by Pirateaba
Waiting.
—-
How long has it been? I can’t tell. Hours? Just an hour? Perhaps. It feels like hours.
My hands are raw and cut and blistered. Despite the gloves I have on, they’re not enough. The jagged rock and rough handholds I can find cut into my skin, but I ignore the pain.
How high am I? High. I’ve been climbing for a while, and still the faeries lead me onwards. I can’t believe Mrsha got this high up, but the route we’re taking isn’t impossible for a kid, especially not a young Gnoll.
Especially not if she was being chased.
My feet slip, and my arms windmill as I nearly slip down the slope in the darkness. Careful. I push myself back up and look around.
“Okay. Where n—?”
The faeries are gone. One second they were ahead of me, leading the way, and now they’re not. I look around, heart beating fast. It’s dark. I had to toss away the torch the Gnolls gave me a while back to use both hands. Without the faeries, the side of the mountain is full of shadows.
“[Light].”
A ball of yellow light appears in my hand and flies upwards. I stare around, but see only rock and dirt where everything isn’t covered by snow.
But if the faeries aren’t here.
“Mrsha!”
I raise my voice and cup my hands to my mouth. My legs are exhausted, but I don’t dare sit. And neither do I dare take any more step. The ground looks stable, but—
“Mrsha! Can you hear me?”
—-
She is going to die. Mrsha knows it. It makes her cry, but she only sheds a few tears because it hurts when they freeze on her fur.
She is going to die. She shouldn’t have strayed so far away. But she’d wanted to chase a snow hare, and then she’d smelled the thing and it had leapt out at her—
She shudders. It is so cold. Her eyes are flickering, but Mrsha knows she must stay awake. But what is the point if she’s not going to be rescued?
The Gnoll child sits with her back against a stone and breathes more slowy. She is so tired. But then her ears hear it. The faintest of sounds, and then—louder.
“—sha!”
The Gnoll looks up. There it is again.
“Mrsha! Can you hear me?”
It’s a voice! A familiar voice! It’s not the sound of any of the elders Mrsha knows, or any of her playmates. But she knows this voice even so. It’s from the Human, the one who tells stories.
How is she here? But Mrsha hears the Human shouting, and sits up. Someone came for her.
Hope.
She raises her voice and howls upwards, desperately. With all her strength.
She wants Ryoka to find her. She wants to be saved. She doesn’t want to die here alone.
Not like that thing.
—-
I’m shouting, but I hear nothing. The wind is blowing around me, and I can’t feel my face. There’s so much snow.
Am I too late? My heart is shuddering. Is that why the faeries left? Because they’ve given up hope?
“Mrsha!”
There’s no response. I’m too late.
But then I hear it. A sound, growing louder. A wild howling, high-pitched and frantic, like and unlike any animal’s call I’ve ever heard.
Mrsha.
I stumble in the direction of the call, and then stop.
“Stop damn you…think!”
Think. I can’t blunder ahead blindly. If I die now, she dies.
I raise my hand, and the orb of light floats to it. I can control the light. So I flick my hand and toss the orb ahead. I can’t control it after I’ve thrown it, but it illuminates the ground in front of me.
There! The orb of light sails over a small crest of snow and then reveals that the crest is in fact a precipice. The ball of light reveals a sudden drop as the ground slips, a natural, concealed crevasse in the mountainside. Cautiously, I cast [Light] again and walk forwards, staring at that spot, praying I don’t trip.
The howling is coming from below. I stare over the edge. The light cast by the orb is too weak to illuminate the depths of that place.
“Mrsha?”
—-
She hears the voice, and then sees the light. Mrsha howls up desperately, and hears an answering shout. The light is very faint. But then it changes, and a beam shines down. It sweeps the place Mrsha is in, bouncing off the slick rock walls, and then catches her. She waves her paw weakly.
“I see you! Hold on!”
—-
God. Gods. She’s at the bottom of a crevasse. No wonder no one heard her.
