Michael

"Uhh," I grunt again as I push myself onto the next handhold. My right foot scrambling on the almost flat vertical side of the mountain to stabilize me.

A hand from Estergon below me eventually pushing my foot up onto another foothold, I sigh audibly as I pause to check how dry my pants are.Shit, I almost died there! I look over my shoulder and quickly look back forward. I lean into the mountain face as closely as is physically possible as I try to follow the path Mirabilis has marked with my eyes.

I think she may be intentionally trying to kill me but there really is no going back at this point in the climb. The fall is so far down that I would have no hope of surviving even before I hit the ground. Unless heart attacks aren't a thing on Gaia, I should look into-

"You rested long enough or what?" Estergon says from below me in apparent frustration interrupting my thought.

"Christ, calm the fuck down!" Christ, these guys will be the death of me.

The mountain, Mount Sinai is practically shaped like a giant isle. Some places almost flat, some steep rock faces that lead to a long plummeting death. And this section we are currently climbing is the second part, and we've been climbing it a while.

I set up for the next step and take it. Moving slowly upwards and to the left towards the visible ledge. The route directly above too steep even curving outwards to face the ground almost parallel in places, no thanks.

We're taking the longer but humanly possible route that takes us almost a km off course. We've been climbing for almost an hour in this way and I know they are only taking this long because I am dragging them down but fuck them, there is no way I'm rushing an over 9 kilometre climb over thousands of feet off the ground.

I take another step and climb my hand into the next hold then pulling myself up with a slight push from my feet, the manoeuvre leaves my forearm burning from the strain. I take a moment to get comfortable before moving on, taking my time and making sure again all the holds are stable, I really can't believe I'm doing this.

The climb goes on like that for twenty more minutes, with the occasion bantering between Estergon and me. At least I'm sure it's bantering to him but I'm about ready to shit my pants in fear and his stupid jokes are driving me crazy. But we all eventually get to the semi-solid ground on the side of the mountain with me grateful and panting.

"Let's not do that again yeah?" I say to Mirabilis as she pulls me back to my feet.

"Oh come now, you can't say you didn't enjoy that even a little." She says with a smile and a spank to my ass.

I shake my head at her behaviour and move a little for some relieving myself. "I need to pee."

We've been moving up the mountain for hours now, having taken the longer route to 'stretch our legs.' Mira had said to me before I joined them in this stupid expedition. Not that I could have been able to resist the temptation to explore the rest of the mountain, especially the higher grounds.

"You sure you wanna drink from that water? I remember some pretty strange experiences when I went through that thing if its the same stuff I came here through anyways." I say to Mirabilis as I join Estergon and her on the steep hike up this section of the mountain.

I wonder why tall mountains are even walkable on in this way. A mountain should be a tall imposing thing almost impossible to climb all the way up, shouldn't it?

"I think I have to. I'm 60 years old and the only one in the entire Conclave at my age that hasn't Awakened. Mother is polite about it but I know she thinks I'm strange. The peers I grew up with are mostly no longer my peers as they Awaken and face new challenges.

"I'm so good at taijutsu releases because I have nothing else but chakra to defend myself against the mean girls I grew up with." She says strongly, stubbornly facing forward.

"I thought that mean girl shit stopped after adolescents." Is all I manage to say in response to that, I've never heard her speak of her family before. This Awakening thing must be important to her or a point of constraining with her family.

"I'm not sure why Estergon wants to drink from that water though, he's only 35 years old and already at the cusp of Awakening." She says with a humph, slightly increasing the pace. I breathe as I try to keep up, taking this as both an adventure and part of training.

*

We've been up on this mountain a month now. After Rumeria returned with the local gossip and news from this Compound they keep referring to with a thumbs up our training seemed to pick up a notch instead of slow down.

I started doing combination moves with an actual spear learning the basic blocks, parries and deflects. Everything there is to know about using a spear defensively along with my six thousand thrusts a day. Mirabilis seemed to slow down our yoga jutsu sessions by only making us do ten combinations repeatedly instead of the previous 20, but I still somehow managed to feel mentally drained after each session.

