1529 Other Abilities 1

The closer he got to me, I started to feel something in the back of my head - something primal, and menacing, and above all, hateful.

█████: What happened when it reached you?

L.: It grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me up to face it. I was looking right into those goggles, those eyes…

█████: Were they goggles or eyes?

L.: Neither. Both. I don't know. But it was like I could see things in them. Not see them, so much… more like feel them. Images and feelings in the back of my mind. Rage, and joy, and… confusion.

█████: Confusion?

L.: I don't think it was used to people resisting it. It asked me a question.

█████: It spoke?

L.: Not words, so much. I could hear it, but not with my ears. I saw images of people - people sitting back in hot tubs, laying by a crackling fire, sunning themselves on the beach. Warm, happy people. But I knew their faces. They were faces I'd seen in books, and in pictures, and people I'd seen on the way up the mountain who I hadn't seen on the way down. I saw Green Boots! People still lying face-down somewhere in the death zone. And I heard its question.

█████: Which was?

L.: "You would refuse my gift?"

[...]

Moving my lips was harder than anything I've ever done… but I did, and I told it "Yes."

█████: How did it respond?

L.: I saw more images. Images of those same people, lying in the snow, already half-dead. I could tell I was looking at them from its perspective. It was [DATA EXPUNGED] them. I could've been sick. It didn't say anything to me in words so much - but it was angry at me. It was offended, outraged, shocked. It was trying to tell me I'd been ungrateful - and instead of relaxing peacefully while it [DATA EXPUNGED] I'd have to feel every minute of it. I asked it, "Why are you doing this?"

█████: What did it say then?

L.: It mocked me.

[...]

L.: It… it showed me another one of its victims. Probably the first one. Mallory. 1924. I'd have known that face like my own mother's, but I'd never seen it in that kind of detail before… or in that condition. He was on his stomach. Weak. Frostbitten. Dying. He was waving and hollering at the thing as I watched it approach from its own perspective. It looked him in the eyes and it [DATA EXPUNGED]. It made me watch every second until it was done. I think watching it was worse than living it would've been. And then it told me…

(L. is silent.)

█████: Told you what?

L.: "Because it's there."

***
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[Note: "Green Boots" refers to Tsewang Paljor, a climber who died climbing Mt. Everest in 1996. This information was explained in a footnote slightly earlier in the article]