Upon the Scarred Mountain
14th of March 2007 A.D.
"Here," the voice is faint and backed up by the sighing of the wind that cuts even though the vial's seal, followed a moment later by the full blown roar as your companion breaks it, it had felt at once like minutes and like hours, though your inner reservoir of Essence informs you that it had been about an hour end to end before you are decanted in a small eddy of bleach onto the ice that had likely never seen its like
Regained 4 Essence.
"Oh," you look up and up and up along slopes that had been carved sharp as black stone handaxes, though great must have been the hand that dropped them. Great but not the least bit good. Here the desolation curls like a wyrm upon itself, guarding treasure none had ever been meant to find, great rents in the side of the mountain, long since stoppered over by the snow and ice, though yo your eyes it can do little to hide than it had been nothing as natural as fire and the rumblings of the earth that had caused it. "They say Typhon was bound under a volcano in Sicily, you would think ancient evils would slow a bit more imagination in their location."
Head tipped to the side as though to get a better look the Chosen of the Grave just looks at you.
"Not a fan of rhymes?" you ask lightly, or at least as lightly as you can manage.
"I do not know if they would have felt us, on the one hand it seems unlikely that any eyes would be on this side of the mountains, it's the hardest to climb but... magic often makes fools of men."
"We are quite noticeable and not just when we... shine." The last word feels inadequate, almost insulting to what you had seen of the anima of Deathknights, but you force yourself not to be too polished in your speech, that can come off as untrustworthy on its own and you are about to walk into battle.
"Would something that's been sleeping for so long really notice anything? "
It's clear the question is rhetorical, but as you start to climb towards the lowest of the rents on the mountain's flank you try to answer it. "Maybe, depending on what kind of eyes it has to see with."
A few minutes more pass in the ascent before he motions to something almost below your feet, a sign as strange as it is easy to notice even for your never-been-a-Girl-Scout self, footprints, dozens of them, set such that a spur in the rock protects them from the wind and snow, though even so they would be obliterated the moment the wind changed directions.
While this mountain is certainly creepy enough that you would not exclude the possibility that the wind's been blowing in the same direction for six thousand years or something, the more likely conclusion is that there are people here, recently come at that, booted feet not web-toed ones or any other mutation of the fomori. The problem of course is that for people who do not have the limitless stamina of the already dead or muscles that draw power from the cold itself this climb would need at the very least safety lines, pinons, an ice pick and yet unlike the snow nothing marks the stone.
Running your fingers along the stone you hit on something, a ridge, a line far too regular and looking up once more along the face of the stone you see it: a crude stone carving, almost to the point of caricature, as though someone had deliberately stripped the act of all artistry and beauty, depicting an enormous man, arms and legs splayed out, hair and beard splayed out as three smaller figures are are pulling at his extremities.
"Looks familiar?" the Venator asks, sounding frustrated that he couldn't name the scene himself, but you can only shake your head. The stories of the world are filled with accounts of smaller beings overtaking the larger, of younger gods overcoming the elder, that they speak of deeper truths you do not doubt, but the sheer breadth of such tales means that no single one comes to mind when faced with this.
Soon the trail of footsteps is lost to the wind though with its passing something lingers, a sense that you might not be as alone up here as you would prefer. Up and up you go....
Drip... drip... drip...
You hear it long before you can see it, the sound of water strange when you are so far below the freezing point that it is not even a memory, more a dream of balmy spring. Then see it you do and you would rather have not. It's an icicle, though not of ice, but blood, its color changing from black to red along its more meter length from an overhead ledge, eternally frozen, eternally melting into the snow. There's not a shadow of a doubt in your mind all of it is human, all of it innocent blood.
Approaching the... obscenity you notice an irregularity in its 'construction', lodged near the middle a darker shape that you at first take to be clotting in whatever arcane process had caused blood to behave like this, but on a closer look realize is a solid object, a small wooded cross. Maybe that's why its melting, in memory of some small act of defiance, of faith, here at the end of the sane and rational world.
More figures mark the walls, but these ones do not have a even the coherence of the one below, jagged blades and torn open bellies, cracked skulls and jaws torn loose, tongues still wriggling in them, until at last you reach the opening.
"Ladies first," your companion surprises you with a joke, though his smile would not be out of place on the face of a corpse.
What preparations do you take before entering the mountain?
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OOC: Well if nothing else circumstances let me write in more of a lead on before we get to the heavy rolling. Hope you guys enjoy. 
