Pitiful Mountain

“Where did Wilbur get his name?” I asked. The elm trees and oak shrubs were behind us; we meandered across an expanse of land which was densely populated with sun flowers, poppies, daisy, and tall blades of blue grass. The contrast between the mountain of dark immensity and this field was stark. The bees and butterflies in their golden and yellow, green, red flair zipped and darted, hovering here and there. My heart was deeply sunk with the happenings of the previous days of the procession's encounters and loss of life.

“He was named after Wilbur Geetug, a valiant dragonslayer who was the only human in recent times to take down a stone giant and save a flock of King Troust Klukus IV's sheep all by himself,” Marcone said. We ambled in a direct line to Pitiful Mountain on our carriers. I had some sips of water. Then I pulled my wolf mask back over my face. Marcone continued to relay the tale. “It's remarkable, because legend says that Wilbur waited with a grandiose spear and lasso for days at the edge of a steep cliff. He didn't have any food, he fasted. His determination was unending to take down the stone giant when it come out of its den. Wilbur was small for a dragonslayer and skinny. He was made up of wiry tendons and long, thin muscle. There is something to be said about long, thin muscle that makes a man more powerful than the thick, fat muscle you see on some berserkers. Thin muscle doesn't get in the way, making for a more agile, slippery fighter. But I digress. Months prior, the giant had eaten from the king's flock and severely reduced the population. This frustrated, perturbed, and angered Wilbur in the worst way.”

Marcone and I continued past some elm trees and their shade, random, in the sunlit field that sparkled brightly. Then we crossed more fields of poppies. The mountain did not seem to be getting any closer as it considerably marred most of the north-east skyline. Marcone continued to speak, “Wilbur Geetug courageously stalked the stone monster. When the giant finally came out, in an early morning frost, when there was just enough light coming from the promise of a burning sun, the monster sought the flock of sheep in the lower field. Wilbur insanely leaped from the rocky ledge and had only one chance to land on the daemon. He fell through the brisk air swinging the lasso above him, aiming to catch the giant's head. If he missed, he would have fallen into an abyss of jagged rocks thousands of feet below. The lasso made a clean catch of the daemon's horned crown. Wilbur landed on the hard surface near the stone giant's eye. He stood in the socket of the eye. The giant tried to grab at Wilbur, but its fingers were too thick to reach into the cavity.

In the huge, red, lustrous eye Wilbur could see his own reflection. He saw the spear on his back, the silver buttons on his bull skin armor shined, and his hands tightly clutching the rope at the end of the lasso. He swung, suspended there. The monster violently tossed its head and roared. Wilbur's feet danced in the huge eye socket as he was thrown about. His hands ached and were sore desperately hanging onto the rope. The colossal eye gazed like a living universe beaming back at the dragonslayer. For an instant, Wilbur saw civilization in the eye. A woeful civilization of starving, sick, destitute people slept and sat in their own filth. The scene he saw in the eye changed. Tall lanky beasts with scaly skin and bulging puss filled eyes came into view. In small rooms with no windows, daemons did dastardly things to young humans which are too much to tell. Then the beasts used their long, jagged teeth to bite the throats of the innocent and drink the blood that came forth. When they were done, some of them regurgitated worms and maggots out of their wailing mouths,” Marcone stopped he didn't really want to tell these revelations. Then again, he started telling the end, “Big human like creatures, with rodent heads and long rat tails and jaundice eyes rapped human females; and if the female resisted, the ratmen beat them to unconsciousness and then finished the defilement. They monsters laughed and regaled thinking their violence was funny. Outside the windows in the torch-lamp-light of the streets, horror struck, naked vixens cut out their impregnated embryos from their wombs and these spilled out onto the cobblestone. The scene changed again; gathered skinny naked human slaves were whipped and lashed as they were trapped in twine on barbwire fences. The screams were unbearable and abominable,” Marcone said.

