Opening Invocation to The Mountain and its Eternal Climber

Hail to the nightmare of a sleepless soul! Hail to The Mountain of restless corpses! Hail to its boulders shaped like men! Hail to their cries of lamentation! Hail to their pain and torture sweet! Hail to the one who bravely climbs their weeping, worm-rot faces!

Here lays in place the slaughtered dreams, a hoard of murdered millions, who scream for life in death, the grave-white ghosts of conquest. Here climbs the king who fought the breeze that billows cold before the summit, who'd strove for life through death, his Highness of strife and conquest.

Hail to Him, and hail to his Mountain!

A Word on a History The Climber would Prefer Forgotten

A king he’d been in by-gone days, a king who’d vanquished emperors, a king who’d clasped to countless realms, who’d ruled the connecting seas and rivers. Through every toil, his troops had tread; they'd tread the soils of every shoreline. His hand had levelled continents, and he'd made sovereigns kiss his footsteps. Many cattle herds, he'd culled; and his battles had killed many men. He'd laid to waste whole nation states, for which Man will shed no teardrops. A thousand mountain ranges, he’d roamed, and their peaks for peace he'd flattened; their pyre-cleansed ashes, he'd fed his fields, and he'd kept for himself their memories.

As a last homage to his great crusade, he’d built this ever-restless Everest; its each sorry boulder, he’d laid, each that begged him for release, to relieve them of the putrid worms, of the rats who chewed their pus-leaking cadavers.

But just a climber was now the king, climbing his Mountain's remnants. Again and again, he climbed each night; again and again, he’d fallen. Again and again, he’d slipped when the dead declined his heart-gripped contact. Again and again, and again, he'd restart from the base his endless climb.

But this time now, his climb won't fail; this time now, he scaled the dead-weighed sins, whom he'd scaled upon this Mountain.

This time…

Catching up with The Climber's Latest Struggles

Since setting off this final time, his head and heart on the summit focused, the climber's craft had progressed slow, crawling up the bottom inclines. The Mountain's base, he climbed, here where dwelled the hell-jailed villains, where he'd shelved the scoundrel beasts whose feasts had carnaged countries. Here the genocidal slime were locked, their like-mind friends their prison. For their crimes, he'd sentenced them to groan, to suffocate and wheeze, while squeezed beneath the full-blown weight of his millions and their murdered bodies.

Over them, he climbed, over these globe-crushing titans. He pulled the tails of drakes that once had strangled continents; he scrambled the scales of leviathans who'd soaked in blood-fed oceans. These Godbeasts he'd once reaped, they formed his stairs and ladders. His rungs were their necrotic tongues; his steps their fangs he'd shattered.

In his previous failed ascents, his cyclic downfalls from The Mountain, despite these beasts' gigantic might, they'd offered no rebellion. Over their death-heaped ranks, he'd flown, swift as carefree summer winds, these kindred friends unable to seize him.

But the vanquished beasts had felt the shift, his handgrip's firmness tightened, and against the heightened goal of his—to climb them, escape, forget—the titans fought hard to halt his summit. They swiped his way with mile-long claws that'd once cleaved nations' navies. Upon his upward path, they barfed; they spat out boiling venom lakes; they hacked up vomit comets.

Beset by the leagues of beast-hurled threats, the restless, lonesome climber battled, armed only with his human hands and a rust-corroded dagger.

For his latest trial, he fought some wolves, a wave of mass-killed greylings. Their sundered thousands him attacked, charred, frozen, and arrow-riddled. In droves, they wriggled from the slope, like flesh-fed maggots from a carcass. In droves, he seized and stabbed the wolves, then tossed their decomposting memories. As their knifefucked bodies fell, they shrank into the hellblack darkness, the ghost-graved void that catches all, all who fail to match The Mountain.

