The Mountain King
35th Ashan, 720
Scalvoris Mountains
Scalvoris Mountains
In reply to Balthazar's question, Falsehood clicked her tongue against her teeth. "If you mean that in the sense of using it as a weapon against us then yes. Their Majesty is this mountain now, not simply trying to persuade it to do his bidding as you are. They could move any part of it as easily as you could move an arm. Attempting to turn the earth against them would surely fail."
At Woe's remark about Sintra Falsehood giggled, though unlike her previous childish sounding laughs this one had a haunting edge to it. "Not all slaves wear collars and chains. Fewer still even know what they are until it's too late. But you will learn this for yourself when the time is right."
As they passed through the spirit party Woe took a tentative sniff of the flowers offered to him, and a pleasantly sweet smell wafted through his nose. It brought with it a pleasant warmth, like a hot drink settling in his stomach on a cold day, and with it a song popped into Woe's head; one that he was sure he'd never heard before, and yet could recall every note and lyric of as if it'd been sung to him all his life. If he tried to hum along to the tune Woe would find that his voice, while still undeniably his, sounded stronger and more musical that it ever had done before in his life: as if he had been training for year. Only when he sung that particular song however, not for anything else.
Victor chose to throw the ball at the target and hit a direct bullseye, causing the puppet spirit to drop down into the dunk tank. A dunk tank filled to the brim with ephemera. All around them the spirits who had seen it cheered and laughed together loudly at the entertainment; one even patting Victor on the shoulder as he passed by, yet for some reason Victor didn't feel like smiling anymore. Something felt wrong. A few seconds later the puppet spirit's hand burst out of the ephemera tank and grasped the edge, using it to pull itself out. Though the other spirits did not spare it a second glance, to Victor's eyes something seemed off about it. The puppet was twitching and shaking wildly, and though its face was eternally fixed into a wide jester's grin the presence about it was not that of a happy being.
The puppet's head turned to look at Victor: watching silently in perfect stillness as the mortal departed higher up into the party. Although it didn't do anything now, somehow Victor got the feeling that he hadn't seen the last of it.
Together the group stepped through the stone gateway. For the first time on this journey the ground before them flattened out, leading them onto a round plateau of solid stone completely encircled by the stone walls. Right in the middle of the plateau was a shallow pool of ephemera, from which eight thin drains stretched out in the cardinal and intercardinal directions to take the emerald liquid through the walls and out into the party below. The source of the chanting noise was immediately obvious, as a congregation of about two dozen spirits knelt in the shallow pool facing a tiny island directly in the centre and chanting words together in an unknown language.
"... -nd Their Majesty declared "We must fight these invaders, these slavers, these parasites of our land! For they bring with them nought but sickness and woe, and shall rot the very foundations of our island so that they alone might rule upon the rubble!" And lo, the anak did weep, for they saw within their royal visage-..." One of the spirits in the middle of the group: a short, bipedal frog-like being dressed in the white robes and long pointy hat of a priest, who had been leading some sort of sermon among the congregation, stopped mid speech as he saw them approach. His lips pulled up into a forced smile and he threw his arms wide open. "Rejoice, for more have come to be baptised and born anew! Welcome frie-..." His smile died an ugly death as the illusionary forms of the party all faded into mist; washing off like water and coming together in front of them to reform Falsehood. With wide eyes the frog priest looked back and forth between Falsehood and the now revealed humans.
"Wha- Falsehood?! Treacherous wretch! How dare you bring mortals before Their Majesty! What are you scheming thi-..."
Falsehood let out a long-suffering sigh and broke back down into her mist form, which swept forward like a wave across the congregation. A second later it faded into the air, completely disappearing along with the rest of the congregation and leaving the plateau empty apart from them and one other thing.
On the tiny island in the middle of the pool stood a tall throne of sheer, jagged stone. Growing upon it in a funny shape, almost like a human sitting on the throne, was a tree. Its trunk split into a mass of roots at the bottom which dug deep down into the ground below, and arm-like branches shot off the side to lay upon the armrests, each fixed down to the throne around the wrists by thick stone shackles. All across it shoots and twigs sprouted forth, growing leaves and flowers that dripped with the liquid ephemera that filled the pool below. None of them had ever seen a tree of this species before, and the reason why became clear as they drew closer and noticed the strangest feature of all. Around the upper part of its face the bark peeled away, revealing a patch of flesh behind it in which two living human eyes stared back at them.
They had found the condemned.
Suddenly the ground beneath them began to quake furiously, trying to shake them off their feet. A voice filled the air: as deep as a ravine, as booming as the thunder, and utterly inhuman; like the sound of rocks scraping together formed into words. If a mountain had a voice then this would undoubtedly be what it sounded like, and not a one of them had any doubts as to who it belonged to. But either the voice wasn't speaking common of its tone was too alien to comprehend, for none of them could understand what it was saying. The island the throne stood upon shifted, rising out of the ephemera pool like a leviathan surging up from the depths of the ocean, and revealed it to be not an island at all but the head of something humongous. It climbed higher into the sky as an entire body of stone pulled itself up from out of the mountain's peak: a titanic humanoid form built of rock and surging with glowing green ephemera for blood.
With a roar like a landslide Their Majesty, the spirit Ornthrus, fixed them with a baleful glare and brought fists the size of small houses down upon them in a hammer blow.