“Wilbur as the giant's head flung him outward,” Marcone said, “Propped his long spear between his arm and breast to stick the weapon out straight. When he swung back toward the menacing stone face, he guided the spear to hit the soft spot of the giant's massive eye. The eye was the only weakness in a stone giant's armor; the weight of Wilbur's free falling body toward the giant drove the lance deep,” Marcone said. Marcone breathed and sat strait in the seat on his horse and didn't look back at me as we moved through the field. “The monster fell upon the mountain and lay dead. Wilbur stood triumphantly on the stupendous stone face!”

“That is quite a name, for a horse,” I said.

“What he saw happen to the children in the eye was so heinous. The eye tells you the amount of evil that dwells in dirt and rock; I almost want to vomit,” he said.

“But the stone giant was taken down!” I said.

“That's good, that is the only way to get through it!” Marcone was suddenly stoic in his seat as he rode. “That is the only way to survive!”

We came to the end of the field of wonderful flowers and different variations of blue grass and arrived at a long natural ditch that cut deeply through the land. It was a border between the mountain and dragon and the land of healthy vegetation. On the other side of the ditch, where we were headed, were mounds of volcanic stone and narrow paths between them. We were finally closer to Pitiful Mountain and I could make out fissures and broken pieces of stone, cracks, and little gray trees, with solid pink leaves. The trees inhabited mostly the lower part of the mountain. I hadn't ever seen these trees before and at the top of the volcanic mountain there were deep scars where lava flows had once seeped.

“Those pink things aren't leaves, they're blossoms,” the Dragonslayer said.

“How did you know I was thinking of a leaf?” I said.

“Sylvia is in my mind, she wanted to know how far we had come. She said you saw the pink things as leafs. More urgently, she said 'once we are confident that the mountain is a volcano, we will be very much in danger of Sarehole and the dragon's menace.'”

“Oh,” I found myself saying. “Sylvia never goes in my mind.”

“No, she does, she says you think we should go further north before crossing the ravine as it doesn't seem as deep looking up that direction,” Marcone said.

“Wow, I haven't even thought that yet. But it is strange, because that is something I might think,” I said, feeling haunted.

We headed north, up the ravine, staying on the north-west side of it, on the vegetation side.

“Did you ask how Desiderio's doing?”

“She said he isn't in as much pain, but she's worried as he just looks at the ground while sitting cross legged. He doesn't want to stand or walk. She wants him to start walking. She said that he did smile at her, briefly, just after she shaved him. She said she tied his hair in a neat pony-tail like mine,” Marcone said.

“Oh,” was all I said. I know her gesture with tying Desiderio's hair in a pony tail sent a message to the dragonslayer that maybe the witch did like him more. I wanted to tell him that I wouldn't count on the actions of Sylvia being anything of any significance. She had a whirl wind of dangerous aspects about her; but to the eye of a man, longing for her acceptance, voluptuous flesh and love blinded the man.

We rode our charges across a more shallow part of the ditch. The air was drastically colder on the east side. The dirt below our horses' hooves was black and had specs of pearl white grains, like beach sand. Nothing grew on this side of the ravine except these gray trees with pink flowers. Pitiful Mountain's dark dominance was a staggering impact on the view of what was before us. It shook me deep and dread filled my heart. I felt the end so near!!!

“Maybe we should turn back? Sylvia was correct, this is not going to go well for us,” I said.

“What about Constance? Look at what we did to her.” Marcone said. Marcone stopped Wilbur and turned him around in a circle, between giant rocks, to face me. Wilbur and Stacy Ann touched muzzles and I felt a vibration from deep in the appaloosa and she gave a slight whinny.

Marcone's ice wolf mask stalked my eyes and grimaced my direction. “Don't surrender,” he said. “Sarehole awaits. Humanity's revenge awaits.” His voice resonated thickly from behind the confines of the resistance of the mask. He then turned Wilbur back around and I guided Stacy Ann to follow them. We headed into a complex maze of boulders, zigzagging through endless corridors of stone at the base of Pitiful Mountain. We were searching for the first steps to the stairway up the mountain.

