V5 Incline 12: Nin

"You are going to be okay! Do you hear me!?" I try to roar back to Rose'lhia. We slowly move out into the open, my free claw moving us up the mountain. Its grip as tight as I can manage as the winds howl and lash at my limbs. They want us off this mountain, plummeting all the way back down.

Heaving with a groan, I try to get as far as I can with each reach of the arms. Reapplying my claws and feet as ideas repeat on me less than the winds make me hurt. Explosive forces. I keep thinking about explosive forces.

Of items that send themselves flying with kinetic energy. Fireballs that tear down concrete and rip open steel. Bullets, bombs, slings, engines, anything and everything. I keep thinking about explosive force!

I need to get us out of this snow-belt quickly and now. Now. Now. Now!

I flex down, bending my legs as much as I am able to as I gather my strength. Whatever distance there is, I need to leave it all behind. We can't stay in this cold. We need to get out of it.

Rapid breaths leave me, the only thing that is acceptable. My efforts to hype myself up are all we have left. It's all I have left in this cold, and I'm wringing it out for all of its value. A final thought settles into my mind. Up.

A breath parts my shivering jaw and... Boom.

The winds rush against me, resisting me. But I keep ascending, the explosive boom catching up with us in no time at all. I feel the snow strike me, cut into me. It lashes and lashes and lashes and... The clouds vanish.

Clear mountain fills my eyes and snowless pastures of rock. I soar higher and higher, hoping, praying to whatever god or goddess might hear me. I need to keep going up, I need to keep going higher... But I don't.

We fall down, and no panic goes through me. Just a clean sensation and I want. I punch right into the mountain, staking us right then and there. The motion dislodges my arm, forcing pain to roar right out of me. Miserable laughter escapes ahead of it, and I claw my way up, smashing my way into and through the mountain rock. I snap one last time and heave myself over the ledge of the mountain. An impossible task that I have broken over my knee like a twig...

I heave happily and cry out my remaining pain as my breath catches on the blades of grass. All that cold and it just vanishes on the mountaintop. Where it feels so fine, like a hot day has come to pass. I peek a little across the peak, taking in Thrurstradtur in a way I've never seen it before. So many details are clear to me now, so many lights and windows and more.

I get up, barely. I struggle to even slip the backpack off, and it drops like a rock. So coated in ice it is. I knock it down and open it up, afraid I might shatter such frozen cloth. I pull her out and collapse to the ground, my chest heaving away. All so we can sink onto fresh grass, into the soft, warm soil under it.

A delicate Rose is on top of me, so close to being replanted in the grass. A distant light illuminates us, the lens' of my mask not catching any of it as I take it off of her. Her breath goes across my chest, telling me the truth of our journey. She's alive, she's alive because of my efforts...!

Albeit barely conscious, like I am.

"Keep... Kee..." I try to say to her, moving her off of me so she can rest on her own. I get up again, shaking and wobbling my way over to a lone tree. My jaw locks tight, my messed-up arm stinging in pain as I double-check everything about it. I knock it back into place, barely muffling my pain with a sudden bite of the branch. Watering eyes do what they can, but they can only do so much.

The branch becomes flakey and I spit the splintery remains of it out. Spitting some more and I turn back to her. I go back to her. To Rose. Rose-sweerui.

While not much would've changed, I feel... This damn woman put me through all that to get up here. She gave me all that stupidity so she could come along... A woman I'm now holding onto with joyful tears as I rock back and forth. All to the delight of her body coming alive again with movement and strong breathing.

The winds of this mountaintop are powerful, rich with magic. It seeks us out of its own accord, healing us of so many of our pains as it rushes through our bodies from our hearth-like lungs. Whatever the reason for it, I'm glad.

"Ain't that right, Futhans? Strong magic heals weaker magic..." I recall, remembering some of the talks I had with that young hunter. While he never had the same dream as Baltanthan, he picked up on all of the same lessons. Wisdom he more than happily past onto me.

It has to be that... The mountain's reserves are so great it can just breathe new life into those who happen to so much as sniff it. Maybe this is why this mountain is a member of the so-called Seven Great Peaks I've heard so much about? Nearly everyone's brought them up at so point.

If this magic is the case, then I'm fine with that moniker. Power so magnificent its power is just attracted to the weary, and its healing breezes just make the worries of a thing of the past. Every ache, every bit of pain. I feel so refreshed when barely any time ago I was clinging to the mountain for my life.