I even started needing fewer toilet breaks than usual, a good sign for my future developmental pace apparently. We discussed what has been happening with the other people ascended from Earth closely enough to be from my generation. There are three others from America, an Abdul which I assume is Indian by the name, Rumeria has a hard time telling race apparently.

Then there is a Max who is apparently from America, born in the year 2000. That was a scary moment of realization for me when Rumeria returned with the information I asked him to gather from the other new arrivals and the confirmation that time is moving faster over there. That a person that was born in 2000 is already a grown ass man that managed to live such a complete life that he managed to ascend, shit. Could my kids be dead right now, could they have their own kids?

But training and meditation kept me from obsessing over that for too long. Eating mostly berries, herbs, stonebuds and other shrubs that grow at these altitudes since no one has time to hunt anymore.

I asked Rumeria how often new ascended arrive and how they knew in advance. He didn't answer the question to my satisfaction but there has been a total of nearly 2 million earthly ascendants since the forming of the Earth from a part of Gaia that is now the deepest known part of the oceans some 20 years ago. When they speak of the time dilation and how the Earth is on a completely different time stream moving faster from their point of view here but relatively slowly from the Earth's perspective and all the other theory that I don't understand its really scary.

And the fact that the thousands of years of recorded history on Earth are actually only about 20 years from the perspective of the people of Gaia, that's profound. The carbon dating that tells is the Earth is millions of years old is actually us recording the age of the remnants of the creatures that were on the parts of Gaia that became our home, Earth. Gaia and how we got on Earth is a part of our history so thoroughly lost that we think we are indigenous to the planet. We breathe in the inefficient mixture of air, we endure the blinding glare of the sun, we displace creatures that are in balance with the biosphere of the planet and yet we call it our home.

We have every characteristic of an invasive species yet we fail to realise that we aren't native to the planet. The microorganisms have tried to get rid of us for thousands of years, evolving like the immune system of the planet trying to fight off an infection.

From polio to bird flu, to smallpox, Ebola, aids and the rest. The planet trying to curb our prolific and destructive ways. We have no natural predictors that prey on us, we practically have no competition to keep us in check at all. All the creatures that fed on humans either left Earth a long time ago when they ascended back to Gaia or took the route of the few fae that found themselves on Earth and just made their own planet only tenuously connected to the Earth.

Vampires, ghouls, reapers, zombies, mets-haldijas, beastmen, mermen, aswans, windigos, harpies and other creatures that feed primarily on humans being mostly gone or conveniently left behind on Gaia. A few made it to Earth of course since we have myths of some of those creatures still, but primarily humans on earth haven't had any competition in many centuries. Even sea monsters no longer show themselves from the deep depths, if they still exist at all.

When I spoke to Rumeria about this I wondered how we couldn't have known that we didn't belong there, how an entire species could just forget something like that. He only snorted at my disbelief and I still remember vividly what he said to that.

"Your people are short-lived and have a penchant for burning books every few centuries, that's not even taking into account all the natural disasters and near-complete global extinctions."

When looking into human history as I know it I can see how he may speak the way he does. The vast histories that are buried in the Sahara desert, the untranslated texts from ancient civilizations that could mean anything, the destruction of the city of Babylon, the burning of the library of Alexandria. The Christian templars conquering half of Europe and burning any other religious texts and practitioners as heresy and witches. We've been doing this to ourselves for millennia, losing our histories one burnt city and conquered kingdom at a time. And why the fuck does conquest go hand in hand with burning anyway? The city of Troy and the city of Athens didn't have to burn if history has it right. They could have been conquered relatively intact but the victors decided to pillage, rape and burn to result in more knowledge lost to the ages. We still don't know how the Romans made concrete that was so strong and lasted so long without rebars for reinforcement, something that is so simple and probably general knowledge then is completely lost now, we don't even know what else we don't know.

