Jellian groans while the metal lever he strains against refused to budge. I stare up at the sheer rocky slope rising a hundred feet or more to the wooded cap of the Green Mountain. I sit on a boulder watching Jellian struggle with the rusted door of the cage elevator attached to the side of the mountain. I kick a flat circle of flint off the lip of the rock only to discover a dead scorpion beneath it. I hiss in air, climbing off the boulder and stand with Bali and the mysterious old woman that had been sent as our escort. We likely share near identical frowns, staring at Kapin and Halford, who in turn watch Jellian struggle with unconcealed humor in their eyes.
The journey to the mountain had taken up the entire morning, some of the more well provisioned adventuring parties passing us on the road and waving from the backs of their horses. As soon as the destination for the competition had been announced a knot had started to form in my gut, the tension there climaxing when the winch elevator came into sight.
As children, I often followed Kapin and my brother out to the old elevator cleverly hidden on the east side of the mountain past a few gullies that most would choose to walk around rather than slop through mud to reach. When Halford had brought me on the first night he had explained that their eldest brother Corinth had installed the elevator. Apparently, before he had even gained his first essentia, Corinth had scaled the mountain and fought the rank one monsters at the top with nothing but a few sharp knives stolen from the kitchen back home. When Corinth came down the mountain again, three weeks later, he weathered the greatest test of his life, our mother’s--very physical--fury. Most of the anger washed away when Corinth revealed the treasures he had found at the top of the mountain, the three essentia that he would use to break out of the family’s cycle of farming.
Since then, many of the local adventurers out of Westgrove had attempted the feat, but most never made it back. The mountain was a hotspot for magical activity--the hotspot in the area--and from what I had heard, essentia and other magical crystallizations flowed like water at the top. Despite having come out to the sight of the elevator many times in the past, none of the three of us had ever taken it all the way to the top, though not for lack of daring each other to do so. Once, when he was fifteen, Halford cranked the elevator to halfway up the mountain, but the chain carrying the elevator kinking and sticking one time was enough to break his nerve.
Jellian yells in frustration and starts kicking the rusty latch that held the door to the cage elevator closed.
“This is dumb,” I say. “Halford, just open the stupid thing.”
“He said that he had it,” Halford replies with a shrug.
Jellian throws a furious gaze back at Halford, using kicks against the cage to punctuate his words. “I. Do. Not. Require. Assistance. With. A. Door!” The rusted weld that holds the door lock to the rest of the iron bars of the cage door breaks, leaving a battered row of iron bars to swing outward on its hinge while the fastening remains solidly locked. “There.”
“Great, it’s broken,” I say, cheering with the most sarcastically slow applause I can manage.
“It should still work,” Halford says as he steps up to the cage. He tries latching the door closed with little success. “Looks like we’ll just need to hold it closed when we’re using it.”
“So, the only thing that separates us from a lethal fall onto these jagged rocks is Kapin’s ability to hold onto a door?” Bali asks.
“Why does it have to be me?”
“Not exactly,” Halford continues, ignoring his friend. “The elevator seats three. We’ll go up first and you three can follow after. It’s only a hundred feet or so to the top, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Who is going to crank the winch for us?” I ask, looking at Bali and the unnamed, silent woman in the ice-blue habit. The old woman, gray hair framing her round face smiles back at me.
“Bali,” Halford answers as he steps into the cage. The earthspeaker woman groans. “Come on everyone, we should have a lead on the other groups since we know about this elevator. We don’t want to squander that.”
“Right,” Kapin agrees, stepping into the iron cage alongside Halford. Jellian looses a long, tense breath in satisfaction and attaches his waterskin once more to the outside of the pack he carries . He looks at Bali with an air of smugness and stepped into the elevator behind Kapin, closing the door as he enters.
