Black Shadow pulled himself up the rope and onto the side of the mountain where there was a ledge, and the steepness of the peak was mild enough to climb. He grabbed the rope when he was done climbing, and began to secure it for when the king began to climb. Even though the king was much shorter than Black Shadow, he weighed nearly twice and a half his weight; the arrow in the mountain would not have been nearly enough. After the long and strenuous climb- on both the archer, and the king- Black Shadow made sure that King Hronzak was on secure land, before retrieving the arrow from the mountain and hoisting up the rope so that none could follow. Even if dwarves had seen the rope, there was no way they could replicate the ascent to the peak.

Turning to the snow capped mountaintop, Black Shadow began with one foot in front of the other, climbing higher and higher. King Hronzak climbed behind him, putting his feet in each of the steps that Black Shadow had made for him in the snow. Black Shadow looked back occasionally to see how the king was doing, but the surface seemed to be holding up. After a long and arduous climb, Black Shadow was only five feet from the peak. As he closed the final distance to the top, the pure white of the snow on the top was replaced with the endless view of the entire mountain range. Al Kitar was the tallest mountain in the range, and beautiful wilderness seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see.

“Incredible,” Black Shadow heard the king huff from behind him. “In all my years, I have lived in this mountain, I have never stood atop it. I have ruled over this kingdom, and my ancestors have ruled, and their ancestors have ruled, but never before have we viewed our kingdom like this.”

Black Shadow continued to look out over the landscape. Up at this altitude, there was a snowstorm that gave the whole landscape a whiteish overtone. Down on the scene, there were rivers and lakes, forests and massive tracts of land that seemed so majestic.

“My father once took me when I was a young prince, and told me to trek to the top of the falls on the far side of the mountain range, and all that I could see was what I would rule. I never truly understood the scope of what he said until now.”