The Malix Mountains

This is the first draft of a setting description for a novel that I am writing. Feedback is as always much appreciated! Enjoy!

The jagged peaks tore up from the ground like sharpened teeth ripping through the land. Every side was a sheer drop, a plunge from the heights of heaven to the depths of hell. The cliffs were made of shale and pieces often broke off and tumbling down the edges, they would shatter into mere fragments. These were the Malix Mountains.

As for their colour, they were of a monochromatic multitude, a thousand different shades of grey. Here and there bits of tenacious vegetation attempted to cling to the crags and lent their grayish greens and ashy yellows to the precipice’s palette. Recycled snow lay like a mantle around the promontory, too dull to offer any gleam.

Some nights storms would gather and build around the summits and then come screaming down into the foothills and valleys below. Lightning would etch the mountains’ relief upon the endless sky and thunder would beat and reverberate off its crests. Other nights, the silence was so stretched, so still that the slightest sound would detonate and fracture the air.

Eagles soared and screeched while encircling the rugged cliffs. Their nests were nestled into the crevices, protecting their young from all but the stealthiest of serpents. Mountain goats leap and cavorted with stunning ease from ledge to ledge, like awkward-looking acrobats.

Dry, hot winds had spent the centuries pitting and contorting the ridges into fantastical shapes and caverns, connected by deep tunnels, riddled their slopes.

Many a thief or fugitive had lurked within these caves, hiding from their would-be capturers and protecting their hordes of stolen treasure. Many had never returned and more still ranged among the treacherously loose rocks searching for lost gold.

Myths and legends were created among these mountains and ghosts haunted them still. Unknown, unmapped and often said impassable, this was not a terrain for the faint of heart.

This was where men were made and cowards were killed.