Halford displays not an ounce of strain as he cranks the winch inside of the cage to start the elevator’s ascension. He gives a grinning salute to the three women as the cage climbs higher up the side of the mountain. The sound of grinding iron of the well-worn chain that suspends the elevator creaks out its tune as the men ascend the side of the mountain, a constant clanking of loose metal dangling out of the side of the cage elevator. It takes only a few minutes for the slow-rising cage to reach the lip of a rocky outcropping at the top of the cliff, where Kapin and Jellian work to hook the cage securely to the metal construction at the top. The men step out of the cage, passing from our sight, and an unseen crank at the top slowly relaxes the tension in the chain, sending the cage back to the ground.
When the elevator arrives once again at the bottom of the cliff it pounds hard into the ground, sending small pebbles and dirt scattering into the air. The iron door swings open on rusted hinges, a sound as welcoming as a basement door creaking open in the haunted Galvis mansion.
Bali sighs again and leans heavily on a reinforced quarterstaff she had purchased as a weapon in town the day before. “This isn’t in my job description,” she says.
“Are you afraid of heights?” I ask as she walks to the entrance of the cage. She puts a bit of her weight onto the wooden boards that make up the elevator’s floor, earning a groan from the wood.
“I’m an earthspeaker,” Bali says flatly.
“Is that a no?”
“It’s a no.” Bali pulls herself straight and sets her shoulders, leaning her head to either side to crack her neck. “My job is to make sure people don’t die. That is pretty much it. If we fight something made of fire, then I throw some water at it. It doesn’t go much beyond that.” She looks up at the long climb up the cliffside and grimaces. “Why didn’t Halford just come down again with the elevator so that he could work the crank for us.”
“Probably because he is an asshole,” I say, shrugging. I put my hand around the winch crank inside the elevator, but fail to budge it the least bit.
“Probably,” Bali agrees, stepping into the elevator alongside me. Bali turns back to look at the old woman shadowing our group. “Are you coming…you?”
“We should at least get your name,” I say to the old woman. A simple smile is her only response as the old woman strides forward and squeezes her way into the cage alongside us. “Alright then.” I hook the door of the cage with my foot and pull it closed, holding it in place with my hand.
Bali slaps her gloved hands together and rubs them against one another. “Let’s get to it.”
My grasp of how the magical ranks work is extremely limited. I understand that someone doesn’t make it to the first rank without a full set of essentia, and that making it to the first rank does something to the body; making it stronger and more idealized--most even gain a few inches in height. I know that bodily enhancement continues past the first rank, each subsequent rank building upon the first, and that there was an extreme jump in physicality at the third rank. Despite knowing all of that, I am still surprised when Bali throws her weight against the winch and manages to get it moving, the elevator jerking upward as the crank turns.
“That’s amazing,” I say, not realizing I intoned my thoughts out loud.
Bali grunts and nods at me as she brings a full revolution of the crank around for the first time. The cage around us sags as it leaves the ground, groaning as our combined weight settles into the floor. Teeth exposed in concentration, Bali brings the crank around in another revolution to hoist us into the air.
Sweat beads on Bali’s brow by the time we make it halfway up the cliffside. The terror of something going wrong--the chain snapping or the bottom of the elevator falling out--fades away from me as I watch the group’s healer shoulder the burden of pulling us to the top. The hint of veins beneath the skin stand out on Bali’s arms, her shoulders swell in effort, and the strain of it all shows in Bali’s sneer at the world.
I feel a desire well up deep inside of me that I can’t remember feeling ever before. Not for the woman in front of me, though I could certainly admire the specimen of female power that had thus far pulled our cage the majority of the way up the cliffside. I feel a deep hunger in my gut for what Bali has, the power that is innate to her, the power to do something that I would have found impossible if the task had been put to me. I want that power, and watching Bali sweat and strain as she manages to haul on a crank against what had to be at least five-hundred pounds of force was the first time that I would later recall feeling that longing.
As the cage nears the top of the cliffside, we hear shouting coming from over the ledge. I hear my brother’s voice yell something unintelligible and see Kapin’s leg swing out over the edge of the cliff, the man barely stopping himself from tumbling all the way over. Monsters are attacking the men. I spy the strange beasts as the cage clears the lip of the cliff, and more than fear, I felt confusion at what I see.
