Chapter 70 - Climb any Mountain
All the people in metal armor thought turning me into a pack mule was a lovely idea, actually, and it became a race to give me their armor first and get out of swampy clothes. Even the goblins got in on the fun, Tiba’s honor guards seemed to relish finally being able to take the heavy iron suits off, and a surprising amount of swamp water was dumped from boots. Tiba didn’t feel the need to offload anything, however. She wore the bare minimum already, and she would never in a million years give up Hunty’s spear or her herb pouches.
The dragon sisters seemed quite comfortable changing in front of everyone, even peeling off their wet underclothes and donning dry ones.
I, being a gentleman, turned to give them some privacy after realizing what they were doing, which amused Samila to no end. So, after a cheeky whisper about how I was taking my monk cover story far too seriously, she set about giving me a play by play of the entire process, not just what she was doing but for Sissa as well, while I silently prayed to Constance to grant me strength or to maybe just remove my blush reflex for a day.
The quick flash of blue I got from the corner of my eye left me with even more questions than I would have had not seeing anything at all. Weren’t they supposed to be reptilian? Why did-
Nope. We are not going down that road.
I shot a pained look over at Trix, who was pulling on a dry robe further up the trail, but he made the smart move and kept out of it, pretending to fold his swampified clothes into just the right shapes while muttering quietly to himself.
The swamp had done a number on everyone. Geddon even had a leech on his upper back that he couldn’t reach thanks to his exaggerated musculature, and since everyone else was busy, I was given the honor of peeling it off which I used as an excuse to get away from Samila.
After ripping the thing off, I went to throw the leech far away, but Tiba stopped me, scandalized at my willingness to waste ‘good ingredients.’
“Good ingredients make good medicine,” was all she would say to clarify, getting on her tiptoes to get a better look at the little bug I had pinched between my fingers. She didn’t go so far as to jump and snatch at it, but I could see that she was close.
I didn’t ask for details on what she planned to do with the thing. I simply handed Tiba the fat leech and watched her stick it in with her herbs while I wiped my slightly slimy hand on my pants.
Then I had to spend about ten minutes making all the pieces of gear disappear one by one into my spatial storage while the rest of the party got their weapons back in place. Bole and Beedy busied themselves scouting, choosing to retain their leathers, but everyone else was down to shirts and pants at the most.
Once everyone was traveling light with the exception of me, we started up the trail.
I tried not to feel bitter that I had no way to lighten my own load. I was already very heavy and dense, in contrast with my size. With 53 body, I’d put on quite a bit of supernatural muscle. I wasn’t bulky by any means, but I wasn’t small anymore either. If I had to use a word for it, I’d call my new frame ‘functional.’ I was wider in the shoulders, deeper in the chest, and my limbs were hard and defined without going into the more rounded shape of a bodybuilder. Back home, I’d probably pass for a particularly well fed Outers scrapper or maybe an amateur boxer.
The infuriating thing was that no matter how much Body I gained I never felt lighter. Did increasing Body also increase my weight? That theory had some holes in it. I started out with what? 10 body? 11? Wouldn’t I have to be four times heavier now to account for the strength increase? That couldn’t be right. I broke my cot earlier in the week, yes, but quadrupling my strength with appropriate weight would reduce every piece of furniture I used to splinters instantly, wouldn’t it?
Always more questions. No. Don’t think it. “Magic” is not an excuse to stop asking questions. That’s the lazy answer, and we’re not doing that.
The pass started out, essentially, as a trail, a trail we were already on, but it quickly turned into more of a constantly forking draw that ran gently uphill, so gently that it could have been mistaken for a creek bed.
With the tree cover overhead and no view of the actual mountain range we wanted to traverse, I had a good bit of trouble thinking of the trail as a pass anyway. At least not yet. If I had a clear view of the mountains, the ability to look up and see what I was crossing, I’d probably be able to hold the concept in my mind better.
However, this was Ralqir. A peak up through the trees toward the sun or the stars anywhere outside of Skyglade was a ticket to blindness and death, especially for things like me with my special condition.
