This is a story about a Bulldozer

Three dead.  Then Humiliation and banditry. 

This was far past professional.  This was personal.  

Personal against this cursed mountain.  It's meandering talking rocks.  

And those four roe who had that rock.

They'd get the four of them.  Pull the rock and the Intern's things from their packs.

After that. 

Well.

It wasn't professional.  

But it would be good sport.

It had been a while since The General had been hunting properly.

Motivations can be simple.  Maybe they should be.

As quick as their makeshift compass, pointing faithfully onward.

Right.  Towards.  The rock.

"Interns!  My gun and my riding hat.  Quickly.  QUICKLY."Don't it always seem to go

The beast the General's makeshift howda was attached to didn't WANT to be here, and didn't WANT to be walking with this elezen shaped predator on it's back, but everything that came out of it's mouth sounded correct.  Right.  Proper.

Which was very weird when you were an apex predator like the Troll Eater Grizzley.

But it also very much wanted more of the food it had been offered.

Maybe just a little longer.  Do what it was told.  Get more food.   Yes.  Good bear.

Motivations can be simple.  Maybe they should be.

The bear gave a low, echoing roar and charged down the mountainside.

"TALLY HOOOOO"

That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?

Down the mountain four bodies turned in unison as a wave of noise rolled down the treeline.

The shortest craned it's lion mane-wreathed head up at the noise.   "What the fuck was THAT?"

The largest didn't even turn around "Reckon it's a bear, Solk.  You going deaf?"

"Fuck you you cheeky wet shit of a Gaez.  Bears don't sound like people."

The thinnest of the four looped their broomstick harms over their head and bubbled a lilting laugh "Can.  Worst kind especially."

Which did nothing to help Solk's mood.  "Not helping, Glaz."

"I know."

The stubbiest, wrapped in leathers and a wilted cone of a hat turned to stare with Solk.  Then.  Started running. "Gogogogogogogoggogo"

Glaz took off after the rapidly accelerating cone with the same lazy dedication of a dog chasing a car.  The mage moved.  Glaz chased.  Simple.  "Why we runnin?"

The sky split with noise and thunder.  Rocks started to shudder off nearby ledges.  The echo hit the edge of the mountain.  The edge of the world.  

Punctuating Unsyn's scream as all four of them took off sprinting for the nearest cliff.

"BECAUSE IT'S GOT A GUN."

Motivations can be simple.  Maybe they all should be.

Fear was a wonderful motivation.

"So what's all this?"

The Intern was hanging from a tree.  

Watching a cone made out of travel leathers and poorly askew hat pick through their pack.  They'd be less concerned about this if it were not for: The Creature.

The creature was green.  Viridian poison green that had an oil slickness in the fur and a tail strong enough to loop around an ankle and throw over a branch.

Which was how the Intern had gotten into this mess.  

Watching a melted ice-cream cone snag their journal.

"You can talk, you know.  It'll translate as long as it's in contact.  Easier than pulling blood or hair or fingernails."

The Intern stayed silent out of choice here.  Swinging from a tree branch at the whim of a roaving mountain hermit and their pet critter was a great way to seal a tounge.

"As you will.  This is a nice book.  Good binding.  Well kept cover.  Worn but you've been using it a lot, hmm?"  

The cone tapped the book against Intern's face, smiling somewhere under that wide brim

"Outsiders this far up the mountain are always looking for something.  And leaving things behind.  You think we're third rate tribals.  You think we don't know anyone coming to the barren ends of the earth isn't looking for leverage against wherever they came from."  There was a hum as the cone thumbed through the journal and settled a finger on a page near the end.

"Or something personal.  Were these people friends of yours?  This missing group?"

You didn't need a translator to interprate the shake of head, through the mass of green fur binding.

"Not yours then.  But your problem, eh?  Your bag to hold?  Please.  I know how command structures work.  Old men telling the young how it's going to be."

The book was knocked against Intern's face.  The smile was just inches away.

"Go back to your old man.  Tell him we're not interested.  Tell him the mountain will come for what's due if it doesn't like the story."

Intern found it hard to reply through the sudden inversion of Gravity as the Creature dissolved into so much dust in the mountain air, leaving them to try and breath loam and the thick leaves at the base of the tree.

"I should check the body" wasn't a thought that came to Hammersmith's head often these days.

It helped that most of the bodies he'd want to check on ended up in a volcano.  Hard to check on something that was incinerated and then mixed into the bones of the earth.

But when you're young you make mistakes.  Mistakes of haste.  Mistakes of frustration.  MIstakes of the moment.  Sometimes you just don't.  Go.  Back.

