A Strange Messenger with Shocking News

Author’s Note: This is a continuation of Farren’s journey through a limbo world where everyone is trying to reach the peak of a mountain but have a rope tied to their ankle. Start here or with Part 1.

Farren dragged his balls of rope up the hill. The terrain was rough and rugged. He wrapped his line into balls, and by his count, he was deep into the thirties. Sweating from the exertion of getting up the hill he sat down looking across the land in front of him. 
He could see the mountain once again, and it was growing on the horizon. There was nothing subtle about it anymore. He had been surprised to see it in the beginning. He considered the possibility of circumnavigating the globe, let alone do it mostly on foot. 
Now the mountain he left ages ago was a regular prop on his horizon. It grew as he accumulated more and more of his rope. Farren was slow to get his hopes up though because he knew that one day his line would take a turn and pull him away from the mountain and towards the massive rock that lay at the end of his rope. 
Standing at the top of the hill he could see movement through the trees. These were the people who were also working their way to the mountain. He wondered how many of them were working their way back to their rock and how many were pulling against a heavy stone to reach the mountain. From his experience, most were dragging their rock far behind them and tugging against it when it got stuck to break it free.
Farren wondered how many people were in a similar situation as him, with a rock that seemed close to the mountain. If those people couldn’t see the mountain, they might move in the opposite direction of their rock thereby moving them unknowingly away from the mountain. 
As he thought about these things, his energy returned to him. He looked less at the moving trees below him that indicated travelers and instead set his sights on his rock. He looked for it on the horizon. When Merc, the god who assigned him his rock, asked what size he wanted Farren had said he wanted the biggest one they had. Why he had done it, he still didn’t know. At the time Farren was new to the world, and likely his overconfidence was pushing him to take on a remarkable challenge. He still didn’t remember his past life, and it seemed to him most people in this world didn’t remember theirs either. 
Scanning the horizon, he hoped that the biggest rock the gods had would be visible. The fact that he couldn’t see it indicated one of two things to Farren. It was either still over the horizon meaning he would pass by the mountain and continue traveling or it was shorter than the trees.

He looked up at the tree next to him. It wasn’t short. He had considered climbing it to get a better view. In the end he’d decided against it thinking it might take him the rest of the day to get to the top. If his rock was that height and had an equally large diameter, Farren doubted he would be able to move it. 
A rock that size would crush most things with its weight and surely as the trees got thicker closer to the mountain he wouldn’t be able to fit the boulder between them. As Farren stared at the tall tree in front of him, he began to daydream of solutions for moving his rock towards the mountain. 
He halted the daydream when he realized that the mountain was so steep and convoluted in places that there’d be almost no way to drag the rock up without it sliding back down or getting stuck in places. As Farren’s hope escaped him followed by a sigh, he began back down the hill and towards the rock that would bind him to one location for eternity. 

Farren traveled for many more days reaching the peaks of various hills and searching for his rock among the trees. He saw nothing but each time he searched he saw the mountain grow on the horizon. It grew and grew, and he thought that if he continued on this course, he would soon find his entire field of view would become consumed by the base of the mountain. That was until his rope inevitably turned away from it on his never-ending quest for his rock. 
He could see more detail on the mountain. When he had headed away from it, in the beginning, he’d never considered studying the mountain’s features, especially with his back to it. Now as he approached it, he couldn’t help but examine the behemoth’s trees and cliffs. He could see where the greenery of the forest grew up its base and stopped then there was bare rock where nothing seemed to grow. It became white after that before disappearing into the clouds.
He wondered how much further it grew up past the clouds, but they were always up there blocking the top from view. Each time he saw it, he wondered if one day the winds would change and remove the vail from the mountain’s top. He doubted this and even considered it being for his good because if he saw how high the peak sat, he might give up all hope there and then. 
Farren descended the hill he had topped that day and began to hear a person traveling through the woods. They weren’t subtle, and he heard them making a lot of noise. Farren considered going to find them but thought better of it. It was merely a distraction to him, and he felt that he would fall down the slippery slope of chasing people around the thick forest. Not to mention he thought it would be hard to convince people to move the other way when the mountain was so close in sight. 