*

We continue the climb up the mountain mostly on our two feet but need to crawl up on all fours at certain places and to climb one hand hold at a time at two others. I've never had any trouble with heights but I'm not a climber either, but I know my Sergeant at the rangers was and I remember the advice he gave to Cauwen once, 'Just don't fall and you'll be fine'. I don't know why I thought of that but it seems funny now.

After another climb, it's more crawling with knees bent and back low to keep the centre of gravity closer to the ground. After the last crawl we reach a sort of cliff and over it, we find an almost 90-degree flat view of the mountain lake and its surroundings.

The lake itself takes up most of the attention and space, I may have been too preoccupied when I was here last but I acknowledge that it's a beautiful view.

The water is luminous crystal clear swimming pool blue and it shimmers like champaign as little things swimming around in it. The depth is not easy to determine even as we get closer, the width of the pool of water an estimated 50 meters.

The sight is captivating and I have absolutely nothing to compare it to. We three move slowly forward with Mirabilis and Estergon already taking their shoes off.

"Are you sure about this guys?" I ask just to make sure we're all on the same page. "What if you end up on Earth or something?" I ask already fantasizing about going back home, my heart clenching at the possibility.

"Jonah said it will be fine, we will have a little swim and a little drink and we will take the easy way down, it shouldn't even be an hour. You keep watch until we tell you it's safe to come in okay?" Mira says giving me a stern look, she knows I want to go in as well. Both to squeeze out as much benefit from the mythical pool/lake as I can and for the little secret fantasy of the possibility that I might go home that I won't voice even to myself.

"Fine," I say as I move to the exposed side of the bank to keep watch. I doubt anything will come from the side we took to get here.

They get naked and wade into the water until they are in neck deep. Their passage through the water leaving little mots of light in their wake. Mira dunks her head in and stays down for a while Estergon is looking at the surface of the water as though trying to solve a complicated puzzle.

The water starts to churn violently where Mirabilis went down and I stand from my perch shouting at the still concentrating Estergon even as I run forward.

"Est! Est snap out of it Mira is drowning! Est!"

I shout even as I kick off my own shoes and wade deep into the water before diving down for a stroke but the most surprising thing happens, I don't float. Its almost as though the water parts for me to sink into it almost like the air that's closely packed together.

Whatever I'm in doesn't have the consistency of water and so I sink, but I sink moving forward towards where I see a convulsing Mira is. Her eyes and mouth wide open as she contorts and convulses strangely in the middle of a blue sea of stars. Her naked pink flesh coloured body in stark contrast to everything around her.

For some reason, I can't reach her fast enough not to need a breath and I have no idea what happened to the ground we were standing on, we couldn't have gone deeper, could we? The burning in my lungs as I hold my breath continues on and on and on painfully and I can't swim up, only forward, I can't fucking die here though so I hold it.

I hold it with the expectation of eventually passing out but I don't pass out, it just gets more and more painful until I'm the one contorting back and forth with my cheeks pumped holding my last breath as my body gets tortured.

I don't know how long it is but I eventually reach her arm and pull her towards me then push her up with all my strength before taking the inevitable breath into my tortured lungs. She floats upwards as though in a vacuum as I sink deeper, propelled by the opposing force of the push.

There is nothing that surprises me more than not immediately breathing in water and drowning. But I don't, I have no idea what I inhale in fact because it feels like a liquid, a slightly more viscous liquid than water but it fits comfortably in all the areolas and little corners of my lungs and down my oesophagus into my stomach. There is no discomfort but instead, I fit into this-

Next thing I know I'm on all fours naked in blue water up to my thighs and I'm coughing up a pink frothy liquid and struggling to breathe.

"You okay?" Estergon asks me hitting my back gently to help me expel whatever it is I'm expelling.

After a minute when I've managed to catch my breath I look up and try to push him away as I stand.

"Where the fuck were you?" I shout looking around and sight in relief as I see Mirabilis coughing as well but stumbling towards her clothes, is her hair longer?

"I have no idea what happened to me but let's get you out of here before we discuss that, come on." He stabilizes me and we walk out together.

Once I'm safely away from the water I lie on the comfortable rocks of the mountain and am out like a lamp.