Tisis

Flight through the mountains (S)

I stumble through the pitch black caves, the torch doing very little to tell me where exactly I am going, while I hear Zero's barking in the distance.

I seriously hope my furry friend knows where he's going, otherwise I'll never find my way back out.

After a few minutes, the ground beneath my feet starts shaking violently and I need to jump forward to avoid getting myself smashed by falling rocks.
As I roll over, the torch in my hand goes out and I mutter, "So much for light..."

More stumbling than walking, I proceed, now only guided by my gut feeling and the echo of Zero's voice.

With every step I take, it feels like it's getting hotter.
Is there another hot cave here? Or...?

The images of my dream come back to life in my mind.
Please let it just be another hot cave and not the entire freaking mountain getting ready to blow...

After stumbling around for what feels like forever, I see a pale blue light straight ahead from me and believe it to be from the moonlight outside, albeit just for a moment, for when I head towards the light, I come to realize my mistake.

Before me, a large chasm extends down, with countless blue lights dotting the walls in every direction.

And that's a good thing too, because otherwise I most certainly wouldn't have found the steep drop straight ahead of me before my feet would have.

A narrow passage leads straight across, much like one of the bridges I've seen the Asmodei stand on while they were supervising us from up high.

However before I can even begin to marvel at how such a thing can exist, the quaking grows more violently and a glint of fiery red mixes with the blue hue from below, which comes with a steep rise in temperature.

I look around and see an exit to the hall on the other side of the bridge, which already shakes dangerously.

No doubt, that thing's not going to hold much longer.
If I really want to go, I need to do it now.

I take a deep breath and cough at the rotten stench stinging in my eyes.

I don't even need to look down to know what's going on below.
Death beckons...and if I linger much longer, he will come get me.

I start running the best I can over the all too fragile bridge over the chasm, as the blue light increasingly gets drowned out by the red light and the heat grows ever more intense.

I feel a little light headed, but I must keep moving.
If I stop now, I'll die!

Just ahead of me, a part of the bridge collapses and falls into the molten death below, but I'm going way too fast to stop, so, even if just by pure instinct, I take the largest leap in my life and just barely manage to grab the ledge on the other side.

I want to pull myself up, however I can't get a hold of anything solid enough to hold my weight and slip closer and closer towards my doom, the fumes from below making beads of sweat appear appear all over my body.

Either that, or it's the feeling of sheer panic.
Could be either, really.

My sight blurs slightly, but I need to hold on.
I need to pull myself up.
After all...I promised...to find her...again.

Just as I slip, I feel a sharp pain in my hand followed by a powerful pull.

I look up and see Zero biting into my hand.
Blood trickles to the ground from the wound, but right now I sure am glad to see that son of a bitch.

I grab his left paw with my right hand and he, as he seems to realize that I can how hold on myself, lets go of my left.

I'm definitely going to feel that one in the morning, but thanks to him, I may yet live to actually see that morning.

Zero steps back, pulling me up with him and the thought at just how strong he really is shoots through my head, but once again, I don't have time to really think about it.

"Sirus go! Death coming!" Zero barks at me.
No shit, Sherlock.

I raise to my feet, nod and together we head back into the darkness of the mountain...only that it isn't dark at all any more.

Lines of red shimmer through the expansive cave system, without a doubt on the verge of breaking through at any given moment.

After seemingly forever, although it couldn't have been more than 5 minutes, I finally feel a waft of fresh cold air in my face and, sure enough, just around the next corner, I see the pale white light of the moon shining on a plateau.

We hurry outside, as a large explosion from behind me rocks the mountain to the verge of collapse.

We are now on the large plateau I had seen while on Zero's back, but that doesn't mean that we are safe.

The mountain behind us has begun to spit fire and ash in every direction, including ours.

We need to get away from here, as far and as fast as we can.

"Zero, we need to fly!" I shout at him, but Zero just looks at me and then replies, "No fly."
"Wait, what?! Look, in case you missed it, the entire mountain is on fire!"

Only now I realize I had grabbed Zero's large head as if they were the shoulders of a man who is talking nonsense.

I quickly let go, even if only to not anger him needlessly and ask, "Okay, I don't get it, but okay...can I...at least ride on your back?"

Another explosion shakes the surrounding, making the both of us jump.
"Know what, screw consent! Run Zero!" I shout, jumping on his back.

Zero accelerates like crazy with pieces of rock and other debris whizzing past us left and right.

I glance back and direct Zero when to evade an incoming piece of junk getting hurled at us.

Honestly, if I didn't know better, I'd say that this stupid thing is aiming at us!

Eventually however we reach the end of the plateau and Zero jumps.
He opens his wings and we glide away from the fiery death.

"Hey, I thought you said you cannot fly."
"Foul wind. No fly. Only glide."
I blink a few times before I finally get what he is trying to tell me.

So that was the reason why he lead me into the mountain...he knew that he cannot fly right now, so he took an escape route where he could at least glide to safety.

That's one heck of a smart critter I'm sitting on, honestly.
Nym is never going to believe this.

I look back at where our home was just about an hour ago and wonder, whether she made it out alright.

I shake my head and mutter, "She's a tough girl, Sirus. That's not going to kill her."

Still, as soon as the mountains have calmed down and the winds have shifted, I need to go find her.

The throbbing in my left hand reminds me of the bite wound and I look at it.
It's just deep enough to puncture the flesh, but did not hurt the bone.

I tousle through Zero's hair with my right hand and say, "Hey, I...I was under a bit of stress just there, so...sorry for yelling at you. And...thank you."

Zero doesn't reply, but merely slowly and gracefully takes us down into the jungle below, landing on a clearing.

He saved me.
He could easily have saved himself, but he decided to save me at the risk of his own demise.
Slowly I'm actually starting to believe that crap about him being some sort of 'spirit animal'.

I look back at the flaming remnants of what was once our home and sigh.
Back to square one, I guess.