As we trekked on the trail gradually morphed into a creek, which then turned into a roughly carved ‘V’ about one Geddon wide with gravel and ground organic bits on the floor while the cracked and jagged walls shot up the sides, just steep enough to be considered a climb instead of a walk. If I spread my arms I could run my hands along both walls, which made steadying myself while climbing over the odd pile of fallen rocks easier.
Overhead, the swamp species of mendau tree gave way to a sort of black-leafed brush with bristly but thick leaves that, along with being the most effective shade tree I’d ever encountered, also seemed to be able to put down roots almost anywhere. In fact, they seemed to seek out the absolute worst places to thrive.
The path we walked had soil and leaf litter in the bottom along with squishy sand and gravel, a fine place to put down roots, but the brush had chosen to live life on hard mode. They grew literally from the side of the mountain, clinging to the rock, roots spreading wide over the stone and forming intricate nets that intertwined with their neighbors and covered the stone surface of the land for as far as the eye could see. Those that had found cracks and crevasses to grow next to, clung to them with thick, hooked protrusions that probably did the lion’s share of anchoring themselves and their neighbors so the whole thing couldn’t come sliding down.
It wasn’t just a few of these shrubs either. They were everywhere, and they grew over the face of the mountain like white whiskers. The pale bark paired with the black leaves made it seem like someone had come along and switched the world’s visual settings to monochrome then lowered the brightness by half.
The Ralqir natives seemed to take the midday gloominess as a good sign, however. Supposedly, these trees were deciduous, and their leaves tended to thin this time of year, but we were lucky enough to have a warm fall. Less light meant more cover, and that was always what you wanted.
By midday, the pass turned into a slow, steady trod. The ground became saturated with moisture, slippery, the sand and gravel no longer allowing our feet to grip properly as we climbed. My legs burned, even with my supernatural durability, and others, by the look of them, were feeling the same.
Geddon had it the hardest. Sometime during the day, the walls narrowed or our path lowered until the big guy had to turn to the side to fit his shoulders within the confines, and our easy view of the slope was no more. The big leori growled and grumbled the whole time, having to shimmy up the mountain turned sideways to fit in the confined space, alternating between which was his lead foot.
We were no longer at the bottom of a V but in a trench ten feet deep with sheer sides, and the floor was split, at times, revealing deep cracks going down into nothing. The debris we accidentally kicked into the gaps made noise for long seconds as the pebbles rolled and clacked off of the flowing surfaces until it got too quiet to hear anymore. Annoyingly, the cracks weren’t quite wide enough to fit a leg, but they certainly were wide enough to turn your ankle if you weren’t paying attention.
Our breaths steamed in the cold now that we’d gotten to a sufficient altitude, and those that had abandoned their wet clothes were doubly grateful to have made themselves dry before the climb, not that they stayed dry for long.
The first peel of thunder cracked overhead, close. Everyone, without exception, froze and looked up.
“We must hurry!” Tiba shouted from the lead of the group. No one else understood her, but they didn’t have to. Everyone knew a storm was bad news.
The first drop of rain *panged* off of my prosthetic hand shortly thereafter, and it only got worse from there.
As far as I could tell, this was a light to middling shower up here in the mountains. Just clouds from the north running headfirst into the mountain range and dropping their load as they flowed over, as Tiba had said. Unfortunately for us, we were in a natural pass that drained the majority of the water from two separate mountain sides. While the gentle patter of raindrops on the black canopy could be heard overhead, what we were quickly subjected to was a deluge.
Gallons of runoff sluiced down from the slopes overhead to fall onto our heads in steady, cold streams. The rest of the mountain may have been getting a light smattering of water, but we got everything, a torrent of freezing cold dumped on our heads courtesy of physics, soaking us to the bone and chilling us to our cores. It battered us, pushed us down, and made our bodies heavy, our footing so slippery that our pace slowed to a tenuous crawl, made worse by having to now carry the shorter folk on our shoulders thanks to the floor our trail disappearing to be replaced by a rushing river of muddy, glacial runoff.
