Throughout his life, Liam had consistently categorized himself as definitely not an adrenaline junkie. Just looking at a clip of some crazy people doing acrobatics at the edge of a rooftop would make him change tabs to something else. There was just something about the possibility of that sheer drop that made his heart clench tight and made him feel woozy.
Something had changed since that time.
Liam was barely a few meters off the ground, and his heart was already pumping like a drum. There was just something about this climb that made his veins feel as if they were full of fire, something that hadn’t been present back in the jungle when he had been climbing those trees. Maybe it was that there was literally nothing between him and the ground, or perhaps that earlier shake had just primed him.
Even when he was perfectly aware his body would not hold out even to the halfway point, his gaze kept trailing the faint curve of the beak’s lip all the way to the top. The higher one went, the easier the climb would become as it would lose some of the steepness, but it was such a monumental way up that it was a rise that would take several days to pull off.
“Pace yourself, breathe,” Wolf’s voice came in softly, the large orcish hand pressing his back slightly. She had opted to stick around after that rumble, and Liam was very thankful for it. “The adrenaline is useful, but it will muddle your thoughts. Be wary of your footing, make sure it is placed correctly before trusting your weight on it.”
“Right, thanks,” he heaved a little; his fingers were shaking a bit.
She had chosen to stick to his side throughout the climb, though she didn’t explain why. Perhaps the shudder had made her nervous, it had certainly caused a fair share of the participants to opt not to participate.
“With your gut and your legs,” she continued the lesson, showing how she pushed her body up by keeping her hips close to the wall. “This wall leans slightly forward; you could climb it without using your hands if you had the technique. Do not lean away from the wall unless you want to tire your arms needlessly.”
Wolf made rock climbing look like it was effortless; she was practically crawling her way up the wall as she remained at his side while just about everyone else was moving past them. Liam still felt slightly disoriented over how her voice was this gruff and deep grumble, but she probably hated it even more than he ever could, so the comment was tucked away.
Their rise kept at a steady pace; there were several climbers that had remained mostly stuck beneath Liam and Wolf, clearly not too happy about being there and not rushing further ahead. Yet one look from Wolf was all it took to shut them up before they started anything.
“Take a rest.”
“I’m fine,” Liam commented a bit more brusquely than he’d intended.
“In climbing, you don’t rest when you’re tired; you rest so you last longer. This is not a sprint,” her stare was flat and unamused, yet her tone neutral.
Taking a deep breath, Liam nodded, slowing to a stop as he sought a comfortable way to lean into the wall. “Feels like we’ve barely moved,” his gaze kept looking up at the peak of the beak; the progress had been imperceptible, the angle not making it easy to spot the checkpoints.
“You may look down if you’d like to prove yourself wrong,” she chuckled darkly.
“I am not doing that,” he half-laughed, putting his hands back in place. “Ready to-”
Wolf’s hand shoved him against the wall and pinned him in place, and a split second later, everything began to shake violently. The tremors ran up Liam’s fingers and feet, threatening to shake him loose.
Shrieks erupted from above and below them.
Liam’s heart might have been pumping fast before, but now it was trying to stampede its way out of his ribcage. Confusion and cries for help broke out from amongst the participants.
Two voices were fast approaching from above, and Liam barely had the time to notice two shadows rushing past them, with the screams continuing all the way down until they came to a very abrupt halt.
The trembling stopped, but his heart didn’t slow down any, his jaw was shut so tightly that his ears were ringing.
“Breathe.” This time, Wolf’s voice came directly into his mind, bringing with it a soft breeze. “In and out, focus on your right arm, loosen it, I’ve got you. Loosen your arm and relax it. Once you move it back, do the same with your left.” She guided him through the motions, first his arms, then his legs. “Now open your eyes, and don’t look down.”
“I will permit fear to pass over me and through me.” With a slightly shaky grip, he looked up again, forcing his body to relax, even with his trembling grip.
“Just so,” she spoke with her male voice, the pressure of her hand against his back loosened, allowing him room to breathe and continue his way up.
“Not my words,” he said, chuckling slightly.
“Wisdom is wisdom, no matter where it comes from,” she glanced at him. “There is not much further until the first checkpoint.”
Indeed it was, and almost every contestant had chosen to get off there. The tiny wooden hut was nearly over capacity with everyone crammed shoulder to shoulder in their attempt to get down. The wood creaked and swayed, and the guards desperately tried to keep everyone from moving. The only way down aside from climbing your way down was a pulley elevator with only enough room for five people at a time, with each round trip taking several minutes.
“We wait here,” Wolf declared with a sternness to her voice as she stared at the hut with a critical eye.
As she said this, everything began to tremble again, and this time Liam had made the mistake of looking down. It wasn’t just some light shake; it was an earthquake all across the city, with dust falling off of buildings and some of them showing obvious cracks. Down at street level, people were screaming and running, and in one place, a fire had broken out.
Yet Liam caught sight of something else, of the gap in the beak narrowing ever so slightly. He would’ve thought it an illusion, a trick of his eyes, if not for how the ropes spanning the whole city of Doeta had visibly sagged a little.
And on the first checkpoint, the people were starting to panic, even as the guard tried to regain control. Until, either by intention or accident, he was shoved off. The uniformed volar’s limbs flailed wildly, but this time the people below were prepared. Two winged citizens took to the air, intercepting the man and turning his certain doom into a clumsy and painful crash.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“ENOUGH!” Wolf’s commanding voice rang out with the power of a bomb and the ferocity of a charging beast. It sent chills down Liam’s spine and froze the panicking people on the shack. “Let’s get you off of this, little man.”
Without asking for permission, she stepped onto the wooden house, pulling Liam with her.
