Summit

Three large birds flew in a delta around the mountain. Up here nothing aside from tiny insects and worthless rodents lived; any major food animals were long gone. All the good prey lived down in the forest and out on the plains, but the birds’ species memory told them that threats could and did appear from the top of the mountain, so a constant vigilance was maintained. One of the birds jerked it’s head upwards, and saw a tiny speck on the grey hulk of stone. It’s eyes magnified it until the speck morphed into a logical shape. The bird ran it through the collective memory.

‘’Standing bear?’’ No. ‘’Fire-breathing scale flyer?’’ No. ‘’Strange pink-creature?’’ Yes!

The bird squawked to it’s wingmates, and in one graceful move they turned and started to fly up the mountainside.

Bruce Brysworth’s fingers closed around another rocky outcrop. For several hours the mountainside had been proceeding vertically on all sides, with not one diagonal he could try to walk up. So he had precariously been climbing his way, trying to reach a large rocky outcrop that preceded the final, smooth diagonal of ice and snow. He pulled himself up, and looked ahead to realise that now he was in front of a narrow but safe ledge. He raised himself onto it and sat down, resting his arms and taking a quick drink. Then he looked down. In the far distance he could see the huge brown ledge which he had escaped from two days beforehand. Tiny pinpricks of red and crimson dotted the ledge and the sky. But three larger dots appeared, just of the mountainside, and slowly growing. Bruce squinted at them, then realised what they were. He immediately packed his bottle away, stood back up and started climbing again.

By some feat of nature and extraordinary bad luck Bruce was arriving at the top of the cliff in the middle of a catastrophic rainstorm. As his palm touched the freezing stone he almost lost his grip – but his feet found a steady hold, and he lifted himself up. With some difficulty, he released a huge burst of energy that sent him over the edge and rolling onto the snowy ground. He lay there for a second, eyes closed, body strength slowly regenerating. Then he opened his eyes.

Three tall figures in sky-blue hooded cloaks stood around him, each carrying a long wooden pole. Bruce lifted his upper body to try and show he meant no harm. Beneath each hood a stern, pallid face glared down at him, although all he could so far see were their lined mouths. Bruce smiled sheepishly. Suddenly, the figures threw their poles into the air. Bruce watched, bewildered. Suddenly each one threw his cloak off, revealing three strong, athletic men in another set of light blue robes. Each held his hand in the air, in which the poles landed exactly. They started to swing them, performing strange moves that seemed somewhere between ritual and show-off. Bruce got up and backed off. His backpack hit a door, preventing him from moving any further. The three figures closed in. Bruce raised his hands, again trying to show he meant no harm, but to no avail. The figures spun their poles. Two leapt in the air, flying towards Bruce. He raised his arms in the air to protect himself.

And then they were snatched out of the air by two huge birds. Bruce lowered his arms to see the gigantic avian predators dig their talons deep into the two fighters. The third fighter spun around just as a third bird spun into him, ramming him in the chest with it’s gigantic beak. Bruce leapt aside as the bird-propelled body slammed into the door behind him with such force that the wood splintered. The bird flared it’s wings, stopping itself just in front of the door. The fighter stood up, moaning in the pain of broken ribs and bones everywhere. As he raised himself the bird pounced forward, snatching the man in it’s beak and carrying him away, front body flailing, legs deep inside it’s mouth. The three birds rejoined their formation and flew off. Bruce watched gobsmacked. Then he quickly ran indoors.

The corridor was long and dark, illuminated only with flaming torches that cast little light and the meagre light that came through the rain-drenched windows. The corridor practically rumbled as the rain sheeted onto the roof, and the wind found its way through the battered remnants of the door, howling down the hall. Bruce had wrapped himself in one of the robes that the fighters had dropped before their demise, trying to stave off the cold, icy conditions.

Slowly, however, the temperature started to increase, and the rain’s beating grew quieter. Bruce also noticed that the corridor was no longer sloping upwards, and starting to level out. He must have been inside the mountain. As the temperature grew from freezing to tolerable, he threw away his stolen robe and started to walk more sneakily. After about half an hour of dodging patrols of more fighters who could only be best described as monks Bruce decided to get rid of his bag. Carefully, he picked the lock of a storage cupboard and threw the bag inside. Just to be sure he would be safe storing it there, Bruce put a tiny coin he fished out from his pocket and put it in the door slot, at the base, clearly in sight but ignorable by most people. The moment he was done he stood back up, drew his sword, and moved on.

As he moved throughout the interior of the mountain, he noticed that the air became warmer and moister. Strange sounds echoed through, like gigantic, muffled explosions. Bruce had been to lava-filled caverns and found forests with unique ecosystems; but never before had he been anywhere as bizarre as this. He was about to leap across a corridor cross-roads, behind a group of red-dressed warrior monks, when his foot fell in a moisture-formed puddle and a loud splash reverberated through the corridor.

