by Logan Jacobs
The lion wrapped itself around me by sinking its front claws into my shoulder blades and its hind claws into the backs of my thighs while it tried to gnaw my face off. Its first bite missed my nose by probably half an inch, and I could smell the animal’s rancid breath. Its second bite almost tore into my cheek, but I managed to pull my skull to my right side so that I only felt one of the fangs graze my neck.
I finally got both hands around its throat and squeezed, but its throat was too thick for me to encompass in my grip, so I couldn’t cut off its air supply that way. I needed a new plan, so I pushed the flat of my left foot on the rocky ground, thrust up my hips with as much strength as I could, and twisted my shoulders in the same direction in an attempt to get the creature below me. For half a moment, it seemed like I wouldn’t be able to lift the big cat, but then my momentum won over, and we both leaned to my side.
We rolled over the rocks, first one of us on top and then the other, as we fought to gain dominance. A particularly sharp rock stabbed into my back. I shifted from a two-handed grip on the mountain lion’s throat to a single forearm block, which had the unfortunate side effect of allowing its massive teeth and putrid, rotting breath within inches of my face, but the very important purpose of freeing up my undamaged left hand so that I could reach behind my back and grab the sharp rock.
I smashed the rock into the side of the mountain lion’s head. It left a bloody gash, but the way the lion had my arm partially pinned prevented me from delivering a blow with full force, and I failed to penetrate its skull. Before I could try again, the lion yanked its claws out of my shoulder blade and pinned the wrist of my left hand with the rock in it to the ground instead.
Now, both of my wrists had been shredded, and not only was I in danger of bleeding out, I no longer had the ability to grip any kind of weapon.
That wrist was no use to me anymore, and the mountain lion was using it to hold me helplessly in place. I took several deep breaths and steeled myself for the pain. Then I jerked my left arm so hard that the mountain lion’s claws tore all the way through the flesh, which basically severed my left hand except for a few threads of skin and tendon.
In the next moment before the cat fully realized what had happened I flung myself onto its back, locked my legs around its midsection, jammed one arm horizontally across its throat, and hooked the other arm over that one to apply enough pressure to choke it.
At first the mountain lion snarled and thrashed in my arms. It was so strong that my muscles were going numb from exhaustion. Then finally, it went limp.
I stayed in place and started counting to a minute. At that point that body was so used up that I wasn’t even sure whether it was capable of standing up on its own two feet anymore, but it had done its job.
At fifty-seven seconds, the mountain lion roared back to life. I had no more energy left to fight it and knew that it was about to break out of my chokehold. I glanced around and saw that we had rolled to about two feet from the edge of the mountainside.
With a burst of pure adrenaline I kicked off from a boulder and sent us both tumbling off Mount Ugga, still locked in an embrace, to our deaths.
Then I sent out a second self again to be prepared just in case the dead mountain lion had a mate or something that might decide to show up.
Ilandere was in tears. “I’m so sorry, Vander,” she cried. “That was so foolish of me. I only saw a small part of it and I really thought it was a cat! A cute cat, I mean, not a monster like that.”
“It’s all good,” I said. “Just more wrestling practice, right?”
“Well ya coulda just asked me, you know,” Lizzy said.
I grinned at her. “Yeah, next time I think I’ll do that.”
Other than that, our first day’s climb was largely uneventful, a slow and steady slog. Towards evening Ilandere started to lag behind, and I knew the little centaur couldn't keep it up much longer. But even if it hadn't been for that, light conditions were starting to grow dim, and therefore treacherous even for the rest of us who still hadn’t completely drained our energy reserves. So I sent my third self ahead and scouted out a roomy cave where the eight of us could comfortably bed down for the night. Thirteen, including the horses, which we brought inside with us as well.
Lizzy helped me collect some dry pine branches, and we built a small fire in the center of the cave for warmth.
“How far up the mountain do you think we are, Vander?” Ilandere asked as she lay down and folded her legs beneath her in her usual sleeping position. As usual, her warrior handmaiden settled protectively at her side.
