The Mountain giveth.
The Mountain taketh.
So does the Dark God.
He gives and he takes.
Or so the stories go. Fables. Myths. Legends. Things that go bump in the night and speak of caution. Of heart’s desires and a thousand other sordid things. Gods and Mountains.
Almost like men and monsters.
Theirs’ is a long history entwined with the Dark God —
It began with the fashioning of Pangea. Pollock becoming king. Sinew, his consort for time immemorial (despite any kingly discretions). Then came the twins: Feast and Famine. Princes and paupers both, for their blood made it so. Neither would govern any throne but the one of their own passions’ making. Feast though, would quest once or twice at the Dark God’s summons. He sacrificed a pale perfect wing for it.
From there, it spawned chapter after chapter in which the Dark God trampled through the pages of. A quest. Or two, who can rightly remember? Then, a season in which magic made possible the impossible - turned fathers into mothers, let stallions have wombs instead of sperm (well that too, but instead of balls fit to burst, there were teats full of milk and stallions tasting a bit of mare’s pain at birth). From that, came her:
Thorax.
The daughter of the Dark God and Feast.
As we all know, blood often calls to blood. So as he sent his summons, she stirred from whatever reverie she was caught up in and lifted her head to the wind as if it whispered something to her. “Come along,” it might have said, to which her blood stirred, raced, coursed until it became adrenaline-rich and her heart seemed fit to burst. Much like her taut flesh suddenly so full of need to outpace the stars in the sky to answer this wild wanton call that said come, come, come.
So the rainbow-slick girl ran through the dark, over hill and dale, until she found that mountain trail that gave her a moment’s pause —
What if?
Do I go?
Come, came the call like a beat of something strange and thrilling in her blood.
But the Mountain had other ideas, enough to meekly challenge the Dark God’s summons (though she couldn’t have known it was him at the time, as a plethora of other scents permeated the thick air at the mountain’s base). It felt like small slaps and stings - enough to discourage but not really harm or fell. But she might have imagined all of that too, as strange new fears arose in her. Ones she put no names too, and ignored.
So up the Mountain she dared to go, or tried at least. But the way grew hard, thick, tangly even as if she found herself in a mire of muck. It sucked at her legs and sapped her strength. Worse, she could see that it was only rocky outcroppings and darkness - not muck at all, but it was much she slogged through, even bearing the sucking squelch of it at her hooves.
Go on or quit? Those thoughts chased themselves through her mind but Thorax persevered because she had no quit in her. She moved sluggishly up that mountain, each step agonizing and time-consuming until it seemed the last star would burn itself out in the coming dawn. Still, there was only rocks and dark, and somewhere up ahead the source of it all —
That call.
This trek.
The challenge.
Others, even. Because she smelled them as she tried to suck in deep breaths of air that choked her lungs. Thin and unsatisfying, as her legs trembled from exertion and her skin shook with exhaustion. But at least, she crested the Mountain and it’s imaginary muck to glance at them all and stand off by herself.
She’d made it, but at what cost?
Only time could tell, and the quest.
But she didn’t know that; trembling and blowing, and tired but somehow mastering a look of something impenetrable or impending.
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