21 Mountain 3

I started digging in one direction, my oxygen supply depleting faster than I could move my hands, yet I didn't stop, I couldn't succumb to the fickle whims of the mountain.

'Why did I do this during winter?' I asked myself for the third time on this journey. 

Digging was a slow process, the hardness of the snow coupled with how little I could move my body made the whole ordeal excruciatingly slow.

Finally, as I began choking on the very air I was breathing, my hand reached outwards and felt a cold breeze running over it. I pulled my hand down and dug relentlessly until I could feel the bliss of fresh air enveloping my body, rejuvenating it with new strength.

I slowly brought my whole body out of the snow and laid with my back on the ground.

"Suck it mountain! I fucking live!" I yelled out at nothing in particular. 

I closed my eyes and smiled triumphantly, happy that I'm even alive. After getting lost, meeting a demon, getting lost again and having an avalanche dumped on me, I was lucky to only have a missing arm. Yet I was alive.

I put the event behind me and began walking to my destination once more, walking around the large cliff face.

After a while, hunger started to set in, spending that much energy to dig out of a snowy tomb had left me yearning for my next meal. I looked in my sack to find no trace of anything edible, only used chopsticks and boxes.

'Shit' I mentally groaned as I stared in the face of yet another challenge.

*

For the next few days, I was forced to conserve energy in my body. That meant I had to stop running to my destination and I couldn't use total concentration either. This, of course, made my journey even longer and more arduous. 

I thought about hunting, but because I had absolutely no idea how to skin, gut and cook animals, hunting would've only provided me with a nice collection of animal corpses and raw meat. 

Regardless, even if I did know how to do all those things, the fact that it was winter meant that most animals would be in hibernation, leaving me with only small critters and bugs. And at this altitude where the air was thin, I doubt I would have even found those.

The lack of nutrients coupled with the lack of rest made me not only groggy, but it worsened my condition. My already pale skin was getting paler and perspiration always found itself a place on my face. 

'Infection?' I looked at my severed arm, fearful to even open the bandages to check. But I did anyway, seeing a sort of greenish blackness enveloping the part where my arm was cut off. I noticed it hadn't spread to any other part of my body so I had to act quickly.

I took out a piece of cloth I found in the village and fashioned it into a ball which I bit down on. I unsheath my sword and brought the blade just above my elbow.

My hand trembled, my breathing was heavy and my teeth bit down on the rag with enough force to rip through it. But if there was one thing I had confidence in, it was my sword.

I took the blade and held it above my head, then I swung down and cut off the infected part along with my elbow clean off. I used what little alcohol I could find in the village to pour it on my wound in hopes of killing the bacteria. The pain was horrible, but bearable.

I then soaked a part of a bandage in alcohol and wrapped it around my hand, followed by another few bandages until the stump was completely covered

That wasn't even the worst part. The mental and physical isolation was excruciating. I hadn't seen anyone in weeks at that point. Back in my old world I could go a whole month without face to face communication yet that was offset by the knowledge that I could always see people if I wanted. Here, the isolation was mandatory rather than voluntary.

By the end of the first month, winter set in full swing. I couldn't even sleep outside without the risk of losing my limbs to frostbite, leaving me to seek shelter beneath rocks, in caves and in large patches of trees, though as the altitude got higher, less and less vegetation started appearing. 

I was seriously beginning to wonder if people in this era just referred to a whole mountain range as just a mountain. There was no reason as to why I was walking for so long without finding any path to a village.

Two months passed and I was pretty much a walking corpse. I had barely gotten by with smoking any unfortunate squirrels and praying that I avoided biting into their organs. Though this only left me with around one questionable meal a day.

The fatigue was getting worse. Unless I slept in a cave or somewhere with sufficient enough protection from the elements I couldn't even close my eyes, because I knew the moment I did, it was possible I would never open them again.

At some point, maybe a few months into the journey, the God forsaken mountains decided to play their cruel game with my life in its balance. 

A heavy, thick blanket of gray clouds covered the sky, from which spawned a blizzard the likes of which I had only ever heard tales of. Capable of indiscriminately killing whatever stands in its way, either through its debilitating winds or simply through the aftereffects of the bone piercing cold it carried in tow.

The blizzard swept over me mere instants after I first saw it, its wind's threatening to pick me off the ground and fly me away. The snow being propulsed by these winds cut into my face as though thousands of steel cold needles were piercing my skin.

The cold was… unbearable, I couldn't even take more than a few steps before I had to kneel down on the snow and hunch over, covering my face with my hand like an ostrich burying its head in the sand.

My consciousness was thrust in a deadly tug of war between me and the mountain, the latter of which wanted to rip it away from me and leave me for dead. 

The wind that blew past me carried voices, some familiar, others not. All of them saying the same thing.

"Stop struggling, give in and be saved."  They said. "Be saved."

"Shut the fuck up." I said, my intention was to yell, yet my mouth was so dry that yelling was impossible.

"Don't you see? Can't you feel it? Why struggle?" A voice said. "Come, join us. Be free from torment." 

"Join us." All the voices said in unison.

I grit my teeth, I clenched my fist anything to stay awake. Pure will kept me going, though this will was generated more by my desire to defy the mountain's wishes and less out of a desire to survive.

"What do you want? What did I do that was so wrong?" I yelled this time, it felt as though my throat was getting ripped apart.

The voices remained quiet as though contemplating their answer.

"You ask for your sins? You?" The voices asked. "A mere guest of this world dares to ask for clarity? Where does your arrogance stem from?" 

"What?" I questioned the chorus. They looked down on me as though I was the centerpiece of a play, and they, the playwrights.

"Your enigmatic existence perplexes us greatly, yet, you are a being of no importance to us. Thus, we urge you, give up now and stop trotting on what is sacred." The voices commanded.

This time, I remained quiet while contemplating v my own answer.

"Go to hell." I said, my mind fuzzy and on the brink of collapse, unable to formulate anything more or even attempt to comprehend the meaning behind the voices' words.

I had no idea how much time passed, my time perception was completely disabled in that comatose-like state, yet the voices never spoke again.

I woke up with my face in the snow, it was nighttime. The storm had passed and I had lived through yet another trial.