Maleki:
My ears rang like chimes echoing in the wind, circling around my skull while my body attempted to undo the daze that it had entered. My fingers felt numb, and my legs felt weak — actually, everything felt numb, and my whole body was weak. The peak was white around me, sterile and desolate. No winds tore at me, and the air was thin. Sluggishly, I blinked my eyes and found my back against the pylon, scraping my fingers against the ground and shaping the brittle snow into the clutch of my hand. Icy remnants woke the feeling in my palms as the gathered snow withered against the warmth of my touch. Long breaths returned me to my senses, but the atmosphere repelled me. This peak was cold, and my lungs didn’t have the strength to withstand this area. The feeling was like drowning very slowly, not quite able to escape, but each breath was less successful than the last.
Miko’s leg curved into sight around the circular pillar. Crawling forward, I summoned the growing strength in my forearms and inched toward my brother. His body was twitching faintly, reacting to the remnants of the previous shock. I pushed against his shoulder blade, and then pulled towards me a few times to jostle him awake. This was not sleep. It was a continued reaction to the trauma of the physical forces that were contained within him. A fierce battle raged inside his body as it decided the victor. My head throbbed, and my ears still rang, but the shakiness of the earth that existed only in my head began to dissipate. There was little left in my muscles, but I gathered it and found myself standing, though my eyes went black in between. That gate was open now, and the storm no longer swarmed this mountain.
Every footstep was like those drunks we saw at the tavern, unbalanced and improvised, like a baby learning to walk. Staying here was not an option, so I gathered our bags and my scythe and hobbled to the gate. Then I returned for Miko. His eyes fluttered, and he mumbled nonsense, and the air wasn’t doing us any favours. Squatting down, my eyes went dark again as the pressure travelled to the back of my eyes. I picked him up, sliding one arm underneath the bends of his knees and the other under his back near his neck. His weight was more than I could stand with after the subtraction of the energy this place stole by default and combined with the toll of the trials. I closed my eyes and imagined myself standing like the weight was not there. Then I took the thoughts to practice, rising with his weight in my arms by driving my heels into the ground. Any air I exhaled was as thin as I had gained through strained breaths. Every cut in my body screamed through the motion. First, my sliced bicep and chest, then the gashes in my back, and especially the two that took the force of the thrown stone. The footprints I left in the short layer of snow were deepened by the added weight, so I focused on the details around me to allow the journey to the gate to pass more swiftly. If I took the time to think or spent energy analyzing and worrying, my body would fall as limp as Miko’s currently was. With each precise step, I found the edge of the stone bowl and the shiny metal gate.
Past the packs and down the slope of stairs was our guide. Only the back of his head was visible as he looked out into the distance. Setting Miko down against his bag, my left hand traced against the ridge mountain wall as a support as I walked towards Nomen. His stance was abnormal and almost relaxed, but the side of his face was dispassionate. Nomen’s right arm and palm supported his sharp chin and pressed against his bulging round cheeks. When I got to his side, he raised an eyebrow but did not seem surprised to have seen me. His lackluster reaction meant he already knew I had surpassed the trial, and he had to walk past me to get over here, so it made sense.
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“You have come far — farther than others.” He said in a detached tone.
A subtle displeasure could be heard, but he was careful not to let it continue as I spoke. “I’m not sure how anyone could muster the strength to survive that.”
“Yet, you did.” He responded.
“We did. That storm would have swallowed me whole if it was just me up here.”
“Maleki, I do not wish to be so direct nor appear indifferent to you… “He paused with a sigh before looking ahead. “You are doing twice the work and would not be so fatigued before or during the trial had you gone at this alo-“
“These trials would take me three times to figure out by myself — IF I ever did.”
“Perhaps you are right, but this is not a game of chance. Every trial takes more from you at increasing difficulty and cost.”
The clouds parted before us, opening the sky so that all below was visible. The long, snaking cliffside of the mountain slanted down for thousands of feet until a wide river coursed through at the bottom. South of that was a massive island that mostly blurred at this distance, but something caught my eye. There was a large feature in the middle of the circular crust of land. Was it a mountain? No, the shape was wrong; it was like a tower and then a blob-like green mountain. “Is that where we are headed? Is The Garden on that mountain there?” I pointed weakly with my finger toward the odd shape in the distance.
“No, that is The Garden. And it is no mountain. “His voice was solemn. “That is the tree that governs — Arbor Majikae.” His pronunciation was reverent, but his eyes told a different story. He stared intently at it. Was that desire or hatred? My body was too tired to decipher. I’ve never seen a tree that large; I’m not sure I’ve seen anything that large, to be fair. From here, I could barely trace any details without straining my eyes, but even from here, I could tell it was beautiful. We just have to make it there. I looked back to Miko, and he showed no signs of waking, still twitching in my absence. How could I not worry for him?
“Rest. You will need every grain of remaining energy at your disposal when you wake.” Nomen said with a more thoughtful voice.
I acknowledged with my eyes, tracing my fingers back against the rock and slumping near my bag. Reaching into Miko’s bag, I covered him in his blanket and found my own to huddle underneath. The cold had finally embraced me tightly after letting myself unfold, though it had not affected Nomen. He was experienced at this, but in our similar ages, he made me rethink my own strengths and very apparent weaknesses. Shivering in my pouch of the blanket, I tucked the edges of the cloth around me as the air cut into the fabric. My warm breath became visible as it left my mouth and heated the blanket and myself as I attempted to trap the warmth in my collapsed huddle. Deep sleep found me, and I found myself in the void, standing on a gray rock devoid of life. Surrounding me was the depth of space. The void of the storm scared me, but this felt right. Grand emptiness — a kind of separation between two things that you can only imagine when trapped at the base of a planet’s many levels of atmosphere. Being on the mountain’s peak was the closest I had ever come to understanding the distance that divides us. Lights flickered out in space — tiny flickers of stars that winked to prove their existence. Where was I? Was this a moon? I often thought of the moons, even during the day. Just looking at them was enough to invigorate me. Turning my head, I saw the shine of the astral ring formed by millions of tiny rocks.