“About halfway,” I replied, which was the truth. But what I chose not to mention was that the second half of the climb was going to be significantly steeper. Not to mention colder, in thinner air.
“Oh,” the princess said in a small voice.
“I want you to know that I’m proud of you,” I said. “All of you. I know that climbing a mountain isn’t, er, something you’ve ever done before. But none of you gave up all day no matter how tough it got. And it’s really brave of you to follow me up here.”
Ilandere brightened. I loved how all it took was a kind word to raise her spirits.
“You know that I would follow you anywhere, Qaar’endoth,” Florenia said. “Into the Fairlands or into the Abyss or anywhere in between.”
“Even if I die, I would never want you to die,” I told her, because I knew that she wasn’t just referring to the two extremes of the afterlife in a figurative sense.
“No one’s gonna die,” Lizzy scoffed. “This ain’t even really a mountain, it’s more just a bitty hill with some pebbles on it. If I waited another hour to morph, I could be down the other side before the sun was up.”
“Dear Lizzy, please refrain from insulting the spirit of this mountain with your usual excessive bravado,” Willobee entreated her nervously.
“The spirit of this mountain?” Lizzy repeated incredulously. “A mountain ain’t alive, it’s just a bunch of rocks and dirt, and neither of those got feelings. You oughta know that, you’re pretty smart for a gnome.”
Willobee’s chubby-cheeked little face puckered up and flushed red. At first I thought maybe that was because of Lizzy’s racial slur against gnomes, which he should have known as well as I did that she didn’t really mean, and that that was just Lizzy’s typical backwards way of disguising a sincere compliment. But then I realized that the gnome was actually suffering from anxiety, not outrage. Whatever this ‘spirit of the mountain’ thing was, he genuinely seemed to believe in it as something more substantial than a mere figure of speech. Willobee was smart for any species, in his own peculiar ways, but he was also susceptible to some quirks and superstitions.
So I said warningly, “Lizzy…. ”
She rolled her spring green eyes at me and twitched one of her long pointed ears with annoyance, but she didn’t press the issue any further.
One of my selves snuggled up with her even though I knew she was likely to transform into a giant wolf as soon as she could and squash me. She preferred to sleep in that form. Willobee preferred for her to sleep in that form too because he liked to use her as a huge furry heated blanket.
Another of my selves snuggled up with Florenia. Her willowy curves fit perfectly against my body, but she never made it easy for me to fall asleep when we were in a group situation like this and sleeping was all I planned to do, because she knew exactly how to wriggle to bring my erection jutting against her backside, all the while pretending that she was just innocently settling herself into a more comfortable position.
My third self, as usual, stood watch over the group. That was the self that noticed that Ilandere, despite her obvious exhaustion from the day’s climbing efforts, was not asleep yet. She had her silvery blonde head resting upon her arms, but her huge dark doe eyes remained open, and unless my eyesight was just playing tricks on me in the darkness of the cave, they were peering at my self that was subtly tussling with Florenia. She also glanced over at Lizz
y, who had one long, leanly muscled leg flung over my waist and one arm flung over my neck possessively. I wondered if I was just imagining the flash of envy that crossed the centaur’s pale little face. Then, she closed her eyes and I decided not to dwell on it.
The familiar rumbling sound of Willobee’s snoring filled the cave and made it feel like home.
In the morning, we were awoken by unearthly chanting that vibrated through the cave and echoed faintly off the stone walls and ceiling. My body that was on watch wasn’t asleep exactly, but I also wasn’t fully awake. I was drifting in a sort of vague meditative state as I stared out from the entrance of the cave into the night beyond to ensure that nothing unwanted emerged out of it. So I was just as bewildered as everyone else.
