Mountain [18+] ✔️ Complete

Thirteen • Maw

A low rumbling shook the ground, and I felt it deep in my guts.

"We need to go," Marius said, and leapt to his feet. We dressed hastily and haphazardly, he just in pants and me in his shirt, while running back to the group.

If shit was going down, being separated was not an option.

"Saph!" Damien bellowed through the trees, and we burst back into the clearing as the rumbling grew in intensity.

Lyla threw a pair of shorts at me as she addressed Marius. "What do we do now?"

"We're not ready," Archer worried, and took my hand tightly in his, looking to our guide.

He swallowed hard, his eyes large and sad. "You need to-"

An intense gust of wind cut him off, and he flew back off of his feet as if sucked right off of the ground.

Lyla was closest and made a mad dive for him, but she hit the dirt as he slipped out of the way. I screamed for him, terror pulsing behind my eyeballs, as he disappeared into a dark purple cloud.

The rumbling immediately stopped, the sky clearing as if nothing had happened.

"What the fuck?!" Damien blurted as Lyla got to her feet.

"It knows..." I moaned, putting a hand to my forehead.

Archer's brow furrowed. "Knows what?"

"It's a balance," I said, and pulled my hand from his to cross my arms over my pounding heart. "His existence caused the demon, so..." My breath caught in my throat, and I couldn't finish.

"So his death would cause its death," Lyla finished and clenched her jaw. "Fuck."

"Wait, when did you figure that out?" Damien asked. "Was he about to tell us to kill him? Was that what we were going to do all along?"

"I don't know if it needed to be a ritual or some kind..." I shivered. "But since we can't do the binding spell... yeah. I figured it out just recently, and he confirmed it."

Archer sighed. "So the demon is protecting him to protect itself."

"What do we do now?" Damien threw his hands up. "Marius was supposed to show us how to fight that thing and now it has him?"

I fought the urge to curl into myself. We needed to act. "I guess we go find him."

"And what do we do when we get there?" Damien shot back.

I shrugged. "We'll figure that out when we get there."

"That's a shit plan," Archer piped up, but I knew from his tone that he agreed with my assessment.

"At least we know where it is," Damien pointed out. "I can't not feel it, you know?"

I did know. It was like a pulsing pit of darkness on the horizon. I wasn't sure if it knew that we could feel it, or if it was somehow doing it on purpose, or what. But I knew exactly where it was, and by proxy, exactly where Marius was. We had to get to him.

I reached down and rolled up one of the sleeping bags on the ground. "Alright, let's pack our shit."

***

Lyla was able to drum us up a rabbit, and we stopped for lunch to eat. I knew we needed the nourishment from walking all morning, but we all just kind of picked at the food.

I didn't know what to say to them. This predicament was very much my fault. We'd been over it, and I knew they didn't blame me, but it was me that had got us into this. And now it was my attachment that was hindering getting us out of it. I didn't know if, when the time came, I'd be able to pull the metaphorical trigger. I knew that they could do it, at least Lyla or Damien for sure, maybe not Archer. He was more of an empath even than my emotional ass.

I could see that they felt the connection too, regardless of the fact that they hadn't been intimate with him. In a way, they had been, given our connection to each other. They could feel the bond between the five of us, to be sure. But there was a protectiveness I felt over Marius that I didn't feel they had.

We cleaned up and continued on. Damien had taken to flicking his lighter and bursting little fireballs as we walked, and I watched him with interest. I felt as though he had the most useful power, especially survival wise. Fire was important.

"You think this'll still work, when we get home?" he asked. "Or is it just because we're here?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I've been wondering that too. If it's just the mountain, or Marius tying us together, or whatever."

"I mean..." he paused, pursing his lips, and then pocketed his lighter. "I can't say I've ever had fire powers before, but I have felt magic with you all. I always thought it was just the drugs we were doing... but the intensity we've been feeling here, especially joining hands back there... it gives me wicked deja-vu, you know?"

"Yeah," Archer said over his shoulder. "I thought so, too. It made me wonder if we've been bound by magic this whole time and didn't know it."

"I don't want to look at it that way," Lyla declared. "I like to think that we came together of our own volition, not from some magical fate."

But it was magical fate, if Marius was telling the whole truth. "I don't think it cheapens what we have if it is, though," I piped up. "If anything, it makes it even stronger. That we're so close, even in our past lives we were together."

"Do you think it's just the one?" Archer mused. "Life, I mean. I didn't get a chance to talk to Marius about how long he's been here. We could have lived multiple lives before these ones."

The thought was both interesting and like a cozy blanket to my fears. How many lives had we lived, and no matter what, we always found each other? Or maybe we hadn't been able to, and just kept getting reborn again and again until we did, so that we could come here to find Marius?

Find him and then kill him... the thought flashed through my mind like a knife through butter and I stifled a whimper.

Damien grabbed my hand. "Hey there, kitten," he drawled. "We got this, okay? If there's one comforting thing about having our lives dictated by some magic fate, it's that it's gonna happen no matter what we do. Predestiny and all that. Which means we don't have to worry about it. It's gonna happen however it's gonna happen."

Was that comforting? Maybe.

"Fuck," Lyla snapped, stopping short at the top of a hill. We almost barrelled into the back of her, and then stood there, gaping like idiots. Below us was what looked like the maw of the mountain.

Complete with teeth.