Ash. The Legends of the Nameless World. Progression Gamelit Story by Kirill Klevanski (essential reading .txt) 📗

“How to say it politely...? It ain’t good, chief,” he grunted, having lost his breath on the seemingly impassable ledge. However, where a reasonable person wouldn’t dare to go, a hunter would explore it to their very last breath. “There’s no road, and I doubt there’ll be one until spring. It’d be nice if it were only snow, but I wager that there’s a lot of rocks there, too. The avalanche could’ve dragged some with it.”

“Could we dig through it?” Mary asked with hope in her voice.

Tul pondered for about a minute, which caused the rest of the group to crowd around him as if around a Christmas tree, waiting to be given their present. But instead of a shiny new toy, they were given coal.

“It’d take us about a week,” he said, but then added: “If not more.”

The Stumps sighed. Just yesterday, their mission seemed like a walk in the park, and now it turned into a test of strength and patience. A new race against time, in which the advantage clearly wasn’t on their side.

“So, that’s a no-go,” Alice said.

Not wishing to see his companions sad, Ash tried to cheer them up but was immediately shushed and dismissed like an annoying puppy. In response, he pouted and joined them in moping around. If it weren’t for the need to hide his true identity, for which someone would be given a nice sum of forty thousand gold, he would’ve made a passage in an instant. But in moments like these, he was always surprised by the selflessness and recklessness of some people. Lari, for example.

The swordsman moved away from them and took a rope and a kind of hammer with an elongated, pointed end out of his bag. After tying a tricky knot around the hilt, he tied the other end around his body, stuck some pieces of iron on his feet, and, without a word, went toward the mountain. Having estimated the distance that separated him from it, he plunged the odd hammer into the wall, fixed it there, pulled himself up, and began to crawl upward.

Ash nodded and tugged at the edge of Mary’s cloak.

“What do you want?” she barked but then noticed Lari climbing the wall like an insect.

One by one, the stumps fell silent and stared at their friend.

Soon, each of them armed themselves with the same equipment and began to climb.

A few hours later

“Finally!” With a sharp exhale, Blackbeard, Tul, and Lari yanked the rope back, pulling as onto the small platform.

“Thank you.” He smiled a little shyly but they still looked at him as if he had killed their cat or something.

The mage didn’t get a set of climbing equipment and had to be towed all the way up. This not only complicated and slowed down the ascent, but also exhausted both the strength and the nerves of everyone around. Especially those who had to pull him up.

Maybe, just maybe, the situation would’ve been different had Ash not been cheering his companions on the entire time. Most of his cheers were reduced to jokes on at expense of nobles and riders, as well as all sorts of barbs and witticisms. All in all, it wasn’t surprising that Ash was now forced to retreat from the Stumps who seemed to have every intention of teaching him a lesson on keeping his mouth shut.

“Wait, wait, we’re partners!” he exclaimed, but it didn’t do him much good. “Alice, tell him how good I am and how wrong they are!”

Unfortunately for him, even she swung her wand as if it were not a healer’s instrument but the mace of a soldier. Even the good-natured Blackbeard, who usually answered to profanity with even more profanity, had drawn his ax, adding to its steely gleam the shine of his porcelain-white teeth. No need to even mention Tul and Mary who hadn’t liked the mage to begin with. Even Tul, the voice of reason, seemed to be torn between which arrow to choose to shoot Ash with.

The mage, who was frantically looking around, froze for a moment and stared in disbelief behind the Stumps. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in legends — after all, it was hard to not believe in them when you were one yourself — but what he saw left even him speechless.

“Look!” he exclaimed, pointing in the opposite direction of the Stumps.

“You think we’re gonna fall for that trick?” Mary grinned, eyes and saber flashing with bloodthirst.

Chances were that Ash wouldn’t suffer anything more than a couple of snowballs shoved into his pants, but he would’ve preferred being sliced and diced over being cold. So, when Blackbeard moved to grab him, he magically appeared behind them all.

“Oh, you quick-witted bastard!” Tul shouted, sounding like an upset hunter whose prey had just escaped. “Catch him before he leaves!”

With each word that followed, the archer’s voice grew fainter and fainter, until the last syllable was almost as loud as a whisper shared between two secret lovers.

“By the demons and my beard!” Blackbeard whispered, grabbing the said beard.

On the mountainside, near the peak, bloomed a tree of unprecedented beauty. Too short to deserve to be really called a tree, but so beautiful that it took one’s breath away. It was chest-high, and miraculous in its appearance. How could something so lovely and lively be living in this icy wasteland?

Still, contrary to all the laws of the universe, a cherry tree had somehow managed to break through the ice and snow to bask in the light of Irmaril, whose rays penetrated the dense veil of clouds. Small, but strong and persistent, it had become a part of many legends and stories, and thousands of minstrels tirelessly sang about the beauty of this tree, left here to aid the travelers.

Its white buds might’ve been mistaken for snowballs if an adventurer wasn’t