When I turned around, I saw the gnome sitting cross-legged in front of the fire in his velvet suit and ostrich feather cap, since he had not yet donned his chainmail for the day, with his eyes closed, and his head tipped back. The silk strands of his lavender beard rustled slightly from the currents of his breath as he chanted in some unfamiliar, guttural, and hypnotic language. Something about his air of concentration prevented all of us from interrupting him to ask questions, even though by the time he concluded his chant several minutes later, every single living being inside the cave was gawking at him, except for the horses, who mostly seemed to be trying their best to ignore him.
Ilandere clapped her hands together. “Bravo! That was quite beautiful,” she exclaimed. “I’ve never heard anything like it before.”
“It is not morning yet,” growled Lizzy, even though the fact that she was human by then and able to articulate that sentiment at all indicated that it was, in fact, morning.
“Uh, what was that about exactly?” I asked him.
“It was a sacred gnomish chant, Master,” he replied with a blink of his lantern eyes. Inside the dim cave, their luminous green quality appeared even more supernatural than usual. “I was making an appeal to the spirit of this mountain for safe passage for all of us.”
“That’s rubbish,” Lizzy muttered. “Vander’s the one keeping us safe on this mountain with his know-how. And the horses are the ones carrying the load of our asses. Better pray to them instead.”
“Well, the chant made me feel better, and I appreciate it,” Ilandere retorted. The timid little centaur really was getting better at standing up to the overbearing she-wolf, although it was just like her to be more assertive in someone else’s defense than she would likely have been in her own.
“Well, if nothing else, we’re all awake now,” I sighed. “May as well get a move on. Let’s get out something to eat from the packs.”
“And Willobee, your language really is something special,” I told him from another of my mouths. “I could feel it humming in my bones. I don’t know what your chant meant, but it has a kind of power to it.”
“See, if you had a godly bone in your body, you would have sensed that too, in spite of your ignorance,” Willobee told Lizzy huffily.
“I have only ever had one godly bone inside my body,” Lizzy purred as she winked at me.
Elodette groaned in disgust as she pulled out breakfast supplies and started setting them out for us. We had jerky, bread, cheese, and even dried plums and apricot from the baron’s castle. It wasn’t as good as eating a fine meal hot, but it was a much finer spread than you could usually expect on the road, other than the game you might hunt along the way. Elodette never failed to bring down deer and rabbits for us in the woods, even hunting in the dark, but the mountain was not her natural terrain, and I didn’t feel comfortable sending her out in a place where she could easily fall off a cliff while chasing after prey. Not to mention the animals of prey available in the area wouldn’t even be what we were used to, and I wasn’t sure that any of us would like the taste of mountain goat.
Ilandere toyed with her food for longer than usual. She always ate the merest fraction of the shocking quantities that Lizzy and Willobee could shovel down within a few minutes. Part of her increased interest in that breakfast seemed to be because the dried plums and apricots suited her palate more so than meat or carbohydrates did, although less so than apples, the only food for which she had a true weakness. But the other factor, I suspected, was that she was procrastinating because she dreaded setting out on the next stage of our mountain climb.
So I allowed the leisurely meal to continue until Lizzy huffed, “Don’t we ever wanna get off this damn mountain, or what? Just live in this cave for the rest of our lives?”
“There are many gnomish clans that live in caves,” Willobee said. “Although, not single caves like this. They are grand networks of hundreds or thousands of caves carved out by hand. With trapdoors and air vents and stones to roll into place to block any intruders.”
“That sounds horribly claustrophobic,” Florenia remarked.
“I quite agree,” Willobee replied. “Clan Benniwumporgan lives in grass mounds beneath the open sky.”
“But you don’t live in a grass mound,” Lizzy said. “Even before you joined up with Vander. You had that carriage and you were just rolling along to fuck knows where, but it wasn’t to a grass mound, was it?”
“No,” Willobee answered, “it was not.” None of us pressed the issue. The gnome was an eloquent little chatterbox on virtually any other subject, but when it came to his past, we had found that he was extremely secretive and tended to either dodge our questions or give us poetical nonsense answers.