An Old Monkey is Woken from A Lovely Nap

Far above the battlehowls, wedged inside a corpse-walled crater, offering The Mountain no fight nor sound, was an epoch-ravaged monkey. While Its neighbours squirmed to free themselves; while wrath-cursed threats, they shouted; this creature lay in peace-full rest, as if napping through a swollen stomach, as if sleeping off a heavy lunch beneath springclouds white and fluffy.

How calm this wise-old monkey slept, how undisturbed by young life's hurry. Its once black fur was flecked with the gently-fallen snow of centuries. Its spine, if not confined by the surrounding jailmates' pressure, would still have bent a humble bow, conceding to Its ancient deathspan. To Its wrist was tied a hand-knit crown, a bangle of fresh woven flowers. And Its head, above the nose, had been chopped off by a swordblade.

Less than half Its brain remained intact, Its eyes and ears shorn off, and the rest's spaghettied meat dangled from Its sword-shaved skullcase. Nevertheless, the old monkey sensed, It scented the ascending climber, and Its vile mouth-twisted with a smile, a recognition fond and foul-grinned.

The monkey spoke of the youngster Man, approaching through the struggle: "I feel a nearing taste and touch, of he who climbs this corpse-piled Mountain. We are The Hunger both, and both what sates The Hunger. We are The Mountain both, and both what climbs The Mountain."

The monkey's live corpse riddled thus; Its wise mouth thus did dribble. Then Its wisened mouth went wide again as if to spit more drivel. Its jaw, It stretched unhinged, and ate Its shrieking Godbeast neighbours. Opening a hole of gore in the slope, It broke Itself from Its corpse-bound prison; Its trapped form, It wriggled free, and to the breeze It tossed Its rotting body.

The Monkey and Its New Friend The Climber Meet

On the slope far down below, where the climber fought the howling torrent, while drowned in the wave of wolves, he felt a warm slap to his shoulders. In a blink, two arms had wrapped his chest, and two legs enclosed his waistline.

As to him latched on the monkey's corpse, his neck was kissed by a squelching wetness; down his collar, something spilt, down dripped the creature's smashed brainmatter, and his nostrils curled at an acrid scent, the perfume of Its festering headwound.

Aghast, the climber drew his knife, his rust-corroded dagger, and he thrust its point with panicked haste into the monkey's open cranium.

Seven times and ten, he stabbed, at the exposed cerebral lesion; and seven times and ten, his blade's attack was thwarted.

By some cruel mystery weakening his hand, his thrusts had lost their lethal force, the strength that'd reaved these slope-heaped monsters. Again and again, his weapon failed, and from the mangled brain bounced harmless. It bounced like a giggling child at play on the trampoline of a dead man's belly.

The Monkey Consoles The Pathetic Climber

In the young Man's thwarted thrusts, the monkey felt an infant panic; It felt the newborn terror rush of those who'd few tough moments stomached. It, who'd the death of many dawns, consumed with heavy pleasure, gave the climber a Zen-fed word from age's calm assurance: "Indeed, young one, I bear some hate for my addition to your Mountain, but would my cloud-sent heart be sate by devouring one more human? No, I would not be content until all the stars I've eaten; only the full-blown cosmic extent could fill my starving blackhole stomach.

"Alas, I've already passed away; through The Universe's teeth, I've entered. I will not mourn my corpse transformed by its intestines into faeces. The genius young Man, the senile old Monkey, all who dare to dine are for some stink Mound destined. Your Mound happens to be mine, and mine happens to be yours; and one bright morn', we together shall crawl into the claustrophobic heaven stored behind the smiling jaw of another fine-fanged gourmand. Neither the thief nor the priest escapes this fetid Filthheap's fetters; neither the caliph nor his slave may leave this Grave's putrescence. All that's born beneath the sun must one day rot, and the next pink lot with suckle the milky-green seepage of our decaying bodies.

