As her disaffected partner approached the base of the mountain with confident strides, the shorter Vortixx shivered in fear. Against her better instincts, Seiri thought back to everything she had been told about the mountain - vanishingly little - and felt her heart sink. She had to do this. There was no choice. It was her only chance to get out of the industrial hellscape that dominated her life and find her own path, even if she knew why Armena was willing to force elders to break rules to choose her. The likelihood of her making it to the top with Armena was almost insignificant, but she had to seize the chance as no male had agreed to make the climb with her. She knew that the taller, stronger Vortixx saw her as disposable, only agreeing because she was weak and unlikely to survive the climb. But it was a chance she had to take. Otherwise, she’d be stuck there forever, and she couldn’t take it. Her mind couldn’t stop wandering, and if it helped her keep going, maybe it was for the better.     Seiri was always more concerned with learning and knowing than the bolting and welding her superiors had forced her to do. Burned into her mind was the agony of being punished, a long, spiked whip slashing against her armor and digging into the flesh beneath after she snuck away from her cramped, filthy ground-level hut and factory job to read the scientific texts that were hidden away from the lower castes. That it happened every time, and with crueler strikes at every new offense, didn’t deter her from pouring over those etched tablets and their secrets again and again. She had engaged in the trademark Xian disregard for life solely to satiate her own curiosity, to understand the insides of the beasts around her. The knowledge of biology gained from her growing pile of dissected Rahi wasn’t much use in the Cordak rocket factory where she slaved away, but the ever-growing understanding of the fleshy machines beneath the protodermis shells was its own reward. 

Of particular note to her was the mystery of eating, feeding, consumption. The first few times she actively hunted for Rahi subjects was when they were hunting, too. She took a rusted rivet gun, stolen from her factory after its disuse convinced her no-one would miss it, as her tool to find insight. It took her some time to discover how to use this unsafe tool as a weapon, but until then, the sheer volume of rivets shot birds out of the sky, and her hands around their necks could finish the job. The few times she managed to kill Rahi after they had devoured their prey, she had cut them open to find them empty. She learned through experience first and research tablets second that digestion to the point of near-100% efficiency was not unique to Vortixx and the other elevated races, but a constant with rare exceptions. A Rahi’s digestive tract converted protodermis, the building block of everything, creature and object alike, into energy with barely any evidence that it was once a being. This at once fascinated Seiri and terrified her. The possibilities of turning protodermis into pure energy were incredible, and she wondered if the scientists who she idolized were really studying the mechanism behind this as she studied dead Rahi, and if could turn things back. Yet at the same time, the idea of a living, conscious being simply ceasing to exist in seconds and becoming fuel for something stronger made the flesh underneath her armor itch. Knowing nothing had ever come back from a Rahi’s gut made it hard for her to sustain enthusiasm for the research.

Biology was not the only interest that reached beyond her lot as a factory drone, but she always found herself thinking about it, coloring her every observation. When she swiped the maps of Metru Nui, she couldn’t help but notice how the tunnels underneath the city resemble organs, as if the vessels and tubes that kept the Rahi alive spread beneath Onu-Metru itself. There were times she had to remind herself that city was no living organism. Eventually, she learned that it was mere coincidence, that round tunnels were simply convenient for transporting prey and shipping containers alike, easy to grow and dig out. But when she finally started out of the industrial district that had marked the majority of her life, said coincidence remained in the back of her head. What if other places were like that, themselves alive instead of the city of dead material that produced a killing smog? The question weighed on her when she took her last look back.

