A mountaintop summons-a meeting with destiny.

Eventually, my lazing would be broken by somebody rather unceremoniously delivering a letter to me-compared to his sausage-like fingers, and my thick tendrils, it frankly seemed out of plate in it's petite and delicate nature. I tried to cut to the chase-ask if he knew what the heck this could be about. However, he'd basically started walking away the moment he'd dropped the thing-and I certainly wasn't going to yell to get what I'll probably get in a few moments reading, anyway.

Tearing off the twine keeping it rolled up, I'm faced with...something I have absolutely no clue how to read. Frankly, that I even shared a language was surprising, it struck me as totally expected that I had no clue how to read whatever they used. At least, that's how it was for a first moment-when the symbols began to practically dance around on the page-shifting and moving , soon to form much more familiar symbols to my sight.

It was an instruction to meet as a mountain-the name transliterated "Shinashimakazan" didn't do anything to clarify where the heck she might be meaning. The instruction to go north and follow the trail of smoke in the sky, however, were much more useful. The sun still rose and set, so I at least knew the basics of what directions were where. And so, travelling again I am, feeling much better now.

It's not a particularly long travel, but it feels like forever. Without much more interesting to look at that I hadn't already been giving close glance-overs the last week, I'm **** to find my stimulation in taking the most keen interest in focusing on the mechanism of my peristaltic locomotion for any stimulation, and that can only last so long. Things definitely picked up as I actually started to approach the mountains, the telltale smoke confirming I had gone the right way.

There was a path that would have been easy to follow, and avoided the harshest of the rockey face. Unfortunately, it looked a bit on the small side, and I was on the tougher side, so I instead made my own, a crude trail of pulverized stone in my wake as I **** myself more or less straight up towards the peak-and noted that for some reason, instead of getting colder with height, it was getting hotter and hotter.

When I got to the top, the reason for that became obvious enough. This mountain is a volcano-with my lupine host hanging around the lip. She isn't alone, though, two new...well, not quite faces, are there to be seen. One appears to be a bubblegum-pink cloud hovering over her-the other, a vaguely man shaped wall of stone, it's animacy betrayed by minor motions as it survey the area. Both of them appear transparent to my sight, a sign I was not meant to see them. What is not transparent, though, is the ears and several furred tails sticking out of the kitsune. This wouldn't be a talk about military my duties in her army, where we play at being anything less than what we are.

This was going to be monster to monster.