Innerworks

73. An up-climb

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Thomas looks up.

For some reason the cliff seems familiar to him, though he's not sure why.

Anxiety, however, takes several steps back, every instinct in his body is telling him to avoid the cliff, but there is literally no way around it. His Shadows themselves think it's unnerving.

Remy has an odd mix of both of their reactions, something tells him he should know the cliff but his Sand hisses and tells him that something is wrong.

The group, as a whole, is left confused.

"So...", starts Patton, "what do we do now?!"

As if offended by the question itself, the Dream Sand Rises completely from its bag, hissing in upset as it forms a staircase at the base of the mountain.

It pulls Remy onto it and when he's high enough to at least a meter above the others, the bottom stairs move from below the last step to make more steps in front of the first ones.

The Sand hisses.

"Seriously?!" Asks Sleep incredulously.

A stream of Sand separates from the staircase...and nods. The staircase itself begins to lengthen, allowing it to touch the ground now, despite keeping its Master in the air.

Remy sighs.

Then he looks down at the others and juts his thumb out to gesture to the Sand. "It says to step up!"

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"Ugh!", complains Roman, "why can't we have an escalator?!"

Remy, for some reason, takes offense to that. "If you want an escalator, then make a freaking escalator!"

"I can't!", whines the Prince, though it's uncertain if he's genuinely complaining or being dramatic for the sake of it.

Remy however, wants nothing to do with either. "Neither can I! The Sand is basically reusing itself and my energy to keep it going, so unless you can offer something better, we're all gonna have to exercise today."

"Guess it's leg day", mutters Roman.

Remus suddenly blinks in contemplation and then makes a sound of interest before summoning his octopic tentacles. Leg day indeed.

They unfurled from beneath the pack and were eager to curl around it. "Well, glad these work at least", he shakes them, letting them writhe about as he stretches them out. "Good to know that if we fall I'm not gonna be the first to die-"

"You will be if I push you off first", grits out Anxiety. The Emo was very visibly uncomfortable being up at this height. He was leaning the most to the wall of the mountain and using it as a brace to climb up.

"Ha, bet!" Cackles the Duke.

Roman rolls his eyes, "if I could I'd make a catapult and simply shoot us to the top. But I'd see if you'd splat on the cliff face"

"Ohh~ like a bug on a windshield!" Remus shimmies, excitedly, "what if we could make a giant slingshot!..." He pauses, then shrugs, "guess we can't so the Sand stairs will have to work"

"Climbing equipment would have been the most useful-" mutters Logan under his breath.

Still it's Remy who hears him. And the Aspect doesn't hesitate to look back and snap.

"Do you have any experience with mountain climbing? No? I didn't think so! Besides I don't think half of us can actually lift our own bodyweight and we can all admit that this is way faster than actually climbing up."