No matter how many times you think maybe you should.

It'd mean going up the mountain.  Not too far, not enough to get really caught up in the old country's clutches, but enough to make it take too long too fast.

Gods he hated that mountain.

He'd have to pack. He'd have to get supplies.  He'd have to see what the going rate was with the aetheryte keepers to try and get that close.  Arrange fast transport.  This was going to take a week, at least, without even leaving home.

But he wasn't going to wait for another fireside chat about The General.

That's what he called a portent.

And he wasn't about to wait for a third to come calling and tell him it was too late.

"Ah.  Fuckin tremendous.  It's you."

Dark and fightlight blend into a dull orange as the sleep burns out of an eye.  Out of two eyes.  Out of his own eyes.  Two others around the fire here.  One cross legged in the sand, the same size as himself, maybe a little better fed, a little more layered with earned muscle.

And one that took up space around the fire like the lowland feet of the mountain.  Hills buried on hills forming a towering expanse.

It was in that collection of lumps and the voice was coming from.

"I fuckin hate this one.  Which fuckin campfire yez fall asleep next t'ae this time, kid?"

There was the blink.  The recognition.

Usyn knew where this was.  He'd been coming here ever since he'd gotten into dad's bag as a child.

Started waking up in the dark around the fires he'd left burning and meeting.

Himself.

"I hope it's not all the way up the mountain."  The smaller, more whole, of the two visitors had a wide smile like a knife, filled with needles.

He didn't like it here.  Not lately.  The time in the mountain had given him friends, places to go.  Things to do.  More than.

Whatever these two were.

"I'd say we're almost off the hills but you know as well as I do how that goes.  So.  Yes.   Still up the mountain.  And not."

One sighed, one laughed.

And Usyn took a moment to look up. Out into that empty, sleep stained void.  A dark expanse of velvet.  

And if  you looked. 

Really looked.

Thousands of firelights.  

"Think we've been up here too long"

"I think we've been up here just as long as it's going to let us.  We ABSOLUTELY need to get a proper team onto this mountain."

"If we can get off it." The three undergrads in the General's care were surly.  The journey had been long, even with the General's access to a functional, if threadbare, airship.  Their course had been a deadhead in a direction with minimal funding and minimal chance for accreditation in whatever papers that were spawned by this.  Their airship had managed to land without tipping over, becoming snagged in a tree or bursting their balloon on a spiked cliff that had looked like it was reaching out from the face of the mountain to poke the all too high flying pinata full of student blood and doctoral hubris.

It was the fate of the undergrad in Sharlaya to work for the Exposure.  This wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last, that some of these commandeered students wondered if they could die from exposure seeking Exposure.

They were chasing a maybe with one of the more dangerous breeds of Academic: The Tenured.  The general had decided to chase something and they were all, now, linked to his fate.  One of them, a self proclaimed cavern expert had been told to walk into the cave.  He'd returned almost a week later with a beard, a moleish squint at returning to the light of the surface and nothing else/   No tales of bodies, stones, or remnants of the team the General was supposed to be hunting. Just that damned chisel.  Glittering in the morning sun.

True to Doctorate form the General had sluffed the task of examining onto the undergrades.   The metallurgist had noted that there was something off on the aetheric alignment.  The cavern expert noted there were still bits of stone clinking ot the blade.  Particulate that drifted off the chisel if pulled and returned when released.

And their sailor?  Their brave pilot of the skys?

Had hung the damn thing on a string and watched it.

It moved like a pendulum when sheltered from the wind.  No force acting on it, the glittering sliver of metal would sway.  First towards the cave.  Then towards the opposite, east fast of the Mountain.

Hard towards the supposed cavern of the Whispering Stone.  Lightly back out.  

They didn't know what it was supposed to mean>

But the General?

Had decided it meant enough.

They were going to chase the new compass they'd built.

Down the slope.

"So why're we all here?"

"Because I feel safer around all of you, Unsyn.  Simple as."  That damned smile.  A silver crescent.  She hated how simple it was, how it got you to agree before you thought about what was said.  "Pull your head out of the hood for a moment.  Watch what's happening."

Unsyn pulled the hood down and adjusted the chain-braided hair that it had been containing.  Nearby there was a wheezing noise followed by a repetitive thump.  She winced.  "Glaz is down there cheering on Doen to bare knuckle brawl with a bear."

"And he's winning!"  

Unsyn frowned there.  The fur-trimmed block of muscle that was Doen had managed to avoid getting mauled, so far.  "Why are you so certain he'll keep winning?"

