Submission (#549) Approved

The air in the Summit was cruel. Not merely cold—but alive with malice. It bit at exposed skin with tiny knives of ice and screamed through every jagged ridge like the mountain itself was howling in fury. And Nadira? She just grinned into it.
“Try harder,” she snarled at the gale, crouching slightly as the wind buffeted her shoulders with a force strong enough to send a lesser climber tumbling down the slope. Her claws dug into the frost-bitten stone as she climbed higher, shards of frozen sleet battering her body like glassy rain. Lightning cracked across the heavens, illuminating the world in a flickering wash of silver—and revealing the dizzying drop behind her. A hundred feet down and not a ledge to catch a slip. One misstep would mean an end as brutal as it was instant.
“WOO! This is what I’m talking about!” Nadira whooped over the roar of the storm, her voice hoarse but electric. “Come on, Summit! Give me a real challenge!” Behind her, her tail clung close, flattened and lengthened against the rocks to brace against the gusts. It had shifted into a webbed, almost manta-ray-like form, trying to maximize drag and keep her steady—clearly more concerned with survival than Nadira was.
“Nadira, for the love of sanity—” it began, but she cut it off with a laugh.
“You worried?” she shouted, flashing a fang-filled grin. “Thought you liked a good climb!”
“I like surviving the climb!” the tail shouted back, its voice curling around her ears. “You’re not impressing anyone with this reckless stunt!”
“I’m impressing me, and that’s enough!” she snapped, slamming a hand down into the stone and hauling herself onto a narrow ledge. Her wings fluttered slightly, but the wind threatened to rip them from her back, so she tucked them tight again, relying on muscle and grit instead of flight. Snow lashed against her face, blinding and sharp. She blinked it away with a hiss.
The mountain didn’t care who she was. Didn’t care that she was the storm-born girl who used to watch the Olympians from below with envy burning in her chest. It didn’t care how many medals they’d won, or how badly she wanted to beat them all. The Summit demanded respect. And she would earn it through blood, frost, and sheer refusal to quit. Her boots hit the next ridge with a satisfying crunch, and she planted her stance wide, balancing against the gusts. Her tail retracted slightly, reforming into a curled shape at her side, a slime-like hand gripping her waist like a seatbelt.
“I know that look,” it muttered.
“What look?”
“The ‘I’m-about-to-do-something-stupid-and-you-can’t-stop-me’ look.”
She didn’t deny it. Instead, Nadira crouched low, coiling her legs like a spring, eyes focused on the next outcrop jutting above. It was far—too far for a jump in this wind. But she wasn’t planning on landing clean. She was planning on climbing whatever she smashed into.
The tail groaned audibly. “You are the literal worst.” With a feral whoop, Nadira launched herself into the air—body twisting like a missile as the storm screamed in her ears. Wind caught her mid-leap, tossing her sideways—but she adjusted, twirling into the gust like a dancer in combat, claws outstretched.
She slammed into the cliffside, claws digging in deep. Rocks shattered, snow exploded in every direction—and Nadira let out a bark of laughter as she began to scale the jagged surface like a wild thing, panting from the adrenaline and raw cold slicing into her lungs.
“This… is the climb,” she whispered to herself, almost reverent. “This is what I was born for.” Behind her, the tail sighed, wrapping protectively around her torso like a harness.
“Just try not to die before you get your gold medal, idiot.”
“Not planning on it,” she muttered, voice cracking with chill and defiance. Above her, the storm boiled on.
And Nadira—lightning-eyed and storm-fed—kept climbing. The storm wasn’t easing up. If anything, it was worse.
For hours now—maybe longer; time blurred in the howling dark—Nadira had been carving a jagged trail along the crumbling mountain ledges, every step forward stolen by force of will. The cliffs here were narrower, the snow deeper. The wind no longer just shoved—it screamed, raked, battered. Her limbs felt like they were dipped in molten ice. Her fingers burned with cold, her knees ached from impact. Still, she didn’t stop, she couldn’t stop.
"Keep going,” she rasped under her breath, each word dragging white steam into the frozen air. “Keep climbing. Just a little higher.” The rocks beneath her paws had long since turned slick. The jagged outcrops, once solid beneath her claws, now splintered and cracked under the strain of the storm. One wrong handhold and she’d plummet into a void too dark and deep to imagine. The drop sang to her, a low, keening lullaby of failure. She spat in its face.
But even Nadira—prideful, storm-hardened, adrenaline-glutton Nadira—was starting to wear down. Her steps grew sluggish. Her shoulders drooped. Her muscles, strong as they were, began to tremble—not from fear, but from cold and fatigue. The wind tugged at her wings like greedy fingers, and her breath came out shallow and quick. Her bioluminescent scales flickered—normally vibrant, now dulled with exhaustion. She staggered into a crevice in the cliffside, barely more than a jagged outdent in the stone, and collapsed against the wall. Snow gathered instantly on her shoulders. Her tail slithered up around her, shaping itself into a protective cocoon and pulsing with a soft, concerned glow.
