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There were many names being thrown around for the most basic of geographical locations. Camp Town was so named not because that was its inaugural name, but because that was what most people called it. It was colloquial and had, when the choice was put to the vote, been what was chosen. But it was hardly the only thing people called it.

Some military types still called it “Roosevelt" because that was the name of the Naval base that preceded the town. Some people tried the ludicrous “Newer Washington" back when there was still debate about the name, though thankfully it never caught on. Some people just said “The Town" and that too was enough in its own way.

Similarly, a lot of the rivers, plains and hills had official names. Mostly denoting who owned them at the time of naming. But all the same, there was a vast, vast number of locations with nicknames to at best to identify them, and inferences at worst.

“The Shoals where the teenagers drowned 11 years ago" was not exactly an uncommon way to refer to a place.

But the Mountains that separated the Penninsula where the remnants of humanity in this world lived did have an official name. And it wasn't even challenged. When they weren't just being referred to as “the mountains" this series of rocky outgrowths of this world's surface went by “White Range."

The altitude at which Mark built his home was still technically at the foot of these mountains. It was laborious to travel to, the ground was rather rocky, and snows came early in fall. It was a rather far away place…but it wasn't situated IN the actual mountain.

Now, the Gryphon only traveled for almost a minute before iKatya slipped out of its claws. Which gave it enough time to climb and travel for about a mile. Said mile placed her high and deep at the beginning of the actual White Range. But it was still close enough for Mark to actually have some experience exploring them.

“There should be-Yes!" Mark grunted as he swung his climbing hook over the edge of a rock and sunk it into the snow on top of it. Snow covered everything at these heights, but he knew that there were plenty of patches of soil on top of these rocks. The metal beak of his hook sunk into the hard soil beneath the snow and provided him with ample leverage for him to lift himself.

He went down to his knees as he took heaving breaths that made his throat feel dry as he slowly, numbly, pulled his rope after him.

It had taken him all of an hour to get this far.

Running wasn't really something you could do while climbing, but Mark had cut as many corners as he could short of literally just leaping rock to rock. The pitons in his backpack clinked as he'd only suffered to use them on this last cliff that he had just climbed, and that only because if his memories of the last time he was here were wrong, he would need to climb down and pick another wall.

As it was, this was the farthest he'd ever climbed these mountains. And the last time he did it, it took him half a day.

But a part of him feared that he'd taken too long as it was.

One hour was far too much time.

The wind was random and treacherous this high up, coming, bolstering and destabilizing out of almost nowhere and in varying directions. Sometimes, it would help you heave yourself over a difficult rock. Some other times, it would rip your hand out of a secure hold.

But always it was sucking the heat out of your limbs.

“Aaaugh." Mark forced himself to get up as he took a drag out of his water bottle, a proper plastic one. The liquid burned with its coldness but Mark didn't have time to gag or take it easy. He drank until it hurt, then he put the bottle back as he walked up to another cliffside.

And swung his hook into another crevice that held more dirt.

Despite the cold and the wind, Mark was actually sweating profusely inside of the fur coats he'd put on. The pace he was keeping was not sustainable by any sense of the word, but he was so close now. So close to where he saw the Gryphon drop his little green woman. And, thankfully, when he crested that wall, he came face to face with the jacket she'd stolen from him.

It was hanging off the stiff limbs of one of the rare trees that grew at this height. It swung like a flag, and it took him but a moment to pry it off and hug it to his face.

It smelled like her.

“They can't be far," he said, because if he didn't vocalize it a part of him was afraid it wouldn't be true. When the Gryphon dived after Katya, it must have let go of the jacket and, hah, it had stab marks in it.

But none of them had penetrated all the way through.

Of course, the Gryphon could have already caught her and taken her off to a safe place. Katya might be dead, with the animal feasting on her.

But besides getting his heart pumping and his fingers twitching, the thought did not help him, so he deliberately chose to believe that they were still here, somewhere.

So he climbed to the edge of the saddle that he found himself in, and looked about.

Thankfully, it wasn't snowing, so the landscape hadn't changed significantly in the time it had taken him to get here. There were signs that Katya's snow slide had caused a small avalanche further in the next ridge, and his heart skipped a bit as there were many holes dug at the newly formed bank at the bottom of it. The Gryphon had, evidently, been trying to get Katya from under the snow.

Had Katya escaped? Or had it found her? Or-had it not because Katya was still buried under the snow?