"Because I've heard his name before.  He'll be with us years after.  Neither of you wanted to drag him along, said he was a braggard and a complete maniac but nothing's.....fun.  Without a little volatility."  The all too tall silver smiling roe, too smooth with youth, too sure for their years, had a brute force of confidence that wasn't going to be talked down.  It was all Unsyn could do to stop themselves from flipping their hood back up and retreating against it.  Back into the cloth.  Back into the snow, again.  No.  No not never.  Speak up.  Speak out.  Bite back.

"That's brass talk, and you're as mad as any of them.  Too sure.  Too ready to jump.  Certain that the gaps won't matter.  Certain of an end when we still don't even know where we're going.  I know you're magic but nothing magic is that certain.  You're even preaching about chaos and we're not even off the mountain, Usyn."  

The scolding earned her a scoff, a burst of bright gold laughter, pure as anything under heaven or earth.  "He needs a bear skin cloak.  Wants it more than anything.  Told me himself.  Something to take off the mountain with him to keep as long as he lives.  So.  We help him with that.  Then we keep going.  Off the mountain."

It was so sure.  

So impossible to disbelieve.

That anything except the future was ahead of them except that cloak, the four of them, and the wide open world.

Just in that one laugh.

That huge, warm hand on her shoulder, hugging her close as Usyn pointed down the hill at the fur-wrapped, near comically short roe locked against one of the mountain's infamous 'clawless bush bears'.  Hardly harmless, they grazed on bush and berry in the spring and were barely hip height to most roes.  But for Solk Doen?  Smallest of all roes and closest to the hells?  When they stood up they were of equal height.  Equal strength.  Equal volume.  Felt-soft arms looped over his broad back.  Teeth snapping over his wide shoulders.  Wheezing in pain as the tiny Doen tried time and time again to kick it between the legs.  She had to laugh too.  Just for a moment.

"W....when do you think..."  The tears were forming in her eyes as the laughter became contagious.

"When do you think Glaz will tell him that beast is a female....and there's nothing down there to kick?"

"Where are we going?"

The squat, hooded roe huddled down into their swaddle of cloth and sulkedat the fireside.  They'd been suffering from insomnia since the storm, though she thought maybe that could be homesickness starting to nibble at the edge of their conciousness.

The four had been traveling together for over a week.  They'd passed down through the proper treeline two weeks ago, and picked up the squat, furry feral.  A week before that they'd met the wrapped wraith that had stepped out of that same treeline's dark and into their firelight.  

A week before that she'd been found half buried in snow and her own consequences and dragged down the cliffsides by the big one.

And who know where he was coming from.  Just another one on the yearly migration off the mountain.  Another one that wouldn't make it back, probably.

"Off mountain question."  The wraith managed to spool three words into a grin in the early morning air. She didn't really like that.   She didn't like how the wraith resisted the dark morning chill.  She didn't like how they never smiled but always sounded pleased.

"Not allowed have a fate until we're off mountain?"  The disgust must have been heavier than she intended because the wraith turned their head.  They'd been adjusting their hair, threading a thin brass chain through the long locks.

"Off it's skin.  Off it's bones.  Nothing's real out there until we leave. Not even fate."    It was the most she'd ever heard the wraith speak in one burst since that night on the mountain.  Since the long, long argument about the talking rock the big guy was carrying.

The argument and the rock only reminded her of further woes. "There's nothing wrong in wondering.  Where we'll end up once we're off the plate.  Where any of this might go.  I want to wonder.  I want something ahead."  The dark mountain air.left the lament to congeal into mist around the fire.  Left it to drift into the ink smothering around the firelight.  So much hot hope expelled into a sea of fear.

The cold she wanted to get away from.  Somewhere warm and with hotter baths. Some place with warm stories for cold nights like this.

It was the warm hand on her shoulder that jolted her out of the fugue.  The wraith had no right to burn that hot, and she had no right to envy it.  

Two weeks ago a stranger, now a soul bound on the same road.off this infinite pile of stone and ages like all of them.

A little more heat for me, she thought as she dropped herself between the wraith's legs near the fire and demanded more contact the same way a cat would.  Silent but insistent.

This was where the two men exited the tent.  Outlined in the rising sun.  Just in time for the tall one to block the warm sunrise with his bulk and for the short one to shatter the morning air with a laugh made of gold.

When had she ever heard anyone so loud.  Would she ever again?

Maybe it didn't matter.

Maybe the wraith was right.

Maybe it was an off mountain question.  Maybe until they got off this thing they should ask smaller questions.  Need smaller things.

"Do my hair the same way.   Do you have another chain?"