At the far northern edge of the monolith's base we arrived at a massive clearing. There was at the very least a reprieve with no longer being confounded with the constraining walls of rock. And here, we found the most beautiful lake of clear, bright, blue water. So quiet was this place at the amazing shoreline. The view of the expanse of water was spectacular. The air was refreshing and the bright color was a juxtaposition to the doom that surrounded everything else. I felt something strange at that moment near the lake and it compelled me to look down at the ripples in the water. I was deeply spooked and startled by my reflection when I saw my horrible visage. “What happened to my face!?” I thought. I had grown so used to the ice wolf mask, I had forgotten in was there. My tall body wavered in the reflection and my appaloosa under me. The spear on my back spiked high above my head. Then more ripples came and washed my image away and only a shadow of my presence was left.

We rode slowly around the lake. The deep black and white volcanic sand seeming deeper than the previous miles before. The hooves of our charges plunged deep, but not as deep as mud. I didn't even want to start thinking about mud again!

“We should've brought Bear or Scotch, so we could carry more rations. We're low on rations and water. I'm not sure we should drink water from this lake, or eat the fish here,” I said.

“We're almost finished. Don't fret. We're too close to the two thousand, three hundred, and fifty steps,” the Dragonslayer said confidently. He kept looking in the water at his own reflection, admiring it. His Moonblade glowed bright blue in its scabbard near the tranquil lake.

We came a little further and found the steps up the side of the monolith volcano. The stairway made a serpentine back and forth up the charcoal face and continued as far as the eye could see toward the mountain's peak in the sky. Each stair was elegantly carved in a hexagon shape by huahuai masons hundreds of years ago. Was I ready to face the end of my life? Was I ready to die horribly at the spit of a dragon's fire? Was I ready for pitiful Mountain?

Sarehole's Lair.

The horses couldn't come any further, so we left them near the lake where there was at least water. We had only ascended a short distance up the mountain, and I was already breathing heavy. I felt weak and unsure. My mind kept playing back the horrible moment when Constance bled to death in the meadow. Everything in the past days seemed like nightmares veiled behind stark realities. My sister's death, when I forgot to think of it, haunted me and made me taciturn and left a helpless feeling in my heart that yearned at me in sorrow. But despairingly, the more time that went by, the more difficult it was to keep her fresh in my mind. I felt unreal and blurry eyed, but then I focused and the reality that I wanted to end, still lurked relentless before me. This stark black mountain and the doom all around it was a wasteland of stone, yet still alive and a menace of fate to climb!!!

I followed the dragonslayer up the serpentine of stairs for what seemed to be forever.

“Here's water,” I said.

I would hand him our bota bag of water and he'd drink, then he'd hand it back to me and then I would drink, and then we would climb more. The intervals of each step was different and the heat of the sun baring down on the black rock from the dark blue sky was a surreal vision. Our source of air came from the oblivion of blue and there wasn't a cloud. Not the mountain, but the sky seemed crooked in my dreariness of lifting my heavy legs at each crossing.

“Lets rest a bit, my thighs are burning,” Marcone said. He drank from the bag as he sat on a rock below an outcropping of other rocks which sat up like a splay of feathers. These rocks provided a smidgen of shade. I sat as close to Marcone as I could to share a rare amount of shade on the barren, dead mountain.

“Desiderio told me that the dragons are sisters. He told me of Critia's overwhelming power and how it would've been futile to save my own sister, Alana,” I said, “Critia lives in water and Sarehole lives in a volcano. And this strange volcano that we climb upon, long ago, had stupendous explosions and rivers of molten lava. The disaster within itself left behind this colossal fossil of marrow of earth. I thought volcano mountains flattened out when spewing, but this mountain grew taller. A very high and majestic infliction, a spire and gods forbid dormant!” I said.

