Stamina Tonic still sloshed in belt flasks and throat pouches, but bodies began to betray their owners anyway.
Men and women hammered their own forearms with clenched fists as if pain might wake the muscles back up.
Fingers that had gripped stone since yesterday would not close all the way.
Shoulders refused to lift. It was not a weakness of will.
It was the old, ugly limit of mortal flesh.
By the third kilometer of Corpse Mountain, the mountain started sending its own answer back.
Undead goats picked their way along the cliff face where there should have been no holds at all.
Their hooves found purchase on nothing. Their bodies leaned into sheer rock as if it were flat ground.
Fire burned in their eye sockets, a steady orange glare, and their horns were too big for any sane animal, curled and scarred like old weapons.
When they noticed a climber, they charged from absurd distances, letting gravity turn their madness into speed.