The jingle of the links in the wraith's palm. The footfalls of the other two walking towards the firepit. She knew they'd heard. She knew all of them had.

You said look at who this was filed by.  So who the hell's Veradash?

Not that.  That's whoever managed to drag that file off a mountain and into the post.  Sure it floated for a year or two until someone noticed that team didn't come back at the end of five years.

And then what?

Well.  Look at the stamp at the bottom?

The Huntsman General?  That's not real right?  That can't be real. That's not a real title.

You know the teams we have that haul Gleaners out of bad situations these days?  Out of revolutions, big fires, infinite migration paths?   The hardnoses?

Yeah?  You're telling me what?  This is that office before it was a real office?

Yeah.  This guy.  That stamp.  They've got his HAT on display in their chamber.

Oh.  OH.  THAT HAT.

Yeah!  And this guy's LEGACY is the reason that department exists.  

So what're all these extra stamps on the file?

That one's 'Aetheric Oddities', that one's a cross-file marker meaning there's a copy of this in the Gridania Black Wood section, this one is a Retrieval Stamp from the Earth and Geology studiums of the time and the three stamps at the bottom are Emergency marks for immediate action.

Immediate action.  The dates for this guy, the emergency markers, all the cross files,  are ten years after the dates in the file.

Oh.  Yeah.  I'm sure this thing set a fire off when it finally got home and they realized an entire team hadn't come home.

So they sent someone out to.....get the team...?

Get what was left of them.

Investigate the talking rock.

No.  Looking at the order this was stamped in?  It went from investigate to retrieve the rock.  Geology department HATES talking rocks.  Let me specify.  Hates NATURAL talking rocks.  If we make them it's Golems and advanced Goldsmithing and totally normal.  They just get mad when nature does it all on it's own for some reason.

And they sent this guy out to....?

Get the rock, get anything the team left behind and.....ooooh. Right.

Right WHAT?

....things were a little more wild that far back.  And the General didn't like things killing Gleaners.  If this team died?  Good chance he went after anything he might have thought responsible.

Oh.  You think that village they stayed in is still there?

Knowing this guy?  Uh.  

Jiggy!  JIGGGGYYYYYY.  Look at this.

What do you mean what.  Look at it.  Little over half century old mis-filed gleaner records.

No no no no no look at the TITLE.  Look at who filed it.  Look at the dates on that.  Look at the record stamping.  7 year difference, at least two handoffs to different departments, STILL filed wrong.  Was brought in way after the guy was long dead too.  

Bet an intern found the misfile and handed it over.

You could make a career off a fragment like this.

I mean.

Look at it.

-----------------------

Record of Jacob Cleanhand.  Third Proto branch Gleaner expedition to deep Spine.  Dated approx 52 cycles before documented chronal distortion following Carteneau.

We were sent up here as a collelition.  Martin to document potential aether-adaptations in local fauna and mark for capture if needed for study, N'eruse for more exotic applied sentience issues such as talking birds, horses who could do enough math to mimic basic arcanima, that sort of thing, and I was meant to document flora, specifically things with potential medical applications that hadn't already been found. Three people bound by grant money and austerity holding hands and saying 'We can save some silver' by making those same three people share travel expenses, security, and supplies.  Five years of not-quite unlimited credit chits through merchant networks and all three of our fates linked to a single expense account for that time. I love the Forum.

-------------------

Getting this far has been pins and needles.  We're all experienced travelers and caravaners but the specific section we've been directed to head towards has no aetherytes, what so ever.  Fine, that's normal for getting into a place.  Can't just barge in if you've never been.  But it means now we have to account for getting out on our timeline, which could as much as halve our available practical time on the Mountain in question depending on the season, the snows, and the passes.  No one's happy about it and I'm even less pleased as I need at least a full cycle in the field to account for seasonal variance in plant-life.  Two if we wanted to be thorough.  I'd be lucky to get that much with good planning, but now we have to deal with mapping and reversing the course after on top of that, which means doing a careful dance with the merchants on the way up to make sure a cart will be coming up somewhere in that region and actually being there when it arrives. 

------------------

Addendum to previous entry: According to the merchants we've been grilling the Aetheryte network wouldn't work up there even if we tried it.  Something about the pressure of the earth aspected aether making any sort of teleportation a huge risk near the mountain, or even in it's foothills and surrounding valleys before you actually get onto it proper.  It's not unusual in the spine but it's unusual for no one to have found a safe haven or route for this sort of thing. There's a heavy population of Hellsguard in the Spine, and this mountain is no different, according to the caravaners running supplies to and furs out from them and not a one of them has a functional aetheryte.  They say the native's opinion is that the "Mountain doesn't like competition" and the merchant opinion is that the hellsguard tribes don't want an easy invasion or logistics route into their ancestral lands open to Outlanders. We'll have to test that theory, won't we?

