Chapter 5: Fiend's Mountain

It took a full week to climb up the mountain. The going was slow, but it wasn’t exactly hard. After that first day’s avalanche, they caused at least three more in their circuitous trip, but none at anywhere near the same scale. None that forced them to run back down the mountain.

It was clear to Wirrin, at least, that that first avalanche had knocked a lot of snow and stone loose all around the mountain. There was no avoiding looking over the precipice and seeing the fresh, fluffy piles.

They may have reached the end of the path on the sixth day if Wirrin hadn’t been so adamant about not camping on the south or east faces. The easterly wind was still blowing, and was bringing darker clouds with it. Thankfully the rain and snow held off.

As they got higher and the snow thinner from the constant shifting and cracking, more and more of the mural along the wall could be made out. Wirrin had dismissed the siblings’ efforts to decipher it as a lost cause, but she was glad for the outlet it gave their growing excitement.

Despite the constant shifting of the snow and stone, some of the animals Wirrin had seen from below were still nibbling at the half-buried plants. It got her to wondering, vaguely, if plants created by magic were more robust than plants grown naturally. She doubted she would ever find out.

A goat and a sheep were more than enough to feed the four of them on their spirally ascent and Wirrin still had about half of the sheep strapped to her back when they finally reached the end of the ledge.

The path terminated into the side of the mountain just beyond a tall cave that was still almost completely packed with snow. The path itself had splintered and cracked over time, as it had everywhere else, and large chunks had fallen free, turning what Wirrin imagined had once been a smooth curve into more like the spokes of a cartwheel.

It was only mid-morning when the four of them reached the cave. There was no doubting that this was what the siblings had been looking for. Wirrin sat down on her rug a couple of hundred metres away from the cave and handed Alina her shovel. Leran and Hest started digging with picks.

While she left the siblings to their digging, with plenty of warnings about taking care, Wirrin finished off her map of this spiral mountain. By now the hide from the first sheep was cured enough to write on. So not only had she updated her regional map with Telposs, to contrast Felgoss, but she was drawing a new map that captured the specific route to get here.

It was a good thing that the siblings hadn’t taken much interest in Wirrin’s maps as they climbed the mountain. They would have learned far more about Wirrin than she wanted them to know. Though perhaps it would be nice to share some of it with them, when the four of them got back to civilisation.

Once she was done with her maps, Wirrin got up and went to check on the siblings’ progress. She hadn’t been at it for so long that they’d completely cleared the cave, but she was still impressed by how far they’d gotten.

Nearly six metres of smooth, stone floor, interrupted by small piles of snow, greeted her at the cave’s entrance. The cave itself was about three metres wide, the bottom corners still sharp right angles, and about twelve metres above, the walls met in a perfect arch.

There was certainly no confusing this for a natural formation.

The siblings had switched tools. Alina and Hest were pulling at the packed snow with picks, and Leran was shovelling it generally toward the entryway of the room.

Alina and Hest paused so that Leran could, scraping the shovel loudly against the floor, push a mound of snow out the entry and down the mountain.

‘You could help, you know,’ Leran said, passing Wirrin.

Wirrin nodded. ‘You three have it under control,’ she said, moving a little further into the room. ‘I wouldn’t want to get in your way.’

Alina went ‘HA’ loudly, and got back to pulling at the snow.

After the next load Leran pushed out the door, he traded with Alina. The siblings gave the strong impression that they knew what they were doing. Wirrin supposed it wasn’t that hard to work out.

It was after another hour, three tool switches, and six metres of uncovered smooth stone floor, that Hest’s pick struck sparks from something behind all that snow. With immediate vigour Leran and Hest, who had the picks, pulled at the remaining snow.

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The statue was revealed from the top of the head down, snow cascading to reveal an odd lack of detail. It looked at first glance like a statue of a person that had been stretched to ten metres tall, but with a head big enough for a person of that height.

It had long, smooth legs, long, smooth arms down to where it’s knees would have been. A long, smooth torso with no features or details and a long, thin neck.

Comparatively, its head seemed gigantic. It wasn’t the head of a person. It had no ears or nose or hair. Instead it had three rings of symmetrical, exquisitely detailed eyes circling its head. Under its chin was a huge, wide, grinning mouth full of sharp teeth.

Wirrin hadn’t been expecting that. She hadn’t thought she had any expectations. But after a week of passing those worn, triangular posts with eyes on the top, she realised she’d been expecting another one of those.

This was much better, of course.

‘Speak to us,’ Hest cried to the statue.

Wirrin choked.

Alina sighed and pulled out their book. She glanced at Wirrin, who was still near the entry, and huddled with her brothers to leaf through their notes. Wirrin slid closer, quiet enough that none of three of them looked back.

‘It has to be someone,’ Alina was saying.

