The three adventurers gazed up at the giant mountain before them. Sparrow was standing, his hair rippling in the cold wind that blew from the peak. Piggy sat, breath heaving as his lungs tried to keep up with the punishment his body had experienced on their two-week long journey to the peak. And Rhino-Xi was crouched behind a large bolder throwing dung at a mountain rabbit. Some things never change.

‘D-do we really have to climb that mountain?’ Piggy asked, breath whistling between his lips, ‘we don’t even know if the gateway is up there.’

Sparrow gazed at the flashes of lightening that brightened the layer of clouds that hid the mountain’s peak, ‘We don’t really have a choice Piggy.’

And with that Sparrow started to climb. The skin of his feet had grown thick and calloused and he preferred to walk without stoneskin, that way he could feel the earth beneath him, he could sense how the ground was reacting to each footstep and whether anything was coming his way, his powerful strides took him-

‘-Ahh, Sparrow! You leopard wanker! Slow down!’

Sparrow turned around to find Piggy crawling on his hands and knees along the mountainside. Rhino-Xi wasn’t much better. You move faster alone, Sparrow thought as he flew down to Piggy, and hoisted him onto his back.

Piggy’s backpack lay beside him. Sparrow reached for a strap and nearly dropped his friend when he felt its weight.

‘Piggy! That backpack is killing you, it’s so heavy!’

Piggy grunted, ‘I know. And I only brought the essentials.’

Rhino-Xi untied to the top of Piggy’s pack, ‘Essentials like three melons, ten loaves of bread, two tea pots, three packs of tea leaves, two bales of sugar, fifteen types of cheese, a jar of pickled onions, and a single smoked salmon.’

‘Alright, alright you caught me, I’ll get rid of a few tea leaves.’

‘Why did you think two tea pots were a good idea?’ Rhino-Xi asked, pulling one from his pack, it had a delicate painting of a Spring Goose in flight over a mountain lake on its side and the handle curled like a swan’s neck. Rhino-Xi held the teapot up to the light and then brought it down on the rocks beside his feet.

The teapot shattered into a thousand pieces, spreading across the mountainside in a cloud of fine white dust.

Piggy struggled off Sparrow’s shoulders and huffed towards Rhino-Xi, ‘Oh yeah tough guy? What’s in your bag?’

He ripped Rhino-Xi's bag from his shoulders and pulled out two loaves of bread, a wax-wrapped piece of cheese, a goatskin water bottle, a small pouch of hemp and a pipe to smoke it with.

‘Huh?’ Piggy said, ‘At least my teapots were for sharing.’

Piggy squashed Rhino-Xi's pipe under his foot. Rhino-Xi growled and hurled Piggy’s other teapot against the edge of the cliff they were standing under. Piggy balled his hand around Rhino-Xi's hemp and sent it rolling down the mountainside. Rhino-xi growled, and kicked Piggy’s bag along the ground. Piggy pulled out Rhino-Xi's cheese and stuffed it in his mouth. Rhino-Xi took the tealeaves and threw them at his fellow adventurer then grabbed one of the loaves of bread, licked it, then dipped it in a puddle of deer dung.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

‘ENOUGH!’ Sparrow shouted. His voice rang out over the mountain, echoing back at him, ENOUGH, Enough, enough. ‘You’ve gone and wasted all the food you spent so much energy carrying.’

‘It was him,’ Rhino-Xi said, ‘if he didn’t stuff my cheese into his fat mouth I wouldn’t have...’

‘Enough!’ Sparrow shouted, ‘This is why I walk alone. I can’t even think with the two of you around.’

The pair wiped their noses, ‘Where’s your pack?’ Rhino-Xi asked.

‘Yeah! How come you never seem to carry anything?’ Piggy said.

‘Doesn’t matter!’ Sparrow said, ‘All that matters is you guys scrape this food off the ground, then get your bags back on your back. Piggy I’ll carry you up halfway first, then you Rhino-Xi. You both better pray that this is the mountain of the gods otherwise you’re both about to starve to death.’

The pair muttered to themselves as they picked up their food, Piggy climbed on Sparrow’s back and Sparrow flew him up the side of the mountain.

****

At the top of the mountain amongst the crisp white snow stood the statue of a powerfully built woman with a shaggy mountain goat skin draped across her shoulders. Her eyes were closed and she was covered in ice. Behind her stood a stone archway, through the archway was a meadow growing on top of white fluffy clouds.

‘W-w-well boys,’ Rhino-xi said through shivering teeth, ‘looks like we did it.’ Twin icicles had grown from Rhino-xi's mouth and looked like chopsticks, or nosefangs jutting from his face.

When Sparrow shook his head icicles fell from his hair and clinked on the ground.

‘With the gods nothing is ever this easy.’

As Sparrow’s footsteps approached the gate the eyes of the statue flickered open, pupils of pure glacial blue stared out at Sparrow.

Sparrow began by bowing, ‘I'm Sparrow and these are my friends-’

‘-and w-w-we're here to enter the land of the gods,’ Rhino-Xi continued with the enthusiasm and foresight of a golden retriever, ‘we’re gonna find the stupid, moron of a god who created the horde and slap him silly until he tells us how to destroy his creation.’

The guard of the gates nose wrinkled, ‘So... my name’s Nola... and basically my job is to make sure idiots like you DON’T get into the land of the gods.’

Piggy, whose entire body was coated in a shell of ice and snow, groaned. ‘What my silver-tongued oaf of a companion is trying to say is that we humbly ask to be let through those gates. There's a god in there who we would very much like to discuss a few things with.’

Nola shook her head. ‘Again, this is the land of the gods. You have to be a VIP to enter this place. Worthless vagabonds like you show up here all the time. I get it - you've got questions. Why did the gods invent spiky things? Why did the gods invent stinging things? Why did the gods make humanity so intelligent that they have the ability to change the very flow of rivers or reshape atoms to their purpose. Yet also make them so stupid that they use those abilities to kill each other? Listen, these questions I do not have answers for. All I know is that if you want to get through that arch you have to be a god or be with a god. I'm kind of like the bouncer at a tavern, if you don’t pass the test to get in then I stick this serrated sword straight through your heart and saw a triangle out of your abdomen and leave your body here on the ice to rest in pain and suffering for all eternity.’

‘I’m not so sure that’s what most bouncers do...’ Piggy said.

Sparrow and Piggy looked at each other, ‘Looks like there's no way forward, buddy.’ Sparrow said.

Piggy curled his arms under his armpits as shivers shook his body, ‘Maybe there's God somewhere we can befriend and...

‘Sparrow’s a god,’ Rhino-xi announced.

The two friends glared at him. The muscles on Sparrow’s face quickly tensed up as he whispered, ‘Shut up.’

‘He's definitely a god,’ Rhino-xi said even more loudly, ‘and he's not afraid to take your test, even if it means he'll suffer in the cold for eternity because he is a God.’

Piggy groaned, ‘You’re kind of being an asshole Rhino-xi and Sparrow’s not a god, he’s a-’

‘He's just a humble god,’ Rhino-xi shouted at Nola, ‘The sort of god who doesn't like to flaunt his image or place temples on the corner of every block.’

‘Right,’ The gate guard said, hefting her serrated sword with edges with barbed edges capable of inducing the sort of pain a heart attack brings of, ‘Come on kid, you loonies have already wasted enough of my time. Let's see what you’re made out of.’