I decided that that was as good a time as any to get the group on the move again. I didn’t tell them to do anything. I just got up in all three bodies and started saddling three of the destriers, and Lizzy and Florenia quickly joined me in readying the fourth destrier and the courser, dappled little Chivalry.
Once we left the cave and resumed our ascent, I kept the pace slow. I didn’t want to tire Ilandere and the horses immediately and make them feel overwhelmed, and besides, I had a feeling based on the shape of the mountain that we were going to encounter some steep challenges today that we would need to conserve our energy for.
“What’s this mountain called, anyway?” Ilandere asked at one point. I wondered if she thought that naming it would make it more familiar and manageable somehow, or if she was just seeking the distraction of conversation.
“Well, it wasn’t labeled with a name on the baron’s map, and the Sanctimians didn’t really mention it,” I replied.
“We should name it Mount Qaar’endoth,” Florenia said.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but we can’t just name every object that we come across after me,” I objected.
“Why not?” the duke’s daughter inquired.
“Well, it just makes me seem like a narcissistic conqueror,” I explained. “I’m not trying to remake the world in my image or anything crazy like that. I just want to wipe out Thorvinius and his slaves. After that, I’ll… I dunno, really. Look after you all. Live a quiet life. Grow an apple orchard. We can still go on adventures, but it won’t have to be anything dangerous anymore, you know?”
“Oh, Vander, that would be my dream,” Ilandere said softly.
“Once your quest is done, I could bear you children, Qaar’endoth,” Florenia offered. “But… I don’t know if it will ever really be done. Even once Thorvinius has been annihilated, there will always be another people that need saving, another evil that needs defeating. And your influence will spread. Everyone will want you to rule over them, like the villagers of Ferndale. You are an extraordinary being, and it is not your destiny to live an ordinary life. The oracle Aurelana said as much. Well, once you have more selves, actually, you could devote a few of your bodies to purely… domestic and recreational activities.”
“While the others are off kicking ass,” Lizzy agreed. “Hey, guys, I know what the natives call this mountain, though.”
“Er, you do?” I asked.
“Yup, for damn sure I do,” she said proudly. “This here is Mount Ugga.”
We all laughed, except f
or Willobee, who said, “Well… the drummer word for ‘mountain’ is actually ‘ugga,’ you know. With the stress on the latter syllable-- ”
“No one gives a fuck, gnome,” Lizzy groaned.
Soon after that, Ilandere let out a little gasp. I looked over at her to see what was wrong, but her beautiful face was actually filled with delight. She pointed. I, and the rest of my companions, looked over to see some kind of enormous shaggy ram with long, whorling horns pick its way gingerly across a boulder field above us, followed by a miniature version of itself that only had little stubs for horns.
We watched the pair until they had trotted out of sight.
“It must be so difficult for an animal to stay alive up here,” Ilandere said, “but the mom is teaching its baby how. And protecting it.”
“Think that was the dad, based on them horns,” Lizzy corrected her. She remarked admiringly, “Wow! I could do some damage with a set like that sprouting out of my head, I tell you.”
Over the course of the next few hours we saw many more of the same kind of sheep, sometimes moving alone or in pairs, but usually in big herds that we would stop and stare at. They never came that close to us and didn’t seem threatened by us as long as we didn’t move toward them. They seemed like calm, peaceful animals, except for one time when we witnessed a pair of ferocious rams engaged in a headbutting contest. They repeatedly clashed horns, wrestled themselves free, wheeled back, and then lunged together again with apparent disregard for their proximity to the edge of a sheer precipice. As the fight stretched on, I decided they must have some kind of sixth sense that enabled them to avoid falling, but a few seconds after that, one lost his footing and plunged off the edge with a furious bellow that rapidly faded from hearing until it cut off altogether. The remaining ram snorted and trotted off out of sight.
“That’s terrible, they are such magnificent creatures, and that one just died for no reason,” Ilandere said sadly.
“Not no reason,” Lizzy retorted. “I guess there must be a pretty little sheep off waiting around somewhere, and now she’ll know which one to take for a lover.”