(She had thought herself indestructible.
But there’s blood sliding hot-slick down the back of her throat.
Even now, even in this rarified air.
Perhaps this was her first mistake,
thinking nothing could touch her so long as she was made of gold.)
She goes on swallowing great gasps of air, watching.
There is nothing familiar in any of them, those who have come just as she has come.
She can see nothing that binds them.
Nothing that brands them as the chosen few.
(But she must consider the possibility that there is nothing exceptional about any of them.
Perhaps they are merely the only souls in Beqanna foolish enough to heed the call.
She among them, stupid in her blind willingness to bend to the will of others.)
Still, the blood drips from her nose.
Down into her belly, down onto the Mountain.
But no craggy rocks spring to life now.
Nothing bites at her ankles, nothing pulls.
She is sick with all the air, head swimming, when the God finally speaks.
(Certainly their paths have crossed before.
But there are so many things that she does not remember.
Memories disassembled and spirited away by death and then life and then death.)
And she must have been dead when it happened.
When the Mountain took so much from Beqanna.
Dead or disinterested, wayward and lost to things that mattered.
(She had never called any place home, as far as she can remember.
Maybe she would have delighted in the ruin of their beloved lands.
She had been a cruel thing once, Bible.
But the cruelty has left her now, leaving her only slightly off-balance. Weird.)
But the dark god seems to have taken these things personally.
Why else would he have called them here?
Why else would he want them to try to excavate whatever is at the Mountain’s center?
There is an odd thrumming in her ears as she continues to struggle to catch her breath.
(Not so indestructible now, are you?)
She swallows her blood until her belly is full of it, until it stops altogether.
Dig.
Dig and don’t stop until I say so.
She is nothing extraordinary, Bible.
She cannot call upon the insects to do her bidding.
She cannot grow herself a tail to use instead.
And she cannot ask for help.
(It is not pride that stops her but rather something else.
Something darker.)
She watches only briefly while the others set to work.
Watches while a few of the others ask their God for help.
(Does she think it a weakness?
Perhaps.)
Once she has caught her breath, she descends into the hole.
Slipping down the slope into the crater.
She goes because she has not been given a choice.
The dark god had asked them to fight their way up the mountain and she had.
Now the dark god has told them to dig and she will.
Even though the vision is still soft at the edges.
She will dig until it kills her if she has to.
(She has died far worse deaths than this.)
She digs the only way she knows how.
With her own feet.
With her nose.
She lies down and uses her shoulder, kicking off the side of the crater to push dirt out of the way.
She labors just as the rest of them labor, her sides heaving with the effort.
She labors until stars erupt in front of her eyes and she thinks she might faint.
She digs and she digs and does not stop because this is what she was told to do.
And perhaps there is some advantage to being made of gold.
Because the dirt and the rocks do not mar her flesh.
She is impenetrable.
(Though fatigue does set in.
Though she does struggle to catch her breath again.)
But she digs on.
Using her hooves and her head and her shoulders.
Even if she looks foolish.
They are each so singularly focused on the task at hand that it doesn’t matter.
There is a faint quake that shudders up her limbs as she nudges her nose through the dirt.
But she does not pause to consider what it might be.
The Mountain had been displeased by their journeys, she knows.
Perhaps it is also displeased that they are carving holes in it, too.
(But it is not that at all.
The quake is the earth falling away beneath them.
All that separates them from the center of the Mountain is a thin layer of dirt.
And they dig on. Dig on, dig on, dig on, until.)
Until the ground disappears from beneath them.
And she tumbles, tumbles, tumbles through the darkness.
She opens her mouth to cry out in surprise.
But her vision goes black and, as she plummets, she goes limp.
i didn't need to go where a bible went