As her gaze shifted away from the glittering black armor, the only Vortixx she could convince to undergo the trial with her, she looked to the mountain. She knew no sights but the smog-filled cityscape, so to see it jut out of the fog like a Muaka’s fang gave her pause. The enormity of the rocky protrusion hit her like a brick to the head. The stories that she had half-listened to about it began to collect in her mind, the whispers of acid-filled plants and rains of fire. With her eyes wide, she looked back to Armena once more, and swallowed her pride to ask a question.     “Armena?” Seiri’s hoarse voice cut through the distant ambience of hissing steam and clanking machines of the cityscape behind her. “What should I expect from this?”     Armena simply snorted as she finished cleaning the talon that tipped her finger. “To not die. If you do expect to die, well, then that’s good for me, isn’t it?”     Realizing that she received a stupid answer to a stupid question, Seiri squared her shoulders and readied herself, ignoring her fear as best she could. “We should get going, shouldn’t we?”     “That’s better than sitting around and staring at it all day,” Armena sneered as she strode forward, hopping over the fence effortlessly. With a slight delay, Seiri followed, copying her movements but stumbling a little. “Maybe I’ll go easy on you, runt.” Despite the disdain in her voice, Armena’s offhand comment was the best news that Seiri had heard all day.

Seiri took a deep breath as they approached the summit, tightening the bag against her back. Inside the simple sack was little more than a short dagger for fighting off Rahi and a flare launcher primed and ready for if -- no, when -- they reached the top, to signal that they had completed their challenge. One hand over the other, she started to climb the mountain with Armena by her side. The rough terrain was surprisingly easy to navigate, each hand hold obvious and simple to hoist herself up with. This challenge seemed easier with each passing minute, and Seiri’s fear slowly cooled as she climbed.

It didn’t stay easy for long. Seiri looked around the stones, seeing sparse patches of grass dot the surface of the mountain. She heard the flapping of a bird Rahi, a beast with a cruelly hooked beak and large, bony wings, as it landed near a patch of grass, looking at her with a glassy lens that obscured whatever base, unclouded thoughts likely cycled through its mind. She stared back at it, her mind idly hoping to glean anything she could about the inner worlds of the living things she so loved. She wished, silently, that it wasn’t as cruel as everything else on their accursed island.  As she started to move again, her eyes still fixed on the beast, she felt a blade of grass brush against her armor, and a sudden searing pain shot through her body.

“Agh!” She grunted, yanking her arm away, and seeing a perfect shape of a thick blade of grass burned into her armor, sizzling as it soaked deeper and into her flesh. The grass of the mountain dripped with acid, a twisted morning dew, just like the rumors she heard, and it tore through her with just a brush. She shifted her arm around, her muscle underneath the thick, chitinous armor exposed to the elements, if only a small amount. She whipped her head around back to the Rahi just in time to see that her sudden reaction spooked it. She felt her jaw drop as its wings flapped in sudden panic and beat against the grass, followed by a ghastly screech as the bird tumbled down the mountain, slamming against the rock multiple times. That screech echoed as it disappeared down a fissure, never to be seen again.

She decided it was very important to watch out for that grass.

After a long period of silence from her partner, aside from the sounds of her climbing seemingly effortlessly, and the pain from the acid-grass long since gone, she decided to croak out a question. “So… If it’s just climbing some stupid…” Seiri paused as she grunted, climbing up and over the section of rock that was just barely taller than her. “Mountain, then why is it so dangerous? This grass...” She huffed, mantling another crag. “Isn’t hard to spot.”

Armena let out a sick laugh, before turning to Seiri, her piercing red eyes cutting through her soul. “You don’t know a thing, do you?” Armena shifted on the stone, standing tall and looking down on her. “Then this will be easy.”

“Wh-what?” She croaked out, trembling as Armena whipped around, leaping up, hastily scrabbling over rock, her cackling drifting away as she rushed up the cliffside. “W-Wait! Come back!” Seiri’s feet slipped, the uncomfortable metal boots she needed on the factory floor but useless to her here scratching against the surface of the mountain, making a horrible, wailing screech. She winced before scrambling back up the precipice, the black figure disappearing into the layer of smog above them.