---------------------

What the caravan master didn't tell us, until after we'd signed the contracts, agreed to the pricing, the fundings, and stamped seals over credit lines, was that time doesn't seem to work consistently here.  If you look at a map this might take a month from the outset points just outside the surrounding valleys.  And the areas around the mountain are lousy with outset points.  Every year hundreds of young Hellsguard come streaming off the mountain to seek adventure, glory, and make a name for themselves and every year the towns far enough away to not count as being 'on the mountain' accept a flood of flesh and youthful exuberance looking for a taste of a new world off the mountain and down here.   But every one of those youths will tell you the same story:  Getting back up the mountain would take about a year.  No matter where you start from.  No matter how close or far.  If you're from the mountain, the journey's a year to get back.  If you're not from the mountain, all bets are off.  The merchant we're with said he once made the trip in a week, and once it took him six months to get off the mount and it never stopped being spring while he was trying.  He kept track with hatchmarks and his journal. Which is was, according to him, miserable because he had hay-fever the entire time he was trying to leave.  When he got back they told him it was only a month after he'd left, local time.  Everyone going into and out of this region just accepts this as a risk and a fact.  Not really a time bubble as much as the mountain deciding how long you're there.  

And if you're allowed to leave. Might tie back to the Aetheryte disruption.  Some sort of aetheric bond to the people who grow up on it?   We didn't bring a proper scholar on soul-study on this, but it's something to note for another grant.  Someone else can cram into a covered chocobo wagon and ask the natives a lot of questions they don't want to answer.  I'm just hoping we're not trapped trying to get up with no frame of reference and discover we missed our window to leave. I don't want to hike down from the Spine on foot. No one's got a backpack that can hold enough rations to manage that trip.

-------------------------------------

Trip up wasn't too bad.  Merchants dropped us in a local Hellsguard village.  Stone buildings, rustic construction if you're being generous and quaint if you're not.  They've been here longer than there's been stars in the sky if you ask them and they've been here longer than anyone else alive could ever contemplate.  This is their home, afterall.  We'll talk with the locals.  See if we can get any undocumented rumors that don't match what we know.  Then go chasing the slopes in search of discovery. They don't have an inn here but they were willing to put us up in a vacant building, share food.  Hospitality seems to be a local tradition.  If only because they don't often see visitors from 'Off mountain'.  One of the older hellsguard said we'd need to speak with the local Brass shaman.  A mix between mage, spiritualist, and oral historian.  Supposedly our best link for myth, legend, and rumor to run after and document, maybe capture, maybe draw.   Who knows. It's oddly quiet this far up.  We should sleep well but Martin's been complaining since we entered the valleys that there's no background noise.  City kid.   Which is a weird affliction for a gleaner.  He always sleeps light when there's no creak of carriage, or conversation in the next room.  He was doing fine in the carts but now?  Up here? He's only sleeping in little bites.

-------------------------------

We met with the "Brass" today and it's going to be at least three or four more days before we're going to get away from them.  She's insistent we hear everything.  Local rules, local rumors, local history, and then making sure we know it's all local.  Just this side of this mountain.  The north face is apparently completely different from the south, southeast, west.  Eight directions, eight different tribes and they'll all know what side you're from because of how you look, how you talk, and what you know.  The mountain's more than just malms.  The way he talks it could be a country and all the faces could be little citystates, minus the cities.   N'eruse already has a list of aetherically notable things to chase, lay snares down for, and camp in a hide and just sketch for months from one day of talking with this guy.  I'll get my time later.  N'eruse is just eating this guy and the folklore up. Pretty sure he'd be just happy being a anthropology staffer back in the schools, sorting and coallating information but he insists he prefers hands on, and this is all he can get.  You have to wait for someone to die, afterall, in academia, before you can get your chance to sit in the good chairs.

-------------------------

A month out and I've already found a psychoactive 'rainbow' herb, two undocumented and very mobile tree specimens distinct from the the kinds we know live in the shroud, and what I'd swear was a sabotender.  Just one sabotender.  I think it might be lost. I didn't check.  I didn't want to spend hours tweezing needles out of my skin and clothes just to confirm an ornary cactus had traveled, or been brought, far from home.  The Hellsguard travel and come home a lot, sometimes with trinkets and souvineers.  The Brass said a lot of things get let loose when they're brought home.   Sometimes because they're too much trouble. Sometimes just to see what happens.  I wish she hadn't laughed like that while saying it.  I'm going to have to open an 'invasive species' entry addendum now to the log with no qualifiers.

