What is faith?

This question probed Zoe’s mind as the cold mist pressed in on her. The Mountain came to her as an unintended reward for fighting in the Black Star dimension. It showed her devotion to the Crimson Armada System, but that was a sick joke. She shared no love for that system, not then, and not now. The power that came with it was one thing, but for her reward to be the Mountain of Faith and the promise of more power…

What did Faith mean to her?

The question echoed in time with the descending footsteps.

Mist billowed and swirled and for all the echoes of incense and the chanting like a forgotten perfume — Zoe could only think of the rising steams in that Hellish bog. The sea of choked vegetation where the crucified Angel dripped molten blood. The steps came, hard, insistent, closing in on her, and for all Zoe wished to charge, she couldn’t bring herself to advance into the mist.

She couldn’t see. Anton crouched behind her. She raised her arms as the steps came closer, closer, closer —

“Show yourself!” she shouted in a voice made ragged by stress, as the weight of the world broke her shoulders. “Don’t hide in the mists. Come out and face me.”

The steps stopped. A silhouette loomed a few feet into the mist, or perhaps there was nothing at all, she couldn’t be sure no matter how hard she peered.

[You fail the first test]

She blinked in shock as the unfamiliar voice whispered through her like a draft through an empty house.

“What? What test?”

The stairs vanished beneath her feet.

For half a moment, Zoe expected to slide down the slope of the Mountain like it was a gigantic slide, but then the Mountain itself vanished. She fell a half step through the mists and blinked. There were no mists, just a clear blue sky and a field of flowers and the Mountain looming in the distance. The stairs beckoned from the bottom, and they rose into the mists she had just lost herself inside. Zoe shook her head and looked fro her friends.

Skidmark was in the middle of building a daisy crown while Bella was doing one-handed pushups. Both women looked over at Zoe with surprise.

“Are you done already?” Skidmark asked.

Zoe shook her head to clear the cobwebs.

“No, something happened.”

“We failed a test,” Anton said from behind. “Didn’t even know there was a test.”

“We knew it would be dangerous.”

Bella sprung up to her feet.

“What was the test?”

Zoe took a moment to explain what it was, and Bella shrugged.

“I think you need to go into the mist,” Bella said. “Move forward, leap of faith sort of thing, you know?”

“Makes sense to me,” Skidmark said.

Zoe nodded.

“Ok, you ready Anton?”

“Always, boss.”

“Good luck,” Skidmark said.

Bella echoed the sentiment as she started doing crunches.

###

The mists parted before them as they raced up the mountain slope once more. Zoe focused her senses on the steps before her, keeping her strides under control as the stone path switched directions. She didn’t want to risk falling off the edge. Who knew if she would even hit the bottom. As they climbed higher, time slipped away in the same way it had before. Days stretched out in her memory, but there were holes in that strained fabric of time, gaps in memory where she saw only steps, felt only mist, and heard only the ragged breaths of Anton and herself.

The mist curled in on them, and pushed closer, she breathed it in like icy fingers, and soon found herself walking instead of sprinting. When did she slow down? Her steps grew labored as though she carried the mountain she walked upon. A nauseous anxiety built up inside her, and with surprising clarity she realized the problem.

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She no longer had faith in Bella’s idea. Why would charging ahead into the mists work? The weight on her legs grew stronger. She should be strong enough to carry a house, but the mists circled around her like Angelic shackles.

Anton sighed behind her.

“It happened again, didn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

A footstep echoed ahead of them. They waited, and the sound came again. Barefoot on stone. Skin touching that slight dampness caused by the choking mists. Zoe could feel the stairs beneath her tensing as though ready to slide away. The Mountain trembled in her peripheral vision, the whole thing a potentiality of negativity, real only for her convenience, but not for much longer.

“Do you think Bella’s right?” she asked.

“I don’t think it matters,” Anton said. “What do you think is right? Cos I’ll follow you.”

Zoe frowned at that. Such a simple proclamation and it revealed a depth of faith she wanted to recoil from. How could he trust her like that? Believe in her like that? She wasn’t so self-righteous as to believe it was justified, no, but she wouldn’t refuse his belief. She couldn’t afford to, because she needed to…

With a grimace, Zoe stepped toward the footsteps.

The walker in the mist descended toward them, and Zoe climbed in response. Their footfalls echoed out louder and louder like the crashing of gongs. Mist clung to Zoe’s eyes, and even when she summoned Moth’s Mirrored skin, she saw no more than an inch ahead of her. Her steps slowed as she felt out the stairs, but they didn’t stop. She couldn’t put into words why she kept going, only knew Anton followed, and she must create room for him to enter, so she advanced in the same way a vine encircles a tree: grasping blindly in the search of light.