I stare down at the small, brown shape of Mrsha. She’s sitting at the bottom of a crevasse. Not too deep, but far too far down for her to climb back up.
I squint. There’s something—next to her? Some dark shape covered by the snow. But I can’t make it out. It doesn’t matter. I need to get down there.
But god. This is a nightmare. I’ve attended lessons on how to conduct emergency rescues of people trapped in situations like this, and I’ve climbed before, and this is about as bad a situation as you can get.
I need to get to Mrsha, but that means I need to climb down there. I don’t want to try tossing her the rope Urksh gave me and have her pull herself up. I need to go down there.
Down? The sensible part of my brain laughs at how stupid that is. I don’t have the equipment to do that. I don’t have a harness, any climbing gear—hell, I don’t even have a backup!
But I’m already tossing my pack down and fishing things out. The first thing I grab is the furs the Gnolls gave me. It was for Mrsha, but I toss it down on the edge of the crevasse. If I put the rope down, I don’t want it to fray and snap.
Maybe it won’t, if it’s magical. Wouldn’t that be amazing? But I don’t want to test it.
The rope Urksh gave me apparently stretches or lengthens. Good for it, but I need an anchor. I don’t have anything to help me with that, and there aren’t any trees around. I stare around the mountainside, aware of the need for speed, but also the desperate need to do this right.
Okay, okay. First things first. If I’m going down, I need an anchor.
I find one close to the precipice. A rock horn helps me as I loop it around another part of the rock. No way to equalize the anchor points, and all I can do is use more and more rope. I loop more rope into the rock and tie it off and stare at the horrible mess I’ve created.
A constriction anchor. Fuck me. At least this rope is magic, for what it’s worth. It had better be, because with all the rope I used to make the anchor secure, I’m not going to be able to get all the way down, much less do what I need.
Moment of truth. I can hear Mrsha making agitated sounds from below. She thinks I’ve left her. I shout something reassuring down at her, and take a deep breath.
Rappelling without a harness. Okay.
I slide the rope between my legs so I’m holding one end with my left arm and the other end that’s going through my legs with my right. I stretch the rope out, and approach the edge.
This is madness. But Mrsha is down there. So I lean on the rope and step out into the air.
Rappelling. I hold the rope hard with my right hand, and take a deep breath. Mrsha is going insane down below. She’s probably never seen someone climbing like this. Descend, rather.
I jump down the cliff and Mrsha screams. It’s more like a howl. But I arrest my fall and absorb the impact as I kick into the wall. I hold my position for a moment, look down for the next place I want to move down towards, and then jump several more feet down.
Abseiling. I’ve done it countless times, but always with a safety harness and a spotter. What I wouldn’t give for a carabineer…
I’m running out of rope. I see the end, and I pray Urksh wasn’t lying to me. Come on, rope. Do your magic thing. I pull, hoping it will do something—
And it stretches. Or rather, elongates. Rather than running out, I find more rope as I slowly rappel downwards.
Pause. Jump. One se
cond of descent, and then I brace as I land on the wall, showering Mrsha with snow. Pause again. Jump. Each second I’m terrified my hand will slip, but the tension stops me as I jump down again, and again…
My feet touch the ground, and then something rams into my side. I shout, but its Mrsha. The small Gnoll jumps all over me as I have to sit at the bottom of the small crevasse.
“God.”
I cover my face with my hand for just one second. Then I nearly fall over as Mrsha swarms over me. The Gnolls is licking and hugging me desperately.
“It’s okay Mrsha. I’m here. I’m—”
She’s making small noises. Whimpering, the sounds an animal would make. Or a child. I hold her for a few seconds.
“I’ve got you. It’s going to be alright, okay?”
I’m shaking so hard, but no more than she is. I found her. I found her in time.
But the worst is far from over. And we can’t stay here. Mrsha is freezing, and I need to get her up. Somehow.
I have a plan. And I’m about to tell it to Mrsha when I look over and go rigid. Mrsha cranes her neck to see what’s happened to me, and then she growls softly.