As Farren traveled, he found the sound was approaching him. He began to become excited about the prospect of seeing another person.
The man who broke through the clearing was not doing what Farren had expected. The stranger looked about Farren’s age with dusty brown hair, a skinny build, and a small button nose. He also had unkempt strands of loose slack roped around his shoulders and dragging limp in the dirt behind him. The strange thing about the man was that he was walking while looking down at Farrens rope. Farren suspected that if the man had been quieter, the two would have headbutted each other.
“Hello?” Farren said breaking the man from the trance that Farren’s rope had caused. The man jumped, and the look on his face was pure awe.
The other man began to say something then stopped only to try and start again seconds later. When nothing came out, Farren decided to clarify his question. “How are you?”
The man continued to be baffled. Farren thought the man might have a stutter, but when the words came out, they were as clear as day. “You’re who this rope belongs to?”
“Yes, this is my rope,” Farren said looking at the rope he balls that connected to him. He presented his ankle to the man as if the knot had some identification to it. 
The man looked at him amazed and in disbelief. For a moment Farren thought the man was looking at Farren so intently that became nervous and began rubbing his hands together. 

“It’s really you,” the man said. 
Farren shrugged, he didn’t know what the man meant. “Where are you headed? Why do you have so much rope just laying around? Surely it gets caught on things often.”
“Yes, it gets caught all the time. I’ve been following your rope for a long time now.”
“Following my rope,” Farren said in bewilderment. “Why would you do that? Follow your own rope. Then you’ll find your rock and be able to go anywhere in this world.” He had assumed that this man was just another person who had gotten the message of Farren’s idea. Although he was surprised anyone would undergo such a long journey without knotting their rope tightly. Was this part of the message lost in the retelling? Farren wondered.
“Follow my rope?” The man said just as confused as Farren. “Why would I do that? Mine’s just attached to a rock some distance away. I’ve been fighting with it my whole way to the mountain.”
“You’re not headed to the mountain though.” Farren began pointing out the obvious in an attempt to make sense of the situation.
“I was there then I found your rope and followed it back.”
“My rope passes by the mountain?” Farren asked. It was strange he didn’t think he would pass so closely to the mountain on his journey to his rock.
“Of course it goes to the mountain,” the man said, “It doesn’t just pass by it though. It’s attached to it.”
“Attached to what?”
“Attached to the mountain,” the man said slowly. “I assumed you knew. I assumed you merely told the gods to attach you to the mountain so you could climb it easier.”
“My rope is attached to the mountain?” 
“Yes,” the man dragged the word out as if saying it slower would put it firmly into Farren’s head.
“You mean that it’s attached to a massive rock that’s sitting on the mountain?” Farren said trying to reconcile the situation.
“No,” the man said with a bit of snicker behind his voice. “It’s attached to a little outcropping that no one can reach. There’s a little bit of rope looped around it with a knot like the one on our ankles.”
“I can’t be attached to the mountain. I asked for the biggest boulder the gods had, and so they gave me something heavy. I never asked to be attached to the mountain. You must have followed the wrong rope.”
The man laughed, “Something heavy is accurate, that mountain has to be the biggest thing in the world. That was some clever wordplay. If you had outright asked to be attached to the mountain, they surely would have denied you.”
“I’m really attached to the mountain?” Farren asked one more time quietly as if speaking it too loud would make it untrue.
“Yes. You’re attached to the mountain, and about a dozen people are waiting near the knot to meet you. Although some of them have a feeling, you’ll never show.” 
Farren thought he had agreed with some of those people until a few minutes ago. Dragging his rock was now an impossible task, but it seemed like it didn’t need to be done anymore either.