“The hook!” Bali yells at me, snapping me out of my stupor.
“Sorry.” I grab the thick chain that arches across the roof of the cage elevator and throw it over a hook that dangles from a metal arm just above us. The second I have the cage secured, Bali locks the crank and releases it. The cage drops a few inches, groaning as it settles once more, but it holds together. Bali kicks the door of the elevator open as she runs outside to help the team, while I fall back into confusion.
I see two fights were occurring simultaneously. Kapin, back against the ledge, holds his shield in shaking arms that bulge with fatigue. A creature that looks like a wolf with a sheep’s woolly coat attacks him. Not with its pronounced fangs or claws, but with its ears, which stretch for eight feet in length and end in a tangle of bone-like spikes. The dog monster manipulates its ears as easily as a hand, slamming them harder than a sledge into the shield Kapin holds in front of him. I see several shallow cuts standing out on the man, and one puncture wound in his leg that looks far, far too deep.
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The cliff lets out into a bit of a clearing, twenty feet of loose gravel with the occasional weed poking up, that ends with a sharp upward rise and a thicket of impenetrable trees. Halford is nearer the tree line, his huge sword held vertically like a shield as he defends against a monster of his own. It is not a large creature, not any bigger than a cat, but except for its rat-like head and tail, the creature was covered completely in spikes of red hair. It fires the spikes at Halford in an unending barrage. I spot Jellian slumped against a tree just a few feet into the thicket, spines sprouting all across him. Even Halford sports a score across his arms and torso.
I am knocked from my wonderment again as the old woman in the blue habit tip-toes past me to stand out on the cliff. The woman is unconcerned, watching the fighting with a passive smile and her hands clasped behind her back. She watches as Bali runs up to the sheep-wolf and kicks it in the side with her steel boots, earning a whine of pain as the monster slinks away from her.
“What happened?” Bali demands of Kapin as she bends down to place her hands over the hole in his leg. Blue light seeps out from between her fingers as she dumps power into him, healing the crippling wound in the few seconds it takes for Kapin to catch his breath and put himself between her and the monster.
“They just came out of the forest all of a sudden while we were waiting,” he says.
“Well, we knew there were monsters up here,” Bali says, keeping an eye on the monster turning its attention back to them. “These ones seem pretty aggressive.”
“We knew that too,” Kapin answers.
I see a boulder resting on the ground a few feet past the entrance to the cage with three packs resting on the ground next to it. I dash out of the elevator and take cover behind the stone. With Bali and Kapin covering each other, I know that they can most likely face and defeat any monster of equal rank. I watch as my brother lunges forward, abandoning the defense of his sword to attempt a swing at the spiny rat, taking a few spines to his shoulder for his recklessness. Halford brings the sword crashing down, spraying up pebbles and large black rocks, but the small monster is too nimble for him to catch wounded, alone.
I unclip the small crossbow from my hip and unlatch the short quiver on my thigh, snatching up a bolt from inside. I do as the salesman had said, using a smaller crank on the side of the weapon to set the line into the latch before fitting the bolt. As I come up from behind my cover, I vaguely think about how this would be my first time firing a crossbow, I take aim at the rat monster.
My first shot wasn’t so bad. It stabs into the loose gravel a few inches behind the monster, sticking. The rat monster whips around, and I get my first good look at its beady, red eyes. Before I realize what it is doing, one of the crimson spines sails toward me, the monster’s aim much better than my own. The spike cuts a grazing line along the side of my neck, and in a panic, I dive back behind the boulder. I drop the crossbow, bringing my hands to my neck as it begins to bleed.
I see clearly in my mind’s eye the look of the pigs my father keeps in the barn and hear the familiar sound of those same animals as some are slaughtered for food in the hard winters. Blood seeps through my fingers, and I hold my breath, afraid that anything I do will kill me. Pain blossoms in my lungs, and after only a few seconds, my pounding heart demands I breathe. I expect to pass out, but the dizziness never comes. When I pull my hand away to inspect it, the blood that wets palms is far less than I expect to be there.