It can’t be. But lying in the snow, half-buried is a small shape. It’s not a rock like I initially thought. No.
It’s a body.
Not just any body. I slowly let go of Mrsha, and she backs away as I hesitantly go over to the shape. It’s lying face-down, but I turn it over and already know what I’ll see.
A Goblin’s face stares blankly up at me, red eyes dimmed, face frozen. He—or she was wearing armor, some sort of scale mail, but it wasn’t enough to save them from the fall. Their neck is bent at a wrong angle.
It must have chased Mrsha. She was out gathering and it surprised her. She ran, and both fell down here. Mrsha got lucky, but the Goblin died.
Goblins. If there’s one, there’s more. And this one is armed. I stare down and see the axe at its belt. Armor and weapons. This Goblin is way more dangerous than the ones I’ve seen to the north.
Danger. But I can’t think focus on that now. I stare upwards. I need to get Mrsha to safety first. And now that I’m down here, I can look up and realize how fucked I am.
The crevasse is only about twenty feet deep. Only. Hah. But it’s a horrible mess. The edge of the precipice actually juts outwards, so that the ice and rock wall is further inside. In short, it makes climbing up with your hands impossible unless you can go nearly horizontal at the top.
I have one thing that will help with the ascent. A rope. And that’s a good thing. But still.
A damn rope. No equipment, nothing else. Just a rope and my two exhausted arms to carry me up twenty feet.
I have no ascender. Nothing to help me climb. I don’t even have any damn knots in the rope that I can use.
I look at Mrsha. She’s staring upwards, hopefully. Maybe she thinks there are others nearby. I hate to disappoint her, but she’s got to know what I’m going to do.
“Mrsha.”
She looks at me, full of hope. I’m the adult here; she’s relying on me. It makes my stomach twist.
“I’m going to get you to safety, okay? But you need to listen to me.”
She nods. I tell her what I’m going to do.
“I’m going to tie a harness around you. Uh, that’s this rope. It will help me lift you up. And then I’m going to climb to the top and pull you up. I’m not going to leave you, okay?”
She stares at me. Does she even get it? But then she nods, a small motion. I take a breath.
“Okay. Lift your arm.”
At least I know how to make a rope harness. I stretch the rope further, looping it securely around Mrsha’s legs and around her groin, tying bowline knots. Now square knots here, fisherman’s knots…
She doesn’t wriggle much, but she stares at the rope harness in confusion. Again, not something Gnolls are used to I guess.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be able to pull you up. Now—”
I stare upwards. Now comes the hard part.
To make all this work, I need to climb to the top of the crevasse. By myself. Without any handholds except the rope.
I can’t do this. My arms are already tired and so is the rest of my body. But I have to.
I hesitate for a minute as Mrsha stares at me, but her eyes are what make me move. Making sure she’s out of the way, I jump up—
And grab the rope.
Immediately, my legs tangle around the bottom of the rope. I fumble blindly with my feet, until I’m wedging the rope between my boots. One boot goes up, and the other steps on the rope, trapping it, giving me a way to stand and support myself. But that’s only if I can climb. So I take a deep breath, lift my hand, and begin.
One hand goes up and I pull myself up. And then another. At first I get up the rope fast, and Mrsha makes sounds of encouragement, running around below until I shout at her to stop. I can’t handle the sway.
It’s been a long time since I climbed a rope. Too long. I haven’t been working out my upper body as much since I came to this world, and hell, I don’t remember the last time I went climbing. And I’m so tired.
Pull. Acquire the rope with my legs. Stand. Pull. Already I can feel the shaking weakness in my arms.
Why didn’t the faeries say to bring anyone else? Why me? Because I asked? How can I do this?
My arms burn as I pull myself up. I nearly let go as my muscles start to give and quickly stand on the rope again.
I can’t do this. My arms are going to give out. But I have to. I have to—!
Somehow I pull myself up again. Impossible. I’m not this strong. But I can do it. This world—what’s happening to me?