The warrior monks turned. Bruce turned at looked at them. In unison they drew back their hoods and threw off their cloaks. And then Bruce had a brigade of sixteen pole-spinning, battle-trained, and really dangerous athletic young men leaping their way down the corridor. Bruce raised his sword. The first two warriors flew through the air at him. Quickly he raised his sword and slashed at them. The first warrior wasn’t injured, but the angle he was moving at made the area above his left ear hit the blade. Unconscious, his body slammed into the wall. Bruce turned and attacked the other warrior. This one wasn’t so lucky – the blade splintered the wooden pole and drove itself across the man’s hands. He fell back, one hand with two and a half fingers missing and the other retaining only a thumb and half a palm. He screamed in the geyser of blood.

The next pair hesitated, just long enough to give Bruce a window of time to escape. He seized the opportunity and bolted down one of the corridors. As he sprinted he removed the torches from their racks, throwing them on the floor. It would slow him down but also hinder the warrior monks’ progress. After he had cleared on corridor he moved on, down another, entering a large hall. He stopped there and looked around, to see table after table of monks.

The mess hall.

“Oops...” he said as they stood up in one universal movement. “Gotta go!”

As the monks started to leap over tables and glide through the air towards him, Bruce ran possibly the fastest he had ever run out of the hall. He was presented with a fork, of five different choices. He didn’t waste any time being picky – he ran down the middle one. The horde of monks followed him. He dashed down the corridor, as suddenly there was a piercing cry from a strange instrument. All the doors on either side of the corridor opened.

“Oh bother!” he muttered as he realised he was running right through the mountain’s barrack blocks. Some of the monks were slow to react, giving Bruce just enough time to pass through and spin round to a smaller corridor on the left. In places it was so small he had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the iron pipes that ran overhead. He emerged to find himself in a new area, a gargantuan cavern that was basically a giant arboretum and botanical garden in one area. Beneath the oddly out-of-place foliage he darted down various earthen paths, picking at random on a route which he hoped would lead him to safety. He could hear the cries of battle-ready monks as they pursued him.

Suddenly, the trail stopped, leading to a corner. Bruce stopped moments before he hit the granite rock face. The war-cries were growing louder and louder. Frantically Bruce looked for an exit. He ran his fingers over the wall, trying to find something that would open a door. Instead, his fingers ran over a very fine perimeter, and detecting this, he yanked the door open, revealing a low, dimly-lit passage. He crawled through, and using the handle on the back of the disguised door pulled it shut.

He turned to crawl through the low passage. For a few minutes, everything was the same – a rocky seam that spiralled up and down. As it narrowed, Bruce feared that it led to nowhere, and he would be trapped. But then he saw a dim light source poking through, and his confidence returned. He crawled further through, and then with delight found the passage widening again. He paused to resheath his sword before he continued. After, he started moving again, where the passage seemed to level out. There was a strong light coming from outside, and he heard the sound of birds. Had the passage taken him to the bottom of the mountain? No.

The answer spun through his mind as he fell through the air at the sudden end of the passageway onto a giant platform of compacted wood and earth, populated by the birds. As he landed hard onto the surface, he had just enough time to notice a silver ring around one bird’s foot, reading:

‘’Lathas constructor bird, egg 3, generation 624’’.

Then he passed out.

He woke up to find himself bound to a chair in a bright, block-shaped room. The walls were whitewashed and the torches shone out from beneath the glass floor and in frosted glass windows. As Bruce’s eyesight slowly went from black and blurred to shades of grey to full colour he was able to distinguish a tall, white-robed figure standing in front of him, with an Oriental appearance and a long grey moustache, with a clipped triangular beard. His robes were extravagant and gold-rimmed. The man spoke to Bruce.

“Welcome to our establishment, Mr Brysworth.”

Bruce looked at him. “You know my name?”

“Of course! Everyone knows of the exploits of Bruce Brysworth. Although we all thought you were a quite a more cultured figure, not someone who would run around protected government establishments like a common criminal.”

“Since when does any government of any kingdom hire monks and killer birds to guard an establishment? Especially one that I thought was supposed to be free to everyone.”

“You mean the Grand Exchange?”

“You don’t say!” Bruce said in a thick, sarcastic voice.

“The Grand Exchange is nothing but an elaborate cover story.”

“For what? And more importantly, why have you suddenly decided to reveal that something ‘’is’’ going on and this isn’t a facility of any major importance?”

“Because you are a respectable man who should know exactly what is going on, not someone who should be kept in the dark.”

“Hmm.”

“You see, I work for a man named Lathas.”

Bruce made the connection with the name on the silver ring, and then his mind jumped to a conclusion. “King Lathas?”

“Yes.”

“What does that old fool want with this facility?”

“To be king again. He has hired my warriors to look after this facility, and has asked us to prepare the birds for the conquest.”

“But why here?”

“Can you think of a better way of getting somewhere all over Gielinor?”

Bruce suddenly realised what he was talking about. There were Grand Exchanges all over Gielinor, from Al Kharid to Karamja to Ardougne. And every place was accessible from here. If the birds were to be teleported to each Exchange the known world would be ravaged in hours.

“I have to admire the strategic planning.” Bruce commented.

“Yes, it is good.”