The Brass did give us a possible lead on somewhere to head for all three of us.  I'll need to pull N'eruse out of their blind and get Martin out of his insomnia trance, but I think it's a good source of unique mushrooms for me, weird animals for N;'eruse, and weird little mutants for Martin. It's a little way out from the village, but not enough to cause problems.  We'll have to pack heavy and buy a lot of salted meat to stay out that far but that's expected and the natives will be happy for more silver to grease their palms. Whispering Cave.  But the Brass said names are a tricky subject.  Since it.  Moves.  We're apparently really lucky to catch it while it's on this side of the mountain.  Almost every tribe dips in there when they find it in their territory for unique things that only really come from this cave system.  They don't know if the openings are natural shifts in the earth from quakes or something more aetheric causing openings to sprout from the depths though.   Just that it's fluid and never the same system twice, the openings never a reliable place or time.  Just there.  Eternal.  Fluid.  Part of the Mountain's personality, if that makes sense. I'll get this history from the Brass later tonight over the last decent meal we'll have for a few weeks.

---------------------

We should be ok as long as the rope is still in the cave mouth.  Hard to shift an entrance when there's something in it and we propped portions up with timber just to make it all the more difficult to vanish if we were still in it. Magic cave is an understatement.  The opening's barely bigger than a hyur.  Getting in wouldn't be difficult, but then you have the packs, the lanterns, we had to leave some of the picks behind because they were too difficult to carry.  We've got some chisels though for if we find some sort of unique crystalized aether formations.\

The Brass said this is where they get a lot of mushrooms so I've been doing my best to pull and document anything I don't recognize off the walls, under the rocks, sometimes dangling from a stalactite.  It's damp in here and Martin's excited at the idea of finding earth-aether infused fish if there's a water system.  N'erruse, however, is getting nervous.  Apparently the mythic creature boys say some of the more dangerous 'cryptid' beasts come from places like this so he's taking to hanging his dagger and hatchet in easy to reach places on his pack.  Nervous but I suppose after you find a rock-troll named 'The Devourer' in a cramped space like he did you're warranted in a little caution.

This open space we've been using for base camp has worked out well.  It's not too far from the entrance, our chalk marks back are clean and easily visible.

Even weirder Martin's been sleeping soundly since we got in here. Says he care hear something out there and that it's the closest to comfort he's had since we got on the Mountain.

---------------------

We lost most of today because Martin wandered off and didn't tell us.  We'd set up a pretty reliable rule of going out in pairs and keeping one person back to guard the camp.  Four bells, come back, switch out, four bells, switch out.  Four bells, switch out.  It limits how far we can get but it also keeps us from losing the basecamp and keeps someone from getting stuck in a crush without help being nearby.

And now Martin's gone.

Martin said he wanted to follow a lead he'd found earlier. Something about something that looked like a variant of the Galbrathian Talking Fish.  N'eruse said there might be overlap, they argued, then agreed to go out together so they could argue if they found anything.  Easier to argue over an actual find than hypothetical, I guess.

And now Martin's gone.

I know there's always a danger of an expedition swallowing someone up but I really hope he's just being stubborn, and not in danger.

----------------------

We had to leave the camp unguarded to go search for Martin.  

We'd managed this twice and on the third time?  We found something had been smudging the chalk marks out.

We thought maybe it was Martin.  It's been a few days, and maybe he'd stumbled back hungry and a little delirious.

No such luck.

We set out this morning for the fourth shift of searching and this time we've started coming up empty on markings to get BACK to camp completely. 

There's still marks on the wall.

They're not our chalk marks.  They're the wrong colour, for one.  Wrong language for the two, and wrong height for three.  These were at lalafel height, only saw them because N'eruse stopped to adjust his boot.

But if we're lost maybe we follow these instead before our pack rations start running light.

Maybe there's some of the Native Roe down here.  

Or another team?  Another basecamp they marked out decades ago?  

We know Sharlaya's sent people out here before.  Why else would we be pointed at the Mountain in the first place, after all.

It's known.

------------------------------

The marks lead us to Martin.  He's shakey but insistent there's other people in the cavern.  He calmed down after a little water from the skins and a good sit.

He told the same story we had, which is the caves twisted up and stopped pointing him back.  The marks stopped showing up, no matter how many he left.  And he said he'd heard whispering in the cave.  

Always around the next corner.

The Brass never mentioned why the Cave was called that.  Just that it was the local name.  And that names were tricky.

