He went up again—slowly, carefully, with the patience of someone who had learned that speed was a lie told by people had lived just long enough to not have lived at all.
Because anyone worth their salt, had tasted life enough to know slow and sure.
The rope burned his palms as he reset it, inch by inch.
Another thing to think about.
The rope, twisted from vines coated in sticky sap, held together with surprising strength.
At first, he assumed its stiffness would guarantee stability, much like traditional ropes made by stripping fibers, drying them, and then braiding or twisting them into strands.
But once he began the climb, he realized that without proper treatment—such as pounding fibers to soften them or adding grease to reduce friction—the rough, resinous surface made every pull far more grueling than expected.
He leaned into stone, chest pressed flat, ribs aching where the earlier fall had kissed bone too closely.
Every breath snagged and determined.
Every pause a hint of a muscular orgasm.
Every involuntary hand twitches a promise that rest would not bring salvation.
Xavier counted anyway.
Not because it helped, but because silence let other thoughts in.
Left foot—bad.
Right hand—steady.
Don't rush. Don't think.
Don't grit your teeth too hard. Don't curl your lips.
The brace creaked when he put weight on it.
He adjusted his angle instead, letting his arms take more of the load, shoulders screaming their objections. But his shoulder had healed better than his leg, and his leg had healed better than his jaw.
And his teeth—there was no healing that.
He moved like someone assembling himself from broken parts, testing each motion before committing to it.
The mountain did not reward bravery.
It spat on courage.
It barely tolerated competence.
And it loved gambling… with the lives of those who would dare to climb it.
By the time he reached the upper shelf, his mouth tasted like old copper. His jaw ached where cracked teeth rubbed raw flesh.
He pulled himself over the lip, rolled onto his side, and lay there for a long moment with his cheek against cold stone, breathing like he had just been born again and resented it.
He recalled participating in the school's marathon and at the very end of the marathon, he hated himself for participating—that level of exhaustion was what he felt now, only a thousand times more concentrated.
The type of exhaustion that made you, however briefly, resent your mother for giving birth to you.
He was tired enough to not notice it the first time.
Nor the second and third time it happened.
He hardly even noticed it when it got closer.
Then the ground trembled and it was right next to his ear.
A sound—not loud, but wrong.
The scrape of hooves on rock.
The hollow clack of weight landing where it shouldn't.
Xavier rolled onto his back just in time to see the goat.
It stood no more than ten feet away, half-turned, muscles bunched tight beneath coarse, weathered hair.
The animal was a hardy criollo goat, its frame lean from generations on the rocky slopes of the mountain.
I have seen this in a book somewhere. He thought.
Curved horns caught the dim light, and its sharp, amber eyes scanned the ground with restless vigilance.
Every tendon seemed strung taut, built for sudden bursts across jagged stone, the kind of survival bred into creatures that thrive where thin air and sparse forage test endurance.
Its eyes locked on him with an intelligence he had not prepared for—flat, assessing, offended.
He bowed his head in shame, taking a moment to examine his own attire—he, somewhat, looked the part of a hunter, but there were improvements that could be made.
Did a goat make me self-conscious?
For a moment, the pain was forgotten—bubbling anger rose in its place.
Man watched goat—goat watched man. A silent clash of wills was happening.
This wasn't prey startled into flight.
This was an animal that had learned cliffs were allies.
He got to his knees slowly, measuring each breath to keep the atmosphere as calm as possible—it wasn't until he started to lean back, instinctively, did he realize his mistake.
For a moment, he was unbalanced.
The goat dashed forward, spun and kicked.
The entire maneuver was fluid, concise—meant for maximum damage.
The impact caught Xavier across the ribs, not full force, but enough.
Enough to feel something give.
Enough to knock the air from his lungs in a wet, tearing rush. He didn't scream—there wasn't breath for it. He tumbled backward, stone flashing past, the sky lurching sideways.
The rope saved him.
More accurately, it was the goat that did—when its legs entangled with a length of rope, barely stopped him from going over the edge.
His balance hung precariously for an instant, then when the goat leaped forward—though it could not complete a full leap, given it had partially been snagged—he was pulled along, back from the brink of death.
… or, at least, a deadly fall—given his track record of surviving impossibilities.
He had the illusion that, someone, somewhere, perhaps the gods themselves, just exchanged a fistful of gold coins, some crying bitter tears, while others cheering in triumph.
He had just cost someone a lot of money by surviving yet again.
For a breath—no longer than it takes a heartbeat to hesitate—time loosened its grip.
Man and goat held still in a fragile balance, each measuring survival by instincts shaped in entirely different worlds.
One knew of smooth stones, hooves marks on rocks, and ways to escape; the other measured weight, tension, and the narrow tolerance of bone and rope.
Then the moment broke.
There was no decision. No thought to follow.
Only motion.
Xavier's body moved as if memory itself had taken control—muscle answering a command older than language. He curled his feet under a length of rope, kicked with all his might, his hand finding the rope mid-flight, and in the same unbroken motion snapped it into a spinning arc.
The loop kissed the air, closed, and settled around the goat's neck with impossible precision. He realized he'd done it only after the world lurched.
At the exact same instant, the goat launched.
Not a jump—a release.
Power honed by a lifetime of surviving vertical death surged through it, and he felt weight vanish, felt himself lifted into something like flight before gravity remembered them both.
The rope went taut.
Stone blurred.
Sky tilted.