“You need to stop,” it murmured, voice gentle now. Not nagging. Not scolding. Just worried. “Even you have limits, y’know.”
“I know,” she panted, dragging her claws through the snow beside her. “But I’m not… I’m not quitting. I just… need a minute.” The tail shifted again, curling tighter around her body. It pressed itself beneath her legs and over her back, absorbing some of the wind to shield her more fully. Its form trembled—not from the cold, but from shared strain. They were bonded in body and soul, after all. It felt her pain just as much as it tried to buffer it.
“You’re going to get yourself killed one day,” it whispered.
“Yeah,” Nadira coughed, a small grin tugging at her cracked lips. “But not today.” Her gaze lifted toward the cliffs above. Just barely, in the distance through the strobing lightning, she could see a faint glimmer—an outpost, maybe. A watchlight from Northchill, or some foolish traveler’s campfire. It was enough. Enough to breathe again, enough to push forward. She pulled a chunk of rime off her chest plate and crushed it between her claws. The sound echoed like breaking glass. Then she pressed her back to the stone and let her lungs fill, slowly, deeply. For a moment, she let the mountain's howl become a rhythm. She counted the thunder. Listened to her tail’s heartbeat as it thrummed beneath her skin. This storm wanted to break her. It thought it could. But Nadira had been raised by storms fiercer than this. She had learned to dance in their fury, to sprint into winds that toppled towers, to laugh into the lightning as it split the sky.
The tail gently bumped her chin, bringing her back to the present. “You good?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, rising again and rolling her neck with a crack. “Let’s go make this storm cry.”
With a fluid motion, she pushed away from the wall, claws snapping into place. The wind came at her again—and this time, she pushed back. Her tail morphed into a sleek stabilizer, bracing her with every leap and shift. Together, they moved like one creature born of the mountain’s fury. And higher, always higher, the summit called.
The wind was dying, Nadira didn't trust it.
She hauled herself up the final ridge with a grunt, claws digging deep into frozen stone. Her wings—half-frozen and laced with ice—dragged behind her like heavy flags. Her tail, now a thick coil of slick, protective mass, pushed beneath her feet, boosting her through the worst of the terrain. Together, they crested the ledge. And suddenly, the world opened up.
Below her, the tempest still raged, sweeping through narrow crags like a banshee. But here, on this high, wide plateau tucked between jagged peaks, the winds stilled just enough for her to breathe again. A soft, eerie quiet fell across the summit—like she had stumbled into the eye of the storm. Snow flurries danced gently here, swirling in circles. Light from the bioluminescent veins on her skin reflected in the ice-coated rocks, glowing faintly blue and violet. And just a few dozen steps ahead, a small outcropping of stone and wood leaned against the mountainside.
A shelter.
Someone had been here—maybe even recently. A few tattered flags marked it, fluttering lazily in the weak wind. And most notably, a carved wooden totem, painted with worn symbols of Northchill’s old trials, sat planted firmly in the ground beside it. She froze.
“…They made it,” she murmured.
Her tail lifted slightly, curling around her side to observe. “Looks like one of the old stations. Must’ve been part of the festival route.”
“They climbed this far back then?” Nadira asked, dragging herself closer, her voice husky with admiration—and envy.
“They survived the summit,” the tail said softly. “You’re doing it too.” That shouldn’t have mattered so much. But it did. Nadira bit the inside of her cheek, hard, as she stepped under the crooked awning of the shelter. Her shoulders slumped against the post. Her breathing—heavy and unsteady—finally slowed. And then she slid down to the frozen floor, knees to her chest, and stared into the distant clouds far below. She was scraped, soaked, and exhausted. Her muscles trembled. Her horns were frostbitten at the tips. Every inch of her body ached. But gods above, she'd made it. And not just through the climb—but through herself. Through the stubborn, prideful, competitive rage that told her to never stop even when she should have. Through the mental loops that equated stillness with weakness. It was okay to rest. She could still win tomorrow.
“...You know,” the tail said gently, shifting into a small lump that leaned against her like a dog curling beside its owner, “you didn’t yell at me once this time.”
She scoffed weakly. “Because I was too busy yelling at the storm.”
“Well… I’m proud of you,” it said, softly.
Nadira rolled her eyes, but her face softened. She reached over and gave the tail a tired but genuine scratch along its rounded top.
“…Yeah. Thanks.”
For a long time, she sat there in the quiet of the high place, looking down at the chaos she had climbed through. She let the ache settle in. Let her body remind her it had limits. Let herself be still—not in defeat, but in strength. The wind would come again. The storms would return. The next time someone dared to look at her and call her reckless? She’d smile. Because anyone who could tame the summit's wrath and still walk away burning bright in the dark, was someone worth fearing.

Reward	Amount
Storm Chest	1
Gold	7