"No, my stout young son, who played the latest teeth and jawcrunch; without malice, I come to you, without war's famished gut or blood-thirsting tastebuds. Life's wise counsel, to you I grant, on this stink Mound's future troubles, as one whose heart and corpse precedes in devouring and being devoured.

The half-dead monkey smiled at the restless plight they shared in common, at Its kindred gut with the climb-bound son in whose bowels Its body rotted. It gave Its sword-peeled brain a pat and massaged the mangled remnants; then it rubbed the young Man's hair, and It thus exchanged a blood-slick anointment.

The climber shivered at the touch. Then he swore with gross repugnance, replying with his open lips, no longer barb-wired censored: "Let go, you stubborn chrome-domed ape, if you know what serves your interest. I've left you half your balding pate, but if you don't release your grip, I'll be forced to gift a second clip and trim it to your ribcage.

Threatening so, he gave the ghoul seven half-priced haircuts. Seven times, he stabbed Its head.

And seven times bounced back his dagger; it bounced with the comedic cool of a clown beating a bongo drum stretched from a dead man's dermis.

The Old Monkey Continues to be Embarrassed by The Pathetic Climber and Questions His Little Ability

The monkey took the teenboy's frail attacks with much embarrassed pity. "Your resolve is weak, too weak to finish even a half-head lemur. How will you climb these other fiends? How will you reach the cloud-high summit?"

The climber answered the older beast, who'd down death's path himself preceded: "In years, you may surpass me, whose hair has yet to grey and fall out. But to this nightmare 'Mound's' terrain, I alone am sage and master. Countless ages have its banks I climbed, and mapped its cliffs and contours. These monstrous slopes imprison ghosts that against yours reigned much longer. Here bide Gods so strong consuming stars was not a comic metaphor but a fucked-up goal they set and did and eventually grew bored of. Princes of Infernal Lands and cosmic time-old Sovereigns - these are the pus-glazed bluffs and crags that rot beside your broken memory. The Dragon Father of N'thaar is one rock amongst my Mountain's boulders; as is trapped his wing-clipped foe, Arwack, Child of Greenfang; as is The Left-Most Foot of Po, who stepped across ten planets; as is The Creator Grish, who dreamed The White Plain into Being."

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The climber caught a biting wolf, and he swung it to a slope-tombed titan, whose black breath blew the beast to dust and declared its forgotten wonder.

"I breathe The Silk-Strewn Path!" It yelled. "I breathe The Flowless Forest! Glance along my bark-laned roads! Heark my rustling timber! You fleeting grave-bound weeds, you gnats who flutter wings so fragile, abandon your pitiful forms, and from hell's jaw assist me! Gift your struggle unto me, and I will break your flesh-jailed prison! Quiet down your little lungs, and I'll restore the breath that's stolen! I breathe The Forest's beast-prowled shade that stores the seed eternal!

All around the great fiend were wedged other screaming gods, whose voices roared with equal volume. Up and down, inside, across, The Mountain towered colossal, its cliffs built of giants whose shadows once a thousand solar systems blotted.

To these star-flung boasts of might, the monkey smirked a gleeful answer: "O Unrivalled Climber God, I applaud Your feats illustrious! But what of the softer slopes beyond these ten-ton titans? Will You grip them with this love-snuffed fist? Will You grab their flesh like rungs of a ladder?"

"What soft-souled problems lie beyond, they will keep my climb no longer. Their faces, I will tread as I've tread these dead goliaths. My ambition is the peak, sweet heaven's golden vista, and towards my lofty goal of peace, all will be my stairs and ladder. A hundred hundred sky-tall Gods, a dozen dozen dragons - these and more, my journey's climbed, and with these and more I summit. My Will-filled lungs and limbs shall train on the strain of these rungs resplendent. With their gifted groans and strength, I'll conquer fast what last trials lie up higher.

Declaring thus, the climber restored his swordarm's hex-drained vigour; with a heaven-sundering might, he stabbed the monkey's exposed brainmeat.