A sound tore loose from man and goat—thin, raw, almost childlike—two throats giving voice to the same startled truth as they slammed together onto the jagged, rocky terrain, bound by chance, instinct, and a moment of loose probability.
The probability that someone would be dropped into a cave thousands of meters high, hidden behind a waterfall, survive against all odds—two falls from incredible heights, umpteen animal attacks, and injuries severe enough to kill a dozen ordinary people—and still preserve the strength of will to hunt a goat.
The goat thrashed, hooves striking sparks from stone, pulling up and down with raw animal strength—the only good news were that they were going away from the shelf.
The bad news was… the shelf was just the longest drop, but far from the only one.
Xavier clung to the rope with hands already numb, forearms screaming as the fibers bit skin—then, the first drop came. It was a mere six feet but while the goat fumbled then steadied, he met the stone back first.
It trembled through his body like the first strum of guitar strings.
He tried to climb, hauling himself up hand over hand, but the goat was already moving forward, weight dragging them both toward a drop that would definitely injure both of them.
Of course, the former more than the latter.
"Stay," he rasped.
To the goat.
To himself.
He managed to snag the corner of a small depression in the stone—scrambled, half-crawled onto a narrow patch of soil, anchoring himself, chest heaving, ribs screaming with every breath.
But he held.
And because he held, the goat could not move.
It choked and bleated, eyes rolling white as it fought the noose biting into its neck.
Xavier braced, aimed, and raised the knife.
This was it.
This was what weeks of hunger and preparation had sharpened him toward. He lunged—
The rope snapped.
Momentum countered and died something fierce—like a rubber band snapping from both ends, causing a cessation right at the peak.
He pitched sideways, slammed hard, and came to rest inches from pounding, panicking, flailing hooves—another near-death experience.
The goat glanced back, reared, calculated with an intelligent glean in its eyes, then brough it's weight down.
For a suspended, stupid moment—while he stared blankly at the incomprehensibility occurring—Xavier saw it. The moment of his death.
The geometry of his head being crushed beneath hooves.
The spray of blood, the withering of a body, and the low, deep chuckle of a mountain.
Death had never been more certain.
Then the forest exploded.
A puma burst from the undergrowth in a blur of tawny muscle and violence, hitting the goat broadside.
They went down together in a tangle of limbs and dust.
It felt like a complex dance of martial punches and kicks, occurring in frozen time and the brief spans between rain drops, but it was simply an animal brawl with no order or attitude other than survival.
The goat screamed—a sound so raw it vibrated in Xavier's skull.
The puma locked onto its neck, jaws clamped tight, hind legs raking.
The goat fought back.
It slammed its body sideways, hooves striking flesh.
The puma snarled, breath hissing, grip slipping.
Blood soaked into fur on both ends.
Xavier scampered to his feet, unbalanced and chaotic but somehow managing to move semi-steadily before thought caught up.
He lunged forward and drove the knife into the goat's leg, muscle parting with sickening ease.
Hot blood sprayed his hand.
The goat shrieked again, stumbling.
The puma seized the opening, tilting its head ever-so-slight, extending jaw as wide as possible and sinking every teeth and muscle in its possession into the neck of the goat.
For a heartbeat, they were aligned—man and predator—violence synchronized by necessity.
The goat froze in terror, and Xavier used the chance for a quick three-jab stab.
The goat still didn't move which was strange since this would, or should, be its final, relentless struggle before death.
Then the puma froze.
Not slowly. Not cautiously.
One second it was there, muscles coiled, jaw loosening with a relaxed tenseness of victory; the next, it released and sprang back, vanishing into the trees as if the forest had swallowed it whole.
Xavier staggered upright, confused, knife shaking in his grip.
The ground shook again.
This time, it wasn't prey.
Two bears emerged from the treeline—massive, dark shapes moving with terrifying speed across broken rock. Not lumbering. Not hesitant.
They moved like soldiers who knew the terrain, leaping gaps, landing sure-footed, eyes locked on the chaos ahead.
Xavier couldn't run.
His leg wouldn't allow it. His ribs screamed when he tried to turn. He backed away instead, limping, breath hitching, knife raised more out of defiance than strategy.
He reached into his pockets with shaking hands and pulled free the small, wrapped bundle he had hoped never to use.
He had never been so happy to have planned for every possibility—even the dumb ones.
He struck flint against the rough spine of his blade.
Sparks jumped.
He cupped them, lit the bundle, and hurled it between himself and the oncoming shapes.
The stench hit instantly, expanding in a flash-like blaze reminiscent of smoke bomb, only it was a lighter shade of green.
It wasn't just foul—it was invasive.
Thick, choking, chemical-sweet and rotten all at once.
At first, it was like smelling roadkill from a distance, then seeing the roadkill, then tasting the roadkill, then realizing it was not just one roadkill. It was a dead cat, dog, opossum, rabbit, and maggots all wrapped up in one lethal package.
It was the kind of stench that would force sane men to rip out their tongues.
It burned the eyes, clawed down the throat.
The goat's screams cut off mid-sound, body going slack as it collapsed.
What a man's lethal stabs couldn't accomplish. What a puma's powerful jaws couldn't accomplish. A stench tube had accomplished in less than a second.
Xavier gagged, staggered, tried to breathe and couldn't. His limbs went heavy, strength draining like someone had opened a valve.
He fell to his knees.
The last thing he registered was the bears halting at the edge of the spreading cloud, shapes blurring as his vision dimmed.
Then the world went dark.
Hopefully, the lumbering giants were unwilling to each such a pungent snack.