The footsteps came so close that the ringing sound became a continuous note. Zoe’s ears rang as though she had summoned her body path, but the Smith and his forge were as distant from her soul as they had ever been. There was no sense of any path, merely step after step and the descending avalanche of noise.

Then, out of the mist, came… nothing.

She felt a flicker pass over her, but perhaps it was just her imagination, and the echoing steps continued down the slope after her. She faltered, and slowed, but didn’t stop climbing.

“Did you feel that?” she asked Anton.

“I think so?”

“I don’t know what that was, but I think we —”

[You pass the first test]

Zoe’s grin spread across her healed lips as she stepped forward. The moment was ruined when she stumbled. She had grown so used to expecting the next step that she was surprised to find herself walking now on flat ground.

The mist cleared and revealed a courtyard of rough and uneven tiles. They had once been smooth, but time eroded any sense of direction. Pagodas stood at the four corners of the courtyard. In the center, a circle of sand rung by stones. A man sat in the center of the sand.

She thought Mathias big, but this gigantic figure dwarfed even him. Even seated, this man’s head was twice Zoe’s height. Long white hair flowed his head and a matching beard hung down. Both hair and beard were kept together with golden rings. He sat shirtless, his muscles bulging like the rocks of the mountain. His hands rested open and palm up upon his crossed knees. A monstrous aura radiated from him. When he opened his eyes, Willpower struck Zoe like a cracked whip. She stepped back involuntarily, her senses screaming of danger.

Anton groaned behind her, and Zoe stepped forward to shield him as the gigantic figure rose. Standing, he was over four times her height and she couldn’t even guess how much more than her he weighed.

“You passed the first test,” he said with a nod. “Now you must face the second.”

He appeared human, but in the same way a mirage resembles water. Something flickered deep in Zoe’s subconscious as she tried to understand exactly what stood before her. She sighed.

This probably wasn’t even a real mountain.

“What’s the test?” she said.

“You already know,” the gigantic figure said as he stepped into a stance with his hands still open. “Defeat me, and you shall pass.”

With a grin, Zoe cracked her knuckles and then her neck. With each pop, the tension faded. This, at least, she knew she could do. She stepped toward the circle of sand and prepared to fight.

###

Down at the Mountain’s base, Bella performed a bridge amongst the flowers. She wasn’t sure how long she held the position, but even her enhanced body trembled as sweat dripped from her forehead into the grass. Skidmark was wondering about somewhere out of sight. The Scottish woman hadn’t taken the revelation about her faith well. Bella couldn't quite relate to the feeling, but she still felt sorry for her. Any attempts at conversation though were quickly brushed aside. Skidmark seemed content to wander and wallow, and Bella understood that at least, though she wanted anything but.

She turned her attention back to her exercise. After the bridges she did another round of one handed pushups. It was all effortless. Even as her muscles trembled, they renewed themselves faster than she could exert herself. Her blade sang to her, and she flipped, and landed beside it with a grace that would require wirework in the old world.

Her runeblade felt eager as it fit into her hand.

The hunt… the hunt comes to us…

She raised an eyebrow. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but she moved through some sword forms Oriz taught her. Anger flowed and made the movements jerky and she forced herself to breathe properly. Oriz was dead. Oriz was the past. She needed to focus on herself. A slash went wide and burning wind swept aside a large swathe of flowers. Bella closed her eyes and breathed. When she opened her eyes, the flowers had returned.

She leaned on her sword and wondered how Zoe was doing up on the Mountain. She looked around, and couldn’t even pick the direction her friends had vanished. Nothing but blue sky reflected in her blue eyes. She smirked at that, did she have such little faith?

As she squinted up at the sky, she noticed something.

A hair thin crack of pure darkness in the sky. She walked closer, and the crack loomed. It wasn’t distant, but close, maybe thirty feet above the ground. If she got a running start, maybe she could leap up and touch it… as her vision locked into it, as she tried to understand what it was, the crack widened. She gasped, and the crack widened further, splitting across the sky like a fracture in glass as though her very attention was too much pressure for it to withstand.

Something dark oozed through the crack. A midnight goop that dangled in long strands. Light reflected off the shiny, viscous fluid, and, as Bella stepped away from a strand dripping toward her, the reflected light blinked. Eyes stared from the darkness. Teeth protruded and smiled.

The hunt…

Bella drew her blade into a ready position. Time to find out if she could kill a Mubilashi.