So many things could happen in an hour. So many, many things.

With a curse Mark quickly hammered a piton into the top of this saddle and then hooked his rope to it as he began his descent.

The lower he climbed, the more evidence of disturbance he saw heading towards claustrophobic trenches in the middle of a few walls. These were depressions on the ridges of this side of the mountain, a valley almost, and they crossed through small copses of trees that had no snow on their limbs. A few were even broken, trampled into the dirt beneath the snow, as paw indentations on the snow broke off in a cliff and let to one of the trenches.

Mark didn't see any signs of Katya, but this wanton path served to calm him somewhat because he didn't think a flying creature would leave these sorts of signs behind unless it was giving chase.

So, after he secured his rope again, he stood on the edge of the trench as he eyed it for the sort of paths that someone Katya's size could take when he heard it.

The Gryphon screamed.

There was much information that could be had from understanding the sounds animals made. Sadly for Mark, the only recordings Camp had were of those taken when they drove them out of the Peninsula. Still, if he had to put a word to this scream it would be “frustrated."

Impressions aside, if the Gryphon was still here, one hour after Katya fell, in frigid heights and cliffs, then it couldn't have gotten Katya. It had to be after prey.

And that meant that Mark wasn't too late.

He took a deep breath and gave himself a rest of all five seconds before he unburdened his backpack and took a few things out.

The battery that he took in hand was an intricate smooth thing. Featureless save for warnings etched on its plastic casing, and the usual polarity indications. It was a thing of simple beauty, that felt simultaneously heavy and solid. While most batteries that a man might buy were amateurish things that would break from the simplest fall, Naval crafts were an entirely different breed apart and a by-word for “quality" these days.

Mark took his machete and, very carefully, made a small incision where its liquid electrolytes were supposed to be stored.

Almost immediately, he smelled its fumes.

Perhaps it was a good thing the Navy didn't let its scant solid-state batteries come out of their workshops. Certainly, Mark would have bought one if he was able to and then he wouldn't have been able to do what he had planned.

The net that Katya had gifted him, the one with the intricate knots that were just about impossible to undo, was surprisingly strong and was just about the only reason why Mark wasn't going about this with just hopes and prayers. Well, he was, but the net could hold on to the Gryphon. Cabin demolisher or not, he was decently certain the net could at least do that.

Mark entangled the battery with the net, tied it so that it would not slip, and straightened it out as he took a length of his normal rope and sliced it. He entwined it with the opposite end from where he tied the battery, as he purposefully didn't entangle the battery in the middle. Preparation done, he hung the weighed net from his shoulders, the battery hanging from his armpits, as he placed one more piton on this cliff and then began descending into the trench.

As he walked through treacherous paths and jumped from foothold to foothold, he cast his sights above him, just to see if he spotted the gryphon. Or if the gryphon had spotted him.

The wind was of no help in these heights. It buffeted against him as much as it tried to pry him away. He strained to hear the flap of those great wings, but all he could captivate was the whistle of the air around him.

The widest path in the trench that he was sure he could brave made him have to crawl and circle around outgrowths. It made him have to hold his breath as he barely managed to fit his fingers in small ledges.

It took him around the bank where Katya fell and had him breathing hard as, not 10 minutes later, it took him to a ridge. An open ridge.

“Where is she?" Mark muttered as he looked around him. This was effectively where this path ended-where was katya? Where was the Gryphon?

Could she have braved one of the less navigable ones? Braved it without the Gryphon having caught up to her?

The Gryphon was still here, so that meant she couldn't have…

Could she?

Mark desperately looked around him when the wind shifted and a grunt reached his ears.

Mark climbed the end of the Trench that he had traveled and saw that there was another trench running parallel to the one he'd climbed. Though maybe the word was a bit too inaccurate.

This was more of a gorge.

Wide enough for his goblin to run in. Small enough for the Gryphon to have problems snatching her out of.

Feather blurred in his peripheral and Mark's breath stopped as the Gryphon furiously reached inside a particularly tight space between two cliffs.

He couldn't see Katya even now, but if he were a betting man, well…then he'd say that, yes, he wasn't too late after all.

The Gryphon scrambled around this bind. It huffed and cried in what Mark just knows is frustration, the same tone and pitch as when he had first heard it. It tries reaching into the tight space from various angles, its clawd paws being far too big to get very far inside. It scratches against the rock, leaving claw marks, as it grips, flaps and moves around its prey.

