The children often ask why the elders tell them to avoid the mountain. The mountain has never given them a reason to fear it, yet to fear it and stay away is what they are told.
I will not tell them to fear the mountain. Instead I tell them of the King Within-The-Mountain.
He sits deep within the mountain in a cavern-court, to which none have found any entry. A thousand men curse in his name every day, yet none have ever been cursed by him in return. He sits on a throne of rubble and rocks, backed by one solid slab on which in the top right are carved rough letters said to spell his name, though none now living can read them.
His chest is a size like that of a normal man. On a too-thin neck sits his head, three times the size of his chest and like a whales in shape; long and rounded, at the end of which sits a flat face. Two small eyes stare out, and his mouth is wide but flat. He smiles sometimes. His arms are a normal length. His fingers extended not from any palms of a hand, but instead seem to stretch from the bones in his arm itself stretching many times his length and further still if he wills it, cracking and stretching the bones.
In his court there stand two pillars. One a great and gnarled thing akin to an old tree. Every inch of it is carved and adorned such that even a trained eye would take weeks to entangle its patterns. Many eyes are carved on it looking outwards.
The other is a straight beam of wood, carefully worked. It is split by carved bands into seven segments, sun and stars it is said are carved at the top and sea and stone at the bottom. Between are carved a face, claws, and feet, though it's said none are certain this is true.
On these two pillars rests a rod, it is believed a royal scepter. It is said to hold the King's true power, but he will never grasp it. Some say also that if the rod is ever taken, the pillars will topple and the mountain crash into the land.
The King Within-The-Mountain keeps a garden from which he grows to sustain himself, it is thought. In it is a round still pond, surrounded by a forest of reeds, and beyond the pond stands a serpent tree. Its roots grow out into many snake tails, and around it and through it the body a great serpent coils, though at times it seems to become the wood itself and disappear.
No head of a great serpent are found at the top, but a canopy of snake heads are found itself. They speak in unison, never with malice. What drips from their fangs fills the pond, and nourishes the reeds.
I do not tell the children to fear the king. The mountain has not harmed us.