With the bruteforce crack of a thunderclap, he thrust his arm to stab...and the dagger bounced back harmless - it bounced from the brain like a blowfly blocked by the pearly gates of a dead man's dentures.

The Old Monkey Taunts The Pathetic Climber and Warns him of The Mountain's Higher Slopes Beyond his Child-like Power

The old monkey opened Its fang-toothed mouth, and It leaked a yawn of boredom; then to the leaf-limp climber's thrusts, It spoke a dark-grinned forecast. "This Mound and taller's crests, my bowel-doomed phantom did once summit. Its puke-foul flesh, I have beheld; and in its winds, I've stood steadfast. Know this of the boulders above: at first, they seem of bite-sized portion, yet the little grip these morsels give is hard to clasp and swallow; the higher you strive to grope, the steeper grows the slope, the looser; the higher you fight to reach, the fiercer blows the breeze-born anger.

"Beyond these sandwiched giants, at The Mountain's next decaying layer, there awaits a feast for you, a delicious snackfood legion: the young dead footmen with melted minds, the young dead archers with broken spines, the young dead mages with arrow-pierced eyes, the young dead cutthroats behewn in two, the young dead generals with blood-spewing necks. These delicious war-slain troops await to hail you welcome, the soldiers, friend and foe, consumed by your voracious hunger.

"For five fat days, my climb surveyed, it scanned your wasted armies. For five full days, I surfeited the meat your cruel campaigns have butchered. On the fifth stuffed day, I reached this Feast's next-snuffed layer; and there, the banquet broke for a course more refined and dainty.

"There I found heap-piled thieves with stake-impaled palms for pinching, bestial poachers made to hang by ropes of self-knit entrails, pale-faced smugglers leaking blood from arteries dissected, noble treasons boiled in pots of gold-coins molten liquid. The rungs you judged and killed for crime, their fine fined carcasses, I climbed up. Your quartered morsels, I ate for days, your courtcase tabled mortals. For days, I scaled the wide-ranged shades of mortal sin corrected, from murderous man-skinned monsters, to babes as chaste as infant apes."

The death-aged monkey smirked, a memory blooming in its stomach. "Why yes, you climbing glut, the small-bite ones are up there also. Those are the rotting rungs up next of your infested Gutmound. As once you climbed them and will again, so I climbed them as a ladder.

"Every civilian that you killed, I climbed them as a ladder. The little rose-clad girls you killed, I climbed them as a ladder. The little dad-snatched boys you killed, I climbed them as a ladder. Their mothers and grandmothers that you killed, I climbed them as a ladder. I ate your rotting kindred rungs, the peasants starved by blight-struck fields, the builders tombed in quake-crushed homes, the nations, cities, and small-folked towns made blue by sipping your poison.

"While a half-nosed ape might bear that stench, might clasp those festering souls with firmness; to an infirm youth, that tear-slick slope will slough like skin from a bloated carcass. To you, their fluids will taste foul. They're savoured only by myself and these other scoundrels bathed in bowels, who love the fetid flavour found in The Universe's Moundheaps.

"Yet this stiff cliff is not that steep; it's not your Rotheap's sweetest strata. Much more harder holds, you'll find, beyond these tear-slimed boulders. Any seasoned hand could pinch, could squish these breadcrumb sorrows; any seasoned tongue could lick, could sip their piss-weak torrent.

"As your soul-set climb ascends beyond the civilian's clutches, above is not the waiting sun but The Rot's lung-bellowed icestorm. Up there, young one, you'll hear a name, a cold word wailed by the weeping tempest, and your flesh-gripped fingers will freeze at the whip of the wind's wintry sentence. An ice-touched cliff, your palms will clasp, its grip made slick by a flow that knows you. Into your ears, it'll bluster harsh, the chilling howl-screeched chatter, and you will fail to block its shriek, to return the snow's lost silence. From your face will fly this coward's mask, which hides your 'climbing' figure, and all you wish had been forgot will recall your disguise-lost features. Your disgusting eyes, they'll stab, with thrusts that hit your human weakspot, and their point shall sink deep past the brain to pierce your heart and entrails. Stab! Stab! STAB by stab, The Gale That Names will carve you; it'll retrace the lost map of your climb-smoothed face, and restore your flattened inclinations...

