Set and the Mountain

Once, a man named Set was climbing the sheer face of a tall mountain. He hammered pitons into the small crevices in the rock and ran ropes through them to secure himself. He had climbed this face for many days when, stopping to take a rest, he laid his face against the rock and heard a low groaning, as of someone in pain. "Why do you weep, mountain?" he asked. The mountain answered in a voice that shook his bones: "Wind, water and plant all conspire to bear me down. From the moment I was thrust up from the earth, the trees have pierced my skin with their roots, ripping my flesh up. Wind has beaten me cruelly and made my own children grind and strip me away. Water flows down me in cold, burning rivers and bears it all away so that I can be humbled yet again. And now you, man, come with the spikes you have smelted from the iron in my heart to pry me open once more. Will you not have mercy on me and ease my suffering?"
Set was very surprised to hear of the mountain's pain. "You are so great, mountain, and I so small. I did not think that it would make a difference to you, to lose a grain or two of rock to me. You will live on for aeons after I have gone, so how should I pity you? Life is a cruel place, and man survives only by being more cruel than life itself." So saying, he levered himself up and drove another piton home. With a great sigh like thunder, the face of the mountain let go in a massive slab and bore the man beneath it to the earth.