Our lives...

I look at my claws, watching all the little scratches fill out and vanish. I smile at them, knowing full well I owe such simple digits an awful lot even if I hate to look at them. This body of mine got me up this mountain. Yet, it's the reason why I had to climb to begin with!

"My love, we are here." Rose-sweerui tells me, the colour having returned to her face quite well. She takes a moment to get out of my grip. Stumbling about herself and she collapses, too weak to stand at all. I get up and heave her back up, standing at her side as we turn to face our goal.

The distant majesty of what we had come up here to see, to begin with...!

Thrurstradtur!

It looks so close, but it's so deceitful about it, it's not close at all. It's just that big of a city and there's so much mountain left to travel! A mountain of brasses, coppers and golds on top of one other mountain... A city that goes even higher, all the way to a point that is on the straight and narrow of a glowing night sky. One that flows with the brightest emerald winds I have ever seen in my life.

The sky is so clear, even with it, too... If I focus my vision carefully, I can see a distant purple backdrop to an otherwise black and blue sky. One can just barely make out the shadow of a metal ring that orbited the world. The Orbital-Halo that protects All-That-Remains!

No clouds in the way at all, just magic...

"It's beautiful, isn't it...?" Rose-sweerui asks, holding herself close to me until she suddenly wants to move. Her tone seems off, and she wanders, pulling away at my grip to escape it.

"Of course it is... This thing is a marvel! It outshines Tobaballe's best in ways I can't even describe!" I nearly scream with delight, not even sure why I called the night sky a 'thing' of all things.

My eyes shift away, going back towards the great wedge in the centre of the city. The main attraction of Thrurstradtur, if I made any guesses at all. I stop looking around and narrow my eyes, blinking with uncertainty. Is my mind playing tricks on me, because I swear this is real... But, it seems to be moving, the whole city is moving, rotating!

It's... It's following an eclipsing moon! We're in the middle of a lunar alignment and the city is gods-damned following it! What in All-That-Remains am I looking at!? What a marvel of engineering...

"Want to see something better?" Rose-sweerui teases, tugging at me with a strange ferocity. The kind I've only ever seen a child use when they want to show their parent something cool.

"Ok?" I go, following along as I keep my eyes to the grass to avoid spoiling the surprise.

"Look!" Rose-sweerui insists as she pokes at my jawline. And I do.

"What the..." I find myself saying as my view moves from what is so simple in comparison. From grass and rock to a greater sight that makes me want to go back and correct all prior thoughts about the night sky. An impossibly huge mountain that reaches the very limits of the sky. So needlessly large that it seems so close and yet it's no doubt a lifetime away. A mountain shimmering in the truly brightest, most plentiful emerald winds I've ever seen.

And it just keeps on going higher and higher... Too high for a mountain... Too high!

"The source of all wind-magic in the world. The heart of the wind-peoples, the tallest peak in the world and the home of the capital of the Seven-Peaks Union of Jherikra..." she starts to say, her bulbs flickering with such clueless behaviour. She lets go of me, walking closer to the impossible mountain, going as close as she can safely go. She collapses.

"Rose-sweerui...?" I go, hearing her cry so blatantly as she turns to face me, the single greatest smile I have ever seen on her lips being there.

"My love, this is, in the oldest tongue of them all, Jhroungijherammujhernosumonaterikra! The Great Mountain with the Greatest Size and the Greatest Air of the People! Your people!" She explains, insisting upon her nonsense like usual, and I...

I have no idea how to comprehend a name like that.

"Jhroungi..." I mutter, barely able to recall even the start of the word.

I just go up to her, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her away from the edge. I hold onto her, needing her support as much as she needs mine. She looks away from the mountain, bawling with a degree of joy I've just never seen from her before... Not even when she found out I was alive.

Gods above us, how does she see this mountain if she sees the world in means of magic?

Whatever the way it looks to her is, I think I get it. My body, for some reason, it screams for me to head that way. Towards the mountain. It feels like... Home? That's all I can describe this sensation as and I have no idea why...

"Tallest mountain in the world, huh...?" I mutter, so breathless despite never feeling healthier. I gaze at the mountain's peak, eyeing it so closely as I try to fit one of my claws between its top and the limits of the sky. It's but a finger's scrape away from it!