My relief is tempered with a rising anger for the rat monster that hurt me with its weird, spiny hair. The roar and heat of flame brings me back to the fight at hand. I see, just a dozen feet away, Bali standing triumphantly on one of the wolf monster’s ears while Kapin traps the other under his arm. The man has tossed aside his shield and from his mouth froths a gout of flame that obscures the wolf monster in its shining, orange brilliance. I crank the hand crank on my crossbow as I watched the club-like ears of the monster struggle for a few seconds before falling to the ground with the rest of it. The sheep wool that covers the monster continues to smolder and burn even after Kapin’s breath of fire cuts off and he spit into the dirt at his feet. The click of my crossbow setting pulses through my fingers, and I slip another bolt on the weapon. Taking a deep breath to ready myself, I stand up from behind the boulder, pointing the crossbow at where the monster had been.
Halford squats there over two bloody halves of the rat monster, wrenching his sword out of the loose dirt around him. He looks up and sees me. His eyes flick down to the crossbow in my hands, and a frown tugs at the edges of his mouth. His eyes pass over me to land on Bali and Kapin standing over their slain monster.
“Bali,” Halford shouts. “Jellian is wounded. Help him!”
Bali springs into motion toward Halford before she has even turned away from the still burning wolf-sheep. She comes up short, pausing at the sight of Halford and the multiple thumb-wide spines sticking out of him, before her sight continues on toward where Halford is pointing. It takes her a few seconds to spot Jellian leaning against the base of a tree, his brown leather’s blending him into the trunk. She darts off in the elf’s direction.
Kapin lets his heavy shield fall, thudding to the ground, and collapses to his knees, huffing. He waves off Halford before he can take a step in his friends direction and takes a few moments to breath after his exertion.
Halford stops, looking back to me. “You’re hurt,” he says, his eyes landing on the cut in my neck.
“It’s not that bad,” I say.
“Your neck is bleeding! I’ll go get Bali.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Really, it’s just a shallow cut. Look at you, you look like a seamstress has been adjusting you instead of your clothes.”
Halford grimaces, looking down at the spines sticking out of his chest, and grabs ahold of one. He stops before he manages to move the spike more than an inch, a pained wince overtaking him. “I’ll be alright once I’ve had Bali look at me.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. I gesture around to the two dead monsters. “Should I…”
“Yes. Do that,” Halford says. The set in the man’s shoulders drains out of him as the battle temper leaves him. He turns to go to Bali, pausing when his foot brushes against the crossbow bolt that sticks out of the gravel. He studies it, then back at me, “Uh…Good job,” he says, showing me the false smile I had thought he reserved for only strangers. “I’m going to go see Bali.”
“Please do,” I say in a quiet voice.
Without another word, Halford turns and half-limps over toward Bali and Jellian. The elven man is still unconscious as Bali kneels over him, blue light shining from her hands and falling into the man. I sit down on the boulder and absently reattach the crossbow to my waist.
Kapin collapses onto his back, catching my attention. “This is going to be an interesting few days,” he says, and despite his obvious exhaustion, the smile he shows me is genuine.
“I’m coming to think that too,” I reply.
I apply my singular power to the corpses of the dead monsters once Bali checks the cut on my neck to make certain that it is inconsequential. As the monsters decompose into pink smoke, I receive the expected bundles of meat and coin flying at my head. For the first time since I first acquired my power more than a year ago, the rat monster also yields three spools of its course and hard hair. No essentia come from their disenchantment, but the party does manage to find eleven silver coins among the various pouches I create.
Jellian comes around after an hour or so, fully healed from Bali’s ministrations, but still a little shaky. Kapin removes the meal kits from his overfull bag and passes out the evening meal, cold bread and beans, as Halford refuses to let us start a fire to heat anything. I can’t help but stare at the pile of hair spikes slung against a tree. My brother looks no worse for his experience with the spike launching monster, other than a few holes in the white and blue loose clothing he wears. The quiet woman that shadows our group declines any offered food with a simple shake of her head, and no one in the group cares to push her on the matter.
