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"But you're not."

Shawn turned.

Mont lounged before him, floating improbably on a large slab of pumice. He leaned on one hand, frowning slightly at Shawn.

"No. I'm not," Shawn allowed.

Mont gestured, and a powerful stream of energy welled up from the heart of the mountain below them and flowed into Shawn. Shawn's body changed. From the small child he usually appeared as, to a teen, to an adult. He stood despite the deepness of the water, as the stone rose up to support his feet.

"Your time dwindles. Why do you continue to reject a permanent home?" Mont asked.

Shawn sighed. He looked over his shoulder, at the people running and splashing in the shallows. From here, they could only make out the dim silhouettes of their forms, dark shapes moving joyfully in the fog. "I don't want to leave them."

"But you will leave them forever if you don't find yourself a root."

"It is a mountain's role to find a root, and grow with it. It is our lot in life to be immovable. Permanent. But I've seen so much of this world. I've experienced its variety and its majesty. To settle down forever, to merge into the land and sleep, to simply watch as heroes rise and fall, and kingdoms ebb and fade… my dreams are more than that," Shawn said quietly.

"Or less," Mont commented.

Shawn snorted. "Or less, from a mountain's perspective."

"You are a mountain."

"But I'm not. I have not spent the eons rooted, watching over the beings that scramble past. I'm… a gem, a treasured item. As long as I've been aware, I've been an object with value, but never a mountain. Never… like you."

Mont trailed his fingertips in the water. "But you could be. That power exists within you. You are but a seed of what you could become. You choose not to plant yourself, but you have all the power in the world. To throw aside your past as a treasured object. To find value in yourself, and let free your true potential."

Shawn glanced down. He said nothing.

Lifting his fingertips from the water, Mont flipped his hand. He watched the droplets run down his fingers and pool in his palm. "You have found something else you can be."

"A friend. A companion," Shawn murmured, almost afraid to say it.

"A human. Walking amongst them. Being as one of them. Not hidden away in a vault, or sitting on some mountain. You choose to experience the present, rather than eternity." Mont sighed. He shook his head. "If you had seen the things I've seen, experience the millenia I've lived, you wouldn't dream of such a thing. You would know your place. Your calling."

"To be a cold rock?" Shawn asked.

Mont chuckled, unbothered. "I have had lovers. Children, generations of them. Friends. Beloved companions, who never knew I was anything but a strange person who liked to live on the mountain. Being your true self doesn't mean rejecting the world around you. It might seem that way, to look at me now, but that is only because I tire of life as those shorter-lived live it. Perhaps in a thousand years hence, I shall feel the need to have a life amongst mortals again, and then I will descend again. Life as a mountain is not a life of seclusion."
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Shawn looked down. He frowned, biting his lip.

"But that would mean leaving today's friends behind. You know you don't have the time to see their journey to the end, and you know they won't settle down. Asking them to, would be to reject their very spirit. Even if they did, they would begin to silently resent you in their hearts, so you would never do it."

Shawn nodded.

Mont sighed. He patted Shawn's shoulder. "I wish I had an easy answer for you. At the end of the day, this is your choice. If you chose to die as a seed, and never plant yourself, then I simply ask that you ensure that this life, was one you do not regret. There is little more fearsome than a mountain at the end of its life, carrying a mountain's worth of regret."

"No. I would not do this if I carried regret," Shawn said.

"Is that true?"

Shawn nodded.

Mont chuckled. "It might be true for now. If it ever becomes untrue, then return to me. I would rather you take up root on my lands or put you to the blade myself, than see another of our number fall to despair."

"You've seen it before?" Shawn asked, looking up.

Mont nodded, just once. "I have. A fearsome thing, it was. A being not meant to exist." His eyes turned misty, focused on something far and long away. "Ah, how glorious. Soaked in pitch black, drenched in it, and yet, blazing as all the power of millennia burned out at once. I watched from my mountain as it razed these lands flat, and thought to myself, what small comfort, that were anyone to push me to such a degree…"

His words trailed off. For a long moment, there was nothing. And then he smiled again. "But I am a mountain. Rooted and placid. I have seen these lands rise from nothing. I have watched these cities come to be from the dirt itself. Seen children grow into adults, grow into mages. I could watch these cities burn, full of the babies I have known since their inception, and feel nothing. It is the loose cannons like yourself who burn out gloriously."

Shawn snorted. "Then, will you watch me as I burn, from your perch from on high?"

Mont lowered his head. "Yes, but I hope not to. I hope to see you take root, and grow long, strong, and tall. But if you must burn out, then I hope you burn out grandly. Leave nothing behind, and take it all down in a blaze of glory."

A laugh. Shawn shook his head. "Everything but Ike and his friends."

"If you are pushed to that point, then they will already be long gone," Mont replied placidly.

Shawn's eyes flashed. He gazed at Mont, his brows furrowed.

"It is not a mere moment of fear or horror that drives a mountain to despair. We, even you seedlings, are placid by nature. To throw one into despair, even an ungrounded seedling like yourself, takes the complete and total destruction of everything in which you hold hope and faith." Mont lowered his gaze. Their entire conversation, his eyes had roamed the area, taking in the world at large, rather than Shawn. For the first time, he looked Shawn dead in the eye. "On the day that happens, Ike and everyone else in this spring will be cold and buried."

Shawn met his gaze. "Then I will not let that come to pass."

"I, too, hope you do not. I had to slaughter a civilization to prevent them from murdering every mountain they could muster the strength to kill." Mont lowered his eyes, then lifted them once more. "But were it to come to pass, I would do so once more. Burn brightly, friend. Whatever path you take, I will see it to the end."

Shawn dipped his head, slightly unsettled, slightly grateful. "Thank you."

Mont hummed. His pumice stone drifted off, and he vanished into the fog. The stone receded beneath Shawn's feet, and he turned small once more. He watched Mont off into the distance, but when he vanished, he turned away. Back to Ike. Back to what he had chosen.

I, too, pray I do not burn down. That I see this path to the end, and find a place to root beyond it. Holding this wish deep within his heart, Shawn paddled back to the splashing and the laughter, knowing he had the rage of a volcano watching over him.

Watching over him, and waiting to explode.

END BOOK 3