If it's a team of natives, some cave bound kobold tribe, or something new, at least it speaks.  The harmonics in the cave network mean it could be malms off but if they're leaving marks at knee height they're little and if they're talking they can be bartered with.

We need to get moving.

-----------------------------

N'eruse threw a glow-moss covered rock into the lake and I've NEVER seen a rock move that fast before.  Not down, but with the current.  This lake's feeding some river far down the mountain, leaking pure clarity out some crack in huge amounts.  No sign of what's feeding the lake.

But that's not our problem.  Not unless we fall in it.

The problem's the big rock, overhead.  The far side of the lake looks like a landslide in reverse.  Tenuous shale and loose rock forming a roof with a massive stone, solid and unbroken, embedded in the loose rock.

Martin says the rock's what's whispering.  I don't hear it.  N'eruse?   He says we should get a sample.

A talking rock would be worth a lot to the Forum.  Even if it's just a little bit.

------------------

Martin's dead.  We couldn't rouse him this morning and when we rolled him over there was more brain on his pillow than his skull.    It looked like it had poured out his ear, some of his nose, the corner of his eyes.

I don't know what happened but he was clutching the rock we chipped off the suspicious....boulder?  Stone?  Meteorite?

And my journal.

This thing was bigger than some of the studium buildings.  And now one of us is dead because of it.  I think it should probably stay down here.

And the rock wants to go back.  Wants us to put it back.

I'm not sure which of us might end up like Martin next, but N'eruse comes from a Gridanian family and I've already caught him looking over his shoulder into the dark and the dull blue glow of the lake more than once.  I think it's in his head now.

And I'll be next.

The record's to give me cold comfort while we wait out whatever's happening.  I asked N'eruse to give me last rights in the old Mhigan fashion if we don't get out of here.  Use the last of our salt if he's got to.

I promised to leave some herbs on him if he goes next.  Hard to keep with traditions under this much stone.

But every tunnel leads back to the rock.  

There's no real way out of here except the lake.  And we don't know how far that current goes, or where, or for how long.

We can't breathe underwater.

But it might be better down there than up here.

Waiting for that whisper full of names and words to tickle us.

----------------------

N'eruse threw the morsel of rock into the lake.  Made it glow with the last of his little magic tricks and hurled it out as far as he could.  Said if he was going to die, better to spite the thing keeping them here than go quietly.

Maybe we've reached the bargining part.  I've got Martin's knife.

N'eruse has the hatchet. 

"Where from here?"

"That's a mendicant question."

"I'm allowed to ask them. A wandering priest, a shambling shaman. Unbound by god or spirit."

"You're ruining.  The afterglow."

"I'm hoping for a promise of more in the answer.  So I ask.  And you might answer."

"And I might not."

"And you might not.  And I see how warm these cold mountain nights will be."

"And and and and and and.  Enough of And.  Give me your now.  I'll give you mine."

"That's it's own answer?"

"That's it's own answer."

"I could be halfway over the mountain by morning."

"You could be smothered to death between my thighs by midnight."

"Poor sport."

"But golden games."

"You're asking me to hang up my brassy rings on your tall golden altar."

"Yes.  But.  The altar can walk.  The divine follows the worthy.  Now.  Worship."

"Ah.  To prove my worth."

That's not for you.

Hushushhush, tears out of your eyes.

It's not like you won't get another out of my pack when I'm not looking at you, you endearing little thief.

It's a little late to chide you for it.

But if you eat the supply there's none for me and there are legitimate uses for it outsides of firelight talks with the flames and things beyond.

And we're here for the wall, not mushrooms.

Down here in the foothills.  Next to a winding river.  Far from home.  But.

Not too far from the mountain to upset it.

Really we're still on it's toes!  Yesyes, wiggle your toes.  Right there in that mud.  Good, thick, rich stuff.  Leave a mark there.  Check the bank and see all the others that left one by stamping their little feet.

Adorable.

The wall's a record for this sort of thing.  Leave your mark.  Let it be known you passed! You yet lived!  You were here! It's been here longer than books, bobs, scrolls, vellum, even lanterns!

I'm sure eons from now the river will have moved, this shaded cave will of collapsed but that will be far past the idea of roes on this talking mountain and it's people leaving little marks on it's toes down in the foothills, won't it?

It won't matter then. 

It can matter later.

And we can matter now.

So squish your little toes up, lean down and smack your little palms into that luxurious silt.

Stamp those silty fingers against the smooth stone and show the world.

You were here.

And will be for a while yet.

And I can be glad to have you close.

Good good go-hey.

What have you got there?

