The Ascension

What lies within

It was quiet. The stars were bright, clear, and-

A dark shape rose out of the mountain, but rose is not quite the term for it. It emerged. It was.

The shape suggested a canine of some kind, with its long fangs and sharp teeth, but the shape seemed to be shifting and changing. It was fluid, not set to be any one creature but rather exploring a plethora of shapes. Even when it began to settle, something suggested motion in the shape that must have been its head.

It was hard to tell if it was its heat, though, seeing as it was obviously just one part of the beast. And soon, into the night air came the greatest sounds Senya had ever heard, and soon their crashes made them the last sounds he ever heard- Permanent or not, he seemed to have gone deaf.

The mountain was ripping itself apart as the creature climbed out of its bed, but even to compare the mountain to a nest would be incorrect. The mountain was the creature. The trees dotted its backside, still rooted into the earth, and the lava that had nurtured its dormant state had found a new home in the translucent underbelly of the creature, forming organs of ember held by a ribcage of obsidian.

This beast was nameless, but if she had ever needed one, it might have been Aera. For obvious reasons, hopefully, she was often confused for Laila- but this did not matter to her. 'Her' did not matter. For once, even the term 'they' would not matter. Aera was an it: A creature, a monster, and a true neuter noun.

Aera moved, and its movement wreaked the earth below it, but luckily its body was an ark of preservation. It did not have a destination in mind, as it did not have a mind. It was moving. That was all to be said.

As the monster unfurled, hot air and dust pelted Senya's face and buried into his eyes. He curled into a ball and covered his face with his hands to try and keep protected, but nothing seemed to work. Even just laying there, feebly, his exposed head was assaulted with rocks that cut open his skin.

He was not crying, but his eyes were trying to summon what little moisture he had left in his body to flush out his eyes. His hearing was slowly coming back, and all it offered was the terrible sounds of shaking, jarring movements felt and heard.

Even as Aera left, extending and shifting more than walking, Senya was left very still on the ground. Shaking no longer guided by tremors. He reached for the water bottle and tried to forced himself to drink from it, but his hand was shaking with such erratic behavior that he spilled it on the ground.

Not far from him, closer than realized, Wren and Aster had crawled out of their seemingly doomed shelter and caught only a dark glimpse of the monster set free from the mountain- the mountain that, truth be told, seemed to finally be bearing the weight of its empty core. Without Aera, it was a husk unable to support itself. Trees with miles of roots were lifted cleanly out of the earth, and rocks older than civilizations had emerged to face the sky after years in the dark.

Ae-en would soon, it seemed, be a valley. Splinters creeped down the walking path, threatening a death to an unknown cause. Would it be the fall, or the the landslide, that eventually would do them in?

There was absolutely no hope of running down the mountain and praying for the best. They stood outside, dully, for a few moments.

"There's... Hm." Was all Wren had to offer.

"There's a light coming from above. If we speak to Ikina directly, they might..." Aster didn't know how to finish her thought. What exactly was Ikina planning to do with her and Wren? Clearly, they wanted her to meet with some odd friend of theirs. Alright. She had to be alive for that.

But they had chosen Wren for some reason. Specifically, him, to complete the quest of exaltation- but this had never been in the plan. Whatever creature was now free from Ae-en, it was unknown to legend. Wren was supposed to have met Ikina here, and they would have pointed him to some sea cave to restore glory to the ocean.

Not hatch an infernal monster from the depths of the Earth. Something had gone wrong, and Wren couldn't be blamed. Ikina, maybe, could have been. But they were also the last chance at a savior.

"We'll likely die, somehow, if we don't try something." Wren said factually, and Aster nodded. They walked carefully up towards the peak of the mountain, soon finding themselves confronting harsh and hazard filled winds that forced their eyes shut.

If their eyes had been open- like if, say, they had for some reason packed goggles- a number of things would have gone differently.

They approached they took to be Ikina. The air was as silent as a collapsing mountain can be.

"Ikina!" Aster shouted, voice dry from dehydration and soft from not risking opening her mouth too much. "Without your assistance, we'll die out here."

There was nothing. Then, a soft sort of whimper that definitely did not befit a god. The whimper grew into a struggle of a voice.

"Aster...? Wren?" It begged, and the two Renen kids spun their heads so fast they almost fell over. They allowed their eyes to open, just to confirm Senya's existence.

"Why are you here?" Aster asked, quick to throw on a sharp voice before Wren let any insecurity show.

"I freed Lailana. Finished my immolation." He coughed, and then quite unexpectedly threw up a little watery mucus. Wren stepped over to him slowly, grabbed his water bottle with its nearly diminished contents, and helped pour some water in his mouth.

The fact Senya was crying had its effects on both Aster and Wren, but quite luckily no one in the group could really look at each other beyond a squint.

"Why was Lailana in mount Ae-en?" Aster asked.

"Now's not the time to be gathering facts." Wren reminded, nervously watching the crumbling ground around them.

Senya seemingly ignored him. "In the chains of Iixo, there was another mountain like this, rising out of the sea like a bubble. And we called it Mount Ae-ah, believing it was the beacon that would lead us to awakening Lailana again. I set out for it as part of immolation. But when I came there, I realized we had the name wrong. There, in the sea he created, rested Silanah."

"Was immolation common in Iixo? You'd suppose someone would have succeeded by now in accidental reviving Silanah then, if the mountain is so close by."

Senya shook his head. "It's very sacred. Only the children of the royal line, the spares siblings, attempt it."

Though still afraid of the others' determination to talk in a crises, Wren burst out quite alarmed, "So you're a prince?"

"No." Senya licked his lips once before continuing. "I didn't know there was another mountain until a good year into my travels. And... I figured with you two on your way over, I might as well end this journey."

"Or... you could have not done that. Did you even see the hellbeast you awoke?" Wren said. "You escaped the duties of your culture's sacrifice easily. Why bother fulfilling them at all?"

"I wanted to. It's... my duty to." Senya shook his head, wringing his gloved hands together nervously. "I'm not happy about this either, particularly, but at least it's done. Lailana will bring new earth, and unite the islands together into one. It's far better than if you have succeeded in finding Silanah, and flooded them off the map."

A sudden, jarring snap of stone brought Aster and Senya back to the reality Wren was more attuned to: the mountain was ready to cave in.

Aster turned again towards the light in the sky. "Ikina! If you actually want me to do... whatever it is you seem so keen on, you're going to need to save me from death. And my friends, too!" Senya was not currently her friend- their conversation hadn't even touched on his abandonment of them- but she did not have time to articulate 'friend and this other guy'.

The light hovered. The wind began to get cold again. The floor started to give in, all at once losing weight- and now, it seems, might be a good time to note the light in the sky was not Ikina.

The floor gave in, and almost comically the three seemed to be floating- but then, uncomically, they were falling. Screaming. And then, hitting rocks on their fall down before finally settling in a thicket of lava.

Unconscious, luckily, though perhaps that distinction did not matter at this point.