The wind, for once, helped Mark and blew his scent and his noise away from his quarry as he slowly climbed towards it.

Other animals visited these mountains as hard to believe as it was. But none of them were stupid enough to be out of their hiding spot when there obviously was a Gryphon nearby. But the gorge offered many footholds and hiding spots. Mark, in his urgency, had evidently missed what Katya in her desperation had not.

He got closer and closer to the growling animal, the eagle with a bear's body. He got close enough to make its individual feathers out as it jittered and moved about. He got close enough that he no longer needed the wind to aid him in hearing it. He even got close enough to smell it and, shit, it smelled like death.

Wild animals didn't always smell pleasant, but most groomed themselves. Birds more than most.

But this one smelled sick.

And then he started hearing it.

It's wet coughs.

Among the growls, among the screeches, among the screams of unfairness, its breath was stilted as it seemed to take raspy huffs that sounded as though its air pipes were inundated.

Mark recalled then the bolt sticking from its chest and the pus coming out of one of its eyes. It had obviously survived the Camp's ambush, but not completely.

Perhaps…that was the reason Katya had survived this long.

Mark got close enough to feel its movement in the rocks. He was just over around the corner where the animal was knocking on and that meant it was now time for him to act.

Climbing for one hour and descending a trench and then a gorge was not an easy thing, and his body ached with such exhaustion that he was sure would make him keel over his bed once he was back home with his goblin.

Or so he prayed.

But this next part wouldn't care at all about how exhausted he was. Thankfully, the proximity of the Gryphon ensured that his blood was flooded with adrenaline.

By this point, the fumes of the battery had coated the net with its fluids, and had even soaked into his shirt. A manageable worry, so long as he didn't fuck up.

Carefully, he pulled a small bar of flint from his backpack and held it against the battery. Taking his machete out, he turned it around and struck the flint above his net.

The “clang" of iron on metal made the Gryphon briefly stop as sparks were produced.

And lit his net.

The gryphon was already turning towards him when Mark circled around the rock, his net in his hand trailing behind him as he used the battery as a weight. Its eyes widened at his sudden appearance as it flapped its wings, trying to make some space between them. But no before Mark cast his net.

Not before the battery flew over its body and entangled the flaming net in its wings.

The Gryphon screeched so loudly as it crashed into the wall of the gorge that it almost made Mark's ears bleed. It didn't tumble down, it was too big for that, but it rolled and rolled into deeper crevices as it tried to get its beak and claws into the ropes.

For whatever reason, things didn't explode like they ought to in this world. But, as experience had taught humanity, things could still burn.

The battery fire reached such potency that it hurt Mark's eyes and the screams only redoubled as the gryphon's desperation grew and, blissfully, tumbled out of his sight.

That went well-no, that went perfectly. Well above what he could, should, have hoped. The net and battery would keep it occupied, but Mark sincerely had no illusions about it taking care of it.

Gryphons were tough.

“Katya!" Mark called as he slipped with some difficulty into the gap that the Griffon couldn't go into. But just because it contained him didn't mean he couldn't slip up and fall hundreds of feet down below.

The walls were uneven and the rock had rocky protuberances which he could set his feet against and hold with his hands. He didn't see Katya, yet he knew this was where she had to be!

“Katya!" he yelled again as he looked around himself, trying to see where she might be.

“Katya!" he was going to yell a third time until his foot dug into a depression and, instead, went all the way through.

Without the pressure from his foot, he started slipping down, his hands sliding forward as his other leg made it a split.

He almost fell down-save that a pair of small hands grabbed his backpack and pulled him into the hole his feet had just slipped into.

Making him come face to face with a small green woman with golden hourglasses for pupils.

She had on her normal furs, but they were shredded everywhere. Her knees were bloody and her fingers were thoroughly scraped. Her feet and nose were almost blue, and she was….she was staring at him.

“Mark," she said, desperate happy tears in her eyes as she tightly held on to him.

This was a small alcove, the kind he would never have been able to fit into.

But that Katya could.

The contrast of shadows in the gorge had occluded this space to him and he was now, as the tiny green woman that he had come to rescue tried to squeeze the life out of him, having to press on between two cliff walls.

It was rather uncomfortable.

He also wouldn't have traded it for anything else in the world.

“Katya," Mark breathed out and circled an arm around her waist, pressing her against his side.

There were so many things that he wanted to tell her, language gap or not. So many things that he wanted to share now that he realized how easily she might be snatched away.