‘How will we get back without her?’ Leran whispered.

Hest pointed to the statue.

‘And what it if doesn’t work?’ Leran asked.

‘She has that map,’ Alina was saying. ‘Would you rather it be one of us?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘We have to get her up against the statue, right?’ Hest said, flexing his hands.

‘I think so,’ Alina whispered. ‘It says to drain the blood into the idol.’

‘Ok, fine,’ Leran sighed. He was the one with the sword, after all.

‘Leran, you’ll have to fight her,’ Alina said.

‘Then me and Ally grab her,’ Hest muttered, loud enough that Wirrin probably would have heard him without getting any closer.

Alina shushed him.

‘You two have to help me fight,’ Leran said. ‘She’s been adventuring since she was like ten years old.’

‘Sure, but she’s got to be like forty or something,’ Hest said. ‘Slow.’

It was a real struggle for Wirrin not to laugh. A struggle she lost, snorting quietly from barely a metre behind the huddled siblings. All three of them whipped around.

‘I’m thirty-five,’ Wirrin said. ‘By the way.’

Leran drew his sword, a smallsword at best. ‘I’m sorry Wirrin, but it’s you or us.’

Wirrin frowned at them. ‘I’d have thought six weeks of spending every moment together would have meant more,’ she said, hoping the deadpan tone wasn’t as obvious as it felt. ‘What’s this all about anyway?’

Hest lunged at her and grabbed her by the arms. She didn’t bother to struggle.

‘I’m sorry Wirrin,’ Alina said. ‘But we need to sacrifice someone against the statue to bring Mkaer back to the world.’

‘Surely you can understand?’ Leran said.

‘I suppose so,’ Wirrin said, hoping she sounded more defeated than bored. ‘There’s no other way?’ She took a deep breath.

Leran’s eyes were starting to get shiny.

‘It’s the only way, Wirrin,’ Alina said.

Wirrin sighed. ‘Alright, fine,’ she said. She pulled an arm easily out of Hest’s bear hug, grabbed him by the scuff of his jacket, and flung him to the ground between her and Leran.

She shrugged her pack off and drew her knife. ‘I guess that makes sense,’ Wirrin said. ‘You did all seem to be making a point to keep your distance. I figured it was a class thing.

Hest struggled to his feet on the damp, smooth stone.

‘I was starting to like you, you know,’ Wirrin continued, just standing there with the knife. ‘I figured young revolutionaries, you know? Found some books and went for an adventure. Especially when it seemed likely that you were right.’

‘Shut up.’ Hest grabbed the sword out of Leran’s hand and lunged at Wirrin.

She leaned out of the way, caught his arm under her own and stabbed him in the throat. She picked the sword from his limp hand as he collapsed. ‘I figured I’d take you back to Ettovica to meet the Sovtlan, that we’d be able to get something started.’

‘We still could,’ Alina insisted loudly, eyes stuck to her brother’s bleeding body.

‘And then you all decided to kill me.’ Wirrin sighed. ‘Doesn’t seem like a good foundation for a relationship, you know?’ She stepped forward and both of them stepped back.

Wirrin stepped forward again and again Leran and Alina stepped back. Leran ran into the leg of Mkaer’s statue. Wirrin stabbed him in the chest. ‘I’ve got to assume that two is better than one,’ she said, and stabbed Alina in the neck.

She kicked Hest’s choking body into the feet of the statue before she stabbed him in the armpit. Then she leant down to pick up the book from Alina’s hand. The double page was covered in notes with a few symbols that Wirrin had spotted on the way up this mountain. It was all written in Yovtavan, which Wirrin understood.

Her reading was interrupted when she glanced at the siblings to make sure none of them were moving. None of them were, but their blood was. Where it flowed out of Alina’s neck and Leran’s chest and Hest’s neck and armpit, it flowed back toward the statue.

Immediately finding the statue, it flowed into the long, toe-less feet and was absorbed. It seemed that nothing was happening, though, once the blood was absorbed. Until Wirrin looked up.

Where the body of the statue seemed unchanged by the blood, its open mouth was filling with colour. White teeth and red tongue. And when Wirrin stepped back to look at its eyes, they too were filling with colour.

The longer she looked, the more certain she was that the eyes were filling with all the colours she had ever seen. White sclera, bloodshot, yellowed. With brown and blue and hazel and green eyes. All eyes that Wirrin couldn’t help but recognise, sure that she had seen them in someone else’s face. She just couldn’t place where.

She had picked up the book with the hopes of finding out what to do next, but she needn’t have worried.

The mouth under Mkaer’s chin was the only part of it that seemed to move. But Wirrin was sure the voice came from inside her own head, not from the statue itself.

A voice that was deep and resonant, that rumbled and cracked and hissed like the mountain it stood in.

‘I am awoken.’

And that was it.