A rock?  A rock from the mud?  Maybe a little treasure for little children hunting for gold in the sticky bank?

A talking rock?

Oh.

There's a lot of ways off this mountain. Here I am around a fire.  Alone.  Not doing any of them. Even though I could.  Even though I.... Should probably hurry up with the packing. The leaving home. The saying goodbye. Or at least something like "Until next time" Really.  Anything else than sitting around this fire. Yelling at myself. It's not helping me. Sure isn't helping the other two of me. It's not getting me off this mountain. Nor past the snowline, the forest, the pass, or the valley. Really there's just.... Everything. Vibrant and waiting. Ever feel... Reticent?  Starting something for the first time?  And the last? Ever wonder if there was a different way?

Hey kid.

Wanna see a magic trick?

NO NO NO please come back.

I'm stuck.

Partners?  Yeah.  We could be partners.

Get me out of here.

Stop laughing.  STOP LAUGHING.

I just wanted to make it nice and warm before the storm hit and I got the spell working just fine.

And then I fell asleep.

And I'm warm.  And this cloak makes me shaped like a tent and the book I've got is heavy.

And now I'm under four feet of snow.  No wiggle room.  I'm a sealed cone here.

A warm cone.

Except for my nose.  I think that's starting to go blue.

Anyway enough of that get me out of here.  You're alone.  I'm alone.

This spell has been going for hours.

Something's going to notice.

I'm not going to be mountain food.

Help me out.

You look strong and I'm built like branches.  We could go places.  See things.

Get off this mountain before the storm gets back around.

What do you mean IF.  

It's coming back.

Oh you speak MAGIC.

Well so do I.  And guess what?

The storm's coming back.  You don't leave a spell like that burning for that long.

It tells a bad story.  The storm will come back to check.

You need to go.  Me and the book need to leave.

Get me out of here and you've got a partner.

I came out of the dark.

You were the only light this side of the mountain, afterall.

Lights are meant to be seen.  Even campfires like this.

I want to leave.and they want me gone.

So everyone gets what they want.

Let's skip reaching for the weapon.

I'm not some myth made flesh.

I'm only a few years younger than you.

You're not from around here.  

A little small, a little nervous.

But I bet you know where the trading post down in the valley is

You're just small. 

Defenseless.

Alone up here hunting something that doesn't belong to you.

And me

I don't know the roads down in the valley well enough to get away properly.

If I don't get away properly.

This mountain's always going to be in my way.  

Cutting off the horizon in an entire direction.

I bet you know how to get there.

So let's make a pact

You bring me a horizon.

And I help you outrun what's coming for you.

Because the peak?

The peak heard what you did.

It was very loud

Let's get you packed up.

We can chase the horizon.

Hey hey hey, sit down.  Suck the water a bit.

Tastes terrible, I know, but you can only get so much in a dust pit stop like this, eh?  Eh?  You gettit.  

Otherwise you wouldn't smell like the still they make the local moonshine in, would you?

Stuck on where to go?  Or already know and not looking forward? 

Listen, listenlistenlisten, you don't need to tell me, I don't need to know, I just like seeing the rudder in someone's head turn every once and a while when asked.  

Did yours turn a little?  Or keep going on?  Is it resolute or rudderless?  Something guiding you or sending you off into the empty?

The empty's scary.

But it's where all the good things are.  Space.  Time for you.  Nourishment for a soul sucked dry.

It's a weird thing to say about nothing, but it's a food, an ambrosia, absolute divine liquor UNLIKE SOME THINGS SERVED AT THIS BAR RIGHT MAHRGRIT?  HAah...aye....aye.

Listenlistenlisten.

I need a way out.

And you have a direction.

You steer towards it.

I want out.

You're taking me with you.

I won't hear otherwise.

The road's rough alone.  Navigating it is worse if you've never been that way.

And I certainly hope I havn't.

Even if I've been the way you're going it'll be a new way there.   Toddling through the plains and the path?  Eh?  Sounds great right? 

And if something bothers you I can get off the wagon and help deal with it. Hunt meat, oooh I can hunt, I can fight, I can I can I can I can.

I'll hop along and tell you stories.  And I can do more than that.  I've got my axe, which is bigger than three of your current guards wrapped together, and enough experience to fold them like the laundry you've hired the washer women to mash clean before you scurry out of this hole.

I just need a direction and a star to steer me by and the stars have been.

Loud.  

Lately.

I'd rather not look at them.

So you lead.  Lay on.  Linger a bit and leave longing in the wake, eh?

And I'll follow along.

Sipping a little starlight behind.

It's honest work.

It's an honest path.

Being caught in the flow.

Come along.