He wanted to lay down in his tent with her, hug her between his arms, and never, EVER, let her go.

The Town? His Cabin? The problems in his life? In that little moment of relief, Mark realized that not a single one of them mattered to him as much as his tiny woman did.

“Mark," Katya croaked as she sobbed, “Go home?"

Mark disengaged from her waist so that he could reach inside his backpack to take out a jacket that Mark didn't really mind being hers.

“Let's go home," he confirmed as his goblin hiccuped a gasp and sobbed as she donned it again.

—-------------------------------------

Emotional rescue or not, a crevice was not a good place for them to talk. The rescue wasn't done and Mark wasn't sure how much time he had gained by entangling the Gryphon with his fiery net.

So, with a goblin ensconced in her well-padded jacket, he climbed back up where they came.

The pitons he had left behind were still there, and that made it easy for him to secure his rope on the harsh walls, Katya managing to keep up with him.

If only barely.

Mark hated how cold her hand felt in his.

They had to go around the bank that Katya's fall had filled with an avalanche; There was no good place to climb back up. Thankfully, since they were descending the mountains, that was not a particularly hard obstacle to circumspect and Mark soon found himself walking down grooves in the mountain that he had never known were there.

They would take him to a farther off-peak, yes, but it would do so at a lower elevation at which point they might well just take to the hills and travel home that way.

With Katya practically glued to him, she slowly regained her warmth as Mark carefully banged pitons into hard-to-travel walls and secured her with rope before letting her go down. The “path" actually became wider as they went down, to the point that he and his girl could walk side by side, but the more he traveled the less energy Katya seemed to have.

She had been in the mountains with nothing but a fur skirt on for over an hour, and that without discounting how much she had scraped herself. It was honestly a miracle that she was alive.

When they hit a cliffside saddle, one that was flat, partly covered in snow and partly ensconced by rocks overhead, Mark decided that they were far enough from the Gryphon to rest.

“Katya," he gently told her as he unlimbered his backpack and put it against the wall, “We rest here."

“No," Katya shook her head, “Monster there. Here. Danger."

“It'll be fine," Mark hesitated for only a second before he reached out with his hand and caressed her head, “I got you. It'll be fine."

Katya closed her eyes as she leaned into his hand, her legs giving beneath her as she slid down the rock and cradled her legs, “...ok."

Mark knelt next to her and also put his back against the wall as the adrenaline seemed to suddenly run out, leaving him with a comfy partner and utterly spent.

Maybe Katya wasn't the only one that needed this.

His eyes were about to flitter close, the wind whistling around them as he stayed warm next to his woman, his backpack blocking providing cover for them both, as the sounds of far-off rocks falling down the mountain were heard.

Yes, rock slides happen every now and then. It was one of the dangers of mountain climbing, but here and now, it wasn't a concern for them.

The sound got closer and closer, however, seeming to head for them.

Mark frowned as he considered the danger but, just as quickly dismissed it; the saddle they were on was big and their backs were to a groove on the mountain wall beside. If rocks fell where they were, it would just pass them by.

But it wasn't the sound of many rocks rumbling down. It wasn't the usual tide that he was familiar with.

No, it sounded as though a single boulder-

The gryphon crashed down in front of them.

One ton of it crashed down into the snow, and made Katya's eyes snap open as she pointed at it and screamed.

But the Gryphon wasn't paying attention to it. No, it was clawing at a bloody wing that had a hole burnt through it.

The wing that Mark's net had trapped the battery against limply hung from the gryphon's back, a hint of charred flesh in the air. But the battery was nowhere to be seen and, with a paint grunt, the Gryphon snapped its head and pulled the now ruined net out of itself.

With a victorious cry, it threw the net over the side of the cliff and huffed wet breaths as it turned around on shaky legs.

And met Mark and it's quarry after all.

Both hunter and prey froze as they stared at each other.

“Stay behind me," Mark ordered Katya, rising up with his grappling hook still in his left hand. His machete made a grinding sound as he filled his right hand with it.

The Gryphon snapped out of its shock and gave a piercing shriek as it advanced on them.

How curious, Mark thought.

All of a sudden, he didn't feel tired.

Nor afraid.

This was a fight that he had been dreading having, but now that it was here? It didn't matter anymore.

He had no idea if he was going to win or if he even could.

But as the Gryphon charged him it realized that it didn't matter.

Not one single bit.