Marcone looked at me with his silvery eyes and narrow white face. “I guess that explains it then,” he said, “One of the sisters is fire and the other is water, fire and water.” Marcone seemed to marvel at the thought of the dragons as he peered off to the Hidden Valley Of Parrish far below. “I wonder if Sylvia will come to help us when Sarehole starts kicking our ass!” he said with a smirk. I hadn't ever seen the dragonslayer smirk, or smile, or ever seem happy. Maybe he did smile when he looked at Sylvia, who he loved. Even then, I am not sure it would have been a smile he gave to her. We both took another sip of water from the bag before we came out of the shade and continued to ascend the steep dark rows of winding stairs baking in the burning sun. Tiny lizards and tiny snakes on the slope scuttled and slithered across hot black rocks and black sand, all around us. Some of them were just very still in the sun, lethargic. The sun seemed to be their deity. We continued to gruelingly move up, higher and higher.

“How many stairs have we done?” I asked Marcone.

“We're over two thousand, and here's another,” Marcone said as the stairway at this juncture circled all the way around the perimeter of the mountain, and the air was strikingly cooler than before. “The view is spectacular of all the lands below and the skyline and the wonderful blue sky.” The air drifts became chilled as if blown over sheets of ice, and thin.

The mountain came to a very narrow point, a wide edge was its top, like the flat tip of a tooth. We've come to where there was not much left. It's almost like someone came and broke the mountain off here!” I said. The colossal incisor intruded artlessly into the heavens. Looking down the sheer side of the mountain made me wary and feeling as though I was off balance and that I could topple. On a couple of occasions Marcone said, “Don't look down.”

I breathed deeply the cooler air with the contrast of heated exorcised muscle. I tried to tell myself to not be tentative of falling, being unsettled would only help the negative to happen.

“There is no room for a dragon to live in this part of the mountain as the mountain has no bulk. It is far too narrow, or broad enough,” I said.

“Up a little further is the crest, the peak.” Marcone said lifting his mask to wipe sweat from his face. “There's a wide rim and we will cross over this steep shale lip and descend down into that bowl where the pit, or mouth of the volcano had once been. There are supposedly no stairs on that side as they were all wiped out in a quaking of the ground. Have you felt the ground quake before?” Marcone asked.

Chilly brushes of wind whipped past us redirecting the sweat on our necks. On one slanted mass of sheer flat stone, in the shade of mountain, far on the north-east side a huge patch of snow still existed, spread wide and clean and its ice I could feel on my lips, through my mask, and in my eyes, I felt the snow as the sun bandied about upon its edges.

“Not that I can remember,” I eventually answered. “The gods control the plates of the earth, right? They make the ground quake?”

“Nah, I believe quakes are caused by witchcraft, like the lightening Sylvia used in the valley. Lightening is also witchcraft. Krantenties was a terrible woman of spells and voodoo. At least with Sylvia, we have someone who is somewhat human, somewhat sympathetic,” Marcone observed.

“These steps don't get us to the lair? They just get us to this precipice, then end?” I asked.

“Yes, hundreds of steps are missing on the other side because of the quake. The sharp edge which we are closing in on is the top. We can see all of Sirry from the top. I need a drink of water. Can I get a drink?” Marcone said breathing steadily and I was breathing heavy too. His mask he pulled up on his forehead and I did the same. I handed him the bota bag and we stood for a moment on the narrow mountain's edge, a whistle of icy thin air came past us again and gave me the feeling of some unseen aspect making my lips ache; I was on the stair directly below him and he was on the black neatly carved hexagon stair above me. “Thanks,” he said gulping some water and it hurt his teeth as the water in the bag had become very cold. Some drips dribbled down his narrow chin. Brightly in the high altitude and rays of relentless sun baring down through the chilled climes. With the backdrop of grand blue sky, a bead of water fell and rolled over once in mid-air just before it spattered on a porous black stone near Marcone's boot.