This is where being heavy and dense actually worked in my favor. As the water levels rose, I did not, nor was my buoyancy ever a factor in my footing. My boots were firmly on the ground, more so than my friends’, slippery as it was, and eventually, I was at the head of the group, a rope tied around my waist and Tiba straddling my shoulders like a kid at a parade as I climbed, gritting my teeth with every grinding step upwards.
“We must get to the top soon, Ryan, or it goes badly for us!” Tiba shouted above the rushing noise.
“So I gathered!” I replied, a sudden gush of water slapping against my sternum, peppering my skin with the hundreds of little pebbles it had brought with it from further up the mountain.
“How far?!” I asked.
“I’m not sure! It looks different like this!”
Climbing is now level 9.
“Do we need to go back?” I asked as I took another heavy, laborious step.
The little goblin queen’s legs tensed on my shoulders, gripping tightly as if I were a mount that might bolt at a bad time.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“We can’t!” She replied. “It is probably worse further down the mountain!”
That just meant I had to buckle down.
The pressure on the rope steadily grew, and the knot dug painfully into my waist. Someone back there was struggling badly, and I desperately hoped it wasn’t Geddon. Having to pull the big guy up the mountain would be-
Climbing is now level 10.
Upgrade paths available:
Anchor
Create Handhold
Reinforced Musculature
Well, there was a bright side to it all, I guessed. If one of these could help me, I’d gladly pick it now if it meant we could get to the top before someone drowned or turned the pass into the multiverse’s most ill-advised waterslide.
Anchor: Any force exerted upon you while climbing is reduced by 20%.
Create Handhold: Affix an object you possess to any surface. The adhering of this object requires an investment of mana while maintaining the bond requires significantly less (variable).
Reinforced Musculature: Your body score is amplified by 10% while climbing. This bonus is lost after 1 minute of rest or a 1 minute period of using only your feet to move through geographical space.
Anchor. One hundred percent Anchor.
Create Handhold was another one of those things I could have fun with, magically gluing things to other things, but I could probably mimic the function well enough with prep time, training, and equipment.
Reinforced musculature was a straight 10% Body gain while I climbed, which would be huge if I kept getting more Body points from my achievements. Plus, it seemed like I could exploit the loose wording a bit to keep the buff if I was in a situation where I was using my hands and feet to traverse terrain.
However, Anchor had the benefit of being impossible. Any force exerted upon me was reduced? Attacks? Physical? Magical? Metaphorical? It didn’t say.
Yes please. Take a seat, Fundamental Laws of the Universe. I’m climbing here.
I chose it before I could second guess myself. Instantly, I felt lighter, the force of the rushing water less oppressive, and the rope around my waist stopped digging into my abdomen so deeply. The effect was so sudden and pronounced that-
“Are you okay, Ryan?” Tiba asked, sweeping my hair out of my face to put her hand on my forehead, checking for fever.
“No. I-”
My stomach spasmed, and I doubled over, losing what little lunch I’d had earlier in the day along with a good amount of water.
“Ryan?!”
I had the presence of mind to keep my grip on the rock, but I let go with my weaker hand to give the goblin queen a thumbs up in between mouthfuls of vomit. Apparently, gravity was also a force being exerted upon my body as I climbed, and suddenly changing that constant came with consequences.
Once the nausea passed, I shook my head and was back to climbing. One foot in front of the other, arms outstretched, prosthetic fingers over rock, I climbed.
What must have been hours later, my angle of ascent suddenly changed, and, without warning, my foot touched ground that had leveled out significantly, not entirely, but enough that it felt like flat ground.
I nearly tripped, reaching out for handholds that were no longer there. The sheer walls of the wash were suddenly gone as if I’d entered a room through a doorway, and I was in a miniature forest of pale trunks and black leaves, the lowest of which were maybe a head or two above my own. The water was about shin-high here, a standing, black puddle as opposed to the river I’d just left.