Her arms shook in terror, her mind loud with fear, desperate grasps for answers as to just what Armena was doing, and why she was being abandoned. What was I thinking? She asked herself, the enormity of her situation sinking in, chilling her to her metal bones. I’m going to die here. Like everyone else who couldn’t make it. She looked down, and saw the city below her, bustling with oppressive noise, lights, and machines, and looked up to see the choking smoke from the neverending industry that swallowed her dreams. What am I going to do?

The death spiral of panic-stricken thoughts shattered with a sudden thunderous shake of the stone beneath her. Her gaze shot down, as fractures began to open beneath her, and an inky blackness yawned under her feet. She could see, so clearly, a perfectly round tunnel beneath the fracture, like a jagged mouth opening to reveal a hungry throat, into a dark belly of oblivion. The pattern was familiar, and sickeningly clear. What a fool she was, wondering if the universe held any living landscapes! The Mountain she stood on was a terrifying organism, a living beast that would devour, digest, and destroy the life that it consumed. She had watched it consume the Rahi already, like it was hunting it. She knew she was one slip from pain, agony, and a sudden, irreversible cessation of her existence, and if she stood still, she would be gone. Her mind raced with terror, but underneath her fear, the knowledge of the sudden, unknowable thing revealing itself beneath her congealed like mucus into a single thought - Run, or you’ll never come back.

She couldn’t look back for even a second as her fingers desperately grasped at the crags, which quickly cracked alongside her and revealed more passages into the center of the unknowable creature. She could only look up, and hold her breath as she ventured into the thick, oppressive smog. She squinted to prevent the thick, industrial smog from sinking into her eyes, and sucked in a single breath of air, praying to Mata Nui, Karzahni, even Irnakk -- whoever she could remember -- that it wasn’t the last she would take. Seiri lost herself to the bursts of blind energy, barely dodging the searing pain of acid brushing against her shoulders as she squinted, her lungs quickly running out of air as she raced against the ravenous mouths rending themselves into existence fractured the stone, desperate to consume her.

She couldn’t hold it anymore. She had to breathe. She opened her mouth and let the smog sink into her, feeling it pool in her insides and weigh her down like a chain on her very soul, dragging her into the consumptive embrace of The Mountain, as if the factories' belching of pollution was made to draw her into it. But she fought. She had to. As her hand fell into one of the jagged, no, toothed sinkholes, she yanked it back, whipping her head around. They were all around her, and one began to break through the stone beneath her with a sickening grinding sound. She was surrounded, deep into the smog without any clue of how far up she was, hope burning away by the millisecond, and air running out. And so, with every ounce of her remaining strength, she leapt, for there was nothing else left.

The moment that she could think again, her arms steady on a crop of unmoving stone, she gasped a wonderful, perfect gasp of clear air, opening her eyes and seeing clearly. She couldn't remember a time she had breathed air this clean, and it was up here, atop a mountain that wanted nothing more than her death. The smog was thinning so much more than she anticipated. Could she actually make it? She looked back and saw the mouths growing thinner and smaller, struggling to form this high up. But when she looked back upwards, her elation was shattered, instantly.

She saw the talons of her partner shake against the corner of a crag as she struggled to hold on, slipping further into one of the thousands of voracious mouths of The Mountain. Seiri leapt over the rock, her only thought being of how she could save Armena. Her arms scrambled and scraped, her weakened muscles struggling to make it over and towards Armena. “Hang on! I’ll save you!” She shouted, her hoarse voice smaller than ever against the grinding, consuming rock. “We can make it!”

As she leaned over to the slowly-closing mouth, the sealing of stone making a sick thumping, grinding noise as it attempted to macerate - or masticate - the insolent thing that refused to be devoured, she saw Armena, and her breath left her chest instantly. The partner that was supposed to go alongside her had her armor burned, ripped, and crushed to the point of nearly being unrecognizable, with her pallid purple flesh on display, some even torn and eroded to the bone. Seiri could barely stomach the sight of Armena's eye, cracked open and leaking a putrid fluid. “...Weak.” she snarled, her talons scraping as she sunk deeper.

