Mount Everfall Death's Counterfeit

Massaraq had felled the elk, an old and ailing creature who had almost fallen to the seasons before falling to Massaraq's teeth. A red wound across his flank, soreness in his muscles, a bruise already on his shoulder, and a ringing in his ears were his trophies from the hunt. He dragged what he could of the carcass up the mountain, his injuries screaming at him, his head pounding, but he bore it all a twisted bitter hope in his heart pushing him past - easier to bear than the aching in his chest that had nothing to do with the hunt. Ajei's feather fluttered in the wind and he could not see the stars, head bent.

Blood trailed after him, sluggish and stained into the ground. His own, the elk's, he did not know, the scent of it all mingled together with his own footprints. When he reached the top he was exhausted, scored a new line in the already dead leftovers of the corpse so that its blood pooled out sluggish and cold onto the stone. The wind snarled and snapped around him, tearing at his fur and he dropped his load crying out when it tore his feather, firmly placed behind his ear onto the wind. He started after it reaching the edge and snarling at himself, tearing open his wounds again in his frustration and rush, watched it fly out over the wind, as it stole the token from him. A moment, maybe two, a third, and he forced himself to move on. And he barely looked at the horizon, sheer cold beauty, terrifying heights, water running down down down and an edge that felt like the end of the world. He thought he could see moonspear from where he was, the western mountain range. It was night.

He stared at the ground, breathing ragged and harsh, each inhalation and exhale rattling his bones and bruises. He wanted to close his eyes, he wanted to rest, he wanted to go home. And yet he could not, not yet. But he would not wait any longer and though even standing at the top of the world he felt as if the ground were empty beneath him and he was falling with no sign to point his way nor roots to latch onto he did not wish to journey any more. Did not know if he would ever feel that call. So he let his heart fill with the fading rays of hope instead a burgeoning dream, let that hurt linger there, unable to push it from his head any longer and he looked to the package that he had carried so far and for what felt like forever and took it carefully between his lips.

It tasted acrid and sour and wrong despite the sweet scent of decay and the surprising smoothness to it, but he forced himself to chew and then swallow. And then he slept, head hazy and his limbs heavy. Pain did not wake him and he felt his consciousness fading even as his awareness remained.

Darkness, he could not see it, only feel it. A yawning gaping void, looming over him, no end, no beginning. His heart pounded dangerously and he felt himself struggle but his limbs did not listen to him and he could not move no matter how much he struggled, could not see his own paws and could not feel his own fur. He might have screamed a howling sound lost on the wind and mist of the mountains, mouth stretched wide. Pain came, but he did not know where from because he could not see his body, feel himself in it and there was no earth no wind nothing. Outside his mind his body thrashed bringing him closer to the ledge, covered in blood, his own and the elk's, and he did, not fall, but inside his mind he was falling, but not because there was no up or down or sideways to fall no him to fall.

He tried to scream but there was only silence and he had never known eternity to feel so short, it might have been an hour or a day, but when he woke it was dark still and he thrashed awake, scrabbling at the edge hitting his head in his hurry to rush away from it, claws digging into the stone with a panic at how close he had come heart still flying over the precipice as he woke himself with a scream. What did it mean? He stared, there was a world again and he should have felt glad, but he began to feel, perhaps for the first time, a deep and dark fear. The fear of one who had never expected to wake. What did he do?

But exhaustion did not let him linger long on the overwrought tremors and shakes of his limbs and the tired pangs in his heart nor the worried trails in his head and he stumbled away from the ledge, away from the blood and the elk head and the zenith of the mountaintop and collapsed further down the path away from the edge into a long and dreamless sleep.