The look of the place was otherworldly, the clouds making the light diffuse before it even hit the trees, casting the world in a strange, eclipse-like gloom.
I let Tiba down gently into the water and started hauling the others up. I felt gravity reassert itself fully now that I wasn’t climbing anymore, forcing my stomach to adjust again, but it wasn’t nearly so rough going back to normal as it was the other way around.
The pull was harder, but that was okay. I was upright and anchored enough.
Everyone, without exception, was exhausted when they took my hand to be helped to the top, Beedy especially. When I hauled him up, grabbing his forearm to get him to his feet, he sagged right back down into the standing water. Grabbing him by the collar, I heaved him up until I could look at his face.
Not good.
His skin was like ice, pale and bloodless, and his lips were blue.
Not good at all.
“Tiba!” I shouted
“I know! We take shelter near here! Come!”
The dragon sisters seemed to be doing the best out of everyone with the exception of myself and (surprisingly) Bole, but I was supernaturally durable. So, the pair of dragon women got under either of Beedy’s arms to help him along as we followed Tiba further into the pass.
Tiba led us through the twilight forest of scrub, to our left, through the trees, and up another slope but only enough to get us out of the standing water, then to a boulder behind which was a rocky overhang that jutted out of the mountainside to form a curved roof of sorts, shallow but long like the gutter on a colossal house, big enough for us to stop and get out of the rain and comfortably so.
Evidence of fire, soot stains, charcoal scratches on the walls, and black discoloration on the rock overhead indicated that this place had been used as a waystation many times before.
We all piled through the gap behind the boulder and into the shelter. Everyone was eager to get out of the elements. Beedy was nearly asleep on his feet, and everyone but me was shivering to the point that I could hear their teeth chattering from ten feet away.
It was down to me to make the fire. Thankfully, my spatial storage was much drier than I was.
I chose the spot in the shelter that was already black from previous fires, sandwiched between the back wall and the surface of the boulder that hid the place from view.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to start the fire from scratch. No flint and steel required. I simply got one of my oil soaked logs out of my storage and piled more of my stock on top. Then I dropped a tiny nail I automated to State Change to liquid once it left my hand. The results were instantaneous. The log with the oil sparked to life with a *FWOOSH* and the rest of the wood was ablaze in seconds to the relief of everyone nearby.
Sissa and Samila practically shoved Beedy into the flames, getting him so close I was afraid his hair was going to catch. Then they set about stripping off his leather armor and every bit of clothing he could spare. Then huddled close on either side of him to transfer body heat. He didn’t have the strength to argue, not that he would, since he was Beedy.
Everyone else followed suit, shivering and gathering around the fire. The concave shape of the overhang combined with the flat part of the boulder seemed to trap the heat pretty well, and, soon, everyone was looking better.
With everyone else sorted, I, the only one of us that didn’t seem to be affected by the cold, took care of security in the only way I knew how. Tiba seemed sad to give up the compass but she was too busy getting warm to really put up a fight.
The indicator wobbled in its housing, pointing west and southwest, tapping my wrist every couple seconds or so. The scourge were out there, maybe not on the mountainside with us, but perhaps down below.
Since we were putting down roots for the night, I figured I would as well. Two gun turrets on either side of the flat boulder would keep watch for us while we slept. They were set up for line of sight, so tracking and killing things through the trees was going to be a challenge, but they’d at least make noise if they saw something hostile.
As I got the second turret anchored and loaded, a violent shudder passed through me. Then I heard something, loud, deep, and hollow, the kind of sound you could feel on your insides as much as you heard it with your ears.
I’d felt an explosion once, when I was a kid. A Colony hauler had veered off course upon reentry and crashed on a mountain in the Outers, the ship’s holds full of promegel that had been processed in orbit. The crash site was way over the horizon from me, but when the holds detonated, the entire world for miles and miles felt it and felt it in their chests. It was a force that penetrated skin and bone and rattled everything in you that was soft and vulnerable.