"...and as you rise to higher heights, so too shall this Mountain...as you chase its corpse-heaped peak, it'll race to flee your capture...for the wind shall blow up all you've skipped, all the worm-composted morsels...

"But if...but if you do surmount that troubling breeze...if you seize the high-held vista...if you reach the feast that radiates above this bone-stacked Mountain..." The climb-dined monkey stopped, Its tongue held by a tasty wisdom, and Its eyes exhumed from out its skull, they shone with The Summit's love-stuffed flavour. "But no. Heaven's high-most taste, your man-fanged mouth will never savour. For the crumbs below will numb your tongue, and they'll file dull your juvenile incisors. How, my Beansprout-climbing son, how will you swill the pus-soured souls of your wars' civilians murdered? How will your hands and teeth hold grip, to grind their rancid grievance?

"The lovely smothered mums, their grief-filled mouths will once more whimper; their cute cremated babes, their ash-filled mouths will once more whimper: 'You, this cruel world's hand and teeth, who climbs and clamps our flesh, why did you pile us damned so high upon this Mound of Death?! On the creeps whose deeds transgressed the good, you should inflict this crime! On those who chose to wrong the right, inflict this endless fine!

"'Instead of storing us to lie upon this Mountain's rot, you could have claimed the violent lions who raped our lamb-soft flock! Instead of storing us to cry upon this Mountain's rot, you could have claimed the viceless sires who raped our lamb-soft flock! Instead of leaving us to heave upon this putrid Mound, you could have claimed the rain-thief priests who made our world a hell! Instead of leaving us to weep upon this putrid Mound, you could have claimed the plaguefiend freaks who made our world a hell!

"'Free us from this crushing weight! Squeezes us from your gut! Desist the savoured climb you love, and save us guiltless snuffed!'

"Answer, please, my climbing grace, who placed these kind rocks scaled forever. How plans your mouth to bite against the mass-heaped meek you've wasted? Before their mourn-stink calls, I bode: your tongue will freeze! Your hand will fumble! And once more, you'll fall to the hope-dead floor, to the faith-cleft base below this Mound infested with your victims!"

The Climber Answers The Propositions in The Old Monkey's Prophecies with Rational Logic

Throughout Its speech, the climber'd fought the ceaseless zombie wolfwave, whose ranks began to multiply at the monkey's doubt-spoke omens. The she-wolves bellies stirred and swelled, and engorged to the point of bursting; and from their ruptured wounds were birthed in thousands, a host of unborn wolf-child litters. These foetuses who'd spoiled inside spawned from their dead mum's showering organs, and they sucked the air with life-torn lungs that'd never breathed or bellowed.

On the climber rained the pink hail of pups, whose tongues licked his cheeks for mercy; and, human-voiced, the young wolves begged: "Spare us! Spare our murdered mothers!"

The climber answered their newborn pleas with a pledge from his rust-dulled dagger. Each crying pup, his knife's edge soothed, by thrusting through their slit-closed eyeballs. He slit their tender throats; their soft-boned infant skulls, he punctured. From navel to neck, he carved their tums, from which incisions bloomed bouquets of fest-slimed innards. Through their twig-thin backs, he sawed, he snipped their spinal cords, and he stopped their legs from clinging.

Their small pink bodies snuffed, he flung them from himself and his Mountain. Like a forgetful fist of pebble stones, he cast the knife-silenced pups down, down into the void below, down.

Thus, he'd answer every son, every daughter, mother, father. Thus, he answered the climb-wise doubts on the timeworn monkey's noggin.