“Well, I think going forward we might want to avoid splitting up,” Kapin says, tearing off a piece of hard bread with his mouth.
“Agreed,” Jellian says. “I just thought that thing was a weird looking rabbit. I guess when they spoke about how dangerous this mountain is they were not exaggerating.”
“No,” Halford says solemnly. “This is the closest we have come to losing anyone.” He looks at Jellian. “It makes me think that it was the right choice for us not to go after many rank one monsters until now.”
“So, you think those were rank one monsters,” Bali says.
“Likely,” Halford says. “Can you imagine a farmer putting down one of those things when they found it in a field?”
“Maybe the little one,” Kapin says. “If they got the drop on it. Your dad can swing an ax when he has a mind to. I’ve seen him do it.”
The way that the ranking system works for monsters is a shallow reflection of the one that is used with the magical practitioners of essentia. It is, however, something of much more common knowledge, and one I know. A rank zero monster is an aberration, something that occurs when ambient magic condenses and gains a consciousness to act upon its own will. Rank zero, being the lowest rank that a monster can be, are little more than animals, and those outside of the protections of the great walled cities or errant culling patrols are expected to deal with them on their own. When they group up or work in coordination adventurers are often called for to deal with them, and lacking that, villages usually round up a burning posse to take care of them.
Rank one monsters are a completely different matter. Like rank one adventurers they have a strength that was outside of what would be expected from a flesh and blood mortal and are seldom something that a person without any magical abilities can handle. Rank one monsters are referred to as Knight Class monsters, as a decently well-armed and experienced warrior likely has a strong chance of defeating one. Subsequently, rank two monsters are sometimes referred to as Squad Class monsters, creatures who often possess magical abilities of their own, and who are preternaturally deadly. Despite the classification, it is rare that a group of twenty or more mundane warriors are employed to handle such beasts, though it does sometimes happen.
The classifications continue from there: battalion, army, and finally national level monsters whom would be impossible to destroy without the assistance of very powerful, magically altered people. I have never heard of something beyond rank five as far as monsters go. Adventurers are commonly expected to be able to handle monsters of their own rank and as a well-coordinated group, be able to defeat monsters of a rank above their own. Halford’s reticence in pitting his party against rank one and two monsters is abnormal, but seeing as how rank two monsters only rarely appear anywhere in the vicinity of Westgrove, there has been plenty of zero rank monsters to occupy our time with.
“We also made quite the payday,” Kapin says.
I realize that I have been drifting off, staring at the pile of bloody spikes again. “So, you think I’m worth having along now?” I ask.
“As long as you keep yourself safe, then yes.” Kapin tosses the bottom half of his bread loaf back into his bag. “I’m not trying to downplay what you add, Charlene. It’s just that you can’t protect yourself, and if we start getting into fights like this more often, then that might get someone killed when they are trying to save you.”
“That’s why I bought this,” I say, tapping the crossbow on my waist.
“Might work for now,” Kapin says with a shrug.
“It’s not something that needs more discussion,” Halford says, cutting off my retort. “Let’s turn our attention to what is ahead. We didn’t get more than a few steps into the forest before we were attacked by monsters. Yet, now, they have left us alone for an hour or more. Either these two were the only ones around, or they will leap upon us again the moment we try to enter the forest.”
“Probably,” Bali says. “Jellian, do you think that you can scout for us?”
“Yes,” Jellian nods. “While I am incredibly embarrassed by getting surprised like that, I will not be making that mistake a second time.”
“Everyone gets surprised,” Bali soothes.
“The scout isn’t supposed to.” Jellian fingers a hole in his pantleg and sighs. “I will do better.”
“Good.” Halford stands, slapping the crumbs from his hands. “If I have it right, most of the other parties will be trying to ascend the mountain from the other side. They won’t even make it up here until tomorrow morning at the earliest, unless they have some other means of scaling the mountain. That means that we should use the advantage afforded to us by arriving early.”
“How many more fights are you willing to take today?” Kapin asks as he too rises.
“More than a few,” Halford says with a wicked smile.