Again. And again. Screaming inside my head. Up. I can’t pause or it’s over.
It’s so far up. Just twenty feet? Feels like forever.
I’m wearing too much gear. My winter clothes—should have taken them off. Should have rested. Told Mrsha that. But too late now. I pull myself up again, and see the top.
So damn close. Pull. Grip. Pull. Grip. Pull—
One hand lets go of the rope and reaches around the precipice. I grab desperately, and then pull—
“Up, damn you—!”
Slowly, slowly, my body lifts over the ridge. I hear Mrsha making sounds below me, but I can only focus on pulling myself up. Every fiber of strength I have left goes into getting myself up and over—!
And then it’s over. I collapse onto the ground and crawl forwards, gasping with exhaustion. I don’t know how long I lay there, but eventually Mrsha’s anxious barking rouses me. I poke my head over the side and see her staring up at me, eyes full of fear and worry.
“It’s okay.”
It’s okay. I seize the rope and call down to her. Once Mrsha realizes what I’m going to do, she untangles the rope and sits down. Slowly, I stand and begin to pull.
If the climbing was hard, this is easy. I can lean back, pull her up a bit at a time. I’m heavier than Mrsha, and I can use that to help me pull her up as she sits in her harness, making faint sounds of worry. But she’s safe so long as I don’t let go and she doesn’t panic. And I won’t let go. I would never let go.
It feels like an age, but I brace myself, pulling hard, and then I hear a noise. I pause, and realize Mrsha’s at the edge. I pull, very slowly, and then I see paws scrabbling at the ledge. And then a head.
Mrsha comes over and instantly the Gnoll is bounding to her feet. She tangles in the rope, but then frees herself and leaps at me. I grab her, and hug her.
And she hugs me back. For a second we just embrace, as I feel her shaking slow and my own fears ease. She’s alright. She’s going to be alright.
And then comes untangling the rope harness and getting Mrsha into those furs. She wriggles into them and sneezes as I sit on the ground. I need a minute.
But now Mrsha is safe. I look over the mountainside, across the empty landscape. Huh. We’re pretty far up. Amazing she managed to get this far. But fear will do that to you, I gues
s.
What now? Well, we’ll get back to the camp. Urksh is probably worrying, and we’re still sitting ducks if a monster appears. It might be hard to find the way back, but the faeries—
The faeries. I look around. They’re still not here. No—they might be, but they’re still hiding. Invisible.
Why? I got Mrsha. She’s safe. It’s over.
Unless it’s not.
My heart begins to pound. Mrsha looks at me as I slowly stand up and stare around. What else could be wrong? But we are in danger. If they aren’t here—
And then I see the sparks in the distance. From our position on the mountain, at first they just look like sparks. But then I realize what they really are.
Torches.
First one, and then a group. And then the lights spread. Not just one or two or even a hundred. But thousands. Fire flares and spreads as the darkness below becomes lit by countless pinpricks of light.
Mrsha goes stiff beside me as she crouches and stares at the sight. I stare too.
“That’s not the Stone Spears tribe.”
It can’t be. There aren’t enough Gnolls by far for that. The army of Drakes? But this feels different. A chill runs down my back.
What is happening? But Mrsha looks at me, her face full of fear, and the pieces come together.
Smells on the wind. Strange shapes watching. The dead Goblin.
Mrsha whimpers, the smallest of sounds, and touches my leg. And I feel the eyes on me and realize we are not alone.
Watching.
“No.”
It can’t be. But they are silent, and
But there they stand. Goblins. They look down upon the two of us, red eyes shining. How many? Twenty? Thirty?
A scout party, perhaps. They might have heard Mrsha and me, or maybe they were following from the start.
What do they want? But I know the answer. They’re all armed, and they’re wearing armor. These aren’t wild Goblins in some tribe.
This is an army.
And they are going to kill us. I see it in their eyes. Goblin eyes might be different than Human or Gnoll eyes, but there is an expression I recognize there.