And shoving him into the pulley elevator, which was basically a glorified large bucket with a tiny door. “Stay safe,” she commanded right as the elevator started to go down, returning to the wall to keep climbing.
There were others on the shack that looked like they might have wanted to complain, but one look from the orc kept them quiet. Liam’s hands were still shaking, gripping the bucket as he was lowered all the way back down to ground level. His steps out of the wooden elevator had a tremble to them, and his adrenaline was still running hot.
The beak had closed a tiny bit.
All around him, the city was in a strange half-panicked state; people were looking around with antsy energy, the children had very quickly hurried in search of their parents, while the guards were running around trying to address the tiny disaster that had just unfolded. Smoke rose towards the sky, bending and swirling as it caressed the inside of the beak; a few buildings had cracked, a few others had bits of them fall off, but by the looks of it, the destruction had not been cataclysmic by any degree.
Yet he could hear people whispering, some pointing up at the sky.
As the minutes bled by, eventually turning into an hour without a single tremble, the nerves began to die down, and the crowd began to tentatively return to a semblance of normality. The guards had stopped rushing everywhere and were now dealing with the opportunists who had sought to use the panic as a chance to steal something or another; the rest milled about, approaching older people to speak reassurances.
Two hours without a single rumble, and Liam opted to do the same, albeit now with a bit more wariness of what might be overhead. He was absolutely certain that this was the first time any of them had even imagined the possibility of the beak closing at a rate that could be observed within the span of seconds. And that was because there was no reason why the beak should have moved so abruptly.
Not unless the spell holding the monster in place had... flickered.
As if something had disrupted it, ever so slightly, ever so briefly.
"It... can't have been me... right?" He glanced at his own hands.
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“It was Liam, wasn’t it?” Bunny asked, telepathically reaching out to her fellow aspect. She was far too amused to be really bothered about how a third of her betting pools had been ruined.
Too many mortals had chosen to quit, and many of them were people meant to cheat their way into a specific position in the race. All because of some little rumbling and a couple of dead mortals. As if a mortal dying was anything out of the ordinary! It was the one consistent thing they were good at!
Cowards, the lot of them.
Fortunately, though the blow was a bitter pill to swallow, it hadn’t been enough to ruin the whole project.
Boy, would the bitch-boss be PISSED if they lost all their gold.
“It was like a drop of acid touching a tree, burning a hole.” Wolf responded from the beak itself, as she continued to restrain herself and pretend she couldn’t just run her way to the top.
“Do you figure he could actually lift the curse and awaken the monster?” Her mental tone held an edge of concern in it. Having such a thing fully awakened would not be good news for anyone, but it would be especially bad news for them.
Because at that point, the pantheon would notice the calamity and descend in full force, and there was no way Origin would be able to hide quickly enough.
“It would take too long.” Wolf’s voice held a pondering edge to it. “Then again, the curse wouldn’t need to be fully lifted, just enough for the monster to be able to break it on its own. Maybe it would suffice if he spent a month hugging the thing.”
Bunny whistled in amusement. “You’re awfully murderous, feeling irritated?”
“Every second I spend in this form is a millennia worth of agony I intend to unleash upon you.” Though Wolf growled the words out, there was only the barest margin of humor in the tone.
“I don’t know why, when after all this time, you’re finally looking on the outside how you’ve always been on the inside.” Bunny cackled. “A big brute.”
“Careful, or I’ll make a snack out of you.” The huntress’ voice had a vague false threat somewhere hidden in it, but it was a fangless jest.
She chuckled. “I wonder how the fate-bitch will react to this.” She snickered at the thought.
“Stick to the plan, Bunny,” Wolf snarled. “No thinking about the Weaver.”
“And no thinking about the tiny hole in our memories.”
“Trust in Origin,” they added in unison, one holding a serious tone, the other a droll one.
The connection was cut off, and Bunny sighed, picking up a large wooden mallet. “And if Origin said to me, ‘Hammer away at these things until they’re tender but not broken,’ who am I to complain?” She swung, watching the stone crack with a grin.
There was just something profoundly satisfying about breaking things.
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If Thalgrim had nails to bite, she would have chewed through them entirely.
They-Who-Ate-Space had moved.
The curse keeping it frozen in place had flickered, just long enough to let it nudge a little. Just enough to awaken its consciousness as it became aware that something had happened. It was still immobile, still helpless, but now it would only be a matter of time before it escaped.
An ever-shortening amount of time.
Because the curse hadn’t just been dealt a blow, it had been infected. The damage dealt to its core functions was like a disease, spreading and growing at an exponential rate. Right now, that meant there was very little of note, but once it reached a tipping point, it would spread so fast that it would shatter.
All of it because of that human’s ability to unmake fate.
Just getting him to meet the Amil of that tiny city had been a minor miracle. All of it made possible thanks to the leonid being the one who had killed the collector. Through that faint connection, she’d taken the fate of the murder towards the source, the daughter of the mortal.
Even then it had nearly failed.
If there was such a thing as a God above Gods, Thalgrim prayed to them. She prayed that the fateless high-priestess could, by killing the fateless mortal, bring this corruption to a full stop, to cure this looming catastrophe.
Everything needed to go as intended, every weave needed to find a place.
She just needed to make sense of her adversary’s plan. The mortal had to have something prepared, she just needed to connect the dots, feel the threads and the direction they were taking, and either subvert or play into each one. But why... why was the other aspect weakening the foundations of one of the buildings the mortals used for hot baths?
There were too many unknowns, the threads of fate leading to the future were ever weaker, her vision of the events within the mortal city ever cloudier. The Merchant God was already suspecting something was amiss, and with this mortal city being eroded, the Sentinel would also become aware of this corruption once the monster stirred.
Thalgrim had to figure it out while there was still time.
Otherwise… otherwise, she could lose everything.