This sound felt like that, a terrible projection of force with disruptive tones too deep to be fully appreciated by a mere human. Only this was… long and drawn out. Emotional. Alive.
Little rocks tumbled down the mountain and landed with a splash in the standing water at my feet.
My lizard brain, the part of me that remembered a time when humanity was not the apex predator of their planet, told me I needed to run, needed to hide, and needed to be quiet. It told me that this was no explosion or volcanic eruption that merely required caution. My lizard brain insisted that this impossible sound came from a living thing, and it was pissed.
I froze, my head swiveling to pinpoint the direction from which the sound came, and I listened.
*CRACK*
It was like a branch snapping under a boot, except far larger, followed seconds later by a thunderous *CRASH* that reverberated inside of me and brought to mind old myths of titans that flattened the Earth where they chose to set their feet.
Electric tingling crawled up from my toes to the tip of my scalp. I felt something notice me then.
I couldn’t tell what, where it was, how far away, or what its intentions were, but it noticed me. My new Stealth upgrade screamed from wherever my Skills lived.
Alert: Your presence has been detected.
Alert: Your presence has been detected.
Alert: Your presence has been detected.
Alert: Your presence has been detected.
The alerts scrolled through my feed, one after the other in a long series of heart stopping realizations that I was seen. My feet felt anchored to the ground, and my muscles refused to do more than sit very, very still.
“He still does the big magic for us,” Tiba whispered timidly.
Breathing in sharply as the spell over me dissipated, I spun on my feet and looked down to find the goblin queen right next to me leaning on her spear tiredly, her head slightly bowed and her arms folded protectively over her stomach.
I turned back to where I’d heard the noise, but…
Whatever it was wasn’t there anymore. It had gone without a sound or was no longer paying attention to me. Somehow, I knew it.
“Tiba?” I asked, not fully understanding. “What the hell was that?”
“Kuul,” she answered. Her teeth chattered in the cold, and her hands went pale as she gripped her spear with all her might.
“You can’t mean- Wait,” I choked on the words, remembering. “That was Kuul?”
Kuul, the old Stone Heart chief that had me enslaved and forced me to make things for him when I’d first arrived on this planet, was someone I’d assumed was dead. At least, I’d hoped he was dead. Last time I’d seen him he’d been running away from the Black Ones after murdering Hunty. My friend. Tiba’s lover.
When I’d found the Stone Hearts on the way to Eclipse afterward, and he wasn’t with them, I’d just…
“Yes.” Tiba’s voice was quiet now, so quiet I could barely hear her over the rain.
“That can’t be right,” I argued. “How do you know? That was- ”
Huge.
“He does the big magic for us,” Tiba repeated. “I can feel it… down there.” She nodded in the direction we were traveling, presumably down the mountain and in the valley where I had entered this universe.
That’s the tutorial area. What’s he doing in the tutorial area?
“That was Kuul?! Short, green, old, frail, hates me? That Kuul?” I snapped, feeling my volume rise without my consent.. “How was that Kuul?!”
“He does big magic to kill many of the Black Ones, as we are chased, before I am Chief. He goes deep into the mountain where the stories are made and does big magic.”
“What are you saying? When the Black Ones invaded the caves, Kuul… what? Cast some kind of spell that summoned that?”
Tiba shook her head sadly. “No. That is Kuul, what he is now. I can still feel the Chief in him… the uh… position. He burns it. He is burning.”
A shiver passed through me, my body choosing that moment to finally experience the cold.
“Last time Kuul and I met, he wanted me dead,” I remembered.
And he was just a goblin back then. What is he now that he sounds like that?
Tiba bowed her head even lower, sliding her hands over her bare skin nervously. “He burns. I feel it now like a hot iron on my face,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“He burns,” she repeated, her eyes unfocusing, staring through the trees and into the valley.
“Tiba,” I gulped. “When we get down there, will Kuul- I don’t know. Will he help us or-”
Tiba looked at me with uncertainty and a little fear, but she didn’t answer.
“Wonderful.”