Fears 3 - Journeys

Chapter 30 - Lightning

WARNING: BLOOD 

Although the map had pointed to some mountains, I had never anticipated that the mountains in question would be this tall. For starters, I didn't even know that mountains this tall existed in a region so close to the desert. Anything can happen when you're on a journey like this.

Pulling out my map, I found that there was a route we had to travel to go up the mountains.

"How the hell are we supposed to get up?" Pen scratched his head.

"Ask Lightning. He probably knows," Tree pointed.

I told Pen the route we had to take to scale the mountains. The climb wasn't going to be easy, since the route up was rather steep and we had no climbing equipment or experience.

"This is gonna suck..." Tree rolled his eyes.

"Could you not complain for one second?" I sighed.

"It's hard not to complain if we're going to walk up the entirety of one of the tallest mountains we've seen to date."

"That's a fair point..." I rethought my previous statement.

We started climbing the mountain. Luckily, there was a small ledge that we could cling to as we climbed. The ledge was about 10 feet wide and wasn't too steep. However, as we climbed and got higher in altitude, the danger increased due to the lack of any protective railing or safety on the ledge.

To make matters worse, the rock that built up the mountain was rather slippery and wet. The bluish-gray rock reflected the light and without the help of some additional rocks on the mountain, we were bound to slip right back down.

"We shouldn't have had that race if we knew that we would be climbing something like this.," Liy looked at Bottle.

"Agreed."

After a bit of climbing, we decided to take a little break in a small indentation of the mountain. The thing was like a makeshift cave. There were small puddles in this cave and the cave provided ample amounts of shade for us, allowing for us to cool down for a bit before continuing.

"Remote, I wouldn't drink that water if I were you," Liy pointed.

"What's the biggie? I've seen people drink cave water in the movies!" Remote complained.

"That's why it's a movie," Bottle chuckled.

"Whatever. Just a sip won't hurt!"

I was listening to their conversation when I felt something move in my back pocket. The map shot itself out of my back pocket and folded itself into the shape of a cone.

"What's the map doing?" I got everyone's attention.

"Don't ask us. You're the magic man who started the journey," Tree adjusted his glasses.

"That's irrelevant to what's happening!"

The map started to float through the air and drifted out of the cave like it was trying to show us something or somewhere we needed to go.

"I think the map's pointing to something, or it's giving us an indicator where to go..." Bottle observed.

"I think you're right. Let's follow it. This has to mean something," I replied.

We followed the map outside. The map started to go back the way we came down the mountain.

"Did we really do all this climbing for nothing?" Liy asked.

"Sadly, probably," Tree mumbled.

We walked down the mountain, following the map. The map reached the bottom of the mountain and so did we. It turned out, I had read the map wrong like a complete fucking idiot. We were supposed to cross the mountains, not scale them.