But his dagger bounced back from its brain, like a bird against a windowpane, outside a man's dead household.

When the climber's weapon once more failed, he flicked his tongue to stab the omens. "To the mothers and their young ahead, to the black-fleshed lambs made breathless, I will dry their war-torn tears with news of change's blessèd tidings. Two right-handed birds, to their bereaving shrieks, I will showcase; and one left-handed bird whose wing cleaves history's heinous skyline.

"For the first bird, I show them the dove who coos of white-peaced futures, who's perched on truce-calmed walls, their city's ramparts lightly standing."

"And if they shoo it away," the unswayed monkey rebut, "this white-peaced dove you showcase? For what to we dead is a bird that flaps in your right-eous handclasp?"

"Then to them, I will showcase the swallow rewelcoming springtime, who swoops over newborn babes as numerous as flowers."

"And if they shoo it away, this de-life-ful swallow you showcase? For what to we dead is a bird endowed to your righteous power?"

"Then to them, I will show the raven who picks at their masters, who feeds on eyeballs, cold and hard, with half my soft-heart sweetness."

"And if they shoo it away, this Grace-full raven you showcase? For what to we dead is a bird held unfree in your sinister sleevehand?"

"No further calm-winged birds have I, not for my conquest's deceased minors, no further kind words to soothe the dead heaped on this crying Mountain," the climber spoke with worn-out remorse, his patience for grovelling exhausted. "Whether their hail sounds of love or hate, I weather their storm in peaceful silence, and their restless remains will be made to serve once again in the climb to my life's restful remainder."

The Monkey Finally Acknowledges The Climber's Might and Grants Its Godly Blessing

This answer, the old monkey sniffed, and It smelt the sweet savour; It smelt the fly-alluring stench when Man makes man his martyr. "You, the people's highest heart and hand, the heaven-striving hero! How majestically and grand you fly along this Mountain's dying minnows! Yes! Yes! Yes! On those that you've transgressed, inflict more righteous malice! To the tiny sacrificed, reply with violent kindness! Grab their weepy cheeks! Wrench their ropey infant entrails! Pull yourself to further heights! Climb! Climb! Climb! CLIMB while christened by their rotting plight! CLIMB them and their lifeless sorrows!"

The monkey reached forward eyeblink-fast, and It stole the youngster's dagger; with the quick-pinched knife, It stabbed and slit open Its own stomach. From the eviscerated abdomen, It yanked out Its intestines. Then, with a niece's tender love, It carefully wove the spool of organs; Its fingers platted a crown of guts, which It placed upon the climber's head and thereby crowned Its succeeding emperor.

While the blood and filth oozed down his brow, the monkey sang a blessing: "Beneath me, you did kindly stand, a Man who grieved for mankind! But with this crown of content greed, your grief-shrunk soul will feed now! Grow, my favourite foe, too match my happy stature! O, to such heights, your soul shall climb - far, far beyond The Mountain's wailing! Your head shall pierce the cloud-swept sky, where the reach of small-voiced noises fail you! Up there, you the lonesome climb-bound sire, who's wrestled in Death's graveyard; your restless soul, It shall hug tight, till you smell Its mouth-blessed fragrance: the perfume sweet, the taste divine, of a corpse's bridal kisse—"

The old ghoul paused at the random prod of a senile thought intrusion, as a back-up dagger, fresh and sharp, had pierced Its half-brained insights.

The climber detached Its clinging arms, and Its legs from around his stomach.

From Its head and hand, he pried his knives, retrieving his gore-soaked weapons.

He tried gift back the gut-wove crown. But to his brow, its filth had bonded.

With a shrug and worn-down sigh, he shoved the hell-bowled beast away from his climbing-returning self, away from the face of his Mountain.

Down Its rot-dead body fell, dwindling down to the void, forgotten. Down It went with the wolves and the rest, dwindling down to the void, forgotten.