in deeper by herself after the fight, trying to find the priestess, trying to find the hero. But there was nobody left to find. By the time she managed to pull herself back out, there was only one other person there. The wizard.

 

They had failed in spectacular fashion. How many were going to die because of this? Because of their inability? Because of their lack of intent. Because of their lack of conviction. Hundreds of thousands. Millions. Everyone.

 

But if they can stop the source, if they can kill the root of the rot, then maybe they can reduce the damage a little. That’s the best that they can hope to do.

 

The two of them had set out, following the trail that they found outside of the dungeon. It’s obvious that the thing was seeking elevation, so that the fungal body could erupt and so that the spores could fly as far as possible, spreading out in all directions as the world-winds carried them far and wide, too many and too distant to be caught; let alone eradicated. But what made it even more obvious, were the many drawings that they found scribbled into the dirt, scribbled into the trees and the rocks by hand.

 

Childish drawings of stick people, of crude depictions of local wild-life and the scenery all around them. As if an excited adolescent had felt captivated by every little thing in the outside world and had felt an intense need to draw it all. But there weren’t just drawings. There were also crude symbols and letters, as if the thing had been trying to learn how to write, trying to learn how to read. Scattered next to those, were stacks of rocks, were little objects made out of broken sticks and splintered wood that they only later recognized as very rough figurines of the animals around them. Birds. Frogs and one particularly large and detailed recreation of a lizard, that must have taken unsettlingly long to make just by itself.

 

If she didn’t know better, she’d say that they were hunting an excited, moon-crazed child.

 

The wind howls, surging with violent force as they reach a ledge. There is a large gap from here to the other side, too far to jump for a normal human and the wall is too steep to climb across safely. The two of them stand there, their heavy clothes wrapping around their figures as they stare down at the single rope, spanning from this side of the gap to the other, swaying violently in the wind.

 

The monk tugs on it. Someone had gone to great lengths to ensure that it was tied securely in place on both ends.

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She looks back to the wizard and nods. The wizard nods back, taking in a deep breath to calm herself down. The monk goes first, locking her arms and legs around the rope and crawling upside down along to the other side with relative ease. The wizard, with shaking, violently trembling legs screams into her scarf to get the fear out of her, as she grabs the rope and starts crawling over to the other side in the same fashion. Though it’s easier said than done. More than once, she notices her joints locking into place, her body freezing as if becoming part of the rigid mountain.

 

She can’t hear the encouraging voice of the monk on the other side, all she can hear is the wind, all she can feel is the wobbling of the single rope holding her above the entire world. Her heart thrashes, racing with a painful tempo, as her trembling eyes dart from left to right, seeking any source of shelter and safety and escape from the terror.

 

There on the rock-face, next to the rope, carved into the mountain she sees a bunch of sloppily spelled words, written in a jagged, terrible and almost entirely illegible script. Dozens of them, hundreds. The longer she stares at the shear wall to her side, the more she sees that it is entirely covered in them. The markings.

 

“You’re almost there!”

“Don’t give up!”

“This way towards the apex of the world ->”

“Pretend you’re a spider.”

“It’s really scary, that’s why it’s fun!”

“Be the hero! (But not a jerk)”

 

By the time she finishes reading everything, she notices that somehow she has made it to the other end, despite her heaving and crying at the same time. The monk grabs her, pulling her up and consoling her for a moment, before the two of them keep climbing together.

 

As they reach closer and closer to the summit, the deathly winds seem to grow less and less, as if they were finally climbing out of its reach, as if they were swimming out of the deepest reaches of the black ocean and had finally pulled themselves free from the powerful current trying to swallow them.

 

The two of them reach the top of the mountain, standing together as they stare at the only other thing here with them.

 

The monk and the wizard turn to look at each other for a moment, before both of them turn back towards the hollow suit of empty, slumped over armor sitting there. Its cape billows in a strange, powerful gust that neither of them feel on their bodies.

 

They walk towards the hollow shell. It doesn’t stir. There is no light to its eyes, no indication of any life to its presence. It is simply… empty.

 

Looking down at it, they stare at the metal body before them. At the crude depiction it has drawn into its own chest with a sharp rock that lays just next to it. The drawing on its body of six stick figures. One in the middle holding two hands of those next to it, with the happiest expression of them all, while the rest of them hold each other’s all together. The big one has a cape, then there is one with a sword, one with a pointy wizard’s hat, one with a band of beads around her arm, one with a smile kinder than the others and one with long ears.

 

Beneath them all is a single, crudely carved word that is scratched into the armor -

 

“Love.”

 

 

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