“It would be a shame if someone were to throw a spanner in the works at this point.”

“Yes,” smiled the man, “It would.” He turned at walked out a door that was expertly hidden in the otherwise featureless wall. Bruce sat, wondering what to do. He had little doubt that the plan would be enacted any moment now – why else would he have been told? He needed to escape, and fast.

Then, he had an idea. His sword had been removed from him, and so had all his knives; but Bruce was remarkably double jointed. Swiftly, he bent his left arm back as far as it would go – namely, almost one hundred and eighty degrees. His fingers prowled along the rope, searching for the knots. He found one, and rapidly got to work fingering it out of position. A knot expert, he was quickly finished, and felt the rope slacken slightly. He searched for another, then undid that too. The rope again lessened in its binding force. He undid three more knots and the rope fell off. He instantly stood up.

But now what? The door’s perimeter had disappeared, and he didn’t have time to search the entire of the wall for the openings. But as he touched the surface he felt wood; tough, but wooden. And therefore burnable. He turned to look at the frosted glass floor. And he jumped. The glass cracked immediately, but held. Bruce jumped again, and the cracks proliferated into other panels. He jumped once more, and the entire floor shattered.

Bruce fell between four flaming logs. He picked one up and laid it next to the door. He did it several times over, then fanned the flames for a few minutes, waiting for the wall to catch fire. Eventually, the flames latched onto the white surface, and the paint slowly peeled off. Then faster. Then faster still. Soon flames were creeping up the whole wall, and smoke was climbing up and gathering around the roof. Finally, the wall exploded in a hail of dust and flaming wood. Bruce wasted no time in running outside. A rack outside held his belt, his knives and his sword. He gathered them up, strapped them to the belt, wrapped the belt around his waste, held his sword steady and ran.

In the gigantic warehouse off crates and conveyer belts that ran from deep within the mountain to far above it’s natural peak, the Head Monk stood on a podium, in front of all the rest of the warrior monks and a collected horde of birds.

“Tonight, my brothers, we take this world for the Great Dictator himself – the new lord of the world, King Lathas!”

The birds and monks squawked and cheered.

“We shall lead his armies and establish a new empire that will last forever!”

More cries of joy.

“And as we rule the planet we will earn our way to the Realm of Enlightenment!”

The crowd went mad.

“All I need to do is to activate this rune and summon the portals that will spread us across the world. Are you all in your correct groups? Excellent! Our conquest begins... ‘’‘’’AHHHHHH!!!’’’’’”

An arrow had cut clean through his hand, and emerging on the other side and going again back through the tip of his index finger, stopping a millimetre away from the rune that had been elaborately carved which served as a button.

In a moment, everyone turned to look. Bruce stood there with a bow and arrow.

“Excellent – villainous plot averted!” He smiled, dropped the bow, and ran up a staircase built into the wall.

“Yahh... ‘’AFTER HIM!’’” the Head Monk bellowed. A few blue-dressed monks leapt up to face Bruce. Moments before they landed on the steel plating he swung his sword at them. Each and every one of lost confidence, sending their jumps awry. As they slammed onto the floor or the side of the deck Bruce kept on running up.

Five minutes later and almost out of breath he had reached the top level. The monks and the birds were coming for him now, and there was nowhere to run other than a precarious escape across the conveyor belts that would lead to nowhere useful. But the conveyor belts could provide something useful. Bruce spied an open-topped crate containing a multitude of runes, and behind it one containing staffs. He quickly grabbed them and faced the door. Behind him a bird soared – he whipped round and hit it with a heavy punch. It fell, but it’s feet caught the side of the platform. Bruce peered over and saw a ring around a talon that was dangling aimlessly. He pulled it off, then stamped on the foot, causing the bird to fall. As he peered at the ring, he became aware of a strange smell. He sniffed the ring – the smell was emanating from there. A plan formulated itself in his mind. Just as the monks were ascending to his level they paused as the wall exploded in a blast of magic. Icy air whipped in with freezing raindrops. But then their progress continued. Bruce took out his toughest knife and looked at the ring. He hoped this would work. Bruce slit a bulging part that felt as if it contained a liquid substance. A purple fluid sprayed out.

Far down the mountainside, the acute sense of smell shared by each bird detected the tiny whiff of a hostile group pheromone. And all the predators rose up and ascended the mountain.

Three minutes later the monks and birds surrounded Bruce. They all thought he didn’t have a chance. But then there was a tremendous beating of wings and bird cries, and the original colony fell ripping and slashing at the monks and slave birds. Carnage immediately ensued. With no time to waste, Bruce leapt on a conveyor belt and ran across it, dodging crates. A bird swooped inches overhead as Bruce ducked. Up ahead the shimmering, gyrating, pulsating sheet of lapis lazuli that was a portal exhibited itself. Bruce looked at it, and leapt through.

On the other side, Bruce emerged above a stack of crates and flew through the air, before knocking over several wizards in a rather bumpy landing. He stood up, amidst a crowd of onlookers. He turned and looked up to see around a large circular stone building,

“Welcome to Yanille Grand Exchange”