The Niobe Compendium: Isolation

Isolation

Desmond Innsman woke up dead.

Well, not actually dead, but close enough that there wasn't much of a difference. The sun was just starting to peak over the mountain's misty head, casting monstrous shadows behind the bizarre twisted rock formations that littered the incline ahead. Bile rose in the back of his throat as he floated into wakefulness. Partly because of his empty stomach, mostly from the smell of his infected gut wound. He gagged, then took a few deep breaths, denying the vomit passage out.

Desmond sat up slowly, grunting as bolts of pain ricocheted around in his mid-section, and put his back against a rock. The water in the canteen swished with a pitifully hollow sound when he picked it up. All the assholes that say they always view life in a 'glass half full kind of way' had obviously never dragged themselves up a moisture-less mountain with a half empty canteen.

Twisting off the lid with a shaking hand, Desmond took the most meager of sips, as if the chemical flavored water was the very essence of life; which in this case, it practically was. Capping the bottle with no little difficulty, the dead man looked up towards his destination. Jagged, many limbed protrusions of rock jutted out of the mountain side, like sentinels guarding some long forgotten treasure that roosted on the mountain's head. The rock formations seemed to defy all laws of physics, they seemed to have grown out of the ground as if the rock was trying it's hand at trees. Perhaps they had been trees, and had been petrified somehow. Desmond doubted that hypothesis, on the basis that they would've been some fucking weird looking trees.

He wasn't sure this entire mountain was a natural formation.

Desmond sighed. It didn't matter. The way his wound smelled, he wouldn't have enough time to crack the case of the biological trees deformed step-cousins, or anything else for that matter. He pulled his knees up to his chest, getting his feet under him.

Pain.

He reached back with both hands, and planted his palms flat against the rock behind him.

More pain.

Desmond pushed himself up to his feet.

'PAIN! PAIN! PAIN!' All the synapses in his brain screamed at him in solidarity.

He took one step, then two, one foot after another up the incline. Leaning heavily on the walking stick he'd cut at the base of the mountain, Desmond dared to look up again. It was a mistake. The thought of all the steps it would take to make it to the top, and consequentially- every jolt of pain- made him dizzy. The sun chose that moment to break through the mist and blind him.

"Damnit," he said to himself. "Okay, so we don't look up."

Desmond kept stepping. Each lurch forward caused the now-heavy make-shift pack to bounce against his back. The impacts sent spikes through his back into his wound. Dead Desmond wasn't sure how that worked, but he was sure it wasn't fair. He planted the walking stick on a solid looking rock protruding slightly from the soil. Leaning all of his weight on it, he resentfully prepared to take his next grueling step.

The rock tumbled free.

"Fuck!" he cursed as he smacked the earth fully on with his face.

An enraged scream of pain and frustration escaped him without his consent. Tears blurred his vision, dropping out to pause for just a moment in the dust, before vanishing forever.

"Fucking Kayce," he rasped in a small voice full of hate.

***