Beast of the Mountain Lair

There are few left in the East who still remembered the old, True Gods of man and nature. Most had given them up, whether by force or out of their free, if mistaken, will. But for those who still kept the Old Ways the time had come to once again climb the Spine of the World and find the blessed lake of Kōgomu, the Mountain Mother.

Our group was small, only ten people all in all; even in the mountains people had turned their gaze to the gods of the Valley. I was one of the few who had visited the lake before, and remembered the way. In truth that counted for very little as the pathways changed and shifted with the whims of Kōgomu, and I knew our journey this time would be different.

Winter winds were retreating back north when we began our travel, and a new spring would soon sprout from beneath the snow. To climb the Spine before melted snows was to seek death, but such was the sacrifice required if one sought for those blessed, hidden waters of the Mountain Mother.

The first week went near identical to my previous experience. Our yaks followed between the people, though they hesitated once we entered the territories of sabertooths and other predators hiding in the mountains. It didn't take long before their nervousness began to affect the people as well. Then the weather turned to worse.

The storm began suddenly and without warning. Wind picked up powder-like snow from the grey rock and more rained down on us in large flakes. We might have perished in the storm had we not found shelter in an empty-looking cave, its entrance just a crack in the mountainside.

The cavern opened up enough for all of us and our beasts to rest in relative comfort. A narrow tunnel of some sort seemed to lead further into the earth, but none of us was willing to seek out whatever secrets lied there. Instead we used some of our supplies to make a fire and get some sleep, even as the raging winds hurled about outside.

What darkness had so well hidden, we discovered as the flames flickered to life at the heart of the cave. Corpses splattered in some black liquid littered the place. Some were ancient, with naught but bones and blackened skin left to recognize them by. Others were fresher, and it was from one particularly fresh body I gleaned that the black liquid was in fact blood. Dried, old and spilled everywhere around us.

It was the lair of some kind of beast, of that I had no doubt, but I could not recall of anything that would leave all of that meat untouched. A sabertooth would scarcely leave a single bone unbroken, and whatever flesh they could rip to feed themselves, they would. And yet there was all of that blood strewn about.

The answer to all my questions would not long go unanswered. It came to us in perfect silence, a figure from the outside. Pale as death and crimson eyes, it stood before us in the eerily familiar form of a human, though no one thought it remained one of us. No, not stood. I still think-I know it levitated. And in its eyes I saw the intelligence of a beast, and excitement for the coming hunt.

I do not recall how long we stood there, frozen in silence before understanding found us once more. The yaks, wise as they were, ran out in sheer terror. Reason tells me it couldn't have been long, seconds at most, but when I think about how that one moment stretched into eternity, it might as well have been an entire age.

It looked like a woman, almost. But the scream it let out before rushing to its victim - one of our younger pilgrims - was no sound a human could make. A shrill, piercing sound like nothing I've heard before or since that one time. It buried its face into that man's neck. Others tried to help, but no force would stop it. Gods, there was blood everywhere.

---

To my shame and salvation I ran out into the storm. I couldn't stay there, I had to get away. I grabbed one of the bags holding our supplies and simply ran outside, praying to Kōgomu for aid and mercy with all the words I could still muster.

I do not know what happened to the others, except that I never heard from them again. The furs of my clothes did not keep me warm for long, but step by step I sought my way forward following the tracks of the panicked yaks. They were headed down the mountainside.

The Mountain Mother claimed one of my legs and a good few of my fingers, all blackened from frostbite, and most of my memories from the time I ran to when I awoke among the tents of the mountain folk remain a mystery. My saviours aided me as best they could, with what secrets of the True Gods they still held, but even they could only do so much.

I will never travel again, in the mountains or elsewhere. Perhaps that was the will of Kōgomu, and the price of my hubris. No one drinks twice from the sacred waters of Her lake, and perhaps it was my ambition which led her to allow such a monstrous encounter.