Frigid winds howl in shuffling, rhythmic waves. It’s trying to sweep us off this mountain like specs of dust.
I love the cold. How it nibbles at my skin, trying to attack my warmth from underneath my furred cloak, always keeping me in motion. Complacency is antithetical to my existence. Always stay in motion.
Seriously, it’s quite bewildering how the Landeskog faction managed to scale this, especially within the first few days.
Obviously, it smells like foul play to me. The classic aristocratic, pathetic kind of cheating—probably from the King himself, on the distant Oak of Augustus, staring over the islandwith a martini in one hand and a courtesan’s tit in the other.
The golden child doesn’t have to frollick with the lower nobility on the ground in poor circumstances; no, he gets to live it up in a castle. Fuck you.
Or maybe Alexander lives up to his reputation after all. Food for thought. But I prefer to think of him as lesser—self-fulfilling prophecy and all; if I believe he is a cheating good-for-nothing, then he is. It isn’t merely a naive thought, but more of a calculated mental advantage. Probably.
I cry about this because it took our initial scouting party a week to get within a mile of the castle—they didn’t dare to get too close to that damn impenetrable fortress.
It’s been two months
What kind of bullshit test takes this long? Let alone a 24/7 broadcast. Are people not bored? They really are milking the people’s desperation for upper-class insight.
As of now, 30 teams remain, down from the initial 333. But that doesn’t account for the new team system; there’s probably still 300 aspirants left, if I had to guess; our forces number around the 50 mark for comparison.
There’s been nothing to do but whittle down that total team counter. So we do. ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by novel fire.net
And we do it by tackling the toughest one—especially while we have the resources to do so.
There are about twenty-five of us scaling the mountain. Me, Leara, Valeria, Cossa, Evan, Nelly, just to name a few of relative importance. Oh, Nicklas is here too, I guess.
We split our forces in half to travel up this bullshit mountain in a somewhat light state—also, if things go south, our survivors won’t fall all the way down to square one and can return to camp.
We’d taken over a better camp spot to the North of the old village. A small team of ten holding it wasn’t much of a match for our full might. It’s a small, run-down castle with some good flat land and visibility—a good amount of resources as well.
The runts we left behind, like Samuel of Malenstyn, should have no issue holding it down in our absence. Even that lardass can operate a simple gate—specifically, keeping it closed, which shouldn’t be too difficult.
It’s day two of climbing. The air is light, and the wind is rough, despite the brunt of it being taken up by the tight and rocky mountainside that we follow on a pre-carved pathway.
I lead the group, with Valeria just behind me. Not that I want to, just that I’m the most well-rested because of Efficient Engine. My preference for the cold helps.
It’s uneventful. I’m not sure if any Corrupted even live on this gargantuan icy dong of stone sticking out of the middle of the island. They certainly haven’t attacked us or the scouting party yet.
My only worry lies in the Landeskogs being smart enough to patrol this path since it’s the easiest way up. Albeit, I doubt any of those bastards are particularly interested in sitting out in the cold to look for the possibility of someone trying to climb. They can just sit still in their castle and defend it with ease, should any attackers come. Complacency, to say the least.
Eventually, after a full second day of slow, steady climbing, I call it a day and happen upon an incredibly convenient place to bunker down: a medium-sized cave inlet in the mountainside.
***
It’s cold and dark. But the crackling fire is hot and smoky. I stand away from it, closer to the cave mouth, away from the rest who chatter under hushed breath or sleep in makeshift sleeping bags.
Leara sits by the fire, managing to sit regally high despite being on hard stone. A true aristocrat, through in through. Orange flame bouncing off her in enchanting ways. Some people aesthetically thrive under natural spotlights.
Things have been... uneventful between us, to say the least, since that night in the chapel.
One would think that it would be quite difficult to continue on business as usual after that.
But the people who think that are probably normal. Among Favored, normal means mediocre failures—all Favored are strange in their own ways. They just don’t know the abnormal outliers, like Leara and I, all that well. This is our normal.
It’s closer to what I initially expected. Leara isn’t a romantic, and I suspect she drank far more that night. She didn’t necessarily deny anything, nor did she address it. I think that more so demonstrates her contentment with our current, normal affairs, rather than a desire to sweep them under the rug and pretend that it never happened.
She’s always a hard read. It’s part of the charm; being the person I feel I understand the most, while also being so unpredictable. Paradoxes and contradictions have a pull on my psyche.
Don’t take that to be romantic. I feel it more in an endearing, pet-like way. Albeit that’s the aristocratic, high-horse way of thinking about it, which I, of course, loathe with all my heart. So just scratch the thought out altogether. I shouldn’t have to explain such a tangential and unimportant comment.
Valeria has mosied her way close but opposite to me. Like a heeling dog with attitude. I don’t get why she’s been so close to my side—I’m guessing it boils down coincidence with my aversion to fire and her Antisocial trait. Maybe I’m just an antisocial, retarded freak, too. A sickeningly untrue thought to entertain.
Cossa has been quite the stubborn donkey. He’s practically taken a vow of silence since being captured. But he’ll have to fight. We’ll make him. That’s all we need.
There’s a certain gloom hanging over our group. A tension. I feel it well too.
We fight an uphill battle in every conceivable way.