“No, no, no!” Seiri begged. “Don’t give up! We can do it!” She shot her hands out and wrapped her arms around Armena’s wrists, struggling to hold her weight against a poor and worsening foothold. “Come on!”

“Weak!” Armena shouted, letting her fingers slip away from the toothy stone, seemingly ready to drop into the stomach awaiting her, to her oblivion.

“We’re almost there!” Seiri said, groaning as she struggled to hoist her partner up. “Come on! Use... your feet!”

“No!!” She growled, wrapping her talons around Seiri’s arms. “Let me go, weakling!” She snarled in rage as her body whipped around, struggling to come loose from the weaker Vortixx’s grip as The Mountain’s closed in on her.

“I can save you!” She said, desperation mounting as Armena lay almost limp. “I can save you!” Her repeated cries weren’t promises, but pleas, a desperate last hope for Armena to come with her. 

“Let me go, or I’ll take you with me!” Armena screamed. The Mountain started to crush her, the sickening sound of armor and bone being crushed, cracking and screaming. In rage, she slashed at Seiri, and her talons dug deep into Seiri’s armor, deeper, into her flesh.

“N-nooo!” The pain shot through Seiri, and she felt her grip slip. “I-!” She gasped. “W-won’t!!” 

“Then you'll… be… weak! FOREVER!!” Armena’s claws began to rend Seiri, tearing her arms apart. The pain built, and built, and Seiri gasped desperately as she denied it all, until she had no choice. Until she finally let go.

    Armena screamed as she dropped, an echo filling The Mountain with her fall. The sound never ended, only turning into a sick, disgusting scrape as the mouth, every mouth, began to close, sealing itself, with no evidence of Armena remaining upon it as she fell into The Mountain’s cavernous insides, and to her certain annihilation. When the grinding stopped, the only thing Seiri could hear were her own sobs.

    When she finally made it to the top, Seiri looked at her own torn arms, scar tissue forming and her armor scraped and warped by acid. One of her gashes bore a remnant from the one who was supposed to stand with her - a polished talon. Hissing in pain as she plucked it from her arm, she wrapped her fingers around it, and felt the tears finally stop. She gripped the talon, her hand steady, as she grabbed the flare and set it off. She had gotten what she wanted, and another was dead for it. She no longer wept, or even cared much about Armena’s death. Atop the mountain, alone, she felt nothing.

—--------------------------------------------------------

Seiri stopped as she carried the container of Rahi through her laboratory, feeling the tip of her necklace bump against her armor. She dropped the cantankerous beast’s protoglass container down, which clattered as it slammed against the tile floor, and raised her finger to it. Armena’s talon still remained with her, and she would never let it go. She looked around at the wide, sterile space, in a building poking above the smog, a laboratory that she had earned, and felt herself grow proud. Armena cursed her for her weakness, moments before her death, but Seiri had won and stood tall upon Xia’s upper crust, able to experiment on whatever she wanted. 

She thought back to that moment with her near century of experience now, and as she kicked the snarling beast’s cage to make it shut up, or at least whimper, she almost wished that she had pushed Armena. She smiled to herself as she walked towards one of the windows. She stared out at The Mountain, grabbing a pair of binoculars to watch a pair of climbers. The female's black armor was beautiful and proud as her, and the male's reflected the slightest bit of green. She watched with private glee as the impossible creature cracked itself open to devour another weakling. She couldn’t help but chuckle to herself.

 She ran a countdown in her head of how far the male must be falling, estimating the time until he - now an “it” - reached the sacred beast’s stomach, and burned into nothingness. Armena’s attempt to punish Seiri came to punish her instead. Even in death, a part of her remained, now simply an object. She ran her thumb over the talon, taking a cruel joy in the fact that complete dissolution within The Mountain, that awe-inspiring creature, is a gift that Armena now never received. Her hubris turned to energy, with nothing remaining but a decoration. And Seiri grew proud. The kind Vortixx who only wanted to know more about the world around her died nine decades and six years ago, dragged down with Armena into the stomach of the Mountain.